Full Circle

by Christopher Nuttall

  He reached out to grip Elaine’s hands as her emotions became more morbid. The Golden City had never quite been the paradise it had been called, but it had been a strange and wonderful place to live. Now, the once-great markets, where one could buy goods from all around the world, were closed; countless homes and boarding houses were bolted up, wary eyes peeked from covered windows as they hurried past. Johan had heard enough of what had happened in the other cities Deferens had occupied to know what might have happened in the Golden City. Elaine had to be having similar thoughts.

  “I went to the gardens once,” Elaine said, quietly. “They were … pleasant.”

  Johan followed her gaze. The gardens were almost unrecognisable. Trees that had once reached high over the city had been cut down, presumably for firewood, while the grass where children had played had been used as campsites for the soldiers and slaves. The pond looked empty; the soldiers, he guessed, had caught the exotic fish and eaten them to make a change from their rations. Some of the more interesting fish were poisonous, if he recalled correctly. Deferens was unlikely to give a damn if a few of his soldiers ate something lethal and died horribly.

  He sucked in his breath as he caught sight of the construction at the far end of the once-proud gardens. A gallows, large enough to take over twenty victims, with nineteen bodies dangling from ropes. Behind the gallows, the street was crammed with crosses, each one displaying a body nailed firmly to the wood. Johan had seen horror – he’d experienced horror – but this was something else. Deferens had hunted down and crucified everyone who’d dared defy him.

  “We asked the Levellers to help us,” he whispered, staring at the dead bodies. None of them looked familiar, but that meant nothing. They’d died weeks ago. “Are they all dead now?”

  “The Emperor purged hundreds of people,” Dolman said. There was a hint of bitter guilt in his voice. “Merchants, scholars; everyone who disagreed with his point of view. The executions took days to complete.”

  And probably only caught a handful of Levellers, Johan thought, bitterly. He recalled Hawke – and Mildred, his young daughter – and shuddered in disgust. Had he signed their death warrants by taking Elaine and Daria to meet the Levellers? Or maybe they made it out of the city in time.

  “You couldn’t do anything to stop it,” Dolman added, looking at Elaine. “The Emperor would have killed you if you’d stayed in the city.”

  “I know,” Elaine said. She looked pale. “We need to move.”

  They hurried down the street, towards the Great Library. The streets looked torn and broken; Johan smiled, recalling the spells Elaine had used to cover their flight from the Great Library after they’d snatched her out of the Imperial Palace. A dragon wheeled overhead, the rider – Charity, perhaps – launching a couple of curses towards the Peerless School. Johan smiled, despite himself, at the thought. Charity had loved the school, but at the same time she’d probably fantasised about burning it to the ground …

  “Halt,” a voice bellowed.

  Johan jumped and swore under his breath as seven soldiers ran towards them, carrying clubs rather than swords. They looked fearful, but nasty; their expressions shifted unpleasantly as they saw Elaine. Johan silently cursed Dolman for not making Elaine look like a man, then felt a surge of anger as he looked back at them.

  “You are ordered to remain off the streets unless you have urgent business,” the leader sneered. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Elaine. “What business do you have here?”

  “The Emperor ordered us to test the defences,” Dolman lied, smoothly. Johan could feel magic seeping into his words. “You did well, thank you.”

  “And you are a liar,” the leader said. “We are protected against such magics.”

  “Then die,” Johan hissed. He knew what they had in mind for Elaine and it made him angry, very angry. “Burn!”

  The leader took a step forward, then screamed as his entire body caught fire. His companions started to stumble backwards, but it was already too late. They died too, their armour melting as the blaze grew hotter. Johan felt sick, his anger calming, as he breathed in the stench of burning flesh. The unnatural flames died within seconds, but it was far too late for the guards. They were dead the moment his fires had struck them.

  Breathe, Elaine sent.

  “They probably wouldn’t have had time to report us,” Dolman said, “but we’d better hurry.”

  Johan nodded, taking one last look at the charred bodies before he followed the Inquisitor through the streets. The Great Library was rising up ahead of them, surrounded by a handful of guards and sorcerers. Dolman pressed the side of his head, silently communicating with his fellows; seconds later, a dragon swooped down and blasted the surrounding area with a great gout of fire. Johan flinched back from the heat – it was odd that he hadn’t been burnt by his own fire – and then stared at the remains of the street. It was scorched and broken, water bubbling up from places where the pipes had been melted by the blaze. No wonder so many people had been scared of the dragons.

  The Great Library itself was wrapped in glowing light as the wards fought to repel the flames and keep the library safe. Elaine squeezed his hand one final time, let go of him and ran across the square and up to the wards. They glowed brighter as she touched them, ignoring the shouts from a handful of advancing sorcerers and soldiers. Johan reached for his anger and directed it at the sorcerers, creating a gust of wind that picked the men up and hurled them towards the mountains. A dragon roared as it snapped one of them out of the air; others, deprived of their chance to feed, howled their disapproval.

  “Shit,” Dolman said, quietly.

  Johan turned, just in time to see a block of ice forming around a dragon. The creature blew fire madly, but the spell summoning and freezing the water was too strong. Its wings were covered in ice; seconds later, it plummeted downwards and slammed into a building with staggering force. He hoped the riders were safe, but the ice might well have frozen them to death within seconds.

  “They’re trying to swat the dragons out of the air,” Dolman said. “It isn’t a bad tactic, either.”

  Johan nodded and looked at Elaine. She was still touching the wards …

  ***

  Elaine hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect when she reached out with her mind and made contact with the Great Library’s wards. In theory, they should have recognised her as their mistress; in practice, it was quite possible that Vlad Deferens had done something that would force them to recognise him – or Vane – instead. But as she grappled with the wards, it became clear that the wardcrafters had been unable to break into the library and so they’d settled for wrapping additional wards around the building, preventing her from returning home.

  Nasty, she thought. She’d never been particularly good with wards and protections, at least until she’d become the Bookworm; the wardcrafters had done a very good job. In hindsight, she should have asked Johan to burn the wards down, despite the risks. Very nasty.

  The wards howled as she plunged her mind forward. It was impossible to pull back and escape without being fried; her only hope was to head onwards and trust she could untangle the wards before it was too late. Powerful incants rose up around her, pushing at her mind; she shoved them back, hastily summoning new incants of her own. The wards seemed torn in two about her, as if half of them were prepared to bow the knee to her and the other half insistent that she be removed from the connection by force. It was almost as if the wardcrafters were determined that no one should be allowed to gain entry …

  It hit her in a moment of insight as she found the weak spot and brought pressure to bear on it. The wardcrafters had found loopholes in their own orders, just like Charity and the Inquisitors. They’d wanted to keep everyone out, including Vlad Deferens. She smiled, despite the growing pressure on her mind; Deferens hadn’t known it, but he’d had a lot more enemies than anyone had realised. Gritting her teeth, she pushed again … and felt the outside wards snap out of existence.

/>   They must have wanted to hide the evidence, she thought, as she made contact with her old wards. Apart from her – and perhaps an Inquisitor – no one would have been able to tell there was any sabotage at all. It might even have killed the Emperor if he’d tried to make contact with the wards himself. Deferens had been powerful, but he didn’t have Elaine’s knowledge or a wardcrafter’s years of training. And if it took the Emperor down too, the risks would definitely have been worth it.

  Her own wards opened up around her, reminding her of just what she’d lost when she’d fled the Golden City. The urge to just bask in their touch, to allow her awareness to drift through the library, was almost overpowering. But there wasn’t time to enjoy herself. She pulled back, after opening a gash in the wards, and called to Johan and Dolman. Johan ran over to her at once; Dolman launched a series of curses before running to join them, the wards snapping back into place to shield them. Elaine smiled, despite her sudden tiredness, as curses started bouncing off the wards. Nothing short of Johan’s power would break through the wards …

  And the Witch-King is a wild magician too, she thought, suddenly sober. He might be able to break in himself.

  She cleared her throat. “Stay in contact with the walls,” she ordered, as she started to walk towards the door. “You don’t want them to consider you an enemy.”

  The wards snapped and crackled around them, unsure quite what to make of either Johan or Dolman. She suspected the wards remembered Johan from his first visit – or, perhaps, that they remembered something far older. There hadn’t been anything about wild magicians in the library, not even in the Black Vault, yet whoever designed the Great Library had presumably known the dangers. She recalled just how many spells had been layered over the building, over the centuries; had one of them, long ago, been designed to repel wild magicians? And yet, Johan had destroyed some of the wards quite by accident …

  Maybe he couldn’t enter without permission, she thought, as they reached the doors. They were locked, but a simple spell was enough to open them. Or maybe they assumed there would be no more wild magicians.

  “The dragons are pulling back,” Dolman said, “but the red-robes are erecting wards and coming this way. I think they suspect we intend to turn the Great Library against them.”

  “Good,” Johan said. “The more who try to break through the wards here, the fewer there are at the palace.”

  Elaine nodded, feeling her stomach clench. It was quite possible they could be walking into an ambush … and equally possible they would make it through to the palace, where she would be tested …

  … And, in truth, she wasn’t sure what result she wanted.

  The door opened. “Come on,” she said. She had no idea where the Witch-King was, but assuming he walked at a steady pace he’d be at the Golden City within a week, perhaps less. “There isn’t much time left.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I’m home, Elaine thought.

  The Great Library felt … welcoming, even though it was cold and dark. She closed her eyes, reaching out to touch the wards and ordering the lanterns to come to life. The atmosphere still felt odd, even to her, as they walked through the mirrors and down into the basement, where the staff had been working on sorting the latest books before she’d ordered them all to leave. She felt as if she’d come full circle when she saw a pile of books, recalling a similar pile that had turned her into the Bookworm. One of her staff might have been the next person to encounter a charmed book.

  I made sure they wouldn’t, she thought, grimly. I altered the wards to make it impossible for a second such book to enter the library.

  Johan touched her arm. She jumped. “Elaine?”

  “I’m just … stressed,” Elaine said. She led them further down into the basement, mentally feeling out the complex pattern of the wards. The first secret passage might have been discovered, but there were two more within the building. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Dolman said, as they stopped in front of a large portrait of a previous librarian and peered at it. “Just get us to the palace.”

  Elaine nodded as she reached out to touch the portrait in the right place. The old librarian had been famous for absolutely nothing, beyond harassing his staff and appointing his cronies to positions of power; somehow, Elaine wasn’t surprised that he’d managed to spend several thousand crowns on his own portrait, even though he hadn’t been able to find the money to fund much-needed renovations. His successor had dumped the portrait into the basement, used it to hide one of the secret passageways and probably forgot it even existed. Elaine couldn’t remember seeing it in all her days as a librarian.

  She pushed the hidden switch and the painting opened, revealing a set of stairs leading down into the darkness. Dolman offered to go first, but Elaine shook her head and took the lead, generating a ball of light to illuminate her path. Halfway down, a set of wards started to spark ominously, ready to trap the three intruders below the city for the rest of their lives if they failed to satisfy them. Elaine gritted her teeth, pushed forward the codes she’d learnt when she’d taken office, and waited. Moments later, the wards withdrew to allow them to pass through without a fight.

  “Another tunnel,” Johan said, slowly. “How many are there?”

  “Hundreds,” Dolman said. “The entire city is honeycombed with tunnels.”

  Elaine nodded in agreement. There were maps in her head, maps of tunnels that had been built by the Grand Sorcerers and Great Houses, maps of tunnels and catacombs and hidden places that had been forgotten by everyone else. Even Light Spinner, she suspected, had never really known the full extent of the tunnel system. The gods alone knew how many youngsters had stumbled in and found themselves trapped, when they triggered a ward or hidden safeguard …

  She walked onwards, feeling other wards pick and pry at her mind as she passed. She was a Privy Councillor, she was a trusted associate of the last Grand Sorcerer … and yet, she wasn’t sure if Deferens might have managed to revoke her access rights. He hadn’t managed to block her from the Great Library, but she’d been Head Librarian. What if she couldn’t break into the Imperial Palace …?

  “Here,” she said, as they came to a solid stone wall. “If it lets us through, we will be in the lower levels of the palace.”

  “I’m ready,” Dolman said.

  Elaine looked at him and pushed her hand against the stone wall. The wards peered at her – she felt suddenly naked under their emotionless scrutiny – and parted; the wall shuddered, then slowly moved aside to reveal a colossal chamber. It was deserted, but bedrolls lay everywhere, suggesting the soldiers had used it as their barracks. Elaine glanced at Dolman, who slipped past her and over to the far wall, tapping at it with his wand. A second hidden passageway opened, revealing a flight of stairs. Elaine braced herself against an attack of claustrophobia and followed him up the stairs, Johan bringing up the rear. The door closed silently seconds later.

  “They left this passage here,” Johan said, his mind tinged with disbelief. “Why?”

  “The palace isn’t just the residence of the Grand Sorcerer – or the Emperor,” Dolman pointed out, dryly. “There are – or were – thousands of civil servants who live and work in the building. The Grand Sorcerer often had meetings he didn’t want anyone else to know about, so he used the passageways to sneak from room to room. No one but he and the Inquisitors knew they were there.”

  “And no one else could gain access,” Elaine added.

  “No,” Dolman said. He hesitated, uncomfortably. “I think I’m technically supposed to wipe your memory after you exit the tunnels.”

  “Bad idea,” Elaine said, quickly. Her protections would make it impossible; she honestly wasn’t sure what a memory wipe would do to Johan. “Let’s see what happens when we do the test first.”

  She tasted Johan’s apprehension as they finally reached a hidden door and peered through a concealed eyehole, looking into an empty room. Dolman opened the door and stepped out, wand
raised; no one moved to challenge them as Elaine followed him and looked around with interest. A chair sat in the exact centre of the room, manacles hanging down from the arms and legs; she shivered as she realised that she was meant to be restrained, while he tested her blood.

  “You can’t chain her down,” Johan said, urgently. “What if we’re attacked?”

  “I won’t,” Dolman said. “That’s for idiots who think we’re joking when we promise mandatory sentencing for anyone stupid enough to try to fool us.”

  Elaine shivered. “Do you have any oath-bound obligations?”

  “No,” Dolman said. He gave her a thin smile as he opened a drawer and rummaged through it. “You don’t have to sit down, if you would rather not. We just prefer to keep the tricksters to a minimum.”

  He withdrew a small iron crown, studded with red gems. Elaine felt her heart skip a beat as she recognised it, although she was perhaps the only person outside the Inquisition who would. It glowed if worn by someone who shared the royal bloodline … all of a sudden, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Certainty would push her onwards, either force her to enact the rest of the plan or flee the Golden City. And Dolman …

  He’s putting his life in my hands, she thought, numbly.

  It was suddenly hard to take a breath. She wasn’t sure she could have done that, not with her experience of being under compulsion spells. Dolman would be hers, if she took the throne. She knew she was better than Vlad Deferens, but did Dolman know it? Or was he prepared to take the risk of her turning into a monster, if it was the price of stopping the Witch-King?