The Bonehunters
Page 271

Not content with dolls fashioned in likenesses, he had constructed, from twine, sticks, straw, wool and horn, a tiny flock of forty-two sheep. Penned in a kraal of sticks assembled on the floor of the estate's attic. Then, from one of his own milk teeth, newly plucked from his mouth, he made for himself the likeness of a wolf fang and then, with tatters of fur, the wolf to which it belonged, of a scale to permit it to devour a sheep-doll in a single gulp.
In skeins of demented magic, he had set his wolf among the flock.
Screams and wails in the night, in household after household, unleashed from terrifying nightmares steeped in the reek of panic and lanolin, of clopping hoofs and surges of desperate, hopeless flight.
Nips and buffets from the huge roaring wolf, the beast toying with every one of them – oh, she would remember the torment for a long, long time.
In the course of the following day, as uncles, aunts, nephews and the like gathered, all pale and trembling, and as the revelation arrived that one and all had shared their night of terror, few were slow in realizing the source of their nightmares – of course he had already lit out, off to one of his countless bolt-holes in the city. Where he would hide until such time as the fury and outrage should pass.
For the crimes committed by children, all fugue eventually faded, as concern rose in its stead. For most children, normal children; but not for Ben Adaephon Delat, who had gone too far. Again.
And so Torahaval Delat had been dispatched to track down her brother, and to deliver upon him an appropriate punishment. Such as, she had considered at the time, flaying him alive. Sheep, were they? Well, she carried in her pack the wolf doll, and with that she intended most dreadful torture. Though nowhere near as talented as her younger brother, and admittedly far less imaginative, she had managed to fashion a leash of sorts for the creature, and now, no matter where her brother went, she could follow.
He was able to stay ahead of her for most of a day and the following night, until a bell before dawn when, on a rooftop in the Prelid Quarter of Aren, she caught up with him, holding in her hands the wolf doll, gripping the back legs and pulling them wide.
The boy, running flat out one moment, flat on his face the next.
Squealing and laughing, and, even as she stumbled, that laughter stung so that she gave those legs an extra twist.
And, screaming, fell onto the pebbled roof, her hips filling with agony.
Her brother shrieked as well, yet could not stop laughing.
She had not looked too closely at the wolf doll, and now, gasping and wincing, she sought to do so. The gloom was reluctant to yield, but at last she made out the beast's bound-up body beneath the tatter of fur – her underclothes – the ones that had disappeared from the clothesline a week earlier – knotted and wrapped tight around some solid core, the nature of which she chose not to deliberate overmuch.
He'd known she would come after him. Had known she'd find his stash of dolls in the attic. Had known she would make use of the wolf doll, his own anima that he had so carelessly left behind. He'd known… everything.
That night, in the darkness before dawn, Torahaval decided that she would hate him, for ever more. Passionately, a hatred fierce enough to scour the earth in its entirety.
It's easy to hate the clever ones, even if they happen to be kin.
Perhaps especially then.
There was no clear path from that recollection to her life now, to this moment, with the singular exception of the sensation that she was trapped inside a nightmare; one from which, unlike that other nightmare all those years ago, she would never awaken.
Her brother was not there, laughing and gasping, then finally, convulsed with glee on the rooftop, releasing the sorcery within the wolf doll. Making the pain go away. Her brother, dead or alive – by now more probably dead – was very far away. And she wished, with all her heart, that it wasn't so.
Mumbling like a drunk beggar, Bridthok sat before the stained granitetopped table to her right, his long-nailed fingers pushing the strange assortment of gold and silver coins back and forth as he sought to force upon them some means of categorization, a task at which he was clearly failing. The vast chests of coinage in Poliel's temple were bottomless – not figuratively but literally, they had discovered. And to reach down into the ice-cold darkness was to close hands on frostrimed gold and silver, in all manner of currency. Stamped bars, studded teeth, holed spheres, torcs and rings, rolled bolts of goldthreaded silk small enough to fit in the palm of one hand, and coins of all sorts: square, triangular, crescent, holed, tubular, along with intricate folding boxes, chains, beads, spools, honeycomb wafers and ingots. Not one of which was familiar to any of them gathered here – trapped here – in the G'danisban temple with its mad, horrendous goddess. Torahaval had no idea there were so many languages in the world, such as she saw inscribed upon much of the currency. Letters like tiny images, letters proceeding diagonally, or vertically, or in spiral patterns, some letters little more than patterns of dots.