Path of Bones (49 page)

Corvinia is a prisoner.  What little there is left of her lies within the tree.  Only one of her own blood can release her: the Blood Queen. 

And in order for Vlagoth to live, a Skullborn must die. 

Kala’s head is filled with the same questions as Ijanna’s.  She hears their thoughts echo one another, dissonant chords slicing through the deepest dark. 

Must the tree be destroyed so the One Goddess can be free?  What will happen to Malzaria?

But there are no answers, and there never have been.  The world marches to its death.  Every Bloodspeaker born and every bit of magic used pulls them all closer to their doom, which is exactly what the Unmaker wants.  The Veil isn’t Corvinia’s blood, like they’ve always believed – it is Corvinia herself, and she’s being eaten away piece at a time by the creatures she holds dominion over.

They’re gone from the vision, the nightmare which Kala has about the tree.  Ijanna recalls her own similar dream, but by the time it came she’d already spent her life being raised for this purpose – to fight, and to sacrifice herself.  If not for the death camps taking everything she held dear Ijanna would be there now, deep in Chul Gaerog, facing the tree and ending her life so the Blood Queen can live and free the One Goddess.

Kala never had any such intentions.

The taint on the girl’s psyche has been there for years.  The doubts Ijanna didn’t acquire until later in her life are with the Imperial Princess from the start.  The world hates her and her kind, and for years she’s searched for something to work in the Bloodspeaker’s favor, some advantage she can gain over her mother.

And now she has it.

The Imperial Princess’s disdain for the Empire grows.  She refuses to eat, dresses herself in torn rags and confines herself to her suites for weeks at a time.  The Empress pays little heed except to cut off the Princess financially (which does little, since Kala has already seduced both the royal treasurer and the trio of men who run the Imperial Bank).

Kala rarely needs to leave the palace – she has contacts all over the world, and they are powerful.  They cull her favor, seeking an end to the Empire and hoping to take its riches for themselves.  Soon she holds a veritable empire of her own: drugs, prostitutes, smuggling, and a flow of illegal lore and information that would make the Spymasters of Blackmoon green with envy.  Her contacts make it possible for Kala to set her sights on her true goal: to follow in the footsteps of the Voss and the Arkan and seize the Blood Queen’s power for herself.

She’s not alone.  A black-hearted coalition makes contact with her, a group which desperately craves access to the otherwise impenetrable citadel of Chul Gaerog.  The Black Tower is all but empty save for Vlagoth’s champion, Calladar.  It is ripe for plunder, if only its defenses can be breached. 

With the aid of the shadowy Cabal – a secret and powerful cadre of dangerous and influential criminals – she’s closer to her goal than ever before.  The Scarstones are the final piece, and with them she believes she can enter Chul Gaerog, so long as the proper sacrifice is made.

The proper sacrifice.

Ijanna has lost track of where she is.  The murky walls of the dreamscape are closing in, and the clouds melt like ice.  Colors bleed, and the ground smokes. 

Her eyes sting.  She feels her body shifting, so she focuses on twin beads of gilded light.

They are Kala’s eyes, staring straight at her. 

Walls of razor sound, stains like a bloody whirlpool.  Wind ripples against her like she’s falling.  She loses control of the dream, but she doesn’t feel Kala has control, either.  Falling forward, Ijanna smashes through a sky of glass.  Splitting pain tears across her skull.

When she can see again Ijanna and Kala both stand at the base of the Black Tower.  Dark lightning plays in the heavens, and a flat blue moon hangs low in the sky.  There are no children in Ijanna’s dream this time, but the ground is charred and smells of burned tar.

She can’t move.  Fear spreads through her chest.  She and Kala are both rooted to the spot, and the other Skullborn glares at her with a hateful expression.

A third individual joins them and stands equidistant from them both and just ahead of the sealed tower doors.  The thin Den’nari man’s chocolate skin is painted with sharp runes and twisted coils, and his loose purple cloak flutters in the bone-cold breeze.  Unlike the Skullborn he move freely.  He turns and regards the tower’s charred spines and black stone skin.

I’ll destroy you
, Kala says to them both.  Her words frost in the air. 

Ijanna tries to free herself, but when she breathes the Veil nothing comes out but a wheeze. 

The man steps up to Kala and runs ringed fingers across her cheek.  Her eyes close and her body slowly drifts up from the ground, floating, as she’s rendered unconscious inside the dream.

Ijanna Breathes again.  This time she feels something give – a shift in the air, a slight pulse, like she’s moved whatever holds her in place.  She struggles.  Something burns against her muscles and her ears pop as if from pressure, but she moves, ever so slightly. 

The stranger watches Kala, and Ijanna feels his defenses slipping.  She hardens her mind, focuses on the space around her body, and hammers her invisible restraints from within.

The barrier shatters.  Ijanna falls forward, and pain sears through her chest like a blade thrust into her heart. 

She tries to pull away, to fall out of the dream, but the man holds onto her somehow.  Darkness breathes into her.

Ijanna peers through the golden shadows and sees that Kala is gone.  The Den’nari man watches her with a cold but angry expression.

That was unwise,
he says. 
I could have stopped all of this, but you distracted me and allowed her to escape.  Now she’s awake, and the moment has passed.

Release me
, Ijanna says.

You have power,
the man says. 
But no discipline. 

Something tugs at her mind, like fingers pressed against her brain.  His deep eyes drown her.  Ijanna struggles, and terrible hurt cleaves through her body.  She writhes and screams and falls away

Sixty-Four

and was back in the room.  The heat was so thick she could barely breathe.  Sounds fell in around her, cries of alarm and combat.  She was dizzy, and her face was bathed in sweat.  The door was open.  Dawn’s early light spilled into the ruined hovel.

How long had she been in Kala’s mind?  How long had it taken her to escape?

Ijanna stood up, but her dizziness almost sent her back down again.  Her stomach churned with nausea, and she had to steady her hand against the wall.  Her vision was blurry.

They had to get out.  She stumbled forward, intent on finding Kath and Gilder and warning them that Kala was insane, that she and her allies sought power to start their own Rift War all over again…

But it was too late.  She heard a muffled cry and smelled blood in the air.  A dark figure stood in the doorway: Drazzek Ma’al, the Allaji warrior, his
raak’ma brandished
.  Two black-clad mercenary soldiers stood at his back with shackles held ready. 

There was no escape.

Sixty-Five

Something was happening at the center of the ruined city.

Dane and Kruje penetrated the breached outer walls and used Corinth’s leaning towers as cover while they worked their way through the network of broken buildings.  The clouds melted away, and sunlight spilled down from the pale red sky.

The slave’s work songs had rang loud all through the night, and though they faded as the sun rose the ruins still bustled with activity.  Dane and Kruje kept out of sight.  The north end of Corinth was a maze of decaying roads and building husks.  The sprawling necropolis spread for miles, and the air buzzed with flies and dripped with heat.

The knight and the giant navigated rubble-strewn lanes and circumvented gaping craters.  Kruje was surprisingly adept at hiding and moving silently in spite of his great size.  The giant found a discarded lance (which in his hands was the equivalent of a spear), and some spare tent material from one of the abandoned camps at the edge of the city allowed the Voss to cover himself a loincloth so he wasn’t exposing his black-skinned body to the world.

They moved as fast as they could.  Whoever occupied Corinth had focused their forces at the southern end, and it took Dane and Kruje some time to circle around and find an unguarded area.  Exhaustion pushed Dane on, and his eyes were filled with the gum of fatigue. 

Kruje seemed more apprehensive than normal, but he motioned for them to keep moving.  Dane wondered why the giant was suddenly so driven to find Ijanna, and part of him worried that Kruje knew more than he was letting on.

They stayed hidden behind crumbling walls and makeshift barricades.  Towers had fallen into ruin and blocked the way, so they had to move through a hollow temple dedicated to obscure Galladorian heroes and sneak through the skeletons of granaries and silos.  Bone dust covered the ground, the pulverized remains of the thousands who’d perished when the Voss’s Veilcrafted machines exploded and blanketed the Empire with soiled flames.

Dane tasted the icy chill of magic in the wind, and realized the Red Hand was in Corinth.  His chest seized up with painful memories.  He hadn’t been near those outlaw Bloodspeakers since the camps, but the way they used the Veil was easy to recognize by one who’d been exposed to it.  There had to be close to a dozen of them, and the swelling of cold he sensed meant they were Breathing even as he and Kruje approached.  He’d heard of ritual castings that Malath Zayne had perfected, a way of joining their efforts so powerful effects could be created without any individual expending too much of his own life force.

They heard fighting in the distance.  Chairos was still in the city, and he and his Blood Knights and Phage mercenaries seemed to be giving the occupiers of Corinth a real battle.  Steel and shouts rang into the sky, but it was difficult to tell where in the ruins the skirmishes were actually taking place. 

He and Kruje kept low and moved fast.  They were close to the center of Corinth. 

They saw a battle in the distance, and for a moment sunlight played off of white and blue armor.  Jlantrians.

What the hell is going on here?

Dane sensed the
thar’koon. 
He and Kruje would avoid the fighting as long as they could until they found it, and
her
.  Whatever Ijanna was there for, Dane vowed he wouldn’t let her fall into Mazrek Chairos’ hands. 

They found a building shell that gave them decent cover and a good vantage of a wide section of the city, and from there they watched a number of small melees unfold.  The Phage descended on Corinth’s defenders like a pack of hunting dogs; they were hopelessly outnumbered, but they had Chairos’ magic to support them.  The mercenaries moved fast, sending Blood Knights to flank and slit throats while the regular Phage soldiers hammered the enemy with arrows and spears from the cover of nearby buildings.  Corinth’s defenders – a strange blend of Jlantrian regulars and well-armed mercenary forces comprised of face-chained Raithians and battle-hardened swordsmen out of Blackmoon – would give pursuit and find themselves harangued, surrounded, cut down and then left with no one to fight as the Phage retreated into the shadows.  The guerilla tactics were working, and even though the men defending the ruins should have had the terrain advantage they seemed incapable of dealing with Chairos’ men.

Who’s occupying Corinth?
Dane wondered again.  He wasn’t certain he really wanted to know the answer. 

The fighting moved further up the road, closer to the city’s core, where the drone of magic and raging flames burned brightest.  Sweat trickled down Dane’s face and under his armor, and Kruje’s strong and meaty odor bore down on him like a slaughterhouse.  Dane kept expecting them to turn the corner and come face-to-face with an enemy force, and he wondered if they shouldn’t be looking to make allies with whoever it was battling Chairos, though for all he knew that was the Red Hand.

That would make sense,
he thought
.  Ijanna is a powerful Bloodspeaker, and if she was in the camps…

He tried not to think about that.  He still wasn’t sure what he’d say to Ijanna when he found her, how he’d convince her he was there to help. 

They came upon a crossroads where magic and metal had undone a group of defending troops with brutal efficiency.  Over a dozen bodies lay strewn across the shattered road, their skin charred black and their sticky remains oozing into the cracks in the road.  Smoke from the corpses billowed across their path.  The dead wore Jlantrian armor, and some of them still clutched the broken remnants of their weapons. 

He and Kruje kept moving.  Dane felt driven by purpose.  The Veil had purged him of the wolf sickness, had brought he and this giant together.  He’d lived through his personal ordeal in the mountains, had survived the battle beneath Ebonmark.   There had to be a reason for it all.