Bone War

by Steven Harper

  “There is more to the story,” Ranadar said. “Did you know that Talfi died that final death when the Axe was reformed?”

  “I … did not,” she admitted. “He is still alive now, so I assumed—”

  “You assumed wrong,” Ranadar said. “Talfi was dead, forever. But I spoke with Death herself after the Battle of the Twist. Because I helped free her, she offered me a reward. I asked her to bring Talfi back to life, but there was only one way she could do it.”

  Gwylph thought only a brief moment. Her perfect features went pale. “No,” she whispered.

  “Indeed. Death said that for every day Talfi gained, someone else would have to give up a day of his or her own. I offered all of mine.”

  “You offered her all of them?” Talfi interrupted. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You were dead,” Ranadar told him. “Your draugr kept begging for release, and all I could think of was granting it to you. The pain tore me in half. But Death did not take all my days. She took only half and gave them to you.”

  “That much I knew,” Talfi said, feeling a little overwhelmed. “Ran, it’s like I told you in your parents’ throne room—I didn’t need more years. I’ve lived more than a thousand of them.”

  “But you remember almost none of them,” Ranadar countered. “How fair is that? I do not want to live without you. The very idea pierces my heart with an arrow. Giving you half my days was a bargain.”

  Gwylph drew herself fully upright. “I did not know he had stolen your days, Ranadar.”

  “I gave them freely, Mother,” Ranadar replied with some heat. “This was your doing, you know. If you and Father had not tried to slaughter the Stane, we would not have had to reforge the Iron Axe, and Talfi would not have needed my days.”

  “You—” Gwylph began, then bit back her words. “I do not wish to argue about blame. These events have ended, and this is where we are now. Your people need you. Alfhame needs you. I need you. With your father … gone, you are all I have left. Please come home. I am asking as a mother who loves you.”

  Ranadar set his mouth hard. “Mother, I—”

  A great shout interrupted them. Slynd with Kalessa on his back rushed into view. The wyrm skidded to a stop. Kalessa caught sight of the elven queen and, with an orcish war cry, vaulted over Slynd’s neck, her sword raised. Queen Gwylph made a startled noise and backed away, but Kalessa was already swinging. The flat of her iron blade caught Gwylph square on the buttocks. With a yelp, she popped back into Neff, who went to his knees. The sylph hung in midair, spiky with surprise for a tiny moment. Then it fled with a thin shriek.

  “Iron,” said Kalessa. “Good against Fae.”

  “So please put it away,” said Ranadar, backing up a step, “or change it to bronze.”

  Kalessa sheathed the sword—it shifted to its normal knife shape—while Talfi helped Neff to his feet.

  “What happened?” the old man quavered as one of his sons came rushing out of the barn to see what was going on. “I don’t remember any—”

  “It’s all right,” Talfi soothed. “You just need some time to sit down.”

  “Why does my arse hurt?” Neff complained.

  They gave vague explanations to Neff’s son, who took the old man into the house. Kalessa patted Slynd’s flank. “This is turning into a strange day,” she said.

  Ranadar picked up Neff’s walking stick and leaned on it. His face was pale and his lips were tight. Talfi’s stomach tightened and he put a hand on Ranadar’s arm.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I did not know she still … cared,” Ranadar said.

  “She’s still your mother,” Talfi replied carefully. “Even after everything that happened.” He paused for a long moment. “Do you … want to go back?”

  Ranadar shook his head hard. “No. But … yes. I mean, I cannot. I should not. But I miss Alfhame. It is my home.”

  “Even though she helped your father kill your true love.” Kalessa leaned against Slynd, arms crossed. “Even though she did her best to kill all of us.”

  “She also taught me glamours and how to live in the woods and how to speak with sprites,” Ranadar said. “She told the slaves to tuck me in at night while she told me stories of elven heroes and frightening ghosts. She is my mother.”

  “She is selfish and greedy and cruel,” Kalessa continued relentlessly. “She thinks of no one but herself.”

  “She thought of me,” Ranadar pointed out. “And she offered to allow Talfi to come back. That was … out of character for her.”

  “Are you defending her actions?” Kalessa asked.

  “No,” Ranadar sighed. “That is … I suppose it sounds like I am. It is not easy to turn away from my family. I did not betray my people because I hated her. I did it because I loved Talfi. Her actions were wrong, but she is still my mother.”

  “Why did she make that offer?” Talfi scuffed at the grass with one toe. “She has to know I wouldn’t go. You know I wouldn’t go.”

  “And I would never ask it of you.” He put his head in his hands. “This is a hard place to stand, between my family and my love and my friends.”

  “Will you accept her offer?” Kalessa said. “Will you go back?”

  “Certainly not,” Ranadar said. “You are correct—she is greedy and selfish and that makes me wonder why she made this offer to me. It must benefit her in some way. It pains me to say it, but she does not want me. She needs me, and I do not understand why. I am nowhere near the magician she is, so she cannot be after my magic. She rules the entire kingdom, and will continue to do so for another two or three hundred years at least, plenty of time to figure out what to do about an heir, so it is not the bloodline. Why approach me now?”

  “And where did she get the power?” Talfi mused aloud. “Didn’t you say it takes a lot to do what she did?”

  “I did,” Ranadar said. “Mother is an expert at Twisting, and sending a single sprite that far would not tax her overmuch, but using it to take over Neff’s mind and send a glamour that distance would take a great deal of power. If all elves could do that lightly or easily, there would be no need to conquer the neighbors with swords. So that leaves us with two questions—why does she need me at home, and where did she get the power to contact me this way?”

  “And we still know nothing of the candle wax man,” Kalessa sighed. “We need to talk to Aisa and Danr. Perhaps we should even talk to Death.”

  Talfi shuddered. “I don’t like talking to Death.”

  “I like her,” Kalessa said. “She promised me everyone would remember my name, and there is no greater reward in the world.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m always afraid she’ll audit the days I have left or something,” Talfi said. “We need to get back to the city and search for the candle wax man.”

  Chapter Six

  Aisa blinked down at Danr the toad. He squatted on a pile of clothes on the side of the road, his goggle eyes wide with startled shock.

  “You have money,” said the ragged man. “Give it to me, or I’ll turn you into a toad, too, and crush both of you.”

  He raised his hands. They glowed gold in the evening gloom and left light trails behind them when he moved. His three compatriots, each with a soot-blackened blade that would not gleam in moonlight, poked their knives toward her.

  Aisa stared at the four men in genuine disbelief. For a tiny moment, an old fear flickered within her, and vanished almost as quickly. “Gentlemen,” she said in a soft, measured voice, “do you know who I am?”

  “You’re the one who’s going to give me her money, and right quick,” the ragged man said. “And you’re going to give me that nice dress so’s I can sell it, and those boots, too.”

  “You do not know where you are standing,” Aisa said.

  “We’re standing in the forest with a pretty girl in an expensive dress,” said one of the men.

  “That is where your perceptions are wrong.” Aisa drew herself up and pulled her own power tog
ether, the power that had faced down the evil harbormaster and the biggest golem the world had ever seen. “You are standing on the edge of a cliff, and only you can decide if you will back away to safety—or fall into an abyss.”

  “Are you looking at this, girlie?” The ragged man swept his hands in an arc, leaving a swath of golden light behind. “Didn’t you just see what I did to your friend?”

  Danr croaked angrily from his pile of clothes.

  “Will you try it on me next?” Aisa said, hands on hips. “Are you truly so foolish?”

  “You gonna let her talk to you like that, Welk?” one of the knife men said.

  The ragged man’s face hardened. He gestured at Aisa, and a beam of golden light shot from his hands and caught her full in the chest. Or it would have if Aisa had not caught the beam in her own hand. She felt Welk’s power rush through her, attempting to change her, mold her into what Welk wanted. But Aisa clamped down on her own shape and held it. The ragged man’s power burned like fine brandy, and Aisa drank it in, molding it into what she herself wanted. She whipped off the dress Death had given her as her limbs shifted and thickened. Fur sprouted all along her body, her muscles stretched and grew powerful, and in less than a moment, a mountain lion faced the four men at the edge of the forest. She roared, and the smell of urine tanged the air around the band of bandits. Knives dropped from nerveless fingers.

  Welk looked at his hands in astonishment. “I thought I could only do toads.”

  Feeling the strength of her new body, Aisa roared again, and the three men fled yipping into the woods. Welk tried to follow, but with a single leap, Aisa came down on his back and brought him down. She pressed a paw the size of a dinner plate on his head and brought her muzzle down to his cheek, so close that her fang slid across his skin, leaving a thin cut behind. A drop of his coppery blood slipped into her mouth. Behind her, Danr croaked again, and anger took Aisa. This man had changed her Hamzu into a toad, and how dared he? A growl rumbled low in her throat, and Welk’s panicked panting beneath her only increased the rage. One little snap would end his wretched, worthless life. One small—

  And then something touched her, gentle as a grain of sand sliding across her ear. Perhaps it was a new effect of the power she had drunk, or perhaps it was an increased connection to the Garden, or perhaps it was nothing but a new thought, but for a moment, Welk’s life stood clear to her, as if she were examining the rings of a recently felled tree. She saw a child growing up in a poor family that scrabbled for a living at the edge of the forest, and the hard blows both his father and his mother dealt him. She saw him leave home and try his hand at laboring, at farming, at anything he could find, but unable to get decent work because of his ragged appearance and low station. She saw him pulling a plow in a field one day when a wolfhound raced across the freshly turned earth and, for no reason Welk could understand, bit him and then dashed away. She saw him accidentally change the man guiding the plow into a toad, and she saw people driving him away as a monster. All these things she saw in an instant.

  Her anger faded. He was not that different from her, or from Hamzu. If things had gone just a bit differently, perhaps she would now have the same life he did. And she recognized the wolfhound. It was one of the former slaves to whom Danr had given his blood. The woman had become a shape mage, able to shift into a wolfhound shape and spread the shape magic with her own blood—or a bite, it seemed. Was this where the legends of werewolves had come from? The possibility bore more thought. At any rate, Aisa and Danr themselves had no small role to play in Welk’s current state. If Danr had not given the slave woman his blood—at Aisa’s request—Welk would not be turning hapless travelers into toads. Aisa pulled back and reclaimed her own shape, standing naked over him while he lay panting in fear on the road.

  “You will change him back,” she said. “Unless you want me to bite something off.”

  Welk scooted backward in the dust, eyes wide. “I can’t. All I does is toads. Please, you have to believe me.”

  More angry croaking came from the side of the road. Aisa stepped on Welk’s wrist and pressed hard. “Pray I do not become upset, Welk. I faced down the harbormaster and his golem. Crushing you will be simpler than stepping on a flea.”

  “That was you?” He flinched. “Aw, no. Please, my lady. I’da never done it if I’d known who you was.”

  “So you would have done this dreadful thing to someone else?”

  “No! I mean, I did, but I don’t … Look, everyone treats me like I have a disease. I’m starving, and I don’t know what else to do for money.” His voice shook a little. “Please help me, great lady.”

  “Hmm.” Aisa could not say her heart melted with pity. He had power, but he had misused it. Even in her darkest moments, she had never done the things he had done. Well, perhaps she had, but she had done them to survive, and only to people who had deserved it. Well, perhaps …

  She gave an internal sigh. She could not judge this man, even if one day it was—would be—her right as a Gardener. Did the Fates actually judge anyone? Now that she thought about it, she supposed they did not. How could they, when they themselves planted the Garden in such a way that individual lives were pushed in certain directions? How could they—she—judge a man when he was only reacting to the row in which he had been planted?

  Still, he had turned Hamzu into a toad.

  “Get up,” she growled, “and come with me.”

  Welk scrambled to his feet and followed her meekly back to Danr, who was as puffed and indignant as only a toad could be. For a wild moment, Aisa wanted to pick him up and kiss him to see if that would change him back.

  “We will fix this, Hamzu,” she said. “While I am happy to love a troll, I am not comfortable sharing my bed with a toad.”

  “Can’t you just change him back, lady?” Welk asked.

  “I can affect no shape but my own,” Aisa replied shortly. “Give me your hand.”

  Uncertainly, Welk obeyed. His hand was both dusty and sweaty, and Aisa did not care for his palm against hers. “Hamzu, this man cannot change you back, and neither can I. You must do it yourself. Call to your own shape, and it will answer, just as it does when you change from a human back into a half troll.”

  “But, great lady,” Welk said in a hesitant protest, “he’s just a toad now. He won’t have enough power to change his—”

  The drop of blood Aisa had taken from Welk’s body gave her an easy connection to him. She reached into his body, found his own source of power, and pulled. Welk gasped and dropped to his knees in the dust. Magic burned in Aisa, but she could tell it was not enough to return Danr to his own shape. She left Welk on the ground and knelt to touch Danr’s head. Aisa and Danr had already shared blood with each other, creating an easy link, and it was simple enough to let Welk’s power stream out of her and into him. For good measure, she added some of her own. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Danr exploded into his full shape. With a trollish snarl, he grabbed Welk by the scruff and hauled him, limp as a kitten, up to eye level.

  “Who do you think you are?” he bellowed in Welk’s face, and Aisa was ready to swear Welk’s hair blasted backward. “After everything I have done for the world, you touch me with your filthy magic? I should tear off your—”

  “Hamzu,” Aisa interrupted with firm softness, “you sound very like White Halli.”

  At the mention of that name, of the man who had bullied Danr for years and whom Danr had finally beaten almost to death, Danr paused. Aisa could see him regain control of his temper, of that which he used to call the monster. Carefully, calmly, he set Welk down on his shaky legs.

  “See that you don’t do that again,” Danr growled.

  “No, great lord,” Welk gulped.

  “So. I suppose everything is all right now,” Danr said with a cough, and turned to pull on his clothes.

  “Thank you, great lord.”

  “I’m not a lord,” Danr said shortly as his dark hair came through his tunic. “But we can�
��t leave you here, turning people into toads and such. People already mistrust shape-shifters and shape magicians. You’re making it worse by robbing people.”

  “I rob people because they won’t give a shape magician honest work,” Welk said with a flicker of spirit.

  “Even so.” Danr flexed huge hands. “We can’t leave you here.”

  “Wait!” Welk put up a shaky palm. “If she’s the lady what killed the harbormaster and his golem, that makes you … Danr. The hero from the Battle of the Twist! The Iron Axe!” He went to his knees again, and Aisa saw Danr trying not to make a face. “Please don’t kill me, great lord! I won’t never use my magic again! I swear!”

  “Sure, all right,” Danr said. “Get up. And I told you I’m not a lord.”

  “If it makes you feel better, you may call him Master Danr,” Aisa said.

  “Which still doesn’t tell us what to do with him.” Danr pointed at Welk, who tried not to flinch.

  “I can think of a use for him,” Aisa said suddenly. “One that will keep him out of trouble, help with the shape magician problem, and even let him earn his own money.”

  “Really, lady?” Welk scrambled to his feet, looking hopeful. “I’ll do anything you say.”

  “Don’t give her that kind of opening,” Danr warned.

  “Come with us,” Aisa said. “We are going to Balsia to see Prince Karsten.”

  “Prince Karsten?” Danr said. “What for?”

  “Is he going to execute me?” Welk squeaked.

  “No,” Aisa said. “I have a better idea, but I would prefer to explain when we arrive.”

  It was near midnight when they arrived at the outer edge of Balsia. Danr had no trouble seeing in nothing but starlight, and Aisa was happy to let him lead the way. Welk followed like a chastened puppy. A smaller city would have shut its gates after dark, but Balsia had overflowed its original walls centuries ago, and its gates had long since become decorations in the middle of busy streets.

  Besides, the Stane were out and about after dark. Aisa, Danr, and Welk passed more than one troll on the street, tall and shaggy, or wide and blocky. All of them were dark-haired, with jutting lower fangs, long jaws, barrel chests, and muscular arms. They towered over Danr by two feet or more. They lumbered through the streets, pulling heavily laden wagons or carrying blocks of stone or just moving about. With them came the short, twisted dwarfs, moving about on business of their own. Danr remembered when he had gone under the mountain and seen trolls for the first time, how uneasy he’d been and how frightened for Aisa. Kin and Stane each saw the other as ugly monsters, as different as night and day. Danr’s father, Kech, had smeared Aisa’s forehead with a bit of his own blood to alert the trolls that she was not to be harmed, but even so, she had been nearly killed for being human. So had he, for that matter.