Bookworm III (22 page)

“They’ll start searching the city as soon as they discover we’re not in the Great Library,” Cass pointed out, sweetly. “Why would they leave House Conidian out of the search?”

“Because they wouldn’t expect us to go there,” Johan said. “We’d want to hide among the poor, or perhaps back in the Blight. House Conidian would be practically hiding in plain sight.”

“Might be worth trying,” Cass said. She shrugged, expressively. “But we have to get out of the current trap first.”

She studied Johan through bright blue eyes. “Tell me about your powers,” she said. It wasn’t a request. “How do they actually work?”

“I make things happen,” Johan said. “That’s the best I can say.”

Daria snorted. “
How
do you make things happen?”

“I don’t know,” Johan said. “I can do some things, but not others.”

“I see,” Cass said. “What
can’t
you do?”

“I can’t brew potions,” Johan said. “And I can’t use magic on myself, I think.”

“That isn’t always a bad thing,” Cass pointed out. “People who use magic on themselves tend to come to sticky ends.”

She frowned. “To make a potion, you need to use your magic to unlock the magic within the ingredients,” she mused. “But it’s a gradual process. If things aren’t done in precisely the right order, you end up with sludge.”

“There are magicians who have problems manipulating their own magic to make potions,” Daria said, slowly. “Johan could merely be having the same problem.”

“No,” Johan said. “Elaine was very clear that I wasn’t manipulating the potion at all. My results were no better than a mundane trying to make a potion like one would cook a stew.”

He paused. “I can cast a spell, if I know what the spell is meant to do,” he added, “and I can make things happen if I know what I want to do ... but I don’t know if I am really casting a spell.”

“Interesting,” Cass mused. “Intent is important, naturally, but so is following the steps to channel one’s magic. Yet you seem to bypass the steps and jump immediately to the final outcome. There’s quite a puzzle there, Johan.”

She frowned. “Do you get tired?”

“No,” Johan said. “I don’t get tired at all.”

“Even the strongest magicians get tired,” Cass said, thinking out loud. “Or have you merely not discovered your limits?”

“I don’t know,” Johan said. “Do you have a plan for using my magic?”

“I would prefer to know what I was dealing with before I tried to use it,” Cass said. “So far, your powers seem dangerously unpredictable. Have you ever had any problems?”

“I smashed a table,” Johan said. “I was trying to levitate the table and it just shot upwards and slammed into the ceiling. There was no fine control at all.”

“But you did have fine control when you were removing a person’s magic,” Cass said, darkly. “Or did you just
wish
for the final outcome?”

Johan shifted, uncomfortably. “I wanted them to suffer,” he admitted. “And nothing would hurt worse than losing their powers.”

“I imagine so,” Daria said, briskly. She stood up in one smooth motion. “Why don’t you show me where the kitchens are? We’re all going to need something to eat.”

“Of course,” Johan said. He couldn’t help feeling relieved. Daria had probably picked up on his unease and stopped the questioning. “But I should warn you my cooking skills are not good.”

“Werewolves can eat anything,” Daria said, as she opened the door. “So can Inquisitors.”

“I’m not an Inquisitor any longer,” Cass reminded her, dryly. “Maybe it’s time to start developing a few expensive tastes.”

Daria laughed, then pulled Johan out the door and down the corridor.

“Thank you,” Johan said, once they were out of earshot. “I was starting to feel like she would never stop asking questions I couldn’t answer.”

“It’s always annoying when someone does that,” Daria agreed. “My older cousin really hated it when I badgered him about his wife. Why did he marry her? I asked. Because she smelled right, he said. But why does she smell right? I asked. Because she does, he said. And eventually he raged to my parents about my questions.”

“Oh,” Johan said. He hated to imagine what his father would have said if his cousin had reported him for pestering her. “And what did they do?”

“Told me I’d understand when I was a little bit older,” Daria said. “I was just a kid.”

Johan smiled, remembering some of his father’s comments, before he’d realised that Johan would never amount to anything. They’d always ended with a note that he would understand once he was a grown man. And, even now, Johan wasn’t sure he
did
understand. Perhaps he’d been spared some horrors by being born without magic.

He stopped dead as a new sensation echoed down the link. Elaine was waking up.

Chapter Eighteen

Elaine’s eyes snapped open.

For a few moments, she honestly wasn’t sure where she was. Her memories were a blur; she recalled Deferens, and Charity Conidian, and then ... and then everything was blurred until she opened her eyes, back in the Great Library. The wards touched her mind seconds later, before she could start to panic. She knew where she was ... and she knew she was safe. And that was all that mattered.

Alarms echoed through the wards as she sat upright. There were people outside, people trying to break through the protections surrounding the library. Elaine tested the wards quickly, one by one, and discovered they were still holding firm. It would take days, perhaps weeks, for the wardcrafters to shatter the wards, or even force them to allow a handful of magicians to enter the building. And even if they did, the Great Library wouldn’t be defenceless. Corridors would lead to nowhere, entire subsections of the library would vanish, taking unwanted intruders with them ... and, at worst, the knowledge within the Black Vault could be turned against the enemy.

“Better stay still for the moment,” a voice advised. It took Elaine a moment to recognise Cass, kneeling beside her. “You’ve had a nasty shock.”

“I know,” Elaine said. Her mind
hurt
. She might have freed herself from the spell, but there was no way to know if she’d eradicated all of its traces. “What’s the situation?”

“The Great Library is surrounded,” Cass said. “Johan and Daria have gone to make breakfast. Other than that, I think I need to ask you.”

Elaine rubbed her forehead, then forced herself to stand. Cass caught her arm and steadied her as she rose to her feet. Her limbs felt weak, as if she’d been very ill, but she was growing stronger as she moved. The wards helped, allowing her to draw on a little of their power, even though it risked draining them at the worst possible moment. Elaine placed her hands on the nearest table and rested for a long second, then stood on her own. There was a chilling moment when she thought she was going to faint, then the sensation faded away into nothingness. She was alive and well.

“Thank you for your help,” she said. “But you’re going to have to tell me what happened in the palace. My mind’s a blur.”

She listened to Cass’s words, allowing them to unlock the blurred parts of her memory. “He had children,” she said, suddenly. “Children from the Great Houses. But why?”

“Hostages, perhaps,” Cass said, darkly. “Or worse.”

“Vlad Deferens is the Emperor,” Elaine said, shaking her head in disbelief. It sounded like a bad joke; she’d known that Deferens had been a contender for the post of Grand Sorcerer, but having him become the Emperor ... the Witch-King had certainly laid his plots very well. “And he’s taking hostages. Why?”

“The Great Houses won’t be happy about an Emperor,” Cass observed. “But I doubt they gave him anyone really important.”

Elaine nodded, slowly. The Great Houses were utterly ruthless at times. Johan’s father had been quite willing to do whatever it took to lure him back to the family, destroying a budding romance along the way. If the Family Heads had sent hostages, she would have bet half her salary that the hostages were the youngest children, the ones who were suitable only as pawns in the endless struggle for good marriages. Deferens might discover that he’d lulled himself into a false sense of security.

“I suppose,” she said, finally. “What do we do now?”

“Get out of this building,” Cass said. “We may be safe, for the moment, but we can’t do anything to help Light Spinner or stop the Emperor.”

She paused. “You were going to find the Witch-King,” she said. “Did it occur to you that he might be buried below the Golden City?”

Elaine shook her head. “I thought about it,” she answered, “but there are thousands of magicians in the city. Having his body hidden here would be an unacceptable risk.”

“But the Golden City was the capital of the Empire even back then,” Cass pointed out. “He might not have had a choice.”

Elaine closed her eyes, remembering the stories that had been decanted into her head. The Witch-King had been the hero of the First Necromantic War, then the villain of the Second. He had killed most of the Imperial Bloodline personally, perhaps in a desperate attempt to take power, then created great and terrifying armies to sweep across the land. And then he had been defeated, but his body had never been found. Could it have been slipped back to the Golden City? She doubted it; back then, there had been far more sorcerers with experience in dealing with the darkest of forbidden magics. They would have found the lich and destroyed it before the Witch-King could recover his strength.

And even if he had somehow evaded their watchful gaze, Elaine was sure, he would have had to hide from successive Grand Sorcerers and the Inquisitors too. She knew how thoroughly the Golden City was monitored for unexpected and unexplained bursts of magic, particularly after the Blight had been created. The Witch-King would have been taking a ghastly risk if he had kept his body in the city, assuming – of course – that he’d been able to leave. A lich wasn’t always mobile. It would depend, the knowledge in her head told her, on just what condition the body had been in, at the moment it had been frozen in mortal stasis. And there was no way she could answer that question until they found the body.

“It would be an insane risk,” she said, slowly. “And he would have had to make his way back to the city in any case.”

“Yeah,” Cass said. “So where did he fall?”

“Beyond the Garston Mountains,” Elaine said, flatly. “We were planning to go there when Deferens took the Golden Throne.”

She looked up as Johan and Daria entered the room, Johan carrying a large plate of bacon sandwiches and Daria carrying a tray with several mugs of hot tannin. Johan put his plate down on the nearest table, then leant forward and gave Elaine a hug. She hugged him back, then gently let go of the younger man. Johan reached for the plate and held it under her nose. Elaine took one of the sandwiches, then motioned for him to share them out. After so long without food, it tasted heavenly.

“It’s good to see you again,” Daria said, sitting next to Elaine as she munched her sandwich. “I was so worried.”

“Me too,” Elaine admitted. She took a breath, then filled them in on everything that had happened since she had been taken out of the Great Library. “He’s got control of everything.”

“Almost everything,” Cass corrected. “He doesn’t control the Great Library.”

Johan had a more immediate point. “He’s using my sister as ... as what?”

“An assistant, for the moment,” Elaine said. She knew what he was thinking. “She swore her oaths to him when he took the Golden Throne.”

“She actually gave him her oaths?” Cass said, in disbelief. “What a stupid bitch.”

“I imagine she wasn’t given a choice,” Elaine said, before Johan could explode with rage. He might have largely discarded his family, but Charity was the only one who had been good to him, from time to time. “Deferens had just taken the Throne and stoned Light Spinner. Charity probably thought it was a choice between offering her oaths or being killed outright.”

“She still shouldn’t have given him her oaths,” Cass said. “There will be no breaking them now, will there?”

Johan looked at her hopefully, but Elaine shook her head. Forcing someone into submission through a compulsion spell could be unreliable, if someone had the mental fortitude to fight back and break the spell, yet they who submitted willingly placed themselves completely at the mercy of their master. Charity could not hope to free herself, Elaine knew; her only hope was Deferens choosing to let her go. And that wasn’t likely to happen. What did she have to offer him, in exchange for her freedom, that he couldn’t simply order her to bring to him, if he wanted it?

But there is something Deferens might want
, Elaine thought.
Johan. Johan and me
.

She kept that thought to herself. Instead, she turned to Cass. “How many Inquisitors are left?”

Cass hesitated for a long moment before answering. “Not counting me,” she said carefully, “twenty-four. Twenty-three now, assuming Akron didn’t survive the flames.”

Daria’s mouth fell open, revealing inhumanly sharp teeth. “Twenty-three Inquisitors for the entire world?”

“It isn’t something we normally tell people,” Cass said. “And I should bind you all to secrecy.”

Elaine wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or furious. She’d known the Inquisitors had taken heavy losses in the fight with Kane, but she hadn’t realised just how few remained. No one had known, apart from Light Spinner ... and she hadn’t been able to launch a recruiting drive for fear of tipping off her enemies. Twenty-three Inquisitors ... they would be a formidable force, particularly with a Grand Sorceress at their head, but hardly enough to stand off the massed power of the Great Houses. Light Spinner’s rule, the shortest in recorded history, had been weaker than anyone had dared suppose.

“They belong to Deferens now,” Daria said, sharply. “Would he choose to discard the women?”

“Perhaps,” Cass said. “But that would leave nineteen alive and well. And fifteen of them are in the city now.”

Elaine understood, suddenly, why Deferens had taken hostages. The Great Houses had never been able to challenge the Grand Sorcerers, but now ... now Deferens was Emperor, rather than claiming the title of Grand Sorcerer in his own right. He might look weak, even if he
did
have the Inquisitors on his side. If someone chose to challenge him openly, the whole edifice might come crumbling down.