The RuneLords

by David Farland

  So, Gaborn surmised, Raj Ahten had come here, had seen the clouds of Gaborn's passage, the distant herds of cattle and soldiers mingled together, had fallen for the ruse.

  That gave Gaborn some comfort. Raj Ahten could be fooled, could be beaten.

  Gaborn circled the tower, tried to see down into the woods. He imagined his father and Raj Ahten struggling on the tower, until at last, perhaps, his father was thrown over.

  He looked down, saw what he dreaded: at the base of the observatory, among the rocks, a hand thrust up, dead fingers clutching a palm full of snow.

  Gaborn raced down the winding stairs, found his father, and pulled at the corpse, shaking it to clear the snow off.

  What he saw broke his heart. For on his father's frozen face was a broad smile. Perhaps in death, some fleeting memory had made him smile. Or perhaps it was but a grimace of pain. Yet Gaborn imagined that his father smiled at him, as if to congratulate him for his victory.

  * * *

  Chapter 57

  TODAY I AM DEATH

  Gaborn had already ridden ahead when Iome's glamour returned. Iome had no idea how Raj Ahten's vector had died, felt little relief at the woman's passing. Like Iome, the woman had been a mere tool in Raj Ahten's hand, one that was poorly used.

  Yet Iome's beauty returned. She felt it as an easing of her heart, a return of her confidence. Like a flower blossoming.

  Yet it was not the unnatural beauty she'd had since birth, not the borrowed glamour. The skin on her hands softened and lost their wrinkles. The blush of youth returned to her cheeks. For once in her life, for the first time, Iome was simply herself, without benefit of endowments.

  It was enough. She wished that Gaborn could have been here to see, but he had ridden ahead.

  Though messengers from Longmont had told Iome what to expect when she reached the castle, had said that Raj Ahten had destroyed it with a shout, nothing they said could have prepared her for the ruin.

  She rode at the head of ten thousand people from out of Groverman and the villages round about. Many of the women had already turned back, heading for their own hearths, their own homes. Their work here was done.

  But others followed Iome, particularly people who'd lived in Longmont, who had come to see what was left of their homes.

  As they neared the ruined castle, saw the empty fields with wolves slinking about the hedgerows, many women and children began crying for what they'd lost.

  They'd deserted their homes three days ago, but a few days of huddling under ragged shelters at Groverman had shown them just how difficult it would be to make do once the snows fell.

  Certainly, most of them hoped to come home, to rebuild. But in hard times, with war approaching, Iome's people could not rebuild without some nearby fortification.

  The castle was nearly ruined. Huge blocks of stone that had lain in place for twelve centuries now lay cracked and shattered.

  Almost subconsciously, Iome began calculating what it would take to repair the fortress: five hundred stonemasons out of Eyremoth, for they were the best. Carters to drag the stones, Frowth giants hired out of Lonnock to place them. Men to dig moats. Lumberjacks to cut trees. Cooks and ironsmiths, with mortar, chisels, saws, awls, axes, and...the list went on and on.

  But to what purpose? If Raj Ahten could simply shatter the castle with a shout?

  She looked up on the hill, saw Gaborn kneeling in a patch of snow, in the field. Gaborn had laid his father's body out on the hill above the castle, beneath a great oak tree. A huge limb lay near them.

  Gaborn had collected dozens of spears, and he ringed these about his father's corpse, creating a fence of sorts, to keep out the wolves.

  In the tree above his father's corpse, he had hung his father's golden shield. He took his father's helm, laid it in the snow at his father's feet--a sign that his father had fallen in battle.

  She turned her horse, went to him, leading her father's stallion. Behind King Sylvarresta followed the three Days: hers, her father's, and Gaborn's. King Sylvarresta had verged on falling dead asleep in his saddle a few minutes before, but now stared about, grinning broadly at the snow through bleary eyes, a child filled with delight.

  Gaborn looked up at Iome as she approached; his face looked bleak, desolate. Iome knew then that she would find no words to comfort him. She had nothing to offer him. In the past few days, she'd lost nearly everything--her home, her parents, her beauty...and things less tangible.

  How will I ever sleep again? she wondered. In her mind, the castle had always been the supreme icon of security. In a world fraught with danger, it had always been a safe haven.

  No more.

  She felt now that she'd lost her childhood, her innocence. Her peace of mind was torn from her.

  Not just because her mother lay dead and one of her castles lay in ruins. As she rode that morning, she considered what had happened. Yesterday, she'd feared that Borenson would sneak into Castle Sylvarresta, kill her Dedicates. She imagined that secretly she'd known what he would do, though she hated it.

  By not challenging him, not confronting him, Iome had agreed to it. The horror of it had all been creeping up on her since noon yesterday. Now she found herself defenseless. She hadn't slept for two nights. She'd felt dizzy for hours, had feared she would topple from her horse.

  Now it seemed as if a great invisible beast, lurking beneath her consciousness, suddenly sprang and seized her.

  Iome had meant to say some word of comfort to Gaborn, but suddenly found icy tears coursing down her cold cheeks. She tried to wipe them, began shuddering quietly.

  Gaborn had prepared his father's body well. The King's hair was combed, his face was pale in death. The glamour he'd worn had died with him, so that the man she saw was not the King Orden who had seemed so regal, so powerful, during life.

  He looked like some aging statesman, with a broad face, skin somewhat weather-beaten. He smiled enigmatically. He was dressed in his armor, and lay on a plank. His richly embroidered cape of shimmering samite covered him like a robe.

  In his hands, he clasped the bud of a single blue rose, perhaps taken from the Duke's garden.

  Gaborn turned to look up at Iome, saw the expression on her face, then stood slowly, as if the effort pained him. He walked to her, grabbed her shoulders as she slid from her horse, and held her close.

  She thought he would kiss her, tell her not to weep.

  Instead his voice sounded hollow and dead as he whispered fiercely, "Grieve for us. Grieve."

  Borenson thundered into Longmont in a red fury. From the moment he had crested a ridge five miles back and seen the ruined towers, the crowd milling on the downs outside the castle, he'd known the news would be bad. Among the crowd, many colors flew, but none for Raj Ahten.

  He wished Raj Ahten were dead, wanted to strike against him with a rage so burning that Borenson had never felt its like.

  So he was still in a frustrated rage when he galloped down the north road into Longmont and met the ragged commoners milling about by the thousands. He looked among the crowd for the colors of Orden, saw them nowhere.

  He rode up to a pair of teens who scrambled among the snow outside the castle, robbing the corpse of one of Raj Ahten's soldiers. One young man was perhaps fourteen, another eighteen. At first he thought the vermin were stealing money pouches or rings, and he'd have belittled them for doing so. Then he recognized that one lad was wrestling the armor from the corpse, while the other helped lift the dead weight.

  Good. They sought armor and weapons that they could never otherwise purchase.

  "Where is King Orden?" Borenson asked, trying to keep the emotion from his voice.

  "Dead, like all them buggers in the castle," the youngest lad answered. He had his back to Borenson, hadn't seen to whom he was speaking.

  A sound escaped Borenson's throat, something like a growl or a snort. "Everyone?"

  Pain must have sounded in his voice, for the lad turned and looked up, eyes widening in fear. He droppe
d the body and backed away, raising a hand in salute. "Yes--yes, sir," his older friend said formally. "Only one man lived to tell the tale. Everyone else is dead."

  "A man survived?" Borenson asked distantly, though he wanted to cry out, call Myrrima's name and see if she would answer. Myrrima had been in this castle.

  "Yes, sir," the older lad said. He staggered backward, afraid Borenson would strike. "You--your men fought bravely. King Orden made a serpent, and fought the Wolf Lord man-to-man. They--we won't forget such sacrifice."

  "Whose sacrifice?" Borenson asked. "My king's, or the buggers'?"

  The young men turned and ran as if Borenson would strike them both down, and he very nearly did, but he felt little anger toward them.

  Borenson scanned the downs wildly, as if Myrrima might stand on the brow of a hill waving to him, or as if he might see one of Raj Ahten's scouts crest a ridge. Instead, as he looked up, he spotted Gaborn beneath an oak.

  The Prince had laid out King Orden's body, ringed it with spears from his fallen guards, as was the custom in Mystarria. He just stood there, over his dead father, hugging Iome. The Princess had her back to Borenson, and wore a hood, but there could be no mistaking the curves of her body. A knot of three Days all huddled a few yards off to the side, watching the scene with studied patience.

  The idiot King Sylvarresta had come off his horse, was in the circle of spears, fawning over King Orden, gazing about dumbly, as if to beg for help.

  A sense of horror and desolation swept Borenson, so that he cried out in astonishment and despair.

  The fallen castle, the fallen king.

  I may have killed him, Borenson thought wildly--my own king. Orden had fought Raj Ahten hand-to-hand, and lost. I could have followed my king's orders, slain all the Dedicates. Had I obeyed in every detail, perhaps it would have changed something. Perhaps Raj Ahten would have died in that battle.

  I let my king die.

  The guilt that welled up in Borenson was a wild thing, a storm that came from everywhere and seemed to uproot every fiber of his sanity.

  An ancient law in Mystarria said the last command of a king must be obeyed, even if the king falls in battle. The command must be obeyed.

  The air seemed to grow thick around Borenson. From deep in his throat, the battle chuckle issued as he lowered his lance, flipped down the visor of his helm with a rapid nod of his chin, then spurred his horse into a gallop.

  His lips clenched tight against his teeth.

  White had fallen from gray clouds earlier. Soft cold. Frozen beauty, covering everything, sparkling when a patch of sunlight struck it.

  King Sylvarresta gaped in wonder, sometimes moaning in delight when he saw a new beauty--the mounds of snow crusting a pool in the road, or clumps of melting snow dropping from a tree. He had no word for "snow," could not recall it.

  Everything seemed new, brimming with wonder. He felt very tired, but could not sleep once he came to the castle.

  There were too many oddities here, people behind him crying out in pain. He looked at the castle, saw fallen towers. He could only marvel at how they had fallen.

  A woman led his horse up a hill, to a great tree where spears stood about in a circle.

  Sylvarresta listened to the young man talk to the woman, then gazed up in the tree. An orange cat, the kind of half-wild mouser common to farms, sat on a branch, staring down at him. It stood, arched its back, then walked out on a huge limb above King Sylvarresta, its tail twisting in the air. It meowed hungrily and gazed at something on the ground.

  King Sylvarresta followed its gaze, noticed a man lying on the ground, under a shimmering green cape. He recognized that royal cape, the one that had mesmerized him just this morning. He recognized the man beneath it.

  King Orden. His friend.

  At the same moment, he knew something was profoundly wrong. Orden did not move. His chest did not fall and rise. He only clasped his hands over a blue flower.

  In an instant Sylvarresta's world shattered. He remembered what this was, dredged it up from some deep place where all horrors lay hidden.

  He shouted wordlessly, not knowing the name for this thing, and leapt from his horse. He hit the ground, scrambled over the snow, sliding in the muck, till he broke through the fence of spears that stuck in the ground, reached Orden's hand.

  Orden's cold fingers held a single flower, blue as sky. Sylvarresta grasped the cold fingers, picked them up and tried to get them to move. Reached for Orden's cheek, stroked it, to find it as cold as the rest of him.

  Sylvarresta cried, and turned back, to discover whether the others knew this great dark secret, knew of this beast that stalked them all.

  As he caught the eyes of the young man and the woman, he saw horror there.

  "Yes," the young man said softly. "Death. He is dead."

  Yes, they knew the secret.

  The woman said in a sad if scolding tone, "Father--oh please, come away from there!"

  In the fields below, a knight rode a great warhorse, speeding toward them like an arrow, his visor and his lance lowered. So swift he came. So swift.

  Sylvarresta shouted the great secret. "Death!"

  * * *

  Chapter 58

  BROKEN MEN

  Gaborn heard the thud of hoofbeats, the ringing of mail as links clanged against one another. He had thought it only a local knight riding across the downs--until he recognized the throaty battle chuckle, a sound that filled him with dread.

  Gaborn had been watching King Sylvarresta, shocked and saddened that the poor fool, though he knew almost nothing at all, had been forced to confront mortality. It felt like watching a child get torn apart by dogs.

  Gaborn only had time to push Iome behind him, spin and raise a hand to shout "No!"

  Then Borenson's gray steed thundered past, its armor rattling. Huge. Unstoppable.

  Borenson's lance was lowered on the far side of the horse, twenty feet of polished white ash with its blackened steel tip at the end. Gaborn thought of throwing himself forward, pushing that lance tip away.

  But Borenson raced past before Gaborn could act.

  Gaborn stood but thirty feet from King Sylvarresta, yet time seemed to slow in that second.

  Gaborn had seen Borenson joust a hundred times. The man had a steady hand, a deft touch. He could skewer a plum off a fence post with a lance, even on a force horse galloping sixty miles an hour.

  Borenson approached with his lance low, as if he'd go for a stomach wound, and Gaborn saw him raise it just a bit, holding steady, aiming at Sylvarresta's heart.

  For his part, Sylvarresta seemed not to recognize what was happening. The King's face had twisted in a grimace, for he'd just remembered the one thing Gaborn had hoped he'd never come to learn, and he had been shouting the word "death," though he could not have foreseen his own.

  Then the steed bore down on Sylvarresta. Borenson pulled his lance to the right a fraction of an inch, so it would not graze one of the spears in Gaborn's spear wall.

  Then the horse charged through the spear wall, sent some shafts flying, shattered others. Almost at that same moment, the tip of Borenson's lance took King Sylvarresta just below the sternum.

  The spear entered deftly, pushing the King backward and lifting him from his feet.

  Borenson let the lance slide ten feet through the King's chest, so the tapering wood spread his ribs open wide, then suddenly released the haft and leaned clear of the dying man.

  The horse thundered two steps, leapt the corpse of Gaborn's father, crashed through the far wall of spears, and charged on past the trunk of the huge oak tree.

  King Sylvarresta stood a moment, blinking stupidly at the huge lance that skewered him, staring in wonder at his own blood as it spurted over the polished white ash. Then his knees buckled. His head sagged, and he pitched to his left.

  As he died, he looked at his daughter and moaned weakly.

  Gaborn had no weapons at hand. He'd left his horseman's warhammer sheathed in his saddle.<
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  He rushed forward, grabbed a spear from the ground, and called to Iome. She did not need prodding. Her horse had startled away at Gaborn's shout.

  Iome ran behind Gaborn. He thought that she would let him shield her. But in a moment it became clear that she did not plan to hide behind him at all. She merely sought her way past him, to get to her father, who lay crumpled and bleeding.

  Borenson spun his horse, pulled the horseman's battle-axe from its sheath on the back of the saddle, and flipped up the visor of his helm. For half a second, he merely glared.

  There was pain in his blue eyes, the pain of madness. His face was red from rage, his teeth gritted. He smiled no longer.

  Running forward, Gaborn grabbed his father's shield from the spot where it hung to the oak, raised it to protect Iome and Sylvarresta, then backed away, standing five feet behind the cold corpse of King Orden.

  Gaborn knew Borenson would not risk letting his mount trample King Orden's corpse, defiling it. He'd not spur his horse into battle.

  But Gaborn did not feel so certain Borenson would refrain from striking him: Borenson had been compelled to commit bloody murder in assassinating the Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta. He'd been forced to choose between slaughtering King Sylvarresta and the King's men--his own friends--or letting the Dedicates live to serve Raj Ahten.

  It was an evil choice, with no fair answer, no answer that any man could hope to live with.

  "Give her to me!" Borenson shouted.

  "No!" Gaborn said. "She is a Dedicate no longer!"

  In that moment, Borenson looked down beneath Iome's hood, saw her fair face, no longer wrinkled. Saw her eyes clear. A look of astonishment came over him.

  A dark blur rushed past Gaborn, some knight of Sylvarresta with great metabolism, running with his might at Borenson. The fellow leapt, and Borenson leaned back from the attack, swung his warhammer, caught the warrior full in the face. Blood sprayed the air as the dying warrior hurtled over Borenson's horse.

  Hundreds of people had witnessed Sylvarresta's murder. Gaborn had been totally focused on Borenson, but now he became aware of the others.