The Lair of Bones

by David Farland

  All too soon the sound of reavers racing across the fields came to Erin's ears above the thud of horses’ hooves and the jangle of chain mail. Their hissing roared like distant surf, and the earth trembled beneath their feet.

  Erin came up over a hill and saw Carris to the south—ten thousand torches glimmering upon the gray castle walls. The torches reflected in the still waters of Lake Donnestgree, and smoke clung to the water in a haze.

  Before Castle Carris a turbulent, roaring sea of reavers blackened the land.

  35

  IN THE DEDICATES’ KEEP

  He who supports my enemy is my enemy.

  —Raj Ahten, upon slaying the Dedicates of Raj Bahreb, Lord of Old Indhopal

  Gaborn sprinted through the ribbed tunnels of the Underworld, down, down, as if toiling through bones of an endless worm, and beheld a strange sight: a bright light shone ahead in a place where no light should be.

  For a moment he suspected that a Glory filled the tunnel before him, but he didn't feel the overwhelming power that had surged through him before.

  Instead, as he rounded the corner, he saw only Iome in the hall, her back toward him as she raced deeper into the Underworld. She moved relatively slowly, now that he had so many endowments.

  He nearly stumbled in surprise.

  He raced up to her back, drew ahead, and saw Iome's face contort with shock. “How did you get here so fast?” he asked slowly, so that she would understand.

  “I found a shortcut,” Iome replied.

  “Follow me,” Gaborn said.

  Iome looked into his eyes, and must have seen the pain there. “It's time, isn't it? The battle has begun at Carris?” Her words came slowly, each syllable drawn out and deepened by the variance that came by reason of Gaborn's vast endowments of metabolism.

  Gaborn nodded. His three days were drawing to a close. A struggle was about to flare up in Carris, one such as had not been seen since Erden Geboren led the nine kings in their charge against the reaver hordes at Vizengower.

  Gaborn could sense his army of Chosen warriors above him, dozens and dozens of miles, and this caused him to wonder. His Earth Senses let him place them precisely. In traversing the caves, he had ridden by horse nearly two hundred miles south, and from there the caves had wound south and west toward Indhopal. But in time the trail looped back north and east, so that now he was directly below Carris again.

  He suspected that this was vitally important. The reavers were trying to secure the ground above them—or perhaps above the Great Seals that they had fashioned. But why?

  He could only guess at the answer.

  “Follow me,” Gaborn said slowly.

  “Where?” Iome asked.

  And he wondered in his heart what he should do. He had come to slay the One True Master, but his Earth Senses warned against it. He could not prevail against the monster—yet. Even now, though he felt as if he radiated vigor from every pore, he was not her match. Nor would the Earth permit him to seek out the Great Seals and destroy them. The Earth allowed only one task. “We must find Averan! Follow as best you can.”

  Comprehension dawned slowly on Iome's face.

  She nodded.

  Gaborn ran.

  Three days have passed, he thought in despair, though with his endowments of metabolism it felt as if he'd run for thirty days through this endless night.

  Death was about to rain down upon his people. He imagined reavers scaling castle walls, hurling dire spells.

  He veered through tunnels. He was near the very bottom of the unbounded warren. The ground grew as hot as the chimney stones on a hearth, and the endless tramping of reavers’ feet had polished the floor like marble. Little grew in these tunnels, just a bit of wormgrass on the walls. Few blind-crabs scurried along the floor. He was not in the wilds any longer.

  Every few strides carried him past some side tunnel or cavity. He met several reaver workers that bore no weapons. He paused only long enough to stab them through their sweet triangle, and then hurried on, leaving a trail of dead in his wake. They did not even register his presence until he fell upon them.

  He ran up a tunnel, following Averan's scent. He could feel her nearby. A mile, a half a mile, a quarter of a mile, and he was at her door.

  A cavelike recess opened to the corridor, with guardrooms dug into either side. As Gaborn approached, two huge reavers sprang out to do battle.

  The first raised a blade overhead, and hissed in fear. Gaborn smelled a spray of wordsfillthe air, probably shouts of surprise or warning. It threw its head back and gaped its maw wide, crystalline teeth bristling like daggers.

  He leapt up into its mouth, landing on its dark tongue, and plunged his reaver dart through the soft spot in the creature's upper palate, into its brain. The weapon slammed into the top of the monster's skull.

  Gaborn gave the dart a twist, scrambling the reaver's brain.

  Purple blood and bits of gray brain rained down from the wound.

  Gaborn leapt from its mouth as the huge blade-bearer crashed to the ground. The second reaver reared high on her back legs. She was a mage, bearing a crystalline staff. A perfume of words wheezed from her anus as she tried to cast a spell. Gaborn would have none of it.

  He dove between her forelegs and plunged his reaver dart into her breast, through her tough carapace, into an organ that the knights of Rofehavan called a kidney. The reaver's perfumed words transformed into the garlicky reek of a death cry.

  Gaborn raced into the cave.

  Averan stood there, turning to peer at him with frightened eyes, lit by the opal that gleamed from her silver ring. Around her squatted a crowd of starved, half-naked people. The reek of their prison was astounding—the stench of unwashed bodies, of urine and feces, and of the rotting carcasses of both fish and the unburied dead.

  “Averan,” Gaborn cried before she had time to react to his presence. He took her staff of black poisonwood, which he had been carrying in his free hand, and threw it to her.

  With ten endowments of metabolism, Averan responded before the others even registered Gaborn's presence. She caught the staff, moving with a liquid slowness.

  Gaborn cried, “The battle in Carris is about to begin! But I'm not ready to face the One True Master. How do I defeat her?”

  Averan seemed to leap in slow motion to grab the staff as she peered at him. Her voice sounded unnaturally deep and tediously slow as she asked, “What?”

  Gaborn forced himself to speak slower, to modulate his voice, as he repeated his request.

  Worry dawned in Averan's face, and she leapt over the squatting prisoners. Her movements seemed painfully deliberate. She ran two paces, and stopped. “Wait!” she shouted.

  She struggled to pull off her ring, twisting it on her finger, and then turned and threw it to the prisoners. She could not leave them comfortless.

  As she worked, two of Gaborn's Chosen died on the walls of Carris-—a proud knight and a young girl. With their deaths, he felt as if a hole gaped in his heart, as if he were rich soil and his Chosen were tender plants, cruelly plucked away. It pained him no end.

  Averan raced to Gaborn, sprang past him. “This way!”

  She ran with all her might, straining every muscle, intensity plain on her face. Then the green glow of Gaborn's opal bathed her back, and threw her dancing shadow on the tunnel floor.

  Gaborn followed, disheartened at how sluggishly she seemed to move, even with ten endowments of metabolism.

  He ambled beside her. A hundred endowments? Gaborn wondered. Perhaps the facilitators have given me more. They'll kill me, he realized.

  He followed at Averan's heel. She sprinted with all her might, her every movement smooth and graceful. Tears streamed from her eyes, tears of frustration, Gaborn imagined, that came from yearning for greater speed.

  He walked ahead of her, slaughtering any reaver that barred their path.

  And ever closer, he felt the approach of danger.

  “There!” Averan called. “Up the corr
idor, three more passageways. The Dedicates’ Keep.”

  Of course! Gaborn realized. Averan had warned that the One True Master was experimenting with giving endowments, though he could not guess how much success she might have. That was why he could not hope to face her.

  Gaborn left Averan behind, sprinted round the corner.

  “Leap!” his Earth Senses warned, and Gaborn sprang fifteen feet into the air.

  A reaver stood before him at the mouth of the Dedicates’ Keep, a great black blade-bearer. Its blade whistled beneath his feet, then sang through the air as it whipped behind its back.

  The monster did not open its mouth. Instead it leaned back, moving with a speed that nearly matched Gaborn's. The philia on its head and along its jaw raised into the air and waved like snakes as all its senses came alert.

  This is no common reaver, Gaborn knew. Dull blue runes glimmered along its forearms.

  As Gaborn reached the apex of his leap, he hurled his reaver gig with all his might, aiming for the soft spot in the monster's sweet triangle. He threw so hard that he felt the ball joint in his shoulder rip from its socket.

  The reaver gig struck home, plunged into the monster's flesh, piercing its brain, and then stood quivering like an arrow in a tree.

  But the great blade-bearer still lived. Its blade whirled round, sang through the air before Gaborn even touched ground.

  Gaborn twisted, catlike, as the blade whistled toward him. It struck his chest a glancing blow that shattered the rings in Gaborn's chain mail and jogged him to the side.

  He darted away as another blow clove the ground at his feet. He threw himself backward as the reaver charged.

  He had no weapon to fight with. His reaver gig stood transfixed in the monster's brain.

  Averan came rushing up the tunnel, and the reaver whirled its massive head to gaze at her, all of its philia quivering.

  In that instant, Gaborn struck. He leapt twenty feet in the air and grabbed his reaver gig on the way up. He did not pull it free but instead wrenched it violently as he reached the apex of his leap, then jerked it down with greater force as he fell, slashing the monster's brain.

  It shuddered and crumpled to its knees. Ahead, in the hallway, two more guards barred Gaborn's way, but neither moved as quickly as the monster that Gaborn had just fought. He dispatched them, and rushed into the Dedicates’ Keep.

  In all his dreams, in all of his nightmares, Gaborn have never imagined a place such as this. The light glowing green from his opal could not pierce the murk. Shadows fled as he entered the vast chamber, but the ceiling was so high that even with all of his endowments of sight, Gaborn could not view a roof overhead, only the steadily curving braces and supports constructed by the glue mums. These were not like the beams that men would use to brace the ceiling of a Great Hall. Instead, they looked more like cob-webs dancing along trusses, spanning over chasms. Not even the fabled Songhouse of Sandomir could have rivaled the complexity or grandeur of the workmanship. The supports, gray with age, rose up like lacework along the ceilings. Gaborn imagined that spiders might build such webs if they could only hope or dream. The designs were as alien as they were beautiful.

  And beneath this glorious webwork, reaver Dedicates milled in an endless reeking herd.

  The smell of them astonished Gaborn no less than the sight of them. A cloud of alien scents smote him—the odor of reaver dung and rotting carrion, suffused with the scents of reaver endowments as brittle as ice and as dank as mold.

  There were hundreds of Dedicates, down in a bowl-shaped enclave. The room was black with them, but the dull light of fiery runes burned among them, so that a glimmering haze shone all about.

  A huge, spidery creature the size of an elephant lay on its back about two hundred yards off, with its legs curled in the air. Reavers tore at the beast with their forepaws and teeth, rending its flesh.

  Beyond that, a fetid stream ran, sending up vapors of sulfur water. Some Dedicates knelt in its shallows, dipping their heads and then craning them back like birds as they drank. Overhead sprawled a pair of massive stonewood trees, like vast leafless oaks, their limbs twisted in ineffable torment.

  And all through the air, flocks of gree wheeled about on squeaking wings, like nervous bats.

  Gaborn could not see the far reaches of the Keep. Nor could he guess how many hundreds of Dedicates it might hold.

  Upon spotting Gaborn, many Dedicates rose up and began to lurch away, hissing and spraying a scent of warning in the air.

  Gaborn raced in, leapt, and plunged his reaver dart deep into the sweet triangle of the nearest Dedicate. The creature hissed and sprayed moldy garlic scent, then swatted feebly at his dart until its legs went out from under it. The reavers lurched to attack, creating a fearsome wall of flesh, of flashing teeth and raking claws, as Gaborn raced into the room. They scrabbled over one another's backs in an effort to reach him.

  Gaborn attacked the nearest reaver, leaping and spinning. He plunged his weapon into its sweet triangle, dodged a blow, and lunged after another.

  In moments purple blood and gray brains made his weapon slippery. Gore clung to his hands and elbows, spattered his face. He wiped it from his eyes, and moved on.

  Each Dedicate had a rune upon its head that glowed a soft silver. Gaborn suspected that it marked the endowment that it had given, but somehow the glowing runes were not shaped anything like those that men took. Since the reavers wrote in scents, the runes drawn upon them were meant to be judged by their musky aroma.

  Gaborn smelled a particularly rank stench, with an odor like rotten cabbage, just beyond a wall of reavers.

  As Gaborn tasted the scent, he felt the Earth's sudden warning: “Strike!”

  He leapt upon a reaver, raced up its head, and peered behind it. Some sixty feet off, a reaver was retreating through the horde. It had a single silver rune gleaming on its forehead, but dozens of fiery blue runes ran the length of its legs. A vector, Gaborn realized.

  “Strike!” the Earth warned again.

  Gaborn leapt twenty feet in the air, somersaulted over three reavers, and landed with his reaver dart plunging through the monster's sweet triangle.

  By now all of the reavers around him hissed, and warning scents filled the cavern.

  “Gaborn!” Averan called desperately.

  He looked back at her, only three dozen yards away. She stood close to the mouth of chamber, her black staff of poisonwood in hand. “I can't help you! I can't kill helpless Dedicates. What shall I do?”

  Gaborn felt in his heart, sensing for danger to the girl. “Do you know where the Great Seals are?”

  Averan nodded.

  “Go destroy them,” Gaborn said.

  Indeed, the Earth now warned him that she must go. Danger was coming, and if Averan stayed, she would die.

  Gaborn took off his green opal cape pin and tossed it to her. The glowing runes on the reaver Dedicates was the only light he would have to fight by.

  Wordlessly, Averan whirled and sped off as fast as she could.

  Gaborn redoubled his pace, plunging among the reavers. The monsters hissed and lashed at him, ripping with talons and gnashing with teeth.

  Gaborn charged into them, dodging blows, lunging with his reaver dart, tasting the air for the scent of vectors.

  Time and again his weapon stabbed.

  He saw the Earth's plan now. Danger was swelling all about him. The One True Master had sensed his presence, and would come for him, as would any Runelord who sought to protect his precious Dedicates.

  He was glad that he had given up his light, for now he could see the reavers’ glowing runes even better.

  He could sense a rising wave of danger.

  She was coming. Gaborn darted into the reavers, raced beneath the legs of one monster, vaulted up onto the back of another and struck down a vector.

  She was at the door.

  He had killed perhaps fifty Dedicates, including three vectors. He whirled toward the chamber entrance.

&
nbsp; A blackness swirled at the door, a shadow that blotted out the night. It wasn't just Gaborn's imagination. Dark vapors flowed into the chamber like a fog. Whatever was coming, it was more than a reaver.

  And suddenly, Gaborn saw it.

  A monstrosity appeared among the shadows, a reaver larger and more bloated than any fell mage he had ever encountered. Her feet clacked and her swollen belly groaned as she slid across the floor. A loud hissing followed as she scrabbled forward, air streaming from her vast anus.

  The reek was magnificent. Gaborn could smell musty endowments, like putrid fat and rotten cabbages and moldy hair, so thick in the air that it choked him.

  Darkness spread out from her, and as she advanced, shadows groped about Gaborn's knees.

  He suddenly felt dazed. The creature twisted in his vision, and his eyes could not focus on it. In his mind's eye, the reaver seemed to expand suddenly, to grow taller and loom over him, as if to fill the whole chamber, as if to fill the universe.

  36

  ALL DARKNESS FALLING

  Let me be remembered not for how I lived but for how I died!

  —last words attributed to Sir Marten Braiden, who died heroically in the Battle of the Boars

  Night fell swiftly over Carris. The sun slanted east beyond the mountains while the haze of distant smoke curtained off the light. Twenty miles to the north, reavers rushed in a horde down the mountainside, their feet making a dull rumble that shook a man's very bones. Borenson could not see them well, for a cloud of gree blackened the sky above. Howlers emitted their strange cries, like unearthly trumpets, and all of the reavers hissed. But there was another sound that bothered Borenson, a dull concussive boom, boom, boom that preceded the reavers like distant thunder.

  The horde was less than an hour away. On the castle wall, men took up battle song to cheer their hearts.

  In the failing light, Chondler led Borenson to his post as commoners began pulling up planks from the old drawbridge and tossing them into the lake.