by Jesse Teller
He walked closer, a slight tingling over his entire body as he neared the girl. She turned to him and dropped to a knee.
“What are you?” Rayph whispered.
When the girl answered, two flaps opened on her neck to draw in air before she said, “I am plutane. My name is Cirtstessa. I am daughter of Termax, princess of what you call Megan’s Bay, what my people call the land of Keta. It is wondrous to make your acquaintance, Rayph Ivoryfist. May the Waves bless your travel and the depths stay from your heart.”
Rayph had no words to say to the girl so he spoke none. He touched her hair, feeling a slight tingle pass from her to him, and he looked to Collette. “I approve of your student. She is lovely. Teach her well. If you need anything from me just ask.”
“Silk is waiting,” Eloam said. When Rayph turned to look at the thief, he felt something precious passing from his grasp.
“Lead me on,” he said.
The Bone Collector
Roth stood his ground bracing himself.
He looked at Burke, who stared at his surroundings with dispassionate eyes. He seemed to be a man whose worst nightmare had come true, trying to summon a strength within himself that could not be reached. Burke’s eyes were for the sky, clouds swarming and stirring. They seemed comprised of fuzz, and moved on currents of air that doubled over on themselves, ripped them apart and reformed them. As the black and gray clouds looped around the urine-colored sky, Roth could see these were not clouds at all, but a flying buzzing thing that ruled the air here.
Roth looked to Arcturus and found power unchecked by the horrors around them. The man rested on one knee with his short sword in his hand, its blade driven into the bones beneath him as he inspected the steel. He checked the weapon’s sharpness with his thumb and grunted, nodding to himself. He slid the weapon to its sheath and pulled his club off a ring on his belt.
The weapon was black and as ugly as the man himself. It was a knotted piece of wood that seemed at once porous and solid. Roth then wished he knew more about clubs, knew wood and even wood stain, but his expertise was forged weapons. He could divine nothing from this one. He found it unnerving to be in the presence of a weapon he knew nothing about, and he suddenly realized he knew nothing of the man either. Fear ticked in him like a settling house, creaking as it worked its way into his bones.
Tate stared at everything around him with a calculating eye. His black robes seemed to swarm like the clouds, shimmering and silken. Tate’s pale face matched the landscape perfectly, as if a part of Roth’s brother made sense in a way that never had before. Tate pulled his gloves from his pocket and tugged them on. He flexed his fingers and smiled. The gloves were bone white stitched over again with blacks and reds, his chosen weapon. As he tapped his thigh with the fingers anxiously, Roth felt slightly himself again.
Tate had never been in a fight, but he had designed the gloves to his chosen fighting style. Just as Ithyryyn had his necklace, Quill her curved wand, Thrak his double wands and Roth his great sword, Tate had constructed his gloves for destruction. Roth drew strength from them.
“Where is the sword?” Arcturus asked. “You said you could find it. So do it.”
Tate sneered at the man but held his tongue, though it seemed difficult. It was a chore for Roth as well, as if his ire longed to be released here.
“The spell is best when directed at the owner of the weapon. It is harder to feel out when seeking the weapon itself,” Roth said.
“So we find the wielder of the weapon, ruin his day, and we are back before supper,” Arcturus said. “Why the wait?”
The man’s black hair hung filthy in his face, his tanned scarred visage and his tight thin lips set in a scowl. Roth decided to draw determination from the man’s words and demeanor.
Roth closed his eyes and reached to his back to stroke his father’s sword, reaching into the pools of magic he had filled it with. The sword gave off a slight hum and Roth looked up. Suddenly he could sense a fold in the air, a slight current he could step into and follow to the master of Harloc’s blade.
“This way.” He snapped a little more than he wanted to. He led them on and through the bone yard.
They crunched bones as they walked. Dry brittle finger bones shattered to dust. Large leg bones and delicate arm bones snapped as they stepped. Every now and again, his leg would sink into a hole as the bones beneath him dropped to a pit. Steady even footing seemed impossible to find, and when Roth did find a piece of ground that was not shifting under him, he longed to stand there and let himself be rooted to it. Every time his feet touched on firm ground he wanted to linger, to rest there a bit.
As he moved around the large stacks of dry bones, he knew he could not wait, could not enjoy a strong stance. He needed to make this trip as short as possible. He kept following the fold and let it lead him on in a weaving line through the parched bone yard.
He grinned and turned to Tate. “Grab Arcturus and I’ll take Burke. Then we can fly. It will make our travel flash past in a heartbeat.” Roth reached out for Burke, but Tate’s gloved hand stopped him.
It was coarse and gritty, as if made from sandpaper or the skin of a shark.
“We shouldn’t,” Tate said.
“Why? We can move so much faster.”
“It seems like a sound idea to me,” Burke said.
“Well, it is not,” Tate said. “When a wizard casts in Hell, it is as if a great beacon is lit. Demons and devils can sense it, and come seeking a meal. Spellcasters are a delicacy in Hell.”
“So you two are worthless here?” Arcturus snapped.
“How could you possibly know that?” Roth said. A thread of fear stitched into his heart. He suddenly wished he hadn’t come.
“I read a few books before coming. Infernus Majoratory, the Demon’s trilogy, Anatomy, Behavior, and Soul.” Tate grinned. “I felt it would be nice to study up on the place we were headed.”
Tate laughed.
It was a disarming sound Roth knew usually meant Tate was hiding something, an innocent sound that made Tate seem like a child again. Roth had seen this laugh used to deceive members of the Collective before.
Roth nodded and turned away. He kept walking until he reached a work camp. From a shifting hill of vertebrae, Roth could see a fenced-in area where bodies of the dead and the living were being strung up on scaffolding.
Wrists were bound, pulleys squealed as the forms were hoisted into the air. Small hunched-over demons with fell implements peeled away skin and meat from the bodies. Screams lifted like the howls of wolves in the distance as the living wailed for mercy. Roth reached out and felt Tate grab his hand. The twins squeezed as they stared.
Meat was thrown into carts on tracks. Other carts were filled at other stations around the camp, and the small demons pushed the carts on wheels to a predestined place. The demons seemed intent on harvesting the bones. They tossed them casually to flatbed carts pulled by gangs of naked and savaged humans, yoked like animals. The teamsters cracked their barbed whips and the teams jumped to a start. They passed out of gates and into the ocean of bone that surrounded everything.
Roth turned and vomited, then pulled back in horror as worms, purple and swollen, leeched out of the ground in the spot of the spray to lap and devour his discharge. The whole of the group pulled back. Arcturus stomped the creatures to death only to draw more of the tiny monsters from the piles.
“These are the beasts that strip the last of the meat from the bone piles. There are millions of them beneath our feet, I would wager. Let’s not draw them if we can help it,” Tate said.
“We need to talk to that demon right there,” Roth pointed at a demon high in a tower with a scope overseeing the entire operation. The creature looked different from the workers. Tall with sharp angular limbs and a peaked head, it seemed his hairline began directly below the eyes and draped over his mouth and face. The hair ended at the spot where his chin might end, and Roth felt sick to his stomach at the thought of treating with the beast.
“The tower is in the camp, inside the fence and guarded by hundreds of worker demons. Getting there will be a problem,” Arcturus said. “Especially with two useless wizards that we are forced to protect.”
“Arcturus, please,” Burke said.
The gnarled warrior looked at his prince and instantly fell silent.
“When I do this, it’s gonna draw everyone’s attention,” Tate said. “If they come, you have to keep them off of us.” He looked at Burke and nodded. “I am going to cast. I will need to interrogate the bastard, so any that come to fight or capture, or,” Tate shrugged, “devour us will be your hardship to bear. Understood?”
“Keep them off,” Burke said. He wiped dark sweat from his brow and nodded. “Done.”
Roth turned to Tate, “You gonna grab him?”
“You know a better way?” Tate asked.
Roth pulled his sword and drove it into the ground. “Do it.”
Tate extended his hand and spoke a word. A gray mass of energy formed before the glove and Tate reached out with it. The gray force formed into a hand and shot out, faster than an arrow from a bow, in the direction of the tower.
The land around them screamed. The workers below looked up with feverish eyes, the beast in the tower glared at them, and beyond the hills of bone other beings brayed.
Tate closed his fingers, as if snatching something out of the air, and jerked his arm back.
The demon screamed as it came. Tate did not glance over his shoulder when he said, “Get ready.”
Roth flexed his fingers around the handle of his sword and waited. Fighting broke out all around them, but Roth could not look for it. He waited until the spectral hand at his brother’s command reached them. Tate drove the demon into the ground, spraying bones in every direction. His gray fist closed around the beast’s throat, and it gasped for air.
“Get close,” Roth said.
Arcturus and Burke pulled in, and Roth spoke out his command. From the tip of his sword, a shield exploded. It bubbled out in every direction to rise up and form a perfect circle around them.
As the half breeds killed the demons within the globe, Roth concentrated on his grip, keeping the shield around them tight and strong.
Tate let up his grip slightly and the demon sputtered.
Tate spoke in the demonic language, and Roth could follow some of it.
Thrak had insisted on the boys learning the language of demons, said they were too much of a force in the worlds they guarded to not know their words. But the lessons had never found fertile soil in Roth’s mind.
“Sword, thorns, where?” Tate shouted over the sound of whispering and hissing demons. Beyond the shield, demons of all shapes and sizes were pulling close to plot and plan their meal.
Arcturus grunted and cursed. Burke drove the tip of his sword into the bones and folded his hands over the handle. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly.
“My sword,” Roth heard from outside the bubble. He looked up to see a devil rising up out of the hill.
It was comprised of pink flesh. Thick and rolling, it looked like the creature was obese, but in fact it possessed so much skin that it quivered in waves. The creature’s cheeks were held open and flayed with sharpened rib bones, the skin of his arms held wide like sails by bones sewn into the flesh. It seemed this being sought to stitch or pin up every inch of extra flesh with bones in order to help him walk and stand. He was stretched like a pink drum across bones of other creatures. The skin around his eyes was held wide in every direction by tiny slivers of finger bones. His lips had been reinforced with bone fragments. Even the very skin around his fingers was pinned out wide in every direction.
“You seek my sword?” the devil asked. “Why seek you such a thing?”
Tate twisted his wrist and snapped the neck of the demon below him. The devil laughed. Roth looked at his brother, who stepped forward and smiled.
“Mighty devil, I ask not the honor of your name, for such a thing would be a repugnant insult, but I do wish for you to give me a moniker of respect that I might use to address you,” Tate said.
He spoke in the common tongue of man, and the devil smiled with a propped up mouth and bowed in a sickly stretched kind of way.
“Call me the Bone Collector. It is as fine a name as any demon could wish.”
“With great respect, Bone Collector, we seek knowledge of the whereabouts of this sword. Within its construction is housed the soul of a being we seek an audience with.” Tate spoke with more respect than Roth was prepared to give, and the devil grinned.
“Wonderful weapon, you see. When it sits the hand, it protrudes thorns. Easiest weapon to hold that I have ever possessed,” the Bone Collector said. “Traded four tons of bone and seven hundred slaves for that weapon.”
“May we see it?” Tate asked. “We will pay for the pleasure.”
“Unfortunately, I do not possess it anymore,” the devil said.
“You are its owner,” Roth said. The devil leaned over and tapped the shield. It sparked and the devil hissed.
“I lost it in a wager.”
“To whom?” Roth asked skeptically.
“To Harloc himself. I wished to possess his elder brother, Fannalis, and I asked him where I might find him. A dagger, you see. To hold a dagger and a long sword in my hands at the same time, weapons of such note and such terrible agony. Oh, the holding of such a weapon is a rare thrill.”
Roth knew that if the devil were to look at Burke carefully, he would see Betamus, and this would turn violent quickly. Roth waited for that very thing to happen, but the Bone Collector seemed charmed by Tate, unwilling to tear his eyes away from Roth’s twin for very long at all.
Roth noticed with great dread that Tate seemed elated at the attention. Seemed to shine in the eyes of this beast, as if to take on a glow of pure bliss.
“What were the terms of the wager?” Tate asked.
“A simple wager of guess. Harloc claimed to be able to name the number of bones in my yard.” The creature shook his head. “Such a thing can never be known. Only I know this number. Down to the last metacarpal. I laughed at him and wagered my name. He somehow guessed the number straight away.”
The devil gritted his teeth and snarled. The expression strained the bones and the skin around them bled yellow blood.
“I could not give him my name.”
“Of course you couldn’t, and he knew it,” Tate said. “So what did he ask instead?”
“He asked for freedom. If I agreed to sell him at market to the highest bidder, he would let me off my side of the wager. I thrashed and screamed, but he would not relent. In the end, I had no other play. Laws keep this place in check, firm laws handed down from those more powerful. Gambling is sacred here.”
Roth looked at the shield, more and more demons teeming on the edge of the bubble. Touching and tapping, suffering tiny shocks and pulling away with a hiss.
“We must be on our way. Pull your demons back and we will leave without a fight,” Tate said.
“Why would I do that?” the Bone Collector said. “Why let you leave?”
“We will pay a toll. We are living beings, not dead and damned. Our bones will be of a harder sort. They will taste different, not so foul. They will give endless pleasure to you,” Tate said. “Let us give you a bone and you allow us to leave.”
“That one right there,” the Bone Collector said with a sigh of pleasure. “I want a bone from him,” he said, pointing at Arcturus. “He is delightful.”
Arcturus looked up at Burke, who shook his head. “Let me give you a bone from my body. You cannot have my man’s bone. Here,” Burke reached down to grab the blade of Betamus, and Arcturus sliced his own finger off in a blink.
“No, not my prince,” Arcturus said. He laid the finger on the ground and spat on it. “I will give you three bones. But you cannot take from my prince’s body.”
“Such honor in such a despicable man. I find it titillating.”
“No
w we walk away,” Tate said. “Soon as the sale is made, you will no longer be the owner of the sword, and we can find another devil to harass.”
The Bone Collector grinned. He nodded. “Indeed, soon I will no longer be the owner. My trader left for Strainus not six hours ago to sell. I expect a fine price.”
The Bone Collector waved his hands out wide and all the lesser demons pulled back.
Tate bowed to him and winked at Roth.
Roth felt like he needed to vomit again.
The Madam
“You’re with me?” Rayph said.
“I’ve got you, but I have no way of knowing where they are taking you,” Smear said. “I can’t get there ahead of you.”
“Just stay on my tail. If they are smart, they are going to try to lose you,” Rayph said through his fetish. He knew at some point they would blindfold him and he did not know what he would do when that happened. Spells he could cast would render their blindfolds useless, but they might sense the casting, and he might lose the bit of trust they were showing. They were taking him to their leader. That alone was something.
“Make a show of losing the trail. They have people watching you, too, I would bet,” Rayph said. “Dran, I want you to seek known hideouts and haunts of Hood. Have a plan to come and get me if it comes to that.”
“You ought to let me just dig into this town and squeeze until this man comes to us,” she said.
“That might one day be necessary, but for now, we will play it their way,” Rayph said.
Smear cursed. “Bedlam’s boy is here. He has me. He will follow me right to you.”
“Which boy?” Rayph asked. His heart leapt up with fear for his friend. He suddenly wanted to call off the meeting with Hood and go to Smear.
“Artan is up on these roofs with me. I can sense him. If they were smart, they put Radamuss on me, too.”