The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “Yep.”

  “And steadiness.”

  “Enough to keep us from flying off the mountain. Can’t make wheels climb, though. We’ll need to take the paths as far as they’ll go, before descending into the mists.”

  Zera giggled.

  Scooting out from beneath the wagon, Kreya glared at her. “What?”

  “The boys are going to hate your plan.”

  The boys did hate her plan. But Kreya gave them all the option to stay at the farmhouse, which she thought was more than fair. Twenty-five years ago, she’d given them a choice too, whether they remembered that or not. They could have said no then. They could have said no now.

  Amurra did say no, loudly and repeatedly.

  But Stran kissed her and swore up and down he’d return unscathed, on top of whatever he’d promised her in the privacy of their kitchen, while the others politely pretended they weren’t watching. Tearfully, Amurra turned to Kreya. “Promise me you’ll bring my husband back to me, alive and unharmed,” she pleaded.

  Kreya replied, “Why in the world do you think I could make that kind of promise?”

  That did not help.

  Eventually, though, they were under way.

  Marso, wrapped in blankets, was tucked into the wagon with Jentt. Stran took up his position at the back, facing behind them. He’d ensure they weren’t chased, or if they were, that they were aware of the fact. Kreya sat with Zera beside her on the front bench. She’d steer while Zera assisted—or, more accurately, provided running commentary:

  “You should slow on the corners.

  “Gotta watch out for the branches.

  “You ran through moose crap. Do you have any idea how hard that stuff is to wash off? We are going to be smelling it for days.”

  Finally, Kreya said: “How about you warn me before I’m about to hit anything instead of after it’s too late, hmm?”

  Zera sat up straighter. “You were listening to me? Okay. Great. Rock.”

  A half second later, Kreya hit a rock, and the wagon jostled up into the air a foot and then crashed back down, rattling as it careened onward.

  “Thanks,” Kreya said through gritted teeth.

  She didn’t touch the brakes, though, despite how many branches whacked the wagon and how many rocks bounced it. Speed was key as they zipped past farms, villages, and pastures. It was fine if people remembered an out-of-control wagon. It wouldn’t be fine if they were stopped or even recognized. The fewer questions they had to answer later, the better.

  If we’re wrong about Eklor, Kreya thought, it’s best if no one guesses where we went.

  Going into the mist to certain doom would confuse most onlookers anyway.

  Fortunately, keeping up their speed was easy—she just aimed the wagon straight down the mountain. She didn’t even have to activate the speed bone. Gravity and momentum were all the magic they needed.

  As they sailed over a larger rock, Zera flung her arms in the air and whooped. “This is amazing! We’re doing this! And we’re going to be awesome! We’re not less than what we were; we’re more! Eklor, we’re coming for you!”

  Kreya grinned. She kept her eyes on the path as it twisted between the trees. If she had read the map correctly, they had a few hundred yards before—

  The path ended in a pleasant clearing, with clusters of wildflowers. Birds startled as they rattled into it. Kreya didn’t slow. She’d seen the elevation markings and knew the contour of this part of the mountain. This should be the perfect place to descend.

  “Wait, Kreya? Road? We lost the road,” Stran called from the back of the wagon.

  “No more road,” Kreya said. She braced herself. “Hold on, everyone!”

  She hit the opposite side of the clearing, where a flat boulder jutted out from the mountain slope, and she drove the wagon off it. Its wheels flew over empty air for a moment, and then they crashed down on a steeper slope.

  Every bone in her body rattled, and she clung to the steering stick as they careened down the mountainside toward the mist below.

  With luck, any onlookers would remember a tragedy: an out-of-control wagon that disappeared into the mist. They’d murmur about how it was such a shame, and then they’d dismiss it as an accident—certainly, they wouldn’t expect anyone to intentionally drive into the mist.

  “Stay alert, everyone,” she called. With the kind of racket they were making, they were bound to draw attention. Without thinking about whether he could or not, she asked, “Marso, any predictions?”

  “Death and doom,” he replied. “I don’t need bones for that.”

  “Helpful,” she said through gritted teeth. “Stran, report.” She glanced back at him.

  “Movement to the east. Ten-foot predator. Make that multiple predators.” He drew his knife but kept his seat. “Croco-raptors.”

  “They hunt in packs,” Kreya said, focusing on driving again. “Expect the visible ones to be a distraction. Attack will come from either west or behind us.”

  “Or front,” Zera added. “Could be front. For fun.”

  “Defend or outrun?” Stran asked.

  Kreya scanned the clumps of bushes, aimed for the least dense, and drove the wagon through them. She ducked beneath branches. “Wait for it.”

  Ahead was the rush of the river. She heard it, calculated the distance, and angled the wagon so it burst out between the trees alongside the water. Vines stretched from bank to bank, knitted into weblike patterns, and Kreya saw the croco-raptors racing along the opposite side.

  The attack would come from their side of the river.

  “Two behind us!” Stran called.

  Four on the opposite side of the rushing water.

  “Now!” Kreya shouted.

  Stran launched himself off the back of the wagon as one of the previously hidden croco-raptors attacked from the bushes on the side. He shouted, “Ozri!” to activate a strength talisman as he swung feetfirst to plow into one of the raptors.

  “Ready for extraction!” Kreya called to Jentt.

  “On it!” He leaped from the wagon, grabbed a vine, and swung to land on the riverbank. Zera tossed him a speed talisman, and Jentt activated it. He sped into a blur. In seconds, he was back, with Stran and the severed head of a croco-raptor.

  “Stran, deliver it!” Kreya called.

  Stran hefted the croco-raptor head up and threw it hard, fueled by a strength talisman. It soared over the water. Kreya heard shrieks from the croco-raptors as it impacted. Drawn by the fresh meal, the croco-raptors slowed to attack the head.

  “Two still back there,” Stran reported. “Keeping their distance.”

  “You got blood on your shirt,” Zera informed him.

  He ignored her. “By the bones, that was the most fun I’ve had in ages.”

  Kreya agreed. It felt like the old days.

  “Strongly recommend not telling your wife that,” Jentt said to Stran. He had his arm around Marso, cushioning him from the rattle of the wagon as they flew over rocks and fallen trees.

  “I tell her everything,” Stran said. “That’s how our marriage works. No lies between us.”

  “Adorable,” Zera said. “Absurd, but adorable. If she asked you whether you thought she was the most brilliant person you’d ever met, what would you tell her?”

  “She wouldn’t—”

  “You’d lie and say she was as brilliant as the sun.”

  Kreya smiled at the thought of Zera’s dispensing relationship advice. She hoped Stran was too sensible to listen. He was lucky to have Amurra, and vice versa. And I’m lucky to have my team here with me, she thought. Together again.

  “And if she asked whether she had any habits that annoyed you, you’d tell her what?”

  “She snores,” Stran said. “She knows that. A marriage is a union—that means the two of you, united against whatever life throws at you. You share everything.”

  “You’re not sharing this.” Zera waved at the wagon, the wildness, the river, and the bloodstains
on his shirt. She narrowly avoided whacking Kreya’s arm.

  “I’ll share the story of this, when we return,” Stran said, as if that were obvious. “And doing so will make us stronger.”

  Kreya thought of all the things she hadn’t shared with Jentt, all the days that there hadn’t been time to tell him about, all the hours she’d spent alone. She thought too of her greatest omission: the truth about the cost of the resurrection spell.

  I’ll share that with him someday, she promised herself. After Eklor.

  Or . . . maybe she’d just wait until they were both on their deathbeds. He’d understand then and wouldn’t blame her for choices she’d made when they were apart.

  Right now, they had the future to share together. Who cared about the past?

  And that future right now held an enormous venomous stone fish. “Hold on!” she called, and veered sharply away from the river toward the tangled mass of trees. “Jentt, to me! Zera, watch Marso.”

  Zera scrambled into the back of the wagon, replacing Jentt beside Marso. She cooed at him and put her arm around him. Jentt climbed up with Zera.

  “Clear a path,” Kreya said.

  “Happily.”

  Standing, he drew two knives. Coming behind him, Stran braced him, holding his thighs steady while Jentt leaned forward. With blurring speed, Jentt slashed at the vines, branches, and greenery, clearing a path in front of them.

  “When I met Amurra,” Stran said conversationally, “I thought she’d never go for a man like me. You’ve seen her—capable, beautiful. She was running her parents’ farm on her own since age fifteen and, when I met her, had already put in motion plans to purchase what is now our farm. Had no need of a partner.”

  “How did you win her over?” Zera asked.

  They burst out onto a deer trail, and Jentt stilled his arms. He sat on the bench as Stran returned to lookout on the back of the wagon.

  “I didn’t,” Stran answered Zera. “She wooed me.”

  “Attracted to the Hero of Vos mystique?” Zera guessed.

  “She needed a tree removed but didn’t have the equipment for it,” he said. “I had a spare strength talisman, so . . .” He paused. Holding on to the back of the wagon, he swung himself out and kicked a croco-raptor in the face. It squealed as it hit a tree trunk.

  “Got it,” Zera said. “You impressed her with your muscles.”

  “Actually, no. It turned out there was a raccoon family living in that tree. I relocated them to a new home, and they scratched the crap out of my face as thanks. She said anyone who tried to cuddle a nest of baby raccoons deserved some cuddling without teeth and claws.”

  “Okay, that’s the cutest story I’ve ever heard,” Zera said. “I may throw up.”

  “River lizard ahead,” Jentt said conversationally. “Should we kill it?”

  Kreya heard the roar and caught a glimpse of its massive jaws through the canopy of trees. It was ahead of them, on the deer trail. “Still got any croco-raptors on our tail?” she called back to Strand.

  “One left.”

  “Feed it to the lizard.”

  She glanced back in time to see Stran’s enormous smile. Working together, Stran and Jentt caught the tail of the final croco-raptor. Activating her own strength talisman, Zera shouted out, “Now!” and joined them as they hurled the croco-raptor into the gaping maw of the river lizard as Kreya drove the wagon between its feet.

  Stran whooped and punched the air.

  Kreya smiled. We’re still a team, just like we used to be, she thought. No other group she’d ever heard of could have navigated the deadly valley like this. But here they were, surviving, thriving. Together, they could conquer the impossible. Eklor won’t know what hit him. Feeling more optimistic than she had since fleeing the plains, she kept driving through the valley, toward the forbidden zone and toward the future.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After a night switching off who slept and who was on guard—not counting Marso—and another day of traveling, Kreya and the others reached the wall. They stashed the wagon beneath a screen of matted vines and branches, and they used stealth talismans to sneak along the wall until they reached one of the grates.

  It wasn’t the same culvert that Kreya and Zera had used before, but the grate was just as rusty and barely guarded. That seemed to be a theme with the forbidden zone. No one cared about it anymore, which was why in twenty-five years no one had noticed Eklor’s return.

  Poor kids, Kreya thought, looking back at the guards who patrolled the top of the wall. They have no idea how terrible they are at their job. Or how terrible their job is about to become.

  Using speed talismans, they left the poorly guarded wall behind. Kreya and Zera led the way across the plain, while Jentt and Stran marveled at how it had regrown. All the lush grass, the autumn wildflowers, and the just-beginning-to-turn trees made it look as if nothing terrible had ever happened here. But all of them remembered what had been, and Kreya felt a tightness in her chest as she thought of what was to come if she was right.

  Stumbling along with them, Marso was muttering in a singsong voice, “Going to the dead, going to the dead, going to the dead.”

  Zera whispered, “Can we gag him?”

  “Absolutely not,” Kreya said.

  “You know I love him, but he’s getting on my nerves.”

  “He’s our early-warning system,” Kreya said. “You don’t gag an alarm. Besides, I think it makes him feel better.” She glanced back and saw Jentt had his arm around Marso, comforting him. Her heart felt as if it thumped a little harder, seeing Jentt alive, here, and caring for their friends the way he always had. He’d always been the heart of their group, believing in them all even when they didn’t believe in themselves.

  After a few miles of walking, they spotted the tower. Broken and burned, it looked like the bones of a dead thing. It stood in sharp contrast to the abundant life all around it. Soon, in another few decades, the life would consume it. Already vines ran up through cracks in the stone, a tree jutted out at a crooked angle from the side, and moss coated its base.

  “Looks abandoned,” Stran said, stating the obvious.

  “Looks like a trap,” Jentt said.

  “Regardless of what you believe, everyone is to treat this as if Eklor were functioning at full strength,” Kreya said. “No stupid mistakes. No unnecessary risks. We assess the situation, and then we regroup and determine how to proceed. Got it?”

  Nods all around, but no one looked at her—everyone was focused on the tower.

  “Zera, your fastest talisman to Jentt,” Kreya whispered. She crouched in the grasses. Beside her the others did the same. “Jentt, scout. Five-hundred-yard radius, then return.”

  Zera withdrew two silver bones from her pockets and pressed them into his hands. He was gone with a rustle of grasses in his wake. Closer to the tower, the rustle disappeared, and Kreya couldn’t even track him by his path. He’d combined a speed talisman with a stealth. She tried to ignore the way her heart squeezed at his absence and instead concentrated on counting her breaths. He should return in one, two, three—

  He was back, only a minor rustle in the grasses as he slowed.

  “Two patrols, six soldiers each, to the northeast and the south,” he reported in a whisper. “Archer on the top of the tower, hidden between rocks.”

  “Take them out?” Stran asked.

  Kreya shook her head. “Not yet. First, we see what they’re guarding.”

  She heard a clink behind her. Silently, she spun, hand on the hilt of a knife. But it was only Marso, squatting between the grasses, making a pyramid with scavenger-picked bones he’d found nearby. “One dead, two dead, three dead . . . ,” he cooed at the bones.

  “Are you reading them or playing with them?” Kreya asked.

  He stopped. “Can’t promise I won’t scream.”

  “Maybe don’t try if you’re going to scream, buddy, okay?” Jentt said.

  Marso began to quiver.

  Kre
ya had hoped that bringing him here, believing in him, would help restore some of his old self. She began to wonder, though, if she’d made a mistake. “Just stay hidden.” She nodded at the tower. “Zera, with Stran. Guard Marso. If the patrols come near, take them out. Jentt, you’re with me. We track the pattern of the patrols.”

  “Like the old days,” Jentt said cheerfully.

  “Hopefully not,” Kreya said.

  He sobered instantly.

  Together, they activated stealth talismans, two of Zera’s finest, and crept through the grasses. The patrols had left clear trails, tramping over the grasses and leaving skeletal footprints in the supple soil. Their more frequently used paths were obvious, and Kreya and Jentt followed them.

  When she had a clear picture of their pattern, she signaled to Jentt to return to their friends. It was as she expected: all the patrols centered around the tower. There was no way to know whether this was a remembered pattern from the days when Eklor used it as his stronghold or if they followed new orders, but there was no doubt that they guarded the tower. The hidden archer was only extra proof.

  The problem was that she’d been inside the tower, albeit quickly, and had seen no evidence of any recent occupation. Chewing on her lip, she considered it.

  Her tower had burned too, and where had she gone? Underground, she answered herself.

  The mountains were riddled with caves, so it was an obvious refuge for her. Here, though, on the plains . . . He could have made himself tunnels, she thought. Or used his skeletal labor to dig them. He’d had plenty of time.

  And plenty of skeletons.

  She would have bet heaps of gold that they’d find an entrance within the tower. She eyed it. She hated the thought of an underground lair. With Marso nonfunctional, there was no way to anticipate what they’d find, and with their only known exit through the tower, they could be easily cut off. It had been bad enough facing Eklor’s forces on an open plain.

  For the first time since they’d left the farmhouse, she felt a twinge of doubt.

  She knew what they would face in the valley, because she and Zera had just survived it, but here, she felt as if she were flying blind. They lacked too much information, and it made her skin prickle with unease.