Books & Bone

by Victoria Corva

  ‘Andomerys!’ Ree’s mother rapped on the door. ‘My daughter requires your assistance. Perhaps for once, you will not shirk your sacred calling!’

  Ree nudged her mother. ‘Maybe don’t antagonise her, since we’re asking her for help?’

  ‘The Goddess asks us to live as honestly in life as we will in death.’ Ree’s mother sniffed.

  Andomerys yanked the door open. Her rosy cheeks glowed with health, her skin a warm brown. Her thickly curled hair made a dark halo about her head. One arm ended at the elbow. She wore robes of ocean blue, and though Ree had known her since she was a small child, it never stopped being shocking how vital and bright she appeared. Her scowl, however, was plenty dark. ‘Arthura. Ree.’ She looked down. ‘A body.’ She nodded, as if confirming something to herself, and slammed the door in their faces.

  Ree’s mother immediately banged on the door again. ‘You dare slam a door in the face of Morrin’s chosen?’

  A muffled bark of laughter was her only answer.

  ‘Mother —’

  ‘Morrin as my witness, you will show me respect —’

  ‘Mother!’ Ree tugged sharply at her mother’s sleeve.

  The priestess stopped and blinked at her, the red rage fading from her eyes. Healers rarely looked as necromantic as Ree’s mother — but then, few were also priestesses of undeath.

  ‘I can handle this,’ said Ree. ‘Go home.’

  Her mother’s gaze shifted from her, to Andomerys’ door, then back again. Her lips parted, as if to argue, but she only inclined her head and swept away.

  Leaving Ree on Andomerys’ doorstep with a dying man at her feet and no clue how to gain the healer’s help.

  Andomerys was the most powerful healer Ree had ever heard of, with reserves of magic so deep that she had passed into legend. But thirteen years ago, she’d fled the surface and made it clear that she was leaving healing behind. Townsfolk came to her with everything from cursed hearts to broken limbs, but she turned almost everyone away.

  Ree did not consider herself a persuasive person. But the stakes were high. She liked Andomerys; maybe Andomerys liked her too. She could only hope it would be enough.

  She leaned against the door. ‘Andomerys?’

  No answer.

  ‘It’s just me. I sent mother away.’ She paused a moment, then continued, ‘You’re probably at least a little curious as to how I came across an upworlder.’

  Footsteps. The door creaked open. ‘You finally went to the surface on your own?’

  Andomerys had encouraged her, over the years, to seek companionship in the upworld. ‘There’s a world of opportunity up there, for a smart girl with her wits about her.’ she’d said. ‘You wouldn’t have to be the bottom of the heap then.’

  ‘I won’t always be the bottom.’ Ree’s tone had been conspiratorial. ‘There are other kinds of power —’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Well, it’s not like you liked it up there either.’

  Andomerys’ eyes had grown distant. ‘I liked it plenty. Nobody chooses to hide away, Ree. Not even necromancers.’

  Now, Ree grimaced at the healer. ‘Of course I didn’t. But I did talk to him a little. He seems … different.’

  Andomerys’ expression didn’t flicker. ‘Different.’

  Ree shifted her weight. ‘... Nice.’ She paused. ‘He saved my life. Please, Andomerys.’

  ‘I won’t heal him.’

  ‘Will you at least look at him?’ She looked down at Smythe, muttering at her feet. The curse was slowly leeching the colour from his skin. He looked faded, like a painting left too long in the sun. It was an effect she’d found fascinating on her excursions to the surface with her father for supplies, but it was disconcerting on a human. ‘I don’t even know whether he could be saved.’

  ‘Ree …’ They locked gazes, blue eyes meeting brown. Andomerys made a sound like a cat guarding its dinner. ‘I’ll look, all right? Just look.’

  Hope bloomed in Ree, strong enough to choke. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t need your thanks.’ Andomerys looked away. ‘I doubt I’ll do anything to deserve it.’

  The seven founding necromancers set themselves up as a town council to settle disputes among the denizens and to intimidate unruly necromancers into obedience. As necromancers naturally form into cabals under more powerful practitioners, this shape of governance worked with little rebellion.

  As of the time of writing, only three of the seven founding council members have been executed for treason and mutiny.

  This success is much celebrated, and at solstices, the tortured souls of the offending council members are summoned to warn young denizens of the dangers of trying to grab too much power. It is a delightful tradition and a favourite of children.

  ~from A History of Tombtown by Emberlon the Disloyal

  CHAPTER THREE

  STRONG-WILLED INDEED

  Andomerys’ house was like the woman herself: full of bright draperies and busy carpets, an explosion of colour that Ree found eye-watering but wonderful. Cushions and blankets were cast about, each crafted from old but expensive fabric that was soft to the skin and gleamed in the candlelight. Clear relics from her life on the surface.

  Now, that same woman hustled Ree, begrudgingly, through her house.

  ‘Through the back, through the back — and try not to drop him!’ The healer used her hand and arms to help manoeuvre Smythe around her armchair.

  Ree had seen the back room a few times before that she could remember — once, when she had crushed her leg when the floor in one of the towers collapsed, and once when she’d accidentally awakened a slumbering knight and he’d cut her across the middle. Andomerys had broken her no-healing rule to save a child. It looked just as it had then — white stone walls and a meticulously clean steel table, with a cabinet of cruel-looking tools to one side. Ree wondered what it said about Andomerys that she had come here to give up healing, but had built a healer’s room and filled it with equipment.

  ‘Not a delicately built fellow, is he?’ said Andomerys.

  ‘Very important discoveries,’ Smythe mumbled. ‘You must take me serious-largh …’

  Ree narrowed her eyes at him. Somehow, he couldn’t stop talking even when unconscious. ‘Humble, too.’

  They hustled Smythe onto the healer’s table. His head lolled at the movement. Andomerys looked him over, hovering her hand and her short arm over the patient. Now, a golden light suffused her, just as it had Ree’s mother, but Andomerys’ light was brighter, warmer, transforming the sterile stone cube into a sunroom. Ree gritted her teeth against the force of it. The heat was slick and humid against her skin.

  ‘A powerful curse.’ Andomerys’ gaze flicked up to Ree, as if she knew Ree had had something to do with it. ‘If it had been completed, I doubt he’d have lasted this long.’

  ‘But?’

  The light around Andomerys pulsed, then faded. ‘He’s resisting. He must have a strong will indeed.’

  Smythe’s head whipped to the other side. ‘I demand to speak to your superior,’ he mumbled.

  Andomerys raised her eyebrows. ‘Or maybe just a strong ego.’

  Ree’s eyes widened and she looked at Smythe uncertainly. ‘Strong-willed’ seemed a poor description of the bumbling scholar. Perhaps he had hidden depths. She bit her lip. Very hidden.

  ‘So.’ Andomerys leaned against the healing table. ‘You tangled with the Lich.’

  Ree’s mouth dried. If the healer told Ree’s parents or the town council, it would mean more trouble for Ree than just an upworlder could bring. Bringing an upworlder home would make her look foolish. Angering the Lich would make her a liability — and necromancers tended to kill those pretty quickly. With effort, she nodded, her thoughts racing for an explanation.

  Andomerys cursed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Don’t look at me like I’m your executioner, young Ree. I won’t tell if I don’t have to, but I know the Lich’s work when I see it. You understand?’

  Re
e nodded. Andomerys would only tell if Ree had upset the balance — if encountering the Lich had somehow woken it up and drawn it back to the town.

  Do not disturb the dead, her parents always told her. It was her one true rule, a mantra never to be forgotten. It was why she kept a pouch of herbs on her belt, her mother’s prayers on her lips, and an amulet full of her father’s magic against her heart. All the denizens of Tombtown put together couldn’t hope to stand against the Lich if it woke up the entire crypt and brought judgement down upon them. This was their home, but it belonged first and last to the dead. She must never forget that.

  If she'd started learning the Craft at sixteen, as the other teenage denizens did, and as her father urged, she might not have to be so wary. But her sixteenth birthday had come and gone, and then her seventeenth, and now her father could barely look at her, and her mother thought her odd.

  But there were other kinds of power. Forgotten magicks so old that they’d passed into myth. She thought of her research journal, hidden away where nobody would ever find it, and drew some strength from it.

  But if she'd learned the Craft like her parents wanted, she might have been able to protect Smythe, at least a little ...

  Andomerys narrowed her eyes. ‘Take that hangdog look outside. I need a moment to study him properly — so I can send you in the right direction, if there’s help to be had. Not to heal him myself.’ She waved Ree away, crushing the spike of hope her words had created.

  So Ree sat on the crumbling step in front of Andomerys’ house and rested her chin in her hands. Her mind was on Smythe, crouching over shattered ceramics, lying cold and grey on Andomerys’ table. She thought about his shock on meeting her, about him following her into the Lich’s path, about Andomerys’ words, ‘He must have a strong will indeed.’

  How strong-willed did you have to be to resist a curse from something more powerful than all the denizens put together?

  Down below, a group of young acolytes about her age had dragged in a wolf carcass and were setting up a ritual to raise it. Across from them, Mazerin the Bold, a weedy little necromancer, had set up his weekly Bone Market stall and was trying to coax the acolytes into buying some of his fresh scry-bones. It all looked so normal, such a sleepy, small-town scene, that it might have sent Ree off into the deepest, unexplored levels of the crypt just to bring some excitement into her life. But right now, Ree didn’t feel normal. Bees buzzed in her head and anxiety pecked at her belly like angry birds.

  She’d never had much cause to worry about other people. Larry was already dead, her parents were as dangerous as anything else in the crypts, and Emberlon was as careful as she was. In truth, she’d always lived in a world where people were worried for her.

  In Smythe’s case, she couldn’t decide whether she was worried for him, or worried what he might cause. But for better or worse, she’d brought an upworlder into the town. Now, all she could do was wait.

  She fished in her pack for something to occupy her twitchy hands. First, a piece of rat jerky, salty and hard between her teeth. Then her research journal, which she dared not get out in plain sight, full of animal sketches and half-drawn spell diagrams. Instead, she pulled out book she’d been collecting for Uzma Plaguebringer, a denizen with a special interest in animal minions. She leafed through it, liking the feel of the heavy parchment between her fingers. Most of it was written in old Antherian, a language dead to any but necromancers, who used it in their Craft. Ree was fluent enough, but all the talk of necromancy made her eyes roll back in her head. She returned it to her pack just as the door behind her creaked open.

  She leapt to her feet. ‘Andomerys!’

  The healer frowned. She looked more worn than Ree had ever seen her, though her skin almost glowed, as if she were still casting now. Healing magic kept its practitioners young; Ree wondered again how old Andomerys really was. ‘It doesn’t look good.’

  Ree swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

  ‘I can stop the curse spreading, and stop it killing his body, but it’s wrapped around his soul as well, and I know very little about that. The soul is traditionally the concern of necromancers, not healers.’ Her eyes were hard, as if steeling herself against her own words. ‘He’s not conscious, and not likely to become it. If I remove my magic from him, he’ll die.’

  Ree nodded, but the situation called for words. She cleared her throat and said quietly, ‘He saved my life.’ She’d meant to say that she understood, but the words had come pushing out. It was at the front of her mind — that he’d come looking for her, that if he hadn’t, she would have been cursed and probably dead.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Andomerys. ‘There were healers who could heal souls. Or so history tells us. But I haven’t the knowledge.’ She paused. ‘Would you like to say goodbye?’

  Ree nodded but something in the healer’s words had caught in her mind. ‘Or so history tells us …’ she murmured, halfway through the door. She stopped with her hand on the doorframe.

  ‘Ree?’

  Ree’s eyes lifted to meet hers. Shadowed versus bright. ‘Could you learn it from a book?’

  Andomerys frowned. ‘If there was such a book.’

  Ree nodded to herself. Several of the libraries had healing books in their magic collections — some of them very, very old. ‘Keep him alive for a few days,’ said Ree. ‘If there is such a book, I know how to find it.’

  ‘Ree —’

  Ree hurried down the steps.

  Andomerys grunted in frustration. ‘I didn’t come to this crypt to be a healer!’ she shouted.

  No. But she was still a healer.

  ‘I’ll be back soon! A few days, at most!’ Ree called.

  ‘Days?!’

  Ree ran down another flight of stairs and into the complex of tombhomes. She wound past lumbering minions carrying boxes and tools for their masters, leapt over the wolf the young acolytes had just got twitching, and shouldered past Etherea Eversworn in her high brocade collar and lace veil, who threatened to curse her shoes. She skidded to a halt in a small alley to knock loudly on a salvage-wood door. It creaked open.

  ‘Emberlon.’ Ree looked at her mentor and ducked her head in a reflexive bow that she never seemed to be able to shake. ‘I need your help.’

  Emberlon drew the door wider. ‘Best come inside.’

  I wore a bear today. It felt wrong to me: large and cumbersome, and I rattled around inside it. I will always prefer my hawkskin — perhaps it is true what they say, and no shape ever feels as right as your first.

  I did enjoy the power of it, though. I went to the village on the plains outside and roared at their hunters. One of them soiled himself — oh, I shall be laughing about that for days! I didn’t eat him, of course. Just the other, cleaner one.

  But the importance of the first shape. I must remember to put it in my book, if the King ever gives me leave to write it.

  ~from the journal of Wylandriah Witch-feather

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LATE RETURNS

  It was with the awful sense that she was about to be found out that Ree walked through her mentor’s door. She lifted herself up onto the stone sarcophagus at the centre, letting her legs swing. She kept her head bowed and folded her hands in her lap, steeling herself to the weight of the archivist’s gaze.

  Emberlon closed the door and turned to face her, his hands clasped in front of him. He was always grave like this: something about his manner made the air heavy. He was an older man, well into his fifties, with a mass of curly white hair and a close-trimmed grey beard. His eyes were an ice-chip blue that stood out against the near-black of his skin. His clothes were little better than rags, but he wore them with straight-backed poise as if they were the richest finery. An ebony chain disappeared under his sackcloth shirt.

  ‘I need to find a book, a healing book,’ said Ree. She didn’t dare meet his eyes. She felt like her guilt was written all over her — that if he looked at her closely enough, he would gasp and condemn her for breaking t
own law.

  It was like that with Emberlon.

  Emberlon only inclined his head in acknowledgement, but there was a question in his eyes. ‘Finding books is what you do.’

  Of course he would wonder. ‘It’s important,’ she said. She locked her hands behind her back to hide their fidgeting. ‘It’s to help Andomerys.’

  She didn’t want to waste any time searching for the right book, and she didn’t want to risk Smythe’s life by telling everyone about his presence. Emberlon knew the archive and libraries even better than she did. She was certain she would find what she needed, and quickly, with his help.

  Emberlon had never been one much for asking — or answering — questions. If he was curious about something, he would wait to see if there was anything you wanted to say. The trouble was, it was difficult to let Emberlon down — and not just for Ree. She’d heard others comment on how it was almost like a compulsion to tell him what he wanted to hear — like the bow Ree couldn’t stop herself making. Emberlon had a power that had nothing to do with necromancy.

  Ree steeled herself to it, clenching her fists at her sides.

  There was a long silence while he considered her and Ree stared into her lap. At length, he said, ‘I can help you.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Which book are you looking for?’

  The sudden change of tone set her off-balance. She leapt to her feet while her mind spun over the question. ‘A healing book,’ she said. ‘Healing and curses … and souls, maybe.’

  She watched him carefully for his reaction, but he only looked thoughtful. ‘I can’t recall any books of that topic. We’ll have to check the records.’

  ‘Of — of course!’ Ree slid off the sarcophagus. It no longer seemed strange to her that Emberlon had refused to have the sarcophagus relocated when he moved into the tomb. ‘There’s room enough for both of us,’ he’d said, and he’d been true to his word. Emberlon’s tombhome was more tomb than home; scant possessions or furniture beyond a chair, a change of clothes, and a straw bedroll laid across a stone shelf in the antechamber. There were a lot of mysteries about Emberlon — where he’d come from, why he’d left — but whatever life he’d had before, he had taken none of it with him.