Bone Magic

by Brent Nichols

  "I'm glad I could contribute," Tira said.

  "No she isn't," said Yanil with a grin. "She's hoping to charm her way across the bridge without paying." He chuckled as she tried to look innocent. "Lots of people try that." He winked. "Sometimes it even works."

  When the meal was over, five dwarves brought out musical instruments, a gittern and a lyre, a couple of drums and a strange, long flute with a curve near the end. They perched together on stools on the far side of the fire, plucking on strings and tuning their instruments, and the others began to gather around.

  "Hey," said Lina, pointing at the curved flute. "That's a krummhorn!" The dwarf holding it blew briefly into the mouthpiece, and the horn gave a moan, surprisingly deep. "I didn't know it would sound like that," she added.

  "Mother told us about those," Sari said. "She was a musician when she was young. She went to the city, and everything!"

  Tira grinned, enjoying her enthusiasm.

  "Oh, look," Lina cried, pointing at the dwarf with the lyre. He had a bow in his hands, and was making tentative strokes across the strings. "Is that a crouth?"

  The dwarf looked up and grinned, a flash of white teeth in the black forest of his beard, and Lina shrank back. "You know your instruments," he said. His voice was low and scratchy, but filled with a quiet pride that made it beautiful. "We pronounce it 'crewth.' My grandfather played the crewth when our people hid in caves on the slopes of the Cold Mountains. The goblins held the forest on every side, and they hunted us. We were hungry and afraid, and almost without hope, and the nights were the worst of all."

  He was no longer looking at Lina as he spoke. He gazed over the heads of his listeners, looking into another place, another time. Voices fell still as he spoke, and the other musicians stopped tuning, listening instead.

  "When every bit of wood that could be scrounged was needed for the fires, he kept a bit aside." His fingers stroked the crewth as he spoke, delicate iron rings on his fingers glinting in the light of the fire. "When every man was laboring from sunrise to sunset to keep hunger at bay, he found the time to shape scraps of wood into something more."

  The dwarf with the gittern ran thick fingers over the strings, a quick burst of sound that made the hairs on Tira's arms stand on end. The entire settlement had gone silent.

  "When the night came, and darkness fell, and we cowered so far underground that even the light of the stars couldn't reach us, when cringing in silence was our only hope to evade the goblin hordes, some of us made a different choice."

  Solid dwarvish fingers were tapping on the skin drumheads, ever so softly, a beat like a pulse just at the edge of hearing.

  "There was hunger, there was deprivation, there was darkness and mud and cold. But worst of all was the fear. It kept us under the ground. It stilled our voices, it chilled our hearts. We became something less than dwarves. We became moles, cowering underground, afraid of the light."

  The krummhorn began to moan, a low, deep sound that made Tira's breastbone vibrate. The drums rose in volume, ever so slightly, and the dwarf with the gittern kept time, plucking a single string over and over.

  "Dwarves with spears and axes kept us safe." His voice rang out, suddenly loud, and Tira flinched back involuntarily. She saw the children do the same, and a dwarf chuckled.

  "Dwarves with hoes and spades gave us crops, and dwarves with bows and nets brought us meat and fish. They kept us alive." His fingers caressed the crewth, and he brought the bow sweeping across the strings. The crewth seemed to wail, as if giving voice to every moment of loneliness and fear the dwarves had ever endured.

  "Brave dwarves preserved our lives. But my grandfather, and men like him, did something else. In the darkest, coldest hours of the night, with goblins pressing close and fear pressing closer, they made music. They preserved our courage. They preserved our hearts!"

  He sawed with the bow, and the crewth gave a triumphant cry. The drums beat louder and faster, and the listening crowd stirred.

  "He reminded us that we were dwarves. He reminded us why we fought, why we endured. He gave us the courage to break free." The bow made quick, back-and-forth movements, the same two notes, over and over, in time with the beat of Tira's heart.

  "In time we left the Cold Mountains." His fingers moved on the strings and the two notes that he played became deeper. "We wandered." The triumph was gone from the music. Instead it became weary and sad. "We had no home. No place of our own. We were pariahs."

  The fire seemed to grow dim, the circle of light contracting, and a slender dwarf, young enough that his beard was sparse and wispy, leaned in to prod it with an iron poker. A log fell into the coals, and sparks shot upward.

  "My father played the crewth." He stopped sawing with the bow long enough to stroke the curved spine of the instrument. "He played this crewth, that he made with his own hands." The bow resumed its back-and-forth movement, and the dwarf squared his shoulders, pride giving strength to his words.

  "When every ounce had a cost that climbed and climbed with every weary mile, he carried wood, he carried tools. When the crewth was finished, he carried that." His fingers moved on the strings, and the back-and-forth surge of the bow changed to something more complex.

  "We had no homes!" The movement of the bow was a dance now, the fingers of his other hand doing a dance of their own on the strings. "No door was open to us. No place made us welcome. We carried tents on our backs, and put them up each night under cold starlight, or under pouring rain, or in fields of snow."

  The other musicians were following his lead, the music taking on a life of its own, dwarves on either side of Tira taking up the beat with fingers or mugs that tapped on the tables and benches.

  "And each night, as we made our poor camp in a new place, my father played the crewth, and his friends and kinsmen brought out drums and horns and pipes. And they played the songs that my grandfather played, and his grandfather before him. And we remembered that we were dwarves! And for just one night, wherever we were, we were home."

  A cheer went up from the assembled dwarves, the children clapped, and the musicians started a lively jig. A score of dwarves clapped in time, and someone tapped a beer keg. The gathering grew louder and more festive as the drink began to flow.

  There was dancing on the grass, the small number of women in great demand as partners, the men linking elbows and dancing in circles when no ladies were available.

  Tira saw Sari and Lena in the thick of it, laughing and whirling, dancing without skill but with great enthusiasm. She smiled at the sight. The girls had been through a rough time, and it was good to see them happy and relaxed.

  Yanil caught her arm and dragged her toward the dancers, and she shrugged and decided to give in. The more sober of the dwarves were doing a traditional reel. Tira had done similar dances at home before the wars, and she picked up the steps easily.

  A loud cry went up, and she turned her head. A couple of dwarven men were on a table, elbows linked, each with a mug in his free hand. The crowd around them clapped in time as they spun, nimbly avoiding the plates and platters on the table.

  She saw Tam carrying Lena away from the group. Mikail followed, leading Sari by the hand. Both girls were yawning helplessly, barely able to keep their heads up. Tam led them toward the cart, and she smiled. There was no need to tell him that she was hoping to sneak across the bridge in the dead of night. He had figured it out, and he was keeping the little ones close to the cart.

  The animals would be challenging. The dwarves had put them in a stable, and even if no one was watching, getting Daisy to leave a warm stall in the dead of night would be no small task. Tira wanted to grind her teeth in frustration, even as she danced. These dwarves were bandits with a thin veneer of respectability. Five crowns to cross a bridge? What nerve!

  A metallic squeak caught her attention. The town gate was closed, but the portcullis was up, and a guard was letting a human man in through a small door set in the gate. He was far from the fire and poorly lit, but
he looked familiar, and Tira broke away from the other dancers. Was he really that big, or was it just because he was standing beside a dwarf?

  He strode forward, and the firelight gleamed on a jacket of red leather. Tira's hand went to her hip, but her sword was with her bow in the cart. She turned, walking toward the cart, watching the man from the corner of her eye.

  The mayor and a couple of dwarves detached themselves from the crowd, moving to intercept the man. He broke into a run, heading straight for Tira, and shoved the mayor aside when she got in his way.

  Tira started to run, and a shout went up behind her. She heard voices, and cries of outrage, and Tam's face appeared, looking around the side of the cart. He hopped into the cart, and when she got there, he handed her the bow. She strung it, and he passed her the quiver.

  She slung the quiver across her back and turned. The big man was surrounded by a crowd of drunk, angry dwarves. His attention was focused on her, and he tried to push past the dwarves, stopping only when someone planted a shoulder in his stomach and shoved him back several steps.

  For a moment he stood, staring at the dwarves around him. The side of his face was marred by scabs in a thick line that started just below his eye and stretched back to his ear. His face was filled with anger and frustration, and she found herself hoping that he would let it go. He could still walk away from her and continue his life.

  It was not to be. He planted his foot in the chest of the nearest dwarf and shoved, sending the dwarf stumbling back. Then he drew his sword. Tira could see a couple of guards behind him, running from the front gate with swords in their hands, but the dwarves who surrounded the man were armed with nothing more than belt knives.

  She could hear the sound of steel on leather as knives came out, and the man, his face twisted with anger and frustration, brought his sword arm back to swing. The dwarves were blocking her line of sight, so she aimed high, picking a spot six inches below his chin where the top button of his jacket was done up. She let fly just as he started to swing, his body turning so that the arrow went in sideways, hitting him high on the left side of his chest and penetrating toward the left side of his back.

  He froze in mid-swing, his sword arm drooped, and he stared down at the arrow jutting from his chest. Then he dropped to his knees, suddenly the same height as the dwarves around him. The dwarf he had kicked put a foot against his stomach and shoved him onto his back.

  A subdued silence fell. Tira unstrung her bow, passed it to Tam, and handed him the quiver as well. Then she set off across the grass, hoping to find the man still alive. Dwarves were clustered around him, blocking the light, so that he was just a dark outline on the ground. She could hear him breathing, moaning with every inhalation and exhalation, and her stomach twisted with regret.

  The sound stopped as she reached him.

  Chapter 6

  The five of them made a gloomy procession as they crossed the bridge the next morning. They were crossing free of charge, with cheerful dwarves waving from the walls behind them. Sari and Lina had made friends in the town, and waved back with long, melancholy faces. Mikail, though he denied having touched the dwarf beer, was clearly hung over, sagging in the saddle and wincing with every step the pony took. Tira was exhausted after a long night of watching the big man die over and over in her dreams. Only Tam seemed to have come through the experience unscathed. He sat on the wagon bench, clucking at the mule, looking as if he was glad to be going home.

  Tira kept her bow strung for most of the morning, and kept her eyes open for any trace of goblins. Or bandits, for that matter, but she thought the threat of goblins would be enough to keep bandits away. She unstrung the bow at midday when the trees gave way to open grasslands.

  In early afternoon they passed a dead horse lying in the ditch. There was no saddle or bridle, and scavengers had picked it down to little more than bones. A quarter of a mile later, they found two more horses. Soon after that, they came to a crossroads where they found a pair of freshly-dug graves and a pile of human remains.

  The girls, already disturbed by the dead horses, kept their faces turned away as the cart rolled past. Mikail rode over to take a closer look, then turned away, looking a bit green. Tira's horse laid his ears back, wanting nothing to do with the smell of death, so she climbed down from the saddle and walked over to the bodies.

  There wasn't much left. Four or five people had been dumped in the ditch. Like the horses, the bodies had been largely stripped of flesh. There were tattered scraps of clothing, and boots that had been gnawed to pieces. It was not the first time she had encountered corpses, and she stared down at the bones and bits of flesh, trying to figure out why her instincts were telling her that something was wrong.

  "What do you think happened?"

  She looked up. Tam stood beside her, looking pale but composed. The cart and the children waited just up the road, far enough away to be free of the smell.

  "There was a fight," she said, working it out as she spoke. "They lost some horses, and went back later to strip off their gear and drag them into the ditch." She gestured at the graves. "The winners took some casualties." She pointed at the unburied bodies. "These were the losers. But something's not right."

  "What could kill someone like that?" Tam asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, they've been ripped to pieces." He pointed at the bones in the ditch. "Look, those two legs don't even point the same way, but it's the same person. The boots match."

  He was right. Scavengers would have scattered some of the bones, but almost nothing was intact on these corpses. She made herself move closer, and squatted to examine the ends of a thigh bone.

  "They were chopped up," she said, suppressing a shudder. "Someone killed these people, and then cut them into pieces." She stood and backed away, breathing deeply until the sweet, cloying smell of the corpses was gone from her nostrils.

  "But why?" said Tam.

  "Well… They might have really hated those people."

  Tam didn't speak, just waited for her to continue.

  She took a deep breath, not wanting to put her next thoughts into words. Some things were so vile, so wrong, that they simply shouldn't exist. She didn't want to believe that it was happening again.

  "Or," she said, "there could be a necromancer."

  He opened his mouth as if he wanted to argue, to say that animating the dead wasn't real, that it was something from stories used to frighten children. But he slowly closed his mouth. He nodded. "Cut up the bodies so that no one can use them." He gestured at the graves. "Before they buried their friends…"

  She nodded. "Probably."

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Then he said, "Don't die. That's not a chore I want."

  She gave him a crooked grin. "Hey, you're the one who brought the axe."

  A grin quirked his lips, then vanished. "Why would anyone raise the dead?"

  She shrugged. "It gives you a slave, ready to carry out your every command. A pungent slave, to be sure, and one that slowly falls apart, but a slave without conscience or remorse, who never needs to rest, who can be controlled remotely. If you had an army of corpses, you could conquer a kingdom."

  Tam grimaced. "Neris preserve us!"

  "Don't worry," she said. "Raising a corpse takes time, and you can't do it remotely. By the time you finished reanimating an army, the first ones would be crumbling to dust."

  "Maybe it's not a necromancer," he said, not sounding convinced. "Maybe they just really didn’t like those guys."

  "Maybe," she said. "We can hope."

  They continued on their way, leaving the stench of death and the buzzing of flies behind them. The sun was warm, the sky was a cheerful blue, but Tira couldn't entirely shake the chill she felt. There was one final thing about necromancers that she hadn't told Tam. Bone magic was powerful magic. Powerful, and costly. Mages summoned magic in different ways. Some used silver, some used psychic energy. Most could draw small amounts of magic from the a
ir around them, or from ley lines in the earth. Not enough to animate a corpse, but some.

  A few mages, the worst ones, could extract magical energy from blood, or from the extinguishing of a life. Especially a human life. Someone who was reanimating corpses might have need of prisoners who could be sacrificed as a source of fuel.

  But it wasn't safe or practical to take people from the streets of your own town. It didn't take people long to notice something like that. A prudent mage, if he had the coin, might hire a few rough men and send them far afield. To the other side of a big river, perhaps, with instructions to gather victims from isolated places. Like Raven Crossing.

  She glanced back at the intersection, wondering if she'd seen the last of that kind of horror. Thoughts of the undead were pushed from her mind by the sight of a plume of dust on the road behind. She dismounted, strung her bow, and remounted.

  Whatever was raising the dust, it was moving fast. The open grasslands offered no kind of cover, so Tira shrugged and kept riding. Eventually she could make out a column of riders on the road behind, catching up quickly.

  There were ten horsemen in total, all of them in gleaming matched breastplates, their horses decked out in green barding. Tira ran through her memories of the past several weeks. She'd crossed any number of borders, moving through kingdoms and empires and duchies, paying little attention to who ruled where. She thought green might be the colors of the local king, but she wasn't sure.

  The lead rider, his breastplate marked with three horizontal stripes to denote rank, lifted a fist as the riders came close. The horses pulled up in a billowing cloud of dust and the riders spread out, surrounding Tira and her companions.

  Tira folded her hands over the pommel of her saddle, moving slowly and being careful not to touch her sword or bow. There was a rider on either side of her, and another directly behind. They wore swords, and they looked hard-eyed and alert. She remembered the graves at the crossroads. These would not be men to trifle with.

  The officer was a man in his forties, with the supercilious look of someone born to privilege and rank. He ran his eyes over the group, and addressed himself to Tam. "Where are you going?"