Sam looked dubious but didn’t say anything else about it, and we spent the next hour assisting with breakfast while Aril and Lorin complained bitterly about Armande’s absence.
“He’d be able to deal with this. Somehow.” Lorin glanced over her shoulder at the dozens of people wandering around the living area. “And there’s only one baking sheet. How are we supposed to feed all these people?”
“You’ll manage,” Sam said, putting on another pot of coffee. The morning passed quickly as Rin went around and treated injuries again, checking on my arm as well. While everyone was busy, I sneaked the canisters outside.
Taking them with us when we left was out of the question. Who knew where we’d travel? But I didn’t want to leave them just sitting in the lab. If Deborl had looked at Menehem’s research, he’d know where the lab was.
There was a wide, clear yard in front of the lab, but behind it was densely forested with spruce and pine and cottonwood trees. Rocks and boulders jutted everywhere. A deer path along a cliff face led to a shallow cave, its entrance mostly concealed by snow-covered brush. Perfect.
Two hours later, I had all the canisters tucked inside the cave, heavy blankets draped over them to insulate them from the cold. Thank goodness Menehem had kept so much junk in his lab.
When I returned, sweaty and gross, everyone was settled down and discussing where to go next. Sam lifted an eyebrow as I sat next to him, and I nodded, ignoring the conversation I had nothing to do with, in favor of thinking about where we might go next, and when I might get a chance to work on translating the temple books.
“Ana,” Lidea said, “what is this building? How’d you know to take us here?”
I shifted and wanted to look to Sam or Stef for help, but everyone was waiting. I had to appear confident.
“This is Menehem’s laboratory. It’s where he disappeared to after I was born.”
Dozens of faces turned to me, not hiding the revulsion and loathing at the mention of Menehem and his experiments.
“Is this where he started Templedark? Is this where he started killing our friends?” someone asked.
I resisted the urge to lower my eyes. “Before you say anything, let me tell you what happened.
“The Council told you that Menehem admitted responsibility for Templedark, but that’s not the whole story. It starts almost twenty-five years ago, when he was looking for ways to control the sylph. One night, while he was experimenting in the market field, Ciana was dying in the hospital. He was working with a gas, and there was a minor explosion. Wind took the vapor toward the temple, and the temple went dark.”
Everyone looked pale and sick. Lidea said, “What does that have to do with this place?” She squirmed, as though this air might be contaminated.
“Well, you know Ciana died when the temple was dark. And in the Year of Songs, I was born instead.”
“The gas did it?” Whit asked.
I nodded. “Yes. Once he realized what he’d done, he left Heart to figure out the details. The mixture he’d been working with had been a mistake, one he wasn’t sure how to reproduce. So he built this place, and eighteen years later, he had a breakthrough.
“He’d been working with sylph. I can show you footage, if you want. He documented everything. And one day, his mixture put all the sylph in the area to sleep.”
A couple of people muttered, but mostly they just waited.
“He experimented on the sylph repeatedly, logging how long the poison affected them, the size of the doses—everything. He realized they quickly developed a tolerance for the poison, so it was useless as a weapon.
“And then,” Orrin said, “he took the poison to Heart.”
“Why are you calling it a poison?” Moriah asked. “It doesn’t kill them, does it?”
Other people chimed in with more questions, but stopped when I held up my hands. “It doesn’t kill them. They recover, and there seem to be no lasting effects. But they are put to sleep involuntarily.” I shrugged. “If someone did that to me, I’d think of it as poison.”
Moriah nodded, satisfied with that.
“As for what happened next, Orrin, you’re right.” I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt. “For reasons only Menehem will ever understand, he trapped dozens of sylph in eggs, then took them and a large quantity of the poison to Heart. He set the sylph free and delivered the poison. That night, dragons came too.”
The lab was silent, except for the humming of the machine in the back.
“So.” Moriah tilted her head. “The poison was intended as a weapon against the sylph, but it affected Janan too. Why? How? They aren’t the same things.”
I glanced at Sam, but he offered no answers. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “There’s a connection between them, but I don’t know what it is.”
“And we’re here because . . .” someone in the back asked.
“Because we’re safe here.” For now.