Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(17)
“Is the road so very dangerous?” she asked uncertainly. She didn’t really care; she wanted to stew in silence and self-pity. She still couldn’t believe she’d allowed herself to be tricked and trapped and carted off to the edge of the world by a man named Ralph, who didn’t know when to shut up.
“Any road that cuts through the wilderness is dangerous!” he warned. “Outlaws roam the Riverlands to the south, no matter how hard His Majesty tries to keep them in check, and pickpockets and thieves will lay traps outside the cities, setting upon weary travelers. Not to mention other soldiers who’ve not found honest work after the war… or decided never to bother to try.”
Wren perked up slightly. “Have you often had to fight?” A highway robbery would certainly shake things up.
“Never,” the driver chimed in helpfully, causing Ralph’s puffed-up chest to deflate.
“Not yet,” he clarified, peering around ominously.
Wren sank back into her seat.
Like most in the Dominions, Ralph refused to travel after dark, misunderstanding the undead. They could rise and attack in daylight as well as at night, even though they preferred the darkness. It had to do with the warmth of the sun, which made it difficult for their ghosts—cold in nature—to take shape. Like cool morning mist, their spirits would be steadily burned away by the heat of the day.
Regardless, all the major roads had bonesmith-installed protections anyway. They would be totally safe, especially since Wren was with them, but when they arrived at a small roadside village, she was told to exit the wagon and sleep in the stables Ralph had secured for the night, so she did. With distaste.
Backwoods places like this would be unable to afford to keep a bonesmith in residence, so they had likely paid for one to see to their protections. Wren could sense the bones that surrounded the village, as well as the additional talismans that had been set into several of the larger buildings, including the stables. Perhaps they’d had a ghost attack their expensive horses at some point, making them wary. Or perhaps this allowed them to house visitors in a place with no inn.
When they departed the following day, they had three additional passengers. They stopped several more times in smaller villages before they reached Aspen Ridge, a large town with a full bone palisade outside the stone walls that enclosed it. It was a highly frequented crossing, with a dedicated bonesmith temple. Homes and villages could erect whatever protections they wished to guard themselves from what lay beyond their borders, but they did nothing against the undead within. All it took was one citizen too poor to pay for proper burial rights, or a tavern brawl gone awry and an unchecked body in a gutter, and there could be a ghost haunting their streets. That’s why the larger towns kept at least one reapyr and valkyr pair on hand, or if they could afford it, a temple in charge of all burials, death rites, and defenses.
The capital had a full embassy housing dozens of bonesmiths. It was where Wren’s father spent most of his time when he wasn’t visiting Marrow Hall and being disappointed by her. However, it was her father’s travels across the Dominions to inspect local temples or dine with important nobles that most interested her. Not for the chance to rub elbows with high society, of course, but for the sights. For the adventure. Despite the circumstances, this trip to the Breachfort was sadly the most exciting journey Wren had ever been on.
Most of the passengers they collected were poor villagers in search of paid positions as Breachfort guards, looking for regular meals and a roof over their heads, but they did pick up another tribute, a silversmith healer fresh from Brighton’s academy.
They also picked up a pair of stonesmiths, hired on for temporary work, and a girl who claimed her father was a woodsmith.
“I’ve seen him call up trees myself.”
The others shared dubious looks at that. The woodsmith craft had all but disappeared from the Dominions, along with some of the other lesser smith abilities like tin, lead, or copper. The stonesmiths, too, might have followed them into obscurity, if not for the fact that their craft was still useful. As such, they could support themselves with good pay and steady work, if not status. But training to become a tinsmith or coppersmith was seldom worth it, their wares not valuable enough and their careers less lucrative. Most learned at the knee of parents or grandparents and were considered hedgesmiths or base-level conjurers in comparison to nobly trained smiths.
If the girl’s father was a woodsmith, he was part of a dying breed, and if any of them had been powerful enough to raise trees from the ground, they weren’t anymore.
All smiths had been more powerful once. There were stories of stonesmiths calling up the Spearhead Mountains from flatlands and goldsmiths drawing molten streams of gold straight from riverbeds. The librarian at Marrow Hall said the Gravedigger could sense bones from miles away, but apparently magic faded over time, bloodlines watered down and abilities weakened generation after generation. In the case of the woodsmiths, there wasn’t a lot of forest in the Dominions to begin with, so it was probably difficult to maintain the connection to the material their magic required.
Luckily—for bonesmiths anyway—as long as there were people living in the Dominions, there would always be bodies and bones.
* * *
They arrived at the Breachfort the following afternoon.
Wren spotted the Wall first and stood in the wagon to get a better look at the massive granite barrier that marked the Border. It snaked across the landscape, over steep hills and rocky ground, disappearing in both directions. As they grew closer, the fort itself became visible, nestled against the base of the Wall and made of the same gray stone. Its highest tower was built directly into the Wall behind it, rising several stories above, giving the best view of the land beyond. Matching towers were spread along the rest of the Wall, acting as lookout points and housing smaller garrisons. There was a gate within the Breachfort, allowing crossing to the other side, and another farther south called the Silver Gate, though the accompanying fortress was small and more lightly guarded.