The Lair of Bones

Prologue Struggles in the Streets

When Raj Ahten’s caravan approached the Palace of the Elephant at Maygassa, all the stars in heaven seemed to be falling, raining down in shades of red and gold.

In the still night air, the scent of spices from nearby markets hung near the ground: whole black pepper from Deyazz, cinnamon bark from the isles off Aven, and fresh cardamom. It was a welcome relief from the scent of death that hung like a pall over Raj Ahten’s troops. His men, princes and lords of Indhopal dressed in their finest thick silken armor, wore rubies in their turbans and kept their heads high, swords held out in salute. Drummers and trumpeters acted as heralds.

The army rode as victors from the south, through the blasted lands that had been decimated by reaver’s spells. The reavers, who spoke in odors, left their curses clinging to the soldiers and their mounts: “Rot, O children of men. Become as dry as dust. Breathe no more.”

Even now, the smells brought Raj Ahten a vision of the giant reavers charging over the landscape. With their four legs and two arms, they looked something like enormous mantises. In their fore-claws, some wielded staves carved of stone, or enormous blades, or long iron poles with reaping hooks. The earth rumbled beneath the horde as it charged, while clouds of gree flapped and whirled above the reavers, squeaking like bats.

At the very head of Raj Ahten’s army, his men brought a trophy: four bull elephants dragged a wagon laden with the head of a massive reaver, a fell mage. It was an awesome sight. At four tons, the head spanned wider than the wagon. The leathery skin grew as dark as the back of a crocodile, and the fell mage’s gaping mouth revealed row upon row of teeth, each a pale green crystal, with some of the larger canines being as long as a child’s arm. She had no eyes or ears. Along the lower ridges of her jaws, and again atop the bony plates that constituted the bulk of her spade-shaped head, her philia—her only visible sensory organs—swung like gravid dead eels with each jolt of the wagon.

Behind the elephants, near the head of the army, came Raj Ahten himself, the Sun Lord. He lay back on pillows, dressed in a gleaming white silk jacket, the traditional armor of old Indhopal, as slaves carried his palanquin. A screen of lavender silk hung like gossamer, hiding his face from his adoring subjects.

To each side of the palanquin, in a place of honor, rode four flameweavers. For now, they held their fires in check so that only thin vapors of smoke issued from their nostrils. Fire had burned away any trace of hair from their bodies, so that all four men were completely bald. The graceful smoothness of their scalps hinted at their power, and a strange light glimmered in their eyes even at night, like the twinkle of a distant star. They wore scintillating robes in shades of flame—the bright scarlet of the forge and the mellow gold of the campfire.

Raj Ahten felt connected to them now. They served a common master. He could almost hear their thoughts, drifting about like smoke.

His troops passed between a pair of huge golden censers where fires had burned continuously for a hundred years. This marked the beginning of the Avenue of Kings. As soon as his palanquin reached them, a thunderous cheer rose from the city.

Ahead, crowds had massed along the avenue to do obeisance. His people had strewn the streets with rose petals and white lotus blossoms, so that as the elephants walked, crushing the petals, a sweet fragrance wafted up. Sweeter to him still was the smell of scented oils burning in a hundred thousand lamps.

The crowd wildly cheered their savior. A throng had gathered to greet him, citizens of Maygassa and refugees from the south, more than three million strong.

Those closest to the palanquin fell down upon their hands and knees, bowing in respect. Their humped bodies, draped in robes of white linen and rising up above the lanterns set on the ground, looked like rounded stones thrusting up from a river of light.

Farther back in the crowd, some fought for a closer view. Women screamed and pounded their breasts, offering themselves to Raj Ahten. Men shouted words of undying gratitude. Babes cried in fear and wonder.

The applause thundered. The cheers rose up like fumes above the city and echoed from low hills a mile away and from the high stone walls of the Palace of the Elephant itself.

Raj Ahten grinned. The deed pained him. He had taken many wounds in the Battle of Kartish, wounds that would have killed any lesser man, and some of those were to his face. He lay back on his silken pillows, reveled in the gentle sway of his palanquin as the bearers marched in step, and watched the frightened doves circle above the city, floating like ashes above the light.

It seemed the start of a perfect day.

Gradually, something caught his attention. Ahead, people bowed to do obeisance, but among the humped shapes one man remained standing.

He wore the gray robes of the Ah’kellah, the judges of the desert. Upon his right hip, his robe had been thrown back, revealing the handle of his saber. He held his head high, so that the black ringlets attached to his simple iron war helm cascaded over his shoulders and down his back. Wuqaz? Raj Ahten wondered. Wuqaz Faharaqin come to fight at last? Offering a duel?

The humble peasants nearby looked up at the judge fearfully from the corners of their eyes, and some begged him to fall down and do obeisance, while others chided him for his deportment.

Raj Ahten’s palanquin came up beside the Ah’kellah, and Raj Ahten raised his hand, calling for his procession to stop.

Immediately, the pounding of the drums ceased, and every man in the army halted. The crowd fell silent, except for the bawling of a few babes.

The air nearly crackled with intensity, and the thoughts of the flameweavers burned into the back of Raj Ahten’s consciousness. Kill him, they whispered. Kill him. You could burn him to cinders, make an example of him. Let the people see your glory.

Not yet, Raj Ahten whispered in return, for since his near death in the battle at Kartish, Raj Ahten’s own eyes burned with hidden fires now. I will not unveil myself yet.

Fire had claimed his life, had filled him with a light divine yet unholy. His old self had burned away, and from the cinders had risen a new man—Scathain, Lord of Ash.

Raj Ahten knew most of the members of the Ah’kellah. It was not Wuqaz who stood before him. Instead, his own uncle on his father’s side, Hasaad Ahten, barred the way.

Not Wuqaz, Raj Ahten realized with palpable regret. Instead, his uncle had come on Wuqaz’s mission.

Raj Ahten had taken thousands of endowments of Voice from his people, endowments that came from fine singers, from great orators. He spoke, and let the power of his voice wash over the crowd. In a tone sweeter than peach blossoms, as cruel as a blade of flame, he commanded, “Bow to me.”

Everywhere among the crowd, millions prostrated themselves. Those who were already bowing flattened themselves further, as if to become one with the dust.

Hasaad remained standing, anger brimming in his eyes. “I come to give you counsel, my nephew,” Hasaad said, “so that your wisdom may increase. I speak for your benefit.”

By phrasing his words thus, Hasaad made certain that all in the crowd knew that he spoke by right. Custom dictated that even Raj Ahten, the high king of all the nations of Indhopal, could not kill an elder relative who sought only to counsel him.

Hasaad continued, “It is reported that already you have sent word, ordering your troops on Rofehavan’s border to march to war.” Hasaad shouted his words, so that they rang out over the crowd, but with only two endowments of Voice, Hasaad’s words could not convey the emotional appeal that Raj Ahten’s did. “The reavers have laid waste our fields and orchards in all of the Jewel Kingdoms. Our people face starvation. Do you think it wise to send more men to war, when they could better spend their time gathering food?”

“There is food in Rofehavan,” Raj Ahten said reasonably, “for those strong enough to take it.”

“And in Kartish,” Hasaad said, “you have sent a million commoners to work the mines, hauling blood metal from the earth so that you heap upon yourself more endowments.”

“My people need a strong lord,” Raj Ahten said, “to defeat the reavers.”

Hasaad asked, “You have heaped the strengths of others upon yourself for many years, claiming that you only seek to save your people from the reavers. Now the reavers are vanquished. You have already claimed victory over the lords of the Underworld. But it is not victory over reavers that you want. When you have stolen Rofehavan’s food, you will force their people to give endowments.” His voice grew thick with accusation.

Burn him now, the voices of the flameweavers sputtered.

“Two battles we may have won against the reavers,” Raj Ahten answered in a tone that suggested grief at being questioned in so callous a manner, “but a greater battle remains to be fought.”

“How can you know that?” Hasaad demanded. “How can you know that the reavers will attack again?”

“My pyromancer has seen it in the flames,” Raj Ahten said, waving his hand toward Rahjim, a flameweaver riding to his right. “A great battle will flare up, more fearsome than any that we have ever known. Reavers will boil from the Underworld like never before. I go now to Rofehavan—to win food for my people, and to fight reavers in my people’s behalf. Let every man who has access to a force horse ride at my side. I will lead you to victory!”

Cheers arose from the multitude, but Hasaad stood defiantly.

How dare he! Raj Ahten thought.

“You are a fool,” Hasaad said, “to persecute the Earth King’s people. Your rapacity is endless, as is your cruelty. You are no longer human, and as such, should be put to death like an animal.”

Raj Ahten ripped back the veil that hid him from the crowd, and a collective gasp arose. The wizard fires in Kartish had seared every hair from his head, leaving him bald and without eyebrows. The flames had also burned away his right ear and scalded the retina of his right eye, so that now it shone as pale as milk. White bone protruded in a cruel line along his lower jaw.

The crowd gasped in horror, for Raj Ahten’s visage seemed the very face of ruin. But he had taken thousands of endowments of glamour from his subjects, giving him a beauty ethereal, as overwhelming as it was impossible to define. In a moment, the gasps of horror turned into “aaaahs” of admiration.

“How dare you,” Raj Ahten roared, “after all that I have suffered for you. Bow before my greatness!”

“No man can be great who is not also humble,” Hasaad intoned in the calm, dignified manner common to the Ah’kellah.

Raj Ahten could not let his uncle continue to stand against him. He would seek to sway the crowds after Raj Ahten left, when the power of Raj Ahten’s voice became only a memory.

He smiled cruelly. He could not kill Hasaad, but he could silence him. He begged his followers, “Bring me his tongue.”

Hasaad grabbed the hilt of his sword. His blade nearly cleared its scabbard, but one of Raj Ahten’s bowing servants yanked Hasaad by the ankles so that he went sprawling forward, and then faithful peasants leapt on the man, ending a brief struggle. Someone wrenched Hasaad’s head around, while another man pried his teeth open with a dagger. There was a flow of blood, a clumsy cut.

In moments, a sweet young girl came skipping up to Raj Ahten, bearing the bloody flesh in both hands, as if it were a gift given with great respect.

Raj Ahten pinched the warm tongue between two fingers, showing his own disrespect for the gobbet of flesh, then tossed it to the floor of the palanquin and covered it with his slippered foot.

The peasants remained piled upon Hasaad, so that he could not breathe. Raj Ahten tapped the side of the palanquin twice, ordering the procession forward. “To the stables,” he said. “I ride to war.”

As his procession made its way toward the Elephant Palace, a knot of men dressed in black watched from the shadows of a darkened bedroom, in the uppermost chambers of an inn. Their leader, Wuqaz Faharaqin, said softy to the others. “Raj Ahten will not abandon the ways of war, and his people are so blinded by his glamour that they cannot see him for what he is.”

Wuqaz felt within himself. For long years, he too had been blinded by Raj Ahten’s glamour. Even now, he fought the urge to bow before the monster, along with the rest of the crowd. But Raj Ahten had tipped his hand. He’d slain his own men in an effort to murder the Earth King, including one of Wuqaz’s nephews. For that murder, Raj Ahten would have to pay. Wuqaz hailed from the noble tribe of Ah’Kellah, the judges of the desert, and his own language had no word for mercy.

A young man whispered, “How can we stop him?”

“We must rip the veil of glamour from him,” Wuqaz said.

“But we have tried to kill his Dedicates,” one of the men said. “We can’t get into his castles.”

Wuqaz nodded thoughtfully. A plan took form. In Kartish, the reavers had cursed the land. For hundreds of miles around, the plants had died, promising famine in the southern provinces.

This had forced Raj Ahten to move most of his Dedicates north to the Ghusa, a mighty fortress in Deyazz. According to conventional wisdom, no one could hope to break down its huge doors or climb its towering walls.

“Let us go to Ghusa,” Wuqaz told his men. “Raj Ahten’s greatest weakness is his greed. I will show you how to make him choke on it.”

1 The Mouth of the Underworld

“Milord, there you are,” someone called. “I was growing worried. We’ve been waiting for hours.” Averan woke. She recognized the voice of The Wizard Binnesman. She found herself in a wagon bed filled with sweet-smelling hay, new from the summer fields. For a pillow she used Gaborn’s rucksack filled with chain mail and leather padding. All of Averan’s muscles felt heavy and overworn, and her eyes were gritty. She lay with her eyes closed. Yet almost by instinct she reached out for her staff, her precious staff of black poisonwood. She touched it, felt the power in it surge beneath her hand.

Gaborn answered, “I hurried the best I could. But the horse was on its last legs, so I turned it loose and left the driver to care for it.”

“So, the Earth King pulls a wagon to save a horse?” Binnesman scolded gently, as if worried that Gaborn might be pushing himself too hard. “Even those with great endowments have their limits—both horse and man.” Binnesman laughed. “You look like an old farmer, hauling a load of rutabagas to market.”

“It was only thirty more miles,” Gaborn said. “And my cargo is far more valuable than rutabagas.”

Averan found herself startled to greater wakefulness. She had been sleeping so soundly that she hadn’t been aware that she slept in a wagon, much less that the Earth King himself pulled that wagon by hand.

Binnesman offered, “Here, let’s hitch up my mount.”

The wagon came to a complete halt as the wizard got off his horse and unsaddled it.

Averan sneaked a peek upward. Overhead, stars arced through the heavens as if intent upon washing the earth in light. The sun would not crest the horizon for perhaps an hour, yet light spilled like molten gold over the snowy peaks of the Alcair Mountains. To Averan it seemed that the light was sourceless, as if it suffused from another, finer world.

The heavenly display fooled even the animals. Morning birdsong swelled over the land: the throaty coo of the wood dove, the song of the lark, the jealous squawk of a magpie.

Close by, knobby hills crowded the road and the dry wheat growing along their sides reflected the starlight. Leafless oaks on the slopes stood black and stark, like thorny crowns. A burrow owl screeched in the distance. Faintly, Averan could smell water from a small stream, though she could not hear it burble.

She watched the steady rain of stars. The bits of light came arcing down in different directions, creating fiery paths against the sky.

“So, Averan is well?” Binnesman asked softly.

“It was hard for her,” Gaborn answered. “She stood before the Waymaker all day, holding her staff overhead, peering into the monster’s mind. Sweat poured from her as if she were toiling at a forge. I was afraid for her.”

“And has she learned the way to, to this...Lair of Bones?”

“Aye,” Gaborn said. “But I fear that the lair is far in the Underworld, and Averan cannot describe the path. She will have to lead us—that is, if you will come with me.”

“If?” Binnesman asked. “Of course I’ll come.”

“Good,” Gaborn said. “I’ll need your counsel. I don’t want to put too much burden on a girl so young.”

Averan closed her eyes, feigning sleep, and took guilty pleasure in listening to them talk about her. She was but a child, yet in all the world she was the only person who had ever learned to converse with reavers, mankind’s most feared enemy.

Gaborn had recognized that she went through an ordeal to see into the mind of the Waymaker, but even he could not guess how painful it had been. Her head ached as if a steel band bound it, and she felt as if her skull might split on its own accord. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of scents crammed her mind—scents that gave her the names of places and passages in the Underworld, scents that in some cases had been handed down from reaver to reaver over generations. In her mind’s eye, Averan could envision the reaver tunnels in the Underworld, like vast arteries connecting the warrens. There were tens of thousands of tunnels, leading to mines and quarries, to ranches and hunting grounds, to egg chambers and graveyards, to deadly perils and ancient wonders. Given a lifetime, Averan could not have mapped the Underworld for Gaborn.

Even now, she feared that she could not retain so much lore. The brain of a human is a tenth the size of that of a reaver. Her mind couldn’t hold so much knowledge. She only hoped that she could recall the way to the Lair of Bones.

I have to remember, Averan told herself. I have to help Gaborn fight the One True Master.

She heard footsteps crunching on the road and tried to breathe easily. She wanted to rest, and hoped that by feigning sleep she could continue to do so.

Binnesman set his saddle in the back of the wagon. “Poor girl,” he said. “Look at her, innocent as a babe.”

“Let her sleep,” Gaborn whispered. He spoke softly, not with the commanding voice one would expect from a king, but with the gentleness of a worried friend.

Binnesman moved away, and wordlessly began hitching the horse to the single-tree on the wagon.

“Have you any other news of the reavers?” Gaborn whispered.

“Aye,” Binnesman said, “Most of it good. We harried them all day. Many of the monsters died from weariness while fleeing our lancers, and our knights attacked any that slowed. At last report there were only a few thousand left. But when they reached the vale of the Drakesflood, they dug into the sand. That was about midafternoon. Our men have them surrounded, in case they try to flee, but for now there is little more that they can do.”

Averan pictured the monsters at the Drakesflood. The reavers were enormous, each more than sixteen feet tall, and twenty in length. With four legs and two huge forearms, in form they looked like vast, tailless scorpions. But their heads were shaped like spades, and the reavers could force their way under the soil just by pushing down and then crawling forward. That is how they would have dug in at the Drakesflood. The move would afford them good protection from the lances of the knights.

“So that’s the good news,” Gaborn said heavily, “now what of the bad?”

Binnesman answered, “At the Mouth of the World we found reaver tracks heading in. It looks as if three reavers circled through the hills after the battle at Carris. Somehow they got past our scouts.”

“By the Seven Stones!” Gaborn swore. “How soon before they reach their lair, do you think?”

“It’s impossible to guess,” Binnesman said heavily. “They may have already told their master how you defeated their army at Carris, and even now she will be considering how to respond.”

Binnesman let that thought sink in.

“But how did they elude my scouts?” Gaborn wondered.

“I suspect that it would have been easy,” Binnesman answered. “After the battle at Carris, the horde fled in the night while rain plummeted like lead. We had only brief flashes of lightning to see by. With our soldiers busy at the front, they left before we ever thought to try to cut them off.”

Binnesman and Gaborn hooked the horse to the wagon, and both men climbed onto the buckboard. Gaborn gave a whistle, and the force horse took off at a brisk trot.

“This has me worried,” Gaborn said.

Binnesman seemed to think for a long moment. At last he sighed. “Beware the Lair of Bones. Beware the One True Master. My heart is full of foreboding about this creature. No beast of this world could be so well versed in rune lore.”

“You suspect something?” Gaborn asked.

“Seventeen hundred years ago, when Erden Geboren prosecuted his war in the Underworld, do you know what he fought?”

“Reavers,” Gaborn said.

“That is the conventional wisdom, but I think not,” Binnesman answered. “In King Sylvarresta’s library are some ancient scrolls, levies for men and supplies written in Erden Geboren’s own hand. In them, he asked for men not to fight reavers but to fight something he called a locus. I think he was hunting for a particular reaver. It may even be the one that Averan calls the One True Master, though I cannot imagine that any reaver would live so long.”

“And you think that this creature is not of our world?”

“Perhaps not,” Binnesman said. “I begin to wonder. Maybe there are reavers in the netherworld, more cunning and powerful than our own. And perhaps reavers here are but mere shadows of them, in the same way that we are mere shadows of the Bright Ones of that realm.”

“That is a sobering thought indeed,” Gaborn said.

The wizard and the Earth King rode in silence. Averan lay back again, eyes closed. Her mind felt overwhelmed.

The road had been leading down, and abruptly Gaborn jolted the wagon to a halt. Averan stealthily rose up on one elbow, and saw that they had reached a town, a small knot of gray stone cottages with thatched roofs. Averan recognized it as Chesterton. Here the road forked. One highway headed almost due east toward the Courts of Tide. The other road went southwest toward Keep Haberd—and beyond that, to the Mouth of the World.

Overhead, a fireball lanced through the sky, huge and red. Flames streaked from it with a sputtering sound. As it neared the Alcair Mountains, it suddenly exploded into two pieces. They struck the snow-covered mountains not thirty miles away. The ground trembled, and moments later came sounds like distant thunder, echoing over and over.

“The Earth is in pain,” the wizard Binnesman whispered.

Averan heard a child squeal in delight. Up the road, beside one of the cottages, a woman squatted on her lawn. Three girls, none older than six, stood with her, looking up at the heavenly display in wonder.

“Pretty!” the youngest child said, as she traced the trail of the fireball with her finger.

An older sister clapped in delight.

“Oh, that was the best one yet,” their mother said.

Other than these four, the town slumbered. The cottages clustered in dark, tired mounds. The farmers within would not dare rise until the cows began bawling to be milked.

Gaborn drove the buckboard through town. The mother and her daughters watched them pass.

Now the earth shivered beneath them like an old arthritic dog. Binnesman had spoken truly. Averan recognized the earth’s pain by more than just the earthquakes or the fall of stars. There were less definable signs that perhaps only one who loved the land could discern. She’d been able to feel it for days now as she walked, a wrongness in the soil, an ache among the hills.

“You know, Gaborn,” Binnesman said at last, “you say that you will lean upon my counsel. Therefore, let me say this: I think you take too much upon yourself. You plan to seek out the Lair of Bones, and hope there to kill the One True Master. But you have not been called to be the Earth’s warrior, you are the Earth King, the Earth’s protector. You also talk of warring with the reavers, killing...perhaps thousands. But more than just the fate of mankind hangs in the balance. There are owls in the trees, and mice in the fields, and fishes in the sea. Life, every kind of life, may fade with us. The Earth is in pain.”

“I would rejoice if we could heal its pain,” Gaborn said, “but I don’t know how.”

“The Earth has selected you well,” Binnesman said. “Perhaps we will find the way together.”

The wagon raced over the road, and Averan lay back with a heavy heart, feigning sleep.

And what of me? Averan wondered. As a skyrider, she’d often had to travel far from home, and she had found some special places that she loved. She recalled a clear pool high in the pines of the Alcair Mountains where she’d sometimes picnicked, and the white sand dunes forty miles east of Haberd where she had played, rolling down the hills. She’d perched with her graak on rugged mountain peaks that no man could ever climb, surveying vast fields and the forests that undulated away in a green haze. Yes, Averan loved the land, enough even to live every day in its service.

That’s what makes me an Earth Warden’s apprentice, she realized.

The wagon rolled through the night with Averan lost in thought. It wound up into the hills. All too soon it came to a halt just outside a vast cavern, where dozens of horses were tethered. A bonfire crackled within the cave, where scores of knights were engaged in rowdy song.

“Averan, wake up,” Gaborn called softly. “We’re at the Mouth of the World.”

He reached into the back of the wagon and as Averan raised her head, he retrieved the sack that held his armor, along with his long-handled war hammer. Binnesman got up and hobbled stiffly toward the cave, using his staff as a crutch.

“I had a dream last night,” Erin Connal whispered to Celinor as they stooped to drink at a stream in South Crowthen, nearly a thousand miles to the northeast of Averan. The sun would not be up for half an hour, yet the sky glowed silver on the horizon. The early morning air felt chill, and dew lay heavy on the ground. “It was a strange dream.”

She glanced suspiciously at South Crowthen’s knights nearby, who were busy breaking camp. Captain Gantrell, a lean, dark man with a fanatical gleam in his eyes, stood ordering his men about as if they’d never broken a camp before. “Sweep the mud off that tent before you put it in the wagon,” he shouted to one soldier. To another he called, “Don’t just pour water on the campfire, stir it in.”

By the surly looks he got, Erin could tell that his troops did not love him.

As the men bustled about, occupied with their work, for the first time since last night, Erin felt that she could talk to her husband with a measure of safety.

“You dreamed a dream?” Celinor inquired, one eyebrow raised. “Is this unusual?” He drowned his canteen in the shallow creek almost carelessly, as if unconcerned that Gantrell’s men surrounded them, treating the crown prince and his new wife as if they were prisoners.

“I think it was more than a dream,” Erin admitted. “I think it was a sending.” Erin held her breath to see his reaction. In her experience, most people who claimed to receive sendings showed other signs of madness too.

Celinor blinked, looking down at his canteen. “A sending from whom?” he asked heavily. He did not want to hear about his wife’s mad dreams.

“Remember yesterday, when I dropped my dagger into the circle of fire at Twynhaven? The dagger touched the flames and disappeared. It went through the gate, into the netherworld.”

Celinor nodded but said nothing. He watched her suspiciously, daring her to speak on.

“I dreamt last night that I saw a creature of the netherworld, like a great owl that lived in a burrow under a vast tree. It held my dagger in its beak, and it spoke to me. It gave me a warning.”

Celinor finished filling his canteen, then licked his lips. He trembled slightly, as if from a chill. Like most folk, he felt uncomfortable when talking of the netherworld. Wondrous beings, like Bright Ones, peopled it, but there were tales of frightening creatures too—like the salamanders that Raj Ahten’s flameweavers had summoned at Longmot, or the Darkling Glory they gated at Twynhaven. “What did this...creature warn you about?”

“It warned me that the Darkling Glory could not be slain. A foul spirit possessed its body, a creature so dangerous that it strikes fear even into the hearts of the Bright Ones. The creature is called a locus, and of all the loci, it is one of the most powerful. Its name is Asgaroth.”

“If you are convinced that this Asgaroth is a danger,” Celinor asked, “then why are you whispering? Why not shout it to the world?”

“Because Asgaroth may be nearby,” Erin whispered. A squirrel bolted up the side of a tree, and Erin glanced back at it furtively, then continued. “We can slay the body that hosts the spirit, just as Myrrima slew the Darkling Glory, but we can’t kill Asgaroth himself. Once a locus is torn from one body, it will seek a new host, an evil person or beast that it can control.” She paused to let him consider this. “When Myrrima slew the Darkling Glory, a whirlwind rose from it—and blew east, toward South Crowthen.”

Celinor looked at her narrowly, anger flashing in his eyes. “What of it?”

“You say that your father has been suffering delusions....”

“My father may be mad,” Celinor said curtly, “but he has never been evil.”

“You were the one who was after telling me how his far-seer turned up dead.” Erin reminded him. “If he killed him, it may have been an act of madness. Or it may have been evil.”

“I only suspect him,” Celinor said. “There is no proof. Besides, his odd behavior began before Raj Ahten’s sorcerers summoned the Darkling Glory. Even if you received a true sending, even if your ‘locus’ is real, there’s nothing that should lead you to suspect my father.”

Celinor didn’t want to consider the possibility that his father might be possessed. She didn’t blame him. Nor could she argue that his father’s odd behavior had begun weeks ago.

Yet something that the owl of the netherworld had told Erin caused her concern. It had shown her the locus, a shadow of evil that inhabited one man, even as it sent out tendrils of darkness around it, tendrils that touched others—seducing them, snaring them—filling them with a measure of its own corruption.

Thus the locus’s influence spread, rotting the hearts of men, burning away their consciences, preparing them to act as hosts for others like it.

Erin had never met Gantrell before, but the fanatical gleam in the captain’s eyes, the way he had his men guard Celinor, the crown prince, as if he were a captured spy, made her suspect that he had been touched by a locus.

And then there was Celinor’s father: claiming to be the Earth King, plotting against Gaborn, spreading lies about him to far-off lords who ought to have been Gaborn’s allies.

Perhaps Celinor’s father did not host Asgaroth, Erin thought, but he was dangerous by any standard.

“What are you two doing over here, all alone?” Captain Gantrell called out. He came sauntering up, the grin splitting his face only a thin veneer to hide his suspicion.

“Plotting my escape back to Fleeds,” Erin said in a jesting tone.

“That wouldn’t be wise,” Gantrell said, attempting to mimic her lightheartedness and failing miserably. Erin could tell that he had no sense of humor. He looked approvingly to his knights, who had mounted their horses, and were now nearly ready to leave. “Well, let’s see if we can make good time while it’s still cool.”

Erin forced a smile, but she grew more and more uneasy about Gantrell. Instinct warned her that rather than grin politely as if he were some unwelcome courtier, she’d be better off to slit his belly open and strangle him with his own guts.

Erin mounted her horse, exhausted from lack of sleep, and rode through the pre-dawn. Every few miles they passed small contingents of knights, all riding south. Camp followers in the form of smiths, washwomen, and squires rode in wains or trudged down the dusty roads. Drivers rode war wagons filled with lances, arrows, food, and tents, everything one needed for an extended campaign.

After passing a train of twenty ballistas mounted on wheels and drawn by force horses, Erin blithely asked Gantrell, “All this movement before the sun’s even up. What country do you plan to invade?”

“Invade, Your Highness?” Gantrell asked. “It is but a normal repositioning of our defenses.” He rode close enough so that she had to urge her horse aside, lest they bump legs.

“If you were afraid of invasion,” Erin argued, “you would strengthen your fortifications, not mass troops on your southern border. So, who will you invade?”

“I couldn’t say, milady,” Gantrell answered with a maddening little smirk.

So they rode through the morning. The horses nearly pranced as they raced through the chill. The knights’ ring mail chinged like cymbals to the drumming of the horses’ hooves, as if making music to accompany some vast empyreal hymn.

Erin’s fatigue lent the ride a surreal, dreamlike quality. Some thought South Crowthen to be a beautiful country, and it was true: the trees on the hills danced in particolored raiment of autumn colors, and in the more settled areas Erin would ride round a bend and discover a picturesque stone cottage dozing beneath a sprawling oak or elm. Nearby, a milk cow would crop the grass in some green field misted by morning dew, while stone fences that had stood for longer than men could remember neatly parceled out the quiet farmland. But when she rounded the next corner, she’d see another quaint stone house beneath a sprawling elm, with the milk cow’s sister cropping the grass by the barn, and another endless stone fence parceling out the squares of dirt, and on and on and on it went until Erin thought that she would never again admire another cottage or cow or meadow or tree.

So she closed her burning eyes. “I’ll only let my eyes rest,” she told herself. “I won’t sleep.”

Erin feared that she would lose her mind. The dreams that came every time she succumbed to sleep were so vivid that she felt that now her horse was galloping through a dream, and when she slept, she would awaken to some truer world.

She dreamt. Only a vague flash of vision, an image of the great owl in its dark burrow. It had moved from its previous roost, and now huddled farther in the shadows. The gray—and-white pattern of its feathers looked like dead leaves plastered above bones.

Erin peered into its unblinking golden eyes, and said, “Leave me alone. I don’t want to speak to you.”

“You fear me,” the owl said, its thoughts piercing her mind with more shades of emotion and insight than mere words could convey. “You need not fear me. I am not your enemy.”

“You are madness,” Erin said, willing herself to wake. The image faded.

The horses rounded a bend just at sunrise, and Captain Gantrell called, “Troo-oops, haw-aalt!”

Erin opened her eyes, imagining that they were stopping to let another wagon train pass.

Instead, near the road ahead lay a serene little pond covered in morning mist, and above it loomed a purple pavilion with gold trim: royal colors.

King Anders himself knelt beside the pool, his shirt off, washing himself in the cool morning air. He stood tall, lean, almost haggard in appearance, with a skeletal head and only a wisp of beard.

His Days, a historian who chronicled his life, brushed down a horse nearby, preparing to ride.

Near the king a plump old woman dressed in grayish rags squatted on a large rock, while squirrels darted around her in play. She would crack a hazelnut between her tough fingers and then toss it in the air. The squirrels made a game of racing over her shoulders or leaping into her lap to catch the nut before it touched ground.

Celinor nudged Erin, nodded toward the woman. “The Nut Woman, an Earth Warden from Elyan Wood.”

In her dreamlike fog, Erin thought it to be one of the strangest scenes in her life.

So, this is mad King Anders, she thought, looking back at the pasty old lord with his sagging breasts—the man I may have to kill.

He didn’t look frightening at all.

The king half turned, peering up from his morning ablutions with a frown, as if worried to hear the approach of troops. Yet he spotted Celinor and the frown disintegrated, blossoming into a heartfelt smile.

“My son,” King Anders called, his tone conveying only solemn joy. “You’ve come home!” He grabbed a towel that lay draped over a nearby bush and dried himself as he rushed forward. Celinor leapt from his saddle, and hugged the old man as they met.

The hug was short-lived. Celinor pushed his father away. “What’s the meaning of all these troops on the border, Father? Are you going to start a war?”

King Anders managed to look hurt as he answered,“Start a war? My dear lad, I may finish a war, but I’ve never been known to start one.” Anders held his son’s hands, but peered over Celinor’s shoulder at Erin.

“And who have we here?” he asked. “Erin Connal? Your picture doesn’t do you justice, fair lady.”

“Thank you,” Erin answered, surprised that he would recognize her face from a tiny picture painted on a promise locket nearly a decade past.

King Anders smiled a genuine smile, a smile of welcome and warmth and gratitude. His gray eyes seemed to stare into Erin, through her. He left Celinor, came to gaze upon Erin more fully.

Her horse shied away, but when he reached out and touched it, the animal immediately calmed.

King Anders raised his left hand in the air. “I Choose you, Erin Connal,” he said. “I Choose you for the Earth. If ever you are in danger and hear my voice whisper within you, obey it, and I will lead you to safety.”

Erin leaned back in her saddle, a grunt of surprise rising from her throat. Of all the words that he could have said, she expected these the least, for he used the very phrase that Gaborn had spoken when, as Earth King, he had Chosen her to be one of his warriors. Could it be that Anders, too, now had the ability to Choose, to select her as one of his soldiers and use the Earth Sight to recognize when she was in danger, then send her warnings?

No, it was blasphemy.

“By what right?” Erin asked. “By what right do you do this?”

“By every right,” King Anders said. “I am the Earth King. The Earth has called me to save a seed of mankind through the dark times to come.”

Erin stared at King Anders, dumbfounded. His manner seemed perfectly sincere. His gray eyes looked kind, thoughtful, and benevolent. He held himself with certitude. He smiled in a manner disarmingly warm. In physical appearance, he looked nothing like Gaborn. Yet in his bearing, it was as if Gaborn had been reborn in him.

“What do you mean, you’re the Earth King?” Celinor asked.

“It happened but yesterday, in the morning. I must confess that I had been feeling strangely for days. I’d sensed that dark times were coming, that great things were afoot, and so I retired to the woods to ponder them. The woods seemed quiet, tense. All of the squirrels were gone. I went searching for the Nut Woman—”

At this, the Nut Woman got off her rock, and ambled over to the party, squirrels prancing madly around her feet.

King Anders continued, “I found her in her cave, packing some dried herbs and whatnot. She told me that she had taken the squirrels to safety, and only returned to get a few things. Then, she led me deep into the woods, to a certain grotto.”

The Nut Woman put a hand on the king’s shoulder, as if begging him to let her continue the tale. “There,” she said, with a voice filled with awe, “the Earth Spirit appeared to us, and warned us that dark times are coming, darker than any this world has ever known. The Earth warned your father: ‘Be faithful! Cling to me, and my powers will attend you. Abandon me, and I shall abandon you: as I have abandoned the Earth King before you! ’ ”

Anders turned away as if the thought of a man losing his Earth Powers wounded him to the core. “Poor Gaborn, to be so cursed,” Anders lamented. “Dear boy. I fear that all the good he tried to do will turn to evil. I doubted him. But he was called of the Earth, if only for a while. Now I must carry on in his stead, and see if I can undo the great harm I’ve done him.”

Erin stared at them both darkly, unsure what to do, unsure what to think. She’d been prepared to meet a madman, and dispatch him quickly. Yet a niggling worry crept into her mind: What if he really is the Earth King?

The Mouth of the World, Averan thought, as she looked at the gaping cavern. I’ve flown over it a dozen times and seen the sheep cropping the grass on every hilltop near here. I’m not fifty miles from home.

The memory of home brought an ache to her heart. The reavers had destroyed Keep Haberd a week past. Just about everyone she’d ever known had been killed.

She leapt out of the wagon on legs that were still rubbery from sleep, and landed on the stony ground. To both sides of her lay a rut, as if this were an ancient road. But Averan knew better. She’d landed in the massive footprint of a reaver, the four-toed track of a huge female. It measured a yard in length and four feet in width. Countless other tracks surrounded it.

The “road” was really a reaver trail. A week past, tens of thousands of the monsters had boiled out of the Underworld here and spilled over the countryside. They had worn a rut in the ground sixty to seventy feet wide and several feet deep. Their trail, which wound over hundreds of miles, led through dozens of devastated cities.

Averan planted her staff in the ground, and found herself leaning on it wearily.

“Are you ready to take your endowments?” Gaborn asked as he shouldered his armor.

“You mean I’m going to do it here,” Averan inquired, “not in a Dedicates’ tower?”

“We’re a long way from any towers,” Gaborn said. “Iome brought a facilitator and some folk to act as Dedicates. Go find something to eat, and then we’ll see to your needs.”

Averan pulled her robes tight against her face. The air up so high had an autumn chill to it, and the wind came a bit boisterous, circling this way and that, like a nervous hound. She followed Gaborn to the mouth of the cave.

With each step they took, the singing grew louder. It reverberated from the cavern walls. “Why is everyone singing?”

“They’re celebrating,” Gaborn said. “The reaver horde has been brought to ground.”

No wonder they sing, Averan thought. Seventy thousand reavers vanquished. There hasn’t been a battle like that in ages. Still, so much wanton killing—even of reavers—left a sour taste in Averan’s mouth.

At the cave’s throat at least two hundred men crowded round the bonfire. Most were minor lords out of Mystarria and Heredon, though many were also Knights Equitable who called no man their king, and some were dark-skinned warriors who still wore the yellow colors of far-off Indhopal.

Still, dozens of peasants looked as if they had followed Gaborn’s troops in from nearby villages. Most of them wore lambskin jackets and knit woolen hats. Some were just curious farmers and woodsmen out to see the Earth King, but most carried heavy axes and yew longbows, as if eager to swell the ranks of Gaborn’s army.

Now that Gaborn had arrived, someone cried, “All hail the Earth King!” and wild cheers erupted.

Averan hung back at the mouth of the cave and glanced up. The flickering light of the bonfire illuminated the smoke-gauzed ceiling where gray-green cave kelp dangled in curtains. An enormous blind-crab crept along the ceiling precariously, clinging to rocks as it fed on kelp.

Even here at the cave’s mouth, the flora and fauna of the Underworld looked strange and unearthly. Averan hesitated, for once she stepped into the cave, she feared that she would be leaving the world behind forever, and her journey down would begin.

She glanced back at the star-filled heavens. She breathed deep of the pure mountain air, and listened to the peaceful coo of a wood dove, then stepped over the threshold of the cave. Her journey had begun.

Nearby, a young knight sat on a stone, trying to knock a dent out of his helm. He glanced up at Averan with shining eyes. Local boys were breaking camp—pulling cooking pots from the fire, checking and rechecking their packs. A grizzled knight of Indhopal knelt on the ground with an oil-stone, honing the steel bodkins on his arrows.

Everyone bustled about. She felt a sense of urgency, as if these folks had been waiting for Gaborn for more than just a few hours, as if they had been waiting for him for all of their lives.

Binnesman’s wylde stood conspicuously among the crowd. He had designed the creature to be a warrior for the Earth. She was one of few women in the group, and she stood holding a war staff of stout oak. She wore buckskin pants and a woolen tunic. To all appearances, she looked like a pretty young woman, but she had a disturbing complexion. Her huge pupils were so dark green they looked almost black, and her hair fell down her shoulders in avocado waves. Her skin, too, seemed to have been dyed a vigorous green, the color of young leaves.

Averan walked over to the wylde. “Hello, Spring,” Averan said, calling her by the name she had used ever since she’d first seen the green woman fall from the sky.

“Hello,” the wylde replied. Her language skills still were limited. On the other hand, Binnesman had only created the thing a little more than a week ago, and no babe could talk at a week of age.

“How are you feeling today?” Averan asked, hoping to start a conversation.

The green woman gazed at her blankly. After a moment of thought, she said, “I feel like killing something, Averan.”

“I feel that way some days, too,” Averan said, trying to make light of the answer. But it underscored a difference between the two. Averan had first thought of the green woman as a person, someone who needed her help. But no woman had mothered Spring, and no man had fathered her; Binnesman had fashioned her from roots and stones and the blood of the Earth. Averan could never really be her friend, because the green woman only wanted one thing in life: to hunt down and kill the enemies of the Earth.

Averan had thought that there might be two hundred warriors when she walked into the cave, but now she saw that she had underestimated the size of the band by at least half, for many men could be seen hovering about farther back into the tunnel, deeper in the shadows. The sight gave her some confidence. She would want all of the Runelords that she could find marching at her back as she led them into the Underworld.

She felt worn to the bone. For the past week, ever since she’d fled the reaver attack on Keep Haberd, she’d been pushing herself hard.

Averan went to the fire, where some farm boy shoved a plate in her hand. A knight carved a slab of meat from a roasting mutton and slapped it on her plate, then scooped buttered parsnips and bread pudding from a pair of iron kettles.

It was fine food for such a rough camp, a veritable feast. The knights here were serving their best, for this might well be the last decent meal they ever had. Averan took the fare and began looking for a bare rock to sit on.

She went to a shadowed corner of the cave, where dozens of others were eating, squatted in the sand. She hunched over her plate. Here, at her back, a few feather ferns grew. She cut a bite of mutton, then happened to glance up.

Every man within twenty feet seemed to be watching her. Their faces showed undisguised wonder mingled with curiosity. Embarrassment warmed her cheeks.

So, she realized. They’ve all been talking about me. They knew that she had tasted reaver’s brain and had learned their secrets in doing so.

She skewered the mutton with her knife, took a bite. The succulent lamb had been delicately seasoned with rosemary and basted in a honey-mint sauce.

“Not as good as broiled reavers’ brains,” Averan mused aloud, “but it will have to do.”

Several farmers laughed overloud at the jest, even though it wasn’t very funny. At least she’d managed to break the tension. Suddenly conversations started up again. Averan began chewing in earnest when a beefy palm slapped her on the back.

“Need some ale to wash it down?” Someone thrust a tin mug into her hands. She recognized the voice and choked out a cry of surprise. “Brand?”

Beastmaster Brand, her old friend, stood above her, grinning hugely. He stretched his one arm wide, inviting her in to hug, and Averan leapt up and grabbed him around the neck.

“I thought you were dead!” she cried.

“You weren’t the only one,” he laughed. “I thought I was as good as dead a few times myself.”

The laugh sounded genuine enough, but not as carefree as it would have a week ago. Averan heard pain in it.

She gazed at him. Brand had been her tutor. He’d taken Averan in as a child and taught her to ride graaks at the aerie in Keep Haberd. He’d taught her to read and write, so that she could deliver the duke’s messages. He’d trained her in the care and feeding of graaks. For such kindness alone, she would have been eternally grateful. But he’d been more than a master. He’d been a mother and father, lord and family, and dearest friend. The relief she felt at seeing him again, the sheer joy, brought a flood of tears to her eyes.

“Oh, Brand, how did you escape? When last I saw you...the reavers—”

“Were charging toward the keep,” Brand said. In her mind’s eye, Averan relived the moment. They’d been high above Keep Haberd, where she could look down over the castle walls and see the reavers charging. The reaver horde had charged in such vast numbers, and at such a fast pace, that he could not possibly have escaped.

“I set you aback old Leatherneck, and sent you into the sky,” Brand said. “Then freed the last of the graaks from their tethers.

“Afterward, I just stood on the landing, looking down over the city. The reavers came in a stampede, and the world shook beneath them. They were like a black flood, rushing down the canyon. Most of the graaks fled. But young Brightwing, she kept circling the aerie, crying out, all mournful.

“The reavers hit the castle wall, and never even slowed. Our ballistas, our knights...” He shook his head sadly. “The reavers just shoved the walls down and rushed through the streets. Some folks tried to run, others to hide. The reavers were taking them all.

“With naught but one arm, I couldn’t fight. So I stood there, waiting for the reavers to eat me, when all of a sudden something hits me hard from behind. The next thing I know, Brightwing is lifting me above the fray. She has my leather vest in her claws, you see.

“Now, I’m a fat old man, and I think that she’s going to carry me to my death. But Brightwing flaps viciously and lugs me over the valley as if I were some young pig that she had a notion to eat. She wings along, and it seems to me that she’s dropping faster than she’s flying.”

Averan stared in wonder. “How far? How far did she take you?”

“A mile and a half,” Brand answered. “Maybe two.”

Averan knew that the graaks could carry more than just the weight of a child. She’d seen old Leatherneck lift a bull calf out of a field, and the calf couldn’t have weighed much less than Brand. And she’d heard that mother graaks would sometimes carry their enormous chicks from one nest to another, if the nest seemed to be in danger. But graaks could never bear such weight for any great distance.

“She must have taken you downwind from the castle.” Averan knew full well that if they’d gone upwind, even at a distance of two miles, the reavers would have smelled him.

“Aye,” Brand said. “That she did. And I had the good sense to stay put until the horde had passed.”

“What of the rest of the town?” Averan asked.

Brand shook his head sadly. “Gone. A few got out on fast horses—Duke Haberd and some of his cronies—” He bit off the words he wanted to say, his voice choked with outrage at such an act of cowardice.

“But what of your adventures?” Brand asked more brightly, changing the subject. “You’ve grown much since last I saw you.”

“Grown?” she asked. “In only a week?”

“Aye, you may not be a hair taller, but you’ve grown much indeed.” He reached out and touched her robes. The old blue skyrider’s robes were covered with tiny roots, as if seeds had sprouted in the wet fabric. Indeed, one could hardly see a trace of the blue wool anymore. The roots were twining together, forming a solid new fabric. It would be her wizard’s robe, the garment that, as an Earth Warden, would hide her and protect her from dangers.

“Yes,” Averan said. “I guess I have grown.” She felt sad when she said it. She hadn’t grown taller, but she felt a thousand years old. She’d seen too many innocent people die in the battles at Carris and Feldonshire. She’d seen more wonders and horrors in a week than she should have seen in a lifetime. And all of it had transformed her, awakened the green earth blood that flowed through her veins. She was no longer human. She was a wizardess with powers that mystified her as much as they did those around her.

Brand smiled broadly and said in a husky voice, “I’m so happy....” He clasped her around the neck and just held her for a moment.

Then he pulled back, and his face became all business again. “So, you’re going into the Underworld, are you?” Averan nodded. Brand seemed to be studying her. He continued, “I’d come with you, if I could. But I’m afraid that with naught but one arm, I’d be of no use. Sure, I can carry a pack full of food as well as the next man, but...”

“It’s all right,” Averan said.

“The thing is,” Brand said, “there are other ways that I can help. I’m a strong man, Averan, always have been. I want you to have my strength.”

Averan swallowed hard and blinked back a tear. “You want to be my Dedicate?”

“Not just me,” Brand said. He nodded toward some of the local woodsmen sitting in the cave. “Lots of us would give anything to help—anything. We might not be worthy to march beside folks like you and Gaborn as Runelords, but we will do what we can. The king’s facilitators has brought hundreds of forcibles!”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Averan said. “What if you died, trying to give me your strength?”

“I think that I would die of a broken heart if you didn’t take it, and that would be worse....”

“I couldn’t bear it,” Averan said. “I couldn’t bear the thought of finding you now just to lose you again.”

“If you won’t take an endowment from me,” Brand warned, “I’ll give it to someone else.”

Averan wanted to argue, but at that moment a facilitator hurried from the back of the cave. “Averan,” he called. He wore black pants and a black half cloak, with the silver chains of his office upon his neck. As she got up, Averan looked down sadly at Brand, and stumbled through the crowd. She followed the facilitator’s billowing black robes into the recesses of the cave. He said, “His Highness has sought a great many endowments for you, child. Twenty endowments of scent from dogs we found, and twenty of stamina, eight each of grace and brawn, twelve of metabolism, ten each of sight and hearing, five of touch.”

Averan’s head spun at the news, at the sacrifices others would have to make. She’d leave dozens of people blind, mute, or otherwise deprived of vital powers.

Perhaps as horrific would be the changes that the endowments wrought upon her. With twelve endowments of metabolism, she’d be able to move faster than others, to run fifty miles in an hour, though to her it would only seem that time had slowed. Each day she would age nearly two weeks. Each year, her body would be more than a dozen years older. In a decade, she would be an old, old woman, if she lived at all.

He led Averan to a corner back in the cave where a dozen potential Dedicates squatted. The facilitator had seven forcibles—small branding irons made of blood metal—laid out on a satin pillow. His apprentices already had a girl on her back and were coaxing the sight from her. She seemed a small thing, not much older than Averan. She had kinky blond hair, a thin face. Beads of sweat were breaking on her brow. One apprentice sang in a piping voice and held the forcible to her arm while the other whispered words of encouragement. “Here she comes now,” the facilitator’s apprentice whispered in an urgent voice, “the hope of mankind, she who must guide our lord through the Underworld, through the dark places. It is your sight that will let her see, your sacrifice that will give us hope of success.”

Hope of success? Averan wondered. The task ahead seemed daunting. The paths through the Underworld were as tangled as a massive ball of yarn. And what could she do when she reached her destination? Kill the lord of the Underworld?

I’m not ready for this, Averan thought desperately.

But the facilitator’s apprentice kept it up, this litany, and the girl stared at Averan with pleading eyes. “Save me,” she mouthed to Averan. “Save us all.”

I’m the last thing she will ever see, Averan realized. And with her gift, my eyes will pierce the deep shadows. I shall be able to count the veins in the wings of a moth at a dozen paces.

Averan went forward timidly, and took the girl’s hand. “Thank you,” Averan said. “I’ll do...everything that I can.”

At that, the forcible blazed white hot, and the girl screamed in pain. Her pupils seemed to shrivel like prunes and go white before her eyes rolled back in her head. The girl fell backward, dazed with pain, and the facilitator’s apprentice pulled the forcible away. A white puckering scar showed the rune for sight branded on her arm.

The facilitator’s apprentice waved the glowing tip of the forcible in the air experimentally. It left a white trail, like living fire, snaking in its wake. Yet the trail remained hanging in the air long after the forcible had passed. He studied the glow, the width and breadth of it, and then looked to the master facilitator for approval.

“Well done,” the facilitator said. “Continue.”

The apprentice reached down to Averan and slid the sleeve of her robe up, revealing the scars from endowments taken in the past. With all of her former Dedicates dead, the scars had all gone gray.

The facilitator’s apprentice once again began his birdlike singing and pressed the forcible to Averan’s flesh. The glowing white trail broke off at the Dedicate’s arm, and flowed into Averan. As it did, the blood metal flared white, and then dissolved into dust.

Averan felt the indescribable ecstasy that comes from taking an endowment, and as the endowments of sight flowed into her, it seemed as if the dingy cave exploded into brightness.

After that nothing would ever look the same again.

2 A Light in a Dark Place

A whooshing sound swept through the Mouth of the World, like the sound of wings, and the huge bonfire snuffed out. Iome glanced up. The Wizard Binnesman stood where the bonfire had been. He had just made a fold of ground rise up and surge like a wave to smother the flames.

Now he held his staff up, and a swarm of fireflies circled it, so that he stood in a haze of green light. Earth blood flowed in his veins, so that he had a green cast to his skin, and even the autumn colors of his robes held some of that hue, so that in this light he looked strange and unearthly. Iome imagined that he glowed like a Bright One, straight from old stories of the netherworld.

“Gentlemen, ladies, may I have your ears?” Binnesman asked loudly. “The time is at hand that we must prepare for battle. Let nothing that you hear this morning be spoken by daylight or before an open fire, for some pyromancers can overhear your words in the sizzle and pop of the flames.”

With that, he glanced at Gaborn for a moment. “Your Highness...” Binnesman said.

Iome felt a thrill of anticipation. She had been waiting all night to hear Gaborn’s plans. Yesterday she had begged to accompany Gaborn to the Underworld, and he had made no promises, only said, “I will think upon it.”

A hush fell over the crowd. Everyone drew close. Someone called out, “We’re with you, milord!” Shouts and war cries rose from all about.

Gaborn raised his hands and begged the men for silence.

“Over the past day,” he began, “many of you have asked to come with me to the Underworld: High Marshal Chondler,” he nodded with deference to Chondler, “Sir Langley of Orwynne, Sir Ryan McKim of Fleeds.” He hesitated as he gave appreciative looks to each of these warriors. “And your great hearts are borne out by greater deeds. Each of you is more than worthy to follow me. But my mind has been much occupied on thoughts of how I can save my people, and I have had to make some hard choices....”

At that, the strong lords around Gaborn all stood tall and proud, eager to hear whom he would choose as companions.

Gaborn gazed out over them, and in the darkness his pupils had widened enormously, so that almost the whole whites of his eyes seemed to have faded. By this, Iome knew that he had already taken several endowments of sight, so that he might better see in the Underworld.

“Those who will follow me,” Gaborn said with finality, “will be three: the wizard Binnesman, his wylde, and the child Averan.”

A gasp of dismay swept through the crowd, and Iome choked out a sob. She felt sick. She had hoped to accompany Gaborn, and had dared to imagine an army at her back with a few hundred warriors at the very least.

Several lords grumbled openly and looked as if they would march into the Underworld against Gaborn’s orders.

Sir Ryan McKim of Fleeds shouted at the lords, “Shut yer yaps, all of you, or it’s a few loose teeth I’ll be giving you! If this man were but a common king, you’d show him better respect. How much more should we honor the counsel of Earth King?”

Gaborn smiled in gratitude at Sir McKim, and said, “It is not by force of arms that we will win our way to the throne of the fell queen. Binnesman, Averan, and I are all under the protection of the Earth. I suspect that that alone can help us win our way into the Underworld. And though I would gladly take an army at my back, I believe all would die.”

Iome saw his look falter then. Gaborn’s face seemed pale, as if he stared death in the face, and she suspected that the struggle to come might be grim indeed.

“Your Highness,” High Marshal Chondler reminded Gaborn, “yesterday you mentioned that the fate of the world hangs in the balance with this upcoming battle. If we do not kill the reavers—”

“We’re not out to kill reavers—” the Wizard Binnesman objected. “That was never my intent. The Earth is wounded with a sore wound, and deep. We must heal its wounds if we can. I suspect that in order to do so, we will have to destroy the three runes and their author. We may only need to kill one reaver....”

“Aye,” Chondler argued, “you’ve got to kill one reaver, but doubtless you’ll have to face thousands more to win your way into her lair. No one has ever gone so deep into the Underworld. If my guess is right, this is an old nest, in the farthest depths of the earth. I myself have risked a journey into the Underworld on two occasions, but only on a dare, and never have I gone so far.” He swallowed, looked around the tunnel, and the warriors all fell silent as he spoke. With the fire gone from the cave, the night grew dark and deep. The starlight outside could hardly lend more than shadows to a man’s face. “Our forefathers used to hunt reavers down there, far below. Mostly they didn’t dare the deep lairs—where the ground gets hot to the touch and the air is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The old books call it the Unbounded Warren, for the tunnels go on forever, and every reaver lair is like a hive, with hundreds or thousands of warriors to guard its nests.”

Averan shouted, “Yes, but the great seals aren’t near the nest! They’re near the Lair of Bones.”

“So,” High Marshal Chondler said, “you’ll be going as assassins, not as an army. Still, Your Highness, I respectfully submit that I or Langley might be of great help on such a quest....”

Gaborn gazed evenly at Chondler for a moment, then his eyes flickered around the cavern. “There are great deeds to be done,” Gaborn said, “more deeds than men to do them. Indeed, in the battles to come, each of you must play a hero’s part. I sense danger closing from every side.”

He gazed down at the floor and peered as if into the depths of the earth. Beads of sweat stood up on his brow. “The first enemy to strike will be in Heredon, a thousand miles north of here, in two nights’ time. Even if I could send an army to Heredon’s aid, it would not help. The Earth bids me to warn the people there to hide—to seek shelter underground.”

Murmurs of wonder rose from the crowd, for Gaborn gave curious counsel indeed. “Hide beneath the ground, like a mole?” someone blurted. Strange though it sounded, the counsel of an Earth King could not be ignored.

“At dusk the evening after that,” Gaborn continued, “war will begin to break out close to home. If it’s battle your stomach wants,” Gaborn said, “you shall have your fill...and more. For war is coming, war with a foe who will not spare women or children.”

At this Gaborn leapt up on a huge rock, so that he could see above the crowd, and shouted, “Send messengers throughout all Mystarria: tell all those who can to gather at Carris. I need every man who can stand upright, every woman who can hold a bow, every child over the age of ten who is willing to stare death in the face. I need them all to gather on the castle walls.

“At sunset, three nights hence, steel your hearts and sound the horns of war. You are to strike, and strike relentlessly. Our enemies will show no mercy and give no quarter, and if we fail, the end of mankind may well be upon us!”

Lowicker shouted, “You mean to send women and children into battle? Will you be there to lead us?”

“By the Seven Stones, I hope so,” Gaborn answered, but Iome saw the worry in his eyes deepen, and knew that he doubted his own strength.

Gaborn gazed out on the assembled lords. Men from a dozen nations gathered around him. “Sir Langley, take the fastest horse that you can find, and fly for your homeland at Orwynne. Bring every lord who will follow you back to Carris. You must reach it by sunset in three days’ time.”

“Aye,” Langley said. With half a dozen endowments of metabolism, he could easily run fifty miles per hour. Langley had hardly agreed when he spun on his heel and fled.

“High Marshal Chondler, you want a great task, and I will give it to you: I ask that you begin fortifying Carris. Do not worry about gathering supplies, for you will not need more than the castle has to offer. If you do not win this battle, all is lost.”

“By the Powers!” Chondler swore. It would have been a daunting task in any case, since the reavers had destroyed the castle walls. But Gaborn put the weight of the world upon the man’s shoulders.

“And what of me?” Iome asked.

Gaborn looked at her sadly, as if he feared to break her heart. “If Carris falls, I will need someone to lead our people to safety.”

“I’m a Runelord,” Iome said, “and by right should fight at Carris. Indeed, should I not be in command?”

“I considered having you hold Carris,” Gaborn said. “You were the last to leave Castle Sylvarresta, and no one cares for her people more than you. But Chondler is the better leader for Carris.”

She knew that he sought an excuse to send her somewhere far away, out of danger.

“I swore on our wedding day to be a light for you in dark places,’” Iome said. “And there is nowhere darker than where you are going. Let me come. I will do all that I can to ease your journey.”

Gaborn shook his head sadly. “You don’t understand. It’s not safe.”

The way that he said it, Iome suspected that Gaborn feared not only for her but for his own life. Her heart pounded. She dared not argue with him further in front of his own men.

Chondler called to several Knights Equitable, and the men began to hurry away, grabbing arms and packs. The place suddenly became a madhouse.

With the members of the band selected, Gaborn quickly began choosing weapons. Averan, Binnesman, and the green woman each had their wizard’s staves, and would not want to be encumbered with other arms. Gaborn had his customary horseman’s warhammer, the long-handled weapon favored in Mystarria. He also bore a saber as a matter of habit. But neither weapon was well suited for fighting reavers in their lair. The warhammer posed a danger to anyone who might be standing too close when he swung it in combat. And Gaborn’s saber would probably snap the first time it struck reaver hide.

So Gaborn studied some weapons that Marshal Chondler’s men had retrieved from Castle Arrowshire for just this purpose, and now laid on the ground before him: reaver darts. These were heavy spears made of solid iron, much like a javelin in shape, but longer. Each dart, some eight feet in length, was pointed at each end and tipped with diamond so that it might better pierce reaver hide. Around the iron shaft a grip had been wrapped, made of rough cowhide.

It was an ancient weapon, rarely used over the past thousand years. It looked overly heavy, but with endowments of brawn the dart would be as light as a willow wand in his hand. Still, its very bulk made it clumsy, inelegant.

So what am I to do while Gaborn is out saving the world? Iome wondered. He had already rejected her plea to go with him, and she doubted that he would be easily persuaded. She carried his child, after all, and he would not subject the child to danger.

And Gaborn was afraid not just for her but for himself.

There are things I can do to help, Iome thought, even if he doesn’t let me come, things that Gaborn would never do in his own behalf.

Iome had always been more pragmatic than Gaborn. She admired his virtue, his refined sensibilities. She loved him for his gentleness.

But there comes a time when we must no longer be gentle, she told herself.

Iome went back into the tunnel, past the smoldering campfire into the deep shadows where a pair of facilitators were transferring endowments to Averan. Half a dozen Dedicates lay about the girl, like spent sacrifices.

Iome waited until the head facilitator was free for a moment, and then approached.

“Gaborn will be leaving soon,” she told him. “When he does, send word to our facilitators at Castle Sylvarresta in Heredon. I have many forcibles hidden in the uppermost tomb on the hill. I want the facilitators there to use them to vector endowments to Gaborn. He has Dedicates at Castle Longmot. It shouldn’t be hard.”

“How many endowments should we give him?” the facilitator asked.

“All that they can.”

“Gaborn would never agree to that!” the facilitator said too loudly. “Even as a child, he has never loved the forcible.”

“Of course not,” Iome said, trying to shush him with a gesture. “He must not know what we do for him. I ask only one boon. Gaborn is an oath-bound lord. He will not take endowment by force, nor barter for them with the poor who have no other choice. Those who give the endowments must be adults who understand the danger and who give their strengths voluntarily, out of their own pure desire to serve others.”

The facilitator studied her. He knew how hopeless Gaborn’s quest would be. He also knew that the world could not allow him to fail. “You will lose him, you know,” the facilitator said. “Even if he succeeds on his quest, with so many endowments of metabolism, he will age and die while you are yet young. And you risk something even more profane. He might well become the Sum of All Men, immortal, alone, incapable of dying.”

The thought wrung tears from Iome’s eyes. “Don’t you think I’m aware of the dangers? This is not something that I do lightly.”

“Very well,” the facilitator said. “I will send word to Heredon at once.”

As Averan finished taking her endowments, Iome strode deeper into the cave. Binnesman and his wylde followed in Iome’s wake.

Farther back in the tunnel, Gaborn stood alone with a torch in hand, peering into the void while his knights broke camp.

The opening to the Mouth of the World was more than a hundred feet wide, but quickly it tapered down to a bit over twenty-five feet wide.

The reavers had recently reinforced the walls with mucilage, which hardened into a substance tougher than concrete. The mucilage had been shaped into riblike pillars that arced up gently to reach a point some thirty feet overhead. Every dozen yards a new set of pillars rose. At the apex, where pillars from each side of the tunnel met, ran a bony ridge the length of the crawlway.

The appearance of these pillars was disconcerting. When Iome peered down the tunnel, the supports looked like bony white ribs, as if the trail led through the skeletal remains of some vast worm, long dead.

From the roof above, cave kelp hung in long tendrils, and other hairy plants dangled.

“What are you doing?” Iome asked.

“Wondering how many torches we should take,” Gaborn said. “Carrying too many would be a cumbersome burden, and taking too few will be a disaster.”

“Waxroot burns well,” Binnesman suggested. “We should find some growing along the way.”

“I may have something better than torches,” Iome said, glad to prove her worth. “I took the liberty of bringing a present from the treasury at the Courts of Tide.” She went to her pack, which sat waiting nearby beneath some coils of stout rope, and pulled out a bag filled with jewelry, all set with opals. These were but a small part of the treasures of the Mystarrian court, and represented the vast hoard of jewels collected by Gaborn’s ancestors over a period of more than two thousand years. There were no less than eighty cape pins with opals of every color, to match whatever a lord might have in his courtly wardrobe: black opals from the hills above Westmoore. Fire opals from Indhopal, pearl opals from beyond the Carroll Sea, a blue opal so old that Chancellor Westhaven had told her that no one at court knew where it had come from. There were golden opals flecked with red set in a tarnished golden crown, and necklaces, bracelets, and rings by the score.

She dumped the contents onto the ground near Gaborn’s feet. The jewels gleamed dully in the glow of his torch. “Can you draw the light from them,” she asked Binnesman, “as you did at Castle Sylvarresta?”

“Yes,” Binnesman exulted. “These will be marvelous!” The wizard scattered the jewels into a circle, and then drew runes outside. He waved his staff above them and spoke an incantation, then whispered softly, “Awaken.”

The stones began to glow dimly, each with its own luster. It was like watching the stars come out on a summer’s evening. First, the blue opal caught a spark, and then others joined it.

Yet unlike stars, there seemed to be no end to their glory. Even without a dozen endowments of sight, the resplendent light that shot up from the opals would have bedazzled and pained the eyes.

Streams of lustrous white, like sunlight bouncing off a snowy field, radiated from many opals. But startling colors played among them: streams of blue water running from a sapphire lake, a ruddy gold like an autumn day, greens and reds so fierce that if Iome had had to describe them, words would have failed her.

The stones blazed, and their brightness was such that Iome felt the heat from them, as if from a fire. She was forced to look away, and thus she looked up and saw the colors dancing across the roof of the cave.

Averan gasped, and even the green woman made a cooing sound in wonder.

Binnesman quickly reached down and pawed through the opals, gathering up the brightest. Iome had hastily searched among the treasure chests before she came, and many of the stones that had seemed fairest to her then were cast aside.

“Softer now,” the wizard said as he finished. The opals dimmed, so that no heat burned from them, and yet even their muted light was brighter than any lantern.

“Let us see here,” the wizard muttered. “Who shall need what?”

The wizard first picked up a silver ring that held a fine white stone that blazed hot. “Take care with this one, child,” he said, handing it to Averan. “You can cook your meals with it.”

Averan put the ring on and rejoiced, “It fits like it was made for me!”

“Perhaps it was,” the wizard jested.

The ring glowed fiercely, and Averan stroked it and whispered, “Softer now.” The light from it dimmed, as if she wore a star upon her finger.

For his wylde, the wizard chose a necklace with dozens of golden opals in it. He draped it over her head, and the green woman merely stared into the stones, bedazzled.

Last of all, he picked cape pins for himself and Gaborn.

Gaborn’s was the pin with the green opal, which blazed the brightest of all the colored stones. “A singular stone for a singular man,” Binnesman said as he pinned Gaborn’s cape.

He stretched out his hand above the rest of the jewels, preparing to snuff out their light, when Iome grabbed his wrist and said, “Wait. I’m going with you.”

She reached into the pile of jewels and picked up the ancient golden crown. Not many of its opals were bright, but with the hundreds of opals therein, Iome suspected that she could see nearly a quarter of a mile back into the cave.

Gaborn stared at her evenly. “No, you won’t be coming. I have another task for you.” He glanced up, as if afraid that others might hear. “If Chondler fails us, if he is overwhelmed at Carris, then I suspect that all of my Chosen may die. But there may still be one slim hope.”

“Name it,” Iome said.

“Some folks might flee to safety on the sea,” Gaborn said. “Reavers hate water, and cannot see far enough to safely reconnoiter the oceans. They never surface on islands. So why not take some people to safety? You could sail north, into the frozen seas where no reavers would dare follow!”

“So,” Iome said, letting only the slightest tone of bitterness creep into her voice, “you still hope to send me to safety?”

“I’m hoping that you will lead our people to safety.”

“Fine,” Iome said. “Send word to Chancellor Westhaven for Mystarria, and to Chancellor Rodderman in Heredon, and let them make the preparations. They don’t need my help.”

“But—” Gaborn began to say.

“Don’t play upon my sense of duty,” Iome warned him. “I’m not some servant. I’m sworn to your service more closely than any man could be. I know what you’re thinking. You want to send me to safety, but you are the Earth King, and the only place that I can be safe is at your side. You swore, you swore in your wedding vows, that you would be my protector.”

“I don’t know what we’ll find down there,” Gaborn argued. “I can’t promise that you’ll be safe.”

“Then what good is your Earth sight?” Iome asked. “You’re as blind to our fate as any common man. But I can promise you this. When others falter, I’ll be your shield. And while you’re thinking about how to save the world, I’ll be thinking about how to save you.”

Gaborn peered hard into her face, searching for an argument. He said as if the words were wrenched from him in agony, “All right. We will face the pit together.”

3 Wed to a Woman of Water

Sir Borenson and his wife Myrrima fled the village of Fenraven before dawn, when the mist was lifting from the mire while the stars drifted from the heavens like sparkling cinders.

Borenson first raided the kitchen, grabbing a few sausages and some loaves of bread, which he stuffed in his pack. Then he crept to the door of the inn, warhammer in hand, and peered out into the street. Cottages hunkered dazedly in the darkness, casting long shadows, and the bare limbs of trees rose up all around behind them like black fingers, silently straining to catch the falling stars. Nothing in the village seemed to be awake. No smoke from a morning fire yet drifted from a chimney. No dogs barked, no pigs grunted curiously.

Yet Borenson’s mind was uneasy, for he still remembered the hooded man who had followed them two nights before. The fellow had ridden a force horse in the darkness, braving the wight-infested bogs of the Westlands. That showed that he was a bold man. But he had also ridden hooded, with sheepskin boots pulled over the hooves of his mount to soften its footfalls, in the manner of assassins out of Inkarra. He might have just been a lone highwayman, hoping to waylay unsuspecting merchants. But Borenson had long ago learned to nurture his suspicions.

So he watched the street for several long minutes, peering into the shadows. When he felt reasonably certain that no one was watching, he whispered, “Let’s go,” and crept like a shadow out the door, around the side of the inn, and into the stables.

Inside the stables a lantern burned dimly, and the stalls were dark. The hay up in the loft smelled moldy, which one might have expected in late winter or early spring, but which seemed odd here in autumn. Borenson watched Myrrima as she lit a lantern. She did not wince when she lifted the light from its hook, and as she carried it to the stalls, she moved gracefully, seeming to flow smoothly over the ground like water. A night past, she had managed to banish a wight with cold iron, but its touch had nearly stopped her heart. Now, to all appearances, her healing was complete.

Myrrima held the lantern high as they neared the stalls, searching for their horses, and Borenson grunted in surprise, giving a little laugh.

“What?” Myrrima whispered.

“My piebald mare! Look, she’s here! Someone must have found her.” She was stabled next to Borenson’s own warhorse. He’d found the little mare outside Carris, and in the past few days had become quite fond of her. But he’d lost her while fleeing the wight. She’d struck her hoof on a root while running in the darkness. “Do you think she’ll be lame?”

“I hope not,” Myrrima said. “I’m the one who found her outside town yesterday afternoon. Her hoof was split, and the poor thing looked ready for slaughter, so I used the last of Binnesman’s salve on her.”

“Binnesman’s wondrous salve?” Borenson asked, peering through the slats in the stable at the horse’s hoof. “I thought I’d used it all on you.”

“You dropped the tin,” Myrrima said, “but there was a tad left.”

There was a white blaze on the mare’s hoof, as if the poor beast had injured it a year ago, but otherwise it looked fine. The mare held her weight evenly, and did not limp as she ambled close to Borenson, to nuzzle him.

Borenson stroked the horse with a sense of loss. “The old wizard outdid himself with that batch. We’ll not see the likes of that ever again, I fear.” The salve had saved Myrrima’s life, and Borenson’s, performing wonder upon wonder. But now it was gone.

“Blessed be the brooks that flow from the slopes of Cerinpyre, and glad be the fish that swim therein,” Myrrima said, almost singing. Borenson wondered at her words, for it sounded as if she quoted a song that he had never heard. But Cerinpyre was the name of a tall mountain west of Balington, where Binnesman had made the salve.

“How far is it to Inkarra?” Myrrima asked, changing the subject.

“It’s seventy miles from here to Batenne,” Borenson said. “If we make good time, we can be there before noon, and I can take my endowments at the home of the marquis. We’ll reach the southern border forty miles beyond. The passage over the mountains into the Hidden Kingdoms may be slow, but afterward, the roads should be good all the way to Iselferion.”

“That’s where the Storm King lives?” Myrrima asked.

Borenson nodded. “We should be there by nightfall. We can deliver Gaborn’s message to the Storm King—and perhaps even learn the whereabouts of Daylan Hammer.”

“Is it that simple?” Myrrima asked.

Borenson laughed at her naïveté, wondering just how much she knew about Inkarra. He peered hard at her in the darkness. “I meant it as a joke.”

They saddled their horses. Borenson took the mare from her stall gingerly, to see if indeed she was healed. To his delight, she was more than just well. She seemed positively sassy.

So Myrrima and Borenson rode into the night, toward the hills south of town. For a bit, the land dropped, and they rode through a thick fog. Myrrima’s horse drew close to Borenson’s then, as if fearing more wights. Borenson looked to his wife, to see if she too was afraid, but Myrrima rode her horse with her head back, her chin raised, as if savoring the moment. The fog misted her skin, so that dew formed on her brow and droplets sparkled in her hair, and she gulped the foggy air greedily.

Borenson grunted in surprise. His wife seemed to be a changed woman after last night. He could smell the water in her breath, like the wind off a lake, and her hair smelled like a still pool. But it wasn’t just her scent that had changed. It was her movements, too—the easy way she seemed to flow when she walked, the calmness and sense of peace that pervaded her.

Wizardborn. She had learned that she was wizardborn, a servant to water. The water’s touch had healed her, transformed her. But she had rejected the opportunity to serve it, and elected to stay with him.

Yes...something was different about her.

The land rose steadily for several miles, so that they soon could see the foggy moors behind. Bands of forest and field alternated along the road, but the woods were quiet and dry, and the land seemed healthier than the bogs to the north had been.

Still, he warily watched the margins of the road for sign of the hooded man. He and Myrrima seldom spoke, and then only in whispers. Whenever they reached a patch of woods, they’d hurry the horses through at a gallop, and each time they topped a hill, he would stop and search the starlit stretches of the road behind for long moments.

Thus they made their way into the highlands of Cragenwold, a region of dense, rocky forests. The road was so seldom used that it seemed only a ruin. Partial walls stood among the bracken where stone had been stacked upon gray stone a thousand years past. Broken statues of ancient lords lined the road, the wind and water having worn away the hollows of their eyes. Their gaping mouths bore mute testimony that Old Ferecia had once been the proudest of realms.

But that had been long ago. Now black pines crowded about the ruins of graveyards. Owls hooted in the lonesome groves, letting their voices echo among the hollows.

The road wound up and down for an hour, yet each time the path went down, it seemed to rise higher again. The morning sun rose, ponderously large on the horizon.

Borenson could feel the dead in these woods, pressing against the shadows, as if restrained somewhere off in the mossy trees. Yet the spirits here did not feel evil. They had once been men much like him, and he did not fear such wights. Besides, the sun beat on his back each time he exited the trees, and so long as it did, the dead were powerless to manifest themselves.

With the coming of the sun, Borenson began to watch the road for sign of tracks, but saw nothing for miles until they passed over soggy ground by a brook: and there it was, a scuff mark where there should have been a clean track.

Borenson’s glance flickered over the scuff. “Our assassin. Do you think it’s fresh?” he asked. He reached behind his back and drew his warhammer from its sheath.

Myrrima hopped down from her horse. She had taken endowments of scent from a dog, and now she sniffed near the track, then tested the air. “Not fresh,” she said. “A day old maybe. A man, by the smell of him, an odd one.”

“Odd?” Borenson whispered.

“His smell reminds me of open lands and lonely hills. Maybe he’s only been out in the weather for a few days, but I think its much longer. It’s like...he’d rather sleep in the rain than in a cozy inn.”

“Hunh,” Borenson said. He glanced about. “More likely, Raj Ahten has had him watching this road for a month. We’ll water the horses, take our breakfast here.”

He got off his mount, and led it uphill, away from the brook. Here, hazelnut trees crowded at the edge of a glen, huddled together like gossiping old women. Down below, the road wound like a ribbon over hills toward Fenraven, and Borenson could glimpse bits of it through the trees farther up the highway.

He lit a small fire and watched the road ahead while the twigs burned away, letting the flame consume the bark from some larger sticks, until he had enough coals so that he could roast the sausages he’d brought from the inn. There was little movement on the road ahead. He saw a huge red stag warily walking along, antlers arching so that they rested on its back, legs stiff, nose high in the air. It was scenting for a doe. But there was no sign of the mysterious rider ahead, nor of anyone else.

Still, Borenson felt uneasy. He couldn’t quite name the cause of his fear. It might just have been the trip to Inkarra. That in itself was dangerous enough.

But there was something more. His main worry was for Myrrima. Over the past weeks, he had been loath to let himself fall in love with her. As a guard to the crown prince, his first duty had always been to Gaborn. He’d never felt that there would be room for a wife in his life—or at least not a woman that he would love. He’d always imagined that if he took a wife, it would be some poor woman, a starveling who would make his meals and satisfy his other physical urges in return for a warm roof. He had not imagined that he would marry a beautiful woman, a strong woman who loved him fiercely, a woman with wit and charm.

Now he was more than smitten by Myrrima. Now he felt struck dumb, like a boy whose heart was churning for the first time with unimagined passions.

Last night with Myrrima, as they had consummated their love, had been perfect.

Yet he felt that something was wrong. He feared that she would leave him—or, more exactly, that something was trying to pull her away from him.

His thoughts kept returning to the hooded man. There was something sinister about him.

Myrrima remained down by the brook, hidden in the thick of the trees. Borenson imagined that she was bathing herself, or merely resting, or perhaps gathering more firewood. But when he’d put the thick sausages on some forked sticks and begun to simmer them over the coals, he realized that he had not seen Myrrima for far too long.

Not wanting to call out with the threat of highwaymen about, he hurried back down to the brook. Myrrima wasn’t by the road, but he could see her modest footprints in the soft earth beside the stream.

She’d headed downhill, following the brook. Trailing her was easy. Moss and fallen leaves covered the muddy ground, making it firm enough for a man to walk on. The low music of water burbling over rounded stones covered his footfalls, and the scent of the stream filled the air.

Borenson lightly crept along, watching her trail. No other footprints followed her, and only in one spot did he notice anything suspicious—the tracks of an enormous wolf crossed her path. The sight reminded him that they were in the wilds.

A steep slope dropped away just ahead, and the brook suddenly pitched over it, spilling into a narrow pool. Just beyond it, a wider pool opened where the water was as still and as clear as glass.

Myrrima knelt on the green grass beside the pool among a field of posies. Cattails thrust up among some stones by the water, and beneath its surface one could see down into the depths. Silver minnows flashed among the black roots of a large pine.

Myrrima was not bathing. She merely sat gazing into the water, eyes unfocused, her bare feet dangling into the pond. As she sat, Borenson saw a little thrill at the water’s surface, as if a single minnow, or perhaps even a larger fish, swam just below the surface, its dorsal cutting the water. It raced along in a near circle, then wheeled toward the heart of the circle, suddenly breaking into three parts that zigged out in different directions and disappeared.

The movement thus drew a rune on the surface of the pond, one that Borenson did not recognize. His heart thrilled at the sight. No sooner had the surface of the pond gone still when a new rune began to take shape. Borenson peered close, to see if indeed there were minnows or water beetles swimming there, but he could see nothing. The water moved of its own accord.

Suddenly, Borenson understood his fear. It wasn’t an assassin that would take his wife, it was another suitor that sought to lure her away, one of the Powers.

I should have known, Borenson told himself. I should have seen it in the way that she flows over the ground, or inhales the morning mist, or in the way that dew sparkles in her hair. She’s an undine!

Borenson picked up a small twig and angrily hurled it into the pond, disrupting the water.

Myrrima looked up, and a broad smile broke across her face.

“You said that you rejected Water,” Borenson accused, struggling to control his voice.

“No,” Myrrima replied. “I said that I love you more, and that I refused to go to the sea.”

“But the Powers don’t let us make that choice. You can’t love both me and Water.”

“Are you so sure?” Myrrima asked. “Can a man love his wife and his children, his horse and his dog, his home and his country? Can he not love each of them deeply, in their own way?”

“He can,” Borenson said, “but life ever makes us choose between the things we love, and if you try to serve Water, it will lay its claim on you, the way that the Earth has laid its claim upon Gaborn.”

“Gaborn serves a hard master,” Myrrima said, “as firm and unyielding as stone.” She cupped her hand and dipped it into the pool, then ladled water onto a rock next to her. “But Water yields. It fills the empty spaces around us and the voids within us, and then lifts us up. I can be borne away upon deep currents of Water and still love you. I told you last night that I love you, and that I won’t leave you. It’s true. I will never leave you.”

Borenson knew that few who loved Water could resist its call for long, yet Myrrima’s soft and reassuring tone almost allayed his fears.

“Come here,” she said, patting the ground beside her. Borenson made his way down the slope and squatted on the grass at Myrrima’s side.

She reached out and touched his hand. It is said that powerful wizards evoke odd emotions when they enter the presence of common men. Flameweavers arouse men’s appetites—their greed for wealth, their lust for women, their hunger for blood, and their avarice—while Earth Wardens arouse a desire to procreate, or to till the soil, or to seek solace in dark places. Borenson had never really noticed such feelings before, until now. As Myrrima took his hand, he felt a sense of peace wash over him, a clean feeling that swept away his doubts and anxiety. He’d felt that same sense of ease last night, as the two of them lay tangled together in bed. He’d thought that it came from within, that he felt only the comfort that came with consummating their love. Now he saw that it was something more.

Myrrima took his right hand in hers, and looked deep into his eyes. Her own eyes were so dark that they were almost black, and the whites of her eyes were a pale blue. Even now, when there was no morning mist, droplets of water sparkled in her dark hair, and her breath smelled like some mountain freshet. But there was no trace of the undine about her. Her eyes were not turning as green as the sea. She was not growing gill slits in the hollow of her throat. There was no hint of silvery scales in her skin.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said, and the very words banished his fear. “Water requires a task of me, one that I am willing to give. A dark time is upon us, a dry time. Water needs warriors, to help bring stability and healing to the land. And I have been thinking: you and I are one. I would have you join me in my quest.”

She’s to be Water’s warrior? Borenson wondered. That explained why he could see no sign of the undine about her. Perhaps it also explained her uncommon prowess in battle. It was her hand that slew the Darkling Glory when all others succumbed to it. And by her hand she had banished a wight, something no mere mortal should have been able to do. And she had slain dozens of reavers in battle yesterday. Yes, he could see that she was a fit warrior. More than that, he could see that the Water chose wisely, for it tailored its request to fit Myrrima’s own penchant.

There was a hunger in Myrrima’s eyes. “Please, join me,” she said. “It is a battle that will leave no scars on the heart. Water will wash them all away.”

What had possessed her to say such a thing? She knew that his guilt over killing the Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta had nearly destroyed him. But did she also know that he had sought Water afterward, that he had made an offering beside a sacred pool?

He felt sure that even if she didn’t know, her master did. And now it made an offer to him in return.

Myrrima reached down with her left hand, cupped it, and ladled a handful of water over their clasped right hands. Borenson resisted the impulse to pull away at the last instant, and the cool liquid spilled over his hand, a hand that a week ago had been so drenched in blood that he had never thought it could be clean again. She poured the water over him slowly, and it spilled down over his thumb and fingers, and around his palms, and streamed down his elbow. There was more water, he thought, than any cupped hand should be able to hold.

The water was warmer than he’d imagined it would be, as if it still held the kiss of summer. And when Myrrima washed him thus, all the pain and weariness in his right arm seemed to depart. He didn’t just feel clean. He felt new.

Myrrima smiled at him, as if delighted by his surprise. She reached into the pool, and water striders darted away as she ladled out a second handful. “May Water refresh you,” she whispered, as she poured it over his head. His mind seemed to go clear. All the fears he felt about her future, all the doubts he had about his own destiny, seemed borne away. She scooped up a third handful and let it wash down the front of his shirt. “May Water sustain you,” she whispered, then leaned forward to kiss him, and added, “May Water make you its own.”

She kissed him then, and took hold of his tunic passionately. With a mighty heave she shoved him into the pool. But she held him even as she did, still locked in an embrace, and her weight bore him beneath the water. The warm water was over him and under him and all around, and she clung to him, still kissing him, and he found no need to breathe, and had no desire to push her away. Instead, she merely held him, her lips against his, and he knew that indeed she loved him, almost as much as she loved Water.

4 The Blind-Crab

Gaborn Val Orden descended into the Underworld. The few small signs of life right at the cave’s opening soon gave way to desolation. Just inside the tunnel, the air began to turn cool, and after a quarter of a mile it had a biting chill.

The frigid air steamed the breath of the horses, and within half a mile, ice glistened on the tunnel walls and crusted the floor. On the ceiling some ice crystals looked as if they had not been disturbed in a thousand years. Ice fans splayed out as wide as a man’s hand, and in such places, the lights from the opals reflected from the roof and the icy walls in a dazzling display.

Here on the floor in their path lay a dead reaver. Whether it had merely died of natural causes, or been killed by one of its own, or trampled by the horde as it raced through the cave, was hard to tell. The grim monster had been shoved up against the wall, as if the reavers had sought to get around it, and parts of it had been trampled. Its eyeless head was intact, shoved against the wall, its jaws gaping wide. A few small blind-crabs had been lured to it by its smell, but they too had succumbed to the cold, and lay around it in piles.

The tunnel was broad enough for five people to ride abreast, so ride they did, though the horses seemed jittery and ill liked the trail.

Reaver tracks were everywhere. The tramping of over seventy thousand of the monsters had worn a rut in the tunnel and cleared the floor of vegetation. Nothing grew upright, except an occasional column of fungi or a stray plant that lay splayed against the wall. And few vines or rootlike creepers swung from overhead to brush against them, for these too had snapped away as the reaver army marched beneath. The path led gently down, a trail that could easily be negotiated by horse or mule.

Averan rode in the lead. The girl had received endowments of scent from dogs, and by taking the lead, she hoped to detect the subtle odors of reaver speech, a tongue that only she could understand. The girl sniffled and wept softly as she rode. She had said a long and sad good-bye to one of her Dedicates, a big man named Brand, who had but one arm.

Iome rode close beside Gaborn. She was no warrior, though she had taken full as many endowments as any captain had in Gaborn’s guard. At the rear came Binnesman and the green woman. The tunnel led down into the heart of the mountains at a gradual slope, and rarely veered. When it did, Gaborn felt certain that it did so only to avoid enormous boulders or exceptionally hard stone.

Despite the ease of the early trail, the reaver’s tunnel was not free of damage. In places, bits of ceiling had caved in, leaving rocks and rubble on the tunnel floor. In another spot, the earth had cracked wide open. The fissure was but four feet wide but seemed to drop away endlessly below Iome as her mount jumped over.

Still, such was the skill of the reaver’s workmanship that the tunnel held, for the most part.

Reavers are used to earthquakes, Gaborn realized. They must know how to cope with them as well as we do with the wind and rain.

But other acts of nature could not be so easily avoided. In places water had seeped through the rocks above, and over the ages had formed stalagmites and stalactites. The reavers had cleared these away just four days past as they marched through the tunnel. But in some places water would spill down the walls, forming shallow streams and icy pools, and ultimately these would find some crevasse to seep into. Such crevasses widened over time, and cut away the floor.

After a dozen miles, the caves began to warm. The ice fans disappeared, and quite suddenly the cave was filled with a dense, cool fog.

The horses slowed to a walk, and despite the fact that Gaborn could not sense any immediate danger, his heart beat faster. Until now, the view had been clear before them, and Gaborn hadn’t feared that they would meet a reaver. At least, if they had met one, he’d have been able to see it. But now, the light thrown by his opal pin failed him, and he could hardly see his hand in front of his face.

The whole party was forced to dismount, and Gaborn walked for a bit in the fog, his skittish horse pulling at the reins with nearly each step.

He thought back to a conversation that he had had while Averan finished taking her endowments.

Gaborn’s Days had asked, “Your Highness, I beg you to take me with you. At least let me ride part of the way.”

Gaborn felt annoyed by the request from the historian. “You ask much of me, and never once have you given anything in return. You say that the Days are forbidden to become involved in political intrigues, that you are merely observers of the affairs of men, servants beholden to no one but the Time Lords. Yet I ask you one last time to become involved. Help me. Bid your Days around the world to warn the people: tell them to set sail north or south for the isles of the sea. If we do not defeat the reavers at Carris, there may be no other refuge.”

To Gaborn it seemed a small request, one that could easily be fulfilled. Each Days had given an endowment of wit to another, who then granted his own endowment in return, so that the two Days shared one joint memory.

The Days that stood before Gaborn acted as the “witness” for the “twins,” scrutinizing Gaborn’s every word and deed. His twin acted as a scribe, and lived a retired life on an island in the cold seas north of Orwynne, where she wrote the chronicles of Gaborn’s life.

Thus, with all of the scribes living together, they formed a vast network. In theory, the Days could do as Gaborn asked. They could warn every lord in every realm of the impending doom.

“This would violate our political neutrality,” the Days answered Gaborn.

“Not if you warn all men equally,” Gaborn said. “I don’t ask you to favor any one nation above another. Warn all men. Help me save any man who will save himself.”

For the first time in his life, Gaborn saw a Days flinch and seriously consider a request for help. By the Days’s own law, if a prince, though he be but a child, should fall into a pool and begin to drown, the Days was not allowed to offer a hand.

“You understand,” his Days answered after a moment, “that whether you want it or not, there would be political repercussions. Kings and queens would flee their own lands, or send their children into exile. Nations would tumble, populaces shift. Wars would erupt as men struggled for control of the islands in the north.”

“At least some would live,” Gaborn said. “At least in the northern wastes, they’d stand a chance against the reavers.”

Iome’s Days, a young girl who was new to the task, looked to Gaborn’s Days and said, “We should take the request to the council.”

“You would risk a schism!” Gaborn’s Days objected.

“And you would risk the fate of mankind!” Iome’s Days shouted back.

The two glared at each other, and Gaborn’s heart pounded. Never had he seen two Days argue.

Gaborn’s Days abruptly went to his horse and rode off in a fit of rage. Iome’s Days said to Gaborn, “Your Highness, I will do what I can to honor your request.”

“Thank you,” Gaborn said. He reached out and squeezed her hand.

The girl looked at Gaborn’s Days’s fleeing back and shook her head sadly. “Old ones like him, they forget what it is like to love, to have family and friends. Their only love is watching, and their only friends are their twins.”

“In this council of yours,” Gaborn asked, “will you stand much chance against others like him?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know. We serve the Time Lords. We keep the chronicles. But what will we chronicle if all men die? The advance of the reavers, the slow cooling of the sun, the end of all things? I think we have reached a time when we must take action, but if we do, we must all take it together.”

So Gaborn walked in the fog, and sought with his Earth Sight to pierce the gloom.

“The fog won’t last long,” Averan assured everyone. “There’s a larger passage ahead, a shaft going up, where hot air from the Underworld meets the cold air of the mountains.”

“Gaborn,” Iome asked, “is there danger ahead? Do you sense reavers?”

“Yes,” Gaborn said trying not to sound too ominous, “I sense danger, but not for many miles.”

He wondered at that. If the reavers were planning to set an ambush, what better place could they have to spring an attack than here in this dank fog?

Gaborn asked Averan, “You warned me yesterday about the dangers here. What are we likely to find ahead?”

Averan shook her head, as if clearing her thoughts. “Mainly there are reavers,” Averan said. “Lots of them. But there are other dangers—deep canyons that reavers could climb, but maybe men could not. And there are other animals down here....”

“With our endowments,” Gaborn said, “I don’t think we need to worry about animals.”

Averan seemed to think for a moment, and then let out an exasperated sigh. “This...isn’t what I remember. A week ago, the roof of this tunnel was choked with vines, and the floors were thick with vermin. That’s what the Waymaker remembered. But now the reavers have cleared the trail and smoothed the way. So I don’t know exactly what we’ll find on the road. And I’m not sure what roads we might have to follow. There are lots of tunnels near the Unbounded Warren, and there are paths that even the reavers fear to tread. If we’re to get past the reavers, we’ll need to take some of the less-used tunnels, the dangerous ones. I think we’ll have to sneak in.”

“You say we’ll meet reavers,” Gaborn asked. “Will there be guards?”

Averan thought for a moment. “I told you: the reavers you fought, they weren’t warriors. They were farmers and tunnelers, butchers and...just common reavers. Few of them knew how to fight. Sure, they carried knight gigs and blades, but they didn’t know how to use them. If there are guards ahead,” Averan continued, “I can tell you what to watch for. Reavers like to burrow underground when they hunt. They’ll be on the road, with dirt covering them, hidden so well that you won’t even notice a bump. Nothing may show except for one or two philia, lying above the surface.”

“I’ve always wondered,” Binnesman said, “can they see us when they’re underground?”

“No,” Averan said. “Like I told you, they don’t see like we do. They only sense shapes from their life-glow, from the lightning in their bodies.”

“The force electric,” Binnesman said.

“Whatever you call it,” Averan said. “So they can’t see through dirt any better than you could. But so long as a philium or two is lying above the ground, they can smell you coming, and they can feel vibrations from your movement. When you’re on top of them, that’s when they like to rise up, throwing you to the ground to disorient you. They want to kill you before you have time to move.”

“So I’ve heard,” Gaborn said bitterly. Averan didn’t know it, but Gaborn had gone into the Dunnwood to hunt reavers only a day after he’d wed Iome. He’d hunted in an ancient cave where some reavers had holed up. Even though Gaborn was an Earth King, and even though he’d had his senses to warn his men of danger, few of his companions had survived that expedition. Nearly four dozen knights had died in an ambush like the one Averan described.

“There is danger ahead,” Gaborn said. “Reavers, most likely. But it’s not for—oh, ninety or a hundred miles.”

“I just remembered something,” Averan said, “something I learned from the Waymaker. There is an old warren ahead. I don’t know how to convert distances in reaver to human terms...but I think maybe a hundred miles. The reavers stayed there for days before they came to the surface.”

“It was a staging area?” Gaborn asked.

“There could be more reavers there, I think,” Averan said. “An army—a big one. I remember seeing it in the mind of the fell mage. She needed to get her warriors out, to make room for the others that were coming.”

Gaborn’s heart went out of him. Seventy thousand reavers had attacked Carris. If there was a horde that size ahead, how could they hope to sneak past it?

“Is there a way around the staging area?” Gaborn asked, “a side tunnel that we can take?”

Averan gazed up at Gaborn’s face. “Maybe we should go find another way into the Underworld.”

“There isn’t time,” Gaborn said.

“We might be able to sneak past them,” Binnesman said. “Or, if their guard is light, we may be able to fight past them, and hope to avoid pursuit.”

The fog felt to Gaborn as if it were closing in. He was beginning to worry about Averan. She had learned much from the reavers, but she didn’t know nearly enough to guide them. Or perhaps, more precisely, her head was so full of minutiae that she hadn’t had time to put it all together.

“What about this fog?” Iome asked. “Can reavers see through fog?”

“Yes,” Averan said. “They hardly notice it.”

Almost as soon as Iome had spoken, Gaborn found the fog beginning to clear. Indeed, in a matter of a few paces, it was gone altogether. The tunnel branched, and warmer air seemed to be coming from the left fork, like a summer breeze, except that it smelled of minerals and dank places. The right fork led up at a steeper angle.

“Turn left,” Averan said. “The trail almost always leads down, toward warmer air.”

Now the tunnel began to show signs of life. The ice here had all melted, and with the confluence of heat and moisture, patches of wormgrass began to grow all along the floor and walls. Wormgrass was so named because the urchinlike shrub had soft spicules the width and length of earthworms. Cave kelp hung from the ceiling, and blotches of colorful fungi adorned the rock.

Most of the vegetation along the floor and walls had been devastated, so that now only ragged patches of flora could be seen.

Here and there blind-crabs roamed about, searching for food. These were nothing like the crabs that inhabited the coast or some rivers. They were more closely akin to reavers, and to Gaborn’s mind looked more like giant ticks than crabs. They had six legs, each of which was long and thin.

The group mounted up, and began to ride their horses hard now. The road was clear before them.

Most of the young blind-crabs were absolutely colorless. Their shells were like flawed crystal, giving a clear view of their guts and muscles. Gaborn could see their hearts palpitating wildly in fear as the horses approached, and could make out the color of their latest meals. Most of the crabs were small, only a few inches across the back.

A few lost gree shot through the cave with the speed of an arrow, searching for reavers that served as hosts for the insects and parasitic worms upon which the gree fed. As they flew, their black wings wriggled and squeaked as if in pain. One landed on Iome’s shoulder, mindless with hunger. Its head was spade shaped, like a reaver’s, with tiny philia that ran along the ridge of its brow and down its jawline. It immediately hooked its clawed feet into Iome’s cloak and began scrabbling about, searching for insects. Iome shrieked and grabbed it, then flung it against the wall.

Soon after that, the party came upon their first great-worm of the journey—gray like a slug, nearly nine feet long and as broad as a man’s hand, leaving a slime trail as it fed on a colony of mold.

Gaborn was fascinated. He’d heard few tales of the Underworld, and many animals and plants, like this giant worm, had no names that he’d ever learned.

Now that they had passed through the fog, for hours they rode down into the very belly of the world. Often they reached branches in the tunnel, and more and more, the cross trails showed signs of heavy use by reavers.

At each juncture Averan would sniff the trail for the Waymaker’s scent. Yet in spite of all the memories that the Waymaker had shared, even Averan found a few surprises.

They had ridden for several hours at a fast pace, when Gaborn noticed something: off the side of the trail was a small cave, crudely chiseled. Above it, clearly visible in the light of the gleaming opals, scratch marks looked to have been gouged by human hands.

“What’s this?” Gaborn asked. “An animal’s lair?”

“Not animal,” Binnesman said. “Human. Erden Geboren’s men often used to build such retreats in the Underworld, when they hunted reavers in times of old. The mark here is written in Inkarran. I’m not too handy with their tongue, but I believe that the sign calls this ‘Mouth of the World Outpost Number Three.’ ”

“The Waymaker knew of hundreds of such fortresses,” Averan said.

“I suppose that we had better check this out,” Gaborn said. “We may want to take refuge in one of these before our journey is over.”

Averan leapt off her mount, and peered into the narrow opening. She held her gleaming opal up before her, so that its reddish light showed the way. “The tunnel is chiseled into solid rock,” she said. “The crawlway goes up a dozen yards, then turns to the left.”

She climbed in first, and Gaborn got down from his own mount and followed the girl in.

Spongy black fungi, like wrinkled leaves, matted the floor. Gaborn crawled over them and felt as if he were crawling on a wet blanket.

At the top of the tunnel he found a room large enough for ten or fifteen people. A pair of blind-crabs, sensing the intruders’ presence, scrabbled to hide behind a tall stone jar that sat in one corner. An ancient reaver dart, its haft nearly rusted through, leaned against a wall.

Moldering in another corner were the bones of a child. The flesh had first dried on the skeleton, and then rotted away in patches so that the bones clung together.

Gaborn counted the ribs, and found that it had been a girl, a small child of perhaps four or five. The girl had been curled in a fetal position with her thumb in her mouth when she died. A blanket was wrapped around her, an Inkarran blanket woven from long strands of white goat hair.

Gaborn heard someone grunt. Iome had followed him up the tunnel. She caught him staring at the pile of bones.

“Who would bring a child down here?” Iome wondered aloud.

Averan spoke up. “A few days ago, when I tasted the brains of a reaver, I saw something. I saw...pens full of people down here in the Underworld, kept so that the reavers could test their magic spells.” Iome looked up at her, stricken. “All the spells that they learned: to wring the water from a man, to blind him with pain, to make his wounds rot, they had to practice on real people. So, they caught people—never too many from one place: here a person, there two or three, and they brought them down here. Maybe this girl was one of them.”

“How horrible it must have been,” Iome said, as if this were something that had happened long ago.

Averan shook her head. “No, how horrible it must be. They’re still down here.”

It was heartbreaking news. Gaborn had imagined that Averan’s mind was a vast cave, full of treasures waiting to be brought to light. But now he found it full of bones and horror. “Do you know where they are?” Gaborn asked. “Can you show me the way?” On top of all his other impossible tasks, he’d have to find these people, bring them up from their prison, if he could.

“At the bottom,” Averan said. “Near the Lair of Bones.”

Gaborn inhaled deeply. He was finding it hard to breathe in this tight space. At first he’d thought that an outpost like this might be a good place to camp, but now he knew that he could never rest in this one, not with the hollow eyes of the child watching him. He felt guilty for being alive, when so many others were dead. He felt guilty for wanting life, when his earth senses warned that so many were about to die.

“Let’s go,” Gaborn said. His group had not ventured more than ten miles past the old outpost when Gaborn halted his horse, peered up the road, and said, “There is danger is here—not far ahead.”

5 The Shivering World

Iome’s nerves felt jittery and her stomach tightened. She’d known that she would find reavers in the Underworld, but she hadn’t wanted to find them soon.

For the past seventy miles the reaver tunnel had been almost featureless, a dull thoroughfare through the Underworld made interesting only by an occasional blind-crab or great-worm. The drab stones offered little variation in color. But suddenly the path ahead opened up into a natural cave whose ceiling rose hundreds of feet in the air. The sound of rushing water thundered in the distance, and nearby Iome could hear it trickling along the walls, dripping from stalactites. The tunnels ahead were covered with white calcite that gleamed like quartz, and the reavers had pummeled it under their feet, so that their trail looked as if it were strewn with bright glass, or bits of stars. The keen scent of sulfur water filled the air.

“The reavers like the pools here,” Averan said. “It’s the last drinking water before they leave the Underworld.”

“They’re here,” Gaborn said, nodding with certainty. “Up the road a ways. I feel the danger rising.”

Iome had watched men battle reavers from afar, but had never fought one herself. The green woman, Binnesman’s wylde, rose up in her stirrups, sniffing the air like a hound, peering ahead.

“Do you smell reavers?” Averan asked her.

The green woman shook her head. “No.”

Gaborn looked to Averan for counsel.

“There could be guards posted ahead,” Averan said. “They might have buried themselves.”

You would never have any warning before they got you, Iome thought.

“I’ll take the lead,” Gaborn said. With his Earth Sight, Gaborn was the only one who could travel this path with any degree of safety.

They rode on.

Iome’s senses were alert. As she rode, she held her opals up and lit the cavern perhaps more brightly than it had ever been lit before. The walls glittered like frosting in shades of honey and ivory. Warm sulfur water trickled and dripped over every surface, and over the ages it had built up deposits of stone in grotesque shapes. Stalagmites squatted like gargoyles on the cave floor while tubular stalactites hung overhead, twisting in serpentine fashion. Along both sides of the path, shallow green pools lay with steam curling up from their surfaces. Myriad reaver tracks deeply imprinted the mud of every pool.

Plant life was sparse, but feather ferns hung from crevasses near the roof. Something large, the size of an eagle, flitted overhead and circled a stalactite.

“Gree hawk!” Binnesman shouted.

Gaborn reined his horse and pulled out his sword, eyeing the creature as it circled twice more. In some ways, it resembled an enormous bat. But it had a head like a reaver’s—blind, broad, heavily toothed, with frills of philia sweeping off its jaw and in a ridge along the back.

To Iome, with her six endowments of metabolism, the gree hawk did not seem to present much of a threat, but to a commoner it would have seemed to be flitting about at lightning speed.

Iome asked, “Will it attack?”

“They mostly eat gree,” Binnesman said. “But if they are hungry, and if they are presented with an easy meal in the way of a lone traveler, they may attack.”

Gaborn eyed the gree hawk. It wheeled near the roof of the cave for a moment, then landed back in a dark corner, near some red feather ferns. The ferns all snaked back from the creature, withdrawing into recesses in the wall so that in moments there was no sign of the ferns at all, merely the small holes into which they had fled.

Gaborn led the way. For three miles the trail followed the line of pools, and Iome saw a host of intersecting tunnels running here and there to unknown destinations.

Averan kept to the straight path, and soon there was a huge rumbling sound, an incessant thunder—water tumbling over rocks. Gaborn halted the group again, seemed leery of the path ahead. He sniffed the air.

Iome rose in her stirrups. She had no endowments of scent from dogs to aid her, and the only smell she could detect in the air was the sulfur water. Ahead, just around a bend, a waterfall seemed to be cascading over the stones. The water breaking on the rocks caused the whole cave to tremble.

Yet as Iome listened, she realized that something strange was happening. The rumbling was growing stronger.

“Flee!” Gaborn shouted. He began wheeling his mount around, and for a moment everyone struggled to keep up.

“Earthquake!” Iome warned, for she had felt that same rumbling two days past, when a quake humbled the Courts of Tide.

“No,” Gaborn shouted. “Reavers are coming!”

How many reavers would it take to make the earth grumble like this? Iome wondered. Yet she knew the answer. She had heard a similar thundering across the plains at Carris.

Iome and the green woman were at the back of the group. Iome wheeled her mount as best she could, raced back the way she had come, but Binnesman’s mount surged ahead of hers.

What are we to do? she wondered. Our horses can outrun them, but to what end? The reavers will only chase us back up the tunnel.

Iome raced past one path that branched to the right, but when she reached a second that climbed a steep hill and then disappeared into another passageway, Gaborn shouted, “That way! To the left!”

Iome spurred her charger uphill. It would have been too steep for a normal mount, and even with endowments of brawn and metabolism her horse struggled up the incline, floundering once so that she thought that they would go tumbling back downhill. But the beast got its feet under it and surged up into the opening. A path opened ahead of Iome—stalagmites rose up all around like ogres. It was a forbidding landscape.

“Not this way!” Averan shouted when she reached the summit. “The Waymaker knew this path. It comes to a dead end a few miles up the trail!”

“Yes, this way!” Gaborn argued. His own mount had just lunged to the top of the hill. “Hide!”

Iome trusted Gaborn’s Earth Sight more than she did Averan’s memories.

“Where?” Averan asked.

“This way,” Gaborn shouted. “Follow me!”

He raced his mount a hundred yards, and then stopped, searching this way and that for a place to hide. “Up there!” he shouted. He pointed toward a narrow cleft between two stalactites near the roof.

“The horses will never fit through there!” Binnesman objected.

“Then we leave them,” Gaborn answered. He leapt off his mount and pulled out his dagger, then cut the girth straps to his saddle. In an instant the saddle and all of the packs were off.

Iome’s mount had its ears back, and its eyes were wild. It snorted in terror at the sound of the reavers’ trampling feet. Iome leapt off and removed her saddle, ropes, and pack. Her mount reared up, frantically pawing the air.

She could see no escape for the beast. There was no light here in the Underworld, and the horses would not be able to run in the dark.

As Iome wondered what to do, Binnesman dismounted, but left his saddle on the horse, cutting off only his packs and his coil of rope. Then he took his opal cape pin off and pinned it onto the saddle.

He laid a hand on the muzzle of the gray imperial warhorse, and said softly, “You have carried me as far as we can go, my friend. Now, seek greener fields.”

The stallion stared at him for a moment in curiosity, ears forward. Iome wondered if the animal understood the wizard, but this force horse had once been Raj Ahten’s personal mount. The runes on it showed that it had four endowments of wit. Seldom were so many forcibles used on a mere horse. This mount learned almost as fast as a man would. Hopefully, it understood.

“Go, my friend,” Binnesman urged. “I have provided light for the journey.”

Around Iome, the ground rumbled continuously. It was as if giant stones were rolling through the cavern. The sound seemed sourceless. She almost expected reavers to come charging up the cave at that instant, but somehow knew that they were far away. The noise wasn’t loud because they were close, it was loud because they were many.

The wizard turned away from his horse. Gaborn was already scrambling up the rocks, with the green woman in tow. Iome followed last.

The horses took off, went thundering down the tunnel, racing back the way that they had come.

“Here, now,” Binnesman said to Iome. “You first.” He hesitated as Iome stepped around him, between a pair of stalagmites that stood like grotesque guardians. There was no trail to their retreat. Iome had to look for handholds on her way up. The flowstone along the walls, though slick, offered many such opportunities.

She turned back to see what was keeping the wizard. He took some sprigs of parsley from his pocket and blessed them. He tossed them on the trail, then drew wards of protection on the ground with his staff.

Iome reached the sanctuary, squeezed in. Gaborn and the others were already inside. It was a small grotto, about forty feet long. Stalactites had dripped down over the ages, until at last they had joined with the stalagmites beneath, forming crude pillars. Several of these stood next to one another, becoming solid walls. The floor beneath showed that at times water had pooled in the small cavern, but now all was dry.

“The reavers will smell the horses,” Averan said. “They’ll come to investigate.”

“But they won’t smell us,” Binnesman assured her.

Iome had to wonder. Binnesman was the most powerful herbalist she had ever known. His spells could amplify the natural properties of plants, magnifying their effect. But could even the incomparable Binnesman hide the odor of half a dozen men and horses from the reavers?

Her heart pounded. She studied the narrow grotto. There was no exit. Sweat stood out on Gaborn’s brow; his tongue flicked out and whetted his lips.

What does it mean, she wondered, when even the Earth King is afraid?

The ground began shaking so hard that bits of stone flaked off the roof. Mingled with the distant rumble now came a hissing, the sound that reavers make as they draw breath. It sounded almost as if the tunnel were a windpipe, and the Earth itself were gasping.

Gaborn threw down his saddle and stripped his pack, ropes, and saddlebags off. He tossed them over his own shoulder, leaving the saddle. He stood up, and his eyes darted about nervously.

Iome and the others grabbed their own belongings.

“Get back,” Gaborn warned them. “Get to the back of the chamber.”

Averan was the first to go. Binnesman and the others followed. Gaborn held his reaver dart and stood at the mouth of the grotto, on guard.

Averan hung at the back of the cavern, listening. The rumbling grew. Tremors shook the floor, and dust rose all about. “They’re coming fast,” she said. “They’re coming too fast.”

“ ‘Too fast?’” Alarm coursed through Iome.

“This is it,” Averan said. “This is their entire horde, their army. This is the end of the world.”

“What do you mean, this is the horde?” Iome demanded.

“Now the real warriors are coming,” Averan said, “and all of them will come. They’ll bring their most powerful battle mages, and...and—” She threw up her arms, unable to explain.

Iome suspected that even Averan couldn’t guess what the reavers were capable of.

Three days. Gaborn had warned that there would be a great battle at Carris in three days. Iome calculated how fast the common reavers had run before, and realized that three days was about right. In three days the army that was marching from the Underworld would reach Carris.

Gaborn paced at the mouth of the grotto.

“What’s wrong?” Iome demanded.

“The Earth...” Gaborn said. “The Earth warns me to flee, but I see no escape.”

“Maybe we should go after the horses,” Averan suggested.

“No,” Gaborn said. “This is the right path. I just—I just don’t see the way out.”

Iome searched frantically. Everywhere, the white walls hung like dripping curtains of stone. Craters pocked the floor where pools had formed and then dried out ages ago. White ridges along each ledge showed where the waterline had been. Perfect blue-white cave pearls rested on the floor.

The water had to come from somewhere, Iome thought. She peered up. The roof above rose some twenty feet. Small stalactites hung overhead like spears. The ground rattled under her feet now, and Iome licked her lips, afraid that a stalactite would break loose and fall, along with the flakes of stone that had begun tumbling from the roof.

Then she spotted it—a tiny shaft so small that a badger could not have crawled through. It was near the roof, at the back of the cave.

“Up here!” she said.

Iome dropped her pack and ropes and climbed up the wall. Her fingers and toes found purchase in tiny crevices and indentations that no commoner could ever have used. The flowstone offered ample opportunity for support. With her endowments of brawn and grace, she felt almost as if she were a fly, climbing along the wall.

She reached the top. Her opal crown gleamed, and by its light she searched the hole. She couldn’t see far back. She reached in. The hole narrowed, and became no wider than her arm. She grasped a knob of calcite, a cave pearl that had fused to the floor of the small spring, and tried to wrench it free. With so many endowments of brawn she was able to break it off, but even as she did, her hand snapped up and hit the roof of the cave, banging it. Her knuckles bled profusely. It was no use. The calcite deposits were as hard as quartz. She’d never be able to dig fast enough to widen the opening.

“Here they come!” Gaborn shouted. “Everyone to the back!”

He herded the others to the rear of the grotto. Iome clung to the wall like a fly, afraid to move. The wall shook beneath her grasp.

Silently, she prayed to the Earth Powers, “Hide us. Let them not find us.”

Loud hissing rose outside the grotto.

“They’ve smelled us,” Averan said. “There’s no other reason why they’d be coming up this branch of the cave.”

The acrid stench of horse sweat was everywhere. Even without endowments from a dozen dogs, Iome could smell it. She only hoped that Binnesman’s spells could hide them.

The hope was short-lived.

In seconds a reaver reached the mouth of the grotto. The huge monster rushed up the cliff and wedged its head into the crevasse at the opening. The philia along its jaw line quivered as if in anticipation. Slime dripped from its fearsome jaws.

“He’s found us!” Averan screamed. “He’s shouting to the others, warning them.”

There was no sound from the reaver other than his hissing breath. His shouts were smells, odors so subtle that Iome could not distinguish them.

The opening was only six feet wide, too narrow for a full-grown reaver to enter—at least that is what Iome thought.

But the monster shoved its head into the crack, and twisted its body sideways. It heaved once, and there was a snapping noise.

On the reaver’s head were three bony plates joined by cartilage. Now the reaver shoved its head into the crevice, and the plates snapped back, so that it could shove its muzzle into the hole. It twisted onto its side, and its torso followed.

Iome could smell the stink of its hot breath. A gree flew up from the beast, dislodged by its acrobatics, and flapped around the small grotto with a squeaking sound.

Gaborn leapt forward, stabbed the monster in the muzzle with his dart. Even with all his endowments of brawn, the blow hardly pierced the monster’s thick flesh.

Iome looked for a place to run. She could not see an exit up here.

The reaver hissed in outrage at Gaborn’s thrust, and pulled its muzzle back, inching from the grotto. It backed out completely, and Iome’s heart pounded in terror: behind it were more reavers, a tide of them sweeping into the small tunnel. Their bodies formed a black wall.

Yet even as they came to a halt outside, the trembling continued, growing louder. She realized that the main part of the reaver horde was still marching, passing them by, uninterested in a few intrepid humans that dared venture into their domain, or perhaps more concerned with advancing to war.

A larger reaver appeared at the mouth of the grotto and thrust a knight gig—a metal hook on a long iron pole—through the hole. Gaborn leapt just as the knight gig approached.

“Binnesman!” Gaborn shouted.

The reaver flipped its knight gig around expertly, and would have impaled Binnesman, then dragged him from safety. But Gaborn leapt down on the pole and ran up its length two paces, until he reached the reaver’s massive paw. He struck with his dart, plunging it into the soft flesh between the monster’s fingers. The reaver wheezed in pain.

There was a hissing at the reaver’s back, a sound of rushing wind that sounded like “Gasht!”

Iome had heard that sound before, when reaver mages cast their spells.

A dark cloud roiled into the grotto, filling it with noxious fumes. Iome found her eyes burning, as if hot coals had been flung into them. She dared not take a breath, for even in the open air on the battlefield, a reaver mage’s spells were devastating. Here in the confines of a grotto, their effect would be twenty-fold.

Think, Iome told herself. Gaborn said that there has to be a way out. But where?

The reaver drew his knight gig from the grotto, banging it against the walls. The pole must have been thirty feet long and six inches around. As it struck the left wall, a huge chunk of stone broke away.

Encouraged by this, the reaver swung the knight gig, hitting a far wall.

“He’s widening the opening!” Binnesman warned. The wizard let out a breath, and was forced to draw air. He fell back against the wall, eyes tearing. He struggled to reach into his pocket for some healing herb.

The green woman rushed forward and would have done battle with the reavers, but Binnesman put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “No,” he said, the word wrung from his throat in torture.

The floor! Iome realized. There were pools here, but no sign of a stream flowing away. That meant that the water had to have emptied through the floor below at one time. There might be an exit hidden down there.

She leapt from the roof of the grotto, twenty feet, jarring her ankles as she hit ground. She peered around the edge of the deepest pool. Her eyes burned, and she swiped tears away. At the back of the grotto she saw it—a tiny crevasse under the craterlike rim of a pool, not more than a foot long and an inch wide.

Gaborn raced to the mouth of the grotto and stabbed at the reaver’s paw. As he did, a second knight gig thrust through the opening. Even with all her endowments of metabolism, it seemed to Iome that the gig wrenched through with incredible speed. Gaborn tried to dodge, and took a glancing blow.

The stroke flung him against the far wall.

“Kill a reaver!” Binnesman shouted to his wylde. The wizard stood with his back against a stone wall, gasping, and tried to pull Gaborn to safety.

The green woman, unleashed at her master’s command, leapt forward. As she did, she waved her iron-bound staff in the air, making it do a little dance, forming a rune of power.

She jabbed the reaver’s paw, and there was a sound like stone hitting meat. The reaver’s massive hand exploded, sending shards of broken bone through flesh. The monster wheezed in pain and dropped its weapon as it struggled to back from the cave. For the moment, no other reavers could get near to attack.

Iome grabbed her own reaver dart, and plunged it into the tiny crevasse. Stone broke beneath her, a clod as large as her hand. The spear pushed through. She lowered her head and peered down. She saw another cave beyond the grotto!

Iome’s air was almost gone. Her lungs burned, but she dared not draw breath. Instead, she pounded the stone alongside the crevasse as fast as she could, widening the hole.

Averan let out her breath, and cried in agony. “Help! I can’t see!”

Iome could do nothing for her. She dared not. She plunged the spear into the stone, breaking away a handful of calcite here, another there. Even with endowments of brawn, it was harrowing work. Her spear point felt blunted and all but useless in a matter of moments.

She toiled on.

Another large reaver entered the mouth of the cave, picked up the pole, and thrust it in. It hit the wylde on the ankle, throwing her to the ground.

Iome slammed her spear into the stone. A large chunk of calcite fell away, went sliding downward.

She could see the cave beyond! There was a path of flowstone, and it dripped down the hill until it joined what must have been the bed of a submerged river, for there the path widened.

She could hold her breath no longer.

She exhaled, and gasped.

The reaver mage’s stench burned her throat. As air filled her lungs, she could almost hear the reaver’s command, “See no more.”

The wylde roared in anger and swung her staff. The blow struck a wall, sending shards of dust and rock everywhere. The reaver that had attacked her backed away.

Iome’s eyes throbbed. The cords that held her eyeball convulsed and spasmed so that she could not focus. She felt as if a dagger had been thrust into each socket, and now her attacker was methodically twisting the blade. Even with a dozen endowments of stamina, she could barely see.

She grabbed Averan first, shoved her through the hole. Averan went tumbling a few yards, then slid on her belly the last dozen feet. As she reached bottom, she began to flounder and make a mewling noise, trying to crawl to safety. Iome found the girl’s pack and shoved it after.

“This way!” Iome shouted.

She could barely make out her friends. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. Gaborn, Binnesman, and the wylde were but partly glimpsed shadows, shifting about in a world of pain.

“Duck!” Gaborn shouted.

Iome ducked.

A swinging pole whipped past her head. She felt more than saw it. Half blinded, only Gaborn’s warning had kept her from being brained.

She grabbed Gaborn. He hunched in pain, holding his ribs. She propelled him toward the exit. “Go!”

Last of all, she grabbed Binnesman.

The green woman still held the front of the grotto. Another reaver slammed its head into the crevasse, trying to wedge its way in, and she lunged forward, slugging it in the jaw. Bloody gobbets of reaver flesh rained through the grotto.

Iome felt about blindly on the floor. Binnesman had dropped his staff and his pack. Iome hurled both through the small opening, then tossed her own pack through, and slid down the exit.

She gasped air, fresh air! She lay for a moment on her belly, chest heaving, trying to clear her lungs of the reavers’ curses.

“Foul Deliverer, Fair Destroyer—to me!” Binnesman called out weakly. In answer, the green woman came hurtling through the opening from above. She rolled downhill and landed against a stone wall with such a shock that if she had been human, she would have broken every bone in her body.

“Let’s get away from here,” Gaborn said. The ground still shook from the passage of reavers, and all around was a distant hiss.

Iome looked back. With all her endowments of sight and stamina, her vision began to clear quickly. It might take the reavers some time to dig through the grotto and find their escape route. But she had no doubt that they would follow.

Ahead, an ancient riverbed wound through the Underworld. There was still water in it here and there, small pools. Grotesque Underworld vegetation, like cabbage leaves, covered the walls. Tubers and hairy rootlike plants hung from the roof in twisted splendor, while giant fungi rose up like little islands from the tickle ferns that covered the floor. Still, there was something of a trail cut by the watercourse. It would be a hard path, a wild path. Where it led, Iome could not guess.

Their horses were gone. Gaborn was hurt. And the reavers were after them. A stalactite fell from the roof, shattered on the floor not a dozen feet away.

“Looks like we’re through the easy part,” Iome said.

6 The Shaft

“Come!” Gaborn urged the group. “We have no time to waste.”

Come where? Averan wondered.

In the reavers’ tunnels, Averan knew the way. But here in this natural cave, without any reaver scents written on the wall to guide her, she was lost. The ground thundered beneath the feet of hundreds of thousands of reavers.

They had barely escaped the grotto. Averan gasped, struggling to clear her lungs of the reavers’ curses. “I’m blind!” She squinted. Her eyes would not focus. Instead, the cords in them convulsed and twitched, and Averan peered through a red haze.

“It will pass,” Binnesman promised. Averan peered at him, a vague shape in the darkness recognizable only by the color of light shining from his cape pin. For an instant his face came into focus. Such was the power of the reavers’ curse that the whites of the wizard’s eyes had gone blood red.

Averan’s eyes burned like poison. She had never imagined such exquisite pain.

The whites of my eyes are probably as red as his, she realized.

Binnesman felt in the pockets of the robe, pulled out a tiny sprig. “Here,” he said. “Eyebright!”

He broke the stem of the plant and wetted it with his tongue, then quickly painted a bit over each of Averan’s eyes. The pain drained away quickly as Binnesman ministered to the others.

Averan grabbed her pack and ropes, peered along the cave both ways, upstream and down. Along the sides of the cavern, stalactites dripped from the ceiling and stalagmites rose up from the floor like a forest of spears. Only the center of the cavern was clear of them. There, water had flowed swiftly once, polishing away the debris. Now the rivercourse was overgrown. Binnesman had called the plants tickle fern. Their fronds fanned slowly, as if swaying in an invisible breeze.

In her mind, Averan tried to construct an image of what the reaver tunnels looked like. But in her mind, the image was a tangled ball of yarn. Perhaps the Waymaker could have envisioned it, but she doubted it. The reavers didn’t negotiate the tunnels by sight. They didn’t use maps. They followed their sense of smell.

Averan sniffed. The reavers had a name for this kind of stone. The name was a smell—the chalky scent of blue-white cave pearls. If this deposit joined with any other reaver tunnels, she might be able to figure it out by the scent.

“Downstream!” she said. “I think this cave meets an abandoned reaver tunnel downstream.” A feeling of doubt assailed her. It would be miles from here, dozens and dozens of miles, and in a cave such as this, the trail might easily be blocked a hundred times.

Gaborn got up, squinting and gasping. He rested his weight heavily on his reaver dart, used it as a crutch. The blow he had taken to his ribs obviously pained him. So he merely stood for a moment, as if to let his endowments of stamina and metabolism heal his broken bones.

As he did, the high hissing sound of frustration came from the grotto above. Averan could hear the reavers clanking the stone with their knight gigs, trying to gouge their way through. With every blow, the floor of the cave shook.

Gaborn peered at Binnesman. “Can you seal the cave behind us?”

“Collapse the roof? That would be foolhardy,” Binnesman said. “I don’t have that kind of control.” He thought for a moment, and added, “But perhaps a small spell is in order.”

He climbed back up the tunnel to the mouth of the grotto, and returned a moment later, obviously pleased with himself.

The reavers still hissed, but the ground shook somewhat less.

“Let’s get away from here,” he said.

“What did you do?” Averan asked.

“There is a simple spell for softening stone,” Binnesman explained. “That is how you make a roof collapse, or destroy a bridge. But it is similarly easy for an Earth Warden to harden the earth, to make dirt as flinty as stone, and stone as impenetrable as steel. I hope to keep those reavers busy digging for hours.”

“So, you locked the door behind us?” Gaborn asked.

“One can only hope,” Binnesman said.

Gaborn led the way, climbing over stalagmites and boxlike fungi, wading through tickle fern. He carried his reaver dart in one hand, and his pack and ropes slung over his back.

So they ran. Each of them had taken endowments of metabolism, which served them well. But of them all, Averan was still the slowest. Her nine-year-old legs were shorter than any others, and she had to take three steps for Gaborn’s every two.

She struggled to keep up at first. But soon, it was Gaborn who slowed his party. Though his endowments would heal the blow he had taken to the ribs, he still wheezed in pain, even as they slowed.

The channel went down, always down. Often there were places worn away where there had once been wide pools. Most pools were dry, but in some basins a bit of water had collected. Averan could see scrabbers—a kind of blind lizard with winglike arms—that seemed to fly beneath the water. She raced through such pools, splashing water everywhere, lest she get bitten.

In other places, the walls of the old river channel narrowed where water had rushed down, and thus the path was much clearer. There was little sign of animal life. Large green-gray cave slugs oozed about, feeding on the tickle fern, and these in turn provided sustenance for some small blind-crabs. But Averan saw nothing big in here, nothing dangerous.

We’re still far from the deep places, she thought. Still far from the perilous realms.

This was a desert. Most Underworld plants drew sustenance from heat, and it was too cold for much to grow here. Thus, there were no large animals about.

Even after they had run for miles, the ground still trembled and thundered from the passage of reavers. It was growing distant now.

They reached a narrows where stalactites hung from the ceiling in columns, and water dripped. Each person had to walk through the narrows in single file, and once they passed, Binnesman turned.

“Averan,” he said. “Let’s see if you can draw that rune I was telling you about.”

He traced the rune on the stone with his finger, leaving a tiny scratch mark.

“Now,” he said, “draw the rune with the point of your staff. And as you do, imagine your own strength, your own power, and the power of your staff fusing with the stone.”

Averan recognized the rune. She’d seen it many times, carved into stone blocks on houses and on castle walls. For a commoner, to carve such a rune was meaningless, a charm that he hoped might protect him from danger. But for an Earth Warden to draw such a rune, it could be a powerful spell.

Yet Averan also knew that not all Earth Wardens had the same powers. Binnesman could peer into stones and see things at great distances. But Averan had no skill with the seer stones. Similarly, she was discovering that she had powers Binnesman had never heard of.

Obviously, the old wizard was pushing her, hoping to discover Averan’s merits.

She closed her eyes. She drew the rune, almost by instinct, and sought to funnel all of her strength, all of her power into it, until she trembled from the effort.

Close for me, she whispered. Close for me.

She drew the rune, and then as if of its own volition, her staff drew three more squiggling lines within it.

And then Averan felt something strange. In an instant, it was as if all of her energy were inhaled.

Averan collapsed; everything went black.

When she woke, not much time seemed to have passed. Her head was spinning, and it felt as if someone had wrapped an iron band about it, and was pulling it tight. A deep pain ached, far back between her eyes. Gaborn stood over her, calling. “Averan! Averan, wake up!”

She looked around. Everyone was staring at her, or staring at the narrow wall. Binnesman stood before the pillars, studying them intensely.

“Are you all right?” Gaborn asked.

Averan tried to sit up, and felt weak as a mouse. Her arms seemed to be made of butter, and her legs would not move at all. If she had run all day without stopping, she would not have felt more overworn.

“I’m all right,” she said, struggling to sit up. She reached a seated position and the pain between her eyes deepened. Dizziness assailed her. She sat for a moment, unable to think, unable to focus.

Slowly, the strength returned to her muscles.

“Very good,” Binnesman said. “Very good, though I am afraid that it was a bit much for you. Would you like to see your handiwork?”

He stepped aside and Averan gasped.

The crack between the pillars was gone. Instead, the rock looked as if it had turned to mud and smeared together, only to harden afterward. The surface of the gray stone itself glistened, as if it had been fired in a kiln.

“What did I do?” Averan asked.

Binnesman shook his head in wonder, then laughed. “Certain sorcerers among the duskins could shape stone to their will. By that power, the great rift in Heredon was formed, and the continents divided. It is the rarest of all of the powers of the deep Earth. I have not heard of a human who ever possessed such skills, but it seems that you have it in some small degree.”

Averan gaped at the stone wall in shock.

Binnesman tapped it with his staff, listening as if for an echo. “This should hold them for a good while. Indeed, I suspect that the reavers may abandon any hope of breaking through, and instead be forced to dig around it. Let’s go.”

Averan made it to her feet. Everyone else ran ahead, but Binnesman stayed behind with Averan, keeping a watchful eye on her, as if afraid that she might fall again. She very nearly did, and if she had not had her staff to help her, she would have.

“When next we stop,” Binnesman said, “if you have the energy, we should practice this newfound skill of yours. But this time, we’ll try shaping something smaller.”

“All right,” Averan said, though in truth she didn’t feel as if she ever wanted to try it again.

After they had run only half a mile, the cave floor suddenly dropped away into oblivion.

The tunnel narrowed and the old watercourse dropped almost straight down, varying only slightly as it twisted this way and that.

Gaborn peered down the hole. Its sides were covered with tickle fern and wormgrass. Averan could see perhaps a quarter mile down the tunnel. At that point, it seemed to twist away, but she could not be certain. The light was too dim to let her see farther. Averan looked into Gaborn’s eyes, wondering if they should dare the shaft.

“The Earth warns us to flee,” Gaborn said. “And this is the only way out.”

Averan reached down and touched a tickle fern. Its fronds brushed her hands gently. She pulled at it, and the roots came away easily.

“Trying to climb the rocks with this stuff is dangerous,” she said. “It’s as slippery as moss.”

“We can make it,” Gaborn said.

The packs lay all around, and Gaborn began pulling off the coils of rope and tying them together, while Iome tied one end of the rope to a nearby stalagmite.

“Let me have a look at those ribs,” Binnesman said to Gaborn.

“I’ll be fine,” Gaborn objected. “They’re almost healed.”

But Binnesman strode forward, unlaced Gaborn’s armor, and pulled it off. Beneath his padding and tunic, Gaborn’s ribs were a mess of blue and black bruises.

“They look worse than they feel,” Gaborn said.

“Good,” Binnesman said, “because if they felt as bad as they look, you’d be dead!” He placed his fingertips above the wound, never touching it. He frowned and muttered, “As I thought, four broken ribs. Even with all of your endowments, they won’t heal fully for a day or so. But I don’t understand how you got hit in the first place.”

“I trusted my eyes more than my heart,” Gaborn said. “I felt the warning to duck, but couldn’t see the danger. Then the knight gig came through so fast.”

“Let that be a warning,” Binnesman said. “Do as the Earth commands. Forget about what your eyes can see, or what you think you know.”

Binnesman reached into his robes, pulled out some melilot, and blew it onto the wound. When he finished tending Gaborn’s ribs, he picked up Gaborn’s mail and leather padding. He considered for half a second, then hurled it into the pit, where the mail clanked and thudded as it bounced down into the darkness.

“What?” Gaborn asked.

“It will only be a hindrance on the climb down,” Binnesman said. “And we should find it on the bottom easily enough.”

Iome and Averan had just finished tying the ropes together. They all looked at one another, and at the pit.

“Who should go first?” Iome asked tensely.

Gaborn walked to the edge of the pit, tossed his reaver dart down the hole. It clanged once, and then he threw the packs over. Last of all, he threw over the end of the rope, and jumped. Averan drew a startled breath.

But Gaborn merely twisted catlike in the air, then grabbed the rope. With so many endowments of brawn and grace, he began to scamper down as quickly as a spider.

Binnesman raised an eyebrow in surprise. Apparently Gaborn’s ribs were better than they appeared.

Averan went to the lip of the shaft and peered down. She gripped her poisonwood staff tightly. She wanted to carry it, but didn’t dare try. The staff was precious, though as yet it was unadorned. She planned to carve runes of protection into it as soon as she could. The poisonwood had chosen her, and in some way she felt that the staff was a part of her. She was wondering what to do with it when Binnesmen threw his own staff down the shaft, so that it cleared Gaborn by a yard. Then he had his wylde do the same.

“Go ahead,” Binnesman told Averan. “The wood knows you. It will be waiting for you at the bottom.”

Averan let her staff fall gingerly, fearing that it might shatter against a stone wall.

In moments they began to make the perilous descent. Gaborn led the way, followed by the wylde, Binnesman, and Iome, with Averan coming last.

The climb proved difficult. For the first hundred yards, Averan merely clung to the rope and lowered herself hand by hand. But all too soon, the rope came to an end.

At this point, she had to abandon it forever, and a sense of dread engulfed her. Each of them had brought some stout rope, and none of them would ever be able to use it again.

“Come on,” Iome urged. She was just below Averan, grunting and struggling for purchase as she made her way down. “If you start to fall, I’ll catch you.”

Averan’s heart raced. She felt powerful with her endowments of brawn, but still found it hard to find her first hand—and footholds. Rushing water had polished the rock over the years, leaving little purchase. The tickle ferns growing everywhere only added to the danger. She couldn’t really look down very well to see where to place her hands and feet, and ended up having to climb down more by a sense of feel than by sight.

Worse than that, the ferns were not trustworthy. If she found a small handhold and was tempted to rely on the ferns, she discovered that the roots sometimes seemed to have dug in enough to give her purchase. But too often the ferns would rip under her weight without notice, and she would be left grasping blindly for something to cling to.

With her short legs and arms, she had a harder time reaching some handholds than the others did.

Binnesman noticed her predicament, and he let Iome climb down past him. He moved up so that he was below Averan. At times when things got scary, he would put a hand up to hold her foot, or offer her reassurance. “Don’t worry,” he’d say. “There’s a good handhold just below you.”

So Averan swallowed her terror and lowered herself, carefully placing each foot, each hand.

A quarter of a mile they descended below the rope, and a quarter more. The tunnel sometimes snaked this way and that, yet every time Averan dared to glance down, the tunnel plunged deeper into the abyss.

It was slow work.

She reached one spot and was about to lower herself another step when Gaborn called out, “Averan, stop. Move to your right, and try to find a way down.”

He was far below her and could not possibly have seen her danger. But he was the Earth King, and he felt it. She did as he said, and dozens of times during the course of the journey he warned others to take similar measures.

More than a mile they climbed, and still Averan could see no end. Her nerves were frayed, and she found herself trembling all over.

Still the ground rumbled distantly, like faraway thunder, at the passage of reavers.

She felt astonished that no one had fallen yet. Even with Gaborn’s help and all of their endowments, it seemed an impossible feat.

Gaborn reached a rocky ledge, the first perch they had found, and called a rest. Averan inched down, met the others. Iome leaned with her back against the rock wall, grimacing with fear. Gaborn squatted next to her, heaving to catch his breath. Binnesman leaned away from the ledge, respectfully, but his wylde walked to the very end of it and peered down.

Their perch jutted out only three or four feet, then the shaft jogged back down. Under normal circumstances, Averan would have been terrified to stand so close to the ledge. But right now it felt like a little bit of paradise. She looked up the shaft, into the infinite blackness.

Once the reavers break through my rock wall, she thought, they will be on our trail in an instant.

Reavers were great climbers. With their huge grasping fore-claws and their four legs, they could scurry up and down stone slopes much faster than a human could. And the shaft from the old river channel was just wide enough to make this an easy climb for one of the monsters.

She imagined reavers up above, and that made her want to hurry all the faster.

“Once the reavers reach the top,” Averan dared say, “all they have to do is throw a rock down this hole, and we’ll all be knocked off the wall and swept to our deaths.”

Binnesman teased, “Once the rock hits you, you won’t have to fear being swept to your death.” He tried to offer a comforting smile, but Averan noticed that no one stayed long on the rocky perch.

Gaborn soon began climbing down, and everyone else followed. Averan’s arms ached from the stress by now, and the skin had been rubbed raw from her fingers. Others were in as bad shape, for they left little smears of blood all along the rock wall. She let her mind go blank, ignored the pain.

The chute dropped another half mile, when suddenly Gaborn called, “Wait where you are. There’s no bottom.”

“What do you mean there’s no bottom?” Iome called.

“I can’t see a bottom,” Gaborn said. “It just—it drops into nothing.”

Averan huddled where she was, clutching some precarious handholds. The tickle ferns waved slowly, brushing like feathers against her wrist.

She tried to peer down, but Binnesman and the green woman blocked her view. There was light all through the shaft, where the opals released their inner fire, but the light ended perhaps a dozen yards below, and Averan could see what Gaborn meant—the shaft suddenly stopped, and below them was what seemed to be an endless drop.

Averan clung to the wall, heart pounding. Sweat streamed down her forehead. The nail of her left pinky felt as if it were about to pull off. She’d abused it tremendously.

She moved her pinky finger minutely, and the nail detached.

She dug her toes tighter into her footholds, and just leaned her head against the stone wall, wanting to cry. Her legs and arms were trembling now, despite her best efforts to keep still.

Do spiders ever get this tired of climbing walls? she wondered. Yes, she realized, they must.

She could hear Gaborn wheezing as he scrambled down farther, closer to the lip of the chasm.

“I think I see water below us,” Gaborn called. “I’m pretty sure of it.”

Averan’s heart pounded in her ears. She sniffed. Yes, she could smell water. She realized now that the scent had been getting stronger for what seemed like hours. The whole cave was moist, and condensation had been dripping from some of the rocks. But she could smell water, a large body of it, rich in sulfur.

Our packs, she thought dully. We threw our packs and our weapons down there. They’ll all be underwater. Gone. Our food.

The realization left her weak, and Averan clung to only one hope: that her staff would float. If she swam around enough, she would find it.

It was a focus point for her magic, and somehow, though she lost everything else, she felt that she could survive so long as she found her staff.

“There’s only one way down,” Gaborn said. “We have to jump. There’s a lake down there. I can see the shore.”

“Wait!” Averan said. “You don’t know what might be living in there!”

But Gaborn didn’t wait. He threw himself from the ledge. Averan listened, counting slowly, until the splash reached her ears.

She reached a count of eighty-nine.

Eighty-nine seconds? she wondered. No, she realized. I have twelve endowments of metabolism. I have to divide that by thirteen. It’s more like seven seconds. How far can a person fall in seven seconds?

She didn’t have any idea. She only knew that it was a long way.

What’s the worst that can live in the lake? she asked herself. She had eaten the brains of several reavers, and from them had learned much about the Underworld. There had been scrabbers in pools up above. They would probably be in the lake—unless there were blindfish down there to eat them.

The Idumean Sea was full of blindfish—great eels thirty feet long that could swallow a child whole, whisker fish as big as a boat. And then there were creatures that weren’t fish, that were just as dangerous, like the floating stomachs—blobs of jellylike substance that would latch onto your flesh and just begin digesting you.

What’s the worst that could happen? Averan asked herself, and she realized that all of her fears were groundless. Gaborn was the Earth King. He wouldn’t let her jump to her death. The worst that might happen is that a few scrabbers would nip her.

She climbed down. By now, Iome had jumped. They were taking their time, giving each person a few seconds to swim away. Binnesman told his wylde to jump, and she leapt off into nothingness.

“I’m not a very good swimmer,” Averan whispered to Binnesman.

The wizard laughed weakly. “Don’t worry, child, I float like cork wood. Let me jump, and then wait for five seconds. I’ll be there to help you.”

Averan set her feet, then peered down, over her shoulder. She saw Binnesman climb down the shaft, to the very lip. Below, she could see the cave now. Gaborn and the others had their opals on, and the lights from them shone like stars in the night. They were swimming in a great pool, shaped almost as round as a cistern, and waves radiated away from them. Gaborn made toward a pile of rocks near the far wall.

It looked almost peaceful, like night swimmers enjoying a dip in a lake.

Binnesman pushed back from the wall and kicked away. She saw his face briefly by the light of her opal necklace, his expression looking perfectly peaceful. He went over backward, with his arms splayed out to the sides, and then the darkness swallowed him. Averan began counting.

Distantly, she heard a sound that set her heart pounding more fiercely—the rasping breath of a reaver.

Where? she wondered. Hiding in the rocks below? She tilted her head, strained to hear. With her endowments of hearing, all noises seemed unnaturally loud, amplified.

No, she realized. The sound is coming from above.

“The reavers are after us!” she shouted.

She didn’t give Binnesman his full five seconds. She merely leapt.

The drop through the darkness seemed endless. Averan had never dived so far. The closest thing that she had ever done was to jump into the pond from the old tree at Wytheebrook.

She went down in a ball, arms wrapped around her knees. She counted almost to a hundred as she fell, then hit the water.

She plunged down and down. The water felt surprisingly warm. She held her breath, struggled to swim upward. By the light of her opal necklace, she peered through the water. Blindfish, as bony as pike, lanced through the black waters, at once both frightened of something as large as she and attracted by her splashing. She could not see the bottom far below.

Averan swam for the surface. Her robe weighed her down, and she considered casting it off. But it was a wizard’s robe, a garment that would protect her and hide her, and she dared not lose it.

So she swam to the surface and splashed about, trying to get her bearings. Almost immediately, her hand hit something hard, and she grabbed on.

A sense of power surged through her as she touched her staff.

For a moment she floundered about, wondering at her luck. But she felt that it was more than luck.

I wanted my staff, and it came to me, Averan told herself.

Binnesman swam to her. “Here, child, grab my arm.”

“Reavers,” Averan told him as she took hold of his robe. “I heard reavers in the shaft above.”

He didn’t answer. He merely shoved his own staff into her hand. “Here. Hold on to this for me.” He began to swim. Averan clung to the staves, and Binnesman pulled them along. Both staves seemed to float unnaturally high in the water.

Averan knew that reavers couldn’t swim. They sink like a stone. But they could walk on the bottom of a lake like a crayfish for short distances.

This lake was small, small enough so that a reaver could probably crawl out of it. But would the reavers know that? Would they know how to get out? They could see a hundred yards with decent clarity, but the world was all a blur at anything more than two hundred.

They wouldn’t be able to see the shape of the lake below. They would only smell it and the scent of the rock walls. Would the smell of the rock be powerful enough to let them guess the size of the lake? Would they dare jump in?

Averan didn’t know. Reavers could be very brave. Their skin was so hard that it almost acted like armor, and reavers were terribly strong. This gave them a sense of invulnerability.

Some of them will come after us, Averan felt sure. She didn’t know why she felt that way, until she searched through her thoughts.

Cunning Eater. She’d gorged on his brain a couple of days ago. He had been a reaver warrior, and she remembered the way he felt about humans. It was a sinister mix of fear and loathing over the past victories men had made against reavers combined with an appetite so insatiable that she knew it would drive him to hunt.

From across the water, Gaborn called, “Don’t worry about the packs! I already got them. Hurry!”

So the packs floated, Averan thought.

But the reaver darts are gone.

Averan paddled, helping Binnesman reach shore. In moments they emerged from the black water. Light from the opals reflected from the waves, sending beams to dance against walls that dripped of white crystal.

No sooner had they reached the bank than a huge reaver hurtled down from the shaft, sending waves to lap against the shore.

“Hurry! This way!” Gaborn shouted, nodding toward a dark arch where the ancient river channel had worn through stone.

“Wait!” Averan argued. “We have to kill the reaver that came into the water. If the ones up in the shaft don’t smell its death, they’ll follow.”

“No! Run!” Gaborn urged. “Now!”

“Come, child,” Binnesman said. He pulled her from the water, set her on shore. “Grab your pack.” Their packs lay in a pile where Gaborn had set them.

Averan slung her pack over her back. Binnesman tossed a pack to the wylde, reached for his own. He looked worn. He had as many endowments of metabolism as Averan did, but even with them, he moved with the deliberateness that comes with age.

A cavern opened like a black maw. Gaborn stood in the mouth of it. “Binnesman,” he shouted, just as Binnesman shrugged on his pack, “flee!”

Binnesman dropped his bag and whirled just as something monstrous surged from the water.

Nothing can move that fast, Averan thought.

Even with all her endowments, the reaver burst from the lake in a blur. Water streamed from its spade-shaped head, and splattered on the rocks before it.

Binnesman whirled to meet it, his face a mask of panic, raising his staff protectively with both hands.

Before she even realized that the reaver was armed, Averan saw the dark blur of its blade—a huge hunk of steel some twenty feet long—slice through the air.

One instant, Averan saw the blow coming, and the next there was a whack of metal shattering wood, the snap of bones. Binnesman hurtled forty feet through the air.

“Help!” Averan screamed.

She raised her staff protectively. The reaver loomed above her, its massive jaws wide enough to swallow a wagon. Runes glowed with a faint blue light along its forearms. Never had she seen a blade-bearer so glorious and deadly. She smelled him, and with her endowments of scent, his name suddenly seemed to seep into the corners of her mind like a shadow. This one had been known to every reaver she had eaten. His name was spoken in fear: Consort of Shadows.

Among all of the servants of the One True Master, he was the most cunning and subtle. Averan’s mind blanked in terror.

For a tenth of a heartbeat, he seemed to halt, watching her. Then his blade whirled to sweep through Averan.

She was conscious of little. Binnesman was gone. She felt numb.

“Dodge!” Gaborn shouted.

Averan threw herself aside as the reaver’s blade hit. Metal cleaved through the rock where she had been. Something streaked overhead to meet the reaver, a shrieking blur that howled like a wolf in pain.

“Blood!” the wylde screamed.

She lunged with her staff, as if to bash the Consort of Shadows.

But as suddenly as he had attacked, the reaver bounded aside, landed on a wall, and scuttled up its side like a spider. He began sending a stream of information in the form of scents. Averan smelled the scent of the wylde, followed by a scent that meant I am confused, followed by a scent of Warning, this one brings death.

The Consort of Shadows backed up the wall, its philia waving. The green woman raced up to the cavern wall, screamed in frustration. She threw down her staff, leapt up to a little ridge, began climbing after the monster, seeking toeholds in the stone. The walls of the cave were covered in calcite, and tickle fern grew on it like moss. Some of the stone was as white and frothy as cream, while other parts were as mellow gold as honeycomb. Over the ages, deposits had built up on the wall, little knobs, like half-formed stalagmites. The green woman climbed swiftly, and the Consort of Shadows moved back up the cave, until he was clinging to the roof like a vast, obese spider.

The wylde mewled pitifully, “Blood, blood!” She reached the roof and floundered about, seeking to follow her prey.

The Consort of Shadows lunged. He leapt sixty feet in a blinding flash and clung to the ceiling with his feet. He grabbed the wylde in one paw, reared back, and smashed her against the rock. Averan thought that she heard bones snap, and the wylde screamed in rage.

Then the reaver flung her back into the pool. For a moment, there was no sound at all but that of water lapping against rock.

Warily, the Consort of Shadows studied them, clinging to the cavern roof, his philia waving in a frenzy.

Suddenly the wylde surfaced, splashing about, screaming in rage.

The Consort of Shadows backed away and retreated up the shaft.

He’s gone, Averan thought in relief. But she knew that it was only for the moment. He was studying them.

“Averan, Binnesman,” Gaborn called.

Binnesman can’t be dead, Averan thought. He’s supposed to be my teacher.

But Averan knew what a reaver’s blade could do. The huge hunk of steel weighed hundreds of pounds. It wasn’t honed as sharp as a sword, but if a blow didn’t slice a man in two, it would still shatter every bone in his body.

She’d seen men killed by reavers—corpses hacked into gruesome pieces—a head here, and a hand there, blood spattered about as if by the bucketful, innards draped over tree limbs like sausages hanging from the rafters of an inn.

The wylde was going mad. The green woman keened like an animal in pain, splashed to shore. Averan wondered that it had survived at all.

Averan shakily struggled to her feet. She didn’t want to look at Binnesman, for she knew what she’d find. She imagined his blank eyes staring into space, the guts knocked out of him.

“Binnesman?” Gaborn called as he rushed toward them.

Averan had to look. There was still a possibility that he might be alive.

Binnesman lay on the cave floor, sprawled on his back. His face was pale, drained of blood, and his hands quivered as if in death throes. Flecks of blood issued from his nose and mouth. Miraculously, he was all in one piece, though the reaver’s blow had struck him in the chest.

“You’re alive?” Averan asked.

“Glad to hear it,” Binnesman said, but the labor he had to put into speaking the jest belied the tone, and his eyes were full of fear.

He’s not alive, Averan decided. But not dead yet either. He’s dying. She knelt, took his hand, and squeezed hard. Binnesman gasped, struggling for breath. He didn’t squeeze in return. He had no comfort to give her.

Gaborn rushed up to Averan’s back.

She glanced up to see his face, pale with shock. Iome came slower.

“Why didn’t you run?” Gaborn asked.

“For a hundred years,” Binnesman said, struggling for breath, “I’ve been the wisest person I know.” A coughing fit took him, and flecks of blood flew from his mouth. “It’s hard to take advice.”

Iome was at Gaborn’s back now, and she just stared at Binnesman with pain-filled eyes.

Binnesman’s hands fluttered and Averan looked back to his face. He was gazing at her now, imploringly. “Not much time,” he said. “Get my staff.”

“It’s broken,” Averan said. But suddenly she had a wild hope that even broken, the staff would be able to heal him. She rushed to it. The wood had not merely cracked; it had splintered in pieces, sending shards in half a dozen directions. Averan wanted every piece. Earth Power was stored in every splinter, and runes of healing and protection had been carved all around the base of the staff. She wanted all of it. When she had all the pieces, she rushed back to Binnesman.

“I’m sorry,” he was telling Gaborn. “I failed you all.” His breath was weak, and more blood came gushing from his mouth with every word he choked out.

“Don’t try to speak,” Iome said. She knelt by his side and held his hand.

“Things must be said,” Binnesman told Iome. “Foul Deliverer, Fair Destroyer,” he whispered. “I unbind you.”

The green woman howled with glee like an animal. Averan glanced up. The wylde was peering up toward the ceiling at the shaft, as if seeking a path to the reavers.

“Averan?” Binnesman called. He gazed about, but his eyes were no longer focusing.

“I’m here,” she said. “I have your staff.”

As proof she began laying the broken shards on his chest, as if they were bits of kindling. He fumbled about, grasped a piece.

“Averan, I must leave you. You must guide them. Listen to the Earth. It will be your only teacher now.”

He gasped for breath, and then could not speak at all.

Averan felt as if the world were reeling out of control beneath her. She couldn’t believe that Binnesman was dying. Old wizards like him were supposed to be indestructible. Averan found herself trembling.

“Bury him!” Gaborn shouted. “Quickly.”

“What?” Iome asked.

“Beneath the soil!” Gaborn raised his left hand and whispered desperately, “Binnesman: may the Earth heal you; may the Earth hide you; may the Earth make you its own.”

Of course! Averan had slept beneath the earth three nights past, relieved of the need to breathe, to think. She’d never slept so soundly in her life. Nor had she ever felt as invigorated afterward.

None of them could save Binnesman, but while there was still life in him, perhaps the Earth could do it.

The cave floor was almost solid rock, with only a few pebbles here and there.

Averan grabbed her staff, struck the ground, and whispered, “Cover him.”

From all around, detritus converged in a rush, pebbles and dust rolling across the cave floor, covering Binnesman, so that he lay beneath a quilt of gray sand, flecks of stone, and cave pearls.

What a pretty grave, Averan thought.

Grief welled up in her. She feared that Binnesman was gone forever, that nothing that they did could help. After all was said and done, he’d be lying here in a pretty grave.

Gaborn glanced up at the dark shaft above. He placed a hand on Averan’s shoulder, as if to offer comfort. “We’d best be on our way,” he said warily.

Iome knelt beside the grave for a moment and pressed her hand into the fresh soil, leaving her imprint, as was sometimes done at peasants’ funerals. She brushed back a tear and picked up Binnesman’s pack.

The green woman kept pacing the shore of the lake, seeking a route to the reavers. There was a scrape on her face, where the Consort of Shadows had bashed her into the stone wall. Other than that, Averan could see no sign of damage.

It was frightening to see the wylde’s inhumanity laid bare. It was more than the green woman’s indestructible nature that bothered Averan. Her total lack of concern for her fallen master was chilling. Averan kept hoping to find some sign of human sentiment in the wylde, but the green woman could offer no affection, no compassion, no grief, no love.

She paced the shore, howled in frustration at not being able to reach the reavers.

“Spring,” Averan called to the wylde, using her private name. “We’re leaving.”

The green woman ignored her.

Gaborn eyed the creature, worry etched into the lines of his face. “Foul Deliverer, Fair Destroyer,” Gaborn called. “Hear me: we go to hunt the great enemies of Earth. You would best serve your master by coming with us.”

If the wylde heard at all, Averan could not tell.

Averan smelled reavers up in the shaft, whispering, wondering what to do. Dozens hid there. She suspected that the wylde could smell them, too.

“Let’s go,” Gaborn said, grabbing Averan’s hand. Iome was already forging ahead, down the old river channel. Gaborn pulled Averan, their footsteps echoing behind them.

For a long time as they raced down the cavern, Averan could hear the keening cries of the wylde.

7 Ties that Bind

A few hours past dawn, Myrrima and Borenson reached Batenne, an ancient city whose tall houses were built in the old Ferecian style, with well-cut stones that fit seamlessly together. The roofs were made of copper plates from nearby mines, green with age, overlapping like fish scales. Old manors in the hills soared above expansive gardens where marble statues of nubile maidens, all swinging exotic long swords, could be glimpsed among the golden-leafed willows.

They bypassed the city and rode to the Castle of Abelaire Montesfromme, the Marquis de Ferecia. The castle, with its stately towers, sat on the highest hill above the city. The outer walls had been limed over the summer, and they gleamed so brightly that when the morning sun struck them it pained the eyes. It almost seemed as if the castle were a bit of bright cloud fashioned into walls. The guards at the gate wore polished silver armor, enameled with the red graak of Ferecia upon their chests. Their helms sported visors with slits so small that the warriors within seemed eyeless. They bore long spears of blackened iron, with decorative silver tips.

Myrrima tried not to look at her own clothes, still wet from her dip in the pool and muddied and stained from the road. She gazed about in wonder.

“Close your mouth,” Borenson warned softly, “you’ll not be catching any flies around here.”

“It’s so beautiful,” Myrrima said. “I’ve never imagined such a place.” Indeed, as they rode into the courtyard, the cobbled stones were so perfectly level that they might have been laid that very morning. A mosaic showed the red graak upon a white background. Along the margins of the road, the lawn was perfectly clipped. Gardens of jasmine trailing down from window boxes in the castle’s archery slots joined with mallow and rose on the lawns to lend the air a natural perfume. Hummingbirds swooped and darted among the bruised shadows of the towers, sparkling like gems when they caught the sunlight.

Myrrima saw anger on her husband’s face. “What’s wrong?” she asked under her breath, lest the guards hear her.

“This—” Borenson said, nodding toward the castle. “The people of Carris bleed and die on the castle walls less than three hundred miles from here, while the marquis and his dandy knights cower in splendor. I have half a mind to toss the fine flower boxes from the tower windows, and hurl the marquis out after them.”

Myrrima didn’t know what to say. The marquis was a powerful man from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in all of Rofehavan, while Borenson was only a Knight Equitable. For days now she had been afraid that she would lose him. She could feel him slipping away. His growing resentment toward Gaborn, the marquis, and indeed all lords was certainly part of the problem.

By the time that they reached the marquis’s Keep, Borenson was in a black mood. His jaw was set, and the blood flowed hot in his face. A servant showed them into a stately antechamber where fine paintings of the marquis and his ancestors hung in gilt frames. Enormous candelabras graced the mantel above the fireplace.

“Wait here,” the servant begged.

Borenson paced like an angry dog, and looked as if he would go follow the servant at any minute, tracking down the marquis. Yet they had not waited two minutes when a young man raced in, face flushed and eyes shining with eagerness.

“Sir Borenson, is it true?” the lad begged. “Is the Earth King battling reavers at Carris?”

Borenson looked that lad over. “Do I know you?”

“I’m Bernaud—”

“The marquis’s son?” Borenson asked in disbelief.

“At your service,” Bernaud said with a half bow.

A wicked twinkle sparked in Borenson’s eye. “Aye, your king is battling reavers,” Borenson said, “as you will be—soon.”

At that moment, a servant entered through the same open door. “The marquis begs you to join him for breakfast in the Great Room.”

Borenson and Myrrima followed the servant, with Bernaud trailing, into the marquis’s Great Hall. An enormous table, some fifty feet long, occupied the length of the room. The table was set with enough pastries, fruit, and boar’s ham to feed a dozen men, but the marquis sat there all alone, as if brooding over which dainty to taste.

Above the table, the shields of the marquis’s ancestors adorned the walls. Each shield, plated with gold foil, was a monument to the great families from which the marquis had descended. Myrrima knew little of such lore, yet even she recognized some of the devices: here was the crouching lion of Merigast the Defiant, who stood fast against the sorcerers of the toth at Woglen’s Tower when all hope of rescue had failed. And there were the double eagles of King Hoevenor of Delf, who drove the arr from the Alcair Mountains. Each shield was elegant, and many had been forged by the finest craftsmen of their era. Yet most impressive of all was a small round shield above the head of the table, a crude thing that almost looked as if a child might have fashioned it on his own. On it was painted a red graak, wings spread as it soared above two worlds. Myrrima did not doubt that it was the shield of Ferrece Geboren himself, son of the Earth King Erden Geboren. In his own day he had been called The Ferocious, for he was fearless in battle. According to legend, at the age of thirteen he had instigated the journey to the netherworld with the Wizard Sendavian and Daylan of the Black Hammer. There Ferrece implored the Bright Ones to fight in mankind’s behalf. In all the lore of knights, no man was more universally admired than Ferrece Geboren.

It was a sad reminder that Ferecia had once been a proud land. An even sadder reminder of its ruin was the marquis himself, who sat just beneath the shield in a silk housecoat, looking down his nose at Myrrima and Borenson. He held a white perfumed kerchief up to his face, and by his sour expression seemed appalled that two people as squalid as Myrrima and her husband should appear in his appointments.

“Oh dear,” the marquis said, “Sir Borenson, it is so good to see you! You look...well.”

“And you,” Borenson said with a strain, the veins bulging in his neck. “Although, last time we met, you had four or five endowments of glamour to your credit. You look to be...a much more withered specimen of humanity without them.” The marquis’s face paled at the insult. Borenson affected a cough into his hand, and then clapped the marquis on the shoulder in a manner that was common with men in arms. The marquis looked down at the offensive hand, eyes popping.

Borenson seemed as if he were ready for murder, and the marquis looked as if he might faint.

“I, I, I trust that all is well with...our king,” the marquis stammered.

“Oh, the kingdom is in a shambles, as I’m sure you know,” Borenson said. “So, Gaborn sent me to give you an urgent message. As you also know, he is battling reavers south of Carris.”

“Is he?” the marquis affected ignorance.

“He is,” Borenson affirmed, “And he wonders where his old friend, the Marquis de Ferecia is hiding.”

“He does?” the marquis asked.

“You did receive the call to battle?”

“Indeed,” the marquis pleaded, “and I prepared to ride at once, but then Raj Ahten destroyed the Blue Tower and my men were left with less than two dozen endowments between them. Surely, one cannot be expected to fight without endowments!”

“One can,” Borenson said dangerously, “and one must. At Carris men, women, and children charged into the reavers’ ranks without regard for their own lives. They fought with the strength of desperation because they had no choice.”

“A nasty business, that,” the marquis said, appalled.

“And now,” Borenson said, “it’s your turn.” Beads of sweat began to break on the marquis’s brow. He held the perfumed kerchief closer to his face. “You are to equip your soldiers and ride toward Carris at once, giving battle to any foe that presents itself, be it man or reaver.”

“Oh dear,” the marquis moaned.

“Father, may I go?” Bernaud cut in.

“I think no—” the marquis began.

“A fine idea,” Borenson urged. “You’ll want to present your son to the Earth King, both as a show of family solidarity and to receive his blessing. Any other choice would leave you...exposed.” He studied the marquis’s neck as if pondering where the headsman might make a cut.

The marquis was in torment, but his son said, “Father, now is our chance! We can show the world that Ferrece is still one of the great houses. I’ll apprise the guard!”

The lad ran from the room, leaving Borenson to hover above the marquis.

Myrrima found her heart pounding. Borenson and the marquis had no love for one another, but Borenson was playing a dangerous game. Gaborn had not ordered the marquis to battle, had not made any threats veiled or otherwise. Yet Borenson threatened the man with the king’s vengeance.

Borenson smiled dangerously. “A fine lad, your son.” Now he got down to the real business at hand. “Have you a facilitator handy? I’m riding for Inkarra and need three endowments of stamina.”

“I—I’ve a facilitator,” the marquis stammered, “and suitable Dedicates may be found, but I’m afraid that I haven’t any forcibles.”

“I brought my own,” Borenson said. “Indeed, I have a dozen extra which I should like to present to your son.”

Outside the castle, Bernaud shouted to the captain of the guard, warning him to prepare some mounts.

The marquis gave Borenson a calculating look, and suddenly the terror in his eyes seemed to diminish. His face went hard.

“You see it, too, don’t you?” the marquis asked. “My son is more a man now than I could ever hope to be. He looks much as his grandfather did, when he was young. In him the House of Ferrece might hope to return to grandeur.”

Borenson merely nodded. He would not feign any affection for the marquis.

The old man smiled sourly. “So, the king orders us into battle. Let the fire take the old trees, and make way for the new.” He sighed, then peered up at Borenson. “You’re gloating. You’ll be pleased to see me dead.”

“I—” Borenson began to say.

“Don’t deny it, Sir Borenson. I have known you for what, a dozen years? You’ve always been so secure in your own prowess in battle. No matter that I had wealth that you could never match, or a title above your own, every time you’ve entered my presence, you’ve given me those insufferable looks. I know what you think of me. My ancestors were kings of renown. But over the centuries bits of our kingdom have been bartered away by one lord, or frivoled away by the next, or stolen from a third who was too weak to keep what he rightfully owned, until the last of us...is me. When you were but thirteen years old you looked at me with disdain, knowing what I was: a minnow freakishly spawned from a line of leviathan.”

“You beg me to speak freely,” Borenson nearly growled, “and through your own self-deprecation, you almost relieve me of the necessity.” He leaned on the table, so that his face was inches from the marquis’s, and he stared him in the eyes, unblinking. “Yes, I’ll be glad to see you dead. I have no stomach for men who live in luxury and whine about their fates. When I was a lad of thirteen, you looked down your nose at me because I was poor and you were rich, because my father was a murderer and yours was a lord. But I knew even then that I was a better man than you could ever hope to be. The truth is that you, sir, are a milksop, so weak in the legs that you could never father a child of your own. You say that Bernaud favors his grandsire, but I suspect that if we look among your guardsmen, we’ll find one that favors him more. Fie on you! If you were any kind of a man, you’d do your best to kill me right now for speaking thus, whether you had endowments or no.”

The marquis’s jaw hardened, and for a moment Myrrima thought that he would grab the carving knife from the boar’s ham and bury it in her husband’s neck. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and smiled wickedly. “You’ve always felt so constrained to prove yourself. The lowborn always do. Even now, as captain of the King’s Guard, you feel the need to challenge me.” The marquis had obviously not heard that Borenson had abandoned his station, and Myrrima wondered what the marquis would have done had he known. “But,” the marquis added, “there is no need for me to fight you. You and your shabby wife are the ones going to Inkarra, and we both know that the Night Children will send your heads home in a sack by dawn. As for me, I go to battle the reavers—a foe I judge to be far more worthy and implacable than you.”

For a moment, Myrrima thought her husband would kill the man for his insults, but Borenson laughed, a genuine laugh filled with mirth, and the marquis began to laugh in his turn. Borenson slapped him on the back, as if they were old friends, and indeed for a moment the two were united, if only in their hatred for each other, their scorn for each other, and their desire to unleash their anger upon other foes.

Borenson and Myrrima made their way to the Dedicates’ Keep behind the castle. Like everything else in the marquis’s domain, the Dedicates’ Keep was overnice. The walls of the keep, along with its towers, had been limed, so that the building fairly glowed. The courtyard gave rise to stately almond trees. Their leaves had gone brown, and the grass was littered with golden almonds. Squirrels hopped about madly, burying their treasures. A pair of Dedicates played chess in the open courtyard next to a fountain, while a blind Dedicate sat off in the shade with a lute, singing,

“You hate the marquis?” Myrrima asked as they walked.

“No,” Borenson said. “ ‘Hate’ is too strong a word. I merely feel such contempt for him that I would rejoice at his death. That’s not the same as hatred.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” Borenson said. “If I hated him, I’d kill him myself.”

“What did he mean,” Myrrima asked, “when he said that the ‘children’ would send our heads home in a sack?”

“Night Children,” Borenson said. “That is what the word Inkarran means. It comes from Inz, ‘Darkness,’ and karrath, ‘offspring.’” He spoke the words with such an accent that Myrrima imagined that he knew the language well. “The Inkarrans will send our heads home in a sack.”

“Why?” Myrrima asked.

Borenson sighed. “How much do you know of the Inkarrans?”

“I knew one back home, Drakenian Tho,” Myrrima said. “Drakenian was a fine singer. But he was quiet, and, I guess, no one knew him well.”

“But you know that our borders are closed?” Borenson asked. “Gaborn’s grandfather barred Inkarrans from his realm sixty years ago, and the Storm King retaliated. Few who have entered his realm have ever returned.”

“I’ve heard as much,” Myrrima said. “But I thought that since we were couriers, we would be granted safe passage. Even countries at war sometimes exchange messages.”

“If you think we’re safe, you don’t know enough about Inkarrans,” Borenson said. “They hate us.”

She understood from his tone that he meant that they didn’t just actively dislike her people, the Inkarrans hoped to destroy them. Yet Myrrima had to wonder at such an assessment. She knew that Inkarrans were outlawed in Mystarria, but it wasn’t so in every realm among the kingdoms of Rofehavan. King Sylvarresta had tolerated their presence in Heredon, and even did some minor trading with those Inkarrans who followed the spice routes up through Indhopal. So she wondered if Borenson’s judgment wasn’t clouded in this matter by the local disputes. “And why would you think that they hate us?”

“I don’t know the full story,” Borenson said. “Perhaps no one does. But you know how Inkarrans feel about us ‘Dayborn’ breeding with their people?”

“They don’t approve?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Borenson said. “They won’t talk about it to your face, but many Inkarrans are sickened by the mere thought of it—and for good reason. Any child from such a union takes on the skin, the hair, and the eye color of the Dayborn parent.”

“Which means?” Myrrima began.

“A full-blooded Inkarran, one with ice white eyes, can see in total darkness, even when traveling through the Underworld. But many half-breeds can see no better at night than we do, and the dark eyes follow down from generation to generation. The Inkarrans call such part-breeds kutasarri, spoiled fruit of the penis. They’re shunned in their own land by some, pitied by others, forever separate from the Night Children.”

Myrrima remembered the half-breed assassin that had tried to kill Gaborn.

“But,” she argued, “even some in the royal families are kutasarri. Even the Storm King’s own nephew—”

“Shall never sit on a throne,” Borenson finished.

“Here’s a mystery,” Myrrima said. “Why would a kutasarri from Inkarra agree to act as an assassin? Why would he try to kill Gaborn? Certainly it wouldn’t be for love of country.”

“Perhaps he merely wants to prove his worth to his own people,” Borenson said. “But there may be more to it. The Inkarrans do not just hate us for the color of our eyes. They call us barbarians. They hate our customs, our way of life, our civilization. They think themselves superior.”

“That can’t be the whole argument,” Myrrima said. “I’ve seen Inkarrans in Heredon. They didn’t seem to hold us in contempt at all. There has to be something more.”

“All right,” Borenson said, “A history lesson, then. Some sixty years ago, Gaborn’s grandfather, Timor Rajim Orden, discovered that many Inkarrans who were entering our lands were criminals fleeing justice, so he closed the borders. He turned back many of their traders, and told the minor nobles to put on trial any man that they believed posed a threat. Three minor Inkarran nobles in Duke Bellinghurst’s realm thus went to trial, and proudly admitted that they were more than criminals—they were assassins bent on killing the king’s Dedicates. They were from a southern tribe of Inkarra, one that despises us more than most, and had sworn to destroy us barbarians in Mystarria. Bellinghurst executed the men summarily, without first seeking King Orden’s approval. King Orden was a moderate man, and some say that he would have merely outlawed the offenders. But I think that unlikely, and in any case, it was too late. So he sent their bodies home as a warning to all Inkarrans.

“When the dead men reached their own land, their families cried out for vengeance to their high king. So King Zandaros fired off a choleric missive protesting the executions and cursing all northerners. Gaborn’s grandfather sent a skyrider over the mountains, telling Zandaros that if he refused to patrol his own borders, then he had no business protesting our attempts to protect ourselves. A day later, a skyrider from Inkarra dropped a bag on the uppermost ramparts at the Courts of Tide, at the very feet of King Orden. In it was the head of the child that had borne the message to the Storm King, and with the head came an edict warning that the citizens of Mystarria—and all of the other kingdoms in Rofehavan—would no longer be tolerated in Inkarra. Soon after, the Inkarrans began building their runewall across the northern borders, a shield that none dare now pass.”

“But that was a long time ago,” Myrrima argued. “Perhaps the new high king will be more tolerant?”

“Zandaros is still the High King of Indhopal. It’s true that he’s old, but he’s more than a king, it is said. He is a powerful sorcerer who can summon storms, and he uses his powers to extend his life.”

“But,” Myrrima protested, “in sixty years, surely his anger has cooled. His argument was with Gaborn’s grandfather, not with us.”

“Aye,” Borenson said. “That’s my hope. It is the only thing that might save us. We come as the envoys not of the old king but of a new, and we bear entreaties of peace. Even that black-hearted old badger should respect that.”

There was a pregnant silence. Borenson loved his wife, and was offering her one last opportunity to abandon their quest. But Myrrima said with finality, “I won’t be left behind.”

“Very well,” Borenson said.

Borenson gave over three forcibles of stamina to the marquis’s facilitator, an elderly man who studied the forcibles with glee, as if he had not seen so many together in a long, long time. The facilitator went to a logbook and came back shaking his head. “Only two folks have offered to give stamina in the past year. Would you like to wait until our criers find a third?”

“That could take weeks.” Borenson sighed. “Give me what you can now, and send out the criers. Perhaps you can vector the third endowment to me?”

“Done,” the facilitator said, disappearing from the room to make the arrangements. For a moment they stood in the silence, and Myrrima gazed about at the work chamber filled with implements of the facilitators’ craft. There were scales for weighing blood metal, tongs and hammers and files, a small forge, thick iron molds for making forcibles. A chart on the wall showed the various runes that allowed the transfer of each type of endowment, like sight and wit, along with possible minor variations in the shape of the runes. Cryptic notes written in the secret language of facilitators were scrawled upon the charts.

Myrrima gazed curiously at Borenson. She noticed that he was pacing, and his face seemed a bit pale. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” he replied. “Why?”

“The facilitator back in Carris said that he’d vector endowments to you: metabolism, brawn, wit. But you’re not moving any faster now than you did two days ago. Do you think he forgot?”

“No,” Borenson said. “The facilitators keep copious notes. I’m sure he’s just too busy. The city was—” He searched for the right word for the destruction of Carris. The walls of the city had buckled under the onslaught of the reavers, and many of its finest towers had fallen. The lands for thirty miles around lay black and blasted, every plant dead. The corpses of reavers, black monoliths with mouths gaping wide, littered the fields along with dead men. The reavers’ curses hung over the city—a reek that demanded that the men inside dry up, be blind, and rot and putrefy. Recalling the nightmare of Carris, Myrrima could think of no word to describe it. Destroyed was too weak. Demolished? Devastated? Borenson offered “Expunged.”

“Still,” Myrrima said, “plenty of people survived. He should be able to get Dedicates.”

“But those people want nothing more than to get away from Carris,” Borenson said. “The facilitators had their hands full just trying to move the Dedicates, boat them downstream. I’m sure that he’ll get the endowments vectored as soon as he can.”

Though he reassured Myrrima, Borenson didn’t seem so confident himself. He began to pace about the room. In all likelihood, his Dedicates were floating downriver now, perhaps on their way to the Courts of Tide. If the facilitator was with them, he’d be looking for a place to settle them, and Myrrima knew by report that most of the towns along the river would be too full of injured and homeless refugees to take on a large number of Dedicates. Under such conditions, it might be days or weeks before the facilitator returned to his normal duties.

Borenson’s lack of endowments put an uneven burden on Myrrima. As a soldier she didn’t have Borenson’s years of training, but she had more endowments and was definitely stronger, faster, smarter. In every way, she was more prepared for a journey to Inkarra than he.

Perhaps that was why Borenson paced. He went to a window, looked out, sighed, and then sat down with his back against the wall. He was pale, trembling all over. Sweat stood out on his forehead.

“What’s wrong?” Myrrima asked.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” he said. “I’ve seen too many Dedicates die.”

Myrrima knew what he was thinking. He had been forced to butcher Raj Ahten’s Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta—thousands of men, women, and children in a single night. And he was thinking of his own Dedicates that Raj Ahten had murdered at the Blue Tower.

“You know,” he said softly, “the marquis was right about me. As a young man, I always wanted to be a Runelord. I wanted to prove myself, and I thought that taking endowments would make me powerful. But it doesn’t just give you power. It gives you new responsibilities, and leaves you open to...whole new worlds of suffering.”

Within the hour the facilitator brought the Dedicates, two robust young girls, aged eleven and twelve. They stood just behind a curtain in the receiving room, a comfortable room, gaily painted, with warm couches to put the potential Dedicates at ease. Myrrima could hear the girls talking to the facilitator, begging for assurances that their widowed mother and younger brothers would receive food from the king’s stores.

“Fine young sacrifices, both of them,” Borenson whispered angrily as he peered through the curtain.

He trembled as the facilitator drew the stamina from the girls, along with their screams of pain. And when the forcibles kissed his own flesh, even the rush of ecstasy that came with taking an endowment did not stop him from shaking. As the facilitator’s aids carried the girls away afterward, both of them pale and weak with shock, Borenson vomited on the facilitator’s floor.

8 Hollow Wolves

South of Batenne, the road up into the Alcair Mountains became a desolate track. In places, the forests covered it completely, and often Myrrima and Borenson found themselves riding through trees, squinting vainly for sight of the road. But as they began to climb above the forests toward the jagged icy peaks, the ruts and stone walls along the road could be easily discerned.

The voices of hollow wolves could be heard in the distant mountains, eerily howling, like the moan of wind among rocks.

They had just stopped to put on heavy cloaks, and were in the last of the thinning trees where mounds of snow still huddled in the shadows of boulders, when Myrrima became aware of another rider.

“Our friend is near,” Myrrima said. “I can smell him up the road.”

“The assassin?” Borenson asked.

She got off her horse and warily strung her bow. She drew an arrow from her quiver, and spat on the sharp steel bodkin, anointing it with water from her own body. “Strike true,” she whispered. She looked to Borenson.

Borenson drew his warhammer. He seemed self-conscious. He was not a Water wizard, but Myrrima had washed him and offered the Water’s blessings upon him. He spat on the spike, and whispered, “May Water guide you.”

She peered up the road. The land rose steadily. Dwarf pines, nearly black against the fields of blinding snow up above, grew in ragged patches on the slopes of the mountain. There wasn’t much cover, not many places for a man to hide. But Myrrima felt sure that the assassin was far enough ahead that he could not have spotted them.

“How far?” Borenson asked.

“A mile or two,” Myrrima said.

“You take the right side of the road, I’ll take the left,” Borenson said. They tied their horses to a tree, then split up. Each of them crept through the woods on opposite sides of the road.

The snow was rife with wolf tracks. Myrrima strained her senses, letting her gaze pierce the shadows, listening for any sound—a cough, the snap of a twig. She sniffed the air. The wind was blowing in odd directions among the trees. She’d lose his scent one moment, smell it twice as strong the next.

There was little cover here, and after half a mile of sneaking, the trees gave out almost completely.

Myrimma leapt over the ground and raced ahead, her feet softly shushing in the snow. With five endowments of metabolism added to her brawn and stamina, she could run effortlessly for hours. More important, she could run faster than most horses. She hoped that this speed would give her the advantage in any fight.

She raced along at fifty or sixty miles an hour, head low, scenting for the smell of the assassin. She had never run like this since taking her endowments. It was queer.

Time did not seem to pass any differently. She ran at a good pace, but not overly quick. Yet when she rounded a bend, she could feel an odd force tugging her, so that she quickly learned to lean into her turns. And when she topped a rise, her stomach would do a little twist as she went airborne.

She felt sleek and powerful, like a wolf as it races after a stag.

The air grew thin and chill. Frost stood up in the dirt where the day’s sun had not yet penetrated the shadows. Higher up the mountain, the sun glinted on snow. She was nearly past the treeline when the odor of the assassin’s horse came suddenly strong.

She drew to a stop, and watched the road ahead. She could smell the brittle scent of a fire, its ashes gone cold. The assassin had made camp uphill, to her right among a knot of trees. She hoped that he might be asleep.

Myrrima peered at the spot for a long moment, but saw no movement, and could not make out any form that seemed vaguely human.

She crept off the road two hundred yards, and circled up through a gully into the trees. She saw no sign of anyone, yet the smell of horseflesh grew stronger. She let her nose guide her into the thick copse of pine, up a ridge, past a fallen log.

She did not spot the assassin’s camp until she was less than forty feet from it. He hid in the midst of thick trees, their branches forming a natural roof. At some time in ages past a depression had been dug there, and a small rock wall built up to chest height in a semicircle, forming a crude defense. She saw a horse’s ears poking above the rocks, and Myrrima froze for a moment.

She could hear the assassin, drawing deep, wheezing breaths. She scented the air. She could smell blood and rot. The man was injured.

Myrrima looked behind her. Borenson had seen her run, and he was leaping up the hill toward her, trying to catch her. He slipped in a deep snowdrift, and for a moment snow churned in the air all around him as he fought back to his feet. She raised a warning hand, dropped to cover behind a tree, and waited for him.

When he drew near, he was huffing for breath. He tried to still it. He peered into the dense foliage, saw the little camp there, and nodded. He motioned for her to circle the camp, come at it from behind.

Myrrima crept along the edge of the wood, walking in slushy snow. A twig crunched beneath her foot, under the snow. She could barely see the top of the horse’s head there in the camp. The horse’s ear went erect.

Wolf tracks littered the ground here at the edge of the camp. Myrrima looked up and saw a white form against some dark trees uphill. A huge wolf was there, as motionless as the snow. Suddenly it spun in its tracks and bounded away over the ice field, emitting a soft woof.

At that instant, she heard another twig snap behind her. She turned and saw Borenson, warhammer held high behind his head, charging toward the hidden camp.

A rush of wind came screaming through the trees toward them. It didn’t come from uphill. Instead, it was like a tornado leaning on its side, aiming toward Myrrima and her husband. The forest shook like thunder, while bits of pine needles, cones, and icy shards of snow suddenly whirled in a vortex, obscuring Myrrima’s view.

Her heart nearly froze in her chest. For a moment she thought that the Darkling Glory must be near, for she had experienced nothing like this outside the monster’s presence.

“Sorcery!” she cried, stunned motionless.

A blinding blast of wind and ice came whipping over her, knocking the arrow from her hands.

Pinecones and twigs pelted her; shards of ice slammed into her eyes and teeth. Myrrima squinted and raised her hand protectively, trying to see through the tempest.

With a roar, Borenson charged. The storm turned on him. He leapt into the pit.

His warhammer fell and with a sickening thud slammed into flesh. A wailing cry arose. “Oooooooh!”

Wind rushed about the trees then, circling like a storm.

The man’s cry kept ripping from his throat. Pine needles and ice lashed through the air in a maelstrom, then went rushing south up the slopes toward Inkarra.

Myrrima heard the scream “Noooooo!” in the wind, as it drew farther and farther away, echoing among the canyons.

She ran up to Borenson, knowing what she would find.

He stood over a corpse, struggling to free the spike of his hammer from a wizard’s head. The dead man wore the blue tunic of Mystarria’s couriers, with the image of the green man on his chest. But his long silver hair proclaimed him to be of Inkarran birth. His eyes were flung open, and his mouth drawn in a little circle of surprise or pain.

His horse whinnied pitifully at the sight of strangers, and tried to rise. But its legs had been shackled.

“Pilwyn coly Zandaros,” Myrrima mouthed the man’s name.

“This is the wizard that tried to kill Gaborn?” Borenson confirmed.

She nodded. Pilwyn had been both an assassin and a wizard of the Air. Myrrima shook her head in confusion. “What do you think he was up to? Waiting in ambush?”

Borenson was already studying the ground, the shabby camp. The hobbled horse had lain in its own excrement for hours. It gazed at Borenson imploringly.

Myrrima saw no sign of food, no extra wood for the fire. There was nothing left of the campfire but lightly smoking ruins.

Borenson knelt over Pilwyn’s corpse. Four days past, Sir Hoswell, who had been one of Iome’s guards, had shot Pilwyn with an arrow. The wound would have killed any commoner in a matter of minutes. The arrow had punctured Pilwyn’s lung. But wizards of the Air were notoriously hard to kill. Beyond that, Pilwyn was a Runelord with endowments of stamina. So he had merely plugged the cavity in his chest with a crude bandage. But now Myrrima could see that black blood crusted the wound, and it had swollen horribly. Maggots crawled around the lip of the bandage.

“He wasn’t long for the world,” Borenson said. “He’d have died in a few more hours, even if we hadn’t come along. If the infection hadn’t killed him, the hollow wolves would have.”

“But why was he following us the other night?” Myrrima asked.

“My guess is that he wasn’t,” Borenson said. “We’re all on the road to Inkarra, fellow travelers. He probably pulled off the road to rest and heard us pass, then just crept along behind us. He may have even hoped for our aid. But he was an Inkarran in Mystarria—an outlaw.” He sighed.

Myrrima went to the body. She reached down to pull the bandage back, look at the old wound. She felt a cool wind whip around her hand as it neared the man’s chest—suspected that she had just touched protective runes written with wind.

Up the hill, through a thin veil of trees, she heard the horrid ghostly wailing of his voice, and could see the plume of windblown ice still racing away, now nearly a mile uphill.

Borenson gazed in that direction. “His elemental will reach Inkarra long before we do,” he said, and Myrrima wondered about her own elemental, the thing growing inside her. She imagined that when she died, the Water within her would merely leak from her mouth and eyelids, leaving a moist puddle.

Borenson went to Pilwyn’s mount, removed its hobbles. The beast struggled to its feet.

Borenson then leapt up on the stone fence above the camp. He did not speak, but his posture, the tilt of his head, asked, “Ready to go?”

Myrrima asked, “What should we do with the body?”

“Leave it,” Borenson said. “The wolves will have him.”

“But he’s the Storm King’s nephew,” Myrrima said. “We should show him some respect.”

“We can’t dig a hole, and I won’t take him over the mountains to Inkarra,” Borenson argued. “King Zandaros would be none too pleased to learn that we killed his nephew on our way to beg his favor.”

“You’re right,” Myrrima said. “Of course you’re right. But I don’t feel easy about it. Wizards don’t just die. After I slew the Darkling Glory, its elemental hurled boulders around as if they were apples. Binnesman warned that the elemental was still capable of great evil. Pilwyn’s elemental is small, but that thing is headed for Inkarra.”

Again she felt the foreboding that had been growing all day. Something, or someone, would seek to take her husband from her. Could it be the wizard’s elemental?

“Look at the bright side,” Borenson said. “At least we got a good horse.”

With three force horses, the trip through the snow went fast. Or at least it would have seemed so to an outsider. Had you seen them, you would have tracked the force horses galloping up the mountainsides, churning snow and ice with each hoofbeat. When the road leveled, they seemed to almost float above it, such was the length and grace of their stride.

But Myrrima had endowments of metabolism now, more even than her mount, and to her senses the horse did not seem to be moving fast at all. Instead, she felt as if the stuff of time had stretched. The sun lumbered interminably into the sky, and gradually slanted toward darkness. Thus one day seemed to be expanding to fill five. Myrrima felt every second of her life waning past.

Their journey had begun before dawn. In that time, they traveled hundreds of miles.

The journey up the slopes was tedious. Myrrima never even got to see one of the much-vaunted hollow wolves up close. In the distance she saw a pack of them sweeping over the snow—white on white—wafting ghostlike over the slopes of a nearby mountain. Even from a distance they looked huge.

The hollow wolves saw her party and redoubled their speed, hoping to catch up, but they were no match for force horses. Borenson let the mounts race for an hour.

When next they stopped, they were near the mountain peaks. The snow was now six inches deep and crusted from last night’s freeze. Myrrima followed its course up the mountains with her eyes. The snow-covered trail looked broad and easy as it wound through the hills. It had been cut wide enough to accommodate wagons, and was none too steep.

Somehow, in Myrrima’s imagination, the Alcair Mountains had always seemed impassable. Perhaps for one without endowments the journey would have been more challenging. But she suspected that there wasn’t so much a physical challenge in crossing the mountains as there was a political one.

At the mountaintops, stone wheels stood against the sky. The wheels looked to be more than thirty or forty feet tall. The line that they formed zigzagged crazily, marching up one ridge, then diving into a ravine, like rocky pearls to decorate the hills. On each stone wheel a rune had been carved. Myrrima eyed them, not quite able to make out the design.

“Don’t look at the runewall!” Borenson warned. “Not unless you have to. Keep your eyes on the road!”

Myrrima averted her gaze, but now felt curious. What was the runewall? The runes looked as if they had been carved on individual tablets of stone and then rolled into place. The making of this massive bulwark had been a monumental task. The border between Rofehavan and Inkarra spanned a thousand miles. Building a barrier like this would have taken tens of thousands of masons a period of decades.

The fact that gazing upon it was forbidden made it that much more enticing. Myrrima wanted to feel the awe of it.

“I had no idea it would be so vast,” Myrrima said. She studied the ground. The snow here was dirty, streaked with ash. She looked for the source of the ash, but could see no sign of a fire. There were no trees so high, only low shrubs here and there that thrust their dead branches up between the rocks.

She dutifully kept her eyes on the road as the horses plodded step after weary step, and felt a most peculiar sensation. The stone bucklers loomed enormous in her mind. It was as if the very shadow of them weighed upon her consciousness. As she drew nearer, she could feel them, demanding her regard.

She had to will herself not to look. She had to force herself to focus on a rough stone road ahead, or the twisted roots of a dead bush, or plain rock casting an uneven shadow in the snow. Even when she did, her eyes sought to flit away, to land like sparrows upon those monoliths that formed the runewall.

The desire to look and be done with it burned her mind, left an acid taste in her mouth. She could close her eyes and feel the stone tablets looming above her. She could track them thus.

An awful certainty grew in her: to keep her eyes closed was better than to look.

Suddenly at her back she heard a loud thump, and the mount that she trailed pulled at its reins. Carefully keeping her eyes averted, she turned to glance back at the horse. Its eyes had gone wide, as if in shock, and it stared in frozen horror toward the monoliths.

Myrrima worried that the animal had picked a lamentable time to look up, but knew in her heart that it was no accident. Even this dull beast felt the forbidding presence of the wall.

If a horse can look upon it, I can too, Myrrima thought. And instantly her eyes darted toward the road ahead. She was just beneath the skyline now, not more than fifty yards away.

A vast archway spanned the road. Overhead, the skies were blue, but clouds on the far horizon lay opalescent beneath that dark arch, making it look for all the world like a blind eye.

An inscription above the arch was written in both Rofehavanish and Inkarran: Beyond This Point, Your Tribe is Barren.

She struggled now to avoid looking at the monolithic stones raised up like shields on either side of the arch. But she had let her gaze stray too far, and now it was taken hostage.

She saw vast round stones, like wheels or shields, on either side of the road. Her eyes went to the northernmost stone. Inscribed upon it was a trail, a groove in the rock, leading downward and inward, like a map. She recognized that it was a rune, a mesmerizing rune, and powerful. She tried to look away, but could not. Her eyes were forced to follow that groove along its tortured path, winding down, down. And as it wound, she felt the weight of ages slowly passing by, wheeling beneath her. Civilizations could rise within each turning of the wheel, and worlds could rot. Great cities formed, and in her mind’s eye, Myrrima saw them crumble. Their foundations sank and moldered among forgotten forests. Monuments to proud kings wore away. Their squalid children fought and sought shelter among the ruins. In time they began the process of building again. Still the wheel turned, and Myrrima was swept away among the dreams of proud lovers, the boasts of warriors, the wild utterances of poets and prophets, and still the wheel turned toward its devastating conclusion.

Her heart surged in panic, and her mouth went dry.

Looking at this will kill me, Myrrima thought feebly. She fought it, tried to close her eyes and twist away. A groan escaped her, but she stared on, her eyes following that twisted groove along its fearsome course—as towers rose and dreamers dreamed and proud lords made war under a hazy sun—until it all stopped.

Immediately an emotion surged through her, struck her with awful force.

You are nothing, a voice seemed to roar through her mind. All your deeds and dreams are futile. You strive for beauty and permanence, yet you are less than a worm on the road, waiting to be crushed beneath the wheels of time.

The conviction of this, the power of it, overwhelmed her. The visions elicited by the rune proved the argument. How dare one like her seek to enter Inkarra? She was loathsome. Better to turn the horse back now and run it madly over some cliff than to proceed.

Myrrima never thought about what she was doing. She merely groaned and reined in her mount, tried to turn it, and spurred its flanks with her heel. She sought escape.

Nothing that had ever happened to her was as cruel as the thought of facing that rune. Until now she had lived in relative peace, not knowing of its existence.

But now that she had seen it, she could never be free. Better to be nothing. Blind with panic, she did not see the cliffs below.

All the heavens had gone black, and she fled through a dark tunnel toward oblivion.

“No!” Borenson shouted. “No!”

Her husband came off his horse and grabbed her own mount by the reins. He was fighting the beast, trying to subdue it and the Inkarran’s horse at the same time. Myrrima could not see him, but felt his hands grab her wrists, pull the reins. She gouged her mount’s flanks. She was riding his big strong warhorse, and as the beast pawed the air, she felt certain that it would deliver a crushing blow to Borenson’s skull, as it had been trained to do. But Borenson had been its handler for years, and perhaps that alone saved his life.

He wrestled the horse down, shouting at Myrrima, “Don’t look! Don’t look at it!”

Myrrima was blind with panic, but suddenly she began to see as if through a haze.

Borenson peered up at her. His own eyes went to the runewall, and he gazed at the horror there. Fierce tears welled up, and he stared in defiance. “It’s a lie!” he raged at her. “I love you! I love you, Myrrima. Damn those bastards.”

He turned and led the horses onward. Each step seemed to fall painfully, as if his legs were slogging through molten iron.

Myrrima clenched her eyes shut and faced the wall. Her heart hammered.

I faced a Darkling Glory, she told herself. I bested a wight. I can fight this, too. Yet somehow, the vile runes terrified her more than other monsters ever could. She could do little to help Borenson but urge the horse forward with a kick of her heel.

Thus Borenson forged on against the repressive wards, dragging Myrrima someplace she could never have gone herself.

She felt the weight of the wards grow above her. Even with eyes clenched shut, she could see their loathsome shape now, stamped on the back of her brain as she bowed in submission. Your birth was a misfortune, a chance collision of wantonness with abandonment. You are no better than the secretions from which you were formed.

And farther away, as if from some hollow in the hills, Borenson roared in defiance, “Don’t believe it.”

And then she was beneath the arch. She could almost feel the weight of it as if it leaned upon her back, crushing her.

And then she was past it, and still she felt it behind her. Sobs wracked Myrrima now.

“I love you,” Borenson said calmly as he strode forward.

Myrrima would have lashed her horse and sped away into Inkarra but for the fact that Borenson kept it firmly in control.

With each step, the power of the wards faded. In a sense, she felt like a dreamer who has awakened from a nightmare. The dream was fading from her memory with each step of the horse, for the mind was not meant to feel such torment, and ultimately could not hold it for long.

Myrrima was half a mile beyond the wall, maybe more, by the time she was able to open her eyes and raise her head a bit. Borenson had taken the reins of all three mounts and led them over the pass and down toward Inkarra. His own mount bumped her leg to her right, the wizard’s mount to her left.

She gazed down the slopes. Ahead, a sea of mist rose above Inkarra. It was warmer on this side of the mountains, much warmer she realized, as if the wall did more than keep out unwanted northerners but also kept out the cold. The thin layer of snow vanished just down the hill, and shrubs here still rose up among the rocks, showing green leaves.

But beyond that, beyond those few signs of life among the stones, she could only discern a rolling sea of fog. “Beyond this point, your tribe is barren.” Barren of what? She wondered. Barren of hope? Barren of pride? Barren of comfort?

Borenson rounded a sharp corner in the road, and Myrrima suddenly saw to her left a small cave, the mouth of a fortress carved into the stone.

At the mouth of the cave stood three men with ivory skin and long silver hair wrapped in corn braids, which were all coiled together and hung over their right shoulders. They wore blood-red tunics that did not quite reach their knees, and beyond that, Myrrima could see no other article of clothing except their sandals, tied with cords that wrapped around the ankles and knees. For armor they wore steel breastplates, perfect circles, upon their backs and chests. They wore similar disks on bands upon their foreheads, and another upon their upper arms. Two of the men bore longbows, and the third carried an Inkarran battle-axe—two slats of wood bound together with a row of spikes between, so that it looked like the jawbone of some sharp-toothed beast.

“Halt!” an Inkarran warrior called in a thick accent as he strode forward. “You are our captives!”

9 Abyss Gate

Long and long the riverbed wound through the Underworld. Gaborn ran in a daze of grief. His side ached from the blow he’d taken from the reavers, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the concern he felt at the loss of Binnesman.

The wizard had been the one to introduce Gaborn to the Earth Spirit. He had been a wise counselor and friend.

More than that, he had been Gaborn’s strongest supporter. As an Earth Warden, he had been set apart for one duty only: to protect mankind through the dark times to come. Gaborn was the Earth King, with powers of his own, regardless of how diminished. But Binnesman’s powers and wisdom had been incomparable.

With him gone, what will become of us? Gaborn wondered.

He felt ashamed to even worry about such a thing. But he knew the answer. Binnesman had said it himself. If he failed, mankind would be lost.

Averan raced beside Gaborn on her short legs, weeping bitterly. Iome stayed back and tried to urge the child on, her face a blank mask.

They had been running through the bed of the ancient river, where water had dribbled over rocks, leaving crater-shaped pools. They reached a wide cavern, where a tiny stream dripped down from a high wall, filling some pools.

Iome asked Gaborn at last, “Can we stop here for a rest?” The sound of reavers running overhead was a dim rumble. Gaborn stretched out his senses, felt for danger. Yes, he could feel it everywhere. Battles coming to Heredon, death to Carris, the creeping darkness that could swallow the world. With every hour that they ran, the darkness was one hour closer.

But for the moment, the danger to the three of them was not great. “We can stop.” His mouth was parched from lack of drink, and his belly clenched like a fist. With all his endowments of stamina he could endure much, but even a Runelord needed some refreshment.

He hadn’t eaten a decent meal since when? Yesterday at dawn? With his endowments of metabolism, his body registered that as something closer to ten days.

“We can’t stay long,” Averan said, her voice thick with fear.

“Why?” Gaborn asked.

“That reaver,” Averan said, “the one that...hit Binnesman. I smelled him. I know him. All of the reavers know him. He’s called the Consort of Shadows. He won’t leave us alone. He’ll hunt us until we’re dead.”

“What do you mean?” Gaborn asked.

“Among the reavers, he’s a legend,” Averan said. “He’s the One True Masters’ favorite, her mate. He’s a hunter, sent to track down sick and dangerous reavers.”

“Dangerous?” Iome asked.

“Among reavers,” Averan explained, “the most feared illness is something they call worm dreaming. Tiny worms eat into the reaver’s brain, causing phantom smells and visions—worm dreams. In time the worms cause terrible pain, forgetfulness, and death.

“So, when a reaver gets worm dreaming, to keep it from spreading, the sick reaver is killed and its carcass is burned.

“Such a death is a disgrace. For if a reaver dies and another eats its brain, then its memories, its experiences, are partly learned by the one who ate it. But reavers that aren’t eaten don’t get to share their memories.”

“In other words,” Gaborn reasoned, “a reaver can hope to gain a sort of immortality.” Gaborn had known that reavers ate their dead. He’d even known that they obtained the memories of the dead. But he’d never imagined that living reavers would hope to be eaten.

“Yes,” Averan said. “Every reaver hopes to be so well thought of that its death will spark a duel among others for the right to feed on its brain. And at feasts where the most powerful sorceresses gather, the brains of wise reavers are considered to be a treat.

“So, the most powerful reavers, like the Waymaker that I communicated with yesterday, have memories that stretch back a hundred generations in an unbroken chain.”

“I see where you are going,” Gaborn said. “To be thrown away, burned, is such a disgrace that some of them fight it. That’s where the Consort of Shadows comes in?”

“Yes,” Averan said. “Reavers who get burned die the ‘greater death.’ It’s a permanent death, and they’re disgraced by it. So when they begin to see signs of worm madness, the reavers often hide those signs even from themselves. They try to live out normal lives, be consumed, and die with honor.

“But as their minds begin to waste, their dreams become more frightening, and their fear of discovery grows. So they flee the warrens.

“They come out here, far away from the hives, into the barrens where they live as rogues.”

“That would explain something,” Gaborn cut in. “Years ago, a reaver attacked the village of Campton. My father sent some men after it, but all they found was a sickly reaver, dragging its legs.”

“Yes,” Averan said. “Some go all the way to the surface—unless the Consort of Shadows catches them. He’s relentless, and deadly. He’s curious about us. He’ll come for us. I’m sure of it.”

“Perhaps,” Gaborn said. “But the danger is small right now. We should take nourishment while we can.” He continued to sense for danger. With the loss of Binnesman their chances of defeating the One True Master had diminished.

Averan went to the nearest pool, peered into the water. “There’s no scrabbers in here,” she said dully. “Only blindfish.” She knelt close, sniffed. “This water is fresh.”

All of the water they’d passed in the last few hours had been contaminated with sulfur. Gaborn hurried over, peered into the shallows. The craterlike pool was perhaps thirty feet across, and two feet deep. Dozens of blindfish, a dull gray in color and the length of a man’s hand, swam about ponderously. These were not the leathery, spiny, sulfur-tasting fish of the Underworld, but looked more as if they had descended from some breed of bass.

For miles now the ground had been covered with tickle fern and clumps of colorful wormgrass, but with the advent of fresh water, rubbery gray man’s ear surrounded the pool.

Averan dipped in her hand, took a long drink. Soon, everyone was doing the same.

“We’ll camp here for an hour,” Gaborn said at last. “Get some rest. We’ll have fish for dinner. It will help stretch our supplies.”

Iome looked up at him. “Before we do, shouldn’t we...make plans. What will we do without Binnesman?”

Gaborn shook his head. “I...he’s not dead.”

“He might as well be,” Iome said.

Gaborn shook his head in exasperation. “Of all the people in the world, Binnesman should have known best how important it was to heed my warning.”

“But sometimes even the wisdom of the wisest men fails,” Iome said. “From now on,” she begged Averan, “when Gaborn tells us to do something, do it.”

Gaborn didn’t think that they would forget the lesson. But it grieved him that it had to be learned at such a dear price. He studied the fish swimming lazily in the pool. Catching them would almost be like picking berries. He waded into the water.

“Gaborn,” Iome said, “lie down and rest. I can catch the fish.” Her fierce look told him that she would not take no for an answer.

What had she said to him earlier this morning? “While you’re out saving the world, who will be saving you?” She was taking those words to heart. Gaborn felt in no mood to argue.

He found a patch of gray man’s ear, then lay down on it while Iome and Averan caught the fish. The plants made a spongy mattress.

Gaborn lay still, listening.

On the wall of the cave above him hung a curtain of cave straws, a kind of stalactite that formed over eons as droplets of water dripped down through hollow tubes. The cave straws looked like agates or jade of varying colors, ranging from a soft rose hue to bright peach. They were beautiful to look at, sparkling gems, and the sound of water plunking from the straws onto the calcite floor created a resonance that echoed loudly. Gaborn wasn’t sure if it was the acoustics of the cavern or if it was his endowments of hearing, but the dribbling water reminding him of the soft tinkling of bells. And distantly, the pounding feet of reavers were like the roll of drums.

Gaborn played a game in his mind. Binnesman had suggested that up until now Gaborn had been asking the wrong questions. He’d concentrated on tactics, various weapons he might use to fight the One True Master, and nothing that he imagined could save his people for long.

Darkness is coming, Gaborn thought, a full night like we’ve never witnessed before. How can I save my people?

He imagined raising armies, attacking various nations—Indhopal, Inkarra, South Crowthen. It mattered not at all.

Darkness was coming, and attacking others offered no hope.

As he lay pondering, Averan pulled up some old dead tickle ferns and started a small campfire. Then she emptied the packs, setting things next to the fire to dry. She pulled out apples and nuts and whetstones and bits of flint and set them in one pile, then threw away the wet loaves of bread that had been destroyed by the water. When she finished, she repacked everything, leaving only some spare clothes and other oddments to dry.

The burning ferns had an odd peppery scent that only made Gaborn that much more hungry. Unfortunately, it would take nearly fifteen minutes for the fish to cook, and with his endowments of metabolism, it would feel more like two or three hours.

He glanced across to the far side of the cavern. The walls there looked almost flat, as if they had been carved by hand, and he spotted a couple of odd-shaped holes that looked like windows here and there, up near the ceiling of the cave. Stalactites hung from the roof, ugly things of dirty brown stone.

Gaborn dropped his mouth in surprise. He had only thought it looked like a fortress, but now he could see details: yes, down there was a gate, but part of the roof had caved in, landing at its door. Over the ages, the stone walls had buckled a bit, so that they wavered on their foundations. Stalactites hung like spears, hiding some of the windows.

“Human?” Gaborn wondered. “Or duskin?”

His heart hammered in excitement. Wondrous things could be found in duskin ruins—metalwork so fine that human hands could not match it, moonstones that shone with their own eternal light.

Gaborn got up and crossed the riverbed until he reached some fallen stones from an old wall. They were coated with mud, like that on the outer walls, making them all but invisible. There had once been a portcullis here, and the wooden gate had been bound together with iron bars. Now the iron had all gone to rust, and the wood had rotted through ages ago.

Gaborn grabbed an iron rod and pulled on it. The gate all but collapsed. He kicked in some old timbers, and made his way inside.

The floor looked as if it were coated with plaster. At some time in the past, the fortress had flooded, leaving a thick coat of mud on both floor and walls. A few Underworld plants struggled up like black bristles from the floor, but it seemed that, for some reason, little could thrive here.

A yellowish creature with a broad back, like some strange eyeless beetle, came scampering toward Gaborn, waving its small claws in the air. Gaborn stomped on the bug with an astonishing effect.

There was a pop and a flash of light, and then the dead bug began to burn steadily with a sulfur smell.

A blazer, Gaborn realized. He’d heard of the bug once, long ago, in the House of Understanding. “They are the only animals known,” old Hearthmaster Yarrow had said, “that do you the courtesy of cooking themselves when you’re ready to eat. Unfortunately, they taste worse than fried cockroaches.”

Gaborn peered about. He’d found what might have been a Great Room. On one wall the tattered remains of a tapestry still hung like a banner, but the colors had so faded that Gaborn could not even begin to guess at what it might have pictured. Ancient oil lamps rested in nooks in the walls; here and there was an odd piece of refuse—part of a rotted chair, the skeletal remains of a chest of drawers.

Mystarrians built this, Gaborn realized. I’ve seen clay lamps like these in the House of Understanding, in the Room of Time.

This place was old, very old. But Gaborn could not guess how old. He thought he knew, but dared not admit it to himself. Only three times in recorded history had Mystarria dared attempt to conquer the Underworld. Erden Geboren himself might have slept in these rooms, led warriors through these corridors during the first of those attempts.

The hair rose on Gaborn’s arms. He could almost feel the presence of spirits here, of men who had died in battle.

A narrow staircase was chiseled into the stone at the back of one room. He climbed the stairs to the second floor. An ancient wooden door blocked the way.

Words were carved into the door. They were all in old script, a corrupt version of Rofehavanish that Gaborn could barely make out. The door had rotted away, leaving blank spots for some words.

“I, Beron Windhoven...this fortress...year of Duke Val the Wise!...Below...much foretoken of reaver.”

“Duke Val the Wise?” Gaborn tried to guess at the age of the writing from memory. His mother’s line came through Val. Val the Wise was the son of Val the Foresworn, who had conquered the Westlands seven hundred years ago.

So, this place was old even then, Gaborn realized. Which meant that King Harrill could not have built it.

Gaborn pulled the door latch; it came off in his hand. He gave the door his shoulder, and it cascaded inward.

There was little to see. Four dozen small rooms had been cut into the rock. It had the look of a barracks. There were privies chipped into the stone, but no ancient weapons, no rare antiquities plundered from duskin ruins.

Anything of value had been hauled off centuries ago.

Another staircase led upward. These would be the officers’ quarters. Gaborn climbed the steps with a growing sense of reverence, came to a T. The left hallway led to a large room whose door had been kicked in. Gaborn suspected that Beron Windhoven must have claimed the room as his own. Part of the ceiling had collapsed into the room, and Gaborn dared not enter.

But to the right stood an ancient door of blackened metal, and upon it was a crest that Gaborn knew all too well: the face of the green man stared out at Gaborn through leaves of oak, all wrought into the metal of the black door.

Erden Geboren once slept in this room, Gaborn realized. He planned his wars and guided his men from here. I know the name of this place now: Abyss Gate, the Dark Fortress.

Knowledge of the whereabouts of this place had been lost in time, but its name was still remembered in the lore of Mystarria. Gaborn would have imagined it bigger, would have thought that it had housed a thousand men, for it loomed large in legend.

There comes a time in a man’s life—if he is lucky—when he feels as if he has met his destiny. There comes a time when he recognizes that every path he has chosen, every plan he has so painstakingly laid, delivers him to a doorstep where he will confront his fate. And what may happen next is only a dimly hoped dream.

Gaborn had that premonition now.

Every step I have ever taken has led me in the footsteps of Erden Geboren, Gaborn thought. Why not here? Why not now?

In the distance, the sound of the reaver horde rushing through caverns above was like a distant thunder.

Gaborn reached out and scraped the door with his dagger, cutting a silver groove. The door was all of silver beneath the black. The door had tarnished that much over the centuries.

Everything else of value here had been carried away, but such was the regard that others held for the Earth King that no one had dared plunder this door.

Gaborn pulled the handle. The door was locked, but the keyhole was a mere indentation in the shape of the green man. Gaborn put his signet ring to the notch and turned. His signet ring had been cast in this very shape for more than a thousand years. The lock resisted at first, then broke free.

He pushed the door open.

The room was austere in the extreme. Gaborn had seen prison cells that were larger. Up here, sealed behind its door, the room had remained dry. The furnishings did not look so much well preserved as petrified. A cot with a wooden frame occupied most of the room. Upon it lay a reed mat and a brown woolen blanket. The bed had been left unmade.

A small table stood by the bed with a chair beside it. Upon the table lay a wooden plate and knife. A weathered book wrapped in leather lay next to the knife, along with an inkpot shaped like a lily, and the remains of a quill. A simple riding robe hung upon a peg on the wall, and a pair of tall boots peeked out from under the bed.

It looked as if Erden Geboren had simply eaten breakfast here ages ago and left, locking the door—never to return.

A realization struck Gaborn: that is exactly what happened. Erden Geboren had been at Abyss Gate, guiding his Dark Knights as they fought the reavers belowground, when he learned of the treachery at Caer Fael.

After an endless war fighting reavers and toth and nomen, he’d heard that the people of his own city had turned against him, the Earth King.

Little was known about why they rebelled. Some historians suspected that the cost of his war had been too great—he had led his knights through the Underworld for more than a dozen years, after all. Others argued against that, imagining that rogues and bandits had rallied against him in one last bid for domination. But one thing was certain: he died at Caer Fael, and no wound marred his body.

Now nearly eighteen hundred years later, Gaborn found himself in Erden Geboren’s room, a chamber undisturbed since the very hour that he had ridden to his death.

Gaborn half expected to see the Earth King’s shade patiently hovering in a corner, waiting to speak to him.

He gingerly touched the book, untied the cords that bound it, and opened it to the first page. The leaves were mere loose sheets, and some were flaking into dust. A drawing occupied the title page—a great oak tree, and beneath it two creatures that looked like men with wings, but with faces like foxes. Each creature bore a long sword with a wavy blade. The picture had been painstakingly drawn in ink, though the artist showed no talent. Gaborn recognized that this was a work of love, most likely a rough draft by Erden Geboren meant to be refined by better hands into an illuminated manuscript. He could not read the title, for the characters and language were in a tongue older than any that he knew.

Still, Gaborn found himself trembling with excitement. He flipped through the pages. The writing was in an ancient language, Alnycian, a tongue that had been spoken at court for a thousand years but was all but forgotten now. Gaborn could not read it, yet here was a book scribed in Erden Geboren’s own hand. He flipped to the next page. The script was strong and graceful. The ink was dark upon the yellowed pages. But the manuscript was far from finished. Words had been crossed out and passages inserted in their place. Questions were transcribed in the margins. This was obviously a work in progress.

Old Hearthmaster Biddles will love this, Gaborn thought. The tome would be cause for celebration among the keepers of the Room of Time. He tucked it into his shirt.

There was little else in the room: an old tin bell, gray with age, four copper coins upon a shelf. Behind the door Gaborn found an ancient reaver dart somewhat longer than the norm, unlike any that he had ever seen. It was a kingly piece, fashioned not of steel but carved from one length of reaver bone, most likely from the shoulder of a large blade-bearer. There had been a leather grip wrapped around the shaft, but it was old and useless. The diamonds that tipped the dart were unusually large, long, and thin.

Gaborn smiled. The very weapon of Erden Geboren. The reaver bone would have hardened over the ages, becoming stronger than ever, and the grips could be replaced easily enough.

He would have wanted me to have this, Gaborn thought.

He took the reaver dart, then stood in the doorway for a moment, just observing.

Erden Geboren had been a humble man, Gaborn decided. The room showed no penchant for adornment, no love of display.

He closed the door once again, and locked it.

Iome had a dozen fish cooking on rocks around a small campfire. She glanced up at him, saw the gleaming amber javelin.

“What have you found?” she asked, a smile broadening across her face.

“The fortress of Abyss Gate,” Gaborn said. “Erden Geboren’s old bedchamber was there, untouched through the ages. I found his own reaver dart!”

“What else?” Iome pressed him.

Gaborn said, “An old book, a manuscript I think.”

“In Erden Geboren’s own hand?” Iome asked. She looked as if she would get up and dance.

Gaborn nodded at her evident delight, but looked around in rising concern.

“Where’s Averan?” Gaborn asked.

“She walked up the trail a way,” Iome said. “She said that she wanted to pee in private, but I think she’s very upset about Binnesman. She just wants to be alone.”

Gaborn reached out with his Earth Sight. Yes, Averan had gone down the trail a way. He could sense no danger around her.

Gaborn pulled out the volume, and Iome unwrapped the leather that bound it. She opened to the title page, and read slowly, “ ‘The Tales’...no, I think that is ‘Lore of the Netherworld, as Told by One Who Walked Among the Bright Ones.’ ”

“You can read this old tongue?” Gaborn asked in astonishment. “I’ve never heard it spoken outside the House of Understanding, in the Room of Tongues. Where ever did you hear it?”

“I learned it from Chancellor Rodham,” Iome said. “He was quite the scholar and thought it infinitely more worthwhile for me to learn Alnycian than needlepoint.”

Gaborn studied her in frank amazement. “History has been silent as to what Erden Geboren learned from the Bright Ones and glories,” Gaborn mused. “Now we know why: he never finished his book. This is fabulous. Only the most powerful wizards have ever walked the path between our world and the netherworld, the One True World.”

Iome flipped to the second page. “This is old,” she said. “It’s hard to decipher.” She struggled to read.

“ ‘Mine voice is coarse...a crude tool, I fear. Mine tongue is of brass, untrustworthy. How may I recount the words of Bright Ones and glories who thunder, who...’—I don’t know that word—‘men with words of light, who whisper to...’ or is it ‘in?...the ears of our spirits? Listen to the words of glories, if thou canst. Unless my poor voice fails, as I fear. Yet still I hope that thou shalt hear.’ ”

Gaborn was immediately riveted. Iome glanced up to see his expression. She flipped open a page at random, halfway through the book, and began to read. “ ‘Then the Fael saith unto me—’ ”

“What’s a Fael?” Gaborn asked.

Iome said flippantly. “Something that saideth things unto Erden Geboren.” She began to read again. “ ‘Learn to love all men...’ He can’t decide whether to use the word ‘equally’ or ‘perfectly.’ ”

“If you loved all men perfectly,” Gaborn suggested, “wouldn’t you love them equally?”

Iome nodded and continued. “ ‘Do not esteem one man above another. Do not love the rich more than the humble, the strong more than the faint, the kind man more than the cruel. But learn to love all men equally.’ ”

“Hmmm,” Iome said with a thoughtful look on her face, as if the words disturbed her. She began to close the book.

Gaborn had never heard words like that, had never heard anyone other than a king who dared utter a commandment about how men were to treat each other.

A Fael must be a king among the Bright Ones or glories, he decided. “Keep reading.”

Iome forged ahead with great deliberation. “ ‘Then asketh I: “How can I love all men with equal perfection?” And the Fael answereth...’” Iome grunted in consternation. “Erden Geboren has got a lot of this blacked out. In part, he seems to say that we learn to love those that we serve, and he writes that ‘Thou must learn to serve each man perfectly.’ But he’s scribbled a note in the margin, asking, ‘How mayest I fixeth’...I think he means ‘fix in people’s minds,’ ‘that serving a man perfectly meaneth to serve his best...’—I don’t know that word—‘in defiance of his own wants? For truly some men wanteth that which is evil, and still we are bound to provide them with only that which is good. Those men under sway of the...lo...loci fighteth goodness by rote, never guessing that the minions of the One True Master command them.’ ”

Gaborn’s head spun as if he had been slapped. “Are you sure it says that?” he asked. “The One True Master?”

“It does!” Iome said.

“Is he talking about the reaver queen?” Gaborn asked. Binnesman had suggested that Erden Geboren had been hunting for a particular reaver, one that he called the locus, but neither the wizard nor Gaborn could guess what it might be that he sought.

“It sounds to me,” Iome said, “as if he is talking about something more powerful than a mere reaver.”

Gaborn grunted, wondering. The Days taught that there was only one evil: selfishness, a trait that all men have in common. That seemed a sufficient explanation for evil. After all, who among men does not desire endless wealth, or unfailing health, boundless wisdom, or unending life? Who does not crave the love and admiration of others?

Certainly, such longings are only too human, Gaborn thought, and in themselves, they are not evil. For, as Gaborn’s father had once pointed out, a man who craves wealth and is thus driven to greater labors blesses both himself and those around him. The woman who wants wisdom and studies long into the night enriches all that she meets. And often Gaborn wished that he could become the kind of lord who could win the undying affection of his people, because to him it seemed an accurate measure of how well he governed.

It is only when we crave such things so much that we are willing to destroy others to get them, Gaborn told himself, that we engage in evil.

“The One True Master...is what Erden Geboren was hunting when he died,” Gaborn mused. “He prosecuted his war with the reavers for more than a decade. Could it possibly be the same creature we are hunting for now, after so long, or is the name merely a title used by the reavers’ lord?”

Gaborn suddenly had some questions for Averan. Could this One True Master have lived for seventeen hundred years? What more could she tell him about it? He looked up the tunnel. She hadn’t returned.

“Averan?” Gaborn called. His words echoed through the cave.

There was no answer.

“Averan?” Iome called.

But it was pointless. Gaborn used his Earth Sight, feeling for danger. He sensed her presence, a mile up the tunnel.

“Where is she going?” Gaborn wondered, and panic swept through him, for he sensed where she was going: into danger.

10 The Consort of Shadows

Averan had left the camp with her mind in a muddle. She felt a keen sense of worry, and it grew with every minute. The Consort of Shadows was on their trail, and she knew that he would never leave them alone.

Right now, Averan suspected that he would be waiting for them to return back up the cave. Most likely he would dig a hole somewhere along the tunnel, bury himself and hide with nothing but one or two philia above the ground.

Given its reputation as a hunter, Averan doubted that even Gaborn could evade the Consort of Shadows forever.

Their only hope was to find another reaver tunnel, one that led deep into the warrens. And the prospect seemed slim. The Waymaker had never been in this shaft, and Averan felt lost.

For a while she walked alone with her worries. They were getting deeper into the Underworld. The air felt warm and heavy. With the warmth, king’s crown began to adorn the walls; it was a bright yellow fungus that slowly grew from a central infestation, then died out in the middle, leaving a golden halo that slowly spread. In the distance Averan heard a strange sound.

She stopped. It sounded almost like the throaty purr of a large cat.

There can’t possibly be cats down here, can there? she wondered. But there were blindfish and crabs and other animals that lived aboveground. It seemed remotely possible that a cat might live down here, too.

There are lots of strange things in the Underworld. But none of the reavers she’d eaten had ever seen a cat.

Averan proceeded cautiously to a bend, peeked around. Several cave lizards, like bloated newts, squatted beside a small pool, and were sputtering at one another loudly, as if by doing so they could claim a prize. They sounded almost as if they were purring.

Keeper had known of these lizards. They would dig holes and live in soft mud. Their flavor was mushy and tasteless. Yet despite Keeper’s vast lore, the reaver had never heard their songs.

Averan walked near them. The lizards spun their blind heads toward her, listening, and then leapt into the pool.

Just past them, the old riverbed ended. Hundreds of smaller tunnels, each as narrow as a wolf den, riddled the stone walls where crevasse crawlers, like giant millipedes, had burrowed into the soft stone. The constant tunneling of crawlers had weakened the cave, collapsing the roof.

The only way past is through the holes, Averan realized. But going into one of those narrow holes was risky. Crevasse crawlers could grow to be fifty feet long, and they were carnivores.

The crawler’s tunnels could extend for miles. I’ll need to find a way through, Averan thought. She imagined how proud Gaborn would be when he learned that she had scouted a path for them.

Shaking, Averan went to the nearest hole, sniffed at it. Nothing. It smelled only of the local stone and feather fern. No crevasse crawlers had been in it for ages.

At the third hole, she detected the musk odor of crawler eggs, and immediately backed away. At the twelfth hole, she finally found what she was looking for, the vague scent of different air blowing up through a passage. Either the hole led to a reaver tunnel or it would give her access to another cave.

Averan hesitated. She studied the burrow. She could crawl through it, but could Gaborn and the others?

Yes, she decided, with some work.

She climbed on her tiptoes and peered in. The burrow was just broad enough so that she could crawl upright without difficulty.

Which means that the crevasse crawler that dug this tunnel is big enough to swallow me whole, Averan realized. I shouldn’t do this. Gaborn would be mad.

But Gaborn was waiting for his fish to cook. What if the reavers came after him? He’d be looking for an escape route fast. He was counting on her to lead the way.

Yes, I should do this, Averan told herself. By scouting the path, I could save the party valuable time.

“Averan?” Gaborn called from back up the tunnel. “Wait!” She stopped, heart pounding.

She turned and watched back up the tunnel. Soon, lights reflected from the walls, announcing Gaborn’s arrival.

He came running round the bend, and saw her.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Just exploring,” Averan said. “There’s a cave-in here. I was looking for a way past.”

“It’s dangerous,” he said, the concern clearly etched in the lines of his face.

“It’s our only way out,” Averan argued.

Gaborn peered back along the trail they had come. The distant sound of reavers charging through the Underworld came as a low rumble. He licked his lips, and shook his head.

“I agree,” Gaborn said. “But I sense danger ahead. Not...death. But I fear that if we take this course...”

“What?” Averan asked.

“I don’t know.” Gaborn said. “Perhaps I should lead the way.” He studied the hole, then stepped back. “No. The Earth warns that I can’t go down there, and neither can Iome.”

“Then I have to go,” Averan offered. “It can’t be that bad. I smell fresh air. This hole should take me to the other side of the tunnel.”

Gaborn peered at the burrow, as if seeking some hidden danger there, and nodded slightly. “Yes,” he whispered. “That’s the one.”

“Let me go first, then,” Averan said.

“Wait,” Gaborn said, stopping her with a touch. “The fish should nearly be cooked. We’ll eat, and come back later.”

Averan could tell that he was stalling. Gaborn had a cornered look in his eye.

After a quick dinner, during which Gaborn kept peering into the distance, lost in thought, Averan felt ready to face the burrow. With Gaborn and Iome behind her, Averan scooted into the narrow tunnel. Dried black goo littered the floor, drippings from the crevasse crawler. It was an oil that the monster secreted to lubricate its cave. Reavers liked the taste of it.

“There’s nothing in here to be worried about,” Averan told Gaborn.

“Perhaps,” Gaborn said, “but take nothing for granted. I sense danger here. It may be something small. Just remember that you’re not a reaver. A bug that is insignificant to a reaver may be devastating to you.”

“I’ll be careful,” Averan promised. She forged ahead. Gaborn needed her help.

She scooted through the tunnel quickly, listening for the rattling that accompanied crawlers as they slithered through the rocks.

She reached the exit after only a few hundred yards, and poked her head out.

The exit opened into a large cavern. She was back to the riverbed, but things had changed. The stone here was red, and must have been soft, for the river had fanned out. Over the ages the roof had collapsed again and again, carving a vast chamber. The ceiling soared two hundred feet above her, and stalagmites rose up from the floor like some petrified forest, while stalactites hung down like giant teeth.

On either side of the path, tanglers grew—plants with roots that criss-crossed the cavern floor. Giant bulbs lay lazily in the center of this network, like huge seed pods. But Averan knew that as soon as her foot touched one of the roots, the pods would wriggle around on their necks of creeper and try to swallow her.

She carefully lowered herself to the ground and sniffed the air. She walked forward a pace or two.

A whisper of reaver scent hung in the air. She smelled the word, “Wait.” It might have been a shouted command given a hundred years ago, or it might have been something whispered much more recently. There was no way to tell.

“Gaborn,” Averan called. “I’m past the cave-in. Come ahead.”

She dared go no farther without Gaborn at her back.

But if reavers have been here, Averan reasoned, then this cave must lead to a major tunnel. And if I can find the tunnel, find some scent markers, I can figure out how to reach the Lair of Bones.

Cautiously, Averan peered down at the tangler, watching to make sure that her feet weren’t near any thin gray roots, lest they snake around her ankle.

Ahead, stalagmite columns pierced the air on either side of her, and a natural stone bridge arched over a deep chasm. Far below, by the sound of it, water churned through a gorge.

Suddenly a single pebble dropped from above, plunking at Averan’s side. She peered upward and yelped as something huge dropped like a vast spider. She tried to leap away as an enormous paw swatted down on her, cupping over her.

“Reaver!” she cried.

She wriggled between its talons, lunged toward the safety of the crawler’s tunnel. A tangler vine, wakened by the presence of the reaver, whipped out and snagged her feet. She sprawled to the ground. The tangler’s podlike head swiveled toward her; the pod opened, splitting into four pieces, revealing a strange, toothless mouth full of fibrous hairs. It lunged at her, but never reached her.

The reaver pulled hard at the roots, ripping the vine that held Averan’s ankle, and the tangler vine went limp. She tried to lunge to her feet, but too late. The reaver’s paw swept her up, crushing her in its grip.

Averan wriggled, tried to draw a breath. Even with all her endowments, her strength could not match that of a reaver. It held her in a fist of iron, and spun about. It leapt over the tanglers and bounded across the stone bridge.

“Gaborn,” Averan cried. “Help!”

She craned her neck to peer backward.

Averan beat on the monster’s fist, and it responded by shaking her so hard that she feared her head would snap off.

Averan caught the monster’s scent. She knew this reaver. How did he find me? she wondered. How did he get here so fast?

In a daze Averan gasped for a breath as the Consort of Shadows whisked her off into darkness.

11 Feykaald’s Gift

Raj Ahten’s army was heading north of Maygassa through the Great Salt Sea, the sun splashing down upon the shallows for as far as the eye could see. In his retinue were three flameweavers, a dozen force elephants, and another three thousand Runelords of various strength. Most of these were nobles who wore armor of thick silk in shades of white or gold, and turbans of blood red adorned with rubies the size of pigeon eggs. Though they were few in number, they were a powerful force, for these were no hireling soldiers; these were princes and kings and sheiks of the old Kingdoms of Indhopal, as rich in endowments as they were in gold. Furthermore, they were men bred to cunning and ruthlessness, for they had been born to wealth and war, and had long ago learned to keep that which they laid claim to.

The bridles and saddles of their horses and camels flashed with gems, and their swords and lances were tipped with the finest steel.

So they rode, their animals’ hooves splashing. Riding across the salt sea was easier than riding around it at this time of the year. In the winter, it would deepen and become impassable by horse, but for now the water was less than a foot deep and barely covered the white salt pan of the lake. Still, it stretched for as far as the eye could see. The noonday sun beating upon distant wavelets sparkled, so that every horizon seemed to beckon with empty promises of silver. Beyond the sea, to the north, a line of mountains could be descried.

Raj Ahten rode in the lead all dressed in white silk, upon the back of a gray imperial warhorse. With each step, the horse’s hooves splashed. The water quickly dried on its belly and legs, leaving a crust of white salt. Raj Ahten wore a white kaffiyeh to keep off the midday sun and to hide the scars on his ruined face.

As he rode, in the distance he spotted a single rider making his way across the sea toward them. The rider, swathed all in black, leaned forward like an old man, and rode a black force horse that nearly stumbled beneath the weight of its saddlebags.

Raj Ahten had over a thousand endowments of sight. His eyes were keener than an eagle’s, for no eagle can spot the heat that radiates from a human body at night. Nor could it count the hair on a fly’s legs at twenty paces. Though the rider was but a distant blur to a common man, Raj Ahten knew his name: Feykaald, his faithful servant.

“O Light of the World!” Feykaald shouted, when at last he rode near. “I bring a gift, a treasure stolen from the very camp of the Earth King!”

He reached back into his saddlebags and pulled out a handful of forcibles, like miniature branding irons, each as small as a metal spike with runes engraved into its head.

“My forcibles?” Raj Ahten brought his army to a halt with a raised hand. Feykaald nodded. Gaborn’s father had taken nearly forty thousand of them from Raj Ahten’s trove at Longmot. “How did you get them?”

“They were on a wagon full of treasure, in the king’s retinue,” Feykaald said. “He had nearly twenty thousand left! The Earth King was hunting reavers yesterday at noon, south of Mangan’s Rock, doing battle with the horde that destroyed Carris, when I managed to get these.”

“What did he plan to do with them?” Raj Ahten asked.

“He is taking them to the Courts of Tide, I think,” Feykaald said. “There, he will use them to strengthen his army.”

“And what of his troops?” Raj Ahten asked. “Who does he have in the way of champions?”

“Langley of Orwynne is his only champion, a lord who has taken hundreds of endowments. Other than that, Gaborn’s army is in ruins. Your strike at the Blue Tower devastated them. His warriors are weak, broken. And to the north, Lowicker’s daughter prepares to strike against him in revenge for her father, whom Gaborn slew.”

Foolish young King Orden, Raj Ahten thought.

The forcibles were invaluable. If Gaborn had dared use them properly, had invested a dozen of his finest men with endowments, he could have created some champions capable of stopping Raj Ahten. As it was, only this Langley stood between Raj Ahten and Gaborn.

“You have done well, my old friend,” Raj Ahten said. “The news you bear gladdens me as much as the treasure. For your reward, you shall have a hundred forcibles. Go now, take them to the facilitators at the Palace of Ghusa, in Deyazz. Tell them that in two nights, my army will ride down into Mystarria, like reapers in a field of wheat. Have them transfer endowments to me through my vectors. I must have them by nightfall.”

“All four thousand?” Feykaald asked.

“Indeed,” Raj Ahten said. It would take twenty facilitators working around the clock for nearly two days to transfer so many endowments.

“O Radiant One,” Feykaald objected, “Ghusa is a lonely outpost. Where will your facilitators find the Dedicates?”

“Have them raid the villages nearby,” Raj Ahten said. “There should be plenty of orphans about who would sell their wit or brawn for a bellyful of rice.”

“As you please,” Feykaald said with a bow. He looked to the east. “The forcibles will be in Deyazz by dawn.” He turned his horse to the west, kicked its flanks, and was gone.

12 A Murder of Crows

Erin Connal rode throughout the day in the retinue of King Anders. The king kept the Nut Woman on her mount to his left, where squirrels darted about on her saddle and made a game of hunting for hazelnuts in the pocket of her gray robes. Celinor rode to the king’s right, tall and regal, so that the three of them took up the whole of the road. Thus, Erin Connal was forced to ride behind them, with Captain Gantrell on one side, and the king’s Days on the other. Fifty knights in silver surcoats with the black crow of South Crowthen rode at her back. Erin was surrounded.

The party snaked south through the mountains, with their green hills and sprawling oaks and scenic cottages. King Anders did not press his force horses for speed, for at every cottage and every village he would stop and peer at the inhabitants. After a moment, he might raise his left hand and utter solemnly, “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth. If ever you hear my voice giving you warning, heed me, and I will lead you to safety.”

Sometimes he would look at a man or a woman, and after a long moment he would merely drop his head sadly, and pass them by.

Thus, because Anders Chose his people, the ride south went by at a creeping pace, making less than ten miles every hour.

The day was cool, and the clouds began creeping toward the south, high and sere, a gauzy veil that hid a sun that seemed to be as cold and lifeless as the blind eye of a dead man.

Erin felt that the day was somehow strange, surreal. To her it almost seemed as if the line of clouds was following them. Ahead, on the horizon, a thin line of blue sky still held a promise of fair weather. But above them and at their back, the billowing vapors followed, like a dog wearily treading at the heels of its master. It did not matter if the party rode fast or slow. The clouds matched their pace.

Heedless of the strange signs in the heavens, Celinor talked to his father. Over a period of several hours he calmly related all that had befallen him since he’d gone to Heredon. He began with his first meeting with Gaborn, then told of his and Erin’s battle with the Darkling Glory, and rendered his account of their race to Carris where Gaborn found Raj Ahten’s troops occupying the city while a dark sea of reavers surrounded it. He related how Gaborn had used his Earth Powers to Choose Raj Ahten and his men along with all of the citizens of Carris so that they might defend themselves from the reavers. But even after Gaborn summoned a world worm to kill the fell mage that led the reaver horde, Raj Ahten would not bend the knee to Gaborn. Instead, like a dog he sought to ambush Gaborn after the battle. Gaborn used his powers to try to kill Raj Ahten, and for that act of sacrilege, the Earth withdrew them. He told how Gaborn could now sense danger to his Chosen, but could no longer warn them how to avoid it. Instead, he had to suffer as his people were slaughtered and torn from him.

As Celinor talked, Erin held silent. She did not trust King Anders. Her thoughts were muzzy from lack of sleep, and she was so tired that the very ride today had an unreal quality. All of the trees and hills seemed to be too defined and have sharp edges, and the light that flowed from heaven was overwhelming and tinged with yellow. She could detect some cold, but she was too weary to feel pain or pressure, or even to think much.

Throughout Celinor’s recitation of his journey, King Anders rode with his head bowed and eyes nearly closed, deep in thought. It was as if he wanted to see the battle, and so was conjuring the image in his mind, living it as Celinor had done. From time to time he would break in on the narrative to ask questions. Usually, the questions were benign. For example, he asked, “The spells that the fell mage cast, you mentioned that one of them wrung the water from you. How so?”

“When it hit,” Celinor answered, “it made the sweat instantly rise from every pore, and made you feel as if your bladder would burst, you had to pee so bad. Once the sweat started, it didn’t stop. My clothes were drenched by the count of five.”

“And what about the need to pee?” King Anders asked.

“I did it where I stood, as did every other man,” Celinor said. “We were in the thick of battle, and had no time for niceties. Besides, there was no stopping it.”

King Anders nodded appreciatively at that, and let his son continue.

The account lasted for hours. Every question that King Anders asked, Celinor would answer easily—too easily for Erin’s taste.

She was reminded again that King Anders had sent his son to see Gaborn as a spy. And though Celinor said that he mistrusted his father and was worried that the old king had gone mad, killing his own far-seer, Celinor still acted the part of a spy. He spared nothing. Erin wasn’t sure if it was King Anders’s own skill at eliciting responses—for during the entire conversation, his demeanor was simply that of a kindly man who wanted to understand the whole situation more clearly—or if Celinor just had a loose tongue.

Celinor told everything, down to the time that Erin chose him for her husband, in the way that horse-sisters did.

“Really?” King Anders responded to the news, looking back at Erin. “You married her? Your mother will be mortified!”

“How so?” Celinor asked.

“She would have wanted a big wedding in the South Garden—months of planning, a thousand lords in attendance.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint her,” Celinor said.

King Anders turned back and smiled warmly at Erin. “Oh, she won’t be disappointed. Of that, I’m certain.”

When Celinor had finished his tale, King Anders asked, “You say that Gaborn traveled with a great trove of forcibles. How many of them were there?”

“Five big boxes,” Celinor said. “I suspect that Gaborn’s father captured them from Raj Ahten when he took Longmot. Each box had to be lifted by two force soldiers, so they could not have weighed less than three or four hundred pounds. I made it to be four thousand forcibles in each box.”

“Humph,” King Anders snorted in surprise. “A great trove indeed.” The soldiers at King Anders’s back made appreciative noises at the mention of the treasure.

“Aye,” Celinor said, “it was a great treasure, and there were more besides. You could hear Gaborn’s facilitators chanting night and day at Castle Sylvarresta, giving endowments, though Gaborn was loath to take any for himself.”

“Loath?” King Anders asked.

“He does not like the kiss of the forcible,” Celinor answered. “They say he is an oath-bound lord.”

“How many endowments does he have?” Anders asked. This was a deeply personal question, the kind of thing that one never discussed in public, in part out of social nicety, in part because it was so dangerous. It was the kind of thing that only an assassin would worry about.

“I haven’t seen his scars,” Celinor said, “but I know that he lost his endowments when Raj Ahten killed his Dedicates at the Blue Tower. Afterward, he took a few endowments at Longmot, but it could not have been many—I’d guess perhaps fifteen—three each of brawn, grace, and metabolism, four or five of stamina, maybe a bit of sight and hearing. He has not taken any glamour or Voice, that I could tell.”

King Anders nodded appreciatively. “It sounds as if he is a good man. I only wish that he were a better king. Remember, Celinor, none of us who are in power can afford the luxury of such scruples.”

“Some folks think that scruples are a necessity, not a luxury,” Erin said. She regretted the words before they even left her mouth.

“That they are,” King Anders said turning around as best he could to face her with a warm smile. “I meant no insult to Gaborn. He is doing his best to manage a dire situation. Still, I feel that if he cares for his people, he owes it to them to take more endowments. True, a few Dedicates will die here and there—a loss that we all regret. But if Gaborn’s people were to lose their king...”

He sighed.

Erin studied his face. Anders showed no outward sign that he planned to try to kill Gaborn and take his forcibles, but Erin could not help but suspect that such schemes were spinning in his head.

King Anders gazed at Erin sidelong. “You don’t trust me, do you?” Erin didn’t answer. The only sound was the clopping of the horse’s hooves as they pounded the dry dirt road. “Why not?”

Erin dared not tell him the truth, that she did not trust him because his own son feared that Anders was mad. He might have killed his own far-seer, and he had done all that was within his power to dispose of Gaborn.

Even now, Erin wasn’t sure why King Anders was heading south to Mystarria. He said that he was going to try to stop a war that he had set in motion. But he wasn’t going in haste.

Celinor filled the uncomfortable silence by blurting, “She had a dream about you. She dreamt that you were a locus.”

King Anders looked as if he would deny the accusation outright, but after a moment of thought gave her a queer look. “A what?”

“She dreamt of an owl in the netherworld,” Celinor went on, “that told her to beware of a creature called a locus, a, a sort of a focus for evil. It can get inside a man and wear him like a suit of armor.”

King Anders raised his hand and stopped his men. He turned his horse around and studied Erin narrowly, as if trying to think of a proper response.

“You dreamt of an owl?” King Anders asked. “Tell me, was it barn owl, or more of a hoot owl?” At her back, several knights guffawed in suppressed laughter. One made hoot owl noises.

Erin felt blood rise to her face. She was outraged by the fact that Celinor had told his father her secret. She never would have spoken openly of her dream. “It was an owl of the netherworld,” Erin said, “in a burrow beneath a vast, vast tree.”

“And it said I was a...locus?”

“No,” Erin said. “It didn’t name you. It only warned me that a locus had come to our world, hidden in the Darkling Glory that Myrrima slew. As for whether or not it’s inside you, I only know that it will be looking for a host, and you’ve been acting queer.”

For a moment, Erin thought that the men around her might take her seriously, but King Anders said, “Dear girl, in this dream of yours, didn’t any toads or mice speak up in my defense?”

At that, the troops broke into a chorus of howls, and Erin’s face went hot in anger. King Anders let them laugh for a moment, then held up his hand for silence. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t any way to speak to my daughter-in-law. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I’m sure that you had a most distressing dream—”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Erin said hotly. “It was a sending, a true sending.” For an instant Anders got a pained expression. Behind him, Captain Gantrell rolled his eyes. “Raj Ahten’s sorcerers summoned the Darkling Glory in Mystarria,” Erin explained, “at a town called Twynhaven. They burned the whole of it, using the folks there as human sacrifices to bring about their dark magic. They opened a door to the netherworld, and let the creature through. On our way back from Carris, Celinor and I stopped at the town. We found fiery runes among the ash, still glowing as they snaked across the ground in a large circle. The door to the netherworld still looked as if it was open. So I tossed my dirk down into the runes. It fell through the fire, and disappeared. It never touched the ground. We knew then that the door was still open.”

At this the men around Erin fell silent. They might laugh at her dream if it was only a dream, but each of them had heard of sendings, and as she explained the circumstances that led to her strange visitations, they began to look more apprehensive than amused.

“Later that night,” Erin said, “I dreamt of an owl in the netherworld that held my dagger in its beak. He was the one who sent me the warning.”

The Nut Woman spoke up. “It was a true sending, or I’m no wizard! I feel it in my bones. But take my word, it was no owl that spoke to you. It was a Bright One, or even a Glory. Much that is seen even in a true sending takes on the nature of a dream.”

Erin drew a breath in surprise. Could it be that a Bright One or a Glory spoke to her? These were creatures of legend. They had helped great folk like Erden Geboren. But she couldn’t imagine that one would help her.

“Why would he appear to her as an owl?” Celinor asked.

“Because something about him is like Ael, the wise lord of the nether world,” the Nut Woman said. “Perhaps it’s his name, or maybe the owl is a favored pet. But mark my words, we should heed this warning!”

There was a long moment of silence. Erin looked about. She was surrounded by men wearing the crow of South Crowthen, and a thought struck her. King Anders wore the symbol of a crow, and owls hate crows. They’ll kill them if they can, and a murder of crows will surround an owl in its tree at dawn and spend the day tormenting it, until they bring it down.

Is this why the messenger appears to me as an owl? Erin wondered.

King Anders said, “All right, let us imagine that it is a true sending. Why would you think that this...locus you called it?...why would you fear that it might come to me?”

“When Myrrima slew the Darkling Glory at Castle Sylvarresta,” Erin said, “an elemental rose from it, a great howling tornado. It went east. Binnesman said that it was capable of great evil still.”

“It could have come as far as Crowthen,” King Anders said with worry in his brow, “though many leagues lie between Castle Sylvarresta and my realm. And there are several cities between us—Castles Donyeis, and Emmit, and even the fortress at Red Rock. If what you say is true, this creature could be anywhere, inside anyone. It could inhabit a knight, a merchant, a washwoman. There are tens of thousands of people in those cities.”

But Erin suspected that it would not be content to merely occupy a washwoman. It had been a Darkling Glory, a lord of the netherworld. And a creature like that, bent on evil, would seek power. It wasn’t just the direction that the elemental traveled. There was the matter of the far-seer that fell from Anders’s watchtower, and the fact that he roused allies to fight Gaborn.

King Anders sat for a long moment, as if in deep thought. Finally, he sighed and addressed one of his men. “Sir Banners, take three men into Heredon, to the eastern provinces, and search the cities. See if you can find any sign of this locus—any murders that have been committed, any robberies.” Anders fell silent for a moment and bit his lip as he thought. “Perhaps I should go myself. I could use my gift to look into the hearts of men, and rout this creature out. It wouldn’t be able to hide from me, or Gaborn.”

“That is, if it’s in Heredon still,” Celinor said. “It could be in Crowthen. Or maybe it passed us all by completely, and went off to the east somewhere.”

King Anders nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. I could waste months looking for it. Besides, I have more pressing business to attend. I feel it in my bones. Our quest lies to the south, in Mystarria.”

So Banners took his men north, and King Anders rode south. Erin dared speak no more of her concerns, and time after time she considered how King Anders had responded to her news of the sendings. He had been quiet and gentle in his expression, but she had seen how he huffed when he spoke, as if he struggled to control his response.

She watched him throughout the day, and noted that most of the time he wore a beneficent smile. Often he would chuckle for little reason—when the sun came out from behind a cloud, or when a squirrel leapt from the Nut Woman’s horse onto his own. But he did not giggle maniacally as the wind-driven wizard from Inkarra had.

What had the owl told her—that the Asgaroth was the subtlest of all the loci?

Certainly a subtle creature would not declare itself. It would stay hidden, wreak its damage from a concealed position.

Yet something that King Anders had said bothered Erin. A locus could be anywhere, inside anyone. It could be hiding in Gantrell, or even in Celinor for all that Erin knew.

Erin wanted to know more. She wanted to question the owl of the netherworld.

She’d been fighting sleep for two days, and so in the afternoon, as the sun dropped toward nightfall, during one of the group’s many stops to let the horses rest, Erin went alone to an old hickory tree by the road and leaned with her back against it.

Despite the noise and commotion around her, she soon fell asleep. She woke in the netherworld.

It was night, and Erin found herself inside the hollow of the vast tree. Lightning was flashing outside, thunder snarled through the heavens and a storm howled through the branches of the tree, shaking the limbs so that they creaked beneath the blow, and the leaves hissed and rattled.

She could hear cries in the wind, too. Wolflike howls and the blood-curdling screams of Darkling Glories. This was no natural storm blowing outside, she felt sure.

Erin peered about in the darkness, seeking for sign of the owl. By flashes of lightning, she made out the now familiar knots and roots that could be seen in the hollow of the tree. The bones of deer and small animals lay in a pile beneath the owl’s roost, and in a far corner were steps leading down between some forked roots into a deeper chamber. Above the entry, a woman’s face had been carved into the roots, and her hair seemed to cascade down around the tunnel’s opening.

She climbed up some steps and peered outside. The limbs of the vast tree swayed, and their shadow blotted out the sky overhead. But lit by flashes of lightning, Erin could see the batlike shapes of Darkling Glories sweeping across the sky in a vast flock.

Her heart began pounding. She slipped back from the opening. She stumbled down the stairs and raced deeper into the burrow, past the face of the carved woman that was sometimes lit by lightning, deeper into the hole where no light could find her at all. The journey took her down stairs that wound deep underground. At last she reached a landing where the echo of her breathing told her that she had entered a vast stone chamber. She could see nothing.

In total darkness, she halted.

Where is the owl? she wondered.

Owl, are you here? Erin shouted wordlessly. I need your help!

She called thus for long minutes, but there was no answer.

She thought back to the last time that she’d seen him. She’d told him then that she didn’t want to talk to him anymore. Perhaps he’d left.

Maybe he’s outside, Erin thought, fighting the Darkling Glories, or fleeing from them.

Or maybe he’s here, and he doesn’t risk answering for fear that his enemies will hear.

Very softly, like a whisper of thought, she heard his voice. “Yes,” the owl said. “Your enemies flock all around you. Can you not smell the evil? Even now, they bend near to hear your thoughts.”

Erin’s eyes came open. She found herself awake, heart pounding, beneath the great hickory tree. Its leaves had begun to hiss in a rising wind.

Down the hill, the knights of Crowthen watered their horses beside a small stream where clumps of lush green grass still hung above the waters.

King Anders and Celinor huddled together in conversation, and as she looked down at them, Anders gazed up at her. There was something suspicious in his stance, the way he watched her. Was he talking about her?

Celinor glanced up at her, too. Erin kept her eyes closed to slits, feigning sleep. Both men looked away.

They were talking about her, she felt certain.

Erin got up swiftly, hurried downhill. The knights had let their mounts forage, and the horses milled about, seeking lush grass. One of them passed between Erin and Celinor, and stood munching for a bit.

Erin came up behind it, heard King Anders ask, “Are you sure that she didn’t take a blow to the head in the battle at Carris? All of this talk of hers—it speaks of madness.”

“It was quite a row,” Celinor said. “The reavers were everywhere. But I’d have noticed if she got hit in the head. More likely, this madness was with her all along.”

King Anders sighed deeply. Erin hunched low and grabbed the horse by the bit, so that it would shelter her from their view. Then she stood, listening.

“You’re not upset that I married her?” Celinor asked.

“Upset?” Anders asked. “Dear me, no! You could not have chosen a better match. If she is Duke Paldane’s daughter, it puts you well in line for the throne of Mystarria, and perhaps even Heredon.”

Celinor had not spoken of Erin’s lineage earlier this morning. As a horse-sister of Fleeds, Erin’s mother had chosen the best man she could to act as stud, but she’d never bandied Paldane’s name about, and Erin had only told her husband that name in strictest confidence, realizing the potential that the revelation had for causing political turmoil in Mystarria.

Now Celinor had spilled his guts to his father.

What kind of man did I marry? Erin wondered. He’d gone to Heredon to spy on the Earth King and learn all that he could about Erin Connal and her suspicious lineage. He’d seemingly taken her into his confidence, telling her that he suspected that his own father was mad.

Now it seemed that nothing she told him remained secret. Could he be playing her and his father against each other?

After a long pause, King Anders spoke. “I worry about your new wife. If she keeps imagining that she has sendings, you know what we will have to do.”

“Cage her?” Celinor asked.

“For her own good,” Anders said, “and for the good of your daughter.”

Erin’s stomach did a little flip.

“My daughter?” Celinor asked.

“Yes,” Anders said. “When I Chose Erin this morning, I sensed not one life but two within her. The child that she carries has a noble spirit. It will be one of the great ones. We must do everything that we can to protect them both, to make certain that the child comes to full term.”

There was a long moment of silence, and suddenly Erin saw a shadow beneath the horse as her husband approached.

“Erin,” he said. “You’re awake?”

Celinor took the horse’s reins. He stood looking at her over the beast’s broad back. His eyes were cool and hard. He knew that she had been listening. She knew that if she weren’t careful, they’d put her in chains right now.

“Aye, that I am,” she said. “Did I just hear your father say that I’ve a child in me? A daughter?”

“Yes,” King Anders said, approaching with a broad smile. “By midsummer you’ll be a mother.”

Erin thought for a moment, wondering what she should do, how she could escape. To run, to fight, would be folly. The crows surrounded her. So she chose to be discreet. She reached over the horse and stroked Celinor’s chin, then kissed his cold lips.

“Looks as if I found me a grand stud,” she said. “It only took one night in the barn for us.” She smiled broadly, and Celinor studied her for a moment, before he smiled in return.

King Anders laughed, as if in relief. “Let’s saddle up. With this rising wind, I think a storm is coming. We should try to make the castle at Raven’s Gate before it gets too dark.”

Raven’s Gate was a vast and ancient fortress that marked South Crowthen’s border. Right now, it was bristling with tens of thousands of Anders’s soldiers, nearly the whole of his armies. And Erin recalled something her mother had once said about the fortress. “Deep have they delved the dungeons at Raven’s Gate, and none who enter ever escape.”