David Farland - The Lair of Bones

She dutifully kept her eyes on the road as the horses plodded step after weary step, and felt a most peculiar sensation. The stone bucklers loomed enormous in her mind. It was as if the very shadow of them weighed upon her consciousness. As she drew nearer, she could feel them, demanding her regard.

She had to will herself not to look. She had to force herself to focus on a rough stone road ahead, or the twisted roots of a dead bush, or plain rock casting an uneven shadow in the snow. Even when she did, her eyes sought to flit away, to land like sparrows upon those monoliths that formed the runewall.

The desire to look and be done with it burned her mind, left an acid taste in her mouth. She could close her eyes and feel the stone tablets looming above her. She could track them thus.

An awful certainty grew in her: to keep her eyes closed was better than to look.

Suddenly at her back she heard a loud thump, and the mount that she trailed pulled at its reins. Carefully keeping her eyes averted, she turned to glance back at the horse. Its eyes had gone wide, as if in shock, and it stared in frozen horror toward the monoliths.

Myrrima worried that the animal had picked a lamentable time to look up, but knew in her heart that it was no accident. Even this dull beast felt the forbidding presence of the wall.

If a horse can look upon it, I can too, Myrrima thought. And instantly her eyes darted toward the road ahead. She was just beneath the skyline now, not more than fifty yards away.

A vast archway spanned the road. Overhead, the skies were blue, but clouds on the far horizon lay opalescent beneath that dark arch, making it look for all the world like a blind eye.

An inscription above the arch was written in both Rofehavanish and Inkarran: Beyond This Point, Your Tribe is Barren.

She struggled now to avoid looking at the monolithic stones raised up like shields on either side of the arch. But she had let her gaze stray too far, and now it was taken hostage.

She saw vast round stones, like wheels or shields, on either side of the road. Her eyes went to the northernmost stone. Inscribed upon it was a trail, a groove in the rock, leading downward and inward, like a map. She recognized that it was a rune, a mesmerizing rune, and powerful. She tried to look away, but could not. Her eyes were forced to follow that groove along its tortured path, winding down, down. And as it wound, she felt the weight of ages slowly passing by, wheeling beneath her. Civilizations could rise within each turning of the wheel, and worlds could rot. Great cities formed, and in her mind’s eye, Myrrima saw them crumble. Their foundations sank and moldered among forgotten forests. Monuments to proud kings wore away. Their squalid children fought and sought shelter among the ruins. In time they began the process of building again. Still the wheel turned, and Myrrima was swept away among the dreams of proud lovers, the boasts of warriors, the wild utterances of poets and prophets, and still the wheel turned toward its devastating conclusion.

Her heart surged in panic, and her mouth went dry.

Looking at this will kill me, Myrrima thought feebly. She fought it, tried to close her eyes and twist away. A groan escaped her, but she stared on, her eyes following that twisted groove along its fearsome course—as towers rose and dreamers dreamed and proud lords made war under a hazy sun—until it all stopped.

Immediately an emotion surged through her, struck her with awful force.

You are nothing, a voice seemed to roar through her mind. All your deeds and dreams are futile. You strive for beauty and permanence, yet you are less than a worm on the road, waiting to be crushed beneath the wheels of time.

The conviction of this, the power of it, overwhelmed her. The visions elicited by the rune proved the argument. How dare one like her seek to enter Inkarra? She was loathsome. Better to turn the horse back now and run it madly over some cliff than to proceed.

Myrrima never thought about what she was doing. She merely groaned and reined in her mount, tried to turn it, and spurred its flanks with her heel. She sought escape.

Nothing that had ever happened to her was as cruel as the thought of facing that rune. Until now she had lived in relative peace, not knowing of its existence.

But now that she had seen it, she could never be free. Better to be nothing. Blind with panic, she did not see the cliffs below.

All the heavens had gone black, and she fled through a dark tunnel toward oblivion.

“No!” Borenson shouted. “No!”

Her husband came off his horse and grabbed her own mount by the reins. He was fighting the beast, trying to subdue it and the Inkarran’s horse at the same time. Myrrima could not see him, but felt his hands grab her wrists, pull the reins. She gouged her mount’s flanks. She was riding his big strong warhorse, and as the beast pawed the air, she felt certain that it would deliver a crushing blow to Borenson’s skull, as it had been trained to do. But Borenson had been its handler for years, and perhaps that alone saved his life.

He wrestled the horse down, shouting at Myrrima, “Don’t look! Don’t look at it!”

Myrrima was blind with panic, but suddenly she began to see as if through a haze.

Borenson peered up at her. His own eyes went to the runewall, and he gazed at the horror there. Fierce tears welled up, and he stared in defiance. “It’s a lie!” he raged at her. “I love you! I love you, Myrrima. Damn those bastards.”

He turned and led the horses onward. Each step seemed to fall painfully, as if his legs were slogging through molten iron.

Myrrima clenched her eyes shut and faced the wall. Her heart hammered.

I faced a Darkling Glory, she told herself. I bested a wight. I can fight this, too. Yet somehow, the vile runes terrified her more than other monsters ever could. She could do little to help Borenson but urge the horse forward with a kick of her heel.

Thus Borenson forged on against the repressive wards, dragging Myrrima someplace she could never have gone herself.

She felt the weight of the wards grow above her. Even with eyes clenched shut, she could see their loathsome shape now, stamped on the back of her brain as she bowed in submission. Your birth was a misfortune, a chance collision of wantonness with abandonment. You are no better than the secretions from which you were formed.

And farther away, as if from some hollow in the hills, Borenson roared in defiance, “Don’t believe it.”

And then she was beneath the arch. She could almost feel the weight of it as if it leaned upon her back, crushing her.

And then she was past it, and still she felt it behind her. Sobs wracked Myrrima now.

“I love you,” Borenson said calmly as he strode forward.

Myrrima would have lashed her horse and sped away into Inkarra but for the fact that Borenson kept it firmly in control.

With each step, the power of the wards faded. In a sense, she felt like a dreamer who has awakened from a nightmare. The dream was fading from her memory with each step of the horse, for the mind was not meant to feel such torment, and ultimately could not hold it for long.

Myrrima was half a mile beyond the wall, maybe more, by the time she was able to open her eyes and raise her head a bit. Borenson had taken the reins of all three mounts and led them over the pass and down toward Inkarra. His own mount bumped her leg to her right, the wizard’s mount to her left.

She gazed down the slopes. Ahead, a sea of mist rose above Inkarra. It was warmer on this side of the mountains, much warmer she realized, as if the wall did more than keep out unwanted northerners but also kept out the cold. The thin layer of snow vanished just down the hill, and shrubs here still rose up among the rocks, showing green leaves.