Ghoulish Song z-2

by William Alexander

  “Here we are.” The Reliquarian came to stand beside a shelf of flutes and whistles. “Some of these are really quite ancient. This one here is a favorite of mine, covered with carvings in an old script. Shall I read it to you?” She squinted at writing scratched into the bone, and then closed her eyes and tilted her head backward. She stayed that way for one long, silent moment.

  “Hello?” Kaile finally said.

  The Reliquarian opened one eye, and closed it again. “Excuse me. I am helping myself remember this ancient language by pouring the liquid stuff of my thoughts from the centers of sensory perception to the mental place of memory. Philosophers assure us that this is how memory works.” She cleaned out her left ear with one long pinky finger, opened her eyes, and began to read. “ ‘This leg belonged to Heris, and she the greatest musician to walk these hills. With so much music in her bones, she desired to be a source of music in death.’ That’s a lovely idea, I think—though I shouldn’t want to risk playing it to find out how much music is left inside. This is a very old relic, very old, and cracked along the side.”

  She set down the leg of Heris, and picked up another flute. “This one is more grim. The inscription reads, ‘I played a happy and frolicking tune at the execution of my murderer.’ That sounds horrible to me, and not at all frolicsome. Let’s examine something else.” She set that flute aside, and took up a pair of ribs. “These are drum bones. You play them by clacking them together. I would try it, but they might snap in half. They are older than this building, you know, and they remember a great deal. Here, let me read to you what they say.” She squinted and moved her lips for a while before speaking. “ ‘Mine is the rhythm makes the bone-house. Mine is the beat inside that house. Mine is the dance and the dark in between. Mine is the building and mine is the breaking. Mine is the shaping and severing song.’ There. What an intriguing bit of old verse.”

  The Reliquarian returned the two ribs to their shelf. “Now tell me,” she said, sounding suddenly nervous, “what interests you so much about bone-made music?”

  “I need to know more about this flute,” said Kaile, holding it up again. “I need to know why it insists on playing only one song. And I think I should find out whose bone it used to be. I have a solid guess about whose it is, but I don’t really know.”

  Runcemore the Reliquarian stood thinking. Then she reached out and took the flute away from Kaile.

  “Hey!” Kaile protested.

  The Reliquarian ignored her protest. “Come with me. Let’s see what answers we can find in my laboratory.” She moved quickly to a doorway on the far side of the Chamber of Curiosities. The door was thick, and locked. The Reliquarian unlocked it with one iron key, which she kept in her coat pocket, and descended the spiral staircase on the other side.

  Kaile followed, still unhappy that someone else was carrying her flute. Shade moved beside her.

  * * *

  The staircase ended in a metal door and a basement room beyond it. The stone walls here were rough and unpolished, and the floor made up of dirt and sawdust. A workbench lit by several lamps and cluttered with odd instruments took up one side of the room. A blazing cast-iron furnace took up the other end.

  The room was hot, oven hot, kitchen hot—only worse, because there were no windows, and because the place smelled like rust and ash rather than baking bread.

  “So sorry for the lack of polish,” the Reliquarian said. “I do need to tidy up down here. Now, let’s see what we can learn. I’ll need a pinch of fine dust from the bone to begin.”

  She took up a dull knife and scraped at the side of the flute.

  “Stop that!” Kaile told her, shocked.

  Runcemore flinched away. “I’ve only scratched it,” she said, defensive and scolding. She collected the bits of scraped bone dust in shallow metal basin, rubbed a pinch of it between two fingers, and tasted it. Then she lit a candle, took another pinch, and dropped the dust into the candle flame. The dust made tiny flashes of light as it fell. The Reliquarian studied the flame, and nodded.

  “Carved from the femur of a young girl,” she said, mostly to herself. “She stood at the same height as yourself, more or less, and wore her hair in much the same way. It seems that she also had a fondness for figs.”

  “You got all that from burning bone dust?” Kaile wondered.

  “I did,” the Reliquarian said. “And I can also tell that the girl died by drowning.”

  “I thought so,” said Kaile. “Iren drowned. She didn’t really turn into a swan.”

  The Reliquarian made a scornful noise. “That’s a foolish song,” she said. “I remember that the girl was foolish, too, though she died a very long time ago and I did not know her well. She was northern, and from a very good family, but wayward enough to take up singing on the Fiddleway. She even took apartments there. No good came of that, of course.”

  The Reliquarian looked sideways at Kaile. “I thought you might be Iren, at first. You do resemble her.”

  Kaile took two steps backward. “Why would you think that? Why would you think I was her? You just said that she died a very long time ago.”

  “She did,” the Reliquarian agreed. “But I’m not at all sure when you died, shadowless thing.” Metal scraped against metal as the Reliquarian shut the door and brought down the latch. Shade made a very unhappy noise.

  “I’m not dead,” Kaile insisted. She gave the Reliquarian a fierce and challenging look, one with iron in it. She had sharpened this look with long practice. She had used it to banish drunken patrons of the Broken Wall such that they slunk away from the public room in shame.

  Runcemore the Reliquarian did not notice Kaile’s iron look. “How sad,” she said. She did not sound at all sad—though she did speak very quickly, all in a rush. “I had heard that ghouls are often unaware of their own death, and carry the delusion that they yet live. This seems to be the case with you. Your lack of shadow leaves no doubt, however. I am not at all sure what one dead girl is doing with the carved fragment of another dead girl, but the dead’s business is none of mine.”

  “Then give me back my flute,” Kaile told her. “Give it back. I’ll go away, and then none of this will be any of your business.”

  “I really cannot do that,” said the Reliquarian. “I would prefer it if you just went away, but my own responsibilities are clear. I should add this specimen to our collection of carved flutes. As for yourself, there are rules concerning the dead who continue to move; very clear rules, and far more humane and hygienic than the terrible things they do in Southside. No beheadings, no separate graves for separate pieces. None of that.”

  She walked wide around Kaile, keeping her distance, and crossed the room to the great furnace at the far side. She opened the furnace. A wood fire blazed inside, and waves of heat flooded the room.

  “We burn ghouls here,” the Reliquarian said.

  Fourteenth Verse

  KAILE RAN TO THE door and wrestled with the latch, but it was too heavy and too high up.

  She turned to face the Reliquarian, whose dark silhouette stood in front of the open furnace blaze.

  “Please don’t,” Kaile said, with pleading in her voice. “Please. I’m breathing and my heart is beating and I do have a shadow but it’s just that she’s standing over there though you probably can’t see her because nobody except for me and the cracked drummer can see her and if you burn me then there will be no one to light lanterns for her because she’s afraid of the dark so please don’t do this!”

  “I really don’t understand what you’re saying,” the Reliquarian said, her voice still rushed and flustered underneath the words she spoke. “I wish I did, but I don’t. And burning you is for the best. It might not seem that way, but a good, cleansing fire is the only sure method to help the unquiet dead find peace. Truly. You should thank me for this—though of course I’ll understand if you don’t.”

  The Reliquarian took a step toward Kaile. Then she paused and took a step sideways. Her free hand fiddled wi
th the buttons of her coat.

  “I’m really not sure how to go about this,” she admitted. “I have heard that one should avoid being bitten by a ghoul, if one can possibly avoid it, so I would appreciate it if you did not bite me. Perhaps I should hit you over the head with something first, to make sure that you don’t.” She picked up a log from the woodpile beside the furnace.

  Kaile looked around desperately for a weapon of her own.

  Even armed, the Reliquarian still kept her distance. She took a small step forward, and paused again.

  She’s afraid of you, Shade whispered. She’s trying to hide it, but I can hear it in her voice. She’s terrified. Don’t plead with her. Frighten her. Threaten her.

  Kaile tried to clear her head and focus her challenging look.

  “I can do worse than bite you,” she said. “I can curse you.”

  “How vulgar,” Runcemore said, dismissive.

  Kaile forced herself to move closer to the Reliquarian, and closer to the furnace. “I can curse the whole of the Reliquary,” she said. “I can wake every single dead thing you keep here, every grotesque thing, every beast and former Mayor. Bufkins will thrash his tail without any gearworked help. The jite will gnash its teeth. The hands of former Captains will crawl across the floor and come looking for your throat. I can do this. I will do this.”

  The Reliquarian said nothing, but she hefted the log in her hand like a club.

  Kaile did not flinch away. She moved closer, within striking distance. She smiled to make sure the older woman saw her teeth.

  “I could also sing them all to sleep,” Kaile offered. “I could do that instead. I can do it without fire, without burning anything. If you give me back my flute, then I can use it to make the whole Reliquary rest peacefully. And after that I’ll leave and never come back.”

  The Reliquarian looked thoughtful.

  “It’s your choice,” Kaile said. She tried to keep her voice calm, as though it didn’t much matter to her which way the old woman chose. “You can help your relics sleep, or else force me to wake them up. All of them. Your choice.”

  Runcemore lowered her club—though she kept it in her hand rather than returning it to the woodpile.

  “I confess that I would find it distasteful to knock you over the head and stuff you in the furnace,” she admitted, clearly trying to sound aloof. It didn’t work. Her voice cracked as she stumbled over her reasonable words, and her hand shook as she held out the flute.

  Kaile took her flute back, and then lifted it to her lips.

  She played a few phrases of the flute’s only song, slow and soft like a lullaby, doing her best to pretend that it would soothe and charm the dead back to sleep.

  “There,” she said, when she was done. “Now the others will keep still.” She hoped that was true. She hoped there were no drowned bones in the building.

  “Lovely,” said Runcemore. “But I should probably still burn you. It would be the most hygienic thing.”

  Kaile was expecting the Reliquarian to waver. She smiled again, showing teeth.

  “But we did make a bargain, of sorts,” the Reliquarian hastily said. She crossed the room, moving wide around Kaile, and then unlatched and opened the large metal door. “Be on your way, dead girl. Please do not bite anyone.”

  Kaile and Shade both raced up the stairs, ran through the Chamber of Curiosities and the Chamber of Beasts and the atrium, and left the Reliquary through its big bronze doors.

  * * *

  Once outside, Kaile paused to catch her breath. The cool air was a relief after the stifling heat of the furnace room.

  Are you okay? Shade whispered nearby.

  “I’m okay,” said Kaile, and she was glad to notice that it was true. She shifted her grip on her satchel and flute. “And I play better music when you’re nearby.”

  Of course you do, said Shade. That’s how it works. There was warmth and a smile in her words. Then she took a few steps, and both the warmth and the smile vanished. Shade began to pace back and forth.

  “What is it?” Kaile asked. “What’s wrong? Is it something worse than genteel relic curators who want to burn me?”

  It’s started, Shade whispered, her voice urgent. It’s here. The flood. And there’s music on the bridge—but the music won’t hold it together. I can hear the flood and the music shivering in the flagstones, in whispers passed between shadows. I can hear it. We have to go back there.

  “We won’t do any good if we go back,” Kaile objected. “We’re useless. We can’t help. I’m not a bridge musician.”

  It’s my fault that you aren’t. I should have stood beside you at the audition. But I’m with you now, and we have to get to the bridge.

  Kaile looked for the Clock Tower. She was annoyed to discover that she couldn’t actually see it from where they stood—she didn’t know the way back to the bridge without using the tower as a reference point. It should have been visible from every single part of the city—especially Northside. This was high ground, built up tall and proud. It looked out over Southside, and turned up its nose at the dusty smells of Southside. But the buildings were too tall, and every brick and stone wall stood stiffly beside the next one like Guard members marching shoulder to shoulder. Kaile couldn’t see between them or beyond them. She didn’t know how to get back. She felt hopeless, and sad, and tired. She felt like she needed to curl up and hide somewhere far away and safe from people who wanted to burn her for ghoulishness.

  “I don’t know the way,” she admitted.

  I do, said Shade. I can hear it. I can follow the sound.

  She set out, and Kaile followed her shadow.

  * * *

  A gatehouse stood over and around the entrance to the Fiddleway, just as in Southside—but the Southside gatehouse always stood empty. Here several members of the Guard looked down from the parapets. Sunlight glinted on their weapons and their gearworked limbs, and they shouted at the dense crowd of people who crossed the bridge below them. Kaile couldn’t make out what the Guard were shouting. It sounded like guzzard bulls squawking to her. Notice me. I’m important. Squawk, squawk, squawk.

  The crowd underneath the gatehouse moved in only one direction. No one headed south. No one tried to cross the bridge. Everyone was leaving it.

  Bells rang in the Clock Tower. Kaile had never heard the bells before. They only ever rang when something vast and terrible threatened both city and bridge.

  Underneath the high sound of the bells Kaile heard the roar of the River’s own voice.

  She followed Shade. The two of them pushed against the current of people leaving the Fiddleway.

  She looked upstream, and saw the River rise up and begin to climb the walls of its canyon in great, frothing waves.

  She looked downstream, and saw the Baker’s Cage.

  Mother’s still there, she thought. Mother’s in the cage in the middle of the flood.

  Kaile smacked up against this knowledge and stood suddenly still.

  Hurry! Shade called, her voice as loud as Kaile had ever heard it. The shadow moved deeper into the crowd, zigging and zagging as she tried to avoid stepping on her fellow shadows. Kaile followed, and tried to do the same.

  Mother’s in the Baker’s Cage, she thought, over and over again, to the same pounding rhythm as her footsteps on flagstones and her heartbeat in her ears. Mother’s in the Baker’s Cage. Mother’s in the Baker’s Cage.

  If the bridge fell, then it would tumble over and fall on the docks, and on the cage, and on Mother in the cage.

  They passed through the gatehouse and came to the Fiddleway Bridge. The crowd around them thinned as more and more people fled into Northside. The sound of bridge music grew louder. Every musician had remained.

  The bridge needs music in the mortar, said Shade. It needs a song to tell these great big stones how to shift their weight. But the music isn’t working, not well enough.

  They found Luce Strumgut playing furiously on her lute. Bombasta sang just across from the sail
or in a language that Kaile couldn’t recognize. It was all the same song, the same one that the flute insisted on playing—but the singer’s voice and the sailor’s lute remained separate and refused to coalesce, even as they danced around the very same notes.

  Great big stones shifted under Kaile’s feet with a lurch and a scrape.

  Bombasta’s song faltered. Luce stopped playing to catch her balance. Then she spotted Kaile. Her eyes grew wide and startled.

  “Take your grandfather’s place,” the sailor ordered, and began to play again. “No one else is there.”

  “She can’t!” Bombasta protested from across the street. “She failed her audition!”

  “The formalities don’t much matter at this moment,” Luce argued. Her fingertips strummed across strings. “You just keep singing.”

  Bombasta disagreed. “This is not a formality. That little girl can’t hear the bridge, or her own shadow, well enough to play here. We’re having enough trouble orchestrating as it is.”

  “Why are you having so much trouble?” Kaile demanded.

  “We don’t know,” said Luce. “We have no idea. Now ignore the singer, and take your grandfather’s place.”

  Bombasta made wide and frustrated gestures with both hands. “You aren’t the conductor here! Nibbledy will pitch an absolute fit!”

  “I’ve survived the Master’s fits before,” Luce calmly said. “And if we can’t all play together soon, then none of us will survive the next hour. Stop talking and sing.” Her fingertips picked out a quick flourish as she looked down at Kaile. “Girl, either get away from here and climb to the highest ground you can find, or else take old Korinth’s place and play.”

  Kaile nodded. Then she ran. Shade ran with her.

  “Heed your shadow!” Luce called after her.

  * * *

  Kaile found the empty circle of brick beneath a lamppost. Grandfather had come here every day to play his bandore. Mother had sent Kaile to this spot with a warm pastry on cold days, because Grandfather would play without noticing his own hunger, or the cold. Sometimes Kaile had stood here for a long time beside him, listening, forgetting she had come for any other reason but to listen.