The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  Joros came to stand at his side, and his hand rested heavily on Anddyr’s shoulder. “Be ready. It will be soon, I can feel it. We only have one chance.” And then he left Anddyr, going back to stand between Rora’s head and Aro’s, and his short sword hung from his fingers.

  Anddyr closed his eyes, closed his ears to Rora’s swearing and the heartsong, closed away everything, and set his mind adrift in the lowering storm.

  No matter how it looks. You have to try.

  He thought of Etarro, poor Etarro, how scared he must be. Etarro, who he knew as well as he knew himself, the kind boy with the sad face and too-old eyes. He could save the boy from his fate, give him a life like he’d never known, let him be a child, let him smile just once . . . he could do it. He would.

  He felt it, when the Twins left their bodies and let their consciousnesses rise through the hole on the hill. He could almost see them reaching through the dark sky. They were reaching for Etarro and Avorra, but Anddyr reached back first. Reached for them with his power, but his hands reached, too, grasping at the air, grasping hard, and he could feel them, writhing and wriggling in his fingers. He dragged them, let his power flow through his fingers to burn through them, weakening them as he pulled, toward himself and toward Aro and Rora, who were unwillingly waiting . . .

  He thought of her face. Rora, beautiful Rora, hard-edged and unbending. He thought of her face, how if he succeeded in this it would twist, change, turn to stone, to the horrible carved face of Sororra in the archway—gone . . .

  A moment of fear, of skip-heart panic—Rora!—and that was all it took. Anddyr’s grip loosened convulsively, and the Twins fought him. They sensed the trap, or perhaps Sororra riffled through his thoughts as all the old tales said she could, or perhaps they simply wished to spite him for his moment of weakness. Either way, they fought. There had been some hope when they were newly freed, weak and uncertain—but now that they knew, Anddyr alone could not hope to outmatch two gods. They rid themselves of his grip effortlessly, like a child flicking a beetle, and he would swear later that he heard laughter. As he had sent his power burning through them, so, too, did they send their own to burn through him.

  Anddyr fell back screaming, convulsing, the skin of his palms burning, blistering, cracking. There was shouting over his own screaming, swearing over Rora’s swearing, and then something hit the side of his head. “You’ve doomed us all!” Joros screamed. Another kick, and another.

  “I tried,” he whispered to the air, whispered to the storms falling around him like ash. He curled into the smallest shape he could, and he whispered across the hills, “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t see it, wouldn’t want to, but in his bones he knew it was happening: Etarro, his young face twisting, changing, turning to the stone-carved face of a god. Anddyr had come so close to sparing him that. Could have spared him, if not for his own weakness . . . “I’m so sorry.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Scal stood amid the black sea, watching its waves surge around him, its currents pass him by. Steady as a rock in sea-spray. He stood near the base of the tall hill—not too near, for the swordsmen stood there. Vigilant, watching just as Scal watched, though they looked out instead of in. Scal stood and stared up and watched all the shapes moving atop the hill. Most wore black robes. Some a deep blue, and they shook as badly as Joros’s witch-man had. He wondered, briefly, if Joros and his witch-man were atop the hill as well. Then he stopped wondering, for he could see at last there were others on the hill, a handful of others who wore red robes and yellow robes, and nothing else mattered.

  Priests and priestesses, and among them, one with a scarred face.

  He had watched her carefully through the long nights and longer days. Watched for any sign of cruelty, of abuse. If he had seen any, he knew his caution would have vanished. But she had not been mistreated. Had been treated well, in fact. Fed and cleaned, given a blanket to sleep on, others to speak with. She had even smiled, once. He did not think she had seen him, in the long journey through the woods and the plains and the hills. If she had seen him, she had given no sign of it. Yet he had watched, vigilant as the stars at night, and he had waited for his moment.

  Now, it felt as though time was rushing forward. As though there was so little of it left. As though his moment would pass by, and he would be left standing in the spinning breeze of it.

  There were great happenings upon the hill. Rushing and shouting, cheering, laughing. Vatri sat on one slope with the others, ringed by two swordsmen and two bored-seeming preachers, their eyes constantly wandering to the crown of the hill. They would rather be elsewhere, and that was good. Distracted men were easy to move through, to knock down. He would need only to pass through the ring of blades around the hill, and he could manage the others . . .

  Still he stood, waiting and watching, and his legs would not move.

  Shape me, he had asked Vatri. It felt a dream. She had drawn on his flesh and told him to step into a fire, and when he had woken he had been no different, save that she was gone again. She had not made of him anything better than he was, and he did not know if he was good enough.

  The sun fell and the moon rose high into its place. A full moon, shining sun-bright, wearing the night sky like a cloak. In its light he watched two preachers and two swordsmen harry the priests and priestesses to their feet, prod them farther up the hill, near to its crown. In the moonlight, he could just see Vatri, the edge of her face lined in moonfire. Blue eyes bright, and waiting, and watching.

  The moon rose triumphant, and the black sea stilled, and there began a noise from the top of the hill. He did not understand it, at first. He had not heard much singing in his life. But singing it was, many voices raised together. He had never heard a song dance. Never heard before how a voice could sing the things that lay hidden in his heart.

  There was fear in him, strong as the ocean-tide, heavy as all the snow in the North, blacker than death. But there was the singing, the soft and low fear-song rising over the high hill, and it sang to him of other things as well. It sang of making a weapon of fear. Of honing the fear to a sharp and deadly thing. The song spoke to him of what he had been, the hands that had shaped him, and the song spoke of what he could be. Perhaps Vatri had not shaped him as he had wished. Perhaps she had not shaped him at all.

  But there was one true thing. He had asked her to shape him, and she would not be able to shape him if he did not get her back.

  Scal had not held a weapon since leaving the North. He had thought he would be better for it. He gathered his fear together, and he shaped it, and he cast it ahead of himself. Following the fear, and following the song, Scal stepped forward through the black sea. One step, and another, his heart pounding in time with the song. The fear was gone from him, and it hung over the tall hill, over the head of a yellow-robed priestess, calling like a star. Three steps, four, and then he was running.

  The black sea parted around him, fell before him. He ran, and he did not stop when he reached the ring of swordsmen. They saw him, but the song did not sing in their blood as it did in Scal’s. They moved too slow. The one before him, the one whose eyes looked wide into his own, did not get his sword more than half-drawn. Scal lowered his shoulder and slammed it into the man’s neck. Sent him falling, flying, choking. In the same moment, Scal wrapped his fingers over the hilt of the man’s half-drawn sword. Pulled it free as the man fell away.

  When his hand closed around the hilt, thumb-tip touching fingertips, fire kindled along the blade of the sword. True fire, sunfire, licking at the cold steel. Surprise rippled through Scal, and his fingers came loose, the sword falling, fire dying. He stood, stunned, heart loud in his ears as the singing ended. Staring down at the sword, only a simple sword. When he looked up, there were eyes on him. Two swordsmen, advancing. There was no time. Scal leaned down and grabbed the sword, and when fire lit along its blade once more, he did not drop it. There was a warmth on his palm, but it did not burn, did not hurt.

  Scal ran forward t
hrough the silence, faster than the swordsmen, faster than the preachers turning slowly, too slowly, to look at him. The fire in his hand led him, up the side of the hill and to the moon-glowing priestess at its crest.

  The ground shook beneath his running feet, but he held his balance. His heart still beat the time of the now-silent song, and he would not be stopped. His sword flashed, trailing flame, and any who drew too near, any who blocked his path, felt its bite. He was almost to her. The swordsmen there saw him coming, had the time to draw their blades, to face him. Ready. But their fear shone in the light of his sword. Its cut left behind blood and scorched flesh. A blade slashed along his arm, but he did not feel it. He turned the sword and swung again, felt it sink and slice and burn its way through.

  The swing twisted his body, and when he looked up he saw two children—twins. Old children, near-grown, but they did not seem like children at all. He had not cared to listen to the plans of the Fallen, had not wanted to know how they thought to free their gods. It seemed, though, that they had succeeded. The Twins, given life, given freedom. They were bound to the ground, but as he watched, the ropes around their wrists turned to ash, and they sat slowly up. A loud cry tore from their throats, loud and long, pain and joy and anger and love. One cry with two voices. As their shout died away, slowly the pain faded, and the love, and the joy. The ground trembled again.

  Then Scal looked to Vatri, and she was looking to him as well, her surprise written clear, and her creased face was bent into the saddest smile he had ever seen.

  Scal’s fingers wrapped around hers, his other hand still around the fire-lit blade, and she ran with him from the hill. Only once did he look back. The Twins stood together at the hill’s tallest point, their hands clasped, their heads tilted to the sky. They screamed together, and dark smoke boiled from their mouths, and a shuddering wave rolled through the sea of black-robed preachers. Bodies collapsed, untouched by any mortal hand, as the wave rippled outward. They fell, and they did not rise again.

  A great white creature burst from the hill like an arrow shot into the sky, bellowing a scream to match that of the children, and great white wings snapped open. The wings flapped, bearing the great body into the sky, bearing the Twins upon its back, and the night swallowed them. Vanished.

  Through the darkness Scal raced, Vatri tight in his wake, and the sword led them like a streaking star.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Keiro’s ears were still ringing as he clambered over the lip of the hole, ringing with the screaming that had echoed through the cavern, echoed through the world. He could hardly think clear over the ringing, but he knew he should be above-ground, needed to see . . .

  Keiro climbed from the hole, and stepped into chaos.

  By the light of the moon and stars, he could see bodies racing frantically over the hills. Dimly, he heard their screaming, too, though it was a low echo of the ringing in his head. In the faint moonlight glow, he could see, too, all the bodies that were not moving. All those who lay perfectly still, sprawled upon the ground like cast-aside dolls.

  Keiro tipped back his head. There was a spot of white disappearing into the dark sky, smaller, star-sized, gone. Straz. Below the hill, when the ancient mravigi had risen, the flapping of his wings had knocked Keiro to the ground, and the wind of it had stolen his breath away. Straz had flown, for perhaps the first time in centuries.

  And, it seemed, he had taken Etarro and Avorra—Fratarro and Sorrora—with him.

  The ground was faintly scorched where they had lain, the ropes gone as though they had never been, the stakes skewed guiltily.

  A hand grabbed at Keiro’s arm, but beneath the ringing, Yaket’s voice was too distant for him to hear. Her eyes, one brown and one milky white, were wide with fear. Her own hand pointed, finger shaking, and he followed its line. There was a space on the horizon, a place where always, even on the cloudiest of nights, two red points had cast their glow over the world. That space was empty now. Sororra’s Eyes had fallen from the sky.

  Keiro pressed his hands to the sides of his face, trying to force his thoughts into order, to squash the ringing from his ears. He couldn’t . . . I am not . . .

  Keiro turned, and nearly fell through the hole in the earth in his haste. His toes found the ladder, and his fingers, and he scrambled down into the darkness. There were important things to be done beneath the hill, he told himself. He was not running. Not fleeing.

  It was quiet in the great empty cavern—and empty it was. When the Twins had left their bodies, the preachers had left, too, raced up the ladders to see what was happening above. The mravigi . . . he searched the shadows for any sign of them, for any starlight glimmer, but they were gone. They had not gone aboveground, but perhaps they had retreated into their tunnels and caves, though he could not think why. There was nothing in the cavern save Keiro, nothing living . . . nothing save the slumped bodies of the Twins, shed like an insect’s husk.

  Keiro knelt before them, not quite believing, not daring to. They were gone, gone as surely as . . . as what? There was nothing sure in the world anymore. Even until the final moment, the final stitch he had placed through Fratarro’s arm, he had doubted. Deep in his heart, he had not thought it would work, not thought that the Twins could ever truly flee their bonds. But now he knelt before their empty bodies, and it seemed as though he had been wrong about everything.

  A hand touched his arm, and this time when he looked up at Yaket, lined in the dim moonlight still filtering through the hole, he could hear her soft voice clearly. “It is done, Godson.”

  “It is done, Elder,” he echoed, and his voice sounded unspeakably tired to his own ears.

  “I didn’t think . . .”

  “I know.”

  Quietly she knelt at his side, and together they stared up at the mighty bodies of the Twins, burned and lifeless. Their eyes were empty, their limbs loose, their heads tilted together as if in sudden sleep. A very soft plop startled Keiro, for the ichor had stopped dripping when Fratarro’s wounds had been sealed . . . Ah, but not all his wounds had closed. There was still the ebon shard, pierced through the center of him, holding him as surely as the chains that held Sororra. The ichor flowed slow and steady from that ancient wound, carved dark trails along the burned flesh of his chest and stomach, and dripped onto the floor, to the glistening pool that gathered beneath him. If the ichor still flowed, that meant the Twins’ bodies still lived, that only their minds had left . . . gone to the young twins above, who were gone now, too, though in body rather than mind. The Twins had taken their bodies, and he couldn’t imagine how their own young minds were faring in the shared space . . .

  “What will happen now?” Yaket asked, jarring Keiro from his thoughts.

  “I do not know,” he said, giving himself a small shake before turning to meet her eye. “If they have truly risen, they will usher in the Long Night. The sun will fall, and the Twins shall walk the earth once more, passing their judgment on all whom they meet, and making all men and all women equal. But I don’t know how much of that is truth, and how much is merely the hope of centuries.”

  “Many preachers were struck down. They are saying it was the Twins’ judgment.”

  “Perhaps it was.” A thought struck him, brought him half to his feet. “The tribe. Yaket, they will be wondering, scared . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to finish, to say that he didn’t know how far the Twins’ judgment might have stretched.

  Yaket didn’t move to stand, merely looked down at her hands. It seemed as though the same thoughts had crossed her mind. “I am frightened, Keiro.” It was the first time she had used his name, in all the long months they had spent together.

  Keiro swallowed the fear in his own throat. He thought of Poret, Keten, all the bright-eyed younglings who had listened so eagerly to Keiro, and all the steadfast folk who had stayed always by Yaket’s side. He thought of them, and he didn’t think of them as anything but living. He reached his hand down to Yaket. “We’ll go together.” She
pressed her fingers into his, and it was too dark to tell if it was moonlight or tears on her cheeks.

  The tall grass swallowed them, took them far away from the gentle hills and the still forms that sprawled upon them. Some of the living had begun to organize, arranging those who the Twins’ first judgment had struck down into neat rows. Keiro could not look at them too long, the dead and the living both, or it set off the deep ache within his chest. So he turned to the grass, and his hand was tight around Yaket’s. He wondered, dimly, if the grip hurt her, until he realized she was holding his hand just as hard.

  Night stretched over the Plains, bright stars above, heavy moon at their backs, and their steps were like lead. Never before had Keiro less wanted to walk somewhere, never had to force his feet forward so much as he did now. But this was a thing that must be done.

  In the hours before light touched the sky, the tribehome was quiet. In that way, it was very much not like the hills with their screaming and their frantic pace. In another way, though, it was very like the hills—in the way that mattered, in the way that hurt.

  In Fiatera, deceased were given to the flames or given to the ground, depending on which set of gods one followed. In his walking, Keiro had seen groups who gave their dead to the water, or to the animals, or to the sun. In the quiet Plains, the peaceful grass-sea, he learned that they gave their dead back to the grass.

  There were more lying than there were kneeling, but the living had not been idle. Keiro watched, numb, as Yaket’s hand slipped from his, as the elder went to join her grieving people. They wove grass stalks, their fingers deft, weaving a cocoon of grass for each still form.

  Keiro wandered through them as if in a dream. He saw their faces, all those he had grown to know so well: Temon, who had a high and silly laugh that rang out often; Relat, who had the best way of cooking groundbirds but wouldn’t share her secret with any others; Pakel, who could kick her leg up higher than any of the men; Kamat, who could throw a spear farther than anyone; so many more, all laid out with their glassy eyes reflecting the stars.