The Tower of Bones

by Frank P. Ryan

  The wolves will be coming after me …

  When she jerked herself into a fully sitting-up position it provoked such a lancinating pain in her head that she groaned aloud. Sand blew over her face as she lifted her hands up and squeezed her head. Another throb of pain made her groan even louder. She flopped over onto her side, dragging her legs free, then inched herself over so she could haul herself onto her knees. Every small manoeuvre had to be carefully planned in advance.

  Time for a breather – try to take stock.

  Another fierce stab of pain in her head. Damn – she had forgotten the crystal embedded in her brow. With the slightest movement it felt as if the thing was boring itself into her brain.

  She knelt there for several moments, holding onto her head and panting through gritted teeth.

  ‘Shit!’

  Ordinarily she didn’t like to swear. It wasn’t ladylike. Bridey and Uncle Fergal had taught her not to swear – although both of them were known to mutter ‘shit!’ when it suited them.

  ‘Shit!’ Kate muttered again.

  Then she swallowed, feeling guilty, while holding onto her head with both her hands and peering very carefully about herself. She could see no other living soul – no succubi, or Garg, or wolf. Her terror eased.

  A step at a time. That sounded like a good idea. Don’t even bother to try to get on your feet just yet. Just think before you try to move.

  Okay – so was this really happening? Was she really here, on some island in a river, kneeling among the rocks and sand? It looked real enough – it felt excruciatingly real. How had she come to be here? A wolf, an enormous bedraggled creature who had the soul spirit of a man, had brought her here. She hadn’t been in a position to give him directions at the time. It was Granny Dew who had told the wolf-man what to do. It sounded utterly mad when you examined it like that. It made her wonder if she really was dreaming after all. But then if she was dreaming, it meant she was still back there, in that coffincell, with the vile creature Faltana ready to torment her …

  Terror of Faltana made Kate attempt once more to get onto her feet. She tottered, trying for balance for a few seconds before slumping onto one knee. It wasn’t just the agony in her head. With the slightest movement pain racked every joint.

  Well, one thing was certain. If Faltana was nearby, with her Gargs and wolves, there was no question of Kate running. She just couldn’t run any more.

  A breeze ruffled the wreck of her hair. Kate rubbed at her eyelids to try to clear them, then blinked two or three times, provoking tears of frustration.

  I’ve just got to get out of here!

  But where was here?

  Panting from another spasm of pain in her brow she stared up into a sky full of wheeling birds. Dark-winged shapes, she hadn’t a clue what sort they were, other than seabirds. But it meant that she must be somewhere close to the sea. Struggling to her feet, physically supporting her upper body by pressing her hands against her trembling thighs, she panted away, her teeth tightly clenched within her grimacing mouth, all the while looking around at the geography of the island. It was largely rock and sand. A craggy ellipse, one edge – the seawards side, judging from the direction of the river current – raised into a bluff about a hundred feet above the stream. It wasn’t much of a sanctuary, seeming terribly exposed with little or no cover where she could hide.

  Tears, the real sort this time, moistened her eyes.

  The breeze gusted again, spraying sand over her exposed skin. When she sniffed back the tears there was the smell of brine, which told her that the sea was close. Her sanctuary was set in a river so big and wide it must be an estuary near to the sea.

  Turning through a complete circle Kate saw that the island was as barren of vegetation as it was deserted. Why had the wolf-man brought her here? Had he really been carrying out Granny Dew’s instructions? And if so, why had Granny Dew directed her to this desolate place?

  Slowly, stiffly, she began to search the island. After an hour or two of meandering exploration she confirmed that her first impressions had been pretty accurate. There was no sign of life here other than the creepy-crawlies that left trails in the white sand and the birds that wheeled and screeched overhead. Finding some protection from the gusting wind in the lee of some rocks, she slumped down onto her bottom and picked at the cobwebs over her knees. The shock of her situation was only slowly registering, making room for this new anxiety in a heart already congested with fears. Lifting her shaky fingers she brushed their tips against the object in her brow. A smooth, glassy surface, definitely a crystal. And the shape was without doubt a triangle.

  An oraculum just like Alan’s …

  A shockwave, like electricity, made her probing fingers recoil. The thing just didn’t feel natural at all.

  She used the hands-on-knees trick to get back onto her tottery legs, then stumbled on, directionless, trying to persuade herself that there just had to be something special about this island, but hardly knowing what she might even be looking for. When she tripped and tumbled down the slope of a sand dune, the flare of pain in every limb and joint made her curl herself into a ball, rolling all the way down to the bottom of the slope with her eyes clenched shut. She waited for the pain to ebb before opening her eyes again to discover that she was at the entrance to a den.

  It was the strangest den Kate had ever seen. The entrance was made out of a whale’s jawbones. The spars supporting the roof were probably ribs. These had been rigged into the rough shape of an arch, woven with pieces of driftwood, all knotted together with sun-bleached straw. Within the gloom inside she glimpsed bright reflections. If she half closed her matted eyelids she could imagine shapes lurking inside, like hunchbacked gnomes, or the whirl of sea or wind. Creeping closer she stuck her head within the jawbones. All she could make out was a jumble, but a very sparkly jumble of shiny things, as if the owner of the den might have made a collection from what been brought up by the tide onto the nearby beach.

  It was the only cover Kate had found and she crawled further in to investigate. She stared in curiosity at sharks’ teeth, turtle shell-cases and the white skeletons of unknown sea creatures. A flash of memory – back in Clonmel Mo had collected things like this. Crystals, amber with insects embedded in it, the skulls of birds – stuff that Mark had called her ‘weirdiana’. Kate gazed with curiosity at shells and carapaces the delicate colours and shades of jade or ivory, or long stringy spikes of mauve and gold that were arranged into the embroidery of what could have been a rather crude nest, and tucked in among them, like eggs, were rounded stones, their surfaces patterned by spirals and whorls or encrusted by twisty-tangled shapes. She found fragments of wood that appeared to be fossils, like the tree trunk she had slept on, or discs of cork from long-lost fishing nets, so sculpted by the sea and elements they might have been beads from the necklaces of giants. This treasure trove was piled into a heap on a bed of seaweed, the tendrils of which had been bleached to a downy blonde by the sun. There was the impression the tendrils had been carefully arrayed, like the hair of a medusa.

  It was pleasantly cool and sheltered here, out of the sun and wind. And the discovery of the den was so unexpected Kate just sat in the middle of it and stared around herself, open-mouthed.

  She picked up a spiral shell, as crimson as a sunset. She brushed the texture of one of the rounded stones against her cheek. She brought it to her nostrils to smell the old, magical smell of the ocean. Edging deeper into the den she was shocked to discover a mound of skulls. Her heart pattering with surprise, she probed among them to see that they included what had obviously been fish or turtles, but there were others she didn’t recognise at all, vaguely human-like, but with wafer thin plates of bone and higher brows – thankfully not really human at all.

  The skulls intrigued her. They appeared to be deliberately arranged, fitted one into another, to make the shape of a tower.

  It occurred to Kate that she should be frightened by this bizarre den, but in fact she felt curiously
comfortable here, like a small bird that had fallen out of its nest and found its way into a protected nook. A nagging voice inside her head suggested that she might be deluding herself – that life didn’t offer comfortable refuges for little ones lost. But she made no effort to leave the den, sitting slightly dazed amidst the bones and the treasure, her hands periodically touching her brow, uncertain what to do next.

  ‘Yeeow!’

  She held her breath at a loud clatter from outside. A globular eye the size and colour of a kumquat was peering in at her from one edge of the entrance. The orange globe of the pupil was cut into two by a jagged black crescent like the eye of a crocodile. While she stared back at it, trembling with fright, it blinked. But it wasn’t an ordinary blink. Some white eggshell-like thing closed over it sideways, then it opened again and the eye peered in at her once more.

  Merciful mother!

  Kate sat utterly still.

  The eye withdrew. She heard a running clatter – it sounded horribly like claws on rock – and then there was a loud thud that shook the interior of the den and set all of the glittery things a-jingling and a-jangling. Then the eye appeared at the opposite side.

  Kate clenched her eyes shut.

  When she opened them again, the eye was still there – or more likely the creature’s other eye, since it had clearly crossed over from one side of the entrance to the other as if needing to check her out in one eye after the other, the way a blackbird would twitch its head from side to side to get a better fix.

  ‘Help – please go away!’

  The peering eye performed that strange membranous blink she had seen in television programmes about raptor birds, and she heard a perfect echo of her own words, Help – please go away!

  ‘Shoo! Get lost!’

  Shoo! Get lost! The echo returned, with exactly the same pitch as her quavering voice, yet also squawky.

  ‘Shoo – shoo! Clear off – you kumquat-eyed parrot!’

  Clear off – kumquat! Kumquat-eyed, kumquat parrot!

  Was the creature mocking her? Kate wiped her sweating face with a cobwebby sleeve. She stared about herself at the den full of glittery things. Her situation was both terrifying and ridiculous at the same time. There was a renewed agony in the centre of her brow. She had forgotten about the oraculum.

  The copycat mockery rose to a high-pitched screech:

  Shoo – shoo! Kumquat parrot!

  She clapped her hands over her ears as, all of a sudden, her fears discharged through the triangle in an almighty explosion that took the roof off the den, scattering the collection of shells and bones.

  Kate sat at the epicentre of the resultant chaos, blinking her eyes back open, her coverings of cobwebs reduced to rags.

  The Red Star

  Even as he hurried forward, taking the steps to the foredeck two at a time, Alan noticed that the chill had worsened. It was as if all the natural warmth had been sucked out of the air to be replaced by an icy cold. Even the gentle rolling of the Ship had worsened to a disturbed heaving. He found Siam and the Ainé in a huddle of conversation before the prow. The cold was even more biting here. A dank dew had condensed over the features of the burly Olhyiu chief and the giant woman, matting their hair to their scalps.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘A storm approaches. The strangest storm you ever witnessed!’ Siam’s dark eyes were wide and liquidly glinting in the reflection of the nearby oil-lamp that shook and rattled on its hook on the foremast.

  ‘Ainé?’

  ‘It may be no more than a natural turn of the weather,’ the Kyra responded, shaking her head.

  But Siam would have none of it. He was unable to stand still, his restless hands twisting and squeezing the battered pilgrim’s hat he normally wore. Standing with his legs widely spaced for balance on a deck that had grown increasingly unsteady he growled: ‘Do you landlubbers imagine that I, Siam, do not know the sea? I who have sailed it even in my mother’s womb. Look about you. An agitation has taken hold of the elements. But this is no nor’easterly blow such as might carry down the cold of the Whitestar Mountains. A nor’easterly is heralded by thunderheads. You witness no such portents. Look! See the sky – is it not starry and bright above us? Yet feel the very air, which harbours a different message.’

  Siam was right. The night sky was pellucid and calm, with starry constellations however alien to a son of Earth twinkling and visible. Alan found himself rubbing at the backs of his hands, where the tiny hairs were freezing into minuscule needles of ice.

  Several Aides approached, moving noiselessly over the shadowed deck, apparently at some unseen signal from the Kyra. Ainé’s order was a simple one. ‘Some heated grog for all. Something calculated to lift the spirits.’

  ‘It will take more than a swig of mulled ale to lift my spirits,’ snorted Siam. ‘I fear a tempest that approaches without cloud or change of wind. This is no normal storm. I fear an enchantment.’

  Siam’s words shook Alan, reminding him of his conversation with Mark. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you both about,’ Alan spoke softly, confining his words to the two leaders. He explained his conversation with Mark, going on to tell them about Mark’s plans for the Temple Ship.

  ‘This is madness heaped on madness!’ Siam exclaimed. ‘What is to become of the sailors who presently man and serve her?’

  ‘I didn’t think to ask him. But I guess that he expects everybody to abandon ship when we move onto land.’ Alan blew into his cupped hands to warm them. ‘What do you think about this, Ainé?’

  ‘What is the nature of this ghost you speak of?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s become of Mark any more.’

  ‘But surely you attempted to dissuade him?’

  ‘Of course I did. And I shouldn’t really call him a ghost. At the very least, his soul spirit is alive. I need to talk with Qwenqwo about this.’

  ‘Aye – that you do!’

  As if responding to the mention of his name, the dwarf mage joined their company in the prow, his pupils somewhat dilated and his step a little unsteady from ale. Alan nodded in greeting to Qwenqwo. ‘Then you heard what I’ve been telling Siam and Ainé about Mark?’

  The dwarf mage scowled. ‘I did.’

  ‘I tried to talk him out of his idea. But he wasn’t of a mind to listen. He might be more prepared to listen to you.’

  ‘But I can’t speak to a soul spirit – my runestone is not capable of this.’

  Alan shook his head. ‘I think I understand what he might be going through. He wants his life back.’

  ‘But what of everybody else – what of Mo, Kate?’

  ‘We all owe him everything. Yet we live and he doesn’t. We can hardly imagine what he’s going through.’ He hesitated, thinking carefully about Mark’s words. ‘I don’t know if what he’s thinking is even possible.’

  The Kyra took several seconds to consider the situation. ‘Your friend Mark brought about the transformation of the Temple Ship to the raptor form that entered Dromenon to save you. Then, once more, he brought about the transformation that made it thus.’ Her eyes swept over the heaving deck around them. ‘Whatever manner of being he has become, we know that he is immensely powerful when one with the Ship. Does he not carry the oraculum of the Third Power in his brow? Whether we agree with him or we don’t, if he finds a way to leave this world there will be nothing we can do to stop him. Our best course would be one of cooperation. We should accept his offer of assistance to the point of his departure. We would still have the rest of the expeditionary fleet.’

  Siam slapped his hat against the rail. But like Alan, he knew the Kyra was right. There was no way any of them could oppose Mark, if he remained determined.

  Alan accepted a mug of spiced ale from the returning Aides, folding his hands about its warming surface. He sipped at the refreshing drink, recalling the desperation of his friend. But desperation made for poor logic.

  Turkeya’s voice fell onto the decks from the crow’s nest. �
�Harken – the mist!’

  Alan peered over the rail at a rising mist that was creeping up out of the ocean. It appeared to be unnaturally drawn to the Ship. Qwenqwo’s tangled eyebrows lifted. ‘I awoke in my bed with the premonition that an evil had fallen upon the Ship. When I looked out of my porthole it was as if the sea was writhing in agony even before I felt the first draught of icy cold on my face.’

  Alan glanced at the Kyra, noticing the rapid pulsation in the oraculum in her brow. ‘What do you make of it, Ainé?’

  Ainé’s leonine face wrinkled in a frown. ‘We must take care not to allow ourselves to be distracted by every whim of the weather.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ growled Qwenqwo. ‘I sense the presence of malice.’

  ‘What about you, Siam?’

  ‘I agree with the dwarf mage. There is danger here. A malengin, I fear, though of a kind I do not recognise. We appear to be the focus of a powerful malice.’

  At the same moment Qwenqwo brought the tankard from his mouth and pointed, ‘Above you – in the sails!’

  Alan followed the dwarf mage’s gaze up into the rigging that thrummed and hissed about the three great masts with their billowing sails. Qwenqwo was right. Whatever cold and mist they were experiencing on the open deck was multiplied tenfold above them in the sails. The lines and rigging were shrouded by freezing vapour, and its chilly presence was beading the ratlines. The cold seemed to intensify from moment to moment. Alan heard crackling sounds from overhead. He stared up into the foresail, amazed to see waves of frost creeping over the canvas and rigging.

  Even the sea appeared to churn with resentment, its waters violent and foaming angrily over the prow, where the spray now rose a good thirty feet into the air.

  Siam growled: ‘Look higher – to the very sky!’