The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “It is already ready,” Death said. She lowered herself back onto the Garden. “If things were different, I may have given the weapon to you two freely.”

  Aeson’s heart sank.

  Bjørn literally sank beside him.

  “But between you, Aeson, and you, Bjørn, and Vrana, the woman you mean to save, I have been cheated. Each of you were meant to die. You did not die.”

  Bjørn started whispering underneath his breath.

  “One soul for one weapon. I do not care whose soul it is. I could take you both, and one day, I will have you both, but for now, one will do.”

  Aeson quivered. “Bjørn,” he said. “I… we… you’re strong… you’re stronger…” He wanted to say that he should die in the Bear’s place, but the words weren’t coming to him. He didn’t want to die. He had suffered and suffered, but he didn’t want to die. “You have a better…”

  Bjørn stepped up to Death. He dropped his mask into the flowers. “Take me,” he said.

  “What?” Aeson shouted. He reached for Bjørn—

  But before he could touch him, and tell him no, this wasn’t right, that he shouldn’t be the one to die; that he was the one who should save Vrana, just like he had saved Vrana before; that Aeson should have died on the tree with his parents—

  Death swept forward and closed her wings around Bjørn. Her form overtook him, and he disappeared completely in her embrace. There was something like a sigh, and then Death pulled back, away.

  Bjørn’s pale, lifeless body fell down on its knees. It lingered there a moment, his eyes dim, his mouth slack. And then he fell on his haunches and onto his back, crushing all the beautiful, killing flowers under his dead weight.

  “Bjørn,” Aeson whispered, eyes bulging from their sockets, drool dripping from his jaws.

  Death hummed and leaned over Bjørn’s body. With one blade-like finger, she sliced through the Bear’s breastplate, shirt, and chest. His body split open like a clam, revealing his glistening, useless innards.

  “Don’t,” Aeson said, barely able to speak.

  But Death continued, anyway. She reached into Bjørn’s chest, grabbed one of his ribs, and broke it off. Then the moth stood up, twisted off her own finger, and jammed it through the rib, so that it protruded from it like a blade. She held the weapon up to her iridescent mouth, and the words she spoke materialized as runes upon the air. They slithered onto the rib and burned into the bone as vibrant, red shapes.

  “Here,” Death said, offering the Red Death weapon to Aeson. “Now, if you give up, you will not only betray your love, but your friend as well.”

  Aeson closed his eyes, and then closed his grip around the rib. He was crying so hard, he almost nicked his finger on Death’s finger blade.

  “You can go now,” Death said. “When you open your eyes, you will be back where you started, in the swamp, outside your home of Caldera. If you are surprised that I do not offer any more assistance, you should not be. You are going to kill my daughters.

  “As for your friend, weep not. His suffering is over. He will no longer know pain, nor joy. Only the finality of the Abyss. In this existence, for a man like Bjørn, there is no greater kindness.”

  “Why didn’t you kill him before?” Aeson said, eyes squeezed shut. “Why did you let him go? With me? With Vrana?”

  “Why does the Skeleton live when he’s died more than the whole of the world combined?” He heard Death laugh. “If I knew everything, there would be nothing. Nothing is best… for everything.

  “You must be strong now, Aeson,” Death said. “Is a human skull truly the right mask for you?”

  Aeson felt his mask leave his hand, and another one, a larger one, go in its place.

  “Remember me as I am today. So that when we meet again, we meet as friends.”

  Aeson slowly opened his eyes. Death was gone, and so were the Abyss and the Garden of Sleep. He was back in the swamp, amongst the Weeping Willows, with Ferry Woman a few feet away, standing diligently by her boat.

  Aeson looked down. In one hand, he held the Red Death weapon, and in the other, Bjørn’s mask. He fixed the rib to his belt, and slowly, more carefully than he had been with the Red Death weapon, he lowered the bear skull over his head.

  It was too large. It didn’t fit right. But it would, in time. It had to.

  CHAPTER XX

  The Ossuary hadn’t stopped stirring ever since King Edgar and his guard had arrived. He had heard stories that the desert was actually comprised of bone, not sand, but even he, the man who had taken the Nameless Forest and witnessed the Vermillion God, struggled to believe them. According to maps, the Ossuary was just as large, if not larger, than the rest of the continent. The amount of bones needed to be crushed and spread over that vast distance was made all the more gut-wrenching by imagining how many bodies had to be pulverized to achieve such a goal. But whereas before he might’ve been put off by the notion, today, Edgar was not. For with his knees on the ground, the bones of the earth running between his fingers, he knew he knelt not before the graveyard of graveyards, but the gates and wastes of his God’s great and inevitable heaven.

  Edgar made a fist, some sand still inside it, and pressed it to his parched lips. He breathed in the dead, until he coughed them right back out. Heaven was a heavy weight to carry. He had been bearing it for years now; at first, reluctantly, but now he carried it because he hadn’t the help to set it down. It drove him. It kept the ghost away.

  The desert was a furnace, and Edgar and his companions seemed to be the coals off which it fed. They had been in the Ossuary for two days and two nights. Whether it was morning or evening, the heat was constant, and consistently unbearable. It was a searing omen of death to come—like the hot breath trapped against one’s mouth and the pillow meant to smother. Even with Archivist Amon’s collection at his disposal, Edgar hadn’t been able to find much in the way of research on the desert. Most expeditions failed due to dehydration or death, or the futility of trying to understand such a hostile frontier. But where previous explorers were wrong was in their assumption that such a place was meant to be discovered. It was never meant to be charted. Like a shipwreck upon a shore, it was never meant to be here at all.

  Edgar wiped the bone off his brow and rose to his feet. It was hard to look at the sun, not only because of how bright it was, but because he was fairly certain it wasn’t their sun. The blazing, seemingly melting orb hung in the sky like a meteor in low orbit—an apocalypse in stasis.

  There were footsteps behind him, but he didn’t want to acknowledge them. For the first time since Edgar could remember, he had found some semblance of peace. Between murdering his family, overtaking the Nameless Forest, and unleashing the Disciples of the Deep upon the mainland, he’d had no reprieve. It had been years since this task was forced upon him, and yet when he looked back, the years seemed to be nothing more than a single day he’d stretched beyond what should’ve been its limits. Archivist Amon, Alexander Blodworth, Crestfallen, the Anointed One, Lotus—they each had coaxed and coerced him into doing awful, terrible, unforgettable things. But he had been complacent, too, in the planting of the Crossbreed in Geharra, the spreading of the vermillion veins, and the torturing of the Marrow Cabal and their leader, the Gravedigger. To call an end to the years-long day would require some acceptance of the events. And accept them Edgar could not, not until this was over. It all had to have been for something, and that something had to be good.

  Edgar took a few steps forward, until the plateau they’d made camp on fell away to a fifteen-foot drop. They were deep enough in the Ossuary to be able to look back and not see the world from which they’d come. Standing there, surveying the seamless sand and endless sky, he could fully feel and appreciate the allure of heaven. After so much wrongdoing, he felt right inside. This was the gift he wanted to share with the world; not only with the Disciples of the Deep, but everyone, even the non-believers. It was a shame he had to denounce the Holy Order of Penance, but he needed as litt
le division as possible. The Trauma wasn’t a scar, but a wound still sore to the touch. When the Vermillion God woke, he had to be sure that wound wasn’t going to open again. Otherwise, this time, there would be no saving the world from drowning in its own ignorant blood.

  At the bottom of the plateau, dried-out vermillion veins rose and fell out of the sands, like coils of razor nettle. God’s fluids still pumped through the growths, but in a thick, inconsumable broth of blood and bone. Addiction made Edgar salivate at the sight, so he reached into his pocket, pulled out a fresher vein, put it in his mouth, and sucked his Lord out of it.

  The footsteps stopped. The shadow of the person behind him joined his own.

  “We need to go farther.”

  Edgar turned to face the Anointed One. The boy he’d brought out of the Nameless Forest looked twelve years old now—the same age as the Holy Child. In fact, the Anointed One appeared to imitate the Holy Child every chance he could get, be it in mannerism, speech, and appearance. He had even given himself a secret, common name—Valac—which only Edgar was to call him by.

  Edgar had only known Amon in his twilight years; he had never realized how much these pieces of the Vermillion God were truly creatures of mimicry. The Anointed One was the harbinger of their Lord, and yet he looked to false prophets for inspiration. Sometimes, it made Edgar worry; other times, he laughed, instead.

  Valac’s entire mouth and throat were stained with the Vermillion God’s blood. His teeth were red, and so were his fingertips. The boy was twelve years old, but of late, he looked closer to his actual age, which had to be in the hundreds of thousands to millions. It was the gut that gave him away. Before they had left Eldrus for the Ossuary, Valac had finished assimilating Amon into his body, gaining all his knowledge and experience in the process. The drawback was that now the boy’s stomach was completely swollen with the corpse of the old man he had consumed. If the reminders of cooking weren’t enough, to Edgar, Valac looked like a potbelly stove.

  “We have to find the communing place,” Valac said. And then, gravely, he added, “Before nightfall.”

  The temperature in the Ossuary spiked another two or three degrees, as if to add a fiery underscore to Valac’s warning. Edgar wasn’t wearing armor, but mumiya wraps, which were thin strips of skin that, when wrapped around a body, kept it fairly resistant to the elements, especially sunlight. The mumiya were extinct, mummy-like creatures that were said to have migrated from the other side of the world. Most of their remains were kept in Eldrus, with Archivist Amon’s collection; however, there were reports of women in possession of the wraps, too. Blonde women, with large, battered hats and thick, brutal crooks. Like shepherds that had taken a sinister turn.

  Picking at the wraps to air out his flesh some, Edgar said, “I understand making the pilgrimage out of tradition. But look at what we’ve accomplished. I have to be the Speaker.”

  “I have collated with the Blood in Us All,” Valac said, changing the topic. “I have updates to share.”

  The Blood in Us All. He’d heard that phrase before, from Crestfallen, when she spoke on her connection to his lineage. But Valac wasn’t talking about that. The Blood in Us All was the God’s blood that flowed through the vermillion veins and, possibly, all Corrupted. Because it was too difficult to keep up on the current events of the continent, Valac used the blood as a means by which he and Edgar could remain informed. It took a long time, and it took a toll. Valac looked sicker and sicker after every collation.

  Edgar turned to face the endless Ossuary and asked, “Did they find Audra?”

  “Yes.”

  Somehow, he shivered. “Is she alive?”

  “Yes, but Isla Taggart was not able to secure her.” Valac’s face flashed fear for a moment. “The Winnowers’ Chapter took Rime, but your sister escaped with the help of a Night Terror.”

  “Do you think she knows we sent Isla in after her?”

  Valac shook his head, said, “I don’t know.” The boy wrung his hands and then, with a fake smile: “But there is good news—”

  As long as Audra was alive and anywhere but at his side, how could there truly be good news? She was the last of him. If he lost her to hate or death—

  “—concerning the continent.”

  Like an Old World switchboard, something changed over in Edgar’s mind. A new channel of thoughts and concerns overwhelmed him. Audra became background noise to his ego and pride.

  “Did Lotus and the Arachne overtake Penance on the Divide?” he asked, excitedly.

  “Many veins were damaged or destroyed in the attack. The reports are inconsistent. Lotus lives, but hundreds of Arachne were killed.”

  Edgar shrugged.

  “Penance is still there, but only by a thread. A second attack would surely crush the survivors. The Arachne are refusing to fight, however.”

  Edgar scoffed. “They must have a different definition of ‘good news’ in the Deep.”

  Valac’s flesh-fattened face grinned. He bared his small, vermillion-colored teeth. At the back of his throat, veins swirled.

  “What?”

  “The Mother Abbess Justine has revealed herself for what she truly is,” Valac said. “A Worm of the Earth.”

  Edgar couldn’t help but laugh as he said, “A Worm of the Earth? You’re sure?”

  Valac nodded.

  “You didn’t know? Again, good news?”

  “Only God can track the Worms; Its pieces cannot, nor can the Worms. She has revealed herself, I expect, to draw faith and devotion. But in truth, she has placed a target on her head. The Worms, if nothing else, are a unifying enemy. Most of our flock are sheep that have strayed from hers. They still possess sympathy or allegiance to the Holy Order.”

  “We’ve been telling the Disciples that their old religion was a false religion,” Edgar said. “Now that they can see there’s been a demon the whole time at the head of their church…” Edgar covered his mouth; he could almost cry he was so happy. “Our people will tear Penance apart. They were lied to, made fools of. They’ll have to kill the religion, as if to prove they were never truly a part of it.”

  Valac rubbed his distended belly; it made a sloshing sound of satisfaction. “Good news, then?”

  “Take us farther,” Edgar said, turning his attention towards their camp. “Bring us to the Deep.”

  To avoid attention, they hadn’t brought many soldiers for the journey, so there wasn’t much to the camp other than three tents, ten horses, and bags and boxes of supplies from Kres—the last Corrupted settlement before entering the Ossuary. Adding to the subterfuge, Edgar had abandoned all of his kingly attire, while his guard dressed themselves in the rattiest garbs not even rats would wear. The goal was to look like traders, or traitors, and so far, unmolested and unnoticed by all, they were succeeding.

  Captain Yelena muscled her way out of her tent. A few feet of sand caught her foot and nearly sent her face-first into the ground.

  “This is Hell,” Yelena said, trying to catch her balance. “I hate this place.”

  “That borders on blasphemy,” Edgar said.

  Yelena straightened up and got it together. With her black skin and the ocean of sweat running down it, she looked as close as one could get to a living piece of obsidian. And like obsidian, she was rigid, and sharp. Bringing the Skeleton to Ghostgrave had won her respect with Edgar; everything afterward had won her assignment here. She was obsidian, but only because of the fire inside her, that volcanic violence that put even Kistvaen to shame.

  Valac waddled up beside Edgar and told Yelena, “Pray for forgiveness.”

  “And while you’re doing that,” Edgar said, “ready the rest. We’re moving out.”

  Yelena mopped her brow with her sleeve. Her lips looked like two pieces of burnt bacon, she was so dehydrated. If Edgar gave her the order to die, she probably would, and gratefully. Most of his soldiers wouldn’t make it home. In fact, he didn’t expect any of them to, except Valac and himself. Any other day, he might’ve
minded this, but he had chosen these hateful ass-kissers for a reason. No one would mourn them, not even him.

  “Pack it up!” Captain Yelena screamed. With her order, seven additional soldiers emerged from the tents. They stretched their arms and legs, cracked their necks and backs; the cramped confines had done them no favors. Edgar let them sleep most of the time, especially here in the Ossuary. If he was under any threat, it was from God, and nothing here, in the desert, on this planet, or from this universe, was going to stop God.

  They broke apart camp in ten minutes. Seconds later, they were well on their way, down the plateau, and towards the bone-dusted horizon. Their horses were born and bred to withstand the intense climate, but the farther they went into the desert, the clearer it became the beasts weren’t going to make it.

  The terrain became more and more alien; the dunes and flat stretches took on subtle, eldritch shapes that called to mind great, faded tattoos. When the horses’ hooves touched these designs, the horses shook and stumbled, and belted out short, sharp screams. The horses stayed their course, if only to reach Death and her final release.

  The atmosphere took a hit, too. While the heat was relentless, even more so on the desert floor, the air and the gravity were undergoing changes with every step they took. Oxygen became sparse, thin as paper and just as filling; and, in places, there were pockets of sand rising off the ground, as if something were breathing the Ossuary in from the depths of space. Again, the horses struggled; but it was the royals and those loyal to them that struggled the most. Edgar and Valac were practically lying down in their saddles, while most of the soldiers had to ride close enough to one another to stop each other from falling off the horses.

  “We… are… close,” Valac said, each word a struggle. “Do you see it?”

  Lost in a reverie, Edgar wasn’t seeing anything that wasn’t already in his mind. He felt the pained movements of his horse, that brutal Braille all living things can read, but in a way, it was a language he was more fluent in than anything else.