The Tower of Bones

by Frank P. Ryan

  Alan’s attention was drawn by a glance from Mo, her eyes turning in the direction of the youthful shaman, Turkeya. She whispered, ‘He is desperate to go with you tomorrow. But Siam wants him to stay behind.’

  Siam was just as apprehensive about the plan as the Kyra. It was easy to understand Siam’s concerns for his only son. Alan signalled to Turkeya and Mo to join him, heading off for a short walk along the shore. By now the moon was out, only a night or two off full, its silvery light glimmering on the cusps of the waves. Their ears were full of the hissing rapture of the surf against the black shingle.

  Turkeya showed little interest in their surroundings. ‘The other boys would laugh at me when I was growing up. The son of Siam, yet it was obvious to everyone that I was never likely to become a warrior. I was too awkward and sensitive, better at hiding than fighting. But in my heart I recognised that I had no craving to kill things, even when hungry. I could survive without the dead rabbit or pigeon if it meant I could watch them at courtship, or at play. There was an ache in my heart that was answered by life, whether in the grasslands, or the forest – even the oceans.’

  ‘Warriors,’ Mo spoke softly, ‘aren’t always the answer, even in war. There are other things besides fighting.’

  Turkeya lowered his head, his lips tight-pressed.

  Alan nodded. He faced Turkeya, the two youths close to the same gangling height. ‘I guess that what Mo’s trying to say is that there’s more than one way of making a difference. My mom taught me that. You shouldn’t be ashamed to care about life. You have a natural empathy with the world. You and Mo – you’re alike in that way. Mo understands where you’re coming from.’

  ‘You think of me as my father does. You see Turkeya, the idiot, whose very sister laughed at how he would hide when danger threatened.’

  Mo shook her head. ‘You have qualities more important than fighting. We have plenty of fighters. We have only one shaman.’

  ‘None respects me as shaman. They think I am too young, too clumsy.’

  ‘Oh, Turkeya, it was you who saved us from the gyre. Your people respect you,’ Mo insisted. ‘Siam is proud of you.’

  Alan saw the disappointment in Turkeya’s eyes. He put his arm around his shoulders and directed the young shaman’s attention to a cluster of figures a short distance further along the shore. Turkeya recognised the Kyra among them, her stature recognisable even in the moonlight. She was on her knees in the volcanic grit, a smaller figure held between her hands.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘The mother-sister is saying farewell to the daughter-sister.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s their custom – the Kyra thinks she’s heading to her death. She is passing on her memories while she can.’

  Turkeya’s eyes grew large and his head fell, as if only now did he truly understand the risks that Alan, and the expeditionary force, would face. But then, lifting his head again, he spoke softly, but insistently.

  ‘I’m still coming. And Mo will insist on coming too.’ Turkeya glanced at the girl, who nodded quietly. ‘Tell him, Mo.’

  ‘Turkeya is right – I sense it.’

  ‘What do you sense, Mo?’

  ‘That you will need us.’

  Alan’s breath caught at the shriek from overhead. A Garg’s cry, from a spy circling overhead even in the dark! He thought about something the Kyra had said: that perhaps the Gargs held off from attacking them because they knew something that the company did now know.

  The Cill

  Kate clenched her eyes shut against the mad rush of air yanking back her hair in a taut stream behind her face. Clinging for all she was worth to the dragon’s neck, at any moment she expected to hit the water in a heart-stopping plunge. But then the headlong descent slowed and, with a powerful flapping of wings, they landed with the lightness of a feather. Only now did Kate dare to open her eyes to discover that Driftwood was perched on a ledge of rock a few yards above the surf. The skin of her face felt raw from friction with the briny air.

  ‘Did you have to scare me half to death?’

  ‘Witch has spies. Must not discover here.’

  Waves broke against jagged rocks close enough to splash her feet as she alighted from the dragon’s body, still trembling with fright. She had to brush the hair from her eyes to take a good look at her surroundings. What, she asked herself, was so special about here? Then she noticed a narrow cleft in the rock, which led off the ledge into what appeared to be a cave. Kate bit her lips, squinting at the cleft. She edged closer, peering into the opening, but all she could see was darkness. Sniffing, she could smell nothing. She tried straining her ears as well but could hear nothing other than the sea breezes wailing like banshees through the rocks.

  She tried to calm her heartbeat, which hadn’t yet come down out of her throat. ‘What? You think I’m just going to hop in there?’

  ‘Momu waits.’

  ‘Momu, whoever Momu is, can wait ‘til she’s blue in the face.’

  ‘Kate meets Momu. Time has come.’

  ‘Don’t you dare abandon me!’

  ‘Driftwood cannot come. Driftwood must prepare – dragon things. Kate – girl-thing – time is here.’

  ‘Absolutely forget it.’

  ‘Kate – close eyes!’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  Those kumquat eyes regarded her, blinking with that peculiar membrane thing flitting across them. The next she knew, he was nudging her into the cleft.

  ‘Stop it!’

  ‘Kate meets Momu. Must beware her hunger!’

  ‘Granny Dew warned me to beware you.’

  A forepaw lifted and a talon sprang out of it to point to her brow.

  ‘What’s that supposed …?’

  Too late. He had nudged Kate into the crevice for her to discover there was no floor. She was already sliding down a steep slope. Darkness yawned about her as she dropped, twisting and turning, like a helter-skelter – but this was a fairground ride whose walls were of ungiving stone. And strangely, though she felt shaken and dizzy, there were no projecting points or sharp corners to cut her skin or break a bone. In the few moments she had to appreciate this, Kate wondered if the tunnel walls were smoother than natural stone should be – maybe worn smooth by the descent of a great many bodies over a very long time. And her landing, though it shook the breath out of her, was cushioned by something soft and smelly, like seaweed. For a while she just sprawled there, panting for breath, with her head spinning. Then she heard noises from what sounded like a long way above that suggested Driftwood was taking off. She turned her face up into the gloom and called to him.

  ‘Please – don’t leave me!’

  Her fright caused the oraculum to flare, illuminating a globular chamber with pallid green light. The tomb-like silence frightened her. She shouted back up into the gloomy tunnel: ‘Don’t you dare!’

  But he was gone. Sitting back, her legs now wobbly with panic, she heard a sniffing or a snuffling. She didn’t like the sound of it at all. There was also a distinct, if strange, kind of smell.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  The sound stopped. But then it started up again, coming closer. Kate clapped her hands to her mouth. Her heart had never come down out of her throat. She sat back against the wall, pulled her knees up to her chest.

  ‘Oh, help!’

  She heard rustling, like … like she didn’t know what. It grew into a scurrying, and then there was the impression of something heavy rolling over. She felt a breeze play over the skin of her face. It was followed by a musical sound … as if somebody was running through notes in a scale. And then two faint lights appeared. Kate juddered with panic and she tucked her head down into her arms and knees. Yet something in her memory tugged at her. Hadn’t she heard something like this before?

  ‘Who are you? Tentatively she lifted her head again and squinted at the lights.

  In fact there were a great many more lights by now. She was confronted by a g
athering of tiny lights, all of the faintest amber. And two much brighter lights, like minuscule beacons of turquoise. The amber lights were still but the turquoise lights were turning this way and that, like eyes. The musical sound came again, from their direction. There really was something familiar about the sound, although her senses were too overcome with alarm to recall what.

  ‘I … I can’t see you properly. Please – please, before I die of fright, will you let me see who or what you are?’

  There was a glow in the air, not a flame exactly, but more like a gentle reflected light from the walls of the cave – if, in fact, it was a cave at all. It must be some sort of chamber carved out of stone. Now she could see more clearly Kate realised that the chamber was a perfect sphere, with walls as smooth as glass. Never in a million years could this have formed naturally. As she peered about herself she spotted patches of dewy wetness that glistened, like snail tracks, on the shiny surface. Just as she was wondering about those patches, one of them detached and in the twinkling of an eye it became a standing figure just feet away from her, its flesh as transparent as a ghost and the top of its head barely up to her chest.

  ‘Sure, I know you!’

  The Cill child gazed up at Kate with his large turquoise eyes, just as when she’d first met him in the Tower of Bones. She saw the corrugated rills of flesh, the folded stubs just above his ears where those delicate fan-like fronds had opened during his torment. And now, still gazing up at her, he emitted that tinkling musical sound. Then he closed his eyes in a slow, deliberate fashion, and when he opened them again Kate saw the irises slowly retract over the liquidly shining pupils, like the opening of an anemone.

  She thought: It’s some kind of gesture … like friendship.

  ‘Thank you.’ Kate lifted her two hands, palms uppermost, and she did her best to return a jittery attempt at a smile.

  He raised his own hands, as if copying her gesture. Then his hands slowly changed so the squidgy nail-less fingers extended to slim, elongated feelers that brushed her face around her eyes, and then, as if every bit as astonished with her as she was with him, his eyes performed that slow blink again, and then he reached up to comb out bits of seaweed that had become entangled in her hair.

  Once again she had the impression he was trying to tell her something through a communication other than words. She did her best to talk to him through the oraculum: I so want to understand.

  The Cill reached up again and touched her brow and the oraculum tingled, as if there had been a tiny spark of static electricity. Her mind filled with a single colour.

  ‘Green!’ she exclaimed.

  The Cill’s eyes stared at her, unblinking, as if to highlight the turquoise colour of his eyes. He emitted that musical sound again – the same communication.

  Kate shook her head, stooping slightly, so as to come closer to his face. ‘Eyes … green eyes?’ She laughed abruptly. ‘What are you telling me? Is that what you call me? You call me Greeneyes?’

  The Cill blinked that slow, iris-changing blink again and he repeated that same musical sound.

  Kate swallowed and her own eyes widened.

  ‘The music – that’s also me? That’s what you’re trying to tell me. The colour and the music – it’s your name for me in your language?’ She clapped her hands. ‘How absolutely lovely!’

  He slow-blinked again, but this time the music changed. He made a clicking sound and more music all at the same time. This time she saw a different colour in her mind- the turquoise of his eyes. She stared at him and he stared back up at her.

  ‘That’s your name?’

  The Cill grew excited. He started a high-pitched chittering. Others appeared out of the shadows, accompanied by a melodic chanting. It was the most beautiful sound Kate had ever heard. Tears of relief came to her eyes as she looked at them emerging out of the shadows and walls, with eyes a medley of jewel-like colours and skins sheening like rainbows.

  ‘You’re just entrancing!’

  She wanted to grab hold of the child and squeeze him. But he was gesturing: some new message. With a sinewy movement of his arm he indicated a patch of wall where, with a five-note musical incantation, a circular door irised open. Moist patches on either side of the opening suggested it was guarded. The gesture, and the sudden look of alertness that had entered his eyes, told Kate that he was still anxious about something, perhaps that the Witch and her minions could track and follow them even here.

  ‘Go on,’ she nodded. ‘I’ll follow you.’

  There was a momentary hesitation, as if he were readying himself. ‘Momu’s people.’ He pointed to himself.

  ‘I just heard you speak!’

  ‘Shaami should not speak.’

  ‘Shaami – is that your name?’

  ‘When Shaami speaks, all hear. Only the Momu can decide when Cill can speak with strangers.’

  ‘Who is this Momu?’

  ‘Shaami has broken the rules.’

  ‘Will you be punished?’

  ‘But Shaami wanted to thank Greeneyes for saving him.’ He hesitated as if he were translating in his mind. ‘This,’ he performed the slow blink with his eyes, ‘says “Thank you”.’

  She couldn’t resist hugging him. But she did so gently, afraid that the diaphanous flesh might bruise.

  The embrace provoked an overwhelming rush of feeling.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘All felt – all shared.’

  ‘What do you mean? All of your people?’

  He bowed his head with a shy smile, leading her to the guarded entrance, and through it into a twisting tunnel that cut through the walls of the chamber, leading away and downwards, like a spout opening off a globular teapot. A second slide carried them further downwards, and out into a new chamber. Shaami sounded another musical signal and the spout disappeared.

  ‘Greeneyes must prepare.’

  ‘What am I preparing for?’

  ‘The ocean.’

  With the word, she sensed a flood of emotions within Shaami’s mind, reverence perhaps, as if the concept of ocean was deeply meaningful to him. But there was no time to wonder about it. The chamber began to fill with a cool, watery gurgling.

  ‘Shaami – I’ll drown!’

  ‘Greeneyes must continue our journey.’

  Kate couldn’t help but clutch at Shaami’s hand as the seawater filled the chamber. ‘What is it? Some kind of defence?’

  ‘Ulla Quemar must be protected. Once there were many cities open to the light, so my people woke to the sun in the morning and slept under the moon and stars. We gathered herbs in the meadows, listening to the birdsong and the hum of the bees amid the flowers. All gone – since the coming of the Great Witch.’

  Kate was staring at the rising level of the briny water, which by now was higher than her knees. She couldn’t help shivering, it was so cold.

  ‘Of all the cities of the Cill, only Ulla Quemar has survived. Here we became learned in the management of stone and water. Through such caution the Momu’s people are the only ones left – the last of the Cill.’

  Kate clutched his hand with panic as the rising water reached her chin.

  ‘Why,’ he questioned, with what she took to be a humorous tinkling, ‘does Greeneyes hug the floor when she might fly.’

  ‘Fly?’ Her chattering teeth made it almost impossible to speak the words, even as a moment later she realised what he meant. She allowed her feet to detach from where she stood on tiptoes and she allowed her body to be directed to the surface by his guiding hand. ‘You mean swim?’

  A thought cut through Kate’s rising panic. If some enemy had discovered the cleft in the rock, and if that enemy had somehow managed to penetrate the hidden entrance and got this far, they would have drowned. Here’s hoping, she thought, it won’t happen to me! A new doorway appeared. Kate felt her body carried through into another chute. Down she spiralled, with Shaami holding her hand, in an exhilarating ride of water and spray …

  ‘Welcome to Ulla
Quemar!’

  She emerged, dripping, into an enormous enclosure. The ceiling soared hundreds of feet overhead, exquisitely curved and smooth as marble. The floor was a proliferating garden of delight through which wove a labyrinth of avenues and pathways. Everywhere was the gleam and glitter of water. Moisture beaded the thick leaves of plants that were as brightly coloured as the flowers that carpeted a wild meadow. Butterflies, bees, dragonflies and damselflies fluttered and buzzed amid an exuberance of flowers and shrubs. Birds too … they must have been chosen for their lovely song and plumage. The sights and sounds were so breathtaking that Kate hesitated to intrude into this world – her guide’s home city of Ulla Quemar. But the city drew her into it, seducing all of her senses and filling her mind with wonder.

  ‘It’s paradise!’

  A gentle spray of water was falling from somewhere high overhead, changing to mist and creating rainbows. But how could it ever rain in here? An engineering marvel it seemed, where tiny streams had been sculpted into the roof and contrived to sprinkle steadily. Everywhere she allowed herself to be led by Shaami brought new wonders of colour and scent and sound. In time they emerged onto a beach opening onto an inner sea, a meeting of land and ocean united by a fine ivory sand, which became many different shades of ultramarine, turquoise and violet as it glowed under the waves. Fish and crabs and other marine life darted in glimmering shoals of movement all around her.

  ‘My goodness – but how does it all work?’

  ‘Ulla Quemar is one with the coral reef.’

  ‘But the light – it’s just like daylight.’

  ‘Our ancestors discovered the light that glows in the hidden places deep beneath the oceans.’

  ‘But … but …’ For several moments she stared about herself, lost for words. ‘Why doesn’t the sea just flood in?’

  ‘There are balances, of water and air, which are as one with the life you see about you. In addition we have the valves of rock we came through, and the equalising chambers filled with ocean waters. Here in Ulla Quemar we keep open a window on our birth world, the ocean, with its delights and freedom.’