Yet clearly Molly believed the wizard’s aid would not be enough. Tears coursed down her cheeks, and she stood in shock, trembling.
“If it was yours,” Molly begged Gaborn, “would you. Choose it? Would you Choose it then?”
Gaborn knew that he would. Molly must have read the answer on his face.
“I’ll give him to you then—” Molly offered. “A wedding present, if you’ll have him. I’ll give him to you, to raise as your son.”
Gaborn closed his eyes. The despair in her tone struck him like an axe.
He could hardly Choose this child. It seemed a cruel thing to do. This is madness, he thought. If I Choose it, how many thousands of other mothers might justly ask the same? Ten thousand, a hundred thousand? Yet what if I don’t Choose it and Molly is right? What if by my inaction I condemn it to die? “Does the child have a name?” Gaborn asked, for in some lands, bastards were never named.
“I call him Verrin,” Molly said, “like his father.”
Gaborn gazed at the child, looked beyond his sweet face and smooth skin, deep into his small mind. There was little to see—a life unlived, a few vague longings. The child felt relieved and grateful for his mother’s nipple and for the warmth of her body and the way she sang sweetly to get him to sleep. But Verrin did not comprehend his mother as a person, did not love her in the way that she loved him.
Gaborn stifled a sob. “Verrin Drinkham,” he said softly, raising his left hand. “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth. May the Earth heal you. May the Earth hide you. May the Earth make you its own.”
Gaborn felt the binding take force.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Molly said. The girl’s eyes glistened with tears. She turned and headed toward Castle Groverman, ready to walk the two hundred miles home.
But as she did, Gaborn felt a powerful sense of dread; the Earth was warning him that she was in danger. If she went south again, she’d die. Whether she’d be waylaid by a bandit or take ill from her journey or face some more dire fate, he did not know. But although he could not guess what form the danger would take, his premonition was as strong as on the day that his father had died.
Molly, Gaborn thought, that way lies death. Turn and go to Castle Sylvarresta.
She stopped in mid-stride, turned her big blue eyes on him questioningly. For half a second she hesitated, then spun and raced north up the road toward Castle Sylvarresta as if a reaver were chasing her.
Gaborn’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude at the sight.
“Good girl,” he whispered. He’d been afraid she would not hear his warning, or would be slow to heed it.
On his white mule, Gaborn’s Days glanced from Gaborn to the girl. “Did you just turn her?”
“Yes.”
“You felt danger in the south?”
“Yes,” Gaborn answered again, not wanting to express the vague fear that was creeping over him. “Danger for her, at least.”
Turning to Binnesman, Gaborn said, “I don’t know if I can keep this up. I didn’t expect it to be this way.”
“An Earth King is not asked to carry easy loads,” Binnesman said. “After the battle at Care Fail, it is said that no wounds were found on the body of Erden Geboren. Some thought he’d died of a broken heart.”
“Your words comfort me,” Gaborn said sardonically. “I want to save that child, but by Choosing it, I don’t know if I did well or ill.”
“Or perhaps nothing that any of us, does matters,” Binnesman said, as if he might resign himself to the knowledge that even their best efforts might not save mankind.
“No, I have to believe that it matters,” Gaborn countered. “I must believe that it is worth the struggle. But how can I save them all?”
“Save all of mankind?” Binnesman said. “It can’t be done.”
“Then I must figure out how to save most of them.” Gaborn looked back at his Days, the historian who had followed him since childhood.
The sense of foreboding Gaborn felt was discomforting. The Days could warn him of the source of that danger, if he would.
Far away in the north, in a monastic settlement in the islands beyond Orwynne, lived another Days—one who had given Gaborn’s Days an endowment of wit and who had received from him the same endowment in return. Thus the two Days now shared a single mind—a feat that had seldom been duplicated outside the monastery, for it led to madness.
Gaborn’s Days was called a “witness,” and he had been charged by the Time Lords to watch Gaborn and to listen to his words. His companion, the “scribe,” acted as recorder, noting Gaborn’s deeds until his death, when the book of Gaborn’s life would be published.
And because the scribes all lived in a common settlement, they shared information. Indeed, they knew all that transpired among the Runelords.
Thus Gaborn felt that the Days knew too much and imparted their wisdom too seldom. This Days had long ago given up his name, given up his own identity in service to the Time Lords. He would not speak.
Binnesman caught the accusatory stare that Gaborn shot toward the Days, and he wondered aloud: “If I were choosing seeds for next year’s garden, I do not know if I would seek to save most of them, or only the best.”
2
Strange Bedfellows
The village of Hay in the midlands of Mystarria was a blight on an otherwise unremarkable landscape, but it had an inn, and an inn was all that Roland wanted.
He rode into Hay past midnight, without waking even one of the town’s dogs. The sky to the distant southwest was the color of fire. Hours past, Roland had met one of the king’s far-seers, a man with half a dozen endowments of sight who had said that a volcano had erupted, though Roland was too far from it to hear the blast. Yet the light of its fires reflected from a column of smoke and ash. Its distant pyre added to the starlight, making everything preternaturally clear.
The village consisted of five stone cottages with thatch roofs. The innkeeper kept pigs that liked to root at his doorstep. As Roland dismounted, a couple of hogs grunted awake and staggered to their feet, sniffing the air and blinking wisely. Roland pounded at the oaken door and stared at the Hostenfest icon nailed there—a tattered wooden image of the Earth King, dressed in a new green traveling robe and wearing a crown of oak leaves. Someone had replaced the Earth King’s staff with a sprig of purple flowered thyme.
The fat innkeeper who greeted him wore an apron so dirty that he was almost indistinguishable from his swine. Roland silently swore to ride far before he breakfasted. But he wanted sleep now, so paid for a room.
Since the rooms were full up with travelers fleeing from the north, he was forced to bed with a huge fellow who smelled of grease and too much ale.
Still, the room was dry while the ground outside was not, so Roland climbed into bed with the fellow, shoved him onto his side so that he stopped snoring, and tried to sleep.
The plan went afoul. Within two minutes the big fellow rolled back over and snored loudly in Roland’s ear. While still asleep, he wrapped a leg over Roland, then groped Roland’s breast. The man had a grip so firm it could only have come from taking endowments of brawn.
Roland whispered menacingly, “Stop that, or I’ll be leaving a severed hand in this bed in the morning.”
The big man, who had a beard so bushy that squirrels could have hidden in it, squinted at Roland through the dim firelight shining through a parchment window.
“Oh, sorry!” the big fellow apologized. “Thought you were my wife.” He rolled over and immediately began to snore.
That was some comfort. Roland had heard tales of men getting buggered under such circumstances.
Roland turned aside, letting the fellow’s backside warm his buttocks, then tried to sleep. But an hour later, the big fellow was at him again, clutching Roland’s breasts. Roland gave him a sharp elbow to the chest.