Bookworm (44 page)

“Stay here,” she urged Daria. The werewolves had been created by wild magic. Daria would be vulnerable to the Blight in ways that wouldn’t threaten a normal human, even a magician. Elaine had never realised just how brave Daria had been to track her down so close to the Blight, but then she hadn’t realised that Daria had been a werewolf. “I need you two to lure him towards the Blight.”

Dread looked at her, puzzled. “Are you sure you know what you are doing?”

The honest answer to that was
no
, but that would only have upset him. “I think so,” Elaine said, carefully. And it was true enough. Whatever happened, she probably wouldn’t last long enough to see what the wild magic did to her. “But you can’t know what I’m doing, not when he might be able to read your mind.”

“Understood,” Dread said. Meeting someone so much more powerful than himself – and sane enough to be a long-term threat to the entire world – had to have been humbling. But he still took it in his stride. “How long do you need?”

Elaine hesitated. She honestly wasn’t sure. “Give me ten minutes,” she said, finally. Constructing the spells in her mind was one thing, but summoning them into reality was quite another. Controlling wild magic was difficult, to say the least. Many sorcerers had tried...and even those who had succeeded had escaped horrifically mutated. She remembered Lady Light Spinner’s face and shuddered. Had she tried to tap wild magic to boost her own powers? “Good luck.”

“And to you,” Dread said, heavily. He took one last look at her, as if he was trying to remember her face, and then started to walk off. “I’ll wait for Daria at the Shipper’s Inn.”

Elaine watched him go and then looked up at the werewolf girl. “I haven’t been a very good friend, have I?”

“Well, you
could
have done more of the washing,” Daria said, dryly. Elaine found herself giggling, despite the tears prickling against her eyes. “Listen to me; you’re not a bad person, not really. And though I know you didn’t want a life of importance, you have handled it well.”

Elaine knew that she hadn’t, but there was no point in arguing. “Thank you,” she said, and gave her friend a hug. “If...if I don’t come out of this alive...please will you tell Bee that I am grateful for everything?”

“Of course I will,” Daria said. “And you
are
going to come out of this alive. And we
are
going to go trawling for men every night when this is over.”

Elaine shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “Just...try not to forget me, all right?”

Daria’s huge canine-like eyes met hers. “Don’t you dare try to kill yourself out of some misplaced guilt,” Daria said, flatly. “You didn’t ask for any of this.”

“I know,” Elaine said. It didn’t make her feel any better. “Good luck.”

“May the gods be with us,” Daria agreed. “I’ll see you soon.”

She shifted back into wolf form and padded after Dread. Elaine watched her go, feeling a sense of unimaginable desolation slowly overcoming her, urging her to call Daria back so that she wouldn’t walk into the Blight alone. But she held her tongue, even when the werewolf looked back at her, and waved goodbye. Turning, fixing her spells firmly in her mind, Elaine turned and walked into the Blight.

***

At first there was nothing, apart from a sense that the air around her was sick and unwell. The wild magic had seeped into the buildings around where the magicians had conducted their experiments, warping everything into something that seemed increasingly unreal. Doorways seemed to gape open invitingly, suggesting that she could walk through them and into an unknown world; the road seemed to twist and turn through a series of increasingly unstable pocket dimensions. She could hear sounds in the distance, screams and laughter from those trapped within the Blight. They were long dead, she hoped, but their souls remained frozen, unable to proceed to the next world.

The wild magic seemed to shimmer around her as she approached the site of the old experiments. Buildings seemed to become odd, almost alien, covered with writing that was beyond her ability to understand. Great...
entities
seemed to brush the surface of mankind’s reality, their thoughts taking on physical form in the midst of the Blight. A scuttling noise alerted her to a giant scorpion-like creature advancing on its prey, a mutated cross between a cat and a dog. Elaine shuddered, unable to tell if the creatures were real or just illusions thrown up by the Blight. The scorpion moved to sting, only to recoil as the cat-dog lunged forward, landed on top of the creature’s shell and started to dig into the gaps with sharp teeth that seemed to have come from nowhere. Elaine watched the scorpion die and then hurried onwards, towards where the ghosts of the dead necromancers waited for her. She didn’t dare go into any of the buildings, not knowing what could be waiting for her in the darkness.

She sucked in her breath as she came to the very heart of the Blight, a circle of ground that was absolutely dead and cold. Wild magic grew stronger as lightning began to flash overhead, each one illuminating a scene from the final moments before the Blight came into existence. The wizards cast their spells, pushing themselves to the limit, hoping to develop a form of necromancy that didn’t include murder. A person could recover drained life force if cared for by competent druids. And if necromancy didn’t include murder, was it really necromancy? They’d never had the chance to find out.

One by one, Elaine started to cast her spells. The wild magic started to slide towards her, a shifting wave as unstoppable as the tide. Magicians had once believed that they could hold back the incoming tide, but the pressure on their wards had eventually caused them to snap, drowning the magicians before they had a chance to escape. Now, Elaine realised as wild magic flickered around her, she was about to die in pursuit of her magic. The only consolation was knowing that Kane was about to die with her.

She closed down as much of her awareness as she could as the wild magic focused around her, slipping into the spells she’d designed to hold it. Higher magic could be controlled – once the first spells had been cast – by magic drawn from the wards; wild magic was just as likely to flicker out of existence for no obvious reason. Her own wards had been carefully designed, using theoretical models that had never been tried before they’d been added to the Black Vault’s collection of banned volumes, using a series of twisting wards to try to contain the wild magic. Even
looking
at it too closely might be dangerous.

But she could still sense Kane. Her father’s awareness would have encompassed the Blight, even if he’d chosen to try to ignore it. Even without Dread and Daria trying to lure him towards the contaminated part of the city, he would have sensed something of what she was doing. He’d
know
that she was drawing on wild magic and he would be coming for her. She could feel his presence start to move, great waves of power washing out as he slowly walked through the city. Buildings toppled and people died wherever he cast his gaze. His power thundered through the wards that had once protected the city, causing them to turn in on themselves. Anyone too close to him would be enslaved or have their minds blown out of existence. He’d become a mad god.

And yet, now she was more attuned to wild magic than anyone else had ever been, she could sense something else. Kane was Kane, but he...wasn’t. Something far older and far darker had infested him, just like he’d infested his cousin. Elaine had wondered how any young mind – and Kane was young, barely old enough to be the father he’d become – could have worked on such a plan for so long. But the puppet-master had been a puppet himself, caught in a web so subtle that he’d never suspected its existence. It had whispered into his mind, fanning the sparks of resentment into a blaze that threatened to bring down the entire world, slowly turning him into a shadow of someone else. As if the awareness was suddenly enough to shatter a barrier she hadn’t even known existed, she sensed an immensely old and powerful entity looking back at her...

No one had ever found the Witch-King’s body...

She saw it all in that moment of horrified awareness. The lich – a dead body animated by a mind so powerful that it could never die – waiting for its chance to strike. Over the years, it had sown many seeds into fertile soil. Some had died, some had failed, some had alerted the Inquisition...but none had revealed that the Witch-King was still alive. His power not only kept him alive; it also hid him from all detection. The gods alone knew where he was hiding, his body animated by vast power and endless hate, laying his plans against the Golden City and the line of sorcerers that had defeated him. How far back had he been drawing up the plans to create Kane? Had he influenced Duke Gama into having an affair with Kane’s mother? Or turned Gama’s wife into an icy shrew, preventing him from having children who would have been legitimate? Or...there were too many possibilities. A mind that could plot over centuries, slowly feeding ideas and hints into the minds of its unknowing allies, might be beyond detection. How could anyone tell if a single event was part of a greater plan or nothing more than a coincidence?

The Witch-King’s insane laughter seemed to echo in her mind. Each fragment of his plan was part of a greater whole, something that twisted events and provided new elements for him to pick up and manipulate. The orphanage had taught Elaine how to knit – it was seen as a valuable skill for a young woman with neither family nor money – and she realised just how well the Witch-King had knitted his plans. Even if pieces of his plan fell apart, he could keep going, knitting elements of his grand strategy back together or twisting it into something new. How could one fight a plan that was so all-encompassing...?

She started as Kane entered the Blight, his magical field flaring into blinding light as it encountered the wild magic. He was already trying to drain it, she realised, in the hopes of absorbing it into himself. And with the power he was creating...he could perform miracles, like restoring the Witch-King to a living body. There would no longer be any need for the Witch-King to use most of his power on keeping himself alive, keeping his soul firmly anchored in a rotting body. He would walk out upon the land and rebuild his empire, while whatever remained of the Golden City and the Regency Council struggled to recover from the damage Kane had inflicted on them. The Inquisition had been crippled, many of the aristocrats, traders and soldiers who made up the underpinnings of the empire had been killed...dear gods, King Hildebrand would lead Ida into rebellion and he wouldn’t be the only one. The entire empire would come apart at the seams.

And behind it all, the Witch-King would build up his power once again, until he unleashed the third and final necromantic war.

The wild magic tore at her mind, threatening to absorb her into itself, but somehow she hung on grimly. There was no point in trying to talk Kane into surrendering, or even helping her to hunt down and destroy the Witch-King. By now, the Witch-King would have so thoroughly riddled his mind with his influence that Kane would literally be unable to comprehend what Elaine was trying to tell him. He’d automatically dismiss everything she said, as if she was merely trying to distract him...and distract him…and distract him...

She felt his influence reaching out for her and shielded her mind, using a technique that she’d learned from the knowledge crammed into her head. Kane knew it too, of course, but it would take him time to break her down enough to seed part of himself into her mind. And
that
would open her up to the Witch-King himself. The thought was terrifying, but she pushed it aside ruthlessly. Her entire body was quivering with wild magic as she sucked more and more of it into her cells, risking her entire life. Kane had already started the transformation towards a higher form of life, one composed completely of magic, but she was catching up with him...

...And they would both die when the magic ran out.

Elaine opened her eyes. She was surrounded by people, the ghosts of all of those who had died in the Blight. They were looking at her as if they expected her to save them; perhaps, once the wild magic was gone, they would be free to move on to the next world. Or maybe they’d just flicker out of existence and die. Elaine reached out for them, trying to use her magic to ask them to help her stabilise the power. Some of them, perhaps all of them, helped her to ground herself. She could hear their voices whispering in her mind, but she couldn’t make out the words. They were trying to tell her something important...

Kane was standing at the edge of the blackened ground. There was nothing remotely human about his form any longer. His entire body was glowing with light, magic flaring through the air only to fall back into a body that seemed to be constantly shifting into something else. Elaine could
hear
his thoughts pressing against reality, threatening her very life even as they recoiled from the wild magic that had consumed her. High magic, ordered magic, just didn’t go well with wild magic. Any graduate of the Peerless School knew that trying to combine the two was very dangerous. But was Kane too far gone to care?

Elaine felt her body starting to come apart and knew that she could wait no longer. They were blood relations, even though she would have preferred to think otherwise. She reached out towards her father and their minds touched, just once. Kane’s far stronger mind grasped the magic boiling through Elaine’s body and soul and tried to take it for himself. Most magicians would have fought if they’d felt their magic being stolen, but it would have been the wrong response. Elaine took a breath and thrust all of her magic right at him, gambling that it would be enough to overwhelm him. He hadn’t set up spells to tame and store wild magic...

Kane screamed as the two types of magic clashed together. Elaine heard – or felt – someone else scream in rage as Kane’s mind shattered under the impact, the magic he’d stored demanding release. It poured through the network of influence that the Witch-King had constructed, bursting out into the minds of those who had listened to his whispers and tried to claim his power. Elaine had a sense – a very brief sense – that it might have killed the Witch-King himself, but he was a lich. A lich could be very hard to kill.