Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (40 page)

But Millicent hadn’t been trying to kill her. The table she was crouching behind suddenly became hot, then melted into a puddle of molten liquid. Elaine lifted her wand, cast a handful of illusionary people in the air, then ran for the next piece of cover. Hawthorne fired at the wrong shapes, popping them out of existence. Elaine took advantage of his distraction to fire a curse at him that should have killed. Instead, it struck his protections and bounced.

“You’re definitely weak,” Hawthorne said, as he turned to face her. “Give up now and you will serve a useful purpose in the new world order.”

Elaine scowled, rapidly channelling a spell through her wand. Hawthorne had been ranting about a god speaking to him; was it possible, she asked herself, that he hadn’t been delusional at all? She wasn’t sure if the gods existed, but she did know the
Witch-King
existed ... and an insane Dark Wizard would make an excellent tool. Or it might just be a wild coincidence, except Johan had tracked Hawthorne down with ease. Could they
both
be touched by the Witch-King?

She cast the spell, throwing it at Hawthorne’s face. It was a mark of his confidence that he didn’t move, allowing the spell to latch on to his protections ... and start to drain them. Elaine had devised the spell to allow her to deal with more powerful enemies, knowing that most magicians would sooner cut off their own arms with blunt knives than try to cast spells on their own bodies. The slightest mistake could mean terrifying agony, not to mention the danger of inflicting permanent harm. Their magic was part of them, after all; whatever changes it made would be accepted by the body as natural.

Hawthorne’s body was suddenly surrounded by a green and red glow as the spell started to work away at his protections, turning the magic that bound them together into harmless light. He let out a howl of rage, then threw a curse back at Elaine that slammed into her cover and blew it into fragments, the blast picking up Elaine and throwing her the whole length of the room. She grunted in pain as she slammed into the wall, then fell down and collapsed at the bottom. Her leg bent alarmingly, but thankfully it didn’t seem to break. She tried to get to her feet, only to discover that she couldn’t put any weight on her leg at all. Her wand ...

Her blood ran cold. Where was her wand?

“Here,” Hawthorne said. She looked up, dazed. The glow was gone ... and Hawthorne was holding her wand in his hand, almost casually. “Looking for this?”

He leered down at her. “What a pathetic magician you really are,” he sneered. “Without a wand, you are helpless. Your magic remains locked inside you, unable to seek release. What can you do that a mundane
cannot
, when you have no wand?”

There was a
snap
. Elaine stared in horror as he broke her wand. She knew that she didn’t need it, at least for basic spells, but it had been with her from the day she’d gone to the shop with her tutor and bought it. It hadn’t been special, or expensive, yet ... it had been
hers
. And now it was gone. She had owned so little in her life before her promotion and now one of her few possessions was gone.

Hawthorne dropped the pieces to the floor, then lifted his hand, casting a spell. Elaine felt herself lifted into the air, her useless leg dangling down. Maybe she’d been wrong, she told herself, maybe it was broken after all. But Hawthorne wasn’t likely to leave her alive long enough to decide between trying to heal herself or crawling back to the city. In hindsight, she should never have given chase without finding an Inquisitor or two to go with her.

“I would consider you for the mother of my child,” Hawthorne said, drawing his attention back to her, “but you really are too weak. So weak you might as well be a mundane yourself.”

Elaine braced herself, then hurled a spell right into his face, putting all of her remaining energy behind it. Hawthorne staggered backwards as blue-white light flared around him; the magic holding Elaine failed, sending her falling to the ground. There was a crack as her abused leg finally broke; Elaine screamed, unable to focus her mind enough to dampen the pain. Somehow, even being tortured seemed preferable.

“You ...” Hawthorne said. “You ...”

Not enough
, Elaine realised, numbly. She’d tried to kill him, hoping that his protections were weak enough to allow her to burn though his skull, but he’d cancelled her earlier spell too quickly. He’d been hurt, and surprised by her ability to use magic without a wand, yet it hadn’t been enough to give them a chance to escape.

“Maybe I was wrong,” Hawthorne said. “Maybe you
would
be a good mother to my children. And the god says that you know something I ought to know.”

Elaine collapsed into absolute despair. She’d failed; worse, she’d delivered everything she knew to a Dark Wizard. Light Spinner should have had her killed, the moment she realised just what had turned Elaine into a Bookworm. She was a colossal security risk even in the Golden City. Outside it, she might as well be a target ... and she knew, now, that Hawthorne’s god was the Witch-King. Who else knew what she was?

It was hard to talk, but she had to try. “Tell me,” she said. “How do you know your god is telling the truth?”

Hawthorne slapped her, hard. Elaine fell back, stunned. Blood started to trickle down her cheek.

“My god is my lord and master,” Hawthorne proclaimed. “He told me to smite the mundanes who dreamed of rivalling those infused with the essence of the gods ...”

Elaine put it together, too late. The Witch-King had manipulated Hawthorne, using him to attack the mundanes who were trying to find ways to develop non-magical technology. And it was possible that Jamal had been manipulated too ... it was impossible to be sure. The Witch-King’s touch was difficult to detect; even in hindsight, it had proven impossible to trace the strings he had pulled to ensure Elaine’s birth and abandonment at the orphanage. And yet it had all worked magnificently ...

But I stopped him
, she told herself. And yet there was a quiet nagging doubt.
Or was what I did part of his plan
?

“On your feet,” Hawthorne ordered. “You will be coming with me.”

He reached out, grabbed Elaine’s shirt and hauled her to her feet. Elaine gasped in pain as he forced her to put her weight on her leg, then staggered and fell against the wall. Hawthorne muttered a curse under his breath, then cast a spell; Elaine felt herself hefted up into the air, drifting helplessly behind him. This time she didn’t even have the magic to cast another spell.

She tried to think through the crushing weight of despair, but it seemed hard to focus her mind on anything. Hawthorne would enslave her, then use potions to ensure that she became pregnant ... all the time pulling spells and concepts out of her mind that had been buried for a very good reason.
He
wouldn’t hesitate to use them ...

“Stop,” a shaky voice said. “You’d ... you’d better put her down.”

***

Johan had watched in horror as Elaine fought and lost, unsure of what to do. If he ran ... he couldn’t leave her, not when she’d clearly tracked him to this place. Her capture was his fault, just like everything else. But he didn’t know what to do ...

He stepped forward, concentrating on maintaining a protective bubble around himself. “Put her down,” he repeated, trying to sound confident. His father would have sounded much more commanding, he was sure. “Now.”

Hawthorne made a harsh noise. It took Johan a few moments to realise that he was laughing, unpleasantly. “You, little mundane, are demanding that I bow to your will?”

“Yes,” Johan said, silently grateful that Hawthorne had never realised that he had magic. “If you let her go, you can walk away freely.”

“I have a better idea,” Hawthorne said. “Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

He waved a hand in Johan’s direction. There was a flash of light against the protective bubble, but nothing else happened. Hawthorne stopped, staring at Johan in surprise; he might have sensed the presence of a normal magician, but Johan was far from normal. His inability to make potions and sense magic had an upside.

“I said, stop,” Johan said. He tried to sound like Jamal at his most arrogant, his most convinced that he was utterly unstoppable. “I won’t ask again.”

“You are using protective amulets,” Hawthorne said, sardonically. “Do you think that they can stand up to a
real
magician?”

A corkscrew of light danced from his fingers, burning towards Johan ... and splintered into nothingness against the protective bubble. Johan took a step forward, concentrating on maintaining the bubble. He honestly wasn’t sure if he could focus on two things at once, even if one of them involved killing Hawthorne. The bubble had to be maintained. It was unlikely that Hawthorne would mess around with freeze spells when he could use more lethal magic.

“I have no amulets,” Johan said, quietly. His bubble flared with light again and again as Hawthorne blasted it with everything he had, to no avail. “All I have is myself.”

“It’s a trick,” Hawthorne snapped. He turned to glare at Elaine. “What have you done?”

Johan looked at Elaine ... and felt a sudden flash of rage that overpowered his common sense. She was bleeding, one of her legs was clearly broken ... and Hawthorne had threatened to turn her into a brood mare. Sheer fury drove him forward, his magic lashing out at Hawthorne and sending the magician flying backwards. The magic holding Elaine in the air popped out of existence and she fell, Johan barely managing to catch her before she hit the ground for a second time.

“Keep ...” Elaine mumbled, blood dripping from her mouth. “Keep your eyes on him ...”

Johan looked up, then threw himself aside as a blast of fire crackled through the air. The Dark Wizard didn’t even seem to be stunned; he threw fireball after fireball at Johan, forcing him to duck for cover. But that hadn’t worked for Elaine ... he collected himself a moment later and told the fireballs, which were swooping down after him, to go out. They winked out of existence, leaving Hawthorne staring at him in disbelief. And then he threw a single white beam of light towards Johan. It struck the protective bubble and went right through, touching Johan’s chest. But as far as Johan could tell, it didn’t seem to do
anything
.

He’s testing you
, he told himself.
He wants to know what you can do. And what your bubble will stop
.

The beam of light grew brighter, wandering up towards Johan’s eyes. Hawthorne wanted to
blind
him, he realised in mute horror; he squeezed his eyes shut, then concentrated on turning the bubble into a mirror. But it didn’t seem to do anything, apart from stopping the light before it could reach him. A moment later, Johan told the light to go away and it did.

Hawthorne stared at him, his face twisted in horror. “What
are
you?”

Johan stared back at him, feeling rage boiling through his very soul. This man was the embodiment of the same ethos that had allowed Jamal and his other siblings to torment him, either in hopes of giving the Powerless magic or merely because those without magic deserved to serve as their betters willed. He had power; he thought it gave him the right to rape, burn and pillage at will, taking whatever he pleased because, in the end, he had power and those he tormented had none. He was despicable. He was a monster. He didn’t deserve to have power.

“I am ... I am your punishment,” Johan said. It was a line from a book he’d read, one of Charity’s romantic novels about a dead man who came back to punish his killers while making love to his girlfriend, who had stayed faithful all along. The book had been dreadfully soppy, but it had given him a few ideas. “And you’re not getting any more than you deserve.”

Something seemed to
click
in his mind. The building was suddenly bathed in multicoloured light, light which seemed to surround Elaine and Hawthorne in particular.
Magic
, Johan realised, the magic that gave them their powers. There were other lights, fading away into nothingness, around the dead bodies, the last traces of the magic Hawthorne had used to kill them. But the light around him was different, as if it was not quite part of the living web. He closed his eyes, staggering ... and yet he could still see the light.

A thought blossomed and he took a step forward, concentrating on one very specific result. It was suddenly easy to reach out with his mind and sever Hawthorne’s link to the web, to drain his magic and cut him off from the source. The magic seemed to
shimmer
in response, although he couldn’t tell if it approved or disapproved ... or even if it were alive at all. And then the vision faded, just in time to allow him to see Hawthorne scream in pain and shock.

“You’re not getting any more than you deserve,” Johan said, concentrating. Hawthorne seemed to be getting older and older, his long dark hair shading rapidly to white, his body stooping into a hunch. “And this, too, is what you deserve.”

Hawthorne shrank, just like Charity. But instead of becoming a rat, he became a tiny statue of himself. Johan stepped over to him and looked down, feeling oddly numb. He’d won, and yet ...

He turned and ran back towards Elaine, cursing himself. He should have thought of her
first
.

“I ... I can try to help with your leg,” he gasped, kneeling down beside her. Blood had stained her shirt, leaving her looking as if she were on the verge of death. “Please, don’t die.”

“Don’t try,” Elaine mumbled. She sounded stunned and weak, but alive. “What did you do to him?”

“I took his magic,” Johan said, bluntly. He tried to put everything he’d seen into words, but stopped when he realised that it just wasn’t possible. “And then I turned him into a statue.”

“You took his magic,” Elaine repeated. Her voice was weak, but he could tell that she was astonished. “I ...”

She closed her eyes. For a long chilling moment, Johan was sure that she was dead. But then her heartbeat was still there, if weak. There was a crashing sound behind him and he turned, just in time to see a pair of Inquisitors charging into the building with drawn wands. Johan let out a gasp of relief and motioned for them to help Elaine. One of them bent down and cast a spell that wrapped her in a bubble of faint blue light. The other looked around, quietly noted the position of the bodies, then looked back at Johan.