The Tower of Bones

by Frank P. Ryan

  Alan thought it prudent to allow the two Aides to feed him spoonful by spoonful, like an ailing child.

  ‘Hey – there’s something else,’ he murmured, between spoonfuls.

  ‘Always, there is something!’

  ‘I’m serious, Milish. It’s important.’

  ‘See how, with all of this excitement, the oraculum flares in your brow. It drains what little strength you possess. You must rest or you can be no use to yourself, or to Kate.’ Milish tried to settle him back on the bier.

  But Alan kept hold of her hand. ‘You’re keeping something back from me.’

  ‘There, on board the Temple Ship – or so the dwarf mage informs me – Mo spoke with her missing brother.’

  ‘Oh, heck!’

  ‘I warn you!’

  ‘Milish – oh, Milish!’ Alan hauled himself upright on the bier, his hand squeezing her fingers without realising he was hurting her.

  ‘Desist!’

  He loosened his grip on her hand, but refused to release her. ‘Not until you tell me more.’

  Milish recounted what little she knew. Mark, if it was to be believed, had entered into some strange communion with the Ship. He knew that Alan was in danger. Then all had witnessed how the Temple Ship had changed shape to become a raptor of enormous grace and power. Milish described how the raptor had soared into the sky before plummeting earthwards, to disappear above the ancient city, to the terror of everybody who saw it. ‘The very ground shook, as if struck by a thunderbolt. None saw the Ship return. When we awoke at daybreak it had returned – and you, unconscious but otherwise unharmed, were lying on the shore.’

  Alan dragged his hands down over his face. He recalled Mark’s voice entering his mind at the very moment he had anticipated death. And now he heard that Mark had been somehow been involved with the Ship. This was the most incredible news. There was no way he could lie here in the cot while such amazing things were happening around him. He threw off the light sheet, grimacing at the nausea that swept over him as he slid his legs out onto the sandy floor.

  He also recalled what he had been about to explain to Milish.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said – when you talked about the Kyra as we were getting ready to board the skiff.’

  She sighed, but met his eyes.

  ‘Milish – I need to talk to the Kyra.’

  At the water’s edge, he stared out at the raptor shape that hovered as if suspended on the inshore winds above the estuary. Its feathers were an opalescent pearly white, the whole being shimmering as if composed of nascent energy that was constantly in a state of flux.

  ‘Wow!’

  Still fretful at his being out of bed, Milish inhaled through dilated nostrils.

  Alan studied every detail of the enormous being, marvelling at the claws adorning the raptor’s feet, now curled into sleeping grapnels, each claw large enough to carry an entire boat. He assumed that one of those claws had deposited him on the shore. Across the harbour thousands of the Carfonese seemed to share his awe. They were setting out in all manner of boats to get a closer look at it, the most intrepid of them being kept from touching it by a defensive ring of Shee.

  Milish pressed him. ‘Now you’ve seen it, you must return to your rest.’

  He lifted his gaze to stare into the raptor’s eyes, which were all-black, glimmering with a matrix of silvery motes and arabesques.

  ‘Then it’s true! That’s Mark’s crystal matrix.’

  There was so much he still didn’t understand, far too much to absorb at once. Alan had to tear his gaze away to look at the flotilla of warships that had gathered in the estuary since he had been ferried across it by the boat of nuns.

  ‘The fleet of the Shee?’

  ‘They’re getting ready for war,’ Milish confirmed. ‘Their army already numbers tens of thousands. The fleet includes transports so they can sail eastwards, to accompany your reckless adventure.’

  He marvelled: ‘All this hustle and bustle in two days – while I’ve been out of it, contributing nothing! It’s unbelievable – like I’d been gone for a month!’

  A deep and growling voice sounded from behind them. ‘My friend – Mage Lord – it is good to see you on your feet!’

  Alan embraced Qwenqwo, though the powerful hug of his friend caused him to totter on his unsteady legs.

  ‘I am, naturally, impatient to hear everything you discovered – though the Ambassador will kill me if I do not wait for a week.’

  Alan laughed. ‘Tonight I promise a full explanation. All that I saw and heard. We’ll knock heads together – see what we can make of things.’

  ‘You look so gaunt – maybe the Ambassador is right. Perhaps a few days rest might be prudent?’

  ‘I’ll have plenty of time to rest during the journey. We can’t afford to wait any longer. We must call together a council of war.’

  Alan turned back to Milish. ‘I’m also going to need your help. I must speak to Ainé – and Bétaald …’

  ‘Speak then.’

  Alan span around, startled, to find himself gazing up into the eyes of the young Kyra.

  He hesitated, his voice falling to a murmur. ‘I do need to talk with you – and Bétaald. But not now – not here.’

  ‘If it is to insist we travel immediately, we are not yet ready. We must make preparations, discuss objectives and tactics. You called for a council and a council you will have.’

  ‘It isn’t that.’ Alan found it difficult to put into words what he wanted to say, particularly in the absence of Bétaald. ‘I really need to talk to you, on your own.’

  Milish tensed, a plea for caution in her eyes, then turned on her heel and strode a short distance away in the company of Qwenqwo. When satisfied that he and the Kyra were alone, Alan spoke softly:

  ‘Milish has explained to me that there may have been a problem with the transfer of experience from your mother-sister. She has also told me that this is very important to you.’

  She gazed back evenly at him, but there was a blanking of expression in those pellucid blue eyes.

  ‘I respect your privacy and apologise if I am trespassing on what may be deeply personal. But I really have to tell you this: I think it’s possible that I may be carrying the memories of your mother-sister.’

  The shock of his words was plain in her posture and in her face. He saw the reaction in the oraculum in her brow – the sudden precipitous increase in her heartbeat. She didn’t need to speak for him to know her thoughts. He read it in the shudder that passed through the frame of the young giantess, even as she averted her face.

  Blasphemy!

  Cat and Mouse

  Like the mouse whose scent the spidersweb was said to mimic, Kate darted from shadow to shadow, scurrying barefoot through a frightening landscape of ancient warfare, with colossal ruins poking like tombstones out of the mists of the false dawn. Sometimes, all too mouselike, she had to force herself to pass through labyrinths of caves and hidden passageways underground. Panting for breath, unable to suppress the rising terror in her throat, she skulked in crevices and wept as the memories rose, unwanted, into her mind. The memories of another time she had felt similarly hunted, on that murderous day when Sister Marie Therèse had saved her by hiding her in a pit in the vegetable garden – the day when Mammy and Daddy and Billy …

  Dear God, preserve me! She screwed up her eyes and pressed her hands tight over her temples. She just didn’t want to think about that. She just didn’t want the bad memories to come back.

  Granny Dew had done something to her. With trembling fingers she reached up and touched her brow.

  ‘Owww!’

  A bolt of pain racked her skull and she had to jerk her fingers away, cradling her hand as it went into a crab-like spasm. It felt as if she had suffered a tremendous electric shock.

  What did you do to me, Granny Dew?

  She couldn’t help but recall Alan, how confused he had felt when Granny Dew had put that ruby triangle into his brow. Wh
at on Earth has she done to me?

  The trouble was, as she now curled her body into a frightened ball, it had absolutely nothing to do with Earth. What it had to do with was … was magic. Magic at a really powerful level, a dangerous level, that went beyond any human understanding.

  Why me? What am I really doing here?

  The mountain, Slievenamon – that had something to do with it. All her life she had known that Slievenamon was a magic mountain. But that had only been the local legend. Nobody thought it was truly magical. For that matter, what did she really know about magic, even if she had lived in its shadow all her life? Alan had experienced this bewilderment too. She had seen the reaction in him. But Alan was different from her. He had a darkness all of his own. She had seen that darkness in him the day they had first met, when he had refused to back down before the fury of the swans. Something in Alan had welcomed the danger. Something that was desperately keen to fight back. And Mark too – there had been another kind of darkness there, for all of his joking. And Mo! Oh Mo – sure you were the strangest of us all, collecting your birds’ skulls and amber and crystals – what Mark called your ‘weirdiana’! Now that Kate knew that magic really existed, wasn’t there something about her friend, Mo, that seemed to be the very essence of magic, all wrapped up within the secret world of her strange little self? But not me, she thought. Not Kate Shaunessy, the doctor’s daughter from Clonmel.

  When she was twelve, and in the third-year class with the nuns, Maire Ni Houlihan had put jam in her hair and made her cry. Her nanny, Bridey, had washed her hair and brushed out the tangles, and given her a hug. Bridey had reassured her: ‘Sure the quare lumpy crayture is only jealous a’ ye, with yeer emerald eyes and yeer lovely red locks! Won’t all the boys be fancyin’ ye and none will take so much as a peek at her!’

  And she had stared at herself that night in Mammy’s mirror – the big glass on the bedroom dressing table – and she had blushed to look into her own green eyes and hold bunches of her thick mane of auburn hair. She hadn’t believed Bridey’s words. Bridey loved her and would say anything to please her. I’m just ordinary – bog standard, as Uncle Fergal would say about a thing that irked him. Bog standard Kate Shaunessy! Magic would never come looking for her – sure it wouldn’t!

  Would it?

  But still there was the bag of seeds that Granny Dew had placed in her hand. And she had seen how the acorn had grown into a tree in the jaws of the Tower. And hadn’t she kept hold of the same bag all the time she’d been running, the bag she now hugged against her chest, feeling its prickly grassy feel against her skin as she breathed fast and shallow, already exhausted from running. And this was different from that other time in the vegetable pit in the African mission. She couldn’t hope to skulk and hide until help arrived. Help would not be forthcoming.

  You’re going to have to go back out there and run.

  She ran on feet that were lacerated and sore through what appeared to be another ancient graveyard of rusting metal in the shape of gigantic armour, with what must once have been titanic swords and shields. She hid among skeletons – the ribcages and pelvic bones of giants. The sense of death and horror filled all her senses and oppressed her mind. She tried not to scream at the clammy feel of cobwebs on her face. Old cobwebs as thick as fishing nets, made by spiders that must have been as big as birds, judging from the husks of their discarded skins still clinging to the monstrous bones like death’s own jewels.

  Let me go! Get away from me!

  Tearing herself free she was running again, colliding into things, tripping and falling, rising again, twisting and turning, then running again, always running, chasing the shadows among the clefts and tunnels, the breath in her lungs burning like flame. In a stinking hollow something fat as a tennis ball landed on her face, and a feeler entered her screaming mouth. She ripped it away, spat its green pussy blood off her lips, gagging at the briny taste.

  Stop screaming, you idiot!

  Silently now, since she didn’t dare to scream, she fought off more creepy things, tearing their legs out of her hair, ripping the crawling feel of them out of her face.

  Running … running, on and on. Ignoring the new scratches and bruises she rose again and again, stumbling, falling, rising, over and over, so many times she had long lost count, and still she was running.

  ‘Oh, Bridey – I can’t go on!’

  There was such a stitch in her side, she had no option other than to stop. She fell onto her haunches, unable to take another step, then collapsed onto her hands and knees, unable even to walk, or even to creep. Cramps racked every muscle.

  ‘Where in heaven’s name am I?’

  Lost was the answer. Lost amongst the tangled skeletons of trees and all manner of growths, twisted and deformed by the vapours that descended and coiled down from the Tower. Thorny tangles, leafless and tormented, that snagged and tore at her flesh, things of mildew and rot that painted foul-smelling decay all over her.

  ‘Try to think … I must think!’

  But no clear thought would come.

  Her voice was a shaky whisper. ‘Granny Dew – are you there?’

  No reply

  ‘If you’re there, answer me! Why won’t you answer me?’

  Again there was no reply, though the growling whispers amongst the thorns and tangles seemed to take heart, as if creeping closer.

  A great roar, as loud as thunder, shook the ground and abruptly the tangles were aglow with a blood-red light.

  ‘Oh no!’

  In the distance, the Beast appeared to have freed its jaws. Kate could hear faint but angry shouts and shrieks that meant the succubi were pouring out of the gaping portal, hunting her. Then she heard the howling. It sounded like a wolf. And it came from much closer than the Tower.

  ‘God help me!’

  She was running again, her legs thrusting her onwards with a will of their own, her terrified mind willing them on through the husks of trees and thorn bushes, her spidersweb coverings torn to shreds.

  Anathema and Plot

  A dank mist hung in the evening air, coalescing as glistening droplets in the hair of the senior Shee and Olhyiu who were gathering about the bonfire on the shore. Taking his place among them Alan couldn’t help but feel humiliated. It wasn’t just the recent encounter with the young Kyra. It was everything. In spite of all his gung-ho determination the Tyrant had easily outfoxed him – he had so outmanoeuvred Alan that the golden robot had almost destroyed him and his mission to rescue Kate. That was him: Alan Duval, stupidly naive! He had refused to listen to the advice of those who had tried to warn him – Milish, Qwenqwo, the High-Council-in-Exile, and most particularly poor Sister Hocht. He had allowed himself to be carried away with his own sense of righteousness. Had it not been for Mark – and he didn’t even begin to understand how Mark had rescued him – the whole thing would have ended there, and with it any hope he might have had of saving Kate and avenging the murders of Mom and Dad.

  ‘How could I have been so brainless?’ He slapped his own brow in a mixture of frustration and humiliation.

  The heavy arm of Qwenqwo Cuatzel fell around his shoulders and gripped him in a clasp of iron. ‘A toast – to dispel the gloom and worry.’

  Qwenqwo had brought a full flagon of liquor to the gathering. Alan had no idea where the dwarf mage found such a ready supply, though he suspected the Olhyiu, who revered the dwarf mage and loved his storytelling. He accepted the flagon, holding its round-bellied bulk in his two hands and raising the neck to his lips to take a measured swig. But he doubted that any simple remedy would assuage his sense of failure.

  ‘What must Kate be suffering!’

  ‘Then drink all the deeper. Let us curse the Great Witch together.’

  Even the single swig of the liquor had gone to Alan’s head. Eschewing a second swig he passed the heavy flagon back. ‘I don’t know if she can hold out any longer in that monstrous place. I’ve tried again and again to communicate with her through the oraculum but I c
an’t get a response.’

  The dwarf mage, who looked close to being tipsy already, lifted the flagon to his own lips and took an almighty swig, dribbling droplets into his hoary red beard where they glistened like gems of amber.

  ‘C’mon, Qwenqwo! Don’t get too drunk on me. We’re going to need our wits about us.’

  ‘Merry I may be already – and a good deal merrier I aspire to become this miserable night!’ Qwenqwo, sitting cross-legged beside Alan, rapped a knuckle on the flask’s fat belly, eliciting a fullness that demanded to sound more hollow. ‘To war, and the planning of it – why there’s nothing more elevating to a Fir Bolg’s heart! So, less of the womanish worries and drink a warrior’s potion – such, if you will but share it with me, will clear those furrows from your brow. Sup – and let friendship banish woe!’

  ‘Your heart would melt permafrost,’ Alan smiled wanly.

  ‘What is this permafrost – that I might melt it all the quicker?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Alan took a second, larger, sip and felt it burn, like a punishing gall, at the back of his throat. At his companion’s grunt of derision, he took a third swig, felt the flame expand within his chest. What would he do without the indomitable courage, and company, of Qwenqwo! But no amount of simple cheer could dispel the memory that he had failed to confront the Fáil, and with that failure his plans, and hopes for Kate, were compromised.

  He needed to understand what he had experienced in that final moment, when he had been sure that his end had come.

  I saw them – I saw Mom and Dad!

  He recalled how they had put their arms around him. How they had pointed to something beautiful – a vision, like an ocean of stars. Were they trying to help him? But if so, what did it mean?

  By Alan’s side, Qwenqwo emitted an almighty belch before roaring with laughter at some private joke, his arm crushing Alan’s shoulder all the more.

  It seemed to Alan that even if he understood little of what had happened in the ancient city there was something important that he needed to do here and now. ‘Stay here, Qwenqwo. Wait for me – I’ll be back.’ He made his way through the gathering crowds around the bonfire to discover Milish on the periphery of the meeting, in the company of Mo and Kehloke, the wife of the Olhyiu chief, Siam. Alan took Milish aside.