Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo

by Lindsay Cummings

  “I cage it,” Sonara said. “I set it free when I need it most. Otherwise, the pressure, the pain of it, is far too much to bear.”

  “I once felt the same way.” Azariah gently set down the rock in her hand. “You love your steed, don’t you?”

  A drastic change of subject, but Sonara nodded. “We have a bond. We came back to life together.”

  “And now you ride him free. Unbridled, unsaddled. It’s rare, for any rider and steed. But a beautiful thing to behold.”

  “Duran deserves his freedom,” Sonara said. “He spent most of his life being caged, too.”

  The moment she said it, she knew she’d walked headfirst into the princess’ clever little trap. Azariah smiled beautifully. “Your magic is the very same. It pains it to be held back. It’s a living, breathing thing, just as the planet is. It deserves to fly free. It is your heart and your soul.”

  “I didn’t ask for it,” Sonara said.

  Azariah lifted her hands and smiled softly. “Neither did I. But we have a gift, and we must keep reminding ourselves of that. To be different is beautiful.” She smiled again. “Have you ever heard the tale of the first Shadowblood?”

  Sonara thought back on the tale. It changed often, like all stories did. But some details remained the same. “It was a girl,” Sonara said.

  Azariah nodded. “Eona.”

  An old northern name, common enough in the White Wastes. But Azariah spoke it like a song.

  “Eona was the very first Shadowblood. A princess, not much younger than you and I are now, whose father was a nomadic warrior king. Jira’s ancestor, no less.”

  “She rode a northern steed,” Sonara said. “One as black as the night.”

  In the tale, the king set out on a journey from the north, slaying all in his path. But he lost a great battle along the way, so he and his warriors found solace for a time, to rest and recover somewhere in the Deadlands. It was there that her father and his court discovered the heart of the planet, and Eona laid eyes upon it for the very first time.

  “There are many written accounts of the First King,” Azariah said, “though the original texts seem to have been lost with time as to what truly happened that night while they camped. But the scholars in Stonegrave believe that the First King came upon a great source of power. It pulsed with it… and seemed to beat with the answers to all things.”

  “Like a heart,” Sonara said.

  The Princess nodded. “The First King was like anyone who wishes to rule. I believe there is always a kernel of greed within them. A little portion of their souls that begs for more, and it is up to them to decide how they will feed that kernel. Will they shower it with good, or will they nourish it with evil, as my father does? The First King had discovered the planet’s very heart. And in his nearness to it, he decided to give in to that darker side of himself, for his lust for power was strong, and that lust was heightened by the pulse of the planet’s heart. He removed a piece of it himself. He cleaved it from the Great Mother… broke her, if you will.”

  Sonara sat and pulled her legs to her chest. “What did it look like? The heart.”

  “Shadow. A mass of shadow, pulsing, moving. Alive. The First King discovered he could do great things with that piece of the heart. The tale, of course, is that he used its power to raze every defiant army across Dohrsar, solidifying his title and beginning his long reign.”

  “And what happened to the piece he removed?”

  “Another relic, lost to time,” Azariah said with a shrug.

  “If it’s true that he removed a piece of the heart, how can you claim the planet is still living?” Sonara asked.

  “The proof is all around us.”

  “But no one can live with half a heart.”

  Azariah lifted a brow. “And no one can come back from the dead, or walk the Earth with shadows for blood.” She carried on, satisfied with having silenced Sonara. “After the First King learned of the power that small piece of the heart gave him, he wanted more. He returned with a full army to remove the rest of it. And it was that night, while everyone slept, that Eona first heard the planet’s whisper.”

  Sonara hadn’t heard that part of the story before.

  “Eona crept closer, certain that the whisper came from the heart itself. Save me, it said. Eona could feel its terror, as if the planet were anticipating what was to come when morning arrived. She was clever. Too clever, as many princesses are.” She winked at Sonara with a casual smile. “She managed to steal the king’s mighty sword while he slept.”

  “Gutrender,” Sonara said. “At least, the story says that the sword once belonged to him.”

  The sword that started this whole mess in the first place.

  “The next morning, when the First King awoke, he found Eona standing over the heart of the planet, the golden sword in hand.”

  “To save the heart?” Sonara asked. “To fight off her father and protect the planet, like the good little heroine she was?”

  She hated stories like these.

  Why was the princess always so perfectly pliant? Why did the princess never answer the call of the shadows, never bathe herself in blood or sidle up next to the sweet simmer of sin?

  You do, Sonara told herself, but it sounded like Soahm’s voice. You are the Devil of the Deadlands, the heroine from Soahm’s story come to life.

  Sonara was surprised when Azariah frowned. “It’s quite the opposite. Thali says that Eona’s true greed appeared as she listened to the whisper of the planet. As she stood over the heart, staring into its inky depths, she tasted the power she could have. With it, she could surpass her father’s strength, and become something far greater than he. She used his sword and slew his army in a great bloody battle. She nearly delivered the death blow to the First King… until someone stopped her.”

  “Who?” Sonara asked.

  There was no someone in the other versions of the tale.

  “Her brother,” Thali said. “Her twin brother, Eder. She did not expect him to stand in her way, so perhaps it was the element of surprise that helped him to take Eona’s life. Alas, that part of the story does not remain in the holy texts. But it was his goodness, his purity, that stopped her from stealing the planet’s heart. He saved Dohrsar.”

  “But then Eona became a Shadowblood?” Sonara asked. “Why her and not Eder?”

  “As she lay dying, the planet brought her back. You know how it goes. Tendrils of shadow, sprouting from the ground to fill your body and give you a second life. Have you never considered what those shadows are?”

  Of course Sonara had.

  She and Jaxon and Markam had talked about it over countless hours, musing about what they now were. But there was never a true answer.

  “The shadows are pieces of the planet’s soul,” Azariah said. “The planet lends us some of her soul, and gives us magic with it. The power to command the aether. The power to call upon the bones of the dead. The power to sense the emotions of others.” Her eyes lit up as she looked at Sonara. “You’re an extension of the Great Mother, Dohrsar. A Child of Shadow.”

  “But why bring Eona back, and not her brother?” Sonara asked. “She tried to kill the planet. He’s the one that saved it.”

  “We could not possibly begin to understand the Great Mother’s choices, just like our Wanderer that lies in waiting for us, back at camp.”

  Sonara shook her head. “But why bring any of us back? What makes us chosen?”

  Azariah shrugged. “Does anyone truly know? You must remember your time in that fold between life and death. The planet decides.”

  Sonara nodded. “Darkness. Light. A realm that held none other, save for… a voice.”

  “A whisper,” the princess said. “Another detail that every Shadowblood remembers. Thali says it is the planet, speaking to us. You may not want to believe the truth, may not wish to worship the Great Mother… but you can at least acknowledge the fact that she lives. That she exists.”

  Sonara’s breathing still
ed.

  Azariah’s words, strangely, made sense. For if the planet really had given her some of its soul, then that would mean her curse was alive. That it could possibly find a way to slip out of her control, to remove the leash she’d kept it tethered to all these years. That it could possibly even grow strong enough to command her.

  There was both comfort and unease in considering that. Perhaps that was the answer to why her curse had exploded at the Gathering. But if that was true, then why did the planet command her to kill a Wanderer… someone who wasn’t even from here?

  “What happened to Eona after she became a Shadowblood?” Sonara asked suddenly.

  “There are many stories about her. Many accounts that she walked the planet, using her magic to seek others like her. Powerful Shadowbloods... some of which she created herself, by slaying those who had unique giftings in their first lives. Who knows how many of them were blessed enough to be chosen and come back a second time?”

  Sonara shivered at that. The torch was nearly gone now, the flames having eaten it whole. Soon it would burn to embers.

  “What happens if we find the heart?” Sonara asked.

  Azariah stood and picked up the dwindling torch. “I suspect that you came here because, perhaps, like Eona… you’re hearing the planet’s call. It sings to your magic, beckoning it to grow stronger, and answer.” She pressed her hand to Sonara’s arm, gently. “You must be careful, Sonara, which path you choose to take.”

  Chapter 23

  Karr

  Karr dared not move.

  The intruder was still there on the bridge, kneeling over his parents’ bodies while his knife dripped with their blood.

  Plink.

  A droplet upon the grated floor of the Starfall.

  Plink.

  A droplet on the silver pistol that his father had not been able to fire in time, now discarded beside his dead body.

  “Hurry up,” a voice hissed.

  A new pair of boots entered the bridge. Pretty, polished things, a triangular symbol stamped into the leather on the side of the heel. “Find the keycard and let’s move.”

  Karr sank further into the shadowed space beneath his father’s pilot chair; further away from the pool of blood, and his mother’s outstretched hand.

  Her eyes were still. Unblinking, as she lay on the grated floor, her lips parted, her gaze distant. She had always watched Karr closely, with a look that only a mother could give. One that was full of equal parts lesson and love…

  But now she looked past him. Through him. As if she no longer saw him at all.

  “Not here,” the voice said.

  “Then check the husband.”

  The first pair of boots, unpolished and worn, turned. “I already did.”

  “Well, it’s not here.”

  “It has to be.”

  “Then find the damned thing!” Karr began to shake.

  The men were growing angrier. He could sense it in their tones, the urgency of their harshly muttered words as they searched the bridge, throwing journals from their casings beside the dash, opening his father’s lunch crate, tossing aside his mother’s hand-knit blanket she kept slung over the back of her chair for long trips through hyperspace. A framed photo, normally magnetically held to the dash, was thrown to the floor. It shattered, the glass splitting across the faces of the Kingston family.

  The boots stopped moving.

  A pair of gloved hands scooped up the broken frame. “Oh, hell. Kids, man. There’s kids.”

  “Not on board, I didn’t see—”

  Karr hadn’t meant to cry. He hadn’t meant to let out that awful, revealing little squeak. But Cade wasn’t here. Cade was running errands in the small market just beyond the ship docks, and Karr…

  Karr was utterly alone.

  The two pairs of boots turned towards the dash, facing the space where he hid just below them, in the shadows.

  He saw knees appear. Then the shadowed face of a man, as he knelt. “Hello, little one.” His teeth were jagged and golden, sharp as a shark’s as he smiled. “You can call me Jeb.”

  It was dark when Karr woke, gasping himself back into the land of the living.

  He cataloged several things at once:

  There were ropes around his chest, binding him, a prisoner.

  The cave he sat in was dark, but not so fully that he couldn’t make out its vastness, broken by the distant light of what must be a crackling fire, for he could smell the telltale scent of wood smoke. He tried to glance left and right, but his skull hissed in pain, and the throbbing worsened… which Karr promptly remembered came from the very same young woman who’d stabbed him in the chest, days before.

  Think, Karr.

  He looked around as far as his bindings would allow him. The rock itself was red. Not a muted brown or grey, like most planets. But a deep, bloody crimson shot through with veins of deepest purple, as if the rock had been prepared by an artist’s hand: the same rock that made up the Bloodhorns that surrounded the valley.

  If any luck was on his side at all, he might not be too far from where the Starfall was docked. Had the crew seen him get taken? Had anyone noticed he was gone? By now, they had to have seen his helmet, left behind.

  He was still breathing. Still alive, without it.

  But how?

  Panic began to set in, for with each breath he took, more of the Dohrsaran air entered his human lungs.

  How long did he have, until the poisonous atmosphere got to him? And if he ever got back to the safety of the Starfall, would there be long-term effects?

  He took another shuddering breath. There was no telling how long he’d been out for. Surely by now, Cade was searching for him. Until then, Karr simply had to get himself to stay calm.

  Nothing good was ever accomplished under the guise of panic.

  All around him, twisting spirals of rock jutted into the black abyss above. Creatures huddled in the corners of the cave, some of them only visible by their dimly glowing green eyes, the slits of them flashing as they blinked, then reappeared again.

  Somewhere behind him, he thought he heard hissing. Perhaps a snake, which gave Karr one more reason to panic.

  Relax, he told himself. Settle your mind.

  He’d been in plenty of sticky situations before, but never one quite like this. At least not without Cade or another member of the Starfall’s crew. Jameson was always his closest comrade. If she were here, she would have made a joke. Something to calm him first, before she got them both to thinking.

  Footsteps sounded ahead.

  Karr looked down at his bonds, wriggling side to side as he tested the strength of the thick rope. But he could scarcely breathe, let alone move to get free. His hands were numb from the mere tightness of it.

  Think, he told himself again. Just think!

  His brain had always been his greatest asset. But the voice in his head sounded like Cade’s, and when he thought of Cade… he thought of what his brother had recently become.

  The footsteps grew louder, and soon they were joined by the flickering orange glow of a torch coming around a thick, spiraling red stalactite. And the person holding it must be…

  The woman from his nightmares.

  There she stood with her blue-and-brown hair, and an old worn leather hat perched atop her head, the wide brim dipping her features in shadow. Her shorts were tattered and torn, but her ankle-length duster looked sturdy enough. Leather boots came halfway up to her knees. She walked with the confident swagger of someone who did not need protecting, and as she came close, jamming her torch into a small hole in the ground, the light kissed the weapon attached to her leather belt.

  Black-and-blue steel that Karr knew well. Suddenly his chest ached again as he beheld the sword. As if his body remembered the feeling of the blade eating its way through his skin.

  “You stabbed me,” Karr said.

  He paused.

  His voice… he hadn’t uttered the words in English, but rather in her language. He�
��d spoken Dohrsaran as clear as day, as if he were fluent, and had been all along. But that was impossible.

  She tilted her chin, removing the shadows from beneath the wide brim of her hat. Her eyes were a muddy brown, matching the strange dark streaks in her blue hair. Those eyes fell upon Karr and did not waver as she said, “And yet here you are.”

  He understood that, too.

  His face scrunched up as he tried to hide his shock.

  She sat down, far enough away that his legs, sprawled before him on the rocky ground, could not reach her. But not so far away that she faded into the shadows without her torch.

  “Where is Soahm of Soreia?”

  More words, in her tongue, that he understood as easily as if she’d uttered them in English. She did not ask it like a question. It was more like a demand, and Karr remembered suddenly that she’d asked the same thing at the Gathering.

  He hadn’t known then, so why in the hell would she think he’d know now?

  He swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Again, in Dohrsaran.

  She nodded once, her face impassive. But she gently slid her sword from her belt, twisting it round in her grip.

  “Do you know, Wanderer, why a Soreian warrior gives a weapon a name?”

  She ran her fingers across the steel, black with a stripe of blue running down its center. Was she going to kill him in one fell swoop? Or would she play with him first, the way a cat toyed with its food before sinking its teeth in deep?

  If Cade were here, their situations swapped, what would he have done?

  A mask, Cade always said. A mask to swap out for every situation.

  Karr considered this, wishing he were as good an actor as Cade, but one could only work with what one had. And Karr had always had a decent smile. They’d used it to get into plenty of high-profile places on jobs. “I’m not very well versed in the ways of Dohrsar,” he said, placing that smile on his face. A little sideways grin that pulled at the dimple in his cheek. “I’m sure there will be plenty of time for me to learn, while you and I discuss whatever matters you brought me here to…”