Scholar of Decay

  A Scheming Family.

  A Devastating City.

  A Terrible Revenge.

  “I don’t know why she hides what she is,” he said instead. “Her family is so strong here it couldn’t possibly make any difference. But then, her kind enjoy dark and labyrinthine games, so perhaps that’s sufficient explanation. I’m sure it amuses them to mingle with the citizens of the cities.”

  His voice trailed off as he remembered another time power had called to power and his beloved Natalia had paid the price of the visit. Finally he regained control and continued. “It’s time for me to go, Lia.” Swallowing his grief, he cupped both hands around the statue without actually touching it. “I love you,” he whispered past the constriction in his throat. “I promise you, I’ll find a way.”

  Face twisted with painful memories, he returned to his bedchamber, pulling the study door closed softly behind him. As he looked into his mirror, he froze. The laughing face of the wild-haired man filled the glass. His lips writhed with the force of his amusement. His eyes, locked on Aurek’s, were dark with gleeful hate.

  To your victory! jeered the apparition.

  From the award-winning author of the Blood Books comes Scholar of Decay, the story of a man who learns that being a scholar does not protect one from the ravages of magic and the schemes of a powerful family bent on evil.

  RavenLoft®

  The Covenant

  Death of a Darklord

  LAURELL K. HAMILTON

  Vampire of the Mists

  CHRISTIE GOLDEN

  I, Strahd:

  The Memoirs of a Vampire

  P. N. ELROD

  To Sleep With Evil

  ANDRIA CARDARELLE

  Tapestry of Dark Souls

  ELAINE BERGSTROM

  Scholar of Decay

  TANYA HUFF

  SCHOLAR OF DECAY

  The Covenant

  ©1995 TSR, Inc.

  ©2007 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Represented by Hasbro Europe, 2 Roundwood Ave, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB11 1AZ, UK.

  RAVENLOFT, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, all other Wizards of the Coast product names, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA and other countries.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Cover art by: Erik M. Gist

  First Printing: December 1995

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6473-4

  640A5187000001 EN

  For customer service, contact:

  U.S., Canada, Asia Pacific, & Latin America: Wizards of the Coast LLC, P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057-0707, +1-800-324-6496, www.wizards.com/customerservice

  U.K., Eire, & South Africa: Wizards of the Coast LLC, c/o Hasbro UK Ltd., P.O. Box 43, Newport, NP19 4YD, UK, Tel: +08457 12 55 99, Email: wizards@hasbro.co.uk

  All other countries: Wizards of the Coast p/a Hasbro Belgium NV/SA, Industrialaan 1, 1702 Groot-Bijgaarden, Belgium, Tel: +32.70.233.277, Email: wizards@hasbro.be

  Visit our websites at www.wizards.com

  www.DungeonsandDragons.com

  v3.1

  For Carrie and Dave

  and a hundred afternoons

  spent rolling ten-sided dice.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  “Aurek?” Taking the Heavy Tray from the Kitchen maid, Natalia Nuikin smilingly dismissed the girl and pushed open the narrow door to her husband’s study. It would have been locked to anyone else. That it opened to her touch was a measure of the depths of her husband’s love. His study was his sanctuary, his alone until his marriage had opened more than just his heart. “Aurek?”

  He was standing in the center of the book-lined room, one hand holding a huge, red, leather-bound volume, the other lifted to shoulder height, ink-stained fingers spread wide. Facing him was a creature out of nightmare. The crest of its misshapen head brushed against the beams in the ceiling. Its skin was gray and pebbled. Its eyes, all three of them, were amber. Two rows of pointed teeth were clearly visible as it opened an enormous mouth and roared.

  Natalia screamed. The tray and its contents smashed against the floor.

  Aurek whirled around to face her.

  The monster vanished.

  “Natalia?” Aurek set the book on its pedestal and quickly crossed the room to take both her hands in his. “What’s the matter?”

  Trembling, she clung to him. “There was … I saw … It was …”

  “Illusion. Only illusion.” Lightly grasping her chin, he lifted her face until their eyes met. “Don’t you remember how I promised you that I would never bring danger into this house?”

  Unable to decide if she should be feeling fear or anger and finally letting go of both, Natalia found a shaky smile. “I remember. It just seemed so real.” Pulling free of his grasp, she knelt to scoop up the fallen food and bits of broken crockery. “I thought you might want something to eat. You’ve been in here all day.”

  He knelt beside her. “I’ve finally deciphered that last bit on the scroll, Lia.”

  “And you’ve added it to the book?”

  “I was just about to.”

  She took a thick piece of buttered bread out of his hand just before he could bite into it and put it back on the tray. “You can’t eat that, Aurek. It’s been on the floor.”

  “Then I shall have to eat this instead.” Lifting the inside of her wrist to his mouth, he nibbled lightly on the soft flesh.

  Natalia giggled. She tried not to; it wasn’t the sort of thing matrons of good Borcan families did, but she couldn’t help herself. “Aurek!”

  “Natalia!” Her name emerged considerably muffled as he’d pushed up the full embroidered sleeve of her shirt and was now chewing on the crook of her elbow.

  Pulling her arm free, she pushed him playfully away. “Not here and not now,” she admonished. “What would the servants think?”

  “The servants can’t get in,” he reminded her with a smile, but he stood and extended a hand to help her to her feet. “I tell you what, give me another hour and I’ll be finished for the afternoon. Then I’ll come out and have something to eat in the dining room, like a civilized human being.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She stood on her toes and pressed a kiss against his mouth to seal the pledge. With the tray balanced against her hip and one hand on the door, she paused and glanced nervously over at the book. Even she, with no magic of her own, could feel the power contained between those red leather covers. “I’m not sure you should be adding to it.”

  “It’s perfectly safe, Lia. I have protections …”

  “Around the book and around the study and around the entire house,” Lia said, completing his oft-repeated assurance. “I know.” She kissed him again. “You’ve got an hour, no more; then I’m coming back to drag
you out into the sunshine—by your ears if I have to.”

  As the door closed behind her, she heard the sound of the chair being pulled up to his desk. It was very likely that she’d have to make good her threat. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Brows drawn pensively, she carried the wrecked luncheon back to the kitchens. Illusionary monsters aside, she found her husband’s research more frustrating than frightening. Aurek believed in knowledge for the sake of knowledge. As he kept reminding her, he was a scholar, nothing more. He thought knowledge was the only thing in the world that was pure and untainted. It never seemed to occur to him that it could actually be used for something.

  There was so much good he could do with the knowledge he’d acquired over his years of scholarship—if only she could convince him to do so. She smiled as she thought of him—arrogant and brilliant, inkstained and rumpled—striding out into the world to save it from itself.

  Well, maybe not, she decided, setting the tray on one end of the huge old table and nodding at the cook. She’d brought most of the servants with her when she’d come here from her mother’s house. Before their marriage, Aurek had been living alone on the Nuikin family’s old country estate with only a single manservant. Personally, Natalia thought that Edik, the servant, deserved a medal for enduring the situation.

  The sight of a horse galloping past the kitchen windows drew her out into the gardens in time to see Aurek’s brother, Dmitri, ride into the stableyard. When he saw her, he spurred his mount toward the house.

  He was a handsome, athletic young man—a boy, really, she amended, for there had been fifteen years and four sisters between his birth and Aurek’s. Although Natalia saw very little of the rest of Aurek’s family—they foolishly preferred town and the court of Ivana Boritsi to country life—Dmitri occasionally made an effort to break into Aurek’s self-imposed isolation. Desperate for acceptance by the older brother held up as a paragon of virtue by their sisters, Dmitri had no idea of how to go about gaining Aurek’s approbation and no intention of admitting such a need to anyone, even himself. Natalia liked her young brother-in-law and wished Aurek were more welcoming.

  Dmitri had never learned to hide what he was feeling, and this afternoon, he looked distressed.

  “Natalia.” He combined bow and dismount, somehow managing to make them both look graceful. “I have to speak with Aurek.”

  “He’s in his study, but …”

  “His study.” Dmitri’s lips thinned. “I might have known he’d be no help!”

  Natalia sighed. In many ways, the two were very much alike. Once one of them got an idea into his handsome head, it practically took direct intervention from the gods to get it out again. Aurek believed Dmitri was an undisciplined fool who thought only of himself, and Dmitri believed Aurek was a cold intellectual who cared for no one. They were both wrong, but Natalia was having a difficult time convincing them of that. “What’s the matter?”

  “What makes you think something’s the matter? I mean, just because Aurek doesn’t deign to notice me, that doesn’t mean no one does.” He threw the words away with such total indifference that it was obvious he had to be in some kind of serious trouble.

  For a handsome young man in Borca, serious trouble could mean only Ivana Boritsi.

  “I’ll go and get him for you.”

  “If you think he’ll come.”

  She laid her hand on his arm and smiled comfortingly at him. “Yes, I think he’ll come.”

  Leaving Dmitri pacing about the garden, Natalia hurried back to the study. She was so intent on coming up with the best way to win the argument she was about to have with her husband that she never noticed how quiet the house had grown … how there were no servants about.

  The smell of heated metal drifted toward her as she pushed open the study door.

  “Aurek?”

  A man with wild gray hair and even wilder eyes stood by the pedestal, clutching Aurek’s red leather book.

  Natalia stepped over the threshold and stared in confusion at the stranger. “Who are you?”

  He smiled at her, and she saw madness twisting the curve of thin lips.

  “Fate,” he said.

  Hands Clasped Behind His Back, Aurek Nuikin Stood in the tower window and watched the light fade over Pont-a-Museau. Dusk masked the worst of the decay, replacing the rot with a patina of shabby gentility. Even the river, flowing sluggishly between the islands and through the canals, seemed less fetid than it had under the light of an unforgiving sun. For those who knew no better, dusk made the city appear a much less dangerous place than it actually was.

  Aurek knew better.

  The search for knowledge had occupied his entire life; had destroyed his life; could, perhaps, redeem his life. After months of frantic study, of piecing together travelers’ tales and rumors for which he could find no source or validation, the search had led him here, to this island city in Richemulot, in the desperate hope that in these ruins he could find his salvation.

  As he watched, dusk gave way to darkness, and the true face of Pont-a-Museau emerged.

  In the near distance, someone screamed

  His mouth twisted as he pulled the shutters closed. In a very short while he would face Richemulot’s greatest challenge. It was long past time to prepare.

  A huge, humped form scurried across the slate roof of the Chateau Delanuit and paused outside an attic window. Much larger than the giant rat it resembled—almost the size of a large dog—it dug front claws into the rotting wood of the windowsill and thrust its wedge-shaped head into the house. Apparently satisfied, it squeezed the rest of its ebony body through the opening, the movement so lithe, so fluid, it seemed to be pouring itself into the attic as though it were made of liquid darkness rather than corporeal flesh.

  Once inside, it moved purposefully down a steep flight of stairs and along a wide hallway. No lamps lit the gloom, but it moved in the half-darkness of the corridor as easily as it would have in full sunlight. More easily perhaps. Although not strictly nocturnal, it much preferred the night to the day.

  It paused for a moment outside a closed door. Rising up on sleek haunches, weight balanced by a hideous length of naked tail, it laid one paw against the wood and appeared to be thinking, notched right ear cocked forward, claws flexed. Some of the reddish brown stains that covered them flaked off to disappear in the pattern of the marble floor. After a long moment, the creature shook its head—as though reluctantly dismissing the dark possibilities gathered about it—dropped to the floor, and continued on its way.

  The door it wanted was open. Tail lashing, it slunk into the room beyond.

  A few minutes passed before Louise Renier stepped out into the hall, a red silk robe tied loosely around her waist. Her furious summons brought a servant racing up from the first floor at a dead run.

  “Yes, mamselle?” he panted, trying very hard not to stare at the curves of ivory flesh exposed by the gaping robe.

  “Nothing works around here,” Louise snarled, pushing a thick fall of ebony hair back off her face with a bloodstained hand and tucking it behind the edge of her ear. “The bellpull’s broken again, and I want a bath!”

  Hours later, Louise stepped out of her suite in time to see a whimpering servant scurry past, blood dribbling out from under the hand clutched to her cheek. Sighing deeply, she hurried down the corridor, carefully avoiding the glistening drops that gleamed like jewels against the marble floor. A pity, she thought, and not for the first time, that such an enthralling color occurs only in such an … ephemeral form. It was never half so pretty when it dried.

  She paused with one hand on the door to her sister’s suite, smiled almost ruefully, and entered.

  The outer room was empty, so she made her way to the inner chamber, her gaze lingering over the furnishings as she walked. In sharp contrast to the chaos in the rest of the chateau, these rooms were practically empty, the pieces richly simple, the arrangement sparsely elegant. Louise hated it. She remembered when this had
been their grandfather’s suite—before Jacqueline had killed him—and with all her heart, she longed for the chance to gut the rooms to the bare walls and replace everything with her own more opulent style.

  At the open door to the bedchamber, Louise paused and stared fixedly at the back of Jacqueline’s slender neck. A few steps, a quick twist, and control of Richemulot would pass on—to her. But though she’d grown weary of waiting for her turn to rule, she had not grown weary of living. Jacqueline had to have heard her approach, and to try anything now would be tantamount to suicide. She’d have had a better chance earlier in the evening—better, but not assured, which was why she’d decided, once again, to wait. Her sister’s death would be meaningless if she didn’t survive to enjoy it.

  Arranging her expression into a parody of concern, she asked, “Trouble?”

  The woman seated at the dressing table turned. Sleek, black brows rose into a delicate arch. “Concerning what?” she wondered.

  “I saw whatever-her-name-is.” Louise stepped forward, red kid shoes sinking into a carpet that had a design so complex several children had gone blind weaving it. “It looked as though you two had a disagreement.”

  Jacqueline lifted one bare shoulder and let it fall in a graceful, minimalist shrug. “Hardly trouble; the stupid woman thought she was permitted to have an opinion on what I wear.”

  “And she’s still alive?”

  “I like the way she does my hair.” Gleaming braids wrapped round her head in an ebony crown. Glancing up at her twin, she smiled and murmured, “What do you think?”

  “Beautiful.” It didn’t matter what she thought; there could be no other answer. Louise clenched her teeth as Jacqueline’s smile broadened. Both sisters recognized the question as the petty test it was. She fought the urge to touch her own hair, artfully arranged to cover her damaged ear. “Are you ready?”

  “Not quite.” Shaking the folds out of her gown’s full skirt, Jacqueline stood. “Why don’t you go on. I want to see Jacques for a moment before I leave.”