A Chime for these Hallowed Bones (Chapter 6, Part 2)
“Yadleen!” Akal all but snarled her name.
She kept her focus on Oracle and continued without waiting for the bhūta’s answer. “It is common knowledge that Unnamed bones cannot make a wight. The bones are tainted. Every necromantic text agrees. However, I am trying to understand the cause.”
Oracle took a single step forward. “First, you’ll –”
Akal clashed the chimes. The assembled bhūtas recoiled. Oracle stood her ground, with only a faint ripple through her flaming form to indicate she’d noticed the sound at all. She raised her burning gaze to Akal briefly before dismissing him with a shake of her azure head.
“You’ll do something for me. You disrupted my meditations, Mortal. You sent that one –” Oracle tipped her horned head towards the archivist bhūta, now barely visible as it cowered among the other onlooking dead. “– into my cave, caterwauling about your ‘need.’ You will answer my questions, to my satisfaction. Only then will I help you. If you don’t like that, you and your fellows can scurry up those stairs and never return.”
Yadleen heard the scuff of shoes as Akal pushed Rajeev up a step. She dug in her heels. “What do you want to know?”
“I know a great deal about the quaint rituals you apes call ‘Ātapararan culture.’ Honor? Yes, you have some primitive concept of it. Taint? A relative concept, but still within the grasp of your gelatinous minds. But ‘Unnamed?’ You’ve taught many of my lesser kin this word, but I had not heard it until tonight.”
Yadleen’s chest tightened. If she doesn’t even know what Unnamed are, she won’t have the answer I need.
It was too early to give up, though. Not every word in the Naga’s Tongue had come from the Naga herself. Necromancers had needed to improvise several terms over the centuries, teaching them to the bhūtas to facilitate communions like this one. Perhaps Unnaming had been introduced to Oracle by a different name. If not, there was still a chance that she’d help once she understood things properly.
“It is a stigma laid upon only the most dishonorable people,” Yadleen explained.
“Deserters?” Oracle guessed.
“Those who pervert truth. If someone seeks chaos and death by twisting facts and spreading falsehoods, their very name is stained by that evil. That stain spreads to the names of everyone they touch. The only way to protect ourselves, to keep the name of the entire Ātapararan race from being stained, is an Unnaming. We erase the dishonorable one from existence. We execute the body and wipe the name from our hearts and all records.”
Yadleen thought it was a good explanation. So, it seemed, did Oracle, as she didn’t for clarification. Instead, the bhūta paced back and forth before the ghat, as if mulling things over.
Abruptly, Oracle stopped and declared, “Such fixation on names. Your ancestors didn’t have that obsession. That’s a rakshasa trait.” She swept her burning gaze back to Yadleen. “I was unaware that rakshasas had conquered your people.”
Rajeev’s remark about the Sultan being a puppet flashed to mind. For a moment, Yadleen forgot Oracle wasn’t human. She nearly spat a retort at the ancient ghost before she remembered herself.
“Our city has been a member of the Hegemony for three centuries. The rakshasas keep peace within the Hegemony. They don’t rule us,” she corrected.
“Did the practice of Unnaming begin when they took over?” Oracle asked.
Yadleen hesitated. She’d never thought about it. It wasn’t like there was a list of names and dates for people who had been Unnamed that one could look up.
Rajeev spoke up in Ātapararan. “The answer to that question is ‘yes.’ Unnaming was introduced to this sultanate two generations prior to the formal assimilation by the Hegemony.”
Trusting Akal to keep his eyes on Oracle, Yadleen turned to scowl up at the alchemist. In the same tongue, she hissed, “Then it didn’t begin when we joined them.”
“It’s a standard part of the Hegemony’s assimilation strategy.” The fires of the gathered dead shimmered in Rajeev’s eyes. “They send infiltrators to mold your culture into one open to their influence, then approach formally when they decide you’re vulnerable enough. It’s conquest via other means.”
“Versus conquest via your empire’s means?” Yadleen countered.
“At least we’re honest about it. Now, if you don’t want me to address her directly, tell her the answer.”
Yadleen scoffed. Switching back to the Naga’s Tongue, she addressed Oracle. “Honor has always been integral to our culture. It is a gift from the Chorus, so that we may measure a person’s character.”
A bull’s snort emanated from Oracle. “If that is all there is to it, then my time’s been wasted. I’d hoped for something more intriguing.” The bhūta turned her back on Yadleen and took a step back towards the onlooking ring of bhūtas.
“Wait!” Yadleen called. “You said you would answer my question!”
Oracle snorted again. Without turning around, she growled, “I did, by acknowledging that my time has been wasted. Whose bones do you think were used for the first experiments in necromancy? The beloved matriarch with fifty grandchildren? The priest who distributed alms to the needy? No, it was the murderers, rapists, and thieves – all those who’d forfeited their honor, whose bones no one would miss. Dishonor has never mattered in the creation of wights. Your gods don’t care about that, and I assure you, neither I nor my ilk do. Now, go.”
Akal intervened. In the Naga’s Tongue, he declared, “We thank you for your counsel, wise Oracle. We’ll take our leave.”
Yadleen’s head spun. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. “Every reputable text states –”
“If you trusted the texts, you wouldn’t have disturbed me.” Oracle’s tone was ice now, though that chill didn’t stab as deeply into Yadleen as the dismissal did. “You have my firsthand testimony. Don’t test my patience further.”
“Yadleen. We got what you wanted. Let’s fall back.” It took Yadleen a heartbeat to register that these soft words, spoken in Ātapararan, were from Rajeev.
No. I can’t let him ruin Master Baig’s life.
“Then something was discovered later, something you haven’t heard about!” Yadleen lurched forward a step. Her foot plunged into the lukewarm waters of the well, sending a ripple across the pool. “You have to find me a bhūta who knows the truth!”
“Yadleen!” Akal bellowed. The chimes rattled as he lunged towards Yadleen.
Rajeev cursed in a language she didn’t know.
Oracle’s azure body flared, and she spun about. Yadleen was suddenly transfixed by the bhūta’s burning gaze. Silent swallowed the ghat, as if Akal and Rajeev were also paralyzed by that hateful look.
“The only thing I have to do, Mortal, is send a message for the next fool who disturbs me,” Oracle decreed.
The bhūta’s silhouette melted. She grew into a five-meter pillar of sapphire flame. The harmony of a full necromantic orchestra – bells and chimes, cymbals and tambourines – blared from her. Yadleen caught only snatches of Naga’s Tongue amidst this theme.
“Intrusion … malicious … purge …”
In a blazing wave, the gathered bhūtas rushed the ghat.
Yadleen fled up the stairs. Above her, Akal climbed faster than her. He’d already reached Rajeev and was driving the alchemist ahead of him with the head of the staff. As they fled, the tambourine rattled in Yadleen’s hand, the chimes rustled upon the staff, and the bells in her hair and Akal’s jingled.
Oracle’s symphony drowned them out, leaving only her own music to command the dead.
Yadleen’s eyes were on the top of the ghat. They just needed to get high enough. Surely, the warrior-wights guarding the Well would see this as a mass breakout attempt.
If one of us can just get high enough –
Sixteen steps up, a searing grip closed around her right ankle. There was no weight, no physical pull, but the pain made her whole leg spasm and give out. She crashed forward, nearly cracking her face against the next stair up.
Terror and pain erupted from her in a piercing shriek. It was cut short when the heat plunged into her back. Her chest seized, stealing her breath and choking off her scream.
Golden ghostfire licked at her vision, and the pain spread throughout her own body. More bhūtas hurtled past her, bounding after Akal and Rajeev. They made it only halfway up the ghat before they were both seized and brought down.
Yadleen’s whole body burned. Visions shimmered before her eyes. Part of her, the training Master Baig had drilled into her, understood that the bhūtas were assessing her, peeling open her mind and sharing her memories to determine which of them would be most compatible with her bones, but that rational voice called through a roaring inferno that forced out all other thoughts.
Then jade and yellow flames joined the gold, engulfing her entirely. There was no room left in Yadleen’s mind for any voice of her own. Only pain and memory remained.
Thank you for reading! Chapter 7 releases next Tuesday, March 3rd! I hope to see you then!
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