Brood of Bones

by A. E. Marling

  I Attracted a cluster of blue diamonds from a shelf and positioned them in a sparkling pile atop the right side of her belly. The diamonds spread outward, circumscribing her abdomen in a revolving circle. The skin they passed over became invisible. Yellow globules of fat nestled against a reddish plaiting of abdominal muscles, all of which faded from sight below the descending diamonds.

  The liver appeared, a bulging, slimy thing the color of sulfur. I pinched my nose although I could not in truth smell it through the transparent flesh. The organ bore no tumors, and was crowded by a bright pink womb, which I would investigate shortly. I lifted my hand, and a scepter with a purple jewel spun, end over end, into my grasp.

  The scepter embodied my most coveted enchantment: regeneration. The spell involved hundreds of Attractions and Repulsions over infinitesimal distances, targeting bits of matter I did not fully understand in units of flesh I could not see, the process multiplied a vast number of times per inch of intended re-growth.

  Once I had set a few parameters in the spell, I lifted Sri’s hand with the diamond ring. It was the only real gemstone here, the one thing capable of maintaining the enchantments once I woke. I touched it to the scepter then to a rack of vials, and the diamond began to glow pink.

  Her health now assured, I gathered my courage to view the state of her child. I was less than hopeful and felt a buzzing twinge in my stomach. Focusing my mind, I willed the blue diamonds to reveal another section of her abdomen.

  The smooth muscles of her womb entered my view, followed by a layer of spongy crimson. I held my breath, preparing myself for my first glimpse of a godsent child.

  I blinked, realizing I had pushed the jewels too far. The spell had removed from the visible spectrum not only the anterior of the womb but also the child’s skin, revealing a tiny bone hand, its finger joints glistening with cartilage. Often, babies in the womb would clench their fists, yet these fingers lay flat, its wrist resembling a collection of white pebbles. I pulled back and noticed that the skin between the fingers was a translucent yellow, a surprisingly similar shade to cartilage.

  To obtain a better visual of the child’s skin, I withdrew the spell a tenth of an inch and saw the gelatinous membrane of the birth sac. Again, I had gone too far. Even as that thought flitted through my consciousness, I observed something that caused my mind to scream, adrenaline gushing into my arteries like sparks exploding from my heart.

  Through the filmy covering of the birth sac, I could still see the whiteness of the skeletal hand. No skin covered those fingers.

  Moving my diamonds forward bared the sight of the hand surrounded by more bones, cartilage connecting finger bones to what appeared to be leg bones and ribs. Neither believing nor understanding what I saw, I flung aside the blue diamonds. Sri’s spotted skin reappeared, hiding whatever lurked inside her.

  Panting, I found myself chewing on gloved knuckles. My head seemed to pulse with flashes of white, the white of the interlocked bones I had seen. The mishmash of ribs and femurs dug into my mind, and I gripped my temples.

  I asked myself what I had seen. Not a stillbirth, I thought, but something fleshless, a pandemonium of bones.

  All at once, I grew aware of a pressure, the sensation of a stranger’s hand on my shoulder. Alarmed, I pirouetted, gowns sweeping aside gemstones. No one was behind me, yet I still felt the presence.

  I could be feeling the hand of a god, the Ever Always. The divinity, or something else, had wormed its way into my dream laboratory, into my most protected of places. I felt vulnerable, horrified for my safety as well as by what I had found in Sri’s womb.

  If a god peered into my dream, he could kill me with a thought.

  “I—I did not mean to interfere.” I kneeled awkwardly in mid-air. “Forgive me. I will...I promise to....”

  I could not think of what to promise, only of the gaze that felt like molten wax dripping on my skin. I had to escape, had to get free. In a blink, I smashed down through the diamond dais and left the dream.

  I staggered from the doors of Sri’s room, Maid Janny lacing the last of my gowns onto my back. Mister Obenji, the elderly servant with the black turban, bowed then tried to look past my tide of fabric.

  “Lustrous Enchantress, I hope there is chance for the good lady’s recovery.”

  “She will progress,” I said distractedly.

  My wobbly legs took me to a parlor with green upholstery. I could not back up and sit in my gowns, so I leaned sideways onto a couch, my face pressed against the cushions as I focused on breathing through chest spasms.

  I no longer felt watched by an unseen force. All I felt, rather, was sickness on an empty stomach. Squeezing one eye closed then another, I tried to rationalize the thing that was not a child lodged in Sri’s womb. I had been too frightened to view more than its closest part. Nor did I feel any desire to rush back and investigate.

  Shivering despite my six layers of gowns, I now understood why Sri had not felt a quickening. The not-child had fused bones and could not move. My head trembled from side-to-side at the thought. The strangeness, the nonsense of what I had seen tore at me, and I could not believe that every woman in Morimound carried what I could only assume was a curse of the Always Dying.

  “Sri has to be an exception,” I muttered. “A fluke. A horrid, horrid—”

  “Did you speak, Elder Enchantress?”

  “No, Deepmand.”

  After several minutes sprawled on the couch, I convinced myself that I had witnessed a very rare birth defect. The other women most decidedly carried healthy babies in their wombs. The presence I had felt in my dream might not have been a god. A magic user could have interposed his will. In theory.

  I turned my attention to all those in the city who might suffer from childbirth, although I had no reason to suspect they would bear anything but normal children. True, the mothers I had spoken to last night had denied quickening, yet they could have been in error. Others might have felt life within them.

  I had to focus. I could not lose control. I had to stay calm and stay silent about what I had seen. If any breath of it reached the people then they might panic. A terrified citizenry could attract Feasters and cause even more problems.

  My thoughts were spinning away from me. Increasingly, I dreaded the thought of more not-children—of unchildren—within Morimound mothers, inside my people, ensconced in their daughters.

  Only twelve years had since passed since an old friend, Harend Chandur, had told me of the birth of his daughter. During my residence in the Academy, I had exchanged several letters with him, one of his first detailing pride in his newborn son, another of his daughter five years later. The news had pained me more than I would ever admit.

  I decided to visit Harend Chandur today, to reassure myself that his daughter had quickened and could not be pregnant with anything untoward. Maybe she was not even pregnant. She would be only twelve.

  As I heaved myself up from the couch, Spellsword Deepmand cleared his throat. “Would you wish to view Sunchase Hall, Elder Enchantress?”

  “I am in no mood for frivolities.”

  “You look glassy,” Maid Janny said. “You’ll feel better with a meal in you.”

  “I will take my breakfast at the estate of Harend Chandur.”

  “My apologies, Elder Enchantress,” Deepmand said. “It is past noon, and I was unaware you had received their invitation.”

  “I will receive one, once I arrive.”

  Janny obtained directions to the Chandur estate, and we departed from my manor grounds. When the carriage passed through the gates leading down from the High Wall, I rapped my cane on the roof.

  “Maid Janny, your diminutive mind has misremembered the directions. Harend Chandur lives in the Island District.”

  “And he couldn’t have moved, in the who-knows-how-many years since you’ve last been here?”

  “He would not have, downhill of the High Wall. His family is one of the most established in Morimound.”

  �
��Then I’ll ask the gate guard over there, as his figure looks rather well established.” She winked at me. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  Averting my eyes, I resolved to sit and doze while Janny’s incompetence sent me to the wrong address. I was relieved to find that the unnerving presence from my dream was now gone, although I avoided looking into my mirrors.

  We arrived at a house with three stories but in all other ways deficient of a manor. Janny shuffled to the door and back.

  “Faliti Chandur said they’d be delighted and honored and whatnot for you to dine with them this evening.”

  My mind labored over the concept of Faliti being the wife of Harend Chandur, who both temporarily lived here, outside the Island District. I assumed their manor was undergoing repairs.

  Faliti I remembered all too well from my youth. Leering over me with her aggressive and mannish chin, she had said, “Resha, you don’t deserve to be a mother. You’d smother your children by falling asleep on them.” She had stolen Harend, the only man who had tolerated my falling asleep between dances and, once, in mid-conversation.

  “Maid Janny, did you neglect to tell Faliti Chandur that it is not now evening?”

  “Must’ve slipped my mind.”

  “You may take my hand as I exit the carriage.”

  “Mind that I don’t take both hands. The honor would be too great for my weak heart.”

  The door of the house opened when I approached, and Faliti glared down at me. The sight of her broad shoulders and square chin sparked fear through me, even after all these years, and I missed a step.

  Faliti closed her open mouth, and I realized that she had not glared so much as gaped in shock. The sight of my gowns morphed her face through several different expressions, and although I could not distinguish them now, I planned to savor them later.

  “I am not prepared to receive you, Resha—uh.” Faliti balked as if surprised she had called me by my childhood name and knowing she had blundered.

  “Faliti Chandur, you may address me as ‘Elder Enchantress.’ I have come on behalf of the priests and the divine gods to see to the safety of your daughter.”

  At the mention of her daughter, Faliti dropped a hand to her own pregnant belly, and despite myself, a flush of resentment crept up my cheeks. I swept past her, and she skirted away when one my gowns rippled past her legs.

  “By the Ever Always! Are your dresses quite safe? One just grabbed my ankle.”

  Lightening enchantments in my gowns caused them to undulate more than expected, lending them an appearance of animation. I saw no reason to put Faliti’s mind at rest and maintained my silence.

  “And you, er,” she said to Deepmand, “your boots are cracking my floorboards, ant-ridden such as they are.”

  “My apologies, Madam. I will Lighten my step.”

  I walked through the rooms of the first floor, noting items of refinement, such as a tapestry of peacock feathers, amid otherwise bare furnishings. “Is Harend Chandur present?”

  Faliti tidied some sewing stuffs. “He’s meeting his merchant friends at the White Ziggurat, so he can lose more money.”

  “Then you may now introduce his daughter to me.”

  “I’m sure I would, but she’s recovering and bedridden, and I wouldn’t be a fit mother if I taxed her strength with visitors.”

  Argument required more mental dexterity than I usually commanded when awake, so I had little recourse than to repeat myself. “You have my permission to take me to her bedside.”

  “Alyla is not seeing anyone. She’s in no state to.”

  “She will see me. My presence is most salubrious.” I walked past Faliti as she ground her teeth.

  Finding no bedrooms on the first floor, I looked up a ladder leading to the second story. It had a gentle incline, similar to a stair, but stepping on the rungs would prove difficult with my oscillating sense of balance and inability to see my feet.

  Hoping I was not fated to fall once again in front of Faliti, I gathered as many of my skirts as I could and explored the first rung with my slipper. Stepping up, I tried to find the second rung, yet velvet and silk slithered around my foot. I had to step on my skirts, although this made me sway and tilt, my shoulder brushing the wall; letting go of my gowns to catch myself only aggravated my plight, with satin blocking any possibility of a subsequent step.

  I tipped backward and knew I would fall in a most dreadful and undignified way. Faliti had committed an act of negligence in employing this ladder, her disregard tantamount to assault with intent to injure.

  Gauntleted hands gripped my shoulders, and Deepmand carried me to the second floor in a leap that cleared the whole ladder. Relief made me gasp, and my knees knocked under my skirts as I strode down the hall, dragging my gowns out of the way so that the Spellsword could stop levitating and rest his feet on the ground.

  I avoided Deepmand’s gaze, ashamed that I had needed his assistance for the most simple of tasks. I wished, for a moment, that I could activate enchantments when awake as a Spellsword could. Of course, such a practice would be neither possible, for an enchantress, nor dignified.

  A voice quavered down the hall. “Mother, do we have guests?”

  I stepped into a bedroom and saw a girl sitting up between pillows, her swollen abdomen rising from beneath sheets. Her slender limbs caused her to resemble a pale spider with only four legs; her skin was waxy and sickly as white jade. The square chin she had inherited from Faliti sat at odds with her smaller frame and timid eyes, which were reddened and bulging.

  If fate had permitted then I could have married Harend, and Alyla might have been my daughter. The inside of my chest felt rubbed raw. I asked, “I wish to know, have you quickened?”

  After roughly a dozen blinks at my gowns, she still failed to find voice to answer.

  “Have you quickened, child? Oh, and I am Enchantress Hiresha.”

  She swallowed and said, “I’m afraid I don’t move too fast anymore.”

  “I mean have you felt your baby move?”

  “Oh.” Her lashes flickered over large, beautiful brown eyes. “I’m not sure.”

  With little insulation in the form of physical bulk, she should have felt each kick as a stab. She should have been sure. My fears dragged my gaze away from hers.

  I doubted that so slight a girl could give birth safely, certainly not with a labor shorter than twenty-four hours; I imagined her ordeal, a lifetime of agony compressed into a day of blood and strain, and then I saw her final contraction producing not a pink, healthy child but a thing of bones, a god’s cruel trick, an unchild.

  It could not be. I promised myself it would not be, and I felt a current of excitement and a deep sense of meaning that made me think I was exactly where I was meant to be, nestled in the pattern designed by the Fate Weaver. The goddess had guided me here to save this girl from grief.

  Regretfully, said goddess had yet to provide any clue as to how I could help her and the other thousands. If I but knew how a letter might reach the Fate Weaver’s cavern palace at the center of the world, then I would have written a stern complaint.

  Faliti stomped into the room. “She shouldn’t be like this. If she’d been stronger, she wouldn’t be this way.”

  I eyed Faliti’s own motherly belly. “All the women in Morimound are pregnant.”

  “My daughter has no right to be. Alyla could’ve dodged it, if she had the will to do anything in her life except spread her legs for some alley boy.”

  Alyla hid her face behind her hands and sobbed. I felt I should comfort her, although I did not quite know how. My gloved hand glittered as I laid it on her knee, and I wondered if a gentle squeeze would be a suitable demonstration of affection. When I tried it, the fleshless knee jabbed my fingers.

  I said, “Priest Abwar has proclaimed these pregnancies as godsent.”

  “God or alley boy, she could’ve said ‘no’ to one less than the other. I tried to build something out of her, but the Fate Weaver spins some thick and others thin
.”

  I, of all people, knew that.

  “Are you still having nausea, my child?” I spoke the address without thinking, and the words tasted bitter on my tongue. She was no child of mine.

  Alyla glanced at her true mother then looked down.

  “No, she isn’t,” Faliti said. “She has trouble seeing.”

  “Blurred vision is common from increased—”

  “You’ve been at it again, you disgusting girl.” Faliti pointed at the wall behind the bed, where the bricks had cracked and chipped. She brushed clay flakes from Alyla’s shift and sheet. “And here are the crumbs. What are you, some mud-eating pig?”

  She slapped Alyla then pinched her cheeks to pry open her jaw.

  “Spit it out, girl. Out with the brick you’ve eaten, or I’ll throttle it out.”

  I noticed a chunk of clay between two of Alyla’s teeth, and her tongue was yellow. “This is also common.” Disturbingly so, given the uncommon thing I feared was inside her.

  “Eat no more of our house or it’ll crumble, as poorly built as it is. You have shamed us in front of my important guest. Do you see her, Alyla? See the gemstones strewn about her? I knew her when she was poor and stupid, and now I bet she earns more in a year than your father will in his whole life.”

  When Alyla tried to meet my gaze, her eyes lost themselves among the mazes of copper and silver thread embroidered in my gowns.

  Faliti said, “Say something to the enchantress. Prove you may be dumb, but you can at least speak.”

  Alyla’s spindly fingers gripped her belly as if she felt the need to cling to something. “You honor the roof of... of our home, and we in-invite you to live here as our guest.”

  Faliti cuffed the back of her head, ruffling her dark hair over her eyes. “Why would you say that? The enchantress owns the largest mansion in Morimound and would never want to stay in this fly-pen.”

  At the sight of her hitting the girl, my hand rose to my mouth, and I held back a sob. I wondered how Faliti could strike something so precious, could abuse a gift given by the Ever Always: a child of her own blood.