Ginn Hale - Lord of the White Hell book Two

In the flurry of wings and beaks, Elezar swore and Nestor howled. Javier snarled a low grating word and flames gushed up to engulf the birds soaring above them. The jays shrieked and burning bodies fell from the air, but moments later more took flight, pursuing Kiram, Elezar, Javier and Nestor as they raced to the doors of the dormitory.

Inside, Elezar barred the doors and continued to swear at the jays under his breath. Blood trickled from a cut across his nose and his hands were a mass of scratches. Nestor pressed his hand against a gash in his cheek. His gold spectacles had been torn away and his calf was bleeding.

Javier leaned against a wall, breathing hard. He too bore a multitude of small scrapes and cuts but they didn't worry Kiram as much as Javier's pure exhaustion. Javier closed his eyes and swayed on his feet, seeming to be on the edge of collapse, but he caught himself.

He needed to sleep. Kiram wondered how well the wards up in their old tower room would protect Javier. Could he afford to rest up there for a few hours?

"We need to get Kiram to the infirmary," Javier said. Both Elezar and Nestor glanced to Kiram in alarm.

"I need to get to the mechanical cure that Scholar Donamillo created. They aren't what we thought they were, but if I'm right we can still use them," Kiram said. Now even Javier regarded him curiously. "I'll tell you everything on the way there."

As they staggered and limped through the halls, Kiram explained what he'd discovered in Yassin's journal and Scholar Donamillo's diary. Both Nestor and Elezar were horrified. Javier looked desolate.

"Every time I took him to a treatment," Javier murmured, "I was killing him."

"You couldn't have known, Javier," Elezar said. "None of us knew."

"He's right," Kiram agreed. "You aren't to blame. You thought you were protecting him and you did everything you could to help him."

"But I wasn't helping him at all."

"Now we will," Kiram assured him. "Fedeles is still there, I'm sure. Donamillo hasn't won yet."

As they moved deeper into the building, they passed servants dressed in the Sagrada colors. All of the men stared at their bloody, filthy condition, but strangely said nothing.

"Birds!" Nestor announced to one man. "Bloody birds went mad and attacked us."

"We're just popping in to the infirmary to get cleaned up," Kiram added.

But Kiram could tell that the servant's attention wasn't really on him, Elezar or Nestor. It was Javier, whom all of the passing staff members watched with a kind of shocked apprehension.

Kiram suddenly wondered if word of the royal bishop's ruling against Javier had reached the academy. He suspected that it had and when one servant suddenly bolted away, Kiram felt sure that the man had gone to raise some alarm that the hell-branded duke had returned to their midst.

"How hard do you think it would be to barricade the infirmary?" Kiram asked.

Javier offered him a weary smile. "We do think alike, don't we?"

When they reached the infirmary, they found the lamps dimmed but still burning. Scholar Blasio sat beside a bed, while across the room Genimo stood polishing one of Scholar Dona- millo's mechanical cures. Genimo's eyes went wide at the sight of the four of them at the door and the polishing cloth dropped silently from his hand.

Donamillo lay on a bed, sunken and still as a corpse. Scholar Blasio stroked his older brother's waxy brow and whispered what sounded like a prayer over him. Only after smoothing the blankets that covered his brother did he look up and see them in the doorway.

"Dear God!" Blasio cried. "Sit down. Sit down all of you and let me see what I can do."

"We aren't here for medical attention, Scholar," Kiram told him. "We're here because you were right about what your brother wrote in his journal. We have to stop him."

A watery gleam came to the scholar's eyes and he glanced to where Donamillo's body lay on the infirmary bed.

"He's nearly gone," Blasio said softly. Then he looked to Kiram. "I've been nursing his body for weeks hoping that he would come back-that if he would just return to me, it would somehow undo what he has done to himself and to everyone else."

"What on earth are you all talking about?" Genimo demanded. "What happened to you?"

"You wouldn't believe it," Nestor told him.

Scholar Blasio cleaned and dressed their wounds and ordered the servants to bring them food and drink.

Nestor nearly fell asleep on his feet once his wounds had been tended and he'd eaten. Elezar guided him to one of the cots and tucked him in. When Javier dropped to another cot moments later, Kiram felt relieved. It had been almost painful to watch Javier struggling to stay awake. Now he sprawled across a cot, snoring quietly. Elezar sat, bleary-eyed, on a cot between Javier's and Nestor's. He maintained his vigil over the two of them for nearly an hour before he too succumbed.

In the meantime Kiram inspected Scholar Donamillo's mechanical cures and flipped between the two journals, taking notes.

"What do you think you're going to do?" Genimo asked. His tone was genial enough but there was something in his wording that bothered Kiram.

"What I can," Kiram responded.

"Why don't I have a look?" Genimo reached for Yassin's journal but Kiram pulled it back from him.

"Thanks, but it wouldn't do any good. They're both written in Haldiim," Kiram said quickly.

"Suit yourself." Genimo shrugged and stalked back to the medicine cabinets. He picked up a tattered book and flipped through the pages. But as Kiram checked the mechanical cures for the symbols and invocations he found in Yassin's journal, he felt Genimo watching him. The sensation made him uneasy and he considered writing his own notes in Haldiim.

But that would just make it more difficult for everyone else to help him reconstruct the mechanical cures. Besides, he might not like Genimo but that didn't make him a traitor.

Kiram had already made that mistake once, in assuming that just because he was off-putting and bigoted Holy Father Habalan had to be the man responsible for the shadow curse. All the while he'd been blind to Scholar Donamillo's machinations, simply because the two of them had shared tastes and ideas. He didn't want to think that he could have idolized a man who committed such cruelty and yet he had.

Even now, Kiram felt sick with awe as he took in the beauty and pure mechanical mastery of Scholar Donamillo's work. Every screw and incantation was precisely placed, perfectly crafted. The twelve iron ribs arched in magnificent geometry supporting 792 glass panels which interlocked to exactly align every curse and command that gave the mechanism its purpose. Even the wires of the harnesses were carefully braided and measured to exact lengths.

Kiram couldn't deny that the mechanical cure was a masterpiece and the thought both repulsed and frightened him. He needed to reverse what Donamillo had done as quickly as possible but the intricacy and perfection of the mechanical cure defied replication. New glass panels and iron ribs as perfect as these certainly couldn't be fabricated in a matter of weeks, much less a few days.

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.