Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (10 page)

Johan hesitated. Betraying his brother so casually caused him a pang, but his brother had been thoroughly horrible to him for all of his life ... and he had caused at least nineteen deaths. He couldn’t remember the rest of the figures that Elaine had quoted at him, yet it had been far worse than any of his other pranks and carried out on helpless victims. He took a breath and started to explain what had happened.

It took longer than he had assumed, for the Inquisitor was a skilful interrogator. Whenever something wasn’t entirely clear, he went over it again and again until he had drawn every last detail out of Johan’s mouth. The experience left him with a pounding headache by the time the Inquisitor stood up, revealing Elaine standing by the door with a worried expression on her face. Johan could have kicked himself. He’d been so focused on the Inquisitor’s inquisition that he hadn’t even noticed that she was there.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the Inquisitor said, tightly. His stony expression didn’t change as he headed towards the door. “You will be informed if more testimony is required.”

Elaine shut the door behind the Inquisitor, then walked over to the bed. “I’m sorry about that,” she said, as she sat down facing him. “But your testimony was required urgently.”

Johan scowled. “Why?”

“None of the other witnesses saw anything,” Elaine said. She paused, then continued. “Nothing useful, at any rate. The attackers disguised their faces; you were the only one to see them properly and only then because Jamal identified himself to you. Glamours don’t usually stand up to such exposure. Without you, proving that Jamal was there would have been tricky.”

“Good thing I was there,” Johan said, although he wasn’t so sure if telling them everything had been a good idea. Part of him was still scared of his brother, the brother who had once openly threatened to kill him on the grounds his mere existence brought shame to the family. But, for once in his life, Jamal wasn’t going to get away with something. It was worth the headache to see him face justice. “What are we going to do today?”

“Experiment with your magic,” Elaine said, standing up. “We’re not going to do it here, though.”

She walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a set of clothes. Johan blinked in surprise as he realised that they were apprentice robes, normally only issued to magicians who apprenticed themselves to an older magician for individual tutoring. Unlike the drab robes worn by students, they were bright blue with a dark sash running around the waist. He took them when she handed them to him and examined them carefully. There was even a holster for his wand! But he had none ...

“These robes,” he said, remembering his father’s cautionary tales. “If I wear them, do I commit myself to anything?”

Elaine smiled. It transformed her face, Johan realised, turning her from a slightly mousy girl to someone who was genuinely beautiful. Still not as pretty as Charity, even without the glamours, but genuinely stunning in her own right.

“You’re wise to be careful,” Elaine said, “but there are no binding contracts woven into the robes. We thought that it might give you a legal status, if necessary.”

Johan nodded in understanding. Magically-binding agreements and contracts could be sealed by accident, particularly when weak or unskilled magicians were involved. A strong magician wouldn’t be in any danger, but if Elaine had had bad intentions she could have constructed a spell that made him her apprentice in truth, if he donned the robes without asking first. It didn’t seem logical, yet his father was fond of telling his children that the older forms of magic were rarely logical.

He sat upright, then flushed as he realised that Elaine was still in the room. She flushed too, then turned her back, allowing him enough privacy to remove the hospital nightshirt and pull the robes over his head. It felt surprisingly rough against his skin, something that puzzled him until he realised that he wasn’t accepting a
real
apprenticeship. Ancient customs, woven into the magic surrounding the city, disapproved of him wearing the robes. But at least they weren’t the black robes worn by full sorcerers ...

“You can turn around now,” he said, once he’d finished dressing. “How do I look?”

Elaine eyed him critically. “It’s obvious that you’re unused to wearing such robes,” she said, dryly. “But that isn’t uncommon in the Golden City.”

She took a look around the room, then headed towards the door. “I’ve taken the liberty of assigning you quarters in the Great Library,” she added. “For the moment, you’ll be sleeping and studying there. We’ll discuss other rules later tonight.”

Johan stared at her. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to go to the Great Library ...”

His voice trailed off. Mundanes – and Powerless – were not allowed to enter the Great Library. He’d found that out when he’d tried to visit during one of his infrequent excursions outside the house. There were wards around the building to prevent anyone without magic from walking in ... and anyone who tried to help one enter the building would be in deep trouble. Or so Charity had said, when he’d begged her to take him with her one day.

But he had magic now ...

He kept his thoughts to himself as they walked through the hospital and out onto the streets, turning southwards to head towards the Great Library. Johan was not as familiar with the mood of the streets as he would have liked, but it seemed clear to him that there were fewer people around than there should have been. Even after the disaster six months ago, the city’s position at the heart of the Empire had ensured that it would recover quickly, yet now ... there were only a handful of people on the streets.

“Your idiot brother scared a lot of people,” Elaine said, when he commented on it. “And the fact that we haven’t brought him to justice yet has only made matters worse.”

Johan scowled as they turned and approached the Great Library. The wards had prevented him from entering last time, but now ... he found that he could walk up to the doors without impediment. He was aware of Elaine watching him closely as he stepped through the doors and into the lobby, her eyes missing nothing. It was another test, he realised, but a test of what? Did she doubt that he had magic? Or was she looking for something else?

The interior of the Great Library was just as Charity had described it. Winding corridors, often lined with books; large and small reading rooms ... and mirrors everywhere. He noticed several students giving him sharp glances, as if they weren’t quite sure who he was or what he was doing with the Head Librarian. The robes, he realised, had convinced them that he was an apprentice ... and that was rare in the Golden City, rare enough to suggest that there was something significant about him. Most magical students went to the Peerless School, after all.

“Once upon a time, professors would come and stay here for a few weeks while they researched,” Elaine commented, as they reached a long corridor lined with doors. “As they were often powerful sorcerers too, the librarians ensured that they had individual rooms that were crafted to suit their requirements. The custom declined in later years, but the rooms are still available. One suite will be yours as long as you wish it.”

She led him into a large workspace and grinned at him. “We will be carrying out our experiments here.”

Johan looked around. The room was almost completely empty, apart from a workbench in the far corner. Odd runes had been carved into the stone walls ... designed, he suspected, to channel rogue magic out of the room. There were a set of circles carved into the floor, lined with other runes ... he wished, suddenly, that he’d actually taken Charity up on her offer of loaning him a rune dictionary. He might have understood just what the runes meant.

Elaine gave him an odd look. “What do you sense about the room?”

“It’s big,” Johan said. He knew that wasn’t the right answer, but nothing else came to mind. “I don’t know. What should I be sensing?”

“Later,” Elaine said, shortly. She led him around the room – being careful not to cross into the circles on the floor – and up to the workbench. “What can you tell me about these items?”

Johan frowned. There were five books; two of them clearly ancient, three of them produced by a new-fangled printing press. Beside them, there was a cup, a dagger and a sharp sword ... and a tiny statuette of a man in sorcerer’s robes. He reached out and picked up one of the older books, opening its covers to discover that it was written in the Old Tongue. His tutors had taught him how to read it, but the handwriting style was so old that he could barely make out one word in four.

“Nothing,” he said, reluctantly. “The two older books are clearly magic; the newer books are just ... common.” He blinked in surprise as he realised that one of the newer books was actually one of the romance novels Charity and his younger sisters devoured whenever their father wasn’t around to express his disapproval. “And everything else is just what it seems.”

Elaine picked up the statuette, held it lightly in her hand for a long moment, then passed it to Johan. “What can you tell me about that?”

Johan frowned, staring down at the statuette. It was perfect, every detail crafted out by a master craftsman, right down to the warts on the sorcerer’s nose. The material was probably silver, he decided after a long moment, although he’d never seen anything so detailed before in silver. His father would have loved it. It would be expensive ... but, apart from that, there was nothing special about it at all.

“It’s silver,” he said, convinced that he was failing a test. But he didn’t even know what he was supposed to be looking for. “What else is there?”

“Interesting,” Elaine said, out loud. “You don’t sense
anything
from the statuette?”

Johan closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of the silver against his fingertips. It felt ... cold and hard and metallic, nothing else. Frustrated, he put the silver statuette down on the table and looked up at her. Her face was twisted into a puzzled expression that worried him. What could puzzle an experienced magician?

“Nothing,” he said, shortly. “What
is
it?”

“There was a sorcerer who wished to contemplate the meaning of life, the universe and everything .... or something to that effect,” Elaine said, a hint of disapproval echoing through her voice. “In order to divorce himself completely from the concerns of the outside world, he had himself turned into a silver statuette and placed in the Great Library. That was two hundred years ago, more or less. He’s still contemplating.”

Johan blanched. He’d been transformed into all kinds of inanimate objects by his siblings and it had always been a terrifying experience, even if they used spells that ensured that no permanent harm could come to the victim. The thought of spending decades – no, centuries – as an object was horrifying. Who in their right mind would consider it practical research?

“It isn’t practical research,” Elaine explained, when he asked. “He’s delving into the ultimate connections that bind the universe together.”

“Oh,” Johan said. He looked back at the statuette, remembering some of the horror stories his father used as cautionary tales. “How do you know he hasn’t gone mad – or lost cohesion altogether? And what’s to stop someone melting him down for the silver?”

“The spells should prevent it,” Elaine said. She knelt down and retrieved a notebook from under the workbench. “And a magician should be able to sense that there was something ...
alive
about the statuette.”

Johan froze. He hadn’t sensed
anything
.

It had always been one of his nightmares, back when Jamal had transformed him into something, that the maids would throw him out of the house without ever realising what they were doing. The wards should have prevented it, but he’d never been
sure
. Now, he realised just how easy it would have been for that to happen. Part of him just wanted to throw up; he forced himself to swallow hard, unwilling to show weakness in front of anyone. But he knew that he wouldn’t sleep well when bedtime rolled around.

“I meant to ask you,” Elaine said, her voice distracting him from his fears. “What sort of procedures did the druid try on you?”

The memories made Johan wince. “All sorts of spells,” he said. “He gave me various potions to drink, then put a wand in my hand and told me to use it. Nothing happened.”

He scowled at the thought. “Then he hypnotised me and told me to use magic,” he added. “It was like being under a compulsion charm, but ... different, almost pleasurable. I tried to use magic, I was
sure
I could use magic, yet nothing happened. Why didn’t it work?”

“Some magicians have problems with their confidence,” Elaine explained. Johan leaned forward, interested. The druid had never offered any explanation, even when Johan had threatened to refuse to cooperate any further. “They have low self-esteem or their families keep putting them down ... hypnosis relieves them of their feelings, allowing them to believe that they can succeed.”

She shook her head. “But the process wouldn’t do anything if the magic wasn’t there,” she mused. “Did he try anything involving blood?”

Johan shook his head.

“Good,” Elaine said, without elaboration.

Johan suspected that he understood. His father’s books on magic were supposed to be completely off-limits to him, but Jamal had borrowed a couple and Johan had taken advantage of the opportunity to peek into some of them. They
had
talked about potential magic-enhancing rituals, all of which were dangerous and some of which were thoroughly illegal. The druid had never gone that far ...

... But would he have, if his father had insisted?

“Time to try a different test,” Elaine said., drawing him out of his thoughts. She stepped over the circle and sat down in the centre, then beckoned for him to follow her. Johan expected a tingle as he crossed the line, but felt nothing. “I want you to cast this spell.”

Johan took the notebook and scanned the page quickly. It was nothing more than a set of words and gestures; thankfully, as far as he could tell, he didn’t need a wand. But there was nothing to say what the spell actually
did
.