Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 14

"We found your messenger,", Baron Poll said, "earlier today. He'd had a bad fall, so I suppose that Paladane has yet to learn your news. Tis bitter tidings these days. The King dead, Raj Ahten advancing on Carris--all of it! Now the reavers."

"We're going north to Heredon," Roland said as he sat up. "We'll bear your news to Paladane in Carris and then to the King, too."

Baron Poll added, "We can drop you off in Carris."

She remembered Brand's warning that she should head north for safety. "I don't want to go to Carris," she said. "I'm going to Heredon, with you!"

"Heredon?" Baron Poll said. "I don't think so. It's bound to be a dangerous trip, what with Raj Ahten on the move. There's no need for you to go. We'll carry the message."

"I know the way to Heredon," Averan offered. "I know the roads, and the mountains, and I know faster ways for a man on a good horse to travel. I could guide you."

"Have you flown there?" Baron Poll asked.

"Yes, twice," Averan lied. She'd seen the maps, memorized the lay of the land. But she'd never even flown as far as Fleeds.

The men looked at one another meaningfully. They could use a guide.

"No, we've only got two horses," Roland said. "We'll drop you off somewhere safe."

"I could ride with you," Averan said to Roland. Given Baron Poll's stomach, she could not sit double with him on a horse. "I'm small, and I've an endowment of strength and stamina. If your horse tires, I can get down and run."

This was important, she knew. She wanted to get to Heredon now; she had an unreasoned and unreasonable craving to do so. Her message to Paladane was important, but her need was even more compelling. Her whole body shook with the desire. In fact, she knew almost exactly where she wanted to go. She closed her eyes, and recalled the maps: In the middle of Heredon, almost nine hundred miles north of here, beyond the Durkin Hills. Castle Sylvarresta. In her mind's eye, she saw something that resembled a green glowing gem.

"Do you have family in Heredon?" Baron Poll asked.

"No," she admitted. "Not really." Yet it was important that she get there.

"Then why are you so determined to go?" Roland asked. Averan knew that because she was small, because she was a child, others expected her to act like a child, p.r.o.ne to tantrums and unreasonable fits. But Averan was not like other children; she never had been. Brand had said that he chose her from among all of the orphans in Mystarria because when he looked in her eyes, he saw an old woman there. During her short life, she had lived more than others had.

"That is where I was heading," she lied, "after I gave Duke Paladane the message. My master Brand has a sister there at Castle Sylvarresta. He hoped she would take me in. He gave me a letter for her, and money for my keep." She jingled the purse tied to her belt.

Roland did not ask to see the letter. Words on paper were obviously above him. And Baron Poll was a lazy man. He didn't want to bother reading letters. Averan hoped that the lure of money might hook them.

"And what of your pet?" Baron Poll asked, nodding toward the green woman. "Will she follow us, do you think?"

"We'll leave her," Averan answered, though something inside warned against it. What if Baron Poll was right? What if one of the Powers had summoned the creature for her? It would be wasteful to abandon it, perhaps even dangerous. Still, Averan did not see how they could bring the creature with them.

Baron Poll considered thoughtfully. In a tone that brooked no argument, he said, "We dare not take you far. I'll drop you off somewhere safe, north of Carris if you like. I've got a cousin in a small town north of there. She could help arrange for your care."

Averan was used to dealing with lords. They were often inconsiderate and never liked being told that they were wrong. Baron Poll's tone warned her that she could expect nothing better from him.

But in her heart she vowed, If you leave me, I'll run behind you if I must, and follow you every step of the way.

Averan ran and fetched Roland's piebald filly, along with Baron Poll's dun stallion, and they prepared to depart. The sun had nearly set, yet the owner of the cottage had still not come home.

Baron Poll picked a few woodpears and crabapples from the small orchard, then grabbed some turnips and onions from a garden behind the cottage. A few scrawny ducks, hatched in the past eight weeks, waddled around the front of the house. Baron Poll left them.

Averan wondered who might live here. An old woodcutter she imagined, for the orchard was too small to provide a living for even one person and the hills were wooded to the south. She wondered what he would think when he discovered his dog dead, and a graak lying beside it in his backyard. She opened the purse that Brand had given her, found that it contained not only some northern coins, but also a couple of golden trade rings like those used by merchants from Indhopal. The rings were as precisely weighted as any coin, and were struck with the symbols of Muyyatin, but could be worn on the fingers or toes, or on a string about the neck, and therefore were not as easily lost as a northern coin.

After selecting a single piece of silver, Averan laid it atop the body of the dog.

Then she sat before Roland on his mount, and she and Baron Poll and Roland raced away from the cottage, up a winding road toward the forests of the Brace Mountains.

When they left the cottage, the green woman was still feeding on Leatherneck's corpse. She did not even look up, except to cast an unconcerned. glance in Averan's direction.

A mile farther on, the road began to climb the hills in earnest. The highway was lined with alders, their leaves going golden in the early autumn. Higher up, a few pines also marched along the hill.

The road here became a lonely place, the hillside windswept. In some places, boulders had rolled down the mountain and blocked parts of the road, so that Roland maneuvered the horse around them. This highway had been well tended a dozen years ago, but the bandits in these hills were so thick that the king's men didn't bother to maintain the trail any longer.

It was an hour after sunset, and Bessahan had been riding hard all afternoon, trying to catch the King's messengers. But his horse had thrown a shoe in the woods, and he'd had to stop and fix it, wasting nearly an hour.

Bessahan found the graak by the roadside almost by chance. Near a cottage beside the road, a hefty woman stood with a battered lantern, staring at the dead reptile in her orchard. The lantern was hooded with a cloudy ceramic that did not let out much light. In the darkness, the woman mistook Bessahan for someone else.

"Eh, Koby, is that you?"

Bessahan had a limited command of the Rofehavanish tongue. He dared not let her hear his accent, so he merely grunted in return.

"Did you see this? Someone killed this graak right here by the house, split its head clean open. There's tracks here from a pair of horses. Was it you who did it?"

Bessahan shook his head no.

"And the d.a.m.ned monster killed my dog, too." The fat, woman shook her head in disgust. She was an old thing with stringy hair and a greasy ap.r.o.n. Bessahan had taken endowments of scent from two dogs. He could smell lye soap on her, even at fifty paces. A dirty woman who washed clothes for others.

"Whoever killed it did me no favors," the old woman groaned. "If they'd have said to me, 'Kitty, you want us to kill that monster in your backyard?' I'd have answered, 'No. You leave it alone. Killing it won't bring Dog back to life and you can let it have my worthless ducks, too.' But would anyone ever listen to me? Nooo!"

Bessahan's opinion of the woman lowered even more. She was not only fat and greasy, she talked much while thinking little.

"Well," she. asked, "will you help me get rid of it? The carca.s.s will only draw wolves. In fact, it looks as if one has already been after it. It's all ripped apart."

Bessahan looked up the road. The messengers had probably gone that way; into the mountains, into the dark. But night was falling, and he wondered if they would risk the mountain trails by night. No, it would be wiser to stay nearby. They could be camped anywhere--in the orchard, up the hill.

And rain was coming. He could smell it on the wind. It might be hard to track them by scent.

He rode his horse up to the old woman in the dim lamplight. She looked up at him through hooded eyes, suddenly wary.

"Hey, you're not Koby!" she accused.

"No, I am sorry," Bessahan answered in his thick accent. "I am not your Koby. My name is Bessahan."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, backing up a step, suddenly defensive.

"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 t.i.tle. 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 a.s.sa.s.sin'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 gra.s.s 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 carca.s.s 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 carca.s.s 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 gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed this way.

Bessahan got on his mount and rode into the night.

CHAPTER 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 firerose 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 s.h.i.+ning 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, wh.o.r.es 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 s.h.i.+eld, Lord of the Forest, Master of the Field."

As the people sang, Iome looked down in wonder, for beside the opalescent lights s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sembly. The crystals and the great polished agate were all glowing with their own light.