The Spirit Lens (27 page)

His answer drifted backward as his shape merged into the dark of the garden arch. “I don’t pray.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

21 QAT 40 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

T
he sultry breeze ruffled the pages of five years’ worth of log books heaped on the library table. Nidallo, the soft-bodied adept temporarily assigned to my position as Collegia Seravain’s curator of archives, hovered at my shoulder, disapproving. “You must allow me to close the casement, Acolyte Duplais. Constant temperature and gentle handling are critical to preservation. And I don’t understand why you need so many logbooks out at once.”

The sun-sweetened airs of Seravain’s rocky vale had cleansed the musty odors of deadhouses, royal crypts, and haunted alleyways from my head. I wasn’t about to shut them out. How had I borne fifteen years in these stifling precincts—nine of them closeted in this dusty labyrinth of book cupboards, lamp-grimed walls, and age-darkened study tables?

“Note the dryness of the parchments in the older journals,” I said. “Experience informs us that more water would improve the balance of elements in the preservation spells. The moisture in the air will suffice. Surely you don’t suggest immersing the books in water, Nidallo?” My recent practice at fabricating lies served many circumstances on this journey.

“Certainly not!” He shook his head sharply, as if trying to extract sense from my logic.

“Then keep the windows open. And if you could give me a better idea who might have borrowed
A Treatise on Heaven and Earth
, I would not need so many volumes. Visiting scholars borrow books every week. You must keep a running tally, compiled monthly at the very least. I’ve a notion it was Ydraga de Farnese who last requested this work, but have no idea when the good woman last visited. If you had to deal with this new mage at Castelle Escalon, you would understand my determination! He is the most unreasonable, crude, demanding . . .”

Angels protect me, I babbled like Ilario. The torrent of words poured from my mouth, each whorl and eddy leading poor Nidallo farther from espying my purpose—or so I hoped.

The adept retreated to his search for the missing treatise. He had not seen me slip the exquisite little volume into my pocket within a half hour of my arrival at my old haunts.

I stretched out my newly unbandaged fingers and settled back to work in the quiet niche. Nidallo’s irritated mumbling at the disappearance of a valuable text kept me apprised of his location.

Switching logbooks frequently enough to prevent anyone from noting which most interested me, I jotted more entries in my journal. The gate warden’s log confirmed that Michel de Vernase had indeed visited Seravain twice the previous year, the first time shortly after the assassination attempt, the second a tenday after his letter to the king hinting at new information and an extended journey. He had met with six senior mages on the first occasion, and only two on the second. Both times he had spoken with Kajetan, as well. That was only to be expected. Seravain’s chancellor received every high-ranking visitor.

As I recorded Michel de Vernase’s visits and appointments, I encoded them with shifted notation, even within my usual cipher. I shifted times, dates, and other names in a similar fashion. The need to mask my inquiries wrenched my soul. Collegia Seravain had been my haven from family upsets and an unwelcoming world, a serene community of the mind where I could explore and contemplate the wonders of a mystical universe. Yet its genteelly crumbling walls enfolded ugly secrets, tainting my memories as if mold had crept out of its corners. A sorcerer associated with the collegia had vilely abused Ophelie de Marangel right under our noses for
months
. How could those of us entrusted with children’s minds—myself included—have been so inexcusably blind?

I recorded and encoded every reference to Ophelie, as well
.
In the early days of her residency, the girl had made occasional day visits to Seravain village, usually in company with the same few students—names duly noted. She had spent short holidays with the families of these same girls, only returning to her home in Challyat for the month-long harvest recess.

Library records scribed in my own hand indicated that three years ago, against all earlier indications, Ophelie had advanced to the rank of adept. That is, she had demonstrated sufficient talent and skill to study serious magic. The timing jibed with Dante’s estimate of when she had begun bleeding herself. Only lunatics and desperate children could find logic in bleeding away one’s soul to unblock the wellsprings of magic. Ironically, only an innately talented child could derive benefit from the attempt.

Sometime in the next year—long before she had been moved to the crypt at Castelle Escalon—a more experienced hand had begun taking her blood. Certainly in the months after her advancement, Ophelie’s habits had changed dramatically. She left the school only rarely, at first alone, later in company with a different girl, a younger student named Lianelle ney Cazar.

Everyone knew the Cazar girl. Tutors considered her talented but erratic, and were forever chastising her lack of discipline. I recalled her as unremittingly annoying. She would demand to read every work in the library, even the most advanced texts, on obscure topics such as animal summoning or bone reading, rather than choosing a broader selection of materials suited to her age and level. And she had plagued me with endless questions about impossibilities, such as invisibility or altering time. I had never realized she and Ophelie were friends.

I jotted another date . . . then jerked my pen from the page. “But that’s the same—” The words slipped out before I knew it.

“Is something wrong, Portier?” Nidallo imposed his beaky face into my light again as I flapped a page of my journal back and forth and back again to verify what I had just noticed.

“No, no. I just thought I had found Ydraga’s name in Mage Gadevron’s appointment list for the thirty-first of last Ocet, but my eyes played tricks on me. I’m not yet accustomed to these spectacles.”

But the surprise had nothing to do with Ydraga, and there was no mistake. As I had encoded the last instance of Ophelie and Lianelle visiting the village, it struck me that I had encoded the same date on a previous page. It was the exact day of Michel de Vernase’s first visit to Collegia Seravain.

I quickly scanned the gate log for additional references to Lianelle ney Cazar. The younger girl had gone out on her own early that same morning of Michel’s visit, noting her intended destination as
the fields
, and her purpose as
to collect fresh herbs for a formulary project
. She had returned an hour later.

Flipping through the wide pages, I skipped to the occasion of Michel’s second visit. A scrawled notation glared up at me. Lianelle had left the school on
that
morning, as well, with destination
Tigano
and purpose
to return a stray dog
. She had returned to the collegia less than an hour before Michel de Vernase’s arrival. I gave no credence to coincidence.

Not daring to feel excitement, I spent the next hour retrieving all the information I could glean about the Cazar girl from the archives. She returned to the Cazar demesne for school recesses, but otherwise left the collegia only on class outings. She took no more of the “village market” excursions she had taken with Ophelie. She had appeared before disciplinary boards at least twelve times in three years, and had been placed on probation twice.

It would be awkward to find the girl. Classes were already completed for the day. Only specialized tutorials went on in the hour before supper. For students not involved, it would be free time. . . .

I pushed away from the desk enough to spy around a corner to Nidallo’s desk. The handwritten paper posted on a nail beside it provided a possibility.

“Adept Nidallo!” I called. “I need assistance retrieving some additional materials for Master Dante. Have you this month’s restriction list?” Lianelle ney Cazar had spent half her time on the restriction list since she had arrived at Seravain.

I smothered a smile as I perused the notice. Indeed the girl’s name appeared along with those of six other students available for extra work during their free hours due to disciplinary infractions. Nidallo roused a student from a corner table to fetch the two malefactors I selected.

As I waited, I occupied my twitching fingers by reshelving logbooks. On a whim, I flipped the student log to Maura’s records, thinking to discover some common bent that might lead to conversation outside palace business. I’d spent much of the two-day journey to Seravain reliving our pleasant hours working on the Exposition and planning what I might say when we next met. Unpracticed at casual conversation and with so much of my present life secret and my past dull or melancholy, I felt as nervous as an acolyte.

The record provided only one interesting tidbit. I had assumed Maura abandoned her studies for the same reasons I had, but indeed she had passed the intermediate examinations for adept’s rank with high recommendations in all disciplines. Her claim that sheer boredom had sent her to court must be the truth. The reason was certainly not lack of talent.

Shuffling footsteps rounded the corner into my niche. I shoved the logbook back into its place.

“Divine grace, Benat, Lianelle,” I said, exposing my hand to a fidgeting, spotty youth of about fifteen and a wiry, sun-browned girl a little younger.

“And w-with you, Ac-c-colyte . . .” The stammering boy exposed the back of his hand.

“Sonjeur de Duplais,” said the girl, scarce dabbing her small hand on her shoulder. Her gray eyes raked me from head to boot. “Are you come back to Seravain, then, Curator? Everyone says you gave up and left because you couldn’t read your way past the examinations.”

Lianelle was exactly as I remembered her. Dark green student’s gown stained and wrinkled. Hair escaped from two braids and frizzed about a smudged face. Speech neither belittling nor sarcastic, but merely uncomfortably frank for a girl of thirteen.

“I am now attached to Queen Eugenie’s household,” I said. “And I require assistance obtaining materials for Her Majesty’s mages. As you may remember, I like to ensure that students on restriction make good use of their time.” To be sure, I had called on the quiet Benat, continually disciplined for his inability to speak clearly, more often than the brittle-edged Lianelle.

I whipped out my transcriptions of Dante’s odd requests, items ranging from crystals of blue-white antimonium to several types of exotic feathers to shards of Fassid pottery and Syan porcelain, many of which were difficult to obtain outside a sorcerer’s supply room. The requirements were so numerous and so varied, requiring trips to the aviary, the metallurgical store, and several individual mages in addition to the general supply cupboards, it should take the students several hours to fetch them all—longer, in truth, as I had split the list most unfairly, leaving all the most difficult acquisitions to poor Benat.

Once the two were dispatched on their errands, I began packing a stack of borrowed volumes into crates destined for Dante. Inevitably my mind turned to the Mondragoni texts. Since the day I had refused his demands to acquire them, our mystery had spiraled deeper into a darkness where innocents died in fire and a conjured spectre drove a decent man to despair. Illicit power for sorcery and transgressing the boundaries of death were exactly the specialties of the Mondragoni, who had named their family the Brotherhood of Malevolent Spirits. How could I deny Dante any resource that might lead to understanding our quarries’ aims?

Acquiring the texts would not be easy. Assuming I could find an excuse to visit the vault and abscond with forbidden materials, in no way could I take them all. The collection comprised more than fifty bound manuscripts and scrolls—far too many to escape notice were anyone to come looking and find them missing.

“Adept,” I called, “could someone have shelved our missing treatise in the vault by mistake?” The short downward stair to the library vault began in an alcove just past the curator’s desk. Impossible to pass without Nidallo’s noticing.

“No,” he snapped, slamming a large herbal on my book stack. “Every visit to the vault is supervised. Just because you no longer serve as curator does not mean the library has fallen to ruin.”

“No, no. Certainly not. But you see, I myself might have put the book there a few months ago. I seem to recall hearing that the Challyat copy had been destroyed in a fire. I was concerned that our original would be the only remaining version. Perhaps we could take a look.” As I had done frequently during the day, I tapped my fingers idly on Maura’s document authorizing my access to all Seravain’s resources.

Huffing in profound offense, Nidallo retrieved the keys from his desk. The vault door swung open with a dull clang. The adept hung a lamp from the drop chain in the center of the small stone room, then planted his back against the door frame and waved a hand at the two small cupboards and three chests—one of wood, one of leather, and one of iron. “Quickly, if you please.”

The cool, windowless chamber housed what few magical texts had survived the Blood Wars. I touched the brittle volumes reverently, noting a threadbare cloth cover that had split, and a gilded title that had tarnished to unreadability. Few people ever looked at the fragile, fading texts. Many, like the Mondragoni collection, were encrypted. A few appeared entirely blank, their information beyond our current skills to retrieve, though age, wear, and the presence of encrypting enchantments bespoke certain significance. Some texts had been composed in obscure dialects or comprised little more than extensive references to even older works we did not possess. The essential knowledge from the readable texts had long been distilled into the
Encyclopaediae of Workable Formulae
, ten volumes filled with detailed instructions that students were required to memorize and practice. What spells responded to a particular student’s talents might take a lifetime to master. It left little time for browsing.