Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  He was right, Elaine realised, but she hesitated to drink. “I shouldn’t worry about poison,” Kane added, almost as if he had read her mind. “Right now, I can drug you or poison you or do anything to you. Why would I bother to trick you into drinking poison?”

  Elaine took a sip of the water, taking the opportunity to look around the small room. It was depressingly familiar; a magician’s workroom. A large wooden table provided space for the magician to work on his magic, a shelf held a small pile of reference texts and a number of jars contained various ingredients for magic potions. A couple – eye of newt, skin of frog – were familiar, but the rest meant nothing to her. She looked up as her eyes caught a motion and saw a small birdcage, holding a diminutive winged humanoid. The fairy looked back at her, her tiny porcelain-like face disturbingly human. Fairies were not intelligent, everyone knew, but few humans could bring themselves to harm one directly. And yet crushed fairy wings were a vital ingredient for several potions.

  Reluctantly, she looked up at Kane. “You do realise that my Guardian has no legal right to sell me?”

  “I think that that hardly matters,” Kane said, dryly. “The important issue is that you have been taken from the city, without leaving any trail for your Inquisitor friends to follow. They’re going to see the remains of Howarth Hall and conclude that you and your Guardian – and his staff – were all killed when the demon he used to power his butler got loose. I left behind just enough of your blood to fool even a werewolf. The Inquisitors will breathe a sigh of relief that the problem you represent has been solved and go back to preparing for the selection of the next Grand Sorcerer.”

  “Right,” Elaine said, trying to fight down despair. He was right. The Inquisition would probably be relieved if they concluded that she was dead and all the knowledge in her head was gone. Daria and Bee – she hoped – would look harder, but Kane had known that he would have to hide his trail from a werewolf. By now, he could have taken her halfway around the planet and they would never find her. “What do you want with me?”

  “All in good time,” Kane said, mildly. “Where was I? Ah, yes; my father was kind enough to insist that the Court Wizard, a venal and ambitious man, school me in magic. I had something of a talent for it, you see. The Prince couldn’t study magic as much as he wanted, but I had all the time in the world. It was easy to master enough of it to go to the Peerless School, my father helping me to conceal my origins for fear that I might be rejected. By the time I arrived, I knew more charms, hexes and curses than some of the tutors.”

  Elaine remembered Professor Whitby, a kind and harmless old man, and suspected that he was right. Not everyone had liked the elderly tutor, but he’d been careful to ensure that the students with the right aptitudes for planting and raising specific crops were offered their chance to learn how to do it properly. Elaine had spent a happy month trying to raise Crawling Fungus before the tutor had reluctantly told her that her magic didn’t seem suited for the task.

  “But I still thirsted for knowledge,” he continued. “I would inherit nothing from my birth, even if my blood mingled the blood of two of the noblest families in the world. The Prince and I agreed that he would help me with my obsession in exchange for me tutoring him in magic. It was not long before we had both surpassed the tutors the Court Wizard hired for us and kept experimenting. Eventually, we found...”

  His voice broke off, just for a moment. “We found...”

  Elaine studied him, puzzled. Someone had spelled the Court Wizard’s body to prevent him from talking; could someone have done the same to Kane? But why would Kane curse himself? What had they found? The small collection of forbidden manuscripts, or something much more dangerous? Something was nagging at the back of her mind, something that she should have recognised.

  “We found...we found the key to knowledge and power,” Kane said, finally. He looked shaken, almost as if something had been trying to keep him from speaking, but his voice rapidly returned to its confident tone. “I discovered that I could become powerful, so powerful that I could bend the world to my will. The Witch-King spoke through me and I realised just how his knowledge could best be applied. And when I realised what I knew – what I’d known all along – I determined to become the most powerful person in the world.”

  His eyes grew brighter. “I didn’t ask to be born, did I? I didn’t ask for my mother to die in childbirth and my father to have to refuse to recognise me as his child! Do you understand how lucky I was that I wasn’t committed to an orphanage like you, or sold into slavery? I had noble blood, but no power. The bitch could have convinced my father to discard me if she’d managed to have a child of her own.”

  Elaine looked at him and wondered, grimly, just how much talent he’d had as a child. “I think you stopped her from becoming pregnant,” she said. There were spells to do that, some of them common enough not to really count as curses. “Why did you do that?”

  “I didn’t,” Kane said. “I think. It’s so hard to look back at my life and wonder what was the first real sign of my magic coming to the surface. But she was such a cold woman that my father would probably have been unable to perform if she’d dragged him into bed. No love or lust or warmth in her heart.”

  He shrugged. “But I was powerless,” he added. “I could lose what little I had at any time. But if I became powerful in magic, I could bend the world to my will. And when I looked up from the Witch-King’s book, I knew how it could be done. Hilarion would suffer for all the humiliations of my childhood.”

  “But you said Hilarion was your friend,” Elaine said, alarmed. Kane sounded mad, but a more focused madness than that which had consumed his former friend. “What did you do to him?”

  Something else clicked in her mind. “You seeded him with a little of your personality,” she said. Kane bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Hilarion practically was you – or is it the other way around. Are you Hilarion?”

  Kane snorted. “Do I sound like Hilarion?”

  “I barely knew him,” Elaine said. “What did he sound like?”

  “Conceited, arrogant, convinced that he ruled the world...” Kane said. “He was legitimate so he was secure, even if he went on rampages in inns and beat up countless whores in an endless quest for pleasure. His father never provided him with real discipline, nor did he punish him for his many transgressions. He and that effeminate fool Count Lucas painted the town red while I studied magic and wondered which day would end my noble life. You would have hated him when you heard him speak.”

  “But he was once your friend,” Elaine pressed. She saw the whole ghastly plot and understood just what Kane had done. “You seeded him with a little of your own personality and convinced him to join the competition to become the Grand Sorcerer. No one would pay any attention to you while – shock, horror – a noble-born prince was trying to compete. And when the Inquisition realised that something was rotten in the state of Ida, you drove him mad and sent him out to fight the Inquisitors.”

  Everything suddenly made a ghastly kind of sense. Hilarion should have fled the moment he realised that the plot had been uncovered, at least enough of it to justify the Inquisition attempting to capture him. Everything had been exposed when Elaine had found the Witch-King’s book; surely, he should have known that the game was up and it was time to flee. And instead he’d terrorised his friend and tried to fight the Inquisition, boosting his own magic to the point where it would have killed him in short order even if the Inquisition hadn’t managed to defeat him. What did it matter if half the Golden City were destroyed by the maddened sorcerer? Everyone would think the matter was over when the rubble had stopped crashing down.

  “Indeed,” Kane agreed. “And Count Lucas was never very enthusiastic about the whole idea of trying to become Grand Sorcerer. He only went along with it because Hilarion was so insistent on trying to gain power. The King had a dream of uniting enough aristocratic magicians together to dictate terms to the Golden City and actually having a Grand Sorce
rer under his thumb...”

  “He would have loved the idea,” Elaine said, tonelessly. But the Grand Sorcerer would have been nothing more than an aspect of Kane’s personality. He would have enough time to grow in power and start using the tools created by the first Grand Sorcerer to crush all resistance. Everyone was scared of the Inquisitors already, not without reason. What would happen when they were turned into a genuine secret service, keeping the common folk in line through fear of magic or violence. “He would never see you coming.”

  “The Grand Sorcerer makes a visit to every kingdom in the world over the first couple of years of his reign,” Kane agreed. “I would go and speak with each of the kings privately, leaving a piece of myself in their minds. Over the next few years, they would all become me, joining one mind living in a hundred bodies. I would then take over the magicians, the traders, the civil servants who make the empire work...I would become the empire.”

  Elaine stared at him in horror. “You’d go mad,” she said. But the Witch-King hadn’t completely lost it, had he? He had been semi-rational right up to the last days of the war, smart enough to realise that indiscriminately releasing demons would tear the world apart and leave him with nothing to rule. How had he done it? The knowledge in her mind seemed to suggest one possible answer. He’d balanced his thoughts out over thousands of minds, providing a stability that one mind in one body lacked. Elaine wasn’t sure if anyone could create such a hive mind deliberately, but the Witch-King had succeeded and Kane clearly believed he could succeed too. “What would be left of the world?”

  Kane smiled. “Who cares about this world? Name me a single person in this world who is fair-minded, decent and willing to embrace difference. No one is...”

  “Daria is,” Elaine said, without thinking.

  “And perhaps you should ask her,” Kane sneered, “just how many people are scared of her because she’s a werewolf.”

  He smiled. “And now I have you in my clutches and the plan is complete,” he concluded. “I will enter the arena tomorrow” – Elaine flinched; she hadn’t realised just how long she’d been unconscious – “armed with the knowledge in your head. It will be easy to allow Administrator Mentor and Lady Light Spinner to fight while I watch from the sidelines – and then I will destroy the victor, claiming the title of Grand Sorcerer for my own. And then my reign will begin.”

  “But you can’t take my knowledge so quickly,” Elaine said. Dread had given her a few tricks to help preserve her mental defences. Even without them, breaking her would take days even for a skilled interrogator. And then she realised the truth. It was possible to do it quickly, without violence, if the victim and violator shared biological traits. And that only happened if they were related.

  The awful truth dawned on her. “You’re my father, aren’t you?”

  Kane nodded. “I seeded you twenty-three years ago,” he said. “I ensured that the whore I used as your mother had the child and gave her to an orphanage when she was finally born. I gave the orphanage staff enough money – and gentle mental pushes – to ensure that you wouldn’t be sold into slavery or otherwise taken from the orphanage. Your magical talent was enough to get you into the Peerless School, but not enough to ensure that you could have your pick of jobs after you left. And then Miss Prim agreed to take you into the Library as a trainee librarian.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Elaine said. Not the bit about him being her father; they looked similar enough for that to be true. But she didn’t believe that someone – anyone – could work on such a subtle plan, with so much to go wrong, over twenty-four years, perhaps longer. “Miss Prim was enslaved...”

  “But not without some independence,” Kane pointed out. “Who do you think hired her to steal from the Great Library in the first place?”

  “You couldn’t have planned so carefully and so well,” Elaine said, flatly. The books on military and intelligence operations she’d absorbed insisted, flatly, that the more complex a plan the more likely it was to go badly wrong. And yet...who would have connected a parentless child with a sneak thief and the Kingdom of Ida? If a single strand of his plan failed, it wouldn’t bring down the rest of the structure. “And how did you know I’d pick up the book...”

  “It was charmed for you,” Kane informed her. “And Miss Prim ordered you to be the one who dealt with it. You can work out the rest for yourself.”

  Elaine stared at him. For her entire life, she’d wondered who had given birth to her and why. Who had her father been, or her mother...and why had they refused to raise their child for themselves? She remembered, bitterly, what the druid had said. Sometimes it was better not to know. As a child, she’d wondered if she were the lost heir to a noble family, perhaps even to the Golden Throne itself. Foolish dreams, all of them. Dread had been right to suspect her, perhaps even to consider killing her. But now it was too late.

  Kane smiled as he stood up and walked around behind her. “If you don’t resist, the process won’t be painful,” he said, as he pushed his fingers against her skull. “And I will acknowledge you as my daughter when I am Grand Sorcerer. What could you do with a family tree that links you to the most powerful magician in the world?

  “I am No-Kin,” Elaine said, flatly. Bitterness threatened to overwhelm her. How Millicent would laugh if she knew the truth. “Right now, I have no father.”

  “No,” Kane agreed. “I suppose you don’t.”

  She felt his mind reaching out to touch hers, icy fingers probing through her thoughts and memories. The feeling was so...violating that she shrank back, but there was no escape. She tried to distract him, to misdirect him, yet he saw through all of her defences. Elaine tried to resist anyway as he started to read her thoughts, but it was futile. She could barely move as he took control of her mind. Resistance was futile...

  And then she blacked out once again.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Elaine shivered as she struggled back to awareness, only to find that she was alone. Kane was gone, leaving her to try to recover from his violation of her mind. All of the knowledge she’d gained was still there, but it felt tainted, as if he’d raped her mind while copying the knowledge from her head. She felt filthy and helpless and very much alone.

  Despair threatened to overwhelm her as she struggled against the chains holding her in the chair. She’d found out who her parents had been, only to discover that she would have preferred not to know. And her father had regarded her as nothing more than a pawn in a very long-term game. Elaine wasn’t entirely sure that she believed everything he’d told her, but in the end it hardly mattered. Dread had been right about the danger she represented to the world, even though she hadn’t intended to be malicious. He should have killed her the moment he realised what had actually happened to her.

  Hot tears burned in her eyes as she started to struggle, only to discover that escape was impossible. The chains granted her limited freedom of movement, but she couldn’t leave the chair and the magic infused into the metal absorbed any magic she tried to use before it could cut her free. Kane had been more than just any old magician, she realised dully; he’d had the power to win the contest honestly, without needing forbidden charms from the Great Library. But then, according to the knowledge in her mind, perhaps it wasn’t too surprising. Mixing disparate bloodlines sometimes produced remarkable results. The last Grand Sorcerer had come from humble origins and risen to become the most powerful magician in the world.

  Perhaps Daria or Dread would find her...but they wouldn’t even know to look. If Kane had been telling the truth, all the evidence would suggest that her trail had ended in the ruins of Howarth Mansion, where she had apparently died alongside her Guardian. No one would quite understand what had happened, but it would be enough to keep anyone from tracking her down until it was far too late. And perhaps Kane had been right about the Inquisitors being privately relieved that she was dead. But they wouldn’t find a body...

  She fought down the urge to cry as she studied t
he chains, trying to find a weakness...but there was nothing. The knowledge in her head identified the entire system, a design used to imprison sorcerers far more powerful than Elaine had ever been. Escape was impossible, as was using magic to call for help. Her thoughts tormented her time and time again. By now, Kane could be in the Arena, using his magic to win the contest and become Grand Sorcerer. What would happen if the Inquisition worked out what had happened, too late to prevent him from taking power? There was no way to know. It had never happened before.

  The door opened and she looked up, praying to all the gods that Daria or Dread or even Millicent had found her. But instead the person who stepped inside was a stranger, a woman wearing a slave collar and carrying a small tray of food. The smell mocked Elaine, reminding her that she’d been completely unconscious for days. Clearly Kane had decided to keep her fed, for the moment. But why? One possibility occurred to her and she shivered. He could easily have placed a seed of himself inside her mind and intended to leave her imprisoned until the seed had taken over and turned her into yet another body for a greater mind. Elaine flinched at the thought as the slave set the food down within reach and turned to leave. Maybe there was one chance to escape...

  “Slave,” she said, “unlock these chains.”

  The slave’s voice was dull, utterly hopeless. “I may not do anything against the orders of my master,” she said. Elaine wasn’t too surprised. Slave collars made a slave completely obedient to their masters, but not to just anyone. They would be able to refuse orders from burglars and would-be spies. “You are to remain in this room until the master returns from his travels.”

  And how long, Elaine wondered, would that be? How did they intend to solve the toilet problem? The thought made her feel sick, before a thought occurred to her. Magic was useless against the chains holding her in the chair, but magic wasn’t the only solution to the problem.