“Gasht,” the words sounded, and a black funnel of wind issued from her staff, racing near the spot where Gaborn had stood. The ground boiled where it touched, and flakes of rock splintered from the floor. Three reaver Dedicates, seemingly frozen in time, fell beneath the blast. Their blood and bones spattered through the chamber.
The floor bucked beneath Gaborn’s feet as a strong earthquake rocked the chamber. Stones and dust fell from the ceiling.
“Strike!” the earth commanded, and Gaborn leapt over a reaver and plunged his dart into another vector. He craned his neck and felt gratified to see one of the ghostly blue runes on the monster fade to gray.
The tendrils of darkness swept over him, and Gaborn found himself wishing to curl up on the floor and die. The monster fought him, sought to take control of his limbs.
As if uttering a curse he shouted, “The Glories deliver me!”
In that moment, Gaborn wished for nothing more than to become pure light himself, to fight the corruption he beheld.
The monster wheezed as if stricken, and the shadow withdrew.
The way his very desire seemed to engender pain in the creature gave Gaborn sudden insight.
I can do it, he thought. I can call upon the Glories, and she knows it!
“No,” the monster whispered. “You’re not worthy.” Images flashed before his eyes: a pair of reavers tearing a man in two as they fought to eat him; a woman rushing from a reaver as its blade whipped down, cutting her in half. “This is your legacy,” the beast whispered.
But Gaborn did not believe it. By making him view the world’s corruption, the beast hoped to dishearten him.
“I am worthy,” Gaborn said. “The Glories have made me so.”
The One True Master wheezed and lunged.
Gaborn found that he had backed beneath a twisted stonewood tree, and the bole of it bored into his ribs.
The monster sprang forward in an astonishing leap.
“Jump,” the Earth warned. Gaborn leapt thirty feet in the air, rising between two branches of the tree. “Dodge.” He felt the warning, and Gaborn twisted as he leapt. “Dodge,” the earth warned again, and he twisted once more as he dropped toward the ground.
The One True Master raked the air with her crystalline staff, swatting at him with incredible speed. Once, twice, three times she sought to strike him as he fell, and each time he only barely managed to twist away from the blow.
As he dropped, Gaborn saw a light at the mouth of the chamber, and huge dancing shadows. Iome had come to help.
Gaborn landed on hard rock. The ground began to buck from the force of the earthquake, and stones showered from the ceiling.
For miles Iome had run, following Gaborn, until at last she rounded a bend and saw a light ahead. She could make out man-shapes, dozens of them, and her voice caught in her throat, for she imagined that Gaborn had found an Inkarran war party.
But when she neared she saw only a tattered band of skeletal beings, the shadows of people dressed in rags, and she recalled Averan’s tale of prisoners in the dark places of the world.
She rushed up to them.
“Where is Gaborn?” Iome begged.
No one answered at first, for she had many endowments and spoke too quickly, but one finally pointed down the tunnel. “That way! Hurry!”
Iome raced down the trail, over a floor polished as smooth as marble by millions of reavers that had trundled over it during the centuries. Her heart hammered with every stride. She knew that Gaborn’s need was upon him, for he had left no marks at side tunnels.
She glanced down each crawlway that crossed her path, afraid that she might lose the way. She saw great rooms carved in stone, and longed to search them, to learn what she could of the secret ways of reavers.
Over the weary days of travel she had lost her ability to track time. Her race seemed unending, measured only by the sense of urgency that drove her.
She rounded a bend, saw a trio of dead reavers, and the mouth of a tunnel. As if from a great distance, Gaborn shouted, “Iome, stay back!”
The ground bucked and swayed beneath her feet. Iome threw herself against a wall for support, and warily peered up, afraid that the roof would collapse, but the walls and roof were reinforced with mucilage from glue mums.
She raced into the mouth of a huge chamber. Stones tumbled from the ceiling. Dead reavers lay in humps all about. But in the distance, wading through a swarm of companions, Iome saw a reaver far more enormous and hideous than any that she’d ever imagined.
Its abdomen was so swollen with eggs that she looked bloated to the bursting point. Yet she danced over the battlefield with a speed and grace that left Iome breathless.
Then Iome spotted Gaborn, a second shadow lit only by the big reaver’s glowing runes. He was in something of a clearing, created as reavers rushed to escape his presence.
Gaborn and his adversary moved as if in dance, seeming to read each other’s minds. Gaborn recoiled backward some eighty feet, spinning in the air as he dodged the monster’s whip.
Never had Iome imagined such grace and speed in a man. It was like watching lightning arc across the heavens. To her, it seemed that Gaborn had become a force of nature, the Sum of All Men.
But the One True Master lunged toward him with equal speed, and if Gaborn was the Sum of All Men, then she seemed at this moment, with her power and deadly intent, to be the Sum of All Reavers.
Together, Gaborn and his attacker raced between a pair of grotesque stonewood trees.
“Iome,” Gaborn called. “Kill the vectors.”
All throughout the cave were countless reavers, each marked by softly glowing runes. Comprehension dawned in Iome. She peered about, searching for targets. To her left, her keen eyes detected a bright glow. Half a dozen reavers clustered around it, as if to shield it from view.
Iome raced down the hill, straight toward the light. Several young guards lunged toward her. As she neared them, she leapt toward one’s face. It lurched backward, and Iome dove under its legs, then sprang up behind it.
She saw a reaver lying there, with dozens of pale blue runes along its shoulders and head. She plunged her dart into the vector’s sweet triangle. Blood and brains gushed from the wound.
Two hundred yards away, the One True Master hissed in anger.
A stone plummeted to the floor nearby, shattering and sending its shards into the reavers all around. Several of them hissed in pain.
Iome peered about, seeking another victim.
In the city of Carris, Borenson raced to meet a reaver, heart pounding in terror.
“For Heredon!” Captain Tempest cried, rushing forward at Borenson’s side. The reaver whirled to meet them, rising up in a defensive posture. It’s huge blade arced overhead, and came swinging.
Borenson rolled to the side as Tempest lunged with a reaver dart, striking the beast in the thorax. The reaver lurched backward ripping the dart from Tempest’s hands, and began to roll about, kicking.
Another reaver came leaping over the castle walls and landed nearly atop it. It was one of the juveniles that Gaborn had seen from a distance, riding the back of a matron. The monster was small for a reaver, just smaller than an elephant, but it seemed to be all legs, and it moved swifter than any adult. The thing raced a few paces, grabbed some fleeing warrior from behind and bit him in half.
An arrow from the tower behind Borenson whizzed into its sweet triangle. The monster curled in on itself, like a wasp, and vainly began trying to pull out the arrow.
Vaguely, Borenson realized that great shadows were leaping over the castle wall—other juveniles—a hail of the swift creatures.
Borenson could see no sign of the heroes assigned to guard the gate. They were still inside the courtyard.
Flames roared to the south of Borenson. The oil and the wood on the burning ramparts sent a wall of flame searing forty feet high. The heat was so intense that Borenson didn’t dare try to run beneath the sally port. He was cut off from the others.