Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling

by Christopher Nuttall

  His father sighed. “Johan ...”

  “But I will remain here for the rest of my life,” Johan thundered. “A prisoner ... no, a pet. I won’t be able to find a wife; will you buy one for me? And if we have mundane powerless children, what will you do with them? Will you keep us all as one happy family of prisoners?”

  His father lifted a hand in a spell-casting pose, then dropped it back to his knee. “Out,” he ordered. He had never used magic to discipline his children, but there was always a first time. “Now.”

  Johan turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

  ***

  Duncan Conidian watched his son leave, feeling his anger drain away into pity ... and sadness. He wasn’t good with showing love and affection; the endless lust for power and position that ran through the blood – as Johan had correctly identified – made it harder for him to spend time with his children. Indeed, he’d relied on his wife to bear and raise them while he concentrated on the family’s ambitions. It had ensured that his relationship with his children wasn’t as strong as it should have been.

  But how could he have developed a strong relationship with Johan? His son was right; he was, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner in House Conidian. Duncan did understand why Johan wanted to be something else, something significant ... and there were positions for talented young men, even if they were powerless. And if Johan had been born to a mundane family, Duncan had no doubt that he would have risen high in the ranks, even earning the respect of magicians.

  “But he’s my son,” he muttered, remembering with shame his reaction when he first realised that he’d sired a Powerless. He’d accused his wife of adultery, a row that had turned into a blazing magical duel that could easily have killed both of them. Even now, their relationship was fragile. “He would still have our blood.”

  It was blood that tied families together; Johan, powerless through he was, still shared the same blood as the rest of his family. If he were to be captured by a magician, that magician would be able to use his blood against House Conidian ... and, as Johan had no defences, there would be no way for him to save himself. Johan had to be protected because he couldn’t protect himself, which meant that he couldn’t be allowed to go far from the house. It was unfortunate, but there was no choice.

  Johan hated it when his older brother made him humiliate himself, or when his younger sister turned him into a doll. And how could anyone blame him for such hatred? But such tricks, cruel as they were, paled in comparison to what a genuinely evil magician could do. Johan was sheltered, too sheltered. He had no idea what dangers might be lurking outside, beyond the wards.

  I’m sorry, Duncan thought, but there is no choice.

  There was a tap at the door. “My Lord,” a maid said, “there is an Inquisitor at the door.”

  Duncan sighed. Inquisitors were always bad news.

  “I’m coming,” he said. There was no way he was going to show an Inquisitor his study. “Show him into the Reception Room to wait.”

  The maid bowed her head, then left the room.

  Chapter Three

  After Dread had left, Elaine walked back through the Great Library to her own quarters and passed through the wards with a sigh of relief. Miss Prim had left so quickly that she’d abandoned almost all of her possessions; Elaine had had most of them stored, but she hadn’t had the heart to remove a handful of paintings of the countryside hundreds of miles from the Golden City. It had taken her some time to realise just how trapped Miss Prim had felt in the Great Library; the paintings had been all she’d had to remind her of the open world outside its walls.

  Shaking her head, she sealed the wards behind her and walked over to the large mirror. It had been a gift from Daria, who had told her that she should try to develop a little vanity now that she was not only a mature woman, but one of the most politically powerful magicians in the Empire. She stood in front of the mirror and eyed herself, noting the long brown hair that framed a mousy face – cute was the best she could hope for, rather than beautiful. Her soft brown eyes looked almost sad ...

  Irritated, Elaine waved a hand in front of her face, cancelling the glamour. The brown eyes vanished, replaced by bright red orbs that looked utterly inhuman. There was no trace of anything but red light, no matter how closely she looked. The strange sense of ... taint that hung over her magic like an oil slick returned at the same moment, as if it wasn’t there until she looked for it. It bothered her more than she wanted to admit, she knew; if she’d been a more powerful magician, she had the feeling that the taint would do more than give her headaches and strange burning sensations on a regular basis.

  Touched by uncontrolled magic, she thought, as she replaced the glamour. It was hardly uncommon for magicians – male or female – to use glamours to conceal unwanted warts or acne, but she knew just how badly others would respond to bright red eyes. Back at the Peerless School, removing glamours had been a common practical joke. Her glamour was much stronger than anything a teenage magician should be able to produce and it still bothered her when she was out in public. Anyone who had been touched so badly by uncontrolled magic tended to be suspected of everything from dark rituals to demon-summoning.

  She would have liked to stay in the library for the rest of the day, but she knew that she had to go to the Imperial Palace. Besides, she wasn’t too sure if the impulse to remain where she was came from her own mind or from her bond to the library. The Great Library was old enough for the wards to mutate and develop quirks of their own, just like most of the other ancient buildings in the Golden City. Many of them, however, had been destroyed during Kane’s rampage. The city was still rebuilding, six months later.

  And some of the scars will never heal, she thought, as she pulled on her cloak and left her quarters, walking up through the library to the sole exit. Her staff nodded politely to her as she passed; most of them, thankfully, were newcomers, rather than men and women who remembered her as the mere assistant she’d been before Miss Prim’s departure. But then, so many magicians had been killed that the former staff had had a chance to get better jobs elsewhere in the Golden City. It still amused her to think that she might have been promoted anyway ...

  No, she knew that was nonsense. Without her, Kane – and through him the Witch-King – would have taken the Empire for himself. No matter how much she tried to hide from it, she was no longer a non-entity. She was the Bookworm, the Head Librarian and a member of the Privy Council ... and she still wanted to run and hide whenever the great and good turned their attention in her direction.

  Outside, the air was cool, reminding her that winter was drawing near. There had already been snowfalls to the north, she knew; this winter was going to be harder than any other in living memory. The Golden City had once been protected from the worst of the weather by powerful spells, embedded into the buildings over countless generations. Kane had destroyed them, accidentally or otherwise, and no one – not even Elaine – had been able to find a way to replace them quickly. The Grand Sorceress was already making preparations for the coming winter, but few others took the threat seriously. How could they when everyone knew that it was always summer in the Golden City?

  The weather should tell them, Elaine thought, sourly. The young men and women on the streets had taken to wearing longer robes and dresses, rather than the scandalously short outfits they’d been wearing only five months ago. No one outside the Privy Council really knew what had happened during the contest to select the next Grand Sorcerer, but the devastation had loosened the bonds of society. Elaine honestly couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing.

  She hesitated as she turned the corner and approached the Imperial Palace. It was easily the largest – on the outside – building in the Golden City, surrounded by gardens that called attention to the Emperor’s wealth and power. Living space was at a premium in the city hemmed in as it was by mountain ranges. To have a private garden – and a building that didn’t make use of transdimensional ma
gical engineering to be bigger on the inside than the outside – was conspicuous consumption on a grand scale. Almost everyone else, no matter how wealthy and powerful they were, had to make do with tiny patches of land, if that.

  The Palace was surrounded by a handful of young men and women, yelling slogans as they marched to and fro under the watchful eyes of the guards. Levellers, Elaine realised; mundanes who wished a greater share in government. Kane’s attack hadn’t just loosened the social bonds; he’d also weakened the faith in the system that kept it going. Right now, mundanes were asking if they could really trust the Grand Sorceress to keep the rest of the magicians in line. Elaine honestly wasn’t sure what to make of that either.

  It was hard for her to walk forward and up to the gates. She had never liked company, and the pressure of the crowd, even composed of non-magicians, pushed at her composure. By the time she stepped through the wards and started to walk up to the palace, she was trembling, even though she knew that there was no reason to fear. She might have been a weak magician, but she had been able to protect herself even before she’d become a Bookworm and started to unlock some of the true secrets of magic.

  She missed Daria dreadfully, she realised, as she stepped through the doors and into the palace. Her friend had always boosted her confidence, telling her to keep chugging on despite her fears and near-panics. And now Daria was off on a mission that even Elaine knew little about, leaving Elaine all alone. She knew she could talk to Dread – the Inquisitor always had time for her, despite the pressures of his job – but there were few other friends in her life. Most of the people who had introduced themselves to her after she’d been raised to the Privy Council had clearly wanted to use her, rather than know her.

  The Imperial Palace felt ... strange. It was a magical building, yet the magic was blurred with the mundane to a degree that would have puzzled her, if she hadn’t known more about its history than anyone else. There had been plenty of non-magicians in the long-gone Imperial Line; hell, the last Emperor hadn’t been a magician, which explained what had happened to him during the Necromantic Wars. Unlike the Great Library or any of the Aristocratic Houses, it wasn’t designed to bond with just one person, but with an entire family line. And that family line was gone.

  There were always rumours of heirs, Elaine knew. But none of them had ever proven real.

  No guards blocked her path as she made her way down the corridor and into the Reception Room. Lady Light Spinner, Grand Sorceress and unquestioned ruler of the Empire, was her own best protection. Elaine knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Light Spinner could have beaten the old Elaine without raising a sweat ... and maybe even the new Elaine, if she had no time to prepare. The magic crackling around her figure was a warning to would-be challengers. This was the magician who was considered the most powerful in the world.

  She was taller than Elaine, her features hidden behind a black veil that concealed everything apart from her eyes. Elaine was one of the very few people who knew what lurked behind the veil – and of the terrible price Light Spinner had paid for her mastery of magic. If others knew ... some would be impressed, Elaine suspected, and others would call for her immediate execution. Elaine had a feeling that Light Spinner’s own experience had helped her acceptance of Elaine’s warped eyes.

  “You missed the meeting,” Light Spinner said, as she waved a hand in the air. A comfortable chair materialised in front of the Grand Sorceress’s desk, waiting for Elaine. “I could have done with another voice.”

  Elaine felt herself flush, even though there was droll amusement rather than condemnation in Light Spinner’s voice. No matter how important or powerful she had become, she would never feel at ease addressing the great and powerful. There were times when she found it hard to talk to Dread, even though they were friends ... or as close as an Inquisitor could become to being friends with anyone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, bowing her head. “I ...”

  Light Spinner snorted. “I shouldn’t worry too much about it,” she said. “There were complaints about the Levellers and complaints about Hawthorne. I found the latter to be far more serious.”

  “I know,” Elaine said. “Is there still no trace of him?”

  Light Spinner’s head moved, slightly. “The Inquisitors are still searching for him,” she said. “They have found nothing.”

  Elaine wasn’t surprised. Hawthorne was a Dark Wizard, a rogue who had set himself up as the ruler of a handful of villages nearly a thousand miles from the Golden City. The Inquisitors had captured him and liberated his territory, dragging him back in chains to face the previous Grand Sorcerer, but he had died before Hawthorne could stand trial. And then, in the chaos caused by Kane’s offensive, Hawthorne had managed to escape and flee into the countryside. There were rumours of his presence everywhere, but no hard information.

  It only added to the unease spreading through the Empire, she knew. No one apart from Light Spinner knew just how many Inquisitors there were, but everyone knew that the Inquisitors had taken heavy losses in the battle with Kane. Right now, there were a hundred problem cases that had to be stamped on before they got out of hand, but Light Spinner barely had the manpower to deal with half of them. And the longer they were allowed to fester, the harder it would be to deal with them.

  “I’ve had to pull the Inquisitors out of Ida,” Light Spinner added. “They found nothing there too.”

  Elaine hesitated, trying to think of the words that would convince Light Spinner to change her mind. But she knew that it would be futile. Unravelling the mysteries surrounding Ida was important – it might lead them to the Witch-King – yet keeping the Empire intact was also important. Chaos would provide an opportunity for him to keep manipulating events until the entire web simply fell apart.

  She gritted her teeth in frustration. Just how did one fight an opponent like that?

  “I did send Princess Sacharissa back to take the throne,” Light Spinner reminded her. “With her father in chains, I’m sure we can rely on her to obey.”

  “Out of gratitude, not fear,” Elaine commented. Princess Sacharissa had been her father’s tool rather than his daughter, destined to be married off to enhance her father’s status among the other kings and princes of the realm. There had been no love lost between father and daughter, Elaine knew, even before it had become clear that the girl’s brother and half-brother were part of the Witch-King’s web. “But I think she will miss Dread.”

  “I have no doubt of it,” Light Spinner said, bluntly. “But the needs of the Empire come first.”

  Elaine nodded, feeling a twinge of sympathy for the older woman. Light Spinner had worked to gain power – and, as the Empire’s structure dictated, responsibility. Right now, she was the law of the land; if she chose to alter the Empire’s laws, there were few who would dare to say no. Elaine would never have sought such a position, even assuming that she could have held a lower position against ambitious subordinates long enough to climb higher. It would have kept her firmly in the public eye.

  “I saw the Levellers outside,” she said, changing the subject. “Are you going to do anything about them?”

  Light Spinner shrugged. “There’s no point in doing anything about them,” she said, snidely. “What can they do to us?”

  Elaine had to smile, although she managed to conceal it a moment later. Light Spinner was Millicent’s aunt – and Millicent had never been very good at handling critical remarks from those she considered beneath her. She would never have ignored the Levellers, even if they were powerless mundanes. It was far more likely that she would have sent out the City Guard to arrest and enslave them.

  But Elaine knew that Light Spinner was right. It was true that mundanes couldn’t pose much of a threat to magicians, yet harsh action might well rebound on her. Mundanes who happened to hold important posts might take offence, while the more forward-thinking magicians in the city might start worrying about who she would lash out at next. Elaine had never considered that t
he Grand Sorcerer was constrained, not until she’d been invited to join the Privy Council. Building the Empire had taken centuries; destroying it would take mere years, if the Grand Sorcerer became a tyrant.

  Light Spinner looked up at her, suddenly. The magic field shifted, drawing Elaine’s attention towards her. This was the meat of the matter, she realised; this was why she’d been summoned. Fighting the compulsion to pay attention was difficult, almost impossible. But somehow she held her own.

  “We are critically short of magicians in all categories,” Light Spinner said, bluntly. “Quite apart from Inquisitors, we need warders, enchanters, curse-breakers and alchemists. We may have to start widening our net when it comes to recruiting new magicians.”

  Elaine swallowed, knowing just how much tradition Light Spinner was talking about throwing away. Unless they were powerful or wealthy, common-born magicians often received very limited training rather than attending the Peerless School. Elaine herself wouldn’t have been able to attend without someone paying her fees. The gods knew that her Guardian hadn’t been willing to pay more than the bare minimum for her.

  “We may also need to teach them some of your magic tricks,” Light Spinner added. “Do you think that you could teach a class?”

  “I’m not sure,” Elaine confessed, finally. “It might be possible.”

  She had worked on improving the basic spells, but actually explaining how magic spells actually went together? Writing her own spellbook would be the work of years, even with her new and unique insights. But she could understand why Light Spinner wanted the information. Many of the new magicians would be on the same level as herself, at least when it came to raw magic.

  But she didn’t want to face a class. She had enough problems facing two or three people at once.

  “I can try to work out a basic syllabus,” she said, wincing at the thought of how the Spell Masters at the Peerless School would respond to her work. One of those who had tried to hammer spellwork into her head had been given, she saw now, to pushing too much power into his spells. They had worked, but they lacked the elegance that allowed her to save power. “But I don’t know how well they will work for new students.”