Shadows Return

CHAPTER 31 A Change in the Wind

SOMETHING WAS WRONG.

Yhakobin was as polite as always when Alec came upstairs each day, as long as Alec was docile and cooperative, but there was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there before. He had no doubt it had something to do with the new rhekaro and the cries that still occasionally came down from the workshop.

Yet unpleasant as the circumstances now were, Alec was glad to get upstairs for any time at all, if only to break up the boredom of the day. It was good to see if the sun was shining or the rain was falling, good to smell the wintry breeze through an open window and hear the sounds of Yhakobin’s children playing outside in the gardens.

Over a week had passed since the making of the new rhekaro. Each day Alec was brought up to feed it, and each day he was sent back to his little cell immediately afterward, with nothing but new books to amuse himself. Yhakobin had little time for him anymore, which in itself seemed a blessing. The smaller furnaces around the room were cold now. Only the athanor was stoked and it burned continuously, heating some greenish-brown mess in the large retort atop it.

While the rhekaro fed each day, Alec looked it over carefully, hoping the alchemist would not notice. At first there were only the bodkin pricks on its pale fingertips, but as the days went by, bandages slowly appeared on both its arms and legs. The memory of the bucket by the door, with that bit of hair hanging out, made his heart race and his guts roil.

Whatever this creature was, Alec could not deny the fact that he was connected to it by blood. Even if it was a monster, no creature deserved to be cut up alive, as the first one had been.

Or deserved to be kept naked in an iron cage, either. It reminded him too much of that nightmarish journey his first time in Plenimar, creaking along in that filthy bear cage.

There was no waste bucket in there, or any water. Did it need such things, he wondered? With its strange eyes and skin, and stranger blood, it simply wasn’t a real child. Except for the way it looks at me. Those silvery eyes locked on his face each day as it sucked hard at his fingertip, and he was almost certain now that he saw some sign of intelligence there. And though it was hard to tell with it huddled over all the time, he thought it looked larger than it had at first, too. Could it be growing, on nothing more than a few drops of blood a day? Its hair was certainly longer. The long, silvery tresses pooled about it like a shimmering cloak.

It’s not a child! he reminded himself time and again, but each day he wondered more and more what it really was.

Alec hadn’t seen Khenir in all that time, but one afternoon as he sat reading on his bed, the door opened and there he was. Alec regarded him with a new coldness, convinced that he’d taken the horn picks. But his heart ached a little, too, torn between conviction and regret.

Khenir noticed the change in his demeanor at once, of course. With a sigh, he sat down on the bed beside him. “You’re angry with me?”

“I think you know why.”

Khenir nodded slowly. “That day I saw that the spoon was missing and realized my mistake in leaving it behind. If Ilban had found out?” He shuddered. “You put us both at a terrible risk with such a foolish act. If you got away because of my carelessness, it would have been my life in payment.”

“I was planning to take you with me,” Alec told him.

Khenir stared at him in disbelief. “You’d really do that?”

“Of course!”

“That was very good of you. I never guessed-But you don’t think those splinters could really have worked in the lock, do you?”

Alec kept to himself the fact that they’d worked perfectly well. “Why are you here?”

“I’ve been worried about you! I was afraid Ilban was taking his anger out on you, as he has on me more frequently.” He lifted the hem of his robe and showed Alec a few red stripes across the backs of his calves.

“What’s he so upset about? He’s got his white creature and I’m keeping it fed for him. And those cries?” Alec hugged himself, feeling miserable and helpless. “By the Light, does he make them just to torture them? What is it he wants?”

Khenir sighed. “He’s pursuing a great secret, Alec. The rhekaro made from Hâzadriëlfaie blood are said to yield the necessary elements for a perfect elixir.”

“To do what? Heal the Overlord’s child?”

“Yes. That’s what he told me, at least.”

Alec narrowed his eyes at the older man. “You think there’s something else it does?”

“I have no idea, but I do know that he’s made many healing elixirs over the years without going to such lengths.”

“Say all you want about ‘alchemy’ it all looks like necromancy to me, and it causes suffering.”

“But for a higher purpose.”

Alec shook his head and looked away.

Khenir squeezed his shoulder and gave him a little shake. “I’m sorry about taking your things, but it was to protect you as much as myself. I keep telling you, you haven’t been a slave long enough to understand the danger.”

“And how would I, shut up in a cell for weeks on end?”

“I know it’s difficult for you. If only Ilban’s experiments work, things will surely change. In the meantime, I’ll ask if you can go out in the garden with me again.”

Alec had expected to work harder than this to get another chance at the garden. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

“Then you forgive me?”

Alec forced a grudging smile. “Forget about it. It doesn’t matter anyway. I guess I’ll have to settle for another walk on my chain, eh?”