The Realm of Dust and Bone
A B Bloom
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
The stones stared back at him. Around him everything moved too quick, action and reaction merging together as cloaks spun in the twilight air. He couldn’t move, frozen in time; his heart thudding wildly in his chest like the beat of animal hooves in the chase of a hunt.
He didn’t even know what a hunt should sound like. He was a twenty-first century boy, used to the best of everything with few cares or worries. So how did he know the sound of a horn blasting into the sky and the cry of hunters as they chased their quarry down deep in his soul? How could he smell the damp earth and hear the snap of the undergrowth?
How could he know her… like he’d always known her… as though he’d always breathed the scent of her skin; always known the speckled dawn grey of her eyes, the smooth cream of her skin, and the plump purse of her lips.
He hadn’t. But he also had.
Now she’d walked through the stones. She’d gone. Swallowed by time and now far out of his reach.
The blood in his ears rushed and heated. His hands clenched at his sides as he stared at the rock uncaring of the drama unfolding around him.
All he could see was her, disappearing through the clearing. His heart ached. His soul cracked; a deep and resounding split straight down the middle.
She’d come back.
By hell she’d come back, or he would go and find her. One way or another he would get to her, as the gods were his witness.
Snapping his eyes away from the rock, he launched a passing punch at the Druid priest who had killed them once before.
This time they would win. He knew it.
This time he and Mae would survive…
Chapter One
“Mae!” I clutched at my ears as the shout lifted through the trees.
The stones were keeping me safe, hiding my whereabouts within their shadowy depths. My hands splayed against the chiselled now familiar rock. What I found was that the more I touched them, the more they seemed to respond to me, as though they were bending to my will, or to my needs, maybe. Right now, they were warm, and an energy pulsed under my palms, as though they knew me on an intimate level I couldn’t comprehend and were communicating with me through those short but deep blasts of energy against my skin. I leaned closer, what are you telling me? I asked. Now I was talking to stones… Maybe I was losing my mind after all. I guess it’s likely that finding out you can perform magic and do various feats against the laws of nature is likely to muddle one’s mental clarity. My Druid training had muddled me enough, boring and painstaking as it had always been. Now I didn’t need the training because one day I woke up and knew everything. Everything. I could see things before they happened.
I leant closer to the stone, my warm breath bouncing at me from against the surface. What do you need me to do? What do I need you to do? I didn’t know which of these questions was more relevant.
I sniggered a moment to myself. Who was I jesting? The only will around here that we were all meant to bend to was that of my father.
Cringing again, I shrunk against the stone, as his voice calling me rose louder. The stones were father’s. He’d had them carried thousands of miles to be our new shrine, sacrificing our beloved trees at their cost. I stared mournfully at the stumps of the oaks; I wanted to help them, but I didn’t know how. I wanted to help the forest, our people, the future of our Isles—but I didn’t know how.
I didn’t know how to do anything.
The future loomed before us, uncertain and dark. My new skill weaved inside me with a glimmer of gold power, but I had no idea how to use it or what it could do. My father was determined to keep it for himself and had instructed that I should tell no one. That was easier said than done when I had this uncontrollable force simmering under the surface of my skin.
I could save us all. I knew it. But father wouldn’t allow it, he wouldn’t allow me to share my gift with Tristram, our liege and leader, so I kept it wrapped up against my will, hiding it from those it could help. And my old childhood friend knew I kept secrets in my heart. They weighed heavy between us, ruining everything that we once had.
“Mae!” father called again.
I didn’t want to see him. I couldn’t explain it, but I clung to the rock, while it rumbled beneath me almost in warning. My skin slicked with sweat, my pulse thudding. What was I forgetting? I stared about me wildly. I was forgetting something.
Automatically, my hand slipped down into the dirt. Before recent weeks I’d never given much thought to the soil my herbs and plants grew in. It had always been just the medium in which my favourite element of herb lore came to be. The herbs I needed for my role as trainee priestess in the settlement grew in the soil—it was as simple as that. But now I knew so much more. Sensed so much more. The earth, it carried so much energy: from the plants, the trees, the water; it all connected in every single grain of earth.
I pressed my hands down hard, balls of dirt sliding under my fingernails, and then I waited. A tingle tickled against my skin, then a pulse. Closing my eyes, I focused until I could see what I needed.
Father. He was searching for me. The
