He glanced back. Behind him, the hill was dark with lords and knights. They came singing; firelight from Carris reflected in their shields.
Erin Connal screamed a war cry. Celinor Anders glowered near her side, with High Queen Connal not far behind. The wizard Binnesman’s face was rigid with terror. Gaborn’s cavalry charged ahead, streaming out from the Barren’s Wall.
Ahead, Bone Hill rose, wrapped in its cocoon. Tendrils of white were strung from it like threads from a spider’s web. Dirt and rock gouged from its slopes made it look a horrid ruin, scarred and maimed.
Warned by the front ranks, blade-bearing reavers suddenly issued from the crevasses in the ground on that hill, climbed atop the cocoon as if it were a fortress wall. Behind the blade-bearers, mages continued their foul work.
The rust-colored mist grew heavy in the vale beneath Bone Hill, lying in thick folds. It seared Gaborn’s eyes and made them water. He blinked away tears, saw ghostlights flicker back under the cocoon.
Gaborn grimaced as he tried to draw a breath. Fatigue and illness slammed into him like a fist. His stomach wrenched; his gorge rose. Every muscle in his body strained as sweat coursed down his forehead.
Gaborn galloped past a blade-bearer that spun, swinging its glory hammer too late. He ducked beneath its blow, knowing that he’d be dead by now if he’d not taken endowments at Castle Groverman.
Gaborn heard the crack as a lance exploded into the monster’s unprotected side, piercing the beast.
Queen Herin the Red had scored her first kill.
Though his charger carried him toward the foul rune, all Gaborn’s effort could barely keep him ahorse. He slowed his mount a third of a mile from Bone Hill, close to the ranks of the reavers, and gripped the pommel of his saddle.
Reavers raced down the slopes of the cocoon to do battle.
Gaborn dared charge no closer. Here in the vale, the sour-smelling mists lay over the ground like a suffocating quilt, and no commoner could have abided the stench. His muscles flamed, aching as if every fiber would rip asunder. Sweat poured from him like a drenching rain. Gaborn reeled, fell hard on the earth.
The very soil beneath him burned; it was almost as hot as a skillet. He writhed upon it, could not breathe.
Silently he wished that he’d taken more endowments of stamina.
He glanced up through the rust-colored mist. His knights were forming their pinwheel, racing ahead of him in a line to cut off reavers that thundered into battle, their thick carapaces crashing against the stony ground.
Several knights caught up to him, circling him protectively. He glimpsed Erin Connal and Prince Celinor, their faces frozen in dismay to see the Earth King fallen.
Gaborn lay sweating on the ground, gasping in the cruel haze, afraid that he might-suffocate, for he could hardly draw a breath for the pain that assailed him.
Desolation lay all around him, a smoke that choked the soul.
Atop Bone Hill, the fell mage raised her citrine staff to the sky and hissed so loudly that the sound echoed from the clouds. With a boom like thunder, black smoke roiled off her.
Gaborn tried to climb to his knees as the mage’s curse swept downhill.
Erin Connal rode behind Gaborn, choosing to guard him rather than help form the staggered pinwheel. Almost instantly she was glad that she had.
A reaver sped through the lines as a knight broke his lance against its side, then lumbered through the rust-colored mist toward Gaborn, an enormous behemoth swinging its head from side to side.
Erin shook the streaming sweat from her forehead, shouted a battle cry, and charged the beast. She raised her lance overhead and to the side, preparing for the thrust. She squinted against the haze, for it pained the eye, then leaned out from her saddle.
She thrust home her lance, just as the reaver spun its head back toward Gaborn. The tip penetrated the monster’s sweet triangle at a slant.
She felt the lance tip drive shallowly into the reaver’s crystalline skull. She suspected that she had the wrong angle, that the lance would merely catch in bone and shatter, but she hurled it anyway, hoping to shove the tip home with brute force.
The lance snagged on bone and snapped at the point. Suddenly Erin was caught still thrusting the damned thing without any resistance. Off balance, she pitched from her horse and sprawled to the ground, just beneath the reaver.
It reared above, raised its greatsword protectively to fend off a charging knight.
“Flee!” Gaborn’s Voice spoke in Erin’s mind as she tried to gain her feet.
As if I couldn’t guess, she thought, knowing she was too late. The reaver hunched its massive head and lunged, its crystalline teeth gleaming like quartz.
A dark blur sped past her. Celinor’s lance pierced the monster’s sweet triangle and heaved into its brain as if it had been shot from a ballista.
In amazement, Erin realized he’d thrown the damned thing like a javelin!
The reaver collapsed at Erin’s feet.
Celinor galloped near, as if he’d planned to block the dying reaver from further attack with his own body. Then he whirled and drew his Crowthen battle-axe.
Erin ran for her own horse.
“One!” Celinor shouted, then pointed toward the Earth King. Gaborn had fallen from his mount.
Gaborn lay in the dust. Several knights leapt from their mounts to fight at his side, prepared to die if necessary. Celinor Anders rode near and stood guard over him, screaming and waving his battle-axe as if daring any reaver to come close.
As Gaborn struggled to get up, the thought streaked through his consciousness: I should Choose him.
Reavers surged down from Bone Hill like living monoliths, and the thought was driven off as Gaborn sent warnings to hundreds of warriors. In moments Erin Connal and others reached Celinor’s side.
The black wind struck, and it carried with it an unnameable stench—a smell similar to burnt cabbage, but that affected Gaborn profoundly. He felt suddenly as if his muscles had turned to jelly, and he experienced the most profound fatigue he’d ever imagined.
He dropped to the ground, as weak as if he’d just given an endowment of brawn. Everywhere around him, dozens of others did the same, even Queen Herin the Red.
A hundred yards back, Binnesman had stopped his mount. He struggled to sit up, slumped as if in pain. “Jureem!” he warned. “Get Gaborn away from here! Get the Earth King away! We’re too close.”
Jureem rode hard among the knights, leapt from his horse. The fat servant held a silk scarf over his nose to keep from breathing the stench. He grabbed Gaborn’s elbow and shouted, “Get up, milord! Let us flee!”
With muscles flaccid and mind swimming in pain, Gaborn struggled to fend off his own man, tried to push Jureem back. “Not yet. I can’t go! Help me!” he cried. “Help!”
Gaborn had to destroy the rune. It was still nearly half a mile off. He had destroyed Kriskaven Wall half a mile out. It was near the limit of his power—yet the cloying mists in the vale were so devastating that he dared not ride closer.
He fought to draw with his finger in the hot dirt, to trace a rune of Earth-breaking.
Jureem tried to grab his elbow, to pull him toward his horse. Jureem shouted to Celinor, “Hold our master’s mount! Help me get him in the saddle.”
“No!” Gaborn pleaded. “Leave me! Binnesman, help!”
He glanced back. As he did, Binnesman collapsed under the influence of the fell mage’s spell, lay draped over his own horse. The mount must have sensed that its rider had fallen, and now spurted north, bearing its master out of battle.
To Gaborn’s astonishment some knights around him were less affected by the reaver mage’s spells. Some lancers still charged. Some men withstood the weakness. Perhaps I need more stamina? he wondered. Yet Queen Herin had fallen, and she had as much stamina as any other.
“Jureem,” Gaborn gasped as he struggled to trace his symbol precisely on the ground. He felt as if he were trying to write on fire itself. His finger wa
s so weak, he could hardly stir the dust.
Jureem stopped struggling to pull him away. The servant gazed at Gaborn wide-eyed and distressed, as if being unable to help caused him physical pain.
Gaborn finished drawing his rune, studied for a moment to make certain that he’d made every curlicue properly, then he looked fiercely at the hill where the Seal of Desolation desecrated the Earth. The fell mage continued to labor atop it. Strange lights flashed behind the cocoon in shades of palest turquoise. Reavers were boiling up from the south side of the hill.
He gazed at the hill, and used the Earth Sight to look beneath it. There, far below the ground, he could sense a weakness—a place where tons and tons of stone grated together in a fault.
It would take only the merest breath to push it all toward ruin, to split the ground beneath the rune.
Gaborn focused on the object of his spell and shouted, “Be thou riven!”
He slammed the ground with his fist, and envisioned the soil beneath him heaving, splintering that foul rune and shattering its every wall.
The earth responded.
The ground heaved beneath him, and the knights who surround him all gaped, trying to stand as the earth shuddered.
Horses whinnied and floundered. Reavers stumbled. The earth roared like an animal.
The ground rolled in all directions. Knights shouted, and reavers atop their foul cocoon scuttled back in dismay, clinging to their webs.
Gaborn had not imagined what devastating power he would unleash. Knights toppled from their chargers, crying in terror.
But as Gaborn gazed at the Seal of Desolation, his hopes went dry. The ground beneath it trembled, the soil around bucked, but the Seal of Desolation held as if it were a bit of flotsam riding the waves of the sea.
Only powerful runes of binding could have held it. He studied the construct again with his Earth Sight as he had Kriskaven Wall, searching for weaknesses.
Indeed it was bound. Every knob and protuberance was encased in runes of binding—perversions that did not call upon the Powers so much as twist them against themselves. Gaborn was astonished to find that the reavers had so twisted their powers that they could use the Earth against him.
Even as Gaborn focused on the foul rune, men all around began shouting, “Look! Look there!”
Gaborn gazed toward Carris.
Reavers crawled over the plain before the fortress. They’d burrowed pits everywhere, but the earthquake had tossed rocks and reavers into the air, throwing monsters from their hidden lairs, or just burying them.
Disoriented, some reavers raced about on broken legs.
Above these monsters, Gaborn saw a tower fall, heard thousands of people cry out.
Sheer horror coursed through him as he saw that his tremor had not struck completely without effect. The walls of Carris, a mere half mile to the southeast, swayed like a willow frond. The white plaster on the walls fell off in sheets, and merlons went splashing into the lake.
The tremor could not destroy the bound rune, but it tore asunder more common structures. Towers toppled. Walls began to crumble. Dust rose in the city as inns and homes collapsed.
Even as Gaborn watched, something unexpected happened. The ground beneath him began to roll once again as a new, more powerful tremor made the castle walls shift and sway. The people of Carris cried in terror.
Gaborn’s horse staggered to keep its footing. And in Carris dust and fire rose as more buildings began to collapse.
An aftershock.
He did not need his Earth Sight to warn him that he had unleashed a monster. He could feel the power building. This fault ran deeper, farther, than he’d expected. Just as a shout will trigger an avalanche, so had his small tremor triggered catastrophe.
Gaborn stared at the hapless inhabitants of Carris clinging to its walls. Two minutes ago I sat here congratulating myself, he thought. But by my actions I might have doomed the people I hope to save.
Guilt swept through him. Guilt for what he had done, and for what he knew he now must do.
Gaborn raised his left arm and looked to the castle, to men by the scores who now were crying out in despair.
He shouted to the people of Carris, though at such a distance few men would have had enough endowments of hearing to discern his voice. “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth!”
Surely the Earth will allow it, Gaborn reasoned. I was given the gift of Choosing in order to save mankind, and those at Carris need saving.
He had never sought to Choose a man he could not see. Now he tested the utmost limits of his powers. He stared at the castle walls and hoped that with this one Choosing he could protect all those within.
If Choosing Skalbairn would let Gaborn save a thousand, he hoped that Choosing Raj Ahten would let him save hundreds of thousands.
He gaped at the broken walls of the city and whispered, “Even you, Raj Ahten. I Choose you!”
He felt the threads of his consciousness lengthen, grasp men who fought in Carris, along with women and babes and elderly who only huddled in its dark corners, fearing for their lives.
He reached out even to Raj Ahten.
Gaborn held the Wolf Lord in his mind and whispered, “I Choose you,” as tenderly as if Raj Ahten were his brother. “Help me save our people.”
He felt the tendrils of communication connect, felt overwhelmed by Raj Ahten’s danger. Death lay thick upon the Wolf Lord, heavy and nauseating. Gaborn had never felt a man lingering so near it. Even now he wondered if his own powers would be sufficient to save him.
“Flee!” Gaborn whispered to Carris.
Out on the plains, Sir Langley and Marshal Skalbairn saw how the earthquake struck the reavers, leaving them dazed and wounded. Being farther from the fell mage, these knights were not so profoundly affected by her curses.
Skalbairn wheeled into the reavers, led a charge, hoping to draw more of them from Gaborn. A thousand mounted knights raced across that plain, lances bristling.
58
THE UNWORTHY
Raj Ahten was not surprised to learn that the boy Gaborn sought to rescue Carris even from the reavers. It was an ill-considered move, as foolish as it was daring and chivalrous—an act of self-sacrifice from a weak-minded idealist.
He sprinted up the steps of a tower, looked to the north.
On the plains, Knights Equitable pinwheeled at the base of Bone Hill. Elsewhere, some thousand knights charged across the downs to the south, drawing away the reavers’ forces, as did another contingent to the north.
Raj Ahten almost wanted to congratulate Gaborn. He’d done a fine job of spreading the reavers thin and baffling their lines.
He watched Gaborn’s knights struggle toward Bone Hill, saw the world shiver around them, tearing stumps from the ground, hurling dirt and stones in the air, burying some reavers, tossing others from their burrows, and raising a sound a hundred times louder than the rolling of thunder.
For some reason that he could not understand, Raj Ahten had never been able to see Gaborn. A spell lay on the lad, one that hid him from Raj Ahten’s view. But the Wolf Lord knew that he was out there.
He felt the quake strike Carris, set the walls to weaving like a drunkard, while those around him cried out.
Only the Earth King could have loosed such a monstrosity. In the space of a heartbeat, Raj Ahten saw the danger. It would level the city.
Almost as soon as the quake struck, Raj Ahten heard Gaborn’s voice ring through his mind as he performed the Choosing.
So, Earth King, Raj Ahten wondered, you bless me and curse me in the same breath?
Gaborn’s troops began to advance on Bone Hill and the fell mage. He rode with two thousand knights at his back, as if hoping that such a desperately small force might, by good fortune, strike a lucky blow.
A black wind rolled over Carris, bringing the fell mage’s latest curse.
Raj Ahten tasted the scent, felt fatigue sap his strength like never before, and translated it thus: “Be thou weary unt
o death.”
Yes, it was a powerful spell. If it were uttered against commoners at close range, Raj Ahten did not doubt that men would collapse with hearts too weak to beat, lungs too exhausted to draw another breath.
On the castle walls around him, many commoners dropped, too stricken to stand.
But Raj Ahten was no commoner.
As Gaborn’s knights in their pinwheel slowly gravitated south, blade-bearers began to amass against Gaborn. Perhaps dismayed by the earthquake, they had turned and charged round both sides of Bone Hill. Indeed, the reavers close to Carris itself were wheeling to meet this new threat.
Gaborn would never repel the attack, Raj Ahten could see. The reavers’ lines were too thick. In the battle for Carris, Raj Ahten imagined that no more than five hundred reavers had died so far. Twenty thousand reavers were still left to charge north. In moments they would crush Gaborn’s troops, rend him to pieces.
“Flee! Flee Carris,” Gaborn’s command rang through Raj Ahten’s mind. “Flee for your lives.”
Even as the Earth King spoke, Raj Ahten recognized the folly in listening. The walls of Carris would come down, true, and many men would die. But they’d die regardless of whether they charged the reavers.
“The clever bastard,” Raj Ahten hissed. He saw the lad’s ploy now: Gaborn merely sought to use Raj Ahten and his men as pawns, as a distraction, to draw the reavers from himself.
Raj Ahten was far too cunning to fall for such a ruse.
Raj Ahten’s Invincibles had already withdrawn from the battle. “Stand fast!” Raj Ahten shouted to his men. To Paldane’s men, he called, “Hold the breach!”
The Earth King will die here, Raj Ahten told himself, and I… I will idly watch.
Yet as Raj Ahten glanced down at the breach, he realized that Paldane’s men suddenly fought as fiercely as reavers themselves. At first he imagined that desperation lent them strength. But it was obvious that an unseen power guided them. These were commoners and warriors of unfortunate proportion. He watched one commoner bait a reaver, stand for it to take a whack with its sword, then leap aside instantly. In the brief opening, two better men lunged forward with axes and took off the reaver’s arm. As the monster screamed, one quick fellow jumped into its mouth and thrust a longsword through its palate, into its brain. Before the beast ever fell, Paldane’s men rushed forward to take on the next comer.
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