Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 51

He climbed up. The clouds of steam rose, darkening everything, and for several minutes he saw nothing.

Though the walls of Carris were bound and strengthened with Earth runes, the explosion had punished the walls, caused stones to shift. Great slabs of white plaster fell from both the inner and outer castle walls, stripping away the bone-white exterior to leave the stone naked to the cold sleet.

Then the men upon the walls nearest the reavers began to shout and cheer and whistle.

Roland spotted the mage at last, lying two hundred yards back from the mouth of the causeway, black as a cinder and uglier than any nightmare he'd ever had.

It lay dead, unmoving. Green smoke issued from its wounds, where the fiery lances had pierced it. Behind it, other flame-blackened mages were canted sideways, feebly pawing the ground with broken limbs.

Four of the reaver mages near the rear wheeled and scurried from the castle, limping or dragging broken limbs.

Roland whistled and gaped at the dead behemoth. He found himself breathing hard in relief. We've beat them, he thought. We've beat their attack. Men clapped and cheered.

Out on the plains, a few thousand footmen had become trapped. Only three dozen reavers bothered to herd them. The reavers stalked among them, slaughtering them wholesale, but hundreds of men made into the causeway, threw themselves into the water.

For along moment, Roland gazed across the countryside. The fog was still receding steadily; a mile from the castle, reavers marched northward in great lines.

The rattling sound of their carapaces smashing against stone could be heard everywhere, like roaring surf. On nearby hills Roland spotted reavers by the thousands.

There are many kinds of creatures that men call reavers, Roland knew, but men rarely saw different varieties. Mostly when men painted images of reavers, they showed the most common breed: the hordes of dreaded blade-bearers and the fearsome mages that led those hordes.

But other species existed. Now for the first time, Roland saw some of those among the blade-bearers: the many legged worms that men called "glue-mums," each some eighty feet long, and the smaller urine colored spidery creatures that men called "howlers" because of the queer howls that they emitted from time to time.

Though these beasts did not look like the more common reavers, they somehow fit within reaver society. Whether they were intelligent species that the reavers had subverted or whether they were dumb animals trained to slave away in the reavers' behalf, no, man knew.

Then, from out of the fog, the reaver horde's leader came.

She was the stuff of legend, a reaver lord unlike any to have been seen above ground for thousands of years.

"A fell mage!" men shouted in dread as she issued from the fog. A hundred reaver mages bore her on a vast palanquin over their heads. Though a reaver stood taller than an elephant, she dwarfed her companions. Thirty feet at the shoulder, and a full length longer than a normal reaver, her entire body was clothed in runes that glimmered like a garment of light. She did not ride upon the palanquin alone, but sat among a pile of glowing crystals so brilliant that at first Roland thought them to be a bed of glimmering diamonds.

But no, he realized, they were merely reaver bones, eaten free of flesh and licked clean by tongues of fire. These were her vanquished foes.

In her paws she held an enormous staff that glowed a sickly citrine hue.

She is beautiful, Roland thought.

Any reaver so terrified him that he did not know how to feel about this one. He looked to see others' reactions, for he suspected that the warriors here would know enough lore to gauge the threat better than he could. The face of Baron Poll, who had joked at the sight of lesser mages, now looked chiseled and bloodless in terror. Raj Ahten himself gaped at her, eyes wide and nostrils flaring.

A moment before, Roland had breathed a sigh of relief. Now hair rose on the back of his head, while goose pimples formed on his arms.

Here was a veritable Lord of the Underworld..

The reaver mages that had tasted the sorcerous fires of Carris, raced toward the palanquin.

"Uh-oh," Baron Poll grumbled dangerously.. "If there's one thing I don't like, it's a tattletale."

Perhaps the fell mage won't care, Roland hoped desperately. Perhaps she has more urgent work to the north.

The four mages reached the palanquin, and to Roland's surprise they dropped their shovel-shaped heads into the ground and did obeisance, almost exactly as if they were knights presenting themselves before their lord; their leader raised her tail in the air as if she were a stinkbug. The mages bearing the palanquin stopped.

The fell mage swiveled her broad head toward Carris, then did something that Roland had never heard of before. She rose up on her back legs, the way that a marmot might do at the front of her burrow, so that her forepaws and middle legs dangled uselessly.

She shimmered in the gray morning. The philia along the top of her head stood up and waved like the spicules on a sea anemone as it grasps for food in a tidal pool.

"She can't see us from there, can she?" Roland asked, hoping that at such a distance, he might be overlooked.

"She's smelling us," Baron Poll said. "Smelling all eight hundred thousand of us."

The fell mage took her great staff in both hands, then leapt from her palanquin and came loping toward Carris.

At her back, her whole army, thousands upon thousands of reavers, followed in a dark tide.

Down above the castle gates, the flameweavers had just vanquished the mages. Now they desperately began pulling fire from the sky, setting down more of their infernal wards before Carris. As they worked, the air grew colder, and the flameweavers leached heat even from the stone walls, until frost rimed them. The falling slush turned to drifting snow.

Rapidly the flameweavers set nine more wards, and in the process exhausted themselves. The fire curling over their skins died, so that soon all three men stood naked in the cold. All of their hair had burned cleanly away long ago. Snow hissed to steam when it touched their hot skin. Roland could see that the flameweavers did not believe that their wards would hinder a fell mage.

As the reavers raced forward, many of them stopped to pick up the ruined corpses of Raj Ahten's foot soldiers in their teeth. These they bore gingerly in their maws, as if to make an offering of them on the causeway, the way that cats might leave dead mice on a doorstep for their master. Some of the men in the reavers' mouths were only wounded, so that they cried out in pain or pleaded for help in Indhopalese.

The cries wrung Roland's heart, but there could be no rescuing those lost souls.

The fell mage closed upon the castle, but at four hundred yards, she halted. A hundred lesser mages, scarlet sorceresses, spread out and flanked her on either side. Tens of thousands of reavers now gathered at her back, a grim horde that covered the fields; nearly every reaver held a man between its crystalline teeth.

The reavers were still far back from the fiery green wards of the flameweavers.

The fell mage raised her citrine staff and played it over the walls of Carris, as if to unleash some dire spell Men shrieked and dropped for cover.

Now she'll show us what she can do! Roland thought.

CHAPTER 43.

ON HUMAN FRAILTIES.

Gaborn took little rest at Tor Doohan. He felt the need to hurry south, to fight the Earth's battle. The facilitator at Castle Groverman must have been working all night, for by early morning Gaborn had the full complement of fifty endowments that he'd asked for. He felt his muscles straining beneath his armor, and his blood pounded in his veins, pounded for battle.

So he let the horses feed and rest for only three hours that morning, until he could restrain himself no more.

Before noon he rode south. Only a few hundred men and women rode with him: a hundred lords of Orwynne and Heredon, another hundred and fifty from Fleeds. But they were a stout war party in many ways, the best to be had from three kingdoms, and hope swelled in Gaborn's chest. For soon he would unite with King Lowicker's vast army, and as he approached Carris he hoped to band together with the Knights Equitable and lords from Mystarria.

He imagined that he might well have half a million men under his command when he reached Carris, and their attack would be spearheaded by some of the most powerful Runelords in the world.

Time and again he thrilled to realize that old King Lowicker of Beldinook would ride beside him. He'd not expected Lowicker to bestir himself.

Some called Lowicker a "frail" man, though the description was overly nice.

His frailty was more mental than physical. Over the past couple of years, his reasoning skills had begun to diminish. Some hinted that he'd grown quite senile. Only the fact that Lowicker had taken endowments of wit from three different men--and thus could store memories in their minds--allowed him to obscure the severity of his ailment.

Yet Lowicker had always been one of King Orden's staunchest allies. Not three weeks ago, Lowicker had organized a grand reception in his father's honor as Gaborn journeyed north.

Lowicker had praised Gaborn roundly, hinting that the Prince would make a fine match for his own daughter--a plump girl who had not one single distinguishing virtue but also seemed to lack any vice.

Gaborn recalled a night of drinking mulled wine beside the hearth while Lowicker and his father told hunting stories, since years before, Lowicker had often accompanied Orden north on the autumn hunt.

But three years past, Lowicker had taken a fall and broken his hip, and now the old man rarely rode a horse at all, and then only in considerable pain. He'd never hunt again, and Gaborn's father had lamented the fact.

As Gaborn headed south, he knew that Iome would be angry with him. He had hastened his departure from Tor Doohan in part because of the rising sense of danger that a.s.sailed him to the south, the sense that he needed to attack swiftly. But even more than that, he hurried because he hoped to discourage Iome from following.

He knew that she'd confronted some danger on the borders of Heredon once this morning. And as he rode he began to suspect more and more that men in his care were going to die today. He didn't want Iome to be among the casualties.

Kriskaven Wall spanned a hundred and fourteen miles of the border between Fleeds and Beldinook. The bastion of black stone stood twenty feet tall, and was twenty feet wide at the base. Beyond that, a trench had been dug in ages past all along the north face of the wall, so that now a shallow river flowed there at all times of the year except in high summer.

Two horses could run abreast atop the wall, but the lords of Beldinook had not felt the need to keep Kriskaven Wall properly manned in the past two hundred years.

When Gaborn rode near the wall early that afternoon, toward Feyman's Gate, he felt somewhat gladdened to see Beldinook's warriors thick along the battlements, to see horses galloping atop the wall, to hear welcoming warhorns blowing from it. He estimated that a thousand warriors held this gate alone.

The wall would be a formidable barrier to Raj Ahten's troops, if any sought to ride through here again.

But as Gaborn in company with a hundred knights drew close to the wall, he felt a familiar p.r.i.c.kling sensation, as if a shroud dropped over them all.

The Earth whispered of danger.

Gaborn called a halt two hundred yards from the open gate, while he studied the sentries ahead. The men wore Beldinook's uniforms, tall silver caps with square tops, and heavy breastplates. Their shields bore the dun-colored field with the white swan. They carried Beldinook's characteristic wide bows. They flew Beldinook's banners. Atop the wall, a captain waved Gaborn ahead.

But something was not right. Feyman's Gate opened wide and inviting, as it had for hundreds of years. The gate itself stood forty feet across, and the top of the wall spanned over it, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with archery slots and kill holes by the score.

Silently Gaborn warned the Chosen in his retinue of an impending ambush. The air around him suddenly filled with the clank of metal on metal as lords lowered their visors and unstrapped shields from the backs of their mounts. The chargers knew the sounds of war. Though Gaborn's own mount stopped, it capered to the side, eager to charge.

Prince Celinor rode beside Erin Connal, two horses down from Gaborn. The Prince looked about nervously, wondering what was happening.

"Who opposes us?" Gaborn shouted across the distance. The ride had been long and dusty, and the dust choked his throat. Though Gaborn felt battle ready, he had not taken a single endowment of voice. Now the wind blew northwest into Gaborn's face, hurling his own words back at him, so that he felt unsure if the men on the wall even heard. The men of Beldinook watched Gaborn's forces uneasily. Many reached for arrows and stepped behind the battlements on the wall.

"Who dares oppose the Earth King?" Queen Herin shouted; and her Voice cut across the distance far better than Gaborn's ever could.

Suddenly the thunder of hooves rose from the far side of the wall. A row of hors.e.m.e.n wheeled from both the left and the right, and the knights converged before the open gate, blocking Gaborn's pa.s.sage. Through the gate, Gaborn could only see the front ranks, but estimated that more than a thousand knights rode together.

At their head rode old King Lowicker himself. Lowicker was white-haired, with a narrow face and pale blue eyes that were going gray with age. His long hair was all in braids and slung over his shoulder. He wore no armor, as if to say that he held so little regard for Gaborn as a warrior that he needed none.

He frowned as he sat in his saddle, pained at his old injuries.

"Go back, Gaborn Val Orden," King Lowicker shouted. "Go back to Heredon while you may! You are not welcome on my soil. Beldinook is closed to you."

"Your messenger told another tale two days ago," Gaborn shouted. "For what reason have you become inhospitable? You and I have long been friends. We can be friends still." Gaborn tried to sound calm, to keep his demeanor friendly, but inside his blood ran hot. He felt confused and betrayed. Lowicker had falsely pledged support and urged him to ride here quickly, to fight at his side. Yet Lowicker himself had plotted to cut Gaborn down like a dog. Though Gaborn struggled to remain calm, in his heart he knew that Lowicker would be a friend no more.

"Your father and I were friends!" Lowicker raged. "But I am no p.a.w.n to a regicide." He stabbed a finger toward Gaborn as if he'd caught a young scoundrel. "You appropriated your father's crown as soon as you were able, but found it too small! Now you call yourself the Earth King. Tell me, Earth King, are these hundred men the only ones silly enough to follow you to your doom?"

"Others follow me," Gaborn said.

But Lowicker studied Gaborn severely and shook his head, as if he pitied those who rode at his side. "When you began to practice in the Room of Faces, young man, I was dubious. I thought that if you did not want to learn to be a king, at the very least you would learn to act the part.

"But now I see you strutting and preening like a great monarch, and I am not impressed. Ride along north, young imposter, while you still can."

Gaborn felt a rising sense of danger. Lowicker was not voicing idle threats. Erin and Celinor had warned Gaborn that King Anders had hoped to sway Lowicker and others with his lies, and apparently Anders had managed to do it quite well.

Lowicker had planned to ambush him, and even now was seconds from ordering a charge. Yet Gaborn hoped that he could persuade Lowicker to see the truth.

"You accuse me of regicide, yet plot my a.s.sa.s.sination?" Gaborn said, hoping to reveal to Lowicker his own error. "I fear you are but Anders's p.a.w.n. How Raj Ahten would laugh to see this!"

"It is not regicide to execute a criminal," Lowicker insisted, "even if that criminal is a man I have always loved as if he were my own son. I wish that I could believe you are the Earth King." Yet his tone was cold, and Gaborn wondered at Lowicker's sincerity.

"I am the Earth King," Gaborn warned. He stared hard into Lowicker, using the Earth Sight.

He saw a man who loved his position; who loved wealth and acclaim more than he loved the truth. He saw a man who had always felt jealous of King Orden's greater affluence, jealous enough so that he'd always greeted Orden with great pomp--but had schemed to grab a piece of Mystarria for his own.

Here was a man who had married a woman he detested so that he could gain greater position.

Gaborn remembered years ago how his own father had mourned the death of Lowicker's good wife. But Gaborn looked into the aging King's mind and saw how Lowicker had feigned love so well that when the Queen took a fall from a horse and died during a hunting accident with no witness other than Lowicker, no one questioned the manner of her death.

He saw a man who thought himself wise, and secretly congratulated himself often for how he'd accomplished his wife's demise.

This was a man who was frustrated because Gaborn had not married his own homely daughter, for he'd hoped that Gaborn would love wealth as much as he did, and Lowicker had long calculated how to arrange both Gaborn's marriage and death at an early age.

As Gaborn searched King Lowicker's soul, the soul of a man he'd always thought a friend, he found only a shriveled husk. Where Gaborn had once believed that he'd seen decency and honor, now he saw only a fair mask that hid a monstrous avarice.

Lowicker was not acting as Anders's p.a.w.n. At the very least he was Anders's conspirator.

Gaborn felt ill in his stomach.

"So then," Lowicker said, grinning falsely. "If you are the Earth King, show me a sign so that I might believe, and thus become your servant"

"I shall," Gaborn shouted. "This is the sign: All men who refuse to serve me shall perish in the dark times to come."

"An easy thing to claim, a hard thing to prove," Lowicker chortled.

"And as all men shall perish whether they serve you or not, I see no advantage in sc.r.a.ping my arthritic knees to you."

"If you will not accept that sign," Gaborn said, "then let me offer another: I have looked into your heart, and found it wanting. I know your secrets. You call me a regicide, but on a hunt eight years ago, you broke your wife's neck with the b.u.t.t of your spear. In your heart, you felt no more regret than if you had taken down a pig."

King Lowicker's smile faltered momentarily, as if he considered for the first time whether Gaborn might really be the Earth King.

"No one will believe your lies," Lowicker said. "You are a nothing, Gaborn Val Orden--not a king, nor even a fair mimic. You are not even a has-been. You are a never-shall-be. Your nation is at the mercy of the merciless.

Archers!"