Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  “That Princess is smarter than her father and brother put together,” Dread observed, as soon as they were out of the main hall. “I’d expect someone like her to be more...interested in marriage than in running the Kingdom. But seeing her father doesn’t have a second male heir...”

  Elaine blinked. “What would happen to her if Prince Hilarion is killed during the contest?”

  “Her husband would become the next King, I think,” Dread said. “Ida doesn’t seem to like the idea of a female ruler, even if she is as smart as anyone else they could hope to get. Prince Hilarion’s wild dreams might just be the only thing saving his sister from an arranged marriage and permanent exile to another kingdom. I wonder if he knows it.”

  “You mean he could be doing it deliberately?” Elaine asked. “But he’s risking his life...”

  “I know,” Dread said. “It would be smarter for him to pressure his father into keeping his sister at Ida, at least until he assumes the Throne.” He shrugged. “Anyway, put it aside for the moment. Walls have ears.”

  Elaine didn’t understand until she looked at the maids. They were charmed, of course. They’d take whatever they heard straight back to their master. Dread might have commented on the Princess knowing that they’d take what he said back to the King, although Elaine couldn’t even begin to guess at his motivations. Did he like the idea of having the princess more involved in governing the state, or did he want her under control? There was no point in trying to guess.

  No one in their right mind would go into a magician’s chambers without his permission, or without the absolute certainty that they had the power to overwhelm any defensive wards backed up by hidden spells. Dread stopped outside Trebuchet’s chambers and gingerly poked the wooden door with his staff. There was a long pause, and then Elaine felt a number of spells slowly shimmering into existence. Some were designed to deter intruders, pushing them away by inducing fear into their hearts; others were far nastier, intended to stop strong-willed intruders in their tracks. Dread stepped forward, muttering under his breath, matching his magic directly against the dead magician’s magic. Trebuchet had created a cunning network of spells to keep unwanted intruders out of his quarters. It was work on a level Elaine knew that she would never be able to match.

  “Stand away from the door,” Dread ordered, stepping to one side. “I think I dealt with all of the dangerous spells, but...”

  He tapped once on the door with his staff. It exploded outwards and slammed into the stone wall with terrifying force. It would have killed either of them if it had caught them in its headlong flight. Dread poked at it suspiciously and then stepped into the chamber, holding his staff ahead of him like a weapon. Elaine realised that he’d woven so many spells into the staff that it was almost another wand. A very simple weapon, one that would be almost impossible to recognise without luck or inside knowledge. How many other weapons did Dread have up his sleeve?

  “He was clearly very paranoid about someone entering his quarters,” Dread observed, mildly. “I can still see spells hanging in the air, watching for targets. Don’t touch anything until I check it first, understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Elaine said, softly. This was something she’d never trained to do. “What should I be looking for?”

  “Anything out of place,” Dread said. He hesitated. “Most magicians key their wards so that they come apart after they die, or switch their obedience to his designated heir. Trebuchet clearly wanted to make sure that no one ever entered his quarters while he was alive, or dead. If I hadn’t been here, it might have been months before someone with the right qualifications came to Ida to unpick the spells and make it safe for the next incumbent. Interesting, really. I wonder what he was trying to hide?”

  Elaine looked around as she stepped into the chambers. The first room was warm and comfortable, with a fireplace and a stack of coal on one wall. It was crammed with books, each of the bookshelves bursting with volumes and countless others piled on the floor as if Trebuchet had simply put them down and left them there in the absence of any space on his bookshelves. Part of her found it charming, remembering the piles of books in the Great Library; part of her was outraged that anyone could treat books like that. She leaned closer and read some of the titles. Most of them were common spellbooks, but a handful were rare and quite valuable. And a couple were definitely on the banned list.

  “That’s the problem with the printing press,” Dread said, when Elaine called his attention to the volumes. “The printers don’t really know what’s banned, so they copy books without realising that they’re setting themselves up for execution or a life in the salt mines; the rogues then take the copies and distribute them everywhere. It’s dangerous to risk it in the Golden City, but here, without any other trained wizard for miles around, Trebuchet could have kept an entire library of forbidden knowledge and no one would have been any the wiser.”

  He frowned as he studied the books. “Interesting choice of reading matter,” he added. “Why would he want to learn about fetches when he was studying life extension? Or about mental seed magic?”

  Elaine shivered as the horrifying possibilities started to slip into her mind. A fetch – a magical double of a person – could be used, given enough magic, as a secondary body. She couldn’t imagine how one person could live in two bodies at once, but Trebuchet had been through the Peerless School and had had years of experience in doing several things simultaneously. Maybe he could have created a fetch to house his soul when the Inquisitors started asking questions he didn’t want to answer. But fetches simply didn’t last very long, not if they had to be convincing. Most homunculi were easy to spot, even for the untrained. They just looked less human than the undead hordes.

  But mental seed magic was worse. A magician with enough power – and a complete lack of scruples – could create a seed of his entire soul, all of his knowledge and experience, and implant it in an unsuspecting victim’s mind. The seed would slowly grow until it had taken over the person’s body, absorbing their magic into itself and allowing the creator to live again in a new body. And no one would know until it was too late. Elaine shuddered at the thought, picking up the volume and glancing at the first page, which bore a demonic sign. A sorcerer had traded his soul for knowledge he’d hoped would allow him to avoid the fires of hell. There was no way to know if he’d succeeded.

  “Put that down,” Dread said, sharply. Elaine obeyed at once. “This entire room will have to be sealed until a team of experts can be dispatched from the Great Library and...”

  Elaine smiled. “I do have that experience...”

  “Yes, you do,” Dread said. He hesitated. “But you might be exposed to risks you’re not ready to handle. I think you’d better leave it for the Inquisition to handle.”

  Elaine flushed. How dare he dismiss her like that? And then she realised that he might be right. Anyone who looked at those books ran the risk of being corrupted, even though she already had all of their knowledge in her head. But he didn’t know that, did he?

  “Yes, sir,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you want me to do anything with these books for now?”

  “Just leave them,” Dread said. He shook his head. “I think you’d be better off talking to the Princess. She probably won’t want to talk to me.”

  “But I won’t know what questions to ask,” Elaine protested. “Shouldn’t you be there...?”

  “I’ll tell you what to ask, but the main thing is to find out just what Trebuchet was teaching his royal pupil,” Dread said. “Trebuchet was a powerful wizard, but I don’t think that he could have taught him enough to make him a competitor for the Grand Sorcerer’s position. And any Court Wizard should have known better than to try. It would only upset the political balance in the Empire.”

  He hesitated. “And I would have to be escorted if I spoke to her,” he added. “It might be easier to learn from her if there wasn’t anyone in the room who might take her words to her father.”

  “I see,�
� Elaine said. “So...what do you want me to ask her?”

  ***

  Princess Sacharissa was lying on her front when Elaine entered her quarters, performing a standard spell she’d learned in the Peerless School to discover the presence of eavesdroppers, if any. The Princess had clearly been crying, one hand rubbing her rear where her father had evidently taken his belt to her. Elaine felt a hot flash of sympathy, remembering her own experience with corporal punishment. The Princess wasn’t immune to her father’s hand, or perhaps to her husband, when she finally got married. It wasn’t uncommon, but it still sickened her. How could anyone treat their daughter like that?

  “You’re a very lucky girl,” Princess Sacharissa said, between gasps of pain. “Does your master treat you like that?”

  “No,” Elaine said, quickly. Dread wasn’t really her master at all. “I need to talk to you...”

  “About my brother, or about the fat-arse who got himself killed?” Princess Sacharissa asked, tightly. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to hear about Trebuchet. He hated me and didn’t bother to hide it. Do you know what he offered my father?”

  Elaine could guess, but shook her head. “He said that he could make a slave collar for me that would turn me into the ideal princess,” Princess Sacharissa said. “Thank all of the gods that my father rejected the idea. Slave collars are very difficult to remove and their influence lingers on for years afterwards...I would have been at everyone’s mercy. Princess Ella used to have a collar and she always did what she was told...”

  “Poor girl,” Elaine said, sincerely. “Why did your brother start to learn magic from Trebuchet?”

  Princess Sacharissa shrugged. “Our mother died when he was seven years old,” she said. “I was barely two years old at the time. She had the Dark Cough, you see; I think she must have brought it from her homeland and was never properly treated before it was too late. And then she died and my brother was devastated.”

  Elaine nodded. The Dark Cough was a magical illness, one created when wild magic festered into an unsuspecting individual with enough of a magical talent to power the disease. Anyone unlucky enough to catch it without knowing the dangers would find themselves weakening slowly until they finally died, no matter what the druids did to try to save their lives. The Dark Cough fed on magic and magical cures would simply speed up the process of the disease. There was no known cure, even in the medical knowledge that Elaine now possessed.

  “He always wanted to be a magician, but after my mother died he was driven,” the Princess continued. “He always talked about raising the dead, claiming that he could find a way to unite our mother’s corpse with her soul and bring her back to life. Trebuchet...offered to try to teach him to use his talent properly, rather than do something that would inevitably cross over into necromancy. And our father encouraged him because he wanted his son to be powerful.”

  Elaine shivered. What Princess Sacharissa was describing – what Prince Hilarion had hoped to do – was impossible. There was no spell that could summon a person’s soul back from the land of the gods and permanently bind them to a dead body. The best that would happen was that the body would become a lich, a near-undead corpse with independence; it was far more likely that she’d become one of the undead and accidentally unleash a new plague upon the world.

  And yet she could understand a person being so desperate to have their mother back that they would consider almost anything. She remembered long dark nights in the orphanage, crying into her pillow because she was so alone; what would she have said if someone had offered her the chance to go to her parents? Elaine was honest enough to admit that she would have taken the chance as soon as it was offered, even if it came at a very steep price. She would have done anything to have her parents returned to her. How could she hate Prince Hilarion for what he’d done, for what he was trying to do, when she understood him so well?

  “He just kept studying and studying,” Princess Sacharissa said. “I think he actually outpaced his tutor fairly early on, for Trebuchet would call some other wizards to the castle and have them spend a few weeks adding to the boy’s knowledge. And sometimes my brother would leave the castle and go off to study somewhere, returning weeks later tired, but happy. I used to think that he would use his powers to replace Trebuchet and send the strange old man away from the castle. Instead...”

  She shook her head. “Instead, he decided to become the Grand Sorcerer,” she said. “And my father encouraged him!”

  Elaine could understand her shock and dismay. Prince Hilarion was the only heir to the throne his father had, at least as long as he was unwilling to admit that girls could rule just as well as men. Allowing him to take part in a contest that could easily kill him was unwise, to say the least. And Trebuchet should have known that the Grand Sorcerer wasn’t likely to come from aristocratic stock, no matter how talented. It would twist the balance of power between sorcerers, traders and aristocrats too far.

  She rubbed her forehead in irritation. Nothing about this made sense to her. Had Trebuchet taught the Prince magic that he shouldn’t have been allowed to know existed? Or had someone else used Trebuchet to teach the Prince? Or had Duke Gama been a far more powerful sorcerer than anyone had guessed...? Most sorcerers were intensely competitive, eager to prove themselves more powerful than anyone else, but there was no law that stipulated that a powerful magician had to be registered. He might have kept a very low profile as he urged Trebuchet to train up his nephew and send him out to join the competition.

  “Tell me about your uncle,” she said, instead. “How did you get on with him?”

  “I think we shared a special bond,” Princess Sacharissa said. “He was like me, you see; he was a useless spare to the throne. I think he was the one who urged my father to ensure that I did get an education – and that I didn’t get turned into a slave. And then he died a few months ago and they wouldn’t even let me keep his books!”

  Elaine could understand that, all right. “Why don’t you just leave the castle?”

  “I tried to run away when I was twelve,” Princess Sacharissa admitted. “My father’s huntsmen caught me before I managed to get more than a few miles away from the castle and my father...my father was not happy about it at all.” She rubbed her rear unconsciously. “Where were you born, anyway? How did you get into the Inquisition?”

  “I don’t know,” Elaine admitted. The orphanage had been in the Golden City, but she could have been born anywhere. The thought continued to gall her. “I never knew my parents.”

  “Lucky you,” Princess Sacharissa said. “Dad isn’t too bad when he’s just dad, but when he’s King Hildebrand...well, I have to shut up, look pretty and do exactly as I’m told. And ever since mother died, I’ve seen more of King Hildebrand than I have of my father.”

  She looked up at Elaine. “You really don’t know where you were born?”

  “No,” Elaine said. “I could have been born anywhere.”

  “Really?” Princess Sacharissa asked. “With colour like yours, I would have thought that you were born here. You certainly have the right colour of hair for a child of the mountains.”

  She grinned. “Do you think we could be sisters?”

  Elaine stared at her. She hadn’t noticed, but the Princess was right. The maids did have the same colour of hair as she had, and Princess Sacharissa’s face could have passed for a slightly slanted version of her own. And yet...even if her family had come from Ida, why had they seen fit to abandon her in the Golden City? Who had they been and why had they abandoned her?

  “Don’t cry,” Princess Sacharissa said. “Whatever else happens, you can always talk to me.”

  She shrugged. “An Inquisitor,” she added. “Father couldn’t stop me from talking to you, could he?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I suppose it is possible that you do come from here,” Dread said, an hour later. “You do have the right hair colour for it, but I wouldn’t place too much faith in it.”

  H
e sounded rather disturbed, as if Princess Sacharissa’s casual remark had confirmed a nasty thought of his own. “These aren’t the days when regions had their own looks and there were few children of mixed blood,” he added. “Your parents might have come from the other side of the world, or been a couple that produced a child that looked like someone from Ida. There’s no way to know for sure.”

  Elaine nodded, reluctantly. “Besides, you were given to the orphanage immediately after birth, according to their records,” Dread mused. “Someone paid for you to remain there until you were old enough to live on your own, but who? Some aristocrat with a guilty conscience or maybe a trader family unwilling to admit a bastard into their ranks? No one bothered to record it back then.”

  “I know,” Elaine said. “But...is that unusual?”

  “It depends on the exact circumstances,” Dread said. He gave her an odd look. “Someone from an aristocratic family, pushed into a loveless match, might have managed to get a serving maid pregnant and give the child away for adoption rather than have her hanging around the home. Sometimes they pay a poorer couple to take in the child and raise her as their own, but it can lead to scandal...”

  He shrugged. “Anyway, I suggest that you get some rest,” he said. “Tomorrow morning we’ll have to go down the hill and catch the iron dragon back to the Golden City.”

  Elaine blinked. “We’re not staying here?”

  “Something is definitely wrong here,” Dread admitted. He didn’t sound nervous, but Elaine suspected that he was more worried than he wanted to admit. “The King insisted that we sleep in Castle Adamant tonight, but tomorrow we will go home and await the assignment of a proper investigative team to Ida. And you can go back to the Great Library.”