Scholar of Decay (18 page)

Carefully rewrapping the amulet, he shoved it to the bottom of an inside pocket and wriggled feet first into the opening.

They lost it again.

Their purposeful advance turned to an aimless wandering as bedraggled ravens watched in beady-eyed amusement from the shelter of shattered casements.

In the hollow breast of what had once been a powerful and feared man, a red heat began to burn. Too many years had passed, forgotten in the catacombs, for him to recognize anger now that it had returned to him, but he welcomed the warmth that burned away the confusion.

He reached out and grabbed the unyielding flesh of his companions’ arms, yanking them to a halt by his side.

They would wait and, when they could feel their master’s stolen property, they would move quickly. He would not allow it to disappear again.

His heel compressed something soft against the slippery surface of the rubble, and Aurek nearly lost his balance as he dropped to
more-or-less solid ground. He straightened in almost full darkness, as what little daylight there was seemed unwilling to enter with him. Using the sound of his entrance to define the dimensions of the room, he determined it was larger than he’d thought from outside, the gray light of his exit was farther away, and he wasn’t alone.

He could hear something breathing, noisily sucking moist air in and just as noisily blowing it out through phlegm-encrusted passageways. There might have been more than one, but the noise he heard was too diffuse to tell for sure. Preparing to defend himself, he decided that light would probably be his most potent weapon.

Slipping his hand into the pocket of his coat—the items it held would be less than useless tucked safely away in his pack—he rummaged among the possibilities until his fingers touched an oilcloth-wrapped lump about the size of his thumb. Drawing it out, he quickly unwrapped it to expose a whitish, waxy substance that glowed faintly in the dark. Although the spell he was about to evoke was extraordinarily simple, finding phosphorus in large enough pieces to make using it worthwhile was not. Under normal circumstances, lanterns made much more sense, used no power, and were infinitely easier to replace. Today, however, he wanted his hands free.

At any other time he’d have drawn in a deep breath to help his focus, but the stench surrounding him made shallow breathing much healthier—even the thought of a deep breath turned his stomach. Holding the phosphorus on his left palm, he closed his fingers around it, spoke the necessary words of command, and threw it into the air. The speck of light whirled about his head and divided into eighteen specks that grew brighter with every revolution. On Aurek’s command the eighteen became six, then three globes of light, each the size of a man’s fist.

“Spread,” he said curtly. Each globe moved about three feet away—one in front, two behind—in a triangular pattern. In their clear white light Aurek finally saw where he stood.

Before the house had collapsed, the area had likely been part of an attached coachhouse; now it was a long, narrow cavern. Rising just barely higher than his head, the ceiling looked ready to collapse at any moment. Moisture glistened on the rubble, collecting on low points and dripping into foul puddles. The stink rose from piles of rotting garbage and excrement and was strong enough, in such close quarters, to make his eyes water.

Edik is going to have a fit about the condition of my boots, he found himself thinking as he took a cautious step forward. He could still hear the moist and labored breathing, but had no better idea of where it came from than he’d had while in the dark.

Then one of the larger piles of garbage moved. Something whimpered as it squinted at him through red-rimmed, rheumy eyes. It had been human once. Perhaps it still was, under a looser definition of human than Aurek used. A second pile of garbage lifted up to the light a face covered in oozing scabs. A third scuttled back into the shadows.

He’d heard of these. The other residents of the city named these pitiful refugees the lost ones. They were the people who had seen one too many horrors. Had fought one too many battles. Had been forced to endure more pain than they were able. Had finally surrendered to horror, to defeat, to pain. Lost ones.

They were well named, Aurek acknowledged as he walked carefully among them. They cowered as he passed, but that could have as easily been from the unaccustomed light as from any threat he presented. They’d gone far beyond caring for their own safety; all that remained was the lowest, most bestial level of survival. They lived, but that was all. The worst of it was, when he forced himself
to look closer, he could see the atrocities that had driven them to surrender lurking behind the blank despair in their eyes. Because they’d stopped just short of death, they hadn’t found the forgetfulness they sought.

One of them sucked something dark in between cracked and bleeding lips and began to chew. Aurek gave thanks he hadn’t seen what it actually was.

Once these people had lives, loved ones.

Natalia …

She had brought light and love and laughter into his life, and all three had been taken from him as she had been, trapped with her. If he couldn’t save her, could he, even he, fall this far?

His mouth went dry, and he began to shake, fighting a wave of despair that threatened to drag him under and throw him up as wreckage on a not-so-distant shore. He would save her! He would! This was not his future!

Gradually, he fought his way back to calm and found himself with one hand up on the damp lip of the exit hole with no memory of how he’d crossed to it. I will save you, Natalia, he promised, as he had a thousand times before. I will never surrender. He took a deep, steadying breath of the cleaner air pouring in from outside and silently cursed his imagination. He was an intelligent man, a strong man, yes, even a powerful man. He would never come to this.

His lip curled in disgust—at the weakness of others, at his own momentary lapse—as he started to climb out into the rain. A noise behind him made him turn, unable to deny curiosity. The third of the lost ones, the one who had originally moved away from the light, crept toward him on hands and knees. The tangled remains of blonde braids and a face clear of beard suggested it had once been a woman, though its condition destroyed any claim to gender and it could have as easily been a beardless boy. When it felt Aurek’s gaze
upon it, it lifted its own sunken eyes to his face and stretched out a filthy, almost skeletal hand.

Save me
.

He could hear it as clearly as if the words had been spoken aloud.

A moment later, the hand fell and eyes stared at nothing, said nothing, wanted nothing.

Aurek climbed out into a garbage-strewn cul-de-sac, dimmed his lights, put the wrapped phosphorus back into his pocket, and threw up until his stomach twisted painfully around nothing.

“But, Aurek, you could do so much with the power you have.”
Natalia’s voice rang in memory.

“I’m a scholar, Lia. Try to understand.”

She put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Actually doing something will make you no less a scholar.”

I’m doing something now, Lia, but I can’t save everyone who needs saving.

Aurek spat and straightened. With trembling fingers, he pulled out the amulet and followed it farther to the east.

Although he tried to turn his thoughts in other directions, they kept returning to the lost ones. Burying his emotional response in scholarship, he tried to work out how something so uncaring of personal safety could possibly survive in such a hostile environment. The Narrows were reputed to hold packs of wild dogs as well as wandering undead, giant spiders, a variety of snakes, and the ubiquitous rats—sewer and otherwise. The lost ones would be easy prey.

Unable to find an answer, he decided that the dominant predator of Pont-a-Museau would consider them poor sport—wererats liked to have more fun with their food.

Wererats. He wiped the rain out of his eyes and found himself
considering Louise Renier and his brother without rage or disgust for the first time. What, besides the obvious, did she want with Dmitri? Or was that all she wanted? Perhaps she had no interest beyond the physical. Wererats were, after all, in the habit of concerning themselves with self-indulgence and little else. If that was the case, Dmitri was in no real physical danger until she tired of him.

But other dangers …

Aurek shook his head, rainwater spraying off the ends of his hair. His warnings had gone unheeded. What was he supposed to do? Keep his brother locked in the house while he searched the ruins for magic to free his Natalia? He would not sacrifice his wife to Dmitri’s stubbornness.

“If he still doesn’t see what Louise Renier is,” Aurek muttered to a cold autumn wind, wondering how anyone could be so willfully blind, “then perhaps his naiveté is protection enough.”

The chain tugged at his finger, and he followed the pull down a narrow alley between two buildings still miraculously intact. Stepping over the gnawed bones of a cat, he considered recalling his lights, then decided not to waste the power. Except for the three lost ones—who were definitely no threat—he’d seen none of the creatures supposedly so prevalent in the Narrows. Granted, a number of the hunters were nocturnal but a few were not, and the appearance of prey should have brought them out. Perhaps the rain kept them from hunting; it was certainly unpleasant enough.

Shoulders hunched against the wet, Aurek picked his path with care. His map of the city had indicated there were underground canals cutting through the area, and he had no desire to find himself suddenly swimming. As his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light between the buildings, he saw that the amulet seemed to be glowing faintly.

He wasn’t surprised, given the power it held and its current proximity to the place it had been found.

“A cousin of mine heard you were searching for magical artifacts in the ruins.… He gave me something to give to you. Says he found it under the city in some sort of ruined workshop.”

“Why did he give it to you?”

“I expect it’s because your brother and I are such friends.”

Why are you giving it to me?

He hadn’t asked her that and, all at once, he realized he should have. Why would Louise Renier give him anything? Certainly not merely because a cousin had asked her to. She’d hated him even before the cellar had collapsed beneath her, and he couldn’t see how being thrown into the sewers could’ve changed her opinion.

Why hadn’t he asked her?

Why hadn’t he seen anything unusual in her even speaking with him?

Because he’d been thrown off-balance by what had happened in the cardroom. Because once he’d seen the amulet, he could think of nothing else.

Aurek stopped where he was and stared at the surrounding shadows. He was walking into a trap.

Louise Renier had lied to him: that was a given. Her feelings about him aside, he doubted she was capable of telling the truth. But in all his long years of study, Aurek had never heard of a true lycanthrope being a wizard, nor could he imagine a wererat, for all they were probably the most intelligent of such creatures, having the necessary discipline to study the art.

For all the lies that had come with it, the amulet was real. It had been created by a powerful wizard, and wizards had workshops. Even now the amulet was drawing him toward the place it had been found. He had to follow it. Whatever the risk, he couldn’t
chance missing the one opportunity he might have to return his Natalia to life.

“And surely,” he allowed, as the amulet led him deeper into the alley, “I can overcome any trap devised by a wererat.” If he had no answers, at least he had faith in his own abilities.

The alley continued, offensive to eye and nose both, for another thirty feet, then opened out into a ruined courtyard. Aurek stepped out from between the buildings, relieved at being away from their oppressive bulk even though he now had no protection from the nearly opaque sheets of rain. He had no idea he was no longer alone until a gray hand wrapped around the amulet and yanked the chain from his finger, ripping off skin and the fingernail with it.