The Lair of Bones

by David Farland

  At the front lines, one great lord turned from the battle and called, “O Great One, save us! The battle is hopeless.”

  “Fight on,” Raj Ahten insisted.

  In the moments that followed, first one and then another lord took up the cry. “Help us, O Great One!”

  He could hear the rising panic in their voices, the despair.

  My time has come, he realized at last.

  Ahead, the elementals of his flameweavers towered above the reavers. Clouds of fire-lit smoke billowed above them. They had lost all manly form, becoming mere monsters, mindless with pain, ravaged by the need to consume. They struck at the reavers blindly, hurling fireballs, lashing with whips of flame. Soon they would lose form altogether, becoming aimless in their desires.

  Lust is a powerful force when skillfully focused. But these creatures wasted their strength.

  Raj Ahten stretched out his hand, as if beckoning the elementals. With that gesture, he drew the heat from them in crimson cords that swirled about, whirling toward him like a tornado.

  Thus he took their fire into himself.

  It was too much for any man to hold. In an instant, heat blazed from every pore, and wrapped itself around him like a brilliant robe. His body armor melted like slag.

  The huge gray imperial warhorse screamed beneath him and died. It fell to the ground instantly, its boiled guts gushing out beneath it.

  Raj Ahten stepped lightly to the ground. He felt as if he had no weight at all. He was only brightness and flame now.

  He stalked toward the reavers’ lines, and his men whirled. He could see them everywhere, their dark faces frozen in astonishment, like pebbles on the ground.

  “Fear not,” he told them, “for I will vanquish all of your foes. My sword will fall upon the Earth, and night shall be no longer.”

  Raj Ahten's light was whiter than sunlight, and he strode easily now toward the battlefront, as if all of the stars in heaven had combined, and now a creature of starlight took shape.

  A reaver broke through his lines, came crashing in among his men. Raj Ahten pointed his finger, sent a shaft of fire swirling through the air. It touched the reaver's forehead, hit its sweet triangle.

  The monster thudded to the ground as a smoking crater opened, revealing the brains that fried in its head. Raj Ahten sent a shaft toward another reaver, and another.

  To kill them all would be child's play.

  But in a heartbeat, everything changed.

  Suddenly, the world shook, and as soon as Raj Ahten became aware of it, the reavers began to hiss. He had never heard a sound like it. A million reavers wheezed at once, like the sound that a blade hot from the forge makes when it meets the water.

  Every reaver hissed, expelling gas from its anus, and filling the world with a single, strange scent, a smell that reminded him of mold.

  Every reaver turned from battle, throwing down its weapon. The monsters drew back from their human foes, each of them turning to face some-thing in the thick of the battlefield, just before the gates of Carris.

  Raj Ahten could not see what had transpired there. But as he peered, he saw a mound of earth rising up. A hillock appeared, gray earth and stone spilling up from the ground. Atop the knoll crouched a dozen wary figures, like tender sprouts.

  Iome wore a crown that glowed like moonlight on water, and Gaborn wore a cape pin that shone like a lantern. Gaborn stood in the light, and held something speared to a reaver dart—a reaver's philia, like the carcasses of wolf eels, gray and slimy.

  He raised them aloft, and the reavers hissed and backed away en masse. All of them lowered their tail ends, dragging them on the ground.

  Only one reaver dared confront him—the great fell mage that had marshaled the horde. She left her hillock some two hundred yards to the west, thundering toward Gaborn.

  She held her head high, philia waving madly atop her regal cape, a livid crystalline staff in her hand. She drew near tentatively, as if undecided on how to do battle.

  Gaborn merely raised his left hand and pointed south.

  The reaver gazed toward him a moment, raised its massive head as if scenting the air like a hound, and then peered south. She seemed to take his meaning: “Your master is dead. Go home. Return to the Underworld.”

  Thoughtfully, she hesitated, and then dropped her head, laid her staff on the gray soil, and lowered her tail as far as it would go. A spray hissed from her abdomen, and behind her, each reaver in turn caught the scent and sprayed. There was a seething sound like the pounding of surf that rose among the reavers, rolling like a wave, until it could be heard repeated dozens of miles away.

  The reavers turned, and the ground began to tremble as they raced to the south.

  At Raj Ahten's back, his troops suddenly began to cheer, shouting and hooting at the tops of their lungs. Raj Ahten looked to his side, saw tears of reliefflowingfrom the eyes of many a soldier. To the northeast, frowth giants raised their staves in the air and bellowed, “Wahoot! Wahoot!” To the east, the men of Beldinook began throwing helms in the air and dancing jigs. “Hail the Earth King!” they cried. “Praise the Earth King.” The warlords of Internook, in their longboats, blew their warhorns in celebration.

  Raj Ahten seethed.

  By the size of the philia that Gaborn carried, and by the reavers’ reaction to them, Raj Ahten surmised what Gabom had done.

  He has stolen my glory, Raj Ahten thought. He has slain the lord of the Underworld, and stolen my triumph.

  He was still clothed in flame, and the light that shone from him blazed in murderous intensity.

  Raj Ahten strode across the battlefield, past the ruined carcasses of men and reaver alike. A week past, the reavers had unleashed dire spells upon the land, blasting every tree and vine, wilting every leaf and blade of grass. Every living thing had gone gray, and Raj Ahten stalked now through a land drained of all color, a realm of horror.

  He was the brightest light in a dark world. Scathain, the Lord of Ash.

  As he passed among the dead, he spotted a great imperial warhorse, one that he'd given to Rialla Lowicker as a gift. The dead queen lay pinned beneath it, her blank eyes staring up toward the sky, as if to question the heavens. Raj Ahten gave her no pity. He hardly spared her a glance.

  Clothed in white flames that sputtered in the evening wind, he stalked toward the Earth King.

  The reavers were leaving, thundering over the plain. The ground trembled and groaned beneath Gaborn, as if complaining of the load that it was called to bear.

  Overhead, a pair of blazing meteors hurtled, their red traces barely visible through the clouds of smoke and dark gree that hovered above Carris.

  Gaborn held his javelin aloft, the philia of the One True Master impaled upon its tip, and felt unaccountably weary.

  The reavers were fleeing, racing over the causeway from Carris in a huge line, shoving and jarring one another in their strain to flee. The last of them, it seemed, would be gone in moments. The fell mage and her minions were already a mile away.

  Yet Gaborn sensed danger still.

  The object of his fear strode toward him from across the vacated battle-field, a beacon in the night, a creature clothed in flames as bright as a Glory, a creature that seemed far hotter than any earthly forge. As it neared, walking between fallen reavers, even at four hundred yards Gaborn could begin to sense the heat that boiled from it.

  Gaborn dropped his javelin, and called to Raj Ahten. “That is close enough. I am the Earth King, and have sworn to save the seeds of mankind. I will honor my vows. I would save even you, Raj Ahten, if I could—though I fear that little of the man you once were abides now among the flames.”

  Warhorns echoed off the lake, and to the north and west, men were cheering. Whatever had transpired, Borenson knew that the battle was over.

  He only wanted to find Myrrima.

  The reavers had not all left when he sprinted across Garlands Street to the ruins of the north tower.

  The stonework was heavy there,
the walls thick enough to withstand artillery. Reavers had crawled atop the tower, collapsing the thick beams that supported the upper stories, but the first floor was still intact. A young man crouched on the floor, bleeding from the head. He peered at Borenson, witless with fear, his arms clasped about his knees in a fetal position.

  “Myrrima?” Borenson shouted.

  Borenson tried charging upstairs to see if he could make it to the second floor, hoping to reach the spot where he'd last seen Myrrima gazing from a window, but beams and broken stones blocked his path.

  From the doorway behind him, Borenson heard a familiar voice. Sarka Kaul had suddenly appeared, and whispered, “Go on up!”

  Borenson looked vainly for a way to the top of the tower, then rushed back downstairs, and out the door. Only a hundred feet up the street, a wooden ladder led to the walkway atop the castle wall.

  He ran round the ruins of a merchant's shop, raced up the ladder. A severed human leg lay draped over a rung. At the top of the ladder sat a helm with the head still in it. Blood pooled hot upon the wall-walk.

  Atop the wall-walk, there had been a massacre. Dead men lay every-where. Some had merely been trampled, others chopped in half with reaver blades. The bottom of one man lay just in front of Borenson, guts splashed against the merlons of the wall. By the look of it, his head and torso had toppled into the water.

  The scene was well lit. Fires raged throughout the city, and light reflected from boiling smoke.

  Borenson hardly spared a glance out on the battlefield. The reavers were thundering south. He ran through the carnage until he reached what was left of the tower. The weight of the reavers had collapsed the roof, and then as the combined tonnage of reavers and wreckage hit the floors below, they collapsed as well. Part of the tower wall had fallen west, so that much of the wreckage had slid into the lake. Broken beams showed where sup-ports had once stood.

  As Borenson studied the ruined tower, pain wracked him. If he searched long enough, he feared that he would find Myrrima crushed in the wreckage below.

  Borenson peered through a crack to the east. A brilliant flameweaver stalked over the battlefield. Borenson froze in surprise. Someone down below addressed the creature, speaking so quickly, having taken many endowments, that Borenson had difficulty understanding.

  Borenson spotted the speaker, there on a small knoll among the dead reavers. It was Gaborn, speaking with many endowments of metabolism. At his side, a small knot of people stood. Averan held her staff up warily. Iome held a reaver dart at the ready, looking regal in a crown of light, while a crowd of ragged beggars crouched behind them.

  Yet Gaborn intentionally slowed his speech, and spoke loudly enough so that a man on the castle wall could hear, almost as if addressing Borenson at his back. “I would save even you, Raj Ahten, if I could….”

  Borenson's nostrils flared with anger, and he peered toward the flameweaver. Raj Ahten?

  Raj Ahten stopped and merely stood for a moment. Bright flames whipped about him, as if blown in a fierce wind, and he blazed all the brighter. Borenson heard a laughing sound, a hiss among the fire.

  “You would save me?” Raj Ahten said, his voice high and almost unrecognizable from the great number of endowments he had taken. “I am not the one who needs to be saved. There is nothing that you have that cannot be mine, including your life. I will take it, as I took your father's, and your mother's, and your sister's and your brothers'.”

  Gaborn shook his head, as if saddened. “There is little in this world that I would not give you, but I will not willingly let you take another man's life, and I will not give you mine.”

  Borenson heard a noise below and looked down on the causeway, saw dozens of warriors racing out of fallen buildings, like creatures creeping from the edge of a forest at night. Sarka Kaul was there, and Captain Tem-pest of Longmot.

  Borenson whistled to catch their attention, then spoke in finger talk. “Raj Ahten is outside the castle.”

  “If you would live,” Gaborn said to Raj Ahten, “listen to me. I will do all that I can to save you.”

  The flameweaver peered at Gaborn, who now dropped his weapon and sat cross-legged on the ground. He bent his head, as if deep in thought.

  Borenson peered down through a broken battlement to the scene directly below. Dead reavers lay piled before the city gates, blocking the street. The corpses were stacked two or three deep, attesting to the fact that the archers and champions at the gate had made the reavers pay a toll for crossing the bridge.

  But it had not been much of a toll.

  Sarka Kaul, Captain Tempest, and a dozen other fierce Runelords were already climbing over the bodies, sprinting to help Gaborn.

  Borenson launched himself from the broken tower onto the back of a reaver, a drop of some twenty feet, and tried to ignore the pain that shot through both ankles on landing.

  He raced to reach the other warriors. Several of them were already approaching Gaborn's back.

  Borenson shouted to the men, “I want the first swing!”

  The men fanned out quickly, stalking toward Raj Ahten. Dead reavers littered the battlefield here, so near the causeway. Most were impaled with ballista bolts.

  Borenson headed toward the flameweaver, his heart hammering.

  Raj Ahten, he told himself. It's Raj Ahten.

  But looks belied the creature. It wasn't Raj Ahten. It was something more. Even at hundreds of yards, he could feel the heat rising from the monster, hotter than the blast of any forge.

  Borenson rushed behind a dead reaver, using its shadow to keep cool as he sought to draw near. Around him, others did the same. Silently, warriors crept about in the shadows thrown by dead reavers, ringing Raj Ahten as dogs ring a bear. Some had nocked arrows in bows. Others held long spears or warhammers. Borenson noted that the men wore armor from several nations—Mystarria, Heredon, Orwynne, and Indhopal.

  And more men were rushing over the causeway at Gaborn's back.

  “Come ahead, little men,” Raj Ahten shouted. He stood among a knot of dead reavers. “The first to attack will be the first to die.”

  One archer burst from cover and took aim at Raj Ahten's back.

  “Raj Ahten, beware!” Gaborn shouted.

  The archer loosed his arrow.

  Raj Ahten whirled and stretched forth his hand. Coiling ropes of white fire flowed from it, incinerating the arrow in its flight. Then the fire traveled on.

  At such a short distance, the archer had no time to escape. The coils whipped about him. His robes and hair flashed into incandescence, and his flesh burned an oily green. He stood like a living torch, crying out in agony.

  Borenson had heard of such curses. Spells of flesh-burning were the stuff of legend.

  Borenson peered toward Gaborn, who sat cross-legged on the ground, now a scant two hundred yards from Raj Ahten.

  “I warn you one last time,” Gaborn said to the flameweaver. “Turn back now.”

  At Raj Ahten's back, Sarka Kaul suddenly appeared from behind a huge reaver, whose legs rose up like the trunks of trees. The Inkarran Days, his face reflecting the fierce light of Raj Ahten, sprang a dozen yards and thrust with his long knife.

  But the heat roiling off Raj Ahten was so intense, that Sarka Kaul succumbed a dozen feet from his target.

  He dropped to one knee, weakened by the heat, and his clothes burst into flames.

  Borenson ducked back under cover, behind a dead reaver's head, and grasped his battle-ax, thinking.

  I'll have to throw my weapon, he decided. But he'd lost his endowments of brawn, and he knew that he could not hurl the weapon more than thirty or forty feet now.

  Suddenly, from atop a nearby reaver, a commanding voice cried out. “Lord of Ash,” the Wizard Binnesman intoned. “Leave here! I warn you one last time.”

  The flaming monster whirled and peered at the Earth Warden. The wizard stood with his staff in hand, held protectively high above. His robes billowed out, blowing in the evening breeze.

 
; Raj Ahten laughed. “You cannot harm me with that old tree limb. I am beyond your power!”

  “That may well be,” Binnesman intoned. “But you are not beyond hers!”

  Binnesman dropped his arms, and suddenly Borenson saw Myrrima hidden there behind his robe, her bow drawn to the full. Borenson's heart hammered wildly in relief to see her alive. She was bloody and wet, as if she had just come out of the lake, and Borenson realized that she must have dived to safety when the tower collapsed.

  She let an arrow fly.

  It blurred in its speed.

  Gaborn shouted, “Raj Ahten, dodge!”

  Raj Ahten saw the arrow blur toward him, and heard Gaborn's warning at the same moment. He heard, but refused to humor the little man.

  He had no time to concentrate his energies, consume the arrow. Instead he reached up to catch it before it could bury itself in his eye.

  He caught the shaft, and only then realized his mistake.

  A force struck him, a Power irresistible.

  He caught the arrow, and felt as if it shattered every bone in his arm. The flames that had encircled him, caressed him, suddenly guttered and died. The heat leached from him in an instant, and Raj Ahten stood naked but for the scars of thousands of runes matted over his body.

  It was as if an impenetrable wall had formed between him and the source of his Power. Only then did he realize that the arrow had never been meant to pierce him. Far more disastrous were the runes that had been written on its shaft with water.

  “No!” Raj Ahten bellowed. The sound of his voice, amplified by thou-sands of endowments, echoed over the low hills.

  “Take him down,” Myrrima shouted, “before my spell wears off!”

  Suddenly men sprang out from the shadows at every turn. Arrows whizzed toward Raj Ahten, while men with spears and battle-axes charged to meet him.

  I am no coward, Raj Ahten told himself, to be chased off by pups like these. I am a Runelord still!

  He batted aside the first two arrows that neared him, pulled the spear from the hand of the first man to attack, and hit the fellow hard enough to crush his skull.