The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  Atticus sat again and looked at the woman, the Corrupted (he had to make sure), who’d come in behind them.

  “My name is Kevin,” she said, taking off her spectacles. Her eyes lost half their size when the lenses left them. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I sit on the council of Geharra. I’ve called this meeting here tonight. I understand that you cannot die.” She put her spectacles back on. “Show me.”

  Atticus tilted his head to show where Bon had opened his neck. He pulled up his shirt, to show where Blythe had gored him.

  Kevin snapped her fingers at Johannes. He handed her one of his knives. She tossed it on the table in front of Atticus.

  “I’d rather not,” he said, pushing the knife back towards her. “I’ve done it enough already.”

  Kevin flicked the knife, sent it spinning back at him. “I try something before I buy it, Gravedigger.”

  Hex said to him, “You’d do the same.”

  Lip curled, Atticus leaned forward and grabbed the knife. He searched its blade for evidence of runes, of powders—things that may reverse his life-sustaining curse. Did they trust him by giving him this? Or did they trust in their numbers to overwhelm him if need be?

  “We’re on a time crunch,” Mara said. Her mask quivered with life. “Hurry it up, please.”

  Deimos shook his head. “Give him a moment. It’s good this isn’t something he takes lightly.”

  Suddenly agreeable, Atticus pressed the knife into his wrist. “This will take a minute.”

  “What?” Johannes turned his head. “Oh, no. It’s tainted with Thanatos.”

  Atticus gritted his teeth. With the knife only touching his skin, he could feel a lightning storm blowing across the muscles below. “How long ‘till this shit is out of my system?”

  “It’s quick.” Johannes sounded excited, like the herbalist he probably was. “Like blowing out a candle.”

  “Hex, I don’t know if another one is coming—” Atticus closed his eyes and exhaled, “—but if a shepherd shows up, you take it down. You hear me?”

  Hex nodded. “Of course.”

  Kevin went wide-eyed and said, “Shepherd? What is he—?”

  Atticus slipped the knife’s tip into his wrist. Blood welled around the puncture, thick and dark. He gripped the knife and ripped downward. His forearm split open, the seams of skin giving way to the blade. Hot, red blood poured over his flesh, like water over the edge of a tub. He dropped the knife and grabbed the wound, his hand adhering to the sticky slit. Sight and sound ceased to be, and like a breath to a flame, Thanatos snuffed his life out.

  When his senses returned, Atticus found himself sitting in the same seat, at the same table, on a scabby cliff overlooking a white desert. A thin film, veined and rough, hung from an unseen place high in the sunless sky. It ran before him for as far as he could see, blocking off the desert entirely.

  “Is this the Membrane?”

  He stood up, noticed his forearm had already begun to heal itself. Craning his neck, he found that familiar tunnel he’d fallen through before, streaks of sinewy light inching across it.

  “Guess so.”

  Atticus walked over to the film. He touched it. Like the insect wing it resembled, it buzzed. Why am I still here? he wondered. The Thanatos. Looking at his slit wrist, he figured it hadn’t left his system yet. Atticus put his nose to the film. The pale desert on the other side sat quietly, a wild wind slowly undoing its many dunes. Where had he seen this place before? The first time he died, he realized, and in Bedlam, the first time the shepherd showed.

  I should try to look for Clementine and Will. Atticus stepped back. If I keep using the Thanatos, maybe I can find them. Maybe I can tell them what I’m doing for them. But before he could turn away, the desert drew him back in. Small figures started to emerge from the sands. They were human, but their bodies were hazy and black, like literal shadows of their former selves. He didn’t turn away, but he did back away, because something about the sight of the shadows made him uneasy.

  “Will! Clementine!” Atticus shouted. He noticed he’d drifted a few feet from the film, the Abyss’ pull ever-present.

  The shadows were coming out in droves now, by the hundreds, by the thousands. They were coming for him.

  “Fuck, fuck!”

  He panicked as the shadowy swarm disappeared under the lip of the cliff, out of sight.

  Am I stuck down here? What the fuck did I do? Atticus went past the table and chair, to where the cliff ended and the Membrane’s tunnel began. He peered into the dim depths, searching the fleshy walls for hints of Pulsa diNura.

  Take care of them, Herbert, he thought. Or whatever the hell your name was.

  “Son of a bitch!” Atticus turned around and jumped as he saw the shadows there pressed against the other side of the film. There were hundreds of them, each one fighting their way to the front. Thick, glistening saliva poured out of their chomping mouths. The sight of Atticus had driven them into a frenzy. They clawed at the film in desperation, and from their desperation, Atticus could tell they were suffering.

  “Are you in hell?” he asked, in awe, like a child.

  Some were praying, others looked like they were trying to make the signs of Penance, but it kept coming out wrong.

  Someone snapped their finger in Atticus’ ear.

  “Are you there?” Hex asked.

  Atticus screamed. He kicked his feet and fell out of the chair. The workshop’s floor met his face like a fist and chipped his tooth. He lay there a moment, breathing in the puddle of blood his suicide had formed.

  “I’m very sorry,” he heard Kevin say. “We will never ask you to do that again. You… are amazing.”

  Atticus grunted. He stood up and threw himself in the chair. He was covered in blood, and his arm had torn back open.

  “Someone going to stitch me up?” He bit the inside of his mouth as the cool air got inside the wound and worked over his nerves. “I’d like to be conscious for whatever other bullshit gets asked of me.”

  Hex, as always, had a small amount of medical supplies on her. It probably wasn’t a coincidence, but Atticus had, in part, done this to himself, so he wasn’t about to bitch about it.

  “Hex already told you our goal: to force Eldrus out of the Heartland and kill King Edgar,” Kevin said as Hex fixed Atticus up. “We have dissidents across the Heartland, but they’re timid. The Heartland hates Eldrus’ involvement, but for most, it was an inevitability. So they’re used to it.”

  Atticus looked at the Night Terrors. Every time he was reborn, he felt renewed, so with renewed confidence, he muttered, “Why are they here?”

  “To keep the balance,” Deimos answered.

  Mara yawned and nodded. “Don’t mistake us for our bloodthirsty brethren in the south.”

  “You saying you don’t kill ‘Corrupted’?”

  “We do,” Johannes added cheerfully, his fox skull bobbing up and down. “But we try to be a little more meaningful about it.”

  “You’re not what I had in mind,” Atticus admitted.

  Mara fiddled with her thumbs, bored. “That’s generally the goal.”

  “When you sneak around killing in the dark, that’ll happen.”

  Atticus thought back to Gallows, where at least twice a year, a neighbor was found slaughtered, Corruption stripped from their arms. It scared him at first, the Night Terror attacks, and then it just became business.

  Mara crossed her arms. “When you’re done sneaking around, killing in the dark, you think you’ll be the same in the light?”

  The Bat cleared his throat. “Our people keep the balance through whatever means necessary. All populations, be it natural or supernatural, must be maintained. The city-states and the Heartland have their place on this traumatized continent. Eldrus has forgotten its place.”

  Atticus tilted his head at Hex. Rolling his eyes, he said, “Dress it up how you like, Terror, but murder is murder.”

  “Are your hands clean, Gravedigger?” Johann
es asked, jumping to Deimos’ defense.

  “No,” Atticus said. “Haven’t been most of my life. But I know what kind of monster I am. Not sure you all do.” He looked at his arm as Hex tightened the last stitch. “I can wash this blood off all I want, but I know it’s always going to be there.” He paused. The gears in his mind cranked out a notion. “Letting Geharra go to war with Eldrus doesn’t sound like the best way to keep your balance.”

  “Not war,” Kevin said. She reached into her pocket and popped a piece of candy into her mouth. “We’re forcing them out, nothing more.”

  “Killing the king isn’t an act of war?”

  “They won’t know it was us.”

  Atticus bit his lip. “Sure they won’t.”

  “The Nameless Forest changed King Edgar,” Johannes said. He touched a dagger on his belt. “It rotted him from the inside out.”

  “He needs to be replaced,” Mara said. “He can’t be reasoned with. And since he brought that child back from the Forest, he can’t be reached, either. It’s going to require brute force.”

  Hex took out a vial of Numb and doused his arm. “To make a difference, he has to die. The body farms and the vermillion veins, they’re only the beginning.”

  Atticus tried to flex his arm, but it wasn’t there yet. “Beginning of what?”

  “You’re going to help us,” Kevin demanded. “There is no turning back. If you betray us, we will chain you to a rock and leave you to burn on the sands of the Ossuary.”

  “Funny you should mention a desert. No, I want my wife and son back more than…” He sighed. “I’ll do anything, even if it means I’ll regret it later.”

  “That’s good to know,” Mara said. She crossed her legs, leaned out of her chair, and said, “Mass is almost over.”

  “King Edgar,” Kevin began, “is trying to mobilize the Nameless Forest. We don’t know what he found when he went in there, but we do know he’s trying to bring it out.”

  “Our people occasionally measure the borders of the Nameless Forest,” Johannes said. “It hasn’t moved, not even an inch, in the last hundred years. But in the last six months, it’s moved forward one mile. In every direction.”

  “It’s spreading,” Mara said. “Testing the waters. What you saw in those bodies are the very same vermillion veins found in the Forest. King Edgar is preparing the land, making it agreeable.”

  Johannes nodded. “They’re also weapons themselves. The soldiers are burying them deep in the earth. But you saw what happens when they are triggered.”

  “It was a massacre,” Atticus said. He remembered Carpenter Plantation’s basement, the web of mutilated bodies from the coffin bombs.

  “During King Edgar’s disappearance, he discovered new allies,” Deimos said, joining the conversation. “We’ve noticed an increase in activity around the Nameless Forest, too. Messenger birds and men made of veins. He’s communicating with what’s inside of the Forest. We’ve seen the rare supply line here and there as well.”

  “What’s inside the Forest?” Atticus asked. “Does anyone really know?”

  “Old World monsters, maybe,” Hex said. “People said a lot of them fled there after the Trauma. But they got caught in the chaos of the place and couldn’t get back out.”

  “Some believe the Dread Clock sits at the Nameless Forest’s center,” Deimos said. “Some believe that’s what perpetuates the Black Hour. It’s creations, in combination with the insane things that normally live there, would make a wave of death not even the greatest of alliances could break.”

  “An army.” Atticus picked at his stitches. “Except, it can’t move unless the conditions are right.”

  “Immortal and intelligent,” Mara said sarcastically. “A man after my own heart.”

  Kevin shook her head and said, “Tracking the corpses is difficult. Their operation is not well organized, and it doesn’t matter if they meet their exact destination as long they’re buried. So anywhere, in the end, is good. But we’re doing our best to rout the convoys, and Carpenter Plantation was a blow to their operations, you can be sure.”

  “So he brings the Nameless Forest to the Heartland. Then what?” Atticus asked.

  “Then whatever he wants,” Hex said. “If it works, if it’s what we’re thinking it’s like, he’ll be able to take over anything. And if it doesn’t, then the Nameless Forest will probably choke the life out of what’s left of this shitty continent. I don’t think it matters what happens. The man is insane. He’s going to go along with whatever outcome he gets.”

  Atticus raised an eyebrow. “Let’s say it happens like you all think it will happen. But it’s not hell on Earth. Don’t think there’s any good that can come out of this?”

  The Night Terrors shook their heads in unison.

  “Balance is everything,” Deimos said. “Diversity is everything in this dying world.”

  “Your movement is just, I agree,” Atticus said. He lowered his voice as he heard the midnight parishioners shuffle past the workshop. When they’d gone, he whispered, “What happens next?”

  Mara straightened up in her seat, exhaled as though to say “finally.”

  Kevin reached back into her pocket and laid a large, blue, slimy snail shell on the table. “You, Hex, and your men will leave tomorrow morning and go west to Islaos. You’ll make yourself known, bolster morale, give a speech, kill if you can, and be on your way. After that, you’ll double back east to Hrothas, then north to Nyxis. After every town, leave a rebellion in your wake. Eldrus will have to stretch itself thin suppressing each uprising. Like I said, our people are timid, because they do not fight for war, but equilibrium. Humans don’t stand particularly well on the middle ground. It is on extreme soil that they find their footing. So give them your image, your story, your ability, and help them understand the importance of standing up for themselves, without having to tear everything down in the process.”

  “And after Nyxis?” Atticus asked. I can do this, he said to his wife and son. I can do this quickly, I promise.

  “Geharra has been smuggling weapons into the Heartland for a while now. Mercenaries, too, like Hex’s friend, Warren. After Nyxis, if you’ve done what you’re supposed to do, and we’ll know, you’ll go with a smaller, more covert operation into Eldrus. As the city-state tries to quell the fighting at its gates, you move into Ghostgrave and kill Edgar. We have people inside the keep. We’ll be tracking his movements, or supposed movements, the best that we can. We will be providing that information.”

  “Geharra stands to benefit a lot from this,” Atticus said, addressing the Night Terrors. “You guys not as cozy with Penance, I take it?”

  “Geharra knows it place,” Mara said. “And they know what will happen if they forget it.”

  “You know why I trust you?” Kevin said, interrupting the Mara.

  Atticus shook his head.

  “Because of your cause. It’s good for all of us, yourself included, that you can’t die, but that alone isn’t enough for me to trust you. There’s plenty of things out there that can do a good imitation of you, Gravedigger. It’s your cause. It’s simple, to the point. Heartfelt. When I look at you, I don’t see a man with grand aspirations for profits or politics. You’re going to do what you have to do until there’s nothing left of you, and then you’re going to take what’s yours and put this all behind you.”

  “Yeah, that’s the plan.”

  “Archivist Amon keeps his artifacts in his tower,” Mara said. “You take what you need and leave the rest.”

  Atticus’ heart started to beat hard. “Is what I need in there?”

  “Yes,” Deimos said. “Archivist Amon has led an unnaturally long life. And there are rumors King Edgar has tried to bring back his dead family members. But he doesn’t have your gift, so he can’t make the journey into the Membrane just by killing himself.”

  Mara laughed. “If nothing else, I’m sure your mosquito friend can figure something out, what with all that fresh blood to weave with.”


  Atticus shot a damning glance Hex’s way. “How have you been in contact with them? I’ve kept a close eye on you since Bedlam.”

  Johannes made a clicking noise with his mouth. “Oh, Hex. You spilled the beans about our plan, but you didn’t tell him about that? You’ve got your priorities backwards, girl.”

  Slamming his fist into the table, Atticus shot up and said, “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “Sit down, Gravedigger,” Kevin said. “This—” she picked up the large, blue, slimy snail shell, “—we call it an heir. It lets us communicate over vast distances.”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  Kevin looked at Mara.

  Mara shook her head.

  The councilwoman of Geharra said, “Hex has been keeping in contact with us through the heir.”

  “You have one of those? In that bag you carry around?” Atticus got calm, got seated.

  Hex shook her head and said, “Don’t have one. Don’t need one.”

  “It really only works one-way,” Kevin said, slipping the device back into her pocket. “We mostly just listen and hope Hex gets the fragments of our answers.”

  Atticus grinned. “I don’t understand. You don’t have one?”

  “Don’t need one. I know you’ve seen it, when my eyes turn blue like they do. I can cast my thoughts.” She struggled to find her words and then finally said it: “I’m a telepath, Gravedigger.”

  CHAPTER XX

  The midnight meeting came to an end shortly thereafter. The Night Terrors scattered to the wind, Mara going one way, Deimos and Johannes, hand-in-hand, the other. Kevin of Geharra went to the local inn, because she was supposed to be in Cathedra, anyways, for a symposium. Atticus and Hex stayed in the workshop awhile longer, staring each other down.

  “A telepath.” Atticus ground his heel into the ground. “I poured my god damn heart out to you.”

  “I can’t always control it.”