10: His Holy Bones (11 page)

He staggered from the archway, tears streaming down his face.

He saw the priests, a dozen lowly ushvun’im in their simple gray robes, as they took aim with their rifles. The first shot tore through John’s chest and he barely felt it. But the next bullets ripped into Ravishan. John cradled Ravishan against him, feeling the bullets ripping through his arms. A bullet pierced Ravishan’s stomach. Another cracked through his temple. Bullets shredded his flesh. Black wounds burst open across Ravishan’s body.

 Fury surged through John. Visions of magma and hurricanes rose before his eyes. Mountains cracked apart and the sky burned. John didn’t fight them.

He screamed, an inhuman agonized howl, and released the unbearable pain within him. The archways behind him shuddered and then shattered as other massive yellow stones crashed through them. White pillars split through the tower walls. Huge sections of the floor dropped away and the ushvun’im fell. John heard the priests screaming, but he was past caring.

A wild wind ripped away sections of the cracked walls, exposing a black sky and blood-red fissures, opening like wounds in the mountain side. Black iron supports suddenly shot up through the side of the tower. Below, the earth buckled and shook in the throes of John’s horror.

Ravishan’s corpse hung in John’s arms and John screamed out his loss. He wracked the land with fury at what he had done with his own hands.

He felt the tower crumbling and welcomed his fall. He longed for the impact of the ragged stones below. White arcs of lightning split down and struck him, burning through his body and yet never purging the horror.

“John.” A voice called from behind him. It was Laurie.

John looked at her terrified face and pulled in his rage.

“Get out of here,” John whispered to her. “Get as far from me as you can.”

“What’s happening to you?” Laurie asked.

John didn’t answer; he concentrated on the furious and raging wind, pulling one current down from the roiling storm. He wrapped it around Laurie and lifted her away from Rathal’pesha.

The moment she touched the ground, just a few miles south of Gisa, John dragged the full force of the storm down onto himself. The tower collapsed and he fell against the stones. His body broke. The pain was blinding and yet moments later his bones slid back together. His muscles and tendons reunited and his memory came rushing back. Ravishan’s corpse still lay perfectly protected in John’s arms. How could he keep the corpse safe but fail to save Ravishan’s life? How could he—how could he have murdered Ravishan?

 John howled in rage and tore the mountain open, blasting sand to obsidian and burning stone to magma and searing the cliffs down to the cold gray sea. Snow and boulders tumbled down. Stone and ice engulfed John. He sank into it, losing himself beneath the expanses of iron and granite.

Arc Seven: The Haunted Ruins

Chapter One Hundred and Three

Kahlil regained consciousness slowly, his body aching and resisting even the small exertion of lifting his eyelids. A damp chill hung over him. He felt droplets of water strike his face and bare chest. He imagined it might be rain, but the smell was dank and filthy.

He finally opened his eyes and stared up at the cracked spiral carved in the ceiling. Through the dim, greenish light he made out the thin black lines of hundreds of wires hanging over him. Beads of condensation dripped from them. Another drop splashed against Kahlil’s forehead. Others dribbled down onto his bare legs and stomach. Kahlil tried to sit up. Hot pain flared through his wrists and ankles. He lifted his head weakly and saw that engraved iron shackles locked him to a stone table.

Ugly black bruises and fever-edged gashes mottled his naked body. The muscles of his neck trembled. He lowered his head back to the stone table.

Despite the cold, he felt beads of sweat gathering at his hairline and in his armpits. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see the walls of the huge chamber. Obscene English words cut through vast tracts of the holy Basawar script carved into the white stone. Over that hung tangled human skeletons, some missing limbs and many burned black. This had been Umbhra’ibaye. The broken skeletons above him would have been the issusha’im or all that were left of them. Kahlil searched the tangle of knotted wires and blackened bones for Rousma’s tiny skeleton, but he could hardly tell one body from another.

 Kahlil closed his eyes and sluggishly dredged up memories of Fikiri’s skull cracking beneath his hands. Then the white forms of hungry bones looming over him. He remembered them slashing open deep rents in his chest and hammering him to the ground again and again. He should have died. Fikiri had already shot him.

A weird, fevered recollection seeped through his mind. A boy had screamed and cried as Loshai had dragged him to Kahlil’s side. Loshai had whispered rasping Eastern incantations, tracing her skeletal fingers over Kahlil’s open wounds and the boy’s bare chest. The boy had trembled and howled as Kahlil’s wounds had split open across his body. His blood had gushed over Loshai’s bone hands, soaking into the incantations carved over her fingers and disappearing.

Loshai had said nothing to Kahlil. But when his strength had returned enough for him to resist his restraints, she had called her hungry bones down from the walls.

They had climbed down the dangling wires like immense spiders. They’d held him as Loshai drove one of her hard sharp fingers into his stomach, clawing deep into his body. Kahlil had groaned as Loshai had whispered burning curses over his exposed chest. Kahlil had thought that she would kill him then, but she had pulled her hand back from his body.

“You’ll die,” she’d said softly, as if sensing his thoughts. “But not quickly. Certainly not easily. You, more than anyone, deserve to suffer.”

She’d made a short gesture to the hungry bones and they’d closed in over Kahlil. They’d beaten him and impaled him on their long, sharp bones. They’d cracked his ribs and snapped the bones of his legs. Kahlil had choked on his own blood. He’d heard himself whimper like a broken animal, but the hungry bones hadn’t relented. Kahlil’s only escape had come with unconsciousness.

Now, he ached. He felt sick and fevered. But he should have been dead.

Kahlil rolled his head slowly to catch a glimpse of the floor. Another boy’s broken corpse lay sprawled a few feet from where Kahlil lay. The mop of his dark hair made Kahlil think momentarily of Pesha. But Pesha was far from here, Kahlil reassured himself. Pesha was with Jath’ibaye. And Jath’ibaye was safe. If nothing else, Kahlil had ensured that by keeping the yasi’halaun out of Fikiri’s grasp. The knowledge was a small comfort against the intense fear that he would never see Jath’ibaye again.

Loshai wanted to kill him. He had seen raw hatred in her face when she had looked at him. She hated him so deeply that it seemed killing him just once was not enough to satisfy her. Kahlil had no idea how many more times she would bother to revive him or how many more he could stand to be beaten so terribly.

 Kahlil flicked his fingers apart, searching the room for any sense of the Gray Space. Nothing came to him. Loshai clearly knew where to imprison him to prevent his escape.

 More droplets of filthy water splashed down against his bare hand and trickled down his wrist. Kahlil worked his hand against an iron restraint. Almost immediately a hot pain flared through his hand. Kahlil swore. His hand flopped limply against the stone table, his palm stinging and his fingers numb.

He heard doors opening and for a brief moment he felt a breeze of the rough Gray Space. Then the door snapped closed, sealing the Gray Space beyond Kahlil’s grasp. He heard the rustle of heavy cloth and the click of bones against the stone floor, but he couldn’t roll his head back far enough to catch a glimpse of anything but the defaced walls and the shattered human remains that hung from them.

Then Loshai leaned over him. Towering behind her were the spidery forms of hungry bones. Loshai raked her hand over Kahlil’s cheek, clawing a gash across his cheekbone.

“That’s for killing Fikiri,” Loshai said quietly. She walked around the stone table and Kahlil noticed a pair of large, rusted shears gripped in one of her hands. She placed the cold metal blades down on top of Kahlil’s naked groin. Kahlil felt the blood draining from his face. He trembled as she lifted the shears just slightly.

“This is for ruining my life,” Loshai said and then she slammed the flat of the shears into his crotch. He choked on his own cry of pain. Briefly, small white bursts obscured his vision. He struggled to remain conscious.

“This will be for John.” Loshai turned, opened the shears, and slid the blades on either side of one of Kahlil’s fingers.

“The ring finger seems appropriate, I think.” Loshai crushed the shears closed. The dull blades ripped into Kahlil’s flesh and he howled in pain. As Loshai worked the shears through his tendon and bone, the pain swelled into a blinding agony. Kahlil jerked his hand up into the iron restraint. He hardly felt the heat that flared through his palm but then, to his relief, his fingers went numb. He heard the low scraping sound of the blades snapping together. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something fall and Loshai caught it. Loshai scowled at Kahlil.

“Clever, but eventually you will feel the pain.” She held up his bloody severed finger. The bone slid down a little as if it were slipping out of a glove. Nausea welled up in Kahlil, but he forced himself to calm down. He drew in a deep, slow breath. If he could stay conscious until Loshai left, then he could take advantage of the brief access to the Gray Space that the open door provided. No matter what Loshai did to him, he had to stay awake until then.

“No doubt John will be wondering where you are.” Loshai tossed Kahlil’s severed finger to one of the hungry bones. It caught the finger between long, needle-like teeth and held it.

“Maybe we should leave him a little trail.” Loshai held the shears up close to Kahlil’s face. “Do you think he’d still want you if you lost an eye? Your nose? Your balls?”

Kahlil didn’t respond. He stared up at the dark spiral on the ceiling. Loshai leaned over him, blocking his view with her pretty, almost childlike face.

“Maybe he won’t care so long as you’ve still got an asshole that he can fuck. That seemed to be all Ourath needed to keep him interested.”

Kahlil scowled at the mention of Ourath and Loshai smiled just a little.

“But you’re different from Ourath. You’re the one he brought back from the dead.” Loshai reached back past the line of Kahlil’s vision. Kahlil heard her skeletal fingers clink against glass. She held a small jar over Kahlil. The dull green light glowed through
it, producing a faint golden shimmer.

“John will come for you no matter what, won’t he?” Loshai asked.

He might, Kahlil thought, and suddenly that knowledge terrified him. Loshai wasn’t keeping him alive just so she could torture him to her full satisfaction. She needed him as bait for some kind of trap she had laid for Jath’ibaye.

“You’re wrong,” Kahlil said. “I’m not the one he loved. I’m not Ravishan.”

Loshai’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m Kyle,” Kahlil said. “I crossed from Nayeshi two years ago. Jath’ibaye isn’t going to risk anything to get me back. He hardly knows me.”

“Really?” Loshai opened the jar. “Even if that were true, why would you tell me a thing like that? Hoping I’ll kill you before John arrives?” Loshai tipped the jar sideways and a golden honey-like fluid poured down into the open wound in Kahlil’s cheek. The gentle warmth of fathi began to spread out from the wound. Kahlil tried to concentrate on his situation, the pain and danger of it, and yet he found himself relaxing against the table. Loshai slid her fingers between his lips and pushed his mouth open. She fed him a sweet swallow of fathi.

Delicious warmth spread through his entire body.

“Would he know if I killed you?” Loshai asked sweetly. “Would he feel it through his bond to you?”

Kahlil remembered how easily Jath’ibaye had found him at the edge of the chasm and even before that in Nurjima. But if he told Loshai as much then she would know how to lure Jath’ibaye here. Kahlil tried to say no. He concentrated intensely, and yet when he opened his mouth, he whispered, “Yes.”

“And he will come for you, won’t he?” Loshai asked.

Kahlil felt a rush of safety and warmth at the thought. Jath’ibaye would cross miles of land to save him. It had already happened once.

“He’ll come,” Kahlil whispered.

A serene expression lit Loshai’s face. She nodded and then turned and retreated from Kahlil’s sight. One of the hungry bones followed her, but the other remained standing over Kahlil.

He stared up at the delicately carved planes of its long body. Red wires glittered between curves of perfectly articulated vertebrae. Blessings of strength and speed engraved its eight legs. It was beautiful, really. A stunning predator stripped down to its most elemental form. It was almost architecture with its perfectly white, column-like legs and arching body. It reminded him a little of a ruin he’d seen photographs of in Nayeshi.

“I’m going to name you Parthenon,” Kahlil said and then he found himself laughing at his own joke. Very distantly, he heard the groan of a door opening. A sense of the Gray Space tickled over his bare skin and Kahlil thought that there was something he should be doing but the notion passed easily into his contemplation of the ceiling. He heard the door fall closed.

“Guess it’s just you and me, Parthenon,” Kahlil murmured. Then he spotted something dark above him, moving slowly between the broken remains of bones. Some creature writhed in the shadows, sliding along the blackened copper wires. As it moved, a scattering of water droplets fell down across Kahlil’s face. Despite the warmth of the fathi a chill passed over him.