Page 39 of Wizards & Weavers (Cozy Questing #1)

“There’s a concentrated cube of elemental ice right through that crack,” Elyssandra replied, twirling her spear and fending off Falina’s attacks while somehow carrying on a casual conversation. “It exploded and opened passages to the surface. It’s what uncovered the dungeon in the first place.”

“A likely story,” shouted Fedro, bringing his blade down in a deadly spike, aiming for Warren’s chest. “I’m sure there’s treasure through there, and that’s why this Wizard of Weathervale wants to seal this place up once he’s looted it all for himself.”

A few quick cracks of his quarterstaff and Warren had not only deflected the Gwerenese man’s strikes, but disarmed him, too. His blade slid across the ice with a scrape and a clatter.

“Believe what you will, round-ears. That cube is a threat to my people and to all who live on the surface. Let us pass, or suffer the consequences.”

The orc answered by charging forward with a terrifying bellow and an upraised hammer. A single smash would crack open someone’s skull. From those crazed eyes, Braiden couldn’t tell if the orc was aiming for Warren or Augustin.

He didn’t wait to find out. His heart so close to bursting from his chest, Braiden unspooled the tangle of panic building in his body, firing it as a spray of conjured thread.

A massive quantity of string spun around the orc’s rampaging form, wrapping him in a messy cocoon. Far from Braiden’s finest work, but it would have to do. The orc toppled to the ground with a great, thunderous crash.

The Gwerenese twins cried out at the sight of their fallen ally.

With a little sense of smugness, Braiden noted the look in both of their eyes, how they’d rejected him at the Dragon’s Flagon.

It wasn’t their fault, of course, and Braiden had enough sense not to feel too sore about it.

He knew he wasn’t the most imposing thing to look at.

Sometimes big things came in small, skinny packages.

He took a beat to study the twins, noting their mutual fondness for fine clothes, Falina in her frilly blouse and tight trousers, Fedro in a gaudily embellished open vest that did little to hide the fine musculature of his torso.

Braiden also noticed their mutual fondness for fine leather boots. Fine leather boots with laces.

Braiden clicked his fingers, engaging the spell from Card No. 37, untying Fedro and Falina’s shoelaces with a mischievous burst of magic, then retying them to each other. The twins tripped over themselves and crashed into a cursing, sputtering heap.

Three down, three to go. Elyssandra engaged the remaining Gwerenese fighters.

In one smooth motion, Warren reached for his hip and hurled his bolas toward them.

The Gwerenese sliced the bolas strings at the last moment, sending the spiked balls hurtling uselessly away.

Warren shrugged, unperturbed, and rushed them with his staff.

And now the horned warrior was bearing down on Braiden himself. Braiden took a moment to feel flattered before the horned warrior raised his sinister sword of blackest midnight.

“Hello again, from the craft shop,” the horned warrior said in a pleasant, tinny tone. “It’s nothing personal, you understand.”

The sword whizzed as it sliced through the air.

The air whizzed back as a furious, howling wind slammed into the horned warrior’s body. His armor clanged like an almighty bell as Augustin’s conjured vortex threw him off his feet, then propelled him at a frightening pace toward King Emeritas and his cluster of elven warriors.

Pained screams and the sound of clanging, crashing metal echoed around the cavern as the horned warrior collided with the captain of the king’s guard, the sheer weight and velocity slamming with all the force of a cannonball.

One armored man ricocheted to another, and another, an expensive and extremely injurious game of lawn bowls.

Barely visible to the naked eye, Augustin’s whirlwind howled and whooshed as it slammed the warriors against each other again and again, too weighed down by their armor and their kingly palanquin to escape.

King Emeritas toppled from his seat with a terrified yowl.

With a single well-placed spell, Augustin Arcosa had taken the elven king’s contingent out of the fight.

Braiden finally understood. This was why they hailed him as a hero.

This was why they called this man the Wizard of Weathervale.

Augustin swept his hair out of his eyes with one hand, shooting Braiden an arrogant smirk.

Braiden tried his very hardest not to swoon.

Flowing like water, with all the grace of a pair of dancers, Warren and Elyssandra fought off their Gwerenese opponents with twirling stave and spear. Finally finding a weak point to attack, they knocked their opponents out with synchronized cracks to the side of the skull.

“I think we did all right,” Braiden said, panting heavily, “but my restraints won’t hold forever, and those armored warriors are going to pick themselves up pretty soon. We still need to make it out of here in one piece.”

Something sharp jabbed into Braiden’s back. He yelped, terrified that someone with a blade had snuck up behind him — but it was only the living skeleton. Gods, his fingers were sharp. Maybe he was still getting used to being made entirely of bones.

“You,” the skeleton rasped. “Stringy. The strings you make, can you make them thin and slender? As fine as you can manage. Hurry!”

“I really don’t want ‘stringy’ to stick,” Braiden said, too anxious to be seriously offended, “but yes. I can conjure thinner threads. Why does that matter?”

The skeleton thrust his hips forward. Braiden stepped back. He never expected the undead to be quite so presumptuous.

“Just cast it over here,” Bones said, gesturing at his torso. “And quickly, if you please.”

Oh — he was referring to his ribcage, not just lewdly rattling his pelvis in Braiden’s general direction. Well, that was different. And he did say “Please,” after all.

Braiden concentrated his magic around the tips of his fingers, shaping his weaving skills in a different direction. He’d become so good at conjuring plush yarns for practicing beer cozies and scarves that making finer strings almost felt like a forgotten end of the weaving spectrum.

Focus , he told himself. Not thick, luxurious othergoat wool this time, but silkworm strings.

Unicorn hair, not that he’d ever felt it with his fingers.

Or spider silk, the stuff of cobwebs, thin and nearly naked to the eye, but strong and sturdy as forged steel.

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. Anything approximate would do.

He unleashed the spell, conjuring glowing, golden lengths of string from thin air. The skeleton took only the briefest moment to admire the display before he reached for the string, tangling it around the protrusions of his ribcage.

One length of the string secured down around his hipbone, another wound across his torso to wrap around a rib, and again and again, string and bone connected in loops and knots by the skeleton’s surprisingly dextrous fingers.

“Finished,” Bones announced, hands on his hips, his nonexistent belly stuck out with pride. A cat’s cradle of golden ensorcelled string covered his ribcage in a haphazard crisscross.

Or was it haphazard? It was a hurried effort, but the final result looked oddly familiar, a deliberate pattern. Where had Braiden seen this before?

“It’s coming back to me now,” Bones said. “In bits and flashes. This is who I once was. I used to make music.”

An instrument. The skeleton had transformed himself into a walking string instrument. Braiden couldn’t help being impressed. But how was this going to help them escape the cavern?

Bones gave his network of strings a tentative pluck, his ribcage emitting a plaintive tone.

“Beautiful music,” he said wistfully. “Powerful music. Now, cover your ears.”

Braiden blinked hard. “I’m sorry. What?”

“You heard me, stringy. Sharp-ears, long-ears, windbag,” Bones shouted. “Cover your ears!”

Everyone hesitated, especially now that both the Gwerenese and the elven guards were starting to pick themselves up. Use their hands to cover their ears when they needed them to cast spells and wield weapons?

But Braiden obeyed, skittering past the skeleton with his hands clapped over his ears. The others did the same, Warren in particular expressing some difficulty in folding down his especially floppy ears.

The orc untangled his restraints, snarling as he climbed to his feet.

The horned warrior laughed bitterly as he thrust the tip of his sword deep into the ice, pulling himself up by the hilt.

King Emeritas waved his fingers in a complicated pattern, his brow furrowed as he intoned ancient elven words.

And calmly, serenely, as if he wasn’t the sole obstacle standing between certain death and the rest of his party, Bones strummed his skeletal fingers against the strings on his ribcage.

A horrific, discordant note ripped throughout the chamber, so horrible and grating a sound that Braiden could hear it stinging his ears even through his palms. The skeleton all but unhinged his jaw. Braiden thought he’d heard the worst that the bony bard could muster.

But then Bones began to sing.

The Gwerenese, the orc, the horned warrior all fell to their knees, weapons crashing as they dropped them, screaming in agony.

The elven retinue, though they were farther away, wailed even louder as the skeleton’s unholy sonic barrage reached their sensitive ears.

The guards clawed at themselves, the captain weeping in distress.

King Emeritas ripped the silks from his palanquin, sobbing as he twisted them into makeshift earplugs with trembling hands.

Bones strolled forward as he strummed, now that the path to the exit was clear, never letting up on his awful melody.

Braiden and the others followed in wide-eyed horror, stepping over and around their fallen opponents.

Fedro had ripped off his vest, wrapping it around his head in a haphazard turban.

Falina had unlaced her blouse, pulling it over her hair until she resembled a frilly pillowcase.

Never did Braiden expect that the cowardly skeleton, of all people, would be the one to save the day. Their party had been spared a terrible bruising. Far out in the frozen passage, when they had safely left their attackers behind, Bones finally ended his performance.

“Thank you,” he said, taking a sweeping bow as Braiden and his friends looked on in befuddlement. “Thank you. You’re too kind.”

Elyssandra clapped her hands, never at a loss for kind words, but so close to speechless now. “That was — that was very unique, Bones.”

“I underestimated you,” Warren told the skeleton. His hand hovered over Bones’s shoulders as if to clap him in congratulations, but Warren thought better of it. “You saved all our hides back there.”

“Yes,” Augustin said, twiddling one finger against the inside of his ear. “A most harrowing performance, indeed.”

“You’re welcome,” Bones said, “but you should thank stringy over here, too. He helped me recreate one of my favorite instruments — on my body, of all places. The Hyberidian Pleasure Box.”

Braiden winced. If that was the ancient Hyberidian ideal of pleasure, he dreaded to consider their concept of pain.

“You can call me Braiden,” Braiden said, smiling. “You should use all our names, now that you’re one of us. You said your memories were returning. Do you happen to remember your own name?”

The skeleton shook his head and shrugged. “No. Not even the first letter. Bones is just bones, I guess, and bones is all that Bones ever will be.”

“That’s not true,” Braiden said. “You’re a formidable ally and a fearsome foe. A bard with, erm, unusual talents. More importantly, you’re a friend.”

Braiden had no way of telling the skeleton’s expression one way or the other, his skull forever frozen in its deathless grin. But he knew that Bones was smiling.