Sorcery of Thorns

Summershall does not accept apprentices younger than 13. As a result, some of the Director’s colleagues had urged her to send Elisabeth to an orphanage when she was discovered on the library’s steps, but the Director chose to keep her, believing that Elisabeth’s “bond to this place is better left intact, for good or for ill” (17). The kingdom of Austermeer has six Great Libraries, which their founder, Cornelius the Wise, spaced in a circle around the capital city. If the Director approves of Elisabeth’s training as a warden, she will go to the capital and study at the Collegium and the Royal Library.

Elisabeth’s friend, an apprentice named Katrien Quillworthy, informs her that a magister has come to see the vault. The apprentices’ friendship began when they were 13 and discovered a mutual fascination with booklice, insects that live in the Great Library and are immune to magic because they feed on grimoires. Elisabeth and Katrien use a secret passageway to sneak into a reading room and catch a glimpse of Magister Nathaniel Thorn. He has long, black hair with a streak of silver near his temple. All her life, Elisabeth has heard tales of sorcerers’ cruelty, and the young man’s cold, gray eyes seem to confirm the stories. A grimoire grabs onto Elisabeth’s robes, causing her to knock over a bookcase.

The crash of the bookcase draws the attention of Warden Finch, who knocks on the door and asks if everything is all right. Elisabeth recoils in fear because she knows the warden will beat her if he sees her away from her post. Nathaniel intervenes, sending the warden away, helping Elisabeth to her feet, and using magic to put the bookcase back together. Despite her training at the Great Library, Elisabeth sees beauty in the emerald green magic swirling across the books. To Thorn’s surprise, she touches the magic and feels a “bright and tingling [sensation], as though she’d plunged her hands into a bucket of champagne” (29). Elisabeth has noticed that magic is sometimes accompanied by a smell like burnt metal, which Nathaniel explains is caused by a phenomenon called aetherial combustion, which occurs “when the substance of the Otherworld—that is, the demon realm—comes into contact with [theirs]” (29). The Director knocks on the door, and Elisabeth hurriedly hides behind the bookcase again. The woman sees her and smiles slightly as she escorts the magister from the room.

Months later, Elisabeth startles awake on a stormy autumn night. She leaves her and Katrien’s bedroom up in the tower and makes her way into the library. As she walks between the shelves, she detects the odor of aetherial combustion and realizes that someone has performed sorcery in the library. The Book of Eyes has turned into “a gruesome monster of ink and leather,” escaped the vault, and attacked the Director (35). Elisabeth finds the Director’s body and takes the woman’s sword, Demonslayer. As an apprentice, she’s supposed to sound the alarm in an emergency rather than take action herself, but she knows that the Malefict will slaughter the people in the nearby town unless someone intervenes.

Elisabeth slashes at the creature’s eyes and hides in an orchard, drawing its fury. The monster tries to get inside her head by offering to tell her secrets: “Someone did this, you know…someone released me” (39). The Malefict seizes her in a crushing grip, and Elisabeth breaks free by throwing salt on the creature. She slays the monster by stabbing it with Demonslayer, but she laments the loss of the irreplaceable grimoire as she watches it disintegrate.

Warden Finch becomes the new Director. He blames Elisabeth for the death of the previous Director, Irena, whom he loved. Finch rejects Elisabeth’s claim that a sorcerer placed the library’s inhabitants under an enchanted sleep and released The Book of Eyes on the grounds that the grimoire’s destruction is a great loss to the sorcerers. Elisabeth learns that the Director left Demonslayer to her in her will, and she wishes that she’d known that the woman loved her and believed in her sooner. After she spends a week in the library’s dungeon, sorcerers arrive to take Elisabeth to the Magisterium for questioning.

As Elisabeth is escorted from her cell, Katrien pushes past the wardens, and Elisabeth asks her friend to remember her. When she reaches the courtyard, she tries to run. Nathaniel Thorn enchants the courtyard’s statues to come alive and surround her, advising her that “attempting to escape will only prove [her] guilt to [Chancellor Oberon Ashcroft, the head of the Magisterium—the sorcerers’ government]” (53). Elisabeth suspects that Nathaniel released The Book of Eyes and intends to kill her since she is the only witness.

Nathaniel uses magic to summon a trunk filled with Elisabeth’s clothes and other belongings. His servant, Silas, helps her into a carriage. For a moment, she sees that Silas has yellow eyes, but she instantly forgets this and feels an odd urge to trust the stranger. When she asks Silas if Nathaniel is cruel to him, he answers, “No, miss. Never. I am essential to him, you see […] No doubt you have heard that sorcerers bargain away their lives to demons in exchange for their power” (56). Nathaniel admonishes his servant not to reveal his nature to Elisabeth, but she doesn’t grasp the meaning of their words. As the Great Library fades into the distance, Elisabeth’s heart aches.

The carriage stops at an inn for the night, and Elisabeth pretends to be asleep when Nathaniel calls to her. When he enters the carriage, she bites his hand and runs into the woods. Silas appears before her, filling her with a strange sense of peace, and carries her back to the inn. Elisabeth’s room is magically locked, and her trunk appears soon afterward. Among her belongings, she finds a book entitled A Lexicon of the Sorcerous Arts. Katrien smuggled the grimoire out of the library’s collection and hid it among Elisabeth’s things. She left a note inside in which she promises her friend that they’ll see each other again and encourages her, “Never forget that knowledge is your greatest weapon” (66). The lexicon’s section on magisters informs Elisabeth that House Thorn is known for necromancy and that one of Nathaniel’s ancestors, Balthasar Thorn, protected the kingdom’s independence by raising an army of the dead.

Nathaniel brings Elisabeth a tray of food, and she grows flustered at the sight of him in an undershirt. She notices a scar on his forearm. Elisabeth apologizes for biting his hand, but he can tell that she doesn’t mean it. She’s surprised to learn that the magister is only 18, and he answers with a cold smile, “Everyone standing between myself and the title is dead” (71). After he leaves, she devours her meal with the goal of becoming strong enough to escape.

Elisabeth breaks a window and climbs down to the inn’s garden, but Silas finds her. The next day, their carriage reaches an enormous forest called the Blackwald, and Elisabeth fears that Nathaniel will dispose of her there. The lexicon prompts her to read a passage that says demonic servants “will seize any chance to betray their masters” (74). The demons’ Otherworld is the source of all magic, and demons agree to form contracts with humans because they crave humans’ life force. Centuries ago, a sorcerer named Aldous Prendergast claimed to have entered the Otherworld and discovered a terrible secret, and his friend, Cornelius the Wise, declared him “insane.”

When they make camp for the night, Nathaniel uses his magic to create two tents. Elisabeth expresses surprise at this, and he teasingly asks if she would prefer to share a tent. Later that night, Elisabeth slips out of her tent in the hope of escaping but finds Nathaniel awake. She sits beside him and watches a forest spirit planting acorns. Nathaniel explains that few of the spirits are left because Balthasar Thorn sapped the life from most of the Blackwald to work his necromantic magic in the War of Bones. He asks her why she believes in the spirits when most people dismiss them as fairy tales, and she answers that life is pointless without belief. He retorts that those who don’t believe in anything have less to lose and returns to his tent.

The next day, they reach the capital, Brassbridge, and Elisabeth realizes that Nathaniel may not be responsible for the attack on the library after all. The citizens are overjoyed to see Nathaniel’s carriage, and he explains that most people aren’t afraid of sorcerers in the modern age. The young woman feels embarrassed and betrayed that the librarians misinformed her with frightening tales. She demands to know why he came to fetch her from Summershall, and he explains that he recognized her name from his conversations with the Director. He leads her to a lodging house, and she asks him not to leave her alone. She catches a glimpse of “hulking and shining-eyed” figures before someone points a knife at her throat (85).

The man with the knife drags Elisabeth into an alley. He refuses Nathaniel’s invitation to surrender peacefully, so the sorcerer has Silas strike him down. The other figures that Elisabeth sees are low-level demons called fiends who assume the form of enormous canines with horns and scales. Nathaniel uses a magical whip made of emerald light to bring part of a building down on the fiends, but he warns Elisabeth that it won’t be enough to kill them. The young people drive off in the carriage with six fiends in pursuit. Elisabeth strikes one of the demons with an iron bar.

Concerned that civilians will be hurt, she urges, “You’re a magister. These people are counting on you. Make a stand” (93). Magic requires enormous concentration, so Elisabeth holds the demons at bay while Nathaniel casts a spell, summoning a storm and striking the fiends with lightning. One of the fiends traps a boy, preventing the sorcerer from attacking again. Elisabeth lures the demon away from the child and strikes at it with the iron bar before collapsing to the ground. Nathaniel electrocutes the remaining fiends, gathers Elisabeth into his arms, and asks Silas to finish the work of banishing the demons to the Otherworld.