Chapter Twenty-One #5
It had become uncomfortably warm in the Tomb of Kings.
Ban Morin stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and his heavy features were slick with sweat.
The Pontiff was fanning himself in one corner, seated on the edge of a sarcophagus.
One arm and one shoulder had emerged from the book now, thin brown veins climbing the bone like ivy.
Milady was gloveless, her fingertips slick and shining with sweat.
Her voice was admirably steady, however, as she continued to read, pronouncing each syllable with clean precision.
“It’s no use,” she said at last. “Only my sister can unlock the spellbook. And she was drawn into it, somehow. It’s like trying to open a chest with the key locked inside it.”
“So it is worthless,” said Ban Morin flatly.
“There has to be something else we can do,” said the Pontiff. “She’s your sister. Surely, as you said, there is enough blood shared between you for the wards to recognize you and let you in.”
“Blood,” repeated Ban Morin thoughtfully. In a sudden movement, shocking in its brutality, he grabbed Milady’s wrist and twisted it, turning it so her bare wrist faced up, pale and vulnerable.
“Cut it,” he said.
“What?” Milady’s eyes were wide.
“You heard the man. Blood. It needs blood. And it has to be you.”
She turned pale. “I can’t.”
“Oh, come on, Sybil.”
“You do it, Sawl.” She shut her eyes. “I can’t look.”
I heard her cry as the silver flash of a knife in his hand came away from her white skin.
“Stop now! That has to be enough, surely.” She struggled against him, but he drew her closer to the book and held out her hand to the groping arm. Even as she screamed and wriggled against him, the blood making her slick in his grasp, the skeletal hand found her fingers and gripped her tight.
The blood ran down Milady’s fingers and onto the bone. The veins entwining it grew dark and fat as sated ticks, the blood seeming to be drawn into them, running down through the skeletal arm and into the book itself, which wicked it up thirstily.
“Let me go!” Milady screamed.
“No,” said the Pontiff, who had abandoned his seat and taken a step forward. “It’s working.”
I wanted to be sick. The hand released Milady at last, and she staggered back, clutching her injured wrist to herself and keening.
As I watched in horror, muscle braided around the bone. The hand felt around beside the book until it touched the stone of the sarcophagus on which the book sat, and then pushed down with its newfound strength, using the leverage to pull out first a shoulder, then a head of dripping hair.
I almost cried out, but Patrick clapped his hand over my mouth, silencing me. I could hear his rapid breathing in my ear.
A tooth tumbled out of the book, landing on the stone floor with a sharp clink. Then another. And another. Red threads of muscle twisted around them, lacing the teeth into a delicate formation, the beginnings of a jaw.
My stomach churned as more emerged. Nails, smooth as pearl. A stream of blood spiraling upwards like a candle flame, slender as a strand of hair, then ribbons of sinew, veins, and skin; a grotesque and sinuous dance.
The book began to crack and split as even larger pieces emerged.
A femur slid free, followed by ribs and vertebrae, assembling themselves midair.
A spine formed and uncoiled, serpentlike.
The threads of muscle and skin wrapped around the skeleton, binding it together.
The teeth slotted into place, and nails settled at the tips of fingers that hadn’t existed moments before.
Finally, a figure stood half in, half out of the book, shining and damp, long hair hanging about its face.
“Hello, Sybil,” it said in quite a normal voice.
Without meaning to, I bit down on Patrick’s hand, drawing blood. It was Mother.
It was Mother.
“Don’t make a sound,” he murmured, withdrawing his hand. I nodded, not trusting myself even to whisper. I felt that if I opened my mouth at all, the scream that was building inside me would burst out and fill every inch of the catacombs.
Mother was in the book. She had been in there all along. More than that—she was part of it. I remembered the Book Man’s talk of anthropodermic bibliopegy, human skin made into binding. All those grisly materials used by Tamara’s predecessor. Had Mother planned this all along?
She looked quite like herself, now—except, of course, that she was buried in the book up to the knees, her torso streaked with something clear and viscous.
Her hair lay flat and slick against her skull, darker than I remembered it.
And her eyes—they were her own gray eyes with their colorless lashes and flecks of gold, but there was something different in her gaze.
And then she looked at me.
I don’t know how, but she saw right into the shadows Patrick had maintained so far, and they dispersed like mist in the sun, leaving us crouching foolishly, fully visible from where Ban Morin and Milady stood.
It took them a moment to notice us, but when they did, Ban Morin’s lip curled in a snarl.
I froze. The scar on my finger seemed to throb as I looked at him.
“Netta,” Mother said again, and smiled.