The Silver Door

10 - Bones

The skeleton man watched avidly as Rye, Sonia and Dirk read the sign. ‘Bones sees!’ he cackled. ‘Bones sees your eyes a-reading along! You know your words all right, lords an’ lady! See this one?’ With a long, yellow fingernail he stabbed at the word ‘death’.

‘Stay where you are,’ Dirk murmured to Rye and Sonia, his lips barely moving. He stepped forward, tightening his grip on the skimmer hook.

‘That’s “death” that is,’ the skeleton man said, nodding madly. ‘That’s one Bones knows.’ He jabbed at the second word on the sign. ‘An’ “Saltings”, that’s another.’

‘Indeed,’ Dirk agreed politely. ‘And what of this?’ Without taking his eyes off the stranger, he pointed to the strange symbol that followed the warning message.

Bones blinked rapidly. His hand crept up to the beads hanging around his neck and he began to finger them one by one, muttering under his breath. With a thrill of disgust, Rye realised for the first time that they were not beads at all, but human teeth.

‘Well?’ Dirk asked roughly, tapping the symbol.

Bones cringed. ‘Is the mark,’ he mumbled, his ridged yellow nails clicking feverishly on his repulsive necklace. ‘His mark. The Master.’

The last words were no more than a hoarse whisper. Rye’s own spine tingled in response to the man’s terror. He felt Sonia grip his arm, but did not turn to look at her. He could not tear his eyes away from the symbol on the sign.

It was just a hand enclosed in a circle. There was a fuzzy white spot in the centre of the hand’s palm, as if a light was burning there. Surely there was nothing so terrible in that. Yet as he stared at it, Rye felt dread gathering like a cold cloud around his heart.

‘The Master,’ Dirk repeated slowly. ‘Your master rules this side of Dorne, does he?’

Bones stared, his mouth hanging open. ‘Bones don’t know sides,’ he said at last. ‘Bones only knows the Scour, an’ the Saltings.’

‘What—where—is the Scour?’ Dirk snapped.

Bones waved his arm helplessly at the flat, bare land. ‘All here, till where the Saltings starts.’

‘And it is death to enter the Saltings, is it?’

Again Bones nodded. And then, weirdly, though his eyes remained fearful, his lips twisted into a crooked smile. He looked over his shoulder as if to make absolutely sure that no one else was listening. Then he leaned forward.

‘For most it is,’ he whispered. ‘But not for Bones. Bones be too much for the Master that way. An’ not for you, lords an’ lady—no, no, no! You be too much for the Master as well, you three.’

A look of cunning appeared on his face. He tapped the side of his nose.

‘Bones knows. Bones sees it with his own two eyes! Hand in hand you comes, treading the Saltings like the wizard kings in the ol’ tales. You sees the castles of stones, an’ you follow, follow. An’ the whiners, big as they are, and hungry for your blood, they don’t dare come near.’

‘You were watching us!’ Impulsively Rye moved forward, ignoring Dirk’s angry hiss of warning. ‘I felt you, but I could not see you!’

The thin man tittered. ‘No one sees Bones in the Saltings. Bones squirms on his belly in the Saltings, flat as a twisty snake. You don’t see Bones. But Bones sees you!’

His cackling broke off in a squeak of fright as Dirk lunged for him, reaching for his throat. With a cry Rye threw himself between them, and Dirk staggered back with a grunt of anger and surprise as the armour shell repelled him.

‘Let him be, Dirk!’ Rye yelled. ‘He is harmless.’

‘Harmless?’ Dirk spat. ‘He was spying on us! By the Wall, he was taunting us with it! This is no time for squeamishness, Rye. Stand aside and leave this to me!’

But Rye shook his head. He could feel the old man’s confusion as well as his fear. And with a colder part of his mind he knew that Bones would tell them far more if they were kind to him than if they threatened him.

He turned to Bones, who was cringing against the pyramid frantically clicking his horrible beads.

‘I am sorry, Bones,’ he said gently. ‘My brother was mistaken. He thought you were threatening us.’

‘Bones is no spy,’ the old man croaked. ‘The Master has spies—many an’ many! But Bones is not one of them. Bones is … only Bones.’

‘We understand that now,’ Rye said, still in that same, gentle voice. ‘You have no more to fear from us.’

Bones wet his lips and at last nodded warily. Rye beckoned urgently to Dirk and Sonia. Dirk, his face thunderous, took no notice, but Sonia moved cautiously forward.

‘We are glad to meet you, sir,’ she murmured, dropping one of her surprisingly graceful curtseys.

The curtsey looked as odd as ever to Rye. No doubt it was perfectly proper in the Keep of Weld, but it contrasted very strangely with Sonia’s grubby orphan clothes.

Bones, however, was clearly impressed. His face full of awe, he abruptly folded his angular body into a bow so deep that his nose nearly touched his knees.

‘A honour,’ he mumbled, straightening with a great rattling of beads and cracking of joints. ‘A honour, great lady!’

‘Bones,’ Rye said carefully, ‘is there somewhere nearby where we could talk in safety?’

Bones’ mouth stretched into that impossibly wide, toothless grin. “Course!’ he crowed. ‘Den’s not far up along. Wait! Wait!’

He jumped off the track and loped away to the left, the tooth necklaces bouncing and clicking on his chest. Reaching a low hump in the ground, he bent and began to scrabble in the earth, throwing dust aside by the handful.

Rye glanced at Dirk, who was clearly still very angry. ‘I am sorry, Dirk,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But you were wrong. Bones is no danger to us, and he can help us—I know he can.’

‘And I know that you are listening to your heart instead of your head,’ Dirk growled. ‘You are not in Weld now, Rye! You are not even in the part of Dorne we know. Olt’s sorcerer brother rules here, and by the sound of it he is worse than Olt himself. Bones is terrified of him, and ten to one will betray us!’

‘What is he doing?’ Sonia whispered, jerking her head at the old man, who was now almost hidden in the cloud of dust he had raised.

‘Digging up something he has buried, by the looks of it,’ said Dirk in disgust. ‘By the Wall, the sun will be setting soon. How long do we have to wait?’

But in fact Bones had not buried his treasure, it seemed. He had just disguised it under a thin layer of dirt so it would be safe from prying eyes. The hump in the ground was quickly revealed to be a large object draped in a cloth made of many odd pieces of fabric sewn together. Bones glanced at the companions and, having made sure that they were watching, triumphantly whipped away the cloth, showering himself with dust.

The thing beneath the cloth was a large sled with two long shafts at one end. It looked a little like one of the sleds that Weld Wall workers used to move loads of newly made bricks across the slick, wet mud of the trench. It was heaped high with what looked like pieces of bleached wood.

Bones draped the cloth around his shoulders like a cloak and knotted two of its corners under his chin. Then he backed into the space between the sled’s shafts. Gripping one shaft in each enormous hand, he came lolloping back, the sled bumping behind him.

As the sled slid down onto the pebbles of the track, Rye caught his breath. The entire vehicle was made of bones lashed together with leather thongs and rusty wire. Most were too large to be goat bones and too small to have belonged to a horse. Rye could not imagine what animal they had come from. And the load was not wood, but a mass of even larger bones—the biggest Rye had ever seen. Right in the centre of the sled, carefully wedged in so it would not be damaged, was a vast animal skull from which jutted a wickedly sharp yellow-white horn.

‘By the Wall—a cursed bloodhog!’ Dirk muttered, unconsciously rubbing the healed wound on his side.

Sonia wrinkled her nose in disgusted horror. No doubt, Rye thought in grim amusement, animal skeletons were not everyday sights in the polite world of the Keep. They had become all too familiar in the rest of Weld since the skimmer invasions began.

‘Out of the sky he come!’ Bones grinned, plainly delighted by their reactions. ‘A wonder, it were! Sky serpent bird, he lets ol’ bloodhog go, right up high, an’ down ol’ bloodhog come, bang into the Saltings! Never did Bones see such a thing in all his born days!’

With a stab of excitement, Rye remembered a very similar story told on one of the scraps of Sholto’s notebook. Sholto, too, had seen a gigantic bird suddenly drop its prey and fly away.

Had Sholto and Bones both witnessed the same event? Surely they had, if Bones thought it such a wonder. And that meant that Bones and Sholto had been in this area on the same day. They might even have met, as Sholto left the Saltings!

Rye longed to question the old man about it, but decided it was better to wait until they were on their way. The light was fading fast now, and Dirk was glancing uneasily at the cloudy sky.

Bones seemed quite unconcerned by the approach of night. He was nodding happily.

‘Big ol’ bloodhog!’ he crowed. ‘He be treasure for Bones an’ the Den when he all picked clean, Bones says to hisself when he sees him first. An’ today he be finished, shiny white, so Bones loads him an’ brings him out. An’ while he’s a-doing that, Bones sees you! So Bones hides sled while he waits. An’ out you comes from the Saltings, sure enough! An’ now here we all is, good as gold!’

He turned his gummy grin on Sonia and gestured proudly at the sled. ‘Climb on, lady!’ he said. ‘You be riding in fine style, as is fitting.’

‘Oh, no!’ Sonia exclaimed, backing away from the bloodhog skull in horror.

‘Sonia means that she would far rather walk with you, Bones,’ Rye put in quickly, seeing the old man’s face fall. ‘But she thanks you kindly for your offer.’

He glared at Sonia until she forced a feeble smile and nodded.

Bones looked at her admiringly. ‘A true an’ gracious lady, you,’ he said. ‘A fine lady, like in the olden tales. Walk with Bones, then, and we’ll go up-along like friends together.’

‘Is this Den place far from here?’ Dirk demanded, glancing yet again at the sky.

‘A step or two,’ grinned Bones. ‘But don’t you mind about it—sky’s a-darkening now, an’ ol’ sky serpents, they hunt in the light.’

Rye wet his lips. ‘But surely sky serpents are not the only dangers,’ he said. ‘Are there no other flying creatures to fear by night?’

‘No, no!’ Bones said in obvious surprise. ‘Night’s safe … ‘cept for bloodhogs, an’ they be few in the Scour these days. Sky serpents has got most of ‘em.’

He waited courteously until Sonia and Rye had moved to his right hand side, and Dirk, frowning in puzzlement, had taken the place on his left. Then he seized the shafts of his sled and set off along the pebbly track at a great pace, with his companions hurrying along beside him.

‘Bones,’ Rye began, raising his voice to compete with the dull roar of the sled’s runners rasping over the pebbles of the track, ‘how well do you remember the day when the bloodhog fell into the Saltings? I know it must have been a long time ago, but—’

Bones cackled. ‘A sad ol’ change it’ll be when Bones don’t bemember that far back! Why, only three days past, it were, counting this one just ended!’

Swallowing a groan of disappointment, Rye tried to return the old man’s grin. Sholto had left Weld over a year ago. He could not have been in the Saltings all that time. How could he have survived?

Clearly Dirk thought Bones was lying or simply had no idea of time.

‘Three days ago? That would mean the snails stripped a bloodhog to bare bones in two nights,’ he scoffed, jerking his head at the sled’s rattling cargo.

Bones nodded violently. ‘Yes, indeed, lords an’ lady. A man, now—a man lays down in the dark, anytime, an’ by dawning he’s a-picked clean, ready for Bones to collect. But ol’ bloodhog, he took two full nights! That’s how big he were.’

Rye’s stomach turned over. He glanced across the sled at Dirk. Dirk stared back, his eyes dark with horror.

‘So the Saltings is clearly no place to spend the night,’ Sonia muttered.

Rye jerked his head round to look at her. Sonia’s face showed nothing but pleasure at having been proved right. Either she had not heard what Bones had said about collecting human bones, or she had not thought about what it might mean.

Rye turned his eyes to the front again, forcing himself not to look at the smooth white bones of the sled—the bones that were too big for a goat, and too small for a horse, but were just right for a human being.