He met Johan’s eyes. “I know! Three years after I was born, our parents found a baby on the doorstep, wrapped in swaddling clothes and wailing piteously. And, because they needed someone for us to practice on, they took the baby into their house and called it their son, even though it had no magic. They didn’t care about the child! No wonder father quietly encouraged me to test my spells on you. You weren’t his son!”
“That’s a lie,” Johan said, frantically. He knew there were plenty of tests to confirm the parentage of children, if there was even the tiniest fraction of doubt. Given his … condition, those tests would definitely have been used. “I would have been tested …”
“Why bother?” Jamal asked. His voice lightened, slightly. “He knew you weren’t his son and you weren’t going to inherit, so why bother testing you?”
Johan stared at him. Could it be true? His parents had had all sorts of arguments about him as he’d grown older, his father even hinting that his mother had done something appalling and brought upon herself the punishment of the gods. And yet, his father had never even hinted to Johan that he might not be his son. Duncan Conidian had been horrified to have sired a powerless child, but he’d never given Johan up for adoption …
He laughed, suddenly. “You’ve overplayed your hand,” he said, taking a step backwards. He no longer felt scared, merely angry. “If that were true, if I was no relation to you, how could you have found me?”
Jamal smiled, then lunged forward. Johan jumped back, focusing his mind; Jamal lashed out with his sword, which became a snake in his hand. It turned with a nasty hiss; Jamal dropped it at once, then threw himself forward. Johan imagined a wall between them; Jamal ran headlong into an invisible force and fell to the ground, blood leaking from a nasty gash in his forehead.
“I took your power,” Johan said, feeling the magic growing stronger as hatred roared through his mind. “And now you’re going to suffer …”
Jamal turned, staring up at him. “Please …”
“You never listened when I begged,” Johan shouted, ignoring the danger. He envisaged something picking Jamal up and throwing him away; Jamal screamed as he was wrenched from the ground and hurled into the distance. He hit the ground hard enough to break bones. “You never treated me as anything other than your toy!”
He strode over to where his brother had fallen. Somehow, despite everything, he was sure his brother wasn’t dead … but that was good. The hatred burning through him demanded that Jamal die at his bare hands. Cold rage powered him as he peered down at the broken body, one leg twisted so badly that it was clearly shattered. Blood pooled on the snow, mocking him. Jamal’s life was slowly leaking away. He gathered himself, ready to kick Jamal to death …
“Careful,” a quiet voice said. “You can give into the darkness that way.”
Johan stared down at Jamal, suddenly shocked. “I …”
He turned. Dread was standing behind him, leaning on a climbing pole. The Inquisitor looked battered, but alive. Johan looked at him, feeling the rage slowly draining out of his mind. All that was left was bitter horror … and fear. He still couldn’t feel Elaine. Her mind was gone.
“If you kill him, like that, you’ll lose yourself,” Dread warned. His voice was very calm, as if he were quite willing to accept whatever decision Johan made. “Madness will overcome you.”
Johan looked back at Jamal, who was staring up at them. His brother had always been a bully … and a coward, too. Jamal had always tormented those with less magic or wealth than himself, but he’d never tried to fight anyone stronger. He’d certainly failed to stand up to the Inquisitors when they’d arrested him for attacking mundanes. Now …
“He’s a danger,” Johan said, numbly. He’d never considered that anyone could use his blood to track him down, although in hindsight it was obvious. Deferens had Charity under his control, after all. Misogynist prick he might be, but Deferens should have had no problems using Charity’s blood in a similar spell. “We can’t leave him alive.”
“You can’t kill him,” Dread said, grimly. He seemed to come to a decision. “I need you to find Elaine.”
Johan nodded, reluctantly. The bond seemed broken, as if she was gone … and yet, his feelings for her hadn’t changed. He knew little about bonds – Elaine had made him read a book on them, but the book hadn’t covered their situation – yet it seemed to him that his feelings should have snapped back to normal, if the bond had shattered completely. No, she had to be alive, just … unconscious. It was turning into a habit.
He closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could, trying to feel the thin remains of the bond. It was there, but faint; terrifyingly faint. Gritting his teeth, he started to walk in a circle, trying to track down where the bond was strongest. Unsurprisingly, it felt as though Elaine had fallen down the side of the mountain.
“Jamal Conidian,” Dread said, quietly. Johan stopped to listen, even though he had the feeling he didn’t want to hear. “By the power vested in me, I find you guilty of crimes against the Empire, including assault, misuse of magic, breach of your parole and horrendous abuse of innocent victims. I sentence you to death.”
Johan stumbled away, but he couldn’t help hearing a final crack. The bond led him down the mountainside; he picked a path down as quickly as he could, trying to ignore his conflicted feelings. He’d hated Jamal. He would have been quite happy if he’d never seen his brother again. And yet … there was a part of him that regretted Jamal’s death. His brother shouldn’t have had to die at Dread’s hands.
“You killed him,” he said, as Dread caught up with him. He wasn’t surprised to see that the former Inquisitor wasn’t carrying a body. There was no point in trying to bury Jamal, not in the snow. Johan wouldn’t have cared if the mountain lizards tore Jamal apart to feed their young. “Why?”
“You were right,” Dread said. “He had to die. I killed him so you wouldn’t have to.”
Johan looked down at the ground, unsure if he should be relieved or angry. Dread had taken the decision from him, choosing to assert his authority … if, of course, he still had any authority. Did an Inquisitor still bear the burden of his office without magic? Johan had a feeling the answer was no, but he doubted anyone would care to tell Dread that. Magic or not, Dread was still formidable.
The bond pulsed, suddenly. Johan ran down the mountainside, suddenly heedless of the danger, and let out a sigh of relief as he saw Elaine’s body lying on the ground. A woman was kneeling next to her, her fingertips on Elaine’s forehead. She looked up when she heard Johan running towards her, her face twisted into an odd scowl. Her brown hair reminded Johan of Elaine …
There was a flash of light. When it faded, the woman was gone.
Johan ignored it as he knelt down next to Elaine. Her hood had been torn back, allowing her hair to spill out onto the ground. Gritting his teeth, Johan pulled it back into place, then touched her bare skin. She was still breathing, he thought, but she was very cold. Her lips were so pale as to be almost translucent.
“Help me,” Johan said, as Dread came up behind him. “What do we do?”
“I’m not sure,” Dread said. He poked Elaine’s body in several places, trying to elicit a reaction. “Her magic must have protected her, because she isn’t frozen to death …”
He paused. “Can you still feel her emotions?”
“I can’t feel anything, apart from the bond itself,” Johan said. Was Elaine dying? What had that woman done to her? Who was she? “It’s like her mind isn’t there any longer.”
“Then you have to find it,” Dread said, flatly. “Touch the side of her head, then plunge into her mind and find her before her body dies.”
Johan hesitated. “But …”
“Do it,” Dread said. “Unless you want her to die.”
Johan pulled back Elaine’s hood and stared down at her face. She looked … fragile, somehow, almost like a living doll. If anything, her face had grown paler …
“I don’t know ho
w,” he said, touching her skin lightly. It didn’t feel human. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Close your eyes,” Dread said. “Feel the bond; it should form around your fingertips. All you have to do is travel through the bond and into her mind. It should be possible, even given your … unusual magic. Make sure you leave a trail behind you so you can find your way back out.”
Johan closed his eyes. Elaine’s presence was there, but weak; he concentrated on his fingertips and realised, suddenly, that there was a way to walk right into her mind. It felt wrong to even think about it, but merely finding the way was enough to send him flying down the link. His body seemed to fall away from him as he left it behind …
Shit, he thought. What if he couldn’t get out? He concentrated, envisaging leaving a trail behind him as he moved onwards into the darkness, then started to search for Elaine. Her presence seemed to be everywhere, yet nowhere. Where are you?
But there was no answer.
Chapter Seventeen
Elaine opened her eyes.
She was standing in the middle of a room – she assumed. There was a lantern, a table, two comfortable chairs, a pair of cups and a pot of warm liquid, but there were no walls. The pool of light shed by the lantern was surrounded by darkness, a darkness so deep that she didn’t dare stare into it despite the sense that there were things out there, watching her. No matter what she did, she couldn’t touch Johan’s mind. She was alone …
“Greetings,” a voice said. She’d been wrong. A man was sitting in one of the chairs, reaching for the pot of warm liquid. “What would you like to drink?”
Elaine stared. The man was … heroic. She couldn’t think of any other word to describe him; he was tall, handsome and muscular, wearing a suit of charmed armour with a sword slung over his shoulder. His hands were so solid that she doubted he could pick up a china cup without breaking it, yet he held the pot so gently he didn’t even spill a drop. Elaine recognised him, but she suspected she was the only living being who would. No one else remembered Valiant, the man who’d become the Witch-King.
“You!”
“Me,” the Witch-King agreed. He waved a hand at the table. “Please, sit. We have much to discuss.”
Elaine hesitated, then sat down facing him. Up close, there was something subtly wrong about his features, as if they were slightly out of focus. Or, perhaps, a glamour that wasn’t perfectly tuned, imperfect enough to reveal that it was a glamour. The more she looked at him, the more she saw something hiding under his appearance, something she couldn’t quite perceive. It was utterly inhuman.
“Is that what you really look like?”
The Witch-King smiled. “Is that your first question?”
Elaine shrugged. She’d never really thought of the Witch-King as human, or anything other than a distant presence pulling the strings. A lich, if the knowledge in her head was accurate, would look like a walking skeleton, barely even humanoid. Hell, if his body was crippled, he would find it very hard to repair. But the person facing her certainly looked alive and well.
“For the moment,” she said, looking down at the table. It felt real. “Are you going to give me straight answers to anything else?”
“Maybe,” the Witch-King said. He lifted his cup and took a sip. “There’s nothing here that can harm you, young lady. I give you my word on it.”
Oddly, Elaine believed him. “Where am I?”
The Witch-King smiled. “This is the centre of your mind,” he said. “You’re trapped here until your body dies.”
Elaine stared at him. “That woman … that woman was my mother, wasn’t she?”
“She couldn’t be anyone else,” the Witch-King said. “I held her in reserve until she was needed, then placed her back on the game board.”
“I never considered the possibility,” Elaine admitted, more to herself than to him. “It never crossed my mind that my mother would have been a magician …”
“There’s a lot magicians don’t understand about magic,” the Witch-King said. “But then, you know that better than I.”
Elaine nodded, slowly. Kane had been a powerful sorcerer; logically, she should have inherited at least the potential for power from him even if her mother had been a mundane whore. But two magicians … it was vanishingly rare for them to produce a low-power child, let alone a Powerless. Had something been done to her, while she’d been in the womb or just afterwards, to ensure her magic never flourished? Or had they simply been poor choices?
“You did something to me,” she accused. “Something that weakened my magic.”
“It would be more accurate to say I matched your parents in the reasonable belief they would produce a weak magician,” the Witch-King said. “There isn’t anyone, with the possible exception of you, who understands just how the different … strands of power and potential weave together. Most of the magic they had cancelled itself out when you were conceived, ensuring you wouldn’t have that much talent.”
He took another sip of his drink. “You weren’t the only prospect, of course,” he added, after a moment. “Merely the one who was gently steered towards the Great Library, so you’d be in place to receive the spell that turned you into the Bookworm.”
“Into a living repository of knowledge,” Elaine said.
“Quite,” the Witch-King agreed. “I needed to know what had been developed in the years since I was entombed.”
Elaine shook her head, slowly. “And Johan? Did you create him too?”
“No,” the Witch-King said. “House Conidian is an old house. Johan was merely the lucky one who had the greatest power of all woven into his strands. But then, I was not expecting Duncan Conidian to let him live. He looked like a terrible embarrassment.”
Elaine’s eyes narrowed. “You’re responsible for the Powerless being purged?”
“Of course,” the Witch-King said. “Magic runs in their strands … and the longer it takes to develop, the more powerful it is.”
“That’s the complete opposite of what I was told,” Elaine said. “I …”
“Yes,” the Witch-King said. “It wouldn’t do to have more rivals to me, would it?”
He placed his cup down on the table, gently. “You already know that some magicians have bursts of wild magic, when they’re shocked or frightened or think they’re about to die,” he said. “Such bursts are often far more powerful – and chaotic – than the more focused spells you’re taught in the Peerless School, which is why magicians are normally trained to keep their thoughts and emotions under tight control. The first burst of wild magic is celebrated because it marks the child as a magician, right?”
“Right,” Elaine said.
“However, what the families don’t realise is that the spells they’ve been taught are designed to help a child develop his or her magic early,” the Witch-King continued. “They’re expected to develop their potential as soon as possible, which ironically cripples their ability to use wild magic. And someone who is resistant to the spells, someone with the potential for truly great power, is often believed to lack power completely. The Great Houses, in the name of killing off embarrassments to their bloodlines, are wiping out the handful of magicians who could match me.”
Elaine closed her eyes, trying to think. Johan had shown traces of magic, the first time she’d met him, but the traces had been … odd. Had the spells she’d used been designed to track high magic rather than wild magic? Or had they been crafted, somehow, to dampen any traces of wild magic? It wasn’t impossible …
“Johan didn’t register as a magician,” she said, slowly.
“Of course not,” the Witch-King agreed. “One could just as easily undress a girl, then proclaim she isn’t a boy because she lacks a penis. If one lacks the concept of girls, one might even conclude that that ‘boy’ is a freak of nature, rather than something natural.”
“You hid it from us,” she accused.
“Oh, it wasn’t just me,” the Witch-King said. “You’re the only person
alive who really knows what the wars were like, back when I was Valiant. The Emperor wanted – really wanted – to make sure they never happened again. And they haven’t, not really. There were no more wild magicians … well, until Johan.
“I crafted spells to help the weak, to show them how to use their potential to the fullest – just like you, although you did a better job. And those spells weakened their ability to use wild magic …”
“That’s how you do it,” Elaine said, as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “Those spells of yours, the ones in your book. They open gaps in the user’s mental defences.”
The Witch-King nodded. “There are always magicians willing to seek ways to enhance their power, willing to use even dangerous or forbidden spells,” he said. “And when they cast them, they open a gateway for me.”
Elaine fought hard to steady herself. How many magicians over the centuries had wanted to enhance their powers? And how many of them had slowly opened their minds to the Witch-King? She’d checked for compulsion spells, but she’d never realised that the corruption was so insidious, that it opened the victim’s mind willingly. It would be next to impossible to detect; hell, the victim might not have any idea of what was happening to him.
“It isn’t even one spell,” she said, feeling growing horror. She knew the spells, but she hadn’t realised just how they went together. “They cast several of them and the combined effects open their minds.”
“Correct,” the Witch-King said. “Your existence poses a curious threat to my plans. You lack the power to use the spells, yet you have the knowledge to take the spells apart, rework them and – perhaps – realise their hidden purpose. Your lack of power renders you very hard to see.”
And that’s why you got blindsided by the Levellers, Elaine thought, coldly. In hindsight, it was far too obvious. Most of them are mundanes. Sarah and her friends don’t have that much more power than me. You concentrated on magicians powerful enough to be useful and unstable enough to risk using dangerous spells. It never occurred to you that mundanes and low-power magicians could pose a threat.
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