Elphaba Grimmerie More Spells

'If I give the Grimmerie to you, will you go?' she said. 'Give me Nor and take your brand of evil and leave us alone at last?'

'I am too old to travel now,' he said, 'and why should I give up what I have worked for all these years?'

'Because I will use this book and destroy you with it if you don't,' she said.

'You cannot read it,' he said. 'You are of Oz and you cannot do such a thing.

'I can read more of it than you suspect,' she said. 'I do not know what it all means. I have seen pages about unleashing the hidden energies of matter. I have seen pages about tampering with the orderly flow of time. I have seen disquisitions about weapons too vile to use, about how to poison water, about how to breed a more docile population. There are diagrams of weapons of torture. Though the drawings and the words seem misty to my eyes, I can continue to learn. I am not too old.'

'Those are ideas of great interest to our times,' he said, though he seemed surprised that she had taken in as much as she had.

'Not to me,' she said. 'You have done enough already. If I give it to you, will you surrender Nor to me?'

'You should not trust my promise,' he said, sighing. 'Really, my child.'

- Wicked, Book 5