Scholar of Decay Page 6

  The wall he soon arrived at was, unfortunately, much more solid than the floor.

  Too late, he realized the stairs were the only way in or out, and the stairs had become a seething mass of rats. Cornered, Aurek turned to face them in time to see Louise Renier descend. Flanked by the giant rats she commanded, the wererat started across the room toward him.

  If he fought and was destroyed, all was lost.

  If he fought and won—and to win he must kill the lord of Richemulot’s twin—all was also lost.

  Rats were still coming down the stairs, and now they’d begun to climb up from the sewers as well.

  Aurek found himself wondering how Louise controlled her lesser cousins, if some sort of telepathy occurred between the wererats and the rest. He had to force his attention back to his own safety. Answers would have to wait. For now, the only question had to be survival.

  There was nowhere else to run. The ceilings in these buildings were high, even deep in the cellars—too high for him to reach the room above. He pressed his shoulder hard against the damp and unyielding stone that held him trapped. If only he knew what was on the other side.… But he didn’t.

  He would have to fight.

  All other choices had been taken from him.

  He turned to face the wererat, fascinated in spite of himself by the similarities between this animal and the woman who had tried to seduce him less than twenty-four hours before.

  Rats continued to pour into the room.

  The floor shuddered under their combined weight.

  Squealing in fury, a rat dropped onto his shoulder from above. Without thinking, he plucked it off and flung it in the wererat’s face.

  He missed.

  She’d moved, almost too quickly for a human eye to follow, and now she stood less than an arm’s length away, gazing up at him, their position a perverted mockery of the way they’d stood at Joelle Milette’s party.

  Whatever he did, whatever the outcome, Aurek knew it destroyed the chance that Pont-a-Museau represented for Natalia.

  Louise reveled in the despair on the scholar’s face. Terror would have been good but, now that she saw it, despair was better. Hissing softly, she began to rise up onto her haunches.

  With a screech of tortured timber, the center of the floor collapsed.

  Rats fell, squealing, into the sewer. Those near enough to the edges of the hole surged forward, adding their weight to wood already stressed. The collapse spread.

  Louise felt the floor beneath her hind feet begin to break away. She whipped her tail forward, found her balance, and lost it again when a giant rat, driven by panic, slammed its weight against her legs.

  Shrieking in fury, she plunged, tangled in a mess of rats and splintered wood, into the fetid water below.

  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 n
ail 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?”

  “Are you trying to get us in trouble with Herself?” Annette added incredulously.

  “The trouble with you lot is, you never think. Point one: Herself is interested in the lad. Point two: he’s out without his brother. Point three: something’ll chew his face off in less than a week if we just let him wander around the city by himself.” Yves flicked a finger into the air to mark each point. “Point four: if we take him under our wing, so to speak, he’ll survive and Herself will be happy.”

  “Point five,” Georges muttered around a mouthful of half-chewed food, “when Herself is happy, we’re all a lot happier.”

  “My point exactly.” Yves leaned forward and glared at Chantel and Annette. “So, go and get him.”

  “Why us?”

  “Because with you two hanging on his arms, he’s not likely to start thinking with what’s between his ears.”

  Dmitri saw the two young women approaching through the gathering dusk and wondered, briefly, if he should turn around and walk the other way. Then warm, yielding flesh pressed itself up against both sides of his body and it was too late.

  “Are you all right?” Chantel asked.

  “We were so worried about you,” Annette added.

  Chantel leaned closer. “You were out too far for us to reach so we ran for help, but when we got back your brother had already rescued you.”

  “You went away,” Dmitri said slowly. His memory of what had happened the night before was foggy, but that, at least, he was fairly certain of. All six of them had gone away and left him alone.

  “A stupid joke that almost went terribly wrong,” Chantel placed soft fingers against his jaw and turned his face toward her own. “Please say you forgive us.”

  Staring down into her eyes, Dmitri suddenly realized they weren’t brown; they were red, and hair he’d seen in candlelight as a pale blonde—paler even than Aurek’s—was actually a completely colorless white, as were her brows and lashes. Rising out of memory came an image of a white shape in the water, a white shape that held him as he struggled to reach the surface.

  “Please,” she repeated, her h
and closing like a heated band around his arm.

  He had to swallow hard before he could assure them both that they were forgiven. The next thing he knew, they were leading him into an outdoor café built on a landing carved into the side of the riverbank. It was crowded in spite of an autumn chill in the air. Then Yves was standing and clasping his hand, Georges stopped eating long enough to shove food and drink toward him, and the twins were shuffling chairs to make room for him at the table.

  A few moments later, after apologies and reassurances had been exchanged all around, Yves asked him if he was attending the evening’s party.

  “Another party?” Dmitri asked around a mouthful of pastry. He noticed that the waiters were all extremely attentive of his friends, and he very much liked being included in that attention.

  “There are always parties at this time of the year in Pont-a-Museau,” Chantel told him. “In the summer it’s too hot and in the winter it’s too cold, so in the spring and fall we make up for lost time. Don’t you like to party, Dmitri?”

  “Of course I do.” He flushed. “But I haven’t been invited.…”

  Yves clapped him on the shoulder just a little too hard. “We just invited you. You’ll come with us.”

  “Aurek …”

  “You don’t have to ask his permission, do you?”

  Dmitri bridled. “Of course not.”

  “Good.” With a fastidious thumb and forefinger, Yves pulled Dmitri’s brocade vest a little way from his body. “This might be the height of fashion in Borca,” he sniffed derisively, “but it doesn’t work here. First thing we’ve got to do is get you some decent clothes.”

  Cinching a broad cloth-of-gold belt around her narrow waist, Louise preened in front of her mirror. Over the course of the afternoon, as she’d thought about what had happened in the cellar of the abandoned house, her fury had turned to speculation.

  A mere scholar could not have avoided the collapse of the cellar floor. A mere scholar would have fallen into the sewer and under her claws and would, at this moment, be providing sustenance for any number of lesser creatures.