The Lair of Bones (41 page)

“Endowments?” the old woman asked. “Where?”

“At Castle Sylvarresta. Folks are gathering from all around. The king took endowments down at Castle Groverman last week, and the facilitators have brought Dedicates to Castle Sylvarresta to act as vectors.”

“Really?” the old woman asked. “Have things gotten so bad?”

Aunt Constance was silent for a moment, and Chemoise imagined that she could hear her shaking her head. “I heard Eber whispering to some of
the men. He told them to get weapons ready. The Earth King says that if we don't win at Carris…”

Chemoise crawled out of bed and steadied herself for a moment. Castle Sylvarresta wasn't far, less than thirty miles. Uncle Eber hadn't had a force horse, but he did have a boat, and the River Wye ran down through the forests right up to the castle. She knew that in the years past, Eber used to send his wine barrels downstream, so the water was deep enough to carry the boat all the way.

With luck, I can get there in a few hours, she told herself.

She threw on her riding cloak, and silently slipped out the window. She crept along the back of the house and was crossing the dirt lane when the door opened. Aunt Constance and her old friend Nan Fields stood there.

“I didn't know that you were up,” Constance called. “Where are you going?”

Chemoise turned and looked her in the eye. “To Castle Sylvarresta, to give my endowment.”

Immediately Constance limped across the street, her right foot swollen by rat bites. Her expression was grim. “You can't do that. You're already sick. Think of your child!”

Chemoise stopped, torn. Iome had always been her best friend, and Chemoise dearly wanted to give whatever aid she could.

“There are endowments I can give that wouldn't endanger the babe,” she argued.

Dearborn Hawks must have heard them talking. Perhaps he had been waiting all day to see Chemoise. He came from the barn, his brow furrowed in concern.

“Dearborn, stop her!” Constance begged.

The Hawks boy looked at Constance, and then at Chemoise, and nodded thoughtfully. “There's not much water in the river at this time of year,” he said at last. “You'll need help rowing if you're to make it by nightfall.”

With that, he led her downhill to the boat.

26

Many a warrior is wise in the ways of war, but only fools ignore mastering the fine art of retreat.

—
from
The Fine Art of Retreat,
by Colm Bryant, Diligent in the Room of Arms

Borenson and Myrrima fled Iselferion with the Inkarran Days, Sarka Kaul, as their guide. The guards handed them their weapons at the door, and Sarka led them to some underground stables where Borenson found his horses already delivered. Many an Inkarran lord was visiting the city, and Sarka had no difficulty stealing a suitable mount for himself.

Thus the three rode from Iselferion into the morning light with the city still asleep, the Inkarrans unaware that a Rune of Will gleamed darkly upon Borenson's leg. He knew that the journey would not stay easy for long.

He suspected that once the Inkarrans learned what had happened, they'd send a legion of pale warriors to hunt them down. They'd kill him and anyone he spoke to.

Yet as Sarka guided them along lonely roads, there was no pursuit by daylight, no sign of Inkarrans at all. Empty fields lay all about the trails, cultivated and pruned, looking strangely bereft, for there were no workmen tilling them, no cottages or barns. The only sign of habitation came as the morning sun shone upon the stele that marked each city.

Borenson could not have hoped for a better escape. Sarka Kaul led them over desolate trails until they reached the shadowed forests, where winged lizards fluttered about, hunting for moths and gnats in the canopy.

Only once did anyone try to stop them. As they neared the foot of the Alcair Mountains, a dark figure raced up behind the trio. The clatter of a charger's hooves announced that it was a force horse with great endowments,
and Borenson looked back down a mountain trail, where he glimpsed the rider galloping through the trees.

“I'll get him,” Myrrima said fiercely as they neared a meadow. She had kept her bow strung all morning, and she slowed her mount, leapt off, and slapped its rump. Her horse raced after Sarka and Sir Borenson, following them through a meadow full of white flowers so delicate that the sunlight shining through made them glow like ice.

Sarka Kaul led the way and reached a line of trees just as their pursuer exited the woods. Borenson glanced back. An Inkarran prince raced under the shadows, his blood red robes flapping behind him like wings. He rode a horse as black as night itself. The mount galloped into the meadow a few paces, and suddenly Myrrima stepped out from behind a gnarled sycamore and loosed an arrow.

The fellow cried and leaned forward, putting his heels to horseflesh. Borenson clearly saw the white plumes of goose feather from the arrow lodged in his back.

The black horse came to a halt in the meadow and spun about. Its rider was cursing, lamely struggling to get it to flee, while he struggled to keep from falling off.

Borenson raced to the wounded rider. The fellow's long silver braids announced that it was Prince Verazeth. He lay slumped in the saddle, clinging to his horse's neck, the arrow sticking up from his ribs. Myrrima had struck him near the heart. His horse danced around, frightened by the scent of hot blood.

Sarka Kaul rode up behind Borenson.

“Cour
as! Cour as!”
Help me, the prince muttered.

“Gladly,” Sarka said, urging his mount forward.

He grabbed the prince by the hair and plunged his sword into the man's back. He flung the body to the ground and took the horse's reins in one smooth motion.

In a moment Myrrima came running up through the field.

“He's dead?” she asked unnecessarily. She stood over the prince, bow in hand, arrow ready to fire.

“He's dead,” Sarka said.

“But… you watched him grow up from a child,” she objected.

“And many a time I wished to put an end to his miserable life,”
the Inkarran whispered. “Here, take his horse. It might come in handy. It has many endowments of sight to let it run in the darkness.”

“This is it?” Borenson asked. “This is the only man they sent to hunt for us?”

Sarka Kaul grunted. “Probably so. Inkarran politics are very complex. King Criomethes has secretly been in league with the Storm King's enemies for decades, so Verazeth couldn't dare risk revealing what his father has done. Their crime against you must remain a secret from the king. Nor could Verazeth tell his own cronies what has happened, for it will make him look foolish to be bested by Daylighters, people that he condemns as inferiors. He really only had one choice. He had to hunt you down himself. Only then could he pretend to avenge his family, and thus gain honor. So he came for you swiftly, foolish enough to hunt by daylight, and took his secret to the grave.”

Myrrima seemed unsure. “Let's get out of here anyway.”

She dragged the prince's body from the road, hid it under the trees two hundred yards into the woods. Then she leapt up on his black stallion and fought the beast for a moment, and led the way.

The trip over the Alcairs went quickly. The snow-laden arms of the mountains glowed as white as bone in the daylight, and the horses were eager to run in the cool air.

They raced up the jagged peaks, over roads that were almost never used, until at last they neared the Inkarran fortress. An icy gale was blowing spindrift from the peaks, so that by the time that they drew close, they did so in a dismal fog.

The road zigzagged down the steep mountain. Sarka Kaul bypassed the fortress by riding up the slopes until he met the road above. Even force horses had a tough job of it, lunging through the foggy ice.

When they neared the mountain peak, with its fearsome wall, Myrrima and Sarka both closed their eyes tightly, and Borenson led the horses. He only shivered once as he passed beneath the shadow of the gate, and noon found them all racing down snowy slopes.

In such fierce light, Sarka was almost blind. Borenson kept a keen eye out for Inkarrans. Sarka warned that the Storm King Zandaros and his men might be camped on the road, hidden in some dark fen. But the snow showed no sign that any large party had ridden past in the night, and Sarka
decided at last that Zandaros must have kept on Inkarran roads, heading farther west, before taking their path northward. That way, the Storm King would avoid any well-traveled highways in Mystarria, taking most of his journey through the wilderness.

“He cares little for the fate of Rofehavan,” Sarka Kaul warned Borenson, “but if the reavers manage to destroy your land, he knows that his own people will have to fight a war.”

The sun seemed to be a great and brittle pearl floating in a distant sea, somehow vaster than any sun that Borenson had ever seen. Below him to the north, clouds covered the green fields of Mystarria like a cloak.

So they rode, racing the horses as fast as they would go down through Batenne and up the roads through the swamps at Fenraven. Verazeth's mount was as swift and tireless as any that Borenson had ever seen, and it carried Myrrima without complaint. His own warhorse and the white mare both tired more quickly, but Borenson kept from wearing them out by switching mounts each time one got winded. Sarka Kaul too had stolen a kingly mount, one whose coat was a peculiarly bright color of red. “They are called blood mounts in the south of Inkarra,” Sarka told them, “and are highly valued for their ability to see in the darkness.”

His mount followed along behind the others, apparently baffled to be running in the daylight. Sarka Kaul kept his head low as he rode through the towns and villages, his deep hood concealing his face, a pair of black riding gloves to hide his hands, and if any man of Mystarria noted that an Inkarran was riding abroad in the daylight, no one gave chase.

By early afternoon they left the swamps at Fenraven and rode west, where they began to draw near the reavers' trail.

A fire burned all across the horizon, and in the muggy air, the smoke billowed uncommonly black. It rose heavenward in thick columns, fulminating upward for miles. To Borenson, the columns looked like black vines espaliered against a stone cliff. At their crown, a breeze blew the smoke east in a thin haze, like tendrils of vine hanging over a garden wall.

Along the road, they began to spot refugees fleeing the coming war. Borenson saw a young woman driving an oxcart. Four children slept on a pile of hay in the back. Food and clothes were wrapped into a few meager bundles.

Then he began to see more exiles, old women with staves hobbling
along the road, young women with babes in arms. But there were no men—no old men, no young men over the age of eleven or twelve. Not even the crippled or maimed were fleeing Carris.

The smoke's reach was tremendous. For twenty miles it hung overhead like a ceiling, and Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka rode closer and closer to the dark columns. Powdery ash began to drift from the sky.

Borenson stopped at a stream near an abandoned farm to let the horses drink, and found a crowd of women who looked too exhausted to march any farther.

“When did the fire start?” Myrrima asked, nodding toward the clouds looming in the west.

“The Knights Equitable lit it yesterday before dawn,” an old woman answered. “They're riding ahead of the reavers, setting fire to everything, hoping to slow the horde.”

If Borenson knew the Knights Equitable, they would do more than just light fires. It was easier to take reavers in the open field than to fight them from behind castle walls. High Marshal Chondler would send sorties against the reavers.

“Have you seen the horde?” Borenson asked. “Do we have any estimates on how big it is?” The last horde sent against Carris had been nearly seventy thousand strong. Sarka claimed that this one might be over a million, but it was hard to credit such wild numbers.

The old woman spoke up. “You can't count them all. The reavers' lines stretches for a hundred miles, like a dark river, and the horde is so wide you can hardly see to the far shore.”