Small Magics (47 page)

“Lead on.”

There was some scuffling while everyone found each other and linked hands. Thomas ended up between Benjamin and George, and wondered who was hanging onto Eileen. Henry he guessed, and found himself feeling a twinge of jealousy. He put the thought away as ridiculous, given the circumstances.

“Everyone hanging on?” asked Benjamin.

A murmured assent passed through the group.

“Here we go.” Benjamin led them at a slow, steady pace down the middle of the hallway. Thomas squinted through the dark, trying to make out possible obstacles, but only seeing dim shapes as they passed them. Benjamin kept them clear of any collisions, taking them half the length of the building to a large staircase. He found the banister, guided the others to it, and led them down. Their footsteps, as quiet as they tried to make them, echoed off the stone walls of the empty building. The dimness turned to pitch black as they descended and their pace slowed even further. There were several stumbles, and some quiet cursing as heels were trodden on and one person ran into another. Eventually, Benjamin whispered, “I’m on the floor.”

“About time,” muttered Henry. “Can we light the lamps, now?”

“Aye, it should be safe.”

After a brief struggle with flints and oil-soaked wicks, the lamps were lit. The group found themselves staring down a very long, very dark hallway.

“Well, this is creepy,” Eileen said, her voice shaking just a bit.

“Not as bad as the graveyard,” muttered George.

“To you.”

Thomas ignored the siblings and turned to Benjamin. “Do you know where the door is?”

Benjamin shook his head. “I only went there the once. It’s down here someplace, though. A plain door leading to a flight of stairs down.”

Thomas looked into the gaping darkness in front of him. “How far do the hallways go?”

“All the way around the building.”

“Wonderful. What’s the door to the vaults look like?”

“Rectangular, wood, iron handle,” said Benjamin. “They don’t label them, you know.”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “Fine. You and Henry take that side—” he indicated to his left, “—George, Eileen, and I will take the right. First one who finds steps going down, say so.”

Fortunately there were not many doors to be tried, despite the hall’s length. Most led to storage rooms, though a set of four opened into small meditation chambers, each with a kneeling stool and a small window that would have let light in from outside, had it been day. Benjamin, discovering the first, covered his lantern and warned the others to do the same. They rounded the first corner and were half-way down the other side of the building when George pulled a door open and called, “Here!”

Benjamin came over and opened the lantern enough to see the stairs beyond the door. “I think this is it. Give me a moment.”

He disappeared down the stairs and through a doorway below, leaving the others to wait nervously in the thin yellow light of Thomas’s lantern. It was a short wait. Benjamin quickly reappeared with a smile on his face. “This is it.”

“Right,” said Henry. “Who’s on look-out?”

Thomas, who hadn’t thought of it, managed an “Uhh…” before Henry interrupted.

“I thought so.” He handed his lantern to George. “I’ll be at the top of the stairs.”

“Which set?” asked Thomas.

“The ones to the main floor,” said Henry. “I won’t see a thing down here.”

“Can you find your way in the dark?” asked Benjamin.

“I can,” said Henry. “Be quick, will you?”

Thomas watched him go, then let Ben lead them down the stairs.

The room below was large, with a door every ten feet and bleak grey stone walls. The thick, musty smell of old books filled the hall. Thomas surveyed the doors. “I don’t suppose you remember which one it was, do you?”

Benjamin, standing in the middle of the room, swung his lantern in a slow circle to light them all. “No, but it’s fairly obvious.”

“How do you mean?”

“Thomas?” Eileen’s voice had gone up an octave. “Here.”

Thomas looked and his jaw dropped. Beside him, Benjamin nodded. “Aye, that would be it.”

The double doorway was large, and carvings decorated all sides. Demons danced up the frame, and at the centre of the wide lintel was a carving of a young woman, rays of light shooting out of her eyes and flames coming from her hands. Above her, writing was inscribed into the wood. Thomas surveyed it all and whistled.

“Timothy said the Blessed Daughter was the goddess of magic,” he said. “Looks like he was right.”

“That is not the Blessed Daughter,” Benjamin objected. “That is a representation of the evil caused by summoning unholy power from the Banished.”

Thomas moved closer to the door. “Then why are the flames hurting the demons?” He pointed at the wall. “See, they’re in pain here.”

Benjamin frowned. “That’s odd.”

“How old is this carving?” asked Eileen.

“Don’t know,” said Benjamin. “But the room was built when the Academy was.”

“Well, maybe it was here before the Church of the High Father declared all things magic to be sinful,” Eileen suggested, moving closer to the door herself. “Maybe she’s meant to be guarding the door.”

“If she was considered to be the one who gave magic to mortals, it would make sense,” agreed Thomas. “She’s there to prevent the books from being used for witchery. What do you think, Benjamin?”

Benjamin shook his head, a troubled look on his face. “It doesn’t make sense. If this is a representation of the Blessed Daughter as a giver of magic, why didn’t the Church of the High Father have it destroyed when they declared magic evil?”

“Because the Church of the High Father doesn’t own the Academy,” said Thomas. “The king does, and they’d need permission from him to destroy one of the original carvings.”

“So they changed the way the carving is interpreted?” asked Eileen.

Thomas nodded, then turned his attention to the rest of the door. The wood was solid, the handles brass, the hinges and lock iron. He looked to George. “Can you open it?”

“I think so,” said George. “Pass me the light.”

Benjamin, now looking very troubled indeed, handed George a lantern and got out of the way. The smith examined the hinges, grunting to himself. Thomas moved back beside Eileen to give George more room. He felt her hand fumble for his, then hold it tight. Her eyes kept going to the stairs, as if waiting for someone to appear and catch them all. Thomas knew exactly how she felt. At length she turned her attention to the writing above the door. “Thomas?”

“Aye?”

“Can you tell me what the writing says?”

Thomas examined it from where he stood. The script was very old fashioned, and while it was their own language, half the words were unfamiliar, and the spellings of the rest seemed to have been a matter of choice rather than custom. It took him a while to get through it, and when he did, he shuddered. “I’d rather not.”

“Benjamin, can you hold the light and shine it here?” George asked. Benjamin took the lantern and held it up. George put down the bag of tools he’d been carrying and dug through it. “This should be easy enough. Just keep the light steady.”

“Tell me what it says,” Eileen said to Thomas. “I want to know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Just tell her,” George ordered as he began prying at the hinges with a chisel. “She’ll be asking for the rest of the night, if you don’t.”

Thomas sighed. “I warned you.” He took a deep breath and began reading. “‘Beyond these doors lies evil. Let none but the righteous pass, and all others receive the wrath and curse of the Giver of Magic. Let them be plagued with disease, pain, and sorrow to the miserable end of their days on this earth, and tormented to the end of eternity by all the Banished.’”

“Oh.” Eileen’s voice was very quiet. “How much longer, George?”

“Not much,” George said. There was a grinding noise, and the hinge-pin pulled itself free and fell to the floor with a too-loud clank. Everyone froze in their place until the echoes died off. George stood up and began work on the next one. After a fairly short time that felt as long as of the rest Thomas’s life, the second hinge-pin hit the floor. Thomas could see the door list slightly from its own weight.

“All right,” George began prying the last hinge up. “Thomas, take the crowbar. Get it into the crack there.” He gestured to the thin line between the door edge and the wall. “We’ll need to get the door pried open this way, then we’ll be able to slip in.”

“Can we do it without breaking the lock?”

“I hope so.”

Thomas did as he was told, and started to put his weight against it. George put out a hand. “Not yet. Wait until the hinge is gone.”

Thomas nodded, watching George for a signal. Time dragged interminably on, broken only by the scraping of the chisel against the metal of the hinge-pin. The pin jumped free and fell to the floor with a metallic clatter. “Now,” George grunted and Thomas put his weight against the bar, inching the door outward. As soon as there was space to get his fingers in between the door and the wall, George grabbed it and pulled hard. Thomas heard the wood creak in protest, but George kept on with a steady pressure. The last hinges popped free of each other and the bottom corner of the door hit the ground with a
clunk
!

Everyone froze, listening. There were no other sounds. George shifted his grip, manoeuvred the door out a bit further and then pulled back hard. There was a scrape and a crunch, and the door began swinging down towards Eileen. She let out a short, involuntary cry and dodged backward. Benjamin quickly grabbed the other edge of the door with his free hand and held it up. With an easy move, the two big men lifted the door away and leaned it against the wall. Thomas felt stuck in his place, afraid to look into the room, afraid what he wanted would not be there. It wasn’t until George’s hand landed on his shoulder that he shook the fear away.

“Right,” Thomas muttered to himself. “Let’s see.” He raised his lantern and stepped into the small, windowless room.

It wasn’t much wider than the double doors themselves, and was filled floor to ceiling, front to back, with books. They were all shapes and sizes and, from the writing on their spines, in a dozen languages. There was a chair and table in the middle of the room. They, too, were covered with books.

George stuck his head in and whistled. “How are you going to get through all of that?”

Thomas stared at the pile with horror. “I can’t do this by myself. I’ll never find anything.”

“We can help,” Eileen offered. “All of us.”

“Not me,” George backed out of the room. “I can barely read.”

“Henry can read three languages,” said Benjamin.

“Right,” George headed for the stairs. “I’ll go take watch and send Henry back. Call for me when you need the door closed up.”

“It’s going to take a long time, George,” warned Thomas.

George nodded. “I know. Just get it done, then call me to put the door back in place.” He clapped Thomas lightly on the shoulder, then turned and moved noiselessly up the stairs. He had no light, Thomas realized. He listened for the sounds of stumbling, but none came. Thomas turned to Eileen. “Can you read any other languages?”

“No. I can recognize them, but that’s it.”

Thomas nodded. “All right. We’ll start with the books on the chair, then on the table. Sort them by language. Ben and I will start going through them.” He looked to Benjamin. “We’re looking for any references to one person stealing magic from another, and any references on how to stop them.” Benjamin’s very troubled look deepened, making Thomas worry for his friend. “You all right?”

“I don’t know,” said Benjamin, “I still don’t like this, and the picture on the door… I never thought of it your way before.”

“Think about it later,” Thomas advised. “I need your help. We have until the fifth bell of night. Once it rings, we get the mess cleaned up, get the door on its hinges, and get out of here.”

Benjamin nodded and Thomas stepped back into the room. The wavy light of the lantern seemed to be playing tricks, bringing flashes of colour to him out of the corner of his eyes. He shook them off and began skimming through the books on the table. The others set themselves to reading as best they could, sharing the books on the shelves among themselves.

A clatter of feet on the stairs made them all stop. The footsteps continued across the main room, and Henry appeared in the doorway.

“Could you be any louder?” demanded Benjamin.

“You told me not to sneak,” Henry said with a shrug. He whistled at the sight of the books. “That’s impressive.”

Thomas explained what they were doing, and Henry joined in. Soon, piles of books grew all around them.

“How are we going to get these back in order?” Eileen asked.

“We don’t,” replied Thomas. “Just put them back on the shelves. By the time they find out they’ve been disturbed, we should be long gone.”

“I hope so.”

She turned back to her book, continuing to leaf through it. Thomas thought he saw a flash of blue light as she flipped the pages. He rubbed his eyes again and turned back to the piles of books on the table and floor. All the ones he’d looked at were about past laws concerning witchcraft, magic, and the nature of miracles. They were very thick and had nothing he could use. He sighed and picked up the next book. A flash of red caught the corner of his eye. He looked to see Eileen paging through another book.

An idea, stunningly obvious once he’d thought of it, leapt into his mind. “Eileen, what’s that book?”

“Folk remedies,” Eileen said. “Very strange, but nothing about witches, really.”

“Pass it to me?”

She did. The cover simply said
Wisdom
. He paged through it, finding folk remedies and sayings, and, in the middle of the book, a single page containing a rhyme to drive away unwelcome guests.

The words glowed bright red.

He stared at it, stunned, for a long time. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “Is it only me who notices that this page glows red?”

The rustling of pages being turned ceased. Henry, Benjamin, and Eileen turned slowly towards him. Each face had a matching look of disbelief and worry.