Void's Tale Read online

  The victim started to twitch, body struggling against the restraints. I watched in horror as his muscles bulged, his eyes practically popping out of their sockets. The table itself shook, even though it was bolted to the floor. I’d heard of enhancement spells - I doubted there was a boy at Whitehall who didn’t consider experimenting, as he grew older - but this was dangerously absurd. The victim’s upper body was growing stronger, his muscles larger; his lower body seemed to be actually shrinking. If it went on, he would have an adult chest balanced on a child’s pair of legs. I wanted to run away as the victim started to scream. His heart was thudding against his chest. I could see it.

  He twitched one final time, then lay still. “His heart gave out,” the other man said. I wasn’t going to call him a healer, not after that. “He wasn’t as strong as we thought.”

  A pair of white-clad men appeared, took the body and wheeled it away. I took advantage of the distraction to sneak off. The obscurification charm had its limits. Besides, whoever had dispatched Chuter was bound to be expecting him. I doubted Chuter was permitted to spend his time in the lower levels. His memories certainly hadn’t shown this degree of horror. Everything he’d done had been on a smaller scale. I pushed the memories back down as I walked into another chamber. It was a smaller alchemical lab, one designed for experiments rather than mass production. A handful of scrolls lay on the table, one pinned open. I took a moment to read it. My heart nearly stopped as - finally - everything started to make sense.

  It wasn’t uncommon for sorcerers and court wizards to experiment with using magic to improve dogs and horses, to grant them more strength and endurance and even - perhaps - a greater degree of intelligence. Actually uplifting them to human-level intelligence was flatly forbidden - there were too many intelligent non-human creatures out there, some of which were very dangerous - but I’d heard stories of kings who wanted horses who could handle more complex orders and put immense pressure on their wizards to push the limits as far as they could go. And yet ... it was never easy to get lasting results. It was more common for the changes not to be passed down, or for the foals to be born with serious defects.

  And trying to experiment on humans is strictly forbidden, I thought. But they’re breaking the law right here.

  I worked through the scrolls, putting the pieces together. The kidnapped people had been brought to the fort and rendered down for raw materials, which had then been used to make an enhancement potion. It wasn’t perfect - it killed about half the people who took it, simply because their hearts couldn’t handle the strain - but it worked. Sort of. I knew enough about alchemy to realise the potion had been mixed with a strong loyalty brew, a warped variant on a fixation potion. The people who drank the potion would be compelled, from the very core of their being, to serve their master. They wouldn’t even be able to conceive of the idea of resistance, let alone actually resist.

  My stomach churned - again - as I finished the last scroll. There were a whole bunch of unanswered questions, starting with who was actually behind the mad plan, but ... I thought I knew the basics. Someone was building an army of super-soldiers. Incredibly strong, incredibly tough ... perhaps even with some slight resistance to magic. And then ... and then what?

  My imagination suggested a rush to take the city, the supermen climbing the walls or simply jumping over, leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Their lifespan would be much reduced - even if they survived the first dose of potion, they’d still be putting immense strain on their bodies - but as long as they lasted they’d be unstoppable. An arrow would normally stop an infantryman in his tracks. I wasn’t sure it would stop a super-soldier.

  And if they hadn’t been kidnapping magicians, we might not even know what was happening until it was far too late, I thought. There was no shortage of people who wanted to reunite the empire - under their rule, naturally. It was a good idea. I would have supported them, if I’d thought they could do a good job. Who are they and what do they really have in mind?

  I put the scrolls back where I’d found them - I didn’t want to sound the alarm too early - and inched further along the corridor. The wards were starting to feel a little more hostile, despite the keystone and my glamour. It felt as if I was going somewhere forbidden, even to Chuter ... even to someone who could hardly reveal the truth without admitting his own role in the affair. I pushed the feeling aside, linking to the wards and feeding them a set of comforting lies as I kept moving. It helped that whoever had designed them hadn’t woven the spells into a single network. The interior wards had a tendency to assume that anyone who passed through the outer wards had a perfect right to be there, a weakness most sorcerers - including Chuter - would know to avoid. I remembered the spells I’d seen in the scrolls and frowned. Was I facing someone who’d learnt his magic through books?

  My jaw clenched as I reached a second door and peered inside. It was another alchemical lab, operated by a single woman wearing a simple robe. She was bent over a cauldron, her back to me. I watched her warily, something about her movements nagging at my mind. She poured the contents of a tiny vial into the cauldron, then straightened up. I saw it immediately. A heavy iron collar sat on her neck. I could feel the charms poisoning the air from metres away. She’d been enslaved.

  Which means she isn’t a willing participant, I thought. I’d seen slave collars before. They could be resisted, by someone with the power or skill, but they were designed to just wear the wearer down until they couldn’t hold out any longer. The slave would do as she was told, by anyone keyed to the collar. I’d seen them before, over the years. They were never easy to remove. If I can free her ...

  She turned. Mistress Layla stared at me, her eyes filled with horror and despair. I understood. The slave collar was just too strong to be resisted. She was nothing more than a puppet, unable to do anything more than follow orders. She couldn’t even kill herself. She might even have had the collar on long enough to damage her ability to think, to look for loopholes in her orders. I’d dealt with slavemasters, in the past. They knew how to keep the slaves under close supervision, long enough for the collars to do their work. And then they could be safely sold to their new owners.

  Her mouth opened to scream. I froze her with a wave. It wasn’t friendly - the spell was a great deal stronger than it needed to be - but she wasn’t going to help me. Her master would have given her standing orders to alert him, if something went wrong. She might not have access to her magic - the slavemasters might have forbidden her to use it, without permission - but she could still shout. I inched forward, ignoring the panic in her eyes. The collar was having a nervous breakdown. It wanted her to resist, to fight back, but she couldn’t do that without magic and the collar wasn’t allowing her to use it. I grimaced. Contradictory orders could destroy her if she tried to carry out both of them at once.

  I pressed my fingers against her neck, charms snapping and snarling at me. They were designed to make the collar impossible to remove, save perhaps by her owner. I could feel them trying to force me to remove my hand, then order her to fight me off and then - finally - tighten the collar and crush her throat. My spell made them impossible and yet ... I could feel her fear as my magic clashed with the collar’s, steadily prising it open. The spells failed, an instant before it was too late. The pieces dropped to the ground. Mistress Layla followed them the moment I released the spell on her.

  “I ...” She started to cry, great heaving sobs that echoed on the air. “I ...”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I told her. It was true. I’d heard of a great many perversions over the years, but I’d never heard of anyone putting a slave collar on willingly. She’d been a puppet. She hadn’t had the slightest hope of resistance. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”

  She shuddered. Comforting people wasn’t my forte, but I had to try. I squeezed her shoulder lightly. She shuddered, one hand twitching as if she wanted to push me away but didn’t quite dare. I stepped back, looking around the room as I he
ard a sound. There was a cage in the rear, occupied by a young girl. She couldn’t be more than a year older than Gabby. I stared at her, too numb to feel much of anything. Why was she in the cage?

  I met the girl’s eyes. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Eleanor,” the girl said. “Are you here to rescue us?”

  “Yes.” I inspected the cage. There was nothing magical about it. The girl herself had magical potential, but she was too young to develop magic properly. She didn’t seem to be a werewolf or another demihuman. “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl said. “One night, I was in my bed; the next, I was here.”

  “They were searching for people with magic, people they could take without being noticed,” Mistress Layla said. She sat on the floor, head bowed. I took the opportunity to sweep my senses over her. Her magic was drained, but it should recover in time. There were no obvious physical injuries. She’d been a slave. There’d been no point in hitting or kicking the poor woman to make her work harder. She couldn’t have done anything, save for following orders. “They took her by mistake, apparently. They put her in the cage to wait.”

  I studied the girl for a long moment, then opened the cage. She sprang out and gave me a hug, then drew back. I thought I remembered the name, from Master Clawthorne’s list of kidnap victims. A child who’d been unwillingly fostered by a distant relative ... too distant, apparently, to give much of a damn about her. Bastard. I felt a flash of pure hatred. In a properly run world, there would be someone to look after the orphans and make sure they found a proper home.

  “I was sent to find you,” I said. “What’s been happening here?”

  “They took me a few weeks ago,” Mistress Layla said. She didn’t sound any stronger. I feared the remnants of the collar might still be affecting her. “They broke through my defences, somehow. They must have done. I woke up with” - her hand touched her neck - “the collar around my throat. They ordered me around until they were sure of their control, then took me back to the shop and told me to pack everything I needed. I was going to work for them.”

  I nodded. I’d wondered if Mistress Layla had packed up herself. It explained why so many things had been left behind, if she’d been ordered to take only what she needed. The potion ingredients had been expensive ... I smiled, despite myself. There’d been a clue there. It was just a shame that I’d missed it.

  Mistress Layla swallowed. “Since then, I’ve been brewing blood-based enhancement potions,” she said. Her hands were shaking. “They didn’t give me a choice. They told me to do it and I did it. I took the blood from the kidnapped sorcerers and ...”

  I swore. Blood-based potions were dangerous. Enhancement potions ... I frowned as I remembered the scrolls I’d read in the last alchemical chamber. The super-soldiers hadn’t needed enhancement potions, not ones based on magical blood. Or so I thought ... enhancement potions were never quite as bad as outright necromancy, but using even a single dose took a high toll. And how many potions had Mistress Layla produced over the last few weeks?

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I told her, again. She’d been a slave. She could not have said no. “I ... who’s behind this?”

  Mistress Layla turned her eyes towards me. “It’s Prince ...”

  Something moved, behind us. A blurred form tore through her, fingers tearing through her neck. Blood splashed everywhere. The blur came towards me. I cast a force punch without thinking. The blur - the super-soldier, I realised numbly - was smashed flat against the far wall. The stone was cracked, pieces of debris falling to the ground. I barely noticed. I could hear more super-soldiers coming towards me.

  I cast a spell on Eleanor. The girl shrank, becoming a tiny piece of debris. She’d pass unnoticed, unless they brought experienced sorcerers in to search the entire chamber. I picked her up, told her to wait for me to come back or for the spell to wear off, then hid her somewhere out of sight. She’d be panicking when she turned back, but at least she’d be out of danger. I had a nasty feeling I knew where the enhancement potions had been going.

  It’s time to put an end to this, I thought, as I ran up the stairs. The wards crackled around me, but I didn’t give them a chance to lock on. And quickly.

  I smiled, despite everything. I was going to enjoy this.

  Chapter Nine

  The throne room betrayed a certain basic insecurity.

  I stepped through the door and looked around, trying not to roll my eyes at the gilt. The chamber was lined with gold and silver leaf, irresistibly drawing one’s attention towards the throne. Swords and spears, some of them looking rusted and old, hung from the walls. A pair of maps rested on a golden table - one showing Yolanda, one showing the three surrounding kingdoms - positioned at the edge of the chamber. I glanced at them, noting the arrows leading out of Yolanda and stabbing deep into the three kingdoms. It looked as if the prince was planning a war on three fronts.

  Prince Alvin lounged in the throne. He sat up as he saw me, magic crackling around him. I was unimpressed. He looked nothing like the upright and almost painfully handsome prince the statues had primed me to expect. He was short and overweight and ... I frowned at the latter. Overweight magicians were rare, almost unknown. Working magic was good exercise. And there was enough power boiling in the air to suggest the prince was a very powerful magician indeed.

  Or was there? My eyes narrowed as I studied the aura. It was ... weird. I’d never felt anything quite like it. The magic reminded me of a ritual spell, with magic from a dozen magicians concentrated and woven into a single piece of spellwork, but ... it was focused on the prince. It made no sense ... or did it? The prince’s enslaved alchemist had been churning out forbidden enhancement potions, using blood and organs sourced from magicians. It wouldn’t be safe to drink more than one or two doses in a month. How many doses was he drinking?

  The prince leaned forward. “Who are you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I tested his wards gingerly. He had little formal education - I supposed that explained why his wards were so simplistic - but he had a hell of a lot of power. Stolen power. Lord Ashworth hadn’t been that far wrong, when he’d suspected a necromancer. It wouldn’t be long before the prince took the plunge into outright necromancy. He was already halfway there.

  It was hard not to smash him flat. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You’re from the council, aren’t you?” The accusation in the prince’s voice was almost comical. “They sent you here to stop me.”

  “Something like that,” I said, vaguely. Lord Ashworth had known something was wrong, but he hadn’t suspected the truth. “What are you doing?”

  The prince stood. His wards grew stronger. I could feel them pressing down on me. “You will not be going back to your master, little sorcerer,” he said. “I think you’re going to stay a while with me.”

  “How nice,” I said, mischievously. My mind raced, slipping through his wards. He might not have personalised them, but he’d piled so many wards into his fort that hacking the spellware would take time ... time I doubted he was going to give me. I slipped a tiny hint of suggestion into my voice. “You’re building an army, aren’t you? Why?”

  The prince smiled. Aristocrats loved to brag. It was how they kept score. They knew - even if they refused to admit it openly - that they didn’t have any true power. A knight on horseback could dominate the battlefield, but if he were to be surrounded by angry peasants with pitchforks he’d be brought down in short order. They wanted - needed - to put on a show. They didn’t dare risk having their subjects call their bluff. They lacked the magic to make their power stick.

  “I’m going to take power,” the prince said. “First, my father. And then the surrounding kingdoms.”

  I was almost disappointed. My relationship with my father had never been that close - and he’d died just after I graduated - but I’d loved him and I never doubted he’d loved me. And this prince was about to kill his own father? He’d hardly be t
he first prince to put a knife in his own king’s back, but ... I had to admit he’d gone further than most. He’d done a quite remarkable job of building up a secret powerbase. The super-soldiers would be more than enough to take control of the tiny kingdom. And who would dare stand in his way?

  “Interesting,” I said. “I might be interested in a barony. Tell me more.”

  “My father bows and scrapes to our neighbours,” the prince hissed. I had the feeling he’d wanted to rant for a long time. “He bends the knee to them all, all the time! He’s a king and I’m a prince and yet we have to kneel before them? Intolerable!”

  “The three kingdoms are strong enough to take your kingdom effortlessly,” I said, mock-thoughtfully. Technically, Yolanda wasn’t even a kingdom. “Your father has no choice but to play the three monarchs off one another. How else is he going to maintain a precarious independence?”

  “We are kings,” the prince insisted. “I should be married by now. Do you know why I’m unmarried? Every time my father chooses a bride, it gets vetoed by one of the monarchs!”

  How lucky for your poor bride, I thought, nastily. The prince looked big enough to squash a horse, let alone a poor princess. I’m sure she’s very upset about it.