Bones of the Empire

by Jim Galford

  Estin kept quiet until the wind’s chill began to make him shake, despite Feanne’s arms around him. He still had no desire to go into that tent and see the hopelessness on Raeln and Dalania’s faces or hear Yoska’s lies.

  “How are the others holding up?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking the way his arms and legs had started to. Deep down, he wondered if he would ever be warm again, and they had barely entered Turessi. Yoska had claimed Turess said this storm was harsher than most, but he could not believe much the man said. “They’ve been quiet…except Yoska, of course.”

  “Yoska says everything that enters his head, other than how he actually feels. He’s as worried as you are and wants to run. He will not as long as we keep going, but he wants to. Turess is plotting something, though without being able to talk with him, I cannot be sure what. He may simply be trying to learn who we all are and what is happening. Dalania is terrified of violence, and there will be no end of that where we are going. Raeln…I have no idea what Raeln is feeling. He has closed himself to me after whatever happened near the tomb. I believe he will talk when he is ready and not a moment sooner.”

  Estin nodded and held her arms tightly to him for a moment before pulling away to head back into the tent. He hesitated when Feanne continued to stare off into the snow. “We should get out of sight. You never know when someone could be out there.”

  Holding up her arm to look at the bright red of her fur where it poked out of her shirt sleeve, Feanne smiled and shook her head. “Not tonight. I called to the bats that inhabit the area. They are watching for anyone hunting us and will relay what they see to me.”

  “How does that work? I knew you could call animals, but I thought seeing through their eyes was something Dalania did.”

  “It works the same way most magic works,” she told him, following him back toward the tent. “Once you know the trick, it simply does. Dalania taught me that some time ago, but I only remembered it while we rode yesterday. I cannot control what comes to my call or whether they will help as I intend. Dalania has far better control than I do.”

  “Any other surprises?”

  “None yet. If I surprise myself, I promise you’ll be the first to know.”

  They stepped back into the tent, with its mild warmth that did little more than melt the snow that had collected on their clothing and fur. Yoska and Dalania were attempting to sleep. Raeln sat in some kind of meditation, his ears and nose twitching as he struggled with something. Only Turess remained fully awake, his attention on the bracelet he had taken from Raeln. At their entry, he looked up, quickly letting his sleeve fall over the silver cuff.

  “You’re the only one who knows where we’re going,” Estin noted dryly as Turess met his eyes. “I’d love to know what you’ve got planned for us.”

  Turess frowned as Estin spoke, staring intently, as if he could decipher their language through force of will. After a moment, he shrugged and said something in his native tongue.

  “This will be a long trek with him making the choices,” Estin muttered, sitting down on the blankets he and Feanne shared.

  “He is not in charge,” said Raeln in his deep voice, without opening his eyes. “We agreed that I was. He will guide us only as far as we need him to, or until I lose faith in what he’s telling Yoska. Get some sleep and don’t worry about him. He’s my problem.”

  Accepting that reluctantly, Estin curled up beside Feanne, though he knew sleep was not going to be coming anytime soon. All he could think of were the various Turessians he had fought and the people he had seen them kill over the years. Now they were heading into those monsters’ homeland. Sleep was simply not going to happen until he was too exhausted to go on, even with Feanne’s reassuring arm across his chest, her claws resting on the still-healing wound over his heart.

  *

  Estin sat up, unsure where he was for a moment. Opening his eyes, he looked out over the miles of snowy plains to the mountains in the distance and knew. Rubbing his face, he tried to remember why he was sitting in the middle of the field, his tail growing numb in the snow drift.

  Movement at his side startled him, making him feel as though he were off-balance and rocking somewhat, causing his stomach to churn. He shut out that sensation and saw Feanne was beside him, cradling an infant kit in her arms. From where he sat, he could not see which of the three of their youngest children it was, but he strained to reposition himself, leaning toward her…

  Estin snapped awake as he nearly fell off his horse. He had not even realized he had dozed off, but it was becoming all too common lately. Sooner or later he would drop like a stone into the snow if he continued to try to stay awake each day after barely sleeping each night. Shaking his head to clear the fog of the dream, he saw the others were doing little better. They had been riding steadily for far too long, and everyone looked half-dead in their saddles.

  As it had for the week prior, the travels continued uneventfully for two more days, the horses trudging through snow nearly up to their knees. The first time the group had stopped, Estin had been tired enough that he was the first to hop out of his saddle, with the thought of tying his horse to a tree. But in doing so, he fell into snow up to his waist. Turess and Yoska had chuckled at his expense as he struggled to climb free. Dalania and Feanne had eyed the snow cautiously and moved their horses around to a rockier area where they could dismount without burying themselves.

  They had pushed on each day, rarely stopping long, unless there was shelter or some natural stone or tree formation that kept the area relatively snow-free. Always, they went north, with Raeln, Yoska, and Turess leading the way, and Dalania, Estin, and Feanne followed, watching the horizon for threats. Not that they could do much if they saw threats…they had little that could slow an enemy from afar, and even less that would stop the undead from charging headlong at them.

  It had not been voiced, but they all knew the Turessian Liris would be coming for them sooner or later, bringing with her dozens if not hundreds of corpses. She had escaped after Turess had come to their aid, but she knew they were in the area. The leader of the Turessians, Dorralt, would see to her repeated attempts to come after them. He could not risk them trying to fulfill the albeit ridiculous prophecy that they could do something about his attack on the nations. His resolve was most likely hardened further by knowing his brother, Turess, was alive again. More than once Estin had wondered if handing Turess to Dorralt might actually spare their lives, but from what he had seen of the Turessians, he doubted it would prolong their lives by more than a few minutes.

  Around midafternoon the second day of hard travel, Turess turned his horse and headed more northeast. Yoska and Raeln stopped the others to watch him go, and soon Turess stopped and looked back. Saying something in his language to Yoska, he pointed toward a distant section of evergreens that grew atop a hill or mound of some sort, far off the path they had been taking.

  “Crazy dead man says we can cheat,” Yoska explained, pausing to wait for the inevitable glares from Estin and Feanne, demanding he tell them what Turess had actually said. “Okay, he really say we can use old mines to bypass much of borderlands. They were tapped out and abandoned during his time. He thinks if they exist yet, we can go under the enemy for a time. If they collapsed, we use hills to hide and rest. The mines themselves end near areas that were to be mined later, giving us good chance of staying below ground nearly half the distance to the temple, which he feels is where we will find his brother.”

  “You expect to use two-thousand-year-old mines safely?” asked Raeln, glowering, his ears flattening back in annoyance. “I wouldn’t trust dwarven halls that old, let alone these.”

  Turess seemed to understand the objection and said something more.

  Yoska quickly translated. “Now he says you seem ignorant of his people’s fine crafting skills. They enlisted the most skilled of the dark elves and dwarves in their lands. He believes the mines are intact. I also think ‘enlisted’ is a polite way of saying
slave, yes?”

  Turning in his saddle to look at Estin and then Feanne, Raeln appeared to seek any objections from them. Having none to give him, Estin shrugged. Feanne squinted at the hills, offering nothing.

  “Very well,” Raeln told the group, though he sounded to Estin to be deeply skeptical. “We’ll follow Turess through the mines. At the first sign of trouble, I want everyone to run for the nearest exit and scatter for a half day once you get out of the mine. We can try to meet up again after we lose any pursuit.” When no one replied, he added, “That is not a request. I’ll keep fighting until you all run, so if you don’t want to get me killed, you’ll run away. Hopefully, we find nothing.”

  The group began riding again, this time with Turess taking the lead. As fresh snow fell, they descended slowly into a bowl-shaped section of land where the existing snow cover was even deeper, gradually making their way toward the hills on the far side. At the foot of those hills, Estin made out dozens of huts, sheltered from much of the snow by the evergreens uphill from them. The sudden darting shapes of fleeing elk to the north drew his eyes briefly, but once he was sure of what was moving, he returned his attention to the huts.

  “An old mining village,” Raeln mentioned as they kept riding. “That wouldn’t have survived two thousand years. Be ready for anything. Turess can’t know this place as well as he thinks.”

  “It might be one of the old Turessian cities,” offered Dalania, giving them a halfhearted smile, likely meant as reassurance.

  “Looks like a mining village,” replied both Raeln and Estin almost in unison. They stared at each other for a moment.

  “Abandoned one near Lantonne was set up similarly,” said Raeln, returning his attention to the path ahead.

  “Same one I saw,” Estin added. “Right before it fell down around me.”

  That seemed to surprise Raeln, and he eyed Estin suspiciously but said nothing further.

  As they got closer to the village, Estin reached down and loosened his sword in its sheath. Feanne cast her cloak back to keep her arms and legs free—her preferred weapons, if she could not get her fangs onto an enemy. They all knew a trap could be waiting, but no one really wanted to say it.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Dalania drop back, keeping well away from the others in case of violence. She would support them, but not fight on her own. If they were lucky, she would be able to use her magic to assist in some way.

  Their already slow pace slowed further as they approached the village, despite no sign of movement—except for the occasional white rabbit or small deer in the woods nearby. Estin could see the doors of most of the huts were rotted away or missing entirely. The place had been abandoned a while. Not two thousand years, but still a long time. Certainly far longer than the old village near Lantonne.

  Turess continued up the slope and past the first houses, pointing at a distant black spot on the hillside Estin had to assume was the entrance to the mines. Turess spurred his horse on, even as the rest of the group slowed to glance inside the huts.

  “These have no furniture and most have no place to light a fire,” noted Dalania, leaning in the open window of a hut. “Who builds a home in these lands without a place to warm themselves? Feanne and I could probably manage, but I doubt all of Turessi had the same tricks.”

  “Fires weren’t allowed in the slave camp I stayed at,” Estin said without thinking. It was not something he had willingly spoken of in years and now it felt so distant that it might have happened to someone else. “Only fires the taskmasters built were permitted. We lost five or six people a week during the winters. The fear was that the slaves would hurt themselves or others if they had access to fire.”

  Dalania looked over at him sadly, but then frowned and looked back into the hut. “There are rusted chains at the rear of the home. You may have it right, Estin.”

  Farther up the rise, Turess stopped his horse and called something back to them.

  Yoska watched until Turess had finished speaking and then translated. “He says that slavery was illegal under his rule, but that the clans tried to keep their old traditions. He agrees that they went back to their old ways after his death. Also, for some reason, he apologizes to Estin.”

  Ears perking in surprise, Estin asked, “How did he know? Does he actually understand what we’re saying?”

  Yoska relayed the question, and Turess held up one of his arms and tapped his fingers against his bare wrist, where he had visible scarring. When Estin looked down at his arm, the fur at that spot was still thin around the scars from wearing chains. Turess had apparently been studying him. They had those scars in common.

  “Keep moving,” Raeln interjected. “I don’t want to be caught out here. Good plan or not, standing around in the open is a sure way to get us all killed. We can reminisce about the awful things we’ve gone through another time.”

  Estin flicked his horse’s reins and followed Turess into the hills. The whole group formed into a single-file line as the snow deepened, each horse following the tracks of the one ahead. At the far rear, Raeln practically stood in his saddle, watching the rolling lands around them for anything that might have followed. When he saw Estin watching him, he gave a quick shake of his head to let Estin know he had seen nothing specific.

  They proceeded up the rise and into the trees, though most were young pines that were easy to navigate through even on horseback. Thicker tree cover everywhere else on the slope hinted at a road where they were walking, but if there had been one, Estin could no longer see it. There was little more than snow and trees between the slave huts and the gaping hole in the side of the stone-strewn hill. The only disruption of the terrain were several snow-covered mounds up the hillside that could have been more huts at one time, though Estin thought they could have just as easily been uneven stones. Every so often, another group of birds or small wildlife would abruptly race from the trees, trying to stay out of their path.

  Near sunset, they reached the opening to the mines, which looked little better than a natural cave to Estin. If the place had been crafted from the stone, it had been allowed to crumble in the elements for far too long. Dwarves, dark elves, or magic—it did not seem to matter after so much time.

  “We need light,” Yoska announced as he came alongside Estin and Turess dismounted and led his horse toward the mine. “Will be long walk in dark, unless one of you magic people does something. I do not bring torches so far, no?”

  Turess stopped at the edge of the daylight and raised his hand, as if he were about to cast a spell. Stopping, he turned partway and looked at Estin. Pointing at the dark tunnel, he said, “Light.”

  “Well, my days of having job that does not get me arrested may be over,” Yoska said, smirking. “Now we have Turess to say obvious things. Light?”

  Estin and Yoska both turned to look back at Feanne and Dalania, who were the only others who might be able to summon magical light if Turess was unwilling or unable. Given recent events, Estin was not about to try.

  “Ne lemur des ceristu…light,” Turess announced, sounding somewhat frustrated. “Ceristu lemur.”

  “What was that all about?” asked Estin, glancing at Yoska for some help. “I still don’t understand anything he’s saying.”

  “This time, I don’t either,” said Yoska, shrugging. “I think it was, ‘no, you will have something something make a light. The something does it.’ On’esquin did not give me enough words to keep up with him. I think he says have argumentative fuzzy man do it, yes?”

  Waiting on their horses, they watched Turess until his shoulders sank slightly and he pointed at Estin. Motioning for him to come over, Turess then pointed at the cave.

  “Didn’t you explain to him that I can’t do magic anymore without throwing up or passing out?” Estin asked Yoska, who nodded. “Feanne, would you mind…?”

  Turess let out an exasperated sigh and motioned for Feanne to stop. Pointing at Estin again, he said with more than a little frustration, “Light!” />
  “I can’t!” Estin snapped back, and Feanne put a hand on his arm to calm him. That caught him a little off guard, given that she was normally the one who was quick to anger. “No magic. She will do it.”

  Turess eyed Feanne and shook his head. Pointing again at Estin, he motioned him closer.

  “Do not let him get to you,” Feanne warned softly. “He probably does not understand. Sooner or later he will figure it out and let me create a light. If he pushes the issue too long, I’ll ignore him and do it anyway.”

  Thanking her, Estin hopped off his horse and led it to the entrance of the cave. Stopping alongside Turess, he opened his mouth to object, but Turess made a sharp click with his tongue and pointed at the cave.

  “All right,” Estin told him, stepping into the crumbling entryway. “I’ll aim for your boots when this goes badly. Does ‘vomit’ translate easily?”

  Lifting his hands to attempt to form the spell he knew would make him ill, Estin stopped when Turess grabbed his wrist. Behind him, he heard a soft growl from Feanne or Raeln, though he was willing to bet it was Feanne. She had been a little overprotective of late, mostly under the guise of giving Estin time to recover his magic and strength.

  Turess eased his grip and started to say something before frowning, as though he could not think of the right words. Posing as though he were frozen with fear, he pointed at Estin again and made a point of relaxing with a deep sigh. He gave a meaningful glance at Raeln and then back to Estin, gesturing toward the cave.

  “Relax? That’s your advice?” Estin demanded as he realized he was tensing up. Taking a slow breath, he calmed himself and lifted his hands to cast the spell. This time Turess did not stop him.

  Whispers of the dead came to Estin as magic rushed in, bringing with it nausea and exhaustion. He nearly lost his concentration, but he kept trying to form the relatively simple spell. With a flicker, a ball of pale blue light formed in the palm of his hand, even as his stomach clenched painfully. The magical light held, but only barely.