Her lips quirked as she peered into the dining hall. The tables groaned under the weight of enough food to feed several large armies. Emily’s stomach turned as she saw entire cows and pigs, roasted and placed on the tables... all left to rot. The diners sat at the tables, deeply entranced. They’d had no time to eat before the enchantment came down and turned them into statues. She felt a pang of discontent at the sheer weight of food being left to waste - it could have fed everyone in Freedom City - and then turned away. The great hall was dead ahead.
Two more guards stood in front of the doors. Emily checked them, then made her way into the great hall itself. Hundreds of men and women were scattered over the chamber, all entranced. She spotted a couple of ambassadors she vaguely recognized from Zangaria, and a Prince of the Blood from Red Rose, but the rest of the guests were strangers. Emily supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. It wasn’t as if she knew everyone. She looked around for Lady Barb or Gordian or Master Lucknow or someone else she might know, but there was no sign of them. They could be anywhere.
They could be overseeing private meetings, she thought. Alassa had explained to her, more than once, that most big meetings were only for show. The real work was done in side meetings between one or two ambassadors, then presented to the rest of the attendees as a fait accompli. This conference operated on a far bigger scale, but she imagined the basic concept would be much the same. The kings and patriarchs would draw up the agreement and expect the rest of the Allied Lands to bend the knee. But they’d have trouble doing that now even without Void’s interference.
She felt exposed as she walked through the chamber, trying not to shiver at the blank looks surrounding her. The guests were so deeply entranced they were utterly unaware of her presence. A handful had dropped their glasses when the spell hit, their clothes and feet stained with expensive wine. Emily saw one man who’d cut himself, his blood dripping to the floor. The spell had to be strong, if the pain hadn’t woken him. She tightened her mental defenses as she reached the far end of the chamber and stepped into the rear section, where the other guests would be waiting. If Void saw her coming and targeted the spell on her, she wasn’t sure she could resist long enough to escape.
He might have cut himself in a bid to escape, Emily thought, as she kept moving. And, if so, it failed.
Her heart sank as she looked around the smaller chamber. Master Lucknow stood in front of her, his eyes blank. The nasty part of her mind wondered if she should slit his throat now, even though he was completely defenseless. He’d arrested her, he’d plotted to have her killed - or worse - and... she put the thought firmly out of her head. Jan stood beside his master, remnants of a tray of drinks pooled around his feet. Emily leaned forward and kissed him before she could think better of it, hoping it would jerk him out of the trace. But it didn’t work. Jan stood there, his face as blank as his master’s. Emily felt her heart ache as she turned away. Jan had risked everything to save her life and she couldn’t even begin to repay him.
Lady Barb was standing by the far side of the room, as if she was on the verge of walking out. Emily touched her forehead lightly, calling on her every reserve to analyze the spell holding her in place. It was... a contradiction. Strong, yet subtle; immensely powerful, but somehow delicate enough to avoid doing permanent harm. It was like looking at a spider web made of cold iron or steel. A chill ran down Emily’s spine as she considered, for the first time, turning around and running for her life. Whatever Void was doing, it had snared most of the powerful and influential people in the Allied Lands. She might be snared too if she stayed in the castle.
I can’t leave her, she thought, as she tried to break the spell. It was so gossamer-thin that trying to remove it ran the risk of actually doing serious harm. Emily knew Lady Barb well - knew that Lady Barb would sooner die than be a slave - and yet she hesitated to try to undo the spell. She was tempted to try to free Master Lucknow first, even though that would just give her another enemy. He might blame her for everything that had happened since the conference began. But what can I do?
She reached out gingerly, very gingerly. The spell should have been easy to remove, yet it was not. It was drawing power directly from the nexus point itself. Subtle magic, but staggeringly overpowered. Lady Barb’s mental defenses were strong, but she’d been overpowered with ease. Emily would sooner have faced a necromancer. Void knew too much to be taken lightly. And yet... she carefully probed for the link to the nexus point and snapped it. The spell started to fade. Slowly. Very slowly.
Emily tensed as she sensed a flicker of alarm moving through the school’s wards. Gordian had surrendered them... or simply been overwhelmed. She cursed him under his breath. A strong man in his position could have accomplished much, certainly if he’d managed to keep Void away from the nexus point. He might not have realized the danger... but he definitely should have. Gordian had believed Void was Emily’s biological father. He could have used his own blood to link into the nexus point.
Which wouldn’t have worked, she thought. But Gordian should have assumed it would.
She studied the charm for a long moment. It was fading. Lady Barb would snap back to herself, sooner or later. And yet, did she have time? If Void knew she was awakening... Emily turned away, pausing as she looked at Jan. He’d risked everything for her, Emily’s mind reminded her again and again. She owed him. She touched his forehead lightly, carefully cutting the link between the charm and the nexus point, too. He’d also wake up shortly. Hopefully, Lady Barb and Jan would have time to realize what had happened and free the others.
Emily took a breath as she stepped through the rear door and hurried down to the lower levels. She wanted to seek out the teachers she knew and free them, or find Frieda and her other friends, but she didn’t have time. The wards were churning now, warning their new master of what she’d done. Emily was torn between the urge to run and a desire to look Void in the eye and demand to know why, exactly, he’d betrayed her. It made no sense. He could have put a knife in her at any moment, while she’d been living in his tower. Why go to all the trouble of assigning Nanette to watch her when he could have killed or enslaved her easily?
He could have insisted I take the oaths, she thought, numbly. The apprenticeship oaths weren’t completely binding - Jan wouldn’t have been able to defy Master Lucknow if he’d been sworn to obey without question - but it would have made it harder for her to stand against Void. No one would have questioned him demanding she take the oaths. His peers would be more surprised that he hadn’t, if they ever found out. What is he doing?
The thought nagged at her as she turned the corner and stopped. The stairwell had come to a dead stop. The walls blocked any further passage. Emily cursed under her breath, then pushed a finger against the stone. It was solid. Void had to have started to reprogram the school. She glanced back, half-expecting her way out to be blocked as well. Void could have kept her prisoner effortlessly, waiting for simple thirst and starvation to quash all resistance before he moved in and took her. Instead, the passage gaped open. She ran back and headed down the corridor to a statue of a long-forgotten noble warrior, concealing a secret passageway. The hatch opened when she touched the switch, allowing her to step inside and hurry down the stairs. Void might not know the passageway was there, she told herself. She hadn’t known until Shadye had used it to get her into the nexus chamber.
Magic pulsed through the school as she reached the bottommost level. Below, there were chambers and passageways that belonged to Old Whitehall, vast complexes that should have been sealed years ago. Gordian had been trying to find a way to undermine her control over the nexus point, she recalled grimly. The bastard might have accidentally given his school to someone with far darker aims. She gritted her teeth as she opened the hatch and stepped out into the antechamber. The walls were glowing with light. She could sense something powerful and dangerous in the next chamber, a piece of spellwork that was both fantastically complex and completely opaque. There were so many com
ponents spinning through the spell network that she couldn’t even begin to guess what it was doing. And...
Emily nearly tripped over a man on the floor. She jumped back and stared. Gordian was on the ground, shaking helplessly. His hands clutched her legs in shock. Emily knelt beside him and touched his forehead, trying to determine what had happened. His link to Whitehall, the connection to the wards he’d borne since he’d assumed his post, had been snapped. The shock had nearly killed him. Emily reached into his mind, trying to draw on his memories, but couldn’t pull anything coherent from the maelstrom. His magic felt damaged, just like Sergeant Miles’s. Emily wondered if they’d both tried to channel immense surges of power and suffered for it or...
Her heart nearly stopped. What if... what if Void had made the sergeant’s condition worse?
She didn’t want to believe it. Lady Barb had been tending to the sergeant ever since the end of the war. She’d have noticed, surely, if he’d been cursed. And yet... there had been something odd about his condition. The Nameless World didn’t dare spend any time or resources on studying mental illnesses, let alone trying to cure them, but logically Sergeant Miles should have recovered quickly or gone downhill so rapidly someone would need to cut his throat before it was too late. Instead, he’d remained oddly stable...
Lady Barb would have sensed a curse, Emily told herself. Wouldn’t she?
She stood, doing her best to ignore Gordian’s babbling. They’d never liked each other, but... he deserved better. He grabbed her ankle, trying to keep her in place. She hesitated, then shaped a stunning spell and knocked him out. The books insisted it was possible to knock someone out cleanly with a single blow, but reality was rarely so obliging. Gordian had enough mental problems without her adding to them. Even if she managed to stop Void, the odds were good he’d be spending the rest of his days in the Halfway House.
The magic grew stronger as she strode towards the nexus chamber. It had always felt welcoming, as if it was a part of her, but now the raging torrent of power felt somehow... tainted. She grimaced, remembering when the dead nexus points had reignited and brought the entire network back to life. She’d been told there’d been power surges all over the Allied Lands. The White City was effectively inaccessible, unless one wanted to take the risk of being warped by raw and uncontrolled magic. It might make a good place to hide...
She stopped, long enough to try to study the spellwork again. There were odd flickers of something familiar, within the magic, all woven together into a coherent whole that defied understanding. The entrancement charm was a very tiny fragment of the spell, she thought, although it was hard to be sure. She wanted to cover her eyes as she resumed her walk, although she knew it was pointless. There was so much magic in the chamber that she felt as if she were staring into a blinding light. She was sure he was ahead of her, if only because there had to be someone directing the spell, but she couldn’t sense him. Even he was insignificant compared to the glow.
He’ll have problems sensing me, too, she told herself. It was wishful thinking, but she clung to it anyway. He’ll be as blind as I am.
The air pulsed with power as she reached the archway leading into the nexus chamber itself; the ground thrummed, a steady beating like a... heart, a human heart. She stopped, her legs unwilling to take her any further. It was hard, so hard, to keep pushing forward. The arch was reassuringly solid, but the light beyond was so bright... she tried to focus, tried to tell herself it wasn’t really there, yet she couldn’t convince herself for a moment. The light sharpened, revealing the pillars she’d first seen seven years ago. Lord Whitehall - or whoever had worked out what she’d done to take control of the nexus point - had done an astonishing job. Nearly a thousand years later, Whitehall’s control of its nexus point was still unrivalled. Only Heart’s Eye came close.
“Emily,” Void said. She could sense him now, a steady presence far too close to the pillars for comfort. His voice was eerily calm, somehow audible over the roaring in her ears; his power seemed to blur into the storm until it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. “Come. Step into the light.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
EMILY STARED AT HER MENTOR AS her legs moved forward, seemingly of their own accord.
Void looked... taller, more there, than ever before. He wore a simple black robe, with an amulet dangling around his neck, his dark hair blurring into the robe until he looked like a hooded ghost. His sharp face was carefully bland, despite the magic crackling through the air. He was wrapped in spells, each linked to the nexus point... somehow bypassing the protections she’d installed, years ago. She could sense endless stratas of power roaring past her, climbing to infinity.
She stopped on the edge of the chamber and stared, a wellspring of emotions bubbling up within. She wanted to believe that it was just another test, that he’d pushed her to the limits to teach her a lesson, but... she couldn’t make herself believe it. Void had taken the school and everyone inside, from the students to the grandees, almost effortlessly. Sweat prickled on her back as she looked at him, all too aware it was real. Whatever he was doing was real. And...
A hundred questions welled up in her mind. She wanted to scream and shout, to demand to know what the hell he was doing, to make him feel the pain of betrayal... the pain he’d heaped on her. He’d cared about her. He’d treated her like a daughter as well as an apprentice. He’d... she’d thought he’d cared. He’d saved her life, introduced her to a whole new world, given her power and insight and something she was good at... had it all been a lie? The questions died on her tongue. She could only force out a single word.
“Why?”
Void met her eyes evenly. “Why what?”
Emily felt a hot flash of anger that burned through her pain. “Why” - she waved a hand at the nexus point, and the band of spells surrounding it - “why this? Why... everything? Why...?”
She gritted her teeth. “You betrayed me,” she managed. The words threatened to catch in her throat, as if she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around everything that had happened. “Why?”
I thought you cared, her thoughts added. Her legs shook, as if she wanted to fall to her knees and cry. I thought you cared about me.
She forced herself to think straight. “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking over,” Void said. His voice was very calm, but she thought she heard a hint of relief. “By the time dawn rises, the Allied Lands will have a single ruler. Me.”
“Why?” Emily scrabbled for fragments of memory. “I thought you didn’t care to rule.”
“I don’t,” Void said. “But someone has to do it.”
He waved his hand, conjuring a pair of chairs. “You may as well sit down,” he said. “I have a lot to say.”
“I’d rather stand,” Emily said. She tried not to show how shaken she was by the display of power. He was tapping into the nexus point directly, rather than using his own magic to produce the chairs. “Why... why are you doing this? What possible justification can you offer for... for everything?”
Void didn’t seem bothered by her tone. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. He sat, trying not to look threatening. “My brothers and I - half-brothers, technically - were experiments. We were supposed to push the limits of magic, but instead... two of us died and the third wound up blind. He went into education and eventually became Grandmaster of Whitehall. Me? I did my duty. I defended the Allied Lands.”
His face hardened, just for a second. “I’ve been cleaning up their messes for a long time. Kings who thought they could experiment with forbidden magics and get away with it. Princes so desperate to inherit that they summoned creatures from the Darkness that inevitably got out of control. Queens and princesses so sick of being treated like brood mares that they called on the deepest and darkest magics in hopes of building a better life for themselves. Aristocrats who did the same, who used dark spells or sparked wars for their own enhancement. And commoners, too, who were so sick of being unable t
o rise they sought to remove the topmost layer.
“You have no idea how much I’ve done, over the years. The madman who thought he could transplant himself into every living soul, the king who believed he could make the entire kingdom swear a binding oath to himself, the border lords who started wars in hopes of making a name for themselves... when the Mediators failed, it was me they called. I cleaned up their messes, Emily. And they hated me for it.”
Emily found her voice as she leaned on a chair. “Why?”
“The alliance is built on a lie,” Void told her. “The Allied Lands are supposed to stand united against the necromancers. But the necromancers were on the far side of the mountains, unable to break through and lay waste to the north. They played their petty political games, each one risking an outbreak that might allow the necromancers to get into our land or summon something worse. They put their desire for power ahead of everything else, including bare survival. If the necromancers had had the ability to play politics, they would have played the kingdoms against each other until the Allied Lands had completely destroyed their ability to resist.
“They hated me because they needed me. And because I kept telling them the truth.
“We had survived their naked selfishness through luck. I knew it was just a matter of time before our luck ran out. I reasoned the necromancers would try to carve a path through the mountains, or across the desert, well before they actually tried. My allies and I did our best to hamper them, even as we tried to unite the Allied Lands against our foes. We struck at necromancer fortresses, we triggered wars between them that - we hoped - would weaken them to the point we could take them out. Some of our efforts were successful. Others... I have lost too many good friends, trying to protect a world that doesn’t care.”
The Right Side of History (Schooled In Magic Book 22) Page 36