Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,69
sun crested the lowest slopes of the Varagas. Her face stung from harsh alchemical depilatory powder, and her hair was an unhappy tangle of braids and pins without a maid and an hour of combing, but she was dressed.
Iancu awaited them in the kitchen. The lines on his face seemed to have deepened overnight, which tied a hard knot of guilt behind her breastbone. But despite the fatigue shadows, his eyes were sharp with interest. He wore riding clothes as well.
“This may well gain us nothing,” he warned, though the speed with which he packed bread and apples and jerky belied the caution. “But it’s worth investigating. We can reach Valcov well before dusk with a steady pace.”
They rode wide-chested, sure-footed trail horses with dark liver chestnut hides and striking flaxen manes. Ashlin was smitten with her mare as soon as she mounted, and spent much of the ride crooning to the beast in Celanoran. Cahal rode rear guard, his dark eyes moving constantly and a bow ready at his back.
East of Arachne the hills rose wild. The lower slopes of the Varagas were thick with silver firs and sun-hungry oaks and beeches decked in brilliant autumn copper; beneath the canopy ferns and fungus carpeted the ground, and moss cloaked falls of dead wood. A green twilight held the underbrush, broken by stray shafts of light. Woodpeckers drummed the grey bark of snags, a sharp tattoo to accompany the horses’ rhythmic four-beat gait and the dry-bone crunch of leaves. Wind swept the upper branches with a hollow rush, dancing spears of light across the ground and stirring the heavy scent of loam and pine and leaf must with the more immediate pungency of warm horse.
Lovely and scenic, a welcome relief from the city’s smells and sounds and narrow streets. It ought to have been, at least. Instead Savedra could only watch the shadows for any flicker of movement. Too early for wolves to grow bold, but there were always bandits, and today her head was full of witches and spirits and things hungry for living blood, despite the reassurance of the wards that lined the road. Sometimes she thought she heard a soft tinkle of bells, and remembered the dancing wood nymphs of Iancu’s stories. Not the deadliest of forest spirits by far, but she was just as glad she saw no further sign of them.
The horses navigated the steep trails easily and by early afternoon they were in the highest hills. The chill in the air sharpened, and soon they heard the rush and froth of the Ardos¸, which split from the Herodis and flowed into the Zaratan Sea. The river’s deep-carven chasm marked the border between Selafai and Sarkany.
The village of Valcov straddled the divide, comfortable in the centuries of peace between its parent nations. Sarkany was more concerned with the Ordozh raiders in the north and Iskar to the south, and Selafai’s longest grudge was with Assar across the sea.
Townsfolk eyed them curiously as they rode past the sprawling stone-and-timber wall that enfolded the clustered stone-and-timber buildings. They passed fields of turnips and cabbage and winter wheat, and smelled sheep and goats before they neared the pens. When the wind shifted Savedra caught the greater stench of a tannery and mill smoke; the clatter and rasp of lumber-working echoed in the distance.
The center of town smelled more invitingly of a bakery and cooking from the tavern. They watered the horses and tethered them in front of the inn; Savedra, Ashlin, and Cahal went in while Iancu vanished quietly to search for information. As quietly as a stranger in a small town could ask questions, anyway.
“Try not to steal any honey,” Savedra told Ashlin as they entered the tavern.
Her stomach rumbled at the smell of meat and herbs, and she ordered ale and venison pies in badly accented Sarken, pretending not to notice how the conversation in the low dim-lit room faltered around them. She paid with a silver griffin and received Sarken pennies in change. Dull silver glinted amid the copper—a thin, uneven coin engraved with an owl on one side and crude letters on the other. She knew it from Iancu’s stories, too—a striga, or witch-coin. If she were a sorceress or a disguised spirit the silver would burn her fingers or glow at her touch. It stayed cool and slick, and she caught the tavern keeper’s eye as she sorted it from the rest of the change, thanking him and tucking it into her inner