Scholar of Decay (9 page)

Aurek swept his gaze over the floor-to-ceiling shelves and saw, through dirt and decay, what had once been a magnificent library. That the owner of the library had chosen a windowless room below ground level surprised him not at all. Sunlight baked both parchment and vellum to a brittle fragility, sucked the moisture from bindings, and faded ink. For certain kinds of books, books whose contents were meant to remain in shadow, sunlight was more dangerous still.

“Aurek! You’re going to turn into a mushroom if you spend all your time sitting here in the dark!”

“I have lamps.…”

Natalia laughed and pulled him to his feet. “You need to get out into the sun and do something.”

He stood motionless while the memory passed, afraid to move lest he lose it, for memories were almost all he had left.

Almost.

He cursed the circumstances that had forced him to finally respond to his wife’s frequent request that he do something, and he would have cursed himself, except that there seemed to be no point.

And I’m wasting time, he thought. The artifact he sought, the artifact that might change his Natalia back to flesh and blood, was in this room. Fortunately, though it might have once held thousands of volumes, the room was nearly empty.

Rust-brown beetles as big around as his thumb scurried out of his way as he systematically searched the shelves, sifting through
and ignoring worm-riddled bits of moldering books and scrolls. Once, he might have been interested in these fragmented leavings of another’s scholarship, but life no longer allowed him that luxury. Finally, just as he’d begun to fear that only the signature of the artifact had survived and not the artifact itself, he found what he searched for tucked into a corner of a lower shelf, buried under a messy nest of chewed parchment and insect droppings. The slim, leather-bound book, barely as large as his palm, sizzled against his fingertips with a familiar sensation of not-quite-pain.

Resting on one knee, the lantern on the floor beside him, Aurek murmured his wife’s name as though it were a talisman and carefully opened the book.

The wards that had protected it for so long against the living had been unable to keep out the damp. Many of the upper pages were stuck together, the ink spread out in patterns only marginally similar to the original handwriting. The last few pages had dissolved entirely and clumped against the back cover in a foul-smelling, gelatinous mass.

But in the middle of the book there were pages that could be read. Aurek’s pale eyes burned as he stared down at the most legible of these; as he stared down at the words that might possibly hold the key to unlock Natalia’s prison.

He heard the silence first, the sudden and complete absence of the insect noises that had provided a constant background hum since he entered the house.

Lips pressed together in irritation, he quickly pulled out a gray silk bag and slid the slender volume inside. Wrapping the excess fabric firmly around it, he tucked it safely down into a corner of the pack, slipped his arms back through the straps, and rose to his feet. That he’d expected this interruption made it no less annoying.

At least I have the artifact, he thought. As soon as he dealt with
whatever was approaching, he’d be able to return to the privacy of his study to find out just exactly what he had.

Holding the lantern at arm’s length, he caught sight of a humped shadow just at the periphery of the light. Rats. He’d have been more surprised had he not run into rats in the abandoned houses of Pont-a-Museau, all things considered. He took a step forward, and the light reflected from a multitude of eyes—most a great deal farther from the floor than he’d expected.

Not only rats—giant rats. Anxious to return to his study, he scowled at what had become an unavoidable delay.

Flexing the fingers of his free hand, he contemplated the most effective use of the defense he’d prepared. As the rats were now between him and the only stairs he’d found, fire might be somewhat self-defeating, given that it would cut off his own retreat. However, if giant rats were anything like their smaller cousins, killing a few should scatter the rest. Primarily scavengers, rats tended to prefer survival over valor and seldom attacked prey that fought back.

Then, just as he was about to speak, the largest rat he’d ever seen moved to the edge of the light. Noting the obvious similarities between it and the six that had attacked Dmitri made Aurek’s lip curl. Wererat. It sat back on glossy black haunches and lifted glisttening green eyes to his.

Aurek let his hand fall back to his side, the gesture he’d been about to make now forgotten. He’d seen those eyes before, and the notch bitten from the right ear confirmed his incredulous identification. His skin crawled, and he stepped back, repelled. It was one thing to know that a beautiful woman was capable of changing into an immense rodent and another thing entirely to be brought face-to-face with the physical evidence.

Unfortunately, Louise Renier wanted him.

She wanted him today for games entirely different than those she’d wanted him for last night, but her expression hadn’t changed a great deal. He took a moment to consider how extraordinary that was, given the difference in her features. Then, all at once, he realized he was truly in mortal danger.

Aurek knew hate when he saw it. This wasn’t a chance meeting, paths crossing by accident as both hunted in an abandoned building. It was personal. But why? Searching desperately for some reason behind the hate, Aurek finally decided it could only be a result of rejecting Louise’s advances at the party. Surely she didn’t kill every man who turned her down? Perhaps no one ever had. Or perhaps she did. Here and now, it didn’t much matter.

“It is important that we take care of our families.”

Remembering Jacqueline Renier’s warning, Aurek knew that if he saved himself today by injuring her twin, the promise of Pont-a-Museau, a promise strengthened by the book in his pack, would be closed to him. He doubted Jacqueline could actually kill him, but she could deny him Richemulot.

He could easily defeat the rats.

He didn’t know what to do about Louise Renier.

He had to remain in Pont-a-Museau. The mist had abandoned magic in the ruins, perhaps the magic he was so desperately seeking. Freeing Natalia had become all that he cared about.

He would kill if it became necessary to free his wife. Not killing—and surviving—would be much harder.

“Mamselle,” he called, “if I have insulted you in any way, I apologize.”

“You don’t know how you insulted me?” The voice from beyond the circle of light was incredulous—and faintly sibilant, as though she hadn’t bothered to change all the way back to human form.

“I can assume only that my refusal to … to …” He paused, and
tried again. “It’s just that I loved my wife very much. I intended no insult to you.”

His only answer was a serrated trill of malicious laughter. Obviously, she didn’t care what he’d intended.

As he could discover no way of getting by her without hurting her, and as she wouldn’t listen to reason, Aurek reluctantly accepted the only possible solution. He flung himself toward the library’s second door—not the one he’d come in through but one that led deeper into the building—and he ran.

Satisfied that Aurek Nuikin had recognized who held his life, Louise dropped to all fours. She was going to take her time with the scholar’s death, and she was going to enjoy every moment of it.

She laughed again and changed, woman flowing into rat in a grotesque metamorphosis. She was pleased to see him run. He couldn’t win the race, but it would add to the fun she planned to have with him before he died.

The narrow flight of stairs angled steeply down into the cellars. Aurek paused for a heartbeat to check his footing and found the top three treads no longer existed. Heart pounding, he leaped over the hole, felt the fourth splinter under his weight, slammed his shoulder into the damp stone wall, and somehow managed to keep his feet. The rats had gone through the walls and cut him off. He had no choice but to go down.

He hadn’t seen Louise Renier again, but he could feel the heat of her hate on his back.

Lantern flickering ominously, the oil nearly spent, he dashed along the heavy beams that were, in places, all that remained of the
floor. From the smell rising up through gaping holes outlined in bloated half-circles of fungus, the sewers were directly below.

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.