David Farland - Wizardborn

“I created the wylde to fight the Earth’s battles, but I have not had time to finish her, to train her. There will be no time. I can see that now. Though I cannot unbind her, we’ll take her with us. I’m sure she’ll be of use.”

“What are you talking about?” Averan asked. She was afraid that he would take her into the Underworld at that very moment, just lead her down into some cavern.

Suddenly the ground began to tremble and rock beneath Averan. There was a hissing from the forest, and Averan imagined that some world worm was about to rise, like the one she’d seen at Carris.

But no, it was only an earthquake.

She looked at Binnesman for comfort, but the wizard stood up and pointed to the sky. Eight stars fell in rapid succession.

“What’s wrong?” Averan asked. “What’s happening?”

He jutted his chin down toward the grasslands, toward Mangan’s Rock. Averan gaped in surprise.

The watch fires around the rock all suddenly blazed. They were coming together in a huge crescent.

Gaborn’s men were setting fire to the plains!

“Come now,” Binnesman said. “We’ll get no more rest. Let us join the battle.”

As Binnesman’s mount galloped down from the hills and over the grasslands, Averan watched the flames shoot higher, filling her vision.

Gaborn had sent horsemen charging over the fields, spreading logs from watch fires upwind from Mangan’s Rock.

Now the flames leapt skyward, the fire spreading. They roared palpably, and rose a hundred yards in the air. Firelight smote against clouds of smoke, making them glow a ruddy orange, and through those glowing clouds Averan could glimpse the reavers on Mangan’s Rock, beginning to pace, their philia waving frantically.

What is he doing? Averan wondered. The fire could never climb the rock. The sides were too steep, too high. The few vines and grasses along the slopes would not catch.

But the reavers might well have sealed their own doom. They’d pushed the vast old oaks from the top of the rock, hurled them over its sides. The dry bark of the trees would burn, sending up clouds of smoke.

Did Gaborn hope to suffocate the reavers?

The very idea somehow terrified her.

She had smelled the world as a reaver, knew something of the beasts’ darkest fears. The smell of smoke loomed huge among those fears.

More than that, Fire itself scared her. It was the enemy of Earth, the antagonist to her Power.

“Can you feel that?” she shouted at Binnesman.

“What do you feel?” he demanded.

“The Fire. It’s aware of us. It’s angry that Gaborn seeks to use it against itself.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Binnesman said. “Fire consumes. Its appetite overwhelms its intellect. It destroys, and will spread devastation when it can. It cares nothing for life, either human or reaver. But that is also its weakness. Remember that. Fire will consume everything around it, until it burns itself out.”

She’d never sensed Fire as a power, at least not as strongly as she did now. Her growing Earth senses made her aware of the rising danger. “What’s he doing?” Averan cried, even when they were two miles away.

She could see men outside the line of flames, knights mounted on chargers, bearing down with lances. The firelight gleamed on burnished mail.

A scarlet sorceress suddenly came thundering out of the wall of fire, her runes glowing fiercely, her staff held in a great foreclaw. Smoke roiled around her, came rushing with her.

She strode out of the fumes and blaze, and brought her staff to bear as knights charged her from three directions.

One fellow lanced her side, and she spun to meet him, hissing furiously. Suddenly other sorceresses came loping out of the inferno in her wake. Clouds of noxious fumes hovered around them.

“They’re coming from underground!” Binnesman shouted.

Averan saw it now. The reavers had been digging under the men, hoping to ambush them from beneath. Gaborn must have discovered it, broken into their tunnel. So he had lit the fires, thus filling their caverns with smoke.

The reavers burst up from a single chasm, just beyond the wall of flames, and made straight for Gaborn’s warriors.

Binnesman wrapped his arms tight around Averan’s waist, spurred his charger on.

As they drew near, she saw that not all of Gaborn’s troops rode. Hundreds of men now manned smaller blazes at the edge of the creek. They stood there over the logs, cooking huge slabs of meat.

In rising horror she realized what they were doing: they had cut the philia from the bungholes of dead reavers, and were throwing them onto the burning logs.

Even now she could smell the garlicky scent of them cooking, a stench that sent words shrieking in her mind. “Death, beware! Death! Death!”

She glanced back toward Mangan’s Rock. The wall of flames blew quickly to the east, had just begun to engulf the base of the cliff. It struck the wood and dry leaves, sent a tower of flame soaring up three hundred feet along the sheer walls.

She had no sooner realized what Gaborn was up to than it started: the reavers panicked.

All along the top of Mangan’s Rock, they scurried to escape.

A moving mass of monsters stampeded to the south, heading for the lowest cliffs, and began to rush down.

Reavers slipped from the top, pushed by their fellows behind. Black crablike monsters flailed their arms and legs as they fell.

Some of the plunging reavers slammed into their fellows below, knocking them from the cliffs. Rocks crumbled beneath their mighty claws. Some of the reavers’ carapaces shattered as they met stones below. Others flailed about on broken legs.

Another tremor struck, and Averan wondered if Gaborn had suddenly regained his powers. Was he making the earth shake?

An entire escarpment collapsed, and the resulting avalanche hurled two thousand reavers into a pile. Those on the bottom died, while those on the top scurried off. Walls of flame shot up along the eastern slope of Mangan’s Rock, sending clouds of smoke billowing.

And all through it, Averan could hear the death screams of the reavers in her mind. The scent of the burning philia nearly overwhelmed her.

Binnesman rode to Gaborn, who sat on his mount. Gaborn stared at the destruction with eyes that gleamed from reflecting fires. His charger stamped its feet nervously.

“Isn’t it beautiful!” he shouted. “The reavers were bluffing, like Averan said. They couldn’t build another Rune of Desolation. They only hoped that we would spend ourselves trying to dislodge them.

“Once I figured that out, and thought of setting fire to the plains, the rest was easy. Not a man will die!

“Knowledge!” he shouted. “Knowledge is better than a fine warhammer!”

Reavers threw themselves from the rock. Instead of merely climbing down, some dared to try leaping a hundred yards to safety, only to shatter legs under the impact.

From out of the smoking tunnel, the last few scarlet sorceresses and blade-bearers fled.

Averan had given Gaborn the weapons he needed to dislodge the reavers. A sense of horror welled up in her. She had not meant to cause such mindless slaughter.

A sound like rising thunder rose on the plains south. The surviving reavers formed into columns and began to retreat. The earth trembled at the sound of the stampede.

Gaborn glanced at her and jutted his chin toward the cliffs. “Let’s go see if we can find the Waymaker.”