The Lair of Bones (39 page)

For centuries the Days have claimed to be politically neutral. Their sole desire, they say, is to “observe” the lives of the lords and ladies of the Earth. But what lord, I wonder, can remain unchanged in the face of such scrutiny? What king among us does not seek to seem wiser, gentler, and more admirable than our base nature craves? We are forever reminded that our lives are short, measured in single heartbeats, gathered into a seeming handful of days. Thus, I believe that in observing the lords of the Earth, the Days unavoidably alter the course of history.

Given this, I can only conclude that it is not the mere recording of his-tory that they desire: it is the alteration of affairs. Their hand is subtle but sure, and I suspect that in time of great need, they will reveal themselves.

—
King jas Laren Sylvarresta to the Emir of Tuulistan

Myrrima's captor hustled her down a long tunnel, shoving her forward. Verazeth was not a gentle man. It was too dark for a northerner like her to see, but he forced her to rush forward blindly. She could hear the sounds of the sea—the dull crash of slow-moving waves breaking over sullen rocks, the distant cry of a gull. The scent of salt water hung thick in the air.

Something stirred inside of her. She had never heard sea waves before, and had not really been able to imagine them. She had thought that they might sound like waves in a lake, lapping on a shore. She had been to a lake before.

But the sound she heard now was nothing like a lake. She could hear waves crashing upon shores that stretched far beyond what the eye could ever convey. The waves beat against the rocks at the base of Palace Iselferion, sloshing around them, making the very foundations of the palace
tremble. She didn't just hear the ocean, or smell it. She could feel it quivering through her bones.

She had never felt such power in Water before. It seemed to call to her.

Myrrima's captor pushed her from the tunnel, and suddenly there was starlight overhead. Myrrima saw the sea, vast and limitless, stretching beyond the horizon. It was almost morning. A soft light hovered in the east. At her back, Verazeth, as pale as if he were dead and bloodless, gave her a shove, backing her over a stone parapet that leaned out over the ocean.

The water lapped the rocks below her, only a hundred yards or so. With a small push, Myrrima would fall into the deep.

Prince Verazeth pushed her backward, his black robe open, revealing his pale chest. He was a handsome man, with a sharp nose, a strong chin, and well-defined muscles in his chest and abdomen. His long silver hair had been braided in cornrows and knotted together, so that it hung over his right shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Myrrima asked.

Verazeth stroked her face just once. She saw undisguised lust in his expression. “It would please,” he said at last, “if you give endowment… metabolism.”

She knew what he desired. Once she gave metabolism, she would go into an enchanted slumber until the lord that received her endowment died, and her own metabolism returned to her. In such a state, she would not be able to protect herself from his lust. She would not even know when he violated her. And when she woke, she would be pregnant with his child.

“I'll give you nothing,” Myrrima growled.

“Husband love you very much. He give will to save you. Make us promise to let you live. But if we let go, you make trouble for us. No can let you go. So, you must give endowment.”

“I'll kill you first,” Myrrima said.

He grunted as if annoyed at an idle threat. “You not understand. Give endowment, you live. Not give, I push you over.” He grabbed her roughly and held her over the ledge.

Myrrima threw her arms around his neck. If he tried to push her over, he would come too, and Myrrima had no doubt that she would fare better in the water than he. She spat in his face.

Verazeth's eyes glittered cruelly, and his nostrils flared. He clenched his fists impotently.

“I give you day to think. Sun very hot.” He let her have a moment to ponder this. Inkarrans, with their white skin, had no protection against the sun. They burned easily and deeply. “While sun come, you think. Maybe not so bad give endowment. Maybe both you and husband give endowment to king. That way, when he die, you both get endowment back, you and husband. Is not better to live in hope than die in despair?”

He grabbed the chain that bound her, and wrestled her arms down. Then he pulled off her traveling cloak, leaving her with naught but tunic and breeches. He grabbed Myrrima's chains once again and pushed her against a wall, even as he lifted her arms.

The next moment, Myrrima found herself hanging from her fetters, unable to touch the ground with her feet.

Verazeth said, “Many crab on rocks. Hungry crab. They climb cliff, look for food. Maybe help you think better.”

The prince turned and entered the tunnel, bolting the iron door behind him.

Myrrima glanced down to see a pair of small green kelp crabs scuttling for shelter under the rocks. She pulled at her restraints. The heavy fetters cut into her wrists. They fit so tightly, it was almost as if they'd been made for her. With her endowments of brawn, Myrrima knew that she could pull her hands out. But she'd break every bone in her wrist doing it, and would cut away much of the flesh at the same time.

What good would escape be if it left her crippled?

So she hung for a long hour as the morning sun crept over the waves. The water reflected the deep blue
of
the sky, and deep swelling waves were wrinkles upon the sea's ageless face. The water stretched everywhere, limitless. Myrrima had never been in the presence of anything that made her feel so small, so humble.

She could feel it calling to her. With every wave that surged against the rocks at the base of the cliff, with the distant hiss of breakers like the clamor of spectators at a joust, she could feel the tug of the ocean, pulling her toward it, pulling her under.

Down below the cliff, seals swam about, their heads bobbing in the waves. Myrrima longed to swim with them. Cormorants and gulls and
other shorebirds flew past in flocks. A little green crab scaled the rock and regarded Myrrima with its eyes talks, drops of water oozing from its mouth.

“Come, little friend,” Myrrima told it. “Come gnaw at my metal bindings.” But Myrrima was no summoner. The little crab scurried off.

The early morning wore away, and Myrrima was still hanging quietly when she heard the soft pad of footsteps.

She craned her head just as an old Inkarran woman opened the iron door. She was as white as clamshell, and hunched with age. She crept furtively, as if afraid that someone might hear.

She whispered in Rofehavanish that was surprisingly free of accent. “You came here looking for Daylan Hammer?”

“Yes,” Myrrima managed to answer through parched lips.

“Long have I wondered what has become of him,” the old woman said. “He was my tutor once, when I was a girl. My father hired him to teach us about the distant past, faraway lands, and the tongues of nations. I loved him greatly, but I could never tell him. I was a princess, you see.”

Myrrima understood. It would have been considered scandalous for a woman of the Inkarran court to love a man of Rofehavan, even a hero like Daylan Hammer.

“But as much as I loved him, my sister loved him more. Often she tried to be with him alone, and at night she would tell me how she dreamed of him. As often as she sought him, he rejected her.

“Her marriage had been arranged before her birth, you see. She was to marry Sandakra Criomethes, Prince of Inturria. As the date of her marriage drew near, she grew sick in the heart, and at last thought of a way to revenge herself against our teacher. On the night before her wedding, she cut out her own womb, and died.”

Myrrima stood for a moment, unsure what she was hearing. “Why?”

“It is the Inkarran way,” the old woman said. “When a woman has dirtied herself with a man, this is how she confesses and makes it right.”

So, Myrrima realized, to spite Daylan Hammer, the princess implicated him in her death.

“My father gave me to the prince in my sister's place, and so I have heard over the years some of what happened next. My lord Criomethes was out-raged, and demanded revenge upon your Daylan Hammer. The immortal
one fled north, and many men went to hunt him. There was a great battle in Ferecia. Many of our men never returned.”

“Did they kill him?”

“I do not know,” the old woman answered. “I know only this. I did nothing to save him, a man that I admired and loved far more than I could ever care for my lord Criomethes. So, I ask that you forgive me.”

The old woman opened her clenched fist, and held out a key. Swiftly she climbed up on the lip of the parapet and unlocked Myrrima's fetters. Myrrima slid to the ground.

“Go now,” the old woman said. “Almost everyone is asleep in the palace. Now is your chance to escape!”

“Not without my husband,” Myrrima said.

“It is too late for him,” the old woman said. “He has already given an endowment of will. He is one of the living dead.”

“Then I'll take the endowment back,” Myrrima said dangerously. She stripped the chains from her, and only then did the old woman seem to recognize her mistake.

She let out a yelp, as if she would scream, but Myrrima grabbed her by the throat. The old woman pawed and kicked, but Myrrima had many endowments, and she choked the old woman until she lost consciousness, and then chained her, and hung her from the peg.

“I'm sorry,” Myrrima whispered as she locked the old woman into place. “I'm sorry.”

Myrrima turned the woman, so that she wouldn't be burned by the sun, and crept back into the dark tunnel.

Sir Borenson lay upon his wooden bed, breathing in, breathing out. A cozy fire burned in the hearth, and Borenson could see the room clearly for the first time in more than an hour. He was in the main chamber of King Criomethes's apartments. The Inkarran facilitator hunched over Borenson's bare foot. He painstakingly dipped a long needle into an inkpot, and then inserted it into Borenson's foot. He was constructing a tattoo to cover the whole of Borenson's leg.

I could look down, Borenson told himself. I could see the shape of the rune of Will.

But he had no desire to do it. For ages the men of Rofehavan had sought to learn the secret of its making. But Borenson did not bother to look. There was a fat black spider on the stone ceiling, meandering along. Borenson watched it, unblinking. His eyes felt dry and itchy, and each time that the pain grew too great, he would try to summon the energy to blink them. This he did only because his tormentor forced him to do so.

His tormentor was a woman. She had stood over him with a bamboo rod since he first bestowed his endowment, and had given him orders. “Breathe for me, or I shall hit you,” she warned. And whenever he stopped breathing, she would rap his shins with the rod, causing excruciating pain. And so he breathed in for her, and he breathed out. Thus she taught him to breathe.

Left to his own devices, he would have merely stopped and suffocated. He no longer cared if he breathed or not.

“Blink for me when eyes get dry,” the woman told him after he had lain staring at the spider on the ceiling for an hour. She rapped him across the hands to show how much pain she could cause. And thus he learned to blink, though he did not care if his eyes went dry in their sockets.

Now she stood over him, lecturing. “I not feed you. I not your slave. When you get hungry, must out of bed and eat. Understand? If you not eat until full, I will beat you. Understand?”

Borenson understood, but he made no sign of it. To speak was a waste of energy, to nod a worthless gesture. He merely lay, staring at the ceiling.

The woman rapped him across the face with the rod. “You have tongue. You answer me. You understand?”

“Yes,” Borenson said. He was angry and frustrated. The thought came to him that he could run away. He was not chained any longer. The facilitator had removed the chains so that he could create his tattoo. Yet the desire to flee was not strong enough to move Borenson's feet.

If I ran, how would I live? he wondered. And the answer was that it would be impossible. He would have to find his horse, a deed that could take hours. He would have to evade or fight the guards, a task that seemed too monu-mental. Then he would have to travel for days. For what? Everything he needed was here. Food, shelter, water. All he had to do was lie down, and others would bring it to him.

He felt the need to urinate, and announced it by letting his water flow.
The urine soaked his pants and pooled beneath him, warming him.

The facilitator cleared his throat in disgust and issued an order to the tormenter. She had been busy across the room with something. She raced back to him.

“No!” she shrieked at Borenson. “You not animal. You not pee on floor or bed. You get up to pee like person. Understand?” She slammed her bamboo rod down. Borenson lamely put a hand over his groin to protect himself.

He heard a deep voice say something in Inkarran. From out of the shadows came King Criomethes himself.

“You well, I hope?” the king asked.

Borenson had no desire to frame an answer.

“Life without will is hard,” the king said. “There no hope, only senseless desire. No real dreams, only longing for goals that one cannot attain. Life become burden, worthless to you. But we teach to live again. We teach to breathe, to eat, to pee. You will live like we tell you to. You will live because it easier than dying.”

“Say Thank you,'” the old woman ordered.

Borenson made no answer, until she rapped him across the chin. “Thank you.”

King Criomethes smiled and was about to leave when Borenson heard the scuff of a shoe across the room. Criomethes whirled to see the cause of the noise. A shadow came out of the darkness. There was a whistle of a swinging blade, and then the thunk of metal cleaving bone.