Lord of the White Hell book Two lotwh-2 (32 page)

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.

Though Kiram couldn't see why several deep scratches slashed across Scholar Blasio's forehead.

"The birds are getting worse. They're mobbing just about anybody," Nestor announced. "And it's getting dark outside, even though it's only noon."

The shadow curse was drawing closer.

Suddenly he was very awake. Hundreds of machine parts greeted him as he surveyed the infirmary. Last night when he'd been writing it out on paper, transforming Donamillo's mechanical cure had seemed so simple. Now the physical reality of all that metal, glass and wire loomed over Kiram.

Javier handed Kiram his notes and his tools.

"Can you still do it?" Javier asked and Kiram knew that Javier was afraid that Kiram's plan had been more the product of delirium than realism.

"I can do it," Kiram assured him.

He didn't waste time but went straight to the heart of the matter, wrenching apart the iron ribs and smashing out the glass panels that needed to be removed.

"Let me help with that." Elezar hefted up one of the braces that Kiram had struggled with.

"Thanks."

"Anything I could do?" Nestor asked.

Kiram put them both to work, hauling, lifting and bracing ungainly machine parts. Javier however stepped back from them all and knelt on the floor, writing curling Bahiim symbols in tight columns. As Kiram spliced new wires into the stripped harness of Donamillo's mechanical cure, Javier enclosed them in protective wards.

Genimo offered to help, but he worked too slowly and too sloppily for Kiram to use him. Fortunately Scholar Blasio asked Genimo to help him with Donamillo's body. Genimo seemed far more suited to dribbling water between the old man's lips than aligning delicate glass panels.

The raucous screams of blue jays became so constant that Kiram stopped hearing them. But the growing darkness outside the windows gnawed at him. He disregarded the stew Genimo brought him in favor of his work.

Javier looked like he was going to insist but then the infirmary doors flew open and Master Ignacio charged in with a bleeding groom in his arms. Ignacio took all of them and the chaos of machinery in with a single sweeping glare.

"Blasio!" Ignacio shouted. "This boy needs your help. NOW!"

Blasio bolted from his brother's bedside and rushed to help Ignacio lay the groom on one of the cots. As they laid him back Kiram felt bile rise in his throat. The young man was nearly cut in half: bowels hung exposed from a bloody, gaping wound.

"What the hell happened to him?" Elezar demanded.

"Some demon tore him open in the shadows of the orchard!" Master Ignacio turned his furious gaze on Javier and his hand went to his sword hilt.

"It wasn't my doing." Javier stood straight and met the master's glare directly.

"It wasn't!" Scholar Blasio insisted. He met Ignacio's gaze for only a moment and then looked back down at the groom. "It's my brother's handiwork. This and Fedeles Quemanor's madness, and even the murder of the groom last year. He's done so much harm." Blasio's voice broke and he turned away.

"What in the name of God are you talking about?" Ignacio demanded. Blasio looked too close to tears to speak. He simply shook his head, then lifted a sheet and laid it over the unmoving groom. Then he turned and sat beside his brother's body.

The groom was dead, Kiram realized.

"If you'll listen I'll tell you, Master Ignacio." Javier cautiously stepped closer to Ignacio.

Ignacio studied Javier and then nodded.

While Javier spoke with the war master, Kiram tried to put the dead groom out of his mind. Red stains seeped up through the sheet that Blasio had laid over the body. In the heat of the afternoon the smell of blood and death saturated the air.

Kiram focused on the last glass panel, wedging it into place and then ever so carefully screwing in the brackets that linked it to the curving ribs. With that done, he stoked the fire of his own steam engine. Heat radiated from the boiler and Kiram tossed in more wood.

"Can you keep it hot?" Kiram asked Nestor.

"Will do." Nestor too flinched from the sight of the groom's corpse. Kiram turned to Elezar. Sweat soaked his already stained shirt and a dark bruise colored the scab that cut across his nose.

"After we've strapped Scholar Donamillo's body into the red harness, we'll need to hand crank the mechanical cure until the steam engine's built up enough force to drive it," Kiram told him. "Can you do that?"

Elezar nodded and hefted up the drive bar.

"Now we just need Donamillo's body."

"Are you sure?" Genimo scowled at the rough monstrosity that Kiram had created from Donamillo's beautiful mechanical cure. "That thing looks like it's about to fall apart."

"How it looks doesn't matter," Kiram snapped. "And I'm not asking you in any case."

"No need to shout, Kiram. I'm just saying what everyone is thinking. It doesn't look like it will work for shit and if it doesn't, then what happens to all of us?"

"Genimo," Elezar said flatly. "Shut up before I shut you up."

Kiram found himself smiling at Elezar with exactly the same happy expression as Nestor. Genimo dropped back against the wall, sulking.

"Scholar Blasio?" Kiram called.

Blasio rose from his chair at his brother's bedside. Kiram didn't have to say anything more. Blasio lifted Donamillo's emaciated body easily and carried him like an infant into Kiram's rebuilt machine.

Master Ignacio stood next to Javier, watching Kiram and Blasio strap Donamillo into the harness. His expression seemed equal parts revulsion and confusion. Kiram wondered what all Javier had confessed to the war master during their quiet, tense conversation.

"It's pitch black outside" Nestor nodded at the barred windows. Suddenly something smacked against the window. A second blow cracked apart the glass. A bleeding blue jay shrieked at them through the opening. Then dozens more birds threw themselves against the glass, breaking the panes as they shattered their own bodies. Black blood poured from them and an acrid steam began to rise from the wrought iron bars that held the windows closed. As the bars crumbled and streams of viscous darkness spilled down the walls, Kiram felt a terrible, sick pain twist through his guts.

"Get behind the wards!" Javier shouted. He all but hurled Master Ignacio into the circle of Bahiim symbols. Genimo scurried into the circle and stared wide-eyed as the entire window casing collapsed. Blasio dropped to his knees near the steam engine and covered his face with his hands.

Kiram tightened the last strap of Donamillo's harness and let the old man's body hang limp. He grabbed the wires of the second harness and leapt out from the mechanical cure.

Jays crashed into the infirmary and a seeping darkness followed them, pooling across the floor, burning stones and eating through pieces of iron. The birds screamed and swooped, but none of them seemed capable of flying over the wards Javier had laid down.

"Get the mechanical cure moving!" Kiram called to Elezar. To Kiram's relief, Elezar pumped the drive bar fast and the iron ribs of the mechanical cure swung around, building speed. Faint sparks lit up along the harness wires. Javier and Master Ignacio joined Elezar and the mechanical cure spun like a gigantic top.

Something struck the infirmary doors. They broke open and a wall of darkness flooded the room. Only the blaze in the belly of Kiram's steam engine and the faint sparks given off from the mechanical cure offered them any illumination.

Hissing screams and the shrieks of blue jays rose from the darkness. Master Ignacio groaned and Elezar swore as the discomfort of the shadow curse intensified. Kiram gritted his teeth against the pain. And yet Javier's wards still held the darkness back.

Javier glared at the black mass roiling over them and mouthed Bahiim incantations as he pumped the drive bar.

"Nestor? The engine?" Kiram had to shout over the screams and shrieks that tore the air.

"It's hot!" Nestor yelled back. Even in the dim light Kiram could see the pain in Nestor's face but he still locked the boiler door down and gripped the engine release as Kiram had shown him earlier.

"Let the steam engine take over!" Kiram shouted. "Let go of the drive bar!"

Elezar, Javier and Master Ignacio released the bar and jumped back as the pistons of Kiram's steam pump took over. The ribs of the mechanical cure whirled by at a blinding speed and suddenly the faint sparks inside the mechanical cure erupted to brilliant light.

Only then did Kiram see Genimo crouched over a patch of Javier's wards, scrubbing them away.

"Stop him!" Kiram shouted.

Nestor tackled Genimo and flattened him to the ground but it was already too late. Cold blackness hit Kiram. Agony stabbed through his chest and hot blood spilled down his belly. His knees buckled.

Elezar and Nestor both lay on the ground writhing from pain, as did Master Ignacio and Scholar Blasio. Blood erupted from wounds that opened wherever the curse touched them. Only Genimo remained unscathed, but he looked terrified when he met Kiram's gaze. Then suddenly hot white light blazed over them all.

Javier stood, hands raised with walls of white light pouring from him. As Kiram forced himself up to his feet Genimo bolted from the sphere of the shajdi's light, fleeing back to his master in the darkness.

"Javier, this doesn't need to go on." Fedeles' voice silenced the cacophony of screams. And suddenly he stood there, smiling, at the edge of the shajdi's light. His eyes were too dark and his skin too luminous. This was not Fedeles, Kiram reminded himself. This was Donamillo wearing Fedeles' body.