Altar of Bones

by Philip Carter

  No, you don’t understand. It’s all just a game, and if you want to be somebody, if you want to matter, you’ve got to play the game. The money isn’t even real, just numbers in computers. Just ones and zeros. Not even real …

  “But now it’s your turn to experience hell on earth, Mr. Taylor.” The girl oh so gently caressed his cheek. “And you know what I say to that?

  I say, fuck you, Mr. Taylor. Fuck you. And I want you to know that I’m going to be taking extraspecial care of you from here on out, because I want that hell to go on and on, for a long, long time.”

  She straightened and glanced over her shoulder, checking out the doorway. Then she turned back around and slapped him hard across the cheek, where a moment ago she had touched him so sweetly.

  Tears filled Miles Taylor’s eyes and the girl smiled, a smile that was pure mean, but he didn’t care. She couldn’t know his tears were ones of joy.

  Hit me again, he screamed, over and over inside his head. Hit me again.

  Because you wouldn’t hit a vegetable, would you? Vegetables couldn’t feel, they couldn’t think, so why would you bother to hit a vegetable?

  Hit me again, hit me again, hit me again.

  53

  Norilsk, Siberia

  One week later

  HOE WATCHED the giant red digital clock on top of the Norilsk Nickel headquarters building click over another minute: 12:19. “Our mystery woman’s late, Ry. Are you sure this is the place? ‘Cause right now there ain’t nobody out here but us freezing chickens.”

  Ry just looked at her and waved a Polartec-mittened hand at the bas-relief sculpture built into the corner of the building above their heads—a big bronze guy, shirtless, muscled, his square-jawed face set hard with purpose, wielding some sort of shovel. Chiseled into the base were the words THE BUILDERS OF NORILSK.

  “I know, I know,” Zoe said. “There can’t be two builders’ monuments in the city. It’s just …” She hunched her shoulders as a blast of frigid wind sent ice crystals dancing in waves down the wide, nearly deserted street. She wanted to give up and go back to the hotel. She wanted to be warm.

  The mystery woman was a mystery because they didn’t know a thing about her, not even her name. She’d telephoned their room late last night, said two sentences: “I can take you to the lake you search for. Be at the builders’ monument on Leninskiy Prospekt tomorrow at noon,” then hung up before Zoe had a chance to so much as draw a breath.

  The whole thing was surreal, but then surreal was what Zoe had come to expect of this strange frozen place almost two hundred miles north of the arctic circle. Norilsk was a closed city, and the policy was strictly enforced. No one, not even Russians, let alone foreigners, could come here without an official invitation and special authorization from the FSB intelligence service.

  It took some time and a lot of money, and even Ry wasn’t sure how Sasha managed it, but he finally got them the documents they needed. There’d been a scary half hour upon their arrival, though, when the police boarded the plane, confiscated their passports, and led them off for questioning. They were posing as potential investors from a Montana nickel-mining company, and Zoe let Ry do all the talking since the only thing she knew about nickel was that it was a coin worth five cents.

  Then there was the two-hour bus ride into the city in the dusky gloom of a polar night, the sun barely above the horizon even in the middle of the day. They rode past ghosts of trees with blackened, barren trunks, and factories and smelters that spewed black, smelly smoke into the air. Past oily pools of stagnant water so toxic they couldn’t freeze even in the subzero temperatures. It was amazing to think this sprawling, polluted city of two hundred thousand souls and blocks of massive Soviet-style buildings began life as a prison camp cut out of the icy steppes, and that her great-grandmother Lena came from here.

  These are my roots, Zoe thought with a shiver that only partly came from the cold. It was such a hard, frozen, ugly place.

  After they checked into the one decent hotel, they’d spent a day studying topographical maps and satellite photographs at Norilsk’s city hall. There were hundreds of lakes all over the Taimyr Peninsula, but not one shaped remotely like a boot. For four more days they’d walked the ice-encrusted streets, going into shops, restaurants, nightclubs, even a couple of bowling alleys, asking of anyone who would listen how to get to the lake with the waterfall.

  Nothing, zilch, nada, zip. Until last night’s phone call.

  Zoe thought of how Boris, the griffin shop man, had spotted her great-grandmother Lena in a noodle shop in Hong Kong and knew right off that she was a Keeper because she had the face of the Lady in the icon. Had that happened again, with herself and the mystery woman? Surely some magic people were still left in the area. Was the mystery woman one of them?

  Zoe stamped her feet to keep them from turning into frozen stubs.

  This street, Leninskiy Prospekt, was the main drag and was well-lit enough for her to see there wasn’t a soul around now for blocks. At least the buildings here were painted a cheerful, if rather gaudy, orange and yellow, unlike the rest of the city, which was all washed-out shades of gray and brown.

  She checked the time on the Norilsk Nickel building again: 12:24. Almost a half an hour late. The woman wasn’t coming.

  Zoe stamped her feet again and clapped her mittened hands together for good measure. She looked up and read the inscription on the base of the sculpture for the umpteenth time, and she must have sighed out loud, because Ry said, “Be patient. She’ll come.”

  “I was just thinking, whoever this particular ‘builder’ person was, he couldn’t have built anything in Norilsk. Even with pecs like his, you’re not gonna sashay around this place without a shirt. You’d be a Popsicle in five seconds. And I’ve got purses back home bigger than that itty-bitty shovel—Hey, look, Ry, that car’s slowing down. Please, God, let it be her.”

  A silver sedan with a broken right-turn signal pulled up to the curb halfway down the block from them, but the figure that got out was so bundled up against the cold, Zoe couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. Whoever it was reached back into the car and came out with an oversize and obviously heavy attaché case, then carried it into a nearby bank.

  Zoe sighed again and looked back up at the digital readout on the Norilsk Nickel building, but the time had flipped over to the temperature. Minus thirty-nine degrees. Somebody made that up, she thought. If it were a real number, we’d be dead, and—

  “Here she is,” Ry said.

  Zoe followed his pointing mitten to a small, slender woman wearing a black fur hat and an ankle-length black coat getting off an ice-crusted city bus. She made a beeline for them, her stride purposeful, confident.

  The long, white wool scarf she’d wrapped around her neck obscured part of her face, but as she got closer, Zoe was surprised to see she was young, barely out of her teens.

  She stopped in front of Zoe and stared at her as she loosened the thick scarf. Zoe saw a pale face with translucent skin and delicate features. Her eyes were gray and full of curiosity.

  She said in fast-flowing Russian, “Sorry I’m late. The buses are always breaking down in this weather. Great-uncle Fodor saw you two days ago. He said he overheard you chatting up Ilia the baker in her shop, and that you’ve come from America and were asking about the lake with the waterfall. And that you’re the very image of the old photograph we have of Lena Orlova, who was the last Keeper. At least we thought she was the last …” Her voice trailed off as she studied Zoe some more.

  “Lena Orlova was my great-grandmother.”

  The girl nodded, her eyes sparkling. “Most think Lena was the last Keeper because she was killed before she could pass on her knowledge and anoint a new one. She was a nurse at the prison camp here, and she was killed by the guards when she tried to help the poor zek who was her lover to escape. But there’ve always been a stubborn few who wanted to believe in the rumors that she got away, for it was too good a story not to be true,
was it not? And here you are, living proof. Are you the Keeper now?”

  “Yes. My grandmother Katya, Lena’s daughter, she … anointed me.”

  “Good. That is how it should be.” The girl turned abruptly and looked up at the builders’ monument. “I hope you don’t think this Soviet poster boy is anything at all like the men who built Norilsk.”

  Zoe would have blinked at this abrupt change of subject, but she was afraid her eyelids would freeze shut. “Not hardly. I mean, who would go to work in this place without even a shirt?”

  “It’s not so much the scarcity of clothing as the abundance of robust flesh. The men who built Norilsk were prisoners, who were fed just enough so they could stay alive and work, and they worked until all that was left of them was bones. When they died, they were buried together in mass graves, and every year to this day their bones come back to haunt us. In June, when the winter breaks, the melting snows churn them up from out of the ground, only everyone pretends not to see them.”

  “But you don’t pretend,” Zoe said.

  The girl smiled at her. “No. Because that would be denying them all, wouldn’t it?” She pulled her wool scarf across her face again. “Come with me now, out of this cold, and we will talk.”

  SHE LED THEM into a small, blessedly warm restaurant with two surly waiters and a dozen low, ugly Formica tables. They all ordered cups of teeth-rottingly sweet black Russian tea.

  “My name is Svetlana,” the girl said, “but do not tell me yours if it is different from what is on your official documents. I will simply call you cousin, for if you are Lena Orlova’s great-granddaughter, then that would make us cousins of a sort, many times removed. Great-uncle Fodor says I am sticking myself out on a clothesline by even speaking to you, but I had to see you with my own eyes. And to help you if I can, because as I told Great-uncle Fodor, it is the duty of the toapotror to help the Keeper when we can.”

  “I am very grateful to you,” Zoe said. “In your phone call last night you said you can take us to the lake we’re looking for?”

  Svetlana nodded solemnly. “I will take you, but only as far as the waterfall. After that, you are on your own. You are the Keeper, and only the Keeper is allowed to approach the altar of bones. I would rather have all my teeth pulled than go into that cave anyway. None of our people wanted me to come to you, they’re afraid you will destroy the altar or betray its secrets to the world since you are not really one of us. Even if you were born of toapotror blood.”

  “They’re wrong. I am one of you. I have come a very long way to prove that I am one of you.”

  “Yes, you are tough, otherwise you would not have made it this far, and that is what I told Great-uncle Fodor. There aren’t many of us magic people left, you understand, and of those who are, most are old and tired and set in their ways. They do not know the Grammies from Google.” Svetlana paused, drew a deep breath, and lowered her voice. “I said for you not to tell me your name, Cousin, but it and your face are all over the Internet. They say you are terrorists, but I know that is a lie. You are being hunted, as the Keepers often are, and I will do what I can to help you. But I think we should also pray to the Lady to protect you.”

  “I really am grateful for your help, Svetlana, but if it means putting you in danger—”

  She waved a hand. “Never mind that, I am bored with being safe. Besides, I live in Norilsk, where there is acid in the snow and we kill ourselves with every polluted breath we take.”

  She shrugged and drank the rest of her tea as if it were fine ambrosia rather than syrupy sludge. “Now, the fastest way to get to the lake this time of year is by snowmobile. My cousin Mikhail, who is smart enough not to ask questions, has a couple of Arctic Cats we may borrow.”

  She paused and looked hard at Ry, and Zoe didn’t think she was happy about him at all. And Ry, probably sensing as much, had been keeping quiet.

  “If I don’t trust him,” Zoe said, “then I may as well not trust myself.”

  “Because you sleep with him? Other Keepers gave up the altar’s secrets along with their hearts. It never ended well, if the stories are to be believed.”

  “Maybe because the only stories that got told were the ones with the bad endings. The ones where the Keepers fell in love with rotten assholes, who should never have been trusted past first base to begin with. But who’s to say there haven’t been Keepers who trusted good guys, guys who were never going to betray them, not for love nor money? You’d never hear about them because there’d be nothing to tell, and … And I know I’ve got a point in there somewhere, and it’s a real zinger, too.”

  The girl surprised Zoe by joining in her laughter. “How can I argue with such logic? Except to say you are the Keeper, so you will do what you will do, anyway.” Svetlana gave Ry another once-over. “He’s a big and strong one—I’ll say that for him.”

  A pale-faced waiter had appeared to pour more tea into Svetlana’s empty cup. She raised it and toasted them. “It is poison, I know, but drink up. You will need the warmth.” She looked at Ry yet again, and this time she gave him a fleeting smile. “One of Mikhail’s Cats is a two-seater, so you can bring him along if you want. They heat up, by the way, the seats on the Cats. And there are hand warmers, too. Can you imagine such a luxury? Drink up now, drink up.”

  The tea was awful, and they drank every drop.

  54

  ZOE STARED up at the waterfall that shot out of the bluff above their heads in waves of ice and jagged spiky icicles. “It almost doesn’t look real,” she said. “It’s like some god came along and zapped it, freezing it solid in midair, in a single instant of time.”

  “This is Siberia,” Svetlana said, “where everything is always frozen solid. Except maybe for five minutes during the first week in August…. All right, I am joking. But only a little.”

  Svetlana looked up at the tall, wide pillar of ice, and Zoe thought a shudder crossed her face. “There’s barely an hour of daylight left and a snowstorm is coming, so I must leave you now, my cousin of sorts. The cave with the altar of bones is behind the waterfall, and you should stay inside there overnight. Your Cat’s got a GPS system, but it doesn’t work here in the canyon, and even back out on the tundra it’s easy to get lost in the snow and the dark. And this is the starving season. The wolves will be out.”

  “Thank you,” Zoe said. “For everything.”

  Svetlana smiled at Zoe, then looked at Ry and gave him a flicker of a smile as well. “In the compartment behind the seats on your Arctic Cat, I put a couple of space blankets, some sausage and cabbage rolls, and a bottle of Kalashnikov. The blankets are good at keeping a body warm, but the vodka is better.”

  Svetlana cast another, fleeting glance up at the waterfall. “I should go now.”

  “We’ll bring the Cat back to Mikhail’s no later than tomorrow morning,” Zoe said. “Will you be there? I’d like to talk with you some more, about the magic people and my great-grandmother, and your great-uncle Fodor, all those stories you’ve heard.”

  Svetlana nodded. “Yes. If you wish, I will be there.”

  For a moment Zoe thought the girl would embrace her, but then she only nodded again and turned away.

  THEY WATCHED THE Arctic Cat cut away from them across the frozen lake, kicking up a rooster tail of snow.

  “I think she was warming to you a little, O’Malley. There at the end.”

  He didn’t smile, and he was quiet for so long, she said, “What? What are you thinking?”

  “That this shouldn’t be a test of your feelings for me. I don’t see it that way and I don’t want you to see it that way either. Tell me to wait out here by the Cat, and I will. No questions asked, and no resentments either.”

  She took him by the arms and turned him around to face her. “There is no halfway here, Ry. Not with me.”

  He stared down at her, his eyes dark with some emotion she couldn’t read, except it seemed to be shaking him to the core. But all he said was “All right, then. Let’s get it done.�
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  He took her by the hand, but now Zoe held back.

  She stared up at the huge, rippling pillar of ice. “All of this … it’s just so hard to believe we’re actually here. When I first heard the story about Lena Orlova escaping from the gulag, trekking across Siberia all the way to Shanghai, and all the while pregnant with her lover’s child, I thought it sounded so beautifully sad and romantic, like something out of Doctor Zhivago. But the truth turned out to be nothing like that at all, did it? What really happened here was brutal and ugly and cruel.”

  “Not all of it,” Ry said. “She survived, and that was a brave and wonderful thing. She survived so that this day, this moment, could happen. When you, her great-granddaughter, could come back to the place where it all began and see it through. Full circle.”

  Zoe swallowed hard and nodded. “Because I am the Keeper now.”

  But she wondered how she would find the altar of bones in a place Nikolai Popov had searched so many times. And if she did, then what? What would come afterward, because once she found the altar, she would become its Keeper in fact as well as in name. The altar’s secrets would be her secrets then, to keep or to betray.

  Ry touched his forehead to hers. “You had an incredible burden laid on you, Zoe, from out of nowhere. And you know what? You haven’t faltered. You’ve got grit and a brain.” He lightly touched his palm to her chest. “And a huge heart. I am very proud of you. Now, let’s find the entrance to this damn cave so we can do what we came to do.”

  “Did she say wolves?”

  He laughed. “I’d kiss you, but I’m afraid our lips would freeze together.”

  55

  ZOE STARED at the impossibly small gap between the two sheets of rock that made up the face of the bluff. “Sweet Mother of Jesus, Ry, this can’t be it. I mean, there’s no way we’re fitting through that. It’s impossible. There’s got to be another entrance somewhere else, and we’re just not seeing it.”