Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(80)

Like the boy.

Julian was crouched before some runes on the stairs, tracing his finger over the deep grooves. The writing didn’t use any alphabet Wren knew, but as she stared, she was hit with a sudden jolt of recognition.

Her hand flew to her pocket, to the ring. She withdrew it, and her heart stopped. Some of the glyphs matched, though the full message was different. Julian stared, making the connection as well.

Shock rooted her to the spot.

The ring was a ghostsmith ring. Made of bone, engraved with ghostsmith writing… and somehow, it had found its way to the Bonewood. Recently, too, if it indeed belonged to the corpse Wren had discovered during her trial.

Heart hammering, Wren stared fixedly at the open archway. There would be answers inside; she knew it. Green light spilled out, illuminating the swirling steam that clung to the ground in wisps, making it seem alive… reaching….

She swung her bone sword through it, but of course it was not a ghost, and there was no reaction.

“Now what?” Julian asked, getting to his feet.

“We go in,” Wren said with more confidence than she felt. But that, she had learned, was the way confidence worked.

The door revealed nothing of what lay beyond.

Sword raised, Wren led the way, blinking through the haze. Several steps into the building and the mist started to clear, revealing that she stood upon a gallery that wrapped around a long, cavernous space. A grand staircase descended from the point of entry down to the lower level, and the balcony, enclosed by simple columns, disappeared into the shadows on either side.

While the upper level was dark, more light came from whatever lay below. She was about to descend the stairs when footsteps echoed up to her. She and Julian ducked to the side and crouched behind a column, seeking an angle to view what was happening on the lower level. The place appeared all but empty, but then the boy and the revenant appeared, making their slow way down the length of the room.

In the middle of the space was a rectangular depression, a pit or pool from where the pale, misty light emanated. Liquid reflections danced across the floor and pillars, putting Wren in mind of the spring outside, though whatever was within the basin was oddly silent. No splashes or gurgles. No sound at all.

Julian nudged her, pointing to something beside the pit. At first she thought it was another person—but then she recognized the sheen of metal. It was a suit of armor, but an empty one, resting upon a rack as if proudly displayed. It looked brand-new, not broken or salvaged, pristine and well made and patiently awaiting its wearer.

As she watched, the boy and the revenant approached the suit. Wren’s spine tingled with foreboding. She met Julian’s eyes in the dark.

Loud clanking echoed up to them as the boy struggled to remove the heavy pieces of gleaming iron. He didn’t put them on himself, though.

He put them on the revenant.





TWENTY-EIGHT


The boy ordered the revenant to be still, and it obeyed, just as before, standing unflinching as he carefully placed the armor on its corpse.

Now it was no ordinary revenant. It was an iron revenant.

Then the boy—the ghostsmith, for now there could be no doubt that was what he was—was touching the revenant with his bare hands, as if there were no threat of deathrot, even though the revenant’s ghost pulsed from within its body, weaving through muscle and bone and shining brightly out of sunken eyes.

Despite looking brand new, the armor was old-fashioned in style, like the illustrations of the Iron Legion Wren had seen in history books, and quite different from what Julian wore. It was rigid and boxy, leaving no gaps or weak points, and once every piece was in place save for the helmet, the boy turned toward the recessed pit. There were steps leading inside, like a soaking pool in a bathhouse, meant to be traversed from one end to the other.

He didn’t walk into it, however. Instead, he crouched by the edge, reaching forward with his hands alone.

There seemed to be some kind of resistance, an invisible barrier that slowed his movements. But eventually he pierced the hidden veil, and his hands plunged into the pit.

There was a sudden, blinding surge of molten white light. The boy flinched, but only to brace himself against the onslaught.

The pool swirled and rippled, growing impossibly brighter as it illuminated the entire space. Wren saw a throne carved into the far wall, a high seat with two smaller ones on either side, plus other details like broken columns and scattered debris. There were deep cracks emanating from the pool, and they too began to fill with light, the entire thing pulsing like a heartbeat, the glow traveling from the source outward like veins.

Soon the stones that surrounded the pit also began to shine with some inner radiance, and beneath her feet, Wren felt a bone-deep vibration. The air itself was charged, like a storm, and her hair started to stand on end.

She looked to Julian, who clearly felt it too, and then placed her palm flat on the ground. Her skin tingled, then a burst of magic shot up her arm. She took a breath, the power crackling in her lungs and surging through her body.

Limitless power.

Dark power.

Fear quivered inside her.

This, surely, was the magic that created the revenants in the first place. The reason the ghostsmiths had built their kingdom so deep.

The power that may very well have destroyed the ironsmith army, the Dominion army, and Locke Graven himself. The “something evil” Odile talked about.