The Throne of Bones Read Online Free PDF

I could not. It was bad enough that our child might be marked by a fish-faced wizard and his demon plants without filling her head with images of rats and skeletons. I pasted a grin on my face, kissed her and made much of her, but for the first time I resisted when she tried to draw me into bed. I told her she looked ill, that she should rest, and this was true, but I wanted to start on the work that would free us.
    I labored for hours, fascinated but appalled by the creatures that begged for release. I thought I’d seen a shy rabbit in the wood I had brought home, a dancer from Lilaret, a hound biting its paw. What emerged were a snarling rat, a demon capering on a skull, a ghoul gnawing a bone.
    I was surprised to see that Dendra had joined me to paint my demon. She looked well enough, but her glances at me were apprehensive. I had no idea how to explain the work I was doing, so I pretended to be absorbed in it, and soon that was true.
    When I next looked up, she had retired. Stretching my fingers, I nearly screamed from the pain. Without noticing, I had worked beyond the limits of flesh. The world outside was gray, stung by the flashes of brilliant blossoms.
    She painted while I slept, so that my wares were ready for the public when I rose at noon to breakfast on bananas and figs.
    “I wasn’t sure what color to paint that ... thing,” she said, indicating my ghoul.
    “Green looks right.”
    “You don’t like this place at all, do you?”
    Careful not to sound like the grumpy bear she sometimes called me, I said, “I’d be happier if we weren’t beholden to a patron. And you must admit that we’re far from the center of things. Just getting to the theater—”
    “I think I need peace and quiet now,” she said. “And this lovely garden—wouldn’t it be so much nicer for a child than a noisy street full of whores and cutthroats, with musicians over our head and opium-eaters next door?”
    This was not an entirely unfair picture of our former home, but she’d once praised its urban diversions. I restrained myself from telling her what I knew and suggesting that even our old neighbors on Ashclamith Square would have been preferable to plague-stricken corpses. Though I was horrified by the length of the stay her words implied, I said mildly, “You don’t want to put down roots here.”
    She laughed. “That’s exactly what I feel like doing!”
    It seemed wiser to get the money we needed to move before we argued about moving. Her lips tasted oddly bitter when I kissed her, like privet leaves. I had heard that pregnant women ate curious things.
    Heading for the gate with my armload of carvings, I met Dwelphorn Thooz.
    “But what have I done,” he said when I told him where I was going, “that you should deny me the first chance of buying your creations?”
    “After all your kindness, I can’t ask you to buy my work.”
    “You mean, my kindness has denied me a right enjoyed by the first wretch you meet? Would you oblige me if I were a monster of cruelty? Why then, trolls lusting to couple with infants and posthumes gorged on virgins’ blood will tremble at the whisper of my deeds! Should Dwelphorn Thooz be written on the earth and the word kindness inscribed on the remotest star, the universe will crumple with shame for holding so inapt a juxtaposition.”
    I believed he was joking, but how could I know? Reading a Sythiphoran face is impossible, I have since learned, even for the owner of another one. I arranged my pieces on the grass, resigned to the necessity of offering a gift. He seized on the ghoul and scrutinized it from every angle.
    “Have you been perambulating our necropolis at midnight, young man?” He studied me even more intently than he had my sculpture. “Where, then, have you seen a ghoul?”
    “In the wood,” I said, and explained how I worked.
    Excepting Dendra, no one had ever heard me out with such alert interest and apparent comprehension. “Extraordinary,” he said. “And