The Lair of Bones (11 page)

The green woman shook her head. “No.”

Gaborn looked to Averan for counsel.

“There could be guards posted ahead,” Averan said. “They might have buried themselves.”

You would never have any warning before they got you, Iome thought.

“I'll take the lead,” Gaborn said. With his Earth Sight, Gaborn was the only one who could travel this path with any degree of safety.

They rode on.

Iome's senses were alert. As she rode, she held her opals up and lit the cavern perhaps more brightly than it had ever been lit before. The walls glittered like frosting in shades of honey and ivory. Warm sulfur water trickled and dripped over every surface, and over the ages it had built up deposits of stone in grotesque shapes. Stalagmites squatted like gargoyles on the cave floor while tubular stalactites hung overhead, twisting in serpentine fashion. Along both sides of the path, shallow green pools lay with steam curling up from their surfaces. Myriad reaver tracks deeply imprinted the mud of every pool.

Plant life was sparse, but feather ferns hung from crevasses near the roof. Something large, the size of an eagle, flitted overhead and circled a stalactite.

“Gree hawk!” Binnesman shouted.

Gaborn reined his horse and pulled out his sword, eyeing the creature as it circled twice more. In some ways, it resembled an enormous bat. But it had a head like a reaver's—blind, broad, heavily toothed, with frills of philia sweeping off its jaw and in a ridge along the back.

To Iome, with her six endowments of metabolism, the gree hawk did not seem to present much of a threat, but to a commoner it would have seemed to be flitting about at lightning speed.

Iome asked, “Will it attack?”

“They mostly eat gree,” Binnesman said. “But if they are hungry, and if they are presented with an easy meal in the way of a lone traveler, they may attack.”

Gaborn eyed the gree hawk. It wheeled near the roof of the cave for a moment, then landed back in a dark corner, near some red feather ferns. The ferns all snaked back from the creature, withdrawing into recesses in
the wall so that in moments there was no sign of the ferns at all, merely the small holes into which they had fled.

Gaborn led the way. For three miles the trail followed the line of pools, and Iome saw a host of intersecting tunnels running here and there to unknown destinations.

Averan kept to the straight path, and soon there was a huge rumbling sound, an incessant thunder—water tumbling over rocks. Gaborn halted the group again, seemed leery of the path ahead. He sniffed the air.

Iome rose in her stirrups. She had no endowments of scent from dogs to aid her, and the only smell she could detect in the air was the sulfur water. Ahead, just around a bend, a waterfall seemed to be cascading over the stones. The water breaking on the rocks caused the whole cave to tremble.

Yet as Iome listened, she realized that something strange was happening. The rumbling was growing stronger.

“Flee!” Gaborn shouted. He began wheeling his mount around, and for a moment everyone struggled to keep up.

“Earthquake!” Iome warned, for she had felt that same rumbling two days past, when a quake humbled the Courts of Tide.

“No,” Gaborn shouted. “Reavers are coming!”

How many reavers would it take to make the earth grumble like this? Iome wondered. Yet she knew the answer. She had heard a similar thundering across the plains at Carris.

Iome and the green woman were at the back of the group. Iome wheeled her mount as best she could, raced back the way she had come, but Binnesman's mount surged ahead of hers.

What are we to do? she wondered. Our horses can outrun them, but to what end? The reavers will only chase us back up the tunnel.

Iome raced past one path that branched to the right, but when she reached a second that climbed a steep hill and then disappeared into another passageway, Gaborn shouted, “That way! To the left!”

Iome spurred her charger uphill. It would have been too steep for a normal mount, and even with endowments of brawn and metabolism her horse struggled up the incline, floundering once so that she thought that they would go tumbling back downhill. But the beast got its feet under it and surged up into the opening. A path opened ahead of Iome—stalagmites rose up all around like ogres. It was a forbidding landscape.

“Not this way!” Averan shouted when she reached the summit. “The Waymaker knew this path. It comes to a dead end a few miles up the trail!”

“Yes, this way!” Gaborn argued. His own mount had just lunged to the top of the hill. “Hide!”

Iome trusted Gaborn's Earth Sight more than she did Averan's memories.

“Where?” Averan asked.

“This way,” Gaborn shouted. “Follow me!”

He raced his mount a hundred yards, and then stopped, searching this way and that for a place to hide. “Up there!” he shouted. He pointed toward a narrow cleft between two stalactites near the roof.

“The horses will never fit through there!” Binnesman objected.

“Then we leave them,” Gaborn answered. He leapt off his mount and pulled out his dagger, then cut the girth straps to his saddle. In an instant the saddle and all of the packs were off.

Iome's mount had its ears back, and its eyes were wild. It snorted in terror at the sound of the reavers' trampling feet. Iome leapt off and removed her saddle, ropes, and pack. Her mount reared up, frantically pawing the air.

She could see no escape for the beast. There was no light here in the Underworld, and the horses would not be able to run in the dark.

As Iome wondered what to do, Binnesman dismounted, but left his saddle on the horse, cutting off only his packs and his coil of rope. Then he took his opal cape pin off and pinned it onto the saddle.

He laid a hand on the muzzle of the gray imperial warhorse, and said softly, “You have carried me as far as we can go, my friend. Now, seek greener fields.”

The stallion stared at him for a moment in curiosity, ears forward. Iome wondered if the animal understood the wizard, but this force horse had once been Raj Ahten's personal mount. The runes on it showed that it had four endowments of wit. Seldom were so many forcibles used on a mere horse. This mount learned almost as fast as a man would. Hopefully, it understood.

“Go, my friend,” Binnesman urged. “I have provided light for the journey.”

Around Iome, the ground rumbled continuously. It was as if giant stones were rolling through the cavern. The sound seemed sourceless. She almost
expected reavers to come charging up the cave at that instant, but somehow knew that they were far away. The noise wasn't loud because they were close, it was loud because they were many.

The wizard turned away from his horse. Gaborn was already scrambling up the rocks, with the green woman in tow. Iome followed last.

The horses took off, went thundering down the tunnel, racing back the way that they had come.

“Here, now,” Binnesman said to Iome. “Youfirst.” He hesitated as Iome stepped around him, between a pair of stalagmites that stood like grotesque guardians. There was no trail to their retreat. Iome had to look for hand-holds on her way up. The flowstone along the walls, though slick, offered many such opportunities.

She turned back to see what was keeping the wizard. He took some sprigs of parsley from his pocket and blessed them. He tossed them on the trail, then drew wards of protection on the ground with his staff.

Iome reached the sanctuary, squeezed in. Gaborn and the others were already inside. It was a small grotto, about forty feet long. Stalactites had dripped down over the ages, until at last they had joined with the stalagmites beneath, forming crude pillars. Several of these stood next to one another, becoming solid walls. The floor beneath showed that at times water had pooled in the small cavern, but now all was dry.

“The reavers will smell the horses,” Averan said. “They'll come to investigate.”

“But they won't smell us,” Binnesman assured her.

Iome had to wonder. Binnesman was the most powerful herbalist she had ever known. His spells could amplify the natural properties of plants, magnifying their effect. But could even the incomparable Binnesman hide the odor of half a dozen men and horses from the reavers?

Her heart pounded. She studied the narrow grotto. There was no exit. Sweat stood out on Gaborn's brow; his tongueflickedout and whetted his lips.

What does it mean, she wondered, when even the Earth King is afraid?

The ground began shaking so hard that bits of stone flaked off the roof. Mingled with the distant rumble now came a hissing, the sound that reavers make as they draw breath. It sounded almost as if the tunnel were a windpipe, and the Earth itself were gasping.

Gaborn threw down his saddle and stripped his pack, ropes, and saddle-bags off. He tossed them over his own shoulder, leaving the saddle. He stood up, and his eyes darted about nervously.

Iome and the others grabbed their own belongings.

“Get back,” Gaborn warned them. “Get to the back of the chamber.”

Averan was the first to go. Binnesman and the others followed. Gaborn held his reaver dart and stood at the mouth of the grotto, on guard.

Averan hung at the back of the cavern, listening. The rumbling grew. Tremors shook the floor, and dust rose all about. “They're coming fast,” she said. “They're coming too fast.”

“‘Too fast?'” Alarm coursed through Iome.

“This is it,” Averan said. “This is their entire horde, their army. This is the end of the world.”

“What do you mean, this is the horde?” Iome demanded.

“Now the
real
warriors are coming,” Averan said, “and all of them will come. They'll bring their most powerful battle mages, and… and—” She threw up her arms, unable to explain.

Iome suspected that even Averan couldn't guess what the reavers were capable of.

Three days. Gaborn had warned that there would be a great battle at Carris in three days. Iome calculated how fast the common reavers had run before, and realized that three days was about right. In three days the army that was marching from the Underworld would reach Carris.

Gaborn paced at the mouth of the grotto.

“What's wrong?” Iome demanded.

“The Earth… “Gaborn said. “The Earth warns me to flee, but I see no escape.”

“Maybe we should go after the horses,” Averan suggested.

“No,” Gaborn said. “This is the right path. I just—I just don't see the way out.”

Iome searched frantically. Everywhere, the white walls hung like drip-ping curtains of stone. Craters pocked the floor where pools had formed and then dried out ages ago. White ridges along each ledge showed where the waterline had been. Perfect blue-white cave pearls rested on the floor.

The water had to come from somewhere, Iome thought. She peered up. The roof above rose some twenty feet. Small stalactites hung overhead like
spears. The ground rattled under her feet now, and Iome licked her lips, afraid that a stalactite would break loose and fall, along with theflakesof stone that had begun tumbling from the roof.

Then she spotted it—a tiny shaft so small that a badger could not have crawled through. It was near the roof, at the back of the cave.

“Up here!” she said.

Iome dropped her pack and ropes and climbed up the wall. Her fingers and toes found purchase in tiny crevices and indentations that no commoner could ever have used. The flowstone offered ample opportunity for support. With her endowments of brawn and grace, she felt almost as if she were afly, climbing along the wall.

She reached the top. Her opal crown gleamed, and by its light she searched the hole. She couldn't see far back. She reached in. The hole nar-rowed, and became no wider than her arm. She grasped a knob of calcite, a cave pearl that had fused to thefloorof the small spring, and tried to wrench it free. With so many endowments of brawn she was able to break it off, but even as she did, her hand snapped up and hit the roof of the cave, banging it. Her knuckles bled profusely. It was no use. The calcite deposits were as hard as quartz. She'd never be able to dig fast enough to widen the opening.

“Here they come!” Gaborn shouted. “Everyone to the back!”

He herded the others to the rear of the grotto. Iome clung to the wall like afly, afraid to move. The wall shook beneath her grasp.

Silently, she prayed to the Earth Powers, “Hide us. Let them notfindus.”

Loud hissing rose outside the grotto.

“They've smelled us,” Averan said. “There's no other reason why they'd be coming up this branch of the cave.”

The acrid stench of horse sweat was everywhere. Even without endowments from a dozen dogs, Iome could smell it. She only hoped that Binnesman's spells could hide them.

The hope was short-lived.

In seconds a reaver reached the mouth of the grotto. The huge monster rushed up the cliff and wedged its head into the crevasse at the opening. The philia along its jaw line quivered as if in anticipation. Slime dripped from its fearsome jaws.

“He's found us!” Averan screamed. “He's shouting to the others, warning them.”

There was no sound from the reaver other than his hissing breath. His shouts were smells, odors so subtle that Iome could not distinguish them.

The opening was only six feet wide, too narrow for a full-grown reaver to enter—at least that is what Iome thought.

But the monster shoved its head into the crack, and twisted its body sideways. It heaved once, and there was a snapping noise.

On the reaver's head were three bony plates joined by cartilage. Now the reaver shoved its head into the crevice, and the plates snapped back, so that it could shove its muzzle into the hole. It twisted onto its side, and its torso followed.

Iome could smell the stink of its hot breath. A gree flew up from the beast, dislodged by its acrobatics, and flapped around the small grotto with a squeaking sound.

Gaborn leapt forward, stabbed the monster in the muzzle with his dart. Even with all his endowments of brawn, the blow hardly pierced the monster's thick flesh.