The RuneLords (19 page)

Along the south wall of the garden grew some dark green vines, climbing the stone wall. Binnesman stopped, began picking leaves. In the failing light, even Gaborn recognized the narrow, spade-shaped leaves of dogbane.

As soon as he'd picked a handful, Binnesman rolled them in his palm, bruising them. To a common man the dogbane had only a slightly malodorous scent, but it was poison to dogs. They avoided it. And Binnesman was a master magician capable of strengthening the effects of his herbs.

What Gaborn smelled in that moment was indescribable--a gut-wrenching oily reek from a nightmare, like evil incarnate. Indeed, an image filled Gaborn's mind--as if suddenly a giant spider had strung webs of murder here across the path. Deadly. Deadly. Gaborn could imagine how the stuff would affect a hound.

Binnesman sprinkled these leaves on the ground, rubbed some on Gaborn's heel.

When he'd finished, he led Gaborn through the cook's garden, ignoring other herbs as he went. They jumped a low wall, came to the King's Wall--the second tier of the city's defenses.

Binnesman led Gaborn along a narrow road with the King's Wall on one side, the backs of merchants' shops on the other, till he reached a small gate with iron bars, small enough so a man would have to duck to pass through. Two guards stood at the gate in the stone wall. At a gesture from Binnesman, one guard produced a key, unlocked the iron gate.

Gaborn set down the stinking buckets of feces, wanting to be rid of the burden, but Binnesman hissed, "Keep them."

The guards let the three through. Outside the wall was a kingly garden, a garden more lush, more magnificent than any Gaborn had ever seen. In the sudden openness, the last failing light of day still let Gaborn see better than he had in the shadows of the narrow streets.

Yet the term "garden" did not feel entirely correct. The plants that grew here were not pampered and set in rows. Instead they grew in wild profusion and in great variety all about, as if the soil were so alive that it could not help but produce them all in such great abundance.

Strange bushes with flowers like white stars joined in an arch over their heads. Creepers trailed up all along the garden's stone walls, as if seeking to escape.

The garden rolled away for a half mile in each direction. A meadow full of flowers spread before them, and beyond it lay a hillock overgrown with pines and strange trees from the south and east.

In this place, odd things had happened: orange and lemon trees grew beside a warm pool, trees that should never have survived these winters. And there were other trees beyond, with strange hairlike leaves and long fronds, and twisting red branches that seemed to rake the sky.

A stream tinkled through the meadow. A family of deer there drank at a small pool. The pale forms of flowers and herbs sprouted everywhere, blossoming in profusion. Exotic forests rose to both the east and the west.

Even this late in the evening, with the sun having fallen, the drone of honeybees filled the air.

Gaborn inhaled deeply, and it seemed that the scents of all the world's forests and flower gardens and spices rushed into his lungs at once. He felt he could hold that scent forever, that it enlivened every fiber of his being.

All the weariness, all the pain of the past few days seemed to wash out of him. The scent of the garden was rich. Intoxicating.

Until this moment, he thought, he'd never truly been alive. He felt no desire to leave, no hurry to leave. It was not as if time ceased here. No, it was a feeling of...security. As if the land here would protect him from his enemies, just as it protected Binnesman's plants from the ravages of winter.

Binnesman bent low, pulled off his shoes. He motioned for Gaborn and the serving wench to do the same.

This had to be the wizard's garden, the legendary garden that some said Binnesman would never leave.

Four years earlier, when the old wizard Yarrow had died, some scholars at the House of Understanding had wanted Binnesman to come, to assume the role of hearthmaster in the Room of Earth Powers. It was a post of such prestige that few wizards had ever rejected it. But then there had been a huge uproar. Binnesman had published an herbal several years earlier, describing herbs that would benefit mankind. An Earth Warden named Hoewell had attacked the herbal, claiming that it contained numerous errors, that Binnesman had misidentified several rare herbs, had drawn pictures of plantains hanging upside down, had claimed that saffron--a mysterious and valuable spice brought from islands far to the south--came from a specific type of flower when, in fact, everyone knew that it was a mixture of pollens collected from the beaks of nesting hummingbirds.

Some sided with Binnesman, but Hoewell was both a master scholar and a ruthless politician. Somehow he had succeeded in humiliating and disaffecting a number of minor herbalists, even though, as an Earth Warden by training, his own magical powers dealt with the creation of magical artifacts--a field apart from herbalism. Still, his political maneuvering swayed a number of prominent scholars.

So Binnesman never got the post as hearthmaster in the Room of Earth Powers. Now some people said that Binnesman had refused the post in shame, others that his appointment would never have been ratified. As Gaborn saw it, such were the lies and rumors that Hoewell promulgated to aggrandize himself.

Yet a rumor more persistent than any other arose, and this one Gaborn believed: In the House of Understanding, some good men whispered that despite the pleas of many scholars, Binnesman simply would not go to Mystarria, not for any prestigious post. He would not leave his beloved garden.

On seeing the exotic trees, tasting the scents of rare spices and honeyed flowers on the wind, Gaborn understood. Of course the herbalist could not leave his garden. This was Binnesman's life's work. This was his masterpiece.

Binnesman tapped Gaborn's boot with his foot again. The serving wench already had her shoes off. "Forgive me, Your Lordship," Binnesman said, "but you must remove your shoes. This is not common ground."

In a daze, Gaborn did as ordered, pulling off his boots. He got up, wanting nothing more than to stroll through these grounds for a day.

Binnesman nodded meaningfully toward the buckets of feces. Gaborn hefted his unsavory burden, and they were off, strolling across a carpet of rosemary and mint that emitted a gentle, cleansing scent as their feet bruised the leaves.

Binnesman led Gaborn through the meadow, past the deer that only looked at the old Earth Warden longingly. He reached a particular rowan tree, a tree that was phenomenally tall, a perfect cone. He studied it a moment, then said. "This is the place."

He dug a small hole in the detritus beneath the tree, motioned for Gaborn to bring the dung.

When Gaborn brought the buckets, Binnesman emptied them into the Pit. Something clanked. Among the feces Gaborn saw objects dark and metallic.

With a start he recognized Sylvarresta's forcibles.

"Come," Binnesman said, "we can't let Raj Ahten have these." He picked up the forcibies, placed them back into the bucket, ignoring the dung on his hands. He walked fifty paces to the brook, where trout snapped at mosquitoes, slapping the water.

Binnesman stepped into the stream and rinsed the forcibles one by one. Then he placed them together on the bank. Fifty-six forcibles. The sun had set nearly half an hour ago, and the forcibles now seemed but dark shadows on the ground.

When Binnesman finished, Gaborn tore a strip of cloth from his tunic and wrapped the forcibles into a bundle.

Gaborn looked up, caught Binnesman appraising him, squinting in the half-light. The herbalist seemed lost in thought. His beefy jowls sagged. He was not a tall man, but he was broad of shoulder, stocky.

"Thank you," Gaborn said, "for saving the forcibles."

Binnesman did not acknowledge his words, merely studied him, as if peering behind Gaborn's eyes, or as if he sought to memorize Gaborn's every feature.

"So," Binnesman said after a long moment. "Who are you?"

Gaborn chuckled. "Don't you know?"

"King Orden's son," Binnesman muttered. "But who else are you? What commitments have you made? A man is defined by his commitments."

A cold dread filled Gaborn at the way the Earth Warden said "commitments." He felt certain that Binnesman was speaking of the oath he'd made this night to Princess Sylvarresta. An oath he'd rather have kept secret. Or perhaps he spoke of the promise Gaborn had made to the kitchen wench, the promise to save her, or even the silent vow he'd made to Chemoise and her father. And, somehow, he felt, these commitments might offend the herbalist. He glanced at the kitchen wench, who stood with hands folded, as if afraid to touch anything.

"I'm a Runelord. An Oath-Bound Lord."

"Hmmm..." Binnesman muttered. "Good enough, I suppose. You serve something greater than yourself. And why are you here? Why are you in Castle Sylvarresta now, instead of next week, when your father was scheduled to arrive?"

Gaborn answered simply. "He sent me ahead. He wanted me to see the kingdom, to fall in love with its land, with its people, as he had."

Binnesman nodded thoughtfully, stroking his beard. "And how do you like it? How do you like this land?"

Gaborn wanted to say that he admired it, that he found the kingdom beautiful, strong and almost flawless, but Binnesman spoke with a tone in his voice, a tone of such respect for the word "land," that Gaborn sensed they were not speaking of the same thing. Yet perhaps they were. Was this garden not also part of Heredon? Were not the exotic trees, gathered from far corners of the earth, part of Heredon? "I have found it altogether admirable."

"Humph," Binnesman grunted, glancing around at the bushes, the trees. "This won't last the night. The flameweavers, you see. Theirs is a magic of destruction, mine a magic of preservation. They serve fire, and their master will not let them resume human form unless they feed the flame. What better food than this garden?"

"What of you? Will they kill you?" Gaborn asked.

"That...is not in their power," Binnesman said. "We have reached a turning of the seasons. Soon, my robes will turn red."

Gaborn wondered if he meant that literally. The old man's robes were a deep green, the color of leaves in high summer. Could they change color of themselves? "You could come with me," Gaborn offered. "I could help you escape."

Binnesman shook his head. "I've no need to run. I have some skill as a physic. Raj Ahten will want me to serve him."

"Will you?"

Binnesman whispered, "I've made other commitments." He said the word "commitments" with that same odd inflection he used when speaking of the land. "But you, Gaborn Val Orden, must flee."

At that moment, Gaborn caught the sound of a distant barking, the snarling and raucous baying of war dogs.

Binnesman's eyes flickered. "Do not fear them. The dogs cannot pass my barrier. Those that try will die."

Binnesman had a certain sadness in his voice. It pained him to kill the mastiffs. He grunted, climbed up out of the stream, his shoulders sagging as if worried. To Gaborn's surprise, the wizard stooped in the near total darkness, plucked a vine at the water's edge, and told Gaborn, "Roll up your right sleeve, I sense a festering wound."

Gaborn did as asked, and Binnesman set the leaves on the wound, held them in place with his hand. Immediately the leaves began drawing out the heat and pain. Gaborn carefully unrolled his sleeve, letting his shirt help hold the poultice in place.

As if making small talk, Binnesman asked both Gabon and the kitchen maid, "How do you feel? Tired? Anxious? Are you hungry?"

Binnesman began strolling through the meadow, and as he walked, he would stoop in the shadows and pluck a leaf here, a flower there. Gaborn wondered how he could find them at all in the darkness, but it was as if the wizard had memorized their positions, knew exactly where each grew.

He rubbed Gaborn's feet with lemon thyme one moment, something spicier the next. He stopped to pick three borage flowers, their blue leaves glowing faintly in the darkness, and gently took each five-petaled flower between his fingers, then pulled so that the black stamens remained with the petals. He told Gaborn to eat the honeyed flower petals, and Gaborn did, feeling a sudden rush of calmness take him, a perfect fearlessness he'd never thought he could experience under such duress.

The herbalist fed several more borage flowers to the kitchen wench, gave her some rosemary to help fight fatigue.

Binnesman then strolled to a grassy slope, reached down and broke the stem of a flowering bush. "Eyebright," he whispered, taking the stem. A fragrant oily sap was dripping from it, and Binnesman drew a line over Gaborn's brows, another high up on his cheek.

Suddenly, the night shadows did not seem so deep, and Gaborn marveled. He had endowments of sight to his credit, and could see fairly well in the dark, but he'd never imagined anything like this: it was as if the herbalist had added another half-dozen endowments in the matter of a moment. Yet Gaborn recognized that he was not actually seeing more light. Instead, it was as if, when he glanced at something that he might have been able to recognize after minutes of study and squinting in the darkness, he felt no strain, yet instantly discerned shapes and colors.

He looked off to the woods, saw a dark shape there--a man hiding among the trees. A tall man, in full armor. Powerful. If not for the eye-bright, he'd never have seen the man at all. He wondered what the fellow might be doing, and yet...knew the fellow belonged.

When Binnesman finished administering the herb to the kitchen maid, he said softly to her. "Keep this stem in your pocket. You may need to break it and apply fresh sap again before dawn."

Gaborn realized now that the herbalist was not just chatting about idle matters when asking how they felt, that perhaps this wizard never chatted about idle matters. He was preparing Gaborn and the maid to flee in the darkness. The ministrations of leaves rubbed over his skin would change his scent, throw off his trackers. Other herbs would magnify his abilities.

This took less than three minutes, then the herbalist began asking more penetrating questions. To the maid he asked, "Now how tired are you? Did the borage make your heart race too fast? I could give you skullcap, but I don't want to overtax you."