Give the Dark My Love(54)

I touched the three knots on the necklace I wore around my neck, reminiscent of Oryous’s stars in the sky, symbolic of our greatest god’s three eyes watching over the past, the present, and the future. Death is not a god to worship, I reminded myself.

Master Ostrum watched me, seeming to follow my unspoken train of thought. “Let us forget what we should and should not say and instead speak the truth simply.” He stood and walked to the center of the lab. “This building is the oldest one on campus. Bennum Wellebourne himself walked the halls. But as time goes by, people forget about the foibles of old buildings.”

Master Ostrum knelt on the wooden floor, feeling along the edges of the boards and then prying his fingers in a crack. I gasped as the entire panel of the floor opened up. I ran over to where Master Ostrum peered into the dark.

I had known the floor of the lab was slightly higher than the floor of Master Ostrum’s office, but I hadn’t realized that it covered the cool, packed earth of the foundation of the building. A small ladder descended into the shadows, and Master Ostrum eased himself over the side of the floor and down into the subbasement. When he reached the bottom, he lit an oil lamp, illuminating the area. Leaning over the edge, I could see that the hidden room was smaller than I’d expected, but still large enough for Master Ostrum to comfortably stand and stretch his arms out without touching the sides.

Shelves had been dug into the packed earth walls, little burrows that looked like ancient catacombs. Master Ostrum grabbed a box from one of the shelves, then lifted it up for me to take.

It was heavier than I’d expected, and I had to leverage it against the floorboards to pull it into the lab. Master Ostrum climbed back up the ladder, first moving the panel to hide the secret entrance and then taking the box from me. He had to beat on the sides of the crate to get the lip to come undone, and when he lifted the lid, I found myself holding my breath as I peered inside.

Straw covered three crucibles—one gold, one silver, and one copper.

Master Ostrum lifted each of the crucibles, holding them out for me to take after he swept the straw aside. I had never used a silver crucible—transformations were difficult to master—but the golden crucible felt comfortable in my hands. I turned it over, examining the runes etched into it. I turned it upside down and saw two initials scratched into the bottom: B.W.

My eyes shot to Master Ostrum’s, and he nodded gravely. “Bennum Wellebourne’s personal crucibles.”

“How did . . . ?” I started, my awe at holding such ancient artifacts in my hands silencing my question.

Master Ostrum ignored me. “Wellebourne was one of the few who mastered all forms of alchemy. Transfer, transform, transact.” He touched the golden, silver, and copper crucibles as he said each word, but then pulled the copper one closer to him. “Transcend.”

Master Ostrum pointed to a knife on the table, and after a curious look, I fetched it for him. I recognized the blade. It was the same one he’d used to slice open my palm on my first day at Yūgen. This time, he turned the blade on himself, piercing the pad of his index finger and squeezing a drop of blood into the copper crucible. The bright red splattered on the empty base, but in a blink, the crucible was no longer hollow.

“What is that?” I asked as Master Ostrum withdrew the object.

“A crucible cage,” he said.

I felt the smooth, black thing. “It looks like . . . bones,” I said. “This could be the metacarpals and carpals.” I touched each of the three sections on the longer pieces that pointed up. “Proximal, middle, distal . . .” As I named the bones, I suddenly realized what I was holding.

A hand.

“This is a replica . . . ?” I started, but Master Ostrum shook his head.

“It’s real.”

“And it’s made of—”

“Human bones, yes,” he said.

I should have been disgusted by the idea of holding hands with a dead person, but I wasn’t. I was simply curious. “Why do the fingers point up like this?” I used my other hand to mimic the position of the bones. I scrunched my fingers together, keeping them flat and pointed.

“All crucibles must be made of pure metals. A necromancer’s crucible is made of blood iron.” He held his hand out to me, and I saw the red smeared on the finger he’d cut with the knife. “Our blood is the color of rust for a reason. We have iron in our veins, Nedra.”

“Yes, but not enough to make a whole crucible,” I started.

Master Ostrum shook his head. “This is dark alchemy,” he said. “I tell you about it now only so that you know what we’re up against with the plague.”

The plague Master Ostrum believed was no true illness, but a necromantic curse.

“It’s not enough for a necromancer to have inherent power, he must have an iron crucible as well. And that can only be made with a crucible cage—a cage built of sacrifice, the hand of a loved one, the bones burnt in a sulfuric inferno.”

I thought of all the hands that had been amputated since the plague. And then I recalled the portrait of Bennum Wellebourne that hung in the quarantine hospital, and the woman who stood beside him with her hand missing.

“His wife,” I said. “He cut off her hand . . .”

“And created the crucible he used to raise the dead. This is the second crucible cage he made—and it’s still very powerful. Especially if . . .”