The Right Side of History (Schooled In Magic Book 22)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “The necromancers are broken,” Emily said.

  Void continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “It took years - decades, really - for me to realize that things were not going to get any better. The kingdoms were going to keep contesting for superiority. The magical enclaves were no better. The White Council would not - could not - evolve into a genuine government. There was too much suspicion and distrust and outright fear, even when selfishness wasn’t involved. None of them would give up their power for the common good. The less power they had, the more reluctant they were to give it up. They’ve fought wars over lands that were lost centuries ago...”

  He met her eyes. “Do you think Queen Alassa would give up her power for the common good?”

  Emily wanted to say yes, but the words died in her throat. Alassa wouldn’t. She’d been born and bred to rule. She’d made concessions, she’d accepted she couldn’t hope for near-omnipotence, that she’d have to allow her people a say in government affairs... but she wouldn’t give up power. She couldn’t. She wanted to pass her throne, and her kingdom, to her daughter. If she’d been willing to leave, she could have left well before she’d been crowned.

  “Yes,” Void said. He’d read her face. “She wouldn’t give up anything.”

  He shook his head. “I knew something had to be done. I knew I couldn’t rely on anyone, not when I started planning a coup. It had to be done carefully. I put my pieces in place one by one, positioning a handful of allies in some key locations and spell-controlling others who wouldn’t otherwise help me. It took years, but I had years. I’d subvert the kingdoms and the armies, then the enclaves. I knew I wouldn’t get everyone, when I finally moved into the light, but there wouldn’t be much resistance. I’d have the vast majority of the Allied Lands under my banner. The remainder could fall in line or be crushed.”

  Emily felt her eyes narrow. “How long were you planning this?”

  “Years,” Void said. “Longer than you’ve been alive. Most monarchs, and patriarchs, are short-sighted. Even the genuinely intelligent ones give way, inevitably, to selfish, stupid, and often dangerous successors. They couldn’t comprehend the mere concept of a plot that took decades to put together, let alone counter it. I lost some of my agents along the way, but never enough to slow me down for more than a few years. If anyone suspected the truth, they kept it to themselves.”

  He frowned. “Lucknow might have done. He might have worked with me, but he never really trusted me.”

  “Is that why he arrested me?” Emily found it all too believable. “He thought I was working with you.”

  “You are my apprentice,” Void reminded her. “I suspect he thought he was killing several birds with one spell. But we’ll come to that in a moment.”

  He grinned, suddenly looking a lot more like his old self. “I had to keep up the pressure on the necromancers as well as plotting a coup. I couldn’t afford to step into the shadows completely or too many people would start to wonder what I was doing. And besides, one of the selfish idiots would probably do something disastrous if I wasn’t keeping my eye on them. I knew Shadye was experimenting with the Black Arts and, fearing the worst, I moved to stop him. Imagine my surprise when he summoned you.”

  Emily shuddered, remembering the necromancer. She would have died, sacrificed to the darkest of gods, if Void hadn’t saved her life. And yet...

  “I wasn’t sure what to make of it, at first,” Void admitted. “You could have been anything, anything at all. I ran a bunch of tests on you while you were asleep, trying to determine if you posed any danger. It took me a long time to determine you were truly ignorant of magic, even though you possessed it. I arranged for you to go to Whitehall, knowing my brother would take care of you. It never crossed my mind that you might turn the entire world upside down. Or that you would become so attached to Zangaria.”

  “You made me,” Emily said. “If you hadn’t sent me to Whitehall...”

  “You disrupted my plans, quite by accident,” Void said. “Your innovations changed the world. You kicked off a shift in the balance of power, allowing commoners to challenge their overlords and mundanes to counter magicians. You even raised the possibility of me not having to launch my coup, despite all my hard work. I hoped your work would lead to the dawning of a new age. But I was wrong. The reactionary movement was threatening to either undo your work or trigger a massive civil war. It would be disastrous.”

  “You triggered the civil war in Zangaria,” Emily said, heatedly. “And you plotted to take control of Laughter.”

  “Yes,” Void said. “It was a good place to test the concept before I launched the coup itself. Or so I thought.”

  He shrugged. “I knew we were running out of time. Rangka and his allies had finally devised a scheme to break through the Craggy Mountains. When Lucknow asked for your assistance, I was happy to allow you to go while I put the remaining pieces in place. Your plan was a good one, I thought, and it would keep you and the others distracted. I never expected you to win the war outright. Or to show them how to devise batteries of their own.”

  “The necromancers are no longer a threat,” Emily said. She looked past him, at the nexus point. “You don’t have to do this...”

  “I wish that were true,” Void said. “There was a week or two of celebration, when it dawned on the world that the necromancers were broken, and then they started plotting against each other again. Kingdoms raising old grudges, manufacturing excuses for war; commoners rebelling against their masters; magical isolationists and supremacists battling for power in the magical world. A handful of the smarter ones started putting together plans for a conference to sort out the post-war crisis, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. There were just too many old grudges, all frozen during the war.

  “And they were afraid of you.”

  He let out a breath. “They always were, but they couldn’t move against you as long as they needed you. The moment you became dispensable, they tried to dispose of you. They drummed up a set of charges and tried to rush a conviction, just because they feared what you could do. And they nearly triggered the war ahead of time.”

  “Ahead of time,” Emily repeated. “You meant to trigger the war.”

  “Yes,” Void said. “The selfish bastards will kill each other, burning away everyone who can stand in my way, while I take over. The north will be reunited under my banner.”

  “For what?” Emily met his eyes. “The necromancers are gone!”

  “There’ll be other threats,” Void said. “And someone has to stop the kingdoms from triggering an endless series of wars.”

  Emily shuddered. “You’re planning to end war by starting one?”

  “A relatively small war,” Void said. “And when I take over, the war will be brought to an end.”

  “Except you’re already losing control,” Emily pointed out. “You said it yourself. You didn’t expect the necromancers to be beaten so quickly.”

  “No,” Void agreed. “But I did ensure I’d have a degree of flexibility.”

  “How many people are going to die?” Emily felt a pain in her chest. “Nanette almost killed me.”

  Her voice hardened. “You sent Nanette into Laughter, didn’t you? Why?”

  Void looked thoroughly displeased. “Killing you, even putting you in mortal danger, was not part of my plan,” he said. “Rest assured, Nanette will be disciplined.”

  Emily felt a chill run down her spine. She hated Nanette and yet... something in the way Void spoke made her fear for the girl. It was proof, in a way, that Void genuinely did care about her. And yet... her heart twisted. Void knew her well. Everything he said could be nothing more than an attempt to manipulate her. She ground down on the feeling of warmth that threatened to flow through her, the belief she had a father-figure who cared...

  “You put her beside me for eighteen months,” she said. “Why?”

  “Someone had to keep an eye on you,” Void said. “And make sure you didn’t get killed.”


  Emily snorted. “She had me shot!”

  She pressed on before Void could say a word. “So you’re going to take the entire world,” she snapped. “And then... what? Declare yourself Emperor? How long do you think your empire is going to last? What happens when you die?”

  Void cocked his head. “You take my place.”

  Emily blinked. “What?”

  “You have an understanding of the ebb and flow of history that is far superior to anyone in this world,” Void said. “You do not really belong to this world. You have an ability to see the bigger picture that most kings and sorcerers lack. You can lay the groundwork for a united world that is both stable and progressive, capable of channeling the ambitions of intelligent men instead of forcing them to surrender or rebel against the system. And you have centuries ahead of you. I might forge the empire, Emily, but you can ensure it stands for a thousand years.”

  Emily shivered. “I don’t want to be Empress.”

  Void smiled. “Which is another point in your favor,” he said. “People who want the job are generally incapable of thinking past getting it. They certainly don’t ask if they should have the job. You, on the other hand, can do it well.”

  “But...” Emily shook her head. “I don’t... this is madness.”

  She tried to reach out to him, pouring all the conviction she could into her voice. “You can’t make it work. Even with magic, you’ll be unable to make it work.”

  “You could,” Void said.

  “There’s no way anyone can hope to run an entire empire,” Emily said. “There’ll always be something that gets left out, something that doesn’t get taken into account. The greatest planners on my world failed because they couldn’t grasp what they were doing, let alone understand why things were the way they were. You can’t...”

  “The world needs you,” Void said. “If not you, then who?”

  “It can’t be done,” Emily said. “You need to let people have room to be free.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Void said. “And I hope that, in time, you will come to change your mind.”

  Emily tensed, suddenly aware of the danger. He was strong in his own right and drawing on a nexus point, her nexus point. She reached out with her mind, hoping she could slip past his spells and cut him off from the source. If she could free the school...

  Void reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Emily felt her will suddenly crumble, her arms falling to hang limply by her side. A flash of panic ran through her, dulled by the numbness creeping into her mind. She couldn’t resist. It was hard to remember she needed to resist. The spell, whatever it was, held her firmly. And yet, it was strangely intangible...

  Her eyes narrowed as she traced the spell back to his hand. A card rested in his palm... her heart almost stopped as she tried to grasp what she was seeing. A card... her card. Her library card, her gateway to worlds of wonder and imagination and... she’d thought it lost, along with everything else she’d brought with her to the Nameless World. It looked maddeningly out of place in Whitehall. Her card, with her full name and a photograph...

  “I’m sorry, Emily Sanderson,” Void said. She had the feeling he meant it. “But you leave me no choice.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Emily could barely think.

  She’d been warned never to share her full name with anyone. It was bad enough, she’d been cautioned, that there hadn’t been anyone else called Emily when she’d arrived. No one, absolutely no one, knew her surname. Not here. And yet, it had never occurred to her that she’d left her library card with Void. She’d never even given any thought, once she’d left the tower, to the clothes she’d left behind. Or her purse and the handful of cards. She wondered, suddenly, if she’d been induced to forget. But then, none of it had been any use in the Nameless World.

  She cursed her own stupidity as she tried to resist the cloud covering her mind. If she’d known, if she’d remembered, she could have cut the link between her and the photograph before it had been turned against her. The card had meant the world to her, once upon a time, but she could have rendered it harmless. And yet... she couldn’t stop him from holding her still, not now. The spell was practically part of her. She couldn’t move or speak or do anything, beyond trying to save what she could. He’d had a trap planned all along and, like a fool, she’d walked right into it.

  A wave of tiredness washed over her, but she didn’t dare let herself sleep. Who knew what he’d do? Put her in a cell and keep her prisoner? Reprogram her into his ideal ruler for a global empire? Or... or what? She didn’t want to know. She tried to bite her lip, in hope the pain would help her to focus, but she couldn’t even do that. She heard him step forward and felt a surge of panic. It didn’t help.

  You had this in mind all along, she thought, numbly. The sting of betrayal hurt worse than ever before. Why?

  Her mind churned. Void had a point. There was no point in pretending he didn’t. The Allied Lands fought each other as much as they fought the necromancers, if not more. They hadn’t shown any ability to work together, let alone unite into a single power. She’d spent the last few weeks watching helplessly as royalists and rebels headed towards a final catastrophic showdown. There was no hope of convincing the two sides to come to terms. The most one side could offer was far less than the other could accept. And the same story was taking place right across the continent. The Allied Lands were about to destroy themselves.

  Alassa will be fine, she told herself. Her people have no cause for revolt.

  She felt her heart sink. Perhaps that was true, but it wouldn’t matter. Void would have other ways of dealing with Alassa and Zangaria. He might have put together an army of his own or, perhaps, simply planned to take one from a conquered kingdom. Or he could have planned to turn the rogue orcs into an army himself. There was no shortage of them wandering around after the end of the war. Void could batter them into submission and then take them for his own.

  “Someday you will have to explain this to me,” Void said. He turned the library card over and over as he modified the spell. “But not today.”

  He looked at her, almost sadly. “You’ll be safe,” he added. “I promise you, you’ll be safe. But I can’t let you interfere.”

  Emily tried, one final time, to free herself, but it was futile. She’d loved that card. She’d invested so much of herself in the card, well before she’d known what she was doing, that it was practically a backdoor into her mind. Her name and the photograph were just the icing on the cake. She wondered if she’d be herself, when the spell was finally lifted. Or if she would be his successor in every sense of the word.

  I could pretend, she thought, desperately. If he believed I’d help him...

  She sighed. There was no way he’d believe her, not after everything she’d said. He’d want to take precautions, making it impossible for her to resist... she wanted to cry in frustration as it dawned on her his plan simply wouldn’t work. There was no way she’d help him willingly and no way he could make her help him, not without doing immense damage to his long-term plan. Void didn’t want power for the sake of power. He didn’t want money or women or massive collections of spellbooks or anything material. He wanted to build an empire that would reunite the continent. And yet, she knew it wouldn’t work. It just wouldn’t last. How could it?

  Tears prickled in her eyes as Void held up the card. She caught sight of herself, of the person she’d been eight years ago. A scrawny little girl, her eyes dark with hopelessness... she felt hopeless now, despite everything she’d done. He would put her to sleep and keep her prisoner and... she knew there would be no escape. Void had a nexus point under his command. He could conjure up an inescapable cell or shove her in a timeless pocket dimension or... or simply reprogram her. Perhaps...

  “I’m sorry,” Void said. “I...”

  A blasting hex shot across the chamber and struck him in the back. He stumbled forward, crashing into Emily and knocking her to the ground. The libr
ary card fell from his hands. Emily shuddered as it struck the floor. Her body felt weird, as if she’d been numbed so thoroughly she couldn’t feel. Void glanced at her, then spun around as another hex crashed into his wards. Lady Barb was running towards him, throwing spell after spell. She’d practically come out of the nexus point.

  She must have crept into the rear of the chamber, Emily thought. And relied on the magic to mask her approach.

  “Emily,” Lady Barb shouted. She threw something at Emily, who caught it instinctively. “Get out of here!”

  Emily looked down. The amulet - the teleport amulet - glowed with magic. Lady Barb hadn’t used it... of course she hadn’t . Void growled as he cast a spell of his own, aimed at Lady Barb. He missed... Emily blinked in astonishment, then realized Lady Barb was far too close to the spellware surrounding the nexus point. If Void hit the wrong thing, he might blow up the entire country. It had happened before.

  “Get out of here,” Lady Barb repeated. “Now!”

  “Don’t,” Void snapped. “Stay here!”

  Emily reached for her magic, then cursed as she realized just how badly drained she was. Everything was catching up with her at the worst possible time. She scrabbled for the library card as Lady Barb and Void exchanged blows, picking it up and staring down at her face. It was part of her past, an important part of her past... she grasped what magic she could and incinerated it. Her childish face caught fire and burned away, breaking the spells Void had put on the card. She felt almost as if she’d destroyed part of herself.

  The magic grew stronger as she reached for the nexus point, only to have it fade into nothingness. Panic shot through her - if they’d snuffed out the nexus point, the interior dimensions were going to collapse again - before she realized he’d blocked her link. He wouldn’t want her cutting him out, let alone taking back control. She cursed under her breath as she scrambled for her dagger... her missing dagger. Leaving it behind had been a mistake.