Bookworm
Page 36
“I think I will,” Elaine said, “but there’s something else we have to talk about.”
She outlined, briefly, what she’d seen in the final moments before Kane had been torn apart by wild magic. The Witch-King was out there, unless he was dead...but there was no way to know for sure. His network had been crippled, yet he might have survived. A lich was very hard to kill.
“We were fooled,” Dread said, when she had finished. “I never even considered that there might be another person hiding behind the Prince.”
“Two people,” Elaine said, precisely. A long-dead sorcerer had lectured endlessly on the need for precision at all times. His words seemed to echo through her mind. Many sorcerers had written their own books and most of them were stored in the Great Library. And even the Witch-King, back when he’d been Valiant, had followed that tradition. “He might still be alive.”
She felt despair as she considered the true scale of the problem. A lich could never die; a lich needed no food, no drink, nothing that humanity could provide. The Witch-King could simply withdraw back into his cave and wait for a hundred years, or a thousand, before he started to spread his influence once again. And there might be a hundred thousand people still out there who had been touched by him and didn’t know it. The Witch-King was old enough to have more experience in subtle manipulation than anyone in the Empire.
He might be dead. She would have liked to believe that he was dead. But there was no way to know.
“He must have guided Kane to his books,” Dread said, when she’d finished. “Or maybe he hid a shadow of himself in those books and waited for someone to come along and start reading them. I wonder how much of it Kane knew himself.”
“Very little,” Elaine said. Kane hadn’t known that he’d just been a puppet. “But I think that the Witch-King was planning his return to power a long time before Kane was even born.”
The sense of despair grew stronger. Even in hindsight, there was no easy way to trace cause and effect back to the Witch-King. No one could have linked a girl without a family to the Royal Family of Ida, let alone the Witch-King himself. But each piece had been carefully put into place and manipulated until all the actors followed a script the Witch-King had written. How did you fight someone so subtle that he could craft plans over a hundred years and wait for longer before they came to fruition? Anything could be part of his plan.
She looked over at Dread and shivered. If he hadn’t come to Ida himself, she would have been taken by the Witch-King’s servants and drained of all her knowledge. The Witch-King hadn’t known everything about magic – no one did – but she knew almost everything that was known. Tapping her mind, through Kane, would have been enough to give him everything he lacked. He might know it all now, if Kane and he had been in close contact before Kane died.
And even without random chance – and Dread’s paranoia – the Witch-King had come far too close to success.
“We have to find him,” she said, and knew that Dread would agree. “I just don’t know where to begin.”
“Ida, perhaps,” Dread said. Elaine glanced at him, surprised. “It was never overwhelmed by the necromancers in either of the great wars. Where better for the Witch-King to have a secret bolt-hole?”
Elaine nodded, thoughtfully. The lands once controlled by the necromancers had been left a thousand scars, including hundreds of tiny hiding places containing knowledge and magical artefacts created by the necromancers themselves. Various Grand Sorcerers had attempted to find them all before they fell into unfriendly hands, but no one had ever been sure that they’d all been found. The necromancers had been determined that their legacy would live on even after they died.
“But we’ll find him,” Dread assured her. He sounded confident, but then he’d always sounded as if he knew what he was doing. “And you can help us search for him. And maybe you can even find a way to destroy him.”
***
Bee couldn’t look her in the eye, Elaine realised. How could he? Her gaze was intimidating now, intimidating in a way that her magic had never been. Hundreds of books on psychology flashed through her mind – half of them seemed to disagree with the other half – and suggested that men would have problems with such a serious power imbalance. And that was strange. Elaine had never had the raw power of Millicent, let alone the senior wizards.
“My mistress is summoning me home,” Bee said, reluctantly. They’d kissed, but little else. The fire was gone. “After Lady Light Spinner became the Grand Sorceress, I completed the political deals the Empress wanted and she called me home.”
And he hadn’t fought it either, Elaine realised. She didn’t need to read minds to understand that their relationship had been destroyed. The Witch-King had had the last laugh there, if nowhere else. Elaine’s eyes showed her taint to anyone who cared to look. Perhaps she’d have to start copying Lady Light Spinner and hide her eyes behind a blindfold.
“Write to me from time to time, all right?” she asked. He wouldn’t, she knew. “I can put in a good word for you at the Great Library.”
Elaine kissed Bee one final time, and then walked out of his apartment.
She didn’t let herself cry until she was safely back home.
***
“How do I look?”
“A very sexy librarian,” Daria said, mischievously. “What does your new boyfriend think of it?”
Elaine snorted. The spells that bound the librarian to the Great Library were complex and almost unbreakable. Elaine now had a connection to the building that no one else could match, even if it did leave her wondering if she should be made of stone instead of living flesh from time to time. The Great Library was alive, almost intelligent – and it was now part of her.
“The Library is just glad to have a new librarian,” Elaine said, honestly. It was difficult to say what, if anything, the Library thought of individuals. Miss Prim had also been bound, if unwillingly, to the Library – and she had tried to steal from it. “I think it was a little upset by what happened last week.”
She kept her voice light, despite the odd feeling that she’d become a prisoner without quite realising it. The Great Library held her now, keeping her within the city; there would be no more trips to anywhere outside the Five Peaks. At least she wasn’t trapped inside the building...but then, maybe there would come a time when she didn’t want to leave.
“Good luck,” Daria said, as they reached the main doors. The Great Library staff had already been told that Elaine would take Miss Prim’s position. Irritatingly, half of the staff had already signalled their intention to leave the Library. With so many senior wizards dead, there were all kinds of opportunities opening up. “Want me to join you for dinner?”
Elaine smiled as she felt the Library’s impatience. “And dancing afterwards?”
She waved goodbye to her friend and stepped through the door. The Great Library welcomed her, its presence reaching out to meet her mind. Where better for a bookworm to live than a library? It was happy to have her back within its walls and she felt the same way too.
Elaine smiled as she saw the staff and then tried to put a stern expression on her face. The Great Library was going to be very busy very soon, as thousands of sorcerers started studying for the new positions that were opening up, and they had to be ready. And the Witch-King might still be out there...
But for the moment, she was happy. And that was all that she had ever wanted.
The End
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About the Author
Christopher Nuttall has been planning sci-fi books since he learned to read. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Chris created an alternate history website and eventually graduated to writing full-sized novels. Studying history independently allowed him to develop worlds that hung together and provided a base for storytelling. After graduating from university, Chris started writing full-time. As an indie author, he has published a number of novels through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. In 2012, Elsewhen Press published his alternate history / fantasy novel The Royal Sorceress. Bookworm is his second novel to be published by Elsewhen Press. Chris is currently living in Borneo with his wife, muse, and critic Aisha.