Wizard squared ra-3 Read online

And terrifying. Because he’d no idea what he was doing. Not consciously, anyway. Temper and desperation had combined in a single hammering heartbeat and suddenly he was smashing powerful hexes as easily as Reg snapped flies in mid-air.

  Lional’s bedroom suite lay beyond the middle doorway. With a single word and a hand wave he banished the lingering smoke then marched through the empty doorway into the private parlor beyond. His earlier incant had lit every lamp and candle in here, too. Again, to his surprise, he found no overwrought opulence. Oh, there was a certain sumptuosity to the sitting room, silk curtains and velvet upholstery and plush carpets underfoot. Beneath the poisonous dark magics the air smelled sweet. There were fresh flowers in crystal vases. Ebony chairs and a low table inlaid with mother of pearl. No gilding. Rich forest green and midnight blue were the dominant colors-and crimson, too, splashed here and there like drops of blood from a wound.

  No books of magic in here.

  A single door in the back wall led out of the private parlor. Gerald tested it, but at last found no hex. So he took the door by its handle, twisted it, pushed-and walked into the room beyond just like an ordinary, everyday man.

  And here was Lional’s bedroom, almost as austere as the rest of his apartments. Dull bronze walls, plush black carpet-and an enormous four-poster bed. Its drapings were bold crimson, as though Lional felt the need to sleep in blood. Tavistock cowered on the red velvet spread, topaz eyes slitted, fangs bared in a terrified snarl.

  Gerald sighed. “Bugger.”

  He stared at the lion and the lion stared back. On the nightstand on the right-hand side of the bed, a tower of ancient texts. The stench of unwholesome incantations was so oppressive he could practically taste the dark magics contained between their covers. The ether shivered with them, a subliminal note of evil on the very edge of sensation. He could feel his potentia shrivel like a garden slug sprinkled with salt.

  And here’s me, come to take that evil into myself. Come to let it devour me alive…

  Stranded on the bed, the lion rumbled in its throat.

  “Poor old Tavistock,” he said, pity stirring for the cat he’d so carelessly sported with to further his own petty ambitions. “Doesn’t look like you’re having much fun.”

  The lion rumbled again-agreement, or a warning of imminent attack?

  “I’ve got some bad news for you,” he added, taking a prudent half-step back. “Lional’s found a new pet. I’m afraid you’re going to have to shift for yourself.”

  Except-how could it? This was a lion, with an appetite to match. And with the palace deserted… nobody to feed the wretched thing… either it would starve to death or start eating people.

  Oh, just what my conscience needs. A man-eating lion on the loose, courtesy of me.

  “Tavistock,” he said. “I think it’s time for a change.”

  The words of the transmog reversal incant were buried in his memory somewhere, courtesy of Reg. But he knew, without knowing precisely how he knew, that he didn’t need the words. Not any more. His potentia, woken to full life by the accident at Stuttley’s staff factory, bubbled inside him like a hot spring. He could feel it expanding within the confines of its mortal prison, his body, shimmering his blood and vibrating his bones. Every time he’d used it since arriving in New Ottosland, whether he meant to or not, in the strangest way it felt like he’d been feeding that power. Giving it what it needed to grow.

  So that all he needed to do now was look at Tavistock and see the cat held captive within the lion. See Tavistock as he’d been before, on the audience chamber dais, in Lional’s lap, just a cat, just a fluffy cat, no more dangerous or disturbing than that…

  “Tavistock,” he whispered, and held out his hand. “Go back now. Go back. Be a cat again.”

  The thaumically-charged ether crackled. On Lional’s enormous bed Tavistock twitched, tail lashing, and lumbered to his feet. Threw back his vast, maned head and roared, saliva-slicked fangs dripping. Around him the air curdled, tinting bluish orange. Then a crack of sound and a flash of light. A thunderstorm roaring through the ether. Gerald grunted, an echoing tempest raging through his unquiet blood as his potentia obeyed his command.

  “Reversato!”

  Another flash of light and crack of sound and the lion was gone. Instead, a bemused cat sat blinking in the middle of Lional’s bed. Long marmalade coat wildly ruffled, whiskers bristling, eyes like saucers, Lional’s abandoned pet took one look around the room, let out a loud, indignant wail and bolted.

  One word, that’s all it took, one word and a thought and I reversed a Level Twelve transmog. Who am I? What am I?

  “Good luck, Tavistock,” he murmured. “And good riddance.”

  Staring after the cat, he wondered if he could undo the dragon the same way. But no. Not with Lional linked to it by the Tantigliani sympathetico. His strength fed their bond beyond any easy breaking.

  More’s the pity.

  Now that it felt safe to move about Lional’s bedchamber he crossed to the nearest window and tugged its bronze silk curtain aside. Stared through the glittering glass at the palace gardens beyond, then up at the sky. Both were empty. No sign of Lional or his dragon. No sign of life at all. There were two more curtained windows and he looked through both of them, just to make sure. The third window afforded him a glimpse of the palace forecourt, where he’d left Shugat and Zazoor and the Kallarapi army.

  They were gone. Holy man, sultan and every last camel. Vanished as though they’d never existed.

  “And good riddance to you too,” he added, feeling bitter. Feeling betrayed. Idiot. “You’d only have ended up getting in my way.”

  So. Lional and his dragon. If they weren’t hanging around the palace, where could they be? Off terrorizing the countryside some more? Probably. Lional did enjoy his little amusements. And he believed himself invulnerable, facing no kind of danger from the likes of Gerald Dunwoody. Which was bad luck for the countryside-but a stroke of good luck for him. It was a reprieve, of sorts. A mistake on Lional’s part. Perhaps the only one the mad king was likely to make.

  Letting the curtain fall back across the window, he turned to stare again at the vast crimson bed. Towering on the nightstand, Lional’s stolen grimoires beckoned. Five-no, six ancient volumes. So many. So much evil. Palms sweaty, breathing uneven, his throat suddenly hot and tight, Gerald pushed through the bedroom’s still-thickened etheretic atmosphere until he was standing so close to those terrible books that all he had to do was uncrook his elbow and he’d be touching them.

  Or they’d be touching him.

  “I’d rather see you dead here and now-I’d rather kill you myself than see you-”

  “Oh, Reg,” he whispered, the memory of her terror for him like acid in his veins. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a choice. You saw what Lional’s turned into. Whatever’s inside me won’t be enough.”

  He cried out as his fingers closed on the first grimoire. Such a shock of latent power searing through him. A dark voice whispering, full of malice and glee. His knees had gone weak again, threatening to buckle. Still clutching the grimoire he sank to the edge of Lional’s bed. The feather mattress gave way beneath him with an almost-silent sigh. With a heart-thumping effort he forced his eyes open, made himself look down and read the title of the book in his sweaty, trembling hands. The damn thing was so heavy he had to rest it on his thighs.

  Grummen’s Lexicon.

  Of course. Start with the best.

  The Lexicon was bound in brass and black leather, its title embossed on cover and spine in faded gold lettering. The rich binding was scarred with age. Wrinkled here and there. On the top right-hand corner, a single fingerprint, scorched scarlet. Holding his breath Gerald touched his own finger lightly to it, and heard in his mind the lingering echoes of a scream.

  He snatched his hand back. Then, though he wasn’t what anyone would call a religious man, church being one of those things he almost never bothered with, even though it meant disappointing his mother, he lo
oked up. Who knew? Maybe the gods of Kallarap were listening.

  “I’m doing this because I have to, all right? Just-please. Please, whatever happens to me, whatever happens once I’m done-if Reg is right-don’t let them send Monk to hunt me down. I couldn’t bear that. Send anyone else-Errol Haythwaite, for example. But please, not Monk.”

  Silence. Not so much as the smallest hint that a deity of any kind was listening, or in the mood to grant his despairing request.

  Oh well. I can’t say I really expected a reply.

  Mouth dry, rivulets of sweat burning his ribs and spine, he stared at the Lexicon. Once he opened the wretched thing, once he exposed himself to the first of its foul incants, there’d be no going back. This new Gerald Dunwoody would cease to exist, almost before the old one’s corpse had grown cold.

  And who-or what-would take his place was anyone’s guess.

  Before he could change his mind, before he let the gibbering fear take over his body, make it throw down the Lexicon and run him screaming from Lional’s chamber Just do it, Dunnywood. Do it. Do it.

  — he opened the book. Recited the handy little incant Reg had taught him, way back in the early days of his wizarding correspondence course, the learn-it-fast hex that made the dullest man a speed-reading, incant-absorbing machine.

  With a spark and a sizzle, the incant ignited. Dimly he felt himself turning page after page with fingers that belonged to someone else. He didn’t understand how, but his unnatural potentia was enhancing Reg’s quick-learn hex. Like a thirsty flower his mind absorbed Grummen’s collection of fetid magics faster than he could make sense of the words. He heard himself breathing like a runner in a race. Felt his heart crashing from rib to rib. Tasted the foulness of Grummen’s hexes and incants, coating his throat and the inside of his mouth with bile. His fingertips burned, and his bleary eyes. His vision was smearing, blurring as crimson as Lional’s vast bed. He was roasting, he was freezing, he was losing himself. Someone had turned his bones to lead. They were so heavy in his flesh now he thought any moment they’d tear free.

  And then he turned the Lexicon ’s last page. Read the incant inscribed upon it- Regarding the Extraction of Knowledge from the Recently Dead- and felt the necrothaumic compulsion incant’s power sink inexorably into his grossly overfed mind.

  With a strangled groan Gerald lost his grip on the heavy grimoire. Heard it thud to the plush black carpet and a heartbeat later thudded beside it. A windstorm was howling inside his skull, scouring the confines of its bony bowl like a banshee trapped in a bubble. Little trickles of its fury dribbled between his parted lips. For one terrible moment he thought he was back in the cave, at the mercy of Lional’s merciless curses. With a louder groan he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling of Lional’s self-restrained chamber. Painted black, it was daubed with eye-searing sigils that in another lifetime he’d never have understood.

  But he understood them now, and what they meant made him weep. Or perhaps he wept because they were no longer a mystery. Because the howling in his head wasn’t a banshee at all, but the last raging cries of a dying Gerald. Because rising from the ashes of that Gerald was this one.

  A Gerald with the power to make the dead speak. To kill with a thought. To fashion mud into a man. A copy of a man. A wicked shambling pretense of a man. Who could boil a woman’s blood in her veins without fire, blind a disobedient child, reduce a village to cinders and a cow to blood and hide… all with a small and simple word.

  His heart was beating sluggishly now, his blood thick and dark with Grummen’s terrible knowledge. With a struggling effort he pushed to his feet. He was a newborn necromancer, learning how to walk.

  With a sigh of relief he collapsed onto Lional’s bed. Pressed the heels of his hands against his hot eyes, willing his red, smeared vision to clear. When he let his hands drop his gaze shifted to the other books on the nightstand, tugged there as though by some thaumaturgic force. He tried to resist-he didn’t need to know any more. He was burdened enough with the contents of Grummen’s Lexicon. But he couldn’t fight the compulsion to reach out to that tower of books and take the next one into his hands.

  Pygram’s Pestilences.

  A slim little volume, this. Clothbound in eggshell blue. So harmless looking, like a nice lady’s diary. Before he could stop himself-try to stop himself-the book was open in his lap and he was devouring each hex. Even though he knew firsthand how evil, how despicable, these magics were. Even though he’d unspeakably suffered through each and every one during his time of torment in Lional’s cave. The notion of learning them, of perhaps using them on another living being-he should be revolted, repulsed, he should destroy the text with a look-and yet he couldn’t. He didn’t. Instead he opened himself to Pygram’s curses and let the words and the sigils engrave themselves on his bones.

  I’ll be all right. I’m a good man. I won’t use them. This is just a precaution. It’s like I told Reg: I have to know how to fight fire with fire.

  With the last curse absorbed, the book joined Grummen’s Lexicon on the carpet.

  So. That was two down and four to go. There was no point in turning back now, no point at all in trying to resist. Whatever Lional knew he had to know, or he’d have done this for nothing. Killed the other Gerald for nothing. And he’d stand no chance of killing Lional in revenge.

  One by one, dear Reg’s learn-it-fast hex sped up to the point where he’d stopped seeing the actual words, he read the rest of Lional’s forbidden library. A Compendium of Curses. Charming. Foyle’s Foilers. Wittily barbaric, that one. Who’d have thought a mass murderer would have such a sense of humor? Madam Bartholomew’s Little Surprise. A hex in forty-six parts, each one more horrible than the last. And finally, sickeningly, a grimoire almost as appalling as the Lexicon: Jonker Trinauld’s Guide to the Unnatural.

  Bloated beyond bearing with the filthiest incants ever devised by witch or wizard, Gerald tossed Trinauld’s dreadful leatherbound observations aside and slid from Lional’s bed onto the floor. He had a headache like a railway spike driving into each temple, pain so powerful and purposeful he couldn’t see straight. Exploding behind his closed eyelids bright starbursts of agony, exquisitely timed with the hammer beats of his heart.

  And beneath the pain, beneath the starbursts, his potentia seethed and bubbled.

  No wonder Lional had gone mad. No man was meant to contain these kinds of magics. Not all at once. He was coming apart at the seams himself, all those dark magics prisoned inside him, boiling and bubbling and yearning to be free. If he opened his eyes would he see his skin, fissuring? Would he see cracks appearing and glimpse the evil within? His potentia had been force-fed full to vomiting, was crammed to its limits with incants and hexes that should never have been born. And now it seethed and surged the hot blood in his veins, demanding expression. Screaming to be heard.

  On his hands and knees, fingers tangled in the black carpet’s deep pile, Gerald opened his eyes. Felt the pain behind them. Heard the roaring in his skull. A storm was building inside him, strong enough to smash his bones and spill his blood. Strong enough to kill him if he didn’t let it out.

  The carpet beneath his hands was starting to smoke.

  Lurching to his feet he threw back his head and let out a howling shriek. The ether erupted-and he erupted with it. In a burst of blue flames, the curtains caught fire. The carpet caught fire. Lional’s vast crimson bed went up in smoke and sparks. Behind the burning curtains the windows exploded.

  He watched as the blue flames fed greedily on Lional’s private chamber. Smiled, and snapped his fingers, and turned the flying shards of glass to ice. The ice melted, steaming. The fire continued to burn. In his veins, in his arteries, his newly blackened blood burned wildly with it. Now he stood at the heart of a thaumaturgical conflagration-sublimely untouched and untouchable as the blue flames roared his delight.

  “Good,” he said, nodding. “That’s good. That feels right.”

  Smiling, he went in search of Lion
al.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The other Ottosland, the same day

  Right,” said Melissande. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”

  Monk sighed. “I did warn you. Look, Melissande, they’ll get to us when they get to us so there’s no point-”

  “No, Mr. Markham, there is every point! Because at the rate your precious Department’s going I’ll have qualified for the pension before they come to a decision!”

  And stop calling me Melissande. Just because in a moment of weakness I sniveled all over you, that doesn’t mean you get to take liberites.

  Except apparently it did, because she couldn’t quite bring herself to reprimand him out loud.

  Squatting between them, Reg refluffed all her feathers and said, “Oh, give it a rest, you two, or I’ll do both of you a mischief.”

  They were sitting uncomfortably side by side by side in a drab gray waiting room outside some official chamber or other in Ottosland’s antiquated Department of Thaumaturgy building. Apart from the back-breaking chairs there wasn’t a stick of furniture. Neither were there windows to look out of or any tedious old magazines to read. The room was cold and stuffy and not designed to succor its occupants.

  Oh lord. I wish I knew what was happening to Gerald.

  Shivering, she glanced through the open door to the drab gray corridor beyond. “Where the hell has Rupert got to? It doesn’t take this long to use the lavatory.”

  “Ha,” said Reg. “He’s probably been side-tracked by a moth.”

  “That’s not funny! Whatever you may think of him he really loved his butterflies, you horrible bird! And Lional killed them and now he’s grieving for them. He’s probably got his head buried in a towel right now, crying his heart out for those stupid, stupid insects!”

  Monk, carelessly presumptuous and dangerously attractive, gave Reg a look. “You know, you’re really not helping.”

  With an effort Melissande pulled herself back from the brink of embarrassment… and didn’t object when Monk took her hand in his. Even though she should. Even though public displays of affection were highly irregular. It was a wonder the bird wasn’t screeching about that, along with everything else.