He gazed about, filled with anticipation. In Binnesman’s garden the Earth had taken physical form, had come to speak to him in person.
But the hills here were bare, and he saw no shadowy figures lurking on their slopes.
With his clothes off, Gaborn climbed down into the soil. He tensed at the touch of the cold ground, but crossed his hands over his chest, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He whispered, “Cover me.”
He lay expectantly for a moment, but nothing happened. The Earth did not fulfill even this small request.
“Cover him,” Binnesman said softly.
Iome felt unsure why Gaborn had asked her to come. She had no powers, could not help summon the Earth Spirit that he sought. She could give him only one thing: comfort.
He needed it sorely. She didn’t know how to help him greet the future. They still faced a vast array of enemies: Raj Ahten might still badger him from the west, Lowicker’s daughter and King Anders from the north.
She’d encountered an assassin from Inkarra, while reavers boiled from the ground beneath their feet.
If we are all to die, Iome decided, then at least we should pass with dignity. She could give Gaborn that much.
But she feared that others would not.
She silently begged the Earth, “Please, answer us.”
Soil coursed over Gaborn in a flow. Cool dirt intruded everywhere—beneath his fingernails, weighing between his toes, heavy on his chest, pressing against his lips and eyelids.
For several long seconds, he held his breath. As he did, he sent forth his thoughts, his longings.
“Forgive me. Forgive. I will not abuse the power you’ve loaned me again.”
He stretched out with his mind, listening for an answer. Most often the Earth spoke with the voices of mice or with the cry of a wild swan or with the sound of a twig snapping in the forest. But on rare occasions it spoke as if in the tongues of men.
“Forgive me,” Gaborn whispered. “I’ll bend to your will. Let me save the seeds of mankind. I ask no more of you. Let me be your servant again.”
He heard no answer.
He imagined the future as it might unfold before him if he did not regain his powers. He envisioned mankind running from reavers, holding out in wooded hills or hiding in caves, fighting as best they could.
He pictured himself using his one remaining power, his ability to recognize danger, to save those within range of his voice.
But in time he would fail. Perhaps he would end up alone, the last man on Earth, his one final gift seen for what it had become: a curse.
He held his breath until his lungs burned and his muscles ached.
Last night as he lay in the grave, the Earth had taken from him the need to breathe, had allowed him to relax every muscle, to slumber in perfect repose.
Tonight...he recalled the words that the Earth Spirit had first spoken to him. “Once there were Toth upon the land. Once there were duskins.... At the end of this dark time, mankind, too, may become only a memory.”
The ground trembled faintly. Iome knew that Gaborn had summoned an earthquake at Carris. She thought that this was an aftershock.
But the earth continued shaking. The leaves of trees hissed, and a few boulders rumbled down the hillside. The soil beneath Iome’s feet rattled, until Gaborn was thrust up from the dirt and suddenly sprawled on the surface.
All around, the dust began to mount in the air. Pieces of what looked like gray stone sifted up to the surface, until suddenly she realized that they were bones—the corrupted jaw of a cow, the skull of a horse, a shoulder blade that might have belonged to a wild bear. All of them rose to the surface along with Gaborn.
Gaborn desperately clawed dirt from his face, gasped for breath. He sat up, naked, spitting dust.
The rumbling stopped, and a boulder bounced downhill through the little knot of people.
Binnesman used his staff to point out the bits of bone that had risen. He frowned at them, squatted and stared. “You have your answer.”
“But what does it mean?” Gaborn asked.
Binnesman scratched his chin. “The Earth is speaking to you. What does it mean to you?”
“I’m not sure,” Gaborn said.
“Think about it,” Binnesman said. “The answer will come to you. Trust what you feel. Trust the Earth.”
Without further ado, he took his wylde back down the hillside.
Gaborn crawled about, picking up fragments of bone, staring at them as if to read some message hidden there. Iome brought him his robe, draped it over his shoulders.
“Bones in the earth...” Gaborn was muttering. “The Place of Bones beneath the earth. Search for the Place of Bones.”
Iome needed no wizard to translate for her. Surely Gaborn had to see it: the Earth had rejected him, rejected his plea. She whispered, “The land will be covered in bones.”
Gaborn stopped, clutched the skull of a dog against his chest. “No! That’s not it at all!”
Iome put her arms around him, tried to hold him and give him comfort.
Gaborn had done his best to be Earth King. He was not a cold man, not a hard man. He was no warrior. If he had been any of those things, she never would have fallen in love with him.
Yet his mistakes were likely to get them all killed.
Am I strong enough to support him in spite of that? she wondered.
“What will we do now, my love?” she asked.
Gaborn merely squatted on the ground, naked but for the cloak thrown over him. “First we must warn Skalbairn and the rest of my troops that I’ve lost my powers. After that, we will do what the Earth demands.”
3
A Contrary Man
The gullible often mistake the pronouncements of cynics for true insight. Cynics will warn that all men are corrupt, and that existence is fruitless. But a wise man knows that not all men are corrupt, and that life brings joy as well as sorrow.
The cynics’ pronouncements are merely half-truths, the dark side of wisdom.
“The problem is,” High Marshal Skalbairn said, as he and Sir Chondler rode through the night woods in pursuit of the reavers, “Gaborn loves his people too much, and Raj Ahten loves them too little.” Skalbairn had received a cryptic warning from Gaborn, who had taken refuge at Balington. Both Skalbairn and Chondler were still trying to make sense of it.
Marshal Chondler replied, “Mark my words, nothing good will come of it. Men are never content to merely plant the seeds of their own destruction. They must first till and dung the ground, then nurture and water the tender sprout of it, until at last they’re ready to reap the full harvest.”
High Marshal Skalbairn guffawed at the comment. “No one would knowingly court disaster.” Chondler’s mount forged through the trees ahead of Skalbairn’s, and the marshal let a limb fly back and slap Skalbairn in the face. Obviously he did so in retribution for the rude noise.
“Ah, I’m wounded,” Skalbairn said.
“Sorry.”
“If that’s the most significant wound I take this night, I’ll be glad for it,” Skalbairn replied.
He was preparing another attack on the reavers soon. He wanted to reach a knoll where Sir Skerret, a far-seer, had lit a signal lantern in warning, but not a single damned trail seemed to lead to that knoll. The night was still overcast; and so high up in the Brace Mountains, the misting rain was turning to snow.
“Men do court disaster in a hundred ways,” Chondler affirmed. “For example, have you ever noticed how easily a man can turn a virtue into a vice?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, when I was a lad I knew a woman so charitable that everyone praised her. She baked bread for the poor, gave coins to the poor, gave her cow—and finally her house. At last she found herself begging on the streets outside of Broward, where she died one winter. Thus her virtue grew into a vice that consumed her.”