“Barris is right,” Averan said. “We need to escape. But we don’t have to fight alone. Help is coming.”
“Help?” Barris asked. “Down here?”
“Yes,” Averan said. “Gaborn Val Orden, the King of Mystarria, is coming.”
“Praise be to the Powers!” Inura cried.
“Why?” Barris asked as if he thought Averan had gone mad. “Why would a king come down here?”
“He’s coming to find the Lair of Bones, to fight the fell mage that guides the reavers,” Averan said. “I was trying to show him the way when the reavers caught me. Gaborn will have no choice but to follow. He should be able to track me. He has taken endowments of scent from twenty dogs.
Barris demanded, “And why would a child like you be leading a king?”
“Because I’m an Earth Warden,” Averan said truthfully, “or at least an apprentice.”
“If you’re wizardborn,” Barris suggested, “then maybe there are other things you can do to help us.”
“Like what?” Averan asked.
“Could you summon animals to fight for us?”
“I don’t have my staff,” Averan apologized. “Besides, I don’t think there is anything bigger than blind-crabs for miles.”
“Please,” Inura said. “Try anything.”
These people were desperate. Averan looked in their grimy, hopeless faces, and could think of no way to help. But anger still burned in her at the thought of her father, and she, too, wanted revenge.
She squinted, wondering. “I’ll try,” Averan said. Silently the prisoners crept near, peering at her in the darkness. She slowed her breath and let her thoughts stretch far away.
Her mind lit first on Gaborn. She imagined his face. When she pictured it clearly, she tried to match the pace of his frantic breathing. He was running. She could sense that much at least.
She tried to envision what he saw as he ran, tried to feel the hard stone earth pounding beneath his feet. But it was useless. She couldn’t gain entry to his troubled mind.
She needed an easier target, someone more accessible. Binnesman had had her summon a stag back in the hills above the Mangan’s Rock because it was a stupid animal.
What kind of animal do I know that’s stupid? Averan wondered. A world worm, she thought. That’s what Gaborn summoned.
But the idea of some vast worm tunneling through the warrens was too frightening. She dared not try to call such a monster.
She cleared her mind, and an image came slowly: the green woman, Binnesman’s wylde.
Averan stretched out with her thoughts.
She envisioned the green woman, and tried to touch the wylde’s mind. But the creature was so far away. After long minutes, she began to see through the wylde’s eyes, hear as it heard, smell as it smelled. Averan felt astonished at the keenness of every sense. The green woman had a nose sharper than a hound’s and eyes keener than an owl’s. Every nerve was alive. She felt the slightest currents on her skin, and could taste the lively air with a flick of her tongue. Binnesman had wrought his wylde well indeed. Never had Averan imagined that any creature could feel so vital, so in tune with its surroundings.
The green woman reached a great abyss where a canyon cut across her path. Below, stone trees grew along a riverbank and canyon walls like twisted, leafless caricatures of oaks, and wormgrass flourished beside riverbanks where elephant snails huddled in packs like rounded boulders.
Reavers and humans alike would have had to spend long hours negotiating the dangerous climb past the canyon. But the wylde merely stepped off the precipice, falling hundreds of feet before she grasped a rock on the far wall.
Averan could almost feel the stone shift, as if to mold itself to fit the green woman’s hand, and then she scampered up the cliff as quickly as a spider.
Averan marveled at the wylde’s endurance. The creature drew its strength from the Earth, and now Earth was all around it, enclosing it, suffusing it with energy. Averan could feel endless vigor in the creature’s taut muscles.
“Spring,” Averan called. “Help me.”
Those three words cost her. Averan felt spent merely to think them, and her head suddenly reeled.
The green woman leapt like a cat, spinning in the air.
“Averan?” she asked.
“Help us,” Averan begged. “We’ve been caught by reavers, deep in the warrens, near the Lair of Bones.” Averan poured herself into the wylde’s mind. Averan enticed her, “The enemies of the Earth are here.”
Averan fell down in a swoon. She could hardly hold contact.
The green woman’s head snapped up. Her nostrils flared. The wylde howled like a hollow wolf and began racing down the tunnel. Averan caught the scent of a reaver’s marker as she met a sudden crossroad. Averan frowned in concentration, recognized the spot.
The wylde had been following the reavers’ horde up to the surface. The creature was hundreds of miles away.
“Help,” Averan cried. “Turn around.”
Bitterly, choking back her own sobs, Averan withdrew from the creature’s mind, unable to maintain contact, and fell into a black place, void of desire.
24
Sarka Kaul
For centuries the Days have claimed to be politically neutral. Their sole desire, they say, is to “observe” the lives of the lords and ladies of the Earth. But what lord, I wonder, can remain unchanged in the face of such scrutiny? What king among us does not seek to seem wiser, gentler, and more admirable than our base nature craves? We are forever reminded that our lives are short, measured in single heartbeats, gathered into a seeming handful of days. Thus, I believe that in observing the lords of the Earth, the Days unavoidably alter the course of history.
Given this, I can only conclude that it is not the mere recording of history that they desire: it is the alteration of affairs. Their hand is subtle but sure, and I suspect that in time of great need, they will reveal themselves.
Myrrima’s captor hustled her down a long tunnel, shoving her forward. Verazeth was not a gentle man. It was too dark for a northerner like her to see, but he forced her to rush forward blindly. She could hear the sounds of the sea—the dull crash of slow-moving waves breaking over sullen rocks, the distant cry of a gull. The scent of salt water hung thick in the air.
Something stirred inside of her. She had never heard sea waves before, and had not really been able to imagine them. She had thought that they might sound like waves in a lake, lapping on a shore. She had been to a lake before.
But the sound she heard now was nothing like a lake. She could hear waves crashing upon shores that stretched far beyond what the eye could ever convey. The waves beat against the rocks at the base of Palace Iselferion, sloshing around them, making the very foundations of the palace tremble. She didn’t just hear the ocean, or smell it. She could feel it quivering through her bones.
She had never felt such power in Water before. It seemed to call to her.
Myrrima’s captor pushed her from the tunnel, and suddenly there was starlight overhead. Myrrima saw the sea, vast and limitless, stretching beyond the horizon. It was almost morning. A soft light hovered in the east. At her back, Verazeth, as pale as if he were dead and bloodless, gave her a shove, backing her over a stone parapet that leaned out over the ocean.
The water lapped the rocks below her, only a hundred yards or so. With a small push, Myrrima would fall into the deep.
Prince Verazeth pushed her backward, his black robe open, revealing his pale chest. He was a handsome man, with a sharp nose, a strong chin, and well-defined muscles in his chest and abdomen. His long silver hair had been braided in cornrows and knotted together, so that it hung over his right shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Myrrima asked.
Verazeth stroked her face just once. She saw undisguised lust in his expression. “It would please,” he said at last, “if you give endowmen t...metabolism.”