by Lena Coakley
“Nine bones. Enough for a casting,” she said. Carefully she replaced the rest of the hand by the corpse’s side.
“Aata’s vow,” said Skyla. She was pressed up against the opposite wall of the tunnel now, her face the color of ashes.
“Oh, I know my father wouldn’t mind,” said Lilla casually.
“Your father!”
“My father, your grandfather.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Skyla said.
Lilla took her glim and held it up, peering into Skyla’s face. “You are the one who asked for a casting, my girl. Do you want it or not?”
“She’s gone mad,” Skyla said to Ryder. “This is wrong. I know it’s wrong. Let’s take our mother’s bone and leave right now.”
Ryder looked from one to the other, hesitating. Was Lilla mad? He remembered what Mabis had told him, that the war had done things to Lilla, that seeing the future had done things to her. Was it wrong to make her cast again? His poor aunt. Why was she even here, languishing among the corpses? Surely there were others who could be the black witch.
But when he looked at her face, his pity dissolved. Calm. Hard. Sure. Mabis’s face, and yet, not. No, they couldn’t assume she was mad. People had thought Mabis was mad, and look where not listening to her had gotten them.
“Let’s hear what she has to say, Skyla,” he said finally.
Lilla Red Bird cocked her head at him and gave a slight smile. She gestured to the black bone. “Do you know what this is, Mabis’s children?”
Skyla glanced at it, then looked back to her feet. “My mother’s bone,” she murmured. “What of it?”
“You know the story of Aata’s set?”
Skyla was silent.
“You are both witches now,” Lilla said. “Surely you have been taught the story.” Ryder felt himself blush at being called a witch. He reminded himself that Lilla didn’t know everything, even if she was a great boneshaker.
“Aayse made the first prophecy bones for her sister so that she could read the future,” Skyla said. “But when Aayse died and Aata had her vision of the Goddess, she realized she didn’t need them anymore. She gave one bone to each of her loyal followers.”
Lilla held up the charred black knob. “And those were handed down, witch to witch.”
Ryder stared at the bone, skeptical, but seeing it in a new light all the same.
“Is it true?” said Skyla, looking at Lilla now. “Do we really have one of Aata’s bones? Are we descended from one of the original followers of Aata and Aayse?”
“Irrelevant. It is a witch’s belief that matters. Your mother made true prophecies with this bone because it meant something to her, because Aata and Aayse meant something to her—as much as she might have tried to deny it. And my father’s bones mean something to me.”
Skyla crossed her arms, and Ryder could see that she was considering what she had heard. Gingerly she skirted around the bones on the floor and peered into the low hollow at the man inside, her nose slightly wrinkled. “That is our grandfather, then.”
“It is,” Lilla said. “He went to Barbiza to trade for the coven—and this is how they sent him back to me.” She looked into her father’s face as if she saw the man and not a dead body. “I was so angry. I’ve often wondered if the war would have been different if he had lived. If I would have been different.”
“Is that . . . ?” Skyla said. “Ryder, look!”
Ryder followed Skyla’s gaze and saw, at the man’s feet, a wooden bowl like the kind some witches used to hold their prophecy bones. Inside it lay a gray stone.
“A humming stone,” Ryder said.
Lilla nodded. “Our Fa was interested in the old magics—from any culture.”
Ryder saw the tears coming to her eyes and didn’t know how to react. He had to keep reminding himself that this small woman with her strange cropped hair and her bad teeth was her. Lilla Red Bird. Her prophecies alone would have ensured her fame, but she’d been a fighter, too, a great warrior. Dassen liked to say that if it weren’t for Lilla, they’d all be worshiping Kar. Ryder never had much respect for witches, but this woman was different. She had seen things, knew things.
“I think she must know what she’s doing, Skyla,” he said. “I think we have to trust her.”
His sister nodded, and Lilla smiled her yellow smile. She turned to the bones. Ryder thought she would begin her casting right away, but instead she held a small bone up in front of her, turning it in her fingers to see it from all angles.
“I name you conflict, the soldier,” she murmured finally, and set it down onto the stone floor.
Skyla leaned forward, fascinated now; Mabis had never done this before a casting. Without hurrying, Lilla examined each bone and gave it a name: the ghost, the shadow man, the eye that sees, and the eye that doesn’t see. They were the same names Mabis used when talking about her bones. Ryder remembered hearing that his grandfather had named her set long ago, the same grandfather that lay before him now.
“And you,” said Lilla, holding up the black bone. “My anchor. The heart of the casting.” None of it meant anything to Ryder—anchor, ghost, shadow man—but he felt a strange pang of jealousy when Lilla held up the black bone and called it hers.
The naming finished, she gathered up the bones in her cupped hands and abruptly tossed them out without a word. Ryder and Skyla held their breath.
Lilla didn’t move around her casting, as Mabis would have done; she only stared, slack jawed and silent as the time slid by. How did she even tell them apart? Ryder wondered. They were mostly knobby finger bones. And why did his mother’s bones have markings when Lilla needed none on hers? His own ignorance annoyed him.
After a while, Lilla’s eyes grew round and wide, and it came to Ryder that she wasn’t looking at the bones, not really, but at some vision, some door to the future that he and Skyla couldn’t see and had no inkling of. He wondered what it was like. Mabis should have taught me this, he thought bitterly. Lilla’s hard words filtered through his mind. A wasted gift.
Suddenly there was a sharp intake of breath. Lilla leaned in closer to the casting, her hands tightening into fists. “Visser!” she said. She looked up at him, and her eyes flashed with anger. “How did I not see it?”
Visser? Ryder had never liked the woman, but by Aata, why would she destroy the coven, the village?
“Visser made the creatures?” said Skyla. “But how?”
Lilla cast her eyes about, ignoring the question. There was a horn-handled knife at her father’s side, and she reached for it, pulling it out of a leather scabbard. “She must be stopped. Even now she plans some great desecration.”
“More creatures,” Ryder said. “We must warn Sodan and the others.”
“No!” said Lilla. “You have no time. The bones tell me she is in the catacombs already, making her way to the lower chambers. I will warn the others. You must find her—find her quickly.” She thrust the knife into his hands. “I will tell you the quickest way down—the two of you can travel faster than I can. I will leave Visser to you, Ryder. If your ancestors mean anything to you, you will put this knife between her ribs. She must not be allowed to do what she plans.”
CHAPTER 22
THIEVES
First there was a staircase that twisted downward and downward, hewn out of solid rock. It seemed to have no end, seemed to Falpian to bore right into the center of the earth. Only occasionally did it open out into some level of the caves, and he was never sure what he would see. Once it was a wall of bodies, reaching up to the ceiling, each corpse resting in a carved-out hollow. The mice in the hollows had no fear of him, only lifted their heads at his glim, a hundred black eyes sparkling, then went back to their work. A chest cavity must make a perfect nest.
At other times his light would reflect on glimmering stone tiles, and Falpian would emerge from the narrow stairwell to gaze at ancient chambers with high ceilings and twisted pillars.
“Hello!” he called in one such place, h
is voice high and small. He got no answer, of course, and didn’t know what he would have done if he had. He continued on.
A persistent, nagging voice at the back of his mind kept telling him to turn around. What if the gormy men should come back? Ryder couldn’t fight them on his own, not without Falpian’s help. He had to keep reminding himself that he was a spy for the other side, for Kar’s sake. He was exactly where he was supposed to be: on his way home. He’d found the information he’d crossed the border for: The coven was blind and vulnerable, ripe for attack. His mission was almost complete.
I’m sorry, Ryder. Falpian tried to link minds with his talat-sa, tried to say good-bye to him across the distance of the cave tunnels. They should be able to do it, with practice anyway. But Falpian didn’t feel an inkling of Ryder’s mind, and maybe it was just as well. His talat-sa would hate him now.
Still the staircase wound on and on. The lump in Falpian’s pockets was almost finished, and he was dizzy with thirst. He began to wonder if she had lied, this black witch, and had only sent him on this path because the thought of Falpian wandering in the dark forever had amused her. Perhaps she was following him right now the way she’d followed Kef, hiding somewhere in the blackness, a stone in her hand.
Abruptly the staircase came to an end, and Falpian found himself in a high chamber with five tunnels leading away from it, all going farther down. The black witch had described this place, had told him to take the middle path, and yet, Falpian hesitated. The air was fresh here, cold and sharp in his nose. He lifted his lamp. Somewhere, high above the reach of its beams, there was probably an opening to the outside—if it wasn’t the middle of the night, he might have even been able to see sunlight—but the opening, if it even existed, was unreachable.
Reluctantly he left the fresh air of the chamber and walked on, but he had gone only a few steps down the tunnel when he noticed something on the stone floor. A brooch. A woman’s jeweled brooch was walking slowly across the floor, the golden pin sticking out like a tail. He bent over. Underneath the brooch was a dark red spider, about the size of a honeyplum. Its legs were hairy and banded with fine black lines.
“Hello, little thief,” Falpian said. He’d always liked spiders and thought that thief spiders were particularly beautiful, with their velvety bodies and glassy red eyes. Of course, back home his mother was vigilant against them. Thief spiders loved anything shiny. Many a nobleman had discharged his servants for stealing, only to find, years later, a nest of thief spiders under his floorboards, hiding generations of lost treasures.
The spider waved two of its hairy legs at Falpian in complaint.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, and he set the brooch to the ground. “You’re quite right. It’s yours.” The spider ran to the brooch and squatted on it.
Falpian would have liked to touch the little thief, but he knew they had a nasty bite. He turned to leave and was surprised when the creature followed, leaving its shiny possession.
“Some other spider’s going to get that,” he warned, but now the red eyes were fixed on something else. Falpian moved his pretty witch glim to the right, and the spider went to the right. He moved his glim to the left, and the spider went to the left.
“Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t have that,” he said. He stamped his foot and the spider scurried away.
Up ahead there were more. The little thieves darted along the walls or scuttled between his feet, but they were fast and disappeared if he tried to crush them. They came out of nooks in the rock to stare, their red eyes following the glim as it passed.
The tunnel was getting narrower now, and the spiders were getting thicker. Every time Falpian glimpsed a movement out of the corner of his eye he jumped, startled.
They eat insects, he told himself, pretty, shiny insects—not people, not me. But as he walked, a story Farien once told him surfaced to his mind. Something about a lost boy. Falpian had always thought his brother made it up to scare him; now he wasn’t sure. After a frantic search, a missing child was found in an abandoned barn not far from his home. He was alive, but bloated with swelling bites, covering his face with his hands. Thief spiders nesting in the barn had been attracted to the glimmer in his eyes. When the boy’s hands were pulled away, there were nothing but bloody holes where his eyes had been.
Something fell from the ceiling onto Falpian’s shoulder, and he gave a yelp, brushing it off. He started to jog down the tunnel, but the floor was uneven and he tripped repeatedly. When he came to a fork in the path, he stopped; he couldn’t remember which way the black witch had told him to go. He looked back and was alarmed to see a great mass of spiders following along behind, coming toward him across the floor. He stamped his feet on the ground and yelled, and they seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. He turned and ran, choosing the right-hand fork at random.
“It’s just a glim!” he cried. “I need it!”
The walls seemed to be alive with them now. They rained down on his shoulders and on his neck. He felt a sharp, painful bite on his back, then another. He tried to brush them off, but they were under his clothes, wriggling down his spine.
He came to a great, long crevice that opened up in the wall like a black scar. It got wider as it went along, and Falpian caught a glimpse of the glimmering hoard inside. It was the nest. Coins, jewels, bits of metal and broken glass—all were of equal value to the little thieves. Anything shining or sparkling they took for themselves and brought back to the dark—beads, bits of mosaic tile they had loosened from the wall—he even thought he saw a gold ring with a bony finger still inside, but he was going too fast to be sure. Falpian didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, and from the mouth of the nest, spiders poured.
“You can’t hurt me!” Falpian shrieked. But he didn’t believe it. They could kill him with enough bites, stab out his shiny eyeballs.
Suddenly he was in an open cave, slipping on a stony floor. A rank smell hit his nose, but he didn’t stop. At his feet was a small, greenish pool. Water. Falpian hesitated for just an instant, his glim reflecting like a glass moon. Then he splashed in and turned around, betting spiders couldn’t swim.
They could.
Or rather they could walk on the surface of the water as witches of old were said to do, gliding gracefully, held up by nothing. Falpian cursed. He splashed at the spiders and they drowned, capsized, but there were more, many more, coming at him from every side. His little patch of water was getting smaller and smaller, overrun by red bodies.
“Take it!” Falpian cried. And he swung the glim on its chain. It sailed in an arc over the water and crashed on the stone floor of the cave, splattering fat and glass. Darkness. He squatted down in the water with his hands over his head, fearing the spiders would still attack. He squeezed his eyes tight, afraid they might see a glimmer. All was silent. The water was frigid, and the spiders didn’t come.
He opened his eyes, but it was no different from closing them. Darkness was all around.
Ryder?
Still there was no answer in Falpian’s mind. There was nothing in his mind, nothing but darkness and a tight knot of fear.
Ryder? Can you hear me?
CHAPTER 23
ALL THE NIGHTMARES
Somewhere above him, water trickled over rock. There was a frigid dampness to the caves now; it sank into Ryder’s bones, made his teeth chatter. They must be near the river. Moisture seeped into the tunnels and covered the bandaged bodies with splotches of green and black mold. The burial hollows were older and more elaborate here, with intricate carvings showing remnants of bright paint, but everything seemed to be rotting away.
Behind him, Ryder could hear Skyla breathing heavily. She was trotting to keep up, but he couldn’t slow down, not with Visser planning another attack. It was frustrating how many twists and turns there were, how many forks and branches they had to navigate, all leading downward and downward. Were they a quarter of the way down the mountain by now? he wondered. Halfway? It was impossible to tell. Lilla had given the
m clear directions, which Ryder had carefully written on his arm in charcoal—a cross for right, a circle for left. Every time they came to a fork in the path, he licked his thumb and rubbed away a mark so they wouldn’t get confused.
“I used to think the Left Hand of Aata was lucky,” Skyla said. They had reached a place where the tunnels narrowed dramatically, and Ryder had to slow his steps and hunch forward like an old man. “I thought it would be so still and quiet, like Aata when she was in her sister’s tomb, listening to the whisperings of the Goddess. But I don’t feel the Goddess here. Do you?”
In the narrowing space, the smell of mouse urine was almost overpowering. “Not really.”
“I hate it here.”
Ryder glanced behind him and saw how haggard Skyla looked. Her face was smeared with dust. “I know you’re tired, but these tunnels can’t go on forever.”
“No, I mean, I hate it here. I hate this coven. I don’t know why I came.” Her voice shook. They’d been walking half the night, and it was clear her nerves were fraying with exhaustion. “There’s something wrong with this whole place.”
Ryder turned a tight corner. “Don’t look,” he warned.
They had come upon another burial hollow. The face of the person inside had been chewed down to the bone, and on its chest was a knot of writhing baby mice, still blind and hairless. Ryder pulled his reds up over his nose.
“Oh Goddess!” Skyla shouted. She wrapped her arms around his waist, and he felt her face pressing into his back. “This is what I mean! Poor Lilla is stuck down here and for what? She can’t keep the catacombs all by herself. I don’t understand what Sodan is thinking.”
