Page 106 of Silver in the Bone

So, we climbed. I kept count of the landings between each steep and shallow set of stairs. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ... nine.

“It can’t be the tower,” I said, recalling the image of the tower from the courtyard. “It has five levels, and the library is at the top.”

“We went down three stories too,” Emrys pointed out. “Maybe the main stairwell only goes to the fifth floor because that’s all the other Avalonians are allowed to see?”

“Or no one alive remembers there’s another floor, or how to get there,” I said, winded from the climb. “Except our cloaked friend.”

The last set of stairs was shorter than the others, lending some credence to our theory that there was a smaller, hidden floor above the library. The dizzying and winding trail led to exactly what I had expected: a locked door. Black iron, with a door pull inside the metal mouth of what looked like a screaming human skull.

The door was locked, but there was no keyhole, making it impossible to pick. But a fastening spell had never stopped my persnickety companion before.

Ignatius, still clearly petulant about the rough treatment I’d given him earlier, took forever to open his eye once his wicks were burning.

“Sorry to catch you at a bad time, but if you aren’t too busy ... ,” I said to the churlish hand, gesturing toward the lock.

As his light fell upon it, misty, golden webs of magic appeared, as if the glow had peeled back a layer of shadow to reveal the locking spell’s structural bones. It was only when Emrys reached out to stroke one lightly with his fingers, amazement dawning on his face, that I realized it was anything unusual.

The bolt inside it slid open and the heavy door swung out.

“You’ve got a complicated relationship with that thing, don’t you?” Emrys said.

I pushed him forward, forcing him into the room first. As he stooped to pass through the doorway, he stopped, blocking it.

“What?” I asked, standing on my toes to see past the expanse of his back. Every muscle there seemed to tense at once. “What is it?”

A strange vibration moved through my left hand and down my arm. It was Ignatius. The hand was trembling; the filmy pale eye was wide open.

Finally, Emrys moved out of the way.

The walls on either side of us were lined with wood shelves, each burdened with small objects, white as fired porcelain. But as I stepped inside, letting Ignatius’s light fill the small space, unease ran its cold, clammy hand over my chest. The shapes—the sculptures—were grotesque. Agonized in their forms.

And made of human bone.

“Holy gods,” I breathed out, risking a step closer to the nearest shelf. Emrys’s fingers skimmed down my back, as if instinctively trying to grab my shoulder and keep me from it.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Not in books, or vaults, or tombs, or anywhere else.”

“This is ...” Emrys, for once, truly seemed at a loss for words. A noticeable shiver moved through him as he rubbed at his arms. “Who do these bones belong to? What kind of sick mind would desecrate them like this?”

“It feels like a collection, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Is it possible whoever made them killed this many people?” Emrys asked faintly.

I shook my head. “Even before the curse, there weren’t enough beings living here for someone not to notice people dying or disappearing. I think someone’s been digging around in graves.”

Setting Ignatius on the ground, I brought my flashlight close to the first sculpture in the line of them. The upper portion of the mouth, just behind the teeth, had been carefully cut to fit against a pelvic bone. Both were etched with tiny, almost unreadable markings.

“Are they curse sigils?” Emrys asked, leaning over my shoulder. The warmth of his body caressed my back, his breath stirring the loose hair near my cheek.

“No,” I said. “The shapes are rounder, more intertwined. I’ve never seen some of these before. Do you think they’re left over from the days of the druids?”

“The sorceresses created their own language to control magic,” Emrys said. “It makes sense there might be others. Or the marks are purely decorative.”

The sculpture beside it was a rib cage balanced on two femurs, secured in place again by precisely cut slits in the bones that allowed them to fit seamlessly. A hand hung down from the center of the ribs, its finger bones melded together with silver knuckles. All covered in the sigils.

Bile burned its way up my throat as I turned, taking stock of them all. They were vile and horrific; I could barely stand to look at them without feeling the cold swell of some deep, innate fear that had been bred and nurtured across the thousands of generations of my family line.

---