Full Circle

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Not quickly enough to help us now, then,” Johan said. He frowned as he recalled the day Chime had shown her first signs of magic. “I thought the earlier a child showed magic, the more powerful it was.”

  “I’m not sure,” Elaine admitted. “It’s quite possible that exposure to magic helps bring magic into the light sooner, creating that myth. What is clear is that you can do fantastic things without a vast reserve of magic. However, your magic is driven by your emotion and isn’t entirely reliable.”

  “I can try to practice traditional spells,” Johan objected.

  “We can try,” Elaine agreed. “However, right now we have a much larger problem.”

  She ran a finger down the long line of equations. “The Witch-King appears to have come closer to solving Entropy’s Dilemma than anyone else in recorded history,” she said, quirking her eyebrows. “You have heard of Entropy’s Dilemma?”

  “Spells decay,” Johan said. He’d overheard his father lecturing Charity on the subject, years ago. “Even the most advanced and powerful spells slowly decay and fade away.”

  “Precisely,” Elaine said. “Wardcrafters are very good at anchoring wards to protect homes and keying them to family members, but even they cannot ultimately defeat Entropy’s Dilemma. The Witch-King’s spells, however, keep magic channelling and rechanneling through him, recycling – if you will – the raw stuff of magic. However, even he suffers from Entropy’s Dilemma. His rebirth used so much magic that he was forced to head straight for the camp, rather than making sure I was dead.”

  “Luckily for us,” Johan said.

  “Quite,” Elaine agreed. She gave him a smile that melted all his doubts away. “I think he thinks he can solve Entropy’s Dilemma with a sufficiently large infusion of magic,” she said. “The children at the Peerless School, as we noted, are a potential source of magic, as are the wards surrounding the Great Houses, the Great Library, the Peerless School and the Golden Throne itself. However, I have a feeling he’d prefer the children. The wards are shaped magic that may not be suitable for his requirements.”

  “Shit,” Johan said. “Can we stop him?”

  “I believe so,” Elaine said. She looked him in the eye, her thoughts shadowed with worry. “I also believe there’s a reason the Witch-King left you alive.”

  It took Johan a moment to comprehend it. “You think he wants me?”

  “Your body, at least,” Elaine said. “He’d have the knowledge I have, combined with the power you have; I think he decided that you’d make a suitable host for his mentality if his original plan fell through. It’s the only reason I can think of why he left you alive.”

  “I won’t let him have me,” Johan said, shuddering in revulsion. It would be worse than a compulsion curse, he was sure. His mentality would be overwritten by the Witch-King, obliterating Johan from existence. Worse, perhaps, the Witch-King would try to make up with Johan’s family and slowly turn them into his puppets. “I won’t!”

  He looked at her. “Can we stop him? Please?”

  “Yes,” Elaine said.

  She tapped the papers, again. “We have two possible angles of attack,” she said. “First, we can attempt to starve him. He needs power, so we’ll make sure he doesn’t get any. The children from the school are already being evacuated; they’ll be well out of his reach by the time he arrives. Trying to chase them down will merely drain his power still further.”

  “Particularly if the children scatter,” Johan said. “He’ll have to go after them one by one.”

  Elaine nodded, rubbing her eyes tiredly. “Yeah,” she said. “That will force him to come here, where we’ll be waiting. He won’t have a choice. There simply isn’t a larger concentration of magic anywhere in the world and he knows that as well as I do.”

  “True,” Johan agreed. So far, it made an alarming kind of sense. “And then?”

  “If we’re lucky, we can prevent him from draining power from the wards,” Elaine said. “He may come straight here” – she nodded to the throne – “but I don’t know if he will be able to steal power from the Golden Throne.”

  “If it needs permission,” Johan said, “Deferens may have already given him the permission.”

  Elaine muttered an oath under her breath and closed her eyes. The Golden Throne glowed brighter for a long moment as she communed with it. Johan waited, wondering just what – if anything – it would say. Ancient artefacts that had somehow retained magic for centuries were notoriously temperamental. His father had been fond of telling his younger children bedtime stories about idiots who found charmed swords or enchanted daggers and the fates that had befallen them. The Golden Throne had survived long enough to have a warped idea of what was acceptable behaviour …

  “He did,” Elaine said. She gave him a warm look, but her thoughts were worried. “I’m not sure I can undo it. It’s much more capable than anything I would have expected from Deferens.”

  “The Witch-King must have worked through him,” Johan said. If Elaine hadn’t taken the Golden Throne, the Witch-King could have walked into the Imperial Palace and drained it dry before proceeding to the Peerless School. “Can’t you convince the throne to ignore whatever he did?”

  “It’s not intelligent,” Elaine said, doubtfully. She looked at the throne, her eyes narrowing in thought. “I don’t think it is really capable of understanding that one of the Emperors might have fiddled with it. There’s a strong aversion to messing with the spells programmed into the throne’s acceptance criteria.”

  She smiled. “But we may be able to deal with it,” she added, looking back at him. “There’s a final possibility, though. We failed to stop him earlier because we didn’t understand the threat. This time, however …”

  Johan leant forward. “You have a plan?”

  “We’d be risking everything,” Elaine said. “If we combine your power and my knowledge, we can slow him down. But if I start … tampering … with the spells holding him together, I should be able to start undoing them from the inside.”

  “And Entropy’s Dilemma will take its toll?” Johan guessed. “He’ll die?”

  “Something like that,” Elaine said. He could sense trepidation in her thoughts. “But it will be risky. The Witch-King will be counter-attacking, Johan, and he wants your body. We might die together …”

  Johan smiled. “How many times have we almost died since we first met?”

  “Too many,” Elaine said. She looked down at the table, guilt twisting through the bond. “I … I can ask Dread to be ready to kill you, if the Witch-King takes control.”

  “Please do,” Johan said. He gave her a long look. “How long do we have?”

  “Two days,” Elaine said. She rubbed the side of her head. “He’s walking towards us at a steady pace. I hoped the Lug would slow him down but it looks as though he just walked over the water. Oh, and there are several armies heading towards the Golden City too.”

  Johan frowned. “Friendly?”

  “No,” Elaine said. “They’ve had too much of one Emperor, Johan. They’re coming to put an end to the Empress.”

  “I won’t let them kill you,” Johan said.

  “They might not have to try,” Elaine pointed out. She sighed, lifting her hands to rub her temples. “They won’t be here until after the Witch-King meets his destiny.”

  “Two days,” Johan said. He looked her in the eye. “You really need a rest.”

  “You mean you want to make love,” Elaine said.

  “No,” Johan said. It wasn’t entirely true – he did want her – but he had a feeling that sleep was a better idea right now. There would be time for lovemaking tomorrow. “I mean I want you to have a proper rest. You’ve been up for … for over twenty hours, I think.”

  “Longer,” Elaine said. She yawned, resting her elbows on the table. “I think I would have collapsed by now if the throne hadn’t been sustaining me.”

  Johan stood. “You need rest,” he said. “Let me take you to the bedchambers
, where you can have a bath and then actually sleep.I’ll sleep next to you – I’ll even put a sword between us, if you wish. The Empire will not collapse because you take a few hours to get some rest before the next crisis.”

  Elaine looked up at him. “It’s already collapsed,” she said. “The Golden City is even running out of food. We’re not getting any from Knawel Haldane. People will start starving in a week if either the Witch-King or the armies don’t get them. I think we may even have to start evacuating everyone, not just the magical children …”

  “Then it doesn’t matter if you sleep or not,” Johan insisted, holding out a hand. “Come on, Elaine. Please.”

  Elaine rose, slowly. “Don’t bother with the sword,” she ordered, as she took his hand and led him towards a hidden passageway. “I think the bed is big enough for both of us.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “The Witch-King is walking through Knawel Haldane,” Dread said, two days later.

  Elaine nodded, feeling the Golden Throne’s warnings echoing in her mind. The Emperors, it seemed, had wanted the throne to be an early-warning system for wild magicians – or gods. It was hard to draw memories out of the throne – she’d grown too used to having the knowledge of the Great Library in her head – but the flickering impressions she saw only suggested the Witch-King had been telling the truth. The gods had been nothing more than immensely powerful magicians.

  And that’s something that can never be shared, she thought, as she looked at the scrying pool in front of her. A single glimmer of light danced just above the water, mocking her. The Witch-King wasn’t even trying to hide; he was the single most powerful source of magical energy on the continent. The world can never know the truth. They’ll all start trying to breed super-magicians.

  “The dragons tried to stop him,” Dolman said. “He just ignored the flames.”

  “Close the northern tunnels,” Elaine ordered. “Let him expend energy on the mountains.”

  She felt a dull tremor shuddering through the ground as the tunnels were collapsed, one by one. The remaining Levellers had been stockpiling Firepowder for one last battle; Hawke had agreed, reluctantly, to use it on the tunnels. Now, the Golden City – with most of the population evacuated – was cut off from the north. There was nothing stopping the Witch-King from walking around to the southern tunnels, but he’d be running short on magic all the time. The direct route was still over or through the mountains. Which one would the Witch-King choose?

  The pool bubbled, faintly, as the light started to advance forward and up. She sucked in her breath as she realised he was doing the impossible, climbing over the Seven Peaks. Raw magic flickered and flared around him – she could sense it through the throne – but it wasn’t enough to stop his steady advance. Kane and Light Spinner had, between them, destroyed one of the city’s strongest protections. There had been no time to rebuild it before the Witch-King arrived.

  “Start throwing rocks,” Dread ordered. “See if we can get him to slow down …”

  Elaine blinked in surprise as the Witch-King reached the top of the peaks and jumped. For a moment, she thought he’d committed suicide, before remembering that he was effectively invulnerable to physical harm. Rolling down the mountainside was hugely undignified, but effective. And it took him past one of the improvised defence lines.

  “Order the catapult crews to abandon their positions,” Dread said, softly. “There’s no point in giving him more targets.”

  “We can fight,” Hawke insisted.

  “You’ll just be another set of targets,” Elaine said. She shook her head. The Witch-King’s presence was growing stronger all the time. “Tell your people to pull back and head for the southern tunnels. Once way or the other, they’re out of it now.”

  “Very well,” Hawke said. He bowed. “It was a honour, Your Supremacy.”

  Elaine nodded curtly, already considering the next step. The Witch-King was standing up and restarting his walk, heading right for the Imperial Palace. It was good to know she’d worked it out correctly, even though it put her and Johan in terrible danger. One way or another, she was determined the Witch-King wouldn’t survive, even if it cost her everything.

  “Keep harassing him,” she ordered Dread. “But don’t get too close.”

  ***

  Charity had to fight to keep her astonishment under control as the Witch-King stood and started to advance towards the waiting students. Gasps of disbelief echoed through the band as they realised, for the first time, just how powerful the Witch-King actually was. She didn’t dare look to see, but she was fairly sure that some of the students were quietly slipping out of the defence line and making their escape. It was hard to blame them.

  The Witch-King looked no less intimidating in broad daylight. His aura was far more powerful than any normal magician, even more powerful than the Administrator who’d ruled the Peerless School with a rod of iron when she’d been a student. Part of her wanted to bend the knee to him, even though she hated the thought of submitting to someone – anyone – else after Deferens had made her a slave. From the mutterings, it was clear that some of the students were more deeply affected than others. Power was the one thing magicians worshipped and the Witch-King was power given shape and form.

  He strode forward, wrapped in blue fire. Charity braced herself and hurled a killing hex towards the advancing lich. He didn’t stop, even when the hex struck his chest and vanished in a flash of light. The other students joined in, some cursing him directly – to no apparent effect – while the others concentrated on casting spells on the surrounding neighbourhood, turning the road to mud, ice or even quicksand. But the Witch-King just kept coming, advancing forward with a cold, chilling patience. Charity gritted her teeth as a dragon bore down from overhead, breathing out a long stream of fire that washed over the Witch-King’s blue form. But when the dragon swooped away, the Witch-King was still there. He didn’t even seem angry.

  “Keep throwing hexes at him,” a voice ordered. One of the Inquisitors had taken command, throwing several spells Charity didn’t recognise at their target. The air turned to ice, then fire; the Witch-King didn’t slow, even once. “Don’t let him have a moment to do anything.”

  Charity shuddered. It didn’t look as though the Witch-King needed to do anything.

  A house exploded into a mass of bricks, mortar and dust. An Inquisitor waved his wand, throwing the remains of the house straight into the Witch-King, following up with pieces of pavement, huge iron crates and everything else within range. For the first time, the Witch-King slowed, holding up a hand to raise a protective ward. The debris slammed into the ward and ricocheted off, heading in all directions. Charity ducked, casting a protective ward herself as bricks flew everywhere. Behind her, several students got in on the game and started hurling pieces of debris themselves. The Witch-King stopped altogether, one arm still raised. They had his attention …

  … And Charity was sure, all of a sudden, that that was no longer a good thing.

  The Witch-King raised his other arm. Charity threw herself to one side as her hair stood on end, moments before blue-white lightning flashed through the air. Her protective ward was actually attracting the lightning! She banished it hastily, watching in horror as four students – too slow to realise the danger – were killed by the spell. The Inquisitor seemed to survive, but then a red-green flash of light struck him and his face changed.Charity saw something utterly inhuman in it as he turned towards her, his wand slowly raising to strike …

  She fired a killing hex at him, desperately. He dropped like a rock.

  I’ve killed an Inquisitor, she thought, as she scrambled to her feet. They’d kill her for it, if she survived. I’ve killed an …

  She pushed the thought aside. The defence line had been shattered. A dozen dead bodies lay on the road; several others looked to have been ripped apart so badly that she honestly wasn’t sure just how many people had died. She’d never realised just how much blood and gore there was
in a human body. The Witch-King had stopped and was now standing in the exact centre of the road, utterly unmoving. It was hard to be sure, but he looked pleased. Slowly, he let his hand fall back to his side.

  Charity glanced from side to side, then turned and started to run. There was a second defence line, then a third, but she had the feeling they wouldn’t be enough to stop the lich. Elaine had been tight-lipped about her plans … even Johan had said nothing, apart from reassuring Charity – when she’d asked – that Elaine knew what she was doing. Charity hoped to all seven hells that he was right, because she couldn’t think of anything else that could stop the monster.

  She glanced back, once. The Witch-King was slowly starting to move again.

  He was still heading for the Imperial Palace.

  ***

  “One of the armies has stopped,” Dolman reported. “The others look skittish.”

  Elaine bit back a laugh. The Witch-King had torn through the first defence line and was advancing on the second, seemingly utterly unstoppable. It didn’t matter – it didn’t remotely matter – what the armies did, not now. If the defenders won, they could negotiate with the armies; if the Witch-King won, the armies would be nothing more than targets for his power.

  He’s trying to distract you in the hopes of making you feel better, Johan sent.

  It’s not working, Elaine sent back.

  The Witch-King’s presence was growing far, far, stronger. She reached out through the wards, preparing defences that had lain dormant for over a thousand years. Magic crackled through the Golden Throne, charging the spells; she hoped – prayed – they would be sufficient to turn the tide. And even if they failed, they’d expend a great deal of power in trying. The Witch-King wouldn’t be able to draw on it for himself.

  “Get everyone out of the palace,” she ordered. The plan would have to be revised. “You too, Dread.”