The Lair of Bones

by David Farland

  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 hisfirstmeeting, 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, Gabom 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 thu
nder. 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 determi-nation. 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

  There is nothing wrong with greed. It is the attribute that allowed your ancestors to amass the wealth that we have today. If you would honor them, revel in greed, and make yourself strong enough to grasp all that you desire.

  —Lowicker's counsel to his daughter, Rialla, at age four

  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.