Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  The next book was much more interesting – and, like Millicent’s reading list, one step short of prohibited. Naming of Demons should have been on the prohibited list, but there were so many copies out in the world that even the Inquisition regarded attempting to track them all down as futile. There were no instructions on how one could summon demons, yet merely knowing their names and natures could give a lucky amateur a chance at calling them up from the darkness. Elaine glanced at two of the pages, shook her head at some of the illustrations, and then placed it on the trolley. Miss Prim would have to inspect the copy, determine if it was identical to the others stored within the Great Library, and then decide what to do with it. She’d undoubtedly end up adding it to the Library’s collection. Duke Gama’s ghost would probably be pleased at the thought.

  The next five books were cheap trash from a basement printer, a series of hopelessly unrealistic novels about a wizard who seemed to have so much power that it was hard to see how he ever had any problems at all. Elaine remembered reading a couple of them while she’d been in school, only to marvel at how many inaccuracies the unknown writer had managed to stuff into a handful of slim volumes. Even the Grand Sorcerer would have had problems matching the hero’s spell-casting ability, although maybe he would have had as many girls throwing themselves at him as the hero. Magical talents bred true; everyone knew that. She felt herself flush as she recalled an offer made to her by one of Millicent’s peers, a magician with more magic in his little finger than Elaine had in her entire body. He’d thought that she would jump at the chance to have his baby.

  She added the novels to the pile for disposal and then picked up the next book – and found herself flushing again. A Guide To Sex Magic wasn’t anywhere near the prohibited list, even though it was one of the more dangerous books ever written – if used by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. It was possible to use sex to generate magical power – the illustrations left absolutely nothing to the imagination – but it required intense concentration and a dedication that surpassed even the most sour-faced of Potion Masters. Her generation of magical students had preferred to pass dog-eared copies around and use them as props when trying to pick up the opposite sex. Memories of the days when some of the boys had discovered copies and tried to talk the girls into bed – for research purposes, naturally – left her flushing darker. Why did some people, like Millicent, manage to glide their way through life when others, like Elaine, just kept stumbling?

  The final book caught her eye and she picked it up, puzzled. There was no title on the front, not even one of the glyphs that some wizards used to represent their names. It was a small book, almost the size of the diary she’d tried to keep at the orphanage before two of the older girls had stolen it and put it down the toilet. She turned it over and over in her hand, trying to see how to release the pages from the spell holding them together. Had Duke Gama stumbled upon one of the spells that writers used to keep their works secure? Or had someone else done the spell for him? Every kingdom was supposed to have a Court Wizard representing the Grand Sorcerer – and making sure that none of the local rulers harboured dreams of rebelling against the magical order. Surely Duke Gama could have convinced the Court Wizard to cast the spell for him.

  She muttered an incantation under her breath and was surprised when the book refused to open. A second spell produced no other effect, nor did a third. That was a surprise; it suggested that the spell on the book was personalised, perhaps complex enough to be the work of a senior wizard. Elaine knew that some wizards used similar spells to keep their work from being read by their peers, but she’d never heard of a non-wizard being able to use such a spell. Surely...

  The book seemed to flicker with magic. Elaine felt it, a sudden sense of something uncurling from within the book. She wanted to drop it as the magic field suddenly spiked, but her hand refused to let go of the pages. There was a brilliant flash of light, a sense that something was being pushed into her head, and then she crashed down into darkness.

  Chapter Three

  ...There was fire...and ice...and someone was calling her name...and she wanted to call back, but her voice was tiny against the roaring that filled the air...and strange memories that weren’t hers were raging through her mind...and...and...and...

  “Elaine!”

  Elaine’s eyes snapped open. She was lying in bed, her head spinning as if someone had slapped her several times. Her mind felt thick and congested, her thoughts moving slowly through her brain. It took her what felt like hours to recognise the face bending over her and then it seemed to take hours more before she could reply.

  “Dar...Daria?”

  “You’re awake,” Daria said. Her friend leaned down and gave her a hug. “What happened to you?”

  Elaine found herself struggling to recall. She’d been at the Library, she’d served Millicent and a dozen others, and then she’d opened Duke Gama’s box...and then nothing. But her mind felt as if she’d spent years cramming for a single exam, yet could no longer remember even what she’d been cramming for. She felt faint, even as she struggled to sit upright. Where was she? And what had happened to her?

  “I...I don’t know,” she said, struggling to look around. She wasn’t at home, wherever she was. The bed was in a small room, illuminated only by a single glowing bulb of light. A hospital, perhaps, except she could hardly afford to pay for treatment. What had happened to her in the Library? “What happened to me?”

  Daria looked down at her, her large eyes worried. “They found you in your workroom, slumped over the table,” she said. “Something sounded the alarm and called them to help you. But you were completely stunned, so they brought you to the Merciful Rest. I hear that Miss Prim is going to be picking up the bill for your stay.”

  Elaine stared at her. “How long...how long have I been out?”

  “Four days,” another voice said, from behind her. Elaine looked up to see a tall thin man, wearing a long white robe. A druid, she realised; a sorcerer who specialised in medical treatment. “Whatever hit you hit you very hard. It must have been a very powerful curse bound into that volume.”

  A memory flashed into Elaine’s mind. There had been a sealed book, held closed by a charm...and she’d tried to open it. And then...nothing.

  “I thought we were going to lose you that first day,” the druid added. “None of our treatments seemed to work, but thankfully you started to come out of it on your own. Is there a god of librarians who might have protected you?”

  “I don’t know,” Elaine admitted. There was a god for just about everything, but she couldn’t recall one specifically for librarians. Her head was refusing to clear. She hated having headaches at the best of times, yet this was far worse than anything she had ever experienced. “But if there is, I will light a candle in thanks.”

  “That would be a good idea,” the druid agreed, dryly. He produced a wand from his sleeve and started to run it up and down her body. “Most of the curse seems to have dissipated on its own, but I’d recommend a few more days of rest. Stay away from magic too – this curse seemed to have tried to hijack your own magic and galvanise it into attacking you. You were very lucky. Something of that power should have killed.”

  “I don’t understand,” Elaine said, slowly. “I checked for deadly spells.”

  “Some of the black magicians who create new curses are very good at hiding them from our detection spells,” the druid said. There was an odd note in his voice, one that promised blood and pain for any dark magician he caught. “I’d give a great deal to meet the bastard who invented this one. My best guess is that it was really nothing more than a standard compulsion spell, but with enough power to slip right into your mind and try to force you to commit suicide. Now, I’m going to put you back to sleep and...”

  Elaine opened her mouth, but it was too late. His wand touched her forehead and she was out like a light.

  ***

  The next time she opened her eyes, it was daylight. Bright
sunlight was streaming in through a window she hadn’t noticed the last time she’d been awake. Her head felt better, although it still seemed as though there was something jammed inside her mind. Elaine sat up in bed and looked around, half-hoping that Daria was sitting next to her bedside. But there was no sign of her friend. Instead, there was a jug of orange-flavoured juice and a small gourd of potion for her to drink.

  She looked over at the door as another druid stepped inside. He was older than the first druid, with a long white beard that hung down to his legs, but his eyes were kind and Elaine liked him on sight. One hand held another gourd of potion, which he passed over to her and motioned for her to drink it. It tasted foul, but somehow she found herself thirsty enough to swallow it all down. He picked up a glass of juice and passed it to her. Elaine swallowed gratefully. It tasted far better than the potion.

  “I should hope so,” he said, when she pointed that out. “I don’t want people drinking more of my potion than they need. It can be addictive to those with weak minds.”

  He sat down beside the bed and looked at her. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Strange,” Elaine admitted. “What...what happened to me?”

  “Someone cursed you, as far as we can tell,” the druid said. He seemed unaware that the other druid had told her the same thing. “We had to feed you ourselves over the past few days, before you finally recovered enough for us to risk allowing you to awaken. I’m afraid that you’re going to have a few more rough days ahead of you.”

  He shrugged. “And there’s an Inquisitor who wants to have a few words with you,” he added. “Do you feel well enough to talk to him?”

  Elaine stared at the druid. “An Inquisitor?”

  “I don’t think that you’re in any trouble,” the druid said, hastily. Very few people ever wanted to meet an Inquisitor, let alone find themselves on the receiving end of an Inquisition. The Inquisitors answered to the Grand Sorcerer alone and had wide powers to investigate suspected breaches of the Mage’s Code. “The curse was powerful enough to warrant immediate investigation. Whoever set that trap might be setting other traps for unwary mages.”

  Elaine remembered the boxes from Duke Gama she hadn’t opened and shivered. “I understand,” she said. She doubted that she’d ever feel well enough to talk to an Inquisitor, but it was something she had to do. “Tell him...tell him that I’m ready to talk to him.”

  “I have told him that your condition may still be serious,” the druid said. “If you feel distressed, just tell him to leave. Even an Inquisitor has limited power in my building.”

  He stood up and walked to the door. “I can call your friend,” he added. “If you should happen to want company...?”

  “Yes, please,” Elaine said, quickly. Daria had been with her, hadn’t she? And she was the only friend Elaine had in the Golden City. “When can I go home?”

  “Maybe in a few more days,” the druid said, as he opened the door. “I’d prefer to keep you under observation for a while. Whatever hit you was new and we had to guess at the correct way to treat you. The next person might not be so lucky.”

  He left the room. A moment later, the door opened again and the Inquisitor stepped into the room. Like all sorcerers who wished to advertise their nature, he wore long black robes and carried a wand at his belt, but unlike most magicians he wore a single ring on his ring hand, a silver skull. His face was stony, half-hidden behind a charm that prevented his features from being clearly seen. Elaine had never been so close to an Inquisitor and had to fight the urge to back away as he sat down beside her bed. His unseen eyes seemed to be staring right into her soul.

  “You are not in any trouble,” he said, in a surprisingly gentle voice, “but we do need to know what happened to you. I am Inquisitor Dread.”

  He paused, as if he expected her to recognise the name. All Inquisitors abandoned their birth names when they graduated and put on the silver skull that marked their rank, although very little was known about how they were trained by their superiors. There had been any number of rumours, including some that suggested that demons were involved somewhere, but Elaine knew nothing for sure. Dread didn’t seem to want anything from her in return, even her name. But then he probably knew everything about her already.

  His voice darkened, slightly. “How much do you remember?”

  Elaine had to think back carefully. All of her memories appeared to be slippery, sliding away from her the moment she tried to recall them. “I...I was opening a box from Duke Gama,” she said, finally. Had Duke Gama been a real magician? She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to use a curse to seal up a book unless it was their own curse. “There was an unmarked book in the box...”

  The Inquisitor reached into his robes and produced a book. “This book?”

  “Yes,” Elaine said, staring. How had he managed to take it out of the Library? Miss Prim would have had quite a few things to say about it...but he was an Inquisitor. And he worked for the Grand Sorcerer himself. “I...I tried to open it and then...”

  Her mind refused to recall anything past that point. There had been something, but what?

  “There was a curse of some kind woven into the book’s pages,” Dread said. He seemed more interested in the curse than the effect it had had on her, but Elaine supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. “Most of it had dispelled itself by the time I examined it carefully. I think it must have been intended to murder whoever opened it without permission.”

  Elaine shivered. Just how close had she come to death? “But...but Duke Gama wasn’t a real magician,” she said, finally. “How did he make the curse?”

  “A very good question,” Dread agreed, gravely. He peered down at the book, flipping through an endless series of blank pages. “It is possible that the Duke received tutoring from a rogue magician instead of the Peerless School. Given his rank, it is unlikely that he would have been accepted at the school even if he had applied. But it is equally possible that a black magician cast the spell for him and he trusted in his own precautions to prevent the book falling into the wrong hands. His decision to send the books to the Great Library after his death might have been intended to prevent his brother or nephew from trying to open the book.”

  Elaine nodded, slowly.

  “But we will be following up on this as a matter of urgency,” Dread added, before Elaine could speak. “If someone else produced the curse for him, who knows what else he may have done in the years between his work for the Duke and the Duke’s death?”

  His lips twitched into a humourless smile. “Do you have any idea what the curse was intended to do?”

  “Not really,” Elaine said. “I thought that it was nothing more than a lock to keep unwanted people from reading his private thoughts.”

  Dread looked at her for a long moment. “Perhaps I misspoke,” he said. There was an odd note of puzzlement in his voice. “Do you know what the curse was intended to do?”

  Elaine felt her mouth opening before she quite realised what was happening. There were whispered stories about Inquisitors, about how they possessed voices that could command obedience from anyone, no matter how powerful they were. He could have ordered Elaine to throw herself at his feet and do anything and she would have obeyed. She couldn’t have lied to him, even if she had wanted to lie to him. Elaine had experienced compulsion spells before – Millicent and her cronies had thought them a terrific joke – but this was different, far more powerful than anything she’d ever known.

  “No, sir,” she said, quietly. “I don’t know what it was intended to do.”

  “I had to be sure,” Dread said. There was no apology in his voice, even though she felt violated on a level that no one, not even Millicent, could have matched. He might have thought that it was justified and maybe he was right, but Elaine disagreed. How dare he do that to anyone? “The druids inform me that you will recover in the next few days. I have spoken to your superior and convinced her to allow you two weeks to recuperate from your ordeal
. Should you learn anything else about the curse that struck you, you will of course contact the Inquisition at once.”

  There was no compulsion in his voice this time, but it was an order. “Yes, sir,” she said, as he stood up. “Will you be sending someone to visit King Hildebrand?”

  “There will be an investigation,” Dread assured her. He walked over to the door and then stopped. “I suggest that you spend the next two weeks in bed. It will improve your chances of making a full recovery.”

  Elaine hesitated, and then decided to gamble. “Inquisitor,” she said, slowly, “they say that the Inquisition knows everything.”

  “We certainly like to give that impression,” Dread agreed. “But you must realise that our knowledge is not to be shared.”

  “I just wanted to ask,” Elaine said, hating just how vulnerable she sounded. “Do you know who my parents were?”

  Dread, for a moment, looked almost kindly. “I’m afraid that that piece of knowledge isn’t known to the Inquisition,” he said. “If there had been something...scandalous about your birth, we might have had a record, but there was nothing that my predecessors knew about when you were born.”

  Elaine flushed. Of course there hadn’t been. It wasn’t as if she was the secret love child of the Grand Sorcerer and the Dark Witch. Her magical talent was so weak that it was quite likely that her parents had had no magical talent of their own. And if she’d been born to a prostitute in the Golden City, her mother might have believed that she would have a better life in the orphanage than on the streets. But that wouldn’t have attracted the Inquisition’s attention. Why should it have?

  “Thank you,” she said, and sank back into the covers.

  The next thing she realised was that Daria was standing beside her bed. “You look much better,” her friend said. “The druids said that you could go home in a day or two. I’ve missed you dreadfully...”