The Tower of Bones Read Online Free PDF

shield she might be able somehow to make real contact and helphim escape. It was a very slight hope, but it was the only hope she could think of, and at least she was determined to try.
    On her knees, with her hair still clutched in the fist of Faltana, Kate clenched her eyes shut, and she pressed every ounce of concentration into trying again.
    This time she felt a flicker of contact. When she opened her eyes, she saw how his head swivelled to look at her. He was gazing over at her with enquiring eyes.
    Yes
, she urged,
we can talk, mind-to-mind
!
    His eyes beheld hers, imploringly
    She pressed the thought to him:
I’m a prisoner too
.
    She just knew he understood her. Why – oh why – would he not answer?
    She tried again:
You mustn’t sing. Don’t give in to them. If you sing, the Beast thing will devour you
.
    His head fell. She could see that his courage was failing.
    Hold on, even a few more moments. I’m trying my best to help you.
    His eyes closed, as if at the impossibility of the thought.
    I’m going to distract them. If I can distract the Witch, even for a second, you might just have a chance.
    Kate shrieked inside, as the agony of Faltana’s whip descended onto the back of her neck. The chief succubus had not missed the swivel of the Cill’s head, nor the look Kate had received from those tormented eyes as they found a natural ally. But Faltana’s attention was distracted bywhat was emerging from the central pit, where a glow, like molten lava, was creeping over the lip of gnarled and pitted bone.
    Kate was cast aside as Faltana flung out her arms to either side of her quivering chest. Her voice shrieked in ecstasy:
    ‘See my Beauty – my beloved Mistress! See how, in homage to your power, the Beast is rising!’
    Kate sickened at the sulphurous smell, like burning hair, that was rising out of the pit. She despaired of finding any way of helping the Cill in time. Yet still she implored him to take heed of her advice:
Don’t sing – whatever you do, please don’t let them make you sing!
    A premonitory keening, high-pitched, like the melodious sigh of a tormented soul, burst upon Kate’s eardrums.
    No!
She implored the child.
    But how could he resist any longer, as a lurid furnace of power was rising out of the pit and filling the air with dark energy. Deformed shapes whirled and spiralled within it. Hisses and sighs of expectation filled the chamber as the succubi and Gargs prostrated themselves against the bony floor. The ground trembled in the proximity to such power – a power battening on to terror, pain and blood. Kate shook with fright, dropping her head and squeezing her eyes shut.
    Faltana had boasted more than once that it had been the genius of Olc to have discovered the monstrousskeleton entombed in stone that was the remains of Fangorath, a legacy so obdurate and terrible it had survived from a time when darkness and light had fought for dominion over the world. A spark of that malice lingered here still, in the fossilised bones – a legacy of malice that Olc nurtured for her own scheming. She had chosen this blasted wilderness because it was the festering graveyard of a terrible battle that had involved creatures of magic. The witch tentacles that crept out into the landscape were searching for the soul spirits of these inhuman dead. In the residual malice that lay encased within the Tower of Bones, she had fastened on the most terrible of them all, Fangorath, whose soul spirit needed to batten on terror if it was to be resurrected to do the Witch’s bidding.
    The frail body of the Cill child was outlined, trembling, against the pulsating red glow of the moiling furnace. In his nakedness, Kate saw that his slender body was devoid of breasts, his skin covered in gossamer-thin scales that reflected the red light with a curious luminescence. In the extreme of his terror, two fan-like structures opened out on either side of his small rounded head, like petals of lacy fronds three times