Cathedral of Bones Page 2

  “Soft,” she said, poking his stomach. “No muscle tone. You stutter. You avoid eye contact. You let other people push you around. You lose your concentration easily. Focus!”

  He dreaded training. Every night, he went to bed with his stomach churning with anxiety. But he kept coming back.

  He learned to levitate a pebble, then to heat the water in a teacup, then to maintain a small flame while Neeta did everything in her power to disrupt his concentration. He spent a full week trying over and over to climb a sheer cliff near the edge of the sea, using Animism to help his hands and feet stick to the stone, but he never made it to the top. By the end of the week his body was mottled with bruises from falls.

  “You lack focus,” Neeta told him for perhaps the thousandth time.

  To improve his concentration, she had him hold a live grasshopper in his mouth while channeling his power; he swallowed it by mistake, and she had him repeat the experiment with a fresh grasshopper.

  He told himself that she didn’t enjoy doing these things—that this was simply standard practice for all apprentices—until he talked to some of his former classmates, who assured him that their training was far more pleasant.

  Neeta, it turned out, was infamous as a demanding and sadistic Master. She kept losing apprentices because they kept asking to be transferred. No one wanted to work with her, and no other Master wanted to work with Simon because of his notorious family history . . . or at least, that was what he told himself.

  Perhaps in reality, he was just incompetent; in the preliminary group classes at the Foundation Academy, which were meant to prepare young Animists for their apprenticeship, he was always the one lagging behind, always the one lingering in the classroom for hours after the bell had rung, trying to perfect some simple task that came naturally to everyone else. In any case, every other Master had turned down Simon’s request for mentorship. And so he and Neeta were together.

  He’d hoped this might create a bond of sorts. Instead, she just seemed endlessly impatient with his failures, which made him all the more desperate to please her. His goal in life was to win a single word of praise. But each time he managed to complete some impossible task, she would simply grunt or mutter, “Finally.”

  Once the first phase of his training was complete, he began accompanying her on missions . . . supposedly as her backup, though he was never of much help. At one point, he actually fainted in the midst of a battle—his crowning humiliation, and the source of his nickname, Swoony, which Brenner used often and with relish once he heard about the incident.

  Simon still wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly. Oh, he remembered what led up to it. An investigation had gone awry. He and Neeta had found themselves cornered by a muscular, bald thug with a nose ring the size of a door knocker. Simon could still see the behemoth running toward him, wielding a pair of stone swords he’d pulled from somewhere, veins popping out of his skin, mouth open in a berserker roar. Simon stood frozen, the terror rushing to his head like bubbles in a champagne glass.

  Then . . . something had happened. A rush of prickling heat, a flash of green light, and a blast of pain, like an ax dividing his skull.

  After that, blackness.

  He was convinced it had been some bizarre medical fluke, a miniature seizure striking at the worst possible moment. What else would explain the strange light and pain? Or maybe that was just what he had to tell himself. The alternative—that he was simply weak of mind and body—was too shameful.

  He’d woken up with Neeta standing over him, hands on her hips and an all-too-familiar look of disappointment on her face. Nearby, the criminal lay neatly trussed up, hands bound and a gag stuffed into his mouth. With cool reserve, Neeta had offered Simon a hand up, then asked, “Have you ever considered going into a different line of work? You’d make a fine tailor.”

  Before that, she’d always openly criticized him for his slipups, but in that moment, the pity in her eyes as she helped him to his feet was far more painful than any insult she’d ever hurled his way.

  Shortly after, Neeta had resigned as his teacher. No one else stepped in to take her place. The Foundation had finally shrugged its shoulders and assigned him to the mailroom—to Master Melth, himself a failed Animist who had tumbled to the bottom rung of the Foundation’s ladder.

  It wasn’t the life Simon had envisioned when he made the decision to become an Animist. But it was better than going home to Blackthorn. To his father.

  Anything was better than that.

  Simon opened the door to his office, if you could call it that: a stone-walled chamber, tucked away in a lonely corner of Headquarters, barely larger than a walk-in closet. Half the floor space was taken up by a hulking desk of cheap yellow pine.

  A box, wrapped in plain brown paper, sat on the desk. When his gaze fell on it, his chest tightened. He didn’t have to open it up to know what it was: another month’s supply of Simon’s medicine, courtesy of Dr. Aberdeen Hawking. Simon had stopped taking the pills when he began his training, but his father didn’t know that. The packages continued to arrive like clockwork.

  Simon carried the box into the hallway and kept walking until he spotted a plump sweeper imp waddling along. It blinked round orange eyes at him and swished its tail. He approached, holding out the package. “Medical waste,” he said. “Can you handle it?”

  The imp’s mouth stretched open, distending to nearly twice the size of its head. Simon was never sure how they managed that trick. He deposited the package into the toothless cavern, and the imp swallowed it down with a quiet gulp. Its innards rumbled, and it belched out a purple cloud before trundling onward.

  “Thanks,” Simon called. He felt a twinge of guilt for wasting the pills but returned to his desk.

  The mailroom was poorly insulated, icy in the winter, sweltering in the summer. For almost a year now, Simon had lived and worked here, sleeping on a cot that folded out from the wall, listening to the drip-drip of the leaking pipes and the scratch of mice in the walls as he drifted off each night, back and shoulders aching from the long hours spent bent over his desk.

  Sometimes, he felt closer to forty than fourteen.

  He could ask to be moved to a warmer room, he supposed, but he knew from experience that complaints would be met with a derisive snort and a lecture from Master Melth. He could imagine it easily enough: If I had the power to request any office I wanted, do you think I would be working here? I put up with the cold when I was your age, boy. Just count yourself lucky that you have a roof over your head.

  Simon pulled out his chair and sat.

  Another day, another pile of papers to sift through. Necessary work, he reminded himself, even if it was rather dull.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Simon looked up from his desk in the mailroom, blinking blearily. Something at the window? He rubbed his eyes, which were dry and sore from a long day of reading by candle flame. The weak light of sunset, filtered through a square of dirty glass, was scarcely enough to see by.

  Tap-tap.

  He stood and approached the tiny window.

  A bedraggled pigeon sat on the sill, peering at him with one pumpkin-orange eye. A folded piece of paper was tucked into an iron band on its leg.

  Strange. Letters typically arrived through a chute in the ceiling above his desk. They came through in brick-sized bundles, bound with string, at odd moments throughout the day. Occasionally, if a letter was important enough, Master Melth would bring it to him personally. But never once had a message arrived by pigeon.

  He opened the window. The bird stood placidly as Simon removed the paper and unfolded it. His candle had burned out; he held a finger to the wick and focused, and a golden flame leaped into being. He studied the letter in its flickering glow.

  Good Sir or Madam,

  It is with grave urgency that I write to the Foundation to request the aid of an Animist. Our humble town, Splithead Creek, is in danger. An unspeakable horror has taken up residence in our mountains. When we tracked t
he beast back to its lair and attempted to drive it out, it killed one of our men.

  We beg you, slay this monster. If you succeed, you will have our eternal gratitude. (Though, I should note, you already have our taxes.)

  Your Servant,

  Mayor Jacob Umburt

  “Splithead Creek,” he murmured. He turned to study the faded map of the Continent spread across the back wall. His finger trailed along the edge, until he located a tiny dot near the edge. He glanced at the pigeon, which cocked its head. “You’ve come a long way.”

  The town’s name tickled a distant memory, but he couldn’t place where he’d heard it, or when.

  The pigeon cooed and rustled its wings.

  “You must be hungry,” Simon said. A half-eaten slice of toast sat on a plate on his desk; he’d grabbed it from the kitchens earlier. He broke off a piece and offered it to the bird, who pecked at it greedily. A smile tugged at one corner of Simon’s mouth.

  A chilly wind gusted from the open window, bringing a few drops of rain. He shivered and rubbed his arms. The evenings were growing cooler as the autumn wore on. Simon warmed his hands over the candle and watched the pigeon pecking at the crumbs.

  “Simon? Simon!”

  He gave a start. The pigeon fluttered off, leaving a few dirty feathers behind, as Master Melth—round, mustachioed, and balding—bustled in, looking flustered and exhausted, as usual. “Have you filed those letters from Westerdale yet?” He squinted. “What is that thing you’re holding?”

  “It’s a request for aid.”

  “Let me see.” He plucked the letter from Simon’s hand. “Splithead Creek? Is that even under our jurisdiction?”

  “Yes.” Though just barely.

  Master Melth studied it for a few seconds longer then frowned. “Monster? Highly dubious.” He opened a cabinet drawer marked Dubious and dumped the letter inside. It fell atop a loose pile of other, Simon guessed, similar letters. “Now, I’ll need that stack of requests sorted in order of importance by six o’clock. My superiors are breathing down my neck, and I can’t keep telling them—Simon!”

  He jumped.

  “Kindly look me in the eye when I’m speaking to you.”

  Simon forced himself to meet his Master’s watery blue gaze. There was a burst capillary in the left eye, a splotch of red against the yellowed white. It was distracting. “Sorry. I was—”

  “Daydreaming. I know.” His voice dropped to a mutter as he added, “I used to daydream, when I was your age.”

  “I wasn’t, though. I was thinking about that letter. It seems like those people are in real trouble. Shouldn’t we at least—I don’t know—send someone to investigate?”

  Master Melth sighed and ran a hand over his bald spot. His features sagged, irritation slipping away to reveal the weariness beneath. “I’ve been in this position for fifteen years, lad. I’ve seen hundreds of missives like this. Every so-called monster turns out to be an overgrown mountain lizard or a mangy bear. ‘Unspeakable horror,’ indeed. Those farmers and goat herders on the fringes of civilization are so bored, they invent things to be frightened of.”

  “They said it’s already killed a man.”

  “People die every day. The Foundation can’t afford to waste resources hunting down a rogue animal.”

  “But—”

  “This isn’t a debate.” Master Melth strode out, shutting the door firmly behind him.

  Simon turned his attention to the stack of letters on his desk. He shuffled through them numbly.

  His gaze strayed to the file cabinet marked Dubious.

  He glanced nervously at the door, then opened the cabinet, fished the crumpled paper from the pile, and set it on the desk, smoothing it out.

  Splithead Creek. Where had he heard that name? After a moment, it clicked. His mother had gone to the mountains near Splithead Creek on her pilgrimage to visit the Gaokerena tree, long ago. His heartbeat quickened.

  He knew it was a flimsy connection. It meant nothing. Mother had traveled to many places in her lifetime, before disappearing for good. Even so . . . he felt, in some vague way, that this letter had been meant for his eyes. That the pigeon had brought it to him.

  We beg you, slay this monster.

  They were asking for an Animist. Simon was an Animist, albeit of the lowest caliber.

  But even if he wanted to answer the summons, he couldn’t. There was a protocol. A summons was filed and evaluated according to its level of danger and urgency, and a panel of Foundation officials chose who was best suited to the job. Simon didn’t have the authority to make such decisions himself. He was still an apprentice, and there was a pecking order even among the Masters, less official, but still quite real. Even when he attained his title—if he ever did—he would be in the lowest tier of power. This was beyond his reach.

  Reluctantly, he tucked the letter into the cabinet.

  A pile of fresh letters dropped from the chute above his desk with a giant thud. He undid the string binding them. He’d no sooner opened the first one than another three bundles dropped onto his desk, spilling everywhere. A groan escaped his throat.

  Maybe he could summon a helper.

  He pulled a palm-sized silver jar of summoning ash out from his robe pocket and turned it over in his fingers. Simon had prepared it himself, several weeks ago, by burning a mixture of dead roses, a sheet of paper on which he had written a secret fear and a secret desire, and a piece of a prized possession—in this case, the amputated leg of his childhood teddy bear, Mr. Wubbles.

  Summoning differed from other forms of Animism. It was more intuitive, more unpredictable. Moreover, the ability to control the summoned entity was dependent on the will of the summoner. You never knew what you were going to get. But this mixture was of a low enough potency that the results wouldn’t be too disastrous, even if they went wrong. Nothing like the urinating pug-faced wraith.

  He cleared a space on the desk, sprinkled the ash in a circle, and nicked the pad of his thumb with a letter opener. A drop of blood quivered and fell, landing in the center of the circle. “I call upon you, servant of the Eldritch Realm,” he whispered. “Claim my toll and lend me your strength.”

  A puff of smoke filled the air, and a quivering ball of lavender fur appeared on the desk. The creature was scarcely bigger than a mouse, with mothlike antennae and round black eyes that seemed far too large for its body. The eyes blinked. “Koo-roo?” a tiny voice chirped.

  “Hello there.” Simon held out a finger, and the creature hopped on, clinging with tiny, sticky feet. “You’re scarcely even big enough to be an imp, aren’t you? Well . . . see if you can pick up that letter.”

  The impling hopped to the desk and scuttled to the nearest letter. It latched onto it with its forefeet, tugged it a few inches, its eyes squeezed into slits from the effort . . . then collapsed, panting. “Koo-roo,” it mewled.

  Simon sighed. “Don’t worry about it. You can just keep me company for a while.” He offered a hand.

  The creature scurried up his arm, onto his shoulder, and nestled against the side of his neck. Its body vibrated, as though it were purring. A tiny smile tugged at Simon’s lips. Well, he seemed to have made a friend, at least.

  He skimmed the contents of a letter—a request from the fishing town of Narth, which had been buffeted by savage storms recently. The fishermen wanted help calming the weather. He sorted the letter into the high-priority drawer, feeling a twinge of shame as he did so. The Foundation was supposed to be objective, but when he started this job, he’d been given clear instructions to prioritize the wealthier cities, the ones that reliably produced goods for the Foundation and fattened the Queen’s coffers with their taxes. Attempts to deviate from these orders had been met with lectures from Master Melth—If you want to keep this job, boy, you’ll stop playing around and do it like you’re told. When you make a mistake, I’m the one who gets my ear chewed off, remember?

  He shucked off envelope after envelope, sorting the letters into piles.
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  He wondered what his mother would think, if she could see him now. No doubt she’d be disappointed.

  He skimmed another letter—a request for funding from a library in the city of Goldorn, on the eastern end of the Continent. They received the same request every month: Our history section is woefully meager. Our children know so little of our fair city’s roots . . .

  Come to think of it, Foundation Headquarters’ library didn’t have many history books, either. At least, none that went back further than a century or two. What little he knew of Eidendel’s deeper history, he had learned from his parents.

  And with that thought his mind drifted, as it so often did, to the past.

  Simon was five years old and sitting in his mother’s lap, enveloped in her comforting, familiar scent—bittersweet, like herbs and arcane powders. She was showing him a map of Eidendel in a picture book, with the streets marked and the buildings all drawn in extraordinary detail. “See, Simon?” she said, pointing. “Here’s the Temple, and here’s the library.”

  Simon snuggled into the crook of her arm. “Where is our house?”

  “Blackthorn? It’s right here, on the city’s edge.” She tapped a spot. “Do you notice anything unusual about Eidendel? About the shape of it?”

  Simon scrunched his nose up. “It’s round?”

  “That’s right. Eidendel was built inside a crater. Do you know that word?”

  “A big hole. From a . . . a me-te-or?”

  She smiled at his clumsy pronunciation. “A big hole, yes . . . but it wasn’t a meteor that did this. It was a man. An Animist.”

  Simon’s eyes widened. “Who?”

  “No one knows his name. It’s been forgotten, as many things have been. Eidendel was built over the ruins of the city he destroyed during the War of Ashes.” She stroked his hair. “You see, Simon, he used a forbidden type of Animism. It’s said he transformed into something immense and terrible, and the few who witnessed the transformation went mad. Afterward, they could only babble about a storm with eyes and teeth. And the man himself died. But for a few brief hours, he held the power of a god.”