Nils was a bag of nerves as he led Shadrak through the moonlit gardens and in through the main entrance of the Academy.
“You sure this will work? Arecagen’s no plonker. What if he don’t touch the ring?”
“He will,” Shadrak said.
He’d taken the liberty of coating the Witch Queen’s ring with a deadly contact poison and placing it in an oilskin pouch attached to his belt. The idea had struck him during their getaway celebrations back at Ilesa’s theater base, after they re-entered New Londdyr through the tunnel beneath the crypt. It had been a wild party, and Shadrak had smoked way too much somnificus. Jeb and Ilesa had left early with business to attend to. Maybe sight of the Lich Lord and all his vileness had lowered Ilesa’s standards when it came to Jeb’s disease-rotted body. But at least she’d been true to her word; she’d dropped her claim on the ring, even if her motivation was self-preservation. Shadrak could hardly blame her; if the Lich Lord didn’t come for the ring, the Witch Queen was still there, lurking in the shadows of the Desecrated City. Far better for scut-buckets like Arecagen to deal with the consequences of possessing the ring, and if not Arecagen, then the Stygian, Xultak Setis, who’d set this whole stinking affair in motion.
The entrance hall was in darkness, save for the overspill of soft light from chambers to the left and right: the circular, multi-tiered reading room with muted glowstones hanging from the high ceiling on silver chains, and the exhibit room, in which Shadrak could just about make out the fossilized remains of monstrous beasts, many of which had been brought over the Farfall Mountains from Qlippoth at one time or another.
There was no one behind the reception desk. In fact, the entire building was eerily empty, silent save for their own echoing footfalls on the marble floor. These matters were best dealt with after hours, Arecagen had said in response to Nils’s handwritten missive.
Stark light spilled from an open door midway along the corridor beyond the desk. And there was a figure in the doorway, silhouetted yet still recognizable from the spiked hair atop his head, the bat-winged tip of his staff. With a gesture that they should follow him, Arecagen retreated inside the room.
The walls were plastered with charts of sigils, linear diagrams, and geometric designs of bewildering complexity. There were books open atop tables all around the walls. A chandelier without candles cast a circle of stark light around a leather-topped desk.
Arecagen seated himself behind the desk and rapped his staff three times on the ground. It shrunk to the size of his pinkie, and he secreted it inside the sleeve of his robe. There was nowhere for his visitors to sit.
“You brought the ring?” the sorcerer said, getting straight to the point.
“First the bugs you put in my guts,” Shadrak said.
“No.” A smug smile cut across Arecagen’s face. “I call the shots. Ring first.”
“You think I’d be stupid enough to bring it?” Shadrak countered.
Nils glanced at him. The idiot was giving the game away… as he was meant to, even if he didn’t know it himself. He mouthed at Shadrak: “But I thought—”
“Spoken like a true homunculus,” Arecagen said, cutting across the lad. “Though without the subtlety. Are you sure you’re a pure blood?”
The sorcerer made a swift gesture with his hand. In response, invisible fingers undid the string fastening the oilskin pouch to Shadrak’s belt. Shadrak feigned shock as Arecagen made a clutching motion, and the pouch floated through the air toward him.
“How—?” Shadrak said, trusting his acting was better than Dame Consilia’s.
Nils, on the other hand, looked genuinely shocked, but at the same time he gave an almost imperceptible nod. Probably not how he had envisaged it, but the plan, as far as he was concerned, was working.
“You’re a little slow on the uptake,” Arecagen said to Shadrak, as he plucked the pouch from midair and reached inside for the Witch Queen’s ring. “Judging by your pupils, I’d say you’ve been indulging in narcotics. What was it, somnificus?”
When the sorcerer placed the ring on his finger and held it up, Nils gave Shadrak a sideways glance and barely suppressed a smirk.
“What’s this?” Arecagen said, immediately pulling the ring from his finger and dropping it back inside the pouch. He vigorously rubbed his hands on his robe. “You’ve coated it with something!”
“Don’t worry,” Shadrak said. “I have an antidote, and there’s plenty of time—an hour at least—until your organs collapse and your insides liquefy.”
The blood drained from Arecagen’s face. “Kill me, and those bore-grubs in your stomach will eat their way out. Only I can stop them.”
“And only I know where I hid the antidote.”
Stalemate.
“You’re lying,” Arecagen said.
“No,” Nils said. “He’s not. Sausage poison, it is, blended with olive oil.”
“Courtesy of a former colleague of mine,” Shadrak said.
“I don’t believe you,” Arecagen said. He plucked his staff from his sleeve and it rapidly grew to its normal size. He pointed the tip at Nils and muttered words in Ancient Urddynoorian. “Interesting,” he said. “You believe the ring is poisoned. It must be that the homunculus has duped you.”
“Or because he’s telling the truth,” Nils said.
“Which means you were in on this.” Arecagen’s eyes narrowed to slits. “In which case you’d better hope it works, because you and I will be having words if it doesn’t. Sorcerous words, not the kind you use in polite conversation.”
He turned the staff on Shadrak. More muttered Ancient Urddynoorian. This time, Arecagen’s eyes widened in surprise. “Idiot boy’s right. You did apply poison to the ring.” He slumped back in his chair, defeated.
“Just dispel the bug magic,” Shadrak said, touching his belly, “and I’ll fetch the antidote.”
“How do I know?” Arecagen said. “How do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain?”
“Use your truth detection spell again?”
“No, you plonker!” Nils hissed at Shadrak.
Arecagen noticed and chuckled. He repeated the truth spell then nodded, apparently satisfied.
“Very well.” The sorcerer stood and approached one of the tables set against the walls. He flicked through an open book till he found what he was looking for. Casually, as if he did this sort of thing all the time, the uttered a cant and turned to make grasping motions with his hand.
In response, Shadrak’s stomach knotted. His back arched, and he cried out as wispy plumes of dirty vapor passed through his jerkin. They sank slowly to the floor, where they coalesced into the steaming, malformed bodies of grubs, which bubbled and boiled then melted into pools of brownish liquid.
“Satisfied?” Arecagen said.
Shadrak gingerly felt his stomach through his jerkin, then nodded. He reached into the hidden pocket stitched into the lining of his cloak and drew out the vial containing the antidote.
“No,” Nils said. “We agreed. You said you’d sort him out for me, if I helped you get the ring.”
Shadrak shrugged. “You really are a prat, then, aren’t you?”
He flipped the vial through the air to Arecagen, who deftly caught it. Without a moment’s hesitation, the sorcerer unstoppered it and drank the contents.
And then Shadrak remembered.
Under the influence of the somnificus, he’d tapped into his true homunculus nature, and while there he’d hatched his plan. And the thing about homunculus deception—the thing Arecagen had first put him onto—was that, to make it perfectly effective, the trickster had to believe his own lies. Absolutely. It was an innate ability unique to the homunculi, who after all were formed from the very stuff of the Demiurgos, the Father of Lies himself. Not only had Nils believed every word Shadrak had told him—about the harmless oil coating the ring being contact poison—but Shadrak had fallen victim to his own deception.
Until the trap was sprung.
Arecagen coughed and thumped his chest. “A potent blend. What was in it?”
Nils crossed his arms over his chest and pouted.
“Remember the sausage poison that coated the ring?” Shadrak asked.
Arecagen nodded.
“Well, that was olive oil.”
Another nod, followed by an alarmed raise of one eyebrow.
“The sausage poison was in the antidote.”
Arecagen swallowed thickly. The veins stood out on either side of his neck. He coughed again, and this time there was a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. He belched, doubled up, clutched his guts.
“Yes!” Nils said, slapping Shadrak on the shoulder.
Arecagen collapsed to his knees. Black vitriol poured from his mouth in a vile and putrid-smelling stream. And then he keeled over onto his side and lay still.
“You did it!” Nils said. “But how? You lied to him and he didn’t know?”
Shadrak held his nose as he approached the sorcerer’s body and reclaimed the pouch containing the Witch Queen’s ring. “Trade secret.”
Nils stuck out his bottom lip and shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“So, I’m a man of my word,” Shadrak said. “Your problem is sorted.”
“I wonder who will replace him as principal of the Academy,” Nils mused out loud. He looked up sharply as Shadrak headed for the open doorway. “What you doing?”
Shadrak pulled up the hood of his cloak and gave Nils a parting nod. “Honoring my contract with a certain Stygian in Pellor.” He paused in the doorway and looked back at the young man. “You did all right, Fargin. For a tosser.”
Nils smiled. “You too. And thank you for taking out Master Arecagen for me.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“I don’t believe you,” Nils said.
“That’s because you’re a fat-headed twat.”
Shadrak tugged his cloak around him and swept from the room.
But did the lad have a point? Would he have come here with the ring, tricked Arecagen, if he’d not had the bugs in his stomach? Would he really have kept his word to Nils and saved the lad from the sorcerer’s ire?
Nah, he told himself as he reached the end of the corridor and headed for the front door.
But the irritating thing was, he couldn’t be sure.