by Scott Hale
R’lyeh’s body left the ground, but her mind never left the pit. Someone was carrying her. She wrapped her arms around them, pressed her head to their chest. She told herself it was her dad, but then she remembered he had no arms at the end. So she told herself it was her mom, but then she realized she wouldn’t be able to walk after what the soldiers had put inside her.
“Get out of the way. Move!” the voice commanded. A door was kicked open and then: “Hold on, R’lyeh. Hold on.”
Wasn’t that what she had been doing this whole time? Holding on? God forbid she should let go. And what if she did? What if she did? She was dead enough to be the Skeleton’s daughter. Hadn’t she heard he had one once?
R’lyeh’s body was laid out on the ground. First, there was heat—a wave of it; scorching, purifying—and then cold—a stinging splash; jarring, rectifying. Her eyes snapped open. Before her, a fireplace, roaring, blazing, and in its flames, Blodworth’s image wavered, lingered; his likeness immortalized in fire, from here to hell.
“No!” R’lyeh scooted across the ground and twisted around to get a measure of the place. It was a small room—a study, or a private library, most likely. There was a desk, a chair, and several shelves filled with books behind what appeared to be ice standing in for glass. The floor had been fashioned out of pale wood, but there were fresh scratches and deep gouges along the boards, as if a fight had broken out recently. There was only one door to the room, on the farthest wall. It was closed, and beside it, a painting hung; done in oils, covered in wood pulp, it depicted a field of yellow, dirty and distressed, with a single word scratched into the center: Want.
Mind finally clearing, R’lyeh noticed her mask on the desk. She came to her feet, grabbed it, and put it on. She stood there a moment, taking long, deep, controlled breaths. The pit was still inside her, like a rotting piece of food stuck in her bowels, but the sick sensations it served were subsiding. She breathed in—one, two, three, four, five—and exhaled—one, two, three, four, five. She breathed in—one, two, three, four, five—and remembered there was still some Canticle at the bottom of her pocket.
“Screw deep breathing,” she said, exhaling. R’lyeh reached into her pocket, pulled out the cubes of Canticle that had been in there for Holy Child knows how long. They were tiny rocks, almost like sugar cubes, and were a vibrant emerald green. She had found a ton of them when she and Will were on their way to Bedlam. Cults used to use them to assist their members into suicide, so that they could go to heaven and give praise directly to god. R’lyeh, on the other hand, had popped so many of the rocks, the most they did for her anymore was make her fingertips tingle.
She ate the last of the Canticle. Before it could even possibly take effect, she already started to feel better. These days, it was becoming less about the poison itself, and more about the gesture, the routine. R’lyeh really didn’t know what to make of that, so she didn’t make—
The door to the private library opened and a Night Terror walked through. Of all the people R’lyeh had seen in Rime, this one was the worst. His mask… his mask. She covered her mouth, started backward to cower in the corner. The Night Terror’s mask was a mangled patchwork of fur and stitching; a grotesque head that had chewed-up ears and one of the dead animal’s eyes still in its socket.
“Get back!” R’lyeh cried.
The Night Terror had her ax in one gloved hand, the Cruel Mother’s talons in the other. The mask… the mask. What the hell was it? The fur was encrusted with blood, and it smelled of shit and piss. It wasn’t any animal she’d ever seen before.
“R’lyeh, please, calm down,” the Night Terror spoke.
That voice; that had been the voice she’d heard earlier. The voice of the man who had swept her up and carried her out of Geharra.
“Take a deep breath,” he said.
The mask sat like a tumor on the Night Terror’s shoulders; something parasitic that wasn’t meant to be or be there. Maybe she had spent too much time away from her own people, but standing there now, R’lyeh realized how wrong they looked, how out of place they seemed, like creatures that should’ve died out years ago, and yet through sheer stubbornness kept on living.
“Get away,” R’lyeh belted. “I’m here from Caldera. That’s all.”
The Night Terror nodded and laid her weapons on the desk. “It’s me,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Deimos.”
R’lyeh cocked her head. “W-what?”
“New mask. I have not made it back to Geharra for my old one. It’s a bat—” he touched the side of the mask, “—and I made it out of the skulls of smaller bats, like my old one. But since I lost my mask, I have to start over. I have to earn the bone again.”
“Deimos?” R’lyeh remembered Deimos and Lucan marching through the marsh outside Geharra. They had set off to meet the soldiers of Penance, who were headed toward the city to investigate what had happened there. But even if Deimos showed her his face, that wouldn’t be proof enough. She didn’t know what he looked like. He had to be tested.
R’lyeh cleared her throat. “Where did we meet?”
“In Geharra, in the prison cells outside the pit. It was me, Lucan, Serra and… Vrana. After the Red Worm was born, I split the group up. Lucan and I went to Penance. Serra stayed behind to destroy the Crossbreed. You and Vrana went to Caldera. R’lyeh, I don’t know if you know, but something has happened to Vrana.”
“I know,” R’lyeh said, trying not to cry. “I was there when the Witch took her.”
Deimos closed the door behind him and took a few steps closer to R’lyeh. “I am so sorry. She is still alive, though. I am certain.”
“She is? How do… how do you know?”
“Lucan and I went to Penance and met the Holy Child. Vrana had been trying to contact him. They had crossed paths once. The elders had sent us there to find out more about the Red Worm, and then they told us we had to kill the Lacunans there. The Cult of the Worm. Did you see the building on your way in with the strange symbols?”
R'lyeh nodded.
“It’s the Witch. She is using Vrana to contact the Lacunans. The Witch is drawing them together, using them to create chaos. It’s happening in all the villages. Here in Rime, they have quarantined the Lacunans in that building… and also their… offspring. They were trying to get to Angheuawl.”
“Wait… offspring?”
Deimos ignored her. “R’lyeh, how are you here? Ghelys asked me to look at you, to see if I recognized you; otherwise, he was going to kill you. The elders in Caldera have been strange lately, but they would not have sent you. What are you doing here?”
“I, uh, I’m here to… to…”
It’s Deimos, she thought. Tell him. He’s the only friend I have up here, besides Elizabeth and Miranda… oh god, Elizabeth and Miranda.
“Who are those two women you were with?” Deimos asked, as if he had read her mind.
R’lyeh crept closer to the fire, in need of its warmth to clear away the Bat’s growing chill. “I don’t know.”
“They are bringing them into the village now.”
Outside, on cue, two women shouted and screamed, until they were cut short by fists and chains.
“No, stop!” R’lyeh ran for the door, but Deimos stood in her way.
“I cannot help them if you do not tell me who they are.” He held out his arms. R’lyeh backed away. “Who sent you here?”
In a flash, R’lyeh ripped the ax off the desk and swung her arm back, to cut Deimos down.
But Deimos didn’t move.
“The Marrow Cabal,” R’lyeh cried, the ax still cocked back. “They’re my friends.” She dropped her arms, teared up. “Please.”
“The Marrow Cabal sent you?”
R’lyeh nodded. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“To get—” she punched the side of the desk, “—to get Audra of Eldrus.”
“She is here,” Deimos said, surprised. “I would not lie to you. I brought her here after Lucan and I left Penance.�
��
“We need her to fight King Edgar,” R’lyeh said. “The Skeleton wants the same thing we do.”
“The Skeleton?” Deimos shook his head. “Oh, R’lyeh, I have met that man once, and I have heard what he has become.”
“He killed the Red Worm.” Again, more screams from outside. “He killed it! And he has the Black Hour. And he can’t die. He has a lot of men, and… he can’t die. He can do anything.”
“If he can do anything, why did he send a thirteen-year-old hundreds of miles north to bring back one of the most important people currently living?”
R’lyeh growled. “You’re not listening.”
“I have seen what Audra can do,” Deimos said, “and she should not be in the hands of someone like the Skeleton.”
“That’s not up to you!”
“You are right. It is up to her.” Deimos turned his head toward the door, as he heard footsteps approaching the room. “R’lyeh, do not tell anyone else why you are here.” He sounded panicked, scared. “I will do all the talking. If they find out—”
The door flung open, and Ghelys stood on the other side, the front of his furs drenched in blood.
R’lyeh screamed.
Deimos put himself between her and the Eel and said, “What’s happened?”
“The little bitch. The little bitch!” Ghelys drove his spear into Deimos’ chest and said, “How many did she bring here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Two,” R’lyeh said. “Two! Please, don’t hurt them.”
“Two?” Ghelys scoffed. “Two? Two? Who the hell is Isla Taggart?”
Deimos whispered, “What?”
“You know her?” Ghelys lowered the spear and took Deimos by the throat. “I took you in. I gave Lucan all our best medicines, and still he died on us all the same. Are you working with this little bitch?”
“Why… did you say… Isla Taggart?” Deimos rasped.
“Because she’s out there right now. Sixty men on horseback surround our village. They call themselves the Winnowers’ Chapter.”
“What… do… they want?”
“You tell me, little bitch,” Ghelys said to R’lyeh.
She shook her head, tightened her killing arm.
Ghelys pressed his mask to Deimos’ and whispered, “They want her. They want Audra. And after I kill you and this little bitch, I’m going to give them her.”
CHAPTER XII
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Aeson lifted his eyes away from The Blood of Before and, much to his dismay, found that nothing had changed. In the past, books had been his escape from those things he refused to let overcome him. At the Inner Sanctum, his subterranean home, books had been his shield, and words his sword; they were weapons anyone could wield, and if wielded well, they were weapons more fearsome than most. But he wasn’t at the Inner Sanctum anymore, and words wouldn’t get him far; not here, in the Dismal Sticks, at house Gloom, where downstairs, in the basement, thirty flesh fiends fed and fucked in filth and squalor, while the madman Ichor urged them on, desperate to draw from his quickly growing Choir every ounce of suffering needed to see the witches satisfied. No, this was no place for books or words; this was a place for no one, nothing; a place out of time, in a season of perpetual depravity—beyond books, beyond words; susceptible only to the one thing that had birthed it: heartless, horrendous brutality.
Ichor had set Aeson and Bjørn up in a room on the third floor of the farmhouse. With the two small beds inside it and the toys beneath each of them, it was obvious to Aeson the room had once been a room shared by siblings. When he asked Ichor where the children had gone, Ichor smiled and told him they had beautiful voices.
Bjørn was sitting on one of those beds now, his height and size making him look like an absolute giant against it. Bastard sword over his lap, he sat there in rigid silence as he sharpened the blade. For the last hour, his attention had been fixed on the door to the room, as if he were waiting for the moment for something to come crawling in. They were on the third floor of the house, but even up here, the sounds of the Choir had such a clarity to them they were impossible to ignore. Ichor had the flesh fiends singing a universal song, one that was sung everywhere, endlessly.
Aeson, too, sat in silence on the second bed, but only because he knew that, if he started speaking, it wouldn’t be long until Bjørn was shaking the insanity out of him. With the help of Ezra and Belia, Gloom’s flesh fiend servants, Ichor had given them a grand tour of the estate. In his studies, Aeson had read about hell more times than he could count; it was a constant across most Corrupted cultures. But in no way had his studies, nor Vrana’s recount of Geharra, prepared him for what waited in the basement. All five senses had been put to use. Each one had been decimated in a matter of seconds. There was being numb, and then there was being in a coma. Currently, he was in the twilight between the two—this book, The Blood of Before, the only shield he had to stop from himself from slipping into a maddening sleep.
It was easier for Aeson to act smarter when he was scared; his brain was the only muscle he could flex.
“You know what that mess says?” Bjørn asked, eyes never leaving the door.
“Yeah.”
Ignoring the screams coming from outside the room, Aeson grabbed a piece of parchment, quill, and ink out of his bag and started deciphering the text.
“It’s a Caesar cipher. It’s simple; barely even encrypts the text. The letters are swapped, A to Z; in this case, A to Y, B to X—that kind of thing.”
“Why do it then?”
“This was… Mom and Dad’s last entry.” He stopped decrypting the text and sighed. “Think they knew if they made it too difficult, the next writer would struggle. I don’t know. There were a few entries before this one from Adelyn. They were simple, too.”
Bjørn stopped sharpening and huffed.
“I didn’t say she was simple. I—” he paused, the tortured songs of the Choir drawing out images of the basement from his mind, “—can’t do this. I know this sounds naïve, especially coming from me, but how can something be so evil?”
Bjørn pressed him: “What did the other entries say?”
“Nothing we don’t know. The Blue Worm, the Red Worm, the attack on Caldera by the Witch; the rebellion in the Heartland, and our support of Geharra funding it; the death of King Edgar’s family and—”
“That one there is the first one you’ve read by your parents?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it say?”
Aeson nodded and focused all of his efforts on the cipher. He didn’t process what he wrote; he just wrote, absorbing the information with machine-like indifference. If only he could have done the same for the birthing chamber downstairs.
When he finished deciphering the text, he realized that the reason the cipher had been so simple wasn’t so others wouldn’t be too
confused, but so that he, Aeson, wouldn’t be too confused. His parents had expected him to pick up in the book where they had left off. It was a childish cipher meant for a child; a withheld legacy left to gather dust in the hands of others.
Aeson looked over at his sword at the foot of the bed. Suddenly its steel didn’t seem so intimidating. Bad thoughts bringing him back to Gloom’s basement, he returned to the parchment and read aloud to Bjørn:
“The Ossuary should not be here. Old World maps have confirmed this fact, time and time again, but the destructive power of the Trauma has made many scholars overlook the desert’s eccentricities. Recent reports suggest that the Ossuary is not a desert in the traditional sense, for it is not comprised of sand but bone. For this to be the case, billions upon billions would have to have been decimated in the waste. This would suggest that the Trauma may have started there, rather than the Nameless Forest; however, this is unlikely.
“The Ossuary should not be here, because it does not belong here. Scouts have reported disturbances in the deserts, but only during the Black Hour, which suggests the place and the event are somehow connected. The Dread Clock currently resides in the Nameless Forest; if there is a connection between the Ossuary and the Black Hour, that may mean that there is a connection between the Nameless Forest and the Ossuary, despite the many miles that stand between the Nameless Forest and the Ossuary.
“The Ossuary appeared only after the Trauma had ended. The desert is not the end of this continent, as we have so long believed, but the frontier to another.
“When one door closes, another opens.”
Now, Bjørn did take his attention off the door. “When did they write that? Twelve years ago?”
“Son of a bitch,” Aeson said, returning to the top of the text to read it over silently once more. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“Practically the last thing Anguis said to me before we left was that King Edgar thought there was something in the Ossuary. Something for the Disciples of the Deep.”