Path of Bones

by Steven Montano

  Chairos backed away, and Drakanna kicked Dane in the side of the knee. A sickening crack echoed through the room. Dane screamed, and went on screaming for quite some time.

  Thirty-Two

  The chamber was old, musty and filled with rot. Rats scurried across the floor, driven by the scent of meat, but Kruje stamped down to drive them back. He could have killed them, but the notion of squashing those vermin with his bare feet was revolting.

  There was no light in the underground prison, and even Kruje’s keen sight made out very little. The walls were thick with slime and the floors were covered with refuse and the half-corroded remains of the room’s previous occupants. The smell was rank, reminding Kruje of the Shadowback slaughterhouses in Meledrakkar, which he’d had the misfortune of spending a great deal of time in when he’d tried to separate himself from his family and make his own path…back before he’d accepted the burden of the Third Iron Crown, only to have it ripped away.

  And now here you are, Kruje. The perfect fool, resting in your tomb.

  Kruje may have been largely ignorant when it came to humans, but he was usually smart enough to trust his own instincts. He should have made clear what a horrible idea it was the moment Dane told him they were sneaking into the city. He’d ignored the gnawing fear in his bones in favor of trusting a human, and this was the result. Dane had proved to be resourceful up to that point, and Kruje had hoped he possessed some secret knowledge that would help them get in and out without issue. At the very least he’d presumed Dane would have enough good sense not to just drop them into the middle of a dangerous situation without any sort of plan.

  Apparently not. He heard Dane scream somewhere in the building above. Kruje had seen his friend briefly, and at that point it was clear they’d already been beating him. Now comes the torture.

  Kruje struggled against his chains, but only managed to tire himself. The Veilcrafted and nigh unbreakable manacles had been looped through the latticed iron door in the ceiling to hold his arms straight over his head. His muscles ached, and his shoulders and neck were stiff and sore. His advanced metabolism made it so he could endure the pain, but only barely.

  Who were these barbarous captors? He had trouble believing this was merely the city authorities, but he supposed it was possible, given that what was left of Gallador was now so lawless. Kruje wasn’t sure what Dane had done after he’d left him there at the docks, but whatever it was he’d either made some new enemies or run into some old ones, or else he’d found another interested party who didn’t want them to locate the mysterious Dream Witch. Whatever was happening, Dane was in no state to execute a rescue, so it would fall to Kruje to save them both.

  Wonderful. No problem. I’ll summon the Seven Steeds of Gr’aag while I’m at it.

  Why was trouble drawn to him like flies to shit? And why was it the only human he’d managed to make any meaningful contact with seemed to suffer from the same problem? This was not normal life – normal life was a woman and children, a grand view of the Iron Plaza from the Crystal Falls, a brother who didn’t want you dead and a society that didn’t seem intent on destroying itself from within.

  I’ve never known that life, he thought mournfully. It only exists in my dreams.

  Kruje kicked at the rats again, this time knocking one across the room with enough force that it satisfyingly smacked against the wall. He lifted himself by his shackled wrists, and though the metal pushed painfully against his skin he was able to bring himself close enough to the grill to see through, only the room above was mostly dark. He heard water dripping, and now and again he thought he sensed movement behind the upstairs walls.

  You’re not beaten. Not yet.

  He heard Dane scream again, so he let rage course through his veins. He’d been unable to attain Kar-Kalled since being captured, but just because it hadn’t worked yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t now. Kruje lost himself in images of pain and violence, heard snapping bones and people crying out in pain. He felt his strength building, so he tensed his muscles and prepared to rip away his chains and tear the grill down. Once done, he’d climb up and fight his way free, then beat his enemies to death with his bare hands…

  Hurt blazed through his skull like wildfire. Kruje’s rage vanished, and he was suddenly filled with cold and utter fear. His eyes burned and his lungs emptied. Kruje seized up in pain like he’d been stabbed in the stomach.

  In moments it was all over, and Kar-Kalled was gone. Kruje’s lungs felt like they’d been filled with glass, and his eyes burned. The shackles tore skin from his wrists as he hung there, unable to summon the strength to rise.

  The Bloodlust Trance had been blocked. Opening his mind had left him vulnerable to some psychic assault.

  Oh no you don’t, a voice in his mind whispered malevolently. You’re not going anywhere…

  Thirty-Three

  It had been a productive night, and Mazrek Chairos was pleased. The Kruje had been captured, Dane was all but broken, and Chairos had every confidence the thar’koon would soon be in his hands, which meant the Dream Witch was as good as caught.

  Don’t get overconfident, he cautioned himself. Harrick was in a similar situation barely a week ago, and the Jlantrians are still scraping his remains off the bottom of the River Black.

  Chairos marched through the upper floors of his sandstone mansion, an archaic and surreal palace he’d had reconstructed into a siege fortress. Iron shutters blocked every window, the doors were reinforced with dark iron, murder holes had been placed in the stone ceiling over each entrance and the place was stocked with enough food and weapons to support his small army of Phage mercenaries and Blood Knights for weeks, if necessary. The structure was round and organic in classical Galladorian fashion, and blood red tapestries and curtains hung from the walls.

  The air was thick with the smell of burning meat and wine; Chairos kept his chefs busy feeding his soldiers and Phage guests. His boots clacked loudly as he rounded the stairs to the uppermost floor. Dane had finally stopped screaming, and the Voss’s latest attempt to call upon its J’ann-granted abilities had been quelled, which meant it would be some time before the giant would even be able to piss without experiencing intense pain. For the moment his stronghold was quiet.

  He passed a window and glimpsed down at his sunlit garden, an expansive and lush solarium populated with hyacinth and roses. He’d always had a knack for gardening, and he sometimes retreated there when the rigors of running the Scarlet Lair and enforcing Mez’zah Chorg’s will became too much for him to bear. A few of his girls were in the garden now, drunkenly dancing half-naked in the pale light of the early morning. He’d send for them later – the sight of them made him stiffen, and he realized he hadn’t had one of his whores pleasure him in nearly a day, which was a lifetime by his standards.

  A pair of Blood Knights stood vigil at the top of the stairs, their kan’aar drawn and held lengthwise before them. He moved past the statuesque guardians and walked to the rune-covered doors at the end of the long hall. The room on the other side was red.

  The former Dawn Knight was a pitiful sight, scarred and bleeding and thin. They’d been beating and torturing him for hours, but so far as Chairos was concerned they were just getting started. Dane hung from chains in the ceiling and floor that stretched him out into a human X. Little of his skin was visible beneath the blood and bruises. Shelves on the wall held knives, chains, slivers of shaved wood and hammers. Bags of salt rested on the floor next to buckets of water. Drakanna soundlessly walked over to Chairos and helped remove his cloak, leaving him in his black tunic and loose trousers. He swatted her rear as she walked by, then walked over to Dane.

  One of the man’s eyes had swollen shut, and his chest was a black and red morass of oozing tissue and puss. His nose was broken, and his lips were gorged with blood. Cuts on his legs and abdomen had gummed over, and one of his testicles was larger than the other from where Drakanna had been beating his groin.

  The fight had gone from Azander Da
ne. His mouth moved silently. All he could do was hang there, bleeding and broken.

  Chairos turned to face the woman and child as they were escorted into the room. He knew Drakanna had already brought them in once before to watch as Dane was beaten. The woman, Mirren, tended bar at the Scarlet Lair and occasionally worked as a whore, though she’d given herself willingly to Dane; the boy’s name was Tolliver, one of the Phage’s many informants who sold them information for food and copper coins.

  “You told us where to find him,” Chairos said to the boy. Tolliver’s eyes were wide with horror. He couldn’t have been a day over ten, but if he lived in Kaldrak Iyres that meant he’d already seen worse than this. “And you...” Chairos said to Mirren. “You kept him distracted while we decided what to do with him.” He stepped up and clasped each of their shoulders. “Well done.”

  “Are you going to kill him?” Tolliver asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Yes,” Chairos said. “After he’s given us what we want, and after we’ve had our way with him.” The boy dropped his eyes. Chairos looked at Mirren. “And you, wench? Any questions?” She looked like she wanted to rip Chairos apart with her teeth, but she said nothing. “Good,” he said. “I don’t want anyone knowing about this man. Normally I’d just have you both killed to make sure you keep your mouths shut, but I’m feeling magnanimous today, and there are benefits to keeping people alive and in my debt.” He nodded towards the door, indicating that they should turn around. Chairos put his heavy hands on the back of each of their necks and started slowly walking them out of the chamber. “Understand something,” he said. “If anyone – anyone – comes asking about Azander Dane, you’ve never heard of him. If I find out you decided to tell someone about him, well…” He stopped them in their tracks. “I’ll make you pay.” He nodded to the broad-shouldered brutes by the door. “Make sure they get the message,” he said. “Take the boy’s thumb. And rape the woman.”

  He shoved the two informants forward and smiled as the woman and child shrieked in fear. The brutish men dragged them back to the stairs, and the sound of Mirren and Tolliver’s pitiful screams echoed through the halls. Chairos waited until they were out of sight before he turned back to Dane.

  The man had proved resilient – most would have died of shock and blood loss by then, even with Chairos’ ability to keep his victims teetering at the edge of death. While Dane’s stubborn survival afforded Chairos and Drakanna more opportunities to engage in their favorite past time it also meant the Dawn Knight was more powerful than Chairos had initially thought.

  Drakanna stepped up to start in on him again – her stamina was remarkable, and always had been, both in the torture chamber and in the bedroom – but Chairos held up a hand, forcing her to wait. She was clearly unhappy with the order, but she wouldn’t defy him.

  Something was keeping Dane alive, and Chairos intended to find out what. Blood slid to the floor as the Dawn Knight dangled there, barely clinging to life. Chairos waited, and watched. When it came to understanding the mechanics of pain it paid to be patient.

  It was difficult to see at first with so much blood covering the knight’s body, but after a time Chairos noted how the bleeding on Dane’s chest and arms slowed. He kept watching. Minutes passed in silence. Chairos and Drakanna stood perfectly still while Dane hung limp, only conscious by the force of Chairos’ will.

  He examined Dane’s flesh with the Veil. Something was happening, and as he pushed his arcane senses through the other man’s ruined skin and probed broken bones and bruised muscles he sensed a change taking place, slow-working, strange magic he was unfamiliar with. It was Veilcraft, to be sure, but not of a variety Chairos had ever encountered before.

  Dane was regenerating. Broken capillaries and ruptured blood vessels untangled and re-knit. Cracked bones slowly sealed back into place as if fused with mortar. Ripped muscles laced together. His wounds were being repaired from the inside out, but Chairos had no idea why, or if he could even stop it.

  “Interesting,” he said with a smile. There was little about the Veil he didn’t know, but aside from a few powerful Bloodspeakers Chairos had never heard of someone being able to recover from severe injuries so quickly. Repairing wounds was something beyond the capacity of even the most accomplished Veilwardens.

  It must be some Jlantrian experiment, he thought, some new attempt in their insane drive to push the Veil to its limits. Or maybe your Vossian companion somehow gifted you with this little trick.

  Chairos intended to learn what was happening inside Dane’s body, even if he had to cut him into a dozen pieces.

  But first thing was first. Chairos had no idea how well-protected the Dream Witch was, and the last thing he wanted was to come even closer to capturing her than Harrick had only for the ground to fall out from under him. Also like Harrick, he was completely on his own. Chairos had served Mez’zah Chorg faithfully for years, but to request aid was a sign of weakness in her eyes, and to seek help from Cranos Thane would have been even worse.

  I don’t need either of them, he thought smugly. Mazrek Chairos was confident in his abilities. He had enormous resources at his disposal. Unlike that upstart Harrick, he would not fail.

  He nodded to Drakanna and left her alone with Dane while he went to plan the hunt.

  Thirty-Four

  Wolves. They surround him, a wall of razor fur and pulsing flesh. He hears their breathing, smells their musk. They give him strength and purpose.

  He can’t join them. Not yet. Being so close yet unable to touch them pains him. His whimpers echo through the dawn sky, and his breath steams in the brittle cold.

  The world is white and vast. There are dark mountains in the distance. The black sun floats like an absence.

  The wolves must keep themselves at bay. There’s some rite he has yet to perform, some test he must pass. He’s growing stronger.

  He lifts his head to sky and howls.

  Soon….

  Thirty-Five

  They finally cleared away the last remains of the battle a week after it was over. The conflict under Ebonmark had taken the lives of many White Dragon soldiers and Black Eagles, but it had also rid the city of dozens of criminal scum from the Black Guild, the Phage...and Wolf Brigade, the mercenary outfit which had reported to the dour and infamous General Karthas of The Thirteen.

  Colonal Aaric Blackhall, Grand Marshall of Ebonmark, was largely responsible for how the battle for the fate of the city had been won, and he was still having nightmares about it.

  In the wake of Blackhall’s success Empress Azaean approved the deployment of a second Company of White Dragon soldiers to help maintain control and provide additional manpower for excavating the ruins of Black Sun. The abandoned Vossian complex had sat relatively undiscovered beneath Ebonmark for years, and clearing it out proved to be vile work. Toran Gess had recovered enough of his strength to provide some magical aid to the workers and soldiers by creating wards which allowed them to breathe clean air and not catch any diseases while they cleared away scores of bodies, many of which were little more than smelted husks thanks to the magical plague called Serpentheart. More Veilwardens from Ral Tanneth would have helped, but Blackhall was just thankful to have Toran back on his feet.

  It was mid-morning by the time the rain stopped, but the sky was still dark with clouds. It had been pouring for days, which made hauling the wrecked Vossian war machine from the river an all but impossible task. Not only had the weather strongly impeded their attempts to even locate the vehicle, hidden as it was amongst thick drifts of black mud and debris at the bottom of the river, but removing it from the water required the use of a complex and bulky Galladorian crane, a clunky contraption made of planks, ropes, pulleys and winches attached to a magically reinforced net. The Iron Egg, as Gess referred to it, was a monstrosity of Vossian war engineering, a perfect sphere that stood twice as tall as a man. The damn thing weighed a ton, and since it was shielded from magic they had little choice but to rely on the largely i
neffective crane.

  Blackhall looked at the tunnel under the docks where the vehicle had crashed into the River Black. Rank odors rose from the passage to Black Sun. It was a slaughterhouse under the city, a ruin of charnel filth and bodily muck; Blackhall had visited the scene where the Black Guild had unleashed Serpentheart, and the walls were paved with the molten remains of the dead. The stench from below permeated the area over the tunnels, and Blackhall ordered every entrance sealed until Gess could come up with some Veilcrafted means to fix the problem, though that would have to wait since the mage was busy hunting down the Bloodspeaker Ijanna Taivorkan. Other Veilwardens from House Blue had secured the Cauldron and seized the remaining canisters of Serpentheart to keep it out of the Iron Count’s hands. In the meantime, Slayne and the Black Eagles had rid the city of the last pockets of Black Guild and Phage soldiers. It was dirty work, but thankfully it was almost done.

  It would have been better if Marros could have finished cleaning up around here before Argus whisked him off on his damned fool’s errand.

  Thunder tore across the sky. The air was leaden with moisture, and thick banks of fog crept across the riverbank. The River Black was low at that point in the city, a good twenty feet below street level. Two small sailing crafts, Storm and Sting, floated near the enormous river barge Atlas, which was loaded down with the crane. Pulleys strained under the weight of iron cables and thickly knotted ropes which supported the netted prize as it was drawn up from the water.

  Blackhall stood on Storm’s deck as it violently rocked back and forth in the wind. Water whipped across his face. He gripped the railing, and the wood was slick under his boots. Sailors moved about frantically.