The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (2 page)

Bone wished for his own mate about now. In his mind’s eye he saw Persimmon Gaunt beside him, her red tresses an answer to the sunset, the rose-and-spiderweb tattoo upon her cheek a symbol of her passion and intellect, the daggers in her hands twin promises that someone watched his back.

But it was Persimmon, pregnant in their hideaway, who was depending upon him.

He edged backward . . . backward . . . wanting every bit of running start he could manage, keeping his eyes on the springfangs, hoping their instincts would overcome any training regarding this path, avoiding their predators’ gazes and watching their haunches, awaiting the telltale quiver that presaged their leaps—

Now. He took a running jump, aiming well beyond the wide, flat stone.

The springfangs leapt half a heartbeat later, converging upon the dust he’d left behind. But one took a wild swipe mid-air and buffeted Bone.

He stumbled hard onto the path, the wind knocked from him. He scrambled to his feet, getting a glimpse of the beasts coiling into crouches and launching themselves into a run.

Their charge led them over the area he’d found suspicious.

With a crack of wicker, a clatter of sand and stones, and twin yowls of outrage, the springfangs fell into the trap. A scream confirmed there was something pointy down below.

But Bone was barely conscious of this, for he was lurching down the path as fast as he could manage. No time for finesse. With feet bleeding, but no worse, he fairly collided with the iron door.

We do not celebrate our victories
, came Master Sidewinder’s voice,
until we are safely in our dens.
Bone was a long way from celebrating. Panting, he eyed the lock. He was familiar with the work of all Palmary’s locksmiths and many in Amberhorn to the north. Breaking into their workshops was once a favorite pastime of his. He carried a dozen customized picks.

But to identify the maker, and choose the right pick, in this light . . . The lock appeared to be a Hookworm Special. No, a Dodder Number Nine. . . . The half-diamond pick was called for . . . But the Xenocrates Conundrum greatly resembled the mid-series Dodders and required the snake-rake . . .

With a screech one of the springfangs clawed its way out of the pit. It lost no time sighting Bone and seeking vengeance for its howling mate.

Bone snatched the half-diamond pick, rattled the lock, and swung the iron door open. He barely registered his triumph and the alcove beyond as he slipped inside and flung the door shut.

As he clutched the bolt the springfang slammed the door back open, hurling Bone against the wall.

Luck was with Bone in two respects. First, the alcove was small and opened directly onto a wide stairway heading down; the springfang’s momentum carried it into a tumbling plummet. Second, there were also two narrow stairways up, and one was close beside him.

He scrambled upward without another thought. Growls (and perhaps human screams) echoed through the Sanctuary of the Fallen Feather, but he had no time for them. His objective was in the tower in any case. That he might reach it rather more noisily than planned could not be helped.

The room he reached held desert survival gear—robes, dried meat and fruit, packs, tents and the like—and as there were many wicker boxes, Bone shoved several of them into the stairway, plugging that access point. Angry growls confirmed he was followed. He ducked through a beaded curtain, recalling with annoyance that the Sanctuary interior contained few actual doors.

He entered a hallway and realized at once something was wrong here. Something other than the bloody-footed thief and the bloody-minded springfang, that is.

There were no Brothers or Sisters, and the tapestries depicting the Swan Goddess lofting an ocean in her feathers and quenching the scorching primeval sun lay torn and strewn. Here and there lay a bloodstain upon the wall or floor.

Bone had no time to wonder about it. He ripped strips from a holy tapestry to bind his oozing soles before, wincing, he reunited his boots with his feet. Even so, the blood he’d left already would lead the springfang here before long. He got his bearings and found a spiral stairway ascending toward the upper sanctum. He estimated his footpads at the level of two
mouses
in his personal scale of sound, but his taxed lungs were forcing his labored breaths toward three.

Alas
, Master Sidewinder once said,
we must keep breathing. Occupational hazard.

Bone gasped his way out into a window-lined hallway lit with the last rays of the sun and the dying flickers of neglected torches. There a young monk, draped in an oversized robe, stood regarding the desert.

“Brother Tadros,” Bone said, recognizing him, “you must run!”

The gangly youth, whose garments always either smothered him or revealed his ankles, simply kept gazing out at the dimming red-orange land. Tower-fires in Palmary glowed upon the horizon. Far to the east, Persimmon’s canyon home betrayed no light.

“Tadros, it’s Imago Bone. You remember. Gaunt and I came here a few months ago. No one trusted us, but we’re used to that. You were always kindly, at least . . .”

Brother Tadros slowly turned to stare at Bone. There was no hint of recognition. Bone, a lean-faced man with dark hair gone sandy-colored from long exposure to the sun, and bearing distinctive scars upon each cheek, one the gift of a blade, the other of a flame, was used to being remembered. Tadros’ lack of reaction was more unnerving than any scream.

“You thought we’d left,” Bone went on, searching for a glimmer of a response, “but your elders have been hiding us. I sneak in once a month to see Brother Clement for news and supplies. I usually take my time and climb the tower at night, but now . . . I thought something was amiss. Last night I saw the Sanctuary light swinging like a pendulum.”

“In fire and glass,” Brother Tadros murmured, as though from as far away as Qiangguo, “we are purged.”

“That doesn’t sound like Swan talk,” Bone muttered. “Come on.”

He got an arm around Tadros, and while the youth did not resist, it took some effort to steer him to the upper sanctum.

This was a small chapel reserved for the use of the Sanctuary’s elders, for those times when their administrative duties permitted only brief observances. The true glory of the Sanctuary of the Fallen Feather was in the public sanctum, which could hold scores of visitors. This one possessed but three pews, a modest stone altar in the likeness of a swan, an earthenware bowl for sacramental rainwater, and a candleholder of red glass hanging from a steel chain. Four open-air windows allowed the shining glass to be seen from miles off.

Pews were overturned, and there were red stains near the altar. The bowl was smashed and the Sanctuary light was dark. The wind from the windows raised a chill.

“Imago Bone,” rasped a voice from beneath a pew. “Such remarkable timing.”

An old monk, with tufts of white hair cut to resemble wings, stared out at Bone. Tonight his eyes even had the wide round look of a swan’s.

“Clement,” Bone began.

“You and your lover have ravaged this place,” Brother Clement said, crawling out from his hiding place with a bitter scowl, “as surely as if you had set fire to it. How fitting that you are here a day early, but still only just after your enemies have left.”

“Clement, later you can curse me from here to the Starborn Sea, but now we have to—”

The springfang leapt into the room.

It crashed into an overturned pew and smashed it away with the saber-toothed side of its mouth. Clement whirled with a speed that belied his age. “The sun is quenched!” he hissed. “Be at peace!”

At his ritualized words the springfang halted and lay down, though it kept its eyes focused upon Imago Bone.

Clement said, “I see the master thief was not so masterful on this occasion.”

Retrieving his breath from whatever distant star it had fled to, and shifting away from Tadros to where he’d have the best options for flight of his own, Bone managed to say, “What has happened?”

“As I said, you have happened.”

“We did not do this, Persimmon and I.” Bone nodded to Tadros. “What has been done to
him
?”

“Purged,” Tadros whispered.

Clement placed a shaking hand upon his own temple. “He has been robbed of mind. As were Sister Una and Brother Fion. Perhaps others, I do not know. All is chaos. Many were robbed of life, and perhaps they are better off. Your enemies departed only recently. We are fortunate most of our number were in Palmary to receive a ship from Mother Church in Swanisle, although perhaps it was our weakness that brought
them
upon us—”

“Who, Clement! Damn it, who did this?”

“The assassins of mind. They who are known as Night’s Auditors.”

Bone steadied himself with the altar. As he did so, the springfang looked as though it might relieve Bone of his throat, command or no command. “I have heard of them . . . They leave no mark . . . They hunt kings at the behest of kings . . .”

“They were hunting
you
. You and the mad poet you call your lover. You told us you were adventurers once, but no more. That you had decided to call it quits to savagery and sorcery and settle down. You hinted you had enemies, and of course we grant sanctuary to any who ask, with no questions. But you never said how powerful your enemies were!”

“I did not know the kleptomancers would send
them
,” Bone said. “I did not know we mattered so much . . .”

Brother Clement raised his quivering hands. “Tell me no more! Lest they return and claim more souls!”

“You . . . you talked.”

“Of course I talked! I told them everything about you. Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone, poet and thief, defying law and sensibility and nature itself, weaving drunkenly about the West until daring to grasp at a mundane life. Daring to start a
family
.” Clement nearly spat the word. “As if you were normal human beings, and not lost souls.”

“Did you tell them where?”

“I pointed from that very window.”

Bone’s dagger was out and at Clement’s throat. The springfang rose, a rattle in its gullet.

“Blood,” Tadros whispered.

“What would you have me do?” Clement said, sweat beading upon his forehead. “You brought this upon us. I saw good folk robbed forever of their wits, made into human cattle. I saw others slaughtered. Including some who’d sought sanctuary of their own. What good would I be to anyone if they sucked the brains from me? They would have had the knowledge they wished either way. And this way . . . Perhaps. Perhaps I can help.”

Bone wanted the word
help
to end with a screeching gasp, and let the Brother’s treacherous blood spurt hot upon his blade. But then the springfang would be upon him, and there would be no hope for Persimmon Gaunt.

Bone lowered the dagger, which remained as dry as his voice. “When did they leave?”

“Perhaps twenty minutes ago, on horseback, down the gorge.”

Bone looked to Tadros, and back again to Clement. “And you lay cowering here? While your people suffered?”

“I blew the silent whistle for the springfangs,” Brother Clement said. “In hopes they would secure our vengeance. If they failed, I wished to stay hidden.”

“They found me instead.”

“That does not altogether displease me.”

“I have no hope of outrunning riders.”

“You will not be running.” Brother Clement turned and whispered into the springfang’s tapered ears. He nodded to Bone. “You will be riding Smoke.”

Bone regarded his recent opponent. “That animal is not meant for riding.”

“Then your lover is doomed.”

“I will ride.”

“I take it,” Brother Clement said, “her mate is dead.”

“He is in your pit.”

Clement lowered his head. “They were trained to avoid the traps.”

“I made him forget his training.”

Clement’s stare was as sharp as Bone’s dagger. “Take me to him.”

They left Brother Tadros in the sanctum, his words “death and dust” drifting in the air behind them.

The moon was up as they reached the pit upon the penitents’ path. Brother Clement slid into the trap and put his hand upon the springfang that lay there unmoving, with a spike driven through its neck.

“Mirage,” Clement said, “is dead.” Smoke moaned. Cool air ruffled Bone’s desert robe. That, surely, was why he shivered.

“Gaunt yet lives,” Bone said.
And the life growing within her.

“Then save her if you can,” said Clement, returning to the path. “But I charge you with one task, one thing only in return for all we have sacrificed. Kill Smoke, once she has borne you to Persimmon Gaunt.”

“What?”

“Springfangs mate more completely than any other beings. Next to that union, human love is as a tidepool beside the ocean. Smoke will always be a fragment now, in pain. If you truly bear love within you, thief, do not rob her of her release.”

Bone nodded. Smoke crouched and he climbed upon her back, wrapping his arms and legs as best he could about her powerful form. Feeling her breath and pulse and warmth, it was as if he hugged a compact volcano. “Clement—”

“Do not thank me, or apologize, or do anything but leave this place, Imago Bone, and go as far away as the land of the stars’ rising.”

“Then I take my leave.”

“Smoke—” commanded Clement, and the shout was also a farewell. “Now!”

And there came a rush that made the landscape a blur of moonlit boulders, and which left Imago Bone clutching the beast with all his strength, as if the force of gravity was now a phenomenon that originated with the Sanctuary of the Fallen Feather and its grief. He could imagine Master Sidewinder wincing at the insane careening charge of his former student across the desert, but he could not honor the memory of his mentor’s subtlety any longer. His work was too urgent for that.