Sorcery of Thorns
ONE
NIGHT
FELL AS death rode into the Great Library of Summershall. It arrived
within a carriage. Elisabeth stood in the courtyard and watched the
horses thunder wild-eyed through the gates, throwing froth from their
mouths. High above, the last of the sunset blazed on the Great Library’s
tower windows, as if the rooms inside had been set on fire—but the
light retreated swiftly, shrinking upward, drawing long fingers of
shadow from the angels and gargoyles who guarded the library’s
rain-streaked parapets.
A gilt insignia shone upon the carriage’s
side as it rattled to a halt: a crossed quill and key, the symbol of
the Collegium. Iron bars transformed the rear of the carriage into a
prison cell. Though the night was cool, sweat slicked Elisabeth’s palms.
“Scrivener,” said the woman beside her. “Do you have your salt? Your gloves?”
Elisabeth
patted the leather straps that crisscrossed her chest, feeling for the
pouches they held, the canister of salt that hung at her hip. “Yes,
Director.” All she was missing was a sword. But
she
wouldn’t earn that until she became a warden, after years of training
at the Collegium. Few librarians made it that far. They either gave up,
or they died.
“Good.” The Director paused. She was a remote,
elegant woman with ice-pale features and hair as red as flame. A scar
ran from her left temple all the way to her jaw, puckering her cheek and
pulling one corner of her mouth permanently to the side. Like
Elisabeth, she wore leather straps over her chest, but she had on a
warden’s uniform beneath them instead of an apprentice’s robes.
Lamplight glinted off the brass buttons on her dark blue coat and shone
from her polished boots. The sword belted at her side was slender and
tapered, with garnets glittering on its pommel.
That sword was
famous at Summershall. It was named Demonslayer, and the Director had
used it to battle a Malefict when she was only nineteen years old. That
was where she had gotten the scar, which was rumored to cause her
excruciating agony whenever she spoke. Elisabeth doubted the accuracy of
those rumors, but it was true that the Director chose her words
carefully, and certainly never smiled.
“Remember,” the Director
went on at last, “if you hear a voice in your mind once we reach the
vault, do not listen to what it says. This is a Class Eight, centuries
old, and not to be trifled with. Since its creation, it has driven
dozens of people mad. Are you ready?”
Elisabeth swallowed. The
knot in her throat prevented her from answering. She could hardly
believe the Director was speaking to her, much less that she had
summoned her to help transport a delivery to the vault. Ordinarily such a
responsibility fell far above the rank of apprentice librarian. Hope
ricocheted through her like a bird trapped within a house, taking
flight,
falling, and taking flight
again, exhausting itself for the promise of open skies far away. Terror
flickered after it like a shadow.
She’s giving me a chance to
prove that I’m worth training as a warden, she thought. If I fail, I
will die. Then at least I’ll have a use. They can bury me in the garden
to feed the radishes.
Wiping her sweaty palms on the sides of her robes, she nodded.
The
Director set off across the courtyard, and Elisabeth followed. Gravel
crunched beneath their heels. A foul stench clotted the air as they drew
nearer, like waterlogged leather left to rot on the seashore. Elisabeth
had grown up in the Great Library, surrounded by the ink-and-parchment
smell of magical tomes, but this was far from what she was used to. The
stench stung her eyes and stippled her arms with goose bumps. It was
even making the horses nervous. They shied in their traces, scattering
gravel as they ignored the driver’s attempts to calm them down. In a way
she envied them, for at least they didn’t know what had ridden behind
them all the way from the capital.
A pair of wardens leaped down
from the front of the carriage, their hands planted on the hilts of
their swords. Elisabeth forced herself not to shrink back when they
glowered at her. Instead she straightened her spine and lifted her chin,
endeavoring to match their stony expressions. She might never earn a
blade, but at least she could appear brave enough to wield one.
The
Director’s key ring rattled, and the carriage’s rear doors swung open
with a shuddering groan. At first, in the gloom, the iron-lined cell
appeared empty. Then Elisabeth made out an object on the floor: a flat,
square, iron coffer, secured with more than a dozen locks. To a
layperson, the precautions would have appeared absurd—but not for long.
In the twilit silence, a single, reverberating thud issued from within
the coffer, powerful
enough to shake the carriage and rattle the doors on their hinges. One of the horses screamed.
“Quickly,”
the Director said. She took one of the coffer’s handles, and Elisabeth
seized the other. They hefted its weight between them and proceeded
toward a door with an inscription carved atop it, the arching scroll
clasped on either side by weeping angels. OFFICIUM ADUSQUE MORTEM, it
read dimly, nearly obscured by shadow. The warden’s motto. Duty unto
death.
They entered a long stone corridor burnished by the
jumping light of torches. The coffer’s leaden weight already strained
Elisabeth’s arm. It did not move again, but its stillness failed to
reassure her, for she suspected what it meant: the book within was
listening. It was waiting.
Another warden stood guard beside the
entrance to the vault. When he saw Elisabeth at the Director’s side, his
small eyes gleamed with loathing. This was Warden Finch. He was a
grizzled man with short gray hair and a puffy face into which his
features seemed to recede, like raisins in a bread pudding. Among the
apprentices, he was infamous for the fact that his right hand was larger
than the other, bulging with muscle, because he exercised it so often
whipping them.
She squeezed the coffer’s handle until her
knuckles turned white, instinctively bracing herself for a blow, but
Finch could do nothing to her in front of the Director. Muttering
beneath his breath, he heaved on a chain. Inch by inch, the portcullis
rose, lifting its sharp black teeth above their heads. Elisabeth stepped
forward.
And the coffer lurched.
“Steady,” the Director snapped, as both of them careened against the stone wall, barely keeping their balance. Elisabeth’s
stomach swooped. Her boot hung over the edge of a spiral stair that twisted vertiginously down into darkness.
The
horrible truth dawned on her. The grimoire had wanted them to fall. She
imagined the coffer tumbling down the stairs, striking the flagstones
at the bottom, bursting open—and it would have been her fault—
The Director’s hand clasped her shoulder. “It’s all right, Scrivener. Nothing’s happened. Grip the rail and keep going.”
With
an effort, Elisabeth turned away from Finch’s condemning scowl. Down
they went. A subterranean chill wafted up from below, smelling of cold
rock and mildew, and of something less natural. The stone itself bled
the malice of ancient things that had languished in darkness for
centuries—consciousnesses that did not slumber, minds that did not
dream. Muffled by thousands of pounds of earth, the silence was such
that she heard only her own pulse pounding in her ears.
She had
spent her childhood exploring the Great Library’s myriad nooks and
crannies, prying into its countless mysteries, but she had never been
inside the vault. Its presence had lurked beneath the library her entire
life like something unspeakable hiding under the bed.
This is my chance, she reminded herself. She could not be afraid.
They
emerged into a chamber that resembled a cathedral’s crypt. The walls,
ceiling, and floor were all carved from the same gray stone. The ribbed
pillars and vaulted ceilings had been crafted with artistry, even
reverence. Statues of angels stood in niches along the walls, candles
guttering at their feet. With sorrowful, shadowed eyes, they watched
over the rows of iron shelves that formed aisles down the center of the
vault. Unlike the bookcases in the upper portions of the library, these
were
welded in place. Chains secured the locked coffers, which slid between the shelves like drawers.
Elisabeth
assured herself that it was her imagination conjuring up whispers from
the coffers as they passed. A thick layer of dust coated the chains.
Most of the coffers hadn’t been disturbed in decades, and their
inhabitants remained fast asleep. Yet the back of her neck still
prickled as though she were being watched.
The Director guided
her beyond the shelves, toward a cell with a table bolted to the floor
at the center. A single oil lamp cast a jaundiced glow across its
ink-stained surface. The coffer remained unsettlingly cooperative as
they set it down beside four enormous gashes, like giant claw marks,
that scarred the table’s wood. Elisabeth’s eyes darted to the gashes
again and again. She knew what had made them. What happened when a
grimoire got out of control.
Malefict.
“What precaution do we take first?” the Director asked, jolting Elisabeth from her thoughts. The test had begun.
“Salt,”
she answered, reaching for the canister at her hip. “Like iron, salt
weakens demonic energies.” Her hand trembled slightly as she shook out
the crystals, forming a lopsided circle. Shame flushed her cheeks at the
sight of its uneven edges. What if she wasn’t ready, after all?
The barest hint of warmth softened the Director’s severe face. “Do you know why I chose to keep you, Elisabeth?”
Elisabeth
froze, the breath trapped in her chest. The Director had never
addressed her by her given name—only her last name, Scrivener, or
sometimes just “apprentice,” depending on how much trouble she was in,
which was often a fantastic amount. “No, Director,” she said.
“Hmm. It was storming, I recall. The grimoires were restless
that
night. They were making so much noise that I barely heard the knock on
the front doors.” Elisabeth could easily picture the scene. Rain lashing
against the windows, the tomes howling and sobbing and rattling beneath
their restraints. “When I found you on the steps, and picked you up and
brought you inside, I was certain you would cry. Instead, you looked
around and began to laugh. You were not afraid. At that moment I knew I
couldn’t send you away to an orphanage. You belonged in the library, as
much as any book.”
Elisabeth had been told the story before, but
only by her tutor, never the Director herself. Two words echoed through
her mind with the vitality of a heartbeat: you belonged. They were words
that she had waited sixteen years to hear, and desperately hoped were
true.
In breathless silence, she watched the Director reach for
her keys and select the largest one, ancient enough to have rusted
almost beyond recognition. It was clear that for the Director, the time
for sentiment had passed. Elisabeth contented herself with repeating the
unspoken vow she had held close for nearly as long as she could
remember. One day, she would become a warden, too. She would make the
Director proud.
Salt cascaded onto the table as the coffer’s lid
creaked open. A stench of rotting leather rolled across the vault, so
potent that she almost gagged.
A grimoire lay inside. It was a
thick volume with disheveled, yellowing pages sandwiched between slabs
of greasy black leather. It would have looked fairly ordinary, if not
for the bulbous protrusions that bulged from the cover. They resembled
giant warts, or bubbles on the surface of a pool of tar. Each was the
size of a large marble, and there were dozens altogether, deforming
nearly every inch of the leather’s surface.
The
Director pulled on a heavy pair of iron-lined gloves. Elisabeth
hastened to follow her example. She bit the inside of her cheek as the
Director lifted the book from the coffer and placed it within the circle
of salt.
The instant the Director set it down, the protrusions
split open. They weren’t warts—they were eyes. Eyes of every color,
bloodstained and rolling, the pupils dilating and contracting to
pinpricks as the grimoire convulsed in the Director’s hands. Gritting
her teeth, she forced it open. Automatically, Elisabeth reached into the
circle and clamped down the other side, feeling the leather twitch and
heave through her gloves. Furious. Alive.
Those eyes were not
sorcerous conjurations. They were real, plucked from human skulls long
ago, sacrificed to create a volume powerful enough to contain the spells
etched across its pages. According to history, most sacrifices had not
been willing.
“The Book of Eyes,” the Director said, perfectly
calm. “It contains spells that allow sorcerers to reach into the minds
of others, read their thoughts, and even control their actions.
Fortunately, only a handful of sorcerers in the entire kingdom have ever
been granted permission to read it.”
“Why would they want to?”
Elisabeth burst out, before she could stop herself. The answer was
obvious. Sorcerers were evil by nature, corrupted by the demonic magic
they wielded. If it weren’t for the Reforms, which had made it illegal
for sorcerers to bind books with human parts, grimoires like the Book of
Eyes wouldn’t be so exceptionally rare. No doubt sorcerers had
attempted to replicate it over the years, but the spells couldn’t be
written down using ordinary materials. The sorcery’s power would
instantly reduce the ink and parchment to ashes.
To her surprise, the Director took her question seriously, though she was no longer looking at Elisabeth. Instead she
focused
on turning the pages, inspecting them for any damage they might have
sustained during the journey. “There may come a time when spells like
these are necessary, no matter how foul. We have a great responsibility
to our kingdom, Scrivener. If this grimoire were destroyed, its spells
would be lost forever. It’s the only one of its kind.”
“Yes, Director.” That, she understood. Wardens both protected grimoires from the world, and protected the world from them.
She
braced herself as the Director paused, leaning down to examine a stain
on one of the pages. Transferring high-class grimoires came at a risk,
since any accidental damage could provoke their transformation into a
Malefict. They needed to be inspected carefully before their interment
in the vault. Elisabeth felt certain that several of the eyes, peering
out from beneath the cover, were aimed directly at her—and that they
glittered with cunning.
Somehow, she knew she shouldn’t meet
their gaze. Hoping to distract herself, she glanced aside to the pages.
Some of the sentences were written in Austermeerish or the Old Tongue.
But others were scrawled in Enochian, the language of sorcerers, made up
of strange, jagged runes that shimmered on the parchment like
smoldering embers. It was a language one could only learn by consorting
with demons. Merely looking at the runes made her temples throb.
“Apprentice . . .”
The
whisper slithered against her mind, as alien and unexpected as the
cold, slimy touch of a fish beneath the water of a pond. Elisabeth
jerked and looked up. If the Director heard the voice, too, she showed
no sign.
“Apprentice, I see you. . . .”
Elisabeth’s
breath caught. She did as the Director had instructed and tried to
ignore the voice, but it was impossible to concentrate on anything else
with so many eyes watching her, agleam with sinister intelligence.
“Look at me . . . look . . .”
Slowly but surely, as if drawn by an invisible force, Elisabeth’s gaze began to travel downward.
“There,”
said the Director. Her voice sounded dim and distorted, like she was
speaking from underwater. “We are finished. Scrivener?”
When
Elisabeth didn’t answer, the Director slammed the grimoire shut, cutting
its voice off midwhisper. Elisabeth’s senses rushed back. She sucked in
a breath, her face burning with humiliation. The eyes bulged furiously,
darting between her and the Director.
“Well done,” the Director said. “You held out much longer than I expected.”
“It
almost had me,” Elisabeth whispered. How could the Director
congratulate her? A clammy sweat clung to her skin, and in the vault’s
chill, she began to shiver.
“Yes. That was what I wished to show
you tonight. You have a way with grimoires, an affinity for them that I
have never seen in an apprentice before. But despite that, you still
have much to learn. You want to become a warden, do you not?”
Spoken
in front of the Director, witnessed by the angel statues lining the
walls, Elisabeth’s soft reply possessed the quality of a confession.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“Just remember that there are many
paths open to you.” The scar’s distortion gave the Director’s mouth an
almost rueful cast. “Be certain, before you choose, that the life of a
warden is what you truly desire.”
Elisabeth
nodded, not trusting herself to speak. If she had passed the test, she
didn’t understand why the Director would advise her to consider
forsaking her dream. Perhaps she had shown herself in some other way to
be unready, unprepared. In that case, she would simply have to try
harder. She had a year left before she turned seventeen and became
eligible for training at the Collegium—time she could use to prove
herself beyond a doubt, and earn the Director’s approval. She only hoped
it would be enough.
Together, they wrestled the grimoire back
into the coffer. As soon as it touched the salt, it ceased struggling.
The eyes rolled upward, showing crescents of milky white before they
sagged shut. The slam of the lid shattered the vault’s sepulchral quiet.
The coffer wouldn’t be opened again for years, perhaps decades. It was
secure. It posed a threat no longer.
But she couldn’t banish the
sound of its voice from her thoughts, or the feeling that she hadn’t
seen the last of the Book of Eyes—and it had not seen the last of her.
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