The Gate of Bones (43 page)

The guardswoman let out a piercing whistle. Heads jerked around, and then people rushed to the gates, preparing to close them, as she led Jason up onto the catwalk so they could look down the valley and the approach to the village. Workers on the outside streamed inward quickly, slipping through the gates before they slammed shut and the great bar dropped into place.

Pyra nocked an arrow in the longbow as the others joined the two of them on the catwalk. “What do you see?”

“Nothing, yet.”

Mantor laid his hands on the top of the wall which surrounded Avenha. His nostrils flared slightly as if he could scent an invader. He shook his head.

“It doesn't matter,” Jason said tersely. “I know it's coming.”

Tomaz rubbed his crystals. “Not far away either,” he said. As if in answer to him, two crows arrowed through the sky toward them from the trees lining the valley's edge, their caws demanding shrill attention. Midnight and Snowheart dove at his head, before circling and taking up a post on the gatehouse roof.

“There.” Jason pointed at the under shadows of the faraway grove. Something loped to a stop, and melted behind a tree trunk, but they all saw the movement.

“Wild animal.” Renart tried to sound hopeful.

“Not a wolfjackal. It looks to be standing upright.”

“Bandits would ride in, would they not?” Pyra sighted down her arrow at the trees, far too distant for a shot, but keeping ready.

“Aye, Daughter, that they would. Quickly in, damage what they can, grab what they can, quickly out.”

“What, then?”

No one had an answer. Mantor drew his own bow, and readied it. They stared along the cleared ground and down the road. After long moments, the shadow separated itself from the tree and began to cross the expanse. Other shadows grouped behind it, staying half hidden.

Mantor stared. “Hold your fire! Hold it!”

Pyra breathed in disbelief, “It's Flameg.”

Renart blinked as he stared down. The figure moved in an oddly fluid way that seemed wrong somehow.

“No, it's not,” said Jason.

“Hold your peace, boy. I know that man like my own brother. He's managed to get home.” Mantor turned away from him. “Open the gates!”

Jason swung on Tomaz, grabbing his arm. “It's not him, believe me. He's dead, think about it. Don't let him in!”

Tomaz stared down at Jason, but it was Renart who moved. He leaped off the catwalk, and flung himself against the gate, as they unlatched the great bar and began to tug it open. It inched wider despite his efforts. Jason jumped to the ground next to him, straightening, his hands filling with a white fire.

“Don't let it in!”

Renart swung about. He could hear the snarling. He turned and saw the . . . thing . . . running at him, charging at the gap between the gateposts. If it had been Flameg once, it wasn't now. He didn't know what he faced if it wasn't the living dead. His heart froze.

Jason shouldered him aside. The air sizzled with white heat, and the thing stumbled, then rolled to its knees. It got up with a growling noise from a throat that had been ripped open. It kept coming.

“It's a Leucator! Or . . . something,” Jason shouted up. Villagers jostled him, hurrying to close the gate again, as the terrible thing threw itself toward them, and other things began to break out of the forest, howling.

They got the gates closed. They fought from the catwalk. Some of the attackers had flesh, but some were little more than bone and gore. They pounded at the walls, mewling and howling. They took blows from arrows, reeling back, and then coming on again.

Only fire seemed to deter them. Three of the fiends fell in crystal fire and flame, and the pack fell back to the forests and disappeared.

Renart helped stand the watch until late in the evening, but the things did not return. They burned Flameg's longbow anyway, although the thing that might have been him had run off, and none of them knew if their neighbor and friend would have peace or not.

When it was done, Mantor turned to Tomaz. “Whatever needs to be done, will be. If the wanderers agree.” He walked away without waiting for an answer, his heavy shoulders bowed.

I
F I NEVER HEAR the words, ‘Are you the Magickers and are you going to help us?' again, it will be too soon,” Stefan said wearily before collapsing onto the floor, his legs folded up under him. He scrubbed at reddened eyes, not caring that he'd missed a chair entirely.

“Well, it
is
our fault,” Henry said mildly. He leaned on the table, his head propped in his hands as if he couldn't hold it up any other way. His glasses sat askew on his face, one of the lenses sooty and smeared.

“How do we know that? How?” Rich pulled himself up a stool, got his flask out and measured a draught of his medicine. He quaffed it quickly, making a terrible face, then closed his flask.

“Okay, guys, listen up.” Trent leaned over the group. “Bailey, give me that map tube I gave you earlier.”

With a smothered yawn, she fetched it out of her ragged backpack and handed it over. With a quick twist, he liberated the map inside. He unrolled it and smoothed it out on the table. He grabbed one of Henry's hands and slapped it down on a corner, took one of Rich's and did the same, and Ting put her own down, taking the hint.

“This is how they used to do it in big city police departments. Watch closely.” Trent fished a pencil out of the billowing sleeve of his shirt. “Attacks have been here, here, here, and tonight, here.” He marked the map starting with Avenha and going to the different villages, including the city of Naria. “Now. We know these things don't ride, animals can't stand the sight or smell of 'em. They move on foot. They're faster than we are, 'cause they don't need to rest or eat or breathe, but they're still on foot. So . . .” He drew a circle connecting the targets. “It suggests that they radiate from somewhere within this circle. Look familiar? I think it does.”

They all stared at Trent's map. “The Dark Hand.”

“Has to be.”

“The abyss they opened.”

Trent nodded. “A given, I think.”

“That confirms it.” Jason took a deep breath, shaking his head slowly. “I didn't think Jonnard could be that stupid.”

Gavan and Tomaz came in, their steps heavy. “Jonnard is far from stupid, give him that,” Crowfeather stated.

Rich snorted. “I wouldn't give him the time of day.”

“Underestimating your foe gives him the first strike against you. Remember.”

Jason stared at the map until the lines blurred. “If he's directing the bone fiends, what's he got in mind? It's no longer looting. It just seems to be terrorizing.”

“It has to be more than that, he wouldn't waste resources. What do the villages have in common? And what about Naria? That's a pretty big city to attack.”

Tomaz tapped the bright star that indicated Naria. “My understanding is that the Trader Guild was hit. There weren't enough fiends to infiltrate more than that.”

“Renart was here.” Jason put his finger on Avenha. “Here.” He touched Naria. “And here, I think,” indicating the small village of Missail. The hills beyond Missail was where Jason's dragon told him the wanderers often wintered, and Renart had gone there in search of Dokr. “Coincidence?”

“Probably not, but the other two, then?”

Gavan said quietly, “Who says Jonnard is in complete control? These are more than Leucators. They're taking dead with them.”

“He's opened something he doesn't know how to deal with?”

“Possibly.”

“Then how can we expect to?”

“That, lad, is something I don't know. Yet.” He slapped Jason on the back. “You all need a shower and sleep, I think.”

Ting shivered. “No hot water!”

“Someday,” Gavan promised. “In the meantime . . .”

“We know, we know.” They got to their feet, the kitchen filled with the sounds of chairs and stools scraping. Sleep while they could, while it was still peaceful.

 

“I promise you, it will be exhilarating. You will feel omnipotent when you're done.” Jonnard patted Isabella's hand as he led her over the landscape carefully, darkness masking her face and eyes from him, but her ragged breathing betraying her fear. That and the coldness of her hands in his. “It'll be fine.”

“I have little choice.” She faltered a step, and he righted her. He could feel a frailness in her body that he'd never felt before, Isabella of the iron will and temper. He wasn't sure that he didn't enjoy the weakness, but he shuttered that feeling away. He needed her, for now. He tightened his hand on her elbow.

A pack of wolfjackals circled uneasily about the Gate as they neared it. Their eyes caught the light from the sickle moon overhead, and glowed an eerie green as they trotted around the two of them. They growled, low and nearly muted, but still defiant.

“There was a time,” Isabella said bitterly, “when they didn't dare snarl at me.”

“That will return. All things will bow to you.”

“Even you, Jonnard?”

He did not answer. She cursed in French, then laughed. He recognized only the word serpent in her fluid muttering, and decided not to answer. Instead he tugged her forward faster, harshly, over the foreign ground, uncaring if she stumbled, making their way to the Gate. The wolfjackals slunk away, looking back over their shoulders, eyes flashing like hot emeralds in the dark as they did.

He stopped. Isabella said quietly, “What do I do?”

“Hold your hand out, dip it into the shadow, and drink of the energy. Stay wary of getting any closer, though. It is an abyss and a fall.”

“We wouldn't want that, would we?”

“Actually, no,” he answered flatly.

That seemed to mollify her a bit. She brushed her hair from her face, resetting her jeweled combs, and then put her long-fingered hand out, just touching the swirling edge of darkness. The Gate immediately let out a low moan, as ghastly as any haunted house could issue, and she shivered but did not stir. He could see in the dim light, the bones tumbling about, and the black aura of the power within.

Isabella hissed a long breath inward. “How powerful!”

“Drink deeply. You'll see.”

“Jonnard,” she murmured softly, entranced, not seeing him, her whole concentration fixed now on the Gate. She almost glowed with it as it filled her. He knew what she felt, and he smiled to himself.

When she was done, he could feel the iron in her again. She drew herself up, and turned to look at him. “Now,” she said. “For the price.”

“Price?”

“There is always a price to be paid.”

He could never put anything past her. He drew her aside. “Not by us.” It took but a moment, and then ghouls began to spill out of the Gate. Whole flesh and broken flesh, bone linked by sinew and little else, and the bone fiends gathered.

No longer a question asking permission of him. They told him they were going. Jonnard gave a bow, and the hunters went forth, their feet whispering swiftly across frost-burned ground.

“What do they hunt?”

“Whatever they wish. Not us.”

She waited until they stood alone. Then, she said, “This cannot be.”

“For a while, Mother. Only for a while. It has its purposes. How long has it been since you felt this good?”

“Do you control them?”

Jonnard thought of several answers, discarded them, and answered, “No.”

“Then it cannot be. If you're a Gatekeeper, open us another Gate. We'll drink of purer, safer energy. Escape to another world if this one is corrupted by them.”

He shifted weight. He'd been studying in the days since he'd opened this Gate.

Isabella arched an eyebrow.

“I can't open a Gate as long as this one is open. One at a time, it seems.”

“Then shut this one.”

“It won't be shut.”

“No?”

“Not without every ounce of power I have. It would consume me.”

She considered him for a very long time. Then she said, “It needs to devour a Gatekeeper to close?”

“So it seems,” he said reluctantly.

“Why, Jonnard, the answer is simple. Give it a Gatekeeper. Give it the Magicker Jason Adrian.”

“He has one weakness he can't protect from me,” Jon stated. “His friends. Even Jason cannot be everywhere, all the time.”

A
TAP, TAP, TAP DREW Rich's attention as he huddled in a blanket, teeth chattering and sweating off some of what he'd come to call blackmarrow fever. It came and went, and he knew it was his body trying to throw off the poison. It gave him some hope that he might do it someday, that his constitution was different enough that a cure could happen.

Tap, tap, tap. Rich blinked. That was definitely not his teeth. He shrugged off the wrap and got to his feet. A black crow fluttered by the window, and he quickly opened it for Tomaz's Midnight. The creature cawed at him and swiped his beak across Rich's hand as if chiding him for taking so long. It took two tries with shaking hands for him to untie the message scroll. As soon as the weight left his leg, the crow hopped off the table and winged outside, in search of whatever crows went in search of. He supposed roadkill could be found just about anywhere.

He decided the object of search ought to be Tomaz and found him giving Stef a lesson in bear lore, which the big guy seemed to be only half absorbing. Both seemed relieved when Rich interrupted by handing Tomaz the scroll. Tomaz shook it at Stef's nose. “Think about what I told you. The bear is a powerful creature but an unthinking one. You need to learn to use the power without letting the animal take over.”