Authors: David Farland
The reavers still hissed, but the ground shook somewhat less.
“Let's get away from here,” he said.
“What did you do?” Averan asked.
“There is a simple spell for softening stone,” Binnesman explained. “That is how you make a roof collapse, or destroy a bridge. But it is similarly easy for an Earth Warden to harden the earth, to make dirt as flinty as stone, and stone as impenetrable as steel. I hope to keep those reavers busy digging for hours.”
“So, you locked the door behind us?” Gaborn asked.
“One can only hope,” Binnesman said.
Gaborn led the way, climbing over stalagmites and boxlike fungi, wading through tickle fern. He carried his reaver dart in one hand, and his pack and ropes slung over his back.
So they ran. Each of them had taken endowments of metabolism, which served them well. But of them all, Averan was still the slowest. Her nine-year-old legs were shorter than any others, and she had to take three steps for Gaborn's every two.
She struggled to keep up at first. But soon, it was Gaborn who slowed his party. Though his endowments would heal the blow he had taken to the ribs, he still wheezed in pain, even as they slowed.
The channel went down, always down. Often there were places worn away where there had once been wide pools. Most pools were dry, but in some basins a bit of water had collected. Averan could see scrabbersâa kind of blind lizard with winglike armsâthat seemed to fly beneath the water. She raced through such pools, splashing water everywhere, lest she get bitten.
In other places, the walls of the old river channel narrowed where water had rushed down, and thus the path was much clearer. There was little sign of animal life. Large green-gray cave slugs oozed about, feeding on the tickle fern, and these in turn provided sustenance for some small blind-crabs. But Averan saw nothing big in here, nothing dangerous.
We're still far from the deep places, she thought. Still far from the perilous realms.
This was a desert. Most Underworld plants drew sustenance from heat, and it was too cold for much to grow here. Thus, there were no large animals about.
Even after they had run for miles, the ground still trembled and thundered from the passage of reavers. It was growing distant now.
They reached a narrows where stalactites hung from the ceiling in
columns, and water dripped. Each person had to walk through the narrows in single file, and once they passed, Binnesman turned.
“Averan,” he said. “Let's see if you can draw that rune I was telling you about.”
He traced the rune on the stone with his finger, leaving a tiny scratch mark.
“Now,” he said, “draw the rune with the point of your staff. And as you do, imagine your own strength, your own power, and the power of your staff fusing with the stone.”
Averan recognized the rune. She'd seen it many times, carved into stone blocks on houses and on castle walls. For a commoner, to carve such a rune was meaningless, a charm that he hoped might protect him from danger. But for an Earth Warden to draw such a rune, it could be a powerful spell.
Yet Averan also knew that not all Earth Wardens had the same powers. Binnesman could peer into stones and see things at great distances. But Averan had no skill with the seer stones. Similarly, she was discovering that she had powers Binnesman had never heard of.
Obviously, the old wizard was pushing her, hoping to discover Averan's merits.
She closed her eyes. She drew the rune, almost by instinct, and sought to funnel all of her strength, all of her power into it, until she trembled from the effort.
Close for me, she whispered. Close for me.
She drew the rune, and then as if of its own volition, her staff drew three more squiggling lines within it.
And then Averan felt something strange. In an instant, it was as if all of her energy were inhaled.
Averan collapsed; everything went black.
When she woke, not much time seemed to have passed. Her head was spinning, and it felt as if someone had wrapped an iron band about it, and was pulling it tight. A deep pain ached, far back between her eyes. Gaborn stood over her, calling. “Averan! Averan, wake up!”
She looked around. Everyone was staring at her, or staring at the narrow wall. Binnesman stood before the pillars, studying them intensely.
“Are you all right?” Gaborn asked.
Averan tried to sit up, and felt weak as a mouse. Her arms seemed to be
made of butter, and her legs would not move at all. If she had run all day without stopping, she would not have felt more overworn.
“I'm all right,” she said, struggling to sit up. She reached a seated position and the pain between her eyes deepened. Dizziness assailed her. She sat for a moment, unable to think, unable to focus.
Slowly, the strength returned to her muscles.
“Very good,” Binnesman said. “Very good, though I am afraid that it was a bit much for you. Would you like to see your handiwork?”
He stepped aside and Averan gasped.
The crack between the pillars was gone. Instead, the rock looked as if it had turned to mud and smeared together, only to harden afterward. The surface of the gray stone itself glistened, as if it had been fired in a kiln.
“What did I do?” Averan asked.
Binnesman shook his head in wonder, then laughed. “Certain sorcerers among the duskins could shape stone to their will. By that power, the great rift in Heredon was formed, and the continents divided. It is the rarest of all of the powers of the deep Earth. I have not heard of a human who ever possessed such skills, but it seems that you have it in some small degree.”
Averan gaped at the stone wall in shock.
Binnesman tapped it with his staff, listening as if for an echo. “This should hold them for a good while. Indeed, I suspect that the reavers may abandon any hope of breaking through, and instead be forced to dig around it. Let's go.”
Averan made it to her feet. Everyone else ran ahead, but Binnesman stayed behind with Averan, keeping a watchful eye on her, as if afraid that she might fall again. She very nearly did, and if she had not had her staff to help her, she would have.
“When next we stop,” Binnesman said, “if you have the energy, we should practice this newfound skill of yours. But this time, we'll try shaping something smaller.”
“All right,” Averan said, though in truth she didn't feel as if she ever wanted to try it again.
After they had run only half a mile, the cave floor suddenly dropped away into oblivion.
The tunnel narrowed and the old watercourse dropped almost straight
down, varying only slightly as it twisted this way and that.
Gaborn peered down the hole. Its sides were covered with tickle fern and wormgrass. Averan could see perhaps a quarter mile down the tunnel. At that point, it seemed to twist away, but she could not be certain. The light was too dim to let her see farther. Averan looked into Gaborn's eyes, wondering if they should dare the shaft.
“The Earth warns us toflee,” Gaborn said. “And this is the only way out.”
Averan reached down and touched a tickle fern. Its fronds brushed her hands gently. She pulled at it, and the roots came away easily.
“Trying to climb the rocks with this stuff is dangerous,” she said. “It's as slippery as moss.”
“We can make it,” Gaborn said.
The packs lay all around, and Gaborn began pulling off the coils of rope and tying them together, while Iome tied one end of the rope to a nearby stalagmite.
“Let me have a look at those ribs,” Binnesman said to Gaborn.
“I'll be fine,” Gaborn objected. “They're almost healed.”
But Binnesman strode forward, unlaced Gaborn's armor, and pulled it off. Beneath his padding and tunic, Gaborn's ribs were a mess of blue and black bruises.
“They look worse than they feel,” Gaborn said.
“Good,” Binnesman said, “because if they felt as bad as they look, you'd be dead!” He placed his fingertips above the wound, never touching it. He frowned and muttered, “As I thought, four broken ribs. Even with all of your endowments, they won't heal fully for a day or so. But I don't under-stand how you got hit in the first place.”
“I trusted my eyes more than my heart,” Gaborn said. “I felt the warning to duck, but couldn't see the danger. Then the knight gig came through so fast.”
“Let that be a warning,” Binnesman said. “Do as the Earth commands. Forget about what your eyes can see, or what you think you know.”
Binnesman reached into his robes, pulled out some melilot, and blew it onto the wound. When he finished tending Gaborn's ribs, he picked up Gaborn's mail and leather padding. He considered for half a second, then hurled it into the pit, where the mail clanked and thudded as it bounced down into the darkness.
“What?” Gaborn asked.
“It will only be a hindrance on the climb down,” Binnesman said. “And we should find it on the bottom easily enough.”
Iome and Averan had just finished tying the ropes together. They all looked at one another, and at the pit.
“Who should gofirst?” Iome asked tensely.
Gaborn walked to the edge of the pit, tossed his reaver dart down the hole. It clanged once, and then he threw the packs over. Last of all, he threw over the end of the rope, and jumped. Averan drew a startled breath.
But Gaborn merely twisted catlike in the air, then grabbed the rope. With so many endowments of brawn and grace, he began to scamper down as quickly as a spider.
Binnesman raised an eyebrow in surprise. Apparently Gaborn's ribs were better than they appeared.
Averan went to the lip of the shaft and peered down. She gripped her poisonwood staff tightly. She wanted to carry it, but didn't dare try. The staff was precious, though as yet it was unadorned. She planned to carve runes of protection into it as soon as she could. The poisonwood had chosen her, and in some way she felt that the staff was a part of her. She was wondering what to do with it when Binnesmen threw his own staff down the shaft, so that it cleared Gaborn by a yard. Then he had his wylde do the same.
“Go ahead,” Binnesman told Averan. “The wood knows you. It will be waiting for you at the bottom.”
Averan let her staff fall gingerly, fearing that it might shatter against a stone wall.
In moments they began to make the perilous descent. Gaborn led the way, followed by the wylde, Binnesman, and Iome, with Averan coming last.
The climb proved difficult. For the first hundred yards, Averan merely clung to the rope and lowered herself hand by hand. But all too soon, the rope came to an end.
At this point, she had to abandon it forever, and a sense of dread engulfed her. Each of them had brought some stout rope, and none of them would ever be able to use it again.
“Come on,” Iome urged. She was just below Averan, grunting and
struggling for purchase as she made her way down. “If you start to fall, I'll catch yout”
Averan's heart raced. She felt powerful with her endowments of brawn, but still found it hard to find her first hand- and footholds. Rushing water had polished the rock over the years, leaving little purchase. The tickle ferns growing everywhere only added to the danger. She couldn't really look down very well to see where to place her hands and feet, and ended up having to climb down more by a sense of feel than by sight.
Worse than that, the ferns were not trustworthy. If she found a small handhold and was tempted to rely on the ferns, she discovered that the roots sometimes seemed to have dug in enough to give her purchase. But too often the ferns would rip under her weight without notice, and she would be left grasping blindly for something to cling to.
With her short legs and arms, she had a harder time reaching some handholds than the others did.
Binnesman noticed her predicament, and he let Iome climb down past him. He moved up so that he was below Averan. At times when things got scary, he would put a hand up to hold her foot, or offer her reassurance. “Don't worry,” he'd say. “There's a good handhold just below you.”
So Averan swallowed her terror and lowered herself, carefully placing each foot, each hand.
A quarter of a mile they descended below the rope, and a quarter more. The tunnel sometimes snaked this way and that, yet every time Averan dared to glance down, the tunnel plunged deeper into the abyss.
It was slow work.
She reached one spot and was about to lower herself another step when Gaborn called out, “Averan, stop. Move to your right, and try to find a way down.”
He was far below her and could not possibly have seen her danger. But he was the Earth King, and he felt it. She did as he said, and dozens of times during the course of the journey he warned others to take similar measures.
More than a mile they climbed, and still Averan could see no end. Her nerves were frayed, and she found herself trembling all over.
Still the ground rumbled distantly, like faraway thunder, at the passage of reavers.
She felt astonished that no one had fallen yet. Even with Gaborn's help and all of their endowments, it seemed an impossible feat.
Gaborn reached a rocky ledge, the first perch they had found, and called a rest. Averan inched down, met the others. Iome leaned with her back against the rock wall, grimacing with fear. Gaborn squatted next to her, heaving to catch his breath. Binnesman leaned away from the ledge, respectfully, but his wylde walked to the very end of it and peered down.
Their perch jutted out only three or four feet, then the shaft jogged back down. Under normal circumstances, Averan would have been terrified to stand so close to the ledge. But right now it felt like a little bit of paradise. She looked up the shaft, into the infinite blackness.
Once the reavers break through my rock wall, she thought, they will be on our trail in an instant.
Reavers were great climbers. With their huge grasping fore-claws and their four legs, they could scurry up and down stone slopes much faster than a human could. And the shaft from the old river channel was just wide enough to make this an easy climb for one of the monsters.