Averan looked down and saw a great change. Her wizard’s robe had been growing for days. It was as if tiny seeds had taken sprout in her old coat, and the new roots had been growing among the fibers. But in the last moment or two, their color had turned a vibrant green.
All trace of her old robe was now hidden under the twined embrace of the rootlets.
I am an Earth Warden, she thought, called to serve the reavers. And she understood why Iome had shed a tear.
This is my home now. Perhaps in some far future, I might visit the surface of the world and gaze upon the fields of wild grass, or walk under the stars, but not soon. Not often.
Averan shook her head. “Get ready to go,” she told Iome, Gaborn, and the prisoners. By habit, she thought of what she would do if she were preparing for a journey by graak. “Go pack your things.”
Barris nodded toward his ragged people. “We have nothing to pack.”
“We’re ready,” Gaborn said.
Averan raised her staff, considered what to do. Hers were the powers of the deep Earth, so she reached out with her mind, as if summoning an animal, and could sense the rocks and boulders all around her.
Gaborn was right. She felt a shaft overhead, not more than a few thousand feet. The world worm had cleared the way a week ago, when Gaborn had summoned it to Carris.
Averan reached out with her senses, felt the stresses in the rock all around her, the tiny cracks and fault lines. With all of the vast tonnage of stone above, it would take a great deal of energy to open a crack and floor beneath them.
It would take more Earth Power than Averan could ever hope to have. To even think about it pained her mind.
“I can’t,” Averan said plaintively.
“Hold up your staff,” Gaborn told her.
She raised it slightly, felt the Earth Power within it. No. She was too tired even to try.
Gaborn suddenly reached out and grabbed the black staff of poisonwood.
At his touch, the wood seemed almost to burst into flame. Earth Power surged through it, as warm as the breath of a newborn babe, as sure as stone.
Averan looked into Gaborn’s weary eyes with renewed awe. Nothing in his manner suggested that he had such reservoirs.
“Thank you,” was all she managed to say.
She knelt and cast a spell, by drawing a rune on the ground, and the earth began to tremble.
Sir Borenson clutched his warhammer and dove for cover in a wrecked wine merchant’s shop. Reavers had collapsed the roof, so that it stood even with the front windows. Flames sizzled along every beam. He dropped to the floor on his hands and knees, just below the sill, while reavers raced into the city unimpeded. Hundreds of them flashed past his hiding spot.
His heart hammered. Reaver gore covered his hands and face. Fierce heat battered him from fires on every side. Black ash and cinders swirled around like falling snow. Borenson spotted a bottle of wine lying unbroken on the floor, pulled its cork, and relieved his thirst.
In the fields north and west of Carris, he could hear Raj Ahten’s and Lowicker’s horns blowing the charge. Men screamed wildly.
The reavers were in for a bloody row by the sound of it. But here in Carris, the city was becoming ominously quiet.
How many have died? Borenson wondered.
He wanted to get a view of the battle. He only needed a little height to see over the city walls. A set of stairs in the shop led up to what had once been a second-floor apartment. Now the stairs conveniently opened to the sky, and only a few flames licked their base.
Borenson crawled through rubble—stones and splintered boards and broken wattle—making his way to the stairs. He gripped his battle-ax and climbed to the top. He heard the distant thwonk, thwonk, thwonk of ballistas.
Near the shores of Lake Donnestgree, longboats plied the waters, thousands of them. One could hardly see the lake for all of the masts. The warlords of Internook, in their horned helms, fired a hail of ballista bolts from longboats, lancing into reavers that waded along the shore.
To his north, Lowicker’s knights surged into the reavers’ lines, horses whinnying as riders drove lances home.
To the northwest, the frowth giants waded among the reavers, their huge iron-bound staves rising and crashing down. The reavers had no choice but to fight.
And fight they did. A wall of reavers surged north toward the Barren’s Wall, and west toward Raj Ahten, even as their fell mage and her companions raised their staves and sent bolts of ice whirling into the elementals.
The reavers were boxed in, Borenson realized.
He looked for a sign of Myrrima. Below him, reavers thundered down the road unimpeded. The north tower, where Myrrima had been, lay in ruin. The reavers were climbing over it, cracking its beams, knocking down the ramparts. A tower that had stood sixty feet was now crushed down to thirty. Part of it had spilled outward into the lake.
He peered into the shadows at its base, hoping for some sign of Myrrima, but he could see nothing.
If she had been on the third floor when the reavers attacked, the chance that she still lived was slim.
“Myrrima?” he called hopefully, but heard no answer. There was no movement there at the base of the rubble, except for one young reaver that seemed to be digging, like some monstrous beagle, digging for rats in their burrow.
“Attack!” Raj Ahten bellowed above the sounds of battle. His voice, amplified by reason of thousands of endowments, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and so compelling was it that against all reason, Borenson felt constrained to leap from the roof onto the nearest reaver.
Heart hammering, he ducked, trying to keep good stone between him and the reavers below, lest they see him.
“Into battle now,” Raj Ahten shouted. “Let your rage light the way. Teach them to fear us for another thousand years.”
The words were like a spell that ignited Borenson’s rage. A nervous chuckle sprang unbidden from his throat, and against all reason he longed to throw himself into battle.
Raj Ahten’s command seemed to compel every man within its range. To the west, Raj Ahten’s men screamed like berserkers as they bore down on the reavers. The armies collided in a boiling mass. Horses screamed and died. Men disappeared in a spray of gore as reavers clubbed them with blades and hammers. Reavers reared up, lances buried in their faces.
Reavers and men hurled themselves into battle, dying by the score with no sign of any clear winner.
To the north, Rialla Lowicker urged her cavalry downhill beneath skies a brighter red than any dawn. The light of elemental flameweavers reflected from clouds of smoke. Her men drove into the ranks of the reavers, and great was the slaughter on both sides.
To the east, the warlords of Internook blew their horns and fired ballista bolts into the reavers with renewed fury. The reavers continued hurling a hail of boulders toward the ships, and to Borenson’s horror, the warlords responded by steering toward shore, as if to do battle. They too were fully under the sway of Raj Ahten’s voice.
To the northwest, frowth giants cried out in renewed fury, as if heartened by the efforts around them. The elementals of fire raged, while reaver sorceresses fought grimly.
But the reaver hordes seemed endless, and for each reaver that died, three more scrabbled forward to take its place. They washed down from the hills in a tide that did not end for a hundred miles.
Borenson glanced east, uphill toward Castle Carris, and his heart nearly stopped. Below in the streets, reavers raced through the dead city unimpeded, surging up Garlands Street in a black flood. At its end they were digging up the streets, trying to get at the men who hid in the maze of tunnels below.
How did so many get in here so fast? Borenson wondered. It can’t have been twenty minutes since they first breached the castle wall!
Rialla’s soldiers suddenly began shouting, and some blew retreat while others blew the charge. Borenson glanced east just as her banner faltered. Thousands of knights had formed a knights’ circus, a huge circle with lances bristling along its outside. They raced in circles and whirled about within this construct, felling every reaver that entered. But Borenson saw how it all would end. The knights had hemmed themselves in. Each knight would use his lance, killing a reaver or two. But Rialla’s knights had nowhere to retreat. The reavers formed a ragged wall, like a canyon, and living reavers were crawling over the dead to get at the warriors.