Then, in the distance, a hulking silhouette moved among the trees. Moonlight shone on its greasy surface. It limped toward the village with a rolling, ungainly gait, like a malformed bear clumsily attempting to walk on two legs. There was no mistaking what it was. A grimoire had escaped from the vault. Drawing upon the power of the sorcery between its pages, it had swelled into a gruesome monster of ink and leather.
Upon sighting a Malefict, Elisabeth was supposed to alert the nearest warden or, if that was impossible, race up the stairs to ring the Great Library’s warning bell. The bell would call the wardens to arms and prompt the townspeople to evacuate into the shelter beneath the town hall. But there was no time. If Elisabeth turned back, the monster would reach Summershall before anyone even had a chance to rise from bed. Countless people would die in the streets. It would be a slaughter.
Officium adusque mortem. Duty unto death. She had passed beneath that inscription a thousand times. She might not be a warden yet, but she would never be able to call herself one if she turned away now. Protecting Summershall was her responsibility, even at the cost of her life.
Elisabeth flew through the gate and down the hill. The sharp gravel gave way to a soft, wet carpet of moss and fallen leaves that soaked the hem of her nightgown. She tripped over a root in her path, nearly losing her grip on the sword, but the Malefict didn’t pause, only continued its lumbering advance in the opposite direction.
Now she was close enough to gag on its rotten stench. And to see how big it was, far larger than a man, with limbs as thick and gnarled as tree stumps. Paralyzing waves of fear crashed over her. Demonslayer grew heavy in her hands at last. She was no hero, just a girl in a nightgown who happened to be holding a sword. Was this the way the Director had felt, Elisabeth wondered, when she faced her first Malefict?
I don’t have to beat it, she thought. If she could distract it for long enough, and make enough of a commotion doing so, she might save the town. After all, disturbing the peace is what I’m good at. Most of the time, I do it without even trying. Courage crept back to her, freeing her frozen limbs. She drew in a deep breath and shouted wordlessly into the night.
The wind tore her voice to shreds, but the monster finally lumbered to a halt. The oily black leather of its hide rippled as if reacting to a fly. After a long, considering pause, it turned to face her.
It was bulky and roughly man-shaped, but lopsided, crude, as if a child had fashioned it from a lump of clay. Dozens of bloodshot eyes bulged across every inch of its surface, ranging from the size of teacups to the size of dinner plates. Their pupils had shrunk to pinpricks, and all of them stared directly at Elisabeth. The library’s most dangerous grimoire walked free. The Book of Eyes had returned.
After gazing at her for a moment, it wavered, torn between her and the town. Slowly, its eyes began to roll back in the direction of Summershall. It must not have seen her as a threat. Compared to all those people ahead, she wasn’t worth bothering with. She needed to convince it otherwise.
She raised Demonslayer and charged, leaping over fallen branches, dodging between the trees. The Malefict’s bulky form loomed above her, blocking out the moonlight. She held her breath against its nauseating stench. Several of its eyes swiveled to focus on her, their pupils enlarging in surprise, but that was all they had a chance to see before the blade swiped across them, spattering ink in an arc through the shadows.
The monster’s roar shook the ground. Elisabeth kept running; she knew she couldn’t face the Book of Eyes head-on. She plunged through the orchard and skidded to a crouch behind the mossy ruin of an old stone well, sucking in gasps of clean air.
Somehow, hiding from the monster was worse than facing it. She couldn’t see what it was doing, which allowed her imagination to fill in the gaps. But she did determine, without a doubt, that it was looking for her. Though it moved with unnerving stealth, it was too large to pass between the trees without betraying its presence. Branches snapped here and there, and apples plopped to the ground with hollow smacks. The sounds gradually drew nearer. Elisabeth stopped panting; her lungs burned with the effort of holding her breath. An apple struck the well and burst, spattering her with sticky fragments.
“Apprentice . . . I’ll find you . . . only a matter of time . . .”
The whisper caressed her mind like a flabby hand. She reeled, clutching her head.
“Better if you gave up now . . .”
The greasy suggestion swirled through her thoughts, compelling in its bloodless pragmatism. Her mission was impossible. Too hard. All she had to do was give in, put down the sword, and her suffering would be over. The Book of Eyes would make it quick.
The Book of Eyes was lying.
Gritting her teeth, Elisabeth looked up. The Malefict stood above her, but it hadn’t seen her yet. Its eyes twisted in their sockets, moving independently of one another as they scanned the orchard. The ones she’d injured had closed up, weeping rivulets of ink like tears.
“Apprentice . . .”
Resisting the whispers was like treading water in sodden clothes, barely keeping her nose and mouth above the surface. She forced herself to stop holding her head and clenched her fingers around Demonslayer’s grip. Just a little longer, she told herself. The monster shifted closer, and a yellow eye looked down. When it spotted her, its pupil dilated so hugely that the entire iris appeared black.
Now.
She thrust Demonslayer upward, piercing the eye. Ink cascaded down her arms and dripped onto the moss. The Malefict’s bellow shuddered through the night. This time, as she scrambled away, she saw new lights winking on in the town below. More joined them with every second that passed, spreading from house to house like banked embers flaring back to life. Summershall was waking. Her plan was succeeding.
And her own time was running out.
An arm swept from the darkness, tossing her through the air like a rag doll. A bright shock of pain sparked through her as her shoulder clipped a tree trunk, sending her spinning through the damp grass. She tasted copper, and when she sat up, gasping for breath, her surroundings blurred in and out. A strap of her nightgown hung loose, torn and bloodied. The Malefict’s dark shape towered over her.
It leaned closer. It had a lumpy head, but no face, no features aside from those countless bulging eyes. “An odd girl, you are. Ahhh . . . there’s something about you . . . a reason why you woke tonight, while the others slept. . . .”
The Director’s sword lay in the grass. Elisabeth snatched it up and held it between them. The blade trembled.
“I could help you,” the monster coaxed. “I see the questions inside your head . . . so many questions, and so few answers . . . but I could tell you secrets—oh, such secrets, secrets you cannot imagine, secrets beyond your strangest dreams. . . .”
As if caught in a whirlpool, her thoughts followed its whispers toward some lightless, hungry place—a place from which she knew her mind would not return. She swallowed thickly. Her hand found the key hanging against her chest, and she imagined the Director slamming the grimoire shut, cutting off the monster’s voice. “You are lying,” she declared.
Guttural laughter filled her head. Blindly, she lashed out. The monster heaved back, and Demonslayer whistled harmlessly through the air. Wood splintered behind her as she scrambled away. The Book of Eyes had struck the tree that had stood behind her a moment before, a blow that would have crushed her like a toy.
She fled, stumbling over fallen apples. Disoriented, she nearly smacked into a pale shape that stood between the trees. Something winged and white, with a sad, solemn face eroded by time. A marble angel.
Hope seized her. The statue marked a cache with supplies that could be used by wardens or townspeople during an emergency. She fumbled in the earthen hollow beneath the pedestal until her fingers bumped against a rain-slicked canister.
The Malefict’s voice pursued her. “I will tell you,” it whispered, “the truth of what happened to the Director. Is that a secret you would like
to hear? Someone did this, you know . . . someone released me. . . .”
Elisabeth’s fingers froze as she fumbled the canister open.
“I could tell you who it was—apprentice!”
The air rippled with motion, but she reacted too slowly. Slimy leather closed in on her from all sides, capturing her in a squeezing, stinking grip. The monster had caught her. It raised her up, lifting her feet from the ground, surveying her with eyes so near she could see the hemorrhaged veins that traced through them like scarlet threads. The fist began to tighten. Elisabeth felt her ribs bend inward, and her breath escaped in a thin gasp.
This is not how it will end, she thought, struggling against the dark. She was to be a warden, keeper of books and words. She was their friend. Their steward. Their jailer. And if need be, their destroyer.
Her arm came free, and she flung the canister’s contents into the air. The Malefict gave an agonized howl as a cloud of salt enveloped its body. Its grip loosened, and Elisabeth slid from its grasp to land with a sickening crack against the angel statue. She blinked away stars. For a moment she could not move, couldn’t feel her limbs, and wondered if she had broken her back. Then the feeling in her fingers returned in a prickling wash of agony. Demonslayer’s grip pressed against her skin. She hadn’t let go.
Before the monster’s whispers could sink their claws into her again, she rolled onto her side, where she found herself face to face with a giant, filmy blue eye. It was reddened and watering, quivering in pain as it attempted to remain open long enough to focus on her. Using the last of her strength, she dragged herself upright. She raised the Director’s sword above the monster’s body and drove it downward with all her strength, burying it to the hilt in the monster’s greasy hide.
The eye’s pupil expanded, then contracted. “No,” the Malefict gurgled. “No!”
Gouts of ink bubbled from the wound. She clenched her jaw and twisted the blade. The monster heaved, throwing her aside. Demonslayer remained stuck fast in its body, far from her reach, but she no longer needed it. The eyes twitched wildly and then went still, rolling upward, the lids relaxing. As if aging in rapid time, the leather skin began to turn gray, then crack and peel. A cloudy film spread over the eyes. Chunks of its body collapsed inward, sending up fountains of fiery ashes. As she watched, the Malefict disintegrated on the wind.
She remembered what the Director had told her in the vault. This grimoire had been the only one of its kind. She had been responsible for it, and she had destroyed it. She knew she hadn’t had a choice. But still she thought to herself, What have I done?
Ash swirled around her like snow. A brassy ringing filled the air. At last, far too late, the Great Library’s bell had begun to ring.
FIVE
“THIS IS MADNESS. The girl has done nothing. You know she is innocent—”
“I do not know that, Master Hargrove,” said Warden Finch. “Only two people handled the Book of Eyes when it arrived in Summershall. Now one of them is dead. Tell me, why was Scrivener out of bed when the Malefict broke free?”
Hargrove wheezed a disbelieving laugh. “Are you truly suggesting that Scrivener had something to do with this? That she sabotaged a Class Eight grimoire? Preposterous. What earthly reason would she have to do such a thing?”
“She was found out of bed, out of bounds, with the Director’s sword.”
“Which the Director left to her in her will, for heaven’s sake! It belongs to Scrivener now—”
Elisabeth’s eyelids fluttered. She lay beneath a thin, scratchy blanket in an unfamiliar bed. Not a bed, a cot. Her toes were cold; her feet stuck off the end. The stone wall she faced didn’t belong to her room, and Finch and Hargrove’s argument didn’t make any sense.
“The Director’s keys were missing from her key ring,” Finch growled, “and we found them at the entrance to the vault. Someone took them. Scrivener was the only one there. The library had been secured for the evening—no one else could have gotten inside.”
“I’m certain there’s another explanation.” She had never heard Hargrove so upset, even after the booklouse incident. Sunk halfway into a dream, she envisioned him gesticulating the way he did during his lectures, his fragile, age-spotted hands waving through the air as though he were conducting an orchestra. “We must investigate,” he said, “speak to Scrivener, employ logic to understand what happened last night.”
“I’ve already sent a report to the Magisterium. A priceless grimoire has been destroyed, and the sorcerers will want someone to answer for it. They’ll get the truth from her, one way or another.”
A long silence followed. “Please, I beg you to reconsider.” Hargrove’s voice sounded muffled, as if he had moved off, intimidated into backing away. “The Director trusted Scrivener, even loved her. We both know she wasn’t one for sentiment. Surely that must count for something.”
“It does. It tells me that the Director loved the wrong person, and the mistake killed her. You’re dismissed, Hargrove.”
“Warden Finch—”
“Director,” Finch corrected. “If you’ve forgotten your place, Hargrove, I’m sure I can find you a new one.”
Why is Finch calling himself the Director?
Elisabeth’s memory flooded back as she fought her way awake. Ashes. Bells. Wardens surrounding her with their swords drawn, Finch emerging from the group to seize her arm. He had dragged her downstairs and thrown her in this cell. She recalled the rage that had twisted his pockmarked face in the torchlight. And she remembered the wetness that had shone on his cheeks when he turned away.
At once, she regretted waking. Every inch of her body ached. Bruises throbbed on her arms and back, and whenever she breathed in, her ribs stabbed her lungs. But far worse than the pain was the rush of understanding that followed.
He blames me for what happened. She hadn’t expected to be hailed as a hero—but this? And if he’s the Director now . . .
Biting the inside of her cheek, she forced herself to sit up. She clutched the coarse blanket to her chest, finding that she was still dressed in her nightgown, crusted stiff with ink and stained with her own blood. Looking around, she found no sign of Hargrove, but Finch stood outside the bars of the cell door. Hard lines etched his features as he gazed down the corridor. A single torch blazed on the wall behind him, throwing his long, threatening shadow into the cell. She struggled to make sense of her final memory from last night. Why had his face been wet? It hadn’t started raining.
The truth dawned on her. “You were in love with the Director,” she realized aloud.
Her voice was little more than a thin scratching, but Finch swung around as though she’d hurled an insult. “Shut your mouth, girl.”
“Please,” she insisted. “I loved her, too. You must listen to me.” The words came tumbling out as though a dam had broken inside her. “Someone else released the Book of Eyes last night. I came downstairs, and . . .”
As she began recounting the story in fits and starts, Finch’s hand stole toward the hilt of his sword. He squeezed the leather grip until it creaked. Elisabeth stammered to a halt.
“Always telling tales,” he said. His eyes shone like black beetles in the torchlight. “Always causing trouble. You expect me to believe you, after all the rules you’ve broken?”
“I’m telling the truth,” she said, willing him to see the honesty on her face. “You can’t send me away to the sorcerers. It was a sorcerer who did this.”
“Why, pray tell, would a sorcerer free a grimoire, knowing it would be destroyed? Those spells are gone now. No chance of getting them back, and all the sorcerers are weaker for their loss.”
He was right. There was no reason for a sorcerer to have done it. But she knew that what she had sensed had been real, and if he would only believe her . . .
“There was something wrong last night,” she blurted, grasping at a memory. “There weren’t any wardens on patrol aside from the Director. I didn’t see anyone in the halls. It was a spell—it must h
ave been. You can check the logs, ask the wardens. Someone else must have noticed.”
“Lies and more lies.” With satisfaction, he spat on the ground outside the cell.
Terror seized Elisabeth. She had the sense of wandering into a dark wood and suddenly realizing that she was lost with no hope of finding her way. Finch was never going to believe her, because he did not want to. Her guilt was the best gift he had ever received. The Director had chosen to love Elisabeth, not him, and finally he had an opportunity to punish her for it.
“An idiot, you are,” he was saying. “Always thought so. Irena never believed me, claimed you had promise, but I knew you weren’t worth the trouble of room and board, ever since you were a fat little babe, filling the library with your squalling.”
Irena. That was the Director’s name? She had died without Elisabeth even knowing it.
“I’m telling the truth,” she whispered again. Her face prickled, hot with humiliation. “I smelled sorcery in the library. A smell like burnt metal. Aetherial combustion. I swear it.”
His lip curled in a sneer. “And how would you know that smell?”
“I—last spring, when—” She cut herself off, feeling ill. If she explained that she’d snuck into the reading room and spoken to a magister, she would only make things worse. She looked down and shook her head. “I just know,” she finished weakly.
“Read it in a grimoire, no doubt,” he growled. “One you shouldn’t have been reading, filling your head with the words of demons. Are you consorting with demons, girl? Have you begun dabbling in sorcery—is that how you know?”
She retreated in bed until her back thumped against the wall. “No!” she cried. How could he accuse her of such a thing? She had sworn her oaths, just like him. If she broke them by attempting sorcery, she would never become a warden, never be permitted to set foot in a Great Library again.
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