by Kailin Gow
“Maybe I should claim you instead of the foolish boy,” the voice from the box said, almost a whisper now. “Maybe I shouldn’t destroy you. Maybe I should make you my champion.”
“No,” Wirt said, through gritted teeth. “No!”
As he did that, power leapt up, wreathing his hands in flame. The mist coating them seemed to recoil from it like some kind of snake, pulling back into the box. “Then you’ll die, as you should.”
“I won’t be the one who dies,” Wirt said, raising his hand and calling up more fire. He’d used it to melt stones before, so how much different would it be to destroy one ancient heart? He would burn it until there was nothing left of it, the box or the mist.
“You’re too late,” the voice said. “You were always too late.”
Wirt looked down at the heart, and somehow it seemed like it was less real. Less solid. It was fading away, Wirt realized with a start, and he poured fire down into the box as swiftly as he could, hoping to catch it before it was gone. The heat of the flames his elemental magic called up was enough that the sides of the box buckled and started to melt, but Wirt knew even as he stopped the spell that it hadn’t destroyed the heart. It was gone.
Gone where? Wirt could guess the answer to that as more people ran past him. He stood, and with everyone else trying to get away, he found himself alone in a clear space in front of the stand. A little way away, Roland was still there, breathing heavily and looking around as though looking at the world for the first time. The first time in centuries, at least.
“I should have done this at the start,” he said, in a louder, clearer version of the voice from the box. “I wanted the foolish boy to have his chance, but this is so much more.”
Wirt looked at him then. Really looked at him, with the kind of magical awareness that he’d been training over the past few weeks. He saw Roland, and so much about him wasn’t himself anymore. He looked deeper, and for a moment, it was like Roland’s skin fell away, because Wirt was sure that he could see the black heart inside him, pressed against his and beating with it, tendrils of green smoke wrapped around it like chains.
“I will destroy you,” Roland said, softly, confidently, and Wirt knew just by looking at him that he was out classed. This wasn’t Roland anymore. This wasn’t just a student. Whoever had taken his body was a master of magic just to do that.
Then a pair of figures stepped past Wirt, into the space between him and Roland. Ender Paine looked terrifying. His eyes seemed to glow with black light, and he had removed those strange white gloves he always wore to reveal hands covered in scars and tattoos that seemed to shift and blur as they formed mystical symbols with every movement of his fingers. Ms. Lake looked almost as dangerous. Her hair seemed to float in some kind of unseen wind, while small pools of water seemed to form with every step she took.
“This has gone on long enough,” Ender Paine said.
Chapter 19
“Ender Paine and Vivaine Lake,” Roland said in that strange new voice of his. “You’re really going to stop me? You should be on my side, both of you.”
“And yet we are not,” the headmaster said, the runes on his ungloved hands glowing an angry red. “Perhaps it is the way you have attacked my school.” His voice rose to a roar with the last two words and the sky seemed to darken around him. Where he stood on the sidelines, even Wirt flinched.
“And you?” Roland asked Ms. Lake. “From what I remember, you have no more love for Merlin than I do. Weren’t you one of those who helped to send him into his slumber?”
“And I have regretted it every moment since,” Ms. Lake said. “You get one chance. Leave Roland. Leave him now.”
“You think I am some pathetic child to be cowed by the two of you?” Roland demanded.
“But there aren’t just two of them.” That voice came from behind Roland, and Wirt looked past him to see Ms. Burns standing there. Her red dress seemed to shimmer like a heat haze, while her hair flickered as though it was actually composed of flames. Combined with the clearly visible points to her ears, she looked ethereal, impossible.
Roland didn’t seem impressed. “I can kill three of you as easily as two.”
“Really?” Ender Paine asked, raising an eyebrow. “Kill three of the most powerful mages in this kingdom? I think I would like to see you try.”
Roland waved a hand, and the three quantum balls he’d been using seemed to leap up of their own accord, circling above his hand like moons around a central planet. They glowed a weird, unhealthy green now, which seemed to Wirt like the same color as the mist had been before.
“Fine,” Roland said. “Die, then.”
The balls shot out, one at each teacher. Ms. Lake waved a hand and vanished, the ball intended for her shooting through the space where she’d been. Ms. Burns seemed to split and multiply, dozens of her occupying the space where she had been. The ball darted after one then another, chasing after illusions until it ran out of energy. Wirt had to admit he was impressed. A glamor that could fool an object like the quantum ball was obviously a powerful one.
As for Ender Paine, he simply stretched out his hands, those runes on them glowing with dull red power, and caught the ball heading towards him. Just that. There was no thunderclap. No flash of light as magic met magic. There was no sign of the headmaster disintegrating either as the quantum ball met his flesh. He just caught it, and in many ways, that was the single most impressive thing he could have done.
He seemed to concentrate, and Wirt watched as tendrils of black smoke crept up over the ball, enfolding it in what seemed to be a tiny cloud bank. When it cleared, things started to fly off the ball in his hand, buzzing as they went. Wirt realized that they were bees. Large, furry, red and black bees. A whole ball of them, which split apart and flew off as Wirt watched, leaving the headmaster holding nothing.
“You will have to do better than that,” Ender Paine said evenly, taking a step towards Roland.
“Then I will.” Roland’s mouth seemed to stretch and dilate, becoming something inhuman for a moment. Something that spat a gobbet of bright green slime straight at the headmaster. Ender Paine deflected it with a wave of his hand, sending it to crash into the stand where people had been watching. It was empty now, which was probably just as well; because Wirt saw the green slime spread out and eat through the wood of the stand like acid. The structure groaned and creaked before finally collapsing in on itself as though made from cardboard.
Roland spun then, sending a wave of green fire towards Ms. Lake and Ms. Burns. Ms. Lake conjured up a wall of water to counter the fire heading towards her, while Ms. Burns met hers with flames of her own, pushing fire into fire until the whole expanse of magic burned out. Wirt stood by the stand, trying to think of something, anything, he could do to help. Yet right then, there simply wasn’t anything. In a contest between four such powerful magic users, he didn’t have a chance of doing anything but being a distraction.
Roland stood there, looking around at the teachers who now formed three points of a triangle with him at the center. He seemed to take a deep breath, and he went on taking that breath. Wirt normally didn’t feel the magic around him unless he concentrated, but he could feel it now, or rather, he could feel its absence as Roland started to suck all the magic in the area around him into him, so fast that there seemed to be nothing left. Wirt looked to Ms. Lake, and he could see the worry on her face. She could obviously feel it too, and whatever was coming, she wasn’t sure if she could cope with it.
Wirt knew he couldn’t let that happen, yet what could he do? He’d already decided that he was useless there. That all he could be… was a distraction. Of course. Wirt hunted around on the ground for a rock, a pebble. Anything. In the end, he had to settle for a lump of broken wood from the spectator stand. He hefted it, and then he threw it, the way he’d practiced throwing the quantum ball so often in the last few days.
The piece of wood flew end over end when Wirt threw it, tumbling through the air without grace but
with all the force he could muster. It was enough. Roland was so intent on whatever spell he was casting that he didn’t even see it coming. It struck him on the side of the head, and spun him around in shock, while Wirt felt the magic rushing back out of him as he lost control of it. Lightning spiked down from the clouds above, striking the earth randomly as the magic spun off.
“What have you done?” Roland started to ask, but the three teachers around him were already acting.
“This ends now,” Ender Paine said, and magic sprang from him. No, not just from him, Wirt realized. He, Ms. Lake, and Ms. Burns were all pouring magic into a spell, weaving it together like an orchestra playing some elaborate piece of music. Roots and vines shot up from the ground, interwoven with strands of shadow and flickering breaths of air, forming chains that wrapped themselves around Roland even as he tried to struggle. They shot up, containing him, controlling him, and Wirt saw something else too. As they did it, Roland’s eyes started to slide closed.
He slept. He looked somehow more peaceful in sleep, without any sign of that violent intelligence that had invaded him, or even his own natural hatred of those around him. The vines and the other strands squeezed tightly around him, pulling him down to the earth, and into it. Pulling him down until he disappeared into the ground and the grass closed up over him like a scar over a wound.
Slowly, so slowly, the sky lightened. People started to drift back, looking faintly stunned, or faintly embarrassed at having run off. Wirt found himself walking over to the spot where Roland had disappeared into the ground. Ms. Lake was there too. The sense of dangerous magic around her had faded, leaving her looking like her normal self, but Wirt wasn’t about to forget what he’d seen in a hurry.
“What happened to him?” Wirt asked. “Is he…”
“Dead?” Ms. Lake shook her head. “Roland is sleeping, and in a safe place. Don’t ask me where. I can’t tell you. We’ll want to talk to him about what he did, and to the creature inside him.”
“Do you know what it is?” Wirt asked. “Who it is?”
“We’ll find out,” she assured him. “And in the meantime, Roland won’t be a danger to anyone else. Now quiet, I think Ender is going to speak.”
Wirt turned around, and the headmaster was just pulling his gloves back on. He’d thought that they were some kind of stupid affectation. Now he knew better. The way he’d simply caught the quantum ball…
“Children, parents,” the headmaster began. “You have seen today the dangers of magic used without control. Of a boy willing to do anything for his ambition. Some of those here have paid the ultimate price for that. I can assure you, however, that the danger is over. The situation has been… dealt with.”
He didn’t go into details, Wirt noted. He didn’t say that Roland was still alive. Probably, given the headmaster’s reputation, people would assume that he wasn’t. Apparently, Ender Paine wanted to keep that part a secret.
“It has been dealt with,” Ender Paine repeated, “as all such dangers will be dealt with. This school is strong, and it will not fall prey to such threats, no matter how great. We come through them as a school, and we are stronger because of them. Now, there will be a break of one hour while my colleagues and I assess the damage, deal with a few details, and of course re-build the stand. Then the Quantum Games will continue.”
“Continue?” Wirt said, and he felt like he was giving voice to something half the people there felt. People had been killed. People had been disintegrated. Yet they were just going to go on with the Games like nothing had happened.
Ender Paine turned to stare at him. “I will not allow this to disrupt my school,” he said, and his tone of voice was one Wirt didn’t dare argue with. The headmaster smiled. “Of course, if Roland Black had not already proved himself incompetent, he would have found himself disqualified for this, so it will be you and young Mr. Bentley facing one another in the final. Unless you wish to concede?”
Wirt knew he should walk away. He knew that it was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t. Not now, and not in front of everybody. Silently, hating himself for it even as he did it, he shook his head.
“Then we will take a period of one hour to prepare things for the final contest,” Ender Paine said. He addressed the assembled crowd. “Refreshments will be served in the school cafeteria to those who wish them. Would those on the school’s board of directors please join me? And you,” he added, with a look at Wirt, “should prepare yourself.”
He walked away through the crowd, and after a moment or two Ms. Lake and Ms. Burns followed him. Parents, teachers and students drifted after them, obviously still trying to make some kind of sense of what had happened. Wirt stood there, knowing that he needed to get a grip on things too. So much had just happened. Roland had killed people, and had been defeated by some of the most powerful magic he had ever seen, but right then, that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that the moment was finally here. In about an hour, he was going to find out if he could bring himself to throw a quantum ball at Spencer.
Chapter 20
There were hedges all around Wirt, making it impossible to see where Spencer was. This was the final test, the contest, and the arena for it was a maze, which had sprung up in response to Ms. Lake’s magic when the headmaster ordered her to do it. She hadn’t looked happy, but she’d done it.
Wirt held his quantum ball. Spencer was out there somewhere with an identical one. The question was, where? No. The question was why they were doing this. Why were they stalking each other through a maze while people looked on from the raised stand above it? Why were they planning to kill one another for their entertainment, for one meaningless place at a school?
“Spencer,” Wirt called out. It would give away his position, but right then he didn’t care. “Spencer, don’t do this. I don’t want to have to fight you. Do you really want to risk your life just so that you can stay in the same place as Alana?”
“That’s low, Wirt.” Spencer’s voice came from somewhere away to Wirt’s left, but he was starting to realize that in this maze, that kind of direction meant less than nothing. Already he’d passed through patches in it that seemed to be upside down, or to pass through themselves. There had even been one point where Wirt had been sure that he’d spotted Spencer at the end of a long stretch, only to realize that he was somehow looking at the back of his own head.
“You need to think about it though,” Wirt insisted, keeping moving. If he stayed in one spot, Spencer might be able to use his voice to find him, and he might throw the quantum ball before Wirt could say anything more.
“I don’t need to think anymore,” Spencer replied. “I’ve thought. This isn’t about Alana. She’s a part of this, but not the whole thing. This school… it’s what I want, Wirt. More than that. It feels like what I’m meant to do. Roland tried to steal that away from me. I won’t let you do it too.”
“I’m not trying to steal anything,” Wirt said, but he knew even as he said it that Spencer wasn’t going to listen. Why would he? They were on opposite sides of this contest, so Spencer was obviously going to assume that anything he said was a lie, a trick. Just some way of getting his defenses down long enough to kill him.
That wasn’t what Wirt wanted at all. It certainly wasn’t what he had planned. Yet what else could he do? If Spencer wasn’t about to yield, and he wasn’t… what else was there? Wirt found himself thinking back to Alana’s words. She’d wanted him to find another option. To find a way, but what way was there that might work? Wirt looked up to the magically rebuilt stand in search of inspiration, watching the faces of the parents and teachers there. After what Roland had done, they no longer looked so eager to see the contest. They looked troubled, restless. Ms. Lake was there, though even as Wirt watched she hurried off. Ender Paine was there too, staring down at the contest. There was no sign of Ms. Burns, or of Alana either, even though Priscilla was up there with her father and brother.
The maze made things harder. It meant that
Wirt had to hunt for Spencer. It meant that Spencer might ambush him at any point. Wirt extended his senses, trying to get a grip on where he was, and then pushed further, remembering the way he’d felt the trees in the forest, the way he’d felt everything in the tree that housed the school.
In an instant, it came to him. He could feel the hedges around him. He could feel the space between them. Wirt had the complete layout of the maze in his head then, and more than that, he knew where Spencer was. It would be so easy to sneak up on him using that knowledge. Just one simple piece of transportation, and he’d be behind him, where Spencer couldn’t defend.
No, he couldn’t do that. He just couldn’t. Summoning up his transportation magic, Wirt blinked himself to the center of the maze instead, where it opened out into a large circular space with an ornamental fountain in the middle for no reason Wirt could see. Find another way, Alana had said. Well, there was only one way to do that.
“Spencer! Spencer, I’m in the middle of the maze. Follow my voice until you find it.”
Wirt kept talking, his eyes on the way in, and eventually, carefully, Spencer edged his way into the open space at the heart of the maze. What would he think? What would the watching spectators think? That Wirt had called him out for some kind of face to face duel? Wirt swallowed. It could still turn into that so easily. What if Spencer didn’t listen? What if he threw the quantum ball? Already, he was raising it.
“Don’t throw it, Spencer,” Wirt said. “I’m not going to, so don’t.”
“Don’t throw it? Just like that?”
“Why not?” Wirt smiled over at his friend. “Not killing one another has to be better than killing one another, doesn’t it?”
Spencer shook his head. “I… I won’t throw if you don’t, but what then, Wirt? We can’t stand here like this forever.”
