The Lair of Bones (4 page)

“I only suspect him,” Celinor said. “There is no proof. Besides, his odd behavior began before Raj Ahten's sorcerers summoned the Darkling Glory. Even if you received a true sending, even if your ‘locus' is real, there's nothing that should lead you to suspect my father.”

Celinor didn't want to consider the possibility that his father might be possessed. She didn't blame him. Nor could she argue that his father's odd behavior had begun weeks ago.

Yet something that the owl of the netherworld had told Erin caused her
concern. It had shown her the locus, a shadow of evil that inhabited one man, even as it sent out tendrils of darkness around it, tendrils that touched others—seducing them, snaring them—filling them with a mea-sure of its own corruption.

Thus the locus's influence spread, rotting the hearts of men, burning away their consciences, preparing them to act as hosts for others like it.

Erin had never met Gantrell before, but the fanatical gleam in the captain's eyes, the way he had his men guard Celinor, the crown prince, as if he were a captured spy, made her suspect that he had been touched by a locus.

And then there was Celinor's father: claiming to be the Earth King, plotting against Gaborn, spreading lies about him to far-off lords who ought to have been Gaborn's allies.

Perhaps Celinor's father did not host Asgaroth, Erin thought, but he was dangerous by any standard.

“What are you two doing over here, all alone?” Captain Gantrell called out. He came sauntering up, the grin splitting his face only a thin veneer to hide his suspicion.

“Plotting my escape back to Fleeds,” Erin said in a jesting tone.

“That wouldn't be wise,” Gantrell said, attempting to mimic her lightheartedness and failing miserably. Erin could tell that he had no sense of humor. He looked approvingly to his knights, who had mounted their horses, and were now nearly ready to leave. “Well, let's see if we can make good time while it's still cool.”

Erin forced a smile, but she grew more and more uneasy about Gantrell. Instinct warned her that rather than grin politely as if he were some unwel-come courtier, she'd be better off to slit his belly open and strangle him with his own guts.

Erin mounted her horse, exhausted from lack of sleep, and rode through the pre-dawn. Every few miles they passed small contingents of knights, all riding south. Camp followers in the form of smiths, washwomen, and squires rode in wains or trudged down the dusty roads. Drivers rode war wagons filled with lances, arrows, food, and tents, everything one needed for an extended campaign.

After passing a train of twenty ballistas mounted on wheels and drawn
by force horses, Erin blithely asked Gantrell, “All this movement before the sun's even up. What country do you plan to invade?”

“Invade, Your Highness?” Gantrell asked. “It is but a normal repositioning of our defenses.” He rode close enough so that she had to urge her horse aside, lest they bump legs.

“If you were afraid of invasion,” Erin argued, “you would strengthen your fortifications, not mass troops on your southern border. So, who will you invade?”

“I couldn't say, milady,” Gantrell answered with a maddening little smirk.

So they rode through the morning. The horses nearly pranced as they raced through the chill. The knights' ring mail chinged like cymbals to the drumming of the horses' hooves, as if making music to accompany some vast empyreal hymn.

Erin's fatigue lent the ride a surreal, dreamlike quality. Some thought South Crowthen to be a beautiful country, and it was true: the trees on the hills danced in particolored raiment of autumn colors, and in the more settled areas Erin would ride round a bend and discover a picturesque stone cottage dozing beneath a sprawling oak or elm. Nearby, a milk cow would crop the grass in some green field misted by morning dew, while stone fences that had stood for longer than men could remember neatly parceled out the quiet farmland. But when she rounded the next corner, she'd see another quaint stone house beneath a sprawling elm, with the milk cow's sister cropping the grass by the barn, and another endless stone fence parceling out the squares of dirt, and on and on and on it went until Erin thought that she would never again admire another cottage or cow or meadow or tree.

So she closed her burning eyes. “I'll only let my eyes rest,” she told her-self. “I won't sleep.”

Erin feared that she would lose her mind. The dreams that came every time she succumbed to sleep were so vivid that she felt that now her horse was galloping through a dream, and when she slept, she would awaken to some truer world.

She dreamt. Only a vague flash of vision, an image of the great owl in its dark burrow. It had moved from its previous roost, and now huddled farther in the shadows. The gray-and-white pattern of its feathers looked like dead leaves plastered above bones.

Erin peered into its unblinking golden eyes, and said, “Leave me alone. I don't want to speak to you.”

“You fear me,” the owl said, its thoughts piercing her mind with more shades of emotion and insight than mere words could convey. “You need not fear me. I am not your enemy.”

“You are madness,” Erin said, willing herself to wake. The image faded.

The horses rounded a bend just at sunrise, and Captain Gantrell called, “Troo-oops, haw-aalt!”

Erin opened her eyes, imagining that they were stopping to let another wagon train pass.

Instead, near the road ahead lay a serene little pond covered in morning mist, and above it loomed a purple pavilion with gold trim: royal colors.

King Anders himself knelt beside the pool, his shirt off, washing himself in the cool morning air. He stood tall, lean, almost haggard in appearance, with a skeletal head and only a wisp of beard.

His Days, a historian who chronicled his life, brushed down a horse nearby, preparing to ride.

Near the king a plump old woman dressed in grayish rags squatted on a large rock, while squirrels darted around her in play. She would crack a hazelnut between her tough fingers and then toss it in the air. The squirrels made a game of racing over her shoulders or leaping into her lap to catch the nut before it touched ground.

Celinor nudged Erin, nodded toward the woman. “The Nut Woman, an Earth Warden from Elyan Wood.”

In her dreamlike fog, Erin thought it to be one of the strangest scenes in her life.

So, this is mad King Anders, she thought, looking back at the pasty old lord with his sagging breasts—the man I may have to kill.

He didn't look frightening at all.

The king half turned, peering up from his morning ablutions with a frown, as if worried to hear the approach of troops. Yet he spotted Celinor and the frown disintegrated, blossoming into a heartfelt smile.

“My son,” King Anders called, his tone conveying only solemn joy. “You've come home!” He grabbed a towel that lay draped over a nearby
bush and dried himself as he rushed forward. Celinor leapt from his saddle, and hugged the old man as they met.

The hug was short-lived. Celinor pushed his father away. “What's the meaning of all these troops on the border, Father? Are you going to start a war?”

King Anders managed to look hurt as he answered,
“Start
a war? My dear lad, I may finish a war, but I've never been known to start one.” Anders held his son's hands, but peered over Celinor's shoulder at Erin.

“And who have we here?” he asked. “Erin Connal? Your picture doesn't do you justice, fair lady.”

“Thank you,” Erin answered, surprised that he would recognize her face from a tiny picture painted on a promise locket nearly a decade past.

King Anders smiled a genuine smile, a smile of welcome and warmth and gratitude. His gray eyes seemed to stare into Erin, through her. He left Celinor, came to gaze upon Erin more fully.

Her horse shied away, but when he reached out and touched it, the animal immediately calmed.

King Anders raised his left hand in the air. “I Choose you, Erin Connal,” he said. “I Choose you for the Earth. If ever you are in danger and hear my voice whisper within you, obey it, and I will lead you to safety.”

Erin leaned back in her saddle, a grunt of surprise rising from her throat. Of all the words that he could have said, she expected these the least, for he used the very phrase that Gaborn had spoken when, as Earth King, he had Chosen her to be one of his warriors. Could it be that Anders, too, now had the ability to Choose, to select her as one of his soldiers and use the Earth Sight to recognize when she was in danger, then send her warnings?

No, it was blasphemy.

“By what right?” Erin asked. “By what right do you do this?”

“By every right,” King Anders said. “I am the Earth King. The Earth has called me to save a seed of mankind through the dark times to come.”

Erin stared at King Anders, dumbfounded. His manner seemed perfectly sincere. His gray eyes looked kind, thoughtful, and benevolent. He held himself with certitude. He smiled in a manner disarmingly warm. In physical appearance, he looked nothing like Gaborn. Yet in his bearing, it was as if Gaborn had been reborn in him.

“What do you mean, you're the Earth King?” Celinor asked.

“It happened but yesterday, in the morning. I must confess that I had been feeling strangely for days. I'd sensed that dark times were coming, that great things were afoot, and so I retired to the woods to ponder them. The woods seemed quiet, tense. All of the squirrels were gone. I went searching for the Nut Woman—”

At this, the Nut Woman got off her rock, and ambled over to the party, squirrels prancing madly around her feet.

King Anders continued, “I found her in her cave, packing some dried herbs and whatnot. She told me that she had taken the squirrels to safety, and only returned to get a few things. Then, she led me deep into the woods, to a certain grotto.”

The Nut Woman put a hand on the king's shoulder, as if begging him to let her continue the tale. “There,” she said, with a voice filled with awe, “the Earth Spirit appeared to us, and warned us that dark times are coming, darker than any this world has ever known. The Earth warned your father: ‘Be faithful! Cling to me, and my powers will attend you. Abandon me, and I shall abandon you:
as 1 have abandoned the Earth King before you!'
“

Anders turned away as if the thought of a man losing his Earth Powers wounded him to the core. “Poor Gaborn, to be so cursed,” Anders lamented. “Dear boy. I fear that all the good he tried to do will turn to evil. I doubted him. But he
was
called of the Earth, if only for a while. Now I must carry on in his stead, and see if I can undo the great harm I've done him.”

Erin stared at them both darkly, unsure what to do, unsure what to think. She'd been prepared to meet a madman, and dispatch him quickly. Yet a niggling worry crept into her mind: What if he really is the Earth King?

The Mouth of the World, Averan thought, as she looked at the gaping cavern. I've flown over it a dozen times and seen the sheep cropping the grass on every hilltop near here. I'm not fifty miles from home.

The memory of home brought an ache to her heart. The reavers had destroyed Keep Haberd a week past. Just about everyone she'd ever known had been killed.

She leapt out of the wagon on legs that were still rubbery from sleep, and landed on the stony ground. To both sides of her lay a rut, as if this
were an ancient road. But Averan knew better. She'd landed in the massive footprint of a reaver, the four-toed track of a huge female. It measured a yard in length and four feet in width. Countless other tracks sur-rounded it.

The “road” was really a reaver trail. A week past, tens of thousands of the monsters had boiled out of the Underworld here and spilled over the countryside. They had worn a rut in the ground sixty to seventy feet wide and several feet deep. Their trail, which wound over hundreds of miles, led through dozens of devastated cities.

Averan planted her staff in the ground, and found herself leaning on it wearily.

“Are you ready to take your endowments?” Gaborn asked as he shouldered his armor.

“You mean I'm going to do it here,” Averan inquired, “not in a Dedicates' tower?”

“We're a long way from any towers,” Gaborn said. “Iome brought a facilitator and some folk to act as Dedicates. Go find something to eat, and then we'll see to your needs.”

Averan pulled her robes tight against her face. The air up so high had an autumn chill to it, and the wind came a bit boisterous, circling this way and that, like a nervous hound. She followed Gaborn to the mouth of the cave.

With each step they took, the singing grew louder. It reverberated from the cavern walls. “Why is everyone singing?”

“They're celebrating,” Gaborn said. “The reaver horde has been brought to ground.”

No wonder they sing, Averan thought. Seventy thousand reavers vanquished. There hasn't been a battle like that in ages. Still, so much wanton killing—even of reavers—left a sour taste in Averan's mouth.

At the cave's throat at least two hundred men crowded round the bon-fire. Most were minor lords out of Mystarria and Heredon, though many were also Knights Equitable who called no man their king, and some were dark-skinned warriors who still wore the yellow colors of far-off Indhopal.

Still, dozens of peasants looked as if they had followed Gaborn's troops in from nearby villages. Most of them wore lambskin jackets and knit woolen hats. Some were just curious farmers and woodsmen out to see the
Earth King, but most carried heavy axes and yew longbows, as if eager to swell the ranks of Gaborn's army.

Now that Gaborn had arrived, someone cried, “All hail the Earth King!” and wild cheers erupted.

Averan hung back at the mouth of the cave and glanced up. The flickering light of the bonfire illuminated the smoke-gauzed ceiling where gray-green cave kelp dangled in curtains. An enormous blind-crab crept along the ceiling precariously, clinging to rocks as it fed on kelp.