Bones of the Empire (2 page)

Estin had learned only recently that those absurd stories were coming true. A dragon—once revered as a god—had sacrificed itself to save the city of Lantonne. More importantly, it had failed. Lantonne had fallen and tens of thousands had died. That gave Estin little hope for anything else in the prophecies coming to pass either. Six people who could barely travel in a straight line would be no match for the armies of the dead that served Turessi.

The group had once thought they could find an army of their own to aid them. On’esquin had led them to one city after another, where his old companions had intended to gather soldiers. In the end, they had found their army butchered by the Turessians and left to rot. Only the six of them remained. Even On’esquin, once as immortal as any dragon, had died in the pursuit of the prophecies. More specifically, he had died bringing Turess back.

Estin desperately wanted to leave the insanity of the prophecies behind and to return to his children. They had already been alone far longer than he would have liked, given that three of the kits were still infants. In his head, being with them would bring a sort of quiet life with it, though he knew that was unlikely. Going to them meant months or more of hiking across lands Estin had never seen and expected to be under the control of their enemies.

It had been Feanne who had convinced him not to go back to their children, despite the pain it obviously caused her to say it and the sadness he could see in her when she was left to dwell on her own thoughts. With Turessian forces hunting them both and an army likely standing between them and their destination, she had reasoned that going back to the kits would lead the enemy straight to them. By heading directly into the lands of Turessi, he and Feanne hoped to draw anyone pursuing them as far from the kits as possible, even if it was suicide. They would both rather die than risk their kits, and they had no allusions to this being anything less than certain death.

“You’re thinking about Oria and the kits again,” said Feanne, startling Estin. Somehow she had snuck out of the tent and now stood behind him. Unlike him, she appeared as comfortable in the chill winds as she would on a spring day.

“How did you know?”

Feanne smiled, came up to him, and put her arms around him to keep him warm. Nuzzling his cheek, she answered, “You always try to be alone to brood about them. I told you the last time that I will not let you do this to yourself. I would rather we fight about the decision than have you stand out here being miserable.”

Estin sighed and hugged Feanne close, thankful for her concern and warmth. He wanted to hide from everyone and cry when he thought of the kits, so far away without their parents, but she was right. There was no sense in beating himself up over what he could not change. Likely she felt exactly the same.

“Do we have any chance of surviving this?” he asked eventually, staring off into the heavy snowfall north of them.

Feanne squeezed him a little tighter. “Had you asked me that when the undead attacked our camp, the mists took us, or any number of other times, I would have been honest in saying that our chance of survival was slim at best. Even then, I would have been lying. We should already be dead. I already have been more than my fair share.”

“That’s not very optimistic.”

“Were you wanting hope or honesty? Honesty is that we’ve been lucky enough to survive everything Turessi has thrown at us for years. We may yet do that again. If what you want is hope, you yourself have said many times that you would willingly die for any of us…now we know that the Turessians want us and will not seek out our children. That will need to be enough hope, regardless of whether we live or die.”

“You really need to work on your motivating speeches, Feanne.”

Laughing softly near his ear, she tugged him back toward the tent. “We need to rest, Estin. It will be a long journey and not an easy one. Yoska will likely get us lost, and either of us will want to kill him within days if we become too tired.”

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.”