Silver in the Bone, page 36
“Wait here a moment,” he told me, lifting the hatch and climbing out. My pulse throbbed inside my skull as my fear finally caught up to me.
A moment later, he leaned over the opening and motioned for me to follow. I climbed quickly, trying to keep the contents of my bag from rattling, and emerged into a small fissure between several towering rocks. The mist hung in a morose curtain across the expanse of rotting trees that lay just beyond the entrance.
“I shall ask once more—are you certain of this?” Bedivere said, his voice hushed.
I swallowed hard, nodding. The mist was undisturbed by any movement. The way was clear. For now.
“Where am I going?” I asked him.
“Good lass,” he said, briefly clasping a hand on my shoulder. “Run straight across the grove from where we stand, and you’ll find a deer path between two oaks. Follow that way for a league, until you reach the river, then head east until you find the lake. The burial mound is at the center of it, its entrance hidden on the northern face. I marked the grave with a pale stone.”
I nodded. The chill in the air gripped me, squeezing my chest until it was hard to draw a deep, steadying breath.
“Travel swift as an arrow,” he said. “Stop for no reason, not even to rest. I will lock the path behind you and return within three hours. You will have little more time than that to complete your task before the dark comes.”
Not that I had a way to track how much time had passed. I’d have to keep an eye on the sky and go by my gut.
I hugged my workbag and waterskin close to my body. “I’ll see you then.”
I burst out from between the spiky boulders at a full run, sucking in deeper and deeper breaths of the sickly sweet rot of apples withering on the forest floor.
Beads of ice clung to the bare branches like forgotten diamond necklaces. Overhead, the gray sky seemed to hang lower than usual, as if to greet the ghostly mist. I had the suffocating sense that I was being bottled in. A buzzing filled the air, almost like cicadas in the summer.
Between two oaks had very little meaning when the trees had that identical look of putrid death. All the trunks in the grove were twisted into anguished spirals, as if they’d tried to pull themselves free from the ground.
In the end, it was the oaks’ size that gave them away. The two giants were bent toward one another. The heavy lower branches were draped along the ground, bracing their towering bodies as the upper branches wove themselves together over the path. The image of them, like lovers collapsing into death together, held me there a moment longer than it should have.
Shaking myself, I climbed through a gap between their intertwined bodies and continued.
In the years before the curse, the deer had cut such a deep groove into the earth that the path was still visible beneath the wet skin of decaying leaves and black mold—without it, I would have been lost within moments. The trees, stripped bare of life, all had the same gaunt look as they faded in and out of the mist.
My heart hammered in my chest and I winced as something—brittle bones or twigs—snapped underfoot. I swung my gaze around, scanning to see if I’d drawn any unwelcome attention, but it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me. Every waiting shadow in the mist became a potential threat, the creaking of the trees a sign that something was watching me from above. My body felt electrified with awareness as I started moving again.
The mist churned around me, drawing me deeper into the isle, past the festering open sores that had once been gleaming pools, around the homes turned hollow, through fields of crops that had died on the vine.
The buzzing only grew louder. The river. I should have reached the river by now—
One moment my foot was pounding through the reeking mulch, the next the ground was gone and I was falling forward.
My body was quicker than my mind to react. I sat hard, rolling my weight back to land on my tailbone and back ankle. Pain shot up my left leg, and somehow, I caught the curse before it slipped past my lips.
At least my instincts and timing hadn’t failed me yet. I had, indeed, reached the river.
The bank dropped sharply into the muddy bed. Netting, fish bones, and leaves piled high in the place of water. Here and there, other debris emerged from the wasting foliage. Shields. Shreds of fabric. A wooden doll.
I backed away from the edge, giving my ankle an experimental roll. I grimaced; it was twisted. I thanked every god of luck I hadn’t broken it, but this wasn’t going to help my already lagging speed.
I’d only gone a few steps when something moved at the edge of my vision. Slithering.
With a sinking fear, I turned back toward the riverbed.
Dried leaves slid toward me, skittering like startled roaches, as beneath them something moved. More leaves fell away as it rolled, worming forward. I bit my tongue hard to keep from making a noise as a gray, hairless head turned up from beneath the mulch and released a shuddering breath. Another moved beside it. Another.
Hellfire, I thought.
Two facts crystallized in my mind as I slowly backed away. The first, that the Children of the Night made that buzzing sound as they slept, a horrible mockery of a purr. The second, that they’d turned the length of the river into a nest. They had burrowed down to avoid the light.
Which I was losing with every second I wasted here.
I pressed a fist against my mouth, holding my breath, and used the other hand to clutch my bag tight to my body.
Slowly, so slowly it was almost agonizing, I limped my way along the river as it curved through a grove of young trees, all denied the chance to thrive. My heartbeat throbbed in every part of my body, and my knees were threatening to turn to water. I couldn’t tell if I was on the verge of throwing up or pissing myself in terror, or both.
You’re all right, I told myself over and over. You’re okay. This is for Cabell.
The mist seemed to take pity on me, stretching itself thin enough that I could see the way ahead. Finally, the rounded top of the burial mound came into view, and I could feel my body again.
Unlike the river, the small lake, no more than a mile across, had retained some of its water. It had thickened at its edges with slime and moss that gave it a boglike appearance.
The burial mound—the barrow—was massive, taking up the entirety of the small island at the center of the murky water. After the endless parade of gray, the shock of bright green grass covering the mound’s rise took my breath away. There had to be some sort of old protective magic on it. Somehow, impossibly, it had held.
I walked along the edge of the lake until the mist revealed a small rowboat caught on the bank. Pulling it free from the grasping mud, I moved it along to clearer water and pushed down, testing it for leaks.
“Sinking would be the least of your problems,” I muttered, climbing inside and seizing the oars. Both they and the long neck of the boat were carved to look like dragons.
Pushing off the bank, I paddled forward as quietly as I could, my hands shaking until I could barely grip the oars. My breath was harsh in my ears. A fresh sweat broke out along my back and chest.
The silence of the lake was worse than the Children’s purring had been. It possessed all the terrible potential of the unknown.
The boat bumped up against the island and let out a miserable creak as I stepped ashore.
“This is the part you know how to do,” I whispered to myself. “This is the easy part.”
I reached into my workbag, feeling for crystals at the bottom of it. Depending on the wards, I might need magical assistance to get inside.
As I made my way around the barrow to the north side, the grass faded to yellow and then a desiccated brown. Still, there was a simple, primal beauty to the mound—so unlike the cold stone of the tombs beneath the tower. I wondered then, running my fingers along the side of the structure, if Viviane would have preferred to be interred with Morgan. At least then they wouldn’t be separated in death as they had been in life.
The flowers that had once bloomed around the stone doorway lay scattered like shriveled tissue. I pushed the brittle leaves on the wall aside, revealing a muddy handprint.
The hair on my body rose like needles against my skin. I crouched and closed my eyes for a moment, saying a prayer to the gods of luck. Switching my flashlight on, I aimed it into the barrow.
There was no pale stone.
The earth was split and overturned from front to back, bones and decomposing corpses exposed to the damp air.
Behind me, the water gurgled. The slime on its surface bubbled up, carrying with it long, stringy dark weeds.
But then there were eyes, white and lidless, over the water.
A face.
A body.
I fell back against the entrance of the barrow as she rose to float over the lake, a rough creature of silver bone and mud and rotting flesh. Not at all like the Children.
A revenant. It had to be. An unsettled spirit that fought to reclaim a body through whatever means available.
She lifted her hand toward me, so much like the White Lady in the snow all those years before that I choked at the sight. Mist gathered at her feet. Clumps of black moss dripped from her arm, but a metallic glint at the end of it caught my eye. There was a ring on the finger pointed at me, its large stone flat and a grayed brown.
The Ring of Dispel.
A strange, cold spell stole over my body and mind. Everything faded to darkness beyond it. My own hand rose, straining for it.
Metal sliced the air between us, blazing through the skin of my arm. I let out a strangled scream, dropping my flashlight to clutch the vicious wound. The revenant screeched in victory, lifting her arms toward the sky, as if in prayer.
One hand had the ring, but the other wasn’t a hand at all. It was an untarnished knife melded with her wrist—the athame.
Terror and adrenaline surged as the creature drifted toward me, her feet floating above the ground. Mud dripped from her expressionless face, revealing patches of silver bone. Hot blood poured out between my fingers to the ground as I staggered back. The thought came suddenly, as if someone else had whispered it.
I have a blade. I have a weapon.
I had to use both hands to lift my dagger, the edges of my vision going dark with the effort. But not so dark I couldn’t see what lay beneath the torn flesh of my own forearm.
Bone, gleaming silver in the low light.
I screamed and the creature lunged, knocking the dagger away and dragging me into the murky water.
The cold depths knifed at my body.
I gasped, inhaling icy water into my lungs until I choked. The creature’s hold tightened, strangling, as we sank. Floods of white bubbles and dark blood rose around us. At the surface, the gray light dimmed until it disappeared altogether behind the creature’s body.
This has happened before, a voice whispered in my mind. Wake up, Tamsin.
I hit the silt at the bottom of the lake, something sharp digging into my back. I pushed at the creature, turning my head. White bones in the mud. A halo of them around me.
This has happened before.
The mud melted away from her face, revealing a skull as silver as the bone of my arm. Her jaw unhinged like a snake’s. Jagged, broken teeth flashed in the gloom.
This has happened before.
The white rose. The monsters in the mist. The flaming sword.
The dream.
Gathering power whispered in the darkness. Wake up.
I felt along the ground until my fingers brushed freezing steel. Through the cloud of inky blood, through the black haze overtaking my vision, I gripped the hilt and swung.
The blade of the sword flared to life, its blue flames heating the water into a fury. The creature screamed as I sliced across her front. Mud and rancid skin broke away from her body, but she had no blood to bleed.
Starved for air, I kicked off the bottom of the lake, swimming with desperate strokes for the surface. The athame slashed through my boot to my ankle.
The blade—I needed that blade. For Cabell. For everyone.
I pushed through the pain, the heaviness of my body, and brought the sword down again. At the last moment, the creature reared back, and the burning sword passed through only water.
I lurched forward, trying one last time to get the athame, but the creature shrank back toward the bottom of the lake, wailing with rage, her weedy hair trailing after her like watersnakes.
I swam. The gray light at the surface appeared again, calling me toward it. With a hard kick, I burst through, coughing as I vomited up dank water.
But once I was there, my body had nothing left to give. Blood flowed out of my arm, draining those last embers of strength from beneath my skin. The water closed over my mouth, my eyes, and I slid under again. I no longer felt the blade’s steel grip in my numb fingers. Its fire dimmed.
In the cold thrall of death, a murmur of consciousness begged, Don’t let go.
The thick morass thrashed behind me, whipping up a torrent of loam. A painfully hot arm wrapped around my belly and yanked me up.
The cold air made me gasp until I choked, unable to get the water out of my lungs. I drove my head back, trying to slam it against the monster. My hand clenched reflexively around the sword’s hilt again and the blue fire returned, boiling the black sludge on the water’s surface. I didn’t realize the blood was roaring in my ears until I heard a muffled voice right beside my ear.
“Tamsin! Tamsin, stop!”
I twisted my neck back, my stomach clenching as the dark splotches cleared from my sight.
Emrys.
“Not here—” I choked out, coughing. You can’t be here.
His face was pale with fear. “Just hang on!”
His grip on me tightened as he swam us not to the island but to the far shore. The muscles in his body worked hard, his heart racing and racing. The heat of him was almost enough to drive out the ice that had crystallized around my bones.
The strap of my bag twisted around my neck as he dragged us both up onto the muddy bank. My arm screamed with pain as the bitter air met wounded flesh. The silver bone had a sinister gleam in the low light, a truth I couldn’t outrun.
He’ll see, I thought desperately, trying to tuck it beneath me. It was already too late. He swore viciously at the blood streaming from it, rivers in the mud. Frantically, he gripped the wound with one hand and brushed the soaking-wet hair off my face with the other.
“Tamsin?” he rasped. “Can you hear me? Tamsin!”
He hugged me close to his chest, rubbing and pounding on my back until I vomited up the rest of the water.
“What is this?” he asked, trying to pry my fingers from the hilt of the sword. Its heat whined and crackled as it fired the mud of the bank to hard clay.
But I only saw what was crawling out of the shadowed forest behind him.
The Children crept over the boulders and through the trees, staying in the heavy shadows of the forest, just outside their hated light. Dead moss and lichen rained silently to the forest floor as they scaled the branches with terrifying grace. Others perched on knobby roots that clawed into the ground. They chittered with excitement, huffing and sniffing.
No, I thought. It couldn’t be…Olwen had said…
Olwen had only said they weren’t as active during the day. That they hated the light. Not that they all slept. Not that none would try to attack us.
Emrys turned slowly, slowly toward the stench of vile death. The Children’s panting breath became the mist, and the mist their breath.
He released me gently back to the ground with a heart-shredding look and rose onto his haunches.
The sword slipped from my hand to Emrys’s and I moaned as the flames flickered out to hissing smoke. He looked down at it, bemused, as he stood to face the Children alone.
One crawled out in front of the others, spittle flying as it growled. One of its long, bony limbs reached out through the mist, slick with sour sweat and scaled.
It tilted its gray hairless head at an unnatural angle. Its eyes were lidless and wide, and the thin, pallid skin around them was puckered. But past the exaggerated and sunken features, there was something disturbingly familiar about the way its lips curled into a smirk.
I knew that face. Those eyes with their wolfish gleam.
It was Septimus.
Or what remained of Septimus.
My nails tore at the dead grass and cattails. I tried to push myself up. To stand.
Emrys swung the sword in wild arcs to hold the Children back, but without the threat of fire, they were undaunted, clambering over one another with cracking bones and snarls to be the first to get to him.
A screech echoed across the lake. The monster—the revenant—rose from the water and drifted to shore. Mud, twigs, and dead grass floated to her outstretched arms and the exposed half of her rib cage. Sickly mist amassed around her feet as the creature was restored to her full form.
Pressure built in my ears. My chest. More Children appeared in the darkness of the spiky bramble around her.
“What the hell is that?” Emrys gasped. “Is that—is that the High Priestess?”
Her head swung around at those words, and when she screamed, the sound rent the air. I clutched at my ears. Emrys staggered down to one knee.
The revenant called again, scaling the rocky hill of the opposite bank, vanishing into the woodland at such speed it stripped the bark from the black craggy trees. The Children around us moved back, deeper into the forest’s darkness. They barked and growled as they circled the wide body of the lake at a gallop. Chasing her.
Or summoned to her side.
Summoned to her side.
She’s controlling them. The words drifted through my mind, trying to take root. High Priestess Viviane is controlling them.
Emrys dropped the sword and fell into a crouch. “I don’t know what the hell just happened, but we’re losing the light. Can you—?”
