David Farland - The Lair of Bones

“Is there something you want?” Erin asked.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” the Nut Woman said. “I’ve been thinking about you and King Anders. You’ve made no secret of the fact that you distrust him.” Erin did not deny it. “But I’ve been thinking. You know, a squirrel can always tell a bad acorn from a good, just by the smell. Did you know that?”

Erin shook her head no.

“They can,” the Nut Woman said, her eyes shining. “They can smell worm, and they can smell rot. They only bother to crack open the good nuts.”

“What does that have to do with King Anders?”

“Don’t you understand?” the Nut Woman asked. “The squirrels would know if he had rot inside. But you see how they love him, don’t you? They jump on his saddle; they climb in his pocket. They’re not like that with bad folk.”

Erin peered ahead. A squirrel was riding on Anders’s shoulder even now.

Erin studied the Nut Woman’s eyes. They were filled with adoration for the king. But Erin saw something else. The woman didn’t focus on anything. It was as if she peered beyond Erin, into some private vision.

“Yes,” Erin said. “I see your point.”

The Nut Woman smiled. “Good! Good. Most people don’t understand. Most can never understand.”

Erin forced a smile. Celinor had suspected that his father was mad; and King Anders accused Erin of being crazed. At the moment, Erin felt certain of only one thing: the Nut Woman was madder than them all.

As the day wore on, they passed far south of the Great Rift and through tortured lands into the sweet fields of Beldinook where the grass grew tall and green, even in autumn. Nestled among valleys and low hills, castles and cities sprang up everywhere. Beldinook was the second largest kingdom in all Rofehavan, with nearly twelve million souls.

Erin clenched the reins of her mount as she rode through. She was a horse-sister of Fleeds, after all, and the folk of Beldinook were ancient enemies. Each time they neared a castle, she expected a mob of cavalry to issue from the gates and put up a fight.

But King Anders rode through without hindrance. Indeed, he had been expected, and several times through the morning, dukes and barons issued out of the castle gates only to swell his ranks.

Gaborn’s call for aid had gone through every kingdom, and had been heard even here in Beldinook, and as each lord joined with King Anders, they would laugh and bark out some variation of, “So, Your Highness, what think you? Do we ride to save Carris, or to watch the reavers feed on our enemies?”

And each time the question was put, King Anders would frown at the men, and with the patience of a father with an errant child ask, “How could you think to laugh at the plight of another? We go to save Carris, and in so doing, save ourselves.”

Often then, he would raise his left hand and Choose the lord to aid him in his fight, and ever again Erin was forced to wonder: is Anders truly an Earth King, or does the Darkling Glory’s locus sway him?

The travel went more slowly than Erin would have liked through the middle of Mystarria. Villages and cities clustered along the fertile banks of the River Rowan. The farms were the lushest that Erin had ever seen, and people choked the roads. With winter coming on, the villeins were herding pigs and cattle and sheep into town to be butchered. Indeed, Slaterfest was celebrated on the fifteenth of Leaves in these parts, only a ten-day from now, and at the fest the folk would celebrate the slaughter by eating huge amounts of sausages and hams, lamb ribs and sweetened meats, along with turnips and licorice root fried to a crisp in butter, and tarts and puddings and cakes, all washed down with dark Beldinook beer so rich that you could smell it in the sweat of your armpits for a week after you drank.

Erin rode close to King Anders and his son all morning. Anders spoke of little. His mind was on the road ahead, and often he would peer south with a worried brow and mutter beneath his breath, “We must hurry.”

Celinor tried to cheer him, and often he would lead the troops in song, as if in hopes of raising their spirits.

When they reached the River Langorn with its broad banks, the road ahead jogged far out of their way. To travel by road would have wasted hours, and some of King Anders men swore that it would be faster to swim the horses across. But to do so would force the knights to abandon their own armor along with that of the horses.

King Anders settled the argument by shouting, “Behold the Power of the Earth!”

He raised his sword as if it were a staff and pointed it to the heavens. He raised a cry and began to chant, but a great wind arose, circling the troops, screaming with a voice like dying eagles, swirling down from the sun. Whatever words he spoke were carried off by the wind.

Then he pointed his sword at a nearby knoll and the wind struck, blasting it into dust. Dirt and stone flew up like a sheet, hundreds of feet into the air, raising a plume of soot in the sky. It was as if a great hand had taken hold of the hill and begun to stretch it, pulling it from its place. Lightning flew out of the ground and split the heavens, and the fields rattled beneath the impact of the wind. The horses snorted and shied away in a panic, and for a long minute Erin only fought with her mount, trying to keep it from fleeing.

Then the dirt and stones rained down into the River Langorn, making a broad road, like a crude peninsula.

“Hurry now to Carris!” King Anders shouted. “There is no time to waste!”

He spurred his horse down to the river and galloped across. His army followed after. The earthen dam was a crude thing, and as Erin’s horse raced over it, its hooves sank in the loose clay and gravel. The soil rose only a few feet above the waterline. The dam would not hold for long. The river was slow moving and languid in the fall, but the water would soon back up. As pressure built, it would wash over the dam and send it downstream.

Still, King Anders’s troops made it across on dry land, and his men began to cheer wildly, “All hail the Earth King! All hail Anders!”

The rest of the day, Erin rode as if in a dream. Whether it was from shock at what she’d seen or from a lack of sleep, she wasn’t sure.

When the army halted for a short meal, Celinor rode up to meet her. “What do you think now?” he asked with the glazed eyes of a fanatic. “What do you think of my father now?”

“I do not doubt that he holds some great Power,” she admitted. “But what is its source? Did the Earth indeed grant him his gift, or does it come from elsewhere?”

“What do you mean?” Celinor asked. “Of course it comes from the Earth.”

“I did not see the Earth moving so much as I saw the wind blowing,” Erin told him.

“You’ll never believe,” Celinor countered. “Will you? No matter that you see with your own eyes, or hear with your own ears, you’ll never believe.”

He sounded like a little boy convinced that he has the greatest father in the world, when along comes a doubter.

“I believe that you love him,” Erin said.

He walked off angrily.

Erin tried to find sleep as she rode, hoping to speak with the owl again in her dreams. But the road remained slick and treacherous, and she could not rest easy. Like the wind and the lightning, sleep abandoned her, left her feeling betrayed.

All too soon she found herself south of Beldinook, riding into Mystarria as darkness fell. The stars overhead burned brightly as they passed through the hills and meadows. The locusts serenaded the troops, buzzing in the scrub oak, while the crickets sang in harmony.

The ride seemed surreal. Erin felt as if she were riding home from a relaxing hunt rather than riding to face the end of the world.