Lord of the White Hell book Two lotwh-2

by Ginn Hale

  "Elezar," Nestor called suddenly. He was smiling into the darkness. "Look, it's Lady-dog! I think she's hurt. Here, girl!"

  "Lady-dog is dead, Nestor." Elezar's gaze didn't leave Javier. "This place is full of devils. Don't be tricked."

  But when Kiram glanced after a movement to his left, he could swear he saw his grandmother beckoning to him through the darkness. His heart ached at the thought of her all alone in this desolate place. He couldn't just leave her.

  Suddenly a strong hand caught his reins and jerked Kiram back into the faint light. Kiram looked up to see Elezar leaning from his own mount.

  "Don't look at them, damn it!" Elezar snarled.

  Kiram's heart raced at the thought of what he'd nearly done. If he'd lost Javier's light he would never have found his way out of this place.

  Elezar straightened and snapped his attention back onto Javier. Nestor rode close beside Elezar, looking frantic.

  "Where are we?" Nestor asked.

  "I think this is the Sorrowland," Elezar said.

  Nestor looked suddenly very frightened and lifted one hand as if shielding himself from the view of the surrounding blackness.

  "What's the Sorrowland?" Kiram asked.

  Elezar glanced only briefly to Kiram. "The dead must cross the Sorrowland to reach heaven. It's filled with the regrets and losses of a lifetime. If they lure you into the darkness, your soul is lost for eternity."

  Kiram frowned at the answer. He only half believed in much of his own religion, and he certainly didn't hold with any Cadeleonian beliefs. Still, Kiram couldn't deny that Elezar seemed to be right.

  Memories of his grandmother, the warmth and comfort she had always offered him, haunted Kiram. He wished, not for the first time, that he'd been able to tell her how much he loved her before she'd died. He thought he could hear her crying but didn't dare to look out into the darkness again. He concentrated on Javier's straight back, desperately trying to ignore the ghostly images flickering at the edges of his vision.

  Kiram pondered how it was possible that Elezar so easily maintained his focus on Javier. But then Kiram wondered if Javier was the single greatest loss in Elezar's life. Nothing in the surrounding darkness could inspire more desire or regret. Nothing else could feel as lost to him.

  As for what Javier himself saw, Kiram had no idea. He prayed that is was nothing, that the light of the shajdi protected him, because of all of them he had known the most grief and suffered the deepest losses.

  But Javier didn't waver from his path. He never slowed or called out into the surrounding black. He rode and they followed. And it seemed that their constant chase would never end. Kiram's entire body hurt from the pounding rhythm of riding. He didn't know how the horses could keep moving or how he could remain awake. Sometimes it seemed like the light radiating from Javier held them all in one endless motion and only its constancy kept them all from plunging into complete oblivion.

  Then suddenly a dusky sky broke overhead and the horses' hooves clattered against cobblestones. Kiram blinked at the evening stars and the moon as if he were looking at a blazing sun. He'd grown so used to pitch blackness that twilight seemed bright, almost luminous.

  Glancing again to the moon, Kiram realized that it was now full, which meant that nearly three days had passed since they had entered the archway. Three days of riding without food, water or rest. He had no idea how they had done it or even how far they had come.

  Slowly, he picked out the details of their surroundings. Apple trees lined the winding road. Low, stone walls divided open fields where young stalks of sunflowers stood among rows of spring wheat. Before them the road wound up to the dark fortress of the Sagrada Academy.

  "Thank God!" Nestor cried. His voice sounded dry and cracked.

  "I don't think God had much to do with it," Elezar told Nestor.

  The light of the moon seemed to burn away Javier's dark form. Kiram studied his hunched back. He swayed in his saddle with his head bowed low and the reins hanging limply from his hands. Suddenly Kiram realized that he was about to fall.

  Kiram spurred Verano ahead and caught Javier before he toppled from Lunaluz's back. He reeked of sweat, smoke and dry blood. The sharp angles of his body seemed terribly pronounced as if he'd been starved for weeks. His dark eyes looked hollow and haunted.

  "Kiram?" Javier's voice came out in a rasp.

  "I'm here," Kiram assured him.

  Javier grasped his hand with silent desperation. He said nothing but bowed his head against Kiram's shoulder and held him as if he could not bear to let go. Kiram couldn't imagine what visions Javier had endured in the Sorrowland. He could only return Javier's embrace with all his strength and try not to think of what Nestor or Elezar made of their display. He held Javier and forgot everything else.

  Then Lunaluz gave an exasperated snort and Javier drew back from Kiram.

  "Apparently we're boring my horse." Javier patted the stallion's muscular neck. Then he sighed and turned his gaze to the dark silhouette of the Sagrada Academy. "Well, I suppose there's still much to be done."

  He straightened in his saddle, composure lending him an air of command despite his obvious exhaustion. Then he turned to address Elezar and Nestor. "Are you still with me?"

  Elezar nodded his assent. Nestor gaped for a moment but then he too agreed.

  When they reached the academy grounds they found them mostly deserted. One groom greeted them at the stable but didn't rouse himself when Javier assured him that they could stable their own horses. However, as they left the stables Kiram noticed blue jays gathering in the surrounding trees and circling the academy roofs.

  "That's odd," Nestor commented as he peered up at the birds.

  "What are they looking for?" Elezar asked.

  "Us." Javier sped up his pace.

  "Are they your teacher's birds?" Nestor asked hopefully.

  "No, they belong to our enemy," Kiram replied. The surrounding trees looked like they had bloomed with thousands of brilliant blue bodies.

  "I think we might be in trouble," Kiram said. They were still yards from the dormitory and too far from the stables to retreat there for shelter.

  Then the jays dived them.

  "Run!" Javier shouted and they all bolted for the dormitory. Talons clawed at their scalps and exposed arms. Hard beaks slashed and stabbed. Blood dribbled into Kiram's eyes as a jay lacerated his brow. Kiram struck back at the small bodies but there were so many. For each one that he knocked away another swept down.

  In the flurry of wings and beaks, Elezar swore and Nestor howled. Javier snarled a low grating word and flames gushed up to engulf the birds soaring above them. The jays shrieked and burning bodies fell from the air, but moments later more took flight, pursuing Kiram, Elezar, Javier and Nestor as they raced to the doors of the dormitory.

  Inside, Elezar barred the doors and continued to swear at the jays under his breath. Blood trickled from a cut across his nose and his hands were a mass of scratches. Nestor pressed his hand against a gash in his cheek. His gold spectacles had been torn away and his calf was bleeding.

  Javier leaned against a wall, breathing hard. He too bore a multitude of small scrapes and cuts but they didn't worry Kiram as much as Javier's pure exhaustion. Javier closed his eyes and swayed on his feet, seeming to be on the edge of collapse, but he caught himself.

  He needed to sleep. Kiram wondered how well the wards up in their old tower room would protect Javier. Could he afford to rest up there for a few hours?

  "We need to get Kiram to the infirmary," Javier said. Both Elezar and Nestor glanced to Kiram in alarm.

  "I need to get to the mechanical cure that Scholar Donamillo created. They aren't what we thought they were, but if I'm right we can still use them," Kiram said. Now even Javier regarded him curiously. "I'll tell you everything on the way there."

  As they staggered and limped through the halls, Kiram explained what he'd discovered in Yassin's journal and Scholar Donamillo's diary. Both Nestor and Eleza
r were horrified. Javier looked desolate.

  "Every time I took him to a treatment," Javier murmured, "I was killing him."

  "You couldn't have known, Javier," Elezar said. "None of us knew."

  "He's right," Kiram agreed. "You aren't to blame. You thought you were protecting him and you did everything you could to help him."

  "But I wasn't helping him at all."

  "Now we will," Kiram assured him. "Fedeles is still there, I'm sure. Donamillo hasn't won yet."

  As they moved deeper into the building, they passed servants dressed in the Sagrada colors. All of the men stared at their bloody, filthy condition, but strangely said nothing.

  "Birds!" Nestor announced to one man. "Bloody birds went mad and attacked us."

  "We're just popping in to the infirmary to get cleaned up," Kiram added.

  But Kiram could tell that the servant's attention wasn't really on him, Elezar or Nestor. It was Javier, whom all of the passing staff members watched with a kind of shocked apprehension.

  Kiram suddenly wondered if word of the royal bishop's ruling against Javier had reached the academy. He suspected that it had and when one servant suddenly bolted away, Kiram felt sure that the man had gone to raise some alarm that the hell-branded duke had returned to their midst.

  "How hard do you think it would be to barricade the infirmary?" Kiram asked.

  Javier offered him a weary smile. "We do think alike, don't we?"

  When they reached the infirmary, they found the lamps dimmed but still burning. Scholar Blasio sat beside a bed, while across the room Genimo stood polishing one of Scholar Dona- millo's mechanical cures. Genimo's eyes went wide at the sight of the four of them at the door and the polishing cloth dropped silently from his hand.

  Donamillo lay on a bed, sunken and still as a corpse. Scholar Blasio stroked his older brother's waxy brow and whispered what sounded like a prayer over him. Only after smoothing the blankets that covered his brother did he look up and see them in the doorway.

  "Dear God!" Blasio cried. "Sit down. Sit down all of you and let me see what I can do."

  "We aren't here for medical attention, Scholar," Kiram told him. "We're here because you were right about what your brother wrote in his journal. We have to stop him."

  A watery gleam came to the scholar's eyes and he glanced to where Donamillo's body lay on the infirmary bed.

  "He's nearly gone," Blasio said softly. Then he looked to Kiram. "I've been nursing his body for weeks hoping that he would come back-that if he would just return to me, it would somehow undo what he has done to himself and to everyone else."

  "What on earth are you all talking about?" Genimo demanded. "What happened to you?"

  "You wouldn't believe it," Nestor told him.

  Scholar Blasio cleaned and dressed their wounds and ordered the servants to bring them food and drink.

  Nestor nearly fell asleep on his feet once his wounds had been tended and he'd eaten. Elezar guided him to one of the cots and tucked him in. When Javier dropped to another cot moments later, Kiram felt relieved. It had been almost painful to watch Javier struggling to stay awake. Now he sprawled across a cot, snoring quietly. Elezar sat, bleary-eyed, on a cot between Javier's and Nestor's. He maintained his vigil over the two of them for nearly an hour before he too succumbed.

  In the meantime Kiram inspected Scholar Donamillo's mechanical cures and flipped between the two journals, taking notes.

  "What do you think you're going to do?" Genimo asked. His tone was genial enough but there was something in his wording that bothered Kiram.

  "What I can," Kiram responded.

  "Why don't I have a look?" Genimo reached for Yassin's journal but Kiram pulled it back from him.

  "Thanks, but it wouldn't do any good. They're both written in Haldiim," Kiram said quickly.

  "Suit yourself." Genimo shrugged and stalked back to the medicine cabinets. He picked up a tattered book and flipped through the pages. But as Kiram checked the mechanical cures for the symbols and invocations he found in Yassin's journal, he felt Genimo watching him. The sensation made him uneasy and he considered writing his own notes in Haldiim.

  But that would just make it more difficult for everyone else to help him reconstruct the mechanical cures. Besides, he might not like Genimo but that didn't make him a traitor.

  Kiram had already made that mistake once, in assuming that just because he was off-putting and bigoted Holy Father Habalan had to be the man responsible for the shadow curse. All the while he'd been blind to Scholar Donamillo's machinations, simply because the two of them had shared tastes and ideas. He didn't want to think that he could have idolized a man who committed such cruelty and yet he had.

  Even now, Kiram felt sick with awe as he took in the beauty and pure mechanical mastery of Scholar Donamillo's work. Every screw and incantation was precisely placed, perfectly crafted. The twelve iron ribs arched in magnificent geometry supporting 792 glass panels which interlocked to exactly align every curse and command that gave the mechanism its purpose. Even the wires of the harnesses were carefully braided and measured to exact lengths.

  Kiram couldn't deny that the mechanical cure was a masterpiece and the thought both repulsed and frightened him. He needed to reverse what Donamillo had done as quickly as possible but the intricacy and perfection of the mechanical cure defied replication. New glass panels and iron ribs as perfect as these certainly couldn't be fabricated in a matter of weeks, much less a few days.

  Kiram knelt on the floor, exhausted and frustrated. He glared at Donamillo's journal, fighting the urge to hurl it across the room. He couldn't compete with this level of experience and perfection.

  His own steam engine looked simple and dull in comparison to Donamillo's breathtaking mechanism.

  "The wisdom of age defeats the strength of youth," Kiram whispered to himself, remembering how smug Donamillo had been in the stable in Anacleto.

  But Donamillo hadn't always been old and wise, had he? Kiram suddenly thought. Wisdom came with experience: trial and error. This perfect mechanical cure wasn't the first machine that Donamillo had built. There had been others and Kiram knew exactly were to find those slightly less ideal iron ribs and glass panels-the tower room.

  Elation surged through Kiram's exhaustion. He bolted to his feet and, grabbing a lamp, started out the infirmary doors.

  "Kiram?" Scholar Blasio gazed at him with gentle worry. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm going to bring your brother back to you." Kiram grinned. "Don't wait up for me."

  In the tower storage room Kiram moved between the dozens of disused mechanical cures like a moth searching for a flame. In one only a few glass panels were viable, but among them was exactly the sequence of incantations that Kiram needed. He jotted notes and then moved to another broken machine. As he found more and more of the pieces he needed his pulse raced faster and he laughed to himself, half delirious with exhaustion and excitement. Steadily his notes grew into an exact design for the parts he required. He mapped everything out: where each glass panel and iron screw would come from and where they should go.

  When he at last stumbled from the tower, he found morning light illuminating the marble staircase and glowing through the vast halls of the academy. In the infirmary everyone was sleeping until Kiram entered and let out a wild crow of triumph. Then only Donamillo remained motionless in his bed.

  Kiram bounded gleefully between the cots while Elezar and Nestor stared at him and Javier shoved his tousled hair back from his face. Kiram waved his notes and explained everything much too quickly. He smirked at Donamillo's mechanical cure and feigned punching it. For a moment even Javier looked at him like he might have gone mad.

  "You're off your nut, underclassman." Genimo shook his head at Kiram.

  "No. I am on my nut! We can do this. We really can." Kiram tried to calm down but only his excitement was keeping him awake and on his feet. "We can rebuild Donamillo's mechanical cure using the parts from his old machines up in the
tower. If we do it right we'll be able to exactly reverse the effect. We'll be able to force Donamillo back into his own body. I've worked it all out! We're going to beat the bastard at his own game." Kiram held his notes out to Javier. "The strength of youth farts in the face of age and experience, ha!"

  Scholar Blasio's brows rose with worry, but Javier took the notes and carefully read through them.

  "This will work?" Javier asked. Thin red scratches slashed his pale skin, bandages wrapped his deeper wounds, and shadows darkened the hollows of his face and yet the hope that lit his expression made him beautiful.

  Kiram nodded and his head felt like it was bouncing on a spring.

  "Then we'd better get started." Javier turned to Elezar and Nestor. "It's going to be heavy lifting and I think the staff might give us some trouble-"

  "I'll talk to the staff," Blasio assured him. "Just do what you have to."

  "I'll get my tools-" Kiram started for the doors but Javier caught his shoulder and spun him back around.

  "Have you slept at all?" Javier asked him.

  "Not yet but-"

  "Then rest." Javier pushed him to a cot. "We'll gather the things you need. Once it's all here, I'll wake you to put it all together. You're going to need your sleep for that."

  Kiram would have objected but lying down just felt so very good. He decided that he would rest his eyes for a few minutes just to placate Javier and then get right back to work. He rested his head on his pillow and closed his eyes. An instant later a thoughtless deep sleep took him.

  The clang of metal and swearing nearly woke him. His eyes fluttered open, and he caught a glimpse of Javier and Elezar muscling huge pieces of iron through the infirmary doors. Nestor tugged a thick coil of wire into the room behind them. Then Kiram's lids dropped and he slept on.

  In the heat of afternoon Javier shook him awake. Kiram groaned and slowly dragged his aching, stiff body out of the cot. His hands were a mess of abrasions and bruises. And he suspected that his face wasn't much better. At least he wasn't the only one. Javier, Nestor and Elezar all sported welts and scratches from last night's encounter with the jays.