“Yes, this way!” Gaborn argued. His own mount had just lunged to the top of the hill. “Hide!”
Iome trusted Gaborn's Earth Sight more than she did Averan's memories.
“Where?” Averan asked.
“This way,” Gaborn shouted. “Follow me!”
He raced his mount a hundred yards, and then stopped, searching this way and that for a place to hide. “Up there!” he shouted. He pointed toward a narrow cleft between two stalactites near the roof.
“The horses will never fit through there!” Binnesman objected.
“Then we leave them,” Gaborn answered. He leapt off his mount and pulled out his dagger, then cut the girth straps to his saddle. In an instant the saddle and all of the packs were off.
Iome's mount had its ears back, and its eyes were wild. It snorted in terror at the sound of the reavers’ trampling feet. Iome leapt off and removed her saddle, ropes, and pack. Her mount reared up, frantically pawing the air.
She could see no escape for the beast. There was no light here in the Underworld, and the horses would not be able to run in the dark.
As Iome wondered what to do, Binnesman dismounted, but left his saddle on the horse, cutting off only his packs and his coil of rope. Then he took his opal cape pin off and pinned it onto the saddle.
He laid a hand on the muzzle of the gray imperial warhorse, and said softly, “You have carried me as far as we can go, my friend. Now, seek greener fields.”
The stallion stared at him for a moment in curiosity, ears forward. Iome wondered if the animal understood the wizard, but this force horse had once been Raj Ahten's personal mount. The runes on it showed that it had four endowments of wit. Seldom were so many forcibles used on a mere horse. This mount learned almost as fast as a man would. Hopefully, it understood.
“Go, my friend,” Binnesman urged. “I have provided light for the journey.”
Around Iome, the ground rumbled continuously. It was as if giant stones were rolling through the cavern. The sound seemed sourceless. She almost expected reavers to come charging up the cave at that instant, but somehow knew that they were far away. The noise wasn't loud because they were close, it was loud because they were many.
The wizard turned away from his horse. Gaborn was already scrambling up the rocks, with the green woman in tow. Iome followed last.
The horses took off, went thundering down the tunnel, racing back the way that they had come.
“Here, now,” Binnesman said to Iome. “Youfirst.” He hesitated as Iome stepped around him, between a pair of stalagmites that stood like grotesque guardians. There was no trail to their retreat. Iome had to look for hand-holds on her way up. The flowstone along the walls, though slick, offered many such opportunities.
She turned back to see what was keeping the wizard. He took some sprigs of parsley from his pocket and blessed them. He tossed them on the trail, then drew wards of protection on the ground with his staff.
Iome reached the sanctuary, squeezed in. Gaborn and the others were already inside. It was a small grotto, about forty feet long. Stalactites had dripped down over the ages, until at last they had joined with the stalagmites beneath, forming crude pillars. Several of these stood next to one another, becoming solid walls. The floor beneath showed that at times water had pooled in the small cavern, but now all was dry.
“The reavers will smell the horses,” Averan said. “They'll come to investigate.”
“But they won't smell us,” Binnesman assured her.
Iome had to wonder. Binnesman was the most powerful herbalist she had ever known. His spells could amplify the natural properties of plants, magnifying their effect. But could even the incomparable Binnesman hide the odor of half a dozen men and horses from the reavers?
Her heart pounded. She studied the narrow grotto. There was no exit. Sweat stood out on Gaborn's brow; his tongueflickedout and whetted his lips.
What does it mean, she wondered, when even the Earth King is afraid?
The ground began shaking so hard that bits of stone flaked off the roof. Mingled with the distant rumble now came a hissing, the sound that reavers make as they draw breath. It sounded almost as if the tunnel were a windpipe, and the Earth itself were gasping.
Gaborn threw down his saddle and stripped his pack, ropes, and saddle-bags off. He tossed them over his own shoulder, leaving the saddle. He stood up, and his eyes darted about nervously.
Iome and the others grabbed their own belongings.
“Get back,” Gaborn warned them. “Get to the back of the chamber.”
Averan was the first to go. Binnesman and the others followed. Gaborn held his reaver dart and stood at the mouth of the grotto, on guard.
Averan hung at the back of the cavern, listening. The rumbling grew. Tremors shook the floor, and dust rose all about. “They're coming fast,” she said. “They're coming too fast.”
“‘Too fast?'” Alarm coursed through Iome.
“This is it,” Averan said. “This is their entire horde, their army. This is the end of the world.”
“What do you mean, this is the horde?” Iome demanded.
“Now the real warriors are coming,” Averan said, “and all of them will come. They'll bring their most powerful battle mages, and… and—” She threw up her arms, unable to explain.
Iome suspected that even Averan couldn't guess what the reavers were capable of.
Three days. Gaborn had warned that there would be a great battle at Carris in three days. Iome calculated how fast the common reavers had run before, and realized that three days was about right. In three days the army that was marching from the Underworld would reach Carris.
Gaborn paced at the mouth of the grotto.
“What's wrong?” Iome demanded.
“The Earth… “Gaborn said. “The Earth warns me to flee, but I see no escape.”
“Maybe we should go after the horses,” Averan suggested.
“No,” Gaborn said. “This is the right path. I just—I just don't see the way out.”
Iome searched frantically. Everywhere, the white walls hung like drip-ping curtains of stone. Craters pocked the floor where pools had formed and then dried out ages ago. White ridges along each ledge showed where the waterline had been. Perfect blue-white cave pearls rested on the floor.
The water had to come from somewhere, Iome thought. She peered up. The roof above rose some twenty feet. Small stalactites hung overhead like spears. The ground rattled under her feet now, and Iome licked her lips, afraid that a stalactite would break loose and fall, along with theflakesof stone that had begun tumbling from the roof.
Then she spotted it—a tiny shaft so small that a badger could not have crawled through. It was near the roof, at the back of the cave.
“Up here!” she said.
Iome dropped her pack and ropes and climbed up the wall. Her fingers and toes found purchase in tiny crevices and indentations that no commoner could ever have used. The flowstone offered ample opportunity for support. With her endowments of brawn and grace, she felt almost as if she were afly, climbing along the wall.
She reached the top. Her opal crown gleamed, and by its light she searched the hole. She couldn't see far back. She reached in. The hole nar-rowed, and became no wider than her arm. She grasped a knob of calcite, a cave pearl that had fused to thefloorof the small spring, and tried to wrench it free. With so many endowments of brawn she was able to break it off, but even as she did, her hand snapped up and hit the roof of the cave, banging it. Her knuckles bled profusely. It was no use. The calcite deposits were as hard as quartz. She'd never be able to dig fast enough to widen the opening.
“Here they come!” Gaborn shouted. “Everyone to the back!”
He herded the others to the rear of the grotto. Iome clung to the wall like afly, afraid to move. The wall shook beneath her grasp.
Silently, she prayed to the Earth Powers, “Hide us. Let them notfindus.”
Loud hissing rose outside the grotto.
<
br /> “They've smelled us,” Averan said. “There's no other reason why they'd be coming up this branch of the cave.”
The acrid stench of horse sweat was everywhere. Even without endowments from a dozen dogs, Iome could smell it. She only hoped that Binnesman's spells could hide them.
The hope was short-lived.
In seconds a reaver reached the mouth of the grotto. The huge monster rushed up the cliff and wedged its head into the crevasse at the opening. The philia along its jaw line quivered as if in anticipation. Slime dripped from its fearsome jaws.
“He's found us!” Averan screamed. “He's shouting to the others, warning them.”
There was no sound from the reaver other than his hissing breath. His shouts were smells, odors so subtle that Iome could not distinguish them.
The opening was only six feet wide, too narrow for a full-grown reaver to enter—at least that is what Iome thought.
But the monster shoved its head into the crack, and twisted its body sideways. It heaved once, and there was a snapping noise.
On the reaver's head were three bony plates joined by cartilage. Now the reaver shoved its head into the crevice, and the plates snapped back, so that it could shove its muzzle into the hole. It twisted onto its side, and its torso followed.
Iome could smell the stink of its hot breath. A gree flew up from the beast, dislodged by its acrobatics, and flapped around the small grotto with a squeaking sound.
Gaborn leapt forward, stabbed the monster in the muzzle with his dart. Even with all his endowments of brawn, the blow hardly pierced the monster's thick flesh.
Iome looked for a place to run. She could not see an exit up here.
The reaver hissed in outrage at Gaborn's thrust, and pulled its muzzle back, inching from the grotto. It backed out completely, and Iome's heart pounded in terror: behind it were more reavers, a tide of them sweeping into the small tunnel. Their bodies formed a black wall.
Yet even as they came to a halt outside, the trembling continued, growing louder. She realized that the main part of the reaver horde was still marching, passing them by, uninterested in a few intrepid humans that dared venture into their domain, or perhaps more concerned with advancing to war.
A larger reaver appeared at the mouth of the grotto and thrust a knight gig—a metal hook on a long iron pole—through the hole. Gaborn leapt just as the knight gig approached.
“Binnesman!” Gaborn shouted.
The reaver flipped its knight gig around expertly, and would have impaled Binnesman, then dragged him from safety. But Gaborn leapt down on the pole and ran up its length two paces, until he reached the reaver's massive paw. He struck with his dart, plunging it into the soft flesh between the monster's fingers. The reaver wheezed in pain.
There was a hissing at the reaver's back, a sound of rushing wind that sounded like “Gasht!”
Iome had heard that sound before, when reaver mages cast their spells.
A dark cloud roiled into the grotto, filling it with noxious fumes. Iome found her eyes burning, as if hot coals had been flung into them. She dared not take a breath, for even in the open air on the battlefield, a reaver mage's spells were devastating. Here in the confines of a grotto, their effect would be twenty-fold.
Think, Iome told herself. Gaborn said that there has to be a way out. But where?
The reaver drew his knight gig from the grotto, banging it against the walls. The pole must have been thirty feet long and six inches around. As it struck the left wall, a huge chunk of stone broke away.
Encouraged by this, the reaver swung the knight gig, hitting a far wall.
“He's widening the opening!” Binnesman warned. The wizard let out a breath, and was forced to draw air. He fell back against the wall, eyes tearing. He struggled to reach into his pocket for some healing herb.
The green woman rushed forward and would have done battle with the reavers, but Binnesman put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “No,” he said, the word wrung from his throat in torture.
The floor! Iome realized. There were pools here, but no sign of a stream flowing away. That meant that the water had to have emptied through the floor below at one time. There might be an exit hidden down there.
She leapt from the roof of the grotto, twenty feet, jarring her ankles as she hit ground. She peered around the edge of the deepest pool. Her eyes burned, and she swiped tears away. At the back of the grotto she saw it—a tiny crevasse under the craterlike rim of a pool, not more than a foot long and an inch wide.
Gaborn raced to the mouth of the grotto and stabbed at the reaver's paw. As he did, a second knight gig thrust through the opening. Even with all her endowments of metabolism, it seemed to Iome that the gig wrenched through with incredible speed. Gaborn tried to dodge, and took a glancing blow.
The stroke flung him against the far wall.
“Kill a reaver!” Binnesman shouted to his wylde. The wizard stood with his back against a stone wall, gasping, and tried to pull Gaborn to safety.
The green woman, unleashed at her master's command, leapt forward. As she did, she waved her iron-bound staff in the air, making it do a little dance, forming a rune of power.
She jabbed the reaver's paw, and there was a sound like stone hitting meat. The reaver's massive hand exploded, sending shards of broken bone through flesh. The monster wheezed in pain and dropped its weapon as it struggled to back from the cave. For the moment, no other reavers could get near to attack.
Iome grabbed her own reaver dart, and plunged it into the tiny crevasse. Stone broke beneath her, a clod as large as her hand. The spear pushed through. She lowered her head and peered down. She saw another cave beyond the grotto!
Iome's air was almost gone. Her lungs burned, but she dared not draw breath. Instead, she pounded the stone alongside the crevasse as fast as she could, widening the hole.
Averan let out her breath, and cried in agony. “Help! I can't see!”
Iome could do nothing for her. She dared not. She plunged the spear into the stone, breaking away a handful of calcite here, another there. Even with endowments of brawn, it was harrowing work. Her spear point felt blunted and all but useless in a matter of moments.
She toiled on.
Another large reaver entered the mouth of the cave, picked up the pole, and thrust it in. It hit the wylde on the ankle, throwing her to the ground.
Iome slammed her spear into the stone. A large chunk of calcite fell away, went sliding downward.
She could see the cave beyond! There was a path of flowstone, and it dripped down the hill until it joined what must have been the bed of a sub-merged river, for there the path widened.
She could hold her breath no longer.
She exhaled, and gasped.
The reaver mage's stench burned her throat. As air filled her lungs, she could almost hear the reaver's command, “See no more.”
The wylde roared in anger and swung her staff. The blow struck a wall, sending shards of dust and rock everywhere. The reaver that had attacked her backed away.
Iome's eyes throbbed. The cords that held her eyeball convulsed and spasmed so that she could not focus. She felt as if a dagger had been thrust into each socket, and now her attacker was methodically twisting the blade. Even with a dozen endowments of stamina, she could barely see.
She grabbed Averan first, shoved her through the hole. Averan went tumbling a few yards, then slid on her belly the last dozen feet. As she reached bottom, she began to flounder and make a mewling noise, trying to crawl to safety. Iome found the girl's pack and shoved it after.
“This way!” Iome shouted.
She could barely make out her friends. Her eyes wouldn't focus. Gaborn, Binnesman, and the wylde were but partly glimpsed shadows, shifting about in a world of pain.
“Duck!” Gaborn shouted.
Iome ducked.
A swinging pole whipped past her head. She felt more than saw it. Half blinded, only Gaborn's warning had kept her from being brained.
> She grabbed Gaborn. He hunched in pain, holding his ribs. She propelled him toward the exit. “Go!”
Last of all, she grabbed Binnesman.
The green woman still held the front of the grotto. Another reaver slammed its head into the crevasse, trying to wedge its way in, and she lunged forward, slugging it in the jaw. Bloody gobbets of reaver flesh rained through the grotto.
Iome felt about blindly on the floor. Binnesman had dropped his staff and his pack. Iome hurled both through the small opening, then tossed her own pack through, and slid down the exit.
She gasped air, fresh air! She lay for a moment on her belly, chest heaving, trying to clear her lungs of the reavers’ curses.
“Foul Deliverer, Fair Destroyer—to me!” Binnesman called out weakly. In answer, the green woman came hurtling through the opening from above. She rolled downhill and landed against a stone wall with such a shock that if she had been human, she would have broken every bone in her body.
“Let's get away from here,” Gaborn said. The ground still shook from the passage of reavers, and all around was a distant hiss.
Iome looked back. With all her endowments of sight and stamina, her vision began to clear quickly. It might take the reavers some time to dig through the grotto and find their escape route. But she had no doubt that they would follow.
Ahead, an ancient riverbed wound through the Underworld. There was still water in it here and there, small pools. Grotesque Underworld vegetation, like cabbage leaves, covered the walls. Tubers and hairy rootlike plants hung from the roof in twisted splendor, while giant fungi rose up like little islands from the tickle ferns that covered the floor. Still, there was something of a trail cut by the watercourse. It would be a hard path, a wild path. Where it led, Iome could not guess.
Their horses were gone. Gaborn was hurt. And the reavers were after them. A stalactite fell from the roof, shattered on the floor not a dozen feet away.
“Looks like we're through the easy part,” Iome said.
6
THE SHAFT
Dare to be a leader. When faced with great peril, men will follow anyone who hazards to make the first move.
The Lair of Bones Page 8
