The Bones of the Past (Books of Dust and Bone)

by Craig A. Munro

  “So if my soldiers are riding these beasts, they need not worry about carrying food?”

  “Indeed, my lord Drokga. They need only let the animals graze. It will not fill their stomachs or remove the feeling of hunger, but they will not suffer otherwise. The females have also been developed with our army’s greater need for food in mind. They are just as large as the males but totally nonaggressive and make ideal pack animals. They also lay a large egg every day. This gives us a simple way to breed more as well as create an exceptional food source while traveling.”

  Carver hobbled over to the second creature. “This, my lord Drokga, is the first dragonid. It can carry an armed warrior at speeds beyond anything possible before now. With this mount, my lord, your men can fly. Unlike the mastikide, the males and females are nearly identical. They are bred for combat and offer the same advantages to a carapace rider as the land mount.”

  The Drokga nodded. “You have done well, Carver. The world will tremble at the coming of the Tolrahkali.”

  Carver bowed and stood by as the assembled generals admired his creations and discussed possible uses for the new creatures. He had seen it all before. It wouldn’t be long now before the fools decided to try out their new weapons and attack some other country or city. The logical target was Bialta, though they likely hadn’t thought of it themselves yet. Really it was the only possible target of consequence given the Tolrahkali’s lack of a significant naval force. The coming battles would provide plenty of opportunities to test his creations and resources in the form of captured enemies. But if the Drokga bit off more than he could chew, everything Carver had built could fall apart. Best to arrange for a contingency plan. Noblemen and wealthy merchants visiting from virtually every nation on the continent were common in Tolrahk Esal. Such people invariably came to taste the city’s forbidden pleasures. And people who are slaves to their appetites are both predictable and easy to manipulate. All I need to do is find a likely candidate and awaken a little extra ambition. I should speak with Nasaka Jadoo about getting a few of his apprentices involved as well.

  New flying units were formed within days and were coming along extremely well. The link the carapace warriors shared with the dragonids had worked wonders and helped the desert warriors with overcoming their initial fear of taking to the skies. Carver had armed them with living bows as well as chitin arrows and javelins. Growing the ammunition had resulted in lighter, stronger, and more consistent weapons. The riders could either fire directly at individual targets or drop bundles of arrows from overhead. The effects of wind were unpredictable, but the riders were training hard, and accuracy was improving quickly. As pleased as the Drokga was with the progress, nothing could sway him from his demand that he be temporarily transformed to a stature worthy of leading this monstrous new army he was building. If anything, it became more and more important. Perhaps he needs to assert his ascendancy over his people. These Tolrahkali do act like dogs much of the time, posturing and playing dominance games. Lucky for him it’s finally ready.

  Carver dispatched a slave to tell the Drokga that the titan carapace was complete, asking him to come to the workshop at his earliest convenience. It didn’t take long. The door to the workshop crashed open and the Drokga walked in followed by two of his guards.

  “Is it finished?” asked the Drokga, walking around the raw slabs of flesh Carver was working on.

  “Nearly, my lord, nearly. I just have a few minor adjustments to make,” came the wheezing reply from somewhere behind the fleshy mess.

  The disconcerting tingle the Drokga felt told him sorcery was being used nearby. He waited, one minute, then another, his anger and impatience starting to brim.

  “I believe we are ready now, my lord. Please take your place on the central slab. I will summon my assistant as well as slaves to attend to Your Majesty.”

  “It’s about time, Carver. You promised me something truly incredible, but then you made me wait for weeks longer than expected. I do not like delays.”

  “I know, my lord, I know. I have done it though. Done the impossible. Though I must caution you again about testing this newest creation on your own august personage. Initial trials with the smaller version on Nasaka are promising, but let us use a slave or even one of your sons if you do not wish to sully the creation.”

  “Are you really so ignorant of the minds of men after spending so long rummaging around in their innards? I cannot place such a weapon in the hands of a slave. Should it choose, it could lay waste to my palace. And one of my sons? They are ambitious, as they should be. Handing them this weapon would be my death. Now hurry up and get it moving.”

  Carver bowed as low as his twisted back would allow. I can unmake my creations with little more than a thought. There is no need to fear their misuse, but then you probably wouldn’t want to hear that, my dear Drokga. Carver smiled in amusement. The slaves moved forward and reverently disrobed the Drokga before helping him to lie back on the cold stone.

  “Now bear with me, my lord; this first melding will take some time. It will be much faster in the future once we have attuned the construct to you.”

  “Just get on with it! Why must all my servants always waste my time!?”

  “Of course, my lord, of course.” Carver slipped a circlet over the Drokga’s head. A simple rune of sensing to allow him to see outside his living armor. Another trick learned from my former master. “Bring forward the stomachs and the shells!” Assistants and slaves pushed and dragged massive wheeled tanks of murky green liquid. Unrecognizable dark shapes floated and twitched within.

  Carver reached out and stroked the nearer slabs of muscle. They began to convulse and twitch. Great bloodless masses of flesh rose up and plunged into the organ tanks at his direction. Every part of the construct was becoming more defined as its component parts came together and Carver’s power melded them according to his plan. Long tendrils of muscle extended between the tanks and started to pull the various pieces together. A massive chitin-armored arm emerged from the mess, a fang-filled mouth in its palm, and grabbed hold of the nearest slave. The man gave a gurgling scream and went limp, the huge hand wrapped entirely around his emaciated body. A few gouts of blood sprayed out between the fingers as the hand crushed the slave’s torso into the slavering mouth. The body was flung aside, the strangely hollowed-out corpse crashing into the far wall like a rag doll.

  Carver glanced down at the Drokga and was grudgingly impressed. The man had courage to match his ego it seemed. He lay impassive and unmoving, though he lay naked at the center of the bloody spectacle. The only hint of emotion he betrayed at the slave’s death was impatience.

  Slowly, carefully, Carver guided the segments of the great body toward his lord. With small fleshy tentacles reaching out around the Drokga and linking with one another, the four limbs and their attached sections of torso were fully defined now and were closing in around the stone slab.

  “The link must now be made. It will be painful, my lord. It is, as I said, regretfully unavoidable.”

  “Dammit, I know that! Just do it! I am no stranger to pain!”

  Carver chuckled inwardly. No stranger to pain, are you? Well, let’s see how you feel with a whole raw, quartered body joining itself to your nervous system. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. White tendrils extended out of the masses of flesh and struck like vipers, sinking into the Drokga’s arms and legs.

  The Drokga grunted, then grimaced. The tendrils dug deeper and then the screams started. Oh, yes, he’s going to be angry after this. But it can’t be helped. The screams were cut short as the construct took over Drokga’s breathing and air supply. His eyes were darting around in shock. Hmmm. I guess I forgot to warn him about that part. But I did tell him I got the idea from examining the breathing of embryos before they are born.

  The sections started to close. The tentacles and muscles pulled the chitin plates over them and sealed the wounds between. Yes, the carapace healing works even on this larger scale. Everything is a success
so far.

  Finally, the last piece of the puzzle was dragged out of a large stone tub. The massive head of the colossus, carefully carved in the likeness of the Drokga himself. Never before have I seen a man so proud of his own face. I guess being recognized helps when there is so much fear and awe associated with who you are. The giant shuddered and started to rise to its feet. Fully three and a half times the height of a tall man, armored in spiked, steel-hard chitin a hand’s width thick. Clawed fingers curled around the fang-filled mouths set in each hand. And above it all the unmistakable face of the Drokga, complete with a chitin likeness of the iron crown that nearly reached the vaulted ceiling overhead. Oh yes, I think he will be pleased after his temper cools. . . .

  Dantic seethed as he returned to his rooms in the Arcanum. There had to be a way. He could outweave any of the fools in either council. He wouldn’t let an upstart Fourth Order outdo him. I’ll just have to beat him at his own game whether he lets me join or not. It can’t be that hard to make a magical servant if that idiot could figure it out. He summoned an apprentice and instructed him to return with a number of relevant tomes. Then, as an afterthought, he summoned another apprentice and sent him out into the city with a list of items he would need to purchase. He would need to choose a better medium than the shinning steel Mage Bagwin’s team was using, of course. If Dantic was going to dispense with costly alchemical reagents, he’d need to use something that was easier to enchant. The essence of magic was life, so enchanting something that had once been living would be far easier. Besides, he couldn’t afford that much steel, much less the fee a smith would charge him. Bone would be ideal though the result might be . . . unsettling for some. All those prohibitions against necromancy and such would probably get raised. He would have to settle for wood. It was by far the cheapest choice and the most readily available, and a large marionette such as he had seen in the markets as a child would save him the trouble of shaping the thing.

  He settled down to study and figure out just how he was going to manage the weave. He scarcely noticed when the apprentices came and went, leaving stacks of books and materials around his rooms.

  Less than a week, he thought with pride. Less than a week and Dantic had figured out how to make a magical servant. And not only figured it out but improved on the idea in a number of subtle ways. He could create a magical servant for a fraction of the price that it was costing Bagwin’s team. His own version of the enchantment even allowed for the automaton to use simple voice responses—something that had been remarkably simple to add to the weave. His innovations also allowed the construct to anticipate regular requests and perform the tasks without being asked. Both were additions he was sure rich nobles and merchants would desperately want. They would ask him for the trick of it he was sure. And he’d be generous with his knowledge . . . as a Closed Council member was expected to be.

  The core enchantment would be a challenge of course. He’d have to make do with no rare metals or expensive catalysts, or even spell anchors to hold the weave in place and allow for breaks. But the Arcanum wasn’t about to offer him funds to mess with what looked to be their most profitable project in centuries. Not to mention that what he was planning was reckless to attempt alone at best, extremely dangerous at worst. He would succeed despite them. When he walked through the halls of the Arcanum with his new servant, the council wouldn’t be able to ignore his brilliance.

  Dantic examined the notes he had spread out across the floor and let out a slow breath. The rest of the Arcanum would call him foolish or worse if they knew what he was attempting to do alone. The sheer amount of energy he would be working with could easily get out of control. But he was determined to prove he didn’t need help to best Bagwin. His door was locked and warded. He had eaten as much as he could force down his throat. Time to get to work. By his best estimates the spell would take at least eight hours to complete. He raised his arms, and glowing threads of power stretched out around him, knotting themselves into increasingly complex patterns and shapes around the marionette.

  A drop of sweat rolled down his forehead into his left eye. As he blinked it away in annoyance he vaguely noticed the sun was setting outside. At least ten hours had already passed and he was nowhere near finished. His stomach rumbled. His mistake had been in not anticipating the slippage on the outer edges of the weave. The enchantment as a whole was fraying as the pressures in the center mounted. Dantic had to devote most of his efforts to holding the weave together while desperately trying to widen and mold the pattern.

  By the time it was fully dark in the room, his back was aching and his arms were starting to spasm from being held up for so long. He felt his bladder release an hour later, the warm wet spreading down his robes before slowly cooling. He did his best to block out the sensation and the feelings of shame that went with it. Three hours later, his mouth felt like sandpaper. Drops of sweat rolled into his eyes one after the other and he couldn’t even afford to blink to alleviate the burning sensation. I’m so close, dammit!

  He briefly considered calling for help. With the assistance of even a middling apprentice the weave would have been completed hours ago. Any help at all would allow him to finish in moments at this point instead of the excruciating hours he guessed were still ahead of him. But the thought of anyone seeing him in this state, soiled and helpless, was unthinkable.

  It was too late to backtrack now, anyway. If he released the weave entirely, the energy he’d been feeding into it for the past however many hours would likely destroy several floors of the Arcanum. Which may be what the rule against undertaking major rituals alone is intended to avoid.

  His progress had slowed to a crawl. Nearly all his efforts were consumed by holding the whole together. I’m so close, damn it all! But his body was failing him. The trembling was getting so bad he could barely stand. His vision was so blurred he realized he’d been working more by instinct than sight for at least the past hour. Black spots swam in front of his eyes. Failure was not an option. With a final surge of will he completed the weave only to feel it jolt out of his mental grasp and start to fray again even as he released it into the puppet. He had a split second of utter panic before everything went black.

  The assembled armies of Tolrahk Esal were turned out in the desert outside the city. Never before had the entire force of the Tolrahkali been fielded together. Throngs of the city’s mercenaries and merchants crowded around the edge of the buildings to watch, none of them daring to move beyond the perceived safety of the city limits. The Drokga stood in front of his assembled soldiers wearing his titan carapace. He raised his arms above his head and roared. The soldiers responded in kind with a mix of wordless shouts and war cries. The army looked more like a force of monsters or demons, their king the largest and most formidable beast of them all.

  Their military was composed of excellent individual fighters. They were feared among the Free Cities, whom they occasionally skirmished with or raided, and they were popular bodyguards in Keral. But they had never been the victors in a large-scale war. There simply weren’t enough of them, and their focus on individual prowess and recognition made them poor formation fighters. Only the presence of the many foreign and local mercenary companies in their city had dissuaded their neighbors from attempting to conquer Tolrahk Esal.

  But today was the day. Today they would prove themselves to the outside world. The other Free Cities were too small to satisfy the Drokga’s ego, and Dreth was more trouble than it was worth. They would sweep out and attack the greatest power on the continent and then, yes, then, the rulers of every nation would shake and tremble at the coming of the Tolrahkali.

  Carver stood unnoticed in the shadows of a building and smiled. The coming war would prove to the Drokga how valuable he and his constructs were. He would be given yet more workspace and resources. Prisoners taken in battle would be especially useful—prime specimens trained for combat were expensive and always in short supply.

  The Tolrahkali army would be split into t
hree parts. A small force consisting almost exclusively of carapace-wearing foot troops would cross the Bialtan border first. The Drokga was insistent that he should be involved in this first battle. A second, larger force would follow with a number of the new cavalry and flying units and pull the bulk of the Bialtan units out of their regular places and far to the south. The last group would strike deep while the eyes of the army and the Arcanum were turned south and assault Darien directly, a final attack that was meant to coincide with a little surprise Carver had cooked up with the help of Nasaka.

  The Drokga’s force would fall back after the first battle and remain with Carver near the border. It would be ready to march in and secure the capital should his plan work, or ready to fall back and prepare for counterattack should it fail. A bold plan. And yet one that places the Drokga himself at risk only in the easiest and least important confrontations.

  At worst, the Bialtans would manage to defeat his distraction force, and his men would have to flee back to the border where they would reorganize and begin a more conventional war. The Bialtans would have no way of anticipating the greatly improved speed and endurance of his carapace soldiers. They would be able to fall back without significant losses.

  This would be a new kind of war, fought as much in the minds of their enemies as on the battlefield as the Tolrahkali brought a new level of savagery and fear to break the Bialtans’ morale.

  Magic is the only complication. Carver had insisted the Drokga’s famed warlocks should concentrate exclusively on trying to obscure the troops’ locations and to counter magic attacks until the mage hunters could neutralize the threat, but there was no telling just how many mages the Bialtans would be able to conscript from the Arcanum. The mage hunters were a central part of the Tolrahkali strategy. The new and improved Nasaka Jadoo would be in the thick of things along with a dozen of his most promising apprentices. Nasaka would remain immersed in a tank of nutritive solution until they reached Bialta. The large tank of dark liquid sat on a cart pulled by two female mastikides. Only a vaguely humanoid form was visible within the murky depths along with the occasional flash of deep-red eyes.