The Tower of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

the circumference of his head, sheening through a kaleidoscope of colours. Kate stared at them in astonishment. But there was no time to wonder what they might be. At the lip of the pit, she glimpsed Olc herself, a gigantic wraith-like face, bowing in homage before the horror that was spilling outinto the chamber, the soul spirit of the titan, Fangorath, re-emerging into the fossilised cavity of what had formerly been its skull.
    Kate wept with fright.
    The chamber warped and crackled with the expanding power. As the Witch herself manifested in carnal form, the air was filled with the carrion stench of her monstrous breath. Kate heard the pattering of claws on bone as the Gargs edged backwards, panic overcoming curiosity. Even the succubi had stopped their chanting. The silence was invaded by a thunderous clicking and clacking. Retching with horror, Kate realised that it was the sound of Olc’s own jaws, mounted sideways, like the gorging mouth of a praying mantis.
    The Cill child began to sing; the notes of his terror rose on the air, the beautiful trill of an angel’s voice rising out of the cacophony of demons.
    The lurid miasma thickened, as if the soul spirit of the Beast and the carnal presence of the Witch took strength from each other, the multifaceted eyes intoxicated with glee, clacking jaws closing slowly about the source of its attraction.
    Kate stared, mute with shock, unable to breathe.
    Something resembling antennae stroked the tiny singer, pausing over the wide open mouth, as if savouring the last morsel of his grief. There was a cawing rasp, like the voice of a jackdaw. The tentacles trembled, as if barely suffused with enough restraint to pause until the deathsongfaded. The clicking and clacking rose to a thunder, extinguishing all other sound.
    At the height of her own terror Kate recalled a similar moment of fear on the summit of Slievenamon, the mountain that guarded her home town of Clonmel. Great danger had also threatened there. And Alan had found safety in a name. Kate’s eyed darted behind her. Faltana’s closed eyes gave her the opportunity she had been waiting for.
    She held her right hand aloft and she opened her palm wide as she screamed that name aloud.
    ‘Mórígán!’
    In the palm of her hand the flickering matrix became a tiny source of light illuminating, however palely, the darkness.
    The great mouth, between the clacking jaws, roared.
    Faltana’s eyes sprang open. Her hands clutched at Kate’s hair once more. But Kate no longer cared. A moment after she screamed the name a star bright as the sun burst through the bony walls and exploded in the chamber. The pure white light found Kate’s upstretched hand, moving in an instant to illuminate her entire body. Kate felt it as if the light of daybreak had suddenly invaded her soul. Alan’s voice … Alan’s love … his kiss!
    Kate! I’ll keep my promise. I’m coming for you!
    In the power of the communication, her body rose so she was hovering, embraced by the light, her feet inches above the floor.
    ‘Treachery!’ She heard Faltana’s scream.
    But Kate ignored her. Her senses were lost in the embrace of love. In her ears she heard how pandemonium surrounded her. The Cill had escaped. The succubi were attacking the Gargs and tossing their bodies into the maw of the Beast, in an attempt to assuage its hunger. Over and over again, she felt the blows about her head and body, and she heard the curses and screams of Faltana.
    When Kate recovered consciousness, the fury of the Witch was resonating throughout the chamber.
    How could such treachery be?
    The Witch’s voice sounded like the rasping caw of a jackdaw. A claw, curved and sharp as a scimitar, materialised on the end of a tentacle to tear out the right eye of Faltana.
    ‘Eeeeaaaahhhh!’
    The succubus screamed, her body trembling with pain, her porcelain face disfigured with the blood-filled orbit. ‘Oh, my Lovely – my beautiful Mistress. If I have offended you, pluck out