The boy pulled Elaine’s stumbling form onto the dance floor before Daria had a chance to finish her threat. He clearly didn’t doubt that Daria’s wrath would be terrible if he messed up with Elaine. It felt harder to dance than Elaine had expected, even with a surprisingly patient tutor who didn’t seem to mind if she trod on his foot. The beat of the music was difficult to follow and she kept placing her feet wrongly, until she finally realised how to dance. And then the dance came to an end.
“You just need practice,” the boy said, as the dancers filed off the floor. “And now...”
Elaine watched him go and sighed inwardly. Of course he hadn’t wanted to dance with her. Daria had bribed or threatened him into cooperating and he was now off to collect his prize. The gods alone knew what Daria had offered him...but Elaine could guess. A dance, a kiss...or something more intimate. She didn’t really want to know.
“That’s enough of feeling sorry for yourself,” Daria said, firmly, as Elaine appeared next to her. “I saw you smiling on the dance floor. Get back out there and get another guy.”
Elaine flushed bright red at the very thought. “Come on,” Daria said, seriously. “This dance needs two couples.”
She waved to a pair of strange boys and invited them to join the two girls. Elaine had barely any time to think before the bandleader started calling out instructions, ordering the partners to take hands and start moving through the steps. This dance was more complicated than the last one...she looked up and saw her partner smiling nervously at her. He was just as worried as she was...oddly, that made her feel better about herself. The music started and they fell into the steps, moving slowly through the first two circles. And then the music started to speed up...
Elaine was laughing as the dance came to an end. Daria smiled at her, gave the boy she’d been dancing with a kiss on the cheek, and then winked at Elaine. Elaine’s partner didn’t look as if he expected a kiss, thankfully, but just as Elaine was about to head back to the tables he caught her arm and awkwardly pulled her back into position for the next dance. Elaine opened her mouth to object, saw Daria’s firm stare from the side of the room, and allowed him to lead her without further objection. The next dance went well, but the one after it was too complex for her to follow easily. It was a relief to note that several other dancers had had to leave at the same time.
“Want to join me for a drink?” The boy asked. He hesitated, and then flushed. “I’m sorry. I sound like an idiot.”
Elaine knew exactly how that felt. “I’d love to,” she said. “Just...juice, please. Nothing alcoholic.”
The boy nodded and headed over to the bar, where a pair of half-naked girls were serving drinks. Elaine watched him taking the drinks and heading back to the table, astonished at her own daring. There was a time when she would have fled rather than face a reasonably handsome guy. Maybe Daria had slipped her something to make her less inhibited, a simple charm or limited potion. Or maybe whatever had happened to her in the Great Library had given her more confidence than she had possessed beforehand.
“I...I don’t even know your name,” the boy confessed. “I’m Bee. Blame my mother; she always loved bees as a child.”
Elaine smiled. “Elaine,” she said. She wasn’t going to mention that she was an orphan, at least not yet. The last thing she wanted was sympathy. “You’re not trying to hide your face.”
“I could never get the glamour to work right,” he admitted. His face was pleasant enough, although his blonde hair was cut too close to the scalp for Elaine’s liking. No doubt he thought she should be wearing a dress like Daria’s, one that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. “And besides, I always felt a little dishonest pretending to be something I’m not.”
“I know the feeling,” Elaine said. Besides, she hadn’t really been able to use a glamour herself, at least before her accident. Now...a thousand different spells for creating a glamour floated through her mind, tempting her with the chance to present herself as whatever Bee wanted in a girl. But he seemed to want her for herself. Or maybe...no, she told herself firmly. She would at least try to enjoy herself. “What brings you to the Golden City?”
“My patron has plans to expand her holdings in this city once a new Grand Sorcerer gets selected,” Bee explained. “I’m here to help with the work she can’t dish out to the slaves. They complain too loudly.”
Elaine smiled at the weak joke. “What sort of holdings does he want?”
“Political patronage, really,” Bee explained. “It’s really rather boring if you’re not able to play the game for your own sake. And what are you doing in this city?”
“I...I was raised here,” Elaine said. She had been about to say that she was born in the Golden City, but the truth was that she could have been born anywhere. Magic could easily be used to move from state to state; her parents could have lived on the southern continent and used a teleporting mage to transport their daughter to the orphanage. “I’ve never really been outside the city.”
“They told me that the streets here were paved with gold,” Bee said. “I was most disappointed.”
They shared a laugh. “I was told that there’s a land where dragons still fly through the skies,” Elaine said, ruefully. “It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realised that no one has seen a dragon for hundreds of years.”
“Mages hunting them down for their skins,” Bee said. “I heard that a coat made out of dragon skin can repel any charm or curse.”
“It can,” Elaine said. And they were incredibly rare now that there were no longer any dragons to hunt down and skin. The Grand Sorcerer had had one in his small arsenal of magical tools and weapons, but she didn’t know of any other sorcerer who possessed one in this day and age. It was tempting to think that there might be more dragons out there, somewhere, yet if there were they were keeping a very low profile...
She staggered as a series of memories suddenly roared into her head. Not dragons, not really, but something close enough to a dragon raised by the necromancers from the pits of hell. They’d sacrificed countless lives for each fire-drake, knowing that the sorcerers desperately scrambling to stop them would have no way to counter the monsters...unless they used necromancy themselves. And necromancy corrupted far faster than any other kind of magic.
Each memory seemed to trap her within an eternity. The monsters devastating entire armies with their fiery breath, leaving their charred corpses behind on the battlefields...where the necromancers had raised them once again in their service. Each magician, battling to stop the undead hordes, dying in fire as the monsters hunted them down and killed them. Children, barely old enough to walk, being herded into death camps to have their life energies drained away by the necromancers, who were already becoming bloated with the power they’d stolen from the act of murder...
...And the Witch-King, a dark figure towering over the battlefield, acknowledged by all of the necromancers as their master...
Bee touched her shoulder and Elaine snapped out of it, breathing hard. “Are you all right?”
“I...I think so,” Elaine said, quickly. She didn’t know what to say to him. Bee wasn’t a sorcerer in his own right; she doubted that he had any magical talent at all. How could he understand what she was going through? And if she told any magician, they’d be obliged to call the Inquisitors and tell them what had happened to Elaine. “I think the air just got to me, for a second.”
“That’s not good,” Bee agreed, gravely. Elaine cursed herself for her timidity. The closest she’d gotten to a likeable guy and she just had to scare him away. “Would you like to go outside for a few moments?”
Elaine flushed. She knew what Daria did with some of the boys she picked up at parties...
“I didn’t mean like that,” Bee assured her, hastily. “I just thought you might like some air.”
“I think I’d like to dance again,” Elaine said, surprising herself. “Let’s go back onto the dance floor.”
The music had changed again
, becoming a style that was surprisingly less formal than the earlier dances. Elaine found it harder to follow, if only because there was nothing real to follow at all. The dancers seemed to be inventing their own steps, some managing to look good, others managing to look like idiots. Elaine wished, for the first time, that she had worn a shorter skirt. Daria had tried to talk her into borrowing one of her dresses, but Elaine hadn’t been able to bear the thought of revealing too much of her legs. Besides, if she’d fallen down, the guys would have all been able to look up at her undergarments.
She looked over and saw Daria holding a guy she didn’t recognise, kissing him with a desperation that seemed oddly out of place. Her friend had always been more sociable than Elaine, with an entire string of boyfriends, yet...could she be worried about the future too? Elaine had known what was likely to happen even before all of the forbidden knowledge was dumped into her head. The next Grand Sorcerer was likely to turn everything upside down just to stamp his own authority onto the world.
Bee looked down at her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
It would have been easy to kiss him. Perhaps that was why she didn’t. “I think so,” she assured him. “In fact...”
Someone slammed into her back, knocking her to her knees. Bee caught her and helped her to her feet, just in time to avoid a second blow that nearly clipped the side of her head. Elaine knew who was standing there before she saw her; Millicent and her cronies had arrived. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of running into her old enemy at the dance club. Daria had certainly never mentioned her.
“Well, well, well,” Millicent said. The other dancers were giving them a wide berth, knowing that Millicent wasn’t someone to challenge unless their magical powers were great enough not to have to care about her – or her relatives. “Look who decided to get above herself and come join us tonight.”
She looked over at Bee. “And couldn’t you find someone better to dance with?”
Bee met her gaze evenly. Elaine would have been impressed, if she hadn’t realised that Bee simply didn’t know who Millicent was. “I do not need...you to tell me who to dance with,” he said, coldly. “I suggest that you leave. Now.”
Millicent stared at him as if she hadn’t been able to imagine that anyone, apart perhaps from an Inquisitor, would stand up to her. And then she smiled in cold delight.
“This girl shamed herself before the whole school,” she said, with an unpleasant smile. “And I think that you won’t be defending her any longer.”
She clicked her fingers, casting a spell with casual ease. Blue light washed over Bee and he froze in place. The charm was a simple one for a magician to deflect, so simple that a standard magical protection amulet infused with magical power could protect a mundane non-magician, but Bee had no protections at all. He would be rooted to the spot until someone cast the counter-charm or it wore off on its own. Given Millicent’s power, she’d probably intended the spell to last for days.
Elaine stared at her, unable to move. She had been afraid of Millicent since the day they’d first met, since Millicent had decided to hate her. The mere thought of meeting Millicent was enough to keep her rooted to the spot, without any freezing charm. Millicent knew it too. There was no need to use magic to bind her feet to the floor when fear did it far more effectively.
“And I think it’s time to show you why you will never amount to anything,” Millicent said, lifting one hand languidly. “You will not show your face here again...”
There was a scuffle as three of Millicent’s friends caught Daria, fighting her with magic and their bare hands. Daria was stronger than Elaine, perhaps the strongest girl Elaine had met, but Millicent’s friends seemed to share some of her power. Elaine saw one of them stumble backwards as Daria’s fist met her face, but the other two caught her and held her firmly. They’d pushed something against Daria’s throat...
“You don’t even know her secret, do you?” Millicent observed. “Maybe you should find out, but not now.”
Her hand shaped into a casting posture and she tossed a spell at Elaine. A transfiguration spell, just like the one she’d used years ago, keyed to her own magic. Even a trained wizard would have difficulty undoing it without Millicent’s help. Elaine felt the spell touch her, its perverse nature grappling with her body and altering it against her will...
...And then time seemed to slow down. The spell broke apart into its component pieces, each one instantly recognisable to her. Elaine felt one of the spells that had been forced into her mind rising up inside her, shaping a thought that required little power to turn into a spell. Her magic flared around her and Millicent’s spell shattered as casually as if it had been nothing more than a gossamer thought. Other spells, some far darker than anything Millicent had ever unleashed on her as a joke, rose up to match it. Elaine realised that her entire skin was buzzing with magic, not the magic forced upon her by Millicent, but something that rose from deep inside her. She might have had limited power, far less than Millicent had on her worst day, yet she did understand spell-casting on a level she couldn’t have put into words. And Millicent couldn’t have hoped to match...
...The spell, driven by hatred and rage and a burning lust for revenge, flared into existence within her mind. In some ways, it was even related to the spell she’d triggered when she’d opened Duke Gama’s book. It would feed on Millicent’s power rather than being dependent upon Elaine’s own limited talent.
Her hand snapped out before she had quite realised what she was doing. Millicent was staring at her, shocked beyond words. She’d known that Elaine didn’t have the power to throw off her spell so casually. Elaine didn’t let her have a chance to react as power throbbed through her mind, magic feeding upon magic until it was beyond her ability to contain. The spell flashed from her power to Millicent and overwhelmed her. Any sorceress knew how to counter spells, but this was different. Her desperate attempt to counter what Elaine had unleashed was too late to save herself.
Millicent let out a yell as she shrank, shrinking so rapidly that she made a whirring sound. Her hands went up in a desperate attempt to strike back, but they turned to stone before she could do anything more than shape the first part of the thought that might have saved her. Before Elaine’s astonished eyes, not quite believing what she had done, Millicent became a tiny statuette of herself. Power danced in front of her eyes, sending her staggering forward almost as if she were drunk, forcing Millicent’s friends to step back in horror. They’d joined her because she was a bully, because it was safer to be one of her cronies than feel her wrath – and become the butt of her jokes. And now their patron had been transfigured against her will by someone she had always despised...
And even her aunt might be unable to restore her to human form.
Elaine had no time to think. Her head buzzing, her thoughts feeling as if they were on fire, she stumbled forward and ran into the night.
Chapter Eight
The darkness seemed to reach out for her like a living thing as Elaine ran, barely aware of the crowds of people wandering the streets. Few of them showed any sign of concern, but why should they? The Golden City was not always kind to those caught up in conflicts between magicians, or those who served as the butt of magical jokes. Elaine finally slowed to a stop, panting desperately, to find herself in a darkened alleyway. There was no one else around as far as she could tell.
Her skin hurt, as if she’d been sunburned and it was only just starting to ache. She’d felt something like it before as a student, when her magical abilities were being studied and gauged by her tutors, but this was different. Even she had gained the control and discipline to keep a single spell from rebounding on her...yet she hadn’t unleashed a single spell. She’d unleashed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny spells that had worked in unison to produce an effect she didn’t have the talent to create with a single spell. No wonder Millicent had been taken so badly by surprise. All of her countering charms had been used on the assumption that th
ere was only one spell that needed to be deflected. She could have countered half of the spells Elaine had unleashed and still not saved herself from an unwanted transfiguration.
There would be consequences, Elaine knew. She wasn’t a well-connected magician, or a student out on the town who knew that her idea of fun would be indulged, but someone without power and connections. Maybe the Inquisitors would have let it pass if she’d worked her spell on a mundane, without power or connections, but Millicent was connected to the very highest levels of society. And yet...the thought of seeing her most hated enemy so savagely and suddenly reduced was satisfying on a level Elaine couldn’t begin to comprehend. Power, the kind of power she’d never had, tempted her. All the knowledge that had been poured into her head offered ways to enhance her magic, or to use it more efficiently than she’d ever learned in the Peerless School. But there would be a price...
She looked up sharply as she heard a snuffle, as if there was a dog sniffing its way towards her, but saw nothing in the semi-darkness. There were thousands of spells that could produce light, but somehow casting even one of them seemed beyond her power. She lifted a hand, peering into the gloom, yet there was still nothing. She wasn’t even sure where she was...
...And then Daria stepped out of the darkness towards her. “Elaine,” she called. Her dress was torn, leaving her forced to use one of her hands to hold it together or lose whatever remained of her modesty. “Elaine...are you all right?”
Elaine stared at her. “How did you find me?”
“Carefully,” Daria said. She winked at Elaine, who could only stare back at her. “I decided to leave the chaos behind and come after you before they recovered from their shock.”
Elaine fought down the urge to giggle. All of Millicent’s cronies followed her because they had thought – had known – that she was an incredibly powerful and well-connected young woman. Better to laugh at her jokes and indulge her sense of humour than to be on the receiving end of her torments, better to watch someone else suffer than suffer themselves. But they would just have seen their leader transfigured against her will, forced into a form that would make being a frog seem comfortable and familiar...and transformed by someone they had believed to be barely strong enough to light a fire. Their world had just turned upside down.
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