Schooled in Magic (52 page)

Perhaps there was no such thing as morality in the first place. All they had was the delusion that they had a working system.

She was still mulling over this question when they started to clamber down out of the Dark City and back towards where they had left their tents. As before, the Sergeants gave the forest a wide berth, even though they had told their students that it was safe. Emily allowed herself to wonder if they had their own reasons for avoiding it, or if they were just trying to keep the students aware of possible dangers. It was a more productive thing to wonder about than the existence–or non-existence–of souls.

“There are creepier places to visit,” Miles said, in answer to a question from Jade. “You may be lucky enough to visit Ashfall one day. A necromancer died there, fifty years ago, and the land is still screaming.”

“No one wants to go there,” Harkin added dryly. “What about the Desert of Death?”

Emily looked at him. “The Desert of Death?”

“Rumor has it that an immensely powerful witch was beaten to death there for daring to fall in love with the wrong man,” Harkin informed her. “Which does, of course, raise the question of how she was killed in the first place, if she was so powerful.”

Harkin snorted. “When she died, she cursed the entire land to wither and die. The land became barren within a year, and the entire population had to flee. I think many of them became slaves in the nearby countryside because there was nowhere else to go.”

“That’s one story,” Miles said, with a shrug. “Another one is that the local lord was experimenting with necromancy and it all went horribly wrong, or more horribly wrong than normal, seeing that no experiments with limited necromancy ever end well. Somehow, and no one knows how, he drew the life out of a hundred square miles around his castle, wiping out his subjects, their livestock and every plant in the area. The entire country became a desert afterwards.”

Emily shivered, wondering which of the two stories was actually true. This world didn’t have television and reporters to bring people the news directly into their homes; it didn’t even have newspapers, just broadsheet readers and heralds. A rumor could grow completely out of proportion by the time it crossed from one end of the Allied Lands to the other, creating a myth that bore no resemblance to reality. No wonder that the Allied Lands didn’t seem to take necromancy and the necromancers quite seriously. There was always an air of detachment in the news she heard rather than the immediacy she remembered from back home.

Jade frowned thoughtfully. “No one has ever tried to replant the area?”

“They’ve tried,” Miles said. “It’s never worked. I think that some of the nearby countries believe the desert is actually expanding, very slowly. Given time, it may swallow up the entire continent.”

“I hope that’s not true,” Emily said, shaking her head in disbelief. Back home, they’d managed to stop deserts from advancing, but here there was magic involved. Wild magic tainted with necromancy, if the second story was the true one. “What are they going to do if the desert reaches their Kingdoms?”

“Pray,” Harkin said. He chuckled darkly. “What else can they do?”

“Sergeant,” a voice shouted. Bran and Cat had gone ahead of the rest of the team. “The tent!”

Harkin sprang forward, running ahead of Emily and Jade. They followed him, running around the edge of the forest, only to see a pile of ashes where their tent–and supplies–had been. Emily stared in numb horror as the Sergeant slowed to a halt, looking down at the ashes. Their rucksacks, their food, their blankets ... they had all been destroyed. And there was a strange, almost
oily
scent in the air.

“Hellfire,” Sergeant Harkin muttered. He glanced from side to side, sniffing the air. “Draw your swords, all of you. And ready your defensive spells.”

Emily obeyed automatically. The short sword she’d been given hadn’t been charmed to be unstoppable–apparently, there was no such thing as an unstoppable weapon–but she knew how to use it, she reminded herself. She was tempted to also draw her dagger as the team looked around, searching for possible threats. The strange stink in the air was growing stronger.

“We’re sitting targets here,” Harkin said after a moment. “When I give the word, move back towards the tunnel at speed, but keep your swords at the ready. If something appears that isn’t one of us, hit first and ask questions later. And keep your voices down.”

Emily glanced at Jade, but he looked as puzzled as she was. If their tents had been burned, someone or something was hunting them, probably something
intelligent
. Was this a test of some kind, Emily asked herself silently as she braced herself to move, or was it
real
? She couldn’t believe that the Sergeants would throw away everything in the rucksacks, including the potions, just for a test. But they’d surprised her before.

“That stink is almost certainly goblins,” Miles muttered. He was making passes through the air, casting spying spells in the hopes of catching sight of their enemy. “And probably backed up by Orcs. I think there’s definitely some Orc in the air.”

“Or maybe they’re just trying to confuse us,” Harkin muttered back. He raised his voice. “Jade, Emily, Cat: follow Miles back to the tunnel. The rest of you, stay here at the ready.”

Emily felt her heart pounding in her chest as she started to move, eyes darting around desperately for unseen threats. Goblins, according to the books she’d read, could be clever and dangerous; Orcs were rarely clever, but those that were tended to be smarter than the average human. And both semi-human races infested lands held by the necromancers. She kept looking around, seeing nothing, until they reached the tunnel. Miles jumped back as blades lashed out at him, trying to drive them back from the tunnel mouth.

“Damn it,” Jade said. He raised his sword as blades kept slashing out of the tunnel’s mouth. “We’re being
hunted
!”

Emily looked back at the forest and saw a small wave of inhuman figures appearing out of the darkness. “Use your magic,” Harkin ordered sharply. Unlike the Redshirts, he didn’t sound as though he were on the verge of panic. “Take down as many of them as you can, now!”

“Use
Berserker
,” Jade said as the goblins advanced. The largest barely came up to Emily’s abdomen, but there was nothing weak about them. They were carrying swords that were bigger than they were. “You
cannot
fight them without it.”

Emily took a deep breath, concentrated and triggered the spell.

T
HE SPELL TOOK EFFECT AT ONCE.
Time seemed to slow down as Emily lifted her sword, seeing the goblins inching towards them in terrifying slow motion. Part of her mind noted that they were ugly creatures, humanoid with big eyes, bigger ears and very sharp teeth; the rest of her focused on fighting them. She sprang forward as the goblins lifted their weapons and sliced through the lead goblin’s neck. The goblin collapsed, greenish blood leaking from its neck, but Emily barely noticed–or cared.
Berserker
hummed through her system as she threw herself at the goblins, moving far faster than the tiny savages could hope to match. It was easy to avoid their stabbing blows and slice them apart.

A goblin lashed out at her, but he moved slowly and Emily found it easy to dodge. Her confidence was building rapidly, along with her strength; she slammed her sword into the goblin’s makeshift armor and sent the little creature stumbling backwards. Another goblin leapt in and cut her with a knife, but Emily felt nothing.
Berserker
countered pain while the spell was operating, leaving her unheeding of the blood trickling down her arm. She knew that she would pay for that afterwards–the sense of invulnerability was an illusion–but she found it hard to care. The spell held her firmly in its grasp.

Magic flared beside her as Jade and the rest of the team fought with their various powers. Goblins died in flame or froze solid before toppling over and dying. The Sergeants fought with a cold precision and power that was all the more terrifying for having no
Berserker
aiding them. Emily felt her blood pound in her ears as she lashed out at the final goblin and cut it apart, just before the world started to spin around her ...

The world faded to black.

The next thing she noticed was that the sun was starting to set. She was lying on the ground, dazed. Her head was spinning and she felt incredibly weak, while her body ached with pain. It took her several minutes to remember the goblins and the blurred memories of the fight, where she’d killed at least a dozen creatures while lost in the battle-trance of
Berserker
. The memories rose up in front of her and she swallowed hard, unable to repress the feeling of sickness at what she’d done. She’d killed intelligent creatures, creatures that might be cousins to humanity ... and she’d done so without even
caring
. Even the knowledge that the goblins would have killed them all if they hadn’t been killed first didn’t make her feel any better.

Jade knelt down beside her and tapped her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Dizzy,” Emily said after a moment.
Berserker
took a lot out of her; in hindsight, it might not have been the best choice of spell for the battle. But without it ... would she have been able to fight so effectively? “What ... what happened?”

“You killed a dozen goblins, then collapsed,” Jade said. “I think you won the battle single-handedly. We killed the remainder and then fled away from the tunnels, carrying you with us.”

“Keep your voice down,” a gruff voice added. Emily twisted her neck–it was suddenly difficult to move–and saw Sergeant Harkin standing there. “We’re still being hunted.”

Emily tried to stumble to her feet, only to be held down gently by Jade. “You need to drink another potion,” Jade said, passing her a gourd. He must have carried it with him through the city, rather than leaving it in the tent. “
Berserker
nearly killed you.”

“I know,” Emily admitted. Mistress Irene had warned her that the sensation of power, of being utterly fearless and invulnerable, was addictive. But the spell drained magic and then it went onwards to drain life force. If she’d been alone...eventually, the spell would have failed, leaving her in the midst of angry enemies and drained of all her power. “Why...why didn’t you use it?”

“
You
didn’t have enough experience to fight without it,” Harkin said. There was something in his tone that bothered Emily, before she realized that she’d turned into a liability. She would barely be able to walk for hours after using the spell. “Can you walk now?”

Emily finished drinking the potion–it tasted foul, unsurprisingly–and managed to stumble to her feet with Jade’s help. Her legs felt like useless sacks of potatoes, no matter how hard she tried to force them to move. Only the sense that she was slowing down the rest of the team kept her upright as she leaned against Jade, eyes darting from side to side. They were hidden within a small forest of trees, with no sign of any more goblins, but she couldn’t escape the sense that they were being watched.

Harkin was right; they
were
being hunted.

“We had to carry you as we fled the Dark City,” Jade said, filling her in as the Sergeant walked back to the watchers. “They said that going into the tunnels would be too dangerous; we’d either be caught by the goblins or attract attention from other creatures as we fought our way through them. But we’ve heard sounds from other goblin hunting parties...”

Cat looked up as Emily staggered back into the group. “I’ve never heard of goblins operating in unison,” he said, grimly. There was a fresh nasty-looking scar running down his cheek, far worse than the scar they’d inflicted on Emily in the fight. Someone had bound the wound, bandaging it with a shirt. “They’re not known for being friendly souls.”

“Maybe someone has been encouraging them,” Jade offered. He picked up a fruit and passed it to Emily, who was too tired to care what it was. She nibbled it gratefully and dropped the remains in the hole they’d dug to bury all traces of their passing. “We’re not
that
far from the necromancers.”

Emily shivered. Had the goblins set out to capture
her
? The thought was a terrifying one, yet she couldn’t see how the goblins had known in advance that she would be coming, let alone get organized in time to try to snatch her. And they
had
tried to kill her when she’d been fighting them...the memories welled up in front of her eyes and she felt sick. She’d killed–slaughtered–intelligent creatures and felt nothing, not until afterwards. Had they deserved to die?

“It could be a great deal worse,” Harkin said, keeping his voice low. “We all assumed that the mountains blocked the necromancers from advancing forward, unless they went through the pass. But if they’ve managed to find a tunnel, or cut one, that allows them to outflank Whitehall - we could be in some considerable trouble.”

He looked around, his dark face furrowed in thought. “We’re going to have to move out in two minutes. Your orders are simple: you are to head back to Whitehall and inform the Grandmaster, whatever happens. Someone
has
to report that there may be a tunnel allowing the necromancers access to the Allied Lands.”