“But you went to the Peerless School,” Johan said. “You were fed there?”
“I was,” Elaine said. “And I ended up working over the holidays, just to stay away from the orphanage. The first time I went back there, no one was pleased to see me.”
She wondered if he would understand. The orphans had watched her leave, wearing new clothes, to a school where she would be safe, warm and well-fed. She’d come back, having put on weight, and started to eat from their communal supplies again. It was hard to blame them for resenting her, even though they’d largely left her alone. She’d been a magician, after all, with a wand at her side.
“No one was pleased to see me either,” Johan said. “And to think I thought my dad was bad, when he was angry at us.”
He looked down at the blood on his hand. “What do I do about this?”
“Allow me,” Elaine said, brandishing her wand. A simple charm and the blood was gone, leaving only the rune standing out against Johan’s pale skin. “And we should probably meditate until we know just how deeply the bond runs between us.”
Johan frowned. “It seems pretty deep,” he said. “Is this remotely normal?”
“I don’t know,” Elaine said. She looked down at the rune on her palm, feeling – for the first time in months – as ignorant as a new student. “There haven’t been bonds like this for a very long time.”
She hesitated. “You may dream of my life,” she warned, “and I may dream of yours. Just remember ... that not everything may be in context when you see it.”
“I’ll try,” Johan said.
Elaine followed him out of the door and down towards the dining room. It was as spotlessly elegant as she’d expected, but Johan’s family would probably not have approved of Daria, or Elaine herself, let alone the decidedly plebeian food on the table. Elaine had to smile at the thought as Johan started passing out sandwiches, wondering just what his father would make of him serving the food. Even as a Powerless, menial work was below a Conidian.
“Your scents have changed,” Daria said, sharply. “What have you done to yourselves?”
“Bonded,” Johan said. He held up his palm. “What does this smell like?”
“Elaine,” Daria said. She sniffed Johan’s palm, then smiled. “Concentrated Essence of Elaine.”
Elaine blushed. “It’s just a bonding rune ...”
“You might want to glamour it,” Cass said. Elaine jumped, one hand reaching for her wand, as the former Inquisitor stepped into the room. “Any magician worth his wand who sees it will know there’s something odd about it.”
Johan found his voice. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I just got back,” Cass said. “The poorer parts of the city are being searched, ruthlessly. I think thousands of people have already been displaced by the soldiers.”
“They’re searching for us, I presume,” Elaine said.
Cass nodded. “The people there can’t really make a fuss,” she said, darkly. “I imagine the search will continue until they’re sure we’re not hiding there.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Johan asked. “If they’re searching there, they won’t be searching here.”
“On the face of it, yes,” Cass said. “But the search will upset the criminal element, who will then have an incentive to look for us, just to end the search before the searches stumble upon something they can’t ignore. And there are other problems.”
She sighed. “The soldiers are not being very nice to the population,” she added. “There will be riots, soon enough. And then all hell will break loose.”
“We can’t do anything about it, though,” Daria said. “Can we?”
Cass gave her an odd little smile. “Not unless you want us to surrender to the Emperor,” she said. “Our best bet would be to get out of the city, then let the Emperor know we’ve made it out.”
“Which we will, if we can,” Elaine said. “Did you hear anything else?”
“Just that the Emperor has been taking students from the Peerless School,” Cass said. “My source was quite certain that all of the children came from mundane families.”
Elaine rubbed her eyes in confusion. She hated politics, but the more she thought about it, the more it puzzled her. Hostages made sense, but children from mundane families were useless as hostages. Their families could neither cause trouble for the Emperor nor offer him anything worth taking, if he wished it. And that suggested he had something else in mind ...
She swore. “A ritual,” she said. “He’s planning a dark ritual.”
“It certainly seems that way,” Cass said. “There’s nothing else he could do with the children.”
“Unless he wants to train them as his personal assistants,” Johan offered, hopefully. “He would want more sorcerers loyal to him, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes, but half of the children he took are girls,” Cass said. “And even if he was able to overcome his revulsion at the thought of teaching a girl how to use magic, it would still be years before they could do anything useful. Why not take students from their sixth year instead?”
Elaine shuddered. “We have to stop him.”
Cass tilted her head. “How?”
“I ... I don’t know,” Elaine admitted. “But there has to be something we can do.”
“He will carry out the ritual under heavy security,” Cass said, tightly. “There will be layer upon layer of protection surrounding him. We could not do anything to stop him.”
“There are Inquisitors there,” Johan said. “Wouldn’t they stop him?”
“The Grand Sorcerer can do no wrong,” Cass said. “Anything they do is legal by definition. I think that will be true of an Emperor too.”
She shook her head. “They won’t try to stop him,” she added. “And they may even find themselves helping! And there’s nothing we can do to stop him.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Ah, Charity,” the Emperor said, as she prostrated herself before him. “I trust that you are ready to witness my work?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Charity said. She had hoped the Emperor would allow her to remain in her rooms or even go back home to check on her siblings, but instead he had kept her busy until the moon had risen high above the city. “I am ready.”
“Then follow me,” the Emperor said, picking up a long, iron-tipped staff. “Time waits for no man, not even an Emperor.”
Charity shivered as she rose from the floor and followed. The timing of rituals rarely mattered, she’d been told at school, unless the rituals involved sacrifice. A lunar ritual tended to mean ... what? She was sure she’d been taught something, once upon a time, that suggested just what the Emperor was planning, but she couldn’t recall what she’d learnt. The Peerless School had only taught them the warning signs, nothing actually useful ...
The Emperor walked through the darkened corridors, ignoring the soldiers who saluted – banging their fists against their chests – and the slaves who prostrated themselves in front of him until he had walked past them. Charity followed, wondering absently what would happen to a child who grew up with everyone automatically bending the knee to him. It had been hard enough dealing with Jamal ... but then, whatever his faults, Jamal had been a powerful magician. What would happen to a child who was raised to practically expect worship and yet lacked the power to make it happen?
She pushed the thought aside as the Emperor led the way into the ritual chamber and looked around, sighing with heavy satisfaction. A large containment circle had been drawn on the ground, surrounding a complicated network of lines, runes and carefully-placed crystals; the edge of the circle was surrounded by smaller circles, each one large enough to take a small child. Charity was no expert, but judging by the lines, the children were expected to voluntarily offer their power to the man in the centre of the ritual.
The Emperor turned to face her. “Do you recognise the runes?”
“Some of them, Your Majesty,” Charity said. She’d been taught a
few Runes of Protection, back at the Peerless School, and a dozen of them had been drawn around the circle. “But others are new to me.”
“The Peerless School has buried entire fields of knowledge,” the Emperor said, as he produced a silver knife and looked down at it contemplatively. “Our ancestors knew secrets that are completely unknown today, save for the books stored in the Black Vault.”
“Our ancestors also fought endless wars,” Charity said. “Over magic ... and power ... and who had the right to learn and use both.”
The Emperor looked up at her. For a long moment, she was uneasily convinced that someone else was peering out through his eyes. “And do you believe those questions are immaterial?”
Charity swallowed. Her mouth was suddenly dry.
“I don’t think we should be killing ourselves over them,” she said. Sweat was trickling down the back of her neck. “The wars did nothing but render a quarter of the world uninhabitable for centuries.”
The Emperor closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked himself again.
“The Peerless School saw fit to bury secrets, rather than allow the strongest to survive,” he said. “But the secrets came out, as secrets have a way of doing, and I will use them to cement my rule.”
He turned and peered towards the door, just as the first of the children entered the chamber and stumbled towards the circle, escorted by one of the serving girls. She was drugged, Charity was sure, or under a spell, for she just kept moving forward without even hesitating when she saw the ritual. Children were taught some of the warning signs, after all, and the circle itself should have set off alarm bells in her mind. Behind her, the other children appeared, led to the ritual like lambs to the slaughter. Charity wanted to shout at them, to tell them to run, but her lips refused to open. She could do nothing to prevent the Emperor from going ahead with his spell.
“A child is completely helpless before a normal compulsion spell,” the Emperor observed, “although even short-term usage on a child’s mind can cause all sorts of long-term problems for the brat. But the magic can also interfere with the ritual, which makes it inconvenient to use any such spells.”
“I suppose they wouldn’t offer themselves willingly,” Charity sniped.
Surprisingly, the Emperor took it in good humour. “Of course not,” he said. “So we drugged them with something purely mundane. There will be no interference with the ritual from compulsion spells.”
He smirked, then gave her a long considering look. “You are to stand over there and watch calmly,” he ordered. “Whatever happens, you are not to move from that spot until I give you leave.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Charity said, defeated.
She walked into the corner and turned to face the ritual circle, wishing she could close her eyes. The red-robed magicians had appeared out of nowhere and were marking the outer edge of the circle with blood, sealing in the magic. But the Emperor’s orders wouldn’t let her do anything but watch helplessly. The children looked sweet and innocent as they waited, dressed in white robes that glittered in the candlelight. Maybe they weren’t as innocent as they looked, but it hardly mattered. Compared to the sins of adulthood, childhood was an innocent time.
“We begin,” the Emperor said, as he stepped into the circle and walked to the centre, careful not to step on any of the lines or runes. “Let us commence the ritual.”
The red-robed magicians started to chant, rapping out words in a harsh-sounding language that echoed with magic. Charity shivered as she felt the magic – cold, unfamiliar magic – drifting into existence, shimmering around the chamber. The chanting grew louder, including a handful of names she knew to belong to long-forgotten gods. Light flared around the circle, brilliant blue-white light, while shadows built up at the edge of the room. And ... something started to manifest in the chamber, as if it were slowly imprinting itself into the human world.
She should be panicking, she knew, but the Emperor’s orders had cast an inhuman calm over her as she watched. The chanting reached a crescendo, then stopped; silence hit like a thunderbolt, broken only by faint sounds of breathing from the magicians. Charity watched, helplessly, as the shadows grew stronger, as faint things moved in the darkness. If it hadn’t been for the light of the ritual, she was suddenly sure, they would all be dead by now. There was something out there, just watching them ...
“This is our time,” the Emperor said. She wasn’t sure if he was speaking in the standard tongue for her benefit or for the children, but it hardly mattered. “The wheel has spun once and we are now free to walk the world once again. And soon, he who is gone will return.”
Magic surged around him, then the crystals lit up with blinding light. Charity half-covered her eyes as the light grew brighter, then she heard the children start to scream. The drug, whatever it was, had been cancelled by the spell. She stared as the children withered away in front of her, their bodies collapsing into dust. Magic pooled around them, then snapped away as soon as their bodies were completely gone. The crystals flared one final time, then faded to a dull white glow.
“They come,” the Emperor shouted. “They come!”
Charity saw ... something form out of the darkness, then vanish before she could get a proper look at it. Another followed and another, until there was a whole stream of ... things appearing out of the shadows. Some seemed tiny, barely larger than a cat or dog; some appeared so vast that the entire chamber seemed unable to hold them. She had to remind herself, as she tried to get a better look, that creatures of pure magic might not be comprehensible to human eyes. There was something about them that made it impossible to get more than a vague impression of their shape and form, if indeed they had either. The entities were so completely inhuman that, in comparison, werewolves and vampires were practically human.
There was a final flare of light, so bright that she had to cover her eyes despite the Emperor’s orders, then the room plunged into darkness. No, she realised slowly; the candles were still burning. And yet, the room felt dark. She blinked, several times, then rubbed her eyes until tears started to form. The ritual had finally come to an end.
She looked towards the centre of the circle and stared. The Emperor was lying on the ground, his red outfit torn to shreds. For a long moment, she thought – prayed – that the forces he’d been manipulating had killed him ... and then he slowly, casually, rose to his feet and looked around. Charity had to fight back a gasp. His face was covered in tiny scratches, each of which had drawn blood. His bare muscular legs were also scratched, so deeply that blood was trickling down his skin and pooling on the floor. The gods alone knew what it would do when it interacted with the remaining magic in the chamber.
The Emperor muttered something, too tired to be loud. There was a flicker of magic, then the scratches healed and his blood vanished. Charity hoped he’d lost enough to make him ill, or careless, but as he made his way out of the circle a young girl appeared, carrying a gourd of potion. A blood potion, she guessed, as the Emperor took it and drank in one smooth motion, then handled the gourd back to the slave. If he’d practiced such rituals before, a long way from the Inquisition, he would have known to take precautions against accidentally hurting himself.
“Take the dust,” the Emperor said, to his sorcerers. “Place it in storage for later use.”
Charity felt sick. Only the vilest of arts used human remains; she’d been told, years ago, that anyone trying to practice such arts had to be stopped as quickly as possible. But the Emperor was the highest authority in the land, while the Inquisitors were his slaves. Who could stop him? Certainly not a foolish girl who had managed to swear unwavering obedience before considering all of the possible consequences. With each passing day, death, or forced enslavement, or even permanent transfiguration seemed a far better option.
The Emperor walked over to her, holding his head high. “You will accompany me,” he said. “Come.”
Charity bowed her head, realising – for the first time – just ho
w rapidly the air had cleared after the ritual. The sense of ... presence had faded, although she still had the jumpy sensation she was being watched. She glanced around, noting how the sorcerers were taking both the dust and the glowing crystals from the circle, then followed the Emperor through a side door and into a hidden passageway that led up a long flight of narrow stairs, all the way to the Emperor’s private quarters. The Emperor sagged as soon as the hidden entrance was sealed, stumbling on suddenly weak legs. Charity remembered the first time Jamal had drunk too much and – somehow – managed to keep her mouth closed. The Emperor would not have wanted to show weakness in front of his subordinates.
“Help me into a chair,” the Emperor ordered. “And then fetch water.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Charity said. The Emperor had a whole collection of chairs, some of them worth more than an alchemist’s takings for a year. Charity picked one that looked sturdy, then helped the Emperor to sit down. “Please stay still. I’ll find you some water.”
The Emperor’s bathroom was larger than her entire apartment back home, she discovered, as she looked inside. Powerful wards and protective charms stirred uneasily as she looked around, then took a glass of water from the sink. It would be safe to drink, she was sure, thanks to the magic running through the room. Nothing remotely dangerous would be allowed to enter without the Emperor’s specific permission. She carried the glass back to the Emperor, then helped him to drink it. Up close, she was far too aware of a faintly-unpleasant smell surrounding him.
“You’re a good nursemaid,” the Emperor said. “I chose well.”
Charity flushed, angrily. “I’m only doing what seems right,” she said. She briefly considered poison, but the wards would stop her if she somehow managed to break her oaths and survive. “I don’t know many healing charms.”
“They shouldn’t be necessary,” the Emperor assured her. He leant forward, resting his powerful hands in his lap. “Using the knife, cut off my jacket and leave it lying on the floor.”
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