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.Emily would have asked long ago, if she’d been in his place, but he was a merchant who wouldn’t want to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.It wasn’t as if she was selling him something that had a nasty sting in the tail.“Very dangerous,” a voice said, from behind them.“It would have crippled the poor girl.”Emily spun around as the world blurred around her, raising her hands to cast a defensive spell.A man was right behind her, wearing a hood that concealed his features.how had he come so close without her being aware of his presence? Imaiqah seemed to be frozen, along with the rest of the street, her form slightly blurred.Then the figure pulled back his hood to reveal his face.Emily relaxed in relief as she recognized Void.“We don’t have too long to talk,” Void said.Now that she knew much more about magic, she could sense the vast reserves of power surrounding the sorcerer.“The spell that isolates us from the world can’t be maintained for very long.”Emily glanced at Imaiqah.Her friend was frozen solid, as if time itself had been stopped.“You’ve stopped time,” she gasped, in absolute disbelief.She’d once watched a movie based on that premise, but it had been silly and probably unrealistic.“What.how have you done it?”“Only in a very small area,” Void said.He was uncomfortably close to her, but as Emily looked around she realized that the spell was barely a meter in radius.“And we can’t actually move outside the bubble without collapsing it.Time doesn’t seem to like people who attempt to defy her rules.”Emily nodded, gathering herself.“What are you doing here?”“I merely wanted to see how you were coping with Whitehall,” Void said.“You’ve created quite a stir, you know? There’s an Accounting Guild that wants your head on a platter, preferably not attached to your body.”Emily swallowed.“I didn’t mean to ruin their lives.”“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Void said.He waved his hand through the air dismissively.“And don’t worry about what you did to that silly brat of a princess either.It’s good to remind the nobility that sorcerers have power from time to time.Keeps them properly respectful.”“I nearly killed her,” Emily pointed out.“Would you have killed her when you were my age?”“My magic surfaced a bit earlier than yours,” Void said absently.His eyes sharpened, suddenly.“And I would probably have transformed her into something awful and left her that way long enough to teach her a lesson.”Emily looked at him.“What’s the story between you and the Grandmaster, anyway?”Void shrugged.“Why do you want to know?”“Because the Grandmaster seems to be willing to give me classes that I shouldn’t be able to take for years.Because I practically got away with almost murdering a Royal Princess.Because.because they seem willing to do exactly what you suggest.”“Let’s just say,” Void said, after a long moment, “that the Grandmaster and I have many differences of opinion, but we are on the same side.”“Yes, but you seem to live an independent existence,” Emily pointed out.“How many sorcerers are there like you?”“That’s a result of power,” Void said.“You may end up in a Tower of your own one day.”Emily sensed that she wasn’t going to get a straighter answer, so she changed the subject.“Why are they all so stupid?”Void smiled.“I beg your pardon?”“The Allied Lands,” Emily said.“They should unite against the necromancers, but they spend half of their time fighting each other.”“Just like the necromancers,” Void said.He looked down at his pale hands.“Many of the aristocrats who are in power at the moment are descended from those who ruled the First Empire.They made themselves Kings when the Empire was destroyed.Do you think that they want to accept subordination again?”He snorted.“There are rumors that there once was a missing heir to the Empire’s throne.They killed him, just to make sure the Empire could never rise again.”“I see,” Emily said.“And there are no blood descendants anywhere?”“Not as far as anyone knows,” Void admitted.He shook his head.“But you’re right.They are crippling the war effort.”He looked over at Imaiqah’s frozen form.“Wouldn’t it work so much better if this one was in charge of the war?”“Probably,” Emily said.“Why don’t you take over the world?”Void gave her a long, searching look.“There have been magicians who sought vast power over the world.Care to guess what happened to them?”Emily winced as the realization struck her.“They became necromancers.Why.why did they become so corrupt?”“They wanted power and power tends to corrupt,” Void observed.He paused, as if he was trying to decide if he should tell her something.“There are.accidents, sometimes, when a magician gains vastly boosted powers.They are always terrifying to the rest of the world because the magician might be driven mad, or plunge headlong into necromancy.And then there are the idiots who think they can handle necromancy and use its power for good.”He shook his head.“There was a King who believed he could keep control of himself if he asked for volunteers to be sacrificed.It seemed to work fine, at first, until his mind became so twisted that he deluded himself that his entire Kingdom had volunteered to be sacrificed.He would have killed them all if his son hadn’t stuck a knife in his back.”Emily nodded, thoughtfully.If Berserker was addictive, necromancy had to be even more dangerous.Void seemed to be suggesting that no one managed to avoid addiction, which inevitably led to disaster.“But never mind that for the moment,” Void said.He looked down into her eyes.“You are aware that you have been noticed, aren’t you?”“You sent me to Whitehall on a Dragon,” Emily pointed out.“And you told everyone that I was a Child of Destiny.”“You are a Child of Destiny,” Void said.“I never told them a lie.”“Yes, but.” Emily found herself groping for words and failing.“I’m not a Child of Destiny in the sense that they mean.”“What does that have to do with anything?” Void asked, honestly puzzled.“The world may not revolve around you, but you became very important the moment our friend from the dark side plucked you out of your world and brought you here.And you have already crippled a Guild that was known for being corrupt, greedy, bloated and stupid.And you have given a royal brat a lesson she needs for the future.And your stirrups may change the way we fight wars.”He grinned, mischievously.“Child of Destiny or not, you are changing the world,” he reminded her.“I’d suggest you never tell them the truth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]