Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) (23 page)

A dusting rag stuck out of his pocket. His unnaturally large eyes stared at me with resentment. How long it had been since he'd had a decent conversation with another person it was impossible to know, but according to the hostility radiating off him it had been a very long time. Sue straightened up and said in a level tone, “Do you wish to check that out?”

“Yes.”

When he swung his arm in a motion to follow, Mordon explained what else we were looking for. Only after Sue had taken a pair of spectacles out of his shirt pocket and consulted a massive tome did he nod.

“There are some books on those topics in the levels down below.”

The way down was a trap door behind the main desk. We descended a tight metal spiral staircase which had no railing in the typical Merlyn's Market fashion. Mordon was kind enough not to tease me about my death grip on the central pole. Then again, he might have seen the danger of his situation if I were provoked into pushing him. At last we were on level ground and facing a door bolted shut. Sue yanked the bolts back and spoke between the screams of rusty metal.

“I haven't opened this place up in years. Special Collections. Nothing here passes the anti-racism regulations.”

Mordon crossed his arms and I remembered a conversation when he talked about the passing of the equalities bills and how much subject matter was now forbidden to display. He would have ignored the legislation but for belonging to the coven that he did. Sue finished opening the door while Mordon and I faced the yawning gap. It was a good thing I was present. I knew in an instant the real reason Sue hadn't opened that door in years.

The squeals of the bolts had stirred up everything which was in the room beyond and attracted them to the forefront. Sue had undone the last bolt and yanked down on the lever—then he was flung flat between door and wall as the door slammed open. Shadows poured out.

No sooner had Mordon put up a ward than I was flinging trinkets left and right to a rhythm which I'd perfected in the scint years of bogey busting. Illusions sprung up, confounding and terrifying the shrieking and howling things of the dark. Traps formed and snapped shut, one nearly catching Sue as he panicked. Anna cried terribly along with him. Mordon had worked with me enough that a few well-placed spells hurried the cause along.

Long, heart-pounding minutes passed. The final shadow batted its way in endless rushes, striking the ward over and over, all my traps deployed. Mordon glanced at me, expecting me to do something, but I just shrugged and patted the upset baby. Sue screamed as the shadow rushed. A fireball struck it, turning the thing into a nothing. I crooned to Anna and she calmed. I was feeling as worn out as she looked.

Dropping the ward, Mordon circled the room collecting all the rings and pebbles and things I'd thrown during the frantic heyday of the battle. A hairpin wriggled and bounced end over end to escape only to meet with Mordon's shoe. Then he reached the gnome and stood waiting until Sue composed himself. He gazed at us in awe.

“Those were bodachs,” Sue said.

“There was storage ghost or two and a young bogart,” I said. “That was what charged you, if he was any older you wouldn't still be here. You should have hired a bogey buster weeks ago.”

Sue rallied himself with a huff and excuse. Issuing a noise which sounded like a sneeze, Sue made the candles in the next room light themselves. Indignant about the display he'd made of himself, Sue strode bravely into the shredded papers and parchment. Cautiously we made our way into the center of the destruction.

“Smells like mold,” Mordon said. “Careful where you step, there are nails sticking up.”

At the work bench with curator's tools we took in the damage. Even the shelves which had held the books were destroyed, torn into splinters, their fasteners laying bare and open. Some books were in worse condition than others.

“Amazing how fast these things deteriorate,” Sue said.

“Remarkable considering you haven't opened the door in years,” Mordon said, “I wonder if you stopped coming once you caught a little fright.”

“They don't give me a budget for things like this. And as I said, these books are banned. No one wants to pay for their upkeep.”

I trudged through the mayhem, noticing the tell-tale signs of where bodachs had nested, where the bogart had used a jar of oil to draw on the wall. They'd been locked up for years, feeding one off the other. Bouncing Anna a little, I considered the perfect storm of Sue, of his probable lack of funding, of the timing of the bans. Above all else I counted the traces of the creatures and weighed the proportions in my mind. It was a perfect ecosystem.

“Sue, what was the last book you placed down here?” I asked.

“What? Oh, yes, let me think. It was a journal. Came in a batch of donations. I told them I couldn't display that journal, but they insisted they wouldn't have it in the house.”

“And you didn't give it back?” Mordon sounded annoyed.

“It was one of the pure humans. I bowed and scraped and grovelled. The same as you would if he controlled your stipend.”

I made my way back to the others. “And what did you do with it? Did you open it down here?”

Sue scratched his ear. “I suppose I did. Every book, even in the Special Collections, gets recorded and stamped.”

“Was it shelved?”

Sue wrung his hands. “Ah, no. But it should have done.”

“And if it had been shelved, where would it have gone?”

He was more than happy to show me the shelf, a place on the far wall which had been touched the least of everything. Actually, the entire row of books were unmolested. Sue pointed to the two books it would have been squashed between, then started to pile all the healthy books into his hands, muttering to himself the entire time.

“Petition to the Council and claim vandalism,” I said. “The bodachs couldn't have survived so long without a sentient connection, which is what the bogart provided. And the storage ghosts kept the bogart company so he wouldn't run off.”

Sue blinked at me, silent, wide-eyed. The tip of his left ear started to twitch and his cheeks reddened.

“That's my opinion, and I'll write down the names of a couple people who can provide official reports. They'll come complements of me if you drop my name.”

The only acknowledgement I had that he'd heard me was the faintest nod. He was starting to make me nervous.

“Can I check this out, too?” I asked, holding a thick book with the title
Before The Veil Fell, A Beastiary.

“Keep it, keep it. No one will know.”

Sue wouldn't let us leave so quickly. According to him, as well as to Mordon, I needed a restorative to brighten the color in my cheeks before I should set foot back outside. Belatedly I realized the gnome assumed that Anna was mine and felt that a new mother shouldn't be put under a good deal of strain. Over a glass of sherry, I showed Mordon the book I'd been given.

“Before The Veil Fell, A Beastiary
. Interesting. I'd always thought of the veil as a word to describe a policy, not a literal thing.”

I mopped a bit of sweat off Anna's forehead. “Like the Iron Curtain?”

“Yes, except it was a division between magic and lamb. You'll catch the occasional reference to it here and there, but there isn't a lot of talk about it as an actual thing. People don't even agree on when it happened. If this is a legitimate account, it has exciting possibilities. I'm jealous. I've looked up and down for a book like this, and you've found it so easily.”

“Oh, I don't know about that. I had to die, be resurrected, kill a monster, stand trial, save the Wildwoods, and see the monster I killed resurrected.”

“Tut tut, I was there with you for a lot of that,” Mordon said. “What are you waiting for? Open it up.”

I perched the book on my knees. Anna was making my stomach too hot and my back sore, but she was finally sleeping after the way we'd upset her with the bogey busting. Guess she didn't like being denied the obviously-unalienable right of sucking on my sweaty shirt. The book's leather felt odd under my fingers, unlike anything else I'd ever handled before. Very soft. Very alive.

The first words stood as clear as day on the page before us, in a strange script in a language which was far more foreign than it was English. Of course, I realized now, if the book was old then it would be in Middle or Early English, and Mordon would have a better hope of reading it than I would. When I was about to ask him what it said, the letters morphed and the words became clear.

The first page made my stomach lurch.

The true tale of the destruction of Dinnune Wair and the formation of the Veil. Cease reading now unless the reader be worthy of the words held within.

“Whoa, Mordon, what—?”

I showed Mordon the page. He sat beside me with an arm over my shoulders, stroking my skin with his fingers. His brow creased, his other hand caressed down the length of the page. Then he turned the soft, white parchment over. Earlier we'd debated if we should wear plastic gloves to protect the book, or bespell our hands to protect ourselves. We'd decided that this book already had protections on it, and to not do anything which might interfere with them.

“Do you feel this?” He slid my hand against the spine. “That is dragon hide. And not any dragon hide. The hide given freely and with blessings. Beautiful.”

“Or disturbing.”

“Shh,” Mordon said and started to read, “ 'In the year of our Lord 1066, in a place which shall remain unnamed, these things occurred. Lanval Cardan, whom I called Father until his recent actions, wishes for it all to be forgotten and has pursued his crusade to cast all memories into the hellish void created solely for destroying every trace of the darkness which shadows the light of our Lord the Christ.' ”

His voice softened to nothing and I followed the words with my own eyes.

... By so relating the contents of this volume I am branding myself as both a traitor to humankind and a disgrace to a family to which I am beloved and cherished. This is the tale of many peoples who once went by many names, the people who the victorious have now called Demons. This should be the tale of those more worthy who have given their last breath, or the brave who yet live in darkness and fear, but I am unable to write any tale except my own.

While these words were but errant thoughts on my guilt, I was called Issa Cardan but with these words scorched into the hide of a lamb, I have become Aethel the Sorceress. I would not forsake my allegiance to my father but for that he sees demons where there are none and is blind to the devil who so whispers in his ear.

He does not yet know that I am the wolf within his flock.

It is so cold this morning that my fingers redden and tingle, and it is such an early hour that the well is frozen and Cei has yet to shatter the ice. He is to descend the chain and use his axe, instead he wakens before the others and heaves stones which have once chipped the bucket. Twice before have I risen in advance of Cei and on this morning, I commit my deeds to eternity. Time will name me fool or savior.

Wise or unwise, I have done these things and done them for Mordren whom I love and who keeps my heart. Mordren is champion of Caledin, King of the Dinnune Wair Drakes. He, by which I refer to Mordren not his King, is as short as I am tall, and powerful in his chest, and he is young for a drake though he is wiser and more cunning than those several times his length in years. They say the same of me, which is what drew him to me when we met years ago at a holy spring which has since met destruction with the razing of Dinnune Wair. Mordren visits me at my father's house at Venilis because I foresee what the future may become and how to ensure or prevent it.

“Mordren? It's very similar to …”

“Yes, it is my name. Perhaps an older version, perhaps merely said differently.”

He kissed my temple, his way of telling me that he wouldn't answer any questions for now. I continued to read the pages.

This is no divine gift such as those the muses possess, rather it originates from intellect and perception which should belong to a man not a woman. And a young woman, one who has promised to forsake knowledge of cruder pleasures in order to obtain the gentle gifts of reading and writing. I must be wicked, for I enjoy both, and my father would banish me if he knew. Nor can he read this book in which I write this confession, for the hide binding its cover is dragon hide taken from a young and possibly foolish dragon who is a dear friend of mine. His name is Thessen, he will outlive me for a long time to come and this book will outlive us both. This book will soon read as a beastiary and I suppose it is one. The ink on this page is purchased from the great white bears in the Wilderness, mixed with apple-gum and blackener. It is difficult to write with, and as challenging is the griffon feather which I use as a quill.