10: His Holy Bones (16 page)

“Ji wasn’t an animal!” John growled.

“Maybe not to start with, but that’s what this world reduced her to,” Laurie said. “It’s what you’d like me to be as well, John. You just don’t want to admit it. You want me to sit down and be a good girl. You don’t want me chewing up the furniture or shitting all over this perfect life you’ve got here.” She stared at him intently.
“It must be annoying as hell to be a god and have one miserable bitch like me ripping the fuck out of your little kingdom, huh?”

“It’s not my little kingdom.” Anger gnawed at John’s instinctive compassion for Laurie. “Basawar is an entire world. There are millions of people here. There are animals and plants that are unique and beautiful. There is life here and it deserves respect!”

“You know, all of that’s a little hard to really appreciate when your husband has been murdered, your baby has been gutted, and you’ve been skinned alive for the sake of all that unique, beautiful life.” Laurie raised her hands, exposing the bare bones of her arms. John flinched from the sight.

“I know you suffered,” John said. “But that doesn’t mean that things can’t change. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“No, it doesn’t. When I’m done, it won’t be like this anymore.” Laurie smiled as if amused by some private joke. “I know you think you have to kill me, John. I know you think that I’ve become some kind of monster, but I haven’t. I’m finding our way back. I’m going to save us. Not just me and Bill and our daughter, but you too.”

“What do you mean?” John felt a chill at the dreamy tone in Laurie’s voice.

“Why do you think I want to go back to Nayeshi? To live out the rest of my life as the star attraction of some freak show? I’m going back to stop us from ever coming here. I’m going to save us.” Laurie’s gaze shifted past John into empty space. “I’ve seen our lives the way they should have been. Bill and I name our son after you, you know. Our daughter is going to be a singer. She has the most beautiful voice. I hear her singing to me some nights. You spend every Christmas with us.”

Laurie smiled into the empty distance. John gripped the hilt of the yasi’halaun. If it could destroy the hungry bones, he had no doubt that it could devour an issusha as well. He hoped that somehow it would bring Laurie a quick death.

“Don’t think I don’t see what you’re thinking.” Laurie’s pale blue eyes snapped back to him. “I’ve done this before, you know. I’ve seen all your devious plans.” She smiled, showing her white teeth. “And don’t forget, Ravishan is in my power. It could take nothing more than a stroke of a single string for me to end his life.” Laurie touched one of the wires meaningfully. “So don’t be an idiot.”

Frustrated fury surged through John and somewhere far above them thunder cracked the sky. But he didn’t move.

Laurie was right. Until he knew where Kyle was he couldn’t afford to attack her outright.

“Would it make it any easier if I told you that in every vision the best you’ve ever managed is to kill us both?” Laurie asked.

“Did the rest of Basawar survive?” John couldn’t keep from asking.

“How would I know?” Laurie replied with a laugh. “I died.”

John scowled down at the yasi’halaun. “What do you want me to do?”

“It looks like you’ve already fed the yasi’halaun with plenty of your blood,” Laurie replied, and her expression was so smug that John wondered if she had known this would happen all along, if all the threats of invasion and attacks from the hungry bones had been a manipulation to ensure that the yasi’halaun was suffused with his blood and power.

 “So now,” Laurie continued, “I just want you to bring the yasi’halaun to the center of the room and slide it into the incision in the floor.”

John started towards the ragged yellow stones.

“But first.” Laurie raised her hand and John stopped. He prayed that she would bring Kyle to him or at least allow him a glimpse of where she was keeping him. Instead Laurie held up a small clay jar.

“Catch,” she called as she tossed the jar through the air. John caught it easily.

“Good reflexes,” Laurie said, smiling.

John studied the plain jar. It was unmarked, though a thick layer of red wax had been melted over the lid to seal it tightly closed.

“There’s a ritual to all of this, remember?” Laurie said.

“You poison the Rifter with tumah’itam,” John recalled. Long ago, Samsango had fed him the terrible, numbing poison to spare him the agony of being burned on the Holy Road. It hadn’t saved him from pain, but it hadn’t killed him either. He wondered if Laurie knew as much. From the way she gazed at him, he guessed that she didn’t.

“They call it the blessing of painless death,” Laurie said. “Drink up. After this is all over you’ll have your old life back. Basawar will never have happened to us. None of this,” Laurie gestured to the corpses hanging from the walls, “none of it will have happened. Everything will be set right.”

“But Basawar will have been destroyed,” John said. “More people will have died than just these children.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, but I think that you do,” John replied. “I think you’ve seen what will happen.”

Laurie shook her head, but John knew he was right. He had seen the flicker of guilt in her expression.

“Do you want me to kill Ravishan or not?” Laurie demanded, and for the first time her voice was cold and her expression hard. John glimpsed the anger that she had held back from him, the hatred she had to feel towards him for their different lives in Basawar.

“No,” John said.

“Then shut up!” Laurie snapped. “You aren’t here to talk. Drink the tumah’itam and bring the yasi’halaun here. I’m tired of wasting time.”

John broke the seal on the small jar. An earthy, almost chocolate scent rose up over his hands. Previously the poison had acted on him within minutes, numbing his senses until he was little more than dead weight. If he was going to stop Laurie, he didn’t have much time. He still had no idea where he would find Kyle. He closed his eyes, and as he lifted the jar to his lips, he searched again for any glimpse of Kyle. Again he found nothing but Ravishan’s remains.

The tumah’itam was sweet and subtle. Its numbness spread slowly through John’s mouth and then seeped down his throat. John knew he only had minutes left.

He swung the yasi’halaun up and raced forward. The water lapping his legs steamed as rage rolled off him.

Overhead, wires hissed as if they were burning. Curse stones flashed and cracked as John rushed past them. A deep pulse throbbed through the yasi’halaun. John hardly felt it through his tingling hands. But the sympathetic pulses that pounded through the surrounding stones rocked him, nearly knocking him off his feet. Beneath him, John felt the fine fissures splitting  the stones apart. The Great Gates were already fighting to open.

They were responding to his mere presence just as Ji had once feared they would.

John reached the center of the chamber. Wild, swirling water lapped at his thighs. John sensed the incision in the floor. All around him, wires glowed white hot and brilliant letters lit up across the yellow stones. The yasi’halaun almost sung with excitement.

John’s legs felt numb. His arms were like weights pinned to his shoulders. It took all of his concentration to retain his grip on the yasi’halaun. The blade shuddered as if trying to shake free of him and drop down into the incision where it would fit like a key into a keyhole.

“Place the yasi’halaun!” Laurie leaned over the dais to shout down at John. “Do it now!”

John clenched his numb fingers around the hilt of the blade. He would never do what Laurie asked of him, he knew that. And yet it frightened him that he couldn’t offer Kyle his protection. It made him pause even when he knew he had to act. He only had seconds.

“Don’t fuck with me, John!” Laurie shouted down at him.

John knew he couldn’t wait any longer. All he could do for Kyle was protect Basawar. He could only hope it was enough.

“I’m so sorry,” John whispered. He saw the look of fear in Laurie’s face. Then he hurled the yasi’halaun up into Laurie’s chest. It split through her ribs and knocked her back against a tangle of wires. Arcs of the yasi’halaun’s hunger bolted up from the blade and burned through Laurie’s body.

Even burning black, Laurie managed to lash out and rip three lines of wires free. They splashed down into the water and brutal volts of electricity shot through John’s body. The yellow stones suddenly gave off an icy cold hiss and John felt the Gray Space ripping open all around him.

He tried to move, to escape the terrible grasp of the opening gates, but the poison made his motions clumsy and weak. John fell to his knees and brackish green water lapped his face. He closed his eyes.

And for one instant he saw Kyle standing in the glittering chamber where Ravishan’s bones had rested. His skin seemed radiant. He lifted his head as if he felt John’s gaze and for a moment a joyous heat burned through John. He felt the bond between them and it overflowed him with a sense of safety and hope.

And then every sensation stopped. The Gray Space engulfed him and John began to slowly suffocate in its grip.

 Chapter One Hundred and Seven

 Jath’ibaye was here in the ruins. Kahlil could feel him. The thought alarmed Kahlil as much as it reassured him. Here was where where Loshai had wanted Jath’ibaye to be. He had stepped into her trap. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, Jath’ibaye’s presence completely vanished. Cold fear clenched through Kahlil’s body.

Kahlil knelt down in front of Rousma. “Do you have any idea where Loshai might try to trap the Rifter?”

“She catches him in the Chamber of Gates and he is swallowed in the yellow rock and she is burned up. I sees it once.”

For a moment Kahlil wasn’t sure what Rousma meant by Jath’ibaye being swallowed by the yellow rock. Then he realized that Loshai had to be following the rituals of the Payshmura. She had locked Jath’ibaye in the Gray Space between the Great Gates where the Rifters before him had been trapped and slowly killed.

“You have to take me there right away,” Kahlil told Rousma. She backed away.

“It’s not safey. He brings the yasi’halaun and it eats all us bones. Eats all them ruins.” Rousma crept forward and clenched her skeletal hand around Kahlil’s. “We goes far away where it can’t reaches us.”

“I can’t leave Jath’ibaye,” Kahlil insisted. “I can’t let him die.”

“But the yasi’halaun burns you. It burns right through your bones.” Rousma’s hard fingers dug into Kahlil’s hand.

Out on the wastes, the yasi’halaun hadn’t reacted to him, but Kahlil suspected that he was different now. The yasi’halaun would be drawn to the holy bones that now nestled beneath his flesh, just as it had been drawn to Ji’s bones.

“It feeds and burns all the ruins down to the deep waters,” Rousma told him. “We goes now. Far away.”

Kahlil shook his head.

“I can’t. I have to reach Jath’ibaye. I have to save him.” Kahlil pulled his hand out of Rousma’s grip. He touched her small skull. “You know I’m going to go to him. It’s what I have to do. If there was a reason for me to live, a reason that I found this key again, it’s to save him.”

Rousma bowed her head.

“Please help me, Rousma,” Kahlil said. “Take me to him.”

“Promise me you won’t dies,” Rousma whispered.

“I won’t die,” Kahlil assured her. “And I will take you away from here. I promise.”

Rousma pressed her head against Kahlil’s bare chest and hugged his waist.

“Don’t be a liar,” Rousma said. Then she pulled back from him. “We goes quicksy now.”

She turned and skittered back to the pool of bright moon water. Kahlil raced after her. They swam through the filthy water and then rushed up into the higher chambers of the ruins. As they traveled, Kahlil noticed an almost electric charge in the air. Tiny sparks skipped between the stone walls and Rousma’s bones. Now and then white shocks arced up and crackled across Kahlil’s exposed bone finger. It stung. Kahlil curled his left hand into a fist, gripping the golden key and hiding his exposed bone under his other fingers.

Kahlil caught glimpses of hungry bones scrambling through the ruins, racing away from the burning shocks of the yasi’halaun. Some let out pathetic moans as they fled. Others were silent in their desperation. Black burns cratered all of their white bodies. Some of them seemed to be turning to ash as they ran.

He and Rousma turned down a half-collapsed corridor and Rousma stopped. The air rolling up from the dark confines felt hot and wet. It smelled like a forge, filled with steam and burning minerals.

“Through the door at the end,” Rousma said. “She traps him there.”

Kahlil knew she couldn’t come any further with him. His flesh offered him some protection from the yasi’halaun, but she had nothing but exposed bone.

“Can you wait for me out in the courtyard?” Kahlil asked. “Will you be safe there?”

“I climbs up in the apple branches. Big bones can’t catches me up theres,” Rousma said.

“Good.” Kahlil patted her skull one last time and then raced down the corridor. As he descended, the smell of steam and molten stone grew stronger. It burned his throat and made his lungs ache. The floor felt hot under his bare feet. He noticed larger arcs of white light dancing over the blessings carved into the walls. In places the rock walls glowed dull red from the constant assaults.

A single door stood at the end of the corridor. Plumes of acrid smoke and steam rolled out from between the hinges and the walls. Bolts of white light skipped over the iron reinforcements. This had to be where Loshai had attempted to recreate the Chamber of Gates.

Kahlil started to reach for the door but jerked his hand back as a searing white bolt arced up from the iron towards him. The light crested like a wave, crackling at the air, and then collapsed back down to the surface of the door. He couldn’t even touch it. It would burn him apart before he could even push it open.