“You’re either the controller or the controlled,” Alt-Emily said. “And I chose to be the controller.”
“You chose to be a monster,” Emily said, flatly. She could see the logic, the terrible logic, but... she wouldn’t embrace it. The world was not divided into controllers and controlled. “You went mad.”
“No one will ever tell me what to do again,” Alt-Emily said. Her eyes were very hard. “No one will ever threaten to beat me or rape me or enslave me or kill me... not now, not ever. You?”
Emily shook her head. “Let us go,” she said. A thought struck her, one she’d been trying to avoid. “You can keep your personal hell.”
“You’ll find a way to strike back if I let you go.” Alt-Emily didn’t sound angry, merely... accepting. Her magic was starting to build as she brought all her power to bear on Emily’s wards. “I won’t take the chance.”
“I could give you an oath,” Emily said. “But you won’t accept that, will you?”
She reached out with her mind, deliberately blending their magics as she forced her awareness into her counterpart’s mind. Alt-Emily hadn’t realized, not really, that they were the same person. Emily didn’t like to admit it, even to herself, but they were. Her counterpart’s mental defenses were strong, so much stronger than hers they were terrifying, yet... in some sense, they were also hers. They melted before her, unable to stop her... any more than they could stop the sorceress who’d created them. Emily felt their thoughts start to blur...
STOP FIGHTING, she thought. She took a grip on her counterpart’s mind and squeezed as hard as she could, holding her counterpart still. Shock and horror rushed through the mental link. Alt-Emily felt as if she were being raped. Emily felt a pang of guilt, mingled with a grim awareness that she had no choice. She had to keep her counterpart still. STOP FIGHTING.
Memories bubbled up, pulling her further into her counterpart’s mind. The early ones were familiar, very familiar... she laughed at herself a second later, kicking herself for missing the obvious. They weren’t just familiar. They were identical. She saw, through both sets of eyes, her mother vomiting drunkenly into a toilet, her stepfather shouting at her... and, later, watching her as she moved around the house. Shadye’s face leered, his red eyes boring into her skull; she felt her counterpart’s terror as she’d felt it herself. That memory was the same. What had changed? When had they become two separate people?
And then the memories reached out and overwhelmed her...
... Shadye stands in front of her, mocking her. He’s controlling her. Sergeant Harkin is in front of her... no, not Sergeant Harkin. Sergeant Miles. She’s holding a knife—a stone knife—to his throat. Shadye pushes and she can no longer resist. The knife slides into his throat... POWER, POWER, POWER. She pushes it at Shadye until the world turns black...
... They find her in the Great Hall, the sole survivor. Everyone else is ash and less than ash. They believe her when she tells them she killed Shadye... they believe her because they want to believe. They don’t know about the itching in her eyes, the growing sense that the world is growing off-kilter...
... She looks into a mirror. Red eyes look back...
... She seduces Jade one afternoon. He becomes hers...
... King Randor listens to her when she speaks. He’s willing to use her. She’s willing to use him too. She ignores Alassa’s concerns as she tells Randor how to build his armies, how to make gunpowder, how to craft a force that could take the entire globe...
... Frieda, crying. A sense of kinship. Another seduction, mental rather than physical...
... The Grandmaster, watching her. His death, his lips turning blue as he tries to speak. A grim awareness that he’s already warned too many others...
... Alassa, screaming. She runs... too late. Far too late...
... Mushroom clouds rising, one by one. Necromancers dying. The White Council, wiped out. King Randor’s armies spilling across the land, slaughtering everyone who dares stand in their way. Alassa, leading the resistance. A brute, her husband, fighting by her side. A hopeless war...
... And Heart’s Eye. Always Heart’s Eye...
The torrent of images grew stronger. Caleb, showing off. Alt-Emily listening, praising, seducing... it was impossible to believe they were the same person, yet... they were. They had to be. Emily understood her counterpart far too well. They were the same person. If things had been different, she might have taken the entire world too.
She wants to be safe, Emily thought. She felt a twinge of sympathy, muted with the grim awareness that nothing justified Alt-Emily’s crimes. And she thinks she can hold the entire world forever...
Pain stabbed through her mind as her counterpart tried to fight back. Emily gritted her teeth, realizing that Alt-Emily was trying to ruthlessly ransack her mind too. It was hard, so hard, to keep her grip on her counterpart’s mind. Alt-Emily had little experience of mental conflict—she’d always been dominant—but she was learning fast. She was drawing information from Emily’s mind, twisting it to suit herself. She...
GET OUT OF MY HEAD, Alt-Emily thought. Her rage tore into Emily’s mind. Her anger was almost beyond belief. NOW.
Emily ignored her. Instead, she reached out and ripped her counterpart’s defenses apart from the inside. The wards and incants collapsed in on themselves. Emily was thrown out of Alt-Emily’s mind a second later, but it was already too late. Far too late. She strode forward, brushing the handful of surviving spells out of the way, and slammed her fist into her counterpart’s jaw. Alt-Emily tumbled, her eyes going wide as Emily hit her again. She’d never tried to develop her body as well as her magic. Emily smiled as she realized she had some advantages...
Her counterpart hit the ground. A moment later, there was a surge of magic and a blinding white light. Emily threw up her hands to cover her eyes. When the light faded, when she lowered her hands, her counterpart was gone. She’d teleported out.
Emily stared in surprise. Alt-Emily had been stunned, even if she hadn’t been knocked out. She was in no state to teleport... had she programmed the wards to automatically teleport her? Or... or what?
She turned to Alt-Frieda. “I’m sorry,” she said, and slapped her as hard as she could. There was no time to be gentle. “We really have to go.”
“You beat her!” Alt-Frieda’s eyes were very wide. One hand rubbed her reddened cheek. “You beat her!”
“In a manner of speaking,” Emily said. She checked Caleb, cursing under her breath. Caleb—her Caleb—was dazed and broken, mumbling. If Alt-Emily had damaged his mind, he might never recover. It wouldn't be pleasant even if she’d avoided doing any permanent damage. “Do you know where she went?”
“No,” Alt-Frieda said.
“She’d go somewhere she felt safe,” Frieda said. She slipped her hand into Emily’s. “Just like you, right?”
“Yeah.” Emily considered it for a moment, then shook her head. God alone knew where her counterpart would feel safe. She wouldn’t have the Grandmaster’s house, not in this reality. Zangaria? Whitehall? Or... or somewhere she’d never been? “How did she do it?”
“I don’t know,” Alt-Frieda said. She looked around the chamber of horrors, as if she expected Alt-Emily to teleport back at any second. “She could be anywhere.”
“Then we have to go, now,” Emily said. She levitated Caleb into the air, then nodded at Frieda to take point. There was no time to look for clothes. “Before she recovers and does something else to us.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
THE AIR FELT DIFFERENT AS THE small team made its way out of the chamber of horrors and back towards the mirror. The wards buzzed, neither impeding their process or trying to help them. Emily reached out to them, time and time again, but they seemed to have slipped into neutral mode. It was easy to guess that her counterpart had teleported to the nexus chamber—to her nexus chamber. She might not be able to tune the wards to strike at Emily herself, but she could surely prevent Emily from using the wards to strike at
her.
And she managed to construct a teleport key, Emily thought, numbly. She had no idea how that trick was done. Teleporting normally required conscious control. Her counterpart could suspend a spell within a pocket dimension, ready to be triggered if she was knocked out, but... how could she know where she’d be when she got knocked out? It would be tricky to handle the variables without a solid idea of where she was. How did she do it?
She tossed ideas around and around in her head as they hurried down the stairwell. They saw no one, not even a servant, but... she could feel doom snapping at their heels. How much time did they have? The Gorgon might have shattered the mirror dimension by now... Emily could still feel the nexus point, but which nexus point? Hers? Or her counterpart’s? They might even be the same nexus point. If the nexuses transcended space and time, if it was always the ever-present now, could they transcend the dimensional barriers too? For all she knew, the cracks in reality were already threatening to tear everything apart.
Everything. Her counterpart had had a point, as much as she hated to admit it. The scale of the devastation—the potential devastation—was completely beyond her comprehension. An uncounted number of people might be about to die.
She glanced at Frieda and her counterpart, feeling a chill run down her spine. They were identical... she frowned, feeling torn between the certainty that they were identical and the awareness there were differences. Alt-Frieda looked grim, her face a bitter mask; Emily felt her heart go out to the younger girl, again, as they made their way down the corridor. Alt-Frieda didn’t have to stay, did she? She could come back with them. It wasn’t as if it would be hard to find a place for her... her lips quirked. Frieda had no ties to her family, not any longer. Caleb, on the other hand... she wondered what his mother would say if she suddenly found out she had an extra son.
Caleb himself looked woozy as she levitated him down the stairs. Emily made a mental note to make sure he was checked out by a healer, a proper healer. God alone knew what had happened over the past two days. Emily had tasted her counterpart’s ruthlessness, tasted the pleasure she took in controlling everything and everyone. She didn’t want to think about what her counterpart could have done to Caleb. If she’d broken her Caleb to the point where he was on the verge of death...
She’s me, Emily thought. It was hard to accept, despite everything. She’s me, just... twisted.
“The mirror is just in there,” Alt-Frieda said. “Can you still get out?”
“We’ll find out,” Emily said. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”
“It’s her world.” Alt-Frieda indicated her counterpart. “And if I can take her out...”
Emily pushed open the door. The mirror stood there, seemingly untouched. And... her counterpart stood in front of the mirror, her mere presence polluting the air. Emily swore, kicking herself for being a fool. She should have realized that her counterpart would cut her line of retreat. It was what she would have done, if things had been different. She would have moved to keep her counterpart from escaping too.
She must have seen the truth in my mind, Emily thought, as she carefully lowered Caleb to the floor. Surely, she would have seen my mind as much as I saw hers.
“Well,” Alt-Emily said. She held up a hand. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Of course you have,” Emily said. She gathered herself. “Let us go.”
“I suppose I could,” Alt-Emily said. “But then... perhaps I shouldn’t.”
“You’re outnumbered,” Frieda said. “We can take you.”
Alt-Emily cocked an eyebrow. “You and Caleb don’t have any magic, not now. Your... counterpart”—her gaze lingered on Alt-Frieda—“cannot use magic against me. The only real threat is my counterpart, and she cannot match my power.”
“Not directly,” Emily said. She reached out with her mind, only to discover that her counterpart had closed her mind. The shock of having her thoughts invaded had probably taught her that they were, on some level, the same person. “But I don’t have time to match wits and magic with you.”
“How lucky for you,” Alt-Emily said, dryly. “I have more of both.”
“No, you don’t.” Emily gritted her teeth. The sense of time running out was growing stronger and stronger. “Let us go. We’re no threat to you.”
“Yes, you are.” Alt-Emily nodded to the mirror. “You’d come back...”
“I don’t even know if I can come back,” Emily snapped. “You saw my mind, didn’t you? You must know.”
“Yes,” Alt-Emily shrugged. “I know that you would seek to stop me if you could.”
She met Emily’s eyes, evenly. “But then, I suppose you really haven’t tried to make things better. You could turn the world into a paradise if you used your powers and knowledge to their fullest extent.”
“I’ve done a lot,” Emily said. “And you know it.”
“I’ve done more,” her counterpart said. She grinned. “The entire world bends the knee to me now.”
“Except Alassa,” Alt-Frieda said.
“She might as well be Bonnie Prince Charlie,” Alt-Emily said, easily. “No armies, not any longer. No power, nothing that can make her rightful claim to the throne a reality. And no one who can help her... not really. She’s a gnat who will be swatted in time.”
She tapped the mirror. “You could always stay,” she added. “You’re thinking about it, aren't you? Stay here and fight me... of course, I won’t let you. The only way you get to stay here is on my terms.”
Emily stared back at her for a long moment. “You remember all the old movies we used to watch?”
Alt-Emily shrugged. “Of course.”
“The villains would gloat to the hero, who was at their mercy,” Emily said. “I never understood why they just didn’t kill him.”
“I dare say the scriptwriter was on the hero’s side,” Alt-Emily said. “Do you have a point?”
“I’ve met people here who gloated too,” Emily said. “People who might have won, if they hadn’t stopped to gloat. How much trouble could Randor have saved himself if he’d simply snapped my neck, when he had me in his dungeons? And it took me a long time to figure out why. They’re insecure. They want to gloat, they want to make it clear that they’re in charge, because they think—deep down inside—that they’re not in charge. That... everything they have rests on sand, that it can be taken away in a moment.”
Alt-Emily raised a single dark eyebrow. “Indeed?”
“Our stepfather was like that too,” Emily said. She saw that now, although she was damned if she’d ever forgive him. To understand all was not to forgive all. “He wanted control because he didn’t have control. And you are just like him. You’re a terrified child lashing out with godlike power.”
“I’m nothing like him,” Alt-Emily snapped. Her magic flared, power tainting the air. “I didn’t...”
“Yes, you did.” Emily shuddered at the memories she’d seen in her counterpart’s mind. “You are so obsessed with control because you fear, deep inside, that you don’t have it. You warp and twist minds until they start to collapse because you don’t let them be free. You fear they will turn on you. You condemned Jade and Cat and Caleb and God alone knows how many others to a living death, because...”
Alt-Emily jabbed a finger at her. A curse—an extremely powerful curse—crashed into Emily’s wards. Emily parried it, throwing back a wardbreaker spell. Her counterpart shoved the ward forward, trying to slam the ward—and the spell—into Emily’s defenses. Emily stepped to one side as Alt-Frieda hurried back, her hands working overtime as she started to cast the nuke-spell. Emily cast another pair of spells to serve as a distraction, eying the mirror as Alt-Emily threw another curse. The air seemed to grow dark, just for a second. Her counterpart was using the darkest of magics.
She’ll run out of power, sooner or later, Emily told herself. She tried to slip into her counterpart’s mind again, but her enemy’s shields remained firm. But will she run out of power be
fore she kills us?
Frieda ran forward, fists raised. Alt-Emily glanced at her, then cast a nasty transfiguration spell. Frieda screamed as her body started to warp; Emily realized, to her horror, that the spell was designed to force someone into a form that literally couldn’t survive. Even a brief touch was utter agony. She cancelled the spell with an effort, giving her counterpart a chance to land a solid blow. Her wards nearly shattered under the impact. It took her everything she had to hold them together long enough to pull Frieda back and shove her at Caleb.
“Get him through the mirror,” she snapped. She could feel something behind her, a sense of power and deadly potential she hadn’t sensed in four years. Alt-Frieda was readying the nuke-spell. “Hurry!”
“You will not get away,” Alt-Emily said. Her face glowed with manic glee. “You will die here...”
Emily shaped a spell and threw it, mingling a handful of different strands of magic into a single attack. Her counterpart had to be kept busy long enough for Alt-Frieda to finish preparing the nuke-spell. If she sensed what Alt-Frieda was doing... Emily looked past her counterpart at the mirror. They had to get through... she cursed her counterpart, savagely, as she started to unleash a hail of spells. She’d seen Emily’s mind. She had to know that Emily wouldn’t be able to cross the dimensional walls once the Faerie was gone.
And it might be gone already, Emily thought. She dodged a spell that would have killed her. We have to move.
She glanced at Frieda, then flung herself against her counterpart. So close, skill counted for more than power. Magic crackled around them as she pressed her advantage, throwing caution to the winds as she tried to rip her opponent’s wards apart. It was strange—she felt as if she were undressing herself as well as her counterpart—but it seemed to work. They really were the same person at heart, even if they were also very different. But her counterpart was tearing apart Emily’s wards too.
Mirror Image (Schooled in Magic Book 18) Page 36