It took Johan several moments to work out what the instructions were telling the reader to do, then he had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up. The spells would remove a person’s heart from his chest, then store it outside his body while maintaining a link to him that would keep him alive, no matter the distance between the heart and the magician. And, apparently, it would render the magician immortal, as long as the link was maintained. Johan had a vivid mental impression of a magician blown to tiny bits, but somehow remaining alive ...
He pushed the thought aside with a shudder. “Are there people who actually try this?”
“Some are reputed to have done it,” Elaine said. “More try it and end up dead.”
Johan gave her the second book, then went to find his own on family magic. It was heavy going; the writer had clearly been writing several centuries ago and a number of words were completely unfamiliar, but he thought he had the gist of it. As long as magic ran through the family, there would be consequences for deliberate betrayal, inter-family murder ... or even outright disobedience. But the writer didn’t seem to know if they applied to Powerless.
“I should undergo an adoption rite,” Johan muttered, sourly. Elaine had proposed apprenticing him, but an adoption rite would be permanent. “Wouldn’t that provide me with a new family?”
“Perhaps,” Elaine said. “But they can be dangerous if they are not entered into willingly.”
She scowled. “And you would throw away everything,” she added. “You would not stand to inherit anything; your father would not even be able to leave you a small token of his esteem.”
“My father has no esteem for me,” Johan said, bitterly. “He doesn’t even know me. What was he thinking when he offered me Marina Clyburn as a bride?”
“There are few young magicians who would turn down such an offer,” Elaine pointed out, mildly. “She is not only pretty, but intelligent, capable and very well connected.”
“And my father has been mistreating me for sixteen years,” Johan added, ignoring her comment. “Why are there no consequences for him?”
Elaine smiled. “Right now, his eldest son and Prime Heir is in jail,” she said. “And his second son wants nothing to do with him. How do you know that those are not consequences.”
Johan rubbed his temple. “If you turned someone into a frog,” he said, finally, “there would be cause and effect, wouldn’t there? You’d cast the spell; someone would transform. But with this magic ... how do you tell if the magic is working against you or if it’s just a wild coincidence?”
“You don’t,” Elaine said, simply.
“I hate this kind of magic,” Johan said. “You can’t tell” – he paused, looking up at her – “what’s so funny?”
Elaine was chuckling. “Just about every classically-trained magician has the same reaction,” she said. “The ones who don’t are the ones who never go to the Peerless School.”
Johan stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “But why are there no consequences?”
“If your father genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing for you, or the family,” Elaine said slowly, “it is unlikely that there would be any adverse consequences.”
“But he wasn’t,” Johan protested. “He made a whole series of bad choices, including trying to marry me off. Or should I have accepted?”
“It might well have seemed the best thing to do,” Elaine said. “As I said, Marina is pretty, rich and well-connected. Her marrying you would wipe away any stain on your reputation.”
Johan snorted, rudely. “She wouldn’t have wanted me when I was powerless.”
“No,” Elaine agreed, flatly. “She wouldn’t.”
“But her father and mine could have pushed us into it,” Johan said. He looked down at the book. “It says that it is perfectly acceptable for the parents to arrange marriages for their children.”
“As long as they pick well,” Elaine reminded him. “And there is good reason to believe that you and Marina would not mesh well together.”
Except in bed, Johan thought. He wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud.
“Tell me,” Johan said. “Apart from being formally disinherited, is there anything else I would risk by having myself adopted?”
“You would be better off apprenticing yourself,” Elaine pointed out. She ticked off points on her finger. “You would not be part of your family; Charity and the rest of your siblings would be strangers to you. You would not be part of your family’s patronage network; indeed, you could expect the family’s network to work against you. Anything you think you own that is actually owned by your family would go back to them.”
She took a breath. “Your family would not provide any support when you actually did choose to marry, nor would they support you when someone proposes that you are too dangerous to be allowed to live. You could not return to your family, no matter what happens. And you could not bear the family name.”
Elaine looked up at him, her illusionary brown eyes meeting his. “You would separate yourself completely,” she concluded. “The ties that bind would snap.”
“Sounds perfect,” Johan said.
“You might also end up in hot water,” Elaine added. “For a start, you would disrupt House Conidian’s line of succession. You could be sued on such grounds and I have no idea which way the case would go. Justice would not get a look-in when one side is a powerful patron and the other is a single young magician, no matter how remarkable. You might find yourself indentured to your own father. Except he wouldn’t be your father, because you snapped the ties that bind you together.
“And then you might be in the same position with your new family ...”
Johan held up a hand. “My head hurts,” he said. “Can I sleep on it?”
Elaine smiled. “If you like,” she said. “But my very strong advice would be to go for the apprenticeship instead. It would force your father to loosen his grip on you, while not breaking all the ties you have with him.”
“I understand,” Johan said, standing upright. Outside, the rain was still pouring down from high overhead. “And thank you.”
He walked into his bedroom, undressed and went to bed, dozing off to the sound of raindrops beating against the roof. In truth, he thought, he really didn’t want to be part of the family any longer. But he needed an adopted family, at least until he was twenty-one. Somehow, he doubted his father would leave him alone long enough for him to secede from the family on his own. No, there would be an offer of becoming the Prime Heir ... and pressure to marry, and whatever else his father could devise to control him.
Being Elaine’s apprentice would be better than enduring his father, he was sure. But it was still limiting. Elaine wasn’t adventurous enough to leave the Golden City permanently and explore the world ... if, of course, she could leave the city permanently. Given her nature, it was possible that the Grand Sorceress would object to Elaine abandoning her post.
He scowled and went to sleep. His dreams were full of fire ...
And then he was awoken by a thunderous crash.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Elaine had been half-asleep when she heard the explosion.
For a long moment, she wasn’t quite sure whether she were dreaming or not. Few of her dreams had been pleasant since she’d picked up a pair of bright red eyes. But as she jerked awake, she heard another explosion, followed rapidly by a pulse of magic that shocked the last remnants of sleep out of her system. She grabbed her wand and sat upright, unsure of what was going on. Had Johan started to experiment with magic inside the cabin despite her orders?
She pulled herself out of bed and ran into the main room. Johan’s room was quiet, seemingly undisturbed; the wards reported that he was still inside, half-asleep. Elaine stared at the closed door, then sensed another pulse of magic. Now she was awake, it was easier to tell that it came from outside the cabin. Running to the window, she looked out and saw a fireball rising into the air from the direction of t
he city. The smoke drifting into the sky suggested that the city was under attack.
Johan’s door crashed open and he stumbled out, one hand raised in a gesture that suggested that he was about to start casting spells. Elaine turned and smiled when she saw it; the Peerless School tried to teach students not to telegraph their attacks like that, but teenagers – boys in particular – thought that it was an intimidating pose, But in Johan’s case it was largely worthless. Gestures didn’t seem to mean anything to his power.
“What ...” He stopped as he saw the fireball. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Elaine said, grimly. “Did you sense the magic?”
Another ripple raced through the ether, followed rapidly by another fireball and explosion in the distance. Elaine gritted her teeth as Johan shook his head; he might not be able to sense the sudden shifts in the magical field, but she could. Someone was unleashing powerful magic in the heart of the city, magic powerful enough to do real damage. Part of her wanted to stay in the cabin and hide, part of her knew that it was her duty to assist the forces of law and order. And besides, she needed to know what was going on.
“Get dressed,” she ordered, shortly. Getting down to the city would take at least an hour, if they were lucky and their neighbours agreed to allow them to borrow their horses. If not, the walk would take much longer. “We have to go down there.”
She walked back into her room, pulled off her nightclothes and donned a pair of heavy trousers and a shirt. Her wand went into the belt, followed by a handful of potion vials she thought might come in handy. There were no weapons, apart from her wand; even if she could take the weapons the Inquisitors had stored in the cabin, she wouldn’t have known how to use them. Johan’s father, like most other aristocrats, had never felt the urge to teach his children how to use edged weapons. Magicians settled their disputes through magic and it was a poor magician who could be killed by a thug with a sword.
He should have taught Johan, Elaine thought, as she walked back into the main room. Johan, irritatingly, had already dressed himself; he carried a makeshift staff in one hand, as if he intended to use it as a club. And I should have asked Dread for lessons myself.
“Come on,” she said, taking a pair of ration bars from the cupboard. “We’ll eat on the way.”
There was an unpleasant scent in the air, she discovered, as they hurried down the path to the road and then started walking towards their nearest neighbour. Magic danced through the air, sparkling uncomfortably whenever it encountered a shimmer of natural magic in the region. Elaine felt her hairs trying to stand on end and scowled, unable to escape the feeling that something was crawling over her body. The sheer level of magic unleashed in the city below was impressive – and terrifying. What was in Falconine City worthy of such attention?
Their closest neighbour was a small farm, probably the owner of the flock of free-ranging sheep that had woken them on their first day. Elaine tapped on the door, then smiled at the young girl who opened it. She didn’t look to be a werewolf, but not every werewolf had the canine features many shared. Pushing the thought aside, Elaine asked the girl to call her father. Moments later, a middle-aged man stamped out of a backroom and glared at them.
“We need to borrow your horses,” she said, without preamble. “We can pay.”
The man’s glare only intensified. “How do we know that you will return them?”
Elaine could have pointed out that she was a Privy Councillor, but she doubted that he would believe her. Instead, she reached into her pocket and produced a handful of gold coins, enough to buy a dozen new horses. The man’s eyes went wide, then he nodded and scooped up the coins. It was more money, Elaine realised to her annoyance, than he’d seen for his entire life.
“I’ll take you down myself,” he said, his glare fading away. “But I won’t take you beyond the edge of the city.”
“Understood,” Elaine said, looking back towards the smoke rising up in the distance. “But get us there as quickly as you can.”
The ride in the cart was worse, she decided moments later, than riding in the Inquisitor’s carriage. In the carriage, she hadn’t seen much of the outside world; in the cart, she could see the trees and cliffs all too clearly. The man whipped the horses into a frenzy and sent them running down the road, skimming the edge far too close for comfort. By the time they reached the bottom of the mountains, Elaine would have welcomed a fight with a Dark Wizard instead of another ride in the cart. Johan, irritatingly, seemed to have enjoyed the ride.
They passed hundreds of refugees as they headed down the road towards the city. Elaine looked at them, tempted to ask what they’d seen, but she knew it would be futile. There were still flames rising up from the centre of town; she scowled as the driver pulled to a halt, right on the edge of the city. If he could take them closer ...
“Thank you,” she said testily, as she climbed down from the cart. Johan jumped down beside her, looking rather pleased with himself. “And I hope you have fun with the money.”
She couldn’t sense any further twists in the magic field as they ran into the city, but as they drew closer to the flames they started to see dead bodies. Elaine stopped next to a young male body and cast a quick diagnostic charm, trying to find out what had killed him. The results were inconclusive, but it looked like he’d simply found himself unable to breathe. It looked bizarre for a long moment, until she realised that someone was using transfiguration as an area-effect weapon. Removing the oxygen from the air by transfiguring it into something else would take a vast amount of power – and it wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, even for the most powerful of sorcerers – but it would kill everyone in the area while it lasted.
“If you find that you’re having difficulty breathing,” Elaine muttered to Johan, “run back the way you came.”
There was no sign of whatever sorcerer had caused the devastation – Elaine hoped that meant that the Inquisitors had killed him – but the flames he’d unleashed were still burning their way through the town. Elaine swore inwardly as she recognised the odd reddish tint of the flames that marked them out as Hellfire, a magical fire that burned almost everything. The only way to quench it was to use the correct counter-spell and, judging by the fact that the flames were still spreading, the counter-spell was not easy to guess. She drew her wand and cast a standard cancelling charm anyway, just in case, but nothing happened.
“They’ll destroy the entire city,” she snapped, feeling the heat starting to press against her. It took a brave or foolish sorcerer to unleash Hellfire, if only because it was so hard to stop. “What was here that they hated so much?”
The thought puzzled her. Falconine City wasn’t a great city; it was hardly the capital of an important kingdom, let alone the Empire. Attacking it made absolutely no sense at all, unless the objective had been random devastation, mass slaughter and terrorism. With Dark Wizards involved, it was quite possible that the attack had been random. And yet most of the devastation seemed to be concentrated in one place.
Johan caught her arm. “Up there,” he snapped. “Look!”
Elaine turned and swore. The flames were licking around the lower levels of a five-story building ... and there were children on the top floor, screaming desperately for help. It was easy to tell that there was no way for them to get down; the Hellfire had the lower part of the building firmly in its grip. It wouldn’t be long before it collapsed completely, throwing the children into the flames. She cast another counter-spell, but nothing happened; it would take hours to go through every counter-spell she knew and hitting the right one would be a matter of luck instead of judgement. Instead ...
“Stay back,” she ordered. “I’m going to try to levitate the kids out.”
Sweat poured down her back as she raised her wand, chanting the spell. Levitating was not her strongest subject at the best of times, particularly when she couldn’t cast spells to reduce the weight of the object she was trying to levitate. A young girl let out
a panicked scream as Elaine’s magic caught her, hefting her up into the air and pulling her out over the fire and towards safety. The flames seemed to reach up towards her kicking legs – for a moment, Elaine almost believed the old superstition about Hellfire being alive and malicious – and then she was safe. Elaine sagged, then gritted her teeth and turned back to the next child, wondering how long her strength would hold out ...
... And where was everyone else? Where were the damn Inquisitors?
She almost collapsed when she put the third child on the ground, but somehow she managed to raise her wand and cast the spells to lift up the fourth child. Johan was pacing forwards and backwards beside her, clearly unsure of what to do; Elaine could only be grateful that he hadn’t tried to help levitate the children. It was far too likely that his magic would go wrong and the children would be hurt ... she swore as she heard a creaking sound from inside the building and realised that the supports were about to collapse. Once they were gone, the entire building would tumble into the flames.
“I can’t hold it,” she gasped, barely able to breathe. For a terrible moment, she thought that the Dark Wizard had sucked all the air out of the area again. “It’s not going to ...”
Johan stepped forward, clearly trying something. For a long moment, it seemed to work; the building still stood upright, despite its crumbling supports. But then there was a terrifying creaking sound and the entire side of the building fell into the flames. Elaine realised, to her horror, that he’d only made the situation worse. His magic had held up the supports at the cost of weakening the floors ...
Panic flared through her mind. “Stop that,” she screamed. Up above, the children were screaming too as the flames licked at their feet. Hellfire would burn flesh, leaving them to die in horrific agony. There was a crash as one of the lower floors fell in, blowing flames and debris towards them. “Stop it now!”
Johan turned to face her. “I’m trying to help,” he shouted back at her over the roar of the blaze. “I’m trying ...”
Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling Page 27