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.”