David Farland - The Lair of Bones

The frigid air steamed the breath of the horses, and within half a mile, ice glistened on the tunnel walls and crusted the floor. On the ceiling some ice crystals looked as if they had not been disturbed in a thousand years. Ice fans splayed out as wide as a man’s hand, and in such places, the lights from the opals reflected from the roof and the icy walls in a dazzling display.

Here on the floor in their path lay a dead reaver. Whether it had merely died of natural causes, or been killed by one of its own, or trampled by the horde as it raced through the cave, was hard to tell. The grim monster had been shoved up against the wall, as if the reavers had sought to get around it, and parts of it had been trampled. Its eyeless head was intact, shoved against the wall, its jaws gaping wide. A few small blind-crabs had been lured to it by its smell, but they too had succumbed to the cold, and lay around it in piles.

The tunnel was broad enough for five people to ride abreast, so ride they did, though the horses seemed jittery and ill liked the trail.

Reaver tracks were everywhere. The tramping of over seventy thousand of the monsters had worn a rut in the tunnel and cleared the floor of vegetation. Nothing grew upright, except an occasional column of fungi or a stray plant that lay splayed against the wall. And few vines or rootlike creepers swung from overhead to brush against them, for these too had snapped away as the reaver army marched beneath. The path led gently down, a trail that could easily be negotiated by horse or mule.

Averan rode in the lead. The girl had received endowments of scent from dogs, and by taking the lead, she hoped to detect the subtle odors of reaver speech, a tongue that only she could understand. The girl sniffled and wept softly as she rode. She had said a long and sad good-bye to one of her Dedicates, a big man named Brand, who had but one arm.

Iome rode close beside Gaborn. She was no warrior, though she had taken full as many endowments as any captain had in Gaborn’s guard. At the rear came Binnesman and the green woman. The tunnel led down into the heart of the mountains at a gradual slope, and rarely veered. When it did, Gaborn felt certain that it did so only to avoid enormous boulders or exceptionally hard stone.

Despite the ease of the early trail, the reaver’s tunnel was not free of damage. In places, bits of ceiling had caved in, leaving rocks and rubble on the tunnel floor. In another spot, the earth had cracked wide open. The fissure was but four feet wide but seemed to drop away endlessly below Iome as her mount jumped over.

Still, such was the skill of the reaver’s workmanship that the tunnel held, for the most part.

Reavers are used to earthquakes, Gaborn realized. They must know how to cope with them as well as we do with the wind and rain.

But other acts of nature could not be so easily avoided. In places water had seeped through the rocks above, and over the ages had formed stalagmites and stalactites. The reavers had cleared these away just four days past as they marched through the tunnel. But in some places water would spill down the walls, forming shallow streams and icy pools, and ultimately these would find some crevasse to seep into. Such crevasses widened over time, and cut away the floor.

After a dozen miles, the caves began to warm. The ice fans disappeared, and quite suddenly the cave was filled with a dense, cool fog.

The horses slowed to a walk, and despite the fact that Gaborn could not sense any immediate danger, his heart beat faster. Until now, the view had been clear before them, and Gaborn hadn’t feared that they would meet a reaver. At least, if they had met one, he’d have been able to see it. But now, the light thrown by his opal pin failed him, and he could hardly see his hand in front of his face.

The whole party was forced to dismount, and Gaborn walked for a bit in the fog, his skittish horse pulling at the reins with nearly each step.

He thought back to a conversation that he had had while Averan finished taking her endowments.

Gaborn’s Days had asked, “Your Highness, I beg you to take me with you. At least let me ride part of the way.”

Gaborn felt annoyed by the request from the historian. “You ask much of me, and never once have you given anything in return. You say that the Days are forbidden to become involved in political intrigues, that you are merely observers of the affairs of men, servants beholden to no one but the Time Lords. Yet I ask you one last time to become involved. Help me. Bid your Days around the world to warn the people: tell them to set sail north or south for the isles of the sea. If we do not defeat the reavers at Carris, there may be no other refuge.”

To Gaborn it seemed a small request, one that could easily be fulfilled. Each Days had given an endowment of wit to another, who then granted his own endowment in return, so that the two Days shared one joint memory.

The Days that stood before Gaborn acted as the “witness” for the “twins,” scrutinizing Gaborn’s every word and deed. His twin acted as a scribe, and lived a retired life on an island in the cold seas north of Orwynne, where she wrote the chronicles of Gaborn’s life.

Thus, with all of the scribes living together, they formed a vast network. In theory, the Days could do as Gaborn asked. They could warn every lord in every realm of the impending doom.

“This would violate our political neutrality,” the Days answered Gaborn.

“Not if you warn all men equally,” Gaborn said. “I don’t ask you to favor any one nation above another. Warn all men. Help me save any man who will save himself.”

For the first time in his life, Gaborn saw a Days flinch and seriously consider a request for help. By the Days’s own law, if a prince, though he be but a child, should fall into a pool and begin to drown, the Days was not allowed to offer a hand.

“You understand,” his Days answered after a moment, “that whether you want it or not, there would be political repercussions. Kings and queens would flee their own lands, or send their children into exile. Nations would tumble, populaces shift. Wars would erupt as men struggled for control of the islands in the north.”

“At least some would live,” Gaborn said. “At least in the northern wastes, they’d stand a chance against the reavers.”

Iome’s Days, a young girl who was new to the task, looked to Gaborn’s Days and said, “We should take the request to the council.”

“You would risk a schism!” Gaborn’s Days objected.

“And you would risk the fate of mankind!” Iome’s Days shouted back.

The two glared at each other, and Gaborn’s heart pounded. Never had he seen two Days argue.

Gaborn’s Days abruptly went to his horse and rode off in a fit of rage. Iome’s Days said to Gaborn, “Your Highness, I will do what I can to honor your request.”

“Thank you,” Gaborn said. He reached out and squeezed her hand.

The girl looked at Gaborn’s Days’s fleeing back and shook her head sadly. “Old ones like him, they forget what it is like to love, to have family and friends. Their only love is watching, and their only friends are their twins.”

“In this council of yours,” Gaborn asked, “will you stand much chance against others like him?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know. We serve the Time Lords. We keep the chronicles. But what will we chronicle if all men die? The advance of the reavers, the slow cooling of the sun, the end of all things? I think we have reached a time when we must take action, but if we do, we must all take it together.”

So Gaborn walked in the fog, and sought with his Earth Sight to pierce the gloom.

“The fog won’t last long,” Averan assured everyone. “There’s a larger passage ahead, a shaft going up, where hot air from the Underworld meets the cold air of the mountains.”