“Ossuaries. Those are collections of bones, right?” I asked, thinking of the unholy church in which we’d found Soraia.
“Yeah, but it’s more than that. They’re often the bones of the religious community that served the local church—the godly—and of the long-dead parishioners, buried in consecrated ground until the bones were stripped of all flesh. Then the bones are gathered into a chapel or a catacomb to make more room in the graveyard and to remind the people that in life they are in the presence and shadow of death. It’s where the danse macabre tradition comes from. In the case of ossuaries, the bones aren’t just gathered. They’re arranged or piled with great care, not so often as individual people and whole skeletons, but as parts—piles of femurs or skulls in one room, ribs in another . . . that sort of thing. Or they use the bones themselves to decorate the chapel they rest in—that’s fairly rare, but there are some spectacular examples of it around. The ossuaries of Rome, Milan, and Paris are famous, and there’s a well-known chapel in Évora, and a really amazing display in Sedlec, outside Prague. Oh, and one in Czermna, Poland, I really want to see. The chapel is built—walls, ceiling, and floors—from the bones of victims of plagues and wars that have ravaged the area for generations. The interesting thing about that one is that it was built recently—relatively speaking—in the late eighteenth and into the early nineteenth centuries by a single priest. Modern ossuaries are so rare!”
Mara fixed her husband with a quelling look. “Ben, we’re not in the lecture hall today.”
“But it’s fascinating and I’d think that magic users who channel their powers through bones would be attracted to such places. Have any of the problems been associated with ossuaries?”
“Not that I know of—not known ossuaries at least,” I replied. “I’ll have to check into it when I get back.” I looked at my watch. It was past three o’clock and I wasn’t sure how it had gotten so late. “And I need to get back before much later or I won’t get enough done before Carlos wants my attention.”
Sam was looking appalled, her eyes wide as she cuddled Martim on her lap. The boy wriggled until she reluctantly let him go to toddle around the room. “What is it he was planning?” Sam asked.
“I wish I knew,” I said. “He didn’t tell me last night because he wanted to get to work as quickly as possible.”
“No. Not . . . your friend. I mean my father. Why would he do this?”
“I don’t know. He has some plan about destabilizing Europe, though how this fits, is beyond me.”
“His own granddaughter . . .” The horror was starting to hit her. “He gave her to those people. . . . They cut her arm. What were they doing to her?”
“What did she tell you?”
Sam was pale and her voice was a little shaky. “It didn’t make sense. She’s . . . She’s always been such a happy girl and now she’s obsessed with death and skeletons and ghosts—she talked all night in her sleep, tossing around and crying. . . .”
“What did she tell you?” I repeated, not wanting to plant any false ideas by speaking of what I knew Soraia had seen.
“She said . . . She said there were dead people—corpses. She said they walked around. She said the bad people—that’s what she called them—bad people. She said they boiled them. . . .” Sam’s voice broke. “She said they took the bones out of a boy who was still alive! Oh my God, oh my God . . .” She began crying, her voice coming in hiccuping gulps. “It can’t be true! Oh God . . .”
Martim sat down hard on the floor and started screaming, his hysteria matching his mother’s. Sam made no move to go to him but stared into empty space, shaking. Ben got up to comfort Martim. Mara and I leaned forward to help Sam, but Sam shook us off with a sharp cry and turned aside, starting to rock and fold in on herself.
“I didn’t take care of her! I didn’t protect her! I let that bastard come near her and—and—and he took her and it’s my fault! He gave her to those people! Oh my God, oh my God . . . Soraia!”
As she screamed for her daughter, both the baby and Soraia—off in Brian’s room—screamed, too.
Brian ran out and skidded to a stop, his eyes wide. “She’s hurt! I think—”
Behind him came Soraia, screaming, eyes wide as she ran toward her mother. She threw herself at Sam, wrapping her arms around her, screeching in spasms of distress, “Mamãe! Mamãe!”
Mara was off the couch in an instant, kneeling in front of Sam. She shot Brian a look over her shoulder. “It’s not you, Brian, love. Go back to your room. Ben, bring me the baby.”
Brian began to retreat, but he only went as far as the hall to the bedrooms, standing in the shadow to watch, quivering, wide-eyed. Ben strode across the floor with Martim clutched to his chest and bent down next to his wife. The chorus of screams rose in volume. Mara scooped Martim from her husband’s arms and held him against Sam’s rocking body, until the baby had wrapped his arms around her, too. But although the character of their screaming changed, it didn’t stop.
“Ben,” Mara said without raising her head, “I need a burdock root, anise, and a sprig of rosemary. Harper, I need you, too. And Brian, if you’re not going to leave the room, be useful and get the damned salt bowl off my worktable. And a match. Now!”
Ben and Brian ran as I stood next to Mara.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“There’s a knot that needs unpicking. Sam’s guilt is affecting Soraia and things are becoming a tangle. The girl thinks she’s to blame. The mother thinks the same of herself. The poor baby’s in the middle and just adding to the feedback. I need you to get hold of the loop between Soraia and Sam, find the knot, and pick it loose when I say so.”
Ben and Brian came pounding back into the salon, handing over their objects as quickly as Mara would take them. Mara set the copper bowl of salt on the floor in front of Sam and lit the dry, wizened burdock root on fire, dropping the vile, smoking thing into the salt dish.
“Harper, time for you,” she said, and I dropped into the Grey, letting the icy mist swallow me as Mara began twining the rosemary and anise together in her fingers and whispering to the herbs as she did.
In the silvery world I could see the anxious orange sparks around Ben and Brian while Mara remained a calm gold and green, her whispers coiling into the burdock smoke and wafting toward the tangled, knotted ball of red and olive green that was Sam and her children. Their screaming shook the world. I didn’t have time to examine much as boiling mist swirled around them, threatening to choke me in a sea of half-formed faces. Random lightning struck around me, growing worse with every moment.
I pushed my hand into the edge of the intertwined auras, sliding along the burning strands until I hit a bump, a knot. I started to pick at it with my fingertips and wished I had the pheasant feather an old Salish woman had given me to help ease the knot apart. Usually I had little trouble with energy strands these days, but the knot of this hysteria was writhing and tying itself tighter with every shriek. I pushed my arm deep into the mess, working blindly, by feel alone. “Come on . . .” I muttered. “Come on, Soraia, let go.” But when I thought she wasn’t going to give me any slack, the knot moved. I shoved my fingers into the slightly open loop and wedged it wider, grabbing the strand that ran through the open bend and pulling it back toward me.
For a moment, the boiling Grey mist pressed itself into a shape with wide eyes under a mop of curls and I was sure I was looking into Soraia’s face, somehow.
“Let go,” I said, still tugging on the burning strand of energy in my hand. “Please.”
The mist sank down and the knot flowed open with the cool slither of silk, falling away.
I pushed back up to the normal world, into panting silence.
The burning burdock root still stank and Mara had torn the rosemary and anise into shreds, but the little family on the couch was no longer screaming. Their postures had softened, slumped, so the children were merely leaning on their mother, one on each side, while Sam sat with her face in her hands, trying to catch her breath. Ben and Brian had both retreated a few steps and Ben was holding his son as the boy hugged him, shivering. Soraia lifted her head and stared at me.