Page 43

“They’re portals,” Emery realized. “These doors are portals to other places.”

“Why not just use a regular portal? Why make them permanent?” Ambrose asked.

“These must go to places where regular portals can’t function, like the castle. I imagine we won’t be able to get back the other way without a secret tithe or enchantment.”

Ambrose regarded the library through this particular door. “He couldn’t have hidden the witch king’s grimoire amongst the school’s collection, could he?”

“I reckon it’d be easier than becoming immortal. He could have spelled it to look like some dry textbook.”

They couldn’t check every tome in the place; it would take them the better part of a year. Besides, it didn’t strike Ambrose as plausible that a man like Morcant would keep something he prized so highly somewhere so public.

“Then we keep looking.”

The other doors led to stranger places still. A stale apothecary through one. A half-drowned pier through another, the salt smell of the sea whispering to them.

None were so strange as the last.

Through it was a bedroom.

It was not a usual bedroom. The walls were windowless stone.

The only light came from a series of thick candles on a dresser, which had burnt so long and been replaced so often that they formed a mountain of wax, dripping into the cracks of the wood, sealing the drawers shut.

Next to it was a toy chest, closed with a rusty padlock.

There was a chart—some sort of yearly calendar—on the wall above, the days either crossed out in red or given a green tick.

There was only one tick in a grid of red.

Besides the dresser, the only furniture was a bed and rocking chair. Seated in it was an elderly woman, who rocked back and forth, humming.

They could only hear the humming distantly through the thin veil of the portal, but it had a haunting lyricism and familiarity to it. Ambrose couldn’t place it, but Emery did.

“That’s the tune Morcant sings before classes.”

Before Ambrose could ask who she might be, Emery stepped through the door. Valenti’s squeak of alarm was cut off abruptly by the portal.

“Emery!”

Ambrose missed his wrist by a scant inch. Wincing at the pain of his tether and cursing Emery’s rash behavior, he leapt through after him.

The temperature shifted from cold to colder. Ambrose looked behind himself to see the portal gone, a door hewn from stone and etched full of marks in its place.

It looked familiar, but Ambrose couldn’t place it, too afraid it was their only way out of here.

Emery had gone to stand next to the woman’s chair, looking at her with a deep crease between his brows.

She continued to rock, but she’d stopped humming, making the soft clink of chains more noticeable.

An iron manacle covered in runes bound one of her ankles, anchored by a clasp drilled into the floor.

Without looking up to acknowledge them, she spoke in a voice dry as kindling. “Add more logs to the fire, Morcant, it’s freezing.”

“I’m not Morcant,” Emery murmured.

She did look up, then. Her eyes had the milky film of thick cataracts. “Well, who are you, then? Hm? Police? What did he do this time?”

Emery frowned. “We’re his students.”

“Students? My boy, a professor?” She scoffed and waved a hand. “Don’t pull my leg. If he’s done something awful, never fear. I’ll handle it.” She leaned forward in her chair, a knobby finger tapping thoughtfully. “I’ve a switch here, somewhere.”

“Who are you?” Emery asked.

“His mother, unfortunately.”

Emery cast Ambrose a look. The tableau was strange and tragic. From the way she spoke of her son, and from the way he’d kept her here, there was no love lost between them.

She could know something, but it was difficult to tell how much of her mind was still intact.

“Did Morcant do something wrong?” Emery asked.

“He is something wrong. They say apples don’t fall far from the tree, but have they ever heard of an apple tree bearing lemons?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Cried and cried and cried as a babe, didn’t he?

No matter what I did or how much I fed him.

Cried, and then when he was older, couldn’t go a night without soiling his sheets.

Never had no friends, never talked about nothing except his silly books, never stopped being a baby.

No amount of discipline set him right. No matter how many little animals he’d kill to try and make himself hard, he was always soft . Troubled.”

A shiver skated its bony fingers up Ambrose’s spine. Those were familiar words. Words Morcant often used to describe Emery.

“What sort of books did he read?” Emery asked, hedging toward the grimoire.

“Fairy tales. Horse shit.”

“Anything on magic?”

“Oh, yes, magic this, magic that. Said he would show me and become a powerful sorcerer one day.” She opened her hands, gesturing to her dank chamber. “I don’t see any sorcerers here.”

“But was there any book he particularly liked?”

“Mm, great, big ruddy thing with an ugly cover.”

“Do you know where he kept it?”

She lifted a gnarled finger and pointed at Ambrose.

Not at Ambrose, but the door behind him.

They turned to look at it. In that instant, Ambrose knew where he’d seen it before. It was the corpse door from the mausoleum.

He exchanged a wary look with Emery. They’d been looking for the grimoire, but discovering what occurred during the second half of the initiation rite could also lead them to answers about the source of Morcant’s immortality.

It was difficult not to see walking into a tomb and walking into a trap as disparate things, though.

Emery ran a finger along the runes engraved in the stone slab. Nothing but magic could cajole it into opening, but in spite of Ambrose’s suspicions it would have protections against standard spells, Emery tithed yew bark in a hopeful whisper, and the door rumbled aside.

The chamber beyond was black as pitch.

The moment it opened, the witch king stirred, his spirit like the rustling of leaves. Something else stirred, too—a deep, old magic that swarmed to Ambrose like wasps to wine.

It’s here , the witch king whispered. It’s here!

Ambrose’s heart thumped. The grimoire.

Emery conjured a witch light. It hovered above his palm, but the darkness had density, and it only carved a thinly veiled path before them.

Before they ventured in, they paused, looking back at the woman bent in her rocking chair.

She’d ceased paying attention to them, unfazed by the opening of a door. The chains still rattled at her ankles, but she didn’t fight to free herself. She went back to humming that same tune Morcant did before class.

Ambrose didn’t know what should be done about her. Did anyone know she lived down here? It was cruel to keep anyone in these conditions, but cruelty seemed to run in the family. Morcant kept his own mother in this abhorrent state, but he’d suffered her contempt from the moment he’d been born.

Ambrose found it difficult to dredge up much compassion for either, then wondered if he, too, deserved no sympathy. Hadn’t he done horrible things in service of his king?

If you let your heart bleed for everyone, they’ll exsanguinate you in short order. Our priority must be the grimoire.

Emery said, “I wonder if Hellebore knows.”

“If we free her, Morcant will know we’ve been here. Those runes on the manacles could be set to alert him, and there’s no helping her if we get caught.”

Emery nodded. Resolved, he went to stand before Morcant’s mother, one hand clutched in a fist to his chest.

“Wretched little rat,” she murmured, looking at Valenti.

Emery said, “We’ll come back for you later,” and reached out to squeeze her shoulder, but his hand passed straight through.

He recoiled, bumping into Ambrose in his haste to get away.

“Wretched little rat,” she said again.

“She’s a ghost,” Emery said, rubbing his chilled fingers. “Morcant chained her spirit down here.”