The Lair of Bones

by David Farland

  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 Under-world, 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 dis-covers 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 sur-face 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 thou-sand 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, thou-sands of them. One could hardly see the lake for all of the masts. The war-lords 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

  Learn to love all men equally, the cruel as well as the kind.

  —Erden Geboren

  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 battle
field 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 tri-angles 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.