The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  She’d found him again the next night, and brought a few others with her. They’d prayed together, Keiro with his back to the setting sun and Cazi perched on his shoulder, the others scattered in a half circle before him. A young hunter, Keten, was the first to speak. “If the Twins have been here since they were struck down, why haven’t they reached out to us before? We’ve been faithful to them for centuries.”

  “I don’t claim to know the minds of the gods,” Keiro said, spreading his hands, “but I would say they have reached out. That you even know of the Twins speaks to that—if one of your ancient ancestors hadn’t found or been summoned by the Twins, you wouldn’t know their names, their stories, their history. Perhaps they haven’t extended a hand to each one of you, but I don’t doubt they know of your faithfulness.”

  “But why you?” Keten asked, and Keiro could read beyond the words to the pain beneath.

  “Truly?” Keiro smiled wanly. “I don’t know. I don’t know why the Twins brought my wandering old feet here, when there are so many of you faithful and strong. But I believe that though the Twins may have guided me here, it was not to find them. It was to find you, all of you. I would never have found the Twins without first finding you.”

  “Did Yaket know the Twins were here?” Keten asked, and there was a quiet demand in his voice, the faint tones of betrayal.

  Keiro wouldn’t lie; it wasn’t in him to. “I believe she did, or that she suspected it.”

  “Then why didn’t she tell us?”

  “We all have a part to play, Keten. Yaket’s part was to keep the faith bright in your hearts. She did her part well, and I don’t know if any more was asked of her than that.”

  “Knowing would have made our faith stronger. She could have told us.”

  “She could have,” Keiro agreed. It was his own question as much as Keten’s. If Yaket had known the Twins were beneath the hill, why hadn’t she told any of her people?

  More of the plainswalkers came each night, questions eager on their tongues, hungry for the new stories he offered. He answered their questions, and filled their minds with bright futures, and there was a lightness in his chest. His whole life had been wandering, and it felt as though he had finally found what he hadn’t even known he’d been searching for.

  He returned to the tribehome one night, more than half the tribe around him, to find Yaket standing in their path. Keiro stopped before her and waved the others on, splitting around him and Yaket like a forking river. He watched the elder’s eyes, the one milky white, hard as a stone; the other was not so much kinder.

  “You should stop this,” Yaket finally said, after they had been alone for some time.

  Keiro shook his head. “This is why I was brought here.”

  “You were not brought here,” Yaket said, and there was real anger rising in her voice. “You were cast out of your home and happened to stumble on the only place where you wouldn’t be despised.”

  The words cut, coming from her. Not so long ago, she had welcomed him like a lost son, treating him as equal to any of the tribe. She’d pressed a finger below Keiro’s missing eye, touched her own half blindness, and smiled like it was a secret they shared. “You’re not wrong,” he said sadly, and he managed a smile. “I’ve truly been walking the Twins’ path, haven’t I?”

  She didn’t seem to catch his meaning right away, but her anger flared when she did. “You are a child. You know nothing of the way this world works. I have been trusted with this secret since before your parents whelped you. You know it a day, and you sing it out to the world.”

  “It’s not like that, Yaket,” Keiro entreated. He would like to have her on his side once more, to win back her respect and kindness. There was that whispering certainty in the back of his mind, too, that told him if he could win Yaket, he would win the whole tribe. “I’m sure the secret of the Twins sang out in you as well, and it could have been no easy thing to keep your lips closed around it. That is the choice you made, to hold them secret, to keep them from your people. But I . . . I wasn’t meant to keep this secret. I was meant to share it, to sing it to the world. It’s why I was brought here. Yes,” he said, gentle and firm as her face began to twist, “brought here. I have felt the Twins’ call all my life. I have only recently learned to listen to it. Please, Yaket.” He stretched a hand out to her. “We are not meant to be enemies. The world is changing, and we, both of us, we’ve been blessed with the chance to lead that change. We’ve both been chosen. Can’t we put aside our pride?”

  She ignored the hand he held out to her. “I hear you’ve been telling new stories out in the long grass. Perhaps it is time you heard a new story for yourself.” She sat, old legs folding gracefully beneath her, and stared up at Keiro until he sat on the ground before her. “This is the first story I was told after I was chosen as elder. I was a young woman then, proud and foolish. ‘Elder’ is not a title given in age. It is a title to tell others that I keep the old knowledge, that I hold the secrets of generations. This is the first story I was told after I met the Twins.” Keiro opened his mouth, but she glared him to silence.

  “You will have seen that Fratarro has one arm. It is the best we have been able to do for him, in all the long years.

  “We used to have chiefs, in the old days. One of them was named Pelen, and four centuries ago, he led the tribe to a faraway place, where the waters flowed clear and the trees grew tall and birds flew in more colors than they had known to exist. They said it was a piece of Fratarro’s creation that even Patharro had not found, a small part of paradise undestroyed. They found Fratarro’s arm at the bottom of a deep pool, and though it had been centuries since it was burned and torn, they said his arm still smoldered with the fires that had scorched it.

  “They pulled the arm from the lake, all the men of the tribe, with ropes woven from beautiful flowering vines. They wrapped it with one hundred layers of lake grass to keep it from burning in the sun, and they pulled it across the ground with the vine-ropes whose flowers withered and died. It took them a year and more to return to the Plains with the arm, and they presented it to sleeping Fratarro, the greatest gift to give a broken god.

  “But they were not done. The men went back out, hunting day upon day until they found a boar taller than a man. They chased the boar for thirty days, always at its heels, until, in the blackness of a no-moon night, the beast fell to their spears. Pelen put his spear through the boar’s heart. The men returned with its tusks, white as stars and sharper than stone.

  “The women of the tribe plucked grass from the earth, plucked half the grass from the Plains. They shredded the grass to the thinnest fibers, no thicker than a strand of hair, and they wove the strands together until they had a long rope of it, delicate as a spider’s web and brighter than sunlight.

  “The whole tribe carved the boar’s tusks until they were slim and sharp and as long as a man’s arm, and they carved a hole in the base of each. These they took to the Twins, along with the rope that was thinner than a blade’s edge, and together they sewed Fratarro’s arm in place. Fratarro screamed throughout, and he bled a river, but at the end of it, he had his arm back. A portion of the Twins’ power was restored, and we rejoiced.”

  Yaket fixed Keiro with her one eye, hard and unforgiving. “All stories have an end. Can you guess this one, Godson?” Somehow she made an insult of the name he’d been given. “There is a cost for any good deed done. There is a price to power.

  “Sororra was reviled by the Parents for using her power to shape the minds of men. This is the power that was restored to her when Fratarro’s arm was attached, when the Twins first woke from their long slumber. She touched Pelen’s mind, the chief of the tribe, and she sought to use him to find the rest of her brother’s limbs. It had been long centuries, though, since she had last used her power. She forgot that it took a gentle touch. When she went to shape his mind, she twisted too hard.

  “That night, Pelen went from grass mat to grass mat, and he carried in his hand th
e bone needle, quiet as a final breath and sharper than hate. He killed most of the tribe in silence before one, dying, cried out. It would have taken more than ten men to subdue him, but there were not ten men left. Those who remained to stand against Pelen fought him, and they died for their bravery. It was a woman, quiet and cunning, who found the second bone needle. In the darkness, she stepped through the fray, and she slipped the needle between Pelen’s ribs and into his heart.

  “She was the first elder, but we do not know her name. There are some secrets that are meant to be forgotten, that are meant to lie unknown. When I go to join the stars, my name will not be remembered here. I will pass from this world, but I will have done the best thing there is. I will have kept the secrets that need keeping.” Her gaze was sharp on Keiro again, and sad. “There is a line, thin as spider’s thread, between believing and knowing. You say I chose to hold these secrets, to keep the knowing from my own people. That is not so. It was never a choice—this is the way things must be. When we helped the Twins, it nearly destroyed my people. Death was our only reward. Those few who remained vowed that they would stay, for they believed still in the message the Twins sang . . . but they vowed, too, that they would stay only as guardians. Keepers of knowledge, keepers of faith. We would guard the Twins from those who would do them harm, but we would not . . . could not . . . raise our hands in their aid. I believe it is why you . . . why you were brought here. You were brought here to do what I will not.

  “My people are too few. It is better this way. Better that they do not know what lies in the hills. They have good hearts, and they are strong in their faith. They would want to help, if they knew.” Her hands clutched at each other in her lap, as though she were trying to hold on to something that kept slipping away. “Things that are known gain the power to rule us. Things that are known cannot be escaped. Do you understand me?”

  Keiro bowed his head, and sat in silence before her. Her words had the flavor of truth, and he understood that her sharing this tale was its own kind of trust, that her honesty was an offering. Yet there was the certainty in his mind. The Twins were not a thing to be kept secret. Their names and their existence should be shouted from one end of the world to the other. He heard the caution Yaket preached, but he could not follow it. “Thank you, Yaket,” he said softly. “Truly, thank you. It . . . it is good to know some small piece of the history that lies here. I would like to hear more of your stories, if you would tell them to me.”

  She smiled at him, and it almost broke Keiro. “I will tell you all the stories I have in me, so long as you stop telling your own.”

  He looked away from her again as he said, “Is there not space in the world for both our tales?”

  She would speak to him no more, after that. She simply rose and walked back to the tribehome, looking older than she usually did. When Keiro followed her after a time, he found his way blocked by two of the bigger tribesmen. They were still much smaller than he, for the plainswalkers had been shaped to hide among the tall grass, but Keiro knew these two, knew they were strong and skilled fighters. He knew, too, that they were endlessly loyal to Yaket.

  “There is no place for you here this night,” one of them said. The other handed Keiro his rolled grass mat, which was an unexpected kindness. Wordlessly, Keiro bowed at the waist and turned toward the hills once more.

  Poret caught him up quickly, panting as she tugged at his arm. “It’s not right,” the woman snarled, anger as bright as her eyes. “Yaket is jealous of you. It’s not right!”

  Keiro shook his head, held her by the shoulders, and smiled down at her. “Yaket is doing as she sees best. I cannot fault her for it—she has many years of wisdom, more than the two of us together. We simply see things in a different way.” He turned her around, gave her a gentle push. “Go back. Sleep. This is a night for quiet thinking.”

  “You’re not leaving, are you?” she asked, suspicion and fear fighting in her voice.

  “No. I’m where I’m meant to be.”

  He went to the hills, for they were as comforting a place as any, and laid his grass mat upon the ridge of a hill. He lay staring up at the stars and the red points of Sororra’s Eyes and the moon that hung near-full overhead, and before he fell asleep a small scaled body curled into the hollow between his shoulder and neck.

  Keiro awoke to teeth in his ear, and batted Cazi away. The mravigi instead bit at Keiro’s finger, insistent. Grumbling some, Keiro sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. It was still night, the moon low in the sky but bright, lining the hills with white fire. “What do you want, little beast?” Keiro muttered sleepily, but he saw it even before Cazi perched on his knee with a chirp.

  Dark figures moved across a valley between two hills, but these were not the shape of star-flecked mravigi. They were man-shaped, and tall, shrouded in black. Keiro caught his breath, heart stilling for a moment. There was a certainty in him not born from the confident whispering, but born from his own history, his own life.

  Keiro rose, fear and joy warring in him, and made his own slow way across the hills. Cazi sat on his shoulder, long tail draped over the back of Keiro’s neck, his nostrils flaring. During the walk, pinpricks worked their way down his back, his legs, Cazi fading into the night. The men took notice of Keiro’s approach, and he saw the flash of steel in the moonlight. Keiro held his hands open at his sides, though they would see soon enough he was naked as a newborn, nowhere to hide a weapon on him. “Greetings, brothers,” he called out, loud enough they would hear but not loud enough to disturb the night overmuch. “Chellani baric.” He hoped they would recognize the preachers’ greeting at least, and their bearings did seem to grow more relaxed.

  “Your name, brother?” one of them called out.

  “I am called Keiro,” he said simply, hoping—a small hope—that they would not know him as apostate.

  “And how have you come to be here, Keiro?”

  “I’ve led a wandering life. My feet have taken me to stranger places than this. I had not thought to see any brothers here.”

  The man who had been speaking stepped forward, past the two with their swords drawn and one with his empty hands raised before him, and the speaker lowered his heavy hood. “I’m on a mission from the gods themselves, brother. I am Saval Tredeiro, and I believe that one of Fratarro’s limbs lies in these hills.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  He wasn’t happy about it, but Joros paid for a chirurgeon to tend to Rora. He’d taken plenty of coin from Raturo’s stores before he’d left the place behind, as much as he could carry without sounding like a knight clattering around in too-big armor, but his various purses were growing much lighter than he was happy with. Still, Aro insisted that his sister deserved more than a raving lunatic to poke at her damaged face—no matter that Anddyr’s ministrations had already taken care of most of the damage—and Joros, if nothing else, needed to keep the twins from revolting. The Northman’s betrayal remained a thorn in his side, and he’d be damned before he’d let these two slip from him as well. This new plan, much as he liked it, still had plenty of room for falling apart. He would need Rora and Aro with him if everything went to shit.

  The chirurgeon was little help, smearing something that smelled foul on the open wound of what had been Rora’s ear. It made her scream and thrash, so that Anddyr and Aro had to hold her down while the chirurgeon poured a sickly green liquid down her throat. That put her to sleep quick enough, and the man said it would help with her pain as well. He wrapped a bandage around her head and demanded an exorbitant sum from Joros, who promised to track the chirurgeon down and do unspeakable things to him if he caught the slightest sign of infection—at that price, Joros thought the man should have been able to grow her ear back—and the chirurgeon left under a hail of insults.

  Joros left the mage and the brother to fret over Rora in the room he’d bought with more of his dwindling money, and went down to the taproom to buy himself a well-deserved drink. Unfortunately, the merra was at the bar as well. She
seemed to have no trouble showing her face in public, which surprised him to no end. He ignored her, ordering a jug of what passed for wine in Mercetta and retreating to a corner table. She followed him, and his glare didn’t scare her off.

  “A gaggle of children and cripples aren’t going to help us,” she said.

  Joros nearly laughed at her—her hypocrisy stunned him sometimes. It sounded like Whitedog Pack certainly had its share of children and cripples injured in whatever little war they’d been fighting, but he’d seen more than enough useful, strong-bodied Scum during his brief journey through the Canals. “I’m glad you’ve at least come around to the idea of killing.”

  She made a quick hushing motion. “I haven’t,” she hissed. “Far from it. I’m hoping reason will prevail, but regardless, towing along children and cripples will only slow us down.”

  “It’s truly wonderful to see the embodiment of the Parents’ love and mercy.”

  She had a look to her, sometimes, of a cat whose fur had been vigorously rubbed the wrong way. “The Parents have set me a mission. I can’t afford to be distracted from it, or slowed down. Neither can you, if anything you say is to be believed.”

  “What makes you think it is?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll prove to be a better man than you’ve been so far.”

  “That’s the difference between us,” Joros said, and sipped the foul wine. “Aside from your ugly face, that is. You do a great deal of hoping. I plan.”

  “Then you have a plan for these ‘Scum’?”

  “My plans, and their existence or lack thereof, are my own. Now leave me be. This wine is like enough to make me vomit on its own. I don’t need your face to help.” She had a stubborn streak in her, and Joros could see her inclination was to stay just to spite him; he’d discovered through experience, though, that pointing out the wreck of her face often enough would drive her to leave, or at least lapse into silence. Mockery was a powerful tool against those prone to shame, and Joros wasn’t above using any tool. He was ready to point out how well his own facial burns were healing, but she left without needing another insult. Triumphant, Joros sipped the horrible wine while he pondered what he was going to do with all the children and cripples he’d just saddled himself with.