“I trust I can rely on your discretion,” Lady Light Spinner said. “The Inquisition is not supposed to know about this little trick.”
“Of course not,” Elaine agreed. The Inquisition tried to enforce fair play, rather than try to keep the various aristocratic houses from fighting each other. Their fighting had to be conducted covertly, acknowledging the Grand Sorcerer’s dominance...and preventing it from spilling out into the rest of the city. That would draw the wrath of the Grand Sorcerer like nothing else. “Why do you wear a veil?”
Lady Light Spinner looked at her for a long moment...and then drew the veil away from her face, exposing her to Elaine’s gaze. Elaine couldn’t help recoiling as she took in the scorched and damaged features, the scars running over the woman’s face. The only thing normal about her was her eyes, the only part of her body she showed off to the world. Her hair was gone, revealing a scalp that should have belonged to an elderly woman.
“I was like her once,” Lady Light Spinner said. There was a catch in her voice, something that caught Elaine’s attention. She kept her voice normal through strict discipline. “But there is always a price for power.”
Knowledge tumbled through Elaine’s mind. There were ways to enhance a person’s power, but they could go horrifically wrong. In Lady Light Spinner’s case, it was clear that she
hadn’t
managed to boost her own power; there was no sign that she was actually insane. She’d attempted a forbidden act and ended up badly scared and mutilated, with nothing to show for the pain she’d inflicted on herself.
She caught herself looking at Lady Light Spinner’s body. It was hidden beneath the shapeless robe, but...what had happened to it? Might it be warped and misshapen, or twisted and blackened by the raw magic she’d unleashed...or perhaps it would be normal, a cruel joke from the magic she’d attempted to bend to her will. The spell hadn’t dredged out new channels for conducting magic in her mind. It had torn her body apart instead. Elaine wasn’t sure that she could have continued to live like that, not knowing that any hint of what had happened to her leaking out would mean her doom. Misshapen freaks were banished from the cities, if they were lucky. It would have been legal for anyone to kill Lady Light Spinner on sight.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. Too many students at the Peerless School were tempted to try to force open their magic channels too early. A brief meeting with someone like Lady Light Spinner might have convinced them that it was a bad idea. “I...”
“I don’t need your pity,” Lady Light Spinner said, harshly. “Millicent, show her to the door. Now!”
“Yes, Aunt,” Millicent said. She was terrifyingly pale. Could it be that she’d never seen her Aunt’s face in her entire life? And what would it mean when she realised that the auntie she’d practically worshipped was one of the freaks everyone hated? “Come on...Elaine.”
Elaine would have smiled at Millicent’s brief inability to remember her name, but she was too tired. All she really wanted to do was go home and sleep.
***
Cass and Karan met her at the door of her apartment as she stumbled inside, having clearly already met Daria when she came home. Daria was sleeping on the floor, still in werewolf form; burned marks covered part of her fur and there were bloodstains around her muzzle. But she’d made it home, presumably giving the book to Dread before going to sleep. Elaine exchanged brief greetings with the two Inquisitors, staggered into her bedroom and fell asleep without even bothering to get undressed. She was so tired that the nightmares that had tormented her since becoming a bookworm failed to make any headway into her mind.
When she awoke, the entire experience seemed like a dream. Had she really burgled a house with Daria and a man called Cat? Had they really encountered Millicent and escaped by the skin of their teeth? And had she really seen a face that was carefully hidden from prying eyes?
Remembering Cat made her shiver. She’d seen too many people die in the last few days, ever since she’d woken up to discover what she’d become, but Cat’s death had made a terrifying impression on her. It would have been easy for Elaine to die the same way, by picking up a book with a deadly curse and opening it before checking for unpleasant surprises. She’d known, intellectually, that many of the forbidden texts were guarded by spells that would keep their contents safe from prying eyes, but it was hard to believe it at an emotional level. Books had always been her friends, there for her when she’d had no real human friends of her own. How could they become dangerous?
It was a silly question, she knew. A little knowledge could be a very dangerous thing; mundane books might not be directly harmful, but they contained knowledge that could become lethal very quickly in the wrong hands. Back when the printing press had been invented, there had been various factions insisting that it should be banned, pointing out that allowing people to read might give them unpleasant ideas. An educated lower class was one that knew enough to realise that it was being exploited by its elders and betters. And yet education could turn a person with talent and no training into someone who could change the world.
She was still thinking about it as she washed and dried herself, before pulling on her work clothes. No more dresses for her, at least until she saw Bee again. The thought of him made her stop in her tracks, just for a moment. What would he have said if he’d seen her breaking into a house and stealing a book that killed people who touched it with their bare hands? Or...had he hidden links with Lady Light Spinner? The Lady was a close friend of the Empress of the South. Or...
There was no way to know, she thought firmly as she glanced at herself in the mirror. She looked strictly functional, thankfully. Outside, she could hear voices; Daria, Dread and a couple of others she didn’t recognise. Bracing herself, she opened the door and stepped into the living room. The book they’d stolen lay on the table, polluting the air with its mere presence, and Dread was flicking his way through it page by page.
“I am...pleased to see that you survived,” Dread said, without looking up. Elaine wondered just how truthful that actually was, even though Inquisitors weren’t supposed to be able to lie. Her death would have solved a great many problems for the Inquisition. “You recovered a very rare book. In fact, I was led to believe that this book was destroyed centuries ago.”
Elaine shrugged as she sat down facing him, gratefully accepting a cup of hot chocolate from Daria. “I didn’t recognise it,” she said. It hadn’t occurred to her during their meeting with Millicent and then their run to safety that that was unusual. The Great Library was supposed to stock a copy of every forbidden tome in the world, every book that even glancing at the cover could earn a reader the death sentence. “What is it?”
There was a long pause. “I may have contaminated myself,” Dread admitted. “The Star Council will not be happy.”
Of course not
, Elaine thought, sourly. Dread would have absorbed knowledge that had been buried for a very good reason. And, unlike her, he might have been tainted by the residues of power and intent burned into the volume, his very soul threatened with the ultimate corruption. Madness might already be tugging away at his mind.
“Never mind that,” Daria said, impatiently. In human form, she seemed to have a scar on her arm and the visible part of her chest, a reminder of how badly she’d been hurt during the frantic escape from the building. “What exactly
is
it?”
Dread hesitated. “This is not a standard grimoire,” he said, finally. “Most forbidden volumes were copied by dark sorcerers and their slaves, the knowledge being passed down from masters to apprentices...often subject to being lost when the apprentice finally killed the master before he’d learned everything he could. Some of the dark sorcerers wrote down their own spells and charmed the books to remain hidden until they died, whereupon other sorcerers would be able to make use of the knowledge. Dark sorcerers simply don’t work together very well.”
“Which didn’t stop the Witch-King and the necromancers from nearly destroying us,” Daria pointed out, crossing her arms under her chest. “Don’t we have an evil prince to stop?”
“It is in the nature of dark sorcerers always to struggle for supremacy,” Dread said. “The necromancers might have won if they’d managed to stay united until we were defeated. Instead, they constantly bickered with each other and sometimes turned their legions of undead on their fellow necromancers. It gave us time to regroup and prepare a counter-offensive that eventually destroyed the necromancers.
“The Witch-King knew that the necromancers couldn’t win unless they were united,” he continued. “We never fully understood how he managed to keep them all in line – until now. This book details the precise procedure for seeding a section of a person’s mind inside an unsuspecting victim. The seed eventually takes over completely, creating a whole new person who is almost an exact copy of the magician who created the seed. I believe that the Witch-King, during the years before he declared himself, was finding necromancers and seeding them with his own personality. There was never a second Necromancer’s Council; instead, there was just one mind in many bodies.”
He grimaced. “The spells here are much more powerful than any we’ve seen elsewhere,” he added. “Powerful enough to overwhelm almost anyone, even a powerful magician. We should be grateful that they were lost for so long.”
“I’ve heard of something like that,” Elaine said, slowly. The knowledge from the Great Library hinted at it, although the writers had clearly not known the specifics – or had been too frightened to put pen to paper. “But surely the necromancers would have refused...”
Daria had a more practical objection. “I thought that a person who’d been enslaved would be unable to practice magic,” she said. “Wouldn’t the new...well, the new Witch-Kings have no power to draw upon?”
“The Witch-King didn’t collar them,” Dread said, patiently. “His seeds infiltrated their minds and they eventually
became
him, with access to all of his powers and whatever was natural to the bodies they possessed. He may have eventually become one mind with many bodies. And he almost won the war.”
Elaine nodded, remembering the descriptions of the final days of the Second Necromantic War. An entire continent had been laid to waste to destroy the Witch-King and his followers.
“This book was written by the Witch-King himself,” Dread said. “There were always rumours that he had created a grimoire of his own, but nothing ever surfaced...until now.”
He stared down at the blank cover. “Anyone with even the rudimentary magical abilities possessed by the lowest student would eventually be able to use the principles in this book to construct his own spells,” he added. “The spell that killed Cat came out of this book. So did the spell that Duke Gama used to charm his private volumes – and the spell that killed him. There is enough in here to take someone from very basic abilities to the very highest levels of magic, all the while turning him into a monster.”
Princess Sacharissa gulped. “And it was hidden in Ida for hundreds of years?”
“Almost certainly,” Dread said. “And it leads to one final point. This is the proof we need to stop him. The Inquisition will arrest him today.”
“I need to be there,” Elaine said, before she could stop herself.
“And me,” Daria said, firmly. “We both need to be there.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Absolutely out of the question,” Dread said, firmly. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it could be?”
A thousand images of maddened or desperate sorcerers fighting their inevitable destruction washed through Elaine’s mind. “Yes,” she said, “but I should be there anyway. I know more about dark magic than any dark sorcerer.”
“That is not a good thing to put on your résumé,” Dread said. His eyes met hers and held her gaze. “He’s going to be desperate; merely possessing that book is grounds for immediate execution. You will be his target if he realises that you led us to him.”
“I need to be there,” Elaine insisted. In truth, she suspected that she would never believe that the threat was over until she’d seen Prince Hilarion die. The Inquisition would probably prefer him to die resisting arrest than to surrender, knowing that his knowledge would make him a target for every other sorcerer who wanted to boost his powers. “Please...”
Dread looked at her for a long moment, and then nodded. “Meet us at the Spearpoint in two hours,” he ordered, finally. “And you are going to have to obey orders. A duel with a magician powerful enough to become the Grand Sorcerer is never easy – and he could have boosted his powers greatly over the last few years. The Inquisitors won’t have time to protect you if Prince Hilarion decides it’s time to fight.”
“And he will,” the Princess said. “He was never at his best when he was backed into a corner.”
“I will do as I’m told,” Elaine promised. Daria, beside her, nodded shortly. “How many Inquisitors are you going to bring with you?”
“A small army,” Dread said. “I’ve already sent out one set of messages, declaring an alert. The remainder of the force will meet up at the Spearpoint, assuming that Prince Hilarion doesn’t decide to run.”
Daria leaned forward. “And what if he does?”
“Then we have to improvise,” Dread said. “There are really too many people in the Golden City to risk fighting a pitched battle here.”
Elaine nodded. The population was high even without the hundreds of thousands of visitors who had flocked to the Golden City in the wake of the Grand Sorcerer’s death. An all-out battle between different magical factions was likely to leave half the city in ruins.
“Meet us at the Spearpoint if you don’t change your mind,” Dread added. “And don’t be late. We won’t have time to wait.”
***
By long convention, dating back to the era before the empire first stumbled into existence, the Spearpoint was technically enemy territory. Upon declaring war, the Emperor would stand in the patch of ground that comprised the Spearpoint and plunge a spear into the ground, symbolically striking the enemy country. The Spearpoint had become a temple to the gods of war after the empire had claimed the entire world, one decorated with statues and medals representing the campaigns that had been fought by the army. One statue was curiously out of place to Elaine’s eyes; Valiant, hero of the First Necromantic War – and villain of the Second War. Dread had skimmed through a book written by his greatest hero and had never realised it.