Bookworm III

ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL

The Mind’s Eye

Bookworm series

Bookworm

Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling

Dizzy Spells series

A Life Less Ordinary

Royal Sorceress series

The Royal Sorceress

The Great Game

Necropolis

I
NVERSE
S
HADOWS UNIVERSE

S
UFFICIENTLY
A
DVANCED
T
ECHNOLOGY

The Best Laid Plans…

Elaine and Johan are preparing to leave Golden City, with Daria and the travellers, in order to search for the Witch-King. The Grand Sorceress instructs Inquisitor Cass to help them. But before Elaine can leave she is arrested by two Inquisitors on the orders of the Emperor. When she resists she is hit with a powerful spell that forces her to concentrate all her efforts on protecting her mind from its intrusion. Taken to the palace she finds that the Grand Sorceress has been removed and the Throne has accepted an heir to the Empire. Realising this has to be the work of the Witch-King, Elaine must defeat the spell that is eating away at her defences if she is to escape and destroy him. Meanwhile, Johan, Daria and Cass are trying to find a way to get to Elaine and break her out of the cell in which she is being held.

The Golden City is still widely devastated from the disastrous battle for power that followed the death of the previous Grand Sorcerer. The recent escalating breakdown of social order can only be made worse by the return of an Emperor and the imposition of martial law. The Privy Councillors and Heads of the Great Houses succumb to the power of the new Emperor, as he amasses a huge army. It is up to Elaine and her friends, with some unexpected help, to prevent an all-out war.

The third instalment in the
Bookworm
series,
The Best Laid Plans
follows on immediately from the events in
The Very Ugly Duckling
, with Elaine and Johan joined by other favourite characters as they try to track down the Witch-King.

Bookworm III

The Best Laid Plans

Christopher Nuttall

Elsewhen Press

Bookworm III: The Best Laid Plans

First published in Great Britain by Elsewhen Press, 2015

An imprint of Alnpete Limited

Copyright © Christopher Nuttall, 2015. 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 978-1-908168-66-5 Print edition

ISBN 978-1-908168-76-4 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

Prologue

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

To Eric Jalil Nuttall, my son

Prologue

The Golden City was on edge.

Inquisitor Cass could feel it as she strode through the streets, her long black robes spinning out around her, marking her as an Inquisitor to all who cared to stare. The handful of people on the streets were careful not to stare, even though she was morbidly certain they would have ogled her if she’d been wearing something – anything – else. She’d left the Peerless School a full year ahead of her contemporaries and looked ridiculously young for her position. But then, being underestimated was always an advantage.

She smiled to the guards as she reached the walls surrounding the Golden Palace, then stepped through the wards, feeling the waves of magic protecting the Grand Sorceress shimmering against her personal protections before they parted, allowing her to enter the complex. The guards nodded respectfully to her – they had no magic and were really only there for show – and stood back, trusting in the Grand Sorceress’s wards to keep out the really dangerous threats. Cass kept walking forward, allowing the magic surrounding the Golden Palace to guide her steps. Slowly, inch by inch, it led her through a long corridor and into the antechamber, outside the Throne Room. There were more guards standing there, watching the long line of petitioners who had somehow managed to slip into the building in hopes of seeking an audience with the Grand Sorceress. Judging from the looks some of them aimed at Cass when they thought she wasn’t looking, their persistence wasn’t getting them anywhere.

The stone door swung open, allowing her into the Throne Room. As always, the sheer magnificence of the room took her breath away. The walls were covered in gold, while the floors were solid marble, engraved with golden images of the great heroes of the Necromantic Wars. In the exact centre of the room, surrounded by silver runes of power, was the Golden Throne itself. Cass felt the tug of the magic shimmering around the Throne and had to force herself to pull away. When there had been an Emperor in the Golden City, she was sure, his presence had been enough to dominate the chamber. Now ...

The Grand Sorceress, Lady Light Spinner, sat at a small table, positioned neatly in the shadow of the Golden Throne. Her face was hidden behind a veil, as always, but her posture was tense, while her hand signed documents in a swift, almost frantic manner, suggesting she too was on edge. It was hard to blame her, Cass knew. During her elevation, a Dark Wizard had done significant damage to the Golden City, while only scant days ago several Great Houses had collapsed into chaos. The Empire was weaker than it had been for centuries.

“Wait,” Light Spinner ordered.

Cass went down on one knee, then forced herself to remain calm, despite her puzzlement at having been summoned to the palace. Junior Inquisitors were rarely called before the Grand Sorceress unless they had done something truly spectacular ... or fallen flat on their faces, embarrassing both themselves and their trainers. But Cass knew that she had done neither, not recently. She’d done her duty ...

The Grand Sorceress looked up at her, suddenly. “You may rise,” she said. “And speak freely.”

“Thank you,” Cass said.

She wondered, absently, what the Grand Sorceress made of her. At twenty-five, she was the youngest Inquisitor on active duty – and certainly the prettiest, with long blonde hair that framed a heart-shaped face. The Grand Sorceress wouldn’t have hidden her face, Cass was sure, if there hadn’t been a good reason to hide. But why? Even the Inquisition didn’t know why the Grand Sorceress chose to wear the veil.

“You swore your oaths to the Grand Sorcerer,” Light Spinner said. “Did you not?”

“Yes,” Cass said. “I did.”

She frowned at the question. Light Spinner, the Grand Sorceress,
knew
she’d sworn the Inquisitor Oaths. Cass couldn’t have entered the Watchtower without having sworn the oaths and bound herself to their service. And, as Grand Sorceress, Light Spinner was entitled to her obedience. Cass could no more have disobeyed a direct order from the Grand Sorceress than she could have chosen to ignore a magic-abusing fool in the streets.

“I have a specific task for you,” the Grand Sorceress said. “It will require you to be released from your oaths, should you accept.”

Cass blinked, genuinely shocked. The Inquisitors were all powerful magicians – and very well trained. Their oaths kept them from being anything more than the Grand Sorcerer’s enforcers, rather than joining other magicians in the endless battle for supremacy. For the Grand Sorceress to
release
her from her oaths ... it made no sense. Cass could have carried out almost any order the Grand Sorceress chose to give
without
being freed from her sworn words.

“My Lady,” she said, carefully. “I ...”

The Grand Sorceress held up one gloved hand. “There are issues you need to understand,” she said. “Johan Conidian is alive.”

Cass felt an odd flicker of fear. There were ways to strip a magician of his or her magic, if necessary, but they required careful rituals and complex spellwork. Johan Conidian, on the other hand, had developed a form of magic that allowed him to take a person’s magic
without
the rituals, something that had terrified every magician who had heard about it. They lived in a world where magic was power, she knew. How could they be faulted for being terrified when they sensed that they could lose their power?

And that everyone they were mean to would be mean to them, once they were powerless
, Cass thought, silently.

“I am sending him and Elaine, the Head Librarian, out of the city,” Light Spinner continued. “They will not be able to attend the Conference” – she gave an odd little chuckle – “but instead they will be carrying out a mission for me. You will accompany them and provide what assistance you can.”

“But not as an Inquisitor,” Cass said, slowly.

“No,” Light Spinner agreed. “You will go as an independent magician.”

Cass considered it, reluctantly. The Inquisitors were among the most capable magicians in the world – and she’d worked hard to join their ranks. It had been far from easy, not when the Senior Inquisitors had taken great pride in pushing the younger volunteers to breaking point, hoping to force out anyone who could break before it was too late. And it was always harder for a woman ... she’d survived, somehow, and gained her robe and staff. The thought of simply abandoning her achievement was horrific.

But she could see the Grand Sorceress’s point. The oaths she’d sworn would push her in a certain direction, once she was face-to-face with Johan Conidian. His magic was new and utterly unprecedented, as far as anyone could tell. She had a duty to take him to the Watchtower or simply kill him, before he fell into unfriendly hands. If the last few months had taught her anything, it was that the peace and stability of the last fifty years was proving to be an illusion.

And she knew her duty.