Bone War

by Steven Harper

  “The Fates?” Danr said.

  “Three and a trickster,” Aisa said. “Three Gardeners and—”

  “Death,” Danr finished. “Oh. Shit.”

  “She did say Tikk likes to talk to her,” Aisa finished.

  Silence fell over the three of them and Slynd. Danr tried to digest what Aisa had said. It made a strange sort of sense. Certainly more than the clay story. He thought about Death in her chair with her knitting needles with the three Fates beside her and he shuddered. Three and one. Everything was three and one.

  Then Kalessa made a hissing snort and the moment passed. “Really, sister! You do have strange ideas.”

  “Hmm,” was all Aisa said in response.

  Three days and nights passed. Every morning when Aisa woke up, she reported working in the Garden, but Danr slept undisturbed beside her through the night, and they decided his trip there must have been a hallucination brought on by shock and injury. All three of those nights, Aisa slid her body against Danr’s and he wordlessly accepted her lovemaking within the fortress of the two wyrms that coiled around their camp. No words traveled between them about a child. If one came, one would come, and Danr realized that he wanted a child, a piece of Aisa to keep with him. And if Aisa left to become a Gardener, he would raise the baby as best he could.

  But on the third night, Aisa lay on his chest and said, “You and … the little one will not be alone, you know.”

  “No?” he said, knowing what she meant.

  “You have two great wyrms to guard the both of you, and two near-immortal men who will probably be better mothers than—”

  “If you finish that sentence,” Danr interrupted, “they will both hunt you down with bows and arrows.”

  She laughed lightly. “In any case, you will have help. And I will be there, too, in whatever way I can be.”

  Talking. They were actually talking about it. Danr raised his head up gingerly, as if he might frighten the topic away like a shy rabbit. “Maybe the child will stay with you in the Garden. Or maybe it will be able to travel back and forth and be with both of us.”

  “I … hadn’t thought of that,” Aisa said. She brightened. “I have been assuming the child will be mortal and always in this world, but why should that be? As a Gardener, I will be running the universe. Why should I not have what I wish?”

  “I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t give you what you wish,” Danr said.

  “Hmm. Let me show you what I wish.”

  *

  When they reached northern Balsia, they briefly considered a trip through Skyford and the village where Danr had grown up and Aisa had lived, then decided against it. Neither of them had many good memories of the place, and they had no desire for the earl to make a fuss over them as Skyford’s most famous former residents. However, they did stop at the top of hill where the road looked down on Skyford, which lay at the bottom of a river valley. It was the very spot where Danr, leading a skin-and-bones steer, had paused to look down at the city more than two years ago, with no idea how much his life and the world were about to change.

  “It looks different,” Aisa observed from Slynd’s back.

  Danr squinted beneath his hat in the afternoon sunlight. The last time he had visited, Skyford was enclosed on three sides by a great palisade of wood and stone while the river formed the fourth side. Later, the earl, now dead, had brought armies from all over Balsia, and they had set up a camp across the river that had nearly dwarfed the city. Now it looked as though the city had expanded into that camp and become permanent. Stone buildings had risen like blocky mushrooms and spread across the slanted valley floor.

  “Those are Stane buildings,” Danr said.

  “The trolls and dwarfs have come calling, just like they did in Balsia,” Kalessa the wyrm said. “Whether the Skyford folk accepted this by choice or by force, I am curious to see. Perhaps we should stop in after all.”

  “Let’s not,” Danr said. “I don’t want to add to any tension.”

  They skirted both Skyford and the little village beyond it and headed into the mountains. Danr had expected to find the path with difficulty, but instead they discovered a clear, well-maintained road that twisted upward through forest and foothill.

  “The road makes sense,” Danr mused. “The Stane build with stone right handily, and if they’re in and out of Skyford, they’d want a nice path.”

  “It is easy to climb,” Kalessa said. “Come, Slynd! And do not eat any trolls you encounter, no matter how tasty they appear.”

  “They won’t come aboveground during the day,” Danr reminded her. “Sunlight bites them harder than it does me.”

  As Danr predicted, the road remained deserted. Only the great green trees and heavy boulders stood guard along the way as it climbed up the mountain. Danr sighed with relief when the shade blunted the sharp sunlight. In a short time, they found themselves at the Great Door. It was just as Danr remembered it—an outcropping of rock that jutted from the side of the mountain and didn’t look at all like a door. But when he slid off Kalessa’s back with a stiff groan, he saw the cunning handles carved to look like part of the outcropping, and the faint outline of the door itself. Unbidden, Danr’s memory called up the first time he had come here. A troll named Kech had threatened to eat Danr and Aisa alive if Danr couldn’t prove he was part troll by opening the Great Door. It took three bone-cracking tries, but Danr had done it. Kech had been forced to admit Danr under the mountain—and eventually admit that he was Danr’s father.

  “This will not be fun,” Aisa said. “It nearly killed you to open this door last time.”

  Danr looked at her, then set his feet, grasped the hidden handles, and heaved. The door ground open and flipped aside with a crash. Slynd whipped himself backward into an S at the sound. Danr raised a shaggy eyebrow at Aisa while Kalessa gave a laughing little hiss.

  “How?” Aisa said, covering her mouth with one hand.

  “I was sixteen back then,” he said, “and still a boy. Come on.”

  They strode forward and slid down into darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Silence rang in Ranadar’s ears and he stood blinking in shock at the mound of rubble piled in front of him. He couldn’t seem to get his mind working properly. Dust choked his nose and throat. As always, he was aware of the iron all about him. Painful, dreadful iron. Iron forges in the distance, iron tools in the houses, iron utensils scattered about this very room. The heaviness dragged at him, grated on his nerves, put a bad taste into his mouth. The feeling was always there in this awful city, this place where iron horseshoes rang harsh on cobblestones and iron hammers bashed on awful anvils. It never quite went away, a headache that wouldn’t end.

  And he was also hungry. His stomach roared its emptiness, and his hands shook with ravenousness. He snatched up the sausage, bread, and pears from the floor and, heedless of the dust, crammed them into his mouth in greedy bites, then washed it all down with the wine. Vik, he wanted more of that Tikkscock. The power that had washed through him was like drinking pure sunlight. The memory turned the wine to Stane piss in his mouth. He had to find—

  Talfi! Where was Talfi! How could he have forgotten? Ranadar shook his aching head in the dusty air. The food helped clear his mind a little. The earthquake! What had happened? Someone coughed and hacked nearby, and it came to him that he was standing in the building where he had summoned the sprite and forced it to talk. He turned, trying to understand, but his head would not come together. The dust settled a little. The figure coughing a few paces away was Talfi. Relief flooded Ranadar. He realized he was still holding half a pear in his hand, and he stuffed it into his mouth.

  “Talashka,” he said, and moved toward Talfi. The Nine! There had to be some Tikkscock left somewhere. He found himself scanning the floor for a leaf, a steam, even a seed. Then Ranadar saw the hand. It protruded from the great pile of debris that had once been the chimney and a good part of the ceiling above it. Ranadar recognized both the hand and the
wrist of the tunic. It was Talfi’s.

  The world snapped into place. Ranadar remembered. The earthquake, the fleeing sprite, the cracking chimney, the collapsing wall. The man coughing near him was not Talfi, but the flesh golem. Talfi was dead.

  Panic fluttered at the back of Ranadar’s throat and he forced it down. It would be all right. Talfi was not dead. Talfi could not die. But neither could he come back to life. Not with a ton of rock grinding him down. Was he even now trying to revive and dying again? Ranadar’s heart wrenched and the panic returned, quick and tight. He shouted Talfi’s name and fell to pulling at the debris with his bare hands. He clawed at the stones and beams. But they were heavy, and he was weak from the damn iron. He no longer wanted the Tikkscock.

  “First!” The flesh golem joined in. Ranadar thought little of the creature, even though it looked exactly like his Talashka, but in that moment, gratitude overtook him and he would have done anything in repayment. Together they shifted several stones and managed to pull aside a beam. The golem’s great strength was a powerful asset, and he tossed aside rocks like pebbles. From outside erupted sounds of terrified screams and panicked shouts and other cries. Ranadar ignored them and kept working. Moments later, however, they found themselves unable to shift a boulder-sized rock with a beam resting atop it. Talfi lay directly beneath.

  “Try harder!” Ranadar gasped. Dust and sweat streaked his hair and itched under his clothes, but he didn’t care. He and the golem grabbed and heaved. Nothing moved. Talfi’s hand stuck out, a grisly and pitiful petition. Blood oozed across the palm. Despair crawled over Ranadar, and he wanted to creep under the rocks himself and die. He grabbed again, ignoring his own scratched and bruised hands.

  “Can you create a Twist to get him out?” the flesh golem asked.

  “He could not step through it,” Ranadar said through clenched teeth. “Lift!”

  The flesh golem shook his head. “We can’t do it.”

  “We must!” Ranadar tugged at the beam again. Splinters tore at his skin. “Come on! We must not … must not leave him.”

  “We can’t do it,” the other Talfi repeated. “Ran, it’s impossible.”

  Rage filled Ranadar, and he whirled on the golem. “You want him dead! You want him dead so that—”

  “What?” the golem asked. “So I can have you?”

  “Isn’t that the reason?” Ranadar tried to lift the beam again. The iron nails inside it nipped at him like cold claws, but he could not stop. “You think that if he is unable to come back, I will turn to you.”

  “I’m him,” the golem said in that maddeningly familiar voice. It was both comforting and horrible at the same time, and the sound of it made Ranadar feel both relieved and sick. “It’s me. You know that, Ran.”

  “Do not call me that!” Ranadar barked.

  “It’s what I remember calling you,” the other Talfi said. “This flesh and blood are the same. The memories are the same. We’re the same! I love—”

  “Stop it!” The bolt of mental energy flashed from Ranadar’s head and struck the other Talfi square in the face. The other Talfi went to his knees with a cry of pain in Talfi’s voice that wrenched Ranadar’s heart. What had he done? Without thinking, he ran over to Other Talfi and put a hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry. I did not …”

  “Vik! Where did you learn to do that?” Other Talfi gasped. “You’ve never done it before.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Like a troop of dwarfs are pounding hammers in my head,” he groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.” And he threw up.

  Ranadar rubbed his temples, feeling even worse. “I am sorry. I did not mean … that is, I did know I could … maybe the Tikkscock brought it out. That and being angry.”

  “I don’t want you to be angry at me.” Other Talfi got unsteadily to his feet. “I hate it when we argue.”

  “You and I do not argue,” Ranadar said.

  “That’s not how I remember it.” Other Talfi’s voice was quiet. Hesitatingly, he reached for Ranadar’s hand. When he touched it, however, Ranadar pulled away.

  “We need to find a way to save Talfi,” he said.

  Other Talfi closed his eyes in either pain, resignation, or both. It disturbed Ranadar that he could read the emotions because he had seen the exact same expressions on Talfi’s face. And for a moment as small and quiet as the footstep of an ant, it flickered through his mind that if they could not find a way to pull Talfi out, perhaps it would be possible to find happiness with someone who was his Talfi’s double, and perhaps, over time, he would forget that this Talfi had ever been anything but the real Talfi.

  He flicked the dreadful thought away. It was not true, would never be true. But the ghost of the idea remained in his mind, the way someone at the edge of a cliff wonders what it might be like to jump over the side.

  More shouts and screams rose from outside the building. These sounded a little different from the earlier ones. The devastation to the city must be terrible, but Ranadar had given it little thought.

  “We can save him,” Other Talfi said. “All of us.”

  Another figure lurched into the room, stirring the dusty air. It was the other flesh golem. His twisted face was covered in dirt, whether from sleeping outside or from the earthquake, Ranadar could not tell.

  “Help … First,” it—he—said.

  Before Ranadar could react further, more figures pushed into the building—two, four, a dozen, twenty. All of them wearing ragged clothes, most of them badly disfigured, all of them Talfi. Ranadar found himself in a room filled with curly brown hair, sky blue eyes, and faintly crooked smiles. Some of them seemed intelligent; others were clearly feebleminded. Ranadar’s heart pounded in his chest, a bird trying to escape. He could not take it in, not fully understand what he was looking at. It was like standing in a forest that suddenly pulled up its roots and walked toward him. With cold certainty, Ranadar knew that this crowd of golems was the reason for the fresh screams outside. All these men shared Talfi’s flesh and blood. Did they share his memories and … feelings as well?

  Without a word, they moved toward the rubble and together they grasped the great, heavy beam. It easily wrenched aside under the inhumanly powerful strength of the flesh golems. The stones beneath it melted away, and no time, Talfi’s crushed and broken body slid free of the rubble beneath the warped hands of his duplicates. His skull was crushed and misshapen and one of his legs was folded at a sickening angle beneath him. Ranadar’s insides twisted.

  “Talfi,” he whispered. His entire world narrowed to that broken body. Ranadar touched the bloody face. He looked so much smaller when he wasn’t alive. Ranadar had seen Talfi die a dozen times, and each time it stopped his own heart. Even with Death’s promise, he could not seem to quite believe that Talfi would come back. And now Talfi had been crushed beyond all recognition. What had it been like? Sudden guilt racked Ranadar. Talfi had died in agony because Ranadar had brought him to this place. If Ranadar had not decided to summon the sprite, or if they had done it somewhere else, Talfi would never have gone through this. He would still be alive. Ranadar was cruel and selfish, just as everyone said.

  “Come on, Talashka,” he begged. “Wake up. You have to wake up.”

  But Talfi did not move. His body was growing cool.

  “He’s gone, Ran—Ranadar,” Other Talfi said quietly. His palms were bleeding from a dozen cuts, and one of the fingernails had torn off from the scarred little finger of his twisted left hand. The other flesh golems stood in a Talfi crowd behind him. Some looked frightened, some looked solemn. Several were weeping quietly. It looked as though a hundred twisted spirits of Talfi were mourning his loss. Ranadar could not bear to look at them. He concentrated on Talfi—the real Talfi. But Talfi did not move.

  A heavy lump grew in the back of Ranadar’s throat, and his arms felt heavy. Hot tears pricked the backs of his eyes. “He will come back. He has to. Death promised.”

  “Some things not even Death can undo,”
Other Talfi said. “Let’s … let’s take him back to Mrs. Farley’s. It isn’t safe to stay here.”

  “No. No!” Ranadar insisted. He pulled Talfi’s body tighter against him. “He will come back. He always comes back!”

  “Ranadar.” Other Talfi squatted next to him. “Ran. I’m sorry. I know you’ve lost him so many times. And maybe there’s a reason for that.” Other Talfi took a deep breath. “Maybe the reason he can’t come back now is that … we’re here.”

  “What?” Ranadar stared at him, and it was the most disconcerting thing imaginable to be cradling the body of his dead love while talking to a man who looked and sounded and acted exactly like him. Even his mind felt the same. This man was not a simple brother or a twin. This man was the same flesh, the same blood. “What are you talking about?”

  “What if … I’m him now?” Sympathy and love filled Other Talfi’s eyes, and they were Talfi’s eyes. “You don’t have to cry. I’m back. It’s me!”

  For an achingly long moment, Ranadar wanted to reach for him and leave the pain behind. It would be simple. This Talfi would be the same as the other Talfi. If the other Talfi was dead, what difference would it make?

  The other Talfi. Ranadar closed his eyes. How could he ever have let his Talashka become an “other Talfi”? The pain did not matter. Talfi did. Ranadar got to his feet.

  “It is not safe here,” he said, forcing himself to ignore Other Talfi’s aching, disappointed look. “We should bring him to Mrs. Farley’s.”

  Other Talfi wrapped Talfi in his ragged cloak, picked up the body—at that thought, Ranadar had to force himself to remain stoic—and headed for the door. The other flesh golems made way for him like an honor guard. Ranadar followed.

  Out on the street, Ranadar blinked and shied back. Chaos had spread everywhere. A number of houses and other buildings had collapsed in the earthquake, sending panicked people into the streets. Their cries and shouts and frightened chatter filled every corner, and the streets themselves were a bumbling press of people. Some were wounded and bloody. Children cried, babies wailed. Crowds gathered around some of the collapsed houses, desperately clearing away rubble to get at victims underneath as Ranadar and Other Talfi had done. Other, wealthier sections of the city must have been equally hit, and those sections no doubt had the prince’s guard and houses with clay golems and—once the sun set—trolls to help. But guards and golems did not come to help the poor. He turned to the horde of flesh golems that streamed out of the building behind him.