Ally: A Dark Fantasy Novel (On the Bones of Gods Book 3)

by K. Eason

Serve Dek right, yeah? See if she’s sorry she’s got no godsworn on Illharek’s side when that thing’s coming at her.

  Veiko closed his eyes. Reached through Briel and found Snow on the far side. Calm and sunk into professional chill. Guarded and armored and steady and ready. He wished—what, that he could see her? Wish her luck? Foolish. He had done both this morning. They had traded

  touch

  incentives for the other to come back alive and had not, even once, breathed goodbye.

  She would survive this. She would not engage Tal’Shik herself. She would cast the lure, that was all, and then the adepts and their witchery would take over.

  Simple, Snow said, with that brittle unconcern that he hadn’t ever believed. I’ve got the easy part. You’re the one facing the dragon.

  “Don’t worry about her, Veiko. Snow’ll be fine. You’ll see.” Istel appeared on Veiko’s left. Solidified out of the cracks in the rocks. A scout’s trick, or a God’s.

  “Is that promise or prophecy?”

  Istel grinned, crooked and quick. “First time we met, she damn near spat in Dek’s face. Damn near spat in mine, and I had a bow drawn on her. She’s got more luck than a cat.”

  Cats were not lucky, in Veiko’s experience; Briel and Logi saw to that. But he could appreciate the sentiment; Istel, like everyone else in their acquaintance, seemed aware of how his partnership with Snow had changed. And Istel, like everyone else, seemed to think that warranted particular well-wishing and reassurance.

  Maybe it did. The worry he felt for her now had a new edge to it. He was more aware of her body. Of the texture of her skin, the taste of it, the flex of hard muscle that was still so fragile against metal and godmagic.

  At least the wurm would come against the legions first, and then against him. His eyes picked out the First Legate–Dictator’s banner again. She stood first between Illharek and the storm. One blood-bright spot against the towering wall of grey cloud and lightning, against which a slim silhouette spread like ink across the clouds.

  Veiko’s chest fluttered. He pretended it did not, and checked his axe again, and his knives, so his hands had something to do. Put the sharp metal into soft places. A simple strategy. Simpler if his leg hadn’t begun to hurt again, as if the old wound had reopened. Knives and heat, knee to hip.

  It was Tal’Shik’s way of reminding him that she had marked him. Well. He had marked her, too. He would do so again. Perhaps her eye and shoulder hurt. He hoped so.

  “Oh, fuck me.” Istel stood up. “Going to kill her.”

  “That is the intention.”

  “Not the fucking dragon.” It was Istel’s turn to point. Except his finger stabbed downslope, toward the Riverwalk and the legion. At Dekklis coming up the hillside, wearing plain scout armor. Alone, which must have been difficult, with her constant company of attendants and guards. She was a better scout than he’d thought.

  “Istel,” Dekklis said, only a little breathless from the climb. “Veiko. How long you reckon until the avatar gets here?”

  “We have until the storm strikes,” Veiko said.

  “Not much time, then. Good.” She turned and gazed over the valley, toward the north. “I’ve been waiting for this, worrying over it, and now I just want it done.”

  “This was not the plan,” Istel said, with a furious calm that fooled no one. “You were supposed to be out there.”

  “I know that.”

  “On the fucking field, Dek. Leading your fucking troops.”

  “So Per and Neela informed me. And Dannike, who tried to make it an order until she remembered I outrank her.”

  “Is that a hint? Shut up, Istel, or I court-martial you?”

  “Illharek’s got plenty of infantry. She doesn’t have that many scouts.”

  “She has one dictator.”

  “Who should lead by example. The dragon’s going to fall out of the sky and land up here, yeah? Unless Belaery and Snow and the rest of them mess it up.”

  “Example. Right. You’re not doing this for the glory, then.”

  Dekklis grimaced. “It’s about being where Illharek needs me. Dannike’s better trained in infantry maneuvers. She can handle the field. And she looks better in my armor, anyway.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “I’m dictator. It’s not illegal unless I say it is. Besides. Way I understand it, way Snow tells it,” and her mouth curved into a dry little smile, “I’m damning us all by keeping Illharek’s surviving godsworn locked up in the Academy towers. So, I reckon the least I can do is come up here and die with you.”

  “No one’s dying,” Istel snapped. His voice splintered on the last syllable.

  And before Dekklis could answer him, before Veiko could ask them both to be silent, someone screamed. Then another someone. Then a hundred voices, howling together. Taliri war-cry.

  The sky split, cloud jaws and lightning fangs. And out of that maw came oblivion in a wurm’s shape, so dark the eye slid away from it. The avatar. The dragon.

  Veiko began to sing.

  * * *

  “Oh. Oh hell. Fuck the Taliri. Look at that thing.”

  Kalle was a small man, for a half-blood. On his toes, he might come to Snow’s collarbone. He strained and wobbled at the floating platform’s edge, trying to gain extra vantage.

  “Fuck’s sake, Kalle. Don’t fall into the river. It’s just a dragon,” Belaery sniffed. “A big svartjagr.”

  “Dragon, hell,” said Sashki. She had just enough hair to scrape into a topknot. The wind was busy tearing it loose, one strand at a time. “That’s Tal-fucking-Shik.”

  “One of the foremothers of all Illharek.” Tethni was the oldest of them, grey-shot and leathery. “Assuming you’re right, Bel.”

  “I’m right.”

  Belaery was walking the platform’s perimeter again. They had cut the wards into the wood before bringing it to the river. Anchored the braziers, traced the runes and the sigils in inks that no rain would threaten. Belaery paused at the southern edge, closest to Snow. Crouched and fingered the anchor-knots, as if the rope might’ve unraveled itself, or a legion of invisible rodents had been gnawing at it. Belaery had protested the river-platform, but Snow had won that argument.

  The black river’s the Jokki, in the ghost roads. We want to open the rift, we have to be on the water.

  “Ropes are fine, Bel,” Snow murmured. She checked the vial again, hanging from the cord on her neck. Didn’t want to fumble with a pouch during the ritual. Didn’t want to risk the contents in an open chalice, either, in case the barge tipped after all. She hadn’t taken much blood from Veiko, and he’d begrudged her that bit. Not because of the blood, but because of what she meant to do with it.

  Tal’Shik would smell it, and Tal’Shik would come. And, finding Snow, and not Veiko, Tal’Shik would—well.

  They’d talked about that, too.

  She will try to kill you. His hands on the sides of her face, gentle, at odds with the force of his witchfire stare. Wanting her to tell him it would be okay, so he could argue. Wanting to be here, and knowing why he could not.

  Of course she will. Not the first to try that.

  You are not noidghe enough to stop her.

  I don’t need to be. I have the adepts, yeah? I’ll be safer than you. And then Snow had kissed him, with that same gentle force, until his eyes closed. One way to stop the man’s arguing, yeah. Give his mouth something to do.

  Veiko hadn’t asked what would happen if Belaery’s ritual failed. Everyone knew that answer.

  “I know the ropes are fine.” Belaery straightened. She, like the others, wore an adept’s working tunic. Treated, spelled, close-fitting and belted and sleeveless. Only Snow wore Suburban armor, leather vest and leather pants and a seax on her hip. Bel hadn’t liked that.

  The robes are costume, Bel. You know that. Performance and theatre. I’m not wearing them.

  The robes are tradition, stiffly, but Bel had let it drop. Tradition didn’t have much to say about what
they were about to do. Something unprecedented, close kin to godmagic, something that conjurors did not do, by custom and law. She and Bel and everyone else been taught that godmagic and conjuring had nothing in common, but now they knew better. Respect the spirits or abuse them, that was the difference.

  “It’s a good spell,” Snow said quietly. “Solid theory. It will work.”

  Belaery’s glare scorched the side of her face. “I’m not worried about the fucking spell, Snowdenaelikk.”

  “Come on.” Tethni waddled to her place on the easternmost glyph. “Let’s start this. The sooner that motherless bat comes out of the sky, the sooner the skraeling can kill it and we can all go home.”

  Sashki grinned like the madwoman she was. The witchfires turned red and black. The air hazed red, solid on the edges, blotting out storm and sky, burning the rain into steam.

  Snow took her place near the northern glyph, which meant turning her back to the enemy. The wind dragged cold fingers up the back of her neck. Pulled on her topknot. Hissed through the rings in her ears. That wind smelled like hot metal, with a faint swirl of woundrot beneath it.

  And then cold wind on her cheek, in her ear. The God’s breath. Tal’Shik still hasn’t healed. She’s half blind and angry. You can use that, Snow.

  “Good to know. Now get out, yeah? Before you get hurt.”

  Tethni eyed her with some interest. “Are you talking to the God?”

  “We could finish him, too,” Sashki murmured. Her eyes were closed. Her fingers wove and danced through the brazier flames. “Take care of all Illharek’s problems right now.”

  “Fuck you. You don’t touch the God.”

  Does that mean you care?

  “No. Go away, yeah? I’ve got to work.” She sang the syllables Veiko had taught her, the ones that would lock her in, alone in her skin and her skull. The song pushed the God out, a door shutting against protest and pressure. She imagined his face, Tsabrak’s, at the last, peering through the closing crack.

  And then it was just the sky, the storm, the rain smacking into wood and water and flesh like small stones.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  Belaery lifted her hands. Paused, while Kalle and Tethni looked at her, while Sashki swayed in her direction. Theatre, again. Performance. But the look Bel shared with Snow was honest. Worried. Serious and genuine and more of the real Belaery than Snow wanted to see.

  Then Belaery began to chant. The words were largely Bel’s own invention, but the tempo was Veiko’s. Eight beats, he had said, and eight syllables. That pattern loaned itself well to the chopped-off cadence of Jaihnu, but it rendered Dvergiri nearly unintelligible. The others joined in. Sashki’s smoky rasp, Kalle’s surprising sweetness, Tethni under all of them, like the foremother of all toads bellowing the thread that bound them together. Tethni cut symbols into the air while Kalle and Sashki held the wards against the physical dragon’s notice. Belaery collected the threads of power as the others wove them, sifted them through her fingers. She knelt beneath the tortured sky, balancing godmagic and conjuring, peeling away all the barriers that held the ghost roads apart from the world. Belaery’s ideas, Bel’s theory, Bel’s raw talent, on which Snow relied now.

  Snow remained silent, waited while her heart drummed a sympathetic beat against her ribs. Sweat beaded and chilled on her skin. This was power, yeah. This was five silver rings in a person’s right ear, master of all the minor arts, and a sixth ring in the left that meant adept. Everyone here had that ring except her. Backlash could kill an idiot, if she conjured in the Wild; but raw conjuring could kill too if a conjuror could not control it. And Snow could not control this kind of power.

  But that wasn’t why she was here. She was playing the part of the noidghe now, not the conjuror.

  Illharek’s flecked granite turned darker, duller, like solid ash. The sky melted from the cloud, spilled silver and lead toward the ground. A faint breeze blew out of the cave, and it smelled like chill and dying. That was the ghost roads: blasted, barren, spirit-Illharek, stones and sand and nothing. The river—not the Jokki, not on that side—ran thick and black out the cave-mouth. Bodies floated in that water. Faces, blind and bleached. Hands, upthrust and clawing at the air. Snow saw smooth planks of wood underfoot in one breath, blasted stone the next.

  Sashki swore. “The motherless hell is that?”

  “The river of the dead.” Belaery might’ve been ordering tea at a shop on the Arch. “We’re seeing into the ghost roads.”

  “No. Not the river. That.” Kalle’s whole being tilted north, where the sky stopped and oblivion began. Snow turned her head just far enough to see what Kalle did, and promptly wished she hadn’t. The storm in the ghost roads was blacker than ink or the river or unlit Below, boiling and shot through with violet so deep it hurt the eyes. And in the midst of it, a shape, vaguely wurm, vaguely woman. The wind coming out of that hellmouth stank of woundrot and burned metal. And if that presence had not noticed them yet—well. That was Snow’s whole purpose here, to draw an angry god’s attention.

  “Snow,” Bel said. “Do it now.”

  Snowdenaelikk opened the vial, willing her cold fingers steady. It was her blood and Veiko’s mixed together in there, and a measure of dragon venom from the Academy’s stores, to match what Ehkla had used on him.

  She dipped her finger into it. Traced her thigh with the same symbols that Ehkla had carved into Veiko, and in the same place. Godmagic, sacrifice, which was cousin to the bargains that noidghe made.

  The sigils sank through leather and into her, took the poison with them, and fuck and damn, it hurt like metal carving in flesh. Fresh blood welled up through unmarked, uncut leather, and ran down. The poison went the other way, up her hip, all the way into her gut. Like being on fire from the inside, reaching fingers toward her heart. Veiko had warned her, and she’d even believed him, and that was the only reason she didn’t scream and fuck everything up.

  Then the world split. A tiny tear, like molten silver, appeared in the center of the platform, head-high. Then that tear stretched and expanded, spreading wide: first a fingerwidth, then a handspan, then an armslength, stretching toward the raft. It looked like a mirror had melted, revealing what lay on the other side. A desolate, jagged cave. The black river, full of the dead. Illharek’s true face in the ghost roads.

  This time, there’d be no K’Hess Kenjak to pull Snow out of that river if she fell in. This time, Veiko wouldn’t come for her. At least, not in time. Not before Tal’Shik figured out the noidghe calling her wasn’t the one she wanted.

  But Belaery would be here. The ritual would work.

  Snow met Belaery’s eyes, on the other side of the tear. Bel’s chin dipped, barely a nod, all the concentration she could spare.

  Go now.

  Veiko had been very clear about how the river-dead reacted to blood. Snow had to jump from the platform to riverbank. Two quick steps, no stumbling, no falling. No fucking up. They got a taste, they’d come swarming out and be on her.

  Snow breathed past the burn in her leg. Shifted her weight to the balls of her feet. Held her breath. Then she leaped into the ghost roads.

  * * *

  The wurm-terror stalked the edges of Veiko’s song. It manifested in a creeping unease and rising nerves among the scouts. But none of the scouts panicked, or bolted from the rocks. It was not so on the banks of the Jokki. The legion ranks had buckled badly where the wurm passed over them. The Taliri did not seem affected. Waded in and killed where the Illhari lines dissolved.

  Briel, too, seemed impervious to the fear. The svartjagr was darting tiny attacks at the wurm, niggling and annoying and distracting. The wurm snapped, sometimes. And sometimes, the jagged bolts that arced from clouds to earth stopped halfway, aiming at a tiny black speck in the air instead of blasting bodies aside on the ground. But Briel escaped every time, sending fury and triumph.

  Pity the soldiers from both sides could not say the same. The lightning did not care who it killed.


  Dekklis worked her hands over the handles of her weapons. “There’s not a thing we can do up here.”

  Veiko leaned on the stone and nocked an arrow. Sighted down the shaft. His arms were steady, and never mind the cold sweat beading up on his skin. “A wurm hunts by sowing panic, scattering the prey so that she can choose her supper.”

  “We’re not food for that oversized svartjagr!”

  “Because my song protects you. Not because you declare it so.”

  Istel sent a wasted arrow down the hill, into the teeth of the wind. “Hunting for us? Or specifically for you?”

  “For me.” His leg was a column of pain now. He gritted his teeth. Snow would be feeling that same burning too if her song had worked. And Tal’Shik would be looking for her in the ghost roads, thinking she was him.

  Dekklis was staring at him, all her anger forgotten. “Veiko. Fuck and damn, you’re bleeding.”

  “Yes.” And more than bleeding. The venom burned memory along his limbs. Ancestors, he’d forgotten how this hurt. And it was his partner bearing the worst of it, Snow drawing it all to herself. Drawing Tal’Shik to herself. A ritual she’d created, out of what she knew about godmagic and conjuring.

  It’s based on sympathy, yeah? I mix our blood, and that links our experiences. I’ll have it worse. You should be able to fight.

  As if that was comfort or consolation. He had tried to dissuade her from this plan. As soon argue the sun from the sky.

  So simple, in theory. As simple as putting the sharp end of his axe into the wurm’s unarmored parts.

  A dog-weight brushed his leg. The pain took his breath. “Logi,” he hissed. But when he looked down, it was Helgi gazing back at him. Steel-grey Helgi, with his ice-colored eyes. Dead Helgi.

  Please, the scouts did not see this, or they would scatter like sheep no matter what songs he sang.

  Blink, breathe, and look again. Helgi was still there, beside Logi. Both his dogs together, looking at him. The living and the dead.

  So. The adepts’ witchery was working, the barriers between the worlds of spirit and flesh completely torn. Snow would be thoroughly poisoned now. Thoroughly pretending to be him.