The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “You won’t.” Horace nodded at the trainees passing through, and the small crowd that formed in the stands. “Could you kill?”

  Edgar shook his head. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  Horace approached his brother, straightened him out. “Then what are you doing out here?”

  “I don’t want anyone killing me.” Edgar laughed, coughed, and laughed some more. “What about you? Could you kill someone when the time comes?”

  “Yes,” Horace said, without hesitation. “I often think of those things which I do not want to do, so that when I must, I am ready for them.”

  Edgar sighed and stared at his brother. “While you’re training to be king, make sure you spend some time learning how to have a bit of fun, too. Because that sounds awful.”

  Horace nodded with a smile. “Sure, Edgar.”

  King Sovn and Queen Magdalena were well aware of the assassin’s origins, for Alexander Blodworth had told them himself. Afterward, he was apprehended and locked away in a heavily guarded room until it could be decided if he had direct involvement in the orchestration of the royal family’s planned demise.

  What Edgar couldn’t understand was why the understudy from Penance had felt the need to tell him in the first place, and why Archivist Amon had facilitated the meeting to begin with. He had every intention of informing his family of the conspirator’s admission, and yet Alexander had beat him to it, by marching straight to the throne room from the Archivist’s tower, before Edgar even had the chance to part from Amon’s quarters.

  “It makes no sense,” Edgar said, walking beside Horace as they left the courtyard, far bloodier and bruised than when they had entered. “To begin with, it’s not my place to know such things. Why did Blodworth think I could help him?”

  “Manipulation, perhaps.” Horace stopped where the walkway intersected with another. “I’ll speak with Archivist Amon.”

  “Am I that much of a pushover?” Edgar said, as Horace started down another path. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”

  Horace didn’t.

  The Crossbreed had grown larger. It had sprawled itself across the subway station and claimed dominion over the rusty and rotted remains there.

  Audra left Auster behind and led Edgar down to the tracks to show him a recent development in the plant’s lifecycle. Where the rails had been pulled back off the ground, like beckoning fingers, a cluster of orbs sat glowing in a ditch.

  Audra crouched, and said, “This is what we need. These fruits fell from it.”

  Edgar swallowed his hesitation—the massive plant wasn’t far off—and crouched beside her. “What is this?” He leaned in closer. The orbs were covered in a carpet of insects—ants, flies, roaches, beetles, and centipedes—but they weren’t moving.

  “Not dead, see.” Audra gave a few a poke, and they twitched with life.

  “Not moving much, either.”

  “We’ll have to find the right amount.”

  Edgar closed his eyes. He knew he should have put an end to the conversation right then and there, but instead, he simply said, “We have to start small.”

  “If… if we’re going to do this to our people, we ought to do it to ourselves first.”

  Edgar nodded enthusiastically. “Yes.” It was a good idea, one which coaxed his conscience into a clam. “Audra, who else knows about this place?”

  His sister stood. She didn’t look at him when she said, “No one. Why?”

  “Alexander Blodworth. He told me he came to speak with you about botany, among other things.”

  This time, Audra did face him, and though it was dark in the tunnels, he could see that she was blushing. “Really?”

  “We can’t tell anyone, Audra.” Edgar stood. “If this is what you say it is, and it can do what you say it can do… Don’t tell anyone. No one, but especially not Alexander. I know you want to please people.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. You don’t have to please anyone, though. You don’t have to prove anything. If we’re going to do this, it has to be in secret, between me and you and Auster, and for the right reasons.”

  “Yeah.” She waved to Auster, who watched them from the room that overlooked the subway. “You seem… Edgar, I won’t be upset if you decide we shouldn’t do this. I was expecting you to say no when I told you, anyways.”

  “So was I.”

  Audra loosened her hair and let it fall over her shoulders. As she combed it with her fingers, she said, “Why did you say yes? I mean, of all things, Ed, you agree to this?” She laughed, and as she laughed, she smelled the floral fragrances that still lingered in her hair. “I thought you were going to be angry. Or, at least, tell me to destroy it.”

  “It’s just so…” Edgar shrugged, tipped his head back, and groaned. “It’s absurd, but there’s something about this whole situation. I don’t know. It makes sense. It seems right. Maybe it’s the assassin, or assassins. I just, I just don’t want people to hate us anymore, and they hate us so much. They won’t even listen when we’re trying to help, and I know that’s… you know, you can’t make people listen. But, with this, now we can, and if all we need is a month to make things better, and if this works like you say it will, then I guess it’s worth it.”

  Audra nudged him. “I want them to be happier, too, Edgar, but I think your expectations may be too high.”

  “Theirs are too low, and they shouldn’t be. They should expect more, and we should deliver on those expectations.”

  “It’s a myth, not a miracle.” Audra went to her knees, and took out a knife. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. No sense in talking at length about it until we’re sure it does.”

  Audra was incredibly shy, but also incredibly bold when the situation asked her to be. She started slicing off layers of the orbs, the glowing fruits of the Crossbreed, and somewhere along the way, decided to just take one of the orbs altogether.

  Side by side, they marched off the tracks, out of the tunnel, and up to the office, where Auster waited, shaking his head, well aware of what his siblings were about to ask him.

  He did what he was told, because he always did what his twin told him to do, and ate a piece of the fruit, which bled a milky white liquid when Audra split it.

  “You next,” Auster said, cringing as he swallowed the piece.

  “No, we have to be thorough about this. One at a time. Don’t interrupt, Auster. I’m timing your interaction.”

  Edgar didn’t need to be a scientist to know their experiment was flawed. There were too many variables left unconsidered, and the sample size was too small to do anything but validate their own biases.

  He almost expected more from Audra, for it was from her he had learned such terms and considerations, but as he watched her watching Auster hungrily, he knew that, like the rest of the family, she wouldn’t be stopped until she got exactly what she wanted.

  That’s when Edgar realized neither would he.

  Ten minutes passed. Auster finally admitted, “I don’t feel any different. I wouldn’t beat yourself up, Sister. Growing myths is not the easiest of accomplishments.”

  Audra slipped into her thoughts. Then, she said, “Stand on the top of your chair.”

  “It’s uneven. I will fall and break my neck, and then where will we be?” Auster shook his head, but as he did so, he stood up and stepped onto the chair. “Oh.” He looked surprised. “Well, there you go.”

  As Edgar stared at his brother while he delicately maintained his balance on the unbalanced chair, he said, “What’s something Auster would never do, even if you asked him?”

  Audra cleared her throat. “Take that knife out of your pocket and cut your hand.”

  “Hold on. No, wait a minute.” Edgar waved his hands, telling Auster to stop, but Auster had already taken out the knife from his pocket.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said. He hissed as he sliced his skin with the knife. Stray drops of bright red blood dribbled onto the rickety chair
. “I’m done. No more,” he insisted, and yet he remained standing, gripping his bloody hand.

  “Sit down, Auster,” Audra said, giddy. “I’ll go next.”

  Audra ingested half as much of the fruit as her brother had. As expected, she was less open to suggestion; by the time Edgar had her singing a bawdy song about a romance between a well-endowed Night Terror and a buxom human, Auster had recovered.

  “I remember everything,” he said, out of it. “I hate you. Both of you.” He held up his hand. “This is going to get infected.” He pointed to the office. “Look at this nasty place. People will not fall for this… this shit!”

  “They won’t know we’re telling them what to do,” Audra said, her words slurred, her eyelids fluttering. “Edgar, your turn.”

  “We have to be able to destroy the Crossbreed as soon as anyone finds out about it.” Edgar was beginning to fully comprehend the implications of the plant’s qualities; it terrified him. “It works, that’s clear to us now, but we don’t move forward until we’ve accounted for everything. Is it addictive? Is it traceable? You said there is a Crossbreed that kills. The Bloodless. How do you know both creations are not one in the same?”

  “Edgar.” Audra took a deep breath and exhaled, as though she were physically ridding herself of the plant’s influence. “Are you willing to wait the years it will take to find all of that out?”

  Edgar shook his head. He wasn’t willing to wait years, let alone months, to put their plan into action; Eldrus couldn’t afford such a delay. No, he had never truly walked its streets, nor lived a life such as those who called its gutters and sewers home, but he didn’t need to; one doesn’t need to murder their siblings to know that they shouldn’t. He had heard and seen enough from Ghostgrave to silence any doubts that the city should be left to follow its own catastrophic course; a daughter raped by her father, a father raped by his son, children exchanged for coin, coin exchanged for children. Labor that leads to nowhere, and nowhere that leads to labor.

  Edgar had heard of roaming gangs leaving blood where they’d roamed, and broken banks leaving behind broken homes. His family could deride him all they liked about his cause. He wouldn’t be stopped, and once they saw his good work, neither they, nor anyone else, would ask him to.

  “Edgar,” Auster said, interrupting his brother’s thoughts. “Audra and I have to ask you something.”

  “What’s Vincent doing with the Night Terror in the dungeon?” Audra scooped up the glowing fruit, as though to tell Edgar she would have the truth, whether he wanted to share it or not.

  Edgar looked back and forth between the two of them. “How? I wouldn’t lie to you, but did Vincent say anything?”

  Auster pointed down the tracks, where it was darkest. “These tunnels run deep. They run right beside the dungeons.”

  “We saw you.” Audra wiped the sweat from her brow. “You’re right, Auster, you really can feel it leaving your system.”

  “Wait, can you take me to the dungeon? Can I get in?”

  They nodded.

  “Show me, please. I need to ask it things, things I can’t ask when Vincent or the guards are around. He’s not interested in what it has to say, not like I am. Audra, Auster. They look… just like us.”

  “What about the Crossbreed?” Audra asked, her voice full of pride and the anticipation of it being hurt.

  “We start tomorrow.” Edgar smiled at his siblings. “We start making everything better tomorrow.”

  Audra disappeared into the shadows. When she came out, she carried fire. She held the makeshift torch of cloth and wood outward, and led the men that followed behind her down to the subway tracks.

  Edgar struggled as they went. He didn’t have the foresight to step over every deep puddle and protruding pipe. Under his feet, loose tiles cracked into clouds of dust, while jagged signs and broken bottles threatened to put an end to his walking days altogether.

  “Just up here,” Audra whispered, pointing to a station outside which a subway car sat. “Have to be quiet. Mean things live down here.”

  “We aren’t prepared for ‘mean things,’” Edgar said. “They built Ghostgrave around these ruins on purpose, didn’t they?”

  Auster made a popping sound with his mouth. “Absolutely. They go on forever, these tracks. It’s like the Old World was turned inside out.”

  Audra lifted herself onto the walkway beside the tracks, went over to the small station, and fixed the torch to a hole in its doorway. She called Edgar over.

  As he entered the station, whose ceiling was covered in a thick spider web, she pointed to a place in the back wall where light shone through.

  Edgar put his eye to the peephole. On the other side, the Night Terror was still in shackles. Except, this wasn’t its cell. It was something else. Something like a torture chamber.

  It took Edgar a moment to make sense of everything, but just out of the Eel’s reach, Vincent, naked and sweating, was crawling toward an equally naked woman on the floor. She was pregnant, tightly bound, and wore the head of a moon cat.

  “How are you so far along?” Vincent asked the female Night Terror. He climbed atop of her before she could answer, and said, “Your belly is so big.”

  “Edgar,” Audra whispered. She grabbed his shoulder.

  He swatted her away, unable to pull himself from the revolting scene. His hands became fists, his temples started to throb. He stepped back, turned around to ask his sister how to get into the dungeon from here, to stop Vincent. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t say anything at all.

  Because now there was a knife at Auster’s throat, and at his back, a man, bald and grinning, wearing the holy vestments of Penance; the second assassin.

  CHAPTER XI

  I remember a time when the world was formed and full, and all that could be was, and all that should be wasn’t. Songs were sung of such squandered potentials, but when the songs were over, so too were the sentiments. I brought the world to its knees and gave it what it wanted, and it bled all over my feet its willful stupidity.

  The Trauma did nothing to humanity that humanity hadn’t already done to itself. Some would say the Nameless Forest is rooted in the suffering that followed that conspicuously tenuous event, but they would be wrong. It has always been here, and not in the metaphysical sense. From east to west it has spread, crossing oceans as though they were fields, and now it has arrived here, where I’ve always wanted it to be, in the graveyard of life and the cradle of death.

  When the world writhes, religion reigns. With God gone, the Lillians constructed distractions while waiting for his return. They commanded their congregation to gather the remaining firearms and explosives. With no place to put their deadly haul, they melted it down and built it up, into a great, achromatic tower that signaled to their lord that they were ready.

  It wasn’t long until the tower became an idol, and like all religions, the Lillians were divided over its meaning. Those that rejected the tower went eastward, filling their ranks with the faiths they had absorbed along the way. Those that held the tower holy stayed behind, christening themselves the Scavengers to make permanent the separation.

  Three city-states had been spared the Abyss, and it was to the northernmost territory of Elin, now Eldrus, the Lillians went. Entitlement saw the congregation thinned by blades and imprisonment; the City of Reason had no interest in bending to the commands of the same people thought to have encouraged the Trauma. The Lillians, full of hate and self-inflicted persecution, evacuated the city, their numbers halved to the comforts Elin provided, and continued eastward, where they were certain their lord slumbered.

  The Lillians tore across the continent, taking what they willed. It was not until they reached the Nameless Forest, a place towards which they felt a kinship given its infamy, did they rest.

  Those too fattened from thieving and fucking ventured into the forest and made it their home. They claimed they saw heaven in its woods, and built the massive church, Benediction, to honor their lord.
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  Those not taken by the Forest or the strange drink found in the veins that grew there, set their sights on the sea. They claimed they heard God calling them from the foggy isle not far from the shore, and set across the ocean’s shallows to answer.

  Those beholden to tradition and dogma left the heretical Forlorn behind, and went to where the land was made white and pure. They claimed they felt God in the frozen isolation of the northeastern reaches, and took the forgotten city-state, Six Pillars, now Penance, as their own.

  Six Pillars prospered beyond anyone’s expectations, for the fanatical have a knack for procreation. Blessed by their God unseen and unheard, the Lillians made of the icy wasteland an escape from mainland chaos. Forgetful pilgrims braved the wild Divide and mountain passes to live with those they had once feared and loathed. The oldest city-state, Geharra, warned of the cruelties that awaited those starry-eyed travelers. They had suffered the Lillians longer than anywhere else, for the city had been the religion’s birthplace. Their warnings, however, fell on deaf ears, even as they pointed to the depravities committed by the Scavengers who worshiped the great, gunmetal tower at their territory’s edge.

  But what could not be ignored were the bodies piling high on the roads to heaven, and the creatures from the Nameless Forest that put them there.

  While the sects of Lillian continued to search for God in all the places a god might hide, those that had stayed in the Nameless Forest were convinced they had found him. Believing the vermillion veins brought them closer to God, they drank from them constantly, claiming each inebriation showed them glimpses of God’s chambers beneath their feet. The priests of Benediction, determined to find these chambers, then cracked the earth, but they did not find God there; only things that hid in the deep dark that should not have been let loose into the light.

  From the Nameless Forest, Nightmares came: Old World terrors that predated the Trauma. Hunters of humanity, dressed in rags and bone, woken and returned to cleanse the world of its Corruption. The Lillians were thought to be responsible for their first Old World appearance, and it only followed that blame would be placed on them for the Night Terrors’ return.