Bookworm

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I need something to pick my teeth,” she said, as she took a bite of food. Kane hadn’t decided to serve her anything better than sausages and bread. Her lips twitched in genuine amusement; it was almost like being in prison. “Can you find me something that I can use to remove pieces of food from my jaws?”

  Someone who hadn’t been enslaved might have wondered precisely why she needed a toothpick, but the slave didn’t have any orders permitting her to think. Instead, she left the room and returned moments later carrying a pair of wooden toothpicks, putting them down on the table within reach. Elaine smiled gratefully at her as she finished the sausages and put the plate down, hoping that the slave would leave her alone with the toothpicks. The slave clearly didn’t think that the toothpicks were any danger, for she left, leaving the plate with her as well. Someone hadn’t given her specific orders about how Elaine should be treated, something that might have made perfect sense if they’d captured a powerful wizard, one so powerful that he never considered using something other than magic. Elaine had had to learn, a long time ago, that she just didn’t have the power to use magic on a daily basis. It had always seemed a weakness, but right now it might prove her salvation.

  She lifted up the handcuffs on her wrist and studied them carefully. One of the books she’d absorbed gave detailed instructions on how to pick locks, although it made it seem easier than Elaine had expected. If she had been holding someone prisoner, she would have charmed the handcuffs to make it impossible for someone to pick the lock, but that might have been difficult. The overwhelmingly powerful spell worked into the handcuffs absorbed magic indiscriminately, but there was nothing intended to stop someone using a more mundane tactic for breaking out.

  It took nearly twenty minutes before she finally managed to unlock the first handcuff. It fell free from her wrist, allowing her to concentrate on freeing her other wrist and release her hands. The cuffs around her ankles were much easier to pick – they seemed larger than the ones on her hands – and she stood up, taking a deep breath as she looked around Kane’s research laboratory. Most of the items Kane had scattered around were useless, but a couple were forbidden outside the Inquisition – and one of the textbooks was very definitely on the forbidden list. She picked it up after carefully checking for unpleasant surprises and glanced at the first page. Someone had crafted a very old spell to keep away prying eyes and linked it to a deadly spell that would kill anyone who opened the book without proper precautions. She remembered Cat’s death and shuddered, before picking up the book and a couple of oddly-designed wands. Kane had clearly been preparing them for his followers to use as weapons.

  The thought puzzled her as she opened the door and peered out into a darkened corridor. Kane...seemed to be too powerful, too capable. Elaine had studied at the Peerless School and knew that there were magicians far more powerful than herself, but Kane seemed to be demonstrating too many skills to be quite real. An alchemist might be the most capable in the world, yet he wouldn’t be a druid or a combat magician at the same time. She might have been wrong, but Kane seemed to have spent centuries studying magic. Maybe he’d been studying intensely ever since he’d left the Peerless School – the touts hadn’t been able to find much evidence of achievement or the normal signs of a wizard building a power base – yet it still seemed unlikely. Elaine had cheated – Duke Gama’s spell had crammed endless realms of knowledge into her head – and yet she couldn’t use it all. She couldn’t even begin to use it all...

  And Kane seemed far too capable.

  She considered it as she slipped down the corridor, eyes and ears alert for any suspicious movement. No one in the building would be her friend; they’d all be Kane’s slaves or his allies, if he had allies. She couldn’t even remember where Kane had been staying in the Golden City, if she’d ever learned. They’d been so focused on the Prince that they’d missed the real threat, the man they hadn’t even realised was his cousin. Kane’s plan had been brilliant, Elaine acknowledged grimly; her father had even managed to fool the Inquisition.

  And yet...could it be that the plan was too complex to be believable?

  She pushed the thought aside as she sensed powerful magic ahead of her. Kane had weaved a network of wards around his lair, each one capable of stopping anyone from breaking in – or leaving. Unlike Randor Mansion, these wards wouldn’t need to be reprogrammed to prevent anyone from leaving without permission. Elaine slipped closer, drawing on the knowledge in her head to identify the wards. Nine of them were common, carefully designed to integrate with one another rather than cause interference; the tenth was unknown in the modern era. It dated all the way back to the Second Necromantic War. Perhaps the Witch-King himself had designed it, for it was directly linked to the magic generated by necromancy. Elaine shuddered the moment she saw it, knowing that it would be almost impossible to break or fool. It kept her prisoner as surely as the chains in Kane’s lab had kept her prisoner. There was no way out.

  The sound of footsteps echoed out from behind her and she slipped into the shadows, risking a minor charm to pull the darkness around her like a shroud. Two male slaves, both wearing collars and basic outfits that marked them as lower-class servants, walked past her and right through the wards. Elaine watched them go, realising in horror exactly what Kane had done to them once they’d become his slaves. The collars they wore allowed them passage through the wards, once the wards had determined that they were genuinely slaves. Anyone who hadn’t been enslaved – or was trying to trick people into believing that they were slaves – would be detected and held for interrogation. There seemed to be no way out of the building – and even if she managed to get through the wards, there was no way to know exactly where she was in the city, assuming that she was in the city. Kane could have lied to her.

  For a moment, she wondered if she should go back to the cell and chain herself up again before someone realised that she’d managed to escape, but she pushed the thought away angrily. There was one possibility, but it was dangerous, perhaps even insane...shaking her head, she headed back to the lab and looked around, hoping to find a spare collar. She found nothing, but the same slave who had brought her food entered moments later, carrying a small jug of water. Elaine’s freeze spell caught her before she could sound the alarm.

  The slave was young, barely older than Elaine had been when she’d entered the Peerless School. She felt an odd moment of sympathy for the girl – there was no way to know when or why she’d been enslaved – before she started to work on the slave collar. The charms that turned people into slaves were designed to be impossible for anyone, apart from the master, to remove, but Dread had managed it for Cat and Elaine suspected she knew how he’d done it. She recoiled as she sensed the enslavement charm inside the collar – it felt like looking at a poisonous snake, uncoiling as it prepared to strike at her – before bracing herself and starting to reprogram it. Dispelling the charm would have been simple; reprogramming it was a great deal harder. It pushed her right to the limits of her ability, but she was desperate. If she’d paid more attention in class...

  She unhooked the collar from the girl’s neck and, before she could think better of it, placed it around her own neck. Even lamed, the enslavement charm pressed against her mind, trying to turn her into a slave. It wasn’t even remotely subtle, not like the suggestion that she should travel to Ida; it enforced the master’s orders with such power that resistance was not even an option. Elaine shuddered, fighting to focus her mind, as she stood up and walked towards the wards blocking her escape. The spell kept pressing away at her, telling her that she should submit to her master, that she should be a good and proper slave. She called on all the mental disciplines she’d learned at the Peerless School to keep her mind free of its influence, hoping against hope that she could get through the wards in time. They shimmered into existence in front of her and Elaine stepped through. The wards didn’t seem to bar anyone with the right enslavement spell, even one that didn’t seem to be working properly.
She passed through them without setting off an alarm.

  On the other side, she found it almost impossible to remove the collar. Certain basic commands were burned into the minds of every slave in the world; they could not remove the collar, they could not harm or kill themselves and they could not, directly or indirectly, harm their master or his interests. The commands threatened to overwhelm her; she stumbled to her knees as her hands twitched, trying to reach the collar. It was so hard to hold her thoughts together against the insistent commands trying to slide into her mind, so hard to be sure that she was really doing as she wanted to do...the collar came loose and fell to the floor, followed rapidly by Elaine herself. Her entire body was drenched in sweat, her head spinning out of control. Slaves were not meant to break free of their collars, even the ones who had been enslaved against their wills. And she’d put on the collar willingly.

  It took all she had left to pick herself up and start stumbling away from the wards, heading towards the edge of the building. The collar was abandoned on the ground; she knew she should take it with her, but she couldn’t even bring herself to pick it up. No wonder so many freed slaves remained servile, even after years of freedom. The commands were burned directly into their minds. There were some spells that would help, she knew, but she barely had the strength left to use them. Instead, she ducked into a side room as she heard footsteps, praying that the slaves wouldn’t see the collar where she’d left it and realise what had happened. She was in no state for a fight.

  It felt like hours before she was strong enough to start walking onwards towards the doors. Kane had taken over a building that had probably originally belonged to another sorcerer, judging from the misdirection charms that seemed to flicker through the entire building, but eventually she reached the doors. There were a handful of wards covering them, but they were simple, easy to remove. Elaine puzzled over that for a long moment, before deciding that Kane wouldn’t have wanted anyone on the outside to sense the wards he’d constructed around his inner chambers. There wouldn’t be anything for the Inquisition – or his rivals – to sense if they started to probe his home. But then, everyone had been focused on the Prince or the more powerful contestants. They wouldn’t have spared much time for Kane.

  Outside, it was dark, the moon rising slowly in the sky. She was at the very edge of the Golden City, looking up at the Watchtower and sensing the magical currents running through the entire city. A faint glow in the distance, towards the Parade of the Endless, revealed that powerful magic was being used and shaped by powerful magicians, those who believed that they could become Grand Sorcerer. The Arena was powerful enough to hold their magic from spinning out of control and ripping through the city. It was possible that the Inquisition would have kept the maddened Prince there if they had been able to take him alive. There were so many wards around the Arena that no one should have been able to break out, no matter how powerful they were...

  She sensed a sudden surge of magic, just before the sky lit up with a brilliant white flash. The sound of thunder hit her ears a second later, almost driving her to her knees. Something had gone terribly wrong; the magic field surrounding the city was twisting, being violently pulled towards the Arena. Elaine stared, realising that the contestants had suddenly realised just how powerful – and knowledgeable – Kane had become. There would be Inquisitors there too, surely, and hundreds of other magicians. Elaine knew with a sickening certainty that it wouldn’t be enough to stop Kane. Given time – and the knowledge he’d stolen from her – he would be able to absorb the power worked into the Arena. There were gods that would be less powerful than he’d become.

  Bracing herself, trying to draw on the magic to give her energy, Elaine started to run. The Arena wasn’t that far away, but she knew that she was tired and worn. And, despite herself she had the sickening feeling that it might be too late. Kane, by killing the other two contestants, would become Grand Sorcerer.

  And then the world would be his.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The waves of magic grew stronger as Elaine ran towards the Arena, trying desperately to avoid the crowds of fleeing people trying to get away from the battle. Reality was bending and twisting right in front of her as the pocket dimension that enveloped the Arena, making it capable of seating the entire city in a tiny space, threatened to collapse, crushing everyone inside into nothingness. Elaine could sense Kane’s mind working away at the spells that held the pocket dimension in place, taking control of it and draining the magic into himself. He’d go mad...

  Or perhaps he was already mad. She could sense his mind spinning out like a spider’s web, drawing on the collective stability of a dozen minds, perhaps a hundred minds. They could provide stability that other dark wizards lost when they tried to enhance their own magical power, or so Kane clearly hoped. But Elaine could feel the ragged edges of his thoughts and knew that he was being tainted by the sheer power he was channelling. Insanity was a very real threat.

  She ducked to one side as hundreds of people fled past her, trying to use the magic woven into the Arena to see what had happened. Images flashed into her mind one by one, each one striking home with terrifying impact. Administrator Mentor and Lady Light Spinner had jousted, contesting their power directly, ignoring the threat from Kane until it was far too late. They hadn’t realised what was happening until the Arena itself turned on them, twisting and reaching out for their souls. Elaine realised, with a frisson of horror, exactly how the next Grand Sorcerer was selected. They didn’t just have to have raw power, but the discipline to take over the Arena and hold it steady. It represented the Grand Sorcerer’s ability to juggle a thousand different problems at one time and still hold the Empire together. Those contestants who didn’t realise the true nature of the contest were likely to die before realising that they’d lost. Kane had already been powerful; now he controlled the entire pocket dimension.

  Dread and his fellows had realised, too late, what was happening to the Arena. They’d tried to collapse it, hoping to blink Kane out of existence along with his power. But Kane had already taken over most of the Arena and he’d been able to save himself from death. Mentor, the man who had once punished Elaine for Millicent’s little joke, had tried to kill Kane directly, upholding the Mage’s Oath. Kane had swatted him out of existence effortlessly, before turning his attention to Lady Light Spinner. But she was gone. Fled? Killed already? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the power flowing through him.

  Elaine kept running, watching in dismay as the Arena slowly began to collapse in on itself. Kane seemed to be manipulating it deliberately, sporting with the thousands of helpless civilians who remained trapped inside the pocket dimension. Some made it out, fleeing in blind panic; others discovered that no matter how fast or how far they ran, they could never make it out of the dimension. Kane had altered part of the Arena so the distance between their seats and the exits became infinite. They were forever trapped on the brink of escape, completely at Kane’s mercy.

  The city’s magical field kept twisting, almost as if the defences created by successive Grand Sorcerers were trying to stop Kane before he managed to take the entire city. Wards that dated back to the era before the First Necromantic War pressed in on him, trying to destroy him or starve him of the magic he was sucking into himself. But it was futile. Kane had already passed beyond anything they could stop. The wards were literally feeding him still more magic.

  She turned the corner and ran towards the Parade of the Endless, only to see the Arena finally starting to collapse. The screams from those trapped inside grew louder as they finally died, while Kane’s laughter echoed out over the entire city. Mad...or determined to ensure that no one fucked with him. Elaine skidded to a halt as the final crowd of escapees ran past her, their faces torn and twisted by blind panic, just before the Arena collapsed into nothingness. Kane stood where it had been, power twisting the very air around him. Prince Hilarion had been a maddened animal, unable to concentrate or focus his power;
it would have killed him even if Dread hadn’t managed to slice off his head. But Kane had prepared properly for the sheer infusion of power that had overwhelmed his half-cousin. He might still be mad, but he would have control...and that would make him immensely more dangerous than a rampaging bull like Prince Hilarion.

  Sheets of white lightning tore through the air as Kane flexed his supercharged muscles. Elaine could sense spells forming into existence, each one too powerful for anyone to stop. Some were basic, spells that every magician learned in their first year in the Peerless School, but boosted to a power level that made them powerful beyond nightmares. Others were older and far darker, unknown to anyone apart from Kane – and Elaine herself. Kane’s power was spreading through the city, reaching out towards its intended victims. Elaine realised that he was powerful enough to compel the entire city, even the senior wizards. How long would it be before he started seeding their minds and turning them into copies of himself?

  Maybe Kane hadn’t realised just how far he could go. He could seed everyone, from the greatest of wizards to the lowliest of slaves. Kane would become the only life form left on the planet, each successive child becoming part of an intellect that would never die. Maybe he could even seed himself into animals, or creatures that combined humans and animal features like werewolves. There would never be any resistance because there would be no one else left alive. Kane would be alone forever in a billion bodies, each one a copy of himself.

  He won’t do that, Elaine told herself firmly, and prayed to the gods that she was right. He wants to gloat over his supremacy. How can he do that if all of his old tormentors are dead?

  A pair of black-robed figures appeared out of nowhere, wands raised and ready. There were no games with harmless spells this time; the Inquisitors threw an entire series of death spells towards their target, spells that were almost impossible to stop. She’d been taught about one of them in the Peerless School, Elaine remembered, even though they hadn’t been shown how to cast the spell unless they went into combat magic. The only certain defence, the tutor – a grumpy old man bearing the scars from fifty years of fighting dark magicians – had told them, was to be somewhere else when you were targeted. Kane, on the other hand, just seemed to absorb enough magic to kill a hundred men, before casually blinking both of the Inquisitors out of existence. They were gone completely, air rushing in to fill the space where they had been. Elaine didn’t know of any spell that could do something like that. Kane had simply altered reality to the point where the Inquisitors no longer existed...