BARTOLO and Jehral lifted the body carefully from its resting place, grimacing at the weight and the horror of their task.
It took some time to get the body up the ladder, but they made it in the end, and Lord Aidan was once again laid on the ground. The group stood in the strange chamber, staring in silence at the portal.
The essence had eaten away at the wall, in what must have started as a trickle and become a flood. The pool was now empty, the stone floor dry.
In the centre of the barren pool, a platform of steps rose from the floor. On the summit stood the portal itself, an oval mirror, twice the height of a man and hovering in empty space, held up by some mysterious force.
Where before the mirror had been shimmering gold, and become blazing red when the seals were knocked away, it was now dark and still.
Ella felt her heart quail at the enormity of what she was attempting.
"You can give me the Lexicons now," she said quietly, as if afraid to shatter the silence.
Wordlessly Bartolo handed Ella his bundle. As Ella unwrapped the oilskin and saw the first flash of green, she noticed her hands were trembling. Soon she held the book in her hands, once more seeing the rune on the book's green cover: the number one. The rune glowed softly. If ever that rune faded — if the Lexicon's power was allowed to drain from it — every enchantment in Merralya would cease to function.
Ella's friends had placed their trust in her. She had to honour that trust.
She stepped over the remnants of the pool's boundary wall and placed the book down on the second step, just below the portal.
Ella turned to Shani. "Can I have the Petryan Lexicon?"
Shani hesitated, but she walked over to Ella and handed her the bundle.
Ella removed the cloth and soon she held a red-covered book in her hands, staring at the glowing rune on the front: the number three. She set it beside the Alturan Lexicon.
Jehral walked to where Ella sat at the portal's base, and handed her his bundle. Ella remembered the yellow cover from when she'd helped Ilathor rediscover his people's lore. The glowing symbol on the Hazaran Lexicon bore the number five.
"Three Lexicons, brought into proximity for the first time in eons," Ella said. "How long do you think it's been?"
She looked up at her friends. They were strong warriors, all of them, who'd faced terrifying enemies and held their ground. Now, they looked at Ella with fear in their eyes.
Ella took the device out of her satchel. She'd worked on it ever since she'd had the idea of using the Lexicons to power the portal. She only hoped three Lexicons would be enough.
It was similar to a wand, but it had three legs. At the base of each leg was a clear crystal prism, while where the legs met was another prism, this one a dark red ruby. Ella placed the three Lexicons an equal distance apart from each other, and then situated the device so that each leg rested on the books' covers.
She removed the seal from her bag. It was similar to Evrin's draining seals that even now rested on the portal's rim, but Ella's seal was different, larger and more complex. Where Evrin's seals had drained the portal's power, Ella's seal would channel energy from the Lexicons to the relic. A ruby on Ella's seal was akin to the ruby on the three-legged device.
Ella placed her device on the portal's rim, at the apex of the oval. She hoped this would work.
She left Evrin's three draining seals in place and returned to the other side of the chamber, where Lord Aidan lay on his back, composed as if sleeping.
Ella sat next to Killian's father. She took out her protective gloves and put them on her hands. Finally, she removed a set of scrills and a vial of essence.
Ella again apologised to Lord Aidan for what she was about to do.
The portal would recognise an intruder — only one of the Evermen could cross, or someone in company.
Only the lore Ella had learned from Barnabas, the old Akari necromancer, would enable her to do what she needed to do. The body was old, and Ella would have to use animator's runes to give it strength.
And, against everything she had been taught, in direct conflict with Necromancer Aldrik's warnings, she needed to bring back Lord Aidan's personality, or the portal wouldn't recognise one of its makers.
Ella looked at her friends, who watched with dread.
"Get some rest, if you can," Ella said, as she prepared to bring Killian's father back from the dead. "This might take a while."
~
NONE of them took their eyes off Ella for a moment.