The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  The wonder was gone from the boy’s face as he lay staring up at the stars, and his sister’s apprehension was gone, too. Such perfect little offerings, Valrik’s pride, waiting so patiently to fulfill the purpose for which they’d been groomed from birth. Keiro felt sick.

  It was his doing, all of it orchestrated by his command. You will be our voice, and our eye, and our hands. He had seen, and spoken, and done, and it had all come to this.

  “Be well, children,” he said softly, though the words sounded hollow even to his own ears. They gave no answer, just stared silently upward. He couldn’t begin to imagine what thoughts lay behind their too-old eyes.

  Keiro turned away from them, left them for the second time in his life, in their short lives, and it was no easier this second time. His steps were slow, his feet never more reluctant to walk. He stood at the edge of the pit, the earth’s gaping maw, the darkness within touched by red. A rope ladder hung over the edge and he took it down, his eye flickering between the bound twins until the ground took him from their sight. Down and down, his hands shaking, and his throat tight. His feet touched the floor of the cavern, and he made sure his hands were steady before he released the rope ladder.

  Preparations had begun here, too. The limbs had been laid out, stretched like corpses upon the floor—an arm, a foot, two legs. All the pieces to make Fratarro whole once more—all save the one hand that was lost, truly lost, though the Twins had come as close as they could to restoring it with blood and magic.

  They stood waiting, the few he had chosen. The most useful. Valrik, with smooth skin where his eyes had been, and yet he seemed to follow every movement made. Yaket, so old and sad, who held a heavy bundle near as big as she was, held it tight against her body. A mage named Berico, who seemed to shake and rave less than the other thrall-mages Keiro had met.

  There were others, of course. Scores of people pressed against the shadows, and that many and more mravigi were giving their glow to the cavern. They waited, watching, and they had their parts to play, true enough, but Keiro had not chosen them. If it had all been his doing, without the whispering certainty in his ear, he would have sent them away, each and every one. And yet it had been his choice, of course, all him. His was the voice, and his were the hands.

  Keiro stood with the other three, the chosen, and together they watched the sky through the hole in the ground above. When the edge of the moon peeked around the mouth of the pit, Keiro lowered his eye, met the gaze of each of the others. He had already spoken the words that needed saying, spoken until his throat was raw. All that was left now was the doing.

  Keiro raised one arm, and the shadowy forms surged forward. Hands gripping, scaled bodies pressing, man and mravigi together moving the great limbs rapidly across the floor. The Twins watched them come, Sororra cradling her brother’s head against her shoulder with both hands. There was triumph in her eyes, and joy. Beneath the burned crags, Keiro could see fear written into Fratarro’s face. As they arranged the limbs before Fratarro, pressing end to ichorous end, Yaket opened the bundle she held. Her armful seemed to glow and shimmer in the faint light.

  Four long needles the plainswalkers had made, one for each of the chosen, and four long threads of grass-fiber woven through each needle’s eye. It was the most Yaket had let her people do, though they had begged to help more, though they had hated her for her refusal.

  Keiro had visited the tribehome days ago, the only time he had left the hills since the Fallen had swarmed over them. He was eye and hands, and he had needed to go. The plainswalkers had looked peaceful, seated in two broad circles, the men in one circle with their knives working steadily, and the women in the other with stalks of grass stretched between them. Their brows had shone with sweat, and their fingers had moved a frantic pace. Over it all Yaket’s voice had woven, the powerful cadence of a story.

  “The whole tribe carved the boar’s tusks until they were slim and sharp and as long as a man’s arm, and they carved a hole in the base of each. These they took to the Twins, along with the woven grass rope that was thinner than a blade’s edge . . .”

  She had never told this story to her people before, never told it to any but him. They listened intently, faces glowing with fervor. Yaket had met Keiro’s eye over the distance between them, single eye to single eye, and he had not been able to bear her look for long.

  This, too, he had done.

  Keiro gripped his needle hard enough that his hands would not shake, and he led the others forward. He would take the arm, which had arrived only hours earlier. He’d been worried it wouldn’t arrive in time, but Valrik had promised Essemo Noniro was on his way, that he would not fail them. He had not been wrong, and so the arm was left to Keiro.

  The preachers had worked quickly, tearing apart the great carts they had used to haul Fratarro’s limbs from the mountain, cannibalizing them to build a hasty platform tower. There was little enough building material in the Plains, so they’d had to make do with what they’d brought, but the first slats held Keiro’s weight as he climbed carefully up the side of it. He held the needle with one hand, its death-sharp tip swinging near his gut each time his hand reached higher.

  There were some preachers already at the top of the tower, holding the arm in place, supported by mravigi and more preachers below. They made space for Keiro, their faces solemn. He stepped close, hands near to shaking once more. He almost reached out to rest his hand on Fratarro’s broad shoulder, but he stopped himself. Instead he asked softly, “Are you ready, my lord?”

  Fratarro did not look at him, eyes staring, unfixed. Above, atop the ground, in the bathing light of the full moon, the Starborn began to sing, their high voices rising and dancing. Fratarro’s eyes squeezed shut, and when they opened once more, they seemed clearer, calmer. He gave a terse nod and said, “Do it. Let it begin.”

  We are ready.

  Keiro took a deep breath, glanced once more through the hole where the heartbreakingly beautiful Starborn song drifted down, and then he fixed his eye upon his task. The needle steady in his hand, Keiro drove its tip through the cracked flesh of Fratarro’s shoulder. A heartbeat later, the other three did the same in their respective places, four needles driving into him, the tips appearing once more from the burned flesh of his missing limbs. Ichor flowed steady from each tear in his flesh, from each tiny hole pierced into him. Keiro pulled on the needle, on the long grass-fiber thread, until the knot at its end caught and held. And then he drove the needle down once more.

  Fratarro didn’t scream, not at first. With Sororra’s hands holding him, her voice whispering low words of comfort, he sat stiff and still, held in place by the shard through his chest. But after the needles were driven through again and again, the thread tugged tight as could be . . . finally his mouth opened in a cry of pain. Once the screaming had begun, it did not stop. No matter how Sororra spoke to him, how her hands moved to calm him, he screamed and screamed, and blood flowed from him, and his eyes wept hot tears as they screwed shut with pain. Keiro felt himself weeping, too, his sight blurring as his hands drove the needle down again and again. Tight stitches to seal the god together, to make him whole once more. Keiro wept, and still his hands moved, steady and sure.

  Under the screaming, under the raw pain, under the slight sound—somehow, so loud—of thread pulling through flesh and skin, under it all soared the singing of the Starborn. He had always thought the sound so beautiful. It sounded obscene, beneath the screaming of a god.

  Keiro’s hands were wet with ichor when finally the needle came through where it had begun. Carefully he knotted the thread, and one of the preachers came silently forward to cut the remainder free. Keiro stepped back, the needle suddenly unbearably heavy in his now-shaking hands. He fell to his knees, thought he might be sick, but he made himself look. The stitching was well done, strong and sure, sealing Fratarro’s arm to his body once more. Though he could see the ragged edges where the limb had been torn away, the blood had ceased to flow there. Finally, fina
lly, Fratarro’s screaming fell away, leaving only the high song of the mravigi above.

  He was the last to finish. Valrik and Yaket and Berico stood to the side, waiting, the bone needles still clutched in their hands. Keiro knew he should join them, but he did not have the strength.

  Fratarro’s head lifted from his sister’s shoulder, and though he didn’t smile, some of the haunted look had fled from his eyes. Sororra smiled wide enough for both of them. As one, they looked up, up through the wide-gaping hole, to the bright moon that stared down at them. Together they reached, chains jangling from Sororra’s wrist, Fratarro’s fingers moving slow and wondering as they stretched toward the sky.

  Together, their hands fell back to the ground with a sound like falling stone, and the red light faded from their eyes fast as blinking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Anddyr couldn’t bring himself to look at Rora. Her screaming and swearing were bad enough, but he’d made the mistake of trying to explain himself to her. The hatred in her eyes had nearly made his will crumble like ancient stone. His magic was enough to keep her pinned, and he didn’t need to look at her for that; so long as she stayed still, she could hate him all she wanted. He told himself it didn’t matter whether she liked him, because repeating a lie often enough made him feel somewhat better. He kept himself busy with Aro instead, working quickly to get the younger man similarly pinned, trying to use as little of his magic as possible—he’d need it for later. For soon, rather. The end of all things was rushing closer, all the storms coalescing and swirling above him, and he needed to be ready.

  His power held Aro pinned to the ground, still silent in his shock, not understanding. He had been such a quick learner, so eager to embrace new knowledge . . . but he didn’t think. He grabbed the lesson but not the concept, not the meaning behind the motions his fingers made, and that was a dangerous thing. There was a deep well of power in Aro, so much that it must have taken an incredible amount of willpower for him to keep the magic from devouring him all these years—but he couldn’t seem to bring that willpower to bear now. His power was a trickle or a flood, nothing in between, and combined with his lack of thought . . . Anddyr supposed that was a good thing, or else Aro might have seen this coming.

  Anddyr squeezed his eyes shut as he reached into his robe, fingers finding the pocket easily. He touched the familiar earthenware jar, and even now, his mouth watered and his stomach twisted at the touch. He almost couldn’t grab it, his hand was shaking so badly. But he had to do this still. No matter how hopeless it all looked, no matter he knew it would fail and the storms would fall and the ground would swallow him—he had to, still.

  In the ice-place, where he’d been set free for the storms to swarm around him, a small voice echoed in his ears. When the time comes . . . you still have to try. He couldn’t understand why—surely Etarro, with his sight that reached farther than it should, knew how hopeless it was. The cappo’s last desperate plan was doomed, no chance of it succeeding. Now, at the crux of it all, when Anddyr wanted only to curl into a ball and die quietly, he was instead bound—commanded, by the traces of skura running sluggish through his veins—to see this useless plan through to its end.

  Anddyr opened his eyes and he looked down at the little earthenware jar in his hand, lighter than a stone but not quite as light as it could be. It was not empty; he’d made sure to leave some of it, just enough. He could feel its contents calling to him even now, black tendrils that snuck beneath the lid to reach for him . . .

  His other hand came up, shaking, and with a twist he set it free.

  The smell of the skura washed over him, pulling a groan from his mouth, from his stomach, from his core. He squeezed his eyes shut once more, trying to block out its pull. He had burned all of the skura Joros had given to him, burned every last bit . . . except for this. He had saved it and carried it with him each day, feeling its sickly warmth against his skin and its call vibrating through him, twisting his gut. Just enough for one dose, one final dose. But not for him.

  Long ago, the night after Joros and Anddyr had fled quietly from Mount Raturo with their secrets and their stolen goods and the cappo’s fury burning brighter than fire, they had walked through the great Forest Voro—quickly, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the mountain. Joros had growled his plans aloud, every possibility, every contingency, all the various ways he could destroy the Fallen. He’d growled his plans like commands, and those words had seeped into Anddyr’s skin, flowed along the skura in his blood, and lodged themselves into his brain. All of his orders for every possible plan, ingrained into the core of his being.

  All the plans had failed, save this one. Every possibility, every contingency—narrowed to this one last hopeless, horrid plan.

  Anddyr opened his eyes and the storms were swirling around him. He didn’t want to—he didn’t want to!—but there was still old skura flowing in him like poison, and the command thrummed through him, inescapable. Cradling the skura jar, Anddyr leaned forward over Aro, held to the ground by an invisible hand, his eyes growing slowly wide with understanding.

  “Don’t you dare,” Rora snarled, but even she was a dim and distant thing. “Don’t you fecking dare—”

  He lowered the jar, held Aro’s mouth open with his other hand. For a moment, his face was Etarro’s, but then it wasn’t.

  No matter what happens, no matter how it looks. You still have to try.

  “I thought you were better than this!”

  Anddyr paused, the jar just above Aro’s mouth, the skura making its slow slimy way toward the lip of the jar. I am trying to be better than I was. He moved his hand, and the skura fell between Aro’s open lips.

  He threw the jar away from him when it was done, threw it so far he would never see it again, and then he curled himself into the smallest shape he could. He couldn’t watch it roll through Aro, watch it stream through his mage’s blood, turning his insides sludgy and black. It was bad enough to hear Aro’s screaming. He screamed with two voices, from two mouths, Rora’s cry tying around her brother’s, and they wrapped around Anddyr like a thunderstorm. I had to, I had to! A desperate plan, a foolish plan, all but doomed to fail . . . and yet he was bound to follow it, bound by Joros, who had been his master, and bound by Etarro, who had claimed to free him. It was a terrible sort of freedom the boy had given him: the strength to fight for a better future for himself, but no power to fight against what the past had put into motion. No power to stop this wheel from turning, and crushing them all.

  “We have to move quickly, now,” the cappo said, his voice tight and angry and scared. “Leave him. See what they’re doing.”

  Anddyr dragged his eyes open, but avoided looking at Rora, whose fury scorched the air between them. He looked to the far hill, to the swarming hive of the Fallen, and with a murmured word he sent his mind soaring over the hills.

  He could look down on them like a bird, see how they moved quickly over the hill as the light fell from the sky. There were so many of them, on the hill itself and scores and scores and scores more surrounding the hill, trailing between the hills, all gathered to bear witness. The sheer number of them made his head hurt.

  Diving closer, he could see that they had staked two people to the ground atop their hill. Two small people. Children. Etarro and Avorra, their small faces serene. They had known their own purpose since the day of their birth. They had never doubted what they were. You have to try. Between them was a giant hole, gaping mouthlike, and it put a twisting in Anddyr’s stomach as bad as the skura. He fled away from it, back to his body, and kept his eyes away from the cappo as he described what he had seen.

  He didn’t need to be told. The cappo had suspected, and prepared. Anddyr fetched his pack, pulled out the rope and the long wooden stakes he had brought, and he set to work.

  If Etarro and Avorra were bound beside that hole, it could only mean that the cappo had been right: the Fallen had found their banished gods, and were preparing to free t
hem. When the ancient Twins rose, when the Fallen freed them from their bound bodies, they would go seeking new hosts. The Fallen had brought a set of twins, but Joros had his own set now, an older pair, a stronger pair, a more enticing prize . . . and his hope was that the Twins wouldn’t see the trap until it had already closed around them.

  Destroy one, the cappo had said, and you destroy them both. If Fratarro chose Aro, if the skura burning through Aro’s blood could overpower even a god, if, if, if . . . The cappo’s final plan, and it relied so much on luck, on conjecture, on hope.

  Aro didn’t twitch as Anddyr worked, moved so little that Anddyr kept checking to make sure he was breathing. “Keep your hands off him,” Rora said as Anddyr splayed his limbs, stretched the ropes, but the threat had fallen out of her voice. It sounded more, now, like despair.

  When he had finished with Aro, he planted the other stakes, pounding them into the earth with his own fists. It made them bruise and bleed, his skin cracking over the heads of the stakes, his bones splintering, but it didn’t matter. He deserved this. He would always deserve it.

  When Anddyr was done, rope tied to each of the stakes, he heard Joros say softly, “This will go easier, if you don’t fight.” He heard, too, the sound of spitting.

  Together they muscled her over to the stakes, tying her at the wrist and ankle, tied like her brother, tied like the young twins on the far hill. It was a relief to let his power fall away from her, to let her be held by simple rope rather than by his own shame. He had plenty of the shame, but he would need all his power for what was to come. When he turned away from her, fled from her screaming, he heard the singing.

  It was unlike anything he had heard before. There were no words, but the song didn’t need words. It was the sound of a heart, a dozen hearts, a hundred hearts, all pulled free and laid bare. Hope and pain, joy and despair, fear and dreams, and fear of the dreams. It was, he thought, the song his own heart might sing, if it had known how.