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.”

29

A WORLD GONE WRONG

Binnesman leaned over Gaborn, peering at his wounds. “Light,” he grumbled. A wan green light began emanating from his 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.