The Lair of Bones

by David Farland

  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 ben
eath 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 them-selves 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 hisflameweavers.” 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, Carrisflamed. 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 wall-walks, 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 for-ward 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 for-ward. 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 werefields, 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, rip-ping 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

  No tree or plant can grow in daylight abne. Given only light, a seed will not germinate, roots will not take hold. It takes a balance of sunlight and shadow. Men, too, grow their deepest roots in the darkness.

  —Erden Geboren

  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.