Sorcery of Thorns (47 page)

Elisabeth had seen that shape before, during the night she had spent with Nathaniel in the Blackwald. The grimoire’s heart—Baltasar had torn it from one of the moss folk. A giver of life, transformed into a taker of it; she couldn’t imagine anything more profane.

As though sensing her thoughts, the Malefict’s head snapped around. Its green eyes burned through the dust. It stared at them for a
long moment, perfectly still. Though it wasn’t much taller than the Book of Eyes, its presence exuded an ancient, festering malevolence that sent terror washing over her skin in frigid
waves. Her instincts screamed at her to reach for Demonslayer, but she couldn’t move.

After a few more seconds, the monster appeared to lose interest. It turned and made for the passageway, stepping through the
dry section of the channel before it disappeared into the darkness beyond.

The key ring jingled in Elisabeth’s pocket. She was shaking as though she had spent a night outdoors in midwinter. Even so, she wiped her palms on her coat and redoubled her efforts to push open the portcullis. If the Malefict were allowed to escape, countless people would die. After what she had just seen, she wasn’t
certain if the wardens could stop it. What if it followed the Inkroad all the way to Brassbridge, sucking the life from entire towns as it went, leaving only dust behind?

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nathaniel staring after the Malefict. “Nathaniel,” she gritted through her teeth. “Help me.”

He didn’t tear his gaze from the passageway. “Didn’t you hear that?” he asked.

His voice sounded
strange, almost dreamy. She paused, taking in his expression. He looked far calmer now than he had a moment before. But his eyes were bright, as they had been on the laudanum. Even the reddish glow of the vault failed to mask his pallor.

“The voice,” he went on. “It was speaking . . . it wanted . . . you didn’t hear what it said?”

A chill ran down Elisabeth’s spine. She glanced at Silas, who
gave a slight shake of his head—he hadn’t heard anything, either. Carefully, he placed a hand on Nathaniel’s arm. “Master,” he said.

Nathaniel’s brow furrowed. He scraped a hand through his
hair. “Sorry,” he said, sounding much more like himself. “I don’t know what came over me. Of course I would be happy to join you in a life-endangering act of heroism, Scrivener. You must only say the word.”

Nathaniel braced his hands against the bars, and they pushed together. With one last agonized groan, the portcullis bent outward enough for them to squeeze through sideways. Silas leaped after them in the form of a cat, balancing on Nathaniel’s shoulder. His tail lashed as they ran across the bridge, the heat of the still-steaming channel gusting over them like a forge.

Elisabeth forced herself
not to look down when they passed Hyde’s empty uniform, or to lift her gaze to the other Class Ten grimoires, roused from their stupor by the Chronicles’ escape. Lightning crackled through the Librum Draconum’s pillar, and a faint music emanated from the Oraculis, like chimes blowing in a distant breeze.

She reached the passageway first, and drew up short. The Malefict’s stink of rot and stone
hung about the entrance. Every fiber of her body rebelled at the thought of entering, but she clenched her jaw, drew Demonslayer, and pushed onward. A moment later a green flame ignited in Nathaniel’s hand, illuminating the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He shot her a grin as he dashed beside her, but she knew it was only a front. He had to be even more frightened than she was. He was about to
face the stuff of his nightmares. But the way he had looked a minute ago, almost peaceful . . .

Unease gripped her. “What did you hear the Chronicles say?” she asked.

He glanced at her quickly, and then away, fixing his gaze ahead. “I think I must have imagined it.” He laughed unconvincingly, then forced out, “It wanted us to come—to go with it.
Join it. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why
on earth would it want that?”

Elisabeth hesitated. The Chronicles had spoken to Nathaniel alone. She doubted its invitation had been meant for all of them. “If it speaks to you again,” she said, “promise me you won’t listen. That you’ll do anything you can to block it out.”

Nathaniel’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I will,” he said.

Grimly, she hoped that would be enough.

The Malefict wasn’t
lying in wait for them; it had gone ahead. As the tunnel sloped upward, the first thing she heard was the Great Library’s warning bell tolling mournfully through the stone, a sound that poured courage through her veins like fire. If the wardens had rallied in time, hope still remained.

The passageway ended in a steep flight of stairs. At the top, it looked as though the Malefict had burst through
the remaining earth by force, creating a shattered opening filled with a circle of night sky. As they clambered over the erupted flagstones, they emerged into the chaos of a battle.

Cold struck Elisabeth like a slap across the face. Cannons boomed, red flashes lighting up the Great Library’s salt-encrusted courtyard. A tang of gunpowder filled the air. Wardens pounded past, too engaged to spare
her and Nathaniel a glance. Between each cannon blast, screams tore through the ringing in Elisabeth’s ears. Ahead, a section of the wall had been breached, its machinery a smoking ruin. As she stared around, trying to get her bearings, a warden staggered back through the breach, grayness creeping across his features like frost. When he had almost reached the library’s doors, he collapsed into
dust.

The next cannon barrage illuminated a figure rearing above the rampart, the tines of its antlers stretching toward the moon.
With a sideways slash, the antlers took out a cannon, tossing it aside in a spray of masonry.

Elisabeth took a faltering step backward. It didn’t seem possible, but— “It’s gotten huge,” she shouted over the din.

“It’s drawing strength from each life it takes,” Nathaniel
shouted back. “It will only keep growing larger and more powerful.”

She turned to him, the wind tangling her hair around her face. “We have to stop it.”

Nathaniel’s gray eyes lingered on hers. Then he nodded. He bowed his head, his lips moving. Clouds swept over the moon and engulfed the stars. For a moment, the wind stilled completely. An eerie calm descended over the courtyard as the cannons
ceased firing, unable to spot their target in the dark. Even the tolling of the bell sounded muffled. In the sudden quiet, Nathaniel’s incantation seemed to grow louder, the Enochian syllables echoing from the walls.

“It’s the sorcerer,” a warden called out. “There he is!”

Elisabeth had been afraid of this. With no evidence of Ashcroft’s involvement, Nathaniel appeared to be responsible for
the Chronicles’ escape. As wardens pelted in their direction, she stepped in front of him, Demonslayer at the ready. Silas leaped from his shoulder, human again before he struck the ground.

Demonslayer clashed against the closest warden’s sword, the vibration shuddering up her arm. He had the advantage of skill, but she was taller and stronger. Parrying recklessly, she managed to block his strikes
until their blades locked.

“He isn’t the saboteur!” she shouted over their crossed weapons.

The warden didn’t listen. Veins stood out in his face as he
pushed against her, his sword screeching dangerously along Demonslayer’s edge. Her stomach turned when she realized she might have to start fighting him in earnest—perhaps even risk killing him. She couldn’t hold him off for much longer without
one of them getting hurt.

Nearby, Silas neatly sidestepped another warden’s swing, appearing behind him in the same breath. He seized the man’s wrist and twisted. There came a sickening crack, and the warden yelled and dropped his sword. Before the weapon fell, Silas had already moved on to the next attacker in a blur of movement. One by one, wardens dropped like chess pieces around Nathaniel,
left moaning and cradling their broken limbs.

Wind sliced across the courtyard. Nathaniel raised his head, his hair wild, his eyes rimmed with an emerald glow. Fire danced along his fingertips. He looked like a demon himself. Through bared teeth, he uttered the final syllables of the incantation.

Elisabeth gasped when she lifted from the ground, the toes of her boots weightlessly brushing the
flagstones. Electricity snapped through the air, crackling over her clothes and standing her hair on end. The energy built and built until she thought her eardrums would burst—only to release in a rush that pulsed through her body, accompanied by a boom of thunder that felt as though the sky had plunged down to slam against the earth. Gravity yanked her back to the ground as a bolt of lightning
flashed on the opposite side of the wall. It struck once, twice, three times, and kept going, each blinding, sizzling blast twisting between the Malefict’s antlers and coursing down its body in rivers of green light.

When the lightning finally ceased, her vision was too full of smoke and blotched purple afterimages to see what had happened. But she was able to venture a guess when a tremor ran
through the courtyard, as though something heavy had fallen, and a cheer rose from the ramparts.

With a great shove, Elisabeth heaved the warden away. He stumbled, appearing uncertain. More wardens had arrived on the scene, but they hung back, staring at Nathaniel.

His chest heaved. Sparks flickered over his body; miniature bolts of lightning crackled between the tips of his fingers and the flagstones.
As if that weren’t enough, he was grinning.

One of the wardens started forward.

“Stand down,” snapped a voice from above. A stocky woman with close-cropped hair stood on one of the stairways that zigzagged up the inner side of the rampart, watching them. She vaulted over the railing and landed beside Elisabeth. “The battle isn’t over yet,” she said in a tone of authority, “and these two aren’t
our enemies. Those of you who can still walk, clear a position for the sorcerer on the rampart. He’s a magister. We need him.” When none of the wardens reacted, she shouted, “Move!”

Before Elisabeth could respond, she found herself hastened alongside Nathaniel toward the stairway. The warden in charge watched them askance. “You had better not make me regret this. Have either of you seen the Director?”

“The Malefict killed him,” Elisabeth said hoarsely.

She looked grim, but unsurprised. “I suppose that means I’m the Director now.” She paused, glancing at Silas before her eyes flicked to Nathaniel. “That’s your demon, I take it?”

“Ah,” Nathaniel said, shaking a few last sparks from his fingertips. Deliberately, he avoided looking at the injured wardens still rolling around in the courtyard,
clutching their broken legs. “I’m afraid so, Director.”

The warden—the new Director—was frowning. Elisabeth
braced herself for disaster. But all she said was, “He’s a bit small,” and turned back ahead.

Their boots clattered on the metal grating. When they reached the top, smoke billowed over them in rancid clouds. Amid the haze, the wardens toiling over the cannons were little more than dark
smudges picked out by the glow of torches. Elisabeth rushed to the crenellations and looked down. A smoldering mass lay crumpled at the base of the wall, surrounded by toppled barricades, whose spikes combed the smoke as it streaked away in the wind. But the fallen Malefict wasn’t disintegrating into ash.

“It isn’t dead,” she shouted back.

“I would be greatly obliged if you could make it dead,
Magister,” the Director said. “As quickly as possible, for all our sakes.”

Veiled in smoke, Nathaniel and Elisabeth exchanged a look. She knew the truth: there was no way to contain a monster this dangerous. Ashcroft hadn’t given them a choice. She imagined the Chronicles getting loose and rampaging through Brassbridge, smashing towers with its claws, leaving a trail of dead and dying in its
wake. How would that compare to an invasion of demons? How many casualties, how much destruction? She did not know. It was as though she stood behind a scale, blindfolded, and it was her responsibility to weigh one disaster against another, to choose the way in which the world would end. As she and Nathaniel gazed into each other’s eyes, the fate of thousands hovered in the air between them, and there
was no time to speak or even think—only to act.

“Yes,” she said, each word an agony. “Do it.”

“I doubt more lightning will work,” Nathaniel said, turning back to the Director. “I’ll have to try something else. Give me a moment.” He closed his eyes.

Elisabeth’s free hand clenched as she stepped back beside
Silas. He was gazing out over the rampart, expressionless, the wind stirring his hair,
which was beginning to come loose from its ribbon. She grasped at one last hope. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” she asked him.

“I am not capable of miracles, Miss Scrivener.” His lips barely moved, as though he were truly carved from alabaster. “I cannot fight the creature; it is the creation of my former master. Baltasar’s orders forbid me, even centuries after his death.”

She hesitated
as an idea occurred to her. Silas’s claim wasn’t entirely true. If she freed him from his bonds, he would no longer be constrained by Baltasar’s orders—by anything. He could stop this from happening. He would have the power to save them all.

“But I would not,” he murmured. “You know that I would not.”

His tone stopped her cold. “I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t certain what she was sorry
for, precisely—for the thought she had had, or for the hunger in Silas’s eyes.

He inclined his head. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened. “Down,” he spat. “Down!”

It was the first time she had ever heard him raise his voice. Everything turned sideways as he seized her and Nathaniel and flung them to the ground. The Malefict rose up over the rampart, smoke pouring from its mouth and slitted nostrils,
eyes fulminating a foul, necromantic green. Silas pressed them flat as a colossal arm swept over the crenellations. Wind howled over Elisabeth, battering her senses, tearing at her clothes. A horrible sucking grayness dimmed her consciousness; she felt as though her life were a guttering candle being buffeted by a gale. Her hearing faded, and her vision dimmed. There came an eruption of green
flame before the world split apart, shattering like a kaleidoscope.