Gaborn carried her a dozen yards, to a cart. A driver sat atop it, rubbing his eyes, fighting sleep. The team of horses stood dozing in their traces.
“What happened? Where is everyone?” Averan managed to croak. Her head was spinning.
“You’ve been standing over that reaver for hours, for the whole day,” Gaborn said. “The rest of the knights are following the horde south. But Binnesman is here, and his wylde.”
“Good,” Averan said. She always felt comforted in Binnesman’s presence. Overhead a fireball raced across the sky. It left a churning red trail of smoke behind. Almost immediately she saw another flash of light, and another. Everywhere in the sky, the stars were falling. Dozens came in the space of a few heartbeats.
“What’s going on?” Averan asked, as Gaborn put her on a seat. He climbed up beside her. The driver cracked his whip, and the cart lurched forward.
“The One True Master has bound the Seal of Heaven to the Seal of Desolation and the Seal of the Inferno,” Gaborn answered. His jaw was tight. “We must break those seals.”
“You mean it’s already done?”
“Already,” he said. “And there’s something else. I suspect that the reavers defeated Raj Ahten at Kartish. Now the danger is...far more immediate, and growing by the minute. Do you know the way now to the Place of Bones?”
“Yes,” Averan said with conviction.
“Can you tell me how to get there?”
“No,” she said. “Not if we had a month.”
“Will you lead me then? While you were busy, Iome brought some men—a facilitator and some vectors. I’ve already taken endowments of scent. I can smell the reavers’ words here, thick on the ground. But I can’t make sense of them.”
Averan shuddered. She had glimpsed the Underworld through the eyes of reavers, through the eyes of the Waymakers who knew it best. The journey would be long and perilous. Worse things than reavers lay before them.
Her thoughts seemed muddled.
The darkening skies yawned wide, and stars dropped from the firmament. What happens when they all fall down? she wondered. Will the night go dark?
She shuddered again. This is not what she’d have wanted from life.
“Take me to the vectors,” she said. “I’ll lead you the best that I can.”