“Watch out!” she warned.
Borenson let go the reins of his white mare, and she split to the left. In order to avoid colliding with Myrrima, he spurred his stallion to the right.
Myrrima raced between them, head down, charging the reavers, who were startled by her sudden attack.
The foremost skidded, trying to stop, its philia waving in alarm. Clouds of dust rose from its feet, and it raised a knight gig as if to gaff her horse. The light of distant fires flashed red on the long black pole. The reaver just behind it bungled on, striking it in the rear legs, so that the foremost reaver tripped.
Myrrima was nearly upon the tangled pair when she loosed an arrow. It blurred toward the foremost reaver and struck its sweet triangle with a thwack.
The monster pushed off with its back legs and leapt nearly straight in the air, its four back legs kicking as if it sought to run. Then it flipped for-ward and crashed headfirst into the ground.
The felled reaver did not get up. It lay facedown in the black ash, its rear legs kicking in vain.
Now there was only one reaver. Borenson wheeled his mount to face it.
The last reaver had drawn to a halt. Myrrima raced away behind it, and the huge blade-bearer spun to confront her. Yet Borenson was now charging at its back, and the reaver swiveled its head, trying to gauge the threat. Sarka Kaul found some courage and brought his own mount galloping toward the fray.
The monster leaned back on its rear legs and raised its claws, as if it were cowed. Two of its companions were dead, and it couldn't tell whether Borenson, Myrrima, or Sarka Kaul represented the greater threat.
“Two hundred yards!” Myrrima shouted across the expanse.
She had now raced her horse about that distance from the last remaining reaver, and she wheeled her mount and drew an arrow from her quiver. Borenson suddenly understood what she meant to do.
Averan had said that a reaver's limit of vision was two hundred yards. The reaver here could certainly smell them, but he couldn't see them clearly at such a distance. Borenson, too, now retreated outside the reaver's limit of vision while Sarka Kaul raced near, distracting the beast.
Myrrima took her great steel bow and drew back an arrow even with her ear. At such a distance, she had little hope of hitting the monster in its sweet triangle. Borenson wasn't sure that her bolt would even pierce the reaver's skin, no matter how sharp her bodkins.
She let her arrow fly. It arced up into the air and struck squarely in the reaver's haunch, burying its head in the monster's buttock.
The reaver snarled and leapt in the air, then wheeled and snapped, biting off the offending arrow. But it was no use. He could not pry out the head of the shaft from beneath his skin without doing greater damage.
Now he hissed in vain and spun about, looking for sign of his attacker. For all the world he reminded Borenson of a wounded bear snapping at the encircling hounds. The reaver looked forlorn and confused.
And why not? he asked himself. In all our battles, the reavers have faced men with lances and warhammers and javelins. Never have they had to contend against men armed with Sylvarresta's bows of spring steel. Never have they faced men who could strike from horseback beyond their limit of vision.
Now the reaver spun about, snarling, clawing at the air, and blindly waving his philia, seeking to catch sight or scent of its enemy.
“Go!” Myrrima called. “I'll come around and meet you.”
She hadn't hoped to kill the last reaver at all, only slow it enough so that they could escape. Sarka Kaul turned and headed back toward the highway. Borenson raced north to retrieve his white mare, while Myrrima circled downwind of the reaver, coincidentally putting the body of its fallen comrade between her and the monster.
She already had another arrow nocked.
Borenson went to his white mare, whispered soothing words, and took her reins. The little mare peered at him with frightened eyes, ears drawn back, and danced away at his approach.
“It's all right,” he said. “I won't leave you to the reavers again.”
He patted her, and heard the reaver roar wildly. He glanced back.
Myrrima was charging the wounded beast. She had the corpse of its fallen companion between them, and she was racing from downwind. She was less than a hundred yards away now.
She swung north, rounded the dead reaver, and suddenly its companion became aware of her. The monster leapt forward a pace, holding its giant blade in the air. It rose up on hind legs and gaped its maw wide in a fierce display.
Myrrima fired an arrow into its mouth, sent the shaft blurring up into its soft palate. Then she gouged the flanks of her horse and veered away, fleeing toward Borenson.
The great blade-bearer hissed in anger and lunged toward her, giving chase. It hissed cruelly as it ran, and Borenson realized to his dismay that Myrrima hadn't been able to fell the creature. Her arrow had missed its mark.
She was nocking another arrow even as she fled.
The huge monster bore down on her, ignoring the shaft buried in its leg. It muscled forward, strengthened by rage, intent on rending Myrrima to pieces.
“Ho-ooo!” Borenson cried.
He spurred his own mount, went charging straight toward Myrrima. She was two hundred yards from him, then a hundred. He could see the whites of her eyes, broad and frightened. Her dark hair flew behind her.
Then she brushed past him, and Borenson faced the reaver. It lurched to a halt, skidding, and then bobbed its head up protectively, believing that it faced a lancer. But Borenson had no weapon to fight it effectively. He merely veered his horse to the left and raced away.
For a second the brute stood, trying to decide whether to give chase. Then another arrow blurred from Myrrima's bow, striking it in the sweet triangle, and burying itself in the reaver's brain. The monster tensed for a moment as if to spring. Then it stepped forward and gingerly lay down in the grass, as if it merely sought a place to sleep.
It moved no more.
Myrrima wheeled her horse, and it came prancing back to meet Borenson.
There was a look of worry on her face. “Three arrows,” she said. “I spent three arrows on one reaver.”
Borenson knew what she meant. She had precious few in her quiver, and an army of hundreds of thousands of reavers marched in the distance, rumbling over the prairie.
“I'd say that three arrows to kill a reaver were well spent. Besides, you killed three reavers with five arrows, not one with three.”
Myrrima bit her lip. He could plainly see that she was cursing herself for her poor bowmanship instead of rejoicing to be alive. How many men had ever killed a reaver with a bow? Few that he knew of. And here she had just slain three!
Sarka Kaul rode back to the meet them.
“How many steel bows like that do you think there are in Heredon?” he asked.
Myrrima shook her head. “I've not seen many. I'd guess that maybe there are three hundred in all the land.”
“I would that you had a hundred thousand of them, and that someone had the good sense to bring them all to Carris,” Sarka Kaul said, “along with all of your ballistas.”
But Borenson could see that his heart was not in his words, for he knew that Carris would boast no such weapons. Sarka Kaul turned his blood mount and they galloped on beneath clouds of smoke-curtained light from the heavens.
27
THE WINDING STAIR
Until you embrace your own mortality, you cannot truly be free.
—Omar Owatt, Emir of Tuulistan
Iome had urged Gaborn to forge ahead to the Lair of Bones, but she never intended to lag far behind. So she ran, straining to keep up.
True to his word, Gaborn had marked a path for her through tunnels and caves, down canyons and watercourses, past wonders that Iome suspected no man had ever seen. She passed once through a long tunnel carved in crystal, its walls as transparent as ice. She beheld forests of stone trees, twisted and surreal in their beauty, climbing in whorls along the wall.
She'd raced through migrations of blind-crabs and climbed down endless chasms. She'd passed under waterfalls, where the roar of an Underworld flood deafened the ear.
And all along the way, one thought rang in her memory, “And while you are saving the world,” she'd asked Gaborn, “who will be saving you?”
It wasn't an idle question. It had been a promise, one that she hoped to keep. She wanted to stand beside him, but she had no weapon, and she had no way to catch up with him.
It was not until she reached another old Inkarran outpost that she had a hope of gaining a weapon.
A hole near the floor of the reaver tunnel marked the sanctuary.
Iome quickly crawled inside, hoping to find something that might be of help. Pocket crabs had gnawed countless burrows in the walls. The pale creatures looked much like small reavers, with heavy fore-claws and thick shells. They scurried about on the tunnel floor down here by the millions, rushing for their burrows as soon as they sensed movement. Some were no larger than roaches, while others were more the size of a rat.
As Iome crawled through the narrow opening, the pocket crab dens dug into the wall made the outpost look so worn that she thought that it must have been abandoned, but just inside the room a stone jar held a store of hazelnuts and buckwheat with dried melon, apples, and cherries. Iome scooped up a handful of it, and found that it tasted salty but edible. By the taste, she suspected that it had been sitting for more than a year. A second clay jug held some sweet winter-melon wine.
In the far corner, four Inkarran reaver darts stood propped against a wall. One was bent, another so old that it had rusted through, and the other two had each lost the diamond from one tip. None was ideal. But any weapon was better than nothing.
As Iome picked through the darts, wondering if she could repair them, she glanced over her back, at a faint charcoal drawing upon the wall. It showed squiggling lines, marked with Inkarran symbols. It looked like a map.
If indeed it was a map, she suspected that it would do her little good. The pocket crabs had dug so many holes in the walls that one could hardly follow the lines, and the pigment itself seemed to have faded. The map had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.
“I must be here,” Iome said, seeing an icon that looked like a shield with Inkarran numbers on it. “And that is the path ahead.” She traced her finger along a sloping line that shot off in a far direction, then circled back below her, then intersected a corkscrew that went down and down. The path ahead led to the unbounded warren, she suspected. But the map seemed to indicate a shortcut, a small trail written as arrow points.
“A shortcut?” Iome wondered. Her heart pounded. With all of his endowments of metabolism, Gaborn was certainly far ahead of her. At her current pace, Iome would never reach him in time to be of help. But if she had indeed found a shortcut…
At the top of the shortcut was an icon, like the head of a crevasse crawler.
It's an old crevasse crawler tube, she realized excitedly. It could save me… a hundred miles, maybe two hundred. That is, if Gaborn keeps following the main tunnel.
I couldn't be so lucky, Iome thought. Even if there had been a shortcut once, what was the chance that it still existed? With all of the pocket crabs around, the walls of the tube would be pitted and scarred at least, and might even have caved in.
Iome studied the drawing. Dare I take the risk? she wondered.
She took her newfound weapon and raced down the tunnel, where she soon found a wall brimming with burrows dug by a large crevasse crawler. Each passageway was three or four feet in diameter. An Inkarran icon had been chiseled above the entrance to one burrow. Iome peered in, the light from her opal crown dancing off the pale stone.
The crawlway wormed this way and that, as if dug by a madman. As Iome had guessed, the walls were pitted with burrows from pocket crabs, but the tunnel seemed passable. Dark lichenous plants felt almost rubbery beneath her palm, and dozens of mushworms—green sluglike creatures that squished into a syrup under the slightest pressure—fed upon the plants. Iome wriggled in, clutching her reaver dart. Only a hundred yards in, the tunnel shot down nearly straight, just as the map had shown.
Iome's heart pounded. The only way to go forward was to let herself drop and hope that the slope at the bottom would be gentle.
But she imagined what might be down there—a cave-in that choked the passage with rock so that when she hit, the impact would shatter every bone in her body—or a chasm carved by water that would send her falling into some void.
Iome turned around, so that she could go feet-first. She hesitated, suspecting that once she dropped blindly down the tunnel, her life would come to a swift end.
She pushed herself over the edge.
Deep shadows peeled away with each foot that she dropped. She slid over mushworms that formed a thin oil, slicking the way. Now and then, some blind-crab would be clinging to a wall, and these she kicked free, so that they tumbled all around her.
The tube plummeted down and down, but she took no serious harm. Suddenly it veered right, then left, then right again, and Iome found her-self spinning, thrown down face-first as she slid ever onward.
Darkness flowed in behind her to reclaim its territory.
28
THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN
Alliances should be like flowers in the desert: quick to blossom, quick to fade.
—Feykaald Kalizar, Chancellor to Raj Ahten
In the hills twelve miles west of Carris, Raj Ahten's army gathered before dawn, a hundred thousand strong. His flameweavers raised a cloud of oily smoke that clung to the ground like a morning mist, hiding them from view, and the morning sun was so obscure, that it looked like a blood red pearl hanging in the air above.
His troops cut trees for scaling ladders, sharpened their weapons, ranged their catapults, and otherwise prepared for war. Raj Ahten spent most of the early hours listening to reports from scouts and far-seers he had sent abroad during the night.
The news disturbed him. To the south the reavers marched in a horde that blackened the lands, heading toward Carris as a host of Knights Equi-table vainly fought to forestall their attack.
To the east, the far-seers spotted only ragged bands of women and children, fleeing the coming battle along the highways, or floating in boats and makeshift rafts down the River Donnestgree.
But to the north, his spies found things to be a bit more interesting. Lowicker's daughter, Queen Rialla of Beldinook, had marshaled a powerful army, some 180,000 strong. Most of these were archers, armed with the yew tallbows common in Beldinook. They rode in war carts drawn by heavy force horses, and thus could be conveyed quickly to the battlefront. The army also boasted many powerful Runelords, cavalrymen mounted on heavily armored chargers that were both swift and powerful.
But Lowicker's daughter, it seemed, was unsure what to do. The scout said, “We saw her march some troops within a stone's throw of the gates of Carris last night. Then she retreated twenty miles back north, to a place where the reavers’ curses have not blasted the grass. There she has set camp on the road, where there is plenty of forage for the beasts. Even now her troops squat, holding the road against any allies that might seek to lend aid to Carris.”
“Is there help from the north?” Raj Ahten asked another pair of scouts that had ranged farther afield.
“Indeed there is, O Light of Heaven,” his spies answered. “Several thou-sand lords have ridden from Orwynne, along with warriors of Fleeds and Heredon.”
“What of Crowthen?” Raj Ahten asked.
“We could see no troops from Crowthen,” the spies said.
Raj Ahten smiled. He could see Rialla's plan. She had ridden south to lay siege to Carris, only to discover the reavers coming. So she had ridden back north, to get out of their way. She would let the reavers do her dirty work.
Carris didn't stand a chance. Raj Ahten had already gutted Mystarria, throwing down the northern fortresses, killing the Dedicates at the Blue Tower. The warriors that hel
d the city were weak, lacking endowments.
And once Carris fell, nothing could stop Lowicker's daughter from over-running Mystarria—except Raj Ahten.
Her army worried him, though. Her archers and heavy cavalry could easily defeat his common troops, though with his wizards and Runelords he could probably even the score. But if the two giants wasted their strength fighting each other, who then would win Mystarria?
A plan began to form in Raj Ahten's mind.
“Gather together a thousand lords to act as an honor guard,” Raj Ahten said. “I think I shall pay Lowicker's daughter a visit.”
As Raj Ahten's most powerful lords and wizards prepared to ride, he sat in his crimson tent. He could feel himself growing from moment to moment as his facilitators in Deyazz vectored endowments of stamina to him.
He had never felt so hale, so robust. He sweated profusely, though he had done no labor to warrant it. It was as if his body recognized that the time had come to cleanse away all impurities, make him something more than human.
He felt as if life and virility were combining in him so powerfully that it bled from every pore.
This is it, he told himself. This is the moment I have been waiting for. I shall be the Sum of All Men.
“Food for the poor!” a small girl called in the markets of Ghusa in Deyazz. “Food for the poor!” The market streets were still gloomy as the morning sun rose like a ruddy coal beyond the sand hills.
Turaush Kasill, a large man grown fat from years of convenience, rounded a stall stacked with tall clay urns to discover the source of the call.
He overshadowed the waif that he found. She was small, no more than eight or nine, with huge eyes like almonds. Her brown skin was paler than the black hue of the folk of Deyazz. She gripped the hand of a small boy, perhaps five years of age.
“Please,” the girl said holding out an empty wicker basket. “We need food.”
Turaush smiled pleasantly. “I could give you food. How much do you want? A basketful? I could give you that.” The girl's eyes went wide, and her lips parted hungrily. “What would you like to eat? Peaches? Melons? Rice? Duck? Sesame cakes with honey drizzled over them? If you could have anything to eat, what would you like?”
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