Wizardborn (12 page)

He wondered at the strange illness that assailed him. Eleven hours past, Binnesman's wylde had attacked him, breaking the ribs in his chest. Perhaps they'd not healed properly. All night long, Raj Ahten had felt rising pain—in the wounds in his chest, in his muscles, as if he suffered from some wasting disease.

He feared that some Dedicates had died, causing him to lose stamina. But a Dedicate's death brought a sudden nausea and a wrenching sense of loss as the magical connection severed. He had not felt that.

Raj Ahten silently stalked over a small rise, and beheld an oddity: half a mile ahead, in a shadowed valley, his spy balloon rested in a clearing, a great balloon shaped like a graak.

On the ground beneath it a fire burned, reflecting flames off the snow into the silk wings of the graak.

Some of his men huddled beside the fire brewing tea—
his counselor Feykaald, along with his flame weavers: Rahjim, Chespot, and Az. The Days that chronicled Raj Ahten's life was also in the group.

Feykaald was old, his gray burnoose pulled up over his head, a black cloak wrapped around him like a blanket. The flameweavers wore nothing but loincloths, and luxuriated near the blaze. The flames of many fires had long ago licked the hair from their brown skins. Their eyes glowed like mirrors, perfectly reflecting light from the campfire.

Raj Ahten's most loyal followers sat quietly, as if awaiting him—or as if they were silently summoning him.

He thrust his warhammer into its scabbard, strode to the camp.
“Salaam,”
he said. Peace. The men acknowledged him, each mumbling
“Salaam”
in turn.

“Rahjim,” Raj Ahten asked the most powerful of the flameweavers, “did you see a patrol pass by?”

“Riders came down the trail just as we landed, judges of the the Ah'kellah, led by Wuqaz Faharqin. He carried the head of his nephew, Pashtuk, in a bag. He will try to raise the Atwaba against you.”

“Troublemaker,” Raj Ahten said. “I'm glad that not all of my men follow the Earth King.”

Rahjim shrugged. “The Earth King could not Choose me any more than he could Choose a water buffalo.” Smoke puffed out from his mouth as he spoke.

Raj Ahten grunted, but merely stood gasping in the campfire's glow, warming his hands in its pale smoke. A log crackled; cinders shot into the sky.

The fire felt good. It burned away the cold and the pain. Flames fanned out along the ground, as if to lick him, though no wind blew. He suspected that the sorcerers manipulated the flames to his benefit.

All three flameweavers watched Raj Ahten curiously.

Rahjim ventured, “O Great Light, do you feel… well?”

“I feel—” There was no word for it. Raj Ahten felt noticeably weak, frail, and disoriented. “I am not myself. I may have lost some endowments.”

Rahjim studied him with that penetrating gaze. Flameweaversz
were often discerning healers, capable of diagnosing a man's most minor ailment.

“Yes,” Rahjim said. “Your light is very dim. Please, breathe the smoke of the fire, and blow it out for me.”

Raj Ahten bent low to the fire, inhaled the pine smoke, blew it out slowly. The flameweavers studied the way that the smoke moved, traced its path through the sky.

Suddenly Rahjim's eyes widened. He looked to the others as if for confirmation, but dared not speak.

“What is it?” Raj Ahten asked. He wondered if he had contracted some illness due to the fell mage's curses.

“There are changes in you—” Rahjim admitted. “This is no common illness. Wizardry is involved—Binnesman's curse. Remember Longmot?”

“Yes!” Az said, his own eyes wide. “I see it too!”

“See what?” Raj Ahten demanded.

Rahjim said, “The Earth Powers are withdrawing from you. That is causing … the changes.”

“What changes?” Raj Ahten demanded.

“You have lost stamina—a single endowment. And one of wit, one of brawn…”

“Only one? It feels like more.”

“You've lost your
key
endowments,” Rahjim said.

“Key endowments” was a term used by facilitators. It meant the endowments a man was born with. Like the keystones in an arch, they held a man together. The news was baffling.

“You are dying,” Chespot said plainly. “In some sense, perhaps you are dead already.”

“What?” Raj Ahten demanded.

Raj Ahten had heard of dead men who still breathed, of course. As a child, he'd been raised on such tales. Just as a senile man can often mask his condition with endowments of wit—effectively remembering much even as his brain slowly withered inside his head—a slain Runelord with many endowments of stamina could sometimes survive for hours or days in a morbid state.

“What am I?” Raj Ahten asked, numb.

Rahjim said, “You … are something that has never been before.”

Chespot eyed him critically. “To live beyond your allotted hour is not a small thing. Your life is ended, but the endowments you've taken have not returned to those who gave them. You have taken a great step. I believe that you
are
the Sum of All Men. You are eternal.”

Am I? Raj Ahten wondered. For years he had gathered endowments, sought to become the Sum of All Men, that mythical creature that could become immortal. He'd hoarded the strength, stamina, and wit of thousands of men, and grown in might until he felt as if he were one of the Powers, like the Earth or Air.

Yet Raj Ahten felt diminished. This morbid state was not what he'd sought. Chespot was wrong. He did not feel like an eternal power. His senses warned that he was failing still—caught like a moth in a web somewhere between life and death.

Raj Ahten's Days asked, “Your Highness, do you recall the precise moment that it happened?”

Raj Ahten scowled. Part of him had died with Saffira. She had been the most beautiful and the rarest of flowers.

And when he had called his Invincibles together and ordered them to help destroy Gaborn, they'd fought him instead. It was a grim struggle. He'd emerged from the battle only half alive.

“I don't recall,” Raj Ahten lied.

No one spoke for a long moment.

The flames from the bonfire spread out low to the ground, fanned toward him. Raj Ahten reached out until his right hand was nearly in them. The flame licked it, and in such piercing cold he felt no heat, only a warmth that seeped into his bones, easing the pain. Its golden curls were like sunlight shining through the trees, soft and glorious. The flameweavers nodded knowingly.

Az said, “See how the Fire seeks him?”

Raj Ahten had imagined that the sorcerers moved the flames. Now he watched them curl toward him in awe.

Chespot reassured Raj Ahten. “The Earth Powers withdraw from you. But not all who walk upon the face of the Earth need its sustenance. You have served our master well in the past. The forests of Aven are ash now, at your command. If you feel ill, if you continue to fade, my master will serve you. Step into the fire, and let it burn the dross from you. Give yourself to it, and it will sustain you.”

Naked desire showed in the flameweaver's face, as if he had craved this moment for years.

The flames of the bonfire crept out further, as if hungrily licking the snow.

Raj Ahten lurched away, stared at his right hand. It did feel better where the flames had touched him—as if he had applied a salve.

Binnesman had warned Raj Ahten that he was under the sway of flameweavers. It was true that they used him for their own ends, just as he used them.

In abject horror, Raj Ahten realized that a choice lay before him. He could continue as he was, wasting away until not even his endowments could save him. Or he could step into the fire and lose his humanity, become one of the flameweavers.

He staggered backward, retreated from the campfire out into the snowfield.

Feykaald and his Days got up and made as if to follow, but Raj Ahten waved them off. He wanted to be alone. His heart was racing.

Rahjim warned, “The fire beckons. It may not always do so.”

Raj Ahten turned and jogged for several minutes, then stopped on a switchback and stood panting. He studied the road in the valleys below. It twisted among trees and a few miles ahead was lost beneath a thin blanket of clouds. Beyond, darkness reigned over the great desert.

A shadow flitted above the woods, an owl on the hunt. He followed it with his eyes until it winged into the stars. To the northeast, a few mountains loomed like islands of sand in a sea of mist. It was a beautiful sight.

The starlight struck the snow-covered ground around him. Trees were black streaks against the snow, the wan light draining all color from them.

Like a face drained of blood, he thought. All of his thoughts revolved around death. He closed his gritty eyes, blinking back the image of Saffira crushed on the battlefield of Carris, blood trickling down her forehead and from her nose.

She is dead, yet I live on.

He clenched his teeth, resolved not to mourn. But he could not turn aside his thoughts. She'd ridden down this road yesterday. With his endowments of scent, he could discern a trace of her jasmine perfume in the air, could smell the sweat of her horse. Saffira had died for her courage and compassion.

Saffira had died. Better if it had been Gaborn.

“Why?” Raj Ahten whispered to the Earth. “You could have chosen me to be your king. Why not me?”

He listened, not because he expected an answer, but by habit. Wind sighed through the forests below. Nearby, mice rustled beneath a crust of snow in dry mountain grasses; the sound would have been inaudible to any other. Nothing more.

Raj Ahten had been raised on tales of men who had cheated death. Hassan the Headless was a king who'd lived eighty years ago, and had taken a hundred and fourteen endowments of stamina. In a battle, his enemy decapitated him. But just as a frog will live on after its head is removed, so did Hassan.

Hassan's body crawled about and even wrote a message in the sand, begging for a merciful death. But his enemy mocked him and put the undead corpse into a cage. Raj Ahten's mother said that Hassan had escaped, and at night on the desert one could still hear his fingers scratching in the sand as Hassan the Headless lurched about, seeking revenge.

It was a tale to horrify children.

But Raj Ahten had studied the matter, knew the full tale.
Hassan had only lost part of his head—from the roof of the mouth up. His body had lived because part of the lower brain remained attached. So Hassan had survived for three weeks, tormented by hunger and thirst, until he burst with maggots.

Raj Ahten had performed a similar experiment with a highly endowed assassin named Sir Rober of Clythe. Raj Ahten felt convinced that his own endowments could keep him alive far longer than most would suspect.

Now a terrible choice lay before him, but in the end he feared he might not have any choice.

Raj Ahten clutched his fists. Blood raced through his veins. He vowed, “Gaborn, the Earth
will
be mine.”

As Raj Ahten opened his eyes, downhill in the trees he spotted a silvery sheen that only his eyes could have detected—the color of heat from a living body. A moment of squinting revealed two huge bucks, antlers locked. One was already dead, worn from combat. But the living animal could not disengage.

It happened sometimes in the fall. The big bucks would fight, and their antlers would tangle hopelessly, leaving both animals locked in a death grip.

Even the victor looked only half alive.

I do not have to choose now, Raj Ahten told himself. I do not have to step into the fire and give away my humanity. Hassan had a small fraction of the stamina that I do.

From the misty canyons below, an Imperial stallion came galloping up the road. Raj Ahten studied the rider with keen eyes. A desert boy of nine or ten rode the huge mount, weaving from fatigue. He was dressed in a white burnoose, dark cape, and had his head wrapped in a turban. A message case was tied to the pommel of his saddle. The glint of gold embossing identified it as an Imperial message case. Raj Ahten knew that he bore ill tidings.

He stalked back to the fire, beneath the hovering spy balloon.

The boy whipped his horse as he neared. The stallion eyed the graak-shaped balloon, eyes rolling in terror. It
danced about, thrusting its ears backward and flaring its nostrils. The beast was wet with sweat. Its breath came hard.

“O Great Light!” the boy cried when he recognized Raj Ahten. “Yesterday at dawn, reavers took the blood-metal mines in Kartish! The very Lord of the Underworld led them.”

Feykaald gasped. “If the attack was like the one in Carris…

Raj Ahten had never fully comprehended how dangerous a reaver horde could be. His perfect memory replayed images of the fell mage crouched on Bone Hill, her citrine staff pulsing with light, issuing her incantations through scents while her minions huddled nearby. Her curses had blasted every living plant, had blinded and deafened his troops, had wrung the water from men's flesh.

The reavers in Kartish could do untold damage. The destruction of crops alone would lead to famines throughout all of Indhopal.

“Everyone went to battle,” the boy panted, “except your servants at the Palace of Canaries in Om. They're taking your Dedicates north. They sent me—”

“You say the Lord of the Underworld led them?”

“Yes,” the boy said, eyes growing wide and panicked. “A fell mage, very big. No one has ever heard of her like.”

Of course, Raj Ahten realized. The reavers would have sent their best troops to Indhopal. It was more populous than Rofehavan, more powerful. Only their most fearsome lord would have dared come against him.

Raj Ahten's course was decided. His people needed him desperately.

He yanked the boy from the horse, leapt onto its back. “Follow me as you can,” Raj Ahten shouted at the flameweavers.

Feykaald looked up at him for orders. Raj Ahten thought swiftly. He felt ill, as if his very soul were waning. He needed to be strong. “Go back to Carris,” he commanded.
“Find out what the Earth King has done with my forcibles. I'll need them.”