“Try not to breathe too deeply,” she advised, as they pressed further into the maze. “This place could be dangerous.”
“They said that people went to see her when they were desperate,” Rudolf said. “How did they escape the plants?”
Emily shrugged. A damp cloth would be enough, if the victim reacted quickly. Or perhaps they just fell asleep, then Mother Holly pulled them out of the plantation and helped them to recover. It wouldn’t take long for the effects to wear off, once they were out of the aroma. She couldn’t sense any wards, but some herbalists had a sixth sense for the condition of their gardens. Mother Holly might have the inclination, even if she didn’t have the training.
She knelt down beside the suffering snake and picked it up, absently. Rudolf let out a strangled sound, staring at her in absolute horror. Emily blinked in surprise, then remembered the rotting touch. But the snake felt harmless in her palm...she stared down at it, feeling no pain at all. The familiar bond, she realized as she shook in relief, protected her from its poison.
The snake licked her finger, then gave her a heavy-lidded look and a series of impressions that suggested tiredness. Emily worked the spell that transfigured it back into a bracelet, then returned it to her arm.
Rudolf’s mouth worked frantically, but no words came out. From his point of view, she’d just picked up the most dangerous snake in the world and held it, without losing a hand.
“I have a link with it,” she said. She honestly hadn’t realized the danger...because the link had ensured that there was no danger. “Don’t try to pick it up yourself.”
She hid her amusement as they picked their way down the path. Rudolf had asked her to marry him...but he was probably having second thoughts, after seeing her pet. And the connection she had with it. No one would question a death by Death Viper. Everyone knew the snakes couldn’t be tamed.
Unless, of course, one forged a mental link out of desperation.
The sound of running water grew louder as they stepped into a clearing with a series of carefully-organized ponds. Emily glanced at one and saw...things...swimming through the water. Fish, she knew, were often chopped up and used as potions ingredients. Another held tiny crabs, the mere sight of them sending a chill down her spine. Smashing them up for alchemical research wasn’t her favorite activity. Professor Thande assigned the preparation of various disgusting ingredients instead of using the cane whenever he wanted to punish someone. Emily had a feeling that most of his students would have preferred to be caned.
“This place is a tiny farm,” she said, as they walked past the ponds and into another clump of plants. “Some of these are magical, some serve as the neutral baseline for specific potions.”
Rudolf looked around, carefully. “How many hedge witches are there?”
Emily had no idea, and said so. Hedge witches were usually solitary creatures, unwilling or unable even to talk with their fellows. It seemed odd that one person could have done all this, but Mother Holly was supposed to be ancient...and she’d presumably had a mentor. Maybe the hidden valley was far older than it looked, or maybe Mother Holly had friends and allies. There was no way to know.
They passed through a final set of plants and stopped, staring at the house at the center of the valley. It looked, on the surface, like any of the other hovels she’d seen in the villages, but it seemed to have drawn trees and bushes into the wooden walls. Emily took a step forward, reaching out with her senses...
She recoiled at the dark magic she sensed surrounding the hovel, powerful and threatening. She held up a hand to stop Rudolf, then got her staff out of her pocket and enlarged it. Rudolf nodded in understanding as Emily advanced forward, trying to feel the shape of the wards. They were tainted with dark magic, but not as complex as some of the tricks she’d encountered in Blackhall.
She looked around, carefully. There hadn’t been any warning ward, as far as she’d been able to tell, but Mother Holly might well have sensed their presence. If, of course, she was inside the building. Even if she wasn’t...she might have sensed something. How closely were the wards tied to her?
“I need to break the wards,” she said, to Rudolf. “Keep an eye out for trouble.”
Rudolf snorted. “You mean something more dangerous than what we’ve found already?”
“Mother Holly herself,” Emily said. If the hedge witch was innocent, which was starting to look rather unlikely, she would be understandably upset at discovering two youngsters trying to break into her home. She could legally do whatever she wanted to them – she could do anything to them, if she had the power to do it. “Let me know the moment anything changes.”
She stepped forward and tapped her magic against the wards. Sergeant Miles had taught her that it was a way of ringing the doorbell, if there was a ward in place to alert the owner that she had visitors. Emily waited for several moments, but nothing happened. Carefully, balancing the staff on its tip, she walked forward and started to untangle the wards.
They snapped and spat at her as she worked. Most of them were basic, barely enough to repel a mundane visitor, but some of the more complex ones were nasty, tapping into very dark magic indeed. Two of them were even outside her experience and she had to work frantically to counter a series of hexes that would have caused her permanent injury if she failed to block them in time. The wards were wasteful and ill-designed, but she had to admit that they were craftier than they seemed.
Still, a trained magician like Lady Barb should have had no difficulty breaking in.
But, she asked herself, was the real problem breaking out?
There was a final flash of multicolored balefire – Rudolf gasped in shock – then the wards snapped out of existence.
Emily paused to catch her breath. If Mother Holly was innocent, they would be in some trouble. Rudolf stepped forward as she picked up her staff and leaned on it, reaching out for the door. Emily hissed at him to stop just before he touched it.
“Let me test everything first,” she ordered. If there was one thing she had learned from Blackhall, it was that the big showy threat might mask something more dangerous. “You could touch something one moment and find yourself a frog the next.”
But there was no charm on the door, at least as far as she could tell. She used her staff to nudge it open, then peered inside, half-expecting something to jump out at her.
But there was nothing inside, apart from darkness...and a stench that made her recoil. There were no windows, nothing to provide any illumination at all. Bracing herself, fearful of any reaction from undiscovered defenses, Emily crafted a globe of light and sent it bobbing into the room.
“Interesting,” Rudolf said, one eye on the ball of light. “What else can you do?”
Emily ignored the question as the light illuminated the interior of the hovel. It was messy, as if Mother Holly had stopped caring about housekeeping. A large fireplace sat in one corner, a black cauldron positioned over it, while the tables were covered with herbs and half-dissected animals. Several bottles were placed on top of the table, their lids removed and protective spells destroyed. She guessed they were the bottles stolen from Lord Gorham’s town.
She created a second light globe and sent it bobbing over towards the pile of blankets at the far edge of the room. Had Mother Holly slept there? She felt another stab of sympathy, which she angrily repressed. Unless she was dreadfully mistaken, Mother Holly was responsible for the death of at least twenty children, as well as trying to enchant Rudolf and his father. What sort of pity did she deserve?
None, she told herself. The only pity Emily could or would offer Mother Holly was a quick death. She’d become too dangerous to leave alive. It didn’t escape her that some people in the Allied Lands believed the same of Emily herself. After all, there were dark rumors that Emily was a necromancer herself.
She pushed the thought aside as she saw something concealed under the blankets. Bracing herself, she reached down and pushed the blankets aside, keeping a wary eye out f
or traps. The blankets stank, but there were no other defenses, allowing her to uncover the skull. It sparked a memory in her mind; Yodel had told her, back when they’d first met, that some magicians stored their memories, even their personalities, in skulls, waiting for someone to find them and put them to work. There were even stories, cautionary tales, of magicians who primed their skulls to decant their personalities into the first idiot who touched them. It provided a kind of life after death.
Careful not to touch the skull with either her bare hand or magic, she used the blankets to pick up the skull and deposit it on the table. Up close, there were a handful of runes carved into the skull, only two of which she recognized. One of them would keep the skull intact, no matter what happened, the other would feed a faint trickle of magic into the skull, holding the enchanted personality firmly in place. Bracing herself, expecting a backlash of some kind, she used a simple detection spell and found...nothing.
“No magic,” she said, puzzled.
Rudolf came over to stand behind her. “Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know,” Emily confessed. “The skull was once home to a magician’s personality, but it doesn’t seem to have endured.”
She looked down at the skull, contemplatively. Was it a fake? Or something Mother Holly had been trying to make work? Or had the personality sunk into Mother Holly, leaving the skull empty? It was possible, wasn’t it? But all the cautionary tales she’d read had suggested that the skull would remain dangerous indefinitely.
Rudolf swore. Emily turned and followed his gaze, staring into another corner. A body lay on the ground, one too small to be anything other than a baby. Sickened, Emily crept closer, directing the light globe to hover over the child’s body. The most obvious wound was a stab to the heart, but there were several others, all of which might prove fatal to a baby. Dark magic surrounded the corpse, clinging to the dead body like a living thing.
“I thought we could save the child,” Rudolf said. He sounded stunned, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing. His voice was almost plaintive. “But why did she need a child?”
Emily swallowed. The answer was obvious; Mother Holly hadn’t been looking for magical power, but life force. A trained magician would be the most promising source of the former, yet a newborn baby would be the best source of the latter. After all, a baby had his or her entire life to enjoy. She shook her head, unwilling to discuss the possibility. Lady Barb had been right, again. In the long run, transferring life force might be even more dangerous to the Allied Lands than necromancy.
“I don’t know,” Emily lied. The skull’s face seemed to mock her as she looked at it. Had it decanted something – or someone – into Mother Holly’s head...or was it just a repository of information?
“So,” Rudolf said, as she returned the skull to its hiding place. “What else can we do? Where else can we go?”
Emily hesitated. There was no trace of Mother Holly – or Lady Barb. She briefly considered releasing the snake again, then realized that she already knew where to look next.
“The castle,” she said, softly.
Throwing caution to the winds, she stood in the middle of the hovel and cast a powerful magic detection charm. The skull showed no reaction, while some of the potions ingredients glowed faintly – and a bright glow could be seen from a hidden drawer. Emily opened it carefully, disarming a nasty protective hex as she moved, and swore aloud as she produced the book. Like some of the grimoires preserved in Whitehall’s library, it was made from human skin and written in blood. The magician who’d written it, she suspected, might even have used his own blood. Once he was dead, the book would be bonded to his family line...
No, that couldn’t be right, she told herself. Mother Holly wasn’t related to a magician, was she? But there was no way to know.
She picked up the book, carefully, and opened it. There was no table of contents, forcing her to inspect each spell one by one. Some of them were surprisingly common, used at Whitehall; others were deadly dangerous. One of them was a compulsion spell so powerful that the victim wouldn’t have a hope of resisting, once the magician had obtained a sample of his blood. It reminded her of the spell Shadye had used on her, years ago. Others told her how to blind a disobedient child or turn him into a toad; make a woman permanently barren or nothing more than a slave; cripple a man or give him permanent bad luck...the writer, she realized, had been filled with hatred and malice towards the world. The evil the book could have caused was terrifying. And most of the people in the mountains would be absolutely defenseless.
And, when the writer had finally died, he’d meant his malice to live on.
The final spell was alarmingly familiar. It was the basic necromantic rite.
“We have to take this with us,” Emily said, placing the book under her arm. “And we have to go to the castle.”
Rudolf gave her a sharp look. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t know where else to go,” Emily said, simply. Had Lady Barb gone to the castle after searching the hovel? There was no sign of a fight. But somehow Emily doubted that Lady Barb would have missed the grimoire. “If we can’t find her there...”
She refused to consider the possibility as she led the way outside, into the slowly darkening sky. Clouds were gathering overhead, threatening to pour rain on their heads. Emily cast a protective charm over the book, wondering if she should destroy it. But she couldn’t bring herself to destroy any book, no matter how evil. Instead, she kept it under her arm, despite her fears. The book was surrounded by magic that might seek to do her harm.
Rudolf followed her outside. “And what if we can’t get into the castle?”
“You go back to your father and alert him,” Emily said, nettled. She didn’t want to consider the possibility of failure. “I go down to the Allied Lands and call for help.”
Moments later, the first raindrops started to fall.
Chapter Thirty-Five
EMILY HAD INTENDED NOT TO RISK using magic to shield them from the rain, but within moments she realized that she had no choice. The downpour grew so rapidly that their clothes were drenched within minutes, while visibility fell so badly she could barely see more than a foot or two ahead of her and thunder crackled in the sky overhead. If she hadn’t been so determined to reach the castle, she would have found a place for them to hole up and wait for the storm to end.
She cast another protective charm on the grimoire, then looked over at Rudolf. He looked like a drowned rat – she knew she probably didn’t look much better – but was grimly determined to follow her to the castle. Emily briefly considered suggesting that he took the book back to the guesthouse, then reminded herself that Rudolf wouldn’t be able to get through the wards and into the building. Bringing him with her was risky, but she suspected he wouldn’t go quietly if she asked him to go back to the village.
The rain grew stronger, beating against her wards and washing against her feet. Any tracks that might have been left would be obliterated, she realized numbly. There was no proof that Lady Barb had actually reached the castle. Coming to think of it, she thought sourly, there was no proof Lady Barb had ever entered the hovel. She might have been waylaid somewhere just outside the building.
“She could have rebuilt the wards,” Rudolf pointed out. “And then gone to the castle.”
Emily had her doubts. Lady Barb was far more skillful with magic than Emily, but rebuilding Mother Holly’s complex series of wards would be very difficult – and besides, she’d left the grimoire in place. And there had been no trace of her magic in the wards. No, Emily decided, Lady Barb had not gone into the hovel. So where had she gone?
She paused in thought. There had been no sign of a battle outside the shack. Lady Barb wouldn’t have gone quietly, certainly not to a hedge witch, so what had happened to her?
Emily briefly considered releasing the Death Viper and inspecting the rest of the plantation, but it would probably be useless. The ground would be sodden by now, all tr
acks and scents utterly destroyed. It was a marvel that the plants had lasted long enough under the bombardment of rain to supply generations of hedge witches.
“I don’t think so,” she said. Lady Barb was still bound by her oaths. If she encountered a grimoire, she was required to confiscate it at once. Instead, she’d just left it in the hovel – if, of course, she had seen it at all. Emily suspected she hadn’t seen the cursed book. “I think something happened to her along the way.”
She jumped as a row of small animals ran across the path and into the undergrowth. Rudolf didn’t seem too surprised; Emily guessed he was used to it. As an aristocrat, he could spend time hunting while peasants worked; he’d probably spent weeks out in the countryside, merely enjoying himself. But Rudolf was an only son. Like many of the older noble children of Zangaria, surely he would be expected to spend time learning to rule.
“Father always said that all he needed was an awareness of the realities,” Rudolf said. “He never wanted me to learn to read.”
Emily shuddered. It still surprised her that so many people had been unable to read, even in the script the Allied Lands had used before she’d introduced English letters. Magicians could generally read – Whitehall offered classes for students – but the other segments of society were largely illiterate. No wonder the Scribes Guild had got away with so much for so long.
“You should learn,” she said, although she suspected the words would fall on deaf ears. On Earth, reading might be a gateway to countless other worlds, but the books simply didn’t exist in the Allied Lands. Not yet. “It can be quite helpful.”
Rudolf snorted and changed the subject. “Shouldn’t we get help to storm the castle?”
Emily looked at him. “From whom?”
“My father...”
His voice trailed off. It would take at least two days to get his father’s troops to Easter...and that would be too long. Emily wondered, absently, if he’d ever considered arming the peasants and sending them against the castle, but it was the sort of tactic that only worked in bad vampire movies. In the real world, any magician could deal with an angry mob and – if the magician happened to be a necromancer – use them as a power source. They’d just be giving the enemy more targets.
Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) Page 33