David Farland - The Lair of Bones

Brand smiled broadly and said in a husky voice, “I’m so happy....” He clasped her around the neck and just held her for a moment.

Then he pulled back, and his face became all business again. “So, you’re going into the Underworld, are you?” Averan nodded. Brand seemed to be studying her. He continued, “I’d come with you, if I could. But I’m afraid that with naught but one arm, I’d be of no use. Sure, I can carry a pack full of food as well as the next man, but...”

“It’s all right,” Averan said.

“The thing is,” Brand said, “there are other ways that I can help. I’m a strong man, Averan, always have been. I want you to have my strength.”

Averan swallowed hard and blinked back a tear. “You want to be my Dedicate?”

“Not just me,” Brand said. He nodded toward some of the local woodsmen sitting in the cave. “Lots of us would give anything to help— anything. We might not be worthy to march beside folks like you and Gaborn as Runelords, but we will do what we can. The king’s facilitators has brought hundreds of forcibles!”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Averan said. “What if you died, trying to give me your strength?”

“I think that I would die of a broken heart if you didn’t take it, and that would be worse....”

“I couldn’t bear it,” Averan said. “I couldn’t bear the thought of finding you now just to lose you again.”

“If you won’t take an endowment from me,” Brand warned, “I’ll give it to someone else.”

Averan wanted to argue, but at that moment a facilitator hurried from the back of the cave. “Averan,” he called. He wore black pants and a black half cloak, with the silver chains of his office upon his neck. As she got up, Averan looked down sadly at Brand, and stumbled through the crowd. She followed the facilitator’s billowing black robes into the recesses of the cave. He said, “His Highness has sought a great many endowments for you, child. Twenty endowments of scent from dogs we found, and twenty of stamina, eight each of grace and brawn, twelve of metabolism, ten each of sight and hearing, five of touch.”

Averan’s head spun at the news, at the sacrifices others would have to make. She’d leave dozens of people blind, mute, or otherwise deprived of vital powers.

Perhaps as horrific would be the changes that the endowments wrought upon her. With twelve endowments of metabolism, she’d be able to move faster than others, to run fifty miles in an hour, though to her it would only seem that time had slowed. Each day she would age nearly two weeks. Each year, her body would be more than a dozen years older. In a decade, she would be an old, old woman, if she lived at all.

He led Averan to a corner back in the cave where a dozen potential Dedicates squatted. The facilitator had seven forcibles—small branding irons made of blood metal—laid out on a satin pillow. His apprentices already had a girl on her back and were coaxing the sight from her. She seemed a small thing, not much older than Averan. She had kinky blond hair, a thin face. Beads of sweat were breaking on her brow. One apprentice sang in a piping voice and held the forcible to her arm while the other whispered words of encouragement. “Here she comes now,” the facilitator’s apprentice whispered in an urgent voice, “the hope of mankind, she who must guide our lord through the Underworld, through the dark places. It is your sight that will let her see, your sacrifice that will give us hope of success.”

Hope of success? Averan wondered. The task ahead seemed daunting. The paths through the Underworld were as tangled as a massive ball of yarn. And what could she do when she reached her destination? Kill the lord of the Underworld?

I’m not ready for this, Averan thought desperately.

But the facilitator’s apprentice kept it up, this litany, and the girl stared at Averan with pleading eyes. “Save me,” she mouthed to Averan. “Save us all.”

I’m the last thing she will ever see, Averan realized. And with her gift, my eyes will pierce the deep shadows. I shall be able to count the veins in the wings of a moth at a dozen paces.

Averan went forward timidly, and took the girl’s hand. “Thank you,” Averan said. “I’ll do...everything that I can.”

At that, the forcible blazed white hot, and the girl screamed in pain. Her pupils seemed to shrivel like prunes and go white before her eyes rolled back in her head. The girl fell backward, dazed with pain, and the facilitator’s apprentice pulled the forcible away. A white puckering scar showed the rune for sight branded on her arm.

The facilitator’s apprentice waved the glowing tip of the forcible in the air experimentally. It left a white trail, like living fire, snaking in its wake. Yet the trail remained hanging in the air long after the forcible had passed. He studied the glow, the width and breadth of it, and then looked to the master facilitator for approval.

“Well done,” the facilitator said. “Continue.”

The apprentice reached down to Averan and slid the sleeve of her robe up, revealing the scars from endowments taken in the past. With all of her former Dedicates dead, the scars had all gone gray.

The facilitator’s apprentice once again began his birdlike singing and pressed the forcible to Averan’s flesh. The glowing white trail broke off at the Dedicate’s arm, and flowed into Averan. As it did, the blood metal flared white, and then dissolved into dust.

Averan felt the indescribable ecstasy that comes from taking an endowment, and as the endowments of sight flowed into her, it seemed as if the dingy cave exploded into brightness.

After that nothing would ever look the same again.

A whooshing sound swept through the Mouth of the World, like the sound of wings, and the huge bonfire snuffed out. Iome glanced up. The Wizard Binnesman stood where the bonfire had been. He had just made a fold of ground rise up and surge like a wave to smother the flames.

Now he held his staff up, and a swarm of fireflies circled it, so that he stood in a haze of green light. Earth blood flowed in his veins, so that he had a green cast to his skin, and even the autumn colors of his robes held some of that hue, so that in this light he looked strange and unearthly. Iome imagined that he glowed like a Bright One, straight from old stories of the netherworld.

“Gentlemen, ladies, may I have your ears?” Binnesman asked loudly. “The time is at hand that we must prepare for battle. Let nothing that you hear this morning be spoken by daylight or before an open fire, for some pyromancers can overhear your words in the sizzle and pop of the flames.”

With that, he glanced at Gaborn for a moment. “Your Highness...” Binnesman said.

Iome felt a thrill of anticipation. She had been waiting all night to hear Gaborn’s plans. Yesterday she had begged to accompany Gaborn to the Underworld, and he had made no promises, only said, “I will think upon it.”

A hush fell over the crowd. Everyone drew close. Someone called out, “We’re with you, milord!” Shouts and war cries rose from all about.

Gaborn raised his hands and begged the men for silence.

“Over the past day,” he began, “many of you have asked to come with me to the Underworld: High Marshal Chondler,” he nodded with deference to Chondler, “Sir Langley of Orwynne, Sir Ryan McKim of Fleeds.” He hesitated as he gave appreciative looks to each of these warriors. “And your great hearts are borne out by greater deeds. Each of you is more than worthy to follow me. But my mind has been much occupied on thoughts of how I can save my people, and I have had to make some hard choices....”