The Throne of Bones by Brian McNaughton

Author:Brian McNaughton [McNaughton, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, Short Stories, world fantasy award
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2010-12-31T08:00:00+00:00

She caught the reference. She looked up joyously through her tears, seized my hand and pressed her wet cheek against it. “I knew you’d help him!”

“Some things are shocking, that’s all, that’s all there is to it,” I grumbled, pacing. “What do you want me to do? What on earth can I do, if that’s what he is? At least he slept last night, didn’t he?”

“The medicine had no effect. I put it in his wine, as you said, but he went out before midnight and looked even ghastlier than usual when he woke this afternoon.” As if to ease the pain of speaking, she picked up one of the books I had dropped and leafed through it. “He does that—he goes somewhere, I can’t imagine where, and returns looking worse each time.”

She paused to inspect an illustration from a different angle. “Would this book help him, do you suppose, by diverting his mind from his usual desires?”

I went to her side and saw to my chagrin that I had been scribbling my thoughts about ghoulism in the margins of Chalcedor’s Lives of the Wicked Apricants, a justly notorious work. When I tried to take it from her, she gripped it and insisted on browsing the engravings. I knelt before her chair to guide her study of the book laid flat in her lap. The pictures made her smile, a welcome respite from all the tears I had caused. She even giggled.

“Have you ever tried this?” she asked, using her fingertip to decipher the parts of one tangled couple. Pretending not to notice what I did, she had allowed me to push her dress above her hips and ease her thighs apart.

“No,” I lied.

“Let’s.” She put the cold, dry, odorless, colorless, hairless and tasteless picture from her lap. It had concealed a reality whose every attribute was precisely opposite.

I was right: the Goddess had sent a test with her gift, and I had passed it. I resolved to buy her a lamb. Not today, though.

* * * *

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