We’re not going to make it,she thought.
But then—“They’re falling back!” Kreya cried.
She glanced again and saw she was right: the soldiers had slowed. But why? Zera allowed herself to slow, catching herbreath, and Kreya caught her arm. “Stealth to pass the wall,” Kreya said. “We don’t rest until we’re on the other side.”
“Right. No rest until we’re safely with the deadly monsters.”
“Exactly,” Kreya said, but there was hope in her voice now, and Zera felt hope course through her too. Maybe they would get out of here alive.
Still, she kept hearing Eklor’s laugh, mocking impossibly in her mind.
Chapter Eight
Keeping the pack of human bones close beside her, Kreya bore down on a chunk of river lizard bone with her knife, carving as fast as she could, as the crawler carried them into the valley. She heard the deer scatter in between the trees and the birds take to the sky, and she hoped the monsters hadn’t noticed them yet.
At least the unnatural soldiers hadn’t followed them to the wall.
Hewouldn’t have risked allowing the guards on the wall to see his creations. They’d halted a few miles from the border, to protect the secret of their existence.That’s why we were able to escape them,Kreya thought. The only reason.
“You know I am right,” Kreya said, not looking up from her work. Any second, the river lizards and other predators would begin hunting them. She had to carve quickly.
“I know no such thing.”
“He lives.”
“How? Who would bring him back? Even if someone else miraculously discovered the same secret you did, who would doit? Why would any bone maker want him to live again? He tried to destroy them all, remember?”
Kreya had no idea. And Zera didn’t even know the cost of the resurrection spell. If she did, Kreya was sure she’d agree there was no bone maker who would pay that price—the years of their own life—for Eklor. Blowing on the bone, Kreya cleared bone dust from a groove and continued carving.
“It’s not as if he could have resurrected himself,” Zera continued. “That would be technically difficult, I’d think.”
“If he somehow cast the spell on himself before he expired...” Theoretically, she supposed the spell could be adapted to heal oneself using one’s own future, or to be precise, the future one would have had if one’s life hadn’t been shortened by violence... but even if such a thing could be done, she’d witnessed his death; he’d been choked by a construct she’d made. There had been no time for him to save himself. He’d had no breath to utter the words.
Could his apprentice have done it? No, she couldn’t believe that explanation either. Even if Eklor had shared his most secret knowledge, which would have been highly uncharacteristic of him, the boy hadn’t been anywhere near the tower at the time of Eklor’s defeat. When he’d been captured, the boy had said Eklor had ordered him away the night before the battle. And he couldn’t have come back to do it later.
Not after what the people of Cerre did to him.
“Marso confirmed Eklor’s death both to us and to Grand Master Lorn,” Zera said. “He never misreads the bones.”
She knew that. But she knew what she’d seen on the plain: fully functional constructs, made in Eklor’s signature style, patrolling his former home.
“Eklor is dead and never coming back,” Zera said. “Those atrocities were remnants, that’s all. He was the most powerful bone maker who’s ever lived. Surely, his creations could have outlasted him.”
You have to admit it’s possible,she told herself.And much more likely than the alternative.
As badly as she hated him, she knew Eklor had been a genius. He could have found a way to extend the lives of his monstrosities. He could have intended for his soldiers to outlast him, to torment his enemies, for decades.
Yes, that had to be the explanation. Eklor was of course dead. She’d let paranoia get the better of her. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.” Finishing the carving, she began installing it in the floor of the crawler, between their feet.
“Obviously.”
“His creations still need to be destroyed,” Kreya said. Such dangerous abominations couldn’t be allowed to roam the plains. They dishonored the dead by their very existence. They should have been purged from the world after Eklor’s death—the guild should have seen to it. “And I swore to you I’d burn those bones.”
“Exactly what do you want to do? Take them on just the two of us? Or, ooh, visit Guild Master Lorn and say, hey, we were just out for a picnic in the forbidden zone and noticed—” She broke off as a river lizard roared.
Nearby, another answered.
Glancing up, Kreya saw the canopy of trees quiver above them as a hundred tiny birds and tree mice fled. “Raca,” she ordered the crawler, and then tightened the bolts holding the bone in position.
