Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (34 page)

He looked over at Elaine, who was sitting on the shore reading a book. After one disastrous trip out on the water, she’d decided not to go out again. Johan hadn’t given any thought to the dangers of drowning – he swam fairly well - but he hadn’t realised that Elaine couldn’t swim until it was almost too late. As it was, he was far too aware that if she’d been wearing her normal robes, she would have drowned before he could reach her.

Smiling to himself, he turned and rowed back towards where she was waiting. He
had
tried to use his magic to push the boat, but the results had been mixed. One experiment had tipped the boat over and flung him into the water, the other had pushed the boat into the rocky cliff face so hard that he was sure that he’d damaged the hull. It had taken him several hours of careful inspection to be sure that the boat hadn’t sprung a leak.

“Hey,” he called, as the boat neared shore. “A little help here?”

Elaine looked up, then raised her wand. An invisible force caught the boat and pulled it up onto the shore, allowing Johan to scramble out and pull it right out of the water. It was surprising just how heavy the boat was on dry land, even though it was light on the water, but Elaine had flatly refused to help him secure it the first time. If he couldn’t do it for himself, she’d said, there was no point in doing it at all. Johan had felt like sulking, before reminding himself that he wasn’t Jamal. He needed to know how to do things for himself.

“Thank you,” he said, when he was done. Tipping the boat over, at least, was easier on dry land. “Do you think it’s going to rain again?”

“Probably,” Elaine said, looking up at the sky. It was the middle of the day, but it was already growing darker as clouds formed high overhead. “Make sure the boat is secure, then we will walk back to the cabin.”

Johan smiled. In the last few days, he’d explored the area; sometimes with Elaine, sometimes on his own. Climbing the mountains had been trickier than he’d expected, but the views had been worth it ... and it was something Jamal had never done. The sense of being completely isolated had only grown stronger, even though he’d spotted a number of other cabins in the distance. If there were other people around they gave the Inquisitor’s cabin a wide berth.

“Coming,” he said, once he’d checked the boat again. “What are we having for dinner?”

Food seemed to taste better in the mountains. Elaine was an indifferent cook at best – Johan hadn’t even been allowed to help the cooks at home – but it didn’t seem to matter. It always tasted good after a long day of practicing magic, then walking or rowing to burn off energy.

“Bread, meat and cheese,” Elaine said. She looked tired, even though she hadn’t done anything more strenuous than sitting on a chair she’d dragged down from the cabin. “I think we both need to rest.”

Johan scowled. Elaine could become exhausted by working magic, but
he
seemed to be largely immune to such problems. Walking, rowing and swimming made him tired; magic didn’t seem to cost him anything at all. It was worrying, Elaine had told him; his magic was either
thoroughly
weird, because the energy had to be coming from somewhere, or he just had vast power reserves, well in excess of any other recorded magician.

Thunder rolled in the sky as they walked up the path, followed by the first splashes of rain. Elaine waved her wand in the air, trying to shield them, but her protective charm wasn’t perfect. As the wind changed, it blew raindrops into their faces and sent streams of water gushing down their clothes. By the time they reached the cabin, they were both dripping wet and thoroughly miserable.

Elaine’s shirt was so wet that it was clinging to her skin, revealing the shape of her breasts and nipples. Johan stared, then looked away, embarrassed. Elaine, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice as she cast a warming charm, drying both Johan and herself. Johan kept his gaze fixed on the stove until they were both dry, then started to load it up with firewood and pinecones. It had been surprisingly fun to collect them, knowing that they were to be burnt.

“I’ll light it,” Elaine said, sharply. She pointed her wand at the stove; a moment later, the pinecones caught fire, burning brightly in the darkened stove. “I think we’ll be staying in tonight.”

Johan couldn’t disagree, he decided as he looked out of the window. Visibility was down to a few metres at best, thanks to the rain – and he knew from experience that mist often followed a major rainstorm. Even if it was still technically daylight when the rain stopped, they might still get lost. Or run right into the bog.

“Agreed,” he said, watching as the rain dripped down the window. “How safe is this cabin?”

“It’s stood for hundreds of years, according to the Inquisitors,” Elaine said. “I dare say that it will survive anything other than your magic.”

Johan sighed. He hadn’t meant to scare her when he’d picked her up, but it had clearly bothered her more than she wanted to admit. Charity had shown the same reaction to Jamal more than once ... and then she’d been weirdly subdued at the disastrous family meeting, after she’d been accidentally turned into a rat. He would have almost preferred a thrashing – his father’s standard response to any misbehaviour from his younger children – than have her be worried about him. Or scared of him.

He watched as she laid bread, cheese and meat out on the table, then sat down to eat beside her. For a long moment, he ate in silence, then Elaine started to talk, telling him stories of long-gone witches and wizards and how they’d changed the world. One story focused on the very first Grand Sorcerer, the one who had won the First Necromantic War, but there was an odd edge to her voice as she spoke. And Johan couldn’t help feeling that the story was incomplete.

But it was something he’d never done with his family; he found himself enjoying it as she outlined several different stories. The King who had enchanted his Crown; the Prince who had walked away from the Throne; the Princess who lost her way ... they were all part of the Empire’s heritage, a heritage that his father had tried to deny him. What good did it do to hide those stories? Even the mundanes knew them!

“Thank you,” he said, when she had finished. “I wish ... I wish I’d heard more.”

“There will be more,” Elaine assured him. “Which one did you like best?”

“The Enchanted Crown,” Johan said, after a moment. “Is it actually
real
?”

“It would be possible to make a crown that judges its wearer, I suppose,” Elaine said, thoughtfully. “But what king would choose to favour a stranger over his own children?”

Johan nodded, sourly. Blood was the determining factor in families, after all; his blood still made him part of House Conidian, no matter how much he strove to deny it. He could barely imagine his father choosing to strip Jamal of his Prime Heir status; it was impossible to imagine that he would pass the family’s collected wealth and patronage network to a stranger. His children were his only real hope of immortality ...

He stood up and walked over to the sofa. Elaine’s books were sitting there; he picked one of them up and glanced at the title.
Hafiz’s Protective Wards, Rituals, Rites and Spells
. The other book was far thinner, written in a purple liquid he suspected might be blood.
A Guide To The Various Venomous Sprites, Faye, Fallen Gods and Demons of the Netherworlds with particular attention to the Kings of Demons
. There was no author noted below the overlong title.

“Most of that book is nonsense,” Elaine said, coming over to see what he was holding. “You can generally tell the value of a book by its title. The longer and more pretentious it is, the less the practical value of whatever happens to be written inside. This writer took a few rumours, made others up out of whole cloth and wrote them down. But there are still people who take it seriously.”

Johan smiled. “What are
you
doing with it?”

“I’m supposed to write a rebuttal we can slip into the library’s copies,” Elaine said, shrugging. “Something to tell people that trying the rituals in this book are a waste of time at best and a sure-fire murder charge at worst. The only ritual that actually works is one that ensures that only one person can read the book ... and that is actually a fairly common spell.”

“Like Charity’s diary,” Johan said. “When I opened it, it was blank ... even though I knew that she had been writing in it.”

Elaine lifted an eyebrow. “And when did
you
look in it?”

“I was
twelve
,” Johan protested. “And I didn’t get away with it either.”

“Glad to hear it,” Elaine mused. She grinned at him. “Girls do need a little privacy.”

“I’ll remember that if I ever have children,” Johan said. He passed her the book, then picked up the other one. “Why this one?”

“You damaged my last set of wards,” Elaine reminded him. “I wanted to try some of the other protections outlined in this book.”

Johan frowned. “I thought that you had all of the knowledge stuffed into your head?”

“It sometimes helps to see the actual words and diagrams,” Elaine admitted. She opened one page and held it out to him. “Although
this
is really too difficult for someone like me, no matter how much insight I have.”

It took Johan several moments to work out what the instructions were telling the reader to do, then he had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up. The spells would remove a person’s heart from his chest, then store it outside his body while maintaining a link to him that would keep him alive, no matter the distance between the heart and the magician. And, apparently, it would render the magician immortal, as long as the link was maintained. Johan had a vivid mental impression of a magician blown to tiny bits, but somehow remaining alive ...

He pushed the thought aside with a shudder. “Are there people who actually
try
this?”

“Some are reputed to have done it,” Elaine said. “More try it and end up dead.”

Johan gave her the second book, then went to find his own on family magic. It was heavy going; the writer had clearly been writing several centuries ago and a number of words were completely unfamiliar, but he thought he had the gist of it. As long as magic ran through the family, there would be consequences for deliberate betrayal, inter-family murder ... or even outright disobedience. But the writer didn’t seem to know if they applied to Powerless.

“I should undergo an adoption rite,” Johan muttered, sourly. Elaine had proposed apprenticing him, but an adoption rite would be permanent. “Wouldn’t that provide me with a new family?”

“Perhaps,” Elaine said. “But they can be dangerous if they are not entered into willingly.”

She scowled. “And you would throw away
everything
,” she added. “You would not stand to inherit
anything
; your father would not even be able to leave you a small token of his esteem.”

“My father has no esteem for me,” Johan said, bitterly. “He doesn’t even
know
me. What was he thinking when he offered me Marina Clyburn as a bride?”

“There are few young magicians who would turn down such an offer,” Elaine pointed out, mildly. “She is not only pretty, but intelligent, capable and very well connected.”

“And my father has been mistreating me for sixteen years,” Johan added, ignoring her comment. “Why are there no consequences for
him
?”

Elaine smiled. “Right now, his eldest son and Prime Heir is in jail,” she said. “And his second son wants nothing to do with him. How do you know that
those
are not consequences.”

Johan rubbed his temple. “If you turned someone into a frog,” he said, finally, “there would be cause and effect, wouldn’t there? You’d cast the spell; someone would transform. But with this magic ... how do you tell if the magic is working against you or if it’s just a wild coincidence?”

“You don’t,” Elaine said, simply.

“I hate this kind of magic,” Johan said. “You can’t tell” – he paused, looking up at her – “what’s so funny?”

Elaine was chuckling. “Just about every classically-trained magician has the same reaction,” she said. “The ones who don’t are the ones who never go to the Peerless School.”

Johan stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “But why are there no consequences?”

“If your father genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing for you, or the family,” Elaine said slowly, “it is unlikely that there would be any adverse consequences.”

“But he
wasn’t
,” Johan protested. “He made a whole
series
of bad choices, including trying to marry me off. Or should I have accepted?”

“It might well have seemed the best thing to do,” Elaine said. “As I said, Marina is pretty, rich and well-connected. Her marrying you would wipe away any stain on your reputation.”

Johan snorted, rudely. “She wouldn’t have wanted me when I was powerless.”

“No,” Elaine agreed, flatly. “She wouldn’t.”

“But her father and mine could have pushed us into it,” Johan said. He looked down at the book. “It says that it is perfectly acceptable for the parents to arrange marriages for their children.”

“As long as they pick well,” Elaine reminded him. “And there is good reason to believe that you and Marina would not mesh well together.”

Except in bed
, Johan thought. He wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud.

“Tell me,” Johan said. “Apart from being formally disinherited, is there anything else I would risk by having myself adopted?”

“You would be better off apprenticing yourself,” Elaine pointed out. She ticked off points on her finger. “You would not be part of your family; Charity and the rest of your siblings would be strangers to you. You would not be part of your family’s patronage network; indeed, you could expect the family’s network to work against you. Anything you think you own that is actually owned by your family would go back to them.”

She took a breath. “Your family would not provide any support when you actually
did
choose to marry, nor would they support you when someone proposes that you are too dangerous to be allowed to live. You could not return to your family, no matter what happens. And you could not bear the family name.”