Bookworm III (12 page)

“It makes no sense,” Elaine had said, weeks ago. “You should be getting the power from
somewhere
, but where?”

Daria glanced back at him. “Do you know where we are?”

“No,” Johan said, shortly. The Golden City might be small – it took barely half an hour to walk from one side to the other – but he’d never had the opportunity to memorise a map, let alone explore as extensively as he would have liked. “Where are we?”

He looked around, doubtfully. The Golden City was so cramped that even a small house was staggeringly expensive. His father had moaned about the cost often enough, looking for ways to avoid paying a small fortune each year just to maintain the house. But here ... the houses looked weird, as if they’d been submerged in water and then left to dry in the open air. There was a scent of decay in the air, and ... and strange sensations that left a chill running down his spine. He couldn’t help noticing that the snow was refusing to lie on certain houses.

“This used to be called the Blight,” Daria explained. “Some idiot was casting forbidden spells and he managed to unleash a tidal wave of wild magic, which rendered the entire area uninhabitable. Only a desperate person would risk hiding in the houses here, because he might go to sleep and wake up in a completely different form. Elaine did something here and cleansed it of most of the wild magic.”

“I ... see,” Johan said. His father had said something about it once, he recalled, but he hadn’t been paying attention. And Elaine was hardly the sort to blow her own trumpet and brag about her achievements. “If it’s safe, why aren’t people moving in?”

“Some bits are still unsafe,” Daria said. “But the areas that
are
safe, Johan, belong to the Grand Sorceress. She was allowing the richest families in the Empire to bid on completely new lots, within the Golden City. The bids were still going up, the last I heard.”

She stopped in front of a house and pulled a small wooden wand from her pocket, then waved it twice in the air. “This should be safe enough,” she said. “And very few people will come here, fortunately.”

The door opened with a creak, revealing a very strange room. Johan blinked in shock as he realised that nothing quite made sense, as if he’d stepped into a room decorated with funhouse mirrors. The walls looked oddly out of place, while the furniture seemed warped and twisted. And yet it all still seemed remarkably intact.

“They’ll want to knock the whole building down and start again,” Daria said, as she closed the door behind them. “No one would want to live here permanently.”

She paused, then glanced into the fireplace. “Do you know how to build a fire?”

“Barely,” Johan said. He’d built fires with Elaine when they’d been living away from the city, but Elaine had told him not to try to light one using his magic. “Can you light it?”

“Probably,” Daria said. She picked up a warped chair, two of its legs clearly longer than the other two, and started to break it into pieces of wood. “Put these in the fireplace, along with anything else that might burn, then give me a shout.”

Johan obeyed, glancing around for something lighter than pieces of wood. A pile of broadsheets lay in one corner; the paper looked all right, he discovered when he picked it up, but the writing was in a language that was completely unfamiliar. He frowned at the sight – the Empire had used the same written language for so long that there were few native speakers or writers of anything else – and then started to tear the paper up for the fire. The next set of pages showed images of strange creatures with giant eyes, long tentacles and nasty expressions. None of them seemed to resemble anything he knew to exist. Shaking his head, he carried the paper over to the fire, dropped it into the fireplace and built up a small pile of paper and wood.

“Add this to the top,” Daria said, as she came back into the room. She was carrying a small grey object in one hand, cradling it gently. “It should have been burned years ago.”

Johan took the object and looked down. It was so badly warped that it took him several seconds to realise it was a doll, one hand-carved by someone who had loved the doll’s owner. He felt a sudden pang of grief for the missing child, wondering if she had escaped the wave of wild magic or if she had died beside the doll. She’d been a lucky girl, he decided, as he placed the doll on top of the fire. Even Jamal hadn’t had anything made with his father’s hands.

“We burn our dolls when we reach adulthood,” Daria said, as she pointed the wand at the fire and cast a spell. There was a flicker of fire, then the paper caught, sending flames crackling through the grate. “It’s supposed to mark the day we cast off our inner child and embrace the adult world.”

Johan held his hands in front of the flames, enjoying the heat. “Is that a Traveller ritual?”

“Yeah,” Daria said. “I was very surprised when Elaine showed me the doll she had kept from the orphanage.”

“I can’t imagine my sisters burning their dolls,” Johan said, with a shiver. He’d
been
their doll often enough. “They were really expensive.”

He shrugged. “Do men have dolls too?”

Daria gave him a sharp look. “Boys tend to have stuffed animals,” she said, tightly. “They bury them when they are ready to become men.”

“I don’t know much about the Travellers,” Johan admitted. “What happens when you want to get married?”

“There’s normally a big gathering every year or so,” Daria explained. She rubbed her hands together, then reached for her bag. “You will generally be introduced to prospective husbands there – or brides, if you’re a man. Everyone looks for the one who
smells
right to them – if they find that person, they take them off somewhere under the moonlight and wait to see if romance takes hold.”

Johan considered it. “What happens if you don’t smell right to the person who smells right to you?”

“It rarely happens,” Daria said.

She shrugged. “If the romance lasts, the woman generally joins the man’s pack, although not always,” she added. “There’s always jostling between the newcomer and the established pack leaders until the new order is established. Or sometimes the happy couple sets off on their own and forms an entirely new pack. It does happen.”

Johan smiled. “And what happens if the romance
doesn’t
last?”

“They peacefully separate,” Daria said. “What sort of idiot would stay with a man who doesn’t love her?”

“Too many in High Society,” Johan said. His mother had always had a cold relationship with his father, even though they
had
managed to produce seven children. “They prefer the status of being married to the right person rather than picking someone they actually
love
.”

“Idiots,” Daria said.

She opened her bag, then produced a large piece of bread and two slices of cheese. “I couldn’t grab much before we left,” she said, by way of apology. “You should really eat.”

“I can’t eat alone,” Johan said. “I ...”

“There’s no shortage of rats around,” Daria said. “You eat the bread and cheese. I’m going hunting.”

She stood, walked to the centre of the room and shrank, rapidly. Johan stared as her robe fell down over her body, concealing the final stages of the transformation into a small wolf. She emerged moments later from beneath the folds and winked at him, then headed towards the door. If he hadn’t known she was a werewolf, he would have mistaken her for a large and very well trained dog. Despite not having any hands, she managed to open the door ... and stop, dead.

“I come in peace,” a female voice said. “Really.”

Daria growled, a sound that sent shivers down Johan’s spine. She was a werewolf, with all the strength of the breed, and he had been staring at her as if she were a normal girl? All of a sudden, he understood why werewolves were shunned, when they weren’t feared or hated by the general population. They might have looked human, when the full moon wasn’t dominating the sky, but they were very different.

The newcomer stepped into the house and smiled at Johan. She was tall, with long blonde hair, and wore a dark cloak that concealed her body. A simple wooden wand hung from her belt, beside a potions gourd and a device that Johan didn’t recognise. He’d never been able to sense magic, not the way his family could, but he had no difficulty in recognising her as a powerful magician. She had the same air of supreme self-confidence that he’d seen in too many graduates of the Peerless School. Elaine was the only one he knew who didn’t show that attitude.

“I ... I am Cass,” she said, simply. Her voice was tightly controlled; friendly, without being
too
friendly. Oddly, Johan was reminded of a distant relative who had been forced to host a funeral for her husband, even though she’d genuinely loved him. “I’ve been sent to help you.”

Daria snapped back into human form and crossed her arms under her bare breasts, seemingly unbothered by her nudity. Johan looked away, hastily. Naked, Daria was very different to any of the pictures he’d seen in the books he’d stolen from Jamal. Jamal had liked thin girls, but Daria was strongly muscled, with very little fat on her body.

“I remember you,” Daria said. “You’re an Inquisitor.”

“I was,” Cass said. She held up her hands for inspection. There was no skull-ring present. “I was released from my oaths.”

Daria barked a harsh laugh. “What did you do? Get caught in bed with the Grand Sorceress’s son?”

“The Grand Sorceress felt that the Head Librarian would need some assistance,” Cass said, tartly. “And she saw fit to release me from my oaths.”

She stepped forward and closed the door behind her. “This wasn’t a bad place to hide,” she said, “but we can’t stay here indefinitely.”

“And what,” Daria growled, “makes you think
you
are staying with us?”

Cass shrugged, then looked at Johan. “Can you make contact with your mistress?”

“The bond doesn’t work very well,” Johan confessed. It wasn’t something Elaine had been keen to advertise. The gods alone knew what Charity would make of it, if she ever found out that Johan was still alive. “I can sense her; she’s still alive, but not much else.”

“I can probably help you link to her properly,” Cass said. She opened her cloak, revealing a dark shirt, long trousers and a pouch. “And I brought food.”

Daria glared at her, then stamped back to where her robe had fallen and pulled it over her head. Johan couldn’t help feeling relieved. It was hard not to stare at her, but he knew she would be aware of his interest and ... and he probably didn’t smell right to her.

She turned to stare at Cass as soon as she was decently covered. “How did you find us?”

“I was watching you when you were with your family,” Cass said, flatly. She pulled the pouch off her belt, then started to reach into it. The pouch was clearly far bigger on the inside than the outside, as it rapidly proved to contain several large pieces of meat and bread, as well as bottles of water. “I was planning to meet you once the Head Librarian arrived and introduce myself, but once you went running off on your own I had to follow you.”

“I never sensed you,” Daria growled.

“I’m very good at what I do,” Cass said. She gave Daria a smile, then turned her attention to Johan. “Eat as much as you can, young man. We have some meditation to try.”

Chapter Ten

Elaine wasn’t fooled by the spell’s seeming dormancy. It was waiting for her to fall asleep, or to lower her defences, or something else that would give it the opportunity to claim her mind and soul. Worse, it still held her body in an iron grip; she had freedom of movement within the holding chamber, she’d discovered, but any attempt to leave via the door simply led to her body locking up and refusing to move. Charity Conidian’s orders had been too specific to allow Elaine any leeway at all.

She probably has plenty of experience ordering slaves around
, Elaine thought, darkly.
How many slaves did her family have under their roof
?

Scowling, she inspected the drinks cabinet in the hope of finding water or juice. The only thing she found that was remotely drinkable was a very light wine, but she knew better than to drink anything that might lower her ability to resist. There were no shortage of spells for removing alcohol from liquid, yet even trying to cast a basic spell would drain her magic to dangerous levels. She didn’t dare take the risk. Instead, she found a pair of oranges held in a preservation spell and ate them both. They would keep her going, for the moment.

She walked back to the sofa and sat down, skimming through the vast reserves of information in her mind. What made the spell so dangerous? And how could it best be broken? There was little encouraging within her mind, nothing she hadn’t already reviewed while waiting to see the Emperor. To dismantle the spell from the inside, she would have to embrace it ... and, if she failed even slightly, she would fall under its influence completely, body and soul. But she was starting to feel as though there was no choice.

Closing her eyes, she started to meditate, marshalling her reserves for the battle ahead. In some ways, her limited magic was actually an asset; the spell had had much less to absorb into its own matrix and throw back at her. But in other ways, she simply didn’t have the reserves to hold it off long enough to pick it apart. The more she looked at it, the more she hated the idea of trying to force it out of her mind. And yet, she knew there was no choice ...

Johan
, she thought. The link between them was almost impossible to feel, even when she was meditating, her mind closed off to all distractions. It tore at her more than she cared to admit; Johan could sense her, to some degree, but she couldn’t sense him at all. Who knew what would happen if they spent time apart? Would the weak link break or would it merely go dormant? And what would happen when her defences finally crumpled and she fell to Vlad Deferens?

That cannot be allowed
, she thought, coldly.
I cannot let my knowledge fall into his hands – or go to the Witch-King.

It was an odd thought. She had assumed, given his history, that the Witch-King knew everything she knew and more. And yet, he’d made at least two attempts to obtain Elaine for himself, maybe three, if one counted Hawthorne’s mad rampage. Was there knowledge in the Black Vault that the Witch-King didn’t know? It seemed absurd, yet she was starting to think it was possible. She had cheated, after all, to reach such levels of knowledge. No other magicians knew as much as she did.