Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo

by Lindsay Cummings

  Sweat dripped down Sonara’s temples as she lay there, the heat sweltering beneath the duster spread over her back, the better to help her blend in with the rocks.

  Jaxon’s hat was on her own head, blocking the sun from her eyes.

  She was grateful he’d given it to her at the Gathering, but she also didn’t deserve the comfort of it, when he was down there, trapped. So close, but untouchable.

  “We’ve been here for hours.” Sonara passed Markam her salamander glass. He frowned and wiped her sweat from the copper. “They’re just standing there, Markam. Why don’t they fight? Why don’t they do something?”

  “This is why we never sent you on recon missions.”

  Sonara raised a blue brow at him.

  “You’re too damned tense to lie in waiting all day. Now relax your jaw, before you shatter your teeth.”

  He lifted the spyglass. The old eyeball, plucked from a beast that lived beneath the ice in the White Wastes, swiveled in its liquid glass casing as Markam shook it, setting the eyeball right before he peered into the glass. He whistled softly. “No breaks or folds.” He slowly peered left and right, then up and down. “I don’t see a way out of it.”

  The network of tunnels surrounding their cave had several entrances and exits, none of which—much to Sonara’s dismay—led into the Wanderer camp as she’d been hoping. She and Markam had settled not far from their cave, where a dark, forgotten mining tunnel spat them out on a small rocky ledge on one of the mountain peaks neighboring the Garden of the Goddess.

  The light-wall spread before them, visible even in broad daylight.

  Power like this… she’d seen only a glimpse of it, ten years ago, when it had stolen Soahm. Today, it was tenfold.

  A rippling wall of pale blue light—not opaque, for they could see clearly through it—spanned down from the belly of the ship. It seemed held aloft by some invisible power, a constant hum that sent the fowl, that so often flocked to the valley, soaring far from it.

  Not a single flock of them had flitted across the blue skies in the hours she and Markam had been here watching.

  Not a single beast at all had shown itself. No herds of black mountain goats, not even a damned snake had slithered past them. It seemed all life had been scared away from the Garden; as if nature itself was repelled by it.

  Sonara looked back at the ship, and the blue wall of light spanning from its belly. Every so often, fingers of lightning crackled and snaked their way across the wall, like it was swimming with it. Made of it. She could sense the power in the air, taste the crackling burn of an endless storm upon her tongue as her curse stretched its fingers through the bars of its cage.

  The entire light-wall spanned from the continuously hovering ship to the valley floor, like it had been sealed shut, seamless in its design.

  And inside…

  Sonara forced herself to look through the shimmering pale sheet of light, her entire body tensing up like a spring. “They’ve trapped them down there, like steeds in a slaughter pen.”

  She had no idea what had transpired in the hours since they’d run, seeking shelter in the neighboring mountain caves. But while they’d been watching, the scene inside the Garden had shifted.

  No longer were there bodies sprawled across the grass, or the burned remains of what had once been a bustling market day. The rubble of tents and market stalls had been moved aside, the once-emerald, sweeping grass of the valley charred in a wide circle that left the Garden barren at its base.

  The river that spanned across its center, stretching down from the fingertips of the goddess, looked dim, filled with ash and muddied by what seemed to be a constant trail of feet stomping through it, or the fat tire marks of the Wanderers’ black vehicles that were now parked beside the river.

  The Wanderers themselves stood paces apart, in groups of two, holding their rifles as they made a wide circle around the prisoners.

  A herd of them, as Sonara had said. All kingdoms were gone. They’d been shoved close together, warriors and artists and merchants, nobles that had come to be seen and peasant revelers that had come simply to witness the Gathering’s glory. All of them, now made one people, sent to their knees. Jaxon was among them. Alive…

  But kneeling, just like all the others.

  “Why?” Sonara asked. “Why don’t they make a move?”

  They all had one thing in common, one thing that set their classes and kingdoms aside: the metallic black beetles that had swarmed at the end of the attack. They clung to the backs of the prisoners’ necks, their sharp needle-like arms digging into the skin, like ticks sucking the freedom from them.

  Little red lights, on the backs of each beetle, glowed like devils’ eyes.

  “There,” Markam said suddenly. “Something’s happening.”

  He passed the spyglass to Sonara.

  She swung it around to where Markam was pointing, pressing it to her eye so that she could see him up close.

  The Wanderer leader, adorned in his crimson armor, emerged from the back of the largest of their vehicles, a massive metal wagon on six fat tires. And beside him…

  King Jira.

  They walked side by side, as if they were equals. Jira, with his massive frame, his gold tunic tied at his waist by a belt of diamonds. His crown of bones was upon his head, but it could not distract from the gaping socket in his face where his eye should have been. Sonara’s lips spread into a devious smile as she beheld it. And remembered, suddenly, that the king was without his sword.

  She had no time to question Markam about the whereabouts of Gutrender, forgotten in the chaos, as the Wanderer leader steered Jira towards the group of prisoners. Wanderer soldiers in crimson armor bowed their heads as they passed, stepping aside so that the Wanderer and Jira could stand at the front of the group.

  Would it have happened in this way—this brutality, so many dead—if she hadn’t given in to the sudden call of her curse and stabbed the Wanderer boy?

  Sonara could feel the tension building as they watched Jira traitorously stand beside Dohrsar’s enemy. His own people, that had journeyed with him here, soldiers and flagbearers and his musical troupe, kneeling with the others.

  “Look,” Markam said. He nudged Sonara. “Movement, in the crowd.”

  She swung the spyglass left, where suddenly a group of prisoners sprung to action.

  A single, fell swoop of attacks to escape, as one kingdom. Soreians and Wasteians and Deadlanders, all together, lunged at their captors.

  But the Wanderer leader scarcely reacted. He simply tapped the side of his armor, a button on his wrist. There was a crackle.

  A pop that sounded like a single bolt of lightning.

  The beetles on the backs of the prisoners’ necks constricted. Their lights turned green, a flash of uniform brightness across the entire crowd.

  The screams that came after shook Sonara to her soul.

  The strongest, fiercest warriors of Dohrsar, who’d been to war and swung blades and rode steeds into battle… they all fell to hands and knees, writhing on the valley floor as the bugs on the backs of their necks began to glow a cool blue.

  There was Jaxon in the crowd, his hands clawing at the beetle as his eyes bulged and his entire body shook like he’d been struck with lightning.

  Sonara’s curse slammed against its cage, and she hadn’t the strength to hold it back as it blasted through the opening and tried in vain to catch the aura of obliterating pain Sonara knew she would sense coming from Jaxon, if he wasn’t so far away.

  His eyes… oh, goddesses, his eyes were bloodshot and wide and that was panic in them, panic she’d never seen before in all her years of knowing him.

  Sonara gasped, ripping the spyglass from her face as she backed away from the ledge, dust scattering around her in a cloud.

  “Sonara, get down,” Markam hissed. “They’ll see you!”

  But panic had overcome her, because if the Wanderers were doing this to Jaxon, what had they done to Soahm, all those years a
go? Her breath hitched in her throat, and Jaxon’s panic became her own as…

  Markam’s arms wrapped around Sonara, pulled her close to his chest. She tried to fight him, shocked and repulsed by the sudden embrace, but when she looked down at where his hands should have been, where she should have seen their bodies pressed close together…

  She saw nothing at all.

  Only the ledge where they should have been standing.

  She felt the coolness of his curse, his power wrapping around them both as he whisked their image right away from the world. If the Wanderers looked up, following a sudden cloud of dust on the mountainside… they would see no one at all.

  “Breathe,” Markam whispered.

  She felt his breath in her ear, but couldn’t see his face. Felt his warm cheek, the scratchy stubble and even smelled the leather of his hat, but saw only the blue light-wall and the ship towering in the sky.

  He rotated her around, pulling her with him, until they were in the shadows of the cave tunnel again.

  “I’m going to release you,” Markam said softly. But he held her a moment more, and she did not miss how his own heart hammered against his ribs, how his own voice was changed, as if what he’d seen had shaken him to his bones, too. As if he didn’t want to let go, for fear of his own panic overtaking him. “When I do, you’ll be visible again. And then we’re going to head back to the tunnels, back to Thali and Azariah, and we’re going to come up with a plan to destroy the Wanderers. To make them pay for what they’ve done. Okay, Sunny? Are you with me?”

  She nodded against his chest. “I’m with you.”

  He released her slowly, and that strange coolness faded from her body. Markam materialized before her, looking every bit as disheveled as she imagined she did. They stood like that, just out of reach of each other, staring in silence.

  “Well.”

  They both turned, as a flickering torch appeared, and Azariah and Thali emerged from the tunnel. Azariah lifted a brow and passed the torch to Thali. “We came to check on you, to make sure things were going alright with the intel but… it seems you’ve been busy doing something else.”

  Sonara backed away.

  “It’s not at all what it looks like.”

  Even Markam lifted his hands before him in surrender. “Goddesses, no.”

  He cleared his throat, and the strange moment of togetherness, of non-hatred between them, melted.

  “They’ve trapped them,” Sonara explained. “With a power I have never seen before. Torture that renders them useless should they try to fight back.”

  Thali stepped past them and peered out the mouth of the tunnel, down at the scene below. Sonara risked a glance. The prisoners were standing now, all in a line. The torture, it seemed, had ended. The Wanderers were passing them tools from their massive vehicle. Black axes and strange sharp-pointed drills.

  “We’ll go back to the cave,” Markam said. “Come up with a way to strike. At nightfall, perhaps, because—”

  “Strange,” Thali said suddenly. She leaned a bit further out of the tunnel, as if she wasn’t sure what she was seeing was true. But she was looking up, not down. At the starship hovering in the sky. “I thought you killed the Wanderer, Devil.”

  “What?” A strange coldness crept across Sonara’s skin as she approached the cleric. “I did. I saw him fall to the ground, after I pushed the blade in deep.”

  “Not so,” Thali said softly. “Look.”

  Sonara took the spyglass from Markam’s outstretched hand and pressed it to her eye as she swung it upwards, looking at the small landing dock that jutted from the side of the hovering ship.

  A balcony of sorts, where the smaller transport ship was parked. And there beside it, leaning over the railing to peer down at the prisoners below…

  The Wanderer she’d stabbed, killed beneath the power of her curse.

  Now very much alive.

  Chapter 17

  Karr

  One moment, Karr Kingston was in agony, lying on his back in a kingdom made of fire and ash.

  The next, he stood alone in a throne room, in a palace carved entirely out of ice.

  He shivered, his breath forming a dense cloud as he turned in a slow circle. His body was miraculously free of all pain.

  The left side of the room was all white, untouched by color or shadow. It was ornately designed, a jagged sort of beauty that reminded him of the mountains. Ice curtains were pulled back from towering, sharply carved cathedral windows. Beyond them stood the ghostly outline of mountaintops far away, the telltale diamond-shape of a flock of wyverns riding the wind between their peaks.

  Karr gazed past the curtains, to the walls of the throne room, which were carved with thousands of tiny snowflakes. Each one of them unique in shape and size, but all shimmered with a dusting of frost as his gaze slid past. Rows of towering ice columns lined the throne room, bearing depictions of crystalline beings that could have been goddesses. They had crowns upon their heads, but no faces. Swords in their hands, but no enemies, for Karr realized the base of each column was carved to look like bones; ones each goddess, on each pillar, had slain.

  The artistry was impeccable, so meticulously carved that their heavy gowns looked to be flowing in a forgotten wind.

  Far overhead, the ceiling came together to the sharp peak of a single twisting spire. All of it, the purest shade of white.

  He swung his head to the right, and gasped.

  It was still ice, he was certain, shimmering and frozen, and slick as glass… but the color had turned black.

  A mirror image in shape and design, the same jagged, frozen beauty. But everything was made of black ice. If Karr looked close enough, he swore he could see movement beneath the dark ice, like living shadows that slithered past.

  He glanced down, in the space where he stood.

  Unease crept through his senses as he realized that the space in which he stood was not black or white, but solid grey.

  A carpet of grey, a single strip of muted color down the center of the throne room, rolled out to split the space in two. The design on the frozen grey carpet was beautiful, with foreign constellations he did not know broken up by snowflakes. Each one of them woven different from the next.

  The carpet rolled all the way to a distant throne, carved to look like an exploding star.

  Half of the throne was slick black ice. The other, purest white.

  Karr shivered again, his bare feet cold on the grey rug. It was the only space in the room where he could not be touched by darkness or light, unsure of which way to go.

  He knew only that he’d fallen into a long and dreamless sleep, and if he wished to wake up…

  “Choose.”

  Karr flinched as the whisper echoed through the throne room. He looked around, but there was no one to be found.

  “Choose,” the whisper came again. “Choose a side.”

  Karr felt it rumble into his bones, as if the word were sidling up beside his very soul.

  Not a suggestion, but rather, a command.

  He knelt and reached a fingertip to his right, to touch the dark black ice. It was surprisingly warm and welcoming. Frozen, yes… but like tendrils of sunlight reaching out to soothe a shattered soul.

  He turned left, and touched the white ice next.

  It was cold and chaotic, a spiraling wind let loose from a raging storm. So bitter cold, it felt like it burned his skin. He flinched away from it.

  Back and forth, Karr tested the two sides, wondering about each of them. The dark was sweet, and safe. But the white light was intoxicating, a taste that kept begging him to come back for more. A little tug and pull that whispered like a devil on his shoulder, its bony finger waving for him to draw near.

  Karr wanted to obey. He wanted to sink into that white abyss, that pool of sly whispers, and let it swallow him whole.

  He took a step.

  Then another, his feet sliding on the grey rug, as he stepped away from the light.

  It was the
n and there, Karr standing with one foot halfway into the dark, that the child suddenly appeared on the throne.

  Bone-white hair cascaded down her shoulders, shimmering as if the strands were alive. When Karr looked closer, he saw that her hair was made of stars. Hundreds of thousands of them, a galaxy hanging in strands down to her waist. And it wasn’t just her hair, Karr realized. Light poured out from the girl’s body, arcing and swirling, as if she had a force field surrounding her. Planets ebbed and flowed across her skin. Nebulas danced in her eyes.

  A blink, and suddenly she faded from the throne before reappearing on the rug just before him, a smile on her lips.

  For a moment, her presence pulled Karr away from the dark.

  He took a step back into the grey and faced the girl.

  “Who are you?” His voice was missing the shock that, in any normal world, it would have been drenched with. “Where am I?”

  Her laugh sounded like a song. “I am the Beginning,” she said, and though Karr knew in his heart that he’d never met this girl, he had the strangest sensation that she had met him, that she knew more about him, perhaps, than even he knew about himself. “And so are you.”

  Her eyes were ancient and all-seeing. In her gaze, he felt laid bare.

  She stepped closer to him. Though her head only reached his chest, when he looked down into her knowing eyes, something inside made him feel as if he were really looking up.

  “Karr,” she said. “The lost soul.”

  The light around her pulsed and expanded, until his eyes ached just from looking at her. She placed her hand flat on his chest, and for one moment, he saw a vision of blue light; of raging wind; of hot blood sliding towards his bare toes.

  “Choose,” the girl whispered. “Darkness, or Light?”

  She stepped aside and held out her arms.

  Tendrils of swirling, cool white snaked towards Karr’s hands, while warm, delicate darkness swept around his feet.

  “Choose.”

  It was impossible.

  The pale abyss to his right whispered his name, and promised power and pleasure, greatness and glory, while the shadows from his left sung sweetly a single word: Peace.