Lights glittered ahead, winking between the heaving boughs of fir trees. That was the first glimpse Elisabeth received of the Great Library. When they reached the road and the view opened up, they both trailed to a halt.
They had to tilt their heads back to see the entire structure. It rose skyward like a black citadel, carved straight from the base of the mountain. Lamplight glowered behind its tall, arched stained glass windows, their panes locked away behind iron grilles. Torches guttered along the rampart that circled it in front, so high that Elisabeth couldn’t make out anyone patrolling the top, though she knew the wardens had to be up there, watching.
Warily, they pressed onward. Barricades had been erected on the road, studded with metal spikes facing outward. She and Nathaniel traded a look. The barricades weren’t designed to keep grimoires in—they were made to keep people out. The library was equipped to withstand a siege.
As they finished winding through the barricades, the sound of their footsteps rebounded forbiddingly from the wall. Elisabeth saw no evidence of a gate or doorway in the riveted iron sheets that made up its exterior, towering high above them.
“Hello?” she called up. “Is anyone there?”
Her voice echoed, bouncing back and forth between the high crenellations, a thin and desolate sound. For a moment, all was silent. Then a rumbling, clanging, grinding cacophony answered her—the friction of gears, the awakening of some immense machinery buried within the wall. The ground trembled. A motion at the top of the rampart caught her eye: cannons, swiveling down to aim at them. On second thought, cannons seemed like an inadequate word. The mouth of each gun was wide enough for a person to crawl inside.
She tensed in horror. “They aren’t going to fire on us, are they? Nathaniel?”
His eyes were closed, his face calm, lips moving soundlessly beneath the clamor of the gears. Her ears popped as the air grew heavy with damp. She looked up to see the sky above the Great Library boiling with clouds, their underbellies lit a menacing shade of green.
Figures leaped away from the cannons as a bolt of lightning forked over the rampart, barely missing them. The machinery ground to a halt. A slot slid open above their heads, and a pair of eyes glared down at them. A warden.
“Identify yourself, sorcerer!” he called down.
“Excellent,” Nathaniel said cheerfully. “I’ve gotten your attention. I am Magister Nathaniel Thorn, and this is Miss Elisabeth Scrivener. No doubt our reputations have preceded us. We come with an urgent warning for the Director.”
If their names had any effect on the warden, he showed no sign. In fact, he still looked as though he’d prefer killing them to talking to them. “No one’s allowed in or out of the library. Magisters aren’t an exception. Leave, or we’ll fire.”
“Wait.” Elisabeth tugged on the chain around her neck and pulled out her greatkey, lifting it to the light. She thought back to the conversation she had overheard between Mistress Wick and the Royal Library’s Director. “I promise Director Hyde will want to see us.”
The warden’s eyes widened at the sight of the greatkey, and even further at the mention of the Director’s name. As she had guessed, that name was only known within a select circle. To most people, he was just “the Director.” With luck, the warden would assume she was here on the Collegium’s authority.
Before she could lose her nerve, she continued, “We know the saboteur plans to strike tonight. We’ve come to stop it from happening.” Further inspiration struck. “I carry Demonslayer, the sword of the former Director of Summershall.”
“Show it to me.”
Elisabeth folded her coat aside, allowing the torchlight to glitter on Demonslayer’s garnets. She hoped Irena would understand it being used this way.
The warden’s eyes flicked between her and Nathaniel. Then the slot slammed shut. Gears began rumbling again. But this time, it wasn’t the cannons that moved. A sheet of iron slid aside, revealing a portcullis hidden at the base of the rampart.
“Step inside,” the warden’s voice commanded.
After a hesitation, they obeyed. Colossal wheel-sized cogs churned behind them as the wall rolled back into place. Now they were trapped between the wall and the portcullis, in a sort of outdoor prison cell. The space reeked of machinery grease and was large enough to contain a coach and a full team of horses. Judging by the signs of wear on the flagstones, it often did so. Anyone entering or exiting the Great Library had to stop here first for an inspection.
Past the bars, torchlight lapped across a grim courtyard. The flagstones were crusted with a white rime of what she first mistook for frost, but then realized must be salt.
They waited for several minutes, shifting from foot to foot to stay warm. Finally, the warden appeared on the other side of the portcullis.
“The Director will see you. But there are conditions. No weapons, and you have to wear shackles.” His eyes traveled to Nathaniel. He lifted up a clinking bundle of chains and cuffs. “Iron shackles.”
Nathaniel grimaced. “They’ll keep me from using sorcery,” he explained to Elisabeth under his breath. More loudly he said, “Fine. We accept.”
If Nathaniel was willing to bear having his magic taken away, she wasn’t about to make a fuss about handing over Demonslayer. But she nevertheless experienced a purely physical resistance when she tried. At first her hand wouldn’t release the blade, and the warden had to tug on it, sending a twinge of pain through her injured palm, before her fingers allowed it to slide free. He handed their belongings off to a second warden, who vanished into the shadows. Then Elisabeth and Nathaniel turned around and allowed him to put on the shackles, binding their hands behind their backs.
The portcullis rose with a squeal.
“Follow me,” the warden said.
Their shackles’ chains clinked as they passed between the two grim obsidian angels flanking the door. The wind cut off abruptly when they crossed the threshold, replaced by a dusty silence filled with papery groans and mutterings. A handful of oil lamps did little to dispel the library’s oppressive gloom. Most of the light entered through high stained glass windows, decorated with scenes pieced together in doleful shades of gray and crimson, which cast splintered pools of moonlight on the tall black shelves. A dour-faced librarian glanced their way, then shuffled off into the warren of corridors, his stained robes flapping around his ankles. Elisabeth had heard rumors that librarians considered an assignment to Harrows more of a punishment than a privilege. Now, it wasn’t difficult to see why.
There was no atmosphere of warmth or welcome to indicate the presence of friendly, well-treated grimoires. Instead a clammy sense of watchfulness prevailed, and the air stank of wood polish and mildew. Unlike the other Great Libraries, no grimoires sat out in the open; every bookcase was enclosed behind an iron grate. Hisses of fury rang out from the shelves as they passed. She felt as though they were walking through a darkened courtroom, enduring the censure of its unseen judges.
“No grimoires lower than a Class Four here,” the warden explained, seeing Elisabeth’s expression. “High-security texts only.” He sounded proud.
Without warning, a shudder traveled through the marble tiles beneath their boots. More gears, she thought, until a muffled howl rose up from the floor—a sound that was neither human nor machine.
Nathaniel drew in a sharp breath. “What was that?”
“Captive Malefict in the dungeon. Class Eight.” The warden gave him an unpleasant smile, clearly enjoying the rare opportunity to enlighten a sorcerer. “It guards the entrance to the vault. Sometimes, we use it for practice.”
The remark disturbed Elisabeth, but she dared not offer her opinion. They ascended a narrow, spiraling stair, lightless and creaking, and emerged into a similarly narrow and dreary hall, at the end of which the warden rapped on a door, opened it, and stepped aside.
As they entered, the warden touched her arm. She tensed, but he only muttered, after a hostile glance at Nathaniel, “The Director is hard of he
aring. Helps if he can read your lips.”
He pitched the advice for her ears alone. It took her a moment to understand why. Nathaniel was a sorcerer, an outsider, untrustworthy. She couldn’t explain the rush of anger she felt toward the warden in response. Not so long ago, she had believed the same as him. But she did not want to be this man’s ally and confidant, even in his own mind, leaving Nathaniel the odd one out.
A fire burned low in the room ahead, gilding the heads of the deer, wolves, and boars mounted on the walls, their plaques taking up almost every available inch of space. The figure who stood facing the fire resembled a beast himself: tall and broad, with a thick fur draped over the shoulders of his warden’s coat. Wind rattled the loose casement of his tower window, letting in drafts that ruffled the papers on his desk.
She and Nathaniel stood in the doorway like children summoned to a schoolmaster’s office, waiting for Director Hyde to turn around. Nathaniel shifted, unable to conceal his impatience.
Finally, the Director spoke. His deep, rumbling voice reminded Elisabeth of a bear. “The Great Library of Harrows has never been breached, by man or by grimoire, in the three hundred years since it was first carved from the mountain. It has weathered tempests and broken every siege brought to its gates. You say there is going to be an attack tonight. How would you come to know such a thing, and why should I believe you?”
Before she could stop Nathaniel, he took one long stride toward the desk. “Sir, no doubt the warden has told you our names. Given the Chancellor’s attempt on our lives, and Miss Scrivener’s previous involvement—”
A floorboard squeaked as Director Hyde turned. Nathaniel fell silent, and Elisabeth froze. Hyde’s face was more scar than skin, lacerated by brutal claw marks that Elisabeth would not have thought survivable. Peering out from this landscape of ravaged flesh, his eyes were bright, hard, and above all—suspicious. His gaze raked across Nathaniel’s mouth. He had turned quickly enough to hear, or see, the end.
“What’s this about the Chancellor of Magic?” he growled.
At first the question made no sense. Then, making a quick mental calculation, Elisabeth’s heart sank. She turned to Nathaniel. “No wonder the warden didn’t recognize our names,” she said under her breath. “They haven’t heard the news. The Collegium must have dispatched a rider to all the Great Libraries right away, but the message won’t reach Harrows until later tonight.” Uneasily, she looked back to Hyde. “They don’t know about Ashcroft.”
“Damn it all. I didn’t think of that. If only we’d brought a newspaper with us . . .” Nathaniel cleared his throat and continued in a louder voice, “Director, allow me to explain. Chancellor Ashcroft is a traitor. The night before last, he was unmasked as the saboteur.”
Hyde glanced back and forth, taking in the ease of their exchange. We’re being too familiar with each other, she realized. No respectable librarian would ever speak to a sorcerer the way she had, much less a magister. As if he were a friend—an intimate. But surely that didn’t matter as much as the news they carried. Surely Hyde was taking them seriously. . . .
At last he said, “Scrivener. I know your name. You’re from the Great Library of Summershall.”
She nodded, setting her jaw against a quaver of foreboding. “The Chancellor took me captive in his manor,” she explained. “While I was there, I overheard his plans. The rest of the story is complicated. But Nath—Magister Thorn is telling the truth. A rider will arrive from the Collegium to verify everything.”
“Everything, including the imminent attack on this library?”
Nathaniel shot Elisabeth a look before he answered. His expression had become increasingly guarded. “No, we discovered that ourselves and came directly. We didn’t have time to alert the Collegium. The Chancellor is sacrificing the grimoires as part of a ritual. I assure you I’m not exaggerating when I say that the fate of the entire kingdom is at stake.”
“Please, Director,” she broke in. “Harrows is the final step in the Chancellor’s plan. You already knew that the saboteur was likely to target this location next, given the pattern of his attacks. He could be infiltrating the library even now.”
That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Hyde stepped around the desk, the floor creaking beneath his weight. His shadow fell over her, as frigid as the draft from the window. When he next spoke, his voice was dangerously quiet.
“And how is it that you’ve managed to reach Harrows more quickly than the Collegium’s fastest riders? Not you, Magister Thorn. I want Scrivener to answer me.”
She swallowed. “Magic,” she said, her voice trembling only slightly. “We used magic.”
His face darkened. “Are you saying you have dabbled in sorcery, Scrivener?”
She couldn’t take it back. She raised her head, meeting his eyes. “Yes. And I would do it again if I had to.”
His fist seized the front of her cloak, bunching the fabric in his huge, scarred fingers, and lifted her from the ground.
“Let go of her,” Nathaniel snapped. There came a scuffle and a rattling of chains; he had lunged for Hyde, and the warden keeping watch had seized him.
The Director paid Nathaniel no mind. His eyes roved over Elisabeth’s face from mere inches away, full of disgust. Shame burned within her—shame as real, as physically painful as the lash of a switch—but she didn’t look away. The Collegium’s teachings held power over her still; perhaps they always would. She had grown around them like a sapling around a nail, taking the foreign part into the core of herself, no matter how poisonous. But she had not been through everything she had, fought and suffered, to yield to this man’s will like a chastened apprentice.
“You’ve been corrupted,” he growled.
“If that’s true,” said Elisabeth, “then we’re all corrupted, and have been from the start. You know that the libraries we serve were built by a sorcerer. Have you ever questioned why?”
A scowl answered her. Of course. This was not a man who asked questions. He’d followed orders his entire life until he’d eventually become the person giving them, one identical cog swapped out for another to keep the library’s machinery running the exact same way it had for centuries.
Even so, she couldn’t give up hope of breaking through to him. “Have you ever seen a summoning circle, Director?” she pressed. “No—I don’t suppose you have, but surely you can imagine—”
“Silence!”
Spittle flecked her face. She choked on her words, stunned into obedience as his other hand came up, roughly, and seized a hank of her hair. Too late, she understood what he had been looking for, and what he had found. Silver gleamed between his scarred fingers.
“You bear a demon’s mark,” he snarled.
Silence. Hideous silence, in which she heard the rasp of the warden’s indrawn breath.
“Director,” Nathaniel interjected sharply, a note of real panic in his voice, “I speak on my honor when I say that Miss Scrivener’s mind remains entirely her own, that this situation is far more complicated than you can possibly—” He stopped there with a grunt, as though the warden had kneed him in the stomach to shut him up.
Elisabeth barely heard. Too late, too late, too late. If only she had remembered to snip off the silver lock . . .
Hyde’s features twisted in revulsion. With a great heave, he threw her to the floor, sending her sprawling. She landed poorly, and cried out when the shackles cracked against her spine.
“Elisabeth!”
“I will listen to none of your lies,” the Director ground out. “You are a disgrace to the Collegium, girl. Corrupted. Tainted. Addled by demons.” Each word struck her like a kick to the stomach.
“Have you gone completely mad?” Nathaniel roared. “She risked her life to come here! She’s trying to save you, you imbecile!”
Hyde whirled on him. “And you, no doubt responsible for leading the girl into darkness. I have seen enough of this vile display.” To the warden, he said, “Take them to the dungeon. They cannot be
trusted. Only time will tell whether they are telling the truth, or are involved in the sabotage themselves.”
Through a haze of misery, Elisabeth felt the warden wrestle her upright and march her out the door. Judging by the storm of invectives that followed, Nathaniel was being treated similarly. She had never heard him so angry. The air even held a faint tang of sorcery, as though his rage was nearly sufficient to overcome the iron.
They were taken back down the spiral stair and past the shelves, down a few more times, and soon she stumbled over the roughly hewn stones of a dungeon passage, averting her eyes from the sputtering torches. Metal clanked; then she was shoved forward into a cell, bare aside from a bucket in the corner and a scattering of straw on the ground. Nathaniel received such a hard push that he went down onto his knees, unable to catch himself with his hands bound. The cell door slammed shut.
The warden paused before he turned away. He regarded Elisabeth expressionlessly, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“It isn’t too late to stop this,” she said, gathering her strength. “There’s still time—”
“I don’t speak to traitors,” he interrupted. Then he left without another word, his boots echoing down the corridor into silence.
THIRTY-TWO
FOR A MOMENT Elisabeth stood frozen, too shocked to react. Then she threw herself against the bars. She spun around and felt at them with her bound hands, scrabbling for a loose piece of metal, crumbling mortar, a rusty hinge—anything she could use to break them out of the cell. She was stronger than an ordinary person. If only she could find a weak spot—
“Elisabeth, stop.”
Nathaniel might as well have spoken a different language. She gritted her teeth and yanked harder, even though doing so sent a spike of pain through her injured hand. A wildness filled her, taking over her body, the same as when she had struck down the fiend on the pavilion, or the time she had destroyed all the mirrors in Nathaniel’s house.
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