The Corpse Palace: A Blasphemy of Bones Book 2 by Will Payne

Author:Will Payne [Payne, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baldric Books
Published: 2024-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The Harp

To fully recapture the horror of being hunted by a Feeder of Man, play the gayum harp in total darkness, preferably in a cave.

—Shadow over Nettles, Courtesan and Imperial Spy

Loam lay bundled in quilts beside an empty bookcase. The kraug shivered uncontrollably. His wheezy breath whimpered through Neffan’s study. “C-c-cold, Kraug not kraug. S-s-so very cold.”

“Wait, friend. Help is coming.” He wiped sweat from the balmy air off his forehead. Swallowing guilt, he patted the kraug’s muscled shoulder. How could Loam have known the difference between living foes and candleheads?

“F-F-Freezing.”

A single touch from a candlehead had chilled Skren’s own heart. Loam had endured an onslaught of icy hands.

Even wrapped in thick blankets, the kraug’s flesh remained devoid of life-giving warmth. If Pongo didn’t return with aid soon, Loam would die of what could only be hypothermia.

He was a fool for leading everyone into such danger. He dragged his palm down his face. His recklessness would eventually lead to one of their deaths. Loam’s injuries were grave. To make matters worse, Greemus had disappeared.

The boy insisted the frog faced scholar fled, but Skren wasn’t sure. An unaccounted for candlehead, a classmate of Pongo’s named Yadi, was not amongst the pile of dead children. Had she ambushed Greemus? In the end, the search for the esoteric philosopher had only delayed medical care for Loam. The poor beast suffered. Without help, he wouldn’t survive much longer.

Skren frowned at Neffan’s looted study. Every book pertaining to alchemy, esoteric philosophy, blasphemy, and engineering had disappeared off the headmaster’s shelves. Their only reason for coming to the Conch Academy had been futile.

“Hagdamned suspicious is what it is,” Pongo had said before leaving the Library. “I’d wager that skin poet was here.”

Where was the boy? He should be back by now.

Loam’s chest rattled and wheezed as he slumbered. His snoring reminded him of the day he toured a sawmill with his mother. The inventive miller had attached a whipsaw to a crude version of the blasphemer’s engine. Forgoing the waterwheel had increased production by over 500 boards a day.

Instead of being rewarded for his innovation, mother ordered him to be strung up by the neck.

Loam gurgled with throaty snores, just like the choking miller twitching on the noose.

“The moment the engine enters the hands of the freeborn, the world is doomed,” she had said before putting the sawmill to the torch.

He padded over the hardwood floors and cracked open a paneled window.

There was still no sign of Pongo.

Approaching dawn glowed across the sky, vanquishing the shadows around the six-sided pavilion sitting in the center of the courtyard…shaped like a hexagon. The turrets of the Alchemist Labs were also hexagons. These shapes hid in plain sight everywhere.

He sighed at his own stupidity. Madame Gromon had expounded upon the indomitable power of the hexagon. But he still had no clue what she meant. Here, like the burned Nautilus academy, the same arithmetical principles dominated the school’s architecture, revealing some secret to the clever few able to grasp the symbolism.

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