The Tower of Bones

by Frank P. Ryan

  ‘What do you mean?’

  What ended that eons-old conflict was an error of judgement. It was expedient, for the danger that ensued would have been too terrible to contemplate. Mórígán was implored to intercede. But in answering such a desperate prayer the Third Power contravened the laws of Fate. So you glimpse a trajectory that was set in motion long ago. However indirectly, it was this error that led to your coming here. The laws of Fate cannot be broken again. Those earlier consequences must be redressed.

  ‘But what can we possibly do, if Fangorath is so powerful?’

  Unknowingly, your companion, with her gift of the Second Power, has set a course in motion. Look to the south, to the life-giving oceans!

  Kate blinked in recognition of Mo’s hand on her shoulder, this new Mo, curiously calm and purposive, encouraging her to turn around and gaze back in the direction they had come. Kate saw, through the clogging ash in her eyelashes, the strangeness that was invading the lowering sky. And then it appeared to come alive. The entire southern horizon twinkled in the gloom, and something at the very centre of it began to swell and to advance, as if the air was transformed by the magic in its passing, cascading every colour of the rainbow over the enormous spread of what looked like wings. They stiffened in astonishment to hear it thunder, words too deep and strange to recognise as any familiar language, the challenge trembling through the ground under their feet as it swept forward and found its focus.

  The titan roared.

  ‘Oh, Mo! It must be Driftwood.’

  All around her, Kate saw the Gargs and Cill warriors fall to their knees. She heard their communal cries:

  ‘Omdorrréilliuc – Omdorrréilliuc!’

  They were prostrating themselves, as if before a god.

  The thunder erupted again, juddering through the rocks under their feet as if they were standing on lumbering tectonic plates. Driftwood, if it truly was Driftwood, had grown enormous, and the swirling waves of power iridescing from his wings made him appear ten times larger. Kate could make out the sinewy bend of the great neck as the long, serpent-like body undulated in a powerful rhythm, advancing through the resisting air. In what seemed little more than a few leviathan beats of his wings, his head, as large as a house, was directly over her. The huge eyes were slitted, as if streamlined for speed, the orange sparkle within them like the inner heat of an iron-smelting furnace. This time she sensed the words speeding over her like the rattle of a passing train:

  Dragon secrets – Kate – Greeneyes – girl-thing!

  As if he had read her mind.

  It was hard to concentrate, to think back about things, with her mind racing. What was he, really? Her eyes moved from Mo, holding onto her arm, to the figure of Alan in the distance, standing perfectly still though he appeared to be surrounded by a whirling hurricane of energy.

  Dragon secrets!

  She made herself think, recall the history she had discovered when she had entered Driftwood’s mind. The dreadful war between the dragons and the titans and how, in order to bring an end to the destruction, the surviving dragons had chewed off their own wings and drowned in the oceans.

  But there was more … There had always been more. What?

  Driftwood had warned her that he was the bearer of secrets. And now she understood something that had puzzled her on their very first meeting. How the ground had shaken with the impact when he had performed those somersaults. There had been something immense about him even then, when he was a very small dragon fawning over his shiny thing.

  The titan turned to face the approaching dragon, one hand outstretched, every finger capped by an enormous black claw. From the tips of the claws lightning poured in a crackling deluge to erupt over the head of the dragon. Kate saw that the dragon’s flight slowed. Then, with eyes ablaze and fangs agape, the titan issued a command that sounded like the same thunderous rumble of the dragon’s own tongue. Lightning exploded again, with multiple arcs attacking the dragon from head to tail. Fangorath reared against the sky, thunderbolts clenched in either hand. Dragon and titan circled one another like mountains, roaring challenges that crackled and echoed through ground and sky. The atmosphere flooded with oceans of red, as if the world were drowning in blood.

  Then something exploded into a colossal turquoise brilliance, like the birth of a sun, at the centre of the conflict. The landscape about Kate shuddered. Cracks appeared through the rocks under her feet, through which clouds of incandescent vapour billowed high into the sky, with vast secondary trails and movements within them, amid which explosions took place from moment to moment.

  Kate and Mo clung to one another, seeing the world dissolve around them. They were free-falling into nothingness. Kate heard Mo’s whisper as if it were addressed to somebody else. Mo was still clinging to her arm. With her other hand Mo was holding tight to the amulet strung around her neck. Her whisper was: ‘Dromenon!’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Kate couldn’t imagine that this was the Dromenon Alan had described to her. He had talked in awe about an endless white plain. This was like falling into a nebula in space. Gargantuan clouds of light and dark wheeled about some unknown centre of gravity, moving cataracts of mauve and gold, rapidly changing shape and substance as they formed, and all so vast as to overwhelm her senses.

  Mo whispered again – strange words, repeating some realisation that had crept into her mind: Battle has entered Dromenon.

  Kate’s jaws ached from clenching them. She was screwing shut her eyes. ‘Mo – if you know we’re not already dead, or worse, will you explain to me what in the world is happening?’

  Mo’s reply was strangely calm: ‘I don’t know any more than you do. But I suspect that Dromenon, or at least this version of it, is bottomless.’

  Thunderous explosions rippled through the murk, evidence of the ongoing battle between the dragon and the titan.

  ‘Have you any idea what’s going on?’

  ‘Fangorath is searching for the Third Portal.’

  ‘Oh, lord!’

  ‘It’s what it was all about, all along.’

  ‘Do you think … I mean, this portal, is it close?’

  ‘I don’t know, Kate.’

  ‘What are you implying? He’s trying to break through into the Fáil? While we’re still here?’

  ‘I think that’s the idea.’

  Kate shook her head. She would have screamed if screaming did any good. ‘Mo – I sense that Alan is near. He’s really close.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  As Kate turned, searching for Alan, there was another enormous explosion. It felt as if an atomic bomb had gone off somewhere close – not that Kate had ever been near an atomic bomb, but she’d seen films and she could altogether imagine it. In a gap in the whirling vapours of red, turquoise and black she glimpsed the reclining hill of scaly flesh that was Driftwood. He looked stunned. His eyes were half closed, his expression bewildered. His gargantuan frame was floating slowly away from the site of the explosion. Yet, as far as she could see, he was physically undamaged.

  And then Kate heard Fangorath roar again. She made him out some distance away, arms windmilling as if clawing his way through the maelstrom, following one of the black arms of a spiral of matter or energy or whatever it really was, to approach an ovoid shape.

  Kate blinked. Or at least she imagined she blinked – she was no longer sure how substantial anything, or anyone, was here. The ovoid was gleaming and semi-transparent. It might have been a gargantuan crystal.

  Drifting closer, there was something a little too perfect about it – something mathematical. Its axes were delineated, as if its creator had left the original drawings in space after its construction, so it was cut through by sectors like the slices of an orange, which, as it slowly rotated, proved to be glowing. It must mean something but it was beyond Kate’s ability to understand. As the titan neared the ovoid she saw that it was truly colossal, dwarfing the demigod like a bat against the
moon. It seemed, perhaps, like some gigantic oraculum of power in which mysteries came into being and dissolved into unbeing, second by second – and from which radiating arcs of power, like luminescent smoke, billowed out into the surrounding chaos.

  The Third Portal to the Fáil!

  Kate gazed on it, stupefied with awe.

  She could make out a ghostly outline within it, as if it contained an individual being. She sensed that the being was aware of her presence.

  Kate found no comfort in that awareness. The being was cold, observing yet devoid of reaction, even as Fangorath began to batter against the shell of the ovoid with his claws and fangs. That coldness worried her. She flailed her legs and arms, every instinct telling her to swim away from it, her whole being overwhelmed by the sense of numinous power coming from the ovoid.

  At last she found her voice: ‘Mo – help!’

  Mo was fingering the glowing amulet around her neck. ‘I know, Kate. I sense it too. We have to get away from here – as quickly as possible.’

  But how could they escape? They were lost and powerless, free-floating, as if trapped within a dream. And then, as one, they saw Alan. He was clutched in the left hand of the titan. It was impossible to see whether he was still conscious or not. The titan must still be attempting to draw on the First Power, but Alan seemed to be resisting any manipulation. The oraculum in his brow looked dead. Mo was whispering to herself …

  ‘True believers – if you can hear me …?’

  We hear you, child.

  ‘What can we do to help Alan?’

  The situation is fraught with peril, not only for your friend but for all that is blessed in this world. Escape is not possible through deliberate machination.

  ‘There must be something we can do.’

  You must trust to Fate.

  ‘Fate?’

  Was it not Fate that brought you to this world? And allowed your companion to resurrect the King of Dragons? Is the Fáil not another word for this same almighty power?

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Think you the Fáil will take kindly to such violent attempts at forced entry? Let Fate decide what it will. Meanwhile, you are threatened merely by proximity to what will be. You are within the threshold of the gods.

  Mo’s eyes drifted to the stars within the vast metamorphosing clouds. There was an idea that was close to consciousness, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. Her heart palpitated with a new fear. The stars appeared to be moving. She watched them, sensing that there must be something deeper, more important, that she was failing to grasp.

  She whispered, urgently: ‘Kate – you must call the dragon.’

  ‘But how?’

  How could she wake Driftwood out of his stupor?

  ‘Use your oraculum.’

  Kate summoned up every fibre of what courage she had left: ‘Driftwood – if you can hear me – you have to wake up!’

  Her eyes followed Mo’s to the stars. They were aligning themselves into patterns.

  The movement of the stars worried her. They couldn’t be real stars, not suns out in the far reaches of space. Perhaps what she was seeing were images created by her own mind, symbols that represented something else entirely. And now the massive cloud formations were also changing. They were aligning about the focus of the ovoid. There was something about the patterns of the clouds, and the stars within them, that seemed frighteningly purposive.

  The dragon groaned, as if waking up.

  ‘Wake up, Driftwood – please.’

  Kate’s frightened eyes returned to the portal. She didn’t dare to attempt to make contact with the mind, or intelligence, that was harboured there.

  She heard a rumbling incantation. Driftwood’s eyes were blinking open – that sideways movement of the membrane she recalled.

  If only she understood what was happening!

  The danger, she sensed, was enormous and imminent.

  Kate – girl-thing …

  ‘Driftwood – thank God! There are frightening things going on all around us. I sense that it’s important that I understand. But I don’t understand a thing.’

  Girl-thing must flee!

  ‘I can’t. Alan is trapped by the titan – and Mo is here too.’

  Beside her, Kate saw that Mo’s eyes were closed. There was a brilliance clutched between her fingers. Something pulsating, like … like the stars! The stars were pulsating in synchrony with what was glowing between Mo’s fingers. And the movement of those stars was speeding up. Kate couldn’t stop her jaw trembling as she spoke. ‘Mo – talk to me. Tell me what’s going on!’

  Mo whispered: ‘The True Believers are following the lines of Fate.’

  Oh, God!

  Kate knew that she was going to die here, in this terrible and incomprehensible landscape, along with her friends.

  Mo whispered again: ‘I think they’re joining up in a kind of communion.’

  Then everything was moving in a frantic whirl around her. The stars were raining down on the figure of the titan, whose battering movements were faltering, slowing to a halt. It was all the more terrifying that it was happening in utter silence, as if the titan’s screams were also being consumed. The stars were flowing along the arcs of force emerging from the portal. These were passing through the radiant substance of Fangorath – and in passing through him they were consuming him. His being, his soul being, was disintegrating.

  Something long and sinewy lashed itself around Kate and Mo. They were spiralling through the air. Kate’s heart faltered. In the silent pandemonium, overwhelmed by the violence that engulfed her, she was vaguely aware that another being was being pinned down close by them.

  I so hope and pray it’s Alan!

  Then a dizzying sense of movement, movement so rapid she felt physically sick. She was blacking out. She welcomed the fading of her senses. The terror of what was happening was too much to bear.

  A Painful Goodbye

  Kate gazed about herself, bewildered by the valley that was already greened with wild grasses to mid calf. Am I really responsible for that? It seemed impossible to believe that this was the valley of the Tower of Bones. She had awoken in the dark, bewildered and alarmed, next to the sleeping forms of Alan and Mo. In her nostrils was the scent of wild flowers. She had sensed that Driftwood was nearby, though it had been pitch dark and impossible to see. The continuing messages of her senses had confused her. Her memories had confused her even more. She had lifted Alan’s unconscious head onto her lap and … and had dozed off again. And now she had woken with a start to realise that dawn was breaking and Mo had disappeared. Meanwhile the world about her had turned to pandemonium.

  Gargs! Thousands of them – maybe tens of thousands!

  They were everywhere, in the air, alighting and taking off again. She hadn’t noticed how they made a sound when flying. A flapping noise like swans, and sometimes a loud knocking sound like pigeons, when their wings, or maybe it was the claws on their wings, struck together with a particularly strong beat. Perhaps it was some kind of signal? Clusters of them were busy in the grass, doing things she failed to grasp, and making deep-throated humming sounds amongst themselves. She could even smell them, some secretion of all those thousands of bodies, but it wasn’t an unpleasant smell. It was a … a vaguely homely smell, like the musky sweat of horses after a hard ride, or maybe the hot smell of Darkie, when she had hugged her dog after one of their walks by the river.

  Oh, Darkie – how I miss you and Bridey!

  Iyezzz was somewhere out there among them. He had brought her a drink in a brown-and-cream-coloured nautilus shell – a fermentation that smelt briny and sweet at the same time, probably a mixture of things she didn’t want to know about from the depths of the oceans, sweetened with honey. Was it possible that the Gargs were getting merry on it? It hardly seemed to fit with the images of Gargs she recalled from their duty at the Tower. But then nothing seemed to fit any more.

  Her eyes searched for Mo and Turkeya, finding them wand
ering through the grass in the distance, looking no doubt for herbs to collect. Briefly, surreptitiously, she gazed back over her shoulder, as if to confirm the dragon was still there. Though perhaps fifty yards distant there was no doubting his presence. He was so huge he seemed to press against all of her senses, even when she wasn’t directly looking at him. His proximity stirred her but it also provoked a sense of guilt, knowing why such a strange and monstrous creature was waiting patiently in the meadow of grasses and wild flowers.

  Alan woke, sitting up beside her. Kate put her arm about his shoulders, her eyes blinking slowly, still clearing themselves of what felt like the deepest sleep. A breeze blew about them, scattering pollen. She had another, longer, look around her. Nearby Qwenqwo and Ainé were keeping a close watch on the activity of the Gargs. In the distance, in his human form, Nightshade lifted his head and their eyes met. He must have been waiting for her to wake. Now he held her gaze for several moments before transforming into the shape of the wolf and loping wordlessly away.

  ‘Is it really over, Kate?’

  Alan was rubbing the sleep from his eyes. She laid her head against his shoulder, relieved to hear his voice. ‘Don’t you remember what happened?’

  ‘I remember some of it – I remember the attack.’

  ‘You did it, Alan. You destroyed the Witch.’

  Climbing to her knees, Kate compressed her lips while running her fingers through his ash-grimed hair.

  He said: ‘I remember that much. But then …’

  She held his face, gazing into his eyes. ‘It was the titan, Fangorath, all along. He was controlling her. He tried to feed off you.’

  Alan looked down at the grasses sprouting between his outstretched feet. He pulled out a grass-head and stuck the stalk between his teeth. Kate was startled at the passion of recall his action elicited – a memory of their climb to the top of the Comeragh Mountains, that day when they sensed the calling for the first time … But here and now Alan had just spotted Driftwood. He was staring at the recumbent figure of the dragon, the grass stalk tumbling from his open mouth.