The Crown of Bones (The Fae War Chronicles Book 2)

by Jocelyn Fox

  Chapter 9

  Full darkness fell over the forest, swathing the trees in shadows. We rode swiftly beneath the pale full moon. Silver light rippled across our path in bars and dappled the undergrowth in small pools, as if the moonlight was river-water and the trail through the forest its river-bed. I glanced up more than once trying to see the stars through the forest overhead, but all I could see were glimpses of black-velvet sky and the overlapping outstretched arms of the trees. Forin and Farin served as our scouts overhead, reporting back to me every half hour or so. Beryk slid into the shadows now and again, investigating a rustling in the brush or a strange scent on the breeze.

  Our mounts pressed on tirelessly, and we rode silently, each left alone with our thoughts in the dark of the night. I thought about the Skin-wraiths for a while, remembering a conversation that I’d had on the night of the feast to celebrate Finnead’s return from the mortal world with Molly, the half-Fae child foretold in a prophecy. It was the night when Ramel had introduced me to Donovan, Emery, Bren, Guinna and Ronan, the group of young Sidhe in Mab’s court who accepted the strange doendhine into their midst with only a little curiosity.

  Malravenar, it is said, has been breeding creatures of shadow in the Deadlands. Some even say he is raising an army of the Dead.

  Ramel’s words echoed in my head forebodingly. Had the creatures that attacked us been Skin-Wraiths, or something worse? If they had no master, as Vell said…then Malravenar might truly be raising an army of the Dead. I tried to imagine battling legions of Dead, creatures that could put themselves together again if they weren’t torn limb from limb and the pieces scattered. I shuddered and pulled my cloak tighter about me to ward off the night’s chill. Now I understood the trepidation in Ramel’s voice when he spoke of the Dead that night so long ago. And if Malravenar’s arm was long enough to reach us here, in the forest close to Darkhill, what creatures were roaming the expanse between Queen Mab’s domain and Brightvale? I’d seen the destruction of the Saemhradall, a sanctuary for the Seelie. Dark creatures ripped the jewel of the Seelie lands from its foundations, leaving a bloodied, ash-strewn wasteland. My stomach clenched at the thought of encountering another scene like the Saemhradall at Brightvale, and I hoped we were not too late for the Seelie.

  Sometime after midnight, after the moon passed overhead and began its descent to the horizon, I started to feel the effects of the long day. My legs ached and it took all my concentration not to fall asleep in the saddle. I glanced over at Merrick. If his arm pained him, he was hiding it exceedingly well. Vell seemed to be in a light trance, her golden eyes slightly hooded and fixed on the path ahead. I scowled. If I wasn’t mortal anymore, it wasn’t helping me that I could tell. I shifted painfully in the saddle and stretched my shoulders.

  “Stiff?” Merrick questioned softly.

  “Apparently endurance is not one of the perks of being the Bearer,” I replied dryly.

  Merrick smiled. “Most would say that it is something that should be earned.”

  “Yes, well, most aren’t thrown into the middle of a deadly war with a weapon that could devastate the entire world.” I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Valid point,” he conceded.

  “Consider the fact,” said Vell from my other side, “that all of us are seasoned travelers…except for you.” Her smile gleamed wickedly in the darkness.

  “Rub salt in it, why don’t you,” I muttered at her.

  “Don’t worry,” she continued. “The soreness only lasts for a few days. It’s the chafing you have to worry about.”

  “Chafing…? Oh. Lovely.” I grimaced. “Just what I need.”

  Vell chuckled. “Like I said, you’ll get used to it all.”

  “I don’t really have a choice, now, do I?”

  “You always have a choice,” she replied firmly, “so stop feeling sorry for yourself.” When I chuckled softly, she continued, “I told you that I was going to keep your feet on the ground. Or your ass in the saddle. Whichever.”

  My chuckle burst into a surprised laugh. “Language,” I scolded Vell in mock chastisement, putting one hand over my chest even as another low laugh spilled over my lips. Merrick grinned, his moonlight-bathed face looking heartbreakingly young and beautiful.

  “Northerners,” he said, arching one eyebrow. “Not half so civilized as they should be…but twice as fierce when you really need them.”

  I glimpsed the glimmer of a grin before Vell turned her face into the shadows. I smiled and looked back at Kavoryk. “Since Kavoryk is twice as big as Vell, and she’s twice as fierce, does that make Kavoryk four times as fierce?”

  Kavoryk grunted. “But you forget the wolf.”

  “I’d never forget him! As Forin and Farin pointed out before our lovely little zombie skirmish back there, Beryk most definitely counts as one on his own,” I replied. Beryk suddenly emerged from the inky shadows of the forest, his white teeth gleaming in a wolfish grin as he loped alongside Kaleth. “See? I’m starting to understand how things work around here,” I told him. He darted near Kaleth, snapping his jaws near the faehal’s hooves. Kaleth merely laid his ears back and snorted at the young wolf.

  “Zombies,” repeated Vell, twisting the word a bit with her Northern accent. “I’m not familiar with the name.”

  “Well, I guess it’s not really the correct name, because people don’t really believe in magic anymore in the mortal world,” I replied. “If someone saw a Skin-wraith in my world, they’d probably call it a zombie.”

  “Mortals may not believe in magic in the way they did centuries ago, but they merely call it a different name,” Merrick said from my other side. “Artists and poets—and many others—still draw on inspiration and imagination. They make the fantastic real. And what is that if not magic?”

  I shrugged a little. “Yeah. I mean, I understand what you’re saying. But if I went back home and told everyone that I was the bearer of a magical sword, they’d have me drugged up and locked away in a nice, padded rubber room before you could blink.”

  “The Sword would not allow it,” Merrick said firmly, and the sheath on my back vibrated in agreement.

  I smiled. “Being kept from the nut-house by the power that they don’t believe exists? Now that would be irony.”

  “Call it what you will,” Merrick said, “the Sword would protect its Bearer. As would we.”

  “You’d follow me into the mortal world?”

  “Of course.” Merrick looked surprised that I would even ask the question.

  “Wouldn’t you get sick from all the iron?”

  “Eventually. There are certain protective spells that would help. We would have to take shifts.”

  “Not me,” said Vell. She bared her teeth. “I’ve enough unSidhe blood that I’d be fine for a good long while.”

  “Define ‘good long while.’”

  “At least a decade, if not longer. Granted, I’d probably have to escape to the North of your world for a bit every year. Around Solstice would be best.” Vell tilted her head, a contemplative look in her golden eyes. “I’ve heard that your North has White Bears. There are only a few left here. The trollskallig hunted them near to death.”

  “Trollskallig?”

  “Troll-clans.” Vell wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Now, if you want to talk about truly uncivilized…there wasn’t ever a need for the North-folk to interfere, even though they breed like damn rabbits. They like blood and war enough to decimate each other without any help from us.”

  “Until recently,” I said softly, remembering the anger and hatred that had flashed in Vell’s eyes when she spoke of trolls back at camp. I waited, hoping that she would elaborate without forcing me to ask a direct question. She turned her face into the shadows, her mouth thinning into a hard line. Beryk’s low growl vibrated through the still night air. I waited, but her silence crystallized, forming an icy shell about her that I knew I wouldn’t be able to pierce with any question. I sighed softly and shifted in the saddle, trying to appeas
e my aching legs.

  “How many days until we’re out of the forest?” I asked Merrick in a low voice.

  “If we keep our current pace, three or four days.” When I raised my eyebrows in surprise, he smiled. “Distances seem much less vast when you are looking at a paper map.”

  “You got that right,” I muttered. “How long until we reach Brightvale?”

  “I’d prefer not to hazard a guess,” Merrick replied. “We must take each day as it comes on a journey like this.”

  “So we know where we’re going, but not how long it will take to get there,” I said in frustration.

  “Trust me, my Bearer,” the young Sidhe told me, moonlight shining in his gray eyes. “I know the path, and I will get us there as quick as we are able.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. You know what you’re doing.” Even as I agreed with him, I had to push down the knot tightening in my stomach. I hoped Merrick understood the urgency of our mission. He hadn’t seen the destruction at the Saemhradall; he hadn’t felt the heat of flames licking at his heels as he ran through the forest. But, I chided myself, he’d seen his shield-brother cut down by the Shadow-soldiers. He’d seen one he counted as a brother laid on a pyre and consumed by flames. That was enough. That was more than enough.

  The slant of moonlight through the branches of the forest changed as we rode on, our mounts swiftly cutting through the darkness. Dew beaded on our cloaks as the night’s chill deepened. Finally, Merrick brought his faehal to a halt. I stretched my arms overhead wearily, grimacing at the pull of sore muscles.

  “Chafing,” whispered Vell wickedly with the glimmer of a grin, and I smiled back in relief. For now, I would let her keep her silence about what had happened to her people in the North. Eventually I’d need to know—one more piece of the puzzle that was the inner workings of the evil threatening Faeortalam.

  “There’s a glade just off this way,” said Merrick, guiding his mount off the path. Vell nudged her mount in front of mine, daring me to protest with a cutting glance of her golden eyes. I wordlessly waited and let Kaleth follow. Kavoryk followed behind me and then the silent Vaelanbrigh kept rear-guard, as he had all night.

  We emerged from the trees into a small meadow. I took a deep breath, enjoying the feeling of space after the day of travel among the close-knit trees. The meadow was almost perfectly circular, a ring of silvery-skinned birch trees standing sentinel at the edges. “This isn’t a normal meadow, is it?” I asked softly.

  “In your world, there are echoes that used to be called faery-rings or faery-mounds,” Merrick said as he effortlessly slid from his mount.

  “So this is one of the original faery-rings?” I felt a strange undercurrent in the air. Goose-bumps prickled along my skin as some latent power brushed over me.

  “It is one of the many places in our world where the currents of taebramh converge,” Finnead said, breaking his silence for the first time since our encounter with the Skin-wraiths.

  I thought for a moment. “Darkhill and Brightvale were built on faery-rings, too.”

  “Perceptive,” said Merrick appreciatively.

  “It is not such a huge leap of logic,” Finnead replied in a tone of aloof dismissal.

  I gritted my teeth and held my tongue, focusing instead on dismounting. Kaleth stood patiently while I worked my left leg free of the stirrup, grimacing at the painful stiffness in my knee and hip. I grabbed his mane with both hands as I slid down. “Sorry,” I muttered. He turned his head and watched me with one calm, intelligent eye. I had to use my hand to free my right foot from the stirrup, and then I stood shakily for a moment, leaning against Kaleth until I was sure my legs were functional.

  Merrick, finished with unsaddling his faehal, unbuckled Kaleth’s saddle despite my protests.

  “I know how to do it,” I said, realizing too late that I sounded like a petulant five-year old. I scowled fiercely to make up for it.

  “I know that you know how to do it,” Merrick replied with a grin, “but it’s your first day of real travel. You’re hurting.”

  “You had your shoulder dislocated today,” I retorted.

  He shrugged and lifted the saddle from Kaleth’s back one-handed. “It could have been worse.”

  I sighed. “Thanks,” I said grudgingly, moving to Kaleth’s head and slipping off the simple halter-type bridle, which was favored by the Sidhe when they put reins on their mounts at all. Merrick rode without reins, but Vell and Kavoryk both used slightly different variations, influenced, no doubt, by their Northern heritage.

  Free of his saddle and reins, Kaleth shook himself thoroughly, his coat gleaming blue in the moonlight. He bunted my shoulder with his nose, flicked his ears at me and then trotted off to the other side of the glade, lowering himself to the ground with a huff of contentment. I chuckled as he rolled in the grass, legs waving in the air. “Undignified, don’t you think?” I asked Merrick’s mount, who regarded me with dark liquid eyes and then joined Kaleth, making his opinion about dignity very plain. I shook my head and unfastened my blanket-roll from the back of my saddle.

  “No fire,” said Finnead brusquely.

  “I’m not a complete idiot,” I said before I could stop myself. Vell hid a smile and Merrick studied the fascinating intricacies of his fingernails. Finnead looked at me silently for a moment, his handsome face unreadable. I met his fathomless gaze stoically. Then he turned away and drew the Brighbranr from its sheath, settling down cross-legged to clean his blade.

  Forin and Farin fell from the velvety night sky and skimmed the dew-wet long grass of the glade, their auras tracing dizzying patterns as they circled and twisted in an aerial dance. I watched them for a moment, entranced by the beauty of their movements.

  “The Small Folk love the night,” Vell murmured beside me. “They burn brightest in the darkness.”

  “Like stars,” I said softly.

  We watched for another moment, and then Vell said, “Come on then. You need to stretch well before we sleep.”

  I groaned, feeling like a new player singled out by the head coach after one day of preseason camp.

  “Come on,” Vell repeated, unrolling a thick hide, fur-side up, on the grass. The black fur was shaped vaguely like some sort of bear, but it was larger than any bearskin I’d ever seen. “Sit,” she commanded, gracefully sinking down onto the fur. I obediently sat and let her lead me through a series of excruciating stretches, a cross between yoga and the calisthenics that I’d learned during field hockey practice and high school gym class.

  “We’ll stretch again before we start out in the morning,” she said as we finished. I kneaded my thighs ruefully, the muscles still painful. Then my stomach growled loudly. I grimaced as Vell raised an eyebrow. She opened a packet of cured venison and passed it to me. I found my water-flask and settled down to eat. The deer meat tasted wonderful, and to my surprise it wasn’t tough or stringy like most jerky I had eaten. If I closed my eyes and used a bit of imagination, I could convince myself it was fresh-cooked.

  “This is amazing,” I told Vell through a mouthful.

  Her golden eyes glimmered in satisfaction as she wolfed down another piece. “I know.”

  I snorted. “Humility, it seems, isn’t a trait common to Northerners.”

  “Why be humble when the praise is true?” Vell shrugged. “And there’s nothing at all common about most Northerners.”

  Glancing over to where Kavoryk sat whetting the edge of his huge battle-axe, I said, “I guess I should have seen that response coming a mile away.”

  Vell shrugged again. She finished another sizeable piece of venison and then refolded the packet, sliding it neatly into a drawstring bag. “Enough jawing. Time to sleep.” She slipped off her boots. I swallowed the last of my meal and stood, slipping the strap of the Sword over my head. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I looked down at the Northerner. “To sleep?”

  Vell shook her head and let out a little sound of incredulity. “Just when I thin
k you’re starting to get it.” She gestured at the expanse of black fur. “You think that this fur is meant for one person?”

  “I…Oh.” I sat down again, brow furrowed. I laid the Sword carefully on the edge of the blanket and tugged at my boots speculatively.

  “Might not be now, because you’re warm from riding, but nights get cold,” she explained with exaggerated patience, as if talking to a child. “With two, you have twice the heat. Twice the blankets, too.” She laid her boots on the edge of the fur, tucking the open ends under the folded blanket serving as her pillow. “Put your boots like this, so nothing can crawl into them at night, and you won’t have wet feet in the morning from the dew.”

  After I’d situated my boots under my rolled blanket, I spread my cloak over myself as my blanket. The fur over the long grass actually provided a decent amount of cushion. Vell wrapped herself in her cloak and then pulled her last blanket over us both. I tucked it in on my side. She paused and said to me gravely, “If you steal the blankets, I’ll punch you in the face.”

  “I won’t steal the blankets, then,” I replied seriously, trying to contain the smile twitching at the corners of my lips.

  “Oh, and you can put the Sword between us, if you like,” she added.

  “The Vaelanbrigh has first watch,” Merrick said from a short distance away, making his own bed among the long grasses. “And the trees will keep watch as well. I doubt anything would be able to enter this ring without us knowing.”

  I left the Sword on the edge of the fur. It seemed perfectly content, and besides, it would be a rude awakening to find it wedged under my back or digging into my ribs. “The Sword will warn us as well,” I said without thinking, the words leaving my lips without me ever really thinking them. I blinked and stared at the Sword. The emerald in its pommel glimmered and the whorls of the war-markings on my right forearm tingled slightly. “Putting words in my mouth is rude,” I told it. The emerald flashed. The Caedbranr’s version of a chuckle swept across my skin like a warm wave. I shook my head and arranged my plain blade and my daggers, keeping them close at hand.