Wizardborn (40 page)

Gaborn raised his shield and set for the charge. Blinding dust rose everywhere, a billowing black front that roared over him.

He reached out with his Earth senses, felt no danger to himself. Only to Iome. He knew where his Chosen were, knew when they were in danger. She had turned and run from him.

“No!” he screamed.

He whirled to see Iome racing toward Binnesman. She had almost reached the wizard.

Jureem ran in front of her, trying to block the onrushing foe with little more than his bulk and a curved dagger.

Beckhurst's mount leapt again as it brushed past Gaborn.

“Strike!” the Earth commanded.

For a brief second, Gaborn hesitated. He hurled his war-hammer. It hurtled end over end through the air, but fell behind its mark.

His heart seemed to freeze in his chest, fearing that his hesitation would cost Iome her life.

The wylde raced forward, staff at the ready. She whirled it forward. The staff nicked the lance, and lightning erupted from it. For a moment, the wylde was bathed in light as ball lightning danced over her skin. But her staff continued its arc, slammed the warhorse in the knees, and the lightning blasted the poor mount.

The horse screamed in pain, stumbled. As the charger fell, the wylde reversed her swing, aiming a blow at the back of Beckhurst's head.

Beckhurst reared back and hurled his lance.

With his endowments of metabolism, Gaborn saw it all in slow motion. The white lance racing for Iome's back. “Down!” he shouted.

Jureem had nearly reached Iome, his jeweled dagger drawn. Jureem saw the lance and leapt in front of it. He
screamed as the lance struck home, and light exploded all around, burst from Jureem's feet.

For a moment Gaborn stood in a daze, saw the lance plunge clear through Jureem. The lance took him in the chest, wedged his ribs wide open, and continued on.

Blood rained down as the wylde clubbed Beckhurst with a furious blow, decapitating the man.

The lance slammed into Iome's right shoulder, and Gaborn saw a flash of red as blood spattered from her robes.

She fell.

The elemental wind roared overhead, lashing. Lightning played at its crown. Horses neighed in terror. Binnesman stood with his staff in hand, singing words of warding against the storm. He touched Iome's still form with his staff.

And then the elemental was past them, howling in its glory, as if to mock the efforts of puny mortals.

   33   

Study brings wisdom. Wisdom brings power. Power brings responsibility.

—
Inscription in the Room of Numbers in the House of Understanding

Iome woke with a pain like fire in her shoulder. The camp was in disarray.

Binnesman had her lying on her belly on the ground, or perhaps that was the way she had fallen. She remembered it now, running from the knight, hoping to draw him away from Gaborn, dropping to the ground at Gaborn's warning, feeling the lance tip slam into her shoulder.

She could not have been unconscious for long. Distantly she could still hear the roaring wind. It raced northeast, toward the mountains.

As quickly as the Darkling Glory's elemental had struck, it was gone. It left the camp all but destroyed. Horses galloped about, having slipped their tethers in the storm.

Everyone gathered round her, looked on with relief. Binnesman applied some balm to her wound. It felt as sweet to the skin as warm honey would to the tongue.

She groaned in pain, tried to climb up to her hands and knees, and caught a glimpse of bloody corpses nearby. Jureem was not twelve feet off, shielded from her view by a knot of onlookers. She suspected by the fact that no one was kneeling over him that the good servant must have died. She knew that he had died to save her.

“Jureem?” she called, in case he was still alive.

“Don't move yet,” Binnesman said. “Even the worst shoulder wound often doesn't hurt as badly as you would think.”

“And Jureem?” Iome asked.

Binnesman shook his head. “Jureem and Sir Handy are both gone.”

The news left her numbed and saddened. She'd known Handy since she was a child. He'd been a shy boy of eight when his father first brought him to court. And Jureem had been an impeccable servant. Iome glanced at her own small wound. The men hadn't just died to save her. Gaborn had set them as guards. He'd spent his men. “I'm all right. It just grazed me.”

“You're lucky it didn't skewer you through the heart,” Binnesman said. “If not for the wylde, I think it would have.”

Iome tried to get up again. Binnesman held her down for a moment, until he tired of resisting. “Ah, well,” Binnesman said. “The bleeding has stopped. With your endowments, no doubt you'll be healed by tomorrow.”

Binnesman went to tend to Borenson, who lay gasping in pain, while Myrrima knelt at his side.

Iome climbed to her knees, found herself circled by friends. Averan, Gaborn, Langley, Skalbairn—all looked on in concern. Just two dozen yards away lay the body of the man who had tried to kill her, a gory mess. The knights of Rofehavan had made triple sure of him.

Iome crawled over to Jureem. The lance had opened him wide, and there was no chance that he could be alive. Still she took his hand, found it limp and warm.

Who knows the moment of death, or what the dead can hear? she wondered.

“Jureem,” she whispered into his ear, the hot air of her breath fogging his golden earring. “You did well, my faithful servant. I thank you. If there is any way I can reward you in this world or the next, I will do so.”

She stayed with him, held his hand for a long moment.
She looked up and saw Baron Waggit standing over her. The man had tears in his eyes, and looked on in confusion.

“Is there anything we can do for him?” the baron asked.

She wondered how it would be, to learn of death so brutally. He could not have had his endowment of wit for more than a few hours, yet he'd seen dozens of men die savagely before his eyes.

“There is,” Iome said. “We can live so that our deeds become a monument to his memory.”

Waggit's mouth moved, and for a moment she thought that he would beg to enter the king's service, take his endowments and go to war. But he said nothing, merely turned and stalked away.

As a fool at Carris he had killed reavers without knowing what death was. Now, he seemed to have no nerve. She thought of the old adage “Make a fool to cure a fool.” Gaborn had wasted a forcible on him.

She let go of Jureem's hand, placed it over the gaping wound in his chest. A pair of knights came to take him away.

Iome glanced at Averan. The big oak that Averan had rested under lay on its side, twisted roots rising twenty feet in the air. The wind had swept all of the straw and grass nearby bare. Averan crouched by the tree, her arms wrapped around her legs, and Iome marveled. The gale had been so fierce, she somehow expected that the girl would have blown away.

A couple dozen yards farther off, Binnesman was asking Sir Borenson, “Can you breathe all right?”

Borenson grunted in pain. “It just knocked the wind from me.”

Iome looked up, found Gaborn staring at her as if he would bore through her with his eyes.

Others drew close and whispered things like, “Honor be to the Powers,” but Gaborn just stared accusingly. With a curt motion he ordered all the others away.

“Why?” he asked, when the well-wishers had left. “Why would the Darkling Glory come after you?”

Iome did not want to burden him with another worry. “I don't—”

“Please,” Gaborn said.

“It wants your son,” Iome said. “It knows that I'm carrying your son.”

Gaborn asked, “My son?”

“Yes,” Iome admitted. “When it was stalking me at Castle Sylvarresta, it said that it could smell a son in my womb.”

Iome did not know how Gaborn would react. She had not wanted him to find out this way. She feared that he would be angry with her for withholding such news.

“That's why I took more endowments,” Iome whispered. “I wanted to give birth to him quickly. If the Darkling Glory wanted him dead so badly …”

Gaborn's eyes grew bright as he blinked back tears of joy. Or perhaps they were mingled with tears of sadness. Both he and Iome had taken endowments of metabolism—too many to ever live normal lives again. They would age and die before their child reached adulthood. With half a dozen endowments of metabolism each, by the time the child was a dozen years old, Gaborn and Iome would have aged to nearly a hundred. Though endowments of stamina might keep them healthy to that point, in time the human body was meant to wear out. This child might be born safely, but Iome and Gaborn would never live to see it reach adulthood. Gaborn had to realize that, had to know the price that she'd already paid for her child.

Gaborn knelt beside her, put his hand on her back. “Here, lie down.”

“I'm all right,” Iome said.

“You're more than all right. You're magnificent,” Gaborn said. “But lie down anyway.”

Gaborn took off his cloak and laid it on the grass. Iome lay on it. Her head was ringing, but she felt well enough to stand. Binnesman was still tending Borenson.

“When were you going to tell me?” Gaborn asked.

“I don't know,” Iome admitted. “I thought I'd wait until
there was a lull in the battles—or until the child was two or three. Whichever came first.”

Gaborn forced a smile. She could see worry pent up behind it. “Then I'm glad there was a lull in the battle.”

As the roaring of the Darkling Glory faded, the sound of thunder followed. In the distance, two more lightning bolts struck in rapid succession.

Averan sat in the grass, staring inward, lost to internal nightmares. The stomach cramps and sweats were abating, yet she felt as if the bolts pierced her.

In the distance, on Mangan's Rock, the reavers hissed in alarm.

The memories that the thunder aroused were terrifying: racing up through the narrow canyons in the Brace Mountains, running with thousands of reavers, the sky erupting in its display of pyrotechnics, the horrible lightning storm that had left her blind and dazed.

Those were some of the last memories that Keeper had formed.

Even now, she could feel his pain. The cold last night had been so bitter that it nearly froze his joints, until at last he huddled in a burrow with the others, sharing their warmth.

Even now, sitting in the sun, Averan shivered at the thought, and her feet ached from endlessly running. The weariness that Keeper had endured after days of marches, of fighting, of working without stop, also assailed her, along with an endless burning thirst.

But most of all she felt the horror of last night, Keeper's fear of the lightning.

The fear it aroused was almost primal. It moved her beyond all bounds of reason. While others cleared the battlefield, Averan sat wondering why this was so.

But though the reavers' memories flowed into her, they came at their own pace. She could not choose to discover what she wanted to know.