David Farland - The Lair of Bones

Every reaver turned from battle, throwing down its weapon. The monsters drew back from their human foes, each of them turning to face something 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 relief flowing from 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 Gaborn 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 battlefield, 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 wallwalk.

Atop the wallwalk, there had been a massacre. Dead men lay everywhere. 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 supports 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.