Elaine wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t even sure why Dread had brought her along, let alone tell everyone that she was his partner in the investigation. But they were working on the same puzzle, weren’t they? Whatever had happened to her had to be connected with what had happened to Trebuchet. And anyone that could curse a fully-qualified Court Wizard had to make the Inquisitors nervous. No Court Wizard was appointed unless he was fully trained in all branches of magic, and powerful as all hell to boot. Trebuchet could have turned her into a toad simply by snapping his fingers.
“Thank you,” she said, finally. Maybe Dread just wanted to keep an eye on her. If he thought that her powers had been boosted, he had to consider her a potential danger to the entire world. Maddened magicians could tap into levels of power that were normally far beyond them, at a price of abandoning all hope of returning to sanity. And then there were the demons that fed on such fools. “They took hours to wash me...”
A trumpet blew before she could finish her sentence. “Kneel for His Majesty, the King of Ida,” a voice thundered from nowhere. “Give him great honour, as he deserves.”
Elaine went down on one knee, as did the handful of other guests. Inquisitor Dread didn’t move, but then an Inquisitor wouldn’t bow the knee to anyone below the Grand Sorcerer himself. The King marched into the room and nodded in return, allowing his guests to return to their feet. At least Ida had never developed the elaborate royal protocol of the southern continent. The Empress of the South was supposed to remain concealed from her subjects at all times, hidden behind a screen whenever she held audience. Maybe that was where Lady Light Spinner had picked up the habit of concealing her face. And yet the Empress had a reputation for also seducing everything on two legs. Perhaps being locked up in a gilded cage, powerful enough to have half the continent executed but not powerful enough to change her apartments, was enough to turn her into a man-eater.
King Hildebrand, father of Prince Hilarion, was a tall middle-aged man with russet hair and beard hanging down to his chest. He was powerfully built, but his gait gave evidence of too much good living over the past couple of decades; he wore a pair of spectacles rather than have a simple corrective spell used to fix his eyesight. Elaine could have understood that for someone like her, without the money to hire a druid to craft and implement the spell, but even the poorest monarch shouldn’t have had any problems convincing a druid to heal his eyes. His Court Wizard could probably have crafted the spell himself.
He wore a suit of golden armour decorated with purple strips of cloth that she recognised as signifying a monarch. Only monarchs were allowed to wear purple and gold, although the Grand Sorcerer’s formal robes were
also
purple and gold, a reminder to the monarchs that he was very definitely their superior. Elaine knew from some of the history books that had been jammed into her mind – history as she
hadn’t
been taught it at school – that some of the monarchs had feared that the Grand Sorcerer would eventually become a tyrant. Anyone with unquestioned authority could become corrupt, but none of the Grand Sorcerers had fallen prey to the temptation to abuse their power. They probably swore mighty oaths that kept them from crossing that line.
“I welcome you to my kingdom,” he said, holding out a hand to Elaine. It took her a moment to realise that she was supposed to kiss it. “I am sorry that your first mission for the Inquisition ended so badly.”
He didn’t sound concerned, not for a monarch whose Court Wizard had been cursed and then killed in his own castle. And he believed that Elaine was training to join the Inquisition...but very little was known, publicly, of how Inquisitors were trained. It was quite possible that the Inquisitors threw prospective candidates in at the deep end to see how they coped.
“The matter has not yet ended,” Dread said. “Someone deliberately cursed your Court Wizard; that person remains unknown. We will have to continue our investigation until we determine what actually happened to him.”
“He was always fond of his own experiments,” one of the guests said. He wore dark clothes and a bright silver medallion that reassembled a large Crown. The Treasurer, Elaine guessed. “Instead of attending hunting or fishing expeditions, he would continue his own experiments in his quarters. Is it not possible that he could have cursed himself by accident?”
“Only a very foolish or untrained magician would have cursed himself accidentally,” Dread said, in his very even voice. Elaine suspected that he didn’t like the thought of wasting time talking and eating when they should be searching the wizard’s chambers. “The rawest of magicians would know to set wards to prevent that from happening...”
“But Hilarion wouldn’t have known, would he?” A new voice demanded. Elaine turned to see a girl, barely old enough to be of marriageable age, emerging from a side door. She had long red hair and wore a black dress, her face a strange blend of ethnic traits. The King had married a woman from the other side of the world, according to the history books Elaine had read while travelling to Ida, and had two children with her. “You should never have encouraged his ambitions.”
“That will do,” the King snapped. “I told you to remain in your quarters, young lady.”
“And I said that I wasn’t going to remain a pampered princess,” Princess Sacharissa said, with a determination that Elaine could only admire.
She
wouldn’t have backed down in front of Millicent, even if she didn’t have enough magic in her to light a candle flame. “My brother has gone off to the Golden City, where they are going to eat him alive, while you expect me to remain in my chambers and keep myself pretty for the first inbred moron who wants to marry me.”
She sat down at the table and waved to one of the maids. “You may as well serve the food now,” she ordered. “There won’t be any useful discussion until after they’ve eaten.”
Dread smiled thinly at Elaine, and then turned to the guests. “What kind of experiments was the Court Wizard running?”
Princess Sacharissa answered before anyone else could speak. “He had an obsession with turning lead into gold,” she said. “And an obsession with ways to extend his life. You’d think that a magician would be wise enough to know when his time was running out, but not our one! He kept looking and looking for secrets that would keep him alive...and then my brother became interested in magic. I tried to tell him that he was being a fool.”
“That will do,” the King said, again. “You will eat and then we will...discuss this matter very thoroughly.”
“I think I would wish to talk with you later,” Dread said, to the Princess. “Do not leave the castle.”
“As if I would be allowed to leave without a pack of werewolves around me,” the Princess snorted. She seemed to be brave enough to be sarcastic to an Inquisitor. Elaine felt a hot flash of envy, which she quickly suppressed. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you want me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Daria would have enjoyed the meal, Elaine thought, as she dug her way through a plate that was far too large for her. Undercooked meat, a handful of unidentified vegetables and a thick gravy that actually had to be spooned out of the jug wasn’t what she wanted in a dinner. Dread didn’t seem to care what he was fed, while the King and Princess ignored each other in stony silence and the courtiers took their cue from their master. Elaine would have liked to ask Princess Sacharissa what had happened to make her brother so interested in magic, but it was impossible to speak to her in front of her father. It was almost a relief when the final course – a pudding so sweet that it made Elaine’s teeth hurt – was over and a pair of maids were ordered to show them to Trebuchet’s chambers.
“That Princess is smarter than her father and brother put together,” Dread observed, as soon as they were out of the main hall. “I’d expect someone like her to be more...interested in marriage than in running the Kingdom. But seeing her father doesn’t have a second male heir...”
Elaine blinked. “What would happen to her if Prince Hilarion is killed during the contest?”
“Her husband would become the next King, I think,” Dread said. “Ida doesn’t seem to like the idea of a female ruler, even if she
is
as smart as anyone else they could hope to get. Prince Hilarion’s wild dreams might just be the only thing saving his sister from an arranged marriage and permanent exile to another kingdom. I wonder if he knows it.”
“You mean he could be doing it deliberately?” Elaine asked. “But he’s risking his life...”
“I know,” Dread said. “It would be smarter for him to pressure his father into keeping his sister at Ida, at least until he assumes the Throne.” He shrugged. “Anyway, put it aside for the moment. Walls have ears.”
Elaine didn’t understand until she looked at the maids. They were charmed, of course. They’d take whatever they heard straight back to their master. Dread might have commented on the Princess
knowing
that they’d take what he said back to the King, although Elaine couldn’t even begin to guess at his motivations. Did he like the idea of having the princess more involved in governing the state, or did he want her under control? There was no point in trying to guess.
No one in their right mind would go into a magician’s chambers without his permission, or without the absolute certainty that they had the power to overwhelm any defensive wards backed up by hidden spells. Dread stopped outside Trebuchet’s chambers and gingerly poked the wooden door with his staff. There was a long pause, and then Elaine felt a number of spells slowly shimmering into existence. Some were designed to deter intruders, pushing them away by inducing fear into their hearts; others were far nastier, intended to stop strong-willed intruders in their tracks. Dread stepped forward, muttering under his breath, matching his magic directly against the dead magician’s magic. Trebuchet had created a cunning network of spells to keep unwanted intruders out of his quarters. It was work on a level Elaine knew that she would never be able to match.
“Stand away from the door,” Dread ordered, stepping to one side. “I think I dealt with all of the dangerous spells, but...”
He tapped once on the door with his staff. It exploded outwards and slammed into the stone wall with terrifying force. It would have killed either of them if it had caught them in its headlong flight. Dread poked at it suspiciously and then stepped into the chamber, holding his staff ahead of him like a weapon. Elaine realised that he’d woven so many spells into the staff that it was almost another wand. A very simple weapon, one that would be almost impossible to recognise without luck or inside knowledge. How many other weapons did Dread have up his sleeve?
“He was clearly very paranoid about someone entering his quarters,” Dread observed, mildly. “I can still see spells hanging in the air, watching for targets. Don’t touch anything until I check it first, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Elaine said, softly. This was something she’d never trained to do. “What should I be looking for?”
“Anything out of place,” Dread said. He hesitated. “Most magicians key their wards so that they come apart after they die, or switch their obedience to his designated heir. Trebuchet clearly wanted to make sure that no one ever entered his quarters while he was alive, or dead. If I hadn’t been here, it might have been months before someone with the right qualifications came to Ida to unpick the spells and make it safe for the next incumbent. Interesting, really. I wonder what he was trying to hide?”
Elaine looked around as she stepped into the chambers. The first room was warm and comfortable, with a fireplace and a stack of coal on one wall. It was crammed with books, each of the bookshelves bursting with volumes and countless others piled on the floor as if Trebuchet had simply put them down and left them there in the absence of any space on his bookshelves. Part of her found it charming, remembering the piles of books in the Great Library; part of her was outraged that anyone could treat books like that. She leaned closer and read some of the titles. Most of them were common spellbooks, but a handful were rare and quite valuable. And a couple were definitely on the banned list.
“That’s the problem with the printing press,” Dread said, when Elaine called his attention to the volumes. “The printers don’t really know what’s banned, so they copy books without realising that they’re setting themselves up for execution or a life in the salt mines; the rogues then take the copies and distribute them everywhere. It’s dangerous to risk it in the Golden City, but here, without any other trained wizard for miles around, Trebuchet could have kept an entire library of forbidden knowledge and no one would have been any the wiser.”
He frowned as he studied the books. “Interesting choice of reading matter,” he added. “Why would he want to learn about fetches when he was studying life extension? Or about mental seed magic?”
Elaine shivered as the horrifying possibilities started to slip into her mind. A fetch – a magical double of a person – could be used, given enough magic, as a secondary body. She couldn’t imagine how one person could live in two bodies at once, but Trebuchet had been through the Peerless School and had had years of experience in doing several things simultaneously. Maybe he could have created a fetch to house his soul when the Inquisitors started asking questions he didn’t want to answer. But fetches simply didn’t
last
very long, not if they had to be convincing. Most homunculi were easy to spot, even for the untrained. They just looked less human than the undead hordes.
But mental seed magic was worse. A magician with enough power – and a complete lack of scruples – could create a seed of his entire soul, all of his knowledge and experience, and implant it in an unsuspecting victim’s mind. The seed would slowly grow until it had taken over the person’s body, absorbing their magic into itself and allowing the creator to live again in a new body. And no one would know until it was too late. Elaine shuddered at the thought, picking up the volume and glancing at the first page, which bore a demonic sign. A sorcerer had traded his soul for knowledge he’d hoped would allow him to avoid the fires of hell. There was no way to know if he’d succeeded.