The RuneLords

by David Farland

  She sat on the throne, tried not to look at Raj Ahten's face, at his incredibly handsome face.

  "You understand why I must do this, don't you?" he asked.

  Iome didn't answer.

  "Someday you will thank me." Raj Ahten studied her frankly. "Have you studied in the House of Understanding, or have you read the chronicles?"

  Iome nodded. She'd read the chronicles--at least selected passages.

  "Have you heard the name of Daylan Hammer?"

  Iome had. "The warrior?"

  "The chroniclers called him 'the Sum of All Men.' Sixteen hundred and eighty-eight years ago, he defeated the Toth invaders and their magicians, here on Rofehavan's own shores. He defeated them almost single-handedly. He had so many endowments of stamina that when a sword passed through his heart, it would heal up again as the blade exited. Do you know how many endowments that takes?"

  Iome shook her head.

  "I do," Raj Ahten said, pulling back his shirt. "Try it, if you like."

  Iome had her poniard strapped under her skirts. She hesitated just a moment. It seemed ghoulish, yet she might never have another chance to stab the man.

  She pulled it, looked into his eyes. Raj Ahten watched her, confident, Iome plunged the dagger up between his ribs, saw the pain in his eyes, heard him give a startled gasp. She twisted the blade, yet no blood flowed down the runnel. Only a slight red film oozed where the blade met flesh. She pulled the blade free.

  The wound closed as the bloody blade exited.

  "You see?" Raj Ahten asked. "Neither your mother's poison nor your own dagger can hurt me. Among Runelords, there has never been another of Daylan's equal. Until now.

  "It is said in my country that when he'd received enough endowments, he no longer needed to take them. The love of his people supported him, it flowed to him. When his Dedicates died, his powers remained, undiminished."

  She'd never read that. It defied her understanding of the art of the Runelords. Yet she hoped it was true. She hoped that such a thing could be, that Raj Ahten would someday quit draining people like her father.

  "I think," Raj Ahten said softly, "that I am nearly there. I think I shall be his equal, and that I shall defeat the reavers without the loss of fifty million human lives, as would happen under any other plan."

  Iome looked into his eyes, wanting to hate him for what he'd done. Her father lay in his own urine on the floor at her feet. Her mother was dead on the paving stones outside the keep. Yet Iome looked into Raj Ahten's face, and she could not hate him. He seemed...so sincere. So beautiful.

  He reached out, stroked her hand, and she dared not pull away. She wondered if he would try to seduce her. She wondered if she'd have the strength to fight him if he did.

  "So sweet. If you were not my kin, I'd take you as a wife. But I'm afraid propriety forbids it. Now, Iome, you too must do your part to help me defeat the reavers. You will give me your glamour."

  Iome's heart pounded. She imagined how it would be, with skin as rough as leather, the cobwebs of her hair falling from her head, the way the veins would stick out on her legs. The dry smell of her breath. To look, to smell, to be repulsive.

  Yet that was not half the horror of it. Glamour was more than beauty, more than physical loveliness. It could be recognized partly as form, but just as much was manifest in the color of one's skin, the glossiness of one's hair, the light that shone in one's eyes. It could be seen in posture, in poise, in determination. The heart of it often lay somewhere in a person's confidence in and love of self.

  So, depending on the ruthlessness of the facilitator involved, all these could be drawn away, leaving the new Dedicate both ugly and filled with self-loathing.

  Iome shook her head. She had to fight him, had to fight Raj Ahten any way she could. Yet she could think of nothing, no way to strike back.

  "Come, child," Raj Ahten said smoothly. "What would you do with all your beauty, if I left it to you? Lure some prince to your bed? What a petty desire. You could do it. But afterward you would only spend your life in regret. You've seen how men look at you with lust in their eyes. You've seen how they stare, always wanting you. Certainly you must tire of it."

  When he put it that way, in such a silky voice, Iome felt wretched. It seemed vile and selfish to want to be beautiful.

  "In the desert near where I was born," Raj Ahten said, "a great monument, a statue, stands three hundred feet tall, half tilted in the sand. It is the statue of a king, long forgotten, his face scoured away by wind. A banner at his feet, written in an ancient language, says, 'All bow to the Great Ozyvarius, who rules the earth, whose kingdom shall never fail!'

  "Yet all the scribes in the world cannot tell me who that king is, or how long ago he reigned.

  "We have always been such fleeting creatures," Raj Ahten whispered. "We have always been so temporary. But together, Iome, we can become something more."

  The craving in his voice, the hunger, almost drove all reason from Iome's mind. Almost she felt willing to give him her beauty. But a wiser voice in the back of her mind nagged. "No, I would die, I would be nothing."

  "You would not die," Raj Ahten said. "If I become the Sum of All Men, your beauty would live on in me. Some part of you would always remain, to be loved, to be admired."

  "No," Iome said in horror.

  Raj Ahten glanced at the floor, where King Sylvarresta still lay in a foul heap. "Not even to save his life?"

  Then Iome knew, she knew, that her father would tell her not to make this bargain. "No," Iome shuddered.

  "It is a horrible thing, to put an idiot among the torturers. All that pain your father would have to endure, never understanding why, never knowing that there is such a thing as death that could bring him release, with the torturers repeating your name each time they put the hot irons to him, so that in time, even at the mention of your name, he would cry out in pain. It would be truly horrible."

  The cruelty inherent in such an idea left Iome numb. She looked at Raj Ahten, her heart breaking. She could not say yes.

  The Wolf Lord nodded to one of his men. "Bring in the girl."

  The guard left the chamber, returned quickly with Chemoise. Chemoise, who should have been in the Dedicates' Keep, comforting her father. Chemoise, who had already suffered so much this week, lost so much to Raj Ahten.

  How had Raj Ahten known what Iome felt for her dear friend? Had Iome betrayed the girl with a glance?

  Chemoise had wide, frightened eyes. She began weeping in terror when she saw the King lying on the floor. Shrieked when Raj Ahten's guard took her to the broken window, poised to throw her over the edge.

  Iome's heart hammered, as she watched her childhood friend begin to gibber in fear. Two lives. Raj Ahten would be killing two--Chemoise and her unborn child.

  Chemoise, forgive me for this betrayal, Iome wanted to say. For she knew, she knew with her whole soul, that surrender was wrong. If no one had ever surrendered, Raj Ahten would be dead by now. Yet she also knew that to give her glamour to Raj Ahten would benefit him little, while it saved the lives of Iome's friends.

  "I cannot give you an endowment," Iome said, unable to disguise the loathing in her words. She could not give it to him. Not to him personally.

  "If not me, a vector, then," Raj Ahten offered.

  Something in Iome's heart tripped. A balance was found. She could give her beauty--give it for her father, for Chemoise. So long as she did not have to give it to Raj Ahten. Her voice broke as she said, "Bring your forcible, then."

  Moments later the forcibles were fetched, along with a wretched woman who had given her glamour. So Iome looked upon the hag in dirty gray robes and saw what she would become, and struggled to see what beauty had ever been hidden inside the woman.

  Then the chants began. Iome watched Chemoise, still poised on the ledge, and silently willed her beauty away, willed herself to buy something lovely and eternally precious with it. The life of a friend, and the baby she carried.

  There was a rust
ling in the darkness, and a tiny glowing streamer of phosphorous fire as the facilitator approached, put the forcible low on her neck, almost against her bosom.

  For half a moment, nothing happened, and someone whispered, "For your friend. Do it for your friend."

  Iome nodded, sweat pouring down her brow. She held the image of Chemoise in her mind, Chemoise holding a child in her arms, nuzzling it.

  Iome felt the unspeakable pain of the forcible, opened her eyes, saw the skin of her hands dry and crack as if they burned in the infernal heat. The veins rose on her wrists like roots, and her nails became brittle as chalk.

  Her firm young breasts sank, and she grabbed at them, feeling the loss keenly. She regretted the trade now, but it was too late. She felt...as if she stood in the river, and the sand at her feet flowed out from under her, undermining her. Everything that was hers, all her beauty, her allure, flowed out and away, into the forcible.

  Her lustrous hair withered and twisted on her head like worms.

  Iome cried in pain and horror, and more flowed out from her still. For a moment, it was as if she gazed into oblivion and saw herself, and loathed what she saw. She understood for the first time in her life that she was nothing, had always been nothing, a no one, a cipher. She feared to cry out, lest others take offense at the sound of her wretched voice.

  That is a lie. I am not so ugly as that, she cried out to Raj Ahten in her soul. My beauty you can have, but not my soul.

  And then she moved away from the precipice, and felt only...alone. Utterly alone, and in unspeakable pain.

  Somehow, she managed a rare feat: she did not faint from the rigors of the forcible, though she imagined that her whole body would be consumed in the fires.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  COMMITMENTS

  Cold black river water swirled around Gaborn's thighs, like a dead hand trying to pull him downstream. Rowan, in the darkness on the bank just above him, groaned fiercely in pain, doubled over.

  "What's wrong?" Gaborn whispered, hardly daring to part his lips.

  "The Queen--she's dead," Rowan whimpered.

  Then he understood. After years of loss of feeling, years of numbness, now the whole world of sensation rushed upon Rowan--the cold of the water and of the night, the pain of her bruised feet, her fatigue after a hard day's work, and countless other minor injuries.

  Those who gave an endowment of touch, once all their senses returned, felt all the world anew, as if for the first time. The shock of it could be phenomenal, even deadly, for the sensations came twenty times stronger than before. Gaborn worried for the young woman, worried that she might not be able to travel. The water here was bracing cold. Certainly he could not hope to bring Rowan through it.

  Yet, even worse, if the Queen was dead, Gaborn feared that Raj Ahten was slaughtering the other members of the royal family--King Sylvarresta and Iome.

  Commitments. Gaborn had made too many commitments. He felt overwhelmed. He'd accepted responsibility for Rowan, dared not move her, dared not try to take her through the river. Yet he'd also promised to save Iome, to go to her.

  Gaborn wanted to kneel in the river, let it cool the burning wound in his ribs. Overhead, a slight breeze made the branches of the alders and birches sway. Here in the deep shadows, he could see the water downstream, reflecting the orange firelight.

  Binnesman's garden was aflame. On the far bank of the river, the nomen were grunting, shadows moving in a greater darkness, trying to spot Gaborn. Yet he was well hidden here in this thicket, so long as he didn't move. The Frowth giants hunted in the shallows downstream. He suspected that he could swim out of here alone, flee Castle Sylvarresta and bear the news of its fall to his father. He was a fast swimmer. In spite of the fact that the water was shallow, he thought he might make it. But he couldn't hope to do so with Rowan.

  Gaborn could not possibly leave Castle Sylvarresta.

  I swore to Iome, he realized. I took an oath. She is under my protection, both as a Runelord, and now as a part of my vow to the earth. Both were vows he could not lightly break.

  A day earlier, in the market at Bannisferre, Myrrima had chided Gaborn for not making commitments easily. It was true. He dared not make them.

  "What is a Runelord," his mother had taught him as a child, "but a man who keeps an oath? Your vassals give you endowments, and you grant them protection in return. They give you wit, and you lead wisely. They grant you brawn, and you fight like a reaver. They bestow stamina, and you work long hours in their behalf. You live for them. And if you love them as you should, you die for them. No vassal will waste an endowment on a Runelord who lives only for himself."

  These were the words Queen Orden had taught her son. She had been a strong woman, one who taught Gaborn that beneath his father's callous exterior, there lived a man of firm principle. It was true that in years past, King Orden had purchased endowments from the poor, and while some considered this behavior morally suspect, a way of taking advantage of the poor, King Orden had seen it differently. He'd said, "Some people love money more than they love their fellow men. Why not turn such people's weakness into your strength?"

  Why not indeed? It was a good argument, from a man who sought only the betterment of his kingdom. Yet in the past three years, his father had given up the practice, had quit taking endowments from the poor. He'd told Gaborn, "I was wrong. I'd buy endowments still, if only I had the wisdom to judge other's motives." But the poor who sought to sell endowments usually had many reasons for doing so: even the most craven of them had some ennobling love of family and kin and could therefore imagine that by selling an endowment, they were performing an act of self-sacrifice. But then there were the desperate poor, those who saw no other way to escape poverty than to sell themselves. "Purchase my hearing," one farmer had once begged Gaborn's father after the great floods four years past. "What need have I of ears, when all I hear are the cries of hungry children?" The world was full of despairing creatures, people who for one reason or another had given up on life. Gaborn's father had not purchased the farmer's hearing. Instead, he'd given the man food to last the winter, timber and workers to rebuild his home, seed to plant for the coming spring.

  Hope. He'd given the man hope. Gaborn wondered what Iome would think of his father if she knew this tale. Perhaps she'd think better of him. He hoped that she would live to hear it.

  Gaborn glanced up through the tree trunks, slashes of black against a dark background. To look toward the city, to look toward the castle walls, filled him with despair.

  I can do little to fight Raj Ahten, he considered. It was true that he might be able to hide in the city, perhaps ambush a soldier here and there. But how long could he last? How long could he keep it up before he was caught? Not long.

  Yet of what help am I to my charges, if I flee now? Gaborn wondered. He should have done more. He should have tried to save Iome, and Binnesman...and all the rest.

  True, his father needed to know that Castle Sylvarresta had fallen, and he needed to know the manner of its capture.

  And the lure of home drew Gaborn. No matter how much he admired the strength of people in Heredon, the stately stone buildings with their ceilings so high, so cool and breezy, the pleasure gardens at every turn, it was not a familiar place.

  Gaborn had not been to the palace much for eight years, had spent nearly all his time some fifty miles from home, in the House of Understanding, with its resolute scholars and stark dormitories. He'd looked forward to going home after this trip. For years now he'd longed to sleep in the big, cotton-filled bed he'd enjoyed as a child, to wake to the feel of the morning wind blowing from the wheat fields through his lace curtains.

  He'd imagined that he'd spend his winter eating decent food, studying battle tactics with his father, dueling with the soldiers in the guard. Borenson had promised to introduce Gaborn to some of the finer alehouses in Mystarria. And there was Iome, whose gentleness among her people had seduced him as no other could. He'd hoped to tak
e her home.

  So many pleasures he'd imagined.

  Gaborn wanted to go home. It was silly, this wish to be taken care of, to live without cares, as if he were a child.

  Gaborn remembered being a child, hunting rabbits in the hazelnut orchard with his old red hound. He remembered days when his father had taken him to fish for trout in Dewflood Stream, where the weeping willows bent low over the water and green inchworms hung from the willow branches on silken threads, taunting the trout. In those days, life, it seemed, was an endless summer.

  But Gaborn could not return.

  He despaired at the thought of even getting away from Castle Sylvarresta alive.

  For the moment, he could see no convincing reason to leave here. Gaborn's father would hear of the castle's fall soon enough. Peasants would noise the tale abroad. King Orden was on his way. Perhaps three days. He'd hear of this by tomorrow.

  No, Gaborn did not need to warn his father, could not leave the castle. He needed to get Rowan to safety, someplace warm, where she could heal. He needed to help Iome. And he'd made a greater commitment.

  He had made a vow never to harm the earth. It should be an easy vow to keep, he thought, for he wished the earth no harm. Yet as he considered, he wondered at the intent of the oath. Right now, the flameweavers were burning Binnesman's garden. Was Gaborn bound by oath to fight the flameweavers, to stop them?

  He listened deep in his heart, wondering, seeking to feel the earth's will in this matter.

  The fire on the hill suddenly grew brighter, or perhaps the firelight was now also reflecting from clouds of smoke above. The smell of sweet smoke was cloying. Across the river, a noman barked. Gaborn could hear others growling. It was said that nomen feared water. Gaborn hoped they feared it enough that they would not swim the river to search for him.

  In the matter of the garden, Gaborn felt nothing. No urge to either stop the burning or to accept it. Certainly if Binnesman had wanted to fight for it, he'd have done so.

  Gaborn silently slogged up from the river, went to Rowan, who still crouched among the willows.