“Tell me,” Gaborn asked. “Do you know anything about the Place of Bones?”
“Yes!” Averan shouted. “That’s what the reavers call the throne where the One True Master rules, among the bones of the enemies she’s eaten! It’s in the Underworld, near the burning stones.”
The queen let out a yelp of surprise and alarm, and climbed to her feet.
“Can you tell me the way?” Gaborn asked.
Averan stood dumbfounded. She recalled bits of the journey, flashes of images of reavers marching up through twisting caverns in the Underworld. But they were just snatches of images—a long march through dangerous territory where the great worms lived, the hot vents near caves of fire. There were cliffs and ledges that no man could scale, and the trail went past tunnels that led to the wilds. She couldn’t describe it.
“There is a trail,” Averan said. “I...don’t know how to get there. The trail is long and twisted, and no commoner could ever make it. Even for a reaver, the trail was terribly har—”
“But there is a trail, one that a bold man might follow?” Gaborn urged hopefully.
“Yes,” Averan said. “But there are millions of tunnels down there. There are hundreds of reaver hives, each with a thousand passages. You—you could waste a lifetime looking for the hive of the One True Master. Even if you found it, finding her would be another matter!”
Gaborn’s eyes seemed to bore right into her. She knew what he was thinking. He wanted to go into the Underworld. But Averan didn’t know the way.
“What’s going on here?” someone demanded.
She turned. A wizard stood at the head of the garden in russet robes. He seemed to be a kindly looking man, with a weathered face and skin that was just a tad too green. His eyes were as clear blue as a summer’s day. His hair might have once been the color of chestnuts, but now gray streaked through it. His cheeks were as ruddy as sandstone, and the hair of his beard grew thicker at the base than at the tips. His strange robe looked to be woven of reddish roots.
Averan had never seen anyone like the wizard before. Yet everything about him seemed familiar. She had never met her father. By all accounts, reavers ate him while she was an infant. But she looked upon the wizard and wondered if perhaps everyone had lied. Perhaps this man was her father.
The wizard stared at her with a gaze so intense that it could have bored holes through a millstone. She sensed power in him, a power older than the hills, stronger than iron.
Behind him stood Myrrima and the green woman who had fallen from the sky.
“Averan!” the green woman called.
The wizard strode forward, his robes swishing in the silence that suddenly seemed to descend upon the garden. The green woman followed.
He stopped a moment, glanced down at the pale roots sprouting in Averan’s coat. “Here, child,” Binnesman said gently, “show me your hands.”
Averan held out her hands, opened them wide. Her palms itched more than before. Yesterday shapeless green blobs showed on her palms. The green woman’s blood had seemed to be seeping below her skin.
Now, to her surprise, each palm bore a dark-green image that had enlarged overnight. For the all world, on each hand, it looked as if she had tattoos of oak leaves.
Binnesman smiled, then touched each palm. Immediately the itching eased, and the dull ache at the base of her skull went away.
One of the king’s counselors, an old fellow with silver hair, gaped at her hands and said in astonishment, “She’s wizardborn!”
10
Strange Tidings
If you listen closely, you’ll learn as much from your child as it does from you.
Iome stared at Averan, heart pounding. Such a small, frail-looking girl, Iome thought. Yet she appeared like a portent of doom.
Iome had thought her husband mistaken. She’d suspected that the Place of Bones existed only in his imagination, that he’d been unable to accept the Earth’s rejection.
Now she feared that he would coerce this innocent child into leading him into the Underworld to battle this One True Master.
Binnesman leaned over the girl. Wizardborn. Jerimas’s pronouncement hung in the air.
“Not merely wizardborn,” Binnesman said. “She’s an Earth Warden—the apprentice I’ve long awaited.”
Binnesman held the girl’s hands and smiled at her gently. His soft voice, his warm touch, all were meant to comfort her. But Iome sensed by his rigid stance and the way that he refused to meet the child’s eyes that the wizard was at war with himself.
“Let us not speak in the open daylight,” Binnesman said. “Come inside with me.”
He took the girl’s hand and led her to the common room of the inn. Every lord in the place followed, until there was no room around the bar where Averan sat, and men crowded the doorway.
Once he had her sitting on the bar, Binnesman asked easily, “Tell me, child, is Averan your name?”
The girl nodded.
“How did my wylde know?”
“I was riding my graak and I saw her fall from the sky. I landed, and tried to help, and her blood got on me. She came north with me to Carris—”
“Hmmm...” Binnesman muttered. “A strange coincidence, don’t you think, that I lose a wylde and that you should find it?”
Averan shrugged.
“It’s more than a coincidence,” Binnesman said. “Tell me, what were you thinking about when it happened?”
“I don’t remember exactly,” Averan said. “I guess...I was hoping that someone would come help me.”
“Hmmm...You’re a skyrider? You’re good with animals, I suspect. Do you like animals?”
“Yes,” Averan admitted.
“Are you good with graaks?”
“Master Brand said that he thought I was the best that he’d ever seen. He was going to make me beastmaster someday.”
“Hmmm...” Binnesman said thoughtfully. “Do you have a favorite animal?”
Averan shook her head no. “I like them all.”
Binnesman mused for a long moment. “Do you like plants better than animals, or rocks?”
“How could you like a rock more than an animal?” Averan asked.
“Some people do,” Binnesman said. “As for myself, I like plants about as much as I do people. When I was a boy, I used to love to walk in the meadows and count buttercups, or the number of seeds on a sheaf of wheat. For hours I used to study how ivy curls its way up a tree. Sometimes I felt as if I were waiting for a revelation. I used to...I would sit and listen for the dry summer grasses all tangled with weeds to whisper some cosmic truth.
“I used to try to think like an oak, and imagine how far the tangled roots of an aspen traveled, and wonder what dreams the willow dreamed.
“Tell me, do you ever do that?”
“You sound crazy!” Averan blurted.
Jerimas barked out in laughter, and said, “Now there’s a child who speaks her mind!”
“I suppose I do sound crazy,” Binnesman admitted. “But everyone has a touch of madness, and those who can’t admit it are usually farther gone than the rest of us. Wizards are, as anyone can tell you, quite demented.”
Averan nodded, as if that sounded reasonable.
“I love the Earth,” Binnesman explained. “And what’s more, I know that you must love it, too, in your own way. Loving it so much is not bad, or shameful. You’ll find great power in moving outside yourself. There is power in studying the ways of plants and animals and stones. It lies at the heart of the Earth Powers.
“The green in your hands comes because Earth Blood flows through your veins.”
“But...” Averan said. “I...it was an accident. I got the green woman’s blood on me.”
Binnesman shook his head. “No, Earth Blood was inside you all along. It has always been a part of you, ever since you were born. You are wizardborn. But among us creatures of the Earth, blood calls to blood. That’s why I came to the garden just a moment ago. I felt you here. What’s more, I suspect that you summoned my wylde from the sky. And when you touched the green woman’s blood, you couldn’t get it off because it flowed to you. Like was seeking like.”