The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “Depends if it’s been exposed to water.”

  “Remember the grates? Think twenty-five years is long enough?”

  Zera grinned.

  Keeping to the trees, they crept parallel to the wall until they spotted a culvert. Sure enough, the grate that had been welded so proudly into position was riddled with rust. Even from here, Kreya could see the red-brown flakes on broken bars.

  “Not one single guard is watching their weak point,” Zera said. “I’m embarrassed for them. Honestly, how do they look themselves in the eye as their take their pay when they’re doing this shoddy a job? If it weren’t utterly against my interests to do so, I’d report them.”

  “We still proceed carefully. Stupid to survive the monsters and get taken out by a kid with an itchy bow-finger. Come on.”

  Together, they used stealth talismans to slip across the open stretch to the grate. Kreya didn’t hesitate to wade into the river. Here, it was knee deep, and the chill bit her skin. River water swirled around her shins. The low arch shielded them from view.

  Carefully keeping the hem of her coat out of the water, Zera picked her way over the rocks. She squatted on one rock and peered at the grate.

  “Definitely rusted,” Zera whispered. “Break it?”

  Kreya shook her head. Breaking it would be too loud. Even the most inattentive guard would hear that. She mimed swimming under it, as an alternative to bashing through it.

  “Fine. We do it the boring, careful, wet way. You know, you used to be fun.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. You weren’t.”

  Zera shed her coat and handed it to Kreya, along with an empty pack. She then swam under the grate. Pushing the coats and packs through the holes in the grate, Kreya then swam under it as well. On the other side, Kreya shivered.

  Checking the wall—the sparsely posted guards were still unaware—they shared speed talismans and sped away from the wall across the plains. As she ran, wind whipped against her, chilling her wet skin and flinging droplets of water behind her. She was like horizontal rain, defying gravity as she sped over the plains.

  Kreya felt a burst of joy. We’re here! Jentt, we did it!

  Three miles from the wall, beyond the limit of how far anyone could see across a flat surface and therefore safely out of sight of any guards, they slowed.

  Zera whooped. “Loved that! Want to do that again. So refreshing to run without fear of crashing into a tree or falling off a cliff or being chased by a monster.” She shook her sleeves. “Hey, I think we ran ourselves dry. Mostly. Perhaps I should add that to my sales pitch as a benefit of the speed talisman.” She pulled her coat back on and executed a spin. Her coat flared out around her.

  Pulling on her own coat, Kreya was only half listening to her. Yes, they’d made it, and that was wonderful. But as the adrenaline faded, she began to look at where they were: the place she’d sworn to never return to, and the place she returned to every night in her nightmares. She’d been so focused on saving Jentt, she hadn’t fully anticipated what this moment would feel like.

  Standing on the plains, she felt as if a hundred memories were crashing into her, threatening to drown her. Here, they’d come to fight Eklor. Here, he’d unleashed his army of atrocities. Here, they’d been outnumbered and, for the first time, she’d tasted fear and doubt. Until then, she’d believed wholeheartedly that the righteousness of their cause would lead to triumph. She’d been naïve and focused only on their goal, and this earth had soaked up Jentt’s blood, as well as the blood of the hundreds of soldiers who had fought and died with them.

  Yet twenty-five years later, the plains looked peaceful, with hip-high verdant green grasses blanketing them for miles. Lacelike white flowers swayed in the breeze, as well as stalks flush with lavender blossoms. Shining gently, the sun made it all shimmer for miles and miles.

  In the distance, she saw the silhouette of a tower, broken. It was as jagged as the scar on her thigh, and she remembered how, at the height of the fighting, the tower had burned. Today, though, it was only silent stone. A tomb.

  Beside her, Zera surveyed it all as well with her hands on her hips. “I can’t decide if it’s pretty or creepy, which, come to think of it, is about the same way I feel about you.”

  “The worst of the battle was closer to the tower.” Kreya pointed. They should find the highest concentration of bones there.

  They walked eastward, toward the ruined tower. A few birds were singing, perched in a nearby tree. Unlike the narrow pines of the mountains that strained toward the sun or the twisted trees of the valley, this young tree looked fat and free, with its arms spread wide and flush with leaves.

  “Looks like nature found a way to bury the lost without any human help,” Zera said. “Maybe we don’t need to burn anything after all.” Her voice was subdued, and Kreya wondered if the memories were flooding into her as well.

  A few minutes later, they found the first skeleton.

  Stripped of flesh, the bones lay curled within tattered fabric, all that remained of a soldier’s uniform. Kreya knelt beside it, laying her fingers on an arm bone. She felt its power: weak but still there. “I’ll need several, to match the potency of the freshly dead.”

  Zera sighed. “I suppose this is my last moment to stop you.”

  Kreya tried to keep the flash of fear off her face. She knew Zera’s coat pockets were full of talismans. If Zera wanted to, she could stop her, and it needn’t be right here. She could raise the alarm with the guards on the wall on their return if she didn’t want to dirty her own hands, and there was very little Kreya could do to prevent it. She fingered the speed talisman they’d used to get here. If necessary, she could use it to flee, with as many bones as she could grab. Maybe it would be enough. “Well?”

  “We came all this way together, and you still don’t trust me. Thanks, Kreya. Love you too.” Zera turned her back on Kreya and walked a few paces off, then stopped. “There are more remains here.” She stood there, quietly, and Kreya didn’t push her. Zera looked at the bones. “If Jentt hadn’t done what he did, I’d be lying with them. Along with the rest of the guild’s army. We bring Jentt back, and then you destroy any trace of the spell.” She looked up at Kreya. “That’s the deal.”

  “Sorry. I—”

  Zera waved off her apology. “That’s the deal, right?”

  “That’s the deal.”

  Zera nodded and started loading bones into her pack.

  Moving methodically through the grasses, Kreya selected the best bones and added them to her pack, cushioning them as best she could. It took only a few minutes for both of them to fill their packs with more than enough to ensure the resurrection spell would work. Far less time than Kreya had imagined. She’d been picturing this moment on the journey here, how she’d feel, desecrating the bodies of those who had sacrificed themselves—men and women whom she couldn’t bring back, whom she hadn’t come here to try to revive.

  It hit her, then, that the magic—and bones—could do exactly that.

  I can’t, though, she thought. I don’t have the life to spare.

  Because even if their bodies had been whole, she had to save every bit of herself for Jentt.

  Maybe it was selfish. Others lost loved ones every day. Why should she have a second chance when others didn’t? Because I sacrificed for it, she thought. I suffered. I worked and studied and did what had to be done, forbidden or not. Still . . . “I wish I could save them all.”

  “I wish they’d never needed saving,” Zera said. “Shame Eklor isn’t here, and we can’t skewer him again for what he did. The worst part is that he’d enjoy his status as most hated man in history. He wanted fame as much as he wanted revenge.”

  Surrounded by grasses that hid the dead, Kreya said quietly, “That’s not the worst part.”

  Zera sighed. “I know.”

  The two of them looked at the broken tower, lost in memory, guilt, and regret.

  They were still sta
nding, wrapped in their own thoughts, when the abomination attacked.

  Man-shaped but cloaked in a lizard skin, it sprang out of the grasses where it had been lurking and charged at them. Its head was a skull, with eyeless sockets, and it wielded a soldier’s rusted sword. Its jaws opened as if it were screaming, but it made no sound.

  “Watch out!” Zera cried.

  Kreya drew a knife as the abomination swung the sword. Kneeling, she blocked it with her blade. The force of the stroke reverberated through her arms. Zera charged toward them, her knife drawn, and the inhuman soldier pivoted to knock her knife back.

  It struck at Zera, with a slice aimed at her neck.

  She ducked and swung up, as Kreya pressed her attack with slashes at his sword arm. He blocked her with a rusted shield. Brown-red flakes sprayed into the air, and the clash of metal on metal rang across the plains. But that was the only sound—the inhuman soldier was silent. It could not call out. It had no throat. Just bare vertebrae.

  She heard the heavy huff of Zera’s breath as she pounded at the soldier, and she felt her own heart hammering in her chest. The soldier fought back, its strokes practiced, fast, and hard.

  Kreya signaled to Zera.

  A nod back.

  Quickly, Kreya lunged in, aiming for its shield arm. She sliced through the joint of metal and decayed flesh. It faced her, parrying her next stroke to its head—

  Zera plunged her knife between the soldier’s shoulder blades.

  The abomination toppled forward.

  And Kreya remembered the true horror of the Bone War: Eklor’s soldiers were near impossible to kill, because they weren’t truly alive. They just kept coming.

  As if to remind her, the soldier rose again. Sword ready.

  Grabbing Zera’s arm, Kreya activated the speed talisman. She didn’t dare run toward the wall, not while they were being chased. The guards on the wall would spot them. So instead she ran north, sprinting through the grasses.

  They slowed as soon as they’d put enough distance between them and it. The inhuman soldier lacked any talismans—it couldn’t catch them. Still, it lumbered after them, a tiny figure in the distance. Her heart was pounding hard. That had been much too close.

  “Where,” Zera panted, “did that come from?”

  “It shouldn’t exist,” Kreya said.

  “Tell that to it.”

  She stared back at the impossibility. There was no doubt in her mind that it was one of Eklor’s creations. The skull, the lizard skin, plus the vestiges of clothes and the sword, built on a humanoid frame made of animal bones . . . his signature style. He’d mixed dead matter with the inanimate in an unmistakable way.

  But none of Eklor’s creations should have lasted this long. A well-made construct could outlast its creator’s death, as demonstrated by the cable cars that had been running for decades throughout Vos. Its life span, if one could call it that, was determined by the skill of the bone maker and the quality of the bone used. But no construct could last forever. Not without new bones to fuel it.

  And someone to activate those bones.

  Zera tugged on her arm. “Shit. There are more of them.”

  “Down,” Kreya ordered, and then both flattened on their stomachs in the grasses as six of the unnatural soldiers moved in a V-formation not far away. They looked, Kreya thought, like a patrol. Their skull heads swiveled, as if sniffing the air, and they moved soundlessly as a unit.

  Leftovers, gone feral?

  Except . . . she knew what happened to a bone maker’s creations if left unattended and unmaintained. Look at her cleaning construct. It would polish the same stone until eventually it quieted and stopped as it drained the last of the living essence captured in its bones. The key was that eventually it would stop.

  But these hadn’t slowed. And they certainly hadn’t stopped.

  They’re new, she thought. She was sure of it.

  Almost sure of it.

  Or at least she thought it was a very real possibility. And if they were new constructs, or even freshly maintained constructs . . .

  “Ready the talismans,” Kreya said. “We need to get closer.”

  The truth was that Zera had missed the adventure.

  She’d never have admitted that where Guine or anyone else could hear her. After all, she was at the pinnacle of success—how could she miss crawling through bug-infested grasses while inhuman soldiers hunted them? But there was something about how it made your heart race, skin tingle, and breath speed. I feel alive, she thought.

  And she wanted to keep that whole “alive” feeling. Preferably elsewhere, while soaking in a hot spring and reveling in how very brave she’d been on the plains of the forbidden zone.

  But now Kreya wanted to get closer?

  “Closer? To what?”

  “To the tower.” Kreya began creeping through the grasses, in the direction of the ruins.

  “I think you mean the opposite. Farther. You definitely mean farther from the tower.”

  “We need to see who created them,” Kreya whispered. “We need to know . . .” Her voice trailed off, and Zera didn’t need her to finish to guess what she didn’t want to say, because saying it would invite both absurdity and horror.

  “We do know. He’s dead, Kreya. Very, very dead, the no-doubt-about-it and no-way-anyone-could-have-survived-that kind of dead. You know it’s true. You witnessed it.” Zera could not believe they were having this absurd conversation. She knew Kreya had been on her own for a while and that could unhinge anyone, but this was a new level of paranoia.

  Still, Kreya was continuing to creep toward the tower.

  Scurrying forward, she caught up with her. “Say it with me: ‘He died.’”

  “I know he died,” Kreya said.

  “Even his apprentice was executed. Publicly, remember? Oh, what was his name? Anyway, there was a festival in Cerre to celebrate his execution. It was a grotesque display of the basest of human instincts, reveling in revenge.” The war had ended and the dying should have been over, but the public had been thirsty for revenge. They called it justice, but a different label didn’t change what they meant. So Eklor’s apprentice, a mere boy misled by the master manipulator, had had his blood spilled on the steps of the Bone Workers Guild headquarters. The red had stained the marble. Zera had excused herself to vomit behind one of Grand Master Lorn’s favorite statues.

  Kreya had left Cerre for good.

  “I remember. Yet here are Eklor’s constructs.”

  “The dead are dead.” Zera stopped. Then she considered what they were carrying in their packs, and why. “I see your point. Let’s check the tower.”

  Using the stealth talisman, they bypassed the patrol. It was a blessing that the grass was so long, though Zera tried not to think about how many ticks must have latched onto her coat by now. She’d need a thorough cleansing when she was back in Cerre.

  The important thing was that she squash the tendril of doubt that made her worry whether she’d make it back to Cerre. Of course she’d be fine. Eklor wasn’t still alive, or again alive, or whatever. The unnatural soldiers were remnants whose power simply hadn’t expired yet. Right? Of course, right.

  Of course . . .

  Closer to the tower, Zera could see scorch marks on the stones, as well as black stains that she didn’t want to consider. She saw the heavy iron door was bent, as if bashed by a battering ram—but she knew it had been hit with Stran’s fist.

  “Just like we left it. Except with a landscaping problem.” Zera couldn’t hide the relief she felt. She didn’t know how she’d been sucked in by Kreya’s ridiculous suspicions. Of course Eklor wasn’t resurrected. How could he be? He didn’t have anyone like Kreya, willing to bring him back. That was one of the flaws with being reviled. Even his apprentice had fled the battlefield, to be caught a mile away by the guild’s unforgiving soldiers.

  “No weeds by the door.”

  Yes, that was true. While weeds choked the cracks in the rocks, all the ground arou
nd the tower was matted down. Probably by the undead soldiers. It made sense they’d take shelter in the only semi-standing structure on the plains. That didn’t mean anyone was living here—anyone living, that is.

  “If I prove no one’s home, can we leave?” Zera whispered.

  “Don’t do anything—”

  But Zera was already moving.

  “—stupid.”

  Clutching the stealth talisman, Zera darted to the tower and knocked on the door. “Hello? Eklor? You home?” Before anything could answer, she darted back into the grasses.

  “You’re an idiot,” Kreya told her.

  “I’m bait. That’s always been my job.”

  “Which would be fine if we had Stran and Jentt to fight, but we don’t.”

  Her heart was racing, and Zera had the inappropriate urge to giggle, but she kept control and watched the door. It was absurd to think a few leftover contraptions meant anything. After all, she’d seen the rag dolls and neglected constructs in Kreya’s tower. Eklor had been an extraordinary bone maker, his skill unparalleled both before him and after. He could easily have created a few hardy constructs that had lasted and were simply continuing the tasks he’d given them before his demise.

  And no one opened the door.

  Nothing in the tower moved at all.

  “See?” Zera began to say, turning to Kreya. She stopped as the grasses beyond her old friend bent in the opposite direction from the wind, and she felt her skin go cold.

  “You’re right,” Kreya said. “My fears got the better of—”

  Zera gripped her wrist. Made a slow circle motion with her finger. Surrounded.

  The patrol, or another patrol, of unnatural soldiers had crept up on them through the grasses. So far, Zera had spotted ten of them.

  No—eleven.

  Shit.

  Her heart began to thump faster, and sweat prickled her skin.

  She hoped Kreya had a plan. Of course she does. Kreya always has a plan. It was one of the things that Zera loved most about her. And hated. But mostly loved. “Tell me what to do, Commander.”