Soul Gem Collector 5 Chapter 4

“Well, that was a pleasant experience,” Janel muttered as she stared into her cup. “I’m sorry, Zayre.”

“Nothing to apologize for.” I fished the ruby out from my trouser pocket and slid it back into my jacket while I waited for Otso and Cad’s rustling sounds to recede from the trees. “Just because they were your boyfriend’s crew doesn’t mean you’re responsible for them or anything.”

“All the same, would you like me to talk to them?” Janel asked. “If I just had a quiet word with Otso about how you need people to keep away from your experiments--”

“I appreciate the thought, but it’d just make him and Cad even more curious about what we’re up to here.” I shook my head, started for the squat brick laboratory, then remembered that I had a living being in my hand that I needed to do something about. I held up Mr. Plaguey’s warm, limp body. “What do we do with the little guy?”

“Hawk food,” Taslyn suggested as she swirled her black cloak around her shoulders. “I’m sure there’s a bird or two around who wouldn’t mind an easy meal. Just put him down and let something get him.”

“That’s so cruel,” Noura protested. “I created him for Zayre. Aren’t we rather responsible for the little chap?”

“If you care to feed him milk with a dropper for his meals, perhaps he’ll live,” Taslyn shrugged. “I doubt he’ll survive long otherwise. He can’t even move on his own, let alone eat.”

“Yeah, if you want to take care of the little guy, go ahead.” I proffered the limp gray rat to Noura. “I don’t have time for a pet on top of everything else right now, and he’s definitely not in any shape to serve as a familiar.”

“What’s the difference?” Noura slid her brown fingers under the rat’s hairy belly, scooped him up, and petted his gray head with one finger. “Familiars help you cast spells, don’t they?”

“Yes, a familiar usually has some amount of magical skill, even if it’s not a magical creature itself,” Taslyn explained. “It’s why so many witches have cats. Cats aren’t inherently magical, but they can pick it up quickly. I don’t think this sad scrap of fur is likely to have any magical capacity whatsoever.”

“It was created out of magic,” Janel pointed out. “Wouldn’t that make it magical?”

“Perhaps, but it doesn’t make it sentient,” Taslyn said. She patted Noura on the shoulder. “Think of its quality of life. All it’s going to do is sit until it starves to death. A quick end at the talons of a hawk would be a mercy.”

“Being torn to death by a ravenous bird doesn’t exactly sound pleasant, either.” Noura petted the little rat behind its ears, then rubbed the little creature's cupped ear between her thumb and forefinger. She slid her hand over the rat, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath through her nose. As she exhaled the breath, little clouds of gray dust started to fall from the cracks of her fingers. The djinn girl opened her hands, spread her fingers, and let a cloud of gray dust float away on the gentle breezes.

“Did you just unmake that into dust?” I marveled.

“It seemed kinder than letting it starve or be eaten.” Noura brushed her palms against each other, then shook her hands out. “I don’t believe it felt much pain this way. At least, I hope not.”

“Probably couldn’t feel much in the first place,” I shrugged. I peered at the sky in hopes that I’d find the hazy suggestion of a storm or a fluffy cloud, but everything was clear and blue. “Janel, is there anywhere we can find a lightning creature that’s not inside of a storm cloud?”

“On top of a mountain, perhaps?” Janel hazarded. She pushed her sunglasses down her nose with one finger and peered up at the sky with me. “I must confess that I don’t know as much about lightning spirits as I might. Hunters who don’t specialize in them rarely chase them, and there aren’t many who dare to specialize. Most of them die young and charred.”

“Top of a mountain, huh.” I glanced north toward the mountains, but I couldn’t see their peaks above the sound-deadening ring of trees. “I’m definitely not up for another trek to the mountains yet, even if it was a lot easier with a djinn-powered carriage.”

“What’s the rush?” Noura asked. “We have so much to do already with the information we’ve collected about the shipments. Shouldn’t we focus on that?”

“Uh, let’s get into the lab.” I headed over to the laboratory and gestured for the girls to follow me. I was usually fairly comfortable discussing secrets around the lab, but now that I knew Otso and Cad were trying to snoop on me again, I didn’t want anything to leak. I had lightning to summon, anyway, and the only way I knew of that might work lay inside of my scrap bin.

“Why don’t I make the place a little more comfortable for us all?” Noura suggested, and my straw-stuffed pallet in front of the furnace immediately morphed into one of the low, cushy silk couches she liked to make. The djinn girl settled onto the couch and patted the cushions beside her. “So. Strategy meeting?”

“Good idea.” I headed over to the portion of wooden cupboards that had been reserved for Professor Blodwen’s supplies before she’d left the Academy with most of the other alchemists. I knew the raven-haired Elvenborn had been working on a method to capture lightning in a bottle, but I didn’t know if she’d made any progress at all. I opened the cupboard and scanned the inside. All I found were a few scraps of copper wire, a few shards of shiny black stone about as big as my pinky finger, and a scrap of paper with a complex net of squiggly lines drawn on it. I swept the pieces of stone into my palm, grabbed the paper, and spread them out on the nearest empty bench. “What’s our first order of business, Noura?”

“Well, turning in the Korlems to the authorities.” Noura answered as Taslyn and Janel settled on either side of her. The djinn-girl conjured up a smallish wooden board covered in slices of sausage, stacks of yellow cheese and white crackers, and little bunches of grapes. “Come, sit. I made a charcuterie board for brainstorming.”

“I want to work while we talk.” I headed to the scrap bin and started to fish out longer pieces of copper wire. “The quicker I can figure out how to conjure lightning, the sooner we can find ourselves a lightning creature.”

“So you can… extinguish it, and put it into one of your gemstones,” Noura said, and the corners of her dark-red lips turned down. “I suppose I can’t judge you for it now, can I? Especially considering what I did to poor Mr. Plaguey. I summoned up that sad little thing just to uncreate him a few minutes later.”

“Yeah, we’re shooting for something a lot like Mr. Plaguey,” I said. I headed back to the workbench with a half dozen pieces of decently long copper wire.

“Elementals can’t even feel pain,” Janel said, and she plucked a few sausage sluices and a small bunch of grapes from the board. “Unlike Mr. Plaguey.”

“Who gave his life nobly for the sake of magic.” I peered at the squiggly lines on the diagram. I could tell that the arrows rubbing along the lines indicated the direction of a magical current, and the boxes were probably energy sources, but I couldn’t tell what the other symbols written on the paper meant.

“Just because they’re not made of flesh like you doesn’t mean they can’t feel pain,” Noura protested. “Or fear. Or grief.”

“They’ll be created out of nothing, live for a few seconds, then pass back into nothing,” Janel said. She popped a few sausage slices into her mouth, followed them up with a grape, and chewed thoughtfully.

“It’s the circle of life,” Taslyn said, and she bared her tiny fangs for a moment, then tossed a piece of sausage directly into her mouth. “Everything that lives must die someday. Even elementals.”

“Usually when something dies, its energy kind of goes out into the universe, right?” I asked. I knew that nobody really was sure exactly what happened after we died, but the dissolution of the energetic body at death was something upon which most seers agreed. I placed one of the shards of stone on one of the boxes, then spun it around for a few seconds. As I moved the shard of stone, I realized that one of the shards next to it was starting to move as well. I pushed the ends toward each other and watched in fascination as they slowly slid together of their own volition. “Huh, lodestones.”

“Yes, I know the theory,” Noura said.

“So if I keep the soul of the creature I captured inside of the stone instead of letting it out into the universe, it kind of lives forever, doesn’t it?” I asked. I traced the square I’d put the rock in to another square on the board and realized that they were connected inside their complex net of shapes. I started to bend the end of one of the wires into a square.

“You mean you’ve trapped it,” Noura said. A lugubrious note crept into her musical tone, and her lower lip began to quiver slightly. “The only time it has life is when it does your bidding.”

“I mean, we don’t know that…” I couldn’t meet Noura’s dark eyes, so I stared down at the square of wire I’d laid around the lodestones and the six-inch tail that stuck out at the join like a capital Q. I hadn’t exactly trapped it, but it wasn’t like a rock could get itself free. I frowned at the diagram again. If I was going to transmit magical energy from one rock to another with conductive copper, it would be easier just to wrap them with the wire. I picked up the largest lodestone and started to bend the copper square around its form. “They might be having a great time in there. I bet they feel safe. Ferox seems to like it.”

Ferox was the first creature I’d ever captured in a gem. He was a chamrosh, a half-terrier and half-falcon who’d been bred for hunting. He’d belonged to Cad, but he’d been killed by flying shards of mirror when his master had been messing around with something he shouldn’t have in my lab. His glittering little soul had been trapped in an amethyst I’d been holding at the time, and since then his consciousness had never quite left the back of my head. The little chamrosh watched out for any danger or exciting prey, and would usually let me know if there was anyone around who meant me harm. He was the only creature I’d captured who I’d forged that kind of connection with so far, but it was possible that he was just a little territorial.

“As you say, Master.” Noura pressed her lips together and hung her head a little. Her sad expression and big dark eyes broke my heart a little. “This will at least help us fight against the Korlems, won’t it? It’s not just because he teased you?”

“Cad and Otso have suspected Zayre of hiding something ever since he first demonstrated his magical powers,” Taslyn explained. “And they’re both connected to the Korlems. If they have even the slightest scrap of proof that Zayre is doing something even the least bit shady, they won’t hesitate to turn us in to the proper authorities.”

“Yes, we can’t have poor Zayre here brought before the Council of the Illuminated Ones before we crack this case,” Janel said. “We really do end up spending as much time working on this as we do making sure that nobody knows what we’re doing but us, and I’m afraid that’s just the way it’s got to be right now.”

“But after we’ve managed to take down the Korlems and stop this war in its tracks, things will be different, won’t they?” Noura asked, and her eyes were luminous in the dimness of the laboratory. “You won’t have to live in secret any more, and you won’t have to gather any new powers. You can stop killing creatures.”

“I promise.” I set the wire-wrapped piece of lodestone down on the table and pressed my hand against my heart. “After we’ve exposed the Korlems for the traitors they are and warned King Sweyn about the Iron Dwarves, I’ll never kill another creature just for its powers again. I’ll retire.”

“Only if you’re serious,” Noura warned me. “We are bound together magically. And even though you are my master, if you make a promise to me you must keep it.”

“I said it, and I’ll do it,” I told Noura. “Look, the only reason I have this power in the first place is to stop this war. It’s a gift I never expected in the first place. Once we make sure that we’re all safe from the Iron Dwarves, there won’t be any reason for me to try to capture another creature anyway. I won’t even use my magic again if you want.”

“There’s no need to go to such lengths.” Noura shook her head. “But maybe we can release some of them.”

“If we can figure out how to do that, I’ll happily let them go.” I picked up the wire-wrapped lodestone and compared it to the squiggly lines on the paper. I could tell that the diagram I was looking at was a closed loop, but the ragged edges of the paper suggested that my portion of the schematics was incomplete. I would need to complete at least one wire loop to see what the effect was supposed to be, so I grabbed the end of the long wire and bent it over toward the end of the short wire tail.

When the ends of the copper wires met, they conjured a brilliant blueish-white spark of crackling lightning. The sudden crackle and the slight jolt of the spark made me drop the battery in surprise, and it skidded inertly across the wooden table.

“Oh, you did summon lightning!” Janel shaded her eyes.

“Is that enough for an elemental?” I asked hopefully.

“It’s not just about the amount of power, it’s about time,” Janel explained. “A small amount of magical energy sustained over a long period of time is more likely to spawn an actual elemental than the other way around.”

“It’s like water wearing a rut in the ground,” Taslyn explained.

“Something that can be accomplished in a very short time with a lot of water pressure, as I’ve demonstrated more than once.” I picked up the wire and lodestone assemblage again, bent the two ends of the copper wire slowly toward each other, and braced myself for another zapping spark.

A few tiny white sparks crackled at the tips of the wires when I touched them together, but this time I held the wire steady as the lightning flew. The sparks settled down a little as I slowly pulled the wires apart, and when the copper points had a quarter of an inch of space between them, a thin blue bolt of lighting began to jump from wire’s end to wire’s end. The crooked blue thread gave off gentle zaps and crackled as it flickered and flared before me.

“It’s about building up patterns of complexity, which can only occur over time--” Taslyn’s teacher tone rose through the zaps and cracks, so I held up the wires to show her what I’d done.

“Tas, come on, look at this!” I exclaimed. “I’ve summoned lightning with just a wire and a lodestone. That’s unheard-of! You don’t think it’s from one of my gems, do you?”

“Now just keep doing it for a while, and we’ll see if we can actually build up some kind of energetic resonance cloud,” Taslyn shrugged. “I’m sorry I’m not more impressed right now, Zayre, but it really is just a very small spark.”

“If you were an alchemist, you’d get it,” I grumbled as I brushed the wires together to creature a series of little sparking explosions. “This is free power we’re talking about. With the right array of lodestones, I could--well, maybe I could fake lightning powers after all.”

“Well, why don’t we discuss strategy while Zayre keeps tinkering?” Janel suggested. She pulled out the cork from the bottle of spring water Noura had conjured for her and took a long gulp. “I’ll do a bit of research into lightning creatures later. I’m sure there must be one that I’m just forgetting today. My head isn’t quite where it ought to be right now, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not surprised, after last night,” Taslyn said, and she patted Janel’s shoulder. “Just because it’s pink and bubbly doesn’t mean it’s not strong, Janel.”

“It tasted like starberries,” Janel sighed. She shook her head and gave her own cheek a gentle slap, then reached inside the pocket of her huge gray tunic and rummaged around. In a second, she drew out a slightly tattered rectangle of folded paper, then started to unfold it on her lap. “Thank goodness nothing happened to the map. I’ve plotted our path as well as I could.”

“It’s…” Taslyn leaned over to peer at the map that lay unfolded in Janel’s hands. “Surprisingly coherent until we leave the mouth of the tunnel. From there it just sort of trails off.”

“Well, that’s the important part.” Janel tapped the map. “We need to know the path the Korlems take to drop off their smuggled goods. Where the Dwarves take them after that could depend on all sorts of things. I presume it would be up to the king’s agents to figure out where the Dwarves are taking it after that.”

“We know where they’re taking it,” I said. My fingers were starting to hurt a little bit from holding the increasingly hot copper wire, but I was still keeping up a steady lightning bolt between the tips of the two wires. I wondered if the lodestone would run out of energy soon, and then I wondered why I’d never run across the spark situation when I’d played around with lodestones and copper wire before. I pulled the pieces of wire apart and rubbed my thumb against the side of the lodestone. I didn’t know for sure that it was an ordinary lodestone, after all. “Those tree-folk we ran into on the way back from Plum Hollow told us they tested their weapons out in the high mountains, and if the trees saw it then it must be pretty near to the treeline.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down much, does it?” Noura sighed.

“If they’re wise, they won’t just use one testing site,” Janel pointed out. “That will make it much easier to get caught by interested parties.”

“Yeah, they’ll probably change sites at random if they’re smart,” I observed. I tapped the ends of the wire together again, but this time the spark was much weaker. I frowned and waved the tips of wire past each other. Now, they didn’t conjure a bolt until they were less than an eighth of an inch away from each other. I wondered if the lodestones had actually been charged with some kind of energy already, and if I’d drained them of the small amount they’d had left. I had been naive to think that Professor Blodwen’s solution had been so easy, and now I realized that the schematics were undoubtedly part of a larger system that charged the lodestones with lightning in the first place. “But it’s also possible that they’re dividing up the shipment, sending it to crafters or factories first, or even sending it to their own alchemy labs for study.”

“When you say change sites…” Janel tapped her fingers on her chin and frowned down at the paper. “The Korlems are not stupid people, you know. If they believe their smuggling route has been compromised, they’ll change it.”

“Then we have to get this map to the King before they find out what happened and change their route.” Noura lifted her chin. “Zayre, where does the King live? I can have a carriage take us there right away.”

“He lives about two hundred and fifty miles south in Lancefort,” I said. I frowned at the drained lodestone, then gathered the few remaining shards into a pile. “That’s a week by land if we speed, don’t stop at all, and don’t get stuck in traffic.”

“Getting an audience with the king will take even longer,” Taslyn grumbled and then stuffed a handful of sausage slices into her mouth,

“If I emphasize that it is a threat to national security, I’m sure they will speed up the process,” Janel remarked.

“Either way, it will take more time than we have.” Noura propped her fist on her chin and frowned in what looked like deep thought. “We have no way of knowing how quickly word will get back to the Korlems, though. It could be--”

Noura clapped a hand over her mouth as the tinny jingle of the cheap, untraceable magic mirror I’d gotten from the Korlems filled the room.

“It’s Mr. Kay.” I held up my finger to my lips, went over to the front door of the laboratory, and leaned against it while I fished the unadorned circular flip mirror out of my jacket pocket. My heart raced, so I took a few long, slow breaths so I wouldn’t seem nervous on the call. I faced the girls, held up the mirror so that Mr. Kay would only see my face and the wood grain of the door when I opened it, and flipped the silvery clam shell up. “Hello?”

“Zayre.” Mr. Kay’s weathered face looked more drawn than normal, and there were dark circles under his pale blue eyes. His bald head shone with sweat. “How did everything go the other day? No problems with the pick-up?”

“Everything went fine,” I replied. I could feel sweat rolling down my back, but I kept my face neutral. “The Minotaur dudes got here, opened up a portal, and took everything. I spent the rest of the day cleaning glassware.”

“The minotaurs.” Mr. Kay frowned. “And you recognized the gentlemen from last time?”

“Listen, most minotaurs look alike to me,” I confessed. “But I’m pretty sure it was the same head guy.”

“Did you happen to see through the portal spell?” Mr. Kay leaned forward. “See where they were taking the barrels?”

“Uh, a little.” I wrinkled my forehead and tilted my head to make myself look mildly concerned. I thought for a second about lying to Mr. Kay and telling him that the minotaurs had smuggled the barrels somewhere else, but that seemed like too much of a tangled web to start, and being caught in a lie would definitely destroy any credibility I had with the Korlems. “It looked like a regular warehouse, I guess. Brick and boxes.”

“Brick and boxes.” Mr. Kay frowned. “And there wasn’t anything strange about the proceedings in general? Anyone mishandling any of the cargo?”

“Nothing I can think of.” I shook my head. “Did something happen with the shipment?”

“You see, it never got to its final destination, Zayre.” Mr. Kay let out a sigh and seemed to shift in his chair. “Something went wrong somewhere in the supply line. We believe it may have been an accident, but we’re not sure. You tested the materials for stability, did you not?”

“Listen, I gave you my best work.” I raised my chin just a little. “But I can’t vouch for anything that might have happened between my lab and wherever it was supposed to go. That stuff is really, really flammable, and I warned the head Minotaur about not having any hot metal or open flames nearby, and that’s all I can tell you about it.”

“I concede that the problem is unlikely to have been on your end.” Mr. Kay nodded at me. “But we still have quite a problem on our hands, young man.”

“And that is?” I sent up a little prayer to Dame Fortune that Mr. Kay would write off the event as a shipping accident and not decide to change smuggling routes. I knew I was taking a risk by playing dumb, but if Mr. Kay let even a little of their strategy slip, it would be worth it.

“Zayre.” Mr. Kay raised an eyebrow. “We have unhappy customers. They’ve paid us for goods and they have not yet received such goods. We’re going to need a makeup batch from you as soon as possible. Don’t worry about the cost of materials, we’ll have them shipped right to you--”

“How soon is ‘as soon as possible’ here?” I held up one hand as I realized the opportunity that I had. If I played my cards right, I’d have the perfect opportunity to show the King’s agents just what the Korlems were trading with who. “I don’t mean to complain, sir, but the only reason that I was able to make that last batch up for you so quickly was because classes were canceled for the Tactical Thaumaturgy Tournament. Now, I have a full load of classes, Battle Magic practice, and I still have to finish up my alchemical experiments from this semester if I want to get any credit for the last ten years of my education. Twenty barrels is going to take a lot longer.”

“Mmm, that won’t do.” Mr. Kay shook his head. “If we don’t deliver it in the same amount of time as the last batch, they’re going to get suspicious. They need it, they need it soon, and they need it to not explode in transit. Skip your classes if you need to. I’ll just send somebody to have a little word with the Dean so that you don’t have to worry about your grades as much.”

“Uh, I appreciate the offer, but I really don’t think--” I began.

“Zayre.” Mr. Kay’s pale eyes glared blue at me, and he lifted his be-ringed hand into view. “You may be the alchemist here, but I am the strategist. I am negotiating with these people to save your ass as well as mine. I will tell you that their original demand was not merely a replacement for the misplaced goods, but that you show them how you arrived at your unique formula so that they would not have to depend on our ‘shoddy goods and unreliable services’ any more. I assumed that as an alchemist, it would be extraordinarily deleterious to your work to have your secret recipes exposed for all who wish to see them.”

“So they wanted an in-person demonstration?” My heart started to beat faster again, but this time it was with the excitement of possibility. I could easily surmise that the Dwarves we’d blown up weren’t anywhere near the top, which meant that the Iron Dwarves had some pretty decent resources to start with. If I was careful, I could have some really solid evidence that the Korlems were working with the Iron Dwarves to create new and powerful weapons. “That can be arranged. I’ll be happy to process a sample batch right in front of your customers, start to finish, as long as I can have access to a professional lab with professional equipment for the purpose.”

“That’s a fair compromise, Zayre.” Mr. Kay’s other eyebrow went up. “And it can be arranged. But I would have thought that an alchemist like yourself would be reluctant to show off his secret methods in front of everyone. It might even cut into our business. Imagine if our customers could all make exploding powders as pure and powerful as yours.”

“The secret of alchemy is that we don’t just get results from the purely physical processes that we put our chymicals through.” I launched into my own version of the lecture I’d heard from old Professor Meinke many times. “The results of our work depend on all the work we’ve done in the past, and how it’s purified our soul. I’ve devoted so much time to working with the energy of my special recipes that nobody else would get the same kind of boom I would.”

I’d always thought the four stages of the Great Work were just a metaphor for how to learn alchemy. The first stage, the Blackening, represented ignorance--the myths and mysterious behind an impenetrable text of magic. The second stage, the Whitening, represented the acceptance that one knew nothing and the willingness to begin from scratch. The third stage, the Yellowing, represented the process of learning, all the way from memorizing theory to performing controlled experiments. The final stage, the Reddening, represented a full understanding of the material and the ability to draw one’s own conclusions and create one’s own experiments. Now that I had unlocked my own magical powers, I was beginning to wonder if the old theories about alchemy had been right in some twisted way.

“You are the expert here, and not I.” Mr. Kay bowed his head for a moment, then fixed me with his steely blue gaze. “I’ll arrange a meeting. Go about your business in the meantime.”

“Thank you, sir.” I waited until Mr. Kay’s face clouded over to close the mirror.

I was going to have hard evidence against the Korlems and the Iron Dwarves if I could just find a spy spell that wouldn’t be detected.