Bone War (20 page)

“Vesha,” Danr bellowed, “cancel the darkness so Aisa can see! Aisa, kill the Twist behind you!”

The darkness vanished. Aisa spun, but it took her several seconds to find the Twist, barely visible as a black-bordered distortion in the air. The fairy with the Bone Sword was already leaping toward it. Without thinking, Danr lunged for the creature. With the tips of his fingers, he caught the fairy around the ankle just as it entered the Twist. In that moment, Aisa spotted the Twist and slashed the sickle through it.

A thunderous explosion knocked Danr backward. Light smashed his eyes, and noise boomed against his very bones. He slammed against a wall, and pain crushed his back. Dazed, he slid to the floor, both blind and deaf. The world rocked and spun, and nausea heaved in his stomach. The pain throbbed up and down his spine. All he could do was lie there and try to breathe.

Eventually, the pain lessened and he was able to push himself into a sitting position. His ears rang, but his vision was clearing. With aching slowness, he grabbed one of the stone niches above his head and used it to pull himself upright, wincing at every movement.

The room was devastated. Piles of worked gold and
silver lay everywhere. The boxes and cases were scattered and broken, their gilded contents strewn about the room. Hundreds of fairy corpses had been flung everywhere, motionless as broken dolls. The room smelled of hot metal and mangled mushrooms.

Kalessa and Slynd were wound together in an emerald tangle. Torth and Vesha were collapsed in heaps near the door. And Aisa! Where was Aisa? Fighting the pounding pain in his back, Danr desperately scanned the room, looking for her. She lay half-buried in a pile of platinum armbands. Danr hobbled over to her, heart pounding. She had to be all right. She couldn't be dead. She couldn't be—

Aisa coughed and tried to move, but the load of silver was too much for her. Relief so powerful it made him giddy swept over Danr. He leaned down to help free her and noticed for the first time what he was holding in his hand. It was a fairy's leg, sheared off and cauterized at the upper thigh. Danr dropped it with a shudder. It landed with a small, sad thump at his feet. Still wincing at the hot pain coursing across his back, he helped clear the silver away from Aisa. Carefully, she sat up.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, and his own voice was faint to himself.

She pointed to her ear, shook her head, and flinched from pain of her own. That was when Danr noticed her arm jutted at an unusual angle. She looked down at it as if puzzled, then looked back up at Danr. Vik, his back hurt. And now that he had time to take stock, he noticed it was hard to breathe. The explosion must have cracked a rib, or even two. He tried to kneel down next to Aisa, but this caused a fresh wave of pain that made him dizzy.

Aisa held up her good hand, halting him, then closed her eyes for a moment. A soft golden light slipped over her, and she changed into a small white cat. The cat squirmed out of her clothes and almost immediately changed back into a naked Aisa. She held up her broken arm, which was now whole.

Vik! He had forgotten. Danr reached inside himself for his own power and took his human shape while Aisa scrambled back into her dress. The pain vanished. His vision cleared completely and his hearing returned. His clothes collapsed around him like a bad tent, so he quickly pulled the power a second time and changed back.

“That's better,” Aisa said, retrieving Kalessa's blade, which had fallen nearby and reverted to its default knife shape.

Danr took a moment to revel in the absence of pain, then put his arm around Aisa. “I was afraid you were—”

“I know,” she said. “So was I. I am glad we are unhurt. But we should see to everyone else before we celebrate.”

Torth and Vesha, with their solid troll bodies, had fared better and were only stunned, as were Kalessa and Slynd, though it took some time to untangle them. The fairies were all clearly dead.

“What happened?” Vesha said. “Where's the Sword?”

Danr cast about. The Sword was nowhere to be seen. Only the forlorn fairy leg lay bent on the floor, as if in trade.

“I think the fairy and the Sword went through the Twist at the same time the sickle touched it,” Danr said. “It slammed shut and cut off the fairy's leg.”

The implication hung heavy in the room. Queen Gwylph had the Bone Sword.

“Vik!” Vesha turned and slammed the wall with her fist. Magic blasted from the blow, and the entire vault shook. Danr nearly lost his balance. Vesha slammed the wall again and again, and each time the vault shook. Danr stumbled forward and grabbed her arm.

“Aunt Vesha!” he shouted. “You're bringing the place down!”

Vesha started to hit one more time, then visibly forced herself to regain control. Her breath came in short gasps and her eyes were wild with volcanic fury. “This won't stand!” she snarled. “It will
not
!”

A mass of frantic-looking trolls and dwarfs appeared at the vault door. Vesha whirled on them. “Get out!”

They fled, slamming the door behind them.

“We'll get it back from her, Aunt,” Torth said. “We will.”

Vesha started to snarl again, then turned her back for a long moment. The tremors in the cavern died down as her magic subsided. When she turned around again, she had regained more composure.

“How did those fairies get in here?” she said with deadly calm. “We're deep under the Iron Mountains. Iron. No Fae has ever been able to Twist through them, let alone do it all the way from Alfhame
and
find the power to hold a Twist open for so long.”

“The power is easy enough when you have a Gardener all to yourself,” Danr pointed out. “Pendra's power isn't limited by distance. Or iron.”

“Then why did the touch of iron collapse the Twist?” Kalessa countered. Her tongue flicked the air with agitation.

“Hmm,” Aisa said. “I do not like to say.”

“Spit it out,” Vesha said.

“I think the iron sickle did nothing to the Twist,” Aisa said. “Rather than let Hamzu pull the fairy back or allow him to follow the fairy through, Queen Gwylph slammed the Twist shut the moment she had the Bone Sword in her hands. The explosion was to shove us back—and keep the fairies from revealing her plans.”

“She killed her own people to ensure their silence?” Kalessa gasped, deeply offended and horrified both. “This is beyond monstrous!”

“The Elf Queen is wielding power she does not understand,” Aisa said with a shake of her head. “And she is using it in terrible ways. Now that she has created life, death means little. She will only become worse as her power grows.”

“Monstrous,” Kalessa repeated, flicking her tongue again. “Was the Twist related to the earthquake?”

“I can't imagine it wasn't,” Vesha said. “That would
explain why I felt sick. The earth itself is being corrupted, and that affects Stane everywhere.”

“There is more,” Aisa added. “The Twist was not created with a Gardener's power or with Fae magic. I felt that the moment the sickle touched it. The iron had no effect because it was yet a different type of Twist.”

“What kind was it, then?” Vesha said.

“Did you not recognize it?” Aisa countered. “The black border. Its easy ability to punch past iron.” She took a breath. “The Twist was Stane, my queen.”

Silence dropped across the vault. Vesha worked her long jaw back and forth. “That's not possible. Gwylph is a master of the Twist, but she can't use Stane magic. Not even with the help of a . . .”

She trailed off and looked at Danr. Danr met her eyes. A terrible thought crossed his mind, and he knew she was having the same thought.

“What happened to the box I gave you?” she asked evenly.

Danr had to speak, but since he didn't readily know the answer, the truth-teller in him allowed him a few moments to think. When Vesha had appointed him ambassador to the Kin, she gave him a box that was actually a Twist in solid form. It allowed him to pull gifts—bribes, really—from the Stane treasure vault from wherever he happened to be. He had given coins, golden goblets, and the gilded, bejeweled skull of Bal himself to the humans, and to the orcs he had given more coins and gems and gleaming swords and runic daggers, all in the hope of creating allies with the Stane.

“I couldn't bring it with me to Palana in Alfhame,” Danr said. “We were disguising ourselves as slaves, and slaves own nothing, so I left the box with the orcs in Xaron. Kalessa's father said he'd hold it until I could come back for it, but I never had the chance.”

“Gwylph has been a step ahead of us,” Aisa breathed. “She used Pendra's power and her own mastery of the
Twist to warp the box to her own purposes and steal the Bone Sword.”

“How did she even know the box existed?” Torth asked. “Or where to find it?”

Aisa gave him a scathing look. “Pendra knew.”

“Father!” Kalessa said suddenly. “The elf queen took the box from my father! What happened to him? And my family? And my Nest?” Her body quivered. “We must find out! We have to go to Xaron! Can you Twist us there?”

“Let me think,” Vesha said. “I have to think.”

Dark guilt settled on Danr's shoulders and made his stomach into a black hole. If the Fae had hurt Kalessa's family, it would be his fault for leaving the box with Kalessa's father. He should have known better, should have kept the box with him.

Vesha paced to the center of the vault, to the spot where the Twist had stood. The crushed mushrooms that illuminated the ruined room were beginning to fade, and shortly the room would be in total darkness. Vesha put out her hands, and more velvet darkness flowed from them. Danr remembered the way Grandmother Bund had commanded the shadows, but this was no picture show. These shadows twisted in ways that nothing should twist. They formed fractals—patterns within patterns within patterns that made Danr dizzy to see. Without thinking, he closed his right eye and looked only with his true eye.

The shadows snapped into focus sharp as knives, hard as dark diamonds. They writhed and twisted, seeking the branches of Ashkame itself—the source of all Twisting. Awed, Danr understood what Vesha was doing. She was following the Twist. It was delicate work, like creating art with hummingbird feathers. Sweat broke out on her wide forehead, but she ignored it, concentrating on following the faintest traces of magic. The shadows turned through nothing, but also through everything, touching the entire universe for a bare moment. Then Danr saw a presence, a female figure made of golden light with threads of darkness
running through it and a black hole in her chest where her heart should be. Vesha's fractal threads touched the figure, and the figure whirled around. The threads snapped back into Vesha's hands. She staggered a little, and Danr opened his right eye with a strange mixture of amazement and pride. This was
his
family. Then a bit of nervousness came to him.

“That was Queen Gwylph, wasn't it?” he said.

“I followed the Twist back to its origin,” Vesha said with a nod. She looked as though she might like a glass of water. “It started in Alfhame with Gwylph, but she's not in Palana.”

Vesha gestured in a way that reminded Danr of Grandmother Bund. The deepening shadows flowed from the corners of the vault and gathered in the center where they were all standing to create a contoured map of the continent. Danr blinked at it. The more he looked at it, the more he saw. It wasn't like reading a map in a book. It was like staring down at the actual world from high in the sky, and if he focused on one spot, he saw great detail. There was Balsia, sculpted in shadow on Bosha's Bay. Streets crisscrossed every which way. Tiny houses lined the streets, and—here he squinted hard—people and horses and carts and carriages moved up and down them. For a moment, he thought he saw Talfi and Ranadar. Talfi was carrying a large, long bundle. Or perhaps it was just his imagination. Then Danr's eyes watered and he was looking at the entire map again.

“Gwylph is here.” Vesha pointed at the spot where the Silver River flowed south and hit a single mountain. The mountain forced the river to fork, splitting itself into the Otra River and a secondary branch of the Silver River. “The Lone Mountain was pushed up during the Sundering and it divided the Silver River. The original riverbed behind the mountain dried up, which is why it's called the Sand River now.”

“It lies directly on the borders of Balsia and Palana,” Kalessa observed. Her great head hovered over all of them,
and she was obviously doing her best to keep her agitation under control. “An ideal staging area for an invasion.”

“How can she invade Balsia?” Aisa said. “The Kin have too much iron. And now that everyone knows how to break the Fae addiction, they do not have the strength. Not against an army encased in iron.”

The answer, the truth, struck Danr with an electric jolt. “It's Talfi,” he said. “Vik, Tikk, and the Nine—it's Talfi!”

“I don't understand,” said Vesha.

“Talfi found that strange duplicate of himself in Balsia,” Danr said. “It had to come from somewhere. And if there's one, there can be two. Or a dozen.”

“Or a thousand,” Kalessa breathed.

“Flesh golems,” Vesha said. “Vik! She's creating flesh golems!”

“What are flesh golems?” Danr asked, though just the term gave him a pretty good idea, and it wasn't a pleasant one.

“The dwarfs make golems by creating a statue, drawing the right runes on it, and smearing the runes with blood. The blood is a conduit for life, and the runes are a conduit for magic. The two combine to animate the golem, make it seem alive.” Vesha wet her lips. “You can animate anything this way—clay, wood, stone, metal, even ice, if you're very skilled.”

“And . . . flesh?” Aisa looked a little sick.

“Also possible. And strictly forbidden.” Vesha shuddered. “You could make it look like the dead have come back to life. Or you could piece together random pieces of—”