The Tyranny of Ghosts_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [83]
“That sounded heavy for bones,” she said.
“It did,” Geth agreed.
“They’re not bones,” Chetiin called softly from above. “Geth, catch this. Be careful.” He held out the skull with both hands. Geth caught it with a grunt. Ekhaas heard it scrape against the metal of his gauntlet and stepped up for a closer look as Geth held it into a shaft of moonlight.
It wasn’t bone at all, but dark, slightly glittering stone. And yet it was a perfect, if weathered, copy of a hobgoblin skull. The finer details had been erased by time and exposure, but all of the ridges, all of the crevices that Ekhaas would have expected to find in a real skull were there. Even the jaw was properly jointed, though it broke away as Geth attempted to move it. He cursed like a child caught damaging something precious, but Ekhaas took it from him and inspected the interior surface. More protected from the weather, it retained every line and pockmark.
Tenquis stared over her shoulder. “If that’s daashor work, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Dhakaani sculpture was never this realistic,” said Ekhaas.
“I don’t think it was a sculpture,” Chetiin said as he came spidering down the wall. “There were stone ligaments holding it together. I think it was a real skeleton that had been changed to stone.”
“Khaavolaar,” breathed Ekhaas.
“Could it have been done by a medusa?” asked Tooth. “Or a basilisk? No hunter has ever seen one in these parts, but this is old.”
“Medusas and basilisks change living flesh to stone,” Tenquis said. “Their victims look like statues. I’ve seen them. Magic might change a skeleton to stone.” He looked back up to the window. “But why pose one like that?”
A yip from Marrow brought them around. The worg crouched beside another collapsed wall, pawing at something. Geth handed the skull to Ekhaas and went over. He bent down and brushed away dry dirt, then shifted a rock. His teeth flashed as he bared them. “There’s another one here. Crushed. I think the wall fell on it.” He picked something out of the ground and held it up. It was a battered and corroded metal greave. “This one was wearing armor.”
Tenquis examined it. “Dhakaani design,” he said.
Ekhaas shivered and set skull and jaw down on the ground. A frightening suspicion was growing in her. “Stay close, but look around,” she said. “See if you can see any more.”
Geth looked up at her. “You think these were the people of Suud Anshaar? But the stories don’t mention this.”
“I’m starting to understand that sometimes the stories aren’t completely right.”
They found four more skeletons nearby, some more weathered than others, most preserved only by some coincidence of shelter. Two stood in a hidden niche, entwined in an eternal embrace, yet also curiously apart. Tenquis slid a hand among the frozen bones. “If they were posed like this,” he said, “why aren’t the two skeletons actually touching each other?”
“I’m not sure they were skeletons when they died,” said Ekhaas. She held her arm in a position similar to that of one skeleton, then took Tenquis’s arm and pressed it to hers, matching the other skeleton. “Imagine the gap between our bones,” she said, her mouth dry, “separated by the thickness of flesh.”
Tenquis jerked away from her. “Something turned their bones to stone?”
Geth considered the skeletons, his face grim. “It happened fast, then. I don’t think they had any warning.”
“Maybe they didn’t,” said Chetiin. The old goblin stood in a ruined doorway. “But you need to see this.”
Beyond the doorway, two sturdy walls preserved a section of corridor no more than ten paces long, both ends open. Two stone skeletons stood in the corridor. Unlike the other skeletons they’d seen, these were posed in attitudes of panic. One was precariously balanced in a sprinting position—fleeing from something, Ekhaas guessed. The other was on its back on the floor, twisted