Iome bit her lip. “One more thing. The men who sell the dogs must take endowments of scent, and vector them to the king’s agent. I will pay well for this service.”
Abel Scarby swallowed hard and suddenly realized whom he was talking to. He bowed to one knee. He growled at the fellow who held Iome’s reins, “Kador, take your paws off the queen’s horse.”
Kador backed away and raised his hands, as if to ward off a blow.
“Excuse us, Your Highness,” Abel said. “We’re hard men, used to guarding our own backs. We keep the law in this alley. We meant no offense.”
“None was taken,” Iome said. “Any friend of Gaborn’s is a friend of mine.”
Abel stared up at her with solemn eyes and a troubled expression. “Is’t true, Your Highness? Gaborn is really the Earth King?”
“It is.”
“An’...dark times are ’pon us?”
Iome nodded.
Abel tossed the purse up to her and said loudly, “Yer Highness, I’ll want na coin.” He rested the knob of his cudgel on the ground in parody of a lord offering his sword, and his bright eyes shone with a mixture of hope and fear of rejection as he explained. “Milady, I’m na a fancy-pantser. Ya won’t find me wearing silk hose on feast days, and if ya ventured into my hovel, ya’d find it smelly as a bear’s den, and na a chair at the table clean enough for the likes of you to sit at. But my heart is as right and proud as any lord’s who ever bent a knee to ya. I’m na a knight, but I’ve got as much gristle in me as any animal what ever lived. An’ I’ve seventeen sons and daughters to my credit. So, I’m beggin’ you to ask the king—him what’s called me a friend—to Choose me an’ me kids.”
The young thugs around Iome all looked up at her expectantly, like dogs begging for scraps at their master’s table. The children in the doorway, wearing grime instead of cloaks and rags instead of clothes, timidly stepped out and crept to their father’s side. He threw his arms around the young ones. Iome hesitated.
Gaborn had no power to Choose the man, yet she dared not tell him. The man looked hopeless, forlorn.
Seventeen children. She thought of the one in her womb. Could she bear to have it torn from her?
“Gaborn is far away,” she said, “fighting reavers. I’m sure that he would Choose you, if he could.”
“When he comes, then?” Abel said. “Ya’ll ask him for us?”
There is a chance he will get his powers back, Iome assured herself. Yet she suspected that he never would.
“I’ll ask him,” she promised.
Abel’s lips were quivering, and his eyes shone dully from tears of gratitude. He stifled a sob, and his children all stood with wide eyes, till one young girl ran back into the house shouting, “Ma! Ma!”
Abel said through a tight throat, “Thank ya, milady. I’ll try ta be worthy of ya.”
Iome tossed back the purse. “Please, keep the money too. If not for your own sake, then for your wife and the little ones.”
Abel dropped his head, bowed lower. “My condolences for your father. He was a great king, from all I hear.”
“Thank you,” she said. Iome no sooner began turning her mount than Abel shouted, “Ya heard ‘em, boys, look lively!”
Iome spurred her horse from the alley, and for a moment Grimeson was hard-pressed to keep up with her as she fled. Half a mile up the road she left the squalid waterfront at Crow’s Bay.
Iome reined in her mount and dropped to the street, then stood for a moment, looking out to the water.
Her hands would not stop shaking.
“Will you be all right?” Grimeson asked.
“By the Powers, I have never felt so dirty and ashamed,” Iome said, shaking. “I couldn’t tell him no. I couldn’t tell him that his children might die, not with the little ones standing there. What can I do? I never imagined I could feel—”
Suddenly she realized how Gaborn must feel. Only for him it had to be a thousand times stronger.
She leaned against the wall of a fishery and emptied her stomach. Grimeson said nothing. There could be no consolation.
Iome wept for her people.
43
The horseman’s warhammer is the favored weapon of Mystarria. The handle of such a hammer can be from four to six feet long, and is made of the finest steel. The crosspiece is narrow, spiked at each end, and of sufficient depth so that it is suitable for piercing a reaver’s skull—or a man’s armor.
Averan and Binnesman sat on the hillside under the starlight. The sun had fallen hours ago, and a horned moon lingered on the horizon. In the distance Averan could see fires winking around Mangan’s Rock.
Deer had come down from the hills to feed in the meadow. They walked around Averan on dainty hooves, as unmindful of her as if she were a dandelion.
Binnesman had planted his staff in the ground, left it sitting upright, and explained to Averan that an Earth Warden always did so, that the staff might draw power from the soil.
Afterward, he fell silent. He did not take Averan aside and show her plants in the dark, fretting about how little time he had. For once he merely sat, resting, gazing across the fields, as if he could see to the ends of the world. He’d done nothing more for hours.
Perhaps he only remains silent to keep from frightening the deer away, Averan thought.
“Are you casting a spell?” she asked at long last, afraid to disturb him. The doe that grazed beside her did not so much as twitch an ear at the sound of her voice.
Binnesman turned his head, glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
Binnesman pondered a moment. “Yes, I am casting a spell of sorts,” he said. “I’m taking time to renew. The touch of grass, the smell of pines in the wind, the taste of soil—they invigorate me. Sometimes, rest can feel magical, can’t it?”
“I suppose.”
She said nothing more for a long minute, then asked, “Binnesman, what happens when people die?”
“Their bodies go back to the Earth, and their spirits...do whatever spirits do.”
“You saw Erden Geboren,” Averan said. “Was he happy?”
“About as happy as wights get,” Binnesman grumbled. She could tell that he turned aside hard questions. In her experience, adults seldom liked answering hard questions. In time, they even learned never to wonder about things at all.
“But...not all spirits rise, do they? What happens to the others?”
Binnesman glanced at her. “No one knows, really. It is said that some are reborn in the netherworld, or perhaps are born into worlds that are shadows of ours, just as our world is but a shadow of the one world. But not all spirits go away, it seems—for some remain behind as wights.”
“I think I’d rather be a wight,” Averan said. “I like it here.”
“Why?” Binnesman asked. “Do you want to cheat death?”
“Of course,” Averan said.
Binnesman smiled. “You can’t cheat it, but some people learn to face it calmly. Some even embrace it as a friend.”
“That’s just conquering fear,” Averan objected. “Anyone can do that. I want to cheat death too.”
“Well,” Binnesman said. “So you want to know how to come back as a wight. I’m not sure I know the answer. I think that the dead may hear our thoughts. It’s almost as if we can summon them by thinking about them, or wishing them near. Or maybe by thinking about them, we merely lend them greater form. I don’t know....”
He fell silent a moment, then added, “I’ve noticed that wights are almost always creatures of great will in life. By far, most of them are people who desired to do good, who sought to create rather than to tear down.”
“But not all?”
“Not all,” Binnesman said. “Some were people or creatures of great will alone, beings with black hearts.”
“What else makes a wight?” Averan asked.
“Who knows?” Binnesman said. “You see the stars in the sky. There are millions of them, and all of them have worlds like ours whirling around them. Or at least they have bits of world like ours.”