The Boneman made a little fire next to the site of the original Crossing, a scar of fused rock and glass. This was the place, the beginning of things, a holy site that was unremarked now and forgotten by the savages of today. The Greygulf was close, but he couldn’t force a way through the world veil.
Something is keeping me out.
The Boneman remembered the day of the Crossing well. A band of sorcerers had achieved the impossible by leading the exodus from a dying world. It was their greatest work. They tore a road through the Greygulf, battling the creatures of that sour realm. Many of his comrades died, and only five made it to the other side. There they opened a shaky door to a barren place, to survival.
Five fierce friends, the sorcerers were bound with ties of blood and the guilt of survival. In those days, the Boneman had called Hesus a friend and confidant.
Their faithful followed them through the door, a blank-faced crowd numbering in the thousands. The Greygulf wiped their minds, as Lucy suspected it would, but “better to be a dummy than dead.” It was chaos. Knots of humanity wandered, mindless and bawling, the livestock running loose and no one to round them up. Only the disciples of Hesus kept their wits, as they were trained to do, and it was left to them to keep it all together, to enforce order, to reteach all of the forgotten things.
It was far from perfect, but the sorcerers had their new world and their second chance. It was a noble venture, and they were both scared and excited. Laws were discussed, and systems of governance. Hesus was against a mageocracy of dictators, citing the final wars and everything that resulted in the exodus, the mad gamble. It had been tried, and it failed.
“Well, that was before, but this is now,” Lucy had said, and the names stuck, the concept easier to explain to their afflicted flock. Before and Now, the old and the new.
Hesus had eventually proven the truth of his argument, even though he was the one who went native, who lost his way.
Reliving the memories of war, failed friendships, and now this, the ruins of an empire, the Boneman spent the rest of the night curled around a flask of rotgut booze, surly and defeated.
He found the answer while poring through the current version of Family scripture and rote, once he had discerned the truth from the rhetoric and lies. Papa Lucy’s passing from the mortal plain was mentioned as “through the roots of Cavecanem, there to await his brother’s rebirth.”
“Cave Canem,” the Boneman chuckled, breaking the phrase into an old scholar’s tongue from Before: “Beware of the Dog.”
Lucy always enjoyed word bastardry, the twisting of old phrases into something new and absurd, and delighted in the art of the awful pun. It did not take much for the Boneman to realise the final resting place of Papa Lucy.
A few days later, a misfiring car dropped him off at the side of the tradeway, midway between Crosspoint and Gladhands. The gap-toothed driver lugged his baggage out of the vehicle’s trunk and dumped several sacks at the Boneman’s feet.
“What’s in these?” the man huffed, wiping a streak of earth onto his pants. The bags were dirty and clacked like they were full of sticks.
“Camping gear,” the Boneman said as he paid out the last of his gold. The man pocketed the coins then quickly tipped another flask of rotgut into the fuel tank, cursing as he spilled a trickle down the side.
“It doesn’t sit right, leaving you out here,” the driver grumbled. “Dangerous parts. You have any sense, you’ll climb back in and come with me.”
“I’ll be safe enough,” the Boneman replied. He took in the rolling red hills of the Harkaways. “My thanks.”
With a wary eye to the hills, the driver leapt into his machine and took off, leaving the Boneman in a shower of dust and small stones. Wrinkling his nose at the blue cloud of exhaust, the Boneman began tipping out bags and arranging bones.
Within minutes, the horse skeleton was following him along an old trail through the hills, the rest of the baggage strapped to its clacking frame. A dark cloud clung to the tips of the Harkaways, and soon rain came as a persistent drizzle that soaked every stitch.
“This place used to be full of hikers,” he told the horse as they huffed up the muddy path. “Families here with picnics, the Riders of Cruik out on exercise. Now, nothing.”
The trails were overgrown, and time had completely erased the food stands. A cement pad marked the ablution block, the only sign that people had ever visited.
The Boneman felt it then, a chill in his skin, the idea that something bad was watching him. Shadows flitted about on the red hills, long-limbed shapes that vanished when he looked directly at them. Panic tickled at his gut and grew with every step along that path, until he took a deep breath to clear his mind. He recognised the sorcery straight away, realised that it was Lucy’s work.
I am close, he exulted.
Digging into the trickle of sorcery remaining to him, he found the first ward on a high ledge, marks of repulsion carved deep into a stone. The runes were still strong, inlaid with molten gold and only partially covered with moss. The conditions for the illusion were spelled out quite clearly, and the Boneman was impressed at the clarity of this magic. Laying his head along the flat rock, he sighted the next mark, on the hill opposite, and another further down the valley.
Seems Lucy had built himself a fence to keep out the nice families and the hikers. Small wonder the folk of this mean age thought the Harkaways were haunted.
The Boneman led the dead horse up a winding path. The wind and rain were powerful. Blinking as the makeup started to run into his eyes, he smeared it away with his sleeve so he could spy out the narrow path ahead.
Twice the horse staggered, its ivory legs thrashing for purchase in the mud. The Boneman rested a hand on its quivering face, wondering if he should dissolve the poor beast before it suffered a nasty fall.
“Sorry, old boy. We’re almost there, I promise you.”
The trail switched back across one of the taller hills, a crag that might as well be called a mountain. Finally, they stood on the apex, a lichen-strewn curve of rock with sheets of rain washing across it.
A rock formation was the only feature here, a shape roughly reminiscent of a dog’s muzzle. Where mouth and throat should be, a low cave wound down into the hill itself.
“Cave Canem.” The Boneman chuckled. “Dog Cave.”
It took some effort to untangle Lucy’s final defence, marks of pain and paralysis carved into the overbite of the “dog.” There had been an actual guardian here once, a vicious killer brought in through the Greygulf. But the rune was surrounded by an old scorch mark tapped of any energy.
Seems someone or something had broken in long ago.
He led the skeletal horse in from the weather, a pointless charity, and retrieved a blanket to dry his own skin. He removed the last of the makeup, leaving a flesh-coloured smear on the cloth. He threw the soggy wig onto a rock. It looked like a miserable rat, and he was glad to be rid of it.
Instructing the horse to wait there for him, he removed his belongings from the panniers and loaded up a stout backpack. He shone the flickering torch into the depths of the cave. It had cost him a fortune in the market, but the batteries seemed good.
The Boneman remembered his first trip to the Harkaways, the first time he and Lucy had walked into this cave. It was during the great survey, the mapping of this new homeland, and when they learned of this place, the sorcerers enjoyed the chance to do some amateur caving. The Boneman remembered searching for Taursi relics and finding nothing.
“If politics gets too much, we could live down here,” Lucy joked, as little witchlights darted about their heads to light the way.
“The ladies would never visit,” he who would become the Boneman told his brother, flashing the easy smile he wore so often in those confident days. Later, there was war, and they forgot all about pottering around in caves and smiling.
Roused from memory, the Boneman descended through the curlicue of stone, weaving through the forest of stalagmi
tes. The roof of the main cathedral was far above, but his torchlight did little to pierce the gloom.
Exploring every nook and all of the side passages, he found nothing else to suggest that Dog Cave was inhabited. Then he spotted the shimmer of a wall that seemed to move slightly depending on his perspective.
“You and your illusions,” the Boneman said as he passed easily through the stone that wasn’t there.
A passageway punched through the rock. The rough edge of the tunnel soon became a smooth walkway, the walls and floor stretched out and rubbed smooth by sorcerous hands.
A row of glowstones were fixed into the stone ceiling, dim and long dead. As the passage wormed its way into the depths of the hill, he found more marks of protection, all of which had failed now. He stepped over a dark scorch mark in the floor. Nothing was left of the intruder but dust.
I just need one bone, the Boneman said. That will tell me all I need to know.
He soon got his wish. The tunnel ended in an iron grille that was twisted and buckled from an old explosion. Beyond that one room was a single narrow chamber littered with treasure, statues, urns, and artwork. A carpet of bones lay underfoot, peppered with shattered skulls.
Everywhere were the mirrors that Lucy had mastered: gilt-edged, plain bathroom fittings, ornate hand mirrors of ivory and mother-of-pearl. Most were frames of jagged glass now, ruptured by the intruder’s explosive entry into the tomb. A single mirror remained whole, wedged behind the remains of a propane barbecue.
On a dais lay a garish sarcophagus, the relief face unmistakeably Lucy’s. The artisans had remembered him with a broad, shit-eating smile and a phallus that coiled around one leg, ending somewhere by his feet.
“You idiot,” the Boneman said, smiling sadly. There was no life in here, nothing he could sniff out. He’d come far too late. Papa Lucy was dead.
He climbed over the broken grille and his feet crunched on bone. Instantly he was buffeted by a series of invisible blows, a swift flurry that he could barely feel. It was like being beaten by a child with pillows.
“There’s no vinegar left in your guardian,” the Boneman said, flexing his will to dismantle the old spirit. Sorcery was becoming easier to do, and in moments the creation dissipated with a soft sigh.
That’s when the remaining mirror glowed with a bright inner light, bathing the chamber in a television glow. The Boneman slid the gilt-edged looking glass out from behind the pile of loot and held it up carefully.
“You look just how I feel,” Papa Lucy said from his glass prison, nothing but a head floating in a black abyss. “What took you so long, brother?”
“Quick, I want to look at my handsome arse,” Lucy said from his mirror, his disembodied head leaping about in the glass and grinning. The Boneman hooked his fingers under the lid of the ridiculous sarcophagus and pushed against the weight of stone.
The lid crashed to the floor, sending up a cloud of bone dust and filth. Waving away the haze, the Boneman lifted his torch and looked into the coffin. He shook his head sadly.
“What is it? Give us a look,” Papa Lucy said. Without a word, the Boneman picked up the mirror and held it up above the coffin.
“Damn it. Here I was hoping to just hop in and take it for a drive,” Lucy grumbled. The coffin was filled to the brim with honey that glowed golden in the torchlight. Beneath the surface, as if trapped in amber, lay the mortal remains of Papa Lucy, Master of the Cruik, First Watch of the Moot, slayer of men.
The most loyal of brothers.
His body was wreathed in hair, great coils of it floating around in the goop like a brown fleece. His beard reached past his navel, granting him modesty, but even this wasn’t enough to hide the damage. He’d been shot several times and his left leg was almost completely severed, attached to the body by several strands of reaching sinew. Three of his fingers were missing, but the healing had gone wrong. The tiny finger growths were melted together like a toasted sandwich.
“It almost worked,” Lucy said mournfully. “Some of those bullet holes have closed right up. Another fifty years, the leg would have been back on, and I would be good to go.”
The true dilemma remained unspoken between the brothers; without a living body to climb into, Lucy would never be able to leave the mirror. He was trapped forever.
“I’m sorry,” the Boneman said.
“It was Jesusmen did this,” the disembodied voice said bitterly. “The last handful of those lay-low bastards, come gunning for revenge.”
“Were these Jesusmen, too?” the Boneman said, scuffing the femurs with his foot. He could get a quick answer from the bone, but refrained, knowing that his brother frowned upon the corpse arts.
“Just robbers,” Lucy said. “There’s nothing left to this world but the low men, animals picking through rubbish. Our age has passed.”
Sighing heavily, the Boneman sat on the steps of the dais and cradled the mirror on his lap.
“Here, then, is our glorious awakening,” Lucy said. “A man in a mirror and a walking bone bag. No offence.”
“I’m not offended,” the Boneman said. “You did your best to help me.”
“I should have done more,” Lucy said. “I should never have woken you and let you see yourself like this.”
“You woke me?”
“I need you, Sol.” Lucy used his old name, the one he’d worn in the Before. “It’s Turtwurdigan, that sour old rattleface. She needs to be dealt with, again.”
“We beat her at Sad Plain,” the Boneman said, numb. “I killed Turtwurdigan. She’s gone.”
“Beaten, but not killed. The Mother of Glass is waking up,” Lucy said, head swimming around in the mirror like a tadpole. “We need to find Bertha, and fast.”
Trapped as he was in the Aum, the shadow roads and far-doors were firmly shut against Papa Lucy, no matter what he tried. Wherever Lady Bertha was, the Boneman would be walking there.
He led his dead horse carefully down the switchback trail. The foul weather was gone, replaced by the calm still of a spring morning. Strapped to the horse’s spine, his mirror half wrapped in a mouldy old rug, Papa Lucy saw daylight for the first time in centuries. He laughed and darted about in the glass and drank in the rays.
“You?” the Boneman said, indicating the clear sky.
“Yes,” Lucy said, and the Boneman felt the final threads of a great weather working to dissipate as his brother tugged away the final thread holding it all together. With typical Lucy panache, his brother had kept the Harkaways wrapped in a permanent storm, just to keep the hikers out.
“Nice. But you’ve lost your touch. Can’t even get yourself out of here.” The Boneman drummed at the glass with his gloved fingers.
“Don’t tap my glass. Haven’t you ever owned a fish, Sol?” the bobbing head scorned. “It’s just rude.”
“You must have been bored,” the Boneman said. “Hundreds of years in there and no one to hear your terrible jokes but you.”
“Not so, brother. Sometimes I can peek out of a whore’s handglass and whisper in certain ears,” Papa Lucy said. “In fact, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to this one particular girl…”
PART TWO
— THE SELECTOR’S DAUGHTER —
— 7 —
I’ll hang this Lanyard Everett and every damn Carpidian I come across. They’re all gonna pay.”
Quentin Dann paced around the private audience room, a gigantic man in a murderous fury. He towered above the guards—riverfolk, dressed in the sombre grey that their master favoured. The water baron’s own retinue lounged against the far wall, seasoned thugs tanned from roaming the Inland.
A waterman stood with head bowed. There was a bandaged stump where an arm had been. This was the only survivor of Fos Carpidian’s betrayal. An eyewitness to murder, and most importantly, the brazen theft of an entire water consignment.
Horace Rider, the Selector of Mawson, let the water baron rage. There was no fear in his rheumy old eyes, nothing but quiet contempt. He was dy
ing of riverlung, and today was a bad day. The puff-faced lord drew deeply from a kennelweed pipe while he soaked his bloated feet in a steam tub.
“He killed my boy, Horace,” said Quentin. “Vern was there on business, nothing more. This is an outrage.”
“You trade in misery,” Horace said. “You rob the north and complain when they snap at your greedy fingers. Enough. Mawson will have no part of this.”
“Speak carefully, Selector,” the Dann said. “There’s agreement between our towns. A posse leaves Graham’s Wash tomorrow, and your men had best be with it.”
“My agreement is with your Magistrate, not you,” Horace said, breaking into a coughing fit. “Get out.”
The water baron and his retinue left the room. The big man slammed the door so hard that one of the hinges cracked. Horace Rider shook his head and packed another pinch of kennelweed into the pipe.
“No such thing as a happy petitioner, Jen,” the Selector said to his grown daughter, who slouched on a chaise lounge, scattering little chips of wood as she worked a whittling knife. “It’s all threats and begging, day in, day out.”
“I won’t mourn Vern the Half-Dann,” Jenny Rider said. She blew a loose speck from the woodwork on a new pipe for her father. “The world is a better place without that creepy little freak.”
“True, but see to the heart of this if you can,” Horace said. “That man who just left is the vilest creature imaginable. He’s bought his way into polite society with water money. He has the Magistrate of Graham’s Wash in his pocket. But beneath all that, he’s a grieving father.”
“So, we should help him?”
“Absolutely not. Young Vern deserved that death one hundred times over. The lesson here is: vengeance makes people stupid. Quentin should have left this to the Magistrate, let the bailiffs bring in Fos Carpidian and his coin-rider, this Lanyard.”
Papa Lucy & the Boneman Page 9