Dragon Bones h-1

by Patricia Briggs

  "She'll want to bury him at Iftahar."

  His father heard the need in his voice. "He'll be buried here unless you wish it differently."

  "Here. Hurog will protect him from murderers and fools." He hadn't meant to say that, it sounded silly aloud.

  His father merely nodded.

  Beckram relaxed a bit. "I'll leave the next day for Estian."

  "You're still set on joining Haverness in his fool's errand?"

  Beckram picked at the table covering. "I need something to do. If I don't, I'll kill him."

  Duraugh's mouth tightened. "Don't think I haven't considered it. If it were fifteen years ago, I could do it. Young Alizon was popular, and the world was used to war. But Jakoven has gotten rid of most of the men who could stand against him, and Alizon's a useless fop outside the battlefield." He sighed. "Very well, go. But I won't send you alone. I'll talk to Stala. She and fifty men will accompany you, fighting under your command."

  "I can't take them," said Beckram. "Haverness only has leave for a hundred men. I believe I'm the eighty-fifth."

  "You'll take them," said Duraugh, standing up. "The Blue Guard's motto is 'We fight as one. You will only be one."

  "The king won't accept that."

  Duraugh smiled coldly. "I'll talk to him. Leave it to me."

  10—WARDWICK

  Death is a wretched business, and rain only made it worse.

  Several weeks into my quest, my search for glory seemed fruitless. We looked for Vorsagian raiders as we neared the southern reaches of Oranstone, but only came upon a few more groups of ragged bandits and the burnt-over villages where the Vorsag had been. It rained all the time—except when it hailed or sleeted. Oreg's gelding and one of the packhorses had developed hoof rot, despite the oil we used. Everyone's temper was short from being constantly cold and damp.

  Tosten, as always, was the worst, seldom speaking except in answer to direct questions. The cold damp caused an old wound in Penrod's shoulder to act up, making practice visibly painful, but he didn't allow me to release him. When Axiel forced him to stop, he and Penrod almost came to blows—would have, except for Bastilla's intervention. Axiel, son of the king of dwarves, watched me like a sheepdog watching his shepherd but said little. Even Oreg was subdued.

  We stopped at a village one midafternoon for provisions. It wasn't much, but I sent Penrod to find the headman and talk to him. Oreg took the opportunity to wander off, exploring.

  "They say they haven't seen any raiders, nor heard of any," said Penrod when he returned. "They also say that they've no grain for sale, nor any other foodstuff."

  We'd heard that often enough. If it hadn't been for Luavellet's provisions and our own woodcraft, we'd have been starving. Oranstonians had a long memory.

  "Did you tell them that the village east of here was burned to the ground when we passed it?" asked Tosten.

  "I did," said Penrod. "I'm fairly sure they think we're the ones who did it. Where's Oreg?"

  "He went to look at Meron's temple," I said. "I think he went to ask her to stop the rain."

  "It'll just sleet, then," said Axiel sourly.

  This village was larger than the last we'd been in, but that was all to be said of it. There had been people going about their business when we came. Upon seeing us, they'd sought shelter in the small stone and thatch huts that were set in circles off of the path that served as the main road.

  The temple of Meron the Healer, goddess of growing things, was a little larger than the other buildings, and some time ago someone had painted it; there were still flecks of blue and white on the orange stone. It had no door, just a bit of ragged oilcloth hung from the doorframe.

  "He went to look at the artifacts. Meron's temples are filled with them," explained Bastilla. "I don't feel much magic from the temple, though."

  We had gone from being mercenary warriors here to save Oranstone from the evil Vorsag to being unwanted tourists. I rolled my eyes at the thought.

  "There isn't very much magic in Meron's temples," I told her. "Not really. Most of the nobles worship Vekke, the god of war. Meron's priests might demand magic as tribute, but that usually means homemade charms from some hedgewitch. Peasants can't afford real magic."

  "Silverfells is not far from here," said Axiel, "I recognize that rock formation." He pointed toward an outcropping on a hill. "I think we passed just west of here last time we came. If you're looking for interesting magical items, Silverfells has a stone they claim was once a dragon."

  Penrod snorted. "The Hurogmeten said it was as much a dragon as he was a horse when we stopped by there."

  Axiel shook his head. "I don't know. It was steeped in magic, I could tell that much." I hadn't known he could detect magic.

  Oreg ducked under the cloth door of the temple and sloshed his way to his horse. "Where do we go next?"

  "Silverfells," I said. Let's go be tourists, I thought bitterly.

  "To see the dragon?" asked Oreg. "Splendid."

  Pansy's big hooves splashed water from the puddles high enough to splatter my already soaked boots. It was hard to say if there was a creek running through the path or a path running through the creek.

  At least Pansy was happy. I rode in the lead where he liked to be rather than with the rest of them. The last time I tried to cheer Tosten up, he made a few nasty comments, and I thought I'd better stay by myself until I was able to control my tongue.

  The rain didn't bother the stallion, as it did some of the other horses. Pansy ignored it as if he were too arrogant to be troubled by such a little thing as weather.

  I wondered if I should send everyone else home. Penrod needed to be back in the dryer climate of Shavig, where his shoulder wouldn't bother him. Ciarra was too young for this, and Tosten was too soft: not in body, but in spirit. He felt the death of every body we burned, whether it was a bandit we'd killed or a villager killed by raiders. Even Bastilla would be better off elsewhere. She had claimed to be a poor wizard. I was no judge of such things, but although she was certainly not as good as Oreg, she was far better than Licleng, Father's mage. She lit a fire every night with wet tinder and wetter wood while Oreg dried our bedding. She could make a living in any noble's house, especially in a wet climate. She didn't need me.

  Oreg belonged at Hurog where he and Hurog were safe. It was almost painful to be around him; he was my daily reminder that Hurog was not mine nor, I'd come to believe, would it ever be.

  That left only Axiel, my father's man, the dwarven king's son. Of us all, he was most suited to doing something other than wandering aimlessly through this godsforsaken swamp: Any noble would hire him as arms master. But, according to Aethervon, Axiel was here to save his people because his father had had a dream. Axiel had been with my father for at least sixteen years, maybe longer, but he thought I was the reason he'd been sent to Hurog.

  Pansy snorted suddenly and collected himself: a warhorse ready to do battle. The change pulled me abruptly from my absorption. Heart thrumming, I searched the woods for signs of watchers.

  With a nudge of my knee and shift of my weight I spun Pansy in a tight circle, but I didn't see anything except that the rest of my party was some distance back, with Axiel in the lead and Oreg hindmost. Tosten and Bastilla were engaged in animated discussion. Penrod was rubbing his shoulder under Ciarra's concerned gaze. Axiel was watching me, his hand on his sword.

  I held up my hand flat, signaling him to wait. When he nodded, I set Pansy ahead on the narrow track, which wound through high mountain marshes. Pansy minced forward, twitching his ears this way and that. I was just ready to turn back when the path wove through some willows and into the remains of a village.

  Thank the fates I had kept the others from following me, was all I could think. I didn't want Ciarra or Tosten to see this. This didn't look like any of the raided villages we'd come to before.

  The Vorsag had demolished the village houses and piled the wood and thatch along the road. The bodies of the villagers were laid out very care
fully on top. Someone had tried to start a pyre to burn the dead, but the rain had gutted it before any of the bodies had been more than scorched. It was the smell of wet char and blood that must have alerted Pansy.

  I dismounted and led the stallion behind me.

  Though we'd seen the results of Vorsagian attacks before, I hadn't seen anything like this. At the other villages, there were survivors who'd run at the first sound of trouble. If the Vorsag hadn't killed every living soul in the village, they'd certainly tried. The Vorsag, like Shavigmen, buried their dead, but they hadn't been, up to this point, concerned enough with the possibility of the Oranstonians' unquiet spirits haunting their village to burn the dead. I didn't think that they had suddenly started now.

  My father said he learned the most about the enemy when they broke away from their usual actions. What was different about Silverfells?

  They had a temple with a stone dragon.

  I backed away from the pyre and looked for the temple—or for where it had been. The Vorsag had ravaged the village for the wood in their pyre, and there weren't many buildings standing. In the end it could have been any of four sites, but I couldn't tell for certain. But there was nothing that could have been Axiel's stone dragon unless it was smaller than my fist.

  Who was calling the shots for Vorsag? Kariarn was only a few years older than me. Normally, that would mean that he was either ruled by or at least was guided by his advisors. But I'd met Kariarn. If someone else was pulling the strings, then they were more devious than I was. Possible, but not likely.

  When Kariarn had been in Estian, he'd had his people scour the countryside for artifacts purported to be magical. What if that was what he was doing now? What if they raided the villages with temples dedicated to Meron, took the artifacts, and then burned the villages to disguise what they had done?

  Most of the temples had only junk, but that was not always true. Oranstone, like the other kingdoms, was an old land. There were ruins that yielded unexpected treasures. Some of the temples held powerful magic. I searched the ground carefully, but there was nothing to indicate that a large object had been moved: no wagon tracks, no deep hoofprints. But the Vorsag had been here, more than fifty of them, perhaps even a hundred. The falling rain obscured the tracks.

  It had been a long time since Axiel and Penrod had been here with my father. It was possible that since that time the stone had been moved, but I was convinced it was Kariarn who took it.

  Just how much power could Kariarn gather that way? I'd been taught that the days of great magic were past with the passing of the great Empire. The theory was that there was only so much magic in the world, and gradually it had been used up. My father had claimed that there never was an age of great magic, just great storytellers.

  But what if the magic was stored in thousands of artifacts? What if one person collected all of them and found a way to get the magic out? I had to find Oreg.

  I started back, but stopped when I neared the stacked bodies. If the Vorsag had tried to burn them, it was not out of respect for their enemies; it was to hide something the villagers' bodies might tell.

  There were seventy-two men, women, and children laid out singly on the wood pile. Most of them were naked, facedown, and blindfolded with strips of rags (probably from their own clothing), and bound hand and foot. Those that weren't bound looked as though they'd died in the fighting when the Vorsag had first attacked. There were no flies—the one blessing the rain brought.

  I was born and bred to prevent things like this. Being Hurogmeten was more than owning land—it was taking care of the people who lived there. Responsibility was bred in my bones, and the high king's failure to protect these people enraged me.

  If this land had a lord to oversee it properly, no Vorsagian troop as large as this one would have come here and had the time to do this. But the rightful lord of this land had died in the Rebellion, and King Jakoven had not seen fit to replace him, leaving Silverfells unprotected.

  I turned over the body of a young girl. Her face was smudged with the dirt of childhood broken with clean trails of tears that the rain began to wash away. Her body was cool to the touch. The only wound I could find was a slit as wide as two of my fingers in her throat. There were runes drawn on her torso. Some of them were done with paint and started to run as soon as the rain touched them, but others had been cut into her skin. Seventy-two Oranstonians, I thought, glancing at the rest of the bodies. This must have taken a very long time.

  I inspected the skin under the bindings at her wrists and ankles to see what they had to tell me. Her wrists were raw, but the bindings on her ankles had cut almost to the bone. That and the lack of pooling blood where she'd been lying told me she had been hung by her feet so the blood would drain from her neck more completely, just like a hog at slaughtering time.

  It was the analogy that tore the cap off my rage. Deep within me, my anger fanned a fire that had smoldered since Aethervon had awakened it at Menogue. It poured through my chest, down my arms, and out my hands. I couldn't see the magic I felt thundering in my veins, but the wet wood and thatch lit when I touched them. Pansy snorted and backed as far from the burning, smoking mess as he could without pulling on the reins, as the fire traveled rapidly through the wet fuel, releasing the spirits of the dead for their journey beyond.

  Son of my father, I'd never sworn fealty to a god nor taken much interest in religion. I knew little of Meron and less of the war god, Vekke. And, after what Aethervon had done to Ciarra, I would not give these people to him. They needed justice. A prayer my nurse had sung to me when I was a child came naturally to my tongue. A Shavig prayer was out of place in these wetlands, but I closed my eyes and sang to Siphern, god of justice and balance, as the flames roared higher.

  And he came. I didn't see him, even when I opened my eyes, but I felt him: felt his anger at the village's death, felt him gather their frightened spirits to his bosom, felt his touch on my forehead as he left.

  When I finished my song, I felt peaceful, even empty. And in that emptiness came clarity and honesty. The reason for my foul mood the past few days wasn't the rain; it was the growing knowledge that Hurog was lost to me. Even if I won glory defending Oranstone (which was unlikely, even under better circumstances), the king cared nothing for this kingdom. Witness how he failed to protect these villagers. My uncle would care for Hurog better than my father ever had, and his sons after him.

  But for the first time, I had an attainable goal. I would help these people who had no one else to help them.

  "Lord Wardwick?" Axiel's voice sounded breathless, and when I turned to look at him, he was on his knees with his head bowed.

  His posture alarmed me, so I reached down and tugged him to his feet. "I thought I ordered you all to wait."

  Hope and wonder lit his face when he looked at me. "We waited for a quarter mark, but we heard nothing. Since I can take care of myself a bit better than Penrod and the youngsters, I came ahead while the others still argued about what to do. I imagine they'll be along soon." He drew a breath. "When I came through the trees, my lord, I smelled evil as I haven't known for centuries—blood magic. Then I heard you sing Siphern all the way from the Northlands for these people. He cleaned this vale of evil for you, my lord. My father told me that our hope was in Hurog. I did not know until now he dreamed true."

  I squirmed under his regard. Truthfully, I didn't know what I'd done to invoke it. Lighting the pyre was something Bastilla or Oreg could have done with half the effort. And…had he said centuries?

  "Centuries?" I squawked.

  He grinned sheepishly and rocked back on his heels. The awe was gone from his expression, but it had left his face altered in its wake. The watchful caution that was the usual aspect of his countenance had given way to a silly grin that was out of place in the presence of so much death.

  "Yes, well," he said. "My father's people tend to live a bit longer than humankind. I was sent to Hurog half a century ago to find hope for my people, the salv
ation of dwarvenkind."

  Salvation of dwarvenkind? I wanted to ask. Instead, I said, "You don't look like a dwarf."

  "I take after my mother. My father is so tall—" He raised a hand to his shoulder. " — and twice my weight."

  White, steamy smoke and the smell of burning flesh billowed off the wet tinder. The smell reminded me of the mystery of what had happened here at Silverfells. I grasped onto it hard, a task to fill the emptiness Hurog's loss had left me with.

  I asked, "Do you remember how big the stone dragon was?"

  "A bit larger than Pansy," he said after a moment. "It didn't look like the dragon in the Hurog coat of arms, but it didn't look like much of anything else, either. It was more like a piece of stone a good mason had started working into shape, but there weren't any chisel marks."

  "It's not here," I said. "Or at least I couldn't find it. I also couldn't find any sign of it being moved."

  Axiel coughed and moved away from the fire. "That's odd. I suppose someone could have moved it since we were here."

  "I don't know a lot about magic," I said focusing on the burning bodies. "What if I told you that most of the villagers were bled dry like slaughtered sheep, and I couldn't find any great dark places in the dirt where so much blood had flowed?"

  Axiel frowned. "I'd say that it was blood magic I smelled earlier, and it would take a powerful one to consume this much blood. The king's best mage is no more powerful than Bastilla. Of all the human wizards I've seen lately, only Oreg could work the kind of magic that would require so much blood."

  Axiel thought Bastilla as powerful as the high king's mages? I knew she was better than she claimed, but I couldn't recall seeing her do anything spectacular. I opened my mouth to ask, but Pansy tossed his head and called out a greeting as the rest of our party emerged from the trees.

  Oreg stopped his horse near me but didn't dismount. "Impressive," he said looking at the fire. "You build this yourself?"

  "No," I said. "The Vorsag. Oreg, Bastilla," I said, as the others crowded around. "The dragon stone is gone. Axiel says it was as big as Pansy, but I could find no sign of anyone dragging it off. The villagers were hung and bled out, their bodies covered with arcane runes." I should have waited to light the pyre, but I had been feeling more than thinking.