The Bone Cave

by Sarah Remy

  “Here, now, what’s this, lad? You look wan as a lass on her wedding day. Did he hurt you?”

  “Nay,” Liam replied. “We’re well. But, Armswoman, you’d best come and look. Goodwife Farrow is here, dead, and sidhe, and I think the man fancies himself a magus. He’s charmed the straw men into walking and he’s set about repairing the ferric army. Lord Malachi will need to know of this, and at once.”

  Later he cursed himself for turning his back on Lane. A cannier man might have stopped to wonder how she’d found them, and thought to bring meat for the hound.

  She struck him in the side of the head with her fist where earlier Holder had hit him with his whip, a sound blow that had him seeing stars as he sprawled in the sand. Parsnip screeched as she launched from the shadows, hatchet swinging. Lane cursed. They came together in a clash of snarls not unlike the sound of Bear’s rage. Liam, all but senseless in the sand, couldn’t lift his head to see. He tried to rise to his knees but the Bone Cave spun around his head, making his stomach rise into this throat. He gagged, and spat to clear his throat.

  “Lane!” he cried. “Don’t hurt her! She’s only a child.”

  The armswoman grunted in pain. Parsnip shrieked, and then there was silence. Liam, blinking to clear his vision, scrabbled on his belly in the direction of the grille.

  “Parsnip!”

  A foot came down on the back of his neck, pressing his face into the sand.

  “Don’t worry,” Lane said. “I won’t let her die. She’s one of the last of my children, precious in every way, and I’ll see Renault rotting in the ground for his blasphemy before I let any more of the young ones go to waste.”

  “Parsnip!” Liam shouted again. He was rewarded with a mouthful of grit. Parsnip didn’t answer.

  Lane reached down and grabbed Liam by the back of his shirt. She dragged him half upright, then across the ground, sending bones scattering; her strength was startling. Liam struggled but the pain in his head made his muscles useless. Lane sighed.

  “You’re a good lad, Liam.” Her voice was gentle, her brute force implacable. “I’m sorry you stumbled into this business, sorrier than you know I can’t give you my blessing and send you on your way. But I’ve given it some thought over the night, and mayhap you’re exactly what we’ve been needing, a gift from the one god fallen into our lap.”

  She pushed him forward until his chin connected painfully with the edge of the chopping block. He scrabbled in the sand, cursing, but she kicked and tucked until he was bent over the slab, cheek on rough wood. His eyes watered. He grabbed the side of the block, pushing up and away, but it was no use. The block held steady, Lane had her knee on his shoulders. His stunned body was still useless as a babe’s.

  “Mortal bones didn’t work for us,” Lane said in quiet conversation, “not as they do for a vocent. Master Paul said it was because we were missing something, some integral magic born only to a magus. His bloody book of spells was no use to us when it came to a human carcass.” Her knee was heavy on Liam’s spine, compressing his ribs, making it hard to breath. He was choking. “’Twas Holder who thought of the barrowmen; he said his nuncle believed a magus was just an extraordinary breeding—like his black cattle or his bloody hounds—born of man and sidhe, and their magic was the same. Farrow worked out how to catch us a few monsters, Holder was not wrong, and we had some hope, for a time. Although what good a handful of straw mannequins marching against a heathen king would do us, I can’t say. They’re quick and strong but hardly durable. One Kingsman with a torch would bring them down. I told Paul we needed something better, still more powerful, to animate the old walking machines.”

  She had the hatchet in hand. It wavered in the corner of Liam’s vision. He wasn’t weeping; he wouldn’t let himself beg for his life although he had to bite his tongue to keep from pleading.

  “You, though, Liam.” She bent so he could hear past the gasping of his own lungs. “You’re born sidhe and turned man. How powerful would your bones be, hammered into the walking machines and kindled by temple prayers? It came to me, overnight, as I worried over what to do with you, that your bones might be very powerful indeed.”

  Liam’s head was buzzing, his vision gone black. He was glad of it, distantly relieved, because at least he wouldn’t feel the slice when she hacked through his neck.

  Lane’s weight came off his back as she shifted her stance. “I’m sorry, lad,” she said again. “I’ll make it quick as I can.”

  Liam waited for the hatchet to fall. Instead Lane made a noise of stifled anger and he was suddenly knocked off the block, pulled away over sand and bone.

  “Breathe, lad. In and out, that’s right. You’ve had the wind knocked out of you, that’s all.”

  Liam groaned. He still couldn’t see anything past the silver sparks in his eyes but he knew the voice.

  “Baldebert?”

  “Don’t try to speak, not yet. Just breathe.”

  “Lane—” Liam coughed then moaned again when his head throbbed.

  “Don’t fret yourself,” Baldebert replied grimly. “I’m no expert, but it seems to me Avani’s got it well in hand.”

  Only then did Liam realize the stars swimming overhead were not the symptoms of overtaxed lungs but the flash and fire of angry magic.

  “Oh, aye,” he said, vastly relieved, “very good. Then we’re saved.”

  Chapter 17

  “If Drem had been any slower with my kit you’d be feeding its kin by now,” Faolan told Everin. “And Drem also, for allowing it to happen.”

  The aes si sat on his knees not far from the small fire. Beyond the mountain shelf rain had turned to blue skies. Everin didn’t remember sleeping, but he must have, for night to pass. He didn’t remember waking, either. But yet here he was, sitting cross-legged in front of crackling flames, midconversation when last he recalled he’d been dying.

  Something in Faolan’s stoic smile suggested they’d been playing the same game of question and answer for longer than the aes si liked.

  “It would deserve the indignity,” Everin replied. His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. He touched the bandage binding his shoulder, and then another wrapped around his throat. He moistened his lips before speaking again. “For allowing the woman to steal the knife unnoticed. Drem was remiss.”

  The lesser sidhe, hovering behind Faolan in its stained motley, glared. “Had you died,” it retorted, “we would no longer be so hungry.”

  Its sly stare made Everin shudder. He hid his unease by turning stiffly in place, looking about the cave. The wound above his collarbone throbbed and itched at the same time; sidhe healing magic at work. The one in his shoulder had the ache of muscles binding. He’d experienced that curative more than once in his life and knew it for a fickle thing when applied to mortals, as likely to make a wound worse as to save a life. Faolan knew the trick of it better than any of the other elders, and in that Everin supposed he was lucky.

  “You kept her alive as I asked?” he demanded of Faolan.

  Suddenly more alert, Faolan looked at Everin with attention. “Ah,” he said. “Good. Coming back to us at last, are we? I must admit, Drem and I are grown weary of answering the same questions over and over again. Drem especially. Drem—” he clapped his hands together. “—I believe our friend’s senses are returning at last. Go and get the woman.”

  Drem darted away, not to the back of the hollow, as Everin expected, but out onto the mountain path.

  “She’s safer outside now that the storm’s passed,” Faolan said, noting Everin’s surprise. “Even starving, Drem’s kin won’t eat spoiled meat and the corpses are bloating. The desert wolf’s a bird with a broken wing, easy prey. There’s no point in dangling temptation in front of their noses.”

  The lesser sidhe were huddled in a pile of fur and claw as far away from the fire as they could get without leaving the safety of Faolan’s shadow. They watched Everin without blinking. Any other man might have mistaken them for dumb, expressionless bea
sts but Everin knew better. They were judging him, waiting to see what he would do next, wondering for how much longer he would be allowed to roam free.

  “Don’t fret,” Faolan continued, startling Everin out of his contemplation. “She’s hardly in any shape to crawl away. Her ribs are broken; I suspect one at least has punctured a lung. Had she tried to flee she wouldn’t have gotten far, not on that slope, not with her dead companion bound again to her ankles. Besides, Drem smashed all ten of her fingers with a rock and she’s been in and out of consciousness ever since.”

  Everin kept reaction from his face because he knew the lesser sidhe hoped for the weakness of horror. Faolan smiled slightly.

  “It was Drem’s right,” the aes si said, “in light of the woman’s thievery.”

  “I haven’t forgotten sidhe justice,” Everin whispered. “I hope you haven’t forgotten the lengths I took to escape it.”

  Faolan didn’t reply. Drem returned, leading their captive by way of bloodied rope. The desert woman listed as she walked; more than once Everin thought she would fall, but when he made a move to rise, Faolan warned him with a shuttered glance.

  Drem yanked the rope. The woman gasped. She stopped in front of Everin, swaying. She held herself gingerly upright, as if every breath was a new agony. Everin did not doubt it was. He recalled the sound of her ribs snapping. Her fingers were little more than bloodied pulp. She had bitten through her lip more than once.

  She was in desperate need of something to ease her pain. Her fingers wanted splinting before the bone began to die.

  “Tell me your name,” Everin grated out in the desert tongue. “Give me reason to help you.”

  “I would rather die,” she replied, “and join my brother in the god’s cradle, than give you the gift of my name.” Her bruised mouth creased. “I rejoice to hear your repugnant whisper, though how much better if I’d managed take your life and not just your voice.”

  Drem wrenched at the rope again. The woman staggered but did not fall. Faolan made to rise. This time it was Everin who shook his head in admonition.

  “My voice will likely return,” said Everin. “Your brother will not.”

  “Galenos was a prince among men,” the woman snarled. “He will live forever in peace amongst the stars.” She coughed, and clutched at her ribs, forgetting her ruined hands. She groaned, tilting; child-sized Drem caught her and held her up without any effort at all.

  “There,” said Everin quietly, as Drem laid the swooning woman on the ground. “Do you understand?”

  “Nay,” Faolan admitted. “What is it?”

  “‘A prince among men’. She’s said so twice now, and meant it quite literally. These people were not a scouting party. That man had status and the feathers in her hair are indication of wealth.”

  “So?”

  “So, there’s more going on here than I first assumed. This is not so simple as an initial parlay.”

  “So?” Faolan repeated, resigned.

  “We can’t go back, not yet. We need to continue up the peak.”

  It was easier, in the daylight, beneath friendlier skies. The ground was still wet from the deluge, so they ascended with care, watching every step. Drem tied their captive across the back of a pony but not before Everin insisted Faolan bind her ribs and splint and wrap her hands. Drem didn’t protest; the punishment was in the pain of the moment and not in any residual damage. The lesser sidhe had repossessed the stolen knife, Everin’s blood still staining the bone handle.

  Faolan climbed at Everin’s side, and lent an arm whenever Everin grew short of breath or dizzy, which was more often than he liked. Faolan’s healing had sealed the wound and saved Everin’s life, but even the aes si could not replenish the blood Everin had lost. He needed rest and nourishment, but there was no time for either.

  The air thinned as they traveled upward toward the mountain peak, and that helped Everin’s weakened constitution not at all.

  Their prisoner was in far worse shape. She remained in a faint as they scaled the winding trail, growing flushed and feverish in spite of the cooler temperature. From the sound of her breathing Everin knew Faolan was right; her lungs were failing.

  “She’ll not live to see Skerrit’s Pass,” Faolan predicted when Everin glanced for the tenth time over his shoulder at the steadily climbing pony.

  “Not tied facedown over the back of a horse,” Everin said. He tugged at the bandage around his throat, struck by imagined constriction.

  “What would you have me do?” Faolan asked, irritable. The renewed sunshine was not treating the aes si kindly. Even without added flatland heat his delicate flesh was striped with pink. He’d wrapped the scarf again around his head and neck, but the tip of his nose was burned scarlet. “Drem’s kin see no reason to treat her softly. They lost Bail to this foolishness.”

  “Drem’s pride was injured,” said Everin pointedly.

  “Had the woman succeeded, and you died, each of them would have been gravely punished for aiding me in this. It’s not pride Drem guards so ruthlessly, but life.”

  Everin looked over his shoulder again. This time Drem, pacing at the pony’s withers, looked away. Her kin flitted along the path a few strides behind, keeping close against the side of the mountain. It was apparent they liked the new elevation about as much as Everin did, which was not at all.

  “Give them reason to believe her valuable and I may yet be able to save her,” Faolan murmured.

  “Is it not enough I say she may be useful?”

  Faolan peered at Everin from beneath his scarf. He grimaced then stopped the procession with a wave of his hand. He cut the woman from her mount with Drem’s knife. She muttered and sighed in his arms, and her labored breathing seemed to ease.

  “Thank you,” Everin offered when they began to ascend again.

  “Someday,” the aes si replied, expression shuttered, “when the time is right, I expect you’ll return my every effort on your behalf threefold. Do you understand?”

  “Aye,” answered Everin and felt a jolt like sleet in his veins as the fetters of his mother’s covenant tightened, renewed.

  Skerrit’s Pass appeared exactly as last Everin had seen it from the back of the dullahan’s back. A shallow cauldron where the range’s highest peak had been blown apart by some long-forgotten cataclysm, the rocky bowl provided sanctuary for weary travelers as well as a sheltered vantage point from which to view the land east and west of the dividing ridge. Everin’s great-grandfather, understanding the importance of vigilance during wartime, had ordered a guard tower built in the cauldron. The Pass garrison had once been a choice position, the tower staffed by some of Wilhaiim’s finest archers and swiftest horsemen and most capable magi.

  By the time Everin’s father took the throne the sidhe had been routed, peace had been brokered with the desert lords, and a new threat was rising much closer to home. Skerrit’s Pass seemed very distant when Wilhaiim suffered under the vocent’s curfew and no man or woman felt safe in the streets nor dared leave the king’s highway for fear of tangling with one of the magi’s peacekeeping patrols.

  Over time, the tower in the cauldron was taken over by birds and foxes. Tinkers still used it for shelter when they traveled between the flatland and the desert, built fires for warmth in the old hearth, and slept on the keep floor. A deep, clear blue lake at the very center of the crater provided water to drink and, if a person was lucky, fish for supper.

  The tinkers, for reasons of their own, believed the Pass was an unlucky place and never stayed there long. Everin, looking down on the place from a shelf of toothy boulders while the desert woman gasped in Faolan’s arms and Drem’s kin muttered unhappily amongst themselves, could understand the tinkers’ reluctance. The old tower was overgrown with a ghastly black vine; an ancient pennant flew from the battlement in scarlet tatters. A blackened lumber cross was driven into the ground near the edge of the lake, the rocks around it laced with old char.

  At least one magi had met his death ther
e between two kingdoms, and no one had dared remove the evidence in the generations since.

  “Keep low,” Everin warned as they crept down into the cauldron.

  Faolan whistled softly, a thrush’s warble, and the lesser sidhe surged over the side of the crater. They moved inhumanly quickly, scurrying on all fours over the craggy landscape, weapons carried clenched between sharp teeth or tethered across their backs. In the way of their kind they made no sound as they charged toward the tower.

  “Take your hand off your sword. There’s no threat here,” Faolan pronounced. He pushed past Everin. “Get me water from the pool; I need as much as you can carry if I’m to keep her alive.”

  “They’ll be watching for movement,” Everin warned. The edge of the cauldron walled away direct line of sight on all sides; in the right light a person could clambor atop the stony lip and see across the land but the best view was had from the top of the tower. “Waiting for some sort of signal, I wager. Had I sent a party over the mountain to meet with an unknown, I’d have a scout here and more down the east side of the mountain.”

  “Water,” Faolan repeated sharply.

  Everin ran the rest of the way down the slope in a half crouch. Faolan wouldn’t be mistaken in his assessment, but it made no sense to Everin that the Pass would be unwatched. Every rattle of shifting scree made him wince. He expected a rain of desert spears from the eastern lip. But the top of the world was quiet. Fat white clouds rolled over the late-day sky and were reflected in the surface of the deep lake.

  He dipped his waterskins. The pool was so light a blue he could see clear through to fat fish swimming below.

  Drem appeared out of nowhere, a collection of dusty crockery clutched in its arms.