Books & Bone Read online

  The rest of the journey passed mercifully without incident. Usther raised a few minions to shamble after them as soon as she found some likely corpses. Their eyes were white and empty in their withered faces. Ree took extra care whenever they crossed a bridge or scaled a wall.

  Finally, they came to a wide stone chamber lined with pillars carved to resemble long-dead kings with their heads bowed benevolently, their faces crumbling under the pressures of time. Ree felt very small, surrounded by that echoing expanse. She glanced at Usther, standing with shoulders back and chin raised. Usther looked at those ancient kings as if they were unruly dogs she would bring to heel. Behind them, Usther’s minions milled, arms hanging loosely at their sides. She’d raised them as soon as she found some likely corpses. Unlike Wandering Larry, these minions were controlled. They did not groan much, though their limbs did creak as they moved.

  ‘Astorfell?’

  Ree pointed to the other side of the chamber. ‘Entrance should be over there. See the windows?’

  ‘A tower inside a wall. How dull.’

  Ree rubbed her eyes. ‘This is only where it starts. I’ve been to Astorfell; it actually comes up out of the mountain and you can see around outside. When the sun hits it, it’s quite beautiful.’ She remembered a soft sky and a bleeding sun, and a warmth like she’d never experienced before.

  Her mother had asked her, once, whether she would prefer to live in the upworld, after a rare visit to an upworld town. ‘I pass no judgement if you do,’ she’d said. They’d been sitting in the Altar of Many Gods, playing scrolls and skulls on a finger-drawn grid on the dusty floor. It was a strategy game much loved by necromancers, about positioning undead forces. ‘But unlike many here, there is nothing tying you to the crypt. You could make a life for yourself up there, in the sunshine, among the green trees and the sweet yellow fields. There are more people than you can imagine. The world is much bigger than you know.’

  Ree had been stricken to find that even her mother thought she didn’t belong. As if she would trade darksight for sunshine, or the grand crumbling arches of the amphitheatre for some poxy trees. Or the still sway of a horde of minions for the push and press of a sweaty city crowd.

  She did belong here. There was more than one way to be a denizen.

  Usther wrinkled her nose. ‘Sunlight?’ Her sneer brought Ree back to the present. ‘How can Veritas get any serious work done in broad daylight?’

  Undead generally grew weaker the longer they were exposed to direct sunlight, but Ree wasn’t terribly interested in how Veritas made it work. He was an experimental necromancer — everything he did seemed strange. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll get the book, stay overnight with Veritas if he’ll let us, and head back. You should release your minions.’

  ‘I will not.’ Usther flicked a piece of rubble from her shoulder. ‘A true necromancer never enters another’s territory unguarded.’

  ‘As well that you’re only an acolyte, then.’ Ree pulled her hood more snuggly about her hair and headed for the door. Usther and her handful of shamblers followed.

  Ree glanced over her shoulder and bit back a warning. While it wasn’t polite, attempts to recover late books didn’t always go smoothly. Normally that resulted in a heart-pounding chase for Ree. She might be glad to have a necromancer on her side, and antagonising Usther seemed a bad way to go about it.

  As she came upon the door she wondered, again, what to expect from Veritas. He lived so very far from the other denizens, and was so rarely seen or heard from.

  She reached for the handle, unease growing in her belly.

  ‘Wait — don’t touch that!’

  Ree jerked back from the handle, but not before her fingertips brushed the cool iron. A spark of magic unfurled from the metal to wrap around her throat, a shadow rope with the feel of gut.

  ‘Us — us-ther …’ Her fingers scrabbled at the rope as it crushed her throat. Her breath came in thin gasps.

  ‘Krizhott!’ Usther pointed at Ree’s throat and voiced a deep, gravelly incantation; the shadow shrivelled away and the rope came loose, leaving what looked like a withered intestine to slither from Ree’s shoulders.

  Usther’s eyes sunk deeper into her face with the expenditure of magic. Her nose wrinkled and her lip curled in a snarl. ‘That is very poor manners,’ she hissed. Behind her, her minions seemed to grow and flex, their shadows lengthening.

  Ree rubbed her throat. The skin was cracked and bleeding where the shadow rope had squeezed. Her eyes drifted to the door.

  It was never easy with the late returns. And this time, a life hung in the balance.

  Tales of witches in sealskin cloaks luring sailors to their deaths and stories of lionesses demanding riddles of trespassers in their caves: this is the legacy of therianthropy — fables and fairytales of brave heroes defeating evil shapeshifters. Not much of a foundation on which to base the existence of an entire school of magic.

  So-called ‘scholars’ of the dead-or-mythical magic claim that therianthropy was an oral tradition passed on only by word of mouth. Why then was the infamous Wylandriah so willing to put her experiences to paper?

  No. More likely the magic is myth and the apocryphal witch Wylandriah was mad or given to penning fiction. Only the romantic and the foolish vaunt her journals as proof of an otherwise entirely vanished magic.

  ~from The Shapeshifter Obsession by Delian Wan

  CHAPTER FIVE

  STITCHWORK MONSTER

  Ree massaged her throat. Each breath was painful. She wondered wildly whether her windpipe was crushed. Did she need healing?

  Usther stalked ahead of her and kicked open the door to Astorfell. Her minions crowded in behind her, made larger and fiercer by the angry pulse of her magic. ‘Veritas!’ she called. Her amplified voice rasped with a death echo, a mark of her active magic. ‘Come and greet your guests, Veritas!’

  Ree rubbed her throat again. Panic still fluttered in her ribcage like a trapped bird, but she hadn’t suffocated yet and that gave her a little strength. She followed Usther inside, her shoulders hunched and her hood drawn as she tucked herself into the corner by the door.

  ‘Veritas!’ Usther called again. Her minions started to shift and moan, picking up on her temper. ‘It’s rude to leave people waiting!’

  But though Usther’s minions stomped and groaned, Veritas did not appear.

  Ree gradually got her nerves under control. She withdrew from the shadows to peer past Usther to the staircase. ‘Perhaps he’s not in?’ She took a few steps up the stairs. ‘Veritas?’ There was no answer. She turned to Usther. ‘I’m going to take a look around.’

  Honestly, given the traps on his doorstep, she’d rather not run into him.

  Usther glared at her. ‘On your own? Hardly.’

  ‘Well, I’ll struggle to do it quietly trailed by your pack of angry dead men.’

  ‘They’re not angry, they’re righteous.’ Usther pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, then turned to her minions. ‘Wait here. Defend yourselves. Warn us.’ She flicked the command at them with a small sting of necromancy, then turned to Ree. ‘After you.’

  Ree started up the stairs, Usther on her heels. She gritted her teeth at Usther’s clicking steps — the older girl wasn’t even trying to sneak.

  Usther herself seemed to be softening. The hollow darkness that her full magic brought on was fading along with her temper. She looked more like the bird-like, irritable girl Ree knew than the angry death goddess her magic turned her into.

  ‘Surely he must have heard us?’ Usther murmured as they crested the first floor.

  ‘If he’s in the middle of a particularly complicated ritual, he might not acknowledge us even if he did hear us.’ She glanced at Usther. ‘At least, that’s how it is when Pa is deep into the Craft.’

  ‘And exactly which rituals has dear old dad been doing? No, don’t look at me like that.’ Usther made a face. ‘You can hardly blame me for trying.’

  They crept furt
her up the crumbling staircase, and the further they went, the more concerned Ree grew for Veritas’ mental state. Mad diagrams and gruesome anatomical art were nailed to the walls. Dried blood caked the steps, and red handprints lined the stairs. Ree kept her hand to the pouch on her belt, while Usther travelled with her arms crossed and a thoroughly annoyed expression.

  They got to the first floor and paused. It was a study; the room was scattered with bones and smeared in ugly brown stains. The smell of gore and rotting flesh was almost overpowering. Ree was unused to a smell so fresh and bloody. Most of the corpses she encountered were both ancient and preserved by oils and chemicals, or wrapped in special scented cloths. Ree gagged at the stench, but Usther only wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Do you sense that?’ she asked.

  Ree hesitated, reaching out with her senses. She wasn’t a practitioner of the Craft, so her affinity for death magic would never be as strong as Usther’s, but you couldn’t grow up in a city of the dead without it rubbing off on you.

  She could sense something. A magic that was not only chill but … slimy. She looked to Usther. ‘A ritual?’

  Usther nodded. ‘Old magic. Really old. Perhaps even older than the third era.’ Her nose wrinkled further and she bared her teeth in a snarl. ‘Nasty stuff, whatever it is. Leaves a foul taste in my mouth.’

  There was a door at the other side of the room. Usther headed toward it, but Ree motioned for her to stop.

  ‘One moment,’ said Ree. Her eyes were on the desk at the side of the room, and the several blood-splattered books that lay open on it.

  ‘Seriously? Just books?’

  ‘It’s what we’re here for,’ Ree replied sharply.

  Usther kicked a femur. ‘It’s what you’re here for,’ she muttered as it skittered across the floor.

  Ree studied the books, fingertips brushing the crisp pages. Her eyebrows pinched as her gaze swept across the text. ‘It’s not here.’

  ‘What isn’t here?’

  ‘Astaravinarad.’ But it wasn’t looking good. Each of the books had blood brushed like paint across their open pages, forming the outside of a spell diagram — the heart of which was missing in a book-shaped gap.

  Why did they ever lend more than one book to any practitioner? Necromancers were always finding new and dangerous ways of defacing their texts in the name of some long-lost ritual or other …

  ‘Usther … what does this mean?’

  Her eyes lingered on the blood diagram. What if these defaced pages were key to Smythe’s recovery? She could barely make out the words beneath the blood ...

  Usther strode over. ‘I hope you’re not about to admit that you don’t know how to read?’ She studied the tableau of defaced books. Her eyebrows sprang up. ‘Oh interesting. He’s attempted a binding on the books. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.’

  Ree rubbed her eyes. ‘Please explain, for the non-practitioner in the room?’

  ‘I’ve always said I’d be happy to teach you, so whose fault is that? Bindings are advanced rituals for spirit summoners. To properly harness the strength of a spirit, you need to bind it to a physical body. These books have been bound together in the same way — like he’s trying to bind the spirits of the books.’ She crossed her arms and lit her pale eyes on Ree’s face. ‘Do books have spirits?’

  ‘You’re the necromancer — you tell me,’ Ree replied. As far as she knew, only living things had souls. It was perhaps a glib answer — in her two years apprenticing to Emberlon as town archivist, she’d seen too many strange things and left too many mysteries unsolved to question whether there was more to books than leather, ink and paper, but she didn’t need to tell Usther that.

  ‘Well, he almost certainly has Astaravinarad at the heart of the ritual. I’m eager to hear how he’s faring with it, just as soon as I express my displeasure with his security measures.’

  Ree’s hand went to her throat, touching the raw abrasions there. ‘We’re just here for the book.’

  Usther sniffed.

  Ree considered the remaining books. They weren’t overdue, but there was no way she was going to let him keep them if this was how he treated them. Binding rituals aside, all this blood was going to make it very difficult for anyone else to read them. She was pretty sure Emberlon knew a few complicated incantations to get the blood out, but nonetheless …

  She scooped up the remaining books, bound them in twine, and held them out to Usther. ‘Could you have one of your minions carry these?’

  Usther rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, so now you want my minions.’

  Ree shrugged. ‘Since they’re here …’

  Magic pulsed from Usther, and Ree heard shuffling footsteps on the stairs. ‘Just leave them on the desk.’

  Ree carefully set down the bundle of books and wiped the dried blood off on her robes. This was the main reason she wore traditional black robes; all the better for hiding the kind of gory stains you picked up in a town full of necromancers. ‘Well, let’s go see what he’s up to, then.’ She said the words lightly, as if her chest didn’t pinch at the thought.

  Usther bared her teeth. ‘Gladly.’

  As one of Usther’s servant corpses fumbled with the books on the desk, Ree and Usther passed through the doorway, which led to a short stone antechamber streaked with yet more blood.

  Ree lifted her robes as she stepped gingerly through the gore, errant bits of viscera squelching under her boots. Usther looked around dispassionately. ‘If he’s attempting blood magic, he’s doing a very poor job of it. So much waste.’ She pushed through the next door and froze.

  Ree peered over her shoulder, throat tightening. Anything that could give Usther pause was something she needed to steel herself to see. The door looked out over a vast chamber, and the smell of gore was so much that Ree turned and retched into the corner. Usther seized her wrist and dragged her back. Her grip was far too tight, her bones cutting into Ree’s hand. ‘Look at what he’s doing,’ she hissed.

  Ree wiped spittle from her mouth and held her herb pouch under her nose in an attempt to mask the fetid stench. Usther dragged her further into the room.

  They stood on the landing of a staircase overlooking a wide marble chamber, a tableau of kings and wars etched into the walls. But that history was near masked in blood and obscured by body parts; a necromancer stood amidst a pile of broken limbs, stitching pieces to a great red beast with a broad body, long arms, and a small, fleshy head.

  Ree shook Usther off and headed down the stairs. The necromancer seemed unaware of their presence, so absorbed was he in his bloody work. His black robes glistened with a thick coat of blood, and he wore a mask over his nose and mouth and goggles over his eyes. Even his scrubby white beard was tucked into cover of a scarf. His hands, though, were bare, as practitioners’ usually were: the better to feel and direct the magic they channelled. Thick leather gloves poked from his pockets.

  ‘Veritas.’ Ree called the name warily.

  The necromancer stiffened, and didn’t turn. She could feel him gathering his magic about him in a sucking wind, but he only said, ‘Who’s there? I’m a bit busy at the moment.’ His voice was high and nasal, muffled through his mask.

  ‘It’s the Archivist,’ said Ree. Many of the more absorbed practitioners had no memory for names or faces, so it seemed easier to identify herself this way. ‘You have a book that is long overdue. We’ve come to collect.’

  At her side, Usther stiffened. Her lip curled, as if she were viewing the antics of a particularly naughty child. ‘I wouldn’t try it, if I were you,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘I don’t know what you — aha!’ He cursed into the air in a voice that echoed with magic, a dart of black shadow flying toward them. Usther stepped in front of Ree and knocked it aside with a wave of her hand and an exertion of will. And now her hair and robes were starting to rise; darkness clustered around her, and distantly, her minions began to scream in rage.

  ‘Usther!’ Ree grabbed her shoulder. ‘We’re not he
re to fight!’

  ‘He seems quite intent on making it one.’ But she let her gathered magic leak away; the screams of her minions died out and she crossed her arms in the picture of necromancer-ly disapproval. ‘I am more than willing to test my power against yours, Veritas. Especially as your poxy security system nearly strangled the Archivist.’

  ‘The book, Veritas.’ Ree fixed the necromancer in a level look she had learned from Emberlon, trying to exude authority.

  Veritas took off his goggles and slid down his mask. He was a middle-aged necromancer, so he could only have come to the Craft later in life, as it tended to slow down or even stop ageing. His eyes were wild and his pale hair had a crust of old blood. ‘I’m not finished!’ he said. He picked up the book from the among the gore and clutched it to his chest. Ree pushed down a spike of anger at how carelessly he treated such an ancient tome. ‘Astaravinarad is essential to my work! I cannot part with it.’ He sneered at Ree. 'I don't expect a plebian crypt-crawler like you to understand the complexities of the Craft, or any magic.'

  Ree fought down a retort, clenching her teeth. She knew more about magic than this man could possibly realise.

  ‘What exactly is your work?’ asked Usther.

  Veritas’ eyes bugged. ‘Generation! Creation! Birth!’ He swept his hand in a flourish toward his grisly statue. ‘I have uncovered a formula to create life from unlife. This “golem”, as you might call it, will have twice the power of an ordinary minion and strength such as even a greywraith cannot equal.’

  He didn’t seem likely to attack them now, at least. Ree kept her eyes on the book he clutched in his bloody hands.

  ‘Flesh golems are a myth,’ Usther replied testily. ‘No practitioner of any worth wastes their time trying to build one.’

  ‘Ah, but no other practitioner has ever combined the knowledge and souls of the working texts of the different eras, as I have!’

  ‘Books don’t have souls.’ Usther glanced at Ree for confirmation, but Ree shrugged.