Chapter Twenty-One #2
next impression was fire—small torches of flame, each of them as green as the
lights of the mortuary chapel, were ringing the walls, placed in perfect order
around the circumference of the room. The green firelight was only barely
enough for someone to navigate around the furniture. Isaac imagined, for a
moment, that the sorceress would have been sensitive to light.
It was
obvious, once his eyes adjusted to the gloom, that the building had been
modified from its original purpose. What the original purpose had been, Isaac
could not say, but its new purpose was a laboratory. One of the walls was lined
with tables, which had all been pilfered from the research stations around the
pelvis. There were bones scattered across the stations, each of them dissected
and placed in cross-section, as well as petri dishes full of ossein, which had
festered similarly to the bones outside. He saw shelves of chemical reagents,
skeletons on display, a bellows with old coals, pedals for a centrifuge. Aside
from the bones, the laboratory in Berith’s tower had not looked much different.
At one
of the research benches, a human skeleton lay slumped across a chair. Judging
from the carbon scores on the ribs and vertebrae, it had died from a
concentrated lance of fire, launched from an elemental mage. The skull was
tilted back, as if locked in a cry of pain.
Isaac
strode into the room, bending to examine the pelvis. He determined, after a
moment, that the victim had been a woman.
He
realized, suddenly, almost shockingly, that this was the body of the
necromancer—the sorceress, the last survivor of an ancient empire, so old that
her name and title had long succumbed to the endless tide of history. She was
so old that she had witnessed the birth of the Charnel dunes, the days when the
necromancers had scoured the region of all life and material. Instead of
becoming an incorporeal wraith, like other necromancers, instead of ascending
beyond the flesh, like some in the Diet were attempting for themselves, she had
remained in the body of her original form, as if stubbornly clinging to the
past. Isaac struggled to imagine her perspective. She had survived such an
inhuman length of time. . . .
This
room was her abode. Her final tomb. It did not look ostentatious in the
slightest. Aside from the lab equipment, there was no furniture, no decoration,
no teeming hordes of wealth. It was obvious that the function of this building
had only been practical. It had been a work station, through and through.
But
what work had she been doing here?
Why
live all this time?
Isaac stared
down at the half-charred skeleton, noting the white lab coat still clinging to
her shoulder, drawing his gaze over the flag of stripes and stars still
stitched to her lapel. The rest of her clothes had rotted to scraps, or been
burned by his father. He could not tell, at a glance, who this woman had been.
What
purpose had she been trying to achieve in this room? How had she come to be the
last of her empire? What difference had it made, in the end?
He saw
no signs of a breakthrough, no sign of some miracle that would save her
civilization. There was only a small, improvised laboratory, buried beneath
tons of rock and sand. He could imagine her toiling away the centuries here,
alone in the dark, repeating the same endless experiments. For the first time
in his life, he became truly aware that, someday, he would die, and, no matter
how famous or loved he had been, there would come a time when no one remembered
his name.
He
looked at the remains of the enemy he had prepared to face for all his life,
and, despite himself, he felt some odd measure of
kinship with her.
“Isaac?”
The
voice was quiet, thin, and ethereal.
Isaac
turned.
On a
small dais, over in a dusty corner, next to a pile of discarded machines, there
sat a metal device. It was no larger than a cuirass, and a small lattice of
pipework, similar to the ones he had seen in the obelisk, had been crudely
soldered up through the floor, shunting directly into the metal. There were
loose wires, mixed with what appeared to be advanced transmission receivers. At
the top of the device, a small purple cloud shone through the dust and gloom,
seeming to shimmer inside an invisible barrier.
Isaac
stumbled his way through the room, disturbing the torches with his wind. The dais was low enough to the floor that he needed to kneel,
bringing himself level with the soul inside. When he did, he felt his skin
glowing with the purple light. He could almost make out a face, if he looked
hard enough.
“Father?”
he asked.
“In the
flesh,” said the purple cloud.
Isaac
could only stare back.
“Sorry,”
Caine said, his wisps shaking as he chuckled. “I’ve been saving that.”
He
looked down at the device. There were knobs and dials, some mechanical gauges
that signified humidity, barometric pressure, a phrase he could only translate
as “containment integrity”. Many of the displays seemed to be indicating a drop
in energy. Several needles were slowly deflating to the bottom of the circular
gauge, like the shadow on a sundial. In the center of the device, Isaac noted a
single, large button. It was painted red, and, though its function was
unmarked, its placement and size could only suggest that it held some great
importance.
Isaac
hesitated, staring at the mechanical screens. Could he do something to arrest
the loss of energy?
Should
he?
Above
the device, Caine shifted himself, drifting like a cloud of smoke. “Zaria,
right?”
The
hyena had not followed Isaac to his father—instead, she was leaning against one
of the research stations on the opposite end of the room. The cutlass was on the bench at her side, still within easy
reach. “Just keeping the peace. Don’t mind me.”
“How
can I not?” Caine replied. “You’re the reason my son’s not feeding the wyrms.”
Zaria
shrugged. “That goes both ways, to be fair.”
“Of
course, of course. But, listen—thank you. Truly. I can never repay you enough,
for all that you’ve done, though I hope what’s downstairs may serve as a
start.”
“Downstairs?”
“You’ll
see.”
Zaria
nodded, glanced at Isaac, and looked away.
Caine
drifted back to the center. “So, Isaac, how did you and the lovely lady meet?”
He
blinked, shifting back on his knees. “Uh—”
“You
like them large, do you? Big and strong? I mean, I can understand a zoanthrope,
they are physically gifted, but a pirate, of all things?”
Isaac
stammered.
“Oh, well,”
his father said. “I can’t say I haven’t done the same.” A face was almost
visible in the cloud, like a suggestion of humanity. “You get sent off to an
expedition, you find an inn for the night, you meet some sellsword taking up
space at the bar, and if they do have fur or scales or whatever in between, I
mean, so what? It’s a Diet rite of passage. Back before all this, more of my
scars came from a bed rather than whatever dead we were fighting, much to my
brother’s consternation.”
Isaac
made a sound that might’ve been a laugh.
“Well,”
Caine said, glowing a bit brighter. “Sorry to babble. She seems quite nice, all
things considered.”
“Sure.
I mean. . . .” He glanced back at Zaria. “Very nice.”
The
cloud drifted closer to his face. If Isaac looked closely, he could see some of
the dust glinting inside, absorbing and detaching from the gaseous glow.
“Gods,”
Caine said, “I still cannot believe how big you are. You’re so tall! The
terror of every doorway! How old are you, anyway?”
“I . .
. do you not . . . ?”
“Oh,
no, unfortunately. It’s quite hard to keep track of time, down here in the
dark. The range of this little box is just around the catacombs, so I . . .
couldn’t even see the sun. You know?”
He
cleared his throat. “I’m twenty two.”
“Twenty-two!
By Oerin, you’re still just a babe. Is that beard fake? Are you putting me on?”
Isaac
held up his uninjured hand, making an effort to match
his father’s humor. “Yes, actually. You’ve seen through me. I’ve never learned
a single spell. I’ve just been waving my arms and
tossing bombs.”
The
purple cloud puffed with laughter. “Actually, you say that, but Sarah and I met
that way, as a point of fact. Did Berith ever tell you this?”
Before
Isaac could answer, the cloud began to ramble.
“I’d do
this trick in the taverns, right, where I’d shoot a bit of flame with those
little poppers in my hand. Add a scroll up the sleeve, and it was a shower of
fire wherever I pointed.” The cloud rolled and tumbled over itself. “Anyway,
one day, Sarah was a scribe on one of the expeditions. She saw my little trick
and decided to call me out in front of the crowd. I challenged her to do
better, knowing she only had evocations, and what does she do but immediately
turn and enchant her ale. It started to talk! Oh, it called me a fool! Of
course, I had to knock it over, just to save face, and by then she—”
Caine
stopped, condensing back together. Isaac had the feeling that something was
showing on his face.
A
silence lingered with the dust.
“Oh,”
his father said, quietly. “You never met her, did you?”
Isaac
shook his head.
“Sarah
was. . . .” The wispy mouth twisted. “She was fiery. Diligent. Smart as a crow.
Heading right for a director post in the collegium. Sometimes, she’d let me
have fun with her.”
He
drifted along the edge of the device, rubbing against the barrier.
“She
was very excited to have you. Reminding her I was the father just seemed to
make her happier, for some odd reason. She picked your name, picked the village
where we’d build the tower. The last time I saw her, she was drafting your
study lessons while rubbing her belly. She told me not to be long in the
desert.” The face inside the cloud seemed to stare at him. “You don’t look much
like her. I’d hoped you would. It would help me
remember. . . .”
Isaac
watched the green fire burn above the dais, hoping his
voice would sound steady.