The Place of Stars and Bones Read online

  As the Rider’s words died away so did my interest in the corpse and her tiny, withered progeny. I had been mistaken; this was no neatly arranged burial. This was a tableau laid out by the Rider. She had mur-dered this woman, perhaps the child as well. She had then set them in a grotesque parody of eternal repose and left them to become part of the plain.

  I gave the body one final look then, taking care to give the dead woman a wide berth, I resumed my northward progress. The Rider remained for a mo-ment, then gave one last chuckle and followed in my wake.

  • • •

  The sun had again sunk low when we came upon the second corpse set into the cracked surface of the plain. It lay face down, its limbs thrown wide. The Rider gave a snort as I circled the dead thing. She did not deign to alter her path and rode within a few paces of it. Much to my surprise, as she passed it by the body remained still. The Rider lifted her head and smiled at me. I raised an eyebrow then turned and again began to walk.

  As the day wore on and dusk approached we came upon more of the colorless, half-buried corpses. Here lay two together, intertwined as though in the act of making love. Not far off another three lay side by side, their arms crossed over their chests. Steadily more and more of the things began to appear; all gray and withered, all partially sunken in the polje. As I picked my way forward I continued to give them a wide berth. The Rider chuckled as I moved around the corpses and occasionally laughed aloud when I strayed too close and one lashed out or began to spasm. Slowly my temper began to rise.

  Not long after the sun had again burned the horizon I found that my way was barred. Stretching before me across the plain was a veritable ocean of the dead. They lay in rough columns or heaped atop one another, their limbs set at odd angles. In the fading light they stretched as far as the eye could see. The further I gazed the thicker the tide of corpses seemed to be. Interlaced as they were, the carrion created a labyrinth into which I dared not stray. There was no way to pass amongst them without some waking while I endeavored to avoid others. So it was that I stood at the edge of that grim tableau hating it for its openness yet impassibility.

  “The need to continue consumes you, does it not?” asked the Rider. Though she stood behind me I knew she wore the same smirk I had seen cross her face a hundred times since our first encounter. “You know not why and you know not how, but something drives you ever onward.”

  I regarded her in the last glow of the sinking sun. She continued to leer down at me. I refocused my attention on the sprawled ranks of corpses.

  I was agitated; uneasy with the prospect of trying to avoid the corpses. Be that as it may, the Rider was correct. I felt an urgent need to move north, to conti-nue my pilgrimage despite what obstacles might stand before me. Pressing my lips into a thin line I drew my sword and stepped forward.

  I split the skull of the first corpse to wrench itself free of the polje. My blade bit through fragile bone, shattering its crown and sending its teeth in all direc-tions. Down through spine and ribs my sword des-cended, bisecting the ambulatory collection of bones. When my blade came free the thing fell away from me, hacked in two. It struck the ground with a clatter, scattering its bones across the cracked surface of the plain. Into its place stepped three more walking heaps of carrion.

  I cut the legs from the nearest and, as it fell, used my momentum to split the second from shoulder to hip. I adjusted my stance, blade still in motion, and brought the third low with a blow to the neck. All three hit the polje in rapid succession, breaking to pieces as they fell. Before the bits of these spectral ca-davers had skittered to a stop, I charged.

  At first only small contingents of corpses rose to come stumbling and pitching towards me. I cut them down by ones and twos, their frail physiques falling to my sword like wheat to the scythe. Then, as I drove further into their midst, the grasping hands and gna-shing teeth began to grow thicker. They tore at my cloak and armor, ripped at my face and hair. I squin-ted my eyes, swinging wildly. I separated hands from arms and heads from necks. Still they came and with each passing moment the shambling waves of corpses grew thicker. As I swung my sword to the right, bony fingers would tear at me from the left. When I turned my attention in that direction I was assailed by those that had filled the space I had just cleared. With their combined weight they began to press in on me, draw-ing me down, pulling me further into their midst.

  Of a sudden I felt sharp fingers jab into my heel and I cried aloud. Glancing downwards I saw a disembodied hand clutching at my boot, the bony appendage digging into both leather and flesh. I raised my foot and brought it down with all the force I could muster. Bone crunched beneath my heel.

  When I turned back to the horde I saw nothing but rank upon rank of the dead. Their arms were out-stretched, their jaws working up and down in mute orison. Their craving was palpable, radiating from the desiccated mass as they jostled with one another to get at me.

  I had been a fool.

  To try and hack my way through innumerable foes in a vain attempt to reach some unknown destination was rash, imprudent. Though I still did not feel the slightest hint of fatigue, should I attempt to stand my ground or cut my way through this forest of the dead I knew my efforts would soon be for naught. Their numbers were far too great. Weak though they were as individuals, together their desirous grasping would soon drag me under.

  Swinging my sword in a wide arc before me I began to retreat. My boots crunched through the re-mains of those corpses I had already shattered, fur-ther pulverizing the dry bones. Back and back I went, the flashing blade before me barely keeping the dead from pulling me under. When at last I was in the open and no longer treading on sundered carrion I halted my retreat.

  The dozen or so corpses that had followed me out of the mass grave I felled as quickly as I could. In my haste I did not bother with proper form, I simply cut at them until they lay in pieces at my feet. When they were no longer recognizable as separate entities I stood and waited for their twitching to abate.

  Ahead of me the mass of bodies lay silent and still. The only movement was the fluttering of my cloak in the stiffening breeze, the only sound the rush of blood in my ears and the laughter of the Rider.

  “You are fortunate to have made your retreat when you did,” said the pale woman. “To have tarried longer would have caused a cascade. The dead would have risen up en masse and you would not have been able to return them to their slumber simply by re-treating.”

  I took several deep breaths. Gradually, normalcy, ―or what passed for normalcy in this place―again reasserted itself. Behind me was a vast expanse of no-thing, ahead a great mass of the dead. Soon the stars would begin to show, covering all in their weird, ever-shifting light.

  “You are strong,” the Rider said with an acid little chuckle. It seemed I was to be the butt of yet another of her jokes. “Yes, and you are adept in the arts of war. It would seem, however, that here the use of force has availed you but little.”

  Annoyed, I sheathed my sword, shoving it roughly back into its scabbard. “Are you going to suggest an alternative?” I asked. “Or are you simply going to sit there and smirk ?”

  “It is not my place to say,” replied the Rider.

  “Perhaps I should ride double with you?”

  “That…” the Rider said and paused, “might be nice.” Her smile was like that of a predatory animal. I shivered, regretting my suggestion.

  The Rider offered me her hand and, after a mo-ment’s hesitation, I scrambled up behind her. She continued to snicker as I situated myself. Then, her smiling tone tinged with malice, she said, “Put your arms around my waist. Should you fall there is no telling what the dead might do.”

  Reluctantly I extended my arms and looped them about the Rider’s waist and pulled myself against her back. Even sitting she was nearly a head taller than I. My eyes hovered just above the line of her shoulder, making me feel small and child-like. Against my cheek and chest her flesh was hot, seeming to radiate the barely contained malice I saw
in her eyes.

  Without warning the Rider set her heels to the flanks of the pale horse. The animal broke into a lope and I tightened my grip. Beneath her nearly trans-lucent skin I could feel the muscles of her midsection and back relax as she began to move with the animal’s rolling gait.

  Over the sea of gray corpses we rode, the un-shod hooves of the strange, glabrous steed cracking bone and powdering dry flesh. As we passed the dead re-mained dormant and unmoving. When darkness at last closed in around us and I no longer had to gaze at the ever-thickening sea of the dead I breathed a sigh of relief, my first since coming to this forlorn place.

  ──╥──

  three

  ──╨──

  I turned my head skyward in an attempt to calculate our position by the weird starscape that hung over-head. After several moments I noted with satisfaction that we still moved north. The Rider had not attemp-ted to deviate from my intended route. Her reason for remaining on course? Yet another mystery. I sighed inwardly. I was tired of the veiled nature of this place; its atmosphere of the inscrutable and un-assailable. Whatever the Rider’s motives, whatever her end-game, I wished to know. To that end I said, “We go north even though I have no say in where you direct your animal. Why?”

  That striking woman, with her black eyes and odd-ly painted physique, turned and gave me another of her unnerving grins. My brow furrowed.

  With a harsh cry the Rider kicked the pale horse in the flanks. It sprang forward, rippling cords of muscle exploding in a burst of speed that nearly drove me from its back. I latched onto the galloping beast with my thighs and clamped my arms around the Rider with all the force I could muster.

  As the horse continued to accelerate the Rider threw her arms wide and raised her face to the stars. While she exulted in the breakneck flight of her mount I attempted to keep from falling to my death.

  Chancing a look downwards I saw the tangle of bodies below had thickened. I could see little of the karstic plain between the heaps of dead, only dark shapes one atop the other. Here they were so thick that passage through their ranks would have been impossible. Should I have attempted the journey on foot I would surely have been lost.

  We flew over the strewn ranks of carrion, the horse’s hooves no longer seeming to touch the sur-face of the plain. The speed at which we moved be-gan to seem out of sync with the animal’s strides. I realized that I was now witnessing firsthand the phenomenon I had observed when first I had spied the Rider. As the wind whipped about me and tore at my cloak I squeezed my eyes shut and laced my hands together about the Rider’s middle, cursing my luck for having found myself in a place such as this.

  All that night we rode, the Rider reveling in the speed at which we tore over the corpse fields. For my part I tried desperately not to fall from the back of her mount. When dawn came the Rider began to ease the horse’s pace, and by the time the stars had faded we again moved at a trot.

  I looked about, feeling vexed. To be sure, I was pleased to be moving at a more reasonable pace, but the dawn that greeted us was unlike those I had ex-perienced previously. What this change in locale might mean, what new oddities it might bring, wei-ghed heavily upon me.

  We had made significant progress during the night’s ride and around us the landscape had begun to change. Looking down I saw the half-buried corpses appeared to be scattered more sparsely. There, per-haps, was a bit of good news. However, this slight elevation of my spirits was short-lived.

  Ahead of us a bank of fog lay upon the plain. It was wan and formless; scrubbing out the horizon and joining both land and sky. A wind, fetid and stale, swirled the fog into ghostly tendrils that rose briefly into the air only to be again swallowed by the amor-phous gray mass. Into this wall of mist the Rider guided her steed until it closed about us.

  “Now that the fog has washed out the sun will you lead me astray?” I asked. “How would I be able to tell if you turned a few degrees to the west or east with every step?”

  The Rider turned her head. With lips pursed she said, “You do not need me to lead you astray. The fact that you are here is proof enough of that. I have brought you north and now we are nearly at the edge of my domain. There is nothing more I need do, for if you continue further you will come to an end far worse than any I could mete out.”

  “And what sort of end would that be?” I asked my tone clipped. In response the Rider only shook her head.

  “Few have made the journey as far as the fog. I slay them upon the plain and leave their bodies to become a part of the landscape. Fewer still pass thro-ugh. Since I failed to kill you, to lead you astray would be a pointless act. Your own foolish determination will precipitate your ruin.” She chuckled then, the dis-tant reverberation of that insipid noise causing the hairs at the nape of my neck to prickle.

  After this exchange had faded we rode on in sil-ence while the mist washed over us in silent waves.

  While walking beneath the sun or stars one is able to mark one’s progress no matter how slow it might be. In the fog this is an impossibility. Time seems to stop. The space between each hoofbeat became an eternity. In that gray void I observed every pulse of the Rider’s heart as it drove blood through the veins resting just below the surface of her skin. The ripple of muscle, the shift of flesh, the bounce of my sword at my side, the flap of my cloak…I saw them all in the most excruciating detail.

  I know not how long we rode in that spectral fog. I could have lived, died, and been reborn a thousand times. On the ground below the corpses continued to appear then melt away. The Rider kept her body still, her head pointed always forward. The horse never varied its pace. When finally the fog parted I felt as though I was on the brink of madness.

  As clinging tendrils of mist wafted away from its flanks the pale steed drew to a halt. After a moment’s pause it took several steps sideways. I turned my head and blinked.

  Before us, its upper echelons scraping the clouds, stood a wall of monumental proportions. It stretched away as far as the eye could see to both east and west, fading into distant fogbanks. Its surface was broken and irregular, its face misshapen as if made of mater-ials that had been heaped indiscriminately rather than laid carefully and purposefully. From its battlements there extended curved, blade-like merlons. These jag-ged defenses were set at right angles, stabbing at the sky like a line of upraised scimitars. Leading up to the base of this gargantuan fortification were more of the gray corpses. At the place where the wall met the cracked surface of the plain they were piled one atop the other as though they had dropped dead while attempting to scale the battlements.

  “I do not recall asking to be brought…here,” I said. “Wherever here is.”

  The Rider snorted. “You move north―where else would you have been going?”

  I thought for a moment then said with a shrug, “I do not know.”

  “None of you do,” replied the Rider. “Not until you reach your destination. And then...then you wish you had not.”

  “Is there a gate?” I asked.

  “Yes, there is a gate,” said the Rider.

  “Take me there.”

  The Rider held the horse where it was.

  “Take me to the gate,” I repeated.

  “Very well,” the Rider said and guided her animal to the right, moving us east.

  The horse made its way along the wall at a steady, plodding walk. The Rider had returned to being sullen and peevish. She squirmed when I adjusted my grip around her waist. Overhead the mists rose and twis-ted, joining with the mass of clouds that seemed to grow darker with every step. During those rare inter-vals when the sun managed to break through the fog, shifting motes of ashen light played across the polje and the piles of withered cadavers. When the distant glow touched the wall I squinted my eyes and tried to make out what the barrier was comprised of. Then, like a hammer blow, it struck me.

  Bones.

  The wall was made of bones.

  The pale Rider must have sensed the tension that suddenly coursed
through me for her shoulders rose and fell in a silent laugh. “You are slow to realize the obvious.”

  I did not reply and we again return to silently par-alleling that soaring aberration.

  Like everything in this place, the wall was vast. It continued in an unbroken line curving away before us. There appeared to be no end, and sickened as I was by the prospect of a bulwark made entirely of bo-nes, I soon found myself lulled into the same apathy that had enveloped me on my trek across the plain. I asked myself why I should be so shocked to see such a partition; one that stretched seemingly to the ends of existence and beyond? Had I not just rode across miles of corpses that, had I been afoot, would have torn me to pieces? The morbidity of this place was staggering, yet relative unto itself. All around were the remnants of the living, but nowhere had I seen actual atrocity, simply its aftermath. I shivered at the tho-ught; the countless years of butchery that had resulted in the corpse fields and the wall of bones.

  As if in answer to these thoughts an image welled up behind my eyes; heaps of newly slain, the bodies piled at the base of a crenellated wall amidst broken shafts of spears and arrows. The parallel to what I now beheld was uncanny. I blinked, trying to clear it from my mind. It would not go.

  I shook my head and inhaled sharply. The Rider peered over her shoulder and I caught her eye. She then looked away and urged her mount forward.

  The gate was not what I had been anticipating. Con-sidering the scale and the macabre nature of the wall I had expected a portal equally as dour. Instead what greeted us was simply a gap in the fortification. To either side lay the remains of what might have been a massive door, but so little of it remained I could not say for sure. Whatever the case, it had fallen to dust ages ago.

  The Rider reigned in as soon as we were centered in the middle of the breach. Scanning the ground for the gray corpses and seeing only a few, and none close by, I slid from the back of the glabrous steed.

  “There is your gate,” said the Rider.