Books & Bone

by Victoria Corva

  Emberlon sighed and folded his hands in his lap. ‘Then it’s good that I didn’t destroy it, much as I wanted to.’ He shook his head. ‘The Old King. What kind of king would sacrifice his kingdom?’

  Usther gave Emberlon a strange look. ‘His kingdom died centuries ago.’

  ‘The kingdom is the land, and all who live upon it. To steal from the future to feed the past is the worst thing a ruler could do.’

  ‘And you know so much about it?’ Usther’s tone was sharp, an eyebrow raised.

  Emberlon went very still. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, I know nothing about it at all.’

  Ree lowered herself to the floor and crossed her legs. She’d seen Emberlon get like this from time to time. Small things would trigger him.

  ‘Best not to upset him,’ her mother had told her once. ‘He left a lot behind, coming here. More than most. And the truth is, you can never completely leave the past behind. Not until Morrin claims you.’

  Ree had heard whispers that he’d been King. It struck her as strange that she needed to petition the new king to save her from the old one.

  ‘Will it take long to recover it, this tablet?’ Smythe’s voice was strained.

  Emberlon blinked and shook his head. ‘No. Not long at all.’ He stood up from his chair in one smooth motion. Ree was struck again by how Emberlon always managed to look so tired and yet stand so straight. He walked to the sarcophagus in the centre of the room, which he kept meticulously clean and uncluttered, and which he always complained at Ree for sitting on. She thought, for a moment, that he was going to push aside the heavy stone lid, that he’d been storing all the dangerous spells and rituals there all along, but he knelt at one side and eased aside a section of the stone base. He slipped his fingers in and pulled out something wide and flat, wrapped in old linen, then restored the base.

  ‘Never far from my sight,’ he said. Smythe’s hands twitched out to accept the tablet, but Emberlon placed it in Ree’s hands.

  If they hate you, they will hurt you. If they fear you, they will flee from you.

  ~Tombtown proverb

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  A FATED DEATH

  Ree brushed aside the linen wrappings, letting them hang rough across her hands. She stared down at the gleaming tablet now revealed. Heavy in her hands and gleaming in her sight. The Great Resurrection was a ritual engraved on a slate of pure gold, as if it were treasure or a trinket to display in some adventurer’s grand hall.

  Smythe and Usther crowded her on either side.

  ‘The Great Resurrection.’ Ree could practically hear Usther wrinkling her nose. ‘Rather presumptuous, considering nobody has ever been resurrected.’

  Ree bit her lip. ‘Until recently, we thought nobody had ever traveled in time, and that therianthopy was only a legend.’

  Usther sniffed, but had no answer to that.

  The tablet didn’t feel evil or powerful. It didn’t have the musky character of a book, which Veritas claimed had tangible souls. It felt like cold metal, weighty but dead.

  ‘Let’s set it down and look at it properly,’ said Smythe. ‘Your arms must be getting tired.’

  Ree flashed him an annoyed look. She was an archivist; she’d carried plenty of heavier things than this, and more awkward too. But he didn’t seem to mean anything by it, so she sat down and placed the tablet carefully on the floor.

  For a moment, they all crowded around it on hands and knees. Emberlon stood in the corner, his eyes sad.

  ‘This is older than Old Antherian,’ Usther said. There was a crease between her brows, like she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at. ‘I can read some of it —’

  ‘I can read the first two lines —’ Smythe cut in eagerly.

  ‘It’s Ancient Antherian,’ said Ree calmly. She felt a weight in her chest. ‘And I can read nearly all of it.’ She looked up and met Emberlon’s bleak grey stare. ‘It’s not good,’ she said.

  Smythe tapped his lips. ‘An exchange of equal parts,’ he said, running his hand along one of the lines.

  Usther’s gaze flicked at Ree, then back down at the tablet. ‘A rift … or maybe portal must be opened.’

  Smythe, ‘And there’s a line at the end that reads —’ he stopped and paled.

  ‘And so let it be done.’ Ree’s words echoed around the stone tombhome. Wordlessly, she extended her arm and bared the mark carved there in flesh and blood.

  ‘It’s a sacrifice ritual,’ she said. ‘I can’t translate the cadence properly, but it amounts to: “To raise one city, the other must be cast down. Cut a rift through the eighth plane, and scry in a bowl of golden oil. The reagents are crysstone, blood, and fire. A hexapentath around the rift. Those spared must be marked on their brow with the same hexapentath. And the rift will pull inward that which lives, and push outward that which once lived, and that which once was will be restored, and that which is will be dust.” The last two lines are the incantation. And then —-’

  ‘And so let it be done,’ Smythe said quietly.

  ‘It would sacrifice the entire town,’ Usther said. Her lip curled. ‘And likely would fail in the attempt.’

  ‘A dangerous ritual to have in the wrong hands,’ said Ree quietly.

  Emberlon spoke from the corner: ‘Or any hands.’

  Smythe had been following her hands as she translated, his eyebrows pinched together. ‘And that which once was will be restored, and that which lives now will be dust,’ he murmured.

  Ree sat back and rubbed her hand on her chest. ‘Still think this will be easy to circumvent?’ Ree asked. She knew the bitterness in her voice was unfair — none of this was Smythe’s fault — but she couldn’t stop herself from doing it. Her chest was growing tight and her head faint.

  ‘I know it looks bad.’ Smythe spoke quietly, deliberately, with none of his usual quaver. ‘But I remain optimistic. One way or another, we will deal with this.’

  But Ree felt sick. ‘We don’t even have a proper translation,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s a language that was spoken hundreds of years before even the version of Antherian most of the Craft uses. A translation from me is worthless if we’re looking for loopholes.’

  Smythe shrugged. ‘We have to try.’

  Ree shook her head and scooted back into a corner. She huddled there, drawing her knees to her chest. It was not a time to be exposed, when she felt already that the universe had looked down at her and found her wanting.

  Death, her mother had told her many times, was not to be feared. It was a transition, a lateral move between planes that necromancers merrily played between every day. But nothing changed the fact that death was final, nor that Ree had no idea what the deathly planes would be like. She closed her eyes against the sting of tears and wished she had managed to fly.

  The crow skin was in a pouch hanging from her belt, folded with magic and careful fingers. Though the skin itself weighed less than a bird, it still felt heavy against her leg.

  The day passed Ree by in a dull stupor. Usther and Smythe argued semantics of the translation and Emberlon brought them books in Ancient Antherian to test their translation against. Usther thought the key to finding a loophole in the Oath was in the ritual itself but Smythe insisted it was in the Oath.

  ‘Intention matters,’ he argued, as if it would make any difference at all. ‘If we attempt the ritual — even if we don’t complete it — it should prevent the full consequence of a broken Oath.’

  But the conversation moved in circles, and every time Usther tried to clarify the translation, Smythe dismissed it, and every time Smythe suggested they start the ritual just to see what happened, Emberlon stepped in and said he couldn’t allow it.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, huddled in the corner while her friends argued against a fate impossible to prevent. But at some point, she felt a touch at her shoulder and blinked with bleary eyes up at Smythe. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said quietly. Usther was nodding over a spread of open books; Emberlon
slept flat and peaceful on his back, the tablet hugged to his chest.

  ‘How can it?’ She croaked the words. It was hard to keep her eyes open. ‘Veritas said the Oath never takes more than seven days to resolve. We’ve already used almost six of them, and we’re no closer to a solution.’ Her eyelids fluttered. ‘I want to go to the tower again, tomorrow.’ Her words were breathy and slurred now with tiredness. ‘I want to shift, just once. I want to be a mage.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Smythe. ‘You will.’

  The last thing Ree remembered was the sight of Smythe’s dark eyes behind his glasses, and the curl of his hair, and the feel of his thumb sweeping across her palm. When sleep took her, she dreamed of the wind rippling across her feathers.

  PLAY NICE

  ~Morrin the Undying, at the foundation of Tombtown

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  WHAT ONCE WAS

  Ree awoke in fits and starts. First, she became aware of her shoulder and hip pressing against hard stone. Then her fingers twitched in the still air; her eyes fluttered against a crust of rheum and dried tears.

  When she dragged herself upright and blinked blearily around at Emberlon’s house, it took her a moment to place herself. She could see Usther curled around a pile of books and Emberlon flat on the floor.

  She felt sick, though she didn’t know why. There was a squirmy, roiling feeling in her stomach, as if she had swallowed a handful of worms.

  The Oath on her arm burned as if on fire. It bled sluggishly, the wound reopened somehow in her sleep.

  She rubbed the crust from her eyes, her gaze seeking Smythe. He was not here, in the main room, nor in the little side room where Emberlon slept.

  She crept over to Emberlon and knelt beside him. ‘Emberlon?’

  Emberlon’s eyelids fluttered. She touched his shoulder with one finger, then quickly withdrew. ‘Emberlon?’

  ‘Mm?’ He blinked at her, then sat bolt upright. ‘The tablet?’ He felt around beside and under himself. ‘I’m sure I had it when I dozed off.’

  The squirmy feeling grew worse. Ree tried to play it off. ‘I’m sure it’s around here somewhere — perhaps Smythe put it back beneath the sarcophagus.’

  Emberlon nodded. His eyes drifted up to her forehead. Ree touched it self-consciously; her fingertips away with black paint.

  ‘Emberlon.’ Her voice was tight. ‘What’s on my face?’

  He still looked oddly bleary with sleep — unusual for him. ‘A spell diagram. A hexapentath, maybe.’

  Her stomach dropped. ‘I have to go —’

  ‘But the tablet —’

  ‘I’ll bring it back if I find it!’ she called over her shoulder.

  As she got out the door, a rumble shook the town. Dust shook free of the domed ceiling; a rock came loose and smashed onto the roof of a tombhome. She tripped into a tombhome wall as the ground rippled beneath her. Where once there had been faded, mud caked stone, there was now shiny slate paving.

  ‘And that which once was will be restored,’ Ree whispered. ‘And that which lives now will be dust.’

  Another rumble, a thunder of shifting stone. People were out in the streets now, shouting orders to their minions. A spectre glided straight through Ree, stealing her breath; a greywraith, all clammy hands and tattered robes, flew overhead.

  Worse, everyone seemed to be … fuzzy. Their edges bled into the air and their shadows shivered in their wake. She could feel the icy magic in the air like an oncoming blizzard. Her breath clouded in front of her; her skin felt sharp and hard as if rubbed with ice. But whatever was sucking and pulling at her neighbours did not trouble Ree. She was solid and wholly present. The paint mark on her forehead itched: the sigil of exclusion defined in the ritual.

  She ran through the town square as the world shivered around her. She passed Mazerin the Bold clinging to his knuckle bone stall, his face pale and blurry; she passed Mortana and Kylath outside the Bone & Brew, using greywraiths to shore up the walls. Symphona lay across a doorstep, her breathing laboured, her usually carefully coiffed hair hanging limp and tangled around her shoulders.

  Ree climbed over a collapsed beam, a heap of wood and stone, and nearly tripped over a minion’s corpse, its connection to its master cut loose. Ree’s heart seized as she saw Andomerys there, her hand aglow as she tried to heal Etherea’s crushed leg.

  Every step, she passed someone in need of help, and her heart stuttered every time, trying to pull her back, telling her to stop. But she knew where this magic had to be coming from and she knew there could only be one way of stopping it. It was surely only a matter of minutes before the rest of the town realised it as well.

  She made it to the town hall just as a loud crack echoed overhead. On instinct, she dived aside as a hunk of rock plunged through the ground where she’d been standing. Panting, she gazed up at the black iron doors, now shining as if recently polished, the long-faded engravings brought into sharp relief.

  She pushed, muscles heaving, and as the gap widened an icy wind whistled through, nearly knocking her to the ground. Green light flared, nearly blinding her. She shaded her eyes and ran low to the ground, slipping between the doors and ducking to the side of the archway.

  As her darksight faded, she was able to take in the room. Smythe stood at the top of the dais. The sarcophagus of the Old King was gone, and in its place was a swirling green portal that sunk into the floor.

  And so let it be done.

  ~the final words of the Black Oath ritual

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  A WORTHY SACRIFICE

  The cold was overwhelming. Frost rimed Ree’s hair and weighed the cloth of her robes. She watched Smythe standing above the portal, arms rose as he chanted. His curly hair was blown back by the force of the wind, swirling behind him like tentacles. His glasses were gone. A long cut on his forearm bled angrily, beads lifting off into the air.

  ‘Smythe!’ She screamed his name but her voice was swallowed by the wind. Ice scalded her throat.

  She dropped to the ground and used fallen debris as cover from the wind, but there would be no shelter on the stairs. She crawled up them, belly against the steps, muscles protesting every movement.

  As she climbed, curses flew overhead. She looked back and saw denizens flooding through the black iron doors, some of them on their knees, others leaning on their staffs and minions for support. She saw her father, his eyes black with fury, his colours bleeding into the wind.

  The curses shattered against a wall of screaming red spirits, all wrapped up in the wind. It was summoning like she’d never seen it. Smythe’s eyes were more sunken than the Lich. Black veins crawled beneath his skin. He looked wholly alien from the boy in the crypt she’d found all those weeks ago. There was nothing bright or hesitant about him, no shine in his eyes, no quirk to his lips. But he couldn’t mean to finish the ritual — he couldn’t mean to kill the world Ree loved. This had to be about breaking the Oath. Hadn’t he suggested just starting the ritual? Hadn’t he insisted that intention would decide the severity of their punishment?

  When she got to the dais, her hands touched the fringes of the green light, and suddenly the cold was gone. The roar was gone. The wind no longer dragged at her hair or chafed her skin.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ she said across the silence. She got unsteadily to her feet, half-braced for the wind to sweep her away, but everything here was calm and still.

  ‘Ree.’ Smythe lowered his arms, but the storm still raged outside their small circle. ‘I have no choice. The Oath will kill you for sure otherwise.’ His eyes were blacked-out with the Craft and sunken into his face. He would never been mistaken for an upworlder now. He looked like an undead creature.

  Ree eyed him uncertainly. He radiated power, and was easily holding down a ritual on a grander scale than any she had ever seen. It was said that the Craft could turn your mind — that the constant contact with the deathly planes could make you something less than human. She’d always been wary of that — war
y of Usther, when her voice took on the death echo, wary of her father, when he came home with grey skin and dead eyes. They were mad, in those moments. And none of them had ever held a power as great as Smythe wielded now.

  ‘You said you didn’t need to complete the ritual. You said just starting it would be enough.’

  ‘Maybe it would be! But we can’t take that chance, Ree.’ He skirted the portal, his hands splayed. ‘There’s no other option.’

  As he stepped toward her, Ree widened her stance. Her fingers slipped into the skin pouch, brushing the silken feathers.

  ‘Besides — you saw it! You saw what it was like!’ His eyes gleamed, as if lit from within by an arcane light. ‘Can you imagine what it would be like to bring that back? Can you imagine what we would learn, what we could study!’

  All at once, Ree remembered every time Smythe had spoken disparagingly of the scholars at his University — how they’d dismissed and belittled him. It was why he’d come to the crypt in the first place — to make them respect him.

  ‘The past is dead, Smythe! We can’t bring it back. We shouldn’t bring it back! Not just so you can impress the Dean of your festering University!’

  Smythe’s mouth flattened. ‘I can bring it back, Ree.’ The death echo was back in his voice as he gathered the magic. ‘And I’ll do it save you.’

  Ree’s heart ached in her chest. ‘I don’t want this! I love this town, Smythe! This is my family, these are my neighbours.’

  In two quick steps, he was in front of her. His hands hovered at her shoulders, his eyes, so alien and yet so familiar, gazed deep into hers. ‘Greatness requires sacrifice,’ he murmured. Something flashed in his eyes, a pinch of his eyebrows, a spark of vulnerability that Ree knew too well. ‘I won’t let you be one.’ He shoved her, hard; Ree was thrown out of the circle to tumble down the stairs, the roar of the wind and the cacophony of curses crashing down on her as she tucked her head and tried to find footing.