Now they were frozen motionless. The whole world seemed to be frozen, and all eternity was but a moment.
He reached a place where tunnel floors were flooded to a depth of several feet. He picked up his pace, raced over the water. Each time the sole of either foot touched the surface, it would begin to sink as if in soft mud. But he raced on, letting the surface tension buoy him.
He didn’t know how many endowments of metabolism he had anymore. At least forty. He had heard that it took that many before a man could run on the water. But he could have had a hundred endowments.
He had no way to measure time except by the slap of his feet over stone, and the pounding of his heart.
There is a limit to the number of endowments of metabolism a man can take. Common wisdom said that one should never take more than a dozen, for when he reaches that point, certain subtle dangers arise. All of the runes by which facilitators transferred attributes were imperfect. The rune for metabolism made the muscles move swiftly, made the brain think clearly, but it often did not make all of the organs work with the same efficiency.
Thus, one who took vast endowments of metabolism and held them for long often became jaundiced and sickly, and within weeks would fall to his death. Adding two endowments of stamina for each endowment of metabolism could ease the problem. But rarely could a lord afford so many forcibles, and so a man who took great endowments of metabolism in a time of need was like a star that blazes brightly as it fades.
Gaborn wondered if the facilitators would kill him with their forcibles.
He did not stop to rest, did not sleep. With almost every step, he felt stronger.
There is a limit to what endowments can do. Once a man takes five endowments of wit, he forgets virtually nothing. At twenty endowments, every heartbeat, every blink of the eye, becomes etched in memory, and there is little benefit to taking more endowments beyond that point.
The same is true with brawn. A warrior who takes ten endowments of brawn might lift a horse, and Gaborn had seen more than one drunken knight attempt the feat. But adding more endowments does nothing to strengthen the bones, and so the warrior soon reaches practical limits. True, he might lift a horse, but in doing so he stood in grave danger of snapping the bones in his back or ankles.
A warrior who takes five endowments of stamina also reaches a limit: the point where he needs no sleep. It is true that he might grow fatigued, but a moment of rest is as refreshing as a night in bed.
Gaborn had never wanted to be like Raj Ahten, to horde endowments that benefited him little.
Yet as Gaborn ran, he could feel himself being added upon. He felt as if he had grown beyond all natural limits. He could not even guess how many endowments he had. A hundred of brawn? Even when straining to leap a sixty-foot chasm, he moved effortlessly. A thousand of stamina? He felt no weariness. It soon felt as if vigor and wholeness oozed from every pore.
And with each few steps, as the facilitators in Heredon vectored him more endowments, the vigor grew.
He felt as if he were a fruit ripening in the sun, ready to burst its skin from its own copiousness. He felt as if he were only dreaming of the race through the Underworld, as if he’d left his body far behind, and now glided on wings of thought.
Raj Ahten must feel this way, he thought. I could run across a cloud.
He raced through the cavern, crossed the water. Ahead, a squat brown creature, like a giant slug, oozed along the cavern floor—a mordant, digesting everything that it touched. The floors of the tunnel were riddled with holes now, the burrows of blind-crabs and other small animals.
Gaborn halted to drink from a warm pool. The water could not slake his thirst. And though he gathered some gray fungi to eat, it could do little more than ease the knot in his empty stomach.
He felt a death as one of his Chosen was torn from him. In Heredon the killing had begun. Gaborn stretched out with his Earth Sight. He felt his own death lurking in the dark corridors ahead, even as he felt death rushing toward his Chosen people in Heredon. Even with the warnings he’d sent, tens of thousands would die tonight.
He halted for a moment to gnaw on some gray man’s ear and mourn his people. He felt that tonight was but a portent of worse things to come.
Aboveground and more than a thousand miles to the north, in Heredon a storm swept the land. Thick clouds, dark on the bottom but green at their peaks, rose like a wall. Lightning flashed at their crowns as a keening wind thrashed the fields.
“Inside!” Chemoise’s uncle Eber shouted to the villagers of Ableton. “Everyone, hide, quickly! This is what the Earth King warned us against!”
Many a young lad would have argued and stayed gazing out the door, just to prove his bravery, but they had heard rumors of the goings-on at Castle Sylvarresta and knew that to ignore the Earth King’s warning could have only one result: death.
“Get inside,” Eber urged. “Whatever it is that’s coming this way, it will kill you.”
“Aye,” a dozen other men all grumbled. “It’s the king’s will.”
So Eber closed the door and brought down the bolt. Old Able Farmworthy surprised everyone by pulling out a leather bag full of soil from his fields and sprinkling it on the ground in front of the door, forming a rune of protection. Afterward, he poured a libation of wine over it. He warned, “Don’t anyone disturb this dust.”
The old man was no Wizard Binnesman, but he was a successful farmer whose heart was close to the land. Chemoise wanted to believe that he had some power, and perhaps everyone else did, too, for no one dared touch his rune.
The music had stopped. The feast was over.
Night had just begun, though no one was in the mood to celebrate now. Instead, the townsfolk all sat on the floor, fearing what the evening would bring.
Chemoise strained to hear outside. The wind moaned as the storm grew.
Soon the stout new door began to rattle on its hinges. “Someone’s out there, wanting to get in!” a woman said. “Who could it be?”
Chemoise thought it only sounded like the wind banging, for no one called out for help on the other side. Or if they did, the rising wind was carrying their voice away.
She peered about the room. There were only sixteen families in the village. She did not know them well enough yet to tell if everyone was present. Could someone have left a child outside?
Eber began calling out names, “Caln Hawks, are you and yours all here?”
Caln looked about. “Aye!”
“Dunagal Free, you and yours?”
“Here!”
And so it went.
Eber and Aunt Constance were both here with Chemoise, and grandmother sat at the dinner table, the poor old thing painfully unaware that anything was amiss.
“We’re all here,” Eber said when he finished.
“But someone is out there!” the woman argued.
“I know—” Gadamon Drinkwater suggested, “it’s that old shepherd what lives in the hills.”
“No,” Eber said. “I warned him this afternoon. He takes his sheep to a cave in times of storm. He planned to stay up there with his flock.”
“It’s not someone at the door,” Able Farmworthy said. “It’s some thing.”
The wind moaned as if in pain and pounded on the door, thrashing it. Sticks and leaves were flung against the stout wood, and it shuddered under the impact. Chemoise’s hair stood on end.
She had heard how the Darkling Glory raged even after it was slain, turned into a whirlwind and raced to the east. Now it appeared that it had returned.
Distantly, a squeaking arose, as if bats circled outside. Chemoise could barely discern it under the howling of the wind, the sudden crash of thunder. With the sound came a stench, the smell of filth and hair.
“Rats!” an old woman said. “I smell rats!”
Slowly the sound swelled in volume, and the stink grew with it. Rats were coming—not just dozens or hundreds, not even thousands, but tens of thousands.