The Lair of Bones

22 A Wind from the East

Gaborn raced through the Underworld in a tunnel where mud pots spattered pale calcite against the white walls of the crawlway. Behind those walls, he could hear steam roaring upward through hidden chimneys, as if the reavers that fashioned this place had tried to wall out vast rivers of boiling water. It was a rolling thunder in his ears.

The light from his single opal pin was fading. He didn’t know how much longer it would last. It seemed that he had been running for days now, perhaps weeks. He sensed danger ahead, stopped and peered down the trail.

The path intersected a crude cavern, a hole bored by some massive rock worm. Part of the roof had collapsed, leaving dirt, gravel, and boulders on the floor. It was perfect for an ambush. The main tunnel had been polished by the tread of countless reavers. But the side tunnel was wild. Red shag-weed grew to the height of a man’s knees.

Indeed, blister worms had crawled from the side cave and now infested the floor by the thousands, dining on dung left by the reaver horde. The worms, sluglike creatures the length of a finger, were gray, shot through with crimson veins. The worms’ flesh secreted a poison that blistered the skin, but a large blind-crab, oblivious to the poison, was raking through the dung, feeding.

Gaborn could see no fresh sign of reavers at the crossroad, no philia peeking suspiciously from beneath a pile of dirt. Yet he sensed death lying in wait.

A reaver was there; perhaps more than one. He caught a faint odor, like flesh that quickly transformed to mold. Reavers were whispering in scents.

Gaborn peered up the trail and felt a sudden rush of energy. His facilitators in Heredon were granting him more endowments. He wasn’t sure if he had just gained more brawn or stamina, but the effect was gratifying to one who had been running for so long.

Gaborn clutched his weapon tightly, his sweaty palms gripping the leather straps that bound the reaver dart, and prepared to step forward.

“Wait!” the Earth warned. Gaborn could see no reason to wait, but as he did, he felt a wash of power, and his muscles unclenched just the smallest bit. He had just received an endowment of grace.

He lifted his foot, leaned forward, and the Earth whispered wait again. Suddenly he understood the warning. The danger had just grown less, but it was still too great. The Earth Spirit forbade him to move forward until he had enough endowments.

And so Gaborn stopped and made a small fire. He made a paste of flour, water, salt and honey from his pack, and then cooked himself some fry bread.

As he ate, his powers continued to grow. Brawn, stamina, grace, and wit were all added to him. With each endowment, Gaborn felt more hale, more...permanent.

He continued to strain his senses for a long hour, whiffing faint scents that drifted across the cave floor.

At last, when he had eaten his fill and digested some food, he climbed back to his feet. He picked up a large flat rock and carried it up near the intersection, then threw it low to the floor, so it skipped as if on the surface of a pond, grinding the blister worms into gooey bits and startling the crab that fed among them.

The effect was instantaneous. A great reaver lurched up from the ground in front of him. The soil seemed almost to explode. Dust and pebbles flew up.

Confused, the monster grasped wildly at the stone, seeking its prey. A second reaver dropped from the roof of a side tunnel to the left. A third mage lurched from a cavity to the right, a deadly crystalline staff gleaming in its hand.

A bolt of green energy sizzled from the staff, smashing into the blind-crab. Gaborn smelled the stench of death, and as if a voice rang in his mind, heard the words, “Rot, thou child of men.”

As their leader recognized that Gaborn had not run into its trap, it rushed forward with tremendous speed and power, and for a moment Gaborn watched in astonishment.

He somersaulted backward a dozen paces, hoping that in the narrows, they would have to attack in single file.

The huge leader lunged, hissing in frustration.

Gaborn leapt into its mouth—knees high so that his feet cleared the rows of scythelike teeth on its bottom jaw. He hit its raspy tongue, and found the beast’s mouth wet with slime, so that he slipped as if on wet stones.

Gaborn shoved his reaver dart into the soft spot in the monster’s upper palate, striking its brain. The monster responded by shaking its head roughly, trying to dislodge him.

Gaborn clung to his reaver dart, holding on for dear life, for the reaver’s teeth were as sharp as daggers and would shred him like parchment.

Gaborn’s weight caused the javelin to waggle. Hot blood showered over him as the monster provided the impetus to scramble its own brains.

Shortly, the reaver staggered and fell, its mouth gritted tightly. Gaborn drew his spear out.

The largest and fastest of the three reavers was dead, but Gaborn’s Earth Senses were screaming, “Dodge.”

Suddenly the dead reaver’s mouth was pried open, and one of its companions slashed with its deadly claw.

Gaborn launched himself from the dead reaver’s cavernous mouth.

The reaver mage stood just feet away, its paws occupied with holding its dead master’s mouth open. Gaborn struck before it could react, hurling his javelin into the monster’s sweet triangle.

The reaver let go of its master’s jaws and lurched backward, stumbling into its companion. It reached up and tried to pry the reaver dart free, but must have done more damage than good. For as soon as it pulled the dart out, a gush of brains and blood came with it, and the mage stumbled and fell.

The battle with the third reaver lasted for several minutes, as Gaborn weaved and dodged to escape its attacks. Yet for all practical purposes, the battle was over before it had begun.

Soon, all three reavers lay dead.

Gaborn had received nothing more than a vicious cut.

But as he staggered over the battlefield, where dead blister worms lay in heaps, he was amazed. The little worms were all dead. They lay in piles of moldering flesh. Even the blind-crab that had been feeding on them was dead, bits of mold and putrescence oozing from its mouth.

Gaborn’s cut began to fester. The reaver mage had been powerful. Indeed, Gaborn could feel the food turning bad in his stomach.

And yet he lingered for a moment, for the spell was so familiar. Gaborn sensed Earth Power here. The spell had been a healing spell, he decided, like those that Binnesman pronounced upon the wounded. Only it was reversed.

Gaborn began to choke, as if his lungs would rot in his chest, and he staggered away from the foul place. Patches of fungi, like liver spots, were forming on his hands.

He ran a few hundred yards, and on impulse, pulled off his backpack. His food was all covered with mold. He had nothing in there worth carrying, so he tossed the pack to the ground.

He ran on for hours, until his healing powers closed his wounds.

Who am I fighting? he wondered. What am I fighting?

Back in Heredon, two weeks ago, he had imagined that Raj Ahten was his nemesis. But the Wizard Binnesman had warned that Raj Ahten was only a phantom, a mask that a greater enemy hid behind.

He’d imagined then that Binnesman was speaking of Fire, was trying to tell him that one of the greater Powers fought him. And then Iome had warned that a wizard of the Air had attacked her, and he imagined that two of the greater Powers were allied in battle.

But something that Gaborn had just seen made him wonder even at that. The reavers’ spells showed that they were twisting the Earth Powers. At Carris they had caused wounds to fester, and sent blindness upon men. They had hurled black mists that shredded a man’s flesh.

They had wrung the water from men. Water?

It wasn’t just Fire and Air that allied against him. Even the forces of healing and protection had been subverted. Even the Earth that he served seemed to have turned against him.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

A creature called the Raven had tried to wrest control of them once before, long ago, in a time of legend.

What was it that Binnesman had said in his garden, when the Earth Spirit first appeared to Gaborn? Other Powers would grow. But “the Earth would diminish.”

Gaborn wondered. The Earth had withdrawn from him, left him bereft of his ability to warn his Chosen people of danger. But had the Earth withdrawn because of Gaborn’s own moment of weakness or because of its own?

Gaborn ran on, and on, until his Earth Senses warned that death was approaching his people in Heredon.

Night was falling aboveground.

It had been a day and a half in common time since he’d entered the Mouth of the World. But there was no measuring time anymore. It had been less than two weeks in common time since Raj Ahten launched his attack on Heredon. It had been ten days since Gaborn had become the Earth King.

But with his endowments of metabolism, time stretched out of all proportion. Days seemed to draw out into weeks, weeks into months.

He ran through a tunnel where tiny crystalline cave spiders, so perfectly clear that they seemed to be cut from quartz, hung from thick silken strings. He had seen such spiders before in Heredon, but then they had climbed up their webs so quickly that they had seemed to be droplets of water, dribbling upward.

Now they were frozen motionless. The whole world seemed to be frozen, and all eternity was but a moment.

He reached a place where tunnel floors were flooded to a depth of several feet. He picked up his pace, raced over the water. Each time the sole of either foot touched the surface, it would begin to sink as if in soft mud. But he raced on, letting the surface tension buoy him.

He didn’t know how many endowments of metabolism he had anymore. At least forty. He had heard that it took that many before a man could run on the water. But he could have had a hundred endowments.

He had no way to measure time except by the slap of his feet over stone, and the pounding of his heart.

There is a limit to the number of endowments of metabolism a man can take. Common wisdom said that one should never take more than a dozen, for when he reaches that point, certain subtle dangers arise. All of the runes by which facilitators transferred attributes were imperfect. The rune for metabolism made the muscles move swiftly, made the brain think clearly, but it often did not make all of the organs work with the same efficiency.

Thus, one who took vast endowments of metabolism and held them for long often became jaundiced and sickly, and within weeks would fall to his death. Adding two endowments of stamina for each endowment of metabolism could ease the problem. But rarely could a lord afford so many forcibles, and so a man who took great endowments of metabolism in a time of need was like a star that blazes brightly as it fades.

Gaborn wondered if the facilitators would kill him with their forcibles.

He did not stop to rest, did not sleep. With almost every step, he felt stronger.

There is a limit to what endowments can do. Once a man takes five endowments of wit, he forgets virtually nothing. At twenty endowments, every heartbeat, every blink of the eye, becomes etched in memory, and there is little benefit to taking more endowments beyond that point.

The same is true with brawn. A warrior who takes ten endowments of brawn might lift a horse, and Gaborn had seen more than one drunken knight attempt the feat. But adding more endowments does nothing to strengthen the bones, and so the warrior soon reaches practical limits. True, he might lift a horse, but in doing so he stood in grave danger of snapping the bones in his back or ankles.

A warrior who takes five endowments of stamina also reaches a limit: the point where he needs no sleep. It is true that he might grow fatigued, but a moment of rest is as refreshing as a night in bed.

Gaborn had never wanted to be like Raj Ahten, to horde endowments that benefited him little.

Yet as Gaborn ran, he could feel himself being added upon. He felt as if he had grown beyond all natural limits. He could not even guess how many endowments he had. A hundred of brawn? Even when straining to leap a sixty-foot chasm, he moved effortlessly. A thousand of stamina? He felt no weariness. It soon felt as if vigor and wholeness oozed from every pore.

And with each few steps, as the facilitators in Heredon vectored him more endowments, the vigor grew.

He felt as if he were a fruit ripening in the sun, ready to burst its skin from its own copiousness. He felt as if he were only dreaming of the race through the Underworld, as if he’d left his body far behind, and now glided on wings of thought.

Raj Ahten must feel this way, he thought. I could run across a cloud.

He raced through the cavern, crossed the water. Ahead, a squat brown creature, like a giant slug, oozed along the cavern floor—a mordant, digesting everything that it touched. The floors of the tunnel were riddled with holes now, the burrows of blind-crabs and other small animals.

Gaborn halted to drink from a warm pool. The water could not slake his thirst. And though he gathered some gray fungi to eat, it could do little more than ease the knot in his empty stomach.

He felt a death as one of his Chosen was torn from him. In Heredon the killing had begun. Gaborn stretched out with his Earth Sight. He felt his own death lurking in the dark corridors ahead, even as he felt death rushing toward his Chosen people in Heredon. Even with the warnings he’d sent, tens of thousands would die tonight.

He halted for a moment to gnaw on some gray man’s ear and mourn his people. He felt that tonight was but a portent of worse things to come.

Aboveground and more than a thousand miles to the north, in Heredon a storm swept the land. Thick clouds, dark on the bottom but green at their peaks, rose like a wall. Lightning flashed at their crowns as a keening wind thrashed the fields.

“Inside!” Chemoise’s uncle Eber shouted to the villagers of Ableton. “Everyone, hide, quickly! This is what the Earth King warned us against!”

Many a young lad would have argued and stayed gazing out the door, just to prove his bravery, but they had heard rumors of the goings-on at Castle Sylvarresta and knew that to ignore the Earth King’s warning could have only one result: death.

“Get inside,” Eber urged. “Whatever it is that’s coming this way, it will kill you.”

“Aye,” a dozen other men all grumbled. “It’s the king’s will.”

So Eber closed the door and brought down the bolt. Old Able Farmworthy surprised everyone by pulling out a leather bag full of soil from his fields and sprinkling it on the ground in front of the door, forming a rune of protection. Afterward, he poured a libation of wine over it. He warned, “Don’t anyone disturb this dust.”

The old man was no Wizard Binnesman, but he was a successful farmer whose heart was close to the land. Chemoise wanted to believe that he had some power, and perhaps everyone else did, too, for no one dared touch his rune.

The music had stopped. The feast was over.

Night had just begun, though no one was in the mood to celebrate now. Instead, the townsfolk all sat on the floor, fearing what the evening would bring.

Chemoise strained to hear outside. The wind moaned as the storm grew.

Soon the stout new door began to rattle on its hinges. “Someone’s out there, wanting to get in!” a woman said. “Who could it be?”

Chemoise thought it only sounded like the wind banging, for no one called out for help on the other side. Or if they did, the rising wind was carrying their voice away.

She peered about the room. There were only sixteen families in the village. She did not know them well enough yet to tell if everyone was present. Could someone have left a child outside?

Eber began calling out names, “Caln Hawks, are you and yours all here?”

Caln looked about. “Aye!”

“Dunagal Free, you and yours?”

“Here!”

And so it went.

Eber and Aunt Constance were both here with Chemoise, and grandmother sat at the dinner table, the poor old thing painfully unaware that anything was amiss.

“We’re all here,” Eber said when he finished.

“But someone is out there!” the woman argued.

“I know—” Gadamon Drinkwater suggested, “it’s that old shepherd what lives in the hills.”

“No,” Eber said. “I warned him this afternoon. He takes his sheep to a cave in times of storm. He planned to stay up there with his flock.”

“It’s not someone at the door,” Able Farmworthy said. “It’s some thing.”

The wind moaned as if in pain and pounded on the door, thrashing it. Sticks and leaves were flung against the stout wood, and it shuddered under the impact. Chemoise’s hair stood on end.

She had heard how the Darkling Glory raged even after it was slain, turned into a whirlwind and raced to the east. Now it appeared that it had returned.

Distantly, a squeaking arose, as if bats circled outside. Chemoise could barely discern it under the howling of the wind, the sudden crash of thunder. With the sound came a stench, the smell of filth and hair.

“Rats!” an old woman said. “I smell rats!”

Slowly the sound swelled in volume, and the stink grew with it. Rats were coming—not just dozens or hundreds, not even thousands, but tens of thousands.

In her mind’s eye, Chemoise could envision them rushing across the valley, through the dry stalks of the wheat fields, leaping into the creek and swimming over it with grim determination. Climbing atop the rock walls of the sheepfolds and racing along them as if on a road.

Until, presently, the rats were at the door. They squeaked and chittered outside, and there was a grinding noise as they began to gnaw the wooden doorposts away.

Uncle Eber shouted, “To the back of the room!”

Chemoise’s stomach churned with fear. Most of the women and children raced to the back of the cellars, seeking to hide. But Chemoise looked around for a weapon, grabbed a broom, and went to the door. Some lads from town had brought swords and warhammers, just in case. But against rats they would prove to be clumsy weapons.

Dearborn Hawks took her broom. “Here,” he said, “let me have that. Get back with the others!”

“It’s all right,” Chemoise argued. “I can help.”

“You’ve a child in you,” Dearborn said. “You can risk hurting yourself all you like, for all that I care. But we have to take care of the babe.”

Chemoise handed him the broom, and held his eye for a moment. She went back to the far corner of the wine cellar with the other women. When she turned to look back, Dearborn was still gazing at her.

For a long while, the rats chewed, filing away at the door.

As they did, something strange happened. The ferrin in their holes began to snuffle and whistle plaintively. They poked their heads out of their burrows and sniffed the air, whiskers twitching. Then, one by one, the pudgy creatures began to emerge, squinting in the lamplight.

Chemoise had seldom seen a ferrin in such good light. The ones who came stalking out of their lairs now were big males, the hunters. Each stood a little more than a foot tall. Each wore rags almost in mockery of human clothing. One might wear only a mouseskin belt, into which a weapon was slung, while another wore an old dishrag as if it were a cape. The ferrin ranged in color from brown to a sort of mottled gray, and were lighter on the belly than on the back. Each wielded a weapon of some kind—an eighteen-inch spear made from an old fisherman’s arrow, an ax with a blade chiseled from broken glass, a dagger formed from a gold cloak pin.

Growling and snuffling they approached the door, and then stood whistling.

Rats were the ferrins’ favorite prey—a delicacy as beloved by them as venison was by the men of Rofehavan. Dozens of ferrin crawled from their holes, and as their courage grew, more hunters followed, grizzled old ferrin with the hair on their snouts gone gray, young ferrin with sleek brown coats. Soon, two hundred ferrin warriors swelled into the room—more ferrin than Chemoise would ever have imagined could have been hiding in the old wine cellar.

Uncle Eber warned his men. “Step back. This is their battle. This is why the Earth King warned us to stay belowground.”

And so the humans fell back and watched in awe as the battle began. For long minutes, rats gnawed the door. The thunder raged, the wind wailed and pounded at the entrance.

Suddenly, a huge black rat lunged under the door.

Instantly, half a dozen ferrin spears rushed to impale the beast.

Then one ferrin lord growled menacingly and raised the rat victoriously into the air. Its legs kicked in vain as it struggled to break free, and it wrenched its incisors around and bit at the spear. The rat was far dirtier and more bedraggled than Chemoise had imagined it could be. It looked half-starved, as if it had been running for days. Its eyes were glazed with a yellow, crusty film. Its matted hair was full of mud and filth.

The ferrin lord swung his spear, sent the wounded rat hurtling through the air, so that it landed in the center of the hall. The poor vermin lay on its side, wounded, and began snuffling and kicking, as if seeking escape.

Three female ferrin bolted from their holes. They grabbed the wounded rat, pulling it in all directions, ripping the small animal with their sharp little paws, so that the rat shrieked once in pain and then died.

The ferrin women dragged their kill toward their warrens, leaving only its turds to litter the floor.

No sooner was one rat gone than the warriors hurled another back to take its place—then a third and a fourth.

But what started as a slaughter soon became a grim struggle.

The rats continued to gnaw, widening their access, so that soon dozens could scurry beneath the door at a time. Ferrin warriors in the front ranks stabbed and hacked at the beasts, blocking the passage with the bodies of the dead. So the rats attacked. They began leaping through the opening, sinking sharp teeth into ferrin flesh, piercing bones and severing arteries. The ferrin grimly fought, whistling and growling curses at rats that surged into the room, attacking with the abandon and strength of madness.

Swarming past the ferrin, some rats managed to race through or leap over the beleaguered ferrin warriors.

Once through, they bolted across the room toward the villagers and charged in a rabid fashion.

The first time it happened, it was a shock. The ferrin warriors hurled a wounded rat into the back of the room from the front ranks, and through pain-clouded eyes it peered into the recesses. Recognition suddenly seemed to dawn in its glazed eyes, and the rat scrabbled and pawed toward the villagers like a wounded hound seeking a boar.

No common madness drove it, Chemoise knew. It moved with a will other than its own.

As it approached, a queer sound emanated from back in its throat, a sort of quavering growl. Chemoise had never heard such a sound from a rat.

But she had heard rumors about rats, how they spread disease. A rat bite could easily become infected and ooze pus for days. The wounds could fester, and bite victims sometimes died.

Chemoise feared that these sickly creatures, which raced beneath the door and attacked with grim abandon, carried some unthinkable plague.

The rat came slowly, and one of the Drinkwater boys, a child of nine, leapt on the beast with both feet, crushing it with a crunching sound.

Chemoise’s stomach turned. Back home at Castle Sylvarresta, there had always been plenty of ferrin to keep the town free of rats.

Their behavior wasn’t natural. The storm outside wasn’t natural. Thunder boomed in a menacing, unending chorus.

We killed the Darkling Glory, she realized, so now it sends this curse upon Heredon.

“Form up ranks,” Uncle Eber shouted. “Men in front, women behind. Don’t let the rats get near!”

Soon more rats came rushing past the ferrin, and not all were wounded. They raced across the room as fast as terriers, jumping ten feet at a time. The young men from the village pretended to make a game of it, racing out and batting the rats with brooms, skewering them with long-handled meat forks from the dinner table, swatting them with their hands or stomping them into oblivion.

But it was no game to the rats. The nasty things, driven by some dark force, seemed impelled to strike with a suicidal zeal. They charged into the ranks of villagers, biting into the first person they reached.

Uncle Eber and some other men grabbed tables and threw them down, forming a protective barrier.

The nightmare began in earnest. Rats streamed under the door so fast that the ferrin could not fight them all. The small warriors stabbed and hacked. The only light in the room came from a pair of lanterns, so that Chemoise could not see the battle well. The ferrin became a writhing, snarling mass. Their whistles and growls, which Chemoise imagined to be battle cries, soon turned to squeals of terror and pain. She could see ferrin spears rising up, impaling rats as they leapt. Axes swinging, chopping the heads off rats.

Wounded and bloody rats crawled about the room in a daze. And still more rats came, soaking rats, black with mud. Rats with crusted yellow eyes, or eyes filmed green from the plague. Rats that oozed white saliva from their mouths, and vomited as they died.

The ferrin battled fiercely, slaughtering the vermin by the thousands. But killing a rat was no small task for a ferrin. A ferrin was only a foot tall, and a large rat nearly reached his waist. Thus, in size, a ferrin was to a rat what a man was to a boar. And even though they were small, the rats were remarkably strong and ferocious, driven by madness. A ferrin armed with a spear or a makeshift dagger could bring one of the monsters down, but it was not easy.

So the battle raged.

Chemoise took her place with the women, and any rats that made it past the ferrin and past the men, she dealt with as best she could, kicking and slapping.

The female ferrin got weapons of their own and stood guard at the openings of their dens, where they waded into the midst of the rats. Chemoise heard a plaintive cry from one of them, saw two rats latched onto the ferrin woman, dragging her down. Chemoise raced to her, grabbed the rats and squeezed until their jaws unlocked. The rats twisted in her hand and turned their rage on her.

The battle became a jumbled nightmare. Chemoise could never say exactly how long it lasted—an hour, two at the most. But it felt like endless days.

She fought with heart racing, mouth dry with fear. She killed hundreds of rats, and was bitten once on the wrist, once on the ankle. One little monster scampered up her dress and would have taken an eye, but Dearborn Hawks swatted it away.

The number of rats swelled, until finally they surged into the room in a dark tide. Chemoise could not imagine where so many rats had come from. Certainly they did not come from local fields.

Old Uncle Eber shouted, “Everyone, stay back!” He ran to a keg of lamp oil, and hoisted it under one arm. Then he grabbed a lantern from the floor, and hurried toward the front door, shouting at the ferrin, “Make way! Make way!”

Rats leapt on him, latching onto his legs, racing up his shoulder to sink their teeth into his throat. Soon, the rats clung to him by the dozens, so that it almost looked as if he wore some macabre cloak.

Aunt Constance cried out in dismay. Uncle Eber would never make it alive through such an attack. Chemoise lurched forward to rescue him, but too late.

The ferrin scampered from his path as best they could, and then Eber hurled the useless door open.

Outside, the thunder was a snarling fiend. Lightning arced through green skies, and Eber stood for a moment, defiant, limned in its light. The wind raged this way and that, like a maddened beast. But for all its fury, the storm brought no water. No rain fell on the fields. Only a dry wind beat the last of the summer’s crops to the ground. The wine barrels that Dearborn had stacked so carefully now all lay in a jumble, cluttering the path ahead.

Eber slogged forward a few steps, wading now through rats that broke off their assault on the door and assailed an easier victim, uttering fierce growls of triumph. The rats scampered up his legs and onto his shoulders, weighing him down so that Chemoise could not see her uncle at all, only a surging, struggling mound covered with rats.

Eber dashed the oil barrel to the ground, smashing dozens of rats in the process. They growled in rage and squealed in pain. Oil spilled over everything. He threw the lantern.

Flames surged up before him, forming a wall. Hundreds of rats had latched firmly onto Eber now, and he spun about crazily for a moment trying to dislodge them.

But he must have known that he could not survive their noxious bites. He staggered into the midst of the flames, dragging the rats with him.

All around Chemoise, the children and women uttered cries of horror. Aunt Constance struggled to reach Eber, but the other women grabbed her arms and held her back. The flaming oil ignited a savage blaze. The old wine barrels were dry as kindling and fed the flames. The tall grasses and wild daisies became an inferno. A wall of fire raged eighty feet high now, just outside the winery door, fanned by the keening wind.

Still the rats came, racing into the fire.

A few burst through, roiling in flames. But few of them survived the wall of fire, and the ferrin easily dispatched the rest.

The wind hammered at the door so that it swung on its hinges, and then slammed closed. The lift bolt slid back into place.

Outside, the storm continued to rage and the fire blossomed. Oily smoke billowed under the door. Dearborn Hawks hurried up and shoved his coat under the cracks.

The rats stopped coming at all.

Chemoise felt numb. She slumped to the floor and sat, exhausted, fearing that more of the vermin would come rushing through, worried that the battle would renew at any moment, only hoping for a brief rest. Many women and children were crying.

Grandmother Kinnelly warned, “Everyone, tend to your wounds! Now is not the time to rest.” She took a keg of wine and went around the room, pouring it on the rat bites and muttering supplications to the Powers.

Chemoise got up to help. The children searched among the rats, clubbing to death any that were found wounded.

The sheer number of bites on some men was astonishing. Long into the night Chemoise worked. When she finished ministering to her own kind, she went to work on the ferrin. The ferrin folk had taken the worst of it. A dozen had died in the battle, and many others had gored ears, swollen muzzles, torn legs, and the like. One old fellow had his tail gnawed off. It broke Chemoise’s heart to see so much pain.

The ferrin, which were normally afraid of humans, suffered her touch now.

Never again will I think of taking a bounty on the ferrin folk, she promised herself. And I’ll take a stick to any man or boy that I hear of who hurts one of them.

Thus she worked through the night, tending each ferrin in turn. When she finished, she found that many wounds on both man and ferrin alike had begun to fester, so that she was forced to minister to them again.

Chemoise worked until she was too feverish and weak to continue. She sat with her back against a rough stone wall to rest for a moment. Her eyes felt as if they were weighted with lead, and so she closed them, still unwilling to let down her guard.

She worried about others that she knew, friends from Castle Sylvarresta. Where was Iome? Where was Gaborn?

Gaborn had sent his warning all through Heredon. Chemoise realized that battles such as this were happening everywhere—in storage cellars and abandoned mines, in dungeons and dank caves. She imagined rats swarming through each village in black hordes, and men and ferrin fighting them bravely, side by side.

The wind howled and snarled outside, and thunder pounded, until its rhythm seemed to beat its way inside of her, become one with her.

Shaking with sobs, Chemoise fell asleep, dreaming of rats.

23 A Land without Horizons

A dispute erupted only a few hours after the Consort of Shadows threw Averan in with the other prisoners.

There were only sixteen people here, sixteen left out of hundreds who had been brought down over the years. They were of all ages, taken from villages miles apart.

“We have light,” one man said. “We have light for the first time...since we’ve been here. That’s a weapon. It’s the one thing that has kept us from making a run for it before. You yourself, Obar, you’ve said a hundred times that if you had a light, you would make a run for it, whether you lived or died.”

“But what good is light?” Obar asked in a thick Indhopalese accent. “We are miles below surface, and tunnels go everywhere. We never find way out!”

“So what choice do you have?” asked Barris, the man Averan had taken to be their leader. “Now that you have a light, you’ll sit here and huddle around it until flowers grow out your arse?”

“We’re not all Runelords,” an Indhopalese woman, Inura, pleaded. “We can’t all fight.”

“Barris is right,” Averan said. “We need to escape. But we don’t have to fight alone. Help is coming.”

“Help?” Barris asked. “Down here?”

“Yes,” Averan said. “Gaborn Val Orden, the King of Mystarria, is coming.”

“Praise be to the Powers!” Inura cried.

“Why?” Barris asked as if he thought Averan had gone mad. “Why would a king come down here?”

“He’s coming to find the Lair of Bones, to fight the fell mage that guides the reavers,” Averan said. “I was trying to show him the way when the reavers caught me. Gaborn will have no choice but to follow. He should be able to track me. He has taken endowments of scent from twenty dogs.

Barris demanded, “And why would a child like you be leading a king?”

“Because I’m an Earth Warden,” Averan said truthfully, “or at least an apprentice.”

“If you’re wizardborn,” Barris suggested, “then maybe there are other things you can do to help us.”

“Like what?” Averan asked.

“Could you summon animals to fight for us?”

“I don’t have my staff,” Averan apologized. “Besides, I don’t think there is anything bigger than blind-crabs for miles.”

“Please,” Inura said. “Try anything.”

These people were desperate. Averan looked in their grimy, hopeless faces, and could think of no way to help. But anger still burned in her at the thought of her father, and she, too, wanted revenge.

She squinted, wondering. “I’ll try,” Averan said. Silently the prisoners crept near, peering at her in the darkness. She slowed her breath and let her thoughts stretch far away.

Her mind lit first on Gaborn. She imagined his face. When she pictured it clearly, she tried to match the pace of his frantic breathing. He was running. She could sense that much at least.

She tried to envision what he saw as he ran, tried to feel the hard stone earth pounding beneath his feet. But it was useless. She couldn’t gain entry to his troubled mind.

She needed an easier target, someone more accessible. Binnesman had had her summon a stag back in the hills above the Mangan’s Rock because it was a stupid animal.

What kind of animal do I know that’s stupid? Averan wondered. A world worm, she thought. That’s what Gaborn summoned.

But the idea of some vast worm tunneling through the warrens was too frightening. She dared not try to call such a monster.

She cleared her mind, and an image came slowly: the green woman, Binnesman’s wylde.

Averan stretched out with her thoughts.

She envisioned the green woman, and tried to touch the wylde’s mind. But the creature was so far away. After long minutes, she began to see through the wylde’s eyes, hear as it heard, smell as it smelled. Averan felt astonished at the keenness of every sense. The green woman had a nose sharper than a hound’s and eyes keener than an owl’s. Every nerve was alive. She felt the slightest currents on her skin, and could taste the lively air with a flick of her tongue. Binnesman had wrought his wylde well indeed. Never had Averan imagined that any creature could feel so vital, so in tune with its surroundings.

The green woman reached a great abyss where a canyon cut across her path. Below, stone trees grew along a riverbank and canyon walls like twisted, leafless caricatures of oaks, and wormgrass flourished beside riverbanks where elephant snails huddled in packs like rounded boulders.

Reavers and humans alike would have had to spend long hours negotiating the dangerous climb past the canyon. But the wylde merely stepped off the precipice, falling hundreds of feet before she grasped a rock on the far wall.

Averan could almost feel the stone shift, as if to mold itself to fit the green woman’s hand, and then she scampered up the cliff as quickly as a spider.

Averan marveled at the wylde’s endurance. The creature drew its strength from the Earth, and now Earth was all around it, enclosing it, suffusing it with energy. Averan could feel endless vigor in the creature’s taut muscles.

“Spring,” Averan called. “Help me.”

Those three words cost her. Averan felt spent merely to think them, and her head suddenly reeled.

The green woman leapt like a cat, spinning in the air.

“Averan?” she asked.

“Help us,” Averan begged. “We’ve been caught by reavers, deep in the warrens, near the Lair of Bones.” Averan poured herself into the wylde’s mind. Averan enticed her, “The enemies of the Earth are here.”

Averan fell down in a swoon. She could hardly hold contact.

The green woman’s head snapped up. Her nostrils flared. The wylde howled like a hollow wolf and began racing down the tunnel. Averan caught the scent of a reaver’s marker as she met a sudden crossroad. Averan frowned in concentration, recognized the spot.

The wylde had been following the reavers’ horde up to the surface. The creature was hundreds of miles away.

“Help,” Averan cried. “Turn around.”

Bitterly, choking back her own sobs, Averan withdrew from the creature’s mind, unable to maintain contact, and fell into a black place, void of desire.

24 Sarka Kaul

Myrrima’s captor hustled her down a long tunnel, shoving her forward. Verazeth was not a gentle man. It was too dark for a northerner like her to see, but he forced her to rush forward blindly. She could hear the sounds of the sea—the dull crash of slow-moving waves breaking over sullen rocks, the distant cry of a gull. The scent of salt water hung thick in the air.

Something stirred inside of her. She had never heard sea waves before, and had not really been able to imagine them. She had thought that they might sound like waves in a lake, lapping on a shore. She had been to a lake before.

But the sound she heard now was nothing like a lake. She could hear waves crashing upon shores that stretched far beyond what the eye could ever convey. The waves beat against the rocks at the base of Palace Iselferion, sloshing around them, making the very foundations of the palace tremble. She didn’t just hear the ocean, or smell it. She could feel it quivering through her bones.

She had never felt such power in Water before. It seemed to call to her.

Myrrima’s captor pushed her from the tunnel, and suddenly there was starlight overhead. Myrrima saw the sea, vast and limitless, stretching beyond the horizon. It was almost morning. A soft light hovered in the east. At her back, Verazeth, as pale as if he were dead and bloodless, gave her a shove, backing her over a stone parapet that leaned out over the ocean.

The water lapped the rocks below her, only a hundred yards or so. With a small push, Myrrima would fall into the deep.

Prince Verazeth pushed her backward, his black robe open, revealing his pale chest. He was a handsome man, with a sharp nose, a strong chin, and well-defined muscles in his chest and abdomen. His long silver hair had been braided in cornrows and knotted together, so that it hung over his right shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Myrrima asked.

Verazeth stroked her face just once. She saw undisguised lust in his expression. “It would please,” he said at last, “if you give endowmen t...metabolism.”

She knew what he desired. Once she gave metabolism, she would go into an enchanted slumber until the lord that received her endowment died, and her own metabolism returned to her. In such a state, she would not be able to protect herself from his lust. She would not even know when he violated her. And when she woke, she would be pregnant with his child.

“I’ll give you nothing,” Myrrima growled.

“Husband love you very much. He give will to save you. Make us promise to let you live. But if we let go, you make trouble for us. No can let you go. So, you must give endowment.”

“I’ll kill you first,” Myrrima said.

He grunted as if annoyed at an idle threat. “You not understand. Give endowment, you live. Not give, I push you over.” He grabbed her roughly and held her over the ledge.

Myrrima threw her arms around his neck. If he tried to push her over, he would come too, and Myrrima had no doubt that she would fare better in the water than he. She spat in his face.

Verazeth’s eyes glittered cruelly, and his nostrils flared. He clenched his fists impotently.

“I give you day to think. Sun very hot.” He let her have a moment to ponder this. Inkarrans, with their white skin, had no protection against the sun. They burned easily and deeply. “While sun come, you think. Maybe not so bad give endowment. Maybe both you and husband give endowment to king. That way, when he die, you both get endowment back, you and husband. Is not better to live in hope than die in despair?”

He grabbed the chain that bound her, and wrestled her arms down. Then he pulled off her traveling cloak, leaving her with naught but tunic and breeches. He grabbed Myrrima’s chains once again and pushed her against a wall, even as he lifted her arms.

The next moment, Myrrima found herself hanging from her fetters, unable to touch the ground with her feet.

Verazeth said, “Many crab on rocks. Hungry crab. They climb cliff, look for food. Maybe help you think better.”

The prince turned and entered the tunnel, bolting the iron door behind him.

Myrrima glanced down to see a pair of small green kelp crabs scuttling for shelter under the rocks. She pulled at her restraints. The heavy fetters cut into her wrists. They fit so tightly, it was almost as if they’d been made for her. With her endowments of brawn, Myrrima knew that she could pull her hands out. But she’d break every bone in her wrist doing it, and would cut away much of the flesh at the same time.

What good would escape be if it left her crippled?

So she hung for a long hour as the morning sun crept over the waves. The water reflected the deep blue of the sky, and deep swelling waves were wrinkles upon the sea’s ageless face. The water stretched everywhere, limitless. Myrrima had never been in the presence of anything that made her feel so small, so humble.

She could feel it calling to her. With every wave that surged against the rocks at the base of the cliff, with the distant hiss of breakers like the clamor of spectators at a joust, she could feel the tug of the ocean, pulling her toward it, pulling her under.

Down below the cliff, seals swam about, their heads bobbing in the waves. Myrrima longed to swim with them. Cormorants and gulls and other shorebirds flew past in flocks. A little green crab scaled the rock and regarded Myrrima with its eyestalks, drops of water oozing from its mouth.

“Come, little friend,” Myrrima told it. “Come gnaw at my metal bindings.” But Myrrima was no summoner. The little crab scurried off.

The early morning wore away, and Myrrima was still hanging quietly when she heard the soft pad of footsteps.

She craned her head just as an old Inkarran woman opened the iron door. She was as white as clamshell, and hunched with age. She crept furtively, as if afraid that someone might hear.

She whispered in Rofehavanish that was surprisingly free of accent. “You came here looking for Daylan Hammer?”

“Yes,” Myrrima managed to answer through parched lips.

“Long have I wondered what has become of him,” the old woman said. “He was my tutor once, when I was a girl. My father hired him to teach us about the distant past, faraway lands, and the tongues of nations. I loved him greatly, but I could never tell him. I was a princess, you see.”

Myrrima understood. It would have been considered scandalous for a woman of the Inkarran court to love a man of Rofehavan, even a hero like Daylan Hammer.

“But as much as I loved him, my sister loved him more. Often she tried to be with him alone, and at night she would tell me how she dreamed of him. As often as she sought him, he rejected her.

“Her marriage had been arranged before her birth, you see. She was to marry Sandakra Criomethes, Prince of Inturria. As the date of her marriage drew near, she grew sick in the heart, and at last thought of a way to revenge herself against our teacher. On the night before her wedding, she cut out her own womb, and died.”

Myrrima stood for a moment, unsure what she was hearing. “Why?”

“It is the Inkarran way,” the old woman said. “When a woman has dirtied herself with a man, this is how she confesses and makes it right.”

So, Myrrima realized, to spite Daylan Hammer, the princess implicated him in her death.

“My father gave me to the prince in my sister’s place, and so I have heard over the years some of what happened next. My lord Criomethes was outraged, and demanded revenge upon your Daylan Hammer. The immortal one fled north, and many men went to hunt him. There was a great battle in Ferecia. Many of our men never returned.”

“Did they kill him?”

“I do not know,” the old woman answered. “I know only this. I did nothing to save him, a man that I admired and loved far more than I could ever care for my lord Criomethes. So, I ask that you forgive me.”

The old woman opened her clenched fist, and held out a key. Swiftly she climbed up on the lip of the parapet and unlocked Myrrima’s fetters. Myrrima slid to the ground.

“Go now,” the old woman said. “Almost everyone is asleep in the palace. Now is your chance to escape!”

“Not without my husband,” Myrrima said.

“It is too late for him,” the old woman said. “He has already given an endowment of will. He is one of the living dead.”

“Then I’ll take the endowment back,” Myrrima said dangerously. She stripped the chains from her, and only then did the old woman seem to recognize her mistake.

She let out a yelp, as if she would scream, but Myrrima grabbed her by the throat. The old woman pawed and kicked, but Myrrima had many endowments, and she choked the old woman until she lost consciousness, and then chained her, and hung her from the peg.

“I’m sorry,” Myrrima whispered as she locked the old woman into place. “I’m sorry.”

Myrrima turned the woman, so that she wouldn’t be burned by the sun, and crept back into the dark tunnel.

Sir Borenson lay upon his wooden bed, breathing in, breathing out. A cozy fire burned in the hearth, and Borenson could see the room clearly for the first time in more than an hour. He was in the main chamber of King Criomethes’s apartments. The Inkarran facilitator hunched over Borenson’s bare foot. He painstakingly dipped a long needle into an inkpot, and then inserted it into Borenson’s foot. He was constructing a tattoo to cover the whole of Borenson’s leg.

I could look down, Borenson told himself. I could see the shape of the rune of Will.

But he had no desire to do it. For ages the men of Rofehavan had sought to learn the secret of its making. But Borenson did not bother to look. There was a fat black spider on the stone ceiling, meandering along. Borenson watched it, unblinking. His eyes felt dry and itchy, and each time that the pain grew too great, he would try to summon the energy to blink them. This he did only because his tormentor forced him to do so.

His tormentor was a woman. She had stood over him with a bamboo rod since he first bestowed his endowment, and had given him orders. “Breathe for me, or I shall hit you,” she warned. And whenever he stopped breathing, she would rap his shins with the rod, causing excruciating pain. And so he breathed in for her, and he breathed out. Thus she taught him to breathe.

Left to his own devices, he would have merely stopped and suffocated. He no longer cared if he breathed or not.

“Blink for me when eyes get dry,” the woman told him after he had lain staring at the spider on the ceiling for an hour. She rapped him across the hands to show how much pain she could cause. And thus he learned to blink, though he did not care if his eyes went dry in their sockets.

Now she stood over him, lecturing. “I not feed you. I not your slave. When you get hungry, must out of bed and eat. Understand? If you not eat until full, I will beat you. Understand?”

Borenson understood, but he made no sign of it. To speak was a waste of energy, to nod a worthless gesture. He merely lay, staring at the ceiling.

The woman rapped him across the face with the rod. “You have tongue. You answer me. You understand?”

“Yes,” Borenson said. He was angry and frustrated. The thought came to him that he could run away. He was not chained any longer. The facilitator had removed the chains so that he could create his tattoo. Yet the desire to flee was not strong enough to move Borenson’s feet.

If I ran, how would I live? he wondered. And the answer was that it would be impossible. He would have to find his horse, a deed that could take hours. He would have to evade or fight the guards, a task that seemed too monumental. Then he would have to travel for days. For what? Everything he needed was here. Food, shelter, water. All he had to do was lie down, and others would bring it to him.

He felt the need to urinate, and announced it by letting his water flow. The urine soaked his pants and pooled beneath him, warming him.

The facilitator cleared his throat in disgust and issued an order to the tormenter. She had been busy across the room with something. She raced back to him.

“No!” she shrieked at Borenson. “You not animal. You not pee on floor or bed. You get up to pee like person. Understand?” She slammed her bamboo rod down. Borenson lamely put a hand over his groin to protect himself.

He heard a deep voice say something in Inkarran. From out of the shadows came King Criomethes himself.

“You well, I hope?” the king asked.

Borenson had no desire to frame an answer.

“Life without will is hard,” the king said. “There no hope, only senseless desire. No real dreams, only longing for goals that one cannot attain. Life become burden, worthless to you. But we teach to live again. We teach to breathe, to eat, to pee. You will live like we tell you to. You will live because it easier than dying.”

“Say ‘Thank you,’” the old woman ordered.

Borenson made no answer, until she rapped him across the chin. “Thank you.”

King Criomethes smiled and was about to leave when Borenson heard the scuff of a shoe across the room. Criomethes whirled to see the cause of the noise. A shadow came out of the darkness. There was a whistle of a swinging blade, and then the thunk of metal cleaving bone.

Blood spattered across Borenson’s face as King Criomethes went down, a fine Inkarran sword blade cleaving down through his neck, into his rib cage.

The facilitator staggered back, and the old woman with her bamboo cane cried out and tried to duck, but the shadow whirled, yanking the blade free from Criomethes’s dead body. The shining blade sliced off the old woman’s head and hit the facilitator in the throat, slashing his windpipe. He fell back against the wall, blood pumping wildly.

Suddenly, in a rush, the will returned to Borenson. He pushed himself from bed, sitting up.

Myrrima stood before him, wrapped in her robes, her hood thrown up to make her one with the darkness.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re getting out of here!”

A moment ago, Borenson had felt empty, almost complacent. Now it seemed that some emotion had to fill that void, and the thing that he felt was rage.

Criomethes lay on the floor, struggling to pull himself up by grasping a chair with one hand. Borenson knew that the man was dead, that his body now only moved by impulse. Yet Borenson struggled against the urge to vent his rage. He watched the dying king as if through a red haze.

He grabbed Criomethes by the hair and lifted him up, raised a fist and would have struck him between the eyes hard enough to crush the man’s skull.

But Myrrima touched Borenson’s raised arm with one finger, and whispered, “Peace be with you.”

It was more than a greeting, it was a powerful spell. Peace washed over him as if it were a flood, and all of the anger subsided.

He had only felt something similar once—at the pool south of Bannisferre, where an undine had kissed him and washed the guilt from his tortured mind.

He dropped the old king, embarrassed by his fury, by his lack of self-control.

A million questions came rushing at once. Where are my boots? Where is my warhammer? How did you escape?

Yet he held them all in, and for a moment just stared down at his leg. The skin burned from the tattoo. The old facilitator had begun at the sole of his foot and worked upward, creating an image of roots on a tree. It was as if Borenson wore a purple sock now, one that covered his foot up to his ankle. But there on his calf lay a rune that he had never seen before, the symbol for will. To Borenson it looked something like the head of a bull, all wrapped within a circle. There were squiggly lines above it that almost seemed to form a word or a thought in his mind. Runes often affected one that way.

Borenson peered about nervously, worried that Inkarran warriors would come storming into the chamber at any moment. Myrrima rushed across the room, stared down some dark corridor.

“Where’s Prince Verazeth?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Borenson said. “I haven’t seen him in hours.”

She growled angrily and stalked back to Borenson. “We’ve got to get out of here!” Myrrima said. “If the Inkarrans find out what we’ve learned the shape of the Rune of Will, we’re dead.”

“Do you even know the way out?” Borenson asked, “This place is a maze.”

Myrrima froze. She had no idea how to get out of the city, much less the country.

In the darkness, Borenson heard a grunt as someone cleared his throat. Then a voice spoke up in mild Inkarran accent. “Perhaps I can help.”

Borenson whirled, ready to fight. In the darkness, against the wall, sat a man in dark robes. He had been so still that neither of them had seen him in the dark. He pulled back a deep hood to reveal skin as pale as milk and eyes that glowed red in the darkness from lack of pigment.

Borenson was about to launch himself at the man when he realized that he was a Days.

No, not just a Days, King Criomethes’s Days, he realized.

“And why would you help us?” Borenson asked. For the Days had been politically neutral from time immemorial. They took no side in any dispute.

“Because the fate of the world sits upon a precipice,” the Days answered. “For two days now, my people have argued whether to intervene. I have made up my mind, and the Council has made up theirs. They will not intervene.” As if to announce his decision, he stood up and pulled off his brown scholar’s robes. He was a tall man, with broad, powerful shoulders. Beneath his robes he wore a plain white tunic, and an Inkarran breastplate. A long Inkarran dirk rode in a sheath on his thigh. “It’s time for any man who hopes to call himself a man to go to fight at Carris.”

“Carris?” Myrrima asked.

“The Earth King has asked every man who can bear a weapon to ride to Carris to fight the reavers,” the Days said. “If we’re to make it, we must do so by sundown. I can get you out of Inkarra, but my kind are forbidden to enter Mystarria. Once we cross the border, my life will be in your hands.”

“Fight the reavers?” Myrrima asked. “Last I saw, Gaborn had the horde on the run.”

“No,” the Inkarran said, “not that horde—a new one. The reavers are marching toward Carris in a black tide, larger than the first.”

Borenson shuddered at the thought.

“Will Gaborn be fighting there?” he asked, for he hoped to tell Gaborn of his discoveries in Inkarra.

“He was last seen entering the Underworld two days ago, to fight a legend—the fell mage who leads the reavers, the One True Master,” the Inkarran said. He rushed over to the fire, reached under some bags that were hidden there. He pulled out a kingly head plate as protection, took a long straight Inkarran sword from over the fireplace and strapped it on.

He finished buckling on the sheath, looked Borenson in the eye. “I should warn you that the chances for those who fight in Carris are slim. A host of enemies are arrayed against you, and not all of them are reavers.”

“Who?”

“Raj Ahten has become a flameweaver, and even now he plots how to destroy Mystarria. As he does, his facilitators vector endowments to him as fast as they are able. They have resorted to bribing street urchins and blackmailing criminals. But he is not alone. Lowicker’s daughter guards the roads north of Carris, preventing any help from reaching the city from that direction.

“Beyond that, King Anders is riding from Crowthen, claiming that the Earth has called him to be its new king, now that Gaborn has lost the power to warn his Chosen of danger.”

Borenson snorted in derision, but the Inkarran said, “Do not laugh. For years he has studied the arts of sorcery, and already he has convinced many of the veracity of his words. But King Anders is full of treachery. He sent a plague of rats to destroy Heredon, and no Earth King would dare do something so vile. Gaborn managed to frustrate his plot, but Anders has others.”

“Name them,” Borenson said.

The Inkarran said, “At his bidding, the warlords of Internook have overrun the Courts of Tide. Olmarg himself led the attack, holding the Orb of Internook aloft. Three thousand gray longboats sailed into the city at dawn. Though Chancellor Westhaven surrendered, Olmarg gutted him. Then the barbarians of Internook hurled fire into the shanties along the docks, and have spent the morning raping and pillaging. Olmarg has seized the throne of Mystarria, and is even now looting its treasury of gold and forcibles. The Duchess Galent went before him an hour ago, begging him to restrain his men, for they slew her husband and deflowered her daughters before her eyes. In answer, Olmarg threw her on the floor and raped her, before slitting her throat. That is the kind of man that serves Anders.” By now the Inkarran had taken a purse full of coins from the dead king’s body and had grabbed some rice buns and fruit from a basket near the fire. He went to a peg on the wall and took down an Inkarran day cloak—a black cloak with a deep hood that would protect his eyes from the light—and wrapped it over his shoulders.

Borenson felt stunned at the news. He had spent his life in service to Gaborn’s father, protecting Mystarria. Never in his darkest dreams had he imagined that his nation would fall.

The Inkarran studied Borenson for a moment. “I’ll take you to the guards now. Act as if nothing is amiss. They’ll return your weapons. Your horses should have been delivered to the king’s stables. If not, we can steal mounts there.”

“And what of Prince Verazeth?” Myrrima asked. “Where is he?”

“He is drinking honeysuckle wine and playing dice with his friends,” the Inkarran answered. “With any luck, he won’t return to these rooms until nightfall.”

The Inkarran turned toward a door.

“One last thing,” Borenson asked. “Do you have a name?”

The Inkarran glanced back, his face a white mask beneath his hood. Just enough firelight caught his eyes so that they reflected the red embers. “Sarka. Sarka Kaul.”

25 A Love so Pure

When Chemoise woke from her dreams of rats, daylight was streaming through the open door of the old winery. Chills wracked her, and she could not stop shaking. Aunt Constance helped her to her feet, and someone from town—Chemoises’s eyes were too bleary to see who—guided her downhill to the house.

The ground outside the winery was burned bare. The hoops from the barrels lay in blackened rings. The pear trees were smoldering stakes. Fire had razed the hills to the west.

A wagon waited just outside the door, and Chemoise saw three people laid out on it with blankets draped over their faces.

“Who died?” Chemoise asked bitterly, for she had worked so hard to save everyone. To her knowledge, only her dear uncle Eber should have died. “Who is in the wagon?”

“Everyone is fine,” Aunt Constance said, her voice choked with suppressed grief. “Everyone is well.” She steered Chemoise to the house, and Chemoise felt too weak to argue. She’d discover who had died in time. She felt surprised to find the manor still standing, but the wind had blown the fire west of the old winery, across the fields, where it still burned in the hills nearby. Thus the house and town were saved.

Inside the manor, Constance poured cold water over Chemoise’s wounds, and put poultices on them. She lay in a fever all morning. By and by she woke and heard a knock on the outside door, followed by women talking.

“The Fancher boy just died,” someone from town said. “We tried everything, but he took too many bites.”

“That makes nine,” Constance said, her voice hollow from loss.

“It could have been worse,” someone added. “If not for the king, we’d all be dead.”

Chemoise lay in a daze, wondering who else might have died.

Not Dearborn Hawks, she found herself hoping. Not him.

It was an odd sentiment, one she felt guilty for even thinking, for in wishing him to be alive, she was wishing death on someone else.

But she had tended to his bites after the battle—twenty-four of them—and she could not help remembering the shy way that he smiled at her, and the way her heart skipped in return.

“Terrible, terrible,” one old woman said. “My heart breaks for every one of them. Thank the Powers that the Earth King warned us in time. I only wish that I could repay him.”

“We won’t be seeing the likes of him for a while,” Aunt Constance said. “Eber told me yesterday afternoon that there’s terrible goings-on. There’s to be a big battle down in Mystarria tonight—reavers. Reavers by the thousands. Everyone who can fight has been called to battle at Carris. And those who can’t fight are giving endowments to the Earth King.”

“Endowments?” the old woman asked. “Where?”

“At Castle Sylvarresta. Folks are gathering from all around. The king took endowments down at Castle Groverman last week, and the facilitators have brought Dedicates to Castle Sylvarresta to act as vectors.”

“Really?” the old woman asked. “Have things gotten so bad?”

Aunt Constance was silent for a moment, and Chemoise imagined that she could hear her shaking her head. “I heard Eber whispering to some of the men. He told them to get weapons ready. The Earth King says that if we don’t win at Carris...”

Chemoise crawled out of bed and steadied herself for a moment. Castle Sylvarresta wasn’t far, less than thirty miles. Uncle Eber hadn’t had a force horse, but he did have a boat, and the River Wye ran down through the forests right up to the castle. She knew that in the years past, Eber used to send his wine barrels downstream, so the water was deep enough to carry the boat all the way.

With luck, I can get there in a few hours, she told herself.

She threw on her riding cloak, and silently slipped out the window. She crept along the back of the house and was crossing the dirt lane when the door opened. Aunt Constance and her old friend Nan Fields stood there.

“I didn’t know that you were up,” Constance called. “Where are you going?”

Chemoise turned and looked her in the eye. “To Castle Sylvarresta, to give my endowment.”

Immediately Constance limped across the street, her right foot swollen by rat bites. Her expression was grim. “You can’t do that. You’re already sick. Think of your child!”

Chemoise stopped, torn. Iome had always been her best friend, and Chemoise dearly wanted to give whatever aid she could.

“There are endowments I can give that wouldn’t endanger the babe,” she argued.

Dearborn Hawks must have heard them talking. Perhaps he had been waiting all day to see Chemoise. He came from the barn, his brow furrowed in concern.

“Dearborn, stop her!” Constance begged.

The Hawks boy looked at Constance, and then at Chemoise, and nodded thoughtfully. “There’s not much water in the river at this time of year,” he said at last. “You’ll need help rowing if you’re to make it by nightfall.”

With that, he led her downhill to the boat.

26 The Curtains of Heaven

Borenson and Myrrima fled Iselferion with the Inkarran Days, Sarka Kaul, as their guide. The guards handed them their weapons at the door, and Sarka led them to some underground stables where Borenson found his horses already delivered. Many an Inkarran lord was visiting the city, and Sarka had no difficulty stealing a suitable mount for himself.

Thus the three rode from Iselferion into the morning light with the city still asleep, the Inkarrans unaware that a Rune of Will gleamed darkly upon Borenson’s leg. He knew that the journey would not stay easy for long.

He suspected that once the Inkarrans learned what had happened, they’d send a legion of pale warriors to hunt them down. They’d kill him and anyone he spoke to.

Yet as Sarka guided them along lonely roads, there was no pursuit by daylight, no sign of Inkarrans at all. Empty fields lay all about the trails, cultivated and pruned, looking strangely bereft, for there were no workmen tilling them, no cottages or barns. The only sign of habitation came as the morning sun shone upon the stele that marked each city.

Borenson could not have hoped for a better escape. Sarka Kaul led them over desolate trails until they reached the shadowed forests, where winged lizards fluttered about, hunting for moths and gnats in the canopy.

Only once did anyone try to stop them. As they neared the foot of the Alcair Mountains, a dark figure raced up behind the trio. The clatter of a charger’s hooves announced that it was a force horse with great endowments, and Borenson looked back down a mountain trail, where he glimpsed the rider galloping through the trees.

“I’ll get him,” Myrrima said fiercely as they neared a meadow. She had kept her bow strung all morning, and she slowed her mount, leapt off, and slapped its rump. Her horse raced after Sarka and Sir Borenson, following them through a meadow full of white flowers so delicate that the sunlight shining through made them glow like ice.

Sarka Kaul led the way and reached a line of trees just as their pursuer exited the woods. Borenson glanced back. An Inkarran prince raced under the shadows, his blood red robes flapping behind him like wings. He rode a horse as black as night itself. The mount galloped into the meadow a few paces, and suddenly Myrrima stepped out from behind a gnarled sycamore and loosed an arrow.

The fellow cried and leaned forward, putting his heels to horseflesh. Borenson clearly saw the white plumes of goose feather from the arrow lodged in his back.

The black horse came to a halt in the meadow and spun about. Its rider was cursing, lamely struggling to get it to flee, while he struggled to keep from falling off.

Borenson raced to the wounded rider. The fellow’s long silver braids announced that it was Prince Verazeth. He lay slumped in the saddle, clinging to his horse’s neck, the arrow sticking up from his ribs. Myrrima had struck him near the heart. His horse danced around, frightened by the scent of hot blood.

Sarka Kaul rode up behind Borenson. “Cour as! Cour as!” Help me, the prince muttered.

“Gladly,” Sarka said, urging his mount forward.

He grabbed the prince by the hair and plunged his sword into the man’s back. He flung the body to the ground and took the horse’s reins in one smooth motion.

In a moment Myrrima came running up through the field.

“He’s dead?” she asked unnecessarily. She stood over the prince, bow in hand, arrow ready to fire.

“He’s dead,” Sarka said.

“But...you watched him grow up from a child,” she objected.

“And many a time I wished to put an end to his miserable life,” the Inkarran whispered. “Here, take his horse. It might come in handy. It has many endowments of sight to let it run in the darkness.”

“This is it?” Borenson asked. “This is the only man they sent to hunt for us?”

Sarka Kaul grunted. “Probably so. Inkarran politics are very complex. King Criomethes has secretly been in league with the Storm King’s enemies for decades, so Verazeth couldn’t dare risk revealing what his father has done. Their crime against you must remain a secret from the king. Nor could Verazeth tell his own cronies what has happened, for it will make him look foolish to be bested by Daylighters, people that he condemns as inferiors. He really only had one choice. He had to hunt you down himself. Only then could he pretend to avenge his family, and thus gain honor. So he came for you swiftly, foolish enough to hunt by daylight, and took his secret to the grave.”

Myrrima seemed unsure. “Let’s get out of here anyway.”

She dragged the prince’s body from the road, hid it under the trees two hundred yards into the woods. Then she leapt up on his black stallion and fought the beast for a moment, and led the way.

The trip over the Alcairs went quickly. The snow-laden arms of the mountains glowed as white as bone in the daylight, and the horses were eager to run in the cool air.

They raced up the jagged peaks, over roads that were almost never used, until at last they neared the Inkarran fortress. An icy gale was blowing spindrift from the peaks, so that by the time that they drew close, they did so in a dismal fog.

The road zigzagged down the steep mountain. Sarka Kaul bypassed the fortress by riding up the slopes until he met the road above. Even force horses had a tough job of it, lunging through the foggy ice.

When they neared the mountain peak, with its fearsome wall, Myrrima and Sarka both closed their eyes tightly, and Borenson led the horses. He only shivered once as he passed beneath the shadow of the gate, and noon found them all racing down snowy slopes.

In such fierce light, Sarka was almost blind. Borenson kept a keen eye out for Inkarrans. Sarka warned that the Storm King Zandaros and his men might be camped on the road, hidden in some dark fen. But the snow showed no sign that any large party had ridden past in the night, and Sarka decided at last that Zandaros must have kept on Inkarran roads, heading farther west, before taking their path northward. That way, the Storm King would avoid any well-traveled highways in Mystarria, taking most of his journey through the wilderness.

“He cares little for the fate of Rofehavan,” Sarka Kaul warned Borenson, “but if the reavers manage to destroy your land, he knows that his own people will have to fight a war.”

The sun seemed to be a great and brittle pearl floating in a distant sea, somehow vaster than any sun that Borenson had ever seen. Below him to the north, clouds covered the green fields of Mystarria like a cloak.

So they rode, racing the horses as fast as they would go down through Batenne and up the roads through the swamps at Fenraven. Verazeth’s mount was as swift and tireless as any that Borenson had ever seen, and it carried Myrrima without complaint. His own warhorse and the white mare both tired more quickly, but Borenson kept from wearing them out by switching mounts each time one got winded. Sarka Kaul too had stolen a kingly mount, one whose coat was a peculiarly bright color of red. “They are called blood mounts in the south of Inkarra,” Sarka told them, “and are highly valued for their ability to see in the darkness.”

His mount followed along behind the others, apparently baffled to be running in the daylight. Sarka Kaul kept his head low as he rode through the towns and villages, his deep hood concealing his face, a pair of black riding gloves to hide his hands, and if any man of Mystarria noted that an Inkarran was riding abroad in the daylight, no one gave chase.

By early afternoon they left the swamps at Fenraven and rode west, where they began to draw near the reavers’ trail.

A fire burned all across the horizon, and in the muggy air, the smoke billowed uncommonly black. It rose heavenward in thick columns, fulminating upward for miles. To Borenson, the columns looked like black vines espaliered against a stone cliff. At their crown, a breeze blew the smoke east in a thin haze, like tendrils of vine hanging over a garden wall.

Along the road, they began to spot refugees fleeing the coming war. Borenson saw a young woman driving an oxcart. Four children slept on a pile of hay in the back. Food and clothes were wrapped into a few meager bundles.

Then he began to see more exiles, old women with staves hobbling along the road, young women with babes in arms. But there were no men—no old men, no young men over the age of eleven or twelve. Not even the crippled or maimed were fleeing Carris.

The smoke’s reach was tremendous. For twenty miles it hung overhead like a ceiling, and Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka rode closer and closer to the dark columns. Powdery ash began to drift from the sky.

Borenson stopped at a stream near an abandoned farm to let the horses drink, and found a crowd of women who looked too exhausted to march any farther.

“When did the fire start?” Myrrima asked, nodding toward the clouds looming in the west.

“The Knights Equitable lit it yesterday before dawn,” an old woman answered. “They’re riding ahead of the reavers, setting fire to everything, hoping to slow the horde.”

If Borenson knew the Knights Equitable, they would do more than just light fires. It was easier to take reavers in the open field than to fight them from behind castle walls. High Marshal Chondler would send sorties against the reavers.

“Have you seen the horde?” Borenson asked. “Do we have any estimates on how big it is?” The last horde sent against Carris had been nearly seventy thousand strong. Sarka claimed that this one might be over a million, but it was hard to credit such wild numbers.

The old woman spoke up. “You can’t count them all. The reavers’ lines stretches for a hundred miles, like a dark river, and the horde is so wide you can hardly see to the far shore.”

“By the Powers!” Borenson swore. “There is no way that we can fight something like that. There aren’t enough men and lances in all of Mystarria!”

But Sarka Kaul gazed off to the north and the west, and whispered, “Perhaps there are enough men to fight, if only they muster the will to do it.”

They took off riding, moving ever deeper beneath the smoky shadow. For several leagues they met women and children fleeing in droves, until at last their numbers began to dwindle.

As the clouds of smoke thickened with each mile, soon it seemed as if night closed overhead. They passed a deserted village, and all the cocks were crowing as if to greet the dawn.

Deep under the shadow, they rode up to a peasant girl trying to carry her two weary sisters, even as a pair of toddlers trailed behind, crying of weariness. Borenson asked, “Where are your mother and father?”

“They went to Carris, to fight,” the girl said.

“Don’t you have any food?” Myrrima asked.

“We had some, yesterday, but I couldn’t carry the children and the food. So we left it. There are farms along the way. I was hoping to find something to eat.”

There was a moment of silence as Borenson considered the girl’s predicament. The land was full of rocks, and there wasn’t a village for forty miles. Half a dozen farms spread out along the road, but other refugees were picking the last apples from the trees as they marched. This girl and her brothers and sisters would never make it.

Borenson would never have abandoned his own offspring like this.

“Give her the spare horse,” Myrrima urged.

Borenson felt torn. He looked to the west. He could see evidence of flames now—an angry red welt on the horizon. If these children didn’t seek shelter soon, the fire would get them before the reavers did. “Nay,” he decided. “We may need the horse for battle. But give them some food.”

“We may need the horse,” Myrrima said, “but they do need it.”

Borenson hung his head. He understood some of the pain that Gaborn must be sensing. If he gave a warhorse to these children, he might save their lives. But he needed the horses for battle, a battle where he could save more than just five small children.

He looked back to Sarka Kaul for advice, but the Inkarran merely shrugged.

It was a bitter choice. He gave the girl some plums and a loaf of bread he’d bought fresh in Battenne, counseled them to head east toward the River Donnestgree, and then rode on.

As he moved toward the shadow, a strange thought took him: this is the road my father traveled to his own death.

It would have been only a week ago now that his father had ridden to Carris. The skies would have been blue and clear, and certainly his father hadn’t known what awaited him, but it was the same road, the same farmhouses and trees, the same dull pond in the distance reflecting the sky.

Still the shadows lengthened, and darkness deepened. The air grew still, motionless. Almost the inferno did not seem to be belching smoke at all. Borenson could imagine that invisible hands had reached into the earth, and were pulling out its entrails, just as a huntsman guts a stag.

At last he rounded a bend and could see a line of red beneath the smoke, the sputtering of flames. The road led through the fire.

They raced the horses then, past scorching flames that rose up on both sides of the road, and found themselves completely beneath the shadow. Ash and smoke filled the air so thickly that they all wrapped scarves over their faces.

The sky was black above, as black as dusk, and the ground was charred and black beneath the hooves of the horses. The only light came from brushfires that raged everywhere in a ragged line, like a fiery snake that stretched across the horizon.

The thundering of the reavers’ feet could now be heard, rumbling beneath the sputter and hiss of flames. Howlers trumpeted mournful cries. Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul raced toward the horde. Soon, gree began to whip overhead on wriggling wings, squeaking as if in agony.

Deep in the blackness, the reavers charged. They thundered along beside the charred highway, running hundreds abreast, and the line extended each direction for as far as the eye could see. Firelight reflected crimson from their carapaces. The ground shuddered beneath their feet, and the hissing of their breath sounded like a gasp.

Blade-bearers made up the vast bulk of the army, along with large numbers of pale spidery howlers whose eerie calls frequently were borne through the shadows. Among the mass of dark bodies, Borenson saw few scarlet sorceresses.

“What’s that?” Myrrima shouted to be heard over the commotion. She pointed to a trio of enormous reavers that loped along about a quarter of a mile off. To Borenson’s eye, they looked like any other reaver he had ever seen except that each of them had dozens of large, bulbous black growths all over their backs.

Myrrima raced her horse toward the monsters, and Borenson followed more warily. Sarka Kaul hung back, afraid of the reavers, for he was but a Days, a commoner without benefit of endowments.

As Borenson drew near, the mystery was solved: the huge reavers looked to be nurses, reavers charged with rearing the warren’s hatchlings. Each nurse was oversized, nearly forty feet in length, and the humps on their backs were young reavers, each no more than five or six feet tall, and eight feet in length. Ten or fifteen young clung to the backs of some nurses.

“Why would they bring their young?” Myrrima shouted, nocking an arrow.

Borenson had an inkling. He imagined the young reavers charging through the rooms of a keep, breaking into cellars to hunt for women and children. He could envision them climbing turret stairs—going any of the places where people might hide when fleeing reavers. How vicious such young creatures might be, he could not guess.

At that moment, an enormous blade-bearer must have smelled them. It came rushing out of the column at tremendous speed, the philia along its head waving wildly. Instantly Borenson saw that the horses wouldn’t be able to outrun it.

He had never seen a reaver move so fast.

“Shoot it!” Borenson warned as he pulled his warhammer from its sheath.

The monster charged Myrrima. It stood over twenty feet tall, and its mouth was wide enough to swallow a horse. Fiery runes glowed on its battle arms, as pale blue as a will-o’—the-wisp in the swamps at Fenraven. The reaver hissed.

Myrrima reined in her black stallion, drawing her bow as the blade-bearer charged. But her horse threw back its ears, and its eyes grew wide. It began to dance backward.

Borenson veered his own mount toward the beast, shouted a war cry, and charged.

He was nearly on the monster when a dark shaft sizzled overhead and disappeared into the reavers’ sweet triangle. The monster’s right legs buckled, and it skidded in the ash for a moment, then floundered as it tried to regain its feet. The arrow had struck its brain, but had not killed it instantly.

“Flee!” Borenson shouted, wheeling to see where Myrrima might be. She had already grabbed her reins and was urging her horse away from the reaver’s lines—not a moment too soon.

The wounded reaver struggled unsuccessfully to regain its feet, even as two of its kin raced out of the horde.

Borenson put heels to horseflesh and set his charger galloping over the blackened fields. Myrrima raced ahead. Before them, Sarka Kaul’s mount galloped like the wind. Borenson looked over his back. The wounded reaver was spinning about in circles while its comrades charged after him.

They were gaining on him.

Borenson had his little white mare on a tether, and was trying to lead her out. But she wasn’t as fast as his old warhorse. He considered cutting her loose. If nothing else, she might serve as a decoy for the reavers.

He glanced up toward Myrrima. She was drawing another arrow from her quiver, trying to nock it as she rode.

The reavers were gaining. He could hear their hissing breath closing in on him; their feet pounded the earth. Borenson had taken but one endowment of metabolism at Carris. Over the past few days, his facilitator had vectored him more. But he still moved more slowly than these reavers. He dared not face them with only a warhammer.

He peered ahead.

Myrrima was racing away from him, over the dun fields. Sarka Kaul still held the lead. The great smoke clouds above threw a broad shadow, so that it looked as if they fled beneath a storm. Her mount’s hooves threw up turfs, then leapt over the blackened limb of a fallen oak. Yet even as Myrrima fled, she held her reins in her teeth and nocked another arrow.

Borenson put heels to horseflesh and struggled to hold on. He clung to his long-handled warhammer. With so few endowments, he would not be able to use it effectively, but it was all that he had.

He could hear the reavers gaining, lurching forward, their massive bodies thudding with each step, weightier than elephants. Their hissing came loud.

Once, in his youth, Borenson had been to the shipyards on the north coast of Thwynn where King Orden’s warships were built. There a huge iron battering ram was being fashioned for the prow of a ship. It was longer than a mainmast. The shipwrights had said that much of the ram would be hidden within the hull of a small, fast vessel, built solely to ram and thus disable the big, heavily armored “floating castles” of Toom. Borenson had seen the new-forged ram lifted from its cast and levered into a ditch filled with oily water. When it touched the liquid, it hissed with the tongue of a thousand serpents and sent plumes of gray steam writhing into the air.

As the reavers advanced, their hissing reminded him of that now.

Ah, he thought, what I would not give for a good lance!

Suddenly he heard Myrrima cry out, and he looked ahead. She spun her horse about and was racing toward him.

“Watch out!” she warned.

Borenson let go the reins of his white mare, and she split to the left. In order to avoid colliding with Myrrima, he spurred his stallion to the right.

Myrrima raced between them, head down, charging the reavers, who were startled by her sudden attack.

The foremost skidded, trying to stop, its philia waving in alarm. Clouds of dust rose from its feet, and it raised a knight gig as if to gaff her horse. The light of distant fires flashed red on the long black pole. The reaver just behind it bungled on, striking it in the rear legs, so that the foremost reaver tripped.

Myrrima was nearly upon the tangled pair when she loosed an arrow. It blurred toward the foremost reaver and struck its sweet triangle with a thwack.

The monster pushed off with its back legs and leapt nearly straight in the air, its four back legs kicking as if it sought to run. Then it flipped forward and crashed headfirst into the ground.

The felled reaver did not get up. It lay facedown in the black ash, its rear legs kicking in vain.

Now there was only one reaver. Borenson wheeled his mount to face it.

The last reaver had drawn to a halt. Myrrima raced away behind it, and the huge blade-bearer spun to confront her. Yet Borenson was now charging at its back, and the reaver swiveled its head, trying to gauge the threat. Sarka Kaul found some courage and brought his own mount galloping toward the fray.

The monster leaned back on its rear legs and raised its claws, as if it were cowed. Two of its companions were dead, and it couldn’t tell whether Borenson, Myrrima, or Sarka Kaul represented the greater threat.

“Two hundred yards!” Myrrima shouted across the expanse.

She had now raced her horse about that distance from the last remaining reaver, and she wheeled her mount and drew an arrow from her quiver. Borenson suddenly understood what she meant to do.

Averan had said that a reaver’s limit of vision was two hundred yards. The reaver here could certainly smell them, but he couldn’t see them clearly at such a distance. Borenson, too, now retreated outside the reaver’s limit of vision while Sarka Kaul raced near, distracting the beast.

Myrrima took her great steel bow and drew back an arrow even with her ear. At such a distance, she had little hope of hitting the monster in its sweet triangle. Borenson wasn’t sure that her bolt would even pierce the reaver’s skin, no matter how sharp her bodkins.

She let her arrow fly. It arced up into the air and struck squarely in the reaver’s haunch, burying its head in the monster’s buttock.

The reaver snarled and leapt in the air, then wheeled and snapped, biting off the offending arrow. But it was no use. He could not pry out the head of the shaft from beneath his skin without doing greater damage.

Now he hissed in vain and spun about, looking for sign of his attacker. For all the world he reminded Borenson of a wounded bear snapping at the encircling hounds. The reaver looked forlorn and confused.

And why not? he asked himself. In all our battles, the reavers have faced men with lances and warhammers and javelins. Never have they had to contend against men armed with Sylvarresta’s bows of spring steel. Never have they faced men who could strike from horseback beyond their limit of vision.

Now the reaver spun about, snarling, clawing at the air, and blindly waving his philia, seeking to catch sight or scent of its enemy.

“Go!” Myrrima called. “I’ll come around and meet you.”

She hadn’t hoped to kill the last reaver at all, only slow it enough so that they could escape. Sarka Kaul turned and headed back toward the highway. Borenson raced north to retrieve his white mare, while Myrrima circled downwind of the reaver, coincidentally putting the body of its fallen comrade between her and the monster.

She already had another arrow nocked.

Borenson went to his white mare, whispered soothing words, and took her reins. The little mare peered at him with frightened eyes, ears drawn back, and danced away at his approach.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I won’t leave you to the reavers again.”

He patted her, and heard the reaver roar wildly. He glanced back.

Myrrima was charging the wounded beast. She had the corpse of its fallen companion between them, and she was racing from downwind. She was less than a hundred yards away now.

She swung north, rounded the dead reaver, and suddenly its companion became aware of her. The monster leapt forward a pace, holding its giant blade in the air. It rose up on hind legs and gaped its maw wide in a fierce display.

Myrrima fired an arrow into its mouth, sent the shaft blurring up into its soft palate. Then she gouged the flanks of her horse and veered away, fleeing toward Borenson.

The great blade-bearer hissed in anger and lunged toward her, giving chase. It hissed cruelly as it ran, and Borenson realized to his dismay that Myrrima hadn’t been able to fell the creature. Her arrow had missed its mark.

She was nocking another arrow even as she fled.

The huge monster bore down on her, ignoring the shaft buried in its leg. It muscled forward, strengthened by rage, intent on rending Myrrima to pieces.

“Ho-ooo!” Borenson cried.

He spurred his own mount, went charging straight toward Myrrima. She was two hundred yards from him, then a hundred. He could see the whites of her eyes, broad and frightened. Her dark hair flew behind her.

Then she brushed past him, and Borenson faced the reaver. It lurched to a halt, skidding, and then bobbed its head up protectively, believing that it faced a lancer. But Borenson had no weapon to fight it effectively. He merely veered his horse to the left and raced away.

For a second the brute stood, trying to decide whether to give chase. Then another arrow blurred from Myrrima’s bow, striking it in the sweet triangle, and burying itself in the reaver’s brain. The monster tensed for a moment as if to spring. Then it stepped forward and gingerly lay down in the grass, as if it merely sought a place to sleep.

It moved no more.

Myrrima wheeled her horse, and it came prancing back to meet Borenson.

There was a look of worry on her face. “Three arrows,” she said. “I spent three arrows on one reaver.”

Borenson knew what she meant. She had precious few in her quiver, and an army of hundreds of thousands of reavers marched in the distance, rumbling over the prairie.

“I’d say that three arrows to kill a reaver were well spent. Besides, you killed three reavers with five arrows, not one with three.”

Myrrima bit her lip. He could plainly see that she was cursing herself for her poor bowmanship instead of rejoicing to be alive. How many men had ever killed a reaver with a bow? Few that he knew of. And here she had just slain three!

Sarka Kaul rode back to the meet them.

“How many steel bows like that do you think there are in Heredon?” he asked.

Myrrima shook her head. “I’ve not seen many. I’d guess that maybe there are three hundred in all the land.”

“I would that you had a hundred thousand of them, and that someone had the good sense to bring them all to Carris,” Sarka Kaul said, “along with all of your ballistas.”

But Borenson could see that his heart was not in his words, for he knew that Carris would boast no such weapons. Sarka Kaul turned his blood mount and they galloped on beneath clouds of smoke-curtained light from the heavens.

27 The Winding Stair

Iome had urged Gaborn to forge ahead to the Lair of Bones, but she never intended to lag far behind. So she ran, straining to keep up.

True to his word, Gaborn had marked a path for her through tunnels and caves, down canyons and watercourses, past wonders that Iome suspected no man had ever seen. She passed once through a long tunnel carved in crystal, its walls as transparent as ice. She beheld forests of stone trees, twisted and surreal in their beauty, climbing in whorls along the wall. She’d raced through migrations of blind-crabs and climbed down endless chasms. She’d passed under waterfalls, where the roar of an Underworld flood deafened the ear.

And all along the way, one thought rang in her memory, “And while you are saving the world,” she’d asked Gaborn, “who will be saving you?”

It wasn’t an idle question. It had been a promise, one that she hoped to keep. She wanted to stand beside him, but she had no weapon, and she had no way to catch up with him.

It was not until she reached another old Inkarran outpost that she had a hope of gaining a weapon.

A hole near the floor of the reaver tunnel marked the sanctuary.

Iome quickly crawled inside, hoping to find something that might be of help. Pocket crabs had gnawed countless burrows in the walls. The pale creatures looked much like small reavers, with heavy fore-claws and thick shells. They scurried about on the tunnel floor down here by the millions, rushing for their burrows as soon as they sensed movement. Some were no larger than roaches, while others were more the size of a rat.

As Iome crawled through the narrow opening, the pocket crab dens dug into the wall made the outpost look so worn that she thought that it must have been abandoned, but just inside the room a stone jar held a store of hazelnuts and buckwheat with dried melon, apples, and cherries. Iome scooped up a handful of it, and found that it tasted salty but edible. By the taste, she suspected that it had been sitting for more than a year. A second clay jug held some sweet winter-melon wine.

In the far corner, four Inkarran reaver darts stood propped against a wall. One was bent, another so old that it had rusted through, and the other two had each lost the diamond from one tip. None was ideal. But any weapon was better than nothing.

As Iome picked through the darts, wondering if she could repair them, she glanced over her back, at a faint charcoal drawing upon the wall. It showed squiggling lines, marked with Inkarran symbols. It looked like a map.

If indeed it was a map, she suspected that it would do her little good. The pocket crabs had dug so many holes in the walls that one could hardly follow the lines, and the pigment itself seemed to have faded. The map had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

“I must be here,” Iome said, seeing an icon that looked like a shield with Inkarran numbers on it. “And that is the path ahead.” She traced her finger along a sloping line that shot off in a far direction, then circled back below her, then intersected a corkscrew that went down and down. The path ahead led to the unbounded warren, she suspected. But the map seemed to indicate a shortcut, a small trail written as arrow points.

“A shortcut?” Iome wondered. Her heart pounded. With all of his endowments of metabolism, Gaborn was certainly far ahead of her. At her current pace, Iome would never reach him in time to be of help. But if she had indeed found a shortcut...

At the top of the shortcut was an icon, like the head of a crevasse crawler.

It’s an old crevasse crawler tube, she realized excitedly. It could save me...a hundred miles, maybe two hundred. That is, if Gaborn keeps following the main tunnel.

I couldn’t be so lucky, Iome thought. Even if there had been a shortcut once, what was the chance that it still existed? With all of the pocket crabs around, the walls of the tube would be pitted and scarred at least, and might even have caved in.

Iome studied the drawing. Dare I take the risk? she wondered.

She took her newfound weapon and raced down the tunnel, where she soon found a wall brimming with burrows dug by a large crevasse crawler. Each passageway was three or four feet in diameter. An Inkarran icon had been chiseled above the entrance to one burrow. Iome peered in, the light from her opal crown dancing off the pale stone.

The crawlway wormed this way and that, as if dug by a madman. As Iome had guessed, the walls were pitted with burrows from pocket crabs, but the tunnel seemed passable. Dark lichenous plants felt almost rubbery beneath her palm, and dozens of mushworms—green sluglike creatures that squished into a syrup under the slightest pressure—fed upon the plants. Iome wriggled in, clutching her reaver dart. Only a hundred yards in, the tunnel shot down nearly straight, just as the map had shown.

Iome’s heart pounded. The only way to go forward was to let herself drop and hope that the slope at the bottom would be gentle.

But she imagined what might be down there—a cave-in that choked the passage with rock so that when she hit, the impact would shatter every bone in her body—or a chasm carved by water that would send her falling into some void.

Iome turned around, so that she could go feet-first. She hesitated, suspecting that once she dropped blindly down the tunnel, her life would come to a swift end.

She pushed herself over the edge.

Deep shadows peeled away with each foot that she dropped. She slid over mushworms that formed a thin oil, slicking the way. Now and then, some blind-crab would be clinging to a wall, and these she kicked free, so that they tumbled all around her.

The tube plummeted down and down, but she took no serious harm. Suddenly it veered right, then left, then right again, and Iome found herself spinning, thrown down face-first as she slid ever onward.

Darkness flowed in behind her to reclaim its territory.

28 The Light of Heaven

In the hills twelve miles west of Carris, Raj Ahten’s army gathered before dawn, a hundred thousand strong. His flameweavers raised a cloud of oily smoke that clung to the ground like a morning mist, hiding them from view, and the morning sun was so obscure, that it looked like a blood red pearl hanging in the air above.

His troops cut trees for scaling ladders, sharpened their weapons, ranged their catapults, and otherwise prepared for war. Raj Ahten spent most of the early hours listening to reports from scouts and far-seers he had sent abroad during the night.

The news disturbed him. To the south the reavers marched in a horde that blackened the lands, heading toward Carris as a host of Knights Equitable vainly fought to forestall their attack.

To the east, the far-seers spotted only ragged bands of women and children, fleeing the coming battle along the highways, or floating in boats and makeshift rafts down the River Donnestgree.

But to the north, his spies found things to be a bit more interesting. Lowicker’s daughter, Queen Rialla of Beldinook, had marshaled a powerful army, some 180,000 strong. Most of these were archers, armed with the yew tallbows common in Beldinook. They rode in war carts drawn by heavy force horses, and thus could be conveyed quickly to the battlefront. The army also boasted many powerful Runelords, cavalrymen mounted on heavily armored chargers that were both swift and powerful.

But Lowicker’s daughter, it seemed, was unsure what to do. The scout said, “We saw her march some troops within a stone’s throw of the gates of Carris last night. Then she retreated twenty miles back north, to a place where the reavers’ curses have not blasted the grass. There she has set camp on the road, where there is plenty of forage for the beasts. Even now her troops squat, holding the road against any allies that might seek to lend aid to Carris.”

“Is there help from the north?” Raj Ahten asked another pair of scouts that had ranged farther afield.

“Indeed there is, O Light of Heaven,” his spies answered. “Several thousand lords have ridden from Orwynne, along with warriors of Fleeds and Heredon.”

“What of Crowthen?” Raj Ahten asked.

“We could see no troops from Crowthen,” the spies said.

Raj Ahten smiled. He could see Rialla’s plan. She had ridden south to lay siege to Carris, only to discover the reavers coming. So she had ridden back north, to get out of their way. She would let the reavers do her dirty work.

Carris didn’t stand a chance. Raj Ahten had already gutted Mystarria, throwing down the northern fortresses, killing the Dedicates at the Blue Tower. The warriors that held the city were weak, lacking endowments.

And once Carris fell, nothing could stop Lowicker’s daughter from overrunning Mystarria—except Raj Ahten.

Her army worried him, though. Her archers and heavy cavalry could easily defeat his common troops, though with his wizards and Runelords he could probably even the score. But if the two giants wasted their strength fighting each other, who then would win Mystarria?

A plan began to form in Raj Ahten’s mind.

“Gather together a thousand lords to act as an honor guard,” Raj Ahten said. “I think I shall pay Lowicker’s daughter a visit.”

As Raj Ahten’s most powerful lords and wizards prepared to ride, he sat in his crimson tent. He could feel himself growing from moment to moment as his facilitators in Deyazz vectored endowments of stamina to him.

He had never felt so hale, so robust. He sweated profusely, though he had done no labor to warrant it. It was as if his body recognized that the time had come to cleanse away all impurities, make him something more than human.

He felt as if life and virility were combining in him so powerfully that it bled from every pore.

This is it, he told himself. This is the moment I have been waiting for. I shall be the Sum of All Men.

“Food for the poor!” a small girl called in the markets of Ghusa in Deyazz. “Food for the poor!” The market streets were still gloomy as the morning sun rose like a ruddy coal beyond the sand hills.

Turaush Kasill, a large man grown fat from years of convenience, rounded a stall stacked with tall clay urns to discover the source of the call.

He overshadowed the waif that he found. She was small, no more than eight or nine, with huge eyes like almonds. Her brown skin was paler than the black hue of the folk of Deyazz. She gripped the hand of a small boy, perhaps five years of age.

“Please,” the girl said holding out an empty wicker basket. “We need food.”

Turaush smiled pleasantly. “I could give you food. How much do you want? A basketful? I could give you that.” The girl’s eyes went wide, and her lips parted hungrily. “What would you like to eat? Peaches? Melons? Rice? Duck? Sesame cakes with honey drizzled over them? If you could have anything to eat, what would you like?”

“Sesame cakes!” the little boy cried.

The girl squeezed his hand and nudged him, begging the boy to be quiet, as if fearing that he asked too much.

“Anything,” the girl pleaded. “Anything you offer.”

“Ah,” Turaush said. “You are that hungry?”

“I have two sisters to feed, and a big brother who is hurt,” the girl said. “My father was killed by bandits, and my mother went to her sister’s, and we have heard nothing since. We would be grateful for anything.”

“And what if I offer you a trade?” Turaush asked. “What if I offer to feed you all the food you want, every day, for as long as you live, and give you a beautiful home to live in?”

The girl hesitated. She must have been warned about sinister men. She studied him warily, but at last put a hand over her empty stomach, as if by pressing it she could assuage the pain. “What house?”

“The finest in all Ghusa,” Turaush said, waving toward the Dedicate’s Keep. “Good food, as much as you can eat, every day for as long as you live.”

Turaush was one of Raj Ahten’s most persuasive facilitators. With five endowments of glamour, he could use his smoldering eyes to lure young women. With three endowments of voice, he could mesmerize the simpleminded. He bent his whole will upon the child now.

“Think of it,” he said. “Fresh fruit—tangerines and melons and dates for breakfast. Fine lamb ribs basted with honey and cumin, cooked over apple-wood coals; red bass fresh from the sea; peacocks stuffed with rice and mushrooms.”

“I want some,” the little boy at her side said, tears coming to his eyes. She squeezed his hand, warning him to be quiet.

“And what if I did it?” the girl asked. “Would you feed my brothers and sisters.”

She was only a child, and perhaps knew that by custom, if a man or woman gave an endowment, their children would be well cared for, for life. Turaush shook his head sadly. “If you were a grown woman, we might make such a deal. But you are only a child half-grown, and so your endowment is not worth much to us. Being so small, you don’t have as much stamina as an adult,” he lied. After all, he had a quota to fill. “So, if your little brother here wants food also, he will have to give up his endowment.”

He smiled kindly at the boy. Turaush had rarely resorted to taking endowments from children so young. But these two looked healthy enough.

“I hear that it hurts,” the girl objected.

“Only a little, and only for a moment,” Turaush said. His tone promised a lifetime of joy afterward, though to be sure, it would not be a long life. Raj Ahten needed stamina, and a starveling like this was not likely to live through the winter plague season.

“But what of my sisters?” the girl asked. “Who will take care of them?”

“How old are they?”

“One is three, and the other barely a year.”

Turaush frowned. Such children were too young to surrender endowments. A Dedicate had to want to give his endowment with his whole soul, and small children, not understanding the consequences of their decision, could not muster the proper resolve.

Still, Turaush thought, we could raise them for a couple of years, until they are old enough.

“I will make you a deal. If you and your brother give your endowments, perhaps I could arrange that your sisters get fed, too. In fact, I know a nice woman who has long wished for a daughter of her own. She would count herself fortunate indeed to be blessed with two.”

“And my big brother?”

“Tell me about your brother.”

“His name is Balimar. He’s big enough to work. But he was gored by a water buffalo last summer, and is only now beginning to walk.”

“So Balimar is mending?”

“Yes,” the girl answered. “He is very strong.”

Turaush considered. Balimar might not be able to give stamina now, but he might give his brawn. He would of course feel accountable for the younger children, and if they were suddenly spirited away to the Dedicate’s Keep in the palace, he would be easily persuaded to follow. “I’m sure that an arrangement can be made. Come now, let us go take your endowments and get some food in you. Then I will talk to Balimar.”

Turaush took the girl’s tiny hand. In the distance, borne on the dawn winds, he could hear the keen piping of a facilitator as he coaxed the stamina from someone, followed by a howl of pain as the attribute was wrenched away. To him, the sound seemed sweeter than the coo of the wood doves as he led the children to the palace.

29 A Bend in the River

Dearborn rowed the boat steadily in the late afternoon, his eyes dull from fatigue. Beads of perspiration trickled down his cheek and off his nose, and sweat liberally stained the armpits of his work shirt.

“Almost there,” he said. “We should see the castle as we round this next bend.”

For hours he had rowed, seeming never to tire, never stopping to rest. He watched the currents, keeping the boat in the center of the V each time he rounded a bend, in order to borrow more speed from the fast water.

A chill shook Chemoise. She tried to ignore it. Instead, she watched the flat green water and rejoiced in the warm sunlight on her skin. It made her feel clean, as if its heat could burn the infection from her.

“Have you decided what to give?” Dearborn asked.

“Metabolism,” she said at last.

It was the least dangerous endowment to grant. It wouldn’t hurt Chemoise’s child, and would hardly inconvenience her. She could give it easily. If Gaborn won, and killed the reavers, then she would wake in some distant day when the war was over, only a bad dream, fading into insignificance.

“Hmmm...” Dearborn muttered. He was obviously displeased. By giving metabolism, she would leave him in a way. She’d sleep as he grew old. But she wasn’t about to let some minor attachment deter her.

Her journey downstream had been almost like a pleasure outing. The banks of the River Wye were overgrown with cattails along the route, and trout could be seen slapping the water in their quest for midges. Mallards paddled near shore, ever vigilant as their ducklings followed behind. Once, Chemoise saw a huge stag leap up from its bed beneath an apple tree.

All of the sudden, they rounded the bend, and Chemoise spotted Castle Sylvarresta ahead, a walled city built upon a long hill; the tall watchtowers looked like gray arrows taking aim at the sky. From here, you could hardly see the damage wreaked by the Darkling Glory. The Graak’s Aerie hid most of the wreckage of the King’s Tower and the Dedicate’s Keep, and the burnt front gates remained concealed by the castle walls. Only blackened grass on nearby hills reminded one that a battle had been fought here.

Chemoise felt surprised to see crowds surrounding the castle. Tens of thousands of bright tents and pavilions were pitched upon the nearer hills. The smoke of cooking fires hung above the fields like gray cobwebs. Horses were tethered along the riverbank ahead.

Chemoise had lived in the city before the Darkling Glory came. Four hundred thousand people or more had camped in the fields round about, eager to meet the Earth King. They’d fled at Gaborn’s warning, fading into the forest to hide from the Darkling Glory. Now it looked as if nearly everyone had returned.

“Look at them all,” Chemoise said in wonder. “It’s like Hostenfest.”

Dearborn craned his head as he rowed, glanced over his shoulder, and grunted in dull surprise. Soon, they passed along shores where hundreds of women and children were washing clothes or fetching pails of water.

Chemoise shouted to one washwoman, “Why is everyone at Castle Sylvarresta?”

“The Earth King needs endowments,” she replied.

“That can’t be it,” Chemoise whispered to Dearborn. “That many people wouldn’t give endowments. There must be another reason. Maybe they came to hide from the rats.”

“Did the rats come last night?” Dearborn asked the washwoman.

“They came,” she answered. “Drowned trying to swim the moat. The ferrin took those what made it over the city walls.” She seemed little concerned, and Chemoise envied her. In Ableton the rats had given them a bitter struggle.

So it was that Dearborn beached the rowboat, and Chemoise climbed the banks of the River Wye, up through oat stubble, looking for signs of a great struggle like the one fought back home. The city looked peaceful.

“The rats didn’t kill your horses?” Chemoise asked the old woman. “They didn’t ruin your tents?”

“We were all in the castle,” she answered. “Hiding. We filled every tomb and every cellar.”

“There was room for everyone?” Chemoise asked, unsure if she believed it.

“Och, no,” the old woman said. “Some folks went up to the old iron mines in the Dunnwood, and stayed as cozy as peas in a pod. The rats never even made it to their door. The ferrin folk had them all, I suppose.”

Chemoise stared in disbelief. There was no sign of a struggle. The sun shone golden over the fields. The cottages by the river sat undisturbed. The farms spread out along the road in a patchwork quilt of colors—white of oat stubble, the forest green of a field of mint, the yellow of mustard flowers, the ruddy gold of winter wheat.

It wasn’t until they had walked a hundred yards toward the castle that Dearborn discovered sign of the attack. With his boot he pointed out a dead rat curled up under a clump of grass beside the road, a ferrin’s broken spear still in its gut.

A chill shook Chemoise, and she noticed a bit of sadness in Dearborn’s eyes and a thoughtful look on his face.

“What is it?” Chemoise asked.

“We’re the lucky ones,” he said. “It’s only little rats we’re fighting. Imagine if this thing was as big as a farmer’s cottage, lumbering about. That’s what our folks will be facing at Carris.”

It was worse than that, Chemoise knew. Rats didn’t have hide as tough as armor. Rats didn’t have mages that cast foul spells. Rats weren’t as cunning as men.

She peered into Dearborn’s face in wonder. “Our folks,” he had called the people of Carris. But they were strangers, hundreds of miles beyond the city’s borders.

It’s the war, she realized. A common foe had made brothers of them all.

She hurried her stride, reached the city gates. There were boys beside the moat, using rakes to pull drowned rats from the water, then throwing the nasty things into wicker baskets.

One boy had waded into the depths up to his chest, and used a spear to try to fish some rats out of the lilies that grew in the shadow of the castle wall.

The vermin would have been able to crawl over the moat on the backs of their dead, Chemoise imagined.

She glanced behind. Shadows were growing long. The sun loomed on the horizon, splendorous among some golden clouds. Soon it would be night. Chemoise hoped that she still had time. She raced up Merchant Street, where vendors hawked food, filling the evening air with scents of fresh bread and meats that made her mouth water.

It wasn’t until she passed the King’s Gate, out of the merchant’s quarter, that she saw how strange the world had become.

She heard the distant birdlike singing of facilitators as they took endowments, and found that just inside the King’s Gate, a crowd had formed.

A thousand people stood waiting to give endowments, jostling one another in an effort to be first. One woman called, “Tell the facilitators to hurry. We haven’t got all night!”

The King’s Tower and Dedicates’ Keep were naught but ruins after last week’s battle with the Darkling Glory, and little had been done to clean up the pile of broken stone. But the old barracks and attendant Great Hall still stood, and these had been turned into a makeshift Dedicates’ Keep.

Pavilions in a riot of color covered the green, and everywhere Chemoise saw hundreds of people lying in their shade, as if in a faint.

Dully she realized that the barracks was full, and the tents were full, and there was nowhere else to put the Dedicates except to lay them on the grass until something better could be arranged. Those without brawn lay as slack as newborn babes while attendants clustered around them. Dozens of blind men and women sat beside a cooking fire, strumming lutes and singing an old ballad, which had served as a call over the ages:

“Are all of these people Dedicates for the Earth King?” Chemoise asked in wonder.

“Aye,” a young man called out. In the crowd, Chemoise hadn’t spotted him. But at a nearby table sat a facilitator’s apprentice with a quill and inkpot, writing on a long scroll. He was a young man, no more than thirteen.

“How many endowments does he need?” Chemoise asked.

“We’ll give him every forcible we’ve got, and hope that its enough,” the apprentice answered. “With any luck, we’ll make him the Sum of All Men.” Chemoise gazed out over the field in wonder. There weren’t just hundreds who had given endowments. Instead, thousands of people lay on the green. And as she glanced back downhill, she could see carts and horses coming from afar—from Bannisferre to the south, and Hobtown to the east, and a hundred villages to the west—people bringing all that they had with them to Castle Sylvarresta. Tens of thousands would offer themselves as Dedicates. And those who didn’t win the honor of going under the forcible would gladly hold the walls against any enemy that might try to take them, making themselves human shields between the enemies of the Earth King and the source of his Power.

It was grand and glorious to see so many people coming together to create the stuff of legend: the Sum of All Men. For a moment, Chemoise was swept away. The young facilitator cleared his throat, and asked, “Are you here to give an endowment?”

Chemoise’s stomach fluttered nervously. “Aye.”

“What can you offer?”

“Metabolism,” she volunteered. “Metabolism won’t hurt my unborn child.”

“We’re full up on that,” the facilitator said. “He’s got more than a hundred now. We really need stamina, grace, and brawn.” He listed the greater endowments. Chemoise thought he sounded like a merchant in the market who demands more for his wares than one can easily pay. Giving any one of those endowments could kill a person. Chemoise was already sick from rat bites. She didn’t dare offer stamina, lest her current illness take her. And those who gave brawn sometimes found that their hearts stopped, or their lungs quit working, simply because they hadn’t the strength to go on. Chemoise didn’t think she could face the terror of that, to lie helpless, unable to breathe, knowing that death was moments away.

“Grace,” Chemoise said, struggling to sound more eager than she felt. Perhaps by giving Gaborn my grace, Chemoise thought, I can atone for my father’s transgression.

Her father had once given grace to Raj Ahten, Gaborn’s most feared enemy, who had also sought to become the Sum of All Men.

The scribe made a mark in his book, adding her endowment of grace to the Earth King’s tally. She was but one of thousands. He didn’t ask Chemoise her name or thank her profusely or make the normal promises of care and compensation for the rest of her life.

Her endowment was a gift, and the giving of it was its own reward.

“And you, sir?” the scribe asked, peering behind Chemoise to Dearborn.

“Oh,” Chemoise explained, “he’s my friend. He just brought me—”

Dearborn put a hand on her shoulder, gently pushed her aside. “Brawn,” he said with a deadly resolve in his voice. “I’ll give him my strength. And may the Powers grant that he deal a blow...” He made a fist and shook it, as if he’d strike with his own hand if he could.

Chemoise looked into Dearborn’s face and saw a hardness she’d never imagined. She’d thought him a moon-sick pup. But now she recalled how he had rowed the boat all day without rest. Something in him had changed.

The plague of rats was sent to break us here in Heredon, Chemoise realized, but instead we have only fixed our resolve.

30 The Glory

Gaborn raced down a seemingly endless winding stair that a commoner would have spent days trying to negotiate. Hot winds from the Underworld swirled up it, blasting his face. There was no water here, no refreshment.

In Heredon the battle was over, and those that would die had died.

Now Carris was braced for the slaughter.

Gaborn could sense Averan, still alive, far below.

Over the past few days—as Gaborn sensed time—the Consort of Shadows had led him through doors that no commoner could open, climbed down chimneys and up stairways that no human was meant to follow.

More than just reavers burrowed in the Underworld, and the Consort of Shadows was as likely to take some route formed by the passage of a great-worm as follow the reaver tunnels. Gaborn had run past huge waterfalls and through drowned caverns. Twice he had lost his way and managed to find it again.

As he ran, days seemed to pass, and he pondered what he would do when he met the One True Master.

She would be prepared. She was strong in the ways of sorcery, strong enough to challenge the very Powers. More than that, she harbored a locus that had existed from the beginning of time.

Had Erden Geboren planned to fight her with his spear? Gaborn hefted the ancient reaver dart, studied its diamond tip. Runes were carved into it—runes of Earth Strengthening to keep the shaft from breaking. Beyond that, the weapon was nothing special. It was only a spear carved from bone.

Not with a spear, he thought. You can’t kill a locus like that. It is evil, the very essence of evil.

Gaborn’s stomach was knotted, but he craved an answer to his dilemma more than he hungered for food.

A chasm crossed his path, some hundred feet across. He ran and leapt effortlessly, but snapped an ankle when he landed on the far side. He straightened the ankle and sat for a moment, letting his endowments of stamina take over. Shortly, the bone healed and he was on his way again.

He tried to dredge up everything that he’d ever heard about the Glories and the Bright Ones, about Erden Geboren, about the great enemy, the one that his own lore called the Raven. As he pondered, something that Iome had read came to mind. Erden Geboren had described the Bright Ones on his first meeting, and said of them, “Virtue was their armor, and truth was their sword.”

He had imagined then that Erden Geboren was trying somehow to express the goodness that he saw in these people, these true men of the netherworld.

Yet it struck Gaborn that these words weren’t written upon first meeting the Bright Ones, but decades later. What if, Gaborn asked himself, Erden Geboren meant this literally?

What if...a man is like a vessel, Gaborn thought. And what if that vessel can be filled with light, or it can be filled with darkness?

If I fill myself with light, how can the darkness find place within me?

What darkness is there to purge within me? Gaborn wondered. He remembered the book that the Emir of Tuulistan had sent to King Sylvarresta, and the drawing within it. The drawing displayed the Domains of Man, the things that he owned. These included his Visible Domains, the properties that he owned that could be seen—his home, his body, and his wealth. His Communal Domains included all of his relationship to his community—his family, his town, his country, and his good name. His Invisible Domains encompassed all of those things that a man owns that cannot be seen—his time, his freedom to act, his body space.

According to the emir, whenever a man invades one of these domains, we call him evil. If he seeks to ruin our reputation, or steal our gold, or control our actions, we feel violated.

But if a man enlarges our domains, if he gives of his wealth or offers us praise, we call him good.

By this definition the One True Master was pure evil. It was seeking to devour Gaborn’s world, strip him and his people of everything, including life itself.

But how could he fight it? How could he destroy it?

Gaborn was so deep in thought that he was running almost blindly. He rounded a corner, and heard a moan. It sounded like a man in pain.

He halted there in the ribbed tunnel, gasping for breath. He tried to hold silent, to still his breathing and the pounding of his heart.

“Help me!” someone called from up the tunnel. It was a man in pain, choking out his words. He sobbed, and the sound of it echoed through the tunnel so that Gaborn half feared that he had passed someone in the dark.

“Hello?” Gaborn cried.

He moved forward carefully. The pale green light of his ring was fading, and didn’t penetrate very far. The sobbing stopped.

Gaborn neared a corner, saw something on the ground—a human leg, drained of blood and as pale as snow. Its toes had gone black, and all of the muscles in it clenched painfully.

The sobbing began again. Just up the tunnel, around the corner.

Gaborn’s nerves came alive. His Earth Senses warned of danger ahead.

It’s a trap, he realized. The reavers must have left someone here as bait. And when I round the bend, they will spring on me.

His heart hammered in his throat, and a cold sweat condensed on his brow. Gaborn gripped his reaver dart, began to inch around the corner, his back to the wall.

Just a few feet ahead lay a pair of arms, blackened fingers curled up like claws.

By the Powers, Gaborn swore, what have they done?

He imagined someone alone and helpless, arms and legs ripped from him, lying in a pool of blood. Only a powerful Runelord with dozens of endowments of stamina could cling to life for long under such circumstances.

“Help!” the cry came again, nearer now, but weaker.

Gaborn suddenly realized how weary he’d become. He had been running for days now, almost in a trance, and even with his endowments, it had taken a toll on him. The walls of the cave seemed dreamy, insubstantial, and he felt disconnected from his body.

“Hello?” Gaborn called. “Are any reavers near you? Is this a trap”

He heard a choking sound, as if the man rejoiced to hear a fellow human’s voice. “No, no reavers,” he answered weakly. “It was no reaver that did this to me.” The voice sounded almost familiar, and Gaborn rounded the corner, surprised to see a shadow on the floor so near.

He peered on the ground. Blind-crabs had burrowed holes in the wall of the tunnel, and there near them lay a stump of a man—armless, legless. Peppered gray hair and beard. His face was turned toward the darkness. The crabs were atop him, eating him. Yet he still managed to cling to life, for Gaborn could see the rise and fall of his chest.

“It was no reaver that did this,” the fellow whispered, his voice a bit stronger. “Unless you are a reaver.”

He turned to look at Gaborn, but peered at him with only bloody sockets. The crabs had torn out his eyes. It was King Lowicker, whom Gaborn had left for dead in Beldinook not a week past.

“No!” Gaborn cried, fearing that what he saw was Lowicker’s spirit.

Lowicker began to laugh painfully. “Gaborn,” he said, and the name echoed in the tunnel. Gaborn distinctly heard it whispered in his left ear, and almost immediately it came again behind him.

I’m dreaming, Gaborn told himself. There was no way that the foul King Lowicker could still be alive, down here. Runelords with great endowments of stamina seldom needed sleep, but when they did, the need was often announced thus, in a waking nightmare.

Lowicker laughed, as if amused at Gaborn’s predicament.

“So,” he said. “You come to meet me. Or do you hope to slay my master?”

Gaborn did not answer, for his mind was a whirl. A dream, he wondered, or a sending?

“You cannot kill her,” Lowicker said, “without killing yourself. For she lives inside of you. You are her sanctuary, and her breeding ground.”

“No,” Gaborn said. “I want no part of her. I hate her.”

“As you hated me?” Lowicker asked.

“You were a murderer. You killed your own wife, and would have killed me. You got what you deserve.”

Lowicker stared at Gaborn with empty, accusing sockets. Blood had crusted on the stumps of his arms and legs, and now the crabs tore into him with relish.

“And you will get what you deserve,” Lowicker said.

At that moment, Gaborn felt as if a cold wave washed over him, and darkness gathered about him. The world seemed to spin.

He felt as if he were in the center of a maelstrom. Invisible winds swirled about him, winds of darkness, and he wanted to cry for help, but his tongue felt like wood in his mouth, and even if he screamed, only the blind-crabs would hear.

He fell to the ground and knew that he was not alone in the cave. Some unseen power swirled about him, intent on his destruction.

His heart pounded. He found it almost impossible to breathe. The Raven circled. He could sense the One True Master, her ageless maleficent intent. She whispered in his ear, “How can you fight an enemy who has no form, who controls your very thoughts?”

Gaborn curled into a ball. He wanted to flee, but there was nowhere to run, and in his current state, he could not tell what was real from what was imagined.

He saw as if in a vision a young boy of four or five. The skies were clear and blue, and the day seemed warm and bright. But thunder could be heard, and the child was rushing from his house with deadly intent, a stick in hand.

There is a fox among the hens, the boy thought.

But as he rounded the back of the house, Gaborn suddenly realized the source of the thunder. Reavers were charging in a vast horde. They thundered over a nearby hill in a black line. The young boy saw them, and his knees went weak and his mouth fell open. He held up his pitiful little stick, as if hoping to drive them back the way he would a fox, but the horde raced forward, unstoppable.

The first reaver to reach the child swallowed him whole, and the vision faded.

The Master whispered in Gaborn’s ear. “You are the child, we are the horde. Against us, you cannot prevail.”

Gaborn felt with sick certainty that the vision was accurate. The Master had showed him something that had happened as the reaver horde charged toward Carris.

The darkness thickened. For long moments Gaborn thought that his spirit would be torn from his body, wailing, to be carried off and used as a plaything by the Raven.

But at long last he had a realization. She didn’t have that kind of power. If she had, she’d have swept all of mankind from the face of the Earth long ago.

With that thought, the swirling darkness began to abate, and after a time, it departed altogether.

As if it had swept all evidence from the ground, Lowicker and his severed limbs had disappeared. Only the cavern floor, polished clean by the tramping of reavers, lay before him.

Gaborn’s heart pounded.

The Master had attacked him. Why?

Gaborn could think of only two possibilities. The first was that she did it for mere sport, tormenting him for her own delight. But the second was that she did it because she was afraid.

Why would she fear me? Gaborn wondered. What threat do I pose to her?

He thought back to when the vision started. Gaborn had been wondering how he could defeat a creature of pure evil, one that lived not in the body but in the spirit.

He crawled to his knees, realized what had happened. She had tried to distract him from his line of reasoning. Indeed, Gaborn suspected that if he returned to his line of reasoning, he would invite another attack.

Let her come, then, Gaborn told himself. I want an end to her. I hate her. He got up.

“Then she will use that hate against you,” a voice whispered in the back of his mind. “She will invite you to hate those who serve her, and in the end, she will overcome you. When you expand the bounds of virtue, the evil ones wail and mourn.”

The swirling winds of darkness were gone now, and peace filled Gaborn’s heart, even though he could hear, as if far off, the wailing voice of the locus.

“Learn to love all men equally,” Erden Geboren had written, and the words seemed now to ring in Gaborn’s ears, as if Erden Geboren stood beside him. “The cruel as well as the kind.”

The cruel as well as the kind, Gaborn repeated. Doubt assailed him. He thought of King Lowicker the wife-killer.

What should I have done with him?

He recalled the hundreds of cruel men that he had refused to Choose. He recalled how he’d hated Raj Ahten.

“Learn to love all men equally. The cruel as well as the kind.”

When Choosing those who would live and those who would die, Gaborn had tried to set some sort of standard. He had refused to Choose only the strong, letting the weak die. He had refused to Choose only the wise, letting the foolish die. He had Chosen old and young, male and female, Rofehavanish and Indhopalese.

He’d set only one standard. He had rejected the wicked. In that, he had felt justified. For men may be born stupid and weak and ugly, Gaborn had told himself, and fortune may abandon even the most frugal, but a man must be held accountable for his own character. Otherwise, we invite anarchy.

“Hold them accountable for their weakness, then,” the voice whispered. But punish them for their own transgressions in the measure they deserve, and not to gratify your wrath.”

Gaborn held that thought.

He felt foolish. He had grieved the Earth Spirit and lost his ability to warn his Chosen warriors of danger. Because of Gaborn’s weakness, women and children would die in Carris tonight.

Who will punish me for my weakness? Gaborn wondered.

He knew the answer. People would die, and he would live, and that would be his punishment.

But was there something more that he could have done?

Erden Geboren had said that he was to love the cruel and the cunning, to seek their benefit, even when they were too blinded by greed and hatred to recognize their own best interests.

Something didn’t fit. Gaborn wondered about Iome’s ability to translate. In his book, Erden Geboren had often found it difficult to select a word, had crossed out a word to insert another, only to cross it out again. It was as if his own tongue were too imprecise to fit with that of the Bright Ones.

What did he mean, to “love” the cruel? How could he love a cruel person without also loving cruelty? Unless “love” were not an emotion but a determination. Perhaps to love another perfectly meant to seek to expand his horizons, to help him become better, even if he had no desire to do so himself.

Gaborn ran blindly down the tunnel, almost by instinct. Blind-crabs and other vermin seemed frozen in fear. Gaping holes in the floor showed where chervil, tiny insects, had eaten away the rock. Stonewood trees hung from the roof above, whorls of branches crazily twisting.

From the corner of his eye he noticed a brightness near the roof of the tunnel.

He glanced up, and the brightness departed.

An illusion, Gaborn thought, thrown by my cape pin.

He remembered something that his grandfather had once told him. “Goodness is like a stone, tossed into a still pond. Its effect causes ripples everywhere, touches everything around it, and in time its effect will return to its source. You say hello to a man, praise his work, and you brighten his day. He in turn brightens those around him, and soon the whole town is smiling, and people you don’t even know seem glad to meet you. Goodness works this way. Evil does, too.”

Erden Geboren had called the locus a shadow, a blackness that spread forth vapors to touch those around it.

Can there be a good locus? Gaborn wondered. Can there be creatures of light that do the same?

Something came to him strongly then, a knowledge that pierced him. It came powerfully, as if it were a shouted word, or memory long forgotten. Yet it came as if in words spoken outside himself.

“Yes, there are Glories,” the voice came to him again.

Again he saw that furtive light hovering above. It was shaped like a vast bird, like a gull with graceful wings, gliding silently in slow circles overhead.

I am not alone, Gaborn whispered in his heart. Am I?

“No,” the voice answered. “I am near you.”

A sure knowledge filled Gaborn. He understood now why the Master had attacked. She had also sensed the presence of a Glory.

“Can you help me?” Gaborn asked. He did not know why he asked. He felt unworthy to ask it. He had promised his people protection, and through his own weaknesses had made that promise a lie. He had taken Dedicates only to see them destroyed. He had killed men rather than work to redeem them.

“Perhaps, if you crave it enough,” the voice whispered.

“I do,” Gaborn said.

Suddenly the brightness above him flared, becoming white hot. The light was blinding, and Gaborn threw his hands up to protect his eyes, yet he felt little heat. Instead, there was only wisdom and power, vast reservoirs that until that moment had been unimaginable to him.

The light dazzled him. Every bone in his body quivered as if to an invisible rhythm. And still the light grew fiercer.

The shadows in the cave fled, and Gaborn pulled his hands from his eyes, hoping for only a glimpse of the Glory. But if the creature had a body, Gaborn could not see. It was only an indescribable brightness, more dazzling than a noonday sun, and Gaborn felt that at any moment he would melt in its presence, or be blasted into pieces.

And then the light pierced him.

It was like a flaming lance in the heart, a lance that struck him and burned through him, consuming the evil hidden within, until every hair of his body felt energized, and every pore of his body bled illumination.

Things that he had never understood suddenly made perfect sense—the relationship between good and evil, between men and loci and Glories.

The light bursting within him was unbearable.

“I’m dying!” Gaborn called out in fear.

As silently as the light had filled the chamber, it began to fade. The shadows grew and lengthened. The tunnel darkened as the winged bird of light fled before the shadows.

Gaborn sat, panting, alone.

He stopped and looked at his hands. He could feel the radiance within, and brightness seemed to illumine his mind. But he could see no physical mark upon him.

Did I really see a Glory? he wondered. Or was it a waking dream? If others were here, would they have seen it?

He knew. He could not deny his senses. It was no dream.

So he got up and ran, down, down, deeper into the Underworld, carrying the brightness in his heart.

31 Gems of the Desert

Glittering like gems against a backdrop of black ash, Raj Ahten and his retinue of lords from Indhopal rode to the camp of Rialla Lowicker.

His lords wore bright silken armor that flashed in the sunlight, whites so bright that they hurt the eyes, golds so bright that they looked as if they were freshly minted coins, rubies far redder than blood. The horses and camels were all caparisoned as brightly as the lords.

They rode down out of the hills through lands the reavers had blasted with curses a week before. The dead pine trees along the road all smelled of premature rot, though gray pine needles still clung to their black branches. Every blade of grass had turned to gray straw, and now lay desiccated upon the ground. Every vine and bush had withered.

No rain had fallen here in over a week, and all of the dead grass and bracken and pine forests now were as dry as tinder. A spark thrown up as a horse’s hoof struck a rock caused a small fire along the way. One of the captains warned the men to beware the danger.

Raj Ahten only smiled. It was only sixty miles to Queen Lowicker’s camp, and on swift force horses, it took less than an hour of the morning.

As Raj Ahten’s criers announced that he had come for a parley, Raj Ahten sat straight and proud upon his gray imperial warhorse, resplendent in white silk.

He rode warily into camp. He did not trust these northerners, for oft Lowicker’s men had sought his life in the past, but he did not let his wariness show. He came under a green flag of truce and let his glamour waft over the soldiers. Though he asked no man for allegiance, many a stout warrior looked upon him for a moment and then dropped to one knee, bowing his head.

Rialla herself came out of her great blue pavilion and took one look at him. She was big of bone and homely, but she had a masculine toughness to her demeanor that he had always admired in women. He knew at once what kind of woman she was: knowing that she could never compete with the dainty ladies of court, she had chosen instead to challenge the lords and warriors around her.

Yet when she looked upon Raj Ahten, her mouth opened in awe, she trembled visibly, and then ducked back into her tent.

A moment later, her chamberlain came out of the quarters and announced, “Her Royal Highness, Rialla Val Lowicker, will parley with you in the privacy of her tent.”

Raj Ahten leapt lightly from his mount and strode into the pavilion as the chamberlain pulled back the flap.

Rialla Lowicker stood alone in the center of the tent. On the floor was spread a huge map of Mystarria, painted upon four steer skins, all sewn into one piece. She stood just above Carris. The map showed Lake Donnestgree to the east, the mountains to the south, and the reavers marching toward them, as signified by a little black wooden carving of a reaver. To the west were the Alcairs, where Raj Ahten’s troops were signified by another wooden carving of a warrior in a white turban. To the north, her maps showed King Anders riding through Beldinook, while young King Orwynne streamed south through Fleeds. But to the east was something of a surprise.

At the Courts of Tide, the King of Mystarria had been toppled, and in his place stood a barbarian in gray, with the Orb of Internook upon his round shield.

“Your intelligence is better than mine,” Raj Ahten said, looking at the map. “Who is the warlord at the Court of Tide?”

“Olmarg,” Rialla answered. She was breathing hard. Raj Ahten glanced at her. When she had first stepped outside, her long-sleeved dress had been buttoned severely up the collar to the top of her throat. Now she had unloosed the top five buttons, to reveal a hint of cleavage.

Raj Ahten smiled. He had thousands of endowments of glamour and Voice, and few women could resist him for long. Beyond that, he was now a flameweaver. As such, the Power of his master was upon him. His very presence in a room inflamed certain passions in commoners—lust, greed, the desire for combat.

Raj Ahten took one look at the young queen and knew that she could not resist him. The combined effect of his magics overwhelmed her.

He toyed with her, stepping near. He took her right hand, stooped, and kissed it. As he did, he made sure to keep eye contact throughout, except for one calculated instant, when he glanced at her cleavage.

Her response gratified him no end. Rialla Lowicker began to pant as soon as he touched her. Her nostrils flared and her eyes rolled back as he kissed her hand. And when he glanced at her cleavage, her whole body trembled in ecstasy.

He knew that she was his to claim.

“How long ago did Olmarg attack the Courts of Tide?” he asked.

“He was to have sailed in at dawn,” Rialla answered, “under the orders of King Anders of Crowthen.”

“But the Courts of Tide are heavily defended. Are you sure that Olmarg can take them?”

Rialla breathed heavily as Raj Ahten’s magics wreathed about her. “He was...my spies tell me that Gaborn Val Orden has fled to do battle with reavers in the Underworld, and commanded all of his warriors to come here. The coasts were left defenseless.”

“So what do you plan?” Raj Ahten asked. “Your map shows lords from the north riding to the aid Carris. Will you fight them?”

He held her hand, and Rialla Lowicker clutched his in return, not willing to let him go.

“Until I know what you and Anders are up to, I can’t decide.”

“King Anders?” Raj Ahten asked.

“He’s a slippery one—plots within plots within plots.”

“And...you don’t like him?” Raj Ahten asked.

“I was afraid to stand against Gaborn after what he did to my father. I wrote to King Anders and told him that any deals my father made died with him. In response, he sent messengers south, claiming to be the new Earth King. He says that Gaborn has lost his powers, and the Earth has called him in Gaborn’s stead.”

Raj Ahten laughed aloud. “First Anders claimed that Gaborn was no Earth King, and now he claims that Gaborn was an Earth King, but Anders is a better man still?”

“In my experience,” Rialla said, “when a man cannot choose between the lies he loves, it is because there is no truth in him. Mark my word, there is no more dangerous man in Rofehavan than King Anders.”

“I’m in Rofehavan,” Raj Ahten said, still holding her hand.

“And do you claim to be more dangerous than he?” she teased.

Passion filled her eyes now, and laughter, and lust. Raj Ahten decided that he liked this woman. Her boldness was tempered with caution, and he sensed a streak of cunning and cruelty in her.

Raj Ahten reached up with his right hand and smoothed back her drab brown hair. Rialla closed her eyes and grasped his hand, held it to her cheek.

There was nothing lovely about her, but at the moment, Raj Ahten felt an excess of wholeness. So many endowments of stamina had been vectored to him that he felt as if light and life were oozing from every pore. If he did not plant his seed in a woman soon, the desire to do so would become pure torture.

“Let the lords of the north ride into Carris,” Raj Ahten suggested. “The city is indefensible, and they will die together, leaving all of the north and west of Rofehavan vulnerable to attack. Orwynne, Fleeds, and even South Crowthen could be ours along with Mystarria and Heredon. Meanwhile, I suggest that you hold your army here and I will keep mine in the hills to the west, until after the reavers finish Carris. Thus, we will have them boxed in against the lake. Only then will we muster our armies and drive the reavers back to the Underworld.”

Raj Ahten held her eyes, and Rialla moved in closer.

“You think we could do it,” she asked, “with only three hundred thousand men between us?”

“Reavers,” Raj Ahten said, “frighten easily when their leaders are stripped from them. They become confused. And I have brought with me from Maygassa a few surprises that even the reavers have never seen before. Once I slaughter their fell mages, our men will strike fear into them.”

“What do you want out of the bargain?” she asked.

“Reaver curses have blackened the land through all of the southern kingdoms of Indhopal. My people need food to last out the winter.”

“The stores at Carris won’t be enough to do much good,” Rialla argued.

“It will be enough to ensure that the strong and the cunning survive,” Raj Ahten said. “The rest can starve.

“Beyond this,” he continued, “I’ll need Dedicates to grant me endowments. Any lords that I capture in Rofehavan will become mine, spoils of war.”

“And what do you offer in return, if I grant your request?” Rialla asked.

“In a year’s time I will rule as king of all Rofehavan, and you shall rule beside me as my queen.”

Rialla was breathing hard. Now she stepped back, and though her lust had nearly overpowered her, her face took on a calculating look. Indeed, Raj Ahten realized that she had been playing him as much as he played her. He had just revealed his heart to her. Now she revealed her heart to him. “You have many wives in your harem. If I’m to rule at your side, there must be only one.”

Raj Ahten liked her pluck. “They are not wives, merely baubles, toys. I had but one wife, and Gaborn took her from me as surely as he took your father from you.”

“If your wives mean nothing to you,” Rialla said, “kill them for me.”

Fire whispered within him, “Yes, let her have them. Thus will I make her mine.”

“Better than that,” Raj Ahten said, “I will give you a knife, and let you kill them yourself.”

He waited to see if she would flinch or back away from the deed. Instead, Rialla Lowicker, the future Queen of Rofehavan grabbed by him the throat and pushed him to the floor as she struggled to tear off his clothes.

Shortly after dawn, a bloody sun rose over Deyazz. The roosters crowed loudly in the streets of Ghusa, as if they were seeing the sun for the very first time.

Raj Ahten’s facilitator Turaush Kasill trudged down the streets of the city, until he found an old ramshackle hut behind the brickyard. The hut was a lean-to made of sticks angled against an ancient stone wall. Hides atop the sticks served as a roof to keep out the rain and the noonday sun.

The smoldering ashes of a campfire still burned before the hut. The smell of human waste was everywhere. Turaush wrinkled his nose in disgust, and clapped his hands twice.

“Balimar?” he called. “Balimar Mahaddim?”

A young man quickly thrust his head out from behind a hide flap of the lean-to. His eyes were red, as if he had been weeping or had lain awake sleepless the whole night.

Surely he had been searching for his little sister and brother, the beggars from the market. Now, worn from a lack of sleep, his wits would be dull. At least, Turaush hoped that they would.

“Yes?” the boy asked. “You called”—he glanced at Turaush’s fine robes and lowered his eyes in respect—“O Great Kaif?”

“I called,” Turaush said. “Your little sister and brother were found begging for food in the markets last night.”

“You know where they are?” Balimar asked with a tone of relief.

“I do,” Turaush answered. “Would you like to see them?”

The boy Balimar pushed himself out from under the flaps of his lean-to, and grabbed onto the wall for support. Turaush could see the white weal of a scar on his hip, and the boy’s leg was still bandaged, but he looked to be mostly healed. He had a brawny build, with a thick neck and strong biceps, but his eyes showed no intelligence. He was a facilitator’s dream—brawn, stamina, perhaps even grace. Such a young man had a wealth of possibilities.

“Where are they?” the boy asked suspiciously.

“They sold themselves for food,” Turaush said.

“As slaves?” the boy asked, his voice thick with disbelief.

“As Dedicates,” Turaush said. “They now serve our lord Raj Ahten.” Turaush put all the power of his voice into this last, hinting by his tone that theirs was a noble service, something to be desired.

“I...” the boy’s voice faltered. Words failed him. “I’ve never met the man,” he apologized.

“He is a great lord,” Turaush said, “the greatest who ever lived. Not two days ago, they say he slew a great reaver in Kartish, the Lord of the Underworld. And even now he rides to defend our realm from the evil kings of Rofehavan. You should be proud of your brother and sister. They render a great service to our lord.”

Balimar looked about in confusion. He was a bit darker of skin than his brother and sister, almost as if he were a bastard, fathered by a stranger. His eyes were darker than almond. He had his hair cropped short, in the style of young men who like to wrestle in the streets on feast days, hoping that by their skill they may win entry into the Raj’s army. “My mother will be sad to hear this, when she gets back.”

“Where is your mother?” Turaush asked.

“She went to see her sister, who lives in Jezereel. She was hoping that her sister’s husband would take us all in. But that was last spring, and she hasn’t returned.”

“The village of Jezereel is less than a week’s walk from here,” Turaush said after a moment’s thought. He was an inspired liar, and often amazed even himself with the way he managed to twist the truth. “But the trail through the hills is rife with robbers and thieves. I suspect that your mother will not return. I fear that she fell to them.” Turaush let a note of false grief accompany his tone, as if to confirm the woman’s death, rather than just raise the possibility. “How will you ever take care of your brothers and sisters?”

Balimar looked down hopelessly. “My leg is healing well. I’ll be able to work again in a month or two.”

“Without nourishing food,” Turaush whispered, “you will only languish. And when you die, the little ones will surely follow.”

Balimar looked about hopelessly, his eyes watering with grief at the thought. “What can I do?” At his back, a pair of toddlers now appeared. Two small children with big eyes, staring plaintively at Turaush. Their hunger was plain on their faces.

“Come follow me,” Turaush said. “Give yourself to our lord, and we shall feed you well—you and the little ones. You can tend them there in the palace. They will not be left comfortless.”

Balimar looked about helplessly. “What can I give that would let me care for the children. My hearing?”

“You would not hear the cries of the young ones in the night then,” Turaush argued gently. “Give stamina, I think. You will be able to care for them.”

“And what of my leg?” Balimar asked. “It will never heal.”

Turaush merely smiled, letting his glamour argue for him. You fool, his smile said, to be so full of concern. He added after a moment, “The finest physics in all of Indhopal grace the Palace at Ghusa. For a thousand years, the lords of the land have come to take the air in its lofty towers, to bathe in the healing springs at its base. We shall find herbs and balms for your wound. In a week or two, the muscles will mend, and the pain will be gone.”

Balimar’s lower lip was quivering, and he stood belligerently, the way an ox will stop at the butcher’s stall when it smells the blood of its fellows.

This one is not as stupid as he looks, Turaush thought. The leg will never heal once he grants his stamina, and the boy knows that.

He reached out his hand, and grasped Balimar’s. “Come,” Turaush urged. “The time is short. Your brother and sister call for you, and breakfast awaits....”

32 The Giving

Chemoise tried her best to wait patiently to give her endowment. She discovered as she stood in line that all the facilitators in Heredon, along with all of their apprentices, had gathered at the castle. Sixteen of them worked near the hilltop. They’d been slaving for nearly two days in an effort to complete their great work, taking no time to eat, no time to rest.

Their voices were weary and coarse.

“Are you sure that you dare do this?” Dearborn asked at her back in a whisper. “Won’t giving grace put your child at risk?”

“It’s a small risk,” Chemoise said. “Yet don’t we ensure our destruction if we refuse to stand against our enemies?”

“Let someone else stand in your place,” Dearborn said.

“I can’t,” Chemoise whispered. “Iome was my best friend at court, and in the short time that I’ve known Gaborn, I’ve learned to admire him as much as any man I’ve ever known. The facilitators need your love and devotion to transfer an endowment. How many others here really know the Earth King?”

“I’ve never met the man,” Dearborn admitted, “but I know what he’s up against, and I’m willing to give whatever I can.”

“So, you offer an endowment because of your love for a principle, while I offer mine for love of the man. Do you think our love is equal?”

“It could be,” Dearborn said, “if one loves one’s principles enough.”

There was a cry up the hill from an attendant. Chemoise glanced up, knowing before she looked what she would see. One of those who had granted brawn lay on the lawn, and several healers quickly threw a black sheet over his body, then hustled him away, lest the death of one Dedicate poison the resolve of others who had come to grant endowments.

Chemoise took that moment to push her way to the front of the crowd, past others who offered themselves as Dedicates. Darkness was falling, and soon full night would be upon them. Gaborn had warned that the attack would commence by sunset.

She only hoped that she could give her endowment in time.

“Let me through,” she said, elbowing past a fat man to the front of the crowd.

Almost immediately, a blunt-faced facilitator came downhill. “Next?”

Chemoise didn’t recognize him. If he had been King Sylvarresta’s old chief facilitator or one of his apprentices, she’d have stayed in the crowd. For the facilitator would have known of her pregnancy and refused to take her endowment.

“Here,” Chemoise called.

She burst from the crowd just as the facilitator reached the front. “An eager one!” he rasped. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Grace,” Chemoise said. “I offer my grace.”

He took her elbow. “Thank you,” he said. “Few there be who will give up grace. I’d walk in your footsteps, if I could.”

“You have your job to do,” Chemoise said, “and I have mine.”

He led her up to a tent, past Dedicates who lay all around the entrance in piles, like the wounded on some macabre battlefield. People were moaning, like the sound of wind through rocks, and nearby crickets had begun their nightly carols. The scent of stewing meats wafted over the fields.

“Tell me,” the facilitator asked. “By any chance, do you know the Earth King?”

He threw back the flap to a red pavilion.

“I know him and love him,” Chemoise said. She knew what he wanted to hear.

“Good,” the facilitator rasped. “Good. Think of your love for him during the endowment. Think only of that. Can you manage that?”

She entered the pavilion. Inside, a single candle burned in the center of the small room, shining like a star. On a cushion, curled in a fetal position, lay a young woman. Every muscle in her body was clenched, unable to move. Her fingers were balled into a fist, and she grimaced as if in pain. Even her eyelids were clamped tight, unable to relax. She wheezed as she breathed shallowly, unable to draw much air.

The facilitator stopped, let Chemoise see the woman for a moment.

“This is Brielle. She was a dancer at an inn at Castle Groverman until she granted her grace to our king. She will serve as his vector. By giving grace to her, you will be transferring it to your king.”

“I understand,” Chemoise said.

“This is what you will look like in a few minutes, if you proceed,” he apologized. “Do you dare to go on?”

Having her muscles corded into knots was not the worst of it, Chemoise knew. Giving an endowment of grace affected the gut. The first few weeks would be hard. From now on, she would only be able to eat broth and thin soups.

“I’ll bear it gladly,” Chemoise said.

“Good,” the facilitator said. “Good girl.”

He went to a small pile of forcibles and picked one up, held it near the candle for a moment, studying the rune on its head. It looked like a tiny branding iron. He must have found some imperfection, for he pulled out a small blunt instrument and began pressing one edge of the rune outward.

“Forgive the wait,” he apologized. “The blood metal bends easily, and is often damaged during travel.”

“I understand,” Chemoise said.

Chemoise watched Brielle. Aside from her shallow breathing, Brielle showed little sign of life. Chemoise saw a tear seeping from one eye.

It’s painful to be so clenched, she realized. Giving an endowment of grace is torture.

When the facilitator finished, he glanced at Chemoise. “Now,” he said. “I want you to look at the candle.” Chemoise glanced at the candle, then turned her attention back to Brielle. Each time that she had seen the endowment ceremony before, the potential Dedicate had stared at the lord who would receive his gift.

“No, don’t look at her,” the facilitator warned. “Keep your eye on the candle. Look to the light.”

Of course, Chemoise realized. We look at our lords because they are handsome, with their endowments of glamour, and it makes it easier for us to give ourselves. But staring at a wretched vector would only unnerve a potential Dedicate.

Chemoise looked at the candle as the facilitator began to half chant, half sing, in a rich voice. She couldn’t understand the words. As far as she knew they were only sounds. But they were sounds that comforted her, and made her want to give of herself. She could feel that yearning grow, like a potent fire.

The candle flame flickered and sputtered as the facilitator whirled around the room several times, and then placed the forcible on Chemoise’s arm.

The touch of it sent a thrill of shock through her. Often she’d heard of the “kiss of the forcible.” She imagined from this that the touch of the metal must somehow be soft and sensual at first. But it wasn’t a kiss. Instead, she almost felt as if the forcible were a leech that hooked its round mouth to her skin, and began sucking something vital from her.

As soon as the forcible touched her, the head of it began to heat, and the elasticity in her muscles drained away. Her right biceps cramped inordinately, so that she caught her breath.

She gave herself, willed herself to think about Gaborn in his hour of need. The candle flame flickered like the tongue of a snake, and she watched it, ignoring the urgent sound of the facilitator’s chant. Outside in the city, she heard cocks crowing, serenading the sunset.

The pain in her arm spread down to her elbow and up to the socket of her right arm. Beads of perspiration broke on her brow, and one trickled down the ridge of her nose. The forcible seemed to become a flame itself. It burned her arm, and she smelled singed hair and cooking flesh.

She glanced down at the tip of the forcible in surprise. She’d been listening for hours as people gave endowments, and in turn nearly all of them had cried out in pain. Some said that the pain of a forcible was unspeakable, unbearable, but as Chemoise’s arm burned, she felt determined to bear it.

So she closed her eyes, focused upon her king, and upon the people that she loved. The pain flared so that suddenly she felt as if her whole arm was on fire. She gritted her teeth.

This I can bear, she told herself. This I can bear.

And suddenly the pain blossomed a hundred-fold. Every muscle in her body seemed to cramp at once, so that she bent over in pain far more exquisite than anything she had ever imagined. Though she wanted to scream, to give voice to that pain, all that issued from her lips was a grunt.

Chemoise’s world went black.

33 In his Father’s Footsteps

Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul rode away from the reaver lines, putting a mile or more between them and the marching horde that spanned from horizon to horizon.

Sarka Kaul stared ahead, his eyes unfocused. “There is good news and bad. Raj Ahten and Queen Lowicker have formed an alliance. They will allow troops to enter Carris from the north, in hopes that all of them die, leaving half of Rofehavan open to conquest. But even they do not guess what aid the night might bring.”

“Hah!” Borenson laughed in sheer delight to have a Days as his counselor. “Tell me, friend, what will this ‘Council’ of yours do when they discover that you’ve betrayed their secrets?”

“There is only one punishment for such as me—death,” Sarka Kaul answered. “They will torture my twin first, a slow, laborious process. When minds are twinned, you share more than common memories. I will see what she sees, feel what she feels, hear what she hears, until the very last moment. When she dies, I will most likely die with her, for one cannot hope to live after being torn from a bond so intimate as the one that we share.”

Borenson fell silent, ashamed that he had laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

“It’s not your doing,” Sarka Kaul said. “I made that bargain long ago. Right now, my twin lies to the Council, saying that you threw me into the ocean and that I am adrift at sea, clinging to a bit of wood. My only hope is that I live to help guide you until nightfall.”

“And my hope for you,” Myrrima said, “is that the Council never learns what has happened, and that your twin can escape.”

They had not gone far when they met a lone rider, galloping south along the prairie. He was a Knight Equitable by the look of him, wearing some outdated beetle breastplate from northern Mystarria, along with a black horned helmet with ring mail that flowed like hair down his back, a style seen only among the Khdun warriors of Old Indhopal. He bore an ornate lance of black basswood, a rather princely weapon.

He came riding toward them on a gray horse, grinning broadly. Borenson recognized him as Sir Pitts, a castle guard from the Courts of Tide.

“What do you plan to do?” Borenson called out, nodding toward the line of marching reavers, “terrify them with your fashion sense?”

“Got in a tangle with a scarlet sorceress this morning,” Pitts said, grinning broadly. “She ripped off me chainmail and chewed up me helm! Luckily, I skinnied out of ’em, or she’d have had me for breakfast, too.”

Pitts rode near. Obviously, he’d scavenged his armor from dead warriors, and was forced to wear anything that seemed a close fit. Across the brow of his saddle were half a dozen philia taken from the bunghole of a reaver. They dangled from the saddle like dead eels, smelling of moldy garlic. Averan said that that smell was the death cry of a reaver. Borenson could see the dried blood now that blackened the man’s brow. It was dark and copious, and if Pitts managed to live through the coming battle, he would surely carry some enviable scars. After all, how many men could say that they’d escaped from a reaver’s mouth?

Borenson laughed aloud. “Someday you’ll have to tell me the tale in full, and I’ll pay a couple of pints of ale for the honor. But for now, how goes the battle?”

Pitts nodded toward the north. “The Earth King warned us to guard Carris, and that’s what we’ll do. But High Marshal Chondler isn’t waiting for the reavers to attack. He’s sending lancers against them, near the head of their column. It’s a bloody row up there.”

“How far to the front?” Borenson asked.

“Thirty, maybe forty miles,” Pitts replied.

The news chilled Borenson. Forty miles to the front? And their line extended south for as far as the eye could see.

“How far to the back of their lines?” Myrrima asked.

“Hard to say,” Pitts replied. “Some make it a hundred miles, others a hundred and twenty.” Borenson was still trying to guess how huge the horde might be, but Pitts was well ahead of him. “There may be a million of them,” Pitts said grimly. “We don’t have enough lances to take them all, not even a twentieth. The Earth King used them all last week. So we’re concentrating on their leaders. Their fell mage is well protected, near the front of the lines. It has been a bloody row.” His voice sounded shaken as he said this. “We’ve lost lots of men already. Sir Langley of Orwynne has fallen.”

“By the Powers!” Borenson swore.

“How are we to fight them,” Myrrima asked, “without lances?”

“We’ll fight them on the ground, at the gates of Carris,” Pitts said. “We’ll use warhammers and reaver darts, and resort to fingernails if we have to. But we’ll fight.” His sentiments were as foolish as they were brave.

“Chondler knows more tricks than a trained bear,” Pitts said. “Go to Carris, and see for yourself!”

“It will take more than a trained bear to win Carris,” Sarka Kaul said. Borenson glanced back. Sarka Kaul looked ominous upon his red horse, his face draped with a black hood. His voice seemed almost disembodied. “But be of good cheer. Young King Orwynne is riding into the city gates even now with three thousand men at his back. He has found his courage at last.”

Pitts peered hard at the figure all draped in black robes. He asked Borenson. “Who’s your friend?”

“Sarka Kaul,” Borenson said, “meet Sir Pitts.”

“An Inkarran?” Pitts asked in wonder, clenching his lance. “What’s he doing here?”

“I go to fight in Carris, friend,” Sarka Kaul answered.

Pitts barked in laughter. “Well then, I hope to meet you there!”

“Come before the darkness falls,” Sarka Kaul said.

Borenson and Myrrima spurred their horses on. Ahead the land grew dark. Columns of smoke roiled upward, creating a vast curtain that leached all light from the plains. The marching of reavers caused the earth to tremble, as if the ground would shatter beneath them.

Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul were nearly to Mangan’s Rock before they reached the head of the reaver horde. There, knights on tired mounts raced across the reavers’ path, setting torch to every blade of grass, every copse of scrub and bracken, every tree.

The flames roared to heaven and smoke blackened the skies. The light grew faint indeed, for by now the sun slanted low to the west, and here the dense forests of the Hest Mountains were wet so that the smoke that roiled up from that furnace was inky black and laden with soot.

Still there was no sign of any cavalry. The group passed beyond the vale of fire into the mountains, racing their horses. They stopped on a southern slope for a while, in the cool shadow of a rowan, and glimpsed the sun for the first time in hours. Even here, beyond the line of smoke, the sun glimmered like a hot coal in a torrid sky. High up, the smoke acted as a lens that colored the world in shades of ash.

So they hurried over the mountains, down through lesser towns, into the dead lands blasted by reaver curses, where at last they saw Carris gleaming upon the banks of Lake Donnestgree.

Here, the green fields had all gone gray a week ago. Vines and trees lay in twisted ruin. Every blade of grass had withered. Nothing lived. Even the crows and vultures had fled. Only the corpses of rotting reavers, monoliths, their mouths frozen wide in a rictus smile that brimmed with teeth, offered mute testimony to what had happened here.

For a moment as Borenson rode into the blasted lands, he had an odd sensation. He felt as if instead of riding from Fenraven to Carris, he was riding from the past into the future. Behind him lay the sweet green fields of the world he had known. Ahead lay rot and oblivion.

Sarka Kaul sniffed the fields. Borenson could smell old reaver curses on the dead ground. “See no more.”

“Be thou dry as dust.” The ground seemed to whisper the curses. “Rot, O thou child of men!”

“Those who saw the battle tried to describe it,” Sarka Kaul whispered, as he stared out across the killing fields, “but words failed them. I could not envision this. I couldn’t imagine how wide the destruction went, or how perfectly it had been carried out.”

Borenson spat onto grass that was as gray as ash. “No rain here in a week. A stinking inferno this shall all make.”

As the three approached Carris, the sun slowly descended beyond the rim of the world, hidden behind towers of billowing smoke. The wind was ominously still, and the heat that rose from the soil leached the stink from the blasted lands and left it hovering in a fetid haze. To the west the foothills were all gray with decay, and to the east Lake Donnestgree lay flat and dull. Not a single wave rippled across its surface. Gone were the seagulls that had winged above its shore a week past.

Ahead, Carris was a city of ruins. The plaster had all cracked from the castle walls, so that only a few bright strips still gleamed above the gray stone. The walls had buckled and bulged. Gone were the doves and pigeons that had wheeled above Castle Carris like confetti.

It was a far fairer sight that greeted my father’s eyes, Borenson thought.

Why Carris? Borenson wondered. Why would the reavers attack it again? There is nothing here worth winning, nothing worth defending. Yet we keep on fighting, like a pair of crabs squabbling over a worthless rock.

Unless there is something here that the reavers value? he wondered.

But what it might be, he could not guess. The land was a broken waste.

Still the armies had gathered. A million reavers were marching from the south, while men and women paced along the cracked castle walls, armor gleaming dully like the backs of beetles in the dying light.

Borenson caught wind of a noxious odor, and noted that to his right were the trenches that the reavers had made to channel water from the lake. The reavers had thrown in some huge yellow stones.

At the time no one had comprehended what the reavers were doing. It wasn’t until Averan explained that reavers could only drink water rich in sulfur that anyone had understood: the monsters were creating drinking water.

But now the ditches were filled with lumps of white lye soap, brown human turds, and an oily scum that colored the water’s surface. Chondler’s men had poisoned it so badly that even a whiff of the putrid mix made Borenson’s eyes burn.

“Even if the reavers manage to win Carris,” Myrrima said, “I don’t think that they’ll be enjoying their stay.”

The sun dipped behind the peaks, and suddenly the black plains plunged into near darkness. Borenson heard a cry rise up from the city, and he glanced back to the south.

A rim of fire could be seen on the mountaintops, twenty miles behind, and columns of smoke rose straight up like the black boles of vast trees. High in the atmosphere, the smoke spread like a mushroom cap, or like the limbs of an oak. Already, clouds of smoke arched overhead.

But it was not the encroaching darkness that caused the cries of alarm. There, in the distance, behind the rim of fire, reavers marched in a broad band, and raced down the mountainside like a black cataract. The distant hissing of their breathing and the pounding of their feet made it sound as if a dam had broken, and trees and boulders tumbled in the glut of the flood.

The city of Carris squatted on an isle out in Lake Donnestgree. The city was more than two miles long from north to south, and a little over a mile wide at its widest point. One could only reach it by boat or by walking up a narrow road that led over a long causeway.

Here on the causeway a week ago, towers and gates had guarded the city. But the reavers had pushed the towers over and thrown down the city gates, and Marshal Chondler, despite all his good intentions, had not had time to replace them.

Instead, at the head of the causeway, his people had dragged wooden rubble from all around—thatch from cottage roofs, timbers, fence posts, broken wagons and chairs, a girl’s straw doll—and heaped them all into piles beside the road. This would become a firewall to protect the city from the reaver’s advance, but even a firewall would not hold for more than an hour or two.

Amid this heap of trash, the heads of several huge reavers lay in the rubble, their mouths thrown wide. Borenson recognized the enormous fell mage that had led the first attack on the city, along with the heads of other monsters. Their mouths were filled with philia cut from the bung-holes of dead reavers, so that the scent of moldy garlic wafted over the fields.

Straw lay strewn over the fields at the mouth of the causeway, a sure sign that Chondler’s men had lain down caltrops—wicked bits of sharp metal bolted together in order to puncture the hooves of charging horses.

But would a caltrop harm a reaver? Borenson wondered. He peered hard until he saw a twisted piece of metal rising up through some straw, a blade at least five times larger than a normal caltrop.

Where would he have gotten so much metal? Borenson wondered, and then recalled the tens of thousands of knight gigs and blades that the reavers had lost here a week ago.

Borenson rode toward the city. A few dull rays of dying sun still managed to penetrate the smoke. All along the city wall, people gazed out at the newcomers—men in bright helms; old women with jaws set in determination, their faces framed by graying hair; young boys pale with fear—so many wan faces like scattered leaves cast upon a field of soot.

The castle gates were still down, along with some of the towers, but the rubble had been shifted, forming barricades of stone that bristled with reaver blades all along the causeway. Such barricades were not meant to stop reavers, only to slow them so that archers and artillerymen could have time to take aim.

Wooden platforms had been set along the wallwalks, and rafts floated in the lake, and on these and on the towers sat an array of ballistas and catapults that perhaps had not been matched in all of Rofehavan’s history. In the lee of each artillery piece crouched a pair of archers from Heredon with bows of spring steel. Farther back, those who had not steel bows were armed with Indhopal’s horn bows. And archers with longbows perched along the castle walls.

“Look at that!” Myrrima said. “Chondler must have gathered artillery from every castle within a hundred miles.”

“Two hundred,” Sarka Kaul said, “though little good it will do him.”

Borenson’s heart was full of foreboding.

Why did Gaborn tell his people to gather here? Borenson wondered. The city had not fared well in the first attack. Only a miracle had saved it. Only the Earth King, summoning a world worm in its defense, had managed to free the city. The mound of dirt around the worm’s hole still rose up like a crater, several hundred yards to the north.

Perhaps, Borenson wondered, Gaborn hopes for another miracle.

He reached the city “gate,” an open space between two tiers of rubble, and found Marshal Chondler there, atop one pile, gazing off toward the south. At his feet lay a pile of stinking philia, and Borenson could see more loathsome pieces of flesh hanging like talismans of doom from the castle walls.

“Hail, Sir Borenson, Lady Myrrima, and...your friend?” Chondler said mirthlessly. “Any news from the south?” His voice was oddly high, and he moved swiftly. Borenson could tell that he had taken several endowments of metabolism, and that he could only slow his speech with great concentration.

“The reavers are coming,” Borenson said. “But that you can see for yourself.”

“No sight of the Earth King?” Chondler’s voice was husky, as if he sought to mask his fear.

“None,” Borenson said, “or of any other comfort.”

“You have your endowments intact,” Chondler said. He eyed Borenson in particular. “I had your facilitator vector more to you yesterday, hoping that you would return.”

“I got them,” Borenson said, “and none too soon. Are you telling me that my Dedicates are still here, in Carris?” The news unsettled him. A million reavers were marching on the city, and his Dedicates would be helpless before them.

“Aye,” Chondler said. “We’d hoped to get them out, but we’d sent our boats downstream to ferry out the sick, the women, and the children. There have been none to spare for Dedicates. So we will guard Carris, as is the duty of Runelords, and if the reavers take our Dedicates, they will have to do so over our dead bodies.”

“This place is a death trap, you know,” Borenson said.

Chondler challenged, “Name a better castle to defend in all of Mystarria.”

Borenson couldn’t. “Do you have any lances? Perhaps we could make one last charge on the open field.”

“I wish we had a few. But our lances are gone. We’ll rely now upon arrows and warhammers and whatever other weapons we have at hand.”

“I found Sir Pitts riding south,” Borenson said. “He told me that you were full of more tricks than a trained bear. I do hope you have more than a firewall and ballistas to show for your trouble.”

“We have ten thousand ballista bolts, besides balls for the catapults,” Chondler said. “We can shoot the reavers from behind the safety of the firewall. Once those fail, we’ll rely upon our archers. They’ll fire into the reavers from the castle walls as our men engage them at the gate. We have three million arrows and five hundred good force archers who can hit what they’re aiming at.”

“Three million arrows may not be nearly enough,” Borenson said. “Those horn bows might pierce reaver hide, but I’ve never heard of a long-bow that could do it.”

“Nevertheless, we will try,” Chondler said. “I’ve ordered the men to refrain from shooting until the enemy engages at ten yards.”

Borenson bit his lip, wondering if it could work.

“I’ve had the facilitators here working night and day,” Chondler said. “They reforged all of the forcibles that we could lay hands on. I’ve got three dozen men to act as champions, each with twenty endowments of metabolism. Working together, they should be able to hold the gate for a good long time. As it so happens, we still need another champion. How about it?” Chondler asked with a wicked smile. “Want to die young?”

Borenson glanced sidelong at Myrrima. Had someone asked him the same question a week ago, he would not have hesitated. But now he was not living just for himself. Taking such endowments meant that even if he lived through the battle, he would never be a real husband to Myrrima. He would die a solitary creature, isolated from all mankind by his speed.

Myrrima seemed to read his mind. She glanced back at the approaching horde, spilling down from the mountains. The darkness had deepened, and all that Borenson could see was a line of fire raging up there. But suddenly the flames took a whole pine, lighting it up like a vast torch, and in its light he saw the dreaded foe, red light reflecting from their dull backs. At the rate that they ran, they’d be here within the hour.

“It will take more than a few champions to save you,” Sarka Kaul said, speaking up at last.

“We have hopes of reinforcements, sir,” Chondler said. “Lowicker’s daughter is leading a good army south, and at last word was less than a dozen miles away.”

“And Raj Ahten has an army hidden in the hills to the east,” Sarka Kaul said. “But neither of them wish you well. They come like crows, hoping only to take the spoils once you have fallen. They will enter the fray only when you are dead.”

“And how could you possibly know this?” Chondler asked with worry on his brow.

Sarka Kaul drew back his black hood, revealing skin whiter than bone. “Because I have been privy to their councils,” he said. “Grant me your twenty endowments of metabolism so that I can fight, and I think I can show you how to win this battle.”

Chondler eyed the Inkarran suspiciously, glanced toward Sir Borenson.

Borenson gave him the nod.

“Very well,” Chondler said. “We could use a man who knows how to fight in the dark.”

As Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul entered Carris, riding along the causeway, the evening sun dipped below the teeth of the world and plunged the city into blackest night.

34 A Bridge in Time

Erin Connal rode south over the muddy fields of Beldinook that morning, heading to war in the retinue of King Anders. On swift force horses followed nearly six thousand knights.

They held their black lances in the air so that they bristled like a gloaming wood. The ground rumbled from the pounding of hooves. Horses snorted and neighed, and the knights raised their voices in grim song.

The strange storm had passed, and the morning dawned bright and clear. Erin felt betrayed by the weather. The storm had paced her all day yesterday, and though clear weather was good for riding, it was not good enough. The ground was as muddy through the morning as if the rain were still falling, so the sun gave them little benefit. She’d rather have had the storm. There would be reavers at Carris, tens of thousands of them, and reavers feared lightning. The creatures could only see the force electric, so a bolt of lightning blinded the monsters, as if they were staring into the white-hot sun.

But the skies dawned clear over Beldinook.

Anders’s troops rode south over the Fields of the Moon, where the ancients had carved a huge basalt boulder into the shape of the moon and set it upon the peak of a volcanic cone. One could see mountains and craters carved into the moon, but the features had long since worn away. The plain all around was relatively flat and featureless, with sparse clumps of grass. Volcanic gravel had rained down upon it in ages past, killing all plant life. All across the fields for hundreds of miles, half-sunken in the gravel, lay large strange stones carved in such a way as to represent stars, with rays bursting from them. Ancient paths led from one star to another, forming a map of the heavens.

“But a map to where?” one rider in the king’s retinue asked.

“To the First Star, and thence to the netherworld,” Anders told him with a smirk. “The ancients longed to return there after death, and so they would practice walking a path through the stars, to learn the way.”

After a while, Erin fell back behind the king’s retinue.

The Nut Woman reined in her own mount to ride beside Myrrima. She was short and broad, dressed in drab rags. She held a sleeping squirrel curled in the palm of her left hand, and petted it softly as she rode.

“Is there something you want?” Erin asked.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” the Nut Woman said. “I’ve been thinking about you and King Anders. You’ve made no secret of the fact that you distrust him.” Erin did not deny it. “But I’ve been thinking. You know, a squirrel can always tell a bad acorn from a good, just by the smell. Did you know that?”

Erin shook her head no.

“They can,” the Nut Woman said, her eyes shining. “They can smell worm, and they can smell rot. They only bother to crack open the good nuts.”

“What does that have to do with King Anders?”

“Don’t you understand?” the Nut Woman asked. “The squirrels would know if he had rot inside. But you see how they love him, don’t you? They jump on his saddle; they climb in his pocket. They’re not like that with bad folk.”

Erin peered ahead. A squirrel was riding on Anders’s shoulder even now.

Erin studied the Nut Woman’s eyes. They were filled with adoration for the king. But Erin saw something else. The woman didn’t focus on anything. It was as if she peered beyond Erin, into some private vision.

“Yes,” Erin said. “I see your point.”

The Nut Woman smiled. “Good! Good. Most people don’t understand. Most can never understand.”

Erin forced a smile. Celinor had suspected that his father was mad; and King Anders accused Erin of being crazed. At the moment, Erin felt certain of only one thing: the Nut Woman was madder than them all.

As the day wore on, they passed far south of the Great Rift and through tortured lands into the sweet fields of Beldinook where the grass grew tall and green, even in autumn. Nestled among valleys and low hills, castles and cities sprang up everywhere. Beldinook was the second largest kingdom in all Rofehavan, with nearly twelve million souls.

Erin clenched the reins of her mount as she rode through. She was a horse-sister of Fleeds, after all, and the folk of Beldinook were ancient enemies. Each time they neared a castle, she expected a mob of cavalry to issue from the gates and put up a fight.

But King Anders rode through without hindrance. Indeed, he had been expected, and several times through the morning, dukes and barons issued out of the castle gates only to swell his ranks.

Gaborn’s call for aid had gone through every kingdom, and had been heard even here in Beldinook, and as each lord joined with King Anders, they would laugh and bark out some variation of, “So, Your Highness, what think you? Do we ride to save Carris, or to watch the reavers feed on our enemies?”

And each time the question was put, King Anders would frown at the men, and with the patience of a father with an errant child ask, “How could you think to laugh at the plight of another? We go to save Carris, and in so doing, save ourselves.”

Often then, he would raise his left hand and Choose the lord to aid him in his fight, and ever again Erin was forced to wonder: is Anders truly an Earth King, or does the Darkling Glory’s locus sway him?

The travel went more slowly than Erin would have liked through the middle of Mystarria. Villages and cities clustered along the fertile banks of the River Rowan. The farms were the lushest that Erin had ever seen, and people choked the roads. With winter coming on, the villeins were herding pigs and cattle and sheep into town to be butchered. Indeed, Slaterfest was celebrated on the fifteenth of Leaves in these parts, only a ten-day from now, and at the fest the folk would celebrate the slaughter by eating huge amounts of sausages and hams, lamb ribs and sweetened meats, along with turnips and licorice root fried to a crisp in butter, and tarts and puddings and cakes, all washed down with dark Beldinook beer so rich that you could smell it in the sweat of your armpits for a week after you drank.

Erin rode close to King Anders and his son all morning. Anders spoke of little. His mind was on the road ahead, and often he would peer south with a worried brow and mutter beneath his breath, “We must hurry.”

Celinor tried to cheer him, and often he would lead the troops in song, as if in hopes of raising their spirits.

When they reached the River Langorn with its broad banks, the road ahead jogged far out of their way. To travel by road would have wasted hours, and some of King Anders men swore that it would be faster to swim the horses across. But to do so would force the knights to abandon their own armor along with that of the horses.

King Anders settled the argument by shouting, “Behold the Power of the Earth!”

He raised his sword as if it were a staff and pointed it to the heavens. He raised a cry and began to chant, but a great wind arose, circling the troops, screaming with a voice like dying eagles, swirling down from the sun. Whatever words he spoke were carried off by the wind.

Then he pointed his sword at a nearby knoll and the wind struck, blasting it into dust. Dirt and stone flew up like a sheet, hundreds of feet into the air, raising a plume of soot in the sky. It was as if a great hand had taken hold of the hill and begun to stretch it, pulling it from its place. Lightning flew out of the ground and split the heavens, and the fields rattled beneath the impact of the wind. The horses snorted and shied away in a panic, and for a long minute Erin only fought with her mount, trying to keep it from fleeing.

Then the dirt and stones rained down into the River Langorn, making a broad road, like a crude peninsula.

“Hurry now to Carris!” King Anders shouted. “There is no time to waste!”

He spurred his horse down to the river and galloped across. His army followed after. The earthen dam was a crude thing, and as Erin’s horse raced over it, its hooves sank in the loose clay and gravel. The soil rose only a few feet above the waterline. The dam would not hold for long. The river was slow moving and languid in the fall, but the water would soon back up. As pressure built, it would wash over the dam and send it downstream.

Still, King Anders’s troops made it across on dry land, and his men began to cheer wildly, “All hail the Earth King! All hail Anders!”

The rest of the day, Erin rode as if in a dream. Whether it was from shock at what she’d seen or from a lack of sleep, she wasn’t sure.

When the army halted for a short meal, Celinor rode up to meet her. “What do you think now?” he asked with the glazed eyes of a fanatic. “What do you think of my father now?”

“I do not doubt that he holds some great Power,” she admitted. “But what is its source? Did the Earth indeed grant him his gift, or does it come from elsewhere?”

“What do you mean?” Celinor asked. “Of course it comes from the Earth.”

“I did not see the Earth moving so much as I saw the wind blowing,” Erin told him.

“You’ll never believe,” Celinor countered. “Will you? No matter that you see with your own eyes, or hear with your own ears, you’ll never believe.”

He sounded like a little boy convinced that he has the greatest father in the world, when along comes a doubter.

“I believe that you love him,” Erin said.

He walked off angrily.

Erin tried to find sleep as she rode, hoping to speak with the owl again in her dreams. But the road remained slick and treacherous, and she could not rest easy. Like the wind and the lightning, sleep abandoned her, left her feeling betrayed.

All too soon she found herself south of Beldinook, riding into Mystarria as darkness fell. The stars overhead burned brightly as they passed through the hills and meadows. The locusts serenaded the troops, buzzing in the scrub oak, while the crickets sang in harmony.

The ride seemed surreal. Erin felt as if she were riding home from a relaxing hunt rather than riding to face the end of the world.

Only the empty cottages and villages along the highway revealed that anything was amiss.

When she reached the road that led to Twynhaven, she wondered if the green flames still licked the ground, and if she rode into them, would she find herself in the netherworld? She glanced toward Celinor, and found her husband watching her as if he feared that she would make a run for it.

She held a steady course. Shortly, distant fires could be seen in the mountains beyond Carris. Tall pillars of fire-lit smoke roared into the sky. As King Anders’s troops entered the blasted lands, the odor of rot replaced the perfume of summer fields.

Scouts forged ahead and returned bringing word: “Reavers are already swarming the fields west of Carris, and Queen Lowicker of Beldinook has drawn her troops up within three miles of their lines, just beyond the Barren’s Wall:”

King Anders blew his trumpets and his men raised a cheer. All day long they had held their lances to the sky, making a black forest of their polished shafts. Now Celinor began a battle song and the lancers drew into lines, riding three abreast down the road. They prepared to drop their lances into a couched position, in preparation for a charge.

All too soon the sound of reavers racing across the fields came to Erin’s ears above the thud of horses’ hooves and the jangle of chain mail. Their hissing roared like distant surf, and the earth trembled beneath their feet.

Erin came up over a hill and saw Carris to the south—ten thousand torches glimmering upon the gray castle walls. The torches reflected in the still waters of Lake Donnestgree, and smoke clung to the water in a haze.

Before Castle Carris a turbulent, roaring sea of reavers blackened the land.

35 In the Dedicates’ Keep

Gaborn sprinted through the ribbed tunnels of the Underworld, down, down, as if toiling through bones of an endless worm, and beheld a strange sight: a bright light shone ahead in a place where no light should be.

For a moment he suspected that a Glory filled the tunnel before him, but he didn’t feel the overwhelming power that had surged through him before.

Instead, as he rounded the corner, he saw only Iome in the hall, her back toward him as she raced deeper into the Underworld. She moved relatively slowly, now that he had so many endowments.

He nearly stumbled in surprise.

He raced up to her back, drew ahead, and saw Iome’s face contort with shock. “How did you get here so fast?” he asked slowly, so that she would understand.

“I found a shortcut,” Iome replied.

“Follow me,” Gaborn said.

Iome looked into his eyes, and must have seen the pain there. “It’s time, isn’t it? The battle has begun at Carris?” Her words came slowly, each syllable drawn out and deepened by the variance that came by reason of Gaborn’s vast endowments of metabolism.

Gaborn nodded. His three days were drawing to a close. A struggle was about to flare up in Carris, one such as had not been seen since Erden Geboren led the nine kings in their charge against the reaver hordes at Vizengower.

Gaborn could sense his army of Chosen warriors above him, dozens and dozens of miles, and this caused him to wonder. His Earth Senses let him place them precisely. In traversing the caves, he had ridden by horse nearly two hundred miles south, and from there the caves had wound south and west toward Indhopal. But in time the trail looped back north and east, so that now he was directly below Carris again.

He suspected that this was vitally important. The reavers were trying to secure the ground above them—or perhaps above the Great Seals that they had fashioned. But why?

He could only guess at the answer.

“Follow me,” Gaborn said slowly.

“Where?” Iome asked.

And he wondered in his heart what he should do. He had come to slay the One True Master, but his Earth Senses warned against it. He could not prevail against the monster—yet. Even now, though he felt as if he radiated vigor from every pore, he was not her match. Nor would the Earth permit him to seek out the Great Seals and destroy them. The Earth allowed only one task. “We must find Averan! Follow as best you can.”

Comprehension dawned slowly on Iome’s face.

She nodded.

Gaborn ran.

Three days have passed, he thought in despair, though with his endowments of metabolism it felt as if he’d run for thirty days through this endless night.

Death was about to rain down upon his people. He imagined reavers scaling castle walls, hurling dire spells.

He veered through tunnels. He was near the very bottom of the unbounded warren. The ground grew as hot as the chimney stones on a hearth, and the endless tramping of reavers’ feet had polished the floor like marble. Little grew in these tunnels, just a bit of wormgrass on the walls. Few blind-crabs scurried along the floor. He was not in the wilds any longer.

Every few strides carried him past some side tunnel or cavity. He met several reaver workers that bore no weapons. He paused only long enough to stab them through their sweet triangle, and then hurried on, leaving a trail of dead in his wake. They did not even register his presence until he fell upon them.

He ran up a tunnel, following Averan’s scent. He could feel her nearby. A mile, a half a mile, a quarter of a mile, and he was at her door.

A cavelike recess opened to the corridor, with guardrooms dug into either side. As Gaborn approached, two huge reavers sprang out to do battle.

The first raised a blade overhead, and hissed in fear. Gaborn smelled a spray of words fill the air, probably shouts of surprise or warning. It threw its head back and gaped its maw wide, crystalline teeth bristling like daggers.

He leapt up into its mouth, landing on its dark tongue, and plunged his reaver dart through the soft spot in the creature’s upper palate, into its brain. The weapon slammed into the top of the monster’s skull.

Gaborn gave the dart a twist, scrambling the reaver’s brain.

Purple blood and bits of gray brain rained down from the wound.

Gaborn leapt from its mouth as the huge blade-bearer crashed to the ground. The second reaver reared high on her back legs. She was a mage, bearing a crystalline staff. A perfume of words wheezed from her anus as she tried to cast a spell. Gaborn would have none of it.

He dove between her forelegs and plunged his reaver dart into her breast, through her tough carapace, into an organ that the knights of Rofehavan called a kidney. The reaver’s perfumed words transformed into the garlicky reek of a death cry.

Gaborn raced into the cave.

Averan stood there, turning to peer at him with frightened eyes, lit by the opal that gleamed from her silver ring. Around her squatted a crowd of starved, half-naked people. The reek of their prison was astounding—the stench of unwashed bodies, of urine and feces, and of the rotting carcasses of both fish and the unburied dead.

“Averan,” Gaborn cried before she had time to react to his presence. He took her staff of black poisonwood, which he had been carrying in his free hand, and threw it to her.

With ten endowments of metabolism, Averan responded before the others even registered Gaborn’s presence. She caught the staff, moving with a liquid slowness.

Gaborn cried, “The battle in Carris is about to begin! But I’m not ready to face the One True Master. How do I defeat her?”

Averan seemed to leap in slow motion to grab the staff as she peered at him. Her voice sounded unnaturally deep and tediously slow as she asked, “What?”

Gaborn forced himself to speak slower, to modulate his voice, as he repeated his request.

Worry dawned in Averan’s face, and she leapt over the squatting prisoners. Her movements seemed painfully deliberate. She ran two paces, and stopped. “Wait!” she shouted.

She struggled to pull off her ring, twisting it on her finger, and then turned and threw it to the prisoners. She could not leave them comfortless.

As she worked, two of Gaborn’s Chosen died on the walls of Carris—a proud knight and a young girl. With their deaths, he felt as if a hole gaped in his heart, as if he were rich soil and his Chosen were tender plants, cruelly plucked away. It pained him no end.

Averan raced to Gaborn, sprang past him. “This way!”

She ran with all her might, straining every muscle, intensity plain on her face. Then the green glow of Gaborn’s opal bathed her back, and threw her dancing shadow on the tunnel floor.

Gaborn followed, disheartened at how sluggishly she seemed to move, even with ten endowments of metabolism.

He ambled beside her. A hundred endowments? Gaborn wondered. Perhaps the facilitators have given me more. They’ll kill me, he realized.

He followed at Averan’s heel. She sprinted with all her might, her every movement smooth and graceful. Tears streamed from her eyes, tears of frustration, Gaborn imagined, that came from yearning for greater speed.

He walked ahead of her, slaughtering any reaver that barred their path.

And ever closer, he felt the approach of danger.

“There!” Averan called. “Up the corridor, three more passageways. The Dedicates’ Keep.”

Of course! Gaborn realized. Averan had warned that the One True Master was experimenting with giving endowments, though he could not guess how much success she might have. That was why he could not hope to face her.

Gaborn left Averan behind, sprinted round the corner.

“Leap!” his Earth Senses warned, and Gaborn sprang fifteen feet into the air.

A reaver stood before him at the mouth of the Dedicates’ Keep, a great black blade-bearer. Its blade whistled beneath his feet, then sang through the air as it whipped behind its back.

The monster did not open its mouth. Instead it leaned back, moving with a speed that nearly matched Gaborn’s. The philia on its head and along its jaw raised into the air and waved like snakes as all its senses came alert.

This is no common reaver, Gaborn knew. Dull blue runes glimmered along its forearms.

As Gaborn reached the apex of his leap, he hurled his reaver gig with all his might, aiming for the soft spot in the monster’s sweet triangle. He threw so hard that he felt the ball joint in his shoulder rip from its socket.

The reaver gig struck home, plunged into the monster’s flesh, piercing its brain, and then stood quivering like an arrow in a tree.

But the great blade-bearer still lived. Its blade whirled round, sang through the air before Gaborn even touched ground.

Gaborn twisted, catlike, as the blade whistled toward him. It struck his chest a glancing blow that shattered the rings in Gaborn’s chain mail and jogged him to the side.

He darted away as another blow clove the ground at his feet. He threw himself backward as the reaver charged.

He had no weapon to fight with. His reaver gig stood transfixed in the monster’s brain.

Averan came rushing up the tunnel, and the reaver whirled its massive head to gaze at her, all of its philia quivering.

In that instant, Gaborn struck. He leapt twenty feet in the air and grabbed his reaver gig on the way up. He did not pull it free but instead wrenched it violently as he reached the apex of his leap, then jerked it down with greater force as he fell, slashing the monster’s brain.

It shuddered and crumpled to its knees. Ahead, in the hallway, two more guards barred Gaborn’s way, but neither moved as quickly as the monster that Gaborn had just fought. He dispatched them, and rushed into the Dedicates’ Keep.

In all his dreams, in all of his nightmares, Gaborn have never imagined a place such as this. The light glowing green from his opal could not pierce the murk. Shadows fled as he entered the vast chamber, but the ceiling was so high that even with all of his endowments of sight, Gaborn could not view a roof overhead, only the steadily curving braces and supports constructed by the glue mums. These were not like the beams that men would use to brace the ceiling of a Great Hall. Instead, they looked more like cobwebs dancing along trusses, spanning over chasms. Not even the fabled Songhouse of Sandomir could have rivaled the complexity or grandeur of the workmanship. The supports, gray with age, rose up like lacework along the ceilings. Gaborn imagined that spiders might build such webs if they could only hope or dream. The designs were as alien as they were beautiful.

And beneath this glorious webwork, reaver Dedicates milled in an endless reeking herd.

The smell of them astonished Gaborn no less than the sight of them. A cloud of alien scents smote him—the odor of reaver dung and rotting carrion, suffused with the scents of reaver endowments as brittle as ice and as dank as mold.

There were hundreds of Dedicates, down in a bowl-shaped enclave. The room was black with them, but the dull light of fiery runes burned among them, so that a glimmering haze shone all about.

A huge, spidery creature the size of an elephant lay on its back about two hundred yards off, with its legs curled in the air. Reavers tore at the beast with their forepaws and teeth, rending its flesh.

Beyond that, a fetid stream ran, sending up vapors of sulfur water. Some Dedicates knelt in its shallows, dipping their heads and then craning them back like birds as they drank. Overhead sprawled a pair of massive stonewood trees, like vast leafless oaks, their limbs twisted in ineffable torment.

And all through the air, flocks of gree wheeled about on squeaking wings, like nervous bats.

Gaborn could not see the far reaches of the Keep. Nor could he guess how many hundreds of Dedicates it might hold.

Upon spotting Gaborn, many Dedicates rose up and began to lurch away, hissing and spraying a scent of warning in the air.

Gaborn raced in, leapt, and plunged his reaver dart deep into the sweet triangle of the nearest Dedicate. The creature hissed and sprayed moldy garlic scent, then swatted feebly at his dart until its legs went out from under it. The reavers lurched to attack, creating a fearsome wall of flesh, of flashing teeth and raking claws, as Gaborn raced into the room. They scrabbled over one another’s backs in an effort to reach him.

Gaborn attacked the nearest reaver, leaping and spinning. He plunged his weapon into its sweet triangle, dodged a blow, and lunged after another.

In moments purple blood and gray brains made his weapon slippery. Gore clung to his hands and elbows, spattered his face. He wiped it from his eyes, and moved on.

Each Dedicate had a rune upon its head that glowed a soft silver. Gaborn suspected that it marked the endowment that it had given, but somehow the glowing runes were not shaped anything like those that men took. Since the reavers wrote in scents, the runes drawn upon them were meant to be judged by their musky aroma.

Gaborn smelled a particularly rank stench, with an odor like rotten cabbage, just beyond a wall of reavers.

As Gaborn tasted the scent, he felt the Earth’s sudden warning: “Strike!”

He leapt upon a reaver, raced up its head, and peered behind it. Some sixty feet off, a reaver was retreating through the horde. It had a single silver rune gleaming on its forehead, but dozens of fiery blue runes ran the length of its legs. A vector, Gaborn realized.

“Strike!” the Earth warned again.

Gaborn leapt twenty feet in the air, somersaulted over three reavers, and landed with his reaver dart plunging through the monster’s sweet triangle.

By now all of the reavers around him hissed, and warning scents filled the cavern.

“Gaborn!” Averan called desperately.

He looked back at her, only three dozen yards away. She stood close to the mouth of chamber, her black staff of poisonwood in hand. “I can’t help you! I can’t kill helpless Dedicates. What shall I do?”

Gaborn felt in his heart, sensing for danger to the girl. “Do you know where the Great Seals are?”

Averan nodded.

“Go destroy them,” Gaborn said.

Indeed, the Earth now warned him that she must go. Danger was coming, and if Averan stayed, she would die.

Gaborn took off his green opal cape pin and tossed it to her. The glowing runes on the reaver Dedicates was the only light he would have to fight by.

Wordlessly, Averan whirled and sped off as fast as she could.

Gaborn redoubled his pace, plunging among the reavers. The monsters hissed and lashed at him, ripping with talons and gnashing with teeth.

Gaborn charged into them, dodging blows, lunging with his reaver dart, tasting the air for the scent of vectors.

Time and again his weapon stabbed.

He saw the Earth’s plan now. Danger was swelling all about him. The One True Master had sensed his presence, and would come for him, as would any Runelord who sought to protect his precious Dedicates.

He was glad that he had given up his light, for now he could see the reavers’ glowing runes even better.

He could sense a rising wave of danger.

She was coming. Gaborn darted into the reavers, raced beneath the legs of one monster, vaulted up onto the back of another and struck down a vector.

She was at the door.

He had killed perhaps fifty Dedicates, including three vectors. He whirled toward the chamber entrance.

A blackness swirled at the door, a shadow that blotted out the night. It wasn’t just Gaborn’s imagination. Dark vapors flowed into the chamber like a fog. Whatever was coming, it was more than a reaver.

And suddenly, Gaborn saw it.

A monstrosity appeared among the shadows, a reaver larger and more bloated than any fell mage he had ever encountered. Her feet clacked and her swollen belly groaned as she slid across the floor. A loud hissing followed as she scrabbled forward, air streaming from her vast anus.

The reek was magnificent. Gaborn could smell musty endowments, like putrid fat and rotten cabbages and moldy hair, so thick in the air that it choked him.

Darkness spread out from her, and as she advanced, shadows groped about Gaborn’s knees.

He suddenly felt dazed. The creature twisted in his vision, and his eyes could not focus on it. In his mind’s eye, the reaver seemed to expand suddenly, to grow taller and loom over him, as if to fill the whole chamber, as if to fill the universe.

36 All Darkness Falling

Night fell swiftly over Carris. The sun slanted east beyond the mountains while the haze of distant smoke curtained off the light. Twenty miles to the north, reavers rushed in a horde down the mountainside, their feet making a dull rumble that shook a man’s very bones. Borenson could not see them well, for a cloud of gree blackened the sky above. Howlers emitted their strange cries, like unearthly trumpets, and all of the reavers hissed. But there was another sound that bothered Borenson, a dull concussive boom, boom, boom that preceded the reavers like distant thunder.

The horde was less than an hour away. On the castle wall, men took up battle song to cheer their hearts.

In the failing light, Chondler led Borenson to his post as commoners began pulling up planks from the old drawbridge and tossing them into the lake.

“Rider coming!” someone shouted from the rooftop.

Borenson turned to see a lone rider racing from the south in the dusk, his swift gray imperial warhorse thundering over the road. The rider bent low, his robes flapping wildly in the wind of his passage.

He raced along the road and rounded the bend. The bridge was more than halfway destroyed, but his powerful steed leapt the gulf and skidded to a halt not more than a dozen yards behind Borenson.

“Hail, Sir?...” Marshal Chondler said.

The rider came to a halt, and sat on his horse, peering critically at the defenses. He was an old man in gray robes, with gray hair and ruddy cheeks. A strange light was in his eyes, and Borenson felt unreasonably that he knew the man from somewhere.

As he tried to imagine where he’d met the fellow, his mind returned to his childhood. Near his home there had been a peach orchard where he’d liked to go. He’d spent many an afternoon beneath a crooked old peach tree, its boughs so heavy with fruit that they swept the ground, and he’d imagined that he was in a deep forest filled with wolves and lions. He’d always felt a great sense of peace there, and now he felt that peace again.

“Binnesman!” Myrrima cried. “What are you doing here?”

The old fellow looked down on Myrrima, and Borenson finally recognized the old wizard. He had aged forty years in the past two days. “I’ve come to protect my charges,” he said. “Perhaps for the last time.”

He said no more for a moment, just peered up at the defenses, studying the stonework for signs of weakness that only a wizard could see. Just ahead, blocking the causeway where the barbican had been, piles of stone bristled with sharpened reaver blades, forming odd little humped barriers. Borenson had seen drawings of them in a book. They were called hedgehogs. They had been laid out in a staggered pattern to slow any reaver charge enough so that archers and artillerymen atop the towers could use the causeway as a killing field.

Beyond that, two new guard towers rose north and south above the city gate.

“The mortar is far from dry in those towers,” Binnesman muttered under his breath. “The reavers could knock them down with a thought.” He frowned with concern and began muttering a spell, sparing no thought for Borenson, High Marshal Chondler, or any other man.

Chondler asked the wizard, “How did you come here? Why did you leave the Earth King’s side?”

Binnesman peered down at the High Marshal. “Foolishness. I came here by my own foolishness,” the wizard said at last. “I was wounded in the Underworld, and Gaborn buried me for my own protection. For long I lay beneath the Earth, healing, and pondered. As I did, the reaver horde thundered over my head. By the time I woke, Gaborn was far gone, beyond my power to reach him.

“I suspected then that the Earth suffered me to get wounded for a purpose. I led Gaborn into the Underworld because I felt that he needed me. But you are all under my protection, and I knew that I was needed here, also.

“So when I had healed enough, I took care of some urgent matters to the east, then came as fast as I could.”

“I thank you,” Marshal Chondler said. “A wizard of your stature will be welcome indeed.”

Binnesman peered at the castle walls. Worry etched his brow, and he shook his head. “I fear that there is little that I can do. But I will try.”

He dismounted and looked as if he would march into the castle. But he stopped and peered hard at Myrrima, then put a hand on her shoulder.

“Your time is at hand, woman. The enemies of the Earth are gathering, and perhaps only you can resist them. Help us.” He squeezed her shoulder, as if to comfort her, and then strode away.

Myrrima stood for a moment, then went to the moat. She reached down and dipped an arrow into the water, sat there for a long moment drawing runes upon the water’s surface, dipping each arrow from her quiver in turn.

Borenson watched her for a long moment. He did not understand the significance of the runes that she sketched, but he dared not disturb a wizardess at her work.

He headed toward the castle, just behind High Marshal Chondler, Sarka Kaul, and the Wizard Binnesman. As Borenson walked the length of the causeway a garlicky scent wafted up, a scent so powerful it nearly brought tears to his eyes.

“What’s this?” Binnesman asked, peering down.

“Onions and garlic, boiled with reaver philia,” High Marshal Chondler said. “I’m hoping that this reek bothers them more than it does us.”

A dangerous smile worked on the wizard’s lips. “Yes, this may be more help than all of your walls and all of your arrows.”

Just before the curtain wall of the castle stood one last low wall, a bulwark of substantial proportions. Here, once again, the reavers’ own weapons would work against them. The wall bristled with bent reaver blades, so that they looked like a crown of wicked thorns set atop the stone. Logs and oil-soaked rags were worked into the mix.

Three sally ports just wide enough to let a horse pass through were placed beneath the bulwark.

Chondler led the party into the town square, where similar bulwarks ringed the square. Streets led west, north, and south beneath the bulwarks. Sally ports let men pass under. Binnesman studied the bulwarks with a critical eye, as if what he saw worried him. He suddenly raised his staff overhead and began sketching runes of strength upon the wall.

The men on the castle walls cheered to have a wizard of Binnesman’s stature blessing their fortifications.

Marshal Chondler halted. Binnesman turned and uttered a spell over the garlic-strewn causeway. As he worked, Marshal Chondler bent in his saddle, and said, “That will be your station, Sir Borenson.” He nodded toward the sally port beneath the ramparts on the left. “You’ll be fighting in a team. In our last battle, the reavers took the walls in minutes. The only thing that gave them pause was men of sound heart, banded together. When confronted by such a force, the reavers grew confused. They didn’t know which adversary might strike next, or which might pose the greatest danger.

“When the reavers charge, you’ll set the bulwark here afire. It should give you ample light to see by and provide extra protection from the reavers.”

“The dead reavers will pile up quickly,” Borenson said, “leaving us no room to fight.”

“I’ve taken that into account,” Chondler agreed. “We expect that you will need to retreat, if only to give you room to fight. As you fall back, you’ll defend Garlands Street. There are three more bulwarks like this up the lane. We have archers stationed atop the roofs and in the windows of every market. You must hold the reavers as the commoners fall back.”

Garlands Street ran the length of the whole island, a distance of some two miles. Ramshackle merchant shops lined the street for the first half mile, shops that stood three or four stories tall. The buildings leaned so close together that the pitched roofs from every shop nearly joined. After that, dilapidated warehouses and smaller hovels squatted along the street’s margins.

“As a last resort,” Chondler said, “we have boats in the marina, enough to carry out a few hundred people. You’ll hold the reavers there, if you can.”

“Fair enough,” Borenson said. He’d never been down to the old underground marina, and didn’t even know the way, but he wasn’t worried. He could simply follow the fleeing warriors. Besides, he doubted that he’d live long enough to make it to the boats.

“Good luck,” Chondler said. He eyed the south tower just above Borenson’s head, not a dozen yards away. Myrrima had just come from washing her arrows. “Lady Myrrima,” he continued. “Take your steel bow up to the third story, and relieve the archer there. I suspect that you will want to guard your husband’s back.”

“Thank you,” Myrrima said.

Binnesman finished his spell, and Sarka Kaul peered up at the wizard and Chondler. “Now,” the Days said, “let us take counsel together and see if we can figure out how to save this city.”

As Chondler, Sarka Kaul, and Binnesman hurried up toward the duke’s old Keep on the hill, Borenson watched the wizard.

Despite the fact that an innumerable horde of reavers marched on the city, Borenson felt a flicker of hope.

Myrrima stood with him for a long moment, her hand wrapped about her bow. She bit her lower lip nervously and tapped her foot for a moment, but said nothing. Borenson realized that she felt shy about making public displays of affection, though she made up for it in private. Atop the walls, commoners began to sing a war song.

Myrrima leaned forward, wrapped one arm around his shoulders, and just held him for a long moment. She didn’t say anything, and finally Borenson whispered, “I love you. I think I was destined to love you.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Myrrima said. “After this battle, you can show me how much you love me, instead of jawing about it.”

Borenson said nothing. He was standing inside the castle where his father had died, and the ground trembled from the tread of advancing reavers.

“This is a good place to fight,” Myrrima said. “Water is all around us. Can you feel its power?”

“No,” Borenson answered. “I can hear the small waves lapping on the rocks, and I can smell the lake in the air. But I don’t feel anything.”

“It whispers comfort to me,” Myrrima said. “Don’t resist the reavers too much. Don’t stand against them like a wall. They’ll break you if you do. You have to yield like waves of water. Rush forward to meet their fury, and rise when you must. Flow back when you have to. Learn to dance away like perch before the pike, and then leap in again for the strike.” She had a peculiar light in her eye.

“I’ll do the best I can,” Borenson said, somewhat bemused by her advice.

He kissed her then for a long moment. A far-seer on the wall shouted, “Reavers are charging in advance of the army! Hundreds of them!”

“Come,” Borenson said. “Let’s have a look.”

He quickly ducked beneath the sally port on Garlands Street and climbed a wooden ladder to the castle wall. Archers and footmen guarded the wallwalk, one every three feet or so. But there were no commoners up here, no gawkers to get in the way of the fighting men, as Borenson would have expected. Chondler had wisely forbidden them.

The air up here smelled of fresh rye bread and roast beef. The guards on the wall were eating one last hasty meal. They’d need the nourishment for the battle ahead.

Borenson squinted to the south, but could see little in the failing light. The reavers marched down the mountainsides in a black tide, their main front hidden among the hills. Nor did he see much in the way of advance forces, only a few shadowy reavers out in the fields—black monolithic bodies racing among the corpses of dead cohorts.

“Any sign of Lowicker’s troops?” Borenson asked a stout warrior.

“Nothing to the north yet,” he said, gripping his war hammer nervously.

Just then a flight of fire arrows arced from the castle wall and struck piles of bracken along the road at the end of the causeway. The oil-soaked piles quickly took fire.

By their light, Borenson could see a bit better. Reavers were indeed coming, racing across the fields like madness. They zigzagged this way and that, weaving like ants or bees, trying to catch a scent.

Some of them raced up to the lip of the vast pit where the world worm had breached, and crawled precariously about the rim.

They’re trying to learn what they can of the previous battle, Borenson realized. They smell the words written on the ground.

A couple of reavers raced toward the castle, to the end of the peninsula. One stepped on a caltrop hidden under the straw. It hissed in pain and raised its tail high, spraying a warning, as it pulled the caltrop from its foot.

Its companion suddenly darted about on the straw-covered fields, plucking up the hidden caltrops and hurling them into the lake.

“They’re smarter than we give them credit for,” someone grumbled at Borenson’s back.

Neither of the scouts dared step onto the causeway. Instead, they approached the head of the fell mage, whose mouth was stuffed with garlicky philia.

They drew near, quivering in fear at the scent, and then both scouts darted south, toward their front lines.

Borenson doubted that they would have to go far. The castle trembled beneath his feet and the earth grumbled loudly, like approaching thunder. To his surprise, he could make out a mass, a greater darkness blurring aboveground not ten miles south. The reavers were closer than he’d imagined.

“It won’t be long now,” Myrrima said.

Several dozen reavers had gathered just a few hundred yards south of the castle, over on the shore. During the previous battle, reavers had begun to build some sort of a strange tower there, with blue spires made of mucilage that twisted up like narwhale horns. These had all come down when the world worm surfaced.

Now the reavers began lifting the spires, tilting them upward, so that they rose hundreds of feet in the air.

In moments they somehow secured the base of these towers, and reavers began to climb up.

A far-seer nearby shouted, “There’s something new here, up on them towers, a kind of reaver we ain’t seen before.”

Borenson squinted, but could barely make out the dark shapes. Only three towers were up, and each of them leaned precariously, like broken narwhale horns. Half a dozen reavers clung to the tops of these towers. Borenson could discern that the reavers were somehow misshapen.

“Describe them,” Borenson called to the far-seer.

“They look like blade-bearers,” the fellow answered, “but thinner and longer of body. And their capes are at least twice as long as a common reaver’s, with more philia.”

A reaver’s “cape” referred to the bony head plates that extended from the sweet triangle to the crown of the head.

“They’re looking at us,” the far-seer called, “studying our defenses.”

“Impossible,” Borenson grunted. The reavers had to be six or seven hundred yards away, and Averan had said that they couldn’t see more than two hundred. Yet as he squinted south, he could clearly see that these odd scouts had topped their towers, and hung like mantises clinging to twigs. Furthermore, they seemed to peer toward the castle, all of their philia waving madly.

He spotted movement not far away, perhaps five miles, and realized that a huge contingent of reavers was racing toward them in a dark tide.

He had imagined that the main front of the horde was an hour away. But reaver scouts charged ahead of the common ranks. He didn’t have an hour. He didn’t even have fifteen minutes.

“You’d better take your post,” he told Myrrima, as dozens of powerful Runelords issued to the castle gate, making their stand beneath the rampart.

Borenson squeezed Myrrima’s hand, and she reached into a pocket of her tunic, pulled out a red silk scarf. It was the same one that Borenson had tied to his lance when he’d fought High Marshal Skalbairn in the tournament a week ago, at Castle Sylvarresta.

“Here,” she said, tying it about his neck. “Keep this safe for me.”

Then she turned and raced into the tower, disappearing beneath a dark arch.

Borenson slid down the ladder and went to his own post. He watched the castle tower, until he saw movement in the window on the third story. Myrrima reached out a pale hand and waved, but he couldn’t see her face.

Borenson had been so preoccupied with watching the reaver scouts, he had failed to notice that several men had taken their posts beneath the rampart on Garlands Street. A pair of torches were stuck in the dirt by the sally port, and by their light he spotted someone he knew, Captain Tempest of Longmot. Like Borenson, he was a stout warrior but did not have a wealth of endowments. A third man was a Knight Equitable, Sir Greenswar of Toom, who had taken enough endowments of metabolism to ensure an early grave. Two more champions beside him wore the golden surcoats of Indhopal. They introduced themselves with thick accents. One was a swarthy fellow named Hamil Owatt, ninth son of the Emir to Tuulistan. The second was a tall black man from Deyazz, a warrior from the fierce Tintu tribe named Nguya Kinsagga.

Nguya looked Borenson over, and blinked once in a sign of respect, but took the lead of the small band. “I fought reavers at this gate a week ago,” Nguya said. “They do not fear a man who backs away from them or one who stands his ground. But when you advance against them, it stops their hearts.” He studied each man, as if by staring he could bore the information into him. He raised his spear and shook it mightily.

“Don’t wear yourselves out,” Borenson suggested to those who had great endowments. “There are five of us here. If any of you start to tire, fall back and let someone else strike the killing blow.”

Nguya nodded appreciatively, and the men took their posts.

From the barbican, Borenson could see nothing. The ground began to rumble in earnest as the reaver horde approached. The rumble grew steadily louder, and soon gree began to whip above the courtyard, a sign that reavers were here.

Borenson found his heart pounding, and he measured the seconds by its beat. He wished that he could go back up on the wall and take a look.

Excited shouts rose from far-seers, and he listened to their reports. “They’re almost to the city gates, but they’re hanging back.”

The thwonk, thwonk, thwonk of artillery fire rose from the rafts out on the lake as the marksmen shot at reavers near the shore. “Milord,” one far-seer cried after a few minutes. “I see Lowicker’s troops cresting the hills beyond the Barren’s Wall,” and seconds later, “Milord, a spy balloon is taking off to the east!”

Only Raj Ahten’s flameweavers used spy balloons, he knew. He could feel no wind down here in the town square. The castle walls rose up all about him. He peered up, and saw stars twinkling in the heavens, but smoke from the south was covering them like a gauze, and little light reached the streets below. But outside the wind had been blowing lightly to the east. The balloon would soar above the city, above the battle, and from there Raj Ahten’s flameweavers would be able to watch in comfort. In an hour’s time, perhaps, the balloon would drop to the east, among his troops.

Borenson glanced south and thought he spotted a man on the castle wall, beneath the dark arch of a tower.

The man had red hair and a familiar stance, and for a moment Borenson’s heart leapt in his chest, for he thought it was his father.

But he looked again and no one was there.

He gulped. It was his father’s wraith, he felt sure. He had been smiling, as if in welcome.

Am I to die here? Borenson wondered.

He looked about, and began to feel panicked for the first time in his life. Always before, he had met battle with grim determination, laughing in the face of death.

Now he wondered where his father lay. He had found the man’s body a week ago, up on the green beneath Duke Paldane’s palace. Carris was built on some low hills that rose out of the water. To the east, the hills were riddled with ancient caves and tunnels—tombs for the dead, warehouses meant to store food and troops in time of siege. Most likely, Borenson’s father was down in the tombs by now.

“The reavers are massing,” a watchman shouted. “I see their fell mage! By the Seven Stones, she’s big! Get ready!”

But for long minutes there was no movement from the reavers. Someone in the streets begged, “What’s going on?”

“They came near the causeway, but after one sniff, they backed off. Now they’re out near the worm hill,” the far-seer shouted. “There’s a bunch of sorceresses. It looks as if they want to rebuild that rune they had out there, the Seal of Desolation.”

Borenson peered about. Fires were springing up all along the castle walls. Young men, torchbearers, were racing along the wallwalk, bringing light to anyone who wanted it. He could hear people shouting messages all up and down the length of Carris, but the hiss of reavers, the pounding of reaver feet, drowned out their cries. Where he stood everyone waited in anticipation of the battle, but he had a sense of the city as a hive, a vast hive filled with men and women who bustled about in preparation for war.

The Wizard Binnesman came down into the courtyard, then went rushing up Garlands Street toward the marinas.

Moments later, Marshal Chondler came running into the town square, a torch in one hand, a reaver dart in the other. “All Runelords,” he called, “hold your positions. All lords to the east and south of me,” he called, “on my command will begin an orderly retreat to the tombs. All commoners, head for the marina immediately.”

“What?” one lord shouted down from the wallwalk. “You would have us retreat before the battle begins?”

In answer, Chondler ordered, “Any man who wants to live will do as I say—now!”

Hundreds of commoners, archers and healers alike, began to race down from the towers and hurry up Garlands Street, following Binnesman.

Borenson saw immediately what Chondler intended. Sarka Kaul had warned that Rialla Lowicker and Raj Ahten would not send their troops into battle until Carris was defeated. So Chondler hoped to feign defeat in order to lure them into coming to his aid. By sending lords to guard the tombs, and commoners to the hidden halls that led to the marinas, Chondler would be hiding most of his men underground.

Gree whipped overhead, squeaking as if in pain, and reavers hissed like a sea.

Chondler climbed atop the wall, looked down for several long minutes.

In that time, Borenson saw the spy balloon hovering in the air like a giant graak. The wind was blowing it right over the city. It peeked over the castle walls. Flameweavers glowed within its gondola, as if the fire would burst from them at any moment.

Chondler shouted to his men, “Don’t let the reavers build that rune. Loose the catapults.”

His marksman shouted, “Sir, at this range we can’t hit it with anything larger than grape shot!”

“Then use grape shot!” Chondler insisted.

Moments later the artillerymen atop the tower cut loose, sending a hail of iron balls from the walls.

The reavers hissed in outrage.

The far-seers began to cry, “They’re coming!”

The thwonk of ballistas filled the air and the twang of a thousand bows arose as missiles rained down, clattering on the causeway.

“By the Powers, they’re fast!” someone swore.

It won’t be long, Borenson thought, even as screams of terror rose along the walls. He grabbed a torch and threw it onto the rampart overhead. The torch landed among the spikes and oil-soaked rags. The rampart blazed, filling the courtyard with light.

Suddenly a reaver landed in the town square, snarling, a huge mage with a crystalline staff. A pair of ballista bolts protruded from her flank.

Borenson froze in astonishment.

She whirled and let fly a spell as arrows rained down on her. A red cloud boiled from her staff, and poisonous vapors filled the courtyard, even as arrows pierced her sweet triangle and she shuddered to the ground.

“Where did she come from?” Borenson wondered, and realized that she had leapt from above. He glanced up and saw three more reavers scurry over the castle wall, sending stones flying as they crashed into merlons.

A reaver atop the wall lurched forward and swung his long blade, hitting three men at once. The force of the blow sent a spray flying toward Borenson. A pile of guts landed sloppily at his feet, while blood showered from the sky.

“They’re over the walls!” someone cried. A reaver suddenly bounded from the castle wall to the top of a merchant’s shop across the street. Sixteen tons of monster hit the roof, which collapsed under the weight. Timbers shattered and rock from the walls tumbled away. Floor after floor buckled, while the men and women inside cried out in pain and horror.

Archers fell back from the castle wall firing toward the monsters in terror.

The mage’s spell hit in a cloud, and Borenson heard words ring in his ears, “Crawl, thou son of man.” Immediately, dismay coursed through him, and his legs went so weak that he could hardly stand. His bowels felt loose, and his heart pounded as if it would burst.

Along the walls, men dropped in panic. Bows fell from the hands of archers. Stout warriors collapsed in terror.

A huge blade-bearer plunged from the castle wall, into the street behind Borenson, landing with a crash as its massive body thudded to the cobblestones, shattering the street.

Borenson screamed a battle cry and charged.

37 In the Lair of Bones

Averan peered down the tunnel that led to the Lair of Bones. A huge blade-bearer was rushing toward her, all the philia along its head waving in alarm at the scent of blood. It skidded to a halt as it became aware of her.

Averan cleared her mind and sent a thought to the monster. “I’m not real. You are worm dreaming.”

The reaver froze for an instant, confused, its huge blade in hand. Averan used that moment to strike. She leapt, waving her staff in the air as she did, forming the rune that she had seen Binnesman’s wylde use so often.

She whacked the blade-bearer on the head, striking the bony plates above its muzzle. The monster’s skull imploded, sending shards of bone lancing into its brain. The creature collapsed.

Averan scrambled past the dead reaver, toward the Lair of Bones. She imagined that no one had ever felt as lonely as she did, rushing through the ribbed tunnels. Averan was heading into the heart of the boundless warren, deeper than any human had ever been.

Sweat streamed down her face, and the silence seemed like a leaden weight. The only sound was the echo of her footfalls, the gasp of her breath.

If I get hurt or die down here, Averan thought, no one will ever find me.

The tunnel wound through the warren, joining others at frequent junctures, becoming a twisted maze. Crawlways led in all directions—one to her left ran a dozen miles to underground lakes where reavers raised enormous blindfish. Another to her left dropped to an old hatching ground where young sorceresses studied the making of fire runes. Another tunnel plummeted down to reaver foundries where brutish workers forged tools of steel.

Another to her right plummeted down into a tunnel whose walls were pure blood metal, a vein of metal so rich that Raj Ahten himself could not have imagined it in his grandest dreams.

Averan sniffed as she went, making sure that her recollections were correct. She had spent hours communing with the Waymaker, plumbing the depths of its memory. He had known the path well, and Averan now negotiated the twisted warrens with ease.

But she had miles to go.

She raced to a pair of howlers, huge yellow spidery creatures that were lugging stone buckets of ore down to the mines. The monsters discarded their buckets and trumpeted an eerie warning as Averan raced past.

Even the big howlers were more afraid of Averan than she was of them.

A dozen miles she ran, meeting no reavers. In Waymaker’s memory, these tunnels had always been bustling. For the first time Averan began to understand how many reavers the One True Master must have sent to attack Carris.

She had emptied the Underworld.

Averan was panting from thirst when she reached a side tunnel that sloped down a hundred yards and then leveled out again as it emptied into the Lair of Bones.

Here, the ground burned hot. Even with endowments of stamina, no human could survive long.

Averan sprinted into the chamber. The Lair of Bones was vast, part of a cavern that had existed for millennia. Dripstone hung from the roof, covered with feathery grasses and roots that slowly stirred the air. Reaver bones littered the floor—ancient skulls with gaping crystalline jaws, serrated teeth as long as Averan’s arm, and huge leg bones as thick as logs. Dried claws groped the air like scythes, while everywhere lay piles of horny carapace plates so exotic that humans and other surface creatures had nothing to compare them to. The bones were as clear as crystal. Some were so old that they were as dull red as amber, others were the citrine hues of the newly dead.

The bones climbed upon the ground to a depth of four dozen yards in places, forming small hills, and the reavers had cleared a path between them. Averan trod through a valley of bones.

These were the vanquished foes of the One True Master, left as trophies so that other reavers might be properly humbled as they sought audience before her.

Until Averan saw the aged skeletons, she had not truly understood how old the One True Master might be, how hoary her malevolence.

She knew that the monster had subjugated all of the other reaver hives. But she hadn’t guessed how many queens had been destroyed in the process.

The dead numbered in the thousands.

Averan slowed as she wound through the vale.

There should be more reavers here, she thought, at least some of the queen’s Shadow Guard.

But the vast chamber lay silent.

That means they must have gone to the surface, Averan thought. They’ll be leading her troops.

Still, Averan’s gut warned that she wouldn’t be able to reach the Chamber of the Seals without passing some guards.

She wouldn’t smell them. The reavers could hide their scents, make themselves smell like rocks and plants. Nor would she see them if they chose to hide.

She cleared her mind, reached out with her senses, and felt him there, the Consort of Shadows.

He was up the trail, waiting patiently. He’d suspected that someone might try to make it here.

“It’s me,” Averan whispered to the creature’s mind. She timidly ambled forward. “I had to come. I have to destroy the Seals.”

Faintly, almost as if against its will, she heard the Consort of Shadows answer. “I smelled you. I knew you were coming.”

“Let me pass,” Averan said.

Ahead lay a great hill of bones that rose seventy feet into the air, so that they almost scraped against the ceiling. At the very top lay the skulls of giant reavers, noses pointed outward like the petals surrounding a daisy, their open mouths gaping in every direction.

They formed a nest. The staves of mighty sorceresses were thrust between the skulls, sticking up like a crown. This was the great throne of the One True Master, the seat of power from which she peered down upon her servants. Above the nest, enormous stalactites hung like teeth.

“The scent of command is upon me,” the Consort of Shadows replied. “I must guard this place.”

Some bones beneath the throne suddenly shifted, and the Consort of Shadows scrambled up, looming above Averan. In one clawed hand he held a great blade, a weapon unlike any that Averan had ever seen. The metal was cold and black, and the blade rippled in waves. She could smell runes written in scents by powerful reaver mages along the length of it. In the other claw he held a black net woven of reaver hide.

He was huge, and Averan now recognized the scent of hundreds of runes upon him, and could see their pale blue light flickering like a low flame along the lengths of his arms and on the bony ridge of his enormous head.

He moved with tremendous speed and grace, and Averan dared not fight him.

“Your ancestor ate the brains of an Earth Warden,” Averan reminded him. “You know what he knew. I don’t come to destroy your people but to help them.”

The monster lunged.

Averan raised her staff and imagined a rune on the ceiling above, a rune of stone breaking. Instantly the stone bubbled and the rune took shape.

The roof of the chamber began to collapse. Massive stalactites sheared away under their own weight.

The Consort of Shadows darted to the side to avoid the first of them. Averan sprang back, running as fast as she could.

Stalactites lanced down while slabs of rock flaked from the roof. Above her the Lair of Bone was collapsing.

Averan ran for her life, racing through the valley of bones. She dodged just as a boulder crashed in her path.

Raining stone pummeled ancient piles of reaver bone. It thundered, and the floor shook beneath her.

Averan sprinted toward the mouth of the chamber, fearing that the Consort of Shadows would leap on her at any moment. Rubble pounded the floor. A choking cloud of dust as black as night roiled out from the mess, filling the cave, so that the light of her opal pin was almost worthless. Averan could see no more.

She threw herself beneath a reaver skull. Stone roared down around her and chunks of rock bounced from the path and slapped her ankles. Blinding dust rushed over her as Averan threw her hands in front of her eyes for protection. Thick dust worked its way into her ears, settled down the back of her throat, clogged her nose. There was nothing to do for it. She waited a long moment for the cave-in to finish.

She opened her senses, reached out with her mind, and sought the Consort of the Shadows.

The huge reaver lord was in pain. Rocks by the ton weighed down upon his back, slowly crushing the air from him. His right arm was pinned, and with his left he tried to dig his way out. But even with his incredible strength he did not seem to have a hope of escape. He was not a hundred yards behind her.

I’m sorry, Averan sent the thought to him. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

The sound of falling stone tapered away. Only a few rocks clanked down from the ceiling and bounced as they settled among the debris.

Averan climbed up from under the overhanging skull and tried to peer around. The dust was so thick that it blinded her, and it would hang in the air for long hours, hours that she dared not waste.

She sprang up and picked a path over broken stones, hurrying toward the Chamber of the Seals. Tons of stone and rubble covered the Lair of Bones. Large rocks shifted each time she stepped on them, and she had to wend her way around massive boulders. Averan peered up to the great throne, but the reaver skulls were crushed beneath the tonnage. Averan squinted painfully as she fought through the dust.

She climbed to the stones where the Consort of Shadows lay buried, worried that at any instant his massive paw might reach up and crush her.

She peered into his mind, felt rage and frustration. He struggled to free himself, unaware of how close she might be. Gingerly, she climbed onto a large stone, fearing that the monster might sense her added weight.

Suddenly a stone shifted beneath her, along with dozens of other rocks nearby that sank a foot as if they had dropped into a sinkhole.

He’s coming! she realized.

She leapt thirty feet, landed on a large stone, and leapt again. Froglike, she bounded past her buried foe.

She reached the far side of the Lair of Bones. A tunnel gaped before her, and the rubble suddenly came to an end.

The Chamber of the Seals was just down the corridor, only three miles. Averan could run it in minutes.

She raced into the tunnel, bypassing crawlways that led to the One True Master’s personal quarters, to her egg chambers. Averan wiped her eyes, fighting back tears.

The face of Gaborn burned in her memory, and for a moment she worried about how he fared. She was so shaken that she didn’t notice the tremors at first.

An earthquake began to build. The riblike supports on the walls swayed with the motion, and the floor beneath her began to rise and fall as if in waves. Chips of rock and dust peeled from the roof and cracked to the ground.

The Earth is in pain, Averan thought. She could feel it, the dull sustained ache that cut through the very bones of the world, adding to her own distress.

She rounded a corner, and a reaver blocked her way, a big lumbering matron. It became aware of Averan charging headlong, and wheeled to flee into the egg chambers. Averan could smell its distress call.

In the pocket of her wizard robes she carried a sprig of parsley that Binnesman had given her days ago. He had told her to tie it in seven knots and throw it on her trail if anything gave chase. She had tied it in knots, but hadn’t needed it until now. Suddenly, the sprig blossomed in her memory.

She grasped its dried leaves between her fingers, dropped it to the floor, and gave a little chant.

Averan raced along the tunnel. The floor trembled wildly as another tremor hit, and suddenly ahead it buckled. Slabs of rock tilted up. Averan leapt over them, racing like a hare.

It wasn’t far now—up one tunnel, round a bend, over a bridge where burning white mud pots splattered against a wall, round a corner.

And Averan was there—a chamber much smaller than the Dedicates’ Keep had been. It was only a couple of hundred yards from one end to the other. As in the keep, sluggish water flowed through a small pond, bubbling up from a hot spring. A few stonewood trees grew from the ceiling.

The whole room was eerily lit.

Upon the floor lay a vast rune, fully a hundred yards across: the Rune of Desolation. It was evil to behold, and seemed all the more depraved for being carved in stone. It was no simple shape. To Averan’s eye, it looked almost like two snakes seeking to devour each other within a vast circle. But other protuberances jutted up among the scene to monstrous effect. A noxious haze circled above it, obscuring the symbol.

The rune itself was made of earth. Knobs and ridges of carved stone rose from the ground in varying heights, forming a bas-relief.

Actinic flashes of red and blue shot from the rune, eerily lighting the vast chamber, as if the flames of a hearth flickered upon the walls. Averan could discern no source for the fire. The ground seemed to fulminate, for she could see glowing embers, yet earth remained unconsumed.

Averan peered about, searching. Gaborn had told her to destroy the seals. But she saw only one seal before her, a Seal of Desolation.

Where are the others?

She tried to imagine what nearby rooms they might be hidden in. But the Waymaker’s memory only confirmed that the runes stood before her.

Then she gasped: there, among the flickering lights she discerned a shape. If she squinted hard, she could see it, a rune carved not in earth but formed in the sourceless fire. The Seal of the Inferno.

And there, above the earth and fire floated a noxious gray haze, swirling in lazy circles. No wind made the smoke swirl so. The third rune was also here, the Seal of Heaven, written in currents of air.

The seals were stacked atop one another.

Her first instinct was to break the Seal of Desolation.

I can collapse the roof on it, Averan thought.

She stretched out her staff, and prepared a spell to weaken the stone.

38 Beneath the Shadow

Gaborn danced away as the One True Master advanced. With every step backward, the Earth warned him, “Flee,” and then again, “Strike!”

Thus he knew that it was not his task to face the monster yet. She was beyond his strength to battle. He raced away from her, slaughtering her Dedicates as he did.

In Carris the battle was in full swing. Dozens of his Chosen were torn from him in an instant, and Gaborn cried out in pain.

Dark tendrils of vapor wrapped around his leg, and ice seemed to freeze his heart. The voice of the One True Master whispered in his mind. “You have failed. Because of your weakness, your Chosen will die.”

Gaborn saw as if in a vision from the hills west of Carris, reavers roaring across the causeway in a black tide, leaping onto the castle walls. The city seemed to be aflame, the only light in a blackened world. Outside the castle, a fell mage and her sorceresses sought to complete a new Seal of Desolation. Actinic blue lights rose from the ground where it took form.

Above the castle, a balloon shaped like a graak wafted through the smoke.

Gaborn’s army was crumbling. Men raced from the gates, fleeing in terror atop the castle wall. From this distance, Gaborn saw a reaver reach up to pull a young boy from a tower window. Gaborn knew that what he witnessed was true, for the boy was one of his Chosen, and Gaborn felt the boy’s life ripped from him.

And then the view changed and Gaborn saw, as if from above, Raj Ahten to the west of Carris, high on a hill, with his troops behind him. His face was a mask of ruin, with his ear burned off, the skin seared from his jaw, and his eye puckering white and blind.

He exulted at the slaughter in the distance, watched the reavers bursting through walls to get at the people that hid in their homes and cellars.

“This is your doing,” the One True Master whispered. “You made him your enemy, and sought his life.”

The Master sought to crush Gaborn with guilt, like a massive stone, but he would have none of it.

“Liar!” he shouted. “He made himself my enemy—at your bidding!”

The One True Master is only seeking to delay me, he realized. Gaborn raced to another Dedicate, and plunged his reaver dart into its kidney.

“Duck,” the Earth whispered, and Gaborn threw himself flat to the ground, dodging beneath the knees of a reaver.

As he did, the One True Master snapped her vile whip, slicing the air above his head.

“Dodge,” the Earth commanded, and Gaborn leapt aside as the monster hissed a curse.

“Gasht,” the words sounded, and a black funnel of wind issued from her staff, racing near the spot where Gaborn had stood. The ground boiled where it touched, and flakes of rock splintered from the floor. Three reaver Dedicates, seemingly frozen in time, fell beneath the blast. Their blood and bones spattered through the chamber.

The floor bucked beneath Gaborn’s feet as a strong earthquake rocked the chamber. Stones and dust fell from the ceiling.

“Strike!” the earth commanded, and Gaborn leapt over a reaver and plunged his dart into another vector. He craned his neck and felt gratified to see one of the ghostly blue runes on the monster fade to gray.

The tendrils of darkness swept over him, and Gaborn found himself wishing to curl up on the floor and die. The monster fought him, sought to take control of his limbs.

As if uttering a curse he shouted, “The Glories deliver me!”

In that moment, Gaborn wished for nothing more than to become pure light himself, to fight the corruption he beheld.

The monster wheezed as if stricken, and the shadow withdrew.

The way his very desire seemed to engender pain in the creature gave Gaborn sudden insight.

I can do it, he thought. I can call upon the Glories, and she knows it!

“No,” the monster whispered. “You’re not worthy.” Images flashed before his eyes: a pair of reavers tearing a man in two as they fought to eat him; a woman rushing from a reaver as its blade whipped down, cutting her in half. “This is your legacy,” the beast whispered.

But Gaborn did not believe it. By making him view the world’s corruption, the beast hoped to dishearten him.

“I am worthy,” Gaborn said. “The Glories have made me so.”

The One True Master wheezed and lunged.

Gaborn found that he had backed beneath a twisted stonewood tree, and the bole of it bored into his ribs.

The monster sprang forward in an astonishing leap.

“Jump,” the Earth warned. Gaborn leapt thirty feet in the air, rising between two branches of the tree. “Dodge.” He felt the warning, and Gaborn twisted as he leapt. “Dodge,” the earth warned again, and he twisted once more as he dropped toward the ground.

The One True Master raked the air with her crystalline staff, swatting at him with incredible speed. Once, twice, three times she sought to strike him as he fell, and each time he only barely managed to twist away from the blow.

As he dropped, Gaborn saw a light at the mouth of the chamber, and huge dancing shadows. Iome had come to help.

Gaborn landed on hard rock. The ground began to buck from the force of the earthquake, and stones showered from the ceiling.

For miles Iome had run, following Gaborn, until at last she rounded a bend and saw a light ahead. She could make out man-shapes, dozens of them, and her voice caught in her throat, for she imagined that Gaborn had found an Inkarran war party.

But when she neared she saw only a tattered band of skeletal beings, the shadows of people dressed in rags, and she recalled Averan’s tale of prisoners in the dark places of the world.

She rushed up to them.

“Where is Gaborn?” Iome begged.

No one answered at first, for she had many endowments and spoke too quickly, but one finally pointed down the tunnel. “That way! Hurry!”

Iome raced down the trail, over a floor polished as smooth as marble by millions of reavers that had trundled over it during the centuries. Her heart hammered with every stride. She knew that Gaborn’s need was upon him, for he had left no marks at side tunnels.

She glanced down each crawlway that crossed her path, afraid that she might lose the way. She saw great rooms carved in stone, and longed to search them, to learn what she could of the secret ways of reavers.

Over the weary days of travel she had lost her ability to track time. Her race seemed unending, measured only by the sense of urgency that drove her.

She rounded a bend, saw a trio of dead reavers, and the mouth of a tunnel. As if from a great distance, Gaborn shouted, “Iome, stay back!”

The ground bucked and swayed beneath her feet. Iome threw herself against a wall for support, and warily peered up, afraid that the roof would collapse, but the walls and roof were reinforced with mucilage from glue mums.

She raced into the mouth of a huge chamber. Stones tumbled from the ceiling. Dead reavers lay in humps all about. But in the distance, wading through a swarm of companions, Iome saw a reaver far more enormous and hideous than any that she’d ever imagined.

Its abdomen was so swollen with eggs that she looked bloated to the bursting point. Yet she danced over the battlefield with a speed and grace that left Iome breathless.

Then Iome spotted Gaborn, a second shadow lit only by the big reaver’s glowing runes. He was in something of a clearing, created as reavers rushed to escape his presence.

Gaborn and his adversary moved as if in dance, seeming to read each other’s minds. Gaborn recoiled backward some eighty feet, spinning in the air as he dodged the monster’s whip.

Never had Iome imagined such grace and speed in a man. It was like watching lightning arc across the heavens. To her, it seemed that Gaborn had become a force of nature, the Sum of All Men.

But the One True Master lunged toward him with equal speed, and if Gaborn was the Sum of All Men, then she seemed at this moment, with her power and deadly intent, to be the Sum of All Reavers.

Together, Gaborn and his attacker raced between a pair of grotesque stonewood trees.

“Iome,” Gaborn called. “Kill the vectors.”

All throughout the cave were countless reavers, each marked by softly glowing runes. Comprehension dawned in Iome. She peered about, searching for targets. To her left, her keen eyes detected a bright glow. Half a dozen reavers clustered around it, as if to shield it from view.

Iome raced down the hill, straight toward the light. Several young guards lunged toward her. As she neared them, she leapt toward one’s face. It lurched backward, and Iome dove under its legs, then sprang up behind it.

She saw a reaver lying there, with dozens of pale blue runes along its shoulders and head. She plunged her dart into the vector’s sweet triangle. Blood and brains gushed from the wound.

Two hundred yards away, the One True Master hissed in anger.

A stone plummeted to the floor nearby, shattering and sending its shards into the reavers all around. Several of them hissed in pain.

Iome peered about, seeking another victim.

In the city of Carris, Borenson raced to meet a reaver, heart pounding in terror.

“For Heredon!” Captain Tempest cried, rushing forward at Borenson’s side. The reaver whirled to meet them, rising up in a defensive posture. It’s huge blade arced overhead, and came swinging.

Borenson rolled to the side as Tempest lunged with a reaver dart, striking the beast in the thorax. The reaver lurched backward ripping the dart from Tempest’s hands, and began to roll about, kicking.

Another reaver came leaping over the castle walls and landed nearly atop it. It was one of the juveniles that Gaborn had seen from a distance, riding the back of a matron. The monster was small for a reaver, just smaller than an elephant, but it seemed to be all legs, and it moved swifter than any adult. The thing raced a few paces, grabbed some fleeing warrior from behind and bit him in half.

An arrow from the tower behind Borenson whizzed into its sweet triangle. The monster curled in on itself, like a wasp, and vainly began trying to pull out the arrow.

Vaguely, Borenson realized that great shadows were leaping over the castle wall—other juveniles—a hail of the swift creatures.

Borenson could see no sign of the heroes assigned to guard the gate. They were still inside the courtyard.

Flames roared to the south of Borenson. The oil and the wood on the burning ramparts sent a wall of flame searing forty feet high. The heat was so intense that Borenson didn’t dare try to run beneath the sally port. He was cut off from the others.

Borenson glanced up at the castle walls. The sound of artillery had all but gone silent. Reavers, both adult and juvenile, had already taken the top of the north tower, and a dozen monsters had scaled the castle wall above. Some men were rushing to face them, but the reavers would soon be swarming over the walls.

“Gasht!” came the sound of a spell. Borenson ducked by instinct.

He dodged toward the north tower, shouting “Myrrima, get out!”

A reaver raced along the wallwalk, and having seen the damage that its weight alone could cause, it bounded atop the tower. Rocks and debris rained down. The first three stories crumbled.

Borenson leapt to avoid a hail of falling stones. One burst near his foot, sending shards everywhere, and he heard Captain Tempest cry out in pain.

He glanced back. The warrior of Heredon was staring down in shock. A shard of stone, as sharp as a dagger, had lodged in his shin.

“Get to the healers!” Borenson shouted, even as the reaver above surged through the tower wall and leapt into the street.

To the north, at the far end of the island, various trumpeters began blowing distress calls and retreat, as if hoping that Queen Lowicker would send her troops into battle.

Borenson charged the reaver, a huge mage. He bounded a dozen feet in the air and brought his warhammer down with all his might, piercing the monster’s sweet triangle.

The long spikes on the head of the hammer hit with a chunk sound and bit through the mage’s flesh. But the sorceress was so large, he couldn’t penetrate deep into her brain.

The reaver shook her head, and her bony cape slammed into Borenson, hurled him thirty feet, where he crashed into the wall of a merchant’s shop. His mail and padding absorbed the impact against the mud—and-wattle facade, but the blow drove the breath from his lungs.

Borenson hit the ground and lay gasping for half a minute. The reaver mage whirled and peered at him, fanning the bony plates of its head wide, all of its philia waving wildly in alarm.

He could see dark blood pouring down its face. He had sorely wounded the creature. It must have decided that he was dead, for it whirled and was about to lope down the street, giving chase to commoners and lesser men who had begun fleeing in a crowd.

It’s leaving, Borenson thought. I should let it go.

But he couldn’t.

He scrambled to his feet and raced down the street a hundred yards, chasing the wounded reaver. It pounced on some retreating guardsman and halted a second as it made sure of the man.

Borenson sprang at the reaver from behind and swung his hammer, striking deep into its haunch.

The reaver hissed, and a stench exploded from its hind end. Too late, Borenson realized that it was a spell.

“Be as dry as dust, thou child of man.”

Immediately sweat gushed from Borenson’s every pore, and came streaming down his face. His bladder contracted, and warm urine rolled down his leg.

The mage whirled to face him, its jaws opening just the slightest.

“Damn you!” Borenson screamed as he dove into its mouth. The monster’s serrated teeth scraped his forehead, and he landed on a tongue as rough as stone.

The reaver snapped its mouth closed, but too late. Borenson was inside. He lunged to his feet, reversed his warhammer, and stabbed upward with the handle, trying to drive it through the beast’s soft palate. But in an instant Borenson was thrown off-balance and his weapon struck only bone.

He went flying sideways as the reaver shook its head, trying to dislodge him. He crashed against its sharp teeth, and grabbed onto one.

For only an instant the reaver shook, then stopped to feel if there was still movement. In that instant, Borenson lunged with his warhammer, and hit the creature in the soft palate again. Hot blood washed down on him in a gratifying burst.

The reaver stumbled forward, and then it dropped. Borenson was thrown from his feet, and scraped his face on the monster’s gravelly tongue.

He lay for a moment in pain, bleeding from a dozen small wounds, struggling to catch his breath. Sweat poured from him, and his own tongue began to swell from thirst.

He crawled to his knees. Reaver blood pumped hot from the gaping hole above, gushing out in a steaming shower.

Borenson laughed and crawled forward. The reaver’s mouth was closed. He couldn’t even see beyond its lips. A large reaver can top twelve tons, and much of that massive weight is in the bony plates of its head. Even a Runelord with all of his endowments of brawn can rarely lift more than a few hundred pounds.

Borenson set his feet in the reaver’s gums and leaned his back against its upper palate. He lifted with all of his might, but could not get the head to budge.

Outside, he could hear warhorns blaring, calling a retreat from the front gate. Folk were screaming in terror. By now dozens of reavers had breached the walls.

What do I do? he wondered.

He rolled onto his back, tried pushing up with his legs. But it was no use.

The reaver’s jaws were locked.

He pondered his predicament.

After the battle at Carris, he’d seen the reavers in the fields, jaws gaping wide as their muscles tightened. Before rigor mortis began to set in, the beast’s mouth would open of itself—in a few hours.

The safest thing would be to stay here until the battle was over. But he couldn’t just sit while others fought and died. Besides, Myrrima was in the north tower, where the battle raged hottest. If she was still alive, the reavers would soon block her escape.

“I’ve got to get out!” Borenson muttered.

He could think of only one thing to do: cut his way out. The only place he might do it was in the monster’s throat, just below the neck. He grabbed his warhammer in his right hand, drew his dagger in the left, and raced to the reaver’s throat. He was trying to wiggle his way down when the dead reaver suddenly seemed to gag. Its mouth choked open, while bile rose from its stomach.

A flood of bile sent Borenson washing into the street.

He got to his knees, and peered about, to make sure he was safe. As he did, he sheathed his dagger and then wiped bile and blood from the handle of his warhammer. Reavers were stampeding over the walls, unimpeded. The north tower had completely collapsed. Only the bottom floor seemed to be standing, and there was no movement in its darkened doorway.

He looked about frantically. “Myrrima?” he shouted, but his heart went out of him.

If Myrrima was still in the tower, she’d be crushed under the rubble.

A few arrows still rose from the roofs of markets across the street from the castle wall, and a guardsman was crawling along the street toward him. Borenson saw no other sign of people, though all through Carris he could hear their cries.

A reaver pitched from the wall and crushed a shop that had served as a station for archers. Borenson whirled and looked up the street to the north, to see if Myrrima might be fleeing.

Dozens of reavers rushed ahead of him, already racing toward the marina, clearing the streets.

He was behind enemy lines!

He heard a hiss nearby and whirled. A reaver charged him.

Borenson held still, as if too frightened to move, until the reaver was upon him. Then he sprang a dozen feet in the air and struck with his warhammer, biting deep into the monster’s brain.

The reaver went down, skidding beneath him, and Borenson landed on its back.

He had been told to guard the street, to hold back the reavers as best he could while the commoners tried to reach the marina.

But he feared that Myrrima was still in the north tower, and he imagined her crushed and bleeding beneath the rubble.

He could not leave her.

He raced south, toward the tower. A reaver vaulted from the castle wall, seeking to crush him. Borenson rolled away from the attack, then jumped up and slew the reaver. A mage on the castle wall cast a horrific spell, and Borenson waded through a red cloud, holding his breath while his eyes burned so badly he thought they would boil from their sockets.

Two more young reavers dropped from the castle wall, while a third climbed over the rampart, ignoring the flames.

There is a difference between bravery and foolishness, Borenson knew. He was cut off from Myrrima. He dove through the window of the nearest merchant’s shop and raced through a back room while a reaver gave chase. The reaver bulled into the shop’s wall, and the building collapsed as Borenson exited out back, into a narrow alley called Bleak Street.

The street was too narrow for an adult reaver to negotiate easily, but a juvenile came rushing toward him.

He ran to the nearest door, found it bolted. Borenson lowered his shoulder and hit the door. It shattered, and he tumbled in.

He stood for an instant, wondering what to do. The reavers would come after him any second. He bounded across the room, heading for a back door.

He felt a wrenching in his gut, as if something vital had torn away, and realized that one of his Dedicates had died.

It could mean only one thing: Reavers hunted uphill where his Dedicates hid in the tombs beneath Paldane’s Palace.

Deep in the Underworld, Iome stabbed with her javelin, and another reaver died, her fifth kill.

Across the black chamber, Gaborn yelped.

She looked up.

“Gasht!” A curse boiled from the One True Master’s staff. Gaborn flung himself away, a shadow in the darkness, moving so fast that for a moment he seemed to vanish.

The One True Master became mindful of her. The reaver lord lurched back from Gaborn and scrambled to cut off Iome’s advance. Tendrils of darkness, like a wispy fog, flowed out from the monster’s feet, surging toward Iome.

Gaborn howled like an animal, leaping to attack. He raced to the One True Master, moving so fast that Iome could not track him as he stabbed her in the thorax.

The creature whirled to face him, cracking her whip. For a moment she blurred, and the surging fog halted in its progress.

Iome kept racing toward a knot of reavers, where a strong light burned, bounding over Dedicates both living and dead. “Gasht!” a spell hurtled from the monster’s staff, a dark cloud of destruction.

“Jump!” Gaborn shouted.

Iome sprang thirty feet in the air, somersaulting as she did. A funnel of destruction, glittering like ash, touched the ground where she had stood, blasting several reavers to oblivion, smiting the floor so that flakes of stone and dust flew up beneath her.

The wind was a tumult as she fell.

Iome came down into the mess. Her left ankle twisted violently, and she cried out in pain. She crawled to her knees and used her reaver dart as a staff to hobble into the midst of the reavers. One struck out at her, and she dodged its blow.

Their bodies formed an almost solid wall. They moved so slowly that they almost seemed to be monoliths. Iome passed beneath their shadows as if into a dark wooded dell. For a moment she was reminded of the glade amidst the Seven Standing Stones of Heredon, where Binnesman had raised his wylde.

But amid these monoliths, there was no vast reservoir of Earth Power, nothing so grand and glorious.

Sir Borenson gripped his warhammer in bloody hands and stood panting in some poor merchant’s hovel. Outside, reavers raged through Carris, knocking down buildings, digging through rubble. The death screams rose, a continuous wail of fear and pain all across the island.

Smoke filled the air as the whole district went up in flames.

And he could do nothing to stop it. In the past few moments, his Dedicates had all been slain, stripped from him.

Without his endowments of brawn, his armor weighed like an anvil about his shoulders, and his long-handled hammer proved so unwieldy that he could hardly swing it.

Without stamina, he felt sick near to death. The exertions of the past few days had taken their toll—his ride to Inkarra and back, the torture he had endured at the hand of King Criomethes. His legs felt so worn that they threatened to collapse beneath him.

He wanted to work up some strength, to go across the street and hunt for Myrrima, the reavers be damned. If she was alive still, perhaps he could help her. And if she had died, then he had no reason to live out the day.

Strength is an illusion, he thought in his torment.

Twice now in his life, Dedicates had been torn from him, dozens of good men and women killed in an effort to prove him weak.

Screaming a war cry, he grabbed his weapon and burst out into the night.

Flames licked the sky in every direction, and smoke reflected the light in such a way that it seemed that the heavens had taken fire. It was brighter than dawn.

Almost directly overhead, Borenson saw a great balloon hundreds of feet above, nearly lost in smoke, a balloon shaped like a graak in flight. It floated in eerie silence.

At the far north of the island, trumpets blared wildly, calling once again for the folk of Carris to retreat.

A sudden roar shook the earth, like rising thunder. The earth began to quiver beneath his feet. Buildings trembled as if a giant jarred their foundations.

A reaver barreled down the street at the end of the alley, a juvenile blade-bearer, with grotesquely long legs and a small head.

It skidded to a halt and whirled, its philia writhing as it spotted Borenson. It opened its maw and charged.

“Death!” Borenson roared as he raised his hammer and rushed to meet it.

Raj Ahten looked down on Carris from a far hill.

The city was an inferno. Reavers thundered everywhere, slamming into homes like battering rams, raking through the rubble to pull out anyone who might still be alive. On the north end of the island, horns desperately blew a call for retreat while people climbed the castle walls and flung themselves into Lake Donnestgree.

But they couldn’t climb the ladders and tower steps fast enough to escape, and so they crowded the walls in a seething mass, trampling one another in their terror. Some tried to fight back as the reavers advanced, shooting with their puny bows or raising their weapons, but the reavers waded into them. As well might hens try to fight when the hollow wolf is in the pens.

The speed at which the reavers overwhelmed Carris astonished him. Powerful lords had protected the gates, but the young reavers merely sprang over them or slammed into them, grinding them to ruin.

Men were no match for such monsters.

Above the city, Raj Ahten’s spy balloon wafted on hot thermals. He could hear the whispering thoughts of his flameweavers, exulting. Sweet-smelling smoke roiled upward in great clouds, enticing them to battle. Their gondolas were loaded with arcane powders made of sulfur, potash, and herbs, brought from the south of Indhopal just for this night. “Give us the signal,” their thoughts whispered, “and we will drop our load.”

“Patience,” he whispered in return. The balloon had been drifting toward the reavers’ fell mage as she squatted in the midst of a great rune, her Seal of Desolation.

As the wind carried the balloon toward the seal, he whispered, letting the Power of Fire carry his words to his flameweavers. “Now let the heavens blaze!”

The flameweavers rejoiced, crying in tongues of flame, “Long live Scathain, Lord of Ash!”

Three miles north of Carris stood the Barren’s Wall, a rampart that rose chest high and spanned from Lake Donnestgree in the east to the Alcair Mountains some dozen miles to the west.

King Anders’s troops came up behind it, riding hard in the darkness, only to find Queen Rialla Lowicker’s army, more than a hundred thousand strong, huddled in its lee. Ballistas by the hundreds were ranged higher on the hill, to help hold back any charge by the reavers, while archers and footmen manned the wall. Lowicker’s intent seemed obvious: she would hold the wall if the reavers sought to range north.

Beyond the wall, Carris flamed. Horns blared on the castle walls as the folk of Carris called for help, yet the screams of the dying overwhelmed the horns.

Reavers by the hundreds could be seen racing north along the wallwalks, dispatching any guardsman who dared try to withstand them.

At the foot of the city a vast reaver horde blackened the land. Howlers trumpeted in their midst, and the earth seemed to groan beneath their feet while clouds of gree whirled above the throng.

Near the great worm mound, a fell mage squatted, covered with glowing runes. She wielded a staff that gleamed as white as lightning. A rune was taking shape beneath her, a malevolent thing that gathered mists and sent them swirling about like a tornado.

“By the Powers!” King Anders swore when he saw the mess.

There was nothing to save at Carris, it seemed.

Even if we charge the city now, Erin thought, the reavers will wipe out its people before we get there.

Erin’s horse stamped nervously, and she leaned forward. Many a brave knight clutched his lance, as if to race into battle at any moment.

The lords at the front of the column stared hard at Anders, to see what he would do. He claimed to be an Earth King. Would he call a world worm, as Gaborn had done?

Erin shouted, “Your Highness, sound the charge!”

But Anders raised his right hand in warning, and said in a bereaved tone, “I cannot. The Earth warns against it. Those in the city are Gaborn’s Chosen, and they must die for his sins.”

“What?” Celinor shouted in horror.

Anders shook his head sadly. “I am to be the new Earth King. He is the old. But I cannot be crowned until the old is swept away.” He peered forward as if he could see through the walls of Carris.

What kind of man is he? Erin wondered. Gaborn could never have sat idle while folk were in danger.

Erin’s head spun. She was dazed with fatigue. More than that, she reeled from the shock.

She felt as if she were in a dream, or at least half in a dream. She wanted to call out to the owl of the netherworld for help, to touch his mind with a sending.

A thought struck her.

The owl had warned that Asgaroth could bend his will and read the minds of others. Could she reach Asgaroth with a sending?

Even as the thought struck, Erin silently screamed the name, “Asgaroth!”

King Anders sat on his horse just ahead of Erin, slouched wearily in his saddle, his long gray hair flowing out behind a kingly war helm.

In answer to her silent call, he whirled as if she had slapped him. His mouth parted in surprise, and he glared at her.

The mask of kindliness fell from his face.

The One True Master raced toward Iome, its feet a blur.

“Noooooo!” Gaborn screamed, veering to block the monster’s path.

He raced forward, weapon in hand.

For an instant, Iome watched them both, frozen in pain. Gaborn bounded toward a creature part light, part shadow. The One True Master blurred, her whip snapping like fire. Gaborn cried out, stumbled, and ducked beneath the lash.

Iome charged toward a Dedicate, a huge reaver that lay as if asleep. She cocked her arm back, preparing to stab with all her might.

The iron javelin ripped from her hand as a reaver swatted at her, missing by inches.

Gaborn shouted, “Iome, flee!”

The room shuddered. The ground rolled beneath Iome’s feet, and stones rained down from the roof as another temblor struck.

“Gasht!” a spell hissed from the monster’s onyx staff. Gaborn took two steps forward and sprang high in the air as a dark green cloud flowed forward. He hurled his javelin.

The monster twisted to her side. The javelin glanced off her skull. Gaborn was still flying toward the beast, and hit it with a sickly thud, then fell away like a broken doll.

“No!” Iome cried.

The One True Master regarded Gaborn for a second, dismissed him, and turned toward Iome.

In her mind, Iome heard Gaborn’s last words, as if he shouted them anew. “Iome, flee!”

The reavers circled Iome all around, their features twisted and cruel. She frantically peered toward the far corners of the room. Even with a dozen endowments of sight, she couldn’t see how to escape.

There was no pain where Gaborn went. He’d smacked into the bony head-plates of the monster. Then nothing.

He woke in a realm as light as day. All about him were fields, brown from the farmer’s plow, the rich soil spilling from the ground. Hills rose in gentle humps in the distance, with oak trees sprawling on their sides. There was no wind, no sun, only a sourceless light that shone above. Ravens cawed and wheeled overhead, their raucous cries full of malice.

Tender shoots shot from the ground all about him, as if the soil could not hold the abundance of life.

The ravens dove and tore at them, drawing the seeds from the soil, ripping the pale roots.

A dozen yards away, a man-shaped creature slumped upon a large stone, his back toward Gaborn. He wore a shapeless robe of gray, and gray hair spilled down his back. But where he should have had skin, Gaborn saw only sand and pebbles.

The Earth Spirit sat before him. “I am but fruit to the crows of fortune,” he muttered. “They hover on jeering wings. My stones cannot fell them....”

Gaborn went to the creature, rested a hand upon its shoulder. It turned to face him.

The Earth Spirit wore the face of Raj Ahten, but no eyes peered from its head, only empty sockets.

The Earth looked at Gaborn helplessly, threw up its hands. “The ravens. The ravens feed....”

Gaborn saw the Earth’s torment.

“Why do you wear the face of an enemy still?” Gaborn asked. “We should be friends.”

The Earth took on a pained expression. “You turned from me.”

“No,” Gaborn said, “only once, in a moment of weakness. But never again will I turn from you. All that I am or ever hope to be, I give to you.”

The pebbly face of the Earth Spirit began to shift. It took on a new form. Gaborn’s father appeared for a moment, and then his face became young. Gaborn thought that the Earth might be showing him his own face, or the face of his father as a child, but then realized that it had revealed the face of Gaborn’s son. The pebbles and grains of sand flowed once more, and Iome was smiling up at him.

Gaborn felt something within him ease, and saw that he was bleeding from a wound to his chest, but instead of blood, light flowed out. He let it flow. All around him, the crows began to caw and flap into the air, wings exploding into the sky.

39 A Tree Beneath the Shadows

Gaborn woke and scrambled to his feet, heart hammering. His ribs felt like broken twigs. The great reaver was chasing Iome, scrabbling on powerful legs as it scrambled over a knot of its precious Dedicates, crushing them.

The effect of its curses putrefied flesh and set wounds to festering. Now dozens of reavers nearby rasped loudly as they sought to breathe. But with the apparent slowing of time, the sound came as an ominous drone.

Iome ran from the monster. Its ghostly runes still glowed, but darkness seemed to flow beneath its feet, obscuring the view. Gaborn wiped tears from his burning eyes.

Iome ducked between two reavers that seemed to move at a crawl, seeking to use them as cover. But Gaborn knew that she couldn’t hide for long. The reaver queen raced toward Iome at blinding speed.

Gaborn could feel death approaching her.

Gaborn reached down, picked up Erden Geboren’s ancient reaver dart.

The One True Master waded over its own Dedicates, grinding a pair of them beneath her.

“Strike!” the Earth warned.

Gaborn shouted a battle cry and lunged forward, bounding twenty yards to a stride. The reavers around him were dark monoliths, almost motionless. He darted between the legs of a large Dedicate and plunged his spear into the One True Master’s hind knee.

The leg buckled. She whirled toward Gaborn, and he jumped backward, throwing himself high in the air and somersaulting as her whip snapped beneath him.

Runes simmered on the face of the One True Master. The triad of bony plates on her head was nearly covered with ghostly blue fire. Despite all of the Dedicates that Gaborn had killed, few dark splotches appeared at all.

Gaborn landed on a Dedicate, then sprang backward again and again, drawing the One True Master away from Iome.

The monster approached, rasping. Wisps of darkness curled about Gaborn’s ankles. His thoughts became confused. He struggled to remain standing.

“Cut the child from your lover’s womb,” a voice whispered cruelly in his mind, “for it is tainted with evil.”

A vision passed before Gaborn’s eyes, in which he held the child from Iome’s womb, a vile monstrosity. He clutched its scrawny neck, peering at it, wondering how it could be so hideous, and the thing twisted in his hands. He saw now that it had four legs and two arms, that it was eyeless, and where its face should have been, bony head plates appeared while philia dangled like pink worms from its jaw.

Gaborn hurled the thing to the ground.

It peered up at him and made a mewling sound.

“Something wicked grows within her,” the One True Master whispered. “Cut it out. Save your people.”

Gaborn felt a horrible compulsion. He had a knife in his boot. It would be easy to reach down, slip the knife from its sheath, plunge the blade into Iome’s womb.

“You could rid the world of evil,” the voice whispered. “Isn’t that what you want?”

No! he told himself. It’s a child, not an evil. But a greater will seemed to seize him, and he heard a voice in his head whisper, “Yea, master, I do thy bidding.”

The One True Master lunged toward him, and Gaborn fell to his knees. He was lost in vision, sinking into a maelstrom of darkness that swirled all about.

“Master!” he called. And simultaneously, the One True Master and the Earth spoke at once, “Yes, my servant.”

“No,” Gaborn said to the One True Master. “I am not your servant.”

A strange light suddenly blazed in his mind. The horrid vision fled, and Gaborn found himself shaken, standing in the reavers’ Dedicates’ Keep. In his right hand he clutched his gore-covered reaver dart.

A light glowed at the far end of the cavern.

A strange animal cry came from the throat of the tunnel, and the One True Master whirled away from Gaborn.

Binnesman’s wylde stood there.

“Now,” the Earth whispered, “summon the Glories.”

The green woman raised her left hand in the air, forming runes swiftly. She spoke as if in a trance, her eyes vacant of thought, void of emotion. “The time has come, Old One, to leave your body behind. The lords of the netherworld demand it.”

The One True Master hissed in alarm, retreated from Gaborn. Her massive head swiveled left and right, as she sought to track both Gaborn and the wylde. Her philia waved frantically as she scented for danger.

The green woman howled and leapt a dozen feet at a stride, her face contorted in fury. Above her, white lights appeared, small at first, and dim, as if seen from a great distance. But they grew in brightness and size swiftly as they neared. Suddenly, the Glories were there, dozens of them, white ghostly shapes with wings of light.

The green woman raised her hand, and balls of lightning issued from it, went scattering through the air like flower petals tossed into the wind. The light snaked through the air, sizzling and crackling, and the whole room suddenly smelled as if a storm began to rage.

The reaver Dedicates hissed in despair and lurched backward, seeking to escape. Many threw their paws over their heads and dropped to the ground.

Gaborn watched calmly.

The green woman has come to kill the One True Master, Gaborn realized, and he thought, But I won’t give her the honor!

In that instant, the reaver queen swung her muzzle toward him, exposing her sweet triangle. On a monster this huge, the soft spot above her brain was a good eighteen inches across. She stood less than forty yards away.

Gaborn rushed from between two reavers and hurled his dart with all his might. Pain wracked his shoulder from strained tendons. The iron pole became a black blur. There was a thwack as it struck reaver flesh, and Gaborn stood for half a second, gazing in triumph.

The reaver dart struck, and then went ricocheting off the monster’s bony head plate. Purple blood pumped from the grazed wound. Yet the One True Master’s head still swiveled about.

The monster held her black staff and lunged as if to strike Gaborn, then glanced back, as if deciding that the wylde presented a greater danger.

The green woman raced forward as the monster pounced. For half a second, Gaborn was not sure if the green woman would strike before the monster crushed her.

But the wylde raised up both hands, as if to embrace the falling beast. Her arms and fingers lengthened, as though they were branches and twigs, growing thick over the years.

The two met, as if in an embrace, and the wylde howled one last time, a howl of triumph and release. In that instant, Gaborn saw her as she had been at the Seven Standing Stones when Binnesman had summoned her—a collection of twigs and stones and roots and dust.

And then she caught the One True Master.

There was a rumbling, and a violent rending, and roots broke into the rock and a thick trunk formed and began to spiral upward. The One True Master fell onto the wylde and let out a cruel hiss. She struggled violently, like a tarantula caught in the grasp of a scorpion, her huge legs scrabbling and tearing.

But a tree grew beneath her now, a tree with a trunk thicker than oak, and branches that pierced her and grew up through her body. The sinuous limbs shot through armored breastplates, sent tendrils and twigs growing through her skull and shoulders.

In an instant, a vast tree took form, its green branches as alive as snakes. It held the monster and crushed her and pierced her all at once.

The One True Master gaped and hissed. She craned her head back, as if suffering indescribable agony. Purple gore coursed from her wounds.

The monster swung its head left and right, trying to dislodge itself.

But the wylde held it, made it one with the Earth.

Within seconds the ghostly runes that simmered across the One True Master’s body winked out, like candles extinguished by a breeze.

Gaborn dropped to the ground, panting. You cannot kill a locus, he suspected. Its evil would only pass on to another.

Help me, he cried in his heart, seeking aid from the Glories.

There had been a darkness about the creature, a shadow that followed as it walked. Gaborn saw that specter now. It surged upward, like a sooty cloud, or a winged shadow. It hovered above the dead reaver, above the living tree.

And the Glories came. Distant lights seemed to break through the rock above, swirling down from the netherworld. They were faint at first, as if seen miles and miles away. But in a matter of seconds they were revealed.

They swooped like swallows upon wings of light, creatures at once beautiful and impossibly cruel. Larger than men they were, and though they had arms and legs, Gaborn thought they looked nothing like men. Their heads hinted at the ravenous faces of jackals, with sharp fangs and large eyes. Whether they were covered in hair or feathers, Gaborn could not tell. For to look at them was to invite death.

Gaborn threw up his hands, squinting.

The Glories circled the mist of darkness, like starlings mobbing a crow, driving it around and around and upward, spiraling through the air.

As Gaborn gazed up, it seemed that a conduit opened between worlds, and for just an instant he saw the skies of the Netherworld—stars so fierce that they made his heart jump, in a heaven so vast that it seemed forbidding.

The Glories pursued their prey upward through those heavens, lights as bright as the stars chasing a strange, amorphous shadow, spiraling up as if all of them were caught in a cyclone.

And then the earth closed above them, and the Glories and the locus all were gone, and Gaborn stood among the dead reaver Dedicates with Iome.

Averan faced the Great Seals that the One True Master had formed, and peered through the shadows toward the roof. She pointed her staff and imagined the runes of stone-breaking that would cause the ceiling to collapse.

The ground buckled and swayed beneath her. Pebbles and soot dribbled down.

And as if in her ear, she heard Binnesman’s voice. “The Earth is in pain. Heal it. End the Earth’s suffering.”

An image came to mind from her dreams. Runes appeared, two vast wheels to join with those that lay before her.

Averan gazed at three great runes, each patterned after the Seals of Creation that had governed the One True World. The runes themselves were not evil. They were tools. And Averan, if she dared, could bend them to her purpose. She could heal the Earth, remake it in the image of the One True World that had been mankind’s first home.

Do I dare? she wondered, trembling.

The ground heaved as another quake shook, causing the room to sway.

Averan stretched forth her staff and stared into the rocky floor, tried to recall from her dreams the great Rune of Life.

She began to shape the stone.

There was a ridge like a hook, where eagles had soared. As she imagined it, the ridge slowly rose from the ground. There were three knobby hills where rabbits had run, and the hills buckled up from the rock. Here was a valley where she had seen elephants sprout from the soil, waving their trunks to the sky, and a rift appeared.

Averan raised and lowered the stone in each place, using her gifts to conform it to her will.

Erin Connal sat upon her horse, frozen in astonishment. King Anders glared at her maliciously. But in an instant his expression changed to one of alarm.

“No!” he cried, whirling to peer at the battlefield.

A pale light shone above it, as if the moon suddenly peeked out from a cloud.

An unreasonable hope suddenly filled Erin.

She took no time to wonder what caused Anders such dismay, or to wonder at the light. She spurred her horse forward, throwing down her lance, for she was too close to use it in battle. She pulled out her half sword, and fell upon Anders before he had time to react.

She plunged the blade into his side, angled it up into his chest. She watched his skeletal face.

“Mother,” he cried, peering toward the battlefield. Then he turned slowly to look at Erin.

What she saw in his eyes terrified her, for there was no dismay, no fear—only cunning.

King Anders gripped the hilt of her sword with his right hand, so that she could cut no deeper, and then grabbed her shoulder with his left hand.

He fell forward, so that for half a minute he leaned into her, his mouth to her ear.

She thought he would speak, and then he would die, but instead he only uttered a strangled laugh.

Cries of dismay rose all around as men witnessed Erin’s attack. Celinor shouted, “Grab her! Hold her!”

Lords instantly surrounded her. Erin spurred her horse, tried to bolt away, but she was boxed in.

Celinor flung himself from his horse, crying, “Father! Father!” while Anders slumped in Erin’s arms and fell to the ground, clutching the blade that still lodged in his gut.

Rough hands seized Erin, dragging her to the ground beside him. Three stout warriors threw themselves atop her. A fat man with a red beard began shouting, “A rope! A rope! Let’s hang the bitch!”

Weakly, King Anders raised a hand to Celinor’s face. “No!” he cried. “Save the poor mad creature. She carries your child, a—a queen who will rule the world. Cage her. Promise.... to cage her—until the child comes.”

Anders’s head dropped to the side a little, and he peered at Erin in pain. A physic rushed into the knot and began pushing Celinor aside, preparing to bandage the wound.

Celinor whirled and glared at Erin, a snarl of rage marring his face. “Tie her!”

The earth was shaking. Erin felt it beneath her, shuddering as if it would break.

A far-seer cried. “Ships! Ships on the lake! The warlords of Internook are bringing longboats upriver.”

The men that held Erin finished tying her arms behind her back. They climbed off her, and stood on the hill peering down at the city. One man jerked the rope, pulling Erin to her feet, while the physic applied a healing balm to the king’s wound.

Erin pulled against her knots, trying to break free, but her captors had tied her in some cunning manner so that the more she struggled, the more tightly her bonds cut into her wrists.

To the east, roaring arose in the wilderness, the battle cries of frowth giants. It was their feet that caused the ground to rumble.

“Giants, thousands of them!” someone shouted. “They’re coming out of the hills.” Erin peered toward the source of the noise, but could see nothing for a moment. Then they rushed over the brow of a hill, huge staves in hand, fur glowing red as it reflected the light of distant fires. They trotted toward the reaver hordes, taking twenty feet to a stride.

Above Carris, Raj Ahten’s spy balloon had been floating like a graak on silent wings. Suddenly, beneath the balloon, light flashed, and there was a tremendous explosion. A great mushroom cloud of fire and smoke blossomed above the battlefield, filling the scene with light.

The ball of fire rose directly above the Seal of Desolation, where the reavers’ fell mage had been working. Some reavers seemed stunned, but Erin could see the monstrous fell mage along with dozens of other mages standing fast among the flames.

The reavers’ far-seers hissed and looked skyward, and Erin could see the lines of communication race through the crowd as each reaver in turn recognized the threat from above, and then raised its hind end and hissed warning scents to its neighbors.

The fell mage whirled and aimed her staff skyward, sending a dark bolt to blast into the air. It ripped through the fabric of the balloon, and the balloon plummeted into the reaver horde.

Reavers lunged to rip the wizards apart.

An instant later, the flameweavers died. Three creatures of fire rose up, man-shaped elementals of white-hot fury, each sixty feet tall.

They surged into the reavers, touching one and then another, so that they boiled and burst into flames.

One elemental raised its hand. With a thought, it sent its power quivering through Carris.

Torches suddenly flared, escaping their bounds. Fires already raging through merchant hovels exploded with new intensity. Fire raced like lightning along beams and up poles.

The city erupted into a blaze, and as it did, the cries of tens of thousands of city folk joined the roar of the inferno.

Pillars of smoke mushroomed upward, glowing as red as coals. Indeed, even the attacking reavers balked, and began backing from the elementals, which had now begun to dissolve, losing their human form as they became simple beasts of malevolent flame.

Erin stared in wonder. The fiery elementals waded through the horde like warlords among a pack of dogs. The flameweavers sent lines of fire racing into the midst of the reavers, and infernos sprang up in the hills.

To the south and west, warhorns suddenly blared, the deep-voiced ram’s horns used by the lords of Indhopal.

Raj Ahten’s men charged into the fray.

Lowicker’s daughter shouted commands to her troops, downhill just below. Her own silver warhorns trumpeted a high note, as if to answer Raj Ahten’s call. Her knights on their chargers leapt the Barren’s Wall and raced toward the reavers like a gale. Lowicker’s archers and footmen roared their battle cries and raced to catch up.

“Sound the charge!” Anders called weakly to his son. His trumpeter sounded the warhorn, and Anders’s lords leapt on their horses.

Many would have urged their mounts into battle instantly, eager to obey what might well be their lord’s dying wish. But Celinor knelt, holding his father up to witness the contest, while a pair of lords stood guard over him.

“Go, now!” King Anders told his son feebly. “This is our day, your hour of triumph. Let the Earth King’s son make a name for himself in battle.”

Celinor’s troops were all mounted. Celinor leaned close, squeezing his father’s right hand in an effort to comfort him. A physic leaned close and sniffed the king’s wound.

“He’ll be all right,” the physic said. “The blade nicked his liver, I think, but missed the heart and lungs. With his endowments, he’ll heal in a week.”

“Very well,” Celinor said. He rose to his feet and vaulted onto his horse. He glanced down at the guards that held Erin and warned, “Kill her if she tries to escape.”

40 Earth Rising

Averan finished roughing out the Seal of Creation, and began the second rune she’d envisioned in her dreams.

In the pool in the far corner of the chamber, water bubbled and boiled. She raised her staff and caused geometrical shapes to chase across its face—circles and triangles, and bizarre arcs—as if great fish sped just beneath the surface, dorsal fins cutting waves.

Sweat poured from Averan’s brow, and her lips grew parched, but she paid no mind. She was so deep in the act of creation that nothing else mattered.

Soon the Seal of the Deep began to glimmer in the pool. Waves stood up, as if frozen in time or sculpted in ice.

Averan studied her work. To look upon the runes filled her with joy. It was a great work, she knew, a slow magic, such as Binnesman had attempted when he sought to heal the plagues at Carris. Her labor would not bear full fruit for many centuries.

Yet she felt potency in the runes. Vigor would come to the Earth, life and health and mending. The grass would grow greener and taller than anyone had ever seen. Children born on this new day would be fairer and wiser than men of old. Fresh colors would be added to the rainbow, and wildflowers would sprout in the desert.

It conformed well to her memory. It was not perfect yet, but she could feel rightness in it, and she would have years to tinker and bend it into shape.

Only one thing remained for Averan there in the heart of the Underworld, to draw a circle and encompass the five Master Seals, make them one.

Averan raised her staff, felt deep in the Earth. She could sense the fault lines and cracks in the stones, the seams and blockages. To shape the stone required almost nothing, a simple release of the energy.

She let it flow upward.

Soil began to rise, bursting up as if a crust of bread had cracked. Then it raced along, leaving a trail within its wake. The circle began to form.

Suddenly she sensed a presence at the mouth of the tunnel, smelled the death cry of a reaver, and whirled.

Gaborn strode toward her, the light of his opal pin blazing like a meteor. Over his shoulders, like a pair of huge eels, he’d slung a pair of reaver philia, taken from the One True Master.

It was her garlicky death cry that Averan had heard.

Gaborn looked on in awe as he peered at the seals, feeling their potency. He spoke slowly so that she would understand. “What are you doing?”

“I’m fixing it,” Averan said. “I’m healing the Earth.”

“I feel the change coming,” Gaborn replied. “Yours is a great work, and I fear to hinder you. But I need your help. The battle goes ill at Carris, and only I can hope to change the tide of it.”

“How can I help?” Averan asked.

“We’re almost directly below the city. I need you to open a path for me.”

“I’m not sure that I can,” Averan said.

“You can,” Gaborn told her with certainty.

Averan was growing accustomed to Gaborn’s uncanny Earth sense. If he told her that she could help, then she believed that he was right.

Averan took a last glance at the seals. She felt exhausted, too tired to do more now. Though sweat soaked her clothes, she took a moment to draw strength from the ground so that she could secure the chamber. With her staff, she drew a rune upon the wall. As she did, the stone flowed together slowly, like boiling magma, until the opening closed.

“Here let the seals be hidden,” Averan whispered, “unaltered and unmarred by the hand of the enemy.”

“Come,” Gaborn said. “I left Iome and the prisoners behind.”

He fled the chamber, striding down the tunnel. She rushed to keep up for nearly a mile. As they neared the Lair of Bones she heard shouting in a side corridor.

“Milady, over here!” someone cried. “I’ve found their nesting grounds.”

“Break the eggs,” Sergeant Barris commanded. “Break them all.”

Averan’s heart hammered. Iome and the prisoners had found the hatching chamber. The clutch of eggs was precious.

Averan followed Gaborn round a bend in the tunnel, found Sergeant Barris, Iome, and the other men and women from the reavers’ prison peering into the egg chamber. Iome stood using a reaver dart as a crutch, a bandage wrapped around her ankle. Iome held her opal crown aloft to reveal leathery gray eggs upon the steaming ground. They lay wrapped in nests of silk spun by cave spiders, each nest holding a cluster of twenty or thirty eggs.

“Stop!” Averan cried.

Barris turned first. Anger blazed in his eyes. “Why?”

“They’re the last of the reaver eggs. The One True Master made war on other hives for years. Each time she took control of a hive, she destroyed the eggs of her enemies. These might be the only reaver eggs left in the world!”

“Good,” Barris said. “Then we can kill every last one of the damned monsters.”

There comes a moment in the life of every Earth Warden when she discovers the purpose of her existence. Binnesman had told Averan that when he realized that it was his lot to protect mankind, the knowledge had flowed into him with a purity and power that could not be denied.

Averan felt that now.

For this purpose I was born, she thought, and empowered by my master. For this reason I learned to commune with reavers and have been granted dominion over the deep places of the world.

“I forbid it!” she shouted. “I serve the Earth, and I will do my master’s will.”

Averan pointed her staff above the door to the egg chamber, and formed a rune there. She had no time to draw power from the Earth at her ease, and instead had to rely upon her own meager reserves.

The stone cracked instantly, and a circle appeared on its surface. Within the circle a rune burst forth. The whole wall warped and flowed together, barring entry.

Averan felt so spent from the hasty spell that she nearly swooned. She leaned precariously on her staff, peering at Barris, Iome, and Gaborn, wondering if they would hate her, or fight her.

These people had all suffered horribly at the reavers’ hands. The monsters had stripped everything from them—homes, health, and families. If any had cause to hate the reavers, these did.

“The Earth loves all life equally,” Averan whispered. “It loves the snake no less than the field mouse, the eagle no less than the dove, the reaver no less than you.”

Barris growled angrily in his throat, as if he would spring. But Gaborn grabbed his arm, holding him back.

Iome merely peered at Averan, her lips parted in surprise. “You have grown, little one,” she said. “You have grown great indeed.” Tears glistened in Iome’s eyes, as if she gazed upon someone who was now dead to her. It nearly broke Averan’s heart.

“Oh, Iome,” Averan said in a small voice. “It’s only me. I’m still the same.”

But Iome shook her head sadly. “No, you’re not. You’re an Earth Warden now. Look at your robe.”

Averan looked down and saw a great change. Her wizard’s robe had been growing for days. It was as if tiny seeds had taken sprout in her old coat, and the new roots had been growing among the fibers. But in the last moment or two, their color had turned a vibrant green.

All trace of her old robe was now hidden under the twined embrace of the rootlets.

I am an Earth Warden, she thought, called to serve the reavers. And she understood why Iome had shed a tear.

This is my home now. Perhaps in some far future, I might visit the surface of the world and gaze upon the fields of wild grass, or walk under the stars, but not soon. Not often.

Averan shook her head. “Get ready to go,” she told Iome, Gaborn, and the prisoners. By habit, she thought of what she would do if she were preparing for a journey by graak. “Go pack your things.”

Barris nodded toward his ragged people. “We have nothing to pack.”

“We’re ready,” Gaborn said.

Averan raised her staff, considered what to do. Hers were the powers of the deep Earth, so she reached out with her mind, as if summoning an animal, and could sense the rocks and boulders all around her.

Gaborn was right. She felt a shaft overhead, not more than a few thousand feet. The world worm had cleared the way a week ago, when Gaborn had summoned it to Carris.

Averan reached out with her senses, felt the stresses in the rock all around her, the tiny cracks and fault lines. With all of the vast tonnage of stone above, it would take a great deal of energy to open a crack and floor beneath them.

It would take more Earth Power than Averan could ever hope to have. To even think about it pained her mind.

“I can’t,” Averan said plaintively.

“Hold up your staff,” Gaborn told her.

She raised it slightly, felt the Earth Power within it. No. She was too tired even to try.

Gaborn suddenly reached out and grabbed the black staff of poisonwood.

At his touch, the wood seemed almost to burst into flame. Earth Power surged through it, as warm as the breath of a newborn babe, as sure as stone.

Averan looked into Gaborn’s weary eyes with renewed awe. Nothing in his manner suggested that he had such reservoirs.

“Thank you,” was all she managed to say.

She knelt and cast a spell, by drawing a rune on the ground, and the earth began to tremble.

Sir Borenson clutched his warhammer and dove for cover in a wrecked wine merchant’s shop. Reavers had collapsed the roof, so that it stood even with the front windows. Flames sizzled along every beam. He dropped to the floor on his hands and knees, just below the sill, while reavers raced into the city unimpeded. Hundreds of them flashed past his hiding spot.

His heart hammered. Reaver gore covered his hands and face. Fierce heat battered him from fires on every side. Black ash and cinders swirled around like falling snow. Borenson spotted a bottle of wine lying unbroken on the floor, pulled its cork, and relieved his thirst.

In the fields north and west of Carris, he could hear Raj Ahten’s and Lowicker’s horns blowing the charge. Men screamed wildly.

The reavers were in for a bloody row by the sound of it. But here in Carris, the city was becoming ominously quiet.

How many have died? Borenson wondered.

He wanted to get a view of the battle. He only needed a little height to see over the city walls. A set of stairs in the shop led up to what had once been a second-floor apartment. Now the stairs conveniently opened to the sky, and only a few flames licked their base.

Borenson crawled through rubble—stones and splintered boards and broken wattle—making his way to the stairs. He gripped his battle-ax and climbed to the top. He heard the distant thwonk, thwonk, thwonk of ballistas.

Near the shores of Lake Donnestgree, longboats plied the waters, thousands of them. One could hardly see the lake for all of the masts. The warlords of Internook, in their horned helms, fired a hail of ballista bolts from longboats, lancing into reavers that waded along the shore.

To his north, Lowicker’s knights surged into the reavers’ lines, horses whinnying as riders drove lances home.

To the northwest, the frowth giants waded among the reavers, their huge iron-bound staves rising and crashing down. The reavers had no choice but to fight.

And fight they did. A wall of reavers surged north toward the Barren’s Wall, and west toward Raj Ahten, even as their fell mage and her companions raised their staves and sent bolts of ice whirling into the elementals.

The reavers were boxed in, Borenson realized.

He looked for a sign of Myrrima. Below him, reavers thundered down the road unimpeded. The north tower, where Myrrima had been, lay in ruin. The reavers were climbing over it, cracking its beams, knocking down the ramparts. A tower that had stood sixty feet was now crushed down to thirty. Part of it had spilled outward into the lake.

He peered into the shadows at its base, hoping for some sign of Myrrima, but he could see nothing.

If she had been on the third floor when the reavers attacked, the chance that she still lived was slim.

“Myrrima?” he called hopefully, but heard no answer. There was no movement there at the base of the rubble, except for one young reaver that seemed to be digging, like some monstrous beagle, digging for rats in their burrow.

“Attack!” Raj Ahten bellowed above the sounds of battle. His voice, amplified by reason of thousands of endowments, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and so compelling was it that against all reason, Borenson felt constrained to leap from the roof onto the nearest reaver.

Heart hammering, he ducked, trying to keep good stone between him and the reavers below, lest they see him.

“Into battle now,” Raj Ahten shouted. “Let your rage light the way. Teach them to fear us for another thousand years.”

The words were like a spell that ignited Borenson’s rage. A nervous chuckle sprang unbidden from his throat, and against all reason he longed to throw himself into battle.

Raj Ahten’s command seemed to compel every man within its range. To the west, Raj Ahten’s men screamed like berserkers as they bore down on the reavers. The armies collided in a boiling mass. Horses screamed and died. Men disappeared in a spray of gore as reavers clubbed them with blades and hammers. Reavers reared up, lances buried in their faces.

Reavers and men hurled themselves into battle, dying by the score with no sign of any clear winner.

To the north, Rialla Lowicker urged her cavalry downhill beneath skies a brighter red than any dawn. The light of elemental flameweavers reflected from clouds of smoke. Her men drove into the ranks of the reavers, and great was the slaughter on both sides.

To the east, the warlords of Internook blew their horns and fired ballista bolts into the reavers with renewed fury. The reavers continued hurling a hail of boulders toward the ships, and to Borenson’s horror, the warlords responded by steering toward shore, as if to do battle. They too were fully under the sway of Raj Ahten’s voice.

To the northwest, frowth giants cried out in renewed fury, as if heartened by the efforts around them. The elementals of fire raged, while reaver sorceresses fought grimly.

But the reaver hordes seemed endless, and for each reaver that died, three more scrabbled forward to take its place. They washed down from the hills in a tide that did not end for a hundred miles.

Borenson glanced east, uphill toward Castle Carris, and his heart nearly stopped. Below in the streets, reavers raced through the dead city unimpeded, surging up Garlands Street in a black flood. At its end they were digging up the streets, trying to get at the men who hid in the maze of tunnels below.

How did so many get in here so fast? Borenson wondered. It can’t have been twenty minutes since they first breached the castle wall!

Rialla’s soldiers suddenly began shouting, and some blew retreat while others blew the charge. Borenson glanced east just as her banner faltered. Thousands of knights had formed a knights’ circus, a huge circle with lances bristling along its outside. They raced in circles and whirled about within this construct, felling every reaver that entered. But Borenson saw how it all would end. The knights had hemmed themselves in. Each knight would use his lance, killing a reaver or two. But Rialla’s knights had nowhere to retreat. The reavers formed a ragged wall, like a canyon, and living reavers were crawling over the dead to get at the warriors.

Rialla herself was dead, and her men had doomed themselves. Footmen and archers who had been charging at her back suddenly turned and fled.

The frowth giants cried out in horror as the reavers lunged into their lines.

Raj Ahten’s men continued to advance, but their war cries had turned to wails of pain and despair. “Onward,” he cried, forcing them into battle like beasts of burden. From here it looked as if every foot they purchased, they bought with barrels of blood.

A meteor blazed overhead, sputtering so brightly that it shone even through the haze of war.

Borenson dropped to a crouch, and leaned against the stone wall of the shop. His mind whirled. He clutched his warhammer.

It’s the end of the world, Borenson thought.

41 The Heat of Battle

The path before Raj Ahten’s troops was black with reavers. Their blades and staves reflected firelight from the elementals at their backs. The philia on their heads waved like cobras. The colored smoke of their spells drifted through the battlefield in toxic clouds.

Their dead formed lurid mounds. He had spent many men to create those hills, hills that his troops could not easily climb. So they fell back and let the reavers come to them, slowing as they climbed over their own dead. His archers fired with their finest horn bows, piercing the sweet triangles of many of the reavers. Those that made it alive over the wall would have to face the most powerful lords of Indhopal.

Raj Ahten merely sat ahorse and watched. Hot blood thrilled through his veins, making him eager for battle. His men were fighting well, but he could see that they would not hold out long. His men were spending their lives too fast.

Only one thing could save them: Raj Ahten himself.

He needed them to know that. He needed to confront them with their own weakness, crush their hopes for the future, leave them debased and adrift. He needed their despair.

For only when they were bereft of hope would they begin to venerate the horrible light that filled him.

His common foot soldiers on the left flank had begun to fall back, weakened by spells and facing a particularly fierce counterassault by a dozen reaver mages that hurled blasting spells from behind their dead.

“Onward, you curs,” Raj Ahten shouted at his men. They jerked like marionettes, driven forward by virtue of his endowments of glamour and voice. “Climb over the dead, kill those mages.” Gree whipped over their heads like bats. His soldiers held their breath and charged to their deaths.

Raj Ahten surveyed the battle. Carris was destroyed. Reavers could be seen racing the length of its walls. The inhabitants had thrown themselves into the lake in a last-ditch effort to escape.

Queen Lowicker’s army to the north was nearly destroyed. King Anders’s flag flew safely behind the Barren’s Wall, while his men rushed in and threw themselves on the reavers.

Even the frowth giants roared in pain, and had begun a slow retreat.

The thwonk, thwonk, thwonk of ballistas from the lakefront now grew quiet, for the warlords of Internook had nearly spent their bolts, to little effect.

At the front lines, one great lord turned from the battle and called, “O Great One, save us! The battle is hopeless.”

“Fight on,” Raj Ahten insisted.

In the moments that followed, first one and then another lord took up the cry. “Help us, O Great One!”

He could hear the rising panic in their voices, the despair.

My time has come, he realized at last.

Ahead, the elementals of his flameweavers towered above the reavers. Clouds of fire-lit smoke billowed above them. They had lost all manly form, becoming mere monsters, mindless with pain, ravaged by the need to consume. They struck at the reavers blindly, hurling fireballs, lashing with whips of flame. Soon they would lose form altogether, becoming aimless in their desires.

Lust is a powerful force when skillfully focused. But these creatures wasted their strength.

Raj Ahten stretched out his hand, as if beckoning the elementals. With that gesture, he drew the heat from them in crimson cords that swirled about, whirling toward him like a tornado.

Thus he took their fire into himself.

It was too much for any man to hold. In an instant, heat blazed from every pore, and wrapped itself around him like a brilliant robe. His body armor melted like slag.

The huge gray imperial warhorse screamed beneath him and died. It fell to the ground instantly, its boiled guts gushing out beneath it.

Raj Ahten stepped lightly to the ground. He felt as if he had no weight at all. He was only brightness and flame now.

He stalked toward the reavers’ lines, and his men whirled. He could see them everywhere, their dark faces frozen in astonishment, like pebbles on the ground.

“Fear not,” he told them, “for I will vanquish all of your foes. My sword will fall upon the Earth, and night shall be no longer.”

Raj Ahten’s light was whiter than sunlight, and he strode easily now toward the battlefront, as if all of the stars in heaven had combined, and now a creature of starlight took shape.

A reaver broke through his lines, came crashing in among his men. Raj Ahten pointed his finger, sent a shaft of fire swirling through the air. It touched the reaver’s forehead, hit its sweet triangle.

The monster thudded to the ground as a smoking crater opened, revealing the brains that fried in its head. Raj Ahten sent a shaft toward another reaver, and another.

To kill them all would be child’s play.

But in a heartbeat, everything changed.

Suddenly, the world shook, and as soon as Raj Ahten became aware of it, the reavers began to hiss. He had never heard a sound like it. A million reavers wheezed at once, like the sound that a blade hot from the forge makes when it meets the water.

Every reaver hissed, expelling gas from its anus, and filling the world with a single, strange scent, a smell that reminded him of mold.

Every reaver turned from battle, throwing down its weapon. The monsters drew back from their human foes, each of them turning to face something in the thick of the battlefield, just before the gates of Carris.

Raj Ahten could not see what had transpired there. But as he peered, he saw a mound of earth rising up. A hillock appeared, gray earth and stone spilling up from the ground. Atop the knoll crouched a dozen wary figures, like tender sprouts.

Iome wore a crown that glowed like moonlight on water, and Gaborn wore a cape pin that shone like a lantern. Gaborn stood in the light, and held something speared to a reaver dart—a reaver’s philia, like the carcasses of wolf eels, gray and slimy.

He raised them aloft, and the reavers hissed and backed away en masse. All of them lowered their tail ends, dragging them on the ground.

Only one reaver dared confront him—the great fell mage that had marshaled the horde. She left her hillock some two hundred yards to the west, thundering toward Gaborn.

She held her head high, philia waving madly atop her regal cape, a livid crystalline staff in her hand. She drew near tentatively, as if undecided on how to do battle.

Gaborn merely raised his left hand and pointed south.

The reaver gazed toward him a moment, raised its massive head as if scenting the air like a hound, and then peered south. She seemed to take his meaning: “Your master is dead. Go home. Return to the Underworld.”

Thoughtfully, she hesitated, and then dropped her head, laid her staff on the gray soil, and lowered her tail as far as it would go. A spray hissed from her abdomen, and behind her, each reaver in turn caught the scent and sprayed. There was a seething sound like the pounding of surf that rose among the reavers, rolling like a wave, until it could be heard repeated dozens of miles away.

The reavers turned, and the ground began to tremble as they raced to the south.

At Raj Ahten’s back, his troops suddenly began to cheer, shouting and hooting at the tops of their lungs. Raj Ahten looked to his side, saw tears of relief flowing from the eyes of many a soldier. To the northeast, frowth giants raised their staves in the air and bellowed, “Wahoot! Wahoot!” To the east, the men of Beldinook began throwing helms in the air and dancing jigs. “Hail the Earth King!” they cried. “Praise the Earth King.” The warlords of Internook, in their longboats, blew their warhorns in celebration.

Raj Ahten seethed.

By the size of the philia that Gaborn carried, and by the reavers’ reaction to them, Raj Ahten surmised what Gaborn had done.

He has stolen my glory, Raj Ahten thought. He has slain the lord of the Underworld, and stolen my triumph.

He was still clothed in flame, and the light that shone from him blazed in murderous intensity.

Raj Ahten strode across the battlefield, past the ruined carcasses of men and reaver alike. A week past, the reavers had unleashed dire spells upon the land, blasting every tree and vine, wilting every leaf and blade of grass. Every living thing had gone gray, and Raj Ahten stalked now through a land drained of all color, a realm of horror.

He was the brightest light in a dark world. Scathain, the Lord of Ash.

As he passed among the dead, he spotted a great imperial warhorse, one that he’d given to Rialla Lowicker as a gift. The dead queen lay pinned beneath it, her blank eyes staring up toward the sky, as if to question the heavens. Raj Ahten gave her no pity. He hardly spared her a glance.

Clothed in white flames that sputtered in the evening wind, he stalked toward the Earth King.

The reavers were leaving, thundering over the plain. The ground trembled and groaned beneath Gaborn, as if complaining of the load that it was called to bear.

Overhead, a pair of blazing meteors hurtled, their red traces barely visible through the clouds of smoke and dark gree that hovered above Carris.

Gaborn held his javelin aloft, the philia of the One True Master impaled upon its tip, and felt unaccountably weary.

The reavers were fleeing, racing over the causeway from Carris in a huge line, shoving and jarring one another in their strain to flee. The last of them, it seemed, would be gone in moments. The fell mage and her minions were already a mile away.

Yet Gaborn sensed danger still.

The object of his fear strode toward him from across the vacated battlefield, a beacon in the night, a creature clothed in flames as bright as a Glory, a creature that seemed far hotter than any earthly forge. As it neared, walking between fallen reavers, even at four hundred yards Gaborn could begin to sense the heat that boiled from it.

Gaborn dropped his javelin, and called to Raj Ahten. “That is close enough. I am the Earth King, and have sworn to save the seeds of mankind. I will honor my vows. I would save even you, Raj Ahten, if I could—though I fear that little of the man you once were abides now among the flames.”

Warhorns echoed off the lake, and to the north and west, men were cheering. Whatever had transpired, Borenson knew that the battle was over.

He only wanted to find Myrrima.

The reavers had not all left when he sprinted across Garlands Street to the ruins of the north tower.

The stonework was heavy there, the walls thick enough to withstand artillery. Reavers had crawled atop the tower, collapsing the thick beams that supported the upper stories, but the first floor was still intact. A young man crouched on the floor, bleeding from the head. He peered at Borenson, witless with fear, his arms clasped about his knees in a fetal position.

“Myrrima?” Borenson shouted.

Borenson tried charging upstairs to see if he could make it to the second floor, hoping to reach the spot where he’d last seen Myrrima gazing from a window, but beams and broken stones blocked his path.

From the doorway behind him, Borenson heard a familiar voice. Sarka Kaul had suddenly appeared, and whispered, “Go on up!”

Borenson looked vainly for a way to the top of the tower, then rushed back downstairs, and out the door. Only a hundred feet up the street, a wooden ladder led to the walkway atop the castle wall.

He ran round the ruins of a merchant’s shop, raced up the ladder. A severed human leg lay draped over a rung. At the top of the ladder sat a helm with the head still in it. Blood pooled hot upon the wallwalk.

Atop the wallwalk, there had been a massacre. Dead men lay everywhere. Some had merely been trampled, others chopped in half with reaver blades. The bottom of one man lay just in front of Borenson, guts splashed against the merlons of the wall. By the look of it, his head and torso had toppled into the water.

The scene was well lit. Fires raged throughout the city, and light reflected from boiling smoke.

Borenson hardly spared a glance out on the battlefield. The reavers were thundering south. He ran through the carnage until he reached what was left of the tower. The weight of the reavers had collapsed the roof, and then as the combined tonnage of reavers and wreckage hit the floors below, they collapsed as well. Part of the tower wall had fallen west, so that much of the wreckage had slid into the lake. Broken beams showed where supports had once stood.

As Borenson studied the ruined tower, pain wracked him. If he searched long enough, he feared that he would find Myrrima crushed in the wreckage below.

Borenson peered through a crack to the east. A brilliant flameweaver stalked over the battlefield. Borenson froze in surprise. Someone down below addressed the creature, speaking so quickly, having taken many endowments, that Borenson had difficulty understanding.

Borenson spotted the speaker, there on a small knoll among the dead reavers. It was Gaborn, speaking with many endowments of metabolism. At his side, a small knot of people stood. Averan held her staff up warily. Iome held a reaver dart at the ready, looking regal in a crown of light, while a crowd of ragged beggars crouched behind them.

Yet Gaborn intentionally slowed his speech, and spoke loudly enough so that a man on the castle wall could hear, almost as if addressing Borenson at his back. “I would save even you, Raj Ahten, if I could....”

Borenson’s nostrils flared with anger, and he peered toward the flameweaver. Raj Ahten?

Raj Ahten stopped and merely stood for a moment. Bright flames whipped about him, as if blown in a fierce wind, and he blazed all the brighter. Borenson heard a laughing sound, a hiss among the fire.

“You would save me?” Raj Ahten said, his voice high and almost unrecognizable from the great number of endowments he had taken. “I am not the one who needs to be saved. There is nothing that you have that cannot be mine, including your life. I will take it, as I took your father’s, and your mother’s, and your sister’s and your brothers’.”

Gaborn shook his head, as if saddened. “There is little in this world that I would not give you, but I will not willingly let you take another man’s life, and I will not give you mine.”

Borenson heard a noise below and looked down on the causeway, saw dozens of warriors racing out of fallen buildings, like creatures creeping from the edge of a forest at night. Sarka Kaul was there, and Captain Tempest of Longmot.

Borenson whistled to catch their attention, then spoke in finger talk. “Raj Ahten is outside the castle.”

“If you would live,” Gaborn said to Raj Ahten, “listen to me. I will do all that I can to save you.”

The flameweaver peered at Gaborn, who now dropped his weapon and sat cross-legged on the ground. He bent his head, as if deep in thought.

Borenson peered down through a broken battlement to the scene directly below. Dead reavers lay piled before the city gates, blocking the street. The corpses were stacked two or three deep, attesting to the fact that the archers and champions at the gate had made the reavers pay a toll for crossing the bridge.

But it had not been much of a toll.

Sarka Kaul, Captain Tempest, and a dozen other fierce Runelords were already climbing over the bodies, sprinting to help Gaborn.

Borenson launched himself from the broken tower onto the back of a reaver, a drop of some twenty feet, and tried to ignore the pain that shot through both ankles on landing.

He raced to reach the other warriors. Several of them were already approaching Gaborn’s back.

Borenson shouted to the men, “I want the first swing!”

The men fanned out quickly, stalking toward Raj Ahten. Dead reavers littered the battlefield here, so near the causeway. Most were impaled with ballista bolts.

Borenson headed toward the flameweaver, his heart hammering.

Raj Ahten, he told himself. It’s Raj Ahten.

But looks belied the creature. It wasn’t Raj Ahten. It was something more. Even at hundreds of yards, he could feel the heat rising from the monster, hotter than the blast of any forge.

Borenson rushed behind a dead reaver, using its shadow to keep cool as he sought to draw near. Around him, others did the same. Silently, warriors crept about in the shadows thrown by dead reavers, ringing Raj Ahten as dogs ring a bear. Some had nocked arrows in bows. Others held long spears or warhammers. Borenson noted that the men wore armor from several nations—Mystarria, Heredon, Orwynne, and Indhopal.

And more men were rushing over the causeway at Gaborn’s back.

“Come ahead, little men,” Raj Ahten shouted. He stood among a knot of dead reavers. “The first to attack will be the first to die.”

One archer burst from cover and took aim at Raj Ahten’s back.

“Raj Ahten, beware!” Gaborn shouted.

The archer loosed his arrow.

Raj Ahten whirled and stretched forth his hand. Coiling ropes of white fire flowed from it, incinerating the arrow in its flight. Then the fire traveled on.

At such a short distance, the archer had no time to escape. The coils whipped about him. His robes and hair flashed into incandescence, and his flesh burned an oily green. He stood like a living torch, crying out in agony.

Borenson had heard of such curses. Spells of flesh-burning were the stuff of legend.

Borenson peered toward Gaborn, who sat cross-legged on the ground, now a scant two hundred yards from Raj Ahten.

“I warn you one last time,” Gaborn said to the flameweaver. “Turn back now.”

At Raj Ahten’s back, Sarka Kaul suddenly appeared from behind a huge reaver, whose legs rose up like the trunks of trees. The Inkarran Days, his face reflecting the fierce light of Raj Ahten, sprang a dozen yards and thrust with his long knife.

But the heat roiling off Raj Ahten was so intense, that Sarka Kaul succumbed a dozen feet from his target.

He dropped to one knee, weakened by the heat, and his clothes burst into flames.

Borenson ducked back under cover, behind a dead reaver’s head, and grasped his battle-ax, thinking.

I’ll have to throw my weapon, he decided. But he’d lost his endowments of brawn, and he knew that he could not hurl the weapon more than thirty or forty feet now.

Suddenly, from atop a nearby reaver, a commanding voice cried out. “Lord of Ash,” the Wizard Binnesman intoned. “Leave here! I warn you one last time.”

The flaming monster whirled and peered at the Earth Warden. The wizard stood with his staff in hand, held protectively high above. His robes billowed out, blowing in the evening breeze.

Raj Ahten laughed. “You cannot harm me with that old tree limb. I am beyond your power!”

“That may well be,” Binnesman intoned. “But you are not beyond hers!”

Binnesman dropped his arms, and suddenly Borenson saw Myrrima hidden there behind his robe, her bow drawn to the full. Borenson’s heart hammered wildly in relief to see her alive. She was bloody and wet, as if she had just come out of the lake, and Borenson realized that she must have dived to safety when the tower collapsed.

She let an arrow fly.

It blurred in its speed.

Gaborn shouted, “Raj Ahten, dodge!”

Raj Ahten saw the arrow blur toward him, and heard Gaborn’s warning at the same moment. He heard, but refused to humor the little man.

He had no time to concentrate his energies, consume the arrow. Instead he reached up to catch it before it could bury itself in his eye.

He caught the shaft, and only then realized his mistake.

A force struck him, a Power irresistible.

He caught the arrow, and felt as if it shattered every bone in his arm. The flames that had encircled him, caressed him, suddenly guttered and died. The heat leached from him in an instant, and Raj Ahten stood naked but for the scars of thousands of runes matted over his body.

It was as if an impenetrable wall had formed between him and the source of his Power. Only then did he realize that the arrow had never been meant to pierce him. Far more disastrous were the runes that had been written on its shaft with water.

“No!” Raj Ahten bellowed. The sound of his voice, amplified by thousands of endowments, echoed over the low hills.

“Take him down,” Myrrima shouted, “before my spell wears off!”

Suddenly men sprang out from the shadows at every turn. Arrows whizzed toward Raj Ahten, while men with spears and battle-axes charged to meet him.

I am no coward, Raj Ahten told himself, to be chased off by pups like these. I am a Runelord still!

He batted aside the first two arrows that neared him, pulled the spear from the hand of the first man to attack, and hit the fellow hard enough to crush his skull.

Whirling, he faced to meet his enemies.

In the palace at Ghusa, Balimar had been lying in the Dedicates’ Keep. The ceiling rose high, some twenty feet, and soaring marble arches showed what had once been an open-air courtyard. But Raj Ahten had walled it in with cheap mud bricks, so that more Dedicates could be housed here.

Balimar’s heart had pounded as he reached into the bandage on his hip, grasped the hilt of a long, narrow dagger that lay concealed there.

It had been easy to fake giving an endowment. As a warrior among the Ah’Kellah, he had taken enough endowments himself. He had seen how the Dedicates sweated as the forcibles were pressed to their bare flesh, how they swayed and cried out as the endowment was taken, how their eyes rolled back and they fell senseless to the ground afterward. So he had feigned giving the endowment. The scars of the forcible were upon him, but in his heart, he had only hatred to give to Raj Ahten.

His face betrayed no emotion, though he grinned inwardly. Raj Ahten’s endless appetite for endowments would be his own undoing. His facilitators were working so hard to strip attributes from the local villagers that they had not even bothered to question the street urchins whom Balimar had bribed to pretend that he was their brother.

He had let the facilitators carry him into the innermost sanctuary of the keep, among the Dedicates. They were an ailing lot. He could hear them coughing, see them limping about.

The facilitators had tossed Balimar to the ground like a rag, throwing him near the door, simply because the Keep was so full.

Now, outside, a ram’s horn blew three long blasts—Wuqaz Faharaqin’s call to battle. It was a mere feint. Wuqaz and thirty men would ride to the gate, shoot arrows at the guards, killing as many as they could.

Indeed, even as Balimar lay there, a death cry arose, and horses began to scream.

Two guards within the Keep rushed toward the door. Their leader shouted, “We’re under attack! Bar the gate behind me.” He rushed through.

The second guard was occupied for a moment, pulling the huge iron gates closed, placing the iron bar across it.

Balimar quietly sprang to his feet. For seeming days now he had sought to hold himself still so that his endowments of metabolism would not be revealed. Now he sprang with all speed toward the door.

The guard heard him, dropped the bar in place, and reached for the warhammer sheathed on his back. Balimar shoved him against the door and stabbed through the fellow’s ring mail, angling the blade upward, so that the dagger sliced into his heart. He quickly drew the dagger out part-way, then thrust it back in—once, twice, three times, and four.

The guard died with nothing more than a grunt escaping his lips.

Balimar made sure that the door was barred tight, and then turned to peer at the Dedicates in the Keep.

Silently, nine other men had risen up among them, all warriors of the Ah’kellah, each bearing a dagger to pierce a man’s heart, or a cord to snap his neck. Already they had begun the slaughter. Balimar grabbed the warhammer from the hand of the dead guard even as the man dropped to the ground, then sprang among the Dedicates.

He bypassed the women and children who lay in heaps upon the stone floor, recalling Wuqaz’s words: kill the vectors first.

“Raj Ahten,” Gaborn shouted. “Flee!”

And Borenson wondered, What is Gaborn doing?

Raj Ahten seemed to have the battle well in hand. Dozens of men rushed to fight him, stabbing with lances, hurling axes, sending arrows to fly. Amid the swirling mass of bloodthirsty warriors, Raj Ahten danced naked, a dance that left many men dead.

An Invincible raced up to Raj Ahten’s back and hurled a scorpion dagger. Its poisoned blade struck him full, buried to the haft between his shoulder blades.

Raj Ahten shook himself, sending the blade flying. He whirled and drove the point of his spear through the man’s eye socket. He hardly slowed as the wound in his back closed and healed.

He swung his spear, almost as if it were a club, and took out a man’s throat.

He’s too fast, Borenson thought. He’s too strong.

He dared not draw near.

And then suddenly Raj Ahten seemed to stumble. In the midst of his dance, he slowed dramatically. His eyes were full of light, as if a dozen stars reflected from them. Smoke issued from his nostrils. His face contorted in alarm.

Borenson had seen that look of dismay upon the faces of other men. He’d had it upon his own. His Dedicates are dying! Borenson realized. He’s lost his metabolism!

The warriors around Raj Ahten raced for the kill. A fellow from Heredon drove a spear through Raj’s knee. Another swung a warhammer and spiked him through the back of the head.

Borenson rushed forward and would have attacked, but in his mind he heard Gaborn’s voice, the shout of the Earth King, warning, “Hold back.”

He dodged back a pace, just as Raj Ahten thrust his spear toward him.

Then Borenson waded in and swung his warhammer, not with much strength, but with great accuracy. He struck Raj Ahten in the joint of the shoulder, taking off his right arm.

Blood gushed from the wound, and a Knight Equitable saw the game. He lunged with a great-ax and hacked off Raj Ahten’s left arm.

Raj Ahten fell, screaming, and a dozen more warriors surged forward, eager to draw blood. They ringed him about and plunged in their spears, while the Knight Equitable lopped off both of the Wolf Lord’s legs.

Raj Ahten wailed in horror, but such was the force of his endowments that he could not die.

“Stay your hands!” Myrrima shouted. “Don’t kill him!”

Her fearful tone stopped the men cold.

“He’s a flameweaver,” she cautioned. “Kill him, and you’ll loose the elemental within! Let the water have him.”

Cedrick Tempest rushed forward, shouting, “I like that. Let him go for a swim. I’ll even give him the loan of my armor!”

He grabbed Raj Ahten, who now was but a torso, with arms and legs removed. Though blood flowed everywhere, Borenson saw to his dismay that Raj Ahten had begun to heal. The flesh had closed over his stumps, so that they had regenerated in a matter of moments more than a normal man’s would have in months. Indeed, the stumps were lengthening, budding new arms and legs.

Yet such healing came at a terrible price. Raj Ahten’s body had to cannibalize fat and flesh and bones from his trunk in order to nourish the new limbs. He looked skeletal and sickly.

With the eager help of two other men, Tempest picked up Raj Ahten. As cinders rained down from above and a meteor blazed in the heavens, they bore him over the ash-covered field, through gore and mud, out to the ruins of the drawbridge. Gree still squeaked in the air, and the reavers charging in the distance made a distant rumble.

Raj Ahten’s eyes glazed with pain, and he moaned in a daze. “My Dedicates!” Then his mind seemed to clear, and he cried plaintively to his enemies, “Serve me! Serve me. Let me go.”

But he had not enough Glamour or Voice left in him to sway his enemies.

Borenson followed the men, a chuckle rising involuntarily to his throat, as they climbed over reaver corpses to the bridge. The fires on the castle wall cast a dim red glow, creating a surreal tableau.

They reached the water, and Borenson saw huge shapes moving in circles there in the blackness. Salmon, he thought at first, finning in the water.

But the shapes were too large. They were more the size of sturgeon, like the great fish he’d seen in the moat at Castle Sylvarresta.

Water wizards, he suddenly realized with awe. Dozens of them swam in circles, small waves lapping against their backs, creating runes upon the surface of the lake.

There on the bridge, the axman noted that Raj Ahten had nearly grown a new right hand. Indeed, a child-sized nub had regenerated. They took a moment to lop it off.

Captain Tempest stripped his coat of ring mail and began to wrap Raj Ahten in it clumsily. “You wanted to take Heredon for its steel,” Tempest said. “But I’m afraid that this bit is all we’re willing to give.”

Borenson pulled off his own armor, and added it. Thus Raj Ahten was doubly weighted in mail.

With that, Tempest and another man grabbed the stump of Raj Ahten and hurled him into Lake Donnestgree.

He sank beneath the dark waves, his neck wrenching wildly as he struggled to scream. The water wizards circled him, as if excited, as he began to sink. The great fishes bumped him with their noses, like playful dolphins, pushing him up toward the surface, teasing him with the hope for air.

The water smelled so potent here, so omnipresent. The black waves lapped at the castle walls, and made soft sucking sounds.

Borenson stood on the causeway as if at the edge of ruin, unable to believe that Raj Ahten would die, unable to accept that anyone so powerful could be killed.

Light flashed underwater as a great red ball of flames erupted. The surface suddenly bubbled and foamed. Hot gases escaped, forming waves that rocked Lake Donnestgree. In the light, Borenson saw the monstrous elemental unleashed. A creature of flame took form, its hand seeking the surface, and it seemed to grow.

The stump of Raj Ahten’s body fell away, burned so badly that ribs stuck out like ruined kindling, as it sank down into the waves.

The great fishes could suddenly be seen more clearly, darting about in excitement. The bright glow lasted only for a second, as the elemental faded, and then the water went dark again.

Still, the surface of the lake continued to boil for nearly a minute until the water grew calm and black and fell silent again.

Then there were only the dark waves lapping softly against the castle walls.

Borenson looked over his shoulder, saw Gaborn and Iome standing side by side atop some dead reavers, looking down. He could see no victory in either of their faces, no celebration. Gaborn looked grim, worn, while Iome seemed to be shocked and hurt by what they’d done.

Gaborn has lost, Borenson realized. The Earth King has lost one of his charges. Yet even then he noted a change in Gaborn.

Like the child Averan, or the Wizard Binnesman, his skin had taken on a green tone. No, it is darker, Borenson realized. More like the face of the green woman—or like the effigies we make for Hostenfest.

Only then did Borenson realize why Gaborn had sought to save Raj Ahten, the prize he had won through his forbearance. Gaborn had become the Earth King, at last.

42 The Earth at Peace

Gaborn strode into the streets of Carris and peered about. The few folk who saw him stared in amazement, and then drew back reverently. Someone muttered, “He has leaves on his face, oak leaves—the sign of the Earth King.”

And inevitably those who looked at him dropped to their knees in reverence.

Gaborn could feel the change that had taken place in him. Until tonight, he had only glimpsed the power he would have as an Earth King. Now he felt it. He was sinking his roots into the Earth, sending up shoots. He was beginning to see ways to use his powers that he had never imagined.

In the city, fires sputtered everywhere, and the town was a pile of rubble. Buildings lay crumbled, with huge stones lying in heaps, or leaned to their sides with timbers thrust out like broken ribs. But he sensed life beneath the ground, life like tender seeds, waiting to spring forth.

He drew a rune on the ground, a Rune of Protection from fire, and in moments the flames that burned everywhere began to dwindle and extinguish.

He stalked down an alley, sensing for life, and found a door. Iome, Borenson, and dozens of others followed him in silent awe.

In the ground at the foot of the door, Gaborn’s sharp eyes could detect runes in the starlight—runes to protect the hunted from the unwelcome attention of the hunter, Runes of Strength to bar the door.

There were hundreds of doors like this throughout Carris, Gaborn knew. The men of Carris had dug many tunnels and chambers over the ages—cellars to store goods, tombs for the wealthy, tunnels to connect hidden passages beneath the castle walls.

“You have done a great work, it seems,” Gaborn told the Wizard Binnesman.

Silently he sent a message to his Chosen people hidden beneath the ground. “Come out. The danger is past, and the reavers are vanquished.”

Long seconds later, someone threw open the door and a pair of frightened commoners, men with pale faces who gripped their spears tightly, peered out.

Then they began to exit. One after another, the folk of Carris ushered forth, an old woman here, a pair there, until soon they began to fill the streets. They peered up in awe, for higher overhead the smoke had begun to clear, and now the stars fell like a shower of diamonds, flashes of silver and gold raining down in a clear night sky.

Soon, folks took stock of the empty fields before Carris and began shouting in jubilation. The crowd swelled the streets, until it became apparent that though many had died in the battle for Carris, perhaps half had been saved alive. Borenson stared at the emerging crowds, his jaw dropped in wonder, and said over and over, “I feared them dead. I thought them all dead.”

“Milord,” Captain Cedrick Tempest called to Gaborn, “the warlords of Internook wish to parlay.

Gaborn climbed the nearest wall so that he could look down over the southern reaches of Lake Donnestgree. There, longboats drifted like leaves, and in every boat a few torches lit the night. They bobbed like censers on the water. Iome stood beside Gaborn, looking down, her regal crown glowing with a thousand gems, while Gaborn’s green cape pin glimmered as if a star had fallen on his shoulder.

Near the base of the castle wall, great fish swam about in circles.

Old Olmarg, the warlord of Internook, drew near in his longboat, his oarsmen driving him forward in graceful strokes. He saw the water wizards ahead, and signaled for the oarsmen to stop. He gazed up at Gaborn and squinted with his one good eye, as if appraising him.

Gaborn looked out over the ships. He could feel a threat here, still. Olmarg was unsure whether to press the attack, or flee.

“The people of this realm are under my protection,” Gaborn warned him. “Come against us, and we will destroy you.”

Olmarg growled and said dangerously. “We came and fought a war for the plunder, and you’ll give us nothing? My men spilled good blood here. A reward seems in order.”

“Your name will go down in songs, as one who fought bravely,” Gaborn said. “Your great-grandchildren will sing your praise.”

Olmarg barked a laugh, and peered south. The pounding of reaver feet came like the roar of a distant ocean, and their backs were black in the starlight as they struggled over the hills.

“Damn,” Olmarg said, “we came and fought for nothing but the joy of battle.” He appraised Gaborn once again, and quickly decided that any man who could take on an army of reavers would not be cowed by the likes of him. He smiled broadly. “But it was worth it.”

Olmarg raised high a bright sphere, an orb of purest white. Gaborn could see clouds and light swirling, as if storms raged within, and almost immediately a gale picked up, came speeding from the north.

“Hoist sails,” Olmarg shouted. “We’re going home.”

Gaborn nodded thoughtfully. The sense of danger at Carris was gone.

As the warlords of Internook set sail, Averan turned and saw troops fleeing to the west. Many of Raj Ahten’s troops raced over the hills, terrified that Gaborn would come and make an example of them. Rialla Lowicker’s troops handled themselves in a courtlier manner. They banded together, and began blowing horns in long wailing notes. Her knights bore her body on a bier, with all of their flags flying about, and headed north in a sedate march as if to give her a heroine’s funeral.

As if to echo their calls, the frowth giants climbed a hill to the west and called out, “Wahoot! Wahoot!” over and over. They beat upon hollow logs, and their leaders raised a dead reaver high overhead, as if to make an offering to Gaborn, and then laid it on the battlefield.

Only King Anders’s men had refused to pack up and go skulking away in the darkness. In moments a knight came riding from his camp. The fellow looked fearful. He rode up to the castle wall and stood on the parapet, looking up. He called out to Gaborn, “Your Highness, my lord King Anders of South Crowthen sends his congratulations on a battle well won, and wishes you peace and a long life.”

“Why does he not come and offer such words himself?” Gaborn asked suspiciously.

“I fear that moving him unnecessarily would not be wise. His surgeons tell me that he has taken a mortal wound, and wishes only to return and die within sight of his homeland. I fear that he will not make it. Still, we beg your indulgence, and ask that you grant us permission to leave the battlefield.”

“What of Celinor?” Iome asked.

“The boy is with his father, trying to ease his way,” the messenger said. “He also begs permission to leave the battlefield.”

Gaborn peered across the battlefield, filled with misgivings. Anders had claimed to be the Earth King, and now he asked to leave the battlefield?

“I will come to bid him farewell,” Gaborn said.

With that, he sped across the field faster than the messenger could have imagined, past dead reavers, up the hill to a small rise where Anders’s startled guards barely had time to register his approach before he was at Anders’s tent.

Erin Connal lay outside it, bound hand and foot. Inside the tent, Anders lay abed with Celinor at his side. His wound did not look mortal. Gaborn peered at the man with his Earth Sight, and saw within him something far more terrifying than any reaver. There was a shadow in him, a blackness deep and grotesque.

Celinor and the guards reacted slowly to Gaborn’s presence. They shouted and began to fall back.

King Anders opened his eyes to slits, peered up at Gaborn, and merely smiled. “Will you kill me?”

“What would be the point?” Gaborn asked. “A locus cannot be slain.”

Celinor had staggered back a step and was drawing his blade, as if to protect his father. Gaborn stopped him with a glance.

“You are wise, Earth King,” Anders said.

Gaborn looked up to Celinor. “Your father harbors a locus, and is therefore your father no more. Bind him, and bear him to the deepest dungeon at Ravenscroft. There, you may tend him and feed him, but do him no harm.”

Celinor peered at his father, horror showing in every line of his face.

At that, King Anders screamed in protest, his back arching up off of the ground. His eyes rolled back in his head, and when he slumped to the ground, he breathed no more. Gaborn saw a flash of darkness as the locus fled. A chill ran up Gaborn’s spine. He rushed from the tent, and saw the shadow blurring away to the north.

“What happened?” Celinor called from within the tent. Gaborn peered back through the flap. The guards were looking about darkly.

“The locus feared imprisonment,” Gaborn said with certainty. “So it tore your father’s spirit from its body, and fled.” Gaborn felt certain that it would make itself known in time.

Celinor went to Erin, and begging forgiveness, cut her free of her bonds.

Home, Averan thought, as Gaborn raced to Anders’s tent. Everyone is going home. But where will I go? Her home was gone.

By her body’s clock, thirty days and nights she had been in the Underworld, and in that time she had become accustomed to the smell of the deep earth, the overwhelming silence of the Underworld, the eternal shadows. The open sky above her seemed strange and foreboding, with all of its bright stars falling down from midnight blue skies in a steady stream, like bright coins of gold and silver tumbling through the darkness.

By dawn the folk of Carris had begun to bury the dead in two great mounds before the castle walls. In a cool gray mist Averan watched them as she rode south toward the Courts of Tide, the hills becoming smaller and smaller, fading into the distance. She imagined them as they would be someday, with broad-leafed elms growing atop them, giving shade to the folk who would build cities here again. Rabbits would feed on the hillsides, and foxes would dig dens beneath the roots of the forest giants. Doves would call from the boughs in the evening while young men sat in the shade of the hillock and sang to the women they loved.

Soon, the Earth whispered to Averan. It will happen again soon.

On the road, the prisoners that Averan and Gaborn had rescued from the Underworld filed off toward their homes. Gaborn provided each of them with cloaks and horses and food and money for the road, and many a proud man wept in gratitude as he took his leave.

The ride to the Courts of Tide was not a hurried one. The Earth King traveled by day, and by night he ranged far from camp. With his many endowments he traveled quickly over hills and through the fields, seeking out the cottages of humble farmers and woodsmen, Choosing those that he fancied. He took to wearing a green travel robe, and carrying a staff of oak. Tiny rootlings took shape in the robe almost as soon as he put it on, and within two days they had so overrun the fabric that nothing could be seen of the original material. Instead, Gaborn wore a wizard’s robe that seemed as brown as turned earth in some light, or as green as pine needles in others.

Within three days, they reached the soaring towers at the Courts of Tide, where the crystalline bridges spanned the ocean between the isles.

The warlords of Internook had already sailed away by the time they reached the city, but evidence of the damage they had wrought was everywhere—scorched wood along the piers, walls of huge estates knocked over.

Still, the folk were delighted to see the Earth King, and came out in force. All of the warning bells in the city rang for joy, and the children and mothers cried.

Gaborn rode through the city slowly, for he was so pressed by those who wanted the Choosing that he could hardly move forward. So he sat atop his horse and held his left hand high, looking into the crowd at knots of people, calling, “I Choose you. I Choose you all for the Earth.”

Averan wondered why he bothered. He had saved the seeds of the Earth, as was his duty. Why did he keep up the Choosing?

So she asked him one night a week after they had reached the city.

“I am the Earth King in times of peace, as well as in times of war,” Gaborn said. “Indeed, now my Power will serve me best.”

And he continued to Choose. Over the coming weeks, lords came from far lands—from the remote reaches of Indhopal, and the islands of the north, and from every realm in Rofehavan, all of them bowing their heads and offering up tribute from their realms. Wuqaz Faharaqin came from Indhopal, to make a peace offering from all of the kings of the desert, and brought with him a great store of blood metal as tribute.

Gaborn distributed the blood metal freely, but only to those who belonged to the Brotherhood of the Wolf. “The Earth King needs no standing army,” he explained. “Our greatest enemy now is the evil that lurks among us, and the Brotherhood of the Wolf is hereby charged with excising that evil. Go into the hills and find the brigands and bandits there, and root them out. Go into the halls of your barons and dukes, and find the evil there, and cut them down.” And though his orders sounded broad, the truth is that few men actually paid the ultimate price. The Brotherhood went out with great authority, executing judgment righteously, and all who dared to defy them were destroyed.

Only the men of Inkarra did not come be Chosen. Borenson told Gaborn that the Kings of Inkarra had gone riding to fight the reavers, but no sign of such a battle was ever seen, and whether they fought and died, or whether they discovered the reavers coming out of the Mouth of the World and decided to retreat, never became quite clear.

Averan waited at the Courts of Tide and took a room in the castle, a room fit for an honored lord. But though it was huge, and the chestnut paneling on the walls was inlaid in gold, and enough feathers had gone into the bolster of its huge bed to make cots for all of the farmers in a village, Averan did not feel at home. She found herself at night wandering from room to room, looking for a place to sleep.

Thus it was on the tenth night, just after sunset, that an old stargazer with a silver beard came to the castle, begging to see Gaborn.

The stars had quit falling every night by then, though the heavens seemed to be filled with light, as if new stars now shone above. Averan led the fellow to Gaborn, who was up on his tower, watching over his kingdom like a shepherd standing watch over his flock.

“Your Highness,” Jennaise the stargazer said when he saw Gaborn. “In behalf of our guild, I thank you.”

“For what?” Gaborn asked.

“For moving the Earth back near its normal course in the heavens.”

Gaborn looked at Averan sidelong out of his eye. “I had no part in that,” he said. “A wizard greater than I managed it.”

At that, the stargazer gaped in surprise at Averan, and begged, “Then it is you that I must thank. However, things are not exactly as they were....”

“In what way?” Averan asked.

“Our path through the heavens will take longer than before. Each year is extended by nearly a day, if our calculations are correct. Can you not repair the damage?”

“The damage is repaired,” Averan said. “The new course will be better for us than the old.”

“But,” the stargazer gasped in exasperation, “the calendars—they will all have to be changed!”

“Then change them,” Gaborn said. “Add a day to the calendar.”

“But, what shall we call it?” the stargazer asked.

“Gaborn’s Day,” Averan answered. “In honor of our king.”

“No,” Gaborn said. “I don’t want people celebrating me. Call it Brotherhood Day, so that men may celebrate their kinship with one another. Make it a day of feasting and games.”

“Very well,” the stargazer said, nearly sweeping the floor with his beard as he bowed and left.

43 Home

Iome stayed on at the Courts of Tide for the winter, though her husband soon left. She heard rumors of him ranging far and wide, stalking through the mountains of Ashoven and hills of Toom, racing through Orwynne. Many a traveler saw him on the road, a bent man with many endowments, hurrying toward some secret destination. On all of his journeys it as said that he Chose the common folk at large, selecting some, neglecting others, and executing men whose hearts had gone dark after committing bloody deeds.

Thus he was loved and admired by most, but feared by others, and it was rumored that evil men were gathering in the forests all through the kingdoms, lest Gaborn’s bright eyes pierce them and discover their secrets.

Throughout the autumn Iome heard word of skirmishes here and there, where the Brotherhood of the Wolf rounded up villains and slaughtered them wholesale.

As for her babe, Iome had not even been showing when she made the trip to the Underworld, but her endowments of metabolism made the babe mature quickly within her womb.

It was on a cool winter night, not more than three weeks after the battle at Carris, that Iome gave birth to Gaborn’s first son. She laid him in a cradle, and named him Fallion, after the hero of old.

To her surprise, Gaborn came home that very night and marched to her loft to look at the child. Iome had made sure that Gaborn received many endowments, and he moved swiftly now, and aged accordingly. Though he had only been gone a few weeks, his body bore the ravages of years.

He peered into the crib, and seemed to hesitate before he said at last, “This one is an old spirit, one that has been born many times. He does not come as others do, with a blank mind, empty of purpose. He comes on a quest.”

“What is his purpose?” Iome asked.

Gaborn stared hard at the child, and whispered mysteriously, “To finish what I cannot.”

Iome sensed sadness in Gaborn then, and she ached for what she had bought. She was losing him, losing him to his cause. Yet she was the one who had paid the coin, given him the endowments that he would not have taken himself. And though they had managed to save the world, they had paid a dear price. He would die of his endowments within a year. And her life too would be short.

Iome sent to Heredon for word of her dear friend Chemoise and learned that she had made herself Gaborn’s Dedicate. Saddened, Iome had her brought to the Courts of Tide so that Iome could care for her until Gaborn’s demise.

Gaborn remained near the castle for a few days more, and Iome healed from her labor and soon found herself with child again.

Almost immediately Gaborn headed back out on the road, for there came word that an army was gathering in Indhopal, an army that would challenge Gaborn. And so her husband slipped out in the night, and once again Iome heard little of him but rumors.

Then, at midwinter, when the first light snow had fallen over the green fields of Mystarria, Iome got word from Gaborn.

She dreamt of him, and in her dream, Gaborn walked beside her and told of his labors of the past few days, of Choosing the poor in Taif, those who were most ravaged from the famine that occurred in the south. He spoke in a language that used no words during the dream, so that she felt his thoughts and his desires, and thus in a way, the time she spent apart from him seemed more fulfilling than the time that they had spent together.

And when she woke, she spoke with her counselors and discovered that her sending was true, that Gaborn was in Taif. There he was using his Powers to warn men not of danger but to tell them who was in greatest need. Thus, those with plenty of food found themselves responding to the Earth King’s warning, and were oft led to give a loaf of bread to a child beside the road, or an old woman holed up in her hovel.

Indeed, from time to time, she heard Gaborn’s voice herself, as he told her what funds to send to the relief of various realms within his kingdom.

And he did not return. He passed into the southern realms of Indhopal at midwinter, and Iome heard rumor that he might have gone to Inkarra.

She ached to see Gaborn, for every day that she spent away from him, he grew another fifty days old. Iome herself had taken many endowments of metabolism, and thus had to bear her own burden. Her second son, Jaz, came a month by the calendar after her first. In their cribs the children looked almost like twins. And though the children hardly grew at all, Iome aged a decade over the course of the winter, while Gaborn grew past middle age.

As spring neared, Myrrima and Borenson took up residence in their estate at Drewverry March. The manor house there offered nothing in the way of defensible walls, and Myrrima preferred it that way. Borenson had hung up his shield and battle-ax, beneath the crystalline tooth of a reaver, and there she hoped the weapons would stay.

Myrrima invited Averan to live with her, and treated the girl as if she were her own daughter. But Averan had taken endowments of metabolism, too, and during the course of the summer, she blossomed into a young woman, the kind that Borenson would have admired only a few years before. The girl seemed restless, and wandered around the house like one who was lost, and often could be seen staring to the west with a faraway look in her eye. Whenever Myrrima saw her thus and asked what she was thinking about, Averan would only say, “Home.” Then she would drop her eyes and look away in embarrassment.

It was obvious to Myrrima that Averan longed to be someplace else.

Over the summer, Borenson went to work beside his farmhands, and learned the fine art of growing string beans, and pulling weeds, and swinging a scythe.

Myrrima, in the meantime, spent much of the day up at a spring above the house. It opened into a clear pool, deep and wide, encircled by weeping willows. In the fall their leaves came on golden, and fluttered noisily in the wind in the evenings, and Myrrima liked to go there and cast rose petals upon the water. She gave birth to a daughter in the late summer, and gave the child no name for the first few weeks.

Borenson had not heard much of Gaborn in long weeks. The last that he’d heard, the Earth King was in South Crowthen. There were rumors that old King Anders had not died after the battle at Carris after all, and had been seen at night, standing upon the castle walls at Ravenscroft. Most of the other tales that Borenson heard, though, were good. The people of the world had nearly all received the Choosing, and among them there was a sense of deep and abiding peace that had never been known.

Often Borenson would find himself prompted to visit an old neighbor woman and help with her chores, and each time that he did, he knew that by doing so, he was saving the old woman’s life. And a thousand times a thousand times a day, such deeds were repeated all across the world.

Borenson began to see now that though Gaborn had won the day at Carris, like Erden Geboren himself, it would someday be said of him, “He was great in war, but greater in peace.”

That evening the Earth King came to them. It had been just more than a year since the battle at Carris, and with his many endowments of metabolism, Gaborn had grown old indeed. His hair had turned gray, and cracks lined his skin. The dark green blotches of earth blood upon his face stood out like tattoos of leaves, and the wrinkles on his cheeks became the veins in the leaves.

Gaborn came and stayed that night and talked to Borenson, Iome, and Averan of many things—of strange goings-on in the south, of rumors of Celinor’s rising madness, and how his wife had gone into hiding. They sat in rough chairs in the kitchen, drinking warm ale, so yeasty that it built a new head of foam if left for a moment. Outside, the wind was growing cold, howling like a wolf cub.

“The children born this year see better than their fathers ever did,” Gaborn told them. “They see new colors in the rainbow, and in flowers. And down in Inkarra, new animals have begun to appear, and many of those that we thought we knew are taking on new Powers. In Fleeds the grass grew long and lush this summer, and it smelled so sweet that I envied the horses that ate it. The colts that sprang forth run fast from birth, faster than their mothers.”

“I’ve heard some stories, too,” Borenson said. “My steward claims to have dreams, sendings from the netherworld. He does not say much about them, but I can tell that they frighten him. He spends too much time sharpening his sword.”

“There’s nothing to fear,” Averan said. “The world is changing, and will continue to change.”

“It’s all your doing, then?” Gaborn asked Averan.

“The world is changing,” Averan said, “taking on some of the shape of the One True World. There is nothing to fear in this.”

So they stayed up late talking, and Borenson reveled in the company of his old master, until they heard a thump at the door late in the night, and Borenson opened the door to find the Wizard Binnesman there.

Borenson grunted in surprise, looked at the old gray wizard, and at Gaborn, and asked at last, “What’s going on?”

“We came to say good-bye,” Gaborn said. “To you, and to Averan. We four shall not meet again. I will not live out the winter, and when I pass, I will leave the world in your hands. And so I must ask a favor of you.”

“Name it,” Borenson said, and he saw that Averan and Binnesman were leaning near them, intent on Gaborn’s every word.

“Protect my wife and my sons.”

“What won’t she be safe from?” Borenson asked. “Are the reavers returning?”

But Gaborn only shrugged. “I am not told, I only feel.”

“Not the reavers,” Averan said. “They will never bother us again, I think.”

“There are darker things than reavers,” Gaborn said with a shiver. “I have searched the world for them far and wide, but many yet remain hidden from me.”

That morning at dawn, Averan, Gaborn, and Binnesman mounted up for one last ride. They told Myrrima that they would be back in three days, and they took force horses to the Courts of Tide.

There, Iome gave Averan a gift, and told her, “Let this be a light for you in dark places,” Iome said. “You may only be a wizard, but you shall look the part of the queen of the Underworld.” Iome gave Averan her crown of blazing opals.

Averan tucked it into her pack, hugged Iome, and said her good-byes.

A night later the three of them rode fast horses to the Mouth of the World. Averan bowed her head as they passed Keep Haberd, and would not look at the massive stones all thrown down, now covered with wild peas that had their blossoms open to the night.

It was a fine night, surprisingly mild. Starlight and a rising moon dressed the hills in silver. To Averan’s senses, everything was a wonder. It was well past the first of the month of Leaves, and the trees had all begun to turn to their autumn colors. To the north, the hills rolled away, each hump riding the back of the last, until the fair fields of Mystarria glistened in the distance. Off to the east, the Alcair Mountains rose up as sharp as blades, with snow glistening at their peaks. Everywhere, crickets sang among the fields, and Averan peered up at the stars, which seemed to loom just out of reach up in the heavens. None of them were falling.

Averan felt as if a huge burden had lifted from her chest. She sat astride a gray mare, holding her black staff.

“Tell all the people,” Averan said, “that the reavers will trouble them no more. The hosts of the Underworld shall never come against them again.”

“Are you sure that you want to go back?” Borenson asked. “There will always be a place for you at the manor, if you wish.”

Averan shook her head. “Don’t worry for me. You’re going to your home. I’m going to mine. There is much work to be done still, and I must remain vigilant.”

Borenson nodded, unable to even guess what burdens the child would have to endure. The reavers needed an Earth Warden to protect them. Even he had to know what that meant. Dark times lay ahead.

“Still,” Borenson said, “if ever you find yourself yearning for sunlight on your face, or a fair bed, or another person to talk to...”

“I’ll know where to find you,” Averan finished for him.

Averan climbed down from her horse, and gave Borenson a hug. He squeezed her tightly, and wished never to let her go. Averan still felt small in his embrace.

Averan hugged him close one last time, and Borenson saw tears glisten in the young woman’s eyes.

At least there is still a small part of her that is human, Borenson thought, and he rejoiced in that.

Averan said good-bye to Gaborn and Binnesman, and of that tearful meeting, little can be said. She had found in Binnesman a father that she had never known, and now she would lose him again.

Then Averan stood in the mouth of the cave for a moment, just breathing the fresh air. A small breeze suddenly stirred the trees, and went hissing through the grasses, and Averan looked as if she took that as a sign to depart. Placing Iome’s old crown upon her brow to light the way, she turned and strode back into the Underworld.