Bone War (13 page)

Danr cringed. A love so thick and so heavy Sharlee couldn't let Hector go. A love that drove her to transform him into this . . . wreck. His and Aisa's love would never turn into something like this. Would it? A sudden fear drove him to stare even harder, look deeper at the bond between Hector and Sharlee while the drums battered the air.

Threads of darkness, stinking black rot that blotted the insides of his nose curled through the bond. Almost against his will, Danr followed them as they spiraled downward like roots, down into the ground, into the dark, sucking depths that hid teeth and claws and rotting corpses. The Garden. Now that Queen Gwylph had tainted the place, it was tainting Sharlee and her magic, had curled its new filth around Hector, had even threaded through the others in the monastery. That was why the shape magic was poison to them. But the bond itself was still strong, could still be a source of strength.

Danr's right eye popped open and the vision vanished. “Sharlee,” he said hoarsely. “You have to stop this. It isn't you. It's the Garden—warped shape magic—that makes you think this way. It's affected you and the entire monastery. But you can turn it around. You can—”

Lif kicked him, in the ribs this time. The pain wasn't as bad, but it ended Danr's plea in a grunt. “We follow the great Lady Kalina,” he growled. “We are one with the moonlight and we share in the stars. Your words mean nothing to us!”

“But your blood,” Sharlee said, “is something else entirely.”

“You intend to keep me around to feed your people,” Aisa said flatly.

“You are the First,” Sharlee agreed, and raised her voice. “All hail the First!”

“All hail the First!” the monks shouted.

“And you, my friend,” Sharlee said to Danr, “we will keep as our oracle. You speak with the voice of Kalina. You will spend your days telling truth for me while we bleed Aisa for the good of the monastery. Eventually, we will all be shape mages, and we will spread the word of Kalina throughout Balsia. And the world.”

“I'll tell you nothing!” Danr spat.

“You can't help it, truth-teller,” she said. “I have complete power over you and your slave bride.”

“You have no power,” said Kalessa next to him. She leaned forward as much as her bonds would allow, and her voice hissed into Sharlee's ears. “You only have what you steal from others. You are a common thief. A shit-stealing thief who feeds on dung. Even the place between your legs has to steal its pleasure because no one will give it to you. Even your husband and his soft, tiny member knew that, and he got what he deserves.”

That did it. Rage filled Sharlee's face, and she turned on Kalessa with a roar. “Orcish whore! You'll become the worm that you are!”

Danr tried to shout as golden light flared from her hands, but at the moment Sharlee flung her magic at Kalessa, another bolt of pure power blasted from Aisa in her cage and struck Kalessa as well. Danr shied away but shut his right eye to understand what was happening. His true eye saw it all, as if time had slowed. Sharlee was sending magic that would twist Kalessa's shape into a worm, as she had promised. Danr could already see her body shifting and moving.

Aisa's power, including her growing power as a Gardener,
filled Kalessa like the way sunlight filled a prism. The power tore through the orcish woman, exploded Sharlee's own meager shape magic, and amplified her spell. The magic that struck Kalessa burst into her with a thousand times the intended power. With a shriek, Kalessa burst free of her bonds, and instead of shrinking, she grew. Her body twisted and ballooned, until a great wyrm half again as large as Slynd writhed before Sharlee.

What came next happened so fast Danr could barely follow it. Sharlee stared openmouthed up at Kalessa for a tiny moment. Kalessa struck. Sharlee was gone. Kalessa raised her head up to the sky and jerked her jaws once, twice, three times. Swallowing. A squirming lump wriggled down Kalessa's long throat and vanished into her body.

Chaos burst through the grove. The drumming abruptly ended. Monks and nuns scattered with shrieks and screams. The eagle-lion lunged at Kalessa, but she swatted it easily aside with her tail. It hit a tree and slid motionless to the ground. Lif and the other monk snatched up crossbows and aimed the weapon at Kalessa. Danr used the moment to gather his own power and flow into his human body. His wrists and hands easily slid out of his bonds, and he lunged at Lif. His human form was light and scrawny and the tackle was clumsy, but it was enough to ruin Lif's aim. Danr and Lif went down with Danr on top, and Danr rushed back into his true form. Lif gasped under Danr's full weight. Danr punched him, and he went limp.

“Look out!” Aisa shouted.

Danr tried to twist aside, but not fast enough. Searing pain hit him as the other monk's crossbow bolt caught him in the spine. Danr lost all sensation in his legs. They buckled beneath him and he landed facedown in the dirt. The world went dark.

“Q
ueen Gwylph made you,” Talfi repeated slowly.

The other Talfi let out a long, relieved sigh. “I can't say it, but you can.”

“That can't be.” Talfi's legs wobbled and he sank to the bed. “The elven queen . . . how could she
make
you? A whole bunch of you?”

The other Talfi shrugged. “Not allowed to talk about it.”

Ranadar straightened and took the other Talfi's head by the chin to peer into his face, and the other Talfi sighed. “Even his eyes are the same,
Talashka.
I don't know how this was done.”

“Aren't the dwarfs the only ones who can make golems?” Talfi said.

“Yes. But this—he—is no ordinary golem. I have never heard of a golem made of flesh until this moment, nor have I heard of one that heals itself. It would require powerful magic of the kind the world has not seen since . . . since . . .”

“The Sundering,” Talfi finished, more than a little hoarsely. “How does it work?”

“I'm standing right here, you know,” said the other Talfi.

Ranadar said, “I do not fully understand it. I am a minor magician, a spark to my mother's inferno.”

“You're really good at archery,” Talfi said, trying to lighten the mood. “Fing!”

“And you're good in the bedroom,” the other Talfi added. “And the hammock. Remember that one time when—”

Talfi socked him in the stomach. He hadn't meant to. His hand balled up on its own, and his fist flew out before he could stop it. The punch came from his sitting position on the bed, so there wasn't much power behind it, and the other Talfi only gasped a little and stumbled backward a step.

“What was that for?” he asked.

Anger he didn't know he was carrying suffused Talfi, red and ugly. “You don't remember
anything
,” he said.

“I do remember.” The other Talfi backed up to the washstand table and leaned gingerly against it. “I'm
you
.”

Talfi's face flushed and his stomach roiled. “You're not me!”

“But I remember,” he protested.

“Calm,
Talashka
.” Ranadar put a hand on Talfi's shoulder. “This is a strange situation for all of us. We will work out what to do.” He turned to the other Talfi. “What do you remember? What is the earliest thing for you that you can tell us?”

The other Talfi thought. “I remember . . . sitting on a table in a huge room. The room has a ceiling as high as the sky and a fireplace that's big enough to eat me, but they probably only look that way because I'm small. A lady with a wrinkly face is cutting my hair with a big pair of scissors, and I'm scared because I don't like the noise the scissors make—
snip, snip
—in my ear, but I don't run away because the table is really high up.”

“I don't remember that,” Talfi said quietly.

“I remember being mad at my sister and holding her doll over the well. It's soft and made of quilt patches. My sister is yelling at me, and just before I drop her doll, Mother runs out and snatches the doll away. She swats me on the butt
and I cry.” The other Talfi blinked at Ranadar and Talfi. “I remember hugging Danr right after he was exiled and watching him disappear into the darkness at the foot of the mountain. I remember helping Ranadar dress in the palace at Alfhame on a warm summer morning and he keeps changing his mind about what to wear, so I call him an uppity elf because I know he won't punish me. He laughs.”

Talfi was on his feet again, fists clenched and heart pounding and nausea twisting his stomach. “I only remember that I always called him an uppity elf, but not how it started. Why do you remember these things and not me?”

“I'm
you
,” the other Talfi repeated. “We all are. All the other ones.”

Ranadar was beside him now, his arm around Talfi's shoulder. “It's all right,
Talashka.
We can handle this. Together.”

Talfi looked at this mirror image of himself, the one who knew as much as he did but in different ways. He trembled under a terrible curiosity. He hungered for the memories locked inside the other self's mind, hundreds or even thousands of fragments that might piece together more of his own past. He wanted to devour the man alive, force him to give the memories over. Give them back. But this demand also made him angry. He shouldn't want these things. He shouldn't
need
to want them. They should be his already. The crying need repulsed him and frightened him at the same time, and with that came anger, and the emotions tangled themselves into a terrible dark ball that swallowed up his insides and made him tremble.

“Talaskha?”
said Ranadar. “What is it?”

“How many of you are there?” Talfi demanded, ignoring him. “Why did Gwylph make you? Why are you here?”

The other Talfi shrugged. “I can't talk about it.”

“We need more information,” Talfi said, and turned to Ranadar. “How can we get it? Can you look into his mind?”

Ranadar shook his head. “I already explained that. But . . . there may be another way. It is drastic and horrible, but . . .”

“What is it?” Talfi said. Snapped, really. “Spit it out.”

“It involves doing something awful to a fellow Fae,” Ranadar said softly. “I have never done such a thing, but I know how it works.”

“And your mother has done such nice things to Kin?” Talfi shot back. “To me?”

“I know how Danr feels now,” Ranadar muttered. “Always caught between.”

The other Talfi cleared his throat, and Talfi thought,
That's what it sounds like when I do it.
“Listen, Ran,” the other Talfi said, “you betrayed your people and helped save the world. What do you have to lose now?”

“Don't call him that,” Talfi said through clenched teeth.

“Call him what?” said the other Talfi, looking surprised.

Talfi couldn't stop himself from snarling, “I call him
Ran
and
uppity elf
. Not you.”

“But I—” the other Talfi began.

“You what?”

Other Talfi looked away. His voice dropped. “Nothing.”

“All right, all right.” Ranadar kept his hand on Talfi's shoulder. “I will try this thing. This new thing. But you will have to fetch a few things for me, because I cannot get them myself.”

“Like what?” Talfi said warily.

“All the knives and spoons from Mrs. Farley's kitchen,” Ranadar instructed. “And we will visit the market, and find another place to work. We should not do this in Mrs. Farley's house.”

“I know a spot we could use,” Talfi said. “Down in the Rookery.”

“What are we doing?” the other Talfi said.

Ranadar said, “We will summon a sprite.”

*   *   *

Assembling everything Ranadar needed actually took a few days and several trips to the market, where Ranadar visited merchants who revealed unexpected back rooms in
their stalls or hidden drawers in their chests. Scandalous amounts of money changed hands. Talfi didn't ask how Ranadar knew about these people, and Ranadar didn't comment. During that time, Talfi refused to let Other Talfi stay with them in Mrs. Farley's boardinghouse, even in a different room. Talfi neither knew nor cared where he slept and how—or if—he ate, but he seemed content to follow Talfi and Ranadar around most days. Or maybe he was just following Ranadar around.

His face continued to heal as well. After a few days, his skin had lost its stretched look entirely, and the muscle filled out. Only a little pebbling remained, and then only if you looked closely. His left hand got better more slowly. His forearm muscle smoothed, and his thumb and first two fingers lost their clawlike appearance, but his last two fingers remained shiny and twisted, and the other Talfi developed the habit of keeping his left hand closed in a fist to hide them while he, Talfi, and Ranadar moved about the city.

More than once, they also caught sight of the other man from the alley, though he kept his distance, and now that he was alert for it, Talfi saw other versions of himself here and there, always just a glimpse, and always too far away to do anything about it, even if he wanted to. Many of them were malformed in some way, and people treated them like beggars, barely giving them a first glance, let alone a second. Talfi wondered if they were healing, too, but he couldn't get close enough to tell. Did they also have pieces of memory that were lost to Talfi himself? Talfi wanted to know, but also didn't want to know.

If they had his memories, what good would it do him? He had no way to put them into his own head, and hearing about them from Other Talfi only made him unhappy and upset, like watching someone else wear his own clothes or eat his own food.

And what did they remember about Ranadar? The question always made him cold.

Why were there so many of him? What was their purpose? It seemed that if enough of them—of him—were scattered across the city, someone would eventually notice. Or would they? How often did you notice individual people on a crowded street or the malformed beggar on the corner?

One day, he saw another Talfi limping through an intersection when a carriage bolted past. It rammed into the other Talfi, who went flying. Talfi reflexively reached out a hand to help, though he and Ranadar were many yards away. Several onlookers gasped. They gasped even more when the other Talfi got up and limped quickly away as if nothing had happened. Talfi remembered how Kalessa had stabbed the other Talfi in the market to little effect. Was it related to the way Talfi himself didn't die? There seemed to be no way to know without asking Other Talfi, and Talfi couldn't bring himself to form the question, so he remained silent.

Eventually, Ranadar announced he had everything he needed from the market and was ready to summon the sprite. They headed out, with Other Talfi in tow, mostly because he wouldn't leave them alone.

Talfi led them through the Rookery, the windward side of Bosha's Bay. The Tenner River meandered through the city here, but unlike the deep, fast River Bal, which ran through the city from the north, the Tenner was slow and shallow, and as it coasted west to empty into the bay, it split into an even slower, shallower river everyone called the Niner. The area south of the Tenner was prone to tidal flooding, especially during storm season, which meant the only people who lived there were the ones who were forced to. For reasons lost to time, the area was known as the Rookery. For reasons that were more obvious, the area between the Niner and the Tenner was simply called the Sludge, and Talfi doubted even Danr would walk there after dark.

Oddly enough, the only way to get to the spit of land
that jutted across the mouth of Bosha's Bay and sheltered it from the ocean proper was through the Rookery, and since the temples of the warrior twins Belinna and Fell were on the tip of that spit of land, a wide road cut through the Rookery leading to it, and that road was reasonably safe, even after dark, in part because the priests of Belinna and Fell patrolled it. This was the road the trio walked now.

They went in silence. The sluggish, shallow Tenner smelled of sea tide and bad algae and dead fish and garbage and the filth the tanners threw into it, for by law all the tanners and their smelly businesses were housed down here. The buildings varied wildly, from cut stone, to ragged wood, to piles of mud. The streets were a horror. Talfi didn't see a well or a fountain anywhere, and he wondered where the people found water to drink. It was clear enough what they did with their waste.

The inhabitants of the Rookery themselves stayed close to the shadows, as if they were afraid of getting caught in the early evening sunlight. Hollow, hopeless eyes stared from rags and patches as the trio passed, and misery hung in the stinking air like a dark mist.

And yet there were bright spots. Taverns were open for business down here, just as they were near the market square. A number of houses along the patrolled road even seemed prosperous, though the women hanging out the windows made it obvious what kind of business they were conducting. One house was populated with men, and Talfi caught Ranadar's eye at that. The elf simply shrugged. Small groups of well-dressed people also walked the patrolled road, or rode in carriages along it. Slumming, Talfi decided, or looking to visit one of the prosperous houses.

The image of the carriage and the distorted version of himself flying in a rag-doll arc across the intersection nagged at Talfi, and he finally spoke to Other Talfi.

“So you're all basically unkillable,” he said.

“I don't know about that,” Other Talfi said, in his
maddeningly familiar voice. “Though I've never watched one of us die.”

“The seat of a flesh golem's magic is his heart,” Ranadar said. “If you cut it out, he would probably die. The same would be true if you cut off his head.”

Talfi snorted. “Isn't that true for everyone?”

“I suppose it is,” Ranadar said with a little laugh.

“Maybe we should test it,” Talfi said, giving Other Talfi a grim look.

“All right!” Other Talfi stopped and crossed his arms, forcing Talfi and Ranadar to halt as well. “Maybe we should have this out right here.”

“Have what out?” Talfi crossed his own arms.

“Why you hate me so much,” Other Talfi said.

“I don't hate you,” Talfi objected.

“Sure you do. And I know why. You're afraid of me because you think I love Ranadar as much as you do.”

Talfi's face grew hot. “That's a lie!”

“I do love him, though,” Other Talfi said softly. He dropped his arms. “I remember it. I remember loving him.”

“Take it back.” Talfi cocked a fist. “I'll beat your damn face in, even if it looks like mine!”

Ranadar stepped between them, creating a strange mirror image—an elf between two identical men, while pedestrians paused to stare. “We do not need an argument here.”