Asea examined the alchemical furnace under the vat. It was a complex device and she studied the workmanship almost admiringly. 'We shall empty this vat and bring this equipment up into the light. I want to study it and see what clues I can find about its builder.'
Rik wondered if that was the only reason she wanted to study it. In his association with the Lady Asea, he had discovered she was possessed of a certain fascination with the darkest of lore. There were times when he found that quite worrying about his patron.
He moved round the corner of the room. Looking behind the hanging corpses, he saw that there was another door that had been concealed by their bulk.
“I think I’ve found something,” he said. He picked the lock and opened the door. It swung ominously open.
The area Rik had found was much bigger than the cellar, and it was full of machinery. Asea pushed through with her wand and illuminated the area. Rik made out a vast complex of brass pipes and alembics. There were more corpses on tables. Someone had been dissecting one. Others had pipes stuck into their arms and had a strange shrunken look.
“What now?” Rik asked. He did not like the look of this in the slightest. There was something very strange about the bodies on the tables. He moved over to the one on the dissection table. It had a weird elongated look and its skin had a scaly quality. Vestigial fangs filled its mouth.
“Bloody hell,” said the Barbarian, pushing up behind Rik. “It’s a ghoul. Somebody’s made a fair mess of it too.”
He was not wrong. The flesh of the stomach had been flayed away, and various organs had been removed. Judging by the expression on its face, it had been alive at the time. Or as alive as such creatures ever got. Blackened, diseased-looking kidneys and other entrails half-filled the abdomen still. There was something odd about it. It took him a while to realise what.
“No blood,” he said.
“No bodily fluids of any kind, I would guess,” said Asea. She pointed at the pipes that ran into the bodies. Rik followed her gesture and noticed that the metalwork all flowed towards a complex of vats and alchemical engines.
“Why?” Rik asked. “Is somebody draining their bodies to make potions?”
“I don’t know. What could anybody hope to gain from the bodily fluids of ghouls? I know of no spells or alchemical serums that require them. I don’t like this at all. Everything here is in working order. It looks as if the owner just left.”
“Perhaps we should put a guard on the place?”
Asea nodded, preoccupied. She began to search the place. She found some leather bound books on the shelves at the back of the laboratory.
“Anything useful?” Rik asked.
“I don’t know. This seems to be gibberish. It’s most likely written in some personal cipher. It may take some time to break.”
“Malkior claimed that there were many Thanatomancers at work in the Dark Empire. Is this the sort of thing they would do?”
Asea nodded. “It has the feel of their peculiar madness. I just can’t work out what exactly this was intended for.”
“But you are going to find out.”
“Our lives may depend on that.”
The voices whispered in Rik’s head. They liked this place. They really liked it. He shuddered and made his way out, even as Asea called for Sardec and gave him instructions to see that this place was sealed off.
Jaderac watched Asea and her minions emerge from the building and cursed. The warning from his brothers had come just in time. A few minutes later and he would have been found in situ, not hiding in the shadows of this ruin. Fortunately most of what they needed was away now, shifted by dead of night to abandoned mausoleums in the Grand Cemetery, the contents already being put to good use in preparation for tomorrow night’s ritual. At least there was nothing in the lab that would lead back to him.
He pulled his cloak tight against the cold and seethed with fury, wondering who had betrayed him. Was it that dolt Sardontine? Or that treacherous little bitch Tamara? She had been playing her cards very close to her chest recently. Rumour had it that her father was in Halim, but Jaderac was inclined to discount that. What would he be doing here? He should be heading back to Askander to contest control of the Brotherhood with Lord Xephan, his replacement as Chancellor and as head of their secret order.
He looked at Asea and her lover and that arrogant cripple Sardec and wished that his new Nerghul was with him. He would have set it on them, and had it slay the lot of them. Even though it seemed flawed and slow compared to the first one, it would be more than capable of killing all of them. But his creature was up in the cemetery, guarding the stores for the ritual against any interlopers. In any case, he told himself, he would not risk it now, not when he was so close to ultimate success.
Tomorrow, after the completion of his great plan, there would be time to settle all scores.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rik lay on the couch in Asea’s apartments and stared at his feet. The massive old clock ticked loudly. He felt useless. Even the voices seemed depressed. They murmured quietly at the back of his mind, but failed to intrude fully onto his consciousness. To distract himself, he ran through one of the sorcerous exercises that Asea had taught him, calming himself, touching his inner strength. It seemed to have dwindled a little. Perhaps this was how it was with thanatomantic energy. Perhaps it dissipated over days and weeks on disuse.
He felt threatened, as if they were all on the edge of some great abyss. Kathea’s coronation was tomorrow and they were still no closer to working out their enemy’s plan. Asea had been closeted in her chambers for all day and most of last night, and had not emerged. Only Karim had entered to take her food. She turned away all messengers. She talked to no one. She seemed driven in a way that he had never seen her before. Sometimes he has caught a glimpse of her through the door, and she looked haggard. All he could so was sleep here, outside her chambers, like a faithful watchdog.
He was afraid, and not just for himself. He sensed that Malkior was coming, and he would kill Asea and him too if he got the chance. Rik had prepared for that eventuality as best he could. His hidden blade was poisoned. He had prepared a truesilver bullet in his concealed pistol. He carried another pistol with another special bullet. He had the blade Asea had given him. He knew they would mostly likely not be enough. Even the stolen energy of the Sea Devil would most likely not be enough, but he was determined that if Malkior came he would be as well prepared as he could be. He was not going to be taken so easily this time.
The door to Asea’s chamber swung open. She emerged. Her face was pale and drawn. Her eyes looked huge. Her pupils were dilated from the potions she took against fatigue.
“I have solved it,” she said softly.
“You’ve broken the code?”
“I did that hours ago. Now I have translated the notes.”
“What do they say?”
“The machines were used for preparing a special serum, a component in a necromantic ritual.”
“The book says that?”
“No but reading between the lines of the descriptions of the experiments and extrapolating from them, I am sure I know what the serum is to be used for. Whoever created it intends to raise the dead and do something worse. There is some component of the ghoul’s disease that can be used to make undeath spread like a plague. They’ll need to do it soon because the serum won’t hold its potency for long.”
“How soon?”
“Tonight, perhaps.”
