The RuneLords

by David Farland

  He waited until the ferrin finished.

  "And what of me?" Gaborn asked the drunken Days. "Am I a good man?"

  "You, Your Lordship, are the soul of virtue!"

  Gaborn smiled. He could expect no other answer. In the back of the common room, an Inkarran singer struck up the mandolin, began to practice for the crowd that would gather later. Gaborn had seldom seen an Inkarran play, since his own father would not let them cross the borders, and he enjoyed the diversion now.

  The Inkarran had skin as light as cream and hair that fell like liquid silver; his eyes were as green as ice. His body was tattooed in the manner of his tribe--blue symbols of vines twining up his legs, with images that brought to mind the names of his ancestors and his home village. On his knees and arms were images of knots and other magic symbols.

  The man sang with a throaty crooning, a very powerful voice. It was beautiful in its own way, and hinted that this singer wore the "hidden runes of talent." The art of creating hidden runes was mastered only by a few Inkarrans. Yet, despite these runes, the singer's voice could not duplicate the ethereal tones sung by the virtuoso outside the songhouse an hour ago. His voice was more generous, Gaborn decided. The woman at the songhouse had sung for wealth and prestige, but this man sung now merely to entertain. A generous gesture.

  The Days stared down at his mug, knowing he'd said too much, needing to say one thing more. "Your Lordship, perhaps it is well that you do not value virtue in your friends. You will know not to trust them. And if you are wise, you will not trust yourself."

  "How so?" Gaborn asked, wondering. With each Days twinned to another, they were never alone, never had the luxury of trusting themselves. Gaborn wondered if this pairing was really an advantage.

  "Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, most often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly."

  Gaborn grunted, considering.

  "If I may be so bold, Your Lordship, I'm glad you question yourself. Men don't become good by performing an occasional kindly deed. You must constantly reexamine your thoughts and acts, question your virtue."

  Gaborn stared at the thin scholar. The man's eyes were getting glassy, and he could barely hold his head up. His thinking seemed somewhat clearer than a common drunk's, and he offered his advice in a kind tone. No Days had ever offered Gaborn advice before. It was a singular experience.

  At that moment, the inn door opened. Two more men entered, both with dark complexion, both with brown eyes. They were dressed as merchants fresh off the road, but both wore rapiers at their side, and' both had long knives strapped at their knees.

  One man smiled, one frowned.

  Gaborn remembered something his father had taught him as a child. "In the land of Muyyatin, assassins always travel in pairs. They talk with gestures." Then Gaborn's father had taught him the assassins' codes. One man smiling, one man frowning--No news, either good or bad.

  Gaborn's eyes flicked across the room, to the two dark men in the far corner. Like himself, they had chosen a secure position, had put their backs to the wall.

  One man in the corner scratched his left ear: We have heard nothing.

  The newcorners sat at a table on the far side of the room from their compatriots. One man put his hands on the table, palms down. We wait.

  Yet this man moved with a casual quickness that could only be associated with someone who had an endowment of metabolism. Few men had such an endowment--only highly trusted warriors.

  Gaborn almost could not believe what he was seeing. The gestures were so common, so casual. The speakers did not stare at one another. Indeed, what Gaborn thought was a discussion could have been nothing.

  Gaborn glanced around the room. No one in the room could be a target for assassins--no one but him. Yet he felt certain he was not their target. He'd traveled in disguise all day. Bannisferre was full of wealthy merchants and petty lords--the assassins could be hunting one of them, or could even be tracking one of their kinsmen from the South. Gaborn was not properly armed to fight such men. He rose without explanation and left the inn to search for Borenson. Just as he stood, the serving boy brought a passable dinner of roast pork and fresh bread with plums.

  Gaborn left it, made his way into the streets, his Days rising drunkenly to follow after.

  Whereas in the morning the city had seemed cool, invigorating, alive, now the heat of the day had intensified the odor. The smell of evaporating urine from pack animals filled the market, along with the scents of dirt and human sweat. The closeness of the buildings in the market held the stench in.

  Gaborn hurried down the street to the stables, where an old horseman from Fleeds brought Gaborn his dun-colored stallion. The horse neighed on seeing Gaborn, held its head high, and raised its blond tail. It seemed as eager to be off as Gaborn did.

  Reaching out a hand to stroke his horse's muzzle, Gaborn inspected the stallion. It had been well tended. Its coat was brushed, tail and mane plaited. Even the teeth were clean. Its belly was fat, and it was still chewing hay.

  A few moments later, the stablemaster brought out the Days' white mule. Though it was no force stallion with runes of power branded into its neck, the mule looked as if it had been well groomed, too.

  Gaborn kept glancing over his shoulder, looking for signs of more assassins, but spotted nothing out of the ordinary here by the stables.

  Gaborn asked the stablemaster, "Have you noticed any men ride into town--men of dark complexion, traveling in pairs?"

  The stablemaster nodded thoughtfully, as if just struck by the answer, "Aye, now that you mention it, four like men 'ave their horses stabled wit' me, and I seen four more ride nor', through Hay Row."

  "Is this common, to see such men?" Gaborn asked.

  The stablemaster raised a brow. "To tell ye true, I would not 'ave noticed them, 'adn't you mentioned it. But two like gentlemen galloped through town late last night, too."

  Gaborn frowned. Assassins all along the road, heading north. To where? Castle Sylvarresta, a hundred miles away?

  As he left town, Gaborn became more concerned. He took his dun stallion over the Himmeroft Bridge, a picturesque bridge of stone that spanned the broad river. From its top, Gaborn could see large brown trout sunning in the deeper pools, rising up to leap at flies in the shallows, in the shade of the willows. The river here was deep, with cold pools. Peaceful.

  He saw no sign of assassins here at the bridge.

  On the far side of the river, the cobbles gave way to a dirt road that wound off through the country west, A side road went north. The roads met in the woods, and bluebells grew in the woods to the north. So late in the season, none were in bloom. Only a couple of dead flowers stood, ragged and faded to violet. Gaborn turned onto Bluebell Way, let the horse run. It was a force stallion, and had runes of metabolism, brawn, grace, and wit branded on its neck, giving it the speed of three, the strength and grace of two, the wit of four. The stallion was a field hunter by body type--a spirited animal bred for running and jumping through woodland trails. Such a beast was not made to rest in Bannisferre's stables, growing fat on grain.

  The Days struggled to keep up on his own white mule, a vile creature that bit at Gaborn's stallion at every opportunity. It soon fell far behind.

  Then a bizarre thing happened: Gaborn had been riding through fields, where the newly stacked haycocks hunched beside the river. And the fields were fairly empty, now that the heat of the day was on.

  But as Gaborn topped one small hill, three miles out of Bannisferre, he suddenly found himself confronted by a low wispy fog that clung to the ground, shrouding the haycocks ahead in mist.

  It was a strange sight, fog rolling in on a sunny day, in the early afternoon. Oak trees and haycocks rose from the mist. The fog seemed off in color, too blue. He'd never seen the like.

  Gaborn halted. His horse whinnied, nervous
at the sight. Gaborn entered the wall of fog slowly, sniffing.

  There was an odd scent in the air, something hard to define. Gaborn had but two endowments of smell, wished he had more. Sulfur, he thought. Perhaps there were hot pools around, and the fog rose from those.

  Gaborn spurred his horse forward, along the fields for another half-mile, and the fog grew steadily thicker, until the sun in the sky was only a single yellow eye peering through the haze. Crows cawed in the lonely oak trees.

  A mile farther, Gaborn saw a gray house through the mist. A young woman with hair that hung out like straw was chopping wood in front of it. She looked up. From a distance her skin looked as rough as burlap, her features plain and skeletal, her eyes yellow and sickly. This was one of the sisters who had given Myrrima her beauty.

  He spurred his stallion, called out to the young woman.

  She gasped, put one arm up to hide her face.

  Gaborn rode to her, looked down with pity. "No need to hide. One who diminishes herself to enlarge another is worthy of honor. A foul face often hides a fair heart."

  "Myrrima is inside," the girl mumbled. She fled into the house. Borenson quickly came out, Myrrima on his arm.

  "It is a beautiful autumn day." Gaborn smiled at Borenson. "I smell sunbaked wheat fields on the wind, and autumn leaves, and...treachery."

  Borenson gaped at the fog, perplexed. "I thought it was getting cloudy," he said, "I had no idea..." He would not have been able to see the fog through the house's parchment windows. He sniffed. Borenson had four endowments of scent. His nose was far keener than Gaborn's. "Giants. Frowth giants." He asked Myrrima, "Do you have many giants around here?"

  "No," she said, surprised. "I've never seen one."

  "Well, I smell them. A lot of them," Borenson said.

  He looked into Gaborn's eyes. They both knew something odd was afoot. Gaborn had come hours ahead of schedule.

  Gaborn whispered, "Assassins rode into town. Muyyatin. At least ten are on the road north to Castle Sylvarresta, but I saw none on my way here."

  "I'll scout this out," Borenson said. "It could well be that someone is laying a trap for your father. His retinue will pass through town tomorrow."

  "Wouldn't I be safer with you?" Gaborn asked.

  Borenson considered, nodded. He retrieved his own horse from behind the house, just as the Days rode up through the mist.

  "We'll be back in a bit," Gaborn told Myrrima, then spurred his stallion out into the meadow behind her cottage. He felt uneasy leaving her, with giants about. Yet he and Borenson were certainly riding into danger.

  A slight breeze sighed from the north, carrying the haze. They rode toward it, over green meadows. The river twisted west, and they soon found themselves riding along the banks of River Dwindell, on a hay trail.

  Along the river, the unnatural fog deepened, rising in a great cloud, waking it dark, dark enough so swallows quit dipping in the water, and instead a few bats began diving for insects. Fireflies rose like green sparks out of the bushes. The grass along the river was deep, lush, but cropped short.

  All along here in the floodplain the farmers had harvested hay. The haycocks stood out along the river, like great rocks in a sea, and each time Gaborn saw one rising from the mist, he wondered if it was a giant, wondered if a giant might be hiding behind it.

  Gaborn could smell giants now, too. Their greasy hair smelled bitter, the musk and dung on their skins overwhelming. Mold and lichens grew on their aging bodies.

  Until a hundred and twenty years ago, no one in all Rofehavan had heard of Frowth giants. Then, a tribe of four hundred of the huge creatures had come over the northern ice one winter, battle-scarred, fearful. Many of them wounded.

  The Frowth could not speak well in any human tongue, had never quite been able to communicate what fearful enemies chased them over the ice. Yet with a few gestures and the odd spoken command, the giants had learned to work beside men to some extent--lugging huge boulders in quarries, or trees for foresters. The rich lords of Indhopal in particular had taken to hiring Frowth giants, so that, in time, most of them migrated south.

  But the Frowth excelled in only one thing--making war.

  Gaborn and Borenson came to a small croft on a hill beneath some trees, beside the river. The cottage's windows were dark. No smoke roiled from its chimney. A dead farmer lay half in the doorway, hand outstretched. His head lay as if he'd died trying to reach for it as it rolled away. The coppery scent of blood hung heavy in the air.

  Borenson swore, rode forward. The mist ahead grew thicker. Heavier.

  In the green grass, they found steaming human footprints. The grass beneath the footprints was blackened, dead. Gaborn had never seen the like.

  "Flameweavers," Borenson said. "Powerful ones--powerful enough to transmute to flame. Five of them."

  There were flameweavers in Mystarria, of course, sorcerers who could warm a room or cause a log to burst into flame, but none so powerful that they blackened the ground they trod upon. Not like this.

  These were creatures of legend, wizards of such power that they could pry secrets from men's souls, or summon beings of terror from the netherworld.

  Gaborn's heart pounded; he looked at Borenson, who was suddenly wary. There were no flameweavers like this in the northern kingdoms, nor so many Frowth giants. They could only have come from the south. Gaborn tasted the air again. That fog, that strange fog, a thinly disguised smoke? Raised by the flameweavers? How big an army did it hide?

  So our spies were wrong, Gaborn realized. Raj Ahten's invasion won't wait for spring.

  The flameweavers' footsteps led north, along the banks of the River Dwindell. Raj Ahten's troops must be marching through the woods, to hide their numbers. But they would not go far into the wood, for this was the Dunnwood. Wild, old, and powerful. Few men dared enter its heart. Even Raj Ahten would not do so.

  If Gaborn took the road north, he could reach Sylvarresta in half a day.

  But of course that was why the assassins watched the road, looking to waylay anyone who sought to warn King Sylvarresta. Gaborn reasoned that given the nature of his horse, a good solid hunter, he might be safer riding through the woods. He knew the dangers. He'd been in the Dunnwood before, hunting the great black boars.

  The giant boars in the wood often grew almost as tall as Gaborn's stallion, and over the centuries they had learned to attack riders. But there were more dangerous things in these woods, it was said--ancient duskin ruins still guarded by magic, and the spirits of those who'd died here. Gaborn had once seen such a spirit.

  Raj Ahten's men would be on warhorses, heavy creatures bred for battle in the desert, not for speed in the woods.

  But even riding fast through the woods, it would take Gaborn a day to reach Lord Sylvarresta. Such a journey would be hard on his stallion.

  Meanwhile, Gaborn's own father was not far south. King Orden was coming north for the autumn hunt, as was his custom, and this time he had a company of over two thousand soldiers. Gaborn was to have formally proposed betrothal to Iome Sylvarresta in a week, and King Orden had brought an impressive retinue for his son.

  Now those troops might well be needed in battle.

  Gaborn raised his hand, manipulated his fingers quickly in battle sign. Retreat. Warn King Orden.

  Borenson looked wary, signed, Where are you going?

  To warn Sylvarresta.

  No! Dangerous! Borenson signed. Let me go!

  Gaborn shook his head, pointed south.

  Borenson glared, signed, I'll go north. Too dangerous for you!

  But Gaborn could not let him. He'd intended to take a dangerous road to power, to try to become the kind of lord who would win men's hearts. How better to win the hearts of the people of Heredon, than to come to their aid now? I must go, Gaborn signed forcefully.

  Borenson began to argue again. Gaborn whipped out his own saber, aiming just so, slashing Borenson's cheek. The cut was so shallow, the soldier could have got it shaving.

&n
bsp; Gaborn fought down his rage. Almost immediately he regretted this impetuous act. Yet Borenson knew better than to argue with his prince in a dangerous situation. Arguments were poison. A man who believes he is doomed to fail tends to fail. Gaborn would listen to no poison arguments.

  Gaborn pointed south with his sword, looked at both the Days and Borenson meaningfully. With his free hand, he signed, Check on Myrrima. If Raj Ahten's troops slaughtered peasants just to make certain their force wasn't discovered, Myrrima would be in danger.

  It seemed a long moment as Borenson considered. Gaborn was no commoner. With his endowments of wit and brawn, he acted more like a man than he did a child, and in the past year, Borenson had begun treating him as an equal, rather than as a charge.

  Perhaps more to the point, Borenson himself had to be torn. Both King Orden and King Sylvarresta needed to be warned as soon as possible. He couldn't ride two directions at once.

  There are assassins on the road, Gaborn reminded him. The woods are safer. I will be safe.

  To Gaborn's surprise, the Days turned his mule, headed back. Gaborn had seldom been free of the historian's scrutiny. But the Days' mule couldn't keep up with a force stallion. If he tried to follow, the historian would only get killed.

  Borenson reached behind his saddle, pulled his bow and quiver, backed his horse, and handed the weapons to Gaborn. He whispered, "May the Glories guide you safely."

  Gaborn would need the bow. He nodded, grateful.

  When the men had disappeared through the mist, Gaborn licked his lips, his mouth dry with fear. Preparedness is the father of courage, he reminded himself. A teaching from the Room of the Heart. Yet suddenly all that he'd learned in the House of Understanding seemed...inadequate.

  He prepared to fight. First he dismounted, removed his fancy feathered hat, tossed it to the ground. It wouldn't do to ride ahead looking like a wealthy merchant. He needed to seem a humble peasant, without benefit of endowments.

  He reached into his saddlebags, drew out a stained cloak of gray, threw it over his shoulders. He strung the bow. He had no battle-axe to cut through armor--only his dueling saber, and the dirk strapped at his knee.