Bone War

by Steven Harper

  The rumbling stopped. Silence fell like a heavy cloak. Talfi’s breathing came hard and fast in his own ears. Slowly, he became aware of Ranadar’s arm around his shoulders. He pushed himself upright, as did the others.

  “What was that?” he asked unnecessarily.

  “I am sure they will worsen,” Ranadar replied. “At least none of us was hurt.”

  “Not yet,” Other Talfi agreed. “Uh … I’ll see to the fire.”

  “You are all right, Talashka?” Ranadar asked.

  “He doesn’t ask me,” Other Talfi muttered in a barely audible voice from the fire pit.

  “I’m fine. Just shaken.” Talfi gave a little bark of laughter. “Ha! Shaken!”

  “You are as bright and funny as ever,” Ranadar said gravely. “And now I will clean the rabbit.”

  When the rabbit was spitted and sending the fine smell of roasting meat in all directions, Talfi drew a target on one of the trees and got out his bow. His hands were still shaking a little, and he used the practiced moves of archery to calm himself. He wasn’t crushed beneath a pile of rubble. He was alive, here, with Ranadar.

  On his way to see a queen who would happily see him dead.

  Stop it, he admonished himself. Breathe.

  The first arrow went wide. The second, however, hit the outer edge of the target. The third hit the exact center. Much better. He retrieved and sheathed the arrows.

  “How long to the Lone Mountain from here?” Talfi shaded his eyes and peered into the forest as if he could tell by looking hard.

  Other Talfi turned the meat. “That’s the ninth time you’ve asked that today, and the answer is still three more days.”

  “Maybe not,” Ranadar said.

  Talfi whirled and Other Talfi looked up. A half circle of Talfis surrounded them, all staring with identical blue eyes, all wearing bloodred tunics. Talfi’s stomach crawled with unexpected nausea. He thought he was getting used to seeing other versions of himself, but so many all at once put a cold, tight fist in his gut. Accompanying them was an elf in bronze armor with a sprite hovering behind her. The elf’s armor was battered and pocked and worn, with sagging leather hinges and cracked buckles. The elf carried her helmet instead of wearing it. The chin strap was broken. Clearly, this wasn’t someone who spent a great deal of time close the royal court, and the angry expression on her face made Talfi guess that the duty she was performing—patrolling the forests between Alfhame and Balsia—was far from choice. Wonderful. Their first meeting with an Alfhamer Fae, and she was likely to be in a bad mood. Her hair was so blond it was more silver than gold, her brown eyes were as hard as oak bark, and her broad build bespoke a hard life in the field instead of a leisurely one in Palana. Talfi had no idea how old she was—no Kin could judge the age of an elf.

  “Er … hello.” Talfi put the bow over his shoulder with a half wave. “We—”

  “What are you doing out here?” demanded the elf. “No other patrols have been commanded for this area. Vik! I should drag you back to Alfhame by your ankle tendons.”

  “Enjoyable as that sounds, perhaps you could just bring us to the queen, Sharyl. Before another earthquake hits.” Ranadar took down his hood.

  All the flesh golems gave identical gasps. Talfi kept his face carefully stoic. The sprite bobbed in midair, and the elf snapped to attention and bowed. Her armor creaked.

  “My lord prince,” said Sharyl. “I did not realize you had returned. Your lady mother has instructed any elf who finds you to escort you to her. Very kindly.”

  There was no mistaking the heavy tone in the word kindly.

  “Excellent,” said Ranadar, a little too brightly. “How far is it?”

  “As the golem here said, it’s three days. Less if we run,” said Sharyl. “Assuming your time playing among the Kin has not made you soft. Your Highness.”

  “No softer than licking sheep testicles has made you, Lieutenant,” Ranadar growled.

  Sharyl’s jaw tensed and her fingers flicked toward her sword. Ranadar stared coldly at her. Talfi tensed, and he could see Other Talfi looked nervous as well. Then Sharyl burst out laughing.

  “Ranadar! You sap-sucker!” Sharyl caught Ranadar in a rough embrace and kissed him on both cheeks.

  Ranadar laughed and pounded Sharyl’s armored back. “Still poking pine needles up your ass, I see.”

  “I would say the same about you, except it is definitely not a needle,” Sharyl said. “Halza’s hellish head, what are you doing? You are the crown prince, but you dash about like a pouting mal rishal child. The queen is put out with you.”

  “Then take us to her,” Ranadar said.

  Sharyl spread her hands. “If I were you, I would keep running. But I have my orders.” She gestured at Talfi and Other Talfi. “Are you bringing these toys along? They’re supposed to be in Balsia.”

  Talfi wanted to feel relieved, but the insult was too great, made worse by the fact that Sharyl didn’t even seem to realize it was an insult. He took a step toward her, but Other Talfi put a hand on his arm.

  “You know what it’s like in Alfhame,” he murmured.

  Talfi glanced at Sharyl and the sprite, and tightened his jaw. Right. At least he didn’t have to worry about the elves addicting him by touch. But judging from the looks of adoration the flesh golems were giving Ranadar, they felt—or remembered feeling—the same way about the elf that Talfi did. Talfi felt a little cold inside at that. An entire army of men who thought they were in love with Ranadar. What were they supposed to do with that?

  Did it matter how the golems felt? Were they really alive? Not long ago, Talfi would have instantly said they weren’t. But the more time Talfi spent with Other Talfi, the more Talfi himself thought about the question, and the less sure Talfi became. Ranadar could touch their minds, but he couldn’t touch the minds of clay golems—because they had no minds. Flesh golems seemed to think. Or they thought they could think. Was there a difference? The idea made Talfi’s head hurt.

  And then there was the question about how they all felt about Ranadar. How could you know if you were in love or not? Was there a difference between being in love and just thinking you were in love?

  Talfi wasn’t worried about one of them stealing Ranadar away. Not anymore. But the rancor he had felt earlier for Other Talfi was shifting more toward pity. It wasn’t Other Talfi’s fault he felt the way he did.

  Except, and this was a big except, the flesh golems hadn’t earned their love. They hadn’t met Ranadar for the first time and felt that quickening thrill at how handsome he was. Their breath hadn’t caught at the way his scarlet hair caught the light, and their hearts hadn’t skipped at the sound of his voice. They hadn’t felt the delicious mixture of fear and anticipation of sneaking through the palace to see him or shaken with excitement when Ranadar hesitantly leaned in to kiss him for the first time. They only remembered it.

  It was a strange situation—the lack of memory caused Talfi pain, while the load of memories hurt the flesh golems. Perhaps there was a way to change all this, free the golems of the memories that chained them to Ranadar. And to Talfi.

  “The … toys are coming with me, yes,” Ranadar said. “And we must hurry.”

  “Perhaps we should Twist, then,” Sharyl said. “I do not relish a days-long run any more than you do.”

  Before Ranadar could comment, Sharyl put out her hand, and the sprite landed on it. She whispered to the sprite, who changed color from sunshine gold to sky blue to sunset red and back to sunshine gold.

  “Can you Twist that far?” Ranadar said doubtfully. “I do not remember you being able to—”

  “Ved-Kal-Who-Skims-the-Emerald-Grasses-Beneath-Autumn-Leaves is alerting Her Highness to your presence, O my great prince,” interrupted Sharyl. “She will open a Twist for us.”

  “Ran,” whispered one of the flesh golems in a voice that sent tight tension down Talfi’s back. “Ran, it’s me.”

  “I know,” said Ranadar quietly. “We cannot discuss this right now.�
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  The look on the flesh golem’s face was painful to watch. “But—”

  “We will talk later,” Ranadar said.

  A soft shimmer grew in the air. Ved-Kal-Who-Skims-the-Emerald-Grasses-Beneath-Autumn-Leaves skimmed around the edge of it, drawing a circle of golden light to mark the boundary. “Time to go, we know,” he said.

  “First,” Sharyl said, putting out her gauntleted hand, “I am afraid you will have to give up the weapons. Arrows and knives. You understand, I am sure.”

  “Do you think I have come to assassinate my own mother?” Ranadar asked archly.

  “You know how it is,” Sharyl said blandly. “Can we be civilized about it, or must I … insist?”

  Silently, Talfi handed over his quiver and knife while Ranadar did the same. Sharyl was letting them keep the bows, Talfi assumed, because they were useless without the arrows. Sharyl handed Talfi’s equipment to one of the guards. The Twist continued to shimmer.

  “Quickly, now,” said Sharyl. Her words were friendly, but her tone was hard. “It will not go well to keep the queen waiting any further.”

  Ranadar stepped through the Twist. Talfi’s heart sped up a little. Twists still made him a little nervous, and this one had been spun by the queen of elves, who didn’t like him. He forced himself to leap through. As the Twist took hold, he saw movement behind him. For an awful moment, he was everywhere and nowhere all at once, and then he snapped back together. He was standing on green grass. Nausea swept him, and he went retching to his knees. Beside him, Ranadar was standing straight and tall, unaffected—or managing not to show it. The shimmer shifted, and Other Talfi popped out of it in his ragged red cloak. He didn’t seem affected by nausea, either, the bastard. Sharyl emerged last with a creak of armor. The Twist vanished.

  Talfi pushed himself upright, the vomit still a sour taste in his mouth. Already his heart was pounding and his palms were sweaty. The Twist was the easy part. He managed a glance around.

  The scene took some time to absorb. They were standing ankle-deep in dead leaves on the bank of a gleaming silvery river that flowed in from the north. The river smashed into the base of a great, sharp-edged mountain that rose like a razor to the sky. Lone Mountain. A thousand years ago, the Sundering had pushed up a single mountain here, split the river, and dried up the original bed. Talfi blinked up at the slope, a little unnerved at the idea that he was nearly twenty years older than this mountain.

  The river torrent was doing its best to drill through the slope, but the rock was too much for it, and the river grudgingly poured off to the east and west, forming the Silver and Otra rivers. From somewhere in Talfi’s head rose the memory that the southern side of Lone Mountain still sported a dry riverbed that went all the way down to the South Sea and was called the Sand River.

  Also on the bank of the river stood an enormous ash tree. Actually, enormous didn’t begin to describe the size. It was easily five times taller than any tree Talfi had ever seen, but also stooped and bent. It hung over the river like a grim ancient giantess trailing a cloak of rotten leaves. Heavy, arthritic branches twisted around one another. In fact, the more Talfi looked at the tree, the more it looked like a massive, ancient woman. A wrinkled, aging face seemed frozen in the bark. Her bark-covered arms reached outward in pain or supplication. Her bent and broken legs sprawled among the roots beneath her, stretching toward the river.

  A rank smell of dying wood and decaying leaves hung heavy on the air. The tree’s shade loomed over everything, blotting out nearly all the sunlight and creating a dark space beneath, and she rumpled the earth in all directions.

  Within the branches of the great tree hung small houses and what looked like giant beehives, all connected by catwalks constructed of wood and vines. Elven army officers in bronze armor tromped along the catwalks with swords and spears, and more elves and fairies had set up camp beneath the tree and along the bank of the river. Sprites darted among the tree’s branches, trailing light as they went. The dank shadow of the tree loomed over all. The Fae preferred to live in trees—the elves in houses, and the fairies in the beehive structures—but Talfi couldn’t imagine wanting to live in this tree.

  The ground camp extended beyond the tree’s shade. Tents and thatched shelters made of elven ivy stood in orderly rows that stretched all the way to the horizon. Flocks of sprites skimmed overhead. Gaggles of fairies scuttled about on errands. More armored elves saw to their weapons. And waiting among them all were the flesh golems. More and more flesh golems, all looking just like Talfi.

  The main trunk of the tree swarmed with yet more fairies. They skittered up and down the bark like great spiders, their sail-like ears quivering and swiveling as they worked. Three of them were massaging a knot in the bark together. Even as Talfi watched, the knot bulged and grew larger and larger until it was the size of a cartwheel. The bark thinned like skin and finally split with a wet, peeling sound. Out spilled the smell of rotting meat and a great deal of greenish yellow fluid. The fairies reached into the hole and together pulled out a naked Talfi. His skin was stretched and smooth as the left half of Other Talfi’s face had once been, and he had no hair. Talfi’s stomach roiled with horror and he tasted bile again. The air itself weighed him down as the fairies dragged the dazed flesh golem to the river and flung him in with a splash. When he burst to the surface, some of his scars had already healed, and curly brown hair was growing atop his head. He waded ashore, where the fairies tossed him an old cloak and a ragged red tunic. Meanwhile, another trio of fairies massaged another spot of bark.

  “Lovely, is it not?” said a familiar musical voice. Gwylph, queen of the Fae, stood only a few steps away, and when Talfi caught sight of her, he dropped to his knees in dread and awe. Her flawless, golden beauty was woven of sapphires and sunshine. Thrilling, gleaming light trailed her every graceful movement. She wore battle armor of gleaming bronze links guarded with more bronze on her gauntlets and greaves. Her soft, braided hair begged Talfi to stroke it, even as he called himself a blasphemer for wanting to put his filthy human hands on her. On her back she wore a quiver of arrows slung with a slender silvery bow. In her hand, she held a white sword. The pale, paper-thin blade winked translucent as an ivory shadow in the shaded light. Runes scrawled down the blade and met more runes inscribed on the heavy cross-guard. A ruby shone red as blood in the pommel.

  Talfi’s heart jerked. “The Bone Sword,” he whispered in wonder. Gwylph must have stolen it from the trolls somehow. He felt even better. It was right and proper that Queen Gwylph should liberate the Bone Sword from lowborn Stane. No one else in the world could wield the Sword’s power with more wisdom, more greatness, than she.

  The Bone Sword quivered in the queen’s hand, and Talfi felt a similar quiver in his left leg, a faint vibration that twisted his gut into a hard knot. For a moment, Gwylph looked less beautiful. Then the quiver halted, and her perfection rolled over him again.

  “The tree is my own creation,” Gwylph continued. “If I cannot be a Gardener, I will create my own garden.”

  Her voice was cold and icy, but it slid over Talfi like melted love. Other Talfi looked rapt as well. Ranadar touched the back of Talfi’s neck and leaned down to breathe in his ear.

  “Rise, Talashka,” he whispered. “She has no power over you.”

  And with his breath, the glamour vanished. The love turned to chilly slush, and the twitch in his leg put a strange, coppery taste in his mouth. He looked at Gwylph and saw a middle-aged elven woman in creaky bronze armor. The armor needed polishing. Ranadar touched Other Talfi, whose face also cleared.

  Sharyl stepped in front of Ranadar and Talfi with a stiff bow. “My queen,” she said, “I have brought your son.”

  “Good work, Lieutenant,” Gwylph said. “You may return to your patrol.”

  Sharyl said hesitantly, “Your Highness, may I request—”

  Gwylph waved an absent hand, and Sharyl vanished into a Twist. From the ground came a small thump and a clatter. Gwylph looked down,
and an expression of distaste crossed her face. “The Nine!”

  Lying on the ground was Sharyl’s right hand, still in its armored gauntlet. Thin smoke rose from the cauterized stump, and the smell of singed flesh hung in the air. A fairy scampered over, snatched up the hand, and rushed away with it. The tree that shaded everything shuddered, and a few leaves drifted to the ground.

  “Mother!” Ranadar said, aghast. “That was … you should have—”

  “She’s just a mal rishal lieutenant, Ranadar,” Gwylph said absently. “If she were worth something, she would be at court.”

  Now that the queen’s glamour had vanished, the Bone Sword at Gwylph’s belt was calling to Talfi. He wanted to touch it, run his hands down the blade, and feel his flesh quiver while he did so. It was a hunger he couldn’t describe, and it overwhelmed the horror he would have felt at Sharyl’s mutilation.

  Ranadar pursed his lips, then held out his arms. “Mother!”

  “My son!” Gwylph embraced him and genuine tears slipped down her cheeks like little gems. Her armor clinked, and the arrows in her quiver jumped about. “How much I have missed you! Look at you.” She took his chin in her hands, then turned his head to examine it critically. “Your hair! What has your body slave done to it? You must have him whipped! I have found the flesh golems are a wonder with a lash.”

  “It is fine, Mother,” Ranadar said. “I have no body slave.”

  Talfi couldn’t pull his eyes from the Bone Sword at Gwylph’s waist. What would happen if he snatched it from her belt and sprinted for the tree? It wasn’t more than fifty yards away. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and shot a sideways glance at the heavily armed elves and fairies and sprites moving in troops and crowds under the tree’s shade, along the banks of the river, and in the endless camp that stretched beyond. He wouldn’t make five feet. Sure, he’d come back to life, but Queen Gwylph would be on her guard. Did Gwylph even know the Bone Sword could release Pendra from the tree? She must. Why else would she have gone through the effort to steal it from Vesha?