24 Bones

by Stewart, Michael F.

  Faris cried out, and Sam ripped the chain from his hand and wrapped it about Sobek’s jaw. But it was still attached to Faris’s neck.

  The collar constricted around his windpipe and halted his lungs mid-breath. Unable to open its mouth, Sobek hauled Faris from his crevice. He swung in the air and landed painfully on his hip.

  “What are you doing?” Sam demanded.

  Faris couldn’t reply; one hand held back thick scales and a ridge of sharp points.The other hand scrabbled at his neck, but he couldn’t release the chain. Sobek bellowed and lunged forward, hauling Faris. Talons tore into Faris’s thigh. Pain was a cold dark thing that squirmed in his stomach. A firework of lights flared in Faris’s vision. The talons incised deeply, caught, and then tore with each step.

  Sam reached down, grabbed his waist and lifted him. She pulled Faris’s legs out from the path of claws. She connected with him, tethering her mind to his and pumping through a cord of Void.

  A knot stuck in Sam’s throat. The river loomed, Sobek headed for safety. With his crocodilian maw wired and thwarted for the first time in his life, the waters and the labyrinth beyond beckoned.

  As the creature crawled, Faris’s injury left a bloody trail. The flesh of his thigh was shredded, the exposed bone luminous in the dark. One of Sam’s arms held Faris’s waist, trying to take pressure from the chain at his throat. Her other hand clutched the brow ring of the crocodile where the chain was knotted. Tendons and veins striated her arms and neck with the effort. The chain jangled with each step.

  Faris pondered the strange connection and wondered why a member of the Shemsu Seth would use the Fullness? Sheathed in such Void, he was surprised she could connect at all. His head jerked and drool strung from his lips.

  “Can you get the chain off your neck?” Sam shouted at Faris. She sensed his mind drifting out of consciousness. “Mother!” Sam shouted. Her call rose above the clamor of rushing water. “Jump on! Grab Sobek’s brow ring!” Hands fought for a grip on the brow ring. Sobek dove. Her mother yelled something, but water interrupted her cry. They plunged into an icy torrent, driven deep below the surface.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  David opened his eyes. The room was his apartment in Toronto. He lay on his couch, but couldn’t rise. He had heard Zahara anoint him as the chosen one. He had heard Pharaoh’s confirmation and lapped at the lauds to the beast, to him.

  “A beast shall rise. Power will be given unto him over all kindred. A beast shall rise,” a voice had hissed, for hours, days, for all time.

  On his couch, the words were silenced. Somewhere water dripped. At the edge of his vision a woman dressed in thin linen pants and tunic knelt. He tried to turn his head toward her, but couldn’t move. Within him, vile, black power thrummed, but he had no way to harness or to block it.

  At first, its coursing soothed his wounds. Then, scrubbing too long, his muscles began to ache. The energy rubbed his chest raw. It scratched his innards and mind. Pain had been a circling vulture, which now dove. Claws ripped. David roared in agony as its hooked beak nudged out a worm of meat.

  “David,” a voice entered his head without form.

  His eyes darted left and right.

  “David, I am before you.”

  David sagged, his eyes glazed. Suddenly, the pain receded. The face of Pharaoh materialized so close that David saw the deltas of his eye wrinkles and the papery skin of his cheeks. Black-headed maggots poked from the tiny apertures in Pharaoh’s nose, and his breath tasted of disease, rot, and ruin. The memory of the dagger piercing David’s chest echoed. He left Toronto’s shelter. His new home was darkness.

  “Good.” Pharaoh smiled with twisted, yellow teeth. “The first lesson. Give yourself to the Void and you may draw from it.”

  “Where am I?” David’s mouth moved stiffly. He lost his grip on whatever sheltered him from the agony, and it seared through his chest. He screamed, and his jaw cracked.

  “David, are you in pain?” Pharaoh asked, his lip curling. David nodded, but did not feel his head follow. “I can teach you to subvert your senses.”

  David whimpered. Pain looped around his neck and choked.

  Pharaoh placed his palm upon David’s forehead. Icy fingertips burned at his temple and sank into his skull. David pushed with all his might and harvested whatever dragged at his limbs, filling himself with it, rebelling against the touch. Pharaoh pulled back sharply. He grinned. The pain had stopped, but it roared back. The momentary lapse only added cruel contrast.

  “Yes,” Pharaoh said with his hand poised above David’s face, nails like tiny daggers prepared to strike. His thick fingernails had eroded backward and stretched their nail beds to the first knuckle. “Again.” Pharaoh’s fingers dipped into David’s scalp.

  David swiped the hand away and reached into the black power that surrounded him. The ache from his chest wound disappeared, and as David correlated his actions with the disappearance of the hurt, he thought he could do it without the impetus of a strike.

  Pharaoh’s nail pierced David’s eye socket.

  Panic overtook David, and he lost control, trying only to twist away. The finger stroked and flicked his brain. His head throbbed cruelly. Pharaoh plucked out his finger. With both hands, he pulled David’s stricken face close.

  “Remember, I can always kill you, David.”

  David nodded.

  “What’s more, I know your secret.” Pharaoh plunged his fingertips between David’s ribs and laughed as he squeezed the mislaid heart. Pharaoh levitated over him, gnarled fingers glistening with wet. David longed to look down at his injuries.

  David pulled a blanket of Void over the pain.

  “Only I know, David, I will not tell any how you survived and are now martyred. To know the beast was false, it would be such a disappointment.” Pharaoh’s tone was businesslike, but his teeth remained bared. He raised his hand again and reached toward David. David attempted to nod vigorously, anything to halt the fingers, but Pharaoh tore the comfort of the Void from him. His nerve endings shrieked. His spine arched and he screamed.

  “We understand each other, David.”

  The opiate of the Void swept through David’s veins, and he collapsed back.

  Cold seeped through the stone bed where he lay. He turned his head. Fingers touched his forehead and he tried to block them, but his hand rose limply and fell back. A moan escaped his lips.

  “Hush,” a feminine voice cooed. His eyelids were leaden, but he concentrated until a fuzzy blue light slid between their cracks. A shadow swept above him like a dark angel. Pharaoh had gone, had never been.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Get the chain off,” Sam called again, but the words were garbled under the water. She glimpsed the thick padlock at Faris’s neck. The cold charged her with energy.

  In the river, even Sam floated blind. Sobek, a black shadow beneath her, tried to twist, but so long as Sam held the ring, his talons couldn’t reach her. Tara bumped against her side, reassuring Sam of her presence in the inky black.

  Sam’s head grazed rock. She bent down over Sobek’s jaw. Rough stone scoured her back and peeled off her robe with a layer of skin. The water rushed cool over the scrape. The crocodile pressed against the ceiling of the underground river in an effort to dislodge its riders.

  Sam swung toward Faris so that only the knuckles that clutched Sobek’s brow and her leg grated against the rough roof. Her lungs begged for air, but water clogged the tunnel. The cold, first jolting her alert, now dredged her strength.

  With her fingers clasping Sobek and Faris, Sam had no hands to help free Faris of the chain. She reached out with Void.

  Faris was again unconscious.

  Strength drained from Sam’s limbs as the crocodile swam deeper and spun.

  Her mother remained calm even as she struggled
to avoid the worst of the rock walls. Sam’s mind drilled into a link of chain on Faris’s collar, but when she pulled away, she could sense only a shallow etching of its surface. She groaned as Sobek began to knock her into a sidewall, but Faris’s body absorbed the brunt of the blows.

  “I’m surprised she can connect to the Fullness, sheathed in Void,” Sam remembered Faris thinking before falling unconscious. And she wondered what he’d meant.

  First she drove her groundwire into the chain and then cloaked it in Void. The groundwire. Could it be the Fullness? Grounding before she drew—had Tariq, so many years ago, taught her to disguise her connection to the Fullness with Void? It would be the clearest proof of her mother’s duplicity.

  Anger welled in Sam. Her mother had let her kill him. Rage frustrated Sam’s attempts to shuck her cord of the iridescent Void. Tears were lost in the water’s rush. Faris rubbed against the wall. She swallowed and calmed.

  Void cracked and flaked from the cord. Beneath it, the wire flashed of twined gold, electrum, and platinum. Her lungs humped against her throat. Sam drew from the cord of Fullness. Unshackled of its conflict with the Void, it pumped hot and thick.

  Water boiled around the chain as she carved into its links. If he survived, the heat would scar Faris. The chain snapped. She thrust away from Sobek’s ridged hide and dragged at her mother so that she released her hold. Sam clutched Faris and her mother gripped her torn tunic as she kicked in the direction she hoped was up. The river flushed them along. Water fought into her mouth. Her arm slipped from Faris’s waist. The current tore him away. She caught a fistful of his robe and hauled at him in a final effort.

  When they broke the river’s surface, Sam and Tara drew gasping breaths. Sam could see again. They sped along rapids. Low stalactites pierced the river, the currents eddying around them. They swept past the first and second columns of stone. When the third slim spear approached, Sam clutched it and hugged its trunk.

  “Mother, get to the rock,” Sam yelled into the torrent, trying to aid her mother who would still be blind. “I’m holding onto it.”

  Tara climbed over Sam’s back and plunged her underwater once more. Then the weight was gone. Over the crash of water came her mother’s labored wheezing. Faris’s face was out of the water, but tinged gray in the non-light. Sam pressed her lips against his, pinched his nostrils closed, and blew into his lungs. The ungainly position was made more difficult by the current.

  “Sam,” Tara screamed. “Something hit my leg. The crocodile, where’s the crocodile?” Her speech chattered with cold. “Oh my god, Sam.”

  Sam scanned the swirling surface and searched for Sobek’s telltale eyes. Sam’s shoulder ached. Her back burned. She ignored the pain and drew an unguent of Fullness across her hurts. Fatigue dragged her feet toward the bottom. The smooth stalactite, worn by the flow of water, offered only a marginal grip. She breathed into Faris again and felt for a pulse. Present, but faint. His thoughts still churned.

  Sobek slammed into her legs.

  Tara cried out in fear. Their mooring broke. They spun; Sam sank under Faris’s burden and struggled to keep him aloft. Faris halted their rush, limp body wrapping around a stalactite less than ten yards from where the water plunged through a maw into black space. Faris was wedged by the racing water. Sam shifted him out from the brunt of the flow. Sobek’s jaw opened above the surface and whipped a length of chain that lashed water and rock. Sam glanced at their exit.

  A standing wave flowed overtop Faris’s half-buried face. Even with a weak mind-link, her mother’s terror was palpable. Sobek motored toward them, jaws agape, teeth daggers. “Let go now!” Sam hollered aloud and in their minds.

  Sam released Faris as they shot over the waterfall’s rim. She tumbled free of water, cartwheeling through the air. When she hit the surface, it cracked like a gunshot. She sank a dozen feet. Then a weight crashed upon her. She went limp. But no jaws clamped about her head, and no thrashing feet tore her stomach as she hung suspended. A pale hand swept by her face. Her mother floated, her skin ghostly; bubbles trailed from her mouth like mercury. Sam surged upward and caught her mother’s translucent slip that rode high over her hips. They charged the surface.

  “Mother, can you swim?” she asked after she had coughed her lungs clear of water. Tara didn’t answer. Sam reached the pool’s shore. It sloped, softened by millennia of erosion. Once her mother lay half upon the shore, Sam searched for Faris. She reached out to his mind, but her thoughts returned cold and empty. Further she plowed, opening the spigot of her connection and letting it run. Beneath the tumble of eighty-foot falls, rolling in the pounding water, Faris’s dim spark revolved.

  At the waterfall’s height, Sobek roared. Its snout jutted over the rim’s edge. The bulk parted the water. The second bellow reverberated in the chamber. It backed into the tunnel. Sam prepared to dive into the water to retrieve Faris. Then the snout reappeared and the crocodile’s white underbelly. Forelimbs strained over the waterfall’s side.

  Sam glanced toward the edges of the cavern, but they were dark. One of the crocodile’s legs stretched into open space. Her throat constricted—Sobek was prepared to dive after them. Sam embraced the Fullness, and she sensed its sickness, could smell its putrefaction. She heaved at what powers remained and funneled it into her extended arms, her palms upright.

  Sobek leaped; clawed limbs ran in the air. Its jaw opened in bellow. Sam clenched her eyes. The great weight of Sobek toppled into her palms. She opened her eyes and bit back a laugh. Sobek writhed in mid-air. Sam’s forearms and biceps knotted. She lifted her palms. Sobek ascended. When the lizard grew level to the tunnel, she drew a deep breath and flung it. Its head cracked against the tunnel’s side. And the dragon flew tail first into the river passage.

  Suddenly, it was like sucking water from sand, the Fullness spent. Sam slumped to the ground. She lay for a time and panted, barely thinking, not daring to wonder at what had just happened. But Faris still spun in the waterfall’s embrace. Sam glanced at her mother. Her chest rose and fell, her nightgown plastered against her flesh. Satisfied that her mother lived, Sam dove into the waters and fought the current that grew from a languid flow to a frothy surge at the base of the fall.

  Fists of water pummeled her head and drove her downward into Faris’s arms. Immediately behind the veil of water, it was calm. Sam clutched his torso and clasped him to her chest as she reached to the Fullness. She dug deeper and found a shallow well of power that flowed into them both. Touching his psyche, so close to death, drove icy fingers into her guts. She pulled back.

  With the current behind her, she kicked to where her mother lay prostrate but with her eyes open, staring blankly into the lightless cavern. A black pool fringed in gray foam lapped against toppled boulders. Water dripped from intricate rock formations, stalactites, cave coral, and nodules that glistened like pearls. Great drapes of limestone stained orange by iron hung behind an open expanse of flow pools and rimstone. Thousands of thin hollow straws strung like spider thread above. No Sobek; the bested crocodile kept to his territory. No Shemsu Seth. The lazy twist of the river flowed from the cavern, and the eight-story cataract tumbled.

  “Sam?” Tara asked tremulously. Sam grunted her presence. “Is he dead?”

  “Dying.” Sam lay Faris beside her mother.

  “Anything you can do?”

  “Tourniquet the leg, help him reach the Void to soothe the pain …”

  “Help him die well, Sam, please.”

  Sam reached into her weary mind and drew out the thin cord that accessed the Fullness. A soft, meager current trickled from the well, and touching Faris’s forehead, she sent it to him.

  You will not let him die.

  “What!” Sam’s cry echoed. Her connection snapped.

  “What?” her mother started.

  Do not let him die. The demand blistered in Sam�
�s mind.

  “Mother, someone else is here.”

  Not here, I am a companion, Askari. Faris is important to me and to your cause. Save him. His voice was harsh, but tinny, distorted by distance. Sam sensed the first contact had come at a cost.

  My cause? Sam flung back.

  You access the Fullness, the Fullness that is failing. It is my cause, Faris’s cause, and yours.

  Sam listened. If the Fullness failed, she would no longer have access to it, and although she had only just realized her ability to do so, somehow to lose it so soon afterward was worse than never to touch it at all.

  What can I do?

  You must connect to his mind and open yourself to him. You must allow him to take what he needs, to feed.

  I am weak, and I cannot maintain the contact and help us escape.

  I see you for what you are, Samiya Amat Yasu. You can and will do this for me. Askari’s thread was fading, and Sam reached out and drew him back.

  Wait, how do I do this?

  He has great need, Sam. He will show you. Sorry, I can … Askari was gone.

  Sam sighed.

  “Who was it, Sam?” Tara asked.

  “Askari, a companion. He thinks I can save Faris.”

  Tara’s face brightened.

  Sam tore a long strip from her robe and twisted it. Faris was gray from loss of blood. The leg hung together by meat and tendon alone. She wound the tourniquet high up his thigh and then pulled to secure it. Faris didn’t move. Blood welled from the jagged lips of his wounds.

  She reached for the Fullness’s tender grip. The Void pressed about her. In her mind, she scooped a handful of the Fullness and rolled it between her palms and then fingertips, fashioning a needle. It took several attempts, but in a few minutes, she held a pin of hardened Fullness, threaded by a string of light.