Bone War (36 page)

“Torth!” Danr said as he and Aisa stepped out of the Twist. “Vik's balls, what are you doing in Alfhame?”

The shouting that had been going up around the circle instantly died. It was followed by a mad fumble for weapons—which no one had—and a general chaotic uproar. Danr held up his hands.

“Silence!” he bellowed.

The grass beneath the tree flattened for twenty feet in all directions, and the surrounding trees of the Alfhame forest trembled. Everyone froze.

“I did not know we could do that,” Aisa murmured. “We must experiment further.”

“We aren't here to hurt anyone,” Danr said. “Please. We just came by to see our friends.”

“Danr! Aisa!” Ranadar finally gasped out. He bolted to his feet and ran to embrace both of them. Talfi, also shouting their names, joined him. Danr hauled both of them and Aisa off their feet with a great laugh. He had thought he would never laugh with his friends again, and it felt astounding.

“Brother,” said Torth. “Where did you come from?”

Danr embraced him as well. “I could ask you the same question.”

“I am forging a new alliance with the Kin and even the Stane.” Ranadar looked pointedly at one of the elves and the sprites who bobbed overhead. “The world has changed and we need to change with it.”

“Your hold on the throne is touchy, Your Highness,” said the two-handed elf. “Not everyone will follow your—”

“He is the son of the former king and queen,” interrupted the one-handed elf. “If he wants to ally with even the Stane, we will do so!”

“
Even
the Stane?” retorted Torth.

“Thank you for your support, Lady Sharyl,” said Ranadar. “We recognize it will not be easy to—”

“Not easy?” interrupted the other elf. “Impossible! The filthy Stane cannot be trusted to—”

“Who is filthy?” Torth snapped. “You invited me here to talk about terms, not insult me. My father, Kech, is king under the mountain, and you flimsy Fae will remember that.”

“We were not so flimsy at the War of the Four Queens,” retorted the elf. “You Stane ran like cowards for your stinking cave.”

Danr slammed his fist down in the center of the circle. The
boom
silenced the circle. Danr drew himself up. “Look at who I am. Mortals,” he added for effect.

Everyone, including Ranadar and Talfi, looked at him. Danr let out a breath of power from the Garden. Green light, pure and powerful, gushed up to the sky and down to the center of the world. It poured through him and out of him. The circle of people dropped to their knees.

“I Am Power,” Danr boomed. “I Am Life. I Am Fate. And You Will—”

“Hamzu,” Aisa interrupted.

Danr looked around. Everyone had stopped moving. Even the column of light he was standing in had frozen. Only Aisa seemed unaffected. Confused, he stepped out of the light and crossed to her.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I think it is a form of Twisting,” she said. “I will show you later. But for now, I do not think we are supposed to do such things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we are . . . well, we are gods. And we are not supposed to tell people what to do.”

“Why not?” Danr folded his arms. “We're fate. That's what we're
supposed
to do.”

Aisa shook her head. “We tend the Garden, but in the end, it grows the way it wants. If we tell everyone what to do all the time, no one will do anything but what we say. Life will grow stale. The Tree will wither and die.”

“But—”

“The Gardeners didn't force
us
to do anything,” Aisa
pointed out. “We chose. Always. And they must choose as well.”

Danr started to object, then stopped himself. He remembered how he'd felt when Death called on him to go places he didn't want to go, pushed him into fighting monsters he didn't want to fight. Was this any different?

“All right,” he said. “We'll try something else.”

“Go,” she said.

He stepped back into the column of light, and time moved again. The light blazed and the people cowered. He gave himself a fraction of a moment to think about how incredible it was, going from the half-blood son of a thrall to . . . a god. But only a fraction of a moment. He had already learned that moments were different for mortals.

Danr clapped his hands and the light vanished. In a more reasonable tone, he said, “I would never tell you what to do. You are mortals and must choose your own way. But I've seen the long row, and it would be . . . pleasing to me if you would choose a certain way. The Nine Races used to be one people, you know. There's no reason they can't be again. Maybe you could . . . choose to think about that.”

He held out a hand to Aisa, who joined him in the circle, and he winked at Talfi, who was grinning widely at him. The Twist opened before them. Just before they stepped through, Aisa said, “And if you were thinking of making life difficult for Ranadar because he loves Talfi, think again. Love is never a bad choice.”

They stepped through the Twist and appeared in the Garden once again.

“What was that last bit for?” Danr asked.

“Just another form of peace.” Aisa straightened her dress. “Our first acts as gods. I think it went rather well.”

He touched her belly with a gentle hand and kissed her. “Will this be our second?”

“And our third,” she replied with a smile. When they separated, she was holding a sickle. “Hmm. It would seem the Garden awaits.” She cocked her head. “So far, among
the Fates, we have seeds, a hoe, and a sickle. What will your tool be, my husband?”

It was the first time she had called him that, and it took him a little aback. “We haven't officially been married.”

She laughed, a light, free sound that carried from one end of the Garden to the other and lifted spirits all across the Nine Worlds. “There is no higher authority in the universe than ourselves, my strong one. But still, you are correct. So.” She took his hand in hers. “Danr, my Hamzu, the strong one, from the day I met you, I knew you were special. My heart felt safe and loved when I was with you, even if I could not immediately admit it to myself. And when I could at last admit it to myself”—her voice broke—“I knew there was no one else I could ever trust with my life and my love. You are my strength. You are my life. You are my world. I take your hand in marriage.”

Danr felt himself fill like a bowl with water and gold. “Aisa, words aren't my way. I never know how to show what's in my heart. I can only say that I have always loved you. Before I knew your face, I knew what was in your heart, and I loved you. I cannot imagine life without you, and”—now his voice grew thick—“and you know that even now I have to tell the truth. I love you forever, and I take your hand in marriage.”

“So be it,” said Nu and Tan together, and Danr knew that they had always been there, while Death smiled in the background. Danr wrapped his arms around Aisa for a long, welcome kiss, the first one of many over thousands of years.

“Well.” Aisa dabbed at her eyes with her free hand and waved her sickle with the other. “With that taken care of, I believe we have work to do. You have not chosen a tool. My husband.”

He held up his hand. “I think this will do just fine.”

Together they turned toward the Garden.

Steven Harper McClary Piziks
was born with a name no one can reliably remember or pronounce, so he usually writes under the pen name Steven Harper. He sold a short story on his first try way back in 1990. Since then, he's written twenty-odd novels, including the Clockwork Empire steampunk series.

When not writing, Steven teaches English in southeast Michigan. He also plays the folk harp, wrestles with his kids, and embarrasses his youngest son in public.

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