Books & Bone

by Victoria Corva

  Ree caught Smythe’s eyes. ‘Necromancy changes people. Are you sure this is what you want?’

  ‘Ugh. Don’t go passing on your irrational bias.’ Usther rolled her eyes. ‘Let the man raise the dead.’

  Ree studied Smythe, taking in the line of his jaw, the steadiness in his gaze.

  ‘I’m certain.’ He straightened, puffing out his chest. ‘Not to sound conceited, but I’m a rather excellent burial scholar, and a good scholar uses every resource and doesn’t discount new or unusual sources.’ His eyes glinted. ‘Think about it! Think what I could learn, directly from the mouths of those who once lived. With that kind of power, there is no knowledge in the world that could be held back from me.’ He drew a shuddering breath. His next words were very low. ‘And the University will be forced to take me seriously.’

  ‘All excellent reasons.’ Usther clapped her hands together, punctuating her approval. ‘Perhaps you have the makings of a practitioner yet.’

  But Ree’s guts only clenched tighter as a wave of unease rolled over her. She’d been truthful when she warned Smythe that necromancy changed people, but power changed them even more. She didn’t like the ugly set of Smythe’s mouth when he talked about the University. She didn’t like to think what might come of that bitterness when combined with the icy magic of the Craft.

  ‘Why settle for the ordinary?’ he’d said, when she revealed her long-hidden desire to learn shapeshifting magic. Who was she, to tell him that he must?

  ‘How can I help?’ she asked after a breath. Smythe’s slow-growing smile warmed her, but did not quite eclipse her apprehension.

  Usther smoothed back her short black hair and folded onto a reading bench against the wall. ‘You could get him the books he needs. You are, afterall, a fetch-and-carry minion, are you not?’

  Ree almost retorted that Usther needed to raise such a minion just to carry around her inflated ego, but managed to stop herself just in time. A fight with Usther when she was being hunted by every denizen in the crypt would be unwise, and Usther grew fangs whenever her pride was wounded.

  It felt like she was always holding things in, holding things back. It made her feel weak and craven, the way she had to tiptoe around the other denizens, always frightened of saying the wrong thing and facing vengeance.

  One day. One day, surely, they would tiptoe around her.

  ‘Give me a list, and I’ll see what I can do.’ Ree locked her hands behind her back and tried to adopt a stance of detached tranquility, like her mother. ‘You’ll have to teach him from memory until I get back — it might take me awhile to find anything when the town is on high alert.’

  ‘There’s no need for that, I’m sure. There are plenty of books here, and the good Usther to teach me — I’m sure we’ll make do.’ Smythe wrung his hands. ‘I couldn’t countenance you risking yourself for my sake — er, again.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Have I mentioned how grateful I am to you, for saving me from your neighbours? Because I am. Grateful. Uh.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Thank you.’

  In spite of her discomfort, her own lips tugged in response.

  ‘Ugh. Enough. I can’t stand how amiable you are.’ Usther wrinkled her nose. ‘So distasteful. Let’s get to business, shall we?’

  Getting ‘to business’ involved searching the shelves for relevant books while Usther searched for a body to walk back for Smythe to practice on. Much of Ree’s unease faded as she lost herself to the task, interrupted only by Smythe’s delight at the age and rarity of many of the texts.

  Ree was quite pleased with their work when they’d found three early grimoires. She sat down on one of the reading benches, and Smythe joined her, a conspicuous gap between them. ‘It’s amazing to think, isn’t it? That all of this —’ he gestured expansively, encompassing far more than the library — ‘Existed beneath the mountains and nobody knew about it.’

  ‘A few people know, or suspect,’ said Ree, though his enthusiasm warmed her. ‘There are a few traders who visit us, knowing we have a lot of needs and a lot of gold besides. And adventurers find us from time to time, and travellers sometimes stumble upon an entrance. How did you find out about the crypt?’

  ‘Rigorous research and inexhaustible determination,’ he said, which startled a grin from Ree. He raised his chin and puffed out his chest. ‘I’m rather an excellent scholar, you know. I got hold of a text detailing the subterranean resting places of M’in Gorad and Queen Eltamere, and became interested in the similarities between the two. About thirty books later and maybe a hundred ancient maps, and I’d guessed that the location of some kind of shared tomb complex was somewhere beneath the Dragon’s Spine, and here we are.’ He pulled a much folded piece of parchment from his pocket and offered it to her.

  Ree unfolded it, enjoying the solid crispness of modern parchment, and studied the map there. It was drawn in an uncertain hand, and much scribbled over with notes, but she recognised the shape of the mountains above the crypt. Smythe had marked several possible entrances, some of which were very close to truth.

  She took a much larger map from her satchel and spread it across her lap, comparing the two.

  ‘Did you make that?’ Smythe leaned in to peer at the map.

  ‘How did you —?’

  ‘Oh. Well, Andomerys told me you’re sort of the town cartographer.’ His eyes scanned the passageways and chambers Ree had painstakingly marked throughout her travels. ‘This is most excellent. I’m rather embarrassed that you’ve seen my effort, to be quite honest.’ In spite of his words, he seemed more impressed by her than embarrassed for himself.

  She liked that about him. It surprised her to think it, but it was true. He was so open in his admiration for her skills. Nobody else really seemed to be — even Emberlon, who was a very supportive mentor, tended to keep his feelings to himself. But for Smythe, every thought just came bubbling out of his mouth, and so often his thoughts were excitable and kind.

  She’d thought that he’d be gone by now. Returned to the surface world, full of bright-eyed, warm people just like him. But he was here and it seemed he had no plans to return to the sun-soaked lands above.

  The thought warmed her.

  ‘Uh — Ree?’

  She realised she’d been staring and her cheeks flushed. ‘Sorry — um, thinking.’ She quickly looked away, cursing herself for her flustered response.

  ‘Actually, I was wondering about this area here.’ He pointed to a blank space at the eastern edge of the map. Some rooms and passages jutted in to it, but it was largely an empty space, her pen-strokes ending in obscurity, the passages leading there unfinished.

  ‘I haven’t been there,’ Ree explained. Her hair prickled just looking at it. Beyond those trailing lines and among the shadows marked there, the Lich’s wing rested. It was the only taboo her parents had ever given her that she fully respected. The Lich was dangerous — she had firsthand experience of that. The section of the crypt where it made its home was off-limits to all denizens.

  ‘Oh? It’s quite beautiful, actually. Although oddly empty.’ His fingers traced the hazy shape of it.

  Ree’s lips parted as she tried and failed to put voice to her shock. After a moment of floundering, she managed: ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘A little, yes. I actually entered the crypt around here — or more here, I suppose.’ He pointed to an unmarked place near the edge of the Lich’s wing. ‘And then from there found my way to the embalming rooms where we met.’

  Her thoughts ground over his words again and again, her eyes fixed on the empty space on the map. In the panic, she’d assumed she’d forgotten the Lich’s routine and crossed its path, but if Smythe had ventured into the Lich’s wing then it was more than possible that the Lich had been tracking him. If Smythe had been the cause of her near-deadly encounter with the Lich, did she owe him anything for taking that curse in her place? Or did it not really matter why the Lich had been there?

  Ree watched him, eyes hazy, as she considered what had happened. Debt
s were important — debts held Tombtown together, all part of the web of politics and power that allowed a hundred odd necromancers to live in one place. Everyone kept tallies of them — who had helped who, and when, and what was expected in return.

  Ree had no debts and no debtors — she was largely considered to be ‘doing her job’ when she went out of her way to find a text or map a section of the crypt. Any debts she owed were collected from her mother or father, who were considered far more valuable debtors than she. Smythe saving her life had been her first experience with debt in a real sense. She’d not expected the weight of knowing that you owed someone your life, the sense of responsibility. It had made her uncomfortable, and desperate to get him out of the crypt alive and safe.

  She had saved him from the council and a public and painful blood sacrifice. Surely, now, she owed him nothing. A life for a life: wasn’t that how it worked?

  But as she watched him poring over a grimoire with a thoughtful crease in his brow, she felt no less protective. No less worried for his future. They had shared their ambitions, alone in the dark, and now the prospect of a life without him seemed oddly bereft. Was this friendship, albeit of a different kind than she and Usther shared?

  He looked up from the book open on his lap. ‘Um … Ree? Are you quite all right?’

  Ree frowned. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Oh. Good.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Uhm. Actually, I had a thought.’

  Ree resisted the urge to raise her eyebrows. ‘Is that unusual?’

  ‘No, no — of course not.’ But although he seemed flustered by her response, his eyes were bright and slightly wild.

  Ree’s gaze slid from him, to the book open in his lap, and back up again. ‘You’ve found something.’

  ‘No — well, I suppose you could say I found it “in the archives of the mind”, as it were, but — look.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ve remembered something about that blank area on your map.’

  Ree waited. Something about Smythe’s intensity kept her quiet.

  ‘Not long after I arrived, I came upon a tableau in those tunnels — centuries old, quite fascinating. And quite relevant to your interests.’ He reached into his pack and withdrew a leatherbound book.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked.

  ‘My research journal. Well, my travel diary, at any rate.’ He flicked through it and held it open to a full spread sketch.

  Ree’s fingers twitched toward it, but she held herself in check. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She took it gently, careful not to rumple the pages. Her fingers hovered over the tableau reproduced there, sketched in loose lines and annotated in Smythe’s scratchy handwriting.

  It depicted a woman, hooded and robed, as any necromancer might be. Her hands were spread; in one, she held a cloth or rag, in the other an orb of light. A large bird with wings outstretched was behind her head, and animals of all kinds crowded in around her. Above her, a sombre king offered a blessing.

  Among Smythe’s notes were: ‘Priestess? Animal worship?’ and labelling the cloth, a note ‘Skin?’

  Ree’s chest tightened and it seemed she could no longer breathe in enough air. ‘Smythe, this — do you know what this is?’

  A curious phenomenon in the town is the forming of cabals among the lesser necromancers, especially among the acolytes and those yet to grow into their powers. They share their knowledge and pool their power to achieve greater works of magic.

  More curious still is that these cabals are allowed to exist and operate openly. The council has traditionally “disbanded” cabals to prevent a rival power growing in opposition to their own. But perhaps they realise the importance of shared knowledge, especially at that early age.

  Or perhaps they wish there had been anyone to share their knowledge with, when they were young.

  ~from A History of Tombtown by Emberlon the Disloyal

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE LURE OF POWER

  Smythe beamed at her. ‘I didn’t at the time, of course — just more death imagery, I thought, it’s not uncommon to use animals symbolically — but after looking at your journal, I realised —’

  ‘She’s a therianthrope.’ The words came out hoarse. She found she couldn’t look away from his sketch. ‘That thing in her hand — it’s a therianskin. A hawkskin, maybe.’ Her finger traced the wings behind the woman’s head.

  ‘Yes! Exactly! Look — if you want, I can give your approximate directions. I’m something of a hobbyist cartographer myself. I’m not up to your standards, of course, but considering I’ve had little to no training —’

  ‘Please do.’ Ree didn’t want Smythe to get sidetracked by his own ego, not when she was so close to a breakthrough. She hesitated, then offered Smythe her own journal.

  Smythe immediately shut up. ‘Are you quite sure?’ He watched her, suddenly grave.

  He had been the first person to see her research journal, and he would be the first, and perhaps only, person to contribute to it. She was glad that he understood the gravity of this gesture — but then, she never would have offered it if he didn’t.

  She showed him where to write his directions and sketch, if he chose. He worked slowly, carefully, a marked difference from the mad scrawl of his own notes. A pathway took shape; a fork at the end of an unusually curved tunnel somewhere in the Lich’s wing.

  ‘That’s it — as far as I can remember, anyway.’ He set aside her quill and returned her journal to her, still open to allow the ink to dry. ‘I must admit — I did get turned around a bit. Distracted by the plethora of different burial rites on show — and by the moaning, of course.’ He smiled wanly. ‘Must have disturbed a few of Larry’s fellows at some point.’

  ‘This is plenty, Smythe — thank you.’ She surprised herself with the warmth in her voice, but nobody had ever given her such a valuable gift.

  ‘Oh. Well, uh, think nothing of it.’ His cheeks darkened and his lips pinched in a blush.

  She tried to help him with his own research in return. She wasn’t a practitioner, but she’d been raised by one, and grew up in a town full of them. She had a fairly solid grasp of the basic theory of necromancy, and had picked up some tips and tricks by sheer osmosis over the years.

  But her mind kept snapping back to Smythe’s discovery in the Lich’s Wing, like a spirit tethered to a corpse. She’d scoured the crypt for grimoires on therianthropy, and found little more than rumours and anecdotes. She’d always been so certain that the information must be here, somewhere. The crypt held the accumulated knowledge of centuries from multiple civilisations.

  But the Lich’s Wing had always been off-limits. He’d been a normal practitioner once — that’s how liches came to be. And he’d obviously accumulated enormous power, or he would never have survived as long as he had. Why had she never considered that he kept all the best texts for himself? And with that tableau, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that there was a connection between therianthropy and whoever was buried in that part of the crypt.

  The more she thought about it, the more it itched at her, until she had no choice but to jump to her feet. She went for her pack, refilling her rations and stuffing her journal and notes back inside.

  ‘Uh … Ree?’

  She didn’t look up from her pack. Her hands moved with the ease of practice, tucking rations into corners and slotting her books against each other. ‘I’m going to find that tableau,’ she said. It would likely be a few days of travel all told, but she didn’t want to concern him with that. ‘Usther will look after you. Well, she’ll teach you, anyway.’ Ree shouldered her pack. ‘She’s not a very nurturing person.’

  Smythe snapped his book shut and scrambled to his feet. ‘I should come with you!’ he said earnestly, feeling around him for his satchel. ‘It’ll be a jolly adventure — I’ve never got to work with a scholar as clever as you before. I rather think we could dazzle the world with our discoveries. And I have so many thoughts on —’

  Ree
raised her hands. ‘No.’ Her tone was clipped, firm. Smythe trailed off, eyes wide. Again, she found herself altering her tone in response; there was something about him that got under her guard. ‘The whole town is looking for you, Smythe. They’ll kill you if they find you. You’re not a necromancer yet, and even when you are, we’ll need to find a way to get the council’s protection before you can safely go back to town.’

  Smythe stopped, hand on satchel. ‘But what about you? Aren’t they looking for you, too?’

  ‘Yes, but nobody is going to kill me or my father will kill them. It’s the stalemate our town is built on — nobody will deliberately violate it. If I ever get killed by a neighbour, it’ll be accidental.’

  ‘Oh. And that’s, uh — that’s reassuring, is it?’

  Ree sighed. ‘Yes.’ She headed for the door.

  ‘Wait! Ree.’ Smythe skidded after her, putting a hand on the door.

  Ree took a deep breath and then exhaled through her nose, resisting the urge to shove him aside. She liked Smythe well enough as people went, but she’d always been snappish when people told her what to do. ‘Yes?’

  Smythe seemed, for once, to sense her tension. He hesitated, then raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I know far less about, well, any of this than you do.’ He swept his arm to encompass the room, and perhaps the whole crypt. ‘But — well, you know. You said nobody goes into that part of the crypt because of that Lich fellow, and he already almost killed me the other day, and of course you’re in trouble with the town because of me, and —’ He drew a shuddering breath. ‘I’m — well, rather worried that if something happens to you and you go alone, there’ll be nobody to help you.’

  Ree paused, the key half-turned in the lock. Smythe watched her in open concern, his fingers tapping his sides.

  He was worried about her. Her, Ree. She had been born in this place, had spent her childhood toddling though tombs with her father or helping to restore ancient shrines with her mother. Skeletons, spectres, and walking corpses held no horrors for her. Unlike Smythe, for whom this was all a new and frightening place.