His men lunged quickly to take advantage of exposed targets, avoided reaver’s blows. They choreographed thrusts and parries, so that the battle suddenly became something more than a frenzied free-for-all.
Now it seemed a macabre and deadly dance.
To Raj Ahten’s wonder, Paldane’s men began fighting so effectively that the reavers at the gates hesitated, with drew in confusion, unwilling to withstand the slaughter.
Paldane’s men closed ranks. Along the walls, men leapt down atop the mound of carcasses and raced forward, forced reavers back to the causeway.
Everywhere in the castle, commoners staggered down the wall-walks, heading for the bailey, trying to obey Gaborn’s command to flee the castle. Others threw themselves over the walls into the lake.
Carris was enormous, with nearly four hundred thousand troops on the walls and as many commoners within the city proper. Now these people spilled out into every narrow street, fleeing the quakes.
“Hold!” Raj Ahten shouted to them. “Stand fast, I say!” His Voice was so powerful and seductive that his words slipped like a dagger into the subconscious minds of Paldane’s men, and soon most of them began to hold their positions.
I will not be ill-used, Raj Ahten told himself.
He smiled grimly and shouted across the distance, with a voice so powerful that even Gaborn could not fail to hear. “We are enemies still, son of Orden!”
Roland thought he heard dogs barking and snarling. He found himself in a tree carved of stone, perched high above the ground.
In a daze, he struggled to raise his head, saw huge reavers racing through the branches above, teeth flashing. An overwhelming fatigue smote him. He fell back. The tree shuddered below, and he heard its great bole snap under so much weight.
“The walls will come down! The walls are coming down!” someone shouted distantly. Raj Ahten’s Voice rolled through the woods, “To me! To me!”
Men screamed and died, and nearby Roland heard a woman shouting for help. He glanced down from his perch of stone and saw Baron Poll’s familiar face, leering up at him.
“Help,” Roland called weakly.
The Baron laughed. “Help? You want the help of a dead man? What would you give me?”
“Please …” Roland said.
“Not until you call me ‘sirrah,’” Baron Poll said smugly.
“Please, sirrah,” Roland begged.
“Now if only your son would say that word,” Baron Poll laughed. He turned his horse and rode away through a misty field.
Distantly he heard men screaming, heard the rattling breath of reavers. He felt in great pain, almost past caring.
Light flashed overhead, flames dancing in a burning tower.
Roland opened his eyes, lay for a long time looking at his arm. It was wrapped in a bloody bandage. Men lay dead all around; gore splattered the merlons above him. The white plaster walls of Carris were turning crimson.
Gloom filled the sky. Feathery flakes of snow fell like ashes. No, he realized, they were ashes. Roland closed his eyes, for it pained him to look. It was nearly dark. Roland judged that he’d been unconscious for an hour or more.
He heard a baby crying, lolled his head to the side. Down in the courtyard just below, a young woman in a gray-blue robe had come out of the back of the manor, and she clucked softly as she tried to shush her fretting child.
Painfully, Roland gathered his strength and rolled to his stomach. Blood began to leak from his bandaged arm. He climbed to his knees and held his arm for a long moment, stanching his wound, trying to make sense of what he saw.
No one was left alive on the south wall with him. Bodies by the thousands lay strewn along it, nearly all human, though a few reavers lay in the mix. Ashes and soot fell from the cold air.
The castle walls were swaying, stones grinding against stone. “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth,” a voice whispered in Roland’s mind. “Flee!”
Roland heard the call distantly, through the tattered remnants of a nightmare of pain. He struggled to comprehend it.
He glanced around. Everyone’s killed, he thought. But no, he decided, the wall had been abandoned. The walls were bucking, plaster and stones falling from them.
He looked into the castle. The front gates were down, along with both gate towers. Reavers had broken into the castle. The men of Carris struggled for their lives down in the bailey, clambered up a mound of dead reavers in an effort to retake the causeway. A few frowth giants fought ferociously at their backs.
The plain before Carris was black with bodies—gray reavers by the dull thousands. At the foot of Bone Hill, a human host fought. Hundreds of knights whirled their mounts in a slow-moving pinwheel, lances bristling.
Lances shattered as men met reavers. Horses stumbled with their knights. Blades and glory hammers rose and fell in deadly arcs.
In the midst of the pinwheel, a flag blew in the stiff wind: the green man of Mystarria, King Orden’s standard.
At the center of a tiny knot, Roland saw the Earth King himself, Gaborn Val Orden, staggering toward the fell mage at Bone Hill. Guards circled him in a knot, and Roland’s heart swelled to imagine that his son would be among them. Ah, if only Averan were here to see this!
It’s true, Roland realized. The voice I heard in the dream … the Earth King has Chosen me.
Why? Roland wondered. Why me? Surely I am not worthy. I am a murderer. A worthless commoner. I am no warrior.
Roland was not given to fantasies. Even if he had been a fantasist, he’d not have imagined the Earth King Choosing him.
Suddenly he found tears streaming down his cheeks, and Roland wondered how he might best repay the gift. “Thank you,” he whispered, unsure whether the Earth King could hear him.
In that moment a gray wind swept over the castle walls, sending gree swirling like ashes in a flume, bearing the odor of the reaver’s curse.
Roland felt weak from his wounds, had hardly made it to his knees. Now the curse wracked him with a lethargy that sapped all his will.
He succumbed atop the wall-walk, felt it swaying. He could not muster the energy to cry for help, to draw a breath, or even to blink.
59
UNEXPECTED RELATIONS
Four miles from Castle Carris, Averan clung to Roland’s back as she rode, afraid that she might fall. One of the men from Indhopal had wrestled the green woman into his saddle, though she struggled against him, trying to climb down.
They’d outpaced the reavers that chased them, left the monsters far behind.
But something was wrong. Averan could not understand why Roland was here with the beautiful woman from Indhopal and her bodyguards. Nor could she understand why Roland was dressed in clothes that were different from those he’d worn yesterday, or why he rode such a grand horse.
With some embarrassment, she realized that this wasn’t Roland at all. It was more than the clothes or the horse—this man smelled wrong. His clothes smelled of desert sage and greasewood and sand, not the green grass of Mystarria.
“Who are you?” she asked. “I thought you were someone else, my friend Roland.”
The big man glanced back at her. She saw that this truly wasn’t Roland. This fellow had the same red hair, the same laughing blue eyes. But some of his hair had begun to turn gray.
“You know someone named Roland?” the fellow asked. “From the Blue Tower?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “He gave me a ride on his horse. He was riding with Baron Poll to Carris. He wanted to go north to see the Earth King, and his son—you. He was going to see you. Wasn’t he?”
The big man nodded. “Roland is my father’s name. You can call me Borenson.” He didn’t look happy to learn that his father was coming to see him.
“You don’t like your father?” Averan asked.
“My mother detested him,” Borenson answered, “and since I look like him, in time she grew to detest me.”
“I like Roland,” Averan offered. “He’s going to petition Palda
ne so that I can be his daughter.”
“The man is a lackluster,” Borenson said. “He’ll be no more of a father to you than he was to me.”
The cold way that Borenson spoke of his father unnerved Averan, and she was angry that he dismissed everything she said. It was true that she was only nine years old, and that she had lost her endowments, but she wasn’t a stupid child. She’d just told Borenson that she was going to be his sister, and she expected some kind of acknowledgment from him. But Borenson seemed intent on dismissing her.
They charged up a long narrow hill, over dry rye stalks, bent and broken and as gray as ash.
At the top of the hill, an ancient granite sun dome lay in ruins. The perfect orb-shaped crematorium had rolled from its pedestal and cracked. Now it rested on the hill like a broken egg.
Averan could see the lay of the land to the north and south. They were far enough from any cover that no reaver could ambush them.
But as they crowned the hill and wheeled around the ruined dome, they gazed down on Carris, and Averan gasped in dismay.
Below in the distance, fire burned the white towers of Carris, reflected in the waters of Lake Donnestgree.
The barbicans lay in ruins and the western wall of the castle was shattered. The smooth plaster everywhere was stripped.
Reavers blackened a land shrouded in dirty mist. One Indhopalese guard stared hard at the burning castle. “Our Lord Raj Ahten defends that fortress,” he said grimly, “along with many men of Mystarria. The Earth King fights in the fields.”
“Perhaps we are not needed,” a eunuch said. “It seems that our lord has already called a truce.” Averan thought him cowardly, the way his voice trembled.
The fields below were a wasteland. It looked as if Carris might never be fit for human habitation again—not even if men tried to rebuild their homes, replant their crops.
Averan watched the Earth King ride through the thick haze toward the foot of Bone Hill. Her eye was drawn to him. She recognized him instantly, but felt surprised. Gaborn looked like an ordinary man, not the emerald flame she’d seen in her mind when she closed her eyes.
Averan glanced over at the green woman. She sat in the saddle in front of Pashtuk and watched the Earth King, but she watched him with her eyes closed. She smiled wistfully.
The green woman sees it, too, Averan realized. She sees his power. Averan closed her eyes and watched Gaborn. He looked like an emerald flame that glided and bounced with every jostle of his mount.
One Indhopalese guard suggested, “If we go down to that hill, we can skirt north along the aqueduct to reach the Earth King,”
“I don’t like it,” Borenson groused. “The burrows at the end of the canal won’t have gophers in them.” He pointed north. “We should take the trail up around the Barren’s Wall—come in from behind.”
“That’s too far!” the Indhopalese fellow argued.
Averan watched Gaborn fight his way to Bone Hill. He had so many endowments of metabolism, that to her the deed seemed swift, almost a race as he crouched and cast a spell that made the whole earth tremble. She saw the walls of Carris begin to tremble, and Gaborn stare off toward it with mouth agape. He raised his left hand and cast a second spell.
“There,” Borenson said. “He’s Choosing. He’s Choosing the whole city!”
If Gaborn spoke, Averan could not hear his words. They were lost in the hissing sound of thousands of reavers, in the trembling of aftershocks. But she marveled at the notion that Gaborn would Choose this whole city, even his enemies.
The men atop the walls of Carris cheered and fled the falling city, while reavers raced to attack the Earth King. Reavers thundered over a barricade at Bone Hill. They scurried up from burrows.
The Earth King urged his cavalry forward, doggedly trying to fight.
“What does he hope to accomplish?” one eunuch asked.
“He’s trying to save Carris,” Borenson said with some certainty. “He hopes to draw off its attackers.”
But even from here, Averan could see that Gaborn could not make it. There were too many reavers, attacking too swiftly. Gaborn would be cut off, surrounded.
Across the valley, the Voice of Raj Ahten roared, magnified by his many endowments. “We are enemies still, son of Orden!”
Raj Ahten stood atop the city wall, waving his battle-axe in defiance, even as slabs of plaster cascaded around him.
And atop Bone Hill, the fell mage raised a pale yellow staff to the sky and hissed. Thunder sounded and rolled down over the hill to Carris.
The beautiful woman from Indhopal said softly, “So, it is true. My husband rejects the Earth King, his cousin by marriage, and will leave him to the reavers.”
Her tone was one of solemn revulsion, as if she’d never imagined that Raj Ahten could be so heartless.
“I am afraid so, O Great Star, my Saffira,” Borenson said gently, trying to ease the blow.
Another aftershock made the ground rumble, the horses dance to keep their feet.
Saffira shouted and spurred her mount downhill. It ran with speed and grace and purpose as only a force horse could, racing due west toward Carris as if to reach the city, though ten thousand reavers blocked her way.
Borenson shouted, and Averan clutched his back tightly as their mount shot forward.
Saffira rode east, and at first Averan thought she rode blindly. But she changed course, veered south, and Averan saw where she headed.
The reavers had broken into several fronts. One front directed its attack against Carris, while a second raced for the Earth King. A third chased after the cavalry that had struck south.
As the reavers split, they left an empty field in the midst of their forces. Into this field Saffira charged.
“Wait!” the eunuchs shouted. “Hold up!”
But it did no good. Saffira galloped for Carris, until she came within half a mile of its walls, and the reavers down the slope ahead were so thick that she could ride no farther.
Sensing her at their backs, blade-bearers nearby all began to wheel. The rasping at their thoraxes became louder.
For a moment Saffira charged alone to a small hillock, in the last light of day. She wore a riding robe of fine red cotton, embroidered with exquisite gold threads to form curlicues like the tendrils of vines that wrapped about her arms and breasts. On her head, she wore a thin red veil beneath a silver crown.
Now she unbuckled a narrow golden belt, tossed it on the ground, and pulled off her robe. She withdrew her veil, so that for one moment she sat proud atop a gray Imperial charger, wearing only a sheer dress of lavender silk that accentuated the exquisite dark hues of her skin.
At the edge of the horizon, the sun was falling, and a few small rays slanted from the broken clouds.
Many other hillocks were scattered through the wasteland, but now Averan saw that Saffira had chosen this one because she’d seen the wan light upon it and knew it was the best place to display herself.
To Averan, Saffira seemed to be perfection given form. The graceful lines of her neck and shoulders would have kept a proper minstrel writing lines for a lifetime, yet even Behoran Goldentongue himself could not have composed a tune and words that would have captured her grace, or the light in her eyes, or the courage in her stance.
It seemed to Averan that even then Saffira knew she would die. She’d ridden too close to the reavers. The nearest of them wheeled not a hundred yards down the slope, taking a defensive stance. Reavers are easily surprised, and often hesitate when trying to determine the nature of a threat, but it would only take a moment for the monster to recognize that Saffira stood alone.
But one moment was all Saffira wanted. In that moment, she began to sing.
60
BONE HILL
How do I save them all? Gaborn wondered.
He’d connected to hundreds of thousands of people in Castle Carris, and he felt overwhelmed by the sense of danger around them. A third aftershock began to make the ground swell and buck.
At the castle gates, thousands of men were fighting for their lives. Gaborn concentrated on them, for their situation was gravest. Yet in Castle Carris, Raj Ahten refused Gaborn, smugly chose to hinder his troops from advancing. Surely, his Invincibles could hack a path over the causeway.
Fatigue wracked him as he doggedly advanced toward Bone Hill, a deep-seated lethargy that worried the bone. The closer he drew, the more paralyzing it became.
I have Chosen too indiscriminately, he realized. He led a ragtag band of warriors. Desperately, his men forged on. Unhorsed and without their long deadly lances, they were not as effective as mounted knights, yet they advanced manfully, as if moved by his will alone.
Gaborn climbed down from the saddle and tried to lead them a few paces closer, but the effect of the fell mage’s spell was so powerful he could hardly hold the reins of his own mount.
To the south, High Marshal Skalbairn sought to make an ill-fated charge. Gaborn sent the message “Turn back! Save yourselves if you can!”
He focused on the job at hand, hoping that the warriors who guarded him now would be able to fend off the impending attack.
Two hundred yards ahead was the great cocoon, with the fell mage atop the hill. Reavers were racing round both sides of Bone Hill. They’d be here in seconds.
When he could go no farther from weariness, Gaborn numbly dropped in the dust and began to draw a second rune of Earth-breaking.
Desperately he searched the rune itself, looking for weaknesses, flaws in its binding.
A wave of reavers rushed toward his battle lines, fifty yards ahead on each side. Near his foot lay a strand of cocoon, a line that ran two hundred yards.
Gaborn glanced up at Bone Hill, trying to see the object of his spell. Reavers blocked the way, climbed the cocoon in droves. A reaver’s head was larger than a wagon bed and its paws were longer than a man’s body. As monsters surged closer, surrounding him, he could not see over them.
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