Path of Bones

by Steven Montano

  A third individual joins them and stands equidistant from them both and just ahead of the sealed tower doors. The thin Den’nari man’s chocolate skin is painted with sharp runes and twisted coils, and his loose purple cloak flutters in the bone-cold breeze. Unlike the Skullborn he move freely. He turns and regards the tower’s charred spines and black stone skin.

  I’ll destroy you, Kala says to them both. Her words frost in the air.

  Ijanna tries to free herself, but when she breathes the Veil nothing comes out but a wheeze.

  The man steps up to Kala and runs ringed fingers across her cheek. Her eyes close and her body slowly drifts up from the ground, floating, as she’s rendered unconscious inside the dream.

  Ijanna Breathes again. This time she feels something give – a shift in the air, a slight pulse, like she’s moved whatever holds her in place. She struggles. Something burns against her muscles and her ears pop as if from pressure, but she moves, ever so slightly.

  The stranger watches Kala, and Ijanna feels his defenses slipping. She hardens her mind, focuses on the space around her body, and hammers her invisible restraints from within.

  The barrier shatters. Ijanna falls forward, and pain sears through her chest like a blade thrust into her heart.

  She tries to pull away, to fall out of the dream, but the man holds onto her somehow. Darkness breathes into her.

  Ijanna peers through the golden shadows and sees that Kala is gone. The Den’nari man watches her with a cold but angry expression.

  That was unwise, he says. I could have stopped all of this, but you distracted me and allowed her to escape. Now she’s awake, and the moment has passed.

  Release me, Ijanna says.

  You have power, the man says. But no discipline.

  Something tugs at her mind, like fingers pressed against her brain. His deep eyes drown her. Ijanna struggles, and terrible hurt cleaves through her body. She writhes and screams and falls away

  Sixty-Four

  and was back in the room. The heat was so thick she could barely breathe. Sounds fell in around her, cries of alarm and combat. She was dizzy, and her face was bathed in sweat. The door was open. Dawn’s early light spilled into the ruined hovel.

  How long had she been in Kala’s mind? How long had it taken her to escape?

  Ijanna stood up, but her dizziness almost sent her back down again. Her stomach churned with nausea, and she had to steady her hand against the wall. Her vision was blurry.

  They had to get out. She stumbled forward, intent on finding Kath and Gilder and warning them that Kala was insane, that she and her allies sought power to start their own Rift War all over again…

  But it was too late. She heard a muffled cry and smelled blood in the air. A dark figure stood in the doorway: Drazzek Ma’al, the Allaji warrior, his raak’ma brandished. Two black-clad mercenary soldiers stood at his back with shackles held ready.

  There was no escape.

  Sixty-Five

  Something was happening at the center of the ruined city.

  Dane and Kruje penetrated the breached outer walls and used Corinth’s leaning towers as cover while they worked their way through the network of broken buildings. The clouds melted away, and sunlight spilled down from the pale red sky.

  The slave’s work songs had rang loud all through the night, and though they faded as the sun rose the ruins still bustled with activity. Dane and Kruje kept out of sight. The north end of Corinth was a maze of decaying roads and building husks. The sprawling necropolis spread for miles, and the air buzzed with flies and dripped with heat.

  The knight and the giant navigated rubble-strewn lanes and circumvented gaping craters. Kruje was surprisingly adept at hiding and moving silently in spite of his great size. The giant found a discarded lance (which in his hands was the equivalent of a spear), and some spare tent material from one of the abandoned camps at the edge of the city allowed the Voss to cover himself a loincloth so he wasn’t exposing his black-skinned body to the world.

  They moved as fast as they could. Whoever occupied Corinth had focused their forces at the southern end, and it took Dane and Kruje some time to circle around and find an unguarded area. Exhaustion pushed Dane on, and his eyes were filled with the gum of fatigue.

  Kruje seemed more apprehensive than normal, but he motioned for them to keep moving. Dane wondered why the giant was suddenly so driven to find Ijanna, and part of him worried that Kruje knew more than he was letting on.

  They stayed hidden behind crumbling walls and makeshift barricades. Towers had fallen into ruin and blocked the way, so they had to move through a hollow temple dedicated to obscure Galladorian heroes and sneak through the skeletons of granaries and silos. Bone dust covered the ground, the pulverized remains of the thousands who’d perished when the Voss’s Veilcrafted machines exploded and blanketed the Empire with soiled flames.

  Dane tasted the icy chill of magic in the wind, and realized the Red Hand was in Corinth. His chest seized up with painful memories. He hadn’t been near those outlaw Bloodspeakers since the camps, but the way they used the Veil was easy to recognize by one who’d been exposed to it. There had to be close to a dozen of them, and the swelling of cold he sensed meant they were Breathing even as he and Kruje approached. He’d heard of ritual castings that Malath Zayne had perfected, a way of joining their efforts so powerful effects could be created without any individual expending too much of his own life force.

  They heard fighting in the distance. Chairos was still in the city, and he and his Blood Knights and Phage mercenaries seemed to be giving the occupiers of Corinth a real battle. Steel and shouts rang into the sky, but it was difficult to tell where in the ruins the skirmishes were actually taking place.

  He and Kruje kept low and moved fast. They were close to the center of Corinth.

  They saw a battle in the distance, and for a moment sunlight played off of white and blue armor. Jlantrians.

  What the hell is going on here?

  Dane sensed the thar’koon. He and Kruje would avoid the fighting as long as they could until they found it, and her. Whatever Ijanna was there for, Dane vowed he wouldn’t let her fall into Mazrek Chairos’ hands.

  They found a building shell that gave them decent cover and a good vantage of a wide section of the city, and from there they watched a number of small melees unfold. The Phage descended on Corinth’s defenders like a pack of hunting dogs; they were hopelessly outnumbered, but they had Chairos’ magic to support them. The mercenaries moved fast, sending Blood Knights to flank and slit throats while the regular Phage soldiers hammered the enemy with arrows and spears from the cover of nearby buildings. Corinth’s defenders – a strange blend of Jlantrian regulars and well-armed mercenary forces comprised of face-chained Raithians and battle-hardened swordsmen out of Blackmoon – would give pursuit and find themselves harangued, surrounded, cut down and then left with no one to fight as the Phage retreated into the shadows. The guerilla tactics were working, and even though the men defending the ruins should have had the terrain advantage they seemed incapable of dealing with Chairos’ men.

  Who’s occupying Corinth? Dane wondered again. He wasn’t certain he really wanted to know the answer.

  The fighting moved further up the road, closer to the city’s core, where the drone of magic and raging flames burned brightest. Sweat trickled down Dane’s face and under his armor, and Kruje’s strong and meaty odor bore down on him like a slaughterhouse. Dane kept expecting them to turn the corner and come face-to-face with an enemy force, and he wondered if they shouldn’t be looking to make allies with whoever it was battling Chairos, though for all he knew that was the Red Hand.

  That would make sense, he thought. Ijanna is a powerful Bloodspeaker, and if she was in the camps…

  He tried not to think about that. He still wasn’t sure what he’d say to Ijanna when he found her, how he’d convince her he was there to help.

  They came upon a crossroads where magic and metal had und
one a group of defending troops with brutal efficiency. Over a dozen bodies lay strewn across the shattered road, their skin charred black and their sticky remains oozing into the cracks in the road. Smoke from the corpses billowed across their path. The dead wore Jlantrian armor, and some of them still clutched the broken remnants of their weapons.

  He and Kruje kept moving. Dane felt driven by purpose. The Veil had purged him of the wolf sickness, had brought he and this giant together. He’d lived through his personal ordeal in the mountains, had survived the battle beneath Ebonmark. There had to be a reason for it all.

  What are you doing? he asked himself. You don’t believe in this, in fate, in the One Goddess’s will. You’ve seen too much, done too much to be this naive.

  Maybe he was deluding himself. Maybe the circumstances that had brought him there were nothing more than blind and stupid luck. Maybe it was his curse to keep on living even though he didn’t deserve to. But he wouldn’t believe that.

  Not today. Today I have to believe I’m here to do something right.

  Kruje, too, seemed intent on finding Ijanna, and Dane wondered what had happened to change things. He hadn’t gotten the impression that the Voss had much of a clue as to what was happening, and that he was there solely because of Dane, but now he wasn’t so sure. The giant had seen something, maybe learned something from Chairos that had motivated him.

  They came into the shadow of a low and broken building not far from the middle of Corinth.

  “Kruje,” Dane said. The giant leaned close. The Voss’s skull was nearly the size of a hogshead, and his eyes were as big around as Dane’s balled fists. Kruje knelt down so they were at eye level, and sweat dripped from his bald head. “Thank you,” Dane said in Vossian, the words strange and scratchy on his tongue. “You’ve been a friend.” He wasn’t sure how much the giant would understand. “You don’t have to come with me.”

  Kruje watched him carefully. His eyes were almost pure white, like a pair of glowing moons, and the dark runes on his skin seemed to run like quicksilver.

  “You don’t have to go,” Kruje said, using small and simple words so Dane could understand him. “We can leave. We can live.”

  Dane’s chest heaved. He felt tears in his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t live.” He looked into the city. “Not like this. Not anymore.” He had to set things right, had to prove to himself he was worth something. Even if he died, at least he could do so knowing he was trying to save a life that wasn’t his own.

  Kruje placed a huge hand on Dane’s shoulder. Though he was gentle it still felt like someone had set a barrel on top of him.

  “Friend,” Kruje said.

  “Friend,” Dane said with a nod.

  Thunder rang through the sky. He looked through the ruins and saw the flames grow brighter. Heat haze made the morning air shimmer. Dane pointed down the narrow lane and signaled to Kruje that he would go take a look, and that the Voss should wait. Kruje didn’t seem to like the idea, but after a moment’s hesitation he nodded his reluctant ascent.

  Dane navigated past collapsed towers and shattered statues. Red mist clung to the ground, and the air was thick with the stain of magic and the sounds of battle as he pushed on towards the heart of the city.

  Sixty-Six

  Kala kicked Gilder in the stomach. The pale Bloodspeaker’s scarred face was drenched in blood, as Gallaean and his men had been beating the Red Hand emissaries since the middle of the night.

  Thunder rattled the windows of the darkened manor. Much of the floor in the lower level was covered with gore that had dried over the course of several hours, and the air was damp with piss and fear. Kala paced around the room. Her black lions sat quietly at the top of the steps, magically attuned to her will. Silence and Phantom were still young but they were loyal and powerful, and they’d ripped creatures to shreds by her silent commands on more than one occasion.

  Gallaean’s men held Gilder down while his arms were bound behind his back. Three more Bloodspeakers cowed on the floor, their mouths hidden behind tight gags to prevent them from Breathing the Veil. That trick alone didn’t work, not truly, but Kala had spent most of her life researching her weaknesses, learning how best to defy and survive where others failed, and she’d discovered years ago that her own limitless reservoir of Veil energies could suppress the magic of other Bloodspeakers. She held them in the grip of her power, sensed their hearts beating hard against their ribs, practically tasted the iron in their dark blood.

  Gallaean planted his foot on Gilder’s back and pushed him onto his face. Kala knelt down and stroked the man’s blood-matted hair.

  “Poor man,” she said to Gilder. “You came seeking an alliance, and instead you got me. I’m glad you came, though.” The skin over his right eye was so swollen he could barely open it, and blood and puss oozed from the wound and pooled onto the floor. “You saved me the trouble of having to hunt down any Bloodspeakers.”

  “You bitch!” one of the other Red Hand shouted, a young man with short dark hair and a face covered in ritual tattoos. “We came here for a common cause!”

  “You came here because I told Malath I sought an alliance,” she said coldly. “It was kind of him to have sacrifices so conveniently delivered to my doorstep.” She stood up and walked over the young man, close enough that she could smell the stain of fear on his skin. “If it’s any consolation, you’ll die so I can live.” She smiled, and motioned for Gallaean’s men to gag the youth before he tried anything foolish.

  Crogas the Red barreled down the stairs and into the wide room. Golden sunlight spilled through the scorch-stained windows. The Drage’s loose tunic displayed his gnarly and hairy chest and Galladorian skin runes, and sweat dripped down his bald pate and into his beard.

  “I thought we were waiting until morning to take them,” he said with his usual sneer.

  “They tried to enter my dreams,” Kala said. “It was that Skullborn bitch who came to the city with them.”

  “We should have seen that coming,” Crogas said angrily. “Just her?”

  “No, there was another,” Kala said, and doubt gnawed in her stomach. They were so close, but everything was happening too fast. “A Den’nari male, or at least that was how he appeared in the dream. “

  “Probably one of those same silly bastards attacking us right now,” Gallaean said. He stamped down on Gilder’s ankle as he lay there on the ground, and the Bloodspeaker howled through his gag and writhed in pain. “The Phage.”

  “Maybe,” Crogas said. “They’re putting up quite a fight. Your men are having trouble with them,” he said to Gallaean. “Do we have all of the Red Hand?”

  “We will,” Gallaean said. His brown hair was unbound, and both it and his chiseled and angry face were streaked with blood that wasn’t his. His priest’s raiment was soaked through. “Drazzek is out collecting them now.”

  “How many do we have?” Kala asked.

  “Nine. We could use the last four.”

  “And the woman,” Kala said, but she nodded her satisfaction with Gallaean’s answer. They needed one Bloodspeaker per Scarstone, but they were close now, so close. They could contact Ghul and link their forces to Crinn’s army under Ironclaw Keep, but if they had the necessary sacrifices on hand they wouldn’t need to. Crinn’s legions were needed to hold Chul Gaerog, not seize it – Kala could do that on her own, and soon. Her blood ran hot with excitement.

  It’s going to happen, she thought.

  Several of Gallaean’s men – scarred and rugged ruffians in dirty chain and leather armor, all armed with broadswords like their priest-captain – came storming into the manor through the upstairs door, past Kala’s open chambers and down the stairs with a large prisoner held between them. He was a handsome lad with a chiseled face and scruffy brown hair; bruises and cuts colored his stony jaw. He wore battered leather armor, and judging by the bags under his eyes he seemed not to have slept for weeks. They held his shackled arms and punched him the kidneys as
they brought him to the bottom of the stairs. He glared at Kala with unmistakable hate.

  “That’s no way to look at your Princess,” she said with a smile.

  “You’re no Princess,” he said. “You’re nothing.”

  Kala ignored him and looked to the top of the stairs, where the real prize waited.

  Her resemblance was uncanny. This woman came from an entirely different part of the world and was of exotic heritage – Den’nari and Allaji, if Kala recalled – and her base-born biological parents were as different from Kala’s pure Jlantrian birth as one could get. Yet even with variations in their skin tone and hair color she and the Dream Witch almost could have been sisters – they had the same almond eyes, the same proud nose, the same aquiline jaws and full lips. Looking up at that other Skullborn was like staring into a distorted mirror.

  Ijanna Taivorkan was bound and gagged and bleeding from a cut over her left eye. Even in that state her gaze sparkled like rubies and blood. Her expression was defiant as Drazzek led her down the stairs and into the sandstone chamber.

  “Welcome, Sister,” Kala said quietly. “It’s nice to meet you in the flesh. I’ve heard so much about you.” She stepped close. Ijanna stood defiantly. She was a full head taller than Kala, but she was cowed by the Princess’s power. Even though it took extended effort on Kala’s part she found she could suppress even Ijanna’s magic, and after a moment panic and understanding dawned in the Dream Witch’s eyes. There was no question as to which one of them was more powerful.

  “You came here for help, didn’t you?” Kala asked her sweetly. “I’m sorry. There’s no help for you here. But you can help me.” She smiled. “You’re going to die, Ijanna, so that the Janus Tree and the power of the One Goddess can be mine.” She nodded at Gilder, who still lay crumpled and bleeding on the floor. “You won’t be alone. Your friends will also perish, so I can open the way to Chul Gaerog and claim my birthright.”