Path of Bones

by Steven Montano

  Were those his words, Crinn wondered, or the Empress’s? He no longer remembered. A part of him vaguely recalled feeling doubt, both when Azaean had finally explained their true mission and then later, when that first day of blood and screams had finally drawn to a close. He’d looked at the pile of bodies stripped of their clothing and skin: their muscles and frightened faces were naked in the firelight, and some of them still gasped from having been flayed and left to slowly bleed to death in the pits.

  After that, it had only gotten worse.

  Crinn still remembered it clearly, that moment when he’d crossed over from the man he’d been to the monster he’d become. His old life felt so distant now it was like he’d dreamed it. He had a mother and a father, but they’d died when he was very young. He’d received an education in Ral Tanneth’s finest schools, paid for by his family fortune. Crinn had joined the White Dragon Army to become more like his father. Wars, combat, medals and promotions made his corroding heart swell with pride. General…even his father had never become a General.

  And what had he done to deserve this decrepit metal husk? Only what the Empress had asked of him. He’d done his duty, and his Dawn Knights had performed just as he’d ordered them to, not questioning their orders until the very end, when it was already too late.

  He’d learned as a child that life was cruel, that those deserving punishment were often the ones who escaped, that those with power were the ones who always acquired more. A lifetime of work and hardship didn’t entitle you to any special treatment: some people were born to do little more than suffer. The death camps were proof of that.

  Crinn’s body shook violently. His steel fingers clenched tight around the grips of the jagged throne.

  He wasn’t alone. He sensed Jaendrel there, doubtlessly sent to issue more threats on Kala’s behalf.

  Another wave of nausea passed through his body, but Crinn clenched his teeth and fought through it, even as his artificial stomach threatened to release its scant contents.

  The Dawn Knights had ruthlessly carried out the Empress’s orders, and their brutality was equaled only by the fervor with which a few of them ultimately rebelled. The resistance came too late, of course, after that bastard Malath Zayne had discovered the location of the camps and led an assault so he could try and free his fellow black-tongued freaks. The attack had been a failure, and afterward Crinn had ordered the Knights to accelerate their efforts and slaughter the remaining prisoners quickly, to ensure there was no one left to rescue.

  That was when everything went wrong, when Dawn Knights who’d spent days torturing and executing without remorse had finally succumbed to the demons of guilt and decided they’d had enough. That night the man with the black face appeared and passed judgment on the rest of the prisoners, and in a way on the Knights themselves. Crinn had been left in ruin, his body torn and his limbs crushed, a once-great man abandoned to bleed out on a field of flame and ash, only to be born again.

  How many times must you go through this? Jaendrel’s icy telepathic message echoed through Crinn’s skull.

  “Leave me alone…” Crinn said in his hoarse metal voice.

  It fascinates me how you insist on re-living your own pain...

  “Pain is all I have,” Crinn said. He was exhausted and weak, and it took tremendous effort to speak. “I thought you would enjoy it. Isn’t that what your kind does – feed on the pain of others?”

  Crinn still hadn’t opened his eyes, but he felt Jaendrel’s presence settle over the room like a freezing fog. The chill made his flesh cleave to the metal.

  Only on emotional pain, Jaendrel thought, and the Arkan caused more memories to crash through Crinn’s mind.

  Not a week had passed before the White Dragon declared General Crinn and his Dawn Knights renegades and outlaws, murderers who’d taken it upon themselves to attempt genocide on all Bloodspeakers and who’d forsaken their loyalties and duties as servants to the Jlantrian Empire.

  The Empress’s betrayal had been the most unforgivable crime of them all, and by the time word of it reached Crinn’s ears he was little more than a bloody cadaver, barely clinging to life.

  I’ll kill you, bitch, he thought. I’ll tear your Empire down and bury you with it.

  Crinn snapped away from his drug-induced reverie with a hollow metal cry. He tore up and away from the throne and seized Jaendrel by the throat. The hideous face snapped into Crinn’s vision. Arkan were tall but slight, only barely sturdier than humans. Crinn’s iron grip could have easily crushed the creature’s throat, but he just held the dark-skinned and emaciated humanoid suspended in the air.

  Crinn, Jaendrel’s mental voice warned. You know I could kill you with a thought. One mental command and I’ll turn what’s left of your pathetic mind to jelly.

  “I hope that doesn’t kill you, as well,” Crinn growled. “Will my hand close around your frail throat when I die? Will the last thing you see be my ugly face crushing the life from your wretched body? My men would find your husk still held here in my grip.”

  Jaendrel didn’t respond, but just hung there and stared at Crinn with contempt in its foul white eyes.

  How dare you, it thought. We made you. You wouldn’t even have a body if not for the Cabal. You’d be nothing but a legless madman, trying in vain to kill yourself because you can’t come to terms with the fact that you’ve failed so utterly. We gave you this Vossian technology and handed you the Black Guild…

  “I don’t need you,” Crinn said to the Arkan’s face. “I’ve never needed you.”

  We made you!

  “Yes,” the Iron Count said. “I know. And in return, I agreed to lead your forces into battle.” It took effort not to kill Jaendrel – the Arkan had crawled under his skin the moment they’d met – but gradually Crinn released his grip and stepped back. Jaendrel glided to the floor, gasping for breath and grinding its preposterously tall rows of teeth in anger. “Don’t,” Crinn warned, “ever try to feed on me again.”

  Jaendrel gathered itself, and after a moment it lifted a few inches off the ground, holding its long and clawed fingers down at its sides. Its naked torso was the color of burned stone.

  Where is the Dream Witch? the Arkan demanded. We’re running out of time. Kala is excavating the Scarstones as we speak. If we don’t have Ijanna Taivorkan soon…

  “She’s still being tracked,” he said. He let Jaendrel wait for a moment before he went on. While the Arkan might have been able to use its telepathic abilities to do him harm it was incapable of reading Crinn’s mind due to the Vossian technology used to reconstruct his body. “You’ll be interested to know that one of my agents has very detailed information about a party of Jlantrian mercenaries also searching for the Dream Witch…”

  They cannot be allowed to succeed…

  “Let me finish, you twig! They’re searching for her, hoping she’ll lead them to Kala…and by all accounts it seems that’s exactly who Ijanna Taivorkan is looking for, as well.” Jaendrel hesitated, doubtlessly assessing the truth of Crinn’s words. “The Dream Witch is in Gallador,” Crinn continued, “heading towards Corinth. The Jlantrians are close behind her. My own people are several days out, but they’ll be where they need to be when the time is right, I assure you.”

  Jaendrel watched Crinn carefully. Eventually something disturbingly similar to a smile crept across its horrid lips.

  Good, it thought. Good. And what of our soldiers?

  “They’re ready,” Crinn growled.

  There are barely a hundred men outside, Jaendrel thought.

  Crinn strode to the wall, his metal boots stamping loudly on the stone. He ran a hand over the looking glass. The darkness on its face bled to an image of a massive underground hall, a subterranean chamber located under Ironclaw Keep.

  The lower level of the fortress was a single vast room lit by a thousand flaming skulls. Ghul had spent the better part of a year constructing the subterranean complex, which now teemed with activity as hundreds of human and Tuscar me
rcenaries readied for battle. Men hauled crates of weapons and ran combat drills while the barbaric humanoids from the Skull of the World fed their drad’mont and nek’dool mounts. Siege engines – ballistae, mangonels, scorpions, trebuchets, porcupines – lined the perimeter of the enormous iron and rock dome, and massive corridors led off to barracks and storage areas.

  “Satisfied?” Crinn asked.

  Very, Jaendrel replied.

  The war was about to begin.

  Forty-One

  They called themselves the Red Hand, and they were the last people Ijanna expected to find out in the Bonelands.

  She and Kath had pushed the pace for nearly two days. Ijanna used the Veil to heal their wounds, and their spirits lifted with the prospect of finding allies. A partnership with the Red Hand wasn’t bound to last long, but as far as Ijanna was concerned any help was welcome.

  The terrain grew rocky and uneven and the stain of tainted magic thickened the air as they drove deeper into Gallador’s ruins. The land was covered with broken hills and sweeps of thorny stones buried beneath a desert of bones and ash. Though the threat of running into Razorcats or other predators was still very real the fierce desert heat forced Ijanna and Kath to stow their armor.

  One thing they didn’t have to worry about was being burned by the sun, as it was perpetually hidden behind caustic clouds and banks of dark fog. No matter the time of day the land was dark with shadows. They crossed a charcoal waste.

  Ijanna had never been so exhausted in all her life, but she wasn’t about to rest, not now. Malath Zayne was hardly the sort of unstable maniac she wanted to rely on, but having the Red Hand on their side would certainly make her feel better about traveling through the rest of the Bonelands. With any luck she’d be able to convince Malath or this Gilder to help her find the last Skullborn.

  She’ll help me, Ijanna thought desperately. I’ve come too far, given up too much. I’ve put too many people at risk. The chances of Kala being as insane as the Witch Mother were slim, but Ijanna’s chest tightened with anxiety when she thought about actually speaking to the woman – the notion that she might turn out to be just another heartless and power-hungry maniac was too much for Ijanna to bear. She’s out here already, searching for something, and not many are brave or foolish enough to come to the Bonelands. She’s at odds with her mother…that could work to my advantage. That didn’t necessarily mean the woman would be at all receptive to Ijanna’s request for aid, but for some reason the fact that they were both far from home and had willingly ventured into the Bonelands heartened her, even if she wasn’t sure why.

  Guilt weighed heavy on her soul. Ijanna hadn’t told Kath of the third Skullborn’s identity yet, but once they met with the Red Hand that truth would come to the surface. Could she feign ignorance? Should she? Ijanna had already considered the very real possibility that finding Kala was the reason the Hand were out there in the first place – there was no ally Malath’s rebellion would benefit from more than Kala Azaean. The Red Hand had grown considerably in the past ten years, evolving from a small band of angry Bloodspeakers to a sizable group of renegade outlaws.

  Once Malath took over the Red Hand became deadlier than ever. Now they staged open acts of rebellion, targeted prominent merchants and military leaders and magically sabotaged Imperial caravans and businesses. Ultimately Malath wanted nothing short of the downfall of the Empires, and while such an aim was laughably dramatic the man’s ambitions made him dangerous. The Red Hand had nowhere near the personnel or power to accomplish their goal, but one thing Malath had done was forged the men and women he led into an efficient and fearsome fighting force. They carried out small attacks, focusing on trade routes or mining camps in remote regions, and occasionally launched daring daytime raids in the city-states, though they’d pragmatically avoided any direct confrontations with military forces. Despite the Red Hand’s constant activities, not many among the common populace were even aware of their existence – they were simply “The Bloodspeakers”, part of that faceless mass of frightening individuals who most people assumed still served the long-dead Blood Queen.

  So far as Ijanna knew Malath wasn’t aware of the significance of the Skullborn or the prophecy. He was enough of a zealot that there was little question he’d place his own agenda ahead of hers if they appeared to be at odds, and that could lead to problems.

  Still, a group of well-trained Bloodspeakers is nothing to turn your nose up at.

  And that left her with the real problem – how to tell Kath.

  As if the truth of Kala’s identity wasn’t going to pose enough of a problem, Malath Zayne was the man who’d stolen away Kath’s mother and was ultimately responsible for her winding up in the death camps. Ijanna was still unclear as to why Malath had lured her away in the first place, but Kath certainly blamed the Bloodspeaker for his mother’s death, as well he should. Malath might not have delivered the killing blow – he rarely did, from what she understood – but he’d placed her in a situation that had left indelible scars on the Cardrezhej family before they died.

  Just like I did, she thought bitterly, and the knife of regret twisted in her gut.

  Malath had nearly died in the camps himself – Ijanna remembered it clearly. He owed her his life.

  Would Kath willingly work with the people who followed the man he blamed for his mother’s death?

  No. And that’s really a stupid thing to even wonder about.

  She could tell Kath knew something was wrong, but as usual he wasn’t voicing his fears, and for the past two days he’d acted more sullen than usual.

  Can you blame him? He just learned that he lost his family…and they were killed because of me. There were no words she could offer to comfort him, nothing she could say, no way to describe the guilt and pain she felt for knowing she was responsible for his loss. It would make no difference to him even if she could.

  And now she was lying to him again, about so many things. Just adding to his pain.

  We all make sacrifices, she thought. This is his. But he hadn’t embarked on this path willingly: he’d been chosen by the Veil, chosen to suffer.

  Tell him, she told herself. Tell him now. If you wait you’ll only make it worse.

  She watched him as they trudged through the dust and climbed shelves of rock and shale. They were both drenched in sweat, and the vile wind blasted desert heat against their bodies. Everything was dark red beneath the shadowed clouds, the color of bloody meat.

  This isn’t up to you. You have to come clean. The Veil chose him, not you. It bonded him to you, and it did so for a purpose. Kath is here for a reason.

  Ijanna took a deep breath and wondered how she was going to keep him from killing Malath on sight. All he knew was that some of her old allies happened to be close by – she hadn’t told him who they were, and he hadn’t asked.

  She smelled the heat of the wind. It was difficult to gauge what time of day it was due to the thick canopy of clouds. The two of them seemed to walk beneath a sea of boiling shadows.

  Ijanna looked at Kath. Her magic had healed his wounds, which bound him even closer to her. The scars on the outside were gone, but she knew the wounds on his soul grew deeper every day.

  Tell him. Now, before it’s too late.

  She stopped, and after a moment he noticed and turned to face her. His wind-tussled hair was damp with sweat and sticky with dust and grit, and his wide and stony face was set with concern.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. She knew it was the Veil that compelled him to serve, the Veil that had bound him to her, but all it had really done was intensify what he already felt inside. One of the reasons their Veilcrafted bond was so strong was because he felt indebted to her for saving his life, and even with everything that had happened, deep down he still wanted to protect her. He believed in her, even if he didn’t believe in what she was doing. “Ijanna?”

  She looked at him, and though her mouth moved to speak no words came out.

  I can’t.
/>   “I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to catch my breath.”

  Kath watched her for a moment, then nodded.

  “Come on,” he said. “We should keep moving, and catch up with these friends of yours.”

  They carried on in near silence, the journey eerily reminiscent of the first stretch of their trek out of Ebonmark. The hard and uneven ground made the going rough, and soon Ijanna’s ankles burned with pain. Fatigue washed through her body in waves. Sometimes she felt like she couldn’t take another step, but stopping wasn’t an option. It never had been.

  That night they found shelter from the driving wind and lay down to rest. Ijanna’s thoughts were filled with memories of Kath’s family, and of her son. When she slept her dreams were filled with the voices of the unquiet dead. Even in sleep Ijanna couldn’t rest.

  Forty-Two

  On the morning of the third day Kath broke the silence with the dreaded question.

  “So who are these allies of yours?” he asked.

  Ijanna had barely slept. Inky clouds spilled across the sky, and the air was dank and still and smelled of burned meat. The ground was so black their tiny cooking fire seemed to float on an oil sea. Kath cooked a can of beans in an iron pot over the low flames.

  “Some people I met a long time ago,” Ijanna said stiffly. Sweat pasted her dirty blonde hair to her face. She sat up, aching, and slowly donned her armor. She had a feeling she’d need it that day, and it wasn’t a good feeling.

  “That’s…vague,” Kath said. He wasn’t looking at her, just stirring the beans and working a shred of jerky out of his pack.

  Ijanna swallowed. She didn’t want to do this, not now. If only she could avoid broaching the subject for another day…she just needed time to think about what she wanted to say to him, how she wanted to tell him…