The chute dropped another half mile, when suddenly Gaborn called, “Wait where you are. There's no bottom.”
“What do you mean there's no bottom?” Iome called.
“I can't see a bottom,” Gaborn said. “It just—it drops into nothing.”
Averan huddled where she was, clutching some precarious handholds. The tickle ferns waved slowly, brushing like feathers against her wrist.
She tried to peer down, but Binnesman and the green woman blocked her view. There was light all through the shaft, where the opals released their inner fire, but the light ended perhaps a dozen yards below, and Averan could see what Gaborn meant—the shaft suddenly stopped, and below them was what seemed to be an endless drop.
Averan clung to the wall, heart pounding. Sweat streamed down her forehead. The nail of her left pinky felt as if it were about to pull off. She'd abused it tremendously.
She moved her pinky finger minutely, and the nail detached.
She dug her toes tighter into her footholds, and just leaned her head against the stone wall, wanting to cry. Her legs and arms were trembling now, despite her best efforts to keep still.
Do spiders ever get this tired of climbing walls? she wondered. Yes, she realized, they must.
She could hear Gaborn wheezing as he scrambled down farther, closer to the lip of the chasm.
“I think I see water below us,” Gaborn called. “I'm pretty sure of it.”
Averan's heart pounded in her ears. She sniffed. Yes, she could smell water. She realized now that the scent had been getting stronger for what seemed like hours. The whole cave was moist, and condensation had been dripping from some of the rocks. But she could smell water, a large body of it, rich in sulfur.
Our packs, she thought dully. We threw our packs and our weapons down there. They'll all be underwater. Gone. Our food.
The realization left her weak, and Averan clung to only one hope: that her staff would float. If she swam around enough, she would find it.
It was a focus point for her magic, and somehow, though she lost everything else, she felt that she could survive so long as she found her staff.
“There's only one way down,” Gaborn said. “We have to jump. There's a lake down there. I can see the shore.”
“Wait!” Averan said. “You don't know what might be living in there!”
But Gaborn didn't wait. He threw himself from the ledge. Averan listened, counting slowly, until the splash reached her ears.
She reached a count of eighty-nine.
Eighty-nine seconds? she wondered. No, she realized. I have twelve endowments of metabolism. I have to divide that by thirteen. It's more like seven seconds. How far can a person fall in seven seconds?
She didn't have any idea. She only knew that it was a long way.
What's the worst that can live in the lake? she asked herself. She had eaten the brains of several reavers, and from them had learned much about the Underworld. There had been scrabbers in pools up above. They would probably be in the lake—unless there were blindfish down there to eat them.
The Idumean Sea was full of blindfish—-great eels thirty feet long that could swallow a child whole, whisker fish as big as a boat. And then there were creatures that weren't fish, that were just as dangerous, like the floating stomachs—blobs of jelly like substance that would latch onto your flesh and just begin digesting you.
What's the worst that could happen? Averan asked herself, and she realized that all of her fears were groundless. Gaborn was the Earth King. He wouldn't let her jump to her death. The worst that might happen is that a few scrabbers would nip her.
She climbed down. By now, Iome had jumped. They were taking their time, giving each person a few seconds to swim away. Binnesman told his wylde to jump, and she leapt off into nothingness.
“I'm not a very good swimmer,” Averan whispered to Binnesman.
The wizard laughed weakly. “Don't worry, child, I float like cork wood. Let me jump, and then wait for five seconds. I'll be there to help you.”
Averan set her feet, then peered down, over her shoulder. She saw Binnesman climb down the shaft, to the very lip. Below, she could see the cave now. Gaborn and the others had their opals on, and the lights from them shone like stars in the night. They were swimming in a great pool, shaped almost as round as a cistern, and waves radiated away from them. Gaborn made toward a pile of rocks near the far wall.
It looked almost peaceful, like night swimmers enjoying a dip in a lake.
Binnesman pushed back from the wall and kicked away. She saw his face briefly by the light of her opal necklace, his expression looking perfectly peaceful. He went over backward, with his arms splayed out to the sides, and then the darkness swallowed him. Averan began counting.
Distantly, she heard a sound that set her heart pounding more fiercely—the rasping breath of a reaver.
Where? she wondered. Hiding in the rocks below? She tilted her head, strained to hear. With her endowments of hearing, all noises seemed unnaturally loud, amplified.
No, she realized. The sound is coming from above.
“The reavers are after us!” she shouted.
She didn't give Binnesman his full five seconds. She merely leapt.
The drop through the darkness seemed endless. Averan had never dived so far. The closest thing that she had ever done was to jump into the pond from the old tree at Wytheebrook.
She went down in a ball, arms wrapped around her knees. She counted almost to a hundred as she fell, then hit the water.
She plunged down and down. The water felt surprisingly warm. She held her breath, struggled to swim upward. By the light of her opal neck-lace, she peered through the water. Blindfish, as bony as pike, lanced through the black waters, at once both frightened of something as large as she and attracted by her splashing. She could not see the bottom far below.
Averan swam for the surface. Her robe weighed her down, and she considered casting it off. But it was a wizard's robe, a garment that would protect her and hide her, and she dared not lose it.
So she swam to the surface and splashed about, trying to get her bearings. Almost immediately, her hand hit something hard, and she grabbed on.
A sense of power surged through her as she touched her staff.
For a moment she floundered about, wondering at her luck. But she felt that it was more than luck.
I wanted my staff, and it came to me, Averan told herself.
Binnesman swam to her. “Here, child, grab my arm.”
“Reavers,” Averan told him as she took hold of his robe. “I heard reavers in the shaft above.”
He didn't answer. He merely shoved his own staff into her hand. “Here. Hold on to this for me.” He began to swim. Averan clung to the staves, and Binnesman pulled them along. Both staves seemed to float unnaturally high in the water.
Averan knew that reavers couldn't swim. They sink like a stone. But they could walk on the bottom of a lake like a crayfish for short distances.
This lake was small, small enough so that a reaver could probably crawl out of it. But would the reavers know that? Would they know how to get out? They could see a hundred yards with decent clarity, but the world was all a blur at anything more than two hundred.
They wouldn't be able to see the shape of the lake below. They would only smell it and the scent of the rock walls. Would the smell of the rock be powerful enough to let them guess the size of the lake? Would they dare jump in?
Averan didn't know. Reavers could be very brave. Their skin was so hard that it almost acted like armor, and reavers were terribly strong. This gave them a sense of invulnerability.
Some of them will come after us, Averan felt sure. She didn't know why she felt that way, until she searched through her thoughts.
Cunning Eater. She'd gorged on his brain a couple of days ago. He had been a reaver warrior, and she remembered the way he felt about humans. It was a sinister mix of fear and loathing over the past victories men had made against reav
ers combined with an appetite so insatiable that she knew it would drive him to hunt.
From across the water, Gaborn called, “Don't worry about the packs! I already got them. Hurry!”
So the packs floated, Averan thought.
But the reaver darts are gone.
Averan paddled, helping Binnesman reach shore. In moments they emerged from the black water. Light from the opals reflected from the waves, sending beams to dance against walls that dripped of white crystal.
No sooner had they reached the bank than a huge reaver hurtled down from the shaft, sending waves to lap against the shore.
“Hurry! This way!” Gaborn shouted, nodding toward a dark arch where the ancient river channel had worn through stone.
“Wait!” Averan argued. “We have to kill the reaver that came into the water. If the ones up in the shaft don't smell its death, they'll follow.”
“No! Run!” Gaborn urged. “Now!”
“Come, child,” Binnesman said. He pulled her from the water, set her on shore. “Grab your pack.” Their packs lay in a pile where Gaborn had set them.
Averan slung her pack over her back. Binnesman tossed a pack to the wylde, reached for his own. He looked worn. He had as many endowments of metabolism as Averan did, but even with them, he moved with the deliberateness that comes with age.
A cavern opened like a black maw. Gaborn stood in the mouth of it. “Binnesman,” he shouted, just as Binnesman shrugged on his pack, “flee!”
Binnesman dropped his bag and whirled just as something monstrous surged from the water.
Nothing can move that fast, Averan thought.
Even with all her endowments, the reaver burst from the lake in a blur. Water streamed from its spade-shaped head, and splattered on the rocks before it.
Binnesman whirled to meet it, his face a mask of panic, raising his staff protectively with both hands.
Before she even realized that the reaver was armed, Averan saw the dark blur of its blade—a huge hunk of steel some twenty feet long—slice through the air.
One instant, Averan saw the blow coming, and the next there was a whack of metal shattering wood, the snap of bones. Binnesman hurtled forty feet through the air.
“Help!” Averan screamed.
She raised her staff protectively. The reaver loomed above her, its massive jaws wide enough to swallow a wagon. Runes glowed with a faint blue light along its forearms. Never had she seen a blade-bearer so glorious and deadly. She smelled him, and with her endowments of scent, his name suddenly seemed to seep into the corners of her mind like a shadow. This one had been known to every reaver she had eaten. His name was spoken in fear: Consort of Shadows.
Among all of the servants of the One True Master, he was the most cunning and subtle. Averan's mind blanked in terror.
For a tenth of a heartbeat, he seemed to halt, watching her. Then his blade whirled to sweep through Averan.
She was conscious of little. Binnesman was gone. She felt numb.
“Dodge!” Gaborn shouted.
Averan threw herself aside as the reaver's blade hit. Metal cleaved through the rock where she had been. Something streaked overhead to meet the reaver, a shrieking blur that howled like a wolf in pain.
“Blood!” the wylde screamed.
She lunged with her staff, as if to bash the Consort of Shadows.
But as suddenly as he had attacked, the reaver bounded aside, landed on a wall, and scuttled up its side like a spider. He began sending a stream of information in the form of scents. Averan smelled the scent of the wylde, followed by a scent that meant I am confused, followed by a scent of Warning, this one brings death.
The Consort of Shadows backed up the wall, its philia waving. The green woman raced up to the cavern wall, screamed in frustration. She threw down her staff, leapt up to a little ridge, began climbing after the monster, seeking toeholds in the stone. The walls of the cave were covered in calcite, and tickle fern grew on it like moss. Some of the stone was as white and frothy as cream, while other parts were as mellow gold as honey-comb. Over the ages, deposits had built up on the wall, little knobs, like half-formed stalagmites. The green woman climbed swiftly, and the Con-sort of Shadows moved back up the cave, until he was clinging to the roof like a vast, obese spider.
The wylde mewled pitifully, “Blood, blood!” She reached the roof and floundered about, seeking to follow her prey.
The Consort of Shadows lunged. He leapt sixty feet in a blinding flash and clung to the ceiling with his feet. He grabbed the wylde in one paw, reared back, and smashed her against the rock. Averan thought that she heard bones snap, and the wylde screamed in rage.
Then the reaver flung her back into the pool. For a moment, there was no sound at all but that of water lapping against rock.
Warily, the Consort of Shadows studied them, clinging to the cavern roof, his philia waving in a frenzy.
Suddenly the wylde surfaced, splashing about, screaming in rage.
The Consort of Shadows backed away and retreated up the shaft.
He's gone, Averan thought in relief. But she knew that it was only for the moment. He was studying them.
“Averan, Binnesman,” Gaborn called.
Binnesman can't be dead, Averan thought. He's supposed to be my teacher.
But Averan knew what a reaver's blade could do. The huge hunk of steel weighed hundreds of pounds. It wasn't honed as sharp as a sword, but if a blow didn't slice a man in two, it would still shatter every bone in his body.
She'd seen men killed by reavers—corpses hacked into gruesome pieces—a head here, and a hand there, blood spattered about as if by the bucketful, innards draped over tree limbs like sausages hanging from the rafters of an inn.
The wylde was going mad. The green woman keened like an animal in pain, splashed to shore. Averan wondered that it had survived at all.
Averan shakily struggled to her feet. She didn't want to look at Binnesman, for she knew what she'd find. She imagined his blank eyes staring into space, the guts knocked out of him.
“Binnesman?” Gaborn called as he rushed toward them.
Averan had to look. There was still a possibility that he might be alive.
Binnesman lay on the cave floor, sprawled on his back. His face was pale, drained of blood, and his hands quivered as if in death throes. Flecks of blood issued from his nose and mouth. Miraculously, he was all in one piece, though the reaver's blow had struck him in the chest.
“You're alive?” Averan asked.
“Glad to hear it,” Binnesman said, but the labor he had to put into speaking the jest belied the tone, and his eyes were full of fear.
He's not alive, Averan decided. But not dead yet either. He's dying. She knelt, took his hand, and squeezed hard. Binnesman gasped, struggling for breath. He didn't squeeze in return. He had no comfort to give her.
Gaborn rushed up to Averan's back.
She glanced up to see his face, pale with shock. Iome came slower.
“Why didn't you run?” Gaborn asked.
“For a hundred years,” Binnesman said, struggling for breath, “I've been the wisest person I know.” A coughing fit took him, and flecks of blood flew from his mouth. “It's hard to take advice.”
Iome was at Gaborn's back now, and she just stared at Binnesman with pain-filled eyes.
Binnesman's hands fluttered and Averan looked back to his face. He was gazing at her now, imploringly. “Not much time,” he said. “Get my staff.”
“It's broken,” Averan said. But suddenly she had a wild hope that even broken, the staff would be able to heal him. She rushed to it. The wood had not merely cracked; it had splintered in pieces, sending shards in half a dozen directions. Averan wanted every piece. Earth Power was stored in every splinter, and runes of healing and protection had been carved all around the base of the staff. She wanted all of it. When she had all the pieces, she rushed back to Binnesman.
“I'm sorry,” he was telling Gaborn. “I failed you all.” His breath w
as weak, and more blood came gushing from his mouth with every word he choked out.
“Don't try to speak,” Iome said. She knelt by his side and held his hand.
“Things must be said,” Binnesman told Iome. “Foul Deliverer, Fair Destroyer,” he whispered. “I unbind you.”
The green woman howled with glee like an animal. Averan glanced up. The wylde was peering up toward the ceiling at the shaft, as if seeking a path to the reavers.
“Averan?” Binnesman called. He gazed about, but his eyes were no longer focusing.
“I'm here,” she said. “I have your staff.”
As proof she began laying the broken shards on his chest, as if they were bits of kindling. He fumbled about, grasped a piece.
“Averan, I must leave you. You must guide them. Listen to the Earth. It will be your only teacher now.”
He gasped for breath, and then could not speak at all.
Averan felt as if the world were reeling out of control beneath her. She couldn't believe that Binnesman was dying. Old wizards like him were sup-posed to be indestructible. Averan found herself trembling.
“Bury him!” Gaborn shouted. “Quickly.”
“What?” Iome asked.
“Beneath the soil!” Gaborn raised his left hand and whispered desperately, “Binnesman: may the Earth heal you; may the Earth hide you; may the Earth make you its own.”
Of course! Averan had slept beneath the earth three nights past, relieved of the need to breathe, to think. She'd never slept so soundly in her life. Nor had she ever felt as invigorated afterward.
None of them could save Binnesman, but while there was still life in him, perhaps the Earth could do it.
The cave floor was almost solid rock, with only a few pebbles here and there.
Averan grabbed her staff, struck the ground, and whispered, “Cover him.”
From all around, detritus converged in a rush, pebbles and dust rolling across the cave floor, covering Binnesman, so that he lay beneath a quilt of gray sand, flecks of stone, and cave pearls.
What a pretty grave, Averan thought.
The Lair of Bones Page 10