The horses immediately began to forage for grass, and the giants all stopped and dropped to the ground, panting.
Binnesman rode away from the troops, toward a hill half a mile to the west. The wylde rode at his side. At the base of the hill, Binnesman halted beside a stream, let the horses graze and drink.
“You can stay here, if you like,” he told Averan and the wylde.
He climbed the hill and stood beneath a great oak tree. He bowed toward the desolation, and raised his staff overhead in both hands. Averan heard him chanting, but the wind carried his words away.
For long minutes, it seemed as if nothing happened. Then she saw a thin green mist that seemed to seep from his staff, blowing on the wind as if it were seeds or pollen.
The green woman had gone to the creek. She knelt in the water and picked up a crayfish, held it up and stared at it curiously. Someone had dressed her since last they’d met, and the green woman now wore a tunic of brown, with green leggings and some new leather boots. But she wore Roland’s big black bearskin cloak over it all. The attire made her look more human.
But Averan knew that it was all an illusion. She was a wylde. Binnesman had made her, as a woodcarver might make a doll. He’d made her from stones and bark and Earth blood. He’d given her a life of some sort, made her to be his warrior.
“What’s Binnesman doing?” Averan asked Spring.
Spring looked up at Averan, followed her gaze, saw the wizard standing there, and squinted. “Don’t...know.”
Averan studied the wylde. She was learning fast. A few days ago, she could only repeat a few words. Now she could answer some basic questions.
“Spring,” Averan said. “Are you scared?”
“Scared?” the wylde asked, cocking her head to the side. She dropped her crayfish back into the water, studied Averan.
“Scared,” Averan said. “It’s a feeling. Your heart starts to pound, and sometimes you shake when you’re really scared. It’s a feeling that comes when you know that something bad is going to happen.”
“No,” Spring said. “Not scared.”
“You don’t get scared even when you fight reavers?”
Spring shook her head with an expression that said she was utterly baffled.
Maybe she doesn’t have feelings, Averan thought. She’d never seen Spring cry or laugh.
“Do you feel anything?” Averan asked. “Do you dream when you sleep?”
“Dream?”
“Do you see things when you close your eyes?”
The green woman closed her eyes. “No. Not see.”
Averan gave up. She wanted to be friends with the wylde, but the creature could hardly talk.
Absently, Averan began to teach her a few more words.
When Binnesman finished, he bowed again toward the deadlands, then climbed downhill.
Nothing had changed. The lands to the south were as desolate as ever.
But the transformation that had taken place in Binnesman over those few minutes was astonishing. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and he trembled from exhaustion. He fell down at the edge of the stream and drank deeply for a long minute. He shook so badly that Averan worried that he would not be able to climb to his feet by himself.
“What did you do?” Averan asked.
“The land is sorely cursed,” Binnesman said, “with plagues and sickness, rot and despair. It needed a blessing.”
“Did you fail?”
“Fail? Not at all!” Binnesman said. “Some magic works slowly. The effects of this spell may not be fully seen for a century or more.”
He patted her head.
“Binnesman,” Averan said. “Can your wylde dream?”
The wizard frowned. “Dream? No, I think not. Perhaps she’ll dream of feeding, or of hunting. But nothing more.”
“Oh,” Averan said, disappointed.
“You mustn’t think of her as a person.”
“I was hoping we could be friends.”
“That...would be dangerous.”
“You mean she’d hurt me?”
“No,” the wizard said. “Not on purpose. But she’s not human. She’ll protect you, but she has no emotions—Oh, look what you’ve done. You’ve got me calling ‘it’ a ‘she.’ The wylde could have taken any form. It could have looked like a walking tree, or taken the shape of a snake.
But I was called to protect mankind, and so I guess it is only fitting that my wylde take the shape of a human.”
“So she can’t feel anything?” Averan asked.
“Pain, hunger,” Binnesman said. “Perhaps some other simple things. But the creature will never be your friend. It’s like a salmon, swimming upriver. It will serve its purpose—if we are lucky—and then it will expire. You must get used to that notion. She won’t be having you over for tea.”
“Oh,” Averan said. She didn’t tell him that she thought that Spring was being cheated, that it wasn’t fair.
They mounted their horses, joined Gaborn’s retinue, and soon were off.
“No more spells today,” Binnesman said as they rode. “I’ll talk instead. The path to wizardry,” he offered in a lecturing tone, “is a path to Power. But it is not an easy path. Do you truly wish to walk it?”
Averan asked, “How should I know?”
“Spoken without guile,” Binnesman said. “I should have expected as much from a silly child.” He thought for a moment. Averan could tell that he’d never really considered how to teach this subject. “Let me put it another way: your path, I suspect, will be hard, full of perils. Will you undertake the journey?”
“Are you talking about the Underworld?” Averan asked. “Do you want me to go with you and Gaborn?” Averan didn’t want to go there, to that darkest of dark places.
“Perhaps,” Binnesman said. “My wylde will need to feed, and that’s where her food is.”
“I know,” Averan replied. “I can feel the hunger for blood too. I was full last night, but I’m already craving it again. I feel...no food that I eat satisfies. I mean, I can eat meat, I can eat grass, and nothing fills me. It’s like I’m just eating air. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go on this way for very long.”
Spring was riding a gray stallion nearby, lounging in the saddle as if she’d been born on one. She heard Averan talking about food, and she said, “Blood, yes!”
Binnesman listened thoughtfully. She liked that about him. “It’s very strange that among your powers, you should hunger for reavers. You can resist the cravings, you know. You do not have to eat reavers or anything else. The Earth will not force you into service. If you resist the cravings, they will go away. But of course, you will lose the power that comes from obeying that urge.”
“Like Gaborn?”
“Like Gaborn.”
“And the cravings will never bother me again?” Averan asked. Binnesman shook his head, and his beard brushed her neck. “I...can’t say. They’ll diminish certainly, but they’ll bother you from time to time. They will bother you till the day you die, I think. You may always crave reaver blood a little, and you’ll try to imagine how it would have been to walk that path to power. And you’ll perhaps wonder what could have been. But then that is the way with life. In choosing one path, we must ignore others.”
“Brand used to say that life should be a journey, not a destination,” Averan said. “And you should take joy in the journey.”
“Hmmm...” Binnesman said, “many among the wise would agree with that, but I don’t think that we have to settle for one or the other, a journey or a destination. Life can be both.”
“So what do I have to do to be a wizard?” Averan asked.
“It’s simple, really,” Binnesman said, “though we tend to make it seem more complex than it needs to be: we gain power through service. I serve the Earth, and it serves me in return.”
“That sounds easy,” Averan said.
“Does it?” Binnesman asked. “It’s impossible for most, and extremely difficult for the those who can manage it at all. That’s why there are so few wizards of any merit. However, it may very well be easy for you. That’s why you’ve got green oak leaves appearing on your palms, and roots sprouting in your cloak, and you’re already gaining powers that others will never master.”