The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  Atticus chose to remain standing. I’m here, in Ghostgrave, he thought. If I can get out, I can get to the Archivist’s tower and get what I need.

  “Not much of a talker?”

  “Hmm?” Atticus snapped out of it. “No, not particularly.” Can I use her? he wondered. “How, uh, did you end up here?”

  “It’s better you not know.” Lotus pointed to her swollen face. “Looks like you’ve been through enough already.”

  Atticus shrugged. It was convenient to run into Clementine when I did, he thought. Why was she out there? Was she looking for the Abyss? To end everything? Was that even really her?

  “What’s that about you not being able to die?” Lotus laughed, wincing as she did so. “Does it help with the pain? Because if so, I’ll have some myself.”

  Maybe she was just passing time. Atticus could see Lotus was waiting for a response, so he quickly said, “No, doesn’t help with the pain. But yes, I can’t die.”

  “Guess I know why you’re here, then. Seems like something the king would want to have a hand in.”

  “That’s half of it.” Now, Atticus did sit. A rat scurried past him, into Lotus’ cell. “What’s King Edgar want with you?”

  “Not really sure.” Lotus caught the rat, broke its neck, and flung it across the dungeon. “My chances aren’t good, Atticus. I’m not sure if talking to you will make them worse.”

  “Kind of seems like you’re going to tell me anyways,” he said.

  “You’re the first person I’ve had a conversation with. Tried talking to the rats, but it’s the same old shit with them. Yeah, ha, I’ll tell you. Why not?” She slicked her short hair back, took out a clump of it when she pulled her hand away. “I’m from the Nameless Forest. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them that, but since you can’t die, I’m sure that’s not all that surprising to hear.”

  Nameless Forest. Now there were two words that knew how to get Atticus’ attention.

  “No.” Lotus’ voice hardened and she scooted a little further away. “This is a test, isn’t it? To get me to talk? I don’t know who you are.”

  After that, Lotus shut down.

  Atticus learned to count the days by the faint dinning of a bell somewhere above the dungeon. It rang twice in the morning, and four times in the afternoon. In the evening, the bell thudded out six dark notes and went dead until the midnight hour, when it rang once, sharply. Atticus was down there for a week and a half before Lotus started talking again.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked after finishing her meal. It was breakfast for dinner. A way to throw them off, he figured. “They’ve barely fed you.”

  “Can’t die. Should be skinnier, but I guess my body has me covered.”

  Lotus pulled a piece of biscuit from her teeth. “Why can’t you die?”

  “Don’t know.” If she was going to keep him at a distance, maybe it was best he did the same. No one else had been placed in the dungeon since he arrived. Either there was a dearth of prisoners of late, or it was on purpose.

  Lotus got the sniffles and said, “I miss my home. Never thought I would, but I do.”

  “The Nameless Forest?”

  “Yeah, but my village, Threadbare.”

  “Didn’t know there were towns in there.”

  Lotus held out her hands. “Yeah. I mean, how much do you know about the place?”

  “I’m from Gallows,” Atticus offered.

  “Hey!” Lotus shouted. “Guess that makes us neighbors.”

  Atticus smiled. “Yeah, in a way. What’s Threadbare like?”

  “Small. Everyone in everyone’s business. But they are good people. It’s batshit madness outside the village, like you’d expect, but nothing’s perfect.” Lotus paused and then added, “I am, well, was the mayor.”

  “You must have really pissed King Edgar off.”

  “I guess.” Lotus started to rock back and forth, the only form of stimulation she probably had in this place. “What about you?”

  “Got wrapped up in a rebellion against Eldrus.” How much do I tell her? “Can’t die, like I said, so I’m sure that’s ruffling his feathers, too.”

  Lotus came to her feet, went to the corner, and took a piss. “Damn,” she said, going back to where she was sitting. “Why’d you do that?”

  It was getting easier to talk to her. “You first.”

  “I don’t know, Atticus.”

  “All right.”

  Lotus groaned. “King Edgar wants to take over the Nameless Forest. He wants to turn it into a state. He wants its people to fight for him.”

  “Figured as much,” Atticus said, trying to assuage her worries of confession.

  “Is that what the rebellion is all about?” Lotus scooted closer.

  “Yeah, stopping that from happening. Stopping the Forest from spreading.”

  “Spreading?” Lotus cocked her head. “With the vermillion veins?”

  Atticus nodded. “What are they?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. No one knows. You stop asking questions when you live in the Nameless Forest. You said spreading? It can, I guess, but… that’s no good unless he gets the people to spread outward, too.”

  “Why not?”

  “Eh.” Lotus covered her mouth and shook her head.

  “That’s why you’re here, then.”

  “This is making me nervous,” Lotus said. “Not a big fan of the feeling.”

  “Doesn’t make no difference to me,” Atticus said. He stood up and went to the opposite side of his cell.

  Lotus pounded her fists against the dungeon’s floor. The words were coming out, regardless of if she wanted them to or not. And here they were: “The Dread Clock.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Everyone in the Nameless Forest does, though. And that’s what pisses me off. He could have taken anyone, but he took me.”

  “What is it?”

  “The source of the chaos in the Nameless Forest. The Black Hour? That’s where most of us think it comes from. And because the Forest is so close to it, that’s why it is the way it is. Black Hour all the time in there.”

  Atticus faced Lotus and went to the bars she sat beside. “King Edgar wants it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s chaos. It’s everything. The Black Hour is capable of showing and creating anything. If you can control that, you can do whatever you want. If he—you better not be a fucking spy, I swear to god—if he gets a hold of it, then he can make the Forest grow beyond its borders, and make the people leave them. Or maybe just use the Black Hour to destroy his enemies. All sounds terrible to me.”

  “Huh.” The gears in Atticus’ head started churning out thoughts, but he tried not to show it. If it were mine, if it works the way she says it does, I wouldn’t need Mr. Haemo or anything else to bring them back. “And he thinks you know how to reach it?”

  Lotus nodded. “He does.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do.”

  “Don’t want to tell him?”

  “I did. It’s not a secret.” Lotus straightened up. She looked towards the front of the dungeon. “But nothing living—” her words faded as she turned her head back towards him, “—nothing living can get close to it.”

  “That’s why I’m here?” Atticus could see the panic in Lotus’ eyes.

  “You tell me.” She jumped as the dungeon doors were unlocked and flung back. “You son of a bitch. I’m so stupid.” She punched the side of her head and leaned into the bars. “What do you know? Here comes the king.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The only thing King Edgar looked like he could rule was a kindergarteners’ playset on recess. With five guards surrounding him, the red-cheeked royal had about as much presence as the ground Lotus kept pissing on. Beneath the fancy garments that swaddled him like a blanket, it appeared Edgar had the body of a brawler. But whether or not the baby-faced boy was willing to make use of his training remained to be see
n.

  “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” King Edgar said. He pointed at Lotus’ cell and, again, from out of nowhere, the jailer appeared and unlocked it. “Please, accept my apologies, Lotus. This has to be a private conversation.”

  The king’s guard moved into her cell, rounded her up before she could make a fuss, and hauled her out of the dungeon. They returned, two fewer, and, with the jailer, went to and unlocked Atticus’ cell.

  “Put this on,” one of the guards said, tossing Atticus a hood to wear.

  “We’re going somewhere else,” King Edgar said. “Lotus doesn’t need to know that. I prefer to keep her in the dark at all times.”

  Atticus stretched the hood between his hands. “What do you want from me?”

  A guard shouted, “He is your king—”

  King Edgar held up his hand. “A king earns his people’s respect. I have not earned this one’s yet. Gravedigger, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Atticus stared down King Edgar. He’d die a few times, but he could probably tear out the man’s throat in the process. Do I even need to, though? That part of the plan was finished. He was already here, without the help of Geharra and their “team.” He slid the hood on and put his hands behind his back. Everything went dark. I’ll play nice and see where it gets me.

  The guards entered his cell. He heard the familiar clink of the jailer’s keyring. His wrists were shackled, and a gag was stuffed into his mouth. Swords were unsheathed, and their tips went into his side, neck, and at the back of his head. With the speed of molasses, they transported him out of the cell, turned him right, facing the back of the dungeon, and pushed him towards that rotund area, where, with the help of their swords, the guards forced him into another cell, against a wall, and then flattened him and slid him across it, until the wall gave out and he stumbled into a passage, past a heavy door, and then, finally, another open place altogether.

  Atticus tried to shake off the hood. Before he could, a guard punched him in the face and shoved him backward. He smacked against a cold, stone wall. As he shook there, stunned, they ungagged and unshackled him. The guards grabbed his arms and legs and stretched them outward, so he stood splayed. They moved his arms and legs into iron cuffs that protruded from the wall and clamped them shut. The guards tightened the cuffs to the point where he lost circulation in those areas. In a frenzy, they cut off his clothes, tearing them from his body, until he was completely nude.

  “Leave his neck unsecured,” he heard King Edgar say. “Otherwise, it’ll be too difficult for him to speak.”

  Taking a bit of his hair with it, a guard ripped the hood off Atticus’ head. His eyes burned as they adjusted to the rotten, orange light that burned brightly in this room. It was a torture chamber if he ever saw one. The amount of blood and mangled skin here put his compartment back on Captain Yelena’s wagon to shame. There was a table beside where he stood, and it, too, was drenched through with gore. Further back, behind King Edgar, a wall divided the room, running across it and from floor to ceiling. It looked new. The only way past the wall was a small gate large enough for a dog to pass through. Something was back there—he could hear noises coming through the gate—but what it was, he couldn’t be sure.

  “Leave us,” King Edgar demanded.

  Without hesitation, his guard nodded and left the way they’d come.

  “Captain Yelena and Captain Roderick tell me you’re the real Gravedigger.” King Edgar grabbed a stool and planted it right in front of Atticus. He unfastened his cloak and excessive adornments and dropped them onto the disgusting floor. “Do you know how many ‘Gravediggers’ we’ve gone through in the last month?”

  Atticus didn’t respond.

  “Five.” King Edgar held up five fingers. “They weren’t innocent. They deserved to die for their treason against Eldrus. But they didn’t deserve to be tortured like they were, like you have been.

  “I know Geharra is funding this little rebellion.” King Edgar crossed his legs and sighed. “I’ve known about it for a while. Eldrus, Penance, Geharra. We all play these games with one another. But sometimes, someone takes it too far, and Geharra’s done just that.”

  “Why’d you wait to stop it?”

  “You’re not a military-minded kind of man, I take it? I’m not, either, to be honest. This is not where I saw myself a few years back.”

  King Edgar’s pretty face didn’t look so pretty this close. It was covered in make-up, to hide the scars that uglied it.

  “A problem isn’t a problem until you make it one. I was willing to let this fire burn a while, and then burn out. The Heartland has nothing that can stop Eldrus, not even with Geharra’s help. Except for you. Or rather, the idea of you. You’re a powerful symbol, but in the hands of a bunch of bumbling idiots. They know nothing of patience. Instead of letting you increase your influence naturally, they sculpted imitations and planted them where they would take.”

  “Speaking of planting things,” Atticus started.

  “Why are you fighting for Geharra? A man who can’t die has better things to do than take orders from someone who can.”

  “Don’t you know the stories?” Atticus tested the iron cuffs, but they wouldn’t give.

  “Of course. My men killed your wife and son, and now you want revenge for their deaths. And that revenge has become something political and galvanizing.”

  Atticus shrugged. “There you go.”

  “But you didn’t turn yourself into a symbol to save the Heartland from Eldrus.” King Edgar stood up, shaking his head. “For everyone who believes your story and is touched by it, that’s one more death on your shoulders. You know this, don’t you? Your inspiration is their damnation. I’m not saying you’re some messiah sweeping across the continent, but everyone you inspire is your responsibility. Can you live with that?”

  “I care about what I’m doing.” Atticus tried to sound sincere, and failed.

  “Do you think the Heartland’s hate for Eldrus only has to do with my soldiers occupying their towns? Or planting… crops… in their soil?”

  Atticus could a sense a monologue coming on.

  “I think you do believe this. My reports tell me you’ve been to Bedlam, Cathedra, Islaos, Hrothas, and, for a moment, Nyxis. You never stayed long. You never took the time to get to know the people and their problems. You just gave a speech, acted like you cared, and carried on.”

  “That’s my job,” Atticus said.

  “No, it’s not.” King Edgar’s neck tightened, and his make-up started to run. “No, it’s not. In Bedlam, there’re more jobs in the underground markets peddling stolen goods, prostitutes, and mind-killer substances than anything else. They’ve already divided the town between the east and west side, and now they’ve started harassing people whose Corruption is lighter than most. Criminal organizations, like your former Marrow Cabal, go there and find cheap workers to carry out their jobs. They are good people in Bedlam, but they are forced to do bad things. And I will hold them accountable for their actions, but I will not judge them for it, because I would do the same.

  “In Cathedra, we have rape cases every day, from men and women in town and the surrounding woodlands. There’s not a lot of murder in that beautiful place, because most families just beat each other into submission at home, in private, under the guise of holy discipline. The cathedral knows about this but does nothing, because nothing fills pews faster than self-loathing.

  “In Islaos, people work themselves to the bone. The unsafe conditions of the lumberyards, mining tunnels, and, in general, the Blasted Woodland, lead to more deaths than anything else. Families are large there, because life is short and unpredictable. Mind-killers are popular, and alcohol even more so. Children are raised to be complacent in Islaos, and to be responsible for its well-being. Those who leave the town for personal reasons are considered outcasts, because they refuse to contribute to the place that gave them the life they live.

  “In Hrothas, murder runs rampant. The law enforcemen
t agencies are corrupt and paid to look away from illicit activities. The misogynistic mayor of Hrothas has tried several times to enact a bill that would allow women to be rounded up and processed like cattle, to identify undesirable defects and personalities. The people fight this, because the people in Hrothas are strong of will, and brave. They may be the strongest in all the Heartland, and most loyal. And what did you do there? You made it rain blood, and then, when things weren’t going your way, when my men outnumbered yours, instead of staying and supporting your people, you ran.

  “And Nyxis? I can forgive for you not knowing Nyxis well, as your stay there was brief. But in Nyxis, the land is dying. Those fields outside the town are fallow. Inside the town, wombs are barren. Disease spreads through the streets from the same mosquitoes you probably employ. Birth rates have plummeted. Violence has increased. Sex is a distraction, and sexually transmitted diseases are considered an inconsequential consequence. My soldiers have to break up community meetings. Somewhere along the line, ex-communicated members of Cathedra’s cathedral and followers of the witches who betrayed you have formed a coven. And they’re wreaking havoc, using Geharra’s rebellion as a cover for their activities. Using my Disciples of the Deep as weapons.

  “I didn’t mention Gallows. I know you’re from there. I know you know it’s hardly a happy place to live. It’s an unregulated, backwoods bum fuck of a town, isn’t it? Everyone taking what they want, when they want, and just barely hanging onto what they’ve got. But it’s home, isn’t it? All these places are homes. All these places are great, in their own ways. Bedlam’s culture, creativity, and once liberal ideology. Cathedra’s tradition, architecture, and devotion to spirituality. Islaos’ work ethic, production, and sense of community. Hrothas’ bravery, intelligence, and political savvy. Nyxis’ love for the land, for the things that grow out of it, and their need to do right by others. I don’t know Gallows as well as you do, Gravedigger. Tell me its positive qualities.”