Chapter Twenty #3
Not for eat, he said impatiently, nudging me with his beak. For key.
“A key? But …” I turned the bone over in my hand.
Bone key, he explained. He sent me an image, a little watery and vague, of the chicken bone growing teeth at one end. For door.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said.
You can.
I thought his faith in me was probably misplaced, but I sighed and cupped the bone in my hands.
I had never really sat down and tried to do something specific with my magic—either I had felt a surge of emotion, and it had responded as it chose, or I had given it direction but not form.
Now, however, I had to make a key to a specific lock, and I had no idea where to start.
No doubt the spell was written down somewhere, and I wasn’t the first to try to come up with it, but I felt like an explorer in a new world. A woefully underequipped explorer.
“What are you doing?” asked the Book Man from the neighboring cell.
“Baldbeak brought me a bone,” I called back. “He thinks I should make it into a key.”
“Brilliant!” the Book Man exclaimed.
Baldbeak preened.
“But I don’t know how!”
I heard the shuffle as he moved back closer to the door. His voice came clearer now. “Remember when you were stitching the spellbook? In my shop?”
“Yes. But this isn’t embroidery! I don’t even have my needles with me, because I’m in this stupid dress with no pockets.” I tugged at the green velvet.
“You have channeled bone magic with no needle before.”
“Only when I was really frightened, or in pain …”
“But you can do it, Netta. I can try to talk you through it as best I can, using my limited knowledge … but I have every faith.”
I stayed silent for a moment, staring down at the chicken bone. It was the least magical-looking thing you could imagine. There was even a bit of sauce still clinging to one end. I suppose it had been part of a prison guard’s supper, once upon a time.
“When I used this power before,” I said softly, “I didn’t know it was bone magic. I didn’t know what it was. But now that I know …”
I looked at the wall as if I could somehow see through it into the Book Man’s bright blue eyes.
“Every time I use it, I come closer to freeing it altogether,” I said. “And who knows what that will mean for Virelith, really? How is it any better if I wield it rather than the Temple?”
“My dear, your caution is admirable,” said the Book Man, “and I quite understand your trepidation. But no knowledge stays hidden forever, no matter how deeply you bury it. It wants to be found. It wants to be known. And bone magic most of all. The question is not who has awakened it, or how, but how to deal with its awakening.”
I took a deep breath, cupped the chicken bone in my hands, and focused my gaze on it.
Please, I thought. Please work. I closed my eyes and imagined a needle skimming over the key’s surface.
The Book Man kept up a steady stream of encouragement and advice, and his voice in the background calmed and guided me as I tried to concentrate.
I felt a slight tremor that I thought at first was my own hand shaking, but then the bone began to bounce about on my palm. I nearly dropped it.
It’s working, said Baldbeak with a pleased raark.
As I watched, the bone twisted and contorted itself before settling into the rough shape of a key—nothing too elegant, but the teeth at one end looked key-like enough to work. I inserted it into the lock, which clicked.
“You did it!” cried the Book Man.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Baldbeak as I left my cell and stroked the sparse gray feathers around his beak.
I turned quickly to the Book Man’s door and felt the bone key contort itself in my palm again, changing itself again to fit his lock.
When the door opened, we hugged tightly. He felt very thin and frail.
“The catacombs,” he said. “The Tomb of Kings, as the Pontiff told you. I will come with you to find it.”
“No, please.” I shrugged off my cloak and gave it to him. “Just try to get out. If you keep your head down and covered, you might be able to make it through the palace. You’ll be able to get out.”
He hesitated.
“It will be quicker with just Baldbeak and me,” I said. “Please.”
He sighed. “Very well, my dear.” He embraced me one more time. “But … come and find me, when all this is over, won’t you?”
“How?”
“Oh, we’ll find a way.” He patted my shoulder and pulled the cloak close about him. “Now. Go.”
I kept the bone key clasped in my fist, just in case. There might be more locked doors between us and the book.
There were no guards at the end of the hallway, as presumably the Pontiff had assumed a sturdy door and stone walls were enough.
Arrogant, but it would have been true if Baldbeak hadn’t had the idea to use the bone key.
I slipped out, Baldbeak clinging to my shoulder, and made my way down the endless staircase of the great marble palace.
I had developed a great distaste for it now, and its pale opulence seemed to reflect the unpleasantness of the Pontiff’s smooth, bald pate and smoother voice.
I hoped he had not been lying about there being an entrance to the catacombs beneath his palace, but I didn’t think so.
I felt the hum of it beneath my feet, just as I had felt the bones buried in the walls of the Corpse Roads.
Of course I would feel the very last and vastest repository of ancient bones; the one that was too enormous to be destroyed.
All the Temple could do was seal it off and hope that no malicious bone mage ever gained access to all that raw material.
Did I fall into that category? I didn’t think so, but then I didn’t know exactly who I would be once I had found Mother’s book. Perhaps I was indeed to be feared. But I had to find out.