The Bones of the Earth Read online

  Dedication

  For my sister,

  even though she

  probably won’t

  ever read this

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part: One Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part: Two Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Part: Three Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  About the Author

  Also by Rachel Dunne

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Etarro’s fingers scraped along the wall, loose stones crumbling away and rough spots tugging at the pads of his fingertips as he ran. The path he followed made a circle around the inside of the mountain, and he was running fast enough that the circling was starting to get to him, making his head spin worse than it already was, making it harder and harder not to throw up. If it hadn’t been for the screaming, he would have stopped to catch his breath, to settle his head and his stomach. But there was the screaming, and his feet couldn’t stop moving.

  He ran from one pool of dull light to the next. The low-crackling torches with their blue flames were the only thing keeping the inside of Mount Raturo from being tar-black. The spaces between the torches were tar-black, so dark his hand against the wall was the only thing keeping him from stepping over the edge of the path and turning into a splatter on the floor of the mountain. He stopped breathing each time the wall ended in one of the hallways that branched off the central spiral, and he didn’t start breathing until his fingers barked against the other side of the tunnel mouth.

  There was no night or day here, but he tried to separate up the days nonetheless. The mountain had its own rhythm. It was dark, of course, but dark didn’t always mean night, not inside Raturo. That was the thing with the preachers; they were nocturnal, or they liked to be, when they were out in the world. But they always slipped back into normal sleep patterns inside the mountain, resting when the sun was down. If they were sleeping now, that meant it really was night. It wouldn’t be for much longer, though; the sun would poke up its fingers soon and wash away the night. He could imagine it, even over the distracting screaming: the sun touching the very top of the mountain first, so bright and warm it almost felt like he could reach up and wrap his arms about it. Avorra always scolded him when he went outside, cuffed him and told him he should know better—what if someone saw him? He almost turned around then—his twin was still sleeping; she wouldn’t wake for a few hours, so no one would know if he watched the dawn.

  But the screaming. He had to help, and so he kept going, down and down the finger-scraping spiral. He was almost glad no one else could hear the screaming, that it was only inside his own head. Almost. Because if anyone came walking up or down the spiral to investigate, he probably wouldn’t have seen them. It wasn’t any kind of comforting to think that if he ran into someone, at least he wouldn’t be a lonely splatter on the mountain floor.

  He’d forgotten his cloak, in the panicked waking and flight, and the cold tugged at him. It wound up along the path, riding along the insides of the mountain and nipping at his skin like a thousand tiny mouths. Avorra never minded the cold. The preachers were always so proud of that. They’d watch her dancing around the Icefall and they’d grin, and then they’d look at Etarro, bundled miserably in furs and cloaks and blankets, and their smiles would flip. “Come, brother!” Avorra would call, sounding to all the world like an innocent girl at play. They couldn’t hear the deeper tone, the warning in her voice, the threat. She’d told him once that she didn’t like the cold any more than he did, but they had their parts to play.

  Avorra was still sleeping now, but soon she’d wake up and see that Etarro was gone. He wouldn’t know what to tell her when she asked. She never listened when he talked about the thumping, and she laughed if he brought up the voice. She would never believe the screaming—she didn’t believe anything she couldn’t see or touch. “You’re getting too wrapped up in your part, brother,” she would say. He said the words aloud, between raspy breaths, between the slaps of his feet against the ground, to try to convince himself of it.

  The end of the spiral came on all sudden, his feet still trying to go down even though the floor was suddenly flat. He stubbed his toes against the ground and fell, palms and knees scraping against stone. The floor had been worn smooth by thousands of feet, but it was still rock, and it bit harder than the cold. The screaming got louder, like it was crying out in pain with him. It quieted back down when Etarro picked himself up, but it didn’t fade away.

  He had to pass by the arch with its big carved figures, but he kept his eyes on the floor. He could remember the first time he’d really understood what he saw. Avorra had touched the face of Sororra, the goddess who fell from the heavens without looking back. Her brother, Fratarro, did look back, and he cried and begged for mercy and reached for his Parents, and because he was looking up and not down, he didn’t see the ground coming, didn’t have time to hold himself together. The preachers never showed Etarro any pictures of how Fratarro would look, with his arms and legs torn off, and they never promised Etarro they knew where to find the missing limbs—they just gave vague answers when he asked, said they were sure all would be made whole again. They didn’t seem to want him thinking about that part.

  The way deeper was almost hidden, a small hole in the wall where the blue torchlight didn’t quite reach. Etarro closed his eyes as he stepped through the opening, though there was no point to it. It would have been just as dark if he kept his eyes open. There was a difference to it, though. It was easier to walk in a darkness that was of his own making.

  He knew when to open his eyes, knew where the first flickering ghostlight would be. Dirrakara had said that they must have been something of Fratarro’s creation, the purest light. The preachers had been trying for years to use the little moving lights to replace the blue torches, but they hadn’t had any luck. Out of the Cavern of the Falls, the ghostlights guttered and died.

  Inside the big cavern, the screaming started to quiet. It didn’t go away, but it faded enough to make him feel less panicked, to let Etarro think about something other than the pain that wasn’t even his. He could breathe, could feel his heart slowing down. He reached up to touch one of the ghostlights, feeling the soft warmth against his palm. Not enough to make him stop shivering, or to keep his breath from frosting in the air, but enough to make him smile, even though the screaming still rattled around between his ears.

  He liked to imagine Fratarro as the creator the preachers said he’d been, pullin
g Raturo from the earth so he could sit at its peak and shape an untouched corner of the world that could be his alone. He liked to think of Fratarro standing here, in the center of a big empty cavern, and wondering how he could make it beautiful. Even though it froze the tips of his fingers, sometimes Etarro liked to break off spines from the Icefall and shape them into castles or creatures, breathing on the broken-off ends until they melted enough to stick together. “I am Fratarro,” he would say then, trying to make himself believe it. He wondered if Fratarro could be put together so easily, breathing on his arms and legs until they stuck back on his body.

  He walked out to the Icefall, not to shape anything but because the voice was always loudest there. He’d told Avorra that, once; she’d made him repeat it when more of the Ventallo were around. “You can’t forget the audience,” she’d reminded him.

  This was a calm place, a powerful place. Even though they were still so far away, Etarro always felt like they were closer here, in the Cavern of the Falls. There was a small space, almost too small for him now, between the Icefall and the stony ledge it tumbled motionlessly from. He wedged himself into the space, shivering, and let out his breath in a slow fog. “I’m here, brother,” he said aloud, though he said it to the screaming in his head. The screaming didn’t stop, but little by little, across the immeasurable distance between them, Etarro felt the terror slowly begin to fade, leaving behind only the pain that was too great to be held back yet. Etarro sat there, cold burning through his nose and lungs, and offered what comfort he could.

  Help me, the familiar voice finally came, smaller and weaker than usual, soft behind the screaming and the sobbing. Please. It has been too long. This is too much. Please. Find me.

  “We found your foot,” he offered, though it wasn’t enough. One of the Ventallo, Tenso Ocdeiro, had shown him and Avorra five glowstones that he said showed the path to glory. The broken-minded mage, Anddyr, had made the stones so the Ventallo would know when their emissaries were successful. The five stones were laid out like a crooked compass on top of the giant stone bier, and Ocdeiro had lifted Etarro up so he could press a finger to each one. Four of them were just like normal stones, cold and lifeless, but the one that was slightly north of center had a soft light to it. When Etarro had touched that one, he’d seen the gnarled roots of an enormous tree, holding something huge and black. He hadn’t been able to see it as a foot, but Ocdeiro had been sure of it. He said Ebarran Septeiro would be back with it any day, and then they’d know for sure. He said the other stones would start glowing soon, too, that soon they’d have all the pieces of Fratarro. Soon they’d be able to put the poor lost god back together.

  Find me, Fratarro said weakly, the same plea it always was.

  Avorra had laughed at Etarro the first time, but she’d gotten scared the more he’d talked about the voice that begged to be found. She’d told him to ignore it, to never talk about it again. He hadn’t, he’d been good, but it had happened once when Anddyr had come slinking into their rooms. The mage had sat quietly in the corner and watched them play with eyes that were almost hungry, but he wouldn’t join them. When Etarro had heard the voice, he’d seen it roll through Anddyr as well. “You hear him, too,” he’d said, and the mage’s eyes had been even bigger than usual. Avorra had yelled at him for that, and then she’d started crying, sure they’d be in the sort of trouble that preachers sometimes disappeared for. Anddyr’s hands had been shaking, but he’d touched the top of her head, gently, comforting, his skin pale against the darkness of Avorra’s hair.

  There was a crack, the sound of ice breaking. Etarro’s head snapped up, and there, among the ghostlights near the entrance to the cavern, he could see them. A line of preachers was filing into the cavern, fifteen of them in their black robes, and the ghostlights picked out the red points sewn over their hearts.

  Etarro thought of squeezing out from his hiding place, standing and greeting the Ventallo so they would know he was there, so they would let him go somewhere else quiet to share Fratarro’s pain. Then he thought of Avorra, and how she knew every secret passage and hiding place in the mountain, and how she always said with a toothy smile, “Anything worth hiding is worth knowing.” She didn’t always share the things she learned. It was the having of secrets that mattered to her; the using and the doing could be saved for later. She gathered secrets around her like a shroud, or a shield. She might listen to him for once, if he had a secret to offer her. So quietly he wedged himself deeper into the crevice, and he watched through the holes and the thin places of the Icefall.

  They had stopped at the edge of the frozen lake, all the Ventallo except the ones who’d gone out searching. Valrik Uniro stood before them, as always, with Illo Duero and Ildra Trera on either side. Some of the Ventallo gazed up at him with red sockets that were an empty mirror of Uniro’s own missing eyes. Many of the preachers had been desperate to follow his example in blinding themselves, though it was hard to tell whether it was because of renewed faith or the fearful following that took over in times of change. “They’ve all got their own parts to play,” Avorra had murmured. She’d told him how she’d heard Duero and Uniro talking, how Duero had begged to keep his eyes because he was the historian, the recorder of times. She’d lowered her voice in a poor imitation of Uniro and rumbled, “In the darkness, we have no need of the past. In the darkness, there is only the now, and to write of it is to waste it.” Duero still had his eyes, though, so he must have won the argument. Trera, too, still had every part of her hard, unhappy face.

  “I have had a dream this night,” Uniro said, his voice made louder in the big space. “Many of you know, my dreams have become sharper since I embraced the darkness.” There was some murmuring of agreement among the ones who’d also blinded themselves. “It was a dream that unsettled me deeply, my brothers and sisters, for it was a dream that rang with truth even as it showed me hard choices. We stand now at the center of a crossroads, and the path forks in many directions. Which to choose? Which is right, and which is best, and which hurts the least?

  “In my dream, I took each path in turn. I have seen all the endings, my brothers and sisters, and I have spent long hours thinking on what I saw at the end of each path. If it has been given to me to choose the path of the Fallen, then I must make sure I choose wisely.” Uniro bowed his old head, and was silent for a long while. The silence sent a chill tiptoeing up Etarro’s spine. Etarro had true-dreams, had them almost as often as he slept, and Uniro’s words had had the sound of truth.

  Etarro wrapped his arms tightly around himself as he shivered in his cocoon of ice. He wished he’d left when he’d had the chance. Avorra would have thrilled to be where he was, giddy with spying on the Ventallo, but Etarro only wanted to be far away from this place.

  Trera’s voice was gruff as she asked, “What is it to be, brother? What path will you choose for the Fallen?”

  Uniro took a heavy breath, and lifted his face to her. “Tell me, dear sister. What is it we always say the Twins will do? What is their goal?”

  “To pull down the Mother’s Sun,” she said, slightly uncertain, as though such an easy question must be a trap. “In the darkness, all are made equal.”

  “Precisely. And yet . . .” Uniro spread his arms wide, like he meant to embrace the Ventallo standing before him. “What are we? We are leaders. First and second and twelfth and twentieth among the Ventallo, and the Ventallo are first among the Fallen. We are rulers, when the Twins would have no rulers in the Long Night.

  “If we find the Twins, if we go to them as the Ventallo, we shall surely be among the first to be struck down. I cannot bear this thought. There must be change, and it must begin with us.” Uniro’s empty eyes looked out over the Ventallo gathered before him, and his voice was like a deep drum. “I, Valrik Uniro, eighty-seventh leader of the Fallen, do hereby disband the Ventallo.”

  There were shouts and cries from some, Trera and Duero the loudest . . . but some of the Ventallo stayed silent and still, their faces sm
ooth as ice, as if they weren’t surprised at all.

  They fell silent when Uniro lifted his hands again. “I feel your concern, brothers and sisters. Change can be a frightful thing, and I can feel the anger glowing in some of you. Trust me when I say you do not wish to face the Twins as Ventallo. Trust me, for I shall lead the way along this path.”

  “Lead?” Trera snapped. “Who are you, to stand above the rules you would yoke us with?”

  Valrik seemed to study her with his empty sockets. “Who am I?” he repeated. “I shed the name Uniro, for I am first among none. I am only a man. Yet . . . a flock has a shepherd, an army a general. Though the night sky is full of stars, still there is the moon. I am no longer Uniro, but I have seen the dark that sits at the end of some paths and the light that covers others, and I shall be the moon to show the way through the night. I shall lead, for someone must, and I shall face the judgment of the Twins when I stand before them. I will spare you all that much, at least.” His old face, grizzled with long beard and longer hair, looked so sad in the glow of the dancing ghostlights. “It is time, brothers and sisters, for the first judgment.”

  From his hiding place, Etarro didn’t see the men until they were almost behind the Ventallo. He recognized them, five of the big swordsmen Valrik had been collecting as bodyguards. Blades for the darkness, he called them. Etarro saw them before the Ventallo, who didn’t even have time to turn and scream before the swords went through them. Five fell instantly, and then three more. Etarro had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out, and pressed both hands over his mouth. Only four of the Ventallo were left standing before Valrik and Duero and Trera. Only four, three blind and one sighted, among the bodies and the blood that began to spread slowly over the cold ground. They stood with their backs straight, faces tight but fearless. Etarro had seen that look before, on new preachers fresh off the mountain—they’d already faced their death half a dozen times, and weren’t afraid of it anymore.