The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “It was time,” Anguis said, arms folded across his chest. His snake skull mask had smaller snakes slithering in and out of its openings.

  “Yeah,” Aeson said, panting.

  “Will you walk with me?”

  Aeson and Anguis went together in silence from the felled tree to the house of the elders. They climbed the steps, crossed the porch, and slipped into the dim domicile of Caldera’s three most respected individuals.

  Aeson already knew where Anguis was taking him, so he took the lead. On the threshold, he immediately turned left and walked down the dark hallway where glowing yellow eyes lined the walls. At its end, he turned left again and pulled back the sliding door there.

  He stepped into the room. Anguis quietly followed after. To call it a room would be a lie, but there was no other way to describe it. It was completely overrun with mushrooms and the opalescent sprites that tended to them. There were no walls, and the ceiling was a black stretch of seamless night. Yet if someone tried to walk beyond the actual bounds of the house, the room would swallow them up and spit them out somewhere near the Den of the Unkindness.

  “Want me to do it?” Anguis asked, shutting the door behind them.

  Aeson ignored him. He crossed the room, through the transparent grass, and went to the large obsidian boulder at the edge of the edgeless room. Kneeling beside the boulder, he splayed his fingers and pressed them into the five invisible grooves on top of it. He waited five seconds, let go. With the tips of his fingers now stained black, he plunged his hand into the pond and let the color run off until the water turned black, like the boulder.

  “Eil’en’kul,” Aeson whispered as the pond’s surface hardened over, like lava cooling into a black crust. He returned to the boulder, pressed all ten fingers to the ten hidden points along its craggy surface, and uttered, “Nyxannul.”

  This time, when he took his hands off the obsidian boulder, they weren’t stained. If they had been, he wouldn’t have been able to attempt the ritual again for another month.

  “I did not mean to insult you when I asked if you wanted me to do it,” Anguis said. “The heart of the mountain is difficult to read.”

  “Ready?” Aeson stepped onto the pond. A crack shot across the charcoal-colored surface, but it held.

  Anguis nodded and stepped onto the surface of the pond with him. The orange and red snakes coiling around his body faded into his flesh until they were merely tattoos.

  “Nyxannul,” Aeson repeated. He balled his fists and spit on the pond. “Nyxannul.”

  Finally, the surface broke, and Aeson and Anguis fell through, straight down, until seconds later, they were standing upright again, upon the top of the same black pond; except the transparent grass was gone and so, too, were the mushrooms, sprites, and the ceiling of sky. Now, they were no longer in the house of the elders, but a mile outside the village, deep inside the mountain, Kistvaen.

  Aeson gathered himself and stepped off the black pond into the cavern it had taken them to. Great, jagged walls of prismatic stone came together across the cavern, forming eerily perfect archways and steep, unreachable walkways. The ground itself was a hilly span of square-cut rocks that jutted out of the ground, as if they had melted into it a millennium ago.

  But it was the place beyond here for which they had come. The place beyond the streaked arches, at the bottom of the hilly span, where the spellweavers lived. Where they spoke to the mountain and listened to its rocks and weaved the spell that made it invisible to those who lived outside Caldera.

  “Before we go in,” Anguis said.

  Aeson stopped and stared at the Snake. He took off his skull mask because the heat inside the mountain was too much to keep it on. “What’s wrong?

  “The three spellweavers have been in contact with the other villages.”

  Anguis paused. He never paused. He never hesitated, not even when he had something awful to say.

  “Something has happened to the Children of Lacuna.”

  Aeson furrowed his eyebrows and said, “The ones that left when the Blue Worm was sealed away?”

  “No. The others. The ones we created and sent out into the world. There’s… hundreds of them, Corrupted and Night Terror alike.”

  “What’s happened?” Aeson felt himself growing impatient. “Did sealing the Blue Worm cause—”

  “We keep losing contact with the Children. They are defecting. Those that we have been able to track down and speak with, they keep telling us the same thing.”

  Aeson’s stomach sank. “What?”

  “It does not matter how far apart the town or village is. Be it in Nora, Bedlam, Cathedra, or even Eldrus, the story is always the same. The Children say that a woman with the body of a raven forces her way into their minds. They say her eyes sparkle like blue gems, and that her mouth is full of bruise-colored worms. They say that when she speaks, their skulls burn hot and they lose control of themselves. They say her name is Vrana, and that she is calling them.”

  “C-calling them for what?”

  Anguis sighed and looked the other way. “The Cult… the Cult of the Worm.”

  CHAPTER III

  R’lyeh liked Hex, but she didn’t need to be her best friend to know there was something wrong with her. A few minutes out of Bedlam and Hex came bounding through the forest on horseback. Unbeknownst to Will and R’lyeh, the Marrow Cabal’s second-in-command had been watching them the whole way.

  Yet that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was Hex’s eyes, and the way they glowed as she rode them down through the trees. The light coming from them was a bright, crystalline blue; it guttered like torch flames around her sockets. As soon as she was beside them, the light vanished. But R’lyeh had seen it. She was sure of it.

  “What’s got you spooked?” Hex asked Will, her voice bobbing up and down with the rhythm of the horse.

  Will pulled back on the reins of his horse and stopped it not far from where Adelaide’s Deceit started. He leaned over, exasperated. If he were trying to hide the fact that he was freaking out, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  But if R’lyeh were being honest with herself, she kind of liked the sight. The boy had been dead not minutes before they were formally introduced, back when the Skeleton slaughtered the Red Worm and pulled Clementine and Will from the Membrane. It was nice to know he still had some life within him, because lately, R’lyeh hadn’t been so sure. Both he and his mother had an emptiness to them, a kind of lost look that reminded her of Geharra and the pit and—

  “Alright.” Hex wheeled the horse around and hopped off it. Her sword bounced against her leg in its scabbard. “Whose bright idea was it to burn down the church?”

  “Mine,” R’lyeh confessed immediately. After all the lies she had told to Vrana about her dead parents, R’lyeh had given up the stuff completely. “I did it.”

  Hex’s blue braids bobbed beside her face, like tiny, frozen tornados. “Yeah?” Her hand shot out and grabbed R’lyeh’s pant leg. “How come?”

  Her eyes, she thought, staring into Hex’s face. There were pricks of light flaring in her pupils, like gateways. “Well, I—”

  Hex threw up her hand, cutting her off. “Save it for Bone Daddy.” The nickname made her smile. She tapped R’lyeh’s ax and said, “Keeping it safe for me?”

  Grinning, R’lyeh chirped, “Keeping it sharp for you. Go find your own.”

  Hex’s eyes fluttered, as if she were struggling to stay awake. She let go of R’lyeh and said to Will, “You look peaked.”

  “I’m f-fine.” Will smiled, forced out a laugh. “R’lyeh back there—” he pointed at her, as if she were invisible, “—scared the hell out of me.”

  “Yeah, she’s a spitfire,” Hex said. Her eyes, now finally dimming, darted back and forth between the two adolescents. “It’s a good thing I came to chaperone this here date you two went on.”

  Date? R’lyeh didn’t care if she sounded mean. She took off her mask and started laughing. Yes, she and Will were th
e same age, but the attraction wasn’t there. That part of them, whatever mechanism in their minds that might be, was broken. Maybe even beyond repair.

  “I got no problem saying it,” Will said, rearing up, looking cheerier. “I love this horse.” He rubbed its back, hugged its neck. “R’lyeh’s just my wingman, so Mom and Dad don’t suspect.”

  Hex rolled her eyes, said, “You’re not right in the head,” and mounted her horse.

  R’lyeh smiled at Will, put her mask back on. I shouldn’t assume he’s like me, she thought, as Hex took off.

  “Ready?” Will asked.

  Before she could answer, he kicked the horse into a gallop and followed after Hex.

  Sitting there, the blood of the priest baking onto her skin, R’lyeh sank into herself. It happened like that sometimes. All of a sudden. Out of nowhere. Like stepping into quicksand.

  I shouldn’t assume he’s like me, she thought again, and that was true. Because Will wasn’t like her. Nobody was. She thought they were. After all, that was half the reason she had joined the Marrow Cabal. When she saw that motley crew of murderers—the Skeleton, Hex, Clementine, Will, James, Warren, Elizabeth, Miranda, Herbert North, and Mr. Haemo—she saw people—Mr. Haemo withstanding—covered in stitches. People who had wounds too big to heal, so they tried to seal themselves up the best they could with whatever they had on hand. She liked that. It was good company to be in, until she got her best friend back.

  Nowadays, her dad would have said she just had a bad batch of woe-is-mearrhea, but it wasn’t that. As far as she was concerned, the actual difference between her and the rest of the Marrow Cabal was that they seemed to be getting better, stitching be damned, while she seemed to be only getting worse. She couldn’t afford to be an outcast amongst outcasts. She couldn’t afford to be alone. Forty minutes by herself in a church and she had killed the priest and burned the place down. It would be easy enough to excuse herself by pointing to the traditions of her people—and she would, if she needed to—but the fact of the matter was this: There wasn’t just something wrong with Hex; there was something wrong with R’lyeh, too.

  They rode hard into the evening hours, until the wind turned red and the taste of blood soured their mouths. It was by these foul comforts Hex, Will, and R’lyeh knew they had made it safely home.

  Farther on, the town of Gallows sat, its mile-wide lake of blood murmuring under the waning moon. Over the lake, a constant stream of countless mosquitoes flowed, to deposit blood from across the continent into their master’s massive well. Around the perimeter of the Red Worm’s resting place, elevated platforms had been constructed, to hold the barracks and buildings that housed and supplied the members of the Skeleton’s Marrow Cabal.

  Hex stopped her horse in front of R’lyeh and Will’s and said, “Hang on.”

  They were on the outskirts, about a half a mile out from the town, where the marshy land thrived on the human mulch the Red Worm had left here. There were still bones lodged in the ground, and bodies, too. R’lyeh didn’t mind being inside Gallows, but being out here, in this bloody backwash, she started to get anxious. It was too much like Geharra’s pit, and the fact there was even a fraction of a chance she might stumble upon her parents’ corpses—

  “Get your stories straight,” Hex warned. Her eyes flared. She grabbed her head and shrieked. “Ah, hell. Ah, shit.”

  “Hey.” Will hopped off his horse. “Hey, what’s wrong? Hex, what’s the matter?”

  Hex tore the sword out of its scabbard. “Stop!”

  Will went stiff. His knees locked in place. The moon was bright tonight, but Hex’s eyes were brighter. She crept forward, the tip of her sword moving closer and closer to Will’s neck. Gems of blue light poured out of her eyes. Although her mouth was moving, she didn’t seem to be saying anything.

  “Hex, don’t.” R’lyeh dropped off the horse. She took the ax in both hands and ran in between Will and Hex. “A-are you sick?”

  Hex stopped. She lowered her sword. A shadow passed through her eyes. Not across them, but through them, as if there were a cruel conductor inside her skull, controlling her every movement. She mumbled something that sounded like “pilgrimage” and started to cough.

  “I-I’m sorry, you two,” Hex said, rubbing her eyes until the light left them. “If I get like that again, leave me be. It’s for the best.”

  Will’s joints loosened. He took a step after Hex, who was already back on her horse, and said, “Dad said that’s when you send your thoughts out.”

  R’lyeh kept quiet. She’d heard Hex had been capable of such a thing, but never had she seen it happen before. When the Skeleton had introduced her to the members of the Marrow Cabal, he told R’lyeh that Hex was from Lacuna herself, and that she was a telepath. When R’lyeh asked her if she could try to reach Vrana, Hex told her she could only communicate with other children of Lacuna, but she’d keep an ear out, just in case.

  Hopping back onto the horse, R’lyeh asked, “Who’s going on a pilgrimage?”

  Hex shook her head. “You and your friend really messed things up putting that Blue Worm to sleep.” She groaned. “The thoughts are re-goddamn-diculous, now. Barely enough room in my head for my own.”

  “Why’d you draw your sword for?” Will got back on his horse.

  “Reflex, I expect. Don’t mean nothing. Bone Man’s going to want to know: Did you see a shepherd while you two arsonists were out?”

  Will shook his head.

  R’lyeh pretended not to hear.

  “Alright, then.” She rubbed her temple and said, “Let’s get to it, lovebirds.”

  Guard towers sat against the night sky. Their black, wiry silhouettes reminded R’lyeh of the dead bugs that littered the barracks. Hex took the vanguard, held up two fingers, and shouted to the sentries, “It’s Hex, Will, and R’lyeh, and we’ve brought the same old, same old.” The same old, same old was the passphrase for entry today. If anyone forgot it, they got about thirty arrows in their neck to remind them.

  The horses cantered past the guard towers and onto the dock that circled the blood lake. There, torches burned across the wooden platform, as well as on the second level above. Together, they created a dirty cloud of smoke that drifted across the lake, leaving most of what was happening at its center obscured. But something definitely was happening. There were ripples in the lake, as if something were churning in it, and sounds, too, in the air; incomprehensible whispers in Mr. Haemo’s grating whine.

  “The Bag of Bones must have him up to something tonight,” Hex said. She turned her horse towards the ramp that led to the second level of the platform. “Stay indoors tonight, if you can help it.”

  Will and R’lyeh nodded. They followed Hex up the ramp, past a few passing cabalists, who quickly saluted Hex as she trotted by. Looking around Gallows, R’lyeh realized there weren’t many people out. Most of the windows had candles in them, but the Marrow Cabal’s soldiers were mostly absent. She couldn’t figure out if the Skeleton’s claims about their growing ranks were wrong—he boasted fifty here, two hundred or more elsewhere—or if they also had been given Hex’s advice about staying indoors. It was strange, but when it came to Mr. Haemo, they treated him like a necessary evil. A lunatic lodger they all hated but couldn’t be rid of. Like they owed him something.

  “So.” Hex stopped her horse in front of the large building designated as Operations. “Who wants to talk to the Skeleton first?”

  Before Will could answer, R’lyeh was already on the ground, one arm leaning against her ax, the other high in the air. “I’m your girl.”

  “Alright.” Hex wheeled her horse alongside Will’s and told him, “Let’s put these beasts to bed.” And then, to R’lyeh: “After you’re done with Bag of Bones, get to bed yourself.”

  She nodded. Her attention wandered over to Operations, and she wondered aloud, “Shouldn’t there be guards?”

  Hex snorted. “Why? So someone doesn’t try to kill him?”

  Will laughed uncomfortably. �
��Yeah,” he said. He focused his eyes on R’lyeh and bore his thoughts through her orange octopus mask. Don’t tell him, he seemed to say. Don’t you dare tell him about the shepherd.

  R’lyeh waved Will and Hex off and then entered Operations. She opened the door slowly; her breath caught in her throat. Over the last few months, she had spoken to the Skeleton on numerous occasions, but the journey to Bedlam had been the first mission he had sent her on. The last thing she wanted was to disappoint him.

  Operations was one large, open, and well-kept room. Across it, several long tables ran, upon which stacks of maps, documents, field reports, and artifacts were kept. The walls were dedicated to the two religions currently battling for control of the continent. On the left wall, The Disciples of the Deep, and the right, The Holy Order of Penance. Both walls contained a timeline of events relevant to each religion’s creation, as well as data about the number of followers each possessed in every major village, town, and city. There were piles of books, too, beside the walls. Mandatory reading for all members of the Marrow Cabal. For the Disciples of the Deep, they had to study The Disciples of the Deep by Amon Ashcroft. For The Holy Order of Penance, they had to read not only Helminth’s Way by the Prophet Helminth and Mother Abbess Lillian, but the newly released and revised holy text entitled The Sinner and the Shadows by The Holy Child Felix and Mother Abbess Justine.

  But, as interesting as all that was, it was nothing compared to the boney beast that inhabited this building on an almost constant basis. The Bag of Bones, as Hex so lovingly put it, was sitting in the back at his desk, shrouded in a cloak and surrounded by candles, poring over the papers in front of him.

  “R’lyeh,” the Skeleton said, his voice dry and high, his pronunciation slow. “Good to see you.”

  She stopped, saluted him. “Sir.”

  The Skeleton waved her off. “What’d I tell you about all that ‘sir’ business?”

  R’lyeh lowered hand and dropped her head.

  “Sit with me.” He gestured to the seat in front of his desk. “Tell me ‘bout Bedlam.”