Wizardborn (49 page)

After dinner they went to bed and lay in one another's arms. Celinor held Erin for a long while, and she wondered at it. She'd never slept in a man's arms before. She loved his touch, but knew that it would not make for a restful sleep. She wondered how long men and women needed to sleep together before they got used to it.

Celinor seemed distracted, Erin more so.

“Tomorrow is the day,” he whispered. She knew what he meant. Tomorrow they would reach South Crowthen, probably late in the afternoon. They would meet his father, and try to discover how deep his madness went.

“Promise me that you won't do anything rash,” Celinor asked. “My father has always been a good man. He treated
me well as a child. If he has gone mad, let me deal with it in my own way.”

She knew what he wanted. Celinor had said that his grandfather had gone mad, and had to be locked away beneath the castle, until he finally died of old age. It was a family curse, apparently. Celinor had promised his father that if the curse ever struck, he would lock him away. Erin did not envy Celinor his duty.

“All right,” she conceded. “But be careful. Some men, you can see the madness in their eyes. Others can hide it. Your father is dangerous.”

Celinor nodded. His father was plotting against the Earth King, and had already gained some support. Anders claimed that Gaborn had masterminded the death of his own father in order to gain the throne.

“My father isn't a danger to us,” Celinor said. “He's just … so confused. I'll talk to him.”

“Be careful what you say,” Erin said. “Your father is a smart man, a cunning man.”

Celinor seemed to think a moment, then said, “He would think it a compliment if you told him so. Why do you call him cunning?”

“I've been thinking about what you said. Your father told you that I was Gaborn's sister …”

“It's an interesting deduction,” Celinor said. “Given the habits of the horsesisters, it makes sense that your mother would choose a sire from a noble line. You look as if you could be Gaborn's sister. And you were born nine months after old King Orden's hunting party passed through Fleeds….”

“I know who my father is,” Erin said. She did not know if she dared tell him. The truth was as bad as the lie. “I've seen the genealogy. My mother chose a sire from House Orden, but it was not Mendellas. She thought there was a better man in the party—Paldane.”

“Of course—you're not his sister, but his cousin!” Celinor said. “Better breeding, but without the title.”

He saw her dilemma. Paldane was Gaborn's uncle. As Paldane's only offspring, Erin was still his heir by Mystarrian
law. So even though she wasn't Gaborn's sister, her predicament remained.

Celinor held silent for a long moment. She knew what he was thinking. By the laws of her people, they were wed. Celinor was a prince of South Crowthen, and now he had married into the family of House Orden. If Gaborn died, Celinor could assume the throne of Mystarria.

She wondered if he was tempted by the prospect.

At last he whispered, “You must never reveal that to anyone, especially to my father.” Erin didn't plan to, but she wondered just how much Anders knew, or guessed at.

Erin tried to sleep, but her mind could not rest. She kept recalling her dream during the afternoon, the great owl of the netherworld summoning her.

She knew that dreams were often just bits and pieces of memories. Could it have been that alone? It had seemed so real. Yet some things did not quite make sense, if the dream came only from memories. The owl had called a “warrior of the Shadow World.” Erin had heard that the netherworld was sometimes called “the One True World,” but she'd never heard of her world referred to as a shadow world. And the details of the place were like nothing she'd ever conceived.

For a long time, she lay, afraid to sleep, but finally slipped off to slumber… .

She woke in the owl's lair. It was daylight now, and an early-morning sun streamed under the branches of the tree. It barely lit the burrow. The owl sat high up on its perch, as it had before. Beneath it lay a pile of bones: squirrel, rabbit, and fawn. Her dagger still sat there, piercing the skull of some froglike creature.

The owl's eyes were closed, and it breathed softly. She could smell it more strongly now, its oily feathers, the scent of blood and old bones.

The burrow descended farther into the ground, a tunnel. Sconces in the wall suggested that it had been dug with human hands, but had long lain unused. Arcane symbols
were carved into the living wood of the tree, runes unlike any that Erin had ever seen before.

“You have returned. Thank you for coming in our hour of need,” the owl whispered. Erin glanced up. The owl still breathed softly. The beast did not speak in her tongue, yet its words pierced her, filled her with understanding and communicated emotion all at once. She felt its deepest gratitude.

“I didn't come,” Erin said uneasily. “You brought me. I don't deserve your gratitude.”

“Don't you wish to be here?” the owl asked. “You answered the summons. Is this not your dagger?”

Erin blinked, looked around in the shadows for some avenue of escape. “I only thought of coming because I was looking for help.”

“Ah, you have troubles in your world?” Erin sensed amusement in the question.

“To put it mildly,” she said.

The owl shifted on its limb, peered at her. “The hope of our world may rest on you.”

“The hope of
your
world?”

“Perhaps the hope of both our worlds. Asgaroth has come to your realm.”

The name Asgaroth struck Erin like a mace. The owl's words were heard by the heart more than the ears. They conveyed knowledge, seemed to inscribe it upon Erin's bones. Asgaroth was the Darkling Glory that had attacked Castle Sylvarresta. He was a lord of tremendous power. His name struck terror into the hearts of Bright Ones and Glories alike.

“Asgaroth!” she said. “He's dead.”

“Dead?” the owl asked. “A mighty warrior you may be, but even a Fury Blade could not kill a
locus”

Erin bolted awake, sat up in her bed. Celinor stirred beside her, tried to hold her close. But her heart still hammered. She could not rest, could not sleep. She felt certain that if she slumbered, she would only awaken in the netherworld.

And right now, her head felt near to bursting. The owl's words had pierced her so. This was not the stuff of dreams. The words that the owl used were unfamiliar. In all of Rofehavan, there was no word for a being called the “locus.”

Yet in a flash she understood. A locus was a creature that housed itself within the mind of a vile man or beast. It entered like a parasite, but soon assumed control of its host.

Asgaroth was a great ruler among them, an evil that had existed from time immemorial. He was not a Darkling Glory. He was something much more, a powerful servant of a darker master. A thousand, thousand Shadow Worlds he had helped to destroy in a war that would rage through eternities.

   40   

The beings that men call “ferrin” have their own names for themselves, which are known to the wise. There are three distinct subspecies. The woodland ferrin are the largest, and perhaps the least fierce. Their range covers hills and woods throughout most of Rofehavan. The water ferrin have a darker fur, prefer moist habitats, and are excellent swimmers. The desert ferrin has short, sandy hair, and seems well adapted to its own harsh environment.

None of the breeds survive well in the snow. I have seldom seen one even fifty miles north of Castle Sylvarresta.

It is well documented that ferrin were brought from beyond the Caroll Sea by one Yakor the Bold, apparently for the express purpose of ridding his realm of rats and the plagues that they carry. They serve the purpose well in southern climes, but are considered a nuisance even by those who benefit from them, for though ferrin spread no disease, they eat far more than their smaller counterparts.

—
Excerpt from
Binnesman's Beastiary: Mammals of the World

As King Anders took dinner, the dying screams of men suddenly filled his castle.

They came in through the uppermost tower and whirled down the stairwell. The wind carried the sound down to the Great Hall, then swirled up again through the chimney.

To an ear that was not attuned, it sounded like a simple
moaning wind. But Anders had been listening for that sound all afternoon.

For a moment, the fire flared.

Ander's wife felt the draft and said, “Oh my.”

Anders had hoped to hear a woman's dying cry. But only five voices mingled in that scream, and all were male.

Anders raised his head and held a goblet of wine up to his latest guests: a Duke Stote from Lonnock, and Prince Grunensen from Eyremoth.

The prince was talking. He was a big strapping lad with soft dark hair and the mannerisms of a girl. “I can't abide travel by ship,” he was saying. “The last time I rode one, the galley was full of rats. They spread diseases, you know. That's why I travel by land. At least in the inns, the ferrin keep their number down.”

“I thought it was too cold in Eyremoth for either rats or ferrin,” Duke Stote jested.

“Milord,” Ander's wife hissed into his ear, dismayed at the turn in conversation at the dinner table.

He smiled. The conversation would surely turn to grimmer matters than rats. “A toast,” King Anders said, “to friends from far lands.”

The guests smiled coldly, drank. It was a quiet dinner, filled with clumsy conversation and long silences. Anders excused himself between courses and climbed his tower.

There he stood looking far to the south. Iome was so far away. He could do little from here.

His attack had been clumsy, inelegant. His master was not pleased. Perhaps …

For a long while he thought about rats. Huge rats, black as coal, burrowing beneath houses. Fat rats on the wharf, feeding on fish heads. Sleek rats in the woods climbing the trees. Rats that carried pestilence and disease.

A notion took him. There were few men so susceptible to his spells that they would fight in his behalf. He had used up three already. But wars did not always need to be fought with men and arms.

Still, to send rats? To call down a plague upon a whole
nation—the old, the infirm, women, and children?

In some bright corner of his mind, the man that Anders had once been cried out, The notion is monstrous!

Anders thought himself to be a hard man. He was a king after all. He'd ordered the execution of a highwayman when he was twelve. He'd fought men in battle.

He'd thought little of sending men to kill Iome.

But he'd never brought death upon innocents in such a wholesale fashion.

A cold wind tugged at the hair around his ear and whispered, It would please me.

“No!” he said aloud, shaking his head vehemently.

A cold gust slapped his back. The iciness took his breath. His head seemed to reel, and for a moment he felt dazed, as if he were drunk and spinning. He suddenly trembled in fear, realizing that the rough paving stones stretched wide below, so close, so very close. He clung to the merlons as the wind rushed at his back. It would take so little to push him over.