The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  Serra nodded and led Vrana to the other side of the street, where a merchant’s stall had been overturned. He cleared his throat and grunted: They’re incompetent.

  “You know,” Vrana said, sliding around the stall and into another alleyway, “I’m not sure if I can tell what you’re saying or if I’m just assuming you’re saying what I want to hear.”

  This time, Serra did look back, and he laughed: Does it matter?

  “They’re manipulators, aren’t they?” Vrana could feel heat rising in her chest. “That’s why we focus so much on the past: to manipulate the future. But now they’re manipulating their own people. Are we a threat, like the Corrupted?”

  Serra grunted: Could be. He groaned and grunted and outstretched his hand: Or maybe something is threatening us.

  “I keep rattling on, I’m sorry. Fuck, how did I even get here?” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Are you a homunculus?”

  Serra started to laugh, kindly not cruelly, and disappeared into a home where the door had been torn off. Vrana followed after him, taking note of an icon writ in blood above the threshold. “I know I’ve seen that before,” she said, analyzing the shape, which was a circle inside in which strange symbols were held.

  Serra nodded, made a cross with his fingers: Penance.

  They walked the length of the house and exited through the back. Vrana opened her mouth to ask the Piranha another question, but stopped as she began to retch. The wind was sour and slid over her like sludge, as though the air itself had putrefied. They were near the Western Gate, and the booths that once held hundreds fish now only held their bones and the insects that were brave enough to eat from them.

  Serra coughed and put his arm in front of his mask to block the stench.

  “The smell—I don’t think it’s the fish.” Vrana felt lightheaded, hot spots of nausea dotting her vision. “What happened to Deimos? I mean, could he have really stopped what went wrong here?” She slipped on a streak of blood and caught herself on a chair.

  Serra shrugged. He tilted his head and helped Vrana stand up: No, he couldn’t have.

  Vrana listened to the waves of the ocean beyond Geharra’s great wall. They were dull and distant, just faint enough for her to consider that she was not hearing them at all. She gripped the chair tighter as the flies buzzing around the pink mounds of fish meat grew louder, until it sounded as though they were inside her skull. Sweat ran down her face, her back. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, and it was there she found her, the Witch, against a field of black, the skeleton of a bird at her breast, nursing bloody milk down its throat.

  Vrana stumbled backward onto the chair and ripped the mask from her head. She pulled back her hair and wrung it out. She felt a vibration against her leg—or was it a muscle spasm? “I’m sorry,” Vrana said, unfastening her cloak and stuffing it into her pouch. “There’s something you need to know.”

  She told Serra about the Witch, more than she had told anybody else besides Aeson and her mother. He nodded and grunted as he did, and although she suspected he somehow already knew all of this, she was glad to have another person she could turn to for support.

  “I wanted to see Geharra. I wanted to see everything, really,” she said. Her teeth started to chatter in the harsh language of the cold. “But I mostly came to find a way to stop the Witch.” She exhaled slowly, and this seemed to help the shaking in her shoulders. “I don’t know what I’m doing or looking for. I just hope when I get close enough, she’ll get scared, and when she comes for me, I’ll be ready.”

  The Piranha shrugged. When Vrana appeared to have recovered, they moved through a series of archways opposite the fishery and the abattoir into a small building that consisted of a ramp and a desk. They followed the ramp downward, until it opened up to a large room that smelled of mildew and metal. In what little light was left from the outside, Vrana noted several ladders on the perimeter that descended even further into the earth. Serra stepped over a pile of chains that had undoubtedly been used to secure the front door and ripped a lantern from the sweating wall. Leaning in close, he spoke quickly, silently, until a small flame flickered into existence.

  Vrana’s eyes widened. She held her hand up, baffled. “You can spellweave?”

  Serra laughed as he started to wipe away the layers of dirt on the lantern. Light spread across the floor with every pass of his hand until most of the room was illuminated. The snakes and beetles in the wiring and ventilation hissed and clicked and scurried out of sight. Spiders as large as fists climbed their webs to the rafters and crouched low in anticipation. A six-legged lizard with white eyes started to smoke under the light; it slipped behind the paneling of a large control box to hide.

  Serra nudged Vrana on the shoulder, pointed to an old service elevator entombed in webs.

  “This is the waterworks? There.” She pointed to another bloody icon of Penance slathered on the floor. “I doubt very many of the pipes in the city still work.”

  Serra shook his head: They don’t.

  “Not yet, at least. Until they have the materials again. But there are pumps and wells and baths.”

  Serra grunted. He attached the lantern to his belt and descended the ladder at the center of the room.

  “What if these cities were left here with the intention of helping future societies develop more quickly?” Vrana’s voice tapered off as she entertained the notion. “It’s all here. It’s just a matter of catching up. The last kind thing the Corrupted did for themselves before the Trauma.”

  She sprinted over to the ladder and peered down into the passage. If there was an end, she couldn’t see it. “Thanks for waiting, Serra. It’s not like I can’t see or anything.”

  The passage did have a bottom, but it came slowly, leaving Vrana much time to think. She surmised from the station above and the size of the city that this was not the sole entrance to the waterworks; rather, it was one of many maintenance stations that acted as waypoints to the corridors beneath Geharra. Ten thousand people—the city could comfortably accommodate ten times that amount, so why stop there? And Alluvia, why Alluvia? Hundreds of her people taken wherever Geharra went. If it was Penance, they would’ve surely passed Rime and Traesk before reaching this side of the world. Why not take them instead?

  “Serra, what do you think happened?” Vrana gripped the ladder tightly; it was getting wetter with every rung passed.

  Serra tapped his thumb against the metal. He rumbled from the deep of his chest: They’re dead.

  “In the Old World, they could kill ten thousand in a day.”

  Serra hummed: Yes.

  “It wouldn’t take much to finish off everyone else, would it?”

  Serra grunted: Not much at all.

  “We’re newborns left to fend for ourselves in a wasteland.”

  Serra stopped and growled: Shitty, isn’t it?

  A deep puddle was waiting for their feet when they dropped from the ladder.

  A mutilated corpse was waiting for their eyes a little farther on.

  The man was from Penance, the clothes on his bloodstained back giving away his identity. Two broken bones in each leg told Vrana that the man had fallen from the ladder and the dagger between his shoulder blades revealed that it hadn’t been an accident. Through a hole that had been gnawed into his shirt, she saw the same symbol, albeit far less ornate, that she’d seen on the young boy’s back during the second trial. It was also the same symbol she’d seen at the checkpoint and in the house they’d passed through. The young boy from the second trial was from Penance. What had he been doing in the South?

  “Serra, during my second trial I saved a Corrupted boy. I should’ve killed him with his father, but I didn’t. I took him to the nearest town. I saved him.” She felt an immediate relief from her confession.

  Serra cocked his head, the Piranha skull staring at her askew. He gave her the thumbs up.

  “Was I wrong to do that?” She went to one knee and fingered a chain around the corpse’s nec
k.

  Serra shook his head. He searched the man’s pockets, producing from the largest a green leaf with sharp edges and crystalline veins: the Gift of Sleep. Vrana kept her surprise to herself; such leaves were very rare. They were said to be left by the Inferi, creatures that climb into the bodies of the restless dead and break their malevolent hold on the world, to prevent them from haunting the place of their death. The leaf, when given to the dying, puts their minds at ease about Death’s Nothingness. When given to the healthy, the leaf acts as a strong anesthetic or a hallucinogenic. Her mother would want it and yell at her if she didn’t take it.

  The Piranha handed the Gift of Sleep to Vrana. Smiling, she returned to the chain and pulled the rest of it from underneath the shirt. “This,” she said, fumbling for her satchel, “this is the same as …” She removed the silver necklace and laid it beside the dead man’s on his chest. “They’re the same!”

  Serra coughed and scrutinized Vrana’s find. After a few seconds, he shook his head and pointed out the differences: The dead man’s was not forged from silver, but some sort of imitation of the metal; there was only one worm, rather than a tangle vying for control of the gem; and the color of the rock was much cloudier than Vrana’s. Nevertheless, he ripped the necklace from the man and shoved it into his pocket.

  “That means something, doesn’t it?” Vrana asked as they rose to their feet.

  Serra nodded: It does.

  The waterworks’ tunnel broadened as they proceeded, but the protruding pipes, roots, and crumbling walls made sure that Vrana and her companion earned their progress. Far off, she could hear hundreds of bats flapping their leathery wings, speaking to the darkness in piercing squeaks. As the tunnel twisted and turned, it didn’t take long for Vrana to realize that they were going backward, inward, toward the center of the city, where the market Deimos had pointed to stood. She questioned the necessity of their trip to the Western Gate but kept this to herself, for Serra had become quite agitated since they’d found the corpse.

  “The man I took the necklace from,” Vrana said, ducking lower to avoid the lantern as Serra turned around, “he didn’t look like that man back there or those missionaries near Nora. I didn’t see any tattoos either. I think he may have stolen the necklace from somebody.”

  Serra hummed: I wouldn’t doubt it.

  “But his throat was cut. Whoever killed him had to have seen the necklace. Yet, they left it. Unless—” The sudden sound of surging water drowned out Vrana’s words and thoughts. It was moving through the stones above their heads, which meant that they were close to the waterworks. “Unless…” She listened sharply now, hearing the strain of machinery nearby. “He killed himself. When I was attacked at the hospital—” she emphasized the word “hospital,” but Serra didn’t react, “—the thieves wanted it back. Either they intended on selling it, or someone had sent them to retrieve it.”

  Serra growled: We’re here. Be quiet. Again, he attached the lantern to his belt. He moved several barrels in the tunnel to reveal another ladder and then mounted it. He flicked his finger against the iron bars: Hurry up, girl.

  Vrana did as she was told. She descended the ladder, and when her feet found the floor again, she fell backward, as though all the oxygen had been drained from her blood. A bitter odor burned at her nose, in her nose, eating away the hairs and mucus. She went to take a step forward, but stopped herself, because she could feel the great openness of the space before her. In that humid, sweltering darkness, she could hear the slow turn of waterwheels, the steady streams along the aqueducts, the annoyed cadence of a restless reservoir, and the guttural groans of the sewage channels.

  Serra raised the lantern to his face and spoke to the flame it held. Expecting the fire to grow, Vrana found herself stunned as it leapt from its container and danced about the noisy cavern, setting aglow lamps, lanterns, and torches that had long since died out.

  What she heard she now saw, and what she saw she now feared: Wooden platforms and stretches of scaffolding choked with pulsating roots from a massive growth, a plant the size of a tree; at the center, in the water, it reached up and outward, into the pipes, into the channels and aqueducts, its roots secreting a milky substance into the waters with reptilian indifference. Purple sprites, not unlike those in Vrana’s basement, worried at the mass’ core, but they couldn’t break through the blight.

  “I knew that couldn’t have been right,” she said as she took from her pouch the roots of Wormwood. “I found these on the beach. I don’t know as much as I should, but I do know Wormwood shouldn’t be growing there. The water here must lead into the ocean. That…” She paused, recalling all that her mother had told her about botany. “… Is a Crossbreed. I only remember it because I begged my mother to tell me about the ridiculous things people have tried to create. Wormwood, Death’s Mantle, Black Fey, Nausea, Malaise, White Chrism…” She had tried and failed, for lack of ingredients, to recreate the experiment as a young girl. “This is what turned Geharra’s waters bitter. It doesn’t kill, Serra. They’re not dead. The Crossbreed doesn’t kill. The Crossbreed controls.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  Vrana lifted herself out of the manhole and onto the street, her hands scrambling for Serra’s as the ladder worked itself free of its bolts. Serra pulled her across the cobblestones and then let her go as she took off her mask and curled into a ball, her palms pressed hard against her head. She shut her eyes tight, but they continued to twitch and roll behind their lids. Serra handed her a piece of ka’thar meat; she shoved it in her mouth, but forgot to chew it. The world felt as though it had sped up and spun off its axis. She started to shiver, and with the cold sweat that poured out of her, the effects of the Crossbreed finally began to leave her system.

  Able to focus again, Vrana opened her eyes and saw Serra, too, struggling to overcome his exposure to the Crossbreed. Sitting on the street, legs outstretched, arms limp at his side, Serra looked like a doll left behind by its master. With his chin to his chest, Vrana could see that he was constantly swallowing something down his throat. After a moment of this, he looked up, gave one final twitch of the shoulders, and nodded at her to show that he was ready.

  They helped each other up and then helped themselves to some more food to silence the growling of their stomachs. Vrana swallowed the ka’thar meat he’d given her and drank the water from her pouch until it was as dry as her lips. Serra let her have a sip from his own pouch, and then, hand-in-hand, the two went on unsteady legs into the great and ruined market before them.

  “It’ll stop soon,” Vrana said, putting her mask back on.

  Serra craned his neck as he scanned the ransacked square, searching for silent thieves with sharp teeth and blunt knives.

  “You have to ingest it for it to take hold,” she continued, wishing to be out of her armor, which was irritating her already irritated skin. “It weakens your will, makes you more susceptible to influence. Penance put it in the water supply, and then they preached their way into Geharra’s mind.” She tipped back her mask to let the air run over her face. “With that much of the Crossbreed in their bloodstream, the priests could’ve made them do anything.”

  Serra shook his head and continued with her into the desolation of the market. A heavy gloom hung about the area, pouring over the surrounding buildings in stifling waves of gray. The sky sat low against the city, a murky sea of shipwrecked clouds broken down in marbled waters. They stepped over a puddle colored copper from the spilled paint running out of an artist’s tent. Prized possessions of the poor and privileged clung to their feet, as though to be prized and possessed once more. Jewelry and expensive clothing rolled and slithered with the wind, now no more valuable than the dirt that scuffed them.

  “I don’t understand why they didn’t fight back,” Vrana said. She turned her head and outstretched her arm, receiving Blix as he landed upon it. “Blix!” She bobbed her arm, encouraging Serra to pet the crow, which he did gently, appreciating the life the little annoyance brought to
the bazaar of the dead. “I hope you’ve something good to tell us,” she went on, poking Blix’s stomach, “because Deimos is going to want a report.”

  Serra groaned: The Crossbreed.

  Vrana ran her hands through a pile of beautiful scarves, touching each petal of every floral print done in the darkly colorful Russian aesthetic. Her eyes found an African pot farther down the table, its rich brown coat decorated with diamonds of blue and white. The wind howled for her attention, and when she turned to answer, she noticed the hint of a Roman aqueduct in Geharra’s architecture. Did they extract from the past as we do? She looked at Serra as though he could read her mind. It shouldn’t matter; the Corrupted’s course must always be the same. If it wasn’t, then how could we continue to kill them? She looked at Serra and was glad he couldn’t read her mind; for she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer.

  Serra nudged Vrana: What else do you know about the Crossbreed?

  “Sorry,” she said as she admired the blade of a katana. “The Crossbreed is supposed to be a myth. It’s something every botanist tries to make but fails, because the components are not meant to work together. It’s a game, a trick you play on apprentices. A long time ago, before the Trauma, someone supposedly grew one. There’s an illustration of it, and it looked exactly like that thing in the sewers. I don’t understand. From everything I’ve read about it, that’s the kind of environment that it shouldn’t be able to thrive in.”

  Serra shrugged one shoulder: Maybe whoever wrote it all down lied on purpose.