“Hardly destroy you,” she said contemptuously. “Transform, perhaps.”
“But I would begone.”
“The human part of you, yes.” She waved her hand dismissively. “But what use had that part ever been, aside from running errands and doing chores? You were a glorified maidservant. You couldn’t evenread. You spent your entire life in one place, quite contentedly. Please don’t pretend you were some sort of great intellect, that your loss would affect the world in any way. No one even knew you existed.”
Baldbeak gave a loud and warlike caw.
“Fine, except for theraven.” She rolled her eyes. “I suppose he would miss you.”
I stared at her. “Is that really what you thought of me, all this time?”
“Netta, to be frank, I thought of you very little.” Her mouth twisted into a smile, or what I suppose she thought was a smile. “It is nothing to be ashamed of. Most people are terribly unremarkable. And you were lucky enough to carry something special within you, until such time as I could marry it with the spellbook and bring it all together. Now that is something to be proud of.”
I had no words. I looked into the face of the thing that had been my mother. I did not feel any sadness—that would come later.
“But it didn’t work, did it?” I said. “Because I wasn’t as powerless and worthless as you thought.”
“I suppose not,” she agreed. “And perhaps it was all for the best, after all.”
I looked around at the ruined room, then back to the horror of her form.
“How could any of this possibly befor the best?”
“Because I didn’t need you, in the end,” she said. “I thought I did. I knew that the work required sacrifice, and I thought you would suffice for it. But now I see the sacrifice had to be mine. If all had gone as planned, I would never have learned that.”
She seemed dreamy; thoughtful. “I don’t know what I was so afraid of, now.” She extended one arm and examined it. “It didn’t hurt at all. And now I am free.”
The air in the chamber grew heavier, thick with the smell of iron and earth. The bones in the walls began to stir, rattling faintly.
“I just need those hairs.”
I clutched them tighter. “Why?”
“You pulled them from my head just as I entered the book. My sacrifice is thus not yet complete, and bone magic will not accept any less than all of me if it is to use me as its vessel instead of you. I don’t even need the book now, you see.” She smiled a terrible smile. “Iambone magic, now.”
Patrick cursed under his breath. He started to try to get up, but I shook my head. “Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t come near.” To Mother, I said, “I am here to stop you, Mother. Not to aid you.”
She frowned at me—still not angry, not really, just exasperated. “But it’s inevitable,” she said. “I don’t see why you’re being so difficult. Imadeyou, Netta. Everything you are, you are because of me.”
I swallowed. She had moved towards me, just slightly. “Maybe,” I said. “But I made myself, too.”
She waved a hand lazily, and I was frozen in place, just as I had been in the Tower. My fists uncurled like a flower. The hairs lifted from my palm and drifted towards her, writhing like water snakes through the magic-curdled air until they rested in her own hand. She closed her fingers over them, smiling. When she opened her hand again, they had disappeared.
She placed her hands on the stone to either side of herself andpushed, as if she were rising out of deep water. Her hips emerged, her thighs, her knees, all with that same slick, queasy shine on the skin, and finally she was stepping out of the book onto the sarcophagus.
She stood tall, flexing her arms and legs, tilting her neck from side to side, savoring her own movement. I could not move my head, but I looked as far to the side as I could and saw that Patrick and Baldbeak were frozen just as I was, their faces horrified.
Mother stepped down onto the stone floor and walked towards me, each movement fluid and precise. She seemed to crackle with magic. Behind her, the book still lay open on the stone tomb, but its luster had gone—it looked as limp and lifeless as a garment shrugged off and left to fall on the floor.
The bones in the walls rattled louder, some breaking free and falling to the floor, then skidding across it as they were pulled towards her. The bones embedded in the catacomb walls responded to her silent call, grinding as they moved, pulling free from stone and earth, assembling themselves into skeletal shapes. Patrick, Baldbeak, and I still could not move.
“What will you do now?” I whispered.
“Why, go out into the kingdom, of course,” said my mother. “And claim my rightful place. But I shall need attendants, naturally.” She looked about her, assessing. The bones were having some difficulty putting their pieces together in the right order, but I could see they were gradually becoming full skeletons.
As I watched, one groped about the floor searching for its skull, which had rolled a little distance away. Hystericallaughter bubbled up in my throat at the horror and the ridiculousness of it both.
My mother, a bone mage—the embodiment of bone magic itself. Raising a skeletal army. Marching on Virelith.
