Path of Bones (30 page)

And he must kill them.

They’re close.  And once they’re dead, the real hunt can begin...

Thirty-Eight

It’s nearly midnight.  The manor is silent and still, with walls the color of old bones.  A chill breeze sweeps dead leaves across the path. 

Inside she finds the floor is paved with blood.  Moonlight reflects off the putrid crimson pools.  Ice runs down her spine, and every footfall is a peel of thunder in the otherwise silent structure. 

She feels her way along the dark corridor.  The place has never seemed so large, so labyrinthine.  Soon she comes upon a body, face down in a blood pool.  The blonde hair is mottled and messy around a gaping wound that has split the skull. 

She steps towards the corpse with dread rushing up her throat.  Her hands are shaking.  The boy’s corpse is cemented to the ground with gore. 

Tears stream down her face, and she’s forced to draw herself back. 

It can’t be him.  It’s impossible.

The smell of the body fills her nostrils and nearly gags her, and the broken skull and blood-mottled hair look frail and false.  She takes hold of the boy’s shoulders, intent on turning him over. 

The head moves.  Suddenly he sits up, and she screams and falls back.  He stares at her accusingly.  Blood seeps from the open mouth and nostrils. 

“
Momma?” he says in a gasp of dead breath.

Another voice sounds, dark and resonant.  Metal grates and rattles in the air like an explosion of blades. 

“
Do not fail me
,” the voice says, utterly inhuman, darkly rich and mechanical.  “
Your son is not safe.  He’ll
never
be safe.”

His iron voice is so loud she can hardly hear herself breathe.  Pain ripples down her face and neck. 

“What do you want?” she begs. 

“
You know what I want,”
he says. 

An image bleeds through her mind like hot wax.  She sees a city at the edge of a dune sea, beyond mountains of dust and valleys of rock and bone.  Cracked temples and broken monuments lie scattered across the desert like leaves.  A sizable military force waits beyond the walls, watching over slaves and workers who dig for monuments buried deep beneath the soiled earth.

It is the ruins of Corinth, one of the devastated cities of Gallador.

“
Find her,”
he repeats.  “
Or your son will be the one who suffers.”

She looks down.  Kyver reaches for her with bloodstained hands.  She tries to move, but he grabs hold of her face and crushes the life from her bones.

Vellexa woke in a cold sweat.  The dark world snapped into focus as she sat up.  She saw the cold plains, the Tuscar campfires, the shabby tents and
drad’monts
tethered by thick iron chains.  Fan’skar and a pair of his grey-skinned warriors sat close by, sharpening their strange weapons with stones.  The night was quiet, and the air smelled of roast dog and crude grain alcohol.  Her flesh was ice even under her thick wool shirt and a mountain of blankets.

“
Are you all right?” Cronak asked.  He crouched in the shadows just out of sight, carving a stick to a point. 

“
No,” Vellexa said uneasily.  “He’s alive, Cronak…he’s out there, watching us.”

“
Who?” Cronak asked.

“
The Iron Count,” she said.  “He just appeared in my dreams…he knows how to find my son, how to find Kyver.  He can get to him.  He can kill him.”  The sight of Kyver’s corpse was burned into her mind’s eye.  “I don’t have any choice.  If I don’t find the Dream Witch, Kyver is going to die.”

Vellexa pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her forehead against her knees.  Fear spiked through her stomach. 

There’s no escape.

“
We’ll find her,” Cronak said.  He sounded so certain Vellexa almost believed him.  “Your son will be safe.”

Their small force of Tuscars and human mercenaries had traveled north for several days, guided by Cronak’s lupine instincts and his strange bond to Marros Slayne and Azander Dane.  Vellexa didn’t really understand the nature of that bond, but according to Cronak he sensed the others’ general location and could even communicate with them at a primitive level.  Cronak assured her he could not only find Slayne and Dane but could subvert them to his will, given time.  Vellexa only hoped that was true – if not, dealing with Slayne, his Black Eagles and the numerous Veilwardens and creatures traveling with them would prove just as dangerous as trying to apprehend the Dream Witch.  Luckily Vellexa had more than thirty hardened Tuscar raiders and their well-trained mounts at her command, as well as a dozen or so loyal Black Guild soldiers.

We’re not such an unimpressive force ourselves
, she thought, but in the back of her mind she just hoped it would be enough. 
It has to be.  You’re fighting for Kyver’s life.

Vellexa would be the first to admit she’d never been much of a mother, and Kyver would undoubtedly agree.  She’d never really been there for him, had never given him much affection.  Her own mother hadn’t exactly provided her with a shining role-model, having sold her daughter of eleven years into prostitution in exchange for Black Powder.  

Vellexa had tried to be better – she’d really
tried
.  Every effort she’d made to advance through the ranks of the Guild had been so she could provide her son with more than she’d had.  The Black Guild had given her money and power and a way to use the gifts she’d been born with.  Kyver deserved a good life, but she’d been so busy providing it she’d alienated herself from him, and now he was in danger. 

She thought of her son, with his ruffled red-blonde hair and big blue eyes, looking so like his father.  He had a smile so broad it seemed to go on forever.  She remembered holding him when he was just an infant, just the two of them on a field south of Ebonmark, watching the sun go down and swinging him around like a little hawk about to take flight.  His giggles, his laughter, the feeling of life in her arms.  He’d been so small, with so much ahead of him, so many possibilities.

She stifled her tears.  She felt so trapped.

“
Cronak,” she said.  “How long until we catch up with Slayne?  Has he found the Dream Witch yet?”

Cronak shut his eyes, concentrating. 

“Slayne and the Jlantrians are several days ahead of us, traveling north,” he said.

“
I’ll have Fan’skar prepare his troops,” she said.  She shook with fear.  Vellexa couldn’t escape the notion that this might have been avoided somehow, that things could have wound up different.

“
They haven’t found her yet,” Cronak said.  “But Slayne is confident they will, and soon.”

“
If we can’t get to Ijanna first, we’ll have to take her from Slayne.” 

Vellexa breathed deep and tried to calm her nerves. 

Steady.  Calm.  You can do this.  Everything will work out, one way or another. 
She’d lived through the death of her husband, found a way to provide for her son when almost anyone else would have given him up.  She’d been captured by Marros Slayne and lived to talk about it. 
You’re stronger than you think.

Cronak watched her carefully.  He was so different now, so alien in his visage and demeanor, but in spite of those changes she was more comforted by his presence than ever before.  They’d grown closer, somehow.  He watched over her.

As if he’d been reading her thoughts Cronak quietly walked over and put a warm hand on her shoulder.  Even though he was in human form she saw the wolf in him. 

“
We’ll save your son,” he said.  “I swear it.”

Vellexa stared into his mirror-like eyes. 

“Thank you,” she said.

“
I was never much of a friend,” he said after a moment.  “But I realize now you’re the only family I’ll ever have.”

She shook her head.  That was more than the old Cronak ever would have said, and she never would have thought him capable of such compassion, even if his tone and manner were distant and cold.  She closed her hand around his and looked out at the wasted plains.  The silhouettes of armored Tuscars obscured the horizon as they gathered supplies and weapons and readied the
drad’monts
, which stood as still as leathery stones against the cloth of night.  The Black Guild men talked amongst themselves, itching for a battle.

This can be done,
she thought.
  We can win Kyver’s safety.

“
It’s strange, Cronak,” she said.  “When Kyver was a baby he never used to cry.”  Cronak watched her in silence.  She felt like a fool, standing there and telling him this.  “He’s a grown boy now…not yet a man, but soon.”  A lump caught in her throat.  “And I couldn’t tell you a thing about what he’s like.  Nothing at all.  I haven’t seen him for more than an hour at a time for months.  I hired a nanny to keep him out of trouble, but now he’s too old for that, so he just runs around and raises hell…”

Tears ran down her cheeks.  She should have been surprised when Cronak put an arm around her, should have worried that Fan’skar and his Tuscars and the Black Guild mercenaries would see her at her weakest, but she didn’t care. 

I’ll be strong tomorrow.  Tonight, I need to cry.

Thirty-Nine

Kyver’s life took a turn for the worse the day the Jlantrians seized him from his posh apartment and turned him into a slave for the Castle Street Orphanage, a dark and dreary two-story building with bars over the windows and iron locks on every door.  (“For your protection”, Mistress Kara insisted.)  Very little light spilled in from the outside, and the air was sour and dank.

The other children in the orphanage were nothing like him.  They all seemed grey and lifeless, sucked of their will to live.  He thought maybe it was because of the food the evil cook Brak prepared, horrible sludge-like porridge and pasty bread that tasted like wet wood.  Or maybe it was because they rarely saw the sun, and on those rare occasions when the youthful prisoners were actually allowed outside it was to visit a small yard hedged in by iron fences that blocked out sight of everything but the smallest slice of the sky.  Or maybe it was because most of those children, who ranged in age from five to fifteen years, had never known their parents and never would, and those few who did told stories of beatings and abuse.

The children were complacent, tired and scared.  Compared to them Kyver was a blaze of energy, and he’d already found himself taking charge and directing the others to find better ways to spend their days than just sitting around and staring at the walls, reading the same books over and over again and drawing on small chalk slates.  They often resented him for daring them to run around, to sing, to try and find a way out of the Orphanage, but he pushed them on anyways.  He’d already received one beating for “instigating trouble”, and his back bore painful welts and a couple of scars as a reminder.  Mistress Kara promised to use the whip if he acted up again, but he clenched his teeth and told himself he didn’t care. Breaking rules was his way – sitting quietly wasn’t.

Thin beams of dawn’s light slipped through the shutters and cast the room in a lurid crimson glow.  The stone floor was particularly cold that morning, and the air was full with the sounds of runny noses and coughs.  Kyver sat quietly in the top bunk of one of the twenty or so beds and surveyed the rest of the wide grey room.  The bunks were full to overflowing with children, who sometimes had to sleep two to a bed and four to a bunk.  There was only a single door to that dungeon, and it was tall and wide and always locked.  The windows were tightly shuttered and reinforced on the outside with thick iron bars. 

Kyver wiped a lick of hair back from his face – it was thin and reddish-blonde, much like his father’s, he’d been told, and he was desperately in need of getting it cut – and looked at Genna, a tall and pretty girl who slept in the bunk below.  She was thirteen, just a year older than he was, but she’d turned out to be a wonderful friend, talkative and friendly without being bossy and pig-headed the way girls usually were.  Kyver knew for a fact that because he hadn’t expressed any interest in her “that way” Genna had felt especially comfortable around him.  The boys who were her age or older always talked about how beautiful she was, and they liked to try and intimidate her by telling her the things they’d do to her if they could get that grey dress off her body, but usually she just laughed at them.  She was a full-blooded Jlantrian, with honey-wheat blonde hair and big blue eyes. 

Genna seemed to be only other one there who hadn’t lost her spark of life.  She still had hope, still dreamed of being adopted so she could get a normal life.  Kyver envied her that…but then he wasn’t there because he was an orphan.  Whether Mistress Kara admitted it or not, he’d been placed there because his mother was a criminal.

She must have made someone very, very angry.