Bone War (6 page)

“A romantic finish to our day together,” she said, wiping her mouth with a handful of grass. She was wearing an ivy green dress, and Danr realized with a start that he
was wearing bark brown trousers and a sky blue tunic. A thick straw hat topped his head and kept out the worst of the evening sun. He held out his long arms.

“Why couldn't she have done this while we were in the Garden?” he groused.

“Why couldn't she have simply handed us the Bone Sword and Twisted us to Alfhame?” Aisa shot back. “Death's explanations come either too late or not at all.”

“She brought us together.” He put a thick arm around her shoulder. “If not for her, you and I would be . . . somewhere else.”

“I will grant her that,” Aisa agreed. “Grudgingly. But where are we now?”

Danr glanced around. They were at the edge of a wood. The road curved down ahead of them through farmland sectioned off by stone walls and hedgerows. The late sun slid sleepily toward the horizon to Danr's right. Behind them, the road vanished into the thick trees, where a cloak of night had already fallen. A few early crickets were already chirping in the leaves.

“I think we're about two leagues north of Balsia,” Danr said. “Maybe three.”

“Death gives us clothing but fails to put us closer to home,” Aisa sighed. “Honestly, I think she enjoys making life difficult.”

“You need to learn to get along,” Danr said. “I think the Gardeners do a lot of work with her, and . . . and she gave you back your . . . your . . .” Unexpectedly, his throat grew thick.

“I need to sit a moment,” she said, and spread her skirts under a tree at the side of the road. Sheep bleated in the distance, heading toward some distant paddock for the night. Danr sat beside her, big as a boulder. They both sat silent in the gathering summer evening as a warm summer breeze wafted the smell of soft clover and heather over them. Aisa's hand stole into Danr's.

“I do love you, my Hamzu,” she said in a voice so soft he could barely hear it over the crickets. “But now—”

His stomach tightened. “I don't think I want to talk about this,” he interrupted.

“We must, my love. We have avoided it for months and months.”

“Then avoid it a little longer.” A note of pleading entered his voice, and he hated himself for it. “It may never happen if we don't find the Bone Sword and cut Pendra out of that tree.”

“And what will happen to us when this ends?”

The words, the forbidden words, hung in the air like a plague of locusts waiting to drop on Danr's heart and devour it raw. But Aisa had asked him a direct question, and the words were already piling up in the back of his throat. He knew what they were, didn't want to let them out for the locusts to destroy. For a tiny moment, he fought to keep them in. But in the end, he knew they would come out, and with a thickness in his chest, he spoke.

“When all this is over, if Queen Gwylph doesn't kill you first, you will go to the Garden and take Pendra's name. You'll become a Fate and you'll change the lives of everyone you touch. You'll stay young and beautiful forever, or maybe your face will change so that it looks ageless, like the other Gardeners. But mine won't.”

Aisa tightened her grip on his hand, and he realized she had forgotten that he was a truth-teller, that when she spoke her question aloud, he'd have to answer it as completely as he could, no matter how much it hurt.

“At first, we'll see each other regularly,” he went on in a voice hard as stone, “but after a year or two or maybe three, you'll become busier and busier, and it'll be harder to make time to see me. We'll miss a meeting and tell ourselves it was just once, but then it'll be another, and then another. Then you'll look at a plant and realize that several decades have gone by. I'll be old, and you'll wonder if you should just leave me alone.” His eyes felt hot and scratchy and he sniffed hard. “The moment you become a Gardener, it ends for us. We both know it, Aisa.”

She looked up at him for a moment with a naked fear and tenderness that tore his heart. Then her face hardened. “How can you say such things to me!” she snapped. “Such cruel, terrible things!”

Aisa started to scramble to her feet, her expression hard. A flash of hot anger flicked through Danr. Then he looked away and let it fade. “It's awful, Aisa. You can shout at me and get mad at me. You can keep things back from me like you used to. It won't change anything. It'll just hurt more, and I wish you wouldn't do it.”

Aisa started to say something, then closed her mouth hard. Her posture eased, and she sank back to the ground. “You are right. I hate it, but you are right, and I am sorry.” She sighed heavily. “I am not angry at you, you know.”

“I know.”

“How can I lose you?” she blurted out, and a pair of doves burst from the tree over their heads, their wings whistling as they fled. “I watched you die and helped you come back to life. After all the struggling we went through to find each other, how can I lose you now?”

“I don't know,” he said truthfully. “You could . . . refuse the position. They can't make you take it.”

“And who would they give it to?” she replied scornfully. “Queen Gwylph?”

“I suppose.”

“Never,” Aisa spat. “You know what she is like. That woman would turn the Garden and its people into her toys. She does not care about people.”

“That's what I love about you, Aisa.” Danr took her hand. “You won't give in. Even when it hurts.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, watching the shadows lengthen, reflecting their somber mood. They were in no hurry to move along. To Danr's trollish eyes, the evening was perfectly well lit, and they didn't worry about finding their way back to Balsia in the dark. After a moment, something else occurred to Danr.

“Death said we had another task to complete before you'll become a Gardener. She hinted it had to do with—”

“A child.” Aisa's hand went to her stomach. “I know. I have been thinking of it ever since she brought it up. How can I—we—have a child if I become one of the Fates?”

“Goddesses have children with mortals all the time in the stories,” Danr pointed out. “Those children become great heroes.”

“With mothers who play almost no role in their upbringing,” Aisa said. “And the stories never say what happens to the . . . goddess who has to watch her offspring age and die.”

“But our child could have children, and they could have children,” Danr pointed out. “An entire grove might show up in the Garden just for us. And you could tend it.”

“I do not know, Hamzu,” she said. “It seems dark and frightening to me. It is nothing I expected or asked for, but I have it nonetheless.”

“We don't get to be normal,” Danr agreed.

“Can we decide later?” Aisa asked. “This is too difficult, too strange.”

“Yes,” he said truthfully. “But later will come awful quick. It might be better to start a baby now.”

“Truly?” she said with an arch look. “In this very spot?”

He returned her look with a grin. “I can't lie, you know. We could start right—”

“Here!” said a new voice.

Danr turned and caught a glimpse of a man in a ragged tunic before the world bent and warped all around him. Danr's body melted and shortened, driving the breath from his lungs. Aisa shouted something, but her voice stretched high and thin. He landed with a thump in the grass by the side of the road, tangled in a pile of cloth. He fought himself free. The tree loomed above him, a thousand times its normal size. Aisa's face, also a thousand times its normal size, bulged above him. His field of vision was strange—flattened
and rounded out, as if everything now fit on a huge plate. The Nine!

“Hamzu!” Aisa cried. “Rolk and Vik! What—?”

When Danr tried to answer, all that came from his throat was a strange croak. It came to him that he had been changed into a small toad. Above him, the ragged man laughed. He must have done it. Behind the man stood three other men with knives. They oozed forward, and the ragged man's hands gave off a golden glow behind them.

“Give me everything you have, girl,” he growled, “or I'll squash your friend and change you next.”

“W
hat do you mean the man was me?” Talfi demanded from the bed. “How could he be me?”

“If I knew that,” Ranadar said, “we would know most of the answers we need.”

“I think Talfi wants to understand how you know the man's identity,” Kalessa said, interested despite her earlier animosity. She was still looking at them over the back of her chair.

“When I touched him and the glamour tried to take hold,” Ranadar explained, “the magic . . . I cannot explain it very well. It seemed to bounce back at me, and instead of him becoming addicted to me, I nearly became addicted to him. That was why I . . . I . . .”

“Screamed like a kid goat?” Kalessa suggested.

“It was terrifying,” Ranadar said seriously. “I caught a brief glimpse into his mind, and it was . . . you,
Talashka.
But also not you. He had some of your memories. He remembered things you have not mentioned to me.”

Memories. Talfi stiffened and came quietly alert. His every nerve quivered with hunger. “What do you mean?” he asked in a careful, measured voice, as if anything louder might frighten Ranadar away like a skittish rabbit.

“I caught glimpses of a young boy—him—running through
an apple orchard. I saw him playing a pipe while he watched a herd of sheep under a sunny sky. I watched him bed a young man with black hair and gray eyes.”

Talfi flushed a little but couldn't stop the questions. Every memory was precious, even if it was secondhand. “Who was the young man?”

Ranadar shook his head. “I know nothing about him, only that he . . . you . . . wanted him very much and that it was a long, long time ago. Do you remember him?”

“No.” Talfi shook his head and slumped back. “I don't remember any of those things. Did my family have an apple orchard, then? Or sheep? Or did those things happen later, after the Sundering?”

“We also need to know the source of his strength,” Kalessa said. “He tossed me as easily as a lioness tosses a kitten.”

“And if he's me,” Talfi said, “why didn't he bleed? Or seem to feel any pain when Kalessa stabbed him? I bleed. I feel pain.”

“Until you die,
Talashka
, and come back to life,” Ranadar pointed out. “Perhaps that has something to do with it.”

“Discussion gets us nowhere,” Kalessa decided. “We need to talk to that man. If we can find him. Can you see into his mind, Ranadar?”

“Elven glamour does not work quite that way,” Ranadar replied. “Usually, we put our thoughts into
other
people and make them see or think what we wish them to. I have never been very good at it. You have seen me create simple disguises, and I can make people not see me—simple tricks like that. When I am close to someone—emotionally close, like my
Talashka
—the bond is more powerful. I recognize his mind, and I can feel what he feels when we touch. I assume that is why I caught glimpses of the candle wax man's mind.” Ranadar shuddered. “It was very strange. There were two Talfis in my head.”

“So what do we do now?” Talfi set the tray aside and
stood up, testing his leg. It took his weight, though he didn't look forward to running on it right away.

“We need to find the candle wax man and learn who he is,” Ranadar said, also rising. “We should probably start by searching the market. Perhaps someone else there has seen him.”

“No.” Kalessa got to her feet and stretched. “It is nearly sunset, and I have to go see Slynd. It has been two days now, and if he does not see me, he will come looking for me. That would prove a disaster. And you must learn to ride, as you swore.”

“But—”

“Disaster,” Kalessa repeated with the ominous note only an orc could create. “Swore.”

“We will watch for the candle wax man on the way,” Ranadar sighed.

It was a long walk to the outer edge of the city, so they hired a carriage. As the wheels bumped over cobblestones or squished through mud, Talfi kept a sharp eye out for anyone resembling . . . well, himself, and wondered what he would do if such a person appeared. Grab him? Tackle him? Talk to him?

“We need to tell Aisa and Danr about this,” Kalessa mused aloud as the people and buildings moved past them. “I wonder where in Vik's realm they are.”

“Probably enjoying themselves,” Ranadar said, “as we were trying to do before this came upon us.”

They reached the edge of the city. In olden times, Balsia had been properly walled in, but the Sundering had brought down large sections of the original walls, and the city had since sprawled well outside the barriers in any case, so the edge of town was a nebulous sort of place where actual buildings faded into farmlands and estates of wealthy Balsians who couldn't afford to live within the truly fashionable Diamond District and who didn't want an ocean villa. Low stone walls and hedgerows snaked among the fields, marking
boundaries. A few trees stood scattered among them. At Kalessa's direction, the carriage took them down a lane and toward what looked like a farm, complete with a house, outbuildings, and stone-lined fields and hedges of its own. However, when Kalessa alighted from the carriage, a giant green blur burst from behind the barn and rushed straight at her. While the driver tried to calm the panicked horses, the blur halted near Kalessa and coiled frantically around her, hissing like the world's biggest teakettle.

It was a wyrm, a great emerald beast easily thirty feet long and nearly as tall as a horse. Its golden eyes matched Kalessa's, and its long tongue lapped the air. Huge coils all but hid Kalessa entirely, and she laughed within them until she was able to scramble out and drop in front of the wyrm's sleek head. Its—his—tongue flickered over her. She laughed again and scratched the underside of the wyrm's jaw. His tail whipped back and forth like a tree in a hurricane.

“Yes, Slynd, I have not forgotten you.” Kalessa put her forehead against the wyrm's. “You are my first love forever, yes, you are!”

“He missed you.” An elderly man with a bent back, a walking stick, and a straw hat emerged from the barn and approached. “You didn't come yesterday, and he was unhappy.”

“Did you miss me?” Kalessa stroked Slynd's head. Slynd's coils writhed with happy excitement. “Mother is so sorry, and she missed her little one, yes, she did. Are you hungry, hmm? Come along, we will ride and then we will eat.”

Slynd bobbed his head. Kalessa leaped onto his neck without even a saddle, and both of them rushed away. Kalessa raised her knife above her head and changed it into a sword with a whoop as they vanished into the distance.

“Mother,” Talfi muttered with a shake of his head. “Am I the only one who gets a little creeped when she says that to a wyrm?”

Ranadar laughed. “After a thousand years of life,
that
curdles your blood?”

“I'm just glad it's not mating season,” said the old man, whose name was Neff. “These wyrms are difficult enough to handle without nesting time angrying up the blood.”

“How many wyrms are you taking care of right now?” Talfi eyed the barn.

“Six at the moment, counting Slynd.” Neff shook his stick. “Most of them from orcs who are travelin' through Balsia. Slynd is the only long-termer I have. Pays the rent, though, now that my sons and I—what is that?”

Neff pointed with his stick. Zipping over the fields came a little ball of golden light. It rushed at the trio like a shooting star, trailing sparks as it came.

“A sprite!” Ranadar put his hands up, but before he or Talfi could react further, the sprite cracked forward like a lightning bolt and struck Neff in the chest. The old man staggered and . . . changed. A golden nimbus surrounded him. His back straightened, his hat fell away, and his form puffed outward. In a blink, Neff had shifted from an old human man with a walking stick into a beautiful elven woman holding a scepter. Blond hair spilled in waves down her back, and her perfect, wide emerald eyes looked out imperiously from beneath a smooth forehead. Her ears came to graceful points. The early-evening sun sparkled off her silver gown and winked off her pearl-headed scepter. Her beauty was too perfect, too awe-inspiring, and Talfi knew it was a glamour, that she was trying to make herself so wondrous, but that didn't keep Talfi from wanting to kneel before her perfection. He found his knees starting to bend, and only sheer willpower kept him upright. He did recognize her, and so did Ranadar.

“Mother,” Ranadar said, his tone halfway between anger and uncertainty. “What are you doing here? You better not harm Neff.”

“Do you care about a single old man, my son?” said Queen Gwylph in a musical voice that made Talfi ache
with hunger and delight. “An elf's lowest business is more important than the welfare of the highest Kin, and this Kin's life has nearly run its minuscule course.”

“What do you want, Mother?” Ranadar said guardedly.

“And this,” Gwylph said, turning to Talfi, “is the boy who forgot how to die. The first. Tell me, little one, what is it about you that made my son cruelly turn against his own mother and break her heart?”

Actual tears came to Queen Gwylph's eyes, and Talfi suddenly wanted nothing more than to comfort her, stop this lovely creature from weeping. Any world that would make her cry wasn't worth living in.

Then Ranadar touched Talfi's arm and blew warm breath in his face. The desire vanished like a burst soap bubble, and the queen seemed much less beautiful, to boot. He could see the fine spray of winkles on her face and the silver in her hair. Anger stiffened Talfi's spine.

“It's probably that I don't bed donkeys,” Talfi said. “Or lick goat balls.”

“How dare you!” the queen snapped out of reflex.

“That's what the goat said,” Talfi replied.

“She is still my mother,
Talashka
,” Ranadar said softly.

“I'd say I'm sorry,” Talfi replied, “but I don't want to.”

“You—” she began.

“The first time we speak in over a year, Mother, and you throw a glamour on my beloved,” Ranadar interrupted. “Why are you here? You Twisted a sprite all the way from Palana, made it track me down, and ordered it to lay your image over this old man. That took a lot of power, so I assume you have a reason for spending it.”

Gwylph recovered herself. “I am here for you, Ranadar.”

“You will have to say more than that.”

“Do you love me, my son?”

A pained look flickered across Ranadar's face before he managed to erase it. Talfi, who knew Ranadar well, wondered if Gwylph caught it, too. “That does not matter, does it? You have made your decisions, and I have made mine.”

Gwylph dropped the scepter. It struck the ground and changed back into Neff's walking stick. She stepped forward and touched Ranadar's face. She was so close to Talfi that he could hear the illusory rustling of her gown and smell the flowery scent of her hair. Neither put a hold on him, but it was like standing next to the real Queen Gwylph.

“I miss you,” she said with genuine grief in her voice. “You are my son, my only child. I do not care what your . . . friends or your beloved mortal have done. They may have killed your father”—here her voice choked a little—“but they are not you. I love you so very much, and I want you back where you belong. In Alfhame. At my side. Come home.”

“I . . . cannot, Mother.” Ranadar backed up a step and closed his eyes. “You know that.”

“Is it because of the boy?” Gwylph persisted. “He can come. We will cast no glamours on him, I give you my word. He can stay as your playmate or your consort or whatever title you want to give him. He can stay until he dies that final time, and then you can move on.”

“He will not die naturally, Mother,” Ranadar said.

“Oh, my son.” Here Gwylph seemed pained again, and Talfi wondered if it was real, or if she was just a very good actress. “That is not true. I have studied the matter extensively, and I know he was the vessel for the power of the Iron Axe. Its power was keeping him alive. Once the Axe was reformed, the power left him. He is a normal human now. He will die one day, and sooner than you think. It is always so with the Kin.”

“There is more to the story,” Ranadar said. “Did you know that Talfi died that final death when the Axe was reformed?”

“I . . . did not,” she admitted. “He is still alive now, so I assumed—”

“You assumed wrong,” Ranadar said. “Talfi was dead, forever. But I spoke with Death herself after the Battle of
the Twist. Because I helped free her, she offered me a reward. I asked her to bring Talfi back to life, but there was only one way she could do it.”

Gwylph thought only a brief moment. Her perfect features went pale. “No,” she whispered.

“Indeed. Death said that for every day Talfi gained, someone else would have to give up a day of his or her own. I offered all of mine.”

“You offered her all of them?” Talfi interrupted. “I didn't know that.”

“You were dead,” Ranadar told him. “Your
draugr
kept begging for release, and all I could think of was granting it to you. The pain tore me in half. But Death did not take all my days. She took only half and gave them to you.”

“That much I knew,” Talfi said, feeling a little overwhelmed. “Ran, it's like I told you in your parents' throne room—I didn't need more years. I've lived more than a thousand of them.”

“But you remember almost none of them,” Ranadar countered. “How fair is that? I do not want to live without you. The very idea pierces my heart with an arrow. Giving you half my days was a bargain.”

Gwylph drew herself fully upright. “I did not know he had stolen your days, Ranadar.”

“I gave them freely, Mother,” Ranadar replied with some heat. “This was your doing, you know. If you and Father had not tried to slaughter the Stane, we would not have had to reforge the Iron Axe, and Talfi would not have
needed
my days.”