Shavala kept watch during the early morning hours on their fifth day out of the city, while the air grew an autumn chill and a thick fog rolled in. She’d bought thicker tunics while she’d been in the elven quarter, but she would need to find a replacement for her old human-style winter coat the next time she was in the city. She liked the pockets that came with human coats.

Setting her bow to the side and rubbing her hands on her arms to warm up, she felt the comforting weight of her new quiver resting against her back. There hadn’t been anything wrong with the horse bow quiver from Four Roads, but after years of wearing a quiver on her back, she’d gotten used to it feeling a certain way, and the horse bow quiver had been shorter than she liked.

The new one was just as wide, able to hold two dozen arrows, but it was the same height as her old hunting quiver and felt right on her back. Lorvalla had been able to construct it in less than an hour, using stiff, reinforced leather so the sides wouldn’t fold in. It was plain but serviceable, and she’d discounted the price once Shavala had mentioned that her brother was a leatherworker.

They’d left the city the day after speaking to the wizard, and had stayed in a fishing village along the North Road the first night, but on the second night, there hadn’t been any villages large enough for an inn. On the third day, they’d left the road, angling northwest as they followed the direction the compass was pointing. They’d passed a few small farms at first, but hadn’t seen any signs of human habitation for the last day and a half. Shavala liked the change—she was able to breathe easier when she wasn’t surrounded by strangers.

An owl hooted nearby as the sky gradually turned from black to gray. The sun hadn’t yet shown itself, but it was easier to see now, even with the fog, and Shavala decided to explore around the camp. They’d set up their tents amid a copse of red maple trees, the leaves already starting to turn their signature color. There were other groups of the trees nearby, so she grabbed her bow and chose a route that would take her to the closest one. As she walked, she peered through the fog, looking and listening for any sign of trouble, but the stillness was undisturbed except for the owl. Shavala couldn’t remember which species of owl hooted to welcome the sunrise, but this one didn’t seem concerned by her presence.

When she reached the trees, she laid her hand on one, extending her elder senses. Just like the trees surrounding their camp, as the weather cooled, the leaves had become less active in their work to gather energy from the sun, and the tree was preparing to abscise them for the winter. There was sap in the tree, but Corec had mentioned that red maples weren’t as good for harvesting as other varieties.

Shavala continued to the center of the copse, finding a weathered stone structure partly covered in moss. The main body of it was a column as tall as she was, filled with carvings and markings. Some of it looked like a language, but it wasn’t one she recognized. Pushed up against the front of the column was a shorter piece of stone with a flat top, forming a ledge two feet across and six inches deep. She ran her fingers over the stone, but her elder senses didn’t feel anything other than its presence.

With the sun peaking over the horizon, she heard Bobo coming up behind her and turned to greet him. “You’re up early.”

“It’s my turn to start the fire, but when I didn’t see you, I thought I should look around first.”

“I found this. I think it’s a shrine.”

“Yes, it is.” He cleared away some moss that had grown over a stone carving near the top. “Look—it’s a shrine to Raven,” he said. “You can still sort of see the wings. The ledge there is the offering table, where you’d place something in exchange for your prayers. Raven is said to like seeds and grain, berries, and shiny stones or bits of metal. The hillfolk still maintain their shrines, but you can find old ones like this dotted all around the continent. Do the elves follow the old gods?”

“No, but we speak of them. There aren’t any shrines in Terrillia, but my mother used to tell me stories about Fox getting into trouble, and Raven or Bear saving him.”

Bobo grinned. “I always liked the one with Fox getting stuck on a raft in the river, in water that was moving too fast for him to swim, and having to hop on Bear’s back and ride him to the shore. Or that one Katrin sings about, when he tries to spy on Arodisis bathing.”

“I’d never heard the one about Arodisis until she sang it. I suppose my watch is over if the sun is coming up.”

He nodded. “I’ll go get the fire started.”

After he left, she opened her old belt pouch, the one with her treasured possessions, and drew out one of the shiny, rounded rocks she’d collected over the years. She didn’t have any sort of prayer to make to Raven, but she laid it on the offering table anyway. It seemed like the right thing to do.

#

“This must be it,” Corec said, staring at the compass in Katrin’s hand, then back at the stone-walled house.

It was the first building they’d seen in days. As they’d cautiously circled around it from a distance, the needle had swung to keep pointing to it. The house had a one-story cottage-like section attached to a round, three-story tower. There was a chimney in the tower and one in the cottage, but no smoke came from either of them.

“There’s the door,” Bobo said. “I don’t see any skeletons.”

“Why is the ground dug up?” Shavala asked. The area in front of the house was all loosely packed soil that looked like it had just been plowed, with no sign of the weeds and grasses that were growing everywhere around it.

“Maybe he kept a garden there and tore out all the plants after harvest?” Katrin suggested.

“Let’s go slow,” Corec said, drawing his sword. “Who has the gem?”

“I do,” Treya said.

“Are you sure you want to do this? You can give it to me, or at least go find a heavy branch to use as a club.”

“I can’t fight with something in my hands. If they’re like the drakes and I can’t hurt them, I’ll back off.”

He nodded. “Katrin, Shavala, what about you? You could hang back until we see what happens.”

“We’ll be careful,” Katrin said, and Shavala nodded. They hefted the cudgels Bobo had found for them in Tyrsall. Bobo’s cudgel was a cured and polished blackthorn rootball he’d bought in Four Roads to replace his last one, but for the girls, he’d found something straighter, with iron knobs dotted all around the head to make them heavier.

“All right,” Corec said, “but we’ve never fought like this before. Let me go in front and don’t get anywhere close to me. I need a lot of room with this sword, and I’ve only fought in close formation with other men wearing heavy armor. I’m not used to watching out for people who don’t wear any.”

The others nodded, so he advanced ahead of them, moving slowly and scanning from side to side. Nothing happened, and he was just starting to relax when he reached the large patch of bare dirt in front of the house. The instant his foot touched it, the dirt began roiling and churning, and…things clawed their way out of the ground.

The scene was too chaotic to make sense at first, but as the dust settled, he realized the collections of dried bones in front of him were dog skeletons, or perhaps wolves, reassembled as if they were still alive. They seemed to be taking stock of the situation.

“For some reason, I thought they’d be from humans,” Bobo said from behind him and to the side, just before the pack rushed at them.

The skeletons didn’t bark or growl the way real dogs would, nor did they howl like wolves. They simply made a clattering sound as their bones rubbed or knocked together. Corec would have preferred the howling.

Most of the skeletons were heading his way, which was good since he was the one with the armor. With a quick glance to either side to make sure nobody was near him, he swung his sword down and around in a much wider arc than he would ever use against a regular opponent. He caught two of the skeletons full on, easily shattering the bones. The skeletons were much lighter than living dogs, and the two he’d hit were knocked several feet away. Unfortunately, the parts he hadn’t broken were still trying to move.

A third skeleton reached him then and tried to bite his leg. He laughed as the teeth scraped harmlessly along his greaves. “They can’t get through my armor!” he shouted. “Fall back as much as you can so they don’t come after you!”

“Too late!” Treya shouted.

Some of the skeletons that had originally come after him had separated out to attack the others. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Treya’s foot—which glowed with a pale white light—kicking a skull off of one of them as if it was a child’s ball. It went flying across the yard. To his other side, Katrin, Shavala, and Bobo were standing back to back in a group, swinging their cudgels when one of the skeletons got close.

Deciding to speed up the fight, Corec concentrated for a moment and felt his mind shift as his combat spells took hold. He charged at a skeleton heading for Katrin, coming at it from the side and cutting it in half down the middle. The front legs tried to pull it closer so it could bite her, but she swung her cudgel down and bashed the head in. When that didn’t stop it, she crushed the legs, too.

Corec disabled two more skeletons enough that the others could handle them, then ran for the ones going after Treya. The one with the missing head and two others were circling around her, and while she was distracted by two of them, whichever one was behind her would rush in and try to bite her—though the headless one apparently didn’t realize it couldn’t bite anything. Two other broken skeletons lay nearby.

As he reached them, Corec swung his sword at the one closest to him, swinging down at an angle so it crashed through the ribcage from the right, then into the left legs. As he pulled his sword back into position, Treya kicked and broke one of the headless one’s front legs, then spun around and crouched down as she smashed both her fists—which were also glowing—into the other skeleton’s back.

Corec finished off the headless one by taking out two more legs, then he stomped on the rest of its bones, finding that his boots were more efficient than his sword now that the skeletons were down on the ground. When he glanced around, the others were following his example, and he winced seeing Treya breaking the bones with her bare feet. He wondered how she managed to do it without slicing her skin open on the sharper pieces.

He was about to tell her he could take care of the rest when a massive, dirty white shape appeared out of nowhere and crashed into him, knocking him on his back and making him lose hold of his sword. With the creature’s size, and with the helmet cutting down on his peripheral vision, it took Corec a moment to realize that this, too, was a skeleton. The shape reminded him of a bear, but it was far larger than any bear he’d seen before—and unlike the dog skeletons, he could feel this one. It kept stomping on him, and he thought it might have dented his armor if his new armor spell hadn’t been reinforcing it.

He tried to roll over on his side so he could push himself up, but between the weight of the armor and the constant attacks from the bear skeleton, he couldn’t manage it. The same thing had happened in the fight against the drake, and it was starting to annoy him.

Then there was a shout. “Stop!” A burst of white light flashed over everything.

When Corec could see again, the skeleton had frozen in place. He scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, picking up his sword. Now that he could view it from a better angle, the skeleton still looked like a bear, but the head and spine came up to his chest. The shout had come from Treya, but when he looked her way, she was down on her knees, using one hand to brace herself against the ground.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “What did you do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, gasping. “And I don’t know how long it’ll hold.”

Taking the hint, he turned back to the skeleton and slammed his sword down across its spine as hard as he could. The bones shattered and the pieces fell, so he stomped on the legs, breaking them, then crushed the skull. Satisfied that the creature wouldn’t be a threat once Treya’s spell wore off, he turned to help her up, but Katrin and Shavala were already there, supporting her shoulders.

Bobo had returned to whacking the other skeletons into smaller pieces, and Corec joined him, finishing off the bear skeleton first.

After they were done, he stood still, catching his breath from the exertion. “I hope that’s the last of them. Was anyone hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Treya said.

“So are we,” Katrin added.

“Then I guess it’s time to go in. Treya, do you still have the gem?”

She nodded, and they approached the house.

#

The door was barred, but opened easily when Treya held the gem up to it. She was about to go through when Corec held his arm in front of her.

“Let me go first,” he said, “in case there are more of them.”

She nodded and moved out of his way, then waited as he went in.

After a moment, he called out, “It’s all right, there’s nothing here!”

She followed him in to find one of his mage lights providing illumination. The first floor of the building was all one large room. The far side held a kitchen, with rotting vegetables and a pile of dirty dishes on the counter. The middle of the long room was a sitting area, with two wooden chairs arranged around a small table, facing an empty fireplace.

The tower side appeared to be the wizard’s workshop. Counters and shelves lined the circular area, filled with bottles and jars of different sizes. Most were empty, but several held liquids of different colors. Skeletons of small animals had been arranged on one of the shelves. They weren’t moving like the ones outside, but were instead fastened in place on wooden mounts. A faint, unpleasant odor pervaded the room.

A table in the center of the work area held the skeleton of a small bird, assembled on a wooden mount like the others. The wing bones were spread out to make it look like it was flying, and a piece of paper had been cut to resemble a wing, then glued to the left side in place of the original one. A bottle of glue and another sheet of paper lay nearby on the table.

“Was he trying to make a flying skeleton?” Bobo asked, peering at the contraption.

Treya shuddered.

“At least it would have been small,” Corec said. “I don’t think it could have hurt anything.”

Katrin said, “If that thing came flying at me, I wouldn’t wait around to see whether it could hurt me.”

He snickered and pulled her close so he could kiss the top of her head. “Has anyone seen any of the things Rallus wanted us to find?”

“I’ll try the wand,” Katrin said, holding it up front of her. “I just point it at things, right?”

“That’s what he said, but you have to be close.”

“All right, give me a couple of minutes.”

While she was doing that and Corec was standing watch in case they were attacked again, Treya helped Shavala and Bobo search the first floor. Neither the wand nor the search turned up the items they’d been sent to find, so they went up the stairs to the second floor of the tower. It held a library with over a hundred books, arranged in small groups around the room and interspersed with wooden figurines and other decorations.

“I think this is the scrying orb,” Shavala said, standing in front of a clear glass sphere, six inches across, that was resting on an onyx stand. “I’ve seen one before.”

The wand glowed when Katrin held it up in front of the sphere. “It must be. How heavy is it?”

Shavala lifted it from the stand and tested its weight. “I can carry it.”

“These books are probably worth something,” Bobo said, examining the titles. “Probably worth a lot.”

Corec said, “After we find the other things we’re looking for, we can come back for them. We won’t be able to bring them all, so you’ll have to let us know which ones would be best. Katrin, does anything else in the room make the wand glow? The spell book might be in here, too.”

She walked around the room, waving the wand over all the books and knickknacks on the shelves. “I don’t see anything.”

They went up the next flight of stairs to the third floor, which turned out to be the bedroom. A figure in a gray robe lay collapsed on a fur rug between the bed and the cold fireplace.

Treya extended her healing senses. To her surprise, she found something. “He isn’t dead!”

She knelt down beside the elderly man and placed her hands on either side of his head. He was colder than he should have been, and his breathing was slower, but the part that felt wrong was in his head. She focused her healing there, the magic coming to her more easily now. Bobo’s injuries from the drake attack had been more severe than anything she’d tried to heal up to that point, and while she hadn’t been able to finish the work, she’d at least gotten him out of danger. She didn’t see any injuries on the old man, but whatever had happened, her senses told her he wasn’t in as bad of shape as Bobo had been.

Finally, the man coughed, then opened his eyes and pushed her hands off of him. “Who are you?” he asked in raspy voice. “Why are you in my home?”

“A wizard named Rallus sent us. Are you Lodarin?”

“Yes,” the old man said, pushing himself up to his knees. “Rallus actually sent someone to help me? Imagine that.” He swayed unsteadily, so Treya helped him up to a chair.

“He thought you were dead,” Corec said. “He wanted us to bring back some of your things for safekeeping—your spell book, a gauntlet, and a scrying orb.” He nodded to Shavala, who handed him the orb. He set it carefully on the bed. “If we’d known you were alive, we wouldn’t have taken it.”

Lodarin frowned and shook his head. “Safekeeping? Heh. I should have known. Rallus always was a greedy bastard.”

“What happened to you?” Treya asked. “Why did he think you were dead?”

“The last time he was here, he said he was worried about my health, living all alone out here. He wanted to set up an alarm ward so he could send help if anything ever happened to me. I told him it was pointless, and Tyrsall was too far away to do any good, but he insisted, and I got tired of arguing with the old fool.” The wizard’s voice had gotten stronger as he spoke, and he glared around the room. “I don’t like visitors. There are too many of you.”

“I’ll go downstairs,” Katrin said, tugging on Shavala’s hand to get her to follow.

“I suppose I will, as well,” Bobo said, and went after them.

Corec stayed.

“What happened?” Treya asked again.

The old man grunted in irritation. “Tried to do too much. Some big spells, too close together. It put me in drain shock. I managed to make it up the stairs, but fell down before I reached the bed. Since I figured I’d be out for a few days, I triggered one last spell that I always keep active, so I wouldn’t need to eat or drink while I was asleep.” He looked proud. “I created that spell myself, but it must have triggered Rallus’s ward.”

“You would have recovered on your own?”

“Yes. I told him I didn’t need any help. How long was I out?”

“We talked to him seven days ago,” Corec said. “He didn’t mention how long it had been since he found out.”

“Heh. Side effect of the spell. It keeps you healthy while you’re asleep, but it takes longer to recover. I should have known he was up to something. He just wants the spells I’ve been researching. Well, I’m not going to let him get his hands on my spell book or the gauntlet. I’ve warded them both—when I die, they’ll burn to ash, so you can tell him he doesn’t need to fear anyone else coming across them. I’ve already burned all my notes.”

Treya glanced at Corec, who shrugged.

“Well, if you’re feeling all right, I guess we should be leaving,” he said.

“First, tell me how you got in here, and why all my skeletons are broken.” The wizard’s voice had continued to recover, and now sounded almost commanding. Treya wondered how he knew about the skeletons.

“Rallus gave us a gem,” she said, holding it up. “He said it would get us through your defenses, but that we’d have to handle the skeletons on our own.”

“I bound that gem to him. He must have figured out a way to make it work for other people. You risked your life to loot an old man’s home because someone else asked you to?”

“We were trying to get his help with some magical runes,” Treya said, allowing hers to flare to life.

“All three of the girls have one,” Corec said, “and I’ve got runes on my arms matching each of theirs. We’re trying to get rid of them. We thought they were binding runes, but Rallus says they aren’t.”

Lodarin stared at Treya’s forehead for a moment. “They’re binding runes, all right.”

“He lied about that, too?” Treya asked.

“Words mean what we want them to mean. A binding rune marks a binding spell, and a binding spell binds two things together. This spell binds you together; therefore, it’s a binding spell. Everything else is just pedantic arguments over definitions. It’s not the type of binding spell Rallus knows how to cast, so he wants to give it a different name, but it is what it is.”

“Do you know how we can get rid of it? He was going to cast a major banishing spell if we were able to bring your things back.”

“Come here,” the old man said to her, then motioned to Corec. “You, too.”

When they both got close, he grasped their wrists in his bony hands and whispered words Treya couldn’t hear.

After a moment, he stopped whispering and let them go. “It didn’t work.”

“You tried to banish it?” Corec asked.

“Yes. A regular binding spell is a weak thing, easy to remove. This one is rooted more deeply, with tendrils linked to something I can’t see. The banishing spell can’t see it at all, so there’s nothing for it to work against. Rallus could have told you that with thirty seconds of effort. There was no need to send you all the way out here.”

“Is there anything you can tell us about it?”

“What does it do?” Lodarin asked. “A binding spell always has a purpose.”

“I can always tell what direction the girls are in, and they can tell what direction I’m in. So far, that’s the only thing we’ve noticed.”

Lodarin let loose with a wheezy laugh. “That’s all? Hardly seems the sort of thing to be worried about.”

“It keeps happening, and I don’t know why, and I can’t stop it. If I’m even the one doing it.”

“If you don’t want it to happen, then don’t let it happen. You may not be a wizard, but you’re a mage of some sort. Think about how it feels when you cast a spell, and then pay attention and make sure you don’t feel that way when you don’t want to cast one.”

“I’ve never felt anything when it happens, at least not until my arm starts itching.”

“Itching?”

“My arm itches, her head itches, and then about ten days later, the runes show up.”

The wizard furrowed his brow. “I’m not familiar with the itching, and the binding spells I’ve used worked instantly, but I’ve never cast one on a person before. Some spells are more subtle than others, but if you’re the one casting it, you’ll be able to feel it.”

“I’ll try,” Corec said doubtfully. “I mean, I’ll try to stop it if I feel it.”

Lodarin stood and stretched, then waved his hand in the direction of the fireplace and whispered a few indistinct words. A fire sprang to life, without any wood to feed it.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” he said, “I’m tired of talking and I want you to leave. You tried to heal me, so I’ll forgive you for the skeletons—this time. Take the orb with you and give it to Rallus. You don’t want him as an enemy, and I don’t know how to use the bloody thing anyway.”

“Shouldn’t you come with us?” Katrin asked. “What if you get sick again?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me other than age, and you can’t heal that. I wager I’ve got a few more years left in me, but I don’t like the city. Never did.”

“We’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want,” Corec said.

“And give me back my gem. As soon as you’re gone, I’m putting my defenses back in place. You can tell Rallus that when I die for real, they’ll fade on their own, and he can ransack my house all he wants.”