David Farland - The Lair of Bones

He ran on for hours, until his healing powers closed his wounds.

Who am I fighting? he wondered. What am I fighting?

Back in Heredon, two weeks ago, he had imagined that Raj Ahten was his nemesis. But the Wizard Binnesman had warned that Raj Ahten was only a phantom, a mask that a greater enemy hid behind.

He’d imagined then that Binnesman was speaking of Fire, was trying to tell him that one of the greater Powers fought him. And then Iome had warned that a wizard of the Air had attacked her, and he imagined that two of the greater Powers were allied in battle.

But something that Gaborn had just seen made him wonder even at that. The reavers’ spells showed that they were twisting the Earth Powers. At Carris they had caused wounds to fester, and sent blindness upon men. They had hurled black mists that shredded a man’s flesh.

They had wrung the water from men. Water?

It wasn’t just Fire and Air that allied against him. Even the forces of healing and protection had been subverted. Even the Earth that he served seemed to have turned against him.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

A creature called the Raven had tried to wrest control of them once before, long ago, in a time of legend.

What was it that Binnesman had said in his garden, when the Earth Spirit first appeared to Gaborn? Other Powers would grow. But “the Earth would diminish.”

Gaborn wondered. The Earth had withdrawn from him, left him bereft of his ability to warn his Chosen people of danger. But had the Earth withdrawn because of Gaborn’s own moment of weakness or because of its own?

Gaborn ran on, and on, until his Earth Senses warned that death was approaching his people in Heredon.

Night was falling aboveground.

It had been a day and a half in common time since he’d entered the Mouth of the World. But there was no measuring time anymore. It had been less than two weeks in common time since Raj Ahten launched his attack on Heredon. It had been ten days since Gaborn had become the Earth King.

But with his endowments of metabolism, time stretched out of all proportion. Days seemed to draw out into weeks, weeks into months.

He ran through a tunnel where tiny crystalline cave spiders, so perfectly clear that they seemed to be cut from quartz, hung from thick silken strings. He had seen such spiders before in Heredon, but then they had climbed up their webs so quickly that they had seemed to be droplets of water, dribbling upward.

Now they were frozen motionless. The whole world seemed to be frozen, and all eternity was but a moment.

He reached a place where tunnel floors were flooded to a depth of several feet. He picked up his pace, raced over the water. Each time the sole of either foot touched the surface, it would begin to sink as if in soft mud. But he raced on, letting the surface tension buoy him.

He didn’t know how many endowments of metabolism he had anymore. At least forty. He had heard that it took that many before a man could run on the water. But he could have had a hundred endowments.

He had no way to measure time except by the slap of his feet over stone, and the pounding of his heart.

There is a limit to the number of endowments of metabolism a man can take. Common wisdom said that one should never take more than a dozen, for when he reaches that point, certain subtle dangers arise. All of the runes by which facilitators transferred attributes were imperfect. The rune for metabolism made the muscles move swiftly, made the brain think clearly, but it often did not make all of the organs work with the same efficiency.

Thus, one who took vast endowments of metabolism and held them for long often became jaundiced and sickly, and within weeks would fall to his death. Adding two endowments of stamina for each endowment of metabolism could ease the problem. But rarely could a lord afford so many forcibles, and so a man who took great endowments of metabolism in a time of need was like a star that blazes brightly as it fades.

Gaborn wondered if the facilitators would kill him with their forcibles.

He did not stop to rest, did not sleep. With almost every step, he felt stronger.

There is a limit to what endowments can do. Once a man takes five endowments of wit, he forgets virtually nothing. At twenty endowments, every heartbeat, every blink of the eye, becomes etched in memory, and there is little benefit to taking more endowments beyond that point.

The same is true with brawn. A warrior who takes ten endowments of brawn might lift a horse, and Gaborn had seen more than one drunken knight attempt the feat. But adding more endowments does nothing to strengthen the bones, and so the warrior soon reaches practical limits. True, he might lift a horse, but in doing so he stood in grave danger of snapping the bones in his back or ankles.

A warrior who takes five endowments of stamina also reaches a limit: the point where he needs no sleep. It is true that he might grow fatigued, but a moment of rest is as refreshing as a night in bed.

Gaborn had never wanted to be like Raj Ahten, to horde endowments that benefited him little.

Yet as Gaborn ran, he could feel himself being added upon. He felt as if he had grown beyond all natural limits. He could not even guess how many endowments he had. A hundred of brawn? Even when straining to leap a sixty-foot chasm, he moved effortlessly. A thousand of stamina? He felt no weariness. It soon felt as if vigor and wholeness oozed from every pore.

And with each few steps, as the facilitators in Heredon vectored him more endowments, the vigor grew.

He felt as if he were a fruit ripening in the sun, ready to burst its skin from its own copiousness. He felt as if he were only dreaming of the race through the Underworld, as if he’d left his body far behind, and now glided on wings of thought.

Raj Ahten must feel this way, he thought. I could run across a cloud.

He raced through the cavern, crossed the water. Ahead, a squat brown creature, like a giant slug, oozed along the cavern floor—a mordant, digesting everything that it touched. The floors of the tunnel were riddled with holes now, the burrows of blind-crabs and other small animals.

Gaborn halted to drink from a warm pool. The water could not slake his thirst. And though he gathered some gray fungi to eat, it could do little more than ease the knot in his empty stomach.

He felt a death as one of his Chosen was torn from him. In Heredon the killing had begun. Gaborn stretched out with his Earth Sight. He felt his own death lurking in the dark corridors ahead, even as he felt death rushing toward his Chosen people in Heredon. Even with the warnings he’d sent, tens of thousands would die tonight.

He halted for a moment to gnaw on some gray man’s ear and mourn his people. He felt that tonight was but a portent of worse things to come.

Aboveground and more than a thousand miles to the north, in Heredon a storm swept the land. Thick clouds, dark on the bottom but green at their peaks, rose like a wall. Lightning flashed at their crowns as a keening wind thrashed the fields.

“Inside!” Chemoise’s uncle Eber shouted to the villagers of Ableton. “Everyone, hide, quickly! This is what the Earth King warned us against!”

Many a young lad would have argued and stayed gazing out the door, just to prove his bravery, but they had heard rumors of the goings-on at Castle Sylvarresta and knew that to ignore the Earth King’s warning could have only one result: death.

“Get inside,” Eber urged. “Whatever it is that’s coming this way, it will kill you.”

“Aye,” a dozen other men all grumbled. “It’s the king’s will.”

So Eber closed the door and brought down the bolt. Old Able Farmworthy surprised everyone by pulling out a leather bag full of soil from his fields and sprinkling it on the ground in front of the door, forming a rune of protection. Afterward, he poured a libation of wine over it. He warned, “Don’t anyone disturb this dust.”