The Lair of Bones

13 The Master

Gaborn studied the tangler as whipcords of vine lashed out and giant pods snapped vainly at the air. Even with all of his endowments, he dared not try to pass it yet. He saw where the tangler had caught Averan’s foot, the vines clutching her leather boot. Closer to hand, Averan had dropped her staff. Her cries still seemed to ring in the air, yet he saw no other sign of her.

“Up there,” Iome said at his back, “is where the reaver must have hidden, waiting for her. Are you sure that she’s still alive?”

“She’s alive,” Gaborn said, sensing deep inside himself. “But the reaver is getting away fast.”

“Even with all her endowments,” Iome said, as if in resignation, “she couldn’t get escape. She has endowments of scent from more than a dozen dogs. She’s learned the ways of reavers, learned their tongue. And one still got her. What hope do we have?”

“Reavers hide their scent,” Gaborn said in Averan’s defense. “I can’t smell that a reaver has been here at all. There’s nothing we could have done to avoid it.”

“Where do you think its taking her?” Iome asked.

Gaborn shook his head. “I...couldn’t guess.” He didn’t sense imminent death in store for her. So her captor didn’t intend to eat her now. The tangler was going quiet.

Using his reaver dart, Gaborn ran forward a couple of paces and vaulted over the beast. He stalked forward a few paces, stood on the land bridge, gazing down into the chasm. His opal pin would not let him see the bottom, though he could hear a river swirling beneath him. Farther above, he could still hear the sounds of reavers rushing through their tunnel, a constant thunder.

Averan was alive for the moment, but he sensed death advancing toward her. The reaver is taking her home for some reason, Gaborn decided.

He felt lost. He’d brought Binnesman and Averan down into this damned hole to guide him, and now he was stripped of both their counsels.

“Is it possible,” Iome asked hopefully, “that the reaver isn’t taking her anywhere? Averan is a wizardess. She summoned the Waymaker yesterday, and held it for hours. Maybe she’s controlling it.”

“No, I don’t think she’s in control,” Gaborn said. “The Waymaker was almost dead from fatigue, and she had her staff to help her. If she were controlling this monster, I think she’d bring it back to us. I only know that she’s alive for now, and she is the only one who can lead us. We have to find her.”

Gaborn held up his light, revealing the path ahead. The land bridge spanned perhaps forty yards, and there he could see the beginnings of a reaver tunnel. The walls were sealed with mucilage, and bonelike pillars supported the roof. Gaborn ventured, “I can track Averan. Her scent is everywhere.”

He stood for a moment, uncertain.

“What’s wrong?” Iome asked.

“I think we are in for a long chase, with a fight at the end of it,” Gaborn said. He turned back to Iome. She stood on the far side of the tangler vine. “Use Averan’s staff to vault over,” he said.

Iome took half a minute to build up her courage, then ran a step, using a rock as a stair, and leapt. With all of her endowments, her jump carried her fifteen feet in the air, and eighty feet in distance.

And then they were off. They did not walk or even jog. Gaborn sprinted, and Iome hurried after him.

He found that his recent meal refreshed him like a feast, invigorating both mind and spirit. Worry over Averan weighed on him, but with the nourishment, it seemed as if the fog had lifted a bit.

So they ran. Scrambling through the reaver tunnel wasn’t easy. Gaborn found that as he sped, odd things happened to his body. His own sense of movement told him that he was going no faster than normal, but he could not round a sharp corner with ease, since his forward motion tended to throw him off course. Thus, he had to lean into his turns at what seemed an unnatural angle. In some ways it was much like riding a force horse.

He also had to pay attention to his footing on the rocky, uneven trail. There was the constant hazard of tripping or twisting an ankle on stone, though plants grew over the path. Wormgrass and molds vied for control of the rocky walls. Rootlike bushes hung from the roof, yellow and white tendrils often cascading down like frozen waterfalls. Sometimes they formed curtains, barring the way, and only the fact that a huge reaver had passed through, ripping the foliage down, had cleared the path at all. In many places, seepage dampened the cave. Black hairlike moss grew beside the water, with golden drops of sap in it, while rubbery plants sprouted tiny brown pods the size of cherries. Gaborn found both to be particularly hazardous. The moss was slippery, while the pods could roll beneath his feet.

Added to these difficulties was the lack of light. The coruscating glow from their opals seemed bright when one stood still. But when he ran fifty miles per hour, Gaborn needed time to choose where to put his feet, to decide whether to speed up or slow down or to leap over a bit of tangle root or pick his way through it. Most important, he had to remain alert for new dangers.

More than once he found himself running headlong into a lumbering crevasse crawler or giant blind-crab, and would have to dodge around it.

Thus, even with endowments of sight, he squinted into the gloom, watching at the limit of vision.

Once, he sensed that he was winning the race, that Averan was only a mile or so ahead. But he and Iome rounded a corner and found their path blocked by a huge stone.

The reavers had constructed a door. The door seemed to have been carved from the rock itself, for it rested on a stone hinge that hung from the ceiling. The panel appeared to be three feet through the center. By pushing at the bottom, Gaborn discovered that the door wouldn’t budge.

It had been locked.

He beat against it in frustration, and then he and Iome went to work. Using shards of rock from nearby, they hammered and chiseled through the bottom of the door, a process that took what seemed like hours.

Gaborn felt weary by the time they started on the trail again, and Averan had been carried far, far away.

There was no sun or moon to track the turning of the earth. There was only darkness fleeing from the light of their opals, returning to reclaim all they left behind as they raced along.

The trail wound, tunneling through veins of soft rock, twisting through boulders, sometimes taking odd turns for reasons that only reavers would understand.

But always the trail sloped down.

Gaborn measured time by the pounding of his feet, by the gasping of his breath, by the waves of sweat that trickled down his cheeks. The heat and humidity began to soar as the miles receded.

Sometimes they reached side tunnels or shafts that rose like chimneys. Each time they did, Gaborn would stop and sniff at every passage, checking for Averan’s scent.

They spoke little. Gaborn found himself alone with his thoughts, and he found himself wondering at the book that Iome carried in her pack: Erden Geboren’s tome.

Had he really been searching for the One True Master? And if so, what was it?

Two days ago when Averan first mentioned the creature, Binnesman had seemed confused. He’d asked, “Are you sure that it is a reaver?”

Averan had been sure. But now Gaborn wondered. What exactly was a locus? He felt that his Earth Sight was failing him. Binnesman had said that it was because he was still asking the wrong questions. Perhaps once Gaborn understood his enemy better, he’d know how to fight it.

He felt sure that the book would tell more, but Iome couldn’t read and run at the same time.

Indeed, they reached a tunnel that slanted steeply down, and found that the tickle fern was gone, trampled. The ground lay in waste. Reavers frequented this trail.

A second door confronted them.

Gaborn called a halt. “I’ll hammer away at the door. You should get some food. If you can spare a moment, I’d like you to read to me.”

He reached into his pack, pulled out some apples and a flask of water. He took a bite of apple, picked up the nearest stone, and began hammering at the door.

Iome munched her own apple as she sat down to read. Alnycian was not an easy language, Gaborn knew. It had been dead for hundreds of years, and most scholars spoke the most recent variety, but Erden Geboren had written back when the tongue was still vibrant. Thus, his spellings, word choice, and grammar would all lie outside the norm.

Iome opened the book, skimmed through.

“Tell me as soon as you find anything interesting,” Gaborn said.

Still huffing from the long run, Iome said, “Erden Geboren begins by summing up his early life in a few sentences. He was a swineherd in the Hills of Tomb, until the Earth Spirit called him. Then he tells how he met the Wizard Sendavian, who guided him and Daylan Slaughter—that must have been Daylan’s name before he won the Black Hammer—upon ‘paths of air and green flame’ to the netherworld.”

This was all the stuff of legend. Iome didn’t bother to go into detail. Then she said, “But once he gets to the netherworld, he suddenly changes the style of his book. He begins inserting subtitles, breaking it into chapters.”

“See if you can find anything about the locus,” Gaborn suggested.

Iome skimmed down the headings silently for a minute, flipping a dozen pages of text, until she said, “Here’s something: ‘Upon Meeting a Locus.’ I’ll try to translate it into a more modern style.”

“ ‘The locus was an most hideous creature. The Bright Ones kept it locked within a cage, hidden in a green glade in a narrow box canyon. It was a difficult journey to reach it, and the monster beat its wings against its prison bars wildly as we approached. The wings had black feathers and a span of perhaps thirty feet. The creature itself had a form somewhat like a man’s, with stubby legs and long arms that ended in cruel talons. But there was a blackness about the beast that defied the eye. Squint as I might, I could not pierce the depths of its cage. It was as if the monster absorbed the light around it, or perhaps bent it, wearing it like a black robe. Air circled the beast, swirling about, carrying with it the scent of rot. Rather than seeing the creature clearly, I got only a vague impression of sharp fangs, cruel talons, and glaring eyes.’ ”

Iome paused, shaken.

Gaborn said, “Erden Geboren is describing the Darkling Glory, isn’t he?”

Even mentioning the monster made Iome shiver. “Perhaps,” Iome said. “Or maybe we’re mistaken. Maybe these aren’t the same creatures.” She read on.

“ ‘The bars to its cage were of blackened iron. Glowing violet runes encircled the base of it, and a roof covered the crown.

“ ‘As I drew near, I felt entranced by the creature. I peered hard to view it, drawing closer and closer. Yet the nearer I got, the more the darkness about it thickened, obscuring my view.

“ ‘It was not until I was nearly upon it that I became dimly aware that the Bright Ones were speaking to me: nay, shouting to me. But I could not hear them. Their voices were dull, as if they called from miles and miles away. Instead, all I could hear was the creature, urging me, “Come! Come to me.”

“ ‘I saw a door on the cage. I could see no...’” Iome paused. “I think the word must be ‘lock.’” She began again. “ ‘It looked as if the door would sway open with a touch of the finger, yet the dark servant could not open it.

“ ‘As I drew near, the creature made no move. Its wings quit beating so wildly against the cage, and it regarded me almost as if it were made of stone.

“ ‘ “Open the door,” I could hear it whisper. “Open it.” Distantly I could hear the Bright Ones shouting, but their words.’ ”—Iome struggled to make sense of the statement by context—“ ‘had no intelligence,’ it says. But I think he means, ‘conveyed no understanding.’

“ ‘I did not intend to open the door. I only thought to experiment, to touch the gate.

“ ‘I was about to do so when Daylan grabbed me from behind. He shouted in my ear, but I could make no sense of his words.

“ ‘He pulled me back from the cage and threw me on the ground, then stood over me gibbering.

“ ‘The locus raged at me with a sound of thunder, and it seemed that all of the heavens roared with it. “I see you, King of the Shadow World! I shall sift your world as wheat, and cast off the chaff thereof.” I could feel the hatred of the servant, could smell it in the air, as palpable as the stink of dead men.

“ ‘At some length, I was able to make out the words of Daylan. “Didn’t you hear us?” Daylan cried. “Can’t you hear me?” His face was red with worry, and tears of’—I think the word must be ‘frustration’—‘filled his eyes.

“ ‘ “I heard you not,” said I, coming to my senses.

“ ‘Then the voice of the Fael did pierce me, that I heard it clearly. “Beware Asgaroth. He is a most subtle child of the mother of all loci, the One True Master of Evil.“ ‘ ”

Gaborn yelped as he slammed a rock against his hand. The green light of his opal pin shone down as he turned toward Iome. But it was not the pain of the wound that had made him cry out.

“The One True Master—” he said, “I thought she was the One True Master of All Reavers, or something like that, not...”

“Of Evil,” Iome offered.

Gaborn felt as if his head were spinning. The creature he was going to face was an enemy that even the Bright Ones and Glories feared. No wonder they had come to fight beside Erden Geboren. Iome continued to read.

“ ‘Many words did the Fael speak unto me, words that were understood in the heart. I realized that if I had touched that door, tried to open it, strength would have failed me. The door was bound with runes so powerful that a common man like me could not have broken it. Yet if I had tried, I would have succeeded in opening another door: a door into my heart.

“ ’ “Asgaroth could have filled you,” the Fael told me. “Its evil desires could have become your desires. It could have filled you, as blackness fills the hollows of the earth.”

“ ‘An unnamable fear seized me. So shaken was I that I could not stand.

“ ‘ “The locus is not the creature that you see before you,” the Fael said. “The Darkling Glory can age and die, but the shadow hiding within it is immortal. When the Darkling Glory dies, its essence will move on, seeking a new host. Thus we have sought to imprison Asgaroth, rather than destroy him. Many Glories were destroyed trying to bring him here. A thousand times a thousand shadow worlds Asgaroth has helped to seize.“ ‘” Iome faltered for a moment, and said, “Erden Geboren doesn’t like the word ‘seize.’ He has crossed it out once, suggested ‘destroy’ or ‘sway’ or ‘capture.’” She read on, “ ‘“But so long as we hold him, he can do little harm.” ’ ”

Iome closed the book, and sat for a moment. Sweat poured down her face, and her clothes clung to her like rags. “Do you think that Raj Ahten’s sorcerer is the one who set the Darkling Glory free?”

Gaborn wiped some sweat from his own brow with his sleeve. The running, the growing heat, had left him feeling oily and gritty. He wished for a bath. He had seen the sorcerer enter the fiery gate at Twynhaven, and seen him come back out only moments later. Had the sorcerer had time to break into the cage? Or had he only met the monster there, after some accomplice freed him on the other side?

Asgaroth was its name. Could the monster that Erden Geboren described two thousand years ago be the one that had stalked Iome at Castle Sylvarresta only a week past?

He felt sure that it was. It had come in a cloud of darkness and swirling wind, sucking all light from the sky, wrapping night around it as if it were a robe. Thunder had boomed at its approach, while lightning snarled. It had spoken “as if with a sound of thunder.”

“Well,” Gaborn said. “It seems as if you have found yourself a worthy adversary.”

“I didn’t pick a fight,” Iome said. “It came hunting for me.”

Gaborn grinned, hoping to allay her concerns.

“Wait,” she whispered. “It didn’t come hunting for me. It came for our son, the child that I carry in my womb.”

“Why?” Gaborn asked. A fear struck him, and a certainty. The Darkling Glory had come for his son, and as Gaborn stretched out his senses, he felt danger stalking the child.

“It isn’t just killing a child that the Darkling Glory enjoys,” Iome said as if to herself. “The clubfooted boy was with me, and the Darkling Glory didn’t seek his life. Wait—” Iome’s face fell and she clutched her womb, then let out a gasp. “Wait!”

“What is it?” Gaborn asked.

“The Darkling Glory—” she said. “Or the locus within it, it didn’t want to kill the child. It merely asked for him. It demanded him.”

“What do you mean?” Gaborn asked.

“I think it wanted to possess the babe,” Iome said, “as a hiding place!”

“Of course,” Gaborn said. “The Darkling Glory has fled the netherworld. It might even be worried that its enemies will come looking for it. So it needs a place to hide. And what better place than in a mother’s womb?”

By voicing Iome’s concerns, perhaps Gaborn gave them weight and heft. Iome began to sob. She covered her womb protectively with Erden Geboren’s manuscript.

“I, too, worry about where it has gone,” Gaborn said. “But with my Earth Sight I can see the child’s spirit. There is no darkness in you. The child in you is like any other, alive, but as yet unformed. I sense no malice, no evil intent.”

Iome shook with fear as Gaborn held her. She peered into the darkness, her eyes unfocused.

Gaborn asked Iome, “How long will it take you to translate the rest of Erden Geboren’s book?”

“I don’t know,” Iome said. “It’s slow going. I could do it in a week, maybe.”

“I don’t need it all,” Gaborn said. “Just...tell me everything he says about the loci and the One True Master.”

Gaborn drained his flagon. It was water that they had taken from the pools at Abyss Gate, and it tasted strongly of minerals. He drank deeply, then sat for a moment. There was absolute silence, a silence so deep that it seemed to penetrate the bones. The distant pounding of reaver’s feet was gone. He had heard it when they looked over the spot where Averan was captured. When had it gone silent?

Aboveground it never grew this quiet. There was always a jay squawking, or the rush of wind through trees, or the bawl of sheep in a distant meadow. Here, there was nothing.

It overwhelmed him. It was as if the earth loomed above him, a sky of stone and iron, waiting to fall. He could smell it all around, the mineral tang.

It feels like a thunderstorm, Gaborn thought. That was the closest thing to it, like on a summer evening when the air grew heavy and the clouds slogged over the horizon, as black as slate. All of the animals would fall perfectly silent and hide. Even the flies quit buzzing.

That’s how quiet it was now, only deeper. It penetrated the skin and made the hair prickle nervously on the back of his arms. Ahead and behind there was only night so deep that he had never felt the like of it.

We’re in a wilderness, Gaborn realized, far, far from any human habitation.

He reached out with his Earth senses, then sighed heavily, looked at Iome. “Averan keeps moving. I suspect that we’ve run a hundred miles and we could have gone no faster, but my Earth Senses warn that Averan is far ahead.” He paused, as if considering what to say next. “There are reavers between us and her, I think. I sense danger.” He did not tell her how great the danger was. He couldn’t quite express it. It was as if there was a wall between them and Averan, a wall of death. Gaborn might make it, but could Iome?

Iome shook her head in near defeat.

Gaborn beat at the door for a bit, knocking off flakes now and then. When he grew fatigued, Gaborn let Iome work as he mended his shoe and put a new leather grip around Erden Geboren’s ancient reaver dart.

After only a few turns at the wall, Iome broke through. She sighed and nodded down the tunnel. “They’re up there waiting for us, aren’t they—the reavers? I can see it in your face.”

“Aye,” Gaborn said.

“Well then,” Iome said, climbing to her feet with the help of Averan’s staff of black poisonwood. “Let’s go make trouble.”

14 The Light-Bringer

The Consort of Shadows raced through the Underworld, its feet thundering over stone. Averan floated in and out of consciousness, struggling for breath.

She opened her eyes. The tunnels were a blur. The mucilage seals had begun to erode. Shadows of twisted stalagmites, like deformed giants, lumbered forward in the small light thrown by her opal, then were swallowed again by the darkness.

The reaver grasped her firmly to make sure that she didn’t escape, much as Averan had held lizards and frogs as a child. The more she had fought, the harder the monster gripped her.

So she faded back to sleep until she jolted awake. The Consort of Shadows had just leapt a fifty-foot cliff and was racing through a maze of stalagmites. As he did, he cupped Averan close to his chest.

He doesn’t want to kill me, she realized. He’s trying to keep me alive. The best thing I can do is to go limp.

She wasn’t sure that he was being tender enough to keep her alive. The skin of his massive paw was as thick as a bolster and as tough as scale mail. His three fingers were so wide that they enveloped Averan’s body from shoulder to heel. With every step he took, the monster dealt out a jolt. Averan felt sure that she was covered with bruises.

Powerless before the beast, Averan dazedly watched the scenery go by. She had no idea how long the Consort of Shadows had been carrying her, but he ran at a tremendous speed.

A fold of reaver’s skin was pushing against Averan’s ribs. She wasn’t sure if she dared try to move, lest the monster grasp her tighter.

She could think of only one thing to do. She cleared her mind, as Binnesman had taught her, and imagined the Consort of Shadows. She envisioned his great, spade-shaped head, as she’d seen it when he rose black from the waters, and she imagined how his philia quivered as he studied his prey. She imagined the feel of his feet as they struck the stone of the tunnel floor, and the sense of purpose he felt as he raced on and on. Soon her mind did a little flip, and she saw, the world through the “eyes” of the reaver.

He registered the force electric in the rocks around him as ghostly blue images, almost as if they were a fog. Plants and animals along the path were much brighter. Blind-crabs scurried from his path, blazing like stars in his field of view.

The path ahead was marked with old reaver scent. Even if it hadn’t been, the Consort of Shadows knew it well. He had hunted in the barrens most of his life.

“Where are you taking me?” Averan asked.

The Consort of Shadows jolted to a halt. He held Averan up to study her, and his philia waved.

“Are you speaking?” the reaver asked. She could feel wariness in the monster, “Or am I worm dreaming?”

“Yes, I can speak,” Averan said.

She felt a fleeting question. “Is this how humans talk to one another?”

“No,” Averan said. “I am a wizardess, a protector of the Earth. I can speak to your mind. But most people don’t talk like this.”

A memory came to the Consort of Shadows. There had been an Earth Warden among the reavers. The Consort’s ancestor had murdered the wizard in a grim battle, and the Consort had later eaten the ancestor’s brain.

“Your grandfather killed an Earth Warden!” Averan said. “I see it in your mind.”

“The One True Master ordered his death.”

Averan saw snatches of the battle unfold in the memory of the Consort of Shadows. The Consort’s grandfather had crept up behind the wizard, leapt on him and ripped off his forelegs. Once the Earth Warden was helpless, his attacker brutally pried apart the three bone-plates on the wizard’s head while he still lived, to torture him until the very last moment, when he scooped out the wizard’s brains. Now the Consort of Shadows held some of the wizard’s memories.

“That’s horrible,” Averan said.

“Proud was my ancestor to have done this deed,” the Consort of Shadows said.

He boasted, but Averan saw that the monster tried to hide more uncomfortable feelings. The memories of an Earth Warden lived inside him.

True, the Consort of Shadows hungered for human flesh. But he also sensed something that other reavers could not. Men were creatures of the Earth, too, beloved by their Creator. They were as valued by the Earth as reavers and blind-crabs, as world worms and tickle fern.

“Where are you taking me?” Averan asked once again.

“A place for humans,” the Consort of Shadows replied. A scent came into his mind, the stench of unwashed people huddled in a dark cavern, the air redolent with the stink of urine and feces. Keeper had also known of the place. It was a cell where the One True Master experimented on people, testing her new spells. Dread knotted Averan’s stomach.

“Your master will kill me there,” Averan said.

“In time,” the Consort of Shadows agreed.

“Please,” Averan begged, “let me go. You know the power of the Earth Spirit. You know that I mean you no harm.”

I must not speak of this human, the Consort of Shadows thought. Others will think I am worm dreaming.

Abruptly, Averan felt as if a gate slammed shut between her and the Consort of Shadows. Like the thief who had stolen her horse at Feldonshire, he pulled back from her scrutiny, broke their tenuous connection.

The huge reaver raced through the Underworld, the tunnel a grotesque blur. He clutched Averan so tightly, that she could hardly draw a breath. She tried to summon the attention of her captor, to beg him not to squeeze so tightly, but without her staff, she was almost powerless.

Averan dreamt of fire—slow-roasting coals that reddened the bottom of a campfire, and of tongues of flame as scarlet as those of the flame lizards of Djeban that snapped out and licked her skin till it was raw.

When she woke, as she often did while in the grasp of the Consort of Shadows, she would find herself racing along at a dizzying pace, plunging into the black depths of the Underworld through garish ribbed tunnels, past steaming pools that roared and thundered, past mud pots and the bones of strange Underworld creatures.

She woke once, after what seemed like days, gasping for breath, and found that the Consort of Shadows had stopped to speak with some other reavers. It was a war party of twenty-seven. They were led by a grizzled old veteran named Blood Stalker.

“Hide,” Consort of Shadows warned in a spray of scent. “Set an ambush. Assassins are coming from above, to hunt the One True Master. I have captured one of them, but more follow.”

“I shall not hide,” Blood Stalker said, in odors that hissed from his anus. “The One True Master has set runes of power upon us. I am strong now, stronger than you.”

Averan did not slip into her captor’s mind to learn what he was thinking. She already knew. Blood Stalker was a proud warrior, and even now he raised his tail higher than the Consort of Shadow’s tail, as a sign that he hoped to win the right to breed. His philia were waving excitedly, and all of his muscles had tensed.

The Consort of Shadows had long held such a reputation for ferocity that none dared challenge him. Now Blood Stalker imagined that he was equal to the contest.

“You may be strong,” Consort of Shadows said, “but so are the assassins that follow. Kill them and prove yourself worthy to challenge me.”

His huge paws tightened involuntarily upon Averan, as he prepared for battle. And as they tightened, Averan’s breathing was cut off. She struggled to keep from suffocating until she fainted.

When next she woke, it seemed to be hours later. The Consort of Shadows was feeding. He had torn the back off an enormous blind-crab, called a “mugger,” and he used his tongue to scoop out the crab’s entrails. Averan lay on her belly on the floor for a moment, seemingly forgotten.

Dazed, she wandered in a strange world, half in and half out of dream. She imagined that she roamed an empty plain, gray and without form. The ground was flat and featureless, with only cracked clay beneath her feet, as if from an interminable drought.

And in the dream she raised her staff, and the ground began to tremble. Rocks and clay rose up in a circle all around her, forming a ridge about a hundred yards across that became a strange and magnificent rune. And from those rocks and ridges, animals began to take shape. The gray clay at her feet shaped itself into a tiny stag only two feet long. The stag lay upon its side, mouth open, head tilted backward. At first the form was vague and general, a lumpy creature that a child might have wrought. But in moments the image became more and more refined, as if worked by the hands of an invisible sculptor. Suddenly, when the stag seemed perfect to Averan, it began to move, kicking about as if it were a babe, seeking to stand upon its own feet for the first time. It struggled to its knees, then climbed up, and suddenly the gray figure blossomed into color, a tawny red at the back, white at the throat, with living eyes that glinted in the sunlight. The creature bounded away, past Averan’s feet.

And as suddenly as the stag had formed, she turned her gaze and saw that it was happening everywhere across the vast rune. Tiny boars were taking shape, squealing with delight. Elephants trumpeted in a far corner, and snakes wriggled past her foot. A flock of tiny doves, smaller than moths, fluttered before her view, as if rising into the mountains. Everywhere she began to discern hopping frogs and wriggling fishes, butterflies in bright clouds, reavers and whales.

Filled with wonder, Averan strolled along the gray earth, studying the rune, seeking ways to improve it.

Ah, if I could only make such a rune, she thought.

Then she became aware of her surroundings once again. She opened her eyes, fumbling for her staff. But it was gone, and the Consort of Shadows was feeding.

Averan considered making a run for it.

She squinted furtively. Fortunately, her white opal ring still glowed, and by its light she could see that the reaver had brought her far down into the Underworld. The tunnel that she was in now had changed. The stifling heat and high humidity made the air muggy, and because of the heat and moisture, hairlike plants as gray and thick as a wolf’s pelt covered the tunnel floor. Wormgrass and feather fern battled for control of the walls, and rootlike plants dangled from the tunnel roof. The broken shells of blind-crabs and the round shapes of elephant snails littered the floor. More important, not far ahead, some crystalline rods grew near the wall and blocked the floor of an adjoining cavern. Each rod was as clear as quartz, and many reached as much as eight or nine feet in height. Each hollow rod came to a jagged point. Averan recognized them from reaver memories: the homes of flesh eaters.

Each tube was a cocoon, spun by a pregnant creature that looked like a crab stretched impossibly thin. Once the cocoon was complete, the crab crawled inside to die. As the eggs inside her hatched, the young devoured their way out of her womb, consuming her. These young, each not much larger than a flea, made the flesh-eater tube their lair.

They crawled to the lip of the tube and waited for something to brush against it—a reaver, a blind-crab, or mordant, it didn’t matter. Any animal would do.

Then the flesh eaters would burrow into their victims. They would be carried through the bloodstream, where they wreaked damage on its organs.

Reavers feared the tubes of flesh eaters. If such tubes began to grow in one of their tunnels, they would sometimes seal off the crawlway and dig a new route.

Thus, the tunnel that Averan was in now was dangerous. The number of plants dangling from the ceiling and growing from the floor showed that common reavers had abandoned it. But the Consort of Shadows often trod dangerous paths.

I could run in among the flesh eater tubes and hide, Averan thought. As long as I don’t get near the tip of the tubes, the bugs won’t get me.

But she didn’t dare. Not with the Consort of Shadows watching her. Instead, she used her summoning powers, concentrated upon the Consort of Shadows to learn what he was thinking, to feel what he was feeling.

“I should eat the human,” Consort of Shadows thought. “No one would deny me the pleasure. She is small and worthless.”

Yet another voice whispered inside him, as if it were the voice of an intruder. “No creature that the Earth has formed is worthless, especially not this one. She is not just its creation, she is its advocate.”

“This is only worm dreaming,” he told himself.

Consort of Shadows grabbed Averan violently, whisked her up against his chest, and began to run, scraping his hide against the far wall of the crawlway in order to avoid the flesh-eater tubes.

I’ve lost my chance to escape, Averan thought desperately.

She knew what was happening to the Consort of Shadows. Just as she had eaten the brains of reavers and thought at first that she would go mad, the Consort of Shadows had done the same. His grandfather had eaten the brain of an Earth Warden, and ever since, almost as if in punishment, the Earth Warden’s thoughts had haunted those who partook of its brains.

Averan lay limp in the Consort’s huge paw, rejoicing in the fact that he was holding her gingerly, and she feigned sleep. She tried to keep a loose contact with his mind, to learn what she could. But the Consort of Shadows seemed to run almost as if in a trance. He did not speak, did not think. His mind had become as eerie and as quiet as a tomb.

She hoped that he’d put her down again soon, give her a chance to escape.

The Consort of Shadows stopped for a moment and opened a stone door that led into a broader corridor. This tunnel was perhaps sixty feet wide, and the floor was rutted from use by reavers. He closed the door behind him, as he had all of the others. Her captor passed some scent markers, and Averan suddenly realized where she was: nearing the Lair of Bones. She was already inside the Unbounded Warren.

Time and again now she saw tunnels branch off, other reavers ambling about. She saw some howlers—blotchy yellow creatures like enormous spiders—coming out of one tunnel, dragging the squirming carcass of an eighty-foot worm behind them. She saw glue mums spitting out mucilage as they shored up a damaged wall. She saw young reavers, no more than ten feet tall, trundling behind a matron.

What she did not see were blade-bearers or sorceresses, the guardians of the lair.

They had all gone to war.

Suddenly the Consort of Shadows turned at a side tunnel. Averan spotted a pair of blade-bearers standing at guard. Both of them were enormous, with glowing runes branded into their heads and arms.

Inside the chamber beyond, Averan could smell the stench of human bodies, filthy and diseased.

“Take care with this one,” the Consort of Shadows told the guards.

“It shall not escape,” the guards said.

The Consort of Shadows trundled deeper into the tunnel, and Averan, with her endowments of scent from more than a dozen dogs, found the reek of filthy humans to be more unbearable with each passing step. She smelled the odor of sour sweat mingled with piles of feces and pools of urine, and the rot of infected flesh, fish guts, and unburied dead.

For the first time in hours, the Consort of Shadows seemed to come out of his reverie. The monster’s stomach churned in disgust at the scent.

He hates it in here, Averan realized. All of the reavers hate being here. The stink is too much for them.

The Consort of Shadows reached the middle of the large chamber and tossed Averan to the floor. Averan heard a woman cry out from a far corner, half in fear, half in wonder, and then the Consort of Shadows turned and was gone.

Averan lay in a heap for a moment, peering around. The cavern was not huge. The mucilage on the walls was eroding away, so that bare rock showed in some places. Stalactites hung from the roof, and the floor was uneven. The scent of sulfur water came from a nearby pool.

In the far corners of the room, people huddled. They were mere humps on the floor, their clothes so grimy that they had taken on the hues of the dirt. Only their eyes could be seen through masks of grime, eyes wide with wonder. Gradually, Averan began to make out more features: here a face so pale it looked like an Inkarran boy, there the leathery brown of an Indhopalese woman.

The more Averan peered about, the more she realized that all of the humps around her were people. Sick people, starving people, wounded people, but alive.

“Light!” an old man cried. “Wondrous light!”

And someone echoed his sentiment in Indhopalese, “Azir! Azir famata!”

The humps began to move, and people rushed toward her on hands and knees. Averan realized that, deprived of light, most of them had probably been scurrying about like this for weeks or months.

“Who are you, Light-Bringer?” a woman called, pleading. “Where do you hail from?”

“Averan. My name is Averan. I was the king’s skyrider at Keep Haberd.”

“Keep Haberd?” a man asked, a mere skeleton. “I am from Keep Haberd. Can you tell me how it fares?”

Averan didn’t dare tell him that the reavers had killed everyone. The fellow scuttled toward her, along with the others, until they pressed about her, their stinking flesh overwhelming, their eyes wide with wonder at sight of her glowing ring. The skeletal fellow reached up to paw it, stroke it gingerly. Soon twenty dirty folk surrounded her, fawning.

“See how it shines!” a woman cried, reaching to stroke Averan’s ring, but not daring to, “like a star fallen from heaven.”

“Nay, no star was ever so filled with luster,” another insisted.

“What year is it?” a man demanded, as if he were some captain among the king’s guard.

“Year one of the reign of Gaborn Val Orden in Mystarria,” Averan answered, “who followed on the heels of his father, Mendellas Draken Orden, who died in the twenty-second year of his reign.”

“Five years,” an elderly man said in a thick Indhopalese accent. “Five years since last I saw light.”

“Ten for me,” a sickly fellow croaked.

For a moment, there was silence, and the prisoners in this dark place looked about at one another.

“Gavin, where are you?” a young woman asked.

“Here,” a man said from a few feet away.

The two of them stopped and gazed at each other in wonder, with love shining in their eyes. Everyone fell silent. The woman began to weep.

These folks have never seen each other before, Averan realized. How would it be to live here in darkness for years, never having seen the face of a friend?

The lost souls wore rags, if they wore anything at all, and several of them seemed to have had more than one broken bone or game leg. The reavers that imprisoned them had not been kind.

Near a far wall lay a pile of bones, both fish and human. Beyond that, Averan could see no sign of food. She asked, “How—how do you live down here?”

“We don’t live,” the Indhopalese man answered. “We just die as slowly as we can.”

15 Forms of War

The Inkarrans held Sir Borenson and Myrrima prisoner at the mountain fortress until it was nearly dark. The Inkarrans took their weapons and placed both of them in manacles. The fortress seemed to hold about twenty soldiers, none of whom wanted to go outside during daylight, where the glare on the white snow all but blinded them. So the westering sun was barely riding above the clouds as they marched into Inkarra.

They could not ride horses. Inkarrans rarely rode them at all, and certainly wouldn’t be able to do so tonight. The trail plunged down the mountain slopes through thickets and rock, then dove into the mists and trees. The combination of darkness, shadow, and fog would make riding impossible. So Borenson’s fine horses were left at the fortress.

Still, all of the party had endowments of metabolism. Shackled at the wrists, Borenson and Myrrima nearly raced downhill in the twilight, making good use of the last of the sun’s rays.

The party made good time in spite of the suddenly rather unbearable mixture of heat and humidity. In the late afternoon, the mists rising up the forested slopes felt as warm as a gentle steam.

By nightfall they were heading down steep mountain roads. The warmer climate here gave rise to vastly different flora and fauna than what was found north of the mountains. There were pines, but they were taller than any trees that Borenson had ever seen, and their bark was a dark red instead of gray. There were birds here, too, but these dusky magpies had longer necks than their northern cousins, and their raucous cries sounded alien to his ears. Everywhere, he saw strange lizards scurrying about—racing beneath ferns, hopping off rocks, leaping from tree branches to sail into the shadows on leathery wings.

Nothing could have prepared him for the strangeness of Inkarra, the misted forest, the exotic perfumes of the peach-colored mountain orchids that grew across the road. Sir Borenson had been raised on Orwynne, an island in the Carroll Sea not more than two hundred miles north of here. Yet once he crossed the mountains, he felt as if he had entered a world of which he had never dreamed.

Night closed in on them soon, and the Inkarran captors traveled noiselessly in near total darkness. They did not speak, did not give their names. The Inkarrans tried to guide Borenson and Myrrima as best they could, moving them this way and that to avoid roots that stretched across the rutted road, but the two daylighters kept tripping. The path couldn’t have been any less negotiable if Borenson was blindfolded. Borenson’s feet were getting bruised and bloody from the abuse.

After two hours of this, the party came to a halt. Borenson could hear laughter, the nasal voices of Inkarrans sounding odd to his ear.

“We wait,” one of the guards said in a thick accent

“What for?” Myrrima asked.

“Lamps. We at village. We bring you lamps.” One Inkarran headed off through the woods.

Borenson peered all about. There were no lights to show him where the village might be. Indeed, he could make out nothing at all, beyond a deeper darkness that showed him the bole of a nearby tree.

“I thought you used flame lizards to guard your houses,” Myrrima said.

“Draktferion very expensive,” the guard explained. “Eat much meat. This poor village. No draktferion here.”

Borenson soon heard rustling in the trees, the sound of approaching feet, and he heard the shy laughter of children. Apparently, he had drawn a crowd.

At last he saw light, a pair of swinging lamps. The lanterns, which hung from chains, were like rounded cups made of glass. In each cup burned Inkarran candles, strange candles as yellow as agates, as hard as stone, and without wicks. Borenson knew of them only from legend. Once lit, each candle would burn without smoke for a week or more. Indeed, he could see no flame from the peculiar candles. Instead, they merely glowed like bluish white embers.

As the guard passed through a crowd of children, the lanterns lit them briefly. The youngest children ran naked, while the older ones wore shifts of white linen. Their pale faces were as white as their clothes. To Borenson, they all looked like ghosts, like a convocation of the dead.

The guard tied a lamp around Borenson’s wrist, and one around Myrrima’s. In its soft glow, he could hardly make out the ground at his feet.

Still, it was enough.

All through the night they walked, until they came down out of the mountains altogether, into flat lands where no trees shadowed their path. They passed village after village, but there was little to see.

The villagers lived belowground, in hollows under the hills. In some richer areas, draktferions did indeed stand guard at the mouth of each village. There, the flame lizards would spread wide their hoods and hiss at the first sign of a stranger, fluorescing. By the flickering bloody light that they threw, Borenson could see the peculiar stelae that marked the entrance to the Inkarran “villages.” The stelae were carved of stone and stood some twenty feet tall. At the top was a circle, like a head, with two branches extending from the base, like arms. On the stelae, carved in stone, were the surnames of the families who lived in the town below.

As they approached a broad river, Borenson was aware that they passed farms. He could smell the rice paddies, and at last they reached a village, where the guards hurried them through a market where merchants hawked white peaches, fresh red grapes, a dozen kinds of melons, and dragon-eye fruits. Freshly killed crocodiles, snakes, and fish hung beside the road, where vendors would cook them while you waited.

The guards bought some winged lizards glazed with some sweet sauce, along with melon, and Borenson and Myrrima fed hungrily while one of the guards disappeared in a crowd.

“Come,” the guard said when he returned. “Boat take us downriver!”

In minutes, the guards had Borenson and Myrrima hustled into an Inkarran longboat. The boat was some sixty feet long and fairly narrow, made of some strange white wood that buoyed high on the water. At the bow of the boat was carved the head of a bird with a long beak, like a graceful crane.

The boat was filled with Inkarran peasants, ghostly white faces. Some of them carried bamboo cages that housed chickens or piglets.

Borenson sat near the front of the boat, looking off into the water. The air was still. He could hear night noises—the peep of tree frogs, the croak of a crocodile, the calls of some strange bird. The laughter and voices of the Inkarrans in town rose like music.

The sky overhead was still hazy, but the moon wafted above the mist, and now he could see the river dimly. Its shores spread broader than any river in Mystarria, mightier. He could not see the other side.

“How far must we go to see the Storm King?” Myrrima asked one of the guards.

“This not for you to know,” he answered. “Keep silence.”

Soon the boat was full of passengers. The guard handed Borenson and Myrrima each an oar, and they rowed together out into the deep. A hundred yards from shore, the current grew swift, and the boat glided under the moonlight. The passengers quit rowing, and left the work to the steersman.

One of their guards, a nameless man with high cheekbones and eyes that reflected red by the light of the lanterns, finally broke the silence.

“We reach Storm King’s fortress by dawn,” he said in a thick accent. “You sleep. You go sleep.”

“Will the king see us?” Borenson asked.

“Maybe,” the guard answered. “Chances good to see king. Not good to get favorable response.”

“Why not?” Myrrima asked.

“You savages. All northern men savage.”

Borenson snorted in laughter, and the guard bristled. He uttered some curse in Inkarran. “No laugh! You no laugh at me! I tell you this for own benefit. Not laugh at Inkarran. Never laugh, unless he laughs first. That giving permission to laugh.”

“Forgive me,” Borenson said. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at the idea—”

“The idea not funny,” the guard retorted. He waited a moment, as if doling out silence as punishment, and then continued, “We Inkarran most civilize people on Earth. You people barbarians. You kings rule by force of arms. When man not follow him, you king resort to brutal. He send army to butcher women and children. This is barbarian way.”

Borenson did not bother to correct the man. The Inkarrans had little contact with his people, and they would believe what they wanted to believe. It was true that women and children sometimes died in war, but that wasn’t the goal of war, only a perennial byproduct.

“In Inkarra, we not make war against innocents,” the guard said. “We choose victims and methods, very careful.”

“You mean that your lords fight one another?” Myrrima asked. “In hand-to-hand combat?”

“Among you people,” the guard answered, “there is but one kind battle. But we see many way settle dispute. You seek take man’s life when he anger you.” Borenson didn’t dare interrupt him, didn’t dare mention that the kings of the North used diplomacy far more often than battle. An Inkarran would not believe the truth. “But Inkarran, we have dozen form war. Each has own rules, own strategies.”

“Like what?” Myrrima asked.

“Gizareth ki,” Borenson suggested.

“Yes,” the guard said, “gizareth mean ‘a man’s honor, ‘ki mean ‘unmake,’ or ‘undo.’ So, in gizareth ki, goal to destroy...how say? ‘word’ of man?”

“Credibility,” Borenson said. “You destroy his credibility.

“And how do you fight such a war?” Myrrima asked.

“Rules simple: you cannot lie to destroy man’s credibility. That civilized way. You must...unmask deceit before witnesses. Once contest begin, it must end within one year.”

“And you call this war?” Myrrima asked.

Borenson answered, “Don’t be fooled. They take gizareth ki very seriously. A man is defined by his word, by his honesty. There are men here, truthsayers, who train for decades to learn how to tell when someone is lying or telling the truth. When you declare war on someone, you can hire one or more truthsayers to denounce the person. They’ll dig up every noble thing that the person has ever done, and then shout about it in the public square. Everyone will gather around to listen, because they know that the truthsayers are just warming up. For once they’ve discussed your virtues, they’ll denounce your vices in such excruciating detail that...well, many a prince has thrown himself down a well. And once they’re done with you, they’ll repeat it again, and again, and again.”

“For one year,” the guard said. “At end of year, must stop. And victim may retaliate; he hire own truthsayers. Once person suffer at truthsayer, he cannot be made to suffer again for ten years.”

“And what do you accomplish by destroying a man’s honor?” Myrrima asked.

“If lucky,” the guard said, “victim will change, grow. There prince in legend, Assenian Shey, who was called to war by brother. Truthsayers, they denounce his vices—” The guard counted them off on his fingers. “He waste talent, cruel to animals, glutton, let father die after robbers waylay him. The list, it grow endless. Everyone agree that young prince shameless. Still, he manage hold place of power. When his mother died, he become king.

“Ten years pass. The king’s brother hire truthsayers once again. After careful examination, truthsayers spoke only of king’s virtues. This bring great shame to jealous brother.

“So, you see,” the guard concluded, “here we civilized. Here, not all battles end with death. We can make war on man’s estate, or on his sanity. This is way of civilized people.”

“Hmmmph,” Borenson grunted. “You talk about your warfare as if it were more virtuous, but not all of your stories end so well. I’m familiar with the eighty-two forms of war. In the milder forms, you seek to destroy only a man’s wealth, or vanity, or reputation, but in the most heinous form, the makouthatek ki, you’re not satisfied with killing just one person, you seek to erase both his future and his past. You plunder his holdings, humiliate him before his people, butcher his wife and children so that he does not leave seed in the earth, put him to death, and destroy all those who dare even mention his name. I agree with you that war is a shameful thing, but you Inkarrans haven’t found a way to avoid the horrors of war, you’ve just perfected them.”

“Be careful such talk,” the guard warned Borenson in a voice edged with anger. “Some say forms of war should expand, that in addition to make war on city or family, we should entomb entire nations.”

Borenson laughed dangerously. “I’d like to meet those folks.”

“Then you in luck,” the guard said. “You will.”

“What do you mean?” Myrrima asked with worry in her voice. “Is the Storm King one of those people?”

“He no love Rofehavan, but he not one of those people. Still, you will visit during...kamen to, festival for pay tribute. Lords from all Inkarra must appearance. You surely meet some who wish destroy your kind.”

Borenson fell asleep to the sound of water lapping against the hull of the boat, and near dawn he woke as the Inkarrans on the boat began to stir. Sometime in the night, the cloud cover had broken above them, and stars shone now. Heaven was giving them another fiery display. Dozens of shooting stars streaked through the sky in a perpetual blaze.

Borenson could smell a sea breeze, a smell that always reminded him of home, and he could hear the roaring of a great waterfall ahead. To the north, the heavens shone down on a great city. Patches of farm were laid out in neat squares, and he could see the ghostly Inkarrans working their fields by night.

They had reached the outskirts of the Storm King’s capital. The boat soon pulled into some busy docks, where fisherman unloaded their catches of the night. The guards ushered Borenson and Myrrima off the boat, and into the dusty streets.

Here in the city, draktferions lit the hilltops. The guards steered him toward the tallest hill, where hundreds of the fierce lizards blazed. Borenson knew that he had reached Iselferion, the Palace of Fire. The road leading up was paved with cobblestones, unlike all other roads that he’d seen in Inkarra, and the sprawling trees and grounds were well maintained.

As he reached the bottom of the hill, he could see an enormous stele, with a three-pointed crown atop it, that announced the Storm King’s residence.

The guard led them up a gentle slope, and then down a tunnel that stopped at an iron gate.

Borenson had never been inside an Inkarran burrow. The mouth of the tunnel was wide enough so that several people could walk abreast, but not so wide that one could drive carts into it. An iron gate guarded the mouth of the burrow. Spikes hammered into the gate were meant to keep out even a charging elephant. The gate was open, and they went down a long corridor. Kill holes and archery slots could be seen in the walls. No sconces lit the way. Borenson’s tiny lantern gave the only light. The only sound was a distant boom as waves crashed against the rocks at the base of the cliff. The surrounding blackness became complete as the guards led Borenson and Myrrima into the palace of the Storm King.

They passed through several darkened antechambers, each descending several hundred feet, when at last a door opened into a vast room. It was enormous, oval in shape, with high ceilings. Its plastered walls had been painted white, and equidistant around this chamber hung a dozen Inkarran lanterns, similar to the one that Borenson carried. Within the chamber, Inkarrans milled about. Most of them seemed drunk, as if returning from a night of revelry, and many laughed. He saw men in their strange tunics, often being held by women in long dresses. They spoke among themselves in whispers, and shot curious glances at Borenson and Myrrima.

In the far corners, merchants had thrown carpets on the floor of the room, and sat hawking bolts of cloth, food, armor, just about anything one might find during a fair.

“As see,” the guard whispered, “lords here from many land.”

Borenson could hardly see the Inkarrans at all. The lamplight was too dim to suit his human eyes. Nor was he certain that he could tell the dress of a lord from that of a pauper.

The guards turned them over to an officious fellow who led them down some long corridors in near total darkness, until at last they reached what Borenson figured was an audience room. There, two women in white dresses came and cut off his long red hair, using sharp metal scrapers. Borenson sat transfixed. Both women were beautiful. He could not help but inhale their strange, exotic scent. Their bodies seemed to have been rubbed in oil perfumed with orchids. When they finished with Borenson’s head, they shaved his eyebrows, but left his beard. They laughed at the effect, and then left, and the guard escorted them to another chamber.

This room was different from those before. It had a single lamp in the center, and several large stones lay about it. By the stones’ size and the way that they lay strewn about, he wasn’t sure if they were adornments or if they were meant to be used as chairs. One corner of the room had a little pool in it, and a stream tinkled down from some rocks, so that the whole room smelled of water. Fresh herbs had been strewn on the floor, and from some dark corner a cricket sang. Borenson could discern large crabs scuttling about in the pools.

“Here you wait,” the guard said, “until king speak to you.”

They rested on the stone. The cricket sang beside the quiet pool. Borenson lay on a rock, until at last the king arrived. With him came several men—counselors, it seemed, and courtiers, all in rich attire.

The Storm King himself entered the room first. He was a gnarled old man with a bent back, a bald head, and a silver moustache that hung almost to his waist. Like all Inkarran kings, he bore a reaver dart in lieu of a scepter. The dart was made of silver, with a head carved of white diamond, and his only garment was a white silk tunic. Nothing about him was adorned at all, and the question crossed Borenson’s mind, “What does he love?”

The old Storm King glared at Borenson, but his gaze softened when he looked upon Myrrima.

Borenson studied the counselors and courtiers. From the anger in their eyes, he suspected that they hated his people more than the Storm King did. Indeed, he suddenly suspected that they were more than mere courtiers. The Storm King was the High King of Inkarra, who exacted tribute from all others. By their fine silk robes, Borenson suspected that many of these were kings from far realms.

Borenson dropped to both knees, and Myrrima knelt on one knee behind him.

“Sir Borenson,” King Zandaros whispered in thinly accented Rofehavanish. “I understand that you bring me a message.”

“Indeed, Your Highness.”

“You do not need to kneel to me,” the king said mildly. “Feel free to look me in the eye.”

Borenson rose to his feet, and behind him he could hear Myrrima do the same.

“You realize,” King Zandaros said, “that it is against our law for men of Mystarria to travel in Inkarra. You must have seen our wards in the mountains. Did they not warn you that your life is in peril?”

“Only great need drew me here,” Borenson said. “I came in spite of the wards.”

“You must be a man of great will,” the king said, “to pass them. However, it is also against your law for men of Inkarra to travel in Mystarria, is it not? As I am sure that you know, our people have been killed for breaking your law. Should we not, therefore, kill you?”

“It was our king’s hope,” Borenson replied, “that an exception might be made, due to the fact that we travel only as his messengers.”

“You are...close to the king?”

By custom only a relative or close friend should bear the king’s message in Inkarra. “I have been his bodyguard for many years,” Borenson said. “He has no father, no mother, brothers, or sisters. I am his closest friend.”

“Yet you come under his command?” the Storm King asked. It would not do for some lackey to bear the message.

“No,” Borenson said. “I was released from his service. I am a Knight Equitable, and come now as his friend, not as his servant.”

Zandaros whispered, “And what if no exception is to be made to our law? Are you prepared to die?”

Borenson had been expecting this question. “If you intend to kill me,” he said, “then I would ask for only one boon: that you let me deliver my message first.”

The king thought for a moment. “Agreed,” he whispered gently. “Your life is forfeit, along with that of your wife. I shall do with them as I deem fit. Give me your message.”

Borenson had expected such a show of power.

“My lord,” Borenson said, “an Earth King has risen in Mystarria, in the person of Gaborn Val Orden. And against him, other kings have raised their hands: Raj Ahten of Indhopal, Lowicker of Beldinook, and Anders of South Crowthen. Gaborn has driven back these enemies, but is concerned with a much greater threat. Even now he fights reavers that have been a scourge to Carris. You’ve seen how the stars fall at night, and how the sun grows large on the horizon. You cannot doubt that we are in great jeopardy. Deep in the earth, the reavers have created magic runes—the Seal of Heaven and the Seal of the Inferno. By uniting these runes with the Seal of Desolation, the reavers will wreak great havoc across the world. Gaborn wishes to put aside old enmities, and asks that you unite with him in his battle against the reavers.”

King Zandaros thought for a long moment, then pointed at Borenson’s chest. “How many reavers has your king killed?”

“Some seventy thousand attacked Carris. When last I saw Gaborn, his knights were charging them on the plains of Mystarria. I would say that he had killed at least thirty percent of them. Those that remained seemed...worn and humbled. I do not doubt that he will bring them all down.”

“He has slain twenty thousand reavers?” Zandaros asked, his voice thick with suspicion.

Behind the king, Borenson heard someone whispering excitedly in Inkarran, followed by gasps of astonishment. Indeed the kings and counselors there began to argue loudly, and two of them made violent motions, pointing off to the north. The Storm King silenced them all with a harsh word and a wave of his hand.

“So,” Zandaros whispered. “Your king sues for peace, and asks the help of Inkarra. He must be desperate indeed.”

“It is not just desperation that drives him,” Borenson said. “He is not like other kings. He didn’t make the old laws. He does not want to count Inkarra among his foes. He feels the need to protect men of all nations through the dark times to come.”

At that, King Zandaros laughed mirthlessly. “Inkarrans like dark times,” he whispered. He went and sat down on a stone, near Myrrima. He motioned for Borenson to sit beside him. “Come, tell me more about this Earth King of yours. How many endowments does he have?”

Borenson sat beside him. “Gaborn has few endowments, Your Highness. He does not like to put men to the forcible. He has none of glamour or Voice anymore. And only a few each of brawn, grace, stamina, and metabolism.”

“I hear that Raj Ahten has taken thousands of endowments. How then can Gaborn hope to stand against him?”

“He relies on his Earth Powers to protect him,” Borenson said. “And on his wits.”

“And you say that this king of yours would protect us, too?”

“He would,” Borenson answered.

At the Storm King’s back, there was a derisive bark, and one of the lords began raging insults. But the Storm King’s demeanor remained pacific. He stared deep into Borenson’s eyes, and then gazed over at Myrrima.

“And you agree?”

“I do, Your Highness,” Myrrima whispered.

The old king peered hard at her, and sniffed the air. “You are not the lackey of any Earthly King,” he said at last. “Of that much I am certain.”

Myrrima nodded as if he had paid her a compliment.

“And what of the rest of your message?” the king asked. “I understand that you search for someone?”

“Gaborn seeks the help of Daylan Hammer, whom we believe to be here in Inkarra.”

Zandaros nodded and turned his back, staring at the knot of men who stood there. “Perhaps you should look harder in your own lands. The kings of the south knew more of him than I did. There was a matter against him some time ago, a war of makeffela ki. Daylan of the Black Hammer fled the battle, and has not been seen in many long years. It is said that he may be living in Mystarria, where any Inkarran that might pursue him would be killed on sight, though he may have gone farther north.”

Borenson took in this news. He had never heard of Daylan Hammer being anywhere in Rofehavan. But if he was afraid of Inkarrans sworn to vengeance, he could be hiding anywhere.

“How long ago was this?” Borenson asked.

King Zandaros turned to one of the kings behind him, an old fellow with an almost grandfatherly look about him. “Sixty-one years,” the old fellow answered. “Please forgive bad Rofehavan talk I make. Wife can tell more.”

King Zandaros patted Borenson on the shoulder, and stood as if to leave. “You and your wife are free to go, Sir Borenson. King Criomethes here will tell you all that you need to know. Feel free to enjoy our hospitality here at Iselferion for as long as you like.”

At that, King Zandaros turned to leave the room. A lord behind him, a tall man with sweeping silver hair, all dressed in a black tunic, growled angrily and made some demand.

Zandaros turned to Sir Borenson. “My sister’s son asks a question of you. It seems that he suffered many things yesterday in a dream. He believes that one of my nephews, Pilwyn Coly Zandaros, is dead, and that you might know something of this?”

Borenson didn’t know how to answer. He could see rage in the tall fellow’s eyes, and dared not admit that he had killed Zandaros himself.

Myrrima spoke up quickly, her voice as soft and liquid as water. “It was Pilwyn Coly Zandaros who caused us to initiate our visit, Your Highness,” Myrrima said, “when he sought to assassinate the Earth King.”

“Assassinate?” Zandaros asked.

“He bore a message case,” Myrrima said, “and on it was inscribed a curse in runes of Air. He claimed that that message came from you.”

The lord behind the Storm King suddenly grew fearful and backed away. Zandaros whirled on him with lightning in his eyes. He smiled cruelly, like a cat considering how to torment a mouse.

“I apologize for that,” Zandaros said. “Our kingdom is ever rife with intrigues. Believe me, reparations will be made. And if Pilwyn is indeed dead, then it only relieves me of the chore.”

“What of an answer?” Borenson asked. “What would you have me tell King Orden?”

Zandaros turned on him and nodded graciously. “I think that I should like to meet this king of yours that has killed twenty thousand reavers. Indeed, I have a sudden urge to hunt at his side. I leave within the hour. I hope to reach the mountains by dawn. Would that be advisable, milady?”

Zandaros gazed into Myrrima’s eyes, as if asking if that was what she wanted. Something had passed between them, Borenson felt sure.

“Yes,” Myrrima said. She seemed to be pondering, almost in a trance. “He will need your peculiar strengths.”

The Storm King whirled and left, and many of the other lords followed at his heel, except for two men who stood by the door. One of them was the grandfatherly king that had spoken earlier. The other was a handsome young Inkarran, dressed in black silk, so much like him that he had to be his son.

“I King Criomethes,” the old man introduced himself again, “and this son, Verazeth. Our kingdom far south. Please, follow.”

Borenson glanced back uncertainly at Myrrima.

“Please,” Criomethes said. “You guest. You hungry? We feed.”

By now, Borenson’s stomach was cramping from want of food. The lizard he’d eaten last night, and the bit of fruit, had not filled him.

“Yes, we’re hungry,” he said, thinking to himself, hungry enough even to eat Inkarran food. “Thank you.”

Criomethes took his elbow and led him back the way that they had come. “This way,” the king said. “Is time for feast here. Our room quite small. For this I sorry.”

They walked through shadowed corridors until they reached the great hall. A throng filled that hall, young Inkarran lords dressed in dark, deep-hooded cloaks, with their armor gleaming beneath. They were already making preparations to ride with the Storm King. There was excitement in the air, a smell of war.

King Criomethes led them into a side corridor, along busy streets that seemed to stretch for miles. They passed doorway after rounded doorway, each covered with nothing more than a curtain, until at last the king steered them to a large room.

“Come in, come in,” the king said. He stood aside from the door and urged Borenson inside, slapping him on the back.

Borenson stopped just outside the doorway, hesitant to enter a room before a king. A cooking fire burned dully in a hearth, and four girls were frying vegetables in its coals. Thick furs and pillows covered the floor, and a tall golden carafe sat on a low table, along with several half-empty glasses of wine.

“Please,” Criomethes said, gesturing for Borenson to enter. Borenson stepped inside, and Criomethes came on his heel, still patting him on the shoulder like an old friend. “I glad Zandaros spared life. You be very useful.”

At that, Borenson heard a gasp behind him, and turned to see Myrrima stumbling toward the floor. Prince Verazeth stood over her, and Borenson saw the glint of gold from a needle ring on his hand. At that very instant, he felt something prick his shoulder, where Criomethes had been touching him.

“Wha—?” he started to say.

His shoulder went numb instantly, and his arm went slack.

A poison, Borenson realized, a paralying drug.

His heart pounded furiously in terror, causing ice to lance through his arm. The Inkarrans were masters in the art of poisons, and their surgeons used a number of paralyzing drugs collected from the skins of flying lizards and various plants.

Borenson reached for Criomenes, thinking to deal him a death blow, but the room spun violently, his thoughts became clouded, and he grabbed the man for support.

His legs seemed to turn to rubber and he dropped to the carpets, no more able to remain upright than if he were a sack of onions.

16 The Betrayal

Gaborn and Iome raced through the Underworld, measuring time by the pounding of their feet, by the wheezing of their breath. The ribs of the tunnel flashed by as white as the cartilage of a windpipe. Gaborn imagined that he was traveling down the throat of some fell beast. Going down, ever downward, until he reached its belly.

He chased the Consort of Shadows ceaselessly, going ever deeper into the earth, sweat storming from his brow, through a landscape of nightmare, past mud pots that splattered gray mud like pain, beneath tunnels where reavers had channeled steam that thundered through pipes of mucilage. The deeper they ran, the more grotesque and abundant the landscape became. Gaborn ran for what seemed days, stopping only long enough to drink greedily from a pool of tepid sulfur water or choke down something from the provisions. But no amount of drinking could assuage his thirst, and no amount of food seemed to give him the strength he needed to keep running.

The path slanted through the Underworld, sometimes leading down trails not meant for humans—through vertical chimneys where reavers had carved handholds and footholds.

He felt a great threat ahead, not more than a few miles now, a wall of death.

As he ran, Gaborn also reached out to sense the danger rising in Carris. He tried to imagine his Chosen people, living pleasant lives in safety. But all he felt in their future was death.

Once, after drinking, he leaned with his back to the wall, wrapped his arms around his knees, and bowed his head, letting the sweat drain from his chin. He squatted on the floor of the cave near a fetid stream, in a place where blind-crab shells were piled thick on the ground like discarded breastplates in an armory.

“What’s wrong?” Iome asked.

Gaborn tried to answer in measured tones. “I’m worried. I think it must be well after midnight now. The threat to Heredon is diminishing. I think our messengers are warning the people to hide there. But in Carris the threat keeps growing. All evening, I’ve sensed...people gathering. Almost everyone that I Chose in the city is returning. I can feel them stirring, coming together.”

“But,” Iome rightfully argued, “you told them to return.”

“Not like this,” Gaborn said. “There were women at Carris that I Chose, and children. So many of those little ones are going back. Hundreds of thousands. They must think that the castle is safer than the villages nearby, but it’s not. They must think that they can help in the fight....”

He shook his head in dismay. He imagined them hurriedly preparing the defenses in the castle. The women would be boiling rags for bandages and preparing food in advance of the battle. The children would be collecting rocks for the catapults and fletching arrows, while the men worked at shoring up the breaches in the castle walls. “The sense of danger is rising so high,” Gaborn said. “It’s...I fear I’ve sent them to fight a battle they cannot win. I think I’ve sent them to their slaughter.”

Iome knelt beside him. “You’re doing your best.”

“But is it good enough?” Gaborn asked. “I’m sending people to war, and against what? If they fought reavers alone, that would be enough. But we are fighting an enemy we’ve never even guessed at—the One True Master of Evil.”

Iome went quiet, and the silence around them deepened. Even with endowments of hearing, Gaborn could detect nothing. The silence around them, the immovable wilderness, was overwhelming. The only sound came from a few elephant snails nearby, their huge shells clacking together as they fed on moss. Even the sound of Gaborn’s voice did not carry more than a few feet beyond his face.

Iome opened Erden Geboren’s book and scanned through the headings. Gaborn sat for a moment, waiting for Iome to find something of interest. He noticed a twinge, as if a wave of fresh air washed over him. As it did, he felt suddenly lighter, more refreshed. He’d noticed it once or twice before, over what felt like the past hour or two.

No, he realized. I’ve noticed it a dozen times. Someone is vectoring endowments to me.

He’d last taken endowments in Heredon—brawn, stamina, grace, metabolism, wit. Now his messengers had gone to Heredon, telling the folk of the dangers to come. The endowments had to be vectored by the facilitators at Castle Groverman. But why would they do it?

Iome scanned through the headings of Erden Geboren’s book. Gaborn peered at her. Was she moving more slowly than she had an hour ago?

No, she couldn’t be, he thought. Perhaps someone is vectoring metabolism to me. Now that he thought about it, it had been less of a labor running for the last stretch. Iome had kept falling behind.

“Gaborn,” Iome said. “You mentioned that the danger is growing less in Heredon. Can you tell me how my friend Chemoise will fare?” For years, Chemoise had been Iome’s maid of honor, and they’d been inseparable.

Gaborn reached out with his Earth Senses. Felt the danger rising around the girl. “If she hears my warning and takes heed, there may be hope for her.”

“May be?” Iome asked.

“Iome,” he said, “you don’t want to play this game. Don’t ask me to name the names of those who will die. Nothing is certain.”

“All right,” she said, biting her lip. She pointed at something in the book. “Here’s a chapter on fighting a locus. It says that ‘Against a locus, no weapon forged of steel can prevail.’ ”

Iome flipped to the next page, and frowned. She began rapidly skimming through the next dozen pages. “If we cannot kill it with steel,” she offered, “then we must find another way.”

Her voice sounded unnaturally deep and slow.

“Something is wrong,” Iome said. “Erden Geboren was going to talk about how to fight the locus, but the pages have been ripped out.”

“Ripped out?” Gaborn asked. “Why would someone rip them out?”

Iome frowned, then gave Gaborn a hard look. “Think about it: Erden Geboren told people what he was fighting seventeen hundred years ago, but in all of the legends, in all of the myths, all we’ve ever heard is that he fought reavers. There can only be one answer: someone doesn’t want us to fight the loci.”

“Or perhaps,” Gaborn countered, “someone took the pages precisely because he wanted to know how to fight the creature.”

“I wish I could believe that,” Iome said.

The heat was unbearable, worse than the hottest day Gaborn had ever witnessed. He took another drink from the pool, but no amount of water could quite refresh him.

Another twinge hit him, barely perceptible. His muscles tightened. He felt sure now. Someone was vectoring endowments to him.

When a Runelord took an endowment, if he took it directly from the Dedicate, he received more than just the attribute, he normally felt a rush of ecstasy. But coming as they were through vectors, Gaborn only sensed the virtue that grew inside him each time a facilitator transferred an endowment.

He got up and peered forward, down the long tunnel. He stretched his senses, reached out with with his Earth Sight. The sense of impending doom had lessened. With each endowment he received, the threat diminished. Ahead, the wall of death was cracking.

Iome must have noticed something amiss. “What’s happening?”

“My facilitators,” Gaborn said, “have begun vectoring more endowments to me.”

Iome looked up at him with sadness in her eyes, resignation, but no surprise.

“Did you tell them to do this?” Gaborn demanded.

Iome nodded. “You wouldn’t have taken more endowments yourself, so I sent a message to the facilitators in Heredon, asking them to vector the endowments to you.”

Gaborn’s heart fell. The facilitators were vectoring greater endowments to him—brawn, grace, stamina. Each time they did, they put the life of a Dedicate at risk. So many of Gaborn’s Dedicates had died at Raj Ahten’s hands already that he would not have dared seek more endowments.

“No promises were to be made to the Dedicates,” Iome said by way of apology. “No offers of gold, no threats. Those who give themselves are doing it out of their love for their homeland, nothing more.”

“How many endowments did you tell them to vector?” Gaborn asked heavily.

“All that they can,” Iome said. “If all four of our facilitators work through the night, they should be able to give you a thousand or more.”

Gaborn shook his head in horror at all of the suffering, all of the pain he would cause the Dedicates. Another burst of virtue passed through him, and he felt the desire to move faster. He stared at Iome, and could not begin to tell her how deeply she had betrayed his trust. The new Dedicates would be at risk, not just from men like Raj Ahten but from the stresses of giving endowments. Sometimes, men who gave brawn would die of weakness as their hearts failed; or those who gave grace would have their lungs cease up, and never draw breath again.

“Why?” he asked.

Iome shook her head, and tears began to pool in her eyes, as if to say I’m sorry. Instead, she said what she had to: “Our people need us to be strong now. If we don’t kill the One True Master, nothing else matters. I’d have taken the endowments myself, if I could. But I don’t have your gifts. I didn’t dare waste any more forcibles on myself.”

Gaborn looked down at her, dismayed. By granting so many endowments of metabolism, his people might well doom him to a solitary existence, moving so fast that he would be all but incapable of carrying on a normal conversation, a life where he could age in a matter of months or years, while his loved ones lived out their normal lives. They could make a sacrifice of him.

Gaborn wasn’t just hurt. He felt as if something inside him had broken.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Iome said. “Don’t hate me. Just...I just want you to live.” Gaborn had never seen such grief in a woman’s countenance. It was as if she were being torn in two.

“Life for me isn’t just existing,” Gaborn said. “It’s how I choose to live that matters.”

Iome took his face in her hands and held it, peering into his eyes. Even now, he could not meet her gaze, but stubbornly looked down at her lips. “I want you,” Iome said. “I want you in my life, and I mean to save you by any means possible.”

He closed his eyes, unable to confront what she had done. She was stronger than he, more willing to bear the guilt that came from taking endowments, more willing to bear shame, more willing to sacrifice the things that she loved for the common good.

For a long moment, she held him. Then she kissed him once on the forehead, once on the lips, and once on each hand.

“Go now,” Iome said. “I can’t keep up with you any longer. I’d only slow you down. I’ll follow as best I can. Mark the trail for me.”

Gaborn nodded heavily, then peered at her. “May I have Averan’s staff? She’ll need it when I find her.”

Iome handed him the simple staff of black poisonwood. Gaborn felt in his heart, considering the path ahead. Yes, the wall of death awaited him just a few miles up the tunnel.

I’ll either clear a path for Iome, Gaborn thought, or die in the attempt.

Gaborn held Iome for a long moment, and whispered into her ear. “I love you. I forgive you.”

He turned and raced down the tunnel, redoubling his pace, becoming smaller and smaller. For a moment he looked the size of a young man, and then a boy, and then a toddler, until at last he turned round a bend and was gone altogether.

17 The Bone Man

Averan was in the fetid prison where lost souls huddled around her in the blackness, drawn to the light of her ring like moths. They were staring at the gem, at her.

Averan tried to sit up but fell back in a swoon. Her head spun and sweat streamed from every pore.

“Get her some water,” one shaggy old man said. Soon, a half-naked girl brought water in her cupped hands, and gave Averan a drink.

“There’s more blindfish in the stream,” the girl reported.

“Fish?” Averan asked.

Barris said, “Fish. It’s about all that we have to eat. There’s a river that runs underground, and the fish swim up through it. We have no fire to cook them with, and they taste like rancid oil and sulfur. But if you pick through the spines and the bones, there’s meat on them.”

Averan’s stomach churned at the thought. She still had her pack on. “There’s supplies in my bags,” she told the group. “Apples and onions, cheeses, nuts and dried berries. It isn’t much, but split it among yourselves.”

No one moved to touch her pack until Averan pulled it off her own back and handed out the food. There wasn’t much, enough for each person to have an apple or a handful of nuts. Yet the folk seemed greatly touched by the gesture, and Averan heard one man weep in gratitude as he bit into an onion.

There was a long silence, and one old man, his face lined with wrinkles and gray in his hair, asked, “You was saying that you hail from Keep Haberd?”

“Aye,” Averan admitted.

“I’m from there,” he said. “But I don’t remember much anymore. I try to imagine grass or sunlight, and I can’t. There were people that I knew, but their faces...”

Averan didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to admit that Keep Haberd had been destroyed, its walls knocked down by reavers, its people slaughtered and eaten. Everyone that this old fellow had known would be dead. “Do you have a last name?”

“Weeks, Averan Weeks.”

“Oh,” the fellow said. “Then you must know of Faldon Weeks?”

“That was my father’s name,” Averan said. “You knew him?”

“I knew him well,” the old fellow said. “He was a prisoner here, captured in the same battle as me. I remember that he was married to a small woman whose smile could light the stars at night. But I don’t remember a daughter.”

“He was here?” Averan asked, disbelieving. She had been told that reavers had eaten him. She had never guessed that he might have been carried down here.

“He always dreamed of going home,” the old fellow said. “But he could not hold on forever. Even with endowments, none of us can hold on forever. And now our endowments have been taken. He succumbed within the very hour that it happened.”

Averan peered into the fellow’s face. Here was someone who had known her father. The man was little more than bones with a bit of skin draped over him. He was so thin that his eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets. His only clothing was a scrap of dirty gray cloth tied around his loins. He looked as if he might expire at any moment.

With sudden certainty, Averan realized what had happened. Raj Ahten had killed the Dedicates at the Blue Tower. When he’d done it, Averan had lost her own endowments, and had grown so weak that she thought that she would die. How much worse would it have been if she’d been a prisoner down here, with nothing but an endowment or two of stamina to sustain her?

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she began to shudder, as if she would collapse. “My father is here?”

“Yes,” the old fellow said. He pointed back to a far wall, where white bones glistened wetly, and blind-crabs still scuttled about the remains. “But there is nothing left of him.”

Ten years, Averan thought. Ten years he’d been down here, and she had missed meeting him by only a week.

Bitterly, Averan cursed the reavers that had brought them here, and wished them all dead.

She found herself sobbing. The old man reached out timidly, as if begging permission to comfort her, and she grasped him around the neck, hugging him.

These could have been my father’s bones, Averan thought. This could have been the smell of his unwashed neck.

A sullen rage grew in her, and she swore to take revenge.

18 An Unexpected Party

“Hide underground tonight!” Uncle Eber told Chemoise as he came in the door that morning, bringing home from the village a pail of fresh milk and a loaf of bread. “That’s what the Earth King said to do. Hide underground. I just heard it in town from the king’s messenger.”

Chemoise looked up from the breakfast table. She was at her uncle’s estate in the village of Ableton, far in the north of Heredon. Her aunt had just finished cooking some sausages and had asked her to sit until Eber got home. And grandmother sat in her rocker before the fireplace, deaf as a doorpost and half-blind as well.

“Why did he send messengers?” Chemoise asked. “He could have just told us that we are in danger.”

“I...don’t know,” Eber said. “He’s off way down in Mystarria. Maybe the Earth King’s warnings won’t carry so far. Or perhaps he wanted to be sure that everyone was forewarned, not just his Chosen.”

Chemoise looked around the room with a rising sense of panic. It was early in her pregnancy, but for the past few days, the very mention of breakfast had made her too ill to eat. She was beginning to feel that sense of fragility that often accompanies gestation. So coming down for breakfast had given her a sense of accomplishment.

Now this. “Underground?” she asked. “Why?”

“I’ll bet it’s the stars,” her aunt Constance offered. “They’ve been falling every night, each night worse than the night before!”

Chemoise’s heart skipped a beat. She knew little of such things. She’d heard of men mining iron from fallen stars, and so she imagined that perhaps it would rain down like grapeshot from a catapult. But that couldn’t be right. Falling stars were hot. The stars wouldn’t be like grapeshot; they’d be more like fire raining from the skies, fire and molten iron. After last night’s meteor showers, with the fireballs roaring through the heavens, it wasn’t hard to imagine such a thing.

Uncle Eber shot Constance a furtive look, warning her to be quiet. He didn’t want to trouble Chemoise with wild speculations about what might happen. That look worried her even more.

Chemoise often missed her life at Castle Sylvarresta. At least if I were there, she thought, I might have heard more about the threat. Even if the folks in the castle didn’t know any more than Uncle Eber does, there would have been some juicy speculations.

But Chemoise knew of things more terrifying than meteor showers that Gaborn might warn them about.

“Perhaps another Darkling Glory is coming,” Chemoise offered. The threat hung in the air like a cold fog.

Constance set the spatula beside the stove and began wiping her hands. She turned the subject, “So, where will we stay tonight?”

“I’ve been thinking we could use the winecellars,” Eber responded. “They’re old and dusty, but they go back quite far under the hill.” A dozen years ago the estate had had some large vineyards. But blight had killed the grapes. With the loss of both his crop and the plants, Eber hadn’t been able to afford to replant, so he’d leased his fields to sharecroppers.

“Those old tunnels?” his wife asked in surprise. “They’re infested with ferrin!”

The thought of the little ratlike creatures gave Chemoise a shiver.

“The ferrin won’t mind a bit of company for just one night,” Eber said. He nibbled his lip. “I’ve invited the sharecroppers to stay with us.”

“That’s half the village!” Constance said.

“I invited the other half, too,” Eber confessed. Constance opened her mouth in surprise as Eber set the bread and milk on the table and made a great show of sitting down, waiting for Constance to bring his breakfast. “There’s nowhere else for them to go!” he apologized. “Only a few folk have root cellars, and the nearest caves are miles from here. We’ll be safer together!”

“Well then,” Constance said with a tone of false cheer, putting the sausages on the table. “We’ll make a party of it.”

Chemoise and Constance hiked up to the wine cellars half a mile behind the hill. The air had a strange quality today. The sky was hazy, and yet seemed to be heavy and looming. The path in front of the cellars was choked with tall grass, shrubs, clinging vines, and wild daisies. A few pear trees were growing before the door. This late in the season only a few dry leaves still clung to the trees.

It took some hard work even to wrench the door open. The odor of mold permeated the old winery. The floors were thick with dust, and little trails showed where ferrin had walked. A pile of their dung moldered next to the door.

“Yech,” Aunt Constance said. “What a mess!”

The cellar had been dug far back into the hill so that the wine could age at an even temperature. Chemoise left the door open and waded through the dust, past some vines white from lack of sunlight, back into the dark storerooms. After twenty feet, the tunnel branched. To her right lay a little shop with hammers and benches where a cooper had made barrels. “Well,” Constance said. “The heavier hammers are still here, but it looks as if the ferrin stole all the lighter chisels and files.”

Straight ahead were rows and rows of old wine barrels. Winged termites crawled about on the nearest ones. Signs of ferrin were everywhere in the little trails on the floor. There were ferrin spears leaning against one barrel, and some ferrin had made a conkle—a fiendish image constructed of straw and twigs—and set it in a corner. Strange paintings, like scratch marks made with coal, surrounded the conkle. No one quite knew why the ferrin built them. Chemoise imagined that they hoped it would frighten away enemies.

She tapped the nearest wine barrel to see if it held anything. Inside, some sleeping ferrin awoke. They began snarling like badgers and whistling in alarm, then raced out the back of the barrel through a small hole.

Soon the whole wine cellar reverberated with such whistles, ferrin talk for “What? What?”

The calls seemed to echo from everywhere, and Chemoise spotted little holes dug into the walls behind the barrels. Fierce little ferrin warriors wearing scraps of stolen-cloth poked their heads out of the holes.

“What a mess!” Aunt Constance said, coming in behind. “We’ll never get it all cleaned up in time.”

“Would you like some help?” someone called. Chemoise turned. In the doorway stood a young man of perhaps eighteen years. He was tall and broad of shoulder, with blond hair that swept down his back and halfway covered his green eyes.

It had only been four days since Chemoise had come to Ableton. As of yet, she had met only half of the villagers. But she hadn’t been able to help noticing this young man plowing a field across the valley.

“Chemoise,” her aunt said. “This is Dearborn Hawks, our neighbor.”

“How do you do?” Chemoise asked.

“Fine, thank you,” Dearborn replied. He was staring at her, as if her aunt didn’t exist, as if he wanted to speak to Chemoise but couldn’t find the words. By now, he couldn’t help knowing all about her, at least the rumors that her uncle had spread. “Uh,” he offered lamely, “I, uh, I promised Eber that I’d come early, to help clean up.”

“Well then,” Aunt Constance said, “I’ll let you two get to it, while I go do some baking.”

There was a clumsy silence as her footsteps echoed out the door. Dearborn stood for a long minute. Chemoise knew what this was. She was going to have a babe in seven months, and her aunt and uncle were trying to find the lad a father.

“So,” Dearborn finally managed. “You’re new in the village?”

“You haven’t seen me before, have you?” Chemoise asked.

“I think I’d remember if I had,” Dearborn said, smiling appreciatively. “In fact I’m sure I’d remember. I, uh, I live across the valley, in the old manor.”

Chemoise had seen it, a dilapidated building that had been old two hundred years ago. The Hawks family was large, ten children at least, from what Chemoise could see. Dearborn had two brothers who were close to his age. “I’ve seen you,” she said. “You’re the oldest?”

“Aye,” Dearborn said. “And the best looking. And the hardest worker, and the cleverest, and funniest.”

“Ahah. That must give you a lot of comfort. Say something clever.”

The young man looked as if he wanted to bite his own tongue off for making a fool of himself. He looked up at the ceiling and said at last, “A true friend is one that will bear your burdens when you are down, and bear your secrets to the grave. And no lesser kind of friend is worthy of the name.”

It wasn’t exactly clever or funny. It was more sincere. “Are you implying that I have burdens that need to be borne, or secrets that need to be kept?”

“No,” he answered. “It was just a thought.”

Chemoise felt sorry for the cold welcome she’d given him. He knew that she carried a child, and had probably guessed the rest. Yet he’d come acting as if he’d elbowed his brothers aside to be the first to meet her. “Well then,” she said, “let’s see if you’re as industrious as you are clever.”

With that they pulled up their sleeves and went at it. Dearborn began rolling the old wine barrels from the back in order to make room for the party. Some barrels had ferrin families living in them, and as soon as he began to roll them out, the ferrin would whistle in terror and come bolting out of one hole or another, diving into the tunnels that they’d dug into the winery walls.

Others barrels were used by the ferrin for food storage—and thus held a bit of wheat stripped from the fields, or dried cherries, or rubbery turnips plundered from gardens. Two barrels had been used as graveyards, and were filled with old ferrin bones.

All of the barrels stank of musk.

They were halfway done pulling the barrels out when Aunt Constance brought some tea.

“I think we should burn these barrels,” Chemoise said. “The ferrin have peed all over them.”

But Aunt Constance would have none of it. “No, we’ll put them back tomorrow. The ferrin would starve without their food stores, and there are mothers living there, with wee babes to feed.” She looked pointedly at Chemoise’s stomach. Uncle Eber and Aunt Constance had only managed to have one daughter of their own, and she had died in childhood, so she was perhaps a bit tenderhearted when it came to children. “Ferrin don’t eat much, you know—a few cherries that fall from the trees, mice and rats and sparrow eggs, things like that. The rats down in the wine cellar were terrible until Eber brought some ferrin up from Castle Sylvarresta. Ferrin don’t like wine, you know. Now we always put a load of hay in the winery come fall, to help keep their nests warm through the winter.”

“You brought them here?” Erin asked. “I thought they were wild.”

“Down south, in the Dunnwood, they live wild,” Constance said. “But not up here, dear. It’s too cold in these mountains come winter.”

In southern Heredon, the wild ferrin were enough of a nuisance that the tax collector would pay two copper doves for every ferrin hide you brought in. Many a poor family avoided taxes altogether by collecting the bounties. But Uncle Eber and Aunt Constance didn’t seem the kind to want to slaughter a whole village full of ferrin for a few coins.

“All right, then,” Chemoise promised, “we’ll work around them.”

So Chemoise and Dearborn spent the morning clearing out the room and sweeping the dust from the floor. The dust cloud raised a stink, and the ferrin whistled in outrage and kept poking their heads from their burrows to let the big folk know about it.

Chemoise found that she and Dearborn worked well together. He was a farmer, used to guiding a plow, and chopping down trees for firewood, and shoeing his own horse. He was strong enough to move the heaviest barrel, and graceful enough to wrangle it around without stepping on Constance’s feet while she swept and mopped.

Indeed, as they worked, she found that it almost became a dance. Dearborn would wrestle the barrels while she swept. She found herself continually drawing close to him, and sometimes she’d look up to find that he was gazing into her eyes, but they never touched. Instead, he’d merely smile shyly and look away.

Sometimes he tried to make small talk, joking and asking about her “husband.” She told him how Sergeant Dreys had died at the hand of an assassin after only two months of marriage.

She watched Dearborn withdraw at the news. He hadn’t really wanted to know about her “supposed” husband. Instead, he wanted to know how he fared against his memory, and he knew that it was not an equal contest. Dreys had been in the King’s Guard, and had made sergeant by age nineteen. He’d have been a captain by forty, and would most likely have been retired as a baron of the realm. He would have had title and lands, and serfs working his fields.

Hawks could not compete against that. He was the oldest of ten, and had the birthright of his family. But it wouldn’t fetch him much in the long run. His father was a farmer and a landowner, almost as wealthy as Chemoise’s Uncle Eber, but once the farm was split among the six boys, they wouldn’t all be able to make a living on it.

Hawks had little to offer a woman. So he worked. He tried to make light of it, but she soon saw the sweat staining the back of his tunic. Hawks took most of the barrels outside, and since Constance had said that she would want them replaced later, he piled them on each side of the path, and then, with the help of old shelving boards, stacked them overhead, making a sort of arch that the townsfolk could walk under. There were at least two hundred old barrels.

By noon, the tunnels were nearly cleared, and the smell of mold and dust and ferrin had receded, but there was still much to do. Both Chemoise and Dearborn just went outside and sat down, too tired to continue.

Downhill just a tad, her uncle’s manor squatted. The foundation was stone. The mud and wattle on the sides had all been whitewashed, and a new load of thatch was on the roof. A pair of geese fed in the garden out back, and her uncle’s old plow horse stared at her dolefully from the corral behind the barn.

It was a good life here in Ableton. Everything a person needed seemed to be close at hand. Her uncle had been living here, eating from his own garden from the time that he was born forty-six years ago. If Chemoise needed a new dress, Mrs. Wycutt would sell her a bolt of cloth, or sew it for her for a couple of copper doves. If her uncle needed a new plow, the smith could have it done in a week. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone watched out for everyone else.

Chemoise had thought that this would be a fine place to raise her son. She knew the child would be a boy, for she’d loved Sergeant Dreys so much that when he died, she’d lured his spirit back into her womb.

Now she felt apprehensive. The sky had gotten heavier since dawn. The haze was as thick as cream, and Chemoise could feel an electric thrill in the air. “There’s going to be a storm tonight,” Hawks said. “I’ll bet that’s what the Earth King was warning us about—grand storm, with lots of wind. I’ll bet it knocks whole houses down.”

“I hope not,” Chemoise said. “I’d hate to see my uncle’s house knocked down.”

“Stay close to me,” the Hawks boy offered, “whatever it is.”

She almost laughed, but she could see sincerity in his eyes. He was offering to protect her, and no matter how melodramatic his appeal, she would not mock him for it.

Aunt Constance came out to check on the situation. She inspected the rooms, and said, “Give me an hour.”

She came back half an hour later with twenty women from the village. They finished pulling out the last of the barrels, and in the back of the storeroom found three old kegs that still held wine. Uncle Eber was called upon to test it. The first barrel had gone to vinegar, but after a sip from the second, he declared, “Why, this is worth a king’s ransom! Tonight we will have a party indeed!”

So the women swept and mopped the cobblestones, and strewed the floors with fresh rushes and pennyroyal to clear the air. The old door had rotted half away, so the miller, who was also the closest thing the village had to a carpenter, came and put up new posterns of fresh oak, and bolted together some planks to make a door so thick it would keep out a cavalry charge. The villagers brought in bedrolls and tables and chairs, and slowly the party room began to take form.

Then folks began to bring the food, as fine a feast as was ever served on Hostenfest. One table was loaded with plates of eels, just fished from the River Wye, and a pair of roast geese, and a suckling pig stuffed with baked apples and cinnamon. Another table was heaped with breads—hazelnut rolls, and butter muffins, and loaves of dark rye with wild honey. A third table was reserved for bowls full of salads made with fresh greens from the garden and the woods, sweetened with rose petals. It also held fruits—grapes just plucked from the vines, and ripe woodpears—along with carrots, beans, and buttered turnips. The last table was for desserts: chestnut pudding, nutmeg custards, and blackberry cobbler—all to be washed down with the finest wine that anyone in the village had tasted in years.

Aunt Constance was mindful of the ferrin, and she made sure that plates were set near the mouth of every burrow, with a few meaty bones on them, and plenty to drink. The growls of outrage that had come from the ferrin all day turned into whistles of delight, and often one of the little rat-folk would rush out of the warrens and snatch a bit of bread or some other delicacy, then race back into its warren.

Thus, the party began two hours before sunset. It was a strange affair. There were smiles and genuine laughs when a good joke was told. Some boys played lutes and drums, and Chemoise danced with Dearborn after the tables were cleared.

But behind the smiles there was worry. What would come tonight? Why had the Earth King warned everyone in all of Heredon to hide? Was a war coming? Would the ghosts of the Dunnwood be riding over the land?

It didn’t take long to find out.

Just before sunset, a strange wind began to blow from the east. One of the boys who had been keeping watch at the door, atop the pile of barrels, yelled, “Come see this!”

Everyone rushed outside. The sky was covered with lowering greenish bruised clouds to the east, a strange and sickly haze that baffled the eye. Miles to the west, a wall of darkness approached. Blowing dust and chaff blotted out the sun. The wind began to rage, a boisterous gale circling this way and that, as if to announce a rising storm.

Veiled lightning crashed in the distance, grumbling again and again, as if the sky cursed in tongues of thunder.

Chemoise’s heart froze. “I’ve only heard such a sound once before—at Castle Sylvarresta. It sounds like a Darkling Glory is coming!”

19 A Warm Welcome

Cold water slapped Sir Borenson’s face. He woke in near total darkness and tried to reach up to wipe himself dry, but the shackles on his hands were chained to his feet, and he could not move.

He could smell the musty scent of Inkarran blankets, and the peculiar odor of Inkarran flesh, a scent that somehow reminded him of cats. He could smell the mineral tang of an underground room, but he could see almost nothing. He knew that people surrounded him. He could hear them breathing, moving about.

He tried kicking with his feet, but they were chained to his wooden bed, as was his neck.

In the darkness, King Criomethes stirred, setting an empty flagon next to his head. “So, you wake now. Very good.”

“Where am I?” Borenson demanded in almost a shout. He wrenched his head around. He could see just the slightest glow of coals in a hearth. By their light, he could pick out some shapes in the room—a few pillows on the floor, low tables. Nearby, in almost total darkness, lay another board made of heavy wooden planks. A woman was chained to it, hand and foot, lying on her back. “Myrrima?”

“She not hear you,” Criomethes said. “The poison, she get more than you. Still sleep. We let her sleep.”

“What are you doing?” Borenson asked. He sensed that hours had passed. He recognized this room. The fire had been burning merrily in the hearth when he and Myrrima first entered.

“Must talk to you,” Criomethes said. The old king came and leaned over Borenson in the darkness. His pale skin was as white as cloud, and Borenson could make out some of the details of it. His eyes were cold, so cold. He peered at Borenson as if he were a bug. “You very willful man. I like.”

“Willful?” Borenson asked.

“Take willful man to pass wards in mountains,” Criomethes said. “Great will. Few can do this, no?”

It had taken every ounce of determination that Borenson had to cross that border. No words could describe the torment he’d felt as he forged ahead, plodding on with each step, even as the wards filled him with self-loathing.

“I don’t think many would try.”

“Ah,” Criomethes breathed out, as if deeply satisfied. “In Inkarra, most men take endowment from family. You know this? Father, when old, give endowment to son. Uncle give to brother’s son. This best way. Endowments transfer best from father to son. You know this?”

“No,” Borenson said. “I’ve never heard that.”

“Unh,” Criomethes said. “That because Rofehavan facilitators very fool. Very backward.”

“I’ll take your word on it,” Borenson said.

Criomethes smiled, a grandfatherly smile, yet somehow sinister. “Taking endowments only in family, not good,” he said after a moment. “It weaken family. My thought, best take endowment from enemy. Yes?”

Borenson knew where this was going.

“You my enemy,” Criomethes said in a tone so cold it hinted at murder. “Understand?”

“I understand,” Borenson said. “You hate all of my people.”

“I buy you endowment. From you. Want endowment. Best endowment is will? Understand?”

A flood of fear surged through Borenson. For ages, rumor said that the Inkarrans transferred endowments of will, but no northerner had ever seen the rune that controlled it.

Borenson knew what was being asked of him. What he didn’t know was the cost. How could a man live without will?

“I don’t understand,” Borenson said, stalling for time. He considered calling for help, but this room had been at the end of a long hallway.

“Please,” Criomethes said. “Must understand. Will. Will is good. Will...it make all endowment strong. It add much effect. Give man strength, he pretty strong. Give man strength and will, he become very strong. Ferocious! See? Give man wit, he pretty smart. Give him wit and will, he become very smart. Sit up, think all night. Very cunning. See? Give man stamina, he not very tired. Give him stamina and will, he unstoppable. So, you sell me will?”

“No,” Borenson said, trying to buy time.

“Oh, too bad,” Criomethes said. “You think about it.” He stepped aside.

There was movement over by the fire. A shadowy figure hunched above it, peering into the coals. Borenson recognized Prince Verazeth, all dressed in black. He advanced on Myrrima. He reached down and picked up something, a metal rod that looked like a long, thin knife.

“Wait!” Borenson said. “Let’s talk about this.”

But Verazeth didn’t want to talk. He stepped over to Myrrima, grabbed her tunic, and ripped, exposing her bare back.

“Stop!” Borenson begged. He heard squeamish cries across the room. The Inkarran women were still here. “Help us!” he called.

Verazeth plunged the dagger into Myrrima’s back at a shallow angle, burying its entire length just under the skin. There was the sound of sizzling flesh, and steam rose from the wound. Even in her drugged stupor, Myrrima cried out, her head arching back up off her wooden table as far as it would go.

“Zandaros!” Borenson screamed with his might. “Help us!”

“No one help you!” Criomethes said calmly. “Zandaros and other lords leave hours ago. He chasing after reavers you tell about. All day gone by. No one help you. No one help wife. Only you can help wife. Understand?”

“You won’t get away with this,” Borenson said. “Zandaros will be angry when he finds out.”

“Zandaros not find out,” Criomethes said. “We not want peace, not want open border. My friends, they tell Zandaros that you go home.”

Prince Verazeth left the burning metal in Myrrima’s back, and she whimpered as he returned to the fire and picked up another poker. He spat. The poker made a sizzling sound.

In the dim light, Borenson saw the profile of the prince’s face. He was smiling. His silver eyes reflected the red coals of the fire.

He enjoys this, Borenson realized. There was a coldness to his smile that hinted at something worse than malice—complete indifference.

“Is shame,” Criomethes said. “Wife very beautiful. Is shame to scar her. Is shame to torture, make die.”

Verazeth approached Myrrima, and Borenson’s heart beat wildly. He kicked at the chains that bound him, tried ripping free, all to no effect. The oversized chains and shackles were made to hold a man who had many endowments.

Verazeth plunged the second knife under Myrrima’s skin, just above the kidneys, and smiled as he twisted it into her flesh.

Myrrima’s head arced up, and every muscle in her went rigid, but the chains that held her were as strong as those that held Borenson. She let out a howl of pain that broke his heart, then fell back in a stupor.

“Please, stop!” he said. “Let her live!”

“You sell?” Criomethes asked.

“Yes!” Borenson said.

“Must want sell very bad,” Criomethes said. “Must want sell more than want life itself. Must want give with all heart.”

“I know,” Borenson said. “I know. Just let her go. Promise you’ll let her live!”

“Of course,” Criomethes said. “You give me will, she live. I promise. I man of honor.”

“You’ll set her free?” Borenson demanded.

“Yes. We take her hills, set free.”

“Let her go, then,” Borenson said.

The old king nodded to Verazeth, and said, “Drug her again, then take her to hills and leave, as we have make promise.”

Verazeth seemed angered by the demand, and Criomethes glanced toward two of the women in the group and barked some orders. He explained to Borenson, “I send women to make sure wife is set free.”

Borenson wished that he had something better than the word of Inkarrans on this, but he could think of no way to guarantee his wife’s safety. He suspected that the Inkarrans, with their twisted sense of honor, really would let her live. Yet he feared that they would try to cut Myrrima’s throat to ensure her silence. He only hoped to buy her some time, give her a chance to escape. “All right,” he said. “I agree to give my will. But I want to see you set Myrrima free.”

Verazeth drew the knives back out of Myrrima’s flesh, and set them in the fire.

“We keep knives hot, in case change mind after wife gone,” Criomethes said. “Remember. Must want transfer will very bad.”

“I know,” Borenson said.

One girl threw a bucket of water on Myrrima, and she came out of her faint, lay shaking her head and weeping. In time, the poison wore off, and her eyes came open.

She looked to Borenson, “What’s going on?” Myrrima asked, voice shaking.

“I’m buying your freedom,” Borenson said.

“Buying?”

“With an endowment.”

Comprehension dawned in her eyes, followed by outrage.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Borenson said. “You can’t fight them. Just leave. Live your life in peace.”

Myrrima took his cue and only lay for a moment, weeping helplessly. Borenson felt grateful. Few women in Inkarra were ever granted endowments, and he hoped that the Inkarrans would not suspect Myrrima.

Criomethes nodded at Verazeth, and the young man unlocked the shackles on Myrrima’s feet. She sat up, rubbing her the metal cuffs on her wrists, and winced at the wounds in her flesh.

“Go,” Borenson told her. A woman helped Myrrima slide from table to floor, and she peered at Borenson for a long moment, as if to take a last look.

She limped to him and threw her arms over him, the heavy chains of her fetters clanking cruelly, and kissed him on the face.

Verazeth grabbed her shoulder, pulled her away, then escorted her down a dark hallway.

“Will remove wife’s cuffs,” Criomethes said, “when she away from here. Now, sit and look on me, your lord. Your master. No move. Keep perfect still.”

Borenson felt someone pull up his right pants leg. He glanced down. In the shadows, an old facilitator with a ghostly white face leaned over him with an inkpot and needles.

20 A Distant Fire

High in the Hest Mountains, Raj Ahten led his army beneath skies so clear that he almost felt he could touch the setting sun.

No snow had fallen in these mountains in almost a week. By day the sun crept up and burned away the layer of white. By night the ground grew bitter cold and every pebble on the trail froze into place. The firm footing made for a safe ride. The force horses ran swiftly, for though they had nothing to eat here on the escarpment where grass could not grow, they knew that refreshment lay in the warm valleys below, in Mystarria.

So it was that Raj Ahten rode down into the pines in the late afternoon when he came upon a vast army.

Dirty brown tents squatted haphazardly beneath trees. The horses in camp were starved, with ribs and hips showing beneath dull hides.

As Raj Ahten’s army bore down upon the camp, its few guards grew frightened and blew their ram’s horns.

“Peace,” Raj Ahten said as he topped a rise and stared down the guards. “Your lord has returned.”

These were ragged troops, commoners. Here were archers and pikemen, smiths and washwomen, camp followers and harlots. He had sent this army over the mountains nearly a month ago in preparation for his invasion of Mystarria. They had not arrived in time for his first battle at Carris, being bogged down in an early snow.

But they had made good time in the past week, and would be able to accompany him now. The captain in charge of the troops rushed from his tent, carrying a half-eaten bowl of rice.

“It is our lord, the Great Raj Ahten,” a guard shouted, warning the captain to look sharp.

“O Light of the World,” the captain called as he tossed his dinner to the ground and drew near, trepidation plain on his face. “To what do we owe this honor?” The captain, a grimy man named Moussaif, hailed from a great family. He had won this post by accident of birth rather than from any skill as a leader.

“The time has come,” Raj Ahten said, “to claim Mystarria. Roust your men from their dreams. They must reach Carris by tomorrow at dusk.”

“But, O Light of Understanding,” Moussaif apologized, “my men are faint. We have had little food and no rest for days, and Carris is still thirty miles away. We just set camp an hour ago. The horses are tired.”

“Your men can rest at Carris,” Raj Ahten said. “They can eat Mystarrian food and drink Mystarrian blood for all I care. Tell every archer to bring a bow, a quiver of arrows, and nothing else. Tell every pikeman to bring his pike.”

“But, O Fire of Heaven,” Moussaif argued, “Carris is well defended. I was there at dawn myself, and rode close enough to see. Fifty thousand people are working like ants to rebuild the towers, and great columns of horses and men were entering the city. Its defenders number twice what you found a week ago!”

Raj Ahten stared down from his horse, seething.

“Of course,” Raj Ahten told himself. “I should have known. Gaborn felt the danger rising at Carris. He knew I would bring it down. So he hopes to make one final stand.”

“It is not you that worries him,” Moussaif said. “My spies got close enough so that they could hear some workmen talk. They say that reavers are marching on Carris once again.”

In a fit of rage Raj Ahten spurred his horse up a nearby ridge, to a lone peak where only a stunted pine grew. With his endowments of sight, he peered down upon the world, like an eagle from its perch.

To the south, more than three hundred miles off, he could see a veil of blowing smoke, and feel the heat of distant fires. The power in them called to him, whispered his name. Beyond the flames lay an endless black line of reavers that stretched over rolling hills. There had to be tens of thousands of reavers coming to battle, perhaps hundreds of thousands.

Ahead of their lines, he could see the distant glint of sunlight on mail, and the twinkle of flames. The knights of Rofehavan were trying to stall the reavers in their march, slow them with a wall of fire.

To the west, but thirty miles away, he could see the workers at Carris, struggling to repair the castle walls and prepare for battle.

Raj Ahten closed his eyes. He had nearly died at the hands of reavers when last he visited Carris. He had grown since then. In Deyazz, his facilitators vectored endowments to him. Raj Ahten could feel virtue filling him in waves, renewing his strength and vitality.

But he had gained more than just mere endowments. A hidden inferno burned inside him now, enlightening his mind. He consulted the flames.

Attack, Fire hissed in a voice like flickering flames. Many will die. Make a sacrifice of them to me, and I will give you victory.

“I hear and obey, my master,” Raj Ahten whispered.

He smiled. A battle was rising, such a battle as had never been seen before. He had some surprises in store for his enemies—men and reavers alike.

21 Raven’s Gate

By the time Erin reached Raven’s Gate, the night skies had grown black with torment, and peals of lightning tore through the shredded clouds. A hard rain pelted down, pinging off helms and armor, dribbling beneath surcoats, drenching capes. The horses splashed through puddles, and mists rose so thick from the fields that Erin felt as if she breathed more water than air.

Raven’s Gate cast an imposing shadow on the horizon. Three enormous black towers loomed above the castle walls above the fields. The middle spire rose much taller than the rest, like the highest tier of an obsidian crown.

A broad river ran to the base of the fortress. Upon its banks, rich plantations and cottages sprang among the rolling hills, presenting a tapestry of fields and gardens.

Erin watched the castle drawing closer, lit by flickering thunder. She had never seen Raven’s Gate, with its legendary Tower of Wind. Here the Wizard Sendavian had paid homage to the Powers of the Air in ages past. Here the kings of South Crowthen had guarded their Dedicates for nearly two millennia.

Here at least twenty thousand knights filled the fields before the castle with pavilions. Squires and cooks had kindled fires within every pavilion, so that they glowed with their own inner light, like gems at the base of a black mountain.

As King Anders rode near the pavilions, lightning flashed above. Dark siege engines squatted among the fields, ballistas by the score. Captain Gantrell blew his war horn, and knights sprinted from their tents with weapons drawn, preparing to barricade the highway.

As King Anders rode to a wall of human flesh, his knights and their squires shouted, “Anders! Anders of Crowthen! All hail the Earth King!” Heralds blew their silver coronets, squires banged shields as if they were drums.

The pavilions housed more than just the lords of South Crowthen. Erin saw merchant princes from Lysle all dressed in purple robes and shining armor; and dire Knights of Eyremoth looking pale as ghosts in white; while Duke Wythe of Beers out of Ashoven stood tall and haughty in his gray robes.

Not all among the camp were Runelords. Many archers, and camp followers, crowded close for a look at Anders, along with hopeful young men with naught but sheepskin for armor and cudgels for weapons.

Anders had emptied his realm, gathering all of his warriors here. His troops only awaited his command before marching across the border.

These lords and commoners alike stood with strange expressions, eyes gleaming with wonder and love for their lord.

Erin had never seen folk so ready to fight and die for their king. Indeed, it gave her pause. If indeed Anders did harbor a Darkling Glory’s locus, and if she sought to strike him down, she saw now that she would never escape his realm alive.

King Anders’s gray warhorse reared back and pawed the air. He raised his left hand and shouted to the horde of warriors, “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth.”

The people cheered and pounded their weapons against their shields. To the north lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, as if the very heavens sought to surpass the people’s applause.

They believe that he’s an Earth King, Erin realized.

“Gentlemen, I apologize for the weather,” King Anders said as the rain hammered on his helm. His men laughed. “We dare not ride in this storm at night, but be set for tomorrow. At dawn we ride to Beldinook to confront Lowicker’s daughter, who even now marches forth to prosecute her unjust war against the people of Mystarria. But the Earth has called me to be its king, and I must protect mankind. Erden Geboren fought for twelve years before the nine kings bent their knees and bestowed upon him the iron crown. I will not repeat his folly. Tomorrow, Lowicker’s daughter will bow her head to me, or we will take it off!”

The men cheered wildly, and a bolt of lightning sizzled across the heavens, arcing from cloud to cloud as it tore at the sky. Thunder roared, and the ground rattled.

Erin stared hard at Anders’s back. She didn’t like his words. He would have either dominion or bloodshed. That wasn’t the kind of Earth King Gaborn had been.

But a mad thought entered her mind: Perhaps that’s the kind of king he should have been. Perhaps Anders is an Earth King.

Erin had still seen no evidence that Anders had any prescient powers. She had not heard his voice in her mind warning her of danger.

Dare I test him to learn if he is a true Earth King? she wondered. If I try to stick my sword in his back, will he feel it coming? And even if I did test him, would it be a true test? What are the powers of a Darkling Glory’s locus? Can it mimic those of an Earth King? A great weariness was on her. She had been fighting fatigue all the long day as she rode south. Her eyes felt heavy and full of grit, and her mind seemed to be turning like an ungreased wheel, slowly grinding toward ruin as the sands wore it down. She didn’t trust her own judgment now.

And what if I kill him? she wondered. I have no proof that he harbors a locus. He might be nothing more than a madman. It would be a small deed, a dirty thing, to kill a man for his madness. And if he’s not mad, if indeed he does have a locus in him, what then? I can’t kill it. It will simply find a new host.

Either way that she looked at it, Erin could not raise her hand against the old king, for his death would avail nothing. It was his unmasking that she needed.

The men continued to cheer as King Anders rode into Raven’s Gate. Erin followed in her sodden clothes, fighting sleep. The castle wall rose high, some eighty feet, and as Erin rode under the arch, she felt as if darkness swallowed her.

They continued up a short lane, to the base of the Tower of Wind. Footmen took charge of the horses. Erin got off her mount, stiff legged, and made her way into the keep.

Celinor took her hand, looked down at her smiling.

King Anders told them, “Freshen up before dinner. I’ll meet you in the tower loft. We have much to discuss.”

Celinor led Erin up six flights of stairs to a kingly bedchamber. A small fire flickered in the hearth. The room felt cozy, almost overwarm. At the door, Celinor ordered a maid to find suitable dry clothing for his wife, then he stripped off his wet clothes and armor. He stood naked for a moment, wiping down his armor in front of the fire. Outside, thunder raged.

Erin took off her own soggy riding cloak, leather armor, pants, and boots, but left on her long undertunic. As she hung her things by the fire, Celinor set down his oil rag and took her in his arms.

“Let’s try out the bed. My father won’t mind if we’re a few minutes late for dinner.”

“We’ll not be needing a bed,” Erin said. “You’ve already got your seed in me.”

Celinor’s face fell, as if he were hurt. “You’re angry about something, aren’t you?”

“You told your father about the sending. You told him that Paldane is my sire. You broke every confidence I’ve ever placed in you! And now you wonder that I’m angry?”

“I—” Celinor began, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Of course I told him everything. My father and I keep no secrets. I never have to worry what he’s thinking, for when he is with me, as soon as a thought enters his mind it comes out on his tongue.”

“That’s no excuse,” Erin said. “You can control your own tongue.”

“I’m trying to win his confidence,” Celinor argued. “How can I hope that he’ll trust me with his innermost thoughts if I don’t seem to reveal my own? If he is mad, I need to know it. I need proof of it.”

“You went to Heredon as his spy,” Erin said. “Tell me, are you still his spy?”

“Of course not,” Celinor said. “But he must believe that I am.”

“And what of me?” Erin demanded. “He sent you to learn my lineage. Did your father demand more of you? Did he tell you to be courting me?”

“Now you’re the one who is talking madness!” Celinor said. He backed away a step and shook his head.

“You think I’m mad?” Erin said. “You told me that you thought your father was mad! Is everyone mad but you?”

“You’ve met my father now,” Celinor said. “What do you think? Is he mad? Or is he the new Earth King? Is it possible that he is everything he says that he is?”

“I think,” Erin said, “that your father is either a madman or is infected by a locus.”

“And what of the Nut Woman?” Celinor asked. “She’s an Earth Warden, and she backs up his tale.”

“I don’t know.” Erin’s head was whirling. She looked hard at Celinor. “I asked you a question a moment ago, and you never answered.”

“What question?”

“I asked, ‘Did your father send you to court me?’ ”

“What kind of question is that?”

“An honest one, from the heart. You say that you and your father keep no secrets. Will you keep secrets from me? Tell me, did your father ask you to court me?”

Celinor’s smile faltered. She saw now that he had been trying to smile in the face of her accusations. He stood gazing at her for a long moment, sadness and worry warring in his countenance. “Yes,” he admitted. “He thought it would be well if I courted you—that is, if indeed you were Gaborn’s kin.”

Erin turned away, her back going rigid with anger.

Celinor put his hand on her shoulder. “But that’s not why I wanted you,” he said. “I wanted you because you’re strong, smart, and beautiful. From the moment I met you, I fell hopelessly in love with you.”

He turned her around, and she thought that she could detect sincerity in his eyes. She stared hard at him and wondered, What kind of man are you? Dare I speak my mind to you ever again?

No, she decided, I can’t.

It was all she could do to keep herself from killing him.

Only one thing held her back. She didn’t know who was more dangerous, the father or the son.

That night, Erin Connal went to dinner in the uppermost chamber of the Tower of Wind, high above the plains. Six hundred steps the staircase climbed.

From time to time, as she ascended the winding stair, Erin would pass archers’ slots. From these she could peer below.

To the south, ages ago, the Great Rift had sliced the land in two, so that Raven’s Gate roosted on the lip of a cliff. From these lofty heights, one could peer down onto the green plains of Beldinook. An ancient road climbed the cliff, weaving this way and that, until it met the city gates.

By the time Erin reached Anders’s chamber atop the tower, she could see for miles. The wind whistled around the tower, and lightning snaked across the heavens.

Anders was not in the room when Erin and Celinor entered. A fine feast lay spread about on a small table, but Anders had left it. He’d thrown open a door, and stood out on the parapet, the wind lashing his hair.

He grinned when he became aware of Erin and Celinor, and came in. “I was admiring the view of Beldinook,” he said, “as Sendavian must have in his day. I cannot imagine that one of the wind-born like him would have been able to stay inside on a night like this. Come, let’s to dinner.”

The king sat at the small dinner table in the center of the room and carved from a venison roast. He held silent all through dinner, and did not look up at Erin, nor at Celinor, who often exchanged curious glances.

Erin found the silence to be disquieting.

“Father,” Celinor asked after several minutes. “Did you want to talk to us?”

King Anders peered up at them as he had forgotten that they were in the room.

He is mad, Erin thought.

“They say that bad news should never be taken with dinner,” the king answered, fumbling his fork, “for it is not easily digested.”

“You have bad news?” Celinor asked.

Anders swallowed a piece of venison, nodded his head, and would say no more. Indeed, he merely peered at his dinner, as if a bite of turnip or mouthful of wine might supply an answer to the question. After a long moment, he continued eating.

Erin’s stomach was tight with hunger, so she shoved a few bites in her mouth. When the king finished, they all pushed their plates back.

King Anders smiled, and gave his son a pained look. “As you know, I’ve played Gaborn falsely in the past. I asked you two here, I asked Erin here, so that I could apologize.”

“Exactly how did you play him falsely?” Erin asked.

“I sent messages to King Lowicker of Beldinook and warned him to beware the pretend Earth King. I also plotted with Internook to invade Mystarria, and these two lands granted support. Others were more reticent to rush to judgment, though, as you can see, many a foreign lord has come to join my army. Only one man alone I did not seek to entice into my war—Raj Ahten, for I feared that he was beyond even my power to redeem.

“But since the Earth called me to be its king, my heart has grown uneasy. You see, every man, woman, and child is precious to me now. Every one of them. Yet I’ve sent the kings of the earth to battle Mystarria. Without endowments to protect them, the folk of Mystarria are doomed. My only hope is that we can reach them before Gaborn’s enemies do, and thus bring enough aid to turn the tide of war.”

Erin drew close and suggested, “If haste is needed, then let’s ride now, as fast as we may.”

“My heart forewarns that we would lose many men if we ride tonight,” King Anders said. “Even if we could ride in such a storm as this, would our horses have the legs to fight when we reached Mystarria? Would our warriors be fit? I think not. Better to rest briefly. Still, haste is called for, and I am making haste. I’ve sent messengers to Lowicker’s daughter, and to the warlords of Internook, begging them to withdraw. But I cannot guarantee that these two will stay their hands. Rialla Lowicker is filled with rage at her father’s death, and the warlords of Internook are ruled by greed, not reason. So we must be prepared for battle. A ragged band of tired knights would avail little. A powerful army must ride from the north, like a mighty wind, blowing succor to the people of Mystarria. We must save Mystarria.”

He peered at Erin for a long moment, and said, “So I have given you cause to mistrust me. I only ask one thing of you. As my new daughter, I ask your forgiveness, and your indulgence, as I struggle to make recompense for my wrongs.”

Erin studied King Anders. His face was skeletal, and he sat leaning forward, like a child with his elbows on the table. His perpetual expression of worry so mirrored Gaborn’s that Erin could almost imagine that the two were one. She seemed to feel the efficacy of his words. He really did want to save Mystarria.

Yet nothing that he had yet said or done indicated he was anything more than a befuddled old man who hoped to undo the wrongs he had set in motion. Nothing proved that he was an Earth King.

“All right,” Erin said. “I’ll give you a second chance.”

After dinner, Erin left Celinor to talk with his father and went to her room. Her eyes felt full of grit, and all of her muscles were so worn that that she knew she could not last any longer. She would have to suffer through her nightly dreams.

She sharpened her long dagger, then lay on the big four-poster bed, placing her blade under her pillow. The bed felt softer than any cot she’d ever slept on, and she felt almost as if she were sinking into the mattress, sinking and sinking but never quite falling.

She woke in the owl’s burrow. It was dawn in the netherworld, and the storm that she’d felt earlier in the day had passed. So much sunlight slanted under the canopy of the great tree and into the hollow that she got her first clear view of the owl’s den.

It was much like a hollow in any earthly tree. Knobby roots thrust from the floor where they would, while others made shelves above the door. But this was no animal den. Erin could see signs of human habitation. A woman’s face had been carved above the opening to the burrow, and a similar image had been carved above a passage farther back, round the bend of a root.

A pile of bones glinted under the roost where the owl usually sat. Erin went to it and gazed down. There were strange bones, the remains of monsters—something like a giant frog with antlers, and another creature that might have been a fawn, if not for its wide-set eyes and ungainly fangs. Feathers and dust lay in piles on the bones, along with the white excretions of the great owl.

Erin peered round the corner, to the woman’s face carved above the passage. Her face was beautiful, surreal. Her long hair cascaded down, framing the doorway. Beyond it, a tunnel angled down into the ground, with flag-stones paving the way, forming a stair down into the darkness.

Erin breathed deeply. The morning air smelled sweeter than a summer field, but a hint of musk and deep places added spice to the odor. She pinched herself, and felt pain. She felt awake. Indeed, she’d never felt so alive.

In tales of the netherworld, it was said that in the beginning, all men were Bright Ones who lived beneath the First Tree. Erin wondered if this vast tree was indeed that tree of legend, and if the hole that gaped before her led down to some forgotten home. Forgotten or abandoned.

Perhaps the Bright Ones are all dying off, she told herself. Surely, if the flocks of Darkling Glories I saw flying in my vision yesterday are real, then the end of the Bright Ones cannot be far off.

She squinted, searching the walls for a sign of an old sconce with a torch in it, or perhaps a fireplace carved into a nook where a faggot might lie. But she found nothing to light her way.

She turned back, and was about to risk going out into the daylight in order to explore this world that she was condemned to visit in every waking dream, when she heard the rush of wings. Darkness blotted out the light that streamed through the opening of the burrow.

Suddenly, the great owl swooped to its roost, the wind from its wings stirring up motes of dust that shimmered in the air. In its massive beak wriggled something that might have been a rat, if it had weighed less than fifty pounds.

The owl set its prey on the ledge, laid one claw over the creature, adjusted its wings, and sat with head lowered, peering at Erin for a long moment.

“Is it safe to talk?” Erin asked.

“For the moment,” the owl said. It hesitated. “You fear me.” Its thoughts smote her, carrying the owl’s sadness. “You are a warrior, yet you fight sleep to avoid me. I mean you no harm.”

“You’re a stranger,” Erin said. “I’d be leery even if you lived on my own world.”

“You need not fear me,” the owl said, “unless you are in league with the Raven.”

In her mind’s eye Erin saw the Raven, a great shadow that blotted out the sun. She it was who had sought to wrest control of the Runes of Creation from the Bright Council. She it was who had blasted the One True World into millions of parts, giving birth to the shadow worlds that she now sought to claim or destroy.

“It’s not in league with the Raven you’ll find me,” Erin said. “Yet I don’t trust you. Or maybe I worry that I’m going mad, for I’ve never dreamt of anything like you before, but now you haunt my every sleep.”

The owl peered at her, unblinking. “In your world, do not people send dreams to one another?”

“No,” Erin said.

The owl said nothing, but Erin felt sorrow wash over her, and knowledge enlightened her. In the netherworld, sendings were valued as the most intimate form of speech. It had greater power than mere words to enlighten both the mind and heart, and when men and women fell in love, they often found themselves wandering together at night in shared dreams, no matter what great distances might separate them.

“I see,” Erin said. “You don’t mean to worry me—only to offer comfort. Yet the things you show me bring no comfort at all.”

“I know,” the owl said.

“I’ve been hunting for your Asgaroth,” Erin said. “I don’t know where he is hiding.”

“Long have I hunted Asgaroth, too,” the owl whispered, and Erin felt the weight of that hunt. She saw in her mind the figure of a man, a lonely man who wore a sword upon his back, tracking endless wastes. The owl had hunted Asgaroth across countless ages and upon many worlds. A hundred times he had found the creature, and many times he had stripped the mask from Asgaroth’s face.

“When I first dreamt of you,” Erin said, “you held my dagger, and you summoned me.”

“Yes,” the owl said softly. “I seek Asgaroth, and I need an ally among your people. Beware,” the owl whispered. “Asgaroth comes.” It folded its wings over its chest and faded like a morning mist.

At the mouth of the burrow, the shadow descended. Black wings blotted out the sun, and the smell of a storm filled the small hole. The creature that strode down the steps squatted as it walked, its long knuckles scraping the ground. The thing had a man’s shape, but its fangs and clawed fingers spoke nothing of humanity. Darkness flowed at its feet.

A Darkling Glory stalked toward her, cold and menacing.

Erin’s eyes flew open just as her bedroom door began to crack. Her heart hammered. She’d left a single candle burning on the nightstand.

Celinor came into the room, looking solemn. She felt certain that Asgaroth’s locus was near, so she clutched the dagger under her pillow, heart hammering, and prepared to sink it into Celinor’s throat as soon as he lay on the bed.

But just behind Celinor came his father, King Anders.

One of them was a locus, Erin felt certain, but she didn’t know which.

“Ah,” King Anders said in a kindly tone, “I’m glad that you’re awake.”

“We just got a courier from Heredon,” Celinor said. “A vast horde of reavers has issued from the Underworld, and is marching through Mystarria. Gaborn has sent out a call for help to every realm of the north. He begs that any who can come to his defense bring lances or bows and reach Carris by sunset tomorrow.”

King Anders’s skeletal face seemed pale. “We must answer his call before first light,” Anders said. “I can bring precious few of my troops in so short a time, but I’ve already sent a messenger to tell Gaborn that a new Earth King rides to his defense. We will bring what comfort we may!”