Chapter Eight #2
“Perhaps. I don’t know how else to explain what happened when you, er, defended yourself against the young man.
But it might not be that the magic is inherently tied to you—there has been some talk of it stirring across Virelith.
Perhaps this is just one of its many manifestations—channeling itself through your suppressed abilities somehow, as you are unable to use them in the regular way. ”
“Stirring?” I shivered. “But … we can’t let that happen. The Temple would never let that happen.”
“Believe it or not, there are some who have been actively trying to resurrect it for a long time.”
“How do you know this?” I whispered.
He took off his spectacles and gave them an unnecessary polish on his silk cravat. “Because I used to be one of them, my dear.”
“One of them?”
He exhaled a long, shaky breath. “I am not proud of it,” he said. “I was quite a different man, then. Discontented. Ambitious.”
“But bone magic …” I looked down at the book I was repairing. “The Plague. Almost half the kingdom died. Why would anyone …?”
I thought of the tapestry—the stitched images of diseased dead, risen and walking, touching the living with their dripping fingers, as melted and deformed as Temple candles long burned.
Their lipless mouths, grinning in skinless faces.
My stomach curdled. Was that magic somehow moving through me now?
Was that my future—becoming one of those near-monstrous creatures, or creating them? I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
“Yes, that is the widely accepted story,” he said. “But not everyone believes it, you see.”
“But how else …?”
“There is a theory,” he said carefully, holding his hands before him as if carrying something very fragile, “that bone magic was not the culprit. Not exactly.”
“Then what was? What else could possibly …?” I shook my head. The Plague had shaped everything we were. Even I, living in isolation in the Tower, had known how it had sliced the kingdom’s population in half—redefined our world.
“Some think—not all, mind—that the Plague was a result of the warping of magic from its true purpose.
That bone magic was blamed because of the …
macabre nature of its practice. It was an easy scapegoat.
The Temple executed all the bone mages it could find, and the rest went underground.
Eventually the secret of bone magic was lost. Or so it is believed.
“In fact,” he added, “the original final panel of the great tapestry of Quell reflected this theory, but one of the Pontiffs ordered it to be unpicked and restitched to reflect the Temple’s victory, as he saw it.”
So that explained the odd patterning and needle points I had seen.
“But even if that is true, why would someone want to bring bone magic back?” I asked.
“Some believe that all forms of magic, including both affinities and the incarnists’ powers, need to be free—to be practiced freely and joyfully, that is, without restraint or control. Without books and words. Without bodily sacrifice.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Isn’t it?” He looked at me quizzically.
Then he said, “Bone magic is a particularly powerful form of magic, of course, so someone’s interest in resurrecting it might not be entirely philanthropic.
When I was a much younger man, I had some idea that I might be the one to wield it …
” He fiddled with his spectacles. “Hubris, I’m afraid.
I was a member of a certain society even then, and I imagined that together we might use bone magic to overthrow the Temple—the hierarchy and structure that they had forced upon magic. ”
I stared at him wide-eyed. He flushed a little.
“As I have said, I was very young and foolish.”
“You were going to overthrow the Temple?”
“Well,” he said self-deprecatingly, “‘overthrow’ is a strong word. I suppose I did imagine that we might be able to establish a better way. I believed—still do—that people who had a minor affinity of whatever kind should be able to practice without stigma or restriction, and that the rigid control of incarnist mages and their spellbooks was doing more harm than good. To the kingdom as well as to the mages themselves. I abhorred—still do—the idea that pain and sacrifice are necessary for the practice. The only power that seemed to have any hope of standing against the might of the Temple was bone magic.”
“So what did you do?” I said.
“I had a young apprentice at the time, another bone magic enthusiast—perhaps even a zealot, I’m sorry to say. I had imagined that they, like me, saw it as a means to an end—an end that would benefit everyone. As it turned out, however …” His voice trailed off.
He cleared his throat before continuing, “When I decided that bone magic was too powerful, too potentially harmful, for one person—or even two—to wield, I’m afraid they did not respond well.
I decided to burn all my notes, you see.
They wanted to keep them—to continue the work alone.
We argued. I destroyed the notes. I thought that we would reconcile, that we both just needed some time to cool off, but they absconded during the night, taking all our remaining research with them.
Their own notes, and several volumes on the subject. ”
“What happened to them?”
He stared down at his hands. “I suppose they either continued their research, or decided to give it up, as I did.”
I sat silently, trying to absorb it all.
My mind seemed unwilling to allow the thoughts in—they skittered over its surface, struggling to find purchase.
Resurrecting bone magic. My Hair brushed against my ears, the strands rustling together like a hundred tiny voices whispering excitedly.
Something in me responded to the idea, even as I wanted to reject it.
Was that something the magic itself? Was it shivering in my bones even now?
“Magic needs us as much as we need it,” the Book Man said almost dreamily. “We are its only channel. Bone magic still exists—can even start to stir and move—but it would require a human mage in order to fully return.”