Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (6 page)

He looked up as he saw a handful of other magicians wearing graduate robes. “What are you going to do ...?”

“Hush,” Jamal said. He waved a hand and Johan found himself frozen, utterly unable to move or look away from the speaker and his audience. “I just want you to watch and learn.”

“That’s your brother,” one of the other magicians said. “Why isn’t he joining us?”

“He’s too soft,” Jamal said, quickly. “Father wants him to watch to toughen him up.”

Johan would have laughed if he could have moved a muscle. Jamal wouldn’t want to advertise his powerless brother, even – perhaps particularly – to his closest friends. It was a good excuse, he had to admit ... and it made it unlikely that any of the others would help him, if they were so inclined. Besides, they’d probably mistaken him for Jay. If they’d realised that Johan existed, they might have started to wonder why he hadn’t attended the Peerless School.

“Stay here,” Jamal said, with an oddly-nervous laugh. “And watch carefully as we teach these upstarts a lesson.”

The other magicians laughed, then started to march towards the crowd, lifting their wands into ready position. Some of the protesters saw them coming and started to scatter, but others were trapped by the sheer press of the crowd, unable to escape. A hail of rocks and stones flew towards the magicians, only to be stopped easily by shield charms. Johan watched, literally unable to tear his eyes away, as Jamal cast the first spell.

He felt his body try to shiver. The nightmare spell was a child’s prank ... which didn’t stop it being thoroughly unpleasant if the victim had no magic to defend himself. A dozen protesters started to scream in horror as they saw their worst nightmares coming to life, their screams echoing over the square. Other spells were being cast; Johan watched, helplessly, as a handful of protesters became frogs, or were frozen in place, or were compelled into attacking their fellows. He felt absolute mind-numbing horror as he saw a man attacking the girl next to him with his fists, tears running down his cheeks as his hands moved of their own accord. Another girl was compelled to tear off her shirt and display her charms for all to see; a third was forced to wet herself, then kneel down in her own filth.

The crowd came apart into screaming panic. A man ran, fists raised, at Jamal who eyed him quizzically. He slammed right into the shield charm and fell to the ground, blood pouring from his nose. Jamal laughed out loud – his laughter somehow echoed over the screams – and kicked the man in the face. The man sank into merciful unconsciousness. Johan watched in absolute horror as Jamal targeted the speaker directly. Someone must have trapped him on his soapbox, Johan realised. The speaker should have tried to run.

Jamal played with him. One spell gave him boils, another moved him like a puppet, a third left him howling gibberish at the gates. Johan watched as his brother allowed one of his friends to take over, casting his own spells towards the speaker. It was unlikely that he would survive, Johan realised. The spells might be intended as pranks, but the speaker was completely defenceless.

Pure rage boiled through Johan as he watched the crowd fleeing, save only for the frozen, the compelled and the transfigured. They’d been broken, knocked down so far that they might not be able to recover ... Johan had been transfigured so many times that he was used to it, but mundanes who rarely dealt with even a single magician would find it a new and terrifying experience. Jamal walked onwards, laughing at the City Guardsmen as they shrank back into the gates. It would be a brave or stupid City Guardsman who tried to stand up to a magician on the rampage. That was a job for the Inquisitors. Where
were
they?

He cursed, mentally. Could it be that Jamal’s actions had actually been
approved
by the Grand Sorceress? She couldn’t find the Levellers – or so the paper had named them – very amusing. Indeed, they were a challenge to her prestige, even if they were no threat to her position. Someone like Jamal would make a perfect – and deniable – tool to use against them.

Johan struggled, throwing himself against the spell ... but nothing happened. Rage met frustration ... and something broke free inside his mind. For a long chilling moment, the entire world dimmed, as if he were about to take a sneeze ... and then
something
blasted through his mind. He was vaguely aware of someone – Jamal? – yelling in shock, then the spell holding him snapped. He tumbled ...

And then he fell down into absolute blackness.

Chapter Five

Elaine felt Light Spinner’s magic billowing through the air as she ran to a window and leapt out, floating on the air and heading towards the riot. For a moment, Elaine wanted to follow her, but sanity reasserted itself before she could jump out of the window herself. She simply didn’t have the power to fly – or levitate – herself for longer than a few seconds, no matter how tightly she finessed the spells. Instead, she ran to the door – passing a handful of servants, who looked thoroughly terrified – and out into the gardens.

She was greeted by absolute chaos. On the other side of the railing, people were running in all directions, while the City Guardsmen were hanging back, desperately trying to pretend that they weren’t there. Shouts and screams echoed over the palace as Light Spinner swooped down, her raw power scattering the remaining protesters. There was so much magic crawling through the air that Elaine found herself wondering if the whole affair was a trap for the Grand Sorceress, before deciding that any such trap would be unnecessary. Someone with the power to create the magic pulse wouldn’t need such tricks. They could just walk into the palace and challenge her directly.

Elaine reached the gates and stared in horror at the scene before her. Countless people were scattered on the ground, some bleeding badly after being trampled by their fellows. Others were held in place by magic, or transfigured into animals or inanimate objects; a dozen had warts and boils burned into their faces through various prank curses and hexes. The Levellers had been thoroughly hammered by person or persons unknown, she thought, feeling sick.
This
was the sort of abuse of magic the Grand Sorceress was supposed to prevent ... and it had happened right in front of her residence.

Light Spinner dropped to the ground, robes billowing around her, as a pair of Inquisitors arrived. Elaine heard her snapping at them – where had they been when all seven hells were breaking loose? – but tuned her out, searching instead for the source of the magical pulse. It was easy to tell that the magical field had been badly disturbed, as if someone had rung a colossal bell and the echoes were still audible. She might not have been the most sensitive magician in the world, but it was easy to trace the pulse back to its source.

A young man lay on the ground, completely stunned. Elaine knelt down beside him and took his pulse, then drew her wand and started casting diagnostic charms. The results shimmered up in front of her; a moment later, she felt her eyes narrow in puzzlement. None of the charms seemed able to decide if she were dealing with a magician or a mundane. There was magic in him, definitely, yet it was concentrated in his brain. But a normal magician would have magic flowing through his body.

She looked up as more Inquisitors and a string of druids finally arrived, followed by a small army of City Guardsmen, who had been emboldened by the appearance of their ultimate superior and her Inquisitors. Elaine couldn’t blame them for keeping back; City Guardsmen weren’t meant to take on magicians, no matter the situation. It was rare to have any Guardsman with magic of his own; the ones who did tended to be transferred to the Inquisition.

“Find out what happened,” Light Spinner ordered, her voice somehow effortlessly ringing out above the throng. “And get these people some medical attention!”

Elaine scowled inwardly as Light Spinner, followed by a worried-looking Dread, came over to where she was waiting. It was impossible to read her expression behind the veil, but Elaine knew her well enough to know that she was deeply annoyed; someone, for whatever reason, had seen fit to challenge her authority right in front of her palace. And she’d also heard the Leveller attack on her person ...

Light Spinner stopped, peering down at the young man. “Is that ... is that the source of the pulse?”

“I think so,” Elaine admitted. “Who is he?”

She studied the young man for a long moment, feeling an odd sense that she’d seen someone like him before. He was handsome enough, with short brown hair and flawless face, but there were odd lines carved into his skin that suggested age or bitter experience. His clothing, however, suggested the aristocracy; bland his outfit might have been, but the tailoring was superb. Elaine could never have afforded such clothes, at least until she had been promoted. And she would have considered it a waste of money in any case.

“He reminds me of Duncan or Jamal Conidian,” Dread said, slowly. “What happened to him?”

“I’m not sure,” Elaine confessed. Dread was right; there was something about the stunned youth that reminded her of Charity Conidian. She cast the charms again, allowing him to see the results as they appeared in front of them. “But he was the source of the magic pulse.”

Light Spinner shook her head. “Take him to the hospital,” she ordered, as she stepped backwards. “You can run tests on him there.”

Elaine nodded. There was something ...
odd
about the way the magic field was responding to the boy. No, she corrected herself, the young man. She cast a second charm over him and discovered that he was a mere sixteen years old, even though he
looked
older. A moment later, Dread bent down and searched the man with practiced ease, turning up nothing apart from a medallion hanging around his neck. There were a handful of tracking charms placed on it, all seemingly inactive.

“No wand,” Dread said. “And he isn’t wearing school robes.”

Elaine heard the puzzlement in his voice and frowned. Most magicians owned and used a wand, but there were quite a few who didn’t. Their magic worked better without one; Light Spinner, like most of the other Senior Magicians, wouldn’t use a wand at all unless she required absolute precision. A reputation for wand dependency would suggest to her enemies that removing her wand would render her helpless.

But it was rare for a school-age youth
not
to own a wand. He would carry it everywhere, even if he didn’t use it regularly. Unless, of course, he had no magic.

She raised her own wand and cast a levitation charm. “I’ll take him to the hospital,” she said, as she floated the stunned man into the air. Thankfully, it was easier to levitate someone else than herself. “Can you find out who he is and why he was here?”

“I can try,” Dread said, with droll amusement.

Elaine felt herself flushing. The only person who had any right to issue orders to the Inquisitors was Light Spinner, who also seemed rather amused at Elaine’s presumption. Irked at herself, Elaine manipulated her wand, sending the floating body drifting ahead of her as she walked away from the crowd. The hospital wasn’t far from the palace, thankfully. Levitation charms didn’t require much power, but maintaining them for long was incredibly draining.

The hospital seemed to be in chaos as she entered, she discovered. Druids and healers were running everywhere, while a handful of City Guardsmen were bringing in wounded from the riot outside the palace. Elaine hesitated then, as she wasn't wearing her purple robes, lifted her Privy Council ring and showed it to one of the druids, who blanched. Everyone knew that the Privy Councillors had almost unlimited authority, even though Elaine rarely used it. She just didn’t have the mindset for going into a building and barking orders.

But she had to right now.

“I want a private room,” she said, sharply. “And a druid to attend me as soon as possible.”

She thought better of that a moment later. “No, I want the druid once everyone else is dealt with,” she added. There was no reason to believe that her charge was in immediate danger; if she took a druid away from emergency medical care, it was likely that someone innocent would die. “Until then, find me a room.”

The druid showed her to a small room, bringing back unhappy memories of the day she’d been turned into a Bookworm. Elaine levitated her charge inside and gently put him down on the bed, then collapsed into a chair in sudden exhaustion. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that she knew so much, yet she didn’t have the power to make half of the spells she knew work. But she knew, better than anyone, that life wasn’t fair. Sweat prickled her back as she sagged, then forced herself to stand upright and take some water from the sink. She needed a drink desperately.

Outside, she could hear the chaos growing louder as more and more patients were brought into the hospital. Elaine hoped that most of them could be healed quickly, but the druids were likely to be overworked and understaffed, particularly after a number of the most powerful druids had been killed by Kane. Taking another sip of water, she stepped over to the young man and started to cast another series of charms. The results seemed thoroughly unique.

There was magic, but it was definitely concentrated in his brain. No matter how she fine-tuned the scans, it was definitely isolated ... she even ran a scan of herself, just to make sure that the charms were working properly. It wasn’t the only oddity. Unconscious magic helped children to heal quickly, even without immediate medical care, but there were definite signs that her charge
hadn’t
healed quickly. She scowled, feeling knowledge from a thousand medical textbooks spinning through her head; there were signs that magic
had
been used to treat him, but it was external magic. A mundane who had been treated by the druids would have shown the same results.

And his body showed the faint disturbance caused by one too many transfigurations. The spells used weren’t
dangerous
, not in the sense that they could accidentally
kill
, but so many transfigurations had to have inflicted
some
damage. Elaine shivered, remembering the day Millicent had turned her into a frog for a week, back at the Peerless School. If her readings were accurate, this young man had gone through much worse ...