A Treasure of Bone & Promises

papery shapes on the road, suggesting that no heavy feet or iron-bound cart-wheels had been plying the path in months.

  They followed the road all that morning as the mountains grew and grew above them. Dapplegrim asked Caewen what she called them, and she said they were the Snowy Mountains. He snorted and said, "They were Ardse Nith last time I came this way."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Snowy Mountains."

  Caewen caught herself laughing a little. "Some things do not change then."

  Tumbles of stone began to appear on either side of them and they passed through the remnants of a great gate of stone flanked by walls that were cracked and split by the freeze and thaw of hard winters. The fortress on the road was long dead and only sightless statues of bearded men with round shields and shattered spears and women who wore armour and helms gave any hint as to who once had lived here.

  The ruins soon fell away, buried by rockslips and tangled creepers. They were passing out the other side of them when a clatter of pebbles announced that something large had moved nearby. Two big shapes loomed into view in the half-shadow of tumbled wall.

  Caewen had never seen anything like them. They were taller than any person she'd seen, though their legs were turned backwards, like a dog's leg and they had claws tipping their fingers and their skin was a brindle grey and white with shaggy fur in patches. Their faces were bestial and their yellow eyes gleamed. But these were not dumb beasts. They stood upright and wore clothing, such as it was—rags and bits and pieces of armour—and both of them had a long spear made of silvery ash and tipped with bronze that glowed a dull red in the morning light.

  "Hoy there," said the first of the creatures. "Who's that then?"

  "Are those Troldes?" whispered Caewen.

  "Troldes?" Dapplegrim laughed. "Troldes! What a notion. No Trolde comes out in daylight. And no Trolde would be so small—unless it was a baby Trolde, I suppose," added Dapplegrim thoughtfully. "Troldes must grow up from something, and Trolde-wives are always complaining about their brats."

  "What are they then?"

  "Just a couple of Boggarts. Easily run off. Show them your sword and they'll turn and run."

  "But I can't use my sword. I've never fought with a sword in my life."

  "They don't know that do they?"

  "I'm unconvinced."

  As they rode up to the broken wall the two Boggarts loped out into the road and crossed their spears. "You is riding on our road, you is," said one of them. "And there's a fare to pay."

  "I see," said Caewen. She decided to try politeness before swords. The stories about Boggarts made them out to be savages and monsters who stole children to eat, but so far these two were acting more or less civil—they were civilly trying to rob her... true... but it was civil nonetheless. "My name's Caewen. And this is Dapplegrim. We're pleased to meet you but we don't have any money to pay for any toll."

  "No money. You hear that, Bloacher?" said one Boggart to the other.

  "I heard that, Blort. I did. But I can't believe it. Young lady with a terrible looking sword on her belt and riding a fancy horse like this 'un. Your typical young lady doesn't ride through beast-infested wilds with naught but a sword. Must be some manner of sorceress or wandering hero. Hard to believe she don't have anything valuable-like on her person."

  "I agree, Bloacher. Hard to believe."

  "Now, Blort, unless the young miss wants a fight, I expect she'll switch her song and be forthcoming with something of value. Like coins, but not necessarily."

  "Could be gems, couldn't it Bloacher?"

  "True. Or could be a gold dagger with spangled stones set in the hilt, Blort?"

  "Quite right. Could be a nice ring of gold or a couple rings of silver, Bloacher?"

  "Always a surprise what travellers keep on their person. That's what I've always said, isn't it, Blort?"

  "It is, Bloacher. It is. That you do say it. I've heard you."

  "Right," said Caewen with a bit less patience. "Here's the thing. It's complicated but we've been sent off north by this witching-man who-"

  But the Boggart's faces had gained a strange expression. They had stopped paying attention to Caewen and were very carefully paying attention to Dapplegrim instead.

  "Here," said the one called Blort. "That's an odd thing. Your horse. It don't look like a horse no more."

  Bloacher took a step back, and then another. "That's no horse."

  They both got off the road then.

  "Very sorry to have inconvenienced you," said Bloacher.

  Blort half-hid himself behind a square block of stone. "There's no need to pay no toll. Great big sharp-toothed, red-eyed thing like you. If you want to ride through here with a lady on your back, you're more than welcome."

  "And Boggarts taste terrible," added Bloacher, "Just so you know."

  "Poisonous," hissed Blort. "Boggarts are poisonous to big demon-thing, horse-things."

  "Quite right, Bort. We are," said Bloacher.

  In a second they were both gone.

  "What happened there?" said Caewen.

  Dapplegrim rippled his shoulders in a manner that suggested a shrug. "I think we just walked far enough from my old master's bones for his illusion to fade. One moment I must have looked like an ordinary horse to them and the next..."

  "They saw you for what you are. There might be more of them though and they might rethink things with a dozen or a hundred fellows at their backs."

  Dapplegrim nodded. "Onward then."

  They left the ruins behind them and had no further problems with Boggarts, or with anything else. Once, while creeping up the twisting path that led to the narrow pass they heard a strange, eerie voice off in the woods singing. Caewen found it entrancing and asked if they shouldn't go and find out who it was.

  Dapplegrim said, "We definitely should not. Things that sing like that in the woods want you to come and find them. And I'd bet gold to rocks that such a thing does not want to merely be friends."

  The road soon became a path cut from rock and it curled and twisted. Sheer drops grew on both sides until Caewen was very happy to make it to the threshold of the pass where there were no more steep drop-offs a misstep away. The cliffs that rose on either side of them were decorated with carved faces and there were more faces within the crevice. Because the sun never quite reached into the space, the air was much colder and drifts of snow were heaped into the cliff walls. The faces here had bristling eyebrows beards of icicles. They were fierce looking and some were monstrous with fangs and leering eyes. "Who carved these?" asked Caewen. "The same who lived in the ruins?"

  "No, not the people of the fortress. These are warnings against going north. There have been many wars between the people of the south, where day and night cycle in equal measure, and the folk of the northern lands, where twilight is everlasting, or beyond that, the night-swarthed realms where sunlight never reaches."

  "How can there be a place that sunlight never touches?"

  Dapplegrim stopped then and looked around at the ghastly faces that were cut into the walls of the cliffs. "I do not know for certain but they say that when the Queen of the Day and Queen of the Night made their bargain to share the world, the Queen of the Night cheated and reneged somehow. She chose to live in the very north of the world. The farther north you go, the closer you come to her realm, and the closer you come to a place where day ceases to have power."

  "I don't know if I believe in old goddesses. Prayers to them never did us any good. Never helped us against Mannagarm."

  "Who's to say goddesses hear prayers just because you mortal folk think they should.?Who's to say that goddesses don't have more important things to attend to?"

  "Like what?"

  "Wars," said Dapplegrim.

  "What wars? No one is at war."

  "Not in your little valley. Not recently. But there have been more wars between the night-realms and the day-realms than can be counted and there will be wars again."

  They started walking again
then. Dapplegrim's hooves made a dull clip-clip-clipping on the ice and stone. The echoes fluttered like sharp-winged bats.

  "But why? Shouldn't goddesses know better?"

  "Should they? Should kings and queens know better? And lords and ladies? And magicians and witches? Power, even very great power, does not confer wisdom. You're right that many are sick of it. The Wisht for example. They were servants of the Queen of the Night, but they have slipped loose and made their own realms and they rule themselves now. But there are still enough servants—loyal servants on both sides—who still want land, power, glory or titles."

  She wondered about that as they walked the icy rift between the mountains. She wondered about the point of endless wars and she wondered what would happen if either dynasty were to win. Would the world become a sun-baked ruin if the Queen of the Day triumphed? Would the whole of the Clay-o-the-Green turn into a icy nightland if the Queen of the Night won? Neither seemed attractive prospects.

  It took most of the afternoon to pass through the cleft in the rock and when they were through the sun on the other side did seem dimmer and it was not just the dimness of oncoming evening.

  Below their gazes the lands beyond the Snowy Mountains stretched in an endless wilderness of shadowy forests and mist-hung vales under a drear grey sky. These were the lands of twilight, as Dapplegrim named them. In the gloaming it was possible to see scatterings of orange lights here and there—cities or towns crouched in the deep dells. The nearest of these was near enough for Caewen to see white towers rising against the forest behind.

  "Is