ChapterSeventeen
Flesh& Blood
Heremembered when he was a boy.
He hadbeen reading by his bedroom window, the twilight of the day casting deep huesacross the stone.From below, he had heard laughter.A mob of village childrenwere playing in the street.Feeling like a voyeur, he had tracked them throughthe buildings below, watching the clouds of dust they kicked from the road, theripples they left in the crowd.
Somethinghad overcome him.
Feelingsuddenly brave, Isaac had snuck down his uncle’s tower, climbed through awindow, and gone out to join the village children, who, contrary to all hisfears, had accepted him without a single word, as if he really did belong.Theyplayed through the coming dusk, and the games had been wonderous, the laughterinsatiable, and he had marveled at the instinctiveness of it all, how easily hefound himself cheering and smiling.
When hecame back to himself, night had already fallen.
On theway back to his tower, a boar from the constabulary had grabbed him by the arm,giving a rough snort of displeasure.Upon returning home, he found the captainof the guard giving a stern lecture to his uncle.Berith had barely waited forthe door to close before baring the cane, and Isaac had curled into a ball longbefore the lashes ceased.His welts had wept with every step back up to hisroom.When he had woken the next morning, a heavy padlock rested on the outsideof his bedroom door.
He hadbeen seven years old.
He hadnever left again.
Now, hewas firing wind across the extraction chamber, knocking the coffins from theceiling.All the broken glass became blizzards in the air.He intensified thegales, concentrated the strikes, blasting the coffinsdown into chunks and splinters.
Theonly thing louder than the wind was the sound of his screaming.
And heremembered, when he was twelve, how he had chatted with one of his instructorsout in the yard.The man—Janos—had been telling him stories of his father, theexpeditions, the wild nights at the taverns, how sorry he was to hear of hiscapture, and, of course, condolences for the death of his mother, as well.Theman had been friendly, jovial.He did not seem like he was talking to Isaac outof pity, like most others had done.
Heseemed as if he could be trusted.
In amoment of boldness, Isaac had asked Janos if he could aid him when it wasfinally time to rescue his father.A look of surprise and guilt had crossed theman’s face.He didn’t remember the rest of the lesson, but Berith had roundedon him the second Janos departed, accusing Isaac of insolence.He had nevertrusted another person again.
Afterthe coffins were destroyed, Isaac targeted the metal, the extractors, thepipes, the drainage shafts, all the rusted tracks and fetid tanks, loosing a blizzard of icy spears.He did not stop until themetal was as brittle as glass.
And heremembered the days when Berith would leave the tower.
Hisuncle would assign some menial labor in the laboratory, the work only designedto keep Isaac busy.Usually, his uncle would be gone for days at a time, sayingthat he needed to attend a college-sponsored excavation, or a researchsymposium at the capital, or a committee hearing for the taxation of enchantedswords.And every time Berith returned from these long sojourns away, he wouldalways be in a fouler mood than when he had left.
Afterward,Isaac would put more effort into avoiding his uncle, because the man’s temperwas always worsened by his presence.Now, of course, he knew that his uncle wastraining to control the minds of his students.
Parasites.
Berith.
TheDiet.
Whenmost of the room had been sundered with ice, Isaac began to fire raw sound,blasting through the rows of machinery, sending clouds of shrapnel screamingthrough the chamber.Entire sections of the factory fell from the ceiling, allof them split and shredded until the pieces of metal resembled the fallenleaves of a tree.Each eruption of sound stabbed at his ears, and the pain onlydrove him further, only made him strike harder and faster, every blast ofsplintered metal only sharpening his need to destroy.
And heremembered all the questions he had ever asked.
Why canI not use the soul-capture to speak with my father?Why did the sorceresscapture him at all?What was she doing to him?Was he going to come back andlive with us once he was rescued?
Theresponses were always the same.Very quickly, he learned to stop asking.
Now,here, in the extraction chamber, Isaac’s legs gave out before his arms.Hecollapsed along a carpet of broken glass and shattered pipes, perched above adrainage tunnel that teemed with piles of bone.He gasped for air, the bloodand metal spinning around him.A giant pelvis curved like the rising of amountain.
Heartpounding.
Sweatdripping.
Bodyscreaming.
