Scholar of Decay

by Tanya Huff

  Trying to ignore the burning ache in his left shoulder, Dmitri flicked his sword tip just before the pointed muzzle. “Or are you afraid?”

  The human was actually taunting him. Him. Jean Renier. Humans did not speak so to members of the family.

  When the next attack came, Dmitri was almost ready for it. The rat moved fast—faster than should’ve been possible. Dmitri grunted as a claw ripped through his trousers and into his thigh, but twisted his leg away before much damage could be done. His own blow went wide. The rat was not where he expected it to be. It was almost as though the creature were thinking.

  They circled, facing each other again. Dmitri set his jaw and prepared to fight for his life.

  He added a number of new scars to the patchwork parting the dull brown fur that covered the huge rodent’s body, but twist and feint and thrust as he might for several furiously swift minutes, he couldn’t get in a killing blow.

  On the other hand, he was still alive.

  The claws ripped at him every time they passed—front claws, back claws, he could seldom tell which. His clothing was in ribbons, but unless he died from the slow loss of blood, the rat had been as unable as he to make a fatal strike.

  The fight had moved them out from under the trees and up against the ruined walls of the old building. This gave the more agile rat a decided advantage.

  To his horror, Dmitri began to realize that he couldn’t win. That all he did was postpone the inevitable. That this was the time and place of his death. A sword stroke faltered. He stumbled, nearly fell, the knowledge dragging at him.

  Jean saw the realization of death in the eyes of his prey but didn’t have the energy left to enjoy it. He was hurt, bleeding from a number of wounds. None alone was worse than any he’d survived in the past, but together they sapped his strength. Had the human continued to believe he had a chance, he might have had.

  In a moment, he’d have the human down and then he’d feed. That would make him feel much better.

  Breathing heavily, the taste of iron in his mouth, Dmitri stumbled backward, lifted his sword in a last-minute parry, and slammed the side of the blade against the rat’s head. It was a lucky blow, but he doubted it had been hard enough to do any major damage.

  Ears ringing, Jean staggered sideways, felt a block of stone tip beneath his paws and, before he could stop himself, he plummeted into one of the ruined cellars. Twisting in the air, trying to get his feet under him, he braced himself for an impact that never came.

  When he realized what he’d landed in, he began to shriek.

  Supporting himself on his sword, Dmitri made his way to the edge of the pit. About ten feet down, he could see the body of the giant rat, thrashing about in midair.

  Then he saw the spiderweb. It shimmered like gossamer in the shadowed light, each strand at least as big around as his thumb. The rat had landed almost right in the middle of the circular pattern.

  The panicked shrieking drove spikes of pain into Dmitri’s skull, and he began to turn away. When the rat began to change, he froze in astonishment. Bones lengthened, muscles flattened, the muzzle became less pronounced, front paws became almost hands, back paws almost feet; only the fur and tail and wounds remained the same.

  “Wererat,” Dmitri gasped, trying to remember to breathe.

  “Help me, human! Help me!”

  Dmitri’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Help you? You tried to kill me!”

  “You tried to kill me!”

  That was true enough, and he was so tired it very nearly made sense. He hesitated, almost considering it.

  Then the spider crept down from the shadows to claim its meal. The bloated gray sac of its body was as large as the wererat’s head. Each of the eight legs that stepped from strand to strand with obscenely delicate precision was longer than one of Dmitri’s arms. As it began to methodically wrap the screaming wererat in loops of sticky white webbing, Dmitri backed away, swallowing bile.

  He wouldn’t, couldn’t face such a horror. If it were a friend, or family member … then he’d help, he told himself, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the continuing cries for assistance. But not for the sake of a wererat that had tried to kill him.

  Bloody sword waving at the air before him, Dmitri stumbled back to the carpetbag, grabbed it, and moved as quickly as he could toward the other side of the island and the bridge to the Renier estate. When the wererat’s screams grew louder, he moved faster.

  The only things that would be attracted to such a sound in Pont-a-Museau were scavengers.

  He killed four rats of normal size before he reached the far side of the overgrown estate. Whether they were drawn by the fading cries of the dying wererat or by the scent of his blood, Dmitri neither knew nor cared. He would survive to get to Louise; he concentrated on that and let the rest go.

  A fifth rat attacked as he staggered out onto the deserted esplanade. He crushed its skull beneath his boot heel. A sixth he skewered on the point of his sword and flung off the bridge. The streets remained empty. Those few who were up and about worked very hard at not seeing his bloody, sword-waving figure pass. The citizens of Pont-a-Museau were experts in the art of turning a blind eye.

  Eventually, staggering and retching, he reached the chateau. It took the last of his strength to lift the corroded brass knocker and let it fall against the door. When—after hours or minutes, he was no longer able to tell the difference—a servant cautiously pulled open the door, Dmitri gasped out, “Louise …” and fell flat on his face, the carpetbag clutched protectively in the crook of one arm.

  The elderly woman stared down at him, her face impassive. After a moment, she stepped back and said, “I’ll tell the mamselle you’ve arrived,” as though bleeding young men collapsed on the threshold too frequently for her to summon a less phlegmatic reaction.

  Her mood sunny, Louise stood in the doorway of the guest room and watched one of the younger, more expendable servants wiping the blood from Dmitri’s torso. The water in the chipped enamel bowl on the bedside table had turned a pale crimson that grew darker every time the cloth was rinsed.

  Louise’s nose twitched. Not all the blood belonged to Dmitri, and she could only assume that, as the little Nuiken had made it to the Chateau, Jean was dead. No great loss, she mused. Although humans killing family was not to be tolerated, since Jean had ignored her direct order to do nothing, it could, under the circumstances, be ignored.

  “Was he bitten?”

  The servant’s back hunched as though expecting a blow, her cheeks pale beneath two barely healed lacerations. “Yes, mistress. There, on the shoulder.”

  Leaning forward, Louise examined the puncture. Surrounded by purpling flesh, it looked as if her cousin’s teeth had gone cleanly in, then cleanly out again, with no tearing. “It must have been an interesting fight.” She almost wished she’d seen it; males whacking at each other could be so … stimulating.

  She pursed her lips and considered the possibilities. There was a chance Dmitri would be infected with a lesser form of lycanthropy, becoming, for all intents and purposes, Jean’s wererat slave. But Jean was dead. My slave then. That could be inconvenient. Although she had the little statue of Aurek Nuikin’s wife safe in her bedchamber, new plans would have to be devised if Dmitri became a wererat. What a selfish little human he’d turned out to be.

  “Let me know if there are any … changes.”

  “Yes, mistress. And if he dies?”

  Her palm smacked against the back of the servant’s head. “Don’t be a bigger fool than you have to be. If he dies, dispose of the body.”

  Shoulders hunched against the cold of early evening, Aurek saw neither the boat nor the river it traveled on. His eyes were locked on a private vision of the workshop and the book that held the spell to free his Natalia. The book he’d lost. The peals of malicious laughter in his head rose and fell with the motion of the waves.

  Had the day given him any encouragement at all, he thought he might be able to quiet the laughter, bu
t he’d spent futile hours searching an abandoned building and found only a preservation spell set into the stones of a room that had once been the wine cellar.

  Nothing for his Natalia. Nothing at all.

  He jerked as the boat careened into the dock and pulled himself slowly up onto the repaired stone wall, not even hearing the boatman’s offer of help. Another day, another failure.

  But you’re still trying, consoled a little voice, barely able to make itself heard over the laughter.

  Trying doesn’t matter, he told it. Only succeeding. And my Natalia is still trapped.

  “Will you be wantin’ me tomorra, sir?” the boatman called out.

  Aurek forced himself to turn. “Tomorrow and every day after that,” he said wearily, no longer clinging to hope as much as clutching at habit.

  With his pack dragging at his shoulders, weighing more empty than it would full, he made his way across the esplanade to the house. Edik opened the door and stood backlit by the candles in the entry hall as Aurek heaved himself up the steps.

  “Mamselle Louise Renier has sent around a note, sir.” The servant proffered a thick, cream-colored sheet of paper, folded twice and sealed with crimson wax, as Aurek pushed past. “The messenger indicated it was of some urgency.”

  “I don’t care.” Without even looking at it, Aurek plucked the paper from Edik’s grasp, crumpled it, and threw it aside. Halfway up the stairs, he remembered his morning’s resolution and paused. “Is Dmitri in?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, when you see him next, escort him to my study. I want to speak with him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Eyes narrowed in worried disapproval, Edik watched until his master disappeared into the shadows of the upper hall, then he bent and picked up the crumpled message. Whether Aurek Nuikin deigned to read it or not, the entryway was not the place for garbage.

  A sudden desperate howl snapped Edik erect so quickly he nearly threw out his back. The next instant, he was pounding up the stairs, paper still clutched in one hand.

  She was gone.

  Gone!

  His Natalia was gone.

  With trembling fingers, Aurek caressed the empty air above the pedestal. Gone? How could she be gone, and the protective spells not breached? It was impossible. Gasping for breath, as though he’d just been dealt a mortal blow, he tried to work out what could have happened and kept returning to the one thing he knew for certain—it was impossible. No one could get safely through the defensive spells.

  No one.

  No one except he, himself, had so much as touched the figurine of his precious Natalia since she’d been so horribly transformed.

  And then he had a sudden vision of Dmitri lifting the figurine and shaking it at him.

  Dmitri?

  Could Dmitri have betrayed him so?

  “Edik!”

  “Here, sir.”

  Aurek’s heart leaped into his throat as the servant’s quiet answer sounded directly behind him. He spun around and grabbed the other man’s sleeve. “The note from the Renier …”

  Brow furrowed, Edik handed it over, his gaze flicking between the empty pedestal and his master.

  The top of the page had been dated that afternoon. The handwriting was bold and dark, each letter traced heavily by a hand that seldom held a quill.

  My dear M. Nuikin, it read. An item you value has recently come into my possession. Please call on me at your earliest convenience to discuss its return. The looping stylized signature took up the bottom half of the page. Louise Renier.

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  Ducking under a dust-laden fringe of dangling cobwebs, Louise entered the room, lips pursed in a moue of distaste. “Has there been any sign of change?”

  “No, mistress.” The young woman prudently backed away from the bed as Louise approached.

  His breathing damp-sounding and ragged, Dmitri lay beneath a moth-eaten blanket, fitfully tossing his head from side to side, his face flushed, golden curls plastered to his skull. Angry red flesh surrounded the bite on his shoulder, scarlet lines spreading out from it into his chest and back. In comparison, the rest of his wounds, claw marks all, appeared to be minor and painless.

  “Could still go either way,” Louise muttered, wrinkling her nose at the scent of sweat and blood.

  “He’s very strong, mistress.”

  The wererat’s laughter all but echoed in the nearly empty room. “Oh, yes, strong like an ox, smart like an ox cart.”

  On the bed, Dmitri jerked toward the sound. “Lou … ise.”

  Tentatively, the servant glanced from the injured young man to her mistress. Having miraculously survived the violence after Henri Dubois had escaped Jacqueline and the chateau, she knew that wererats were capable of love—or a wererat variation of love. If she’d expected a softening of Louise Renier’s expression, she was doomed to disappointment. Brows drawn in, eyes narrowed, her mistress looked, at best, calculating.

  “At least he’s calling for me rather than for his brother. I can use that.” Tapping long, curved nails against her thigh, Louise frowned, weighing her options. If the impossible chanced to happen—and the impossible had happened before in Richemulot—and her darling sister defeated Aurek Nuikin, she would need Dmitri as an excuse for Nuikin’s behavior: When Dmitri moved into the Chateau, Nuikin went crazy. He swore revenge on the whole family. I’m only glad that you were ready for him.

  Presenting Dmitri essentially unharmed would add a certain verisimilitude—after all, Jacqueline had told her not to harm Dmitri, and she hadn’t. Jean had. And Jean, who had disregarded Jacqueline’s instructions to the family, was dead. Jacqueline would be happy about that. And with Jean dead, no one need ever know what had happened to Lucien.

  Louise glanced derisively down at her wounded gallant. It would easy enough to convince Dmitri, weakened as he was, of any story she chose to tell him. For that matter, it was easy enough to convince Dmitri of almost anything, even when he was in perfect health.

  “All right,” she declared abruptly. “I’ve decided. Do everything you can to keep him alive.”

  As her mistress left the room, the servant returned to the bedside, shoulders slumped and feet dragging. Now that she’d been ordered to keep the young man alive, it would become her fault if he died. Her hand rose to lightly touch the double scar slashed into her cheek. If the young man died, her punishment would go far beyond mere disfigurement.

  “Mistress, there is a man named Aurek Nuikin here to see you.”

  Louise glanced back over her shoulder at the closed door hiding Aurek Nuikin’s younger brother and smiled broadly, exposing a great many pointed teeth. “Light the candles in the library and offer him something to drink. I’ll be down in a moment.”

  Fighting the urge to tear through the Chateau, fireballing everyone and everything in his path until his Natalia was safely returned, Aurek followed the bent and shadowed form of the elderly servant into the library. He stood, arms folded, and watched through narrowed eyes as she took her single candle and lit a number of candles scattered about the room.

  As the sweet scent of the warming beeswax began to replace the dry and dusty odor of neglect, she nodded once in his general direction and left the room through a narrow door opposite the one they’d entered by.

  Louise Renier, Aurek surmised, would grant him an audience when she was good and ready, not an instant before. Fine. He could wait. He wasn’t leaving until he spoke with her, and he wasn’t leaving without the figurine of his wife.

  Even under the most extreme of circumstances, which these undoubtedly were, Aurek was incapable of standing in a library and not examining the books. Holding a branched candelabra in one hand, he approached the shelves. The books, like most everything else in Pont-a-Museau, were falling apart. Mold and mildew made titles difficult to read, and when he pulled out a volume for a closer inspection, the pages fluttered to the carpet in amber-colored flakes well mixed with dried insect p
arts and rodent droppings.

  Few of the books were in any better condition. Some were worse. Most had probably not been touched since the night the mist-created city had appeared.

  This too, they should be made to answer for, he snarled silently as he set the empty cover back in its place.

  A small stack of more recent publications caught his eye, and he crossed the room to take a closer look. Not only were these half-dozen clothbound books still readable, but one had been published since his arrival in Pont-a-Museau.

  “Centuries of scholarship rots away,” he muttered in disgust, glaring at a lurid woodcut depicting something vaguely female wrapped in a long black cloak indulging in a close embrace with an attractive young man, “but The Dead Travel Fast, a Romance from Beyond the Grave, is not only in perfect condition, but well read!”

  “I read it twice the week it came out.”

  Aurek whirled about to discover that Louise Renier had seated herself in a thronelike wingback chair and was regarding him with interest. He hadn’t even heard her enter the room.

  “I so enjoy a good romance,” she continued, as though there were nothing of more import occurring than an unexpected social call. “Girl gets boy; boy dies tragically; boy becomes girl’s zombie slave.” She pressed one hand dramatically against her chest. “I just love a happy ending.”

  “Where is she?” Aurek growled, his left hand curled into a fist, his right rising to gesture.

  Louise basked in the heat of his anger, so much more potent than his brother’s fits of pique. “Don’t you know, wizard?”

  Silver-blond brows drew together into a sharp V. “Why do you call me that?”

  “Call you what? Wizard?” Her laughter had edges that could flay skin, and her eyes glittered in the candlelight. “You know what I am. I know what you are. Let’s not play this game any longer, especially not when I’ve gone to so much trouble to set up a new one.” She leaned slightly forward in the chair. “So, if you want to know where your beloved is, wizard, all you have to do is sense the waning struggles of her poor trapped life.” When he jerked toward her, she shook a finger at him. “Not if you want her back. The poor little woman is in a very fragile state right now.”