The Bone Houses Read online

  She nodded, not precisely pleased so much as satisfied. Trading food for favors had become something rather common of late. She let out a breath and pressed her fingers to her temple. She could feel a headache building, stress forming a knot behind her jaw.

  “You should be getting back,” said Hywel, breaking into Ryn’s thoughts.

  Ryn inclined her head toward the fields of tall grasses. “I saw one of them. I need to take care of it before I return home.”

  Hywel gave her a despairing sort of look. “Listen, girl. How about we both head back to the village, stop by the Red Mare. I can spare an hour before returning to the mill. A drink on me.”

  “No.” A hesitation, then, “Thank you. You shouldn’t walk home in the dark, not tonight.”

  “Your family needs you,” he said, more gently than she expected.

  She stood a little straighter. The sun was all but set, casting a golden glow across the fields. Shadows crept in along the trees, and a cool breeze whispered through Ryn’s loose shirt.

  She thought of the grave mounds. Of the sleeping bones warm and safe beneath the earth.

  “I know,” she said. Hywel shook his head, but he didn’t protest. He gave her one last nod before walking away from the village, toward the nearby creek and mill. The sword dragged, a little too heavy for the old man.

  The village would be preparing for nightfall. Latches on all the doors locked. Gareth would blow out the candles, and the scent of burnt tallow would linger in the kitchen. Ceri would be getting ready for bed.

  Ryn reached into her pack. She’d brought a bundle of hard bread and cheese and, lastly, her axe. She liked eating out here, amid the wilds and the graves. She felt more comfortable here than she did in the village. When she returned home, the weight of her life would settle upon her once again. There would be unpaid rent, food stores that should be filled for winter, an anxious brother, and a future that needed sorting out. The other young women of Colbren were finding spouses, joining the cantref armies, or taking up a socially acceptable trade. When she tried to imagine doing the same, she could not. She was a half-wild creature that loved a graveyard, the first taste of misty night air, and the heft of a shovel.

  She knew how things died.

  And in her darkest moments, she feared she did not know how to live.

  So she sat at the edge of the graveyard and watched as the sun vanished behind the trees. A silvery half-light fell across the fields, and Ryn’s heartbeat quickened. It was not truly dark, but it was dark enough for magic.

  The sound of shuffling feet made her stand up. It was not the gait of an animal—but of a two-legged creature, one who could not walk properly.

  Ryn rose and gripped her axe in one hand.

  “Come on,” she murmured. “I know you’re out there.”

  And she did know. She’d seen the figure in the wee hours of the morning: a half-broken thing that had vanished into the tall grasses.

  She heard the approach. It was slow—a staggering gait.

  Thump. Shuffle. Thump.

  The creature rose with the night.

  It looked like something out of the tales that her father used to tell—a spindly creature of rotted flesh and tattered clothing. It was having trouble walking and every other step made the figure stagger.

  Shuffle. Thump.

  It had been a woman: A long dress trailed behind it, dragging in the dirt. Ryn didn’t recognize her, but she must have died recently. Perhaps a traveler. A turned ankle could kill a person in the wilds, if they were alone.

  “Good evening,” said Ryn.

  The creature went still. Its neck gave a sickening pop as it turned to look at her. Ryn wasn’t sure how it could see—the eyes were always the first bits to go.

  The bone house did not speak. They never did.

  But still, Ryn felt obligated to say something.

  “Sorry about this,” said Ryn. And then she swung the axe at the dead woman’s knees.

  The first time, she’d gone for the head. Turned out, the dead were like chickens. They didn’t need heads to blunder about. Knees were a much more practical target.

  The blade bit into bone.

  The woman staggered, reaching out for Ryn. Ryn ducked back, but the woman’s brittle fingers caught her on the shoulder. She felt the rake of nails, the fingers stiffened in death. Ryn tore the axe free, and there was another nauseating wrenching sound, like tissues being rent apart. The dead woman fell to the ground. It rolled over, dug its bony fingers into the earth, and began to crawl toward Colbren.

  “Would you please stop that?” Ryn brought the axe down a second time, and then a third. Finally, the creature went still.

  Ryn pulled on a pair of leather gloves and set about searching the body. No coin purse, no valuables. She exhaled sharply, trying to hold back a sinking disappointment. She wasn’t a grave robber—and she didn’t take coin from the dead she was paid to bury. But these creatures that haunted the forest were fair game. After all, the cursed dead cared little for money. Only the living had need of it.

  And Ryn did have need.

  She’d gather up what was left of the woman, place the parts in a burlap sack, and bring them into the village for burning. Only the forge burned hot enough for bone.

  It was the only peace she could offer the woman.

  Ryn clenched her teeth as she hauled the burlap sack to the graveyard. She tied it shut, just to make sure no parts escaped. Her muscles burned with exertion. Despite the chill of the night, a sweat had soaked through her shirt.

  The sack gave a twitch. “Stop that,” said Ryn.

  Another twitch.

  Ryn crouched, settling on the ground beside the sack. She gave it an awkward sort of pat, the way she might try to calm her little sister. “If you’d stayed in the forest, you would have been fine. Want to tell me why death suddenly has an urge to wander?”

  The sack went still.

  Ryn pulled her gloves off and ate a few mouthfuls of bara brith. The dark bread was sweet and studded with dried fruit. The food eased the hollow feeling in her stomach. She looked at the sack and had the sudden urge to offer it a piece of bread. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

  This was the problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren.

  Nothing stayed buried forever.

  CHAPTER 2

  ELLIS HAD A fondness for travel.

  When he first left the castle of Caer Aberhen, he had spent some time in the southern port cities. He had considered sailing to the continent on one of the sleek vessels brimming with freshly caught pollock and eels. He worked on a map of the docks for a harbormaster while he contemplated the course his life should take. He’d enjoyed a comfortable bed in the manor house, far from the bustle and noise of the city, and thought himself worldly for leaving Caer Aberhen so far behind.

  But now he stood at the edge of a forest, utterly alone, and realized his own mistake.

  He loved new places—but the travel involved was a nightmare.

  His tent was sunken.

  Strung between two small trees, it should have looked sturdy and warm, but instead appeared like a loaf of fallen bread. He frowned, tried to adjust the way the canvas draped, but pain flared beneath his left collarbone.

  The cold night air aggravated his old injury. He was always leaning toward fires, hovering near wood stoves, and seeking out stray patches of sunlight. It was only when he was tucked amid the library stacks at Caer Aberhen that he’d forced himself to endure the chill that would settle into his joints. Even so, his hands remained deft. They had to be, if he were to make a living as a mapmaker.

  With a resigned sigh, he reached for his pack. Rolls of parchment peeked out of the top. He plucked one from the cluster. The maps were old friends, speaking to him in lines and etchings as clearly as people spoke with words. He looked down at this particular map; it was smaller than the others, smudged with dirt and fingerprints. Yet there were flourishes of whimsy—small, shadowed creatures peeked through
the branches of a forest, and a dragon perched atop a mountain. It reminded him of the maps he’d seen sailors use, where the edges of the parchment were marked with serpents. Here be dragons.

  Ellis had never believed in monsters. And even if he had, this map wouldn’t have made him turn back. For one thing, whomever had crafted it had done a laughable job with the distance markers. If this map were accurate, he would have arrived at Colbren in the afternoon and been cozily asleep under some tavern’s roof.

  Instead of spending the night on the fringes of a forest, under a crooked tent.

  He balled up his cloak as a pillow and closed his eyes. Insects chirped and the wind whispered through the trees. He tried to focus on each sound, directing his mind away from his own discomfort.

  And then everything went silent. There were no animal sounds, no rustling of wind through the trees.

  The change kindled to life some instinct he had not known he had—an animal reaction of raw fear, of pounding pulse and shortened breath.

  In the flickering light of his lantern, it took him a heartbeat to see the man. He knelt over Ellis, having entered the tent in perfect silence.

  Cold fingers wrapped around Ellis’s throat, so lightly at first it was almost a caress. The man’s hand was as slick as a freshly landed fish, as cold as rainwater. And then the grip went tight.

  Panic burned through Ellis. He reached for the only weapon he possessed: a walking stick. He jabbed it toward the man, trying to hit him around the shoulders and head. But it was little use. His heartbeat throbbed with an ever-rising pressure and his sight blurred at the edges.

  Ellis could do little more than flail his arms and legs when the man began dragging him out of his tent. It took a moment for Ellis to realize that he was being pulled away from his camp, away from the cheery lantern light and the few trappings of civilization.

  He was being dragged into the shadow of the forest.

  Ellis was going to die. He was going to die alone, outside a village he could not find because someone had put incorrect distance markers on their map.

  Desperation gave him new strength, and he threw a punch at the man’s face. A cut opened up on the man’s forehead, but there was no blood. He seemed more startled than injured; his fingers went slack. The man’s wounded forehead sagged oddly, and revulsion crawled up Ellis’s throat even as he broke free and skittered back into the circle of his small camp. The lantern light cast odd shadows upon the man’s face—there were hollows where cheeks should have been, and his eyes were strangely blank.

  He took a step toward Ellis, his fingers outstretched.

  That was when the young woman appeared.

  She looked at Ellis, then to the man. She was dressed in a loose tunic, her leggings worn and dirty at the knees. Her dark hair was bound in a tangled braid, and in one hand she carried an axe.

  “Get out of here!” Ellis rasped, unsure if he was speaking to himself or the girl.

  She didn’t listen. When the man staggered toward her, she whirled once, as if to pick up speed, and then she swung the axe with more strength than Ellis could have mustered. The blade sank into the man’s chest, collapsing part of his rib cage. The man fell, twitching, to the ground.

  The girl placed her foot on the man’s hip, holding him steady as she pulled the axe free.

  Silence fell upon the small camp. Ellis breathed raggedly, his gaze fixed on the dead man. He didn’t look like a bandit—or at least, not like any bandit Ellis had read about. His clothes were too fine, albeit soaked through with muddy water. His skin was too pale, and there was an odd bluish cast to his fingertips.

  “Sorry about that,” said the girl.

  “No need to apologize to me,” said Ellis, startled.

  The girl’s gaze flicked up, then went back to the man. “I wasn’t.”

  The man twitched again. Ellis choked back a shout as the man began to sit up. He couldn’t still be alive, not after taking a blow like that. But how—

  The girl brought her axe down again. There was a thud and the next thing Ellis knew, there was an arm on the ground. Ellis found himself staring at it. He’d never been in battle before, but surely the removal of a limb would involve more blood.

  “Listen,” the girl said, as if speaking to an unruly child. The man rolled over, reached for her with the other, still-attached arm. “You need to stop that.” A swing—a thud.

  The man tried to move toward her, using his legs to push himself across the dirt.

  “By all the fallen kings,” said Ellis, sickened by the sight. “How is he not dead yet?”

  The girl grimaced and slammed the axe into the man’s knee. “He is. That’s the problem.”

  “What?”

  Finally, the man stopped trying to move. But still his eyes rolled about like those of an enraged animal.

  “Do you have a sack?” asked the girl.

  For a heartbeat, Ellis stood could only stand there. With a shake of his head, he ducked into the woefully crooked tent and began pulling the canvas free. “Will this work?”

  The girl nodded. And without a trace of squeamishness, she reached down and began picking up the pieces of the man she’d just dismembered.

  Ellis stared at her and wondered if he shouldn’t cut his losses and run.

  “Oh, sit down,” she said. “You look like you’re about to swoon.”

  He sank to his haunches. “Who—who are you?”

  The girl began hauling the head and torso of the man onto the tent cloth. The dead man was still looking at her, mouth moving silently.

  “Aderyn verch Gwyn,” she said. “Gravedigger. And you are?”

  Ah. No wonder a corpse did not disturb her.

  “Ellis,” he replied. “Of Caer Aberhen.”

  She waited for a family name—and he remained silent.

  Aderyn looked down at the dead man. She began drawing in the edges of the canvas. A piece of twine appeared in her hand and she looped it around the bundle. “What did you do to him?”

  Ellis frowned. “What?”

  “Well, you must have done something.” She finished tying off the canvas. “You wearing any iron?”

  “What?” he said again. “No.”

  “Well, you should. Did you speak the name of the Otherking three times?”

  “I—no, of course not.”

  “Dabble in magic?”

  “Magic doesn’t exist anymore,” he said, some of his fear hardening into irritation. But if there was no magic, how could this man be—

  “Dead,” he said softly. He felt as if all his wits had been scattered about the camp, and he was scrambling for them. “He was dead and walking around—that can’t happen.”

  Aderyn studied her handiwork. “Outside the forest, no. Inside the forest, yes.” She gave his bedroll a dubious look. “Perhaps he just wanted to share your camp.”

  Ellis smiled thinly. “He probably could have found better lodging elsewhere, if he’d bothered to look.” Aderyn laughed. Her gaze came up to meet his and she did not look away. It was the kind of look that held on a little too long. But it was not the same flirtatious glance that some young ladies gave him—rather, it felt like he was being picked apart, dismantled as easily as Aderyn had taken apart the dead man.

  He glanced down, eyes on his hands. “Thank you,” he said, realizing he had not said it yet. “For saving my life.”

  She let out a breath. “Well, to be honest, if I’d found that the bone house had already killed you, I was going to steal your coin.”

  He blinked. “Does that happen often?” He held up a hand, trying to buy a moment’s time. “I mean, dead people coming out of the forest. Not you looting corpses.”

  “Never,” said Aderyn. “Not until last week. Some dead bloke stumbled out of the forest and into the miller’s yard. I was walking back to the village after picking berries, heard the shouting, and helped bring the bone house down.” She gave a little shrug. “The dead have the forest. I don’t know why they’re coming out of
it, not now that magic has waned.”

  She spoke matter-of-factly. As if the risen dead were an infestation of plague rats she were trying to keep from her home.

  “And what are you doing out here?” She nodded at his camp—at the overturned belongings, the maps scattered across the dirt, and the remnants of the fire he’d tried to make. “What brings a city lad into the wilds?”

  He crossed his arms. “How do you know I’m from the city?”

  “Because you tried to make a fire with green wood,” she replied. “Because you have more parchment than food. Because you can afford enough oil to leave a lantern burning all night. Am I wrong?”

  He gave her a shallow nod. “You’re not wrong. And as for what I’m doing out here…” He reached down, picked up one of the scrolls. “I’m a mapmaker.”

  She frowned at him. “Why aren’t you spending the night in the village?”

  He looked around, groping for an explanation. “I—I meant to.”

  “You’re lost,” she said.

  “I am not.”

  “You’re a mapmaker who cannot find a village.”

  “I was using someone else’s map,” he said. “If I’d drawn it, this never would have happened.” He rubbed at his forehead. “Can you bring me to the village? I have coin, if that’s what it takes.”

  He saw the flicker of eagerness in her eyes. It was quickly quashed, and her neutral expression slid back into place. “All right. But I’m waiting to return until morning—just in case any more of these creatures decide to venture out of the woods. You all right with that?”

  “I survived an attack of the risen dead,” he replied. “I think I can spend a night without a tent.”

  Her eyes drifted toward the dark smudge of the trees only a few strides away. “We’ll see, I suppose.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE ROAD TO Colbren was little more than packed earth. Sunlight reflected off the golden dead grasses that would revive with the autumn rainfall. Evidence of the village could be seen from here: Trees had been cut for firewood and the earthy scent of horse manure wafted from nearby fields.