Bone Magic (6 page)

"How far?"

He shrugged,
rubbing the side of a bony, sunburned nose. "I don't know. A ways?
I've never been."

"Doesn't anyone
cross the river?" she asked.

He looked
shocked at the idea. "That's goblin country! We get raids over
here, but across the river? There's goblins everywhere."

When they
stopped to camp for the evening, Lina wailed, "How will we get home
if there's goblins?"

"There won't be
goblins," Tira told her.

"But that boy
said!"

Tira grinned.
"He also said he's never been across the river. He's never been
anywhere. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"But what
if…"

"It will be
fine," Tira told her. "Tam and I will keep you safe."

The next day,
though, the farms ended and the country grew wild. This wasn't the
ancient forest they had seen on the other side of the river. This
was farmland abandoned for twenty or thirty years. The road grew
rough, and they had to steer the cart around saplings, or push it
through washed-out sections. On the other hand, game was plentiful,
and Tira brought down a nice buck at midday. She dressed it and put
it in the cart.

In the
afternoon the road improved slightly. There were paving stones,
though they were buckled and uneven. Saplings had been chopped off
low to the ground, and washed-out sections had been crudely
repaired, making the road bumpy but navigable.

Late in the day
they came to a squat stone building standing by the side of the
road. Instead of windows it had arrow slits for archers. The door
was solid oak and covered in metal studs. "Maybe we should stay
here tonight," Tira said. "It's defensible."

"I thought you
said there weren't any goblins," Lina objected.

"That's not
exactly what I said."

"I'm scared of
goblins!" Lina wailed.

"Oh, for… Look.
If I see anything shorter than five feet tall, other than you
three, I'll put an arrow in it. I promise. All right?"

"Now that,"
said a gruff and gravelly voice, "is the most insulting thing I've
heard all day."

Lina gave a
small shriek and crowded closer to Tam on the bench. Tira, her
cheeks growing warm, looked at the closest arrow slit in the hut
and gave a helpless shrug.

The oak door
swung open and a stocky figure came out. He was just under five
feet tall, though thick-soled boots and a steel helmet made him
look taller. Long, curly dark hair spilled out from under the
helmet and framed a weathered, homely face that was mostly obscured
by a dark brown beard. Broad shoulders were made even broader by a
shirt of thick chain mail that hung to his knees. He wore a sword
belt over top of the chain mail. His thick-fingered hands were on
his hips, and he was doing his best to frown at them, but he
couldn't quite hide an amused grin.

"Are you a
dwarf?" Mikail blurted.

"What an odd
question," the stranger said, and sketched a mocking bow. "I am
Yanil Ironholder, at your service. I am a soldier, and a baker, and
a teller of tall tales." He smirked up at Tira and said, "I'm
primarily known as a lover of the ladies." He chuckled at his own
wit, and nodded to Mikail. "I am also a dwarf."

Mikail blushed.
"I didn't mean to be rude. Only, I thought dwarves weren't
real."

Yanil gave a
snort of laughter. "Well, I never. But I forget my manners. Welcome
to Willan's Crossing. All who come in peace are made welcome. All
others are chopped fine and dumped into the river. You'll find the
town just ahead, and I'm sure they'll be glad to provide a roof
over your heads." He patted the stone wall beside him. "I'm afraid
you won't be able to spend the night in my hut."

Tira thanked
him, and he bowed again in reply. She could hear him chuckling to
himself as they rode past and continued up the road.

"Was he really
a dwarf?" Sari asked.

No one bothered
to reply.

The trees ended
and the town appeared before them. It was a small settlement, but
well-defended. A stone wall about eight feet high surrounded the
town, with a tower at each corner. The town gate had a steel
portcullis and a tower on each side, each with a dwarf in chain
mail standing guard. As they rode closer Tira saw the rest of the
town's defenses, a low ditch just outside the wall, the bottom and
the inner side lined with sharpened stakes. An athletic man could
have cleared the ditch with a leap. It was scaled for goblins.

The bridge was
built of stone as well. It spanned the river in three graceful
arches, connecting to a road that vanished into the forest on the
far side. On the near side of the river, the end of the bridge was
within the stone walls.

The five of
them rode through the town gate, a handful of dwarves watching them
from the top of the wall. Tira was expecting to see more stone
inside, but the walls she saw were whitewashed plaster. There were
dwarves everywhere, most of them men, and they watched the
strangers with idle curiosity. A short street paved with crushed
gravel led to an open square in the middle of the town. There, a
graying dwarf woman in a long green dress came striding over to
meet them, flanked by a pair of soldiers.

Tira swung down
from her saddle and nodded a greeting. The dwarf woman bobbed her
head in reply. "Welcome," she said. "I'm Mayor Tandis."

Tira introduced
herself and the others. "We're passing through," she said.

"Perhaps," the
mayor replied, and ran a critical eye over them. "Five people, four
animals, and a cart. I think five silver crowns should cover the
bill."

Tira felt her
jaw drop. "Five crowns? For what, exactly?"

The mayor's
lips thinned, but her voice remained calm. "For the privilege of
crossing the river on our bridge, of course."

"That's
outrageous!" She regretted the words as soon as they were out of
her mouth, but the mayor shrugged, unfazed.

"You don't have
to pay, of course." She smiled. "There is a ferry crossing, back
the way you came. You can reach it in about three days." She
gestured over her shoulder. "There is another bridge, about two
days that way. Of course, when we drove the goblins out of this
town, that was the direction they were headed. But maybe they will
let you pass."

Tira glared at
her, then made herself relax. There was more than one way to cross
a bridge. She smiled with as much sincerity as she could muster.
"Since we haven't got five crowns, I guess we'll be on our way. The
hunting was good today. We'll just go beyond your town limits and
cook up our venison."

The mayor's
eyes brightened. "We can't very well turn you away with the sun
about to set. Surely you'll join us for dinner?"

"That sounds
marvelous," Tira told her. "We accept."

They roasted
the buck outside in a brick fire pit under the stars. There were
fifty or sixty dwarves in the town, and they supplemented the
venison with roast chickens and a vegetable stew, all of it mopped
up with slices of coarse bread.

There were
always sentries on the walls, but the rest of the dwarves ate
together at long tables set up on the open grass in the center of
town. Tira found herself on a bench wedged beside a sturdy dwarf
with a beard of familiar-looking brown curls. She wasn't entirely
sure if he was Yanil Ironholder until he spoke. The dwarves were
bewilderingly similar to one another.

A fat dwarf
with a gray-flecked beard sat on her other side. He was a leather
worker, and he was delighted to learn that Tira and her group
didn't want the hide of their buck. "The hunting isn't so good
around here anymore," he told her. "We've been here too long." He
stabbed a bit of venison with his fork and waved it for emphasis.
"I haven't had proper red meat in a week."

"I'm glad I
could contribute," Tira said.

"No she isn't,"
said Yanil with a grin. "She's hoping to charm her way across the
bridge without paying." He chuckled as she tried to look innocent.
"Lots of people try that." He winked. "Sometimes it even
works."

When the meal
was over, five dwarves brought out musical instruments, a gittern
and a lyre, a couple of drums and a strange, long flute with a
curve near the end. They perched together on stools on the far side
of the fire, plucking on strings and tuning their instruments, and
the others began to gather around.

"Hey," said
Lina, pointing at the curved flute. "That's a krummhorn!" The dwarf
holding it blew briefly into the mouthpiece, and the horn gave a
moan, surprisingly deep. "I didn't know it would sound like that,"
she added.

"Mother told us
about those," Sari said. "She was a musician when she was young.
She went to the city, and everything!"

Tira grinned,
enjoying her enthusiasm.

"Oh, look,"
Lina cried, pointing at the dwarf with the lyre. He had a bow in
his hands, and was making tentative strokes across the strings. "Is
that a crouth?"

The dwarf
looked up and grinned, a flash of white teeth in the black forest
of his beard, and Lina shrank back. "You know your instruments," he
said. His voice was low and scratchy, but filled with a quiet pride
that made it beautiful. "We pronounce it 'crewth.' My grandfather
played the crewth when our people hid in caves on the slopes of the
Cold Mountains. The goblins held the forest on every side, and they
hunted us. We were hungry and afraid, and almost without hope, and
the nights were the worst of all."

He was no
longer looking at Lina as he spoke. He gazed over the heads of his
listeners, looking into another place, another time. Voices fell
still as he spoke, and the other musicians stopped tuning,
listening instead.

"When every bit
of wood that could be scrounged was needed for the fires, he kept a
bit aside." His fingers stroked the crewth as he spoke, delicate
iron rings on his fingers glinting in the light of the fire. "When
every man was laboring from sunrise to sunset to keep hunger at
bay, he found the time to shape scraps of wood into something
more."

The dwarf with
the gittern ran thick fingers over the strings, a quick burst of
sound that made the hairs on Tira's arms stand on end. The entire
settlement had gone silent.

"When the night
came, and darkness fell, and we cowered so far underground that
even the light of the stars couldn't reach us, when cringing in
silence was our only hope to evade the goblin hordes, some of us
made a different choice."

Solid dwarvish
fingers were tapping on the skin drumheads, ever so softly, a beat
like a pulse just at the edge of hearing.

"There was
hunger, there was deprivation, there was darkness and mud and cold.
But worst of all was the fear. It kept us under the ground. It
stilled our voices, it chilled our hearts. We became something less
than dwarves. We became moles, cowering underground, afraid of the
light."

The krummhorn
began to moan, a low, deep sound that made Tira's breastbone
vibrate. The drums rose in volume, ever so slightly, and the dwarf
with the gittern kept time, plucking a single string over and
over.

"Dwarves with
spears and axes kept us safe." His voice rang out, suddenly loud,
and Tira flinched back involuntarily. She saw the children do the
same, and a dwarf chuckled.

"Dwarves with
hoes and spades gave us crops, and dwarves with bows and nets
brought us meat and fish. They kept us alive." His fingers caressed
the crewth, and he brought the bow sweeping across the strings. The
crewth seemed to wail, as if giving voice to every moment of
loneliness and fear the dwarves had ever endured.

"Brave dwarves
preserved our lives. But my grandfather, and men like him, did
something else. In the darkest, coldest hours of the night, with
goblins pressing close and fear pressing closer, they made music.
They preserved our courage. They preserved our hearts!"

He sawed with
the bow, and the crewth gave a triumphant cry. The drums beat
louder and faster, and the listening crowd stirred.

"He reminded us
that we were dwarves. He reminded us why we fought, why we endured.
He gave us the courage to break free." The bow made quick,
back-and-forth movements, the same two notes, over and over, in
time with the beat of Tira's heart.

"In time we
left the Cold Mountains." His fingers moved on the strings and the
two notes that he played became deeper. "We wandered." The triumph
was gone from the music. Instead it became weary and sad. "We had
no home. No place of our own. We were pariahs."

The fire seemed
to grow dim, the circle of light contracting, and a slender dwarf,
young enough that his beard was sparse and wispy, leaned in to prod
it with an iron poker. A log fell into the coals, and sparks shot
upward.

"My father
played the crewth." He stopped sawing with the bow long enough to
stroke the curved spine of the instrument. "He played this crewth,
that he made with his own hands." The bow resumed its
back-and-forth movement, and the dwarf squared his shoulders, pride
giving strength to his words.

"When every
ounce had a cost that climbed and climbed with every weary mile, he
carried wood, he carried tools. When the crewth was finished, he
carried that." His fingers moved on the strings, and the
back-and-forth surge of the bow changed to something more
complex.

"We had no
homes!" The movement of the bow was a dance now, the fingers of his
other hand doing a dance of their own on the strings. "No door was
open to us. No place made us welcome. We carried tents on our
backs, and put them up each night under cold starlight, or under
pouring rain, or in fields of snow."

The other
musicians were following his lead, the music taking on a life of
its own, dwarves on either side of Tira taking up the beat with
fingers or mugs that tapped on the tables and benches.