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

by Jocelyn Fox

  “Of course not,” he replied mildly. “I was merely stating that fact for the rest of our merry little band’s benefit.”

  “The rest of the ‘merry little band’ has noticed on their own that there’s no faery ring,” Vell said.

  I rubbed my temples. “All right. We’ve established there’s no faery ring. We’ll just have to be more vigilant with the watch.”

  “Vigilance is the eternal price of freedom,” murmured Finnead, almost to himself.

  I glanced at him in surprise. “Where did you learn to quote Thomas Jefferson?”

  His teeth glimmered in half a smile. “It would not do well for a Knight of the Court to be uneducated about the world in which he must travel.” There was something like contempt in his voice.

  I had enough presence of mind to blame my sudden irritation on my tiredness. “We—or at least I—need to sleep at some point.”

  “We will make camp here for the night,” rumbled Kavoryk, dismounting from his shaggy beast. Merrick looked as if he were about to say something, but then he closed his mouth and shrugged, sliding down from the saddle.

  “Here’s as good a place as any,” he said.

  Kavoryk hefted his battle-axe in one hand. When he saw my raised eyebrows, he grinned and said, “Just in case there are any wild boars.” He stalked into the forest, his huge form moving with deceptive stealth, the edge of his axe cutting through the darkness with a bright gleam.

  “Nasty creatures, wild boars,” Merrick said sensibly as he followed the giant Northman on foot, leading his mount.

  I bit back a groan as I dismounted, massaging my legs in an effort to persuade them to carry my weight. I was partially successful and I limped along next to Kaleth, who bore my arm over his neck and my various small sounds of complaint stoically.

  “A few more days and you’ll be running and skipping out of the saddle,” Vell said from behind me. She tried for her usual wry smile, but her eyes were haunted. Her black eye had faded to a bruise that glowed sickly green in the moonlight.

  “Can we fast forward to then?” I grumbled. The Sword chuckled. “You’re not helping,” I growled at it, pausing as my calf cramped painfully. I swatted at a bramble-branch that wrapped around my leg as we started forward again, wincing as a thorn scratched my hand. “Nasty bushes around here.”

  Vell murmured something in agreement, but it was clear her attention was focused elsewhere.

  I lowered my voice. “Are they close?”

  Staring off into the shadows with her wolf-like gaze, she answered, “They can’t be that far behind us. They were at the faery ring before sundown. We are not traveling as ulfdrengr travel.”

  “Meaning we’re slower?”

  Her luminous eyes turned back to me. “Meaning we’re much slower and louder. A pup could track us.” She took a deep breath of the night air. “And smell us.” She wrinkled her nose.

  I surreptitiously sniffed my shirt.

  “Not you,” she clarified. “Well…a wolf could, but not their warrior. Not until they were right on top of you, anyway.”

  “Oh.” I dropped to a whisper. “Is it Kavoryk?”

  Vell chuckled a little at that. “No. He smells like a Northman anyway.” She shook her head at my perplexed look. “Really, Tess, you can be so thick-skulled sometimes.”

  “Thick-skulled, that’s me,” I said brightly.

  Vell sobered. “It’s going to be a problem soon.”

  “The…smell?”

  She nodded. “And the cause of it.”

  We stopped at the edge of a tiny clearing, really no more than an indentation in the ground created by the roots of several huge trees. I wondered how we would all sleep in the small space. Would we all pile atop each other like puppies? A ridiculous image flashed through my mind: Kavoryk, snoring on his side, with Merrick under one arm like a teddy bear; Beryk snuggled between Vell and I, and Finnead—I forced my attention back to the present. Vell had said something. I blinked. She sighed.

  “The Vaelanbrigh. The poison,” she repeated.

  I began unbuckling the straps of Kaleth’s saddle, glancing about the little clearing. Kavoryk loomed on the other side, and Merrick was scratching a rune into the bark of one of the trees. Finnead was nowhere to be seen. “It’s that bad?” I whispered.

  “Beryk can hardly stand it,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  I lifted the saddle from Kaleth’s back and set it on the ground, rummaging in the saddlebag for a grooming-cloth. Kaleth blew out a breath in satisfaction as I rubbed him down. He flicked his tail and I obligingly combed through the silky dark hair for leaves and burrs. When I finished, I patted his shoulder and he wandered a short distance away, moving through the trees like a gleaming blue wraith.

  “You’re both stubborn as mules,” Vell muttered as she gave her sleek little faehal a fond slap to send it off with Kaleth.

  “I can’t hold him down and force him to let me help him,” I said in exasperation.

  “You’re not going to have to hold him down at all in a few days,” she replied meaningfully.

  “I don’t even know if I can do anything.” My protest sounded feeble even to my own ears.

  “Now, Lady Bearer,” said Vell, her voice thick with sarcasm and a hint of reproach. “We both know that isn’t true.”

  I folded my blanket into a camp pillow. “True or not, I can’t help the fact that he’s a self-righteous prick.”

  “Or that you might be falling in love with him?”

  I looked sharply at Vell, who was folding her own blanket as if she’d just commented on the weather.

  “I might not be all rainbows and sunshine tied up in pretty ribbon like some of those Court-bred girls, but I know the ways of the world,” she said. “I know it when I see it.”

  “Well then, you must be looking at something completely different than what’s happening,” I snapped.

  “Don’t get angry at me for pointing out something that you’re too stubborn to admit,” Vell replied coolly.

  I found that I had no reply to that. I slid the strap of the Sword over my head. The emerald winked slyly at me. “Not you, too,” I groaned.

  “Well,” the Northwoman said to the Sword, “we agree on something for once.”

  The Sword’s silvery chuckle shivered through the air.

  “If it’s quite all right, I’d like to go to sleep instead of gossiping like schoolgirls,” I said irritably. Vell spread her fur out in the little bowl created by the tree-roots.

  “I was never a schoolgirl,” she said ostensibly, “so there’s no way I can gossip like one.” Her teeth gleamed as she grinned at me.

  “At least you’re in a better mood,” I said sourly, dropping my pillow onto the fur and pulling off my boots in a huff. After arranging my boots under my pillow and the Sword at the edge of the fur, I pulled my cloak over myself.

  “Yes,” Vell murmured. “It will be over soon.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows, my irritation draining away as I realized that Vell expected to encounter the other ulfdrengr while we were camped here. “Wake me up if anything happens.”

  “Trust me,” she said, sitting on the other side of the fur with her legs folded neatly beneath her, “you will know when he arrives.” She stared unblinkingly out into the darkness, still as a statue, her bow laid across her lap and her green-fletched arrows laid within reach.

  Kavoryk stood to the other side of the small clearing, his giant form looking like a tree trunk amidst the forest. Merrick sat cross-legged on his blanket, Forin and Farin hovering above him to provide light as he pored over the map, the scrying-stone sliding with a soft scraping noise across the parchment. I thought vaguely that I shouldn’t be able to sleep, since we were going to be attacked by another wolf-warrior and all, but weariness settled over me like a second blanket and my eyes drifted shut, the aches of my tired body fading as I drifted into welcoming darkness.

  Chapter 12

  I felt as though I had
just closed my eyes and drifted to sleep when the Caedbranr sent a sharp word into my head, rousing me from my rest.

  Ulfdrengr.

  It sounded like half a greeting and half a command, laced with a firm contempt that I had never before heard in the Sword’s mental voice. I threw my blanket to the side, rubbing one hand hastily across my eyes and groping for the hilt of my plain blade with the other. My eyes were still adjusting to the pitch darkness as I slid my sword out of its sheath, the Caedbranr’s voice still humming in my bones. I realized as I awakened fully that the Sword had not been talking to me. It had woken me up with its greeting to the ulfdrengr tracking us, but it had been addressing the wolf and the warrior.

  A chill crawled up my spine as I felt something answer the Sword from the depths of the shadows. It wasn’t a voice, and I couldn’t understand any words in it, but it was a sound of malice and hatred. The surrounding trees trembled, their branches shaking. I moved into a crouch. The place where Vell had sat with her bow across her lap was empty, only a slight indentation in the blankets remaining. I scanned the little clearing. My gaze settled on a stealthy movement: Vell, her body perfectly still save for her right arm as she drew back an arrow, two fingers grazing her cheek, her gaze fixed on something in the trees.

  “Tess.”

  I turned to the whisper. Merrick crouched to my right, his gray eyes luminous in the darkness, catching the light like a cat’s.

  “Kavoryk and Finnead?” I whispered, barely breathing any sound into the words.

  Merrick motioned with two delicate flicks of his fingers, pointing out Kavoryk, hefting his battle-axe further to my right, and Finnead, the Brighbranr gleaming softly even in the heavy darkness. They’d formed a full circle around me, I realized. I slipped the strap of the Sword over my head and slid forward to join Merrick. He glanced at Finnead and opened his mouth to protest. I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “You all have to stop being so protective,” I whispered. “They’d have to be blind not to see that I’m the high-value target, with everyone hovering over me like mother hens.” I stiffened as the Dark voice came again, something like a growl this time, but like no living throat could make. It wasn’t the sound of the wolf or the man. It was the sound of something inhabiting the wolf and the man, I thought grimly. I wondered if they would be dead, reanimated corpses like the Skin-wraiths. Goose bumps crawled across my skin. “They’re close.”

  Merrick nodded and adjusted his grip on his sword. The Sword’s power began its restless circling, pacing like a caged tiger in my chest, prowling from rib to rib. I clenched and unclenched my free hand, fighting the urge to unleash it. It wanted to hunt the Darkness among the trees. It sensed its enemy, and its bloodlust coursed through me. Was this what Vell felt? Was this thirst for the kill a taste of ulfdrengr because of the scent on the wind, or was it my own instincts, magnified by the Sword? I shook my head slightly to clear it. I had to focus.

  Vell shouted a Northern word as a mottled shape burst out of the shadows. Her green-fletched arrow whistled through the night. As soon as she released the arrow, Vell tucked her bow and rolled to the side. A black and gray wolf landed where she had stood only a heartbeat earlier, the arrow lodged in its shoulder. The wolf snarled and turned toward Vell, but the Northwoman was already on her feet, drawing a dagger. Beryk erupted from the trees, catching the mottled wolf unaware. He seized it by the scruff of its neck, clamping down with his powerful jaws, and the two wolves rolled, crashing through the underbrush in a whirl of teeth and fur and flashing claws.

  “Tess! Down!” Vell shouted over the tremendous noise of the wolf-fight. I dropped to the ground and Vell dove over me, connecting solidly with a form in the shadows that had been ready to tackle me. She slammed the other ulfdrengr into a tree, her dagger flashing as she brought it up to his throat. “Skorlan hvel, ulfdrengr,” she snarled.

  Heedless of the dagger against the pale skin of his throat, the ulfdrengr seized Vell, moving with inhuman speed, and threw her. She twisted, slamming her shoulder into a tree with jarring force, but with barely a pause she whirled, dagger raised. Merrick sliced at the man with his sword. The ulfdrengr blocked it with a twisted black blade. It was the blade, I knew suddenly as the Dark voice made the leaves on the trees shake with its terrible cry. Merrick paused, seeming dazed by the inhuman snarl, and the man raised the dagger. I lunged, blocking the black dagger with my sword and shoving Merrick to the side.

  A shard of moonlight illuminated the ulfdrengr’s face in the instant that we gazed at each other. His expression was terrifyingly blank, like a mask—except for his eyes, which glimmered with pain. And then he whispered two words.

  “Kill me.”

  I didn’t have time to reply. Vell’s arm snaked around his neck and she swept his legs out from beneath him, taking them both to the ground. The sounds of the wolf-fight abated. I glanced up. The two wolves circled each other warily in the little clearing, Beryk clearly larger and stronger than the black and gray wolf. Blood speckled the leaves. Kavoryk’s battle axe shone as he swung it through the air. The mottled wolf fell to its side at the impact, shuddered once and then was still.

  “A little help here,” gritted out Vell.

  The ulfdrengr thrashed with the strength of a madman, his blank face reddening as Vell tightened her chokehold.

  “The blade!” I said.

  Merrick lunged with cat-like grace and pinned the ulfdrengr’s arm to the ground. He hissed. “It’s iron,” he said painfully, paling as the blade brushed his sleeve. The ulfdrengr kicked at me viciously as I moved to his side. One of his boots caught a glancing blow to my shin. I gritted my teeth and took hold of his arm. Merrick let go and caught his other arm.

  “Roll him,” panted Vell. “To the right.”

  I kept the ulfdrengr’s arm tight against the ground and Merrick adjusted his position so that Vell could roll the man onto his side, wrapping her legs around his to secure her hold. Whatever Dark power gave the ulfdrengr his strength apparently also made him very hard to kill. Vell tightened her arm about his throat. His lips were turning blue but he still struggled with an amazing strength. The Dark blade shrieked, its scream slicing through the night. Merrick flinched as if he’d been struck and Vell made a sound of pain. The Sword’s power surged through me, a rising tide that I couldn’t contain, my war-markings blazing, engulfing my arm.

  “Let go!” I shouted at Vell and Merrick. Vell rolled away and Merrick jumped back as the green fire rose in my eyes, my vision dimming at the edges.

  The Sword slammed its power down into the ulfdrengr, whose body arched as though electrocuted. He screamed through blue lips as emerald fire enveloped him. I felt the Dark blade like a shard of ice in my flesh. I wielded the Sword’s power like a torch, searing it away. Black tentacles had wrapped around the ulfdrengr’s arm, invisible to the naked eye. I followed them into his chest, and somewhere in the back of my mind, the part that was not exulting in the roaring bonfire of power, I knew that I would probably kill him. But he had told me to kill him.

  Flames raced down my right arm in fierce whorls. I plunged my hand into his chest, half-substantial, passing through bone and flesh and blood, seeking out the seed of Darkness. I felt the hot pulse of his beating heart beneath my palm. He writhed and I said, “Hold him.” My voice was not my own, layered with the power of the Sword and all the voices of all the Bearers who had gone before me. I felt them in the back of my head, through the Sword, calm presences centering the blinding rush of power. My fingertips brushed a writhing, cold-burning splinter near his heart. I closed my hand around it and jerked it from his chest, fist blazing. The ulfdrengr was still screaming. With my other hand I gripped the Dark blade, its edge biting into my flesh.

  The Sword’s power shredded the darkness savagely, immolating it like the burning heart of the syivhalla. The Dark shard crumbled to dust in my fist and the fire heated the black blade silver, leeching the Dark from it. The Sword’s power burned down like embers in a fire, the edges of my vision
clearing. I opened my hands and silky black ash sifted through my fingers. I fell back on my heels, breathless. My head spun from the sudden vacuum in my chest, the space where the Sword’s power had been.

  The ulfdrengr’s scream broke, fragmenting into shards of sound grating from his ruined throat. I leaned over him with the ashes of the Darkness still staining my skin, my hair in a wild halo around my head, my eyes wide. He shuddered and his head fell to the side as his body stilled. Vell knelt on his other side, pressing her fingers against his neck.

  “Is he alive?” I rasped. My bones ached with exhaustion.

  “You put your hand in his chest,” Merrick said. “Through his chest.”

  “The curse was near his heart,” I said tiredly, brushing the ash from my hands. The Dark blade was now a straight, ordinary-looking silver dagger, only the bones etched into its handle remaining to tell of its cursed history.

  “He’s alive,” Vell said. Her voice held a shadow of the relief that coursed through me.

  Finnead stood over the black and gray wolf, Kavoryk posted nearby with his huge battle-axe. The wolf’s paws were bound with black cord. I squinted at Kavoryk’s battle-axe and then at the wolf, sure that I’d heard the giant roaring a battle cry as he swung his huge blade.

  “No need to kill it,” he said gruffly as he met my gaze. He tapped the flat of the axe. “A blow to stun it.”

  I stood shakily. Merrick shadowed me, one hand extended as if to catch me. I gave him half an exhausted smile and let him take my elbow. I felt as though I’d just run a marathon, my chest aching and my knees watery, all my joints soft as butter. Merrick patiently walked with me as I crossed the small clearing, the distance feeling like miles. Finnead looked at us silently, his blue eyes almost black in the shadows.

  Beryk circled the unconscious wolf. As I drew closer, the difference between the downed wolf and Beryk became painfully obvious. Where Beryk’s fur gleamed glossily in the moonlight, the mottled wolf’s fur lay lank against its sides, outlining its ribs starkly. Dirt encrusted the wolf’s paws, and brambles were stuck in its fur on its belly and tail. A small sound of sympathy escaped me. I pushed at Merrick’s hand and he carefully let me go. The Sword hummed softly on my back. I knelt by the wolf and watched the rise and fall of its pitifully skinny chest, its muscles standing out in corded strings on its lanky frame.