Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  Elaine leaned forward. “Did his father know where he had gone?”

  “I don’t think so,” Trebuchet said, after a moment. “I did offer to try and use sorcery to track him down, but the Duke refused. I liked to think that he’d decided that his son would be better off joining the Imperial Army or maybe even sailing out to the islands and setting up a life far from home. The gods know that bastards aren’t always popular as they grow up into strapping young men.”

  “Yes, they do,” Dread mused. He shrugged. “You were the one who performed the first examination of the Duke’s private library. Did you notice anything special about the books...?”

  The change was remarkable. Trebuchet opened his mouth, and then froze horribly. His entire body started to shake, blood dripping from his mouth and nose. Dread jumped forward, casting a countering charm that Elaine had never learned in the Peerless School, but it was already too late. Trebuchet’s body exploded, scattering blood and guts everywhere. Elaine swore out loud as blood drenched her hair and clothes. Dread seemed just as shocked.

  “What...” she managed to say. “What was that?”

  “A lethal curse,” Dread said. The Inquisitor had remained calm, somehow. “Someone didn’t want him talking about those books.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Are you all right, Milady?”

  Elaine shook her head. It was rare for her to have time to enjoy a proper bath; the apartment she shared with Daria didn’t have more than a washbasin and she was too shy to visit the public baths, even the ones reserved for women alone. But Ida’s King had been willing to have the Inquisitor and his ‘assistant’ move into his castle and get cleaned up properly. The three maids assigned to Elaine had helped her to undress, climb into the bath and wash all the blood away from her body. Her clothes, they’d warned, would have to be thrown out. They were just too stained to be washed and reused.

  Her mind kept returning to the horrible moment when she’d seen Trebuchet explode. She’d never seen anything like it before; she’d never seen anyone die in front of her in her entire life. Even the sickliest of the orphanage children had been taken away before their illnesses had killed them, although she’d known that they would never be returning. But she had never been too close to anyone at the orphanage. They were either adopted and taken away, or eventually sold to slave traders and taken away. Elaine had been unusual in that she’d been left in the orphanage until she was old enough to make her own way in the world.

  The knowledge at the back of her head had identified the curse that had killed the Court Wizard. According to the text of a book on banned curses crafted for use in warfare, the curse was intended to prevent someone from revealing secrets; it bonded with the victim’s magical field, rendering it almost undetectable, until it sensed that they were on the verge of confessing to their interrogators. And then it struck, inflicting so much damage that the victim’s body literally shattered in front of the watchers. It was almost impossible to make someone who had been cursed in such a manner talk. They couldn’t talk freely, even if they didn’t know that the curse was there, while truth spells and torture would simply trigger the curse once the interrogation reached the right spot. It was a chilling thought and she felt a moment of sympathy for the Inquisition. Who knew how many others, perhaps unknowingly, were walking through the Golden City with such powerful curses attached to their soul?

  She closed her eyes as the maids came up behind her and pushed her head down lightly into the water. Warm water lapped around her body, washing away the dirt and blood, before they helped her out and started to dry her with a white towel. Elaine would normally have pushed them away – she didn’t have a maid in the apartment; the very thought was laughable and somewhat creepy – but she didn’t resist as they dried her off and produced a green dress for her to wear. It didn’t match her eyes, yet at least she could wear it. The thought of having to send someone to the inn to pick up her spare outfit was humiliating.

  “You don’t need to worry about my hair,” she said, quickly, as one of the maids started to brush it carefully. It looked as if she intended to spend longer than Daria had making Elaine look pretty, which wasn’t necessary. If royal princesses were treated in this manner every day, unable to even wash themselves without help, it was a miracle that more of them weren’t completely spoilt brats. But then, they were also breeding cows for their families. There was definitely something to be said for not being born into the aristocracy. “Just brush it and then let it hang free.”

  “But Milady, you have such nice hair,” the maid said, insistently. She wore a collar that Elaine found depressingly familiar. “I was ordered to ensure that you were suitable for your presentation to the King.”

  Elaine blinked. “My presentation to the King?”

  “The King wishes to see you and your master at High Table,” the maid said. She would have been ordered to prepare Elaine for the meeting even if Elaine argued against it. “You have to be properly prepared for him.”

  Elaine rolled her eyes and settled back onto the table as her hair was washed again, brushed, and then braided into two ponytails that reminded her of her childhood. The orphanage had been severe about how its children should look, providing uniforms and insisting that all the girls had the same hairstyle. Elaine had been glad to leave and grow her hair out a little once she’d gone to the Peerless School; she’d certainly never been allowed to experiment with perfumes until she’d left the orphanage. And then she’d never really used them until Daria had started pushing her into going on a date with Bee.

  But the maids didn’t seem to care. Elaine felt frankly useless as they poked and prodded at her, applying light makeup and dabs of ointment until she felt like an ornament, rather than a living person. Daria had given her makeup that had felt naturally part of her face. The maids had given her makeup that felt like a facemask, one that might crinkle away from her if she tried to smile. How could anyone endure living as a human doll? Perhaps they were influenced from birth to believe that that was their due. There were tribes on the Western Islands that bound their women’s feet to make them small and dainty, even though it caused them great pain. One of their gods had ordered it as an act of worship, apparently. Elaine suspected that he had been a demon in disguise.

  They finally helped her to her feet and pointed her at the mirror. Her face was pale, patted with white makeup that made her look like the doll one of the kinder matrons had given her, years ago. The green dress seemed to offset her pale face naturally, while a golden necklace called attention towards the shape of her breasts. She felt herself flushing and then sighed as one of the maids hastily reapplied makeup to hide the flush. They seemed intent on turning her into a doll. Spells danced through her mind to drive the maids away, or break the collars that ensured that they would always be loyal and obedient to their monarch, but she ignored them as best she could. The gods alone knew what the King wanted with them.

  Outside the warm room, Castle Adamant was cold, illuminated by torchlight rather than magic or the gas lights used in some parts of the world. The small army of servants seemed accustomed to the cold, wearing furs to keep themselves warm or simply ignoring it with the dedication of the magically enslaved; the handful of guards wore suits of armour that probably included spells that kept them warm and alert. Battle spells she’d never learned at the Peerless School – she hadn’t had the talent to go into combat magic – shimmered through her mind. A handful of carefully-charmed garments could make their wearers invincible, as long as they didn’t encounter an enemy with stronger magic.

  Castle Adamant didn’t seem to be partly built into a pocket dimension, unlike most of the houses belonging to the wealthy in the Golden City. Elaine suspected that it made sense, from their point of view; Ida had never had a strong magical tradition and they’d probably worried about the danger of a cunning enemy collapsing the pocket dimension and crushing the interior of the castle. What would be a nuisance in the Crypt would be a disaster in the l
iving breathing heart of the kingdom. The Crypt...

  A thought struck her. It was a mad thought, one that would have been dangerous even without an Inquisitor nearby, but it refused to fade from her mind. Death broke all enchantments, everyone agreed; even the darkest of enslavement charms would be shattered if the victim were bound to only one person, who happened to die before the charm was passed on to a younger master. And Trebuchet was very definitely dead. Even a necromancer would have had problems raising his corpse and sending it out to prey on the living.

  She caught one of the maid’s hands and halted her. “I want you to have my clothes, the ones that were splattered with blood, brought to my rooms,” she ordered. She had a feeling that the King would have organised rooms for her and Dread, if only to ensure that they were where he could see them. No King would be happy with an Inquisitor sniffing around, perhaps digging up secrets that should remain buried. “Have them bagged and left for my inspection.”

  “Yes, Milady,” the maid said, with a bow. Elaine allowed herself a moment of relief – and regret. It had been quite possible that the maid would have been forced to check with her master before she did anything he hadn’t already cleared her to do. Enslavement charms were rarely subtle, but then they didn’t need to be subtle to do their job. It was a chilling reminder of what could have happened to her if she’d been sold to the slave traders from the orphanage.

  The King’s Great Hall was enormous, larger than Elaine had expected. It was also cold, warmed only by a massive fire at one end of the room. A dozen heavy wooden tables – Elaine remembered what Dread had said about wood being expensive in Ida – were lined up along the hall, with a single raised table at the far end. Inquisitor Dread stood at one end of the high table, speaking with one of the King’s servants. He turned and nodded to Elaine as the maids brought her up to the table. Elaine was oddly piqued that he didn’t show any sign of noticing her outfit, although she didn’t want an Inquisitor lusting after her. Some of the knowledge in her head suggested that Inquisitors were sworn to lives of chastity. Daria would have made a joke about that explaining why they were always in such foul moods.

  “They insisted on giving us the royal treatment,” Dread said. Elaine looked at him sharply. He didn’t seem to have changed at all, merely swapped his black robes for another set of identical black robes. Or maybe his robes had been charmed to prevent blood from sticking to them and becoming impossible to remove. Inquisitors were meant to walk into danger on a daily basis. “The King wants us to join him for dinner before we continue our investigation.”

  Elaine wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t even sure why Dread had brought her along, let alone tell everyone that she was his partner in the investigation. But they were working on the same puzzle, weren’t they? Whatever had happened to her had to be connected with what had happened to Trebuchet. And anyone that could curse a fully-qualified Court Wizard had to make the Inquisitors nervous. No Court Wizard was appointed unless he was fully trained in all branches of magic, and powerful as all hell to boot. Trebuchet could have turned her into a toad simply by snapping his fingers.

  “Thank you,” she said, finally. Maybe Dread just wanted to keep an eye on her. If he thought that her powers had been boosted, he had to consider her a potential danger to the entire world. Maddened magicians could tap into levels of power that were normally far beyond them, at a price of abandoning all hope of returning to sanity. And then there were the demons that fed on such fools. “They took hours to wash me...”

  A trumpet blew before she could finish her sentence. “Kneel for His Majesty, the King of Ida,” a voice thundered from nowhere. “Give him great honour, as he deserves.”

  Elaine went down on one knee, as did the handful of other guests. Inquisitor Dread didn’t move, but then an Inquisitor wouldn’t bow the knee to anyone below the Grand Sorcerer himself. The King marched into the room and nodded in return, allowing his guests to return to their feet. At least Ida had never developed the elaborate royal protocol of the southern continent. The Empress of the South was supposed to remain concealed from her subjects at all times, hidden behind a screen whenever she held audience. Maybe that was where Lady Light Spinner had picked up the habit of concealing her face. And yet the Empress had a reputation for also seducing everything on two legs. Perhaps being locked up in a gilded cage, powerful enough to have half the continent executed but not powerful enough to change her apartments, was enough to turn her into a man-eater.

  King Hildebrand, father of Prince Hilarion, was a tall middle-aged man with russet hair and beard hanging down to his chest. He was powerfully built, but his gait gave evidence of too much good living over the past couple of decades; he wore a pair of spectacles rather than have a simple corrective spell used to fix his eyesight. Elaine could have understood that for someone like her, without the money to hire a druid to craft and implement the spell, but even the poorest monarch shouldn’t have had any problems convincing a druid to heal his eyes. His Court Wizard could probably have crafted the spell himself.

  He wore a suit of golden armour decorated with purple strips of cloth that she recognised as signifying a monarch. Only monarchs were allowed to wear purple and gold, although the Grand Sorcerer’s formal robes were also purple and gold, a reminder to the monarchs that he was very definitely their superior. Elaine knew from some of the history books that had been jammed into her mind – history as she hadn’t been taught it at school – that some of the monarchs had feared that the Grand Sorcerer would eventually become a tyrant. Anyone with unquestioned authority could become corrupt, but none of the Grand Sorcerers had fallen prey to the temptation to abuse their power. They probably swore mighty oaths that kept them from crossing that line.

  “I welcome you to my kingdom,” he said, holding out a hand to Elaine. It took her a moment to realise that she was supposed to kiss it. “I am sorry that your first mission for the Inquisition ended so badly.”

  He didn’t sound concerned, not for a monarch whose Court Wizard had been cursed and then killed in his own castle. And he believed that Elaine was training to join the Inquisition...but very little was known, publicly, of how Inquisitors were trained. It was quite possible that the Inquisitors threw prospective candidates in at the deep end to see how they coped.

  “The matter has not yet ended,” Dread said. “Someone deliberately cursed your Court Wizard; that person remains unknown. We will have to continue our investigation until we determine what actually happened to him.”

  “He was always fond of his own experiments,” one of the guests said. He wore dark clothes and a bright silver medallion that reassembled a large Crown. The Treasurer, Elaine guessed. “Instead of attending hunting or fishing expeditions, he would continue his own experiments in his quarters. Is it not possible that he could have cursed himself by accident?”

  “Only a very foolish or untrained magician would have cursed himself accidentally,” Dread said, in his very even voice. Elaine suspected that he didn’t like the thought of wasting time talking and eating when they should be searching the wizard’s chambers. “The rawest of magicians would know to set wards to prevent that from happening...”

  “But Hilarion wouldn’t have known, would he?” A new voice demanded. Elaine turned to see a girl, barely old enough to be of marriageable age, emerging from a side door. She had long red hair and wore a black dress, her face a strange blend of ethnic traits. The King had married a woman from the other side of the world, according to the history books Elaine had read while travelling to Ida, and had two children with her. “You should never have encouraged his ambitions.”

  “That will do,” the King snapped. “I told you to remain in your quarters, young lady.”

  “And I said that I wasn’t going to remain a pampered princess,” Princess Sacharissa said, with a determination that Elaine could only admire. She wouldn’t have backed down in front of Millicent, even if she didn’t have enough magic in her to light a candle flame. “My brother
has gone off to the Golden City, where they are going to eat him alive, while you expect me to remain in my chambers and keep myself pretty for the first inbred moron who wants to marry me.”

  She sat down at the table and waved to one of the maids. “You may as well serve the food now,” she ordered. “There won’t be any useful discussion until after they’ve eaten.”

  Dread smiled thinly at Elaine, and then turned to the guests. “What kind of experiments was the Court Wizard running?”

  Princess Sacharissa answered before anyone else could speak. “He had an obsession with turning lead into gold,” she said. “And an obsession with ways to extend his life. You’d think that a magician would be wise enough to know when his time was running out, but not our one! He kept looking and looking for secrets that would keep him alive...and then my brother became interested in magic. I tried to tell him that he was being a fool.”

  “That will do,” the King said, again. “You will eat and then we will...discuss this matter very thoroughly.”

  “I think I would wish to talk with you later,” Dread said, to the Princess. “Do not leave the castle.”

  “As if I would be allowed to leave without a pack of werewolves around me,” the Princess snorted. She seemed to be brave enough to be sarcastic to an Inquisitor. Elaine felt a hot flash of envy, which she quickly suppressed. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you want me.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Daria would have enjoyed the meal, Elaine thought, as she dug her way through a plate that was far too large for her. Undercooked meat, a handful of unidentified vegetables and a thick gravy that actually had to be spooned out of the jug wasn’t what she wanted in a dinner. Dread didn’t seem to care what he was fed, while the King and Princess ignored each other in stony silence and the courtiers took their cue from their master. Elaine would have liked to ask Princess Sacharissa what had happened to make her brother so interested in magic, but it was impossible to speak to her in front of her father. It was almost a relief when the final course – a pudding so sweet that it made Elaine’s teeth hurt – was over and a pair of maids were ordered to show them to Trebuchet’s chambers.