The Temple of Heart and Bone (26 page)

Drothspar looked closely at the
young woman’s eyes and noticed they weren’t quite focused. Her voice was
lighter than he expected. She seemed to him almost intoxicated, and he
recognized the symptoms of her enforced fast. The nuts and roasted meat had
been enough to keep her going, give her a bit of energy, but she was still
starving, and her mind was starting to wander.

“You know,” she said, “when I was
a little girl, I always dreamed about walking in the forest. We had woods on
the estate, but it wasn’t the same. The trees were all planted neatly in a row,
and the groundskeepers plucked out weeds and other ‘unsightly’ plants.

“I’d heard stories, though, of
princes and castles and great, enchanted forests. This forest probably isn’t
enchanted, and there certainly aren’t nearly as many animals as there were in
my stories, but it’s still a lot closer to what I imagined than those manicured
woods on the estate.” She walked along, skipping just a little every few dozen
steps.

“I dreamt that I’d walk through a forest with some
handsome young prince who would be happy just to be with me. He didn’t care
about my family or the estate. He didn’t care if I would grow up to be ugly,
beautiful, or plain. He would just hold my hand and be happy. And so would I.
That was my idea of love.”

Drothspar watched as a frown
stole away her smile and her eyes narrowed and hardened. It looked to him as if
a cloud had passed over her face.

“Did I ever tell you about my
classes at the university? Did I ever tell you about my ‘Humors of Love’
professor?” She paused as if waiting for him to respond, but continued on
before he had a chance to write a word.

“When I first arrived at the
university, I thought it was wonderful. The buildings were tall and elegant.
The grounds were well-maintained. The campus was a structured little city,
planned from its conception to be what it was, its logic and method clearly
visible. There was a serenity about the place, as if it were removed entirely
from the surrounding world. There were no merchants hawking wares in the
streets. There were no drunks staggering into—or out of—public houses. Flower
gardens bordered green lawns and cobbled paths led from structure to structure.
When I first arrived, I was happy.

“I remember enjoying my first few
classes. All of my fellow students were girls around my own age and station in
life. Our first courses revolved around the structure of society, etiquette,
and one called ‘Form and Balance of Movement.’ I think they were trying to
ensure that all the young women would be proper, polite, and graceful. We paid
attention where it was necessary, and talked about boys and parents in our off
times.

“The boys were strangely absent,
though we saw them occasionally walking in monitored groups about the grounds.
The professors and staff maintained a meticulous schedule designed to keep the
genders separate. We ate in the same dining hall, but the girls dined before
the boys. We were up earlier and in bed earlier. Our classes were structured
and segregated so well that in the first three months I was there, I never once
spoke to a single boy or older man. Even our professors were women.

“After a short holiday at home, I
returned for my second session at school. This must have been what my father
had been waiting for. Our classes continued in the subjects of etiquette and
grace, but we had a new one called ‘The Humors of Love.’ Everyone thought this
was going to be wonderful! We were delighted. Romance filled our thoughts and
all the questions of life were answered in the beating of our innocent hearts.”
She snorted derisively.

“‘Love,’ the professor started
out on the first day, ‘is an illusion.’ He was a cold old man named ‘Krekel.’
He looked like a dried old fish and had slightly less charm. He explained to us
that love was just a chemical humor of the body, much like pain. Like a fever,
it was designed to express to the mind the physical needs of the form. ‘We are
creatures,’ he would say, ‘not unlike the animals which wander in forests or
farms. We breed to sustain life, to propagate our bloodlines and ensure some
measure of immortality. Just as a fever indicates to the initiated that the
body has an excess of heat which must be bled, so love translates for the mind
the need of the body to pass on its blood to the next generation.’

“‘Our societal structure,’ he
would say, ‘has evolved for the express purpose of protecting the process of
bonding, mating, and propagating our bloodlines. Men love for so long as it
takes to secure a mate. They are capable of spreading their seed often and in
quantity. Women, being tied to the cycles of the moon and the longer cycle of
bearing a child, love for longer periods. Thus we know that the fiction of love
and the strictures of marriage are ideals forged into reality by matriarchs who
banded together to leverage the securing of a mate for a man against the woman’s
need for extended support.’

“He had us perform exercises to
demonstrate his theories. For the first time since we’d started, we were
allowed to speak to the boys in our school. For short periods of ‘common time,’
the genders were allowed to mingle in the courtyards. The sessions were closely
monitored, as were the number of participants. At first, there were more girls
than boys. In just a few sessions, the boys had each chosen to focus their
attentions on specific girls. I didn’t understand the exercise at first, and I
didn’t really care. I was well dressed and groomed, and I had a number of boys
arguing over me until a rather cute one seemed to win the argument. Other girls
didn’t find anyone, and were very disappointed.” Chance stared out into the distance
and Drothspar waited for her to continue.

“In the following weeks, Krekel
changed the ratio of boys to girls. For a short time, our numbers were equal,
and I felt quite happy. The ratios continued to change, and the boys soon
outnumbered the girls. In time, the pool of girls was changed to another class
in one of Krekel’s later sessions. As the weeks progressed, to a boy, each male
chose a new girl to shower with affection. Eventually, our class of girls was
introduced to a new class of boys, their numbers greater than our own. In time,
each of us found a new boy to shower us with affection, having seen our former
suitors change allegiances against us.

“At the end of the school
session, Krekel explained to us that we shouldn’t be personally hurt by these
events. He had apparently kept close track of which boys had focused on which
girls, and later which girls had focused on which boys. He demonstrated the
male pattern of securing a mate and the female pattern of seeking security. We
entered the class warm and full of hope. We left it the progeny of Krekel, cold
and uncaring. I spent four years at that school, and I had Krekel at least one
session each year.”

Chance sighed, finishing her
tale. She whistled erratically and sang fragments of old songs. Drothspar’s
mind drifted over her experiences. He’d never heard of such things being done.
For him, love had always been love. Love wasn’t a matter of need or desire, it
was an overwhelming joy brought upon by being with a specific other. For him,
it had been Li. They had shared an invisible bond, but rather than restricting
one or the other, somehow it had expanded both. When they were together, they
were more than the sum of their parts. When they were separate, there was a
longing—an emptiness.

Oddly, regretfully, he didn’t
feel it now. Where had it gone? Had their bond expired with his life? Had their
marriage truly been shattered in death? He wasn’t even sure if she was dead.

The questions rattled around in
his hollow mind until he put a stop to it. He had to let it go for now. If he
kept fueling the anxiety, all he would do is burn himself out. All things in
their time, he tried to tell himself. All things in their time. Worry, he knew
rationally, was useless.

It was also damn persistent.

Drothspar
listened as Chance talked sporadically throughout the day. He heard the changes
in her voice as hunger tightened its grip on her mind. He yearned for the city
of Arlethord, eager to find the young woman shelter and food. They were close
now; they would reach the outskirts of the city as early as tomorrow night.

He sat with Chance until she fell
asleep. Sleep had not come easily to her that night. She was restless, tossing
and turning on the ground, occasionally jerking spasmodically. Drothspar wished
that he could speak to her, wished that he could whisper some comforting phrase
to let her know that she wasn’t alone, that it would all be okay. He couldn’t
touch her, not with his cold, dry hands. If he didn’t startle her outright, he
was certain she’d find little comfort in his touch. He knew that a kind word
and a warm touch could go a long way toward comforting someone. He was sorry he
could offer her neither. He waited for her to fall asleep before going to
forage for food.

Traveling through the woods, they
had managed to avoid contact with strangers. Foraging close to Arlethord raised
the risk of an encounter. Most people would not be overly gracious to a strange
skeleton. It wasn’t himself that he worried about. He’d been stabbed recently
and it hadn’t made all that much of an impression. If someone followed him back
to their camp, however, that could present a serious problem. Although he was
dead, Chance was quite alive, and if someone found her in his company, they
might take steps to alter that condition. He had to get her into the city. They
had to get to Petreus.

Focused on thoughts of caution,
it took Drothspar a moment to become aware of the scents being carried to him
in the air. He stopped moving and started sorting out the various smells.
Something sweet was cooking, possibly corn, if his phantom senses served him
properly. There was the smell of smoke, of the cooking fire. There was the
acrid odor of stale sweat, sweat mixed with alcohol. He tried to gauge what
direction the scents were coming from and listened closely. He could see no
light from any fire, but he could hear rustling in a bramble thicket.

If someone had set up a camp for
the night and fallen asleep drunk, he might be able to examine their food
supply. He knew it wasn’t the most noble thought he’d ever had, but promised
that he would only take something if he was certain the camper could spare it.
After all, he thought, he wouldn’t want to inflict starvation on a stranger.

Drothspar moved stealthily. His
body, light without its mass of flesh, hardly stirred the crumbling leaves on
the ground. He edged closer to the thicket, noticing the spines in the bramble.
He decided to take off his robe so it wouldn’t get caught on the thorns. He
packed the cloth stuffing and his dagger into his robe and stood exposed to the
night. It had been a while since he had been stripped down to simply bones. He
found he could move more easily and enjoyed the freedom.

Drothspar slid around the outer
edge of the thicket trying to find a way inside. He worried about being seen,
but having come this close, he decided to risk it. If he could walk away with
any sort of food, it would help Chance get through the next day. If worse came
to worst, he could always run in a direction leading away from their camp.
Moving slowly, he caught a glimpse of flame through the mesh of branches. He
heard the crackle of the fire and what sounded like snoring. He continued
around the thicket, keeping an eye on the direction of Chance’s camp.

He found a small opening low in
the bramble, perhaps three feet high and two feet wide. He set his stuffed robe
on the ground and got down on his hands and knees. Looking into the thicket, he
could see a square clearing that measured about fifteen feet on a side. From
what he could tell, it had been cut from the very thicket, itself. There were
still several thick feet of bramble surrounding the clearing like a wall. All
in all, he thought to himself, it was a very good hiding place.

The scent of the cooking corn was
very strong, and Drothspar crawled slowly and quietly into the opening. He was
aware that anything could be standing on the other side of the bramble, and he
peered through the branches trying to detect any shapes or movements. Nothing
stirred in his vision, and he crawled in further.

He darted his head into the
clearing, first to his left and then again to his right. Nothing stood waiting
to bash in his skull, a fact that made him profoundly grateful. He wasn’t sure,
exactly, what would happen if someone were to bash in his skull, but he wasn’t
so curious that he needed to experiment.

He pulled himself out of the
opening and stood in the clearing. A large cover of bramble stood before him,
sectioning off a few feet of the open space. The sounds of the fire and the
snoring were louder, closer. He was certain that everything was being hidden by
the façade of bramble. He edged along the bramble, exposing more and more of
the clearing. On the far side of the façade, he saw a portly, red-faced man sleeping
on a bed roll. The man was snoring loudly, and saliva was dribbling out of his
mouth. A ceramic jug was spilled over on its side, its contents seeping into
the ground.

The scent of the spilled alcohol
came sharply to Drothspar’s senses. It had been a long time since he’d taken a
drink, even before he had died. The scent was still powerful. He saw other
ceramic bottles, corked and covered with melted wax. Somewhat reassured that
the snoring man was drunk and quite asleep, Drothspar looked around the bramble
façade and saw a copper kettle sprouting long, thin, looping tubes. He smiled
in his mind. He had found himself a good, old-fashioned still!

He helped himself to two of the
ceramic jugs, carrying them over to the opening in the bramble and pushing them
through to the other side. He returned to the kettle-still looking for some
corn that he might take back to Chance. On the other side of the still, he
found a wooden crate filled to overflowing with multi-colored autumnal corn. He
found a metal pail and filled it with as much of the corn as it could hold. The
wooden crate was still more than full as he carried the pail to the opening in
the bramble.

Just as he was pushing the pail
through the opening, the snoring behind him stopped. He heard a gruff coughing
and someone spit on the other side of the bramble façade. He pushed the pail
quickly to the other side of the opening and hurried along behind it. He made
more noise as he scrambled out than he had when he was crawling in. Leaves
rustled under his bony knees and hands. Twigs snapped. Thorns reached out for
his back and scraped as they lost their purchase.

He felt like a child stealing
apples from an orchard as he gathered up his robe and a jug in one hand and the
pail and second jug in the other. He was grateful he couldn’t speak just then,
because he was certain he’d be snickering. He could hear the drunk on the other
side of the bramble grunting and coming awake. The man had definitely heard
him.

“Who’s out there?” the man
demanded in a hoarse whisper. Drothspar started to walk away trying to settle
all his booty in his hands. He heard grunts and curses behind him as the chubby
drunk tried to squeeze himself through the opening too quickly.

“Hey,” the man called out again,
“come back here!” Drothspar stopped to look back at the man who had just
erupted from the thicket. The living man’s eyes locked with Drothspar’s vacant
sockets, and the two stood motionless. Drothspar lifted the hand with the pail
and jug and waved politely to the drunk. The poor man’s eyes bulged wide and
his mouth fell open.

Drothspar didn’t wait around to
see what else the man did; he high-tailed it out of the area as fast as he
could. He kept an eye on the corn, making sure he didn’t drop any to leave a
trail behind himself. He was laughing merrily in his mind, running along as
fast as he could. He changed course a few times to put off any pursuit, but he
was fairly certain there would be none. Who would believe a drunk who claimed
to have been robbed by a skeleton?

He ran until he was close to
where he had left Chance. He felt like he could run forever if he had to. He
hadn’t run like that since he was a little boy, more out of fun than any real
necessity. With a tinge of regret, he slowed to a walk as he approached the
camp. He set the two jugs down and took the pail and corn some distance away.

There was a stream running a
quarter of a mile from their campsite and Drothspar set up a second camp there.
He filled the pail with water and built up a small fire. He hoped that if the
fire attracted attention, it would draw the curious to him, and not to Chance.
While the water boiled, he worked on getting his robe back on properly. He
stowed his dagger and stashed bits of cloth back to where he thought they
belonged. He wasn’t sure how he looked, but he was certain all the cloth had
been stuffed somewhere.

It took a while to cook the corn
to a tender state. Unable to tell how much time had passed, Drothspar watched the
moon moving through the branches of the trees. When it passed different
branches, he would draw out an ear of corn and test it with his fingers for
softness. The boiling water felt warm to his fingers but it didn’t hurt. About
the time the sky started to pale in the east, he was convinced that the corn
was done. He put out the fire and covered it with dirt and water from the pail.

Chance was still asleep when he
returned with the cooked corn. There wasn’t much variety in what he had brought
her, but there was quantity. He waited excitedly for her to wake and kept an
eye on the trees. He was fairly certain that no one would pursue a skeletal
corn-thief, but that was no reason to be careless.

As the sun dawned under the
clouds and splashed its morning light across her eyes, Chance began to stir.
She woke slowly, her eyes fluttering open and closed. She inhaled the aroma of
the cooked corn and her eyes flickered open. Drothspar sat, ever grinning, with
a pail of corn by her side.

“What do you have there?” she
asked groggily.

Drothspar picked up the pail and
tilted it to show her the contents. Chance worked herself into a sitting
position with her elbow and hands.

“Corn!” Her voice, excited,
carried loudly in the morning air. Drothspar put one finger to his mouth,
urging her to be quiet. “Corn,” she asked quietly, “where did you get it?”

Drothspar was glad he couldn’t
blush right then. He felt a little foolish about stealing the corn, but he was
pleased by her reaction. He drew out his tablet and wrote, “I stole it.”

“You’re kidding me,” she said,
her eyes widening.

Drothspar shook his head.

“How sweet,” she said, her voice
thoughtful. She placed one hand on his bony finger and smiled brightly at him.
“Can I have some?”

He handed her the pail.

“Tell me all about it,” Chance
said as she selected an ear of corn from the pail. Drothspar brought out his
slate and proceeded to cover the night’s events. After a few moments, Chance
interrupted him, waving her corn over his slate to get him to stop.

“Was he really asleep when you
slipped in?”

Drothspar nodded his reply.

“And you stripped off your robe
and padding? You robbed him while you were naked?”

Drothspar’s head snapped upright
at the thought. He had, for all intents and purposes, robbed the moon-shiner while
naked. He nodded his head slowly, feeling slightly ashamed.

Chance, however, burst into peals
of laughter. Her face flushed a warm crimson, erasing the pallor of hunger.
Tears formed at the corners of her eyes and once again she rested her hand on
Drothspar’s.

“That’s just too precious,” she
said, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why in
heaven’s name did you rob the man naked?”

Drothspar scribbled madly on his
slate, trying to explain about the bramble thorns as quickly as he could. He
showed Chance the slate, looking at her with non-existent, imploring eyes.

Chance unsuccessfully suppressed
a smirk and nodded as she read. “Well,” she said finally, “understandable, I
guess, but probably not the way I would have done it.” Drothspar looked at her
steadily, knowing that if he’d have had flesh, he’d have been blushing head to
toe. Chance, either on her own or perceiving a change in Drothspar’s manner,
blushed again, bringing healthy color into her cheeks. Her lips gave a little quiver,
and she began to giggle once more. Her giggles gathered strength, and in
moments, she was laughing warmly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I keep
interrupting. Please, go on.” She looked at him encouragingly and took another
bite of corn.

Drothspar explained about the
still, and the spilled bottle of liquor lying next to the sleeping man. He
noticed her eyes widen momentarily as he wrote the word “still,” but kept
writing. He explained how he pushed his loot outside the thicket, and how he
hurried himself out of the thicket when he heard the man stirring.

“That’s what caught you, wasn’t
it,” she said sagely. “You got nervous and a little careless.”

Drothspar nodded his head and
explained how the thorns had tried to catch on his bones.

Chance nodded. “You’ve got to
keep your cool, even if you think they’re right behind you. Being nervous is
just like asking to get caught.”