The Temple of Heart and Bone (12 page)

She picked up her shoulder bag
and sifted through it. She found some bread she’d wrapped for the journey. She
unrolled it from the cloth and broke off a small piece. “It’s a little soggy. I
guess some of the storm seeped into my bag.”

Up until that moment, an unspoken
boundary of distance had separated the two beings in the cottage. Drothspar had
remained carefully by the fire, and Chance had remained close to the door.
Slowly, nervously, the young woman extended her hand with the bread in her
fingers. She cringed slightly when he took the piece, afraid she might feel the
bones of his fingers scraping against hers. Drothspar took the bread carefully,
trying to avoid touching her for much the same reason. He felt unclean, and he
didn’t want to spread that feeling to her.

The heightened tension passed
quickly once the bread had been exchanged and the two parties returned to their
own territory. Once back, both realized that nothing evil or painful had
happened, and both felt slightly more confident. Drothspar looked at the bread
in his fingers. It was soggy. He looked again at Chance, and she moved her hand
to her mouth and nodded her head, trying to let him know it was okay to eat.

Squaring his shoulders and
looking straight at her, he opened his mouth and inserted the bread. It caught
slightly on his front teeth, but when he separated them to try and get a better
bite, the bread fell through the bottom of his jaw. He looked quickly at Chance
and noticed her eyes widen as the bread hit the floor.

“Well,” she asked, “could you
taste it?”

Drothspar shook his head and
wrote “no” on the floor. He picked up the piece of bread and moved to give it
back to Chance.

“That’s okay,” she waved him off,
“you go ahead and keep it. I’ve got more.” She smiled weakly and Drothspar kept
the bread. He couldn’t really blame her.

“It seems like you’ve got about
three and a half or so senses out of five. Touch doesn’t seem to be working
entirely, so we’ll call that the half. That’s not too bad, all things
considered. What happens when you try to talk?”

Drothspar opened his mouth to
speak a few times only to hear his own teeth clatter against one another.
“Nothing,” he wrote on the floor. Chance watched his attempt at speech and was
reminded of the marionette puppets she had seen as a child. It was eerie, she
thought to herself, but no more so than anything else about this encounter. She
had dozens of questions about the creature before her, if it even qualified as
a creature. There were so many questions that she hadn’t sorted out the next
one before he wrote something else on the floor.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

She was taken slightly aback by
the question. She’d been asking so many questions herself, she wasn’t really
prepared to answer one. She thought about the situation. She was in a dead
man’s home, and he was here, before her, asking why. It wasn’t really the kind
of question you could ignore. She sighed.

“It’s a pretty long story,” she
replied, “are you sure you want to hear it?” Her voice carried a pleading tone,
bearing the hopes that he might wave off his question. He nodded his head,
however, letting her know that he was sure. Of course he was, she thought to
herself, I’ve invaded his home. She sighed and considered the best way to
explain her situation to the stranger across from her.

“All right then,” she told him,
“but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She smiled at him ingratiatingly, trying one
last attempt at charm. The skeleton sat quietly in its robe, devoid of all
expression. He’d make a great gambler, she thought to herself.

“I come from a wealthy, noble
family. My family is very old and very structured in its traditions. I
sometimes think that my parents had my life plotted out a year before I was
born.” She paused, waiting for a response to what she had felt was a joke. No
response came, at least none that she could see, so she continued.

“I used to say that to people as
sort of a joke, but as I got older, it didn’t seem very funny anymore. As I
grew older, boys and I began to notice each other and my father sent me off to
school in the North. He had attended the very same school himself, as had my
mother. I’m fairly certain they didn’t meet there, though.” She smiled wryly to
herself, again responding to some personal joke. She looked at Drothspar to see
if he’d react, slightly disappointed that he didn’t.

“I spent four years attending
lectures and classes and then returned home. I was a different person when I
came home, four years older, certainly. I was sixteen years old when I went to
school, just a girl, really. I came home as a twenty year-old woman. I guess my
father didn’t realize that the education he’d planned for me might not coincide
with his plans for my life.

“About six months after I got
home, my father called me into his study. His study was his sanctum all
throughout my life. I was never allowed in there.” She leaned forward and
lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I snuck in there once, when I was about
nine. I earned a moderate lashing and a month without sweets for my
transgression.” She leaned back and continued in a normal tone of voice. “The
lashing was quick and the pain didn’t last that long. The month without sweets
was a nightmare,” she smiled.

“I was pretty nervous about being
asked into his study. I began to wonder what punishment I’d earn this time.
Thinking about it now, I guess I wasn’t too far off the mark, as the saying
goes. My father congratulated me on my graduation. He told me he was very proud
of me. He said I’d become a fine young woman. He also told me I would soon be
meeting my husband.

“I was,” she paused, searching
for the correct term, “surprised.” The tone of her voice indicated that she was
being somewhat reserved in her choice of phrasing. “Certainly, in my life and
my education, my father had been preparing me for this ‘momentous’ occasion. I
smiled at him. I thanked him. I left the study feeling far worse than I had
when I was nine.

“A month and a half later, I had
the distinct displeasure of meeting my would-be husband. He was intolerable. He
was rich enough, I suppose, even handsome. His manners were appalling, to say
the least, and he thought himself overly clever. He told me what our lives
would be like, drawing me a quick sketch of our life together. Like my father,
he had it all planned out.

“As politely as I could, I excused
myself, having come down with a terrible headache. Leaving the room, I heard my
father play off my exit as ‘a young girl’s nerves on meeting so fine a young
man.’ I could hear the veiled displeasure in his voice. While the men continued
to drink to our health and their heirs, I packed.” She paused for a moment,
noticing the rain streaking down the walls around the windows. She gazed off
into the distance, looking for the trail that had led her to this explanation.

“I bundled up a few things in this
shoulder bag, wrapped myself in the biggest, darkest cloak I had, and slipped
out of the house. I could still hear the crystal clink of their glasses as I
closed the door on my family.

“Getting out of the house was one
thing. That had been pretty easy, actually. The problem was finding someplace
to go. I took a room in the city for the night, asking to be awakened before
dawn. I knew I’d have to be away from the city before my father got up and
found that I was missing. Whatever I might think of my father’s plans, he’s
actually a very intelligent man,” she explained. “Once he found out I was gone,
I knew he’d turn out the family’s retainers, even the soldiers in our own
regiments to search every inch of the city.

“The innkeeper’s wife woke me
about an hour before sunrise. I paid her quickly for the room and a little food
for the road. I bought myself a seat on a carriage headed south and rolled out
of town before the light of the sun cleared the horizon. For the moment, I was
one step ahead.

“While we were driving to
Arlethord, I tried to make some plans of my own. Getting away was one thing,
staying ahead of my father would be something else entirely. At first, I hoped
he might assume I would turn north toward school and my friends there. I dashed
the hope almost as soon as I felt it. I had to plan as if he were right on my
heels. He would have
no
qualms about dragging me back to my ‘fiancé’
kicking and screaming.

“Help from my family was out of
the question. Aunts, uncles, and cousins would never stand up to my father on
my behalf. They’d sell me out in a heartbeat, knowing that they would not only
avert my father’s wrath, but probably gain a fat, greasy reward out of the deal
as well. I didn’t really know anyone in the capital, a few friends from school,
but I had no idea where they actually lived. Even if I could have found them,
there was no way I could be sure where their loyalties might lie. I began to
get a bit more nervous as we neared the city-gates.

“Once I was in the city itself, I
wrapped myself in my cloak and decided to visit the market square. I needed to
walk, to clear my mind. The merchants hawking their goods actually clamored
over my ability to think. They were just so loud. I wandered almost in a daze,
just looking for some way out of the marketplace. Then the church bells rang,
and they were so near that they even drowned out the shouting merchants.

“The bells must have snapped my
wits back into order, because I remembered the one family member who might not
turn me over to my father. Petreus. He’s a distant relative, a cousin of my
father’s to some greater or lesser degree. He was occasionally invited to
family gatherings, though most of the family didn’t really care if he had been
invited or not. Truth be told,” she said, smiling, “he didn’t much care either.
The family didn’t concern themselves with him because he was not of financial
substance. I suppose he didn’t care much for the way they chose money over
blood.

“I walked straight to the church
and got myself admitted to see Petreus. We had a few drinks and talked. When
Petreus
did
attend family gatherings, very often the two of us would
wander away from the mingling crowds and talk about all kinds of things. When I
started school, we started debating my lessons in religion and philosophy. When
I was old enough, he let me have a few drinks with him. I think it was because
I lost more arguments after I’d been drinking,” she said seriously. “Either
way, it was fun.

“I told Petreus what my father
had planned for me and what I thought about it. He was a bit taken aback by my
language, but he agreed to help me. I told him I needed someplace to get away
from all the eyes that would be looking for me. He told me about a little
cottage in the woods, one that had been abandoned quite some time ago. He told
me that I might find a vagrant squirrel living there, or maybe a restless
spirit…” She paused for a moment looking at Drothspar. “He said I might find a
restless spirit, but if I did, it would probably be a nice one. I was certain
that he was just joking. I told him that I didn’t believe in spirits. That set
off another one of our ‘discussions,’ and then I left. He gave me the
directions to get here—otherwise I’d never have found this place.”

Drothspar looked at her then
leaned forward to write her a question.

“Spirit?”

“I honestly think he was joking,
just trying to tell me a little ghost story. I mean, I don’t think he knew you
were here.” She thought for a moment. “He did seem to know an awful lot about
the place, and his directions on how to get here were amazingly detailed.”

Drothspar nodded.

“Do you know him?” she asked.

“Yes,” he wrote. “He performed my
marriage.”

“He told me that the cottage had
belonged to a nice couple. He said that they were very loving, but also
unlucky. He told me your names, and,” she thought about the best way to phrase
her next statement, “your falling out with the Church.”

Drothspar nodded. “What else
about us?” he wrote.

“Not too much, really. He told me
that you and your wife were, as he called you, ‘a magical couple.’ He said you
were both and together ‘beautiful creatures of body and soul, damn me if
they’re not,’ and he took a long drink in their, well, your honor. He also said
you’d had some difficult times with your love, not with each other, but with
the, how did he say it, ‘jealous jackal-pigs’ of this world and the ‘damned
Fallen filth’ of the other. He made a sign to ward off evil and had another
drink to make sure it stayed.”

“What else?”

“After he’d had enough to drink,
he started telling me how much he had loved you both. He talked about how
beautiful your wife had been, and how she’d have been ‘a damn-better priest
than most of the rabble serpents that befoul the church with their scum-licking
tongues.’ He’s very excitable when he’s drunk.” She smiled.

Drothspar nodded briefly,
acknowledging her statement but obviously looking for something more. After a
moment of consideration, he wrote again.

“What about death?”

“He didn’t tell me what had
happened to you, only that the cottage had been abandoned since shortly after
the invasion.” She paused, trying to remember what she could of her
conversation with the priest. “He told me he knew of a good, secluded place,
one that had been a ‘focus of love and goodness.’ His eyes rose right toward
heaven as he said it, as if he’d been testifying before the Maker of All. It
was as if he’d sobered up for a second, then fell from a happy, occasionally
bitter, drunk to a very sad one. When he looked back down at me, his eyes were
watering, but he just blustered all the more to cover it. He said it was a
shame for the place to go unoccupied for all this time, that there was the lake
nearby, and that I could even fish for my dinner if I was so inclined. Which,
he said, was a good thing, because the farm where they’d gotten their food fell
under ‘the flaming sword.’” She blinked for a moment, remembering that this
haunting presence
was
one of the couple that had made up “they.” She
went on with her story, trying to reconcile with the reality of the moment.