Sorcery of Thorns (42 page)

And this time, she hadn’t come alone. Nathaniel’s hand gripped her arm. Silas stood beside him, holding his wrist in turn. They exchanged looks. Either Prendergast had let them in on purpose, or he was no longer able to keep them out.

“Oh, wonderful,” Prendergast said weakly. “More visitors. Forgive me for not getting up and offering you tea.”

He lay crumpled on the floor between the leaning shelves, as though someone had thrown him there like a discarded rag. Elisabeth dove to his side. His complexion was the color of porridge, his face contorted with pain.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where’s Ashcroft?”

Prendergast dissolved
into a fit of coughing. When he recovered, he gasped, “You’ve just missed him. We had a delightful chat.” Elisabeth bit back her frustration as more coughs wracked his thin frame. “Help me sit up, girl,” he panted at last. “That’s it. I want to see what he’s done to my . . . oh.” He fell silent. She followed his gaze. Across the room, embers smoldered along the broken edges of the floorboards,
exactly like the Codex’s pages. Ashes swirled away into the void.

“The dimension is collapsing,” Nathaniel provided for Elisabeth’s benefit, coming into view. “We can’t stay here long. A few minutes at best.”

Prendergast’s eyes widened. “
You
. You’re a Thorn.” He turned to Elisabeth and spat, “Are you mad, bringing someone like him along? Have you any idea who he is?”

Nathaniel tensed. Reflexively,
he ran a hand through his hair—trying to make the silver streak less visible, she realized. “You weren’t a friend of Baltasar’s, I take it.”

Prendergast sneered. “Certainly not, demons take him. Those of us with any sense stayed as far away from him as we could. Even Cornelius wouldn’t touch him. And you’re the spitting image of him, boy.”

Nathaniel looked sick. Elisabeth couldn’t let this go
on. “We need to know what happened,” she interrupted. “Is Ashcroft coming back? I don’t see why he would have left, unless . . .”

She trailed off. Prendergast wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Unless you told him your secret,” she finished.

“In my defense,” he said, “pain is considerably more persuasive when one hasn’t felt it in hundreds of years.” He shrank from Elisabeth’s expression.

“What did
you tell him? We need to know!”

“If you think I am going to allow the truth to fall into the hands of a Thorn—”

“It doesn’t matter! It’s over!” She resisted the urge to shake him until his teeth rattled. “All of this, everything you’ve done”—she waved at the workshop—“will have been for nothing if you don’t help us. Nathaniel is here to stop Ashcroft. Whether you believe that or not, you’re
almost out of time. This is your last chance to make things right.”

Prendergast’s head hung. His mouth twisted into a grimace.
Several seconds passed, and then he seemed to come to a decision. “Watch closely,” he instructed sourly. “I don’t intend to repeat myself.”

He yanked six rings from his gaunt fingers. While Elisabeth and Nathaniel watched, perplexed, he started arranging them on the
ground. Understanding dawned as he set the final ring in place. The shape was as familiar to Elisabeth as the back of her own hand. One ring in the center, the five others spread around it to form an evenly spaced circle.

“What pattern have I made?” he asked.

“The Great Libraries,” Elisabeth answered, at the same time Nathaniel said, with equal certainty, “A pentagram.”

Silence fell.

Elisabeth
looked again, more closely this time. In her mind’s eye she drew lines between each of Prendergast’s rings, connecting them to create a star inside the circle. The shape
was
a pentagram. But it was also a map of the Great Libraries. It was both.

Dread slammed into her, knocking the air from her lungs. “Counterclockwise,” she whispered. When Nathaniel looked at her, she said, “Something has been
bothering me all day, ever since Katrien’s map arrived. I know what it is now. The attacks on the Great Libraries are occurring counterclockwise. Knockfeld, Summershall, Fettering, Fairwater. Then Harrows. The pattern reminded me of when I lit the candles for Silas’s summoning.”

“Go on, girl.” Prendergast’s dark eyes glittered. “You’re almost there.”

She turned to him and said, “Cornelius built
the Great Libraries.”

“Yes. He constructed them to form a summoning circle.”

Elisabeth’s mind reeled. She wondered, distantly, if she might be ill. She didn’t want to believe Prendergast. If he was telling
the truth, the Collegium had been founded on the darkest lie imaginable. Her own life, a lie. The magic that flowed through her veins, the beauty and majesty of the Great Libraries—could it
all have been for this?

She spoke haltingly, stumbling onward. “The Maleficts—Ashcroft intended for them to be defeated, didn’t he? That’s the point of the sabotage. He’s using them in place of candles.”

Prendergast nodded. “A ritual this size calls for more than wick and wax. When a Malefict is destroyed, it unleashes a vast amount of demonic energy. Position a sacrifice of that nature at each
point of a pentagram, and one ends up with sufficient power to breach the veil for a greater summoning.”

Elisabeth’s nails dug into her palms. Once more she felt the effort of driving Demonslayer into the Book of Eyes, saw the gouts of ink pour forth as she twisted the blade. A crucial part of Ashcroft’s plan, carried out by her own hands.

“But
why
?” Nathaniel broke in. “Why create such a large
circle? Ordinary pentagrams work perfectly well. There’s no reason he could possibly . . .” He paused, his narrowed eyes boring into Prendergast. “Ashcroft needed something from you before he could complete the ritual. What was it?”

Prendergast returned Nathaniel’s glare. Animosity darkened his features. “A name. That’s what I’ve been guarding all these years.”

“A name,” Nathaniel echoed flatly.

“You know of lesser demons, fiends and goblins and so on, the lowest subjects of demonic society. And you know of the highborn demons who rule them, like your demon there. But the highborn are ruled by something else in turn. On the Otherworld’s throne sits a being of almost limitless power—a creature called an Archon.”

Both Nathaniel and Elisabeth turned to Silas. His face was as inscrutable
as a marble carving, but his yellow eyes, fixed upon Prendergast, seemed to glow with a cold inner light. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded. Prendergast was telling the truth.

A humorless smile twisted Prendergast’s mouth. “Cornelius and I were close friends, or so I thought. I told him of my travels in the Otherworld. We theorized that the Archon’s true name could be used to summon it, supposing
a sorcerer could assemble a ritual equal to the task, which I did not believe possible. For years, the matter never rose again between us. Then, one day, he asked me for the Archon’s name. By then he had already begun building the Great Libraries. When I realized what he was planning, and refused to tell him, he flew into a rage. Until that moment, I believe he truly expected me to help him. He
viewed the Archon as a resource, something that could be harnessed and controlled for the betterment of mankind. . . .”

“Progress,” Elisabeth murmured. How ignorant she had been, they all had been, raising their glasses in praise of Ashcroft’s plan.

“Arrogance,” Prendergast corrected. “There is no controlling a being like the Archon. Yet Cornelius’s heir is going to attempt the summoning. Tonight.”

She looked to Silas. “What will happen if he succeeds?”

“If the Archon is permitted to enter your realm, its power will destroy the veil that separates our worlds.” Silas’s lips thinned. “Demons will run free, slaughtering your kind with abandon.”

She stood so quickly that the blood rushed from her head. “We must stop him,” she said, glancing to Nathaniel in appeal. The hopelessness she saw
in his eyes sent a jolt through her stomach.

“Even the full strength of the Magisterium would take hours
to breach Ashcroft’s wards. We don’t have that much time. He’ll have finished the ritual by then.”

“Then you go directly to Harrows,” Prendergast said, “and prevent the final sacrifice.”

“But it’s a three-day journey,” Elisabeth protested.

“Not necessarily.” Prendergast gripped the nearest
shelf and wrenched himself to his feet. He staggered deeper between the broken shelves, trailing his fingers along the jars, skulls, and books that lay tumbled along them. Finally he dragged out a chain, on the end of which hung an onyx stone. No, not a stone—a round crystal vial, filled with blood.

“I alone discovered the means by which to travel between dimensions, to fold reality like a tapestry,
joining one location to another. The magic lives on in my blood. Since I no longer possess a true physical form, this is the final sample remaining.” Bitterness warped his mouth. “And here I am, about to hand it over to a Thorn.”

Elisabeth couldn’t stand the mistrust etched across his face. “Nathaniel isn’t Baltasar,” she blurted out. “I swear to you, he’s different.”

Prendergast gave her a
sour look. “There is enough blood to transport the three of you to Harrows and back.” He threw the vial to Nathaniel, who caught it one-handed, startled. “Use it carefully, boy. It will exact a toll.”

As Nathaniel ducked his head through the chain, Prendergast limped away. He set a chair upright and then leveled a bleak stare at the overturned table. Elisabeth lifted it back into place for him,
even knowing her efforts wouldn’t do any good. The embers had eaten away another several feet of the floorboards. In minutes, the section they were standing on would be consumed, and the table would topple into the void.

Another tremor shook the workshop. Wood groaned, and more jars smashed around them. Prendergast’s fingers spasmed on the chair’s backrest.

“What about you?” she asked. “Can
we take you with us?”

He shook his head. Slowly, as though every joint ached, he eased himself into the chair, facing the approaching darkness. “Go, girl,” he said in a rough voice. “My time is finished. Pray that yours meets a better end.”

THIRTY-ONE

E
LISABETH FELL. IMAGES whipped past like scenes glimpsed through the window of a runaway carriage. Darkened hills. Trees silhouetted against the night sky. Countryside spread beneath a crescent moon. And stranger vistas,
like a forest of gray, twisted branches shrouded in mist, and a ruin overgrown with luminous flowers. They were not hurtling through the mortal realm or the Otherworld, but somewhere in between.

She couldn’t close her eyes. In this place of nothingness she felt no wind, no breath, only the pressure of Nathaniel’s hand gripping her own, accompanied by the endless sensation of falling.

And then
wind slammed against her body. It tore the breath from her lungs, whipped her hair around her face. Cold pierced to the marrow of her bones. The ground reeled beneath her as though she had been spinning in circles; the stars whirled overhead.

She staggered, only for her boot to meet empty air. An arm hooked around her waist and yanked her back. Stones tumbled from the lip of rock where she had
stood a second before, plunging
silently toward the trees far below. The three of them had materialized on a cliff’s edge. Stunned, she took in the dizzying drop as Silas dragged them away from the precipice.

“We seem to be in the right place,” he remarked, “but you may wish to take more care with your aim on the return journey, master.”

Nathaniel laughed, a wild sound. Then he bent over and
retched. Something dark spattered the pine needles underfoot.

“It is not his blood, Miss Scrivener,” Silas said when she cried out in alarm. He steered Nathaniel toward a boulder and firmly sat him down before he fell over.

Of course. The vial hung half-empty against Nathaniel’s chest, the upper portion of the crystal coated in a red slime. In order to harness Prendergast’s magic, he had had
to drink it. He’d explained the principles of the spell as they’d leaped from the disintegrating Codex back to his study, scrambling to tug their boots and coats on over their nightclothes. This was blood magic, strictly banned by the Reforms, which Elisabeth thought he had declared altogether too cheerfully as he’d raised the vial to his lips.

“Are you all right?” she asked, a twinge of nausea
stealing through her relief.

Nathaniel grinned at her, even though he still looked slightly peaked. “Don’t worry, I’ve swallowed far less wholesome substances. Once, for instance, I was permanently banned from a lord’s estate for—”

“Let us save that story for another time, Master Thorn,” Silas interrupted, ignoring Nathaniel’s frown. “If memory serves, the Inkroad passes by this hill, and the
Great Library lies less than a quarter mile onward. You will be able to reach it in a few minutes.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” she asked.

“I am a demon, Miss Scrivener,” he replied softly.

She looked down at her hands, which had curled into fists. Silas had fought back against Ashcroft as hard as any of them. But if he came with them, the wardens would attempt to kill him on sight. The injustice
of it made her sick.