Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  He seemed odd to her eyes as he sat down, his companions taking the seats beside him. A thought nagged at the back of her mind until she remembered the work of the great Sorcerer Niven. It was simple for a magician to use a sword as a cure for impotence, provided that one took the blade to bed with oneself! Any sorcerer who carried a sword was almost certainly impotent, but would Prince Hilarion know that? He hadn’t had a formal education in magic as far as anyone had been able to find out, just tutors. And those tutors had apparently refused to be interviewed.

  Bee caught her sleeve as the lights dimmed again and the female dancers came back out into the stage. “Does his sword mean that he’s impotent or merely doesn’t have enough faith in his magic to defend himself?”

  “I don’t know,” Elaine admitted. Trust a guy to remember what use a sword had for a magician. “He could be hoping that people will underestimate him by wearing the sword.”

  She shrugged as the dancers came into view. They’d changed, removing their traditional dresses for loincloths that covered their thighs – and placing shells on their nipples. Elaine glanced over at Bee and saw him staring in awe as the dancers started to move, using their arms to call attention to their breasts and thighs. If the dance the males had performed was intended for the women, this one was intended for the men...even with wards surrounding the stage, its effects were spectacular. Who knew what it would be like for a tribal boy, barely on the verge of manhood, to be confronted with such powerful evidence of feminine sexuality? Or for the girls when they saw the men.

  The dancers finally bowed, the shells covering their nipples dropping off as they turned and retreated from the stage. A long series of sighs ran through the room as the men were released from their hypnotic trance, staring around at their wives and partners. Bee at least had the grace to look embarrassed, although he’d probably seen her staring at the men with just as much interest and enthusiasm. Some of the men also had to leave the room as the waitresses started serving the main course. Elaine smiled at Bee, who’d ordered a complex dish of chicken and beef, before she started to dig into her steak. The meat was surprisingly tasty and tender, although given the cost it had better be good. Most of the Darlington’s customers wouldn’t have hesitated to complain if they felt that they hadn’t had their money’s worth.

  Prince Hilarion didn’t seem to be eating, Elaine noticed. Instead, he was sitting in his seat watching the other guests with undisguised interest. There was something oddly composed about his expression, as if he wasn’t particularly interested in anything apart from the guests, some of whom would be trying to work against him when the contest began. He should be trying to win their favour, or at least neutrality, but instead he was just watching them as though they were not important to him. None of the guests were going to like that kind of attitude from someone who hadn’t even been through the Peerless School.

  Elaine puzzled over it as she devoured the last of her steak. Prince Hilarion had to know that he didn’t have the connections to make a proper bid to become Grand Sorcerer, yet he didn’t seem to be interested in attempting to make those connections. And there was the fact that he was related to the man who’d sent Elaine the charmed book. The Peerless School had taught that there were more coincidences in the magical world than anyone really understood, or recognised, but Elaine was convinced that that was too unlikely a coincidence for it to be possible. There had to be a connection somewhere.

  She was tempted to walk over to Prince Hilarion and ask him directly, but she knew she couldn’t take the chance. If he’d wanted the knowledge from the Great Library, he had to be looking for her...and he presumably didn’t know who’d picked up the book. Or perhaps he would have tried to convince her to join him by now, or had her kidnapped...one advantage about going to Ida was that it would be the last place anyone would expect to find her. Or so she hoped.

  Bee smiled as the waitress started to take away the dishes. “Do you want to watch the rest of the dancing or go walking?”

  Elaine hesitated. She would have liked to see the rest of the dancing, but she didn’t really want to be near Prince Hilarion any longer than strictly necessary.

  “Walking,” she said, finally. “Do you want to go to the Park?”

  Bee grinned. “Why not?”

  The Park was the only open space in the Golden City that was accessible to anyone who wanted to stride in through the gates. According to history, the first Grand Sorcerer had planted it himself and then left it to the entire city in his will. The terms of the will had stipulated that anyone who wanted to enter had to be allowed to enter, while the Council would have ultimate responsibility for maintaining it and protecting the plants from vandals. Elaine wasn’t sure how much of the story she believed – the knowledge in her head hinted at a very different story – but it was a ‘night’ place to go. Illuminated by moonlight, and the faint glow of the Watchtower on the North Peak, it was remarkably romantic. The shadows provided concealment for any number of activities.

  Bee took her arm as they walked past a tiny set of graves buried under statues of weeping angels. The graves themselves were unusual; most bodies were cremated and then their ashes scattered on the soil outside the city. It was a tradition that dated back to the first clumsy experiments with necromancy, before the necromancers had started bringing entire graveyards to life. No one knew why the bodies in the Park had been buried instead of cremated and scattered. Some people commented that they were probably older than the Park itself and the Grand Sorcerer had hesitated to remove or defile the bodies. Elaine wasn’t sure that she believed that at all.

  “Thank you for this evening,” she said, as they halted under a tree that draped a concealing shadow over them. There was magic in the Park, old magic; magic that might have more in common with the Blight than anyone cared to think. “I’m sorry about the last time we met...”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Bee assured her. He took her in his arms and it dawned on Elaine that he was about to kiss her. “Your friend was very clear on that point. It definitely wasn’t your fault.”

  Elaine flushed. Daria had stood up for her, believed in her...and Elaine had rewarded her by peeking into a locked chest and discovering a horrible truth about her friend. “She’s a good person,” she said. All of the stories about wild werewolves didn’t seem to apply to the one werewolf she’d actually met. “And I...”

  Bee’s lips descended and touched hers, gently. Elaine felt her heartbeat starting to race as long-suppressed desires came to life in her mind. She kissed him back, feeling his lips steadily increasing the pressure on her body. It was suddenly very hard to breathe as his hand touched her breast and started to stroke it through the dress. Part of her wanted to tear off the dress and make love to him right now, even though they were in the Park. And part of her knew that that would be a very bad idea.

  “I can’t go too far,” she said, between kisses. Her hand had somehow found its way to his crotch. “I can’t...”

  “Hush,” Bee said, very gently. “I do understand.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Well, someone had a good night,” Daria said, the following morning. “How far did you go with him?”

  Elaine flushed. “How can you tell?”

  Daria chuckled. “Did you look in the mirror when you woke up this morning?”

  Elaine turned and glanced into Daria’s mirror. She saw a girl with smeared makeup staring back at her, with faint traces of male lips on her cheek and neck. Her face was almost unrecognisable...and she had only an hour before her iron dragon was scheduled to leave for the north. She let out a yelp and ran into the washroom, splashing water on her face and trying to wash off most of the smeared material. Some of it refused to come off until she muttered a simple charm to cancel the magic binding it to her skin.

  “So,” Daria said, following her in, “how far did you go last night?”

  “We kissed,” Elaine said. She could still feel his fingers stroking her breast, sending stran
ge yet remarkably pleasant sensations running down her body. Who knew what she would have done if he’d pressed the issue? “And we touched...and we didn’t do anything else.”

  “Good for you,” Daria said. She winked and passed Elaine a towel as she removed the remains of her underclothes and splashed water all over her body. “Did you decide you liked the experience after all?”

  Elaine flushed, again. “Yes,” she admitted. “I enjoyed myself.”

  “Welcome to your first step into womanhood,” Daria said. She assumed a posture Elaine remembered from some of her more boring tutors. “Now, the next step is going down on him, which means taking his cock into your mouth...”

  “Not for a while yet,” Elaine said. Part of her, remembering the feel of his hardness against her hand, seemed to think that it would be a fantastic experience. The rest of her found the whole idea disgusting. He used his penis to go to the toilet as well as everything else. “I...do people really do that?”

  “Of course,” Daria said. “And just you wait until you get a guy who’s willing to go down on you and use his tongue to lick you out. You’ll find it absolutely wonderful.” She shrugged. “Of course, guys are more reluctant to go down on girls than have the girls go down on them...”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Elaine said, quickly. Her ears were glowing bright red with embarrassment. And yet she’d had strange and erotic dreams when she’d closed her eyes and gone to sleep, dreams that had pushed aside the nightmares that seemed to have come with the knowledge from the Great Library. “Will you be all right here for a couple of days?”

  “I owe Marla a shift or two at the parlour,” Daria said. “I dare say I will be able to keep myself amused while you’re gone. I just wish I could come with you.”

  Elaine wanted her to come too, but some instinct seemed to be insisting that it was better to go alone. She didn’t want to risk exposing her friend to danger, particularly when she hadn’t been able to tell her about what had happened in the Great Library, or what she’d done with Daria’s chest of secrets. How could she even begin to tell her the truth?

  “I’ll be back in a couple of days,” she assured her. At least she wouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to sleep. Lady Light Spinner’s gift of cash had solved more than a few problems for her. “Who knows? By then, they might even have found the final list of candidates for the Grand Sorcerer’s position.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Daria said. “I think they’ll be counting down right until they reach the last few seconds and then start jumping into the contest. Too many of them will be watching to see who else is interested before they commit themselves to the struggle.”

  She shrugged. “But don’t worry about it,” she added. “Unless Deferens wins, of course. But I don’t think he has much of a chance if he alienates half of the wizards in the world just by being who and what he is. Someone else will have to deal with him, of course. I wish we had the power to do that, you know.”

  Elaine shivered. She did have the knowledge, if not the power, to do something about Deferens and his views on what women should do with their lives. But anything she did would expose what had happened to her to the Inquisition. She was still astonished that Lady Light Spinner – or Millicent – hadn’t reported what had happened to the Inquisitors. Perhaps they’d feared how the Inquisitors would react to Millicent’s idea of fun and games, although that had never been a problem before. They’d had the connections to avoid the skull-wearing magicians unless they really stepped out of line.

  “Me too,” she said, finally. “Me too.”

  ***

  The Iron Dragons weren’t really magical, although they did have binding spells on their boilers to prevent them exploding and wrecking the entire series of carriages hooked to the steam-powered monster. Some of the boys in the orphanage had dreamed of driving an iron dragon across the land, blowing the whistles as they roared under the bridges and carried people from one end of the Empire to the other. The network had been partly destroyed by the Second Necromantic War and the Grand Sorcerers had actually attempted to restrict the redevelopment of the damaged tracks, but money talked louder than magic in some parts of the world. Elaine could see why they might have had their concerns about the iron dragons. Anything that lessened the world’s dependence on magic would have been a danger to the status quo.

  Elaine took a moment to study the hulking monstrosity as she walked up towards the coaches. Memories that weren’t hers rose up inside her mind, images of real dragons – or the monsters raised by the necromancers – chasing and destroying iron dragons in the opening days of the second war. The Witch-King had known just how important the iron dragons had been for transporting and concentrating troops in the right positions and knew that every destroyed section of the network could impede reinforcements from the Emperor, before the last of the Emperors had been killed in the war. It was easy to see why some people believed them to be magical, even though they were really powered by steam. Nothing that size, surely, could move under its own power.

  “All aboard who’s going aboard,” the conductor shouted, ringing his bell. The puffs of steam from the iron dragon grew louder as the driver started to shovel coal into the engine. Elaine ran forwards, silently grateful that she’d worn something more practical than the dress she’d worn for the Darlington, and found her way into her coach. Inside, it was surprisingly cool, with long rows of seats stretching away towards the end of the carriage. Elaine hadn’t been able to afford the luxurious accommodation in the first class sections, but she had managed to reserve a table and a comfortable chair. She put her bag under the seat and settled down with a book in her hand. It was several hours to Ida and she had to pass that time somehow. Two young girls, barely old enough to attend the Peerless School, sat opposite her, smiling. They looked excited to be on their way again.

  The coach lurched as the iron dragon started to move, heading across the city and up towards the tunnel that led through the mountains and out into the countryside. She caught sight of strange magical energies moving through the Blight as they passed near it, before the coach plunged into darkness as they entered the tunnel. There was no light outside at all, something that left her feeling creepy before the coach finally burst back outside into the warm sunlight and headed northwards. On the other side of the mountains, there were a handful of small towns and little else. The battles that had decided the Second Necromantic War had burned away most of the settlements and, even now, few chose to live there willingly. At least it wasn’t as bad as the Blight.

  She smiled as the iron dragon picked up speed, heading onwards into the distance. The conductor came into the coach and moved from person to person, checking tickets with an expression that suggested he’d done it a thousand times before and had long since grown bored with the whole affair. Elaine wondered, absently, if he’d been one of the boys from the orphanage who’d dreamed of driving iron dragons across the world. But he didn’t look familiar and he certainly didn’t seem to recognise her. He merely took her ticket, checked it, and then passed it back. It took longer to do the girls, for some reason; their parents had decided to travel later for whatever motive of their own. Elaine had honestly never realised that there might be problems with having children travelling without their parents. It was probably something one learned from actually having parents.

  The girls continued to chatter amongst themselves as Elaine yawned and tried to return to her book. She really hadn’t slept much last night and she knew that she should be trying to catch up before she reached Ida, but she didn’t want to take the risk of falling asleep on the iron dragon. What would happen if she woke up to discover that she’d been taken all the way to the far side of the empire? It wasn’t very likely, but what if...?

  “Hey,” one of the girls said. “What’s your story?”

  Elaine blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Pretty girl travelling alone...it doesn’t happen very often,” the girl said. Her
twin smiled encouragingly. “Why are you travelling without a man?”

  “I have no husband,” Elaine said. She wasn’t sure if Bee counted as a boyfriend or not by now. Yes, they’d kissed...but Daria had gone further than that with boys she’d never wanted to see again. “Why are you travelling alone without a man?”

  “Too young to get married,” the girl said. She held out a hand. “I’m Sandy and that’s Sandra. Don’t get us mixed up or we’ll get cross.”

  Elaine had to smile. They had the same faces, the same clothes and even the same voices, it seemed. Telling them apart would be difficult for anyone, particularly when they started using their magic as twins. Twins had great magical power, but it came at a price; they’d start blurring together into one person. But at least they’d have each other. Elaine would have given anything for a sister when she’d been a child.

  “Would you like to play cards?” Sandra asked. “We really need a threesome to play properly.”

  Elaine smiled again and put away her book. “Why not?” she asked. “What sort of cards do you play?”

  She listened carefully to the rules of the game, which seemed rather complex to her – but then, she’d never played cards in her entire life. The girls didn’t seem to want to bet money, which was something of a relief, but they did want to bet sweets. Elaine lost the first four games before realising that they were cheating shamelessly, either comparing their own cards to work out what Elaine had to hold or somehow reading the back of her cards. Once she’d realised what they were doing, it was still hard to decide how to counter it. In the end, she merely decided to abandon the game and surrender some of her sweets. There was no point in picking a fight over it.

  The countryside was changing as the iron dragon raced northwards. Flat plains where farmers pulled a living from the ground were steadily replaced by mountains which marked the rough edge of Ida’s territory. The ruling king had apparently ordered a station built at the bottom of the mountains rather than have a tunnel constructed under the mountain or have the iron dragon network extended up the mountains. Elaine’s history books hadn’t been able to provide a proper explanation, although it could just be nothing more than paranoia. Anyone whose independence depended on mountains blocking the path of conquering armies would have to be leery about accidentally weakening the natural defences. But none of those mountains would deter the Grand Sorcerer if he wanted to make an example of Ida. There wasn’t enough iron in the mountains to neutralise the sort of magic the Grand Sorcerer could unleash if he wanted to punish the tiny state.