Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  Princess Sacharissa frowned. “Would that work?”

  “Of course it would work,” Dread said. “The price, however, is very high.”

  The Princess lifted her eyebrows. “Sanity,” Dread explained, reluctantly. “And that’s just for starters. Madness brings with it the ability to call on magic powers rarely mastered by mankind, powers that eat away at the flesh of their victim even as he believes he is their master. They say that that is what happened to the Witch-King.”

  Elaine shivered. She knew the truth behind the Witch-King, but did Dread? She wanted to tell him, and yet...she didn’t really want to talk about it. If he believed in Valiant, and looked up to him as a possible role model, why should she ruin his ideals by telling him the truth? What possible good could it do?

  “Never mind him,” Elaine said. “What are we going to do about the problems in Ida?”

  “First, we’re going to get you back to the Golden City, where we can keep you under guard until we have a new Grand Sorcerer to judge your case,” Dread said. Elaine had to fight to repress a snort. What if the new Grand Sorcerer was Prince Hilarion? Or Deferens? They wouldn’t be inclined to view her sudden acquisition of forbidden knowledge very lightly. And she doubted that any of the others would take a better view of it. “And then...”

  He shook his head. “I don’t even know where to begin sorting this mess out...”

  “Maybe you should forget convention and just move against my brother,” Princess Sacharissa said. “Surely, if you can stop him, everything else won’t matter.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Dread explained, patiently. “The Inquisition exists to prevent the misuse of magic and magical artefacts. It does not exist to vet candidates for the post of Grand Sorcerer, at least without direct orders from the reigning Grand Sorcerer. We depend upon a degree of consent from the rest of the population to carry out our duties. If they start thinking that we’re picking and choosing the Grand Sorcerer...”

  He shrugged. “The results could be outright civil war,” he admitted. “I suspect that my superiors will find some way of dealing with the problem, but not immediately. I don’t think your brother can win without the help of this young lady.”

  He nodded to Elaine. “So we should be fine as long as we keep you well away from him,” he added. “You won’t try to run off again?”

  “Not as long as you don’t try to kill me,” Elaine said, seriously.

  Dread didn’t smile. “I hope it doesn’t come down to that,” he said, flatly. “I’ll do my best to keep it from becoming a problem for us.”

  Elaine was still thinking about possible solutions. “Couldn’t you put it to a vote?”

  Dread blinked in surprise. “A vote?”

  “You have six possible candidates for the position – five, if we exclude Prince Hilarion,” Elaine pointed out. “What if you told them what was going on and then asked them to commit their support to investigating the Prince and flushing him out – you’d just need three votes in favour and then you could reasonably claim that you had the support of the next Grand Sorcerer, whoever he might be.”

  “Assuming that the investigation turned up enough dirt to prove that he was up to something dangerous – and illegal,” Dread said. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “And it would be very embarrassing if one of the dissenters became the next Grand Sorcerer. And we’d need proof...”

  “I thought that you had the powers you needed to investigate anyone on suspicion of necromancy,” Elaine said, in surprise. “Couldn’t you just tell them what we know.”

  “We don’t have absolute proof that Prince Hilarion is involved in this crazy plan,” Dread said. He smiled sourly at her expression. “Think about it. We know that his father was involved, as was his former Court Wizard, but we don’t have anything on Prince Hilarion himself. And we don’t even know if his father is a willing conspirator or under the control of person or persons unknown.”

  Elaine remembered the voice speaking out of the crystal ball and shivered. But if pressed she would have to admit that she didn’t know who had been on the other end.

  “And Prince Hilarion is very well connected through his father and grandfather’s complex network of marriage alliances,” he added. “And most of the aristocracy will rally around him without absolutely watertight proof that he is controlling his father and experimenting with banned magic. It might even be hard to prove that the spell he used on you, through that cursed book, was illegal. He could merely smile and deny all knowledge, or claim that he hadn’t thought that anyone would be stupid enough to open the volume without checking first...”

  Elaine scowled at him, but she had to admit that he had a point. The druids spent most of their time dealing with the fallout from magical disasters, which were mainly caused by some idiot walking into a set of wards or accidentally triggering a spell they didn’t know how to control. Every magician worthy of the name used wards and booby traps to safeguard his possessions. There was no law against doing it, if only because it would be widely ignored. And anyone stupid enough to try to burgle a magician deserved everything he got.

  And Dread was right. The aristocracy were determined to retain what few rights and privileges they had left. They would definitely rally around Prince Hilarion unless there was watertight proof...proof that they might never be able to acquire. Once there was a new Grand Sorcerer...but what if Prince Hilarion became the new Grand Sorcerer?

  She hesitated. “What if we killed him?”

  “He’s my brother,” Princess Sacharissa objected. “I know he can be an asshole at times, but...”

  “Killing a potential Grand Sorcerer is a serious crime,” Dread pointed out. “I don’t think we would be able to convince everyone that we’d done the right thing.” He shrugged. “Are you always this bloodthirsty?”

  Elaine stared at him. She hadn’t been bloodthirsty before the accident, any more than she’d have stood up to Millicent – and her aunt – or talked to an Inquisitor like he was a friend. And now she’d seen four men die in front of her – five if they counted the werewolf as human – and was coldly talking about killing another man. It wasn’t what she wanted to be...

  ...But was there any choice? What if Prince Hilarion became the new Grand Sorcerer?

  The thought kept spinning around in her mind. What if...what if...there had to be a way to stop him, but...what?

  A thought struck her. “Where is he staying at the moment?”

  “With the Duke of Randor,” Dread said. “At least he was last time I heard – I suppose he could have decided to desert the Golden City by now if he thinks we have proof of his misdeeds.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Princess Sacharissa muttered. “He was...always a stubborn bastard.”

  “Why don’t we burgle the house and see what he has in his secret chests?” Elaine asked. She would never have dared think of that before the accident. “Or what if we...”

  “That would be technically illegal,” Dread said, deadpan. “I would not be able to accompany you.”

  Of course, Elaine realised. He’d taken his oaths. “But I can’t think of anything better,” she said. “Unless we just keep our heads down and hope for the best.”

  “You should be kept under firm guard until the new Grand Sorcerer is selected,” Dread said. “But let me give the matter some thought. I should be able to come up with a possible solution that will suit both of us.”

  “I want to go out with Bee again,” Elaine said, firmly. For once, she was going to chase a man – by following Daria’s advice and running away very slowly. “You can have me escorted if you like, but I am going.”

  Princess Sacharissa gave her an odd look. “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Sort of,” Elaine said, reluctantly. Princess Sacharissa was beautiful. She could have any boy she wanted, just like Daria. There was no way she was going to allow her anywhere near Bee until she’d decided just what she wanted to do with him. “And no, you can’t have him.”r />
  Dread laughed. “Get some rest,” he said. “We catch the coach to the Golden City at dawn – hopefully we should be well away before they catch up with us. If they do...”

  Elaine frowned. “Do you think they’ll come after us?”

  “They must,” Dread reminded her. “They’re committed – they were committed the moment they tried to kill me. They have no choice but to play it out to the end.”

  He doffed his hood to them and left the room, carefully creating the wards that should keep them both safe overnight. Elaine watched him go and then looked over at Princess Sacharissa, who looked back at her as if she didn’t quite believe what was happening. Elaine felt the same way. Had it really only been a week ago when she’d had nothing more important on her mind than working for Miss Prim?

  “Tell me something,” Princess Sacharissa said. “He may be your master, but he isn’t your lover?”

  Elaine flushed. “No, he isn’t my lover,” she said. And he wasn’t really her master either, although part of Elaine was tempted to work with the Inquisition in future – if they ever agreed to allow her out of their sight. “Are you interested in him?”

  Princess Sacharissa didn’t flush. “What if I was?”

  Elaine felt an odd pang of sympathy for Daria. Had her friend felt the same way when trying to talk her into entering the wonderful world of boys?

  “He’s an Inquisitor, married to his job,” Elaine said, simply. “Just remember that he won’t put you first – he can’t. They want single-minded ruthlessness and they get it.”

  She shook her head as she climbed into bed and waved her hand at the candle flame, using a tiny charm to dampen its glare. Sleep shouldn’t have come easily, but she was exhausted and – for once – her sleep was dreamless. She only awoke once to the sound of quiet sobbing. The Princess had finally realised that everything was real.

  Elaine did the one thing she could for the prideful girl. She pretended she hadn’t heard anything.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Inquisition was housed in the Watchtower itself, a blocky structure that provided an excellent vantage point over the surrounding territory – and the Golden City. Elaine had visited it while she was in the Peerless School, but had never visited it afterwards – and certainly never as a possible candidate for the Inquisition’s attentions. The looks some of the guards tossed at her suggested that they thought that she should be going into the building wearing handcuffs...and they didn’t even know why she was there.

  Inquisitor Dread led her through the public part of the building, walking through the waiting room. A handful of junior Inquisitors were attempting to cope with a backlog of magical complaints, ranging from tricks played by junior magicians to more serious incidences of dark magic being used against helpless civilians. The death of the Grand Sorcerer had left a power vacuum in the heart of the Empire and it wouldn’t be filled until a new Grand Sorcerer was selected to fill his shoes. And then the more rowdy elements would be brought under control, or crushed. Elaine knew enough now, from Dread or from the forbidden knowledge in her heart, to know that part of the price of becoming Grand Sorcerer was to keep magic and magicians under control. The new Grand Sorcerer would establish his authority by stamping on the rowdy elements, just incidentally reminding the non-magicians why they needed a Grand Sorcerer in the first place. Someone had to keep magicians firmly in line.

  She blinked in surprise as she heard a girl babbling drunkenly. “She did this to me,” the girl said, loudly enough to be heard halfway across the room. “Where’s my owner? This floor hasn’t been swept in weeks. I should be going to work...I’m human! I’m not a...”

  Elaine stared until Dread nudged her. “Her housemate transfigured her into a broom when she refused to do any housework around the apartment,” he said, by way of explanation. “But the housemate wasn’t a very skilled witch and caused a mental transformation as well as a physical one. Even now she has been returned to flesh and blood, part of her still thinks she’s a broom – and that she has always been a broom.”

  “But...” Elaine began, before shaking her head. Transforming a person into an inanimate object was easy, but it was almost impossible to do the reverse and transform an inanimate object into a person. But someone whose mind had been warped into thinking that she was a broom wouldn’t notice that what she thought had happened to her was impossible. No amount of calm reasoning from the Inquisitors would change her mind. “What are you going to do with her?”

  “That’s up to the Inquisitors on duty,” Dread said. “It depends; maybe we’d use a simple spell to adjust her mind, or maybe we’d see to it that her friend got a taste of her own medicine. Or maybe we’d just have to wait and let the girl get better on her own.”

  He shook his head as Elaine looked around the massive chamber. There were people who had been tricked into drinking love potions, whose relatives had brought them to the Watchtower to complain to the Inquisitors. Some love potions were little more than practical jokes, the effects wearing off within days, but others were permanent, rewriting a person’s mind around pleasing the object of their affections. They were banned, by edict of one of the previous Grand Sorcerers, yet it was easy enough to produce one of the more powerful recipes. The Great Library had never managed to round up the majority of the copies of books describing love potions.

  The knowledge buzzing through her head told her that it might be impossible to save the people who’d drunk the love potions, or at least stop them becoming fixated on something. Given time, the druids could probably refocus the spell on something harmless, leaving the victim capable of living a fairly normal life. If not...she wondered, absently, what would be the best thing to do for the victim. They’d pine away and die if they weren’t allowed to unite with the person they thought they loved.

  Love potions are no joke, she thought, as she looked away from a young man with wide hopeless eyes. Even Millicent hadn’t tried to spike a person’s drink with a love potion. It was one of the few acts that would get someone – anyone – expelled from the Peerless School, their wands snapped, before they were sold into slavery. The ones that wore off within hours would still leave scars that might last for a lifetime.

  She wanted to look away from the crowd of victims, but she couldn’t. A young woman was screaming about how she should have had a tail rather than bare legs; Elaine realised, after a moment, that she was a mermaid who had been the victim of a cruel practical joke. She’d be a fish out of water in the Golden City, even if she could survive without water. Two young men had been fused together by magic, stumbling around as if their conjoined body hadn’t quite figured out how to coordinate itself. A number of waitresses had been hit with a charm that convinced them that they couldn’t wear clothes, even in public. Their parents were shielding them as best they could from the gaze of the young men in the crowd. Elaine suspected that only the presence of a handful of scowling Inquisitors had kept the young men from trying their luck.

  Dread shook his head as they reached a heavy stone door. “Let us hope that this will all be over once a responsible authority takes his place as Grand Sorcerer,” he said. “The Inquisition is being pushed to the limit by the sudden upsurge in magical crime.”

  “And yet you came all the way to Ida to check up on me,” Elaine said. She hadn’t realised, not really, just how hard it would be for the Inquisition to cope with magical crime between Grand Sorcerers. Normally, when the Inquisition showed up, anyone with any sense would head for the exit as quickly as possible. But there weren’t enough Inquisitors in one place to patrol the entire city. “Why was I so important?”

  “Are you not glad I did?” Dread asked, ducking her question. She’d learned from their three days in various coaches – the iron dragons would have been direct, but their enemies would have been watching all the direct routes – that Dread tended to be sardonic when answering questions to which he felt the person should already know the answers. “And besides, I had unsolved mysteries
.”

  Elaine felt the repulsion spell on the door pushing at her, just before Dread pressed his hand against the stone and the spell snapped off. “This is the part of the Watchtower that is rarely shown to outsiders,” Dread said, softly. “You must not speak of what you see or hear inside this part of the building.”

  The door opened, allowing them entry before it closed with an audible thud. Silence fell, almost like a physical blow. There were so many muffling spells in the air that even Elaine’s rudimentary magical senses felt blinded, as if her head were suddenly full of cotton wool. Dread seemed to be speaking – she could definitely see his mouth moving – but she couldn’t hear a word. And then her ears popped and she could hear normally again.

  “We don’t want people spying on us,” Dread said. His voice sounded funny inside the Watchtower, slightly dampened by the active spells all around them. “There are more wards around this part of the building than there are anywhere else outside the Golden Palace.”

  He led her down the corridor, Elaine struggling to keep up with his long strides. The interior of the Watchtower was another pocket dimension, although one that didn’t quite make sense to Elaine’s mind. Unlike the Great Library, it didn’t appear to be larger on the inside than on the outside; it was almost as if the interior was rapidly shuffling itself around to accommodate permitted guests and confuse unwelcome intruders. The thought made her shudder; given enough time and power, the Inquisitors could have infused a personality into the Watchtower, or perhaps summoned a demon and used it as a source of power. She hoped it wasn’t the latter. All the knowledge in her head insisted that only a fool would trust a demon to keep a promise. They were older than mankind and very – very – devious. And they delighted in watching humans suffer and die.

  There seemed to be no other Inquisitors in the private part of the building, but she was unable to escape the sense of being permanently watched. The corridors seemed to be shifting all around them – at one point, she was sure she saw doors flickering in and out of existence – before they finally reached a large hall. A set of demonic statues awaited them, braced for the command to spring to life and attack the intruders. What did it say about the Inquisition, Elaine wondered, when they were so careful to take precautions even inside their stronghold? It seemed to take paranoia to ridiculous levels.