“Right now, we have other problems,” she said. “But afterwards... we won’t stand in the way of anyone who wants to set up shop over there”—she nodded in the rough direction of Heart’s Ease—“as long as they follow the rules.”
“Quite,” Yvonne agreed. “And the rules are very simple.”
“Until people start making them complicated,” Frieda said. “That’s what the kings always do, isn’t it?”
Emily shook her head. The kings—and their noblemen—had a very simplistic view of law. They owned everything. Their peasants were their chattels, no freer than the slaves of Dixie or women in Afghanistan. They could be bought and sold at will. Whatever they produced belonged to their owners, not to them. And they did as little as they could, because it wasn’t them who profited when the chips were down. Emily understood, all too well. What was the point of striving when someone else reaped the rewards?
The kingdoms don’t have to be constantly on the edge of starvation, she thought coldly, but if they remove all incentive to produce more than the bare essentials, they shouldn’t be surprised if they find themselves consistently short of food.
“We’ll sort things out as we go along,” she said. Hopefully, that would be someone else’s problem. She’d given Heart’s Ease a set of laws, based on Cockatrice, but... Heart’s Ease was a very different place. She wondered how long it would be before one of those differences rendered her laws ineffective. “But, right now, we have to sort out our current problem.”
“We’ll have the first weapons ready by this evening,” Yvonne assured her. “And then we can start probing the mirrors again.”
“If they work, perhaps we can simply pick the Manavores off, one by one.” Praxis sounded pleased by the prospect. “And then we can declare the school safe and well.”
“Let us hope so,” Emily said. She wondered just how long it would be before she felt safe in Heart’s Eye, after everything that had happened. “But first, we have to get Caleb back. We might need the Manavores to get to... wherever he is.”
She shuddered. They’d destroyed one Manavore. Had they accidentally cut all ties to Caleb? He’d gone through that mirror... She told herself, firmly, that she could find him. If worse came to worst, she could summon a demon and make a bargain. She’d have to pay for it—and she’d have to be very careful to ensure she wasn’t tricked—but she could do it. If there was no other choice...
“We’ll see,” Praxis said. “For all we know, the Manavore was actually making things worse.”
“They stuck it in a mirror,” Frieda said.
“They turned it into a mirror,” Emily corrected. She wondered just who had come up with the idea—and why. Why hadn’t they been condemned to the nearest madhouse? Didn’t they understand the dangers? “And if that mirror is gone...”
She shook her head. She refused to think any more about it.
Jayson appeared at the door, looking disgustingly fresh. “Emily... um... Lady Emily?”
“I’m coming.” Emily looked at Yvonne. “Get the guns and bullets ready as quickly as possible.”
“Of course, My Lady,” Yvonne said. “We’re already working on it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“CIRROC WENT TO GUARD THE OTHER mirror,” Jayson said, as Emily led him and Frieda down the corridor towards the nexus point. “He said to tell you he wants relief. Whatever relief is...”
“He means he wants someone to take over the duty,” Emily said. “And quickly, before he falls asleep on the job.”
Jayson glanced at her. “Is that likely?”
Emily shrugged. Sergeant Miles had had some pretty choice words for lookouts who fell asleep on the job—and dire warnings of what would happen to anyone stupid enough to fall asleep while they were in the field—but she had no idea if Cirroc had taken his words to heart. He was the kind of person who always wanted to be doing something, not standing guard waiting for something to happen. She made a mental note to make sure Cirroc was relieved, sooner rather than later. She’d be a great deal happier if there were at least two sets of eyes on the mirror at all times.
She glanced from side to side as they made their way down the corridor. There were fewer mirrors here, but... she shivered, unwilling to take her eyes off them. If all of the mirrors were actually Manavores... if they all came back to life, the three of them would be dead seconds later. There was no way they could escape before it was too late. She took a long breath, telling herself—firmly—that the Manavore hadn’t escaped until Hoban had started messing with the spell holding it in place. They wouldn’t be doing that again in a hurry.
“Frieda,” she said. She could have kicked herself for not asking earlier. “How is Hoban? His eyes?”
“He said he was fine,” Frieda said. “And the Gorgon said she couldn’t find any actual wound.”
“Strange,” Emily commented. Hoban had been bleeding. She’d seen it herself. “Did he manage to heal himself?”
“No,” Frieda said. “He was as puzzled as she was.”
Jayson glanced at her. “It could have been a reaction to the magic. Or... or to the creature itself.”
“Perhaps,” Emily said, slowly. Her eyes had been streaming, afterwards. But tears, not blood. “People don’t bleed like that, not unless there’s an actual wound.”
“Not from their eyes,” Frieda said.
Jayson flushed. “I... I don’t pretend to understand it.”
“Just another puzzle,” Emily said. They turned the corner. She could feel the nexus point growing stronger. “We’ll solve it, sooner or later.”
She kept her thoughts to herself as they followed the path under the school. Someone—she forgot who—had theorized that contact with alien life would cause physical harm, if only because the aliens were so different than humanity. She’d never believed that, but now... she wondered if it were true. Dragons and orcs were practically human compared to multidimensional creatures. Contact with them was dangerous, even if they didn’t mean to cause harm. They were so big, so real, so much realer than humanity that... she remembered Hoban bleeding, and shuddered. It didn’t matter if the Manavore had meant to hurt him or not. Mere contact with the Manavore had hurt him.
And it tore Seth apart, Emily thought. It really did mean to hurt us.
She put the thought to one side as they reached the carvings. They looked unchanged, as far as she could tell. She wished—again—that she’d spent more time studying them before she’d returned to Whitehall. She wished... she gritted her teeth, reminding herself—again—that she couldn’t change the past. She couldn’t undo her mistakes. She could only learn from them.
Jayson inspected the first set of carvings. “Interesting. Is that the... creature you saw?”
“Yes.” Emily studied the diagram carefully. “It’s as close as someone can get.”
She tried to keep her doubts and fears out of her voice. The drawing was crude and unfocused, like a child’s scribble compared to the reality, but it was clearly a Manavore. She wondered who’d carved it into the stone and why. The next set of runic diagrams showed how to capture and kill a Manavore... her eyes narrowed as she remembered the remains of the ritual they’d found. Someone had tried to fight back... she cursed under her breath. They’d failed. Of course they’d failed. They’d failed, and left her with a mystery she couldn’t solve.
“Curious collection of runes,” Jayson said, as he inspected the next set. “This one is practically a three-dimensional rune.”
“Three-dimensional?” Emily looked up, sharply. “I was under the impression that was impossible!”
“It is.” Jayson didn’t sound convinced. “But here, they’ve drawn out a three-dimensional rune.”
Emily peered over his shoulder. It looked three dimensional, as if someone had tried to draw a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, but... it shouldn’t have worked. Not as a rune. The lines crossed each other, cancelling each other out... at best. It was more likely, she
decided as she traced the lines of power, that they’d turn the rune into something altogether different. It was a paradox. The rune couldn’t exist—any more than a two-dimensional drawing was a three-dimensional object—and yet it did. What was it?
“I don’t know,” Jayson said, when she asked aloud. “But there are a lot of them.”
“Yeah.” Frieda sounded puzzled. “And they grow more complex as you walk towards the nexus point.”
Jayson pulled a notebook out of his pocket, then stopped. “I could copy them,” he mused, “but... it might be dangerous.”
Emily nodded, slowly. It wasn’t easy to draw out a rune without risking accidentally creating it. The textbooks always inserted a little mistake, allowing the reader to work out what the rune should look like without actually drawing it. And now... everything she knew told her that the runes shouldn’t work, but... they clearly did something. Why would anyone bother to sketch out the runes unless they had something in mind?
And they wouldn’t be trying to confuse intruders, she mused. They had no way to know the school would fall.
“We probably need to bring in more experts,” she said. “And try to figure out what the runes actually do.”
She held her hand over the nearest rune, gingerly feeling for magic. There was a faint sense of warmth above the rune, as if it was doing something... but what? Her eyes narrowed as she tried to parse it out. The power had to be coming from somewhere...
Frieda cleared her throat. “Runes draw power from ambient magic, right?”
“Yes.” Jayson didn’t look up from his work. “You can’t power a rune yourself. You’d overpower the rune and destroy it.”
“There’s a nexus point just down the corridor,” Frieda said. “Are the runes drawing power from it?”
“They shouldn’t be,” Jayson said. “And if they were, they would have been destroyed long ago.”
“Are you sure?” Frieda leaned forward. “The runes have to be drawing power from somewhere, right?”
Emily frowned. Everything she knew told her that Jayson was right. If a rune couldn’t handle a lone magician’s power, it certainly couldn’t handle a surge of power from the nexus point. Even trying could be deadly. They might trigger a surge of power that blew up the entire school. And yet, Frieda had a point. The only source of magic in the vicinity was the nexus point itself. There was nothing else.
“...Maybe,” she said, slowly. “I don’t know.”
She studied the runes thoughtfully. Were they designed to handle more power than the average rune? Or... or what? She’d crafted batteries that worked because the power had nowhere to go. Here... had someone devised runes that could handle a power surge? But... it shouldn’t have been possible. A river of power would almost certainly break its banks and spill over... if it didn’t explode. What had they been trying to do?
“I’ll keep figuring out the runes,” Jayson said. “But... I think we need to call help.”
“Your family?” Emily glanced at him. “Or Hoban and Master Highland?”
“Either. Both.” Jayson looked up at her. “This is way out of my league.”
Emily nodded. “We’ll search the surrounding area,” she said, calmly. “And make a note of all the carvings we find.”
She glanced at Frieda, who stepped up beside her as she started to walk down the corridor to the nearest fork. It twisted oddly, as if one passageway led to the nexus point chamber and the other circumvented it. The walls were lined with runes, ranging from very basic designs to ones that were completely beyond her comprehension. A handful of images sat beside them—something that looked like a Manavore, something that looked like a giant octopus—with a couple of runes under each picture. She tried to figure out what they did, but came up with nothing. It was very strange. She would have sworn a mighty oath that some of the runes in front of her were flat-out impossible.
And so was storing magic indefinitely, until I figured out how to do it, she reminded herself, tartly. Heart’s Eye was clearly carrying out its own experiments, even as it taught the next generation of students.
The air shifted, very slightly. She tensed. Beside her, Frieda lifted a hand, ready to cast a spell. The air moved, a faint gust of wind blowing against her face... she braced herself, eying the mirrors warily. If one of them was a Manavore... she motioned for Frieda to stay where she was as Emily moved forward, looking from side to side. The mirrors were unmoving. Her reflection looked... unchanged. And yet...
“There’s a door up ahead,” she hissed. “Watch my back.”
“I’m ready,” Frieda said.
Emily slipped closer to the door, reaching out with her senses. There was a single charm on the wood, one that warned of anyone approaching... it wasn’t deadly, as far as she could tell. It didn’t seem to have enough magic to do more than scratch. And yet, it was there... she gingerly touched the wood, ready to leap back if the spell was designed to trigger something deadlier. But there was nothing. The door wasn’t even locked. Carefully, very carefully, she pushed the door open. The wind grew stronger...
She recoiled, gagging in shock, as the stench hit her. The air was foul, so foul she had to cover her nose to keep from throwing up. She muttered a pair of spells to clear the air—behind her, Frieda choked, too—and another to check for subtle attacks, for spells that might be concealed by the smell. But she found nothing. The air just stunk...
Frieda inched up behind her, one hand pinching her nose. “I think we’ve found the boys locker room.”
Emily laughed, humorlessly. “Stay here,” she said. “I’m going in.”
She inched through the door and peered around. The room looked as if a bomb had hit it. A pile of blankets lay in one corner, a giant collection of books lay in another... pieces of wood lay everywhere, suggesting that something had been shattered beyond repair. She reached out with her senses, but detected nothing beyond faint hints of dying magic. It struck her, suddenly, that the necromancer had lived here. It might have been a nice room before he’d torn it apart.
He split his mind into two bodies to handle the power, Emily thought, numbly. What happened to the second body when the first was destroyed?
She looked around the room, feeling an odd twinge of sympathy. Dua Kepala had been the most dangerous necromancer she’d ever faced, yet... his life had been so empty. He hadn’t been interested in wine, women and song... or anything else that might drive someone to conquer entire countries. He’d been the sanest necromancer she’d encountered, with the possible exception of King Randor, but... he’d been so desperate to ensure a steady supply of food that he’d forgone everything else. She told herself, firmly, that Dua Kepala had brought his fate on himself. He’d had other options. He hadn’t had to become a necromancer.
Frieda appeared behind her. “Is this where he lived?”
“I guess so.” Emily looked at the next room and shuddered. It was bare, save for a single stone altar resting on the floor. There were hundreds of runes, carved into the floor, surrounding it. She could sense the taint of necromancy pervading the room. Hundreds—perhaps thousands—of innocents had been slaughtered on the altar, their lives sacrificed to give the necromancer one more day of life. “All of that slaughter, and for what?”
“If you’re powerless, you want power and control.” Frieda’s voice was calm, but Emily knew her well enough to hear the grim undertones. “And you eventually stop caring about what you have to do to get it.”
Emily gave her a reassuring look. “You wouldn’t have turned into a necromancer.”
“I might have,” Frieda said. “If you hadn’t come along... I might have sold my soul for power.”
“I don’t think so,” Emily said. “You’re a decent person.”
But she knew, as she turned her attention to the books, that Frieda had a point. She would have sold her soul, if it had given her power to escape her stepfather and find safety. And the only way to be truly safe was to have the power to make oneself safe... you couldn�
�t rely on anyone else, she knew, because they might let you down. Such thinking led to disaster—always—but... if someone was hurting, they might not care. She could have gone that way too...
Frieda cleared her throat. “That’s your influence.”
“It’s you,” Emily said, simply.
She picked up the closest book and smiled as she parsed out the title. An Introduction to Mirror Magic. She opened the first page and read the details. The book was over fifty years old, but... still intact. Still readable. Dua Kepala had taken the book out of the library and carried it down to his lair, for... for what? She had a sudden mental image of the two-bodied necromancer sitting in a comfortable armchair, drinking a glass of wine as he read his way through the entire library. She had to smile at the thought, even though it wasn’t funny. The necromancer could have made himself very dangerous if he’d studied the rest of the collection.
He was dangerous already, Emily mused. And he might have wanted to know why his victims filled their school with mirrors.
She felt her heart sink as she surveyed the pile of books. There were over a hundred volumes in the collection, ranging from old textbooks to tomes that might well be unique. Some of them were written in languages she didn’t recognize, the script so old that it predated the Empire itself. She picked up a handful of books, feeling a surge of frustration. The answers might be right in front of them, if only they could read the books...
“Go fetch Jayson,” she ordered. “Tell him we need him.”
Frieda nodded and hurried off. Emily smiled grimly and started to sort through the books. The textbooks were written in the common tongue, as far as she could tell; she could read those and leave the remainder for Jayson. She tried a translation spell on one of the books, but nothing happened. There was a spell woven into the leather that prevented the spell from working. She cursed whoever had written or bound the book under her breath. She could try to overpower the spell, but that might destroy the entire book.
Mirror Image (Schooled in Magic Book 18) Page 26