Schooled in Magic (56 page)

“Thank you,” Emily said, relieved. She’d known tutors who would be much less reasonable when they enforced the rules. “I didn’t mean to sleep though supper.”

“No one ever does,” Madame Razz said. She led Emily into her office and rummaged around in a chest, finally producing a set of chewing bars. “Eat these here, then go back to your room. Make sure you eat in the morning.”

Emily obeyed. The chewing bars, whatever they were, didn’t taste very nice at all, but they filled her grumbling stomach. Once she had eaten, she went back to her bedroom, lay down on the bed and closed her eyes again. She was awoken, seven hours later, by Aloha’s alarm gong.

“Welcome home,” Aloha said as Emily sat upright. The gong was meant to be audible to its owner–and no one else–but Aloha kept fumbling the spells. “I hear you fought off a million Orcs on your own, and killed a thousand Goblins.”

Emily rubbed her hand against her face. “I didn’t do anything of the sort,” she said crossly. The thought of killing the Goblins still tormented her, no matter how much she told herself that it had been a choice between killing them or being killed herself. “How can anyone believe such nonsense?”

“Rumors always have a grain of truth,” Aloha pointed out, as Imaiqah sat up and yawned. “And we’ve been told that all classes have been cancelled while the tutors see to the defenses. Whatever happened on your field trip?”

Emily found herself flushing as she outlined the basic details of what had happened at the Dark City, leaving out only the fairies and her oath. And
Berserker
, which she had been told never to mention to anyone outside Martial Magic. Aloha and Imaiqah listened in awe as they dressed themselves and then followed her down to breakfast, clearly impressed by everything she’d done. Emily wasn’t sure why they were so impressed, or why so many students were throwing her admiring looks. She certainly hadn’t fought an Orc and beaten him with her bare hands. Even the Sergeants, she suspected, would have difficulty outfighting an Orc without weapons.

“Melissa was looking very green,” Alassa informed her when they met at the breakfast table. “I think you’ve scared her.”

“Oh,” Emily said. She shook her head tiredly. There were more rumors surrounding her than there were around Harry Potter,
and
for far less reason. She couldn’t have just abandoned the rest of the team, not least because she didn’t know the way back to Whitehall. And besides, if the Orcs
had
been after her, their captivity was her fault. “Can’t we forget about playing pranks for the moment?”

“I heard from my parents,” Alassa said, after an awkward pause. “They want me to go back through the portal to safety.”

Emily didn’t blame the King and Queen of Zangaria. Alassa
was
the only real Heir they had and if she died, Zangaria would probably be torn apart by civil war. Or, if the necromancers happened to capture her, who knew
what
they could do with such an important hostage? They could start by unlocking the secrets of the Royal Bloodline and then go on from there. Maybe they could find a way to curse everyone touched by the Blood.

“It may be a good idea,” Emily said. She didn’t want to urge Alassa to run–she had too few friends as it was–but it might be the best possible choice for her to make. “Are you going to go?”

“Everyone back home would say that I ran,” Alassa said miserably. “I don’t know what to do.”

“This place is supposed to be impregnable,” Aloha pointed out. “It would take a madman to even
think
they could get through the wards.”

But ... necromancers are mad
, Emily thought. She kept that to herself. And yet...she couldn’t see
how
the necromancers intended to break through the wards. Powered as they were from the local ley lines, they were stronger than any magic anyone, even a necromancer, could bring to bear against them. Maybe they just intended to seal off Whitehall while they crushed the rest of the Allied Lands. Or maybe they had something
really
nasty up their sleeves.

A dull gong rang throughout the school, followed by immediate panic. Emily glanced around in alarm as students jumped back from their chairs while tutors stood up and ran from the hall. She looked over at Aloha and saw that her roommate was panicking too as a second gong echoed in the air.

“What ... ?”

“That’s the emergency gong,” Aloha gasped. “The school is under attack!”

Emily stared at her. No one had told her what to do if the school was attacked. “What do we do?”

“We’re in Martial Magic,” Aloha reminded her sharply. “We have to get to the Sergeants!”

“Attention, all pupils,” the Grandmaster’s voice said. It echoed through the school, drowning out the sounds of panic. “The school is surrounded by a hostile army. All first to fourth year students are to return to their bedrooms, unless they are taking either Martial Magic or Healing. Martial Magic students are to report to the Sergeants; Healers are to report to the Infirmary. Fifth and sixth year students are to report to their common rooms where tutors will issue further instructions.”

There was a long pause. “The wards remain intact and the enemy does not seem to have the ability to break them,” the Grandmaster added. “Do not panic. Whitehall has stood against attacks before and will continue to do so as long as the Allied Lands endure.”

Alassa exchanged a long glance with Imaiqah. “Do you mind if I share your room?” She asked. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Emily hid her smile as she pushed away the remains of her breakfast and headed for the door, following Aloha towards the armory. The Sergeants were passing out weapons, encouragement and the occasional lecture to students who had some training in defending themselves. Neither of them looked very happy.

“Look,” Aloha said quietly.

Emily followed her finger and stared at the mirror showing the view outside the castle. Outside the wards, Whitehall’s worst nightmare was taking on shape and form. A vast army of monsters were standing there, waiting. But what were they waiting for?

“Take your weapons,” the Sergeant ordered. “Right now, this building is under siege!”

“H
...” ALOHA SWALLOWED AND STARTED AGAIN.
“How many of them are out there?”

Emily shook her head, unable to answer. The school was surrounded by monsters, each one more horrific than the last. There were Goblins and Orcs, armed to the teeth, backed up by human crossbreeds with all kinds of non-human creatures. Humanoid snakes rubbed shoulders with walking bees, which stood beside crawling octopus-like monsters. She caught sight of a medusa before hastily looking away. Who knew how far their petrification ability could reach?

“Thousands,” Sergeant Harkin said quietly. “Perhaps many more.”

Aloha looked over at him. “How did they get so close without being detected?”

“Magic, I suspect,” Harkin said. “A simple cloaking spell might have hidden much of their army assuming they stayed out of our wards, or the wards around Dragon’s Den. Or they might have ...”

He shook his head. “Not that it really matters. The important detail is that they’re here.”

Emily swallowed hard when she saw a giant snake’s head lifting above the colossal army. A single humanoid figure was perched on the creature, one hand holding a long black staff. It had been months since she’d last seen Shadye, but the necromancer was unmistakable. He looked older than he’d looked when they’d first met - when he’d kidnapped her for use as a human sacrifice - yet she could still sense the aura of raw power crackling around him. The necromancer had come to lead the attack on Whitehall in person.

“That’s a necromancer,” one of Aloha’s teammates said. He sounded as if he were going into shock. None of them were trained to the point where they could fight a necromancer and hope to win, if such a thing were possible. “What’s
he
doing here?”

Emily remembered how she’d tricked the Orcs into fleeing and wondered if she could do something similar with Shadye. But the Orcs, according to all the books, were not very bright, while Shadye was both brilliant and insane.

On the other hand, necromancers weren’t known for being patient. It was possible that Shadye could be convinced to throw himself against the wards rather than wait for the defenders to sally out and try to drive the necromantic army away from the walls.

“Get the archers up to the battlements,” Sergeant Harkin ordered. “I don’t think we can kill the scumbag, but we can certainly
try
.”

And it might annoy him to the point that he does something stupid
, Emily thought grimly.

Aloha’s teammate poked her in the ribs, none too gently. “You’re meant to be a Child of Destiny,” he sneered. “What do
you
think he’s doing here?”

Emily scowled at him, thinking hard. The locals took the safety of their wards for granted, but their confidence seemed fully justified. Whitehall was built on a ley line crossroads and the school’s main wards were linked directly into the nexus, a vast source of
mana
that far exceeded anything any magician could hope to produce on his own. Even a necromancer wouldn’t be able to knock the wards down by brute force. It was possible, she supposed, that Shadye might intend to crack them one by one, but the Grandmaster and his staff would be monitoring them, ready to counter any such move. And even trying would expose Shadye to the ravages of wild magic.

A thought struck her and she shivered, looking over at the Sergeants. “Can you ... can you shift the ley line nexus somehow? Or excite it to the point that it explodes?”

Surprisingly, it was Sergeant Miles who answered. “Ley line nexuses are woven into the soil,” he said. “I have never heard of one being moved, anywhere. It isn’t even theoretically possible.”

He paused, considering. “You could agitate one to the point where it produces a magical upsurge, but you’d have to be inside the wards to do it. And even a necromancer wouldn’t be able to survive the surge of magic. The results would be disastrous for him if he tried.”

“Unless he thinks he can survive the upsurge, somehow,” Emily said darkly. Shadye had been sacrificing humans for years, both for power and simple survival. “How much power can a necromancer channel?”

“Nothing a necromancer could do would come close to the sheer level of wild magic that would be released, if the nexus were upset,” Sergeant Miles assured her. “A foolish boy tried it, back during a civil war between a King and his bastard son. He intended to destroy his father’s castle. Instead, he ended up wiping out half the kingdom.”

“It went up like a volcano,” Sergeant Harkin put in. “Hundreds of thousands of lives were blotted out in a split-second.”

Emily nodded slowly, looking back towards the monstrous army–and the dark figure waiting patiently on top of his snake. Shadye had to have something in mind, but what?

“Maybe this is the diversion,” she said after a long pause. It was her best guess. “He might be dispatching an army towards Dragon’s Den or somewhere else, using his force here to pin us down while he achieves his real objectives.”

“It’s hard to imagine anywhere else as important as Whitehall,” Sergeant Harkin said, “but you might be right. Still, we
are
going to be bringing in troops and combat sorcerers through the portal, once the Allied Lands get off their duffs and start dispatching reinforcements. We’re not going to let that army stay there forever.”

“Maybe that’s what he’s counting on,” Emily said. “Us leaving the safety of the wards and fighting him in the open.”

The sun rose higher in the sky as the defenders watched the necromantic army and waited for the other shoe to drop. Emily found herself moving from defensive position to defensive position, hastily learning what she needed to know to take part in the defense if the necromancer managed to crack his way through the wards. But Shadye seemed to be doing nothing, apart from waiting; he didn’t even seem to be trying to hack into the wards and dismantle them. It was strange; every book she’d read had suggested that necromancers wanted instant gratification and used their powers to get what they wanted, without hesitation. And yet Shadye was waiting for something ...

“Maybe he wants to surprise us by attacking at nightfall,” she suggested, when the remaining Redshirts assembled to continue their training. A book she’d once read had talked about the “looming volcano” theory of military surprise, suggesting that some defenders had simply grown used to looking at the attackers as they waited on one side of the border.
Then
they had been surprised when the attackers suddenly switched from passively waiting to thrusting into the defender’s territory as hard as they could. And the Germans had won the Battle of France, if not the war. “Or maybe he thinks we’ll forget they’re out there if he waits long enough.”

Jade rubbed his nose. “They’d have to be insane,” he said, dryly. “Those creatures
stink
!”

Emily had to smile. He was right. Every time the wind changed, it blew the stench towards the castle, which caused the defenders to recoil. Emily had wondered if Shadye had come up with the concept of poison gas, or biological warfare, but when she’d mentioned it to the Sergeants she’d been informed that the wards would keep out anything that was actively dangerous.
That
had left her wondering about the concept of chemical weapons that were really two separate–and individually harmless–compounds mixed together, which could probably pass harmlessly through the wards and combine to do great harm on the other side.