Brood of Bones (37 page)

“Your gift?”

My hand snapped to the ruffles at my neck, and I scrounged between the folds of fabric to pull out the red diamond, wishing to throw it at him. Its gold chain prevented me from doing so, cutting into my fingers as I strained to break it.

“You kill most everyone in Morimound and call it a gift? You lied to me!”

His open-mouthed hunger contracted, his expression changing into something subtler. “I never lied.”

I realized he stared at the red diamond on the necklace, and I grew embarrassed and angry with myself for allowing him to see it. “You did worse than lie. You deceived.”

“You deceived yourself,” he said, “if you thought I’d attempt to do
good
. I’m far too conscientious for that.”

“I will warn the Soultrapper,” I said, aware I was raving but unable to care enough to contain myself. “I’ll tell him your plan, and he’ll wither you like he did Deepmand.”

“You will do nothing of the kind.”

“I see nothing to lose by it.”

“Morimound has recovered from six floods,” he said, “but one Soultrapper will change it beyond recognition. You think all these Bone Orbs will satisfy him? This is only the first crop. His power will spread outward from this city, until his dominion rivals the Oasis Empire. And he won’t die. His magic will extend his life even as it distorts his body, and once he at last shrivels into dust, he’ll lock his own soul in his bones and still control legions of slaves.”

I clutched the red diamond as if its gold chain were a rope thrown to me as I tumbled down a cliff into despair. However, the enchanted jewel could save neither Morimound nor me, no matter how much I wished it would.

“After the Seventh Flood,” he said, “I’ll be gone with the dawn. This time I will not return. Enchantress Hiresha...I think you deserve better, but so do all born to this world.”

With that, he left.

The candle remained on the table, yet I curled my arm around my face, hiding from the light. This candle stank of burning ox fat. As I sobbed, I wondered if the Lord of the Feast had been right: I would accept the Seventh Flood, allowing all but a few of my people to die in order to save all from enslavement.

Anlash Niklia was ill mannered and brutal, which
were common traits among kings
. He had professed his wish to protect the city, and I had no doubt that with his strength in magic, Morimound could become a world power. I envisioned myself at his side, advising him, petitioning him for better treatment of his subjects, for Alyla and Sri. He had some mercy in him; his magic had selectively spared girls younger than twelve from pregnancy.

My stomach rolled, and I blotted out the thought. Expecting kindness from the man who had violated women with Bone Orbs would be madness. He had no mercy, only practicality. The girls would have made insufficient vessels for the unchildren, or they would have died and thus denied his nascent empire its future generation.

The door opened again, and I was angry that the Lord of the Feast would dare to return to torment me yet again.

Lifting my eyes from the crook of my elbow, I realized it was not he. One of the Soultrapper’s followers stood beside the guard, both with scimitars drawn.

 
“The candle’s lit! So she
can
command fire.” The follower’s scimitar trembled as it pointed to me. “Don’t you try your enchantery on me, you hear? Or I’ll carve you into a jackal’s dinner!”

His ignorance astounded me, yet not half so much as those rudely sharp blades.

The guard stayed silent beside him, yet his sword also wobbled in the air, his knuckles white on the hilt. I began to think they both feared me, and the revelation was not unpleasant, as it meant I might yet live.

“Did ya finish the plan? Water’s rising, and we’ll be swimming soon, if the clouds don’t let up.”

I waved to the parchment on the table and noticed the blood on my hand, which I had cut when yanking at my necklace. My fingers shoved the red diamond out of sight in my gowns.

The follower half-tripped over a fallen book on his way to the table.
Keeping his scimitar angled at me, he attempted to scrutinize the construction procedures and diagrams while glancing my way every other second.

I thought I should warn them about the Lord of the Feast.
Better for people to live, even if they suffered.
Yet, the follower and guard had arrived so soon after Tethiel that I worried he might still be in the building, and he might intercept any message I gave them. I was too drowsy to decide if that was probable or not.

“The pictures seem right enough.” The follower scooped up the parchment and rolled it into his belt. He backed away from me and nodded to the guard. “Well, go on. We’ll be safer once it’s done.”

The guard stalked toward me with his scimitar.

I needed two seconds to realize the purpose to which he intended to put that blade and another to remember that I had lost both my golden hump and Deepmand. Neither of them would save me now. The blade swung toward my head.

I tried to back away, tripping instead into my billowing gowns. The scimitar sliced the air above my nose.

“Hurry, you fool!” The follower shouted from behind a bookcase.
“Before she enchants us to death!”

I thrashed to my feet and tried to escape, wallowing in my silks, yet the guard had trodden on several of my hems, pinning me. He grabbed at the swaths of cloth spreading from my shoulder and yanked me toward his blade. My gowns, I realized, had just killed me.

An agony spread through me, even though the scimitar had yet to cut. I would be thrust from this world; the majority of Morimound would soon follow, and I could do nothing to stop it.

The guard’s face tensed as if he struggled against something within him.

“She killed His Divinity’s sons.” The follower
peeked
his head around the bookcase. “They broke because of her, and the enchantress must die!”

I glowered up at the guard, angry that I would have to admit to the other spirits that a possessed nobody had killed me. Not about to waste breath on pleading, I torqued the arm holding my shoulder.

A line of pressure crossed over my neck, followed by sensations of heat and wetness. I glanced below my chin to see blood dribbling over the bronze of the scimitar.

He had severed my throat.

A calmness
washed through me, along with feelings of lifting and weightlessness, as if I entered my dream.

“Good lad.” The follower strode from behind the shelf with scimitar raised. “Now lay her out, and I’ll cut off her head for His Divinity.”

The guard was holding me on my feet, and I had pressed my hands against my throat. While blood leaked between my fingers, I gazed at the men with a sense of perfect clarity. My own struggle seemed a trifling thing now, only one fraying thread in the Loom of Life. In addition, I realized that even if I could still speak to warn them of the Lord of the Feast, I would not.

Alyla and Sri would die birthing Bone Orbs; the Soultrapper would sacrifice them because he cared little for his people and much for himself, and under his rule, Morimound would rise to power but not to greatness.
Better for some of my people to lay down their lives now than doom their descendents to tyranny.

The follower stopped his approach, and the guard stiffened, their eyes widening. I wondered what in my face had given them pause.

Hands lifted from my throat, and I realized they must be my hands as my blood covered them and they reached from my sleeves. Yet I could not recall releasing my grip on my neck, or of lifting my arms, although I could not be certain: I felt nothing now but
a coldness
.

My dripping fingers etched runes of blood in the air, and red energy crackled down my arms. My hands began to smoke with heat. From this, I could only conclude that blood loss was causing a hallucination.

The guard backed away from me, the follower dropping his scimitar. Both their mouths stretched in horror, and this pleased me until I realized that real men would not be able to see my hallucination. Their reactions also had to be the result of miscalculations in my dying brain.

Flame spewed from my hands; blinding waves of red blasted over both men. Books sprayed into ash, and the marble behind crumbling shelves brightened into molten dribbles.

The fire scoured away the men, vaporizing their flesh and carbonizing their bones, which shattered against the wall. Ash drizzled through the air.

When the room cleared of smoke, I found myself on my knees with cold hands still held against my throat. The bookshelves returned into being from their recent incineration, and the walls were no longer melting; my hallucination had ended. Quite peculiar, I
thought,
that the men lay unmoving on the floor, their skin white and faces wracked with terror. Neither man breathed.

Tethiel stood in the doorway, a black triangle on his brow. His hands were raised.

Then I understood: I had not hallucinated but seen an illusion, which had frightened my attackers to death. Tethiel had begun Feasting for my sake, counter to all his plans, and as I spluttered blood, I dreaded that I would be but the first Morimound woman of thousands to die.

Tethiel began to bloat, his head and body expanding and stretching upward while his arms thickened into trunks. More fingers sprouted beside his thumbs on his palm, and all his digits sharpened into black fangs; his hands were enlarging into the jaws of monsters.

Now I knew why they said the Lord of the Feast had three heads. The sight froze me and obstructed my breath, although that might have been the blood in my chest.

With a yell, he slammed his hands to the ground and pinned them under his knees. The teeth at the end of his arms gnashed while he bent forward to vomit a dark fluid. The tar-colored ooze rippled over the floor then melded into shadows.

As he retched out more darkness, Tethiel shrank back to normal size. Fangs diminished to bent fingers, and the black triangle receded into his skull.

“Hiresha!”

He scrambled to me. I had fallen to my side, gagging, and he rolled me forward, holding my head and shoulders steady as I coughed blood. While I gasped, he cradled me and wiped my mouth.

“Can you heal yourself, in your dream?”

I had never heard of someone falling asleep with her throat cut, yet if anyone could, she would be me. When I nodded, my neck stung.

“Then you must sleep. You will sleep and heal yourself.”

Hearing him say it made it almost sound plausible. I relaxed my grip on my neck and forced my eyes closed. Aware of blood sliding down my esophagus, I saw the stair leading to my dream dripping with red. The steps multiplied, the stair twisting and knotting itself into a maze that I could never hope to traverse before I drowned in my own blood.

I waved my hand and willed the stair back to straightness, the one hundred steps leading down to safety. As I began to descend them, blood trickled after me, slicking the steps and forcing me to worry what would happen if I fell from the stair into the darkness on either side.

By step thirty-five, blood sheeted down the stairs, and I was wading downhill. My foot slipped, and I tumbled five steps and began to slide off the edge. I threw my arms over the wet steps, hauling myself back onto them and wobbling to my feet.

Stooping for a lower center of gravity, I flattened each foot on the step ahead of me before trusting any weight to it. This grew impossible by step seventy-one, as the blood flow had increased into a red waterfall. I did not so much walk as was swept down the last steps, relying on flailing and willpower to stay on the stair.

The hundredth step approached, and I feared that if I went past it then I would hurl downward into nothingness. Jumping too soon would result in waking to death, and with blood preventing proper footing, I was unsure if even leaping at the right moment would grant me sufficient clearance to reach the dream.

Above the ninety-ninth step, I heaved my legs downward into the blood.

My feet connected with the hundredth step and sent me soaring.

A moon shaded of amber and spessartine gems shone in the jeweled sky above me, and I stood amid broken basalt. From the rubble lifted my operations table; I replicated myself onto it, and with golden clamp in hand, I sealed her throat shut.