Flesh and Bone

by Robin Lythgoe

  “If you come to me now, I’ll stop them from hurting you.”

  In response, they tweaked his hair, pulled his ears, scratched at his eyes. The rakeshi growled as he batted them away. Some of them slipped through his fingers and remained to plague him. It didn’t take them long to find the burn on his hand. They stabbed and scraped the wounded skin, though he did not let them maintain their grip. He fumbled the jar of bleakstone from its pocket, uncorked it, and flung it out in a glittering, fatal arc. The kathraul’en didn’t have time to scream. The tiny grains shredded the magic holding them to this realm, and they simply disappeared.

  Wiping his hands on his pants, he rose to his knees to squint at the items atop the table. A statuette became a missile. A grunt announced he’d struck his target. He brushed aside a book—open and untouched by the fire—to grab a bowl of autumn roses. With it came a delicate table scarf.

  Back to the pedestal, he laid his sword on the floor beside him. Flowers discarded, he soaked the cloth in the water the bowl held. Tepid and smelling green, it eased his eyes and burnt skin as well as any salve. He tied the cloth around his face, then upended the remains over his head. Moisture trickled beneath his collar and under the leather cuirass. Shadows slipped down him like ink.

  “Come to me, my fine dragon.” The coaxing, singsong words were pitched to win him over. “Things don’t have to end this way. We can fix this together.”

  Across the room, the ceiling fell with a thunderous crash—or perhaps only a wall for now. Bairith’s shadow loomed close, the black staff scraping along the tiles.

  The kathraul’en chittered in excitement.

  The rakeshi dove to the floor and rolled straight at the mage. Both hands caught the staff in a grip like iron to wrench it aside. It didn’t budge. A shock of energy coursed through him, making the hairs on his body lift.

  “You cannot take the staff,” Bairith murmured, so understanding, so persuasive. “You cannot even hold it.”

  Conversely, the energy convulsed his hands tighter and tighter. A black stain seeped into his fingers, dissolving them. He grunted and squeezed his eyes shut against pain. Against illusion. Against the urge to surrender.

  To Sherakai, trapped and helpless, the loss of that single sense gave blessed relief. How strange… He should be terrified. He was terrified, but he was also determined to get away from Bairith.

  “Easy. Easy, now, my heart.”

  While the jansu crooned and coaxed, Sherakai’s thoughts raced. He’d lost more than one sense. No eyes, no smell, no taste. Yes ears, yes touch, yes awareness. He knew precisely where Bairith stood. The distance of the fires, the buckling of beams and columns nearby. Recognized the flow of aro moving over him like a soothing stream.

  How? How could Bairith have countered the effects of the bleakstone? And so fast!

  Logic said he could not. Had he made an illusion of himself? No, the staff felt solid as stone, but Bairith could make him believe that, couldn’t he? He’d smelled him, though.

  The rakeshi swung his head back and forth, searching…

  It sought inwardly, Sherakai realized. Dismay stilled his racing thoughts, but it was not him the beast was after. It focused its attention on that slender, ugly thread between him—them—and Bairith. Snapping it, if he could do such a thing, would surely have devastating consequences. To begin with, it would leave him in Bairith’s reach.

  Another groan shaking his chest awoke further realization. He could not hold on to the staff much longer. The staff! he shouted.

  Pure aro pulsed up its length. It stopped at Bairith’s hand and flowed outward in smaller, more muted threads. It could only come from the Heart, where Bairith had laid his foundation of magical runes.

  With no warning at all, the rakeshi contorted, swinging around the stave to slam both feet into Bairith’s belly. As soon as he connected, he straightened, wrenching the staff out of the mage’s hands. He rolled upright to hurl the thing like a spear, straight into the inferno of a crumbling wall.

  Beams groaned as they splintered and broke. Stones crashed, sending up great gouts of sparks and dust. Figures struggling in the rubble screamed. The stench of burning flesh joined the miasma of Bairith’s drug-fused smoke.

  The rakeshi flexed both aching hands, and the illusion of dissolving fingers disappeared. A snarl hid behind the cloth over his face. He crouched to pick up his sword and hammer. Two sharp cracks of the blade against his greaves rid him of the smoldering mats he’d tied on to protect his legs from the fire. He stalked after the fallen mage.

  Bairith met him with a short sword in either hand. Without the power channeled by the staff, he could not hide the ravages of the bleakstone. Stark shadows marked chalky features, and he seemed to have lost substance. “Your single-mindedness borders madness. You must realize repeating the same futile exercise will never yield you new results.”

  Metal clashed against metal as they traded strokes. What he might have lacked in the jansu’s finesse, the rakeshi made up for in strength and speed.

  “You are a dog with a bone!” Bairith exclaimed, barely dancing away from the whistling hammer.

  The rakeshi gave it a little twist that hooked the jansu’s sleeve and tugged him off balance. Bairith yanked free with a ragged slice in his side from his opponent’s sword. Only once before had he met the rakeshi’s violence face to face. He had no experience with the way the creature used Sherakai’s body. How it absorbed his lessons and bent them to his own unpredictable ends.

  Suspicion registered in the jansu’s eyes—eyes gone gray as stone, all leached of color. “I don’t want to hurt you. Stop, Sherakai.”

  Relentless, the rakeshi pushed Bairith around burning furniture.

  Suspicion turned to denial. “You cannot win,” he said. “Stop…”

  More of his blows landed now. Fury fueled him still, an icy purpose he refused to relinquish. His tormentor had to die. For him, yes, and for every other creature who ever had or would suffer at Bairith Mindar’s hands. It was a strange, dual line of reasoning shared by both man and demon.

  “Stop!” the cry came again, more urgent—and not from the jansu’s lips, but a woman. That woman…

  “Get away from here, fool!”

  That tiny distraction allowed the rakeshi’s hammer access. It met Bairith’s arm with a gratifying crunch and the mage dropped one sword. The other lifted to defend. The rakeshi pressed his advantage, both weapons slashing.

  “Stop! No!” the seer screamed, scrambling over toppled, burning furniture to throw herself at him. “Sherakai, no!”

  She pitched forward.

  Her descent brought her against the base of an enormous carved pillar. It might have been strong enough to hold up the very sky. Overhead, a section of roof collapsed. Beams crashed down, striking the capital, then smashing to the floor. Embers fell like hellish rain.

  The seer shrieked and covered her head.

  The rakeshi paused for the merest, awfullest instant. Bairith’s blade bit into his leg, high on the outside of his thigh. Sherakai, thrust into a distance without definition, felt it and cried out. The rakeshi staggered.

  “Why do you make me wound you?” Bairith shouted. He held his broken arm protectively against his belly.

  Another timber fell between them. One end struck, then the other clattered against a pile of refuse. The distraction gave the rakeshi time to straighten. From behind the scant shelter, he bounced the hammer once, then threw it with all his strength.

  It smashed Bairith in the chest and sent him flying.

  The seer screamed and screamed. A thousand spirits joined her, howling through the hall as if the earth had fractured and every demon from the Abyss came pouring through. Purple smoke and flames leaped upward toward the collapsing roof. Red and orange tongues of fire licked up the walls. Hungrily, they devoured the remains of elegant woodwork, paintings, and tapestries.

  The rakeshi dropped low, sword arm raised to protect his head. He hopped backward until he hit the w
avering column of stone. Blood rushed from the wound in his leg. Tearing off the makeshift kerchief, he bound it around the gash, then shoved himself upright. With his sword gripped tightly, he limped through the rubble, searching for the jansu.

  A rock crashed into the beam beside him, sending splinters into his arm, his face, his side. He flinched away. A few steps further on, he heard weeping. Saw a pale, bloodstained hand against the wreckage of the wall.

  Creaking groans heralded the column’s imminent collapse. He put his shoulder to the wedge of stone and heaved. It moved sluggishly, grinding, grating. Another shove drew a long growl from him—then the wedge tipped sideways, crashing and settling in a pall of ash and debris.

  He went down on one knee to pull the seer free.

  Tears painted tracks down her filthy face, but she stumbled upright. She stumbled again when he pushed her toward the relative safety of a doorway.

  The spirits found them there.

  They carried every scent known to man and beast, from the wide sea to the driest desert, from deepest forest to unending plains. Flowers, dirt, spring rain, rot. All of it.

  He did not see what they did to the seer. Him, they pushed and pinched, tugged and screamed at. He could not wave them away and they did not burn. They prompted memories of blood and sand, of the bitter Wilds wind in his face, of the utter loneliness of the cell in the stone.

  A barrage of rock and broken wood saved him. His hurts brought focus. He resumed his hunt.

  “Sherakai. Sherakai!”

  It was the seer again, tattered and far too fragile to walk through this inferno.

  Shoulders hunched, head low, he ignored her and forged on. The collapse of the ceiling had put out some flames. In other places, the fire blazed unchecked. Moans came to him: spirits, the dying building, the wounded… And there, propped against a slab of stone, lay Bairith Mindar.

  Fury flickered back to life. Hateful, cruel, selfish creature.

  Blood stained the jansu’s once-immaculate tunic. Shadows cavorted in the twisting light. Half a dozen indistinct figures stood around him, looking for all the world like vultures. The rakeshi would leave him to them—just as soon as he was sure the mage’s heart beat no more.

  A sense of urgency stirred the kathraul’en to a frenzy. They plucked at his sleeves and his hair, hissing words he did not hear. He shifted his grip on the sword and detoured to a place he could climb over.

  “Sherakai,” the seer pleaded. “Please go. Save your great heart and go! Leave him to me!”

  Go, go, go… the spirits echoed. Cannot stay… Only death… Go, Sherakai.

  One voice caught his attention. A familiar face appeared at the corner of his eye, but when he turned toward it, it melted away.

  “Papa?” It hurt his throat to speak. He saw double of everything—half limned in the gleam of energy, and the other confused by shadows and light.

  Go! You must go now!

  A noise drew his gaze up the pillar to the tortured faces carved into it. Writhing smoke made their mouths move. They groaned long and deep.

  “Run, Sherakai!”

  Precarious, the great chandelier dangled from two of its five chains. Miraculously, the transparent glass bowls with their clear bright luminescence still shone. With a crack! one of the remaining supports snapped. The chandelier descended like a broken butterfly. Instinctively, Sherakai closed his eyes as it burst in a flash of blinding light.

  The voice of the column grew louder and louder.

  “Ruuuunnnn…!”

  He ran.

  Under his feet, the floor heaved and buckled. Sherakai staggered to the side, out of the monster’s path. With an explosion great enough to bring down a mountain, the column fell.

  Chapter 72

  Morning found Sherakai high in the craggy reaches of the Choke Mountains. Blood loss, exhaustion, and tempestuous emotion left him shivering uncontrollably. He dared not light a fire to warm himself. Red-rimmed eyes studied the winding path he’d taken up the incline, wary of pursuit though the rakeshi had kept a demanding pace throughout the night. The creature had swiftness and endurance on its side. It should have outdistanced anyone the jansu or his captains fielded though an Air mage might yet cause him grief if one remained. He knew from experience that they could manage uncanny speed.

  The jansu… Did Bairith still live? And how long before he learned the answer to that question?

  The scene spread out at his feet was beautiful. Cypresses and oak bordered the slender thread of the road. To either side lay a patchwork of fields and tidy orchards gone rusty with the season. A finger of light from the rising sun touched the earth like a gilded arrow. Its target bled smoke. Clouds trapped the sooty pillar, their undersides a garish orange. He couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. Well… except that it began on the ground at the Gates.

  Though details of his flight eluded him, he remembered all too clearly the rubble of disaster he’d escaped. Charred bodies, the smell of smoke, and the grit of ash and dust haunted him. It had been no easy feat to get out of Bairith’s stronghold. Bloody and soot-streaked, he should have blended with all the other refugees. Soldiers had found him anyway.

  They chased him.

  They died.

  He wished he could kill the spirits trailing after him as easily. Some of them had urged him on. Some hung back, suspicious as children waiting for the surprise at the end of a Twixt tale. They stayed with him even now, an amorphous presence on the edges of his unreliable vision.

  He couldn’t afford to stand here gawking at the view. A single step woke a stab of pain in his leg. Dimly, he recalled stopping now and then to retie the scarf around it. The rakeshi chose the most convoluted of paths over boulders, across tumbled rocks, up streams. Smart, yes, he allowed reluctantly, for it made it difficult for anyone to follow his trail. But it was torture for him to maintain.

  Picking his way across the slope, he discovered a stream of water hardly wider than his hand. Painstakingly, he worked himself down to a place where it ran through a crevice big enough for him to hide in. Nothing but birds would see him. He set aside his boots to dry. A cautious ration of food made a sparse meal. Afterward, he leaned against the rock wall to chew a piece of willow bark and brace himself for his next task.

  To his astonishment, he found a dozen wilted leaves of pig’s ear in his pack. Good to keep the wound from becoming inflamed, his mother’s voice reminded him. He must have picked it up along the way. He beat one leaf with a stone until it was pulpy, then got down to the business of cleaning and sewing the cut Bairith had given him.

  Hush, hush… the spirits whispered around him.

  Is he dying?

  We’ll keep watch…

  Wounded. Bleeding. Don’t leave a trail…

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” he grumbled, threading a needle.

  He lost to the rakeshi after only a few stitches.

  “You can’t stay here, Sherakai,” Deishi dan Arunakun said quite clearly.

  His eyes shot open, and he jerked upright. A red squirrel stared at him from a ledge overhead, tufted ears tipped forward. With a flick of its tail, it disappeared. There was no Deishi, physically or spiritually. It unsettled him that he’d fallen asleep.

  Jaw set, he refilled his flask then crept from his hiding place. A long, careful study revealed no danger. One or two drops of rain struck his face, plump drops full of promise. By the time he crested the next ridge, a deluge enveloped him.

  It didn’t matter. He’d seen worse weather in the Twixt, and he couldn’t stop now. He could take an easier, faster route though, and the storm would hide his tracks.

  Far and fast, voices in the trees reminded him.

  “Far and fast,” he agreed.

  Easy words to say, but not so simple to carry out. “Far” meant over the mountains and straight through to Romuru’s coast. From there he would find a ship heading east through the Midland Sea.

  “Fast,” though, got complicated. The slash Bair
ith gave him burned all the time. He couldn’t tell if a fever made him hallucinate or if spirits still followed from the Gates. They tormented him, dashing around him, sending debris and wet autumn leaves into his face. Sometimes they clung to him, chill, earthy-smelling things whispering their pleas and warnings.

  Go back, you must go back! We are lost without you. Help us… help us… Hush! Still! Men on the trail ahead. It hurts, can’t you feel it? You can’t stay. Down in the ravine there is willow. Willow bark tea for the pain. Did you hear me? Why don’t you listen?

  To listen to them promised insanity—Except he did find willow bark at the bottom of the ravine. And another time a silent, waif-like girl led him to a place where he could replenish the pig’s ear. Protected in a pocket between rocks and bushes, the leaves had yet to curl and wither in the cold.

  Time and distance unraveled repeatedly. Halfway through the Stab Pass, he realized he’d passed his home and hadn’t even noticed. He went by the rock formation called Dead Dog three times before it sank in that he’d gone in circles all unaware. Well into Romuru and not at all on the path he’d planned to take, he recognized the towering, weathered column from his missions for Bairith Mindar. He’d come too far south. If he kept going in this direction he’d find himself in Kyusaido and nowhere near the ocean he needed.

  I might go to sea, he remembered telling his boyhood friend. Chakkan knew everything about him. Everything except the truth of what he was now.

  You’d have to leave the horses, Chakkan pointed out.

  Studying the crown of Dead Dog, Sherakai heaved a sigh. He was leaving the horses after all. Going to sea.

  Going in circles.

  He aimed himself northeast, picked out a landmark to guide him, and resolutely moved on. One marker at a time, he made better progress, at least for a while. Awareness of his surroundings came to him again as the sun rose. He stopped where he stood. The sun should be setting. How many days had passed since he’d left the Gates of Heaven?

  Long enough for the storm to clear.

  There had been a storm, hadn’t there?