Bone War (16 page)

Bel-Jan said, “Hail the queen!”

“Hail the queen!” said Other Talfi automatically.

“What?” Talfi stared at him as a dreadful thought crawled through his mind. “Are you obeying Queen Gwylph right now?”

“I . . . I . . . ,” other Talfi stammered. “I can't . . .”

“She forbade you to speak of it,” Ranadar supplied.

Other Talfi remained silent, but his expression spoke
the truth. Talfi swallowed as the full implications stole over him. The flesh golems were immensely strong, incredibly difficult to kill, and they didn't feel pain. And they had already been seeded throughout Balsia.

“Bel-Jan,” he said, “how many of . . . me has the queen sent?”

“A nifty four hundred fifty.”

Talfi felt the blood drain from his face, leaving cold skin behind. “There are four hundred and fifty copies of me in the city right now?”

“More to come, all mum,” said the sprite.

“The Nine,” Talfi breathed. “We need to tell someone. The prince. Or the—”

The ground rocked beneath him. Talfi lost his balance. The floor seemed to rumple like a blanket, sending Talfi tumbling to the floor. His breath smashed out of him.

“Earthquake!” Ranadar shouted. “Out! Get out of the house!”

Talfi tried to scramble upright, but the shaking floor kept knocking his feet out from under him. Panic overtook him. The ground wasn't supposed to move. It was a solid thing. Forcing fear back, he pushed himself upward again, and failed. The floor rocked. Iron utensils flew in all directions, breaking the circle. Bel-Jan-Who-Caroms-Over-Trees-by-Scarlet-Sunrise fled out of a window in a trail of light. The walls groaned like angry ghosts. In front of Talfi, a spiderweb of cracks rushed up the chimney. A hand grabbed his arm and steadied him a little, letting him get to his feet. It was Other Talfi.

“Come on, First!” he shouted. “Let's—”

The chimney collapsed. Talfi had enough time to throw up a hand before a ton of rocks landed square on him.

D
anr sat up in the Garden. He was naked, in his human form, and pain blazed through his back and shoulder. The Garden's gray light soothed his eyes, and the smells of the plants stretching in all directions calmed him, slowed his racing heart, despite the awful pain. The soft sound of water dripped somewhere nearby. This place was comforting and quiet. Why had he been so upset? How had he gotten hurt? He couldn't remember.

He didn't want to be in his human form. It was injured and too small. He concentrated, pushing the pain aside, and found the power within himself. His form expanded, his jaw and teeth lengthened, his muscles bulged, and he was in his familiar, comfortable half-troll shape. The pain slipped away, and a crossbow bolt dropped to the ground behind him. He blinked at it. Where had that come from? And what did it matter, anyway?

Another smell, the smell of rot, assailed him. He hoisted himself to his feet and came to a set of plants all tangled together. One of them was a half-dead climbing rose that had tangled itself around a rotting blob of mushroom. The rose's roots were infected with more rot, and its thorns had snagged a number of plants around it. The mushroom was also dying, and in pain to boot. This wasn't right. They
both needed to come out. Danr reached down for the rose with one large hand and the mushroom with the other.

“Why are you here, friend?”

It was Nu with her seed bag. She was staring at him from under the hood on her green cloak. Tan was nowhere to be seen.

“I'm . . . just here,” he said, putting his hands behind his back.

“Hmm.” Nu pulled the drawstring on her bag shut. “Tan and I sensed someone else was here earlier, when our new sister came to visit. Was that you?”

Danr thought a moment. “I don't know,” he said truthfully. “It may have been. Where is Tan?”

“We aren't joined at wrist and ankle,” she replied. “What were you going to do with the rose and mushroom?”

“Pull them out,” Danr said promptly. “The rose is tangling itself in everything around it, and the mushroom is dying. It's in pain, somehow.”

“Indeed,” Nu agreed. “But have you thought that if you pull the rose out, you will also damage the plants it has entangled?”

“No,” said Danr the truth-teller. “Should I try to work it free instead? That might take a long time.”

“Sometimes speed is more necessary than care. Other times, we must take care for the surrounding plants before we remove a tangle.” Nu narrowed her eyes. “Which is more important here, care or speed?”

Danr examined the mass with a farmer's critical eye. “The rose is getting more and more entrenched,” he said. “The longer she stays, the more tangled the other plants get. And the mushroom is trying to eat everything around it and spread its pain farther. Every moment that passes makes it worse for everything else. So, speed.”

“Interesting choice,” Nu said. “Just the sort that Aisa would have made.”

The name triggered a rush of memories. The monastery.
The animals. Sharlee. Victor. Kalessa transformed into a wyrm. “Aisa!” he said. “Is she—?”

“First, your task, child,” said Nu. “You named it. You must complete it.”

“I—”

“Your task,” Nu repeated firmly.

There was more here than Danr understood, but his worry for Aisa overrode everything else. He reached down to grab—

—and bolted upright. The giant wyrm—Kalessa, he remembered—was running off the last of Sharlee's followers. He was in his clothes, and the moon had passed its zenith above the ash grove and Aisa's cage. The great bundle of cloth that was Slynd continued to tremble in outrage. For the second time, Danr scrambled to his feet. Kalessa would have to be all right. Right now Danr needed to see to Aisa.

He dashed past Slynd to the cage and found a key hanging on one corner of the door, not reachable from the prisoner because of the mesh inside. He snatched it down and, with shaking fingers, unlocked the door.

Aisa lay in an exhausted heap on the cage floor. Danr picked her up and carried her out. She struggled out of his arms once they were clear of the bars and mesh. “I am well,” she insisted. “Are
you
all right? I saw you shot with a crossbow and my heart stopped.”

“I'm fine,” he said. “I changed my shape and it healed me.”

Kalessa's jaws made
clop-clop
noises as she bit the air behind the last of the fleeing monks.

“You turned her into a great wyrm,” he accused.

“No such thing,” Aisa shot back. “Sharlee tried to turn her into a tiny wyrm. I just . . . helped.”

“She ate Sharlee,” he said mildly as Kalessa twisted back on herself to return.

“Transformation can be hungry work,” Aisa replied. “But there is still Slynd to deal with. And Hector.”

“Which one do you want?”

Danr sighed. “You free Slynd. I'll take Hector. I should have done it the first time around, so it's my job.”

Aisa didn't object to this. She took Danr's knife and headed toward the canvas bundle while Danr caught up Kalessa's blade. He had never actually held it before. It was tiny in his hand, and he wished it were larger, easier to handle. Instantly, it was—sharp, heavy, and over six feet long. If Danr hadn't seen Kalessa do the same trick a thousand times, he would have dropped the sword in surprise. He made himself stride to the center of the ash grove, where the blobby horror squelched and quivered. Danr closed his right eye and gave it a glance with his left. At such close range, he could almost feel Hector's pain. It hung like a red shroud over the blob that had been Hector Obsidia, and he also saw terrible hatred—hatred for the world, hatred for what he had become. Hatred for himself.

Danr's stomach swam with nausea, and acid burned the back of this throat. He swallowed, and for a moment he was . . .

. . . in the Garden, with Nu looking over his shoulder.
Speed or care?

Had he really been there, or had that been a dream when he lost consciousness? It felt like a dream, but one more real than any he had ever experienced.

Speed or care?

Speed. The truth-teller in him knew there could be no more delay. The pain and rot and hatred emanating here had to end, and it had to end quickly. Danr raised the sword. The blob quaked, and angry ripples spread across its mottled skin. Before he could hesitate further, Danr slashed down with the sword. It cleaved the blob in two.

Pus and blood exploded in all directions, covering Danr with warm goo. It got in his eyes and mouth. An awful, rotting smell burst from the blob. Danr choked. He dropped Kalessa's sword and threw up. The two halves of the blob
oozed flatter and flatter as the noisome liquids drained out of it. A few bubbles burbled and died.

Aisa, meanwhile, slashed open the canvas that bound Slynd. He exploded free, hissing angrily, looking for someone to bite. Aisa backpedaled.

“Calm, Slynd,” she said. “We are friends. I released you after the bad people tied you up.”

But Slynd was having none of it. The fury in his yellow eyes made them all but glow. He hissed like a thousand kettles and reared back to strike at Aisa, who was too tired to change shape and escape. Horrified, Danr tried to wipe the rest of the gore from his eyes and help her, but he was still half-blind and couldn't do much.

“Slynd!” Kalessa slid into the grove and reared up behind Aisa. “Stay!”

Danr froze. He hadn't expected that Kalessa would be able to speak. On the other hand, Grandfather Wyrm, who had also once been human, was able to speak, so why shouldn't Kalessa? Her wyrm voice was deeper, almost thunderous, and it halted Slynd in his track. He backed away and coiled around himself, hissing and muttering.

“He will calm down in a few minutes,” Kalessa said, bringing her own head down to ground level. It was as big as a horse.

“Thank you,” Aisa said, blinking up at her. “Are you . . . well?”

“I am in no pain, if that is what you mean,” she replied. “And I am not agitated or unhappy. Did you see the look on Sharlee's face? I have been waiting for my chance at her ever since she chained me up.”

Danr wiped the last of the blob fluids from his face, though the stench still covered him in an eye-watering miasma. Hector and Sharlee had kept Kalessa chained to a tree for days and days as a hostage against the good behavior of Danr, Aisa, and Talfi, who were to bring back the power of the shape. Now, at last, that power had killed both of them—and altered Kalessa herself.

“It worked, sister,” Aisa said.

“It worked?” Danr squelched over to them, and both of them drew back at the smell. Kalessa's tongue flickered in disgust. “You mean you—”

“Goaded her, yes,” Aisa said. “We knew if we made her angry enough, she would try to change Kalessa into something cruel, and then I would merely . . . add to it.”

“You worked that out together while Aisa was in the cage and Kalessa was chained up?” Danr said incredulously. His clothes were sticking to him now.

“Not in exact words,” Aisa said, “but the sentiment was there. Kalessa and I are blood sisters, after all. That was also the bond that let me add power to Sharlee's spell.”

Danr spread his hands. “How are you going to change back?”

There was a long, long pause. Aisa and Kalessa exchanged glances. “I . . . do not know,” Aisa said at last. “I cannot change anyone but myself.”

“Maybe Welk could do it,” Danr said.

“I doubt it very much.” Aisa chewed a thumbnail. “The only animals he can transform into humans are ones he changed himself. It takes a powerful and skilled magician to undo someone else's spell. Even I cannot do it yet. And Sharlee herself is . . . well, you know where she is.”

“She tasted like incense,” Kalessa said. “Do you mean this could be permanent?”

Aisa's face tightened. “I fear it may be, sister.”

“Hmm.” Kalessa twisted around to look at herself. Her scales gleamed like liquid emeralds and hissed against one another in the cool moonlight. “There are worse fates.”

This took Danr by surprise. “It doesn't bother you?”

“Bother me?” Kalessa raised her head and roared like a cannon exploding. Slynd raised his own head and joined her. The sound drove Danr's ears flat against his skull. The ash trees shook, and even the stone walls of the monastery trembled. “Not one person in the world will forget me now.”

“Oh.” Aisa shot Danr a glance. “What do you think, Hamzu?”

He had to laugh a little then. “If a problem becomes a solution, I say let it lie. Right now I need a wash.”

Aisa caught up Kalessa's sword and Danr squelched down to the village, where they found a well. Danr's clothes were judged beyond salvage, so he simply ripped them off. The pails he and Aisa hauled up from the well were icy cold, but Danr welcomed the shock. Each bucket washed away a little more of the horrific memory of blood and pus, of Hector Obsidia himself, and what he and Sharlee had done to Danr and his friends all those months ago. After more than a dozen buckets, he finally felt clean.

Kalessa and Slynd stood guard over them during this process. Kalessa glared around the dark village with her new eyes the size of dinner plates. “No one seems interested in coming out to see us,” she observed.

“That could not possibly be due to the two enormous wyrms writhing around this courtyard.” Aisa set the bucket down. “Or it may be that they are unsure of what has happened at the monastery and do not know how to find out.”

Kalessa raised her head and flickered her tongue at the village. She seemed to relish new sensations. On a whim, Danr closed his right eye and looked at her. Instantly, he saw Kalessa both as an orc and as a wyrm at the same time.
That
was even stranger—it meant Kalessa's wyrm form was just as true as her birth form.

“Should we at least tell the villagers what happened?” he wondered aloud.

“I think they will figure it out,” Aisa said. “More than anything, I want to be free of this place. Tonight.”

“All of us can see in the dark except you, sister,” Kalessa said. “And you will be riding. We will travel a good distance up the road and then find a place to rest.”

Danr felt a vague pricking at his hand, and for a moment he was holding a dead climbing rose. A voice echoed in his
head.
Sometimes speed is better than care
. Then both sensations were gone. He shook his head and accepted the dry clothes Aisa had pulled from their packs.

Slynd was still wearing the saddle. After a moment's discussion, they decided that Danr, the largest, would ride Kalessa while Aisa continued to ride Slynd. Kalessa's back was much broader than Slynd's, and Danr had to cling to the horns protruding from her neck ruff to keep from sliding off. It was distinctly odd, knowing he was on a friend's back, and he tried not to think too deeply about it.

The two wyrms and their passengers fled the village, and the night swallowed it behind them. Kalessa rushed up the rough road with a surprisingly smooth . . . gait? Slither? Danr wasn't sure what the correct term was. In any case, it was clear she was pushing her new shape to see what it could do, and Slynd was hard-pressed to keep up. Even though it was night, they traveled far faster than they had when it was three of them riding Slynd.

“Such speed! Tikk himself would be jealous,” Kalessa said over her shoulder in her new, low voice. “We will reach Queen Vesha's lands days faster at this rate. You did not lose my sword, did you?”

“I have it,” Aisa called from the laboring Slynd.

“Grick would approve.” Kalessa fell silent and slithered onward.

Dark trees and fields flowed past them beneath the now-setting moon. The chill air bothered Danr not at all now that he was dry. Cold rarely bothered him—even in winter he went barefoot. Trolls, of course, lived underground, and it wasn't particularly warm there, so Danr—