Bone War (17 page)

“I did not enjoy that,” Aisa said, breaking into his thoughts.

Danr gave her a quick glance. He had to look down because Kalessa's back was so much higher than Slynd's and Danr was already so tall. “Enjoy what?”

“Killing them,” Aisa said. “I have thought about Sharlee and Hector often since they took our friends hostage. If it weren't for them, my grandmother and Ynara would still
be alive. The merfolk would not be angry with me. I would not feel so much guilt and anger. But now that I have killed them—or arranged for their deaths—I do not feel particularly better.”

“It doesn't seem fair, does it?” Danr said. “It was just, and it needed to be done. Hector was in pain and he wanted to hurt more people. I saw it.” He tapped his left eye. “The only way to stop them was to kill them. I should feel good about it, too, but . . .”

“Yes,” Aisa sighed, and Danr wanted to hold her very much right then, but they were on different wyrms. Why were they so often separated by a gulf? He set his jaw. That separation would soon become permanent. He'd been trying not to think too much about that, but the knowledge crowded his mind at bad moments. They hadn't talked about their impending loss—or about a baby—since the night Welk changed Danr into a toad. The topic was too raw yet. But sometimes, late at night when he couldn't sleep, he turned the problem over in his mind, searching for a solution, a way for him and Aisa to stay together even after she became a Gardener.

“I noticed rot in Sharlee and Hector,” Aisa said. “Just like in the Garden.”

Now Danr looked at her full-on. “So did I. In my true eye. Did the Garden corrupt them, or did their actions corrupt the Garden?”

“I think they were already rotten, and their corruption allowed the Garden to make it worse,” Aisa said. “That is the way of it—corruption is drawn to corruption, rot to rot. You saw how easily Hector and Sharlee blackened the people around them.”

Danr shuddered. “Yeah. It was . . . yeah.”

“But there is something you are not telling me, Hamzu. I can hear it in your voice.”

The question was unasked, which meant he could choose how and when to answer it. He felt grateful for this small courtesy, even though he was going to tell her anyway.
“That injury knocked me out, and I felt like I was in the Garden. It was like a dream, or something.”

“Hmm. A hallucination when you were injured?” she hazarded. “Or perhaps you went there like I go when I sleep. But you are not a Gardener, nor are you in line to become one.”

He turned to peer ahead into the night, though there was nothing to see but empty road. “I keep waiting for everything to make sense, but it only gets worse.”

She shook her head. “We need to get the Bone Sword from Queen Vesha. Then all of this can end.”

“That's what I'm afraid will happen,” Danr muttered.

*   *   *

The rest of the trip continued without real incident. Kalessa relished her new form. Every day, she rushed down roads both smooth and rutted, clearly enjoying the near invulnerability her scales granted her. She reported being able to taste incredible new sensations on the air, and couldn't imagine how she had missed them before. She hunted deer and elk with Slynd for food, and didn't seem to mind devouring them raw in the slightest.

“I would not have done this as an orc,” she said after one meal, “but as a wyrm, I cannot imagine eating any other way. The bones crunch, and the blood adds a perfect tang to the meat.”

“It certainly saves time cooking,” Aisa said dryly.

And the likelihood that she would never become an orc again seemed to bother her not at all. “All my life I have ridden wyrms,” she said. “I have long thought it must be wonderful to be so big and fast and powerful, and now I have that wish. Nothing is better!”

“Do all orcs feel that way?” Danr asked. They were riding past a herd of sheep that panicked and fled across their paddock as the wyrms passed with their two riders.

“Many do,” Kalessa said. “Many old stories tell of orcs
and wyrms exchanging shapes. You know that. Perhaps this is why we feel so close to our wyrms.”

“And now those old stories are coming true,” Aisa mused. “Shapes are so . . . fluid. In the right hands. I wonder . . .”

“What?” Danr asked. “When someone who is fated to become a Gardener wonders something, the rest of us tremble, you know.”

Aisa made a face that wasn't quite smile and wasn't quite grimace. “You remember that legend Grandmother Bund told us, the one that says the Fae and the Kin and the Stane were made out of three different kinds of clay?”

“Yeah.” Danr's eyes grew distant as his thoughts went back to his grandmother's aged, powerful voice telling the story in the dark under the mountain. “The Stane came from rich, dark clay. The Kin came from smooth, fine clay. The Fae came from white, weak clay. Though probably the Fae tell the story a little different.”

“I also have a different story for you,” Aisa said from Slynd's back. “Long, long ago, when fire was a new discovery and living in a cave was the height of wealth, there was only one race of people, and there was only one god. Let us call him Tikk, the trickster. And Tikk the trickster told the people he would give them a gift, if they wanted it. The people gladly accepted a gift from their god, not realizing that Tikk was laughing behind his hands at them, for the gift was the power of the shape. Some people wanted nothing to do with this new power, and kept their shapes. Other people learned to change their shapes, and the shapes of other people. They changed their shapes a little bit, and then a little more, and then a little more.

“One group of people, the ones who lived in caves, changed their shapes so much that they no longer wished to come aboveground except at night, and their eyes became sensitive to light, and they twisted their magic until they could shape the shadows and the earth itself and forgot the power of the shape entirely.

“Another group of people, the ones who lived in the forests, went into the trees and into the air above until the heavy iron became painful anathema to them. They twisted their magic until it became all light and air and glamour and forgot the power of the shape entirely.

“Another group of people, the ones who farmed and fished, became close to the beasts they husbanded. They kept the power of the shape pure, and learned to change into any animal they pleased. Some went into the ocean and never came back. Others went to the grasslands and learned the power of the wyrms. And still others remained where they were, learning the power of eagles and lions, bears and boars.

“And over time, the groups of people changed so much that they forgot they had once been a single race of people and remembered only a time when they had been the three groups of three, the Nine Races. And once that happened, the trickster god discovered he had himself been tricked, for he was split into nine gods. But a piece of him flew away and remained himself, which is why the Nine are actually ten. And so the world spun out—one becoming three, three becoming nine, while two always revolve around a third, in the mortal world and among the gods and among the Fates, with the one trickster gadfly remaining a little apart.

“The Fates?” Danr said.

“Three and a trickster,” Aisa said. “Three Gardeners and—”

“Death,” Danr finished. “Oh. Shit.”

“She did say Tikk likes to talk to her,” Aisa finished.

Silence fell over the three of them and Slynd. Danr tried to digest what Aisa had said. It made a strange sort of sense. Certainly more than the clay story. He thought about Death in her chair with her knitting needles with the three Fates beside her and he shuddered. Three and one. Everything was three and one.

Then Kalessa made a hissing snort and the moment passed. “Really, sister! You do have strange ideas.”

“Hmm,” was all Aisa said in response.

Three days and nights passed. Every morning when Aisa woke up, she reported working in the Garden, but Danr slept undisturbed beside her through the night, and they decided his trip there must have been a hallucination brought on by shock and injury. All three of those nights, Aisa slid her body against Danr's and he wordlessly accepted her lovemaking within the fortress of the two wyrms that coiled around their camp. No words traveled between them about a child. If one came, one would come, and Danr realized that he wanted a child, a piece of Aisa to keep with him. And if Aisa left to become a Gardener, he would raise the baby as best he could.

But on the third night, Aisa lay on his chest and said, “You and . . . the little one will not be alone, you know.”

“No?” he said, knowing what she meant.

“You have two great wyrms to guard the both of you, and two near-immortal men who will probably be better mothers than—”

“If you finish that sentence,” Danr interrupted, “they will both hunt you down with bows and arrows.”

She laughed lightly. “In any case, you will have help. And I will be there, too, in whatever way I can be.”

Talking. They were actually talking about it. Danr raised his head up gingerly, as if he might frighten the topic away like a shy rabbit. “Maybe the child will stay with you in the Garden. Or maybe it will be able to travel back and forth and be with both of us.”

“I . . . hadn't thought of that,” Aisa said. She brightened. “I have been assuming the child will be mortal and always in this world, but why should that be? As a Gardener, I will be running the universe. Why should I not have what I wish?”

“I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't give you what you wish,” Danr said.

“Hmm. Let me show you what I wish.”

*   *   *

When they reached northern Balsia, they briefly considered a trip through Skyford and the village where Danr had grown up and Aisa had lived, then decided against it. Neither of them had many good memories of the place, and they had no desire for the earl to make a fuss over them as Skyford's most famous former residents. However, they did stop at the top of hill where the road looked down on Skyford, which lay at the bottom of a river valley. It was the very spot where Danr, leading a skin-and-bones steer, had paused to look down at the city more than two years ago, with no idea how much his life and the world were about to change.

“It looks different,” Aisa observed from Slynd's back.

Danr squinted beneath his hat in the afternoon sunlight. The last time he had visited, Skyford was enclosed on three sides by a great palisade of wood and stone while the river formed the fourth side. Later, the earl, now dead, had brought armies from all over Balsia, and they had set up a camp across the river that had nearly dwarfed the city. Now it looked as though the city had expanded into that camp and become permanent. Stone buildings had risen like blocky mushrooms and spread across the slanted valley floor.

“Those are Stane buildings,” Danr said.

“The trolls and dwarfs have come calling, just like they did in Balsia,” Kalessa the wyrm said. “Whether the Skyford folk accepted this by choice or by force, I am curious to see. Perhaps we should stop in after all.”

“Let's not,” Danr said. “I don't want to add to any tension.”

They skirted both Skyford and the little village beyond it and headed into the mountains. Danr had expected to find the path with difficulty, but instead they discovered a clear, well-maintained road that twisted upward through forest and foothill.

“The road makes sense,” Danr mused. “The Stane build
with stone right handily, and if they're in and out of Skyford, they'd want a nice path.”

“It is easy to climb,” Kalessa said. “Come, Slynd! And do not eat any trolls you encounter, no matter how tasty they appear.”

“They won't come aboveground during the day,” Danr reminded her. “Sunlight bites them harder than it does me.”

As Danr predicted, the road remained deserted. Only the great green trees and heavy boulders stood guard along the way as it climbed up the mountain. Danr sighed with relief when the shade blunted the sharp sunlight. In a short time, they found themselves at the Great Door. It was just as Danr remembered it—an outcropping of rock that jutted from the side of the mountain and didn't look at all like a door. But when he slid off Kalessa's back with a stiff groan, he saw the cunning handles carved to look like part of the outcropping, and the faint outline of the door itself. Unbidden, Danr's memory called up the first time he had come here. A troll named Kech had threatened to eat Danr and Aisa alive if Danr couldn't prove he was part troll by opening the Great Door. It took three bone-cracking tries, but Danr had done it. Kech had been forced to admit Danr under the mountain—and eventually admit that he was Danr's father.

“This will not be fun,” Aisa said. “It nearly killed you to open this door last time.”

Danr looked at her, then set his feet, grasped the hidden handles, and
heaved.
The door ground open and flipped aside with a crash. Slynd whipped himself backward into an S at the sound. Danr raised a shaggy eyebrow at Aisa while Kalessa gave a laughing little hiss.

“How?” Aisa said, covering her mouth with one hand.

“I was sixteen back then,” he said, “and still a boy. Come on.”

They strode forward and slid down into darkness.

S
ilence rang in Ranadar's ears and he stood blinking in shock at the mound of rubble piled in front of him. He couldn't seem to get his mind working properly. Dust choked his nose and throat. As always, he was aware of the iron all about him. Painful, dreadful iron. Iron forges in the distance, iron tools in the houses, iron utensils scattered about this very room. The heaviness dragged at him, grated on his nerves, put a bad taste into his mouth. The feeling was always there in this awful city, this place where iron horseshoes rang harsh on cobblestones and iron hammers bashed on awful anvils. It never quite went away, a headache that wouldn't end.

And he was also
hungry.
His stomach roared its emptiness, and his hands shook with ravenousness. He snatched up the sausage, bread, and pears from the floor and, heedless of the dust, crammed them into his mouth in greedy bites, then washed it all down with the wine. Vik, he wanted more of that Tikkscock. The power that had washed through him was like drinking pure sunlight. The memory turned the wine to Stane piss in his mouth. He had to find—

Talfi! Where was Talfi! How could he have forgotten? Ranadar shook his aching head in the dusty air. The food
helped clear his mind a little. The earthquake! What had happened? Someone coughed and hacked nearby, and it came to him that he was standing in the building where he had summoned the sprite and forced it to talk. He turned, trying to understand, but his head would not come together. The dust settled a little. The figure coughing a few paces away was Talfi. Relief flooded Ranadar. He realized he was still holding half a pear in his hand, and he stuffed it into his mouth.

“Talashka,”
he said, and moved toward Talfi. The Nine! There had to be some Tikkscock left somewhere. He found himself scanning the floor for a leaf, a steam, even a seed. Then Ranadar saw the hand. It protruded from the great pile of debris that had once been the chimney and a good part of the ceiling above it. Ranadar recognized both the hand and the wrist of the tunic. It was Talfi's.

The world snapped into place. Ranadar remembered. The earthquake, the fleeing sprite, the cracking chimney, the collapsing wall. The man coughing near him was not Talfi, but the flesh golem. Talfi was dead.

Panic fluttered at the back of Ranadar's throat and he forced it down. It would be all right. Talfi was not dead. Talfi could not die. But neither could he come back to life. Not with a ton of rock grinding him down. Was he even now trying to revive and dying again? Ranadar's heart wrenched and the panic returned, quick and tight. He shouted Talfi's name and fell to pulling at the debris with his bare hands. He clawed at the stones and beams. But they were heavy, and he was weak from the damn iron. He no longer wanted the Tikkscock.

“First!” The flesh golem joined in. Ranadar thought little of the creature, even though it looked exactly like his
Talashka
, but in that moment, gratitude overtook him and he would have done anything in repayment. Together they shifted several stones and managed to pull aside a beam. The golem's great strength was a powerful asset, and he tossed aside rocks like pebbles. From outside erupted
sounds of terrified screams and panicked shouts and other cries. Ranadar ignored them and kept working. Moments later, however, they found themselves unable to shift a boulder-sized rock with a beam resting atop it. Talfi lay directly beneath.

“Try harder!” Ranadar gasped. Dust and sweat streaked his hair and itched under his clothes, but he didn't care. He and the golem grabbed and heaved. Nothing moved. Talfi's hand stuck out, a grisly and pitiful petition. Blood oozed across the palm. Despair crawled over Ranadar, and he wanted to creep under the rocks himself and die. He grabbed again, ignoring his own scratched and bruised hands.

“Can you create a Twist to get him out?” the flesh golem asked.

“He could not step through it,” Ranadar said through clenched teeth. “Lift!”

The flesh golem shook his head. “We can't do it.”

“We must!” Ranadar tugged at the beam again. Splinters tore at his skin. “Come on! We must not . . . must not leave him.”

“We can't do it,” the other Talfi repeated. “Ran, it's impossible.”

Rage filled Ranadar, and he whirled on the golem. “You want him dead! You want him dead so that—”

“What?” the golem asked. “So I can have you?”

“Isn't that the reason?” Ranadar tried to lift the beam again. The iron nails inside it nipped at him like cold claws, but he could not stop. “You think that if he is unable to come back, I will turn to you.”

“I'm him,” the golem said in that maddeningly familiar voice. It was both comforting and horrible at the same time, and the sound of it made Ranadar feel both relieved and sick. “It's
me.
You know that, Ran.”

“Do not call me that!” Ranadar barked.

“It's what I remember calling you,” the other Talfi said. “This flesh and blood are the same. The memories are the same. We're the same! I love—”

“Stop it!” The bolt of mental energy flashed from Ranadar's head and struck the other Talfi square in the face. The other Talfi went to his knees with a cry of pain in Talfi's voice that wrenched Ranadar's heart. What had he done? Without thinking, he ran over to Other Talfi and put a hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry. I did not . . .”

“Vik! Where did you learn to do that?” Other Talfi gasped. “You've never done it before.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like a troop of dwarfs are pounding hammers in my head,” he groaned. “I think I'm going to be sick.” And he threw up.

Ranadar rubbed his temples, feeling even worse. “I am sorry. I did not mean . . . that is, I did know I could . . . maybe the Tikkscock brought it out. That and being angry.”

“I don't want you to be angry at me.” Other Talfi got unsteadily to his feet. “I hate it when we argue.”

“You and I do not argue,” Ranadar said.

“That's not how I remember it.” Other Talfi's voice was quiet. Hesitatingly, he reached for Ranadar's hand. When he touched it, however, Ranadar pulled away.

“We need to find a way to save Talfi,” he said.

Other Talfi closed his eyes in either pain, resignation, or both. It disturbed Ranadar that he could read the emotions because he had seen the exact same expressions on Talfi's face. And for a moment as small and quiet as the footstep of an ant, it flickered through his mind that if they could not find a way to pull Talfi out, perhaps it would be possible to find happiness with someone who was his Talfi's double, and perhaps, over time, he would forget that this Talfi had ever been anything but the real Talfi.

He flicked the dreadful thought away. It was not true, would never be true. But the ghost of the idea remained in his mind, the way someone at the edge of a cliff wonders what it might be like to jump over the side.

More shouts and screams rose from outside the building.
These sounded a little different from the earlier ones. The devastation to the city must be terrible, but Ranadar had given it little thought.

“We can save him,” Other Talfi said. “All of us.”

Another figure lurched into the room, stirring the dusty air. It was the other flesh golem. His twisted face was covered in dirt, whether from sleeping outside or from the earthquake, Ranadar could not tell.

“Help . . . First,” it—he—said.

Before Ranadar could react further, more figures pushed into the building—two, four, a dozen, twenty. All of them wearing ragged clothes, most of them badly disfigured, all of them Talfi. Ranadar found himself in a room filled with curly brown hair, sky blue eyes, and faintly crooked smiles. Some of them seemed intelligent; others were clearly feebleminded. Ranadar's heart pounded in his chest, a bird trying to escape. He could not take it in, not fully understand what he was looking at. It was like standing in a forest that suddenly pulled up its roots and walked toward him. With cold certainty, Ranadar knew that this crowd of golems was the reason for the fresh screams outside. All these men shared Talfi's flesh and blood. Did they share his memories and . . . feelings as well?

Without a word, they moved toward the rubble and together they grasped the great, heavy beam. It easily wrenched aside under the inhumanly powerful strength of the flesh golems. The stones beneath it melted away, and no time, Talfi's crushed and broken body slid free of the rubble beneath the warped hands of his duplicates. His skull was crushed and misshapen and one of his legs was folded at a sickening angle beneath him. Ranadar's insides twisted.

“Talfi,” he whispered. His entire world narrowed to that broken body. Ranadar touched the bloody face. He looked so much smaller when he wasn't alive. Ranadar had seen Talfi die a dozen times, and each time it stopped his own heart. Even with Death's promise, he could not seem to quite believe that Talfi would come back. And now Talfi
had been crushed beyond all recognition. What had it been like? Sudden guilt racked Ranadar. Talfi had died in agony because Ranadar had brought him to this place. If Ranadar had not decided to summon the sprite, or if they had done it somewhere else, Talfi would never have gone through this. He would still be alive. Ranadar was cruel and selfish, just as everyone said.

“Come on,
Talashka
,” he begged. “Wake up. You have to wake up.”

But Talfi did not move. His body was growing cool.

“He's gone, Ran—Ranadar,” Other Talfi said quietly. His palms were bleeding from a dozen cuts, and one of the fingernails had torn off from the scarred little finger of his twisted left hand. The other flesh golems stood in a Talfi crowd behind him. Some looked frightened, some looked solemn. Several were weeping quietly. It looked as though a hundred twisted spirits of Talfi were mourning his loss. Ranadar could not bear to look at them. He concentrated on Talfi—the real Talfi. But Talfi did not move.

A heavy lump grew in the back of Ranadar's throat, and his arms felt heavy. Hot tears pricked the backs of his eyes. “He will come back. He has to. Death promised.”

“Some things not even Death can undo,” Other Talfi said. “Let's . . . let's take him back to Mrs. Farley's. It isn't safe to stay here.”

“No. No!” Ranadar insisted. He pulled Talfi's body tighter against him. “He will come back. He always comes back!”

“Ranadar.” Other Talfi squatted next to him. “Ran. I'm sorry. I know you've lost him so many times. And maybe there's a reason for that.” Other Talfi took a deep breath. “Maybe the reason he can't come back now is that . . . we're here.”

“What?” Ranadar stared at him, and it was the most disconcerting thing imaginable to be cradling the body of his dead love while talking to a man who looked and sounded and acted exactly like him. Even his mind felt the
same. This man was not a simple brother or a twin. This man was the same flesh, the same blood. “What are you talking about?”

“What if . . . I'm him now?” Sympathy and love filled Other Talfi's eyes, and they were Talfi's eyes. “You don't have to cry. I'm back. It's me!”

For an achingly long moment, Ranadar wanted to reach for him and leave the pain behind. It would be simple. This Talfi would be the same as the other Talfi. If the other Talfi was dead, what difference would it make?

The other Talfi. Ranadar closed his eyes. How could he ever have let his
Talashka
become an “other Talfi”? The pain did not matter. Talfi did. Ranadar got to his feet.

“It is not safe here,” he said, forcing himself to ignore Other Talfi's aching, disappointed look. “We should bring him to Mrs. Farley's.”

Other Talfi wrapped Talfi in his ragged cloak, picked up the body—at that thought, Ranadar had to force himself to remain stoic—and headed for the door. The other flesh golems made way for him like an honor guard. Ranadar followed.

Out on the street, Ranadar blinked and shied back. Chaos had spread everywhere. A number of houses and other buildings had collapsed in the earthquake, sending panicked people into the streets. Their cries and shouts and frightened chatter filled every corner, and the streets themselves were a bumbling press of people. Some were wounded and bloody. Children cried, babies wailed. Crowds gathered around some of the collapsed houses, desperately clearing away rubble to get at victims underneath as Ranadar and Other Talfi had done. Other, wealthier sections of the city must have been equally hit, and those sections no doubt had the prince's guard and houses with clay golems and—once the sun set—trolls to help. But guards and golems did not come to help the poor. He turned to the horde of flesh golems that streamed out of the building behind him.

“If you want to show your humanity,” he said, “help these people!”

Without a word, the golems split up and spread out. They moved up and down the street, stopping at places where people were digging through rubble, and they helped. They pulled aside beams and cleared away fallen walls. No one seemed to notice the disfigured flesh, not in the crisis. It occurred to Ranadar that if Mother wanted to use the flesh golems to invade and take over the city, now would be the time.

“She won't do it now,” Other Talfi said, as if reading Ranadar's mind. “There aren't enough of us yet, even with the city in a mess.”

“You can simply refuse,” Ranadar said. “Look at how much good you—you all—are doing.”

Other Talfi shook his head above the sad, ragged bundle in his arms. “If
she
commands it, we have to do it. We're built that way.”

“Then you are less human than I thought.” He turned sadly to go, and missed the look of shock that crossed Other Talfi's face.

*   *   *

The trip back to Mrs. Farley's house was filled with more stress and pain. The earthquake had been relatively mild, but Balsia wasn't prone to them, and the city was not built to withstand them. A number of structures had simply fallen in on themselves, while others showed cracks or other damage and yet others showed no ill effects at all. The animals, which had become agitated in the moments before the quake, Ranadar realized, were now even louder and more panicky than their owners, and the sounds of horses, waterfowl, chickens, dogs, and other animals mixed with the yells of their owners. Some places had caught fire, and bucket brigades hastily rushed water from city wells to put them out. More than once, Ranadar and
Other Talfi encountered the prince's guard in their red and gold uniforms, looking harried and trying to keep order. Silver-shirted followers of Fell and Belinna, the warrior twins, joined them. Green-robed priests and priestesses of the goddess Grick, known for her aid and mercy, were out and about with sacks of medicine and worried expressions on their faces. Ranadar did his best to slip through the noisy crowds with his hood up and avoid thinking about Talfi. He had to get home to Mrs. Farley's. That was all that mattered. Just get home.