This astrologer fellow is a complete ass, Kelley wrote in his journal. He’s almost as bad as Doctor Dee.
At least Roderick seemed to know his business better than that old fraud Dee had. For six weeks, Kelley had assisted the astrologer, working with the lenses and examining the stone from a safe distance, observing various experiments, many of which had been gruesome and dangerous. In no time at all, Kelley had been relegated to his typical duties of fetch and carry. Just like working for Dee all over again.
Except now Kelley felt he served two masters. Edgar sent his Society agents at least twice a week for progress reports. They frowned and crossed themselves upon hearing the details of Roderick’s vile experiments. Only occasionally did Edgar come himself, warning that soon the Society would need to make its move.
Kelley simultaneously dreaded and welcomed whatever the Society planned. On the one hand, he wanted this over, to be free of Prague Castle so he could leave and never look back. On the other hand, Edgar’s vague hints implied that the Society’s scheme involved sudden, blinding violence. Kelley was sure to be caught in the middle.
In the meantime, he kept the journal, partly so he could offer a detailed report when the Society agents checked up on him, but also because he thought somebody somewhere would need to know what had happened here. Anyway, his writings would probably be disregarded as delusional fantasy. Why bother? But he scribbled in the journal every day.
Kelley finished his morning entry, then slid the journal into its hiding place under his clothes chest at the foot of his bed. He walked the short journey through the castle courtyard, into the castle, and down the dark twisting steps to the dungeon, where he found Roderick.
Emperor Rudolph was there.
Kelley froze and began to back out of the chamber when Roderick looked up and spotted him.
“Ah, there you are, Kelley. Fetch a couple of bodies from the corpse room, will you? There’s a good man. Relatively fresh ones, please.”
Kelley’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. Give me a minute.”
He trudged the corridor, grumbling under his breath, until he arrived at a thick wooden door. He pulled it open on creaking hinges and went inside. Dark, only the flickering torchlight from the hall behind casting its dim orange light on the pile of dead bodies. The ones on top would most likely be the freshest. He grabbed a man that looked a bit on the thin side-easier to carry-and took him back to the stone chamber, passing under the sharp eyes of Roderick and the emperor. He arranged the man in a wooden chair ten feet from the iron box, then went back to fetch the next body.
A young girl with a good volume of red hair. Slight. She looked easy to carry too. He bent, grunted as he heaved her over his shoulder and lugged her back. As he arranged her in the chair, he froze, going cold, heart skipping a beat. He knew that face.
Oh, God. Bianca.
He had finally remembered her name. The young serving girl who had warmed his bed so many times. He hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks, and the kitchen staff had told him she’d come down with fever. Bianca.
Kelley stood, backed away from Bianca, feeling leaden, like his skin was made of ice. He went back to Roderick, indicated the bodies were in position.
“What’s the matter with you, Kelley? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s just… nothing.”
“Well, pay attention. His Highness has asked for a demonstration, and I mean to oblige him.” Roderick turned to the emperor. “Highness, there is still much work to be done before we reach our ultimate goal, but I believe you’ll be impressed with our progress thus far.”
Roderick entered the stone chamber, motioned for Kelley to follow him. “Help me position the lenses.”
Kelley had watched the elaborate construction process as a dozen men had labored to install the apparatus. The machine consisted of a series of round frames into which the lenses were slid into place. There were eight sets of lenses, with three lenses in each set. Pulleys and levers had been rigged to raise or lower the lenses into place, and there were multiple permutations of ways the lenses could be arranged. Roderick and Kelley lowered the apparatus until the lenses encircled the iron box.
“I want the middle lenses only,” Roderick said.
Kelley turned screws, loosening the middle lenses in their brackets, lowering them into place, then tightening the screws again.
“Okay,” Roderick said. “Out of the room.”
They retreated back into the hall and shut the iron door with a clang. A window about the size of a serving tray had been cut into the door, thick and obscenely expensive glass separating the observers from the goings-on within. After having conducted several experiments, Roderick had described the additional precautions as likely unnecessary but prudent nonetheless.
Roderick stood close to the door and peered through the window at the iron box and lenses, with the corpses sitting limply by. He signaled Kelley.
Kelley went to the big crank on the wall, grabbed the handle with both hands, grunted, put his back into it, and started turning. He picked up speed. The crank turned a shaft that connected to gears on the other side of the wall that connected to another shaft, which ran along the ceiling to more gears that turned the apparatus.
The lenses began to spin around the iron box, slowly at first. They picked up speed until they were a shimmering glass blur surrounding the box. Sweat broke out on Kelley’s forehead and under his arms, but he kept up the pace.
When Roderick judged the speed sufficient, he pulled the lever that opened the iron box. The stone glowed a deep red, lighting up the lenses with almost blinding intensity. Kelley had seen it before and had thought, at first, that the light show had actually been quite beautiful.
Until he’d seen the result.
Roderick motioned Rudolph to the window. “Come witness, Your Highness.”
The emperor paused. “Is it safe?”
“Quite safe behind the protective barrier, I assure you.” Roderick knocked on the iron door to indicate its sturdiness. “Come see. The effects will soon make themselves evident.”
Rudolph approached the window tentatively until he was standing shoulder to shoulder with the astrologer, his nose a half inch from the window glass. The Holy Roman Emperor was obviously curious. Years of planning and a small fortune had gone into his scheme. Just as obvious was the fact that he was a little nervous. Even emperors reported to a higher power.
The interior of the chamber was awash in bloodred light, pulsing as the stone emanated its rays.
“Observe, Highness.” Roderick pointed. “Like our sun in the sky, the stone emits a spectrum of rays with a variety of properties. I believe the stone is attuned with the very fabric of reality, the same force that controls the tides and the seasons. The special lenses filter out the properties we don’t want or need while allowing the beneficial properties to continue on. By controlling these rays we can achieve different effects. There! It begins.”
Nothing happened at first. The emperor watched, unblinking, through the window, holding his breath. Then there was movement so slight it seemed a mirage at first. But when Rudolph gasped, Kelley knew the emperor had seen it.
A flutter of a single finger to start off. The male corpse lifted his head first, lurched out of the chair to stand on wobbling legs, head lolling like a dead chicken’s. It opened its mouth, and a sort of choking cry erupted from its gob.
Rudolph crossed himself, a gesture Kelley had never seen the emperor make.
“You’ve brought him back to life,” Rudolph said with awe.
“Er, well, not quite, Highness,” Roderick admitted. “They are merely animated-undead, if you will.”
“Undead?”
“Yes, a sort of state between life and death,” Roderick said.
“And that’s what you think I wanted?” The emperor’s stare was as hard and flat as the iron door.
“No!” Roderick’s eyes went wide. “Of course not, Highness. My goodness, no. I’m merely pointing out that we’ve taken such a big stride. Not immortality, not yet, but not death either. We haven’t quite conquered death, but we’ve given it a good kick in the family jewels.”
Rudolph nodded toward the shambling corpse. “Death would seem a preferable state to that.”
“You’re right of course, Highness.” Roderick bowed formally. “Still, they are rather durable. We’ve made a dozen or so the past week, and they’re damn hard to get rid of. Chop off an arm or a leg and they keep going, eh? Might actually be a little more like immortality than we thought.” Roderick chuckled.
Rudolph did not laugh. At all.
Roderick cleared his throat. He wiped sweat from the back of his neck. “Your Highness is rightfully concerned. I simply wanted to demonstrate that we’re doing some amazing things. I feel certain it’s a matter of time before we find the right combination, filtering out the bad properties and allowing only select ones to bathe the subject. Life, Highness. It is within our grasp. I know it.”
The emperor looked back at the zombie, which was now clawing uselessly at the wall. “Immortal life. Is science the answer, Roderick, or are we damning ourselves?”
“Highness, if there is a God, then surely He has given man dominion over all the earth. This stone may be from the heavens, but it fell to earth. Surely God has sent it to us, perhaps even as a test. I think it’s our lot to push our intellects to the breaking point, to divine that which our Lord has sent us. Maybe He’s testing us. Perhaps it’s the ultimate test.”
“Perhaps,” Rudolph said quietly.
Roderick signaled Kelley to cease cranking. He pulled the lever to close the iron box. Kelley rubbed his shoulders. He’d worked up a good sweat.
Rudolph put his hand against the glass, looking into the chamber, as if mesmerized. “What about the other one?”
“Highness?”
“The other dead body. The young girl. She… it… isn’t moving.”
“Not uncommon, Highness. Sometimes the procedure fails to yield results. Perhaps certain bodies are not receptive.” A shrug. “It’s one of the mysteries that make our research so fascinating.”
“Yes. Fascinating.” The emperor’s face remained blank. “I must think on this. Thank you, gentlemen, for the demonstration.” He turned and left, a shadow seeming to hang over him.
“That’s damned peculiar,” Roderick said after Rudolph had gone. “I thought he would be more enthusiastic.” He scratched at his beard, contemplating.
“Maybe he was ashamed,” Kelley muttered.
“Eh?” Roderick lifted his head. “What was that?”
“Nothing. What should I do with it?” He indicated the zombie.
The astrologer looked up and down the hall. “Damn. All the soldiers have gone. It usually takes three or four each to hack them down safely. Can you let him chase you into the storage room we set up, Kelley?”
“They bite.”
“Yes, but they’re so slow. They just sort of shuffle along, don’t they?”
Kelley sighed. “That worked fine when the room was empty, but now I’ll run straight into a mob of them if I lead the new ones inside. It’s getting crowded in there.”
“Hmmmm, we’ll need to devise some new way to dispose of them, I suppose. Maybe we can burn them all when the room is full.”
Kelley pictured it, his gut lurching at the thought.
“We can leave them for tonight. Get some sleep, and we’ll figure it out in the morning.”
Kelley nodded, looked one more time at the back of her head, all that red hair.
He was glad he couldn’t see her face.
Kelley returned to his room in the White Tower, and lay down, exhausted, in bed. Sleep would not come. Part of him was appalled at the crimes against nature he’d witnessed in the past few weeks, and another part of him was ashamed by the fact that these scenes were a little less appalling to him each passing day. He even found himself occasionally sharing Roderick’s scientific enthusiasm, wondering how a particular experiment would turn out. Could a man get used to such things? He hated the thought of it. Seeing Bianca’s dead face had shaken him, had yanked him back to the reality of what they were doing.
He tossed and turned, tangled the blankets, every muscle in his body aching for the sleep that wouldn’t come.
He lay a long time, then he heard the door to his chamber open on rusty hinges. Kelley turned his head, saw the darkened figure enter.
“Who is it?”
No answer. Kelley held his breath.
The figure approached, and the bed sagged as it climbed on. Kelley’s pulse clicked up a notch.
The figure crawled on top of him and Kelley trembled. He opened his mouth to scream but couldn’t find the breath for it. The figure leaned forward, her face coming into the moonlight, her nose an inch from Kelley’s. Bianca was ghost pale, her lips black, eyes red, teeth sharp and yellow.
“Take me, Edward, my love. Put yourself inside me.”
And then Kelley did scream.
He thrashed, bucked the zombie off of him, kicked her away, rolled off the bed and hit the floor hard, tangling himself further into the bedclothes. He…
… opened his eyes.
He stood, panting, his heart racing. The yellow rays of dawn crept over the trees beyond his window. He looked around the room frantically, little panicked noises leaking out of him. A dream. Bianca. Just a dream.
He knelt to retrieve his journal from its hiding place beneath the chest. He took it to his desk and dipped his quill in ink, but he couldn’t write. His hands shook. He filled a cup with cheap, dark wine, spilling some. He drank, letting it burn down to his belly, then took up the quill again.
I can no longer be part of this abomination. Edgar must be contacted. It’s time. The Stone must be destroyed or hidden. It stops now.
Kelley poured another cup of wine. He drank and wept.
“It has to be now,” Kelley said heatedly. “I’m cracking up.”
Edgar shushed him. “Keep your voice down.”
They knelt next to each other on the cold stone floor of St. Vitus Cathedral, hands clasped in prayer. Edgar had snuck in dressed as one of the workers, although there were fewer workers now. In the castle, there was a strange tension, a growing, unspoken sense that something portentous was coming to fruition. There had been fewer and fewer casual visitors to court, little sign of foreign dignitaries and the normal activity of state, almost as if Prague Castle had been quarantined. As if the city held its breath, waiting for something dire and long-anticipated to finally drop its turd of doom right into the soup.
“We’re not ready,” Edgar whispered. “We’re still gathering strength.”
“I’m not doing this anymore.” Kelley said it with authority. He was putting his foot down. “Do it now, or I quit.”
“Are you forgetting?” Edgar asked. “You’ve sworn allegiance to the Society.”
Did the brand on Kelley’s ass flare slightly, or was it his imagination?
“I might not be able to escape, but I’ll kill myself. I’ll drink poison or throw myself off the top of the White Tower. Then you can find yourself another dupe.”
“Pull yourself together, Kelley. My God, you’re a wreck. I can smell the wine on your breath. It’s seven in the morning.” He eyed Kelley, a hard appraisal. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you? You’d kill yourself.”
Probably not. Kelley was too much a coward. “I can’t stand the constant horror anymore.” This, at least, was the honest truth.
Edgar sighed. “Two days. Give us two more days.”
Kelley closed his eyes tight and bowed his head. He couldn’t remember how a prayer went, couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound like whining, couldn’t think of anything to ask that he deserved. To Edgar he said, “Two days. No more.”
“We’ll need your help from the inside.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
Roderick had set up a small antechamber near the entrance to the dungeon as a personal study. That’s where Kelley found the astrologer, hunched over a table littered with documents and diagrams, small models of the machines and gadgets he’d designed in service of the emperor’s mad project.
Roderick muttered to himself. There were bags under his eyes. Kelley thought the man had been looking more fatigued these past few days. They’d all been pushing themselves, but until now, the old man had seemed inexhaustible, buoyed and driven by his singular purpose.
Kelley cleared his throat, not sure if he should enter.
Roderick looked up from some obscure parchment, allowing a moment for his eyes to focus. “Oh, it’s you, Kelley. Come in if you like. Have a seat.”
Kelley lowered himself into the rickety wooden chair opposite Roderick. He noticed the cup of wine at the astrologer’s elbow and could not remember ever seeing the man drink before.
“I’m at an impasse,” Roderick said. His voice sounded so tired that Kelley wondered if he might be ill.
Kelley leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands folded.
“Oh?”
“We can make a corpse almost alive,” Roderick said. “Almost alive. What the hell good is that? It is merely walking death. But we’re so close, Kelley. I know it.”
“I thought it was just a matter of finding the right combination of lenses,” Kelley said.
Roderick frowned. “I suppose. I mean, that’s part of it, certainly.” He shook his head and tsked. “I may not have been entirely honest with the emperor. Yes, the lenses. Of course. But so much more. We could experiment for a hundred years, fill the dungeon with zombies and still not stumble upon the exact answer.”
He reached below the table, came up with a jug, filled his cup with more wine. He held the jug out to Kelley. “Can I offer you a drink?”
Kelley grinned. “I never touch the stuff.”
Roderick sputtered laughter. “Good one.” He filled another cup, passed it to Kelley. “The duration we expose our subjects to the stone is likely one of the problems. It’s possible we simply haven’t allowed the process to complete.”
Kelley sipped wine. “Then you’re going to have to find somebody bigger and stronger than me to turn that damn crank. I’m wearing myself out. My heart might explode.”
“Fret not. We’re already in the process of constructing a much more elaborate version of the device we’ve been using. You won’t kill yourself cranking.”
Kelley recalled the dammed river and the waterwheel in the caverns beneath St. Vitus Cathedral. He almost commented but remembered he wasn’t supposed to know about that. Instead he said, “Is it really corpses you want to bring to life anyway? I thought the emperor’s goal was immortality.”
“A fair point.” Roderick sipped wine, smacked his lips. “There are two ways to go about this. The emperor and I spoke at length about it in the early days of the project. The first option.” Roderick held up a finger. “We fashion a device that confers immortality upon the subject. But how would we know if it worked or not? Expose a living man to immortality rays, and what’s the difference? Alive is alive.”
Kelley admitted he hadn’t thought about it like that.
“But the difference between dead and alive-now, that’s measurable. This brings us to option number two.” Another finger. “We create a device which brings the dead back to life. The emperor could die an infinite number of times, and always he could be brought back. In theory.” He sighed, sipped more wine.
Kelley thought about this. “What if he breaks his neck?”
Roderick looked up from his wine. “Eh? What was that?”
“If Rudolph dies from a broken neck, and you bring him back to life, then… what? He’s alive with a broken neck?”
“Oh.” Roderick scratched his beard. “Yes, I see what you mean.”
“Or if he dies of old age,” Kelley said. “You might bring him to life and then he just dies again five minutes later because he’s so old.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then you have to consider that maybe nobody will want to bring him back,” Kelley said. “I mean, his heirs might want the throne someday, and if the man is dead, he won’t be able to bring himself back, will he?”
“Okay, now you’re just being annoying,” Roderick said. “I admit there are some minor details to work out.”
A protracted moment of silence, both men sipping wine.
“I wasn’t trying to be negative,” Kelley finally said.
“Never mind,” Roderick said.
“You know, you could probably make a fortune curing hangovers,” Kelley said.
Roderick said nothing, looked at Kelley as if he’d been examining a dog or an especially stupid child.
“That first day I met you,” Kelley explained, “you zapped me with that sunbeam through the lens. I never felt better in my life. You could go from tavern to tavern. Charge a copper a piece to put all the drunks back into shape. Probably better money than the immortality racket.”
Roderick sat straight in his chair, his eyes round and suddenly alert. “What did you say?”
“I said you could probably make better money than-”
Roderick stood abruptly, walked quickly from the room.
Kelley frowned. “Well, what the hell?”
When the astrologer failed to return, Kelley finished the jug of wine.
Kelley shrugged into his clothes the next morning and slouched toward the dungeon entrance. What would Roderick have for him today? No doubt something menial or horrifying.
Inside the castle, Kelley ran smack into a crowd of gawkers, all looking up at one of the big windows. Roderick was there, directing two workmen who stood in the window’s frame, trying to put one of the astrologer’s big lenses into place.
“Be careful, damn you!” shouted Roderick. “Put even a scratch on that, and I’ll see you hung from Powder Tower.”
“What’s all this?” Kelley gawked with the rest of them.
“I’ve been at it since dawn, Kelley,” said Roderick. “All thanks to you, don’t you know?”
“Me?”
“You reminded me about the power of sunlight,” Roderick said. “I’d been operating under the misapprehension that the stone was a chunk of the same cosmic stuff as our sun. Not at all! It is the opposite. A reflection almost.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think we can use the stone and the sun together.” The excitement in the astrologer’s voice was barely contained. “We have to bring yin and yang together.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Notions I brought back with me from my travels in the east,” Roderick said. “The upshot is that two sources of contradicting-yet complementary-energies must collide to create the effect we’re after. Some say the origins of the universe were created through such an act of creative violence.”
Kelley tried to keep his face neutral. “I thought God created the universe.”
Roderick cleared his throat. “Yes, of course.” He looked back up at the workmen standing in the big window. “Be ready with that lens. The sun will be right soon.” He gave Kelley a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Follow me, and I’ll demonstrate what I’ve been telling you.”
Kelley followed Roderick down the stairs into the dungeon. At the bottom of the stairs, another lens with a highly polished mirror behind it stood on an iron stand. Down the corridor where they turned the corner was yet another lens.
“These have all been placed at just the right angle,” Roderick explained.
They passed three more lenses before arriving at the room that housed the stone. A few more of Roderick’s assistants stood waiting for him, one holding a small wicker cage with a small bird flitting around inside.
Roderick took the cage, reached inside, and brought out the bird. It looked small and fragile in his fist. He handed the cage back to his assistant, then closed his other hand over the bird’s head. The bird began to twitch, its wings flailing.
Kelley flinched. “What are you doing?”
“A quick suffocation does the least damage to the body.”
At last the bird went still. Roderick took it into the stone chamber, placed it on a stool near the closed iron box. He returned, told his other assistants to get back down the hall and prepare to relay his commands. They left at a jog.
“I’ll need you on the crank, Kelley.”
Kelley pointed. “But the door’s still open.”
“Never mind that,” Roderick said. “Just make sure not to stand directly in front of the doorway. You won’t get any direct rays if you’re off to the side.”
Kelley remained dubious, but he manned the crank and waited for Roderick’s command. Nervous.
“Angle the sun lens!” Roderick shouted.
The command was relayed back down the line, loud voices echoing in the dungeon halls. There was a long pause, and then the hallway filled with light. A blue-white beam flashed past and into the chamber room. Kelley yelled and jumped back.
“Back on the crank, Kelley,” Roderick shouted. “Get to it.”
Kelley cranked, the lenses spinning within the chamber. Roderick pulled the lever, opening the iron box. An electrical crack deafened Kelley. He winced but kept cranking. Rainbow lights washed through the hall, blinked and shimmered. Kelley felt nauseous and dizzy. His teeth hummed with a sharp vibration. The dungeon had become a blinding, deafening hell.
Kelley screamed but kept cranking.
Roderick pulled the lever again to close the box. He shouted back up the hall. “Finished!”
The sunbeam cut off. The hall went dead silent.
Kelley fell backward, landed hard on his ass. He was drenched in his own sweat, panting.
“Stay here,” the astrologer said.
Roderick entered the chamber. He didn’t come back right away. Kelley stayed on the floor. His shoulders ached from cranking at such high speed. He wished somebody bright and young and pretty would rub his shoulders. He wished he was back in Ireland, wished he’d never met Dee or Roderick or come to this place. How might his life have been different if he’d really studied the sciences, gone to the university? Instead he’d picked up dribs and drabs of knowledge, bits of science and the occult. This is where it had landed him. A sad little con man turning a crank for lunatics.
Roderick emerged from the chamber, cradled something in his hands. He stood without moving, his head upturned toward the ceiling, eyes closed. A wan smile played over his face. He stayed like that for such a long time that Kelley thought there might be something wrong with him.
Roderick turned his head slowly, smiled at Kelley. He walked to the alchemist, paused a second, then sat down on the floor across from him.
“What happened?” Kelley asked.
“Look.” Roderick opened his hands.
The bird bounced into Kelley’s lap, its head twitching from side to side. It peeped, flapped its wings. Kelley looked closely. It was not a zombie. It was a live, normal bird. Kelley reached for it, but the bird spread its wings, then darted into the air and into the depths of the dungeon. Kelley looked after it, mouth agape.
Roderick the astrologer had done it. He’d taken death and had turned it into life. Impossibly. Against the laws of man and God. The astrologer had done it.
And Kelley was terrified.
The daily routine and attention to security within Prague Castle were obnoxiously irregular. On any given day, five guards in light armor might patrol the dungeons, or there might be twenty, depending on whether the emperor was scheduled for an inspection or if additional troops were needed to dispatch a fresh batch of zombies.
There were seven guards on duty the morning of the assault. The one constant was the guard at the main entrance of the dungeon whose job it was to lift the bar from the inside and allow entrance to anyone who spoke the proper password. This guard was Kelley’s responsibility.
The guard sat on a stool and watched Kelley approach. Kelley smiled, held up a tankard of mead. He’d stashed a dagger at the small of his back under his clothes, and he shuddered at the thought of using it. Hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. Couldn’t stand the thought he might have to jam it into this young fellow’s throat. Kelley didn’t want to kill anyone.
“Looks like a dull job.” Kelley had picked up more than enough Czech for casual conversation. “How about some refreshment?” He offered the tankard. Please take it.
The guard smiled crookedly, a tooth missing up front. He was maybe eighteen years old. “Much obliged.” He drank, slurped, drained the mug, looked at Kelley with appreciation.
Kelley chatted with him another two minutes. Soon the guard began to sway on the stool. His eyes rolled up and he fell backward, chain mail clinking on the stone floor.
Kelley took some mild satisfaction from knowing that his alchemy skills had not completely atrophied. He could still whip up a sleeping draught from basic ingredients.
He lifted the bar of the door and pulled the iron ring. The heavy door swung inward.
Edgar and a dozen hard-looking men crowded into the dungeon entrance, all carrying short, thick swords and hand axes. They were prepared to hack through chain mail. The men were dressed in the coarse brown clothing of laborers, but they had the broad, powerful builds of fighting men, steely eyes seeking opponents.
“Good work, Kelley.” Edgar handed him a sword. “Let’s go.”
Kelley looked at the blade in his hand. “I don’t want this!”
“No time to be squeamish, man. The bloody deeds are at hand!”
“I opened the door. Bloody deeds are your department.”
Two more guards appeared at the end of the hall. They drew swords. “Halt!”
“Have at them!” Edgar yelled.
Edgar’s mob collided with the guards, blades flashing, axes rising and falling, biting through chain mail. Blood spurted. Screams! An empty helmet flew through the air and clattered at Kelley’s feet. The guards were dead meat by the time Kelley caught up.
“There are only three more,” Kelley told them. “And Roderick the astrologer. He’s an old man, and I don’t think he’s armed.”
“Let’s go, then,” Edgar said.
“Wait.” Kelley grabbed Edgar’s tunic. “Don’t open the box. Take it out of here. Hide it far away. I don’t even want to know where. But don’t open it.”
“You’ve told us already,” Edgar said. “Now man up, Kelley. Bring that blade and let’s finish this.”
Kelley sighed. Okay, he could trail behind. No problem, bring the sword and jog along after them. He could hang back and not fight. “Lead on, then. I’ll follow.”
“Right. Let’s go!” Edgar raised his sword. “No prisoners!”
The mob cheered, followed Edgar. Kelley tried to jog after them.
Something tugged at his ankle.
Kelley looked down. One of the hacked guards was not quite dead, and he had latched onto Kelley’s ankle.
“Knock it off.” Kelley tried to kick free. “Stop that.”
The guard spit blood, lay on his back, one eye gouged out, the other fixed on Kelley. He coughed and wheezed, more blood foaming over his lips, but the hold on Kelley’s ankle was like iron.
“You’ve done your part, okay? The fight is over.” Kelley lifted the sword. “You want me to hack that hand off?”
No reply. From another part of the dungeon the sound of clashing steel reached him.
“Damn it.” He knelt, tried to pry the fingers loose, but they were locked on.
The guard croaked, spit more blood.
“Oh, shut up.” Kelley rapped the knuckles with the flat of the sword blade. Hard. He kept hitting until the hand let go. “Finally.”
He ran after Edgar’s mob and found three more dead guards. One of Edgar’s men lay dead as well. Kelley kept running, gripping the sword hilt firmly. He didn’t want any part of the violence, but he was determined to be ready.
A dozen steps from the Stone chamber and-
– an explosion.
Fire belched from the chamber, scorched bodies flying out, tumbling against the stone walls like dice.
The dungeon shook. The stone floor came up and smacked Kelley in the face, his sword clattering away, ringing in his ears, dust and screams and the smell of burnt fresh. He blinked his eyes, tried to see. Smoke filled the hall, crumpled blackened bodies, clothes still aflame.
Kelley forced himself to his feet, then shook his head and picked up his sword. He staggered into the stone chamber.
Roderick stood tall and straight in the center of the large room, a semicircle of blackened bodies in front of him. Edgar stood ten feet from Roderick, his face half bloody and charred, anger and pain alive in his one good eye. He lifted his sword, yelled, and charged the astrologer.
Roderick stretched out a hand, harsh words flying from his mouth. Jagged blue bolts left his fingers and slammed into Edgar’s body. He shook and twitched as the blue lightning coursed through his body. His eyeballs popped. Bile boiled from his mouth.
Roderick released him, and Edgar collapsed into a smoking pile.
Kelley blinked at the scene, mouth agape. Oh. My. God.
Roderick poked at Edgar’s body with a toe, satisfying himself that the man was gone. “Society do-gooders. I’d expected to see them long before now, I must admit. Fools.”
Roderick looked up at Kelley, spotted the sword in his hand. “I appreciate your coming to my rescue, Kelley, but as you can see, I’ve handled the situation.”
“Um… okay.”
Roderick went from body to body, examining each one. “Help me get these corpses into a pile, will you, Kelley? They’re a bit crispy, but they’ll make for an interesting experiment when we zombie-fy the next batch.”
Three months passed like an eye blink. Even after the success with the bird, Roderick insisted on more odd experiments.
Kelley let himself go numb. He plodded through his daily routine with Roderick, adjusting lenses, lugging corpses, finding corners of the dungeon to fill with writhing zombies until they could be burned or hacked apart by castle guards. For about a week, Roderick called upon Kelley’s skills as an alchemist to concoct a series of potions. It was hoped injecting the corpses with these potions might promote various effects when they were exposed to the stone’s rays, but the astrologer soon grew tired of this avenue of experimentation.
They tried animals for a while. The dungeons echoed with the sound of fluttering wings as zombie pigeons filled the air, until their wings decayed and their feathers fell out and they could no longer stay aloft. The pigeons then scooted along the floor, flapping skeletal wings and going nowhere.
Zombie goats tried to butt Kelley, but there was no passion in it. They’d simply put their horns against Kelley’s leg and lean into him without zeal.
Zombie chickens, zombie pigs, zombie ducks, zombie fish, zombie cats. One incident with a zombie bear that left two guards dead.
The pathetic sight of a zombie puppy made Kelley weep openly, and he was forced to retire to the White Tower for the rest of the day, where he drained a jug of wine. Maybe breaking down like that was good. Maybe it showed he yet retained some shred of humanity. Or maybe he was just that much closer to madness.
On his way into the dungeon the next morning, Kelley met Roderick on his way out. The astrologer carried an armload of diagrams and parchments. He looked happy and excited.
“Just in time, Kelley. Follow me.”
“What’s going on?” Kelley asked.
“No more cranking those lenses by hand, my good man. I think you’ll be impressed. Come see.”
Kelley followed the astrologer out of the castle to St. Vitus Cathedral. Halfway there he guessed where they were going. It had been a long time since Kelley had first encountered Edgar and seen the underground river in the caves beneath the cathedral. He tried to act surprised when Roderick led him down and through the vault.
Where there had been a ragged hole knocked into the wall, there was now a proper archway. The stonemasons had done their jobs. The tunnel beyond that was smoother and wider. When they reached the river, Kelley observed a row of wooden posts with thick rope strung between for safety.
“As you can see, we’ve diverted this underground river to open up the chamber beyond,” Roderick explained. “We’ve cleared a number of areas for different purposes, but what I want to show you is just up ahead. Be careful going down the ladder.”
The ladder had now been anchored more securely, and Kelley followed Roderick down to the trickle of a stream where the underground river had once flowed freely. Flickering lamps hung from hooks, illuminating the path-a flagstone walkway that now paralleled the water all the way into the main chamber with the waterwheel.
Kelley noticed that the trench had been deepened to allow a greater flow of water to the wheel. The wheel wasn’t turning at the moment. Workers were busy installing a larger version of the apparatus from the dungeon, with more lenses, gears, levers, shafts-all of the astrologer’s bright playthings. The money and man hours already put into the project must have been staggering. Kelley could only guess.
Roderick was showing off, gesturing grandly at the wheel. He dove into a tedious and protracted explanation of the machine’s workings, the colossal efforts needed to divert the river and expand the chamber, the exact calculations to place the reflecting mirrors. Kelley let the information wash over him, the technical details becoming white noise in his ears.
He belched and tasted last night’s wine.
Kelley realized he was killing himself. He’d fallen into a deep depression; drank himself to sleep every night and ate barely enough to sustain himself. For his health and his sanity, Kelley had to escape this place. As the astrologer droned on, Kelley thought how he could do it.
Kelley felt confident the spell on his ass-brand had been broken when Edgar had been killed, so there was no magical restraint on him now. But security in and around the castle was tighter than ever. People who knew the secrets of the castle dungeons-people like Kelley-were especially kept under lock and key. The emperor didn’t want tales of the walking dead to spread throughout the city. The peasants were already wary enough of the strange goings-on at court, with rumors of alchemists and magicians. Turning lead into gold was one thing, but trespassing against the laws of God and nature was something else entirely.
He considered the tunnels. When Kelley had first encountered Edgar, the man had taken him through a twisting tunnel that had let out in the woods beyond the castle. It had been months, but could Kelley perhaps find that same passage, use it to escape? He looked about the chamber and spotted a number of caves leading off in various directions. He’d probably get lost, and anyway, there was an armed man at every entrance.
Never mind. He would escape or die trying. Kelley would form some kind of plan, and he would leave.
Kelley spent the rest of the day hauling items from Roderick’s antechamber near the dungeon down to a workspace beneath the cathedral. There were some delicate instruments that needed careful handling, and the astrologer didn’t trust the common laborers to take proper care.
That night Kelley lay awake in the White Tower. He’d already written the day’s events into his journal, but he did not crawl into a wine jug as usual. Saving himself was his new purpose. That he might not deserve saving didn’t enter the equation. He’d earn it later.
Perhaps he could get Roderick to send him on some important errand in town. He’d simply not return to the castle. Or maybe in the general work and confusion beneath the cathedral, he could find Edgar’s tunnel and escape that way. He wouldn’t be able to take much. Luggage would naturally draw suspicion.
A knock at his chamber door startled him. Nobody ever visited him in the White Tower. Ever. Not since Dee had gone.
He sat up in bed, hesitated. “Come in.”
Roderick entered. “Good. You’re awake. I took a chance.” He glanced around Kelley’s room. “Your accommodations seem adequate.”
“I’m comfortable.”
Roderick nodded, toyed with a rolled-up piece of parchment in his hands. He seemed to be considering it. Finally, he stepped forward, handed it to Kelley. “I need you to memorize this then return it to me in the morning.”
“What is it?”
“Oh…” Roderick shrugged. “It’s the final sequence. Instructions for the machine.”
“What?” Kelley stood, unrolled the parchment. He looked over it quickly, trying to take it all in at once. “It’s finished?”
“Fully assembled.”
As much as he hated the machine, hated what it did, Kelley could not help but feel awe. Such an undertaking. Finished at last. What would it mean to the world?
“Why give me the instructions?”
“I just thought somebody else should know how to operate it,” Roderick said. “It occurred to me only just an hour ago that I’m the only man alive that knows completely how the contraption works.” He chuckled.
“Are you going somewhere?” Kelley asked.
“No, no. Nothing like that.” Roderick waved the notion away. “Just a precaution, you know. What if I choke on a chicken bone or something? Wouldn’t that give the emperor fits? It’s simple common sense. Somebody else should know. But that’s the master copy. Memorize it and give it back to me in the morning. There’s a good fellow.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry to disturb you, Kelley.” He flicked a wave. “Good night.” The astrologer let himself out.
Kelley examined the intricate instructions, complete with diagram. Roderick must have been drunk or out of his mind. If Kelley had a year, he’d never be able to memorize all this. He took out his journal and began to copy the information. It took him two hours. He checked the information three times to make sure he’d duplicated it perfectly.
He had.
He laughed. So much time and effort. Who would ever read it?