Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(76)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

The last set of stairs was shorter than the others, lending some credence to our theory that there was a smaller, hidden floor above the library. The dizzying and winding trail led to exactly what I had expected: a locked door. Black iron, with a door pull inside the metal mouth of what looked like a screaming human skull.

 

The door was locked, but there was no keyhole, making it impossible to pick. But a fastening spell had never stopped my persnickety companion before.

 

Ignatius, still clearly petulant about the rough treatment I’d given him earlier, took forever to open his eye once his wicks were burning.

 

“Sorry to catch you at a bad time, but if you aren’t too busy . . . ,” I said to the churlish hand, gesturing toward the lock.

 

As his light fell upon it, misty, golden webs of magic appeared, as if the glow had peeled back a layer of shadow to reveal the locking spell’s structural bones. It was only when Emrys reached out to stroke one lightly with his fingers, amazement dawning on his face, that I realized it was anything unusual.

 

The bolt inside it slid open and the heavy door swung out.

 

“You’ve got a complicated relationship with that thing, don’t you?” Emrys said.

 

I pushed him forward, forcing him into the room first. As he stooped to pass through the doorway, he stopped, blocking it.

 

“What?” I asked, standing on my toes to see past the expanse of his back. Every muscle there seemed to tense at once. “What is it?”

 

A strange vibration moved through my left hand and down my arm. It was Ignatius. The hand was trembling; the filmy pale eye was wide open.

 

Finally, Emrys moved out of the way.

 

The walls on either side of us were lined with wood shelves, each burdened with small objects, white as fired porcelain. But as I stepped inside, letting Ignatius’s light fill the small space, unease ran its cold, clammy hand over my chest. The shapes—the sculptures—were grotesque. Agonized in their forms.

 

And made of human bone.

 

“Holy gods,” I breathed out, risking a step closer to the nearest shelf. Emrys’s fingers skimmed down my back, as if instinctively trying to grab my shoulder and keep me from it.

 

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” he asked.

 

“No,” I said. “Not in books, or vaults, or tombs, or anywhere else.”

 

“This is . . .” Emrys, for once, truly seemed at a loss for words. A noticeable shiver moved through him as he rubbed at his arms. “Who do these bones belong to? What kind of sick mind would desecrate them like this?”

 

“It feels like a collection, doesn’t it?” I said.

 

“Is it possible whoever made them killed this many people?” Emrys asked faintly.

 

I shook my head. “Even before the curse, there weren’t enough beings living here for someone not to notice people dying or disappearing. I think someone’s been digging around in graves.”

 

Setting Ignatius on the ground, I brought my flashlight close to the first sculpture in the line of them. The upper portion of the mouth, just behind the teeth, had been carefully cut to fit against a pelvic bone. Both were etched with tiny, almost unreadable markings.

 

“Are they curse sigils?” Emrys asked, leaning over my shoulder. The warmth of his body caressed my back, his breath stirring the loose hair near my cheek.

 

“No,” I said. “The shapes are rounder, more intertwined. I’ve never seen some of these before. Do you think they’re left over from the days of the druids?”

 

“The sorceresses created their own language to control magic,” Emrys said. “It makes sense there might be others. Or the marks are purely decorative.”

 

The sculpture beside it was a rib cage balanced on two femurs, secured in place again by precisely cut slits in the bones that allowed them to fit seamlessly. A hand hung down from the center of the ribs, its finger bones melded together with silver knuckles. All covered in the sigils.

 

Bile burned its way up my throat as I turned, taking stock of them all. They were vile and horrific; I could barely stand to look at them without feeling the cold swell of some deep, innate fear that had been bred and nurtured across the thousands of generations of my family line.

 

I bent to retrieve Ignatius, then froze. The light from his small flames had bled into the nearest sculpture on the bottom row of shelves, throwing the shapes of the carved sigils onto the stone floor in illuminated patterns. As I knelt, the sigils shifted and began to spin.

 

“Tamsin,” came Emrys’s sharp voice. I looked up, only to realize I didn’t see him—he’d gone around to the other side of the stairs climbing up from the center of the room. As I made my way toward him, I passed a tarnishing suit of armor and a glass-faced cabinet full of vials and withered black herbs.

 

The narrow staircase—hardly better than a rickety ladder—led up to the open air, and near its base sat a large cauldron. The first gray light of Avalon’s dawn broke over it, glinting off silver clawed feet and causing its etched sides to shine like polished blades.

 

Emrys was staring down into it, his face sickly pale. I came to stand beside him, bracing for whatever grisly thing waited inside.

 

Instead, I found myself staring into a glistening pool of molten silver.

 

It churned with some unfelt wind, swirling with eddies. The metallic smell was emanating from the cauldron, but when I floated my hand over it, there was no heat. Only blistering cold.

 

As I stared into its depths, fragments of memories rose unbidden and splintered further. The pale face of the White Lady in the snowy field, calling me forward to join her in death. A flash of darkness and stone and the steel of a small blade. The unicorn, standing beneath a dead tree, collapsing as an arrow pierced its chest.

 

I took a step back, forcing myself to look away. Emrys looked awful, worse than I’d ever seen him, his skin bloodless and clammy.

 

“Are you all right?” I asked. “Emrys?”

 

It took a moment for him to look up, his eyes filled with a wrenching, pure terror. He didn’t seem to know where he was, moving from the cauldron until his back hit the wall.

 

“Emrys?” I asked more urgently. “What is it? What did you see?”

 

He held up a hand, his throat working hard as he doubled over. “I’m fine—give me—give me a second.”

 

He wasn’t fine at all. I looked back at the cauldron, my mind bursting with thousands of thoughts. I searched through that storm for a memory—for any passage of a book, or a story, that had mentioned a cauldron in Avalon.