Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I used to ride through them when I was a child,” Princess Sacharissa said. She hesitated, staring around the darkened landscape. In the distance, Elaine could see the first glimmer of dawn starting to illuminate the sky. “I don’t think that much will have changed since then.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Dread said. “We need to get down to the plains before the next nightfall, or we will have to find a place to hide on the mountainside.”

  Elaine shivered as she heard the sound of a wolf in the distance, remembering Daria’s true nature. A werewolf would have no difficulty tracking them across the broken mountainsides, perhaps leading a squad of guardsmen down their trail. Or perhaps summoning a flock of wolves to aid in the hunt. Some werewolves had an almost familial relationship with their beastly cousins.

  “Thank you for coming to save me,” she said, before they started on their way. “I...I thought I was dead.”

  “I thought that my father had finally gone insane,” Princess Sacharissa admitted. “What the hell was he thinking?”

  “Assuming it was him doing the thinking,” Dread said, slowly. “The books we found in your wizard’s room...they could be used to influence a person’s mind.”

  Princess Sacharissa looked over at him. “You mean that my father is under my brother’s control?”

  “It’s possible,” Dread admitted. “I won’t know for sure until I have a chance to examine your father personally.” He changed the subject quickly. “That secret passage didn’t look very well guarded.”

  “There are guard posts inside the castle,” Princess Sacharissa explained, “and the passageway only opens for members of the royal family. Even my mother couldn’t have used it without my father’s help. He once told me that he and mother used to walk out before he became King and enjoy a picnic on the mountainside. I miss the man he used to be.”

  “Power changes people,” Dread said, as they started to scramble down the gully. “Some people become better when they take on power, others allow it to corrupt them and drive them mad. Someone born to the purple has a higher chance of going mad than someone born without power.”

  “That isn’t quite what you said earlier,” Elaine remarked, waspishly. “You implied that giving the powerless power could be very dangerous.”

  “In a different way,” Dread said. “People born to power...they never question the rightness of their position. They just accept what they have...”

  He shook his head. “I suggest that we concentrate on the walk for now,” he added. “We have a long way to go.”

  The walk rapidly turned into a nightmare as the sun rose, warming the gully and threatening to burn all three of them. Elaine felt sweat trickling down her face as she scrambled down the path, wishing that she could take a break, but knowing that they didn’t dare stop for a rest. Behind them, she was sure that she could hear the sound of dogs barking and wolves howling. One of the few jobs available to openly-infected werewolves was that of hunting master, using a werewolf’s powerful sense of smell to track game through the forests and mountains so beloved of the aristocracy. One of them could be on their tail right now.

  “It was easier when I was a child,” Princess Sacharissa muttered. “I should have worn proper clothes instead of this...nightdress.”

  Dread ignored her. “I think...”

  He swore. “Get down and into the stream,” he added. “Hurry!”

  The sound of baying dogs grew closer as the stream flowed towards a waterfall. Elaine couldn’t swim and almost fell over the edge before she caught hold of the rock and started scrambling down. She finally lost her grip on the slippery rock and plummeted into the deep pool, gasping for breath as she struggled to keep her head above the water. Dread caught her arm and pushed her towards the waterfall, into a cave just behind the falling sheet of water. Elaine could barely hear anything over the thunder of the falling water, but Dread seemed to be almost impossibly aware. Something was very definitely hunting them.

  Elaine squeezed as much water as she could out of her robe, looking over at the Princess. They shared a faint chuckle; no one, even Daria, would have considered them a decent couple. Their outfits were clinging to their wet skin, revealing every curve of their bodies. No one would need to imagine anything...

  “Quiet,” Dread hissed. “They’re coming.”

  “I can’t hear anything,” Princess Sacharissa said. Elaine couldn’t make out anything either, but Dread held up one hand. “What’s coming...”

  “A werewolf, I think,” Dread muttered back. Elaine winced. Dread was so aware...could he be a werewolf? The Inquisition would probably overlook a little thing like lycanthropy if they thought that a werewolf would make a good Inquisitor. But he didn’t have the faintly canine features that most werewolves possessed. Daria’s eyes were alarmingly like a dog’s pair of eyes. “I don’t know if they can track us here.”

  Princess Sacharissa reached out and took Elaine’s hand as they waited. What seemed like hours passed slowly before Dread finally ducked under the waterfall and peeked outside. “Nothing,” he said. “Either they lost the scent or they’re lying in ambush. But we have to move.”

  The sun was higher in the sky as they kept heading downwards, drying their clothes even as it threatened to burn their skin. Elaine kept glancing around, looking for possible threats, even though she suspected she wouldn’t see anything until the enemy actually attacked. The books on warfare she’d absorbed into her mind extolled the virtues of surprise attacks and ambushes, although most of them did note that surprise was often far more difficult to achieve than many of the history books suggested. Elaine found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she’d learned more background material at the Peerless School. Or maybe she should have gone hunting, if she’d been able to afford it. Millicent’s family certainly had been able to afford it for their children.

  A low growl caught them all by surprise. Dread spun around, raising his staff to confront the oversized wolf standing on the rock above them. The wolf was easily twice the size of a normal wolf, its dark eyes intimidating as hell. It opened its jaws, revealing teeth that could crush a man’s head in a single bite, and leered at them. Elaine had no difficulty reading its expression. It wanted to kill and eat them – and it would, if they showed any signs of resisting.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” the werewolf growled. “And you, put down that staff.”

  Dread muttered a curse under his breath and the rock exploded, but the werewolf was already leaping into the air and was unharmed. Of course, part of Elaine’s mind noted; the werewolf would have known from Dread’s scent what he was planning, probably before the idea had gelled properly in Dread’s mind. It landed neatly in front of the Inquisitor and lashed out with a single paw, knocking Dread to his knees with effortless ease. Princess Sacharissa started forward, only to freeze when the werewolf turned his head and looked at her.

  “Do not move,” he said, “or a whipping from your father will be the least of your troubles.”

  Elaine felt her wand in her hand, thinking fast. A death-curse would work, surely, but it might catch Dread in the blast as well...and it would reveal what had happened to her. There had to be another idea. She hesitated and then gambled, pushing all the power she could muster into raising an illusion right in front of the werewolf. A plate of meat, larger than the werewolf itself, seemed to materialise in the air. The animal part of the werewolf’s mind reacted and jumped forward, abandoning Dread. It jumped right through the illusion and then turned around, snarling in rage. Elaine felt herself drop to her knees from sheer terror as the werewolf met her eyes. Whatever the werewolf’s masters had ordered, it no longer wanted to take her alive. Wolves had their pride; it was just about all they had left.

  The werewolf lunged at Dread again, but he cast a spell that raised a shield and deflected its leap, before he threw a fireball into the beast’s fur. It howled in pain and leapt twenty meters into the lake and then jumped up again, coming right at th
e Inquisitor. Dread began a death-curse that shattered when the werewolf struck his shield, the force of the impact knocking the Inquisitor back to the ground. And then it leapt up and came right at Elaine.

  She screamed as the beast knocked her down and placed one paw firmly on her chest. Blood welled up where its claws pieced her flesh, leaving her worrying about the dangers of infection – could it turn her into a werewolf too? But it had a collar around its neck...the demand for bloody revenge on the bitch who had tricked it was struggling with orders to return the unwilling bookworm to the prince – unharmed.

  The beast won and it leaned forward, its jaws opening wide. Elaine saw Dread stumbling to his feet, but there was nothing the Inquisitor could do. The words for a hundred death-curses rose into her mind and she shaped a single thought, knowing that it would save her life only to risk losing everything to the Inquisitors. But there was no choice. The death-curse lanced upwards and blasted the werewolf away from her, leaving the body crashing down near the lake. A moment later, it slowly returned to human form, revealing a dark-skinned man covered in hair. Most werewolves shaved to hide their true nature; Elaine knew that Daria did, even though female werewolves had less body hair.

  Dread caught her arm. “Where did you learn that spell?”

  Surprisingly, Princess Sacharissa came to her aid. “Don’t you dare yell at her,” she snapped, with all the arrogance of a royal upbringing. “Elaine just saved our lives.”

  “Yes, she did,” Dread agreed. He looked over at Elaine, his eyes burning into her soul. “When we get down to the plains, we are going to have to have a long talk. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Elaine said. If nothing else, perhaps Dread would help her to find a compromise that would help her stay alive. She hadn’t asked to be turned into a bookworm. “For now...can we get down before the end of the day?”

  “I think so,” Dread said. He grinned, suddenly. “If nothing else, the dead werewolf should give other hunters a touch of reluctance to advance further.”

  He gave her one last worried look and then started off back down the trail. Princess Sacharissa followed him and, after a moment, Elaine followed him as well. The maps she’d looked at hadn’t gone into many details, but from what she remembered there was an independent city-state at the base of the mountains, along the shores of Silver Lake. It was closely allied with Ida, yet its ruler was elected and it wouldn’t be quick to jump when Ida called the tune. Or so Elaine hoped. Being tracked down by werewolves was bad enough, but if they were detected in Lakeside, they would face guardsmen and combat magicians.

  And she knew that they were in no state for a fight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lakeside seemed much more laid back than Ida, as far as Elaine could tell. The population wore more colourful clothes and no one seemed to bat an eyelid when they saw three strangers walking off the mountain. Dread had cast an illusion spell to appear as a father with his two daughters, neither one of whom bore any resemblance to wanted fugitives. Elaine couldn’t see any sign that any of Lakeside’s population was even looking for them, but there was no way to be sure. Lakeside was a pretty obvious destination for them.

  “I had to book tickets on a coach tomorrow to Garston,” Dread said, after they’d waited for him in the inn. “I don’t want to go back to the iron dragon – it’s too obvious a place for them to look for us.”

  Elaine nodded, exhausted. They’d booked an inn with two rooms, although Dread had warned them that they needed to set up proper wards – and remove all the mirrors – before they went to sleep. Elaine had been relieved to discover that he hadn’t realised that Castle Adamant had had a secret network of gateways into a mirrored dimension, even though it wasn’t very reassuring. If an Inquisitor could miss that, what else could he miss?

  “Good thinking,” Princess Sacharissa said. She didn’t seem to have given any thought as to what she would do once she fled her father’s kingdom. Was she even qualified to do anything? “Have you called the Inquisition and warned them about my father?”

  “There are...political problems,” Dread admitted, reluctantly. “I told my superiors, but...they can’t act at once.”

  Elaine stared at him. “There’s a rogue sorcerer – probably more than one – and a royal family with a mad plan to bring down the Empire and you can’t do anything?”

  “There are political problems,” Dread repeated. “Right now, there isn’t a single unifying source of authority – and there won’t be until the next Grand Sorcerer is selected. Without his orders, we do not have the legal authority to take over Ida and hunt down her royal family – we can’t even arrest his foolish prince. There would be a terrific outcry over it.”

  “Madness,” Princess Sacharissa said. “My Kingdom’s subjects are at the mercy of my father and whoever is controlling his brain and you can’t do anything about it!”

  “I agree,” Dread said. “I have suggested most strongly that we put together a force anyway and keep Ida under close watch, but the others may not agree to go along with my suggestion. Everything is a little crazy between Grand Sorcerers; the last thing we need is rumours that the Inquisitors are plotting to remove candidates they don’t like.”

  “I thought you were sworn to serve the state faithfully – magically binding oaths,” Elaine said. “Why...?”

  “You ought to know that any oath, even one sworn on a person’s name, can be circumvented with a little ingenuity,” Dread said, ruefully. “If I sincerely believed that assassinating all of the candidates was the right course of action, I could do it without losing my powers. And even if you haven’t thought of that” – he smiled, dryly – “I assure you that the candidates themselves will have thought of it. What could someone do with a carefully-tuned memory charm?”

  He shrugged, thoughtfully. “The Inquisition has never been popular,” he added. “We do our job too well.”

  Elaine nodded. “And so they fear you, even as they battle to control you.”

  “Oh yes,” Dread said. “Fear keeps the world going round.”

  He straightened up. “Which leads neatly to the next question,” he said. “What happened to you when you were hit with Duke Gama’s spell?”

  Elaine took a breath and started to explain, watching Dread carefully as she spoke. Whatever else happened, he would be angry – and horrified – that she hadn’t told him at once. Maybe that too had been a command included in the spell – she hadn’t told anyone about her new knowledge – but it no longer seemed to have any effect. Or maybe she’d just been paranoid.

  “Let me see if I understand you,” Dread said, finally. He looked over at Princess Sacharissa, and then looked back at Elaine. “The spell gave you all of the knowledge in the Black Vault?”

  “All of the knowledge in the entire Library,” Elaine said. It was beyond her comprehension – and she’d been the target of the spell. There were hundreds of thousands of volumes – no one had a precise count – within the Great Library. “I can tell you details from history books covering the Inquisition...”

  “Most of those books are untruthful,” Dread muttered. He looked up at her, sharply. “You had all this knowledge and it never occurred to you to tell anyone?”

  “No, sir,” Elaine admitted. “I didn’t even tell Daria.”

  “You must have been out of your mind,” Dread snapped. “Didn’t you think about what someone could do with that kind of knowledge before you decided to head off to Ida?”

  Princess Sacharissa came to Elaine’s rescue. “You skulls have a reputation for...extreme solutions to problems,” she said, her voice calm and very reasonable. “What do you think she expected from you if she told you the truth?”

  Dread nodded, slowly. “Very true,” he admitted, “although we wouldn’t have killed you. You didn’t ask to become a bookworm...”

  He hesitated. “Were you tempted to use the knowledge in any way?”

  “I did something to Millicent,” Elaine admitted, in a small voice. He
had every right to be angry about that, even though he and his fellows had never called Millicent to account for her crimes. “And...and I spied on Daria.”

  The whole story slowly tumbled out. Her curiosity about the secret Millicent had mentioned, finding the chest...and finding the magical supplies inside. She didn’t know exactly why she had confessed so openly, but in some ways it was a relief. At least they’d hold her to account for something she’d actually done deliberately.

  “I just assumed that you did know that you were sharing your apartment with a werewolf,” Dread said, shaking his head. “How did you manage to miss the clues?”

  Elaine looked down at the ground. “I just...I guess I am as stupid as Millicent says I am,” she admitted. “I never thought that Daria might be a werewolf...and I never thought twice about coming to Ida.”

  “That wasn’t completely your fault, I think,” Dread said, reassuringly. “Your past history doesn’t suggest a person likely to drop everything and go on a trip five hundred miles from the Golden City on a whim. But...they clearly knew what had happened to you. If I hadn’t shown up, they would probably have waited for you to visit the Court Wizard and grabbed you there and then.”

  Elaine felt...violated. Someone had placed commands in her mind and she had followed them without even thinking it through. Millicent had been kind to her by comparison; she’d known that she was being compelled to act, even though resistance was futile. Even the cold knowledge that few people were logical enough to notice that they were being subtly influenced didn’t help.

  He stood up and started to pace the room. “Let’s see...Duke Gama dies – the only person who can assure us that it was a natural death does so. But we know that he was involved because he was cursed, and he died when he started to tell us the truth. The king tries to kill an Inquisitor and has his men torture you...his son wants to become Grand Sorcerer and may be trying to get his hands on you to boost his powers.”