Bone Song

by John Meaney

  Another stewardess, not the woman who'd hurried forward, reached out and touched Donal's arm. “Sir, please return to your—”

  Donal leaned close to her ear. “I'm a police officer. Let me help.”

  “Oh, Lieutenant, yes.”

  So Donal's rank as well as name had been noted on the passenger list.

  “Excuse me.”

  It was the first stewardess, followed by a dark-complexioned woman Donal had not seen before. This woman was dressed in black and purple robes, and the eleven-sided amulet between her small breasts shone silver and jet.

  Moving heptagrams rolled across the exposed areas of her skin: her taut, lined face and her bony hands. Her age was impossible to determine. She looked like some sand-weathered sculpture left out in the desert for decades.

  Donal was about to hold up his hand and suggest that the woman remain where she was, but her eyes held a strange glint, like oily pools in whose strange depths creatures swam.

  A witch?

  That's right.

  The thought seemed to be Donal's own.

  After a few moments, Donal blinked back to full awareness. The two stewardesses yawned, eyelids fluttering, then came awake.

  “What—”

  The witch had already reached the rear of the aircraft.

  “I'm glad she's on our side,” muttered Donal. “Er, she is on . . .”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Thank Hades.”

  At that moment the plane lurched sideways. A dozen people yelled or screamed.

  “Shit.” Donal caught hold of the nearest seat as a tray crashed on the deck.

  “Hurry.” A stewardess was pushing him.

  “All right.”

  Donal moved toward the rear galley, where the witch had disappeared from sight. A grim-faced steward was holding open an internal hatch. Metal steps led down into a shadowy space. Donal leaned inside, catching a glimpse of the witch's robe.

  “Thanatos. Here goes.” Donal grabbed hold of the steel rails and jumped. He slid down the rails on his palms, just like the stairwell in the orphanage. Then his feet hit the lower deck.

  “Hush.”

  The witch was sitting cross-legged before the row of cages, her arms outstretched, her eyes closed as she bent her head forward and sent waves of energy—whatever that might mean: Donal could almost hear Sister Mary-Anne Styx's skeptical voice debunking mysticism whenever it was mentioned—toward the fearful animals. Silver scales and purple skin and gray talons flashed inside the cages.

  A thump sounded behind Donal, then a curse. Donal turned to see one of the hard-faced stewards—an undercover marshal, had to be—lying on his side. One knee was pulled up against his chest.

  The plane had bumped again just as he was descending the steps. Donal could see right away that the man's leg was broken.

  “I'm Riordan,” said Donal. “Have you got a weapon?”

  “Yeah . . .” Through clenched teeth, the injured man forced out: “Ankle . . . holster. Other leg.”

  “I've got it.”

  Donal moved fast, whipping the black short-barreled revolver from the holster. The injured leg needed to be immobilized, but if the animals got free—or the turbulence got worse—first aid would be irrelevant.

  Crouching, Donal took aim at the nearest cage, then swiveled the weapon from one cage to the next. A translucent streamer of pale light washed through the cargo hold.

  It was only in that moment that Donal finally acknowledged the obvious. This was no ordinary storm, and these were not ordinary animals. And it would take more than bullets to resolve the situation.

  A dark glow surrounded the witch.

  The plane pitched. Screams and tinkling glass sounded overhead, attenuated by the deck in between and by something more: a thickening quality to the air, a new vibration just below the limit of human hearing.

  Around the witch, the air darkened further. Inside the cages, animals quieted as their eyes brightened. Then they, too, began to hum and warble, reptilian throats joining the witch's near-subliminal chant. Donal lowered his weapon.

  Go forward.

  For a moment, Donal could not figure out who had spoken. The witch continued to hum and chant, but somehow it was her words that he was thinking.

  Touch the animals, came the thought. One by one.

  “I don't—”

  Now.

  Donal looked back at the officer with the broken leg. The man's eyes were shining and damp with suffering, but he was determined to remain conscious. Donal handed him back his weapon.

  “I won't be needing it,” Donal said.

  “What are you . . . doing?”

  “I wish to Hades I knew.”

  The plane tipped sideways again. Donal rolled along the smooth deck, coming up on one knee. Somehow the witch remained fastened in place, seated cross-legged on the tilted deck, her attention focused inward.

  Donal could never appreciate what battle she was fighting or how much energy it required. He could only do as she had asked. He crawled to the first cage.

  “Don't.” It was the wounded sky marshal. “Don't do it.”

  “Have to,” muttered Donal, grabbing hold of the bars and hauling himself half upright. “I know it makes no—”

  A cold black tongue rasped across Donal's hand and was gone.

  Do you feel the bones?

  “Thanatos,” he whispered. “That was a Basili—”

  Hurry. It was the witch again, inside his mind. There's little time.

  Another thought, of a different flavor, followed.

  And do you taste the song?

  The plane was straightening up. There was a series of bumps, and once more a scream sounded from the passenger deck overhead. Loud, it pierced the sound of ongoing panic. Donal pulled himself forward to the next cage and thrust his hand inside.

  “Ah. . .”

  Teeth fastened on his wrist. Sharp teeth. An acid burning pierced his skin. Donal forced himself to hold still and not jerk back: those sharp curved fangs could rip his tendons apart.

  Do you feel—

  Hush. Let me work.

  It took all of Donal's trance-trained willpower to override his reflexes and hold in position until the pressure released. Burning still swept through him as he crawled forward. There were four more cages.

  There was more danger here than in the hex-laden storm outside. Somehow Donal's presence was part of it.

  Do you hear the music?

  It's here because of me.

  One of the beasts was ethereal, akin to a wraith yet not remotely human. The bars of its cage acted as conductors for the necromagnetic field that held it in place.

  When Donal put his hand inside the field, the burning across his skin was followed by an icy blast as the strange form melded with him, just for a moment. The geometries of space rotated through impossible angles and directions. Donal saw the world like some cuboid painting, from perspectives no normal person could maintain.

  Then a massive migraine seemed to cleave his head asunder like an ax. Falling backward, he cried out—and felt fine.

  “What the Thanatos?”

  The witch shuddered. There were no words in Donal's head, but he got the message: the witch couldn't hang on for much longer. He had to make peace and create some kind of rapport with the remaining animals fast, or the aircraft was going to fall out of the sky.

  It's my fault. They need to understand I'm no threat.

  There were three cages left. Donal grabbed the next with both hands, steadying himself as the aircraft tilted again. He forced his face between the bars.

  Foolish risk . . .

  This time he got what should have been a clear view of the beast, but purple scales swirled in helices too fast for Donal's eyes to follow. It spat something acidic into his face and he jerked back, releasing the bars, and rolling across the hard metal.

  He bumped up against a cage.

  Not . . . The witch, bent over, looked close to collapse. Not an attack.


  “It forgives me,” Donal said. “I understand.”

  No . . .

  For a moment Donal thought the witch was disagreeing with him. Then the plane bucked and she fell, and Donal realized that it was over: the plane was going down with everyone aboard, and it was his fault.

  The fuselage screamed as metal twisted. Donal slammed his fist into the nearest cage and something slid across his skin. It corkscrewed and twisted inside, some quicksilver insertion sliding into Donal's bones, delivering pain.

  Donal yelled as a percussive wave of air hammered across the hold, slamming him against a bulkhead.

  Collapsed on the deck, the witch looked unconscious. The wounded man was curled up, shivering.

  One cage left.

  The plane was dying, but there was a chance. Donal leaped from the deck toward the final cage as the cargo hold spun upside down and everything went . . .

  NO!

  . . . away.

  When Donal came to, several people were taking care of the wounded man. One of the stewards plus a well-dressed passenger were tying emergency splints in place with linen napkins. There was no sign of the witch.

  Someone had left a water bottle next to Donal. He picked it up, unscrewed the top, and drank.

  The plane was flying steadily.

  “Ugh.” Donal dragged himself upright. “There's a medical chest . . . upstairs. I saw it earlier.”

  “Yeah, we know.” The steward looked up at him. “Problem is, there're a dozen injured people upstairs. One of them's had a heart attack.”

  “He'll be all right,” murmured the well-dressed man, continuing to work on the splint.

  “There'll be an ambulance waiting when we land,” said the steward.

  “Assuming we don't hit more storms. Wouldn't it have been better to turn around?”

  The steward said nothing for a moment, then: “Keep this to yourselves, but the weather's worse behind us than it is up ahead. Nothing like this was predicted by the Met Bureau.”

  The medical man chuckled. “Never trust a seer, is what I say.”

  “What happened”—Donal gestured toward the deck—“to the . . . lady?”

  “You mean the witch?” asked the steward. “She's fine. Why?”

  “Nothing.” Donal had last seen her collapsed, but there was nothing normal about witches. “What about the animals?”

  The cages were silent.

  “They're quiet. Don't know what spooked them earlier. Well . . .the storm, right? I mean, I don't know how they knew it was going to happen.”

  “Me neither,” said Donal.

  But he had a bad feeling that somehow he did know, that the witch had been right and his presence here had triggered everything. He remembered being back in the theater when the front rows of the audience, ensorcelled, had risen in parazombie trance and stepped forward in exact unison, advancing upon the diva—and upon Donal.

  Do you hear the bones?

  No.

  “Where is she now?” Donal added. “The witch.”

  “Working on one of the passengers”—bitterness surfaced in the medic's voice—“that I couldn't do anything for. I'm making myself useful down here.”

  Can you feel the music?

  It was not my fault.

  The injured steward moaned with pain, then slipped out of consciousness once more.

  Donal grinned and glanced back at the cages.

  “What's funny?”

  “Nothing,” Donal answered. “Sorry. I had a bang on the head. I'm having a strange reaction to it.”

  I feel wonderful.

  The medic looked concerned. “Just sit down and I'll look at you in a—”

  “No, no. I'm not concussed. See?” Donal raised his right hand, using the thumb to keep the little finger bent. “Three fingers, right? No, the weird thing is . . . how wonderful I feel.”

  Really wonderful.

  “Euphoria,” said the medic. “Perhaps the oxygen in here is—Never mind. If you're able to move okay, perhaps you should get back upstairs to the passenger deck. See if there's anything you can do to help. You look capable enough.”

  “All right.” Donal climbed, chuckling to himself. “All right.”

  When Donal reached the top of the steel ladder, a thin hand took hold of his wrist, then grasped with steel strength and hauled him up. It was the old witch, clothed in black and purple. When she released her grip, Donal's wrist throbbed.

  “Er . . . Thank you,” he said.

  No one had taught him how to address a witch. Nuns, yes: the steel ruler across his leg taught him to respectfully say Sister (or Mother in the case of the Reverend Mother who ruled the orphanage, cold bitch that she was). But the witch was different, and Donal knew that a lack of ceremony would not bother her.

  “The touch of black blood,” she said, “is upon you. The tempest field is unusually widespread tonight to have picked up the resonance this far from the—Could there be intelligent direction behind it?”

  “I may have enemies in Silvex City, though I've never been there.” Donal shrugged. “Part of the job.”

  “That does not make it a good thing, young man.”

  “No, ma'am.”

  A smile cracked the witch's old skin. “But you will face the dangers anyway? Good for you, Donal Riordan.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  The witch nodded toward the rear bulkhead of the galley, where a small typed list stood in a transparent glass pocket. “They call it a passenger manifest.”

  “Oh.”

  “Be observant of the world. That's the way to thrive, don't you think?”

  Donal inclined his head in a kind of bow.

  “Here.” The witch reached inside her robes, tugged, and brought out the silver-and-jet amulet that Donal had seen earlier. “This is for you.”

  “I can't—”

  “Take it. Now.”

  The amulet was already in Donal's hand. “Thanatos. How did you do that?”

  “I didn't do anything. Are you saying I can control your hands?”

  “Well, I don't suppose it's possible to—”

  “Put the amulet around your neck right this moment.”

  “—command me to”—Donal finished fastening the cord at the back of his neck and let the amulet drop against his sternum—“um, do anything I didn't want to do already.”

  “Exactly.” The witch smiled again, and this time Donal could see the warmth of her spirit: young and dancing, despite the age of her physical body. “Aren't you so glad you wanted to do the right thing?”

  “Right.”

  “You'll excuse me.” The witch touched Donal's arm. “There are still a few people who need my help.”

  “Yes. I'll just—”

  “Go back to your seat.”

  Donal let the witch slip past him in the galley, then he headed back toward first class. People were snoring softly, despite the earlier panic.

  Back in his seat, Donal allowed his eyelids to droop, enjoying the soft orange glow of light seen through closed eyes. Somehow the witch had given him permission to enjoy this. He slipped slowly down into warmth.

  Do you . . .

  Smiling, Donal fell asleep.

  The Transition Tempest's core was formed of huge billowing sheets of silver and purple fluorescence, the aurora heart of a centuries-old (maybe millennia-old) storm that raged in place above the Illurian border. Silver lightning could strike at any time.

  Suddenly, it did.

  White light flared inside the cockpit and ripped back along the aisles and concave walls, and then was gone. The plane's systems continued to function, and nobody panicked.

  Only the witch was capable of panicking at that moment, but she was too busy to worry about anything. She poured her strength into maintaining the calming spell that enveloped all the passengers, particularly Donal Riordan, as he smiled, deep inside some happy dream, and murmured one word: Laura.

  Hearing it—or sensing it somehow—the wit
ch also smiled. She had been in love and had remained married to the mage of her dreams for thirty-five years, until his confrontation with a group of parazombies controlled by some unknown power. That had been in a “secure” hospital wing.

  The medics had tried to retain control of the ensorcelled parazombies, refusing to let police officers inside the ward to help them, while her husband, Valkton, attempted the group exorcism single-handed, unwilling to wait for help to arrive. The concentration of hex increased by the minute: the parazombies' controller was traveling physically toward the place, increasing the strength of his broadcast (by the straightforward geometry of an inverse-square law) the nearer he drew.

  The witch had tasted the resonance of the Black Circle upon the emanations remaining around her husband's corpse. She had not known the conspiracy's name at that time, but she read the same traces upon Donal Riordan.

  And you realize, don't you?

  All of this she obtained from Donal's subconscious during the twenty-minute interrogation that she had conducted in the galley when he ascended from the plane's cargo hold. In Donal's memory, the conversation had lasted only seconds.

  You begin to realize what they did to you, Donal Riordan.

  When Donal came awake, the plane had begun its descent. He pulled back the small white curtains inside the window—or were you supposed to call it a porthole?—and noticed two things at once: the black—not purple!—sky above, and the glistening reflections on the perfectly flat ground beyond Silvex City.

  He'd missed the beginning of the Glass Planes, the hundred-mile-square glass sheets that were supported like some god's three-dimensional chessboard, stacked one above the other, separated by fifty or a hundred feet of air—the spacing alternated. The supporting pillars were of marble; each was as wide as an ordinary city.

  There were legends, plenty of them, about the eons-past origins of the planes. Each legend had thousands or hundreds of thousands of believers. Yet many of the legends contradicted the others. No one knew the truth; many people claimed to.

  Donal had slept through the aircraft passing inside the Transition Tempest and emerging on this side, over Illurian territory. What was strange was that, in his mind's eye, Donal could see every detail of that vast, long-lived storm guarding the border.

  The engines' pitch changed. Their emerald luminescence shifted hue, glowing a deeper green as the plane banked left and downward, beginning its miles-long arcing trajectory to the waiting runway.