The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  Though, truly, he almost wished for the sweet, simple madness—any hallucination his mind could conjure up couldn’t be worse than the knowledge that he’d once more stepped inside Mount Raturo.

  A preacher stepped before him, startling Anddyr badly—until he realized how short the preacher was, and how loose the robe hung off her frame. It was just Rora, the robe’s hood drawn low, showing only her deep frown. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “I have to be,” Anddyr muttered, levering himself to his feet. She didn’t offer him a hand.

  All of them wrapped in dark robes, hoods hiding their faces, they stepped from the cold storage room. Anddyr, the only one who knew Raturo’s circling paths, led the way, and his hands drew in the air once more, wrapping them in a cloak of the magical kind. It would send eyes sliding away, keep any watchers from focusing on them. It wouldn’t hide any sounds they made, though, and it wouldn’t stop anyone who was suspicious or persistent from seeing through the cloaking.

  The lowest floors of Raturo were seldom traveled, frequented only by servants and workers—preachers who were so only in name. They passed less than a handful on their way and none took notice of them, though Anddyr was sure the shaking of his hands would rattle loudly in the stone passages, that the black-robed servants would sniff out his fear.

  He took them to another storage room, smaller, closer to Raturo main, but thick with dust, dripping with cobwebs. “Stay here,” he told the knives. “I have to go search out . . . how best to do this.”

  They all looked at him with the same suspicion, eyes shining like coins, but it was Rora who spoke. “I’ll go with you,” she said, and the mistrust in her words cut worse than blades.

  The women of Whitedog Pack had argued long into the night. Tare, who Anddyr hated with the unshakable strength of stone, had refused to leave her master unprotected, but also hadn’t wanted to let Rora lead the knives. “Goat’s dead, yeah?” Rora had said. She had been clouded and strange for a long time after leaving Mercetta, but the strangeness had faded from her eyes when her brother had unwound the bandages from her head and she’d touched the smooth skin where her ear had been. She’d gone hard, after that, brittle as untested steel. “Have you picked another hilt, then?”

  “There hasn’t been time,” the one called Dogshead had said, voice old and sad.

  “Right. Then I’m hilt now.”

  More arguing, but it had come down to no other choices. None of the other knives save Tare were fit to lead, and Tare wouldn’t leave the Dogshead. Rora had the cappo’s clear favor as well, and so the Dogshead named her hilt, which seemed to be the leader of the knives—“Such quaint names,” the cappo had sneered. They’d parted with glares, Tare and Rora, but Rora had ridden out from the cappo’s estate with her head held high, proudly showing her missing ear.

  Anddyr couldn’t meet her eyes, but he shook his head with as much firmness as he could muster. “You’ll get in the way,” he told Rora, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. He reached into a pocket, held a seekstone out to her flat in his hand. She took it, the tips of her fingers barely brushing his palm. “You can watch me. Make sure I’m not betraying you. I’ll return as soon as I know how to proceed. Please, stay here.” He cast off the cloaking from around them, leaving it over himself—and over Rora, who he half expected would follow him.

  He moved farther up through the halls of Raturo, walking as quickly as he dared. So little time, and so much to be done . . . but his heart rode choking-high in his throat. He reminded himself again and again that no one would see him, that he was as hidden as he could be, and even if someone did see through his cloaking, all they would see was another black-robed preacher, as inconspicuous as anything. He was safe, he was safe, he was safe.

  Anddyr passed through Raturo’s heart, the wide chamber with its path spiraling almost up to the mountain’s peak, and stepped between the horrible carved faces of the Twins, through the arch into the Ventallo chamber beyond. The room was empty, and that meant no one to hear him fight with the door behind Uniro’s chair. Cappo Joros had had a key to this room . . . but Anddyr had destroyed it, after they’d realized it could be used to track Joros. The door wouldn’t budge, no matter how much magic he threw into it—that door had been crafted long and long ago, when the preachers had known a darker magic, had powers mercifully lost to time. Anddyr didn’t know its secrets, and so he couldn’t open it. His hands shook and his gut twisted as he briefly rested his forehead against the door.

  “Destroy the leg,” the cappo had said, the command unbending. “It will make them weaker, and that will make us stronger.”

  Anddyr had known this might happen, that he’d have to find a different way to get to Fratarro’s leg. He’d need a key from one of the other Ventallo, but those weren’t easy to come by. He could wait until after Rora and the knives had . . . done what they’d come to do, take a key off one of the Ventallo then, and hope there was enough time to burn the leg and get out before anyone discovered the Ventallo were no more. Since the only other option was trying to take a key from a living Ventallo and hoping no one discovered the destroyed leg before the knives could do their work, he supposed the leg would have to wait. It was disobeying the cappo, in a way, but what could he do? There was no way around it. Still, it started the slow roiling in his stomach, the small evasion combined with the burning, trembling horror of being back inside Raturo. It was too soon, but a small wolf began to chew at his insides.

  “Learn everything you can,” the cappo had said. “We need to know their plans, need to know where they stand.”

  So Anddyr wasted no time in leaving the Ventallo chamber, walking beneath the arch of the Twins but able to avoid seeing their faces, mercifully. He moved slowly through the halls, his feet tracing familiar paths—it was something he had done often for the cappo, when they’d lived here. Cappo Joros had been a Shadowseeker—the head Shadowseeker—a gatherer of secrets and useful things. Joros’s chamber here had been lined with all manner of miscellany—anything that might someday prove useful, many things that looked so innocent until the cappo smiled and gave voice to the secrets they held. Secrets could be better than coins, more powerful than kings. Anddyr had known each of the mishmashed items, known their uses and their secrets, for they practically shouted to him when he was deep in his madness. Anddyr was one of them after all, just another useful thing, and the cappo would never discard something he might use later. Even the burn-faced merra might be a useful thing, and so he hadn’t driven her away.

  His feet walked the same paths they’d walked for years, unseen and listening, a wide loop that took him past the circular meeting rooms, the sleeping quarters of the always-gossiping initiates, the canteen, the deep pools where warm water bubbled from the center of the world. There was bustle everywhere he went, more preachers than he had ever seen within Raturo, and everywhere he heard the same murmurs: The time draws near. Time to leave. Time to free the Twins. Time to sink the sun.

  With each step, each overheard conversation, each unfamiliar face—Anddyr’s gut made another twist, the wolf took another bite. He hoped no one saw through his cloaking, because he wasn’t able to hide the terrible way his hands shook.

  He had learned what there was to know. The Fallen had found more limbs, and they had called back the wandering preachers who spread the word of the Twins, and they were preparing their next move.

  “After all that,” the cappo had said grimly, “you need to find Etarro.” He’d repeated his instructions, another easy mantra for Anddyr’s weak mind to remember: “Burn the leg. Learn their secrets. Kill the boy.”

  He knew most of the places Etarro would hide, knew the boy’s mind as well as his own. The wolf grew and grew within him, spawned mates and pups, all of them gnawing at him. He walked invisible past the preachers, so many of them, and he was sure they would see him, hear the roaring of his guts, the mewling hunger of his need. His shaking hand reached into his robe, drew out the stuffed horse Etarro had given him, held
it tight against his chest like a talisman.

  Kill the boy.

  Anddyr didn’t remember stopping, but he recognized the door he stood before. How could he not? The mountain, evil and unchosen, had nonetheless been his home for years. He knew its secret places, and so of course he knew the faces it would show the world. There was a voice from beyond the door, and it called his name.

  There was no one else around, no one walking this deep hall. No one to see the door creak open, close again.

  Shelves lined the walls, shelf after shelf after shelf, and though there was a blue haze over all of it, and though the walls pulsed with breath and laughter, there was no doubting his eyes here. Even in the throes of deepest delusion, he would trust this sight. He walked slowly between the shelves, fingers reaching out in wonder, pulling back so as not to taint them. Not until the very end of the chamber did he let himself take one, cradling it in both his hands, holding it like a new-hatched bird fallen from the nest. One of the thousands of skura jars that sat in storage, waiting to enslave, waiting to enrapture.

  He wanted to put it back. Anddyr would swear that until his last breath left him. But the hunger in him was howling now, tasting the smell of release. The world shrank, paring off all the pieces that didn’t matter, everything that wasn’t the little jar cupped in his palm. It was too soon, much too soon, but the fear-born wolves tore at him, and he couldn’t bear it.

  There was a small space between the last shelf and the wall, a space that a determined man could wedge himself into. Hidden from sight, should anyone walk into the chamber, Anddyr dropped his cloaking and twisted open the lid with shaking fingers. He knew better than to try to hold a spell during his dosing—once, he’d thought to heal some of his wounds while the skura took him, but he’d returned to himself to find an entirely different spell raining fire around him. Anddyr had learned that lesson well. Naked of magic, he reached one finger only into the jar, the black paste sucking at his fingertip, and brought it to his mouth.

  The ecstasy of it washed over him like a wave, his tangled innards unknotting, the wolves dissipating, his shaking hands stopping. The world that had narrowed to the jar in his palm now exploded, expanded, spiraled away into shades of blue. Anddyr sagged against the wall, mind and body slack, holding to the moment for as long as he could, for the real world was a thing he was not yet ready to face. But it turned wrong, halfway through the euphoria, like not tasting the rot in an apple until after the third bite. His stomach turned sour and throbbing, the taste of mud thicker in his mouth than usual, and he could feel worms writhing slowly down his throat. When his sight cleared of the blue haze, he still felt heavy and stupid, and birds wheeled slowly against the far wall—nothing at all like the clarity that usually followed a dose of skura. The gnawing need was gone, but worms and bile fought now in his belly.

  There had been a few times where he had taken his dose too soon—but not many, for they had left him feeling sluggish and fuzzy. But this . . . this felt like poison crawling through him. This must be the effect of skura unmixed with the cappo’s blood.

  Plain skura, unbonded, waiting for a few drops of blood to activate all its properties—those that enslaved as well as those that restored sanity, both sides of the so-heavy coin. It sat in his gut, boiling and bleeding, and a weak whimper of a sob burst out of Anddyr—he wished for the wolves back.

  “Anddyr,” a soft voice said, and Anddyr’s foggy eyes tracked the sound. He shouldn’t have been surprised, and yet he was—he could blame it on his slow-moving mind, weak and useless. Etarro knelt before him, Raturo’s own boy-twin, and his face was painted with sadness. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  “I had no choice,” Anddyr murmured, barely lifting his head to meet the boy’s gaze.

  “You always have a choice.” Etarro took the jar from him, put its lid back in place, set the jar on a near shelf. He took Anddyr’s limp hand in both his own, held it gently just as he held Anddyr’s eyes. The touch felt like ice, searing cold. “Tell me why you’re here, Anddyr.”

  “You know.” The boy always knew, knew far more than he should.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “To burn the leg. To kill the Ventallo.” He blinked, slowly, the boy’s face fading from focus, swimming back. “To kill you.”

  Etarro bowed his head, looking at their entwined hands. “You always have a choice, Anddyr.” His fingers slipped from around the mage’s as he rose, taller than when Anddyr had last seen him, close to man-grown. “Valrik and the others gather in the Cavern of the Falls each night. There’s a place, within the Icefall, where a man can hide.”

  The boy left him then, moving on quiet feet. Anddyr’s head lolled so he could follow Etarro with his eyes. The boy left him alone, with the pieces of his fractured mind drifting together and falling apart, the world and all its problems closing around him like teeth. This was wrong, all wrong; he should have . . . He should not have taken the skura, he had ruined the careful timing, perhaps ruined everything with his weakness.

  He imagined Rora, back in the storage room, holding the seekstone he’d given her and watching with disappointment, disgust.

  Slowly he rolled to his knees, clinging to the shelf for support, his limbs practically useless. He dragged himself to his feet, stumbled forward a few steps, crashed into one of the shelves. A jar fell, shattered on the floor, skura oozing from it like mud. Anddyr left a pile of sour vomit next to it before lurching toward the door. His stomach was twisting again, though not with the skura-hunger, but with something deeper.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rora sat with her back to a wall, the cold of it seeping into her bones, and held her dagger in one hand, the round little stone in the other. She hated those rocks, the ones that made her head twist and her eyes not her own; she didn’t trust ’em, not since she’d found out strangers had been using them to look through her eyes for most of her life. Curiosity was a powerful thing, though, and even she’d admit the stones could be damned useful, sometimes.

  The one the witch’d given her, so far it didn’t seem too useful, or even interesting enough to make up for that. The witch had wandered around for a while, but now he was just sitting in another storeroom. She’d felt dirty, spying on him, but that guilt was dripping away with how boring he was being. She tapped the point of her dagger against the stone, restless, impatient.

  The other knives were scattered around the room Anddyr’d put them in, small groups talking in low voices, sharpening blades, three of ’em tossing dice across one of the black robes to keep the rolls muffled. Rora watched them, and they made her throat hurt.

  When she’d been young, after they’d found a home with Whitedog Pack and Aro’d been all a-bubble with the things the Dogshead was teaching him, Rora’d felt a poke of jealousy that’d made her say, “I’m going to be hilt one day. I’m going to lead all the knives.” She’d glowed with the pride of those words, knowing deep in her stupid little bones they were true.

  But Aro’d frowned at her and said, “You’re better at taking orders than giving ’em, Rora. Everyone says.” She’d cursed at him and shoved him hard, spun away before she could see the surprise on his face when he landed on the ground. She’d gone to prove him wrong instead, rounding up a handful of other pups, most of ’em younger’n her but already taller, but they didn’t have real jobs like she did. They were just pups, maybe good enough to be feet or fingers someday, but none of them were like her. She’d waved her dagger in their faces, the bright sharp knife with its shining blue stone, and she’d told ’em about this place in Blackhands territory, where they left some small treasures and didn’t even guard them much. She’d told ’em how a few small and sneaky pups could make names for themselves, and get the attention they deserved. She’d grinned at the light in their eyes that she’d put there.

  Pups went missing all the time. It was a hard life in the Canals, and things went wrong. Pups got picked up by guards or other packs or worse. No one really thought much of it, w
hen a few pups disappeared. No one asked where they’d gone to. No one went looking for a few small mud-pile graves, scraped together with hands and tears. And no one even wondered when Rora started telling other people she didn’t ever want to be the hilt, didn’t ever want to lead. “I’m better at taking orders anyway,” she’d always said, making a smile, and no one ever saw that it didn’t touch her eyes.

  And now here she was, hilt anyway. Leading two handfuls of knives in spite of everything, and the responsibility sat on her like a stone.

  They were some of the best knives Whitedog Pack had left, even if that wasn’t saying too much. Most of ’em she recognized, young faces from the knifeden. Maybe young wasn’t quite right, since most of them were probably as old as or older’n Rora, but none of ’em had been knives as long as she had. None of them had been raised to it, born to it. So they were new faces, fresh-made knives, all bright-eyed and glow-skinned that they weren’t fingers anymore, or fists. She tried to remember them that way, how she’d seen them in the knifeden before she left, before everything happened . . . to her and to them. But it was hard to picture them happy when their faces now were so skinny, their eyes haunted. It was as hard as trying to use her own eyes when she held the damn seekstone, twisting and straining, and not really working. Some of the knives she didn’t know at all, couldn’t pull their faces from her memory, and when it came down to it, she hadn’t been gone all that long. When your best fighters kept getting killed, though, you had to replace ’em somehow.