27. Resurrector

Finally, the assumption that the Ojisaries had uncorked bottles of wine to celebrate the Wells Moon Festival proved to be correct: there was singing, loud voices, and laughter coming from one of the terraces of the buildings that lined the notorious corridor. I only hoped that in a few moments the singing would not turn into a roar of alarm.

It took us forever to reach the roof of the house at the end of the dead end. But we reached at last the Ojisary territory. Slaryn crawled over the tiles to the wall of one of the buildings and, wrapped in harmonic shadows, I followed her. At the beginning of the journey, the dark elf had told me over and over again things like: don’t make noise, don’t complain, and don’t forget to use the shadows exactly as I do. I sighed silently. Sometimes I felt like Slaryn thought I was a five year old.

Slaryn glanced down the alley, and I crouched between the tiles and the wall of the building, waiting patiently for her to move. Finally, the Black Dagger tugged at my sleeve to get my attention, and I saw her disappear under the roof. I walked on all fours, and as I bent over, I saw a bunch of shadows coming down a gutter. She made no sound. In the corridor, there were two lanterns. One was quite close to where Slaryn landed, and the other was near an Ojisary who stood guard at the entrance to the dead end.

After making sure the Ojisary wasn’t looking in our direction, I too grabbed onto the gutter and began to descend as quietly as I could. It wasn’t my best night, as my arm and jaw still hurt from Syrdio’s punches; nothing serious, but it was distracting. When I got my feet on the ground, I crouched down next to Slaryn, and she showed me her hand as if she was holding back from slapping me. Only then did I notice that my shadow spell had worn off. Damn. I cast it again, thought Slaryn had a good reason to be angry, and lowered my ears. She gave me a gentle warning tap and began to skim along the wall. We passed the first lantern light, and Slaryn chameleonized herself so well that she made me pout in admiration. I tried to imitate her—after all, that was what she had asked me to do. However, my intuition told me that my harmonies were not as good. Finally, the Black Dagger stopped in front of what must have been the door leading to the laboratory. She pulled out a key, and I widened my eyes as I realized that by some means she had managed to make a copy. I approached as quietly as I could, and suddenly my foot struck something and I froze as I heard a slight creak. I looked down with a murderous glance at the stone I had stumbled upon, but when I saw it I forgot all about it for a moment. It was my sharp stone! The Ojisaries must have thrown it away the day they captured me. Feeling a sense of joy at my discovery, I picked it up, and as Sla had just opened the door, I hurried after the Black Dagger like a shadow. I could hardly believe that the Ojisary who was standing guard had not seen us.

We walked down a corridor, and I noticed that she was making more noise than I was… I rolled my eyes. We were in the middle of the hideout of the Ojisaries, putting our lives on the line, and I was comparing skills? Spirits…

After a few steps, Slaryn stopped in front of a door, and this time she pulled out a picklock. Feeling a bit useless, I decided to at least make sure there were no alarms on the door. There was none. Slaryn slapped my hand, concentrated, and finally forced the door open; she went in, I went in, and she closed it behind us.

We found ourselves in a darkened room. There were no windows. Only darkness. The light spell I cast barely lit up, and Slaryn gave me another tap. She turned on the dark lantern, and I could see a long table cluttered with a lot of bottles and strange instruments. I heard a metallic clang just as the light shone on the pale face of a middle-aged gnome, bearded and disheveled, lying on a straw mattress. His eyes blinked, and Slaryn murmured rapidly as she approached:

“Mr. Wayam, we’ve come to set you free!”

The Alchemist let out a little laugh that made my hair stand on end. He lifted his chains.

“And how?” he croaked in a nasal voice. “I am chained. Not even the strongest acid can break the black steel. You will not be able to free me.”

“Yes, I will,” Sla replied, crouching down beside him.

“You won’t.”

“I have hydra blood.”

This time, the alchemist remained silent.

“It can work,” he finally admitted.

“It will work. The sokwatas have been released,” Sla informed in a low voice. “And we’re going to get you to safety.”

The gnome glared at her.

“To another jailer?”

“No. But it was you who invented and manufactured the sokwata. And you’ll have to keep making it until you give us a final cure. That sounds like a fair deal to me,” Sla concluded.

The alchemist bit his cheek as Sla pulled out that miraculous hydra blood, and I shook my head in disbelief. What did he have to ponder so much? Perhaps so much prison and so much alchemy had affected his head.

I was surprised at what I saw next: after putting some kind of black powder on the chain, Sla spat on it. But I saw the result immediately: in a few moments, the black link shrank to a thin string and finally melted away.

“Amazing,” the alchemist murmured, in wonder. “I’ve never seen hydra blood before. Where did you find it?”

“On the black market,” Slaryn replied. She had proceeded to do the same with the chains that held the feet, and the alchemist was quickly freed. The dark elf gestured, “Tell us what you need to make the sokwata, and we will bring it with us.”

The alchemist stood up, and without saying a word, he held out an index finger to a bottle. I took it and put it in my bag. He went around the table, and each time he pointed to something, I put it away. I even took a little notebook full of notes. Then he stopped, raised a hand, scratched his beard, and nodded.

“That’s it. I think.”

“You think?” I gasped.

“Mm,” the alchemist confirmed. He rubbed his eyes. “All the essentials, yes. Can we… go now?”

I exchanged a look with Slaryn. She nodded.

“Let’s go. Just be quiet. And don’t be surprised by the way we’re going.”

“I’ll be more surprised if you can get me out of there alive,” Mr. Wayam retorted.

I could hear Slaryn’s exasperated sigh. She gently took him by the arm and guided him to the door. Then I realized that the gnome was limping, and I huffed.

“Why are you limping?”

My question seemed accusatory, even to me. But, hell, wasn’t our task difficult enough that the alchemist was lame to boot? It could have been worse, I thought, he could have been missing both legs. Or worse still, he could have been dead.

The alchemist glanced at me, seeming to notice me for the first time.

“They beat the crap out of me a few hours ago. Isn’t that a good reason?”

His tone implicitly added a: You little impertinent. I pouted, and when Sla imposed silence on us, I sealed my lips. We walked back down the hall to the door that led to the outer corridor. The door to the tunnel and mine was on the other side. And, frankly, I didn’t see how we were going to get through the dead end to it without the Ojisary who was on guard seeing us.

Sla opened the door quietly and surrounded herself with harmonic shadows before slipping out, grabbing the alchemist by the sleeve. I followed them, carrying the bag full of vials and instruments. I closed the door behind me, and just as Sla opened the door opposite with another spare key, I saw movement at the dead end, saw four Ojisaries pointing their crossbows at us, and shouted:

“Run!”

The bolts whistled right at me, I rushed at the alchemist to push him inside, and I didn’t understand how the hell no projectile hit me, then, already running through the inner corridors, I found that in fact one of the bolts had torn my shirt.

“Isturbaaaags!” I shouted. And I hurried the alchemist, hurling a string of curses at him, for the cursed man was limping and this was not the time for that, blasthell!

Fortunately, the gnome was not so lame, and we reached the tunnel door before the Ojisaries entered the corridor door. We heard them rush down the hallway, and Sla closed the door, shouting:

“I have nothing to barricade it with!”

I wanted to reply, but my throat was constricted by terror. I was about to continue running when suddenly the alchemist grabbed my bag, thrust his hand in and pulled out a bottle.

“Mmno, it’s not this one,” he muttered.

He took out another, squinted as if trying to see in the darkness, and I was already about to suggest him that he sang some requiem because we were all going to die when, to my amazement, he threw the flask against the floor near the door. And flames shot up.

“Good mother!” I stammered. Were those the essential bottles for making sokwata? Yeah, tell me another one…

The alchemist took off at a run, and Sla and I followed him, outpacing him to the famous metal door of the bongs. And what an icy shower I received when Sla tried to pull the door open and couldn’t.

“Back!” she cried.

I recoiled, not sure why, and when I saw Slaryn pull out an explosive disk, I quickly grabbed the alchemist and pushed him back. The explosion deafened me, and Slaryn had to take me by the arm to remind me that we had Ojisaries on our tail, already entering the tunnel. They had abandoned their heavy crossbows to jump over the flames, but they still had their daggers. They were certainly puzzled by the path we were taking, and perhaps mocked that we thought we could break out the alchemist and the gwaks. How would they imagine that we had another way out?

The metal door was dented and open. We rushed down the stairs, and Sla shouted:

“Black Cat! They’re chasing us!”

We reached the bottom of the stairs, and I could see the masterpiece that would finish off the salbronix mine: the explosive magaras were laid out all over the tunnel. And the black steel door had already been blown open. Despite Sla’s cry of alarm, the Black Cat received us with a smile of relief.

“Good evening, Mr. Wayam. Don’t worry, you’ll get out of there alive. Run, Sla, get him to safety. Take the tunnel.”

“I’ll take care of blowing it up,” Aberyl said. Clearly, despite what the Black Cat had said, the Black Dagger seemed to be handling the vampiric foam attacks quite well. He was crouched near an exploding magara, attached to a wire that ran directly into the tunnel. “This is going to be deadly,” he added.

Deadly, he said! Damn deadly, yes! I tugged the alchemist by the sleeve, and he quickly followed me, running towards the other cave. Everything was empty: the freed gwaks must have been already safe in the alleys of the Labyrinth.

“Black Cat!” Sla shouted. “Listen to Aberyl: he knows what he’s doing.”

Yerris hesitated, however, and I thought I understood his dilemma: he was anxious to make sure that the tunnel would explode and be unusable for a long time. I said to him:

“Black Cat, with those explosives, everything’s going to fall on us, run, scaluftard!”

And I did not wait any longer, for I could already hear the roars of incomprehension from the Ojisaries who were running into the tunnel, not imagining for a moment that death was surrounding them on all sides. Driven by the urgency of survival, I could only think of running and not losing sight of the alchemist. The bearded gnome, on seeing the mist of light, exclaimed:

“What the hell is this horror?”

He did not seem so horrified, for he nevertheless entered the tunnel of light without even slowing down. We had gone perhaps fifty paces when Aberyl shouted something and ran past us like a hare. And then came the explosion.

I threw myself to the ground, and the mist of light curiously muffled almost all the bang that came. This did not prevent me from scraping my knees on the sharp rock. Without thinking, I breathed in, found no air, and rose, asphyxiated, just to see the hell breaking loose on the surface. The stones fell, the light vibrated as if complaining of such a crash, and the worst of it was that I could see no one.

After a few moments of clumsily moving forward, I managed to shout:

“Black Cat! Sla!”

I repeated my call until my foot struck something soft, and with a frozen heart, I hastened to seize the body. To my relief, I felt a reaction, and hands grabbed me. I pulled it up. It was the alchemist. But he was half passed out.

“Mr. Wayam,” I stammered. “Are you alive?”

The alchemist huffed without opening his eyes.

“For now. But that won’t be true for long. I feel like… like life is just flowing away.”

I understood his problem and turned pale. Devils. If we didn’t get out of there soon, the mist was going to absorb all his jaypu and kill him.

“Come on, cheer up, we have to get out of here or you’ll die.”

I lent him my support, and we went forward a few steps before I heard voices.

“Don’t kill me, I have a wife and children, please!”

The scene I saw as I came around a bend chilled my blood. Barely a few feet away from me, I saw Slaryn, and not far away, on a small rocky islet, stood the Black Cat, threatening an Ojisary with an explosive disk. And it wasn’t just any Ojisary, I realized with a shudder, finally recognizing the voice. It was Lof, the Masked One, the one who brought us magic bread every day and told us jokes.

“Nooo!” I roared. “Black Cat, don’t kill him!”

I left Slaryn to deal with the alchemist and ran to the Black Cat.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s the Masked One.”

The Black Cat looked at me as if he did not recognize me.

“Round, shyur. It’s the Masked One: a heartless Ojisary who used to tell us jokes as he watched us suffer.”

“No,” I said, altered. “Don’t kill him. It’s not right, Yerris. Please. Let’s not waste any more time, let’s get out of here. The alchemist is dying.”

The Black Cat looked into Lof’s eyes, made a pout of disgust, and growled.

“If you try anything funny, I’ll make you eat this disk, Lof.”

He stepped down from the islet and led the way while I hurried to help Sla with the alchemist. Seeing that his jaypu was going down at great speed, and knowing that we still had a long way to go to get out of there, according to the Black Cat, I knew we wouldn’t make it in time. I was already on the verge of falling into deep despair when I thought that I could do something. I took his arm with both hands and concentrated as we moved forward. Since turning his own morjas into jaypu would have required a concentration that I did not have, given the situation, I set about turning mine and sending him waves of jaypu. It helped that I had absorbed the morjas from those bones I had picked up in the escape tunnel, and after a while, the alchemist regained some composure.

“Impressive,” I heard him whisper.

I paled, hoping he wouldn’t draw too many conclusions about what had just happened. Was using the morjas of the bones to bring life back to someone who was not yet dead necromancy? I did not think it was. That was healing, not resurrecting. So when I saw that Lof was following behind us, looking more dead than alive, I took his hand and helped him in the same way. Perhaps I did not try as hard, but in any case, the Masked One managed to follow us with more vigour.

The way to the hole seemed endless. I was already thinking that Yerris was lost, but then he stopped, felt the wall through the light, and nodded.

“This way.”

We plunged into the light and entered a cave through a rather narrow hole. So much so that I could hardly fit the bag full of flasks through. Who knows how many totally unnecessary things the alchemist had made me pack?

We breathed, relieved, as we left the vampiric foam behind.

“I was beginning to think you’d stayed buried,” Aberyl greeted. His veiled figure stood near the exit tunnel. “Come on, gnome, get up, you’ll be fine.”

But the alchemist had sprawled on the rock, croaking incomprehensible things. I shuddered. No way, he hadn’t gone mad, had he…?

“Get up,” Aberyl repeated.

Between them, he and the Black Cat helped the alchemist through the narrow tunnel, and they jerked forward as Sla led the way, lighting the way. I tugged the Masked One by the sleeve, and he staggered forward behind me, dazed.

The vampiric light had not seemed so far away from the tunnel entrance. But the way back seemed long, very long, because all I wanted to do was get out of there, go back to my comrades, and sleep soundly.

“Watch out for the magaras,” Aberyl then said. “I put in all the ones that were left. I don’t suppose you wanted to keep any of them as souvenirs, did you?”

Growling under the weight of the alchemist, the Black Cat replied:

“Blasthell, no. Let it all blow up, the tunnel, the mine, the foam, and all their holy dead.”

Aberyl glanced over his shoulder at him with a smile and nodded.

“Then so be it.”

We were almost there. And I held back from pushing Aberyl, eager to finally leave this tunnel. They started to come out. I put one foot on the wooden box and was about to pull the Masked One to help him when he suddenly tripped over the wire.

“Mind the wire!” Aberyl cried. He rushed to untangle Lof, but when he touched a magara, his eyes flashed with terror. He leapt back and shouted, “Blasthell, take cover! Run!”

And he ran. I tried to follow him, but in my haste, I stumbled on the makeshift steps. As I tried to regain my balance, I thought I saw, like a flash, a familiar figure standing there at the corner, and Aberyl was pushing him back, and then… everything exploded.

It all happened so quickly that it took me a long time to realize what had happened. The Masked One threw himself upon me, I screamed, was hit by something that left me half unconscious, stopped screaming, and choked on the dust. I coughed and heard distant screams. The rocks had shattered. That was why I could not understand how I could still be alive, unless… With a hand that I could hardly move, I touched the hand of the Masked One. He was covering me completely… and he wasn’t moving. His jaypu had vanished.

My eyes filled with tears. Lof had saved my life. He had sacrificed himself for me. But… why? My body was now shaking violently. I felt someone remove the dead weight above me and pull me from the pile of rocks. I coughed again, and looked at my right hand, and seeing it a little torn, I let go what little energy I had left to regenerate it. It would not do to have survived more or less everything and then have the sajits catch me with an undead hand… Two strong arms grabbed me, and I tried to stand, but one leg would not support me. I looked down, saw it bloody, then looked up and recognized the familiar face.

“Elassar,” I murmured.

If he said anything to me, I did not hear it. My ears were ringing. I turned my head toward the tunnel. It was gone. Now it was just a pile of rocks.

Yal tried to move me forward, but when he saw that I could only limp along, he lifted me up, whispered something again, I think, but I could not tell what, and walked away from the courtyard as quickly as he could. In my head, the stones and the explosion continued to echo over and over again, and I continued to feel the Masked One above me like a shield. As the Priest would have said, may his ancestors welcome him as a brother.

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