Spellbreaker полностью

He blinked, the spectacles making his eyes large and birdlike. “Runes? Those are spellbreaker books. Down in the basement. Why?”

“Thank you.” He stepped away. Paused. “Would you kindly point me in the direction of the stairs?”

The man did, with a crooked finger, and Bacchus crossed the floor with long strides. Bookshelves like sentinels stood in his way, but eventually he found a stairwell basked in shadow, thanks to a burned-out lamp. He took it carefully, the temperature lowering by the step. The smell of mildew snuck into his nose as he reached the bottom.

The area was poorly lit, so Bacchus took one of the lamps off the wall and brought it with him. Two others shared the space: a woman nearly as old as the steward, and a boy who could not have yet been twelve. The woman squinted at Bacchus; the boy, his hair mussed, pored over a book. Her apprentice, he suspected. Perhaps he was a spellbreaker in the making. Hopefully he did not have the tome Bacchus sought.

The man had not said where in the basement the books would be, and so Bacchus forced himself to slow down, to read spines and labels, which were severely lacking in information. He pulled out the folded paper in his pocket to again study Elsie’s drawing. The symbol looked almost Asian, but the curls on the edges lent it more of a French aesthetic. Not that it mattered. Magic was universal.

Tucking the paper away—thinking about Hadleigh, where Elsie claimed to have gone—he investigated one row of books, then another only a quarter full. On to the next shelf. At this rate, he’d have to ask the old woman—

Encyclopedia of Runes until 1804, a book spat at him. The spine was the same width as his hand, and when he pulled it free, he grunted at its weight. The thing might as well have been made of iron. He expected dust, but got little. Either the tome was used often or the stewards of the library took their jobs very seriously.

He searched for a table, but the only other one was back by the woman and her apprentice, and he’d rather have privacy. So he returned to the quarter-full shelf and set down both the lamp and the book, opening the latter.

It had three to four spells per page, labeled in alphabetical order. Fortunately, the thing was also segmented into four sections: novice, intermediate, advanced, and master spells. He flipped to the last quarter and slowly turned the pages, moving the lamp closer.

So that’s what the ambulation spell looks like, he thought, tracing his fingers over the complex coils of the spell he’d tried so hard to obtain. A spell he no longer needed, thanks to Elsie. His stomach tightened. He ignored it.

The ambulation rune would do nothing to teach him the Latin spell that would actually enable him to use it. The name had a plus sign by it. An advanced master spell, then.

He turned the page. Upon closer inspection, the ink was actually colored to match the alignment of the spells. The physical spells were blue, rational spells red, spiritual spells yellow, and temporal spells green. The yellow ink had faded, making the spiritual runes hard to read in the poor lighting, but Bacchus had a mind for only the physical runes.

He dismissed spell after spell, turned page after page. Thought he heard the woman and boy move from their table to the stairs. He neared the end, turned the page.

Saw the rune immediately.

His breath caught, and he slammed a hand onto the page as though the rune might leap away. The blue ink was faded nearly to black, and the name had two pluses by it. A very strong spell.

The letters seemed foreign for a moment. Bacchus held the lamp even closer. The word revealed itself. Siphon.

He formed the syllables with his lips. Siphon. A siphoning spell? And on the following page, the rune was inversed. Squinting at the faded text beneath the images, he read on the first, Dare, and on the second, Accipere. Latin. To give and to receive.

A physical aspector had somehow placed a high-ranking master spell on his person and . . . siphoned his strength away from him? Given him symptoms two doctors had diagnosed as the early onset of polio? Had the aspector kept the stolen strength for himself? Bottled it up? Let it drain out with the sea?

Why?

He gripped the edges of the book until his fingernails left marks in the covers. His only consolation was knowing that whoever had benefitted from sapping his strength could no longer tap it. But where had it happened? Barbados? England? He’d been to New York and France as well, but he had absolutely no memory of the event . . . or of the person who’d done it. Had a rational aspector been present as well, to wipe his mind clean?

Now he was getting into the absurd.

Siphon. He knew when, roughly, it had happened. Before his parents had brought the first doctor in. But . . .