CHAPTER 4

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“Open up! In the name of the Commanderie!”

Klervie woke to the sound of shouting, men’s voices loud in the dark of the night. She heard the thud of fists pounding against the cottage door. Terrified, she lay still, not daring to move.

“Hervé de Maunoir! Open up!”

She heard her mother, Maela, whispering frantically to her father. “Slip out by the pantry window. Go!”

“And leave you to face them alone?”

“I’ll stall them. Just go!”

“Break down the door.” The brusque order outside was swiftly followed by juddering blows that made the whole cottage tremble. Klervie clapped her hands over her ears.

Suddenly the loudest blow was followed by the splintering rending of timber. The door burst open and men came running in. Klervie shrieked in terror and, snatching up her book, ran to her mother’s side.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Maela’s challenge rang out. “How dare you disturb my child’s rest? By what right do you break into my home in the middle of the night?”

At the same time, the sounds of a violent scuffle erupted in the cottage garden, punctuated by shouts. Then came a sudden cry of pain that made Klervie flinch as if she had taken the blow herself. “Papa!” she whispered.

“I have a warrant from the king.” A burly officer in a plain black uniform loomed over them, a folded paper in hand; Klervie noticed that it was secured with a scarlet seal.

“A warrant? We are not criminals—” began Maela, but her voice trailed away as more soldiers appeared in the doorway, dragging a man by the arms. “Hervé!” she cried.

Klervie flinched. Her father’s head drooped; drops of red dripped from a gash on the side of his skull, staining the clean flagstones. A horrible sick feeling gushed through her whole body; she wanted to run away, but her legs had begun to tremble and she could only stand and stare.

“So you thought you could escape us?” The officer gazed impassively down at her father. “By order of his majesty, King Gobain, I arrest you, Hervé de Maunoir.”

“On—what grounds?” Papa seemed to be having difficulty speaking. Klervie felt Maela’s hands tighten on her shoulders.

The officer gave a grim laugh. “Heresy. Practicing the Forbidden Arts. Summoning daemons—”

“What?” Maela interrupted him. “My husband is a reputable alchymist. He has never dared to practice the Forbidden Arts. He has more sense!”

“Seize everything. Every book, every piece of writing, down to the smallest scrap,” ordered the officer, ignoring her.

Bright gouts of lanternlight illumined the darkness as the soldiers ransacked the cottage, piling Papa’s books into chests, taking away boxes of papers. Klervie held tight to her beloved storybook, determined that no one should take it from her.

“The wards,” Maela was murmuring. “Why did the wards fail?”

Though Klervie did not understand what the wards were, she knew that they were there to protect them. And now Maman was saying they had let in these harsh-voiced and brutish men who were turning their home upside down. There came the crash of breaking crockery in the kitchen and Maela winced.

“What have you got there?” The officer loomed over Klervie. His eyes radiated such stern disapproval that she shrank close to her mother, arms crossed, both hands clutching the precious book to her breast.

“You wouldn’t begrudge a little child her book of tales?”

“Fairy tales are a dangerous and corrupting influence on young, impressionable minds.” The officer snatched the book from Klervie and stared at it with suspicion. Then his stern expression softened. “Lives of the Holy Saints,” he read aloud, nodding. He thrust the book back at Klervie. “Not a title I had thought to find in the house of a filthy magus.” He turned away, striding into Papa’s study, barking out orders.

Klervie gazed at the book in astonishment. In the harsh torchlight she noticed that the picture engraved on the front had changed; instead of the Faie with hair silver as starshine, her arms wound around the neck of a unicorn, she saw a haloed saint, eyes piously upraised, hands fervently clasped together in prayer. But before she could ask Maman why the picture had changed, the officer reappeared.

“We’re all done here, Lieutenant. Take him away.”

The soldiers began to drag Papa out of the door, his toes bumping over the flagstones, leaving a bloody trail behind.

Maela ran into the lane in her nightgown. She caught hold of one of the men by the arm. “Where are you taking him?”

Klervie had stood watching, mute with fear. Now she ran after her mother, only to see the man throw Maela to the muddy ground.

Klervie stopped, shocked to see how brutally he had treated her mother.

“I’ll follow you, Hervé!” Maela cried, her voice shrill, close to breaking. “I won’t let them keep us apart! I’ll—”

The sky turned white. Klervie shut her eyes, dazzled as an ear-bruising explosion shook the night.

“Oh, no,” she heard her mother whisper. Jagged flames leaped high into the misty darkness, coloring the trees and houses a lurid orange.

High on the hill that overlooked the village, the College of Thaumaturgy was burning.

 

“Stay back!” Imri hissed, tugging Rieuk into the shadows as a troop of soldiers tramped along the lane. They were dragging a prisoner.

“Who are they?”

“Inquisitors.”

“But I must warn the others—”

“It’s too late.” There was such urgency in Imri’s voice that the protest died on Rieuk’s tongue. “Don’t you understand? There’s nothing you can do now. I’ve seen the Commanderie Inquisition in action before. They hate our kind. All you can do is hope we get away without being seen.”

At that moment, Rieuk sensed a faint yet familiar electric tingle. Two officers of the Inquisition had stopped close by. One pulled what looked like a fob watch from his breast pocket. A crystal watch? As he held it aloft, Rieuk felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. He sagged against a wall, suddenly weak and disoriented.

“Ugh.” Beside him, Imri staggered as if he had been kicked in the chest.

“Look, there’s a streak of darkness in the stone,” said the officer.

“It must sense more mage blood close by,” said his companion, raising his pistol. “Could Maunoir’s apprentice be hiding out here?”

Rieuk’s instinctive reaction was to run like hell. But his limbs were trembling and would not respond to his will. He was helpless.

“Maistre Visant!” came the call. “We’ve breached the college walls. Come quick!”

The Inquisitors hurried away, and Rieuk saw not the dial of a watch face but the sparkle of a quartz on a golden chain as the officer tucked it back in his pocket.

The instant they had gone, Imri grabbed Rieuk’s hand, pulling him along the unlit lane.

“Can’t—run—anymore.” Rieuk dropped to his knees, trying to gulp in lungfuls of air. His throat was taut and dry and his ribs ached. “What happened back there? I felt so weak.”

“Angelstone,” Imri rasped. “It—has to be. It negates our power.”

“I never knew—” Rieuk broke off as the night sky flared with the lurid brilliance of the burning college. He gazed in dismay as the flames roared toward the stars. All the rare and ancient books would be incinerated in that inferno. All that precious knowledge accumulated over centuries would be lost forever.

“We can’t stay here.” Imri’s hand pressed on his shoulder, firm yet insistent. “They’ll scour the lanes. They’ll put blocks on the roads.”

Rieuk looked up at Imri’s face in the fire-streaked darkness and saw nothing but the flames reflected in the lenses of his spectacles. There was no way of reading the expression in the dark eyes behind those blank lenses.

“We must get out of Francia—and as soon as possible.”

 

“So Azilis is free at last.” Imri leaned on the rail of the barque, gazing out across the sunlit dazzle of the waves.

Rieuk was fighting to stay in control of his seasickness. The salty wind had freshened, gusting in fierce bursts, stirring up huge waves.

“You saw the conflagration at the college. Maunoir’s book could never have survived such a blaze. And as the pages burned, so she would have returned to the aethyr.”

“Is that…a good thing?” The barque crested another rolling breaker and Rieuk slipped to his knees, clutching his stomach.

Through the rising surges of nausea he heard Imri’s voice suddenly quirked with amusement. “Seasick? Silly boy. Why didn’t you say so?” Rieuk felt Imri’s hand on his head, tousling his hair. He flinched, fearing he was about to puke. And then a swift, bright current of cleansing heat passed through his body from his head to his toes. He opened his eyes and saw Imri kneeling beside him on the damp boards.

“Better?” Imri inquired.

Rieuk drew in a tentative breath. He could feel the barque’s timbers shuddering as it cut through the breakers, he could hear the waves slapping against the hull, but the nausea had gone. “What did you do?”

Imri helped him to his feet. “What use is an apprentice to his master if he’s lying groaning in the bilges?”

The master of the barque was shouting orders to the crew; the wind changed as they rounded the headland and the sailors began to climb up into the rigging to unfurl more sails. In spite of the sun’s bright sparkle on the burnished blue of the summer sea, Rieuk felt as if distant storm clouds were looming, darkening the hours yet to come.