The RuneLords (45 page)

Yet Jureem knew enough to fear this region, as did the Invincibles. Maps showed the Westwood only as a blank, and at its center was a crude sketch of the Seven Standing Stones of the Dunnwood. In Indhopal, it was said that the universe was a great tortoise. On the tortoise's back sat the Seven Stones, and on the stones rested the world. A silly legend, Jureem knew, but intriguing. For ancient tomes said that millennia ago, the duskins, the Lords of the Underworld, had erected the Seven Stones to "uphold the world."

The Invincibles searched the ground under the birches for sign of Gaborn. Somehow, the Prince's scent eluded them, and now the mastiffs stood yapping stupidly, noses high, trying to catch the scent.

It should not have happened. Young Prince Orden had three people a horse. Their scent should have been thick in the air, the prints of the horses' hooves deep in the ground. Yet even Raj Ahten could not smell the boy, and the earth was so dry and stony that it could not hold a print.

Most of Raj Ahten's men were already unhorsed. Twelve horses dead, several dogs dead, too. The men who ran afoot should have been able to keep up with Gaborn, but complained, "This ground is too hard. We can't walk on it."

An Invincible sat on a log, pulled off a boot. Jureem saw the black bruises on his sole, horrible blisters on his heels and toes. These rough hills had killed most of the horses and dogs. They'd kill men, too. So far, Jureem was lucky enough to retain a mount, though his butt hurt so badly he dared not climb off his horse for fear he'd never get back on. Even worse, he feared that at any moment his own horse would die. Not able to run with these men, he would be abandoned here in the woods.

"How does he do it?" Raj Ahten wondered aloud. They'd followed Gaborn for six hours, astonished at how the Prince eluded them. Each time, it had been in a stand of birches. Each time, they'd lost Gaborn's scent completely, had to circle the trees until he reached pine. Yet it was getting harder and harder to find the Prince's trail.

"Binnesman," Jureem said. "Binnesman has put some Earth Warden's spell on the Prince, hiding him." Gaborn was leading them all somewhere they did not want to go.

One of Raj Ahten's captains, Salim al Daub, spoke with a soft, womanly voice. "O Light of the Earth," he said solemnly, "perhaps we had better relinquish this fruitless chase. The horses are dying. Your horse will die."

Raj Ahten's magnificent horse did show signs of fatigue, but Jureem hardly imagined it would die.

"Besides," Salim said, "this is not natural. The ground everywhere we walk is harder than stone, yet the Prince's horse runs over it like the wind. Leaves fall in his path, hiding his trail. Even you cannot smell him anymore. We are too near the heart of the haunted wood. Can't you hear it?"

Raj Ahten fell silent, and his beautiful face went impassive as he listened. He had endowments of hearing from hundreds of men; he turned his ear to the woods, closed his eyes.

Jureem imagined that his master could hear his men rustling about, the beats of their hearts, the drawing of their breaths, the strangling noises their stomachs made.

Beyond that...must be silence. A pure, profound silence all across the dark valleys below. Jureem listened. No birds called, no squirrels chattered. A silence so deep that it was as if the very trees held their breath in anticipation.

"I hear," Raj Ahten whispered.

Jureem could feel the power of these woods, and he wondered. His master feared to attack Inkarra because it, too, harbored ancient powers--the powers of the arr. Yet here in the north the people of Heredon lived beside this wood and apparently did not harvest the power, or did not commune with it. Their ancestors had been a part of these woods, but now the northerners were sundered from the land, and had forgotten what they once knew.

Or maybe not. Gaborn was aided by the wood. Raj Ahten had lost the boy's trail, lost it hopelessly.

Now Raj Ahten turned his head to the northwest, and looked out over the valleys. The sun shone briefly on Raj Ahten as he gazed at a deep valley, far below.

The heart of the silence seemed to lie there.

"Gaborn is heading down there," Raj Ahten said with certainty.

"O Great Brightness," Salim begged. "Haroun asks that you leave him here. He feels the presence of malevolent spirits. Your flameweavers attacked the forest, and the trees want retribution."

Jureem did not know why this annoyed his master so. Perhaps it was because Salim asked him. Salim had long been a fine guard, but a failed assassin. He'd fallen from Raj Ahten's favor.

Raj Ahten rode to Haroun, a trusted man who sat on a log, his shoes off, rubbing his maimed feet. "You wish to stay behind?" Raj Ahten asked.

"If you please, Great One," the wounded man asked.

Before Haroun could move, Raj Ahten drew a dagger, leaned over and planted it through his eye. Haroun gasped and tried to stand, then tripped backward over a log, gagging.

Jureem and the Invincibles stared at their lord in fear.

Raj Ahten asked, "Now, who else among you would like to stay behind?"

Gaborn rode full-tilt, and though his mount was one of the strongest hunters in Mystarria, in the afternoon he felt it giving way beneath him.

The stallion wheezed for breath. Its ears drooped, lying almost flat. Serious signs of fatigue. Now, when it leapt a tree or jumped some gorse, it did so recklessly, letting brambles scrape its hind legs, setting its feet loosely. If Gaborn did not stop soon, the horse would injure itself. In the past six hours, he'd traveled over a hundred miles, circling south, then heading back northwest.

Gaborn felt certain Raj Ahten's scouts must have begun to lose mounts by now. He could hear but two or three dogs baying. Even Raj Ahten's war dogs had grown weary of the chase. Weary enough, he hoped, to make mistakes.

He rode on, leading Iome through a narrow gorge. Night's shadows were falling.

He could see quite well here. As if the eyebright administered the night before had not yet worn off. This amazed him, for he'd expected it to lose its effect long ago.

He felt thoroughly lost, had no idea where he'd managed to end up, yet it was with a light heart that he raced down into a deep ravine, covered in pine.

Here he found something he'd never expected to encounter so far into the Dunnwood--an ancient stone road. Pine needles had fallen on it over the ages, and trees grew up through the middle of it. Yet all in all, as he headed deeper into the gorge, the path could be tracked.

It seemed a decidedly odd road, too narrow for even a narrow wagon, as if it were made to be trod by smaller feet.

Iome must not have expected this road, either, for she watched it with wide eyes, looking this way and that. In the darkness, her pupils dilated.

The woods grew silent as they rode for the next half-hour, and the trees grew immense. The trio descended from the pines into a grove of vast oaks, trees larger than Gaborn had ever seen or imagined, spreading wide over their heads, the oak boughs creaking softly in the night.

Even the lowest branches rose eighty feet overhead. Old man's beard clung to those boughs in vast curtains, thirty and forty feet long.

On the hill beside him, in the trees, Gaborn saw lights winking among the boles of trees. Tiny holes had been dug beneath a rock shelf. A ferrin warrior rushed before the light, his tail whipping.

Wild ferrin, living off acorns and mushrooms. Some inhabited caves up there; others lived in the hollows of great oaks. Gaborn saw lights from their lamps among the immense roots and boles. City ferrin seldom built fires, since those attracted men who would dig the ferrin out of their burrows. Somehow, the presence of wild ferrin comforted Gaborn.

He strained his ears, listening for sign of pursuit, but all he could hear was a river, somewhere off to his right, rushing down the ravine.

Still the trail descended.

The trees grew old and more vast. Few plants thrived beneath these trees--no gorse or winding vine maple. Instead the soft ground was covered in deep moss, unmarred by footprints.

Yet as they traveled, Iome cried out, pointed deeper into the woods. Far back under the shadows, a gray form squatted--a heavyset, beardless man, watching them from enormous eyes.

Gaborn called out to the old fellow, but he faded like a mist before the sun.

"A wight!" Iome cried. "The ghost of a duskin."

Gaborn had never seen a duskin. No human living ever had. But this looked nothing like the ghost of a man--it was too squat, too rounded.

"If it is the spirit of a duskin, then all is well," Gaborn said, trying to put a good face on it. "They served our ancestors."

Yet Gaborn did not believe for a moment that all was well. He spurred his horse onward a bit faster.

"Wait!" Iome called. "We can't go forward. I've heard of this place. There is an old duskin road leading down to the Seven Standing Stones."

Gaborn flinched at this news.

The Seven Standing Stones lay at the heart of the Dunnwood, formed the center of its power.

I should flee, he realized. Yet he wanted to reach those stones. The trees had called him.

He listened for a long moment for sounds of pursuit. Distantly, he heard trees bending in the wind, speaking something...he could not quite distinguish.

"It's not much farther," Gaborn told Iome, licking his lips. His heart hammered, and he knew it was true. Whatever lay ahead, it was not far distant.

He spurred his horse into a canter, wanting to take advantage of the failing light by covering as much distance as possible.

Ahead he heard a far-off rasping sound--like the buzz of rattlesnakes.

He froze in his saddle. He'd never heard the sound before, but he recognized it from others' descriptions. It was the rasping of a reaver as air filtered from its lungs.

"Halt!" he shouted, wanting to turn his horse and retreat.

Yet almost immediately he heard a cry ahead, Binnesman calling, "Hold! Hold I say!" He sounded terrified.

"Hurry!" Gaborn shouted and rode like a gale now, the horses' hooves drumming over the mossy road, beneath the black boughs.

He drew his warhammer, and pounded the ribs of his failing horse with his heels.

Sixteen hundred years ago, Heredon Sylvarresta had slain a reaver mage in the Dunnwood. The deed was legend. He'd put a lance through the roof of its mouth.

Gaborn had no lance, did not know if a man could even kill a reaver with a warhammer.

Iome shouted, "Wait! Stop!"

Deeper the road dropped, into the endless ravine, so that when Gaborn tried to look up above the dark branches, he had the impression of endless land all around and above him.

"The earth hide you..." the words rang in his mind. Iome and her father followed Gaborn down, until he felt as if at any moment he would be swallowed up into the belly of the earth.

He raced under the great oaks, which spread above him taller than any he'd ever imagined, so he wondered if these had grown here since the world was first born--then suddenly he saw an end to the trees, an end to the trail ahead. The rasping of the reaver came from there.

A ring of misshapen stones lay a couple of hundred yards off. Dark, mysterious, shaped somewhat like half-formed men. Gaborn raced to them in the starlight, hurtling under dark trees.

Something seemed very wrong. Only moments before, at the top of the hill, the sun had been setting. It was dusk. Yet here, with the steep mountains rising all around--here in the deep hollow, full night had fallen.

Glorious starlight shone all around.

Though legend had named this place the Seven Standing Stones, it seemed the ring had not been named aptly. Only one stone stood now--the stone nearest to Gaborn, the stone facing him. Yet it was more than a stone. Once it might have seemed human. Its features were ragged and chipped with age, and the statue shone dimly with a greenish hue, as if foxfire played over its features. The other six stones, all of similar design, seemed to have fallen in dark ages past; all had toppled out from the center of the ring.

And though they were of similar design, yet they were not. For this one's head lay askew, and another's leg was raised in the air, while a third looked as if it were trying to crawl away.

A tremendous blast of light erupted from what Gaborn had taken to be a huge boulder--a beam of fire that struck the remaining statue at its feet. Gaborn saw movement as the boulder took a step, then another blast struck the statue, a blast of frost that froze the air, cracked the statue's edges, flaking them away.

Before that single statue, a reaver mage spun to meet Gaborn.

Binnesman shouted, "Gaborn! Beware!" though Gaborn could not see the old wizard.

Gaborn first saw the reaver's head, row upon row of crystalline teeth flashing like ice in the starlight as its jaws gaped.

It bore no common ancestor to man, looked like no other creature to walk the face of the earth, for its kind had evolved in the underworld, descended from organisms that formed countless ages ago in deep volcanic pools.

Gaborn's first impression was of vastness. The reaver stood sixteen feet at the shoulder, so that its enormous leathery head, the width and length of a small wagon, towered above him though Gaborn rode on horseback. It had no eyes or ears or nose, only a row of hairlike sensors that skirted the back of its head, and followed the line of its jaw like a great mane.

The reaver scrambled quick as a roach on four huge legs, each seemingly made only of blackened bone, that held its slimy abdomen well off the ground. As Gaborn drew near, it raised its massive arms threateningly, holding out a stalagmite as a weapon, a long rod of clear agate. Runes of fire burned in that rod. Dire symbols of the flameweavers.

Gaborn did not fear the icy rows of teeth, or the deadly claws on each long arm. Reavers are fell warriors, but reaver mages are even more fell sorcerers.

Indeed, the whole art of the Runelords had developed in mimicry of the reavers' magic. For when a reaver died, others of its kind would consume the body of the dead, absorb its knowledge, its strength, and its accumulated magic.