Chapter Twenty-Six
The whole room quivers with the sound of concrete grinding on stone, unsettling dust and snuffing out a few of the sconces, as the wall behind Eliaz is swallowed up by the ground – taking most of the vile water with it. The extension of the chambers, unlit and beckoning.
And there it is again.
The scent that had drawn me in here. It hadn’t been something placed there by Eliaz, not a conjured-up smell of my own imagining either. It was real. The fresh fragrance of the damp earth after light summer rainfall. Herby and organic. Cut grass and mint leaves. Ori.
As Eliaz pulls a torch from the darkness and lights the sconces in the extension of the chambers, I sober up from my resurfacing hopes that the smell clinging to the air means that my brother is here.
Towering high above Eliaz, are monstrous plants that arch their leafy heads downwards, constricted by the ungenerous, unyielding height of the ceiling.
If these plants were housed outside, they would no doubt keep growing tall and straight, perhaps not stopping until they surpass the height of even the tallest oaks in the nearby forest.
I edge closer to where Eliaz stands, taking in the peculiar sight, my vision overcome with foliage unalike anything I have ever encountered before.
There are dozens of these gigantic plants lining the length of the room, some craning, some with twisted necks that swirl around the sconces and into the air.
A few of the plants have met each other in the middle of the ceiling, intertwined in the vines of their fellow leafy giant.
Their leaves are a deep jade colour, some the size of dinner plates, some tiny and budding, at the beginning of life.
As I step over the ground where the wall partition had disappeared into, a hand-sized leaf slices into my cheek with its toothed edge.
A stinging sensation roils in my blood, and the feeling of thousands of cold pinpricks in the affected flesh. Wiping the blood away with my sleeve, I widen my gaze at Eliaz, who’s busy rummaging through a compartment in a tiny desk that hides in the corner of the room, encased in greenery.
‘Are these venomous?’ I ask. The age it takes for him to look over his shoulder at me should be comfort enough, but the swelling panic in my throat does not subside until he vocalises the answer.
‘What? No, they just cause a little irritation as a predator repellent. So, they don’t become rabbit food, essentially. That tingling will calm down soon enough.’
‘Rabbit? What sort of vile creature is that? Do I even want to know?’
Eliaz waves away my question and resumes his digging around in the desk. Taking his sudden busyness as an excuse to nose around on my own, I kick about in the forest of green grass that carpets the floor, ducking to avoid any further discomfort they might cause.
What could possibly be the meaning of this glorified greenhouse, hidden in the bowels of Daegon Manor?
And more importantly, what does it have to do with Eliaz’s source of power?
These plants, despite their otherworldly countenance, hardly seem to glitter with something one might use for the complete control over a person’s senses.
My investigation is short-lived, as my boot hits a solid object that clangs in protest to its collision with me.
‘What the—’
Then I see it. The round charcoal lump concealed by the indoor grassland, only the circular rim of the object is fully visible.
I’ve only ever seen one before, in the gallery at Grange Castle, a rusted old eyesore in amongst a treasure trove of ancient royal diadems and the rumoured jewellery of the gods.
This one is much smaller, a quarter of the size of the one back in Reyhen, but its appearance is unmistakable even when mostly enclosed in green. A cauldron.
I quite foolishly try to pick it up, but it does not yield to my want, the sheer solidity of it is enough to keep it firmly planted where it currently resides on the floor. I exhale, loud enough to attract Eliaz’s attention.
‘Will you just wait a godsdamn minute? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to find something.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Does it have something to do with the ridiculously large and solid pot at my feet?’
He turns his whole body around and squints at the ground for a few seconds before it even registers. ‘Oh, that old thing. It’s only partly relevant – I use it from time to time.’
‘You use a cauldron.’ I start to giggle at the thought of him, mixing potions, reciting spells, his hair frizzed with the steam that rises from the heated concoction. ‘What are you, a wizard? Some sort of tortured sorcerer? Brewing up some mind control from time to time.’
‘You’re insufferable. Here.’ He hands me a small clay flask, bound in a leather the colour of oxidised blood. I turn it over in my hand, inspecting it for any discernible inscriptions or symbols, but the surface is plain and unembellished.
‘For your potions?’ I ask, shaking the flask near my ear. ‘It’s empty.’
Eliaz rolls his eyes. ‘It is yet to be filled, yes.’ He crouches down in front of me and comes back up with the cauldron in arms, as though its weight is of no significance to him.
‘Show-off.’
‘Quit being jealous and bring that flask over here. I will show you why I have the damned cauldron.’
He’s back in the original section of the room, which is, much to my surprise, now full of equipment.
Even the way he had revealed things to me wasn’t an accurate depiction of my surroundings, for there, in the centre of the concrete floor, is a dipped circle of metal with a large stack of uneven logs piled up inside.
Three long black spires of steel meet in the air above the circle in a pyramid, and a single chain falls from the peak and splits in two, a rusted hook on the end of both chain partitions.
Eliaz loops the hooks into holes at either side of the cauldron, which swings clumsily as it is set to dangle in the air. He brings a foldable knife from his back pocket, and over to the closest green monster, and cuts four large leaves from its body.
‘What kind of plants are they?’ I swallow down the lump clagging in my throat. ‘I seem to remember their fragrance. Perhaps we used to grow them in the castle greenhouse when I was young.’
‘You are thinking of something else. These are incredibly rare, Servaytor Peckati. Servy, as I have come to call them,’ he says as he drops the leaves in the cauldron. ‘You won’t have encountered them before.’
I am not convinced.
‘So where did you come to find them then, if they are as hard to come by as you say?’
‘Stop asking more questions when I am trying to show the answer to your first one.’
To the right of me, is a large oak chest, square and tattered, its wood splintering and chipped.
He shoulders past me to pull the metal handle on the lid up, and the chest opens its groaning jaws to reveal dozens and dozens of decanters and flasks like the one in my hand, setting loose that horrendous stench that combatted the nostalgia that had filled my nose earlier.
Stale. Metallic. Salty.
Like mortality manifest in the air. Dread drags its airy fingers up my spine, and an instinctive hand covers my mouth to catch any cries or whimpers that threaten to break free.
My fingers begin to tremble, with either the abrupt chill or the repulsive thoughts of what fills that chest and how Eliaz came to have so much of it.
It can’t possibly be, he wouldn’t. How does this prove his innocence, his trustworthiness?
I’m back in my father’s study. Redness pooling around his cracked open head where I found him. His eyes still open. The sword still buried deep in the flesh of his chest. Marks on his face and neck where it had attempted injury prior. The smell of it all.
Fragility. Mortality. Iron and salt.
Blood.
‘You can’t. You wouldn’t.’ I shake my head. ‘You don’t mean to tell me that—’
‘I am not telling you anything. I would appreciate it if you would remain quiet, your incessant questioning is bringing me dangerously close to showing you nothing at all.’ Eliaz plucks a brown leather flask from his sinful collection.
‘Understand?’ he whispers into my ear on his way back to the centre of the room, where the cauldron lies. I gulp down air and sick and nod at him obediently. Oh, gods above, please let this simply be a joke make in distaste. Another trick of the eye sent to confuse or torment me further.
In a desperate attempt to prove to myself that what my senses combined tell me lies before is an illusion, an untruth told again by the enigmatic Umbrian king, I reach out and grab the tallest decanter; its glass icy and tinted green.
The liquid inside slides around with a revolting slosh as I tilt its vessel and right it again.
It is not a thick substance by any means, the way it moves freely and with haste, barely thicker than water but not as spirited.
The liquid is a murky brown, but I know that should it be spilled free from the green tint of the glass, it would pool in the colour red.
‘It is not human,’ his voice almost causes me to drop the decanter there on the floor, testing that theory. Clearing my throat, I slot it back into its gap between its fellow vessels.
I can’t quite make up my mind if I should consider the contents life or death. For blood only pumps through the living, but separate from the body, it tells of the absence of the life it existed to sustain.
With trembling lips and eyes that blink far too much, hiding my unease is a struggle as I turn to meet an ungodly sight.
The cauldron is engulfed in wild and hungry flames, the logs lit below billowing out fire from the confines of the metal they lie on.