The Throne of Bones

by Brian McNaughton

  “Wait—” I began.

  “It’s a ghoul! That’s not a living man, you fools!” the last of the condemned men screamed. “Tell them, Porfat, it’s Vomikron—”

  “Noxis,” Zephryn finished, for his victim no longer could.

  “Lots, lots glybdi walk round around here,” said an Ignudo, using his word for ghouls. “No like dogface-tooth.”

  The last phrase was his jargon for a sword, and it seemed a strong endorsement from a disinterested party. Zephryn might not be a ghoul. But as he laughed through his bloody mask and embraced me warmly with his good arm, the sword dripping on my back, I reflected that he might not be much of a man, either.

  * * * *

  We accepted the hospitality of the bargemen at their tavern and suffered the attentions of a witch-doctor, or perhaps he was merely a surgeon, whom they extracted forcibly from a hempen torpor. All the while Zephryn never stopped yammering and posturing. He relived, over and over again, our pursuit by three rogues who had set upon us in a whorehouse with—to explain our stranger wounds—their savage dog. He judged his audience well. They never tired of hearing the tale, even with new and contradictory embellishments. He seemed well on his way to becoming an honorary Ignudo.

  I found it impossible to forget that he had formerly been an honorary ghoul. That unspeakable king’s commendation of his “ability to dupe boys” stuck in my mind. What plots had he hatched, what perversions had he wallowed in, what murders had he done? I tried to hold the memory of his last, ringing refusal to serve the ghoul, so much finer than my own groveling, but other memories superseded it. His skill in slitting the throats of three unarmed men suggested diligent practice.

  A cat never studied a bird more closely than I did Zephryn Phrein. I analyzed each word, each accent, each gesticulation for a whiff of something less than human. All I found, in a toss of his head, a sidelong look, a way of wrinkling his nose, were unwelcome and disturbing echoes of Zephreinia. His existence colored her image; I would never be able to see her or think of her again without his intolerable taint.

  Rested, fed on questionable dishes, clothed in a bizarre farrago of bargemen’s castoffs and slightly drunk, we found our way to civilization and a chair that Zephryn directed to Peartree Square.

  I said to the chairmen, “That’s at the foot of the hill with the temple of—which temple is that, Zephryn?”

  Without the slightest hesitancy or suspicion, he replied, “Polliel,” a name that ghouls supposedly may not pronounce.

  When I asked him how he had made his escape, he told me in a straightforward way, with none of the japes and mummery he had thought suitable for Ignudos. By calling his name when I had, I had saved him. Believing him finished, Vomikron Noxis had turned to taunt me, and Zephryn had seized on that moment of inattention to flee to the end of the cellar and a tunnel that led to the street. It sounded plausible.

  The Miraga had exhaled an enormous white ghost of itself to haunt its course through the city. Those waiting atop Temple Hill rejoiced to see the sun and proclaimed that the God had granted us a fine day. Only because their shouts echoed down to the bottom of the ghostly river where we drifted, and because the bricks and leaves of Peartree Square ignited with color beneath their wet gloss, did I know that it was dawn. Zephryn showed no more discomfort at the light than I myself felt, owing no doubt to my exhaustion.

  “Doctor,” he said, when we had reached our destination, “I know you dislike me, and my ill-considered words have given you more than enough cause. I know you helped me only for my sister’s sake, but I owe you my life. Believe me, I will pay you back.”

  “Ill-considered words are the least of your errors, Sir. You can mend some of the worst ones, and pay me back fully, by accompanying me to Prince Fandiel this afternoon and telling him all you know about that loathsome cult.”

  “How ever could I have called you a mouthing moron!”

  “I don’t recall that you did.”

  “You’re too kind. But I shall go with you, of course, and cleanse myself completely.” As he limped out, he turned with an unpleasant little smile and said, “Give yourself credit for a miraculous cure, Doctor. My unhealthy obsession led me to that hell. I plan to fight against it, and to begin my research into the female sex ... immediately.”

  There was no getting around it: I would dislike this young man no matter what he did, said, or became. But I managed some kind of a smile and said, “Get some rest first.”

  His laughter followed me across the square.

  * * * *

  I wanted nothing but to sleep. I was unable to tolerate Zephryn’s company one minute longer, nor did he invite me in. For those reasons I was eager to go home, and for one reason that weighed more than the others combined: I was afraid to test my new perception that Zephreinia was too like her brother.

  Whenever I tried to conjure up her delightful voice, I heard a feminine version of his provincial whine. I had treasured all the words she had spoken to me as if they were rare spices, but when I took them out to savor them, I found Zephryn’s accents crawling on them like weevils.

  I realized that I was drifting back into the illness that had kept recurring since I was nearly killed by a wretch called Phylphot Phuonsa. The first symptom of a relapse was a sick state of mind in which words became things, noisy, obsessive objects that cluttered my mind so densely that my surroundings faded. The words would be repeated, again and again, until I heard them shrieked in the voices of ghouls. I would soon sink into delirious visions of capering with those ghouls and feasting on the corpses of all I had ever loved. Lucid intervals would fill me with terror that I had fallen victim to ghoulism, the disease I had studied for so long and to so little profit.

  As the chairmen trotted me joltingly home, I heard Zephreinia’s voice, or perhaps it was Zephryn’s, repeating the words, “Peartree Square.” The taste of pears touched my tongue, but it abruptly degenerated to something unspeakably foul as inhuman voices cackled and gabbled the words.

  “Stop!” I screamed.

  “Sir?” I was screaming at the voices, but the chairmen came to an abrupt halt. I heaved myself out of the chair, tumbling onto the pavement, cursing and shoving the men aside when they tried to help me rise.

  “Where did that young man direct you?” I demanded.

  “You mean, Peartree Square, where we left him?”

  “Yes, but what did he call it? What name did he use? The old one, or did he call it Sekris?”

  They consulted together, scratched their heads, tried not to look at me as if I were crazy while I mumbled a Pollian prayer to override the chattering inside my skull. At last they concluded that Zephryn had called it Peartree, as no tourist from Omphiliot would do, but as Lord Glyphtard, born and bred in Crotalorn, would surely do.

  I thanked them volubly, thrust money at them, hurried back on foot the way they had brought me. I walked with my head down, for the light hurt my eyes and disordered my thoughts, all the while praying to drown out the evil words in my head: .20.20. mouthing moron .20.20. my research into the female sex .20.20. immediately.20.20.20.

  Another word that recurred as a rasping undertone was Phuonsa, Polliard Phuonsa, a foul libel that the ghoul-king had spoken, for Polliard’s surname was Glypht, and he had subsequently been enrolled in the Tribe of Vendren by Weymael. Why this grievance of a depraved child who had died from eating tainted meat should trouble me, I had no idea, but I felt the pain of that slur as if it were my own, and it made me pray all the louder. Those pedestrians I blundered into were less inclined to expostulate with me than to flee.

  The door of the house in Peartree Square hung ajar, which seemed ominous. I dithered at the threshold, struggling to master my confusion and the cold waves of nausea that threatened to overcome me. I felt that Zephreinia was in danger, but what good would it do her if I walked in the door and fainted? Worse, what if I opened my mouth and began babbling the nonsense now shrieking in my head? Perhaps I could pull myself together if I escaped t
he light and noise of the street for a moment, where porters and fishmongers and fruiterers were starting the day with their inharmonious cries of “Phuonsa, Phuonsa, Phuonsa!” I slipped inside and shut the door behind me.

  Contrary to all that has been alleged since, I never saw any servants, alive or dead. Zephryn must have killed them before I arrived. If they were sprawled bloodily in the atrium, as they were later found, I failed to notice them in my peculiar state.

  All my concentration was focused on Zephreinia’s voice. She wasn’t screaming, but her voice was loud, firm and full of outrage as she said, “No, stop it! Zephryn, no! Get away!”

  It seemed clear to me that he was honoring his promise to begin his research into the female sex by raping his sister. But of course she wasn’t his sister. Zephryn Phrein had died bravely in that cellar, a far braver man than I had proved to be, and it was Vomikron Noxis who was assaulting Zephreinia in the next room. What I did then is almost too painful to write: I fell to my knees and pressed my hands to my ears in an effort to shut out her cries. But you must understand, this was the King of the Ghouls, and what could a mere boy do against him? If only my mother—

  I was going mad. He had called me a boy, my ghoulish voices were screaming the word, and I had somehow come to believe that it was true, that I was not a very large and capable man who had already bested the ghoul-king once. I staggered to my feet and forced myself to enter the room where Zephreinia was fighting him off.

  * * * *

  Now you would think that one who rescues a woman from being raped by her brother, even putting aside the fact that this brother is in fact a personating ghoul, would be forgiven almost any excess due to the necessity of the moment and the righteous fury such a situation would provoke. You might even think that this savior would be accorded a certain measure of honor. I fear you would be wrong, for I write this in a dungeon under sentence of death.

  Whatever good I may have done was counteracted, in the view of the magistrates, by the fact that I had ripped out Zephryn’s throat with my teeth and appeared to be eating him when passersby, drawn by his sister’s screams, burst into the house and tore me from my victim.

  The woman’s testimony is no help. I know what I heard and what I saw, but she swears that they were grappling half-playfully as she blocked her brother’s way to the liquor-cabinet. He already reeked of pflune, she said, pressed on him by the wicked old man—myself—who had enticed him to some low den for a night of debauchery. She insists on these lies to protect her brother’s reputation, even though that has been thoroughly destroyed, and even though the story has put my neck beneath the ax. Degenerate Zaxoin yokels, they were probably lovers all along!

  My noble connections.... I can hardly bear to write what follows, but I must. My brother-in-law professes the greatest affection and respect for me as he hammers me with his daily, repetitive questions, but no one else in the government is imbecile enough to concoct the theory that I conspired with Weymael Vendren, Lady Glypht, Squirmodon, Zephryn Phrein and certain Ignudos to commit murders, burglaries, grave-robbings, cannibalism and arson. Weymael’s discovery of Chalcedor’s lost classic and my scholarly work in preparing it for the press have prompted a further charge of distributing pornography, while Weymael and Zephryn’s vice has damned us all with the charge of procuring boys and murdering those, like the missing Polliard Phuonsa, who might have accused us. Since there are no witnesses against us, we must have killed them all and probably—given my study of ghoulism and my alleged treatment of Zephryn—eaten their bodies.

  To perfect this ghastly charade, I have been convicted of murdering Phylphot Phuonsa. I cannot explain the reasoning of the magistrates, I can only retail it: he was last seen with me, my bloody cloak was later found in an alley, I cannot account for my activities during the following week, and no one can now find him; therefore, obviously, I killed and ate him.

  I had thought the Empress might intercede for me, since I did recover her necklace, but even that good deed is twisted against me. I was able to retrieve the necklace because I had stolen it. I burned down Gourdfoot’s tavern so no one could disprove my wild tale of a ghoul’s treasure-room beneath it.

  At least she has spared me from torture, and I must thank Her Imperial Majesty for that. Weymael has not been spared, however, and the Lord Collector of Tears has extracted from him a detailed confession that names me as mastermind of the conspiracy.

  * * * *

  I was very deeply confused when I came here, and I had not yet learned that one must say nothing at all out of the ordinary, not even to those one loves. I asked Nyssa if my warning had been heeded, if Zephryn’s body had been exposed to sunlight for a full day; preferably in Hound Square, where the statue of an ancient goddess is said to have power over ghouls.

  “Why would they want to do that, Brother?”

  “Because,” I said slowly and with great forbearance, “that was not Zephryn Phrein. He was personated by Vomikron Noxis, King of Ghouls. Do you suppose I would have attacked a man—a wounded man—with such fury? It was a desperate struggle against a superhuman creature, and I used every means at my command. Didn’t they do as I asked?”

  She averted her eyes. “No. He was sewn in a shroud and buried in the common pit reserved for criminals. Fandiel has assigned some Cluddites to watch the pit, so—”

  “So he’ll have a hearty breakfast when he resumes his terrible form!” I laughed.

  “Please, Brother, please! You should be setting your mind at ease, composing yourself for....”

  “Death?” I kept laughing. I couldn’t seem to stop. “If they didn’t expose Vomikron’s body to the sun and the goddess, they won’t expose mine, either. So I’m not going to die, I’m going on a journey. I’m glad that dear Vomikron will be there to receive me. At last we’ll see who’s fit to be King of the Ghouls!”

  I don’t know what I meant. I raved on in that style until she clapped her hands to her ears and screamed to be let out of the cell. Even when the guards were kicking and clubbing me, I found it hard to stop laughing.

  I have since learned to keep my own counsel, and I have tried to resign myself to my fate, although the most bizarre thoughts and images will burst into my mind at odd moments and it is hard not to speak them or write them down.

  * * * *

  I just noticed something funny about my hand. It’s not mine. No longer huge and veined and hairy.

  No, I take that back, it is mine. It’s not old, that’s all, it’s not Porfat’s hand. It’s mine!

  EPILOGUE

  To Fillitrella, Empress of All Seelura and the Outer Islands, Scourge of the Thallasshoi, Torch to the Argyroi, Hammer of Gastayne and Beloved of the Fairies, from Fandiel, Prince of the House of Fand, Cmdr., Never-Vanquished, most humble Greetings:

  The guards who permitted the regrettable escape of Dr. Porfat maintained that they rushed to his cell when they heard someone other than the doctor laughing. There they found a boy alone in the cell, they said, attempting to destroy the enclosed manuscript by eating it.

  If I may direct Your Imperial Majesty’s attention to the most salient fact of this otherwise absurd narrative, it is that Dr. Porfat denies none of the charges brought against him. On the contrary, under the guise of irony intended to delude an “imbecile,” he says outright: “I was able to retrieve the necklace because I had stolen it. I burned down Gourdfoot’s tavern so no one could disprove my wild tale of a ghoul’s treasure-room beneath it.”

  This, and the other memoir recovered by Feshard, the agent I inserted into the criminal’s home, do indeed comprise a wild tale, one that is a match for any of the wild tales concocted by that author from antiquity, whose name eludes me at the moment.

  The purpose is of course to distract us from a conspiracy of real-life cutthroats, thieves and pornographers. By writing the memoirs and substituting a boy for himself, the doctor hoped to convince us that he was dead, murdered by a henchman of Weymael Vendren; that this boy was an untypical ghoul who
normally retained a human form; that the ghoul had, after eating the doctor’s body, successfully personated him for several months; and that he miraculously reverted to his youthful form just in time to escape punishment for the doctor’s crimes.

  Having observed Porfat during the time of the alleged “personation,” and having known him for years, I can confidently assert that this is nonsense, regardless of whatever my distraught wife, his sister, may say about it. My view is supported by Dr. Beliphrast, now our foremost ghoulologist, who has examined the boy and pronounced him normal in every respect.

  The condemned necromancer, Weymael Vendren, attempted to delude us with similar lies, but recanted them under repeated interrogation and admitted that Porfat had concocted the plot in order to discourage pursuit. Needless to say he is being actively hunted, and an arrest may be expected soon.

  Although only such tortures as are deemed suitable for children were employed, the boy confirmed that Weymael Vendren arranged to free Dr. Porfat and insinuate him into the cell with the help of the guards, who were summarily executed. The boy has been identified as Polliard Phuonsa, the necromancer’s missing “ward,” although he insists that he should be called by the noble name of Glypht or Vendren. Since he was apparently duped and bullied into his acts by the real criminals, he was provisionally released in the custody of his mother.

  This mother, a common whore called Zara (although she also claims membership, as yet unverified, in the Tribe of Glypht) at first denied kinship with the boy. Only after a private interview with Polliard, from which she emerged notably pale and shaken, did she own up to her son. She identified his father as one Quodomass Phuonsa, deceased. Her knowledge of these events seems slight, and whatever value she might have had as a witness would have been vitiated by her marked peculiarities of speech and demeanor, to say nothing of her ill repute.