Bone War (3 page)

“You can bite my—”

“Kalessa,” Ranadar interrupted, “even orcs are not usually so snappish with their friends. And you look unhappy. Has something happened?”

Kalessa scowled. “I am not snappish. You are both sensitive.”

Talfi caught the look in Ranadar's eye and snagged a wooden cup from a passing alewife, who had a tray of them around her neck. He dropped a half knuckle on the
tray, and the alewife filled the cup from an ale pitcher, then waited patiently so she could get her cup back.

“Have a drink,” Talfi said. “You look like you need one.”

Kalessa looked annoyed but accepted the cup and drank. She was far from home herself. The prairies of Xaron, the orc lands, lay east, on the other side of Alfhame, and Talfi knew the city put her on edge, but her quick temper was rarely directed at her friends.

“What happened?” Talfi asked.

“I do not wish to discuss it.” Kalessa held out the cup, and Talfi dropped another coin so the woman would fill it.

“As you like,” said Ranadar. “We would not understand anyway.”

“Yeah,” Talfi chimed in. “We're just a couple of guys. Men wouldn't understand woman problems. You should probably talk to Aisa or something.”

“Woman problems?” Kalessa drained the cup and held it out for a third, which Talfi also paid for. “Psh. My woman problems are ten times more difficult than your manliest man problems.”

“I doubt it,” Ranadar goaded, his tone overly airy. “Men and women cannot understand one another's problems. Women's problems are just too . . . too . . .”

“You were going to say
petty
,” Kalessa said, thumping the cup on the alewife's tray.

“I was not.”

“You were.” Kalessa wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. “Understand this, then. I just heard from my mother. Word of my deeds before the Battle of the Twist and of the Great Golem reached the clans, and as a result, my clan has been promoted from Sixth Nest to Third Nest.”

“Congratulations!” Talfi said in surprise. “Kalessa, that's great news!”

“It is and it is not.” She waved away the alewife, who wandered off with her cups and pitcher. “It brings a lot of status and power to my parents, and it means my brothers
and I do not have to worry so much about trying to marry up to a higher-ranking Nest.”

“So why is it bad?” Ranadar asked.

“My mother is suddenly receiving a number of marriage proposals for
me
,” Kalessa growled. “For the sake of the line, I must respond, and soon.”

“You do?” Talfi shook his head. “But you have a lot of older brothers, yeah? There's no pressure on you.”

“What do my brothers have to do with it?” she asked, genuinely confused. “I'm the only female in my family's generation. If I don't have children, our chieftain's line will end.”

“Oh.”

“Ah.” Ranadar nodded. “That I
can
understand. I am the only child, and that puts me under considerable pressure as well.”

“Uh . . . your parents . . . ,” Talfi began, then stopped himself. The subject of Ranadar's parents was a touchy one, a subject Talfi had decided to avoid until Ranadar brought it up. Now that he had done so, Talfi found himself unsure what to say, especially since Kalessa was there.

Kalessa solved the problem for him with orcish directness. “Your parents put pressure on you?” she snorted. “How? You live in exile. The elf king is dead, and the elf queen has all but said you can never go home, now that you've sided with the people who killed your father. And you're
regi
anyway. How many children can you sire?”

Ranadar's face remained impassive, but Talfi bit the inside of his cheek. He knew Ranadar well, and noticed the tightening of the tendons at his neck and the way he drew his fingers along the hem of his cloak.

“Regardless of what you and my mother may think of me,” Ranadar said quietly, “I am still a prince. Actually, I am
the
prince. If I have no children, the royal family line will end and another family will take the throne. The throne does not care about my mother's feelings toward me, or mine toward her. One day, she will die, and the
throne will be mine to take or not. And if I do, I must have children. Therefore, she wants me to marry a nice elven woman and produce a number of nice elven children.”

“Huh.” Kalessa drew her knife and cleaned under a fingernail with it. “Bites Vik's balls, doesn't it?”

Ranadar remained silent for a split second, then gave a firework laugh. “It does. So maybe an orcish warrior princess who cannot decide on a man can share a problem with a
regi
elven prince who has already found one.”

Talfi cocked his head, trying to work this out, then gave it up. “Maybe we should stop the love party and—”

A woman's scream tore across the market, followed by a crash. Glass shattered. All three of them came alert. The knife in Kalessa's hand flickered and changed into a long, thin sword. Two stalls over, humans and trolls scattered, though they didn't run away. The woman screamed again. Kalessa shouldered her way through the people with Talfi and Ranadar right behind her. In an empty half circle around a bottle maker's stall was a figure in a ragged cloak. He faced the stall with his hood down, but his back was to Talfi, so all Talfi could see was that he had dark brown hair, badly cut. One of the bottle maker's tables had tipped over, sending shattered glass in all directions. The plump woman who had screamed was cowering against one side of the bottler's stall, a large market basket clutched under her arm, while the bottler stared at the man with a startled expression.

“Hideous!” said someone.

“Is it a shape-shifter?”

“Probably a half-blood.”

“Disgusting!”

“Someone call the guard!”

“What happened?” Talfi asked no one in particular.

“That creature scared this poor woman,” replied a man, turning to look at Talfi. “It's not fit to walk the—hey! You're—”

But Talfi was elbowing his way through the crowd into the open circle. Glass crunched under his shoes. Ranadar
and Kalessa came with him. The bottler and the woman still hadn't moved, and neither had the man. Or creature. Or whatever it was. The crowd kept its distance.

“It's all right, friend,” Talfi said, approaching. “No one's going to hurt you. Everyone just got a little startled is all.”

The man didn't move. Talfi, no stranger to odd occurrences, approached with calm caution. Hey, he had faced down ghostly
draugr
, wyrms, trollwives, and even Death herself. What could this guy possibly do?

As he stepped forward, Ranadar said, “Talfi, perhaps we should—”

At that, the figure turned. As one, the crowd backed up a step with a gasp. A cold wave of shock washed over Talfi and he froze on the cobblestones. Every nerve jangled and he felt his bowels loosen like water. This couldn't be. The left side of the man's face was malformed. Shiny, translucent skin stretched over bone and thin muscle as if it had been melted. A single, lidless eye stared out of its round socket, and the lipless mouth showed a grim row of yellow teeth. An equally malformed, clawed hand clutched the ragged cloak at his throat. But the right side . . .

The right side of the man's face looked exactly like Talfi's.

T
he little boat drifted lightly on the rocking waves beneath a golden sun. Danr, in his human form, leaned over the gunwale to peer into the azure depths. The ocean lay cool and clean beneath the warm wood, and his head was free of pain, an advantage of wearing his human form. So far it was shaping up to be a fine day.

A shadow moved beneath the water. It started small, then ballooned to human size as it rushed toward the boat. Danr pulled back as a mermaid broached the surface. Aisa. With a wild cry, she arched over the boat, trailing silver water behind her long dark hair. A mask of fierce blue tattoos and seed pearls covered her face, and her muscular tail gleamed like a hundred jewels in the sunlight. Her breasts were bare and her arms were wide. A grin split Danr's face as Aisa passed over his head. She shouted again, a high, free sound, then landed in the water on the other side of the boat, drenching him in salty spray. He laughed, but there was a little desperation behind the sound. He had to enjoy every moment he could with her. Every second was more precious than a candle in a cavern, because one day, and he didn't know exactly when, it would all end.

Aisa's head popped out of the water with her hair floating all around her. Her mermaid skin was as dusky as
Danr's own, and her eyes were as wide and brown. The spiky blue tattoos gave her a proud expression, and they only enhanced her beauty. Aisa's simple appearance in the water gave a little flutter to Danr's heart. With a small laugh of her own, she reached out of the water. He took her hand, cool and wet.

“The water is beautiful and fine,” she said in her lilting western accent. “You should try it, my love.”

He shook his head. “I don't want to get wet.”

“Really?” Her eyes danced with mischief. “Then why would you love a mermaid?”

She yanked hard and Danr went into the water with a yelp. The waves closed over his head. Salt water filled his nose and ears, and he started to splutter, but then Aisa was there. She put a hand over his mouth.

“Do not struggle,” she said, and the water carried her voice perfectly well. “I will not let you sink.”

They hung in the clear water. Her arm was under his, bearing him up. It was still a strange feeling. He was used to being the big one, the strong one, but down here, Aisa was the power.

“Here we go!” she said, and sped away with him.

Water rushed past him, so fast, so incredibly fast. The rushing sensation made his heart leap with a thrilling mixture of fear and excitement. They burst into a school of fish that scattered in a panicked rainbow of flashing scales and wide eyes. The warm ocean flowed over him like a silken lover, delicious and soft, and just when his lungs started to ache, Aisa pulled him to the surface. They both burst high into the air and fell back with a great splash. Danr resurfaced, flinging his dark hair out his eyes and blowing water like a dolphin. Aisa circled around him, lithe and agile, and his entire body thrilled with her very presence. He rolled over onto his back and floated, something he could only do when he was fully human. Danr was a half-blood, with a human mother and troll father. His normal shape was therefore big and muscular and dense, and any attempt
at floating sent him straight to the bottom. Just last year, however, he had learned how to change his shape and become fully human when he chose. His human form was much smaller, with a whipcord build, straight jaw, prominent cheekbones, and slightly paler skin than his more trollish self. His hair, however, remained thick and black and shaggy above large brown eyes.

Sunlight didn't bother his human form, and he was able to float effortlessly on his back to enjoy the warmth and light without spears of pain drilling into his skull. Really, this was a delightful way to spend an afternoon, especially because none of it would have happened without Aisa, and it was the best way to spend their dwindling time together.

Aisa slid up beside him and murmured in his ear, “There, now. Is this not better than hiding in a boat?”

“I would never want to hide from you,” he said.

“You are hiding something I want,” she countered.

In response, he turned his head and kissed her, indeed, he did, and tasted salt on her lips while the waves rocked them both. At long last, she was here, with him. It was a perfect moment, and nothing should have ended it.

Which meant, of course, that something did.

A great bubbling came up from underneath Danr's feet. The water blooped and burbled, washing around them like a laundress's tub. A great green bulk rose from the ocean floor and burst to the surface just in front of them. It opened, revealing the biggest flowering lily pad Danr had ever seen. It spread across the suddenly still waters like an emerald carpet with a golden flower in the center the size of a cart horse. Danr furiously treaded water. Standing near the flower were two women. The first wore a cloak of pale spring green, and over her shoulder she wore a leather seed bag of the kind farmers used to sow fields. The second wore a rich green-brown cloak of summer and carried a gardening hoe over her shoulder. Their faces were neither pretty nor ugly, not old or young, and their hands were worn with work. Danr, of course, recognized both of them.
They were the Gardeners, the Fates who tended the Garden, which ordered all lives, mortal and immortal both. The woman with the seed bag was Nu, and the woman with the hoe was Tan. Their time was up.

“No,” Danr whispered. “Not yet. You can't.”

“We can,” said Nu.

“We do,” said Tan.

Danr's breath shortened and his throat thickened. He had wielded the Iron Axe, kissed Death on the cheek, and faced down Grandfather Wyrm, but this moment turned his entire body to ice. He looked at Aisa, and his own fear and sorrow were reflected in her eyes. All the things he hadn't said in the last eighteen months piled up under his tongue, but it was too late to say them.

“Great Ones,” he said, and automatically tried to bow, even though he was still treading water.

“Is it . . . is it time?” Aisa asked. “Have you come for me?”

“We must speak,” said the woman in spring green. Her name was Nu.

“Converse,” added the woman in summer brown-green. Her name was Tan.

Danr, long conversant with careful truth, quickly noticed the Gardeners hadn't actually said they were coming to take Aisa away from Erda. Instead there was a long pause, as if the women were waiting for something. Danr tried to latch onto this small fact for reassurance, but had little luck.

Aisa hauled herself onto the edge of the lily pad and wrung water out of her hair. Danr's mouth was dry from both the fear and the salt water. He couldn't read her expression.

“Talk?” she said. “It has been six seasons since you came to us to say that Pendra disappeared, six seasons since you said you wanted me to take her place. Six seasons I have waited and wondered when you would come, and now you have. But you say you only wish to talk, Great Ones?”

Both Nu and Tan looked relieved. Nu said, “Indeed. Our sister Pendra is still missing, and the Garden weeps at her loss.”

“Not the best news,” Aisa sighed. “I was hoping you were coming to tell me she had returned.”

“And now,” said Tan, “we need you.”

“We call on you,” said Nu.

Another silence fell over the group. The lily pad rocked slightly, and the two Gardeners looked unhappy. Then Aisa said, “You require me.”

This cheered them up. “You must come to the Garden and help us,” they said together. “We will show you the way.”

Startled, Aisa grabbed Danr's hand. There was a
wrench
, and the ocean and the lily pad were gone. The water vanished, the sunlight dimmed, and Danr stumbled as he found himself standing on dry ground. Nausea sloshed through his stomach, and he went to his knees for a moment, breathing deeply. No matter how many times he did it, Twisting made him sick, though if he was careful, he could at least keep himself from throwing up. After a moment, he got his stomach under control and pushed himself to his feet. Water dripped from his bare chest and the old trousers he'd worn on the boat, and he gaped at the lightly wooded field stretching before him. Tall trees poked up here and there, along with stands of smaller ones. But it wasn't grass that grew between them. It was a riot of plants. Thousands and thousands of different plants growing in a great mass. Carrots rubbed roots with wheat stalks. Peanuts tangled in pumpkin vines. Bean sprouts languished in the shade of gooseberry bushes. Unseen breezes made the leaves dance and writhe with soft sounds that hissed in Danr's ears. Or maybe it was the plants themselves, squirming to get loose, whispering to anyone who might listen.

Some attempt had been made at order. Danr noticed how the plants had been seeded in plowed rows, and the plants followed them, more or less, but even the original furrows dove and swooped like chaotic ripples on a sandy
beach, and the plants themselves behaved badly, growing where they pleased and twining about each other in an orgy of golds and greens and scarlets and azure blue. It was tame wilderness. It was orderly chaos. It was ugly beauty.

It was the Garden.

The sight stole the breath from his very soul and twisted his heart around inside him. This was the most sacred of places. He was glad he was barefoot—and what a strange thought that was to cross his mind here and now; indeed, it was.

Aisa had told him of her visits to the Garden. It grew along the trunk and branches of Ashkame, the Great Tree whose roots drilled down to the dark realm of Glumenhame, whose upper branches cradled shining halls of Lumenhame, and whose trunk curled around Twixthame, where mortals lived. Every plant, every blossom, every fruit and seed was a mortal life somewhere in the mortal realms, and the way each tangled or twisted around the others showed how lives were intertwined.

And something . . . bothered him about the Garden. He couldn't put his dripping finger on it, but it was there, like an itch he couldn't scratch or a shadow at the corner of his eye. What was it?

“Danr came along, too,” said Nu. “That is . . . interesting.”

“Fascinating,” added Tan.

“Delightful,” said Aisa. He had lost his grip on her hand, and she was sitting beside him, her damp tail pressed against his legs. “My love, would you give me a hand to my feet?”

Automatically, he reached down and pulled her upright. It took effort, more than it should have. But he was human, and his human shape was considerably weaker than his birth shape.

As Aisa came upright, Danr felt a bit of his own personal energy leave him. It slipped down his arms, out his hands, and into Aisa. He shivered delicately. It was an
intimate sensation, like pulling on a shirt still warm with someone else's body heat and fragrant with their scent. When Danr was in his human form, Aisa could and often did take energy from him to power her own magic. It wasn't much, but it was enough. With a faint glow and the sound of moving flesh, she . . . changed. Her tail split into a pair of legs. The scales and tattoos faded, leaving smooth, dusky skin behind. In a few soft moments, Aisa stood as a naked, bare-faced woman among the twisting plants of the Garden. Like Danr, Aisa herself was a half-blood, with a mermaid mother and a human father, though her ability to change her shape was much more extensive than Danr's. She stretched and ran her hands through her hair with a sigh.

Danr looked at her, and decided privately that she was more beautiful than anything the Garden might have to offer. Her long night black hair spilled down her back, complementing her dark eyes and slender nose and full red lips. Her breasts were high and round, and her hips tapered down to long, smooth legs. An incredible sight in an incredible place. It was hard to remember her as the slave girl he had known when they were younger, her body always layered in multiple dresses, her hands wrapped in rags, her face and hair hidden under scarves. At that time, he had thought himself an ugly, inhuman monster. But over time, she had changed.
They
had changed. Now it seemed foolish that she had ever hidden herself and that he had thought the Stane were ugly. Now he was standing in the Garden of the Fates, she stretching her naked body and he admiring it, and neither of them self-conscious.

“Perhaps you would join me in changing shape, Hamzu,” Aisa said, using the nickname she had given him years ago. It meant “strong one.”

Danr nodded once and stretched on his own. He closed his eyes, reached inside himself, and called to his birth shape. Aisa touched his arm, and some of her power came to him, though it was more difficult for her to share when
she was in her own birth shape. Her power slid around and through him, boosting his spirit and making him feel almost buoyant, as if he might float away. His birth shape came easily to him, more easily than his human shape did. His back and limbs lengthened and grew heavy with muscle, splitting his trousers until they dropped away in rags. His chest grew thick and powerful. His jaw jutted forward, and his lower teeth grew upward enough to give him a pugnacious look. His own didn't become as large as a full troll's, but they tried. Shaggy black hair covered his head and fell a good way down his chest and arms, and his skin darkened. He towered over Aisa, with more than a full head of height on her. But his eyes remained the same—large and dark and liquid.

“Much better,” Aisa said, taking his much larger hand in hers. “Your human shape is handsome, my Hamzu, but I like your true shape best. Especially when it has no clothes.”

“We aren't alone, you know,” he replied mildly.

“We have nothing the Gardeners haven't seen.”

“I know. I just wanted to point it out.”

“And we still need your assistance,” said Nu.

“Aid,” amended Tan.

“Help?” offered Aisa.

Nu nodded. “Look about you, sister. What do you see?”

“What do you observe?” said Tan.

There was a long pause. At last, Aisa said, “I do not feel comfortable in this role, Great Ones. It has been more than a year and a half now since Hamzu and I stopped the harbormaster's golem from destroying Balsia. Before then, I spoke with Pendra and even wielded her sickle. She said that every thousand years, one of you Gardeners steps down and a mortal takes over the role to keep you balanced and compassionate to mortals.”