The Tower of Bones (19 page)

That’s what I want to talk to you about. After the Ship has taken you to where you’re going, you won’t need it then – not for a while.

Aw, c’mon! We might need to get out of there, real fast. If things go wrong …

The way I see it, my need is greater.

You’re going to abandon us in the Wastelands? You’re going to try it on nothing more than a hunch – just suck it and see if it will get you back to Earth?

We’re thinking about it, Nan and I. Back to our bodies – back to life.

But your experiment could put us all at risk – including Mo!

I’m thinking of putting it to the Ship – see if the Ship agrees with me. When I figure out how to communicate the idea.

Alan exhaled hard, deeply shocked at what Mark was
thinking. The loss of the Temple Ship could jeopardise their whole mission.

Couldn’t you wait – at least until we rescue Kate?

I wish I could.

You’re not really thinking this through.

Believe me, I am
. A change came over Mark’s voice, a new urgency.
We’ll talk again. Meanwhile you had better look to your back. You have a problem
.

What?

Simultaneously Alan received an urgent summons, oraculum-to-oraculum, from the Kyra, who was forward at the prow.

Kate woke to see that the sun was already penetrating the mists of the horizon. She recalled the whispered warning of Granny Dew:

Cha-teh-teh-teh!

Where was she? She felt utterly bewildered and lost. Panic rose in her. She had to make a move – discover a place to hide.

But the fierce intensity of the sunlight hurt her eyes, even when she squinted through eyelids that were smarting and heavily encrusted with flaky crud. She felt exhausted already, and she hadn’t even climbed to her feet.

What am I going to do?

When she lifted her head off the stony ground where she had slept her neck was excruciatingly stiff. Peering down at her body, which was still covered in a weave of cobwebs, she discovered that it was half buried in soft white sand. When she tried to move her arms, her back –
even her jaw – every joint felt achingly stiff. It was as if she had slept for a hundred years …

Oh, heck – just how long have I been asleep?

If sleep was remotely the right word for what must have been more like a coma, brought on by exhaustion? She put all of her concentration into bracing her arms against the stony ground so she could struggle to a half sitting-up position. A premonition seized her, rendered her trembling with fright.

Faltana!

The chief succubus would be out there searching for her. The Witch would blame her for Kate’s escape from the Tower. Faltana’s second eye would be plucked from her head if she failed to get Kate back. She’d be frantic in her efforts to find Kate, using every power at her disposal – the succubi, the Gargs … the wolves!

The wolves will be coming after me …

When she jerked herself into a fully sitting-up position it provoked such a lancinating pain in her head that she groaned aloud. Sand blew over her face as she lifted her hands up and squeezed her head. Another throb of pain made her groan even louder. She flopped over onto her side, dragging her legs free, then inched herself over so she could haul herself onto her knees. Every small manoeuvre had to be carefully planned in advance.

Time for a breather – try to take stock.

Another fierce stab of pain in her head. Damn – she had forgotten the crystal embedded in her brow. With the
slightest movement it felt as if the thing was boring itself into her brain.

She knelt there for several moments, holding onto her head and panting through gritted teeth.

‘Shit!’

Ordinarily she didn’t like to swear. It wasn’t ladylike. Bridey and Uncle Fergal had taught her not to swear – although both of them were known to mutter ‘shit!’ when it suited them.

‘Shit!’ Kate muttered again.

Then she swallowed, feeling guilty, while holding onto her head with both her hands and peering very carefully about herself. She could see no other living soul – no succubi, or Garg, or wolf. Her terror eased.

A step at a time
. That sounded like a good idea.
Don’t even bother to try to get on your feet just yet. Just think before you try to move
.

Okay – so was this really happening? Was she really here, on some island in a river, kneeling among the rocks and sand? It looked real enough – it felt excruciatingly real. How had she come to be here? A wolf, an enormous bedraggled creature who had the soul spirit of a man, had brought her here. She hadn’t been in a position to give him directions at the time. It was Granny Dew who had told the wolf-man what to do. It sounded utterly mad when you examined it like that. It made her wonder if she really was dreaming after all. But then if she was dreaming, it meant she was still back there, in that coffincell,
with the vile creature Faltana ready to torment her …

Terror of Faltana made Kate attempt once more to get onto her feet. She tottered, trying for balance for a few seconds before slumping onto one knee. It wasn’t just the agony in her head. With the slightest movement pain racked every joint.

Well, one thing was certain. If Faltana was nearby, with her Gargs and wolves, there was no question of Kate running. She just couldn’t run any more.

A breeze ruffled the wreck of her hair. Kate rubbed at her eyelids to try to clear them, then blinked two or three times, provoking tears of frustration.

I’ve just got to get out of here!

But where was here?

Panting from another spasm of pain in her brow she stared up into a sky full of wheeling birds. Dark-winged shapes, she hadn’t a clue what sort they were, other than seabirds. But it meant that she must be somewhere close to the sea. Struggling to her feet, physically supporting her upper body by pressing her hands against her trembling thighs, she panted away, her teeth tightly clenched within her grimacing mouth, all the while looking around at the geography of the island. It was largely rock and sand. A craggy ellipse, one edge – the seawards side, judging from the direction of the river current – raised into a bluff about a hundred feet above the stream. It wasn’t much of a sanctuary, seeming
terribly exposed with little or no cover where she could hide.

Tears, the real sort this time, moistened her eyes.

The breeze gusted again, spraying sand over her exposed skin. When she sniffed back the tears there was the smell of brine, which told her that the sea was close. Her sanctuary was set in a river so big and wide it must be an estuary near to the sea.

Turning through a complete circle Kate saw that the island was as barren of vegetation as it was deserted. Why had the wolf-man brought her here? Had he really been carrying out Granny Dew’s instructions? And if so, why had Granny Dew directed her to this desolate place?

Slowly, stiffly, she began to search the island. After an hour or two of meandering exploration she confirmed that her first impressions had been pretty accurate. There was no sign of life here other than the creepy-crawlies that left trails in the white sand and the birds that wheeled and screeched overhead. Finding some protection from the gusting wind in the lee of some rocks, she slumped down onto her bottom and picked at the cobwebs over her knees. The shock of her situation was only slowly registering, making room for this new anxiety in a heart already congested with fears. Lifting her shaky fingers she brushed their tips against the object in her brow. A smooth, glassy surface, definitely a crystal. And the shape was without doubt a triangle.

An oraculum just like Alan’s …

A shockwave, like electricity, made her probing fingers recoil. The thing just didn’t feel natural at all.

She used the hands-on-knees trick to get back onto her tottery legs, then stumbled on, directionless, trying to persuade herself that there just had to be something special about this island, but hardly knowing what she might even be looking for. When she tripped and tumbled down the slope of a sand dune, the flare of pain in every limb and joint made her curl herself into a ball, rolling all the way down to the bottom of the slope with her eyes clenched shut. She waited for the pain to ebb before opening her eyes again to discover that she was at the entrance to a den.

It was the strangest den Kate had ever seen. The entrance was made out of a whale’s jawbones. The spars supporting the roof were probably ribs. These had been rigged into the rough shape of an arch, woven with pieces of driftwood, all knotted together with sun-bleached straw. Within the gloom inside she glimpsed bright reflections. If she half closed her matted eyelids she could imagine shapes lurking inside, like hunchbacked gnomes, or the whirl of sea or wind. Creeping closer she stuck her head within the jawbones. All she could make out was a jumble, but a very sparkly jumble of shiny things, as if the owner of the den might have made a collection from what been brought up by the tide onto the nearby beach.

It was the only cover Kate had found and she crawled further in to investigate. She stared in curiosity at sharks’
teeth, turtle shell-cases and the white skeletons of unknown sea creatures. A flash of memory – back in Clonmel Mo had collected things like this. Crystals, amber with insects embedded in it, the skulls of birds – stuff that Mark had called her ‘weirdiana’. Kate gazed with curiosity at shells and carapaces the delicate colours and shades of jade or ivory, or long stringy spikes of mauve and gold that were arranged into the embroidery of what could have been a rather crude nest, and tucked in among them, like eggs, were rounded stones, their surfaces patterned by spirals and whorls or encrusted by twisty-tangled shapes. She found fragments of wood that appeared to be fossils, like the tree trunk she had slept on, or discs of cork from long-lost fishing nets, so sculpted by the sea and elements they might have been beads from the necklaces of giants. This treasure trove was piled into a heap on a bed of seaweed, the tendrils of which had been bleached to a downy blonde by the sun. There was the impression the tendrils had been carefully arrayed, like the hair of a medusa.

It was pleasantly cool and sheltered here, out of the sun and wind. And the discovery of the den was so unexpected Kate just sat in the middle of it and stared around herself, open-mouthed.

She picked up a spiral shell, as crimson as a sunset. She brushed the texture of one of the rounded stones against her cheek. She brought it to her nostrils to smell the old, magical smell of the ocean. Edging deeper into
the den she was shocked to discover a mound of skulls. Her heart pattering with surprise, she probed among them to see that they included what had obviously been fish or turtles, but there were others she didn’t recognise at all, vaguely human-like, but with wafer thin plates of bone and higher brows – thankfully not really human at all.

The skulls intrigued her. They appeared to be deliberately arranged, fitted one into another, to make the shape of a tower.

It occurred to Kate that she should be frightened by this bizarre den, but in fact she felt curiously comfortable here, like a small bird that had fallen out of its nest and found its way into a protected nook. A nagging voice inside her head suggested that she might be deluding herself – that life didn’t offer comfortable refuges for little ones lost. But she made no effort to leave the den, sitting slightly dazed amidst the bones and the treasure, her hands periodically touching her brow, uncertain what to do next.

‘Yeeow!’

She held her breath at a loud clatter from outside. A globular eye the size and colour of a kumquat was peering in at her from one edge of the entrance. The orange globe of the pupil was cut into two by a jagged black crescent like the eye of a crocodile. While she stared back at it, trembling with fright, it blinked. But it wasn’t an ordinary blink. Some white eggshell-like thing closed over it sideways, then it opened again and the eye peered in at her once more.

Merciful mother!

Kate sat utterly still.

The eye withdrew. She heard a running clatter – it sounded horribly like claws on rock – and then there was a loud thud that shook the interior of the den and set all of the glittery things a-jingling and a-jangling. Then the eye appeared at the opposite side.

Kate clenched her eyes shut.

When she opened them again, the eye was still there – or more likely the creature’s other eye, since it had clearly crossed over from one side of the entrance to the other as if needing to check her out in one eye after the other, the way a blackbird would twitch its head from side to side to get a better fix.

‘Help – please go away!’

The peering eye performed that strange membranous blink she had seen in television programmes about raptor birds, and she heard a perfect echo of her own words,
Help – please go away!

‘Shoo! Get lost!’

Shoo! Get lost!
The echo returned, with exactly the same pitch as her quavering voice, yet also squawky.

‘Shoo –
shoo!
Clear off – you kumquat-eyed parrot!’

Clear off – kumquat! Kumquat-eyed, kumquat parrot!

Was the creature mocking her? Kate wiped her sweating face with a cobwebby sleeve. She stared about herself at the den full of glittery things. Her situation was both terrifying and ridiculous at the same time. There was a renewed
agony in the centre of her brow. She had forgotten about the oraculum.

The copycat mockery rose to a high-pitched screech:

Shoo – shoo! Kumquat parrot!

She clapped her hands over her ears as, all of a sudden, her fears discharged through the triangle in an almighty explosion that took the roof off the den, scattering the collection of shells and bones.

Kate sat at the epicentre of the resultant chaos, blinking her eyes back open, her coverings of cobwebs reduced to rags.

Even as he hurried forward, taking the steps to the foredeck two at a time, Alan noticed that the chill had worsened. It was as if all the natural warmth had been sucked out of the air to be replaced by an icy cold. Even the gentle rolling of the Ship had worsened to a disturbed heaving. He found Siam and the Ainé in a huddle of conversation before the prow. The cold was even more biting here. A dank dew had condensed over the features of the burly Olhyiu chief and the giant woman, matting their hair to their scalps.