The Lair of Bones Page 7

  So Gaborn walked in the fog, and sought with his Earth Sight to pierce the gloom.

  “The fog won't last long,” Averan assured everyone. “There's a larger passage ahead, a shaft going up, where hot air from the Underworld meets the cold air of the mountains.”

  “Gaborn,” Iome asked, “is there danger ahead? Do you sense reavers?”

  “Yes,” Gaborn said trying not to sound too ominous, “I sense danger, but not for many miles.”

  He wondered at that. If the reavers were planning to set an ambush, what better place could they have to spring an attack than here in this dank fog?

  Gaborn asked Averan, “You warned me yesterday about the dangers here. What are we likely to find ahead?”

  Averan shook her head, as if clearing her thoughts. “Mainly there are reavers,” Averan said. “Lots of them. But there are other dangers—deep canyons that reavers could climb, but maybe men could not. And there are other animals down here….”

  “With our endowments,” Gaborn said, “I don't think we need to worry about animals.”

  Averan seemed to think for a moment, and then let out an exasperated sigh. “This… isn't what I remember. A week ago, the roof of this tunnel was choked with vines, and the floors were thick with vermin. That's what the Waymaker remembered. But now the reavers have cleared the trail and smoothed the way. So I don't know exactly what we'll find on the road. And I'm not sure what roads we might have to follow. There are lots of tunnels near the Unbounded Warren, and there are paths that even the reavers fear to tread. If we're to get past the reavers, we'll need to take some of the less-used tunnels, the dangerous ones. I think we'll have to sneak in.”

  “You say we'll meet reavers,” Gaborn asked. “Will there be guards?”

  Averan thought for a moment. “I told you: the reavers you fought, they weren't warriors. They were farmers and tunnelers, butchers and… just common reavers. Few of them knew how to fight. Sure, they carried knight gigs and blades, but they didn't know how to use them. If there are guards ahead,” Averan continued, “I can tell you what to watch for. Reavers like to burrow underground when they hunt. They'll be on the road, with dirt covering them, hidden so well that you won't even notice a bump. Nothing may show except for one or two philia, lying above the surface.”

  “I've always wondered,” Binnesman said, “can they see us when they're underground?”

  “No,” Averan said. “Like I told you, they don't see like we do. They only sense shapes from their life-glow, from the lightning in their bodies.”

  “The force electric,” Binnesman said.

  “Whatever you call it,” Averan said. “So they can't see through dirt any better than you could. But so long as a philium or two is lying above the ground, they can smell you coming, and they can feel vibrations from your movement. When you're on top of them, that's when they like to rise up, throwing you to the ground to disorient you. They want to kill you before you have time to move.”

  “So I've heard,” Gaborn said bitterly. Averan didn't know it, but Gaborn had gone into the Dunnwood to hunt reavers only a day after he'd wed Iome. He'd hunted in an ancient cave where some reavers had holed up. Even though Gaborn was an Earth King, and even though he'd had his senses to warn his men of danger, few of his companions had survived that expedition. Nearly four dozen knights had died in an ambush like the one Averan described.

  “There is danger ahead,” Gaborn said. “Reavers, most likely. But it's not for—oh, ninety or a hundred miles.”

  “I just remembered something,” Averan said, “something I learned from the Waymaker. There is an old warren ahead. I don't know how to convert distances in reaver to human terms… but I think maybe a hundred miles. The reavers stayed there for days before they came to the surface.”

  “It was a staging area?” Gaborn asked.

  “There could be more reavers there, I think,” Averan said. “An army—a big one. I remember seeing it in the mind of the fell mage. She needed to get her warriors out, to make room for the others that were coming.”

  Gaborn's heart went out of him. Seventy thousand reavers had attacked Carris. If there was a horde that size ahead, how could they hope to sneak past it?

  “Is there a way around the staging area?” Gaborn asked, “a side tunnel that we can take?”

  Averan gazed up at Gaborn's face. “Maybe we should go find another way into the Underworld.”

  “There isn't time,” Gaborn said.

  “We might be able to sneak past them,” Binnesman said. “Or, if their guard is light, we may be able to fight past them, and hope to avoid pursuit.”

  The fog felt to Gaborn as if it were closing in. He was beginning to worry about Averan. She had learned much from the reavers, but she didn't know nearly enough to guide them. Or perhaps, more precisely, her head was so full of minutiae that she hadn't had time to put it all together.

  “What about this fog?” Iome asked. “Can reavers see through fog?”

  “Yes,” Averan said. “They hardly notice it.”

  Almost as soon as Iome had spoken, Gaborn found the fog beginning to clear. Indeed, in a matter of a few paces, it was gone altogether. The tunnel branched, and warmer air seemed to be coming from the left fork, like a summer breeze, except that it smelled of minerals and dank places. The right fork led up at a steeper angle.

  “Turn left,” Averan said. “The trail almost always leads down, toward warmer air.”

  Now the tunnel began to show signs of life. The ice here had all melted, and with the confluence of heat and moisture, patches of wormgrass began to grow all along the floor and walls. Wormgrass was so named because the urchinlike shrub had soft spicules the width and length of earthworms. Cave kelp hung from the ceiling, and blotches of colorful fungi adorned the rock.

  Most of the vegetation along the floor and walls had been devastated, so that now only ragged patches of flora could be seen.

  Here and there blind-crabs roamed about, searching for food. These were nothing like the crabs that inhabited the coast or some rivers. They were more closely akin to reavers, and to Gaborn's mind looked more like giant ticks than crabs. They had six legs, each of which was long and thin.

  The group mounted up, and began to ride their horses hard now. The road was clear before them.

  Most of the young blind-crabs were absolutely colorless. Their shells were like flawed crystal, giving a clear view of their guts and muscles. Gaborn could see their hearts palpitating wildly in fear as the horses approached, and could make out the color of their latest meals. Most of the crabs were small, only a few inches across the back.

  A few lost gree shot through the cave with the speed of an arrow, searching for reavers that served as hosts for the insects and parasitic worms upon which the gree fed. As they flew, their black wings wriggled and squeaked as if in pain. One landed on Iome's shoulder, mindless with hunger. Its head was spade shaped, like a reaver's, with tiny philia that ran along the ridge of its brow and down its jawline. It immediately hooked its clawed feet into Iome's cloak and began scrabbling about, searching for insects. Iome shrieked and grabbed it, then flung it against the wall.

  Soon after that, the party came upon their first great-worm of the journey—gray like a slug, nearly nine feet long and as broad as a man's hand, leaving a slime trail as it fed on a colony of mold.

  Gaborn was fascinated. He'd heard few tales of the Underworld, and many animals and plants, like this giant worm, had no names that he'd ever learned.

  Now that they had passed through the fog, for hours they rode down into the very belly of the world. Often they reached branches in the tunnel, and more and more, the cross trails showed signs of heavy use by reavers.

  At each juncture Averan would sniff the trail for the Waymaker's scent. Yet in spite of all the memories that the Waymaker had shared, even Averan found a few surprises.

  They had ridden for several hours at a fast pace, when Gaborn noticed something: off the side of the trail was a sm
all cave, crudely chiseled. Above it, clearly visible in the light of the gleaming opals, scratch marks looked to have been gouged by human hands.

  “What's this?” Gaborn asked. “An animal's lair?”

  “Not animal,” Binnesman said. “Human. Erden Geboren's men often used to build such retreats in the Underworld, when they hunted reavers in times of old. The mark here is written in Inkarran. I'm not too handy with their tongue, but I believe that the sign calls this ‘Mouth of the World Outpost Number Three.'”

  “The Waymaker knew of hundreds of such fortresses,” Averan said.

  “I suppose that we had better check this out,” Gaborn said. “We may want to take refuge in one of these before our journey is over.”

  Averan leapt off her mount, and peered into the narrow opening. She held her gleaming opal up before her, so that its reddish light showed the way. “The tunnel is chiseled into solid rock,” she said. “The crawlway goes up a dozen yards, then turns to the left.”

  She climbed in first, and Gaborn got down from his own mount and followed the girl in.

  Spongy black fungi, like wrinkled leaves, matted the floor. Gaborn crawled over them and felt as if he were crawling on a wet blanket.

  At the top of the tunnel he found a room large enough for ten or fifteen people. A pair of blind-crabs, sensing the intruders’ presence, scrabbled to hide behind a tall stone jar that sat in one corner. An ancient reaver dart, its haft nearly rusted through, leaned against a wall.

  Moldering in another corner were the bones of a child. The flesh had first dried on the skeleton, and then rotted away in patches so that the bones clung together.

  Gaborn counted the ribs, and found that it had been a girl, a small child of perhaps four or five. The girl had been curled in a fetal position with her thumb in her mouth when she died. A blanket was wrapped around her, an Inkarran blanket woven from long strands of white goat hair.

  Gaborn heard someone grunt. Iome had followed him up the tunnel. She caught him staring at the pile of bones.

  “Who would bring a child down here?” Iome wondered aloud.

  Averan spoke up. “A few days ago, when I tasted the brains of a reaver, I saw something. I saw… pens full of people down here in the Underworld, kept so that the reavers could test their magic spells.” Iome looked up at her, stricken. “All the spells that they learned: to wring the water from a man, to blind him with pain, to make his wounds rot, they had to practice on real people. So, they caught people—never too many from one place: here a person, there two or three, and they brought them down here. Maybe this girl was one of them.”

  “How horrible it must have been,” Iome said, as if this were something that had happened long ago.

  Averan shook her head. “No, how horrible it must be. They're still down here.”

  It was heartbreaking news. Gaborn had imagined that Averan's mind was a vast cave, full of treasures waiting to be brought to light. But now he found it full of bones and horror. “Do you know where they are?” Gaborn asked. “Can you show me the way?” On top of all his other impossible tasks, he'd have to find these people, bring them up from their prison, if he could.

  “At the bottom,” Averan said. “Near the Lair of Bones.”

  Gaborn inhaled deeply. He was finding it hard to breathe in this tight space. At first he'd thought that an outpost like this might be a good place to camp, but now he knew that he could never rest in this one, not with the hollow eyes of the child watching him. He felt guilty for being alive, when so many others were dead. He felt guilty for wanting life, when his earth senses warned that so many were about to die.

  “Let's go,” Gaborn said. His group had not ventured more than ten miles past the old outpost when Gaborn halted his horse, peered up the road, and said, “There is danger is here—not far ahead.”

  5

  THE SHIVERING WORLD

  A well-bred lady must be prepared in all things. It is not enough to simply excel at needlepoint. She must also be equipped to lead a nation. She should know how to gossip effectively, barter for mercenaries, plan a feast, skewer an assassin, comfort a sick child, and lead a cavalry charge.

  —from A Young Woman's Primer, by Andreca Orden-Cooves, Duchess of Galant

  Iome's nerves felt jittery and her stomach tightened. She'd known that she would find reavers in the Underworld, but she hadn't wanted to find them soon.

  For the past seventy miles the reaver tunnel had been almost featureless, a dull thoroughfare through the Underworld made interesting only by an occasional blind-crab or great-worm. The drab stones offered little variation in color. But suddenly the path ahead opened up into a natural cave whose ceiling rose hundreds of feet in the air. The sound of rushing water thundered in the distance, and nearby Iome could hear it trickling along the walls, dripping from stalactites. The tunnels ahead were covered with white calcite that gleamed like quartz, and the reavers had pummeled it under their feet, so that their trail looked as if it were strewn with bright glass, or bits of stars. The keen scent of sulfur water filled the air.

  “The reavers like the pools here,” Averan said. “It's the last drinking water before they leave the Underworld.”

  “They're here,” Gaborn said, nodding with certainty. “Up the road a ways. I feel the danger rising.”

  Iome had watched men battle reavers from afar, but had never fought one herself. The green woman, Binnesman's wylde, rose up in her stirrups, sniffing the air like a hound, peering ahead.

  “Do you smell reavers?” Averan asked her.

  The green woman shook her head. “No.”

  Gaborn looked to Averan for counsel.

  “There could be guards posted ahead,” Averan said. “They might have buried themselves.”

  You would never have any warning before they got you, Iome thought.

  “I'll take the lead,” Gaborn said. With his Earth Sight, Gaborn was the only one who could travel this path with any degree of safety.

  They rode on.

  Iome's senses were alert. As she rode, she held her opals up and lit the cavern perhaps more brightly than it had ever been lit before. The walls glittered like frosting in shades of honey and ivory. Warm sulfur water trickled and dripped over every surface, and over the ages it had built up deposits of stone in grotesque shapes. Stalagmites squatted like gargoyles on the cave floor while tubular stalactites hung overhead, twisting in serpentine fashion. Along both sides of the path, shallow green pools lay with steam curling up from their surfaces. Myriad reaver tracks deeply imprinted the mud of every pool.

  Plant life was sparse, but feather ferns hung from crevasses near the roof. Something large, the size of an eagle, flitted overhead and circled a stalactite.

  “Gree hawk!” Binnesman shouted.

  Gaborn reined his horse and pulled out his sword, eyeing the creature as it circled twice more. In some ways, it resembled an enormous bat. But it had a head like a reaver's—blind, broad, heavily toothed, with frills of philia sweeping off its jaw and in a ridge along the back.

  To Iome, with her six endowments of metabolism, the gree hawk did not seem to present much of a threat, but to a commoner it would have seemed to be flitting about at lightning speed.

  Iome asked, “Will it attack?”

  “They mostly eat gree,” Binnesman said. “But if they are hungry, and if they are presented with an easy meal in the way of a lone traveler, they may attack.”

  Gaborn eyed the gree hawk. It wheeled near the roof of the cave for a moment, then landed back in a dark corner, near some red feather ferns. The ferns all snaked back from the creature, withdrawing into recesses in the wall so that in moments there was no sign of the ferns at all, merely the small holes into which they had fled.

  Gaborn led the way. For three miles the trail followed the line of pools, and Iome saw a host of intersecting tunnels running here and there to unknown destinations.

  Averan kept to the straight path, and soon there was a huge rumbling sound, an incessant thunde
r—water tumbling over rocks. Gaborn halted the group again, seemed leery of the path ahead. He sniffed the air.

  Iome rose in her stirrups. She had no endowments of scent from dogs to aid her, and the only smell she could detect in the air was the sulfur water. Ahead, just around a bend, a waterfall seemed to be cascading over the stones. The water breaking on the rocks caused the whole cave to tremble.

  Yet as Iome listened, she realized that something strange was happening. The rumbling was growing stronger.

  “Flee!” Gaborn shouted. He began wheeling his mount around, and for a moment everyone struggled to keep up.

  “Earthquake!” Iome warned, for she had felt that same rumbling two days past, when a quake humbled the Courts of Tide.

  “No,” Gaborn shouted. “Reavers are coming!”

  How many reavers would it take to make the earth grumble like this? Iome wondered. Yet she knew the answer. She had heard a similar thundering across the plains at Carris.

  Iome and the green woman were at the back of the group. Iome wheeled her mount as best she could, raced back the way she had come, but Binnesman's mount surged ahead of hers.

  What are we to do? she wondered. Our horses can outrun them, but to what end? The reavers will only chase us back up the tunnel.

  Iome raced past one path that branched to the right, but when she reached a second that climbed a steep hill and then disappeared into another passageway, Gaborn shouted, “That way! To the left!”

  Iome spurred her charger uphill. It would have been too steep for a normal mount, and even with endowments of brawn and metabolism her horse struggled up the incline, floundering once so that she thought that they would go tumbling back downhill. But the beast got its feet under it and surged up into the opening. A path opened ahead of Iome—stalagmites rose up all around like ogres. It was a forbidding landscape.

  “Not this way!” Averan shouted when she reached the summit. “The Waymaker knew this path. It comes to a dead end a few miles up the trail!”