A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (45 page)

“Never mind. I withdraw that offer. Go now, before I change my mind and have you tossed into my most unfriendly dungeon,” he said over his shoulder. “You shall be free to pass the guards at the outer gate unmolested.” 

Kate’s eyes drifted past Leonardo, never making eye contact, just as the man had instructed earlier, as she turned to look at Will. His expression was dumbfounded.

“Let’s go.” She picked up her pack with one hand, took Will’s hand in the other to help him to his feet, and headed for the double doors without looking back or pausing to put her pack on.

***

As the doors closed behind them, the room erupted with conversation. Leonardo watched sadly as, in the midst of the hubbub, Cipher called the minion from his post at the bottom of the dais and directed him to gather a party and bring Will and Kate back immediately.

28: A Boat Made of Bone

“You know the way to the outer gates?” Kate asked in a breathless voice. She knew they had only a short amount of time before Cipher tried to bring them back using his heartless minions, even with the time limit he’d just given them, he would fight dirty to prevent them from reaching their goal. As they walked through the lavishly decorated corridor and over red-woven rugs textured with patterns of silver and gold, Kate adjusted her Timex to timer mode. She set it for eleven hours and forty minutes, just to push herself.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Will said, watching her, walking briskly in his Spartan costume.

“Do you want to change?” Kate asked, studying his clothing but never stopping.

“There’s no time. Why? Don’t you like a man in a skirt?” He smiled at her as they reached the doors to the outside. The giant guards swung the heavy black wood doors open and motioned them through, their faces stoic and unmoving.

“Hardly,” she laughed. “To be honest, I love it. I’d marry you right now if you were wearing a kilt.”

“That could be arranged,” he joked, touching his chin thoughtfully. They trotted down the stairs together and as they did, Will’s uniform clanked and clattered loudly.

“So, you’re sure, you don’t want to change?” Kate asked again dubiously.

“Tempting. The sword is annoying, that’s about it. But I like how tough I look. Honestly, it reminds me of wearing a gun in
LA: Bluefire.
Did you ever watch that?”

“Of course. I watched it every day after you told me you were in it.”

“Aw, Kate. You did?” he said, touching his chest like he was genuinely moved.

“A moment of reunion would be great. But like we have time for that,” she said, bitterly. “I have so much to tell you.”

They paused outside at the foot of the giant statue that Kate now knew represented a triumphant Cipher. 

“Wait, let’s stop a minute,” Will said. “What just happened?” he asked, taking her by the arm in the shadow of the looming Cipher. “Did you just rescue me? Did we just beat Cipher?” He was still dumbstruck. He stood there in his Spartan warrior outfit, eyes wide in disbelief. He cleared his throat and cursed. “Kate, did you just cross the galaxy to come for me?”

“Damn right. More than a galaxy. A freaky world full of smoke and flames. Let’s not forget that.” She gave him half a smile, her mind still worried about the passage of time.

He stared down at her, his eyes illuminated with something—love, maybe? Appreciation? “I just can’t believe it worked.”

“Of course it worked. You don’t think I’d stage a half-assed rescue, do you?” Kate sounded more confident than she felt. She shrugged under the weight of her pack.

Will smiled, finally, and even though it was strained with tension, it made Kate relax just to see it. “No, I guess not.”

“Let’s get out of here. Quick. Lead the way,” Kate urged him.

“Of course. But first, Kate, I have to do this before Cipher’s mood changes,” he said, suddenly behaving like the Will she remembered from her dreams. He scooped her into his arms and kissed her, fiercely at first, gradually settling into a gentleness that made her bones melt. “I’ve missed that. It’s even better now that you’re here,” he said when he pulled away at last.

Kate teetered, almost collapsing. Slowing down, relaxing in his arms like that, brought her exhaustion up from deep in her sinews where she’d buried it.

“Whoa, Kate. I’d ask if you’re OK, but I can see that you’re not,” he exclaimed in surprise as he caught her.

“Sorry,” she said as he helped her regain her balance. “I haven’t slept in, I don’t know, a day or two? And I don’t have enough water, let alone food, for this journey. I didn’t plan on this, you know?”

“Then we had better hurry, like you said. I don’t want to be ungentlemanly, but can you keep going?” he asked.

“I think so. By the way, I really do love this. I wish you’d worn more skirts in the dreams,” she said, taking a deep breath and taking hold of one of the plackets of his warrior’s skirt and studying his attire now that they were alone—mostly alone. Nearby guards watched them while pretending to stare straight ahead.

He laughed. “You never had me do any of the Greek epics.”

“Well I guess I didn’t realize you were taking requests. Sure you don’t want to put on something more comfortable?”

“No. What we wear here never ends up mattering. Give it a minute and Cipher will be grumpy and I’ll be a pile of mud anyway.” There was a hint of fear in his voice.

“Don’t worry, I’ve seen it already.”

His blue eyes lightened in relief. “So you won’t . . . “

He let it hang in the air between them. “Run away? Scream in fear? Hate you?” She asked point-blank. “Not a chance. Let’s go. The guards are starting to fondle the spikes on their maces.”

Will took Kate’s hand and they hurried down the remaining steps to the street below them. Kate only gave the hideous, communist-style statue one more shuddering glance and they vanished up an alley.

He led her through a series of twists and turns around the city and its hulking complexes. Eyes peeked out at them from dark windows, making Kate’s skin crawl. They made it to the gates after passing through the neighborhood of hovels like the one where Leonardo lived. As Cipher promised, the guards at the outer gates gave them no trouble, in fact both of them pulled on metal rings affixed to the center of each door and swung them wide. Kate peered into a long tunnel illuminated by torchlight.

“This is it?” she asked. They were at the base of the mountain walls that surrounded the city. “Are there doors on the other side?”

“Just this side. Enjoy the world out there. You’ll never make it, but enjoy it,” a long-haired guard said. He grinned, revealing a row of sharp teeth. His eyes were an unholy yellow and the tips of his ears were sharp with protruding bones like some kind of cross between a prehistoric monster and a human.

“Let’s go,” Will said, squeezing Kate’s hand.

“I’d advise you to run, in fact,” the conversational guard said. The other merely grunted and rolled its eyes.

“Thanks, but we knew that already,” Kate answered.

Will’s brow furrowed in confusion, but before he could say anything, Kate pulled him into the tunnel. The doors slammed shut behind them, a noise also punctuated by the maniacal laughter of the guard. 

***

Five hundred feet beyond the mouth of the tunnel out of Necropolis, Kate and Will stumbled down the muddy, decrepit banks of a river onto a questionable dock made of stone. “Great. This is it. We’re going the right way. Leonardo said there’d be a river here,” Kate muttered, breathless.

“Leonardo? You talked to him?” Will asked in disbelief.

“Yeah, of course. The dragonfly led me there. How did you think we’d get out of here?” She removed her pack and began rummaging through the contents. She stripped out of the ugly clothes Leonardo gave her and put her own back on, tossing the Chthonian clothes into her pack. Will looked away while Kate changed. “Huh, I thought you’d watch,” Kate observed.

“I save that bravado for the dreams,” he said with a faint smile.

“Leonardo told me what we’d need to do to leave, and he gave me some tools to help,” she continued, fully dressed and searching through her pack again. 

Will blinked and shook his head. “I hadn’t thought that far in advance. I just—he’s the one who gave me the dragonfly, actually. That’s how you got here.”

“It worked,” Kate said, glancing at him as she removed a heavy disk from her pack, hefting it in both hands. It was chalk white and dense. “And that kind of makes sense, right? Who else has he given dragonfly rings to?”

Will cleared his throat and began to study his fingernails. “We call him the wizard. He’s one of the oldest inhabitants of the city. I—I had heard he knew the way out. I didn’t believe those rumors, exactly.” He shrugged as Kate approached the edge of the dock and studied the dark, broiling water. “What are you doing?”

“This is how we’re getting out. Wait a minute,” she said, stopping and looking back at him over her shoulder. “You trusted that he could bring me here, but not that he had a way out once I was here?”

“I didn’t think that would work either, to be honest. I’m just as surprised as you that you’re here. How long did you dream with the ring before it found its way into your world? Think about it—why would Leonardo stay here, if he knew the way out?” Will asked.

“Beatrice. It’s obvious, isn’t it?” She was standing at the edge of the dock wondering if she really should do what Leonardo told her to do. What if it didn’t work? It seemed that things Leonardo created did work, but what if this didn’t? It only took once for something not to turn out right before your trust was gone. 

“Cipher’s consort?” Will wondered aloud. “But she belongs to Cipher.”

“Against her will, I would say,” Kate explained, surprised that Will had never noticed it. “I’m sure there are rumors, aren’t there? From what I could tell, the only reason Leonardo came here was for Beatrice. Think about that: why the hell would any woman want to be with Cipher? Aside from the fact that he’s devilishly gorgeous, he’s a complete narcissist. She doesn’t even have equal standing in that throne room.” Kate shook her head and threw the disk into the river, just as Leonardo had instructed her. The moment it hit the water—blood-red, she now saw upon closer inspection—the disk transformed into a boat. Not just any boat. A boat made of bone. A rope trailed from one of the dock’s stone pylons and was anchored to a ring on the rim of the boat.

“Well, isn’t that something,” Will said, his mouth dropping in awe. He stood beside her with one hand resting on the hilt of his costume’s sword.

The strange boat curved up on either end and there was a long white pole balanced lengthwise in the middle. A human skull grimaced at them from its position as a figurehead on the bow.  

“Should we get on it? I suddenly have my doubts about its integrity,” Kate said, disconcerted by the skull and as one would expect, the bones.

“I think that’s the idea, don’t you? Not that I look forward to it, myself.”

“It’s a bit creepy. All of it. The water—look at it! Is it blood?” she asked, holding on to one of the nearby pylons and dipping the toe of her shoe into the seething water. A hiss went up and she snatched her foot back. Kate’s nose crinkled as a sulphuric smell wafted up from the water. Black chunks of something floated in eddies rushing past the boat as well as the occasional pale stick. At least, she thought they were sticks. She told herself that’s what they were.

“Most likely an illusion,” Will said in a reassuring tone.

“On this planet? Really? I bet anything that looks safe is probably illusory. I’m betting that water is blood.”

“We have nothing to worry about, Kate, it’s just water.”

“You’re covering up the truth. We both know this world is some kind of hell,” Kate murmured. She stood there on the dock, gazing out at the landscape with a somber expression on her face. Beyond the bend of the river, there was the sea of everlasting burning plain grass. Eventually it rose far, far in the distance into foothills and then mountains.

“Nah, it’s fine. Come on. Let’s cross,” Will said, moving toward the boat.

“Need a hand?” Kate asked, moving to his side, suddenly fearful he’d fall into the river and get swept away.

“I’m not crippled yet, Kate,” he joked, smiling at her before he leapt onto the boat. It dipped and swayed with his weight.

“What do you mean ‘yet’? Is that some sort of hint? Are you going to become crippled?” 

He turned to peer at her after he’d picked up the pole and dug one end of it into the river bottom. A haunted look crossed his eyes. Lifting a shoulder nonchalantly, he said, “Rumors. That’s all they are.”

“Tell me,” she pled.

“Just—some people claim that the further we get from Necropolis, the more our bodies decay. But who would know that? I hardly believe it. Anyone that would get far enough away to find that out would never come back. Right? That’s what I think.” He frowned but in a flash it was gone, replaced by a grin. “I’m really happy to see you, Kate. Thanks. Thank you, for coming.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she said, choosing not to say anything about the bodily decay notion. She had no idea what to do with that information. What she had to concentrate on now was getting away from Necropolis and the demons. She climbed into the boat and as she did, glanced back the way they’d come.