Full Circle

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I see,” he said. He reached out for Elaine, but there was nothing coming through the link, save for a vague sense that she was still alive. What had happened to her? “What happened?”

  “An … entity brought you to the camp,” Charity said. “The Emperor ordered me to look after you. I healed you up and then woke you.”

  “Once you drugged me,” Johan said. The entity had to be the Witch-King. He couldn’t think of anything – anyone – else it could be. “And the Emperor himself?”

  “Ordered another attack on Ida, to be launched at dawn,” Charity said. She touched the knife at her belt gingerly. “There’s barely a couple of hours left before the sun rises over the mountains.”

  Johan grimaced. If he hadn’t allowed himself to get captured … it was hard to force himself to care, even though he wanted to curse himself with the vilest words he knew. He had been the only thing that had protected Ida from death and destruction and now he was in the enemy’s camp, his powers neutered. He gritted his teeth and tried to summon a spark of anger, but felt nothing. Even if he managed to break free – he inspected what little he could see of the bed, only to discover it looked quite unbreakable – he still wouldn’t be able to use magic.

  “It’s pointless,” he said. If the Witch-King was free, Ida was no longer important. “Why is he doing it?”

  “I don’t know,” Charity said. “He’s odd, Johan. I don’t understand him. Every so often, it’s like a different person is talking through him.”

  Johan frowned. “One is,” he said. “That entity you saw was the Witch-King. The Emperor is just another of his pawns.”

  Charity looked down at him in flat disbelief. “The Witch-King?”

  “He’s the power behind all the recent disasters,” Johan told her. A thought occurred to him and he played with it, carefully considering just how to phrase his words. “Charity, there are times when he just shoves the Emperor right out of his body and takes over.”

  “But he’s still issuing orders,” Charity said.

  “Yes, but they’re not his orders,” Johan said. He managed to lift his head, slightly. “As long as someone else is speaking through his mouth, the Emperor is effectively dead. He’s certainly not in his right mind.”

  Charity’s mouth opened and closed for a long moment. “Are you saying there are times when the Emperor isn’t the Emperor?”

  “Yes,” Johan said. Would she see the implications? He didn’t dare try to speak any plainer, not when she had to rationalise it for herself. Oaths were dangerous things. The only person he’d known who had managed to forsake one and survive was Dread and he’d had help. And it had still cost him his magic. “It’s not him all the time. His mind is elsewhere.”

  “I see,” Charity said. She touched her knife – Jamal’s knife, Johan noted – again. “Can you swear to that?”

  “I can swear that everything I’ve said is literally true,” Johan told her. He wasn’t sure if the oath would work. He’d tried to swear oaths as a teenager, in the hopes it would reveal some spark of power, but nothing had ever happened. Now … he wasn’t sure what would happen, if anything would. “Charity …”

  “I see,” Charity said. She looked down at the ground, her body shaking slightly. “Johan, what happened to Jamal?”

  “Dead,” Johan said. “His body is somewhere in the mountains.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Charity said. She was still playing with the knife. “Johan, what happened to us?”

  Johan sighed. “The family?”

  Charity nodded. Johan took a moment to organise his thoughts. The Witch-King had had a point, he suspected; their father had always been reluctant to make hard decisions. And yet …

  “Father was a failure as a father,” he said, bluntly. “What happened to him?”

  “I have no idea,” Charity said.

  Johan lifted his head, again. “Jamal is dead, I’m a prisoner, you’re a slave … the others? What happened to the others?”

  “At the Peerless School,” Charity said. “The Emperor left it alone.”

  “They’re probably not going to be safe for long,” Johan said. If the Witch-King needed sources of magic, the children at the Peerless School would make tempting targets; powerful enough to be useful, too young to defend themselves. “Where did the Witch-King go?”

  “I don’t know,” Charity said. “Johan …”

  “The world is at risk,” Johan said. He had a feeling he was going to need days to purge his system of the drug, even if he somehow managed to convince Charity to stop feeding it to him. “Charity, we have to stop him.”

  Charity looked back at him. “How?”

  Johan closed his eyes in pain. They’d lost their best chance to stop the Witch-King when he’d been separated from Elaine … and that had been his fault. The Witch-King was staggeringly powerful – and, if he had Elaine’s knowledge, he’d be able to use it too. Johan wasn’t sure how that worked – he hadn’t been able to use high magic, when he’d tried – but the Witch-King clearly had a solution. He was a terrifyingly intelligent enemy.

  “I don’t know,” he said, opening his eyes. “But if that army overruns Ida, there will be no hope of stopping him.”

  “I see,” Charity said, quietly.

  Johan leant back on the bed. “What’s happening to the rest of the world?”

  “Falling apart,” Charity said. “Kingdoms are declaring themselves independent everywhere.”

  “It doesn’t suit Vlad Deferens,” Johan said. “What is he doing about it? He should be giving orders to bring the kingdoms to heel. But instead, he’s fixated on Ida. The Witch-King issued those orders.”

  He pushed his advantage. “Why would the Emperor cut his own throat? He wouldn’t. It’s just like Lord Gresham!”

  Charity’s face paled. She would know the story, of course; it had been quite a scandal before they’d moved to the Golden City. Lord Gresham had been crippled, thanks to a very nasty curse, but he’d managed to literally possess the body of his oldest son. It had only been through sheer luck that anyone had noticed, as far as Johan could recall; the Inquisitors, if he’d heard correctly, had discovered that Lord Gresham had swapped minds with his son, leaving the young man trapped in an elderly – and crippled – body. Jamal, of course, had found the story hilarious. Johan had wondered if their father had intended to do the same with Jamal …

  But the important part of the story was that the victim’s mind hadn’t been in his body.

  Charity stared down at him for a long moment, then turned and left the tent.

  Johan scowled, pulling on the chains. They remained resolutely unbroken. The manacles cut into his wrists when he pulled too hard; he considered, briefly, trying to break his wrists into powder, before deciding it was unlikely to work very well. And even if it did, he would be trapped, in the heart of the enemy’s camp, with neither hands nor magic. The only thing he could do was wait …

  … And hope that Charity took the bait.

  ***

  Charity wasn’t sure what to think.

  Her oaths bound her to the Emperor. She was his, body if not in soul; he could order her to do anything and she would have to obey. And yet, she knew the Emperor wasn’t always himself. There had been times when she’d thought she’d seen another personality, someone else peeking out from his eyes …

  … And if that were true, where was the Emperor?

  Some of his decisions made sense, but others didn’t … and he was not a particularly stupid man. Charity was sure he was too obsessed with Ida – and the Head Librarian – but not enough to throw away his Empire. He’d taken a major risk just claiming it for himself. The Golden Throne would have killed him if he hadn’t shared the Royal Bloodline. And yet, he was practically destroying it. Just attacking Ida one final time would bleed his army white, even if he won. He might destroy Ida and her entire population and wind up losing the war.

  But if Johan was right, the person who issued those orders wasn’t the Emper
or.

  She stood outside the tent, thinking hard. Lord Gresham had proved it was possible to swap minds; he’d done it for years before he’d been detected. It had been years since she’d heard the story, but she was sure it had been erratic behaviour that had finally tipped off the authorities. The old man hadn’t been prepared for the hormones of youth, if she recalled correctly. It was quite possible that the Witch-King was swapping minds with the Emperor every time he wanted a specific order given to the army …

  And yet, the Emperor just seemed to take it in his stride.

  But he could be under a spell, she thought. The most dangerous compulsion spells didn’t force someone to follow orders, they encouraged someone to come up with good ideas for doing something. He might just accept the change when he returns to his own body.

  Her thoughts hardened. And if he isn’t in his body …

  She touched the knife at her belt, then started to walk towards the Emperor’s tent. It looked as if he were holding a staff meeting, outlining his plans for invading and occupying Ida; she saw a dozen guards outside, including three Inquisitors. She walked past them – they knew she was harmless – and into the tent, where she saw the Emperor holding court with General Vetch, Roth, an Inquisitor and several officers she didn’t know.

  “I want the castle stormed as soon as we’re through the gates,” the Emperor said, peering down at the maps of Ida. Charity had a feeling it wouldn’t be easy to reach the castle – Ida was practically designed to stand off an invading army – but she knew the Emperor would just keep pouring men into the breach until it was all over. “The Queen is to be captured alive.”

  Poor bitch, Charity thought. The Emperor wouldn’t allow her to live, certainly not as a free woman; she’d probably wind up enslaved, if she wasn’t killed out of hand. She needs to keep some poison – or a dagger – on hand at all times.

  “Your Supremacy,” General Vetch said. “It would be easier to clear the houses first, then turn on the castle. It is not designed to withstand a long siege.”

  The Emperor’s face shifted. “The inhabitants of the castle must be killed, save for the Queen,” he ordered. “There is no time to waste on civilians.”

  Charity shivered. Now that Johan had pointed it out, it was easy to see the shift in personality. The Emperor was a bumptious combative man, someone who enjoyed humiliating her just for his own amusement; the other personality was cold, dispassionate, and even less concerned about casualties. She’d wondered if the Emperor had a split personality, but now she knew the truth. Someone else was swapping minds with him on a regular basis.

  “The civilians will have time to rebuild their defences,” General Vetch warned. “The castle won’t last indefinitely …”

  “They will surrender once their Queen is a prisoner,” the Emperor snarled. “The castle is to be attacked first.”

  There was a long pause. “Your Supremacy,” one of the other officers said. “The reports from Falcone’s Nest claim that the pontoon bridges have been destroyed.”

  The Emperor’s face shifted again. “Have them repaired!”

  The officer looked nervous. “Your Supremacy,” he said. “The garrison in Falcone’s Nest doesn’t have the manpower to force the locals to rebuild the bridges. Our reinforcements will be delayed, quite sharply.”

  If there are any, Charity thought. The Empire hadn’t had a sizable land force for generations; it hadn’t needed one. Deferens had built up a private army in his homeland, but it wasn’t large enough to dominate the entire continent. The dragons should have tipped the scales in his favour, yet three-quarters of them were dead. We might be alone out here.

  “Then order the garrison to burn Falcone’s Nest to the ground,” the Emperor snarled, slipping back to normal. “The city is to be completely destroyed!”

  “They don’t have any dragons,” the officer insisted. “Can we send back a flock of dragons …”

  “They’re needed for the assault on Ida,” the Emperor said. “We do not have dragons to spare.”

  Because you need raw magic to summon them and you gave it all to the Witch-King, Charity thought, nastily. Right now, you simply don’t have enough magicians to generate enough power even if you threw them all under the knife.

  Another officer leant forward. “Your Supremacy, our situation is precarious,” he insisted, smoothly. “Our logistics are very poor …”

  “Then strip World’s Gate of every last morsel of food,” the Emperor ordered.

  The officer rose to his feet. “There isn’t enough food in the town to feed the entire army, even with the recent losses,” he insisted. “We can send out foraging parties, but the farmers will have already hidden their crops. Even if we succeed in finding corn and livestock, it will run out quickly. We need to fall back before the army starts to starve.”

  “Don’t burden me with logistical problems,” the Emperor snarled.

  “The army will die if we stay here,” the officer said. Charity admired his bravery, even though she had a feeling it was about to prove fatal. “Your Supremacy, we are already on short rations.”

  The Emperor’s face shifted. “That will no longer matter after tomorrow.”

  Charity felt her blood run cold. That was not the Emperor.

  “Your Supremacy,” the officer said.

  The Emperor lifted a hand. “Do you feel ready to challenge me?”

  “No, Your Supremacy,” the officer said, hastily. “But …”

  “Die,” the Emperor snarled.

  Charity’s hair stood on end as the Emperor cast a spell at the officer. He shrank rapidly, his body warping and twisting into a snail. Charity fought down the urge to vomit as the Emperor stood, walked over to the snail and stamped on it, hard. Several other officers turned pale and looked away. Charity half-expected the snail to return to a crushed human body, yet it stayed inhuman. She’d known the Emperor was powerful – he’d been a contender for Grand Sorcerer – but that powerful?

  “The final attack will be launched in thirty minutes,” the Emperor said, as he returned to his seat. “Once Ida has been destroyed and the population butchered, we will return to Falcone’s Nest and punish those who dared interfere with our plans. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, Your Supremacy,” General Vetch said, hastily.

  “Good,” the Emperor said. “You are to prepare the troops. They are to be told – yet again – that we have the blessing of a god. You will make them understand that this assault will be decisive, that the destruction of Ida is an offering to our god.”

  “Yes, Your Supremacy,” General Vetch said.

  The Emperor rose. “Our god is with us,” he announced. “Charity; come here.”

  Charity obeyed, helplessly. But at least she was closer to him.

  “The god has already given us mastery over the Golden City and the Great Houses,” the Emperor said. He reached out and stroked Charity’s hair. “Now, we will take mastery over the kingdoms and secure our hold on the Empire.”

  “Your Supremacy,” General Vetch said. “There will be much hard fighting to come.”

  “We have a god on our side,” the Emperor insisted. He thumped the table to make his point, shaking the entire tent. “Victory will be ours.”

  “There’s no need to attack Ida,” General Vetch said. His face was frantic. Charity knew he was worried, yet he didn’t dare oppose the Emperor. “We could win Ida, we could destroy Ida, and lose everything.”

  The Emperor’s face shifted, becoming someone else. “Ida must be destroyed …”

  Charity braced herself, pulled Jamal’s blade from her belt and shoved it right into the Emperor’s chest. He’d known she was under his control. The thought of her striking him had never crossed his mind. He gasped, then staggered; the blade, charmed to cut through all defences as long as it was wielded by a Conidian, was instantly lethal. His face shifted back, too late; he collapsed to the floor, blood leaking from his wound.

  “The Emperor is dead,” General Vet
ch said. He hadn’t seen it coming either. “I …”

  Charity ducked – too late – as Roth hurled a spell at her. She screamed in pain as the spell burnt through her protections, slicing into her body …

  … And then Roth exploded into bloody chunks as the Inquisitor cursed him from behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Elaine and Daria were midway back to the tents when all hell broke loose.

  The Emperor’s tent exploded into fire, an Inquisitor standing in the middle of the blaze with flames lapping around his hands. Elaine had a moment to see the Emperor’s body lying on the ground before she threw herself down; the Inquisitor shouted something in battle language and fired off a series of curses towards the red-robed magicians. The Inquisitors outside Johan’s tent joined in seconds later, hurling their own spells into the battle.

  “Stay down,” Elaine hissed. Soldiers were running in all directions; some heading towards the magicians, others fleeing into the breaking dawn. The Emperor was dead; the Emperor was dead and all oaths to him were null and void. His magicians were powerful, but did they stand a chance against the Inquisitors? “We have to get to Johan!”

  She pushed herself as low as she could, despite the cold, and crawled towards the tent. The battle was growing louder; five Inquisitors had banded together, magic shimmering around them as they strode towards their enemies. She felt a flicker of envy for the power they wielded so casually and forced herself to remember the cost as she reached the tent and opened the flap. Johan was lying on the bed, his arms and legs spread out and chained to the railings. He lifted his head as the flap opened, his eyes narrowing, but showed no other reaction.

  “It’s me,” Elaine hissed. She dispelled the invisibility spell and stood up. “What happened?”

  Johan smiled, but it looked twisted, as if he’d forgotten how to smile naturally. “Amanda’s Draught,” he said, as Elaine tried a spell to free his hands. Hot sparks flared around the manacles, stinging Johan’s hands. “The Inquisitors provided the chains.”