The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) by Christopher Nuttall Read Free Book Online Page A

had that day when she’d discovered that she was a magician. Even without knowing the basics, she’d managed to learn quite a bit on her own. Her ability to combine the different talents was remarkable, according to Master Thomas. But then, she had never truly realised that there were different talents.
    “Burn,” she whispered, opening her eyes.
    The air grew warmer around her as she projected her magic outwards. Wallpaper started to blacken, then catch fire; the wooden staircase began to glow with light as flames leapt up the banisters and crawled through the plaster covering the stone walls. And yet, Gwen kept pouring on the magic, until the stones themselves began to crack under the heat. A roaring holocaust started to rage through the house.
    She drew on her magic again, forming a protective bubble around her body, and waited. The fire was completely out of control now, obliterating the scanty bedding and melting the metal beds into puddles of molten iron. A giant rafter crashed down from high overhead as the flames destroyed the buildings supports, followed rapidly by one of the storage chests that had held what food and drink were offered to the captive women. It was already blazing with eerie green and blue flames.
    Something must have been left inside , Gwen realised, as the staircase collapsed into a heap of flaming debris. She looked up, just in time to see cracks forming above her head as the ceiling started to follow the staircase into destruction. The flames grew brighter for a long second, then the ceiling caved in. Pieces of flaming debris bounced off Gwen’s protective bubble and crashed to the ground.
    She heard – or felt – a dull creak echoing through the house as one of the walls started to collapse. Moments later, large parts of the roof collapsed inwards, smashing through the remaining parts of the upper floor. Gwen saw, for one brief moment, a body, just before it vanished within the flames. She’d given orders that all of the bodies were to be destroyed – it was standard procedure to cremate the dead, now that necromancers could bring new life to rotting corpses – but one had clearly been missed. Or maybe it had just been very well hidden.
    There was a final crash as the rest of the roof fell in on her, landing on top of the protective bubble. Gwen kept her thoughts under tight control – panicking now would be disastrous – and altered the shape of her bubble. The rubble was pushed aside, allowing her to levitate herself up and out of the destroyed building. To the sorcerers outside, she had to look like an angel rising out of the flames.
    A Blazer could have destroyed the building, particularly if he was smart enough to realise that direct beams of magic would be less effective than making fire. A Mover could have protected himself and then escaped the holocaust. But Masters could use both powers – and so much more, besides. Whatever Colonel Sebastian might say, there was a very good reason why the Royal Sorcerer had to be a Master Magician.
    The grass was smouldering, she realised as she dropped to the ground in front of the senior magicians, but the flames were unlikely to spread. Instead, without her magic or much left to burn, the flames were already dying down, leaving nothing more than a pile of charred rubble. All of the evidence of the farm’s existence had been destroyed.
    “The fire brigade will be on their way,” Sir James said. There was a round of nervous chuckles from some of the magicians, although others were watching Gwen coldly, perhaps regretting the end of an era. “What do you want to tell them?”
    Gwen shrugged. Both the fire brigade and the Bow Street Runners had been given specific instructions to ignore the farms, leaving the guards stationed there to handle any problems. She honestly had no idea if that had changed, but it hardly mattered. Right now, a word from Sir James would suffice to distract interested policemen – and the fire was already dying