Schooled in Magic (63 page)

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.

T
HE 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?

Bracing herself as best she could, she pressed her fingers against the crystal. Instantly, she felt the power growing stronger, as though it were already coursing through her body. She pulled away hastily, too late to stop some of it from taking root in her mind.

Even after she broke contact, she still felt the school all around her. The Doctor’s TARDIS was nowhere near as complicated as the interior structure of Whitehall. She sensed Shadye as he made his unhurried way down to the nexus, and the Grandmaster, as he held the remaining students and tutors safe in a sealed section of the school. All around the latter, there were hundreds of interlocking dimensions, all piled up on top of one another.

Unsure of what she was looking at, she pulled away as she sensed Shadye’s sudden alarm. He knew what she’d done - and was coming to stop her.

Not that he has much choice
, the tactical part of her mind insisted.
Given time, I could turn the school against him. He has to stop me now. Or flee
.

She pulled her mind back to herself and started to concentrate. The power she’d drawn from the ley lines wouldn’t match Shadye’s power–she doubted she could, unless she was willing to court madness– but it would be enough to keep him busy until she could get him into the right place. At least it would be easier here, in the nexus, than outside in the school itself. There was a risk that Shadye would try to draw the power of the nexus for himself, but–if she was right–the mere contact with it would be too much for him to stand. He’d be convinced he could tame it, right up to the moment when it melted his brain.

The doorway exploded inward with a thunderous crash. Shadye strode into the room, holding up one hand in a defensive posture. He was alone, even though Emily could sense the presence of Orcs and Goblins outside, in the antechamber. Shadye clearly didn’t want an audience, or distractions.

Or ... did he fear that his servants might make their own bid for the power? They’d been human before the Faerie started playing with their genes. And she would have been surprised if they didn’t trust Shadye any further than they could throw him.

Of course, being Orcs, they could throw him quite some distance.

The necromancer stopped at the edge of the room, almost as if he was reluctant to walk into it any further. His humanity seemed to have completely faded away, his cloak and robe the only thing that kept him even vaguely humanoid.

Emily’s enhanced senses saw power coiling around him that wasn’t quite visible to the naked eye. Somehow, it reminded her of CT–and how he’d grown additional manipulators at will.

“You have unlocked the power,” Shadye said. Emily couldn’t tell if he meant it, or if he was trying to play with her mind. “Stand aside and allow me to fulfill my destiny.”

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” Emily said mildly. In hindsight, she should have studied acting, as well as engineering, chemistry and a dozen other subjects that would have prepared her for her brave new world. It took everything she had to appear confident in front of the maddened necromancer. “Your destiny doesn’t lie here.”

“My destiny lies where I say it lies,” Shadye snapped at her. He still hadn’t moved forward and she took heart from that. “Stand aside.”

Emily smiled. “How can you claim that you make your own destiny and, at the same time, call me a Child of Destiny?”

“You
are
a Child of Destiny,” Shadye insisted. “You are here to change the world. And it will change, at my hands.”

He’d abandoned the idea of converting her to necromancy, it seemed. Or maybe he’d just put it to one side.

Emily studied him and allowed her face to develop the smile that had driven her stepfather into angry fits when she was a kid, waiting to see what he’d do. Shadye might decide to lash out at her, with all of his power, but there was no way to know what would happen if they fought a duel within the nexus. Maybe they would overload it and blow the ley lines accidentally. Or ... once again, there were just too many possibilities.

“Your destiny is to die here,” Emily said. She shaped a spell in her mind and readied it for immediate use. “So die.”

She tossed the spell at him, transfiguring the air around him to deadly black smoke. For a heartbeat, Shadye was blinded.

It wouldn’t take him long to dispel the smoke, but it gave her a moment to cast her second spell. A dozen copies of herself stood around the room, all looking ready to fight. There was so much power flowing through the Nexus that it would be difficult for him to find the
real
Emily among the shadows.

The smoke vanished. Shadye paused, again holding up one hand, then released a blizzard of spells towards her and the duplicates.

Emily jumped in order to avoid some of his tricks, praying that he wouldn’t be able to wipe out all of her duplicates before she managed to prepare her next trick.

Shadye seemed to be losing control completely, lashing out angrily towards one of the duplicates. A flash of light powerful enough to blast through stone walls struck one of the crystal columns, only to be effortlessly absorbed into the nexus.

Emily blanched. That could have blown up half the country!

Shadye howled in rage and blasted the column again, but to no greater effect.

Taking advantage of his distraction, Emily created a second set of duplicates and followed her spell up by throwing a hail of practical joke charms at his back. The itching charm, she’d discovered when practicing with Alassa, was actually surprisingly hard to block, even for a skilled magician.

Shadye spun around and unleashed such a blast of fire at her duplicate that the illusion popped like a soap bubble.

Emily jumped back behind one of the pillars, only to find herself staring at black tentacles that seemed to have come out of nowhere. One of them grasped her leg and picked her up, dragging her towards Shadye. His red eyes glared at her as he pulled her closer, one hand holding the stone knife.

He must be running low on power
, she thought, desperately.
If he wants to drain me, he must be running critically low on power
...

She looked at the shadow and generated a beam of light, causing the shadow to break apart and merge back into the darkness. But it was too late; a clawed hand caught her and yanked her forward until she was staring into Shadye’s glowing red eyes.

Shadye lifted the knife threateningly, ready to plunge it into her chest.

Emily panicked. Raw power lashed out of her with no clear direction, which forced Shadye into a defensive posture. Emily quickly shaped a cutting spell she’d learned from books and aimed it at his arm. The arm disintegrated into nothingness before she dropped to the ground.

Shadye slashed out at her as she fell, barely in time for the blade to miss her skin. She knew
exactly
what would happen if he managed to get his hands on more of her blood.

Shadye bellowed a curse in a language the translation spell refused to adapt for her and summoned more shadowy monsters to his side.

Emily turned and ran. The creatures came after her as she desperately tried to generate another ball of light. But Shadye snuffed her first ball of light out; the shadows fell on her before she could produce a second. A monstrous shape that seemed oddly familiar grabbed her tightly enough to make her cry out in pain. Desperately, she focused her mind, thought of a monofilament blade and lashed out with it. The shadows recoiled, giving her just enough time to pull free.

“There is no escape from the Living Shadows,” Shadye informed her. He seemed calmer, oddly; perhaps he thought that victory was within his grasp. “You cannot fight a shadow.”

He was right, Emily realized. Laser-like beams melted them, but they reformed with terrifying speed; bright flashes of light dispelled them, yet they returned as soon as the light faded away. She tried to produce permanent globes of light, only to watch helplessly as Shadye picked them off, one by one.

And then the shadow-creatures caught her again and sent her stumbling to the floor.

The chamber shook as Shadye worked his will, summoning a stone table into existence. Emily knew what it was a moment too late. The shadows lifted her up to deposit her on the stone, moving to secure her hands and feet, pinning her. Her magic suddenly seemed to be useless. The stone absorbed anything she did, but it couldn’t–didn’t - block her link to her prepared spells. She clung to that thought as Shadye advanced on the table, red eyes glowing with bright light. Just a few seconds more ...

“If you will not serve me of your own free will, you will be reshaped,” Shadye informed her. He lifted the knife again, moving it to the point where Emily had stabbed Sergeant Harkin and revealed that he had no
mana
to call his own. But Emily knew that Shadye would have no trouble draining her. And then, he’d either feed on her life force or rewrite her brain to suit himself. “I will make Destiny my servant.”

Emily wanted to giggle as she released a handful of spells, including the charm keeping her final surprise under wraps.

Shadye held the knife above her chest, his red eyes studying her as if he expected her to surrender and become a necromancer, just before the air started to blow past them. A moment later the knife was yanked out of his hand and spun through the air, finally vanishing into nothingness. Shadye stared at where it had been as the pull grew stronger, tugging at him even as he grabbed hold of the stone table. He started to say something–Emily guessed he was demanding to know what was happening–but it was lost in the noise of the wind. Shadye spun around and threw a fireball at her, but it only made it a couple of inches before the gravity pull sucked it in, too.