Debt of Bones Read online

  ‘I know.’ The Mother Confessor offered a quick smile. ‘Let us hope your trick was worth it. You have until dawn. She said they expect her to torture you all night before bringing you to them in the morning. Their scouts alerted Anargo to our troops’ arrival.’

  Back in the rushes the Mord-Sith was screaming as though she were being flayed alive.

  Shivers ran through Abby’s shoulders. They’ll hear her and know what’s happened.’

  ‘Even if they could hear at this distance, they will think it is Zedd, being tortured by her.’ The Mother Confessor took the knife from Abby’s hand. ‘I am glad that you rewarded my faith and in the end chose not to join with them.’

  Abby wiped her palms on her skirts, shamed by all she had done, by what she had intended to do. She was beginning to shake. ‘Are you going to kill her?’

  The Mother Confessor, despite looking bone-weary after having touched the Mord-Sith, still had iron resolve in her eyes. ‘A Mord-Sith is different from anyone else. She does not recover from the touch of a Confessor. She would suffer in profound agony until she dies, sometime before morning.’ She glanced back towards the cries. ‘She has told us what we need to know, and Zedd must have his power back. It is the merciful thing to do.’

  ‘It also buys me time to do what I must do.’ Zedd’s fingers turned Abby’s face towards him, away from the shrieks. ‘And time to get Jana back. You will have until morning.’

  ‘I will have until morning? What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll explain. But we must hurry if you are to have enough time. Now, take off your clothes.’

  *

  Abby was running out of time.

  She moved through the D’Haran camp, holding herself stiff and tall, trying not to look frantic, even though that was how she felt. All night long she had been doing as the wizard had instructed: acting haughty. To anyone who noticed her, she directed disdain. To anyone who looked her way, thinking to speak to her, she growled.

  Not that many, though, so much as dared to catch the attention of what appeared to be a red-leather-clad Mord-Sith. Zedd had told her, too, to keep the Mord-Sith’s weapon in her fist. It looked like nothing more than a small red leather rod. How it worked, Abby had no idea – the wizard had said only that it involved magic, and she wouldn’t be able to call it to her aid – but it did have an effect on those who saw it in her hand: it made them melt back into the darkness, away from the light of the campfires, away from Abby.

  Those who were awake, anyway. Although most people in the camp were sleeping, there was no shortage of alert guards. Zedd had cut the long braid from the Mord-Sith who had attacked him, and tied it into Abby’s hair. In the dark, the mismatch of colour wasn’t obvious. When the guards looked at Abby they saw a Mord-Sith, and quickly turned their attention elsewhere.

  By the apprehension on people’s faces when they saw her coming, Abby knew she must look fearsome. They didn’t know how her heart pounded. She was thankful for the mantle of night so that the D’Harans couldn’t see her knees trembling. She had seen only two real Mord-Sith, both sleeping, and she had kept far away from them, as Zedd had warned her. Real Mord-Sith were not likely to be fooled so easily.

  Zedd had given her until dawn. Time was running out. He had told her that if she wasn’t back in time, she would die.

  Abby was thankful she knew the lay of the land, or long since she would have become lost among the confusion of tents, campfires, wagons, horses, and mules. Everywhere pikes and lances were stacked upright in circles with their points leaning together. Men – farriers, fletchers, blacksmiths and craftsmen of all sorts – worked through the night.

  The air was thick with woodsmoke and rang with the sound of metal being shaped and sharpened and wood being worked for everything from bows to wagons. Abby didn’t know how people could sleep through the noise, but sleep they did.

  Shortly the immense camp would wake to a new day – a day of battle, a day the soldiers went to work doing what they did best. They were getting a good night’s sleep so they would be rested for the killing of the Midlands army. From what she had heard, D’Haran soldiers were very good at their job.

  Abby had searched relentlessly, but she had been unable to find her father, her husband, or her daughter. She had no intention of giving up. She had resigned herself to the knowledge that if she didn’t find them, she would die with them.

  She had found captives tied together and staked to trees, or the ground, to keep them from running. Many more were chained. Some she recognized, but many more she didn’t. Most were kept in groups and under guard.

  Abby never once saw a guard asleep at his post. When they looked her way, she acted as if she were looking for someone, and she wasn’t going to go easy on them when she found them. Zedd had told her that her safety, and the safety of her family, depended on her playing the part convincingly. Abby thought about these people hurting her daughter, and it wasn’t hard to act angry.

  But she was running out of time. She couldn’t find them, and she knew that Zedd would not wait. Too much was at stake; she understood that, now. She was coming to appreciate that the wizard and the Mother Confessor were trying to stop a war; that they were people resolved to the dreadful task of weighing the lives of a few against the lives of many.

  Abby lifted another tent-flap, and saw soldiers sleeping. She squatted and looked at the faces of prisoners tied to wagons. They stared back with hollow expressions. She bent to gaze at the faces of children pressed together in nightmares. She couldn’t find Jana. The huge camp sprawled across the hilly countryside; there were a thousand places she could be.

  As she marched along a crooked line of tents, she scratched at her wrist. Only when she went farther did she notice that it was the bracelet warming that made her wrist itch. It warmed yet more as she proceeded, but then the warmth began fading. Her brow twitched. Out of curiosity, she turned and went back the way she had come.

  Where a pathway between tents turned off, her bracelet tingled again with warmth. Abby paused a moment, looking off into the darkness. The sky was just beginning to colour with light. She took the path between the tents, following until the bracelet cooled, then backtracked to where it warmed again and took a new direction where it warmed yet more.

  Abby’s mother had given her the bracelet, telling her to wear it always, and that someday it would be of value. Abby wondered if somehow the bracelet had magic that would help her find her daughter. With dawn nearing, this seemed the only chance she had left. She hurried onward, wending where the warmth from the bracelet directed.

  The bracelet led her to an expanse of snoring soldiers. There were no prisoners in sight. Guards patrolled the men in bedrolls and blankets. There was one tent set among the big men – for an officer, she guessed.

  Not knowing what else to do, Abby strode among the sleeping men. Near the tent, the bracelet sent tingling heat up her arm.

  Abby saw that sentries hung around the small tent like flies around meat. The canvas sides glowed softly, probably from a candle inside. Off to the side, she noticed a sleeping form different from the men. As she got closer, she saw that it was a woman: Mariska.

  The old woman breathed with a little raspy whistle as she slept. Abby stood paralysed. Guards looked up at her.

  Needing to do something before they asked any questions, Abby scowled at them and marched towards the tent. She tried not to make any noise; the guards might think she was a Mord-Sith, but Mariska would not long be fooled. A glare from Abby turned the guards’ eyes to the dark countryside.

  Her heart pounding nearly out of control, Abby gripped the tent-flap. She knew Jana would be inside. She told herself that she must not cry out when she saw her daughter. She reminded herself that she must put a hand over Jana’s mouth before she could cry out with joy, lest they be caught before they had a chance to escape.

  The bracelet was so hot it felt as if it would blister her skin. Abby ducked into the low tent.

  A trembling little
girl huddled in a tattered wool cloak sat in blankets on the ground. She stared up with big eyes that blinked with the terror of what might come next. Abby felt a stab of anguish. It was not Jana.

  They stared at each other, this little girl and Abby. The child’s face was lit clearly by the candle set to the side, as Abby’s must be. In those big grey eyes that looked to have beheld unimaginable terrors, the little girl seemed to reach a judgement.

  Her arms stretched up in supplication.

  Instinctively, Abby fell to her knees and scooped up the little girl, hugging her small trembling body. The girl’s spindly arms came out from the tattered cloak and wrapped around Abby’s neck, holding on for dear life.

  ‘Help me? Please?’ the child whimpered in Abby’s ear.

  Before she had picked her up she had seen the face in the candlelight. There was no doubt in Abby’s mind. It was Zedd’s daughter.

  ‘I’ve come to help you,’ Abby comforted. ‘Zedd sent me.’ The child moaned expectantly.

  Abby held the girl out at arm’s length. ‘I’ll take you to your father, but you mustn’t let these people know I’m rescuing you. Can you play along with me? Can you pretend that you’re my prisoner, so that I can get you away?’

  Near tears, the girl nodded. She had the same wavy hair as Zedd, and the same eyes, although they were an arresting grey, not hazel.

  ‘Good,’ Abby whispered, cupping a chilly cheek, almost lost in those grey eyes. Trust me, then, and I will get you away.’

  ‘I trust you,’ came the small voice.

  Abby snatched up a rope lying nearby and looped it around the girl’s neck. ‘I’ll try not to hurt you, but I must make them think you are my prisoner.’

  The girl cast a worried look at the rope, as if she knew the rope well, and then nodded that she would go along.

  Abby stood, once outside the tent, and by the rope pulled the child out after her. The guards looked her way. Abby started out.

  One of them scowled as he stepped close. ‘What’s going on?’

  Abby stomped to a halt and lifted the red leather rod, pointing it at the guard’s nose. ‘She has been summoned. And who are you to question? Get out of my way or I’ll have you gutted and cleaned for my breakfast!’

  The man paled and hurriedly stepped aside. Before he had time to reconsider, Abby charged off, the girl in tow at the end of the rope, dragging her heels, making it look real.

  No one followed. Abby wanted to run, but she couldn’t. She wanted to carry the girl, but she couldn’t. It had to look as if a Mord-Sith was taking a prisoner away.

  Rather than take the shortest route back to Zedd, Abby followed the hills upriver to a place where the trees offered concealment almost to the water’s edge. Zedd had told her where to cross, and warned her not to return by a different way; he had set traps of magic to prevent the D’Harans from charging down from the hills to stop whatever it was he was going to do.

  Closer to the river she saw, downstream a way, a bank of fog hanging close to the ground. Zedd had emphatically warned her not to go near any fog. She suspected it a poison cloud of some sort that he had conjured.

  The sound of the water told her she was close to the river. The pink sky provided enough light to finally see it when she reached the edge of the trees. Although she could see the massive camp on the hills in the distance behind her, she saw no one following.

  Abby took the rope from the child’s neck. The girl watched her with those big round eyes. Abby lifted her and held her tight. ‘Hold on, and keep quiet.’ Pressing the girl’s head to her shoulder, Abby ran for the river.

  *

  There was light, but it was not the dawn. They had crossed the frigid water and made the other side when she first noticed it. Even as she ran along the bank of the river, before she could see the source of the light, Abby knew that magic was being called there that was unlike any magic she had ever seen before. A sound, low and thin, whined up the river towards her. A smell, as if the air itself had been burned, hung along the riverbank,

  The little girl clung to Abby, tears running down her face, afraid to speak – afraid, it seemed, to hope that she had at last been rescued, as if asking a question might somehow make it all vanish like a dream upon waking. Abby felt tears coursing down her own cheeks.

  When she rounded a bend in the river, she spotted the wizard. He stood in the centre of the river, on a rock that Abby had never before seen. The rock was just large enough to clear the surface of the water by a few inches, making it almost appear as if the wizard stood on the surface of the water.

  Before him as he faced towards distant D’ Hara, shapes, dark and wavering, floated in the air. They curled around, as if confiding in him, conversing, warning, tempting him with floating arms and reaching fingers that wreathed like smoke.

  Animate light twisted up around the wizard. Colours both dark and wondrous glimmered about him, cavorting with the shadowy forms undulating through the air. It was at once the most enchanting and the most frightening thing Abby had ever seen. No magic her mother conjured had ever seemed... aware.

  But the most frightening thing by far was what hovered in the air before the wizard. It appeared to be a molten sphere, so hot it glowed from within, its surface a crackling of fluid dross. An arm of water from the river magically turned skyward in a fountain spray, and poured down over the rotating silvery mass.

  The water hissed and steamed as it hit the sphere, leaving behind clouds of white vapour to drift away in the gentle dawn wind. The molten form blackened at the touch of the water cascading over it, and yet the intense inner heat melted the glassy surface again as fast as the water cooled it, making the whole thing bubble and boil in mid-air, a pulsing sinister menace.

  Transfixed, Abby let the child slip to the silty ground.

  The little girl’s arms stretched out. ‘Papa.’

  He was too far away to hear her, but he heard.

  Zedd turned, at once larger than life in the midst of magic Abby could see but not begin to fathom, yet at the same time small with the frailty of human need. Tears filled his eyes as he gazed at his daughter standing beside Abby. This man who seemed to be consulting with spirits looked as if for the first time he were seeing a true apparition.

  Zedd leaped off the rock and charged through the water. When he reached her and took her up in the safety of his arms, she began to wail at last with the contained terror released.

  There, there, dear one,’ Zedd comforted. ‘Papa is here now.’

  ‘Oh, Papa,’ she cried against his neck, ‘they hurt Mama. They were wicked. They hurt her so...’

  He hushed her tenderly. ‘I know, dear one. I know.’

  For the first time, Abby saw the sorceress and the Mother Confessor standing off to the side, watching. They, too, shed tears at what they were seeing. Though Abby was glad for the wizard and his daughter, the sight only intensified the pain in her chest at what she had lost. She was choked with tears.

  ‘There, there, dear one,’ Zedd was cooing. ‘You’re safe, now. Papa won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe now.’

  Zedd turned to Abby. By the time he had smiled his tearful appreciation, the child was asleep.

  ‘A little spell,’ he explained when Abby’s brow twitched with surprise. ‘She needs to rest, I need to finish what I am doing.’

  He put his daughter in Abby’s arms. ‘Abby, would you take her up to your house where she can sleep until I’m finished here? Please, put her in bed and cover her up to keep her warm. She will sleep for now.’

  Thinking about her own daughter in the hands of the brutes across the river, Abby could only nod before turning to the task. She was happy for Zedd, and even felt pride at having rescued his little girl, but as she ran for her home, she was near to dying with grief over her failure to recover her own family.

  Abby settled the dead weight of the sleeping child into her bed. She drew the curtain across the small window in her bedroom, and unable to resist, smoothed back s
ilky hair and pressed a kiss to the soft brow before leaving the girl to her blessed rest.

  With the child safe at last and asleep, Abby raced back down the knoll to the river. She thought to ask Zedd to give her just a little more time so she could return to look for her own daughter. Fear for Jana had her heart pounding wildly. He owed her a debt, and had not yet seen it through.

  Wringing her hands, Abby came to a panting halt at the water’s edge. She watched the wizard up on his rock in the river, light and shadow coursing up around him. She had been around magic enough to have the sense to fear approaching him. She could hear his chanted words; though they were words she had never heard before, she recognized the idiosyncratic cadence of words spoken in a spell, words calling together frightful forces.

  On the ground beside her was the strange Grace she had seen him draw before, the one that breached the worlds of life and death. The Grace was drawn with a sparkling, pure white sand that stood out in stark relief against the dark silt. Abby shuddered even to look upon it, much less contemplate its meaning. Around the Grace, carefully drawn with the same sparkling white sand, were geometric forms of magical invocations.

  Abby lowered her fists, about to call out to the wizard, when Delora leaned close. Abby flinched in surprise.

  ‘Not now, Abigail,’ the sorceress murmured. ‘Don’t disturb him in the middle of this part.’

  Reluctantly, Abby heeded the sorceress’s words. The Mother Confessor was there, too. Abby chewed her bottom lip as she watched the wizard throw up his arms. Sparkles of coloured light curled up along twisting shafts of shadows. ‘But I must. I haven’t been able to find my family. He must help me. He must save them. It’s a debt of bones that must be satisfied.’

  The other two women shared a look. ‘Abby,’ the Mother Confessor said, ‘he gave you a chance, gave you time. He tried. He did his best, but he has everyone else to think of, now.’

  The Mother Confessor took up Abby’s hand, and the sorceress put an arm around Abby’s shoulders as she stood weeping on the riverbank. Despair crushed her. It wasn’t supposed to end this way, not after all she had been through, not after all she had done.