Sorcery of Thorns (19 page)

A sound came from Lorelei in the corner, where she was applying rosin to the bow of a violin. Today she wore a crimson gown that matched her lips and eyes. It was so long
that it spilled off the chair like a waterfall and formed a shimmering pool on the carpet, as though she sat in a puddle of blood. “The girl is hiding something from you, master,” she said.

Ashcroft looked around. “Are you certain? Is that possible?”

The hair stood up on the back of Elisabeth’s neck. She forced herself not to react, aware that she could betray herself with any movement.

“If
she has a secret, the impulse to protect it may remain, even through a glamour. Most humans haven’t the fortitude. But this girl is strong-willed. Her spirit burns as brightly as a flame.” Lorelei glanced at Elisabeth beneath her eyelashes, a gesture so like Silas that goose bumps spread across her arms. “I do so wish I could taste it.”

Ashcroft leaned back, steepling his fingers. “What do you
propose I do?”

“Enter her mind. Take the memory from her by force, and destroy the rest.”

“It’s too early for that. She must be seen for a few more days before I get rid of her. If news of her fate reaches the papers, I will need witnesses to support the physician’s diagnosis.”

Lorelei gave a delicate shrug. “Very well, master. And you’re certain her presence here isn’t distracting you from
your work?”

Ashcroft glanced at his desk, at the grimoire hidden beneath his cloak. Based on the way it had levitated that first night in the study, Elisabeth guessed it was a Class Five, or even a Class Six. Private ownership of grimoires Class Four and up had been made illegal by the Reforms. If Ashcroft was willing to keep something that dangerous in his home, the book had to be important.

He sagged back in his armchair, shadows etching deep lines across his face. “It’s proving stubborn,” he said, “but I’ll have what I need before Harrows.”

Elisabeth’s pulse quickened. The Great Library of Harrows was located in the northeast corner of Austermeer, where the Blackwald met the mountains—the most remote possible location to store high-security grimoires. Descriptions she had read of
the place painted it as a fortress built of black stone from the bones of the Elkenspine Mountains. Its unbreachable vault contained two of the kingdom’s three Class Ten grimoires. Did he aim to attack it, like Summershall and Knockfeld?

Whatever his plans, the grimoire on his desk clearly played some essential role. And no matter the risk, she had to find out what it was.

•  •  •

Her chance
arrived two days later, when Mr. Hob appeared in the doorway in the middle of her questioning. “A visitor,” he
announced in his deep, garbled voice. “Lord Kicklighter here to see you.”

“With no word ahead?” Ashcroft’s expression darkened. “I’ll meet him in the salon. Lorelei, watch over Elisabeth.” He strode from the room, and a moment later Lord Kicklighter’s greeting boomed down the hall.

Elisabeth’s mind raced. Judging by the length of Kicklighter’s handshake the other night, Ashcroft was going to be occupied for at least a few minutes. She felt Lorelei’s bored gaze tickling over her. All she needed was to get the demon to leave the study for a few seconds. But she had nothing to work with. If only she were closer to the bookcases, she was certain she could manage to knock one over.

A decorative mirror on the wall afforded her a view of herself sitting on the couch. She looked drawn and pale, at odds with the extravagant amethyst gown Hannah had laced her into that morning. She was growing used to the way the expensive corsets squeezed her chest, but at tense moments like this, the garments still made her feel short of breath.

An idea struck her like lightning. She gasped
loudly, drawing Lorelei’s attention. Her hand flew to her breast. Then she rolled her eyes up into her head and collapsed onto the carpet with a lifeless
whump
, landing so hard that she rattled the teacups on the coffee table.

Silence. Elisabeth felt the weight of Lorelei’s regard. Once she seemed to decide that Elisabeth wasn’t faking it, she rose with a whisper of satin and stepped over Elisabeth’s
prone body on her way outside. As soon as she had gone, Elisabeth hiked up her skirts and scrambled to the desk. Bracing herself, she swept away Ashcroft’s cloak.

The grimoire lay open beneath a length of iron chain
stretched along the valley of its spine, its pages filled with a slanted, spiky script. That was all she had a chance to observe before a wave of malevolence crashed against her,
forcing her a step backward. A man’s voice roared wordlessly within her mind, tearing at her in a maelstrom of anguish and fury.

She didn’t have time to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. The edges of the room darkened; the grimoire’s pages whipped as if the study’s windows had been thrown open during a howling gale. She clenched her teeth and pushed against the grimoire’s will, stretching
out her hand, trembling with the effort. Sweat beaded her brow. Even the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to slow, like the air had turned to treacle. At last her fingertips brushed leather, and a confused, sickening rush of emotions thrummed through her body. Longing. Rage. Betrayal. She had never felt anything like it before. She swallowed thickly, wishing she had iron gloves to dampen
the grimoire’s psychic emanations.

“I’m not your enemy,” she forced out. “I’m here as a prisoner of Chancellor Ashcroft. I intend to stop him, if I can.”

At once the man’s voice fell silent, and the pressure in the air disappeared. Elisabeth fell forward, catching herself on the desk, her muscles quivering from the strain. The grimoire now lay quiescent. Her desperate guess had proved correct—its
malice and fury had been meant for Ashcroft, not for her.

“What does he want from you?” she murmured. Carefully, she lifted it from the desk.

Its cover was bound in strange scaled leather, crimson in color, which reminded her unsettlingly of the imps in the conservatory. A five-pointed pentagram was emblazoned on the front. Age had faded the title, but the words remained legible:
The Codex Daemonicus
.

Her heart skipped a beat. She had read this grimoire’s title before, and not long ago. Where had she seen it? In Nathaniel’s coach, traveling through the Blackwald . . .

I’ll have what I need before Harrows
, Ashcroft had said. Whatever he needed, it sounded as though he would find it in this book. She wracked her memory, trying to recall why the Lexicon had mentioned this volume. It had been
in the chapter about demons. All she could remember was that it supposedly contained the ravings of a mad sorcerer, who claimed to have hidden some kind of secret inside—

Footsteps clipped down the hall. Breathless, Elisabeth snatched Ashcroft’s cloak and yanked it back over the grimoire. Hoping that its psychic screams had been audible only to her, she scrambled across the room and threw herself
back on the floor, arranging her limbs as closely to their original position as she could manage.

She wasn’t a moment too soon. A shadow fell over her just seconds later, and then an acidic smell seared her nostrils, zinging through every nerve in her body. She shot upright, strangling back a shout, only for Lorelei to catch her in an unyielding grip, a suggestion of claws pricking through the
lace of her gloves. The demon held a crystal vial full of what appeared to be salt.

“There, there,” she soothed, her tone cloyingly sweet. “You’re all right. It was just smelling salts, darling. You had a little spell, but it’s over now.”

“Give her to me,” Ashcroft said. “This farce has gone on long enough. It’s time.”

Lorelei let go of her and stepped back. Before Elisabeth could react, Ashcroft
seized her and spun her around. His expression was terrible to behold. It was as though he had spent all of his kindly charm putting up with Lord Kicklighter, and he had none left to maintain the act.

His patience with her had reached an end. Now, she was about to meet the monster beneath the man.

“Listen to me, girl,” he said, and shook her until her teeth rattled, “you
will
tell me what you
know.” And then he splayed his palm over her forehead, and Elisabeth’s thoughts exploded outward like a newborn star.

The study vanished; everything went pitch black except for her and Ashcroft and sharp-edged silver fragments that hung glinting in the darkness around them. Familiar images flowed over the surfaces of the fragments in silent flashes of color and movement. They were her own memories,
floating in a void like the shards of a shattered mirror. Each one showed a different scene. The Director’s red hair shining in the torchlight. Warden Finch raising his switch. Katrien’s laughing face.

Though Elisabeth still dimly felt the Chancellor’s brutal grip on her arm, in this place, he stood apart from her. He turned, taking in the fragmented memories, and then raised his hand. The shards
began to spin around them in a glittering cyclone, blurring together to show him not just isolated fragments out of order, but whole memories, Elisabeth’s life flowing past on a shimmering river of glass. Distorted sounds echoed through the void: laughter, whispers, screams. Her stomach clenched as she saw herself as a little girl bounding through the orchard toward Summershall, her brown hair
flying out behind her, Master Hargrove struggling to keep up. These were
her
memories. They were not for Ashcroft to see.

“Show me what you’ve been hiding,” the Chancellor commanded. His cruel, hollow voice rang from every direction.

The bright summer afternoon faded away, replaced by a ghostly image of Elisabeth descending the Great Library’s stairs in her nightgown, a candle raised high. She
felt his magic drawing
the memory out of her, a force as inexorable as the undertow of a tide, and panic squeezed her lungs. She could feel the memory, hear it, smell it. She watched as Memory-Elisabeth unlocked the door and stood gazing wide-eyed into the dark. Any second now she would notice the aetherial combustion, proof that a sorcerer had committed the crime.

Elisabeth had to stop it. But
she couldn’t resist the pull of Ashcroft’s sorcery. She sensed that if she fought him, her memories would shatter into a thousand pieces, gone forever. He would destroy her mind—her very life—if he had to. She needed to show him
something
.

So she reached deep inside herself, where her most precious memories were hidden, and found something that she could give.

“Do you know why I chose to keep
you, Elisabeth?” the Director asked.

Elisabeth’s breath caught. The memory had sped forward to the moment that she had found the Director’s body. They were the same words from the vault, but this time whispered from the Director’s dying lips, last words meant for Elisabeth alone. She had succeeded in blurring the two memories together. And it felt real, because to her it
was
real. Grief and longing
speared her heart like an arrow. She had never expected to hear the Director’s voice again.

“It was storming, I recall.” The halting words fell from the Director’s cracked lips. “The grimoires were restless that night. . . .”

Gazing up at the memory, Ashcroft frowned.

“The Great Library had claimed you.”

Ashcroft shook his head in disgust and turned away. He gestured, and the shards began
to disintegrate, crashing like a sheet of water toward the floor.

“No!” Elisabeth shouted. Too late, she remembered what
Lorelei had said two days ago.
Take the memory from her by force, and destroy the rest.

“You belonged here. . . .”

Reality flooded back in a tempest of color and sound. Someone was screaming. Elisabeth’s throat was raw. All of her was raw, and she tasted salt, and copper,
and the world stank of singed metal.

Ashcroft’s voice coasted above her agony like a ship on a calm sea. “She knew nothing. That memory she hid from us—it was just a sentimental trifle. Important to her, perhaps, but not to us. Fetch Mr. Hob. The arrangements have been made.” His voice receded, or perhaps that was her getting farther away, tumbling down into some dark place from which there was
no return. “She will be sent to Leadgate tonight.”

FIFTEEN

O
UTSIDE THE COACH’S windows, the night hung in tatters. Greasy clouds cloaked the city, bleached by the full moon, which shone like a silver coin lost in a dirty gutter. Elisabeth hadn’t seen this part of Brassbridge when
she and Nathaniel rode in last week, aside from a dismal smear of factory smoke on the horizon. The old brick buildings were blackened with soot, and the coach’s wheels splashed through foul-looking puddles. A clammy chill permeated the air. Somewhere nearby, a bell tolled mournfully in the dark.

She sat slumped forward, shivering uncontrollably. Disjointed thoughts filled her head like broken
glass, and agony lanced through her skull every time the coach bounced over a rut in the road, whiting out her vision.

My name is Elisabeth Scrivener. I am from Summershall. Chancellor Ashcroft is my enemy. I must expose him. . . .

She recited the words over and over again in her head until they began to feel real. One by one, she pulled the jagged edges of her memories together. The spell Ashcroft
had used on her
should have destroyed her mind, leaving her an empty shell—but it had not succeeded. She was still herself. Even the pain only served to remind her that she was alive, and had a purpose.