by Scott Hale
“Does this book have anything to do with the Children of Lacuna?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Does it have to do with where we came from?”
“Oh, yes.”
Confused, Aeson asked, “Why should that be a secret?”
Anguis shoved his hands into the toga. “I am not sure that it is anymore.” He turned on his heels and started to walk away. “I have to go now, and so do you, soon.”
“Anguis,” he said, stopping the Snake. “Why are you only sending Bjørn and me to get her back? This is too much ground to cover for just two people.”
Anguis paused, the darkness of the Archive closing around him. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “There will be others tracking the Children—Deimos and Lucan were the first—but we must divide the bulk of our efforts between the Disciples of the Deep and the Ossuary.”
The Ossuary? Aeson clenched his jaw as he belted out, “The desert? What? Why? There’s nothing down there.”
“We thought so, too,” Anguis said, slithering into the shadows. “King Edgar begs to differ.”
CHAPTER VIII
R’lyeh slipped off her boots and took a seat beside the Divide. Her feet, hot and calloused, bobbed up and down in the river’s weedy shallows. Elizabeth and Miranda had warned her not to stray too far from camp, but after several days’ worth of riding, R’lyeh’s mind was about as muddy as these waters. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was going to notice her this early in the morning; at least, not while Penance’s army was stretched out across the eastern bank.
The massive river and the massive army upon it were almost too much to take in at once. She had never seen such things before, and both were equally terrifying and awe-inspiring. The Divide was miles long and wide; someone who didn’t know better might even mistake it for the ocean. The river divided Eldrus’ Heartland from Penance’s peninsula. To R’lyeh, it looked like the Divide not only separated the areas, but had drawn inspiration from them as well. In the west, the Divide was lush, vibrant; an overgrown expanse that might as well have been some submerged forest the world had more or less forgotten about. In the east, it was cold, lifeless; a pale wasteland of ghostly grass caught in some unbreakable haze, like an image seen through an icicle. R’lyeh wasn’t even that far from the Divide, merely on the outer banks north of Gallows, and even she could see the difference. Good and evil seemed like the obvious symbolism between the two parts, but for R’lyeh, measuring Eldrus’ side against Penance’s was like measuring the merits of puke versus diarrhea.
The Divide was cool, but Penance’s army was better. There was a rush to seeing it, a nervous excitement that was one-part sadness, two-parts bloodlust. On the eastern shore, row after row of pale white tents had been raised. If she had to guess, there were hundreds, maybe even a thousand, of them. Guard posts and watch towers had been constructed, too, though they looked rickety, like they might fall over as quickly as they had been put up. There were boats in the water, twenty or thirty, and that was just what she could see. They weren’t very large, and couldn’t have been anything more than the boats Penance usually used to make trades on the river. What R’lyeh couldn’t figure out was why the city-state had made their stand here. With the river being so wide and the boats being so small, how did Penance think they would get all their soldiers across? Better yet, how did Penance get all this here in the first place? Was it here all along?
R’lyeh’s heart started to pound. She began to repeatedly swallow the spit in her mouth. Her temples throbbed, and then her vision blurred. Was the world getting larger? Darker? She took off her octopus mask. Leaning forward, she splashed the river water into her face, baptized herself in its war-warmed waters. A cold shock shot through her body. Then a trickling sensation, as if the stress were melting from the inside of her chest. Her heart slowed, her vision cleared. But the world was still dark and larger than it should’ve been. Everything towered over her, and she over nothing.
Early morning mist rolled off the eastern bank. The lush, vibrant plant life was still there, but now that the air had cleared, there was something else, too. There were no soldiers, no guard posts, or watch towers. If Eldrus or some Heartland army were here, then they were somewhere else. No, behind the bank, a little farther inland, the ground shone, winked, as if a million tiny rubies had been spilt in the grass. And as the ground blinked in the light of the rising sun, it also throbbed; breathed almost, as if, like the rest of world at this hour, it was waking, too.
R’lyeh’s breath caught in her throat. In the waters of the Divide, she saw the pit of Geharra filled to its bloody brim. She jumped to her feet, hurried into the woods behind her. Bravery would only get her so far; stupidity would take her to a place she had no intention of going. Elizabeth and Miranda were right; she should have stayed in the camp. And Mom and Dad had been right, too; she should have never left the house while they were gone. She wouldn’t be here, and she wouldn’t be alive. It was hard to tell whether that was a good thing or not, but she knew well enough the idea shouldn’t have felt as good as it did.
“I need something,” R’lyeh said. She scanned the woods and its leaf-choked ground for a snack to snack on. “Come on, damn it.”
In five seconds flat, R’lyeh found something strong enough to kill her. Growing from the base of a nearby tree was a patch of gloom cap mushrooms. She hurried over to the green and gray fungi and quickly ripped a handful out of the soil. One would make her sick; two would make her sicker; and a third would deliver her to Death, gift wrapped in dirt and sweat.
Tough and terse, the gloom caps had to be eaten one at a time. R’lyeh took the first mushroom and pushed it shakily into her mouth. Sharp, intense spikes of earthy flavor stabbed into her gums and tongue. As she chewed and swallowed the first gloom cap, she noticed a pair of darkslick frogs hopping through the grass; they were poisonous, too, except she would only need one of them to kill herself.
Impatience often made her impractical, so R’lyeh took the last two gloom caps, crushed them the best she could, and crammed them into her already deadened mouth. Chewing both of them at the same time was like trying to chew through a leather belt, but she kept at it. And while she did, she spotted another source that could give her a certain demise: Death’s Dilemma.
“Holy crap,” R’lyeh mumbled, the suicidal mouthful getting in the way of her words.
She stumbled forward and knelt before the flower. Death’s Dilemma was supposed to have been one of the rarest plants known to exist in the world. They had bone-white petals that hid shyly beneath their ice-blue stalks. Supposedly, each flower represented a love of Death’s who had dared to love Death and let Death love them in return. Each flower, then, was unique; imbued, in a way, with the ecstasy and sorrow of an impossible union. R’lyeh had heard that those who picked or ate the flower were immediately killed. It wasn’t like the Thanatos she stole from the Skeleton; that destroyed the system. It was said Death’s Dilemma was like using scissors to snip someone’s soul. It was immediate, irrevocable, and personal.
R’lyeh fell, narrowly missing the plant. The gloom caps in her gut had started to go to work on her. Some shouting came in from the Divide, and then what sounded like boat hulls hammering into one another. She prised her eyes open with her fingers, tried to get to her feet, but the pain blossoming around her belly was breathtaking.
Nose first into the leafy dirt, R’lyeh found herself staring at Death’s Dilemma, and found her dilemma, too. She clenched her teeth, squeezed her legs together. She started to think about how easy it was to find poisonous things in the wild, and wondered if the Earth was trying to tell her something.
“Okay, okay.” R’lyeh rolled over. She pushed her hands against the top of her pelvis. “I got this. I can do this.”
A hot light flashed across the insides of her eyes. She dug her jaw into the top of her chest to stop it from quivering. Gaseous bubbles popped and hissed throughout her body, like they might in one of Adelyn’s beakers. On her b
ack, she trained her eyes on the canopy above. The trees were bare, their limbs skeletal; she imagined they were the Skeleton’s limbs, and then imagined them hugging her.
By the time the poison had passed, she had pissed herself, but R’lyeh was still alive. Winded and wracked with hunger, she rolled over and came to her trembling feet. Facing the Divide again, she found that the tens of ships, hundreds of tents, and thousands of unseen soldiers were easier to deal with.
“Back in our day, we just cut our wrists when we wanted to hurt ourselves.”
R’lyeh turned around. Behind her, Miranda stood; and behind her, Elizabeth was farther back, her hands in the air, as if she were asking R’lyeh just what the hell she was doing.
“I, uh.” R’lyeh wiped her mouth. “I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Miranda said.
R’lyeh nodded and blushed behind her mask.
“Anyone see you?”
R’lyeh shook her head.
“You see anything worth mentioning?”
“Just,” R’lyeh started, “the, uh, army in general.”
“Yeah, that’s interesting.” Miranda turned away. “Come back to camp. Sun will be up soon.”
Camp was one small tent a quarter of a mile from the Divide. It sat at the center of four old, sap-soaked trees that were almost bound to one another by the razor nettle running between them. When they had arrived last night after the Black Hour, Elizabeth had had to cut her way through to the middle in almost complete darkness. She had told R’lyeh cutting through the razor nettle was like cutting through barbed wire. R’lyeh didn’t know what barbed wire was, but at that point, Elizabeth had lost a lot of blood trying to get in, so she took her word for it.
Now, Elizabeth was in better shape, but her bracers and gloves were still covered in dried blood. She was ahead of R’lyeh and Miranda, humming something to herself—a nursery rhyme, maybe, or a church song. It was hard to tell. To R’lyeh, who hated Penance so much it was damn near becoming a profession, there wasn’t much of a difference between the two.
Miranda broke the silence by saying, “Were those gloom caps you ate?”
“Yeah,” R’lyeh said, her stomach rumbling in confirmation.
“You should be dead.”
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, but didn’t say anything.
“Yeah.” R’lyeh cleared her throat. “I don’t know how long I’ve been able to do it, but I can eat poisonous stuff or get bitten by venemous animals and not have it affect me. Well, I mean, not kill me.” She shrugged. “It still sucks.”
Miranda’s eyes tightened on R’lyeh, who felt so small beside her. Miranda was at least six feet tall, though given that she looked like a squirrel—puffy cheeks, brown hair and eyes, and a short face—it would have made more sense for her to have been smaller.
“You sure King Boner didn’t have anything to do with that ability?” Miranda asked
King Boner? R’lyeh laughed, said, “No, I just happened upon it one day.”
The wind stole past R’lyeh and Miranda, and a trail of leaves like begging children followed after. Shafts of sunlight beamed through the trees, like holy boons meant to bring life to this dying place. Fall was R’lyeh’s favorite time of the year. The grayness of the sky, the darkness of the ground; the biting air and bending trees—she liked seeing the world in a different way, in an honest way, as her dad had once put it.
“So why did those gloom caps happen upon your mouth?” Miranda persisted.
Leaves crunched under their feet. They turned through the rows of scraggly trees. Ahead, a crumbling hill sat like a squished toad, and atop it, camp waited.
“I try to test myself whenever I find something new to—”
Still a few feet in front of them, Elizabeth let out a fake cough and said, “That wasn’t it, yeah?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Miranda agreed.
“I, uh—” R’lyeh looked back at the Divide, which had shrunk to nothing more than a small lake at this distance, “—sometimes, I, uh… I don’t know. I get anxious.”
Elizabeth stopped at the bottom of the hill. “What made you anxious?”
Miranda stopped, too, and stood by Elizabeth’s side. They weren’t threatening, but they definitely weren’t going to let her pass until she spilled her guts.
“The Divide,” R’lyeh started. Then, begrudgingly, she said, “Penance.”
Elizabeth tilted her head. A portion of the bat tattoo on her clavicle snuck out from underneath her armor. “And gulping down gloom caps made you feel better?”
They think I’m an idiot.
“You know what makes me feel better?” Miranda asked.
R’lyeh shook her head.
“Getting laid. There are a lot of men back in Gallows, aren’t there?”
Confused, R’lyeh said, “Yeah, I guess.”
“Do you know when the last time I got laid was?”
R’lyeh started to laugh.
“Two years ago. What I’m saying is that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. There’s probably some higher quality stress relief techniques out there that don’t involve destroying your body.”
Feeling lectured, R’lyeh blurted out, “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Miranda and Elizabeth started up the crumbling hill. “Talking seems to do the trick.”
After they were back in camp, Elizabeth, their designated cook, started a fire and began on breakfast. While she did this, Miranda headed into the woods again; this time, to explore the western bank of the Divide and determine if Eldrus did have some sort of army waiting in the mist.
“I think I saw the vermillion veins on the western bank,” R’lyeh told Elizabeth.
“Don’t get any ideas about eating them,” Miranda shouted, as she plodded down the hill.
“I wouldn’t.” R’lyeh had considered telling them about the Thanatos and the Death’s Dilemma, and how she hadn’t eaten those, but stopped herself. She figured they wouldn’t have believed her anyways.
With Miranda gone and Elizabeth’s face in the fire, R’lyeh went over to their horses to see how they fared. They weren’t tethered, and they were nothing special; just skinny, brown beasts that had taken their sweet time getting them this far.
“You’re good with them,” Elizabeth said, not looking away from the fire.
R’lyeh ran her hands along her horse’s coat, picking out the bugs that had made a home there. “Thanks. Elizabeth?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you all call the Skeleton those names? Bag of Bones, King Boner, Bone Man.”
Elizabeth snickered. She reached into one of the bags beside her and took out a few eggs. “Makes it easier not to be scared of him.”
R’lyeh patted the horse, and then joined Elizabeth at the fire. A warm, itchy feeling spread across her cheeks as its heat washed over.
“He’s a walking, talking, immortal skeleton,” Elizabeth said, “who is carrying the heart of the Black Hour. If that’s not freaky, then I don’t know what is.”
“I’ve seen his rib cage. There’s this weird black moss growing all over it. That’s where he keeps the heart, isn’t it?”
Elizabeth took out an ancient skillet and cracked the eggs against it; she poured the yolk out onto it and held the warped piece of metal over the fire. “Definitely. You don’t keep something like that anywhere else but on you at all times.”
“You think it’s getting to him?”
“I don’t think the Skeleton was ever really right in the head.” Elizabeth handed the skillet to R’lyeh, then fished out some bread and oats from the bag. “It’s mostly Hex’s show, anyways.”
R’lyeh’s stomach started growling again, but this time, it was for all the right reasons. The breakfast, even in its early stages, smelled fantastic.
“But since she tried to kill you, we’ll have to see what happens next, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I think the Skeleton would do anything to giv
e up on the Marrow Cabal, but things are so bad now that he can’t.” Elizabeth took the skillet back from R’lyeh. “Leading the Marrow Cabal might be the only thing keeping him sane. The heart talks to him, you know? I’ve seen it happen before, yeah? I feel bad for Dusty Bones. I don’t see how this will end well for him. If the shepherds ever snatch his wife and son again…” Elizabeth shook her head. “After all those gloom caps, are you still hungry?”
R’lyeh laughed and finally took off her octopus mask. “I’m starving.” She set the mask on the ground, close to Elizabeth.
“I like that about you Night Terrors, the whole mask thing.” Elizabeth took the eggs out of the fire and tilted the skillet until they poured off into R’lyeh’s bowls. “I have twenty-eight tattoos, but I think I’d trade most of them for one sweet-looking mask.”
“I could make you an honorary Night Terror,” R’lyeh said, smiling.
“Well, yeah, why not? I’ve killed plenty of ‘Corrupted,’” Elizabeth said with a snort. “I think I would fit right in. I bet you if I finished covering my Corruption in tattoos, you Night Terrors wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t one of you.”
“Yeah, probably not,” R’lyeh said, watching Elizabeth go to work on making the porridge.
“People always debate whether Night Terrors are really all that different from humans, but you know what?”
“What?”
“I wonder if people have it all wrong. Maybe it’s not whether Night Terrors and humans are all that different. Maybe it’s if Night Terrors are all that different from something else. Might be we’re making you guys out to be something you’re not.”
Even though Elizabeth had the best of intentions, R’lyeh was beginning to feel as if she were being picked apart. So she said, “You might be right,” and then didn’t say anything else until breakfast was ready.
Miranda must have had one hell of a nose, because by the time breakfast was being divvied up into the bowls, she was back from her patrol, licking her lips and rubbing her stomach as she practically skipped up the hill to camp.