The Tower of Bones

by Frank P. Ryan

  Alan nodded to the Kyra: ‘The fleet?’

  ‘I have already recalled it.’

  Alan and Ainé were joined on the afterdeck by Mo, in the protective company of Milish, and by Siam, with his arm on Turkeya’s shoulder. Others among the surviving Shee and Olhyiu were emerging all over the wreck, eyes wide, staring at sea and sky, and the changes of healing amid so much ruin. Nobody was inclined to cheer. All they could do was to observe the changes with a mixture of relief and awe. Alan sensed a great sigh, as if the very heart of the Ship was also recovering from beyond its limits of endurance. Then the decks trembled with another massive jolt of change. The entire Ship was bathed in the eerie glow he recalled from Isscan. It seemed to bend out of shape, as if the great masts and the massive superstructure were as pliable as putty – its restoration so strange and certain that even when you witnessed it happening right in front of your eyes it was all the more magical.

  The jerk of the deck rocked him on his unsteady legs and caused him to take hold of the rail.

  His eyes lifted to where the forward mast had resurrected itself from the shattered stump. Though still grimed with snow and ice a sail was starting to billow, catching the powerful breezes that fanned his hair.

  Making A Stand

  ‘I don’t even pretend to be brave,’ Kate pleaded as the first pale wash of dawn broke over a transformed island.

  ‘Driftwood knows …’

  They were sitting side by side, or more accurately she was sitting with her legs crossed and the dragon was slouched, somewhat alligator-style, on top of the bluff that overlooked the wide river, as the eastern horizon came pinkly alive. Kate peered down at the water, a hundred feet below them.

  ‘It’s true. I’m a complete coward.’

  She blinked furiously at the thought of actually fighting with wolves and succubi; and as to the Witch herself! – if Driftwood was relying on her help to face all that, he was going to be disappointed.

  ‘When girl-thing discovers memories inside Driftwood’s mind, Driftwood also discovers truth in girl-thing’s mind.’

  Kate shook her head. He really didn’t understand her at all. When it came to actual fighting, she really was a scaredy-cat. If she had any resilience at all, it was nothing more than obstinacy. Bridey used to tell her if there was an Olympic category of pig-headedness she would have won a gold for Ireland. And this was a situation where pig-headedness was unlikely to help. Neither dragon nor girl had managed to get a wink of sleep all night, though for patently different reasons. Kate made no pretence of the fact she was terrified. All through the hours of darkness she had heard the howling of the approaching wolves. Driftwood had been encouraging her to let loose her powers, as if his sole concern was to greet the dawn with a verdant island. And now, gazing about them from the rise of the bluff, it looked like his wish had been granted.

  Shafts of sunlight glowed between the branches of trees along the eastern horizon. Washes of cream and blue and pink and orange were diffusing into the horizon, already bright enough to be uncomfortable when she stared at them unblinkingly. The previously barren landscape was now exuberant. She could smell the marshes, and the oases of tough grasses that carpeted the ground under palm trees, and right there in the distance, where she had slept on bare rock that first exhausted night, a small wood of oaks was sprouting. Brightly coloured dragonflies and damselflies fluttered between the branches of gum trees on the slopes leading to the bluff. Birds twittered in the branches, and bees and other insects buzzed and dived among the profusion of flowers. The dragon’s island preened and buzzed with life.

  ‘Kate, girl-thing, is hungry?’

  Kate forgot her delight at the fecundity of the island as the fear returned, with a savage suddenness. ‘Stop calling me that. Just Kate.’

  ‘For Kate Driftwood catches lovely fish – yum yum?’

  ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. My stomach is in knots.’

  And besides, she would have fainted outright if he took off on those liberating wings and left her here all alone.

  ‘Driftwood would know secrets of Kate – Greeneyes.’

  ‘Kate – just Kate!’

  ‘Secrets of how Kate came to island. How Kate’s power came?’

  ‘I’m too jittery to chat.’ Butterflies of panic fluttered in her gut. Her heart was missing beats like mad. ‘And it’s a … a twisty-turny story.’

  ‘Driftwood likes twisty-turny stories.’

  He seemed perfectly happy just to talk even as those dreadful things were closing in around them. But she started to tell him her story anyway. It helped to take her mind off things, just prattling on, pretending to be calm in this strange company, and with monsters prowling all around her. She told him how she had met her friends, Alan – the boy she now loved – and Mark, and his adoptive sister, Mo, back in Clonmel.

  ‘What is Clonmel?’

  ‘My home town. The place where I was born. A place of streets and houses where people live.’

  ‘Kate’s island!’

  She hesitated. ‘I suppose so.’

  With a start, Kate realised something that had been slowly dawning on her for a day or two. The dragon was growing bigger from day to day. And he didn’t talk about shiny things. He was maturing mentally. She shook her head, her sleep-deprived mind unable to grasp what was really going on.

  ‘Kate will continue her story?’

  Now she was talking, she didn’t know how to stop. She described the murder of her parents. How she later discovered that their deaths were part of a pattern, along with the deaths of Alan’s parents, and the presumed death of the parents of Mark and Mo. This reminder caused Kate’s head to fall. She felt a cold contraction about her heart. She talked about the symbol Mark and Mo had seen on the twisted cross of Grimstone, Mark and Mo’s adoptive father, and how Alan’s grandfather, Padraig, had shown them the same vile symbol on the hilt of the sword of Feimhin, where it had lain for thousands of years in the barrow grave of the fearsome warrior-prince. Like the ordinary symbol for infinity with an extra loop – the triple infinity. A symbol they had come across once more in this world, where it turned out to be the mark of the Tyrant. She told him how they had gathered the waters of the three sister rivers, the Nore, Suir and Barrow, to pass through the gate on the summit of the mountain, Slievenamon. Through that gate they had escaped from danger on Earth to arrive into this alien world.

  ‘Show Driftwood!’

  ‘Show you what?’

  The dragon pointed a single talon at the oraculum in her brow.

  A wolf howled nearby. Kate sprang to her feet. She peered across the island at the far shore where slinky shapes had appeared at the lapping edges of the wide river channel.

  ‘Kate – must show!’

  She ignored the dragon. She couldn’t think of anything other than the wolves. ‘Maybe they won’t cross the water.’

  ‘Wolves not matter.’

  ‘Not to you, maybe! You can fly away. But I can’t.’

  ‘Kate – Greeneyes!’ The dragon pressed her. ‘Must not show fear.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  The dragon reached out with a claw and brushed the back of it against Kate’s right cheek, under which her jaw muscles were clenched. She couldn’t help but stare at the prowling, ravening shadows, searching among them for any sign of the wolf-man that had helped her. The sun was in her eyes, a lovely cool sun of morning, accompanied by the sweet scent of blossoms opening their fists of petals to it – sights and scents that would have been welcome in any other circumstances, but now she had to squint under the shadow of her arched hands to focus on a huge male, whose head moved from side to side, sniffing the air. It wasn’t her friendly wolf. She knew that the moment his gaze found her. His jaws gaped to show yellow fangs, slavering with anticipation. He was staring across the water, looking right at her, eye to eye. Kate sensed the feral cunning in those unblinking eyes. And beyond the animal spirit she also sensed an even more frightening malice.

 
; ‘The Witch is here. The wolves are her eyes.’

  ‘Kate – show Driftwood. Driftwood must know. Kate must explain this Old One who gives her power.’

  ‘I can’t think about things like that. We have to run. We have to escape. Help me! The Witch – she’ll get me. She’ll take me back to the Tower. You have no idea what she will do to me.’

  The dragon took her hand in his paw. He squatted back on his haunches, so tall that Kate’s arm was up-stretched. ‘Kate must listen to Driftwood. Kate show Driftwood how it works, this oraculum thing.’

  The leader of the wolves had taken several steps into the river. All the while its eyes held hers. Sweat had broken out over Kate’s body. She tried to break free of Driftwood’s paw so she could run. She moaned aloud, finding it impossible to break free from him. ‘Are you out of your mind? We have to run.’

  However pig-headed Kate might be, there was still greater stubbornness in the dragon. His enormous eyes bored into hers. ‘Not run. Not show fear!’

  ‘Let me go!’

  She just couldn’t believe him. He glanced at the wolves as if they were no more than an inconvenience. But Kate could see how a dreadful determination drove them. More and more of them had entered the water. Half the pack were up to their bellies in the stream. And all of their eyes were on her.

  The wolves began howling. Driftwood’s head started up and his nostrils started twitching. ‘Witch comes.’ he growled.

  On the far bank, Kate could see that something was moving. A thick, heavy vapour was running over the ground, extending tentacles before it, each tentacle aglow with a pallid, gangrenous light.

  ‘It’s my fault. I led them to your island.’

  Driftwood remained calm. ‘Witch-tentacles searching for Kate-girl-thing. Not thinking of dragon’s trail. Dragon smell unfamiliar to tentacles of witch. Human’s smell easy to follow.’

  Kate reflected that she had lost her mouse smell, and camouflage, given to her by Granny Dew, when she had run out of the tidbits. ‘Is that supposed to comfort me?’

  She watched one of the tentacles creep over the ground to the water’s edge. She knew it had detected her. An apparition seemed to rise up out of the licking tentacle, a wraith-like thing, taking on a vaguely human form. It grew rapidly, the wraith-head swivelling from side to side, as if searching.

  ‘We’ve got to get away from here – away from the island.’

  ‘Kate must explain. Tell Driftwood of Old One.’

  Kate could sense the all-consuming instinct that drove the wolves. She doubted that they would even try to take her alive. There was such a ravenous hunger in their bellies that it would only be satisfied by a gluttony of flesh and blood and bone. It was almost impossible to drag her eyes away from the wolves’ baleful presence. How the Witch must hate her, breaking out of the Tower and making this island come alive with trees and flowers and grasses. Her throat was bone dry. She had no saliva left to swallow. The dryness was causing her to retch. The dragon, squatting back on those great hind legs, was gazing down at her still. His eyes looked different. There was urgency in them that Kate had not seen before. He growled, deep in his throat.

  ‘Kate must tell Driftwood!’

  She clenched her teeth to stop them chattering and she clenched her head between trembling hands to try to gain control of her thoughts.

  The dragon brought a taloned paw to her shoulder. His eyes blinked, in that strange sideways way. The paw lifted and the talon reached out again, longer, fiercer, and brushed her brow with a hard, pressing intensity. ‘Driftwood must know of Old One. Must know all – must know now.’

  Kate felt the threatening nearness of the Witch. She felt the evil of the Tower close around her. She could smell the sulphurous stink. She was no longer able to fill her lungs to breathe. She was close to fainting with terror. Haltingly, through a throat that retched even with the effort of just forming words, she explained about the cave where they had woken up, all four friends, when they had first come to this world. She did her best to explain how the old woman had snatched the three mobile phones from their hands and shuffled back to squat by the fire.

  ‘Alan, my friend, had a silver flask. The old woman took the flask from him and then she … she sat in front of her fire and she did something to it.’

  ‘Tell, tell – explain!’

  ‘She did something strange. She just plunged it into the fire. The fire didn’t harm her, didn’t appear to burn her.’

  ‘Yes – yes?’

  Kate’s hand lifted to her mouth, trembled against it. ‘I – I think she moulded the silver flask in her hands, inside the fire. Then, when she lifted it back out again, it turned into an eagle.’

  Kate’s eyes glazed over with the memory. Her hands trembled – pallid, drenched in sweat – and held her face. From the river she heard a triumphant howling. She didn’t dare to look in the wolves’ direction. She breathed hard, the image hanging on in her memory for several seconds. ‘We realised it had to be magic of some sort.’

  ‘Tell – quickly! Who was Old One?’

  ‘She crooned something like a name. “Graaannneee Dewwww”.’

  The dragon’s voice was little above a growl: ‘Graaannneee Dewwww?’ He pronounced it exactly as the old woman had pronounced it. That startled her so much she was silent for a moment or two, recalling the extraordinary scene.

  ‘We thought it sounded like Granny Dew – that’s what we called her after that.’ Her eyes were wide open, pupils dilated. ‘She made us all drink something – something very strange, horrible. It felt in my mouth as if there were living things, like spiders and insects alive in it. We were all really afraid of her. But she was helping us in her way. Oh, Granny Dew – I wish you were here to help me now!’

  ‘Graaannneee Dewwww!’ The dragon growled the name over, as if chewing on it, turning it over in his mind. ‘This what Old One call her name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Kate – hear it here,’ he pointed to Kate’s right ear, ‘or here?’ He pointed to Kate’s head, her brow.

  ‘I had no oraculum. Of course I just heard it in my ears.’

  ‘Kate not understand. Words not name. Words from old language … Language of beginnings.’

  ‘None of us understood.’

  ‘Old One … Speaks language of makers.’

  ‘Makers?’

  ‘Makers.’ He waved a paw to encompass the mountains, the river, the island, with its blooming magnificence.

  Kate didn’t know how she wasn’t already dead from fright. Her throat was so paralysed by fear it felt as if she was squeezing each word out of a fist of ice. ‘Like … Like the Earth Mother?’

  The dragon’s claw reached up to point to the oraculum in Kate’s brow. ‘Old One – she gives Kate this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What means this – this power?’

  ‘I think it’s the power of new life, of healing. But I have to learn how to use it.’

  A sudden instinct yanked her attention back to the river. Kate was on her feet, unable to stop herself looking. The first creeping tentacles of the Witch were running between the wolves. They were reaching out to where the entire pack now pressed deeper into the water, until they were immersed up to their spines, then all of a sudden the entire pack surged forward, swimming into the stream. Terror took her legs from under her. She would have tumbled to the ground if the dragon hadn’t taken her shoulders and helped her to sit down again on the bluff.

  Her voice trembled as she spoke out of lips so numb they didn’t feel her own. ‘Oh, Driftwood, it’s too late!’

  ‘Witch sees through wolf eyes. Must blind Witch eyes.’

  ‘But how? I have no weapons – nothing that could hurt her.’

  ‘Weapons not hurt Witch. Power only does she fear.’

  ‘But – but she is much more powerful than I am.’

  ‘Kate must listen. Wolves are Witch’s eyes. Here – now – Kate must blind eyes of Witch with her power.’

 
The wolves were about halfway across the great river, their gaping jaws held up above the stream, the furious paddling creating v-shaped eddies, with the leader well in front of the others. His eyes were still on hers, rabidly determined. In just minutes he’d be scrambling up the island shore.

  Panic caused her breath to judder through her teeth.

  The dragon spoke with icy calm. ‘Great dragon philosopher, he whose words were as reefs to ocean, he say, “In time of greatest danger, be most calm.”’

  ‘I bet he didn’t have a Witch, and a pack of wolves, around his throat!’

  ‘Such wisdom!’

  ‘This great philosopher wasn’t called Driftwood, by any chance?’

  ‘In philosopher’s dying words …’

  ‘Dying?’

  ‘Kate must be calm – if calmly she thinks. If she looks, looks deeply in her own heart, at what oraculum has done here. Old One gives Kate gift of Life. Life in land, in air … in water.’

  ‘In water?’

  ‘Power of oraculum – is not to give or to take away?’

  Kate stared downhill to where the lead wolf, jaws ferociously agape, was no more than thirty feet from the near bank. He would be out of the water and bounding towards her in less than a minute.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Is not obvious? – what may be given may be taken away.’

  Kate tottered back onto her feet. She raised both her arms outright. She pressed her thoughts to the oraculum in her brow. Then she stared at the river, at the water where the current had carried the wolves maybe fifty yards downstream of the level where they had entered it on the far bank. She stared at how they thrashed their way across it, and she imagined how it might change with a dreadful thunderstorm. A burst of rain upstream? It was curiously easy to sense the mood and movement of the surface waters. She imagined how they might erupt with the instructions of her thoughts. Instantly they did so. The placid current changed to a catastrophic spate. Within the raging water there were living things, biting creatures, that seemed to share the water’s rage. Soon there were howls of a different kind, screams of pain and terror, rising out of the stream. With her eyes closed and her heart beating into a rage of her own, she poured her being into the turbulent current. She was shaking with the sheer savagery of it, barely able to contain herself on juddering legs, her eyes clenched shut, when the dragon touched her cheek and bade her open her eyes again.