Path of Bones

by Steven Montano

  “No,” Argus said. “I’m already prepared to leave.”

  “What…tonight?” Lestarra asked. Argus nodded.

  “How’s that for short notice?” Karn said with a wry grin.

  “I’m sorry,” Argus said. “You know the Empress likes to keep her information tightly bottled.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Karn said.

  “Thank you, Dorvan. I’m having Rasteen assemble the charters and the ledger, and he’ll deliver them to you in the morning.”

  Dorvan nodded to each of them in turn and took his leave, leaving Argus and Lestarra alone. Silence fell over the room like a shroud. It had been a few days since they’d spoken, and none of their last words had been pleasant. Lestarra held him in her steely gaze. For woman so short she possessed great presence and authority, which was part of what had attracted Argus to her in the first place.

  The tension in the air was palatable. Argus set his cloak and boots on the floor next to the bureau while Lestarra watched him.

  “We never had a chance to finish our conversation,” he said at last, no longer able to bear the silence.

  “There didn’t seem to be much left to say,” she said. “I can’t trust you. I want to. I thought I could. But I know that you still think about her.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t want to lie to her – not again – but sometimes the truth was more painful.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s it?” she asked with an edge to her voice. Her eyes were radiant, beautiful. Eyes he’d gotten lost in.

  “What do you want me to say?” he asked. “That I don’t think about her? That the time Razel and I spent together didn’t mean anything to me? That I didn’t want it to end? Because if I said that I’d be lying to you again.”

  Lestarra’s eyes burned through him. She remained calm – Veilwardens were always calm, for that was as much a part of their training as learning to Touch the Veil – but the way she clenched her jaw told him she was fighting the urge to incinerate his skull. He could feel the Veil shift around her, practically tasted the glacial fumes.

  “Well, now you’ll get what you want, won’t you?” she said coldly. “Too bad it was Gess who let slip that she was part of this secret business, and not you.” Lestarra shook her head and wrapped her arms around her body as if fighting off a chill. She smiled viciously. “And now you get to go off on a secret mission together…how exciting!”

  “One thing has nothing to do with the other,” he said angrily. “She was involved in this long before anyone knew I needed to go. I selected her because she’s the best person for the job.”

  “And yet you never told me,” Lestarra said. “Remember that first night we spent together?” she asked quietly. Her hair was tussled, as ever, beautiful in how she never styled or even seemed to care about it, just a wild and fiery mess of explosive red. “I asked you to tell me a story. A story about love…”

  “I do,” he said sadly. “And I told you about her.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that Razel was involved, but I...didn’t want to hurt you.” She looked away angrily. “You have to know I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said again. “You know me well enough to believe that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think I know you at all,” she said.

  She left without another word. Argus stood in silence, feeling like he’d been punched in the chest.

  Damn it.

  After a short time he picked up his pack, donned his cloak and headed for the north tower, where Veilcrafted steel and runic stones would help him prepare a cutgate.

  It was time to gather the hunters.

  Twenty-One

  “I like you,” Kel muttered as he ran his lips up Fon’s leg. “I like the way you smell…”

  Fon laid her head back and sighed. It was cold in the streets of Irontear, but there in Kel’s grimy little house the air was thick with body heat. His room was a shambles, a sweaty box filled with years of accumulated bric-a-brac taken from the women he’d tortured and killed: wedding rings in cloth bags, charm bracelets still crusted with old blood, gold teeth dug from broken jaws, tufts of hair he’d wadded up and used to stuff his pillows. He wasn’t a subtle killer, but he’d somehow managed to stay out of plain sight. The Ripper, they called him, for he always removed the hearts of his victims and stuck them in the corpse’s mouth after he’d fucked them. Usually they were alive for that part, but not always.

  He was going to do the same to Fon, which was exactly why she was there. She’d gone with him willingly, just like his victims always did. Why wouldn’t they? He was a charming man, not too young or too old, with chiseled muscles and a lean face, sparkling eyes and a pleasant voice. He always knew what to say to make a girl blush, and then what to say to make her do more than just blush, but all the while he watched them with poison in his soul, a sick fire that raged day and night, never calming even when he thrust his soiled member inside them, even when they screamed and writhed and called for help as he spilled his seed and plunged his knife in their chests.

  She wanted him to feel the thrill of his horribly deranged act, to allow his senses to reel in that moment before the kill.

  Fon smiled. His tongue worked its way up the smooth stomach of her assumed form. It was a body she usually adopted when she needed to be human, a lithe and athletic female without an ounce of fat and perfectly smooth skin. She was tall, with long legs and short brown hair…just like many of Kel’s other victims. She knew she was his dream come true.

  She felt a moment of pain as he penetrated her – he was quite endowed for a human – but it was soon replaced by waves of pleasure which rippled through her unstable skin. Her species reproduced via much more methodical and infinitely less pleasurable means than humans, and Fon had to remind herself not to enjoy the intimate contact too much.

  Their sweat and breath cast steam over the windows, and soon all she heard were grunts and moans and the creaking bed, flesh slapping on flesh. He held a hand clamped tight around her throat and seemed surprised at her docility, but of course he had no way of knowing she didn’t need her mouth to draw breath, or that the pain he caused was in its own way pleasurable to her, just as all human contact was pleasurable, fascinating in its complex array of sensations and contradictions. She kept her eyes closed, but she saw him perfectly. He watched her hungrily as he thrust his cock in and out, and by the almost pained expression on his face she could tell he was nearly finished – already he reached for his blade at the edge of the bed. It was keen and sharp and his only friend, and he’d use it to finish her the moment he erupted.

  Fon struck first. She felt his blood spray against her inner thighs, watched his eyes bulge in shock and his mouth twist in pain. He tried to pull away, but that only made it worse – tiny spines ripped into his genitals, puncturing the skin like meat hooks. His weapon clattered to the ground and his arms flailed. Red gushed everywhere as his high-pitched screams echoed through the small house.

  The creature called Fon smiled. Her skin flushed grey-green, not truly skin at all but scales. Fon’s eyes went yellow and her hair turned black, and the perfect human teeth stretched into yellow fangs a tiger would envy. Ebon claws as keen as razors pushed from the tips of her fingers.

  She took the Ripper by the throat. He whimpered like a beaten dog.

  “It’s taken me a long time to find you,” Fon said through clenched teeth. Her voice was inhuman, a sound more like breaking glass and stone. “You’ve been a very naughty boy, Kel. They say you’ve killed twenty-three women, and that’s just the ones they found.” She pulled his face close to hers, tightening her grip. His face turned blue. Her immense strength held him suspended off the ground, and with her free hand she reached up and grabbed the ruin of skin and blood that used to be his cock. He cried out in pain, and tears of agony ran from his eyes. “You made a mistake, Kel. Got sloppy. The last one you brought home was the servant of a rich man
’s wife. They were both fond of her, and they’re paying me a great deal of money to bring back proof of your death. They were very specific how they wanted it done.” She bore her fangs and pulled his face to within inches of hers. “I warn you: it’s going to hurt.”

  And it did.

  A cutgate brought Argus to Kel’s house in search of Fon shortly after she’d finished, when she was still drenched in her victim’s remains. Argus gave her a disapproving look as he stood and waited for her to shift form and cleanse herself of gore.

  “Excessive?” he asked.

  “Necessary,” she replied. “Don’t forget, Argus…” She held her hands up to the blood-spattered room and the husk of what had once been a man as he lay dying on the ground. “This is why you and Toran Gess chose me.”

  “Among other reasons,” Argus said.

  They left through the cutgate. Fon took a small box with her, the proof her employer required, which Argus would help her deliver before they went any further. Though Kel had screamed and pleaded as Fon had slowly peeled away his skin, none of the people in the squalid neighborhood bothered summoning the Watch. They’d all known what he was, and they’d heard screams coming from his house before.

  Twenty-Two

  They called him Brutus. His name was one of the only human words his small brain understood, and he knew when it was used that he was meant to respond, just as he knew if he performed well on the battlefield he’d be allowed to eat the remains of those he killed. He was the mightiest of the red-skinned trolls in service to the white-clad masters, who in turn served the woman they called the White Dragon.

  His name was Brutus, and if he killed fast and killed well he was allowed to eat. That was all he needed to know.

  The cold air made Brutus angry and uncomfortable, but that just meant he’d kill faster, because the faster he killed the faster he could feast. He and a number of his brethren trampled across the rocky battlefield. Their wickedly curved swords and black armor made them appear fearsome in the night. Flares of magic light burned high above and cast ghostly illumination across the icy terrain.

  The trolls thundered ahead of the human divisions, rows of men on horseback and ranks of foot soldiers with giant crossbows and strange rock-throwing contraptions. Their enemies charged at them from the other side of the snowy fields, a horde of ugly grey-skinned Tuscars in bronzed armor who swung their lance-swords and howled at the top of their lungs.

  Brutus’ blood pounded through his veins as he raced across the field. He hadn’t expected the battle to come so soon, certainly not before the sun rose, but the burning fires in the red-black sky provided plenty of light by which to kill. The sooner the battle, the sooner the meat, and while Tuscar flesh was tough and tasteless it was nourishing, and there was always plenty to go around.

  In moments Brutus and his trolls came to the front of the melee. Steel crashed against steel and sickening blasts of bone and blood sprayed across the frozen earth. Tuscars fell beneath the troll’s larger weapons in a tide of metal and growls and flesh falling on blades. Brutus took a Tuscar down with a claw and tore off its face, then barreled through another with his gigantic claymore.

  Enormous stones flew through the air and came crashing down to smash the grey-skinned enemy into the snow, which steamed red and black with blood and splattered remains. Chunks of ice and body rained around Brutus as he cleaved a Tuscar’s skull in two. Another charged at him, and Brutus slashed through its chest with his armor’s shoulder blades, then swung around and cut two more down with a single blow. A blade punched through his side, but Brutus ripped out his attacker’s throat with one hand while he pulled the weapon from between his ribs and angrily threw it to the ground.

  Brutus lost time: the combat became a blur of motion. Cuts riddled his body, but the wounds healed almost instantly. He was a torrent of violence, hacking and clawing and kicking until his powerful muscles ached and he was covered with his enemy’s blood.

  He was sad it ended so quickly. The bodies of the fallen sank into the snow and blood froze into pools of oily sludge. Human soldiers walked the ridge to the south, shivering and talking as Brutus and the other trolls knelt and greedily devoured their reward. Tuscar remains smoked in the cold and gore covered the red giants up to their elbows. Sharp fangs and oversized jaws greedily slurped and gnawed on opened torsos and dismembered limbs.

  A black-cloaked human stood with one of the soldiers at the edge of the battlefield. The newcomer looked familiar, but Brutus wasn’t sure why. They both watched him, and before long they approached.

  Brutus knew it was good to be singled out, because it meant he’d have the chance to earn more food.

  Twenty-Three

  A vista stood at the edge of the bone-white desert. Pools of vein-blue water and bursts of orange flame dotted the pale landscape. The night was as brittle as ice.

  He watched as she struggled across the wastes, her feet sinking in frozen sand. Her blue dress trailed behind her, tattered and stained with blood. Streaks of white ran through her otherwise dark hair, and her skin was flushed with exhaustion. A flat blue moon hung low in the sky, the one constant Jar’rod included in every dreamscape he created.

  He was a formless presence in that world, a roaming cloud of near invisible vapor which harried her like a flock of malevolent birds. She looked back as she fled, aware of a pursuer but unable to see him. The more terrified she was the faster she ran, and the faster she ran the clumsier she became.

  Frankly he was disappointed. In the waking world she was a courtesan of some import, an influential woman with many connections and more influence than many gave her credit for, but here she was a frightened lamb, easily cowed.

  Jar’rod supposed he’d gone too far, as he often did. For a woman who’d made it her business to conceal her thoughts and feelings her dreaming mind had been far too easy to penetrate, and he’d tailored the dreamscape to play upon her every fear: wide-open spaces, loud noises, even an irrational aversion to the color blue. Her reactions had been mundane – fear, flight, panic – and nothing like what he would have expected based on her reputation. Jar’rod decided he’d give her a little bit more time before he broke off the pursuit.

  Something tugged at the edge of his thoughts, an intrusion which breached the vaporous edge of the pocket realm he’d crafted in the dream reality, a place kept alive by the minds of sleeping creatures all over Malzaria. He analyzed the motion for a moment, read the dweomer lines for traces of the presence, and realized this new being wasn’t an intruder but a visitor, and that the push on his domain was a request for access.

  With a thought Jar’rod collapsed time inside the dream, freezing his prisoner in place so he could focus his attention on the power at the fringe of the demi-realm. It was rare for him to receive visitors. Few Veilwardens had the patience or talent to practice dae’vone, the art of manipulating dreams, and most didn’t believe the realm existed at all. The notion of a tangible world conjured by the collective subconscious of Malzaria’s minds was a frightening possibility – what defined it, what kept it from collapsing, and to what extent did events in that quasi-realm affect what happened to a person in the real world? Jar’rod left the theories and debates to the classrooms while he experimented and learned.

  His consciousness circled the desert, swirling close to the fused glass edge of crafted reality. He analyzed the disturbance in the shell, tried to identify the source, and when he did he smiled, for that presence could only mean one thing.

  It’s time for the real test to begin. Jar’rod had been honing his skills in the dreamscape for years, spending countless hours researching and building his power. Now it was time to put that power to some use.

  Jar’rod released himself from the dream and took his experiment with him, easing her out of his private domain slowly so as not to melt her consciousness from the shock of transition. There was no need to destroy the minds which preserved the very life-force of the world he found so fruitful. She’d wake with a ter
rible headache, but she’d recall little of the experience save for a vague and fleeting dread, as if she’d had a normal nightmare. Once she was gone Jar’rod ebbed out of the cold blue realm.

  A shiver ran across his body as he woke. Electric pain rushed through his mind. Among the shockingly small number of so-called “dream mages” he was considered the most practiced and powerful, largely due to how frequently he plied his unique craft, and even with his experience it was difficult to shift smoothly from the dreamscape to the waking world.

  Jar’rod blinked and stretched his arms. His skin was flawless, much darker than most Den’nari because he was a baseborn from the coast, a descendant of tribal warriors and slaves whose chocolate-colored flesh cast them as stark opposites to their pale and ancient enemies in Allaj Mohrter. His toned muscles were covered with glyphs, sigils and the tattooed tale of his family line, and his body was layered with sweat even though the Veil energies he grabbed onto as he returned to a waking state turned his insides cold as ice.

  It was more difficult for him to recover from the draining effects of Touching the Veil than it was for others, but that was to be expected given the bizarre nature of his powers. All his life had been about making sacrifices. He’d sold every scrap of trust and goodwill he’d ever earned in order to learn the secrets of magic, but Jar’rod knew it was worth it, for there in the dreamscape he was practically a god.

  The mystic sat cross-legged on the floor of his tent in a pilgrim’s camp just outside the holy city-state of Urag Kesh, a place he normally detested but was forced to endure from time to time so he could make contact with those still bound by the trappings of polite society. Though his business was done he’d promised Toran and Argus he’d remain in the area so they could find him when it was time to begin the hunt.