فصل 8

EIGHT

AUSTERMEER’S COUNTRYSIDE FLOWED past the coach’s window. They passed farms, and rolling wildflower meadows, and wooded hills tinged gold with autumn color. Mist pooled in the hollows between the valleys, and sometimes stretched fingers across the road. As the afternoon shadows deepened, the coach clattered into the Blackwald, the great forest that slashed through the kingdom like the stroke of a knife. Everything grew dark and damp. Here and there among the undergrowth stood shocking white stands of birch trees, like specters floating among the black gowns of a funeral party. Gazing out at the gently falling leaves, the thick carpets of ferns, the occasional deer bolting into places unseen, Elisabeth was enveloped by a pall of dread, as though the mist had seeped inside the coach and surrounded her.

Nathaniel would make the attempt here, she was certain. When he reached the city without her, he could claim she’d run and vanished among the trees. In a place like this, no one would find a girl’s body. No one would even bother looking.

Escape felt increasingly hopeless. She had tried again last night, but after breaking her room’s window and climbing down the roof, Silas had been waiting for her in the inn’s garden. Strangely, she didn’t remember the rest. She must have been overcome by exhaustion. Afterward she’d had an unsettling dream of being back in Summershall’s orchard, digging the emergency salt canister out from under the angel statue. But this time the statue had come alive, and looked down at her with vivid yellow eyes.

A nudge against her hand interrupted her thoughts. Frowning, she tore her gaze from the forest to the grimoire on her lap. This was the third time it had bumped her with its cover, like a dog begging for attention.

“What is it?” she asked, and the Lexicon gave another, more insistent nudge, until she loosened her grip and it flipped itself open with an eager flutter.

It had opened to the same section as last night, Demonic Servants and Their Summoning. Elisabeth shuddered. Illustrations from books flashed through her mind: drawings of pentagrams and bleeding maidens, of demons with horns and snouts and tails feasting on entrails like ropes of sausage. But the Lexicon wanted her to read this for a reason. Steeling herself, she bent over the pages.

Relatively little is known about demons even within the sorcerous community, it told her beneath the heading, in part due to the danger of conversing with demons, who are notorious deceivers, and will seize any chance to betray their masters. For once a bargain with a demon is struck, it is in the demon’s best interest to see its master dead; thus it may secure another bargain with a new master, and maximize the amount of human life that it receives in payment.

Demons populate a realm known as the Otherworld, a plane adjacent to our own, which is the source of all magical energy. Without the connection established by a demonic bargain, humans cannot draw energy from the Otherworld. Therefore sorcery’s very existence is contingent upon the summoning and servitude of demons—a regrettable, but necessary, evil. It is both a blessing and a curse that demons crave mortal life above all else, and are therefore eager to treat with humans. . . .

Could this be Nathaniel’s weakness? She grasped in vain at the thought. Her head felt muddy, as though she had been reading for hours instead of only seconds. The grimoire nudged her hand again, and she realized she’d been staring off into space. Determinedly, she rubbed her eyes and continued reading.

The Otherworld teems with hordes of lesser demons: imps, fiends, goblins, and the like, which are not difficult to summon; but they do not make reliable servants, for they are little more intelligent than common beasts. Being the province of criminals and unskilled dabblers, lesser demons are illegal to summon as of the Reforms. True sorcerers seek only the service of highborn demons, which for all their danger may be bound to the conditions of their summoning, and therefore compelled to obey the orders given to them by their masters.

“Where on earth is Nathaniel’s demon?” Elisabeth murmured. It seemed odd for him to travel without it. She briefly had the sensation of teetering on the edge of a revelation, but the epiphany leaked from her mind like sand, leaving only a tinny ringing in her ears.

Further speculation on the nature of demons and the Otherworld exists, the Lexicon continued on the next page, but by and large the sources are highly inconsistent—if not fabricated outright—and their value dismissed by contemporary scholarship. The most notorious example of these is the Codex Daemonicus, by Aldous Prendergast, written in 1513, once held in high esteem but now believed to be nothing more than the ramblings of a madman. Prendergast was declared insane by his own friend, Cornelius the Wise, for his claims that he entered the Otherworld and discovered a terrible secret, which he concealed within his manuscript in the form of a cipher— “Miss Scrivener?”

Elisabeth flinched and slammed the grimoire shut. She had been concentrating so hard on reading that she hadn’t noticed the coach had come to a halt.

“We’ve reached our stop for the evening,” Nathaniel went on, opening the door wider. “It’s best not to travel in this forest after dark.” His eyes tracked her as she set the Lexicon aside, but he didn’t comment on its presence.

When Silas helped her out of the coach, she tensed. The coach had pulled off the road into a forest clearing. Stars glittered above, and the trees clustered close around them, dark and watchful, breathing mist. They were far from any sign of civilization, even an inn.

This was the place. It had to be. Her hands curled into fists as Nathaniel stepped away into the meadow, casting around on the ground as though searching for something. A place to bury her body? She shot a look over her shoulder, only to find Silas standing close behind her. Though he kept his gaze politely lowered, she felt the weight of his attention.

“There are no buildings in the Blackwald,” he said, as though he had been reading her mind. “The moss folk do not take kindly to intrusions on their territory. While few of them remain, they can still prove dangerous when the mood strikes them.” Elisabeth’s breath caught. She had read stories about the moss folk, and had always hoped to see one, but Master Hargrove had assured her that the spirits of the forest were all long dead—if they had ever existed to begin with.

“Don’t let Silas frighten you,” Nathaniel put in. “As long as we take care not to disturb the land when we make camp, and stay out of the trees, they won’t bother us.” He paused, looking down. Then he knelt and placed a hand on the ground. She saw his lips move in the dark, and felt a snap of magic in the air. The spell that followed wasn’t anything like what she expected. Emerald light unfolded around him into the shape of two tents, which swelled with bedrolls and unrolled lengths of fine green silk down their sides. Nathaniel stood to examine his handiwork. Afterward, he gestured toward the farthest tent. “That one’s yours.” She stiffened in surprise. “You’re giving me my own tent?”

He looked around, eyebrows raised. A lock of silver-streaked hair had fallen over his forehead. “Why, would you prefer to share one? I wouldn’t have expected it of you, Scrivener, but I suppose some species do bite each other as a prelude to courtship.” Heat flooded her cheeks. “That’s not what I meant.”

After a moment of studying her, his grin faded. “Yes, I’m giving you your own tent. Just remember what I told you about running. Silas will keep watch tonight, and I assure you, he’s a great deal harder to get past than a locked door.” Why give her a tent if he only meant to kill her? This had to be a trick. She remained awake long after she crawled inside, alert and listening. She didn’t take off her boots. Hours passed, but a fire continued to crackle, and the murmured tones of Nathaniel and Silas’s conversation carried through the canvas walls. Though she couldn’t make out any words, the ebb and flow of their exchange reminded her more of two old friends than a master and servant. Occasionally Nathaniel would say something, and very softly, Silas would laugh.

Finally, the conversation ceased. She waited for an hour or so longer—long enough for the fire’s embers to fade to a dull red glow against the canvas. Then, unable to stand the tension any longer, she crawled out of her bedroll and poked her head through the tent’s flap. The air smelled of pine and wood smoke, and crickets sang a silvery chorus in the night. Silas was nowhere to be seen. Bent at the waist, she took a step outside. And stopped.

“Out for an evening stroll, Scrivener?”

Nathaniel was still awake. He sat on a fallen log near the edge of the forest, his chin resting on his clasped hands, facing the trees. The embers smoldering behind him cast his face into shadow. He didn’t turn, but she knew he would cast a spell the instant she tried to flee.

She had a choice. She could run from her fate, or she could face it head on. After a moment of stillness, she picked her way through the wildflowers, feeling strangely as though she were trapped in a dream.

“Do you not sleep?” she asked as she drew near.

“Very little,” he replied. “But that’s particular to me, not sorcerers in general.” As he spoke, he didn’t look away from the trees. She followed his gaze, and froze.

A shape moved within the ferns and pale thin birches, picked out by moonlight. A spirit of the wood. It was stooped over, collecting objects from the ground. A curtain of mossy hair hung from its head, and a pair of antlers crowned its brow. Its skin was chalk-white and cracked, like birch bark, and its long, crooked arms hung to its knees, ending in knotted, twiglike claws. A chill shivered up and down Elisabeth’s arms. Slowly, she stepped forward and sank down on the opposite end of the log.

Nathaniel spared her a glance. “You aren’t afraid of it,” he observed, almost a question.

She shook her head, unable to tear her gaze from the forest. “I’ve always wanted to see the moss folk. I knew they were real, even though everyone told me differently.” The fire at Nathaniel’s back etched the lines of his jaw and cheekbones, but didn’t reach the hollows of his eyes. “Most people grow out of fairy stories,” he said. “Why did you carry on believing, when the rest of the world did not?” She wasn’t sure how to answer. To her, his question made little sense—or if it did, it wasn’t a kind of sense she wished to understand. “What is the point of life if you don’t believe in anything?” she asked instead.

He gave her a long look, his half-hidden expression indecipherable. She wondered why he had been sitting here watching the moss spirit, alone, for so long.

Movement caught her eye. As they’d spoken, the spirit had raised something small—an acorn—to inspect it in the moonlight. That was what it had been collecting, and surely it had found many, but there seemed to be something special about this acorn in particular. Using its gnarled claws, it raked aside the covering of leaves on the ground and scooped out a hole from the loam. It buried the acorn and mounded the leaves back on top. A sigh stirred through the forest at that exact moment, a breeze that rushed forth from the heart of the wood and swept over Elisabeth, combing through her hair.

The stories claimed that the moss folk were stewards of the forest. They tended to its trees and creatures, watched over them from birth to death. They had a magic of their own.

“Why are there so few of them left?” she asked, pierced by a sorrow she couldn’t explain.

For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “Do you know of my ancestor, Baltasar Thorn?”

She nodded, hoping her goose bumps weren’t visible in the firelight. The embers popped and snapped.

“At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Blackwald covered half of Austermeer. This was a wild country. It was ruled as much by the forest as it was by men.” But not any longer, she finished. “What did he do?”

“It was the necromantic ritual he performed during the War of Bones. To grant life, even a semblance of it, one must take life, trade it like currency. Unsurprisingly, raising thousands of soldiers from the grave took a great deal. The life came from the land itself. His magic left two-thirds of the Blackwald dead and dying in a single night. The moss folk are tied to the earth—those that survived were stricken like blighted trees.” Nathaniel paused. He added in a dry tone, “Baltasar, of course, received a title.” Elisabeth’s fingernails dug into the wood of the log beneath her, soft and spongy with decay. Now that she looked more closely at the moss spirit she saw that one of its knees was swollen and disfigured, like a canker on the trunk of an oak.

“I suppose you must be proud,” she said. “It’s the reason why you’re a magister.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” He sounded amused. “Meditating fondly on my ancestor’s deeds?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. No one should take pleasure from such a thing.” Not even someone like you.

Perhaps his supply of mockery wasn’t as infinite as she assumed. He only gazed into the forest a moment longer, then stood. “It’s late.” He nodded at the spirit. “You’re lucky to have seen one. A hundred years from now, they’ll all be gone.” He brought his fingers to his lips. Before she could stop him, a whistle broke the stillness.

The spirit jerked toward the sound like a startled deer. In the gloom she saw two blue-green eyes, glowing incandescently, like fox fire. Withered lips pulled back from sharp, gnarled, brown teeth, and then the spirit had vanished, leaving only a patch of trembling ferns where it had once stood.

“You don’t know that for certain,” Elisabeth said. But her voice sounded tentative in the dark. Looking at the empty hill, where magic had once walked and now was gone, she could almost imagine that he was right.

“I never did answer your question.” He set off toward his tent. “If you don’t believe in anything,” he said over his shoulder, “then you have a great deal less to lose.” • • •

When they reached Brassbridge the next evening, Elisabeth was still alive, and faced the troubling possibility that she had been wrong about Nathaniel Thorn. Alone with her questions, she gazed out the window as the sunset’s light poured over the city, transforming the river into a ribbon of molten gold.

Even from afar, her first glimpse of the capital had taken her breath away. Brassbridge sprawled on an unimaginably large scale along the winding bank of the river. The city’s peaked slate rooftops formed an endless maze, their chimneys trickling threads of smoke toward a ruddy sky. Above them loomed the somber edifices of cathedrals and academies, their spires topped with bronze figures that blazed like torches against the darkening rooftops, flaming ever brighter as the shadows deepened. She sought the Collegium and the Royal Library among the clutter of towers, but she couldn’t tell any of the grand buildings apart.

Soon the horses’ hooves clashed over a bridge’s cobblestones, and the river slid beneath them, stinking of fish and algae. Statues flashed past the windows, their hooded silhouettes ominous against the glowering clouds.

Doubt gnawed at Elisabeth’s thoughts, intensifying as the sun sank beneath the statues’ bowed heads. Last night in the Blackwald, Nathaniel hadn’t tried to kill her. He hadn’t so much as touched her. Had he intended to hurt her, he almost certainly would have done so by now. But if he wasn’t the sorcerer who sabotaged the library, that meant— The clamor of traffic intensified as the coach’s door swung open. Nathaniel clambered inside amid a swirl of emerald silk. He flashed Elisabeth a grin, pulling the door shut as he took a seat in the opposite corner.

“Best if I don’t show myself,” he explained. “I don’t want to inflame the public. They go absolutely mad in the presence of celebrity, you see, and I’d prefer them not to storm the carriage. There are only so many propositions of marriage a man can bear.” Elisabeth stared at him, nonplussed. “Aren’t they afraid of you?”

Nathaniel leaned toward the window, using his reflection to fix his disheveled hair. “This may come as a shock, but most people don’t think sorcerers are evil.” He gestured toward the city. “Welcome to the modern world, Scrivener.” Elisabeth looked out. Wrought iron lamps cast an orange glow over the bridge’s sidewalk. A group of soot-smudged children ran parallel to Nathaniel’s coach, pointing and shouting. A woman selling pastries attempted to hail them, nearly overturning her tray in excitement. They clearly recognized the coach with its thorns and emerald curtains. Recognized it, and were not afraid.

The truth, astonishing though it was, began to sink in. “All those things you said, about drinking blood and turning people into salamanders . . .” Nathaniel propped his elbow on the door and covered his mouth with his hand. His eyes shone with suppressed amusement.

Shock swept over her. “You were teasing me!”

“To be fair, I didn’t think you would actually believe I drank orphan’s blood. Are all librarians like you, or is it only the feral ones who have been raised by booklice?” Elisabeth wanted to object, but she suspected he had a point. Almost everything she knew, she had learned either from Master Hargrove, who hadn’t traveled farther than the privy in over a half a century, or from books, many of which were hundreds of years out of date. The rest—stories told to her by the senior librarians, their details so frightening that she behaved as a good apprentice ought and ceased asking about sorcerers altogether. Now she wondered how many of those stories had been lies. Her teeth ground at the betrayal.

“Why did you come to fetch me from Summershall?” she demanded, rounding suddenly on Nathaniel. “Why you, and not anyone else?” The ferocity in her voice took him aback. His grin disappeared, and the sparkle left his eyes, leaving them as cold and gray as doused embers. “When the report arrived at the Magisterium, I recognized your name.” “How? I never told you my name.”

“The Director did.” Seeing her expression, he explained, “I wanted to know the name of the girl who almost murdered me with a bookcase. It seemed wise, in case I ever crossed paths with you again.” “Did the Director say anything else about me?”

“No.” Then, after a pause, “I’m sorry.”

A lump closed Elisabeth’s throat. She turned back to the view. As she watched the sky deepen to indigo, a sick feeling of despair pooled in her stomach. Soon the journey would reach its end, and she did not know what, or who, awaited her there. She could no longer put a face to the Director’s killer.

In the dark, her first impression of the city’s streets was an imposing one. Buildings nearly as high as her Great Library reared from the fog, candlelight wavering through their windowpanes. She had never seen so many structures in one place, nor even a fraction of the people. As their coach wove through the traffic, pedestrians bustled past: men with walking sticks and top hats, and women wearing high-collared dresses trimmed in lace. They carried shopping parcels, hurrying across the street and climbing in and out of carriages with a sense of urgency that seemed foreign to Elisabeth, accustomed to the sleepy rhythm of country life. Everything was painted by the hazy glow of the lamps, which Nathaniel informed her did not run on magic, as she’d assumed, but rather an invention called gaslight.

The carriage finally rolled to a stop on a narrow, gloomy side street. Numbly, she followed Nathaniel outside. The fog enveloped her boots and eddied around the hem of her dress. The nearest streetlamp had gone out, submerging them in shadow. There were no other people in sight.

“This is the lodging house where the Magisterium has arranged for you to stay,” Nathaniel said. “I may see you briefly at your hearing tomorrow, but otherwise, you’re rid of me from here onward.” Elisabeth gazed up at the lodging house in silence. Once it had been a dignified brick building. Now its forbidding walls were blackened with soot, and bars had been affixed to its windows, the metal leaving rusty streaks down the brick. She folded her arms across her stomach to suppress a shiver.

“Odd,” he went on, speaking to himself. “There’s supposed to be someone waiting for us—but no matter, I can take you to the door. . . .” Without looking, he offered her his arm.

Elisabeth barely saw the gesture. She was still staring up at the lodging house. It reminded her of the orphanage she had imagined as a child, the grim place where she would be cast away, unwanted and forgotten. “You’re going to leave me here?” The words forced themselves out, sounding small.

Nathaniel hesitated, his expression wiped clean. A heartbeat passed. He looked young and very pale in the dark. Then he stepped forward, motioning for Elisabeth to follow.

“Don’t tell me you’ve succumbed to my charms,” he said over his shoulder. “I assure you, no good will come of a passionate affair between us. You, a small-town country librarian, me, the kingdom’s most eligible bachelor—you needn’t scoff, Scrivener. It’s true—go out on the street and ask anyone. I’m quite famous.” But Elisabeth hadn’t scoffed. The sound that had escaped her had been a stifled cry of alarm. In a nearby alley, behind the extinguished streetlamp, a group of figures stood watching them: hulking and shining-eyed, their breath steaming in the night. She blinked, and they were gone—but she was certain she hadn’t imagined them.

She opened her mouth to warn Nathaniel, who was by now several paces ahead. But before she could make another sound, a rough grip seized her around the waist and yanked her toward the alley. A hand crushed her mouth, and the cold point of a knife appeared at her throat.