The Tower of Bones Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

  Jo Fletcher Books

  an imprint of Quercus

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2012 Frank P. Ryan

  The moral right of Frank P. Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 978 1 78087 741 9

  Print ISBN 978 1 78087 740 2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  and

  www.jofletcherbooks.com

  Frank P. Ryan is a multiple-bestselling author, in the UK and US. His other fiction includes the thrillers Goodbye Baby Blue and Tiger Tiger. His books have been translated into more than ten different languages. Born in Ireland, he now lives in England. Visit him at www.frankpryan.com

  Also by Frank P. Ryan

  The Snowmelt River

  For Amy

  Other rumours, equally venerable, tell a different tale – that long before the age of mortals there was a great war between the dragons and a brutal race of titans. So lasting and terrible was this conflict that the bones of the slain are still scattered over the blighted lands. It is said that the titans eventually won this war to bring to an end the Age of Dragons. This ushered in the Age of Tyranny, when mortals served no purpose other than enslavement, a tyranny that was ended by the coming of the Arinn.

  If such be true, deliverance surely came with a price.

  Ussha De Danaan: last High Architect of Ossierel

  Contents

  Lost

  The New Kyra

  A Song of Innocence

  Feed the Beast

  The Council-in-Exile

  The Prophecy

  Slug Beast and Lizard-Dung

  The Portal

  The Riddle of the Way

  Communication

  The Fáil

  The Triangular Shadow

  Unwelcome News

  Cat and Mouse

  Anathema and Plot

  Nightshade

  Ghost Talk

  Shiny Things

  The Red Star

  Scrags ’n’ Bones

  The Amulet

  The Sacrifice of the Dragons

  A Splinter of Malice

  Mysteries Still

  The Gyre

  A Vision of Apocalypse

  Making A Stand

  Preparations

  The Cill

  Into the Chasm

  The Momu

  An Unlikely Capture

  Resurrection

  Fears and Suspicions

  An Important Journey

  The City of the Ancients

  A Historic Meeting

  A Penitence of Blood

  The Forest of Harrow

  Golden Heart

  Soul Stealers

  Fangorath

  The Dragon King

  A Painful Goodbye

  At Feimhin’s Grave

  Lost

  From her Tower of Bones the Witch’s song ravished the night. There were no words to the song but still it managed to convey a terrifying mixture of power and triumph, flowing far and wide over the blasted landscape, eliciting echoes here and there among the wolves attracted to her swamps and marshes. They howled an answering chorus, gathering about the hill of the dead, snarling and snapping at one another with hunger. The Tower was a cyclopean skull, vast as a castle in its proportions and horned and fanged like some monstrous beast. Within this terrible fastness, in a freezing dungeon that was only faintly illuminated by a pulsating red light, an emaciated young woman lay face down against the floor, her hands pressed against her ears, her auburn hair dank and tangled, mixing with the dust and spiders’ webs. But nothing she did could keep out the dreadful melody.

  What was she doing here, in this alien world of continuous nightmare? How long had she been a prisoner of the Witch?

  She had no answers to these questions. She had no memory of coming here to the Tower of Bones. She hardly recalled who she was any more. But now, struggling against the invasion of her mind by the Witch’s song, she insisted on remembering her name.

  I’m Kate Shaunessy. Kate Shaunessy from the town of Clonmel.

  Slowly, through an impassioned effort of will, she recalled snatches of her childhood in the small town in Ireland, with just the Comeragh range of mountains separating it from the Atlantic Ocean. It was a struggle to bring to mind the street names or any clear memory of her home there. Still it comforted her to recall glimpses of the town’s meandering streets, the remnants of its ancient walls and the great river that flowed through it, with its three or four limestone bridges … and, most precious of all, the names and faces of her friends. Maureen Grimstone … Mo … Mo and her brother, Mark. And Alan … Alan!

  I couldn’t bear it if I lost their names …

  She recited the small litany again and again. Mo, with her long brown hair and her beautiful hazel eyes. The best friend she had ever had … and Mark … and Alan … Alan, the boy she had fallen in love with, who wasn’t from Clonmel, or from England, like Mo and Mark, but from America.

  Even now, recalling such things, recalling Alan’s name, her heart raced within the half-starved cage of her chest. Please … please! Stop it! Stop stealing my memories. Stop taking everything that matters from me!

  Climbing to her feet, she threw herself bodily against the wall of her cell. She smashed her fists against the hard reverberating surface that looked and felt like bone. She shrieked it aloud: ‘I am Kate Shaunessy … from … from Clonmel!’ She must never forget its name or the … the calling. The calling had led them to gather the waters of the three rivers … the sisters. The River! If she could only clear her mind sufficiently to remember things. The river’s name … The river that flowed past her garden every day of her life. What was its name?

  The Suir – she remembered its name.

  She remembered more. All four of them had been seduced into leaving Earth. They had carried the waters of the three sisters to the portal on the mountain of Slievenamon. Through the portal they had arrived, as if by magic, into this alien world of Tír. Their coming here had been for a purpose. They had freed the bear people, the Olhyiu, from slavery in the Arctic wilderness of the Whitestar Mountains. They had sailed the Snowmelt River in the Temple Ship. But that had only been the beginning of why they had been brought here into this alien world …

  Already her mind was hurting from the effort at remembering. The Witch was invading her being, stealing her mind again. The past seemed so long ago … an eternity …

  With her fingers in her ears to block out the song, she insisted again: I can’t forget … I won’t forget!

  To memory, unbidden, came a beautiful morning, early, under a summer’s sky. Alan was waiting for her. He was astride his bicycle, outside the gates. With a mixture of terror and grief she held tight to that memory, that one brief moment of clarity like an island of wonder in the cloudy seas of her memories.

  The memory became overwhe
lming. The clumsy kiss of the shy, gangly boy – Alan. And how, in that moment, she knew she loved him.

  A sound of screaming in the corridor beyond her cell: the clatter of calloused bare feet in the echoing labyrinths of bone. The unmistakable snap of a Garg-tail whip. Faltana was lashing some unfortunate creature. Kate trembled with fright, struggling to recover the precious vision of something so beautiful, but already it had slipped away.

  I’m lost, she thought. I’ve died and gone to hell – and there’s nothing that anybody can do to help me.

  The New Kyra

  Across the three-mile-wide estuary of the Snowmelt River, the walled City of Carfon was ghostly in the half-light of dawn. For Alan Duval the stroll, in the company of his friend, the dwarf mage Qwenqwo Cuatzel, offered a brief respite from the despair that had set, like an iron cage, around his heart. Tall, slim, almost gaunt in his features, with his thick brown hair grown a little wild and long, he kept the sea to his right as he headed in broad sweeping strides towards the surf.

  Carfon! He spoke its name softly, as a man might speak of a fabled wonder, even when that wonder confronts him in solid stone. Carfon, pearl of the Eastern Ocean, and the last free city in the entire continent of Monisle.

  No description in words could have prepared him for the reality of this vision. The walls were a vast cliff face of masoned granite, two hundred feet high on their aprons and a quarter as much again atop the towers that studded the battlemented summit, with row upon row of bronze cannons lowering defensively over sea and landscape. Now, leaning on the heavy spear he had been using like a shepherd’s staff, its upright blade spirally twisted and warded over its cutting edges with Ogham runes, he stared across the choppy water at this brooding fortification.

  Yet for all their impregnable appearance those walls were threatened. There were enemies in this strange and menacing world that would be undaunted by any protection of cannons and stone. Carfon might fall, no matter that such an eventuality was unthinkable. And uppermost in the plans of the enemy, as in his own, was the fact that deep within those ancient walls was the portal to the most powerful force of all, a force so dreadful none dared openly to speak its name.

  In his mind Alan whispered that name: the Fáil – a strange and ancient word. Even in whispering it he felt a tingle of its power activate in the ruby triangle embedded in his brow – the Oraculum of the First Power. The tingle spread out, a wave of pins and needles, through his heart and limbs. Such a power could never be allowed to fall into evil hands, or the consequences would be too dreadful to contemplate. Alan knew that much about it although he knew little to nothing of its true nature, or for that matter the dangers it might pose to him and his purpose. But now he was this close to it he had no choice but to confront the Fáil.

  He took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly.

  He couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that he had lost two of the three friends who had been summoned with him to this strange and dangerous world. Thank goodness Mo was safe, sleeping within the protection of the Olhyiu and Shee, whose tents and campfires covered several acres of beach behind him. The very thought was a reminder of the strangeness of this world. The Shee were descended from great cats and the Olhyiu were descended from bears. But as to his friend Mark – heck, he didn’t rightly know where Mark was any more. Mark had saved their lives during the battle for Ossierel. But he had paid a terrible price for doing so. For all Alan knew his friend might be dead. Mark’s body had disappeared from the Rath at the top of the tor. Alan had witnessed the extraordinary change in the statue of the dark Queen, Nantosueta, who now appeared to be locked in an embrace with the figure of Mark. And in his brow Mark bore the same triangle of power as Nantosueta – the Third Power, the Power of Death. The memory caused Alan to hesitate in his stride. He didn’t know how to come to terms with what had happened to Mark. It was a problem that wouldn’t go away. And yet he had no choice but to put it to one side for the moment, such was his anxiety about Kate. Thoughts of Kate, the girl he loved, had preoccupied every distracted moment of his life since she had been abducted by the repulsive bat-like warriors, the Gargs, during the battle. The Gargs had clearly been in league with the Great Witch. They had carried Kate across the Eastern Ocean to the Tower of Bones. Of the four friends only Alan and Mo had stayed together. Mo had also been terribly injured, an injury to the spirit that she was only slowly recovering from. Meanwhile the abduction of Kate, the thought that he might have lost her altogether, provoked a rising nausea.

  Qwenqwo, the dwarf mage of an extinct warrior people, the Fir Bolg, waited patiently while Alan recovered his composure sufficiently to walk on again.

  The beach itself was serenely beautiful, an oasis of fine white sand set between sea-worn rocky outcrops. Broad-canopied trees, their foliage as delicate as puffs of olive-green smoke, decorated the undulating sand, the focus of tiny blue-winged birds that hesitated and darted among the branches. Inhaling the briny air, he might be strolling the seashore of some warmer part of his native Earth had it not been for the alien appearance of the two women who watched him from a low headland, perhaps fifty yards away.

  A warning, sudden and fierce, cut through his musing.

  Halt!

  Alan stopped walking, a warning hand on Qwenqwo’s shoulder, arrested by the force of the command.

  Take not another step!

  The command was non-verbal but it invaded his mind with irresistible force through the oraculum. He stood barefoot in the sand, his path, and that of his companion, a wandering trail of prints over the virginal white surface – it had been the inviting prospect of this that had tempted him to remove his seal-skin boots, which he had strung by their leather thongs around his neck. He turned his head to stare at the two women, the taller one in particular. It was she who had issued the warning. But now that he was still, she made no further attempt at communication. Leaving it to me, he thought.

  Something about the sand.

  He gazed ahead at the region immediately in front of him, the place he was about to step into …

  ‘What is it, Mage Lord?’ Qwenqwo’s right hand had crested his shoulder and it rested on the hilt of the double-bladed Fir Bolg battleaxe that straddled his back.

  ‘The Kyra has sent me a warning.’

  Alan planted the spear in the sand before going down on his haunches and studying the beach in front of him, angling his face to its apparently innocent surface. An offshore breeze played over the surface, blowing sand grains against his cheeks. He saw nothing suspicious, just a few fragments of shell glittering with a mother-of-pearl opalescence. But as he searched harder the ruby triangle in his brow came alive, an inner matrix pulsating with complex whorls and arabesques of light. What his eyes could not see, his enhanced mind quickly detected. There was something there … a series of ultra-fine hairs protruding through the smooth white surface. Returning to his feet he retrieved the spear, then poked the blade among the protruding hairs. Four gigantic jaws erupted from the sand. At their centre was a maw big enough to swallow his leg, stinking of meaty digestive juices, and with the jaws lined with concentric rows of teeth.

  ‘What demon is this?’

  ‘A hungry one, Qwenqwo – probably detected the vibration of our feet!’

  The jaws closed with a violent snap before withdrawing into their den in the sand.

  Alan stood back and lifted his gaze to stare at the giantess who still watched him, expressionless, from the headland about forty yards away. He lifted his open hand in a gesture of thanks.

  On the headland, which offered a vantage over the entire estuary, the shorter of the two women spoke to her companion.

  ‘You do not respond to his wave?’

  The speaker, Milish Essyne Xhosa, Princess of Laàsa and unofficial stateswoman of the Council-in-Exile, was herself a statuesque six feet tall, yet she was dwarfed by her companion.

  There was a flattened oval disc of a pearly smooth material in the centre of the giantess’s brow, the mark of
a Kyra, hereditary leadership of the Shee, and known as the Oraculum of Bree.

  The Ambassador placed a tentative hand on the young Kyra’s naked shoulder, decorated with a tattoo of naturalistic shapes and forms.

  The Kyra shook her tawny head, returning the young man’s acknowledgement with a frown. She growled, low in her throat. ‘There is much I do not understand – or trust – in him.’

  The giantess’s hair was coiled into a braid clasped to her left shoulder. Thick and luxuriant, it would have passed for normal on Earth. But there the comparison ended. No woman on Earth sported those side extensions, which grew down from her temples as ivory-coloured sideburns, any more than those symmetrical markings, like large brown freckles, that decorated the downy skin over her face. The Kyra’s snow tigress inheritance was all too evident in her size and facial markings, as in the glacial blue of her eyes, the upper lids padded, so they readily closed to slits. The same brown marbling bisected the ash-blonde down in two widening tracks, with stripes splaying out to either side and dappling her cheeks. Her oval crystal, like the ruby triangle in Alan’s brow, pulsated with an inner matrix of power.

  The Ambassador spoke again. ‘The recent death of your mother-sister has placed you at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the young Mage Lord.’

  ‘My mother-sister departed the Guhttan heartlands without the opportunity to exchange memories. My legacy has not been confirmed.’

  Milish nodded, understanding what a bitter blow this must have been. The Shee, with their great cat ancestry, did not reproduce in the normal way. There were no males. The mother-sisters gave birth to identical daughter-sisters. And it was essential to the Kyral inheritance that the mother-sister should confer her acquired wisdom and experiences on the daughter-sister with her coming of age. ‘If he appears distant or distracted it is through grief at the loss of his beloved companion, Kate.’ Milish continued to watch the young man, her luminous eyes the speckled brown of tortoiseshell. Her voice remained soft, a measured contralto: ‘In time you will come to understand why your mother-sister trusted him like no other.’