Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling

by Christopher Nuttall

  She’d tried to teach Dread a few spells, knowing that the Inquisitor was used to controlling himself. But even he had been unable to master the modified spell.

  “I may have you try to teach one or two new students,” Light Spinner mused. “Because we are critically short of personnel.”

  Elaine scowled at the reminder. It was her duty to try, even if she didn’t know if she would succeed. But then, that was true of just about everyone these days.

  “I’ll do my best,” she promised. “When do you want me to start?”

  “We are currently combing the countryside for new recruits,” Light Spinner said. “But many of the more promising ones will have a great deal to unlearn.”

  Elaine nodded, then stopped as she sensed a sudden change in the magic field. For a moment, she thought that Light Spinner was calling on her magic, before she realised that the source was outside the Palace’s wards. A second later, there was a sudden pulse of magic ...

  ... And then nothing. The field just seemed to snap back to normal.

  She found her voice. “What ... what was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Light Spinner said. She sounded as disturbed as Elaine felt. “But I think we had better find out.”

  Chapter Four

  “I think I’d better run,” Charity said. “That Inquisitor is here because of me.”

  Johan blinked. He could easily imagine an Inquisitor coming for Jamal – his older brother was an asshole, plain and simple – but Charity? His sister was sweet, innocent and determined to do well at her studies. And, unlike most of his other siblings, she hardly ever played magical pranks on her powerless brother.

  “You?”

  “Father gave me a spell to help me study,” Charity said, as she stood up and headed towards the door. “But I think I want to give father time to cool down before I face him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Johan said, picking up his coat. He’d hoped to talk to Charity, even if she didn’t really understand what he went through on a daily basis. But now ... maybe he could spend some time away from home too. “Where are we going?”

  “I thought I’d go see my boyfriend,” Charity said. She gave him an understanding look as he flushed, brightly. “But I’ll help you get out of the house.”

  Johan scowled inwardly as they walked downstairs and stopped in front of the door, just long enough for Charity to cast the charm that unlocked it and allowed them to leave the house. A mundane – or a powerless – would be trapped without a magician to open the door; Johan knew, no matter what his father said, that he was effectively a prisoner. Outside, hardly anyone knew of his existence. The family rarely mentioned him to any of their friends, even their closest allies. It would be an admission of weakness in the family bloodline that they could ill afford.

  Outside, it was chillier than he had expected, but he couldn’t help feeling a sensation of freedom that more than compensated for the cold. Away from the house, he told himself, he could just blend into the mundane population. They would never know that he was a Conidian – and neither would anyone else. He would just be another teenage boy wandering the streets.

  “Here,” Charity said. She passed him a handful of silver coins. “I’ll be expecting them repaid, sooner or later.”

  “Thank you,” Johan said, genuinely touched. He was given an allowance by his father, but – unlike the rest of his siblings – he was unable to look after it for himself. The one time he had, it had been stolen by Jamal and spent on sweets. “I’ll pay you back tonight.”

  Charity waved as she walked off in one direction; Johan hesitated, then walked in the opposite direction, heading away from her. If their father decided to use tracking spells to find them, at least they wouldn’t be together. And it was more likely that he would go after Charity first. Johan had no idea what spell their father might have given her, but if an Inquisitor had turned up it had to be bad.

  The sense of freedom grew stronger as he turned into a shopping alley and walked down, passing countless people as they thronged through the city. Despite the weather, many of them wore traditional clothes from their part of the Empire, some of them completely covered and others barely wearing anything at all. Johan had to remind himself not to stare; unlike his other brothers, he had few opportunities to meet girls. Who would want to marry a powerless?

  He bought himself a sweet treat from a vendor and walked onwards, nibbling at it and trying to make it last. Charity had given him a surprising amount of money, but he would still need to eat dinner ... unless he went home early. But his father would be raging and Johan didn’t want to face him any sooner than strictly necessary. Instead, he found himself walking towards the Imperial Palace, feeling a flicker of bitter envy. If he’d been born a magician, like the rest of his family, he might have one day risen to be Grand Sorcerer. But instead, he would always be below the rest of them – and everyone else who had magic. The thought tormented him as he turned to look at the gates. There was a small crowd gathered outside, shouting slogans and trying to pull onlookers into their protest.

  Puzzled, Johan stepped closer. His father had muttered things about protest movements and other insecurities in the wake of ... whatever had happened to reduce part of the city to rubble, but he hadn’t gone into detail. Jamal had been sneering, of course, and Johan had long since learned not to pay attention to Jamal’s sneering. It inevitably turned into an attack on his younger and powerless brother. Johan found it hard to understand why Jamal, who would inherit their father’s position even if his brother hadn’t been powerless, was such an asshole, but maybe it came from his sense of entitlement. Whatever Jamal wanted, Jamal got. Even the occasional thrashing from their father hadn’t been enough to cure him of his tendency to bully.

  “Hey,” a young voice said. “You want one of these?”

  Johan turned to see a young lady, wearing a green dress that exposed the tops of her breasts. He found himself tongue-tied as she smiled at him, then pressed a piece of paper into his hand. Johan took it automatically, then watched as she twirled away and headed towards the next curious onlooker. Someone must have charmed her dress, he realised; it clung to her in all the right places, but hinted at her curves rather than revealed. Charity had had something similar until their mother had seen her and thrown a fit.

  He tore his gaze away from the girl and looked down at the piece of paper. It was surprisingly simple – and seditious. It asked, openly, why rule by magicians was the natural order; why should those without magic be governed by those with magic? Where was the justice, it asked, in granting one group of people power over others? After all, the writer went on to say, a strong man was not automatically considered superior to all other men.

  Johan knew what his father would say if he read the paper. He would be openly sarcastic, mocking the writer for daydreaming of a world without magic. What was the old joke? The human race was improved when a swordsman took up arms against a magician, no matter the outcome. A swordsman would be quickly killed by any capable magician ... and if the magician was killed himself, he was clearly too stupid or weak to use magic. It would be a very poor magician who lost to a swordsman.

  “There is no magic in the Iron Dragons that take people from kingdom to kingdom,” a voice thundered. Johan turned to see a blonde-haired man, standing on a box and addressing the crowd. “There is no magic in the aqueducts that supply the Empire with water. There is no magic in the printing presses that provide us with our reading material. There is no magic ...”

  Johan listened, feeling oddly hopeful. It was true; magic was powerful, but it was not the be-all and end-all of existence. The gods knew that he had tried to find out how one worked on the Iron Dragons, although his father had dismissed the possibility the one time he’d brought it up. He was simply too blue-blooded to work on the lines, his father had said, years ago. It wasn’t until he’d grown older that he’d realised that his father wouldn’t allow him to work anywhere.

  “They call us mundane,
” the man thundered. “They call us powerless! They call us nothing! And yet it is us who run the Empire. The Grand Sorceress could not control her realm without the mundanes who work for her and her council. Why, then, are we powerless?”

  His voice lowered. “Because they have power,” he said. “But we are far from powerless.

  “We trusted in the Grand Sorcerers to protect us from the dark magicians, those who would abuse their powers. But they have failed. Only six months ago, countless people – magicians and so-called mundanes – were slaughtered at what should have been the investiture of the new Grand Sorcerer. What happened on that day? We do not know! All we know is that thousands of people died!”

  Johan nodded. His father had never been able to get a clear answer as to what had happened in the Golden City, nor – to the best of his knowledge – had anybody else. Jamal had snidely remarked that the contest had clearly gotten out of hand and, for once, Johan was inclined to agree with his elder brother. But if the contest had been so dangerous, why not hold it somewhere well away from innocent civilians? Even if the powerless were dismissed, the gods alone knew how many magicians had died.

  “And we don’t even know why,” the speaker hissed. “Why, then, should we trust them?”

  A very good question, Johan thought. He knew a whole family of magicians – and most of them delighted in tormenting the sole powerless among them. Charity wasn’t too bad; Jamal was a nightmare ... even eleven-year-old Chime was a holy terror. It didn’t bode well for the conduct of superior sorcerers. Their father was a good man, in his way, but he didn’t hesitate to trample over anyone who got in his way.

  A hand fell on his shoulder.

  “Well,” a familiar – far too familiar – voice said. “I should have known that you would be here, weakling.”

  Johan gritted his teeth as he turned to face his elder brother. Jamal was taller than Johan, wearing the multicoloured robes that identified him as a recent graduate from the Peerless School; his face, thinner than Johan’s face, seemed twisted into a permanent sneer. Most of his other siblings had become unbearable after they realised that Johan was largely unable to fight back; Jamal had been thoroughly unpleasant even before Johan’s lack of magic was discovered. There were times when Johan wondered just why Jamal was such a bully, when he had so much to look forward to, and times when he felt that his brother just liked feeling superior to people.

  “You found me,” he said, fighting down the urge to cringe. “Did father send you?”

  Jamal looked surprised – and a little disappointed. “I’m afraid not,” he sneered, as he pulled Johan back from the crowd. “Should father be sending me after you?”

  It was a little unlikely, Johan had to admit. Jamal and their father had had an argument over something and he’d moved out, setting up his own establishment on the other side of the Golden City. It clearly hadn’t been that bad an argument, not if they were still talking, but it gave Jamal a freedom that Johan couldn’t help envying. Even if he’d been older, his father wouldn’t allow him to leave the house permanently. It had been one of the reasons why he wanted to find a job that didn’t require magic.

  “...No,” he said, finally.

  “Glad to hear it,” his brother said. His eyes narrowed as they reached the corner. “But I do have a bone to pick with you.”

  Johan swallowed. Jamal blamed Johan for everything that went wrong in his life, quite unfairly. Well, largely unfairly. Johan might not have been able to brew a potion to save his life, but he had managed to sneak a few herbs into Jamal’s drink after one particularly bad bullying session and give his brother a few very uncomfortable nights.

  “I was talking to Marina, of House Clyburn,” Jamal said. “Father and I were closing the deal for the marriage contract. I would have been her husband.”

  “Oh,” Johan said. He had an awful feeling that he knew where this was going. House Clyburn was poor in wealth, but rich in blood and connections. An alliance between them and House Conidian, sealed by the marriage of two of their children, would bring money to one and connections to the other. “And?”

  Jamal leaned forward. “And they insisted on hearing about our entire family,” he hissed. “When they found out about you, they cancelled the negotiations and tore up the contract.”

  “I’m sorry,” Johan said, weakly. “I ...”

  For a moment, he almost felt sorry for his brother. Alliances between strongly-magical families were meant to blend the best of their lines together to produce children that were vastly more powerful than their parents. But the merest suspicion of weakness in the family line could destroy an alliance. A weak magician alone would have been bad, but a powerless ... that was even worse. His mere existence had destroyed the planned contract. No wonder his father had been so desperate to find even the merest hint of magic.

  “And look at them,” Jamal added, waving towards the speaker, who was still pontificating. “They are powerless, just like you! And we are not going to stand for it!”

  Johan looked at his brother ... and, in a sudden flash of insight, understood. Jamal had been raised to be the Heir to House Conidian, to take over the family magic and patronage network when their father died. No wonder he was such an asshole; their father pressured him constantly, trying to shape him into a worthy heir. Johan’s complete lack of power should have reassured his brother, but it also undermined him too.

  He looked up as he saw a handful of other magicians wearing graduate robes. “What are you going to do ...?”

  “Hush,” Jamal said. He waved a hand and Johan found himself frozen, utterly unable to move or look away from the speaker and his audience. “I just want you to watch and learn.”

  “That’s your brother,” one of the other magicians said. “Why isn’t he joining us?”

  “He’s too soft,” Jamal said, quickly. “Father wants him to watch to toughen him up.”

  Johan would have laughed if he could have moved a muscle. Jamal wouldn’t want to advertise his powerless brother, even – perhaps particularly – to his closest friends. It was a good excuse, he had to admit ... and it made it unlikely that any of the others would help him, if they were so inclined. Besides, they’d probably mistaken him for Jay. If they’d realised that Johan existed, they might have started to wonder why he hadn’t attended the Peerless School.

  “Stay here,” Jamal said, with an oddly-nervous laugh. “And watch carefully as we teach these upstarts a lesson.”

  The other magicians laughed, then started to march towards the crowd, lifting their wands into ready position. Some of the protesters saw them coming and started to scatter, but others were trapped by the sheer press of the crowd, unable to escape. A hail of rocks and stones flew towards the magicians, only to be stopped easily by shield charms. Johan watched, literally unable to tear his eyes away, as Jamal cast the first spell.

  He felt his body try to shiver. The nightmare spell was a child’s prank ... which didn’t stop it being thoroughly unpleasant if the victim had no magic to defend himself. A dozen protesters started to scream in horror as they saw their worst nightmares coming to life, their screams echoing over the square. Other spells were being cast; Johan watched, helplessly, as a handful of protesters became frogs, or were frozen in place, or were compelled into attacking their fellows. He felt absolute mind-numbing horror as he saw a man attacking the girl next to him with his fists, tears running down his cheeks as his hands moved of their own accord. Another girl was compelled to tear off her shirt and display her charms for all to see; a third was forced to wet herself, then kneel down in her own filth.

  The crowd came apart into screaming panic. A man ran, fists raised, at Jamal who eyed him quizzically. He slammed right into the shield charm and fell to the ground, blood pouring from his nose. Jamal laughed out loud – his laughter somehow echoed over the screams – and kicked the man in the face. The man sank into merciful unconsciousness. Johan watched in absolute horror as Jamal targeted the speaker directly. Someone m
ust have trapped him on his soapbox, Johan realised. The speaker should have tried to run.

  Jamal played with him. One spell gave him boils, another moved him like a puppet, a third left him howling gibberish at the gates. Johan watched as his brother allowed one of his friends to take over, casting his own spells towards the speaker. It was unlikely that he would survive, Johan realised. The spells might be intended as pranks, but the speaker was completely defenceless.

  Pure rage boiled through Johan as he watched the crowd fleeing, save only for the frozen, the compelled and the transfigured. They’d been broken, knocked down so far that they might not be able to recover ... Johan had been transfigured so many times that he was used to it, but mundanes who rarely dealt with even a single magician would find it a new and terrifying experience. Jamal walked onwards, laughing at the City Guardsmen as they shrank back into the gates. It would be a brave or stupid City Guardsman who tried to stand up to a magician on the rampage. That was a job for the Inquisitors. Where were they?

  He cursed, mentally. Could it be that Jamal’s actions had actually been approved by the Grand Sorceress? She couldn’t find the Levellers – or so the paper had named them – very amusing. Indeed, they were a challenge to her prestige, even if they were no threat to her position. Someone like Jamal would make a perfect – and deniable – tool to use against them.

  Johan struggled, throwing himself against the spell ... but nothing happened. Rage met frustration ... and something broke free inside his mind. For a long chilling moment, the entire world dimmed, as if he were about to take a sneeze ... and then something blasted through his mind. He was vaguely aware of someone – Jamal? – yelling in shock, then the spell holding him snapped. He tumbled ...