Читать книгу Rise to the Rahz - Erik van Mechelen - Страница 11

Through the second hallway they found Mav in a small, oblong room. Mav was hunched over a table jutting from the stone wall, shuffling through several stone and clay containers, shoving a few back into cubbies in the stone. Abyl stood in awe of the smoothness of the walls.

Mav made a jerky sort of noise that Abyl decided was his mode of laughter. “Had Gara smooth them out,” said Mav. “My experiments may be chaotic, but I need some order in my space.”

“We’re ready,” said Maryn. She gently pushed Abyl into the room and his nostrils were tickled by turma lingering on the air. “Onto the table, now,” said Maryn cheerily. As Abyl climbed on Mav whispered a few phrases to the stone above his head, tapped its edges, and its green glow came fully to life.

“Time to get a look at you,” said Mav, handing a Abyl a half-finger thick sheet of stone. “Hold it up to your face.”

Abyl took the obsidian and saw himself for this first time. The obsidian mirror reflected a hairless head, eyebrow-less. His eyes were dark, but not like the Abyss. A dark brown, like Kaydin's.

“In our family, you’re an individual,” said Mav. “Time to get that pretty face cleaned up, eh Maryn?”

“You do have good features,” said Maryn, smiling.

Abyl kept looking at his face through the reflective glass. Three cuts, each about the length of his smallest finger, burned red, angling across his forehead next to his right eye.

Mav interrupted his thoughts. “Kaydin said the sentinel mostly missed you, but he gave you a good scratch. Any questions before we get started?”

Abyl still smelled the turma on the air. “Do you work with turma in here?”

“All the time. This is my lab. It isn’t much. But hey, the experiments are mostly happening up here.” He jabbed a finger against his forehead.

“The turma tickles my nostrils,” said Abyl. “Is that normal?”

“Definitely. Turma can enter your system in solution, through powder, and through the air itself.”

“What does it do?”

“So far, we’ve discovered a handful of memory and predictive abilities,” said Mav, “but you’ll have to ask Kaydin how they really work.”

“Why Kaydin?”

“Because he’s the only one who can do them—he has what we call the Sight.”

“Why him, though?” asked Abyl. “If the turma affects us all?”

“To varying degrees. Unless you want to believe we all have the same abilities, then we must be different.”

“But you’re saying Kaydin is much different.”

“Maybe.”

“But why?”

Mav frowned but was delighted by the conversation. “Ry thinks it’s because he is Dag’s grandson.”

“Birthlines,” said Maryn.

“And who is Dag?”

Mav lowered his voice. “He’s what made all of this possible—he’s the founder of Haven.”

Maryn coughed and Mav looked annoyed, but let her speak. “Can we get started? I bet Abyl’s in some pain.”

When she said it, Abyl realized his forehead was indeed throbbing, but he wasn’t sure from the pain or from the new information. Abyl wrinkled his nose, considering the conflicting details about the Rahz, the turma, and what it could do; but when he did, he stretched the cuts above his eye, causing more pain to shoot into the region. He started to raise his hand to touch the cuts, but Maryn caught his hand. “No touchy,” she said.

“Any questions about what I’m about to do?” He returned with a narrow obsidian blade and a string of plant fiber.

“Will you make the pain go away?” asked Abyl.

“Well, yes, but it will get worse before it gets better,” said Mav. “Up until now, your body probably has naturally numbed the area, as if the body had a store of the turma root within you.”

“Do what you need to do,” said Abyl.