Arcanum
Chapter 49 : She doubled back and gave him everything she could. Face to face, over the distance of

She doubled back and gave him everything she could. Face to face, over the distance of a stadia: fire boiled out of her again and flowed towards Eckhardt's hovering form. As it seethed and roiled, it dripped flame on the ground below. She was dimly aware of shouts and cries, but they were just mundanes, stupid, gullible and weak mundanes who weren't worth saving. She used their fear to feed her fury.

Her destroying fire reached Eckhardt's s.h.i.+eld, and it flowed around it, enveloping it. She willed the ma.s.s on, to become more intense: thicker, hotter, brighter.

At some point, she had to stop. Blood was coming from her nose and ears, and her vision was obscured by a red mist that she had to blink away. The fire flickered and faded.

Eckhardt wasn't dead yet, but she'd succeeded in wiping his maniacal grin off his contorted features, and his filthy-dirty robes smoked with residual heat. She'd cooked him red-raw, his skin cracked and baked and oozing.

She was going to hit him again. She'd almost got him last time, and now she was looking for a kill.

Something invisible held her and started to crush her. She pulled in her arms and legs, ducked her head down to her chest to bring her to the centre of her s.h.i.+eld. Vast and incalculable pressure weighed down on her, a mountain's worth of rock that made shrieking sounds as the structure of her defence deformed and buckled under the relentless, impersonal force.

She held on. It was a storm and she would endure. When it pa.s.sed, she would remain. It grew dark outside, and she concentrated on the core of her being. Eckhardt was trying to snuff her out, but she was determined not to be extinguished.

Then, with a creak, the attack faltered. It became light again. She could see him on the bare ground in front of the novices' house, on all fours, exhausted amid the ruin of charred, smoking corpses and tongues of bright fire.

Now.

Her very fingertips seemed to burst with ribbons of flame.

And suddenly, he was gone. The s.p.a.ce he'd occupied filled with a thunderclap.

Fire growled down and out, spilling up the stone steps and into the open door of the novices' house, licking around the walls and scorching the roof s.h.i.+ngles. Eckhardt had escaped, and she howled in frustration.

He couldn't have gone far. He was weak. It was his final throw. Where would he go?

Her gaze travelled up to the White Tower. Where else? She lowered her s.h.i.+eld for an instant, just to make sure, and looking at Eckhardt's aura was like staring into a furnace. She slammed the s.h.i.+eld back into place and set off again, up the mountain, over the trees, until nascent green gave way to gnarled and warped brown.

The entrance to the tower was clear, and she flew down, almost into it and then through to the s.p.a.ce beyond. But there was a note of caution sounding in her head. When the dragon was in its den, it was the most dangerous of all.

The sygils drawn into the doorway had no effect on her; whether or not they still worked, she didn't know or care. She brushed by them and entered the hall.

There was a single blue-white light in the centre of the vast room; such a contrast from its previous overwhelming brightness. Now it was shadows that obscured the exits.

But not the dead. They were obvious, little mounds of decay lit on one side only. If Eckhardt had had more imagination, or power, or both, he'd have reanimated them. Corpse armies were hard to deal with, since their const.i.tuent parts were dead already. But however good undead were at terrorising mundanes, a decent magician could always either sever the tenuous link that controlled them or more prosaically, destroy their bodies.

It would have cost her more power. It would have slowed her down. But the dead stayed dead, and she flew over them, looking for a pa.s.sageway. There were several she needed the right one.

She dropped her s.h.i.+eld momentarily. G.o.ds, Eckhardt was starting to cast again. She could feel it, a dark star below her. He was too busy to deal with her, frantically carrying out the ritual that would suck the life from one person and give it to another, a ritual that could neither be abbreviated nor hastened.

Necromancy was a stupid and dull dead-end, relying on rote and cant. She could take him now, almost at her ease. She wouldn't even need magic to do it.

She started into the tunnels beneath the tower, and made her own light for the journey in the palms of her hands. Finding Eckhardt wasn't going to take long. She was getting closer with every step. How hurried he seemed. How futile it all was.

She came, finally, to his door. She could have opened it in the normal fas.h.i.+on, but chose instead to blast it. Pausing only to notice the lifeless wards etched into the wood, she brought up her s.h.i.+eld again to protect herself from splinters.

The door frame came away with the door itself, slamming into the opposite wall and taking several pieces of furniture with it. Burning fragments spiralled away like missiles, sooty trails following.

She walked through. There he was, captive in the circle along with his victim, and behind him, all the previous victims, children, grey skinned and still but for their wetly gleaming eyes.

Eckhardt was astride the barely breathing chest, his hands around a man's throat. He looked up at her, and she down at him.

This deranged murdering vagrant who smelt of death was a hexmaster. The second-to-last hexmaster. His rooms were already ablaze; tinder-dry books, powders and volatile liquids popped and flashed and crackled.

It was, in the end, easy. She held out her hand, and a ball of fire closed the distance between them in less than a heartbeat. It clung to Eckhardt's face like a burr, then consumed him.

He twisted and turned as he burnt, staying upright for a long time, longer than any mundane could have stood. Eventually, he put one hand to the floor, and tried to rise, but there wasn't enough of him left to hold him up.

The individual fires were coalescing into one all-encompa.s.sing inferno. She started to back out of the room, her strength spent. It was over. Her spells dropped away and she felt the full force of the heat for the first time.

She turned, saw a man, felt something cold and hard piercing her heart.

Nikoleta looked down and recognised the hilt of Felix's dagger. She looked up and saw Ullmann, his eyes narrow, his jaw set.

"I'm sorry, Mistress. But it's for the best."

She reached for him, her hands fluttering, but there was no force in her efforts. Instead, he pushed her back through Eckhardt's doorway, back into the fire she'd started.

As the blade left her, her blood poured out. She knew why he'd done it. She knew exactly why.

She just hadn't expected it to be him.

49.

Thaler climbed to the very top of the library, to the master librarian's gallery. The sparks of candlelight that fluttered below seemed so very far away, as if he was watching spirits at the bottom of a lake; something he a.s.sumed had come to an end along with everything else. Also, the walkways, the banisters, the balconies: they seemed less substantial than they had before.

It was just the effect of the dark. In full light and that would happen, he was determined of that the library was warmer and more friendly. That was partly why he was up here, poking about. The Romans, when they'd built their pantheon, hadn't filled it with magical light. He vaguely remembered seeing an ill.u.s.tration once, not of this pantheon but of a similar one in Rome. There'd been a feature in that picture that was absent from the library building, and now he was going to see if the sketch was true, or just a fiction.

He couldn't reach the ceiling. He'd need a ladder, and someone to hold it, or better still, someone to hold it and a different someone to climb up while he directed activities from the safety of the master librarian's platform.

All the same, he dragged the heavy desk to dead centre and climbed up. It gave him another three feet of reach, and he was almost there. He happened to glance down, and his guts churned. It was an awfully long way down, and he'd have quite a while falling to contemplate his folly, or to give a drawn-out scream: that was far more likely.

He crawled off the desk and gave himself a few moments to calm himself. He wished he was brave, brave like Buber, like Felix, like Ullmann, even like Sophia Morgenstern whose courage was equal to any man's. He couldn't even stand on a desk without breaking out into a cold sweat.

Banging his hands on the thick wooden top, he summoned up his resolve.

"Come on, Master Thaler. Greater things are expected of you than this, so why do you quail like a frightened child?" His own voice chided him.

"Quite right, quite right. It is all very silly," he replied. He took hold of a heavy chair and heaved it up onto the desk. "As the master librarian acting master librarian? No, master librarian I have responsibilities."

He climbed up onto the desk again, and sat in the chair. That wasn't so bad. He reached down for the lantern, and slowly turned around. He put one foot on the chair seat, then the other, and straightened up.

He was standing on a chair. Hardly a feat worthy of Hercules, yet he felt like he'd slain the Lernaean hydra all by himself. He held the lantern in one trembling hand and pressed his other against the ceiling to steady himself.

The domed roof had always been smooth inside at the very top, repainted white every decade or so at great expense and no little disruption to the work of the library below.

Yet he held in his mind two things: firstly, the image of breaking away a layer of rock to reveal a door underneath it, and secondly, the book ill.u.s.tration that showed the pantheon with a circular hole in its roof, the edge of which began almost exactly where he was looking.

The paintwork was old, and the plaster beneath even older. It was nothing but a patchwork of cracks as fine as any mosaic. But he thought he could make out the beginning of a wider line that extended away from his probing fingertips. Outside, the concrete dome was completely covered in greened copper sheets, with no hint of what they might hide underneath. But if he was right, if there was a hole at the top of the dome, which could let in natural light, they would only have to peel back the copper to reveal it. Of course, the hole would then have to be covered by something to keep the weather out. But no one made gla.s.s in sheets that big, and the weight of a leaded window that size would be enormous. How would they get it up there, let alone place it without it collapsing?

Life was complicated where it used to be simple. All those questions to answer.

The sound of commotion came from beneath him, and he wobbled. Cold sweat drenched his skin as he braced himself between the ceiling and the chair. He held his breath and closed his eyes, and convinced himself that he wasn't going to fall.

Someone was shouting, and not in a good way. Buber: it sounded like Peter Buber.

He opened his eyes again, one at a time, and carefully climbed down until he was kneeling on the chair, then standing on the table, then back onto the platform. It was inviolable tradition for the master librarian to be stationed here at the top of the library, but he really didn't fancy it all.

Time to find out what was going on. He peeked over the edge of the gallery to see. Yes, there was Buber, and the prince, and Sophia, and the librarians, and he couldn't make out a single word any of them were saying.

He hurried down the staircases and along the walkways. The noise had subsided by the time he arrived, red-faced and panting, on the ground floor. Buber was crouched on the stone flags, his knees under him, his long back arched like a boulder, his hands pressing his head down as far as it would go.

Around him was a circle of concerned-looking people, each apparently unable to do or say anything to help.

Thaler pushed his way through, and instead of asking them what the matter was, he went straight over to his friend and put his arm across his shoulder. He bent his own head low.

"Peter? Peter, it's Frederik." Buber smelt of smoke, bad smoke, the sort of smoke that was acrid and dangerous. "Talk to me, Peter. Tell me what's wrong?" He looked up to see if Ullmann was also present, but there was no sign of the usher. Instead, everyone was staring at him. If they weren't going to help, why didn't they just go away?

"She's gone," Buber said.

"She's ... gone?" Thaler glanced up again, and noted that both the prince and Sophia looked neither at him, nor at each other. "Who's gone?"

"Nikoleta."

The magician with whom Buber had been banished. The one who still had power.

"What happened?" He was beginning to sound as bewildered as Buber. "Did she and Eckhardt ...?"

Buber's head came up off the floor. "They're both dead. They're both dead, Frederik."

And Buber clung to Thaler and wept.

The knowledge that Eckhardt was gone made Thaler's heart flutter, but there was clearly something more. Buber, the man who had never cried before, who suffered disfiguring pain with little more than a shrug, was in torment.

"Ah. I understand." Thaler looked over Buber's shaking shoulder and pursed his lips. "My lord, if you could afford the huntmaster a moment's privacy, we would both be so very grateful."

The onlookers had been looking for an excuse to go: now, Thaler had given it to them. One by one, they stepped back and pulled away, their pace increasing. Sophia took Felix's arm and eased him in the direction of the portico. He left reluctantly, repeatedly turning his head as he went.

He was young. He'd learn.

When they were alone, Thaler urged Buber to his feet. "Come on. Let's find somewhere sensible." And, unresisting, Buber allowed himself to be pushed ahead, towards a side door and down a narrow corridor pierced through the wall of the pantheon.

There were stairs, and doors, and windows through which Thaler was able to catch fleeting glimpses of outside: he saw that there was smoke rising from the far side of the river. Something seemed well ablaze and there was little sign of it diminis.h.i.+ng: the black cloud he could see over the rooftops of Juvavum seemed dense and consistent, no matter which part of the sky he searched.

He just about managed not to comment aloud on the fire, though he was itching to know its cause.

Guiding Buber to the last door, he reached past him to open it. It led into the library's refectory, and they were alone. There were still the remains of a fire in the hefty grate, and Thaler moved them to the end of the table closest to it.

He pressed Buber onto the bench seat, and went in search of something to drink. It was what his friend needed right now, even if Thaler himself would have preferred a plate of bread and a thickly sliced sausage.

The kitchens were deserted. It was likely, he concluded, that some of the library staff, cooks and the like, had gone over to Eckhardt. The thought grieved him, even as he banged around, opening cupboards and peering at shelves.

He finally found a crate of beer under one of the benches, and rather than carry just two bottles back, he unloaded half onto the floor and heaved the rest of them to waist height.

When he got back to the refectory, Buber was in exactly the same position that he'd left him in.

Thaler sat opposite, opened the stoppers on two bottles and slid one across the table. He took a swig from his own and waited.

Eventually, Buber snagged the stone bottle without looking up, and clutched at it without drinking.

"You loved her," said Thaler.

Buber nodded miserably.

"b.l.o.o.d.y disaster all round." Thaler put his beer back on the table. "I'm really very sorry, Peter."

Buber nodded again, and showed no sign of talking.

"What was she like?"

That got a reaction. Buber looked up sharply, and his whole body tensed as if he was going to fight. There was only Thaler, though, nudging a bottle of beer around the table with his thumbs.

"She's ..." he began, and choked up. He loosened his throat with several gulps from his own bottle. "It was crazy, Frederik. Like a madness. We just circled around each other until we couldn't stand it any longer. Then we just tore at each other like we were rutting animals."

Thaler's eyebrows crawled up his forehead, and he had to make a conscious effort to drag them down again.

"I don't even know why. She didn't either. After that first time, we should have left each other. She to go one way, me another; the world's a big place, so I'm told. Look at me, Frederik: I'm not the sort of man a woman goes with willingly."

"You have other qualities," ventured Thaler.

"I look like a f.u.c.king troll. I swear that the wh.o.r.es on Gentleman's Alley take it in turns with me so that I don't subject any one poor girl to the horror of bedding me twice in a year."

"I was talking about loyalty, honesty, friends.h.i.+p. But never mind."

"And now I expect all the trolls are dead, too, so I'm the ugliest b.a.s.t.a.r.d left walking Midgard." Buber sank the rest of his beer, tossed the bottle to one side and reached for another.

Thaler watched the bottle roll along the table, getting closer and closer to the edge. It teetered and fell, bouncing against the bench seat on its way to cracking apart on the floor.

"There was a deposit on that," he murmured. "Although in the grand scheme of things, that's not really important. Peter, what happened?"

Buber sighed, drank beer, and rested his elbows on the tabletop. "Ullmann couldn't get anywhere near Eckhardt. The mob had descended into a ... I don't know what you'd call it ... a pack of wolves, except wolves work together. They'd have ripped him to shreds and thrown what was left to Eckhardt. But we'd seen enough to understand that attacking with a militia would just have given him more fuel for his spells."