Ravenous (25 page)

But for me it is the only choice if I want even the smallest chance of freedom.

Old Mae grins at me like she can see straight through to my soul. It is difficult not to squirm.

“I know just what you need, princess. Wizard's Bane.”

My mouth drops open, my throat stripped of its voice. Ren sputters.

She cackles into her soup. “You both think you're very sneaky, but nothing gets by Old Mae.” She nods in the direction of the other vendors. “Don't worry—those fools haven't got a clue, and I'm not interested in opening their eyes. Your secret is safe with me.”

I manage to find my voice. “Thank you for keeping it secret.” I swallow hard. “But how did you know?”

She grins again. “Not much happens in Bryre that gets by me. Just because I deal in flowers doesn't mean I've got my head in the weeds.”

“What is this Wizard's Bane?” Ren interrupts. “Do you have it here?”

“Heavens, no. Far too dangerous a thing to carry around.” She gulps down the last of her soup and wipes her chin with her apron. “It's difficult to find, but if I get it for you, it will cost you, my dearie.”

“I'll pay anything,” I say immediately. This time Ren gives me a sharp look. I know what he must be thinking. What if she's just a mad old woman who's an excellent guesser and is making this up for attention? It's possible, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

My parents said the same thing to the wizard, all those
years ago. And now I offer the same unlimited price to undo the damage done.

She rocks back in her chair and folds her hands over lap. “I thought you might. Come and see me next week. I should have more information then.”

“But what does it do, exactly?” Ren asks. “We must know how we're to use it.”

She shrugs. “Never used it myself. All I know is that it's said to take away magic. I'll see what more I can find out.”

“Thank you,” I say as we get up to leave. “We'll be back next week.”

“Be careful,” she says, waving. “Even the walls have eyes, you know.”

Something inside twists at her words. Ren takes my hand again and hurries us toward the crumbling church, my thoughts and fears hau
nting our every step.

SINCE REN CAN TRAVEL FREELY OUTSIDE THE PALACE, THE BORING PART
of the research falls to me. The next day, while Ren is occupied running errands for my father, I venture into the library. Delia insists on coming with me, though I have not told her about the Wizard's Bane. I don't need her tattling to our parents if my plans go south.

Our heels click on the stone tiles as we walk down the hall. The whole host of our ancestors peers down at us from the portraits lining the walls. While Delia has done everything she can to make up for her misstep, she is still reticent around me. She feels terrible, which is the only reason I didn't object to her joining me now. I never meant to make her feel abandoned, and she's right: we haven't spent much time together lately. Hopefully this will be harmless, and
boring, but enough to appease her. Mama would be very proud, I'm sure.

The library doors loom before us, carved from thick black oak with silver handles. I open them wide. The library is a rather pretty place, though a rather dusty one too. The trouble will be deciding where to start. Thousands of books line three stories of shelves. Sliding ladders on each level make it easier to get to the books, but finding the place where the ones about plants and biology are stored is the trick. Of course, that's if Wizard's Bane even is a plant at all. But it sounds like one, or perhaps some sort of weapon.

Either way, I must make a choice and start somewhere.

“Are you looking for a novel?” Delia asks. Her eyes are as big as serving plates as she takes in all the books. She rarely comes in here.

I laugh. “No, I am not in the mood for that today.”

I head for the catalog table and flip through the catalog, searching for anything related to plants or spells. She trips at my heels. “Then what are you looking for?”

“Plants.”

She frowns at me. “Mama doesn't like it when you get all dirty in the garden. She said you've ruined too many gowns that way.”

I snort. Mama doesn't like it when I do anything she deems less than befitting a princess. “They were old gowns. It wasn't as though I was going to wear them anywhere else.”

She giggles as she runs her hands over the dust on the table. “Why do you like plants so much, anyway?” She
frowns. “They seem so . . . dull.”

“I like watching something new come to life.” I shrug. “It's the discovery. Who knows what lies inside a tiny seed until it sprouts? It's like discovering a secret.”

This earns me a big grin. “I like secrets,” she says.

I smile back. “I know you do.”

“If you share more of them with me, I won't slip and tell Mama and Papa. If I'd known where you were, I'd never have done it.” Her eyes water.

“I know, I'm sorry. Next time I'll tell you everything.” The lie is bitter in my mouth, but I swallow the taste. I don't know where the hunt for the Wizard's Bane will lead, but I will do anything to keep my sister out of harm's way. Any hint that this will be dangerous, and I intend to shut her out entirely.

“Good.” She folds her arms over her chest. “What kind of plant is this?”

I open the listings and scan the pages. “A very special one.”

“Is it pretty?”

I frown as the turn of a page puffs dust in my face. “I don't know. I've never seen it.”

“Then how do you know it's special?”

I give her a withering look. “Because it is, that's why.”

“Let me help,” she pleads. I cannot say no to that face. I will tell her some of it, but not all.

“Fine. The plant I'm looking for is called
bano magus
in the old language. It has some special properties.”

“Like what?” Delia pulls another catalog toward herself.

“Absorption, for one. And it's a very old plant. You could say its history has roots.”

She gives me the side eye, and I wonder how much she actually believes. “What do you use it for?”

“To . . .” I falter. “To absorb things.”

“You mean like when the scullery maid spills milk on the floor, she could absorb it quickly with this
bano magus
?”

“Yes, just like that.”

Delia smiles and pores over the listings. I am definitely the worst older sister in the entire world.

I shove down the guilt, then begin to search in earnest. I let her review the plants and surreptitiously search for ancient weapons and artifacts as well. The more territory we cover, the faster we'll find it. And Delia doesn't need to know I have an interest in anything other than plants.

I may not know what Wizard's Bane is; I just need to find it before she does.

It takes a good portion of the afternoon, but we manage to scour through more books than we can count. Yet we barely make a dent in the mountain before us. Frustrated, I pace the long rows of the library, wondering if Ren had better luck. I would much rather be out there than stuck in here.

Delia, however, is delighted to be a part of my search, and she's more diligent than I am. She comes up to me at least half a dozen times with possible plants that could be
bano magus
. None of them are, but her efforts are sweet.

I feel even worse that I deceive her.

It's nearly dinnertime when Delia begins to yawn.

“Why don't you take a nap before we have to get ready for supper?” I suggest. Delia gives me a shrewd glance.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Of course not! You're yawning all over that book.”

She closes the tome with a heavy thud. “This one is the most boring of them all,” she says, putting her elbow on the book and her chin in her hand. “Why can't you research interesting things?”

I make my way back to her side of the room. “I find them interesting. But you don't have to help if it bores you. I'll find it eventually.”

She sticks her chin out. “You're stuck with me.”

“And of that I am quite glad.”

I tousle her loose yellow curls and take another circuit of the room. I can only stare at those books about swords and stones and staffs so long before my eyes cross.

What a disappointment. The only thing I can say with any reasonable amount of certainty is that I am quite sure Wizard's Bane is not a plant. It is . . . something else.

But what? Weapon? Rock? Animal? Or perhaps a person? I clench my hands in frustration and pace faster.

“I like this room,” Delia says, hand still beneath her chin and head tilted to the ceiling. “Even if I could do without all the books.”

“Why is that?” I call down to her from the highest tier of the library.

“I can watch the stars all day, even when they're not out. There's something romantic about reading under the stars.” She sighs, and I can't help but laugh.

“Is that what the stories say?”

She nods, eyelids drooping, while I pause my pacing to gaze at the ceiling. It is painted in a lovely fresco of stars and constellations, but now that I stand on the highest section of the library, I notice something odd about it. At each of the four points of the room, a compass mark in gold filigree is affixed to the juncture where the wall meets the ceiling. But here on the north side of the library, it is slightly different. Behind the filigree is the faint outline of a rectangle. Just big enough for a person to crawl through.

I suck my breath in sharply and head in another direction. I can't have Delia noticing that, or I'll never hear the end of it. If something's behind there, it won't be a secret for long if she finds out.

I must wait for Ren. I will need help getting up there and someone to keep watch.

A secret space in the library. I am all a-tingle just thinking about it.

Before I reach Delia again, the doors open and a maid steps through. “If it please miladies, the king and queen have asked me to be sure you're ready for dinner.”

“Thank you, Molly. We were just heading up to our rooms.”

The maid curtsies and leaves, and Delia groans. “Finally! I'm famished.”

“Of course you are. Come on.” I shut the doors behind us, casting a fleeting glance at the northern compass mark on the ceiling. I make a silent promise to come back tonight.

Ren approaches us as we enter the hall, and Delia greets
him like a brother. “We've been researching all day.”

“Find anything?” He speaks to her but looks anxiously at me. I grin behind her back, but only for a second.

“No,” she says, scowling. “Just books.”

“Imagine that, books in the library.” Ren winks and she giggles.

“Go along, get ready for dinner,” I say, and to my relief, she runs off toward the stairs.

“What did you find?” Ren asks in a low voice as soon as she's out of earshot. He smells like the warm bread his mother makes.

“I'm not sure. I found something strange on the ceiling. It resembles a door.”

“Let's find out.” He starts for the library, but I catch his hand and pull him back.

“Wait. Meet me here at midnight. No one will see us then,” I say, far too conscious of his pulse under my fingertips. “Did you find anything?” I release his hand in case a servant happens by.

“Nothing new. No one wants to utter a word about magic. The baker closed his cart when he saw me coming near, and I wasn't even going to say a thing to him. Just wanted a strawberry tart.” Ren pouts. “Where are you going?”

“Dinner, of course, but first to my garden. It needs watering and I have been cooped up all day.”

“I'll help.”

“If you like,” I say, though I always enjoy having Ren around. And as we reach the safety of the gardens, I do not object when he takes my hand again.

WHEN THE NIGHT DRAWS ITS CURTAINS AROUND THE CITY, AND MY FAMILY
has gone to bed, I creep from my room. On light feet, I run to the library in my robe, determined to find out what lies in the ceiling above all those books. Who knows if it can help, but I must satisfy my curiosity.

Mama and Papa were subdued at dinner tonight but still refused to listen to reason. They shut me down when I tried to speak of the wizard. “Not in front of your sister,” they said. “You'll scare her.”

Haven't they noticed she's already scared? Delia is more observant than any of us give her credit for, which is why I glance behind me every few seconds tonight.

When I reach the huge doors of the library, I hear a soft noise, and Ren's form breaks free from the shadows. He
wears a mischievous grin. “Come on,” he says, reaching out his hand. I take it.

We creep through the aisles, between the stacks of moldering tomes, then upstairs and around corners. Every inch is packed with the knowledge our kingdom has collected over the centuries.

With all this mess of books out here, what could be behind that door?

When we reach the top level, the last step creaks, echoing off the rafters in the otherwise silent room. Ren and I hold our breath for almost a full minute before deciding no one heard us.

At the northernmost edge of the top level we are faced with another problem.

“How are we going to get up there?” Ren says.

I scan the walkway for a moment. “This,” I say, heading for the ladder used to reach the highest shelves. “This should give us the boost we need.”

We wheel it over together, positioning it beneath the northern compass point. “Ladies first,” Ren says.

Getting to the compass point, a gold filigree star-shaped design, is easier than I thought. Figuring out how to get it to release the panel is more difficult. Pulling and pushing have no effect, and it won't even budge enough to turn. “We're missing something,” I say.

“Missing what?”

“I don't know—that's the problem.” I tap my fingers on the top of the ladder. “It needs to move for us to get behind there, but it's like it's locked.”

“Let me try,” Ren says. I come down and he hurries up the ladder in my place. But it's no good. He twists and cajoles with the same result: nothing.

He hops back onto the floor. “You're right—we're missing something.”

“I've been thinking,” I say slowly. “What could unlock a compass point?”

“Compasses are used for navigation. So perhaps something to do with the ocean?” Ren considers this idea, then his face lights up. “Perhaps the key is hidden in a nautical book of some kind, or a pirate history?”

I straighten up. “Yes! Or maybe even a map?”

Ren takes in the whole of the library—we can see almost every book from our vantage—and groans. “Do you think we'll find the key before dawn?”

I bite my lip. “I hope so.”

We get to work, but none of the histories or archived captains' logs shed light on the trouble here in the library. We end up seated on the floor with piles of scrolls and tomes surrounding us. When I sneeze for the seventh time from all the dust, Ren leaps up from his chair. “It can't be a book. Let's try the maps and nautical instruments on the third tier. Or maybe one of the weapons exhibits.”

“All right, but how could those things help?”

“I have an idea.” Ren heads for the section that holds the maps. I follow, intrigued. “The ceiling is divided as a compass, right?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Another navigational tool was a sextant. And that
we could find with the antiques . . . if we're lucky,” Ren says as we reach the maps. Two whole walls are piled high with them. He handles the maps with great care as he looks through them.

“You've looked at these before, haven't you?” I say.

He glances up, surprised. “I may have snuck in here once or twice before.”

Of course he has. Ren and I grew up together, and for a time we even shared a tutor. Papa holds Ren's father in the utmost respect and wanted to be sure his son had a good education. Ren always livened up on days the tutor taught us history, and the oceans and sailing were remotely involved.

“The sea intrigues you,” I say.

The edges of Ren's ears turn pink. “It does. I've read everything I can find on the topic. I'd give almost anything to sail the seas one day.”

“Perhaps you shall.”

“Not today.” Ren moves on to the glass cases along the next wall filled with oddities from the ocean and old weapons. I gave these a cursory examination yesterday in hopes one might be Wizard's Bane. It was as fruitless as I expected.

Rusted chain links, a telescope, compasses, a globe, and even an old anchor rest inside. And many, many strange triangular devices—sextants.

“How on earth will we figure out which one?” I grumble.

Ren opens the case and begins to examine them one by one. “Some have rusted through and can't move. I doubt
those are the right ones.” He studies the compass design in the corner again. “I'd be willing to bet the one we want will match that. Maybe it will be gold, or will have the same filigree design.”

Together we pore over the compasses and sextants, seeking something that resembles the ceiling compass. Nothing stands out to me.

But Ren squeaks as he moves aside sextants on the bottom level. “Look, Rosabel!” A faint outline mars the bottom of the shelf, but I'd never have noticed with all the debris on top. Ren pries the paneling on the shelf up carefully, revealing a secret compartment that holds a crumpled map. He frowns as he pulls it out. “Who would do such a thing to a map . . . ?”

A gleaming gold sextant tumbles out of the parchment, but Ren catches it with his nimble hands. Adrenaline ripples through me.

“What do you think it will do?” I ask.

“I hope it's the key we need to unlock that door. If this map is any indication”—he spreads the crumpled paper flat on a table—“then I believe I'm right.”

The map isn't of the ocean; it features the night sky. It looks just like the ceiling in the library, right down to the compass points in the four corners. A drawing of the gold sextant lies near the northern compass point.

“Now that is a remarkable likeness,” I say, unable to suppress a smile.

We return to the northern corner of the room and this time Ren goes first, scrambling up the ladder, quick as the
monkeys we once saw in a traveling caravan. I crane my neck to see while he fiddles with the settings on the sextant. I can't make sense of it, but it clearly means something to him. Then he turns to the compass point where it juts out from the corner. I couldn't get it to budge, but he finds a way to fit the sextant onto it in just the right manner so that it clicks, then gives, and suddenly the panel above swings open.

I start up the ladder and Ren gives me a boost into the opening. I crawl through into a room far larger than I expected. It looks like it spreads across the entire library. Above me is only sky—the ceiling is a glass dome and covered with sparkling dew and stars. This room, too, is full of books. If the ones in the library proper are old, then these are ancient. They fill the shelves with titles on their spines that I can barely understand. A thick layer of dust covers everything. How long has it been since a human set foot in here? Gooseflesh breaks out on my arms.

If any place in the city has the information I need on the Wizard's Bane, this is it.

“Amazing,” Ren says behind me.

“What do you think is in here? And who built it?”

“And why?” Ren adds.

Moonbeams stream down and light up the tomes like stars reflected back at the sky from a pond. Did my parents build this room or was it already here? Do they know it exists? And if they do, why have they never told me about it? I'll rule this city one day; shouldn't I know every nook and cranny in my castle?

“I wonder what they thought they needed to hide,” Ren muses.

I wander toward the first table and run my fingers through the dust. It puffs, making me sneeze, but by then the cover is half cleared.

Magi Ministeria.
Wizard's Ministerings.

My heart leaps into my throat. “I know why they hid these books. They're dangerous.”

Ren frowns. “What do you mean?”

“These are spell books.”

Any question of whether my parents knew about this room vanishes. Mama would faint from fright and then burn the library if she had any inkling these existed, and in our own home.

An awed silence passes over us, just as the moon ducks behind a patch of cloud, abandoning us to the darkness. I shudder. It has been a very long time since magic was forbidden in the realm. We're surrounded by the bones of a magical past. We all know the stories of how wizards came to be, but magic itself is older and even more cunning. One tiny error in a spell and it could go horribly awry. Of course there's hardly any magic hanging about, not like there once was. They say before the dragon riders transformed into wizards, before they became greedy, magic flowed in the waters, whispered in the air currents, and made the soil fertile for exotic plants.

I would have particularly liked to see the last.

“Are they safe to touch?”

I frown. I hadn't considered that. “I think so. Spell books
are just books, after all.” I sound more certain of this than I feel. “Besides, not much magic is left to be conjured anyway. You can't just create magic—you have to use what already exists and transform it into a spell.”

“A spell and its cost.”

A chill runs over my shoulders until the moon sneaks back out from behind the cloud. “Yes, there is always a price.”

“I wonder what the price will be for the Wizard's Bane.”

“Perhaps I will grow a tail. Would you still like me with a tail?” I try to shove away my fears and twirl around, pretending to have a tail.

Ren guffaws. “A princess with a tail? The commoners would revolt.”

I punch him playfully on the arm. “Or perhaps you'll grow another head.”

Ren sobers. “What if the price is something terrible? Worse than the wizard at our gates?”

I glance at the books, so well hidden here, probably lost even to my grandparents' memories, and take a deep breath.

“What choice do I have? Waiting under an invisible wizard's thumb is unthinkable.” The memory of what Mama said about the wizard being terribly patient comes to mind in a cold rush. “He'll come for me sooner or later. We have to be rid of him once and for all.”

Ren sighs, a weary acceptance of things beyond our control. “Let's see if we can find something that will help.”

We decide the best possibilities are where we'd normally look last—in other words, the darkest corners of the hidden room. We divide them up and are soon coated in a layer of
dust, and frustrated by lack of progress. Books about how to catch a dragon, or the origin of the various hybrid species (a spell gone awry, it turns out), how to make a potion from only mermaid scales, and other assorted useless things are all we can find. Soon the sun begins to peek through the clouds, brightening the dome over this room.

Then, as I am about to give up and call it a night, my hands clasp one small book in the farthest corner. It's bound in black leather with a cover etched with ink that only shows up in the shadows and fading moonlight, becoming invisible when it's struck by the first few rays of sun.

“Wait!” I say. “I think I have something.”

The Origin of Wizards.

Ren reads over my shoulder just as the last vestiges of ink fade away, leaving only the black cover behind. My fingers tingle. “This one is special—I can feel it,” I say. “If it has how they began, perhaps it will include how to end them.”

Ren smiles, dust stuck to his chin. “Let's hope so.”

I tuck the book into my pocket, and together we leave the hidden room behind.