Brotherhood of the Wolf (91 page)

Gaborn's knights had abandoned their mounts and now skirmished furiously with reavers in a ragged front. The reavers were pushing his men back. Everywhere he looked, a sea of reavers crawled atop one another in an effort to break the line, hunting men as dogs might hunt hares. His people fought valiantly, but in vain. Even as his glance swept across the battlefield, he saw a dozen men hurled into oblivion as blade-bearers swung their enormous swords.

On Bone Hill, surrounded by minions, in her protective cocoon the fell mage raised her citrine staff to the sky, prepared to utter another curse. The air was already filled with an unspeakably foul scent. But ghostlights flickered at the base of the rune, suddenly blazing like never before.

“Get the Earth King,” the wylde said, pulling Gaborn toward the battle line.

He understood. Someone had sent the creature to him. But Gaborn had been present at her creation, knew the wylde's true name.

Now Gaborn grabbed her wrist and summoned the wylde for his own purposes. “Foul Deliverer, Fair Destroyer: Stand with me.”

The green woman stood panting, as if she'd forgotten her previous errand.

“Strike now,” the Earth warned.

Gaborn knelt. Taking the wylde's finger, Gaborn concentrated as he began to trace a rune of Earth-breaking in the grime.

Yet as he studied the foul hill before him, he could see no flaws, no way to break that thing.

Curiously, an image came to mind. Not a rune of Earthbreaking, but a rune nonetheless. A strange coiled shape within a circle, and single dot above.

He drew the rune, and then he gathered the wylde's hand into a fist.

He looked up. Staring at the fell mage atop her monstrous creation, Gaborn imagined annihilation. He imagined the soil blasting upward in total ruin, the hill and the rune ceasing to exist—scattered so far on the winds that they utterly perished, never to be rebuilt again.

He did not know if he could do it. Can earth destroy earth? he wondered.

Gaborn shouted, “Be thou dust!”

For two long seconds Gaborn held his fist clenched, waiting for the Earth to respond.

Far below him the ground began to tremble, slowly at first, a distant rumble that grew steadily more powerful, as if a quake were building, far huger than any he'd felt before. He could feel the might there, struggling for release. Soon the ground pulsated as if shaken by a mighty fist.

The fell sorceress raised her staff in the air, the runes in her flesh glittering like a garment of sunlight, and her citrine crystal flashed with inner fire.

She issued a hissing roar that resounded from the heavens, that bounced from the walls of Castle Carris and rebounded from the near hills. An impenetrable black cloud began to form at her feet, joining with the corrosive mists that swirled out from the Seal of Desolation—a curse that Gaborn imagined his men would not survive.

Still Gaborn let the earth power build, a measureless force surging toward him. He held the image of destruction in his mind, letting it grow and expand until he could hold it no more.

Gaborn opened his fist, releasing his power.

64
THE SHATTERED EARTH

Iome Sylvarresta was still forty-two miles from Carris. She had stopped with Myrrima and Sir Hoswell to eat some bread and drink a draught of wine while the horses took a rest. The wind was blowing softly through the leaves of the live oak above her, whispering through the grass as it surged downhill.

She felt the Earth trembling long before she heard the end. The ground ripped and snarled beneath her feet, and she looked south in wonder and horror.

From Iome's vantage, she saw only a vast dust cloud that thundered into the evening air, rumbling as it hurtled upward mile after mile.

Though the sun had fallen moments before, the dust cloud rose so high that the evening light slanted off its top, while lightning forked around it.

“By the Powers!” Myrrima said, leaping to her feet, spilling wine from her wineskin.

Iome grabbed Myrrima's arm, for though she had endowments of brawn, she suddenly felt weak with fear. She knew that her husband was in Carris, and that no one could survive such a blast.

Many long seconds later, the sound of the explosion came. Even at such a distance it shook the Earth, making it rumble beneath her feet, then the echo sounded from the distant mountains. She was not quite sure if there had been a single explosion or more than one.

In later days, she would always imagine that there had been two explosions: one when Gaborn cast his spell, and a second explosion a moment later when the world worm
surged upward, creating a vast hole where the Seal of Desolation had been.

But witnesses closer to the blast said, “Nay, there was but one explosion as the world worm burst from the ground at the Earth King's summons.”

The Earth snarled as the world worm ascended. Erin Connal fought at Gaborn's side when it came, and that is how she would always describe the sound: “the Earth snarled.”

Dust exploded upward from the Seal of Desolation and the world worm reared so high that for a moment a full half of its body shot skyward hundreds of yards in the air, blotting out the last rays of sunlight. It spewed dust in its wake.

The ground snarled at the blast site, and some walls of Carris that had not yet fallen now tumbled into Lake Donnestgree.

Erin hardly remembered anything for a long time after that. She stood gaping up at the vast worm, a hundred and eighty yards in diameter, her heart nearly frozen within her breast, awed by its complex musculature, the magma streaming from the crevasses in its skin, the spectacle of its scythelike teeth. The air was suddenly awash with the odors of sulfur and the metallic tang of dust.

She could only have seen it for a moment, yet time seemed to stand still.

When she came to her senses again, she became dully aware that men and women had begun to cheer. The world worm was receding into its vast crater, where Bone Hill had once stood. Dust was falling everywhere.

Lightning bolts ringed the sky as dust shot through the cloud ceiling.

The reavers began to flee.

It seemed too much to hope for—a full rout. But with the destruction of Bone Hill and the fell mage who led them, the reavers saw no reason to remain.

They began fading into the night, racing back to their
dark tunnels, until the time when they would return in greater force.

“Flee,” a distant voice called. Sir Borenson struggled to obey. “Run now, while you may.”

The Earth rolled and bucked beneath him, throwing him two feet in the air. A vast rumble sounded, far louder than the snarl of any thunder. Lightning crashed overhead, while dust and pebbles rained down.

The Earth is broken! Borenson thought dully.

Borenson's legs kicked almost of their own volition, and he reached out for Saffira. He'd found her bleeding and half-dead here on the battlefield. Pashtuk and Mahket fought ferociously to protect her, and when the reavers came in full force, Borenson had no recourse but to throw himself atop her, try to shield her with his own body, even as a dying reaver collapsed upon them, crushing the air from his lungs.

He would not leave her now.

He coughed, struggled to breathe, though dust clogged his nostrils.

“Flee now!” Gaborn's Voice warned once again.

It did not come more clearly, but Borenson realized whose voice he heard, and he struggled to obey. The air was filled with the stench of rot.

Borenson reached for Saffira, searched nearby. “O Bright Star, we must go!” he mumbled, struggling up. He tried to focus his eyes, but everything had gone black. Night was swiftly falling, and with dust filling the air here in the shadows of the reaver corpses, he could see almost nothing. He looked up. A vast cloud of dust hung overhead, though some light still silvered the north and south horizons. He crawled to his knees. Lightning flashed overhead.

“Where would you take her, little man of the north?” Raj Ahten asked, his voice soft and melodious but seething with subdued rage.

Borenson blinked, trying to focus, to see Raj Ahten in
the flicker of lightning, to hear his Voice above the pealing thunder.

He could see them now in the deep evening gloom. Raj Ahten's saffron-colored surcoat gleamed in the darkness. Saffira lay gently in Raj Ahten's arms, as still as the waters of a pond on a windless morning, her pale teeth and eyes hardly visible. She did not move. The glamour had dissipated from her.

For one eternal moment, Borenson knelt. All the air left his lungs. All the willpower seemed to drain from his heart, and he wondered that he could even remain on his hands and knees.

She was gone forever, and he feared that because she was gone, his mind would break.

Not all beauty is gone—he tried to console himself—only the greatest. Life is not empty. It only seems that way.

Yet he felt as if a great void suddenly yawned open inside him, and he could not breathe the dusty air, and he did not care that he could not breathe.

He'd known Saffira only for a day, and if it had been but a short time, it had been … He found no words for it.

Every breath he'd breathed had been for her. Every thought in his mind had revolved around her. In that day, he had been completely devoted, had become her creature. His devotion might have been short in duration, but it was intense.

To go on living now would be … fruitless.

“Run,” Gaborn called to Borenson.

He was safely encircled by dead reavers, as if in a narrow canyon. Beyond them, on the shadowed battlefield, Borenson could hear sounds of war amid men shouting and cheering in the distance. Some reavers still fought, but none fought nearby. The battle had turned.

Borenson gazed warily at Raj Ahten. The Earth King had warned Borenson to flee, but now Borenson realized that he was not meant to flee from reavers.

“Answer me, man of the north,” Raj Ahten said calmly. “Where would you take my wife?”

“To safety,” Borenson managed to croak. He licked his dry mouth; grime came thick on his tongue.

“Yet you brought her here, didn't you? You brought her to her death, at your master's insistence. The most exquisite and finest woman in the world. You brought her here.”

It was not an empty accusation. Blood rose hot to Borenson's cheeks. Even if Raj Ahten had not been struggling to convey Borenson's guilt through the power of his Voice, Borenson would have felt ashamed, damned beyond all hope.

“I did not know that reavers would be here at Carris,” Borenson apologized more to himself than to Raj Ahten. “She didn't fear them. We wanted her to stay back, but she would not listen….”

Raj Ahten growled low in his throat, as if mere words could not express his rage.

He hates me, Borenson knew. The lies I told pried him loose from Castle Sylvarresta, and I slaughtered his Dedicates there when he left. My deceptions caused him to retreat from Heredon at Gaborn's ruse. I delivered his wife to her death.

“You were a worthy adversary,” Raj Ahten whispered.

Borenson tried to lurch to his feet, to run, but he was no match for Raj Ahten with his endowments of metabolism.

Raj Ahten had taken brawn from more than two thousand men. Borenson could not fight him or escape his grasp any more than a newborn could withstand the wrath of its father.

The Wolf Lord of Indhopal caught Borenson's ankle, jerked swiftly and brought Sir Borenson down hard upon his back.

“I found you cradling her like a lover,” Raj Ahten whispered fiercely. “Were you her lover?”

“No!” Borenson shouted.

“Do you deny that you loved her!”

“No!”

“It is forbidden fruit to look upon my concubines. There
is a fee that one must pay!” Raj Ahten said. “Have you paid your toll?”

Borenson did not need to answer. The Wolf Lord swiftly pulled him near, ran his hands up Borenson's leg beneath his coat of ring mail and his tunic, to explore his private region.

Sir Borenson howled in outrage and grasped for his dagger, but Raj Ahten was swifter still.