Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling Read online

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL

  Bookworm series

  Bookworm

  Dizzy Spells series

  A Life Less Ordinary

  Royal Sorceress series

  The Royal Sorceress

  The Great Game

  INVERSE SHADOWS UNIVERSE

  SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

  Not every ugly duckling becomes a swan...

  In the wake of the disastrous attack on the Golden City, Lady Light Spinner has become Grand Sorceress and Elaine, the Bookworm, has been settling into her positions as Head Librarian and Privy Councillor. But any hope of vanishing into her books is negated when a new magician of staggering power appears in the city, one whose abilities seem to defy the known laws of magic.

  Johan is a Powerless, a person born to a magical family yet lacking powers of his own. His dreams of a better life are curbed by his family, who see him as a cripple at best and a burden at worst. But when a political protest goes horrifically wrong, Johan discovers that his true powers have merely been buried, waiting for their chance to explode into the world. As he comes to grips with his newfound talents, he discovers that he finally has a chance to realise his ambitions ...

  ... But for the Golden City, reeling after the devastation of six months earlier, he may be the greatest threat the city has ever seen. Elaine must unlock the mystery behind his powers before the political factions can kill him ... or use him to unleash a nightmare.

  Returning to well-loved characters from Christopher Nuttall’s bestselling Bookworm and introducing new ones, Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling explores power – and the effect it has on the human mind.

  Bookworm II

  The Very Ugly Duckling

  Christopher Nuttall

  Elsewhen Press

  Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling

  First published in Great Britain by Elsewhen Press, 2014

  An imprint of Alnpete Limited

  Copyright © Christopher Nuttall, 2013. All rights reserved

  The right of Christopher Nuttall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, telepathic, magical, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Elsewhen Press, PO Box 757, Dartford, Kent DA2 7TQ

  www.elsewhen.co.uk

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-908168-28-3 Print edition

  ISBN 978-1-908168-38-2 eBook edition

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  Elsewhen Press & Planet-Clock Design are trademarks of Alnpete Limited

  Converted to eBook format by Elsewhen Press

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, libraries, and events are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, repositories, places or people (living, dead or undead) is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  To Peter, Laura and Faith Nuttall

  Chapter One

  The Witch-King, Elaine thought, must have been out of his mind.

  She lifted her eyes from the small book on the table, resisting the urge to rub them in the hopes that certain memories would fade from her mind. She’d always had a good memory, even before the entire contents of the Great Library had been dumped into her head, but the Witch-King’s spellbook was too horrifying to remember. Somehow, reading it naturally – rather than having the knowledge stored in her mind – made it worse. It was far too easy to see just how twisted he’d become by necromancy.

  There were laws against reading such books, unless one happened to be the Grand Sorcerer. Elaine knew that many young magicians had chafed against such restrictions, assuming that the Grand Sorcerers had wanted to keep certain types of knowledge to themselves, but she understood perfectly. There were spells and forms of magic that were inherently corrupting, so much so that even using one of them once would taint a person for the rest of his or her life. If Elaine had had the power to make some of them work, she had a feeling that Lady Light Spinner would, with the greatest of regret, have ordered her execution. Even so, she was effectively a prisoner in the Great Library.

  It wasn’t something she resented, most of the time. She was, after all, one of the most important people in the Empire – and she had a seat on the Privy Council, which controlled the Empire. And she had the ear of the Grand Sorceress. But there were times when it gnawed at her, such as when she’d been asked to read the Witch-King’s book and see if there were any hints as to his current location. Somehow, against all logic and common sense, the Witch-King was still alive. The gods alone knew where he might be hiding.

  Elaine shivered, remembering the brief moment of mental contact when she’d been trying to stop the maddened Kane from destroying the Golden City. In that instant, she had realised that the Witch-King was still alive, trapped as a lich – and quite insane. He was effectively immortal; he’d had literally hundreds of years to prepare his plans, while remaining hidden from even the most intensive probes. If he couldn’t be found, Elaine suspected, he would simply start another plan that would take generations to come to fruition. How did one fight an enemy who could take so long to prepare his offensive? They might well miss the clues until it was far too late.

  She looked back at the book and scowled. All magicians of real power – Elaine had very little, despite the knowledge in her head – kept a private spellbook, a tradition the Witch-King had honoured. Unsurprisingly, the spells had grown darker and darker the more she’d read, showing her how to control an army with her mind, corrupt a child or even create a horde of monsters from dead human flesh. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would dare risk using any of those spells, but not everyone had her unique insight into how magic worked. Besides, corruption rarely set in immediately. Someone might use a mildly dark spell, then a slightly darker spell ... and, before they knew it, they were corrupted, thinking nothing of using the darkest of spells.


  The book should be destroyed, she thought, although training and inclination mediated against it. The Black Vault existed for books that were judged too dangerous to be allowed to be copied and shared everywhere; surely, she had been told, the book would be safe there. But Elaine’s very existence proved otherwise. If the Witch-King’s book had been in the Black Vault, its knowledge would have been dumped into her head along with the rest of the Great Library.

  She closed the book, placed it back in the box and concentrated for a long moment, muttering bespoke charms under her breath. Standard lock spells were one thing, but the spells she had devised herself were almost impossible to detect – or to open, without the right code. Even the most powerful of magicians should have had problems opening the box – and if they managed to crack through one spell by brute force, the second would incinerate the book. It was better that the book be reduced to ash, Elaine had told herself, than risk it falling into enemy hands. She hadn’t told either Lady Light Spinner, the Grand Sorceress, or Inquisitor Dread about the precaution. It would only have upset them.

  Standing, she picked up the box and placed it within a stack of others, each one completely indistinguishable from the rest. Only the Head Librarian could find anything within the Black Vault; even the most powerful magician in the world would have had problems, at least until he managed to bend the magic shaping and maintaining the pocket dimension to his will. Elaine could have done it, she thought, but few others could have managed such a feat. They would always be tempted to use raw power rather than subtle magic.

  Shaking her head, she took a long look around the compartment. Massive bookshelves, bursting with books, ran for as far as the eye could see, each tome forbidden to the vast majority of the population. There were chests of papers belonging to the Grand Sorcerers, sealed away too so that their heirs could keep their knowledge to themselves, as well as books and artefacts that had been offered to the Grand Sorcerer by other magicians. The magic that shaped the Black Vault would keep everything preserved, Elaine knew. Generations could pass outside and the books would remain undamaged.

  And hopefully unread, she told herself, as she stepped through the mirror and out into the unrestricted stacks. Mirrors served as gateways between the normal world and the pocket dimensions used to store the library’s vast collection of books, but only one person could use them to access the Black Vault. Elaine smiled to herself as she felt the library’s magic pulsing around her, closing the gateway, then started to walk towards her office. Moments later, she realised that she had a visitor. Inquisitor Dread.

  “Inquisitor,” she said, as she stepped into her office. “Make yourself at home.”

  She had to smile as she sat down facing the hooded man. There had been a time when she wouldn’t have dared joke with an Inquisitor, when she wouldn’t have wanted to face one ... but Dread was a friend, of sorts. And one of the very few who knew what had happened during the selection process for the Grand Sorcerer. Most of the world believed that the battle between contenders got out of control, wrecking large parts of the city. Elaine knew better.

  “Elaine,” Dread said. As always, his voice was near toneless. “I trust that you are prepared?”

  Elaine blinked in surprise ... and then remembered. They had been scheduled to run a specific security check on the Great Library. And she’d almost been late! No one could have contacted her in the Black Vault, save for the Grand Sorceress.

  “I think so,” Elaine said. “Are you ready?”

  Dread shrugged, one hand touching the burns on his face. “It wouldn’t matter if I was bleeding out and dying,” he said, flatly. “I’d still have a job to do.”

  Elaine nodded, closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. As always, the wards of the Great Library answered her, recognising their mistress. Elaine found the experience slightly disturbing; the Great Library’s wards were old enough to have developed a certain intelligence of their own, something that gave them an odd sense of humour. Anyone who linked into the wards felt as if they were becoming part of the building itself.

  No wonder Miss Prim fled the moment she could, Elaine thought, ruefully. She must have hated being convinced that she had birds nesting in her hair.

  Pushing the disconcerting sensations aside, Elaine studied the wards carefully. Hundreds of sorcerers had created them, piece by piece; few of them had really understood what they were creating. The Witch-King, before his fall from grace, had been one of them. No wonder he had been able to slip a booby trap through the wards – and no wonder no one had expected anything of the sort! They’d thought that all the magicians who might have built themselves a secret password to get through the wards were dead.

  Elaine shivered at the memory. Barely six months ago, she had been a normal librarian, one of many who worked in the Great Library. And then she’d picked up the book that had been carefully steered to her, the book that had been primed to channel all of the knowledge in the library into her mind. And then things had really become complicated.

  She smiled to herself as the wards flickered and danced around her. One thing the spell had done – something she doubted the Witch-King had meant it to do – was show her precisely how spells really worked. Most magicians used their raw power to cover up the gaps in their knowledge, doing it so naturally that they never really realised what they were doing. Elaine, on the other hand, had little power, but by disassembling spells and putting them back together again she was able to do much more than she should have been.

  Carefully, she began to study how the Great Library’s wards went together ... and swallowed a curse as she realised that there were more holes in the library’s security than anyone had ever discovered. Most of them were countered by other wards, but someone with real knowledge might have been able to exploit them. She couldn’t help wondering if there had been more thefts from the library than had ever been officially acknowledged. The librarians would be reluctant to admit failure when every ambitious magician would try to take advantage of the library’s weakness.

  All right, she told herself. Here we go.

  Piece by piece, she shaped tiny spells in her mind and uploaded them into the library’s wards, mapping them out thoroughly. By now, it would be impossible to disassemble the wards and recast them, no matter how much better they could have become with some careful fiddling and other improvements. They had simply become part of the library. But she could still make some improvements ...

  She pulled herself out of the wards and opened her eyes, feeling drained. Unlike Miss Prim, her inherent magic wasn’t strong enough to sustain the contact indefinitely, not when the wards drew on her as savagely as any other spell she knew. Dread would probably have been able to hold the contact for hours – the Inquisitors were chosen for magical strength as well as skill and bloody-mindedness – but the wards would have rejected him. The only other person who could have manipulated them was the Grand Sorceress.

  “Ready,” she said, as she sagged. Sweat was pouring down her back, despite the cool air. “The spell can be triggered at any time.”

  Dread nodded, one hand on his staff. “Do you want to do it now or wait until later?”

  Elaine hesitated. On the one hand, she was exhausted – and really needed to get some sleep in her office to allow her magic to recharge. But on the other hand, she didn’t want to have to do the whole process over again – and she would have to, if they delayed too long. The new spells she’d added to the wards wouldn’t last indefinitely.

  “I think so,” she said. “Ready?”

  Dread bowed his head in acknowledgement.

  Elaine allowed herself a tired smile, then linked with the wards again, sending a final command into the network. She felt the wards shift as she fell out of the connection, her magic depleted so badly that she wouldn’t have been able to light a candle, even with the newer lighting spells she’d developed personally. Not that it mattered; now that she’d given the order, the wards could do the rest on their own, s
weeping the entire library for signs of unwanted dark magic – or other surprises. Light magic was associated with goodness, naturally, but there were plenty of ways light spells could be used to cause trouble.

  “It’s done,” she said, as she collapsed into her seat. “The spells are searching now.”

  Dread put out a hand and squeezed hers, an odd gesture of affection from the Inquisitor. “I thank you,” he said. “Now ... relax.”

  Elaine nodded, torn between watching as the wards searched the library and closing her eyes and trying to sleep. Standard search spells could locate an object within range very quickly, assuming they knew what they were actually looking for. The task she’d assigned to the library’s wards was far harder. They were to locate and catalogue any magic that wasn’t actually part of the library’s protections and filing system, then report back to Elaine. There would probably be plenty of reports of various cheating spells used by students desperate to pass their exams, but she wasn’t too worried about those. The real danger came from darker magic.

  She had almost dozed off completely when the wards twitched against her mind. A moment later, a glowing image of the library appeared in front of them, showing the location of every spell and magical artefact that hadn’t been cleared to enter the library. Elaine sucked in her breath when she saw the vast number of cheating spells and charmed note-takers. The Peerless School had always encouraged creative thinking and rule-bending, but surely there were limits.

  “I shouldn’t worry about it,” Dread said. “Magic is all about looking for ways to cheat.”