The Royal Sorceress

by Christopher Nuttall

  Gwen said nothing. A dozen arguments ran through her mind – from the marks she’d seen when she undressed in the evening, to the sheer unfairness of three ganging up on one – and she dismissed them. Master Thomas wouldn’t be too impressed if she started acting like someone in need of his protection. It was bad enough when her father thought her a foolish female who needed a strong male hand to guide and protect her throughout her life.

  “You are training to be the next Royal Sorcerer,” Master Thomas continued. “You will one day be giving orders to Cannock and his fellow Movers. Your multiple talents could have made the outcome of the whole affair far worse…”

  “I tried to restrict myself to Moving,” Gwen protested. “I didn’t Blaze them…”

  “You came close to Blazing them out of this world,” Master Thomas said. “They should have known better than to provoke you – and you should have known better than to lose control. Had you been born a man, we would have taken you when your powers first manifested and spent the last five years teaching you control. As it is, you will have to learn on the job.”

  “I didn’t rule that women shouldn’t learn magic,” Gwen protested, hotly. “That rule makes little sense if magic is part of a person’s body…”

  “I didn’t make the rules,” Master Thomas said. “There is no formal rule against ladies learning to use the magic they have. They are just rarely considered for employment by the Crown.”

  “But you needed to employ me,” Gwen pointed out. “Do all the rules change when situations require that the rules be broken?”

  “Of course,” Master Thomas said. “Just ask poor King Charles.”

  Gwen frowned. Charles I had lost control of his country – and his head – after crossing swords with Parliament. His son, Charles II, had finally restored the monarchy, but Parliament’s powers had not been diminished. George II had known and understood the power of Parliament – both to fund wars and fight them – yet George III had thought he could control it by fiat. George IV seemed to prefer to allow Parliament to handle its own affairs, while he enjoyed himself at Windsor Castle.

  The carriage lumbered to a stop and Master Thomas peered out of the covered window. He’d been remarkably unforthcoming about where they were going, or even why; he’d even insisted that Gwen refrain from practicing magic in the morning. She’d spent the hour waiting for him reading a tome of eldritch lore that seemed to bear no resemblance to magic as she understood it. The Mad Arab’s spells seemed to make no sense at all.

  “One thing,” Master Thomas said, in a gentler voice. “You are about to see sights that…some would say are not suitable for young ladies. And that is strange, because young ladies are often involved. If you want to stay in the carriage…”

  Gwen shook her head, firmly. “I’m coming,” she said. “Where are we?”

  Master Thomas helped her down to the pavement. They were standing in front of a large brick building, situated on the northern outskirts of London. A high fence, topped with unpleasant-looking spikes, sealed off the building from the rest of the city. She could see a handful of people walking on the grass inside the fence, their faces downcast and sad. It looked more like a prison than a reputable home.

  “This place has no name,” Master Thomas admitted. He led the way to the gatehouse, where a burly man scrutinised both of them before allowing them entry through the double gates. It was starting to look more and more like a prison. “I think most of the nobility are a little ashamed of it. They wouldn’t want anyone to know what happens inside these walls.”

  Inside, Gwen felt a prickling feeling at the back of her neck. The handful of people on the grass seemed to be paying no attention to the two guests. For a moment, she wondered if they were revenants rather than living beings, but they didn’t seem to be dead. Their eyes were strange, almost as if they couldn’t focus on anything. She shuddered as she saw spit falling from their mouths. Master Thomas caught her arm and led her away from the strangers, up towards the huge doors. A man wearing a white coat greeted them and invited them inside.

  “Ward Four,” Master Thomas said, bluntly. “At once, if you please...”

  Gwen stared around her. Inside, the hallways appeared to be quite deserted. An unpleasant stench hung in the air, suggesting meat that was on the verge of rotting off the bone. The white-painted corridors were blank, illuminated only by gas lamps hanging from the ceiling. As they walked down the corridors, she glanced into a side room and saw a young lady, naked to the waist, chained to a chair. Her eyes were savage and, as she met Gwen’s stare, she yanked at her chains and started forward. Gwen was halfway through preparing a magical defence when she realised that the chains had held. Even so, she didn’t want to turn her back on the woman. What, she asked herself, was wrong with her?

  “This place is a madhouse,” the attendant said, noticing her puzzlement. Master Thomas frowned in a manner that promised trouble for the attendant, if he said much more. “The gentry send their mistakes here to be held away from public view…”

  “Every family has someone who isn’t right in the head,” Master Thomas rumbled, his voice drowning out the attendant’s comments. “The ones who are too dangerous or too embarrassing to be let out in public are sent here, where they are treated to the best of our ability.”

  “But none of them are ever healed,” the attendant said. “They live out their lives within these four walls and no one ever sees them again.”

  Gwen was shocked. She’d heard rumours, allusions she hadn’t fully understood – until now. It seemed that every aristocratic family produced at least one person who couldn’t wipe their mouth in public, let alone look after themselves, but she’d never realised what happened to them. Everyone involved had to keep it quiet, or there would be an almighty scandal. Hadn’t there been rumours about George III during the regency? His son might have had him committed to a madhouse, if he hadn’t been the King. Parliament would never have stood for it.

  Master Thomas stepped back and caught her hand. “The first time I came here, I had nightmares for weeks,” he said. “If you want to back out now…”

  “No,” Gwen said. “I won’t let this beat me.”

  “Then prepare yourself,” Master Thomas said. “Remember who you are.”

  The attendant threw open the door to Ward Four and ushered them inside. It hit Gwen at once, a deafening babble that seemed to appear inside her head without going through her ears first. She put up her hands to cover them anyway, but it was useless. The babble just grew louder and louder until she thought she would be lost in it. She opened her mouth to scream, but somehow she caught hold of herself. And then she remembered who and what she was.

  She opened her eyes without fully realising that she’d closed them. Ahead of her, there were a number of men and women lying on beds, their eyes wide open as they stared at the bare ceiling. She somehow knew that their minds were elsewhere, despite their twitching bodies as they struggled against their restraints. The noise within her head started to billow up again and she recoiled, fighting down an urge to be sick. The sound was overwhelmingly powerful, as if it were trying to jam its way into her mind through every possible orifice. She staggered backwards, struggling against the torrent of diverse thoughts and emotions. There were voices in her mind...

  A strong hand caught her. “Focus,” Master Thomas ordered. A stinging pain appeared on her face and she dimly realised that he’d slapped her. It was almost lost against the roaring in her mind. “Concentrate. Imagine building a wall against the barrage of thoughts. Imagine something that will keep them out forever...”

  Gwen closed her eyes, squeezing his hand tightly. It gave her something to anchor herself in the real world as she concentrated on building her defences. Little girls weren’t supposed to play with building bricks, but she’d played with her brother’s building set as a child before he’d become interested in toy soldiers and then grown too old to play with his little sister. Brick by brick, she built a wall in her mind.
It grew easier with each brick and she almost sagged in relief as the torrent diminished and finally faded away into the background. She realised that she was clinging desperately to Master Thomas and let go of him hurriedly. How close had she come to losing her mind?

  “You did well,” Master Thomas reassured her. She could see concern in his eyes, concern that he might have pushed her too far too fast. “There are Talkers and Sensors who can’t come anywhere near this building without risking madness.”

  Gwen focused her mind. Every time she looked at one of the patients, the babble at the back of her mind seemed to grow louder. She wasn’t looking into their minds, she realised grimly; they were projecting their maddened thoughts and feelings into the air, creating an atmosphere where madness flowed from mind to mind. Each of the maddened magicians added to the madness of the other magicians, and in turn fell further into darkness as they absorbed madness from others.

  Her legs felt weak, but she held herself upright through sheer force of will. “What...what happened to them?”

  Master Thomas’s face was grim. “They came into their powers too early,” he said. “They should have been Talkers and Sensors and Seers, but they developed their magic too early and discovered that they couldn’t learn to control their talents. The influx of outside thoughts drove them insane. Some of them could be controlled through drugs, but others...others had to be brought here and left to die.”

  Gwen stared at him, honestly shocked. “Their families just...abandoned them?”

  “No one wants to admit that madness runs through their family blood,” Master Thomas admitted. He looked down at one of the older patients, a man who appeared to be on the verge of death. “That man is twenty-two years old and he looks fifty. There’s nothing we can do for them, except make them as comfortable as possible and prevent them from hurting themselves. Some of them do make it out of the madness...”

  “And how many of them die because they cannot separate their own thoughts from those of others?” Gwen demanded. The building was evil. How could anyone leave people here to waste away and die? “Can’t we do anything for them?”

  “It’s been tried,” Master Thomas admitted. He nodded towards a middle-aged woman, who was lying on one of the beds, giggling to herself. “She was once a trained Talker, with a particular interest in helping to cure the sick. It was easy for her to peer into a person’s mind and discover what they were reluctant to tell her, or understand the true cause of their distress. And then she came here, into the mental storm, and opened her mind.”

  “And then she just lost herself,” Gwen said, bitterly. “Why...why do we even tolerate this?”

  Master Thomas caught her arm. “There isn’t a single aristocratic family in the Kingdom who would permit us to...kill mentally disturbed family members,” he said. “None of us enjoy watching them suffer, young lady, but there’s nothing we can do, apart from watching them die.”

  He looked down for a long second. “I’m sorry for bringing you here,” he admitted. “I needed you to develop mental shields before your training continued...”

  Gwen shook her head. “It’s forgiven,” she said, shortly. She didn’t want to know, but she had to ask. “What else is here?”

  The next ward stank so badly that Gwen had to push her pocket handkerchief against her nose to remain within the room. It was crammed with small beds, each one holding a young child. Like the older patients, the children were restrained, but they seemed to be inhumanly calm rather than traumatised. Only their eyes, staring at nothing, revealed that their minds were elsewhere. A handful of nurses with nervous eyes moved from child to child, changing the cloths that had been hung around their waists. They didn’t make eye contact with either of the visitors.

  Gwen forced herself to look at the children, even though every nerve in her body called out for her to run. They seemed to be evenly divided between male and female, ranging from five to nine years old. None of them seemed to be in good shape, despite the nurses; she suspected that the nurses did the bare minimum they needed to do and left the children to fester. The aroma in the room was one of death. How long, she asked herself as she struggled to hold back the urge to vomit, did the children live before they died? And what happened to the bodies.

  “When I am Royal Sorcerer,” she said, flatly, “I will not suffer this to continue.”

  Master Thomas nodded, slowly. “I thought the same,” he said. “Perhaps you will be the one who finds a solution to these poor wretches. Or perhaps you will realise that everything comes with a price.”

  The atmosphere in the room changed, sharply. Gwen glanced up, uncertain of just what had disturbed her, and saw one of the children staring directly at her. The other children were scrabbling against their restraints, fighting to sit up and add their gazes to the disturbing stare. Every child in the room was fighting to look right at Gwen. She felt a tingling down the back of her spine as their eyes bored into her. They had magic, she realised, magic tainted by madness. Who knew what they could do? The nurses acted as if they were scared of their charges. Perhaps they had good reason to be scared.

  “I have seen you,” one of the girls said. Her voice was cracked and broken, an old woman’s voice in a young girl’s body. The effect was chilling. “You will rise so high and then fall so low.”

  “I have seen your lover,” one of the boys said. “He will burn with passion for his cause, yet you will catch his eye.”

  “You will feel yourself torn and broken,” a different girl said. “You will watch as madness and anarchy consume the land.”

  “You will see your lover die,” the first girl said. Her eyes were bright in her emaciated face. “You will watch as he burns to death, consumed by a fire greater than his passion.”

  “Your choice will save or damn a world,” the oldest boy said. Blood was leaking from his eyes as he struggled against the straps holding him in his cot. “You will choose...”

  Gwen stumbled backwards. Master Thomas caught her and held her upright. The nurses were lying on the ground, clutching their heads and screaming for mercy, a mercy that might never come. Gwen tried to raise her mental wall of bricks, but it refused to form...and then the mental pressure faded away. The children lay back in their cots and resumed staring at nothing. Gwen risked a glance at Master Thomas and saw his worried expression staring back at her. But what had it all meant?

  ***

  “I don’t normally partake at all,” Master Thomas said, as he passed Gwen the glass of brandy. “But I think we could both do with a proper drink now.”

  Gwen nodded. She had never fainted in her life and had always looked down on women who fainted, viewing it as weakness. And she had never come closer to fainting as she had when the children had made their prophecy. The brandy tasted strong against her throat, stronger than she remembered. It helped her to think.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What did all that mean?”

  “Their...youth unlocks aspects of their talent that are denied to older and more stable magicians,” Master Thomas said. “I suggest that you don’t take it too seriously. Very few of their prophecies have proven valid. In at least one case we discovered afterwards that the foretelling hadn’t been for the subject at all.”

  Gwen rubbed her forehead. “The nurses aren’t taking proper care of them,” she said, coldly. “They need to be fed and washed and...”

  “We have tried,” Master Thomas said. “But they are children, with talents that can be very dangerous. It’s difficult to give them as much care as we do, let alone what they actually need. We lose a nurse every month...”

  Gwen started. “They die?”

  “Some die,” Master Thomas admitted. “Some are mentally damaged by being so close to the children. Some are humiliated and forced to...perform for their amusement. And some just cannot bear to be so close to such power and so little control.

  “But don’t take their words too seriously,” he added. “They see many possible futures. How many of them
can actually come true?”

  Somehow, Gwen was not reassured. “I’m going to do something about it,” she said. “I don’t know what, but I will do it.”

  “I hope you succeed,” Master Thomas said. He shook his head, sadly. “If we can’t take care of our own, what good are we?”

  Chapter Eight

  Burley Hall glowed brightly against the dark.

  Jack perched on a rooftop, wrapped an illusion around himself and studied the building dispassionately. Lord Burley had served the British Empire in India and Cuba during the wars and there was an undeniably Indian flavour to his house. After he’d made his reputation as a skilled soldier and an undoubted loyalist to the Hanoverian dynasty, he’d been appointed commander-in-chief of the forces in Britain, where he’d stamped on all rumours of uprisings and rebellions with enthusiasm. The common people had many scores to settle with him.

  Lord Burley was clearly aware that he wasn’t popular – and he clearly also lacked the faith in capital punishment that upheld the ruling government. His house was heavily guarded, with at least two-dozen private guards, all armed with the latest in military rifles. At a guess, Jack reminded himself, he would have some magicians on his staff as well. A single Talker, even one with only limited powers, could summon the Bow Street Runners or soldiers from the nearby garrison easily. And the walls of the house were tough enough to hold off shellfire for long enough for the inhabitants of the house to escape. Jack’s lips twitched into a smile. Lord Burley’s confidence would be his undoing. He had no idea what was coming for him in the darkness.

  Jack had spent a day chatting to Lucy and a handful of other contacts in the Rookery and the middle districts of London. It had always astonished and dismayed him how the poor followed the affairs of the wealthy with so much enthusiasm, but maybe it made a certain kind of sense. A man who made it as a successful merchant could hope to join the Quality, if only through the traditional method of bribing the King in exchange for a peerage. His children would be mocked by those born to the aristocracy, but their children would be accepted as part of the lords and ladies of England. There was plenty of speculation over who would marry Lord Burley’s son. His wife and children lived apart from him, according to his contacts; Lord Burley was as unpleasant to his family as he was to his servants and soldiers. He’d flogged more men than anyone else, even the Duke of India.