If, of course, she was right.
The creature advanced forward. She couldn’t help thinking that it was sniffing the air, looking for traces of her magic. The world had to look very different to a magic-hunter, she thought; Bernard and Robin had to be bright, easy to see, while Emily and Julianne were barely even visible. She sensed the magical field shifting around the creature, flickers of raw magic flowing towards the translucent bulk and flickering out of existence. Could it be, she asked herself, that the creatures had drained the ambient magic field until it was too weak to support them? Did they explain why she’d never seen or heard anything like them in her own time? Or ...
She staggered as the memory struck her. There had been ... something ... in the tunnels below Whitehall, something they’d seen just before encountering the statue. And there had been warnings of spider-like creatures carved into the walls ... was she looking at one of those creatures in the flesh? Or whatever it had that passed for flesh? And then there was the statue, the vanishing statue ...
Dear God, she thought. The statue!
The creature sprang forward. She recoiled in shock—she saw a whole series of flickering impressions of tentacles, claws, teeth and a stomach that went all the way to infinity—and then screamed in pain as ... something ... lashed across her face. She’d been hurt before, more times than she cared to imagine, but this was different. The pain slashed all the way to the very core of her being, tearing at her, and ...
A spell struck the back of the creature and it recoiled, magic billowing around it and sliding towards the creature. Emily flew backwards and hit the ground, barely managing to brace herself a second before she landed. Bernard was blasting raw magic at the creature, trying desperately to overwhelm it; Robin joined him a second later, throwing wave after wave of raw magic into its gullet. But it wasn’t anything like enough. Emily pulled herself to her feet, somehow. Her face hurt so badly that it felt as if she’d been punched, repeatedly.
“Help us,” Bernard shouted. His power was already draining rapidly. “Emily ...”
“It won’t help,” Emily shouted back. The creature, whatever it was, seemed more interested in eating the magic than anything else. They might as well try to drown a fish. “It won’t stop it ...”
She forced herself to think—and think hard, despite the pain. Drawing power from the nexus point might be enough to stop the creature, by overfeeding it if nothing else, but there was no way to get it to the castle without putting everyone else at risk. The creature would see the commune as an all-it-could-eat buffet. She didn’t dare take the risk, but what else could she do? Julianne and she might be able to sneak away; Bernard and Robin, magic tainting the very air around them, would have no such option.
I could try to teleport it, she thought. Maybe send it into orbit or scatter its atoms across the world ...?
She shook her head a moment later, dismissing the thought. There was no way the spellwork would hold up long enough for her to complete the spell, even if she managed to muster the power to make the spell work. The damned creature would simply drain the magic and then turn on her. And there was nothing else she knew that could overload the creature. The more she looked at it, the more certain she was that nothing short of the nexus point could hope to stuff it to bursting point.
If it eats magic, Emily thought suddenly, maybe it can be starved.
“Keep it busy,” she yelled. “I’ve had an idea!”
She picked up a stone, cast a locomotive spell and hurled it directly at the creature. There was enough power to smash the stone right through a person’s chest, but the stone didn’t even touch the creature. It seemed to bend around the creature, as if it was still part of the real world, and slam harmlessly into a tree on the other side of the clearing. Emily cursed—the creature, whatever it was, probably wouldn’t be harmed by physical attacks—and then turned and ran towards the forest. She needed a place to work.
Julianne caught up with her as she hurried into the trees. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve had an idea,” Emily repeated. She glanced from side to side, looking for another clearing. “But we need a clearing ...”
“There,” Julianne pointed.
Emily nodded in relief as they ran into another clearing, silently thanking whoever might be listening that there was no grass growing nearby. A pool of water rested in the exact center—Emily eyed it suspiciously, noting the absence of animal tracks near the water’s edge, then dismissed the thought. There was no time to worry about what might be lurking in the water, waiting to grab an unwary passer-by. She just hoped it couldn’t get out while she worked desperately to set up her plan, drawing out runes in the soil. Julianne watched from the edge of the clearing, clearly puzzled. Emily had no time to explain.
“All right,” she said.
Bracing herself, she shot a beam of raw magic back through the trees towards where she’d left the boys. It wasn’t strong enough to do more than serve as a spotlight, but if she was right about how the creature saw the world it should be enough to draw it towards her. She heard Bernard shouting in the distance, just before the trees started to warp and twist around the creature as it charged through the forest. Emily would have been impressed with the sheer level of power it was displaying if it hadn’t been trying to kill them. She had a series of impressions of teeth and claws as it approached, flowing towards her on translucent legs ...
She forced herself to stand still, careful to keep the runes between her and the creature, as she extruded magic into the air. The creature seemed to find the bait irresistible, but Emily was all too aware that—if the plan failed—she was dead. There was no way to get the taint of her magic off her before it was too late. She heard Julianne cry out in horror as the creature emerged into the clearing, allowing the trees to slip back into place. The boys had been left far behind.
Come on, you monster, Emily thought. Come on ...
The runes blazed with blue light as the creature crossed the line. Emily readied herself to jump, as if she had any hope of escaping. The creature stopped dead, as if it was suddenly blind and deaf. The runes were designed to push magic away from the circle, erasing all traces of ambient magic ... Emily was surprised it had worked as well as it had. But then, the magic field seemed stronger in the past. The nexus point had only just been tamed.
Bernard ran into the clearing, one hand raised to cast a spell. “Don’t do anything,” Emily snapped. She hoped the creature couldn’t hear normally. “It’s trapped.”
“Trapped?” Robin repeated, following Bernard. “What have you done to it?”
“Drained the mana,” Emily said. It was hard to be sure, but the creature seemed to be getting smaller. It was hunching down, curling its legs like a giant spider. “I’m trying to starve it.”
Robin gave her an incredulous look. “And you believe that will kill the creature?”
Emily looked back. “Did anyone else think to try?”
She regretted it instantly. If there had been more than one creature, they would have been screwed. A horde of magic-eating monsters swarming through a settlement would have been more than enough to slaughter the communes, going after the masters first and making sure the apprentices never had a chance to rebuild. And the masters would have tried to fight back with magic, which would have done nothing more than draw the creatures to them. Physical force didn’t seem to have any effect at all.
“No,” Bernard said, slowly. “No one thought to try.”
Emily rubbed her face, gritting her teeth as she touched the wound. The creature had scarred her left cheek. She couldn’t feel blood, thankfully, but the wound was still aching. And it was tainted with wild magic. It would take weeks for it to fade enough for her to heal the scar. By then, the scar might have healed on its own.
She pushed the thought aside as she watched the creature shrinking rapidly, growing weaker and weaker until it finally twisted out of existence. Her head swam as the creature unfolded from reality, her eyes
unable to follow where it was going. It definitely hadn’t been part of the natural world, she realized numbly. Its multidimensional nature had been more than just a defense against physical attack.
“It’s gone,” Bernard said.
“It could be a trap,” Julianne warned. “The ... the thing ... might be toying with us.”
“I felt it go,” Emily said. “But I’ll leave the runes in place, just in case.”
Robin sat down hard. “They found us,” he said. “We’re going to have to run.”
“But we have a defense,” Bernard objected. He nodded to Emily. “Don’t we?”
“Against one,” Emily said. She sucked in her breath tartly. “You and Robin are covered in magic. It found you the most desirable targets.”
“They never attacked mundane villages,” Bernard said. He sounded very tired. He’d pushed his reserves to the breaking point. “The monsters only ever go after magicians.”
“They eat magic,” Emily said. “The spells you were throwing at it ... you might as well have been hurling food into its belly.”
“... Shit,” Robin said. He sounded tired—and stunned. “And ... and I wasted a demon.”
“It just fled,” Bernard said. “You overpaid it, clearly.”
He cleared his throat before Robin could come up with a rejoinder. “And we’d better head back to the castle,” he said. “Master Whitehall needs to know that they’re still tracking us.”
“They might have trouble finding us,” Emily commented. The creatures definitely hunted using magic. Their hunter would have killed them all if it could see normally. “There’s so much raw magic in the air that we might not stand out so much.”
But that won’t last, her own thoughts reminded her. And once the level drops a little more, we’ll stick out like sore thumbs.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE WALK BACK TO THE CASTLE took longer than Emily had expected, if only because Bernard insisted on keeping a careful eye out for signs of pursuit. Emily didn’t blame him, even though the birds and insects could be heard, once again, as they buzzed through the trees. It was their first close look at one of the hunters—Bernard hadn’t had a good look at them earlier—and they were all shocked. Julianne was shaking so badly that Emily couldn’t help wondering if she needed a sleeping potion and a few hours of uninterrupted rest.
She kept her thoughts to herself as she walked, remembering the statue. It wasn’t just a statue of her, she realized now; it was her. Or would be her, after she petrified herself and waited away the years in a hidden chamber within Whitehall. Her own touch—her past self’s touch—would be enough to break the spell, just slowly enough to ensure that her past self didn’t see her future self before it was too late. And she had to have—or would have—taken the books from the hidden library. She smiled, rather humorlessly, at the thought. Professor Locke had been right all along when he’d accused her of stealing them.
I might need to write all this down, she thought, darkly. And then diagram out how it’s supposed to work.
Her blood ran cold as another piece of the puzzle fitted into place. She’d been summoned to the nexus chamber, pulled out of bed by blood magic. And she’d wondered just who had enough of her blood to summon her. But she knew the answer to that too—she’d summoned herself. No, she would summon herself. She and her past self were the same person, after all, just existing at different points along the same timeline. All her defenses, already dangerously weak against blood magic, were useless against a person who knew her defenses as intimately as she knew her own.
Because they—we—are the same, she thought, morbidly. She rubbed the cut on her cheek. And the statue had the scar that would develop from this too.
She tossed the idea round and round in her head as they finally walked out of the forest and up towards the castle. Turning herself to stone would be easy—she’d just have to cast the spell on herself—but shutting down her own thoughts would be tricky. If she didn’t remain awake and aware, breaking the spell from inside would be impossible, yet if she did remain aware she’d go mad within weeks or months. Being turned into an animal wasn’t too bad, once the victim got over the shock; she could still move and signal for help. But remaining a statue for centuries ...? She’d been a statue for a week, back in her second year, and the experience had almost broken her.
And it would have, too, she thought, if they hadn’t been trying to keep me entertained.
She shook her head, grimly. She’d need to devise the spell very carefully, just to make sure it awoke her at the right moment ... without dooming her to madness. On one hand, she knew the spell had worked; logically, her future self had pushed her past self into the nexus. But on the other hand, who was to say her future self was sane? Someone worse than Shadye could have been unleashed on the Nameless World, after centuries trapped in stone. The idea of surrendering to stone—of gambling everything on remaining in suspension for centuries—was terrifying. It was hard enough to willingly drink a sleeping draught. Trapping herself in stone, freezing her thoughts, was worse.
“Master,” Bernard called. Whitehall was standing by the gates, chatting to Master Keldor. “I have to speak to you.”
Whitehall looked surprised to see them—Emily belatedly remembered that they weren’t meant to be back until twilight—but he nodded as they hurried towards him. They had to look a sight, Emily realized; Julianne was terrified, while Emily and the boys were wounded, tired and muddy. Whitehall tensed when he saw his daughter, then turned his head and called for a serving girl. When she appeared, he ordered food, drink and blankets for the apprentices and then gave Julianne a tight hug. She clung to her father as if she had feared she would never see him again.
“Master,” Bernard said. “They’ve found us.”
Whitehall blanched. “Already?”
“One creature,” Emily put in, tiredly. The servant returned with food and drink and she nibbled gratefully. She hadn’t drained herself as badly as the boys, but she still needed to replenish her reserves. “There was no sign of any others.”
“Which means nothing,” Robin muttered.
Emily nodded. Robin was right. There could be a small army only a day or two away—or, perhaps, waiting in the next dimension. If the creatures—whatever they were—could bend reality so easily, neither teleporting nor building portals would be much of a challenge. And what were they? The Faerie? In her time, the remnants of the Dark City were two or three days away on foot, but as far as anyone knew there were no settlements for nearly a hundred miles around Whitehall.
But the Faerie would have ample time to build the Dark City, she thought. If, of course, they’re planning to build it now, before the first war.
She cursed her own ignorance under her breath. If only the historical records had been accurate! She had no idea when the Dark City had been established, nor when it had been abandoned in the wake of the Faerie Wars. And, realistically, she had no idea what was happening beyond the forest. For all she knew, the war might already be well underway—or the creatures might merely be the first in a series of terror weapons. She touched the bracelet at her wrist, wondering if the Death Vipers existed yet. Sergeant Miles had been fairly certain they were as unnatural as the Faerie themselves.
And the creature we saw was very unnatural, she thought. A manavore, perhaps?
She pushed the thought out of her mind as Bernard and Robin explained what had happened, starting with the arrival of the creature and ending with its destruction. Whitehall looked very pale up until they told him what Emily had done, whereupon he turned to her, looking as though he had a hundred questions he wanted to ask. There was a calculating expression on his face that Emily didn’t like, although it was hard to blame him. He was one of the most powerful magicians in the world and yet he’d been forced to flee by the creatures, which had casually destroyed his home and butchered his friends.
“Emily,” he said. His eyes flickered over the gash on her cheek. “What did you do to i
t?”
“I drained the local magic around it,” Emily said. In hindsight, she’d read a couple of books where gods and monsters had flickered out of existence when the mana levels dropped too low to support them. It was both good and bad, she thought, that something akin to the Warlock’s Wheel couldn’t work on the Nameless World. “And once the level dropped too low to sustain it, it died.”
Whitehall frowned. “Are you sure it died?”
“She got rid of it, My Lord,” Robin said. “Does it matter if it’s dead or merely gone?”
“Yes, it does,” Whitehall said, flatly. “If it’s dead, then there’s no need to worry about it reporting back to its comrades. But if it’s alive, then it could be telling the rest of its people about us right now.”
“Yes, My Lord,” Robin said.
“But we stopped it,” Bernard said. He hesitated, then leaned forward. “A demon couldn’t stop it, but we did!”
Whitehall’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
Bernard looked at Robin, who scowled. “I unleashed a protective demon, My Lord,” he said, slowly. He was clearly reluctant to say anything, but it was obvious that he didn’t want to defy Whitehall. “The demon should have torn the creature into little pieces. Instead ...it just died.”
“It fled,” Bernard said.
Robin’s face flushed angrily. “With your permission, My Lord, I would like to seek out my master,” he said. “He needs to be informed.”
“You may inform him,” Whitehall said, after a moment. “And then inform him that I would like the pleasure of his company.”
He looked at Bernard as Robin hurried off. “Escort my daughter back to her bedroom,” he ordered. “And then hunt down the other masters and ask them to meet me in my office, one hour from now.”
Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) Page 20
