Dearborn put a hand on her shoulder, gently pushed her aside. “Brawn,” he said with a deadly resolve in his voice. “I’ll give him my strength. And may the Powers grant that he deal a blow...” He made a fist and shook it, as if he’d strike with his own hand if he could.
Chemoise looked into Dearborn’s face and saw a hardness she’d never imagined. She’d thought him a moon-sick pup. But now she recalled how he had rowed the boat all day without rest. Something in him had changed.
The plague of rats was sent to break us here in Heredon, Chemoise realized, but instead we have only fixed our resolve.
30
The Glory
The Glories speak not as men speak but whisper words that can only be heard in the heart of one who yearns for understanding.
Gaborn raced down a seemingly endless winding stair that a commoner would have spent days trying to negotiate. Hot winds from the Underworld swirled up it, blasting his face. There was no water here, no refreshment.
In Heredon the battle was over, and those that would die had died.
Now Carris was braced for the slaughter.
Gaborn could sense Averan, still alive, far below.
Over the past few days—as Gaborn sensed time—the Consort of Shadows had led him through doors that no commoner could open, climbed down chimneys and up stairways that no human was meant to follow.
More than just reavers burrowed in the Underworld, and the Consort of Shadows was as likely to take some route formed by the passage of a great-worm as follow the reaver tunnels. Gaborn had run past huge waterfalls and through drowned caverns. Twice he had lost his way and managed to find it again.
As he ran, days seemed to pass, and he pondered what he would do when he met the One True Master.
She would be prepared. She was strong in the ways of sorcery, strong enough to challenge the very Powers. More than that, she harbored a locus that had existed from the beginning of time.
Had Erden Geboren planned to fight her with his spear? Gaborn hefted the ancient reaver dart, studied its diamond tip. Runes were carved into it—runes of Earth Strengthening to keep the shaft from breaking. Beyond that, the weapon was nothing special. It was only a spear carved from bone.
Not with a spear, he thought. You can’t kill a locus like that. It is evil, the very essence of evil.
Gaborn’s stomach was knotted, but he craved an answer to his dilemma more than he hungered for food.
A chasm crossed his path, some hundred feet across. He ran and leapt effortlessly, but snapped an ankle when he landed on the far side. He straightened the ankle and sat for a moment, letting his endowments of stamina take over. Shortly, the bone healed and he was on his way again.
He tried to dredge up everything that he’d ever heard about the Glories and the Bright Ones, about Erden Geboren, about the great enemy, the one that his own lore called the Raven. As he pondered, something that Iome had read came to mind. Erden Geboren had described the Bright Ones on his first meeting, and said of them, “Virtue was their armor, and truth was their sword.”
He had imagined then that Erden Geboren was trying somehow to express the goodness that he saw in these people, these true men of the netherworld.
Yet it struck Gaborn that these words weren’t written upon first meeting the Bright Ones, but decades later. What if, Gaborn asked himself, Erden Geboren meant this literally?
What if...a man is like a vessel, Gaborn thought. And what if that vessel can be filled with light, or it can be filled with darkness?
If I fill myself with light, how can the darkness find place within me?
What darkness is there to purge within me? Gaborn wondered. He remembered the book that the Emir of Tuulistan had sent to King Sylvarresta, and the drawing within it. The drawing displayed the Domains of Man, the things that he owned. These included his Visible Domains, the properties that he owned that could be seen—his home, his body, and his wealth. His Communal Domains included all of his relationship to his community—his family, his town, his country, and his good name. His Invisible Domains encompassed all of those things that a man owns that cannot be seen—his time, his freedom to act, his body space.
According to the emir, whenever a man invades one of these domains, we call him evil. If he seeks to ruin our reputation, or steal our gold, or control our actions, we feel violated.
But if a man enlarges our domains, if he gives of his wealth or offers us praise, we call him good.
By this definition the One True Master was pure evil. It was seeking to devour Gaborn’s world, strip him and his people of everything, including life itself.
But how could he fight it? How could he destroy it?
Gaborn was so deep in thought that he was running almost blindly. He rounded a corner, and heard a moan. It sounded like a man in pain.
He halted there in the ribbed tunnel, gasping for breath. He tried to hold silent, to still his breathing and the pounding of his heart.
“Help me!” someone called from up the tunnel. It was a man in pain, choking out his words. He sobbed, and the sound of it echoed through the tunnel so that Gaborn half feared that he had passed someone in the dark.
“Hello?” Gaborn cried.
He moved forward carefully. The pale green light of his ring was fading, and didn’t penetrate very far. The sobbing stopped.
Gaborn neared a corner, saw something on the ground—a human leg, drained of blood and as pale as snow. Its toes had gone black, and all of the muscles in it clenched painfully.
The sobbing began again. Just up the tunnel, around the corner.
Gaborn’s nerves came alive. His Earth Senses warned of danger ahead.
It’s a trap, he realized. The reavers must have left someone here as bait. And when I round the bend, they will spring on me.
His heart hammered in his throat, and a cold sweat condensed on his brow. Gaborn gripped his reaver dart, began to inch around the corner, his back to the wall.
Just a few feet ahead lay a pair of arms, blackened fingers curled up like claws.
By the Powers, Gaborn swore, what have they done?
He imagined someone alone and helpless, arms and legs ripped from him, lying in a pool of blood. Only a powerful Runelord with dozens of endowments of stamina could cling to life for long under such circumstances.
“Help!” the cry came again, nearer now, but weaker.
Gaborn suddenly realized how weary he’d become. He had been running for days now, almost in a trance, and even with his endowments, it had taken a toll on him. The walls of the cave seemed dreamy, insubstantial, and he felt disconnected from his body.
“Hello?” Gaborn called. “Are any reavers near you? Is this a trap”
He heard a choking sound, as if the man rejoiced to hear a fellow human’s voice. “No, no reavers,” he answered weakly. “It was no reaver that did this to me.” The voice sounded almost familiar, and Gaborn rounded the corner, surprised to see a shadow on the floor so near.
He peered on the ground. Blind-crabs had burrowed holes in the wall of the tunnel, and there near them lay a stump of a man—armless, legless. Peppered gray hair and beard. His face was turned toward the darkness. The crabs were atop him, eating him. Yet he still managed to cling to life, for Gaborn could see the rise and fall of his chest.
“It was no reaver that did this,” the fellow whispered, his voice a bit stronger. “Unless you are a reaver.”
He turned to look at Gaborn, but peered at him with only bloody sockets. The crabs had torn out his eyes. It was King Lowicker, whom Gaborn had left for dead in Beldinook not a week past.
“No!” Gaborn cried, fearing that what he saw was Lowicker’s spirit.
Lowicker began to laugh painfully. “Gaborn,” he said, and the name echoed in the tunnel. Gaborn distinctly heard it whispered in his left ear, and almost immediately it came again behind him.