Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(81)

Had the ghostsmiths discovered this well of power or had they built it themselves, somehow finding a way to trap the magic of the earth? It felt wrong to Wren, the idea of containing magic. No one person was meant to draw so much, but the ghostsmiths had created an entire society around doing so. As she tried to pull away, Wren noticed for the first time that the ground was shaking, the entire building groaning with tremors. Bits of rock fell from the ceiling, distant cracks and crumbles telling her other, larger items were being shaken free.

Was this how their necropolis was buried in the first place? Not by some natural disaster but by constantly pulling on this source of magic and drawing it up from the depths of the earth, destabilizing the world around them? It was no wonder the Breach happened after this place was accidentally rediscovered. It was obviously unstable.

Again Wren tried to detach her hand, but she couldn’t. Staring down in alarm, she saw tendrils of white light had seeped up from the stone and wrapped themselves around her wrist, steadily climbing.

Seeing her struggle, Julian took hold of her arm and, with difficulty, pried it away from the ground, breaking the contact. The reaching strands of light evaporated, and Wren blinked, still feeling the effects, but she shook them off and returned her attention to the boy below.

Like what had happened to Wren—but with far more potency—tendrils of light were crawling up his arms, swirling over his skin, then sinking deeper. He glowed, the light coming from his very bones, each standing out in stark clarity as the magic filled him from within. His skeleton must be holding the power his body drank in, acting as storage containers, as reserves, and after each bone had taken its fill, the magic spilled over, flooding the next and the next.

His face was frozen in something like pain, jaw clenched and muscles straining. The light reached his skull… but it didn’t stop there. The magic kept going, traveling from the tip of his head and into the horns, illuminating what appeared to be a partial ram’s skull worn over the top of his face like a mask. It must aid him somehow, enhancing his magic or his ability to store it. The light pooled there, around the horns, as well as in his right hand.

There was a final burst of light before he withdrew and staggered away.

He breathed deeply, and the magic glittered and swirled within him, becoming even brighter, while the pool softened and settled, the glowing cracks and stones surrounding it dimming. The building grew darker, and the tremors ceased, the boy’s illuminated skeleton and glowing flesh standing out all the more as he turned back to the suited revenant.

All that remained to put on the revenant was the helmet, but he didn’t lift it.

That’s when Wren noticed for the first time that he held something in his hand. A long, narrow object, dark against his faintly glowing skin… and pointed at the end, like a spike.

Before she could react, he lifted it in one hand and a small hammer, withdrawn from his belt, in the other. He lined it up with the center of the skull’s forehead, then struck it home with one precise hit, the brittle crack of bone ringing out. Wren’s knowledge of reapyr lore had always been patchy, but she was quite certain it had pierced the revenant’s ley line.

An otherworldly wail filled the silence, reverberating off the walls in a painful cascade.

Wren clapped her hands to her ears, though again Julian appeared unaffected. He stared at her with concern, but she gritted her teeth, determined to watch what was happening below.

Apparently in pain, the revenant reached for the spike with gauntleted hands, tugging and scraping, but the boy paid it little mind.

“Stop,” he ordered, almost distractedly, and the revenant stilled.

Then, carefully leaning forward, he examined what he had done. Wren got the impression something had gone wrong.

Indeed, wisps of ghostlight emerged, and the boy muttered under his breath. If the spike had traversed the ley line, then the ghost should lose its tether to its body. But apparently, that was not what the boy had intended.

As the spirit began to release before their very eyes, swirling through the suit of armor like steam, the boy raised his hammer again. Heedless of the ghost, he carefully lined it up with the spike, then tapped it with a single, ringing impact, embedding it half an inch deeper. Wren suspected too much force would rent the skull in half, but that didn’t happen.

The screeching ceased, and the boy’s shoulders slumped in apparent relief.

The ghost, which had been steadily dissipating, froze in midair, tremulous.

Then it retracted. Sucked into the suit of armor like water swirling down a drain.

Somehow, the boy had brought it back, remaking the tether. Binding the ghost to its body through its anchor bone.

A surge of light exploded from the revenant, spilling through the iron the way the magic spilled through the boy’s body, and then all the light—save for the ghost glow—went out. Even the boy’s inner light was gone, his magic apparently used up.

Panting, he took up the final piece of armor—the helmet—and slid it over the obedient revenant’s pierced skull, the iron ringing when it settled against the neck piece. It had no eye holes, no slots for breathing, because of course, the revenant didn’t need them. All was darkness.

“Go,” the boy rasped, head hanging, not bothering to look at the thing he had just made. “To the others. To Caston. Find her. Obey her.”

Others? How many others?

The iron revenant moved at once, armor clanking with every footstep, out through a door somewhere in the back of the throne room.