Empire of Bones

by N. D. Wilson

  Phoenix raised the silver knob on his broken bamboo cane to his thin Oliver lips. He knew this breed of last-minute anxiousness was courtesy of youth, but he still felt it. He wanted this more deeply than he had once been able to want anything. And with wanting came fear.

  He flipped open the silver knob and studied the black tooth, the sharp black triangle that swallowed light. He pressed the tooth itself to his lips and felt calming cold electricity flow through him. His plan would work. His intellect knew it. The trouble was with his young nerves.

  Oliver walked toward the cockpit, even as he felt the plane banking into descent beneath him.

  He could see Ashtown smoking ahead. He could feel a young man’s adrenaline pumping through him.

  “Father!” The two largest of his sons stood behind him, ready to help him jump. He walked back toward the cargo doors and positioned himself between them. Oliver smiled and bounced in place. Anxiety was becoming excitement.

  “Aim for the fountain, Father!” one of the big men said. Once, he had been a Marine. “We don’t want you initiating too close to hostile structures.”

  Phoenix smiled. He had molded a terrific crop of sons, the first seeds of his new world. Hal, the coward, excepted. But Hal was still in Plumm, watching over the collection of women chosen as wives for those sons who would survive this day.

  A red light began to flash beside the cargo door. Let the countdown begin.

  Cyrus and Antigone had descended back into water. The Brothers were in a chamber beneath rising water, but there had been no springs anywhere, and no fountains. The water was black and still, and the walls were wet. The chain of chambers behind the sealed door hadn’t been easy to navigate. Ten stone markers in and Cyrus and Antigone had been forced into a hard right turn, and a room much larger than any they had seen belowground. It was almost the size of the dining hall, but with slightly lower ceilings and some kind of dais at the far end.

  The water was thigh-deep. Antigone sighed, but Cyrus was staring straight ahead.

  “Tigs,” he said. “Look.” He slid Patricia’s tail out of her mouth and stood beside his sister in silence.

  “Cy …”

  “Let your eyes adjust.”

  There was a vertical seam on the far wall and it was glowing. That was how Cyrus had seen the dais at all. And that was how he could see the two huge shapes on either side.

  Cyrus began to water-jog forward. He tripped, dove, stood again, and kept running, the heavy stone ball in his pocket banging against his leg with every step. Antigone dove more often, managing to stay just half a step behind him.

  As Cyrus drew nearer, he slowed, sliding his finger back into Patricia’s mouth and holding up her light.

  Steps rose to a circular door with the glowing vertical seam. But the top of the steps was buried beneath a layer of bones carved from stone—stone bones, from monstrous beasts and monstrous men, strewn around the feet of the tall statues.

  The Brothers and their clothes and all their weapons were shaped from the same stone. They wore the robes of monks with hoods up, hiding hard features in shadow. But solid stone or not, both heads seemed to have turned, to be looking down at Cyrus and Antigone.

  “What do you think is behind the door?” Antigone asked. “And where’s the rising water?”

  “Right now, I don’t care,” Cyrus said. “I want these guys up top.”

  The Brother on the right gripped three spears in his left hand; a long sling dangled from his right. Instead of a stone, the sling held the skull of a king wearing a gold circlet crown. More skulls were pulled behind.

  “You must be Justice,” Cyrus said.

  “Why?” Antigone asked.

  Cyrus pointed at the Brother on the left. “Because he’s Wrath.”

  The huge stone monk held only a long carved jawbone—like a giant crocodile’s—in his right hand. The sleeve of his robe had been torn off at the right shoulder, and his stone arm was knotted in permanent tension.

  Cyrus inflated his cheeks. These guys alive would be able to crush him like a cheese puff. They each had to weigh as much as a garbage truck.

  But he had been marked. He could wake them. When they looked at him, they wouldn’t see all the things he wished he had never done; they wouldn’t see the cracks in his soul. They might not see a friend, but they wouldn’t see an enemy, either.

  He hoped.

  Cyrus climbed up the steps and stood at the foot of Wrath. The statue was four feet taller than he was. The mouth was closed and the stone jaw tense, but there was a hole at the base of the man’s throat right between his collarbones. It was about the size of a baseball.

  Antigone stood beside Cyrus, handed him a stone ball, and cupped her hands to give him a boost. He used it to hop up and grab on to the stone giant’s shoulders. They were warm, and the stone depressed beneath his fingers. He grimaced and shifted his grip, suddenly feeling very much like he was climbing all over something alive.

  What was it Quick had said? “Breathe your law into them.” What law? Thou shalt not kill? No stealing? Smoke the villains? “Live for those you love.” That was just about the last thing Quick had said. Cyrus thought about why he wanted this beast of a man-shaped stone to wake, about why he was willing to die. Because of Diana. And Rupert and Jeb and Dennis and Jax and Nolan and the Captain and Arachne and even Niffy. He was angry because he loved.

  “Um … Cy?” Antigone was beginning to shake.

  Cyrus leaned forward until his lips were inside the hole at the statue’s throat, and then he gave the statue a law for his heart.

  “Live for those I love,” he whispered.

  Then he smacked the stone ball into Wrath’s throat hole and watched as it melted and molded into the rest, until the giant monk had a completely human-looking neck. The statue’s eyes lit up green with burning orange centers.

  Cyrus jumped down and the eyes followed him. Antigone was backing away.

  “Hurry!” Cyrus said, and he dragged his sister to the feet of Justice. She handed him the next ball and cupped her hands to boost him.

  Cyrus scrambled up and spoke his law without hesitation. The second ball melded into the throat, and he jumped back down.

  Two pairs of fiery autumnal eyes stared down at the siblings. Two massive statues shifted their weight, and the stairs beneath shivered with the force of it.

  Wrath’s fist clenched his jawbone, and living stone knuckles popped like tree trunks snapping. Justice rattled his three spears and then stretched his arms out from his sides. His chest expanded with a sound like wind in a canyon. The sling and crowned skull rocked beneath his arm.

  Antigone slid her arm into Cyrus’s and inched behind him.

  Cyrus was braced to die, waiting for a blow to fall.

  “Cy,” Antigone whispered. “I think they’re waiting for you.”

  Cyrus pointed straight up at the ceiling. “Go!” he said. “Defend what I—what you—love.”

  The Brothers looked at each other. Then Justice tore his feet free of the stone and leapt down off the stairs. The splash enveloped Cyrus and Antigone when he landed. The room shook. Loose stones rained down from the ceiling.

  Justice reached for Antigone.

  “No!” Cyrus yelled.

  Wrath splashed into the water behind Cyrus. A stone hand closed around his thigh and he was lifted up. Dangling upside down, he saw Antigone hanging from Justice’s hand beside him.

  So this was it, then. The end. Killed by statues.

  At the same instant, the Brothers dropped the siblings in the water. Then they turned, leapt up onto the stairs, and with two blows, smashed open the round door with the glowing seam.

  Justice and then Wrath ducked through into light.

  Two rows of lanterns hung from chains attached to the high ceiling. They were white balls of flame, each one suspended over a carved stone sarcophagus. A shallow river ran between the rows, and the Brothers strode through it.

  Cyrus and Antigone sprinted behind, barely
able to keep up. This was a tomb for mortals, not transmortals. One of the sarcophagi had been split open by a ceiling collapse, and normal grimy bones had spilled out. As the two rows ended, the Brothers reached a larger sarcophagus, carved like a boat. Water poured down over it in a delicate stream.

  “Saint Brendan?” Cyrus said.

  “You’re just getting that?” Antigone said. “Yeah. I’d say so.”

  The stream dropped down the center of a stone-lined cylindrical shaft. A spiral stair coiled up around the sides toward a distant stone ceiling, but the Brothers were too big for the stairs. Instead, they began to climb the outside of the spiral like a ladder.

  “Hey!” Cyrus shouted. “A little help? You’re going to destroy those.”

  Justice leaned back and extended his bundle of spears toward Cyrus and Antigone, blades down.

  “You asked,” Antigone said. “May as well.”

  They each hooked their arms over the spears and Justice lifted Antigone up onto Wrath’s overly large shoulders, and set Cyrus on his own.

  Radu Bey dodged Leon’s snapping head and stepped out into the pouring rain, the sword of his ancestors at his side, the blood of the Smith running off its edge in the water.

  A dense ring of parachutes was settling on every side of Ashtown, like mushrooms from the sky.

  It couldn’t be Phoenix. He wasn’t that foolish. And the O of B would never throw away this many men. The human military? That could be. He smiled at the thought. But he hadn’t expected to swallow up the simple soldiers in fatigues for a few months yet.

  Anann stepped out beside him.

  “How long here?” she asked. “The resurrections are well begun. My sister thanks you, but she has slept long and desires sacrifice.”

  Radu Bey pointed his sword at the sky. “And this?”

  At least twenty parachutes were touching down all around the courtyard.

  Radu Bey filled his nostrils with the promise of battle and strode down the stairs in the rain, rattling chains as he went. He moved toward the nearest chute.

  The man slipped out of his harness and rolled into a fighting stance, as lithe as a cat. As Radu Bey approached, he could see the gills on the man’s neck, the power in his limbs, the strange symmetry of his features, and the wildness of his eyes. Here was mortal art worth making. He could enjoy the victory in felling such a creature.

  Radu Bey raised his sword as the man raised a gun dangling a belt of darts.

  Needles punched into Radu Bey’s chest as the dart gun spat its tooth-brewed poison.

  Radu Bey lashed the man’s legs with a chain, and lightning cracked. When the mortal staggered, Radu’s blade flashed and sent the man’s head rolling. Then Radu Bey dropped to his knees.

  “Poison!” he bellowed back to his men. And then he fell forward, giving himself to the dragon gin within.

  Azazel, scales the color of dried blood, spun, flinging the body of the headless man across the courtyard with his spiked and smoking tail.

  He stretched out his mind and found another stretching back.

  Phoenix!

  He had come in a boy’s flesh, and to the dragon’s ancient senses he felt as cold and unyielding as the Reaper’s Blade he carried. And so very … young.

  Diana let her reloaded shotgun dangle at her side. She stood at a window three stories up, looking down at the courtyard. Behind her, Jeb and her father and Rupert were shouting. The four of them were trapped in a room with only one door. Rupert had rallied them and they had tried to reach the airstrip, or even the water, but the transmortals were everywhere.

  They had been attacked and then chased and then forced back and back into this room with no retreat.

  Rupert and her father and her brother were struggling to hold the door, even as it splintered under the assault.

  Horace was dead. The Captain was dead. Gunner was dead. When Diana had fallen, he had stood over her with one gun blazing, while the other hand wielded a long black knife.

  The tall Texan had been picked up by a fiery woman and smashed against a wall while Robert Boone had managed to drag his daughter away.

  It was hard to imagine Dennis and Jax and Niffy being alive in the swarm of unkillable hate that now prowled the halls of Ashtown. As the Boones and Rupert had fled, she had heard the rejoicing. The Burials were being smashed open.

  Were the Smiths lying dead in some dark hall, or had they escaped? Were they hiding?

  In the courtyard below, there was a dragon.

  Behind her, Rupert’s shouts were growing louder and more desperate, his threats more impossible. She filled herself with a long calming breath. It was time to die. She began to turn from the window.

  And then, in the courtyard below, the central fountain exploded. Water swamped into the grass. The obelisk toppled. Statues lost limbs as they fell.

  Two huge monks who looked like they were made of clay climbed up out of the hole. For a moment, they stood, assessing the field like two living monuments. And then they raised weapons. One picked up a man and seemed to weigh him. Then he dropped him into a sling and flung him completely out of the courtyard and into the trees. The other monk grabbed the dragon by the spiny tail and spun it around, ignoring the fiery blast that billowed around him. He leaned forward, studying the dragon’s snarling face, and then he struck at it with a massive jawbone.

  The monks were brutal and methodical, and as calm and unafraid as two men choosing fruit. Men were crushed. Transmortals were flung. The dragon took blow after blow and retreated, its claws and teeth and fire useless against the unflinching stone giants.

  Beside the monks, ducking blows intended for others, dodging massive feet, Diana saw the Smiths.

  Cyrus slipped in the mud and fell on his back, almost stabbing himself with the fat-bladed black knife. Steel was shattering, men were shouting, transmortals were cursing, a dragon was roaring, and the Brothers were loudest of all. Every blow shattered bone. Every step was an earthquake, pounding the grass into a swamp. The monks of living stone moved with the sudden force of explosions, and every motion of their joints groaned like giant sighing timber. The Reborn fled before them. The transmortals stood but were toppled like saplings facing an avalanche of boulders.

  Rolling over, Cyrus looked for Antigone. She was crawling toward him through the mud. But behind her was Oliver Laughlin, looking startled and afraid between two large guards, standing with his back near the wall of the courtyard.

  Cyrus blinked the rain away. Phoenix was here. Which explained the gilled men. But why? And Oliver looked both horrified and amazed by the Brothers.

  Wrath picked up a transmortal and threw him down the hole beneath the fountain. Justice crushed two men with his cluster of spears and flung them toward the wall. The dragon embalmed Wrath in fire, but he merely picked up a statue from the fountain and hurled it at the dragon’s head. Azazel leapt away, and the statue disappeared in an explosion of mud. The dragon sprang forward again, hacked wing stubs flailing, and lashed its tail around Wrath’s head, throwing him to the ground. The earth shook. Swords and spears bit into the Brother’s soft stone, but there they stayed, ripped from attackers’ hands as the statue twisted and stood. Darts shattered on him and ricocheted away.

  Yes, Cyrus could see that Phoenix was impressed. His Oliver face had the look of a boy admiring a new toy. And he had a wall at his back. He felt safe.

  Cyrus scrambled to his feet and ran as hard as he could to get out of Oliver’s peripheral vision.

  He slid over a dead gilled man with his chest caved in by a crowned stone skull. Then he sprinted toward the courtyard wall, aiming for a spot less than forty yards from Oliver.

  Twenty transmortals were drawing Justice away from Wrath, separating the Brothers. The dragon circled Wrath alone.

  Breathing hard, Cyrus hit the courtyard wall and pressed his back against it. Oliver was clutching his broken cane, rubbing the silver knob at the top. If one of his two guards turned … but they didn’t. Apparently, they had never
seen a dragon fight a man of stone, either.

  Glass shattered. Three stories up on the main building, Cyrus saw four bodies falling together. He saw Rupert’s dark skin. He saw Diana’s red hair. And his heart stopped.

  They hit the ground hard, but they bounced and rolled like Cyrus had been taught. Then they were still. The bodies on the grass were well away from the Brothers. A few eager shapes began to move toward them.

  Cyrus had no time for anything but rash. He might never get this close to the tooth again. Keeping his shoulder as tight to the wall as he could, he sprinted toward Phoenix from the side. He saw Oliver raise his silver knob to his lips.

  Four seconds. Three. The guards still hadn’t looked. One. Cyrus slipped in behind the first large guard, closed his hand on Phoenix’s bamboo rod, and smashed his shoulder into the side of the boy’s head.

  He felt a shot of cold vibration thrill up his arm as he rolled free. And then a large gilled man stepped over him and emptied a gun into Cyrus’s stomach.

  The other man was firing now, too. Darts and bullets both. Heat punched through Cyrus’s ribs. Darts dangled from him.

  Cyrus couldn’t breathe. But right now, holding the tooth, Cyrus also couldn’t die. He pushed away the pain and rose, clutching the tooth to his chest and slashing at the guards with his black knife. He split one man’s knee and kicked his gun away when he fell. The other was reloading. Cyrus threw his knife and watched him crumple.

  Cyrus turned to face Oliver.

  Cyrus’s arm straightened, shaking, slowly extending the tooth to give it back.

  “No,” Cyrus said.

  “Yes,” said Oliver.

  Cyrus turned and ran with Oliver behind him. He ran toward the Brothers, but as he did, he saw Rupert being dragged by his arms back toward Leon’s steps.

  A transmortal with a forked spear was prodding Diana. Cyrus forgot everything else. He forgot Oliver. He forgot the pain in his chest. He ran toward the ones he loved, and he heard swamping thunderous footsteps as two stone mountains ran with him.

  “Crescens!” Cyrus shouted. It was the name the Captain had used.