40
A Mighty Wind
The beings that men call “ferrin” have their own names for themselves, which are known to the wise. There are three distinct subspecies. The woodland ferrin are the largest, and perhaps the least fierce. Their range covers hills and woods throughout most of Rofehavan. The water ferrin have a darker fur, prefer moist habitats, and are excellent swimmers. The desert ferrin has short, sandy hair, and seems well adapted to its own harsh environment.
None of the breeds survive well in the snow. I have seldom seen one even fifty miles north of Castle Sylvarresta.
It is well documented that ferrin were brought from beyond the Caroll Sea by one Yakor the Bold, apparently for the express purpose of ridding his realm of rats and the plagues that they carry. They serve the purpose well in southern climes, but are considered a nuisance even by those who benefit from them, for though ferrin spread no disease, they eat far more than their smaller counterparts.
As King Anders took dinner, the dying screams of men suddenly filled his castle.
They came in through the uppermost tower and whirled down the stairwell. The wind carried the sound down to the Great Hall, then swirled up again through the chimney.
To an ear that was not attuned, it sounded like a simple moaning wind. But Anders had been listening for that sound all afternoon.
For a moment, the fire flared.
Ander’s wife felt the draft and said, “Oh my.”
Anders had hoped to hear a woman’s dying cry. But only five voices mingled in that scream, and all were male.
Anders raised his head and held a goblet of wine up to his latest guests: a Duke Stote from Lonnock, and Prince Grunensen from Eyremoth.
The prince was talking. He was a big strapping lad with soft dark hair and the mannerisms of a girl. “I can’t abide travel by ship,” he was saying. “The last time I rode one, the galley was full of rats. They spread diseases, you know. That’s why I travel by land. At least in the inns, the ferrin keep their number down.”
“I thought it was too cold in Eyremoth for either rats or ferrin,” Duke Stote jested.
“Milord,” Ander’s wife hissed into his ear, dismayed at the turn in conversation at the dinner table.
He smiled. The conversation would surely turn to grimmer matters than rats. “A toast,” King Anders said, “to friends from far lands.”
The guests smiled coldly, drank. It was a quiet dinner, filled with clumsy conversation and long silences. Anders excused himself between courses and climbed his tower.
There he stood looking far to the south. Iome was so far away. He could do little from here.
His attack had been clumsy, inelegant. His master was not pleased. Perhaps...
For a long while he thought about rats. Huge rats, black as coal, burrowing beneath houses. Fat rats on the wharf, feeding on fish heads. Sleek rats in the woods climbing the trees. Rats that carried pestilence and disease.
A notion took him. There were few men so susceptible to his spells that they would fight in his behalf. He had used up three already. But wars did not always need to be fought with men and arms.
Still, to send rats? To call down a plague upon a whole nation—the old, the infirm, women, and children?
In some bright corner of his mind, the man that Anders had once been cried out, The notion is monstrous!
Anders thought himself to be a hard man. He was a king after all. He’d ordered the execution of a highwayman when he was twelve. He’d fought men in battle.
He’d thought little of sending men to kill Iome.
But he’d never brought death upon innocents in such a wholesale fashion.
A cold wind tugged at the hair around his ear and whispered, It would please me.
“No!” he said aloud, shaking his head vehemently.
A cold gust slapped his back. The iciness took his breath. His head seemed to reel, and for a moment he felt dazed, as if he were drunk and spinning.
He suddenly trembled in fear, realizing that the rough paving stones stretched wide below, so close, so very close. He clung to the merlons as the wind rushed at his back. It would take so little to push him over.
Please me, a voice whispered in his ear.
For a second, Anders felt desperate. He’d sought to serve the wind, hoping that it would serve him in return. To some degree it did. Now, he saw that it could turn on him at any moment. He was in its thrall, would either do its bidding, or be discarded.
The cold wind pummeled him, slashing at his thin robes and tunic like a blade. It pierced his heart.
He suddenly stood tall and let the coldness seep into him. “Come, my warriors,” he whispered. “Come.”
The wind had been blowing from the south all day. Now the wizard on the weather vane of the highest tower turned and pointed to the west.
The wind beat down with a new ferocity.
Presently, Anders could hear sounds in the streets, the patter of tiny feet, the squeaking of small voices. He looked down in the deepening shadows, saw dark shapes darting across the cobblestones.
A terrier leapt out, barking, grabbed one of the small beasts. It shrieked in pain as the terrier broke its back.
But the rats continued to rise up from beneath the city. They scuttled out of drains and sewers, came leaping out of barns. They scurried down from trees and crawled up from beneath rotting floors. They went racing over the rooftops in furry little packs, flowing out the castle walls in a dark tide, casting off dank turds in their wake.
Here and there in the city below, a woman would cry out as she discovered a pack of rats scampering beneath her feet.
People would talk about it for days, Anders knew, the mysterious exodus of rats. But he needed them, the dirty little beasts, with their penchant for spreading disease.
They fled the city under the cover of darkness, traveling east with the wind.
Anders whispered softly to the south, “Iome, come home. Your land needs you.”
He had hardly finished when his wife came up to the tower. “Are you going to stay here all night? You have guests, you know.”
King Anders smiled.
41
Farion’s Father
Parian is the Queen of Slumber. She rewards good children by leading them into fair realms of dream, and punishes the wicked by directing them along dark paths into the lands of the twisted phantasms.
To win her favor, a child who has been bad may leave a piece of fruit or a sweet by his bed.
Stars smoldered in the cold heavens above Mangan’s Rock. Sunset was gone an hour ago, and still the reavers sat on their pile of stones, casting their spells.
Wains filled with supplies had arrived from Castle Fells, and Gaborn’s army was well fed for the night. Many lords lay in their bedrolls, taking the first real slumber they’d had in days.
Everything seemed quiet, yet Gaborn sat beside his campfire, poised, pensive. He could sense danger approaching his perimeter guards.
Baron Waggit, who was acting as a sentry, called out to Gaborn from the edge of his campfire, “Milord, Skalbairn says that there’s something you should see.”
Immediately Gaborn came alert, sensing for danger. Yes, he could feel trouble brewing along the perimeter. He got up, with his Days in attendance, and followed Baron Waggit. The big man’s yellow hair shone like silk in the starlight, and his back looked broad enough to ride. Watch fires burned steadily in a ring around Mangan’s Rock, every two hundred yards.
Sounds carried preternaturally in the cool night air. Gaborn could hear the rasping of the reavers’ breath, as if the monsters had crawled closer in the darkness. Smoke still roiled from the top of Mangan’s Rock, and blue lights crackled around the Rune of Desolation.
As Gaborn followed, he spotted other sentries out on the plains in their pale livery, starlight reflecting from arms and helms.