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.104 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 its105 kind would consume the body of the dead, absorb its knowledge, its strength, and its accumulated magic.

And of all reavers, the mages were most fearsome, for they had amassed powers from hundreds of their dead.

This one lunged sideways, and Gaborn heard the rasping of air exhaled from the vents on its back as his horse charged. He detected a whispering sound in that exhalation, the chanting of a spell.

Gaborn shouted, putting all the force of his Voice into his call. He'd heard of warriors with such powerful voices that they could stun men with a shout.

Gaborn had no such gift. But he knew that reavers sensed movement--whether it be sound or vibrations of something digging beneath their feet--and he hoped his shout would confuse the monster, blind it as he charged.

The reaver pointed its stalagmite at him, hissed vehemently, and a coldness pierced Gaborn, an invisible beam that stung like the deepest winter. The air all around that beam turned to frost, and Gaborn raised his small shield.

Legend said that the greatest of flameweavers' spells could draw the heat from a man, just as flameweavers could draw heat from a fire or from the sun--suck the warmth from a man's lungs and heart, leave him frozen on a sunny day.

Yet the spell was so complex, required such concentration, that Gaborn had never heard of a flameweaver who'd mastered it.

He felt that spell's touch now, and threw himself sideways in his saddle, dropped in a running dismount as his horse raced ahead. The chill struck him to the bone, left him gasping as he rushed behind his charger, let its body shield his attack.

"No! Go back!" Binnesman cried from somewhere behind the ring of fallen statues.

Gaborn inhaled deeply as he advanced on the monster. The reaver carried no scent. Reavers never do, for they mimic the scent of the soil around them.

Yet the reaver mage rasped now, in terrible fury. The air hissed from the anterior of its long body.

Gaborn's horse staggered beneath the beam of cold, and Gaborn leapt over the falling beast, rushed the reaver at stomach level, swinging his warhammer with all his might.

The reaver mage tried to step back, tried to impale him with its staff. Gaborn dodged the blow and swung at its shoulder, buried the warhammer deep into the reaver's leathery gray hide. He quickly pulled the spike free and swung a second time, hoping to plunge deeper into the wound, when suddenly the reaver smashed the agate rod down at him.

Gaborn's hammer hit its great paw, pierced a talon, and the iron T of his hammer smashed into the reaver's blazing rod. The agate staff shattered along its entire length, and flame leapt in the reaver's paw, a hot flash that erupted with explosive force, cracking the wooden haft of the warhammer.

Iome rode in behind Gaborn now, shouting at the monster, and King Sylvarresta's horse danced to its left. The tumult and the horses circling round distracted the beast, so that it swung its great maw one way, then the other.

What happened next, Gaborn did not see, for at that second, the reaver chose to flee--running over the top of him so that its huge abdomen knocked him backward.

Gaborn hit the ground, the wind knocked from him as the reaver scrambled away. Gaborn wondered if he'd die from the blow. As a boy in tilting practice, he'd once fallen from his saddle, and a fully armored warhorse had trampled him. The reaver far outweighed the warhorse.

Gaborn heard ribs crack. Lights flashed before his eyes, and he had the sense of falling, of swirling like a leaf into some deep and infinite chasm.

When he regained consciousness, his teeth were chattering. He smelled some sweet leaves beneath his nose, and Binnesman had reached down beneath Gaborn's ring mail, was rubbing him with healing soils and whispering, "The earth heal you; the earth heal you."

When the soil touched him, Gaborn's flesh seemed to warm. He still felt terribly cold, frozen to the bone, but the soil worked like a warming compress, easing each wound.

"Will he live?" Iome asked.

Binnesman nodded. "Here, the healing earth is very powerful. See--he opens his eyes."

Gaborn's eyes fluttered. He stared, uncomprehending. His eyes could not focus. He tried to look at Binnesman, but it required so much effort.

The old wizard stood over Gaborn, leaning on a wooden staff. He looked horrible. Grime and blood smeared his face. His clothing smelled charred, yet when his right hand brushed Gaborn, it felt deathly cold.

The reaver had tried to kill Binnesman, too.

There was a look about the wizard. He trembled, as if in pain and shock. Horror showed in every line of his face.

The single standing statue was throbbing with light. Great icy blasts had chipped away corners of it, cracked it. Gaborn lay for a moment. He felt a bitter chill in the air. The sorceries of the reaver mage.

Distant war dogs bayed. Binnesman whispered, "Gaborn?"

The statue seemed to waver, and the aged half-human face carved into it glanced down at him. Gaborn thought his eyes were failing. But at that moment, the light within the statue died, turning black, like a candle snuffed out.

A great splitting sound tore the air.

"No! Not yet!" Binnesman cried, looking up toward the standing stone.

As if in defiance of his plea, the great stone rent in two and tumbled, the head of it landing almost at Gaborn's feet. The ground groaned, as if the earth might shake apart.

Gaborn's thoughts came sluggishly. He gazed at the huge statue, but ten feet from him, listened to war dogs baying.

The Seven Stones have fallen, he realized. The stones that hold up the earth. "What? Happening?" Gaborn gasped.

Binnesman looked into Gaborn's eye, and said softly, "It may be the end of the world."

Chapter 29.

A WORLD GONE WRONG.

Binnesman leaned over Gaborn, peering at his wounds. "Light," he grumbled. A wan green light began emanating from his106 staff--not firelight, but the glow of hundreds of fireflies that had gathered on its knob. Some flew up, circled Binnesman's face.

Gaborn could see the old man clearly now. His nose was blooded, and mud plastered his cheek. He did not look severely wounded, but he was clearly distraught.

Binnesman smiled grimly at Gaborn and Iome, bent his ear, listening to the baying dogs in the woods. "Come, my friends.

Get inside the circle, where we'll be safer."

Iome seemed to need no prodding. She grabbed the reins of hers and her father's horse, pulled both mounts round the fallen statues.

Gaborn rolled to his knees, felt his sore ribs. It pained him to breathe. Binnesman offered Gaborn his shoulder, and Gaborn hobbled into the circle of stones.

His horse had already gone in, stood nibbling at the short grass, favoring its right front leg. Gaborn was grateful that it had survived the reaver's spell.

Yet he felt reticent to enter that circle. He sensed earth power. It was old--a terrible place, he felt sure, to those who did not belong.

"Come, Earthborn," Binnesman said.

Iome walked rigidly, watching her feet, apparently unnerved by the power that emanated from below. Gaborn could feel it, palpable as the touch of sunlight on his skin, rising from beneath him, energizing every fiber of his being. Gaborn knelt to remove his boots, to feel the sensation more fully. The earth in this circle had a strong mineral smell. Though enormous oaks grew all round, taller than any he'd ever seen, none stood near the center of the circle--only a few low bushes with white berries. The earth smelled too potent, too vigorous for anything else to thrive. Gaborn pulled off his boots, sat on the grass.