Path of Bones (37 page)

Or maybe we were doing our duty, and we justified it by telling ourselves it was the right thing. 
It helped to see the Bloodspeakers as less than human, even when they cried for their mothers or begged to go back home.

Slayne had been as mad as the rest.  He’d dressed as the Dark Angel, covered himself head to toe in black paint, surrounded himself with drugged Bloodspeaker women and executed them one by one.  His wife had been among them, bound and pleading to her husband to take her home, telling him she loved him.  It was the last thing she said before the blade fell. 

The Red Hand attacked that night.  Slayne killed several Dawn Knights and Red Hand in the ensuing chaos, and Dane did battle with the mercenary in the clouds of ash and smoke.  Bodies were strewn everywhere.  Bloodspeakers and Dawn Knights fought all around them, warring shapes in the black fog.  The ground was stained dark with blood, and Crinn’s ruined body was close by.  Walls of flame blanketed the darkness of the forest.

Hatred for Slayne raged through Dane’s soul.  He fought relentlessly, determined to destroy the mercenary, not just to kill him but to make him suffer.  Looking back, he realized Slayne had become for him what the Bloodspeakers had been to them all: the embodiment of everything that was wrong and broken, the culmination of the world’s evils, a physical manifestation of all he hated about himself.  It hadn’t taken much to push the Dawn Knights into madness.  Azaean hadn’t needed the Veil to compel them to murder those people: the capacity for slaughter had been there all along.

The two men battled in the blazing field, neither gaining advantage.  A Veilcrafted bomb went off at their feet.  Dane took a grievous wound in the stomach from the shrapnel, an injury that had never fully healed.  His back was a ruin of cuts from the shards of wood and steel he landed on after the blast sent him flying through the air. 

He and the other survivors found no trace of Marros Slayne after that.  It was over.

Not really over, of course – the true nightmare had just begun. 

Fearing for their safety, the half-dozen surviving Dawn Knights went their separate ways, unsure of what they’d do but no longer able to stand the sight of each another.  Being Dawn Knights had been their entire existence, the meaning of their lives, but staying together would just serve as a reminder of how far they’d fallen.

Dane spent days in those mountains, willing himself to die, screaming as the horrors of what he’d done played out in his mind.  The Veil kept him alive even though he’d never mastered the art of healing, even though Veilwardens and Dawn Knights had no such ability.  It was as if the world was forcing him to live on as atonement.  He didn’t get to escape the knowledge of his crimes, even if he tried.

He couldn’t recall what it was that eventually drove him out of that cave and down from the mountains.  He trekked through bitter winds and deep snow, navigated razor bluffs and scaled harsh peaks.  Cold and numb and shaking with delirium and pain, Dane eventually found his way out of the Razortooth.  He was half-starved and barely alive by the time he emerged. 

A band of forest rangers found him.  Recognizing his status, they gave him food and extra clothing and helped nurse him back to health.  They didn’t know what he’d done, not yet.  It would be another week before the Dawn Knights were declared criminals – former servants of the Empire who’d allowed their blind fear and hatred of Bloodspeakers to carry them into madness. 

By the time news of their crimes had spread Dane was in a fishing village at the edge of the Grey Sea.  It was a simple place, with barely two hundred residents but a great deal of traffic along the trade roads.  Dane had managed to fit in easily and maintain his anonymity, fearful of the repercussions his actions would bring even before details of the massacre started to travel.  The reactions among the people there in the village had been decidedly mixed – while most feared the Bloodspeakers, everyone agreed that the once-esteemed Dawn Knights had gone too far, and should be punished. 

Dane had trouble sleeping, and when he did it was full of nightmares.  He saw the faces of children he’d hanged, smelled the women he’d burned, heard the men scream as he’d pushed them back into pools of boiling fluid.  Sometimes they were already dead, crying to him in cracked and hollow voices.

Eventually Dane headed east, out of Jlantrian territory.  The Dawn Knights were being hunted.  He no longer wanted to die, but he still didn’t believe he deserved to live.  Either way, there was nothing left for him in Jlantria.  It was no longer his home, and never would be again.  The dreams of his youth had blown away like the ashes of those he’d left dead in the mountains.

Azander Dane kept moving to try and keep the nightmares at bay.  He drifted for three years, putting himself in harm’s way working as a mercenary and hunter, tracking people for money. 

He was a corpse, walking.  A shell of what he’d been.

What was he looking for?

He hadn’t known until he’d returned to Ebonmark.  The Dream Witch, Ijanna, was out there, a survivor of the camps.  Would ensuring her safety be enough to redeem his soiled soul?  Could someone as tainted as he ever be forgiven, or was he doomed to this cursed existence?

He had to try.  He owed himself that much, at least.

Forty-Seven

Where am I?

Dane knew the answer: a new hell.

There was no reason he should have been alive.  Dried blood was caked all over his naked body.  His arms were pulled cruciform to the ceiling, and the muscles in his shoulders burned. 

The darkness was thick with the smell of blood.  His bare feet slipped in something greasy.  Dane had to piss, so he did, and he cried out in pain because his genitals had been mangled and his urine came out like a stream of fire.

Pain crawled up his skin like a horde of spiders.  His weight pulled him down, and the ropes painfully ground against his torn wrists.  He felt snot dangling from his nose and bloody drool on his chin.  Dane blinked, blinked again, but the darkness was still there.  The world was dull and silent, and every sound he made echoed back at him.

How long have I been here?

He had vague memories of being beaten, of Drakanna and other Blood Knights pelting him with their fists and hammers and slicing him open with bladed gauntlets and knives.  He should have been in even worse shape than he was, and he wondered if Chairos wasn’t healing him between beatings just for the sport of it.

Sleep came, or perhaps it didn’t.  It was hard to know in the dark.  He saw the black face now and again, leering at him, mocking him, making him watch the execution. 

Dane’s feet couldn’t find purchase and his wrists sent jolts of pain down his arms every time his weight shifted, so he just hung there, weeping and bleeding, blind and alone.

“Wake up, you little bastard.”

He’d dreamed of a land of wolves.  He still heard their calls, smelled the musk and urine, and he badly wanted to be with them. 

Dane’s blood-crusted eyes slowly opened.  The pale room came into view, and a blast of cold air lanced across his tender flesh. 

A single lamp spilled dim light into the tiny chamber and cast a yellow pallor on the blood-soaked floor.  Pain shot through his mouth even though nobody had touched him.  His crusted scabs felt as if they were being peeled open.  Nausea spiraled up his stomach and punched against his spine like an iron fist. 

Icy water fell over him, so shockingly cold he thought he’d pull out of his skin.  He screamed. 

Mazrek Chairos was there, dressed in a grey and purple tunic and a loose black cloak.  He was accompanied by a pair of black-clad mercenaries armed with swords; one of them held an empty bucket.  Drakanna was also there, her crude mask in place and her crimson-and-black armor stained with gore that Dane knew was his own.  She held a cudgel and a long knife. 

“Good morning, Azander,” Chairos said.  “I’m pleased you managed to get some sleep.  It means you should be well rested for today. ”  He stood so close Dane could practically make out his own reflection in the Veilwarden’s perfectly straight white teeth.  While it was common knowledge that a Bloodspeaker could be identified by the faint trace of black on and around their tongue, few knew that the tell-tale sign of a Veilwarden was his teeth – only mages were so arrogant and vain that they would drain the world’s life force to fix their smiles. 

Dane tried to speak, but all that came out was a spatter of blood.  He coughed violently for a few moments before he could draw air without choking. 

“How…how long…?”

“
Three days,” Chairos said.  “Long enough for Drakanna to do some thorough work and for me to assemble my forces.  Unfortunately, playtime is over.  It’s time for us to tend to business, and for you to prove your usefulness.”  His eyes shone with frosted radiance.  Dane felt the razor’s caress of the Veil against his wounded chest.  “You studied the
thar’koon
.  Now use
cher’nag
and tell me where to find them.”

Dane wanted to spit in Chairos’ face, but even the thought of expending that much energy left him dizzy and weak.  He tried to Touch the Veil so he could free himself, but it eluded him.  Somehow Chairos had control over the flow of magic in that chamber, and he’d shielded Dane so
the Dawn Knight’s gift of Seeing was the only thing he’d be able to do.

Well done, Dane
, he told himself. 
Way to let your cock get you into a world of trouble.  Just like the good old days.

Why hadn’t he been able to control himself?  Maybe it was some effect of the Scarlet Lair, or another Veilcrafted compulsion.  Either way, it didn’t matter now.

A jolt of electricity ripped across his chest.  Bits of torn skin flaked off and burned. 

“
Don’t play this game with me,” Chairos said in a deep and measured tone.  “You don’t have the strength to resist.  Use
cher’nag
, and find the
thar’koon
.  Do it now.”

Dane’s fingers and toes curled with hurt.  His heart beat hard against his chest.

“Fuck yourself,” he said.

Dane was nearly deafened by the sound of his own screams.  Forks of black power jumped from Chairos’ hand and scorched Dane’s stomach, tearing open his old wound.  Dane bit down so hard he thought his teeth would break.  The ropes cut deeper into his wrists, and his feet slipped in blood and urine.

The bones in his shoulder cracked.  He forced bile back down, closed his eyes and rode the waves of hurt.

Memories of his childhood flashed before him, his life accelerated, an infant one moment and nearly a grown man the next, half-remembered images of toddling along on the ground at his mother’s feet, eating raisins and biscuits in the afternoon, kissing girls and grabbing their breasts behind the barracks, himself, younger, propelling towards a bright future that never happened, all that promise and fire and passion wasted, because what he grew into was a monster, a murderer, slaughterer of Bloodspeakers and traitor to the realm, now a shadow of himself, wanting death but too weak to seek it out, never to live the life that might have been.

And now this pain, this suffering, a pathetic and weak husk of human skin so covered in gashes and bruises he was barely recognizable, the once-proud Knight awash in his own blood and filth.

I won’t die like this.

He heard wolves howl somewhere far away. 

“
Do it,” Chairos said.  “If your life doesn’t mean anything to you, then think of your Voss friend.”

Something took hold of him, a dark presence, molten and wicked like burning embers around his heart.  Dane’s blood boiled and his fingers tensed.  The pain started to fade, and each breath seemed to invigorate him.

His wounds were healing.

He looked at Chairos and imagined ripping free of his bonds and putting his fist right through the bastard’s skull.  Dane wanted to tear him in two, and felt that he could.  Hunger built inside him, so intense he could hardly see straight.  All he had to do was let go, and join the wolves.

No.  Not like this.

He’d lose Kruje.  He didn’t know where the Voss was, and he’d come to think of the exiled giant as a friend.  His
only
friend.

“
All right,” he said, his voice almost a growl.  Chairos’ eyes narrowed in surprise at the sudden power and presence in Dane’s voice.  “I’ll do it.”

It proved to be no easy task.  Dane was dizzy and in pain, and in spite of the hot night the gelid wind chilled his wounds and painfully cooled against his skin.  The brief moment of healing he’d experienced was done, but even though his scars and injuries were still there he sensed they weren’t as grievous as they’d been before, that his body had repaired the worst of the damage, especially on the inside.

Chairos and his Phage henchmen chose not to say anything about Dane’s spontaneous regeneration.  But he knew it was the wolves.

He’d come close to losing control, and that terrified him.  Something was happening – the darkness inside him was very real, and very dangerous.  If there was some way he could call it rather than being called, some way he could force that anger to rise at the right moment, it could mean his and Kruje’s freedom.