Cathedral of Bones

by A. J. Steiger

  Simon’s ragged breaths echoed through the silence. “I’m warning you. Come any closer, and I will use this.”

  The figure made no sound. It raised one gloved hand and pointed at them. Two vaguely reptilian shapes emerged from the shadows behind it and stalked toward Simon and Alice. A chill washed over him.

  The creatures were roughly man-sized, and they walked on two legs, but there was nothing remotely human about them. They were white and hairless, with muscular haunches and thick, lizard-like tails. Their necks were long and sinuous, their arms tiny, each ending in a single foot-long hooked claw.

  Alice stared, her face ashen. “What are those things?”

  “Ghasts.” He swallowed, throat tight. “Demon familiars.” Ghasts were fierce, and smart, and hungry. Not many Animists had the skill to summon them, but for those who could, they were unstoppable weapons.

  The larger ghast took a step forward and licked its muzzle. They had no faces, no eyes—just massive jaws crammed with long, needle-like teeth.

  Simon thrust the dagger forward. “Stay back!”

  The hooded form snapped its fingers.

  The ghasts advanced slowly, tails swaying behind them. Acid-green drool bubbled from their mouths; where it struck the stones, it sizzled.

  “Alice,” Simon said, “can you transform?”

  She rose to all fours. Her body swelled and darkened, and the remains of her cloak fell away. Bones and muscles crackled, rearranged themselves. Her neck stretched out, her limbs thickened, and her jaws lengthened and sprouted fangs.

  She growled.

  The ghasts circled them like wolves. One abruptly charged straight at Simon, jaws gaping.

  Alice lunged and seized the ghast’s neck in her jaws. It squealed. She shook it once, like a cat with a mouse; its neck snapped, and she dropped it disdainfully. Its body crumbled and vanished in a swirl of green smoke.

  The second ghast took a few steps back then turned toward Simon, teeth dripping. He slashed with the dagger, and the ghast fell back, squealing, a deep gash in its shoulder. Black blood gushed out and hit the floor, sizzling. The ghast let out a bone-shredding scream, then lunged at Simon. He thrust the dagger again, but this time the ghast was ready; its long tail lashed out, knocking the weapon from his hand. One hoof cannoned into his chest and sent him sprawling. He scanned the floor frantically for the dagger. There; it lay a short distance away. He crawled toward it and stretched out a hand, but the ghast sent it flying away with another flick of its tail. Its head swung toward Simon.

  Alice pounced on the ghast, knocking it to the ground. The ghast sprang back up, leaped onto her back, and sank its teeth into her neck. Green drool ate into her flesh, bubbling, and hissing steam rose up from the wound.

  “Alice!”

  She roared, rearing up, and flung the ghast away. It struck the wall and slid down. Alice stalked toward the cloaked figure, growling . . . then her legs wobbled, and she staggered to one side. Her neck swayed back and forth. The wound on her back—a patch of raw, wet flesh—sizzled. Simon watched in horror as the patch grew. The acid was eating into her, burning her alive. She dwindled, shrinking back to her human form, and crumpled to her knees. Dark hair hung in front of her face like a curtain as she arched her wounded back, groaning. She scrambled for her cloak and grabbed it, clutching it against her bare, shivering body.

  At any other point he might’ve been embarrassed and flustered at her nakedness. Now it was the least of his concerns.

  The masked figure raised one hand. Three more ghasts emerged from the shadows and advanced toward them.

  Simon stood in front of Alice, shielding her with his body as best he could, his mind racing in frantic circles.

  “Run,” Alice whispered.

  “I’m not leaving you!”

  “If you don’t, we’ll both die.” She cried, gasping. “Get out of here.”

  Simon gritted his teeth. A scream welled up in his throat. No. This wasn’t how it would end.

  “Simon, go!”

  The ghasts closed in. Then, all at once, they charged. An impact jarred him to his bones, and then he was on the floor, a forest of yellowed teeth bared inches from his eyes. A string of drool dangled over him. Hot, foul breath gusted against his face.

  “Wait,” said a voice. The white-robed, masked figure stepped into his field of vision, looming over him. The figure placed one gloved hand on the ghast’s neck. “Don’t kill him.”

  The voice was muffled, but he recognized it, all the same. His mouth opened in shock.

  “Neeta,” he whispered.

  The ghast stepped back. She stood over him, stone-still. Behind her, two more robed forms seized Alice and dragged her back into her cell.

  “Alice!”

  The door slammed shut with a resounding bang. The two robed forms remained motionless outside it, standing guard.

  Neeta removed a heavy iron collar and chain from within her robe and snapped it shut around Simon’s neck. She yanked the chain, pulling him upright. He stumbled. His hands flew to the collar, trying to pry it off. “Neeta.” His voice emerged thick and choked. “You’re one of these people?”

  She removed her mask and stared at him for a long moment, her expression inscrutable. Then she glanced at the waiting ghasts and raised a hand. “You may return.”

  They vanished in a puff of greenish smoke.

  “Why?” Simon rasped.

  She let out a quiet sigh. There was pain in that sound. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  It hurt, more than he would have expected. He’d already known that Neeta believed in the Foundation through and through. But despite everything, he’d still admired her, still seen her as his teacher. Had he ever truly known her?

  She turned and began to walk, pulling Simon along. The collar chafed his neck.

  He stumbled after her, wheezing. He could barely find the breath for words. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To the Queen. It will be better for you if you don’t resist.”

  He blinked, dazed. “The Queen? She’s here?” That made no sense. The Queen lived in a mansion in Eidendel.

  Neeta didn’t respond. She kept walking at a brisk clip, half leading, half dragging him along. “I don’t know how you found this place, or where you got that weapon. But we will know everything soon enough.”

  “What are you planning to do to Alice?”

  “No more questions.”

  She led him through a door, into a narrow, stone-walled stairwell with a set of rusted iron steps leading down in a spiral. There were no lamps here. Neeta raised one hand, and a golden ball of meta blossomed above her palm. It cast a faint, pulsing glow over the walls as they descended.

  The door at the bottom of the stairwell opened into a large, empty room. At the far end of the room stood a pair of towering black doors.

  Neeta led him to the doors. She started to reach out, to touch the dark material—wood or stone, Simon wasn’t sure—then stopped. She took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. Simon saw, to his surprise, that she was trembling. “I should warn you . . . the Queen is not who you think. It is said that she is mostly a symbol these days, and that is true enough. The woman who represents her public face is merely a figurehead. A puppet. Our true ruler—the one who has led the Foundation since its inception—is behind this door.”

  “But . . . the Foundation has existed for five hundred years.”

  She met his gaze. “Once you’re inside, don’t speak. Try not to look her directly in the eye. And don’t think anything disrespectful, if you can help it. Once we’re in her presence, there is nothing I can do to protect you.”

  The doors creaked open, revealing darkness. He could see almost nothing beyond, but he had the sense that the space was incredibly vast.

  “She’s in here?” he whispered.

  “The Queen doesn’t like light.”

  Neeta pulled him forward, into the blackness, and the doors slammed shut behind them. Simon blinked, hi
s eyes straining against the thick shadows. “Neeta . . . what . . .”

  “Shhh.”

  He shuffled his feet. He couldn’t see the floor, but he could feel a puddle of something slimy and viscous. It clung to his boots. He shuddered.

  A wet, snuffling sound broke the silence. At the far end of the cavernous emptiness, a faint, yellowish glow pierced the darkness. Two lights, round and filmy. It was hard to judge their size from this distance, but each, it seemed, was larger than a man. They hung suspended high above him . . . then they flickered, once. Blinked.

  Neeta dropped to one knee. “My Queen. I have brought you the trespasser, as you ordered.” Simon didn’t move. She yanked on his chain and whispered, “Kneel.”

  Simon fell to his knees.

  The thing in front of him shifted its enormous bulk, emitted a low rumble, and leaned forward, lowering its titanic head. A wet, indescribably foul stench rolled over him. Dimly, he could make out the outline of the thing’s face. A writhing mass of rubbery protrusions, like catfish whiskers, covered its mouth. A thick, slimy substance dripped from its jaws, congealing in puddles on the floor. Heavy, scaled ridges sat above its murky yellow eyes.

  His mind wouldn’t accept what was in front of him. It rebelled, froze. Its gears ground to a halt, leaving his body a shuddering, mute shell.

  The enormous eyes blinked. With an odd detachment, Simon noticed a tiny, scarred notch on the ridge above the left eye.

  The thing extended one house-sized hand toward him . . . but it was not a hand, exactly, nor a claw. It resembled a mass of fleshy roots, long fingers branching into smaller and still smaller fingers, the thinnest little more than filaments.

  Neeta tensed. “My Queen. If I may speak, he is not accustomed to your touch. He may die if you—”

  A single finger flicked toward her. It didn’t touch her, but Neeta flinched and stiffened. Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes glazed and her breathing quickened. A dark line of blood trickled from her right ear.

  The tree-thick finger stretched toward Simon, smaller tendrils wiggling at the end. One tendril touched the center of his forehead—the barest brush of moist, clammy flesh. And suddenly, he couldn’t move, couldn’t even draw breath. Every muscle had locked into place. A flash of blinding pain filled his skull.

  For an instant, he felt something vast and cold touching his mind—a labyrinth of thought, ancient as the oceans, remote as the stars. There was a sense of a great, impassive eye peering into him, and his own tiny, simple thoughts laid bare, spread out like the innards of a worm on a dissection table.

  There was a flicker of . . . something. Fear?

  It’s afraid?

  Of me?

  Then the damp tendrils were pulling back, recoiling. He dropped to the floor, shivering, head pounding.

  Silence filled the enormous room.

  Neeta remained on one knee, motionless. A few minutes dragged by as Simon’s shuddering breaths echoed through the emptiness. The huge eyes blinked again, once. “My Queen?” Neeta said at last, her voice small and uncertain.

  A voice filled his head, but it was nothing like a human voice. It was enormous, deep, and rough, like the scrape of tectonic plates grinding together. It vibrated in his sinuses and made his eyes water, filling every corner of his skull: KILL IT.

  He heard Neeta’s intake of breath, saw her shoulders tense, drawing inward . . . then she bowed her head. “Your will is mine.” She seized Simon’s chain, pulled him to his feet, and walked briskly out of the room. The doors groaned ponderously shut behind them.

  Simon stumbled numbly after her, his head ringing. His brain felt like jelly. He was struggling, and failing, to process what had just happened.

  The Queen . . .

  The Queen is a demon.

  No, he thought. Not a demon. Something greater, older, far more terrifying.

  It was the voice.

  He had heard one like it before. It echoed back to him from those black times—the ones he could barely piece together.

  The chalice. The cathedral.

  The Queen was something that, according to the Foundation’s teachings, did not even exist. A thing spoken of only in legends and dusty, forbidden texts.

  The Queen was an Elder God.

  Chapter Twenty

  Simon moved mechanically as they ascended the staircase and emerged into the upper levels of Grunewick. He heard a low, feverish moaning and realized it was coming from his own throat. “Spirit,” he whispered. “Oh, Spirit.”

  Neeta paused, casting a glance over her shoulder. Her eyes were empty and dull, but beneath the dullness there was a deep black void of despair. Absently, she wiped the blood from her right ear, then kept walking. “I’m sorry, Simon. An order from the Queen is absolute.”

  So, he was going to be executed. He felt curiously numb. Empty. “So why didn’t she just kill me herself?”

  “She doesn’t kill humans. Not directly. It’s part of the treaty.”

  “Treaty.” His lips and tongue felt like clay. “With a monster.”

  Neeta stopped in her tracks. Her grip tightened on the chain, and she turned to face him. Her hair, damp with sweat, clung to her face. “You understand nothing.”

  “Help me understand. Why would you serve something like that?”

  Her features sagged. “I have no choice. None of us do.” She didn’t look angry. She looked tired, defeated. “She is more powerful than all of humanity combined.”

  He found himself thinking, suddenly, of the tiny vial in his mother’s hand, the lump of grayish slime. Her secret ingredient. A substance stronger than demon cells, obtained at great personal risk.

  Had she stolen it from the Queen herself?

  He thought of the scar above the Queen’s eye, and the pieces clicked together.

  What had greater regenerative capacity than a demon? An immortal being. Somehow, Veera had gotten her hands on a tiny piece of the Queen’s flesh. With his mother’s ability to travel between worlds, it might have been possible for her to enter the Queen’s chambers and escape instantly afterward.

  Did that mean that Alice was, in some strange way, a relative of the Queen? And Olivia too?

  He pushed the questions aside; there were bigger things at stake now. His mind spun. If he was right, his mother had done the unthinkable: had injured an Elder God. Even if it was no more than a tiny notch. The Queen wasn’t invulnerable.

  “Maybe she isn’t as strong as you think,” he said. “What if she could be overthrown?”

  “Simon . . .” Neeta shook her head slowly. “Even if it were possible, it would be disastrous. Hard as it may be to accept it, the Queen is humanity’s savior. There are worse things than her out there. Far worse. Without her aid, her protection, our world would have long since been devoured by creatures from the Outer Realm.” She stopped. Took a breath. “In the beginning—after the War of Ashes—the Queen intervened often and directly in human affairs. As time went on, she began using human intermediaries. The monarchy became a stand-in—her public face, as it were—and the Foundation became her hand. With each passing century, she has governed less and less, guiding us only when necessary, and the memory of the Foundation’s origin faded. We made sure it faded. There were always those who could not accept the idea of swearing fealty to an Elder God. And here we are, now, in an age of unrivaled prosperity and peace. Our empire stretches across the Continent. And yet, if she withdrew her protection, it would end in a heartbeat. She is all that stands between us and a thousand hells—entities more evil, more hungry than you can begin to imagine. Humanity is a frail, flickering candle in the void. She is our only shield.”

  “Who told you all that? Her?”

  Neeta didn’t reply.

  Simon thought back to that horrifying moment when the Queen had invaded his head. There had been no hint of human sentiment in that mind. “So, what does she get in return for protecting us from the other Elder Gods? Don’t tell me she’s doing it out of the kindness of h
er heart.”

  “You would not understand—”

  “I’m going to die. What difference does it make?”

  A brief silence. “In another five hundred years, she will devour half of humankind, leaving the other half to repopulate the Earth so the cycle can repeat. That is the bargain.”

  “So we’re cattle being fattened for the slaughter.” He wanted to laugh. He wondered if this was what it felt like to go mad. “And you’re all right with this?”

  “The cattle in the pasture eat better and live longer than their wild cousins. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. As we do for them, the Queen does for us. You might say that this is part of a natural order—the cycle of death and rebirth. Better than going extinct.”

  He gave her a long, empty stare.

  “This is not for us to decide, Simon. The world is as it is, and it is beyond our power to change. Do you think I would choose this?” Her voice wobbled like a crystal on the verge of shattering. “We are insects. Ants on an anthill. All we of the Foundation can do is protect humankind from a truth that would drive them mad.”

  Beneath the ashes of despair, a small, hot flame of anger kindled. “That’s easy for you to say, when the devouring won’t happen in your lifetime.”

  She shot him a glare. Then her expression softened. “I won’t ask your forgiveness. Hate me, if it’s any comfort to you.” She kept walking, pulling him along. “If you have any last requests, I’ll do my best to fulfill them. I can’t tell your father or anyone else the truth about what really happened to you, of course. But if you have any message for him, any last words, I will deliver them.”

  Simon swallowed, throat tight. “Tell him I’m sorry.”

  She nodded. “I’ll take you to the girl’s cell, and you can say your goodbyes.”

  A terrible hollowness filled his chest. Was this how it ended? “Neeta. Don’t do this. Please.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You know this is wrong. You have to know.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, Simon.” Her voice was curiously gentle. “It’s what must be.”

  They reached a door with a small, barred window—Alice’s cell. He glimpsed her inside, curled up in the corner. He couldn’t tell if she was even conscious.