Silver in the Bone, page 28
Nothing happened for several heartbeats. Then came the tug.
It pulled down, sucking at the holder even as I tried to lift it free. Small shapes spiked in the liquid, rising from the surface like—
Like reaching fingers.
The Hand of Glory’s eye bulged, its burning wicks squealing as if in terror, guttering wildly at the tips of the fingers. Emrys was there in an instant, helping me rip my arm and Ignatius free.
“What are you doing?” Emrys choked out.
A hard gust of wind billowed down the steps, sweeping past us and blowing Ignatius out completely. I held up the end of the holder between us. It was coated in solid silver.
“The bones of the Children…,” Emrys whispered.
They were the same.
I stooped, walking around the cauldron, trailing my fingers along the basin until I found a slight rise in the rim. It almost looked as if it had been scratched off, worn down until it was nearly impossible to tell what it was.
Nearly.
I’d seen it before.
I reached into my bag, retrieving Nash’s journal. For the first time in my life, I wanted to be wrong. My hands shook, just that little bit, as I flipped through the pages. I found the page of symbols that Nash had sketched and labeled, and held it up beside the mark.
It was a spiraling knot pattern with a crude sword slashed straight down through the serpentine twists. No wonder I’d felt the stir of recognition at the mark on the statue’s hand—it was a section of this very one.
“Tell me it’s not what I think it is,” Emrys said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“It’s the emblem of the king of Annwn,” I said.
He looked a bit queasy. I looked around the room—at the horrible sculptures, at the curse sigils—and felt the chill creeping along my skin turn my body numb.
Neither of us seemed to want to say the name aloud now. Lord Death.
The familiar sound of scraping stones echoed up from far below. With one last shared look of horror, Emrys and I spun around, searching for any place to hide. There was no room behind the armor or in the cabinet. The shelves were too open and pressed to the wall. The only way out was up.
I led the way, switching off my flashlight and returning Ignatius to my bag. The upper deck was enclosed by a roof and four walls with large open windows that overlooked the courtyard below. We were at the very top of the tower—what I had thought was merely a decorative embellishment.
The door’s lock clanked open. I dropped down onto my stomach on one side of the stairs, moving far enough away from the edge to avoid being seen from below. Emrys did the same on the other side of the opening.
Don’t come up, I thought, don’t climb the stairs…
A light patter of footsteps was accompanied by the whisper of fabric dragging over stone. Because I apparently hadn’t had my fill of stupid for the night, I inched closer to the opening in the floor, trying to see who had come in.
It was the same cloaked figure as before. The brightening sky revealed the deep blue tone of the fabric sweeping behind them as they stepped up to the cauldron. Closer now, I could see other details, too.
Raising a small, curved dagger, the figure pressed its vicious tip against their palm and, with a hiss of pain, slashed down. Blood dripped from the pale hand into the waiting pool of silver.
In the forest, the howling of the Children of the Night turned to screeching. It knifed at my ears, piercing every thought until I was desperate to clamp my hands over my ears.
They’re being controlled. The thought hammered in my skull. And if they could be compelled, what was to say they hadn’t been made—born of the dark chamber below us?
The cloaked figure lingered by the cauldron, listening. Clearly satisfied, they started toward the door. As they passed by the suit of armor, the movement was enough to shift the bottom of the hood, revealing a hint of a braid.
It took me a moment to realize why it was so difficult to see reflected in the surface of the breastplate. It was the same color as the cloudy metal.
Silver.
Cold, deadly silver.
Knowing another uninviting dawn was upon us and there would soon be people working in the great hall, Emrys and I waited only a few minutes before rising and silently making our way down into the gallery of death. My heart was thundering in my chest as we followed the path out through the storage chamber and into the tunnel.
The back of Emrys’s hand brushed mine again and again as we hurried along the corridor and over the roots. I couldn’t seem to pull away any more than I could put words to what we’d seen.
We emerged from the hidden doorway just as the first of the women arrived at the great hall with their looms. Their eyebrows rose at the sight of us alone together, but I was beyond caring or trying to explain it away. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered, except getting us back to our own world.
Our eyes met one last time on the steps leading into the courtyard, an unspoken promise passing between us. The Children had quieted with the coming of daylight, but the relative silence felt all-consuming without the calls of birdsong to comfort us. It left a different kind of ache in me, a longing for the ordinary I’d never appreciated before.
“Oh—I was just coming to find you!” Olwen’s bright voice was jolting after the dark hell we’d crawled out of. She seemed to appear out of nowhere, her gray dress and white apron blending into the colorless morning. Her inky-blue hair waved around her, as if drifting in water.
“We’re about to pull up the stones to see if the earth beneath will take crops,” she continued. “That is…if you feel well enough for it?”
Emrys hesitated but plastered a smile on his face. “Of course.”
“Are you certain?” Olwen’s dark eyes narrowed with consideration. “You look a bit peaky.”
“Just didn’t sleep very well,” he assured her.
Or at all, I thought.
“The Children were restless last night, and something was amiss with them this morn,” Olwen said, shaking her head.
“Did they…do anything?” I asked.
“They’ve not moved at all, I’m afraid,” she said. “Cait suggested we try to dispel them with fire and arrows if they still haven’t gone by nightfall.”
“And that’s not an option now because…?” I prompted.
Olwen’s face hardened. “Because we’ve not got many arrows to spare.”
A pathetic “Oh” was all I managed.
“I’m ready to dig in, figuratively and literally,” Emrys intervened smoothly. “Do you have an extra shovel for me?”
“Of course,” Olwen said, leading him away. “I’ve asked the others to gather what ash they might have…”
Her voice trailed off as they went to join the growing cluster of men and women gathered near the forge. Emrys glanced back one more time, mouthing, Later?
I nodded.
Cabell and Neve, I reminded myself, turning back toward the tower and the many steps between me and the bedchambers. They needed to know what we’d found—and maybe Neve would have some idea of what the sculptures were used for.
The clash of metal drew my attention back outside. Taking a chance, I made my way toward the training area. I’d expected to see another batch of anxious novices, or at least some of the Nine, but Cabell and Bedivere were the only ones there. My brother worked through a series of blocking and parrying moves, this time with a broadsword, not one of the blunt training weapons.
I stared, almost not trusting my eyes. Cabell had always thrived at night, and, on more than one occasion, had come home from a night of reveling through the streets of Boston or a guild gathering as I was getting up. His idea of an early start was noon.
Yet he’d been out here long enough to have worked up a heavy sweat. There was real color in his face—real emotion in his eyes as he grinned at something Bedivere said.
The older man gave an encouraging “Yes—good, good! Well done, lad!” and pounded him on the back as Cabell stopped to catch his breath. The hunger for approval on Cabell’s face, the way he smiled in turn, was almost painful to see.
I felt oddly unmoored watching them, like I was drifting in the mist, insubstantial and fading. As he raised his sword again, Cabell happened to look my way, and stilled. His face tensed with concern.
I pressed two fingers against my upturned palm. Later. Then formed a small square with my hands. Library.
He nodded, turning back to Bedivere to resume practice. The old knight raised his hand in greeting to me, and I returned the gesture, struggling to muster a smile.
I could try to confront Caitriona, or at least shadow her steps, but that might only turn the others fully against me.
No, the best thing I could do right now was continue to gather information and bring Cabell and Neve to see the room with their own eyes. That might finally be enough to sway them into finding another way out of Avalon.
Opportunity came in the form of a soft gasp of surprise behind me on the steps. Mari’s leaf-green face leaned around the mound of folded linens in her arms. “My apologies, I did not see you there.”
“I don’t know how you can see anything at all,” I said. “Can I help you?”
Mari’s face pinched in a way that made me wonder if she was replaying my harsh words from the other day.
“I was rude to you in the library,” I continued, thinking quickly. “I’d love to make it up to you…?”
After a moment, her expression relaxed and she nodded, but still didn’t meet my eyes as she let me take half the sheets from her teetering pile. They were still cold from the line they’d been pinned to high on the southern wall.
Mari wasn’t one for empty words. It became obvious within minutes that my usual tactic of letting the other person nervously talk to fill the silence wouldn’t work; Mari seemed to relish the bit of peace it provided. I’d have to engage her where she was willing to be met.
“So…,” I began, racking my brain for something to say as I scurried along after her. For someone so small, she moved with the speed of a cat. “What do you know about unicorns?”
The dream had been hovering at the back of my mind, begging to be acknowledged, but it was slightly mortifying that this useless question was the best I’d been able to come up with on the spot. This was why I didn’t do small talk.
Mari’s eyebrows rose. “Have you come across one?”
“No,” I said, fumbling in a way that annoyed me. I was better than this. “I just thought that—in the library, you seemed to know so much about legends. I just wondered if they were real. Or something invented out of—well, you know, dreams.”
“A dream of a unicorn is a wonderful omen of good fortune ahead.” Mari started to turn away, only to pivot back, unable to resist elaborating. “They were alive once. One of the Goddess’s most beloved creations, as gentle as they were fierce.”
“Once?” I repeated. “What happened to them?”
“No one is certain, only that eventually, they stopped appearing to the priestesses, and were no longer there to aid in healing the sick,” Mari answered, starting down the hall again. “The dragons came to the same fate.”
It took me a moment.
“Hang on—dragons?” I called, hurrying after her.
After stripping the beds in the hall and leaving clean sheets, we brought the soiled linens down to the sacred springs. They were washed in a different set of pools, deeper into the cavern. And there I saw my first real opportunity for answers.
“Are there any other rooms or tunnels hidden beneath the tower like this?” I asked Mari as we climbed the steps back up to the courtyard.
“Certainly,” she said, voice airy and melodic. “As many as the body has veins. Some have collapsed with time, and others simply forgotten, waiting to be found once more.”
“There’s no record of them anywhere?” I asked, trailing after her through the courtyard. She was so slight—a mere seedling to the rest of us. It was little wonder the other Avalonians barely seemed to take notice of her as she hurried by them, keeping her head down.
“Oh, but I wish,” Mari said. “That knowledge died with High Priestess Viviane. She was…” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “She was the High Priestess when the sorceresses rose against the druids and taught me nearly everything I know of magic, ritual, and Avalon’s history.”
“Flea says that Caitriona is your new High Priestess,” I said. “Was she able to learn from the last one before she died?”
“Yes, but not for very long.” A curious transformation came over Mari. She stood straighter, her shoulders back as she led us up the stairs. Even her voice sounded clearer. “Cait was the first called of our Nine, but we chose her because she is the best of us.”
“Nobody is perfect,” I managed.
“Cait is,” Mari said, looking back at me with defiance. “She is the bravest soul I know, and the kindest.”
“She hasn’t been kind to Neve,” I pointed out.
“That’s only because…because she knows the old stories so well,” Mari protested, tucking the streak of white hair behind her ear. “The betrayal of sisters is not easily forgotten, nor forgiven.”
“Do you think the High Priestess ever taught her anything about Lord Death’s magic?” I asked.
Mari stared at me, her wide-set eyes the very portrait of bewilderment. “What makes you ask that?”
My stomach curled in on itself, cramping with everything else I should have said. It felt wrong not to tell her, knowing what was at stake for all the priestesses. I’d only wanted to plant that suggestion in her mind, to let it fester enough for her to find her own answers, but it suddenly felt breathtakingly cruel.
The Nine were fiercely loyal to Caitriona and one another, perhaps unbreakably so after what they’d faced together. For the first time, looking at Mari, I started to doubt my own eyes.
Why would Caitriona want to do any of this, knowing it threatened her sisters and had killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Avalonians?
She could be serving another, I thought, and this is all their design…
But that only brought up more questions my mind was too exhausted to handle. Instead, I asked, “What’s next?”
“I’m afraid if I tell you, you won’t want to help,” Mari said with a smile.
I was already intimately acquainted with the garderobes—essentially medieval lavatories that jutted out from the back of the tower. They were nothing more than a hole on a wooden bench that opened to the reeking, stagnant moat below, and to my eternal joy, I got to see every one of them as we emptied out the chamber pots and dumped used wash water into them.
Mari had a way of always staying at the very edge of things: the stairs, the walls of rooms, the courtyard. It was growing clearer to me by the moment that she was the unseen engine at the heart of the tower, quietly assigning the day’s tasks to all the others and shouldering the most thankless, invisible work herself. It was in the elfinkin’s gentle nature to tend to animals, and it seemed that extended to the human variety as well.
Hours later, Mari moved to her final task of the day: tallying their stores of food and other supplies and distributing the daily allotment to those assigned to cook the evening meal, including, as it turned out, Olwen, who had come to collect it herself.
The larder was in a room tucked away at the back of the sleeping hall, where many people were still milling about, greeting Olwen as they rolled the bed pads and folded the blankets to store at one end of the room.
The priestess’s smile grew at the sight of me. The simple dress she wore was the color of a faded rose and hugged her full curves; its draped bell sleeves rolled and pinned to keep them from interfering with her work.
“Just taking in the sights,” I said lightly.
Olwen passed a small basket to Mari, who lifted it with a look of obvious pleasure. The scraggly gray kitten inside examined her with equal interest, taking in her face with his unusually vivid blue eyes.
“I thought you could use a new mouser for the larder, or just a friend to join you as you go about your day,” Olwen said, smiling. “I’m not sure what’s happened to his mother and siblings. He just wandered into to the kitchen and took a bit of goat’s milk.”
“Oh, what a darling you are,” Mari cooed, lifting the kitten out of the basket. “Does he have a name?”
“Rabies?” I suggested. But the sight of his adorable little face made me miss the fiendish felines in the guild library to an almost unspeakable degree.
“That’s an unusual name,” Mari said, visibly relaxing as she cuddled the kitten beneath her chin. The creature happily accepted the attention with a soft purr. “I think…yes, you look more like a Griflet to me. Thank you, Olwen!”
“Don’t forget to eat something before this evening,” Olwen said. “The both of you. I’ll hunt you down and feed you bits of cheese if I have to.”
“Just so you know, you’re invited to do that anytime,” I said.
The larder was lit by three glass windows, which gave a clear view of the disaster inside. I turned. And turned again.
The room was as large as the bedchambers and smelled sweet with dried fruit, but there was food only on one wall of shelves. My stomach turned over at the sight.
“Where do you keep the rest of it?” I asked.
Mari set her kitten down to allow him to explore. Olwen quickly shut the door behind us, pressing a finger to her lips.
“They don’t know?” I asked, the words bursting out of me. I turned to survey the shelves again. “This is food for weeks, not months.”
“Now you understand the importance of the crops they’ll be growing in the courtyard,” Olwen said, glancing at Mari as she fussed with a nearly empty jar of dried berries. Seeing them reminded me of the almost decadent sweet bread they’d given us the night before.
Dread crept over me like a shadow. There was no way this would last until they had viable crops to eat. Unless…
