The Lair of Bones (40 page)

Blood spattered across Borenson's face as King Criomethes went down, a fine Inkarran sword blade cleaving down through his neck, into his rib cage.

The facilitator staggered back, and the old woman with her bamboo cane cried out and tried to duck, but the shadow whirled, yanking the blade free from Criomethes's dead body. The shining blade sliced off the old woman's head and hit the facilitator in the throat, slashing his wind-pipe. He fell back against the wall, blood pumping wildly.

Suddenly, in a rush, the will returned to Borenson. He pushed himself from bed, sitting up.

Myrrima stood before him, wrapped in her robes, her hood thrown up to make her one with the darkness.

“Come on,” she said. “We're getting out of here!”

A moment ago, Borenson had felt empty, almost complacent. Now it
seemed that some emotion had to fill that void, and the thing that he felt was rage.

Criomethes lay on the floor, struggling to pull himself up by grasping a chair with one hand. Borenson knew that the man was dead, that his body now only moved by impulse. Yet Borenson struggled against the urge to vent his rage. He watched the dying king as if through a red haze.

He grabbed Criomethes by the hair and lifted him up, raised a fist and would have struck him between the eyes hard enough to crush the man's skull.

But Myrrima touched Borenson's raised arm with one finger, and whispered, “Peace be with you.”

It was more than a greeting, it was a powerful spell. Peace washed over him as if it were a flood, and all of the anger subsided.

He had only felt something similar once—at the pool south of Bannisferre, where an undine had kissed him and washed the guilt from his tortured mind.

He dropped the old king, embarrassed by his fury, by his lack of self-control.

A million questions came rushing at once. Where are my boots? Where is my warhammer? How did you escape?

Yet he held them all in, and for a moment just stared down at his leg. The skin burned from the tattoo. The old facilitator had begun at the sole of his foot and worked upward, creating an image of roots on a tree. It was as if Borenson wore a purple sock now, one that covered his foot up to his ankle. But there on his calf lay a rune that he had never seen before, the symbol for will. To Borenson it looked something like the head of a bull, all wrapped within a circle. There were squiggly lines above it that almost seemed to form a word or a thought in his mind. Runes often affected one that way.

Borenson peered about nervously, worried that Inkarran warriors would come storming into the chamber at any moment. Myrrima rushed across the room, stared down some dark corridor.

“Where's Prince Verazeth?” she whispered.

“I don't know,” Borenson said. “I haven't seen him in hours.”

She growled angrily and stalked back to Borenson. “We've got to get out of here!” Myrrima said. “If the Inkarrans find out what we've learned the shape of the Rune of Will, we're dead.”

“Do you even know the way out?” Borenson asked, “This place is a maze.”

Myrrima froze. She had no idea how to get out of the city, much less the country.

In the darkness, Borenson heard a grunt as someone cleared his throat. Then a voice spoke up in mild Inkarran accent. “Perhaps I can help.”

Borenson whirled, ready to fight. In the darkness, against the wall, sat a man in dark robes. He had been so still that neither of them had seen him in the dark. He pulled back a deep hood to reveal skin as pale as milk and eyes that glowed red in the darkness from lack of pigment.

Borenson was about to launch himself at the man when he realized that he was a Days.

No, not just
a
Days, King Criomethes's Days, he realized.

“And why would you help us?” Borenson asked. For the Days had been politically neutral from time immemorial. They took no side in any dispute.

“Because the fate of the world sits upon a precipice,” the Days answered. “For two days now, my people have argued whether to intervene. I have made up my mind, and the Council has made up theirs. They will not intervene.” As if to announce his decision, he stood up and pulled off his brown scholar's robes. He was a tall man, with broad, powerful shoulders. Beneath his robes he wore a plain white tunic, and an Inkarran breastplate. A long Inkarran dirk rode in a sheath on his thigh. “It's time for any man who hopes to call himself a man to go to fight at Carris.”

“Carris?” Myrrima asked.

“The Earth King has asked every man who can bear a weapon to ride to Carris to fight the reavers,” the Days said. “If we're to make it, we must do so by sundown. I can get you out of Inkarra, but my kind are forbidden to enter Mystarria. Once we cross the border, my life will be in your hands.”

“Fight the reavers?” Myrrima asked. “Last I saw, Gaborn had the horde on the run.”

“No,” the Inkarran said, “not that horde—anew one. The reavers are marching toward Carris in a black tide, larger than the first.”

Borenson shuddered at the thought.

“Will Gaborn be fighting there?” he asked, for he hoped to tell Gaborn of his discoveries in Inkarra.

“He was last seen entering the Underworld two days ago, to fight a legend—the fell mage who leads the reavers, the One True Master,” the
Inkarran said. He rushed over to the fire, reached under some bags that were hidden there. He pulled out a kingly head plate as protection, took a long straight Inkarran sword from over the fireplace and strapped it on.

He finished buckling on the sheath, looked Borenson in the eye. “I should warn you that the chances for those who fight in Carris are slim. A host of enemies are arrayed against you, and not all of them are reavers.”

“Who?”

“Raj Ahten has become a flameweaver, and even now he plots how to destroy Mystarria. As he does, his facilitators vector endowments to him as fast as they are able. They have resorted to bribing street urchins and blackmailing criminals. But he is not alone. Lowicker's daughter guards the roads north of Carris, preventing any help from reaching the city from that direction.

“Beyond that, King Anders is riding from Crowthen, claiming that the Earth has called him to be its new king, now that Gaborn has lost the power to warn his Chosen of danger.”

Borenson snorted in derision, but the Inkarran said, “Do not laugh. For years he has studied the arts of sorcery, and already he has convinced many of the veracity of his words. But King Anders is full of treachery. He sent a plague of rats to destroy Heredon, and no Earth King would dare do some-thing so vile. Gaborn managed to frustrate his plot, but Anders has others.”

“Name them,” Borenson said.

The Inkarran said, “At his bidding, the warlords of Internook have overrun the Courts of Tide. Olmarg himself led the attack, holding the Orb of Internook aloft. Three thousand gray longboats sailed into the city at dawn. Though Chancellor Westhaven surrendered, Olmarg gutted him. Then the barbarians of Internook hurled fire into the shanties along the docks, and have spent the morning raping and pillaging. Olmarg has seized the throne of Mystarria, and is even now looting its treasury of gold and forcibles. The Duchess Galent went before him an hour ago, begging him to restrain his men, for they slew her husband and deflowered her daughters before her eyes. In answer, Olmarg threw her on the floor and raped her, before slitting her throat. That is the kind of man that serves Anders.” By now the Inkarran had taken a purse full of coins from the dead king's body and had grabbed some rice buns and fruit from a basket near the fire. He went to a peg on the wall and took down an Inkarran day cloak—a black
cloak with a deep hood that would protect his eyes from the light—and wrapped it over his shoulders.

Borenson felt stunned at the news. He had spent his life in service to Gaborn's father, protecting Mystarria. Never in his darkest dreams had he imagined that his nation would fall.

The Inkarran studied Borenson for a moment. “I'll take you to the guards now. Act as if nothing is amiss. They'll return your weapons. Your horses should have been delivered to the king's stables. If not, we can steal mounts there.”

“And what of Prince Verazeth?” Myrrima asked. “Where is he?”

“He is drinking honeysuckle wine and playing dice with his friends,” the Inkarran answered. “With any luck, he won't return to these rooms until nightfall.”

The Inkarran turned toward a door.

“One last thing,” Borenson asked. “Do you have a name?”

The Inkarran glanced back, his face a white mask beneath his hood. Just enough firelight caught his eyes so that they reflected the red embers. “Sarka. Sarka Kaul.”

25

Since an endowment cannot be received unless it is freely given, it must be reasoned that it is
emotion—
rather than a facilitator's skill
—
that forms the glue that binds a Dedicate to his lord.

Fear binds a Dedicate to an evil lord, but such a bond is weak, for the Dedicate will often choose death rather than continue to serve one whom he despises. Greed is stronger, for those who sell attributes for gold usually crave life. But by far the strongest bonds are those created by love, for those who love their lords dearly are not dissuaded when they feel the bite of the forcible.

—
from
The Art of the Perfect Match,
by Ansa Per and Dylan Fendemere, Master Facilitators

When Chemoise woke from her dreams of rats, daylight was streaming through the open door of the old winery. Chills wracked her, and she could not stop shaking. Aunt Constance helped her to her feet, and someone from town—Chemoises's eyes were too bleary to see who—guided her downhill to the house.

The ground outside the winery was burned bare. The hoops from the barrels lay in blackened rings. The pear trees were smoldering stakes. Fire had razed the hills to the west.

A wagon waited just outside the door, and Chemoise saw three people laid out on it with blankets draped over their faces.

“Who died?” Chemoise asked bitterly, for she had worked so hard to save everyone. To her knowledge, only her dear uncle Eber should have died. “Who is in the wagon?”

“Everyone is fine,” Aunt Constance said, her voice choked with sup-pressed grief. “Everyone is well.” She steered Chemoise to the house, and
Chemoise felt too weak to argue. She'd discover who had died in time. She felt surprised to find the manor still standing, but the wind had blown the fire west of the old winery, across the fields, where it still burned in the hills nearby. Thus the house and town were saved.

Inside the manor, Constance poured cold water over Chemoise's wounds, and put poultices on them. She lay in a fever all morning. By and by she woke and heard a knock on the outside door, followed by women talking.

“The Fancher boy just died,” someone from town said. “We tried every-thing, but he took too many bites.”

“That makes nine,” Constance said, her voice hollow from loss.

“It could have been worse,” someone added. “If not for the king, we'd all be dead.”

Chemoise lay in a daze, wondering who else might have died.

Not Dearborn Hawks, she found herself hoping. Not him.

It was an odd sentiment, one she felt guilty for even thinking, for in wishing him to be alive, she was wishing death on someone else.

But she had tended to his bites after the battle—twenty-four of them—and she could not help remembering the shy way that he smiled at her, and the way her heart skipped in return.

“Terrible, terrible,” one old woman said. “My heart breaks for every one of them. Thank the Powers that the Earth King warned us in time. I only wish that I could repay him.”

“We won't be seeing the likes of him for a while,” Aunt Constance said. “Eber told me yesterday afternoon that there's terrible goings-on. There's to be a big battle down in Mystarria tonight—reavers. Reavers by the thou-sands. Everyone who can fight has been called to battle at Carris. And those who can't fight are giving endowments to the Earth King.”