The Temple of Heart and Bone (15 page)

He would need a better outfit,
but he would also need information. He needed to know what had happened to his
life and his death. Most of all, he needed to know what had happened to Li. He
had left her that night, more than seven years ago, just to make this walk for
honey. He had never returned. Had she died in the cottage? Was the blood on the
floor hers? Had she managed to hide or flee? Could the blood be someone else’s?
Petreus had told the girl, Chance, little about the couple. Still, there was a
strong possibility that he might know more of what had become of Li.

Petreus might also have some
knowledge of just what Drothspar had become. There were priests who handled
exorcisms and the driving out of unclean spirits. Certainly these priests had
to be aware of happenings that were outside the normal realms of life and
death. Even if Petreus didn’t have first-hand experience with such knowledge,
he would probably be able to find someone who did. For the moment, Petreus held
the answers to many questions. He had to go and talk to the old priest.

Chance had come to his cottage
seeking a place to hide. He appreciated her need to establish her position with
her family, but he would need help to get to Petreus. He could not speak, for
one thing, and that would be a problem. Any citizen who saw a fistful of bones
clutching a stick to write out a question would have him burning before a mob
in no time. The girl, however, was known to Petreus. She knew her way to and
from the cottage, and she seemed to have a very sharp mind. She could be his
path to information—if she were willing.

He walked near the cottage but
heard nothing stirring. He fought back the urge to peek in the window and
walked out on to the dock. He shook his head, imaging how it would look to wake
up and see a skull peeking in the window at you. He chuckled silently at the
absurdity of it and sat at the very edge of the pier. He let his feet dangle
into the water and watched as the water played in and around his bones.

He wondered how long it might take
the girl inside to wake up. A quick, sharp fear stabbed into his thoughts. What
if she’d already left? What if she’d taken the opportunity to leave right after
he had? She could be almost halfway to Æostemark by now. His feet came up out
of the water, and he turned to go back to the cottage. Slowly, however, he
caught hold of himself, and eased back down into his place. If she was gone,
she was gone. He certainly wasn’t going to haunt the girl throughout the world
and force her to help him. Enough people were chasing her already, according to
her. If she were going to help him, he decided, it definitely would have to be
of her own free will.

Drothspar sat on the edge of the
pier, watching the clouds spreading thin across the sky. The light of morning
began to appear in patches, wrestling with the remnants of clouds. Rain fell
sporadically, deprived of the force which had allowed it to lash repeated
across the water. The rain fell gently, performing an interpretive dance,
telling, in its choreography, of the power its predecessors had possessed.

The wind rippled the surface of
the lake, scattering the reflection of the tattered sky above. The sound of the
rain, of the world in general, was less threatening than it had been in days.
Rain padded down on the wood of the pier and hissed softly in the waters of the
lake. The lake sighed along the shore as it washed against the stones and sand.

Drothspar continued to wait for
the girl to awaken. The thought that she might have left occurred to him time
and again, but he tried to remain as calm as he could. He decided that he would
check the cottage at nightfall—if the girl hadn’t emerged by then. He began to
wonder if her own wounds might have been enough to keep her unconscious, but he
couldn’t really see how that might have been possible. He was certainly no
physician, but the bump to her head didn’t seem that severe.

The waiting, he supposed, was
made easier by the fact that he had no concept of time. He could tell that it
was day time, but that was about all. He looked around and noticed a cluster of
flat, round stones. He got up off the pier and walked down to the shore. He
started picking up the stones and setting them on the edge of the little dock.
After he’d gathered up a fair sized pile, he walked back out on the pier. He
took up one of the stones, holding it in the curve between his first finger and
thumb on his left hand. He drew back his arm and tossed it straight into the
water. The stone slipped into the surface as smoothly as an arrow.

Undiscouraged, he took up another
stone and again tried to skip it across the water. The stone skipped a single
time, then sank with a gulping splash. He picked up another stone, and tried
again. It had been a long time since he’d tried to skip a stone, he thought to himself.
At least seven years, a wry part of his mind agreed. He remembered skipping
stones as a child; there was a sort of magic to the practice.

Stones were hard, simple objects.
They had no ability to float on their own. If you could throw them just right,
however, you could make them bounce across the water as if it were something
solid. He’d known children who could skip stones multiple times, and others who
could hardly succeed at all. He didn’t remember anyone who had never given it a
try. Give a child some water and some stones, and the basic knowledge that it
could be done, and you’d have an instant contest. Even if they were alone,
children just had to know if they could do it.

As he grew older, the
opportunities to skip stones seemed to diminish, but never completely
disappear. It was a part of childhood that no adult seemed to be able to
completely put aside. It was one simple form of magic that anyone could
perform. He had seen dignified and reserved priests take up stones at the edge
of a pond, peek around to make sure no one was watching, and skip rocks out
into the water. Once, he had seen an older priest hop into the air at each skip
of his stone.

Standing on the pier throwing
rocks, he didn’t notice the young woman emerge from the cottage. She stood some
distance away, walking quietly, watching what he was doing. She watched him
bend down to pick up a stone, lean back, and throw it at the water. The first
several attempts that she observed plunged directly into the lake. One,
however, bounced off of the water and several feet out onto the lake before it
splashed down into the surface. Fascinated, she watched as he tried again. On
his next attempt, the stone actually bounced twice before sinking.

In Drothspar’s defense, the water
was not ideal for skipping. The surface of the lake was broken by the coughing
winds and faltering rain of the dying storm. He refused, however, to let the
minor setback of uncooperative water impede his skipping. He skipped all the
stones that he had collected, and eagerly turned to get some more. As he
turned, he noticed the young woman watching. He imagined he knew how the old
priests would have felt if they had noticed him in his cell window.

He stood frozen, unable to say a
word. He felt embarrassed that he had been watched by someone he hadn’t seen.
He also felt a twinge of regret at being interrupted in his play. Chance stood
there watching him, frozen as well. They stood quietly, each having surprised
the other. Drothspar stepped off of the pier and knelt on the ground.

“Hi,” he wrote simply in the
sand. Chance stirred to life and read his message.

“Hi,” she replied. “You weren’t a
dream,” she told him, as if he might not be sure.

“No,” he wrote and shook his
head.

“Um,” she said, curiosity burning
in her head, “what were you doing?”

“Skipping rocks,” he wrote,
realizing how much noise he must have been making. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“No,” she replied, “well, yeah,
but that’s okay. How were you doing that?”

Drothspar looked at her and
erased what he had written in the sand. “You’ve never skipped stones?” he
asked.

“No, is it hard?”

“Not at all,” he wrote, “I’ll be
happy to show you.”

“Really?” her voice was filled
with enthusiastic excitement.

Drothspar nodded and stood up. He
beckoned with his arm for her to follow. Walking closer to the shore, he knelt
down by the rocks and picked up one that was round and flat. He held it up to
her. There were too many stones around for him to write anything out, so he had
to draw out ideas in the air. He pointed to the stone and made a circle in the
air with his finger.

“Round,” she asked, like this?”
She held up a rock that was completely rounded, not at all flat.

Drothspar shook his head and
turned his stone to the side. He made the circle in the air again, then pointed
at the side of the rock, indicating the flat of the stone. He squeezed his
fingers together as if her were pinching a grape.

“Round and thin,” she said, with
a bit more confidence.

Drothspar nodded his head
hesitantly. He turned the stone so that it was horizontal. He drew his hand
across the flat edge of the stone as if he were slowly dusting it off. He
repeated the action a few times.

“Round, thin,” she said, “and
flat!”

Drothspar nodded
enthusiastically. He gathered up a few more stones that met the criteria and
showed them to her in his hands. She nodded her understanding, and he deposited
his collection on the pier. Chance had become so involved in finding the stones
that she appeared to be oblivious to the fact that she was kneeling in rocks
with a skeletal companion.

When they had collected enough,
Drothspar motioned for her to follow him onto the pier. They walked out a ways,
and he picked up two stones, one for himself, and one for her. He showed her
how he held the stone in the curve between his thumb and forefinger. He traced
the curve with the finger of his right hand. He leaned back as if he were going
to throw, then leaned forward, showing how he tried to keep the stone flat as
he would throw it. He leaned forward, as if the stone were about to leave his
hand. He reached with his right hand and held the stone in the center top and
bottom. Slowly, he let his right hand take the stone as if it had been thrown.
His left forefinger trailed on the edge of the stone, making it spin slowly in
his right hand. He repeated the whole display several time, then looked at the
young girl’s face.

“I think I understand.” “I should
hold the stone like this,” she said, duplicating his hold with her right hand.

He nodded his agreement.

“I should try to keep it flat
when I throw it.”

He nodded again.

“And I sort of make it spin when
I let it go, right?”

He nodded his agreement again. He
held up one hand to ask her to watch him. He leaned back with his stone and
threw it, spinning forward, into the water. It skipped twice and sank.

“Okay,” she said excitedly, “let
me try.” Drothspar bowed and indicated with his arm that the pier was hers.

Chance took her stone in her
right hand as he had shown her. She leaned back and threw it at the lake as
hard as she could. The stone slipped immediately below the surface. Her
shoulders dropped in disappointment, but she looked eagerly at the pile of
stones and her teacher.

Drothspar imitated her throw,
exaggerating her force. When he finished, he shook his head. He imitated her
throw again, slowing the force of his arm going forward.

“Not so hard?” she asked.

He nodded his agreement.

“Okay,” she said, taking up
another stone. She licked her lips with concentration and stared out at the
water.

The lesson continued for quite
some time. Drothspar made little puppet-plays of stones bouncing off the wooden
pier to demonstrate how the stone should hit the water. Chance, for her part,
never gave up. She was intrigued by the lesson and thrilled beyond measure when
she first succeeded. She bounded up and down on the pier, hooting and clapping.
Drothspar wished only that he could smile. He leaned down to the collection of
their stones and arranged them as two for eyes, and the rest in the arc of a
smile.

Chance
continued to skip stones until the day’s light faded. The weather cleared
during the afternoon, though some few clouds still lingered in the sky.
Drothspar watched his student at her practice, and even skipped a stone himself
once in a while. Between stones, he thought about his need for information, and
his need for help. He would have to try to convince a stranger to risk
traveling with a walking corpse. Not only that, he’d have to convince her to
head in the direction from which she, herself, was running.

As darkness settled, the strange
pair retired to the cottage. Although he felt nervous about approaching the
girl, his lack of features gave nothing away. Chance was flushed with effort
and excitement. The chill in the air enhanced the rosy bloom of her cheeks,
and, at least for the moment, she seemed to have forgotten all anxiety
concerning her companion.

She lit her lantern as she
entered while Drothspar worked on the fire. She borrowed a burning twig from his
efforts to light candles she’d found scattered in the cottage. She had made a
comfortable place for herself before the fire, and once light was cheerfully
bouncing about the room, she settled down to get warm. Drothspar sat on the
edge of the fireplace, watching the girl take her seat.

“Thank you,” she said simply.
“That was so much fun!” Her voice was filled with wonder. She kept her eyes
averted from his face. It wasn’t much of a face, he thought, none at all, as a
matter of fact.

“You’re very welcome,” he wrote
with a stick on the floor. Chance leapt excitedly from her place as she read
his words.

“I almost forgot,” she said,
looking about the cottage. “I found this last night while I was waiting to go
to sleep. To be honest with you, I was exhausted, but after you left, I was
really nervous. I could hardly keep my eyes open, but every time they shut,
they snapped back open and my heart started hammering in my chest. So I decided
to look around. I found those candles there, and this!”

She presented him with a flat,
square stone. It was a little bigger than a book and one of its edges was
broken jaggedly across. Drothspar recognized it immediately as one of the roof
tiles. He took the gray slate shingle from the girl, feeling slightly puzzled.

“It’s for writing,” she said
quickly. “So you don’t have to write on the floor anymore. You can even use a
damp cloth to wipe away the old writing quickly. I checked.” She handed him a
damp cloth. “Go ahead and try it yourself.”

“Thank you,” he wrote tentatively
on the shingle.

“You’re welcome,” she replied
with a smile. She watched as he wiped away the “thank you” from the slate.

“This is wonderful,” he wrote
again, “thank you very much!”

“You’re welcome very much,” she
said whimsically and beamed a smile at him. Her eyes dashed away quickly as she
went on. “Like I said, I really couldn’t sleep anyway. I hope you don’t mind
that I was sifting through your cottage.”

“Not at all,” he replied.
Quickly, he wiped that away to write again. “Had you really never skipped
stones before today?” He was pleased by how much he could write on the
makeshift tablet.

“Not even one,” she answered.
“Where did you learn how to do that?”

“My father taught me.”

“I never got out into the
countryside very much,” she explained. “There are fountains and ponds on our
estate, but no one ever throws stones in them. I think all the stones on the
estate are handpicked—and placed. Probably interviewed, too, before they’re
allowed in. The groundskeeper would drop dead if someone picked up a stone to
throw anywhere, for any reason.”

“Doesn’t sound like very much
fun,” Drothspar observed.

“It wasn’t,” Chance agreed. “I
don’t think it was meant to be, though. I think it was only meant to impress my
father’s associates. He’s not the kind of person who has friends. Or fun, for
that matter.”

“What are you going to do now?”
Drothspar asked.

“Tonight you mean, I hadn’t
thought much about it yet.”

“No, not just tonight. Do you
intend to stay here?”

“I was kind of hoping to,” she
said, a hint of nervousness creeping into her voice. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” he wrote, “I was actually
just wondering if I could ask you for your help.”

“Help with what?” she asked
cautiously.

“I need information,” he began.
“Years have slipped by me. I don’t know what’s happened to my wife, my world,
or even my life.” He paused to clear his slate. “Petreus may have some of,
maybe even all of, those answers. You know Petreus. You’ve even been to see him
lately.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” she said
considering what he meant. Her eyes widened and she stared straight at him.
“You can’t be serious! I just ran from there, maybe two steps ahead of my
family!”

“I know that it’s a lot to ask,”
he wrote.

“No, you don’t,” she said in an
excited voice. “I’m not going back there. They are not going to catch me. If
you don’t want me to stay here, I can keep running, but I’m not going to head
back there to debase myself for my family or that slavering idiot they want me
to marry!” Her face flushed once more with her words, but no sign of
cheerfulness remained.

“You can stay here,” he wrote,
“if that’s what you want. Please don’t be upset. I wouldn’t force you to do
anything, even to leave.”

“Thank you,” she said curtly.

“It’s just that you are,” he paused,
considering how to phrase his thoughts, “somewhat accustomed to me. Can you
imagine what would happen to me if I went to see Petreus on my own?” She looked
at his slate considering what he wrote. Her eyes and her face, however,
remained hard.

“I do understand. I suppose I am
somewhat
accustomed to you,” she said hesitantly. “I would help you, but I
cannot
go back there. They would snap me up in less than a day, I’m sure of it. I’m
not
going to give up my life and my freedom just so my father can make another
conquest.” She paced about the room, muttering darkly to herself.

Drothspar understood her feelings
but was disappointed none the less. He knew he would not stand a chance going
to town without a living person’s help. Having this girl stumble into his hands
had been a gift from God, he was certain. There were no other settlements
anywhere near the cottage now that the Ferns were gone. He might run into some
loggers in the woods, but they would either attack him or run away. He watched
the pacing girl until she stopped and looked at him.

“Do you have to go now?” she
asked. “I mean, do you think you could wait a couple weeks for things to cool
down for me?” Drothspar thought about it as her eyes moved away.

“I’ve waited years,” he wrote. “I
don’t suppose a few more weeks will kill me. Too late,” he added a moment
later.

Chance read his message with a
cocked eye. Reading the last two words she fought to suppress a smile. The
tension in her posture drained from her shoulders and back.

“Thank you,” she said earnestly,
appreciating his patience as much as his refusal to try to force the issue.

“Thank you,” he wrote in reply.
“Today or in three months, you’ve given me back some hope.” She looked away
from his words and hung her head low. Drothspar became concerned he’d written
something that had offended her. He quickly wrote a message to ask if that were
true.

“No, no,” she said, “I’m just
tired, that’s all. I got a little overly excited there. I just need to get some
sleep.”

“What are we going to do with me?”
he asked.

“Um,” she started, biting at her
lip, “I hadn’t thought about that yet, either.” She looked around the open
cottage and her own place by the fire. “I hate to ask you this, but could you
sleep outside?” Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“I haven’t slept yet,” he noted,
“but I’ll stay outside.”

“Thank you,” she said, obviously
relieved.

“You’re welcome,” he wrote. “Try
to get some rest tonight.”

“I will.”

Drothspar checked the fire and
added a few more logs to make sure it would burn through the night. He walked
to the door and let himself out.

“Goodnight,” he heard her call
after him.

He closed the door behind himself
and stared at the surrounding night. He decided to move off the porch so she
wouldn’t be disturbed by the sound of his feet against the wood. The moon had
risen white into the black sky. A cool wind tugged at his robe like the hands
of a small child. He walked down to the pier and stretched himself out on it.
He looked up at the moon and thought about their talk.

She had agreed to help him. Not
as immediately as he might have hoped, but she had agreed none the less. If he
had to wait, he thought to himself, he had to wait. He needed her. It may take
time for her to feel comfortable returning to the city, but time would pass. It
was not as if he had a sense of urgency.

Chance was really all that he
had. She was his only companion, his only contact in years. The time may not
have existed for him, but it had existed for the rest of the world. She had needs
herself, though, and those were as important to her as his own had been to him.
Foremost was her need for independence. That was no bad goal. If Li had married
the man her parents had wanted her to marry, he, himself, would never have
understood the true depths of love.

Where would she have been now, if
she hadn’t married him? Where was she now that she had? He continued to wonder
if she had died the same night that he had. Had that been her blood on the
cottage floor? His mind flashed back to the Ferns, to the bodies in the cellar
and the barn. The bodies had been there, and with them the shadows he suspected
were their spirits.

There were no shadows on the
floor of the cottage! Even if that had been her blood, he thought, maybe she
didn’t die. That was a lot of blood, reason told him somberly. Whoever had lost
it had probably not survived. Still, he argued with himself, there was no
shadow lingering near the blood, nor anywhere else in the cottage. There had to
be hope, he told himself. There always had to be hope.

Drothspar continued to wonder
about hope and freedom as the night progressed. He thought about the choices he
had made that had led him to this point in his existence. “Life,” he thought to
himself, was not the right word anymore. Looking up into the stars, he wondered
where his existence would take him now that his life was over. What would
happen once all of his questions were answered?

Life had always had the same
conclusion. No matter what twists and turns a person took, the path of their
life would eventually end in death. His own life had done just that. Now,
however, he stood on the other side of that ending. What would happen to him
once this path came to its conclusion? His mind staggered at the idea,
shrinking back from a frightening unknown. He pulled his thoughts away from the
shadows and settled them back to the path at hand. Wherever it might lead, for
the moment, he had a path. For the moment, he had goals. Far better to concern
himself with what he could see, he thought, than to worry over an unknown he
had never even approached in speculation or theory.

Pale blue light began to stain
the low, eastern horizon. Drothspar sensed the increasing chill of the
departure of night. Animals, silent in the forest since he had awakened, began
to sound off hesitantly. Questions and alarms cried out in songs and whispers,
all of them searching for hope and answers. Although he could not understand
their meanings, Drothspar was certain something was different about the
animals. He wondered what it could be as he waited for the rising sun.

Drothspar and Chance spent the
day talking and wandering the woods near the cottage. Drothspar wrote of his
concerns about the animals, but Chance could only shrug her shoulders in
response. “I don’t know,” she would say, “I’ve never spent much time in the
woods.” Drothspar nodded and continue to wonder.

At midday, Chance took a few
bites from her loaf. She looked at the meager remains and asked Drothspar what
they had done for food in the forest.

“We had a little garden,” he
replied, showing her his response. “We would visit the Ferns’ farm for other
things. Occasionally, I’d set traps in the forest, but I was never very good at
it. To tell the truth, I would often just let the animals go, so long as we
weren’t really in need.”

Chance showed him what remained
of her bread. She had offered it to him politely each time she ate, but
finally, he asked her not to bother. He looked at the dwindling loaf. “You’re
going to need more,” he wrote.

“And soon,” she added. “Are there
any villages or other farms nearby?”

“Æostemark,” he wrote, “a little
more than a day to the east. That’s all that I know about. Anything that may
have come or gone in the last seven years is a mystery to me.” She nodded her
understanding.

“Maybe we should try a walk to
Æostemark tomorrow,” she suggested. Drothspar thought about it. It would be his
first opportunity to try and move about in civilization. They’d have to be
careful, he thought, but it could be good practice.