Wizardborn (28 page)

—
Hearthmaster Thornish, from the Room of Stones

Myrrima insisted that Sir Borenson eat a quick meal in the inn at Balington. His wound was healing quickly, and his fever was gone, but he no longer had his endowments. He was a common man, and needed food and rest like any other.

She still had some of Binnesman's salve, and Myrrima applied it again to him before the meal, dipping her hands
in the water and making the healing runes. Borenson took her ministrations patiently.

The wizard's restoration was incomplete. Borenson's flesh had healed without a scar, but he didn't have his walnuts. His scrotum hung empty except for a bit of fluid.

Myrrima secured a small container from the mistress of the inn and carefully stored the rest of the wizards' balm.

Afterward they ate in silence. It was a goosey affair. The serving girl gawked at her husband, while passerby peered in through the doors or glass window. After the king had departed, the inn was astir. The mistress of the inn and the various cooks and stable hands all gathered around and gabbled like geese. “Oh, did you see our new queen?” the mistress said. “I didn't know the Sylvarresta girl would be so dark of skin.”

“It's the Taifan blood,” the stablemaster said.

“Well, I'm not one to judge,” the mistress said. “There will be many tongues a-wagging about his choice. You can see that she's Indhopalese, but if you ask me, it makes her look
exotic”

“The very word,” the stablemaster said. “Exotic—that's what she is. That Iome Sylvarresta is not an ugly girl, not in the least.”

The mistress of the inn, who had strawberry-blond hair, said, “Still, it makes you wonder. Will creamy skin go out of style?”

Every word that Gaborn and Iome had said was repeated, and the greater the secret, the more certain it was to be bandied about. It seemed that the mistress of the inn had her bedroom right against the common room wall.

Soon, the inn filled with people—a good half of the village. Myrrima heard some peasant ask loudly, “I heard they brought a knight into town, and the king's wizard turned him from a steer into a bull!”

Immediately the room went silent. There was tittered laughter and a good deal of nudging, and everyone looked Borenson's way. He pretended not to notice, but with his pale complexion, his face turned crimson.

Word of Binnesman's alleged healing had spread too fast. Everyone kept looking his way, then pretending they hadn't. Myrrima felt as if people were waiting for her husband to grow a new set of walnuts as they watched.

When the lady of the inn came and asked, “Would Sir and Madam… er, uh, like the use of a room?” Borenson could take it no more.

He shouted, “Why? If I wanted to rut, I'd just as well rut in the street like a dog, for all the privacy I'd get.” The patrons of the inn fell silent. Most of them flinched or stepped closer to the bar, as if afraid he'd pull out a war-hammer and start swinging.

Borenson threw down his mug and stormed out of the inn, red in the face and blinking in embarrassment. Myrrima whispered an apology to the lady, set a coin on the table, and rushed out on her husband's heel.

She felt… very strange.

She was relieved to end the meal. Her husband walked quickly, as if he fought the urge to run as he made his way to the stables. He saddled up his charger. It was a huge animal, bred to carry a knight in full armor along with its barding. “Damned fools,” he kept muttering as he cinched the saddle tight.

He got on, turned and looked at his wife, waiting for her to climb into the saddle.

“Yelling at the innkeeper was uncalled for,” Myrrima said. “She meant no harm. It's a small town. Having the Earth King sleep here is probably the biggest thing that's happened since… well, forever. People will talk.”

Borenson's face burned with embarrassment. He muttered, “Uh-oh, Diddly-O! Ain't it funny how his walnuts grow.”

“I don't understand.”

“My … predicament will be on the mouth of every minstrel for miles,” he said. “They've been singing this damned ballad about me and Baron Poll for years.”

He was right. Everywhere he went from now on, he'd draw attention. He couldn't escape the notoriety. All he
hoped for now was that he not be thought of as half a man.

“Well…” Myrrima said, her voice full of sincerity and conviction, “if anyone asks, I'll tell them the truth: your walnuts grew back larger than before. They've got to be the hairiest and most astonishingly perfect walnuts ever to grace a man.”

Borenson was still for a moment. Then he smiled. “That's it!” he said. “Tell them just like that.” He grinned mischievously, and Myrrima couldn't really define the expression. There was real fear and embarrassment all mingled with his desire to burst out laughing.

She climbed into the saddle on the big horse. He leapt behind, and they rode out of Balington.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. The silence felt clumsy. Borenson held her lightly, one arm around her taut stomach, just beneath her breasts. His chin rested above her shoulder.

She knew that he could smell her hair, feel her skin through the fabric of her blouse. She wished that he would kiss her, or hold her tenderly. But too many things held them apart. They were still more strangers than husband and wife.

She needed more than that.

“If we're going to ride together,” Myrrima said as they entered the blasted lands, “we ought to be on better speaking terms at least.”

“Agreed,” Borenson said. His tone remained noncom mittal.

“Tell me something about yourself that I don't know' Myrrima said.

“I don't like puddings or custard,” Borenson answered. “I can't abide them in any form. It's the damned texture.”

“All right,” she said. “Then I'll be sure to bake tarts Now tell me something important.”

He had to know what she wanted. She wanted him to open his soul to her, talk about all of his deepest feelings.

“There's nothing important about me.”

“Tell me about Saffira, then,” Myrrima said, broaching
the subject that she knew he'd least want to discuss. “What was she like?”

“Smug,” Borenson said.

“What makes you think she was smug?”

He sighed heavily. “She asked about you. She wanted to know if you were pretty. She knew that you couldn't compare.”

“What did you tell her?”

“You don't want to hear,” he said. She knew it was not flattering. “I couldn't look at her, couldn't hear her Voice, without feeling… enslaved. But I'll tell you what she was. I think that she was mostly an empty shell of a girl. She doted on Raj Ahten, and knew little of the world. I thought that she might even betray us.

“But she surprised me in the battle. She showed some courage, and some compassion. If she'd been a little smarter, she might have managed to stay alive.

“Mostly, she was just a girl with too much glamour.”

“You're just saying that to comfort me,” Myrrima protested. “A couple of hours ago, you thought you loved her.”

He fumbled for an answer. “Now I'm telling you what I think about her. What I think and what I feel are entirely different. Both are equally true. Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't know what love is.”

“My older sister warned me against marrying a warrior,” Myrrima mused. “She said that they had to learn to close off their tender feelings.”

“I've never had any tender feelings,” Borenson said.

She looked back to give him a sidelong glance. “Really? Not even in the Dedicates' Keep?” She was trying to keep him off balance, move from one dangerous topic to another. But the expression on his face suggested that her words cut him too deeply.

“I—I'll tell you true,” he said, shaken. His voice began to rise. “You say that I don't know what love is, and I'll admit that I don't. Love is a lie. My mother hated me from the day I was born. Even as a child, I could see it.”

“She hated your father,” Myrrima corrected. “Averan
told me. You merely had the misfortune to look like him.”

“No,” Borenson said. “She hated me.” He tried to sound casual, but a person cannot talk casually of a wound that strikes so deeply. Pain haunted his voice. “She spoke about love when other women would talk about their precious children. My mother would say, ‘Oh, yes, I love my little Ivarian.' Then she would look about slyly, to see if they believed her.

“But she only spoke to reassure her friends that there wasn't something wrong with her.”

“Clearly there was something wrong with her,” Myrrima said. She couldn't change the truth. But she could take away some of the pain. “Perhaps she didn't love you. I do.”

“How can that be?” he demanded too loudly. “What good is a husband who cannot give you a child?”

“I can think of plenty of good uses for such a husband,” she said. “A husband is someone who works beside you when you till the garden, and who keeps you warm in bed at night. He's someone who worries about you when no one else even knows that anything is wrong. And he's the one I'd want holding my hand when I stand at death's door.”

“People delude themselves,” Borenson said as if she hadn't seen his point. “They want love so badly that they search for it until they pretend they've found it. Women will meet some worthless fool, and convince themselves that they've discovered a treasure, a ‘remarkable gem' of a human being that the rest of the world has somehow managed to overlook. What rot!

“There is nothing to such love. People breed with abandon. The world is full of fools who have no other aspiration than to procreate. I can't fathom it!” Borenson stopped. He'd been talking so fast that he was puffing.

“You don't understand desire?” Myrrima asked. “Didn't you feel it with Saffira? Didn't you feel it when you first saw me?”

“Carnal urges have nothing to do with love—at least not any kind of love that I want. It doesn't last.”

“So you want more than carnal urges?” Myrrima demanded.

He hesitated, as if he could tell by her tone that he was falling into a trap.

“Yes,” he said. “The best love must be founded on respect. Let desire grow from that, and when the desire wears thin, at least the respect will remain.”

“You have my respect,” Myrrima said. “And you have my desire. But I think that there's more to love than that.”

“Ah!” he said, as if eager to hear her thoughts, but she could tell that he only wanted to argue.

“I think,” Myrrima said, “that everyone is born into the world worthy of love. Every babe, no matter how physically marred or how colicky, is worthy of its mother's love. We all know that. We all feel it deep inside when we see a child.”

Borenson fell silent, and for first time, she felt that he was truly listening. “You were born worthy of love,” she said forcefully, “and if your mother never gave it to you, it was from no lack of your own.

“More than that,” Myrrima added. “We
stay
worthy. You condemn people for ‘falling in love.' You say that there really aren't any ‘human treasures' to be found. But people are better than you think. Even the worst people have more potential than the common eye can see.

“When a man and woman fall in love, I don't wonder that it happened. Instead I rejoice for them. I, too, sometimes wonder what qualities they saw in each other that I might have missed. But I respect people who have the common sense to love well.”

Borenson said coldly, “Then you will never respect me.”

“I already do,” Myrrima said.

“I doubt that.”

“Because you don't respect yourself.”

Borenson was getting angry. He tried to change the subject. “All right, I've played your game. I told you something about me that you don't know. Now tell me something that I don't know.”

“I got some endowments,” Myrrima said. “And I learned to use the bow.”

“I can tell you got endowments,” Borenson said. “Where'd you get the forcibles?”

Modesty forbade her from telling. Besides, she supposed that he would learn the tale soon enough. “From the queen.”

He said nothing. She gave him just enough information to let him believe that they were merely a gift.

“So,” he said, “tell me something that I don't know.” Once again, he was holding in his feelings. She didn't want the topic to get away from her.

“All right,” Myrrima said. “When I was a little girl, my father and mother both loved me enough to care for me when they were tired, and to hold me when I fell, and to work long hours to feed me. Maybe I was lucky, because I got something you never had. I learned firsthand about love from people who knew how to give it.

“And I learned this: the best romantic love has a good amount of lust in it, and an equal amount of respect. But the main ingredient is
devotion.”
She wondered that he hadn't mentioned that when defining love, and suddenly she realized that he didn't even see it. “And devotion is what you lack!”

Borenson took a deep breath, and she thought he would utter some denial. Instead, his hand drew more tightly against her belly, and he fell silent, as if he were astonished.

She was right of course, now that she saw it. Borenson could respect another, even feel compassion and envy. But he didn't understand devotion, not really. That was the part of the equation that a faithless mother could not teach him.

She wondered if she should take her words back, offer some sort of empty apology. But she knew that she shouldn't. He had to see the truth.

Maybe the truth was that it was good that he was a eunuch. He might never grow his walnuts back, she knew, despite the wizard's best efforts. Maybe it was all for the better. Making love wasn't love, she knew, and too many
people confused the two. If she could help him learn to truly love, could teach him devotion, then she would have healed a wound beyond even Binnesman's reach.