Corgos licked his lips. They were a mess of hair and legs and twinkling eyes—and boy, oh boy, wasn’t it good to be king.
He was about to dive in and grab handfuls of blonde and brown hair and smell and taste each color when the relay sphere began to glow and hum. He had left it on like an idiot.
“Who is it?”
“My sincerest apologies, Your Highness. The batch is ready, the one you requested for inspection. Shall I hold them until tomorrow morning?”
Corgos looked at Blondie and Brunette. They were staring at him, silently, with pleading eyes that seemed to be saying, Not now. Let’s have some fun.
No. This couldn’t wait any longer. He had promised Kovax an answer by tonight…
He wanted to stamp his feet and slam his fist into the glowing, blue sphere, inside of which a scientist’s face shimmered, waiting for a reply. He was one of Kovax’s men.
Gods! His cousin could be so demanding. Just because he was a Savant and Corgos was only Humankin with no special abilities—
Just remember who’s king, he told himself. No, not just king—emperor! Since acquiring control of Valestaryn, he was officially an emperor! Soon, once he had his Tower of Dusk, the other kingdoms and republics would fall, leaving him the most powerful man in the realm.
“Send them up!”
Corgos tied the front of his robe and motioned for the girls to get off the bed.
“Come back in one hour,” he told them.
“But Highness,” Blondie said.
“Your Majesty,” said Brunette.
Corgos pounded his fist against the bed. The mattress rippled enough to dislodge the two women from their spots.
“Go!”
They leaped off the bed, not even stopping to gather their sandals as they pulled open the door and practically climbed over each other to get out. They were laughing, because they knew Corgos wasn’t serious; this was all part of a game and they were the lucky ones, hand-picked from among the noble population, guaranteed wealth and status as long as they were young and beautiful, which they were—for now.
“Brats,” he said under his breath.
He pulled on a pair of silk pants the color of red roses, drank the last dregs of wine from a gold cup smudged with lipstick, and popped a chocolate-covered strawberry into his mouth. He slapped his hands together and belched.
A knock at the door. He spun around to face it.
“Enter!”
Two of his men came in, one dressed in light leather armor and carrying a sword, the other dressed in a white smock that went down to his feet. The one in the white smock was old, a Savant scientist. He motioned toward the open door.
Four Feral children in their early teens were led in. Colorless and dressed in white, they looked ready to collapse from exhaustion at any moment. They were three boys and a girl, and a smell like sour milk followed them in. Corgos covered his nose. The children didn’t appear to notice the smell, or they were used to it. Each one had a tail and a badge with a number pinned to their shirts. The numbers ranged from 1 through 4.
“Your Majesty,” the scientist said, sweeping forward in an elegant bow.
“Cut the theatrics,” Corgos said. “Show me what you came here to show me, and make it quick.”
The soldiers pushed the gray children against the wall in order of his or her number.
“One week after blood ether extraction,” the scientist said, indicating the boy with the number 1 on his badge. The boy, despite being gray like the others, looked fit and strong, if a little drowsy. His hair was a tangled mess that hung over his forehead, and he was looking down at the floor. “Each child yielded close to one thousand blood lumins. As you can see with number 1, no sign of the blightsore after one week.”
The scientist indicated the girl with the number 2 badge. “Four weeks after extraction. At this point, the Feral is incapable of phasing into animal form.”
The girl’s skin was so gray it was almost white, and her hair was as white as an old woman’s. The scientist lifted her shirt and exposed a collection of nasty sores that clung to her skin like leeches.
Corgos nodded, stroking his chin with three fingers.
The scientist let the girl’s shirt drop and moved on to the next child, a boy with the number 3 on his badge. The boy’s eyes kept closing and he was swiveling like a drunk. A bit of drool crept out of his mouth and slid down his chin. There were blightsores on his arms and neck, some of which oozed purplish blood.
“Six weeks after extraction. The boy is near death and has only a few more weeks of life.”
“Help me,” the boy said, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked at Corgos. “Please.”
Corgos wagged a finger at him. “Don’t look at me, boy. You point those beastblood eyes down at the floor.”
The boy looked down and sniffled. A single tear snuck down his face.
“And finally,” the scientist said, making his way down the line. “We have number four.” He indicated the last boy, who looked more like a skeleton than a living person. The boy’s hair, completely white, had mostly fallen out, leaving only a few thin wisps. He stood with his knees bent, arms hanging limply by his sides, skeletal face turned up to the ceiling. His mouth gaped opened. Several teeth had fallen out. His eyes looked off in different directions and there were blightsores on his forehead and cheeks. One long sore ran across his chin like a strap.
“By the gods,” Corgos said. “Don’t tell me this is what happens after only two months.”
“Ten weeks, to be exact,” the scientist said. “The boy is hours away from death, which is why this meeting was so urgent.”
“I can see that,” Corgos said. “By the gods, he stinks!”
The boy let out a pathetic moan. Upon seeing Number 4, Number 3 began to cry and shiver. He collapsed and covered his head with his arms.
“I don’t want to be like that!” Number 3 wailed. “I don’t want to die!”
“Get him up,” Corgos said.
The soldiers did as ordered. They slapped the boy until he stopped crying. Corgos couldn’t watch. He went to the table and checked the wine bottles to see if there was any left.
Empty. He had drunk every last drop.
“Get them out of my sight,” he said.
“Highness, there’s one more thing. Some of our experiments have shown that direct contact with blood ether causes the bacteria on the dead skin cells to transform rather unusually. There’s a possibility that the blightsore could go viral and infect us all.”
“Take care of it. Blame it on the Ferals, then create an antidote, or a magic potion or whatever, that we can sell to the masses. Might as well make some money off a bad situation, right? Besides, the Tower of Dusk need only be operational for a short time. After the other nations surrender, we’ll shut it down.
The scientist bowed. “Yes, Highness.”
Corgos lifted a goblet off the table that still had a mouthful of wine at the bottom. A lucky find. He would have to order more immediately.
“The war is as good as over,” he told everyone in the room. “With the Tower of Dusk in my possession, no one will ever stand in my way again.”
He swallowed the contents of the goblet in one gulp and let out a loud burp. A drop of wine ran down his chin. Seeing it, the girl burst into sobs and covered her face as, next to her, Number 4 collapsed.
He was dead before he hit the floor.
Chapter 45
Valhades Cemetery, a place known for its twisted black trees and poisonous spiders, was situated in the southern end of Lethargis, nestled against the Elder Wall enclosing the city. People believed Valhades was haunted, that the ghosts of the dead rose after sunset to mourn their own tragic ends. The roads around the cemetery were empty at night and dimly lit, so it was easy to imagine phantoms going out for a stroll.
Holding Duo in his right hand, Kovax waited as his men pulled open the gate, a massive web of iron that squealed like a child in pain. Beyond it lay not a single gravestone. He had
gotten rid of the last one a decade ago. Valhades had not been a proper cemetery with gravestones and mausoleums and pathways in a long time. Now, it was home to mass graves where criminals, prisoners of war, and those who had opposed King Corgos’s will were dumped and buried without ceremony or recognition.
A shred of cold wind scratched its icy nails across Kovax’s face and slid down his cloak. He didn’t like this place at all. Too many memories of people cursing his name in their final moments. It was bad luck to be cursed like that. The gate made a bang as his men opened it all the way and walked through, carrying torches that did little against the inky darkness. It was like walking on the very bottom of the ocean.
“Bring the prisoners,” Kovax said.
His soldiers brought forth five skinny, wasted-looking men dressed in rags and covered in dirt. Each had orange eyes and a tail, and all were bound by chains and a collar around their necks to keep them from phasing into their animal forms. The soldiers threw them down to the ground.
Kovax pointed the red crystal tip of his staff at the men and chanted a spell. The crystal began to glow bright red with stolen life energy. The men screamed as currents of blood ether seeped out of them in pink, smoky tendrils.
Kovax closed his eyes and beckoned further. A minute later, when the men were no more than dried-out skeletons and the crystal on one end of his staff was ablaze with fiery red light, he began to chant a different, even darker, spell.
It took several minutes to cast. The essence of it poured from the blood crystal like misty, neon-red snakes, burrowing holes into the graves and seeping inside.
The ground trembled as his servants awoke.
“Rise,” Kovax said. “Your master summons you.”
The trembling grew more intense, and he could feel it in his teeth and bones. His men pulled out swords and got into defensive positions and looked around at their darkened surroundings.
Muffled moans rose from the earth. Kovax watched with a familiar fascination.
“Get back toward the gate,” he told his men.
They backed away, eyes searching the cemetery, torches picking out the sweat on their foreheads. Something was drumming upward, shaking the ground in anger.
A hand shot up from the earth, black because of the dirt stuck to the bone. The few bits of remaining flesh were torn and rotten.
Metal rang and flashed as the soldiers pulled out their swords. The ground had stopped vibrating. Silence fell around them.
The skeletal hand closed into a fist and opened again, as if it were testing the air. It disappeared as the dead man pulled it back into the grave.
The ground opened with a loud ripping sound as the dead men began to dig an opening. Kovax watched, trying to ignore the pain in his bones. He was out of practice and imagined his face was whiter and more cracked than before, the lines around his eyes deeper. His voice would sound raspy and cracked from now on, a side effect of the process.
“Damn it.”
What would Samara think if she saw him like this? And Kofi, his son? What if Kovax woke them only to have them stare at him with blank, uncertain eyes, unable to recognize the withered creature before them as the man they had once called husband and father?
He couldn’t bear the thought. He turned and screamed at his men.
“What the hell are you waiting for? Help them up!”
His soldiers went to the fissures in the earth, where skeletal hands had begun to shoot up like a rampant growth of vile, black weeds. One of the soldiers grabbed a hand, only to have it yank him into the pit.
He screamed. Kovax smiled.
The man’s screams were accompanied by something else: the tearing sound of his limbs being ripped off his body.
The screaming stopped. Two legs, freshly severed and still wearing pants and boots, flew up from the nearest pit and landed with a thump at Kovax’s feet.
The soldiers backed away from the pits. Kovax stepped forward, staff upright beside him, and spoke as loudly as his frail body would allow.
“I am Kovax Leonaryx. Many of you recognize my name because I was your executioner.” A pause as he let his words sink in. “I’m here to give you some good news and bad news, as the Earthborns like to say.”
Moans rose from the pits.
“No,” a man shouted. “Not him! Not him!”
Kovax lifted his left arm. The sleeve of his cloak slid back, revealing a ghastly hand that was pale-orange in the torchlight. The skin had turned white. He could hear his men murmuring about the startling change in his appearance.
A few blood transfusions would lighten the effect. Hopefully.
“Quiet!” Kovax shouted, and the cemetery fell silent. “I will share the bad news first. You have been summoned back to life in order to complete several tasks. Our emperor, Corgos Leonaryx, has need of construction crews to build towers all over Taradyn. The towers are of a special magical nature and will require raw luminether crystals, which are too toxic to be mined by regular men. That is where you come in. Of course, once the towers have been completed, I will release you from your bond and you may again be at peace.”
He paused and waited.
“Tell us the good news,” a woman said.
“Please, tell us,” a man said.
“The good news is that once the towers have been completed, one hundred of you will be selected according to how well you have performed. Those whom I select will be brought back to life—and I mean a real, healthy life, as you had before your deaths. And I will give you back your freedom so you can rejoin what is left of your families.”
The undead men and women hissed in protest.
“Impossible!” said a high-pitched, raspy voice that could have been male or female. “You can’t bring us back. You lie to us!”
“Not so,” Kovax said. “With the energy from these towers, I will be able to give you back your souls and much more. Those who do not believe me can stay in these holes forever, fully aware of the opportunity you have lost.”
“No, please, let us go! Help us!”
“Quiet,” Kovax said. The voices silenced at once. “I have summoned you and therefore I am your master. Those who are not happy with the new order and attempt to break free of my influence will face a punishment worse than the one that killed you: the anthills of the Razira Plains, where your bones will be dissolved by lava ants over the course of many painful months.”
Quiet whimpers came from the graves. Many of Kovax’s soldiers made religious gestures, imagining what it would be like to have those tiny, orange ants pick at their skin with acid-soaked teeth until they were no more than bleeding piles of human tissue screaming for release.
When the whimpers quieted, Kovax turned to his men and swept his staff through the air.
“Bring out the rope ladders—and do it quick!”
Chapter 46
In warm weather, classes at the ranch were often held in the whitewashed gazebo out in the gardens. Milo and his friends would sit on the grass, soaking in the pleasant garden fragrances and cooling off in the shade cast by the surrounding trees. Ascher or his wife, or one of the other three instructors, would stand inside the gazebo and use a chalkboard to lead them through lessons as birds sang and scampered among the leaves.
As it was winter, their classes now took place inside the ranch, in one of the three rooms off the main part of the library. The rooms were small, comfortable, and well lit, with windows showing the snowy landscape beyond.
Milo found himself steeped in thought today. He was thinking about the different continents of Astros, and what it would take to get the orphans safely off Taradyn. He yearned to see Ayrtoros, especially its capital city, Theus, home mostly to Savants. Maybe in Theus he could learn spellcasting.
Lily sat next to him at the long table Milo and Emma shared with the other orphans in their age group. Though she was older than the twins, their classes on Sundays focused on the nature of luminether particles—something in which Lily was an expert. Her job was to ass
ist the teacher, which got her out of certain unpleasant chores, like cleaning fungus off the walls of the bathhouse.
The class was called “The Physics of Luminether” and was taught by a ruddy-faced and short but muscular man named Harrikin Gukarris who rode in by levathon one day a week to teach the four-hour seminar. Ascher paid the man well, for it was illegal to teach any sort of class not registered with the Royal Council of Education.
“Now remember,” Professor Gukarris was saying as he strutted around the room, scratching his coarse, copper-colored beard. Tendons stood out on his reddish neck. “When we study luminether on the subatomic level, we have to take into account that sometimes things become very strange. We’ll be studying the quantum mechanics of luminether particles in the next level of this course, which will begin in two weeks”—he added, in a cynical voice—“if this ranch or you kids are still around.”
Milo and Lily gave each other worried looks.
Lily mouthed the words “I’m scared.”
“Me too,” Milo mouthed back.
That night, in Barrel’s room, Milo passed his first exam in levitation.
A mug of Bara-cola hovered a few inches off the tabletop, wavering a bit as he struggled to improvise a story about a pet dog and cat who run away from their master’s house one snowy day. “A very difficult task,” Barrel had explained, “levitating while thinking about something else.” To learn levitation quickly, Milo would have to find ways to make his practice sessions more challenging. Barrel called it “deep practice.”
“Whoa,” Milo said, staring at the rising mug.
“You’re doing it. Now, see if you can drink it without spilling.”
It took Milo ten minutes to bring the mug to his lips and tilt it at just the right angle necessary to pour it into his mouth. His hands rested on the table. They twitched now and then with the desire to reach up and speed along the process.
He managed to drink all of it down with a minimum of spillage. Once he almost tipped it too far, but caught it at just the right moment.
He was so exhausted afterward that he dropped like a sack of potatoes into his bed, asleep as soon he hit his pillow.
Savant (The Luminether Series) Page 26