Page 54 of Tomb of Ancients
“Gods,” she answered for Malatriss. “Ancients. Those that came before and were made to surrender.”
“Some have yet to be,” Malatriss added. “Many decided to return here to sleep.”
“This... This is where I was born.” Mother walked to an empty tomb, spreading her palms across it. There were other cases like it, abandoned or waiting to be filled. “I have memories of this place. I have dreamt of it, too.”
“That’s why I could see it,” I said. “Because Father remembered it.” The library, rectangular but with a ceiling so tall it simply became darkness, stretched on and on, perhaps into eternity. This place, as she had said, existed out of time. I felt compelled to speak only in a whisper, as if afraid to disturb the slumber of so many dreamers. Mother began to cry, and I went to her side, ignoring the pain of carrying the book to wrap an arm around her waist in comfort.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I should not have brought you to this place.”
“No,” she said, smiling through her tears. “It is beautiful to see it again.”
“When you have had your fill, you may approach the Binder,” Malatriss announced, standing apart from us and petting her snake. “Time is meaningless here, and I am in no rush to watchyou die. If you have made it this far, you deserve to mark the tomb’s splendor.”
And mark it I did, wandering down the endless line of coffins to see the array of gods and goddesses within, all unique but for the peaceful, blank expression they shared. Mother remained slumped against her own empty case, and my curiosity soon curdled as my feet brushed something brittle on the ground. Bones. I had stepped directly onto a skeleton, its arm turning to dust under my foot.
“But... I thought one had to be immortal to enter,” I whispered, jumping back in horror. It was not my intent to desecrate the dead, and the empty sockets of the fallen skull stared at me accusingly. “To have known death and returned...”
“There are many ways to taste death,” Malatriss replied. “You two are the first truly immortal beings to enter the tomb.”
The bones had shaken me, and I stumbled back toward Mother, hefting the pack higher on my shoulders before turning to Malatriss. “Mother, I know you are overcome, but I must hurry. My friends are in danger.”
“Of course,” Mother said, pressing her forehead to the glass sarcophagus. “Of course. Go on, let us see this Binder.”
I returned to Malatriss, a lump in my throat. Now I needed all of my courage. I had met a Binder before, and every inch of me recoiled at the thought of seeing another. The thing had brought me only pain and torment, but then, it had also givenMother back to us. And my purpose in the tomb was not to admire all the gods that had been and could be, but to destroy the white book and earn the ritual that would sever Father from me for good.
“Tell me, then,” I said to Malatriss, with great trepidation but also great urgency, for time might not have had meaning in this place, but it undoubtedly did in Yorkshire. I watched her cat eyes dance with excitement. “Tell me what comes next. I came to unmake the white book, and then I will be leaving this place.”
“The Binder comes,” she hissed, showing me her demon’s smile. “The unbinding begins. You will ask of it one boon, it will take from you two. You ask of it two favors, it will require three. Choose your words carefully, little one. Nothing in this place is free.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Once, delinquent as usual at my old school, Pitney, I had sneaked out of my bed to enjoy the pleasure of nighttime solitude. To be at a boarding school was to endure constant noise. Even when the candles were snuffed out and we were put to bed, somebody snored or coughed through the night, and I, ever a light sleeper, would spend anotherrestless spell counting the days until our lessons broke and we received a brief respite. Not that anyone would visit me or that I would be allowed to leave—my grandparents wanted nothing to do with me, thinking me a broken bird with a wing that never mended. That injured wing, naturally, being my contrary nature, my strange black eyes, and my bothersome habit of speaking my mind.
But still, when those days arrived, I might spend all my ungoverned hours hiding up a tree with a book, and then throwing rocks at squirrels with my one friend, Jenny. Her family never visited or invited her home, either, her father gambling away their money, her mother ever abed with some real or invented frailness.
And so, desperate for those easier days, but knowing they were far off, I tiptoed past the sleeping teachers at the door that night, over the threadbare carpets, down one set of stairs, and across the left side of the second-floor gallery to the library. Nobody thought to guard the library, since the dozing sentries outside the bunk room were considered vigilance enough. The wood floors of the library were icy cold on my bare feet. Francine Musgrove, the person, at the time, whom I considered the worst person in England, had stolen my socks and hidden them in a chamber pot. Nothing, not even warmth, was worth the price of fishing around in someone’s piss bucket.
The books, however—the lovely, lovely books—and the quiet banished the misery of the cold. I found a nook near thewindow and read by moonlight, rousing myself with pinches so as not to be caught sleeping there come morning.
Now I stood once again in a darkened library, and I felt strangely similar—cold, alone, delinquent, choosing to put myself in a place where I did not belong.
God, I thought, blinded for a moment as all the light in the Tomb of Ancients went out, what would Jenny think of me now? My greatest adversary was no longer Francine Musgrove and her penchant for thieving my undergarments; my adversaries were gods, creatures of ancient myth, vengeful spirits, and the unquestionably evil thing descending from the ceiling now. I shivered, realizing that it had been hovering in the darkness all along, watching us. Waiting.
Even Francine Musgrove did not deserve to be faced with this.
Instinctively, I reached for Mother’s hand. She watched the Binder drift down toward us with narrowed eyes. The fine, purple hairs on her arms stood on end, and she whispered something, a prayer, in a language far older than English. The true language of the Dark Fae.
This Binder looked nothing like the last. Indeed, it was hard to consider it one thing at all, for it was primarily a collection of arms, each dangling from the end of a glistening string. I did not need to step closer to know those strings were living, more like tendons than twine. The hands at the ends of thosearms, perhaps thirty in all, held quills and inkpots, blotters and pouches of sand, wax, brands, and various jars filled with colored liquids, most too thick to be ink. One hand juggled a pair of dice, one cube red and the other black, each side mottled and carved with odd symbols.
And at the center of this pale and fleshy array hung an overlarge head, attached to a withering white torso. The Binder had no legs, and it appeared sexless; it was bulbous and smooth, the color and quality of an egg. Its odd, round body, floating amid the detached arms, gave it the vague appearance of an insect with many legs, yet it defied even that comparison, for its “body” was at least the size of a wagon.
The only resemblance it bore to the other Binder was its slit-like nostrils and unsteady mouth, which flapped and jostled as it floated there above us.
“This one carries two of my creations.” Its voice reminded me of a workman who drank in the alley outside my childhood home. Buoyant, nasal, jolly. But then, he had gone on to stab his wife in a drunken rage, so maybe not so jolly after all.
“The white book,” I said, dredging up my voice from a chest fluttering with fear. “I... I would see it destroyed.” I removed the pack from my shoulders and dropped it. Malatriss swooped out of the darkness and took it up, then carried it closer to the Binder.
The Binder’s face careened toward mine, so close it shockedthe breath out of me. I gasped and closed my eyes, then forced myself to open them slowly. Its loose mouth chewed, passing spittle from cheek to cheek, as it studied me from an inch away.
