“I am searching for the men who killed the graak,” Bessahan answered.
“What for?” the old woman demanded. Bessahan let his horse step closer.
“Bessahan?” she asked, suddenly frightened. “What kind of name is that!”
She had obviously not seen the men, had no further information of any value. So he told her the truth.
“It is not a name, so much as a title. In my country, my name means ‘Hunter of Men.’”
The old woman put her hand on her mouth, as if to keep from crying out.
Bessahan leaned over quickly, grabbed the old woman by the hair with his right hand, and drew his khivar, a longbladed assassin’s knife, with his left.
He slashed hard with his knife, so that the blade snicked through bone, and the old woman’s body tumbled into the dry grass at his horse’s feet. He cut off a single ear, then tossed her head beside the body.
She had died without a cry.
Bessahan put the ear in a coin pouch, then leapt from his horse and picked up the lantern. He cleaned his blade and circled the carcass of the graak. He caught the scent of a young man in a cotton tunic, and an old man whose sweat was more like a boar’s scent. All of these northerners ate too much cheese and drank too much ale. Their very skin smelled bad to Bessahan, like curdled milk. And they were dirty besides.
But he smelled something else—a girl’s scent on the beast’s neck. This was no wild graak, he suddenly realized. He held the lantern near, saw where the scales of the graak’s neck had been polished smooth by young legs there near the base of the graak’s shoulders. A skyrider had been on that beast!
So, she had joined with the king’s messengers.
The prints of hooves near the graak’s carcass showed that two mounts had indeed headed north on horseback.
Bessahan removed the hood from the lantern, then blew out the wick and left it on the grass. He preferred that the old woman’s body not be found until morning.
In the darkness, he stretched his back and looked up. A ragged hole in the clouds showed stars gleaming like a thousand diamonds in a perfect sky.
A beautiful night, with just a touch of cold. On such a night back home, he would have taken a pair of girls to his room to keep him warm. He had been without a woman for too long.
He let the hood fall back from over his head, shook his long dark hair out in the starlight, and sniffed the air in consternation.
He smelled something odd, something … unlike anything he had ever encountered. Rich, earthy. Like freshly turned soil or like moss—yet sweeter.
I am in a northern forest, he reminded himself, far from home. Of course there are plants here that I have never smelled before.
Yet something bothered him. He could sniff the air, taste the scent, but he could not locate the source of the smell itself. It was as if some strange animal had passed this way.
Bessahan got on his mount and rode into the night.
11
POLISHED STONES
Iome and Gaborn stood atop the King’s Keep, gazing down on the fields below Castle Sylvarresta. It was the last evening of Hostenfest, and the great feast was over, though Gaborn had not eaten a handful of food all day. Now, by tradition, was a time of song.
For a thousand years or more, the end of Hostenfest had been celebrated in song as families gathered round the hearth and cast handfuls of fragrant dried leaves and flower petals upon the fire—rose and jasmine, lavender or mint.
Then they had sung together, in hope of the new King.
Two hundred thousand tents and pavilions covered the fields before Castle Sylvarresta, and each one shone from the lanterns within it, so that the light shining through made the edifices glow in colors of gold and silver, iridescent blues and vivid greens. Moreover, the people of Heredon stood before their tents and held aloft small oil lamps. The essence of flower petals filled the air, and the light of the lamps reflected from their faces.
Every kind of man stood upon that field: lords and ladies in their finery, peasant farmers by the drab hundreds of thousands, scholars and fools, minstrels and laborers, whores and healers, merchants and huntsmen. The sick, the healthy, the lame, the dying. The astonished, the joyous, the skeptical, the true believers, the terrified.
The people were giddy and wild-eyed. It was the last day of Hostenfest, the celebration of the Earth King. The people celebrated, but even in their celebration there was an undertone of terror.
Together the people sang an ancient hymn.
“Lord of the Forest, Master of the Field,
To whom each knee must bow and heart must yield,
Great shall be my joy when thy reign has come.
Gather me when you bring the harvest home.
“We’ll stand together when the darkness falls
Shoulder to shoulder on the castle walls.
I’ll lend thee my sword, if you’ll be my shield,
Lord of the Forest, Master of the Field.”
As the people sang, Iome looked down in wonder, for beside the opalescent lights shining from the pavilions and lamps around the castle, a strange sapphire light glowed in the moat.
The great sturgeons swam wildly, drawing runes of protection about the castle, as if they too offered support to the Earth King.
When the song ended, horns began to trumpet upon the walls of Castle Sylvarresta and throughout the vast horde. Hundreds of thousands of voices united in shouting, “All hail the new Earth King! All hail the Earth King.”
Their voices echoed among the hills and reverberated from the castle walls. Men, women, and children raised their fists as they cried out in wonder. Many an animal bucked wildly at the shouting and began to run through the camps. A throng of at least five hundred thousand people began racing forward to kneel with their weapons proffered in support of Gaborn. Men shouted and women cried, the horns kept blaring. Upon the castle walls boys wildly waved the banners of Sylvarresta.
Iome had never imagined such a noise or tumult. A chill coursed down her spine.
This is only the beginning, Iome realized. People remember the legends. Every man, woman, and child who desires to live knows that he must serve the Earth King, gain his protection.
Millions upon millions of people are coming. The whole world will gather here.
Thus Gaborn Val Orden stood on the walls of Castle Sylvarresta in triumph.
Iome looked to his face to see his reaction. Gaborn stood rigid, and peered to the south as if listening to a distant trumpet.
Iome looked off at the edge of the forest, could see nothing beyond the dark trees. Yet Gaborn trembled as he gazed beyond the southern hills with a faraway look in his eye.
“What’s wrong?” Iome asked.
He breathed heavily. “Iome, I feel a warning like never before! The Earth’s warning. The fields here are black. My death is coming! The death of us all is coming!”
“What do you mean?” Iome asked.
“We must prepare to flee,” he said. He offered no further explanation. Instead he gripped her hand as he turned and raced from the top of the King’s Tower, through the open hatch, down the stairs, descending six stories until he reached the old cellars where no man had lived in Iome’s lifetime.
Gaborn’s and Iome’s Days raced to keep up.
Iome was vaguely aware that the Earth Warden Binnesman had converted this dirty hole into his den, since Raj Ahten’s flameweavers had burned his cottage in the garden, but when Gaborn threw open the door, she was not at all prepared for what she saw.
The wizard Binnesman stood in the cellar, whose scent of mildew, sulfur, and ash was made tolerable only by the bundles of herbs tied to the rafters. Binnesman had no candles or lamps of any kind lit in that room. Yet half-buried in the dirt on the floor lay a Seer’s Stone. It was an enormous round stone, a polished agate of purest white. Other, smaller crystals were laid around it, pointing inward toward this vast stone, and the wizard had drawn magic runes in the dirt around the entire assembly. The cr
ystals and the great polished agate were all glowing with their own light.
Binnesman stood leaning on his staff and staring down at the glowing stone, watching an image. As Iome looked at the stone, she could see four mountains spouting smoke and ash and fire. Distantly thunder rumbled, seeming to shake the floor beneath her. The stone reavealed an image of volcanoes erupting.
Or at least that is what she thought at first. For these were not common volcanoes. Instead, they were but small domes, where lava gushed like water, and reavers by the tens of thousands boiled out of the ground.
Nor did the Seer’s Stone convey the image alone. Iome realized that the odor of sulfur and ash in the air issued from the stone, and the heat radiated by the Seer’s Stone warmed the room like a baker’s oven. Indeed, she could smell and feel and hear and see everything, just as if she were watching the volcanoes from afar.
Yet Iome had never heard that Binnesman dabbled with Seer’s Stones. In fact, he’d denied ever having done so when confronted by Raj Ahten.
Iome stared at the image in the stone, astonished.
“Reavers have surfaced in North Crowthen,” the wizard said matter-of-factly. “Others are coming to ground farther south, along the Alcair Mountains. Your keep at Haberd is toppled. Raj Ahten’s defenses in Kartish are faring no better.”
Even as he said it, the whole of Castle Sylvarresta suddenly trembled as the earth shook. At first Iome thought it was a residual effect from the Seer’s Stones arranged on the floor, but the wizard stared up at the walls of the castle, concerned. “It is but a minor tremor,” the wizard said. “The Earth is in pain.”
Iome glanced at the pair of Days who had taken sanctuary in the dark corner behind her. With their minds paired to those of their fellows, they knew more about the affairs of the Earth than anyone in this room, including the wizard Binnesman. What she saw worried her. Gaborn’s Days stared at the scene in horror, mouth gaping.
“What is Raj Ahten doing, attacking me at a time like this?” Gaborn demanded. “Does he even know the danger?”
“I doubt that he sees the calamity yet,” the wizard answered. “Last I saw, his troops were marching toward Carris, it seemed. At least, they were a few hours ago.”
“Where are they now?” Gaborn asked.
Binnesman bowed his head and closed his eyes, as if too weary to continue. Ever since he’d raised his wylde and lost it, he’d suffered from fatigue. “It has been a long day. But I’ll try.”
The wizard reached down to the dirt floor and rubbed fresh soil upon his palms and on his face. Then he picked up a few crystals, moved them about the edge of the Seer’s Stone, pulling some back, moving others left or right, his face a study in concentration.
The process took several minutes, for the wizard had first to locate Raj Ahten’s troops, as if seen from a distant mountain, then progressively move to better vantage points.
Yet what Iome eventually saw made the hair stand up on her arms: Raj Ahten’s troops were massed about a village, a hundred stone houses with thatch roofs. A low wall of stone surrounded the village, one that a knight mounted on a good force horse could easily overleap.
There were no watchmen on the walls, no distant sound of barking dogs. It appeared that the town was unaware of the approaching threat.
“I know that place,” Gaborn said. “That is the village of Twynhaven.”
The frowth giants in Raj Ahten’s army raised their muzzles and sniffed the air hungrily, as if trying to catch the scent of fresh blood. The knights in the retinue held their lances and war axes ready.
But it was Raj Ahten’s sorcerers who took the lead.
Three flameweavers spread out in a line, just outside the village wall, and began to chant, soft and reedy. Iome could hear them plainly, yet she could not make out their words, for their chant was a song of fire and consumption, the flickering sounds of flames, the crackle of a log.
Around each of them, grass and bushes suddenly erupted. Green flames shot skyward, and the flameweavers were engulfed. Iome smelled ash, felt the heat of their flame. They began stalking toward the village, climbed the low stone wall.
Suddenly, the dogs in the town caught sight of them and several began to bay. A horse whinnied nervously.
Still, no voice was raised in alarm.
The flameweavers leapt over the wall, and by now the fires behind them had grown substantial, so that Iome watched the sorcerers from beyond a screen of flame.
Around the village wall, the late summer sun had bleached the grass, sucked all the moisture from it. The flameweaver to the far left pointed to his left, and a tendril of flame shot from his hand and raced around the wall faster than a good horse could run. The flameweaver to the right did the same. In seconds, the two bolts of flame met at the far end of the city, and it was circled in fire.
Then the fire leapt skyward and began to rush toward the center of the circle.
A woman screamed and ran from her house at the edge of the village, gaping in dismay. Others began to follow her from their homes—children and mothers. Some horses knocked down a corral, raced round the town, bucking wildly.
The flameweavers advanced on the village now. The rising inferno was feeding them, giving them energy. One flameweaver pointed at a large barn, and the thatch of its roof caught fire, seemed almost to explode.
Seconds later, one of his fellows approached a house, sent a rope of flame twisting toward it, so that its roof and all its timbers inside were consumed at once. The heat of it fairly smote Iome.
People screamed within the house, and a burly townsman raced from it, his hair and clothes afire. A woman and her son raced out, the boy bearing a shield. His armor and his eyes reflected the flames. Firelit smoke made the scene bright.
The smell of smoke came strong to Iome’s nostrils.
The whole town suddenly erupted into an inferno, and the flames whirled high into the air, a hundred, two hundred yards. The flameweavers began chanting louder as they walked into that inferno, and they themselves became glowing worms of light, writhing beside the townspeople who died.
“They’re sacrificing those people to the Power they serve,” Binnesman said in horror, and the wizard turned away from his Seer’s Stone. “This is a black summoning.”
“This is the source of my terror,” Gaborn said.
The flames encompassing the village slowly turned green, the several fires within it coalescing into some strange wonderland of otherworldly shadows. Within moments, the rock walls of the cottages and the stone fences all began to dissolve into molten puddles.
It happened quickly, Iome thought. The town was soon leveled; the bones of every carcass, both of man and animal, were licked clean by flames.
It did not take the normal hours of teasing and coaxing that Iome thought would be required to perform a summoning. Perhaps the sacrifice strengthened the flameweavers’ spell. The flameweavers sang and danced like living flames.
Within an hour, a green glowing portal appeared on the ground, and the flameweavers stood before it, calling in the tongues of flames and ashes.
Nothing came forth, until one flameweaver walked to the portal and disappeared into the netherworld.
Almost instantly, the flames around the city diminished, puffed out into utter blackness. Only an occasional coal in the blackness still burned.
For a long moment, Iome held her breath, believing that a flameweaver had died, that he’d disappeared into the netherworld, never to return.
Then, among the ashes, she saw two forms take shape, writhing like wrestlers, she thought at first. But no, she decided, they were writhing like men who have struggled to crawl the last few yards of a long and difficult journey.
One was the dark shape of the flameweaver, half-covered with ashes.
Beside him was a larger form, like that of a dark man with a shaggy mane of long curly hair. But he glowed with a pure blue light, as if he were made of crystal. Flames rippled and played on his flesh.
The lumb
ering fellow staggered to his feet, and fanned wide his resplendent wings. Lightning seemed to flicker across his brow, and it glowed fiercely in his eyes.
Everywhere, among the ranks of Raj Ahten’s troops, hardened soldiers cried out in astonishment, while war dogs backed away and snarled in terror.
“By the Powers,” Gaborn said, “he’s summoned a Glory!”
But what kind of Glory? Iome wondered. For in the ages past, it was said that at the battle of Vaderlee’s Gorge, the Earth King Erden Geboren once fought with one Glory on his right hand and another on his left. They were said to be irrepressible opponents. She’d thought them to be the beneficiaries of mankind.
Yet this youth had a fell look in his eye as he wrapped his wings about his shoulders, and the light streaming from him became the blackest abyss.
“Do not be misled,” Binnesman said. “He is not like the Glories revered in ancient tales. He is a Darkling Glory. This creature comes to slay an Earth King, not to save one.”
“How soon?” Gaborn asked. “When will it come?” Binnesman went to a small table and retrieved a large tome, an illuminated manuscript that depicted various creatures of the Earth. He flipped through his bestiary, to the pages that dealt with creatures of the netherworld. The notations for a Darkling Glory were scant, and lacked even a crude drawing. Obviously, even among the wise, this beast was the stuff of mere legend. “It is a creature of air and darkness,” Binnesman said. “It will fly to you, and most likely it will wait to attack until night. I think it is too far away to reach us today. But tomorrow night, or the night after, it will surely come.”
“What should I do?” Gaborn asked.
Binnesman didn’t answer, merely frowned as he read the entry on Darkling Glories. Iome realized that he had no answer.
“That fool, Raj Ahten,” the wizard muttered, “to loose such a monster now.”
Binnesman knelt by his crystals, nudged one a hairsbreadth, and shifted his view so that he could better see Raj Ahten’s army.
For a long moment he stared, then he spoke to Gaborn. “I don’t see Raj Ahten himself. Where could he be?”
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