“You are the Earth King still,” she said. “The Earth asked you to perform one task. Your powers may be diminished...but that task remains: save your people.”
Iome considered telling him about the son that she carried inside her. She wanted him to be strong, and wondered if this news would help. But at the moment, guilt and useless self-recrimination tore at him. She didn’t dare burden him with the knowledge that she carried his child.
“You’re right,” Gaborn said softly. “My people need a king. Even if the Earth will not sanctify my calling, the people still need a king.”
Gaborn closed his eyes. His face went slack as he relaxed every muscle.
He raised his chin high, and when he glanced at her, there was determination and strength in his eyes. His nostrils flared, and his look was one that held her, saw through her, accepted her, and dominated her all at once. It was a look that intimated endless power.
“Milord!” Iome said, trying to catch her breath. She knew that he had studied mimicry in the Room of Faces. Yet the transformation that had come over Gaborn in that instant was astonishing to behold.
For in that moment, despite every doubt that Gaborn had expressed, and despite the fact that he felt bereft of his powers, she recognized for the first time that she looked upon the face of the Earth King.
13
A Child’s Lesson in Wizardry
Men name the four powers Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Such appellations are good enough for common folk, but only wizards ever learn their true names. We call upon them only in our hour of greatest need, and sometimes at our own peril.
Averan clung tightly to the pommel of the saddle as the cool wind whipped her face. The force horses galloped south across hills as green as emerald, beneath a blue sky marbled by high cirrus clouds.
Binnesman had her riding in front of him, her back snug against his warm riding cloak, his big left hand wrapped around her protectively. He did not trust her on such a fast horse alone.
She thought it laughable, for at the age of five she’d once ridden a graak through a wild storm where the wind blasted her while lightning sizzled under the clouds below. The graak fought the air currents so hard that its wings would sometimes buckle. It was an experience that only another skyrider could sympathize with, and it was one that would have loosened the bowels of many a brave knight.
Still, she was glad to have the wizard ride with her. Averan had never traveled with so many people before, and with the dangers of the road the journey felt much safer for the company. There were advance guards ahead of her, stern Runelords armed with lances at her back, and fierce giants as the rearguard.
Averan was especially glad to have Spring in the retinue, for Averan had been the first to find the green woman. A small part of her still felt responsible toward her, even if she knew now that Spring was a wylde. And Averan was also happy to have Iome as part of the company. With Averan being a skyrider, she seldom got much contact with other women.
The force horse raced, its hooves pounding a rhythm against the road, its barding and the king’s armor jangling like music.
Averan suspected that riding a kingly force horse was as close as she’d ever again come to riding a graak.
Binnesman remained silent for a while, and his grip on her was loose. He seemed weary.
“Will Borenson truly be healed?” Averan asked.
“I hope so,” the wizard answered. “Healing a flesh wound is a small matter. Restoring a body part is a greater magic, and carries a hard price. But for a true healing such as he requires, a healing of the heart, the afflicted must also desire to recover.”
“Is it hard work—healing such a wound?”
“Very hard,” Binnesman said. “Nearly impossible. But we were in a place of Power, with a wylde at our back. On another day, in another setting, I would not have tried it at all.” He fell silent for a while.
They swept like a gale through villages that Averan had only seen distantly from the air. Garrin’s Tooth she’d always thought of as merely a lord’s estate with odd-shaped fields and some clustered buildings just north of the Solace Mountains. But on the ground, with the full sun shining on it in the early autumn, it was a riot of life. The buildings turned out to comprise a fine tall inn, with whitewashed sides and green trim, and flower baskets hanging from every window. The odd-shaped fields were vineyards and hayfields cut from the rolling hills, where a blue stream threaded and pooled, reflecting the sky and the black swans that swam upon its surface. The lordly manor there was such a fine estate that it took her breath away.
Then she was out of the hills completely, galloping past villages with names like Seed, and Windlow, and Shelter—each an oasis of life among rolling autumn fields where huge black-eyed Susans grew taller than a child. Averan loved the way the yellow flowers bobbed in the wind, with their dark faces.
The retinue was making as much as thirty miles per hour, traveling so fast that the giants at the end of the train could hardly keep up. They panted and grunted, sometimes emitting barking roars as they loped. They fell behind, but caught up whenever the horses rested.
During one of these rests, Averan began to pick at the seeds that had sprouted on the cuff of her robe.
Binnesman playfully slapped her hand. “Stop that.”
“Why?”
“You’re growing your wizard’s robe,” he said. “It will protect you from sun and from fire, from wind and cold. And whether you are walking in the woods or out among the open fields, whether in daylight or darkness, it will shelter you.”
Averan glanced at the sleeve of Binnesman’s robe. The rootlike fibers in the robe were a reddish tan, the color of maple leaves in autumn. She couldn’t see if there had ever been any cloth beneath those fibers. Nor could she imagine it offering much shelter from prying eyes.
“Beastmaster Brand said I’m growing fast. What happens when I get too big for my robe?”
“You’ll never get too big for your robe,” Binnesman said. “It grows to fit you just right.”
“I hope my robe looks better than yours,” Averan said. “No offense, but it’s kind of baggy. I’d rather have something pretty.”
Binnesman laughed. “I’m sure yours will grow to be the envy of Earth Wardens everywhere.”
“So,” Averan asked, “when are you going to teach me how to do spells and stuff?”
“Well, there’s no time like the present,” he said. “This will protect you against Fire.” Binnesman drew a rune on her hand. Immediately the sun that had seemed blinding over the past few days dimmed. Its rays no longer burned her. “And this will protect you against Air.” He drew a second rune. Averan had not even noticed in the past few days how chafing the wind had become, as if it carried winter upon it. But suddenly there seemed to be a lull. Averan traced each of the shapes again herself.
“Those should help for the moment,” Binnesman said. “I’ll teach you more rune lore and spells later.”
Not long after they resumed their ride, they approached the deadlands that surrounded Carris. A dark ugly line lay on the horizon, and intuitively Averan wanted to stay away. Something vital had been leached from the soil there. On the ridges ahead stones now somehow seemed revealed to be the misshapen bones of a dying Earth, much in the way that the white knuckles of a leper are displayed as his skin sloughs off in decay.
Averan had hoped that she would never again have to visit Carris, even in her nightmares, but here she was riding toward it.
Binnesman called out to Gaborn, “Your Highness, may we stop for a moment?”
Gaborn did not ask why. He could see the ugly line ahead, and knew that the animals would need to forage. “Troops, halt!” he shouted.