The Lair of Bones (45 page)

So it was that Dearborn beached the rowboat, and Chemoise climbed the banks of the River Wye, up through oat stubble, looking for signs of a
great struggle like the one fought back home. The city looked peaceful.

“The rats didn't kill your horses?” Chemoise asked the old woman. “They didn't ruin your tents?”

“We were all in the castle,” she answered. “Hiding. We filled every tomb and every cellar.”

“There was room for everyone?” Chemoise asked, unsure if she believed it.

“Och, no,” the old woman said. “Some folks went up to the old iron mines in the Dunnwood, and stayed as cozy as peas in a pod. The rats never even made it to their door. The ferrin folk had them all, I suppose.”

Chemoise stared in disbelief. There was no sign of a struggle. The sun shone golden over thefields. The cottages by the river sat undisturbed. The farms spread out along the road in a patchwork quilt of colors—white of oat stubble, the forest green of a field of mint, the yellow of mustard flowers, the ruddy gold of winter wheat.

It wasn't until they had walked a hundred yards toward the castle that Dearborn discovered sign of the attack. With his boot he pointed out a dead rat curled up under a clump of grass beside the road, a ferrin's broken spear still in its gut.

A chill shook Chemoise, and she noticed a bit of sadness in Dearborn's eyes and a thoughtful look on his face.

“What is it?” Chemoise asked.

“We're the lucky ones,” he said. “It's only little rats we're fighting. Imagine if this thing was as big as a farmer's cottage, lumbering about. That's what our folks will be facing at Carris.”

It was worse than that, Chemoise knew. Rats didn't have hide as tough as armor. Rats didn't have mages that cast foul spells. Rats weren't as cunning as men.

She peered into Dearborn's face in wonder. “Our folks,” he had called the people of Carris. But they were strangers, hundreds of miles beyond the city's borders.

It's the war, she realized. A common foe had made brothers of them all.

She hurried her stride, reached the city gates. There were boys beside the moat, using rakes to pull drowned rats from the water, then throwing the nasty things into wicker baskets.

One boy had waded into the depths up to his chest, and used a spear to try to fish some rats out of the lilies that grew in the shadow of the castle wall.

The vermin would have been able to crawl over the moat on the backs of their dead, Chemoise imagined.

She glanced behind. Shadows were growing long. The sun loomed on the horizon, splendorous among some golden clouds. Soon it would be night. Chemoise hoped that she still had time. She raced up Merchant Street, where vendors hawked food, filling the evening air with scents of fresh bread and meats that made her mouth water.

It wasn't until she passed the King's Gate, out of the merchant's quarter, that she saw how strange the world had become.

She heard the distant birdlike singing of facilitators as they took endowments, and found that just inside the King's Gate, a crowd had formed.

A thousand people stood waiting to give endowments, jostling one another in an effort to be first. One woman called, “Tell the facilitators to hurry. We haven't got all night!”

The King's Tower and Dedicates' Keep were naught but ruins after last week's battle with the Darkling Glory, and little had been done to clean up the pile of broken stone. But the old barracks and attendant Great Hall still stood, and these had been turned into a makeshift Dedicates' Keep.

Pavilions in a riot of color covered the green, and everywhere Chemoise saw hundreds of people lying in their shade, as if in a faint.

Dully she realized that the barracks was full, and the tents were full, and there was nowhere else to put the Dedicates except to lay them on the grass until something better could be arranged. Those without brawn lay as slack as newborn babes while attendants clustered around them. Dozens of blind men and women sat beside a cooking fire, strumming lutes and singing an old ballad, which had served as a call over the ages:

“Come give yourself, come give yourself,

Before it is too late.

Together we stand when darkness falls.

The need is growing great.

“Come give yourself, come give yourself,

We know the cost is dear.

Together we'll stand when our lord calls.

Let's have a rousing cheer.”

“Are all of these people Dedicates for the Earth King?” Chemoise asked in wonder.

“Aye,” a young man called out. In the crowd, Chemoise hadn't spotted him. But at a nearby table sat a facilitator's apprentice with a quill and inkpot, writing on a long scroll. He was a young man, no more than thirteen.

“How many endowments does he need?” Chemoise asked.

“We'll give him every forcible we've got, and hope that its enough,” the apprentice answered. “With any luck, we'll make him the Sum of All Men.” Chemoise gazed out over the field in wonder. There weren't just hundreds who had given endowments. Instead, thousands of people lay on the green. And as she glanced back downhill, she could see carts and horses coming from afar—from Bannisferre to the south, and Hobtown to the east, and a hundred villages to the west—people bringing all that they had with them to Castle Sylvarresta. Tens of thousands would offer them-selves as Dedicates. And those who didn't win the honor of going under the forcible would gladly hold the walls against any enemy that might try to take them, making themselves human shields between the enemies of the Earth King and the source of his Power.

It was grand and glorious to see so many people coming together to create the stuff of legend: the Sum of All Men. For a moment, Chemoise was swept away. The young facilitator cleared his throat, and asked, “Are you here to give an endowment?”

Chemoise's stomach fluttered nervously. “Aye.”

“What can you offer?”

“Metabolism,” she volunteered. “Metabolism won't hurt my unborn child.”

“We're full up on that,” the facilitator said. “He's got more than a hundred now. We really need stamina, grace, and brawn.” He listed the greater endowments. Chemoise thought he sounded like a merchant in the market who demands more for his wares than one can easily pay. Giving any one of those endowments could kill a person. Chemoise was already sick from rat bites. She didn't dare offer stamina, lest her current illness take her. And those who gave brawn sometimes found that their hearts stopped, or their lungs quit working, simply because they hadn't the strength to go on. Chemoise didn't think she could face the terror of that, to lie helpless, unable to breathe, knowing that death was moments away.

“Grace,” Chemoise said, struggling to sound more eager than she felt. Perhaps by giving Gaborn my grace, Chemoise thought, I can atone for my father's transgression.

Her father had once given grace to Raj Ahten, Gaborn's most feared enemy, who had also sought to become the Sum of All Men.

The scribe made a mark in his book, adding her endowment of grace to the Earth King's tally. She was but one of thousands. He didn't ask Chemoise her name or thank her profusely or make the normal promises of care and compensation for the rest of her life.

Her endowment was a gift, and the giving of it was its own reward.

“And you, sir?” the scribe asked, peering behind Chemoise to Dearborn.

“Oh,” Chemoise explained, “he's my friend. He just brought me—”

Dearborn put a hand on her shoulder, gently pushed her aside. “Brawn,” he said with a deadly resolve in his voice. “I'll give him my strength. And may the Powers grant that he deal a blow… “He made a fist and shook it, as if he'd strike with his own hand if he could.

Chemoise looked into Dearborn's face and saw a hardness she'd never imagined. She'd thought him a moon-sick pup. But now she recalled how he had rowed the boat all day without rest. Something in him had changed.

The plague of rats was sent to break us here in Heredon, Chemoise realized, but instead we have only fixed our resolve.

30

The Glories speak not as men speak but whisper words that can only be heard in the heart of one who yearns for understanding.

—
Erden Geboren

Gaborn raced down a seemingly endless winding stair that a commoner would have spent days trying to negotiate. Hot winds from the Underworld swirled up it, blasting his face. There was no water here, no refreshment.

In Heredon the battle was over, and those that would die had died.

Now Carris was braced for the slaughter.

Gaborn could sense Averan, still alive, far below.

Over the past few days—as Gaborn sensed time—the Consort of Shadows had led him through doors that no commoner could open, climbed down chimneys and up stairways that no human was meant to follow.

More than just reavers burrowed in the Underworld, and the Consort of Shadows was as likely to take some route formed by the passage of a great-worm as follow the reaver tunnels. Gaborn had run past huge waterfalls and through drowned caverns. Twice he had lost his way and managed to find it again.

As he ran, days seemed to pass, and he pondered what he would do when he met the One True Master.

She would be prepared. She was strong in the ways of sorcery, strong enough to challenge the very Powers. More than that, she harbored a locus that had existed from the beginning of time.

Had Erden Geboren planned to fight her with his spear? Gaborn hefted the ancient reaver dart, studied its diamond tip. Runes were carved into it—runes of Earth Strengthening to keep the shaft from breaking. Beyond that, the weapon was nothing special. It was only a spear carved from bone.

Not with a spear, he thought. You can't kill a locus like that. It is evil, the very essence of evil.

Gaborn's stomach was knotted, but he craved an answer to his dilemma more than he hungered for food.

A chasm crossed his path, some hundred feet across. He ran and leapt effortlessly, but snapped an ankle when he landed on the far side. He straightened the ankle and sat for a moment, letting his endowments of stamina take over. Shortly, the bone healed and he was on his way again.

He tried to dredge up everything that he'd ever heard about the Glories and the Bright Ones, about Erden Geboren, about the great enemy, the one that his own lore called the Raven. As he pondered, something that Iome had read came to mind. Erden Geboren had described the Bright Ones on hisfirstmeeting, and said of them, “Virtue was their armor, and truth was their sword.”

He had imagined then that Erden Geboren was trying somehow to express the goodness that he saw in these people, these true men of the netherworld.

Yet it struck Gaborn that these words weren't written upon first meeting the Bright Ones, but decades later. What if, Gaborn asked himself, Erden Geboren meant this literally?

What if… a man is like a vessel, Gaborn thought. And what if that vessel can be filled with light, or it can be filled with darkness?

If I fill myself with light, how can the darkness find place within me?

What darkness is there to purge within me? Gaborn wondered. He remembered the book that the Emir of Tuulistan had sent to King Sylvarresta, and the drawing within it. The drawing displayed the Domains of Man, the things that he owned. These included his Visible Domains, the properties that he owned that could be seen—his home, his body, and his wealth. His Communal Domains included all of his relationship to his community—his family, his town, his country, and his good name. His Invisible Domains encompassed all of those things that a man owns that cannot be seen—his time, his freedom to act, his body space.

According to the emir, whenever a man invades one of these domains, we call him evil. If he seeks to ruin our reputation, or steal our gold, or control our actions, we feel violated.

But if a man enlarges our domains, if he gives of his wealth or offers us praise, we call him good.

By this definition the One True Master was pure evil. It was seeking to
devour Gaborn's world, strip him and his people of everything, including life itself.