Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  “You missed having me to help clean up after your latest boyfriend,” Elaine said, and tried to tell herself that she wasn’t bitter. She could have had a boy of her own, if it wasn’t so completely inconceivable that a boy would be interested in her. “You should get him to help with the cleaning.”

  “You can’t ever trust a guy to do the cleaning,” Daria said, dryly. “Besides, he only wanted one thing and didn’t even bother to attend to my needs, so I dumped him. I should have taken him shopping first before inviting him to bed.”

  “I didn’t think that you had the money to go shopping,” Elaine said, trying to sit up. Her head was threatening to split open again. “Or did you happen to find something so interesting that they gave you a bonus?”

  “I can still go look,” Daria said. “You should try looking at clothes instead of those books you love to read. Clothes make the woman, don’t you know?”

  She shrugged. “Anyway...what happened to you?”

  Elaine opened her mouth to say what little she knew, just before she felt something unlocking itself in her mind. She let out a yelp as new knowledge flooded her brain, leaving her feeling as if she’d finally understood something she should have realised all along. The curse that had been used to secure the book...hadn’t been intended to secure the book. It had been waiting for someone to pick up the book in the right place...

  ...Each of the steps involved with crafting the curse flooded into her mind. A simple spell to deflect anyone without enough magic to energise the rest of the curse, followed by a series of complicated incantations that seemed to have been designed for the Great Library. As if the first realisation had been enough to unlock the second, she realised that the curse had somehow reached out, using her magic, to absorb the entire collected knowledge of the Great Library. Millions of books, hundreds of thousands of spells...all crammed within her skull. She screamed out loud as the knowledge blazed through her mind, knowledge that the senior wizards had locked away long ago. Spells so dangerous that even the Witch-King would have blanched at the mere thought of using them floated inside her mind...

  ...Knowledge that was forbidden on pain of death.

  “Elaine,” Daria said. Her voice seemed to come from a very far distance. “Elaine!”

  “I’m...I’m all right,” Elaine lied. The druids hadn’t known how to deal with her, if only because they hadn’t realised that the curse had been far more than just a simple murderous incantation. She knew now how it had worked, and what would transpire if Dread realised what had happened to her. “I think I’m all right.”

  “I think you need more potion,” Daria said. “I’m calling the druid.”

  “No,” Elaine said, panicking. What would happen if they realised the truth? “I’m all right, really. Just let me sleep.”

  Chapter Four

  Elaine lay in bed, thinking hard.

  Her old tutors used to say that the difference between a magician and a non-magician was that a magician would remember every spell perfectly, as soon as they learned them. Even Elaine, with her limited magical talent, had the perfect memory of a magician, even though some of the spells she’d learned were beyond her ability to actually cast. Now...now every spell known to the world floated through her mind, including some forgotten and some long prohibited on pain of death.

  The necromancers who had started the First Necromantic War had known how to raise the dead. Their grimoires had been recovered after the war and stored in the Black Vault, just in case they were needed by some future Grand Sorcerer. All of the spells they had used to create vast armies of the undead were floating through Elaine’s mind, waiting to be used. It would be easy to reanimate a soulless corpse and send it out charged to kill the living, infecting their dying bodies with the curse that would see them rise again. She had wondered, when she’d started to study magic, precisely how the Witch-King had solved the problem of keeping the curse going over such vast periods of time, but now she understood. His spells had fed on its victims and just kept going.

  And there were other secrets within the Black Vault. Truth spells that were impossible to resist, far beyond the voices used by the Inquisitors. And she knew how those worked too now. Spells that could turn someone into a frog, or a cat, or a slug, or an inanimate object permanently, warping reality far beyond anything Millicent had ever done to her. Names and rituals that could be used to summon demons from the darkness, or call down the gods to the mortal plane, or recall the souls of the dead to the world of the living. Spells that could boil a person’s blood in their veins, or make them a devoted slave, or any number of atrocities that could be carried out by someone with enough magic and ruthlessness to make it work. The tales stored within the Black Vault shocked her. Who would have known that the Witch-King had once been a Grand Sorcerer? That had never been included in her History of Magic classes.

  Some of the other spells made little sense to her, until she started combining the spells with the knowledge that had been dumped into her head. One spell stripped a person of their magic permanently, something that she had always been led to believe was impossible. Why would the Grand Sorcerer have bothered to enslave Miss Prim if there had been another way to render her harmless? But how badly would knowledge of such a spell shake up the established order? Maybe the Grand Sorcerer kept it to himself for a reason, or maybe he didn’t even know it existed. He might never have bothered to search the Black Vault himself, even though he was the one person with unquestioned right of access.

  Her mind started to spin as darker spells assailed her. She could create a disease that would send an entire population to sleep, only for them to awaken as her creatures, body and soul. Or she could call down lightning from high above and strike down Millicent, or create a volcano right in the heart of the Golden City. She found herself staring temptation right in the face and shuddered at what she’d learned about herself. Maybe there was a good reason why the Grand Sorcerer was the only person permitted access to the Black Vault. He already ruled the world and didn’t need such powers to enforce his rule.

  Restlessly, she pulled herself to her feet and stared out of the window over the city. As always, it was illuminated by countless magical lights, lights she now understood how to create for herself. The Watchtower, positioned on the mountain, seemed to her eyes to glow, marking the presence of sensitive magicians watching for any sign of a necromancer like those who had started the war. All of the knowledge flowing through her head seemed to confirm one thing she had been taught in school; the defeat of the Witch-King had been a very near thing. The Necromantic Wars could have ended with the Lords of the Dead ruling over an undead world for the rest of time.

  She looked over into the mirror, seeing her haunted eyes and tired expression. It was a surprise that all the new knowledge hadn’t changed her, but perhaps it had in some ways beyond her ken. There were spells that could have made her as beautiful as Millicent, reshaping her body until she had the charm and sex appeal of a succubus. And yet, there were less dangerous ways to use magic for cosmetic purposes, but they wouldn’t have changed who she was. Even if she had been far better looking that Millicent, she would still have been the same Elaine underneath. She couldn’t have hoped to compete with her.

  There was a click as the door opened, revealing one of the druids. “You should be in bed,” he said, reproachfully. “You’re not ready to get up without supervision.”

  Elaine hesitated. There were spells that could make him forget what he’d seen, even though he would be protected against accidental magical discharges from his patients. Or there were spells that could convince him to let her go now and then forget that she’d ever existed. But using them would be wrong. She’d hated it when Millicent had made her run through the corridors naked or humiliate herself in front of the other girls. It would be wrong to use her new knowledge to do the same to others.

  “I just wanted to stand up,” she said, as she walked back towards the bed. Whatever else could be said for the foul-tas
ting slop the druids fed her, it did give her remarkable levels of energy. But then, most of it was meant for recovering from the curse that had hit her. “Do you have something else to drink?”

  “You should be eating properly now,” the druid said. “I’ll have something brought in for you. Eat it – and if it stays down, you can probably consider leaving tomorrow.”

  Elaine watched him leave, shaking her head. Now that she knew what the curse had done, she felt much better, at least physically. But mentally...? She knew what the Inquisitors would say if they discovered what had happened to her, even if it hadn’t been her fault. There were some magical curses that meant that their victims had to remain segregated from normal society for the rest of their lives, or transfigured into stone to ensure that they could no longer threaten anyone else. And her curse was knowledge...knowledge she hadn’t intended to acquire, but still made her an incredible danger to the status quo. The Inquisition would try to wipe her mind and, if that failed, kill her. They wouldn’t have any choice.

  She looked up as one of the nurses entered, carrying a small tray of stew. The smell reminded her of how hungry she was, even though she had been fed a number of potions over the last few hours. It suddenly seemed the hardest thing in the world to take small bites and nibble the food, hoping that it wouldn’t start forcing its way out of her stomach again. Some of the potions the druids had given her didn’t seem to like competing with proper food.

  But this time it all stayed down, thankfully. She closed her eyes and went to sleep, praying to the gods that Inquisitor Dread wouldn’t return to ask more questions with his voice of compulsion. She’d have to answer...and that would be the end of her. They’d kill her if they couldn’t cure her and she knew, somehow, that there would be no cure. Whoever had designed the curse hidden in Duke Gama’s book had meant it to stick.

  ***

  “You’re much better,” the druid said, the following morning. “I think you can probably go home, but remember to take it easy for the next two weeks. Do not use magic unless you absolutely need to. And come back here for a check-up before you go back to work.”

  Elaine nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Druidical healing didn’t come cheap, but Miss Prim had clearly picked up the bill, just as the druids had promised. Maybe the Inquisitor had had a word with her, or perhaps her Guardian had spoken to one of his contacts in the establishment...or maybe she was nicer than she chose to act. If it had been a normal illness, she would have preferred to stay in the hospital, particularly if someone else had been paying for her treatment. But this was different. She didn’t dare attract more attention.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Daria said, as they left the building. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’m glad you managed to come pick me up,” Elaine said, only partly truthfully. Daria was a comforting presence, but she was also alarmingly cheerful when Elaine wanted to get home and hide under the bed. “Didn’t your work have something to say about it?”

  “I just happened to mention that there was an Inquisitor involved,” Daria said, with a wink. “They couldn’t fall over themselves fast enough to give me a couple of days of leave to be with you. I’ll have to go back tomorrow, but by then you should be settled into bed. I don’t like seeing you ill.”

  “I don’t like being ill,” Elaine said, ruefully. “Did you hear anything from Miss Prim?”

  “Not a word,” Daria said. “But you know how the senior wizards feel about my sort. They don’t want to commit themselves to anything they don’t have to.”

  Elaine stumbled as new knowledge flooded into her mind. Daria had come from a travelling family, one of the Traveller sects. The Travellers had some strange magic of their own, magic that wasn’t well understood by the establishment, perhaps even by the Grand Sorcerer himself. They shunned the Travellers, even the ones who had left the road and taken up permanent residence in a city. But they didn’t seem to put any blocks in their path. The Travellers were allowed to move from state to state as they pleased.

  And there was something else, something so important that no one had written it down.

  “But don’t worry about a thing,” Daria continued. She hadn’t noticed Elaine’s sudden distraction. “Miss Prim didn’t notice the curse that zapped you, did she? She’s really not in a good place to complain about you taking a few weeks off to recuperate.”

  Of course she didn’t, Elaine thought, coldly. Her new knowledge illustrated exactly what had happened to her, and why the curse hadn’t triggered any of the wards that were supposed to protect the Library. Someone with a fantastic level of skill and patience had built it up, and then compressed it down into something that had needed her magical field to fuel its transformation into a deadly spell. By the time the wards had registered that there was a problem it had already been too late.

  “I suppose not,” she said, finally. “But you know what people can be like.”

  She leaned on Daria’s arm as they walked down the street. It seemed busier than she remembered – had it really been six days ago? Thousands of newcomers thronged through the streets, from high-born aristocrats to low-born magicians considering their chances of becoming Grand Sorcerer. Elaine could understand exactly how they felt; she’d been treated as a low-born herself, if only because no one knew who her parents had been. It bred an icy cold determination to succeed in those who had the talents to carve out a magical career.

  “I hear that the Empress of the South is on her way to the Golden City,” Daria said, cheerfully. She’d always paid more attention to rumour and gossip than Elaine. “I don’t think that she’s a magician herself, but she probably wants a chance to try to seduce the next Grand Sorcerer. Rumour has it that they had to send her a female Court Wizard to try to stop her seducing her minder...and she still slept with her. Not that anyone dares say so outright, of course.”

  “Of course,” Elaine agreed. The Empress of the South controlled vast territories that had barely been touched by the Necromantic Wars. It had given her a degree of independence from the Empire that wasn’t shared by most other states – and their rulers. She also had a reputation for ruthlessness that matched most of the senior wizards. Being appointed to keep her ambitions under control couldn’t have been the easiest post in the world, even if the Empress’ seductive talents had been nothing more than rumour. “Or maybe they just wanted to try to weaken her position.”

  “I don’t think it worked,” Daria said, after a moment. “The Empress doesn’t have the sort of kingdom that we can meddle with openly, not without risking too many consequences.”

  She shrugged as they reached the apartment block, glancing at the landlord’s private apartment. It was warded, unlike the rest of the stairwell, and clearly marked as such. Even without her new knowledge, Elaine had known that it was weak...but now she knew how to unlock the ward without actually breaking it, leaving the occupants unaware that anyone had entered their apartments without permission. The small letterbox at the bottom of the stairs included a small amount of junk mail, an invitation to renew her subscription to a broadsheet that covered magical books and a demand from their landlord that they pay their rent or face eviction. Elaine felt the old flicker of helplessness, matched with the sudden awareness that she did have the power to punish him for taking liberties with a pair of magicians. Some of the spells she now knew were well within her capabilities.

  “Nothing important, of course,” Daria said, as they walked up the stairs and into the apartment. Elaine was surprised at how much she’d missed it. “I think that they never actually send us anything important. We’d probably fall down dead from shock if they did.”

  Elaine glanced at one of the pieces of junk mail – an advertisement for an eatery that offered food at all hours of the day – and then threw it towards the bin. Miss Prim had been known to rage that the printing press hadn’t really been a benefit to librarianship, even though it made it easier for printers to produce thousands of books. Whatever had
been published back before the printing press had needed to be published, but now anyone could publish a book, from a genuine magical textbook to a trashy romantic novel. There were other libraries in the city that catered for people who wanted to read fiction. It didn’t have to be based on reality.

  “I was expecting something from my Guardian,” Elaine said. She didn’t want to admit how much not receiving something hurt, even though she had little reason to expect it. He’d certainly made his feelings clear the last time they’d spoken, four years ago. “You’d think he would have cared enough to ensure that I was well.”

  “What do you expect from a man so inbred that his ears stick out?” Daria demanded. “You know that he never really cared for the duties forced on him by his rank. And it isn’t as if you became anything important to him. Forget him and concentrate on getting better.”

  She grinned, suddenly. “Do you want to come out tonight with me? I could take you to the dance hall and find you a nice attractive man to dance with...”

  “I couldn’t,” Elaine said, softly. And she couldn’t. If she were to go, she’d be nothing more than a wallflower, watching helplessly as others, more confident than herself, danced the night away. And the thought of a man dancing with her...she wanted it, but how could she work up the nerve? “You go and have fun. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  A thought crossed her mind. There were spells in her mind now that could change how a person thought. Perhaps, with a little rewriting, she could use one on herself. If she made herself more confident, she could go dancing and enjoy herself the way that other girls enjoyed themselves. But she knew how dangerous such spells could be. She might rewrite her personality permanently. Or maybe even have the spell wearing off after she had started, but before she was finished.