The Boiling Seas: Non-Canon Adventures, Part 3
Part 3 of the non-canon Boiling Seas story. If you haven’t read part 2, it’s here. But now it’s time to get spooky.
The chapel was as bare and dull within as without. The walls were whitewashed, the seats rough wooden benches that didn’t even look properly sanded down. Even the most simple places of worship would display the symbols of the various gods – but in here they were small, dull things, looking almost an afterthought above the plain stone block that was the altar. The pulpit was of the same rough-hewn wood. There were no banners, was no metalwork, no ornamentation of any kind. Max’s lip curled in disgust. She’d spent a lot of her academic career examining accounts of the temples of old, things of gold and soaring spires dedicated to deities long since forgotten. Tal, who had actually seen many of those forgotten temples, looked just as unimpressed. This was a paltry imitation even if one were feeling generous.
“So,” Tal said, dragging Max from her reverie, “this ossuary.”
“Um, somewhere behind the altar. That’s where they usually are. In places like this.” Tal nodded, and strode down the aisle between the benches without hesitating. The chemical lanterns that ran in a line along the ceiling were extinguished, the only light within the pale moon, filtering through the slit windows. Even if someone were watching the windows no passing shadow would be visible. She followed him. There was a door, but Tal ignored it. Probably just a back room. Instead he knelt behind the altar, where there was flat double door set into the flagstones, heavy and ironbound. It too was locked, but Tal’s picks flashed, and though it took him a moment he had it open swiftly. He pried up one of the doors, grunting with the effort.
“Give me a hand.”
Together they lifted the heavy doors free. The hinges were thankfully well-oiled. A steep stair led down, into a darkness like pure pitch, utterly impenetrable. Max shivered at the sight despite herself. You broke into an asylum. And out of it. This isn’t even the most frightening thing you’ve done today, let alone lately. All the same, the dark, and her knowledge of what lurked within it, made her shudder.
“Guards!” Tal’s hiss was urgent. His eyes were closed as he felt the air. “Two coming. With a hound.” He was already halfway into the hole in the floor. “Come on!”
Half-reluctantly Max dropped into the steep stairwell, and she pulled her door up and over, straining at the huge weight of the iron and old oak. She almost let it drop – almost – but she held it, and she and Tal lowered the doors as gently as they could, setting them in place with barely a sound and plunging them into total darkness. They were just in time. As the doors slotted into place Max heard the chapel’s main door open, and cursed quietly. It shouldn’t have opened at all, should have stayed resolutely locked without the key. The guards would see the shattered lock – and as she thought it she heard one of them exclaim, muffled by the heavy doors but clearly startled. She grimaced.
“Sorry,” she murmured, almost directly in Tal’s ear.
“Don’t worry,” the thief murmured back. He was doing something in the dark, working by touch alone. “They won’t find us.”
“Surely they’ll look in here?”
“Not – ” there was a soft click from above them “ – if it’s still locked.” There was another, softer snap, and a soft golden light filled the air, gently spreading out from Tal’s clenched fist. It was dim, but in the darkness it was more than enough to see the satisfaction on his face as he pocketed his lockpicks again.
“Very nice,” Max admitted. Tal grinned.
“Thanks. Now let’s get below before they bring over the damn dog.”
Down the steep stair they climbed, into the dark, the golden glow of Tal’s witchlight dripping from his fingers. Max had to fight not to be fascinated by the light, forcing herself to concentrate on the rough, plain stone of the tunnel, looking for clues. Tal’s light was a strange piece of magic, neither pure fire nor pure light, nothing that any piece of book-learning had prepared her to see. But then he’d had no formal training like she had, knew none of the structures and theories of magic that had been laid down by centuries of scholars. The light running over Tal’s hand like liquid was something instinctual, something new.
Thankfully there was neither sight nor sound of pursuit – the guards above must have been fooled by Tal’s relocking of the doors. The surface was, presumably, still in uproar from the broken lock, clear evidence of trespassers – but at least, for now, they were out of sight and mind. Max didn’t relish the thought of what might wait for them above, though. She pushed it out of her mind. The tunnel levelled out quickly, and the witchlight illuminated more plain flagstones, more rough walls. Tal’s frown deepened.
“Long way down.”
“They wish to keep its contents safe,” Max replied as they walked. “I cannot blame them. This is a traditional design, in any case.”
“Arcadian?”
“Later, but inspired. The dead must be kept at a minimum distance from the living worshippers. To avoid unintentional idolatry.” Max remembered the hefty treatise she’d laboured through a few years before when studying funeral rites for a series of essays. “Space and layout were very important to the Arcadians. Alter placement, proximity of relics – ”
“I do know a little,” Tal interrupted – but gently, with a small smile. “I don’t need a lecture.”
“Sorry.” Max flushed. Not talking to anyone for four days had clearly affected her more than she’d realised.
“Anyway,” Tal continued, “you can point it out to me in person. Here we are.”
Before them, the rough tunnel ended in an archway of smooth black marble, polished to a mirror-bright gleam. Tal took another step, stretching out his hand, and the liquid glow of his witchlight licked at the walls beyond the archway, and caressed the bones that sat upon the rows of endless shelves.
“Hellfire,” Tal breathed. Max was already ahead of him, leaning close to one of the shelves. The bones were human, and they were legion. They were not laid out in the shape of skeletons, but packed neatly into the shelves, separated by wooden dividers. Long, thin bones were stacked at the back of the deep shelves, tibiae jostling for space with ribs; in front of them sat vertebrae stacked three or four high in tight columns. The small bones of fingers and toes had been placed in slots in the bottom of the shelves, running the width of each alcove, and atop those slots, at the front of each space, was a grinning, eyeless skull.
“Fascinating,” Max breathed, examining the nearest skull. The alcove was barely wider than the skull itself, every bone of the owner’s body packed tightly into the space behind it. It was a very efficient use of space. A small brass plaque gleamed below the skull. The owner’s name had been Alexios. The dates were several hundred years old. Amazing. That was old Arcadian. Had this bone-House really been here for that long?
“Just how many,” Tal began, but he faltered as he raised his hand, clenching it, his witchlight glowing more brightly, and he saw the full extent of the ossuary. Max gasped too. There were hundreds of alcoves, the shelves stretching floor to ceiling, eight feet high, and from every one there leered a pale skull, dark-eyed and grinning.
“Hundreds,” Max breathed, her thumping, fearful heart fighting a bloody war with her fascinated scholar’s brain. Thousands, even. All named, all dated. This could not have always been an asylum. What other buildings stood on this isle before? Temples? Palaces? Given time she could have compiled whole books’ worth of new knowledge of the old Empire from these bones and this place, she was sure of it.
But they didn’t have that time. The guards would, eventually, realise she was gone from her cell, and when they did so no stone would be left unturned in their search for her. The asylum prided itself on its security. According to them, no patient – or prisoner – had ever left without being discharged. If they dallied, they would be hunted – and eventually they would be found.
Tal saw the look on her face and grimaced. He, too, had the glint of fascination in his eye. A thief only he was not.
“We don’t have time.”
“I know.”
“Maybe some day.”
“Maybe.” But Max knew it would almost certainly not be a day in her lifetime. She breathed in deeply, and then let out her regret in a great sigh.
“Alright,” she said. “There ought to be an alcove further along. With records.” She felt a pang of loss, knowing what those records might be able to tell her, but quashed it.
“An index?”
“I hope so.”
Tal let out a sigh of his own, and straightened, brightening his witchlight.
“Come on, then. Let’s get this done.”
Tune in next week for part 4.
