Chapter Eleven
Madman, elusive lord or the cursed offspring of a witch? I told myself I didn’t care as I sank lower into the hot bath, relishing the feeling of stretching my legs and dipping beneath the water into the peaceful silence beneath. The small metal tub in my room at the Institute was by now a distant memory. The discomfort for myself and Alma as we had to share the shallow water. Too tired by the end of the tedious days to lug more up the narrow stairs.
The memory of the confining cruelty of the place made me linger beneath the surface of the water. Hoping to drown away the shame and anger of it all.
However, no matter how much I wished it, I couldn’t dwell in the bath all morning. If I hadn’t worked that out myself, Alma’s squeaking from the chair in the corner told me as much.
Begrudgingly, I pulled myself from the warm water and set about the gruelling task of getting dressed without help once again.
Despite William’s endless conversation and reassurances in the kitchen as he made dinner, I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that had followed me like a dark shadow into the next few days. My inability to study my own papers, the dark events still taking place in this world and the fey that seemed to suffer the most from it.
Alma was still a mouse, more unable to communicate with me than before. Emrys hadn’t returned, and I began to worry he never would. I should have been relishing the calm, but it appeared I wasn’t made for the quiet as I found myself dressed, damp hair tied back into a sensible bun as I approached the west wing portal, which William had shown me during a house tour when we both grew bored after dinner.
However, on my journey to find it, the rug beneath me suddenly curled up of its own volition, making me skid into the sideboard.
I waited to hear the rattle of drawers or creak of the wood panelling echoing with the house’s dark amusement, but nothing followed. I put the incident down to my own foolishness, despite my unease that maybe the house was trying to stop me. With accusations of my madness already rampant, the last thing I needed was to be talking to houses.
I found the door I needed. Reluctantly and with an unsteady hand, I slid the instruction paper I’d written into the slot, listening to the creaking groan of the cogs turning. A soft glow emitted from the edges of the door as I opened it and stepped through into one of the Institute’s opulent greeting halls.
Apprehension rolled through me as I saw the stone archways carved with ancient runes leading in various directions and depictions of ancient beasts carved around their bases. The eternal lanterns omitting sharp white light, making the gold they were cast in glow.
It had been mere days and yet the place suddenly seemed foreign, too big as every tiny sound echoed back to me.
Fighting the childish urge to go to Master Hale’s office, I accepted the bitter realisation that he couldn’t help me anymore. I was on my own.
I took the endless west corridor that led to the Grand Library, ignoring the childish thrill that shot through me as I saw the ornate door.
I pulled the key from my pocket, slipping it into the lock. It turned of its own accord, a cracking of the mechanism as the door flung itself open, leaving the key in my palm.
Before me stood the grandeur of the library. White marble floors polished to a high gleam so the early morning light that poured down from the stained-glass ceilings bounced around the room, making multicoloured flecks of light dance. Rich, dark wood bookcases and tables filled the space. The golden inscriptions on each book glistened as if freshly labelled.
A large greeting desk sat in the centre that I approached cautiously. The echo of my footsteps too loud.
‘Can I help you?’ came the brittle voice from behind the desk, and the librarian looked up over her spectacles. She had a thin, disapproving face and her mousy hair harshly pulled back into a bun.
‘Can you point me in the direction of magical ailments and earth diseases?’ I asked politely.
‘Southern section, two floors down. Keep right.’ She scowled at me – at my ears specifically – before ducking back behind the desk.
‘Thank you,’ I murmured to no further response, moving cautiously deeper into the cavernous library.
I wished Alma was here to see it with me, despite knowing they’d never let her. The loneliness inside of me returned, eating ravenously at my heart.
I found the section just as spacious and empty as all the others. Where I’d anticipated the endless chatter of mages working and the excitement of new spells being formed, there was nothing. Just silence and a dreadful draught.
It wasn’t what I imagined it to be. Everything too clean, nothing but the strong citrus scent of polish to greet me. No chaos trapped in compendium pages, no dust sprites or wayward spells. They had killed it all.
The key in my grasp became a dead weight.
I didn’t belong here. Not in their sterilised version of the world.
I longed for the damp of the ruins and the dust of the Fifth Library. Worst of all, I wanted the comfortable disorder of the Blackthorn study – William’s cheery interruptions and Alma’s presence.
Annoyed, I began to rummage through what little books they held on fey illness, seeing barely any records of use to me.
I needed to extract the magic from the valek scales I’d collected before it dried out. Only there were no books on the art of extraction for healing here.
I pulled a few new and recently printed volumes from the shelves, the pages sliding easily past one another as I flicked through the depictions. A bland and sterilised take, written more as a cautionary tale than with the purpose of giving any advice on how to help. It put most fey illness down to poverty, lack of intelligence and heathen practices.
I pushed the book aside, going for another, but finding little change. Not even a simple remedy to cure a rushing cough or goblin rash. Nothing. Like they didn’t exist at all. I found only charms to help with mortal ailments, or cures for common diseases from which most healing houses in the south made great profit.
I turned my attention to the volumes on curses instead, looking for any with ground sickness that could be quoted. Quickly copying down the sections of any use, I found myself uncomfortable in the silence. No crackling hearth or murmur of voices. Not the creak of old wood or the whispering of wind through an open window. Just the endless silence, and how it seemed to swallow me whole. My thoughts too loud in my head in the hollow space.
I grabbed my notes, shoving them into my bag, and made my way back to the portal, annoyed I’d allowed myself to be fooled into thinking that an Institute library would solve any of my problems, or that it would be so vastly different to the men who ran it.
Early-morning light streamed through the Blackthorn library, dust dancing in the beams as I weaved my way through the shelves to the back section where William had indicated the books I’d find most interesting were kept. Finding myself in a small open space, wooden beams high above, curving up to a turret of a ceiling. Gargoyles made of black stone leering down as cobwebs hung from their claws.
A worn green velvet chair sat beneath a grand window, cushions welcomingly sunken with years of use. Remains of candles burned down to stubs were scattered across the window ledge, and water rings stained the wood from various cups over the years – evidence that this was once someone’s favourite retreat.
I pulled off my jacket and tossed it onto the chair, taking the papers and few notes I’d managed to make and scattering them across the nearest table.
I found a few volumes on species magic on the back shelves of Emrys’s collection, dumping them on the table and flicking through the pages. I knew that mages had once extracted magic from a secmor beast’s scale, and I focused on journals and compendiums that mentioned the creature, looking for any sign of how they had managed it.
I had the fourth book spread open, finger running down the convoluted text before I stumbled upon another dead end. None of the tomes spoke of extracting magic from a fresh scale or a shed one. Only fossils or dried flecks.
Blowing strands of hair from my face with a frustrated breath, I turned from the table, stretching my hands over my head to relieve some of the pain at the base of my spine from stooping too long. I took the valek scale sample from my pocket, letting it rattle around the tiny glass vial. If I couldn’t extract the healing potential, there was nowhere left to go with my theory.
An odd, croaked squeak came from behind me. The cupboard of the sideboard across from me rattling its drawers almost in warning.
I turned and there, gnawing at the corner of another priceless volume, was a miniature secmor beast, its bright green scales shining in the candlelight, ink smudges all over it from the book it had crawled out of.
My eyes darted to the open book in question, seeing the large gap where the illustration had been and the mess of ink now marring the page from its escape.
‘Bollocks,’ I whispered before lunging to try and catch the thing between my palms like a stray butterfly.
Only butterflies didn’t have teeth.
It nipped my finger, drawing a curse from my lips as it slapped its tiny leathery-paper wings and took off.
‘Stop !’ I snapped, watching it zoom over the top of the bookcase and through the library. First dust sprites and now miniature beasts from books I’d left unattended. It wove easily through the shelves with frightening speed. Clearly not its first escape.
‘Bloody little bastard !’ I seethed, rushing around another corner, only for an annoyed pair of crystalline eyes to be waiting for me.
Emrys. Sat at one of the library tables, clearly in the middle of working on something judging by the mess before him. His hair was in disarray as if he hadn’t slept, with a dark brow raised in expectation of an explanation.
‘Good afternoon to you too, Croinn,’ he said dryly.
I skidded to a halt, heart jumping into my throat. His jacket and vest were missing, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to show his forearms. His scars catching the light as they curved around the muscle. Wrapped around his right forearm was a badly tied, clean bandage.
My lips parted as I fumbled for a lie, only for a tiny growl to stop me.
There, perched on his shoulder was the secmor, almost mocking me with the swishing of its tiny spiked tail.
‘I see you’ve found the 1664 Compendium of Lost Beasts ,’ he observed, reaching for the creature on his shoulder.
‘Be careful, it—’ I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence before the little beast had jumped into Emrys’s palm with the familiarity of a childhood pet.
The bookcase next to the table he sat at creaked, and then spat a book out. It skidded across the table, flipping open of its own accord to the page the beast had escaped from. With a growl of disappointment, the beast slipped back into the book, becoming nothing more than a picture before Emrys closed it. Sliding it aside, Emrys contemplated me once more.
‘I was looking for an extraction charm for valek scales,’ I offered weakly, still eyeing the book cautiously. ‘The method I used on the dried variety isn’t working the same.’
He nodded absently, pushing back his chair, getting to his feet and moving to the shelves across the room, his fingers barely brushing the spines as a maroon book shot out to greet him. He caught it effortlessly, despite its weighty appearance, and held it out to me.
‘Section five,’ he instructed as I hurried to take the offering, still trying to catch my breath.
He slipped his hands into his pockets, waiting patiently, which only made my movements clumsier. I turned the book over to see its label, but it didn’t have one. I opened it, scanning for section five, only for the title to confuse me further.
‘This is for blood extraction from mythical beasts,’ I pursed my lips, holding the book so he could see too, but he was still watching me, almost cautiously.
‘If the magic in the scale is fresh enough, it will work the same.’
‘I didn’t see magical healing remedies being one of your specialties.’ I frowned.
‘It isn’t. However, when you grow up with two healers, things rub off.’ He held out his hand. ‘Let me see your sample.’
I handed over the valek scale in question from the vial in my pocket.
His lips moved soundlessly, fingers radiating a sharp white light for a mere moment. The scale in the glass folded in on itself as if consumed by an invisible flame and left behind the liquid I needed.
‘I assume you have another to try?’ He offered me the new sample carefully. I stuffed it in my pocket and rooted for another. Following the words on the page, I repeated them in my mind.
I didn’t need to move my lips, letting the words whisper through my mind, feeling my magic coil and burn as it wrapped itself around my fingers, soft blue flames devouring the glass before slipping back beneath my skin as my scale turned into the same liquid as Emrys’s.
A small nod was the only evidence of his approval.
‘How did you find the Grand Library?’ he asked as he moved back to his table.
‘They didn’t have the records I needed. I was looking for extraction reports, or even pox records for the villages in the districts, but they didn’t seem to have any on fey illnesses.’ I still considered my new extract sample, the radiance of the liquid and all the help it could do.
‘The local fey district leaders would have ledgers.’
‘The Council won’t accept information that hasn’t been sealed by a registrar of the order. None of them are going to validate evidence for a pox study.’ Especially since fey illnesses didn’t impact mortals.
‘I’m certain one in the west owes me a debt,’ he said, surprising me. He slid a piece of paper across the table towards me. Resting on top of it was a tiny vial that looked filled with dirt. ‘What do you know about an endless rotting curse?’ He leant back against the table’s edge and picked up a glass of amber liquid that had been discarded amongst his books and notes.
‘It’s a bit early for drinking, isn’t it?’ I observed carefully, watching how the morning light played off the liquid in the glass.
‘As my brother Gideon remarked, it’s always noon somewhere.’ He considered me over its rim.
Gideon. The name startled me and I couldn’t help but frown. Knowing from records that the previous Lord Blackthorn only had two children. One son. One daughter.
Troubled, I shut the book in my hands and focused on the new mystery he’d presented me with.
‘It’s formed of residual darkness,’ I answered, turning the vial over and seeing it wasn’t dirt but a clipping of root speckled with rot that curled against the opening of the vial, trying to find a way out. ‘Corrupted earth that’s seen dark activity. Or, if the stories are to be believed, where a Verr summoning has been attempted.’
But those were stories from long before the war. Long before a greedy cruel king had condemned us all. This sample seemed too fresh, too alive, but that couldn’t be.
‘Is this from an archive collection?’ I looked to him again, only for the bandage on his arm to catch my eye once more.
‘An orteritus gremlin got the better of me.’ He answered the question I was too much of a coward to ask.
I frowned, wondering how he was still coherent.
‘They’re poisonous.’ A bite from an orteritus being could send you into madness.
He smiled sharply, but there was something dark in it that had little to do with amusement. ‘It’ll take something stronger than a gremlin to take the likes of me down.’
I looked down at the sample in the jar, seeing how it curled and split. The infection of the dark was so strong.
Wrong. This was wrong. Impossible, even.
‘Do you think—’
The ringing of a distant bell silenced me. Less severe than the ones in the Institute but still causing a tension to come over Emrys.
A curse slipped from his lips as he downed the rest of his drink and let the glass clatter onto the table. Then he tugged his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Croinn.’