The Temple of Heart and Bone

by Evren, S. K.

  Partly, he thought, her motivation would stem from her desire to maintain her freedom. Although he may be a skeleton, he was not trying to marry her to someone for financial gain. He wouldn’t turn her over to her family, or anyone else for that matter. He believed she had the same rights to freedom as every other soul descended from the Maker. He had placed no strictures upon her whatsoever, even agreeing to hold off on his own search for knowledge until she felt safe enough to accompany him.

  Wondering about his companion helped Drothspar to clear his mind of his own fears and doubts. He led her toward the city square, taking detours to avoid areas of dense smoke. He also bypassed sections of heavy debris and buildings that looked as if they might continue to crumble. It took time to weave around the maze of smoke and rubble. Drothspar moved as quickly as he could. Chance held tightly to his robe and concentrated on calming her coughing and breathing.

  After many twists and turns, Drothspar and Chance emerged in the city square. The haze thinned out in the open space and Chance finally had the opportunity to catch her breath. She coughed a few times and released Drothspar’s robe. He, in turn, watched to make sure she was all right. Once he was certain she could breathe and stand on her own, Drothspar began to look around the square.

  It was a far different scene than he remembered. Damage from the invasion Chance had told him about had been compounded by the city’s latest disaster. The monolithic fountain at the center of the square had toppled, most likely, during the earlier invasion. Most of the damage had time to weather down.

  The haze of smoke lessened in the square, but it was not gone entirely. It lingered in spots like customers around a merchant’s goods. Few of the buildings surrounding the square appeared to be intact, and all of them were damaged to some degree. Shattered windows littered the streets, partially melted into the cobblestones. Doors hung charred and useless in their stone frames.

  Drothspar was amazed at the woe that had been imposed on Æostemark. Certainly, the Ferns’ farmstead had suffered as much as it could. It was a primer, he thought, a first lesson compared to the destruction he saw around the square. The city hadn’t merely been destroyed, it had been tormented. Someone had wanted Æostemark to suffer. Drothspar walked to the toppled fountain. He walked slowly to avoid feeling gauche. He felt as if the city was baring its pain to him, and to move quickly would tell it that he wasn’t paying attention. It would have been like running through a funeral procession.

  While Drothspar stepped toward the fountain, Chance looked around through watering eyes, red and irritated by the ever-present smoke. She was stunned. Lessons in a history class overlooked scenes such as this. Professors were quick to highlight dates of battles, names of leaders, names of heroes, but she had never been taught about the devastation that war could bring. Surely, this had to have been an act of war. No accident could have caused all of this. Looking around at the destruction, her eyes sought proof that it had been intentional. She wouldn’t believe—she couldn’t believe—that any accident had been so thorough. A short distance from the fountain, she noticed a dark patch of cobblestones.

  The stones were stained with dead and dried blood. She had seen enough bloody stains in the last week to be certain of that. There were multiple pools, she thought, looking at the ground and trying to understand what had happened. Some of the stains appeared to have been disturbed. She noticed something else near the blood. It was small, tiny, even. She knelt down to examine it. The blood had dried around it, helping to hold it in the crevice between the stones. Chance drew her dagger and used it to pry the object loose.

  It was a very small chain. She noticed that some of the links were open, as if they’d been sheared by something very sharp. Chain-mail, she thought, remembering the armor she’d seen on her father’s soldiers. This was a scrap of that kind of armor, she was sure of it. There must have been a fight here.

  She turned to look for Drothspar. She had to share what she had found. She saw him standing near the remains of the fountain. His hands rested on a great stone slab, probably one that had been the centerpiece of the fountain. She walked over to him, her evidence in hand.

  “I found something,” she said to him as she approached. Drothspar remained still, standing at the stone, his hand spread over it for support.

  “I found something,” Chance repeated stopping before the large stone.

  Drothspar turned his head slowly to regard the young woman. Chance returned his look steadily. It was the first time she could remember that he had held her gaze. Normally, he turned away, as if afraid to have her study him. This time, however, he did not turn. He seemed to be looking into her, looking through her, looking past her. Chance bore the weight of his stare, feeling calm and unafraid. She wondered what it was that he saw and what it was that he was looking for. After several minutes, his focus shifted to the scrap of mail in her hand. Slowly, he turned to his slate and wrote something in response.

  “I found something, too.”

  “What did you find?” she asked. She was eager to tell him about her discovery, but she was curious about what he had found.

  Drothspar pointed around the side of the stone. Bloodstains had gathered around a post driven into the ground. Small droplets of blood led away from the post to end near the side of the stone. Drothspar pointed again to his other side. There Chance saw similar stains. In the center, between the posts was another stain, larger than the first two.

  “What happened here?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

  “Sacrifice,” he wrote slowly across his tablet.

  “Sacrifice,” she read. “What do you mean by ‘sacrifice’?”

  “A ritual was performed here,” he replied. “The victims were tied to those stakes, they were killed. Some part of their bodies was removed. This stone was used as an altar.” He wrote sporadically, clearing his slate when he was certain she had read what he had written.

  “How can you be sure?” she asked, knowing he was right.

  “Gathner, my mentor, told me about certain rituals the Church has been trying to suppress. He never went into too much detail. He didn’t think I was ready. Some of the other priests used to enjoy trying to frighten me with stories of what they had seen. They described barbaric practices, the slaughter and shaming of living beings, both victims and celebrants. I thought they were ghost stories, simple tales only meant to frighten me. They never did. I used to annoy the old priests by asking them to tell me more. Eventually they would give up and leave me alone. I was never sure I should believe their stories. I was almost certain they were just made up of whole cloth to frighten me.” He paused and looked at the stakes. “Now I know they weren’t.”

  “So you’re saying that some ritual was performed here? On this very spot? People were sacrificed? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “From what I was told, the sacrificial rituals were common to ancient worshipers of the Fallen, the True Fallen. It was a sign of allegiance to sacrifice a human to them. They were the creators of humanity, makers of the bodies we inhabit. To sacrifice a living human, to ritually separate soul from body, was to call out to them as masters. The True Fallen see mankind as slaves. If their slaves can’t be chained, they must be destroyed.”

  “Someone tried to call a Fallen here?” She made a sign to ward off evil.

  “A True Fallen,” he corrected. “It certainly seems so.”

  “We should leave,” she suggested quickly. Her eyes darted around the square. She forgot the scrap of chain-mail clutched tightly in her hand. She had been curious about the city and the prospects that it held. Now, however, she was ready to go. Her professors had told her that there was no possibility of life after death. Drothspar, whatever he truly was, had proven them wrong. They had also told her that the mythology of the Maker and the Fallen was just that, mythology. She had learned enough in her childhood to be certain that she didn’t want to meet any Fallen, True or any other kind. “Please,” she asked plaintivel
y, “can we go?”

  Drothspar was lost in thoughts of long past lessons and horror stories. He had failed to notice the change in Chance’s behavior. He heard her plaintive plea and looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. He saw the fear rising in her eyes. He saw her eyes nervously darting around the square. He also saw that she refused to panic. Whatever fear may have gripped her, she held it tightly under control.

  “Yes,” he wrote, “but I would like to see something before we leave.”

  “Great,” she said ready to be on her way. “What do you want to see?”

  “The cemetery.”

  “Great,” she said, with much less enthusiasm.

  They left the square moving off to the north-east. The city cemetery had been filled long before the invasion seven years ago. The siege of Æostemark, however, would have created more bodies in need of burial. Since the inhabitants couldn’t leave to bury their dead in the cemeteries outside of the city, Drothspar reasoned, they would look for places in the old interior graveyard. Walking with purpose, Drothspar led Chance through the smoke and debris to the north-east corner of the city. The old cemetery was right up against the walls.

  The ground had been disturbed in many areas. It looked as if someone had dug hastily, in order to accommodate those who had died in this recent attack. Drothspar threaded his way between the graves and stones, trying to get a look into one of the openings. Chance felt uncomfortable walking through the cemetery, but she clung to Drothspar’s robe and gripped her dagger tightly in her hand.

  They reached an opening in the ground and Drothspar came to a halt. He stopped so abruptly that Chance nearly knocked him into the grave. She looked at the hole. There were no tools around it, the opening was irregular. The ground appeared to have been pushed from below rather than opened from above. She edged closer to the opening and peered inside. There was nothing but a putrid stench.

  Drothspar knelt beside the opening. He took some of the dirt in his hand and crumbled it. He stood and circled the grave, looking deeply into it. Rain water had collected in the bottom, evidence that it had been opened prior to the storm.

  He walked to another of the openings and looked inside. Chance joined him and looked in for herself. The hole was smaller than the first, barely two feet wide. Deep inside, she could see something lighter. A simple collection of wood had splintered up in the dirt. Although water had collected inside of the opening, it was obvious that the wood had been pushed upward.

  “Someone was buried alive,” she gasped, revulsion echoing in her voice.

  “No,” Drothspar replied.

  “No,” she asked, “what are you saying? A corpse dug its way out of its own coffin?”

  “I think so.”

  “Under normal circumstances—” she began, “Oh, to hell with it. Did you see what you needed to see? Can we get out of here, please?”

  “Yes,” he wrote abruptly.

  They started to work their way out and then stopped. Drothspar began to look around the cemetery.

  “What’s wrong?” Chance asked, a note of worry in her voice.

  Drothspar continued to look about, absently reaching for his slate. “They’re not all open,” he wrote.

  “No,” she agreed, “they’re not. Maybe we should get going before they change their minds.”

  Drothspar looked at Chance and nodded his head. He put his tablet away and led her out of the cemetery. They made their way to the opening in the north wall and stopped. A fire, more stubborn than the others, blazed up in a building near the opening. Heavy smoke was being drawn out through the wall. Vision wavered. Heat was pouring out along with the smoke. Drothspar pointed to the east.

  “East gate?” she asked.

  Drothspar nodded.

  “I don’t suppose we have much choice,” she agreed.

  The newly awakened fire was drawing air from other areas of the city. Ashes kicked up by the wind flew through the air like dirty snow. Chance tightened the scarf around her nose and mouth as Drothspar led her through the graying air.

  Stones began to crumble down from the buildings around them. The sound of crashing timber began to fill the streets. Fires returned to the smoldering buildings. Hot winds and thickening smoke assailed them as they walked among the rubble. Chance began to cough again, and Drothspar noticed she had closed her watering eyes.

  The smoldering city quickly flared up once more. It shuddered as if gripped in its own death throes. The temperature in the city began to rise and soon distortions of heat shifted and undulated through the streets. Ashes flurried about as the heated wind tugged at their clothing. Sharp reports detonated around them as moisture from the rains heated in the stones and shattered them from within. A shadow of smoke covered the city, filtering the day’s light into a sickly reddish-orange. Drothspar remembered paintings of the torments of hell shaded with just the same colors.

  Chance began to cough weakly. Drothspar could sense the heat around them, but he couldn’t gauge its effect on the living. Chance, he could tell, had been affected. Her grip on his cloak loosened and her steps were slow and faltering. He tried to lead her as quickly as he could, but she began to stumble over fallen stones until, finally, she tripped. Her hand slipped off his robe and she crashed to the ground.

  Drothspar grasped her arm and tried to pull her to her feet. He had been afraid to touch her, afraid she would recoil from the feel of his bone-thin hands. He put aside that fear and concerned himself only with her safety. If she noticed his hands on her arms, she didn’t acknowledge it at all. Her breathing was faltering and her muscles lax under her cloak. He struggled to keep his own balance in the rubble as he pulled her to her feet. She tried to open her watering eyes once, but they were so deeply bloodshot that it must have caused her great pain. She closed them again and her head hung limply from her neck.

  Drothspar draped her arm across his shoulders and put his right arm around her waist. He tried to balance her weight onto himself. He half-carried and half-dragged Chance through the streets as quickly as he could. He had to get her to fresh air, if any could be found in this hellish landscape. He continued to move toward the east, dodging rubble and pushing through heat and smoke.

  Finally they approached what remained of the east gate. Drothspar could see the blackened ruins of what had probably been the guard house. The edge of the city was in sight. Chance had become limp in his arms, no longer moving her feet on her own. Pulling her left arm tightly over his shoulder, he dragged her past the ruined guard house and out through the gate. He looked back into the city, certain he was staring into the mouth of hell, itself. Further to the east, he saw another building, also destroyed, smoldering in its own ashes. He turned straight north, moving urgently to put distance between himself and the fires of the city.

  He pulled Chance through the muddy fields around Æostemark. He could sense the heat draining from the air, along with the ash and smoke. He kept moving to the north, dragging Chance along with him. He didn’t know what to do other than to get her as far away as he could. He kept going until he saw an irregularity in the fields before him. The ground had been ripped apart, as if someone had started pit-mining or trying to break a foundation for a massive structure. He dragged his companion as close to the edge as he dared and set her gently on the ground.

  He loosened her scarf and opened each of her eyes gently, briefly, to see what they might tell him. He saw her pupils change size as he opened each eye, but the whites were filled with red. Her face was flushed a deep crimson and her hair pressed limply to her face. He tried to gauge if she was still breathing, first listening for breath from her nose and mouth. He thought he could hear something, but he couldn’t be sure with the wind hissing around them. He tried to watch her chest through her thick robes but gave up on that almost immediately. He had to know if she was still alive.

  He opened her cloak at the throat. He felt his own chest to remember where his heart had been. No sensation beat back at his hand, but he though
t he sensed the “muscle-memory” of his hand’s placement. He placed his right hand on her chest at approximately the same spot, adjusting slightly for decency’s sake. He placed his left hand over it and prayed for a sense of feeling. It took a few moments, but finally he could feel something fluttering under his hand.

  He brushed her hair from her forehead and opened her cloak completely to help her cool down. He placed her pack under her head as he had at the cottage and knelt beside her. He prayed. He couldn’t breathe for her, he knew. He had no poultice or herb to comfort or wake her. He wasn’t sure if waking her would be the appropriate thing to do. So he prayed. He rocked on his knees and shut out every fear and doubt. He called out to the Maker in His Forge. He put his left hand into hers and his right hand over his own missing heart. He begged God to heal her, to keep her from being another victim of this murdered city.

  Time was irrelevant to him. His mind focused so intently on his prayers that he ignored the moving of the sun. He no longer heard the hissing of the wind. The city of Æostemark died behind him in oblivion. She couldn’t die. She wouldn’t die. He would give whatever he had, and he did in his silent supplications. He would have cried, he knew, had he been capable. He continued rocking in his place.

  Something was changing, he was certain. He didn’t stop his prayers. He thought he detected a new sound, but he shut it out of his mind. Something tapped at his hand and then at his head. He continued to pray, focusing all his hope and intent on Chance.

  He felt something squeeze his hand. It took a moment for the sensation to sink through his meditation. He looked down to see her hand holding his. Her eyes opened slowly, and she smiled weakly at his shrouded face.