Scholar of Decay (10 page)

Manic rage insisted she deal first with the rat that had caused her to slip. By the time it had been rendered into an unrecognizable mass of blood and bone, everything that was likely to fall had fallen. Chunks of broken wood floated with less savory flotsam and, up above, jagged stumps jutted out mere inches from the walls.

Her anger barely abated by the slaughter of the giant rat, Louise searched for Aurek Nuikin. Had he survived the fall uninjured—in itself unlikely considering the splintered wood and rusted spikes now in the water—he couldn’t have gone far.

Except that it appeared he had.

Shaking a patina of stinking algae from her fur, she climbed up onto a protruding masonry block and surveyed the sewer. Nothing. Not Nuikin, nor his body, nor even his scent.

Eyes narrowed, she looked up.

The joints between the stones in the cellar walls fitted smoothly together. He could not have clung to safety.

Lips drawn back off her teeth, she began to climb.

No floor remained where he’d been cornered.

Tail lashing the air, she climbed the holes that had once held the stairs and sat at last on the threshold of the floor above. Whiskers twitching, she delicately sniffed the rotting wood and found his scent both over and under hers. Her nose curled as she caught a faint trace of the power that had lingered by the crushed corpse of the spider.

He had gone down into the cellar.

She had followed.

He had, somehow, left.

Claws shredding the wood beneath her, her body lengthened, bone and muscle and ligament stretching to the form between rat and human that, being neither, gave her the most use of both. Staring down into the pit Aurek Nuikin had so impossibly risen out of, she spat and derisively snarled, “Mere ssscholar indeed.”

Aurek Pushed His Hair Back Off His Face and Was
astonished to notice his hand trembling. If it hadn’t been for the leather loop he’d held in his hand as the floor collapsed and the accompanying spell.… He sat and stared at his trembling fingers for a moment, then slowly laid the piece of leather on the empty desk in front of him. Fate had intervened back in the cellar of that abandoned house, had cast Louise Renier away without him having to raise a hand. Perhaps that was a good omen. Perhaps it meant he was destined to find the answer he sought in Pont-a-Museau.

Perhaps the answer was in the book he’d risked so much to discover.

His pack rested on the corner of desk, where it had remained since he’d returned to the house nearly an hour before. He could feel the book from where he sat, had been able to feel it while he washed and changed into sweeter-smelling clothes. It wasn’t the power of the book he could feel, but the book itself—its potential.

Until he opened it, that potential continued to exist, and with it, hope. While he delayed, he held hope trapped. The moment he knew, hope was gone, and each time he found it again it returned to him less willingly.

But the book might hold the answer, and hope was the price he had to pay.

Wearily, Aurek closed his eyes. When he opened them after pulling a long breath in and pushing it out again, he called himself several kinds of fool. You don’t look because you’re afraid it might be nothing, and your fear keeps you from possibly discovering the nightmare is finally over.

Hands barely steady, he yanked open the mouth of the pack.

A moment later, the small leather-bound book lay on the gray silk bag in the exact center of his desk. He had removed all surviving wards, checked for more subtle protections, and lifted a small, clear crystal from a rosewood box tucked into a desk drawer. Murmuring under his breath—the words merely needed to be said, it wasn’t necessary to say them loudly—he passed the crystal over the book from left to right. Finally, nothing remained to be done save actually folding back the cover.

The first few pages had been marbled, front and back, with dissolved ink. Here and there he could make out what might have been the swoop of a letter and once an entire word could be read intact and out of context. The closer he came to the middle of the book, however, the less extensive the water damage and the more legible the handwriting.

While there was nothing about the writing that resembled his own less than legible style, he saw similarities in the way the unknown writer had used all the available space—pages were filled top and bottom and out to each margin, the waxed thread of the spine sewn as close to the text as possible.

 … in order to change that which is …

His heart began beating with such force that he thought it might burst through his ribs.

 … to change that which is …

The next few words were damaged but not completely illegible. He found four p’s and what he thought was a pair of s’s. A combination that might have been hr or br perhaps even ak. His hands were sweating, and he continually wiped them on his thighs lest he mark the pages and cause further damage. Circular letters were the worst for a’s and o’s were virtually identical.

His eyes burned with fatigue when he finally realized what he’d found.

 … in order to change that which is copper or brass temporarily to gold, the caster must possess either a citrine, a piece of amber free of flaw, or a tiger’s eye no smaller than the smallest nail on the caster’s hand
.

No need to puzzle out the rest, he knew how it ended.

Hope fled. His spirits fell as far as they had risen. He scanned the rest of the book because it would be foolish not to—and for all that he was, he was not a foolish man—but he knew he’d find nothing he needed. He closed it carefully when he finished, pushed it gently to one side, and slammed both fists down onto the desk.

“My love is snatched from my side and trapped in an existence too horrible to contemplate, and now I am taunted with useless magics! Why do the fates conspire against me?”

Hands clasped behind his neck, he rested his forehead on the desk. He didn’t expect the fates to answer; they had spoken when his Natalia had chosen the wrong moment to open his study door.

For her sake, he had to go on.

Straightening, he drew in a long, shuddering breath, wiped the moisture from his eyes, and drew a clean sheet of parchment across the desk. He always preferred to use parchment over paper or vellum; its properties were easier to control than those of the latter, and it absorbed power longer than the former. Dipping a fresh-cut pen into the inkwell, he began meticulously copying the fragments
that could still be salvaged from the damaged book.

Outside the study window, the raucous cries of ravens became wild laughter.

Oh, yes
, a hated voice murmured in his heart,
start to build your spellbook again. I am dead, but there will always be others. After all, you foolishly believed that you had protections enough the last time. What else that you claim to love can you destroy?

Crying out in anger and grief, Aurek leaped to his feet, the chair crashing to the floor behind him. The voice—the fiendish, remorseless, loathsome voice was right. He could not, would not allow his arrogance to be responsible for yet more pain and suffering.

Snatching up the book and the sheet he’d begun to fill, he raced across the room and, with all his strength—had he used less than all, he didn’t think he could have done it—he threw them both on the fire. Then he stood and stared, wide-eyed, unable to believe what he’d just done.

The impact spilled embers and ash out onto the hearth. The parchment caught almost immediately. Pale flames licked cleanly over the lower half of the page, flaring suddenly when they reached the ink. The few words he’d actually copied burned with a fierce white light—hot enough to feel from where he stood—that ignited the book.

The explosion shouldn’t have taken him by surprise, but it did. A piece of shattered andiron slammed into his shoulder, spinning him about and dropping him to his knees. He welcomed the pain, accepted it as penance for what he’d nearly begun.

Still on his knees, blood soaking into his shirt and trickling warmly over his chest, he crawled to the pedestal and clasped it in trembling arms. Eyes closed, he laid his cheek against the wood, tears staining the pale grain.

“I will find it, Lia. I promise you, my love, I will find it!”

An observer in the room would have seen, by some appalling trick of the light, the porcelain statue that was Aurek’s wife appear to stare down at him in horror.

His cheeks pale and his eyes still slightly bloodshot, Dmitri made his way carefully downstairs, having convinced himself that his measured tread had nothing to do with the weakness in his knees and everything to do with the rotten wood found throughout the house. Arriving safely at the bottom, he took a deep breath, twitched his jacket into place, and glanced up to meet Edik’s steady stare.

He thought he managed to hide his reaction reasonably well, having jumped back only half a step—a movement that could have any number of explanations. “Have you seen Aurek?” he asked, sounding not quite as nonchalant as he would’ve liked.

The servant slowly swept his gaze down the length of Dmitri’s body and back up again. Dmitri tried not to fidget; to even notice the insolence would give the other man more power than he already had.

“He’s in his study,” Edik said at last, the undertone in his voice clearly adding, and you are not to disturb him.

Dmitri knew the subtext well; he’d heard it all his life. When he was younger, he’d tried to make friends with his brilliant older brother, but whatever went on in the study had always come first. Aurek was not to be disturbed. Aurek had important things to do. Obviously, whatever went on in the study was more important to Aurek than he was. Only during those years when Natalia had been a part of his brother’s life had the study door ever opened—and then it had opened for her, not for him. As much as he liked the
laughing young woman Aurek had married, that had hurt.

“Are you going out, young master?”

“Yes. I’m going out.” And if Edik tried to stop him, they’d soon settle who was master and who servant.

But Edik only looked disapproving and said, “Are you certain you are well enough?”

Stupid old mother hen. “I’m fine.”

“Have you told your brother that you are going out?”

“I can hardly tell Aurek anything if he’s in his study, now can I?” Grinning triumphantly, he swept past Edik and out the door.

“Yves. Look there.”

“Don’t poke at me, Chantel.” Yves swiped at his face with his sleeve. “I really hate it when you do that.”

She poked him again, digging the point of her fingernail viciously into his side. “Then look at who’s walking right toward us.”

“If I look,” he snarled, “will you stop poking me?”

“It’s the Nuikin,” Georges announced, leaning around the twins in order to see. “He seems to have survived his swim.”

Yves half-turned, his neck twisting at an angle no human neck could have sustained, then he picked up a pastry and stared at it thoughtfully. “Chantel, you and Annette go and get him. Bring him here.”

“Are you crazy?” Chantel stared across the cluttered café table at him. “After what happened last night?”