The Lair of Bones (25 page)

And then they were off. They did not walk or even jog. Gaborn sprinted, and Iome hurried after him.

He found that his recent meal refreshed him like a feast, invigorating both mind and spirit. Worry over Averan weighed on him, but with the nourishment, it seemed as if the fog had lifted a bit.

So they ran. Scrambling through the reaver tunnel wasn't easy. Gaborn found that as he sped, odd things happened to his body. His own sense of movement told him that he was going no faster than normal, but he could not round a sharp corner with ease, since his forward motion tended to throw him off course. Thus, he had to lean into his turns at what seemed an unnatural angle. In some ways it was much like riding a force horse.

He also had to pay attention to his footing on the rocky, uneven trail. There was the constant hazard of tripping or twisting an ankle on stone, though plants grew over the path. Wormgrass and molds vied for control of the rocky walls. Rootlike bushes hung from the roof, yellow and white tendrils often cascading down like frozen waterfalls. Sometimes they formed curtains, barring the way, and only the fact that a huge reaver had passed through, ripping the foliage down, had cleared the path at all. In many places, seepage dampened the cave. Black hairlike moss grew beside the water, with golden drops of sap in it, while rubbery plants sprouted tiny brown pods the size of cherries. Gaborn found both to be particularly hazardous. The moss was slippery, while the pods could roll beneath his feet.

Added to these difficulties was the lack of light. The coruscating glow from their opals seemed bright when one stood still. But when he ranfiftymiles per hour, Gaborn needed time to choose where to put his feet, to decide whether to speed up or slow down or to leap over a bit of tangle root or pick his way through it. Most important, he had to remain alert for new dangers.

More than once he found himself running headlong into a lumbering crevasse crawler or giant blind-crab, and would have to dodge around it.

Thus, even with endowments of sight, he squinted into the gloom, watching at the limit of vision.

Once, he sensed that he was winning the race, that Averan was only a mile or so ahead. But he and Iome rounded a corner and found their path blocked by a huge stone.

The reavers had constructed a door. The door seemed to have been carved from the rock itself, for it rested on a stone hinge that hung from the ceiling. The panel appeared to be three feet through the center. By pushing at the bottom, Gaborn discovered that the door wouldn't budge.

It had been locked.

He beat against it in frustration, and then he and Iome went to work. Using shards of rock from nearby, they hammered and chiseled through the bottom of the door, a process that took what seemed like hours.

Gaborn felt weary by the time they started on the trail again, and Averan had been carried far, far away.

There was no sun or moon to track the turning of the earth. There was only darkness fleeing from the light of their opals, returning to reclaim all they left behind as they raced along.

The trail wound, tunneling through veins of soft rock, twisting through boulders, sometimes taking odd turns for reasons that only reavers would understand.

But always the trail sloped down.

Gaborn measured time by the pounding of his feet, by the gasping of his breath, by the waves of sweat that trickled down his cheeks. The heat and humidity began to soar as the miles receded.

Sometimes they reached side tunnels or shafts that rose like chimneys. Each time they did, Gaborn would stop and sniff at every passage, checking for Averan's scent.

They spoke little. Gaborn found himself alone with his thoughts, and he found himself wondering at the book that Iome carried in her pack: Erden Geboren's tome.

Had he really been searching for the One True Master? And if so, what was it?

Two days ago when Averan first mentioned the creature, Binnesman had seemed confused. He'd asked, “Are you sure that it is a reaver?”

Averan had been sure. But now Gaborn wondered. What exactly was a locus? He felt that his Earth Sight was failing him. Binnesman had said that it was because he was still asking the wrong questions. Perhaps once Gaborn understood his enemy better, he'd know how to fight it.

He felt sure that the book would tell more, but Iome couldn't read and run at the same time.

Indeed, they reached a tunnel that slanted steeply down, and found that the tickle fern was gone, trampled. The ground lay in waste. Reavers frequented this trail.

A second door confronted them.

Gaborn called a halt. “I'll hammer away at the door. You should get some food. If you can spare a moment, I'd like you to read to me.”

He reached into his pack, pulled out some apples and aflaskof water. He took a bite of apple, picked up the nearest stone, and began hammering at the door.

Iome munched her own apple as she sat down to read. Alnycian was not an easy language, Gaborn knew. It had been dead for hundreds of years, and most scholars spoke the most recent variety, but Erden Geboren had
written back when the tongue was still vibrant. Thus, his spellings, word choice, and grammar would all lie outside the norm.

Iome opened the book, skimmed through.

“Tell me as soon as you find anything interesting,” Gaborn said.

Still huffing from the long run, Iome said, “Erden Geboren begins by summing up his early life in a few sentences. He was a swineherd in the Hills of Tomb, until the Earth Spirit called him. Then he tells how he met the Wizard Sendavian, who guided him and Day Ian Slaughter—that must have been Daylan's name before he won the Black Hammer—upon ‘paths of air and green flame' to the netherworld.”

This was all the stuff of legend. Iome didn't bother to go into detail. Then she said, “But once he gets to the netherworld, he suddenly changes the style of his book. He begins inserting subtitles, breaking it into chapters.”

“See if you can find anything about the locus,” Gaborn suggested.

Iome skimmed down the headings silently for a minute, flipping a dozen pages of text, until she said, “Here's something: ‘Upon Meeting a Locus.' I'll try to translate it into a more modern style.”

“The locus was an most hideous creature. The Bright Ones kept it locked within a cage, hidden in a green glade in a narrow box canyon. It was a difficult journey to reach it, and the monster beat its wings against its prison bars wildly as we approached. The wings had black feathers and a span of perhaps thirty feet. The creature itself had a form somewhat like a man's, with stubby legs and long arms that ended in cruel talons. But there was a blackness about the beast that defied the eye. Squint as I might, I could not pierce the depths of its cage. It was as if the monster absorbed the light around it, or perhaps bent it, wearing it like a black robe. Air circled the beast, swirling about, carrying with it the scent of rot. Rather than seeing the creature clearly, I got only a vague impression of sharp fangs, cruel talons, and glaring eyes.'”

Iome paused, shaken.

Gaborn said, “Erden Geboren is describing the Darkling Glory, isn't he?”

Even mentioning the monster made Iome shiver. “Perhaps,” Iome said. “Or maybe we're mistaken. Maybe these aren't the same creatures.” She read on.

“The bars to its cage were of blackened iron. Glowing violet runes encircled the base of it, and a roof covered the crown.

“‘As I drew near, I felt entranced by the creature. I peered hard to view it, drawing closer and closer. Yet the nearer I got, the more the darkness about it thickened, obscuring my view.

“‘It was not until I was nearly upon it that I became dimly aware that the Bright Ones were speaking to me: nay, shouting to me. But I could not hear them. Their voices were dull, as if they called from miles and miles away. Instead, all I could hear was the creature, urging me, “Come! Come to me.”

“‘I saw a door on the cage. I could see no…' “Iome paused. “I think the word must be ‘lock.'” She began again. “‘It looked as if the door would sway open with a touch of the finger, yet the dark servant could not open it.

“‘As I drew near, the creature made no move. Its wings quit beating so wildly against the cage, and it regarded me almost as if it were made of stone.

“' “Open the door,” I could hear it whisper. “Open it.” Distantly I could hear the Bright Ones shouting, but their words.'”—Iome struggled to make sense of the statement by context—” ‘had no intelligence,' it says. But I think he means, ‘conveyed no understanding.'

“‘I did not intend to open the door. I only thought to experiment, to touch the gate.

“'I was about to do so when Daylan grabbed me from behind. He shouted in my ear, but I could make no sense of his words.

“‘He pulled me back from the cage and threw me on the ground, then stood over me gibbering.

“The locus raged at me with a sound of thunder, and it seemed that all of the heavens roared with it. “I see you, King of the Shadow World! I shall sift your world as wheat, and cast off the chaff thereof.” I could feel the hatred of the servant, could smell it in the air, as palpable as the stink of dead men.

“'At some length, I was able to make out the words of Daylan. “Didn't you hear us?” Daylan cried. “Can't you hear me?” His face was red with worry, and tears of ‘—I think the word must be ‘frustration'—'filled his eyes.

“' “I heard you not,” said I, coming to my senses.

“Then the voice of the Fael did pierce me, that I heard it clearly. “Beware Asgaroth. He is a most subtle child of the mother of all loci, the One True Master of Evil.”'”

Gaborn yelped as he slammed a rock against his hand. The green light of his opal pin shone down as he turned toward Iome. But it was not the pain of the wound that had made him cry out.

“The One True Master—” he said, “I thought she was the One True Master of All Reavers, or something like that, not… “

“Of Evil,” Iome offered.

Gaborn felt as if his head were spinning. The creature he was going to face was an enemy that even the Bright Ones and Glories feared. No wonder they had come to fight beside Erden Geboren. Iome continued to read.

“‘Many words did the Fael speak unto me, words that were understood in the heart. I realized that if I had touched that door, tried to open it, strength would have failed me. The door was bound with runes so powerful that a common man like me could not have broken it. Yet if I had tried, I would have succeeded in opening another door: a door into my heart.

“' “Asgaroth could have filled you,” the Fael told me. “Its evil desires could have become your desires. It could have filled you, as blackness fills the hollows of the earth.”

“‘An unnamable fear seized me. So shaken was I that I could not stand.

“' “The locus is not the creature that you see before you,” the Fael said. “The Darkling Glory can age and die, but the shadow hiding within it is immortal. When the Darkling Glory dies, its essence will move on, seeking a new host. Thus we have sought to imprison Asgaroth, rather than destroy him. Many Glories were destroyed trying to bring him here. A thousand times a thousand shadow worlds Asgaroth has helped to seize.”'” Iome faltered for a moment, and said, “Erden Geboren doesn't like the word ‘seize.' He has crossed it out once, suggested ‘destroy' or ‘sway' or ‘capture.'” She read on, “' “But so long as we hold him, he can do little harm.”'”

Iome closed the book, and sat for a moment. Sweat poured down her face, and her clothes clung to her like rags. “Do you think that Raj Ahten's sorcerer is the one who set the Darkling Glory free?”

Gaborn wiped some sweat from his own brow with his sleeve. The running, the growing heat, had left him feeling oily and gritty. He wished for a bath. He had seen the sorcerer enter the fiery gate at Twynhaven, and seen him come back out only moments later. Had the sorcerer had time to break into the cage? Or had he only met the monster there, after some accomplice freed him on the other side?

Asgaroth was its name. Could the monster that Erden Geboren described two thousand years ago be the one that had stalked Iome at Castle Sylvarresta only a week past?

He felt sure that it was. It had come in a cloud of darkness and swirling wind, sucking all light from the sky, wrapping night around it as if it were a robe. Thunder had boomed at its approach, while lightning snarled. It had spoken “as if with a sound of thunder.”

“Well,” Gaborn said. “It seems as if you have found yourself a worthy adversary.”

“I didn't pick a fight,” Iome said. “It came hunting for me.”

Gaborn grinned, hoping to allay her concerns.

“Wait,” she whispered. “It didn't come hunting for me. It came for our son, the child that I carry in my womb.”

“Why?” Gaborn asked. A fear struck him, and a certainty. The Darkling Glory had come for his son, and as Gaborn stretched out his senses, he felt danger stalking the child.

“It isn't just killing a child that the Darkling Glory enjoys,” Iome said as if to herself. “The clubfooted boy was with me, and the Darkling Glory didn't seek
his
life. Wait—” Iome's face fell and she clutched her womb, then let out a gasp. “Wait!”

“What is it?” Gaborn asked.

“The Darkling Glory—” she said. “Or the locus within it, it didn't want to
kill
the child. It merely asked for him. It demanded him.”

“What do you mean?” Gaborn asked.

“I think it wanted to possess the babe,” Iome said, “as a hiding place!”

“Of course,” Gaborn said. “The Darkling Glory has fled the nether-world. It might even be worried that its enemies will come looking for it. So it needs a place to hide. And what better place than in a mother's womb?”

By voicing Iome's concerns, perhaps Gaborn gave them weight and heft. Iome began to sob. She covered her womb protectively with Erden Geboren's manuscript.