David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

Gaborn tried to climb to his knees as the mage’s curse swept downhill

Erin Connal rode behind Gaborn, choosing to guard him rather than help form the staggered pinwheel. Almost instantly she was glad that she had.

A reaver sped through the lines as a knight broke his lance against its side, then lumbered through the rust-colored mist toward Gaborn, an enormous behemoth swinging its head from side to side.

Erin shook the streaming sweat from her forehead, shouted a battle cry, and charged the beast. She raised her lance overhead and to the side, preparing for the thrust. She squinted against the haze, for it pained the eye, then leaned out from her saddle.

She thrust home her lance, just as the reaver spun its head back toward Gaborn. The tip penetrated the monster’s sweet triangle at a slant.

She felt the lance tip drive shallowly into the reaver’s crystalline skull. She suspected that she had the wrong angle, that the lance would merely catch in bone and shatter, but she hurled it anyway, hoping to shove the tip home with brute force.

The lance snagged on bone and snapped at the point.

Suddenly Erin was caught still thrusting the damned thing without any resistance. Off balance, she pitched from her horse and sprawled to the ground, just beneath the reaver.

It reared above, raised its greatsword protectively to fend off a charging knight.

“Flee!” Gaborn’s Voice spoke in Erin’s mind as she tried to gain her feet.

As if I couldn’t guess, she thought, knowing she was too late. The reaver hunched its massive head and lunged, its crystalline teeth gleaming like quartz.

A dark blur sped past her. Celinor’s lance pierced the monster’s sweet triangle and heaved into its brain as if it had been shot from a ballista.

In amazement, Erin realized he’d thrown the damned thing like a javelin!

The reaver collapsed at Erin’s feet.

Celinor galloped near, as if he’d planned to block the dying reaver from further attack with his own body. Then he whirled and drew his Crowthen battle-axe.

Erin ran for her own horse.

“One!” Celinor shouted, then pointed toward the Earth King. Gaborn had fallen from his mount.

Gaborn lay in the dust. Several knights leapt from their mounts to fight at his side; prepared to die if necessary. Celinor Anders rode near and stood guard over him, screaming and waving his battle-axe as if daring any reaver to come close.

As Gaborn struggled to get up, the thought streaked through his consciousness: I should Choose him.

Reavers surged down from Bone Hill like living monoliths, and the thought was driven off as Gaborn sent warnings to hundreds of warriors. In moments Erin Connal and others reached Celinor’s side.

The black wind struck, and it carried with it an unnamable stench—a smell similar to burnt cabbage, but that affected Gaborn profoundly. He felt suddenly as if his muscles had turned to jelly, and he experienced the most profound fatigue he’d ever imagined.

He dropped to the ground, as weak as if he’d just given an endowment of brawn. Everywhere around him, dozens of others did the same, even Queen Herin the Red.

A hundred yards back, Binnesman had stopped his mount. He struggled to sit up, slumped as if in pain. “Jureem!” he warned. “Get Gaborn away from here! Get the Earth King away! We’re too close.”

Jureem rode hard among the knights, leapt from his horse. The fat servant held a silk scarf over his nose to keep from breathing the stench. He grabbed Gaborn’s elbow and shouted, “Get up, milord! Let us flee!”

With muscles flaccid and mind swimming in pain, Gaborn struggled to fend off his own man, tried to push Jureem back. “Not yet. I can’t go! Help me!” he cried. “Help!”

Gaborn had to destroy the rune. It was still nearly half a mile off. He had destroyed Kriskaven Wall half a mile out. It was near the limit of his power—yet the cloying mists in the vale were so devastating that he dared not ride closer.

He fought to draw with his finger in the hot dirt, to trace a rune of Earth-breaking.

Jureem tried to grab his elbow, to pull him toward his horse. Jureem shouted to Celinor, “Hold our master’s mount! Help me get him in the saddle.”

“No!” Gaborn pleaded. “Leave me! Binnesman, help!”

He glanced back. As he did, Binnesman collapsed under, the influence of the fell mage’s spell, lay draped over his own horse. The mount must have sensed that its rider had fallen, and now spurted north, bearing its master out of battle.

To Gaborn’s astonishment some knights around him were less affected by the reaver mage’s spells. Some lancers still charged. Some men withstood the weakness. Perhaps I need more stamina? he wondered. Yet Queen Herin had fallen, and she had as much stamina as any other.

“Jureem,” Gaborn gasped as he struggled to trace his symbol precisely on the ground. He felt as if he were trying to write on fire itself. His finger was so weak, he could hardly stir the dust.

Jureem stopped struggling to pull him away. The servant gazed at Gaborn wide-eyed and distressed, as if being unable to help caused him physical pain.

Gaborn finished drawing his rune, studied for a moment to make certain that he’d made every curlicue properly, then he looked fiercely at the hill where the Seal of Desolation desecrated the Earth. The fell mage continued to labor atop it. Strange lights flashed behind the cocoon in shades of palest turquoise. Reavers were boiling up from the south side of the hill.

He gazed at the hill, and used the Earth Sight to look beneath it. There; far below the ground, he could sense a weakness—a place where tons and tons of stone grated together in a fault.

It would take only the merest breath to push it all toward ruin, to split the ground beneath the rune.

Gaborn focused on the object of his spell and shouted, “Be thou riven!”

He slammed the ground with his fist, and envisioned the soil beneath him heaving, splintering that foul rune and shattering its every wall.

The earth responded.

The ground heaved beneath him, and the knights who surround him all gaped, trying to stand as the earth shuddered.

Horses whinnied and floundered. Reavers stumbled. The earth roared like an animal.

The ground rolled in all directions. Knights shouted, and reavers atop their foul cocoon scuttled back in dismay, clinging to their webs.

Gaborn had not imagined what devastating power he would unleash. Knights toppled from their chargers, crying in terror.

But as Gaborn gazed at the Seal of Desolation, his hopes went dry. The ground beneath it trembled, the soil around bucked, but the Seal of Desolation held as if it were a bit of flotsam riding the waves of the sea.

Only powerful runes of binding could have held it. He studied the construct again with his Earth Sight as he had Kriskaven Wall, searching for weaknesses.

Indeed it was bound. Every knob and protuberance was encased in runes of binding—perversions that did not call upon the Powers so much as twist them against themselves. Gaborn was astonished to find that the reavers had so twisted their powers that they could use the Earth against him.

Even as Gaborn focused on the foul rune, men all around began shouting, “Look! Look there!”

Gaborn gazed toward Carris.

Reavers crawled over the plain before the fortress. They’d burrowed pits everywhere, but the earthquake had tossed rocks and reavers into the air, throwing monsters from their hidden lairs, or just burying them.

Disoriented, some reavers raced about on broken legs.

Above these monsters, Gaborn saw a tower fall, heard thousands of people cry out.

Sheer horror coursed through him as he saw that his tremor had not struck completely without effect. The walls of Carris, a mere half mile to the southeast, swayed like a willow frond. The white plaster on the walls fell off in sheets, and merlons went splashing into the lake.