The Lair of Bones Read Free Page A

hitching the horse to the single-tree on the wagon.
    â€œHave you any other news of the reavers?” Gaborn whispered.
    â€œAye,” Binnesman said, “Most of it good. We harried them all day. Many of the monsters died from weariness while fleeing our lancers, and our knights attacked any that slowed. At last report there were only a few thousand left. But when they reached the vale of the Drakesflood, they dug into the sand. That was about midafternoon. Our men have them sur-rounded, in case they try to flee, but for now there is little more that they can do.”
    Averan pictured the monsters at the Drakesflood. The reavers wereenormous, each more than sixteen feet tall, and twenty in length. With four legs and two huge forearms, in form they looked like vast, tailless scorpions. But their heads were shaped like spades, and the reavers could force their way under the soil just by pushing down and then crawling forward. That is how they would have dug in at the Drakesflood. The move would afford them good protection from the lances of the knights.
    â€œSo that's the good news,” Gaborn said heavily, “now what of the bad?”
    Binnesman answered, “At the Mouth of the World we found reaver tracks heading in. It looks as if three reavers circled through the hills after the battle at Carris. Somehow they got past our scouts.”
    â€œBy the Seven Stones!” Gaborn swore. “How soon before they reach their lair, do you think?”
    â€œIt's impossible to guess,” Binnesman said heavily. “They may have already told their master how you defeated their army at Carris, and even now she will be considering how to respond.”
    Binnesman let that thought sink in.
    â€œBut how did they elude my scouts?” Gaborn wondered.
    â€œI suspect that it would have been easy,” Binnesman answered. “After the battle at Carris, the horde fled in the night while rain plummeted like lead. We had only brief flashes of lightning to see by. With our soldiers busy at the front, they left before we ever thought to try to cut them off.”
    Binnesman and Gaborn hooked the horse to the wagon, and both men climbed onto the buckboard. Gaborn gave a whistle, and the force horse took off at a brisk trot.
    â€œThis has me worried,” Gaborn said.
    Binnesman seemed to think for a long moment. At last he sighed. “Beware the Lair of Bones. Beware the One True Master. My heart is full of foreboding about this creature. No beast of this world could be so well versed in rune lore.”
    â€œYou suspect something?” Gaborn asked.
    â€œSeventeen hundred years ago, when Erden Geboren prosecuted his war in the Underworld, do you know
what
he fought?”
    â€œReavers,” Gaborn said.
    â€œThat is the conventional wisdom, but I think not,” Binnesman answered. “In King Sylvarresta's library are some ancient scrolls, levies for men and supplies written in Erden Geboren's own hand. In them, he askedfor men not to fight reavers but to fight something he called a locus. I think he was hunting for a particular reaver. It may even be the one that Averan calls the One True Master, though I cannot imagine that any reaver would live so long.”
    â€œAnd you think that this creature is not of our world?”
    â€œPerhaps not,” Binnesman said. “I begin to wonder. Maybe there are reavers in the netherworld, more cunning and powerful than our own. And perhaps reavers here are but mere shadows of them, in the same way that we are mere shadows of the Bright Ones of that realm.”
    â€œThat is a sobering thought indeed,” Gaborn said.
    The wizard and the Earth King rode in silence. Averan lay back again, eyes closed. Her mind felt overwhelmed.
    The road had been leading down, and abruptly Gaborn jolted the wagon to a halt. Averan stealthily rose up on one elbow, and saw that they had reached a town, a small knot of gray stone cottages with thatched roofs.