He shook his head in dismay. He imagined them hurriedly preparing the defenses in the castle. The women would be boiling rags for bandages and preparing food in advance of the battle. The children would be collecting rocks for the catapults and fletching arrows, while the men worked at shoring up the breaches in the castle walls. “The sense of danger is rising so high,” Gaborn said. “It’s...I fear I’ve sent them to fight a battle they cannot win. I think I’ve sent them to their slaughter.”
Iome knelt beside him. “You’re doing your best.”
“But is it good enough?” Gaborn asked. “I’m sending people to war, and against what? If they fought reavers alone, that would be enough. But we are fighting an enemy we’ve never even guessed at—the One True Master of Evil.”
Iome went quiet, and the silence around them deepened. Even with endowments of hearing, Gaborn could detect nothing. The silence around them, the immovable wilderness, was overwhelming. The only sound came from a few elephant snails nearby, their huge shells clacking together as they fed on moss. Even the sound of Gaborn’s voice did not carry more than a few feet beyond his face.
Iome opened Erden Geboren’s book and scanned through the headings. Gaborn sat for a moment, waiting for Iome to find something of interest. He noticed a twinge, as if a wave of fresh air washed over him. As it did, he felt suddenly lighter, more refreshed. He’d noticed it once or twice before, over what felt like the past hour or two.
No, he realized. I’ve noticed it a dozen times. Someone is vectoring endowments to me.
He’d last taken endowments in Heredon—brawn, stamina, grace, metabolism, wit. Now his messengers had gone to Heredon, telling the folk of the dangers to come. The endowments had to be vectored by the facilitators at Castle Groverman. But why would they do it?
Iome scanned through the headings of Erden Geboren’s book. Gaborn peered at her. Was she moving more slowly than she had an hour ago?
No, she couldn’t be, he thought. Perhaps someone is vectoring metabolism to me. Now that he thought about it, it had been less of a labor running for the last stretch. Iome had kept falling behind.
“Gaborn,” Iome said. “You mentioned that the danger is growing less in Heredon. Can you tell me how my friend Chemoise will fare?” For years, Chemoise had been Iome’s maid of honor, and they’d been inseparable.
Gaborn reached out with his Earth Senses. Felt the danger rising around the girl. “If she hears my warning and takes heed, there may be hope for her.”
“May be?” Iome asked.
“Iome,” he said, “you don’t want to play this game. Don’t ask me to name the names of those who will die. Nothing is certain.”
“All right,” she said, biting her lip. She pointed at something in the book. “Here’s a chapter on fighting a locus. It says that ‘Against a locus, no weapon forged of steel can prevail.’ ”
Iome flipped to the next page, and frowned. She began rapidly skimming through the next dozen pages. “If we cannot kill it with steel,” she offered, “then we must find another way.”
Her voice sounded unnaturally deep and slow.
“Something is wrong,” Iome said. “Erden Geboren was going to talk about how to fight the locus, but the pages have been ripped out.”
“Ripped out?” Gaborn asked. “Why would someone rip them out?”
Iome frowned, then gave Gaborn a hard look. “Think about it: Erden Geboren told people what he was fighting seventeen hundred years ago, but in all of the legends, in all of the myths, all we’ve ever heard is that he fought reavers. There can only be one answer: someone doesn’t want us to fight the loci.”
“Or perhaps,” Gaborn countered, “someone took the pages precisely because he wanted to know how to fight the creature.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Iome said.
The heat was unbearable, worse than the hottest day Gaborn had ever witnessed. He took another drink from the pool, but no amount of water could quite refresh him.
Another twinge hit him, barely perceptible. His muscles tightened. He felt sure now. Someone was vectoring endowments to him.
When a Runelord took an endowment, if he took it directly from the Dedicate, he received more than just the attribute, he normally felt a rush of ecstasy. But coming as they were through vectors, Gaborn only sensed the virtue that grew inside him each time a facilitator transferred an endowment.
He got up and peered forward, down the long tunnel. He stretched his senses, reached out with with his Earth Sight. The sense of impending doom had lessened. With each endowment he received, the threat diminished. Ahead, the wall of death was cracking.
Iome must have noticed something amiss. “What’s happening?”
“My facilitators,” Gaborn said, “have begun vectoring more endowments to me.”
Iome looked up at him with sadness in her eyes, resignation, but no surprise.
“Did you tell them to do this?” Gaborn demanded.
Iome nodded. “You wouldn’t have taken more endowments yourself, so I sent a message to the facilitators in Heredon, asking them to vector the endowments to you.”
Gaborn’s heart fell. The facilitators were vectoring greater endowments to him—brawn, grace, stamina. Each time they did, they put the life of a Dedicate at risk. So many of Gaborn’s Dedicates had died at Raj Ahten’s hands already that he would not have dared seek more endowments.
“No promises were to be made to the Dedicates,” Iome said by way of apology. “No offers of gold, no threats. Those who give themselves are doing it out of their love for their homeland, nothing more.”
“How many endowments did you tell them to vector?” Gaborn asked heavily.
“All that they can,” Iome said. “If all four of our facilitators work through the night, they should be able to give you a thousand or more.”
Gaborn shook his head in horror at all of the suffering, all of the pain he would cause the Dedicates. Another burst of virtue passed through him, and he felt the desire to move faster. He stared at Iome, and could not begin to tell her how deeply she had betrayed his trust. The new Dedicates would be at risk, not just from men like Raj Ahten but from the stresses of giving endowments. Sometimes, men who gave brawn would die of weakness as their hearts failed; or those who gave grace would have their lungs cease up, and never draw breath again.
“Why?” he asked.
Iome shook her head, and tears began to pool in her eyes, as if to say I’m sorry. Instead, she said what she had to: “Our people need us to be strong now. If we don’t kill the One True Master, nothing else matters. I’d have taken the endowments myself, if I could. But I don’t have your gifts. I didn’t dare waste any more forcibles on myself.”
Gaborn looked down at her, dismayed. By granting so many endowments of metabolism, his people might well doom him to a solitary existence, moving so fast that he would be all but incapable of carrying on a normal conversation, a life where he could age in a matter of months or years, while his loved ones lived out their normal lives. They could make a sacrifice of him.
Gaborn wasn’t just hurt. He felt as if something inside him had broken.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Iome said. “Don’t hate me. Just...I just want you to live.” Gaborn had never seen such grief in a woman’s countenance. It was as if she were being torn in two.
“Life for me isn’t just existing,” Gaborn said. “It’s how I choose to live that matters.”
Iome took his face in her hands and held it, peering into his eyes. Even now, he could not meet her gaze, but stubbornly looked down at her lips. “I want you,” Iome said. “I want you in my life, and I mean to save you by any means possible.”
He closed his eyes, unable to confront what she had done. She was stronger than he, more willing to bear the guilt that came from taking endowments, more willing to bear shame, more willing to sacrifice the things that she loved for the common good.