Bone War (25 page)

Xanda and Aisa gasped. Kalessa's eyes popped open. “How dare you!”

“How dare
you
?” Danr countered. He felt the pain his words were causing her, felt the acid teeth as if they raked across his own skin, but he kept going. “You left your people behind when they needed you most. What could that magic sword have done in defense of your tribe? How many enemies went unslain because you chose outsiders over your own people? What kind of chieftain will you make?”

“Hamzu!” Aisa hissed. “What—?”

Kalessa shot to her feet, her face a fury. Behind her, Slynd reared back with an angry hiss. Xanda's face was pale.

“You dare speak to me that way after everything I have done for you?” Kalessa snarled. A faint golden glow limned her body. “After the enemies I have slain for you? When I have endured endless torture and pain for you?”

“You don't know what pain is!” Danr shot back, also on his feet. “No orc does. You even let yourself be chained up by Sharlee Obsidia. Twice! Some warrior.”

“I will slay you where you stand, Stane!” Kalessa boomed. But her body was already changing. The blanket fell away. She thickened and grew. Her voice deepened. Scales sprouted and coruscated across her skin. In moments, Danr found himself facing a great horned wyrm. Two of them—Slynd was right beside her.

“Now you die,” Kalessa snarled, and lunged at him.

Shit, shit, shit.
Danr dove aside at the last moment. Kalessa missed, but Slynd was there. He caught Danr around the waist before he even hit the ground and flung him into the air. Sky and ground blurred into a sickening mess as Danr spun through nothingness. He flailed wildly, but there was nothing to grab. The world jerked to a stop.
A terrible pressure was crushing his midsection. He couldn't catch his breath. Kalessa had him sideways in her mouth like a cat with a mouse. Her teeth dug into skin and muscle. Danr struggled but got no leverage. The pressure increased and Danr let out an involuntary groan.

“Sister!” Aisa barked. “Look at yourself! Look at what you are doing!”

The pressure let up, but only marginally. Danr's bones creaked, and he prayed to the Nine. Puffs of air—Kalessa's breath—rushed past him in a dreadful kind of wind.

“You did it, my daughter!” Xanda exclaimed from somewhere behind Danr. “You changed like the orcs in the old legends!”

“Now let him down,” Aisa added. “You know he meant no harm.”

There was a long, long moment when Kalessa didn't move. Danr, heart pounding in his ears, forced himself to remain limp. Kalessa finally opened her mouth and let him drop to the ground. Danr stumbled and went to one knee. Aisa rushed over to him.

“Are you well?” she demanded.

“A few bruises, I think,” he said, “but I'll live.”

Kalessa lowered her head and glared at him with heavy golden eyes. “You said those things to make me angry.”

“I saw it.” Danr tapped his left eye. “You needed a push, and anger was your fuel. I'm sorry. You're a good daughter, Kalessa, a warrior who frightens the Nine themselves, and the best orc I know.”

“You do not know more than a dozen,” Kalessa accused with a small laugh. “I apologize for my outburst, my friend, and I am glad you are uninjured. Your words took bravery. Though . . .” She twisted around to look at herself. “. . . they seem to have worked.”

“Can you change back yet again?” Aisa asked.

In answer, Kalessa's body glowed and in a moment, she stood naked before them all. This time, Slynd snatched up the blanket and dropped it over her.

“I feel him,” Kalessa said in awe. While she spoke, Slynd brought his head down and Kalessa stepped onto it. He raised her higher and higher, a look of adoration on his face. “His mind speaks to me and mine to his. Not in words, but in . . . concepts. Slynd and I are one!”

A roar rose. Startled, Danr spun and saw that the rest of the tribe had emerged from their tents, attracted by the commotion. They crowded around Slynd and Kalessa, their green skins and golden eyes making a strange and boisterous crowd beneath the starry sky. All of them wanted to touch Kalessa. Slynd lowered his head carefully, and Kalessa put out her hands to every orc she could reach. Danr felt a pride he hadn't known he could feel. Kalessa was a strange sort of sister to him, and to see the orcs rally around her like this made his heart swell. Kalessa had Slynd raise her again.

“My sisters and brothers!” she called, still wrapped in the blanket. “This magic can come to you, just like in the days of old. We can find our strength! We can regain our power!”

Wild cheers broke out among the assembled orcs. Aisa tossed Kalessa's blade to her. She caught it, changed it into the great curved sword orcs favored, and raised it above her head, never minding that the blanket fell away. She made a stark and powerful picture, standing naked on the head of a great wyrm with the gleaming magic sword describing an arc above her head.

“We can rebuild the Nesting grounds, overcome our enemies, regain our lost lands!” Kalessa boomed. “Who is willing?”

Every orc shouted and howled and yelled. Danr realized he himself was roaring like a troll.

“Then share in the power!” Kalessa finished. “Share in your wyrm!”

A celebration began. The orcs broke out drums and rattles, creating a heart-thumping rhythm that pulsed in Danr's veins. More food and drink appeared. Orcs danced and shouted in equal measures around the fires. A green-
robed priestess appeared, and Danr wondered if she was the same one they had encountered back when they were searching for the Iron Axe. He hadn't seen her face beneath her hood, so he had no way to know, and this woman showed no signs of recognizing him. She quickly took charge of doling out dollops of Danr's and Aisa's blood to a line of orcs, waving a sweet-smelling bundle of burning sage in blessing over each and calling on the power of Kalinda, the shape-shifting moon, on each orc. Kalessa, still naked, stood atop Slynd's head and looked on with glittering eyes. Danr had to remind himself not to stare at her and her fierce beauty while the priestess squeezed another drop of blood from the cut on his hand.

To everyone's disappointment, especially after Kalessa's rousing demonstration and speech, none of them were able to change shape, even Xanda. At least none of them turned into chaotic blobs and died. Perhaps orcs weren't prone to that. Kalessa, for her part, remained unfazed by the failure. She stepped down from Slynd's head and donned a cloak, as Aisa so often did. Danr wondered how quickly nudity and cloaks might become the custom for shape mages.

“Danr, my friend,” Kalessa said, “would you look at the Nest with your true eye?”

Danr did. Every orc in the tribe—man, woman, and child—showed at least a small affinity for connecting with the wyrms, and inside many of them he saw a trapped wyrm, just as he had seen inside Kalessa. He reported this to her with more than a little wonder.

“It is as I thought,” she said with a firm nod. “They only need learn, as I did. And we must spread blood to the other tribes.”

The party continued, even though everyone was tired. “They need a reason to celebrate,” Xanda said. “It is good to
have
a reason.”

Eventually, Danr and Aisa retired to a tent Xanda ordered set up for them, and it was a fine, fine thing to
stretch out on soft furs and wyrm-skin leather after so many weeks of cloaks and cold ground.

“Do you every wonder if we are doing the right thing?” Aisa asked from the crook of his arm.

“I don't understand the question,” Danr was forced to say truthfully.

“We are mortals making decisions like gods,” Aisa said. “Look at what we have done! We have changed an entire tribe of orcs, and through them, all orcs everywhere. We gladly interfered with the way a prince runs his kingdom. Rather than execute a man who turned people into toads for robbery, we increased his power and turned him over to the army as a weapon. Everywhere we go the world becomes wildly different, and this will affect the Nine Races in ways I can scarcely comprehend! Now we are exhorting the orcs to go to war again—more changes.”

Danr sighed. The dark tent was warm, and Aisa was warm against his body, and the furs were warm under his skin, and these things combined with the long day and night were making him drowsy. “Gwylph is making even bigger changes,” he said. “We're only trying to repair the damage she's doing.”

“I haven't even
seen
her,” Aisa said, “except that one day you faced her down with the Iron Axe. Even then, she had little to say to me. And here I am, working hard to stop her. It feels so strange.”

“It'll be even stranger when you're a Gardener, won't it?” he said. “You'll change even more lives than we are now.”

“Yes,” she said seriously, “but I will do my best to ensure that the changes are the best for all and try to leave everyone as much free will as possible. I . . . I make a poor judge, Hamzu. I remained angry at Welk for turning you into a toad even after I learned how he arrived at such a place in his life. I will be setting events into motion that make people do dreadful things in order to survive. I can see this. Every thousand years, the Tree tips, forcing such things to happen, and I will be a part of it. It frightens me.”

“You can still turn the position down,” Danr said. “Let someone else do it.”

“Do not say that aloud,” Aisa cried. “I think of it every day. But Death and the Gardeners said there is no one else in the world except Queen Vesha and Queen Gwylph. Death will never accept Vesha, and Gwylph as a Gardener would be disaster.”

Danr sighed again and hugged her closer. “That's what I love about you. You can't give up, even when you should.”

“I am with child,” she said.

Danr froze in the dark tent. His mind stopped working and tried to run in a hundred different directions but staggered about as if drunk instead, and his tongue became a block of wood in his head. A baby! Aisa was going to have a baby!
His
baby! Suddenly, the Tree tipping seemed small and insignificant.

“The child will be yours, you know,” Aisa said when he didn't respond.

His tongue freed itself. “The Nine! A baby! That's wonderful news! Aisa, I can't believe . . . well, I can definitely believe it, but I'm . . . Vik, I don't know what I am!”

“The term is
father
, I believe,” she said, but there was a smile in her voice.

“My Aisa!” He kissed her, trying to tell her in that single gesture how he felt. A new life would enter the world soon. Iron Axes and Bone Swords were lumps of metal and slivers of ivory compared to this. The sun and the moon and a thousand stars blazed inside him, and he reeled with the enormity of it.

When they separated, she was breathless. “Perhaps I should become pregnant more often!”

They lay for a moment in silence, enjoying their own company and the thought of impending parenthood.

“I wish I could tell my mother,” Danr said at last. “She would be so happy to know about this.”

“So would mine,” Aisa said.

“Though Kech the troll will be a grandfather. A grand-
troll.” Danr laughed a little. “I wonder what he'll think of that. Oh! And my brother will be an uncle!” The world seemed to tilt a little at the edges.

“Hmm,” said Aisa, and squeezed his hand.

“Now I have a hard question,” Danr said.

“Where the baby will live,” Aisa replied, “after I become a Gardener.”

“You read my mind like an orc reads a wyrm.” Danr was trying to keep his tone light, as Talfi would, but it came across as heavy anyway.

Now Aisa sighed. “We do not have enough information to decide,” she said. “If the baby is mortal, it will not be able to live in the Garden, where no mortal can survive long. But I . . . I will be there every day. I do not care what Nu and Tan might say, or what Death might think. I will be there for my child.” She rubbed her belly, perhaps in unconscious anticipation. “Not only that, but he or she will anchor me to this world so I do not forget what it is to be human.”

“And if the baby is an immortal?” Danr said.

“That opens up an entirely new line of thought, does it not?” Aisa said. “She—or he—will outlive you, but all children do that, and I will not see my own child outlive me. How is that in any way a bad thing?”

“Now you sound like me when someone asks a direct question,” he complained. “The baby isn't even born yet, and already you're looking ahead to the day I die.”

“You did ask, my Hamzu,” she laughed. “But truly—what if we brought another immortal into the world?”

It was half a question, which allowed Danr some freedom in answering it. “I don't know. I don't think it's ever happened before. Except for Tikk. He changed into a fly and landed on Fell's knee just as Grick was birthing him and Belina, and then he changed into a baby so the Nine would think she had triplets instead of twins.”

“In the version I heard, Tikk landed on her vulva,” Aisa
said with a shudder. “When I go into labor, I am giving you the job of guarding against insect incursions.”

“Should I swat?” he asked.

She smacked him on the shoulder. “I suppose we can only wait and see.”

“And stop Gwylph,” Danr added. “If we don't, the baby won't be born at all, because there won't be a world for him—or her—to be born into.”

Aisa fell quiet. Then she said, “I wonder what would happen if you looked at my belly with your true eye. Perhaps you can tell if the baby is healthy. And see if it is a boy or a girl.”

He sat up, surprised. Aisa was sensitive about Danr's true eye, and he had long ago sworn to her he would never use it on her without her express permission. “Do you want me to look?”

“No,” she said, rubbing her stomach again. “And yes. I only want good news from you, but in that case, hearing nothing is just like getting bad news.”