To the right, a silver stream wound through a stand of alders. White ducks gabbled as they fed along the stream banks downhill.
Ahead lay a village with thatch-roofed cottages squatting by the road. Honeysuckle and ivy trailed over the garden walls.
Everything here seemed so alive—everything but Sir Borenson. He had gone from pale to a feverish red. Sweat streamed from his forehead.
“Where are we?” Averan asked.
“Balington,” Myrrima said. “You’ve been asleep for more than an hour.”
Averan looked at the cottages. Yesterday, she’d been able to sense Gaborn’s presence in battle. She’d seen the Earth King as a green flame that stood before her even when she closed her eyes. The Earth King was supposed to be here.
Now, she reached out with her feelings, tried to discern his location. But the flame had gone.
Still, there was something about Balington. She felt a power here, old and immense. She could not detect its center, could not tell if it meant her well or ill. She felt as if she were riding toward her destiny.
They drove into the village, past forty fine horses that stood all blanketed and barded outside the stables. Averan spotted a wagon there with several burly guards hovering nearby—keeping watch over the king’s treasure. It looked as if the king were getting ready to ride.
A village boy in leather pants, green smock, and feathered cap led a milk cow along the road. Cream leaked from her swollen udders.
Myrrima stopped long enough to ask the lad, “Where’s the king’s wizard?”
“Round the back,” he said, pointing toward the inn.
Myrrima drove the wagon to the back of the inn. She skirted a stone fence covered in jasmine and golden hop vines until she reached a wooden gate. She climbed down, unlatched it.
“Are you coming?” Myrrima asked. “You said you had a message for the king’s ears only.”
Now that she was here, Averan felt uneasy about the ruse. She feared that if she told Gaborn her story, he would think her mad. A dull pain throbbed at the base of her skull.
She summoned her courage. “I’m coming.”
She hopped out of the wagon on stiff legs and entered the garden gate. Brown and white pigeons strutted atop the thatch of a dovecote, cooing softly. A gray squirrel went leaping up a nearby cherry tree, its tail floating behind.
Gaborn’s Days stood at the top of the garden in a patch of sunlight. The skeletal scholar, with his close-cut hair and rust-colored robes, stood quietly with his hands clasped behind his back, merely observing.
The king himself sat on a stone beneath an almond tree in the midst of the garden. He wore a shirt of ring mail, as if for battle. Sweat darkened the quilted tunic beneath his arms, as if he had been doing heavy labor. But he merely talked. At least thirty knights surrounded him, all sitting on the grass in their finely burnished armor, the young squires with their bowl haircuts and rougher clothes lounging in the shadows beyond. Most of the lords hailed from Mystarria, but she saw some blank shields, and even a pair of Invincibles who had ripped off their surcoats so that they no longer wore the gold and crimson of Raj Ahten.
Gaborn sat with his back straight and chin high, engaged in light conversation. The queen sat at his feet, in a robe as softly yellow as a rose.
Averan saw no sign of the wizard that Myrrima was seeking. Indeed, Myrrima whispered a question to a lord, and he nodded toward the inn.
Myrrima hurried back out of the garden, and Averan just stood a moment, too nervous to speak.
Some minor noble was saying, “There’s tales going around Carris that a certain commoner, a fellow named Waggit, killed nine reavers in battle.”
“Nine?” several men guffawed in disbelief.
“No man who survived Carris should ever be called common,” Gaborn said. “And if the tales be true, I’m tempted to have this Waggit knighted and placed in my personal guard. What do you know of him?”
“He works in the mines at Silverdale,” the lord said. “I hear he’s somewhat...well, he’s simple.”
“A fool killed nine reavers?” Gaborn asked in disbelief.
“With a pickax, no less,” Lord Bowen confirmed. “The bards at Carris are already singing about it. I’d have brought the man to your attention sooner, but given his incapacity...”
“By the Powers, I would that all men were such fools!” Gaborn swore. “I’ll have him in my guard!”
The knights laughed, and Averan found herself smiling at the jest too. Gaborn could only make the man a guard if he cured him of his idiocy, and the only way to do that would be to have him take an endowment of wit from someone who was whole. Surely Gaborn would not waste a forcible on a fool, for in curing one fool, it would only make another—and at great cost to the kingdom. For the forcibles used in the endowment ceremony were made of metal that was far rarer than gold.
She hadn’t known what to expect of Gaborn. She normally dealt with old wrinkled dukes and barons. But Gaborn was not some pompous lord trying to impress people with his ten endowments of glamour. Instead he was a strong, lanky youth with dark hair and piercing blue eyes.
She’d expected that the Earth King would be grim and stern, full of himself. But Gaborn did his best to fit in, to cheer the men around him.
Averan decided that she liked him in spite of the fact that she knew that something was wrong.
An unlikely pair of warriors got off the ground. One of them she recognized from his tunic. He wore the colors of South Crowthen, and could only be Anders’s son, Celinor. The other was a young horsesister from Fleeds.
“Milord,” Celinor said. “We’ll be leaving now, if we may.”
Gaborn looked thoughtful. “I...sense no immediate danger.”
The queen blurted an old blessing out of Fleeds: “Erin, Celinor—may the Glories ride before you while the Bright Ones blaze at your back.”
“And with you, My Queen,” the horsesister said.
Gaborn turned his gaze toward Averan’s direction, caught her eye. Everyone fell silent, watched her expectantly. She still wore the robe of a skyrider. Averan could tell by Gaborn’s tone that he feared that she carried dire news.
“Well?” the king asked in a kindly tone. “Do you have a message?”
Averan stammered, couldn’t think how to start.
“Have...have you forgotten the message?” Gaborn asked kindly.
“I...” Averan didn’t know what to say.
“Spit it out, child,” Gaborn’s counselor said.
Averan found herself babbling, trying to explain all that she’d learned: “A green woman fell from the sky, and her blood got on me, and ever since then, everything is so strange. I ate a reaver’s brain. I can remember things—the way a reaver sees and smells and thinks. I know what they know. In the Underworld, there’s a fell mage. She’s called the One True Master. She’s the one who sent the reavers to Carris. You didn’t beat her—”
Around Gaborn, knights and lords stared at Averan, dumbfounded. One lord blurted, “Where did this child come from? I didn’t see a graak fly in. What is she saying?”
Averan knew that she wasn’t making much sense.
Another knight said, “She’s gone mad.” He got up and started to walk toward her.
Averan shouted, “No!”
Gaborn raised his hands, warning the lords back. He looked at her sharply. “You say you ate a reaver’s brain and learned what it knew?”
“Yes,” Averan said. “I ate the brain from the fell mage you slew. I know what it knows. She came to destroy all the blood metal beneath Carris, so that she could hurt us. But—in my visions I remember the screams of reavers. They’ve learned how to take endowments too.”
Gaborn hesitated a moment. He seemed pensive, thoughtful. Ages ago, mankind had developed their rune lore in an effort to mimic the way that reavers gained strength by eating the glands of their dead, or learned by eating the brains of their dead. But this was the first time anyone had discovered that reavers had learned to take endowments from their own.