Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7) (41 page)

“Master Grey has offered to continue your training sessions,” she said, glowering down at Emily. “The Grandmaster told him to shut up. Your remaining sessions will be spent with me, preparing for a fight you cannot win. You would be well advised to run before completing your final exam.”

“I understand,” Emily said.

“Good,” Lady Barb said, tartly. “Emily...”

She shook her head, unable to finish the sentence, and triggered the spell. The world flared white for a long moment, then faded, revealing the barren grounds over Mountaintop. It didn’t look to have changed much, Emily noted, as she staggered slightly against Lady Barb, but she could
feel
the presence of hidden wards pulsing below the earth. Maybe Zed
had
managed to find another way to power the school, she told herself. She had no idea how the negotiations for Red Rose or another nexus point were going.

“Lady Emily,” a voice said. It was cool and dispassionate. “Welcome back.”

Emily let go of Lady Barb and turned to see Mistress Mauve, standing in front of an entrance that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She was tall, with cold grey eyes and an utterly merciless demeanor, a harder version of Professor Lombardi. But then, they’d both seen hundreds of students making mistakes through carelessness that could have easily killed someone. Charms tutors were
always
strict. They couldn’t afford to be anything else.

“Lady Barb waits here,” Mistress Mauve added, firmly. “Lady Emily comes with me.”

Lady Barb looked at Emily, and shrugged. “I’ll be here,” she said, sitting down on a flat rock and producing a book from her bag. “Good luck.”

Emily swallowed, cast a night vision spell - unlike her previous visit, the spell worked perfectly - and followed Mistress Mauve down the long dark tunnel into Mountaintop. The wards scrutinized her as she passed through, both more complex and less powerful than she recalled; they didn’t seem very welcoming, but Zed must have keyed her into the wards when he’d become MageMaster. Or, perhaps, she’d held the Key long enough to earn an honorary position within the school. The tunnel broadened as she reached the end, revealing a handful of glowing crystals casting an eerie light from high overhead. Zed, it seemed, had decided that keeping the school shrouded in darkness was silly.

“Do not speak to anyone you encounter in the corridors,” Mistress Mauve ordered, as they made their way through the underground labyrinth. “The MageMaster does not wish your presence known to anyone.”

“Of course,” Emily agreed. Zed had to be in two minds about allowing her anywhere near Mountaintop. The last time she’d visited, abducted by his predecessor, she’d discovered the dread secret of Mountaintop and shattered the wards. “I won’t speak to anyone, save you.”

Mistress Mauve gave her a sharp look and kept walking. A handful of students ran past, heading in the other direction, but none of them seemed to notice Emily. She smiled at them anyway, but frowned as Mistress Mauve stopped outside Aurelius’s office. It looked to have been sealed, rather than passed to his successor. Emily wondered briefly why they hadn’t cleared the rooms, then dismissed the thought. Zed would probably have wanted to seal them rather than move someone else into the rooms at some point, someone who might have ideas of his or her own. Mistress Mauve opened the door and beckoned Emily to follow her inside. It felt as if nothing had changed, as if all she had to do was look up to see Aurelius sitting behind his desk. A shiver ran down her spine as Mistress Mauve pointed at the door to Aurelius’s private library. Could Aurelius still be alive?

Probably not
, she thought.
But how do I really know that
?

“You will be locked into this section,” Mistress Mauve said, curtly. “You can find Kava in the pot, if you wish; milk is stored in the jug beside it. Ring the bell--” she pointed to a silver bell, placed on the desk “--when you are ready to leave.”

She nodded once, turned, and left the room.

Emily shook her head as she felt the wards shift, locking her into the compartment, then turned and walked through the door into the private library. It looked just like she remembered, a collection of ancient books - some so rare there were only one or two copies outside Mountaintop - and the notebooks of countless magicians, including the former MageMaster himself. She sucked in her breath, fighting down the temptation to just pick a book at random, and reached for the first book on demonology. There had to be something she could use.

The books, even the ones she hadn’t glanced at before, weren’t as useful as she’d hoped. Aurelius had told her that most of the DemonMasters had been careful to hide their secrets, burying nuggets of useful information in mountains of maniacal ravings, yet there were kernels of truth in everything they wrote. Demons could be summoned, if someone was prepared to pay the price; demons could be used as guard dogs, if the proper rites and rituals were performed. And yet, there were odd limits. A bound demon could affect everyone who stumbled into its area of influence - Shadye’s demon had posed as a Nightmare Hex - but it couldn’t chase them outside its territory. Only a complete idiot, the books agreed, would risk summoning a demon without some form of binding.

I may not have any influence over the demon at all
, Emily thought, sourly. The chains binding the demon in place should have broken after Shadye’s death, dislodging the creature from the human realm. That it had stayed where it had been bound was odd, to say the least; it should have been freed. Unless Shadye had done something to keep it in place...it made no sense to her.
And that means we might not be able to get rid of it at all
.

Four books later, she thought she had the answer. Shadye had granted the demon power over everyone who entered his territory without invitation; later, the Grandmaster and Emily had inadvertently allowed it access to Whitehall. It hadn’t been compelled to give everyone in Whitehall the treatment it had handed out to trespassers...no, in a sense, it hadn’t been
able
to give them that treatment. Instead, it had needed to slowly dig its way into the minds of its victims and eventually send them into comas. She recalled Imaiqah chewing her fingernails and shuddered. It had been the first sign of demonic possession. And yet...

We need to find a way to trade
, she thought.
But what can we offer the demon in exchange for letting go and leaving the wards
?

She skimmed through the next couple of books, thinking hard. Demons didn’t need wealth or power, magical or mundane. They hated humans, hated everyone who summoned them into the human realm; they wanted nothing more than revenge, to cruelly torment the humans who had summoned them. And Shadye was dead. There was no way she could throw the necromancer into the demon’s arms...

A thought crossed her mind. Perhaps there
was
something she could offer, after all.

Or I could try to throw Master Grey at the demon
, she thought, feeling an odd flicker of amusement.
Solve two problems with one stone
.

She shook her head. It wouldn’t be enough.

The last two books only confirmed her earlier readings. Even the most powerful DemonMasters had hesitated to bind a demon permanently, knowing that they or their families would be the first to die if the demon broke free. They always ensured that the demon would be banished when they died, despite the risks. Shadye...seemed to have skipped a few lessons while preparing his defenses. Or maybe he’d been mad enough not to care. If it had broken free earlier, Shadye would have been the first to die.

Pity
, she thought, morbidly.
It would have solved a great many problems
.

The earlier thought returned to her head. This time, it refused to leave.

There’s no choice
, she thought. She shuddered as she remembered the demon’s cruel, sadistic eyes. In the mindscape, it had presented itself as it was.
We don’t have anything else to offer the creature.

She looked up as she felt the wards shift, already knowing who was entering the compartment. Moments later, the door to the library opened, revealing Zed. The Alchemist wore the long white robes of the MageMaster, walking slowly as if he were burdened under some great weight. Emily felt a stab of sympathy, mixed with a strange combination of fear, respect and even liking. Zed had far better reasons than Master Grey to dislike her, but he hadn’t taken it out on her.

But if he had, Aurelius
would have killed him
, she thought. The former Administrator had gone to great lengths to seduce her to his side.
Zed chose to play mind games instead
.

“Emily,” Zed said. He closed the door behind him, and sat in one of the comfortable armchairs on the other side of the library. “Have you found anything useful?”

“I may have,” Emily said, slowly. She didn’t want to talk about it, not even to Lady Barb. Zed was definitely not her first choice of confidante. “It will have to be tried before I know if I have something workable.”

“Good, good,” Zed said. He looked up at the books. “Quite an interesting collection here, I must say. Aurelius must have spent a large fortune on collecting them.”

Emily nodded, fingering the bracelet at her wrist. “Some of these tomes are literally priceless,” she agreed. One of the older books was worth more than the entire Barony of Cockatrice. “And others should be destroyed, on general principles.”

“There would be a riot if the last copies were to be burned,” Zed pointed out. He looked back at her, sharply. “I understand you have challenged a tutor to a duel.”

“Something like that,” Emily said. She wasn’t in the mood for semantics. “Does that matter, at the moment?”

Zed met her eyes. “You would be welcome to come here, if you wished,” he said. “There will always be a place for you here.”

Emily blinked in surprise, feeling an odd surge of warmth. “And what would happen to you if you were hosting an outcast?”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone,” Zed said. “It isn’t as if there aren’t plenty of tunnels here we could use to hide you.”

Emily nodded slowly. Mountaintop was huge, yet it covered only a tiny percentage of the tunnels and catacombs below the earth. She’d gone exploring with Frieda, back when she’d been an unwilling student; there had been chambers filled with sleeping monsters, chambers where underground rivers ran through the earth and even a handful of chambers where Mountaintop’s staff had carried out their secretive experiments. Zed was right. There was no shortage of space for her, if she chose to hide at Mountaintop. And it was the last place anyone would expect her to go.

But he’d want me to work for him
, she thought, numbly. It wasn’t something that had occurred to her earlier, but it should have done. Caleb wasn’t the only person who had something to trade.
Share my ideas with him in exchange for sanctuary.

“I’ll think about it,” she promised, instead. Maybe it would serve as a last resort. “Did you manage to come to an agreement with Red Rose?”

Zed showed no surprise at the change in subject. “King Rupert was reluctant, but finally agreed we could gain the nexus point in exchange for a few major concessions,” he said. “Princess Mariah shows traces of magic, even though it hasn’t blossomed yet; her father wishes us to train her, without allowing her to enter the general curriculum. It will not be difficult for us to find her a private tutor.”

Emily nodded. Princess Mariah had been somewhere around twelve when Emily had met the younger girl; she’d be thirteen or fourteen now and would probably come into her magic within a year or two. It was a shame she’d miss out on studying with other students, but she could see certain advantages to the plan. The Princess’s true powers would never be public knowledge, without any need to contrive an excuse to expel her. King Randor might have preferred Alassa to receive private tutoring, but she’d needed the chance to meet other students as equals.

“I’m sure she would be happy,” Emily said. She’d barely met Princess Mariah. All she could remember was that the younger girl hadn’t found her father very amusing, back when he’d been cracking absurd jokes.
Emily
hadn’t found him very funny either. “And with a nexus point, Mountaintop can bloom.”

“Yes, it can,” Zed said. He looked down at the table, then picked up one of the books. “I have not dared to read some of these tomes.”

Emily blinked in surprise. “You haven’t?”

“They are a temptation on the mind,” Zed said. “Once someone gains a piece of forbidden knowledge, there is always the impulse to try it. And, sometimes, that ends in disaster - or it ends in a quest to gain
more
forbidden knowledge, to push the limits until they finally break and someone dies. Demons are
never
safe to mess with, Emily. Did
he
teach you nothing?”

“You’re an Alchemist,” Emily said. Professor Thande had told her, right at the start, that some alchemists were encouraged to live somewhere well away from the rest of the world, just so they could carry out their experiments with no one else at risk. “Don’t you always push the limits?”

“That’s
Alchemy
,” Zed said. He held the book out in front of her so she could see the cover, the sketch of a demonic face. It would have been almost angelic if it hadn’t been baring its teeth at the viewer. “
This
is Demonology. It is not
safe
. The forces the DemonMasters played with are living entities with wills of their own and boundless malevolence. You can do everything right and
still
wind up dead. Or worse.”

“I know,” Emily said, quietly.

“I hope so,” Zed said. He rose to his feet. “The offer was sincere, Lady Emily. You would be welcome to come here, if you need a place to hide.”

“I’ll think about it,” Emily promised. She glanced at some of the books again before she started to return them to the shelves. “But right now I have to return to Whitehall.”