Cathedral of Bones Page 3

  “How?” Simon whispered, caught halfway between fascination and horror.

  A shadow slipped over her pale green eyes. They grew distant, thoughtful. “You know how Animism normally works, Simon? We draw energy from this world. From Earth. Or we summon creatures from the Eldritch.”

  Simon nodded.

  “Imagine both our own world and the Eldritch as tiny islands surrounded by a vast sea. There are other worlds, other islands, probably. But we only know of these two, so far.”

  “A sea? Could we take a boat to the Eldritch?”

  “It’s not that sort of sea. The Earth and Eldritch are not separated by space, but by . . . let’s call it wavelength. Frequency. They exist in the same place, on different levels of reality. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said, though he didn’t. He just wanted Mother to think he was smart. To her—and to Father too—being smart was very important. To call someone slow was the worst thing.

  Olivia was always so quick to understand things. Simon, not so much.

  “Very good,” Mother said, smiling. “So—there’s the Earth and there’s Eldritch, and other worlds, yet to be discovered. Islands, so to speak. But there is also a sort of space between worlds. This is all theoretical, you understand. And highly controversial. But the sea—the empty space that surrounds and separates our world and others—is what we call the Outer Realm. It’s inhabited by entities more powerful and strange than any Eldritch creature. We call them the Elder Gods.”

  Simon listened. He understood less the more she spoke, but the rhythm of his mother’s voice was calming, despite her words.

  She wrapped one of his curls around her finger, playing with it. “Long ago, before the War of Ashes, the gods would sometimes visit our world. They would eat people, sometimes whole cities at once—gulp!”

  He flinched.

  “They were dangerous, never doubt it. But they would strike bargains with humankind, as well. Sometimes, they’d protect chosen villages from other gods, in exchange for certain favors or sacrifices. It was a dark and wild time.” She smiled, almost fondly. “Of course, the Elder Gods have not made an appearance for many, many years. But they are not the only power that flows from the Outer Realm.”

  She fell silent for a few heartbeats, a small, pensive frown on her lips. Simon waited.

  She took a breath. “You see . . . the realm itself is filled with—or perhaps composed of—a powerful energy. The Elder Gods, for all their formidable strength, are but fish swimming in this sea of power. You might say that it’s around us all the time—that we are separated from it by only a thin veil. And every so often, a human is born who can penetrate that veil, who can draw water from that sea . . .”

  “Veera?” said a deep voice. His father stood in the entrance to the study. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m simply telling him about the history of our city,” she replied coolly.

  Father’s eyes narrowed. “Go to your room, Simon.”

  Simon hesitated. His mother smiled, ruffled his hair, and said, “Go on, little scholar. I’ll be up soon to kiss you good night.”

  Scholar, Simon thought as his chest filled with warmth. That’s a very good thing to be called.

  He crept out and closed the door behind him, but he lingered in the hallway, pressing his ear to the door, trying to make out what his parents were saying. The words were muffled; only the urgency in their voices came through.

  “—only a child—can’t possibly understand—”

  “—always trying to hold him back—”

  “If the Foundation found out—”

  They were always arguing. He could never tell what they were arguing about, but somehow, he always felt like it was his fault.

  Later that night, his father came up to his bedroom and knocked on the door. “Simon? I’m coming in.” The door creaked open.

  Simon sat up, clutching the covers. His father sat on the edge of the bed, his lips pressed into a thin seam. He scratched his stubble and cleared his throat. “Listen, Simon. Your mother, she’s an amazing person, but she’s a bit . . . abnormal. She’s—” He paused, as if searching for words. “She’s very smart. Smarter than me, even. And sometimes, smart people get restless. They like to poke at reality, like a child poking a badger with a stick. They can’t seem to help themselves. But a poked badger will eventually bite. There are things about this universe that simply aren’t meant to be understood by the human mind. Barriers that aren’t meant to be breached. People like your mother . . . they have trouble accepting that. Sometimes, they’re drawn to areas of study that are . . . risky. Unstable. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, blast it. I’m no good at this.” He rubbed the back of his neck. The lamplight reflected off his glasses. “All right, Simon, listen. There are rules that even powerful Animists like us have to follow. The rules are frustrating sometimes, but they’re there to prevent people from getting hurt. Or worse. Your mother does not have much regard for those rules.” He fidgeted. “Has she . . . has she ever mentioned the name Azathoth to you?”

  Simon shook his head.

  The tension eased out of his shoulders. “Good. Well, forget that name. I shouldn’t have spoken it. But she was talking about Elder Gods again, wasn’t she?”

  Simon nodded.

  “All right. Well. Here’s what you need to know: the Elder Gods never existed. There are ancient stories, but they’re no more than the fantasies of primitive and superstitious people, a sort of mass hysteria. When the Foundation imposed order on the world, they stopped human sacrifice and other cruel practices, and they swept away all those old, false beliefs.”

  “But . . . imps and wraiths are real. Aren’t they?”

  “Of course. Imps, wraiths, ghasts, shoggoths . . . there’s nothing supernatural about them. They’re simply creatures from the Eldritch that can cross over to Earth when summoned. But Elder Gods are not from that world. They’re not from any world. Because they don’t exist. Anytime your mother starts talking about that sort of thing, you just come to me. All right?”

  “Um. All right.”

  “Good.” He stood. “I’m glad we had this talk.”

  The next day, at the breakfast table, Simon sat with Olivia and his mother. Father was secluded in his laboratory, as he often was, working long hours on his research for the Foundation.

  Simon glanced up from his bowl of porridge and said, “Mother, are the Elder Gods real?”

  “Olivia, stop feeding that imp,” Veera said.

  Olivia had conjured a tiny creature resembling a spotted toadstool with legs and was giving it crumbs of her blueberry muffin. She glanced up. “Why?”

  “Because they’re not meant to eat human food.”

  As if to prove her point, the toadstool opened a fang-filled mouth and vomited a tiny puddle onto the table.

  “So what do they eat, Mother?”

  “Oh, lots of things. Plants and fungi from their own world. Other Eldritch creatures. Occasionally they’ll eat human flesh.”

  Curiously, Olivia offered her finger to the toadstool. The imp sniffed it.

  “Careful,” Veera said, smiling. “It may get a taste for you.” She clicked her teeth together, and Olivia giggled.

  Simon asked again, louder, “Mother, are the Elder Gods real?”

  “Hm?” She glanced up, just as Olivia’s imp vanished in a wisp of green smoke. “What makes you ask that, Simon?”

  “Father says they’re just stories,” he said.

  She laughed. “Of course he says that. He only thinks something is real if he can weigh it on a scale or boil it in a test tube. I prefer to leave all possibilities open.”

  “But aren’t the Elder Gods something bad? You said they used to kill lots of people. Aren’t they evil?”

  “‘Evil’ is just a word people give to things they fear,” his mother replied. “A true Animist fears nothing.”

  Simon shifted in his chair, uneasy. Maybe Father wa
s right: his mother was a bit abnormal.

  Still, Simon couldn’t help envying her. He was afraid of so many things.

  When Simon glanced out the mailroom window, it was dark. He rubbed at his eyes. Sometimes, after hours of shuffling through letters and placing them in the proper drawers, he descended into a sort of numb haze where time slipped away. The impling had long since vanished, whisked back to the Eldritch Realm. He missed its warmth. Maybe one day, he could call on it again.

  He doused his candle and unfolded his cot from the wall. Yawning, he changed into his sleep-clothes—he kept them in a wooden chest beneath the desk—and eyed his robes. They were due for a washing. He turned on the tiny, rust-stained sink in the corner of the room, added some soap, and let it fill up with water. Then he sat on the edge of his cot and began a series of breathing exercises designed to quiet his mind.

  Be empty.

  He imagined himself growing insubstantial, translucent, like glass. Then he expanded his consciousness outward, focusing on the meta around him. It was everywhere, floating in the air and slumbering far beneath the stones of the Foundation Headquarters. If he concentrated, he could see it faintly—a network of shimmering golden lines traced into the darkness behind his eyelids, like thousands of fireflies. That same energy glowed in the center of his chest. He breathed in rhythm with the pulsing warmth inside him, the energy that bound him to the web of life.

  He crouched, pressed his palms to the floor, and slowly drew meta up through the floor and into his body. His skin tingled as the power filled him. His robe glowed a soft gold as it levitated into the air. Water from the sink levitated as well, sticking together to form wobbly, transparent globules laced with soap bubbles. They floated toward the robe, coalesced around it into a swirling sphere of water. The robe drifted within, turning around and around, slower, then faster.

  It wasn’t the most efficient method of washing clothes—if Simon’s concentration faltered, the whole thing would collapse, soaking the floor—but there was no communal laundry in the Foundation Headquarters. Because most apprentices didn’t live in Headquarters. They had their own homes, their own families . . . or, if they were old enough and well-off enough, their own rooms in the massive, stately apartment complex next door. (Such rooms were, Simon knew, well outside of what he could afford on the small allowance paid to him by the Foundation.) Master Melth was letting him live and sleep here as a favor. He tried to remind himself of that, when he started feeling resentful.

  Once or twice, in desperate moments, he’d thought about asking for money from his father. But a mixture of pride and fear always stopped him. He wasn’t sure his father had much to spare, anyway.

  When the robe was clean, Simon let the water blob disperse slowly into the air, becoming droplets, then mist. Once the last of the moisture had been pulled from the fabric, Simon hung it up on the hook near the door and wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow. Channeling for that long always left him drained and shaky.

  He settled onto the stiff mattress and pulled a thin blanket over himself. Faint moonlight crept in through the window.

  His shoulders ached. His back ached. He shifted around, trying to find a more comfortable position, until sheer exhaustion weighed him down, and the warm darkness of sleep enfolded him.

  The nightmares were waiting.

  Chapter Three

  “Care for a copy of the Eidendel Underground, sir?”

  Simon looked up, blinking blearily. He sat on his usual bench outside Foundation Headquarters, eating his usual mincemeat pie, shivering in the damp cold. He’d slept poorly—he’d had that dream again, the one that had plagued him for the last four years—and a headache pulsed behind his left eye.

  “The other papers are nothin’ but Foundation propaganda,” the voice said. “We’ve got the truth.”

  He turned his head to see the bedraggled woman, braids adorned with feathers, holding out a rolled-up paper. Her again? If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was following him. Though there was no spark of recognition in her grimy face. “No, thank you.”

  She waved it under his nose, as if tempting a dog with a biscuit. “Half a gilly?”

  Buying one would probably be the quickest way to get rid of her, and he didn’t feel like talking, so he fished a tarnished gilly out of his coin pouch, pressed it into her thin, dry palm, and took the paper. She handed him his change and smiled, showing several missing teeth. “You won’t regret it.”

  She walked away, and Simon exhaled a soft breath.

  In spite of himself, he felt a flicker of curiosity. He shuffled through the flimsy pages of the Underground, which was filled with exactly the sort of braying nonsense he’d expected. GRUNEWICK LABORATORY STILL IN OPERATION! GOVERNMENT LAB CREATES HUMAN-DEMON HYBRIDS AND UNDEAD SOLDIERS. ABOMINATIONS!

  Simon chewed another mouthful of his pie and used a sheet of the paper to wipe the grease off his hands. The cheap ink came off on his fingers, leaving them smeared with black.

  Conspiracy mongers were obsessed with the now-abandoned Grunewick Laboratory, which sat on an island off the coast of Eidendel. It hadn’t been in active use since the War of Ashes, centuries ago. Simon himself had been there, once, along with a class of other new apprentices; they’d been taken on a tour of the main floor, which was nothing but empty, dusty rooms and bed frames. He couldn’t deny, though—there was something morbidly entertaining about all these baseless speculations, printed as news. He wondered how many of the Underground’s readers actually believed all this.

  He flipped to another page. When his eyes fell upon the name Dr. Aberdeen Hawking, he froze. His mouth went dry.

  Ever since Simon’s father left the Foundation, he had been the tabloids’ favorite chew toy. There was always some new rumor, each one more bizarre than the last. The allegations ranged from political corruption to romantic liaisons with demons.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised to see his father’s name. He shouldn’t care. He should just chuck the paper in the trash. But his eyes moved involuntarily, scanning the lines of blearily printed text: Though the official story is vague, the consensus among our experts is that Dr. Hawking was expelled from the Foundation for grave-robbing and performing gruesome experiments on human corpses.

  Grave-robbing?

  “Numerous bodies have disappeared from the city morgue, in a series of incidents over the past several years,” says a source who chooses to remain unnamed for her own protection. “The Foundation has covered it up, of course, as they always do, but I believe Dr. Hawking is the culprit.” Furthermore, these expert sources have reason to believe that Dr. Hawking may have experimented on his own daughter, the now-deceased Olivia Hawking. Was he, perhaps, involved in her mysterious death?

  Simon wanted to violently crumple the paper until it was nothing but a microscopic ball.

  Experts, Simon thought contemptuously. What experts? They probably found some crazy hermit living under a bridge, asked him to ramble for a while, and then called him an “expert source.” Simon tossed the paper into the nearest rubbish bin. His hands were shaking.

  He and his father weren’t on good terms, to put it mildly. They hadn’t even seen each other since Simon left home two years ago. But he still hated hearing those ugly rumors.

  The clip-clop of hooves caught his ears.

  He turned his head to see a patrol rounding the corner, two men and two women clad in green Animist robes and riding sleek, well-fed horses.

  As the patrol drew closer, Simon’s stomach clenched. Brenner. He sat astride his mount, his hand resting on the hilt of a thin, coiled whip.

  Of course. The day was already off to such a splendid start—why not Brenner?

  Simon stood, looking around for an exit route. The patrol hadn’t noticed him yet; if he was careful, he could slip away before Brenner started his usual routine of sneers and insults.

  “Who here seeks the truth?” The bedraggled woman wandered across the street, waving a rolled-up paper. “Who dar
es to look behind the curtain?”

  Oh dear.

  Brenner held up a hand, and the patrol halted. In one smooth motion, he dismounted, and his fellow Animists followed suit. Brenner drew his whip and tapped the hilt against his hip a few times. “What have you got there, woman? Let’s see.”

  The woman froze—perhaps realizing her mistake, a little too late—and backed away. “Nothin’ important, sir, nothin’ a man of your station needs to trouble hisself with . . .”

  Brenner snatched the paper out of her hand and squinted at it for a few seconds. He raised his eyes to the woman, who was fiddling with an amulet around her neck, muttering under her breath.

  Brenner’s fingers tightened around his whip handle. The whip uncoiled itself and flicked out, snapping the air. The cord glowed red, like the heart of a furnace, as he raised the whip high and brought it down with a crack.

  Simon gasped. The woman fell to all fours, papers spilling from the satchel on her back, blood dripping from a gash on her arm.

  A few passersby stopped, turned, and stared.

  Brenner loomed over the woman and rattled the paper at her. “Libel,” he said, “is a serious offense. Perhaps you don’t appreciate how serious.”

  The woman curled into a ball, protecting her head with her arms. Several people averted their gazes and hurried past. Simon watched in stunned horror as Brenner raised his whip again.

  “Stop!” The word burst from Simon’s mouth before his brain had time to silence it.

  Brenner raised his head, eyes narrowed. The woman started to climb to her feet, but one of the other patrollers planted a boot on her back and forced her down again.

  “Who said that?” Brenner called out.

  Simon squeezed one hand into a fist. A voice in his head whispered, He’s a patrol member. He outranks you. You’ll just get yourself into trouble.