Erin peered round the corner, to the woman’s face carved above the passage. Her face was beautiful, surreal. Her long hair cascaded down, framing the doorway. Beyond it, a tunnel angled down into the ground, with flag-stones paving the way, forming a stair down into the darkness.
Erin breathed deeply. The morning air smelled sweeter than a summer field, but a hint of musk and deep places added spice to the odor. She pinched herself, and felt pain. She felt awake. Indeed, she’d never felt so alive.
In tales of the netherworld, it was said that in the beginning, all men were Bright Ones who lived beneath the First Tree. Erin wondered if this vast tree was indeed that tree of legend, and if the hole that gaped before her led down to some forgotten home. Forgotten or abandoned.
Perhaps the Bright Ones are all dying off, she told herself. Surely, if the flocks of Darkling Glories I saw flying in my vision yesterday are real, then the end of the Bright Ones cannot be far off.
She squinted, searching the walls for a sign of an old sconce with a torch in it, or perhaps a fireplace carved into a nook where a faggot might lie. But she found nothing to light her way.
She turned back, and was about to risk going out into the daylight in order to explore this world that she was condemned to visit in every waking dream, when she heard the rush of wings. Darkness blotted out the light that streamed through the opening of the burrow.
Suddenly, the great owl swooped to its roost, the wind from its wings stirring up motes of dust that shimmered in the air. In its massive beak wriggled something that might have been a rat, if it had weighed less than fifty pounds.
The owl set its prey on the ledge, laid one claw over the creature, adjusted its wings, and sat with head lowered, peering at Erin for a long moment.
“Is it safe to talk?” Erin asked.
“For the moment,” the owl said. It hesitated. “You fear me.” Its thoughts smote her, carrying the owl’s sadness. “You are a warrior, yet you fight sleep to avoid me. I mean you no harm.”
“You’re a stranger,” Erin said. “I’d be leery even if you lived on my own world.”
“You need not fear me,” the owl said, “unless you are in league with the Raven.”
In her mind’s eye Erin saw the Raven, a great shadow that blotted out the sun. She it was who had sought to wrest control of the Runes of Creation from the Bright Council. She it was who had blasted the One True World into millions of parts, giving birth to the shadow worlds that she now sought to claim or destroy.
“It’s not in league with the Raven you’ll find me,” Erin said. “Yet I don’t trust you. Or maybe I worry that I’m going mad, for I’ve never dreamt of anything like you before, but now you haunt my every sleep.”
The owl peered at her, unblinking. “In your world, do not people send dreams to one another?”
“No,” Erin said.
The owl said nothing, but Erin felt sorrow wash over her, and knowledge enlightened her. In the netherworld, sendings were valued as the most intimate form of speech. It had greater power than mere words to enlighten both the mind and heart, and when men and women fell in love, they often found themselves wandering together at night in shared dreams, no matter what great distances might separate them.
“I see,” Erin said. “You don’t mean to worry me—only to offer comfort. Yet the things you show me bring no comfort at all.”
“I know,” the owl said.
“I’ve been hunting for your Asgaroth,” Erin said. “I don’t know where he is hiding.”
“Long have I hunted Asgaroth, too,” the owl whispered, and Erin felt the weight of that hunt. She saw in her mind the figure of a man, a lonely man who wore a sword upon his back, tracking endless wastes. The owl had hunted Asgaroth across countless ages and upon many worlds. A hundred times he had found the creature, and many times he had stripped the mask from Asgaroth’s face.
“When I first dreamt of you,” Erin said, “you held my dagger, and you summoned me.”
“Yes,” the owl said softly. “I seek Asgaroth, and I need an ally among your people. Beware,” the owl whispered. “Asgaroth comes.” It folded its wings over its chest and faded like a morning mist.
At the mouth of the burrow, the shadow descended. Black wings blotted out the sun, and the smell of a storm filled the small hole. The creature that strode down the steps squatted as it walked, its long knuckles scraping the ground. The thing had a man’s shape, but its fangs and clawed fingers spoke nothing of humanity. Darkness flowed at its feet.
A Darkling Glory stalked toward her, cold and menacing.
Erin’s eyes flew open just as her bedroom door began to crack. Her heart hammered. She’d left a single candle burning on the nightstand.
Celinor came into the room, looking solemn. She felt certain that Asgaroth’s locus was near, so she clutched the dagger under her pillow, heart hammering, and prepared to sink it into Celinor’s throat as soon as he lay on the bed.
But just behind Celinor came his father, King Anders.
One of them was a locus, Erin felt certain, but she didn’t know which.
“Ah,” King Anders said in a kindly tone, “I’m glad that you’re awake.”
“We just got a courier from Heredon,” Celinor said. “A vast horde of reavers has issued from the Underworld, and is marching through Mystarria. Gaborn has sent out a call for help to every realm of the north. He begs that any who can come to his defense bring lances or bows and reach Carris by sunset tomorrow.”
King Anders’s skeletal face seemed pale. “We must answer his call before first light,” Anders said. “I can bring precious few of my troops in so short a time, but I’ve already sent a messenger to tell Gaborn that a new Earth King rides to his defense. We will bring what comfort we may!”
Book 13
When True Night Falls
22
A Wind from the East
The world is full of burrowing creatures—great stone worms whose diameters are larger than a house, crevasse crawlers with their sharp teeth and segmented bodies, blind-crabs and pouch spiders, and even tiny weevils called chervils, that can burrow into a man’s armor. But reavers are hunters, not burrowers. They live in holes tunneled by other animals, and seem to dig only when trying to dislodge their prey from some small cavity.
Gaborn raced through the Underworld in a tunnel where mud pots spattered pale calcite against the white walls of the crawlway. Behind those walls, he could hear steam roaring upward through hidden chimneys, as if the reavers that fashioned this place had tried to wall out vast rivers of boiling water. It was a rolling thunder in his ears.
The light from his single opal pin was fading. He didn’t know how much longer it would last. It seemed that he had been running for days now, perhaps weeks. He sensed danger ahead, stopped and peered down the trail.
The path intersected a crude cavern, a hole bored by some massive rock worm. Part of the roof had collapsed, leaving dirt, gravel, and boulders on the floor. It was perfect for an ambush. The main tunnel had been polished by the tread of countless reavers. But the side tunnel was wild. Red shag-weed grew to the height of a man’s knees.
Indeed, blister worms had crawled from the side cave and now infested the floor by the thousands, dining on dung left by the reaver horde. The worms, sluglike creatures the length of a finger, were gray, shot through with crimson veins. The worms’ flesh secreted a poison that blistered the skin, but a large blind-crab, oblivious to the poison, was raking through the dung, feeding.