The Bonehunters Read online

  Chapter Nine

  If thunder could be caught, trapped in stone, and all its violent concatenation stolen from time, and tens of thousands of years were freed to gnaw and scrape this racked visage, so would this first witnessing unveil all its terrible meaning. Such were my thoughts, then, and such they are now, although decades have passed in the interval, when I last set eyes upon that tragic ruin, so fierce was its ancient claim to greatness.

  The Lost City of the Path'Apur, Prince I'farah of Bakun, 987-1032 Burn's Sleep

  He had washed most of the dried blood away and then had watched, as time passed, the bruises fade. Blows to the head were, of course, more problem­atic, and so there had been fever, and with fever in the mind demons were legion, the battles endless, and there had been no rest then. Just the heat of war with the self, but, finally, that too had passed, and shortly before noon on the second day, he watched the eyes open.

  Incomprehension should have quickly vanished, yet it did not, and this, Taralack Veed decided, was as he had expected. He poured out some herbal tea as Icarium slowly sat up. 'Here, my friend. You have been gone from me a long time.'

  The Jhag reached for the tin cup, drank deep, then held it out for more.

  'Yes, thirst,' the Gral outlaw said, refilling the cup. 'Not surprising. Blood loss. Fever.'

  'We fought?'

  'Aye. A sudden, inexplicable attack. D'ivers. My horse was killed and I was thrown. When I awoke, it was clear that you had driven off our assailant, yet a blow to your head had dragged you into unconsciousness.' He paused, then added, 'We were lucky, friend.'

  'Fighting. Yes, I recall that much.' Icarium's unhuman gaze sought out Taralack Veed's eyes, searching, quizzical.

  The Gral sighed. 'This has been happening often of late. You do not remember me, do you, Icarium?'

  'I — I am not sure. A companion...'

  'Yes. For many years now. Your companion. Taralack Veed, once of the Gral Tribe, yet now sworn to a much higher cause.'

  'And that is?'

  'To walk at your side, Icarium.'

  The Jhag stared down at the cup in his hands. 'For many years now, you say,' he whispered. 'A higher cause... that I do not understand. I am... nothing. No-one. I am lost—' He looked up. 'I am lost,' he repeated. 'I know nothing of a higher cause, such that would make you aban­don your people. To walk at my side, Taralack Veed. Why?'

  The Gral spat on his palms, rubbed them together, then slicked his hair back. 'You are the greatest warrior this world has ever seen. Yet cursed. To be, as you say, forever lost. And that is why you must have a companion, to recall to you the great task that awaits you.'

  'And what task is this?'

  Taralack Veed rose. 'You will know when the time comes. This task shall be made plain, so plain to you, and so perfect, you will know that you have been fashioned — from the very start — to give answer. Would that I could be more helpful, Icarium.'

  The Jhag's gaze scanned their small encampment. 'Ah, I see you have retrieved my bow and sword.'

  'I have. Are you mended enough to travel?'

  'Yes, I think so. Although... hungry.'

  'I have smoked meat in my pack. The very hare you killed three days ago. We can eat as we walk.'

  Icarium climbed to his feet. 'Yes. I do feel some urgency. As if, as if I have been looking for something.' He smiled at the Gral. 'Perhaps my own past...'

  'When you discover what you seek, my friend, all knowledge of your past will return to you. So it is prophesied.'

  'Ah. Well then, friend Veed, have we a direction in mind?'

  Taralack gathered his gear. 'North, and west. We are seeking the wild coast, opposite the island of Sepik.'

  'Do you recall why?'

  'Instinct, you said. A sense that you are... compelled. Trust those instincts, Icarium, as you have in the past. They will guide us through, no matter who or what stands in our way.'

  'Why should anyone stand in our way?' The Jhag strapped on his sword, then retrieved the cup and downed the last of the herbal tea.

  'You have enemies, Icarium. Even now, we are being hunted, and that is why we can delay here no longer.'

  Collecting his bow, then stepping close to hand the Gral the empty tin cup, Icarium paused, then said, 'You stood guard over me, Taralack Veed. I feel... I feel I do not deserve such loyalty.'

  'It is no great burden, Icarium. True, I miss my wife, my children. My tribe. But there can be no stepping aside from this responsibility. I do what I must. You are chosen by all the gods, Icarium, to free the world of a great evil, and I know in my heart that you will not fail.'

  The Jhag warrior sighed. 'Would that I shared your faith in my abilities, Taralack Veed.'

  'E'napatha N'apur — does that name stir your memories?'

  Frowning, Icarium shook his head.

  'A city of evil,' Taralack explained. 'Four thousand years ago — with one like me standing at your side — you drew your fearsome sword and walked towards its barred gates. Five days, Icarium. Five days. That is what it took you to slaughter the tyrant and every soldier in that city.'

  A look of horror on the Jhag's face. 'I — I did what?'

  'You understood the necessity, Icarium, as you always do when faced with such evil. You understood, too, that none could be permitted to carry with them the memory of that city. And why it was necessary to then slay every man, woman and child in E'napatha N'apur. To leave none breathing.'

  'No. I would not have. Taralack, no, please — there is no necessity so terrible that could compel me to commit such slaughter—'

  'Ah, dear companion,' said Taralack Veed, with great sorrow. 'This is the battle you must always wage, and this is why one such as myself must be at your side. To hold you to the truth of the world, the truth of your own soul. You are the Slayer, Icarium. You walk the Blood Road, but it is a straight and true road. The coldest justice, yet a pure one. So pure even you recoil from it.' He settled a hand on the Jhag's shoulder. 'Come, we can speak more of it as we travel. I have spoken these words many, many times, my friend, and each time you are the same, wishing with all your heart that you could flee from yourself, from who and what you are. Alas, you cannot, and so you must, once more, learn to harden yourself.

  'The enemy is evil, Icarium. The face of the world is evil. And so, friend, your enemy is...'

  The warrior looked away, and Taralack Veed barely heard his whispered reply, 'The world.'

  'Yes. Would that I could hide such truth from you, but I could not claim to be your friend if I did such a thing.'

  'No, that is true. Very well, Taralack Veed, let us as you say speak more of this whilst we journey north and west. To the coast opposite the island of Sepik. Yes, I feel... there is something there. Awaiting us.'

  'You must needs be ready for it,' the Gral said. Icarium nodded. 'And so I shall, my friend.'

  ****

  Each time, the return journey was harder, more fraught, and far, far less certain. There were things that would have made it easier. Knowing where he had been, for one, and knowing where he must return to, for another. Returning to... sanity? Perhaps. But Heboric Ghost Hands had no firm grasp of what sanity was, what it looked like, felt like, smelled like. It might be that he had never known.

  Rock was bone. Dust was flesh. Water was blood. Residues settled in multitudes, becoming layers, and upon those layers yet more, and on and on until a world was made, until all that death could hold up one's feet where one stood, and rise to meet every step one took. A solid bed to lie on. So much for the world. Death holds us up. And then there were the breaths that filled, that made the air, the heaving assertions measuring the passing of time, like notches marking the arc of a life, of every life. How many of those breaths were last ones? The final expellation of a beast, an insect, a plant, a human with film covering his or her fading eyes? And so how, how could one draw such air into the lungs? Knowing how filled with death it was, how saturated it was with failure and surrender?

  Such air cho
ked him, burned down his throat, tasting of the bitterest acid. Dissolving and devouring, until he was naught but... residue.

  They were so young, his companions. There was no way they could understand the filth they walked on, walked in, walked through. And took into themselves, only to fling some of it back out again, now flavoured by their own sordid additions. And when they slept, each night, they were as empty things. While Heboric fought on against the knowledge that the world did not breathe, not any more. No, now, the world drowned.

  And I drown with it. Here in this cursed wasteland. In the sand and heat and dust. I am drowning. Every night. Drowning.

  What could Treach give him? This savage god with its overwhelming hungers, desires, needs. Its mindless ferocity, as if it could pull back and reclaim every breath it drew into its bestial lungs, and so defy the world, the ageing world and its deluge of death. He was wrongly chosen, so every ghost told him, perhaps not in words, but in their constant crowding him, rising up, overwhelming him with their silent, accusatory regard.

  And there was more. The whisperings in his dreams, voices emerging from a sea of jade, beseeching. He was the stranger who had come among them; he had done what none other had done: he had reached through the green prison. And they prayed to him, begging for his return. Why? What did they want?

  No, he did not want answers to such questions. He would return this cursed gift of jade, this alien power. He would cast it back into the void and be done with it.

  Holding to that, clinging to that, was keeping him sane. If this torment of living could be called sane. Drowning, I am drowning, and yet... these damned feline gifts, this welter of senses, so sweet, so rich, I can feel them, seeking to seduce me. Back into this momentary world.

  In the east the sun was clawing its way back into the sky, the edge of some vast iron blade, just pulled from the forge. He watched the red glow cutting the darkness, and wondered at this strange sense of imminence that so stilled the dawn air.

  A groan from the bundle of blankets where Scillara slept, then: 'So much for the blissful poison.'

  Heboric flinched, then drew a deep breath, released a slow sigh. 'Which blissful poison would that be, Scillara?'

  Another groan, as she worked her way into a sitting position. 'I ache, old man. My back, my hips, everywhere. And I get no sleep — no position is comfortable and I have to pee all the time. This, this is awful. Gods, why do women do it? Again and again and again — are they all mad?'

  'You'd know better than I,' Heboric said. 'But I tell you, men are no less inexplicable. In what they think. In what they do.'

  'The sooner I get this beast out the better,' she said, hands on her swollen belly. 'Look at me, I'm sagging. Everywhere. Sagging.'

  The others had woken, Felisin staring wide-eyed at Scillara — with the discovery that the older woman was pregnant, there had been a time of worship for young Felisin. It seemed that the disillusionment had begun. Cutter had thrown back his blankets and was already resurrecting last night's fire. The demon, Greyfrog, was nowhere to be seen. Off hunting, Heboric supposed.

  'Your hands,' Scillara noted, 'are looking particularly green this morning, old man.'

  He did not bother confirming this observation. He could feel that alien pressure well enough. 'Naught but ghosts,' he said, 'the ones from beyond the veil, from the very depths of the Abyss. Oh how they cry out. I was blind once. Would that I were now deaf.'

  They looked at him strangely, as they often did after he'd spoken. Truths. His truths, the ones they couldn't see, nor understand. It didn't matter. He knew what he knew. 'There is a vast dead city awaiting us this day,' he said. 'Its residents were slain. All of them. By Icarium, long ago. There was a sister city to the north — when they heard what had happened, they journeyed here to see for themselves. And then, my young companions, they chose to bury E'napatha N'apur. The entire city. They buried it intact. Thousands of years have passed, and now the winds and rains have rotted away that solid face. Now, the old truths are revealed once more.'

  Cutter poured water into a tin pot and set it on the hook slung beneath an iron tripod. 'Icarium,' he said. 'I travelled with him for a time. With Mappo, and Fiddler.' He then made a face. 'And Iskaral Pust, that insane little stoat of a man. Said he was a High Priest of Shadow. A High Priest! Well, if that's the best Shadowthrone can do...'He shook his head. 'Icarium... was a... well, he was tragic, I guess. Yet, he would not have attacked that city without a reason, I think.'

  Heboric barked a laugh. 'Aye, no shortage of reasons in this world. The King barred the gates, would not permit him to enter. Too many dark tales surrounding the name of Icarium. A soldier on the battlements fired a warning arrow. It ricocheted off a rock and grazed Icarium's left leg, then sank deep into the throat of his companion — the poor bastard drowned in his own blood — and so Icarium's rage was unleashed.'

  'If there were no survivors,' Scillara said, 'how do you know all this?'

  'The ghosts wander the region,' Heboric replied. He gestured. 'Farms once stood here, before the desert arrived.' He smiled at the others. 'Indeed, today is market day, and the roads — which none but I can see — are crowded with push-carts, oxen, men and women. And children and dogs. On either side, drovers whistle and tap their staves to keep the sheep and goats moving. From the poor farms this close to the city, old women come out with baskets to collect the dung for their fields.'

  Felisin whispered, 'You see all this?'

  'Aye.'

  'Right now?'

  'Only fools think the past is invisible.'

  'Do those ghosts,' Felisin asked, 'do they see you?'

  'Perhaps. Those that do, well, they know they are dead. The others do not know, and do not see me. The realization of one's own death is a terrifying thing; they flee from it, returning to their illusion — and so I appear, then vanish, and I am naught but a mirage.' He rose. 'Soon, we will approach the city itself, and there will be soldiers, and these ghosts see me, oh yes, and call out to me. But how can I answer, when I don't understand what they want of me? They cry out, as if in recognition—'

  'You are the Destriant of Treach, the Tiger of Summer,' Cutter said.

  'Treach was a First Hero,' Heboric replied. 'A Soletaken who escaped the Slaughter. Like Ryllandaras and Rikkter, Tholen and Denesmet. Don't you see? These ghost soldiers — they did not worship Treach! No, their god of war belonged to the Seven, who would one day become the Holies. A single visage of Dessimbelackis — that and nothing more. I am nothing to them, Cutter, yet they will not leave me alone!'

  Both Cutter and Felisin had recoiled at his outburst, but Scillara was grinning.

  'You find all this amusing?' he demanded, glaring at her.

  'I do. Look at you. You were a priest of Fener, and now you're a priest of Treach. Both gods of war. Heboric, how many faces do you think the god of war has? Thousands. And in ages long past? Tens of thousands? Every damned tribe, old man. All different, but all the same.' She lit her pipe, smoke wreathing her face, then said, 'Wouldn't surprise me if all the gods are just aspects of one god, and all this fighting is just proof that that one god is insane.'

  'Insane?' Heboric was trembling. He could feel his heart hammering away like some ghastly demon at the door to his soul.

  'Or maybe just confused. All those bickering worshippers, each one convinced their version is the right one. Imagine getting prayers from ten million believers, not one of them believing the same thing as the one kneel­ing beside him or her. Imagine all those Holy Books, not one of them agreeing on anything, yet all of them purport­ing to be the word of that one god. Imagine two armies annihilating each other, both in that god's name. Who wouldn't be driven mad by all that?'

  'Well,' Cutter said into the silence that, followed Scillara's diatribe, 'the tea's ready.'

  ****

  Greyfrog squatted atop a flat rock, looking down on the unhappy group. The demon's belly was full, although the wild goat still kicked on occasion. Morose. They are not getting
along. Tragic list, listlessly reiterated. Child-swollen beauty is miserable with aches and discomfort. Younger beauty feels shocked, frightened and alone. Yet likely to-reject soft comfort given by adoring Greyfrog. Troubled assassin beset by impatience, for what, I know not. And terrible priest. Ah, shivering haunt! So much displeasure! Dismay! Perhaps I could regurgitate the goat, and we could share said fine repast. Fine, still kicking repast. Aai, worst kind of indigestion!

  'Greyfrog!' Cutter called up. 'What are you doing up there?'

  'Friend Cutter. Discomfort. Regretting the horns.'

  ****

  Thus far, Samar Dev reflected, the notations on the map had proved accurate. From dry scrubland to plains, and now, finally, patches of deciduous forest, arrayed amidst marshy glades and stubborn remnants of true grassland. Two, perhaps three days of travel northward and they would reach boreal forest.

  Bhederin-hunters, travelling in small bands, shared this wild, unbroken land. They had seen such bands from a distance and had come upon signs of camps, but it was clear that these nomadic savages had no interest in contacting them. Hardly surprising — the sight of Karsa Orlong was frightening enough, astride his Jhag horse, weapons bristling, bloodstained white fur riding his broad shoulders.

  The bhederin herds had broken up and scattered into smaller groups upon reaching the aspen parkland. There seemed little sense, as far as Samar Dev could determine, to the migration of these huge beasts. True, the dry, hot season was nearing its end, and the nights were growing cool, sufficient to turn rust-coloured the leaves of the trees, but there was nothing fierce in a Seven Cities winter. More rain, perhaps, although that rarely reached far inland — the Jhag Odhan to the south was unchanging, after all.

  'I think,' she said, 'this is some kind of ancient memory.'

  Karsa grunted, then said, 'Looks like forest to me, woman.'

  'No, these bhederin — those big hulking shapes beneath the trees over there. I think it's some old instinct that brings them north into these forests. From a time when winter brought snow and wind to the Odhan.'