The Tower of Bones

by Frank P. Ryan

  This is crazy.

  Crabbing across the slippery decks he clung to whatever solid structures he came across, making his laboured progress to the stern rail from where he attempted to probe the sea in their wake. But it was impossible to make out whether or not the fleet had been able to follow the Kyra’s order. Visibility was so reduced he could detect nothing. He could only hope that, by now, they were tacking southwards, aiming to put as many leagues as possible between them and the storm-wracked Temple Ship, haunted by the baleful red eye that leered threateningly over it.

  It’s downright unbelievable!

  It made no sense that the Ship, which should have been their protector, had become a source of the gravest threat. Above his head the tempest tore and ripped at the masts and rigging, even as the snow was freezing and thickening, burying everything in ice as hard as concrete. The same ice was sticking to the decks and rails so that no matter how hard Siam’s crew picked it away with shovels it overwhelmed their efforts, making any movement on the pitching and rolling surfaces hazardous.

  Alan clapped his gloved hands together, then stuck them under his armpits. But it made no difference. There was no escaping the fact that over just one day a power of darkness had invaded the entire fabric of the Ship. And that same darkness had weakened his oraculum.

  Nearby a gathering of Olhyiu sailors, their sideburns frozen to icy sculptures about their faces, murmured among themselves. He saw fear in their eyes. The sharp sound of hammering sounded overhead, where Siam had sent a party of men aloft with mallets to hammer at the ice that had encased every inch of rigging. Taking what grip he could of the rails, and just holding on during the worst of the pitching and tossing of the decks, Alan made his way back to the prow. When he got there he shouted into the ears of the captain, Siam.

  ‘Your sailors are panicking.’

  ‘Who would blame them? The Ship is accursed.’ Siam’s eyes fell on the oraculum in Alan’s brow. ‘Can you not aid her?’

  ‘I’ve tried. Nothing seems to make a difference.’

  Siam’s eyes met Alan’s, as if to urge him to try harder.

  Alan focused on the frozen deck, his eyes almost closed against the cold. He felt the power grow in him, felt it discharge through the oraculum. But it was as if he were shining a flashlight into the night sky. The battening darkness sucked up the feeble beam and it was gone. What slight effect it had in melting the surface layer of ice proved useless, the ice reforming in moments. And it left him exhausted.

  ‘What is it, Mage Lord? Why is it to no avail?’

  Alan shook his head.

  ‘But what could it be, out here? Three hundred leagues separate us from the Witch and her plotting!’

  ‘The power in my oraculum feels weakened somehow. Try as I might, the response is too feeble.’

  As he stood by Siam the sky swelled with black storm clouds and the wind rose to a hurricane. The great Ship twisted about on itself, yawing violently from side to side as if to cast off its Arctic shackles. A groaning rose up from the timbers below their feet. The movement and the deep, sad sounds were terrifying, throwing people off their feet amid the clattering of belongings falling about the cabins and storerooms. Shouts from below decks alerted Siam to the fact that a fire was being put out in the galley.

  Alan gritted his teeth. His stomach clenched with another of the monstrous yaws, seeing the starboard rail pitch so low it was several feet below the seething invasion of a great wave. He hollered into the ear of the chief. ‘Siam – you know the moods of the oceans. What do your instincts suggest?’

  ‘Strangeness is imposed upon strangeness. Yet this weakening of your power arrived as one with that eye in the sky.’

  Alan nodded, peering up into the madness of sky, through which he glimpsed the baleful red glow.

  As the Ship righted itself once more he glanced about himself in a rare moment or two of respite. He saw the breath rising from the sailors’ mouths in puffs of steam. But there was something odd about the way the steam was moving, something he wouldn’t have noticed amid the fury of the wind. Arcs of breath were coming from people’s faces and whirling away, to join together into a vague but definite stream.

  He followed the movement of the stream: It’s as if it’s revolving about the fulcrum of the Ship.

  But what could that mean? He wondered if he was looking at a clue to what was going on. But if so it was a clue he hadn’t yet figured.

  Something resembling the eye of a storm?

  Oh, man! He sensed it could be important – he sensed it strongly, instinctively. Something in the way the Ship was rocking from side to side, and how their breath was circling …

  ‘O great A-kol-i, look down upon us from your leap on high! Save us, Lord of the Deep, from the red eye, and the Witch’s challenge!’

  The youthful shaman, Turkeya, trembled as he knelt on the bare plank floor of his cabin, his numbed fingers clasped before him and his elbows hugging the wooden bunk for support against the heaving of the decks. Though younger than many of his fellow Olhyiu on board, he was privileged to have this billet to himself. But in truth he would have been happier to share the swinging hammocks of the sailors, with their grog-inspired shanty-singing. It would have made a welcome change from his gloomy solitude amid this terrifying blizzard.

  No wintry storm, not even a gale of snow, would ordinarily have worried the young shaman, who had spent his entire childhood in the Whitestar Mountains where winter reigned seven months of the year. But this was no seasonal chill or blow of winter. This was a bane of malevolence arrived out of the blue to harrow these summer waters. It had proved impossible to sleep, with the wild rolling of the Ship, and with the porthole, though battened shut against the storm, pitching below the massive swells and the wintry forces seeping in past the wooden shutter to freeze to ice inside the cabin wall. In the pallid daylight that filtered into the tiny cabin he had seen the rime of ice creep and spread. He could hear it squeaking like a horde of mice, as the living timbers heaved and groaned under the battering of wind and ocean. And with its icy presence the accompanying cold was invading the very air around him, freezing muscle and sinew, slowing the thoughts in his head as he attempted to pray.

  With the new dawn a bizarre invasion of ice and rime encrusted his cabin wall, a bloom like a gigantic rose, but instead of the white of snow or the glassy reflections of ice this sinister flower was made up entirely of greys and darks, as if in its very nature it was devouring the light, and spreading in huge concentric florets around the focus of the porthole. The sight of it chilled more than mere flesh. And at the very heart of it, haunting the corners of his vision, was a shadow – a head cowled in black – in which the eyes appeared darker still, like windows into a soul of darkness.

  ‘O – O great A-kol-i …’ he stammered, the prayer failing on his lips, the image of the leviathan that, in the legends of the Olhyiu, was the creator of worlds, melting from his very imagination. His prayer faltered, and his courage with it.

  ‘Turkeya!’

  He was only confusedly aware that someone was calling out his name. He recognised the voice, soft in his ears, but was unsure if it might be real or a dream, his whole being still haunted by the cowled figure. He felt hands take hold of his shoulders to shake him out of his torpor, slim girlish fingers, yet surprisingly determined. ‘What’s happening? You’re like a block of ice!’

  Allowing his face to be turned, he blinked slowly at the vision of his friend, Mo, who had entered the cabin on silent feet and who was standing over his still-kneeling form.

  ‘Mo!’ he whispered. ‘What is happening to us?’

  ‘Here! Let me help you back onto your feet. I’ve had a message from Mark.’

  ‘A message?’

  ‘Please listen to me!’ Mo began to rub at his hands, his face, to try to unthaw him from the clutches of the cold.

  Turkeya’s eyes blinked again with a painful sluggishness. He began to blow into his numbed fingers, to stamp life back in
to his feet. ‘Mark? Your brother has spoken to you?’ He shook his head, wiped his face with what felt like somebody else’s awkward hands.

  ‘He’s sent me a warning.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A splinter of malice has somehow invaded the Ship. It will destroy us all if we don’t do something.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I know is that time is short. We must hurry. We have to find Alan. He’ll know what to do.’

  Climbing the central staircase proved to be hazardous, with their feet slipping and sliding over icy timbers and rimy debris. Everywhere below the decks they encountered shivering sailors, their furry surcoats stiffened with hoar frost. Their very breaths were transformed as they exhaled, thickening to a freezing vapour that added to the deposits of rime and ice so the cabins and chambers looked like the interior of cooling stores. Even as they stumbled out into the middle deck, thick slurries of snow obscured their vision to a few yards, whirling down out of a wrack of storm, stinging and burning with the tiniest contact on exposed skin, all the while their numbed ears tormented by the shriek of the wind. Great waves pounded the Ship, coming in over the pitching sides, rushing over the decks and sweeping away everything in their path. The gaps in the ratlines were filling with thick panes of ice, like windows. Already the ice over the middle deck was a foot deep and the sheer weight of it was dragging the Ship, and all aboard, deeper into the turmoil of the ocean.

  What few sailors they saw, clinging to rails or ropes on deck, stared at them with haggard faces encrusted with ice and snow. Everywhere they witnessed broken spars and fallen rigging. With every tread they had to negotiate an obstacle course of debris made treacherous by thick ice.

  An almighty wave struck from starboard, and Turkeya and Mo lost their footing on the middle deck, their bodies skidding over the ice to be flung against the great pillar of the central mast.

  Turkeya attempted to protect Mo but his fingers were too numb to hold her, so that she began to roll and slide away from him, at the mercy of the next great wave. Turkeya began to slide into oblivion himself, his eyes clenched shut, expecting death. Abruptly, an enormous hand took a firm grip of his hair and yanked him back to his feet. He blinked open his eyes to be confronted by the cook, Larrh. The cook’s mane of white hair had broken free of its plait so it whirled about his head and face in the frenzy of wind. The giant figure took a better grip of Turkeya, pushing him up against an ice-encrusted rope where he managed to find a grip. His blurred vision searched frantically for Mo. He glimpsed her through the snow flurries, clinging onto the starboard rail.

  ‘There!’ he cried to Larrh. ‘The girl – save her!’

  But Larrh ignored him, staring up into the wrack of sky, his arm pointing to where the lurid red light of the star was faintly visible even through the deluge of snow and storm.

  ‘That spiteful moon!’ Larrh cried, as if there was no escaping the fact that the star was directly overhead. The vortex that gripped them spun about the fulcrum of the red star. ‘It robs me of sleep. It invades my dreams. It fills me with foreboding.’

  Turkeya shouted into Larrh’s distracted ear. ‘Listen to me! The girl will perish, unless we save her!’

  Larrh’s enormous head was shaking, his lips trembling. ‘That monstrosity – I cannot tear it from my mind. Is it possible that we are being punished?’

  Turkeya reached up and slapped Larrh’s face. ‘Will you not listen to me, Mr Larrh? You know who I am. I am the shaman. If we lose the girl we are lost!’

  Larrh’s head swivelled slowly down. His brow glowered, his eyes protruding with what appeared to be uncontrollable emotions.

  ‘Such is my torment I can neither rest nor sleep. That confounded thing – that bloody eye.’

  ‘Only you have the strength to save my friend. Save her, Mr Larrh. Save the girl and you will save us all.’

  The wheel was the only fragment of superstructure that resisted the ice. Shivering, holding onto it with every ounce of his strength, Alan waited for the Temple Ship to recover from the blow of another wave that had pitched the starboard rail below the waves. His breath was reduced to a desperate panting through nostrils that were encrusted with ice. Through similarly ice-grimed eyelids he surveyed the aft deck, or what little he could make of it, with visibility reduced to snatches between squalls. He was startled to see movement, a small huddle of figures breaking through the blizzard in a series of shuffles, holding on wherever they discovered a foothold, but determined, it seemed, to approach him at the wheel. With hair frozen awry on their heads and a wild, desperate look in their grime-etched faces, he recognised Turkeya and Mo – and then the giant figure that released them both from his powerful grip, before fading away into storm.

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  What could they be thinking of, coming up from below into these conditions? He shouted for Ainé.

  ‘I see them!’

  The Kyra, in some form he had never witnessed before, half woman, half tigress, with extended claws on all four limbs, hauled the two shivering figures up close to Alan, where they clutched onto the wheel on either side of him. Mo’s features were luminescent with pallor. Alan extended his right arm so it encircled her, helping her cling to the wheel, then turned to Turkeya, whose eyes were closed and whose lips appeared to be praying.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  It was Mo who answered, her girlish voice strong enough in his ear to penetrate the shriek of the wind.

  ‘Mark has spoken to me.’ Mo explained the nature of Mark’s message. A splinter of malice had invaded the Ship.

  ‘But what does that mean? Are you talking about the red eye?’

  ‘No. Not the eye. Something else. Something here, within the Ship itself. Mark believes that it will destroy us all if we don’t do something about it.’

  Alan shook his head, baffled by her words. If only he could communicate directly with Mark himself. But he had been trying to do that, without success, ever since he had come back to the after deck. He turned to the Kyra, who was crouched nearby, her arms about a stanchion of iron at the base of the wheel, her talons extended and gripping. The fur of her face was solid with ice and even the pulsations in her oraculum were dulled.

  ‘Do you sense anything more of this splinter of malice?’ He addressed the young shaman.

  Turkeya told Alan about the rose of ice that had invaded his cabin – and the figure of darkness he had sensed to be part of it.

  ‘Not the Witch?’

  ‘The Tyrant, I fear!’

  The Tyrant?

  A new blast of wind threatened their balance, so each held tightly to the wheel and waited for it to ebb. Alan closed his eyes, forcing himself to think. ‘The Tyrant is mounting some kind of attack from inside the Ship?’

  ‘It’s as if some malign force is weakening us from within. Some malaise of the spirit. But it attacks more than the Ship. It attacks us all, in heart and spirit. Do you not sense it – feel it – within yourself?’

  Alan stared at the young shaman, shocked by what he was suggesting.

  ‘Mage Lord!’ He heard the Kyra’s urgent call, mind-to-mind. ‘The Ship is heeling about!’

  ‘Watch out, Mo, Turkeya. I’m taking the wheel.’

  But the Ship did not respond to the wheel. The Ship was turning by itself – spinning around its own axis- and the sensation was dizzying. Even as it did so another gigantic wave struck. Water surged over the decks, the spray from the wave foaming high into the upper masts and lines, then cascading back down onto the decks. They had to cling to the wheel, their hearts in their throats and their breaths suspended. With a sudden deafening crack the centre mast snapped. There was a thunderous series of detonations as the huge timbers crashed down onto the decks, dragging rigging and fragments of the other two great masts down with it, smashing through superstructure and rails, killing sailors.

  Mo cried into Alan’s ear. ‘Talk to the Ship!’

  He glanced down into her face, obs
erving up close the beaded tracery of the ice in her eyelids that made it almost impossible for her to blink.

  ‘Find a way, Alan!’

  All of a sudden the light faded, as though the sun, already obscured by the pall of blizzard, had been eclipsed. The Ship reeled as another monstrous wave struck it broadside, and Alan lost his footing on the slippery planks, crashing heavily against the rail. Half-stunned, he felt the surging rise of the recovering deck, which hurled him forward, smashing him against the base of the wheel. It stunned him for several moments while he clung to the icy woodwork, attempting to recover his senses. He could only hope that Mo and Turkeya remained safe nearby.

  The Kyra helped him struggle back onto his feet. He felt her claws penetrate his surcoat as she pressed him back against the wheel. Thank goodness, Mo and Turkeya were still alive, huddled together immediately below him.

  ‘Mark!’ he cried, staring anew at the great wheel, realising that this too was now frozen solid, encased in ice. There was no impression of the soul spirit of his friend, no impression of Mark’s presence at all.

  The world about him had gone berserk.

  Close to his ear he heard the Kyra roar. ‘The sea ahead! A monster wave. It is twenty feet above the deck.’

  ‘Tie me to the wheel!’

  Wordlessly the Kyra took hold of Alan’s right arm. She lashed it to the rim of the great wheel. The Ship heeled, as if anticipating the approaching horror. With an almighty heave, the Kyra was at his other side, lashing his left arm to the other side of the wheel. He heard her departing words, mind-to-mind.

  ‘Discover the source of malice!’

  The Kyra was gone, and with her, his friends Mo and Turkeya. Alan counted the seconds, hoping that they made it to safety below decks before the great wave swept over the decks. He held his breath as the monster wave struck, tearing his feet from under him and roaring through him.