“What would be the point?” Gaborn asked. “A locus cannot be slain.”
Celinor had staggered back a step and was drawing his blade, as if to protect his father. Gaborn stopped him with a glance.
“You are wise, Earth King,” Anders said.
Gaborn looked up to Celinor. “Your father harbors a locus, and is therefore your father no more. Bind him, and bear him to the deepest dungeon at Ravenscroft. There, you may tend him and feed him, but do him no harm.”
Celinor peered at his father, horror showing in every line of his face.
At that, King Anders screamed in protest, his back arching up off of the ground. His eyes rolled back in his head, and when he slumped to the ground, he breathed no more. Gaborn saw a flash of darkness as the locus fled. A chill ran up Gaborn’s spine. He rushed from the tent, and saw the shadow blurring away to the north.
“What happened?” Celinor called from within the tent. Gaborn peered back through the flap. The guards were looking about darkly.
“The locus feared imprisonment,” Gaborn said with certainty. “So it tore your father’s spirit from its body, and fled.” Gaborn felt certain that it would make itself known in time.
Celinor went to Erin, and begging forgiveness, cut her free of her bonds.
Home, Averan thought, as Gaborn raced to Anders’s tent. Everyone is going home. But where will I go? Her home was gone.
By her body’s clock, thirty days and nights she had been in the Underworld, and in that time she had become accustomed to the smell of the deep earth, the overwhelming silence of the Underworld, the eternal shadows. The open sky above her seemed strange and foreboding, with all of its bright stars falling down from midnight blue skies in a steady stream, like bright coins of gold and silver tumbling through the darkness.
By dawn the folk of Carris had begun to bury the dead in two great mounds before the castle walls. In a cool gray mist Averan watched them as she rode south toward the Courts of Tide, the hills becoming smaller and smaller, fading into the distance. She imagined them as they would be someday, with broad-leafed elms growing atop them, giving shade to the folk who would build cities here again. Rabbits would feed on the hillsides, and foxes would dig dens beneath the roots of the forest giants. Doves would call from the boughs in the evening while young men sat in the shade of the hillock and sang to the women they loved.
Soon, the Earth whispered to Averan. It will happen again soon.
On the road, the prisoners that Averan and Gaborn had rescued from the Underworld filed off toward their homes. Gaborn provided each of them with cloaks and horses and food and money for the road, and many a proud man wept in gratitude as he took his leave.
The ride to the Courts of Tide was not a hurried one. The Earth King traveled by day, and by night he ranged far from camp. With his many endowments he traveled quickly over hills and through the fields, seeking out the cottages of humble farmers and woodsmen, Choosing those that he fancied. He took to wearing a green travel robe, and carrying a staff of oak. Tiny rootlings took shape in the robe almost as soon as he put it on, and within two days they had so overrun the fabric that nothing could be seen of the original material. Instead, Gaborn wore a wizard’s robe that seemed as brown as turned earth in some light, or as green as pine needles in others.
Within three days, they reached the soaring towers at the Courts of Tide, where the crystalline bridges spanned the ocean between the isles.
The warlords of Internook had already sailed away by the time they reached the city, but evidence of the damage they had wrought was everywhere—scorched wood along the piers, walls of huge estates knocked over.
Still, the folk were delighted to see the Earth King, and came out in force. All of the warning bells in the city rang for joy, and the children and mothers cried.
Gaborn rode through the city slowly, for he was so pressed by those who wanted the Choosing that he could hardly move forward. So he sat atop his horse and held his left hand high, looking into the crowd at knots of people, calling, “I Choose you. I Choose you all for the Earth.”
Averan wondered why he bothered. He had saved the seeds of the Earth, as was his duty. Why did he keep up the Choosing?
So she asked him one night a week after they had reached the city.
“I am the Earth King in times of peace, as well as in times of war,” Gaborn said. “Indeed, now my Power will serve me best.”
And he continued to Choose. Over the coming weeks, lords came from far lands—from the remote reaches of Indhopal, and the islands of the north, and from every realm in Rofehavan, all of them bowing their heads and offering up tribute from their realms. Wuqaz Faharaqin came from Indhopal, to make a peace offering from all of the kings of the desert, and brought with him a great store of blood metal as tribute.
Gaborn distributed the blood metal freely, but only to those who belonged to the Brotherhood of the Wolf. “The Earth King needs no standing army,” he explained. “Our greatest enemy now is the evil that lurks among us, and the Brotherhood of the Wolf is hereby charged with excising that evil. Go into the hills and find the brigands and bandits there, and root them out. Go into the halls of your barons and dukes, and find the evil there, and cut them down.” And though his orders sounded broad, the truth is that few men actually paid the ultimate price. The Brotherhood went out with great authority, executing judgment righteously, and all who dared to defy them were destroyed.
Only the men of Inkarra did not come be Chosen. Borenson told Gaborn that the Kings of Inkarra had gone riding to fight the reavers, but no sign of such a battle was ever seen, and whether they fought and died, or whether they discovered the reavers coming out of the Mouth of the World and decided to retreat, never became quite clear.
Averan waited at the Courts of Tide and took a room in the castle, a room fit for an honored lord. But though it was huge, and the chestnut paneling on the walls was inlaid in gold, and enough feathers had gone into the bolster of its huge bed to make cots for all of the farmers in a village, Averan did not feel at home. She found herself at night wandering from room to room, looking for a place to sleep.
Thus it was on the tenth night, just after sunset, that an old stargazer with a silver beard came to the castle, begging to see Gaborn.
The stars had quit falling every night by then, though the heavens seemed to be filled with light, as if new stars now shone above. Averan led the fellow to Gaborn, who was up on his tower, watching over his kingdom like a shepherd standing watch over his flock.
“Your Highness,” Jennaise the stargazer said when he saw Gaborn. “In behalf of our guild, I thank you.”
“For what?” Gaborn asked.
“For moving the Earth back near its normal course in the heavens.”
Gaborn looked at Averan sidelong out of his eye. “I had no part in that,” he said. “A wizard greater than I managed it.”
At that, the stargazer gaped in surprise at Averan, and begged, “Then it is you that I must thank. However, things are not exactly as they were....”
“In what way?” Averan asked.
“Our path through the heavens will take longer than before. Each year is extended by nearly a day, if our calculations are correct. Can you not repair the damage?”
“The damage is repaired,” Averan said. “The new course will be better for us than the old.”
“But,” the stargazer gasped in exasperation, “the calendars—they will all have to be changed!”
“Then change them,” Gaborn said. “Add a day to the calendar.”
“But, what shall we call it?” the stargazer asked.
“Gaborn’s Day,” Averan answered. “In honor of our king.”
“No,” Gaborn said. “I don’t want people celebrating me. Call it Brotherhood Day, so that men may celebrate their kinship with one another. Make it a day of feasting and games.”
“Very well,” the stargazer said, nearly sweeping the floor with his beard as he bowed and left.