Alex Archer - The Bone Conjurer

Garin glanced across the room where the two men spoke in low tones. His master studied a kris blade with a bejeweled ivory handle. A glint of ruby caught sunlight beaming through a grilled window. Roux did like unique weapons.

Garin stroked his fingers over a folded cloth run through with silver threading. Curious things. Unnecessary to him, but still, they were something to behold.

Only last night he’d run his fingers along the shabby torn cloth of a serving wench’s skirts upstairs in the tavern where they’d stopped to eat. She, too, had been something to behold.

But his master had been eager to find a more suitable resting spot, so Garin had left the wench with but a kiss and a remorseful sigh.

He could appreciate all his master had done for him, shown him the way and taught him skills for defense and survival. But he did not fool himself that someday he would break free and be on his own. He deserved freedom. He was no man to answer to another.

A small brass key tied through with a shimmery pink ribbon went untouched, for something marvelous caught Garin’s attention. He reached carefully behind a stack of leather-bound books and palmed the curved shape of a skull.

It was not a man’s skull, for it fit upon his palm. A child’s?

It looked like the many other skulls he had seen as he and Roux ambled over the highroads for days without end. Skulls attached to skeletons and hanging from a gallows or tree; lying roadside, detached from the neck as if fallen from a bone collector’s pack; or sitting upon a desk or windowsill in declaration of the dark arts.

The bone was creamy pale and smooth. The scalp was delineated into sections and the pieces were held together by some kind of dirty plaster. The eye sockets were large in comparison to the skull, and the jaw quite small. It was missing the lower jawbone.

It surely belonged to an infant.

Did the alchemist practice the dark arts?

Garin glanced again at the two men. De Castaña wore a white turban and his skin was brown, yet paler than most Moors. His voice was kind. He gestured gracefully with long fingers as he spoke.

Roux had mentioned something about de Castaña having angels and demons at his beckon. What foul deeds men got their hands to, Garin thought.

He turned the skull on his palm, smoothing his fingers over the slick bone. Poking two fingers into the eye sockets, he did it only because of curiosity. Hooked upon his fingers, he turned the skull and found the tiny hole at the base where it must attach to the spine.

Compelled for no reason other than it was what his hands next decided to do, he lifted the upturned skull to his ear. Slithery, silver tones clattered within. A voice without words.

“What have you there, boy?” His master fit the kris blade into the leather belt at his waist and glanced at his charge.

“Ah! No!” The alchemist clapped his hands twice over his head. “Put that down, boy. Its secrets are not for you to know.”

Roux cast him the fierce eye. Not a look Garin ever wished to challenge. He set the skull on the books, yet his fingers lingered. As did Roux’s gaze upon the skull.

“It whispers to me,” Garin said with all due fascination.

“Ah, ah.” The alchemist leaned in and snatched the skull from its perch and gave it a smart toss, catching it on his palm. “Not yet, boy, not yet.”

“But—”

There was nothing more to say. His master shuffled him toward the stringed wooden beads marking the entrance. “Take yourself out to the serrallo, apprentice. I’ll follow directly.”

Casting the skull a desirous glance, Garin licked his lips. He met the alchemist’s eyes and thought sure he’d seen a star blink in the center of each dark orb.

“Someday, perhaps?” the alchemist said with a slippery grin. “Someday, all good things.”

Garin rushed outside. The open-air serrallo beamed brilliant white sun upon his face, altering his mood for the better. Moments later he was joined by his master. Roux laid out plans to ride to the city and find a meal. Fine and well. Yet all the day, Garin’s thoughts tried to form sense of the mysterious whispers from the skull.

All good things, he finally decided. Someday.

Desperation had prompted him to contact a stranger. Annja didn’t know him. Had never met him, save through a couple e-mails.

So why agree to meet him?

Others had helped her out of desperate situations. And this is what she did. She didn’t sit at home lazing before the television. She seized what the day offered.

And today’s offering was too good to resist.

The season’s first snow smacked Annja’s cheek with a sharp bite. It melted on her warm skin. Glad she’d the fore-thought to tug on a ski cap and warm jacket, she stalked onto the Carroll Street Bridge. One of the oldest retractile bridges in the country, this sweet little bridge was about one hundred and twenty years old.

The traffic was sparse. Few cars crossed the Gowanus Canal at this bridge. Annja glanced up and read the antique sign hanging overhead on the steel girders.

Ordinance of the City: Any Person Driving Over this Bridge Faster than a Walk Will Be Subject to a Penalty of Five Dollars per Offense.

You gotta love New York, she thought.

Peering over the bridge railing, recently painted a fresh coat of bold green, she decided the water in the Gowanus Canal wasn’t so lavender as rumors claimed. The city had gone to remarkable efforts to clean the grungy, putrid stretch of water. A flushing tunnel was also supposed to clean out the raw sewage more often.

The effect of snow falling around her as she looked over the water produced an eerie hyperspace vibe.

“It ain’t like dustin’ crops, boy,” she said in her best Han Solo imitation.

So she could geek out with the best of them.

“Not interested in a swim tonight,” she muttered. “Not without my hazmat bikini.”

Turning her hips against the bridge railing, and shoving her hands in her pockets, she switched her gaze skyward. There weren’t a lot of stars to be seen with the ambient light from buildings and street lamps blasting the heavens. At least there was a sky to see. One of many advantages of living in Brooklyn was the lack of skyscrapers. The Cuban cuisine wasn’t too shabby, either.

Somewhere, she gauged maybe half a mile off, a siren shrilled. Horns honked, announcing the bar crowd as they scattered to various haunts. The snow was heavy, but not enough to make the road slippery.

Annja had walked from her loft. Passing cars had lodged muddy spittle onto her hiking boots. A quick walk in brisk weather always lifted her spirits. Until the chill set in. And it was nippy tonight.

Staying home with a cup of hot chocolate in hand, and watching her latest favorite TV show on DVD, sounded a much warmer plan. But she was not one to resist a mystery when it involved an artifact.

Only that afternoon Annja had received a desperate e-mail from Sneak. She didn’t know the person, just suspected he was a he. He’d followed her conversations at alt.archaeology.esoterica, and felt she could give him some answers about something he’d found—a skull.

Skulls were more common than gold coins in the archaeological world. There was a skull in every myth, every legend, every thrilling adventure tale told. Skulls granting wishes, skulls promising fortune, skulls bringing about the end of the world.

Plain old skull skulls that could be anything from some peasant who’d died of a heart attack working the fields to some deranged serial killer’s leftovers.

What was so special about this one?

Sneak hadn’t sent a picture, claiming his digital camera had been broken in a recent fall. But his mention of a dig in Spain grabbed Annja’s attention. He claimed to have apprenticed during the summers, though he’d abandoned his desire to dig for bones two years earlier.