"It was only a moment," Crovax whispered.
"My lord?"
"Never mind. Carry on with the preparations. Send a squad of moggs to clear the bodies away-"
"-and burn them?" Nasser finished. Cremation was the custom on Rath.
"No," Crovax said. "Have the moggs set up a gibbet by the causeway and hang the bodies from it. I want the whole expedition to march past them. It will motivate them, don't you agree?"
"As you say, my lord."
Supported by two somber guards and accompanied by Belbe, Ertai was ushered into a small chamber within a large tower outside the main Citadel. It was an unsettling place, filled to the ceiling with vats, vessels, and urns of unknown purpose. Some tanks held rank solutions that bubbled and seethed, even though no fire burned beneath them. Here and there flowbots continued in tasks Volrath had set for them. One rotated an hourglass-shaped flask at precise two-minute intervals. A muddy brown solution drained endlessly from one half of the flask to the other. Another long, insectlike arm switched bowls of red and yellow gelatin from under a device emitting colored rays.
Ertai could feel the air was alive with power. Most of it was destructive energy, the forces of corruption and decay. It was so strong, he reasoned there must be a powerstone somewhere in the laboratory-a very large powerstone.
"What is this place?" he asked, thinking he'd been better off in his cell.
"Volrath's laboratory," Belbe said. "He did considerable work with animals here. I understand his collection of artificial creatures is quite fascinating. Would you like to see them?"
"No, thank you!"
She shrugged. "Perhaps later. Here's what we came for."
In the center of the room, almost obscured by other apparatus, was a large circular slab of crystal. The flat top was grooved with five concentric rings, the sides were lined with narrow vertical flutes. Made of some smoky, transparent mineral, the slab was sited under an elaborate metal tripod fifteen feet high. Rendered in the skeletal, organic style of the fortress itself, the tripod supported a second faceted crystal, about half the diameter of the slab below it. Wires were attached to the smaller crystal, running off to all parts of the laboratory.
Here was the source of the power Ertai had sensed since entering the room. Both crystals were saturated with it.
"Help him onto the device," Belbe told the guards.
"Wait a minute," Ertai protested. "You're not putting me on that thing! Do you know what it is?"
Belbe crossed her arms. "You want to be well, don't you? This machine can alleviate all your injuries in a few minutes. Otherwise, you'll have to be confined to bed for days, maybe weeks. Even then, your hands may not heal properly."
Ertai tried not to look at his ruined hands. Greven had allowed his moggs to crush his fingers with thumbscrews after he'd outlasted the branding irons.
"Crovax is leaving this day with a force to destroy the rebels," Belbe went on. "If he succeeds, I must name him evincar. Once that happens, I can do nothing else for you."
"He'll have me killed," Ertai said. He looked up at the tall soldier holding his left arm. "Wouldn't you think so?" The guard nodded.
Why was he hesitating? So he got an infusion of negative energy-so what? He'd handled amounts of such power before, on an experimental basis. It was distasteful, but he'd suffered no ill effects from it. Power was power. Only stumpwater witches and country bumpkins still believed types of power were "good" or "bad."
He had no illusions about becoming Evincar of Rath. So absurd was the whole idea, his first response after Belbe proposed it was to laugh in her face. The laughter quickly died, smothered by the fire in his tormented flesh and the look of disappointment on Belbe's face. When she offered the option of rapid healing and a far more comfortable existence than either a barren cell or a headsman's ax, he chose to play along for a while. Once he regained his strength, he might be able to escape to Portal Canyon, open a gateway to Dominaria, and get back home. At least there was a chance
… the loss of such a talented wizard would be an infamous crime, a terrible loss to civilization.
"What do you say?" Belbe asked, breaking in on his reverie. "The choice is yours."
"I suppose I can handle a little," he said.
"Good." Belbe smiled. Ertai found himself feeling glad he'd pleased her.
The soldiers hoisted the young wizard onto the crystal slab. Belbe ordered them back. She fiddled with the alignment of the upper focusing crystal, centering the stream of power on Ertai's chest.
"Don't overdo it," Ertai said, trying to sound nonchalant.
She didn't answer but went to the shielded control station to make a few adjustments. "Volrath used this infuser to heal experimental animals after he'd surgically altered them. On higher settings, it can mutate living creatures into drastically different forms."
Belbe clicked over several switches. "I'm using a lower setting in this case," she announced. "Beginning now-"
With a loud crack, sparks flew from the array of wires above the focal crystal. Ertai, helpless because of his injuries, could do nothing but watch the fireworks overhead.
"Stand by," Belbe shouted over the throb of the machinery. "I'm diverting power from the laboratory flowbots."
One by one, the automatic mechanisms in the lab shut down. Jars fell to the floor and smashed, spilling their unnatural contents. Horrible odors wafted through the room.
Ertai noticed the focal crystal had begun to glow darkly. It was an odd concept, a dark glow, but there was no better way to describe the presence of negative energy. He expected to see a beam emerge from the stone and touch him, but it never did. Instead, the glow got wider and darker, gradually blotting out everything else in sight.
Unlike the power he'd tapped to bring Predator in for a crash landing, Ertai discovered this dark energy, in its pure form, felt cold. His body felt flooded by ice, and the cold spread rapidly through his chest and down his legs. It did blot out the pain of his injuries, and for that he was grateful.
With a snap, the surge of power ceased. Ertai pushed up on one elbow and saw the laboratory was hip deep in mist. Each breath he exhaled made sparkling ice crystals in the air.
Belbe appeared, swimming out of the fog. She looked disheveled, her hair awry.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Wonderful." Ertai flexed his hands, formerly crumpled like a bundle of broken reeds. "I feel like new-no, better than new."
He hopped off the slab and patted himself all over. His burns were gone. His ribs were healed. Even the bruises from the beating Predator's sailors had given him were gone.
What about his mind?
He held up a finger on his right hand, and a tiny flame appeared at the tip. Ertai extended the next finger and made the little flame leap to it, and then the next finger, and so on. It was an elementary magical exercise, one he could do since he was a small child.
By the time the flame had jumped to his fourth finger, it flickered and turned orange, then red. It dropped down to his pinkie and became purple. When Ertai transferred the violet flicker to the thumb of his left hand, the tiny flame went jet black.
He stared at the black flame.
Belbe watched him. "Are you all right?"
Ertai snuffed the flame with his other hand. "It's nothing," he said. He'd never seen the finger flame change color before. He was suffused with dark energy, true, but he'd created a yellow flame and not willed it to change. That it did so by itself was disturbing.
Belbe gently pulled his hands apart. "Come, it's time you had a proper bath, clean clothes, and food."
She led him by the hand through the misty lab. On his way out, he saw two empty suits of armor standing near the door. The men inside, the two guards who'd brought him there, were gone.