The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy

by Alma Katsu

  Adair began wrapping the book in its deerskin cover, anxious to escape with his prize while the bookseller was distracted. “And need I remind you in whose house I am a guest? The man who rules the principality, the doge of Venice. Don’t be a fool. It would only take one word from me for you to end up in the dungeons . . .” he said, his bravado betrayed by a slight quaking to his voice.

  At those unfortunate words, the bookseller’s servile demeanor changed. He gave a long, irritated sigh and stiffened underneath his leather apron. “Ah, my lord . . . I wish our discourse had not deteriorated so quickly. I’d hoped you would not besiege me thus with idle threats that would only harm us both. Getting the law involved in our private transaction would get both of us in terrible trouble. And which of us is the more serious heretic? I may be a peddler of the occult, but you are the sinner who wishes to give over his soul to the devil, or so the inquisitors will see it. So while I doubt that you would make good on your threat, I prefer not to do business with men who would treat me thus.”

  Though he sensed it would do no good, Adair decided to press his bluff. “I will not be made a fool of, or cheated. You summoned me here and dangled your wares before me. I’ve offered you good golden ducats at a more than fair price. If you wish to avoid any unpleasantness, I suggest you act like a merchant and sell the book to the first customer who offers to buy it, and that is I. I consider our business concluded.” He tucked the package under his arm and tried to brush by the shopkeeper, but the man put out his hand, catching Adair in his chest.

  “I’m sorry, my lord, but I cannot let you have the book. Take back your coins and leave the—”

  Adair’s dagger was drawn before the shopkeeper could finish his sentence. Because Adair was flustered, his hand was unsteady and he was not as precise as he would’ve preferred: he only meant to send the man back a step or two, but ended up driving the tip of the blade into the man’s chest. The leather apron saved the shopkeeper from serious harm, but he staggered to his knees, clutching the wound. In the moment of confusion, Adair darted out of the shop, his treasure hidden under his cloak.

  With such a rare and damning book, Adair knew he had to take special precautions to keep it from being discovered. While he appreciated the book’s beautiful construction, its peacock linen cover was something of a drawback as it made the book stand out no matter where you placed it. When he tried to hide it among his other books, the bright cover invariably drew the eye, and then of course the hand was sure to follow. It pained him to tuck it beneath floorboards or behind a loose rock in the wall, but there was no way to leave it out in the open. It was too conspicuous. He was careful to move it between hiding places in his bedchamber: it was the doge’s palazzo after all, with more servants than the population of entire villages, and people were in and out at all hours, tidying up the room when he was not around. He stayed up late at night to read the book in secret by candlelight. Each page revealed whole new areas of alchemical thought and practice for him, for which he was amazed, and grateful. It was as though he was given all the sweet water he could drink after a prolonged and painful drought. Adair took the example of the monk who created this book and copied out his favorite recipes on rough paper in his native language so that he would have a spare copy in case something happened to the original.

  He was returning late one night to the palazzo from a lecture at the home of his tutor of medicine, Professore Scolari, when he became aware that he was being followed. He was in a lonely alley at the time with only a quarter moon overhead for light. The alley had been so quiet that he had felt certain there was no one else with him, and sure enough, when he turned to confront his assailant, there was nothing there but blackness.

  Then, without warning, a man Adair had never before laid eyes on stepped out of the inky emptiness. Adair could not believe his eyes: it was as though the man had been hiding inside a black cloud that completely obscured his presence. He was older and imposing, tall and broad as a church door. He had piercing gray eyes and a thick mustache, his long black hair streaked with silver. He wore a cloak of burgundy velvet trimmed in ermine, fine enough for a king to wear.

  The conjurer pointed a finger at Adair. “Stand right where you are, you devil’s stripling. You will not pass. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  Adair stepped back, his hand on his sword. “How can that be when I don’t know you, sir?”

  The man continued to glare at him. “Don’t feign ignorance; you’re not that good an actor. The book, sir. You took it from a friend of mine. You have frequented a shop near the Plaza Saint Benedict, have you not? You know the shopkeeper, Anselmo?”

  “I didn’t take it from your friend, I bought it. He was more than fairly compensated. I would be careful, sir, for I am a ward of the doge—”

  “I know all about your place in the doge’s household,” the conjurer said with a sneer. “And we both know he would cast you out and return you to your heathen family’s estate if he found out about your extracurricular interests. And I also know that the doge currently has at least a dozen such young men living under his roof, too many to keep track of. Zeno probably wouldn’t even be able to identify your body—if you were to come to such an unfortunate end.” The stranger was right: he had seen through Adair’s bluff. “Don’t worry, boy—I’m no assassin. I’m only here to take what’s rightfully mine. Do you know what I am?”

  There was little question that this old man was a mage, a practitioner of some skill and ability, and angry with Adair for being so presumptuous as to buy (or, rather, steal) the book out from underneath him. He’d come to settle the score. Adair sheathed his sword quickly and made a low bow. “My sincere apologies, sir. I meant you no disrespect. The shopkeeper had summoned me to his store, had he not? I thought the man was merely trying to force an exorbitant sum from me with the pretense of having another buyer. I will return the book to you without argument if you return the sum I paid your friend Anselmo.”

  The large man relaxed, shifting his weight to his back leg, his hand dropping from his sword. “I’m glad you’re being so reasonable,” he said with some caution.

  “Obviously, I do not presently have the book with me. Let me deliver the book myself to your house tomorrow evening,” Adair said.

  The old man narrowed his eyes. “Is this a trick? You want me to tell you where I live so you can send the doge’s men to arrest me? How do I know I can trust you, after what you did to Anselmo?”

  Adair bowed low again in a show of deference. “By the fact that you were able to follow me unseen within your ingenious black cloud, I can tell you are a man of considerable expertise in the magical arts, whereas I am a novice and have only begun in my scholarship. You would do me a great honor if you would allow me to set this matter right between us, sir.”

  “That black cloud is nothing, a minor trick. You’d do well to remember that imbalance in our powers; I would not hesitate to bring the worst punishment imaginable down upon you should you betray me.” The old man thought, rubbing his grizzled chin. “All right, since you plead so prettily, I’ll let you bring the book to me. But I warn you: I’ll be watching your every move through the soothsayer’s bowl and if you cross me, it will go very badly for you. Do you understand?” He watched Adair nod. “Come to the Plaza Saint Vincent tomorrow at midnight. You’ll know which house is mine.”

  Adair bowed a third time, and when he rose, the man and the black cloud had disappeared.

  PRESENT DAY

  Adair woke with a start and had to shake his head hard to clear visions of the dark Venetian alley from his mind and remember that he was safe in his fortress off the coast of Sardegna. He looked down at Lanore—she was still asleep, oblivious to his alarm—and then blinked and peered around the darkened room, half expecting to see the conjurer step out of the inky blackness.

  Adair hadn’t thought of Cosimo Moretti, the old conjurer, for centuries. He’d actively suppressed thoughts of Cosimo (and his demise) for a very lo
ng time and could see no reason why he should think of him—even worse, dream of him—now. Adair couldn’t help but think it had something to do with the spell he’d cast over Lanore or the Venetian book with its peacock-blue cover that she had returned to him.

  Adair rose from the bed, readjusted his twisted clothing, and went downstairs to his study, tiptoeing through the silent house. He didn’t want to risk waking the girls, so he didn’t turn on a light until he reached his study. The book fairly glowed from across the room, from where it sat on his desk.

  He pressed a hand to the cover, quite filthy by now, with centuries of grime effacing the blue linen, and he could practically feel magic emanate from it like a pulse. Cosimo’s magic; he’d felt the same jangly vibrations in Cosimo’s presence, just as he assumed others felt something similar when they were near him. Once a person made contact with the other world, it left its mark on him. It had made Adair into something like a portal, with the hidden, magical world a heartbeat away.

  ELEVEN

  Once I stepped through the door of the Moroccan hotel, I was back in the fortress, presumably in the hall on the second story. The dusty smell of the hotel in Fez lingered, however, clinging to my sweaty skin and damp cotton dress, proof that it hadn’t been completely fabricated in my mind—unless the subtle mix of ginger, mint, sandalwood, and jasmine were also figments of my imagination.

  The hall was still a dim and empty expanse of red carpet and dark wooden doors. No sound echoed down the long corridor, the house as quiet as a mausoleum. In the unbroken stillness, I suddenly noticed that the flames standing atop the candles in the iron wall scones had begun to quiver, tickled by a draft coming from an unknown direction. Someone had opened a door.

  I strained so hard listening for a sound that my ears started to ache. Then I heard what I’d been waiting for: a muffled thump, like a ball being dropped onto a carpet. And a second thump. Whatever it was, it sounded very solid, ominously so. The cloven hoof of a demon? I wasn’t going to stay and find out. My hand closed around the nearest brass doorknob. I gave it a turn, held my breath, and slipped inside another room.

  I stepped into a forest, just on the other side of the door. The forest was vast—I could tell by the vacuous silence—and a light snow was falling; only a few flakes made it through the canopy of bare branches to the ground. A fuller stand of trees stood ahead of me, mostly pine and all frosted with new snow, and behind it another stand and another. My breath misted on the cold air and my skin tingled—not from the cold but because I was home.

  I knew without needing to be told that I was in St. Andrew. How did I know this? After all, I could be in a forest anywhere, but I knew. The land was as well known to me as a painting I’d looked at a thousand times. The air tasted familiar; it even felt familiar against my skin, though of course all of this could have been a trick of the mind. Still . . . the birdsong, the slant of light. Everything told me I was in St. Andrew.

  Again, it made no sense that I should be here. Perhaps it had to do with the way the afterlife was configured, hardwired to the time we spent on earth. The dour, judgmental Puritan in me would like to believe that it was designed to throw me back to the place or events that were most important to me, to revisit the lesson I missed in life. That is, if there was an order to things at all, which the realist in me doubted.

  I walked toward the trees, wondering where I was in the Great North Woods, a forest famous for swallowing up people and not letting them go. The great woods went on for miles in sameness, and it was easy for even experienced wilderness guides or, in my day, axmen and surveyors on horseback, to lose their way. As I came to a thinning of trees, I heard the faint sound of running water and followed the noise until I came to the river.

  Within minutes the Allagash unfurled before me. There was no mistaking it, broad and flat and calm. It might’ve been snowing, but it was not cold enough to cause the river to freeze over. The only strange thing I noticed about the river this day was that it was unusually dark. Black, as though a river of ink rushed over the rock bed. It must be a trick of the light, I told myself, a reflection of the overcast sky and not an ominous sign portending ill fortune.

  My sense was that the village lay on the other side of the rolling water. I wondered if the river was shallow enough at that point to walk across. It looked to be, though the water was sure to be painfully cold. However, when I scanned the river’s edge for its narrowest point, I suddenly saw an empty rowboat nestled in a tangle of dead vines. The boat was weathered to a silvery gray, an old and forgotten thing, crudely made. A paddle lay across the plank seat.

  I climbed in, pointed its nose toward the opposite shore, and began paddling. There were stretches of the Allagash that were very gentle, and I assumed from the current that this was one of them, but was surprised nonetheless by the ease with which I reached the other side, not quite as though the boat knew what was expected of it but nearly so. It nosed onto a sloping part of the riverbank as neatly as though strong hands had pulled it ashore for me, so it was nothing to step out and onto dry land.

  A path showed itself through the trees and I followed, having no better idea of which way to go, and I didn’t have to walk very far before I saw someone in the distance. As I got closer, I saw that it was a woman in a long, dark coat sitting on a tree stump with what appeared to be a baby in her arms. Her straight dark hair had fallen across her face like a curtain, obscuring my view of her. I knew without question that she was waiting for me.

  Despite the crunch of my shoes in the snow, she did not look up until I was practically standing next to her, confirming it was who I’d begun to suspect: Sophia Jacobs, the woman who had once been Jonathan’s lover but had taken her own life—and that of her unborn baby.

  I was startled—almost frightened—to see her again. When we were young women together in St. Andrew we hadn’t been friends and she even had reason to hate me. I had tried to make her give up Jonathan, to hide the paternity of the baby he’d put inside her, but instead, she drowned herself in the Allagash, near this very spot. I’d thought little of her since Jonathan had absolved me of any guilt in her suicide, taking the blame on himself. And though I’d dreamed of her many years ago, when my trespass against her was still fresh, in none of those dreams had she ever been this vivid. She looked exactly as I’d last seen her in life, but seeing her this closely revealed a hundred tiny details I’d perhaps forgotten with time. Had she always been so worried and nervous? Were her eyes always this sunken, her skin ashy, her mouth hard set in a half frown? And in her arms was a bundle of swaddling that she held like a baby.

  “Sophia,” I said by way of greeting, puzzled as to why I’d been brought to her.

  She shifted the bundle in her arms, regarding me coolly. “Well, you took long enough getting here. Come along now, you’ve much to see.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand—why’d you bring me here?”

  She was rising to her feet but froze at my words. “Bring you here? No, it’s the other way around. I’m here because of you. Don’t dawdle now. We’ve got to be going.” She didn’t wait for my reply but set off at a strong pace through the snow, the baby held tight to her chest.

  Within minutes we were at the edge of town. St. Andrew looked the same as it did in my childhood memories: the long clapboards of the congregation hall; the common green in front, now covered with snow, where we spent many an afternoon in the company of our neighbors after services; the fieldstone fence that surrounded the cemetery; Parson Gilbert’s house; Tinky Talbot’s smith shop; the path next to the blacksmith’s leading to Magda’s one-room whorehouse; and farther down the muddy, choppy road, Daughtery’s poor man’s public house, shuttered up against the snowfall.

  Faces of the people I’d known when I’d lived here as a child—my family, friends, the townspeople who ran the businesses and occupied the farms that had flanked ours—spun past my eyes, people I’d missed more dearly than I would’ve thought possible. “Wait, Sophia,” I call
ed to the thin figure bustling ahead of me. The top of her head and her sloping shoulders were white, as though she’d been dusted with sugar, and the hem of her long coat swept a wide path behind her. “Can you tell me what happened to everyone? You don’t know how often I’ve wondered . . .”

  She walked on purposefully, keeping her gaze trained on the ground before her. “If you really wish to know about St. Andrew, the horrors that befell us, I’ll tell you.” Her tone was grimly smug, thick with schadenfreude. “The entire town was torn apart when you and Jonathan ran away.” It was then I realized that for all her ghostly qualities, Sophia was not omnipotent and was unaware of the circumstances of my abrupt departure. It may have looked to outsiders that I’d returned to the village intent on stealing Jonathan’s heart, but I’d come armed with Adair’s elixir of life, under orders to bring Jonathan back to Boston with me. But when I returned to St. Andrew, I found the town dependent on Jonathan: he ran the logging operation, the most profitable business in town by far, and held the mortgage to nearly every farm. I had no heart to take him away from a town that needed him. Fate interceded, however, and when Jonathan was shot by a cuckolded husband, I was left with no choice but to give him the elixir and whisk him out of town to keep our secret from being discovered.

  “There was a terrible row when it was discovered that you’d gone,” Sophia continued with relish. “Jonathan’s family was exceedingly angry with yours, taking your mother to task for raising such a wicked girl. The town divided on the matter, for and against, and you’ll not be surprised to learn that very few stood with your family. You were called all sorts of vile names—whore, harlot, Jezebel”—she seemed particularly delighted to recall this bit of history for me—“and there was some talk of forcing your family to compensate the St. Andrews for their loss.”