The book of shadow, p.23
The Book of Shadow, page 23
part #1 of The Curse of the Unnamed Series
Enough for her.
The stairs ended in a landing, two passageways leading away at angles, one to the right, another the left. She pictured the cellar door’s placement in relation to the cabin and surmised to follow the righthand path. But what lay at the end of the other?
She put the question from her mind. Finding the tome and returning it mattered more than anything. With it in hand, they could leave this odd place, and perhaps her debtor would consider her marker paid. Doubtful, but she hoped.
The earthen sides of the passageway brushed against her narrow shoulders and she suppressed a chuckle over the baron’s champion suggesting he should retrieve the book—he wouldn’t have fit. Maybe the old man had sent her because of her size. It mattered not—her diminutive stature contributed to her talent for what she did.
She went twenty-five paces—far more than expected—before the passage widened into the room full of books she’d visited before. Another whisper increased the intensity of the stone’s glow by the smallest degree, enough to illuminate the length of the chamber. To her eye, it appeared as big as the entire cabin above, while also seeming larger than on her last visit. Shelves lined every wall, each overloaded with tomes and scrolls, some standing, some lying in piles. Two more rows of shelving crowded the center of the large space, both as packed to bursting as the others. A thousand books or more, she estimated.
At the closest shelf, she ran her finger along the spine of the first tome, felt the roughness of the material. Some sort of animal skin, she guessed. As she pondered it, she thought about the brief discussion she’d engaged in with Viden Misk before they left.
“You’re wondering how to recognize the book I require,” the old man had said.
Hinter grunted in response. It seemed a question unworthy of an answer.
“It will be the oldest text you have ever seen,” he continued. “But it won’t have such an appearance, with an unadorned cover, and the pages within blank. It will let you know when you have found it.”
“Blank?” she’d said, incredulous. “You send us to find a tome full of empty pages?”
“Considering everyone involved in this expedition, I’d most expect you not to question that things are not always what they seem, Hinter Panne.”
She’d shrugged, accepting this was all the information he’d offer. She’d done jobs with less.
A thought occurred to her, and she glanced at the ceiling overhead, the boards serving as the floor of the women’s sleeping quarters. Wooden beams crisscrossed the space, and she saw dark cracks showing between the floorboards. She threw her cloak over the glow stone. Was this how Prue had known of her presence in the library before? She’d need to be more careful with the light.
Hinter crept along in front of the shelf, running her fingers over the spines of the volumes as though thinking the way one felt might reveal it as her prize. She had no expectation of such a thing happening. She understood magic existed in their world—the Unnamed, the glow stone she carried, her cloak, and so many more unexplainable things the average person wrote off as coincidence or happenstance. Hinter knew better, but she didn’t presume for such occasions to present themselves and make her task easier. Instead of hoping for some ancient book to speak to her, as Misk had suggested, she relied on her knowledge of materials, printing and binding practices, expertise gained sneaking into rooms similar to this.
Many books disqualified themselves, their covers or spines adorned by embossed scroll work or patterns in gold leaf. Others she ignored for being too small; though Misk hadn’t described her mark as thick, she’d inferred it. Surely, Misk wouldn’t have sent them on a dangerous journey in search of a leaflet. Finally, she assessed the binding techniques. If the tome was as ancient as he said, they’d have sewn its pages into the cover, not affixed them with adhesive; this allowed her to disqualify any of the flat-backed volumes characterized by this more recent style of bookmaking. Judging by the results she found on the initial few shelves, she estimated her knowledge might eliminate two-thirds or more of the library, leaving three hundred plus possibilities to sort through.
Hinter sighed and yanked the first book meeting her specifications from its spot, placed it under her cloak to see it without pulling the glow stone into the open. She raised the cover, releasing a puff of dust to find its way to her face and start a tickle inside her nostril. The need to sneeze built in her, and she wrinkled her nose, held her breath, waiting for it to pass. With it quelled, she flipped two pages further into the text, saw calligraphic writing spilling across the page, then closed it and replaced it on the shelf.
The next few aged volumes showed signs of their antiquity, so she ignored them, remembering how he’d told her it wouldn’t show its age. Drawings of what she assumed animals filled another she pulled out, though she’d never seen their likes before, either in person or illustrated in the books she’d read. Loops of writing crowded the pages of three consecutive texts, then she located one dedicated to diagrams of couples in various positions of copulation, and a journal focused on detailed renderings of the body’s internals.
An hour and a half later, she’d worked her way to the end wall of the library. Her knees hurt from crouching, and her young back ached. Before she set to examining the next clutch of books, she stood and stretched, breathed deep. The scent of antiquated paper nearly overpowered her nostrils, disguising the musty odor present in every cellar in the world. Her nose detected a secondary smell under those, faint and faraway enough she couldn’t place it. Sweet and sour. Perhaps the other passage led to food stores.
She squatted again and returned to determining one tome from another, but repetition made them resemble each other too closely for her to tell them apart. Ignore the slender volumes, the flat backed, the rough-edged, the dog-eared. She yanked a thick grimoire which appeared to meet the prerequisites from the top of a stack, but an embossed illustration of a dragon decorated the front cover. Cursing herself for her poor judgment, she flipped it open anyway.
Colorful drawings of the mythical beasts filled the pages, showing them in all the artist’s imagined glory. Dragons in green and blue and red, from tiny serpents to huge winged creatures. Hinter found herself enthralled. In her time skulking empty libraries late at night, she’d come across a plethora of books dedicated to them, but none so beautiful as this. The others so often contained an element of whimsy, a cartoonishness relieving the sketches of the very sense of awe they sought to instill in the reader. The quality of these illustrations made her believe the animals might have been real, as though the illustrator had seen them and captured their essence in his art. Silly and impossible thoughts, of course, but with undeniable allure.
She slipped the book into her cloak and returned to the task at hand.
Spine after spine passed under her fingertips as she worked her way from the end wall to the far side of the chamber, then to the shelves running along the middle of the floor. Time pressed in on her. By her estimation, three hours had gone by since she entered the cellar, leaving sunrise less than two away. The realization brought fatigue to her, and she stood once more, stretching her arms upward, flexing her legs. She inhaled between her lips, tasting the dust hanging in the air, the moistness of the dirt under her feet. As she readied herself to crouch again, despite the desire of her knees and backbone to remain upright, a board creaked above her head.
Hinter froze, held her breath. She looked toward the stairs leading to Prue and Priscilla’s bedroom; no dark shape stood watching her.
Muted snores found her ears, but nothing more. She waited, the air in her chest growing staler with each passing second, until it burned to be set free. She continued holding it. No more creaks, no furtive steps. Three minutes passed before she relieved her lungs of their burden, letting the hot air out with slow and steady intent through her nostrils before inhaling another breath. After holding it for so long, even the room’s mustiness replenished her.
Her head spun, so she lowered herself to a squat, elbows resting on knees as she bent forward to fill her lungs, then breathe out, fill her lungs, breathe out. The dark room settled into place and she raised her chin, moved her cloak aside to spill the stone’s weak light onto the nearby books. One stood out amongst the others. Sandwiched between a thick volume with a flat spine denoting the use of glue, and a larger tome with hieroglyphics embossed on its binding, the book appeared innocuous—plain, sewn, of middling size. She reached a finger out, tilted it toward herself, pulled it from the shelf.
Nothing adorned the front of it, and the odor of the supple leather covering it wafted to her nose as though freshly bound. It felt smooth and firm, unmarked by the sweat of being touched. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought it recently made. She grasped the top corner of the cover, flipped it open.
Even in the stone’s muted glow, she recognized the first page was the color of cream, with no wear showing at the corners, no yellowing around the edge. She turned to the next page, then the next, then leafed thirty pages further into the tome.
Blank. Every page clean and crisp and free of script.
This is it, she thought.
She closed the book with a puff of air and tucked it away in her cloak beside the volume with the dragon illustrations. She realized taking the first for herself was a risk, but she couldn’t help herself; if she was stealing one, why not the other? A drop of sweat rolled along her temple. She wiped it on her sleeve, then pulled the glow stone out long enough to orient herself to the correct passageway. Blundering up the stairs and into the women’s bedroom was a poor choice. Once she’d gotten herself set, she stowed the rock, whispering to extinguish the light, and made her way unerringly past the shelves to the tunnel leading out of the chamber.
The passageway’s temperature was warmer than when she descended the steps to the library. Perspiration formed on her brow and the air pushed in close around her. Perhaps a sign of the rising sun. Did she misjudge the time? She didn’t think so, but if anywhere existed where she might lose track, amongst stacks and shelves of books was the place.
The dirt sides of the passage brushed her shoulders until she reached the landing a minute later. The stairs climbed up in front of her, while the other earthen hall led away into darkness. She paused, inhaled. Whatever the unidentified smell was she’d detected before, she now recognized it as coming from somewhere down the tunnel. She glanced at the doors, noted the quality of light squeezing through the crack, and determined her estimation correct—an hour remained before some rooster crowed to wake the household.
She had time.
A whispered word brought the glow stone to life again, but she didn’t take it out, instead holding her cloak open and allowing its dim luminescence to filter through the fabric of the pocket containing it. Not sufficient to allow an average person to see, but enough for Hinter to estimate her surroundings. She stepped away from the stairs toward the passageway.
Click.
The sound froze her in place. She didn’t need to wonder what made the noise she’d heard hundreds of times before: the scrape of a metal shackle tripping a lock’s tumblers.
She abandoned the thought of exploring the tunnel and rushed up the steps, moving silently in case her ears had deceived her, though she knew they hadn’t. At the top, she laid her palm flat against the wooden door, pushed with a controlled effort meant to open it a crack, not send it flying. The board moved half an inch, then stopped, held firm.
Locked. She was trapped.
Hinter descended the stairs. The fool Shriken must have fallen asleep and the women discovered her missing. When they came across the picked lock, they’d realized where she was—in the precise spot they told her not to be. Now, instead of imprisoned in a place where her companions had an opportunity to release her, she found herself imprisoned in the cellar, the stairway to their hostesses’ room her only hope of escape.
Her feet touched the dirt at the bottom of the wooden stair and she stopped, glancing one way, then the other. If she crept up the stairs into their bedroom, she might sneak past them unnoticed, but they already knew of her presence in the library. She’d lost any chance of surprise.
A bead of sweat rolled in her eye and she blinked it away. Maybe another exit existed somewhere down the tunnel she hadn’t explored, perhaps leading to the kitchen. She set her jaw and took a step forward, setting out down the darkened passage into the unknown.
The unidentifiable odor found its way into her nostrils, and gooseflesh prickled her skin.
The merchant’s man named Kove tiptoed across the floor—the second person stealing around in the dark, disturbing Ilkari’s sleep. On the first occasion, he’d watched Rein liberate the girl from the front room, seen her sneak out into the night. He guessed Pris and Prue wouldn’t be happy to know he’d let her go, but the squire didn’t think it prudent to wake them from their slumber. He’d tell them of these happenings in the morning, if they needed divulging at all. Whether they did, he’d have to decide when the time came.
Kove crept in the direction of neither the front room nor the exit. Instead, he sneaked toward the chamber where their hostesses made their beds.
Ilkari stared after him, wondering what the fool was up to. Did he intend to tell them what Rein had done, thereby winning their favor? Anger tremored through the squire. He ground his teeth and clenched his hands into fists, but didn’t get up from his makeshift bed near the kitchen. He wanted to with every ounce of fiber of his muscles. Given his choice, he’d have wrestled the man to the floor, clambered over him to reach the women first and reveal what happened. But with Kove being younger and stronger, he realized such a plan wouldn’t end well.
For a second, he pondered his willingness to give up the master he’d served these last fifteen years—and more if he included service to his father. The thought passed as Carpera’s man reached the bedroom door, extended his hand toward its handle.
The fellow paused, glanced around the area to see if anyone observed him. Ilkari feigned sleep when his gaze came to him, though his muscles remained tight, threatening to knot themselves if he didn’t soon release some tension from them. Satisfied nobody watched him, Kove pushed the door open without knocking, the gentle creak of the hinges grabbing Ilkari’s attention. Through slitted lids, he witnessed the merchant’s man slip into the room beyond, disappearing into the darkness before shutting the door behind him.
The squire’s chest tightened on his heart. How could he be left lying on the cold floor while this dolt insinuated himself into the ladies’ favor, perhaps earning himself a nighttime idyll with one or the other? Hadn’t it been he who fetched water from the well when they needed it? He’d done so quickly and efficiently, and told them about the girl snooping around the backside of the cabin. Didn’t he deserve to be the fellow to experience the privilege of their company?
With a huff of breath louder than he intended, Ilkari faced the wall and imagined all the ways he might kill Kove and earn his rightful place with Pris and Prue.
Chapter 21
T he boy’s breathing eased, entering and leaving his lungs with more facility than before. His chest rose and fell along with its rhythm. A pink hue grew in his sallow cheeks. After less than a week, he was returning to the picture of a healthy child, as everyone hoped to happen.
“This won’t do,” Viden Misk muttered, bones creaking as he got up from the chair in the corner farthest from Cassemir’s bed.
Unlike the last instance when health had crept back into the boy, this time he’d sensed its return before anyone else realized. In the depths of his basement chamber, he’d perceived a change and made his way up the stairs to attend to his patient. Luckily, he’d arrived before any nurses or servants, and before the lad awakened. For what must have been three hours, he’d sat watching him as wellness stole into him one symptom after another.
“This won’t do at all.”
He crossed the room, leaning on his staff for support. Even after the passage of hours, ascending the stairs had left him depleted of energy and aching in places he never expected to ache. He’d let himself grow old before because it lent an air of distinction to whatever character he played, and got him into situations not otherwise accessible. This time was different. Age gripped him firmly in its teeth, squeezing tighter with every passing day. If he didn’t get things set right soon, it might prove too late. He stopped halfway to the bed, stared at the recovering boy as the child’s eyelids fluttered but remained closed.
“Or is it?”
He resumed his trek, his one hip so painful his foot refused to rise off the floor when he stepped, so the toe of his sandal scraped along the carpet. When he reached the bedside after an unreasonably long time, he lowered himself to sit on the edge, wincing with the movement. Upon settling on the mattress, he released a slow breath between his lips, hung his head, and closed his eyelids.
The voice whispered to him, as it so often did.
“ You can’t do this,” it said. “They are relying on you.”
He considered responding, but to what end? He’d be talking to himself, or a version of himself. A minute passed. He raised a hand and rubbed his temples, covered his eyes. Doing so blocked out most of the light in the room, leaving him in darkness nearly equal to his cellar chambers. The red glowing embers that appeared so often in his mirror flickered to life, stared at him.
“ This is not the way.”
Misk sighed, willing the ruby orbs to disappear, leave him alone. They didn’t. They obeyed his wishes so infrequently, he doubted whether his subconscious was the source. If not him, then who? Or what?
