The Bone Cave

by Sarah Remy

Do you see them everywhere now, I wonder? The legions of the dead?

  Avani pressed the knuckles of one hand against her forehead. The brindled hound began to snarl in earnest.

  “Be at rest,” Avani snapped. The ghost disappeared. The hound, to Avani’s great surprise, sighed, thumped her tail, and returned to her meat. Baldebert blew out a quiet breath.

  “The theist wrapped this place in sigils,” Avani said, low. “To contain the dead—keep the ghosts from wandering. There was no time . . .” She swallowed down remembered grief. “Mal wasn’t here to lay them all to rest and the Masterhealer worried I hadn’t the skill. There were so many, and more dying every day. Renault thought this was the best option.”

  She pointed upward at a theist’s mark glowing softly as yellow grasses. “Within or without, only the living may pass.”

  “What’s done is done,” Baldebert said. His boot heel came down on the brooch, snapping it into further pieces. Then he was through the opening and into the Bone Cave. Avani grit her teeth and plunged after.

  For too long the ghostly children were all she could see. Their misery was a palpable thing, powerful enough to make her ears ring and her sword fall from her hand. The temple had done them no favors in trapping them in the crypt. There was no peace to be found in between, most especially for the very young.

  The Masterhealer, in looking to the safety of the living, had forgotten to honor the dead.

  She might have killed him for the failing herself, if Lane hadn’t already done so.

  “Ai, Goddess, Lane.” She couldn’t let the doleful spirits make her forget, even as they stared and stirred about her, electric as late spring lightning, that she’d come into the Bone Cave with a purpose.

  She bit the inside of her cheek hard until the sting cleared her head. The crypt was full of shifting light, but the armswoman was unmistakable, standing proud amongst the bones over a square of wood, hatchet lifted.

  “Liam!” Avani was done with finesse. Lane had one knee pressed against Liam’s spine; the back of his neck was bared to her blade, her intent was obvious.

  Avani grabbed up her sword. She had presence of mind to hold her wards as she barreled forward, scattering bone and sand. Lane paused just long enough, looking around in surprise. Baldebert ran across the cave, ducked beneath the armswoman’s elbow, and tackled Liam, rolling the lad off the chopping block and out of immediate danger.

  Lane whirled. When she saw Avani standing amongst the bones, sword bared, she wagged her head in dismay.

  “My lady. It’s sorry I am to see you here,” the armswoman said sadly. “You’ve a mighty talent for weaving, but none for blade’s play. I should know; I despaired of you in my yard.”

  “Armswoman Lane,” Avani returned, resisting the urge to look away to where Liam and Baldebert still lay in a tangle on the ground. “Put down your blade. You stand accused of murder and kidnapping both, and it’s my responsibility as vocent to collect you for the crown.”

  “You’re uncommonly brave,” Lane admitted. She, too, glanced sideways, taking slow and careful note of Avani’s shining wards. “And not without skill. But one spring serving at His Majesty’s right hand does not make you vocent any more than one season in my tutelage makes a lass a soldier.” She licked her lips, the first sign of nerves Avani had ever seen the woman display. “I serve the god first, and Wilhaiim second, and I will protect both, no matter the cost. Set aside your sword, Avani. It pains me to face you as foe.”

  “Nay!” Liam cried. Baldebert rose slowly to his feet.

  “There are three of us,” Avani said. She drew more power from her center, making the wards sparkle and flash, trying her best to solidify the protective net about the admiral and Liam. Andrew’s ring on its chain about her neck flashed an angry yellow. “And only one of you.”

  The armswoman snorted. Hefting the hatchet, she took a step toward Avani.

  “Three for you to protect, magus,” she agreed. “Do you truly suppose you’re up to the task? Why, last I knew, you barely had the strength of concentration to warm a kettle.” She took another stride forward, cajoling, “Drop your sword.” She licked her lips once more, betraying her intent.

  Avani ducked. But Lane pivoted at the last moment, reversing direction. She let fly the hatchet as she turned. Baldebert, caught midspring, would have lost an arm but for Avani’s wards. The spell shuddered upon impact, making Avani gasp at the reverberation in her skull. The hatchet bounced harmlessly away, shedding angry silver sparks.

  The dead children whispered unhappily. They drifted toward Avani, small hands reaching. Avani did her very best to ignore them.

  Baldebert was staggered, momentarily stunned by the surge of wild magic. Lane advanced on Avani. The Masterhealer’s blood still stained the sword she now held.

  “There’s a knack to controlling it,” the armswoman said apologetically. “Which you don’t yet have. I watched Andrew teach Malachi, when Andrew still knew his place in the realm. Why, Andrew would hit him again and again with one of my best cudgels until eventually the magic failed and young Serrano would writhe on the ground, insensate. It took years before Malachi had enough competence to hold him off.”

  Lane paused, sword swiveling deftly between Baldebert and Avani.

  “Admiral,” she called. “Give yourself up. We both know you’re the only real threat to me here. I’d rather not cross swords with Roue’s bastard prince; Wilhaiim’s fate depends on my survival. Give yourself up. I’ll kill you cleanly and let the others live.”

  Baldebert gripped the pommel of his sword with a surety Avani couldn’t help but admire. He circled out of the shadows. When Liam made motion to follow, Baldebert clucked his tongue and shook his head. Liam subsided back amongst the bones, clutching his head.

  “I don’t intend to die today,” said Baldebert. “On your guard, woman!” He sprang.

  It wasn’t like watching displays of prowess on the practice yard, or even what Avani had imagined Liam faced on Roue’s battlefield. Lane and Baldebert came together without any elegance at all, plunging swordfirst into skirmish. Lane’s heavy blade scraped across Baldebert’s silvered protection. More sparks scattered. Avani felt the wards tremble in her heart, an echo of Lane’s blow. The armswoman was right: she didn’t know how to hold the cant against physical threat.

  Silently, wordlessly, she begged her ancestors for fortitude.

  The flat of Baldebert’s sword glanced off Lane’s shoulder. He’d been aiming for her head, Avani realized, to subdue rather than wound, but Lane was too quick, spinning down and away.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” the armswoman said calmly. “You’re not trying.” She struck low. Baldebert jumped sideways. His warding crackled. Avani felt the tremor in her back teeth. Ghostly fingers brushed her check. She swatted them away with the point of her blade.

  Baldebert surged forward. Lane’s next strike slipped again off silver. Baldebert struck the armswoman hard, head to gut. Lane coughed and fell. They rolled together in a clatter of bone. Baldebert had let go his sword and was trying to get both hands around Lane’s throat but Avani’s sorcery flashed between them, spitting silver wildfire. Even as Avani struggled to hold, Lane’s leather armor began to smolder. She flailed about with fist and foot and sword, trying to land a blow anywhere on Baldebert, but each time she connected she jerked and gasped, stung.

  Avani’s skull rang painfully.

  “Let go the wards!” Liam shouted. “Avani, stop!”

  She couldn’t see him past the dead children massed protectively in a circle around her; she couldn’t see anything except the flash of silver fire in her head. The children pressed close, stroking her arms, her legs, her face. They stank of funeral char.

  Avani quenched the wards with a sigh of relief. For a moment the crypt seemed blessedly dark. Then everything came back into focus, too bright and too loud. She pushed through the cloud of anxious children, legs shaking, just in time to see Baldebert set the tip of Lane’s own sword
against the armswoman’s left eye.

  Liam wrapped an arm around Avani, holding her upright. His mouth was bloodied, his face bruised, but he was a solid comfort against her side.

  “It’s done,” he soothed.

  She let herself lean for a heartbeat. Then she straightened and took stock. Baldebert, straddling the armswoman’s chest, was sporting a swelling nose and looked less than pleased. His blond hair was singed in places, one eyebrow blackened. Blisters and raw, red flesh marred Lane’s face and neck; she’d been badly burned. She watched Baldebert dully through one eye, breath hissing out in short gasps.

  Avani realized the reek of burned flesh wasn’t the fault of Wilhaiim’s dead children after all.

  “Don’t—” Liam said when contrition made her gasp. “Here, now. Look at me instead. See? Aye, I’m well, thanks to you. And Parsnip.” He indicated a small, tallow-headed lass standing not far away. The lass had been at her side all along, Avani realized, only she’d mistaken her for one of the dead.

  “My lady,” Parsnip said. She was pale but determined, the quick peek she shot Liam full of admiration. “Thank you. I thought nobody would come. I’m so glad you did.”

  “Liam,” Baldebert interrupted. “Be a good man and bring me that length of chain, there, just near the hound. There’s a lad. Don’t worry, the bitch is far more bark than bite.”

  Liam hurried off. Baldebert waited coolly, Lane pinned beneath the threat of his sword. The armswoman grimaced but didn’t speak. When Liam returned Baldebert eased carefully off Lane’s chest, shifting the point of his sword from her eye to her throat.

  “On your knees,” he ordered. “Slowly. Liam here is going to hobble you chockablock before he runs for the guard.”

  “I’ll not stand and be dishonored in front of the men and women who are my family.” Avani glimpsed brief, venomous hatred on the woman’s face as she glared up at Baldebert.

  “You’ve no choice,” Avani said. “You’ve committed grave crimes against His Majesty and the temple both.” She stood aside as Liam gripped Lane by the shoulders. “It’s my responsibility,” she repeated, and the promise felt unwieldy on her tongue, “to see justice is served.”

  “Look out!” cautioned a transparent lad with ghostly pustules still on his face and neck. He pointed. “She’s got a cutter hid in her boot.”

  Lane arched off the ground, knocking Baldebert’s sword away with her fist. Liam stumbled. Avani acted without thinking. An instant before the armswoman buried her knife in Baldebert’s ribs Avani plunged her own sword through Lane’s throat. The blade grated on bone and Avani felt the jolt all the way up through her arm. Bracing herself, she twisted until blood burst in a warm shower across her face.

  Lane opened her mouth, stunned, and died.

  Avani let go her sword, took a step sideways, and promptly retched. The lass Parsnip appeared at her side. She waited patiently as Avani choked, then offered her a bit of dirty rag to wipe her face and mouth.

  “Don’t worry, my lady,” she said. “Liam’s run for help, and the admiral’s guarding the gate in case Holder or his straw men come around, and I’ve got the hatchet. We’re safe, now.”

  “Holder’s lit out,” Russel said. She cleared a spot carefully of bone and sat cross-legged next to Avani on the cave floor. “Left his poor hound and his wee straw men behind. The mannequins didn’t so much as twitch when we set them to flame. Could be Liam and Parsnip were overwrought and fancying monsters.”

  “Nay,” Avani said, propping her elbows on her knees. She tipped her chin at the metal creature standing in the crypt shadows. “I don’t think they were.”

  “Holder won’t get far,” the soldier said. Her own attention was on Brother Orat and Constable Wythe where they knelt together over the armswoman’s body. Orat murmured the reverent, bittersweet litany meant to send a lost soul swiftly into his god’s care. Renault’s attendant priest seemed to have diminished in the past hour; there were new lines of grief etched upon his face.

  His prayer soothed only the living. Lane’s spirit was caught with the rest in the shepherd’s mound, unable to escape.

  “He can’t sunder the magic around the cave,” Avani said. It was easier to look at the blood under her fingernails than the children congregated about Orat. They watched his effort hopefully. One or two reached to touch his face and robes. Avani wondered if he could feel their desperation. It squeezed at her heart until she wanted to bury her head in her hands.

  “Ai, and neither could I, though I’ve tried. They’re trapped here, for the nonce.” She continued, “Paul was made Masterhealer for a reason; he crafted a powerful spell. Mal may have better luck, once he and Renault finish with the business in the temple. I hope so.”

  “And a grim business that is.” Russel crossed herself. “The king’s own temple desecrated, and in such a way. Leaves will be falling in the scarlet woods before the theists settle to calm again, Aug save us.”

  “Corporal.” Constable Wythe rose to her feet and beckoned. Russel jumped to attention. “We’re ready to take her out now. There’s a cart waiting, but I’d rather not leave her bare to curious eyes. She deserves better, no matter her failure in the end.” The king’s constable raked Avani with a cold glance. “Lane served Wilhaiim faithfully all her life; every choice she made was for the good of the throne.”

  Avani rose to her feet. Although not a particularly large woman, Wythe filled the crypt with her very presence. A person, Avani thought, used to command and proud of the uniform she wore.

  “Use the Automata’s covering and wrap her,” Wythe told Russel. “We’ll carry her out when she’s veiled. I owe her that much, at least.”

  “Let me help,” Avani said. “She was kind to Liam, once.”

  “Until she wasn’t.” Wythe’s stern visage softened. Avani wondered if she was thinking of her own lad kept safe under Lane’s care.

  “Until she wasn’t,” Avani agreed. She flexed her right hand, remembering the scrape of Lane’s bone against her blade.

  Dawn

  Jacob rode Mal’s shoulder, content to let the magus carry them both along the King’s Highway. Despite the early hour the day was already promising to be the hottest of a miserable summer. The air currents above the city were no more pleasant than those at street level. It was not the sort of weather that allowed man or beast any comfort.

  Both the hour and the heat ensured the road east of Wilhaiim was mostly deserted. A lonely tinker rested in the shade of a sycamore off the highway just past the north gate, breakfast in hand. Jacob eyed the tinker’s mince pie then clacked his beak in irritation.

  “You’ll have your tart as soon as we return,” Mal assured the raven. The tinker looked around at them in surprise, but didn’t comment. If she recognized the magus out of his Hennish leather she knew enough to pretend otherwise.

  It was possible she didn’t know him. Dressed in yeoman’s garb, his long hair only recently shorn to ringlets, the king’s vocent might pass as unremarkable to any that didn’t know him well. The residents of squatter’s row paid him no attention as he passed before their huts; a gray-faced man, naked but for a loincloth in the heat, whistled at Jacob in between swigs of sour wine.

  “Pretty magpie!” the drunk called. “Clever, clever bird!”

  Mal snorted under his breath. Jacob ruffled his feathers in indignation.

  “It was you as followed me out of the palace this morning,” he reminded Jacob. “Easier for us both if you simply convinced your mistress I don’t need chaperoning.”

  He meant Avani, Jacob supposed, when in truth the matter was much more complicated. Fool enough to discount godhood nevertheless Mal seemed unable to escape divine attention.

  Not far beyond squatters’ row Mal turned away from Wilhaiim’s white walls and crossed a small, moss-hung bridge. Jacob left the magus’s shoulder to splash in the bubbling creek beneath. The water was deliciously cool and sweet. Fingerling trout wriggled lazily in the shade beneath the gray stone arch. Jacob e
ntertained himself by chasing the school into frightened circles before selecting the largest for his breakfast. He ate the fish on the bank while the sun steamed his ebon feathers, then took to the air.

  He found Mal outside the Bone Cave, sorting absently through the toys, flowers, and candles littering the ground near the edge of the crop. The magus’s expression was pensive. He started when Jacob landed amongst the small memorial, scattering trinkets, then sighed.

  “I can hear them through the wall,” he said. “Renault should have prevented this.”

  Unsympathetic, Jacob flapped his wings. The children trapped in the cave were loud, certainly, but not so noisy one couldn’t ignore their imprecations. Jacob poked about with his beak in the clutter around the cave’s sealed entrance, looking for treasure. Upon finding a child’s silver name-day token hidden amongst the mess he croaked his delight aloud.

  Mal tossed him a look of disgust.

  “Thieving from the dead is bad luck,” he warned, and disappeared around the side of the grass-covered mound. Jacob shook his feathers in derision and hopped after, clutching the silver coin in his beak.

  The back way into the Bone Cave smelled of dog. Jacob sneezed in disgust. Mal pretended not to hear. Standing outside the half-open gate, he conjured a mage-light. The light pulsed silver and green above his shoulder. Theist sigils carved into the cave wall glittered in response.

  The inside of the mound smelled of nothing at all, not dog, nor charred bone, nor desiccated corpse. Theist book-magic kept the air stagnant, too cold, and too dry. The makeshift tomb was a moment frozen in time; Master Paul had outdone himself. The Bone Cave was well contained indeed.

  Mal sent his light to spinning beneath the ceiling. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the carpet of bones, the dismembered corpses, disordered pieces of armor, and Lane’s blood still staining the sand. He made a sound of grim amusement over the chopping block, then caught sight of the ferric soldier and froze.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Lane. She stood now at Mal’s shoulder, ringed about by her lost children. They clutched her hands and legs and grasped at her clothes.