Sorcery of Thorns (45 page)

“I’ll have you know,” Nathaniel said, “that that was an accident, and the public certainly didn’t mind. One woman even sent me flowers.” To Elisabeth, he added, “Don’t worry. She was forty years old, and her name was Mildred.”

Silas snatched his hand back as the door swung open, dropping the keys with a hiss. A tendril of steam rose from his fingers.
He moved to step away, but was arrested in midstride by Elisabeth, who seized him in an embrace, followed by Nathaniel, who hugged him from the other side. He froze, completely rigid, enduring their affection in the manner of a purebred house cat being squeezed by a toddler. When he twitched, they finally released him.

“We shall never speak of that,” he warned, brushing off his sleeves. “Miss
Scrivener, if you would follow me, I believe your sword has been taken to the armory.”

She scooped up the key ring. The three of them crept through the dungeon’s passageways in single file, retreating into the shadows whenever a patrol’s torch came near. Fortunately Silas knew exactly where to go, and after several minutes they reached an iron-banded door, which Elisabeth was able to open with
one of the keys. She gasped at the room beyond. Torchlight flickered not just over swords, but a bristling collection of axes, spears, crossbows, and even a spiked weapon she tentatively identified as a morning star. After recovering Demonslayer from an arms rack, she seized a belt and tightened it around her waist. As Nathaniel watched, amused by her enthusiasm, she stuffed its pouches full of
salt rounds.

“What now?” he asked.

Elisabeth squeezed in a final salt round. “We need to find the vault. All we have to do is stop whoever’s come here from getting inside. Silas, did you pass it on your way to the dungeon?”

Silas had been strolling through the aisles, his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the weapons with an unreadable expression. He’d stopped in front of an ancient,
cruel-looking device hanging from the ceiling, which resembled a giant cage filled with rusty spikes. Elisabeth’s heart skipped a beat, her eyes darting from the spikes to his wrists.

“No,” he said, turning away, “but I can sense the psychic emanations of the grimoires. I will take you there.”

He showed no sign of whether the device was the same variety Ashcroft had used to trap him. She cast
the room another look as they left, seeing the racks of weaponry anew. For Silas, this place was a torture chamber.

When they snuck back into the passage, the ground shook with the force of a familiar-sounding howl.

“We must be near the Malefict,” Nathaniel said.

Silas inclined his head. “There is no way around it. All routes to the vault travel through this hall.”

Cautiously, they made their
way around the corner. At the end, the passageway opened into a cavern, a space so large that its ceiling disappeared in a haze of smoke and shadow. Stalactites hung like teeth from the substanceless dark above. Below them, lit by fires in charred, smoking braziers, a sort of pit arena had been carved into the stone. Their boots clanged softly on the metal walkway that encircled it, bounded by
railings. A ladder—one of several—descended to the sawdust-covered floor far below, which was marked by scuffs and grooves, as of those made by a restless, pacing animal.

Or a monster.

As they watched, the Malefict lumbered into view. It was the size of a small house, powerfully but crudely built, its bearlike form missing ears, a nose, and even eyes, the leather of its muzzle crisscrossed with
badly stitched seams. A heavy chain dragged behind it, each link large enough to yoke an ox, the other end attached to a system of gears and pulleys fixed to the cavern’s wall. It wagged its head back and forth, disoriented by the pain of the iron collar around its neck. Ink wept from open sores, gleaming wet down its shoulders, and old scars scored its leather-bound hide. Nathaniel gazed down
at it with a troubled expression. Feeling sick to her stomach, Elisabeth recalled the warden’s explanation upstairs.

“This is wrong,” she said. “It isn’t a practice dummy, to be beaten with weapons while it suffers in chains.”

Silas stopped beside her, his face impassive. “Do you not believe it an evil creature, Miss Scrivener?”

Her hand clenched around Demonslayer’s hilt. She was beginning
to understand that evil wasn’t so simple a concept as she had once imagined. Perhaps it wasn’t wrong for Maleficts to want to hurt humans—the humans who had created them, imprisoned them, tormented them with salt and iron—and ultimately, consigned them to their twisted forms.

“None of this is its fault,” she said at last. “It didn’t choose to be a monster.”

If Silas had an opinion on the matter,
he didn’t offer it. Nathaniel said, pointing, “Look. There’s the vault.”

On the opposite side of the arena, on the ground floor, there was a portcullis recessed into the stone. Anyone who climbed down and attempted to reach it would get slaughtered by the pacing Malefict. Unless they managed to put the monster out of its misery first.

Impulsively, she drew Demonslayer and started for the ladder.
Nathaniel grabbed her arm. Before she could object, he spun her around and trapped her against the stone. Her thoughts took a moment to catch up. Nathaniel was rigid with tension, his body drawn tight as a bowstring, but he hadn’t been seized by a sudden, passionate desire to kiss her against a dungeon wall. Rather, he was using his dark coat to shield them both from view.

They weren’t alone.
At first she heard only the Malefict’s labored snorts and grunts. But then footfalls rattled the walkway nearby. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Director Hyde step onto the path through the passage they had just left behind. She held her breath until he turned, scowling, in
the opposite direction, his suspicious gaze failing to detect their hiding spot just a few feet away. They sagged
in relief as he set off, unsuspecting.

The feeling was short-lived. Hyde must have been on patrol, heading down to inspect the vault. No matter what he had said in his office, he was too vigilant a man to hear a warning like theirs and completely disregard it. Yet in coming down here, he was putting himself, and his keys, precisely where Ashcroft needed them.

An earsplitting metallic squeal
echoed through the cavern. Hyde had used his Director’s key to activate the pulley. Gears churned, winching the chain upward link by heavy link. The Malefict bellowed, straining against its collar, a futile effort; no matter how hard it struggled, the machinery dragged it inexorably through the sawdust. When the winch clanged to a stop, the chain had been tightened so much that the Malefict’s front
end hung off the ground. It dangled there like a bull waiting to be slaughtered, head low, dripping ink from reopened sores.

Hyde climbed down the nearest ladder and set off across the arena without so much as a backward glance. He unlocked the portcullis, entered, and shut it behind himself.

The machinery rumbled back to life. Slowly, the pulley began lowering the Malefict to the ground. With
a jolt of alarm, Elisabeth realized that they had only moments to cross the arena.

“We have to follow Hyde,” she said, starting for the ladder. “Where’s Silas?”

Nathaniel nodded upward. Elisabeth followed his look, and wished she hadn’t. Silas had evaded Hyde’s attention by climbing straight up the cavern wall, and now he clung there like a spider, gazing down at them with inhuman yellow eyes.

“He’ll catch up,” Nathaniel said. “Let’s go.”

Seconds later, Elisabeth’s boots struck sawdust. When Nathaniel landed beside her, the Malefict turned its stitched, weeping face in their direction. The pulley’s wheel groaned as the monster plodded forward, stretching the chain to its limit, snuffling blindly at the air. Nathaniel gave the ancient machinery a critical once-over. He grabbed Elisabeth’s
wrist, hastening them onward.

They were halfway across the arena, running side by side, when there came a deafening, shrieking crash that shook the cavern, and an object bounced past them in a spray of sawdust: the pulley wheel.

There wasn’t time to react. They could only run. Elisabeth felt across the key ring, selecting the largest key by touch. That should be the key restricted to wardens.
The problem was, she didn’t know for certain whether it would open this portcullis. Depending on how close they were to the vault, it might respond only to the Director’s personal key. And if that were the case, there would be no time left to turn and make a stand; the Malefict would be upon them, and it would crush them in an instant.

The portcullis drew closer and closer. The Malefict’s shadow
stretched across them, the earth shuddering with its bounding strides. She raised the key. Her hand remained steady as she inserted it into the lock, but the Malefict was too fast. Its shadow plunged them into darkness—

And vanished, the ruddy light of the braziers flooding back in. Astonished, she looked over her shoulder. The Malefict lay sprawled on the ground some distance away, insensible,
and Silas stood interposed between them, one hand raised in the attitude of a concluded slap across the face. Ink dripped from his claws.

Forcing her mouth shut, Elisabeth turned the key. A mechanism thumped inside the wall, and the portcullis’s teeth lifted from the ground. Silas did not move. Nathaniel seized the back of his coat and dragged him into the passageway.

For a terrible moment Elisabeth
thought that Silas had been hurt, but then she saw he was merely gazing down at his soiled hand in disgust. She offered him a corner of her coat. Without comment, he used it to wipe off his claws.

Of Hyde there was no sign, not even a glimmer of his torch in the deep darkness ahead. Nathaniel conjured a green flame in his hand, illuminating a stair leading downward, its steps glistening with
moisture. Water dripped nearby, unseen. Elisabeth’s eyes widened at the tunnel’s unexpected beauty. The stone was the pure black of obsidian, veined with sparkling mineral bands.

“Silas, can you tell if anyone else is down here with us?” She kept her voice low, but if the Director was hard enough of hearing that he hadn’t doubled back already, she doubted talking would make a difference.

Silas
finished inspecting his nails and glanced down the stairwell. “This mountain is full of pyrite; I expect the vault’s location was chosen for that very reason. The presence of so much iron inhibits my senses. I’m afraid I cannot say for certain.”

“If it helps,” Nathaniel said, “there wasn’t any trace of magic back in the arena. I don’t think anyone’s gotten past the Malefict ahead of Hyde.”

“Unless Ashcroft knows a secret way into the library,” Elisabeth pointed out. “Cornelius planned this from the very beginning. He could have had a hidden corridor built into the mountain—something only he knew about.”

“Is it possible for something like that to remain undiscovered for so long?”

“I think so. I found all kinds of secret passageways in Summershall, and the senior librarians didn’t
have a clue.”

They fell silent as they stole forward. Nathaniel extinguished his flame when the reddish glow of Hyde’s torch reappeared ahead, outlining the fur draped over his shoulders. While they snuck after him, his purposeful stride rang from the naked stone. He held the torch high in one hand, the other clasping his sword, never pausing to look behind him.

Elisabeth held her breath. Any
moment now . . . any moment . . .

Her heart leaped to her throat when the torchlight poured over an irregularity on the ground: a pair of boots protruding from an adjoining tunnel. Staring straight ahead, Hyde didn’t seem to notice. He kept walking.

The three of them paused, allowing Hyde to gain a few steps as they took in the sight of the warden lying collapsed in the tunnel. A woman, still
armed, sprawled loosely on the ground. Her torch had fallen into a puddle and gone out. The dim, shifting light made it impossible to tell whether she was still breathing.

“She lives,” Silas whispered. “There is no injury. She is merely asleep.”

They looked at each other.
The sleeping spell
. The attack had already begun. And yet Hyde was nearly at the vault, and they had seen no sign of the
attacker.

The truth struck her like lightning.

Elisabeth abandoned every pretense of stealth. “Stop him!” she cried, lunging after Hyde. “Stop him from getting inside the vault!”

Too late. The portcullis at the end of the passage slammed down, separating Hyde on the other side. She skidded to a halt.

He turned to face them through the grille. A smile spread across his face, grotesquely stretching
his scars. The expression
looked wholly unnatural on his features, yet there was something familiar about it all the same. It was a smile she had seen many times before: in the gilded halls of Ashcroft Manor, in the palace ballroom, on the rose pavilion by moonlight.

It belonged not to Hyde, but to Chancellor Ashcroft.

THIRTY-THREE

“I
SEE YOU’VE FIGURED it out, Miss Scrivener,” Ashcroft said, his cultured voice uncanny on Hyde’s scarred lips. “Quite honestly, I’m surprised it took you so long. After all, you’ve met the Book of Eyes.”