The Lair of Bones (49 page)

The touch of it sent a thrill of shock through her. Often she'd heard of the “kiss of the forcible.” She imagined from this that the touch of the metal must somehow be soft and sensual at first. But it wasn't a kiss. Instead, she almost felt as if the forcible were a leech that hooked its round mouth to her skin, and began sucking something vital from her.

As soon as the forcible touched her, the head of it began to heat, and the elasticity in her muscles drained away. Her right biceps cramped inordinately, so that she caught her breath.

She gave herself, willed herself to think about Gaborn in his hour of need. The candle flame flickered like the tongue of a snake, and she watched it, ignoring the urgent sound of the facilitator's chant. Outside in the city, she heard cocks crowing, serenading the sunset.

The pain in her arm spread down to her elbow and up to the socket of her right arm. Beads of perspiration broke on her brow, and one trickled down the ridge of her nose. The forcible seemed to become a flame itself. It burned her arm, and she smelled singed hair and cooking flesh.

She glanced down at the tip of the forcible in surprise. She'd been listening for hours as people gave endowments, and in turn nearly all of them had cried out in pain. Some said that the pain of a forcible was unspeakable, unbearable, but as Chemoise's arm burned, she felt determined to bear it.

So she closed her eyes, focused upon her king, and upon the people that she loved. The pain flared so that suddenly she felt as if her whole arm was on fire. She gritted her teeth.

This I can bear, she told herself. This I can bear.

And suddenly the pain blossomed a hundred-fold. Every muscle in her body seemed to cramp at once, so that she bent over in pain far more exquisite than anything she had ever imagined. Though she wanted to scream, to give voice to that pain, all that issued from her lips was a grunt.

Chemoise's world went black.

33

It is the duty of every man to conduct his affairs in a manner that will make it both an honor and a challenge for his offspring to follow in his father's footsteps.

—
Sir Blain Oakworthy, counselor to the Kings of Mystarria

Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul rode away from the reaver lines, putting a mile or more between them and the marching horde that spanned from horizon to horizon.

Sarka Kaul stared ahead, his eyes unfocused. “There is good news and bad. Raj Ahten and Queen Lowicker have formed an alliance. They will allow troops to enter Carris from the north, in hopes that all of them die, leaving half of Rofehavan open to conquest. But even they do not guess what aid the night might bring.”

“Hah!” Borenson laughed in sheer delight to have a Days as his counselor. “Tell me, friend, what will this ‘Council' of yours do when they dis-cover that you've betrayed their secrets?”

“There is only one punishment for such as me—death,” Sarka Kaul answered. “They will torture my twin first, a slow, laborious process. When minds are twinned, you share more than common memories. I will see what she sees, feel what she feels, hear what she hears, until the very last moment. When she dies, I will most likely die with her, for one cannot hope to live after being torn from a bond so intimate as the one that we share.”

Borenson fell silent, ashamed that he had laughed. “I'm sorry,” he said at last.

“It's not your doing,” Sarka Kaul said. “I made that bargain long ago. Right now, my twin lies to the Council, saying that you threw me into the
ocean and that I am adrift at sea, clinging to a bit of wood. My only hope is that I live to help guide you until nightfall.”

“And my hope for you,” Myrrima said, “is that the Council never learns what has happened, and that your twin can escape.”

They had not gone far when they met a lone rider, galloping south along the prairie. He was a Knight Equitable by the look of him, wearing some outdated beetle breastplate from northern Mystarria, along with a black horned helmet with ring mail that flowed like hair down his back, a style seen only among the Khdun warriors of Old Indhopal. He bore an ornate lance of black basswood, a rather princely weapon.

He came riding toward them on a gray horse, grinning broadly. Borenson recognized him as Sir Pitts, a castle guard from the Courts of Tide.

“What do you plan to do?” Borenson called out, nodding toward the line of marching reavers, “terrify them with your fashion sense?”

“Got in a tangle with a scarlet sorceress this morning,” Pitts said, grinning broadly. “She ripped off me chainmail and chewed up me helm! Luckily, I skinnied out of ‘em, or she'd have had me for breakfast, too.”

Pitts rode near. Obviously, he'd scavenged his armor from dead warriors, and was forced to wear anything that seemed a close fit. Across the brow of his saddle were half a dozen philia taken from the bunghole of a reaver. They dangled from the saddle like dead eels, smelling of moldy garlic. Averan said that that smell was the death cry of a reaver. Borenson could see the dried blood now that blackened the man's brow. It was dark and copious, and if Pitts managed to live through the coming battle, he would surely carry some enviable scars. After all, how many men could say that they'd escaped from a reaver's mouth?

Borenson laughed aloud. “Someday you'll have to tell me the tale in full, and I'll pay a couple of pints of ale for the honor. But for now, how goes the battle?”

Pitts nodded toward the north. “The Earth King warned us to guard Carris, and that's what we'll do. But High Marshal Chondler isn't waiting for the reavers to attack. He's sending lancers against them, near the head of their column. It's a bloody row up there.”

“How far to the front?” Borenson asked.

“Thirty, maybe forty miles,” Pitts replied.

The news chilled Borenson. Forty miles to the front? And their line extended south for as far as the eye could see.

“How far to the back of their lines?” Myrrima asked.

“Hard to say,” Pitts replied. “Some make it a hundred miles, others a hundred and twenty.” Borenson was still trying to guess how huge the horde might be, but Pitts was well ahead of him. “There may be a million of them,” Pitts said grimly. “We don't have enough lances to take them all, not even a twentieth. The Earth King used them all last week. So we're concentrating on their leaders. Their fell mage is well protected, near the front of the lines. It has been a bloody row.” His voice sounded shaken as he said this. “We've lost lots of men already. Sir Langley of Orwynne has fallen.”

“By the Powers!” Borenson swore.

“How are we to fight them,” Myrrima asked, “without lances?”

“We'll fight them on the ground, at the gates of Carris,” Pitts said. “We'll use warhammers and reaver darts, and resort to fingernails if we have to. But we'll fight.” His sentiments were as foolish as they were brave.

“Chondler knows more tricks than a trained bear,” Pitts said. “Go to Carris, and see for yourself!”

“It will take more than a trained bear to win Carris,” Sarka Kaul said. Borenson glanced back. Sarka Kaul looked ominous upon his red horse, his face draped with a black hood. His voice seemed almost disembodied. “But be of good cheer. Young King Orwynne is riding into the city gates even now with three thousand men at his back. He has found his courage at last.”

Pitts peered hard at the figure all draped in black robes. He asked Borenson. “Who's your friend?”

“Sarka Kaul,” Borenson said, “meet Sir Pitts.”

“An Inkarran?” Pitts asked in wonder, clenching his lance. “What's he doing here?”

“I go to fight in Carris, friend,” Sarka Kaul answered.

Pitts barked in laughter. “Well then, I hope to meet you there!”

“Come before the darkness falls,” Sarka Kaul said.

Borenson and Myrrima spurred their horses on. Ahead the land grew dark. Columns of smoke roiled upward, creating a vast curtain that leached all light from the plains. The marching of reavers caused the earth to tremble, as if the ground would shatter beneath them.

Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul were nearly to Mangan's Rock before they reached the head of the reaver horde. There, knights on tired mounts raced across the reavers' path, setting torch to every blade of grass, every copse of scrub and bracken, every tree.

The flames roared to heaven and smoke blackened the skies. The light grew faint indeed, for by now the sun slanted low to the west, and here the dense forests of the Hest Mountains were wet so that the smoke that roiled up from that furnace was inky black and laden with soot.

Still there was no sign of any cavalry. The group passed beyond the vale of fire into the mountains, racing their horses. They stopped on a southern slope for a while, in the cool shadow of a rowan, and glimpsed the sun for the first time in hours. Even here, beyond the line of smoke, the sun glimmered like a hot coal in a torrid sky. High up, the smoke acted as a lens that colored the world in shades of ash.

So they hurried over the mountains, down through lesser towns, into the dead lands blasted by reaver curses, where at last they saw Carris gleaming upon the banks of Lake Donnestgree.

Here, the green fields had all gone gray a week ago. Vines and trees lay in twisted ruin. Every blade of grass had withered. Nothing lived. Even the crows and vultures had fled. Only the corpses of rotting reavers, monoliths, their mouths frozen wide in a rictus smile that brimmed with teeth, offered mute testimony to what had happened here.

For a moment as Borenson rode into the blasted lands, he had an odd sensation. He felt as if instead of riding from Fenraven to Carris, he was riding from the past into the future. Behind him lay the sweet green fields of the world he had known. Ahead lay rot and oblivion.

Sarka Kaul sniffed the fields. Borenson could smell old reaver curses on the dead ground. “See no more.” “Be thou dry as dust.” The ground seemed to whisper the curses. “Rot, O thou child of men!”

“Those who saw the battle tried to describe it,” Sarka Kaul whispered, as he stared out across the killing fields, “but words failed them. I could not envision this. I couldn't imagine how wide the destruction went, or how perfectly it had been carried out.”

Borenson spat onto grass that was as gray as ash. “No rain here in a week. A stinking inferno this shall all make.”