The Alchemists' Bane Page 4

  “I’ve got nothing that’ll get through fifty inches of concrete, let alone steel.”

  “I need something, and I’m running out of time.”

  “Listen, Koskova,” Dominik said as he pushed himself to his feet, his knees crackling, “I want to help, however, you’re giving me nothing. I understand that you don’t trust me, but I’m an Alchemist, I work with figures and facts—with information. Our job is not a blind one. Without information, I cannot help you. I’m sorry.”

  Elana pursed her lips and studied Dominik. “All right,” she said at last. “What I’m trying to rescue is stuck in the uzhas vault.”

  Dominik blinked. “Um… Uzhas vault?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is he, she… it stuck in the vault?”

  “That you don’t need to know.”

  Dominik rubbed his chin and eyed her thoughtfully. “Well, I assisted in the design of the vault. I know every detail of that room.”

  Relief rolled over Elana. “Splendid!”

  “I will tell you everything I know about the vault,” Dominik said, his words carefully measured, “if you tell me exactly what is happening.”

  Elana blew out a sigh. “You first?” she asked hopefully.

  Dominik shook his head.

  Don’t tell him, the uzhas said, he’ll betray us.

  “I bonded with some uzhas,” Elana said. “It’s stuck in the vault, and I’m tethered to it.”

  Elana!

  Shut up, Elana said.

  “I see,” Dominik said. “Uzhas. The stuff Serovnya’s economy is built on, that’s all. I mean, only half the buildings in Kosgrad have uzhasgart frames.” Dominik’s voice rose steadily as he continued, “Couldn’t you have found something to rescue that isn’t going to throw Serovnya into turmoil when it’s gone?”

  Elana offered an apologetic shrug.

  Dominik visibly willed himself to calm then said, “Fine. Who has it captive right now?”

  “That’s irrelevant. Are you going to help or not?” Elana asked.

  “Who is holding it captive?”

  Elana glowered at Dominik. “I don’t see how knowing who the captors are will help.”

  “It’ll help my curiosity.”

  “All right, whatever. Chernov Commander and a dozen soldiers from Voronin Master’s private army are in the vault.”

  The blood drained from Dominik’s face.

  “Now tell me about the vault,” Elana said.

  “Are you serious?” Dominik asked. “You want to try and take something from Chernov Commander? You do know why the Warrior Guild discharged him, right?”

  “Ah, no. Not really.”

  “Well, let me tell you a story: Chernov was the Warrior Guild’s best instructor, but rumours ran thick and fast about his sadistic training methods. One day he returned from a training exercise in the mountains… without the recruits. He claimed there’d been an avalanche, only he had survived.

  “Everyone believed him until three months later when one of the recruits showed up—closer to death than life. The story she told about what Chernov did out there…” Dominik shuddered, a haunted light flickering in his eyes. “Anyway, she was delirious, and the council ruled that due to her mental instability, her word wasn’t reliable enough to convict Chernov. But they gladly took the excuse to discharge him. Voronin Master didn’t even hesitate before recruiting him to train his soldiers.”

  The image of Sofia’s battered face flashed through Elana’s mind. She could all too easily imagine what Chernov had done to those recruits in the mountain. Perhaps this would be harder than she thought. Though surely his soldiers couldn’t be that tough, right?

  “You don’t have a hope of outmanoeuvring his soldiers, either,” Dominik continued. “Nearly every Warrior he trained instantly qualified for the Sentinels. Those that didn’t qualify, didn’t fail from lack of skill—they failed because they were caught abusing other Warriors. The Warrior Guild imprisoned them or sent them to the uzhas mines. And who controls the uzhas mines?”

  “Oh. The Alchemist Guild.”

  “Yes. So where do you think those skilled fighters with an undying loyalty to Chernov ended up?”

  Elana swore softly as her intestines tied themselves into a dozen knots.

  “Precisely,” Dominik said as he walked up to Elana and pulled the phial of healing extract from his pocket. “I’m sorry, Koskova, there’s nothing you can do against him. Take the extract, free yourself from the uzhas and forget any of this happened. Better yet, run away.”

  Elana looked from the phial to Dominik, disdain curling her lips. “Really? That’s your response when an entire race is being slaughtered for our convenience?”

  At least Dominik had the decency to look abashed. But before Elana could react, he dropped the phial into one of her coat pockets and walked to the door. “This fight is suicide, nothing will change. Take care of yourself and forget about the uzhas.” Dominik opened the door. “Please do yourself a kindness and take the extract, Elana.”

  Elana trudged to the door. She couldn’t just leave the uzhas to die, as annoying as it was. She hesitated by Dominik. “Hold on, you haven’t fulfilled your end of the bargain. I told you who was in the vault, now you tell me about the vault’s construction.”

  “Don’t do this,” Dominik said. “Please, you’re putting me at risk too.”

  “If you answer one question for me, Dominik, I’ll go.”

  Rubbing a hand across his forehead, Dominik said, “Ask.”

  “Is there anywhere that the vault walls aren’t steel-lined?”

  Dominik glanced outside then shut the door. “Fine, I’ll tell you this much: there is one other entrance, a little-known one…”

  Elana’s breath caught in her throat. Another entrance? At last, some good luck. She waited, silent, for Dominik to continue.

  The Alchemist took his spectacles off and smeared the dirt around again, all the while frowning pensively at them. Finally, he replaced them and peered at Elana. “There’s a room beside the vault that houses the gas pumps for the heating and lights. You can access that room from within the vault, and also from a Service Guild passageway that runs alongside the vault.”

  “Is that room steel-lined?”

  “Yes, and the outer door is locked. And like the main vault door, it’s tightly sealed. The vault can be flooded without risk of leaks, they can even seal the ventilation shafts on the ceiling.”

  “Does the door have a key lock?”

  “Yes.”

  Elana nodded, a plan forming. “Thank you, Dominik. I’ll not forget your help.”

  Dominik cast a sidelong look at her as he opened the door. “I’d rather you did forget.”

  Chapter Eight

  Elana stood outside Dominik’s lab. Not a soul marked the vaulted stone hallway. She wondered about the absence of activity for a second before remembering it’d already been dusk by the time she’d finished the telepathy extract. She had no idea what the current time was—ten o’clock perhaps? Elana rubbed her scratchy eyes and tried to ignore the itch in her left temple from the uzhas.

  I’ll die if you leave me, the uzhas said.

  Elana’s brow furrowed. Excuse me?

  I see what you’re planning. You’re going to take the healing extract and kill me.

  I’m not pulling consciousness from you, I’m cutting off access to my mind. You’ll be fine.

  You don’t know that.

  Elana dug into her pocket and pulled out the healing extract. I’m an Alchemist, I live by educated guesses.

  She uncapped the phial and drank the extract, ignoring the cry of anger in her mind from the uzhas. A burning sensation swept through her. The itch faded from Elana’s mind, leaving her strangely empty—as though a part of her had been scraped away.

  “What the depths am I doing?”

  Silence responded.

  Elana tugged at her thick fingers, faint pops echoing through the still corridor. Was she really consider
ing tackling Chernov and a dozen of his men? Bile rose in her throat as she thought about what they might do to her if she failed. What they might do to her family.

  She swallowed hard and wiped away the sheen of sweat slicking her forehead. Stumbling, she made her way back to her lab, doubt nipping at her heels.

  A few minutes later, she reached the small room. Nothing had changed in the hours since she’d left. The two phials of telepathy extract still sat in the rack on her workbench, and her journal lay open beside it. She retrieved the journal and flipped through a few pages, easily reading the coded words. She’d only taught Mikhail the code, now she just had to pray he’d been smart and not told anyone he knew it. That fact alone could put him in danger if the wrong Alchemists got it.

  Elana shut her eyes, fighting back tears. After a few calming breaths, she opened her eyes, picked up her pen, and wrote.

  After a page, she blew the ink dry and shut the journal, slipping it into her coat. Her hands shook as she grabbed the phials of telepathy extract, pocketed one, and uncapped the other. The familiar muck-like odour filled the room as Elana drank. She grimaced as she waited for the pain.

  Grey dots materialised in her mind’s eye, but no agony.

  “Huh…” Elana pushed that puzzle aside and walked to the cold box in the wall alongside the window. Inside lay eight steel phials of liquid uzhas. With the new dose of telepathy extract, she could see the swirling grey of the dormant uzhas inside each phial as she grabbed them. It wasn’t much, but she didn’t need a lot to accomplish the plan spinning around her head.

  A thought struck her, and she returned two phials to the cold box, then poured the other six into a beaker. It quickly warmed and turned to a cobalt mist that seemed to regard her with suspicion. As soon as all the extract turned blue, she focused on it and extended her mind. The uzhas hesitated, then connected.

  Anger, rage, and pain ripped through her mind and she doubled over, gasping.

  Who… you? the uzhas asked, probing her, crawling through her thoughts.

  A friend, she said, pushing it out of her head.

  It resisted, unsuccessfully.

  The familiar itch inside her skull returned as it left her. Once out of her system, she could only locate it by the itch and the faint smudge of misty gas floating before her face.

  We don’t have time to sit around sharing pleasantries, Elana said. Chernov has the rest of your kind trapped in the vault, and I may be the only person in this building who cares enough to try free you.

  The uzhas seemed to consider this a moment. Who are you?

  “Elana,” she said. “My name is Elana.” She removed another phial of uzhas from the cold box.

  Elana, the uzhas said. Eeeeelana.

  The previous uzhas hadn’t been joking about intelligence diminishing as it shrank. She ignored the uzhas and emptied the phial into the beaker, watching as the translucent liquid turned into a hazy mist.

  The uzhas she bonded with floated through the air and hovered above the beaker. A mix of curiosity and anger swept over her from the uzhas.

  Why? it asked.

  “Because uzhas and uzhasgart make us powerful.” An unfamiliar loathing boiled through Elana’s veins. “My people lust for that which makes them powerful.”

  The uzhas accepted this and dropped into the beaker.

  A shiver raced up Elana’s spine as the two clouds of gas morphed into one. She grinned. It actually worked. Now, one final test… Elana retrieved the final phial of uzhas from the cold box and removed the cap before returning it to the box. “I want you to try and merge with the dormant uzhas,” she said.

  Elana could sense the scepticism from the uzhas, but it obliged and split into two clouds. Elana’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped. “How did you do that?”

  The uzhas regarded her scornfully. Can’t you? it said as one cloud seeped into her body, allowing her to see the second as blue.

  “That’d be a neat trick.”

  The second cloud of uzhas drifted into the freezing box and Elana grinned. So it was true, cold didn’t affect bonded uzhas.

  The uzhas floated towards the dormant grey pool of uzhas in the phial and slipped into the liquid gas.

  Elana held her breath. For several long seconds nothing happened, then, with a crack, the phial shattered. Elana stumbled back, throwing her arms in front of her face as shards of the phial slashed past her, biting harmlessly into the thick leather of her coat. She dropped her arms and saw only a blue cloud in the cold box.

  Glee swept through her bond with the uzhas. We grow! it said as it streaked about the lab.

  Confidence surged through Elana, her plan might just work. She strode into the corridor, the uzhas trailing behind her.

  Chapter Nine

  After sneaking through the Guild and hiding her journal in Mikhail’s cramped lab, Elana had quickly found the Service Guild passages and now crept through the chilly, dim hallways towards the vault. The itch in the back of her mind told her the uzhas followed. She’d had all of it leave her body, hoping Sofia wouldn’t notice a small cloud of cobalt moving through the building.

  Elana wiped her clammy palms on her coat. Her appreciation for the uzhas’s ability to see any mind within a hundred yards had grown exponentially over the last few minutes. See anything? she asked the uzhas for the hundredth time.

  Still no, came the terse reply.

  All right, all right. No need to get snippy.

  Elana turned a corner and came face-to-face with a thin, grimy woman in a beige Service Guild coat.

  The woman sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled back.

  “Shh,” Elana said, a finger on her lips.

  The woman nodded, eyes wide, fear plain in them.

  Elana frowned, why’d the woman look so terrified? She opened her mouth to ask, but the woman turned and scurried away, her footfalls barely making a sound in the barren corridor. Shaking her head, Elana continued on and soon came to a metal door to her right. A panel—identical to the one in the sculpting chamber—was embedded in the wall beside it. She called the uzhas and pointed to the lock. The itch in her mind moved until it scratched at her skull behind her eyes as she stared at the lock.

  What you want me do? the uzhas asked.

  Unlock it, of course.

  How?

  Elana glanced left along the passage, she suspected it joined the main corridor to the vault. Has the blue mind seen us yet?

  No.

  She placed her hand over the lock. Merge with me, I’ll show you what to do. The skin on Elana’s palm tingled, and a chill raced up her arm. Distant grey dots twinkled around her. To her left, less than twenty yards away, the blue glow of Sofia’s mind floated next to seven grey minds. Chernov and his soldiers.

  Turning her attention back to the lock, she closed her eyes and focused on the uzhas in her. The previous uzhas had said she could be inside its “head” as well. So maybe…

  She let out a soft gasp as in her mind’s eye, the world turned hazy. Scattered and fragmented thoughts not her own flitted through her head.

  Hello, the uzhas said.

  Elana grunted and kept her eyes shut, trying not to think about the hazy black—her arm from the inside? Now enter the lock.

  The uzhas moved, and the haze disappeared. Elana briefly saw the keyhole in her mind’s eye and then monochrome grey as the uzhas entered the lock. She could feel the surrounding metal and the tumblers, cold and hostile; a cage pressing in on it. Instinctively, she knew this lock wasn’t uzhasgart.

  We need to make an uzhasgart key, she said.

  No.

  What? Elana’s eyes snapped open, and she winced as what she saw from the uzhas blended chaotically with her own vision.

  Not dying.

  You won’t die, Elana said as she pulled back from the uzhas until she only saw with her own eyes. You only need a tiny amount for the key, and soon you’ll be merged with more uzhas.

  No.

  Elana glanced at the distant Sof
ia, and her hearts skipped a beat. Sofia and five of the grey minds now headed their way.

  We’re out of time, Elana said. Make a key! I’m risking everything for you, you selfish cloud of gas. If you don’t help, sculptors will slowly kill the rest of you.

  The uzhas remained stubbornly silent.

  “I should have left you to die,” Elana said, yanking the uzhas back into her.

  The grey minds moved with impossible speed. Chernov’s soldiers had obviously taken speed extract.

  Elana broke into a sprint, her short, stocky legs pumping, her hearts thundering in time. She rounded a corner and glanced back.

  Her stomach clenched as the dead-faced soldiers launched around the bend a second behind her.

  Silent as wraiths, they caught up to her and surrounded her.

  Elana staggered to a halt, wheezing, as they levelled their crossbows at her. Blood thrummed in her ears, and the sound of her breathing resonated through her skull.

  “Koskova Alchemist,” a man—Chernov, she assumed—said from behind, his deep voice rolling through the passage. “How nice of you to join us.”

  “I hate to disappoint,” Elana said, fighting to keep the quiver from her voice as she slowly turned.

  Chernov stood, looming in the passage, hands clasped at his back, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. Sofia stood beside him, head bowed and shoulders slumped.

  “You are many things, Koskova,” he said, “but a disappointment is not one of them. Yet. Your friend”—Chernov indicated to Sofia—“informed me of your successful control of the uzhas. Now you will finish cataloguing the process for Voronin Master’s records.”

  “I’ve hidden my notes and will never show you how to make the extract, or control the uzhas.”

  Chernov dug a sheaf of papers from his coat and held them aloft. “You mean the notes we copied?”

  Elana’s chest constricted. “You might have the notes, but they’re coded.”

  “True. But codes were made to be broken. All they need is patience.”

  “Why didn’t you just steal the journal?” Elana asked.

  Chernov grinned, revealing a mouth full of broken and crooked teeth. “And miss this exchange? Now, I trust you have the phials of telepathy extract with you?”