“Tell me,” the facilitator asked. “By any chance, do you know the Earth King?”
He threw back the flap to a red pavilion.
“I know him and love him,” Chemoise said. She knew what he wanted to hear.
“Good,” the facilitator rasped. “Good. Think of your love for him during the endowment. Think only of that. Can you manage that?”
She entered the pavilion. Inside, a single candle burned in the center of the small room, shining like a star. On a cushion, curled in a fetal position, lay a young woman. Every muscle in her body was clenched, unable to move. Her fingers were balled into a fist, and she grimaced as if in pain. Even her eyelids were clamped tight, unable to relax. She wheezed as she breathed shallowly, unable to draw much air.
The facilitator stopped, let Chemoise see the woman for a moment.
“This is Brielle. She was a dancer at an inn at Castle Groverman until she granted her grace to our king. She will serve as his vector. By giving grace to her, you will be transferring it to your king.”
“I understand,” Chemoise said.
“This is what you will look like in a few minutes, if you proceed,” he apologized. “Do you dare to go on?”
Having her muscles corded into knots was not the worst of it, Chemoise knew. Giving an endowment of grace affected the gut. The first few weeks would be hard. From now on, she would only be able to eat broth and thin soups.
“I'll bear it gladly,” Chemoise said.
“Good,” the facilitator said. “Good girl.”
He went to a small pile of forcibles and picked one up, held it near the candle for a moment, studying the rune on its head. It looked like a tiny branding iron. He must have found some imperfection, for he pulled out a small blunt instrument and began pressing one edge of the rune outward.
“Forgive the wait,” he apologized. “The blood metal bends easily, and is often damaged during travel.”
“I understand,” Chemoise said.
Chemoise watched Brielle. Aside from her shallow breathing, Brielle showed little sign of life. Chemoise saw a tear seeping from one eye.
It's painful to be so clenched, she realized. Giving an endowment of grace is torture.
When the facilitator finished, he glanced at Chemoise. “Now,” he said. “I want you to look at the candle.” Chemoise glanced at the candle, then turned her attention back to Brielle. Each time that she had seen the endowment ceremony before, the potential Dedicate had stared at the lord who would receive his gift.
“No, don't look at her,” the facilitator warned. “Keep your eye on the candle. Look to the light.”
Of course, Chemoise realized. We look at our lords because they are handsome, with their endowments of glamour, and it makes it easier for us to give ourselves. But staring at a wretched vector would only unnerve a potential Dedicate.
Chemoise looked at the candle as the facilitator began to half chant, half sing, in a rich voice. She couldn't understand the words. As far as she knew they were only sounds. But they were sounds that comforted her, and made her want to give of herself. She could feel that yearning grow, like a potent fire.
The candle flame flickered and sputtered as the facilitator whirled around the room several times, and then placed the forcible on Chemoise's arm.
The touch of it sent a thrill of shock through her. Often she'd heard of the “kiss of the forcible.” She imagined from this that the touch of the metal must somehow be soft and sensual at first. But it wasn't a kiss. Instead, she almost felt as if the forcible were a leech that hooked its round mouth to her skin, and began sucking something vital from her.
As soon as the forcible touched her, the head of it began to heat, and the elasticity in her muscles drained away. Her right biceps cramped inordinately, so that she caught her breath.
She gave herself, willed herself to think about Gaborn in his hour of need. The candle flame flickered like the tongue of a snake, and she watched it, ignoring the urgent sound of the facilitator's chant. Outside in the city, she heard cocks crowing, serenading the sunset.
The pain in her arm spread down to her elbow and up to the socket of her right arm. Beads of perspiration broke on her brow, and one trickled down the ridge of her nose. The forcible seemed to become a flame itself. It burned her arm, and she smelled singed hair and cooking flesh.
She glanced down at the tip of the forcible in surprise. She'd been listening for hours as people gave endowments, and in turn nearly all of them had cried out in pain. Some said that the pain of a forcible was unspeakable, unbearable, but as Chemoise's arm burned, she felt determined to bear it.
So she closed her eyes, focused upon her king, and upon the people that she loved. The pain flared so that suddenly she felt as if her whole arm was on fire. She gritted her teeth.
This I can bear, she told herself. This I can bear.
And suddenly the pain blossomed a hundred-fold. Every muscle in her body seemed to cramp at once, so that she bent over in pain far more exquisite than anything she had ever imagined. Though she wanted to scream, to give voice to that pain, all that issued from her lips was a grunt.
Chemoise's world went black.
33
IN HIS FATHER'S FOOTSTEPS
It is the duty of every man to conduct his affairs in a manner that will make it both an honor and a challenge for his offspring to follow in his father's footsteps.
—Sir Blain Oakworthy, counselor to the Kings of Mystarria
Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul rode away from the reaver lines, putting a mile or more between them and the marching horde that spanned from horizon to horizon.
Sarka Kaul stared ahead, his eyes unfocused. “There is good news and bad. Raj Ahten and Queen Lowicker have formed an alliance. They will allow troops to enter Carris from the north, in hopes that all of them die, leaving half of Rofehavan open to conquest. But even they do not guess what aid the night might bring.”
“Hah!” Borenson laughed in sheer delight to have a Days as his counselor. “Tell me, friend, what will this ‘Council’ of yours do when they dis-cover that you've betrayed their secrets?”
“There is only one punishment for such as me—death,” Sarka Kaul answered. “They will torture my twin first, a slow, laborious process. When minds are twinned, you share more than common memories. I will see what she sees, feel what she feels, hear what she hears, until the very last moment. When she dies, I will most likely die with her, for one cannot hope to live after being torn from a bond so intimate as the one that we share.”
Borenson fell silent, ashamed that he had laughed. “I'm sorry,” he said at last.
“It's not your doing,” Sarka Kaul said. “I made that bargain long ago. Right now, my twin lies to the Council, saying that you threw me into the ocean and that I am adrift at sea, clinging to a bit of wood. My only hope is that I live to help guide you until nightfall.”
“And my hope for you,” Myrrima said, “is that the Council never learns what has happened, and that your twin can escape.”
They had not gone far when they met a lone rider, galloping south along the prairie. He was a Knight Equitable by the look of him, wearing some outdated beetle breastplate from northern Mystarria, along with a black horned helmet with ring mail that flowed like hair down his back, a style seen only among the Khdun warriors of Old Indhopal. He bore an ornate lance of black basswood, a rather princely weapon.
He came riding toward them on a gray horse, grinning broadly. Borenson recognized him as Sir Pitts, a castle guard from the Courts of Tide.
“What do you plan to do?” Borenson called out, nodding toward the line of marching reavers, “terrify them with your fashion sense?”
“Got in a tangle with a scarlet sorceress this morning,” Pitts said, grinning broadly. “She ripped off me chainmail and chewed up me helm! Luckily, I skinnied out of ‘em, or she'd have had me for breakfast, too.”
Pitts rode near. Obviously, he'd scavenged his armor from dead warriors, and was
forced to wear anything that seemed a close fit. Across the brow of his saddle were half a dozen philia taken from the bunghole of a reaver. They dangled from the saddle like dead eels, smelling of moldy garlic. Averan said that that smell was the death cry of a reaver. Borenson could see the dried blood now that blackened the man's brow. It was dark and copious, and if Pitts managed to live through the coming battle, he would surely carry some enviable scars. After all, how many men could say that they'd escaped from a reaver's mouth?
Borenson laughed aloud. “Someday you'll have to tell me the tale in full, and I'll pay a couple of pints of ale for the honor. But for now, how goes the battle?”
Pitts nodded toward the north. “The Earth King warned us to guard Carris, and that's what we'll do. But High Marshal Chondler isn't waiting for the reavers to attack. He's sending lancers against them, near the head of their column. It's a bloody row up there.”
“How far to the front?” Borenson asked.
“Thirty, maybe forty miles,” Pitts replied.
The news chilled Borenson. Forty miles to the front? And their line extended south for as far as the eye could see.
“How far to the back of their lines?” Myrrima asked.
“Hard to say,” Pitts replied. “Some make it a hundred miles, others a hundred and twenty.” Borenson was still trying to guess how huge the horde might be, but Pitts was well ahead of him. “There may be a million of them,” Pitts said grimly. “We don't have enough lances to take them all, not even a twentieth. The Earth King used them all last week. So we're concentrating on their leaders. Their fell mage is well protected, near the front of the lines. It has been a bloody row.” His voice sounded shaken as he said this. “We've lost lots of men already. Sir Langley of Orwynne has fallen.”
“By the Powers!” Borenson swore.
“How are we to fight them,” Myrrima asked, “without lances?”
“We'll fight them on the ground, at the gates of Carris,” Pitts said. “We'll use warhammers and reaver darts, and resort to fingernails if we have to. But we'll fight.” His sentiments were as foolish as they were brave.
“Chondler knows more tricks than a trained bear,” Pitts said. “Go to Carris, and see for yourself!”
“It will take more than a trained bear to win Carris,” Sarka Kaul said. Borenson glanced back. Sarka Kaul looked ominous upon his red horse, his face draped with a black hood. His voice seemed almost disembodied. “But be of good cheer. Young King Orwynne is riding into the city gates even now with three thousand men at his back. He has found his courage at last.”
Pitts peered hard at the figure all draped in black robes. He asked Borenson. “Who's your friend?”
“Sarka Kaul,” Borenson said, “meet Sir Pitts.”
“An Inkarran?” Pitts asked in wonder, clenching his lance. “What's he doing here?”
“I go to fight in Carris, friend,” Sarka Kaul answered.
Pitts barked in laughter. “Well then, I hope to meet you there!”
“Come before the darkness falls,” Sarka Kaul said.
Borenson and Myrrima spurred their horses on. Ahead the land grew dark. Columns of smoke roiled upward, creating a vast curtain that leached all light from the plains. The marching of reavers caused the earth to tremble, as if the ground would shatter beneath them.
Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul were nearly to Mangan's Rock before they reached the head of the reaver horde. There, knights on tired mounts raced across the reavers’ path, setting torch to every blade of grass, every copse of scrub and bracken, every tree.
The flames roared to heaven and smoke blackened the skies. The light grew faint indeed, for by now the sun slanted low to the west, and here the dense forests of the Hest Mountains were wet so that the smoke that roiled up from that furnace was inky black and laden with soot.
Still there was no sign of any cavalry. The group passed beyond the vale of fire into the mountains, racing their horses. They stopped on a southern slope for a while, in the cool shadow of a rowan, and glimpsed the sun for the first time in hours. Even here, beyond the line of smoke, the sun glimmered like a hot coal in a torrid sky. High up, the smoke acted as a lens that colored the world in shades of ash.
So they hurried over the mountains, down through lesser towns, into the dead lands blasted by reaver curses, where at last they saw Carris gleaming upon the banks of Lake Donnestgree.
Here, the green fields had all gone gray a week ago. Vines and trees lay in twisted ruin. Every blade of grass had withered. Nothing lived. Even the crows and vultures had fled. Only the corpses of rotting reavers, monoliths, their mouths frozen wide in a rictus smile that brimmed with teeth, offered mute testimony to what had happened here.
For a moment as Borenson rode into the blasted lands, he had an odd sensation. He felt as if instead of riding from Fenraven to Carris, he was riding from the past into the future. Behind him lay the sweet green fields of the world he had known. Ahead lay rot and oblivion.
Sarka Kaul sniffed the fields. Borenson could smell old reaver curses on the dead ground. “See no more.” “Be thou dry as dust.” The ground seemed to whisper the curses. “Rot, O thou child of men!”
“Those who saw the battle tried to describe it,” Sarka Kaul whispered, as he stared out across the killing fields, “but words failed them. I could not envision this. I couldn't imagine how wide the destruction went, or how perfectly it had been carried out.”
Borenson spat onto grass that was as gray as ash. “No rain here in a week. A stinking inferno this shall all make.”
As the three approached Carris, the sun slowly descended beyond the rim of the world, hidden behind towers of billowing smoke. The wind was ominously still, and the heat that rose from the soil leached the stink from the blasted lands and left it hovering in a fetid haze. To the west the foothills were all gray with decay, and to the east Lake Donnestgree lay flat and dull. Not a single wave rippled across its surface. Gone were the sea-gulls that had winged above its shore a week past.
Ahead, Carris was a city of ruins. The plaster had all cracked from the castle walls, so that only a few bright strips still gleamed above the gray stone. The walls had buckled and bulged. Gone were the doves and pigeons that had wheeled above Castle Carris like confetti.
It was a far fairer sight that greeted my father's eyes, Borenson thought.
Why Carris? Borenson wondered. Why would the reavers attack it again? There is nothing here worth winning, nothing worth defending. Yet we keep on fighting, like a pair of crabs squabbling over a worthless rock.
Unless there is something here that the reavers value? he wondered.
But what it might be, he could not guess. The land was a broken waste.
Still the armies had gathered. A million reavers were marching from the south, while men and women paced along the cracked castle walls, armor gleaming dully like the backs of beetles in the dying light.
Borenson caught wind of a noxious odor, and noted that to his right were the trenches that the reavers had made to channel water from the lake. The reavers had thrown in some huge yellow stones.
At the time no one had comprehended what the reavers were doing. It wasn't until Averan explained that reavers could only drink water rich in sulfur that anyone had understood: the monsters were creating drinking water.
But now the ditches were filled with lumps of white lye soap, brown human turds, and an oily scum that colored the water's surface. Chondler's men had poisoned it so badly that even a whiff of the putrid mix made Borenson's eyes burn.
“Even if the reavers manage to win Carris,” Myrrima said, “I don't think that they'll be enjoying their stay.”
The sun dipped behind the peaks, and suddenly the black plains plunged into near darkness. Borenson heard a cry rise up from the city, and he glanced back to the south.
A rim of fire could be seen on the mountaintops, twenty miles behind, and columns of smoke rose straight up like the black boles of vast trees. High in the atmosphere, th
e smoke spread like a mushroom cap, or like the limbs of an oak. Already, clouds of smoke arched overhead.
But it was not the encroaching darkness that caused the cries of alarm. There, in the distance, behind the rim of fire, reavers marched in a broad band, and raced down the mountainside like a black cataract. The distant hissing of their breathing and the pounding of their feet made it sound as if a dam had broken, and trees and boulders tumbled in the glut of the flood.
The city of Carris squatted on an isle out in Lake Donnestgree. The city was more than two miles long from north to south, and a little over a mile wide at its widest point. One could only reach it by boat or by walking up a narrow road that led over a long causeway.
Here on the causeway a week ago, towers and gates had guarded the city. But the reavers had pushed the towers over and thrown down the city gates, and Marshal Chondler, despite all his good intentions, had not had time to replace them.
Instead, at the head of the causeway, his people had dragged wooden rubble from all around—thatch from cottage roofs, timbers, fence posts, broken wagons and chairs, a girl's straw doll—and heaped them all into piles beside the road. This would become a firewall to protect the city from the reaver's advance, but even a firewall would not hold for more than an hour or two.
Amid this heap of trash, the heads of several huge reavers lay in the rubble, their mouths thrown wide. Borenson recognized the enormous fell mage that had led the first attack on the city, along with the heads of other monsters. Their mouths were filled with philia cut from the bung-holes of dead reavers, so that the scent of moldy garlic wafted over the fields.
Straw lay strewn over the fields at the mouth of the causeway, a sure sign that Chondler's men had lain down caltrops—wicked bits of sharp metal bolted together in order to puncture the hooves of charging horses.
But would a caltrop harm a reaver? Borenson wondered. He peered hard until he saw a twisted piece of metal rising up through some straw, a blade at least five times larger than a normal caltrop.
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