But over the past week, as news of the rise of an Earth King spread lords and peasants from all across Heredon and even from kingdoms beyond Heredon had begun to gather. Gaborn had a premonition of what was to come. The fields before Castle Sylvarresta had been burned black by Raj Ahten, yet already so many peasants had amassed that the grounds around the great walled city of Sylvarresta were covered by pavilions. Not all of the pavilions belonged to peasants; many tents belonged to lords and knights from around Heredon-armies that had marched when they’d heard of the invasion but had arrived too late to offer any aid. Banners of Orwynne and North Crowthen and Fleeds and various merchant princes from Lysle mingled among the hosts, and off on one hill camped thousands of merchants out of Indhopal who—after having been driven off by King Sylvarresta had hurried back to see this new wonder, this Earth King.
The fields around Castle Sylvarresta were dark, but they were no longer dark from the blackened grass. They were dark with the massed bodies of hundreds of thousands of men and animals.
“By the Powers,” Gaborn swore. “Their numbers must have quadrupled in the past three days. It will take me the better part of a week to Choose them all.”
Distantly, Gaborn could hear music drifting above the smoke of cooking fires. The sound of a jousting lance cracked across the countryside, followed immediately by cheers. Binnesman sat a horse, gazing down, just as the Days rode up. All three mounts breathed heavily after their short run.
But something caught Gaborn’s eye. In the sky above the valley, a flock of starlings flew, thousands strong, like a living cloud. They weaved one way, then another, swooped and then soared upward. It was as if they were lost, searching for a place to land but unable to find safety. Starlings often flew thus in the autumn, but these birds seemed peculiarly spooked.
Gaborn heard the honking of geese. He looked along the Wye River, which wound through the green fields like a silver thread. A hundred yards above the river, miles away, the geese flew in a V along the river course. But their voices sounded strained, crass.
Beside him, Binnesman sat upright and turned to Gaborn. “You hear it, too, don’t you? You feel it in your bones.”
“What?” Gaborn asked.
Gaborn’s Days cleared his throat as if to ask a question, but said nothing. The historian seldom spoke. Interference in the affairs of mankind was forbidden by the Time Lords that the Days served. Still, he was obviously curious.
“The Earth. The Earth is speaking to us,” Binnesman said. “It is speaking to you and to me.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know, yet,” Binnesman answered honestly. The wizard scratched at his beard, then frowned. “But this is the way it usually speaks to me: in the worried stirrings of rabbits and mice, in the shifting flight of a cloud of birds, in the cries of geese. Now it whispers to the Earth King, too. You are growing, Gaborn. Growing in power.”
Gaborn studied Binnesman. The wizard’s skin was oddly tinged a bit of ruddy red that almost matched his baggy robe. He smelled of the herbs that he kept in his oversized pockets, linden blossom and mint and borage and wizard’s violet and basil and a hundred other spices. He looked like little more than a jolly old man, except for the lines of wisdom in his face.
“I will check into this. We shall know more tonight,” Binnesman assured Gaborn.
But Gaborn was unable to lay aside his worries. He suspected that he would need to convene a war council, but dared not do so until he knew the nature of the threat that his Earth senses warned him against.
The three riders headed down the road into a deep fold between two hills that had been burned black last week.
There, at the base of the hill, Gaborn saw what he took to be an old woman sitting by the roadside with a blanket draped over her head.
As the horses came stamping down the road, the old woman looked up, and Gaborn saw that she was not old at all. Instead, it was a young maiden, a girl he recognized.
Gaborn had led an “army” from Castle Groverman to Longmot a week ago. The army had consisted of two hundred thousand cattle, driven by peasant men and women and children and a few aging soldiers. The dust of their passage as the herd crossed the plains had been ruse enough to dislodge the Wolf Lord Raj Ahten from his attack on Longmot.
If Raj Ahten had discovered Gaborn’s ruse, Gaborn felt sure the Wolf Lord would have cut down every woman and child in his retinue out of sheer spite. The girl at the foot of the hill had ridden in Gaborn’s army. He remembered her well. She’d carried a heavy banner in one hand and a nursing babe in the other.
She had acted bravely and selflessly. He’d been glad for the aid of people like her. Yet Gaborn was astonished to see her—a mere peasant who probably didn’t have access to a horse here at Castle Sylvarresta, more than two hundred miles north of Longmot, only a week after the battle.
“Oh, Your Highness,” the girl said, ducking her head as if to curtsy.
Gaborn realized she’d been waiting by the roadside for him to return from his hunt. He’d been gone from Castle Sylvarresta for three days. He wondered how long she’d been here.
She climbed to her feet, and Gaborn saw that the dirt of the road stained her feet. Obviously, she had walked all the way from Longmot. In her right hand she cradled her babe. As she stood, she put her hand beneath her shawl to ease her nipple from the babe’s mouth and cover herself properly.
After giving aid in a victorious battle, many a lord might have come to seek a favor. Gaborn had seldom seen a peasant do so. Yet this girl wanted something of him, wanted it badly.
Binnesman smiled and said, “Molly? Molly Drinkham? Is that you?”
The girl smiled shyly as the wizard dismounted and approached her. “Aye, it’s me.”
“Well, let me see your child.” Binnesman took the infant from her arms and held it up. The child, a dark-haired thing who could not have been more than two months old, had put its fist in its mouth and was now sucking vigorously, eyes closed. The wizard smiled beatifically. “A boy?” he asked. Molly nodded. “Oh, he’s the very image of his father,” Binnesman clucked. “Such a precious thing. Verrin would have been proud. But what are you doing here?”
“I come to see the Earth King,” Molly said.
“Well, here he is,” Binnesman said. He turned to Gaborn and introduced Molly. “Your Highness, Molly Drinkham, who was once a resident of Castle Sylvarresta.”
Molly suddenly froze, her face pale with terror, as if she could not bear the thought of speaking to a king. Or perhaps she fears only to speak to me, the Earth King, Gaborn thought.
“I beg your pardon, sire,” Molly said too shrilly. “I hope I’m not disturbing you—I know it’s early. You probably don’t remember me—”
Gaborn alighted from his horse, so that he would not be sitting high above her, and sought to put her at ease. “You’re not disturbing me,” he said softly. “You’ve walked a long way from Longmot. I remember the aid you gave me. Some great need must have driven you, and I’m eager to hear your request.”
She nodded shyly. “You see, I was thinking...”
“Go on,” Gaborn said, glancing up at his Days.
“I wasn’t always just a scullery maid for Duke Groverman, you see,” she said. “My father used to muck stables for King Sylvarresta’s men, and I lived in the castle. But I did something that shamed me, and my father sent me south.” She glanced down at her child. A bastard.
“I rode with you last week,” she continued, “and I know this: If you’re the Earth King, then you should have all of Erden Geboren’s powers. That’s what makes you an Earth King.”
“Where did you hear this?” Gaborn asked, his tone betraying his concern. He suddenly feared that she would ask some impossible task of him. Erden Geboren’s deeds were the stuff of legend.