The Royal Sorceress by Christopher Nuttall Page B

nodded towards a middle-aged woman, who was lying on one of the beds, giggling to herself. “She was once a trained Talker, with a particular interest in helping to cure the sick. It was easy for her to peer into a person’s mind and discover what they were reluctant to tell her, or understand the true cause of their distress. And then she came here, into the mental storm, and opened her mind.”
    “And then she just lost herself,” Gwen said, bitterly. “Why...why do we even tolerate this?”
    Master Thomas caught her arm. “There isn’t a single aristocratic family in the Kingdom who would permit us to...kill mentally disturbed family members,” he said. “None of us enjoy watching them suffer, young lady, but there’s nothing we can do, apart from watching them die.”
    He looked down for a long second. “I’m sorry for bringing you here,” he admitted. “I needed you to develop mental shields before your training continued...”
    Gwen shook her head. “It’s forgiven,” she said, shortly. She didn’t want to know, but she had to ask. “What else is here?”
    The next ward stank so badly that Gwen had to push her pocket handkerchief against her nose to remain within the room. It was crammed with small beds, each one holding a young child. Like the older patients, the children were restrained, but they seemed to be inhumanly calm rather than traumatised. Only their eyes, staring at nothing, revealed that their minds were elsewhere. A handful of nurses with nervous eyes moved from child to child, changing the cloths that had been hung around their waists. They didn’t make eye contact with either of the visitors.
    Gwen forced herself to look at the children, even though every nerve in her body called out for her to run. They seemed to be evenly divided between male and female, ranging from five to nine years old. None of them seemed to be in good shape, despite the nurses; she suspected that the nurses did the bare minimum they needed to do and left the children to fester. The aroma in the room was one of death. How long, she asked herself as she struggled to hold back the urge to vomit, did the children live before they died? And what happened to the bodies.
    “When I am Royal Sorcerer,” she said, flatly, “I will not suffer this to continue.”
    Master Thomas nodded, slowly. “I thought the same,” he said. “Perhaps you will be the one who finds a solution to these poor wretches. Or perhaps you will realise that everything comes with a price.”
    The atmosphere in the room changed, sharply. Gwen glanced up, uncertain of just what had disturbed her, and saw one of the children staring directly at her. The other children were scrabbling against their restraints, fighting to sit up and add their gazes to the disturbing stare. Every child in the room was fighting to look right at Gwen. She felt a tingling down the back of her spine as their eyes bored into her. They had magic, she realised, magic tainted by madness. Who knew what they could do? The nurses acted as if they were scared of their charges. Perhaps they had good reason to be scared.
    “I have seen you,” one of the girls said. Her voice was cracked and broken, an old woman’s voice in a young girl’s body. The effect was chilling. “You will rise so high and then fall so low.”
    “I have seen your lover,” one of the boys said. “He will burn with passion for his cause, yet you will catch his eye.”
    “You will feel yourself torn and broken,” a different girl said. “You will watch as madness and anarchy consume the land.”
    “You will see your lover die,” the first girl said. Her eyes were bright in her emaciated face. “You will watch as he burns to death, consumed by a fire greater than his passion.”
    “Your choice will save or damn a world,” the oldest boy said. Blood was leaking from his eyes as he struggled against the straps holding him in his cot. “You will choose...”
    Gwen stumbled backwards. Master