“But what have I done for the Earth?” Averan asked.
“I have no idea,” Binnesman said. “You took care of graaks. Could that be a service? And you tried to save my wylde as it fell from the sky.”
Averan didn’t think either of those sounded very important.
“Let me ask, have you ever seen wrongs in the Earth, and sought to make them right?”
Averan’s head bobbed up and down.
“Tell me about the first time,” Binnesman said.
“I was little—”
“How old?”
“I don’t know, maybe two or three?”
“Go on.”
“My mother had taken me down to the river to help with her washing, and I saw a bush. I don’t know what kind it is. I’ve never seen another like it, either before or since. But there were these icky fat green caterpillars all over, eating it. So I killed them.”
“All of them?”
“Every one I could find. I got most of them the first day. My mother caught me, and made me go home. But I snuck back later and got every one.”
“And how did your bush do?”
“Very well, thank you,” Averan said. “It got big, and when the red berries came out, I planted some. Now there are more like it growing all around Keep Haberd.”
“I suspect that in doing this,” Binnesman said, “you performed a great service for the Earth. Now, tell me about the reavers. What do you see when you see them?”
“I see...that same wrongness,” Averan said. “When they came boiling over the hills toward Keep Haberd, and the skies were filled with gree, and their feet made the earth thunder—it was wrong. They were out of place.”
“Did you want to kill them?” Binnesman asked.
“I knew that they’d kill Brand, and my friend Heather, and everyone else that I knew. I didn’t want to kill them really. I just wanted them to go back where they belong.”
“I think,” Binnesman said, “that that could be your destiny, if you choose it—to help drive them back. Perhaps it already is your destiny and there is no avoiding it.”
Averan felt nervous. “But I’m just a little girl.”
“With an unnatural taste for reaver brains,” Binnesman argued, “and the potential to become an Earth Warden.”
“And what does that mean, to be an Earth Warden?”
“You can become the Earth’s protector. Life will become your occupation, to protect and nurture the small and helpless things of the world.”
“Like mice and plants?” Averan asked.
“Or humans,” Binnesman said.
“I never thought of humans as being small and helpless,” Averan said.
“Children seldom see them so,” Binnesman answered. “But now that you’ve seen a reaver, you know better. There was a time, ages and ages ago, when men lived in packs, and ran about to and fro, hiding from the reavers. We lived in the forests like deer, always terrified, always huddled and shaking. Even now, terror comes easily to us, and men still know better how to flee than to fight.
“But in time, mankind discovered how to dig for metal to forge weapons of brass and iron, and how to raise fortresses, and how to wage war in cooperation. The blood metal and endowments made men equal to any predator, and raised them to the status of Lords of the Overworld.
“So it is easy for you to look at a Runelord and imagine that nothing could be so powerful, so masterful as a man.
“Yet nothing is farther from the truth.”
Averan was quiet, thoughtful for a long moment. “How long have you known that mankind is in trouble?”
Binnesman stroked his beard. “I’ve known that dark times were coming for ages, now. Mankind needed no protector, needed no Earth Warden to watch over them, for many thousands of years.
“But when I heard the Earth whisper my name, when I first felt the urge to protect and nurture mankind, I knew that dark times were upon us. Until I saw the ruins at Carris, I had no idea how dark they might become.”
“Is that how it happens?” Averan asks. “You hear the Earth calling? Is that how you learn what to do?”
“It’s not a sound heard by human ears,” Binnesman said. “It’s more like a trembling, a knowledge that strikes to the core of you. Suddenly you just know...everything: why you exist, and how you are connected to the Earth, and what you must do.”
Binnesman could not hide how he felt. The moment he first understood his purpose in life, felt his connection to the Earth, must have been powerful indeed. He sounded rapturous....
It filled Averan with longing.
“So you will be called to protect the beasts, I think. You love them more than plants or minerals, it seems. You’ve heard of Alwyn Toadmaster, haven’t you?”
Averan laughed. The antics of Alwyn Toadmaster had made some of her favorite bedtime stories as a child.
“Well, he was real,” Binnesman said. “He really did live in the swamps of Callonbee. And when the marshes dried up for six years, he collected all of the frogs’ eggs he could and stored them in the wells at Brachston, which of course drove the townspeople mad. Imagine having to fish a hundred pollywogs out of your cup every time you took a drink!”
Averan giggled, but a part of her felt horrified. What if the Earth called her to take care of something nasty, like frogs? “Did he really hop around like a frog, and catch files on his tongue?”
“What do you think?” Binnesman asked.
“I think they made that part up.”
“I suspect you’re right,” Binnesman said.
“So,” she asked nervously, “you just know? You just wake up one day and know what you’re here to save?”
“It’s not always so easy,” Binnesman said. “Everything is interlinked. Sometimes, in order to save one thing, you have to let another go. For example...people,” Binnesman said pointedly, glancing toward Gaborn. “Gaborn was given a gift, the ability to Choose people, and to save a seed of mankind through the dark times to come. But he wasn’t commanded to save all of the people. So he has tried to Choose the best.
“In the same way, the time may come when you have to choose to save something while letting another thing go.”
“I hope I can take care of the graaks,” Averan said wistfully. “Or maybe deer.”
“Ah, now a graak,” Binnesman said playfully, “is in my opinion a thoroughly unpleasant animal. So I’m glad you’re here to save them, if they need saving.”
“I guess if everyone got to choose what animals to save,” Averan said, “we’d probably all save bunny rabbits.”
Binnesman nodded sagely. “Or kittens.” The old wizard wrapped a huge arm around her, gave her a hug, but neither of them spoke for a while. They had entered the deadlands.
She thought about Roland, lying there in Carris, and wondered if she’d see Baron Poll.
14
Triumphal Entry
A cunning man considers him a fool who acts against his own best interests. An upright man considers him a fool who acts against the interests of the whole of mankind.
Therefore, all men are fools.
And since I must live in the company of fools, I’ll stake my lot then with upright fools.
Throw that damned cunning fool to the Bears.
The throng outside Duke Paldane’s keep in Carris was thick with the denizens of Rofehavan—lords and merchants in their smelly woolen garments, all of them nattering loudly, or so it seemed to Feykaald.
He stood alone with his back to the stone wall, the sun shining brightly upon him. As he did, he closed his eyes and listened.
The tide of voices overwhelmed him. With a dozen endowments of hearing and only half as many endowments of stamina, the noise swelling around him set his ears to throbbing and caused a painful buzz at the base of his skull. Even the opium he had smoked earlier did little except to leave him feeling disjointed, disconnected, and slightly out of control. The bitter taste of it clung to his teeth. He frowned in concentration as he picked voices from the crowd.