Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7) (43 page)

“But if it was so easy,” Emily said, “why doesn’t everyone do it?”

“A question we would have been wise to ask,” the Grandmaster said. “I - we - spent the last few months at Whitehall looking for problems, but we found nothing. It seemed safe, so after we graduated we found a secluded place up in the mountains and performed the ritual. It went badly wrong. Two of my brothers died; I was blinded. The fourth was left with scars on his soul. No one ever knew what we’d done. When I was asked, later, why I was blind, I told them I’d traded my sight for knowledge. Everyone assumed I’d performed a Know Thyself ritual and accepted it without question. I studied under a master, completed an apprenticeship and went into teaching. Eventually, I became Grandmaster.”

“The demon said you were blind to demons,” Emily recalled.

“It never occurred to me that Shadye would have successfully raised and bound a demon,” the Grandmaster said. His voice darkened for a long moment. “If it had, I would have brought someone else along, someone who might have sensed the demon’s presence before I took it back to Whitehall.”

Emily frowned. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

The Grandmaster sighed, heavily. “Everything comes with a price, Emily,” he said. “I can see magic, still, but not demonic energy. It nearly killed me twice before I realized what I’d lost, when my eyeballs burst in my head. To a demon, destroying my eyes would have been more than a mere sadistic joke. Symbolically, it removed my ability to see or sense demonic presences.”

“A loophole,” Emily said, slowly. Her blood ran cold as something fell into place. “Demons see the future, or glimpses of it. Could Shadye have summoned the same demon as you and your brothers? Could it have blinded you then to allow itself access to Whitehall
now
?”

“It’s a possibility,” the Grandmaster said. He looked down at the table. “Emily, my brothers and I held the top spots at Whitehall. The only student currently at school who may match us, one day, is Aloha. Even
you
don’t have the same level of genius.”

“Thank you,” Emily said, sourly.

“Shadye was a lukewarm student at best,” the Grandmaster added, ignoring her remark. “The thought of him not only being able to summon the demon, but bind it successfully where we failed, is galling. He had raw power and nothing else. On the other hand, the demon might have played along. It was certainly willing to torment me while it had me in its grasp.”

Emily shook her head. “We may never know,” she said. She cleared her throat. “What happened to your other brother?”

“We rarely talk,” the Grandmaster said. He rose and started to pace the room. “Our uncles died shortly afterwards. I always assumed it was his work, but I never asked. It wasn’t something I wanted to know for sure, not really. After our mothers died...I cut my remaining ties with the family for good and shed my name. I don’t even know if they know I was promoted to Grandmaster.”

He sighed. “That isn’t something I ever told anyone else,” he added. “Emily...”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Emily promised. “There won’t be time, will there?”

“It probably doesn’t matter,” the Grandmaster said. He sat down, resting his hands on the table. “My family probably prefers to forget that the four of us ever existed. We were just another crazy experiment that went wrong.”

Emily nodded. She had a feeling her mother - and her stepfather - felt the same way. If her mother could forget having a daughter when they were sharing a home, she’d probably not even noticed when Emily had vanished one day. Maybe someone at school had noticed she was missing and called the police. It was even possible her stepfather had been arrested for murder...

Or that they think I just ran away
, she thought. She understood, all too well, why the Grandmaster and his brothers would want a little revenge. Whatever their father had been, treating his children as pariahs because of it was unforgivable.
If I could go back, with magic, I’d want revenge too
.

“Go write your letters,” the Grandmaster ordered. “And update your will, if you wish. I’ll meet you in the infirmary in a couple of hours. I have some preparations to make.”

“Yes, sir,” Emily said.

A
LASSA HADN’T MOVED.

Emily felt another chill run down her spine as she entered the private room and sat down facing her friend. Alassa’s body looked completely still, as if she were a waxwork rather than a living human; Emily honestly wasn’t sure if she was breathing. She touched her friend’s hand lightly and recoiled at the clammy feel of it, as if Alassa was no longer human. The demon was slowly laying claim to her body as well as her soul.

“I’m sorry,” she said, very quietly. “I wish I had the chance to talk to you one last time, but I don’t and I won’t. I’m sorry.”

Alassa showed no reaction.

Emily shook her head, bitterly. Friend or foe, Alassa had always been
alive
; now, she might as well be dead. She had no idea what weaknesses and insecurities the demon had used to worm its way into her mind, but it had succeeded magnificently. Alassa couldn’t hope to free herself, not now. All she could do, if she was aware at all, was pray that someone else managed to free her.

Of course she will be aware
, Emily thought.
The demon will want her to understand just how badly she’s screwed
.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, opening them and looking up as the door opened and the Grandmaster stepped into the room. He had discarded his normal robes; instead, he wore a long dark cloak that wrapped around his body, concealing everything. Emily raised an eyebrow, but he merely shrugged and sat down on the other side of the bed. It looked as though he’d pulled his blindfold so tight that it was clear he no longer possessed eyeballs, although that could merely be her imagination filling in the blanks. She
knew
his eyeballs had been taken long ago.

Everyone makes mistakes
, she thought.

She sighed, bitterly. It seemed to be true of all magicians, herself included. If the young Grandmaster could summon a demon and pay for it, her own mistakes seemed small and tragic in comparison. But she’d meant well...
of course she had,
she told herself, and so had the Grandmaster. Demons might have little real power in the human realm, at least without being summoned by humans, but they were skilled at luring people into temptation and using that temptation to overcome their reservations. Someone could be tricked into surrender long before they realized they’d gone too far down the slippery slope. Who knew
what
had happened to the Grandmaster’s surviving brother?

“Emily,” the Grandmaster said. “Are you sure you wish to proceed?”

“Yes,” Emily said, flatly. There was no choice. She surrendered to the demon, freeing her friends in the process, or she waited for Master Grey to kill her. Or she could run, knowing she was abandoning everything she cared about. “I am ready.”

The Grandmaster passed her a small knife. “I believe you know the procedure,” he said, calmly. His voice was very flat. “Unless you wish to say goodbye to anyone else...?”

“I wrote letters,” Emily said. She’d written to everyone: Frieda, Jade, Lady Barb, Caleb, and everyone trapped within the demon’s grasp. “I don’t really want to face anyone right now.”

“I understand,” the Grandmaster said. “But you do have friends, Emily. More, I think, than you realize.”

Emily shrugged. It had been hard for her to get used to the idea of having friends; harder still, perhaps, to understand what friendship
meant
. Part of her had always envied the people who’d made friends easily, who could walk into a gathering and make themselves heard; part of her had always known it came with a price. And Caleb? It struck her, suddenly, that she might have been granted an unexpected advantage. The books seemed to agree that demons prized the souls of virgin girls and she
was
virgin. But then, Imaiqah was
not
and the demon had swallowed her too.

“They’ll understand,” she said, finally. “Can we get on with it?”

The Grandmaster gave her a long look, then nodded. “If we must,” he said, “we must.”

Emily took the knife and cut into her skin before taking Alassa’s palm and pressing her bloodstained hand against the scar she’d made earlier. Nothing happened; grimly, she pressed the knife against Alassa’s flesh and cut her gently, allowing their blood to mingle. There were places, her mind noted, where sharing blood was considered a marriage rite...the thought made her smile, just before she felt her mind being tugged forward into the demon’s spell. She didn’t try to resist as she plummeted through the mists to where the demon waited, lounging on a stone throne.

“I thought I’d redecorate,” the demon said, in a breathy voice. The throne looked far too large for its body, but its malevolent presence more than made up for it. “Do you not recognize the throne?”

“King Randor’s,” Emily said, flatly. The mists were pressing in around her, strange voices echoing through her mind. “You took that image from her mind.”

“Among other things,” the demon said. “Would you like to know her most private secrets? I could tell you.”

“No,” Emily said.

“But you’re tempted,” the demon said. It wasn’t a question. “You would
like
to know everything.”

“Everyone has secrets and little shames,” Emily said, thinking of the Grandmaster. She hadn’t known he had brothers, let alone that two of them were dead, until he’d told her, even though she’d looked him up in the scrolls. He’d buried his past very well. “I don’t want to know hers.”

“I could tell you that she used to be in love with you,” the demon said. “I could tell you that there was a time when she seriously considered marrying you.”

Emily felt her mouth drop open. Alassa had said, more than once, that if Emily had been born a man King Randor would have insisted that she - he - marry Alassa. It had never occurred to her that Alassa might be interested in her personally, no matter how close they’d become since they’d been forced to work together.
No one
had questioned Alassa’s duty to marry a man and bear children to succeed the throne. They’d never wondered if Alassa was interested in women, rather than men.

Because if she had been, it wouldn’t have mattered
, Emily thought.
She would still have had to bear children, even if she’d had to do it with a stranger...

She scowled as the penny dropped. “You
could
tell me?”

The demon bared its bloodstained teeth. “You are wise in the ways of demons.”

No, I’m not
, Emily thought. The demon couldn’t lie, but it had never actually
lied
. It had merely tried to mislead her and it had almost succeeded.
And if I start believing I can’t be outsmarted, I will be outsmarted
.

She drew herself up to her full height and looked the demon in the eyes. It wasn’t easy.

“You know why I’m here,” she said.

The demon giggled. “Nothing may be known until it is spoken.”

“I’m Shadye’s Heir,” Emily said. “I command you to leave.”

The demon snickered. “Not
that
sort of heir, I’m afraid,” it said. “Do you have something else you wish to say?”

Emily clenched her fists. It could read her thoughts, she was sure; she’d willingly plunged herself into its mind. But it was going to force her to spell everything out, just to humiliate her one step further...

“I offer you my life and soul, in exchange for the release of my...of everyone you hold in your thrall, including the school,” she said. Her heartbeat raced as she realized how close she’d come to screwing up. She didn’t count everyone trapped in the demon’s clutches as a friend and it knew it as well as she did. “Take me, free them, and leave us for good.”

The demon stroked its pointed goatee. “And why should I accept you when I already have so many?”

“Because I am offering myself willingly,” Emily said, simply. “None of the others gave themselves to you of their own free will.”

“Are you sure?” The demon asked. “I worked my way into their minds...”

“They were in no state to make a decision,” Emily countered. “You twisted their thoughts to the point where they couldn’t tell right from wrong, life from death, freedom from submission. You won their souls through trickery.”

The demon giggled, again. This time, the sound cut right into her soul.

“There’s always a trick,” it said. “So
few
humans choose to come to us willingly.”

It stood up, the throne vanishing in the mists, and walked towards her. Emily forced herself to stand her ground as it stopped in front of her, then reached forward and stroked her chin in a mocking parody of intimacy. Caleb had stroked her too, she recalled; the demon had seen it in her mind and turned it into a weapon. It was all she could do to ignore its touch and keep her mind focused. There was no way to avoid it using her own weaknesses against her. All she could do was remind herself that her friends - and countless others - depended on her keeping her cool.

“But I could offer you so much more,” it added, darkly. “Would you like to wake up in a hospital bed, on Earth? Leave this world for good?”

It leaned forward until it was whispering into her ear. “And then she woke up and it was all a dream?”

Emily felt her blood run cold. “You wouldn’t have
me
, if you did,” she pointed out, somehow. It had
been
the Nightmare Hex, she recalled. “I wouldn’t
know
I belonged to you.”

The demon smirked, drawing back. “Are you
sure
?”

“...No,” Emily admitted. There was no point in trying to lie. The demon could not only read her mind and know she was lying, it knew when she was
thinking
about lying. “But I believe you would want me personally.”

“And, without you, the Allied Lands will be in deep trouble,” the demon said. It reached forward again and touched her neck, one sharp fingernail scratching her skin. “You would sacrifice yourself to save a hundred students, but your absence
will
cost the lives of thousands - millions - of innocents. And
that
is the truth.”