Bookworm (45 page)

There was a brief moment of relief as Kane’s magic field flickered and died, followed by a grim awareness that the wild magic was now free to burn through her mind. The ground came up to slam into her face and Elaine felt darkness enveloping her...

...And someone was whispering to her in the darkness. “We’re free,” the voice said. It was one voice that seemed to be hundreds of voices, all blended together. “And we thank you...”

And then there was nothing.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Elaine slowly came back to herself, climbing out of a darkness that had threatened to overwhelm her mind. She had an odd sense of
déjà vu
as she opened her eyes, realising that she was in a hospital bed. A pair of druids were bending over her, one pulling a wand away from her forehead. The other passed her a thin tube and inserted it into her mouth. Elaine sipped it gratefully, and then tried to sit up. They held her down gently and held up a mirror in front of her face. Her brown eyes were gone, replaced by two fiery red orbs that seemed almost demonic. Elaine recoiled in shock. How could
anyone
look at her any longer?

“Wild magic always extracts a price,” the druid said. It was no surprise that she recognised him. “Compared to some of the others, you were lucky. Very lucky.”

Elaine sorted through her memories until she remembered what had happened. “The Blight?”

“Gone, it seems,” the druid said. “You’re going to be a very rich young lady, once the Council gets back together and pays you what they promised. And they probably owe you one hell of a reward for saving the Golden City, perhaps the entire world.”

He smiled. “But rest for the moment,” he said. “There are a great many people who want to talk to you, I’m afraid.”

***

The next time Elaine opened her eyes, she saw Lady Light Spinner standing beside her bed, looking down at her from behind the veil. Elaine had lost track of what had happened to her after Kane had lashed out at both her and Mentor, but she’d clearly survived...and prospered. The robes she wore were those of the Grand Sorcerer, granted to her by default. She’d been the only one of the original contestants to remain in the contest and survive.

“You won,” she said, through a mouth that felt as if she’d been slapped a dozen times. Her entire body felt numb. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks to you,” Lady Light Spinner said. She sounded oddly amused. “You saved my life.”

We all make mistakes
, Elaine thought, before realising that maybe it hadn’t been a mistake. Even if Lady Light Spinner had been as bad as Millicent, she wouldn’t have been
insane
– and besides, her warped body would keep her in check. And the Witch-King...it was impossible to tell if he was still alive, if one could call a lich alive in the first place. He might have been destroyed in the final backwash of wild magic.

“You’re welcome,” she said, finally. “How is the city?”

“Nine thousand dead, including many of the senior wizards,” the Lady said, flatly. Elaine blanched. Apart from the Second Necromantic War, there had never been so many deaths among the magical community. The whole system for selecting and upholding a Grand Sorcerer was designed to prevent magical fratricide. “About a hundred Inquisitors were killed as well, most of them trying to stop Kane before it was too late.”

She hesitated. “Your friend Dread survived, somehow,” she added. “The druids finally managed to stun him and work on healing the damage he took while he was unconscious. I don’t think he was too happy.”

Elaine had to smile. That sounded like Dread.

“But overall it will take years to recover from what Kane did to us,” Lady Light Spinner added, grimly. “We’ve already had to put off dealing with Ida until we’ve managed to sort out the wreckage Kane left in his wake. Far too many other monarchs are wondering if they can declare independence while the Empire is crippled.”

She shook her head. “But that wasn’t what I came in here to talk about,” she said, changing the subject. “There have been a great many discussions recently.”

“Concerning me,” Elaine said. She’d expected as much. Her relationship to Kane might not have come out, although Daria or another werewolf might have realised the truth, but everyone had just had a harsh lesson in the dangers of forbidden knowledge being used. Those who didn’t know that the Witch-King was still alive – which was almost everyone – would wonder if Elaine would go the same way. They would want to condemn her on the grounds that it would be better safe than sorry. “When will I be executed?”

“Some of the remaining senior wizards voted to kill you,” Lady Light Spinner said, dryly. “But I am Grand Sorceress and I had the deciding vote. We...
agreed
to offer you a compromise, as we owed you our lives. Killing you might rebound upon us in some subtle way.”

Elaine shrugged. Magic’s laws were not – had never been – as well understood as the physical science that powered the iron dragons. Breaking an oath could be disastrous, as could striking down someone to whom you owed a debt. It was commonly believed that the gods arbitrated such actions, but no one knew for sure. The information on the gods that had been shifted into Elaine’s head was more questions than answers. Even glancing at some of the titles was considered blasphemy by most of the major religions.

“The Great Library needs a Head Librarian,” Lady Light Spinner said. “That person will have to be bound to the Library’s service, someone who won’t mind spending the rest of their life within the Library. Miss Prim, I’m told, was something of a special case.”

She leaned forward. “Would you consider taking up the position?”

Elaine hesitated. It
was
what she had once wanted, a responsible position working with books, including ones that only existed in the Great Library itself. And no one could accuse her of secretly opening the Black Vault when all the knowledge inside the vault was already in her head. She could happily walk into the Great Library and let the rest of the world pass her by.

And yet her life had expanded after Duke Gama’s spell had changed her. She wanted to spend time with Daria, chasing boys; she wanted to be involved with Dread and the other Inquisitors as they tried to track down and destroy the Witch-King. It was something she would have shied away from before the accident. Did she
really
want to accept the oaths and obligations that came with being the Great Librarian?

She rubbed her eyes. Was she imagining it, or were her eyes burning?

“The other option is probably having you restrained in some way,” Lady Light Spinner admitted, carefully. “I don’t want to have to turn on you, but...”

“I understand,” Elaine said. It wasn’t
her
fault. If she’d become Grand Sorcerer after so much destruction, Elaine would have wanted to clamp down on any other possible sources of disruption in the Golden City. Forbidden knowledge had been forbidden for a reason. “How long do I have to think about it?”

“Several days, at least,” Lady Light Spinner said. “The Great Library didn’t get destroyed in the battle, but there was enough damage to the surrounding buildings to make it difficult to get inside. After that...”

She smiled. “Take some time to think about it,” she added, “but don’t try to kill yourself. It is possible to live after being warped.”

It took Elaine a moment to realise what she was talking about. Red eyes, even ones that looked like hot coals, were nothing compared to what had been inflicted on the veiled woman in front of her. Of
course
Lady Light Spinner would have considered suicide when she realised that no power in the universe could change her back into a normal person. Her bloodline was as illustrious as any other, but that wouldn’t have saved her if High Society had realised what had happened to her body. Even a Grand Sorcerer might not be able to remain in office if everyone knew that she had been warped.

“Thank you,” Elaine said. She hesitated before asking the next question. “How is Millicent?”

“Shocked,” Lady Light Spinner said, shortly. No one would be able to face compulsion on such a scale and escape unscathed. A taste of what it felt like to be a slave would be good for Millicent, Elaine decided, even though she would probably blot most of it from her mind. The human memory didn’t like to remember pain. “She’ll be fine. She grew up a great deal in the last few days.”

Elaine shrugged. Millicent didn’t seem to matter anymore. Maybe she too had grown up over the past few days.

***

Elaine was amused to discover, when entering the private room that had been set aside for Inquisitor Dread, that Princess Sacharissa had taken over his care. She’d organised him into eating properly, relaxing as much as he could and trying to forget about what had happened to the city. The glamour that normally made Dread’s face unrecognisable seemed to have faded slightly, revealing a face that was almost a frozen mask. Even when he smiled, he still seemed to have a face of stone.

“I understand that we owe you everything,” Dread said, without preamble. Elaine took it in her stride. With so many Inquisitors dead, Dread had to feel that he should be out on the streets with the remainder of his fellows. How many Inquisitors were even left alive? “And that you’re a hero.”

“They should have made you Grand Sorceress,” Princess Sacharissa said, from where she was sitting beside Dread. “You saved the entire world.”

Elaine shook her head, numbly. Her magic seemed to have been...tainted somehow, perhaps by the moment wild magic had bypassed her defences and struck directly at her soul. Red eyes could be the merest sign of a corruption that had spread through her body. It still seemed to be ready for her to call upon when necessary, but now it rolled and seethed inside her mind. Who knew what would happen when she tried to work her next magic spell?

“I trust that you will assume the position the Grand Sorceress suggested,” Dread said, gruffly. “You would be automatically considered one of the senior wizards, one of the people who could serve on the Regency Council. You’d do better at that position than many of the ones who died in the fighting.”

“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.