The Lair of Bones (59 page)

Iome ducked between two reavers that seemed to move at a crawl, seeking to use them as cover. But Gaborn knew that she couldn't hide for long. The reaver queen raced toward Iome at blinding speed.

Gaborn could feel death approaching her.

Gaborn reached down, picked up Erden Geboren's ancient reaver dart.

The One True Master waded over its own Dedicates, grinding a pair of them beneath her.

“Strike!” the Earth warned.

Gaborn shouted a battle cry and lunged forward, bounding twenty yards to a stride. The reavers around him were dark monoliths, almost motionless. He darted between the legs of a large Dedicate and plunged his spear into the One True Master's hind knee.

The leg buckled. She whirled toward Gaborn, and he jumped backward,
throwing himself high in the air and somersaulting as her whip snapped beneath him.

Runes simmered on the face of the One True Master. The triad of bony plates on her head was nearly covered with ghostly blue fire. Despite all of the Dedicates that Gaborn had killed, few dark splotches appeared at all.

Gaborn landed on a Dedicate, then sprang backward again and again, drawing the One True Master away from Iome.

The monster approached, rasping. Wisps of darkness curled about Gaborn's ankles. His thoughts became confused. He struggled to remain standing.

“Cut the child from your lover's womb,” a voice whispered cruelly in his mind, “for it is tainted with evil.”

A vision passed before Gaborn's eyes, in which he held the child from Iome's womb, a vile monstrosity. He clutched its scrawny neck, peering at it, wondering how it could be so hideous, and the thing twisted in his hands. He saw now that it had four legs and two arms, that it was eyeless, and where its face should have been, bony head plates appeared while philia dangled like pink worms from its jaw.

Gaborn hurled the thing to the ground.

It peered up at him and made a mewling sound.

“Something wicked grows within her,” the One True Master whispered. “Cut it out. Save your people.”

Gaborn felt a horrible compulsion. He had a knife in his boot. It would be easy to reach down, slip the knife from its sheath, plunge the blade into Iome's womb.

“You could rid the world of evil,” the voice whispered. “Isn't that what you want?”

No! he told himself. It's a child, not an evil. But a greater will seemed to seize him, and he heard a voice in his head whisper, “Yea, master, I do thy bidding.”

The One True Master lunged toward him, and Gabom fell to his knees. He was lost in vision, sinking into a maelstrom of darkness that swirled all about.

“Master!” he called. And simultaneously, the One True Master and the Earth spoke at once, “Yes, my servant.”

“No,” Gaborn said to the One True Master. “I am not your servant.”

A strange light suddenly blazed in his mind. The horrid vision fled, and Gaborn found himself shaken, standing in the reavers' Dedicates'
Keep. In his right hand he clutched his gore-covered reaver dart.

A light glowed at the far end of the cavern.

A strange animal cry came from the throat of the tunnel, and the One True Master whirled away from Gaborn.

Binnesman's wylde stood there.

“Now,” the Earth whispered, “summon the Glories.”

The green woman raised her left hand in the air, forming runes swiftly. She spoke as if in a trance, her eyes vacant of thought, void of emotion. “The time has come, Old One, to leave your body behind. The lords of the netherworld demand it.”

The One True Master hissed in alarm, retreated from Gaborn. Her massive head swiveled left and right, as she sought to track both Gaborn and the wylde. Her philia waved frantically as she scented for danger.

The green woman howled and leapt a dozen feet at a stride, her face contorted in fury. Above her, white lights appeared, small at first, and dim, as if seen from a great distance. But they grew in brightness and size swiftly as they neared. Suddenly, the Glories were there, dozens of them, white ghostly shapes with wings of light.

The green woman raised her hand, and balls of lightning issued from it, went scattering through the air likeflowerpetals tossed into the wind. The light snaked through the air, sizzling and crackling, and the whole room suddenly smelled as if a storm began to rage.

The reaver Dedicates hissed in despair and lurched backward, seeking to escape. Many threw their paws over their heads and dropped to the ground.

Gaborn watched calmly.

The green woman has come to kill the One True Master, Gaborn realized, and he thought, But I won't give her the honor!

In that instant, the reaver queen swung her muzzle toward him, exposing her sweet triangle. On a monster this huge, the soft spot above her brain was a good eighteen inches across. She stood less than forty yards away.

Gaborn rushed from between two reavers and hurled his dart with all his might. Pain wracked his shoulder from strained tendons. The iron pole became a black blur. There was a
thwack
as it struck reaver flesh, and Gaborn stood for half a second, gazing in triumph.

The reaver dart struck, and then went ricocheting off the monster's
bony head plate. Purple blood pumped from the grazed wound. Yet the One True Master's head still swiveled about.

The monster held her black staff and lunged as if to strike Gaborn, then glanced back, as if deciding that the wylde presented a greater danger.

The green woman raced forward as the monster pounced. For half a second, Gaborn was not sure if the green woman would strike before the monster crushed her.

But the wylde raised up both hands, as if to embrace the falling beast. Her arms and fingers lengthened, as though they were branches and twigs, growing thick over the years.

The two met, as if in an embrace, and the wylde howled one last time, a howl of triumph and release. In that instant, Gaborn saw her as she had been at the Seven Standing Stones when Binnesman had summoned her—a collection of twigs and stones and roots and dust.

And then she caught the One True Master.

There was a rumbling, and a violent rending, and roots broke into the rock and a thick trunk formed and began to spiral upward. The One True Master fell onto the wylde and let out a cruel hiss. She struggled violently, like a tarantula caught in the grasp of a scorpion, her huge legs scrabbling and tearing.

But a tree grew beneath her now, a tree with a trunk thicker than oak, and branches that pierced her and grew up through her body. The sinuous limbs shot through armored breastplates, sent tendrils and twigs growing through her skull and shoulders.

In an instant, a vast tree took form, its green branches as alive as snakes. It held the monster and crushed her and pierced her all at once.

The One True Master gaped and hissed. She craned her head back, as if suffering indescribable agony. Purple gore coursed from her wounds.

The monster swung its head left and right, trying to dislodge itself.

But the wylde held it, made it one with the Earth.

Within seconds the ghostly runes that simmered across the One True Master's body winked out, like candles extinguished by a breeze.

Gaborn dropped to the ground, panting. You cannot kill a locus, he suspected. Its evil would only pass on to another.

Help me, he cried in his heart, seeking aid from the Glories.

There had been a darkness about the creature, a shadow that followed as
it walked. Gaborn saw that specter now. It surged upward, like a sooty cloud, or a winged shadow. It hovered above the dead reaver, above the living tree.

And the Glories came. Distant lights seemed to break through the rock above, swirling down from the netherworld. They were faint at first, as if seen miles and miles away. But in a matter of seconds they were revealed.

They swooped like swallows upon wings of light, creatures at once beautiful and impossibly cruel. Larger than men they were, and though they had arms and legs, Gaborn thought they looked nothing like men. Their heads hinted at the ravenous faces of jackals, with sharp fangs and large eyes. Whether they were covered in hair or feathers, Gaborn could not tell. For to look at them was to invite death.

Gaborn threw up his hands, squinting.

The Glories circled the mist of darkness, like starlings mobbing a crow, driving it around and around and upward, spiraling through the air.

As Gaborn gazed up, it seemed that a conduit opened between worlds, and for just an instant he saw the skies of the Netherworld—stars so fierce that they made his heart jump, in a heaven so vast that it seemed forbidding.

The Glories pursued their prey upward through those heavens, lights as bright as the stars chasing a strange, amorphous shadow, spiraling up as if all of them were caught in a cyclone.

And then the earth closed above them, and the Glories and the locus all were gone, and Gaborn stood among the dead reaver Dedicates with Iome.

Averan faced the Great Seals that the One True Master had formed, and peered through the shadows toward the roof. She pointed her staff and imagined the runes of stone-breaking that would cause the ceiling to col-lapse.

The ground buckled and swayed beneath her. Pebbles and soot dribbled down.

And as if in her ear, she heard Binnesman's voice. “The Earth is in pain. Heal it. End the Earth's suffering.”

An image came to mind from her dreams. Runes appeared, two vast wheels to join with those that lay before her.

Averan gazed at three great runes, each patterned after the Seals of
Creation that had governed the One True World. The runes themselves were not evil. They were tools. And Averan, if she dared, could bend them to her purpose. She could heal the Earth, remake it in the image of the One True World that had been mankind's first home.

Do I dare? she wondered, trembling.

The ground heaved as another quake shook, causing the room to sway.

Averan stretched forth her staff and stared into the rocky floor, tried to recall from her dreams the great Rune of Life.

She began to shape the stone.

There was a ridge like a hook, where eagles had soared. As she imagined it, the ridge slowly rose from the ground. There were three knobby hills where rabbits had run, and the hills buckled up from the rock. Here was a valley where she had seen elephants sprout from the soil, waving their trunks to the sky, and a rift appeared.

Averan raised and lowered the stone in each place, using her gifts to conform it to her will.

Erin Connal sat upon her horse, frozen in astonishment. King Anders glared at her maliciously. But in an instant his expression changed to one of alarm.

“No!” he cried, whirling to peer at the battlefield.

A pale light shone above it, as if the moon suddenly peeked out from a cloud.

An unreasonable hope suddenly filled Erin.

She took no time to wonder what caused Anders such dismay, or to wonder at the light. She spurred her horse forward, throwing down her lance, for she was too close to use it in battle. She pulled out her half sword, and fell upon Anders before he had time to react.

She plunged the blade into his side, angled it up into his chest. She watched his skeletal face.

“Mother,” he cried, peering toward the battlefield. Then he turned slowly to look at Erin.

What she saw in his eyes terrified her, for there was no dismay, no fear—only cunning.

King Anders gripped the hilt of her sword with his right hand, so that she could cut no deeper, and then grabbed her shoulder with his left hand.

He fell forward, so that for half a minute he leaned into her, his mouth to her ear.

She thought he would speak, and then he would die, but instead he only uttered a strangled laugh.

Cries of dismay rose all around as men witnessed Erin's attack. Celinor shouted, “Grab her! Hold her!”

Lords instantly surrounded her. Erin spurred her horse, tried to bolt away, but she was boxed in.

Celinor flung himself from his horse, crying, “Father! Father!” while Anders slumped in Erin's arms and fell to the ground, clutching the blade that still lodged in his gut.

Rough hands seized Erin, dragging her to the ground beside him. Three stout warriors threw themselves atop her. A fat man with a red beard began shouting, “A rope! A rope! Let's hang the bitch!”

Weakly, King Anders raised a hand to Celinor's face. “No!” he cried. “Save the poor mad creature. She carries your child, a—a queen who will rule the world. Cage her. Promise…. to cage her—until the child comes.”

Anders's head dropped to the side a little, and he peered at Erin in pain. A physic rushed into the knot and began pushing Celinor aside, preparing to bandage the wound.

Celinor whirled and glared at Erin, a snarl of rage marring his face. “Tie her!”

The earth was shaking. Erin felt it beneath her, shuddering as if it would break.

A far-seer cried. “Ships! Ships on the lake! The warlords of Internook are bringing longboats upriver.”

The men that held Erin finished tying her arms behind her back. They climbed off her, and stood on the hill peering down at the city. One man jerked the rope, pulling Erin to her feet, while the physic applied a healing balm to the king's wound.

Erin pulled against her knots, trying to break free, but her captors had tied her in some cunning manner so that the more she struggled, the more tightly her bonds cut into her wrists.

To the east, roaring arose in the wilderness, the battle cries of frowth giants. It was their feet that caused the ground to rumble.

“Giants, thousands of them!” someone shouted. “They're coming out of the hills.” Erin peered toward the source of the noise, but could see nothing for a moment. Then they rushed over the brow of a hill, huge staves in hand, fur glowing red as it reflected the light of distant fires. They trotted toward the reaver hordes, taking twenty feet to a stride.

Above Carris, Raj Ahten's spy balloon had been floating like a graak on silent wings. Suddenly, beneath the balloon, light flashed, and there was a tremendous explosion. A great mushroom cloud of fire and smoke blossomed above the battlefield, filling the scene with light.