Master of Blood and Bone

by Craig Saunders

  He let this happen. I could have stopped it. I could have been by Janus’ side within a heartbeat. We could have been…

  The child within Ank said nothing, but she felt it step back, as it had so many times while they had walked south. Step back from her anger.

  Quit being so fucking…polite!

  She wanted to rage against her inner twin, too, but it would not let her. Each time her anger rose, it stepped back, and back, and she could not grasp it, until for a minute, or two, she forgot her rage.

  Then her twin was there, waiting. Like she knew it always would be from now on, until…the end?

  Some end, at least.

  Eventually, her anger rising so near the surface that she could barely hold it down, Ank spoke.

  “Holland…”

  “Shh, Ank. A moment.”

  Fuck’s sake!

  “Holland!”

  Holland took a breath. Then another. While he wasted his time breathing, her anger swallowed her.

  The whole time they walked, all the way from Norfolk to Kent, they walked through swathes of destruction. People frozen in ice, cities on fire. Tanks smoldering by the side of a motorway. Warplanes, wrecked, in the middle of cityscapes. Corpses, explosions, the stench of death. The terrified living and the horrible dead.

  My God, so many dead. So many.

  Ank closed her eyes against the sight, her rage against Holland, and tried to unsee the sights she’d seen.

  Everywhere. They were everywhere. When once she could not see a dead cat, now she saw every bastard one of them and they all, everyone, called for her. Not Holland. No, not him.

  Bastard!

  He could see them. She knew he could see them. Not once did he offer to help. Not once did he ask.

  He’d let it build and build, the horror, her despair, until she could do nothing but shake her head to their pleas, until tears tracked through the ash on her face.

  “Hear that?”

  His voice cut through her anger, dragged her from her dark thoughts and remembrances.

  “What?”

  “Listen, Ank. Listen.”

  “What? I don’t hear anything. Shit, Holland…don’t you realize how fucking angry I am right now?”

  “Shh…”

  “I’m trying to talk to you!”

  “I know. You’re being noisy. I’m trying to listen. Pipe down.”

  If Ank had a gun, she would have shot him in the other knee right then.

  “Hear it now?”

  “No, damn it, I don’t.”

  “What about him? He hear it?”

  No, said the child in Ank’s mind, carefully, though, as if he was wary of Ank’s dark mood, which made her even angrier. No. I hear nothing.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  Holland nodded, then walked away down the coast again. He’d thrown his walking stick away when they’d reached Kent, now, a lighter man, muscles building with each footstep they took, he managed with just a heavy limp.

  It was already half-dark, and she could barely see his back in the gloom.

  Fuck, Ank said to her brother, the book in her mind, he’s driving me fucking nuts.

  You swear a lot, said the book.

  Ank stamped her foot.

  “There,” said Holland, and turned to grin at Ank.

  At first, she saw nothing—just sleet, snow, whatever it was, blown in the darkening skies.

  But then, there was something there, wasn’t there?

  A shape, dark and low, on the water.

  A boat.

  And at last, Ank understood.

  Like a cloud had been lifted from her, with the sight of that boat sliding across the rough sea toward them.

  She understood why they walked and where they were going and why they went slow, and not fast.

  Her anger drifted, then…it was gone.

  Standing there, watching it approach, it was as though the sun suddenly shone on her, despite the winter squall that hit and chilled her face.

  The boat was an old thing. Ancient, even. Wood more green than brown. Wet and warped. A simple boat, like a barge, with but one man to steer it, with a long, long pole.

  And like that, her anger went. One second, there, powerful, crushing.

  The next, she was swallowed with awe at the sight of him.

  The Ferryman.

  Seriously? The Ferryman? Fucking…fuck…

  And nothing but wonder. Like a child. Her heart pounded and she shook her head.

  “Not fair…not him…”

  Holland nodded. His form was barely perceptible, though he stood not ten feet from her.

  “I can’t teach you anything more, Ank. We need help. No choice, honey. Time to go slow’s almost over, okay?”

  His voice was soft. Kind, like when he was pleased with something she did.

  “You’re a bastard, Dad.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, but she understood he spoke around a grin.

  The Ferryman’s boat scraped against the shingle. Half in, half out of the water.

  Ank punched her father on the shoulder. She hit him hard enough to let her frustration loose, her fear, but just that right kind of pressure that let Holland know it was going to be fine between them.

  “First trip abroad, and you’re taking me on the Night Boat?” she said.

  “Disappointed?”

  “You’re kidding, right? This, or Easy Jet?” Ank laughed, then grinned from ear to ear. For a minute, she felt just like a kid again—so full of wonder she forgot to be afraid.

  “Anger’s got no place on the boat, Ank. You understand, right?”

  Ank nodded, and hugged Holland like she had done once, surely, but so long ago she no longer remembered.

  It was answer enough.

  66

  “Charon,” said Holland by way of greeting.

  “Holy shit,” said Ank.

  “Matthew Doyle Holland…it has been a long, long, time. Have you come to the end?”

  “Not yet, old friend. Just a sojourner, still. Ank, close your mouth, eh?”

  “But, Holland…I mean…holy shit,” whispered Ank again. “You know Charon?”

  “Forgive her. She’s just a kid.”

  Ank bit back her words and gawped instead. Charon turned his gaze to her, and she felt stripped bare beneath his scrutiny, but still, she stared right back.

  That’s Charon, she thought. Holy…fucking…shit.

  “He looks…tired,” said the book.

  And he did, Ank saw. He was a dark-haired man, not in a cloak or cowl, but in a worn shirt that looked like linen. The shirt bore a faded pattern…like something from a department store, rather than some kind of mythical garb. Trousers, old and patched. Heavy curls in his hair and a good growth of stubble. Like a fisherman, more than the fabled Ferryman of the Styx.

  “We are none of us as we once were, girl,” said the Ferryman, aware of Ank’s roaming eyes and bearing her scrutiny with better grace than she was showing. “The Gods are tired of waking or sleep so heavily I fear they will never wake. You and I…we are not Gods. Ankou, daughter of Death. Remember this well.”

  Ank blinked at her true name. Charon’s words hit home.

  He knows my name?

  “I know everyone’s name, child,” said Charon with that calm, cool voice. “But as your father knows…a name has power, no? Names are not mine to use, to own…Ankou…but yours.”

  Holland nodded. “Will you take us across?” he asked.

  Charon nodded slowly. “Intone your names and you may board. Pay your passage and I will ferry you across the wide river…for you? With pleasure…for her…with pleasure.”

  “Matthew Doyle Holland. I will pay. With silver.”

  Holland ejected a shell from his gun and passed it to Charon’s palm. Then he stepped back a little and elbowed Ank gently to nudge her from her stupor.

  “Right,” she said. “Ankou Holland. He’s paying for me, I think?”

  Holland shook his head. �
�Can’t, Ank. You pay your own way now…you know why.”

  “Then,” she said, but could go no further for a moment. She thought hard of what she had of worth. All she had was a crooked cane that she’d carried from a vault beneath a mountain, across England, and carried still. She had the clothes on her back. The cane was worth plenty, she knew, her clothes, little. But she had the feeling she might just need that etched crutch…the same feeling she had back when she saw it in the vault.

  What have you? Nothing.

  “Not true,” said the small voice in her mind.

  Then she knew. What was she? If she had nothing…what else do people pay with?

  With a service.

  And that service was long overdue, wasn’t it?

  “I will pay with my actions and bring you a soul long lost.”

  Charon nodded, and seemed pleased enough with the offer.

  Before they could step aboard, Charon spoke. “And the third among you?”

  “He means me,” said the book within Ank.

  “He doesn’t weigh much,” she said.

  “Every soul weighs the same, child Ankou.”

  “I don’t have a name.”

  “He doesn’t have a name.”

  “Every soul has a name. As does he. I know his name, should he wish me to speak it for him…” said Charon. The Ferryman seemed neither pleased, or displeased. Dispassionate, perhaps, despite the way his words hit Ank and Holland and the book within.

  Ank felt the book’s fear, sudden and absolutely, close enough to her own soul that she, too, felt the burden of fear settle on her, pushing her down like weight on her shoulders, on her heart.

  “What?” said Holland, concern drawing his face tight. “The book is…a person?”

  He spoke aloud, and for once, wished he had not. Holland understood more than he’d like, right there, in the way he knew so many things. Back when he’d first held the book, he’d assumed it was covered in vellum, mere calfskin.

  It was not.

  67

  “NO” said the book within Ank, and she staggered and suddenly fell to the wet shingle, hurting her knees but unaware until later. No punctuation, thought Ank through her pain, even as she was lost in the memory of an insane entity that thought and spoke in words made of snakes.

  Holland rushed to his daughter and crouched beside her.

  Don’t fuck this up, he thought, but then his mind was still and he was acting. No time to fuck it up.

  Do. Don’t do.

  In the moment, that was all there was and all there ever was.

  He did not speak to Ank, but to the roiling, magnificent thing within. Even in the dim light, Holland could see the words on his daughter’s skin raving across her features.

  Ank’s black eyes were closed. He pulled them open.

  I can’t get the child out. I’d kill her.

  She was unconscious. He held her and held her eyes open and spoke to the book, the soul, the scared child trying to destroy the only person he loved in the entire world.

  “Listen to me,” he said, and as he said it he realized the wrong thing might mean her end. The one time he was at a loss for words, out of ideas, and it was the most important of all.

  Charon did not move to help. He could not leave the ferry.

  Holland drew a breath in, slowed his heart and his thoughts. He began again.

  “Whatever your name…whatever you’ve done, or had done to you, you ride in my daughter. Book…or child. It is not your fault, and your anger, your fear…you’re hurting your friend…hear me. She is more than a friend…

  “She is your sister now. You are one body and one soul and you are not alone. You are not a book. You are not a creation…you are a soul. Hear me? You are a soul. What you do matters. You have a name. Speak it! Ride the ferry. Let’s see what’s on the other side. Three of us…we’ll make right what can be made right. What can’t, we’ll lay to rest. Are you listening?”

  Ank bucked and jittered in his arms. Blood leaked from her ears, staining her beautiful white hair.

  “Fuck! You’re hurting my daughter!”

  Can’t shoot. Can’t threaten. Can’t do a fucking thing!

  He was, for the second time in his life, utterly helpless. Bereft of options, but to call on the benevolence of the mad thing within Ank.

  “Please…please stop.”

  The words scrawled on his daughter’s pale skin slowed…like crawling worms, or snakes, marring her white flesh.

  Slowed, then, stopped.

  Ank’s eyes focused on Holland, and she began to cry. Not from fear, nor pain.

  “I saw what he did,” she cried. She sobbed, and he held her with his arms, thinner than they had once been, but strong enough. “I saw what he did.”

  “The book?”

  “The book is innocent, Holland. So innocent. Oh, Holland…oh.”

  Holland held Ank there on the shore. He knew right then he’d hold her forever, should she need it.

  Charon said nothing, but stood impassive upon the boat, waiting. He, too, would wait forever, if he must.

  “I think…I think I can let him speak. He wants to. He needs to.”

  “Ank…”

  Ank gently pushed her father away and stood before Charon, endlessly patient, as bound by lore as Ankou herself.

  And when she finally spoke, she spoke not in her voice, but that of a boy-child.

  “My name is David,” said the boy-child. His voice cracked, used to ink and maybe snakes or broken-tooth scrawls upon walls, or silver trails left by slugs…but not speech.

  Then his voice became stronger.

  “My name is David,” began the child that was once a book, again. “Of the royal house of David. I am the first son of Naamah…”

  Ank’s body shook, as though the child David that shared her thin frame warred with himself.

  For a moment, Holland feared the child would tear his daughter apart. But, finally, Ank stilled and her/his voice rang out once more. This time it was proud and strong and noble.

  “David. My name is David, and I am of the Royal House of David! My mother’s name was Naamah…and I am the seventh son of Solomon!”

  “And, David, will you pay?” Charon was unmoved…but then he knew every soul.

  Holland, on the other hand, shook just like Ank and her passenger.

  “I will pay…with my story.”

  Holland shook because the child, the book, wasn’t anything as simple as that.

  Seventh son of Solomon?

  A sorcerer by birth and right.

  A sorcerer whose flesh had become a book. No longer child, or book, or entity…but a person.

  Holland shook just the same as Ank, because he was in the presence of maybe the most dangerous person on the planet.

  68

  And as, on the long battle-march to the north and east, the immortal wizard known as Solomon paused. His footsteps faltered in the snow. He smelled, or felt…sensed…

  What?

  Something blown in the ash, through the wind of war.

  A name he’d long forgotten. A deed he’d thought long done.

  An echo of a dead thing rang in his ears. But then, deeds do echo. They reverberate, through time, through history. Some deeds do not die.

  They never die.

  “…seventh son of Solomon,” whispered the wind.

  Solomon shook his head to clear what must be insanity.

  It could not be.

  A deed done could not be undone…

  Impossible…beyond impossible, even. A thing that simply could not, ever, be.

  But still, that sense followed him. A sense that his doom was reborn, blown to him along the winter wind from the south…close…

  The wind does not keep secrets, he thought.

  Something in the stench that blew not from war, but from a place to the south called Pripyat.

  Solomon was no clairvoyant. He was not given to know the future. But the smell of that place…

&nbs
p; Seventh son, he thought, plucking it again as it echoed in the cold, punishing air.

  Pripyat.

  He raped the mind of the body he now owned. South…in a country called Ukraine. A place on the borderland. Near to a place called Chernobyl.

  A wasteland.

  This is where my future waits, thought Solomon, and knew without a doubt that it was true. His future, Janus’ future, too, maybe. The reason he was here, in this fire-blasted, bloodred and snow-white field.

  He looked across the wide, tattered, battlefield upon which he stood, and in the distance he saw Janus. Unmistakeable. Immense, clad in armor covered in the blood of the fallen and the scorching of the weapons of mortal war upon a God’s crazed and dull armor.

  The insane God, bloated on war.

  He must come, too.

  We are bound, now. My future, my fate, with his.

  Solomon looked at the mad God, riding into the screech of battle upon his ridiculous throne. Two tanks beneath, and one at the back. The armored giant had grown so large and so cumbersome on the food of battle that the two tanks, vessels of power themselves, labored to carry his weight.

  Janus, Solomon realized, would soon become too heavy to even carry his own frame and his tremendous armor that grew right along with him. Even now, the sword he’d fashioned from a helicopter blade had begun to look tiny in his hand. In that vast gauntlet, the helicopter blade now looked no more heavy than a dagger might in Solomon’s own borrowed hand.

  Soon, the tanks that Janus rode, too, would be unable to carry him.

  The excess will kill us both with bloat.

  Solomon, crazed himself, understood this to be the incontrovertible truth.

  He knew, too, that the dead land of Pripyat was their destiny. Not endless war. Not the plains and steppes and tundras of Russia.

  But Janus…the God’s blood was high. Flooded, with war and blood and fire.

  How do you turn a bull in heat?

  Not, Solomon thought, by the nose ring.

  But even a dumb bull was a creature of pride.

  So thinking, Solomon the wizard steeled himself, blinked, and stood atop the warm, long turret of the right-hand tank that formed Janus’ throne.

  Such hubris, thought Solomon, in a rare bout of clarity. What are we, but childish Gods?