Path of Bones

by Steven Montano

  She thought of her son, with his ruffled red-blonde hair and big blue eyes, looking so like his father. He had a smile so broad it seemed to go on forever. She remembered holding him when he was just an infant, just the two of them on a field south of Ebonmark, watching the sun go down and swinging him around like a little hawk about to take flight. His giggles, his laughter, the feeling of life in her arms. He’d been so small, with so much ahead of him, so many possibilities.

  She stifled her tears. She felt so trapped.

  “Cronak,” she said. “How long until we catch up with Slayne? Has he found the Dream Witch yet?”

  Cronak shut his eyes, concentrating.

  “Slayne and the Jlantrians are several days ahead of us, traveling north,” he said.

  “I’ll have Fan’skar prepare his troops,” she said. She shook with fear. Vellexa couldn’t escape the notion that this might have been avoided somehow, that things could have wound up different.

  “They haven’t found her yet,” Cronak said. “But Slayne is confident they will, and soon.”

  “If we can’t get to Ijanna first, we’ll have to take her from Slayne.”

  Vellexa breathed deep and tried to calm her nerves.

  Steady. Calm. You can do this. Everything will work out, one way or another. She’d lived through the death of her husband, found a way to provide for her son when almost anyone else would have given him up. She’d been captured by Marros Slayne and lived to talk about it. You’re stronger than you think.

  Cronak watched her carefully. He was so different now, so alien in his visage and demeanor, but in spite of those changes she was more comforted by his presence than ever before. They’d grown closer, somehow. He watched over her.

  As if he’d been reading her thoughts Cronak quietly walked over and put a warm hand on her shoulder. Even though he was in human form she saw the wolf in him.

  “We’ll save your son,” he said. “I swear it.”

  Vellexa stared into his mirror-like eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I was never much of a friend,” he said after a moment. “But I realize now you’re the only family I’ll ever have.”

  She shook her head. That was more than the old Cronak ever would have said, and she never would have thought him capable of such compassion, even if his tone and manner were distant and cold. She closed her hand around his and looked out at the wasted plains. The silhouettes of armored Tuscars obscured the horizon as they gathered supplies and weapons and readied the drad’monts, which stood as still as leathery stones against the cloth of night. The Black Guild men talked amongst themselves, itching for a battle.

  This can be done, she thought. We can win Kyver’s safety.

  “It’s strange, Cronak,” she said. “When Kyver was a baby he never used to cry.” Cronak watched her in silence. She felt like a fool, standing there and telling him this. “He’s a grown boy now…not yet a man, but soon.” A lump caught in her throat. “And I couldn’t tell you a thing about what he’s like. Nothing at all. I haven’t seen him for more than an hour at a time for months. I hired a nanny to keep him out of trouble, but now he’s too old for that, so he just runs around and raises hell…”

  Tears ran down her cheeks. She should have been surprised when Cronak put an arm around her, should have worried that Fan’skar and his Tuscars and the Black Guild mercenaries would see her at her weakest, but she didn’t care.

  I’ll be strong tomorrow. Tonight, I need to cry.

  Thirty-Nine

  Kyver’s life took a turn for the worse the day the Jlantrians seized him from his posh apartment and turned him into a slave for the Castle Street Orphanage, a dark and dreary two-story building with bars over the windows and iron locks on every door. (“For your protection”, Mistress Kara insisted.) Very little light spilled in from the outside, and the air was sour and dank.

  The other children in the orphanage were nothing like him. They all seemed grey and lifeless, sucked of their will to live. He thought maybe it was because of the food the evil cook Brak prepared, horrible sludge-like porridge and pasty bread that tasted like wet wood. Or maybe it was because they rarely saw the sun, and on those rare occasions when the youthful prisoners were actually allowed outside it was to visit a small yard hedged in by iron fences that blocked out sight of everything but the smallest slice of the sky. Or maybe it was because most of those children, who ranged in age from five to fifteen years, had never known their parents and never would, and those few who did told stories of beatings and abuse.

  The children were complacent, tired and scared. Compared to them Kyver was a blaze of energy, and he’d already found himself taking charge and directing the others to find better ways to spend their days than just sitting around and staring at the walls, reading the same books over and over again and drawing on small chalk slates. They often resented him for daring them to run around, to sing, to try and find a way out of the Orphanage, but he pushed them on anyways. He’d already received one beating for “instigating trouble”, and his back bore painful welts and a couple of scars as a reminder. Mistress Kara promised to use the whip if he acted up again, but he clenched his teeth and told himself he didn’t care. Breaking rules was his way – sitting quietly wasn’t.

  Thin beams of dawn’s light slipped through the shutters and cast the room in a lurid crimson glow. The stone floor was particularly cold that morning, and the air was full with the sounds of runny noses and coughs. Kyver sat quietly in the top bunk of one of the twenty or so beds and surveyed the rest of the wide grey room. The bunks were full to overflowing with children, who sometimes had to sleep two to a bed and four to a bunk. There was only a single door to that dungeon, and it was tall and wide and always locked. The windows were tightly shuttered and reinforced on the outside with thick iron bars.

  Kyver wiped a lick of hair back from his face – it was thin and reddish-blonde, much like his father’s, he’d been told, and he was desperately in need of getting it cut – and looked at Genna, a tall and pretty girl who slept in the bunk below. She was thirteen, just a year older than he was, but she’d turned out to be a wonderful friend, talkative and friendly without being bossy and pig-headed the way girls usually were. Kyver knew for a fact that because he hadn’t expressed any interest in her “that way” Genna had felt especially comfortable around him. The boys who were her age or older always talked about how beautiful she was, and they liked to try and intimidate her by telling her the things they’d do to her if they could get that grey dress off her body, but usually she just laughed at them. She was a full-blooded Jlantrian, with honey-wheat blonde hair and big blue eyes.

  Genna seemed to be only other one there who hadn’t lost her spark of life. She still had hope, still dreamed of being adopted so she could get a normal life. Kyver envied her that…but then he wasn’t there because he was an orphan. Whether Mistress Kara admitted it or not, he’d been placed there because his mother was a criminal.

  She must have made someone very, very angry.

  Kyver held his last personal possession in his cold dry hands: his sketchbook. He’d kept it hidden deep in the folds of the cloak he’d been wearing when he’d arrived. Kyver had enjoyed drawing ever since he was very young. Books didn’t really hold his attention unless they were read to him, and he wrote little aside from silly stories he made up to go with his pictures. The thin leather-bound book only had about twenty sketches in it, but that was because Kyver drew slow, taking his time with little details and paying attention to backgrounds. The book was only a quarter of the way full even though Kyver had been working in it for almost a year. He drew with pieces of charcoal he’d managed to smuggle into the Orphanage, and most of the pictures were of people he saw on the streets or in shops.

  The last image he’d drawn had been special, and though he’d finished it the night before – the shuttered moonlight had been just enough for him to work by – he’d spent most of the morning looking over the piece and touching
up the details.

  It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

  He quietly leaned over the bed and ducked halfway down so his head hovered close to the bunk below. Genna lay on her side, her long hair spilled across the pillow. Her dress was as grey as the sheets, a soft granite hue covered with stains.

  “Genna,” he whispered. “You awake?”

  She slowly turned over and looked up at him, sleepy and confused. Faint light bled through the room.

  “What are you doing up so early?” she asked with a smile.

  Kyver held his hand down for her.

  “Come see the sunrise,” he said.

  “Oh, Goddess, you’re worse than a girl,” Genna laughed quietly. She gripped his hand – she was as light as a feather – and he pulled her up next to him on the top bunk. The orphanage was always cold, but her proximity warmed him. They sat cross-legged and faced the shutters of the nearest window as the world outside brightened. “You know you can’t actually see the sunrise from here, right?” she asked jokingly.

  “True,” Kyver said. “But there’s enough light for you to see this.” He held the sketchbook up and set it in her lap. Genna looked at the picture and nearly blushed. It was a black and white rendition of her profile, standing before rolling hills with the sunrise behind her. Dark birds fluttered against the sky, and she wore a white gown. “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “I love it,” she said with a smile. Something inside him melted. “You’re not going to ask me to marry you now, are you?” she said as she jabbed a thumb in his ribs.

  “Don’t worry,” Kyver said. “I wouldn’t marry a friend.” Kyver watched her as she took in the details. That was true joy on her face. He’d learned how to read people from his mother – it was often easy for him to tell if someone was lying, even if they were much older than he was – and he could see that Genna was flooded with emotion over the gift. She hadn’t talked much about her life before Castle Street Orphanage, but he got the impression it had been a long time since she’d had parents, so she probably wasn’t used to receiving presents. Most of the other children there weren’t used to material possessions of any kind.

  Genna looked over at him and smiled, but there was an undercurrent of worry in her eyes.

  “Kyver, where will I keep this?” she asked. “If Mistress Kara or Grunt find out about it…”

  Grunt was Mistress Kara’s assistant. His real name was Gunther, but all he ever did was growl and grunt, and though the nickname had stuck everyone knew if Grunt ever heard them call him that they’d receive a lashing the likes of which they’d never known.

  “I’ll hang onto it for you,” he said.

  “And what if you get to leave here before I do?” she asked with a wry grin.

  “That won’t happen,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked. “You might.”

  “No,” he said. “If anyone might get to leave it’s you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re a good person…”

  “And I’m old,” Genna said quietly. “You haven’t been here long enough to see it, Kyver. No one older than twelve ever gets adopted, unless it’s by some warehouse owner who wants cheap labor or for one of the brothels.” The promise of tears hung in her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll be leaving.”

  After the age of fifteen, she’d told him, the children were taken away, though no one seemed to know what happened to them. Based on what Kyver had seen of Mistress Kara and Grunt he couldn’t imagine they went anywhere scrupulous – his guess was they were sold as slaves to the Black Guild (which wouldn’t be all that bad, considering who his mother was) or to pirates bound for Kaldrak Iyres.

  He wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that everything would work out for the best, but he knew better. Genna had been there almost a year, while Kyver had only resided at the Orphanage for barely a week. His time at Castle Street had already felt like an eternity…he couldn’t even imagine how long Genna’s stay must have felt to her.

  Kyver squeezed Genna’s hand and held it tight. She didn’t say anything, just stared out at the daylight beyond the bars.

  “I wish there was a way I could get everybody out of here,” he said. “You know…escape.”

  It was impossible, of course, and they both knew it. Besides the fact that Mistress Kara and Grunt patrolled the orphanage like pack dogs and never seemed to sleep, the place was locked down tight, a veritable fortress in the middle of the city. To make matters worse, Kyver knew he was being watched, and not just by the orphanage staff – Jlantrian soldiers had dropped him off, and every now and again he saw one on the street outside when he looked out from the window or the yard. They were keeping an eye on him. Sure, they never looked like soldiers, but Kyver had been exposed to enough of his mother’s illicit activities to see things others couldn’t. There were only a handful of them – two men and a woman, apparently working in shifts – and he guessed their job was to make sure he didn’t leave.

  Kyver was young, but growing up in the shadow of the Black Guild had made him wise beyond his years, and he had no illusions as to how precarious his situation was. If the Jlantrians had placed him there it meant he was being used as leverage against his mother, or as bait. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what sort of trouble Vellexa must have been in to have landed him in the Orphanage.

  This story doesn’t end happily, he realized.

  And even if by some miracle Kyver and the other enslaved children actually managed to escape…what then? Kyver had spent plenty of time on Ebonmark’s streets running with youth gangs and living large off of his mother’s influence and reputation, but how far would that carry him if she was in trouble? When he’d been taken the city was on the brink of an all-out crime war, but being in the Orphanage had shielded him from any of the truth of what was happening. For all he knew the Black Guild was gone, the Iron Count was in chains and Colonel Blackhall had taken revenge for all of the soldiers he’d lost.

  My mother might be dead, he realized. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He should have been sad, but for some reason the notion only made him feel empty inside.

  “Are you all right?” Genna asked him.

  The glow through the shutters grew brighter and the other children started to stir, rubbing their eyes and pulling their sheets tight as they shivered against the morning’s cold.

  “No,” Kyver said. “I woke up angry and afraid. I was hoping it would get better.” He tried not to cry. His mother always told him not to cry. It was a sign of weakness, she said. He needed to be strong.

  “Maybe it will,” Genna said. “Get better, I mean.”

  Kyver stared at the tightly sealed window.

  “Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t really believe it. “Maybe.”

  Forty

  Mezias Crinn sat upon the throne of Ironclaw Keep. It was an imposing artifact, with jags of edged bone blackened by funeral flames. The chair stood in a removed chamber Crinn kept sealed except when he needed to use the device to keep himself alive.

  Thin spikes and strong needles pushed up from the throne at the touch of a button, designed to slide into the tiny chinks in Crinn’s solid metal frame. Once inserted the needles injected thaumaturgic drugs into what meat there was left on his body. Those drugs – Crimson Sky, Azure Angel, Coldrazor – did little to relieve his pain but they calmed his raging mind, which was something he desperately needed. He sat, wincing in pain as the spurting fluids made his body convulse. Ripples of light played across his vision, vibrant hues of purple and green.

  He was half-automaton, more Veilcrafted metal than true flesh, and all that was truly left besides parts of his face and skull were his organs and crippled bones, which were held together in a black framework of nigh unbreakable iron, an armored body standing nearly eight feet tall and terrifying to behold.

  I’m a monster, outside and in.

  Horrors from his past flashed before his eyes. He saw the black face smiling from inside the circle of wome
n, their heads bowed low as they awaited their execution. He felt the roaring flames of the death camps, stoked so high the yellow and red smoke seemed to billow straight up to heaven so the One Goddess could smell the carnage. He saw Bloodspeaker corpses piled in the forest, left there mutilated and broken by the stoic Dawn Knights, champions of Jlantria, dutifully doing their Empress’s bidding.

  Without remorse, and without thought. You trained us well, you whore. And then you threw us to the wolves.

  Several hundred Bloodspeakers had been rounded up by the Dawn Knights, acting under Empress Azaean’s orders. Those prisoners were put in chains and carts, their powers (if they even had any) nullified by specially crafted restraints provided by House Red and then taken to the deadly camp Crinn himself had designed. The order to execute them all – Slowly, she’d said, very specific, very deliberate, the command from her lips to his ears, Kill them slowly, General, I want them to suffer – hadn’t come until the prisoners had been secured into tightly guarded buildings, caged pens and covered pits.

  General Mezias Crinn and his Dawn Knights had carried out those orders with cold and calculated efficiency. They starved the prisoners, beat them, raped them, destroyed their spirits and crushed their hope. It wasn’t conduct worthy of the most elite knights the Empire had ever known, but that hardly mattered since so far as they were concerned their prisoners weren’t human, and thus were undeserving of decent treatment. Those Bloodspeakers were agents of the Unmaker, children of darkness, heralds of the Blood Queen and a plague upon the Empire.

  There could be no safety for Jlantria until all Bloodspeakers were dead. Their crime wasn’t what they’d done so much as what they’d planned to do through their subversive imitation of normal people. They’d wormed their way into Jlantrian communities with false smiles and artificial lives, fooling everyone with their normal-looking farms and shops and happy children, when all the while they’d planned to destroy the Empire from within. For that, they deserved to die. Horribly.