The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  Ignore it and give it the stone. Vrana plodded toward the shifting pile of broken skeletons and held out the sealing stone, which was becoming unbearably hot. “Take it.”

  “You’ve seen my brood? My legacy?” the Blue Worm remarked with pride, still refusing to surface.

  “Take the stone and sleep,” Vrana insisted.

  “Why not ask of Caldera’s mountain?” the creature whispered. The chamber tensed, the veins and arteries tightened. “That is mine, too, after all. Why not ask of the black rock? Surely, you’ve seen it.”

  “Take the stone.”

  The Blue Worm rose out of the bed of bones, the remnants of the dead clinging to its bruised flesh. It encircled Vrana, walling her in with one hundred dripping tentacles. The milky light of the chamber faded as the Worm covered her completely, leaving only the sealing stone to illuminate the darkness of the creature’s hold. She could hear and smell the Worm’s organs hissing and popping, but it didn’t seem to care.

  “You will do much for us.” The Blue Worm leaned in close, and through the burning light of the stone, Vrana could see a human shape to which all the tentacles were bound. “Why not ask of your father? I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”

  Vrana screamed as she shoved the sealing stone into the Blue Worm’s body. Immediately, it began to wither, its appendages becoming hard and brittle, like the branches of a smoldering tree. She cut her way through the carcass as the tortured cries of dead children rang out across the chamber. The ground began to spasm, and the veins, arteries, and sacs that crossed it ruptured and burst, spewing blood and amniotic fluid into the swirling air.

  “Blix!” Vrana shouted, for she could still hear the crow clawing at the door. “Don’t come in!” she warned, reaching for the handles.

  A cold sweat broke out across Vrana’s body as she felt a hand close on her side.

  “Yours to have,” the Blue Worm whispered in her ear.

  The Raven looked to the hand at her side, which was the color of coal, and saw dangling from its thin fingers a silver necklace with a blue gem inside a tangle of worms.

  “A necklace for a stone, a stone for a necklace,” the Blue Worm offered.

  “Keep it,” Vrana said, mind returning to the red-gemmed necklace falling into the flesh pit of Geharra. “I don’t want it.”

  “You say that now,” the Blue Worm said, laughing. It lifted the necklace to Vrana’s eyelevel. “Take it, do what you will with it; the door will not open otherwise.”

  Vrana swallowed her words of protest, snuffed her want to sever the Worm’s head from its body. Without looking at the Worm in full—it was naked and unguarded—she ripped the silver necklace from its hand, pulled open the wooden doors, and threw herself into the long tunnel that would lead her out of hell.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  It had been morning when the Raven descended into the island and midnight when she climbed out of it. A violent tempest awaited her as she staggered out of the rock formation. She forced Blix into a satchel to protect him from the storm, and he nipped at her hand to show he appreciated the thought.

  “What happened?” Vrana shouted to herself, shivering as sheets of rain fell across the area. “Where is it?”

  The trees of the island creaked and moaned as the mad wind twisted their backs and brought them to the muddy ground. Vrana stood on the tips of her toes and saw across the parted land the ruins of Lacuna, the buildings jagged shapes like debris across a war-torn field. She shoved the blue-gemmed necklace into the satchel opposite Blix’s and made for the passage that would lead her to the docks.

  Halfway to the village, Vrana stopped and watched as torches moved like fireflies across the western shore. Though the light of the moon was little, it was enough to see that there were three small boats on the beach. Mara had warned Vrana that a group had taken interest in the island, and now they were here, having arrived far too quickly to suggest that their interest was nothing less than an obsession.

  As she came to the outskirts of Lacuna, Vrana found the door to the dockyard torn off, lost somewhere in the glistening glade. She entered the passage through the hollowed-out tree, the sconces inside having been robbed of their flames. Blades of grass and wet leaves clung to her feet as she hurried into the depths of the island once more.

  “Vrana!” R’lyeh called out from the passage’s end. “Vrana, you’re okay!”

  R’lyeh? She could hear the girl’s voice, but the passage was too dark to make out what was in front of her.

  “Mara, she made it!” she heard the Octopus say.

  Am I hallucinating? Vrana quickened her pace, rubbing the top of Blix’s head as she went. What did the Worm do to me?

  Just as she was about to doubt her own sanity, Vrana collided with R’lyeh, sending both the girl and herself to the ground.

  “Are you okay?” Vrana cried, scrambling to her feet to embrace R’lyeh. “Sorry Blix,” she whispered, squishing the crow as they hugged.

  “I’m so sorry.” R’lyeh began to weep. “I really wanted to be there.”

  “It’s better that you weren’t,” Vrana said, her eyes beginning to adjust to the dark. She slid her hands under R’lyeh’s mask and stroked the girl’s hair to calm her. “Where’s Mara?”

  R’lyeh took Vrana by the wrist and led her to the docks, which had been torn in half during the calming of the Bane. Wood shavings coated the surface of the cove’s black waters, bunching up against the supports that had yet to be toppled. At the farthest end of the inlet, a small boat without paddles or a sail waited, with Mara standing at its bow and an emerald orb of light hovering over its stern.

  “She said that she can spellweave a little,” R’lyeh muttered as they navigated the remains of the dock. “She said the Worm taught her how.”

  “I wonder what else she’s learned,” Vrana retorted, steadying herself on the rickety walkway as the waves pounded against it.

  “I was so scared you wouldn’t come back,” R’lyeh admitted, not taking her eyes off Mara.

  “How do you think I felt seeing you like that?”

  R’lyeh sighed. “I don’t know what happened.” She batted a moth away. “It’s not the first time.”

  “Later, then.”

  One by one they descended a ladder off the side of the walkaway and boarded the boat. Mara nodded at the Raven and tapped the emerald sphere with the tip of her sword. The conjuration began to melt, dripping onto the stern and spreading at an alarming rate over the entirety of the boat and its passengers.

  “What did you do?” Vrana lurched forward as the boat propelled itself into the night.

  “The waters are too turbulent to sail any other way,” Mara said. “It’ll be slow going, but we’ll reach Nachtla soon enough.”

  “Then how did they get across?” Vrana took a seat, her back to the dock, and laid her ax the across her lap.

  “Who?”

  “Vrana…” R’lyeh started, touching her damp side.

  The Raven ignored the girl and said, “The Worm told me you should have been the one to seal it away.”

  “Not everyone can be as dedicated as you,” Mara said, sounding defensive. “We all have our shortcomings.”

  “Are you a homunculus?” Vrana ran her fingers through the fine layer of emerald light that surrounded the boat, which hummed with every pass.

  Mara laughed. “You know that I’m not.”

  “How is it you can spellweave?” Vrana shrugged off R’lyeh’s attempt to get her attention.

  “Practice. And promises.” The centipedes on Mara’s mask started to shift, changing the shape of the headpiece to something more pointed and severe. “I swear, Vrana, that I would never betray you.”

  “Mara,” R’lyeh said, abandoning her friend to appeal to the captain, “I thought you said everyone left.”

  Vrana swung her legs over the seat and turned toward the docks. Twelve torches burned brightly in the hands of twelve cloaked figures standing on the structure’s edge. Their
robes, tattered and torn, fluttered in the changing wind, with the hints of weapons glinting behind the dark fabrics.

  “Who are they?” Vrana said, lowering her voice, even though she knew the spell had made the boat all but invisible.

  Mara crouched, closed her hand around a portion of the emerald light, and ripped it free. “It’s time to find out,” she said as she molded the light into a ball, whispered a word, and threw it across the cove at the shuffling figures.

  Like fireworks from the underworld, the eerie emerald orb exploded in the cove, showering the docks in nightmarish green light. The twelve figures pulled back the hoods of their robes, as though they were eager to make their identities known. There were six men and six women, and although Vrana could not see their arms, she was somehow certain they were Corrupted. They appeared ordinary enough by their faces alone, which were unmarked by madness or ritualistic scarification.

  “Who are they?” Vrana repeated.

  Before Mara could answer, a thirteenth figure emerged onto the docks, the group parting as it passed. The figure moved gracelessly, its legs wracked with infections or fractures. The cowl hung like a curtain over its body—neither fitting it nor forming to it—and a dented breastplate protected its chest. Like the others, the thirteenth figure looked up at the gems of light falling through the cove and then pulled back its black hood.

  Vrana gasped as the thirteenth figure let the hood fall to its shoulders. Where there should have been a face, there was only bone: a skull with hardened eyes, veined and glassy, bulging from their sockets. The Skeleton, Vrana said to herself. The Skeleton from the Black Hour. Her hands went to the bags at her side for the key from the keep—which was back in Caldera.

  “The Marrow Cabal,” Mara whispered. She became frantic and began to murmur incantations that seemed to make the boat increase in speed.

  “I’ve seen him, the Skeleton,” Vrana confessed.

  Mara shook her head. “You must be mistaken, Vrana.”

  “No, I’m not.” She looked to the docks to confirm her statement. “I’ve seen him.”

  “That’s who led a rebel group to Eldrus to kill King Edgar,” Mara said, still not believing the Raven. “How could you know him?”

  “The Black Hour.” Vrana’s neck burned under R’lyeh’s scrutiny. “After my second trial, I was lost, and I stumbled into the Black Hour.” She could hear the Octopus draw a deep breath. “It was raining, and I took shelter in a keep. I fell asleep, and when I woke, I found him, torturing a man. There were bodies everywhere, and I could hear what sounded like a mob closing in. When I went to escape, everything vanished—the keep, the mob, the Skeleton.”

  “Does that mean he knows who you are?” R’lyeh asked, a shiver coursing through her body.

  Mara chanted one last hymn and said at its end, “The Black Hour is a perversion of what has been and could be. There’s not enough known about it to come to any conclusion other than it is real to those experiencing it.”

  “When I met him, he seemed obsessed with finding a way to reverse death.”

  “He certainly came to the right place,” Mara said. She exhaled loudly. “But the Worm is gone, and so are we. There is nothing they can learn from Lacuna.”

  R’lyeh hummed. “What is he doing?”

  Squinting, Vrana saw in the last of the light the Skeleton’s bony hand moving back and forth. “He’s waving us off.”

  Vrana kept to herself for the better part of an hour. Her mind felt sick, dizzied, and fevered. Her hands busied themselves in the bag at her side, petting a sleeping Blix, as her thoughts oscillated between the Blue Worm and the Skeleton. Could she leave it to mere coincidence to explain these two encounters with the King’s would-be assassin? If Mara was correct, then their meeting in the Black Hour was known only to Vrana; it was nothing more than a secret dream. Yet, she didn’t believe that, not entirely. Was she bound to the Skeleton as she was to the Witch? Would they be forever entwined, the three of them, each twisting around the other, until the threads of their being frayed and snapped?

  Vrana sighed, took off the raven’s skull, and told herself she was simply not that important.

  R’lyeh had been the first to break the silence aboard the boat, with a snore like an old man’s.

  But it was Mara who was the first to say anything of importance. “We’ve been out here for too long.”

  Vrana surveyed the sea, watching the black waves carry debris long held under by the tow of the Bane. “Did we drift off course?”

  “No,” Mara retorted, shaking her head. She drew her sword at nothing in particular and said, “The spell wouldn’t allow that to happen.” She ran her hand through the emerald glow coating the boat. “It’s still strong. Something is wrong.”

  “Mara,” Vrana started, “what did you give the Worm to spellweave?”

  The Centipede seemed to hesitate for a moment. “My womanhood,” she said finally. “It was a fair trade.”

  R’lyeh yawned. As she sat up, her mask rolled over the top of her head and fell behind her. “Are we there yet?” she asked, hands fumbling for the dried octopus body.

  The boat came to a grinding halt. Vrana’s initial thought was that they had reached the mainland, but this was not the case. In a matter of seconds, the ocean had frozen over. Jagged waves encased in ice loomed like the claws of a beast reaching from its prison deep within the solid sea. They had sailed into the Black Hour, Vrana realized, and this time she could not chalk it up to mere coincidence.

  “Vrana,” R’lyeh said, her voice quivering. “Vrana!” she yelled, losing the nerve she had so recently recovered.

  Vrana removed her mask, took R’lyeh’s hand, and pressed it to her cheek, so that the girl could feel something that was alive. “Breathe.” She dried the Octopus’s tears the best that she could. “If I give you the daggers, will that help?”

  “I know I’m weak,” R’lyeh said, nodding and taking the Cruel Mother’s talons, “but they help me be brave.”

  “You are brave,” Vrana insisted. She could tell Mara was trying to get her attention.

  “Not like you.” R’lyeh wiped her nose.

  “It takes its toll.” Vrana turned to face Mara. “I just don’t let it show.”

  The ocean began to shake, sending white fractures across the dusted icescape. Lights the color of Corruption winked from the waters below their feet. The sea became a window as shadows slithered behind its glassy surface, making the tiniest of cracks dreadful gateways.

  “Get out of the boat,” Mara ordered, stepping onto the ice.

  Vrana nodded, put R’lyeh’s mask on the girl, and then put on her own. She asked Blix if he was doing all right, and he responded by pulling the flap of the satchel shut with his beak.

  “What do we do?” R’lyeh asked between the chattering of her teeth.

  Vrana opened another one of her bags, removed the faerie silk cloak, and threw it around the girl. “We wait it out. That’s all we can—”

  The ocean heaved high into the air a cloud of ice and freezing water. A colossal tower bored the Bane’s breast, twisting like a screw as it worked its way toward the sky. Vrana, R’lyeh, and Mara tried to flee, but the force of its emergence put them on hands and knees, face to face with the shadowy beings on the other side of the sea.

  “What’s happening?” R’lyeh shouted.

  Blix, unable to endure the abuse any longer, burst out of the satchel and took flight. Vrana’s eyes followed as he soared across the starless heavens toward the tower that seemed to hold them there. It was a skyscraper, a stolen bone from the Old World’s body. Angular, starved, and stripped of color, it swayed where it stood like the wakened dead, charged to frighten one last soul before collapsing into dust.

  R’lyeh pulled the faerie cloak as tight as she could around her body, fresh snow dotting the fabric. “Where did they all go? The buildings, I mean, from the Old World.” She sounded awestruck.

  “Now’s not the time,” Vrana said gently, her attenti
on taken by the fissures and the shadows collected within.

  “We have to keep moving.” Mara’s sword arm tensed as a chunk of ice fell from the sky and burst at her feet. “There’s nothing to be learned from the Black Hour.”

  The Centipede turned to lead them into the frigid darkness, but the lights beneath their feet began to flare and burn red again. Vibrations, and then tremors. More shadows spread across the frosted glass. The ground cracked, snapped. They moved away from the boat as it twitched and sank into the softening ice. The noises grew louder, the vibrations harder, as they rattled the sea. The ice buckled, screamed; a geyser of metal blew through the surface, sending the boat high into the night.

  They picked a direction and ran as the second skyscraper wound out of the hole it made. The shadows were swarming beneath their feet towards what Vrana could only assume was an escape. She could hear more buildings tunneling through the ocean. Ice and snow rained down upon them as the hidden architects of the Black Hour built their tribute to insanity.

  “Not much longer,” Mara assured. “Always an hour and never more.”

  Vrana shivered at the sounds of madness that rode in on the wintry wind. Laughter; the wailing of an infant. The shadows had broken out of their cells and were now closing in around them with murderous intent, pouring through the alleyways and streets of the growing city.

  “What are they?” R’lyeh said, scrambling as the layer of ice beneath her cracked in half.

  Vrana grabbed the girl, caught a glimpse of the black swell of death behind them. Blix cawed overhead until he was sure he had their attention and then flew on. They followed after.

  “I don’t know,” Mara responded finally. “They may be new to this world.”

  New to this world? The merfolk in the rivers outside Geharra—Deimos had said the same of them. They’re not new. We are. And they hate us for it.

  Mara hopped backward, curses passing through her lips as the ground rumbled and shook. She held out her arm to bar Vrana and R’lyeh from nearing, which Vrana found both sweet and uncharacteristic of the woman. The ground fell inward, and a power line like a crucifix rose out of the crimson haze trapped within the ice, wires rising with it, ripping through the ocean’s shell.