The Boiling Seas: Non-Canon Adventures, Part 4

If you haven’t read part 3 yet, do. If you have, welcome to the crypt…

He strode off along the corridor of skulls, and Max followed. Shelf after shelf after shelf they passed, Tal’s witchlight flowing smoothly over pale bone. Most were unblemished, stripped of whatever aged flesh had once wrapped them,  but there were many that showed signs of damage. Max was healer as well as scholar, and recognised sword-cuts and hammer-blows, fractures old and new, the swathes of tiny spines that spoke of cancers of the bone, and other strange mottling besides. Most of the alcoves were stuffed full of bones – but again some were missing leg-bones, or half a stack of ribs. They passed one skull that grinned down without a lower jaw, its remaining teeth glinting in the golden light. Max shuddered at that one without quite knowing why.

A few alcoves – just a few, but enough – had no skulls. Their plaques described nothing but neat stacks of long bones, their owners’ faces lost forever.

There were sconces in the walls for old-fashioned torches, but none were lit. As they progressed, torches became oil lanterns, then chemical, as the bones in the ossuary’s alcoves grew brighter, whiter, newer. But there was no light at all, save that which flowed around Tal’s fingers. The shadows flowed too, oil to the water of the witchlight. Finally, after what seemed like a mile of shadowed skulls, they came to a break in the bones. The shelves stopped, and beneath an extinguished lantern there was a pedestal of the same grey stone as everything else at the asylum. On it was a heavy book. It was old, but nowhere near as old as anything else they’d seen so far.

“If this isn’t alphabetised,” Tal muttered as he stepped over and opened the tome, “I’m going to burn that building down.” He sighed with relief. “By date. That’ll do. When are we looking for, Max?”

“Date of death or internment?”

“Internment, looks like.”

“Fourteenth of Parthis, twelve seventy-two.” The date rolled off Max’s tongue like her own name.

“Your memory,” Tal said as he began flipping pages, “is genuinely frightening.” The pages were heavy parchment, each one landing audibly as Tal turned them. “I brought your notes and everything. Wish I hadn’t bothered.” He patted his satchel absently, and Max noticed that it was bulging a little more than normal. She grimaced guiltily. She wrote quickly and profusely, and in the process of gathering information about their target she’d filled a heavy notebook from cover to cover – and stuffed it with loose papers. And then, because she’d known that nothing she took with her into the asylum would come out again, she’d committed it all to her admittedly prodigious memory.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Tal said, flashing her a smile. “But if you write much more we’ll have to buy a bigger trunk. And hire someone to carry it.”

“I’ll condense a bit.” Tal carried nothing but his satchel. Max had a pack and a set of cases that weighed almost as much as she did.

“You’d better.” Tal was still flipping pages. “And you’d better keep watch. I’m only in the eight hundreds.”

Max nodded and stepped back. She wanted to look at that book – but if she did then it would be days before she reached the entry they needed. She knew she wouldn’t be able to resist taking a proper look – but Tal could skim-read like a professional. She stepped away and turned to face the pitch-black corridor. Keep watch. Right. She hadn’t quite gotten the hang of Tal’s air-sense yet, and she couldn’t see a thing.

So she closed her useless eyes, and listened.

At first, all she could hear was the whisper of turning pages in the echoing gloom. But she opened her mind, stretched out her senses. She could feel the stone of the tunnel, cold beneath her bare feet. It was still, at first. But as she breathed, slowly, in and out, she felt the subtle movements shaking through it, through the air that began to feel like liquid against her skin, the vibration of each and every tiny sound – for that was all sound was, when you broke it down, and vibrations were energy – and so was magic. Some audiokenes could wield sound like a weapon, roaring like a storm as easily of breathing; some could render crowds as silent as a whisper. Max was newly come to the discipline, but practice made perfect, and the best way to learn to wield an element was to immerse one’s self in it. So she stood, and paid no attention to anything save touch and sound. Her own breathing was like thunder in her ears, each page Tal turned a great door creaking open. She tuned those sounds out – something that had taken her a lot of practice to master – and listened for the vibrations in the air and stone ahead of her, from the tunnel. At first there was nothing. But as her connection to the stone grew stronger she heard sounds that were faint at first but grew louder: the sound of distant voices, incomprehensible but there, the sound of heavy boots on flagstones.

“They’re in the chapel,” she whispered, wincing at the thunder of her faint words. “Two… or three.” Their voices mingled from so far away. “Can’t hear them, but they’ve not come down yet.”

“Alright.” So close, Tal’s whisper made her jump out of her skin. Max refocused herself, listening again, connecting herself to the far end of the tunnel with a chain of gently humming particles. The longer she listened, the easier it became to understand the distant voices.

“…broken… something…”

“…prisoner?” That chilled her a little; not patient, prisoner.

“But… locked. All… floor.”

“They’re starting to figure it out,” Max warned, feeling her own words ripple from her mouth in a great wave. “We don’t have long.”

“Almost found it,” Tal replied, his voice another pebble dropped in Max’s ocean of sound.

“…downstairs?”

“Can’t have.” She could pick the two voices apart now. One reverberated far deeper than the other. “It’s locked.” The rattling of the heavy door on its hinges cut sharply through the air. “See?”

“Unless they picked it.” The other guard’s voice was reedy and unpleasant. “Let’s just check it, shall we? No harm. And it’s out of the wind.”

“Sure,” the other guard sighed. “Why not.”

The sound of the lock being turned rang sharply in Max’s ears as she broke her trance. Sound rushed out of her ears in a flood, and she reeled for a moment as she adjusted to ordinary noise.

“They’re coming down!”

“Got it!” Tal slammed the book closed with a heavy thump. “Further on. Seven twenty-seven.”

Without another word they both turned and began to run. Tal’s boots were soft and Max’s feet bare, so even at a jog they were near-silent – but behind them Max could hear the clicking of hard heels on flagstones. The guards were coming.

“Dim the light,” she hissed, and Tal did so, the glow in his fingers dimming until they could barely see two feet ahead. She heard him begin to count under his breath, marking the alcoves they passed by the rhythm of their footsteps rather than sight. Behind them, the glow of a chemical lantern was slowly becoming brighter as the guards marched down the corridor of bones.

“five, six, here.” Tal skidded to a halt, and Max stumbled after him. He raised his glowing fist, and illuminated the plaque marked with the number 727, and the name Thaddeus Fierling, and the grinning skull that had borne it.

“That’s him,” Max whispered. Her mind was already painting the skin and muscles back over the man’s face, his regal countenance etched in her memory from a dozen portraits and etchings. Thaddeus Fierling, gentleman explorer. The nobleman had been legendary in his day for his extensive travels across the world and the Boiling Seas in particular, sailing in his own personal cutter on the wildly dangerous journeys that had been all that were possible in the age before steelships. His accounts of the islands of his era had been required reading in the Lantern’s history classes, lauding the intrepid noble for an inquisitive spirit centuries ahead of his time.

Max’s own reading had uncovered a very different man: hypocritical, prone to outbursts of violence – especially against his long-suffering servants – and as exploitative as possible of every culture he had encountered on his travels. There was a reason that his skull and bones were lodged halfway down a colossal ossuary instead of having a fine tomb of their own, that his name had been almost entirely forgotten outside of the world’s universities and archives. He was one of those figures it was more expedient to leave forgotten than to make the effort to remember.

But there had been enough written to tell a diligent researcher – or at least one diligent researcher – where to look to find Fierling’s bones. And what might have been left with them.

“Be careful,” Tal warned, as Max reached up to the alcove. She was taller than Tal, could reach it more easily. The wiry thief held up his witchlit hand, his eyes turned away towards the corridor, watching for the guards. The light flowed over Fierling’s skull like molten gold. Carefully, Max reached up and took the skull in both hands, bending down to place it gently on the floor. A swift examination showed her nothing hidden within it, inside the jaw or beneath. Of course it couldn’t be that easy.

Bone by bone, Max slid the fragments of Fierling’s body free of their alcove, slowly and carefully, checking each and every one for the object they sought. She couldn’t rush, not with something so delicate – but as the distant footsteps of the marching guards grew louder, she knew that she soon wouldn’t have a choice.

“Anything?” Tal hissed.

“Not yet,” Max muttered. She slid a thighbone free, and barely caught the femur above it as it slipped from its place. She wobbled on her tiptoes, trying to hold both bones in one hand, but recovered her balance.

“Be quick,” Tal said. Carefully, slowly, he drew his knife. “They’re almost on us.”

Max slid another bone aside, but there was nothing in the alcove but dark stone and old dust. Frustrated, she looked down at the row of finger- and toe-bones. She shoved them aside with one hand, trying not to rattle them – and saw beneath the fingers a glint of silver. She grabbed it.

“Got it!” I think. But there wasn’t time to look for anything else – the light of the guards’ lantern was growing brighter and brighter. She bent for Fierling’s skull.

“No time!” Tal hissed, grabbing her arm.

“But they’ll see – ”

“Can’t be helped. Move!”

Light in hand, he pulled her away – deeper into the tunnel.

“You think there’s another way out?” Max whispered as they ran.

“Not a clue.”

“Then shouldn’t we – ”

“Just run, will you?”

Max shut up and ran, bare feet slapping softly against the flagstones, the gleaming object she had snatched from Fierling’s bones cutting into her palm as she gripped it tightly. Behind them came a shout of alarm, echoing down the tunnel: the guards had clearly reached the old explorer’s desecrated alcove. Max winced. Sorry. Whatever kind of man he had been in life Thaddeus Fierling deserved a peaceful rest. She felt guilty for taking so long, not replacing the skeleton. Tal, she knew, had fewer qualms about such things than she did. Though he respects them too. It was just that he was more prepared to be practical when it was really necessary.

They ran through a blur of bones. Tal let his light grow brighter – there was no point hiding it now, now that the hard sound of boots on stone was fast and loud, joined by the clinking of metal as the guards ran down the corridor after them. There must be another way out. Or they wouldn’t be rushing. Or maybe they were just eager to catch the intruders, Max thought to herself as they ran. She was out of breath now, trying not to pant too loudly even though stealth would soon be pointless.

She hoped Tal had a plan. She had assumed he did when they started running, but he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t said anything. She saw the knife in his hand. Not like him. He wouldn’t resort to violence. Would he?

“Here!” The whisper was sharp, and Max stumbled as Tal skidded to a halt in front of her, almost running into him. The witchlight played off another alcove, like the one before, holding another pedestal with another ledger. Of course! There had to be more than one copy of the heavy index. Tal had known that. That was why he had run on.

“Get in,” Tal muttered, sliding behind the pedestal awkwardly. It was a small alcove, and once Max had obeyed and struggled inside herself there was no room to move at all. She was shoulder to shoulder with Tal, pinned against the back wall by the pedestal.

“They’ll see us!” she hissed. It was the worst hiding place she had ever seen.

“Not if you do that thing again,” Tal muttered, bringing his knife-hand up across his chest awkwardly. “Like you did outside.”

“I don’t have the strength,” Max protested feebly. She really was tired; the run would have been bad enough if she hadn’t already been drained by the magic she’d done above the ground. Could she do it again?

“Tough,” Tal said curtly. “Now or never.”

His witchlight dimmed, then died, and all was dark – for a moment. Blinking rapidly to adjust her eyes Max saw the faint but growing glow of a chemical lantern, as the sound of the guards’ footsteps grew louder and louder. Now or never.

She took a deep breath, and drew the darkness of the tomb around them like a shroud, and as the light of the guards’ lantern finally lit the alcove she pushed it away. Please. She gritted her teeth with the strain of it – but then the clinking mail and hard boot-heels were gone, fading as the guards kept running straight past the dark alcove and into the unknown.

Max felt Tal’s hand on her arm – a warning. Hold it. She knew better than to let the cloak of shadows drop, but it was hard, so hard, to keep it up. But she managed it, drawing on energy she hadn’t known she had. After what felt like forever Tal squeezed her arm, and she let the magic go, gasping as cold flooded her very bones. Tal’s witchlight ignited dimly.

“Well done,” Tal whispered. “Very well done. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

With a gentle hand at her back, he helped her down the tunnel and back out to the surface above.

Part 5 – the finale – coming next week.