The omnimaton hesitated, but its stomping had only spread the fire. It blurred to Julio’s side, pinched the iron chains between two massive fingers, and yanked the rings from the wall as if the stones were made of talc. Still shrieking its alarm, it hefted Julio like a child and hauled him from the room in a series of rapid jerks. Isabelle followed as smoke poured from the door. Surely that wail had roused the whole aerie. They had only heartbeats to be away from here.
Unfortunately, the omnimaton did not stop outside the cell. It smashed through the outer door as if it were made of papier-maché, then dashed into the hall and down the corridor.
“Damn.” Isabelle hadn’t anticipated that. She hiked her skirts and gave chase. She sprinted by a stunned-looking Gretl, who joined the pursuit.
“What now?” Julio barked. He squirmed futilely against the omni’s gargantuan strength.
“I don’t know; I’m making this up as I go!”
The machine accelerated, swiftly outdistancing her.
“I think it’s taking me to the infirmary,” Julio called, his voice faint amidst the clangor, just before the omnimaton disappeared with him around a long bend in the corridor.
The infirmary. That made sense as a standing order, one of Kantelvar’s endless, interwoven contingency plans. If the príncipe had to be pulled from his cell due to injury, the most logical place to take him was the infirmary, the surgery, where Kantelvar was now making ready to butcher his brain. Builder’s breath, all her stunt with the fire had done was accelerate his execution.
Isabelle followed the receding noise through what seemed like kilometers of corridors, around corners, up a stairwell. The noise had brought the denizens of the place out of their holes and they were running hither and yon, though purposefully, without panic, as if they had practiced for this. None of them seemed to be going her way. She was hurrying along yet another dim gray tunnel, gasping for breath in the thin air and nursing a stitch in her side, when the noise suddenly stopped.
A half-dozen side corridors led off this one. Which one? She leaned against the wall and listened but heard no sound louder than her own labored breathing. And what would she do when she found him? She could not fight Kantelvar and his machines.
Just then Gretl caught up with her. She waved for Isabelle to follow and darted into one of several identical-looking side passages.
Isabelle followed her along a short hallway to a small infirmary. A row of empty cots lay along one wall, and there was an arched opening at the far end. Weird grainy shadows flickered beyond the archway to the accompaniment of a high-pitched whine. Just inside the infirmary, Gretl stopped, quivering, at the very end of her courage’s tether. Isabelle laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder, then crept by her, down the aisle. Her own fear made the air thicker as she approached the archway, until it was like pressing through water … mud … tar. Beyond that opening waited Kantelvar, and somehow he would know what she had done. He would be furious, his wrath would be terrible, and there were far worse things he might do than kill her, but she could not leave Julio in his hands.
She peered through the archway, and it took a moment for the scene to resolve itself in a way that made sense. In the center of the room, Julio was strapped facedown to a table with his head in a vise that restricted all movement. At his head stood Kantelvar, his hood cast back, revealing the glittering apparatus of his false eye and the still-angry flesh of his recent surgery.
On the table between the two men squatted a bizarre omnimaton. In shape it was most like a spider, with four telescoping, spindle-like legs connecting to a central hub. From the top protruded half a dozen metallic tentacles, each tipped with a different tool.
Dangling beneath the hub, between the legs, was a transparent bottle filled with a cloudy liquid … and the rotting remains of a head. Kantelvar’s head. His skin, what little remained of it, had sloughed free of his skull, and his eyes were bloated and putrefied, his tongue swollen, his lower jaw missing entirely.
Isabelle’s skin felt cold and slick as ice. This was the gurgling hump Kantelvar hid under his robes and in his pack. This was the seat of his consciousness. Through hundreds of lifetimes he had survived like this, a pickled grotesquery. And he had done it on purpose, done it to himself.
One flexible tendril was still fixed to the back of the skull of Kantelvar’s most recent host. Another gemstone eye oversaw a nest of tentacles making Julio ready for surgery, shaving the back of his head and injecting his skin with some vile potion in preparation for drilling through his skull.
At the far end of the room the warder omnimaton gave its report to Kantelvar’s current host. Its central eye glowed, and the air before it shimmered. Fine corpuscles of greasy light coalesced into a sort of animate sculpture suspended in air.
It was a half-sized, translucent image of Isabelle’s conversation with Julio. She could see her lips moving, but the only sound was the whir of the omnimaton’s gears. It was like watching a painting made of raindrops, wet and streaky, but still gut-wrenchingly recognizable. Soundlessly, her image piled kindling against the wall of Julio’s cell. A wave of irrational guilt washed through her, as if she had been caught in some wickedness. She watched herself set the kindling alight. She winced in memory of the bang. And there was Julio’s rescue from the omnimaton’s point of view. It yanked the chains from the wall and carried him from the room.
A soul-curdling wail yanked her attention to Kantelvar. His host body was bowed and trembling as if in pain, his visage contorted with rage. His ordinary eye streamed with tears.
Isabelle drew back out of view and turned to find Gretl, on her second dose of bravery, creeping up behind her. Her face was drawn taut as a sail in a hurricane.
Isabelle mouthed, “I’ll try to draw him away. You free Julio.”
Gretl swallowed hard and nodded.
Isabelle steeled herself. This was a bad plan, but she had no time for a better one.
Isabelle stepped into the room. “Kantelvar!”
His sapphire lens fixed her with a murderous stare. “Traitress!” he spat. “How could you? How dare you?”
Isabelle leaned back, to turn and run, but Kantelvar’s arm jerked like the spring-arm of a rat trap. The urchin tip of his staff flashed. A snap of lightning scribed a jagged path through the air and smote her in the chest. Her whole body convulsed, and she collapsed, twitching.
“He is your husband!” Kantelvar shrieked. “Your destiny!”
Spittle drizzled from Isabelle’s lips even as she fought for control of her thrashing limbs. He’d gone over the edge. She had to bring him back.
Kantelvar rounded the table toward her. Arcs of lightning formed a menacing gloriole around the staff head, and his voice was the whine of a wounded animal. “He is your lord and master, the father of the Savior!”
“N … nmmmnm…” Isabelle couldn’t get her jolted tongue under control.