Gaborn looked to Binnesman for answer, and the wizard nodded, urging Gaborn to speak to the earth directly.
Gaborn had never seen anything like this creature, had never heard tales of it. Earth had come to him, choosing a form that Gaborn could see and comprehend. Some men claimed to look into fire and see the face of the Power behind it, but it often seemed to Gaborn that fire was the most approachable of elements, while air was the least. Gaborn had never heard of the earth manifesting itself in this way.
"I do love the land," Gaborn said at last.
The strange clamor of faraway noises rose again. " 'How can you love what you cannot comprehend?' " Binnesman interpreted.
"I love what I do comprehend, and suppose I would love the rest," Gaborn tried to answer truthfully.
Earth smiled, mocking. Boulders rumbled. Binnesman said, " 'Someday you shall comprehend me, when your body mingles with mine. Do you fear that day?' "
Death. Earth wanted to know if he feared death.
"Yes." Gaborn dared not lie.
"Then you cannot love me fully," Earth whispered. "Will you aid my cause despite this?"
Raj Ahten. The thing looked so much like Raj Ahten. Gaborn knew what Earth desired of him. Something more than embracing life. Something more than serving man. To embrace death and decay and the totality that was Earth.
A strangeness showed in Earth's dark face, emotions not human. Gaborn looked into those eyes, and images came to mind: a pasture far south of Bannisferre where white stones protruded from the green grass like teeth; the scenic purple mountains of Alcair as seen in the distance south of home. But there was more--vast crevasses and caverns and canyons deep beneath the ground, places he had never seen. Many-colored soils and dark rock by the shapeless ton, so deep within the earth that no man could hold it all, no man could begin to comprehend it. Gems and mud and leaves rotting on the forest floor among the bones of men. Smells of sulfur and ash and grass and blood. Rivers thrumming and tumbling in the dark places of the world, and endless seas lying over the face of the earth like sweet tears.
You cannot know me, Earth was saying. You cannot comprehend me. You see only surfaces. Though you want me as an ally, I must also be your enemy.
Painfully, Gaborn considered each word of the vow, wondering if he could keep it.
"Why would you want me to take this vow?" Gaborn asked. "What does it mean, to never harm the earth? What does it mean, to preserve a seed of humanity?"
This time, Binnesman did not hesitate when he translated Earth's answer, which came more as a sighing of wind than a grumble. "You will not seek to thwart me," Earth said, leaning back casually against the bole of one dark tree that seemed to cup him like a hand. "You will seek to learn my will, discern how best to serve the earth."
"In what capacity?" Gaborn asked, seeking to know more precisely what the earth wanted.
Clamorous noises. Binnesman frowned thoughtfully as he sought for words..."As you cannot comprehend me," Earth said, "I cannot comprehend you. Yet this much I know: You love your people, seek their welfare. You seek to save men."
"There was a time when Fire loved the earth, and the sun drew nearer to me. That time is no more. So in this dark season, I must call others to champion my cause. I ask you to save a remnant of mankind."
Gaborn's heart pounded. "Save them from what?"
Hissing rose through the woods. "Fire. All of nature is out of balance. That which you call 'the First Power' has long been withdrawn, but now it will waken and sweep over the world, bringing death. It is in Fire's nature to seek constantly to consume and grow. It shall destroy much."
Gaborn knew enough of wizardry to know that while all Powers combined to create life, the alliance of Powers was uneasy, and different Powers favored different kinds of life. Air loved birds, while Water loved fishes, and Earth loved plants and the things that crept upon its face. Fire seemed to love only serpents, and creatures of the netherworld. Earth and Water were powers of stability. Air and Fire were unstable. Earth itself was a protector, and combined with Water to protect nature.
Immediately, Gaborn reasoned, I am a Runelord, Prince of Mystarria--a nation strong in water magics--who loves the land. So earth seeks to make an ally of me.
"You seek my service," Gaborn said, "and only a fool would refuse to consider your offer. You want me to save someone, and this I would do gladly. But what do you offer in return?"
Boulders rumbled, and nearby the ground vented steam as Earth laughed. Yet Binnesman did not smile as he translated, " 'I ask but one thing of you, to save a seed of humanity. If you succeed, the deed itself shall be your reward. You shall save those you deem worthy to live.' "
"If--I succeed?" Gaborn asked.
Lonely wind hissing through trees. "Once there were toth upon the land. Once there were duskins...At the end of this dark time, mankind, too, may become only a memory."
Gaborn felt his heart nearly freeze. He'd imagined that the earth wanted him to help save the people of Heredon from Raj Ahten. But something more dangerous than a war between two nations was at hand--something more devastating.
"What is going to happen?" Gaborn asked.
The wind hissed as Earth spoke softly. Binnesman merely frowned for a long time, then answered for himself. "Gaborn, I can't tell you what the earth is saying. It is too complex to interpret. The earth does not itself know the full answer. Only the Time Lords see the future, but even for the earth, the answer is unclear. Earth senses wide destruction. The skies will be black with smoke, and everything will burn. The sun at high noon will shine dimly, as red as blood. Seas will be choked with ash...I--it's too much for me to untangle, too much to answer."
The wizard fell silent then, and Gaborn saw that his face was ashen, as if trying to make sense of Earth's words was a great labor, even for him. Or perhaps the things he'd learned terrified Binnesman to the core, so that he could speak no longer.
Gaborn did not understand how to keep the vow. Yet no matter what it required, he had to take it. He fell to his knees and vowed, "I, Gaborn Val Orden, swear to you that I will never harm the earth, that I dedicate myself to the preservation of a seed of humanity in the dark season to come."
Gaborn's whole body trembled. The man of dust leaned over until its helm almost touched Gaborn's forehead. The sound of wind whispered in Gaborn's ears, and the earth rumbled ominously. Binnesman croaked the words: " 'I shall hold you to your word, though in time you curse me.' "
Earth raised two fingers of dust, the forefinger and index finger of its left hand, to Gaborn's forehead, and there traced a rune.
When it finished, Earth stuck the two fingers to Gaborn's lips.
Gaborn opened his mouth. Earth placed its fingers inside. Gaborn bit, tasting clean soil on his tongue.
In that moment, the fine filaments of hair on the creature of dust fell away, and its muscles slackened, until a pile of dust sloughed to the ground.
Immediately, the suffocating presence of earth power diminished. Light shone thinly still through the trees, and Gaborn breathed deep.
When Binnesman next moved, his face was pale, and the wizard stared at the mound of dust in awe. Reaching down, he respectfully prodded it with a finger, then tasted the dirt.
He took another pinch and sprinkled it over Gaborn's left shoulder, then his right, and then his head, chanting, "The earth heal, the earth hide you, the earth make you its own!
"Now," Binnesman whispered, placing his hands on Gaborn's shoulders, "Gaborn Val Orden, I name you Earthborn indeed. As you serve the land, it serves you in return."
Gaborn still smelled rue here in the glade, but now its powerful scent only made his nose itch. He went to the bush, caressed a faded yellow flower, pulled a few leaves from branches.
Gaborn glanced over, saw Binnesman staring at him with something like awe etched into his features.
When Gaborn had taken a dozen more leaves, Binnesman grumbled.
"You don't need enough to wipe out a whole village. Com
e now, time is short."
The wizard rolled the rue leaves between his hands, and when he held out his palm, the leaves had crumbled to powder. Binnesman took a pouch from around his own neck, put the crumbled leaves into the pouch, and placed it around Gaborn's throat.
Gaborn took it stiffly, wanting to ask a hundred questions. But when he'd first come into this wild, tangled garden, he'd felt a sense of safety, of being protected. Now he recognized time was drawing short, and he felt a sense of urgency. He had no time to question now.
The kitchen maid had been standing this whole while at the edge of the glade, a terrified expression on her face. Now Binnesman led her and Gaborn downhill, to the south wall of the garden, and they hurried along a narrow trail, Gaborn clutching the forcibles in one hand, the hilt of his saber in the other.
He felt so odd. So numb. He wanted to rest, to have time to sort things out.
When they'd reached the far side of the meadow, beneath the shade of the exotic trees, Gabon heard shouting behind. He glanced back up the trail.
Night had almost completely fallen. Gaborn could see lights shining now from the watchtowers of the Dedicates' Keep, and from down below at the Soldiers' Keep, and from the King's own chambers. A few lonely stars had begun to glow in the sky. This surprised him, for the eyebright so aided his vision that it did not seem night.
But uphill, on the trail behind them, far brighter than any other lights, a fiery man strode into view, the green flames flickering across his shoulders like the tongues of snakes, licking the clean skin of his hairless skull.
The flameweaver was behind the gate still, the same gate Gaborn had entered only minutes before. The guards had fallen back from this sorcerer, and the flameweaver reached out a hand. A bolt of sunlight seemed to burst hungrily from his palm, and the iron gate melted and twisted. The flameweaver pushed past the ruined gate, entered the garden.
Behind him came Raj Ahten's scouts. Men in dark robes, searching for Gaborn's scent.
"Hurry!" Binnesman whispered. If these had been normal men, Gaborn would not have feared. But he sensed now that this was no fight between mere mortals that he engaged in. This was Fire, seeking him.
Then they were running through the woods, over marshy ground beside the stream. Just downhill a few hundred yards, the stream would meet with the River Wye, and there Gaborn hoped to find a means of escape. The maid and the wizard could not match Gaborn's speed. He jumped some low bushes, and in a few moments they reached a small cottage with whitewashed wattle and a thatch roof.
"I must go and save my seeds," Binnesman hissed. "Rowan, you know the way to the mill. Take Gaborn. May the Earth be with you both!"
"Come," Rowan said. "This way."
She reached back for his sleeve, pulled him down a brick road. Gaborn did as he was told, rushing with a renewed sense of urgency. He could hear shouting in the meadows behind him. He still had his boots in hand, was painfully aware with each step that he needed to put them on, yet Rowan ran over the uneven stones recklessly, feeling nothing.
Yet even as he ran, he felt...astonished, full of wonder, incapable of comprehending all that had just happened. He wanted to stop, to take time to ponder. But at the moment, he knew it was too dangerous to do so.
At the edge of the garden, Gaborn told Rowan, "Stop, stop. Put on your shoes, before you break every bone in your foot!"
Rowan stopped, put on her own shoes while Gaborn pulled on his boots; then they ran with greater speed.
She raced out the garden gate, along a street to the King's stables, an enormous building of new wood. She pulled one of the doors open.
A stableboy sleeping in the hay just inside the door shouted in alarm, but Gaborn and Rowan rushed past him, past the long stalls. Here, slung from the ceiling in belly harnesses, were dozens of the King's Dedicate horses--horses robbed of wit, brawn, stamina, or metabolism so that the King's own force horses could have greater power. Rowan ran past the long row of stalls, then fled out the back door. Here a stream, the same stream that had flowed through the wizard's garden, wound through a muddy corral, where the horses stamped and neighed in fear. The stream passed under a great stone wall, the Outer Wall to the city's defenses.
Gaborn could not climb that wall, some fifty feet in height. Instead, Rowan squirmed under the wall, where the stone had eroded over the ages. The passage was narrow, too narrow to admit a warrior in armor, but the thin girl and Gaborn squeezed through, getting wet in the icy water.
Now the stream tumbled downhill, down a steep green. All around the stream grew tall pussy willows.
Gaborn looked up. An archer on the walls was posted just above them. He looked down, saw them escape, and pointedly looked the other way.
The ground here was kept open near the walls, so that archers could shoot from above. Gaborn could never have sneaked into the castle from here, not unobserved.
The hillside became steep just below the pussy willows, where it led into some deep birch and alder woods that were so dark that Gaborn could hardly see. Yet it was only a small grove, a triangle of trees barely two hundred yards long and a hundred wide.
Through the trees Gaborn spotted the river now, broad and black. He could hear its soft voice burbling.
He halted, grabbed Rowan's ankle to stop her from crawling farther. On the far side of the river he saw movement: nomen and Frowth giants setting camps in the darkness. The nomen were black shadows in the fields of grain, hunched and clawing. Gaborn knew that the nomen, who preferred to leap on their prey from trees in the starlight, would be able to see well in the night, but he did not know how well.
Though the nomen had invaded from the sea a thousand years before, the Runelords had decimated their numbers, had even gone so far as to sail to their own dark lands beyond the Caroll Sea to wipe them out. Long had their war cries been silenced. They had not been fierce warriors, but were cunning fighters in the darkness. The nomen were now little more than legend. Still, rumor said that nomen inhabited the Hest Mountains, beyond Inkarra, and that they sometimes stole children to eat. The Inkarrans seemed never quite able to wipe the last of the creatures from the rain forests. Gaborn didn't know how much of the tales to believe. Perhaps the nomen could see him even now.
But the woods grew thicker off to the left--and Gaborn spotted a wide diversion dam made of stones. The mill. Its huge water wheel made a great racket, with its grinding and the water splashing.
"Let me lead," he whispered. He moved slowly now through the pussy willows, eeling on his belly, not wanting to attract the attention of the nomen on the far side of the river till he reached the shelter of the woods.
They were outside the city wall now, on a steep bank that overlooked the River Wye to the east, the moat to the south. He hoped Raj Ahten didn't have soldiers posted in these woods.
He took his time as he led Rowan deeper into the grove, careful not to snap a twig.
Up on the hills behind him, in the heart of Castle Sylvarresta, he could hear distant cries of dismay, shouts. Perhaps a battle had broken out.
Other shouts nearby mingled with the noise, cries of hunters, shouting in Taifan, "Go that way! Look over there! After him!" Raj Ahten's trackers were searching on the other side of the city wall.
Gaborn crept down a steep ridge, keeping to the trees, till he and Rowan nearly reached the river.
There he studied the far banks from the deep shadows.
On the hill behind, a fire had begun raging. He smelled smoke. Binnesman's garden was ablaze. The flames looked like the lights thrown by a fiery sunrise.
Gaborn spotted giants on the far bank of the river, hoary things with shaggy manes. The blaze reflected in their silver eyes. Nomen prowled among them, naked. Shades, who shielded their eyes from the conflagration.
The river looked shallow. Though autumn was on its way, little rain had fallen in the past few weeks. Gaborn feared that no matter how far he dove beneath the water, the nomen would see him. But it looked as if the whole city might burst i
nto flame, and for the moment the nomen were somewhat blinded.
Gaborn hugged the shadows. He pointed out twigs for Rowan to avoid with each step.
He heard a branch snap. He spun, drew his saber. One of Raj Ahten's hunters stood on the ridge above, half-hidden by trees, framed by firelight from the wizard's burning garden.
The man didn't rush Gaborn and Rowan, only stood silently, trusting to the night to hide him. Rowan stopped at the sound, looked uphill. She apparently couldn't see the fellow.
He wore a dark robe, and held a naked sword, with a lacquered leather vest for armor. Only the eyebright Binnesman had given Gaborn let him spot the hunter.
Gaborn didn't know what endowments the man might have, how strong or swift he might be. But the hunter would be equally wary of Gaborn's attributes.
Gaborn let his gaze flicker past the hunter, searched the woods to the man's right, as if he hadn't spotted him. After a long moment, Gaborn turned his back, watched the far bank.
He set his bundle of forcibles on the ground, then pretended to scratch himself and drew the dagger from his belt with his left hand. He held the haft in his grip, the blade flat against his wrist, so that it remained concealed.
Then he just listened. The mill wheel made a noise like the rumble of rocks sliding down a slope, and Gaborn could hear distant shouts, perhaps the sound of folks fighting a fire in the city. "Let's wait here," Gaborn told Rowan.
He stilled his breathing as the hunter drew closer.
Stealthy, a stealthy man, but quick. The man had an endowment of metabolism.
Gaborn had no extra metabolism. He moved with the speed of youth, but he was no match for a force warrior.
Gaborn couldn't risk letting the man cry an alarm, attract the attention of the nomen.
He waited till the hunter drew close, twenty feet. A twig crunched softly. Gaborn pretended not to hear. Waited half a second.
He waited until he judged that the hunter would be gazing at his feet, concentrating on not making another sound; then Gaborn spun and leapt past Rowan.
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