Schooled in Magic

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Emily found that she could talk again. “You’d let them live?”

  “I will not kill them,” Shadye said. He looked back at her. “I swear upon my power that I will release them into the forest, free to make their way back into the Allied Lands.”

  Emily felt cold. He had sworn the oath, knowing that once Emily was tainted by necromancy she would want to kill them herself. And even if she didn’t kill them, the journey back to Dragon’s Den–let alone further north–would be through lands infested with monsters. They might well die anyway, but there would be no deliberate breach of his oath.

  A thought struck her. She could tell him about the fairies, deliberately breaking her own oath in the certain knowledge that it would kill her. He wouldn’t let her try to kill herself, she suspected, but he wouldn’t realize that she’d sworn a binding oath until it was too late. And then he would be deprived of her services ...

  She opened her mouth to say it, then hesitated. Suicide would be the end of everything. Even now, she couldn’t take that final step.

  “Choose one,” Shadye repeated. He sounded ... impatient. And to think that he’d waited patiently for her to go to sleep so he could manipulate her mind. “Choose one to die and the others will live.”

  Emily felt her hand shiver where it grasped the knife’s hilt, but her hand didn’t move. Shadye didn’t seem inclined to puppet her body in order to kill one of the captives. This was puzzling until she realized that necromancy was a deeply personal art. If she didn’t kill the captive deliberately, of her own free will, the ritual might fail. And who knew what would happen then? Maybe Shadye would drain the power himself, as he’d used her body as a weapon, or maybe it would just fade away into the background.

  She felt hot tears prickling at the corner of her eye. How could anyone make such a choice?

  That’s what defines a necromancer, a voice whispered at the back of her mind. The decision to put yourself first and foremost, to regard others as nothing more than sources of power or objects to play with as you please. Necromancy is a deeply selfish art.

  “If you do not choose a sacrifice now,” Shadye said, “one of these captives will die. And then another, and another, until there are no captives left.”

  Emily hesitated. One life for the rest of the lives. Shadye seemed to have placed her in a position where killing one person was the moral choice, knowing it would taint her forever to have to make that choice. And yet she couldn’t see any alternative. She couldn’t fight, she couldn’t run ... there was nothing she could do.

  Sergeant Harkin’s chains clinked as he shifted position. “You must use me as your sacrifice,” he said. Emily could hear the pain in his voice, but somehow he managed to speak clearly. “It is a small price to pay for allowing the others to go free.”

  “Silence,” Shadye snapped. Behind him, the Orcs stirred angrily. “The choice must be hers.”

  Harkin smiled, blood trickling down his mouth. “There is no choice,” he said. He twisted his head to meet Emily’s eyes. “I will die soon without medical attention. The others have long lives ahead of them. Besides, can’t you draw more mana out of a willing sacrifice?”

  Shadye hesitated. “You would willingly offer yourself to the blade to save these worthless lives?”

  “No one is worthless,” Harkin snapped back. “But I suppose a necromancer wouldn’t understand the concept of self-sacrifice. The only reason you’d give someone a helping hand, or a pat on the back, would be to stick a knife in them.”

  “He wants you to kill him,” Shadye said, to Emily. “Kill him.”

  Emily hesitated. “But ...”

  “Do it,” Harkin said angrily. “Do you think I want to die slowly of these wounds?”

  And then he smiled at her, rather tiredly. “You have no choice,” he said. “Just ... brace yourself for the power.”

  Emily stared at him. He was trying to tell her something, but her tired brain refused to process it properly.

  She hefted the knife and wondered if she could bury it in Shadye instead before the necromancer could stop her. But when she looked at Shadye she realized that it might not be enough to kill her tormentor. His body was growing into an abomination that might be more terrible than the Faerie of old, something that sucked up life force and would eventually die when it rendered everyone else extinct. He’d start trying to sacrifice animals when the supply of humans ran out, and then he would run out of animals too...

  Helplessly, she stepped forward and held the knife above the Sergeant’s heart. Up close, she could sense the life energy flaring through his body and knew instinctively where she would have to cut to drain the Sergeant’s mana, followed by the life energy that kept him alive. There seemed to be no way to drain him slowly, to allow him a chance to recuperate between sessions, or to take his power without killing him -

  - In some ways, that was a mercy. If the necromancers ever figured out how to partially sacrifice a person in order to get more and more life energy out of their body over and over again, there would be no stopping them.

  “Do it,” Harkin hissed.

  “Mana first,” Shadye ordered. “And then you can drain his soul.”

  Emily closed her eyes and stabbed downwards. The stone knife sliced into the Sergeant’s body as if it were cutting through butter - as if it had a mind of its own, eager for the kill. It jerked madly in her hand, but there was no mana. Nothing seemed to be happening.

  “What?” Shadye demanded. The spell holding Emily in thrall seemed to weaken as the necromancer stared at Harkin in shock. “What are you...? A Mimic?”

  Harkin started to laugh, which splintered the last of the control Shadye had over Emily.

  The necromancer stumbled backwards.

  “You never thought to ask,” Harkin said as he coughed up blood. “I was never a magician. No mana to drain.”

  Emily gaped at him, realizing that she’d never seen Harkin perform magic. It had always been Sergeant Miles ... Come to think of it, Harkin had never called himself a combat sorcerer, or any kind of magician. And he’d offered himself to the blade knowing that it wouldn’t work ...

  She twisted suddenly and locked onto the vial in Shadye’s hands. The Sergeant had sacrificed himself to give her a chance, and she wasn’t going to waste it. There was no point in a direct attack, but if the wards of Whitehall couldn’t keep Shadye from manipulating her mind, his own protections couldn’t break the link between her and her blood.

  The vial exploded in Shadye’s hands and he howled in pain, almost as if her blood had turned to acid. It took her a moment to realize that he’d been cut by the fragments of glass.

  And then he waved his hands in a complicated gesture and a blast of fire blazed out, scorching Emily’s hair as she threw herself to the ground.

  “Run,” Harkin snapped. “Go!”

  Emily ran, through a door that closed rapidly–but not quickly enough to stop her escaping into the corridor. Shadye seemed to be wounded, unable to focus enough magic to manipulate the castle into stopping her escape. But that wouldn’t stop him torturing the remaining captives if he figured out a way to break his oath.

  Screams followed her down the corridor as she fled, unsure of where she was going. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to go, or any way to call for help. The Grandmaster was sealed up in a locked compartment, trying to preserve at least something of Whitehall from Shadye. And there was no way she could call Void, at least not without alerting Shadye.

  She thought desperately, trying to find a weapon to use against the necromancer. Nothing came to mind that seemed likely to succeed.

  She could feel Shadye’s mind reaching out to impose his will on the castle once again. He’d be able to find her soon enough once he gained control of the monitoring spells that kept a careful eye on young students with magic and bad intentions. Unless she could find a way to escape them ... but how?

  Maybe she could dismantle the charms using her magic - the talent she was supposed to have - ye
t somehow she doubted she could do it quickly enough to matter. And if Shadye happened to keep an eye on which charms were being dismantled, he’d know exactly where to find her.

  The stealth spells, she thought. The Sergeants–Sergeant Miles, to be precise–had taught her a handful of spells that should help her to hide. They weren’t always guaranteed to work against inhuman opponents, but she lost nothing by trying them. She’d also been warned not to use them inside Whitehall, yet she was sure that prohibition no longer applied. The spells fell into place.

  She relaxed slightly, before she reached the end of the corridor.

  But the corridor was gone.

  Emily felt utter despair as she stared at the stone wall. Shadye might not know precisely where she was–assuming the stealth spells were working and not lulling her into a false sense of security–but he’d closed off all possible avenues of escape.

  Or had he?

  Looking down at where the wall met the floor, she saw a tiny opening, barely large enough to accommodate a rat, or a hamster. The thought came to her before she could think better of it; self-transfiguration was incredibly dangerous, but so was being taken prisoner by an outraged necromancer. Next time, Shadye would rewrite her brain. That would be the end of all hope - or resistance.

  The world spun around her as she cast the spell, seeming to grow larger and larger with every second. Emily focused her mind on remembering that she was human as a sudden influx of new sensations flared into her mind. The rat had an excellent sense of smell and better eyesight than she would have believed possible, yet its thoughts were crude, very basic. It wanted to hunt the cheese it could smell in the distance, not follow the demands of a very human brain ...

  Somehow, Emily forced herself forward, and into the hole. The rat’s mind found nothing wrong with jumping through claustrophobic tunnels and heading downwards, despite the weird flickers of magic that ran through the castle, but Emily found it terrifying–and she didn’t dare allow the rat’s mind to take the lead. It was quite possible that she would be lost completely if she forgot she was human, or at the very least she might be convinced that she was a rat. Poor Broomstick had been badly traumatized because her roommate had forgotten to include protective wards in her spell. Emily hadn’t had time to protect herself against the ratty mind. It was a part of her now.

  There were no signs of any other vermin as the rat jumped further down into the castle, something that bothered her. Any large structure should be infested with vermin, from rats and mice to insects and cockroaches, but Whitehall seemed to be immune. And that nagged at her mind. Had someone used magic to make a better mousetrap, or had she missed something obvious?

  Actually, what if there were people who had been transfigured and forgotten themselves completely? The lower levels of the castle might be guarded by frogs and rats that had once been human.

  Or maybe CT eats them, she thought. Or they use them to feed the creatures in the zoo.

  She could feel magic trickle through the air as the rat stopped, right at the very lowest part of the castle. Emily glanced around, fighting to keep the rat’s body under control as she tried to determine if she could safely transform back to a human shape. The rat’s skewed perception made it difficult, if not impossible, to be certain. It saw nothing wrong in a passageway that was little more than ten centimeters high, but Emily knew that she’d be killed instantly if she returned to human form in a space too small to hold her. Shadye would probably sense her death and decide that, too, had been part of his plan.

  Eventually, she managed to get out into a giant passageway, large enough to take a human being. The rat’s brain fought her as she started to release the spell, either out of self-preservation or because the rat smelled the stench of Orcs with bad intentions. No doubt Orcs ate rats for breakfast ... Emily gagged at the thought as the spell twisted and finally snapped. She flopped against the wall, barely able to hold herself upright. Her mind spun as it struggled to cope with the sudden change, even though the ratty thoughts had faded away into nothingness. But the rat’ senses had been better than hers as a human and, oddly, now she was human again she felt blinded.

  She took her a moment to gather herself. Then, abandoning the struggle of walking upright, she stumbled down the corridor on all-fours.

  Idiot, she told herself, when her mind caught up with what she was doing. It had felt natural to move like a rat, natural and right. No wonder Broomstick had been so badly affected, even though a broom shouldn’t have had a mind to merge with human thoughts. Maybe she’d just imagined it into existence ...

  She shook her head as she heard the sounds of Orcs grunting outside a heavy stone door, the one she’d forced her way into while Shadye had controlled her. A quick glance revealed that there were no less than five Orcs, all heavily armed. She considered casting the Mimic illusion for the second time, but she doubted they would be fooled again ... Of course, they might have released the Mimic from the zoo and left it to dine on unwary Orcs and escaping students.

  Instead, she pushed herself into the shadows. There, she created an illusion of herself running around the corner and skidding to a halt when she saw the Orcs. The Orcs howled and gave chase, clearly thinking of the rewards Shadye would bestow on those who took living captives.

  Emily watched them go, then stepped around the corner, only to see a short Goblin-like creature standing there. It hissed at her in a language Emily didn’t recognize.

  “Sorry,” Emily muttered, as it advanced towards her with a sword in one hand and a pair of manacles in the other. She hit the creature with a kinetic spell and threw it down the corridor into the wall at terrifying speed, smashing it to paste. Days ago–it felt like years–doing that would have bothered her. Now it was just a way to get through to the nexus itself.

  Behind her, there was an angry roar as the Orcs realized that they’d been tricked. They charged back towards the door. Emily had to smile; Shadye wasn’t too likely to forgive anyone who messed up, particularly a subhuman Orc. He was unlikely to honor whatever promises he’d made to them. And they were mad enough to kill her rather than try to take her alive.

  Desperately, she improvised a spell, scooping up air and cramming it into a very tiny space. The Orcs didn’t notice as they advanced, right up until the moment Emily took cover and released the spell, allowing the compressed air to flash out with the force of a small explosion. There was a massive thunderclap, loud enough to damage her ears even though she’d jammed her hands over them.

  When she looked back the Orcs all lay on the ground, groaning in pain. Their oversized ears would have been damaged by the sound even if they hadn’t been knocked down by the sonic boom.

  Bracing herself, Emily pressed her hand against the doorway and tried to open it. A series of powerful charms guarded the room, each one capable of killing anyone who wanted to gain access without the Grandmaster’s permission. It was too late to withdraw, so Emily plunged her mind into the charms and worked rapidly to untangle them before they could kill her. The irony struck her as she finished unlocking the final charm. If Shadye hadn’t controlled her before, it might have been easier to reach the nexus. The Grandmaster wouldn’t have tried to secure it against her specifically.

  The door clicked open and Emily stepped through, bracing herself for more surprises. It was unlikely that anyone as careful as the Grandmaster would rely on only one line of defense ...

  But she had no choice. There might just be a way to win, but she would need power to use it.

  And the only source of power was the nexus.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  THE NEXUS ROSE UP IN FRONT of her as she stepped into the room.

  Instantly, she felt small–and terrified.

  There was power all around her, spinning upwards into the school and downwards back into the ley lines, enough power to turn someone into a god. The chamber seemed impossibly vast, like a giant cathedral that reached all the way to heaven. She heard a sound like the beating of a giant
heart, the sound of power spinning through the ley lines and echoing all around her. And it reminded her of where Shadye had taken her, the day she’d entered his world. He’d planned to sacrifice her to serve his goals.

  Maybe Void made a mistake, she thought as she looked over at the towering crystal pillars that seemed to rise up into infinity. If he had killed me, the Harrowing would have known that I was no Child of Destiny and turned on him. Shadye was saved by Void and he doesn’t even know it!

  The thought provided no consolation.

  She stepped over to the nearest pillar, wondering if she was out of her mind. If tapping the relatively small amount of mana in a magician’s body was enough to drive someone insane, who knew what would happen if she tapped into the vast wellspring of power right in front of her? The whole idea of using charmed crystals to control and direct the flow was to prevent someone from having to tap the power directly. It was easy to imagine all the ways it might go wrong.

  I could blow the ley lines, she thought as she studied the pillar. Even holding her hand near the structure, she felt the power coursing through it. The school would be destroyed.

  She shuddered. Apart from her, no one in this world had the background to imagine what might happen next. Dragon’s Den, ten miles away, might be shattered by the explosion; it would certainly be exposed to hordes of necromancers as they poured through the new pass through the mountains. And that was assuming a relatively small blast.

  What would happen if the blast was powerful enough to blow the world apart?

  Sergeant Harkin had trusted her. He’d given his life to ensure that she had a chance to escape, to meet a destiny she wasn’t sure she had. A Child of Destiny should know exactly what to do at any given moment, according to the books, but Emily found herself utterly uncertain of the best course of action. Should she risk merging her mind with the power, knowing that the merest touch might shatter her mind? Or should she try to destabilize it, risking the destruction of everything for miles around? Or should she gamble and hope that her original plan worked?