The Bone Palace

Book 2: The Necromancer Chronicles

by Amanda Downum

Genres: Action & Adventure; Dark Fantasy; Epic Fantasy; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

Death is no stranger in the city of Erisén -- but some deaths attract more attention than others. When a prostitute dies carrying a royal signet, Isyllt Iskaldur, necromancer and agent of the Crown, is called to investigate. Her search leads to desecrated tombs below the palace, and the lightless vaults of the vampiric vrykoloi deep beneath the city. But worse things than vampires are plotting in Erisén. . . As a sorcerous plague sweeps the city and demons stalk the streets, Isyllt must decide who she's prepared to betray, before the city built on bones falls into blood and fire.

Release date: December 1, 2010

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 470

Sample

496 Ab Urbe Condita (1228 Sal Emperaturi) Three years ago

Death was no stranger in Erisín. The city named for the saint of death and built on the bones of its founders had known its
share of suffering, but the pestilence that struck that summer was enough to horrify even the priests of Erishal. The plague
had come from the south, borne on a merchant ship that slipped through a lax quarantine. It spread now through the bites of
fleas and midges, so that any drone of wings or sudden itch meant terror. Hundreds dead throughout the city, temples and hospitals
become mass tombs, and in the slums they dispensed with the proper rites altogether and stacked the infected dead like cordwood.


Not even the palace was safe.

The queen no longer trembled. She lay still now in the wide curtained bed, only the shallow rise and fall of her breast and her fluttering lashes to show that she lived. Sweat soaked her linen shift, matted her long black hair. Brown skin
flushed gold with jaundice and the whites of her half-open eyes were yellow and bloodshot.


The room stank of sick sweat and vomit, the cloying sourness of old blood. Shutters and curtains blocked the windows despite
the summer heat, and lamps trickled dark malodorous smoke. Meant to keep insects at bay, but it served with men as well. Sane
ones, at least.


Kirilos Orfion, spymaster of Selafai and the king’s own mage, sank into a chair and wiped his brow with a sodden cloth. A
cup of tea sat on the table beside him—long cold, but it eased the ache in his throat, if not the ache in his bones. His hands
shook, sloshing brown fluid over the rim. Sunken, shaken, sweating—he must look as though the fever burned in him too.


Boots rang heavy in the hall outside. Mathiros keeping vigil. The king hadn’t slept since his wife took ill, save in fitful
snatches beside her bed. Kiril had finally sent their son to rest with a whispered spell, but it was all he could do to keep
Mathiros from the room. It was all he could do to keep death from the room. He rarely wasted energy on regret and might-have-beens,
but now he wished for the healing skill he’d abandoned so many years ago. In his decades of service to the Crown he had known
worry and fear and even the sharp edge of panic, but never this sick helplessness.


Kiril felt Isyllt waiting beyond the door as well, tasted her own fatigue and worry. Ten years as master and apprentice and
two as lovers had left their magic inextricably twined—even now she reached for him, a soft otherwise touch, but he drew away, tightening his mind against her. She would only exhaust herself trying to comfort him and that would serve nothing. If he burned himself out here, the
city would need all the mages it had left.


The fever might not be the work of spirits as the superstitious claimed, but so much suffering still attracted them. The mirrors
in the room were draped with black silk, the windows warded with salt and silver, but even now something skittered over the
shutters, larger than an insect. Those mages who weren’t tending the sick spent the nights hunting newly fledged demons.


He stood, wincing as his joints creaked, and limped toward the bed. “Lychandra.” His voice broke on her name, hoarse and ugly.

Bruised lids opened and golden-brown eyes met his. Lucid now, at least, delirium fled. No wonder people thought the plague
demon-born, when victims died bloody and raving.


Her lips cracked as she smiled. “You’re as stubborn as Mathiros.” Her voice was soft and ragged. “Find someone else to save—it
won’t be me.”


He pressed a cup of willow bark tea to her mouth. She coughed around the swallow and bloody saliva flecked her lips. The physicians
had shaken their heads when she first vomited black blood, said she was beyond their skill. She was likely beyond his, too,
but he had to try.


Kiril sucked in a deep breath and tried to clear his mind. The magic answered slowly, scraping like broken glass in his veins.
A cool draft whipped through the room, fluttering the bed hangings and rattling the shutters. Lychandra sighed as it breathed
over her skin, respite from the fever’s heat. Kiril laid a hand on her brow and she gasped.


His vision blurred and he saw with otherwise eyes—illness hung on her like a pall, swirled dark and yellow-green as bile inside her. Contagion flared like an asp’s hood
as his magic lapped over the queen’s skin; it had feasted and grown fat in three days, while Kiril had only worn himself dry.
His power broke, splintering ice needles inside his chest. He fell to his knees beside the bed, jarring bones even through
thick carpets.


Lychandra turned her head and pink saliva dripped onto the sweat-stained pillow. “Kirilos—” Her long brown hand touched his,
burning his numb fingers. “No more. You’ll only hurt yourself. Please, let me see my husband.”


He nodded, climbing shakily to his feet. Hard to breathe around the pain in his chest. He’d seen this woman a glowing bride,
listened to her curse in childbirth. He hadn’t thought to stand her deathwatch, too. Pins and needles stung his hand as he
opened the door.


The king’s face only made it worse—skin ashen, eyes black pits under his brows. Mathiros read defeat in Kiril’s expression
and let out a sound neither sob nor howl. He shouldered the sorcerer aside as he rushed to his wife.


Isyllt followed the king into the room and stepped into Kiril’s arms. She cupped his face in white hands and kissed him, the
familiar scent of her hair filling his nose. Her grey eyes were shadowed and dark with worry; he winced from his reflection
there. So tired. So old.


“You have to rest,” she said. “You’ll kill yourself this way.”

He would die, sooner or later. Sooner every year. Leave her grieving beside his bed like Mathiros beside Lychandra. He lowered
her hands away from his face. She was too young to be a widow—certainly too young to be his. He might have told her so, but he couldn’t get enough breath. His chest ached like a bruise.


“Kiril.” Mathiros’s voice cracked on his name. “Is there nothing—Anything—” Tears soaked his beard, splashed his wife’s hand.
Kiril wanted to cringe at the pain in his eyes. “You can’t do this!”


Whether he spoke to Kiril or Lychandra or Erishal herself, the sorcerer couldn’t say. His palms slicked with cold sweat and
Isyllt’s hand tightened on his.


Lychandra’s eyes sagged and she whispered to her husband. His name turned into a cough and she gagged, turning her head to
vomit. Mathiros flinched; the liquid that soaked the side of the bed was watery, clotted with blood dark as soil or tea dregs.
Her organs were failing, and no skill or magic could undo the damage now.


The king knotted his fist in the gauzy curtains as if he meant to rip them from the bed. “Kiril, please!”

Kiril closed his eyes. Mathiros hadn’t pleaded with him, with anyone, since he was a child. He’d never been able to say no
to the boy.


The queen hitched and shuddered, twisting stained linen. Isyllt gasped—she felt it too, the icy presence filling the room.
The black diamond rings they both wore began to spark and glow. Kiril’s vision darkened. Mathiros screamed his wife’s name.


Kiril reached, scraping himself raw, and threw every bit of strength against the shadow. For an instant it balked, mantling
over the room. He couldn’t breathe, could feel nothing but that black chill.


The ice inside his chest broke and stabbed him through the heart.

His legs folded. The shadow crested over him, crashed down. Mathiros screamed. Isyllt screamed. The floor rushed up to meet him. Old debts come due at last.


The shadow retreated; it would take Kiril with it, and at last he might rest. Isyllt’s face lingered behind his eyes—no surprise
that death would wear her countenance. But she called his name, invoked it, held him inside his pain-riddled flesh. Over the
roar in his ears he heard his king’s wailing grief. He might only have imagined Erishal’s mocking laughter.


Darkness stole over him, dark and blessed silence.

The bells tolled an hour before dusk, slow and solemn and irrevocable.

In her chambers in the Gallery of Pearls, Savedra Severos sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed her face into her hands.
Her eyes ached, though she had no tears—it wasn’t her grief, but the weight of it still crushed her. It would crush the whole
palace; the queen was well loved.


Had been.

“I should go to him.” Her voice snagged and broke halfway. Maybe it was her grief after all. Lychandra had always been kind
to her son’s impolitic mistress, more than Savedra could have hoped for. “If he’ll see me.”


She had been the prince’s lover for six months, formally installed in the Gallery for three, but it still felt unreal that
she might walk the palace corridors and visit Nikos whenever she wished. Even now. Especially now.


It was almost a relief, if only to leave her room. The windows were shuttered and draped and warded, the air close and cloying
with smoke and incense. With no sunlight for days, too many candles had smudged the ceiling and curtains and left the taste
of wax and char on her tongue with every breath. The ashes of prayers streaked her shrine, but no saint had answered, not Sarai or Alia or even owl-winged
Erishal. Or rather, Erishal had answered, but not as Savedra had begged.


“He’ll see you,” her mother said, sipping her tea. No amount of death or chaos could shake Nadesda Severos’ flawless deportment.
It made her seem colder than she was, but it was reassuring. A familiar comfort. “He needs you now more than ever.”


Savedra frowned, letting her hands fall. Her hair hung in kinks and tangles around her face and she didn’t need a mirror to
know how bruised her eyes must be, how dull her complexion. Nothing she could do for it now—it was madness to uncover the
mirror with so many demons about, and she’d sent her maids away days ago.


That her parents had stayed in the city, let alone come to visit her in the palace, was testament to either pride or love.
Or both, she conceded. There was room for both. And ambition, of course—that the Severoi stayed when other great houses fled
the Octagon Court would be marked. Especially now, as the city’s horror became the kingdom’s grief.


“This is an important time for you and the prince,” her father said, leaning over Nadesda’s chair. “With Lychandra gone, it
will be you he turns to more and more.”


Ambition again. Her fists clenched in her already-wrinkled muslin gown. She’d been grateful, at first, that her parents hadn’t
repudiated her when she became Nikos’s mistress. It might have been easier if they had.


She touched the pearls at her throat—the mark of her station. Her fingers tensed against the cool slickness and for an instant
she thought of ripping them away, scattering them across the room. “I’ll never be queen, Father, not for all your scheming.” Her voice was calm when she would rather scream;
her mother’s child, after all. “Can’t you at least feign a little sorrow? Or tact?”


Sevastian’s lean brown face creased in a frown. A familiar expression—she’d have the same lines on her brow in ten years.
Or sooner. Her mother’s smooth olive skin and silken hair were not to be hers.


“I don’t have to feign sorrow, Vedra,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Lychandra was a good woman, a good queen.
She’ll be missed. Saints know she made Mathiros bearable. But sorrow doesn’t negate practicality. You may not be queen, but
consort isn’t beyond your reach. There’s precedent enough for that.”


Savedra pried her fingers from the pearls and touched instead the telltale bulge above them. The joke of her birth, that kept
the rank of queen forever from her as surely as politics did. If only that were as easy to rip away as a necklace. “There
will be a queen. The betrothal is already set and Lychandra’s death won’t dissolve it. And even if this foreign princess doesn’t
make Nikos set me aside, I’ll still be nothing more than another pearl. Sorrow doesn’t negate practicality.”


Nadesda raised a hand when her husband would have spoken. “Enough. This is a time for tact as well as sorrow. Vastian, leave
us. I’ll help Vedra dress.” Her teacup didn’t clink against the saucer, but her veils spoke in a dry rasp of lace and netting
as she rose.


Her father gave them both a sardonic little bow and retreated to the antechamber. Savedra found a comb on her dresser while
her mother opened the wardrobe to inspect her gowns. Sandalwood teeth caught in snarls and she fought the urge to tear them free. The sharp pain in her scalp grounded her.


“Why do you bother, Mother? I won’t be queen, and I’ll give you no Severos heir or cat’s paw bastard. Why keep including me
in your schemes?”


Nadesda pulled out Savedra’s white mourning dress—a year out of style—and turned, sinking onto the bed next to her daughter.
She wore eucalyptus oil to keep insects away, and the sharp minty smell clashed with the more familiar perfume clinging in
the folds of her skirts.


“My love for you has nothing to do with the children you can’t bear, or the marriages you might make.” Her manicured hand
closed over Savedra’s and she smiled. “I’ve always been grateful to have a daughter, even if it took us a few years to discover
it.” The smile fell away. “But my love and loyalty to the house demand I take all of those things into account. As a mother
I want you to be happy with your prince, but as archa I have other well-beings to consider too.”


Savedra continued combing for a moment, then gave up and twisted her hair into a thick knot at her nape. No one whose opinion
she valued would care what she looked like right now. “Just remember, schemes that hurt Nikos will hurt me as well.”


“None of us can stop the world from hurting those we love. The best we can do is be there to ease the pain.” Her mother draped
the white silk across Savedra’s lap and went to the bathroom; water gurgled, and she returned with a damp cloth. “So wash
your face and go to your prince. You could have made worse choices, even if he is an Alexios.”


Savedra couldn’t help but smile at the approbation—the strongest an archa of House Severos might ever grant their ancient rival. “Mother, can’t you leave us out of your machinations?”


Nadesda rarely frowned, but her beautiful face stilled with sadness. “Even if I could, others won’t. I can only promise to
spare you any suffering that I can, and to keep you innocent of anything that might compromise you.”


Savedra wanted to argue. Wanted to scream. But she was too tired, too empty. More than anything she simply wanted to go to
Nikos. Her hands tightened on the washcloth till water dripped onto the dress in her lap. She’d need a new one made, anyway.
The palace would be awash in white for a year.


“Thank you,” she said at last. Then she began to scrub away the clinging smoke, and the ghosts of tears she hadn’t yet shed.

499 AUC

In the Sepulcher, death smelled like roses.


Sachets of petals and braziers of incense lined the marble halls and scented oil lamps burned throughout the long vault, twining
ribbons of rose and jasmine and myrrh through the chill air. Meant to drown the smell of blood and rot that crept from the
corpse-racks in the walls, but death couldn’t be undone so easily. The raw copper scent of recent violence teased past the
sweetness, creeping into Isyllt Iskaldur’s sinuses as she studied the dead woman on the slab.


Blue-tinged lips parted slightly, expressionless in death, but the slash across her throat grinned, baring red meat and pale
flashes of bone. Barely enough blood in her to settle—some clotted like rust in brass-blonde hair, pasted damp-frizzed tendrils
to her cheeks. Lines down her ribs showed where corset stays had pressed into flesh. Her clothing, cut away by competent, uncaring attendants, was shelved in an oubliette of an evidence room upstairs.


Isyllt crossed her arms beneath her breasts and shivered in her long black coat. “Where did you find her?” Her breath trailed
away in a shimmering plume; spells of cold etched the stones.


“In the Garden,” Khelséa Shar said, “in an alley just after dusk.” The police inspector lounged against the wall between corpse-drawers,
a short, dark woman in the garish orange coat of the Vigiles Urbani. Frescoed vines and leaves swirled behind her—the builders
had tried to make the room cheery, but no amount of paint or plaster could disguise the death that steeped these stones. “She
was cold and stiff when we got there.”


Isyllt frowned at the dead woman, brushed a finger against a lock of yellow hair. A prostitute, then, most likely. A foreigner
too, from the coloring—Vallish like Isyllt, perhaps, or Rosian. Refugees from Ashke Ros crowded tenements and shantytowns
in the inner city, and more and more turned to the Garden for work.


Isyllt pressed gently on the woman’s jaw and it opened to reveal nearly a full set of tea-stained teeth. Her elbows were still
stiff, knees immobile. Rigor had only just begun to fade. “A day dead?”


“That’s our guess. It was raining when we found her, and she was soaked, but there were hardly any insects. The alley is visible
from the street—she couldn’t have lain there all day.”


“So dumped. Why call me?” The Garden was the Vigils’ jurisdiction, unless the Crown was somehow involved, or the crime was
beyond the city police. And while pride insisted that the Vigils’ necromancers weren’t as well trained as the Arcanostoi or Crown Investigators, Isyllt knew they were perfectly competent. She bent over the white stone table,
examining the wound. The knife had nicked bone. The killer was strong and sure-handed—left-handed. “What can I tell you about
this that you don’t already know?”


“Look at her thighs.”

The woman’s legs tapered from flaring hips to gently muscled calves and delicate ankles. No spider veins or calluses on her
feet—chipped gold paint decorated her toenails. Flesh once soft and supple felt closer to wax under Isyllt’s careful fingers.
Death whispered over her hand, lapped catlike at her skin. The cabochon black diamond on her right hand flickered fitfully,
ghostlight sparking in its crystalline depths.


She ran a gentle hand between the woman’s thighs, tracing the same path as a dozen customers, a dozen lovers. But this time
there was no response, no passion real or feigned. Only stiffening muscles and cold flesh.


No wounds, no bruises. No sign of rape. No violation but that of the blade.

“What am I—” She paused. On the inside of the left leg, near the crease of the groin, she touched a narrow ridge of scar tissue.
More than one. She pressed against stiff flesh to get a better look. Old marks, healed and scarred long ago. Teeth marks.
She found the same marks on the other leg, some only recently scabbed.


Very sharp teeth. Isyllt knew what such bites felt like.

“Do you think this had anything to do with her death?” She kept looking, but found no fresh wounds.

“Maybe.” Khelséa reached into an inside pocket of her coat and pulled out a folded piece of silk. “But this is why I called
you.”


Isyllt stretched across the dead woman and took the cloth; something small and hard was hidden in its folds. She recognized
the shape of a ring before she finished unwrapping it.


A heavy band of gold, skillfully wrought, set with a sapphire the size of a woman’s thumbnail. A rampant griffin etched the
stone, tiny but detailed. A master’s work. A royal work.


“Where was this?” A knot colder than the room drew tight in her stomach.

“Sewn inside her camisole, clumsy new stitches. Her purse was missing.”

A royal signet in a dead whore’s clothes. Isyllt blew a sharp breath through her nose. “How many know?”

“Only me and my autopsist.” Khelséa snorted. “You think I’d wave something like this in front of the constables?”

Isyllt stared at the ring. A woman’s ring, but no woman alive had the right to wear it. She looked down at the body. A sliver
of blue iris showed beneath half-closed lids, already milky. “What was her name?”


“Forsythia.”

Not a real name—at least she hoped it wasn’t. Not many mothers branded their daughters with a prostitute’s name at birth.

Isyllt dipped a finger into the gaping wound, licked off coagulated blood and fluids. Khelséa grimaced theatrically, but the
inspector’s nerves and stomach were hard to upset.


Cold jellied blood, bittersweet and thin with rainwater. No trace of illness or taint, nothing deadly save for the quantity
spilled. The taste coated Isyllt’s tongue.


“Forsythia. Are you there?”

No answer, not even a shiver. Her power could raise the corpse off its cold table and dance it around the room, but no ghost
lingered to answer her questions. She sighed. “They never stay when you need them to. She might be wherever she was killed,
though.” She nibbled the last speck of blood from under her fingernail.


Gently she pushed back Forsythia’s kohl-smeared eyelids. Rain, she wondered briefly, looking at the ashen streaks, or did you have time for tears? Her reflection stared back from death-pearled eyes. She rested her fingers on the woman’s temples, thumbs on her cheekbones;
the black leather glove on her left hand was stark against pale skin. The woman’s soul was gone, but memories still lingered
in her eyes.


Isyllt hoped for the killer’s face, but instead she found a sunset. Clouds glowed rose and carnelian as the sun sank behind
the ragged rooftops of Oldtown, and a flock of birds etched black silhouettes against the sky. The last thing she saw was
those jeweled clouds fading into dusk, then a sudden pressure of hands and darkness. Much too quick for death, even as quick
a death as this must have been.


Isyllt sighed and looked away, the colors of memory fading into the white and green of the mortuary. “She was grabbed off
the street, somewhere in Oldtown. Maybe the Garden.” Death must have come not long afterward; she hoped the woman hadn’t suffered
much. “What else do you know?”


“Nothing. There was nothing but rain in the alley, and no one saw anything.” Khelséa rolled her eyes. “No one ever sees anything.”
She pushed away from the wall, shaking back her long black braids. “Do you have any magic tricks for me?”


“Nothing flashy.” Isyllt turned toward the back of the room, where tables and benches were set up for students and investigators.
“Bring me gloves and surgical spirits, please. And a dissection plate.”


The inspector opened a cabinet against the wall and removed thin cotton examiner’s gloves, a bottle, and a well-scrubbed tin
tray. “What are you doing?”


“Testing for contagion. Someone touched this before she did.” She sat down, stripping off her left glove. The hand beneath
was scarred and claw-curled, corpse-white after two and a half years bandaged or gloved; she was mostly comfortable with only
seven working fingers by now. She scrubbed her hands with cold spirits, then wiped down the tray and tugged on the white gloves.
The ring was already contaminated, of course, but every little bit helped. It was much easier to test for transference—be
it of skin, hair, blood, or energy—with a suspect at hand, but she could also tune the ring to react to the presence of anyone
who had handled it recently, and even to seek them out at close range.


Closing her eyes against the bitter sharpness of alcohol fumes, she touched the ring lightly. Tendrils of magic wrapped around
the gold, resonated through the stone. Mages used sapphires and other such gems to hold energy—the cut and clarity of this
one made it ideal for storing spells.


The taste of the spirits crept over her tongue, stinging her palate as it sharpened the spell. Alcohol, like her magic, was
clean of living things, anathema to disease and crawling necrophages. Against its stark sterility, any contagion should shine
clear.


Isyllt opened her eyes and leaned back, wrinkling her nose at the mingled stink of spirits and roses and death. Witchlight glimmered and faded in the sapphire’s depths. “There.
Let’s test it.” She stripped off the cotton gloves and touched the ring with her bare hand. The light flared again briefly
at the familiar skin, and the spell shivered in her head. She let the essence of the alcohol erase the contamination, and
it stilled again.


“Now you,” she said, holding the ring out to Khelséa. Another shiver and flare at the inspector’s touch, and again she let
the memory of it vanish. Now the stone should react only to whoever had held it before Forsythia. She found a spare silver
chain in the exorcist’s kit in her pocket and slid the ring under her shirt. It settled cold against her sternum, warming
slowly between cloth and skin.


“Do you need anything else?” Khelséa asked. “You look tired.” Her tone changed with that last—a friend’s concern instead of
a detective’s.


Isyllt ran a hand over her face. “I haven’t had any sleep.” She’d been happier than was healthy when the inspector’s message
had summoned her into the night—murder was better than being alone after midnight with a dark mood.


Khelséa’s raised eyebrow must have worked wonders with guilty criminals.

“It’s nothing.” When the eyebrow didn’t lower, she finally conceded: “The usual thing.”

The other woman’s lips compressed. “Kiril.”

Over the past fifteen years Kiril Orfion had been her mentor, her friend, and briefly her lover; Isyllt was still glad she
wasn’t the one to say his name. “What else? He’s been withdrawn lately, secretive. More than usual,” she added to Khelséa’s wry snort. Every time she thought she was finished with grief over their broken relationship, something
stirred the embers. “I worry.”


Sympathy shone in Khelséa’s long leonine eyes, but her voice was light. “You need a distraction. A vacation.”

Isyllt laughed. “My last vacation ended badly.” She flexed her left hand. Two and a half years ago she’d been sent to stir
rebellion in the distant port city of Symir. The mission had ended in murder, chaos, and the near-destruction of the city—a
success, as far as the Crown was concerned. “Work is distraction enough. I’ll go to the Garden next.”


“Do you want company? Or backup?”

“No. I’d rather tread lightly. More Vigils will only attract attention.”

Khelséa snorted and tugged her orange coat straight. At least her dark skin let her wear the Vigils’ distinctive shade well.
“What’s one more death in Oldtown, after all?”


“Eight for an obol.” Their boots echoed in unison as they started for the stairs, leaving the dead woman on her slab.

Outside, the night smelled of cold rain and wet stone, and cobbles glistened under the streetlamps. Isyllt’s breath frosted
as she sighed—the wet chill of late autumn was still more pleasant than the unnatural dry cold of the vaults.


Inkstone was a quiet neighborhood after midnight, scribes and bureaucrats long safe in bed. Shadows draped the columned façade
of the Sepulcher, and the twin bulk of the Justiciary across the plaza. Isyllt felt the unblinking granite stares of the owl-winged
gargoyles on the roof as she descended the broad steps. Sentinels of the Otherworld. A carriage waited in the street, the driver half-dozing, horses
snorting restlessly.


“Speaking of distractions,” Khelséa said with a grin, “I saw your minstrel friend in the Garden tonight. Maybe I should take
him in for questioning.”


Isyllt snorted. “Is that the only way you can start a conversation with a man?”

“Better than calling them from th