Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Elaine confessed. And yet part of her had felt nothing less than exultation when she’d seen the fear on Millicent’s face. “Why do you let it happen?”

  Dread lifted a single eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You and your Inquisition swan around controlling magic, the final sanction against evil magicians, and yet you don’t intervene to stop powerful magicians picking on their inferiors,” Elaine snapped. She felt tears rising to her eyes and blinked hard to suppress them. “Where were you when I was at the Peerless School?”

  “I never claimed that we were perfect,” Dread said, seriously. “And you know as well as I do that people have to develop their own controls, their own self-discipline, to understand and master magic. A certain amount of unpleasant behaviour is acceptable.”

  “Not to the person on the receiving end,” Elaine snapped. She was almost shouting at him. “Don’t you care about them?”

  “I care more than you can imagine,” Dread said, flatly. There was something in his voice that warned her not to press the question any further. “But I also know that we need to breed strong magicians and we cannot do that by coddling people who may be far more powerful – potentially – than their tormentors.” He put down his fork and looked at her. “Are you still prepared to claim that you are stable?”

  “I think I know how to control myself,” Elaine said, sharply.

  “You would be astonished – and depressed – by how many magicians have believed the same thing, only to end up convinced that the right thing to do is to lay waste to the countryside and enslave entire populations,” Dread said. “I was...I was involved in the liberation of a city-state that had been taken over by a single extremely powerful magician. And he thought that he was making everything better for his people. I think that he really believed every word he said about how killing and torturing dissidents made the world a better place.”

  He shook his head. “But in the end, we had to kill three quarters of the population to save the rest,” he added. “Those choices are never easy, I am afraid. But someone has to make them.”

  “I thought that that was the Grand Sorcerer,” Elaine said, waspishly.

  “Who do you think gave the order?” Dread asked. “We didn’t decide to slaughter upwards of fifty thousand people on a whim.”

  He smiled as he started to drink his hot coffee. “Eat up before it starts to go cold,” he ordered. “We have a long walk ahead of us.”

  Elaine blinked. “We?”

  “I think I’d be happier keeping you where I can see you,” Dread said. He leaned forward and looked directly into her eyes. “I don’t like the fact that you turned up here – I think you were...influenced to come here by the charm that hit you. And the choice is between taking you with me or leaving you in my room, shackled to the bed. And because I don’t know just how powerful you really are...”

  “All right,” Elaine said, as grandly as she could. Without a clear idea of how powerful she was, he would have to knock her out to make sure she couldn’t escape. “You may come with me.”

  Dread didn’t bother to respond to the sally. “Drink up,” he said, instead. “We have an appointment with the Court Wizard at Eleven Bells.”

  Elaine looked at him. “Does the Court Wizard know that we have an appointment with him?”

  “Of course not,” Dread said, crossly. “It would spoil the surprise if I announced myself ahead of time. And it would give him time to think up some lies.”

  He grinned, picking up a pipe and sticking it in his mouth. “Something is very strange in this kingdom,” he added. “The game’s afoot.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  One thing about walking with an Inquisitor, Elaine rapidly noticed, was that everyone seemed to assume that she was under arrest. A handful of elder people looked at her as if they expected her to suddenly pull out her wand and start transforming people into frogs at random, while others hid their possessions and made signs to ward off evil gods when they thought the Inquisitor wasn’t looking. Some children catcalled in her general direction until Dread drew his wand and waved it towards them, knocking them down to the ground with irresistible force. Elaine wondered if this was how most of the werewolves felt when they entered a normal town. They’d be aware of the hatred and fear directed at them, even by people who prided themselves on control of their faces.

  “I’m sorry about the rabble,” Dread said. Elaine was surprised; she’d never heard of an Inquisitor apologising for anything before. “They do seem to take one look at us and assume that you should be in handcuffs.”

  “I thought you and your fellows tried to keep the world safe,” Elaine said, after a moment. “Why do they hate you so much?”

  “Because we could turn on them at any moment and tear their lives apart, looking for even a hint that a magic threat has crossed their minds,” Dread said. “People don’t like power without responsibility and accountability – and right now, who do we report to? There’s no Grand Sorcerer living in the Watchtower.”

  He shrugged and made a show of checking his clockwork watch. The remaining onlookers swiftly remembered urgent business elsewhere and scattered, leaving them standing alone in front of a large grey building. It seemed to blur into the rocks that ringed the city, probably linked into tunnels that went all the way up to the king’s castle. Some of the knowledge in Elaine’s mind pointed out that the city would be almost impregnable to an army, unless that army was supported by powerful magic. Even getting a few hundred troops up the tiny roads – with the enemy hurling rocks from high above – would be difficult.

  “I thought we might visit the Crypt first,” he added, “and then we can go visit the Court Wizard.”

  The stone doors were solidly locked, but Dread lifted his staff and tapped firmly on the stone, undoing the charms that bound them together. Elaine watched as the stone slid apart, revealing a long line of steps descending down into the base of the earth, illuminated only by burning torches. Someone clearly visited regularly to replace the torches, binding them with careful charms to allow them to light up whenever the main doors were open. Elaine remembered charms that would produce light for her upon demand as she realised that someone could slam the door closed and leave them trapped in the caves. But then, who would be foolish enough to do that to an Inquisitor?

  Dread led the way down the long flight of stairs, pointing out natural caves hollowed out by water erosion over the centuries. Some of the caves appeared to have been inhabited, probably where most of the population hid when an invading army threatened their walls. Elaine found herself sensing misdirection charms bound into the caves, making it harder for anyone to find their way in or out of the maze. It was easy to imagine that the caves reached down all the way to the legendary dragon who inhabited the centre of the world...

  She yelped as she stepped through another darkened stairwell and came face to face with a real dragon. It was dead, centuries old, all of the skin torn away by sorcerers intent on using it for their potions, leaving only its skeleton as a warning to anyone who dared trespass in the Crypt. There was something almost...obscene about leaving such a noble creature in such a state; part of Elaine wanted to suggest that they took it out and buried it properly. She doubted that Inquisitor Dread would agree, not when the mere attempt at moving the creature might remind magicians of what the necromancers had summoned from alternate worlds to wreak havoc on their planet. Better to leave it buried under Ida and long forgotten.

  “The noble family who rule this state would prefer that you kept all of this to yourself,” Dread said, as he picked up an object from a stone table. It was a clenched human fist, lying beside a stone knife and wand. The wand caught Elaine’s eye at once, for everyone knew that the only material that could channel magic properly was wood. Had it been petrified as thoroughly as Millicent herself, or was it something more remarkable?

  “Don’t touch,” Dread added, as Elaine reached for the wand. “You
don’t want to awaken anything that might have been left to sleep here.”

  He held up the clenched fist and spoke a word Elaine had never learned at the Peerless School. Words of Power were dangerous and often unpredictable, unless used by the strongest of wizards. The knowledge in her head spoke of the kind of self-discipline needed to use Words of Power without one’s mind wandering, allowing mischievous entities to slip into the spell and misdirect it so that one didn’t quite get exactly what one wanted. There was a ghostly roar from the dragon and its skeletal mouth began to slip open, revealing a spinning gateway into a pocket dimension. Dread caught her hand – his touch was cold, very unlike Bee’s – and pulled her inside. The world went black...

  ...And she was standing in the centre of a long stone tunnel, illuminated by magical lights that hovered above hundreds of tables. Each one held a stone coffin, decorated with the picture of the man who had been buried under the mountains. Elaine stepped closer, prompted by a flicker of memory from the books dumped into her head, and saw a strong-faced man with a beard and two black eyes that seemed to stare at her out of the ages.

  “The Warlord Elian,” Dread said. “He served under the First Emperor in his advance towards the northern seas, eventually bringing a dozen small states into the empire. In exchange for his services, the First Emperor agreed to leave Ida completely alone, a promise that was kept until the first necromancers waged war on the state during their advance on the Golden City. Some of them openly swore to desecrate Elian’s tomb, claiming that he’d sold them out to the Empire in exchange for his people remaining free. But Ida never fell and his memory is still honoured, at least here. The Golden City prefers to forget that there was a time before the Empire.”

  But it hadn’t been as simple as that, Elaine knew; the knowledge in her head told a different story. The first necromancers had claimed to be fighting for the freedom of the northern continents – as Dread had said earlier, perhaps they’d even believed their claims – and nationalism had provided the fuel for a war that shouldn’t have taken more than a year or two to end. But the Empire had gone through a series of weak Emperors – including a madman who had been intent on stamping his face over the entire world – and they hadn’t been able to stop the necromancers without resorting to the same tactics the necromancers had pioneered. And that had started the process that had turned a hero into the Witch-King...

  She looked around, feeling the pocket’s odd dimensional nature tearing at her eyes. Nothing seemed to be quite right, as if the dimension hadn’t been secured properly. “How big is this place?” she found herself asking. It seemed to stretch for miles. “How many people are buried here?”

  “All of the population has a right to be buried under the mountains,” Dread said. There was an odd note in his voice. It took Elaine a moment to realise that he was worried. Dead bodies weren’t dangerous in and of themselves, but dark sorcerers could strip them for supplies and necromancers could bring them back to a shambling parody of life. “After the Second Necromantic War, the Grand Sorcerer struck a deal with the Kings of Ida – they’d be allowed to keep burying their dead, provided they buried them all inside a pocket dimension, a dimension that could be collapsed into nothingness if necessary. They weren’t happy – their religions believe that the souls of the dead become part of the mountains, which protect their state – but there was no other alternative. After the horrors the Witch-King unleashed, we would have done anything to prevent a graveyard being turned into a source of undead soldiers.”

  Elaine shivered. Even without the knowledge in her head, she would have known how deadly the undead were, particularly to those who didn’t know how to stop them. They could be beheaded, or chopped apart, and yet they would keep going. The only way to stop them was to reduce them to ashes, which consumed vast amounts of fuel and magic. It said something about the sheer scale of the war that the necromancers hadn’t just concentrated on bringing every last graveyard back to life, but also summoning other creatures from the darkness and sending them against the Golden City. The Peerless School, the Regency Council and the Inquisition would do anything to prevent it from happening again. She was surprised that the first Grand Sorcerer had been prepared to compromise as far as he had.

  Dread pointed towards a particular coffin. “That one was prepared for Duke Gama while he was alive,” he said. He nodded at the writing someone had scrawled along the bottom of the stone case. “It claims that he was a great and wise man who never had an enemy worthy of the name. They always write that sort of nonsense on coffins and it is very rarely true. Better to forget it and assume the worst of everything.”

  Elaine blinked. “How would you know?”

  The Inquisitor gave her the kind of look a long-suffering tutor would bestow on a particularly stupid student. “Who do you think investigates when someone in a royal or noble family dies unexpectedly?”

  “You,” Elaine said. It should have occurred to her that there had to be a reason – beyond filial piety – why people like Millicent didn’t try to remove their elderly relatives to try and claim their inheritances ahead of time. Some of their seniors – like Lady Light Spinner – would be powerful enough to be nearly impossible to kill, but others would be vulnerable...of course the Inquisition would investigate. They’d probably start by interrogating everyone who could have benefited from the death with their compulsive voices and making sure that they didn’t have anything to do with the murder of their relative. And then they’d start work on the staff. Even enslavement charms had their limits – and someone who was cleverer than the slave masters realised could outwit the spells binding them to servitude. “I should have thought of that.”

  “Yes, you should,” Dread said, mercilessly. She couldn’t tell if he was irritated with her or just as uncomfortable in the midst of so many dead and decomposing bodies as she was. “There was once a widow who refused to marry again, or start writing a proper sealed will so as to keep her hold on all of the people sucking up to her in the hopes that she would leave them her money, who died suddenly. Too suddenly. And yet I couldn’t work out means and opportunity until I realised that someone had been very clever, ordering one slave to take out a bottle of poison, another to put it in the milk without being aware that it was poison, and a third to give the poisoned glass to her mistress. It turned out that if she died without a proper will, the money would be spread out among the family, including to the person who plotted her murder. He would have got less than he would have expected if he’d actually been in the will, but he did have gambling debts to pay.”

  Elaine shivered. Perhaps there was something to be said for being an orphan after all. “What happened to him?”

  “Dead,” Dread said, flatly. “I believe that the rest of her money was shared out among her relatives and her household – and her slaves were freed. The Grand Sorcerer insisted on it.”

  “Good for him,” Elaine said. She walked forward and studied Duke Gama’s face. He’d been fat, if the picture was anything near accurate, with a faintly unhealthy cast to his eyes. It had to be accurate, if only because a statue intended to be flattering would have probably been thinner and made him look more dignified. “Was there anything suspicious about Duke Gama’s death?”

  “Nothing that demanded the attention of an Inquisitor,” Dread admitted. “Gama wasn’t the kind of man to keep his desires under control. He had the reputation as a great trencherman and loved going to parties where he could eat all he wanted, even though the hosts became very inventive when they came up with excuses as to why he shouldn’t attend. His life was largely dictated by wine, women and song...mostly the women, according to the Court Wizard. His singing was apparently appallingly bad. When he died, it was evidently only a surprise that it had taken so long.

  “But that isn’t uncommon among the younger heirs,” he added. “They’re the ones who have no chance of inheriting something significant – and Gama went off on his gorging lifestyle after his brother’s heir and spare w
ere born. The Court Wizard concluded that Gama literally ate and drank himself to death. And as you know, his books ended up in the Great Library.”

  Elaine frowned. “You talked about compulsions,” she said. She wasn’t sure how much she dared say, but maybe Dread could sort out the shadow she felt hanging over her and she could retreat into obscurity. Someone would have to take Miss Prim’s place at the Great Library. “Could someone have hit him with a compulsion to just keep eating and drinking until he was dead?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Dread said, after a moment. “But such a compulsion would be...not particularly easy to miss. It would have him literally eating and eating until he threw up; surely someone would notice such odd behaviour. He was still the heir to the throne if something happened to his nephew...”

  “Maybe it was the prince who did it to him,” Elaine said. How much could she say? “He thinks he can become the Grand Sorcerer. Perhaps he cast a very subtle spell over his uncle...”

  “It would have to have avoided attention from the Court Wizard,” Dread said. He sounded rather more troubled than she would have expected. “A spell like that would probably be noticeable – and one of the reasons we have Court Wizards is so that they can notice if something is badly wrong with their charges. And yet the prince thinks he can climb to the highest position in the world.”

  He looked over at her. “Have you ever met the prince?”

  “Not really,” Elaine said. “I saw him at a distance at the Darlington when Bee...”

  A thought struck her. “Is Bee one of your people?”

  Dread blinked. “Who...ah, the romantic patroniser,” he said. “I’m afraid that young Master Bee is nothing to do with us, apart from having a brief contract with the Inquisition five years ago when he started his career in the south. He doesn’t work for us now and we didn’t steer him towards you...that was what you were asking, wasn’t it?”