“That can’t be it,” Chemoise whispered to Dearborn. “That many people wouldn’t give endowments. There must be another reason. Maybe they came to hide from the rats.”
“Did the rats come last night?” Dearborn asked the washwoman.
“They came,” she answered. “Drowned trying to swim the moat. The ferrin took those what made it over the city walls.” She seemed little concerned, and Chemoise envied her. In Ableton the rats had given them a bitter struggle.
So it was that Dearborn beached the rowboat, and Chemoise climbed the banks of the River Wye, up through oat stubble, looking for signs of a great struggle like the one fought back home. The city looked peaceful.
“The rats didn’t kill your horses?” Chemoise asked the old woman. “They didn’t ruin your tents?”
“We were all in the castle,” she answered. “Hiding. We filled every tomb and every cellar.”
“There was room for everyone?” Chemoise asked, unsure if she believed it.
“Och, no,” the old woman said. “Some folks went up to the old iron mines in the Dunnwood, and stayed as cozy as peas in a pod. The rats never even made it to their door. The ferrin folk had them all, I suppose.”
Chemoise stared in disbelief. There was no sign of a struggle. The sun shone golden over the fields. The cottages by the river sat undisturbed. The farms spread out along the road in a patchwork quilt of colors—white of oat stubble, the forest green of a field of mint, the yellow of mustard flowers, the ruddy gold of winter wheat.
It wasn’t until they had walked a hundred yards toward the castle that Dearborn discovered sign of the attack. With his boot he pointed out a dead rat curled up under a clump of grass beside the road, a ferrin’s broken spear still in its gut.
A chill shook Chemoise, and she noticed a bit of sadness in Dearborn’s eyes and a thoughtful look on his face.
“What is it?” Chemoise asked.
“We’re the lucky ones,” he said. “It’s only little rats we’re fighting. Imagine if this thing was as big as a farmer’s cottage, lumbering about. That’s what our folks will be facing at Carris.”
It was worse than that, Chemoise knew. Rats didn’t have hide as tough as armor. Rats didn’t have mages that cast foul spells. Rats weren’t as cunning as men.
She peered into Dearborn’s face in wonder. “Our folks,” he had called the people of Carris. But they were strangers, hundreds of miles beyond the city’s borders.
It’s the war, she realized. A common foe had made brothers of them all.
She hurried her stride, reached the city gates. There were boys beside the moat, using rakes to pull drowned rats from the water, then throwing the nasty things into wicker baskets.
One boy had waded into the depths up to his chest, and used a spear to try to fish some rats out of the lilies that grew in the shadow of the castle wall.
The vermin would have been able to crawl over the moat on the backs of their dead, Chemoise imagined.
She glanced behind. Shadows were growing long. The sun loomed on the horizon, splendorous among some golden clouds. Soon it would be night. Chemoise hoped that she still had time. She raced up Merchant Street, where vendors hawked food, filling the evening air with scents of fresh bread and meats that made her mouth water.
It wasn’t until she passed the King’s Gate, out of the merchant’s quarter, that she saw how strange the world had become.
She heard the distant birdlike singing of facilitators as they took endowments, and found that just inside the King’s Gate, a crowd had formed.
A thousand people stood waiting to give endowments, jostling one another in an effort to be first. One woman called, “Tell the facilitators to hurry. We haven’t got all night!”
The King’s Tower and Dedicates’ Keep were naught but ruins after last week’s battle with the Darkling Glory, and little had been done to clean up the pile of broken stone. But the old barracks and attendant Great Hall still stood, and these had been turned into a makeshift Dedicates’ Keep.
Pavilions in a riot of color covered the green, and everywhere Chemoise saw hundreds of people lying in their shade, as if in a faint.
Dully she realized that the barracks was full, and the tents were full, and there was nowhere else to put the Dedicates except to lay them on the grass until something better could be arranged. Those without brawn lay as slack as newborn babes while attendants clustered around them. Dozens of blind men and women sat beside a cooking fire, strumming lutes and singing an old ballad, which had served as a call over the ages:
“Are all of these people Dedicates for the Earth King?” Chemoise asked in wonder.
“Aye,” a young man called out. In the crowd, Chemoise hadn’t spotted him. But at a nearby table sat a facilitator’s apprentice with a quill and inkpot, writing on a long scroll. He was a young man, no more than thirteen.
“How many endowments does he need?” Chemoise asked.
“We’ll give him every forcible we’ve got, and hope that its enough,” the apprentice answered. “With any luck, we’ll make him the Sum of All Men.” Chemoise gazed out over the field in wonder. There weren’t just hundreds who had given endowments. Instead, thousands of people lay on the green. And as she glanced back downhill, she could see carts and horses coming from afar—from Bannisferre to the south, and Hobtown to the east, and a hundred villages to the west—people bringing all that they had with them to Castle Sylvarresta. Tens of thousands would offer themselves as Dedicates. And those who didn’t win the honor of going under the forcible would gladly hold the walls against any enemy that might try to take them, making themselves human shields between the enemies of the Earth King and the source of his Power.
It was grand and glorious to see so many people coming together to create the stuff of legend: the Sum of All Men. For a moment, Chemoise was swept away. The young facilitator cleared his throat, and asked, “Are you here to give an endowment?”
Chemoise’s stomach fluttered nervously. “Aye.”
“What can you offer?”
“Metabolism,” she volunteered. “Metabolism won’t hurt my unborn child.”
“We’re full up on that,” the facilitator said. “He’s got more than a hundred now. We really need stamina, grace, and brawn.” He listed the greater endowments. Chemoise thought he sounded like a merchant in the market who demands more for his wares than one can easily pay. Giving any one of those endowments could kill a person. Chemoise was already sick from rat bites. She didn’t dare offer stamina, lest her current illness take her. And those who gave brawn sometimes found that their hearts stopped, or their lungs quit working, simply because they hadn’t the strength to go on. Chemoise didn’t think she could face the terror of that, to lie helpless, unable to breathe, knowing that death was moments away.
“Grace,” Chemoise said, struggling to sound more eager than she felt. Perhaps by giving Gaborn my grace, Chemoise thought, I can atone for my father’s transgression.
Her father had once given grace to Raj Ahten, Gaborn’s most feared enemy, who had also sought to become the Sum of All Men.
The scribe made a mark in his book, adding her endowment of grace to the Earth King’s tally. She was but one of thousands. He didn’t ask Chemoise her name or thank her profusely or make the normal promises of care and compensation for the rest of her life.
Her endowment was a gift, and the giving of it was its own reward.
“And you, sir?” the scribe asked, peering behind Chemoise to Dearborn.
“Oh,” Chemoise explained, “he’s my friend. He just brought me—”