The Lair of Bones (63 page)

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.

Whirling, he faced to meet his enemies.

In the palace at Ghusa, Balimar had been lying in the Dedicates' Keep. The ceiling rose high, some twenty feet, and soaring marble arches showed what had once been an open-air courtyard. But Raj Ahten had walled it in with cheap mud bricks, so that more Dedicates could be housed here.

Balimar's heart had pounded as he reached into the bandage on his hip, grasped the hilt of a long, narrow dagger that lay concealed there.

It had been easy to fake giving an endowment. As a warrior among the Ah'Kellah, he had taken enough endowments himself. He had seen how the Dedicates sweated as the forcibles were pressed to their bare flesh, how they swayed and cried out as the endowment was taken, how their eyes rolled back and they fell senseless to the ground afterward. So he had feigned giving the endowment. The scars of the forcible were upon him, but in his heart, he had only hatred to give to Raj Ahten.

His face betrayed no emotion, though he grinned inwardly. Raj Ahten's endless appetite for endowments would be his own undoing. His facilitators were working so hard to strip attributes from the local villagers that they had not even bothered to question the street urchins whom Balimar had bribed to pretend that he was their brother.

He had let the facilitators carry him into the innermost sanctuary of the keep, among the Dedicates. They were an ailing lot. He could hear them coughing, see them limping about.

The facilitators had tossed Balimar to the ground like a rag, throwing him near the door, simply because the Keep was so full.

Now, outside, a ram's horn blew three long blasts—Wuqaz Faharaqin's call to battle. It was a mere feint. Wuqaz and thirty men would ride to the gate, shoot arrows at the guards, killing as many as they could.

Indeed, even as Balimar lay there, a death cry arose, and horses began to scream.

Two guards within the Keep rushed toward the door. Their leader shouted, “We're under attack! Bar the gate behind me.” He rushed through.

The second guard was occupied for a moment, pulling the huge iron gates closed, placing the iron bar across it.

Balimar quietly sprang to his feet. For seeming days now he had sought
to hold himself still so that his endowments of metabolism would not be revealed. Now he sprang with all speed toward the door.

The guard heard him, dropped the bar in place, and reached for the warhammer sheathed on his back. Balimar shoved him against the door and stabbed through the fellow's ring mail, angling the blade upward, so that the dagger sliced into his heart. He quickly drew the dagger out partway, then thrust it back in—once, twice, three times, and four.

The guard died with nothing more than a grunt escaping his lips.

Balimar made sure that the door was barred tight, and then turned to peer at the Dedicates in the Keep.

Silently, nine other men had risen up among them, all warriors of the Ah'kellah, each bearing a dagger to pierce a man's heart, or a cord to snap his neck. Already they had begun the slaughter. Balimar grabbed the warhammer from the hand of the dead guard even as the man dropped to the ground, then sprang among the Dedicates.

He bypassed the women and children who lay in heaps upon the stone floor, recalling Wuqaz's words: kill the vectors first.

“Raj Ahten,” Gaborn shouted. “Flee!”

And Borenson wondered, What is Gaborn doing?

Raj Ahten seemed to have the battle well in hand. Dozens of men rushed to fight him, stabbing with lances, hurling axes, sending arrows to fly. Amid the swirling mass of bloodthirsty warriors, Raj Ahten danced naked, a dance that left many men dead.

An Invincible raced up to Raj Ahten's back and hurled a scorpion dagger. Its poisoned blade struck him full, buried to the haft between his shoulder blades.

Raj Ahten shook himself, sending the blade flying. He whirled and drove the point of his spear through the man's eye socket. He hardly slowed as the wound in his back closed and healed.

He swung his spear, almost as if it were a club, and took out a man's throat.

He's too fast, Borenson thought. He's too strong.

He dared not draw near.

And then suddenly Raj Ahten seemed to stumble. In the midst of his
dance, he slowed dramatically. His eyes were full of light, as if a dozen stars reflected from them. Smoke issued from his nostrils. His face contorted in alarm.

Borenson had seen that look of dismay upon the faces of other men. He'd had it upon his own. His Dedicates are dying! Borenson realized. He's lost his metabolism!

The warriors around Raj Ahten raced for the kill. A fellow from Heredon drove a spear through Raj's knee. Another swung a warhammer and spiked him through the back of the head.

Borenson rushed forward and would have attacked, but in his mind he heard Gaborn's voice, the shout of the Earth King, warning, “Hold back.”

He dodged back a pace, just as Raj Ahten thrust his spear toward him.

Then Borenson waded in and swung his warhammer, not with much strength, but with great accuracy. He struck Raj Ahten in the joint of the shoulder, taking off his right arm.

Blood gushed from the wound, and a Knight Equitable saw the game. He lunged with a great-ax and hacked off Raj Ahten's left arm.

Raj Ahten fell, screaming, and a dozen more warriors surged forward, eager to draw blood. They ringed him about and plunged in their spears, while the Knight Equitable lopped off both of the Wolf Lord's legs.

Raj Ahten wailed in horror, but such was the force of his endowments that he could not die.

“Stay your hands!” Myrrima shouted. “Don't kill him!” Her fearful tone stopped the men cold.

“He's aflameweaver,” she cautioned. “Kill him, and you'll loose the ele-mental within! Let the water have him.”

Cedrick Tempest rushed forward, shouting, “I like that. Let him go for a swim. I'll even give him the loan of my armor!”

He grabbed Raj Ahten, who now was but a torso, with arms and legs removed. Though blood flowed everywhere, Borenson saw to his dismay that Raj Ahten had begun to heal. The flesh had closed over his stumps, so that they had regenerated in a matter of moments more than a normal man's would have in months. Indeed, the stumps were lengthening, bud-ding new arms and legs.

Yet such healing came at a terrible price. Raj Ahten's body had to cannibalize
fat and flesh and bones from his trunk in order to nourish the new limbs. He looked skeletal and sickly.

With the eager help of two other men, Tempest picked up Raj Ahten. As cinders rained down from above and a meteor blazed in the heavens, they bore him over the ash-covered field, through gore and mud, out to the ruins of the drawbridge. Gree still squeaked in the air, and the reavers charging in the distance made a distant rumble.

Raj Ahten's eyes glazed with pain, and he moaned in a daze. “My Dedicates!” Then his mind seemed to clear, and he cried plaintively to his enemies, “Serve me! Serve me. Let me go.”

But he had not enough Glamour or Voice left in him to sway his enemies.

Borenson followed the men, a chuckle rising involuntarily to his throat, as they climbed over reaver corpses to the bridge. The fires on the castle wall cast a dim red glow, creating a surreal tableau.

They reached the water, and Borenson saw huge shapes moving in circles there in the blackness. Salmon, he thought at first, finning in the water.

But the shapes were too large. They were more the size of sturgeon, like the great fish he'd seen in the moat at Castle Sylvarresta.

Water wizards, he suddenly realized with awe. Dozens of them swam in circles, small waves lapping against their backs, creating runes upon the surface of the lake.

There on the bridge, the axman noted that Raj Ahten had nearly grown a new right hand. Indeed, a child-sized nub had regenerated. They took a moment to lop it off.

Captain Tempest stripped his coat of ring mail and began to wrap Raj Ahten in it clumsily. “You wanted to take Heredon for its steel,” Tempest said. “But I'm afraid that this bit is all we're willing to give.”

Borenson pulled off his own armor, and added it. Thus Raj Ahten was doubly weighted in mail.

With that, Tempest and another man grabbed the stump of Raj Ahten and hurled him into Lake Donnestgree.

He sank beneath the dark waves, his neck wrenching wildly as he struggled to scream. The water wizards circled him, as if excited, as he began to sink. The great fishes bumped him with their noses, like playful dolphins, pushing him up toward the surface, teasing him with the hope for air.

The water smelled so potent here, so omnipresent. The black waves lapped at the castle walls, and made soft sucking sounds.

Borenson stood on the causeway as if at the edge of ruin, unable to believe that Raj Ahten would die, unable to accept that anyone so powerful could be killed,

Light flashed underwater as a great red ball of flames erupted. The sur-face suddenly bubbled and foamed. Hot gases escaped, forming waves that rocked Lake Donnestgree. In the light, Borenson saw the monstrous ele-mental unleashed. A creature of flame took form, its hand seeking the sur-face, and it seemed to grow.

The stump of Raj Ahten's body fell away, burned so badly that ribs stuck out like ruined kindling, as it sank down into the waves.

The great fishes could suddenly be seen more clearly, darting about in excitement. The bright glow lasted only for a second, as the elemental faded, and then the water went dark again.

Still, the surface of the lake continued to boil for nearly a minute until the water grew calm and black and fell silent again.

Then there were only the dark waves lapping softly against the castle walls.

Borenson looked over his shoulder, saw Gaborn and Iome standing side by side atop some dead reavers, looking down. He could see no victory in either of their faces, no celebration. Gaborn looked grim, worn, while Iome seemed to be shocked and hurt by what they'd done.

Gaborn has lost, Borenson realized. The Earth King has lost one of his charges. Yet even then he noted a change in Gaborn.

Like the child Averan, or the Wizard Binnesman, his skin had taken on a green tone. No, it is darker, Borenson realized. More like the face of the green woman—or like the effigies we make for Hostenfest.

Only then did Borenson realize why Gaborn had sought to save Raj Ahten, the prize he had won through his forbearance. Gaborn had become the Earth King, at last.

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