The Place of Stars and Bones Read online

  I gave a short, humorless laugh.

  The glabrous pair sidestepped several paces then turned back in my direction. I watched as both horse and rider rippled with tension. Their gaze seemed to smolder, burning into the prize of which they had been twice cheated. Unable to help myself, I smiled.

  “Insult me if you like,” I said. “You will not con-vince me to face you head on like a fool. Come again, if you will, but I have no interest in dying by your hand. Attack and I will spurn you. Try to insult me and the result will be the same.”

  “Face me!” growled the Rider.

  “No,” I said.

  “Coward,” hissed the Rider again.

  “Say what you will,” I shrugged.

  The Rider snarled and her angular features became suddenly grotesque. She kicked her heels savagely in-to the sides of her mount and galloped straight at me. There was no subtlety to this charge, no finesse. This suited me just fine. In trying to goad me into action she had only succeeded in raising her own ire. Her form was now sloppy, her balance off-kilter. That meant I now held the advantage, slight though it was.

  As the Rider neared I made as though to leap to one side. She adjusted her trajectory accordingly. This put her on a course that would bring her mount al-most on top of me. In the split second between my feint and the Rider’s turn, I positioned myself within her guard. As the wind from the horse’s passage brushed my face I raised my arm and hooked it over the Rider’s shoulder. I tore her from the back of the pale steed and drove her into the ground. She hit the earth with a muffled thud and bits of shattered polje leapt into the air around us.

  The horse ran on for several dozen paces before it began to slow. I did not turn my head to watch the beast, but instead lowered the point of my sword until it rested against the Rider’s throat.

  The Rider gasped and writhed, trying to catch her breath. She wheezed, gouging at the polje with her heels, her arms wrapped about her chest. I stood over her watching, waiting. She coughed several times then at last drew a full breath.

  When she had regained her voice the Rider mutt-ered something only half audible.

  “Speak up,” I said.

  In that strange, far off voice the Rider repeated what she had said. The words were guttural, their cadence obscene. Upon hearing them I shuddered, wishing I had not asked that they be repeated. It was as though the words had splashed a stain across my conciseness. I knew that should the Rider utter more in this strange language the stain would grow, an inky black spot that dripped venom behind my eyes. I pressed the point of my sword more heavily against her throat.

  “You do not like what I have to say?” she asked, the corners of her mouth turning up in a spurious little grin.

  “I do not.”

  “A moment ago you said that you did not care if I spoke.”

  I shook my head. “Speak all you want in the common tongue, but do not burden me with that vile parody of a language.”

  The Rider continued to smile.

  “Very well,” she said stolidly.

  We regarded one another, unmoving.

  At length the Rider licked her lips and asked, “Will you kill me?”

  There came a gust of wind, fearsome and cold, and I stumbled forward. Inadvertently, I pressed the point of my sword into the Rider’s flesh. She winced, turning her eyes up to the stars. In the space of a heartbeat her smile broadened then suddenly faded. I regained my balance and looked down upon the pale-skinned woman lying at my feet. A thin rivulet of black liquid had begun to seep from the place where I had nicked her throat.

  “Was that a look of triumph, or perhaps one of anticipation?” I asked.

  The Rider’s eyes remained fixed on the stars, her lips pressed tightly together.

  “Is it that you wish to die?” I asked.

  She did not respond.

  “What release would death provide for something like you? What possible good would it do me? What-ever the case may be I do not think you should be indulged. Whatever you want would more than likely result in suffering. My suffering.”

  The Rider remained silent.

  I waited. Still, she said nothing.

  “So be it,” I shrugged. “Speak now or I shall take your silence to mean surrender.”

  “It is you who stands above me,” growled the Rider, “so it is for you to determine if I live or die. Slay me if you wish, but I will not speak my own sur-render.”

  “You will not yield?” I asked.

  The Rider hissed and dug her long fingers into the polje, plowing miniature furrows into its surface.

  “Submit,” I said, “I may have a use for you.”

  The Rider let out another burst of heinous, gutt-ural syllables. Cringing, I shouted over the top of her, beating back her words with my own:

  “Yield to me! Yield, or you shall know neither life nor death! I will cut your limbs from your body and set you upon the back of your horse to wander this forsaken place for eternity!”

  The curses suddenly abated. In their wake my head throbbed and the cold wind seemed to bite dee-per into my bones.

  The Rider drew breath and said in an almost in-audible whisper, “I yield.”

  ──╥──

  two

  ──╨──

  The Rider and I made our way in tandem, wordlessly plying the featureless expanse of the plain. She was mounted; I remained on foot. Her horse moved along at a sullen trudge, seemingly galled at having to adopt at a pace less than a gallop.

  Overhead the wheeling bow of stars had given way to a cloudless sky of powder blue. In this new firmament the sun shone as white and colorless as the plateau which we traversed. At the place where thesky should have met the land it faded to an etiolated haze. This haze joined with the far reaching polje, scrubbing out any semblance of a proper horizon.

  By the achingly slow movement of the anemic sun I was able to navigate the empty plain, calculating my position by the shadow I cast. The Rider sat slumped atop her animal, not seeming to care which direction we went. Her expression was dour, her demeanor little more than restrained hostility. I had made her yield and this, apparently, had displeased her mightily. She remained by my side not out of any sense of loyalty or even curiosity, that seemed plain enough. I gathered that her failure to kill me meant she was bound to me in some way or another. Perhaps her plodding along beside me fell under the purview of some code I was not privy to. Whatever the case may have been, I was content to see her sulk rather than swing her club at my skull. To ensure that she was not tempted to further hostilities I had made her leave the damnable thing behind.

  In the light of day the Rider’s colorless flesh shone brightly, reflecting the glow of the strange white sun. When looking upon her I noticed that her skin app-eared almost translucent. A network of veins could be seen weaving their way just beneath its surface. When she moved, the extension and contraction of her muscles was eerily discernable. This did nothing to detract from the line of her figure which, though long and wiry, was still unmistakably feminine.

  The Rider’s hairless mount bore many of the same characteristics as its master. The rippling of muscle beneath its skin was almost hypnotic. Disturbed, I turned away from the strange pair and kept my eyes focused on the middle distance. There was nothing to see save cracked earth and blue sky. This vastness did little to settle my nerves.

  As we walked the sun slipped westward, its pace impossibly slow. Once again it appeared as though we made no forward progress at all. By the time the sun had visibly sunk towards the washed-out horizon my mind was reeling with our seeming lack of progress.

  With a disgusted sigh I came to a halt. Beside me the Rider reined in her horse. We stood abreast for a moment saying nothing. Then the Rider slowly urged her mount forward. The animal turned in a wide circle while its passenger regarded me.

  As though she had read my very thoughts the Rider said, “You walk and you walk and yet it seems you go nowhere. You do not tire, you do not thirst, you do not h
unger. You march on not knowing why. Tell me this is not true. Tell me this is not true and I will know you a liar.”

  I did not respond.

  “All through the night and unto dawn…then from dawn until dusk,” said the Rider gesturing to the blurred horizon. “All through the next day…on, and on, and on. Have you begun to wonder why you do not grow weary?”

  I looked up at the Rider, squinting against the glare of the sun. She stared back, her black eyes reflecting my distorted image back at me.

  “Am I in the land of the dead?” I asked.

  The Rider barked out a single peal of laughter. “No, you are not in the land of the dead! There are dead things here, but this is not their domain.”

  “Where am I then?” I asked. “Where am I that I can walk all night and all day and feel neither thirst, nor hunger, nor fatigue?”

  “If you do not already know, I will not tell you,” said the Rider with a smirk. “Very soon we will begin to meet those dead things of which I have spoken. Perhaps then you may discern where you are and why. Ask them your questions. Perhaps they will answer.”

  I shook my head. “Riddles. I have no use for such things. In fact I am beginning to question your use-fulness entirely.”

  “Release me then!” hissed the Rider.

  “No,” said I.

  The Rider let out a harsh cry and bared her teeth at me as though she were dog. They were sharp and white, the canines wickedly pointed. She kicked the flanks of her horse and it reared up on its hind legs, striking at the air with its hooves.

  I stood my ground. “You yielded. You are mine. At least for a time. Continue to scream and see how much difference it makes.”

  My words were more boast than threat. I sincerely hoped my bluff would strike a chord or call upon whatever code held the Rider in check. Should my gamble come back on me I would have little recourse but to draw my sword and again face her in combat. The prospect was a dubious one.

  The horse reared a second time. The Rider turned her face to the sky and howled. Then, as though the wind had been knocked out of them, the pair slum-ped back to earth. Silently I let out a sigh of relief. Though I had bested her once, I had no wish to re-new hostilities. She would not make the same errors again and the likelihood of a second victory on my part was greatly diminished even if she no longer possessed a weapon.

  Lowering my head I resumed my march. After a time the Rider rejoined me and side by side we con-tinued north.

  The sun had grown large, its face bloated and indi-stinct. As it reached the horizon its white glow sud-denly changed and grew darker. The light faded from the washed-out hue of day to the color of bronze. The sun itself began to glow a dusky, lambent orange.

  I shaded my eyes and watched as that burning sphere sank ever closer to the place where the land met the sky. At last it touched the edge of the plain and the haze that had obscured the horizon seemed to burst into flame. Gold and amber fire danced in a thin line across the edge of the world. The air itself filled with a florid glow, the dying light reflected by the ubiquitous haze and the plain itself.

  Then, as quickly as the phenomenon had occur-red, it vanished. The sun slipped below the horizon, leaving behind only a pallid afterglow. In the east, where the sky had faded to a deep indigo, the first of the stars had already begun to appear.

  “Not long now,” said the Rider.

  I spared her a sidelong glance then renewed my march.

  Through the next night we trekked while overhead the stars shimmered in their millions and the biting wind whipped at our flanks. With the coming of the dark the Rider became almost exuberant. She and her mount made a game of riding off a short distance then charging back towards me. She would steer her animal to within inches of me and pass with a rush of air that tossed my hair and cloak. To these games I lent no outward sign of agitation and kept my eyes on the plain before me. Each time the horse passed, however, I had to fight the urge to throw myself out of its way.

  On her eighth pass I lifted my hand and said very softly, “That is enough.” The Rider reigned in her mount and walked it slowly back towards me. When she had drawn alongside, she let her shoulders droop and set her eyes straight ahead.

  Why had she stopped? Perhaps this had some-thing to do with the unspoken oath that kept her in check. Then again, perhaps not. She was like a scol-ded child, her fun suddenly spoiled. Whatever the reason for her acquiescence I breathed more easily now that the Rider’s hell-beast was no longer threat-ening to bowl me over.

  The stars wheeled overhead and the interminable hours of darkness dragged on until another day daw-ned, white and hot. When the sun had at long last moved past its zenith and my shadow had begun to grow long, the dead things of which the Rider had spoken at last made themselves known.

  Much like my first glimpse of the Rider, I was at first unsure of what it was I saw ahead of me. For days the only other presence in this vast lacuna had been the Rider. Now, the addition of something else, anything else, made me mistrustful of my own senses. As we approached and the thing in our path did not vanish like a mirage, I finally conceded to the fact of its existence. After having drawn up beside it, how-ever, that same sense of unreality returned.

  Half-buried in the polje lay a corpse. It was the body of a woman wrapped in a funeral shroud and clutching the near-skeletal remains of an infant. She was a desiccated husk, both her flesh and wrappings colored a dull, lifeless gray. Her face was partially covered by the pall, the fabric sunken into the hollow sockets of her eyes and nose, a skeletal grin her only discernible feature. It appeared as though mother and child had lain out under the cycling motes of stars and the blazing sun for years, perhaps millennia. It was impossible to tell who they had been or how long they had been dead.

  The grotesque appearance of the two corpses did not stop me from crouching to inspect them further. After my prolonged trek, seeing something different, even something as morbid as the bodies that lay before me, was a welcome sight.

  I noted the woman’s posture; it was peaceful, almost serene. She lay flat on her back, the child clut-ched to her breast. Who had laid her out thus? Per-haps she had been a pilgrim like myself; fallen and ar-ranged by her companions for lack of the means with which to bury her. It certainly appeared as though she had been set here as a part of some ritual—

  The sudden twitch of the woman’s arm and the rasp of her jaw drove me backwards in surprise. I landed sprawled upon my back, my cloak tangled be-neath me. I scrambled to my feet, shattering the sur-face of the karstic plain and revealing subsoil that was as gray and dead as the woman and her child.

  At this the Rider threw her head back and cackled. Her slight breasts rose and fell as she expelled that terrible, broken laugh, one hand to her mouth. The sound filled the hot, dry air rolling away over the vast expanse of nothingness that surrounded us. I sent a curse her way and shook pieces of polje from my cloak.

  Turning back to the corpse I again scrutinized her. There was no movement, no hint of life. She was as she had been before; long dead, mummified by the anhydrous plain.

  Behind me the Rider continued to bray with laughter. “Have you lost your courage? Why are you lying there slack-jawed, trembling like a child? Why keep you so far from the poor dead woman? See how close you can get before she again wakes.”

  I turned to the Rider, my eyes still wide. “Then she did move,” I said. “It was not just a figment, a hallucination?”

  “She moved,” said the Rider, her eyes crinkling with mirth. “Most of them do.”

  “Most of them?” I asked.

  “Most, but not all.”

  “There are more?”

  “A great many more,” said the Rider with a barely suppressed a smile.

  Feeling foolish, but nonetheless wishing answers, I asked, “Why?”

  “Ask her,” was the Rider’s reply.

  I drew my sword and the Rider shook her head and buried her face in the palm of one hand. Slowly I approached the dead woman and her in
fant holding my blade out before me. When the point of my sword was within an arm’s length of the desiccated corpse it again moved. A twitch of her wrist loosed her skeletal hand from where it had lain over the body of her child. As dry flesh peeled from bone, the corpse’s head crooked backwards at an impossible angle and her jaw forced itself open. She spasmed and jerked, dislodging bits of the surrounding karst. Quickly I stepped back two full paces. The skeleton ceased its convulsions.

  “They move,” cooed the Rider. “They move just as they once did. They are as greedy in death as they were in life. So it is that when they see something they desire…” she trailed off.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would desire and covet-ousness persist after death?”

  The Rider smirked, her lips drawing back to show the tip of one pointed canine. “It is their greed that drew them here in the first place. It is what preserves them. Their desire is what lives on, not the flesh.”

  I stepped forward again, my sword leveled. When the dead woman began to writhe I thrust my weapon into her skull, piercing it between the eyes. One bony hand came up, its fleshless fingers wrapping them-selves around my blade. I drove the sword further into the corpse’s skull feeling the point rasp through the empty space behind her eyeless sockets. The skull cracked and brittle chunks of bone fell inwards. With a shudder I withdrew my blade, severing most of the dead woman’s fingers. Her infant, its toothless jaw working, wriggled on its mother’s chest.

  I took several steps back, returning to my previous position. The corpse again ceased its jerking and the squirming child stilled, its tiny limbs once again merc-ifully inanimate.

  “What could it possibly want with me?” I asked.

  The Rider shook her head, still smiling odiously. “What do any of them want? That is not for me to say. I simply slay them and leave them to shrivel in the sun.”