by AC Cobble
“There are some,” admitted Lucia. “Most who have stayed are as bad as Reynald, or worse. Here, this building here, this is where you’ll find your answers.”
The place had the look of a warehouse, except it was constructed of thick blocks of granite which could have served as the foundation for the wall around the Arcanum. There were no windows, just an impressive steel door. The door was bound by chain as thick as Rew’s wrist and clasped by a lock as big as two of his fists.
“King’s Sake,” muttered Rew, looking at the device. “We should have brought Zaine.”
Lucia raised an eyebrow.
Shrugging, thinking it did no harm to share with the woman, and that maybe it’d incline to her share as well, Rew explained, “She’s a thief.”
“Ah,” acknowledged Lucia. Offering him a wry grin, she produced a fat steel key and said, “I brought something better.”
Chapter Ten
Lucia stepped forward with the key and hefted the lock. She tried to fit the key inside of it then scowled. She fiddled with it for another moment then dropped the lock and punched the door. Hissing and clutching her fist as if surprised it hurt after striking the steel barrier, she asked, “Someone else want to try this?”
Rew took her place, but the key did not fit. “What’s inside of here?”
“You want to know what happened to the Arcanum? You want to know more about necromancy? You’ll find the answers.” She looked at the key then at the door. “Of course, we’ve got to get in the door first…”
Rew rattled the chain. Nothing happened. “Who put this lock here? Could they have known you had a key and changed it?”
Shaking her head, Lucia replied, “No, there’s no way they knew I had a key. If they even suspected I knew what was inside of here, I’d have bigger problems than them changing the lock. It’s, ah, possible I took the wrong key.”
“Is there another key back in the colony?” inquired Anne gently. “Maybe one that works?”
Shaking her head, Lucia explained, “This isn’t my lock. I stole the key. I thought this was the right one. It was the biggest, but it was on a ring of keys and… I didn’t have much time, and I haven’t been inside of here since my last attempt failed. We can’t just go and steal another key, so we’ve got to figure something else out.”
“Zaine?” asked Anne, glancing at Rew. “We could be back here in an hour.”
“You remember what happened last time she picked a lock?” asked Rew, thinking of the poisoned dart which had nearly stuck in Raif back in Jabaan. Eyeing the heavy fortifications of the building, he didn’t doubt this place could have its own traps embedded in the door.
He peered down at the key in his hand, frowning. Along the length of it, there was a thin cerulean band of color. It was dark, but it reminded him of something he’d seen before. “This key seems a finer thing than the lock.”
Lucia shrugged.
The nameless woman approached and fiddled with the lock and chain, bending down to examine both. When she stood, she was staring at Lucia.
“Let me try,” suggested Cinda.
She stepped forward, and a pale glow built around her hand.
Lucia watched avidly, ignoring the nameless woman’s look. She asked Cinda, “Can you feel it?”
Frowning, Cinda nodded, and her hand brightened until it was difficult to look at. Then, she thrust it toward the door and released a wailing blast of wind and cold. It was like funeral fire but dense, and when it hit the steel door, it did so with the impact of a giant sledge hammer. The door crumpled, flying open, and links of chain burst as the steel barrier swung inward. Crackles of energy sizzled in the freezing air, but in a breath, it was over.
“That was impressive,” remarked Rew.
“There’s power inside of this place,” responded Cinda. “It’s strange, though. Not like I’ve felt before. It’s like an echo.”
The interior of the building was dark, with only several paces of stone floor illuminated from the open doorway. There were no windows and no lights.
“There’s a lantern to the left of the door,” offered Lucia.
Rew gestured for her to lead the way.
Smirking at him, the woman shook her head.
“I don’t think… I don’t think I should light our way,” said Cinda, her voice tight, her eyes wide as she studied the darkness. She was holding her hands together at her waist, clutching tightly the one she’d used to cast her funeral fire.
Throwing up his own hands, Rew stepped inside and fumbled around in the dark until he retrieved a copper lantern with clear glass walls. He shook it and heard the slosh of oil in the basin. There was a striker hanging beside it, and after a moment of struggling with the device, he got it lit. He held the lantern high and let out a whistle.
In the center of the room was a giant wood, rope, and iron contraption. Above it hung glass globes of liquids and gases. Some of them appeared to be warmed while others boiled with freezing clouds of multi-colored smoke. Ice clung to the exteriors of several, and others appeared empty. Rew saw no obvious sources for the heat or the cold, except for nondescript boxes hanging beneath some of the glass orbs. Could they be enchanted, or was it a chemical mixture the arcanists had devised? There were tubes strung around and through the contraption, moving liquids with a rhythmic pulse like a heartbeat.
The thing was shrouded in gloom, and Rew began walking the edge of the space, finding more lanterns hanging on delicate stands. He used the striker to light them. A warm glow from the copper and glass devices spread through the room, though what he saw only gave him chills.
The room was mostly empty, aside from the giant contraption in the center, but against one wall was a huge, copper-bound glass container, like a giant version of the lamps. It was constructed similar to an oversized wardrobe, but inside of it, spectral mist swirled constantly. The mist seemed to pick up and reflect the light of the lanterns, and to Rew’s eye, it burned with a pale shimmer.
Cinda stood, transfixed by the glow that emanated from the cabinet.
“Rew,” said Anne, looking at the massive construction in the center of the room.
He followed her gaze. It took him a moment to realize that the body of a man was suspended in the middle of the strange apparatus. The man was shirtless and barefoot, wearing black wool trousers. His head hung limply, and he was pallid in the lantern light. On the man’s shoulder, Rew saw a tattoo signifying membership in a company in the king’s black legion.
Across the man’s chest, there were a number of tubes and leads sunk into his flesh and sealed there. Needles sprouted from his arms like the quills of a porcupine, and as Rew followed the path of the tubes, he saw they came from the containers hanging above. The liquids that were flowing to and from the containers were passing through the man’s body. Rew gaped at the giant device and the dead man, confused.
“King’s Sake,” muttered the nameless woman. “What is this?”
“It’s… It’s doing something to that man, I think,” stammered Rew.
“Necromancy,” said Cinda, her gaze turning to the man. “He’s dead. They’re… resurrecting him, or at least trying to. That cabinet is filled with the essence of souls—the power of their departure. This device is pouring that essence, along with a lot of other substances I don’t recognize, directly into the dead man. They’re trying to animate him. It hasn’t worked, at least for him. I don’t know if it’s possible…”
Rew swallowed and didn’t know what to say.
“This might work, Ranger,” declared Cinda, taking a hesitant step toward the contraption. “I don’t understand the science, how they are doing it, but I can feel the power radiating from that vessel against the wall. It’s true power. They’ve manually captured the same source I use to cast my spells. It’s… not strong, I don’t think, not efficient or pure. It’s just an echo of the real power that spills out when someone dies, but I can feel it. This is the power I was drawing upon when I cracked open the door. I don’t kno
w if they can apply what they’ve gathered, but they have manually captured peoples’ souls!”
“What do you mean when you say echo?” asked Lucia, tilting her head slightly and looking at Cinda’s back.
Appearing to ignore the other woman, Cinda approached the wardrobe, her hands clasped carefully behind her. “It’s hard to describe. Drawing power from death feels like… the wind against my face. This is like the wind stirring distant leaves. I know it’s there because I can see it. I know what that breath of air would feel like if it touched me, but it’s not there, present against my own face. It feels like I could reach out and touch it, but it’s not touching me. Do you understand?”
Frowning, Lucia began a slow circuit of the room, her eyes darting between Cinda and the device in the center. Rew began to get an uncomfortable feeling about the way the woman was discussing the device with Cinda. Lucia had known this was here. It must be why she warned them not to come to the Arcanum. But she’d also claimed it would give them answers.
Now, it was as if… as if she was soliciting Cinda’s opinion, but Lucia was a servant of the king. If he wanted to know about the device, he could portal to the Arcanum in moments. The arcanists worked for the king, after all, and no one had more talent at necromancy. Was it possible the king did not know about the device? The ranger shared a look with Anne and could tell she was wondering the same thing he was.
Cinda held a hand up toward the wardrobe, careful not to touch it. The mist swirled, distinct patterns curling and uncurling against the frosty glass. The necromancer’s eyes rose, and her gaze followed a series of copper piping that ran up from the wardrobe, across the ceiling, and then dropped down into the tangle of tubes, glass globes, and metal boxes above the wood and rope contraption.
“What does that do, do you think?” asked Lucia, pointing to the copper pipes.
“A conduit for the souls?” wondered Cinda. “They draw them out somehow with this machine and store the power in the wardrobe. I think… I don’t know if it would work, but it looks like whoever built this is trying to put a soul back into that dead man.”
“That’s horrific,” muttered Anne, staring aghast at the corpse suspended in the center of the contraption.
“I believe one can turn the machine on with that lever,” said Lucia, nodding toward a heavy metal switch on the side of the device. “You should try it.”
Cinda walked toward the switch, and Anne barked, “Why would anyone want to turn this infernal thing on?”
Lucia shrugged, her face blank. She held up a book that she’d produced from within her robes. “I found this in the room. The artificer who built the device was using it. It’s about necromancy, but I have no talent for the art. I don’t understand a fraction of what is in here. There’s nothing useful for me in these pages, but perhaps you can find some answers, some explanation of the device?”
Cinda took the book and opened it. She frowned.
“Anything useful?” asked Rew.
Not looking at him, Cinda responded, “I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Rew scratched his beard and left her alone. It looked like a thick book, and he supposed there wouldn’t be much she could tell him until she’d had time to read the thing.
“Blessed Mother!” cried the nameless woman, staggering away from where she stood at the back of the room.
Rew darted to her side and saw she’d opened a discreet door in the back wall of the building. She was shaking, and he saw grave discomfort in her eyes. He steeled himself then looked through the door.
A body was stretched out on a table, its chest cut wide open, only an empty hollow where its organs had been. The eyes had been plucked from the head, the tongue ripped from the mouth. The dead man wore black trousers and had a tattoo on his shoulder from the king’s legion.
“Blessed Mother,” croaked Rew, unconsciously repeating the nameless woman’s curse.
He looked around the rest of the room and saw a pile of dead bodies stacked like cordwood in one corner, a barrel like one that would catch rain near the table. From the putrid odor wafting from the barrel, he guessed where the dead man’s organs had gone. There was a pile of discarded clothing and other debris which must have been stripped from the bodies before they had been mutilated.
Soldiers from the king’s black legion, some of the missing men, had been… Pinching his nose, Rew entered the room and circled the table. The bodies in the pile had all been sliced open and crudely stitched back together. They’d been tossed there with no more care than sacks of beans, and it’d happened some time ago, judging by the state of them. Most wore the trousers of the black legion, as if it’d been too much trouble to remove those when the body parts beneath the trousers would remain intact, but some were naked or only in underclothes.
Rew adjusted his belt, glad that not all of the soft organs had been removed. These men hadn’t suffered that indignity, at least.
He knelt. Two bodies had been leaned against the bottom of the pile, and they were still fully clothed. Rew raised his lantern and grimaced. The fabric was covered in char and blood, but the pair wore the crimson robes of necromancers, and their deaths were more recent than the others. It was as if they’d been dragged there just to get them out of the way. Had they been the ones responsible for this awful experiment?
Seeing nothing else of interest and unable to force himself to study the corpses any longer, Rew hurried out of the room and kicked the door shut. He rubbed his hand across his nose, wishing he could scrub the stench from his nostrils. Lucia was watching him.
“Do you know what’s in there?”
She nodded affirmation.
“Explain yourself.”
“You wanted to know what happened to the Arcanum.” She raised her hands and gestured around the room. “This is what happened.”
“People were… fed into this thing?”
“Not many, relative to how many used to live in the compound,” she responded. “Several score. Maybe one hundred over time. Most people were wise enough to leave once things got uncomfortable. Arcanists can always find a position in some nobles’ court or in Mordenhold if they don’t mind being so close to the king’s grasp. Some weren’t as quick to leave and paid the price. You saw the bodies of the legionnaires? They didn’t have the choice to leave and suffered terribly for it.”
“The king did this!” snapped Rew. “He sacrificed his own men?”
“He did not,” replied Lucia, her lips set in a sour grimace. “The king has nothing to do with this. He, ah… I lied to you earlier. The king doesn’t know what’s happening here.”
“He doesn’t know?” demanded Rew, glancing at the contraption. “You’re his spy, aren’t you?”
“When I report to him, I want to do so with complete information. I… I need to know what exactly this device is capable of. It can kill a man. That was easy enough to learn. But… does it work? It appears it can extract the soul from a body, but as the lass wondered, I need to know if it can raise the dead. The truth, I don’t know. I have to know before I speak to the king.”
“I don’t understand,” murmured Anne. “You’re wanting… You want us to try it for you?”
“Not you,” answered Lucia. She pointed to Cinda. “Her.”
“There are dead necromancers in that room,” said Rew. “You put them there? They tried to work this thing and failed?”
“Yes.” Lucia began circling the room again, studying the device. “Evidently, this machine is rather dangerous to operate. It… has a kick.” She glanced at them and, seeing their expressions, explained, “It’s been my role to monitor the Arcanum, to ensure the king’s coin is well spent and all discoveries are known to him. I failed. This… thing, was created under my nose. I fear it’s been used. The king has a particular interest in necromancy, and… Do you understand the implications if this device works? It could shatter Vaeldon, and it happened on my watch. I have to know if it works before I inform the king. If I inform the king. Maybe I could… Pfah.
I have to know if it works before I do anything.”
“But…”
“You’re a ranger, yes? You know the price of failing the king. The creation of this abomination is my fault, I admit that, but the punishment for failure is severe. I’d… end it, but the end is not always the end. You know his reach goes beyond this world. I’ve monitored the building, but when the arcanist arrives, he’s always careful to shut the door behind him. I can’t risk a confrontation until I know more. My only hope is for a necromancer to discover the truth.”
“You expect Cinda to try and activate it?” scoffed Rew. “Why would we agree to that?”
Lucia removed the short iron club from her belt that she’d used to gain entry into the Arcanum and rapped it against the stone wall. She beat out a distinct pattern and then waited.
“That’s a signal,” guessed Rew. “To the king’s legion?”
Nodding, Lucia glanced at the door where an armored man stood. “They serve at my command.”
Rew drew his longsword and set his feet. “The missing soldiers? You’ll need more than that to threaten us.”
“Will I?”
“Ranger,” warned Cinda. “That man is dead.”
“The king doesn’t waste resources feeding men when he can utilize those that don’t eat, sleep, or breathe,” said Lucia. “Before you do something rash, Ranger, think about whether or not you really want to test your might against the king.”
“I can’t break the binding,” said Cinda, scowling at the shape in the doorway. “That corpse is in the king’s thrall tighter than I’ve ever felt. It’s not like when I… Ah, I can’t break the binding. And there are more of them, gathering outside.”
“Blessed Mother,” grumbled Rew.
“Those dead necromancers in the back room understood what the lass does,” said Lucia. “Attempting to use this device is a risk, but defying the king is worse than death.”
“It’ll be your death and worse if the king finds out what’s going on in this room.”
Smirking, Lucia nodded in acknowledgement. “If the lass was responsible for Jabaan, she doesn’t want the king’s attention any more than I do, but I have to know, does this device work? Has it been used? Don’t you realize there is nothing you can do to me worse than what the king will do if he finds out about this and blames me? If it doesn’t work, I can destroy it, and I will be safe. The king may never know. If it does work—"
