Bookworm III Read online

  “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.

  The Witch-King had to be behind everything, she was sure. Vlad Deferens would never have sat on the Golden Throne unless he’d known it was safe – and only the Witch-King could have ensured he knew. And then, Deferens hadn’t surrounded himself with naked and submissive women, in the belief that it was all they were good for, but had put them to work. Elaine had never thought she would see the day when not acting like a misogynist would seem a bad sign, yet it was now. It spoke of someone else pulling the strings, keeping his eye on the prize. And who knew what the Witch-King really wanted ...?

  How does he do it?she asked herself, not for the first time. How does he influence so many at such a distance?

  The thought had nagged at her mind ever since she’d first deduced his existence. There was no shortage of compulsion spells; some blunt tools that could be resisted, while others were so subtle that few could realise they had ever been influenced at all. And yet, they all required someone to either cast the spell directly or leave the spell hidden for the victim to find and activate. The idea of long-range control was unthinkable ... and if it was some form of long-distance control, the Witch-King should have won by now. There was something about the method that made it work, but added limits. But what was it?

  He left a book for some of his slaves to find, she thought. Some of the spells in it had been nasty, others might have tilted the user towards insanity, weakening their defences. But how did he get it into their hands?

  She sensed the spell holding her rubbing against her defences, just long enough to bring her mind back to the here and now. Cursing mentally, she tightened her defences once again, then opened her eyes and looked around the chamber. There was nothing she could use, either to escape or to kill herself. The only option for the latter was a spell that caused instant brain death, leaving her thoughts so fragmented that no one, not even a necromancer, could summon her ghost back from the realm of the dead. But would she be able to shape and cast it before the compulsion spell overwhelmed her? The timing would be very fraught. She couldn’t afford even the smallest mistake.

  Despair threatened to overwhelm he
r as she stood and started to pace, testing the limits of her bonds again and again. There was no hope of escape unless she broke the spell, yet the mere act of trying to break the spell was dangerous in itself ... her thoughts raced around, time and time again, going back to the simple point that there was no other way out. But would she have the time to break the spell?

  And then she felt a presence pushing up against her mind. No, inside her mind. She almost panicked, then reached out, understanding in sudden wonder that the apprenticeship bond was finally working. Johan’s mind was touching hers, a level of intimacy she hadn’t enjoyed with anyone, even her first lover. The mere touch sent her reeling; hastily, she checked and rechecked her defences, then tried to send a thought back down the link. But there was no sense Johan had heard her.

  Concentrate, she told herself, firmly. It had been years since she’d had any classes in mental communication – the bond should have formed naturally, if it had been normal – but she knew the basics. Focus your mind.

  She gritted her teeth. Johan hadn’t broken her defences. The bond was already present within her mind, allowing Johan to contact her. All she had to do – all – was make contact in return. She held her defences in place with part of her mind, then reached through the bond with the rest of her attention. There was a flurry of confusing images – Daria in wolf form, Daria naked as the day she was born, a blonde-haired girl who looked oddly familiar – and then an overwhelming sense of him pressing his mind against hers. She shrank back from the contact – it wasn’t painful, but it was powerful – and tried to warn him to moderate his voice. The barrage of thoughts were coming at her so fast she couldn’t separate them out into individual, understandable concepts.

  “Slow down,” she said, or thought. She honestly wasn’t sure. Some of the books in her head insisted that some mentalists preferred to vocalise their thoughts, but she was all-too-aware that someone might be spying on the holding cell. “I can’t understand you.”

  The jabbering grew louder for a long moment, then faded. “Elaine,” Johan said. She heard his voice in her mind. “Where are you?”

  “In the Imperial Palace, a prisoner,” Elaine muttered, too low for anyone to overhear. It was important to get that piece of information out first, although she wasn’t sure what Johan could do with it. At least he would know to remain hidden. “How did you make contact with me?”

  “There’s an Inquisitor – ex-Inquisitor – here,” Johan said. “She boosted the link.”

  Elaine felt a sudden flush of overwhelming pride. She had never thought of asking another magician to help, if only because it would have exposed her thoughts – and Johan’s – to outside scrutiny. Her mental privacy had been important to her even before she’d absorbed the contents of the Great Library. It had been the only privacy she’d enjoyed at the orphanage, then at the Peerless School. The idea of private rooms had been laughable.

  But Johan, who had been abused far worse than her, had opened his mind to another, just to contact Elaine.

  “Then you need to listen,” Elaine said. She briefly outlined the spell holding her and what she’d done to hold it back. “You have to break the link completely.”

  “No,” Johan said. “I won’t.”

  There was a sudden sense of ... expansion, as a third person joined the conversation. “I know the spell,” Cass said. The sense of her identity flooded through Elaine’s mind as she spoke, bringing with it an awareness of power and confidence that left her feeling envious and afraid at the same time. “It’s astonishing you’ve held out as long as you have.”

  Johan coughed. “Why?”

  “The spell is known only to Inquisitors,” Cass explained. “Unlike most compulsion spells, it absorbs magic and strengthens itself by attacking the target’s defences. The standard response to any compulsion spell will merely make the spell stronger, while it burns through the victim’s mind. It isn’t used unless you don’t care about your target walking away with real damage. Even the merest use of the spell can leave someone in deep trouble.”

  She paused. “Elaine has held out very well.”

  “Not well enough,” Elaine said. She knew something about escaping ordinary compulsion spells – Millicent had given her more than enough practice, while they’d been at school together – but this was different. “My body is under their control.”

  “That sounds like a bad romance novel,” Cass observed flippantly. “Or a line from a worse play.”

  Elaine tried to bite down on the anger surging through her mind. Emotion, no matter the cause, would only weaken her defences. Cass was right; there were no shortage of plays about women – and sometimes men – who had married someone they hated, merely to carry on the family line. The heroines always talked about surrendering their bodies, but never their minds. Elaine had always hated those plays with a white-hot passion.

  Johan tried to pour oil on troubled waters. “Can you break the spell?”

  “Not from here,” Cass said. “I’d have to do it in person and ... and there would be no guarantee it wouldn’t leave traces in her mind.”

  Elaine shuddered, knowing that both of them would feel her horror. There was no shortage of people who took damage from using the wrong kind of spell. Light Spinner, as horrific as it seemed, had maintained her sanity. Others had gone mad, or lost their confidence, or simply killed themselves as soon as they could. Who knew what this spell would do to her if it had enough time to leave its hooks in her mind?

  “Then we have to rescue her,” Johan said. “Is there a way into the Imperial Palace?”

  “A couple,” Cass said. “But we shouldn’t be talking about them through the bond.”

  “She needs to know we’re coming for her,” Johan said. “We should tell her ...”

  “No,” Elaine said. She was touched – more than touched – by Johan’s loyalty. Even if she had been the first person to treat him with a modicum of human decency, his loyalty was still astonishing. Or perhaps it was a function of their bond. “What I know, they can make me tell.”

  “She’s right,” Cass said. “The more that damned spell tightens its grip on her mind, the more they can control her and force her to talk.”

  Johan’s horror was easy to feel through the link, but he held his peace.

  “We will come,” Cass said. “I promise. The city may be under occupation, but we will have a way through if we’re careful.”

  “I may have to try to remove the spell earlier,” Elaine warned. “If it starts to break through my innermost defences, I won’t have a choice.”

  “I understand,” Cass said. “Just be careful.”

  The link broke. Elaine staggered as the presences withdrew from her mind, leaving her completely alone. For a moment, she almost started to cry, knowing that they were gone. And then she gathered herself and held back the tidal wave of despair. She wasn’t alone, not really. Her friends were on their way.

  But it might be a trap ...

  She cursed herself for not considering the possibility while she was in contact with Johan and Cass. Light Spinner had told the Privy Council that Johan was dead, but Dread might well know better. Elaine had lied to his face, but Dread was good at sniffing out lies ... and he was an Inquisitor, his loyalty sworn to the Golden Throne. If Deferens asked, Dread would have no choice but to admit that Johan was still alive. And then Deferens would set a trap.

  Had Deferens thought to ask? There was no way to know. She hastily reviewed all the knowledge in her head on Inquisitor oaths, but it wasn’t clear if Dread would feel compelled to volunteer the information or not. They were sworn to uphold the Throne, she knew, yet Dread had never liked Deferens. He could do precisely as he was told, without volunteering any information he wasn’t specifically asked to volunteer. She knew Dread well enough to know he might well try to keep it to himself ...

  ... And yet, there was still no way to know.

  She cursed under her breath, then closed her eyes and started to concentrate on strength
ening her defences once again. The spell hadn’t remained dormant; it had taken advantage of her distraction to start breaking through wards that should have stopped any normal spell in its tracks. Elaine shuddered in horror, then rebuilt her defences once again, knowing she was fast running out of magic. Indeed, if she hadn’t known how to angle her defences just right, she would be overwhelmed by now. But it was only a matter of time.

  No wonder Deferens didn’t bother to try to force me to swear an oath, she thought, savagely. He – and his master – had been stung by Elaine before. They probably preferred her to be a useless vegetable, a repository of knowledge, rather than a thinking human being. She would be so useful to them, without the intelligence or willpower to seek loopholes in their command and use them as a weapon, or just a way to escape. The bastard wants me ruined completely.

  She opened her eyes, then started to pace the room again. Cass wouldn’t have hesitated, she was sure; Cass would have jumped right into the spell, counting on her prowess with magic to ensure that nothing went seriously wrong. Elaine knew she was skilled, yet she also knew just how many things could go wrong. She cursed the spell’s inventor, once again, as she stopped in front of the mirror and eyed her reflection. There was no disputing the fact she looked a mess. Her hair was sweaty and damp, while her face was pale and her eyes were sleepless. The glamour that concealed her eyes had vanished, leaving red light glaring out of her face. She yawned, as if the sight had reminded her that she really needed some sleep, but she knew she couldn’t allow herself to rest. When she opened her eyes, her free will would be gone.