Schooled in Magic (58 page)

...Something was definitely wrong, but cold resolve pushed her doubts aside. Whitehall, her new home, the home she’d embraced so completely that she had never looked back, was dead. And all she could do was avenge it.

The sound of alarm bells grew louder, yet she thought nothing of them. All that mattered was extracting revenge. Even the discovery that one of the peepholes looked out into the changing rooms didn’t distract her from her quest...

...She stepped out of the passageway, spells charged and primed, ready for the command to unleash themselves. There would be monsters blocking her path, she knew. They’d have to be killed and killed quickly, before they could summon reinforcements. But, instead, there were bodies scattered everywhere. Emily recoiled in horror as she realized that she was staring down at the last stand of the Redshirts. Jade had died from a sword wound to the throat that had almost beheaded him. Cat had been partially transfigured and then left to die of shock. Bran had a long spear rammed through his head. Rupert had been poisoned, judging by the look of agony on his face. And there was no sign of Pillion at all. It took her a long chilling moment to realize that his body had been blown apart and she was walking through the remains of her teammate. They’d fought bravely and they’d lost ...

... But something was wrong.

Emily stopped, staring at the bodies. Something was nagging at her mind, something so obvious that she should see it at once, and yet it was so hard to think clearly. What was wrong with her? Aside from shock.

A monster howled behind her. Startled, she headed towards the doors that led into the castle’s deepest secret, the magical core that linked directly to the ley line nexus. The monsters would be sorry that they’d ever invaded Whitehall and slaughtered her friends. They would pay ...

... The door opened, revealing five necromancers. Emily reacted on instinct, unleashing the spells that she’d stored inside her body; they tumbled backwards. Waves of magic spun around her as she ran past them, heading towards the nexus, a source of mana so powerful that it took the most complex wards she’d ever seen to tap and use it for the school. Behind her, the necromancers were rallying, putting aside their differences to stop her; she found herself deflecting freeze spells and even a deadly killing curse without difficulty.

This had to be a dream ...

... She ran right into the wards, feeling something welling up from inside her, and the world went black...

Emily’s eyes snapped open. The Grandmaster was staring down at her, his face twisted with anger ... and fear. What was he doing in her bedroom?

No, she wasn’t
in
her bedroom. Instead, she lay on the floor of a chamber she didn’t recognize ...

... And something was very wrong. It took her a moment to realize the wards that had been an ever-present background noise since she had come to Whitehall were ... gone.

The Grandmaster hauled her bodily to her feet. “What have you done?”

Emily stared at him, confused and disoriented. She wore her nightgown, part of her mind noted. What had happened to her? The last thing she recalled was going to sleep and dreaming and ...

He shook her, raw magic crackling around his fingertips. “
What have you done
?”

“Sympathetic magic,” Professor Thande said. Emily looked at him, feeling her head spinning. Wasn’t he dead? She’d seen the body ... hadn’t she? “Look at her hands, Grandmaster.”

The Grandmaster caught Emily’s left hand and wrenched it open, twisting it sharply enough for Emily to cry out in pain. There was a bloody mark on her hand, where she’d squeezed it so tightly that her nails had cut into her skin. She’d done it to herself ... her head, still spinning, couldn’t cope with what she saw. If the Grandmaster hadn’t held her upright, she would have collapsed and probably fainted on the stone floor.

“There were necromancers,” she said, finally. But ... but necromancers
never
worked together for long–and none of them would want their rivals to gain control of Whitehall. “I saw necromancers ...”

“You nearly killed a dozen of my staff,” the Grandmaster snarled. Emily stared at him, slowly realizing that her nightmare had been more than just a nightmare. “And the wards are coming down.”

“She doesn’t know, Grandmaster,” Thande said patiently. “Very few top-rank magicians could master a protection against sympathetic magic once the caster had their hooks in them. A first-year student couldn’t
hope
to defend herself.”

Emily stared at him. “What ... what happened?”

“You were cut when you were kidnapped in Dragon’s Den,” the Grandmaster said bluntly. He relaxed his grip on her, just enough to allow her to breathe normally. “Malefic cut you and then left you alone, knowing you would escape. Once he’d killed his two allies, he took your blood to the necromancer, who used it to influence your mind. Whatever you thought you were seeing wasn’t real. He used you as his puppet.”

Emily ... felt soiled. Violated. She’d known that mind control spells existed; she’d seen them on her very first day in the new world. And yet, she had never really grasped the fact that she could be ...
influenced
by someone outside the school’s wards. All the little practical jokes she’d learned were nothing compared to the delusion that had been inflicted on her ...

... It struck her, in a moment of horror, that she might have killed some of her friends. Shadye had woven a net around her mind and manipulated her as easily as she might manipulate a character in a computer game. And she hadn’t known the difference.

“He used you to bring down the wards,” Thande said. “The school is now defenseless.”

“But...” Emily swallowed and started again. “But I thought there were spells to cut the link between me and my blood. Weren’t they performed at the infirmary?”

“You
can’t
sever the link completely,” the Grandmaster said flatly. “All you can really do is ... weaken it to the point where it’s effectively useless for magic. Kyla performed the spells to weaken the link at my request, but Shadye must have done something to ensure that the link could only be rendered dormant, not destroyed. And then he used it when the time was right.”

Emily stared at him, realizing–for the first time–just how patiently Shadye had plotted and schemed ever since Void had snatched her from his clutches. Void had risked his life to save her, which meant that Emily had to be important–and everything she’d done since then only underlined her status as a Child of Destiny. And he had to have been
delighted
when his servants had kidnapped Alassa as well. No one would consider that Emily had been the prime target when the kidnappers had also walked away with a Royal Princess. But it had all been intended to obtain a sample of Emily’s blood, then allow her to escape, never knowing that had been the plan all along. And Whitehall had performed the standard checks and
known
that Emily was safe ...

And then he’d forced her to betray Whitehall ...

The Grandmaster frowned. “I am going to have to scan your mind,” he said. “Please try to relax. It can be painful if you fight.”

Emily had no time to object before he locked eyes with her. She found herself unable to look away. The sense of being violated returned, a thousand times stronger, as she felt the Grandmaster rummage through her thoughts. Oddly, the sense of being isolated from her own mind, as if she were looking down at herself from the outside, allowed her to see the subtle tendrils Shadye had crafted and spun into her mind. And how her own mind, responding to his prompts, had created a scenario powerful enough to keep her enthralled until it was far too late.

“I’m going to have to cut those links,” the Grandmaster said - or thought. Their minds were so entangled that Emily honestly couldn’t tell the difference. Mr. Spock couldn’t have done a better job. “And you really shouldn’t have sworn that oath.”

Emily winced, expecting immediate death. But she hadn’t intended to betray the fairies–she hadn’t realized that the Grandmaster intended to scan her mind in time to say anything–and the oath didn’t seem to consider it a breach of contract. And yet she had still failed ...

“Don’t worry about it,” the Grandmaster ordered. “There is little need for fairies to be slaughtered, save for spells that”–there was a hint of hesitation–“you are really too young to know about. I will keep their secret.”

Emily smiled, but didn’t relax. “Will you swear an oath to that effect?”

“Smart people try to avoid swearing oaths,” the Grandmaster said. There was a moment as he peered into the delusions her mind had created. “You were a tool in the hands of a necromancer with power and knowledge.”

“I feel bad enough already,” Emily snapped. Mind-to-mind, there was no way to conceal anything from him, or to swallow her tongue before she said anything. She flushed hotly, embarrassed; it was a feeling that was only made worse by his shimmer of amusement. “Can you stop him from doing it again?”

“Yes,” the Grandmaster said patiently. There was a moment when he seemed to be working directly on her mind. “It is done.”

Emily felt her head spin one final time, just as Thande pushed a potion-filled gourd into her hand . He urged her to drink it. It tasted foul–all medical potions tasted foul, for some reason–but as soon as she swallowed the first drops she felt a great deal better.

But she couldn’t rest for long. A clanging alarm in the distance brought her to her feet–without any clear memory of how she’d once again been on the floor–and reaching for her sword before remembering that she was in her nightgown. At least she was decent, thankfully. One of the ones she’d considered wearing back home would have shocked local opinion.

“The outer wards are gone,” the Grandmaster said, quietly. “The spells that redirected the power of the nexus are collapsing. It won’t be long before the inner wards are gone too.”

Emily stared down at her bloodstained hands, knowing she had failed. She’d
loved
Whitehall far more than any other school she’d attended, for it had given her a chance at a very different life. The tutors hadn’t treated her as an idiot, nor had they been idiots themselves. Even the harsh discipline seemed unimportant compared to what she had learned to do.

But she’d betrayed the school. There was no way they’d let her attend another magic school after this, assuming she survived the next few hours. The scenarios her mind had constructed might come true after all. Shadye would want to capture as many of the students as possible–he could sacrifice them to boost his power–but he wouldn’t want to risk capturing the tutors. They knew enough magic to be dangerous.

“I’m sorry,” she said, finally. It seemed so inadequate. “I ... I didn’t know ...”

“Very few people could have realized what was going on and broken free,” Professor Thande assured her. “You are
far
from alone.”

The Grandmaster stood up. “Professor Thande, I need you to start evacuating the younger students through the portals. The school’s interior dimensions are based on different spells, so they should remain stable until the necromancers reach this room and start trying to fiddle with the wards. I’ll have Whitehall open sealed corridors for the students to escape.”

“I have war potions brewing in my office,” Thande said. He sounded ... reluctant to run. “I can’t leave the building ...”

“You can return once the younger students are out of here,” the Grandmaster said. There was no give in his voice at all. “The building’s interior defenses are still intact–Shadye wouldn’t have known about them when he was a student–so we should be able to put up a good fight, but we have to assume the worst.”

There was a bleakness in his voice that almost crushed Emily’s soul. Whitehall was the linchpin of the southern defenses. If it fell, the necromancers would be able to ravage at least eight countries before they ran into more natural barriers to their expansion. The Allied Lands would be weakened, perhaps crippled, even if they
did
finally put all of their differences aside and unite behind a single monarch.

And it was all her fault.

She looked up suddenly. “Shadye was a student here?”

“There was a ... difference of opinion,” the Grandmaster said. “He left the school and vanished. It was a long time before he resurfaced and longer still before we realized that Shadye had once been one of our students.”

Emily looked back down at her hands. “So you know his name,” she said. “Couldn’t you ...”

“Not enough of it to matter,” the Grandmaster admitted. “And even if we did, he knows how to ward himself. Using his full name against him is unlikely to work.”

He turned and marched to the door. “I can’t put you on the front lines. Shadye is crafty and has plenty of raw power, perhaps enough to re-establish a link between his sample of your blood and
you
. We cannot take the risk.”

Emily hesitated, then nodded once, bitterly.
She
wouldn’t have trusted herself either, because there was no easy way to know if she was acting of her own will, or if Shadye was mentally influencing her until she thought that stabbing the Grandmaster in the back was a good idea. Shadye could twist her mind to the point where she could become convinced that black was white, right was wrong and monarchy was actually a viable governing system.