Bone Magic by Brent Nichols Read Free Book Online Page B

bridge. She smiled with as much sincerity as she could muster.
"Since we haven't got five crowns, I guess we'll be on our way. The
hunting was good today. We'll just go beyond your town limits and
cook up our venison."
    The mayor's
eyes brightened. "We can't very well turn you away with the sun
about to set. Surely you'll join us for dinner?"
    "That sounds
marvelous," Tira told her. "We accept."
     
    They roasted
the buck outside in a brick fire pit under the stars. There were
fifty or sixty dwarves in the town, and they supplemented the
venison with roast chickens and a vegetable stew, all of it mopped
up with slices of coarse bread.
    There were
always sentries on the walls, but the rest of the dwarves ate
together at long tables set up on the open grass in the center of
town. Tira found herself on a bench wedged beside a sturdy dwarf
with a beard of familiar-looking brown curls. She wasn't entirely
sure if he was Yanil Ironholder until he spoke. The dwarves were
bewilderingly similar to one another.
    A fat dwarf
with a gray-flecked beard sat on her other side. He was a leather
worker, and he was delighted to learn that Tira and her group
didn't want the hide of their buck. "The hunting isn't so good
around here anymore," he told her. "We've been here too long." He
stabbed a bit of venison with his fork and waved it for emphasis.
"I haven't had proper red meat in a week."
    "I'm glad I
could contribute," Tira said.
    "No she isn't,"
said Yanil with a grin. "She's hoping to charm her way across the
bridge without paying." He chuckled as she tried to look innocent.
"Lots of people try that." He winked. "Sometimes it even
works."
    When the meal
was over, five dwarves brought out musical instruments, a gittern
and a lyre, a couple of drums and a strange, long flute with a
curve near the end. They perched together on stools on the far side
of the fire, plucking on strings and tuning their instruments, and
the others began to gather around.
    "Hey," said
Lina, pointing at the curved flute. "That's a krummhorn!" The dwarf
holding it blew briefly into the mouthpiece, and the horn gave a
moan, surprisingly deep. "I didn't know it would sound like that,"
she added.
    "Mother told us
about those," Sari said. "She was a musician when she was young.
She went to the city, and everything!"
    Tira grinned,
enjoying her enthusiasm.
    "Oh, look,"
Lina cried, pointing at the dwarf with the lyre. He had a bow in
his hands, and was making tentative strokes across the strings. "Is
that a crouth?"
    The dwarf
looked up and grinned, a flash of white teeth in the black forest
of his beard, and Lina shrank back. "You know your instruments," he
said. His voice was low and scratchy, but filled with a quiet pride
that made it beautiful. "We pronounce it 'crewth.' My grandfather
played the crewth when our people hid in caves on the slopes of the
Cold Mountains. The goblins held the forest on every side, and they
hunted us. We were hungry and afraid, and almost without hope, and
the nights were the worst of all."
    He was no
longer looking at Lina as he spoke. He gazed over the heads of his
listeners, looking into another place, another time. Voices fell
still as he spoke, and the other musicians stopped tuning,
listening instead.
    "When every bit
of wood that could be scrounged was needed for the fires, he kept a
bit aside." His fingers stroked the crewth as he spoke, delicate
iron rings on his fingers glinting in the light of the fire. "When
every man was laboring from sunrise to sunset to keep hunger at
bay, he found the time to shape scraps of wood into something
more."
    The dwarf with
the gittern ran thick fingers over the strings, a quick burst of
sound that made the hairs on Tira's arms stand on end. The entire
settlement had gone silent.
    "When the night
came, and darkness fell, and we cowered so far underground that
even the light of the stars couldn't reach us, when cringing in
silence was our only hope to evade the goblin hordes, some of us
made a