Page 74 of Wizards & Weavers
“Just cast it over here,” Bones said, gesturing at his torso. “And quickly, if you please.”
Oh — he was referring to his ribcage, not just lewdly rattling his pelvis in Braiden’s general direction. Well, that was different. And he did say “Please,” after all.
Braiden concentrated his magic around the tips of his fingers, shaping his weaving skills in a different direction. He’d become so good at conjuring plush yarns for practicing beer cozies and scarves that making finer strings almost felt like a forgotten end of the weaving spectrum.
Focus, he told himself. Not thick, luxurious othergoat wool this time, but silkworm strings. Unicorn hair, not that he’d ever felt it with his fingers. Or spider silk, the stuff of cobwebs, thin and nearly naked to the eye, but strong and sturdy as forged steel. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. Anything approximate would do.
He unleashed the spell, conjuring glowing, golden lengths of string from thin air. The skeleton took only the briefest moment to admire the display before he reached for the string, tangling it around the protrusions of his ribcage.
One length of the string secured down around his hipbone, another wound across his torso to wrap around a rib, and again and again, string and bone connected in loops and knots by the skeleton’s surprisingly dextrous fingers.
“Finished,” Bones announced, hands on his hips, his nonexistent belly stuck out with pride. A cat’s cradle of golden ensorcelled string covered his ribcage in a haphazard crisscross.
Orwasit haphazard? It was a hurried effort, but the final result looked oddly familiar, a deliberate pattern. Where had Braiden seen this before?
“It’s coming back to me now,” Bones said. “In bits and flashes. This is who I once was. I used to make music.”
An instrument. The skeleton had transformed himself into a walking string instrument. Braiden couldn’t help beingimpressed. But how was this going to help them escape the cavern?
Bones gave his network of strings a tentative pluck, his ribcage emitting a plaintive tone.
“Beautiful music,” he said wistfully. “Powerful music. Now, cover your ears.”
Braiden blinked hard. “I’m sorry. What?”
“You heard me, stringy. Sharp-ears, long-ears, windbag,” Bones shouted. “Cover your ears!”
Everyone hesitated, especially now that both the Gwerenese and the elven guards were starting to pick themselves up. Use their hands to cover their ears when they needed them to cast spells and wield weapons?
But Braiden obeyed, skittering past the skeleton with his hands clapped over his ears. The others did the same, Warren in particular expressing some difficulty in folding down his especially floppy ears.
The orc untangled his restraints, snarling as he climbed to his feet. The horned warrior laughed bitterly as he thrust the tip of his sword deep into the ice, pulling himself up by the hilt. King Emeritas waved his fingers in a complicated pattern, his brow furrowed as he intoned ancient elven words.
And calmly, serenely, as if he wasn’t the sole obstacle standing between certain death and the rest of his party, Bones strummed his skeletal fingers against the strings on his ribcage.
A horrific, discordant note ripped throughout the chamber, so horrible and grating a sound that Braiden could hear it stinging his ears even through his palms. The skeleton all but unhinged his jaw. Braiden thought he’d heard the worst that the bony bard could muster.
But then Bones began to sing.
The Gwerenese, the orc, the horned warrior all fell to their knees, weapons crashing as they dropped them, screaming inagony. The elven retinue, though they were farther away, wailed even louder as the skeleton’s unholy sonic barrage reached their sensitive ears. The guards clawed at themselves, the captain weeping in distress. King Emeritas ripped the silks from his palanquin, sobbing as he twisted them into makeshift earplugs with trembling hands.
Bones strolled forward as he strummed, now that the path to the exit was clear, never letting up on his awful melody. Braiden and the others followed in wide-eyed horror, stepping over and around their fallen opponents. Fedro had ripped off his vest, wrapping it around his head in a haphazard turban. Falina had unlaced her blouse, pulling it over her hair until she resembled a frilly pillowcase.
Never did Braiden expect that the cowardly skeleton, of all people, would be the one to save the day. Their party had been spared a terrible bruising. Far out in the frozen passage, when they had safely left their attackers behind, Bones finally ended his performance.
“Thank you,” he said, taking a sweeping bow as Braiden and his friends looked on in befuddlement. “Thank you. You’re too kind.”
Elyssandra clapped her hands, never at a loss for kind words, but so close to speechless now. “That was — that was very unique, Bones.”
“I underestimated you,” Warren told the skeleton. His hand hovered over Bones’s shoulders as if to clap him in congratulations, but Warren thought better of it. “You saved all our hides back there.”
“Yes,” Augustin said, twiddling one finger against the inside of his ear. “A most harrowing performance, indeed.”
“You’re welcome,” Bones said, “but you should thank stringy over here, too. He helped me recreate one of my favoriteinstruments — on my body, of all places. The Hyberidian Pleasure Box.”
Braiden winced. If that was the ancient Hyberidian ideal of pleasure, he dreaded to consider their concept of pain.
“You can call me Braiden,” Braiden said, smiling. “You should use all our names, now that you’re one of us. You said your memories were returning. Do you happen to remember your own name?”
