Chapter 28 #3
We all silently stood about the corpse of Jalin Burav. Then Tauri pulled out a wheel of testing parchment, ripped off a shred, knelt, gingerly placed it to Jalin’s lips, and held it to the light. The paper remained a soft green color.
“He is clear,” said Tauri quietly. “He does not have the web in him.”
“So this was done of his own will?” I said.
“Do you see signs of a struggle? I don’t.”
I gazed at Jalin Burav’s eyes, which now stared at the purple canopies above us.
My memories quaked within me, and I recalled his words: You should kill me. I am but flesh. And what else do we do with flesh in this cursed place?
“Let’s search the area,” I said hoarsely. “Carefully.”
—
Searching the area about the fountain quickly proved absurd, for Burilis Burav had only defoliated a few dozen span past the edge. Besides the fountain, Jalin’s body, and the barren ground, there was nothing—except, there at the very corner by the trees, a small cabin.
The cabin appeared to be decades old at least. Much of it was crumbling, and its half-broken roof had collected so many purple leaves that it almost threatened to collapse.
Yet within it was somewhat cleaned and arranged, as if someone had recently dwelt here and tidied it up.
There was a set of shelves, a small workbench, and a metal stove, complete with a pipe chimney that poked past the roof.
One only needed to glance at the dusty, glittering vials on the workbench to realize its purpose.
“An Apoth laboratory,” I said.
“Yes,” said Tauri, leaning into the small cabin. “A remarkably rudimentary workspace, but one efficient enough to do what Burav needed, so many years ago.”
“Which was?”
Tauri plucked up one vial, squinted at it, and confirmed that its innards swirled with cloudy water. He uncorked it and poked a slender strip of testing parchment down until it touched the fluid—where it instantly turned orange.
“To make his version of the web, of course,” said Tauri. “Please search this place thoroughly, Kol. I’ve a theory I want to test…” Then he slipped out and made for the fountain.
I did as he bade and searched the tiny laboratory carefully. I found not only the tools necessary for reagent-brewing, but also picks, shovels, and axes stuffed into one corner. What he had planned to dig at, however, I had no idea.
Then my gaze fell across a bundle in the corner of the shelf, wrapped in waxen cloth and leathers. I knelt and slid it out, then carefully unfolded it.
It contained a book, bound in leather. Its front and spine were unmarked, but when I opened it, I read on the first page in clear, bold handwriting: Accounts of the nature and modifications of the qaytatin tuman.
I peered at the date of the first page: 12th of the month of Jarat, 1099.
I blinked for a moment, doing the math in my mind and summoning my memories.
That was thirty-one years ago now. Burilis Burav himself would have been thirty-two at the time.
“Damn,” I said softly. Then, louder: “It’s his journal!”
“Pardon, sir?” said the Orbiis officer at the door.
I continued paging through it. I encountered tables and tables of reagent mixes, compounds, performances, temperatures. I comprehended none of them, but I knew the sight of them well. “It’s Burav’s journal, it…it accounts for how he made the damned thing!”
I rushed out to bring it to Tauri. I found that he had entered the dry fountain and was digging at the soil there with a dagger. He squatted there in the dark silt, glowering as the blade carved through the dust and crumbling earth. “No water…none at all. So how?”
“Sir!” I called. I held up the journal. “I think we might have found something of use.”
He dashed up to me, took the journal, and leafed through it.
“Fucking hell…” he murmured. “The mad bastard wrote down everything he learned of how the web behaved! This must have been how he fashioned the agrarian web, thirty damned years ago! Look here, he makes a note saying, ‘Sleep is almost always affected by echoes of conditioned behavior within two days of the host hearing the awakening tones.’ That would have been damned handy to know, yes? I hope it has something more of use, though…Much of this we’ve already learned. ”
“But he couldn’t have done the alterations and testing here, could he? I thought he had engineered it to work on the field cats.”
“Oh, true, true. I believe Burav found the web here—or something here—and isolated it in that cabin. He took his samples back to his family homestead and refined the specimen there, keeping a careful journal of all his efforts, just like any good Apoth would.”
“Then, decades later,” I said, “Jalin found the journal in his father’s vault in his mansion and returned here with it to do his own works. He likely needed to brew up more to infect the Armentas, and the others.”
Tauri’s face grew troubled. “Yes…but as to where Burilis Burav originally found it, or why it works upon the human mind, I cannot say. I thought perhaps it was a Daljeni creation—but the fountain is dry, and it has been for centuries.” He cast his eyes about at the crumbling, mildewed ruins.
“Wherever it came from, Burilis Burav didn’t find the web in this place. ”