Averan swallowed hard. She could not bear to feed again, not from a reaver that had knowingly drunk its own death.
She raised her staff, held it defensively as if she were Spring, ready to parry a blow. Then she realized that she really was trying to parry a blow.
She raised the staff, holding each end overhead, as Binnesman had done when blessing Carris. She did not know why she held it thus. It merely felt as if the staff needed to be held that way.
As she did, an image came to mind: the Waymaker, with his thirty-six philia and his huge paws. She could see him in her mind’s eye—still running among the horde, racing toward the Underworld. He had a scar on his flank, a lance wound by the look of it. His philia drooped from fatigue. Around him, reavers marched by the weary thousands, and he could smell the scent trails of those who marched before, the whispered mutterings of pain and despair that reverberated through the horde. There were thousands of them speaking, thousands of voices that humans had never heard. The scents overwhelmed Averan.
“He’s alive!” she told Gaborn. “The Waymaker is still alive.”
Gaborn gazed at her, mouth open.
She glanced back at the wylde, eager to try something. “Spring, come help me!” she said. The green woman came and Averan said, “Grab my staff. Help me summon.”
Spring stood at Averan’s back, so that Averan could lean back and feel her taut body against her shoulder blades. The wylde reached up, grasped each end of the staff.
Averan closed her eyes and held the reaver’s image, until she found herself breathing in rhythm to the Waymaker’s rasping, felt as if she ran each step with him.
He was weak, burning from thirst. The muscles in his four legs were worn. Each loping stride was a jarring blow to his knees. He knew that he was dying.
He felt too weary to keep up with the horde much longer. Yet he ran in measured terror, counting his fluttering heartbeats.
Averan felt his mind, the vast intellect. It was overpowering. She could never have reached him, could never have touched him, without the help of her staff, and of the wylde.
But now shadowy fingers seemed to form in the air, and it grew cold around Averan. Tendrils snaked out through the sky, grasped the Waymaker’s weary mind. She seized his consciousness, called to him desperately. “Come to me.”
Far across the valley, a lone reaver stopped, as the others marched on. After a long moment it turned and began loping wearily toward Averan. Gaborn’s troops had all topped the hill. There was no one down on the plains seeking to slay the beast.
He was coming! Averan tried to stifle her excitement. She took the staff in hand, held the Waymaker on her own, now that he had turned.
Averan looked up to Gaborn on his mount. “See the Waymaker coming toward us? Take me to him.”
Gaborn grabbed her arm, and swung her up before him into the saddle.
Averan held her staff high, and together they rode over the scarred plains, past Gaborn’s troops, past Langley and Baron Waggit, past the sulfurous ponds and the dead reavers that lay black around them, out over the battlefield.
Sweat began to drench Averan. Holding the contact was hard work.
The Waymaker loped toward them at a sluggish pace, and stopped.
Averan could sense his consternation. He had answered her call, felt overwhelmed by her. Yet he began to panic in the presence of a human wizard. She wasn’t sure that she could hold him for long.
Averan sat in the saddle, and peered into his mind.
“Show me the way,” she begged. “For the good of both our people, show me the way.”
His consciousness unfolded to her, as gently as a flower opening, laying his thoughts and memories bare.
The Waymaker was a powerful reaver, his intellect deep, and his memories vast. He had fed upon the brains of Waymakers before him—an endless line of them that spanned thousands of years. The knowledge came to her in a blur.
Reavers recall scents far better than men recall words or images. So the map of the Underworld that began to take shape in Averan’s mind was a map of scents.
The map revealed the meanings of various warning posts that would tell how to open secret doors, or find hidden tunnels, or avoid dangerous beasts.
The Waymakers had traveled far in the Underworld, had even sailed the Idumean Sea in boats made of stone. They had followed paths that other reavers feared to tread. Averan recalled wonders and horrors and the positions of ancient duskin ruins and other historic sites.
She climbed from her saddle, stood before him.
The great reaver merely knelt, overcome by exhaustion. He was huge, towering above her, peering at her with philia that merely twitched.
She stared into his mind, sifting his thoughts.
He had come to the Overworld to begin mapping it, to study its paths and blaze new trails. It had been a grand adventure, a journey that promised danger and excitement. He knew now that it led to death.
61
Passages
We are often called upon to make our way through dim passages, never knowing whether they open into shadow or to light.
Borenson stumbled upon Fenraven shortly after setting Myrrima adrift in the stream. His mind was reeling with fatigue, and his sight was blurry. He stood looking for a long moment. The dilapidated village sprawled on a small hill, open so that morning sunlight played upon the thatch roofs of its cottages. Around the village, the fog still held thick upon the moors, so that the hill rose up like an island in a sea of mist. It had a gate that stood halfway open, and beside the gate were braziers where dwindling watch fires burned. Silver mirrors behind the braziers would reflect their light, focusing it onto the road.
Borenson staggered forward, feeling as if every muscle in his body were slowly transforming into pure weariness.
The inn at Fenraven was a small affair, with nothing more than a single room. It was in the process of being vacated by a pair of gentlemen from the south.
The mistress of the inn was cooking breakfast, morning savories with mushrooms and chestnuts. Borenson was worn to the bone, and heartsick. All of his thoughts were on Myrrima. But he had a job before him still, and he knew he had to keep focused for a little while, at least until he went to sleep. He sat on a stool, and solemn pain settled into his back, between his shoulder blades.
As he waited for breakfast he asked, “So you’ve just the two boarders? No one came through in the night?” His voice felt rough, as if from disuse.
“In the night?” she asked.
“A man—a lone rider with sheepskin boots on his horse?”
“No!” she said, in exaggerated horror. “He sounds like a highwayman, maybe, or worse! There’s assassins on the road, I hear. They found the body of Braithen Towner nine miles down the road yesterday morning.”
Borenson wondered at that. Assassins on the road still. Raj Ahten’s troops down here probably hadn’t heard about the fall of Carris. It might only have been a random assassin. But Borenson wondered. He couldn’t escape the feeling that the fellow had been searching for him.
He rubbed his gritty eyes, all done in, and ate a small bite of pastry while the other guests vacated the inn.
Afterward, he told the mistress that he would be leaving when he woke, and asked her to go about town purchasing supplies for his trip to Inkarra. Here at Fenraven, he was but a hundred miles from the mountains at the border, with few cities between.
He went to the single room and found it more than adequate. It was clean and cozy. The straw beneath the mattress was fresh, and the mistress’s daughter took out the old blankets and brought in new. He didn’t have to worry about fleas or lice.
The food had been good, and the stableboy knew his business. Borenson felt well provided. It was his first chance for some real rest in days, and without an endowment of stamina, he needed it sorely.