Kanthe had never passed through that other door.
From under his longshirt, he pulled free a heavy iron key that hung from a loop of braided leather. Though he had unlocked this particular door a thousand times during his eight years at Kepenhill, he still felt a twinge of trepidation. He turned the key and swung the door open. Past the threshold, a narrow stair spiraled upward and downward. These steps were only allowed to be used by those who had achieved the Highcryst of alchymy.
Or in Kanthe’s case, a prince who had been assigned a tutor of that order.
With a steadying breath, he ascended the steps. The staircase ran from the first tier at the base of Kepenhill all the way up to the ninth tier. It allowed the alchymists to traverse the levels of the school and not be disturbed by the scrabble who ran up and down the outer steps. Overhead, the spiral ended within the confines of the half circle of towers reserved for alchymical studies on the ninth tier.
A similar stair, reserved for the hieromonks, ran from bottom to top on the other side of Kepenhill, ending in the towers committed to religious studies and devotions. Not that Kanthe had ever traversed that path—or had any interest in ever doing so.
He reached the top of the stairs where an archway—carved with all manner of arcane alchymical symbols—led out into a cavernous main hall. He kept his head down and slunk across the stone floor. Above, a massive iron candelabrum glowed with strange flames that flickered in different hues. The centermost and largest bore a black flame that expelled a stream of white smoke.
He hurried under it, holding his breath.
The very air of the hall smacked of arcane mysteries, thick with the scent of bitter chymistries and hair-tingling energies of a thunderstorm. This sense was likely heightened by his own unease. He knew well the condemnation of anyone who trespassed onto the ninth tier without proper invitation. It was certainly forbidden to students.
Kanthe had special dispensation—not so much because he was a prince of the realm, but due to the esteem of the man who tutored him. No one expected Frell to traipse up and down the school to deal with the Prince in the Cupboard. Instead, it was Kanthe who made this climb—shorter now that he had reached his eighthyear—nearly every other day.
After so many years, the other alchymists had worn past their initial shock at the sight of him. With the exception of a few annoyed glares, he was mostly ignored now—which was not much different than how his fellow students treated him. Some continued to avoid him out of jealousy, spite, or resentment at this privilege. Others had tried to curry favor initially, but after years of failure, they eventually gave up and joined the others in their disdain.
A loud boom made Kanthe jump nearly out of his boots. It came from somewhere above him. He ducked his head, picturing some experiment gone awry. Muffled shouting from the same direction reinforced this assumption. Each alchymist here had his or her own private scholarium in which to conduct studies.
Kanthe rushed to the far side of the main hall and down a curved hall lined by torches and age-blackened oils of the school’s most famous scholars. He reached the doorway into the westernmost tower and climbed yet another set of steps that wound to the very top of this spire. It was where Alchymist Frell secured his own scholarium.
He reached a simple oaken door and rapped his knuckles against it. He had no idea if Frell was still here, especially as the summons was a day old.
“Hold!” a voice shouted back at him.
As Kanthe waited, a nervous shiver shook through him.
Finally, a bolt scraped on the door’s far side, which surprised Kanthe. Frell seldom barred his private rooms. If anything, the man was more than happy to drone on and on about his work or get into heated discussions with other brothers or sisters of his order. He even welcomed input from the hieromonks on his work. It was this cooperative nature that likely granted him a seat on the Council of Eight, the youngest person to have ever achieved such an honor.
The door cracked open enough for Frell to peer out into the hall. The man let out an exasperated sigh and hauled the door the rest of the way open.
“Remind me to tutor you on the definition of urgency again,” Frell scolded. “Now get yourself in here.”
Kanthe stumbled inside and waited while Frell secured the door behind him. He gaped at the state of the scholarium—not to mention the scholar himself.
What is going on?
Normally Frell’s spaces were orderly to the point of fussiness: books neatly aligned on shelves, scrolls ordered in their numbered cubbies, worktables free of even a speck of dust. Kanthe had understood the need for such tidiness. The space was packed from floor to vault. It was part ancient librarie, part scholarly study, and part hall of curiosities. Arcane apparatus—some glass, others bronze—rested on shelves or had been set up on tables, sometimes bubbling with elixirs and strange chymistries. And while windows looked out in every direction, they were usually—like now—shuttered tight to preserve the integrity of the precious texts kept here. Still, the room glowed with a scatter of oil lamps, their flames kept behind glass amidst all the parchment and vellum in the room.
But no longer.
“What happened here?” Kanthe asked.
Frell ignored him and hurried past with a swish of his black robe, belted at the waist with a crimson sash. The alchymist was twice Kanthe’s age and a head taller in height. His dark ruddy hair had been tied to a tail in the back. Normally his features were shaven and bare, but his cheeks were shadowed with stubble. His eyes—which had always been wrinkled at the corners from his constant squinting at faded ink—were lined deeper and shadowed below. It looked as if the man hadn’t slept in days and had aged a decade because of it.
Frell waved to Kanthe. “Come with me.”
Kanthe followed his mentor toward the room’s center. The place looked as if a gale had blustered through it. Books were stacked everywhere. Scrolls had been knocked and forgotten on the floor. Most of the oil lamps dotted one long table that had been dragged from a wall and positioned alongside the scholarium’s chief apparatus—a device that also appeared to be the eye of this particular storm.
Kanthe joined Frell at the long bronze scope in the room’s center. Its base was bolted atop a wheeled gear, while the far end poked through a sealed gap in the tower roof. The shaft of the huge scope was twice the size of his own thigh and lined by polished crystals and mirrors in some arcane design.
Frell leaned over a sheaf of parchment strewn atop the nearby table. He rubbed his chin, while his other hand hovered over a row of crystal inkwells—each a different color—with quills resting in them. “Let me mark this before I forget my calculations. With the moon no longer at its fullness, I must record what I can.”
He selected a quill from an azure inkwell and shifted one of the parchments closer. He quickly and neatly jotted down a series of numbers next to a detailed depiction of the moon’s face.
Kanthe used the time to furtively glance around. He spotted a spiral ribbon of black oilskin, recognizing a missive carried by a skrycrow. What was written there could not be discerned, but he noted a prominent sigil on one side. It was similar to Kepenhill’s own mark, only the tiny book inscribed on the missive was not bound in chains but tangled in a vine of thorny nettles. He knew that sigil.