Empire of Bones

by N. D. Wilson

  “The Brothers Below?” Cyrus asked. “Those living statues? This guy made them?”

  “That’s what Lemon said,” Antigone answered. “A Druid with the touch of life.”

  Cyrus wanted to forget Babd. If this guy had made the Brothers, then maybe he could change the Brothers. He might be able to tell Cyrus where to find them. He could definitely tell him how to wake them, and how to keep them from killing absolutely everything. Maybe.

  Cyrus tallied his step count in his head. This was not what he was supposed to be looking for … not if he believed Dan. And he did. He had to. But the maker of the Brothers?

  He needed to stay on task. Cyrus nodded at Antigone, sheathed his knife, and jogged on, dragging his fingers down the wall as he went, no longer counting his steps.

  The next three slabs in the curving corridor turned up an Italian name, a French name, and more Latin. But no Babds and no Cathas. Not even a Cathy.

  And no other stairs. No other doors or corridors. Nothing.

  Cyrus kicked the dead end. He kicked it until his foot screamed, and then he kicked it one more time. Breathing hard, he turned around, put his hands on his knees, and leaned against the wall. The cool stone pulled the heat from his back but not from his frustration. Somewhere up above him, people who died were fighting people who didn’t. They needed him to get this done and get up there. He had to be faster. He had to find the Burial of a feather-haired war goddess with a skeleton face and stop a human sacrifice so that the real versions of every statue in Dan’s black dream water wouldn’t rise up around them and destroy the real world. And now he couldn’t even stay focused on that.

  QUICK. With the touch of life …

  He breathed slowly, trying to clear his head. Dream Dan had told him that Antigone would die if he didn’t find Babd Catha and prevent her from rising. In which case, he should be sprinting back up those long stairs already, trying to find a way out of this place, and a way into the next dank suite of Burials.

  Cyrus wiped his forehead on the back of his wrist.

  “Cy?” Antigone asked. “What are we doing?”

  Cyrus slid down into a crouch. He had to make a decision now.

  “Quick,” he said. “We find out about this touch of life.”

  Oliver Laughlin yawned and stretched his Reborn but still adolescent body. He crossed his feet at the ankles and folded his hands around the Dragon’s Tooth, letting them rest on his stomach. The plane was absurdly loud and absurdly cold, but collecting as many aircraft as he had over the last few weeks had required the remainder of his wealth and a great deal of theft. Pickiness would have been foolish. And he could, after all, silence the noise inside his skull; he could push warmth through his body. The flip-down stretcher he had claimed for himself was uncomfortable enough that it must have been intended for use by the dead. But that could be altered within his mind as well. Complaining nerves were tamed and his mind focused on the broader game at hand.

  Phoenix was striking for the throat.

  Radu was testing the trap. He had firebombed Ashtown and sent in a team of at least nine transmortals. Somehow, Rupert Greeves was on-site, but he wouldn’t be for long.

  Radu Bey would enter Ashtown. The Burials would be opened, and Phoenix and two hundred of his sons would be in place, ready to constrict.

  The old powers would be offered a choice.

  Mortality: true, complete, and final death.

  Immortality: but only in blood-bound allegiance to Phoenix.

  Phoenix knew that some would fight. But his Reborn would be firing darts full of tooth potion already tested and proven in that skirmish in the cigar factory. If the darts could stun Gilgamesh, a sufficient number could temporarily drop any of the transmortals. Phoenix had even sent Radu a little sample along with the ritual tokens to help him enter Ashtown—a threat to accompany his gift.

  In the end, Phoenix expected to execute many with the tooth that tipped his cane—perhaps even rebestowing transmortality on a few of his most-trusted Reborn sons. But surely most of the dragons would kneel. They were lovers of power, unused to fear. They would feel terror and awe, and they would be bound to him.

  And then he would govern the storm.

  Oliver yawned and felt the pleasure of young lungs inside a taut chest, undecayed by age. The human authorities were scurrying. A plane had crashed in the lake. The smoke rising up from Ashtown would be visible for miles. Some fools were sure to investigate.

  Oliver closed his eyes and smiled at the thought of what those people would be walking into.

  The living stone was warm beneath Cyrus’s palm. It felt like mud, but it was dry, and as dense and heavy as stone. Because it was stone. If he punched it, his knuckles would break. But when he pressed on it lightly, it depressed beneath his fingers. If he had time to experiment, he could probably stab his knife right through the slab, one slow centimeter at a time.

  “Cy, are you sure about this?” Antigone chewed her lower lip while she watched.

  “Of course not,” Cyrus said. “I’m unsure about everything right now.”

  The silver Solomon Key rippled and morphed into a long, jagged leaf as he slid it into the hole and turned.

  The slab bent inward slowly in the center, and then swung open.

  The room inside was on fire with sunlight. Cyrus staggered back across the hall, blinking. Antigone threw an arm up over her eyes.

  Warm air swirled out into the corridor. The floor of the chamber was covered with vines and grass and bright flowers that looked like they were made of pottery or porcelain, but all of it was moving, bending slightly in a breeze. The chamber was deep, the vaulted ceiling high, and the far wall held the white fiery orb of a false sun. It was setting, inching down toward the floor. Every pillar had sprouted branches, and they were heavy with fruit and blossoms. Huge clusters of grapes hung down from the ceiling.

  Cyrus stepped inside, and the grass bent around his feet, light enough to be real.

  In the center of the room, water burbled out of the stone floor and flowed in a small circular river. Inside that circle, the grass was thick and emerald bright, bent and tangled in a ring like a nest.

  In that nest, a small boy was sleeping. He was on his side with his knees pulled up to his chest. He wore pale rawhide trousers but was shirtless. His skin was the color of caramel and was thickly spattered with dark chocolate freckles. He had no hair.

  “Um, excuse me?” Cyrus inched forward. “Hello?”

  The boy’s eyes opened. They were even greener than Patricia’s. As green as two glowing leaves held up in front of the sun.

  He sat up, looking from Cyrus to Antigone in the open doorway. He blinked, and then stretched, bending slowly backward until his body was shaped like a horseshoe. In a flash, he snapped back upright. Apart from the baldness, he didn’t look more than eight years old.

  Cyrus cleared his throat. “I’m Cyrus, and this is my sister, Antigone. We need your help.”

  The boy’s bright eyes narrowed. After a moment, he leapt to his feet. As he did, his legs changed, and a goat’s body sprouted below his waist. He landed on four prancing hooves, now a young goat centaur. He turned in a circle, while Cyrus and Antigone gaped at the boy’s freckled torso on the spotted goat’s body. Finally, he faced them, a rear hoof still scraping at the grass. When he spoke, his voice was a wide whisper that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once but was still barely louder than the little stream that encircled him.

  “I plucked Cyrus the mighty Persian from his goatherd home,” he said. “You are not he, but perhaps his distant echo. I wept for Antigone as she hung in the cave, her tomb. You have not her darkness.”

  “Different people,” Cyrus said. “Not us. But we really do need your help. We have to stop the sacrifice of some girl we don’t even know, though I did see her face in a dream. And I think we’re going to need the Brothers Below or something just as strong. Is there any way we can find them and wake them up without dying?”

  Th
e boy cocked his head. “I do not know them.”

  “Justice and Wrath,” Cyrus said.

  “Law hearts,” said Antigone. “You made them for Brendan in exchange for this Burial.”

  The goat boy shut his eyes, breathing slowly. He shook his head.

  “Listen,” Cyrus said, moving forward. “The transmortals are coming. Radu Bey is coming. He’s going to wake up some crazy war goddess without a face, and if she gets this sacrifice, then she’ll be too strong to stop and all the people I love are going to die, and these Burials will be opened, and the world is going to get absolutely hammered with pretty much every single member of the awful villain hall of fame all at once.”

  “My sleep is older than these words. I do not know them.” The boy’s eyes stayed closed. His sun was sinking fast and the color of the room was shifting to red and orange. A small moon was rising on one wall.

  “Immortals,” said Antigone. “Radu Bey is a Dracul, a blood sorcerer and dragon gin. He shares his flesh with Azazel.”

  The boy flinched at the name, but his eyes stayed firmly closed.

  “They’re coming to wake Babd Catha,” Cyrus said. “And everyone else will follow.”

  At that name, the boy’s eyes snapped open. He stared straight into Cyrus’s and down inside him. Cyrus coughed. He felt heat in his head, in his gut, in his chest. And in a flash, it was gone.

  “It is now the truth,” the boy whispered. “It must be made a lie. But you do not have the strength to face her. The Reaper has kissed the knife you now carry, but only the Reaper’s true blade can harm the storm crow, mother of death and devils.”

  “Right,” said Cyrus. “Well, I lost that one. So we should find her Burial and make sure she doesn’t come out and no one kills this girl for her.”

  “Her place of sleep is sealed with living stone from my hands,” the boy said. “There is no door, no keyhole, no hinge. The stone will swallow ax and pick and blast. A way cannot be opened from without.” His bald, speckled brow furrowed, and he shut his eyes again. “And yet she rises. A dragon has been given charms to guide him. He spends the strength of a thousand souls to come to her. A thousand more to wake her and open the stone from within.” His eyes opened, and their green was dimmed by sadness. “She will walk these halls. She, the oldest of evils but one, will see the sun.”

  “What about the sacrifice?” Cyrus asked. “The girl. Can we stop that? Where is she?”

  “Many hundreds of miles distant,” the boy said. “On an altar of men, in a chamber of bodies, in a temple of pain and slowly departing souls.”

  Cyrus groaned. So Dan’s dream had simply been an announcement. It was done. Babd Catha was rising no matter what, and her human sacrifice was hundreds of miles away. All the stone shapes would rise up from the water, and he knew what that meant. Dan had seen death for all of them. That was all that was left—for Cyrus and for his sister and for his friends, for everyone he had called to join in the impossible defense of Ashtown. Some general.

  Antigone shivered. She had actually seen pictures of Radu’s old body buildings. There was a new one? And some girl was inside one on an altar made of people? It made her feel sick.

  “Okay,” Cyrus asked. “So how do we wake the Brothers Below?”

  The boy’s goat legs vanished and he was human again.

  “The kiss of law,” he said. “Breathe your law into them and stop their throats. They shall arise and slay.”

  “Us first,” Cyrus said. “Right? I mean, if it has to be that way, it has to be that way. But I’d rather it not. And there are others, too.”

  The boy didn’t blink. His eyes were still.

  “Listen,” said Cyrus. “Please, help us. We’re not looking to purge silly people. If you made the Brothers for anything good at all, this is it. I have to stop Babd and Radu. There are people we love, and they are upstairs, fighting for us right now.”

  Antigone moved up beside Cyrus, her face on fire in the false sunset. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears and met the boy’s eyes.

  “A boy called Quick,” she said. “Is that really your name?”

  “I have worn many names,” the boy said. “I have taken many sacrifices. With a stolen spark of life I have grown much folly and seasoned much wine and spread much foolish love. Always, in every temple, in every rite, I was the fool, always I was Quick and Quickening.” He looked from sister to brother and back. “A greater Fool came. A greater Folly. I was broken and found peace.”

  Cyrus looked at Antigone, impatient. She was smiling.

  “We’re not in this situation because we’re wise,” she said. “Please. Help us.”

  The boy nodded. “There is one deep rite to turn Justice, one only to shield men from Wrath.”

  Quick spread his arms and the grass flew out of his circle. He stood on bare, slowly swirling stone, ringed with water.

  “If you would belong to the Fool, slay me,” he said. “Your black blade can bite.” And in one second, his freckles vanished and his skin became perfect. In the next, he dropped to the ground, no longer a boy but a small sheep—short-haired and young.

  Slay me.

  “No,” said Cyrus. “I can’t do that.”

  Antigone drew her brother’s knife and stepped across the water.

  Throat.

  “Tigs!” Cyrus jumped forward, but he was too slow. His sister bent quickly, grimaced, and jerked the blade up across the lamb’s throat.

  Black blood stained white wool and ran down over the stone and into the water. The little river ran red.

  The lamb leapt back up into the shape of the boy, one side of his throat gaping. But he didn’t seem to mind. The bloody boy traced three circles in the stone at his feet, and small living bowls sprouted up, pooling with his dark liquid life. The bowls didn’t stop growing until they had closed all the way into spheres the size of small oranges.

  He handed two to Antigone, and they were as heavy as solid stone in her hands.

  “To stop their mouths,” he whispered. He handed the third to Cyrus. “For those you love.” The boy looked at them both. “Kneel in the water.”

  The round stone was hot in Cyrus’s hand. Antigone dropped to her knees in the tiny stream, and Cyrus followed her down, more than a little confused. Sharp, frigid water climbed over his calves and numbed his knees.

  Quick reached out with both hands and tore Cyrus’s tight black sleeves off at the elbows. He threw them away. Shocked, Cyrus watched them unravel and sprout up into black grass where they landed.

  With a snap of Quick’s hands, Antigone’s leather jacket was gone. He threw it aside, and Cyrus watched it roil on the ground like it was trying to stand up or take root or slide away. Antigone was wearing a short-sleeve olive safari shirt, buttoned only in the center. Beneath it, her pearly Angel Skin glowed. Winged images moved through the visible threads.

  Quick smiled at the sight. Then he plunged his cupped hands into the cold water and slapped it up into Cyrus’s surprised face. Cyrus spat, blinking and dripping even as Quick did the same to his sister.

  “Lay down your life,” he said, “and find that you have picked it up. Fear no raging beast.”

  Quick dragged his fingers through the black blood on the stone. Then he touched his fingertips to Cyrus’s temples and painted a dark stripe down Cyrus’s forearms onto the backs of his hands, and did the same to Antigone. He pointed to the stone ball in Cyrus’s hand.

  “Place those you love in a sealed room. Wipe that blood or your own blood around the door.”

  Antigone studied the backs of her hands. “What about when it wears off?”

  Again Quick smiled, and his eyes flashed spring and summer. “It is the Fool’s symbol, the mark of the lamb who ravaged ancient lions. The symbol fades, but what it symbolizes will live on, growing with every drumbeat of the sun. I am Quick; it is I who say this. Believe, and it is done.”

  Cyrus looked at his sister and then at his bare arms. Patricia had been striped with blood a
s well. “This will keep us safe?” he asked.

  The boy called Quick ran his hands over his soft stone, and his blood began to sprout back up into long emerald grass, spreading through the whole ring as it did, swirling into a nest. His throat had healed, and his freckles were returning.

  “Safe?” he asked. “I am older than this world. It will not make you safe; it will make you dangerous—light to the darkness, life to the dead, love to the loveless, folly to the wise. Wage your war. Wake the Brothers.”

  He curled himself back into his nest of grass.

  “But where are they?” Cyrus asked. “How do we find them?”

  “Follow your feet down when the floor falls,” Quick said. “Run. Justice and Wrath wait below the rising water. If you seek, you find. Live for those you love. Until the end”—Quick yawned—“of sorrows.”

  Cyrus stood up in the little stream. He looked at the heavy stone ball in his hand, and then down at the sleeping boy, mottled with chocolate freckles. Antigone rose, dripping, beside him.

  “May the Brothers burn the feathers of Babd Catha,” Quick whispered, his eyes blinking slowly. “And grind her skull to meal. As for the wingless beast, the dragon you called Azazel, feed him no pain.” He breathed in long and slow. “Tell only tales of laughter.”

  The sun on the back wall set completely. Only the light of a moon and Patricia lit the sleeping boy in the grass.

  nineteen

  THE BROTHERS BELOW

  RUPERT GREEVES KICKED the heavy oak door open and stepped into the room with Horace slung over his shoulder and bleeding down his back.

  Jeb, Robert, Diana, and Gunner ducked through the door after him. Gunner had Nolan’s big black weapon bag slung over his shoulder, and it looked a lot heavier now that he was carrying it. After a glance back into the hallway, Gunner shut the door and threw a heavy bolt.

  The room was three floors above ground level and served as a council hall for Sages. The long, low ceiling was held up by dark carved beams, and a table of the same wood filled the room below it. The stone walls were painted but undecorated. There were three doors but no windows, which was why Rupert had chosen it.