6
THE SEPARATION OF BONES
I’m not sure that Islana had ever actually loved me.
It was something I’d wrestled with for a long time. At the beginning, when he saw each other infrequently, when our passion and our desire was so intense that we’d hurt each other in our lovemaking without even intending to do so, when our desperation was such that we were on the verge of exploding…well, at the beginning, I hadn’t cared.
I’d fallen in love with her quickly and I’d trusted that, given a little more time, she’d eventually fall in love with me. And maybe she wouldn’t, and that would be okay too. For a long while our meetings had been entirely one sided in that she had gone to all the effort to organize them and was most enthusiastic about the next time we could see each other. I, on the other hand, recognizing the absolute mortal peril I was putting myself in, was always on the verge of running away and starting a new life. I was terrified. Terrified to touch her, talk to her, even to see her while I was on duty during the day.
Then, as the years passed, it bothered me that she didn’t love me back. That was around the time when I’d still harbored the unrealistic and frankly childish notion that we could one day run away together.
One time, I remember, we had been sitting with our backs against a tree, grasping each other’s hands. Eleven, maybe twelve years ago, so we’d been intimate for years, yet not as intimate as I wished. I bluntly asked her, “Do you think you’ll ever love me?”
Islana had looked at me, arching one brow. “What makes you think I don’t love you?”
“I don’t know. The fact that you’ve never said that you do is a decent clue, I should think.”
“Perhaps I just don’t show affection in the same way you do.”
“So, you do love me then?”
“Why does it have to be so simple, Sigmund?”
“I—”
“You’re a simple man,” she continued, “I get that. Not to say you’re a fool, you’re not…well, maybe a little, but my point is, you’re very direct all of the time, very…how shall I put it? You’re truthful. Both with yourself and others. But at the same time you’re so…open.”
I stared at her in the dark, her features half-lit by the crescent moon suspended above us. I hated when she talked like that, like she had me all figured out, like I was just some insect for her to study. How could she know all of these things about me when I didn’t even know them about myself?
“Back to the question,” I said.
“I don’t think so, Sigmund. Or at least, not in the way you want me to love you. I mean to say, really, that I do love you in a lot of ways, but—”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
I remember my face flushing, anger thrusting into my chest. I’d been far worse at pushing down my rage back then. “We should go,” I’d said, the only way I knew to shut down the conversation, a self-inflicted mercy kill.
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Anyway, later on, and still to this day, I learned to be content with what we had. She would never love me in the exact way I loved her, but fine, why did she have to? There was no rule, physical or divine, that commanded her to do so. She enjoyed my company and I enjoyed hers and that was all that mattered.
Why was I lingering on the past?
I think I was trying to find a way out of my situation. An excuse to jump overboard, to leave Islana to her cell and to her fate, to continue on with my life in other ways. My reasoning might be that, since she’d never actually loved me, I had no obligation to help her.
I didn’t. Have an obligation, I mean. But I was still going to do it.
#
Tonight would be a new moon, so the streets were filled with mourners.
A procession of people in bone masks shambled past me, all of them dressed in the most tattered, filthy clothing available to them, the flesh around their eyes gray with ash. An upside down rune, the aspect of Draugr, was painted across their masks. I watched them from under the roof of a tavern, grateful for some brief respite from the snow, and said a prayer.
A long walk down Augran street brought me to the smiths quarter. Black and white smoke bled out of brick chimneys and distorted the glassy rain. I breathed the smoke in, relishing it. My father had been a smith, so this part of the city held sentimental value for me. My mind drifted back to afternoons spent in my father's workshop, watching red hot iron smoldering, watching him, the man who'd raised me, sweating and grunting as he worked to arm the warriors of the empire. He'd forged my first sword, a basic, though expertly crafted tool. I'd broken it at some point, had lost one half of it in the skull of some poor bastard. At the time, I'd meant to go back after the battle to retrieve the hilt, but by then, I couldn't remember where I'd left it. A lasting regret of mine.
I found the church, small and surrounded by a nice garden, all nine gods rendered in stone and standing vigil around its perimeter. Then, continuing on, the house with the green door.
A newer house, constructed with stone. I approached it, head down against the sleet and the biting wind, knocking at the door with a numb hand. I looked around, saw no one, pressed my ear against the green wood and listened. Shouldn't have bothered, what with my terrible hearing and the weather conspiring against me.
I tried the door, prayed it wasn't locked, and for once my prayers came true. I pushed the door open and stood at that mouth of darkness, bringing the palms of my hands together, the old sign of peaceful intentions upon entering a household which, like so many other customs, had started to fade away. I closed the door against the increasingly violent pounding of the rain, thankful for shelter, eyes adjusting to the gloomy interior.
Silence. And a smell, wet and rusty, and mixed with the reek of piss. Never a good sign. My right hand found the hilt of my sword. I stepped quietly forward, knees bent, attempting stealth— never my forte. A board creaked underfoot. There were two rooms, the entrance hall in which I now stood, and up ahead, Kitan’s bedroom. A helmet rested on a wooden table to my side, conical and horned, the style of the warriors who inhabited the northern coastline. A souvenir, no doubt, from a raid Kitan had participated in.
My eyes now accustomed to the dark, I saw the body in Kitan’s room.
I suppose I’d been expecting it. That smell, raw and metallic, was a familiar one. I drew closer. In the dark, Kitan’s blood was black. It covered the floor, the walls, had splashed across his small bed, which he’d likely been dragged out of, judging by the mess. Kitan was naked, and in many pieces. Someone —or something— had separated his bones and piled them up in the corner.
I’d seen a lot of death, had dealt it out many times, but I’d never seen a man so ruined. He’d been taken apart, as though a pack of wolves had been set loose on him. And, with that thought in mind, it seemed to me that parts of him had been gnawed on. His throat had been torn out, his chest excavated and heart removed. Black mucus, the very same stuff which had coated Emrik, was all over Kitan’s remains. Where it touched his flesh, he had been dissolved. The remnants of his hand, sticky with the strange substance, were covered in human teeth. They protruded out of his waxy skin, perfectly shaped and white.
No point lingering, I returned the way I’d come and was soon back out in the rain and the snow and the wind, colder than ever, ice in my veins. So, whoever had killed Emrik had killed Kitan, and the obvious reason why was because he’d seen something.
My mind raced. I pushed my way past another procession of mourners, men and women who seemed ignorant to the cruel weather. I didn’t yet know where I was going, only that I wanted to get away from that house, from the man who had been disassembled.