The Spirit Lens (37 page)

Gritting my teeth and forcing my wits into order, I glared at that damnable boot and dared it to reveal its wearer. Indeed, it was no countryman’s cocker like Merle’s, nor was it a peasant’s nailed brogue, nor an elaborately stitched, wide-toed boot of current fashion as Ilario had worn. This was a horseman’s knee-high boot of good leather, rubbed thin on the inside of the leg, the plain, double stitching well waxed to keep out sand and water. Worn leather spur stops protruded from the heel. A well-loved boot. A knight’s boot.

Think. Who is this man?
Lord, Quernay had called him. A knight, it seemed. A sorcerer, I presumed, though his assumed title said not.
Aspirant
—what did that signify? One like Dante, not of the blood? Someone who knew me or knew
of
me. I could think of no one to fit the shape. Not yet. But on my hope of life, I would.

“Be assured, librarian, you’ve done no mischief that I cannot undo.”

But I
had
done mischief . . . if I could keep Dante unknown. More, if I could get free. The thought of my partners, one living, one lost, infused a remnant of strength. Let this devil think me cowed.

“Please loose my hands,” I mumbled, wincing as speech ground the cracks in my skull one edge against the other. “I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

“Indeed, you will.” The knight’s boot nudged my swollen lips and forced its gritty leather way inside, crushing my cheek, shoving my tongue aside, inevitably stretching and filling my bruised mouth until I gagged repeatedly. “The answers will . . .
leak
. . . out of you . . .
drip
. . .
flow
. What a pitiful thing you are. I will make you more useful than you could ever be to the King of Sabria.”

Abruptly he removed his foot. I spat, coughed, and swallowed repeatedly to clear the foul taste, my skin ablaze. Shame fueled my risen determination into fury. I would babble like poor dead Ilario and twist my tale into such knots, the leather-faced villain would never find the end of them.

“Get him in the chair,” snarled the Aspirant. “His Savin blood is not so sour as he claims. The blood of failures has fed our best work.”

The blood of failures
. . . Ophelie? Gruchin? As if I needed more fodder for my hatred.

Quernay unwrapped my arms and legs, and sensation returned to my cramped muscles in a fiery flood. Before I could claim any use from them, he hauled my carcass to the chair and strapped down my awakening limbs with the wide strips of supple leather. An extra strap bound my neck to the tall, narrow slat of the chair back.

Above the stair, the doorway to the night remained open. I could not go anywhere trussed like a goose and locked in a sorcerer’s hole, but in the chair . . . if I could stay sensible . . . recover some use of my extremities . . . break the damnable straps . . .

A bronze tray sat atop a wheeled trolley next to my chair. Quernay laid out thin tubes of silver on it, alongside a porcelain bowl, pots of herbs, flasks of oils and liquids, and glass cups and tubes, some fitted with brass or ivory handles. The Aspirant opened a flat wood case containing neatly arranged lancets of every size, but he picked out a small brass block and flicked a lever on its top. Ten or more small blades popped out of its polished base.

Saints defend . . .
Horror shivered my skin. I had seen sketches of scar ificators in histories of the Blood Wars. I clamped my jaw tight.

“Clean him up and we’ll draw a sample.”

As the masked man watched, Quernay snatched a dagger from his waist and sliced through my ripped and filthy shirt. Grinning, he traced his blade lightly across the bloodied bruises his red-haired friend had left me. “Pity for you we can’t use what’s already let,” he said. “But the Aspirant likes it clean. Fresh.”

I shrank into the unyielding chair, needing no player’s skill to convey my fear. “This is forbidden, p-perverse.”

“You’ll learn. We’ve many a lesson to teach.”

With a rag doused in pungent oil from one of his flasks, Quernay wiped dried blood and dirt from my chest. Then he plunged the fiery wick of a lit candle into a bulbous glass cup from the tray. So quick I could scarce follow, he removed the flame and laid the mouth of the cup on my chest. The smooth rim, not so hot as I feared, clung to the skin, and I watched in dread fascination as the circle of flesh purpled and swelled into the cooling cup.

Quernay’s finger under the edge of the glass loosened the cup, and he tossed it aside. Before I could speak or think, the Aspirant laid his chilly block of brass over the dark circle of swollen flesh and flicked its triggering lever.

The searing shock set me hard against the leather straps.

“And for good measure,” the masked man whispered, “because you have set my plans askew . . .” A precise click and he set the metal block askew in the same spot, cool against the fiery wounding. The lever snapped again. Ten blades bit again. My skull threatened to explode.

“Father Creator,” I mumbled, weakness radiating from the spot in scalding waves.

Quernay pressed a tubular glass fitted with a brass plunger over the wound, ensuring the oil on my skin sealed its heated mouth. He twisted the plunger’s ivory handle and tugged it slowly outward. Blood surged into the glass. I thought my gut might be drawn out with it.

“It’s time I looked in on our other friend,” said the Aspirant, tossing his nasty implement onto the tray. “The adept’s ready. Bring Portier’s offering when you’ve milked enough for a trial.” The masked man moved behind me into the passage that led to the sorcerer’s hole.

“Aye, lord.” Quernay removed the glass tube, deposited my blood into a porcelain jar, and picked up his glass cup and candle to begin again.

The Aspirant’s footsteps halted. Locks snapped, and a heavy door scraped open. Then rose a keening as spoke of eternities of misery, of despair so cold and dark I felt the firelight dim, of suffering so profound my soul quailed. Not
friend
. Victim.

“Legions of Heaven bring you mercy.” I had scarce breath enough to speak it, scarce mind enough to think who, in the name of holiness, the poor soul might be. Michel de Vernase? The Aspirant had mentioned an adept—so the missing Fedrigo, perhaps, who might have seen too much of Gaetana’s work?
Please gods, let it not be Dante.

Quernay pressed his cup to my chest. I wrestled the cursed straps, until the lout struck me so forcefully, the sand-hued light blurred and spun, smearing his dark face and my blood-striped skin with gleaming glass and fire. Though my head screamed agony, I clung to sense.

Quernay picked up the gleaming scarificator and cocked its blades.
Snick.
And it bit again. . . .

Such shallow cuts give up blood more slowly than a lanced vein. The day could stretch interminably, and I needed to act while I yet retained some wit. Only one thing was sure to halt a leech using a mule. He wouldn’t want that mule to die until he was ready.

As Quernay suctioned blood from the fourth or fifth cupping circle, I took a lesson from Dante’s discipline. With every scrap of will I could muster, I sent my mind voyaging into a cave darker than the sorcerer’s hole, conjuring the sound of ocean, the rhythmic crashing of implacable wave on resistant rock. I immersed myself in stillness. Retreated, until my head sagged against the neck strap.

Quernay lifted my head by my hair. Shook my chin. Threw water in my face. But failure had prompted me to work diligently at denying feeling. Sensation remained remote, and I remained limp.

“Weak-livered dolt,” he grumbled. “Can’t have your heart seizing up. Not yet.” He pried the suction loose with a thick finger. After depositing the blood-filled instrument on the bench, he unbuckled the neck strap, allowing my head to droop without risk of strangulation. His heavy footsteps faded down the passage.

Raising a fervent prayer to whatever bright angels might frequent this demonish place, I shook off my trance, bent to the right hand wrist strap, and worried the buckle with my teeth.

As in every circumstance since giving up my studies, a spell formula popped to mind. The spell for breaking was not complex. It required base metal, unadulterated by water or air, and proportioned according to the material to be broken—less for paper or thread, more for wood or rope or leather, monumental amounts for thick stone or metal. The metal must be balanced with spark, proportioned as to the metal particle’s hardness, as if—gods, I’d begun thinking like Dante—as if to make the spell’s edge keen.

Idiot.
I needed to bend my mind to escape, not dream of magic. I worked the leather tongue free and yanked the buckle loose, only to realize that freeing one wrist benefited me nothing. A second strap at the elbow held my arm in place. My freed right hand could not reach my other arm to loose either wrist or elbow. Nor could it reach the buckle on my side that held the strap across my waist or the straps across my thighs.

As I swallowed screaming frustration and rejected the impossibilities of gnawing leather straps in twain or bursting them with main strength, magical calculations continued running in my head. The chair’s thick bolts were surely dense enough to supply the needed proportion and quality of base metal. But spark . . . My scattered coppers would compromise the metal without supplying enough spark. The torches—their flame pure spark—were stuck in mounted sconces too far away.

In frantic foolishness, my eyes roved the long chamber’s furnishings. In one corner stood a water butt, tin cups stacked atop it. The long, low bench was piled with metal basins, towels, flasks, and a thick, leather-bound ledger, propped on a stack of other books. Beside the stack sat Merle’s lantern.

Had not my face felt as battered as a tin pot fallen off a mountainside, I would have grinned. A man incapable of creating magic could still invoke a key. Anyone with half a mind kept spellkeys secret. Clearly, damnable, murderous Merle had less than half a mind.

Without touch to access the spell, I had to focus carefully. Quenching fear and frustration, I considered the lantern and mumbled, “
Illuminatio
.” Nothing happened. I breathed deep and tried again.

“Illuminatio.”
The candle winked out. Curls of smoke filled the lantern.

“Illuminatio
.
”
The wick sparked into a small steady flame.
“Illuminatio . . .”

On the seventh invocation of the spellkey, the lantern exploded into a storm of fire, shooting flames and smoke plumes all the way through the rectangular opening above the stair.

Imprisoned in the bleeding-chair, I laughed as the oiled leather binding of the ledger book burst into flame, quickly charring its pages. And I felt no librarian’s qualm as the rapacious fire caught the other books and burst the glass flasks of oils and herbs. Nor did I quake when the spilled oils fueled a burning of the bench itself or when a gout of flame caught the tangles of rope so lately used to bind my limbs.

If the spark traversed the ropes all the way to my chair, I would infuse my will into the flame and the other particles bound within the compass of the chair, attempting once again to create magic. But even did I fail, as was certain, my captors must surely note the conflagration and set me loose. Once free of ropes and straps, once dragged up the steps and into open air, then we’d see.

Foolishly, I hadn’t counted on smoke filling the chamber so quickly. Gray and yellow plumes billowed and curled. My eyes flooded. Coughing threatened to splinter my broken head. It took all the mind I could muster to hold the spellwork ready, awaiting the arrival of the flame. My hands clawed the wooden arms in the very grooves and gouges left by those who’d been bled in this cursed chamber. As I gasped for air, a door deep in the passageway behind me crashed open.

“I’ll take care of this one,” shouted the Aspirant. “You get Portier out!”

Footsteps pounded toward me, Quernay cursing with a production and artistry that made my own pale. He set to my bindings. “Is this fire
your
doing, sniveler?”

He’d loosed only one ankle when a boulder plummeted straight through the thickening murk, near landing on my head. The moment’s terror screamed that Heaven was caving the roof to make an end of us all.

But naught else fell. And Quernay shot to his feet, lurched backward, and drew his sword. Soon weapons clanged and hammered amid the growing din of fire and Quernay’s roaring curses. I could see naught but two bodies clad in writhing smoke.

I bared my teeth and crowed. This was Dante, surely. Now we would put an end to these devils.

The sound of the unseen combat measured its progress. The scrape and clash of weapons . . . fast, vicious. Harsh breathing, grunts of effort, edged now and again with the keen timbre of pain.

“
Obscuré!
” Quernay bellowed. The firelight dimmed and smoke darkened.

Dante did not counter with magic. Odd. Surely his potent sorcery overmatched his combat skills. I’d spied no sword ever in the mage’s rooms, and he had only one useful hand. Families in Coverge, slaveys in the quarries or mines, could not afford swordmasters.

A body crashed into the bench. Glass shattered. The dulled flames spiked, and smoke billowed thicker, reeking of scorched herbs. The figure lunged back into the fray. Flailing bodies bumped my back, my arms, my scorching knees. The raw wounding on my chest screamed as if with its own voice.

A sweating back pressed to my shoulder. “How many are they?” The voice was none I knew. Certainly not Dante’s.

“Two here,” I croaked between gasps. “One outside. Another prisoner, deeper in.”

He darted away, shouting a question back at me. But I could not comprehend it, for rising flames licked the legs of my chair and singed my bare feet, surrounding me. The air became unbearably hot, and my breath came hard . . . hot, too . . . and I could not fill my lungs for the racking cough and the agony of my head, and the fire thundering ever louder and ever closer . . . and I needed to
break
these cursed straps and be
out
of this cursed chair . . . and I wanted to jump overboard, but the
agente confide
within reported I was not on the
Swan
this time and there would be no such easy escape and certainly no magic. . . .