The Throne of Bones (21 page)

I must have knocked my head again, too, this time more seriously, for I had passed from the real world into that of Chalcedor’s tale about the young man who stumbles upon the magic words that open a thieves’ cave. I stood in a room where a wealth of jewels and coins, gold statuettes and silver dinnerware lay tumbled. The locked chests of gold-chased ebony and sandalwood hinted at even more wealth than the thief had troubled himself to count.

The thief himself lay scattered on a floor of uneven stones that he had stained with his blood. Nothing about his skeletal remains suggested his identify, except that the legs and arms were missing; but the iron collar and massive chain—not the anchor-chain of a galley, but I had suspected that Prince Fandiel exaggerated—persuaded me that these were the relics of the unfortunate Squirmodon.

His loot had been treated with slovenly indifference. I discovered a painting by Lutria of Ashtralorn lying face-down on the floor of the mouldy cellar. An instinct for the fitness of things prompted me to dust it off and prop it upright. It was hard to imagine a thief so stupid or uncaring that he would do less; and from what little I knew of Squirmodon, he had been both intelligent and discriminating. Alive or dead, he must have been dragged here from his dungeon and eaten by a ghoul. His treasure had then been retrieved by a second thief.

Nothing was arranged for private gloating, except one object, but this exception disclosed the very heart of that second thief as a cesspool of depravity, mockery, blasphemy and treason. A bust of Sleithreethra, carved from obsidian and rendered even more hideous with ruby eyes, had been placed neatly on a plain wooden pedestal; the latter not part of the loot, obviously, but dragged from some other part of the cellars for the specific purpose of honoring the abomination. About its neck hung a string of progressively larger emeralds, the lower ones large as hen’s eggs, with a massive gold pendant representing the Dragon of Fand.

I had seen this necklace last year—and there could be no other like it—when a new wing at the Anatomical Institute had been dedicated by the lady who had worn it, Empress Fillitrella. Although contact with the bust made me retch, I muttered a hasty prayer to Polliel, made a protective sign, and took the necklace. I put it around my own neck for safekeeping and fastened my shirt over it.

A second room led off this one. I stiffened my resolve and stepped forward, but I immediately faltered, nearly overcome by an urgent desire to scramble back and pound desperately on Gourdfoot’s trapdoor. What almost unmanned me was an odor I could never forget, the stench of the ghoul that had assaulted me in the graveyard. I made very sure the room was empty before I tiptoed in.

The most intentionally frightful object here left me unmoved. It was a throne made of bones, mostly human, although I noted some tusks that might have come from wild boars. Yellowed and broken, patched with bits of wood and wire, its effect was less terrifying than childish. The phrase “King of the Ghouls” came unbidden to my mind.

This small, dank space hardly seemed a fit throne-room for even a king like that. By one wall lay a compressed heap of papers and rags, partly covered by a fabulous carpet of Phyringian workmanship. Aside from that carpet, probably loot from the next room, it looked like the sort of mattress favored by derelicts. It even held the hard-packed imprint of a large body. Perhaps the king was only storing his throne in this, his shabby bedchamber.

I pulled back the carpet for a closer look and was repelled by a staggering concentration of the stench that had frightened me. The old and crusted stains in various shades of brown and yellow conjured up the image of a creature worse than any animal, one that would lie in its own filth over and over again.

I gripped the carpet, meaning to fling it back on this mass of putridity, and I wish I had, but I was stopped by a glimpse that broke my heart. The oddments that the monster had torn and crumpled and wadded down for its comfort included a scrap of parchment bearing an unmistakable fragment of Chalcedor’s marginalia: a tiny, winged fairy alighting on the tip of a monstrous phallus.

Poking and peeling a bit deeper, I came upon more scraps: some containing a word or a phrase in his hand, others a fragment of a drawing that might have been his. But I reached the point where I simply could not bear to root deeper into foulness, not without long-handled tongs, plugs for my nose and a bucket to puke in now and then. I had uncovered enough to know that the King of the Ghouls had found my missing boxes and used their precious contents, rat-like, to fashion his foul nest.

I slipped the scraps I had found into my pocket and sat back on my heels as I tried to sort out my anger and grief. That I had found Squirmodon’s loot and solved the puzzle of his disappearance paled to insignificance beside this disaster, but I knew others would think my findings important. Much as I might hunger to track down the King and wring his neck—damned unlikely, of course, but that was my desire—I owed it to those others to bring back the truth.

My thoughts were interrupted by an ordinary sound, but surely the last one I ever expected in this place, and therefore all the more horrifying: a woman’s voice in ordinary, animated conversation: “And
did
you?”

What answered might have been a voice, although it sounded at once like scraping metal, boorish flatulence and brutish growls. I could make out no clear words.

I got up hastily and raised my lantern. I had not noticed the other doorway to this room, a smaller one that gave onto stone stairs leading downward. The voices were ascending those stairs, and they were close. I hurried back to the treasure-room and shut the lantern completely; but in the utter blackness of the cellar, the light leaking from the seams was caught by every polished gem and gold surface to produce an effect worthy of an Imperial ball. Unwilling to put out my only light, I muffled the device in my cloak and put it aside. I snatched up Squirmodon’s chain, the nearest thing to an iron weapon at hand, and held it ready.

“ ... expected of you,” the woman was saying.

“Expected by whom? By
what,
I should say, by the sort of scum whose parents should have been drowned in a rain-barrel at birth? Vomikron Noxis, King of the Ghouls, indeed! The ghouls laugh at this—yes, yes, of course, they laugh at everything, but they laugh at this most of all—for I am ruler only to a festering of human perverts and malcontents, people I would have murdered for presuming to lick the dirt from between my toes when I was mortal, people who want to become ghouls, people who want me to eat their grandmother’s nose so I can tell them where she lost her diamond ring, people who merely want to
seem
dangerous and wicked. This throne of ebony and crystal from the tomb of King Ashclamith is too good for them, of course—skinning alive with twigs would be too good for them—but it pleased me to use it.”

I heard a resounding thud. I assumed he had set down the piece of furniture he described. They had entered the room, but they had brought no light with them. They could see in the dark. How would I know if they spotted me? Near the door I hugged the wall of the treasure room with my back, willing my flesh to seep into the pores of the stone.

“Whatever you might think of them, they are your subjects, your only access to power in the world above. They’ve adored the Throne of Bones ever since your father had it made to his specifications.”

“My grandfather was a drooling idiot, and nothing proves it more than that stupid throne.”

“Your
father!”
she shrieked, and I believe she slapped him. “Does it make you feel less guilty about murdering him, calling him your grandfather?”

He paid her back for the slap somehow, because she screamed, and that unforgettable sound confirmed her identity as Lady Glypht.

“Father, grandfather, great-grandfather, too—if I had all three of him here, I’d kill him again. And laugh.” He demonstrated his laugh. I prayed fervently that he would not do it again. “I don’t know why I don’t kill you.”

“Because you love me. Because I am the only woman who could ever understand you. Because I didn’t just give birth to you, I
created
you by concentrating the superhuman blood of the Glyphts in your veins.”

“By making me a monster, you incestuous whore. The only thing I ever had to be proud of—even in this hideous state—was that my father was a Fand. And you would take even that little away from me with your disgusting stories, which are probably lies. If you love me so much, stop protecting that horrible boy and give him to me.”

“Perhaps, Glyphtard, if you stop calling me names and ask me nicely, if you—”

She began to scream again. She mentioned her arm, so I guessed he was twisting it, but his own roars suggested she was getting back at him. It would be the ideal time to steal away, but I wanted to hear more, even though all the lies and family history made my head swim. I had thought at first this must be the son she never spoke of, but he had probably never existed beyond the lie she told me. This could only be Lord Glyphtard, who had somehow escaped death at the hands of Never-Vanquished.

The scuffle continued with much grunting and screaming and ghoulish laughter. I wondered how, considering his superhuman strength, such a fight could go on for so long. It struck me only by slow degrees of escalating nausea, compounded by my memory of embracing this despicable woman, that Lord Glyphtard and his mother were now vigorously pursuing an activity quite different from fighting.

“What’s that smell?” he demanded.

“Smell? You mean you can smell something besides this filthy bed? How many times when you were a boy did I tell you—”

“Shut
up,
mother! Something’s burning—”

“Yes, yes, and only you—unnhh!—can quench it—”

He was right. My cloak, draped over the lantern, was smoking. Even as I turned to look, a tongue of flame pierced the cloth.

I was lost. They might be distracted by the fire for a moment while I fled, but where would I flee? I never would have believed that Prince Fandiel could have told me a single worthwhile thing, but I now remembered a rule he had told me about combat: when caught unprepared by the enemy, it does no good to hide or run; the only choice is to attack with speed and ferocity.

I silently thanked Lady Glypht for mentioning that abominable bed. That was where they had to be. Snatching up the burning bundle without a thought for the pain, I dashed into the room and flung it at the bed. I gave Squirmodon’s heavy chain a preliminary swing to build up speed and brought the massive collar down where I thought the ghoul-king’s head might be. It connected solidly. I heard, and through the chain I even felt, the gratifying crunch of a well-broken skull. But by the light of the now furiously burning mattress, I saw that I had miscalculated: Lady Glypht had been on top.

The ghoul roared in a way I had never even imagined possible as he thrashed this way and that to fling his mother’s bleeding body aside. The sound threatened not just my hearing but even my consciousness. Stunned and disoriented, I staggered to the stairs they had mounted and fell all the way down.

Attack was impossible now. My burning bundle was gone, my chain was gone, I had lost my staff along the way. Sobbing in mindless panic, I fled blindly down a slimy earthen tunnel that seemed to lead into the bowels of the earth. I knew that safety could not lie in this direction, that I was descending deeper into the king’s own kingdom, but the elephantine trumpets of rage and grief at my heels drove me faster.

Soon I was splashing in cold water, and before I could even consider this fact, I was forcing my way forward in water to my knees, my hips, my chest. I had hesitated for just a fraction of a moment to take a deep breath when a hand as big and hard as a shovel-blade, tipped with claws like spikes, engulfed my shoulder as easily my own hand might have engulfed a pastry.

A nest of furious vipers, but no human throat, could have hissed the words that exploded against my ear in a blast of ghoulish breath: “My
mother!”

I wrenched myself forward, oblivious to the tearing of my flesh, and got a blinding clout on the forehead from the roof of the tunnel. Nothing but water lay ahead, but I dived into it and hauled myself forward. My ankle was pierced by a claw, but I was able to rip it free.

On Weymael’s map, the red lines had ended in the Miraga. But I could not be at all sure that those lines were accurate, or that this particular tunnel was even represented on that map. I might be swimming deeper into a pool with no exit. As the walls on either side expanded away from me, I no longer knew which way I was swimming.

The ceiling rose, too, but so did the water, and I could find no air at the top, only a confusion of waterlogged beams that might entangle me. I dived a little deeper, still pulling forward.

I had swum constantly in the Miraga as a boy. My playmates had been the sons and daughters of Ignudo bargemen, and I had often outdone their feats of underwater swimming. That was a long, long time ago, but I remembered the technique, and I remembered the insane determination that had pushed me beyond the excruciating pain of burning lungs and a throbbing head.

I could go on no longer, though. Death would be a blessing. I kicked myself upward. If I found no air at the top this time I would just have to breathe water, no matter the consequences. But the top was now a long way off. I did more twisting and thrashing than purposeful swimming as I tried to escape the overwhelming need to breathe.

I thought for a moment I was beholding the pure light of Cludd that his Sons are forever prattling about, but it was the sun of an autumn afternoon. I whooped in as much cold water as I did air in my first breaths, laughing in triumph even as I scanned the river around me for some sign of the pursuing ghoul. But he had not pursued. Perhaps some aspect of his disease made him shun water, as his smell had certainly attested.

I grew aware of a great commotion above me and saw that I had very nearly been run down by some noble’s bloated pleasure-barge. The sailors threw down a rope with a loop that I managed to secure under my arms, and they hauled me on deck. Only when they began exclaiming over my wounds did I realize that I had indeed been badly wounded. I might have collapsed then if it had not been necessary to drop to one knee as gracefully as possible. I was face to face with the Empress herself.