Path of Bones

by Steven Montano

  Dane stepped back into the troglodytic blacksmith’s shop. Kruje moved around slowly; he seemed grateful to finally have enough room to move, even if the giant was able to do a complete circle of the interior of the smithy’s in a matter of seconds. The forge looked to have been cold for years, and the cooling buckets were cracked. The bellows were layered with dust and calcified soot, and various implements of the trade – tongs, hammers, chisels, half-finished swords – lay scattered about the open room, many of them chipped, rusted or broken. The air was dark, and motes of dust swam in the light which spilled in through small holes in the roof.

  The place clearly hadn’t been used for some time, at least not by a blacksmith. Tracks on the dusty concrete floor indicated where a pair of tables near the center of the room had recently been pulled from the corners, and bone dice and loose coins were scattered everywhere. Kruje tested the boards over the windows, and Dane double-checked the doors. It was possible it had just been sailors or street rabble who’d moved the tables, but there was no way to determine whether or not they’d come back.

  Kruje seemed satisfied after doing his rounds, so he sat down in the corner. His black skin was covered with sweat, and his pale eyes glowed in the dark. His thick muscles tensed as he set his enormous war-axe on one of the nearby tables, and he pulled in his thick legs so he sat hunched against the wall. He was easily the size of a hearth. Kruje had already removed his thick armor plate – it lay in pieces in the boat under another tarp – and now sat bare-chested, his chiseled torso layered in blue-black runes somehow darker than his midnight skin. Kruje surveyed the room, tapped his enormous fingers on his knees, and looked at Dane.

  “Food?” he asked. His voice was thick and hollow.

  Dane inspected a door to a back room, only to find little more than a washbasin and an empty bedchamber, neither of which appeared to have been disturbed in quite some time. He returned to the front main room and peered through the grimy window. They’d extinguished his Veilcrafted flame, and life seemed to have returned to normal on the docks – ships drifted through the archway on the far side of the bay and business at the taverns and shops carried on unabated. It was dark inside, a permanent night.

  Kruje flicked an ancient pile of ash. He looked up at Dane.

  “Food?” he asked again. “Please.”

  Dane conjured some gruel for them, thick and tasteless porridge the consistency of warm oatmeal they spooned into bowls from Dane’s pack. It was the best the Veil could offer. They ate it wordlessly, listening for any sound of alarm or for someone approaching the door.

  “Rorg lok nik?” Kruje asked a few minutes later. Dane was tired and his eyes were raw, but he knew he still had a long night ahead.

  “Go…you go?” Dane said out loud as he translated the question. “Yes,” he answered in Vossian. “I go search. You…stay. Hide.”

  Kruje nodded, looked around the room, and shrugged.

  I know, Dane thought. This is my worst idea in a long string of bad ideas. But I’m not sure what else to do. Dane gave Kruje a nod, then pulled his cloak tight and stepped out through the side door, closing it shut behind him. He was off to find the Scarlet Lair.

  Twelve

  He dreams of wolves. Silver moonlight shines on sharp fur as they swarm across the plains in a tide of hunger and need.

  The moon is enormous and bright, and the night twists around it like a shadow-clad dancer. The deep sky is full with the sounds of rending flesh and braying song.

  Blood runs in rivers and pools. He hears the father of the wolves in the distance, sleeping in a den of rock and human hides.

  He’ll kill the father. Then the others will be his.

  Thirteen

  Marros Slayne was slow to wake. His head pounded. The small room in the inn slowly bled into view, incandescent blues and greens which peeled back to reveal the skin of the whore he’d taken to bed. Carlotta, he thought her name was, and he’d picked her because of the dragon tattoo on her lower back and her stark silver hair. She had jade eyes and dark skin that felt like flower petals beneath his calloused fingers, and being with her had filled him with a sort of serenity, a calm deep in his soul.

  The calm didn’t last long. It never did.

  Slayne ran a hand through his short pale hair and over his scarred face. His senses were still dull from Den’nari brandy, and he was sure that was as much to blame as anything else for the strange dreams he’d had. He reached for the bottle and took a long drink, all but draining it.

  His eyes ran over Carlotta’s smooth naked body. She was a tigress. His back still ached from fucking her so hard, and he felt wounds where she’d clawed him. He ran his hand across her thigh, causing her to stir.

  Bedding whores wasn’t something he normally did, intoxicated or no. He’d actually slept with only a few women over the course of his cursed life, and in fact tended to avoid them whenever possible, though he wasn’t really sure why.

  But for the past week or so things had been different…he’d been different. He craved sex and drink in a way he rarely had before, even in his youth. He wasn’t sure what had come over him but he’d been utterly ravenous, to the point where he was foregoing sleep or training with his Black Eagles so he could seek out women and alcohol.

  As leader of the Black Eagles – a small band of assassins who performed questionable services for the White Dragon Empire – Slayne was well paid, and since material possessions meant little to him he had money to spare. He had no permanent residence, and owned very few belongings beyond his exotic weapons and memorabilia. He sent most of his pay to his daughter: just because she’d chose to ignore the fact that he existed didn’t mean he didn’t feel obligated to take care of her, and making sure she was provided for seemed the least he could do. Slayne had coin to spare even with the meager portion of his pay he kept for himself, and this week he’d decided to spend it all on whores. It had been worth it.

  His stomach growled. Slayne had already consumed a huge portion of fried ham and potatoes downstairs before he and Carlotta had retreated to his room, but he suddenly felt like he hadn’t eaten in days.

  He quietly slipped out of bed, shivering naked in the cold, and crossed to the window as he picked his clothes up off the floor. The sun had just set, and through the window he saw Ebonmark’s moonlit streets. Thunder peeled in the distance, and Slayne smelled rain and electricity, the promise of a coming storm. He dressed, his mind elsewhere.

  It had been a hectic few days. With the threat of the Black Guild removed from Ebonmark, Blackhall had finally been able to move his tower into the city so he could firmly establish control. There had been incidents…there were always incidents. Remnants from the Guild and the Phage had formed pocket militaristic resistance intent on making life difficult, and both the Black Eagles and the White Dragon regulars had spent the better part of a week hunting those criminals down and eliminating them. It was bloody work, and it wasn’t yet finished, but for the moment things were as they should have been in Ebonmark – the Jlantrians were in charge, and the criminal element had been driven back to the shadows.

  There were other problems. They still hadn’t found the amulet the Empress had sent them there to retrieve in the first place, and Gess concluded it was with the remains of the Phage lord Harrick, somewhere at the bottom of the River Grey. Worse, more than a few of Slayne’s enemies had survived the purge of the city’s criminal element. The Guild woman, Vellexa, was of small consequence, though it still irked him that she’d managed to escape. She and her mysterious werewolf savior had disappeared during the battle in Black Sun, but Slayne was confident she’d be swept up along with the rest of the Guild’s trash over the next few days. If he decided to press the issue Slayne had her son under lock and key at the Castle Street Orphanage, just to make sure she had reason to stay in the city. Getting her son to safety had been part of her compensation for leading the rest of the Black Guild into a trap, but revealing where her son was located had never been a part of the dea
l.

  Maybe I should kill the little bastard, just to teach her a lesson.

  But the real threat was Azander Dane. It had come as little surprise to Slayne to learn that Dane was still alive, but Slayne took some solace in the fact that his own presence had come as a shock to the fallen Dawn Knight. Azander had escaped again, and so far as Slayne was concerned tracking him down took precedence over finding the Empress’s trinket or working with Argus and Gess to locate the Skullborn.

  Three years ago Slayne had tried to kill Azander Dane. His failure to do so haunted him, and until Dane was dead neither Slayne nor his late wife would be at peace.

  Once he’d dressed Slayne left Carlotta asleep in the room – he’d hit her up for another round later – and walked down the narrow upstairs hall of the Ogre’s Vest. It was one of the last reputable inns in Ebonmark, a place that until recently had been run by the Black Guild but had since fallen into the hands of an enterprising young Allaji woman named Rashanna. Though the ownership had changed the services remained the same, and down in the smoke-filled main room dozens of scantily clad and exotic-looking women danced and flirted and frolicked with any man or woman who looked of meager enough means to employ their private company. Most of the men frequenting the establishment were merchants from out of town or off-duty soldiers who gambled and drank while the nubile displays of flesh milled between the widely spaced tables. A pair of minstrels sat on a small stage in the corner playing a fast-paced folk song called “The Winds of Yesterday”; the music was fine, but the singer was completely botching the lyrics.

  Slayne made his way to the bar, eying the girls greedily. He considered paying another whore to join he and Carlotta, and he started to get stiff just thinking about it.

  He spied Toran Gess, seated in the corner and quietly sipping from a large mug. A plate of sausages sat before Gess as he watched the ladies of the Ogre’s Vest with a scrutinizing eye. Slayne ordered a beer and nonchalantly walked over, fighting through the burning haze of tobacco and sharp alcohol to go and seat himself across from the Veilwarden.

  “Are you supposed to be out of bed?” Slayne asked him. “You look terrible.”

  Gess wore a thick bandage wrapped around the stump of his right wrist where Dane had taken his hand. He was a pale and frail-looking man to begin with, but he looked so sallow in the inn’s murky light he might have been a corpse. He shook, ever so slightly, as he knifed a sausage and brought it to his mouth. Gess had short and clean-cropped brown hair and always wore simple grey clothing, and his angular cheekbones and hollow eyes lent him an alarmingly skeletal appearance even when he was healthy.

  “I’ve been better,” Gess admitted after he swallowed a bite. “I feel more alive than I did yesterday.” Veilwardens didn’t possess the healing powers of Bloodspeakers – Slayne already knew that was how Ijanna had survived her theft of the thar’koon blades even though he’d struck her squarely in the back with a ring’tai – but they were resilient, and capable of surviving incredible trauma.

  Too bad the Veil can’t grow you a new hand, Slayne thought.

  “So,” he said as he stole a sausage from the plate. It was so greasy it nearly slipped away, and was scalding to the touch. “You decided to treat yourself to a night on the town? Interesting choice of locale…”

  “I could say the same to you,” Gess laughed. “I never knew you were such a lecher.”

  The sausage was disgusting, nine-tenths grease and one-tenth meat, and just one bite curdled Slayne’s stomach. He tossed it back onto the plate in disgust. A gorgeous woman with luxuriously long blonde hair passed near the table, her loose and nearly translucent green dress doing little to conceal her ample curves. Her top was cut low enough that Slayne could see the outline of her thick nipples, and her bared stomach glistened with sweat and oils. She smiled as Slayne’s eyes moved over her.

  “Getting greedy, aren’t you?” Gess said with a grin. “Don’t you already have one waiting for you upstairs?”

  The girl kept walking. Slayne sighed.

  “So what are you doing here, Toran?” he asked. “I know you came looking for me, and clearly this isn’t a social call.”

  “That hurts,” Gess said in his nasally voice. “It’s true, but it still hurts.” He smiled smugly. “You’re going to be taking a break from hunting the criminal scum of Ebonmark.” He glanced at the blonde. “And whores.”

  “Damn. And just when I was beginning to enjoy it.”

  Gess took another bite of sausage.

  “You don’t look like a man who enjoys much of anything,” he said.

  “That’s probably true,” Slayne said with a nod. “You, on the other hand, seem to enjoy everything a little too much. So what’s going on?”

  “As you might have guessed,” Gess said once he took a drink, “my current physical state means I won’t be directly involved with the hunt for Kala.”

  Slayne gave him a questioning look.

  “Should we be talking about this here?” he asked.

  “Oh, probably not,” Gess said with an off-handed smile, but he kept talking anyways. “As I was saying, I’m not likely to be going. Even with magic holding me together I’m in no state to deal with her or any of those maniacs she’s associated herself with. I will, however, still act as liaison between your team and the people back in Ral Tanneth.”

  The song switched to “The Sun Never Sets”, a slower tune which made the girls dance slower and more sensuously, much to the delight of the crowd. Slayne reached out and grabbed a serving girl by the wrist. She was pretty, with sapphire eyes and braided dark hair, and even though she was obviously very young she had a woman’s shape.

  “Could I get some ale and some food?” he asked. He pointed at Gess’s plate of sausages. “Anything but that.”

  “How about some stew?” she smiled.

  How about you? Slayne wanted to say, but he nodded.

  “That’ll be fine.” He admired the girl’s figure as she walked away.

  “Are you on a binge?” Gess laughed.

  “It certainly seems that way…” Slayne said with a shake of his head. What the hell has gotten into me? “So is Argus going to send another Veilwarden along in your place? I won’t go up against Kala without some magic of our own.”

  “You’ll have magical support,” Gess said. “That’s what I need to talk to you about. Argus is assembling a team.”

  Slayne shrugged and turned to look for his food, but after a moment Gess’s words sank in.

  “Wait…I thought we were using the Black Eagles, plus a Veilwarden…”

  “That was the original plan,” Gess said with a nod. “But things have changed. Argus doesn’t feel the Black Eagles will be enough to handle Kala and the Cabal agents she’s bound to have with her, and no disrespect to you and yours but I tend to agree with him. There’s also the matter of the Dream Witch to consider.”

  “I handled her just fine before,” Slayne said in a near growl.

  “Yes,” Gess said sharply. “You thought you’d killed her, gave her your best shot, and yet she lived. She’s extremely powerful, Marros, and Kala is even more powerful. And that’s why your Black Eagles will be accompanied by a team of bounty hunters hand-picked by Argus and myself. They’ll be ready in a few days. Once they are, the mission will be underway.”

  The serving girl brought Slayne his stew and a large mug of ale. She smiled at him, but Slayne was no longer in the mood, and the look he gave her made clear he wanted her to leave. When she was gone he chugged the ale down without taking a breath and slammed the tankard on the table.

  “Bounty hunters, eh?” he said with an angry smile. “People we can trust. Good.”

  “Don’t concern yourself over them,” Gess said. “Just worry about Kala.”

  “Who are they?” Slayne asked.

  “Who?” Gess asked as he speared another sausage.

  “Argus’ team…”

  “A Veilwarden named Razel, and a few others,” Gess said with a shr
ug.

  Slayne took a bite of stew. It was hot and thick, and the meat and potato juices ran down his throat.

  “Does Aaric know?” he asked between bites.

  “Yes,” Gess said. “And before you ask, he’s not happy about it, but there’s not much he can do since this mission has nothing to do with him. The good Colonel needs to worry about finding the Bloodheart Stone.”

  “The what?”

  “The amulet we were supposed to get from the Phage,” Gess said. Slayne angrily ate his food. He felt the Veilwarden’s eyes on him. “Marros, what exactly is the problem?” Gess asked.

  Slayne finished his stew and pushed the bowl aside. The song had changed back to a faster tune, “The Dragon’s Gambit”. Half-nude girls kicked their heels and danced on some of the larger tables, encouraged by raucous laughter, hand-clapping and shouts. He felt the air stiffen around him, and the noise faded – Gess’s eyes glowed red for a moment as he finished casting the enchantment that would allow them to carry on their conversation so they could actually hear one another.

  “I think Dane is looking for the Dream Witch,” Slayne said.

  “That’s unlikely,” Gess sighed. “The Black Guild is all but gone. All we have left to do is clear out the last few men here in the city and locate the Iron Count. Why would Dane try to fulfill an obligation to an organization that can no longer pay him?”

  “I don’t know,” Slayne said. “It’s just a feeling.”

  “Do you think Dane is skilled enough to find her?” Gess asked.

  “Yes,” Slayne said without hesitating. “He’ll find her.”

  “Then we’ll find him,” Gess said matter-of-factly. “But if you’d hoped to go after him first, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. Kala is our main concern. Dane can wait.”

  Slayne realized he was shaking, though he wasn’t sure if it was from fear or anger. He tried to steady himself, and hoped Gess hadn’t noticed.