The Tower of Bones

by Frank P. Ryan

  Mysteries Still

  Returning to the riverbank, with the morning sun warming the air about her, Kate had never felt more exhausted and yet so exhilarated. The dragon waited for her return, his tail swishing through the long grass, disturbing a swarm of brightly coloured butterflies. She stared at him, as if to reassure herself that what she recalled had been real: those great wings really were there, furled like collapsed tents along his back. When she squatted back down beside him, his head and neck extended almost to her lap.

  It had all been so exciting she had forgotten her hunger. But that hunger had never gone away.

  She murmured, ‘I feel so famished my muscles feel jittery.’

  ‘Driftwood find food.’

  ‘I don’t know where – but I wish you would.’

  She threw her arms around the long, scaly neck, squeezing his iron-like solidity. ‘Show me that you can fly. Let me see those wonderful wings in action. Let me see the real you – Driftwood the magnificent!’

  With a swirl of his long body he turned riverwards, and then he moved with a blur of speed in those powerful hind legs that startled her. In moments he was airborne, the long slender body rising in a spiral so graceful it took her breath away. She watched as he grew smaller with distance, moving out until he hovered several hundred feet above the central stream, and then plummeted down, his body sheening blue-black as he dived vertically into the river. He was gone for something like a minute, with just the spreading ripples to show the place of his entry, and then suddenly he surfaced again in a cascade of water, and with a fish in his jaws. His great wings beat the air as he lifted slowly clear of the river, and a small rainbow shimmered within the rain of droplets falling from his wings. Kate squealed with delight. She thought a rainbow needed a peep of sunlight twinkling through it. But then she realised that Driftwood was himself the source of the light. She blinked, a slow entranced blink, only just realising something she should have grasped before. The odd, cantankerous little dragon wasn’t just some exotic animal. He was a being of magic.

  Even so he couldn’t resist showing off, rising in another glorious spiral, preening his brightly coloured ruff so it flashed a delight of iridescent colours for her benefit, before swooping down to alight before her, his wings folding about him like a cape, and depositing a flapping salmon at her feet.

  She clapped her applause.

  ‘Kate – eat!’

  ‘I can’t just eat it like that. It’s still jumping.’

  He bit off the head and swallowed it. ‘Not jumping.’

  ‘I just couldn’t. It’s still raw.’

  The dragon bit the remains of the fish into two halves. One half he swallowed whole before he picked up what remained of the fish and trapped it between his sharp teeth. Then flames rose from his throat and he grilled the fish for her, allowing the cooked meat to lie within the bowl of his lower jaw.

  He looked so pelican-like, unable to speak because his mouth was full, a talon-tipped finger – or maybe it was a thumb – pointing towards his burdened jaw.

  ‘Mmmmmm!’

  Kate sniffed: it really did smell delicious.

  ‘Mmmmmm – mmmmmmmhhhhh!’

  ‘I think I’ve found a way to stop you prattling on.’

  Those great eyes regarded her, fast blinking, with steam exuding from between his nostrils.

  Kate’s mouth slavered with hunger. She wanted to taste the fish very badly, but she quaked with fear at the thought of going anywhere near those jaws. At the same time she really was starving and her hunger got the better of her, so she dashed one hand quickly into the maw and took a fistful of fish, burning her fingers so she had to pass the hot flesh rapidly from one hand to another, blowing on it in an attempt to cool it. She was forced to drop it before dashing off and gathering several dock-like leaves and returning, arranging them into a makeshift platter before the dragon on the ground.

  ‘Put it there.’

  He dropped the mouthful of fish, then snorted, blowing steam and fragments of fish all over her.

  But Kate didn’t care. She blew on a morsel of fish and she tasted it as hot as her mouth would bear it.

  ‘It’s lovely.’ She snorted through her nose, with her mouth still half full. ‘It’s the most delicious food I have ever tasted.’

  ‘Eatings – not talks!’

  She couldn’t wait. She blew on some more, aware that she was slobbering saliva from the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Just look at the state of me!’

  The dragon watched her all the while, those great kumquat eyes blinking slowly, as Kate couldn’t stop herself slobbering, or her poor wasted body shivering and trembling, and all the while her fingers dipped repeatedly into the mess of fish, and her mouth gobbled, reluctant even to chew properly, until her belly felt full to bursting.

  Although her mind was full of wonder at all that had happened, yet still there were mysteries about the dragon, and about the island, that deeply puzzled her. For example, who was this Momu who had dressed her in the diaphanous clothes while she slept that second night? And there were mysteries that applied to Driftwood himself. If she was right, and her oraculum had somehow restored life to the dragon from what had appeared nothing more than an ancient fossil, he had come back into the world as a new-born – a child. That would explain the childish behaviour and speech. But over the few days – a week at the most – he appeared to be growing, maturing at enormous speed. Granny Dew had sent her here, to this island. So there had to be a logic to her arrival here, even if she couldn’t fathom any of it.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ It emerged more like, ‘Unn ahh assshhh u ehhh wesssnnn?’

  The dragon merely flicked an eye in her direction. He was lying prone in the grass, peering down at the river, as if impatient to hunt again.

  ‘I know that our meeting – even if it just seemed to happen by chance – must signify something important.’

  His tail whumped in the grass.

  Kate sighed. Then she began to twirl a seed head of grass before her eyes, astonished in studying it that it had grown from the purse given to her by Granny Dew.

  ‘What about this Momu? Who, or what, is the Momu?’

  ‘Soon! Girl-thing meet – see!’

  A prickle of apprehension swept over her. ‘I don’t follow.’

  The dragon’s tail started to swish again, but more purposefully, not the gentle, day-dreamy whumping as before. Kate looked askance at him. ‘I didn’t know where I was running when I got free of the Tower. Any direction would do. It was just chance that I met the wolf-man.’

  ‘Ummm.’ The tail was still swishing gently in the grass.

  ‘And then it was sheer chance where I fell down into an exhausted sleep. It just happened that your fossil bones were under my head. Under the oraculum all the while I was sleeping.’

  His voice sounded surprisingly deep. ‘Not chance!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fate!’

  The seed head fell from Kate’s loosened fingers. ‘What are you implying? Are you saying that Granny Dew is controlling me?’

  Driftwood swivelled his lumpy head, with a knowing widening of the eyes. ‘Fate controlling Granny Dew.’

  Kate hesitated, wondering if this could possibly be true. ‘We need to get away. The Witch and all the others – they’re out there looking for me. We need to run.’

  ‘Driftwood will not run.’

  Kate’s heart faltered. ‘We have to get away. We’re both too weak to fight them. We’ll be slaughtered if we just sit here and wait for them to find us. We have to escape. If you won’t come with me, I’ll have to go on my own.’

  But the dragon reared to his full height and simply shook his head. ‘No running. Driftwood and Kate fight. We fight – no running any more!’

  The Gyre

  Alan gasped for breath as another enormous wave struck them broadside, close to the bow this time, the great ship plunging down at a terrifying angle beneath the solid wall of water, t
hen twisting and rolling as the fury of the ocean tore over the decks before righting itself to an uncertain juddering balance again. Soaked and frozen, his skin numbed by ice, his eyes almost blinded, he was only dimly aware that the spars and rigging were gone, wrenched away by the fury of storm and waves. Of the three great masts, only splintered stumps remained. How many of her crew, and of the guardian Shee, had also been lost? The tethering of his arms to the wheel had saved him from being washed overboard. Holding his breath, too exhausted to do anything other than squeeze his eyes shut, he hung on as another great wave struck, tearing him off his feet until his whole body was horizontal under the rushing tide of water. The force against his shackled arms was immense. It felt as if his shoulders were being torn from their sockets, but then after what seemed an eternity it eased again, the ocean draining away from his pain-racked body and limbs, abandoning him retching and coughing, his limbs and senses struggling to recover.

  Mark – are you there? He pressed his call urgently, through the oraculum.

  No response. Just the manic glee of the gale.

  Mark! He roared again, with all of his force and concentration.

  I … I hear you … faintly …

  What’s the hell is wrong?

  … trying to call you … calling for hours … something attacking the Temple Ship … Ship’s telling me … corruption from within …

  What does that mean?

  … don’t know … getting to me too …

  The Ship itself! The Temple Ship was communicating through Mark. But what was it trying to tell him? A corruption from within? It had to be the eye of malice – the red eye must be eating into both their soul spirits.

  But his oraculum suggested the eye was empty. This didn’t feel right …

  Alan tried to recall something Turkeya had said. Something he was trying to remember, if only his numbed brain would respond …

  Turkeya had spotted something.

  It’s as if some alien force is weakening us from within. Some malaise of the spirit … It attacks us all, in heart and spirit. It’s turning our own minds and spirits against us … We’re becoming our own worst enemies …

  Alan retched against the ice-encrusted woodwork of the great wheel. But there was nothing left to bring up. He stared around himself at the heaving and rolling decks, which resembled a breaker’s yard of spars and masts and bedraggled tatters of rigging. He didn’t know how the Ship had survived such a battering. But it couldn’t possibly survive much more of this. He closed his eyes and attempted the same scrutiny through the oraculum. He saw the Ship in ghostly outline, the heartbeat at the core of her weak, faltering.

  It reminded him of something, a memory … a feeling of terrible sadness. He had felt this same communication of sadness from the Ship before – a sadness that had not come from his own heart but from outside, a feeling that had shocked him with the intensity of its communication. And now, when he scanned the Ship through his oraculum, he sensed despair. Could it be that the Temple Ship was sending him a personal message – a warning?

  He poured what power he still retained through the oraculum into the structure of the Ship. But there was no response. If anything the weakness in the Ship seemed to worsen, its despair to deepen. Alan’s head fell onto his chest.

  A corruption from within? A malaise of the spirit … Maybe the malaise was within Alan himself – his failure to understand the warning message?

  The threat, whatever it was, was capable of overpowering the oraculum. It was capable of silencing Mark, even his soul spirit in its powerful union with the Ship. What could possibly be so powerful? Alan recalled how the Tyrant had controlled him in their last confrontation. The Tyrant had overcome his oraculum. The Tyrant – not the Witch! But the Tyrant wasn’t here to do that. He thought about Turkeya’s warning: Mo had received a message from Mark.

  A splinter of malice has entered the bowels of the Ship.

  Not the red eye in the sky. Something attacking the Ship from within!

  Alan clung to consciousness as a new cyclone tore through the wreck, hurling debris horizontally across the decks. About him the ocean heaved and pounded as if maddened with rage. The Temple Ship had been reduced to a shattered hulk amid the mountainous waves that pitched and tossed it with monstrous violence, its hull and decks groaning under the freezing torrents of water. The stumps of masts, a yard across at the base, were being further tormented and shattered, with dangerous fragments shattering and snapping, showering the air with potentially lethal splinters. There was no escape from the violence, no place of safety. The gunwales had been torn away and even the planks of the decks were being ripped from their moorings. Speech was impossible. The only communication was oraculum to oraculum. Desperately, Alan reached out to Mark again. ‘What is it? You sent Mo a message – something about a splinter of malice attacking the Ship?’

  Mark’s communication, at the core of his mind, sounded even weaker than before.

  … malice … here … attacking from within …

  Bewildered, Alan directed his oraculum to that of the Kyra, who was invisible in the snow and spray, but somewhere forward in the prow. The Kyra responded immediately, a reassuring return of communication, mind-to-mind.

  Can you figure what’s causing this, Ainé?

  The Ship is caught in a deathmaw.

  A deathmaw? Alan’s vision attempted to probe the seas about him but all he could make out was one gigantic wave after another. What was Mark trying to tell him? What could be attacking the Temple Ship from within?

  Alan attempted to think this through, doing his best to shake the confusion from his head, the muscles of his neck so stiff it felt like an agony of slow motion. But he could sense no inner rage – no inner madness. All he had done was to fight the storm, to press every mote of his being into an effort to fight back against the raging elements, and by doing so help the Ship.

  He still poured out all of his power against the enraged elements. It felt as if all that was right and decent in him was draining away, being sucked out of him. And yet he was failing. Only then did he try to communicate again, mind-to-mind, with the Kyra.

  Something has been brought on board the Ship. The eye is just a deception, causing us to focus all of our concern on the Witch. We’ve been looking outwards when the real danger is within. There must be some sign of it. I’ll stay at the wheel and try to communicate further with Mark. But you’ve got to organise a search below. Get Siam to help you – and Turkeya. Mo took Mark’s message to Turkeya – he knows the Ship. And he has a shaman’s instincts. Get Turkeya to conduct a search from top to bottom. If anybody can find what is wrong, it’ll be the shaman.

  An exhausted Turkeya held onto a timber in the murky corridor below decks and waited for the violent impact of another great wave to pass. A malice was at large among them, a danger at the very heart of the Ship. But what could it be? All he knew was what he’d been told. That if and when he saw anything strange he was to blow on the whistle he carried in his greatcoat pocket. It would have been helpful to know a little more of what to look for since just about everything he encountered in the confusion seemed awry, like the look of terror in the eyes of everybody he spoke to. But doggedly he stuck to his task, questioning all he met and poking into every nook and cranny.

  So it was, after many hours of stumbling throughout the debris-littered lower decks of the Temple Ship, that he came across the cook staring out of a wide-open porthole in the galley kitchen. Larrh’s white hair was a miniature storm in itself, wild and drenched about his head. His tall body was bent so he could press his face against the porthole and peer out into the storm. Turkeya was shocked to find any porthole opened, for the sea deluged in through the opening with every wave that struck them broadside, and the galley was already awash with brine. The cook himself appeared oblivious to the shaman’s arrival. He was no longer wearing his apron. His body was enveloped in a greatcoat large as a tent that was itself dripping with spray. He was groaning and mutteri
ng to himself, his face haggard with worry.

  ‘How fare you, Mr Larrh?’

  ‘How fare I?’ The ponderous head of the cook turned and peered through red-rimmed eyes at the gangling youth, blinking with a weary deliberation. At first there was no recognition in Larrh’s eyes, just a flatness, a distraction of distance.

  ‘I find myself asking if there are still stars up there,’ he muttered, ‘stars that remain to guide us?’

  Turkeya thought it again: the porthole open! When it should have been battened down tight against the waves. He attempted to slam it shut, but the bulk of the cook prevented him. For several tense moments they stood in a kind of exhausted confrontation with each other. No more did Turkeya know what to say in response to the cook’s strange comment. His own words, when they emerged, came from something less than conviction. ‘I’m sure the Mage Lord will find a way.’

  ‘Would that I were sure of anything any more.’

  Turkeya hesitated. Larrh had originally hailed from Turkeya’s old tribe and village but he had not travelled down with them from the ice-bound lake. He had long abandoned his Olhyiu roots and found employment in the harbour at Carfon. If Turkeya recalled correctly, he had been recruited for this journey at the suggestion of Feltzvan, the adviser to the Prince, Ebrit.

  ‘What is it, Mr Larrh? You seem distressed. Is it something I can help with? A potion to help you sleep, perhaps?’

  Larrh had inserted his right hand between the folds of his coat and he appeared to be scratching at his breastbone. His voice was low, halfway between a growl and a whisper. ‘Distressed, you say?’

  ‘Is it a spasm of the heart that ails you?’

  The huge man withdrew his hand, blinking again, as if seeing the young shaman more clearly. ‘Forgive a foolish man! Why I have a son and daughter older than you. You are precious young, for a shaman.’

  ‘I do what I can.’

  The man hesitated, then jerked his head violently away, consumed by some new spasm of torment. Crouching down again, his hand rubbing and scratching under the greatcoat, he pressed his head once more into the porthole, his face instantly drenched with more spray, yet his eyes blinking through it all, as if determined to discover an answer out there in the tormented ocean. All of a sudden he swivelled and took a powerful hold of Turkeya’s shoulders.