The Temple of Heart and Bone (25 page)

“He’s got blood of ice, I tell
you,” one rider murmured while making the sign to ward off evil.

“He’s a brave one, I’ll give you
that,” another agreed. “Did you see the way they moved around him?” Others who
had seen nodded their heads. “They walked right over top of that little
mageling.”

“Who are those guys, anyway?”
someone asked, grateful that the subject had been broached.

“They’re supposed to be priests
or sorcerers, or some such thing,” an older sergeant explained. “They was there
to assist the Master with that ritual back in Ostie.”

“Tell me
that
didn’t set
your teeth on edge,” a corporal observed, shuddering.

“Why would I go and tell you a
fool thing like that?” the sergeant smiled back. “Tell you the truth, the whole
thing sets my teeth to chattering. Either way, though, our cap’n, he’s a good
one. We’ll see a lot of blood and loot before this trip is over.” He smiled
again, his teeth glittering like fangs in the moonlight.

“Sure we will,” the corporal
agreed. “Not like we’re going to have to fight
them
for it.” He laughed
and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the standing ranks of dead.

“Yeah,” another rider chimed in,
“they’ll do all the work and we’ll clean up all the booty.” The soldiers nodded
their heads and laughed quietly at the idea of easy looting. Someone broke out
a bottle of bitter wine and passed it around. Each one took a swallow and
smacked his lips as if he had never tasted better. Troseth walked up, and one
of the men offered him the bottle.

“No thanks,” he told the rider
holding the bottle. “Sergeant, see to it that the men all get some rest.”

“Yes Sir,” the sergeant replied,
snapping to his feet and attention.

“Not right away mind you,”
Troseth continued, “but don’t spend the entire night gossiping and drinking,
either.”

“No Sir, I’ll see to it, Sir.” He
saluted Troseth smartly.

“Excellent, Sergeant, excellent.”
He returned the salute and walked away. The rider holding the bottle passed it
over to the sergeant who returned to the place he’d been sitting.

“You heard the man,” he told
other others gruffly, taking a swig of wine out of the bottle.

“We’ll just finish that bottle,
eh Sarge?”

“There’s not much left in this
one,” the sergeant suggested, “maybe we better finish another one quick, just
in case it gets cold tonight.” The men smiled broadly as someone uncorked
another bottle.

“To the Captain’s good health,” he
said, raising the wine.

“To the Captain’s good health,”
the other’s replied, their hands reaching out for the bottle.

Drothspar
looked out at the reflection of the moon over the lake. Pale light glittered across
the water’s rippling surface. The wind was cool, carrying chill tales of the
winter to come. Drothspar found that he enjoyed the cold air now that it caused
him no discomfort. He hadn’t been too fond of the cold when he’d been living,
at least not until he had married Li. When he had been living—and alone—he’d
needed fire to draw the chill from his body. After he was married, he found
that cuddling with Li under heavy blankets warmed him even faster. Now that he
was dead, the cold didn’t really bother his bones. It wasn’t worth the loss.

Chance slept inside, restlessly.
In two days, they’d managed to catch only a handful of nearly skeletal fish.
She had eaten what they provided, but that was not very much. Drothspar had set
traps among the trees, hoping to catch a rabbit or two. Each morning he checked
the traps, and each morning they were empty. They had put off the discussion of
traveling for too long. Chance needed food. They needed to head west.

For what little food it had
provided, the fishing had still been enjoyable. Drothspar and Chance had talked
about little things, topics meant only to pass the time. She questioned him
about life as a novice, and he asked her about life at the university. He told
her as much as he could write about his novitiate, about the chapter house, and
about Gathner and Petreus.

He was certain she had held back
some important parts of her time at the university. Occasionally, she would
forget herself, remember something that had made her happy, smile and open her
mouth as if to speak. Then a quick flash would dart across her eyes, and she
would look away slowly, as if her topic had slipped her mind. She would
casually watch as she assured him it had certainly been nothing of importance.
Otherwise, she insisted, why would she have forgotten? His face, however, had
revealed nothing. His expression had remained the same as she studied him with
a practiced calm, and as he noticed her doing it.

Everyone had mysteries in their
lives. His curiosity did not diminish with that knowledge. Everyone, he told
himself, was not fishing beside him at his home. He was too much of a
gentleman, in life or death, to push the issue and question her. She would have
to decide for herself if she wanted to share her secrets. If she would only make
a few more slips, he thought to himself, he might be able to piece a few things
together. Courtesy and curiosity didn’t
need
to preclude each other. It
helped to keep thinking that.

He remembered watching her slip a
worm on her hook for the first time. She had such a dignified look of
resignation on her face. The second day they had been fishing, she declared
firmly, and quite out of the blue, that she wanted to bait her own hook.
Drothspar looked at her to see if she’d been joking, then handed her the worm.
She took it from him slowly, her eyes resolute. She looked more like a queen
about to submit herself to the headsman’s block than a young woman about to
thread a hook into a worm. Her eyes betrayed the conflict she felt, even as her
expression had remained stony.

She looked at the worm and her
eyes filled to overflowing with distaste. They darted once to Drothspar with a
pleading appeal before she brought them sternly back to the wriggling worm. She
blushed momentarily, embarrassed that she had almost given up so easily.
Drothspar remained perfectly still. He was afraid that if he broke her
concentration she would startle as easily as a cat sneaking up on a string. He
was also amazed that she would try so hard to overcome a task that she didn’t
have to perform.

It took her some time, and he
heard her gag once or twice as she fought down the physical effects of her
revulsion. In the end, she baited her hook and cast it out into the lake.
Drothspar turned silently, baited his own hook, and did the same. He turned his
head slightly to watch her as they fished. She never said a word. She looked
out over the water and smiled to herself.

They had enjoyed their fishing so
much that they had repeatedly put off the discussion of leaving. Sitting alone
that night on the pier, Drothspar reminded himself that they could put it off
no longer. Whatever he needed for himself no longer mattered. It wasn’t concern
for his state of being or a desire for information that made him resolve to
approach Chance in the morning. It was concern for her and her well-being.

The sun rose and morning came.
Chance woke late, hungry and still tired. Drothspar waited for her outside the
cottage. He rehearsed conversations in his mind, working out ways to convince
the young woman to return to Arlethord. Each sound she made in the cottage
startled him. He watched the door, certain it would fly open and he would have
to begin his presentation.

Chance continued to rumble around
in the cottage while Drothspar returned to the pier. He gathered up stones on
the shore and started skipping them out on the lake. Staring at the door wasn’t
going to make it any easier, he thought, watching a rock skip twice. Worrying
about how to approach her wasn’t going to help, either. It was just something
that, like so many other things, simply had to be done. There was a time and a
place for planning, but there was also a time for action. It was the lull
between the two that could become uncomfortable.

How many times had he worried
over the moments between thought and action? How much good had all of that
worrying done him? In the end, he was still dead. How many good moments had he
lost worrying about things that he couldn’t change? How could he ever prevent
his—?

A sharp thump sounded on the pier
behind him. Turning he saw Chance in all her traveling gear standing and
watching him.

“Well,” she said, “are you ready
to go?”

Drothspar stared at her.

“You might want to check the
cottage,” she suggested. “I tried to secure it as best I could, but, well, you
might want to check it yourself.”

Drothspar handed her his stones
and walked off to check the cottage. Could he really have slipped off the hook
so easily? He opened the cottage door and looked around. Chance had covered the
windows with scraps of wood and cloth, cleaned out the fireplace, and even
closed the flue. He shook his head in amazement. His worrying had once again
been for nothing.

They set out for Arlethord that
morning. Both were quiet as they walked along. Both thought back to the cottage
they were leaving. Drothspar remembered walking out into bad weather seven
years earlier. He remembered the useless argument that had separated him from
his wife. He regretted never being able to tell her he was sorry. He was sorry
that the last words she had heard him say were not “I love you.”

Chance thought about the person
she had met unexpectedly. She had come to the cottage with the simple hope of
escaping an unpleasant situation. She had expected to spend the time alone and
well-hidden. Walking in the front door, she had been accosted by a set of
bones, a set of bones that walked beside her now. The same set of bones that
had walked with her to Æostemark and had carried her out when the smoke and
heat had overwhelmed her. The same set of bones that had taught her to skip
stones, fish, and bait a hook.

Certainly, she thought, there had
been revulsion at first, an internal horror at facing something dead, something
unnatural. She remembered swooning when she felt and saw his fleshless hand
grasp her ankle. She had made a stab at the floor before she had seen what had
caught her, but when she had seen, when she had felt, she had swooned. She had
never
swooned in her life! There was no other word for it, though. She remembered
feeling light headed, as if her spirit were trying to escape through her
forehead. She remembered the odd feeling of her own eyes rolling back in her
head. There was no doubt about it, she had swooned. She shook her head
silently.

This was the same man, she
thought, looking at the robed figure beside her. It was the same set of bones,
anyway. Why wasn’t she swooning now? She waited, daring herself to fall
unconscious. She wouldn’t, and she knew it. She was no longer afraid of the
aberration that walked beside her.

If they had met under different
circumstances, if she had seen a skeleton approaching her on open ground, she
was certain she would have run in the opposite direction as fast as she could.
That was probably only natural, she thought, though she was just as certain
that there was nothing natural about a skeleton approaching her on open ground.
If she had run, if they had not actually “met,” what, then, would she have
lost?

Her father had been content to
sell her, body and soul, to seal a business deal. Had he concerned himself when
the prospective buyer had disappeared with her? No, not at all. Had her father
come looking when the nice young man decided he needed to sample the goods
before he bought? No, not at all. Had her father, or anyone for that matter,
come when she screamed? Had they come to assist her when the young man tried to
take by force what she would not give willingly?

No, not at all.

Of course, they hadn’t come when
she pulled her dagger on the young man, either. No one came to hear him
whimpering as she slit him open in just a few sensitive places. No one came to
stop her when she knocked the little darling unconscious and bolted out into
the night.

She had run away alone. Money had
been her only companion, and only currency brought her help, compassion, and
assistance. Even Petreus, dear and sweet as he was, didn’t offer to escort her.
He only gave her knowledge of a place to stay.

He had, in the grand scheme of
things, given her more than just that knowledge. Intentionally or not, the old
priest had led her straight into the set of bones beside her. She frowned
silently to herself. Drothspar was more than just a set of bones. If he didn’t
have the flesh to be considered a man by most, he had the honor and courtesy to
be more of a man than any other she had met.

This man, this Drothspar, had
aided her when all others had failed her. Everyone needed
something
in
their life. Drothspar needed answers, probably more than anyone she’d ever met.
He’d lost his wife. He’d lost his life, for God’s sake, and still he was, for
lack of a better word, alive! Who in creation could need more than this
man
needed answers?

Had he turned her aside to search
for those answers? No, not at all. Had
he
tried to force her to aid him
in any way? No, not at all. Had this stranger, this aberration, this lost soul
been anything other than kind, compassionate, and understanding?

No, not at all.

He had done everything he could
to help her to hide and to survive. He spent his time with her. He fished with
her. He shared his home with her. He told her about his life, and he listened,
always curious, about hers.

She hadn’t, of course, told him
everything. At first, she could hardly accept his existence, let alone his
trustworthiness. Later, as they had come to something approaching a friendship,
she was uncertain of how he might react to some of the things she had done. She
thought back over those things and walked on lost in her own thoughts.

They bypassed the Ferns’
farmstead. Drothspar had told her about the inky black forms around the farm. He
told her he suspected they were the trapped souls of the family and farmhands.
Chance had been shocked when he told her, feeling the shortcomings of her
education. Her professors had been so adamant that such things as souls,
trapped or otherwise, could not exist. The case, however, was hard to argue
against an animate skeleton. There was little they could do to comfort or free
the unfortunate souls of Ferns’ farm, so they moved on around it, heading west
to the city of Arlethord.  

They made the trip in easy
stages. Scattered rains fell as they walked, and the sky seemed perpetually
cloudy. Once they moved past the Ferns’ farm, the forest opened up, letting
more of the day’s light, and rain, fall from the sky above.

When Chance slept for the night,
Drothspar would forage for what food he could. Most nights he found only nuts,
which Chance gratefully accepted in the morning. Privately, he suspected she
wasn’t quite as fond of them as she let on, but she knew he had done his best.
One night, Drothspar almost stumbled across a sleeping rabbit. Chance woke the
next morning to the smell of roasting meat, and her eyes warmed with gratitude.
The rabbit hadn’t been very large, but it had provided her with something more
substantial than nuts.

It had been weeks since she had
eaten warm food, and Chance felt her spirits rise. Her last warm meal had been
with Petreus, and they were on their way back to him. She smiled to herself,
aware of a certain lightheadedness, but unconcerned.

“He’s going to be excited to see
you, you know,” she said unexpectedly. Drothspar looked at her with a certain
amount of surprise. She hadn’t spoken while they walked in days. It had been
taking all of her effort just to keep walking. He scrambled to free his slate
from his robe. Chance noticed him fumbling and laughed a warm laugh.

“Petreus,” she said, answering
the question he didn’t have time to write. “He’s really quite fond of you, you
know. He told me so several times.”