“Yes, sir,” Elaine said. If nothing else, perhaps Dread would help her to find a compromise that would help her stay alive. She hadn’t asked to be turned into a bookworm. “For now...can we get down before the end of the day?”
“I think so,” Dread said. He grinned, suddenly. “If nothing else, the dead werewolf should give other hunters a touch of reluctance to advance further.”
He gave her one last worried look and then started off back down the trail. Princess Sacharissa followed him and, after a moment, Elaine followed him as well. The maps she’d looked at hadn’t gone into many details, but from what she remembered there was an independent city-state at the base of the mountains, along the shores of Silver Lake. It was closely allied with Ida, yet its ruler was elected and it wouldn’t be quick to jump when Ida called the tune. Or so Elaine hoped. Being tracked down by werewolves was bad enough, but if they were detected in Lakeside, they would face guardsmen and combat magicians.
And she knew that they were in no state for a fight.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lakeside seemed much more laid back than Ida, as far as Elaine could tell. The population wore more colourful clothes and no one seemed to bat an eyelid when they saw three strangers walking off the mountain. Dread had cast an illusion spell to appear as a father with his two daughters, neither one of whom bore any resemblance to wanted fugitives. Elaine couldn’t see any sign that any of Lakeside’s population was even looking for them, but there was no way to be sure. Lakeside
was
a pretty obvious destination for them.
“I had to book tickets on a coach tomorrow to Garston,” Dread said, after they’d waited for him in the inn. “I don’t want to go back to the iron dragon – it’s too obvious a place for them to look for us.”
Elaine nodded, exhausted. They’d booked an inn with two rooms, although Dread had warned them that they needed to set up proper wards – and remove all the mirrors – before they went to sleep. Elaine had been relieved to discover that he hadn’t realised that Castle Adamant had had a secret network of gateways into a mirrored dimension, even though it wasn’t very reassuring. If an Inquisitor could miss that, what else could he miss?
“Good thinking,” Princess Sacharissa said.
She
didn’t seem to have given any thought as to what she would do once she fled her father’s kingdom. Was she even qualified to do anything? “Have you called the Inquisition and warned them about my father?”
“There are...political problems,” Dread admitted, reluctantly. “I told my superiors, but...they can’t act at once.”
Elaine stared at him. “There’s a rogue sorcerer – probably more than one – and a royal family with a mad plan to bring down the Empire and you can’t do
anything
?”
“There are political problems,” Dread repeated. “Right now, there isn’t a single unifying source of authority – and there won’t be until the next Grand Sorcerer is selected. Without his orders, we do not have the legal authority to take over Ida and hunt down her royal family – we can’t even arrest his foolish prince. There would be a terrific outcry over it.”
“Madness,” Princess Sacharissa said. “My Kingdom’s subjects are at the mercy of my father and whoever is controlling his brain and you can’t do anything about it!”
“I agree,” Dread said. “I have suggested most strongly that we put together a force anyway and keep Ida under close watch, but the others may not agree to go along with my suggestion. Everything is a little crazy between Grand Sorcerers; the last thing we need is rumours that the Inquisitors are plotting to remove candidates they don’t like.”
“I thought you were sworn to serve the state faithfully – magically binding oaths,” Elaine said. “Why...?”
“You ought to know that any oath, even one sworn on a person’s name, can be circumvented with a little ingenuity,” Dread said, ruefully. “If I sincerely believed that assassinating all of the candidates was the right course of action, I could do it without losing my powers. And even if you haven’t thought of that” – he smiled, dryly – “I assure you that the candidates themselves will have thought of it. What could someone do with a carefully-tuned memory charm?”
He shrugged, thoughtfully. “The Inquisition has never been popular,” he added. “We do our job too well.”
Elaine nodded. “And so they fear you, even as they battle to control you.”
“Oh yes,” Dread said. “Fear keeps the world going round.”
He straightened up. “Which leads neatly to the next question,” he said. “What happened to you when you were hit with Duke Gama’s spell?”
Elaine took a breath and started to explain, watching Dread carefully as she spoke. Whatever else happened, he would be angry – and horrified – that she hadn’t told him at once. Maybe that too had been a command included in the spell – she hadn’t told anyone about her new knowledge – but it no longer seemed to have any effect. Or maybe she’d just been paranoid.
“Let me see if I understand you,” Dread said, finally. He looked over at Princess Sacharissa, and then looked back at Elaine. “The spell gave you all of the knowledge in the Black Vault?”
“All of the knowledge in the entire Library,” Elaine said. It was beyond her comprehension – and she’d been the target of the spell. There were hundreds of thousands of volumes – no one had a precise count – within the Great Library. “I can tell you details from history books covering the Inquisition...”
“Most of those books are untruthful,” Dread muttered. He looked up at her, sharply. “You had all this knowledge and it never occurred to you to tell
anyone
?”
“No, sir,” Elaine admitted. “I didn’t even tell Daria.”
“You must have been out of your mind,” Dread snapped. “Didn’t you think about what someone could do with that kind of knowledge before you decided to head off to Ida?”
Princess Sacharissa came to Elaine’s rescue. “You skulls have a reputation for...extreme solutions to problems,” she said, her voice calm and very reasonable. “What do you think she expected from you if she told you the truth?”
Dread nodded, slowly. “Very true,” he admitted, “although we wouldn’t have killed you. You didn’t
ask
to become a bookworm...”
He hesitated. “Were you tempted to use the knowledge in any way?”
“I did something to Millicent,” Elaine admitted, in a small voice. He had every right to be angry about that, even though he and his fellows had never called Millicent to account for her crimes. “And...and I spied on Daria.”
The whole story slowly tumbled out. Her curiosity about the secret Millicent had mentioned, finding the chest...and finding the magical supplies inside. She didn’t know exactly why she had confessed so openly, but in some ways it was a relief. At least they’d hold her to account for something she’d actually done deliberately.
“I just assumed that you did know that you were sharing your apartment with a werewolf,” Dread said, shaking his head. “How did you manage to miss the clues?”
Elaine looked down at the ground. “I just...I guess I am as stupid as Millicent says I am,” she admitted. “I never thought that Daria might be a werewolf...and I never thought twice about coming to Ida.”
“
That
wasn’t completely your fault, I think,” Dread said, reassuringly. “Your past history doesn’t suggest a person likely to drop everything and go on a trip five hundred miles from the Golden City on a whim. But...they clearly knew what had happened to you. If I hadn’t shown up, they would probably have waited for you to visit the Court Wizard and grabbed you there and then.”
Elaine felt...violated. Someone had placed commands in her mind and she had followed them without even
thinking
it through. Millicent had been kind to her by comparison; she’d
known
that she was being compelled to act, even though resistance was futile. Even the cold knowledge that few people were logical enough to notice that they were being subtly influenced didn’t help.
He stood up and started to pace the room. “Let’s see...Duke Gama dies – the only person who can assure us that it was a natural death does so. But we know that he was involved because he was cursed, and he died when he started to tell us the truth. The king tries to kill an Inquisitor and has his men torture you...his son wants to become Grand Sorcerer and may be trying to get his hands on you to boost his powers.”
Princess Sacharissa frowned. “Would that work?”
“Of course it would work,” Dread said. “The price, however, is very high.”
The Princess lifted her eyebrows. “Sanity,” Dread explained, reluctantly. “And that’s just for starters. Madness brings with it the ability to call on magic powers rarely mastered by mankind, powers that eat away at the flesh of their victim even as he believes he is their master. They say that that is what happened to the Witch-King.”
Elaine shivered. She knew the truth behind the Witch-King, but did Dread? She wanted to tell him, and yet...she didn’t really want to talk about it. If he believed in Valiant, and looked up to him as a possible role model, why should she ruin his ideals by telling him the truth? What possible good could it do?
“Never mind him,” Elaine said. “What are we going to do about the problems in Ida?”
“First, we’re going to get you back to the Golden City, where we can keep you under guard until we have a new Grand Sorcerer to judge your case,” Dread said. Elaine had to fight to repress a snort. What if the new Grand Sorcerer was Prince Hilarion? Or Deferens?
They
wouldn’t be inclined to view her sudden acquisition of forbidden knowledge very lightly. And she doubted that any of the others would take a better view of it. “And then...”
He shook his head. “I don’t even know where to begin sorting this mess out...”
“Maybe you should forget convention and just move against my brother,” Princess Sacharissa said. “Surely, if you can stop him, everything else won’t matter.”
“You’re missing the point,” Dread explained, patiently. “The Inquisition exists to prevent the misuse of magic and magical artefacts. It does not exist to vet candidates for the post of Grand Sorcerer, at least without direct orders from the reigning Grand Sorcerer. We depend upon a degree of consent from the rest of the population to carry out our duties. If they start thinking that we’re picking and choosing the Grand Sorcerer...”
He shrugged. “The results could be outright civil war,” he admitted. “I suspect that my superiors will find some way of dealing with the problem, but not immediately. I don’t think your brother can win without the help of this young lady.”
He nodded to Elaine. “So we should be fine as long as we keep you well away from him,” he added. “You won’t try to run off again?”
“Not as long as you don’t try to kill me,” Elaine said, seriously.
Dread didn’t smile. “I hope it doesn’t come down to that,” he said, flatly. “I’ll do my best to keep it from becoming a problem for us.”
Elaine was still thinking about possible solutions. “Couldn’t you put it to a vote?”
Dread blinked in surprise. “A vote?”
“You have six possible candidates for the position – five, if we exclude Prince Hilarion,” Elaine pointed out. “What if you told them what was going on and then asked them to commit their support to investigating the Prince and flushing him out – you’d just need three votes in favour and then you could reasonably claim that you had the support of the next Grand Sorcerer, whoever he might be.”
“Assuming that the investigation turned up enough dirt to prove that he was up to something dangerous – and illegal,” Dread said. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “And it would be very embarrassing if one of the dissenters became the next Grand Sorcerer. And we’d need proof...”
“I thought that you had the powers you needed to investigate anyone on suspicion of necromancy,” Elaine said, in surprise. “Couldn’t you just tell them what we know.”
“We don’t have absolute proof that Prince Hilarion is involved in this crazy plan,” Dread said. He smiled sourly at her expression. “Think about it. We know that his father was involved, as was his former Court Wizard, but we don’t have anything on Prince Hilarion himself. And we don’t even know if his father is a willing conspirator or under the control of person or persons unknown.”
Elaine remembered the voice speaking out of the crystal ball and shivered. But if pressed she would have to admit that she didn’t know who had been on the other end.
“And Prince Hilarion is very well connected through his father and grandfather’s complex network of marriage alliances,” he added. “And most of the aristocracy will rally around him without absolutely watertight proof that he is controlling his father and experimenting with banned magic. It might even be hard to prove that the spell he used on you, through that cursed book, was illegal. He could merely smile and deny all knowledge, or claim that he hadn’t thought that anyone would be stupid enough to open the volume without checking first...”
Elaine scowled at him, but she had to admit that he had a point. The druids spent most of their time dealing with the fallout from magical disasters, which were mainly caused by some idiot walking into a set of wards or accidentally triggering a spell they didn’t know how to control. Every magician worthy of the name used wards and booby traps to safeguard his possessions. There was no law against doing it, if only because it would be widely ignored. And anyone stupid enough to try to burgle a magician deserved everything he got.
And Dread was right. The aristocracy were determined to retain what few rights and privileges they had left. They would definitely rally around Prince Hilarion unless there was watertight proof...proof that they might never be able to acquire. Once there was a new Grand Sorcerer...but what if Prince Hilarion
became
the new Grand Sorcerer?
She hesitated. “What if we killed him?”
“He’s my brother,” Princess Sacharissa objected. “I know he can be an asshole at times, but...”
“Killing a potential Grand Sorcerer is a serious crime,” Dread pointed out. “I don’t think we would be able to convince everyone that we’d done the right thing.” He shrugged. “Are you always this bloodthirsty?”