The horrible spell book had talked about spells to terrify people into servitude. Perhaps Mother Holly had tested one on the guard, only to discover that it rendered him largely useless. And then she’d just left him that way...
Emily heard a loud thump as the door slammed closed. The chamber was sealed.
“Well,” Mother Holly said. Her gaze was fixed firmly on Lady Barb. “You came to restore the old order.”
Lady Barb showed no reaction. Emily cringed, mentally. Just how badly had the older woman been hurt? She didn’t look to have any broken bones, but someone could be beaten into submission without breaking any bones. The bruises suggested that she’d been worked over by experts, using everything from their bare hands to the flat of their blades. Blood had dried on her bare flesh.
“But you have failed,” Mother Holly said, when Lady Barb showed no reaction. “The old order has failed.”
Lady Barb coughed, then spat. Emily couldn’t avoid noticing she’d spat blood.
“You are messing with powers you don’t understand,” Lady Barb said. Her voice was strong enough to hold attention, despite the beating. “You have to stop this.”
Mother Holly stepped forward until she was standing in front of the table, looking down at the young girl. “I have seen too many aristocrats” – the word was a curse – “abuse the common folk,” she snapped. “Why should I not wage war on them?”
“You’re killing more commoners than the aristocrats ever did,” Lady Barb pointed out. “I know you’ve taken at least twenty children – and I’d bet you took more. How can you justify that to yourself?”
For a moment, Emily thought the question had started to unravel Mother Holly’s determination to proceed. Her face shifted rapidly, as if there were two personalities struggling for control. She must have done something to the skull, draining it of the personality its creator had left in place.
What if the personality had tried to overwhelm Mother Holly, only to come to a draw? Or perhaps they were still fighting.
“I have watched peasants starve because they are not allowed to keep enough food for winter,” Mother Holly said. “I have watched girls taken into the high castles because they are pretty. I have watched boys beaten for daring to go too close to the castle and older men crippled for trying to hunt for food. I will do whatever it takes to prevent the aristocrats from abusing their subjects.”
Emily puzzled over it. If that was the case, why hadn’t she killed Lord Gorham and Rudolf, rather than trying to control them? And why try to have Rudolf marry Lady Easter’s daughter? Unless...perhaps the objective was to give the mountains a single royal family once again? There would be fewer people trying to claim tax, for one thing, and it would be far easier for Mother Holly to control them.
“I will break your mind if you refuse to pledge your servitude to me,” Mother Holly hissed as she produced a knife from her belt. A wave of dark magic washed across the room. Emily didn’t need to see the knife directly to know that it was made from grey stone. “And what is left of you will never be found.”
“Go to the devils,” Lady Barb said. She managed to stand up straighter, despite the chains, looking Mother Holly right in the eye. “You’re already halfway there.”
Mother Holly snarled and raised the knife, ready to plunge it into the girl’s chest. Rudolf moved before Emily could stop him, throwing himself at Mother Holly’s back. She turned, surprised, as the concealment spells snapped. They couldn’t hide someone who drew attention to himself. Rudolf barely made it halfway to her before his entire body froze and he fell to the ground.
Emily cursed and hastily returned her staff to normal size. Mother Holly stared at her, lifting her hand. Emily threw herself to one side as a fireball rocketed past her and struck the far wall, setting fire to one of the tapestries.
She channeled her power through the staff despite the risks, trying to use a basic freeze spell on Mother Holly. A wave of raw magic deflected her spell, followed by another that yanked the staff out of her hand and sent it flying across the room. Emily shaped another spell in her mind, but it was too late. A third wave of magic caught her, picking her up and holding her upside down, hanging helplessly in front of Mother Holly.
“Well,” Mother Holly said. Up close, her breath stank – and there were faint hints of red light in her eyes. Emily remembered Shadye and shuddered. “Who might you be?”
She cast a spell that made magic crackle around Emily, but nothing happened. Mother Holly repeated the question; Emily braced herself to resist a compulsion…yet there was nothing.
It took her a moment to realize that the spell Void had given her, the spell that made it impossible for her to be forced to share her secrets with the world, was still protecting her.
Mother Holly frowned, motioning with her hand. Emily found herself slammed to the ground, then trapped flat against the floor. Leaving Emily there, Mother Holly picked up Rudolf, cast a spell on him, then started to ask questions. Rudolf answered them, helplessly.
“Your apprentice,” Mother Holly said to Lady Barb. “Wouldn’t she make an excellent sacrifice?”
She turned back to the table and nodded to the three daughters. The spell holding Emily to the floor snapped, but she couldn’t really move very much. She gritted her teeth as the daughters pulled her up into a sitting position, then started to pull at Emily’s clothes. One of them removed the bracelet, then Emily’s shirt and carried them both away from the table.
Emily felt an odd moment of hope. If she took the bracelet too far from Emily...
There was a piercing shriek as the Death Viper returned to its normal form. The girl had been holding it, and the mere touch had burned her badly.
Mother Holly jumped as Emily felt one of Holly’s compulsion spells snap. The girl was in so much pain that the spell had lost its grip on her completely. Her sisters seemed equally shocked.
Emily gathered all the strength she could, then thrust it against the spell keeping her down and weak. It snapped, too. She broke free, then slapped Rudolf hard on the head. The shock should help him recover from the charms Mother Holly had used on him – and besides, it was his fault they were in this mess.
She heard a yelp behind her. As she turned her head, one of the guards doubled over as Lady Barb pulled her hands free. Emily gaped at her, then turned just in time to dodge another fireball from Mother Holly. Her vision seemed to split in two for a second as the Death Viper sensed that she was in danger and went after Mother Holly, almost causing Emily to black out.
Mother Holly screamed with rage, then clutched her knife and brought it down on the helpless child. Emily didn’t hesitate; she cast a spell and yanked the girl towards her, dropping her on the far edge of the chamber. Drugged as she was, the girl didn’t even cry out as she hit the floor.
Got her out, Emily thought. And now...
Mother Holly twisted, then threw a whirling mess of a spell right into Emily’s face. The sheer force of the impact picked her up and slammed her into the wall. Emily grunted in pain as she fell down and landed on her bottom, then picked herself up as another fireball flashed towards her. Heat scorched her hair as it passed over her and struck the wall.
Rudolf threw himself at Mother Holly – this time, the madwoman had no time to react before he struck her. But she recovered within seconds, casting a spell that turned him into a slug. Emily gasped in horror as Mother Holly lifted her boot, intending to squash him, then threw a fireball of her own. The madwoman stumbled backwards as it hit her wards.
Emily followed up with a twisting hex that required several moments of uninterrupted concentration to break. Mother Holly jumped to one side, throwing another blast of raw magic at Emily. The sheer level of power – Emily hadn’t sensed anything like it since Shadye had died – slashed past her and smashed right through the walls.
The entire castle shook as stone crumbled into dust. Emily saw corridors ripped apart, followed by the main wall itself. In the distance, she heard the sound of
falling masonry.
Outside, it was still dark. The wind blew rain right into the chamber. For a long moment, everything was still, as if no one could quite believe what had happened.
And then Lady Barb threw a piece of rock right at Mother Holly’s head.
It should have killed her. Or at least knocked her out. But instead, all it seemed to have done was resolve the inner conflict in the madwoman’s mind. The constant changes in expression were gone, leaving only one face, one personality, staring at them.
Another low rumble ran through the castle. It had been designed to weather the very worst storms, to stand tall and proud when gales whistled through the mountains and valleys, but it wasn’t designed to stand up to magic. Emily heard the sound of something else crashing in the distance and wondered if the entire castle was about to fall down around their ears.
The madwoman stared at them, cold rage written all over her face. She lifted her hands, as if she intended to cast a spell, then there was another surge of magic. Emily ducked, bracing herself to evade, but the magic didn’t leap out at her or anyone else. Instead, the madwoman floated into the air and flew right through the gap in the castle’s walls. She cackled out loud as she made her escape, vanishing into the distance.
Emily threw a cancellation spell after her, hoping to send her plummeting to her death, but the spell either missed or didn’t work.
She turned to look at Lady Barb. “Are you...are you all right?”
“You’ll need to purge my system,” Lady Barb said. “Don’t worry about any of the bruises, just purge my body.”
Emily nodded as Lady Barb sat down, still wearing the shackles around her ankles. She cast another cancellation charm at Rudolf, breaking the spell keeping him as a slug, then concentrated on Lady Barb. The purging spell was only meant to be used if someone had swallowed poison or a poorly-prepared potion, and she’d never liked using it.
The spell worked. Lady Barb shuddered, then vomited violently. Emily looked away as the older woman kept throwing up until she was dry-heaving. The stench made Emily want to be sick, too.
“We have to get after her,” Lady Barb said, staggering to her feet. “She drained some of her power now, but she can repower herself...”
“She took the knife,” Emily told her.
She looked around the room. The drugged girl looked to have fallen asleep, thankfully. One of the guards looked to have lost his mind completely – he was sitting on the ground, humming – while the other was groaning in pain. Rudolf looked badly shaken at just how easily he’d been defeated and almost killed. Lady Easter looked angry, somehow, while two of her daughters were desperately trying to tend to the third who’d been burned by Emily’s familiar. And the Death Viper...
Emily looked around and discovered that it was lying next to her, waiting for attention. She turned it back into the bracelet and placed it on her wrist before anyone could start demanding that it be turned into potions’ ingredients.
“The knife doesn’t matter that much,” Lady Barb reminded her. She waved her hand over her shirt, but it took several tries before the vomit fell to the ground, leaving her relatively clean. “We need to keep her away from prospective victims. Even one person would provide enough power to make her immensely dangerous.”
She looked over at Lady Easter. “Send a guard to find my staff,” she added. “We cannot give her time to escape.”
Emily winced. Now that the personality conflict had been resolved, Mother Holly would be twice as dangerous...and she was already mad. Given time, a necromancer could rip the mountains apart.
And there was no one else who had even a hope in hell of stopping her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
EMILY TALKED RAPIDLY AS LADY EASTER took control of her guards – most of whom seemed to have either snapped back to normal or collapsed – and directed them to bring Lady Barb her staff, some food and a change of clothes, perhaps not in that order. Lady Barb listened as she outlined what they’d found at Mother Holly’s hovel, then swore as Emily described the skull.
“She must have tried to use it wrongly,” Lady Barb said. “That’s why she has a split personality.”
Emily nodded. Mother Holly had claimed to be fighting for the common folk, but had stolen their children and used them as a power source. She would hardly be the first person to believe that the ends justified the means, or that there was nothing wrong with exploiting their own people because the cause was righteous, but it was still disappointing. Part of her was clearly more idealistic than she’d thought.
She looked over at Rudolf and wondered, absently, if he would make a good lord.
“Go see what you can do for the poor girl,” Lady Barb ordered, as a guard returned with a change of clothing. “She’ll lose that arm if she isn’t very lucky.”
Emily swallowed hard before walking over to the wounded girl. She was cradling her arm and sobbing quietly. The pain seemed to have faded, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Death Viper venom spread so rapidly that it might well have destroyed the nerves that carried pain sensations to the brain. Emily knelt down beside the girl and winced as she saw the arm up close. It looked bruised and broken.
“Stay still,” she advised, as she focused her mind. The venom remained dangerous to others, which was one of the reasons it was so deadly, but it shouldn’t be dangerous to her. Or would that stay true if she wasn’t actually touching the snake? It should – she hadn’t wiped her hands after picking it up – yet she wasn’t sure she wanted to test it. “Let me work on it.”
She cursed as she used a spell to probe the extent of the damage. Thankfully, the girl had dropped the snake quickly enough to prevent the poison spreading all the way up her arm, but there was a good chance that she was going to lose it completely. Emily concentrated, carefully removed the poison, then winced as she realized there was no way to repair all the damage. Even magic couldn’t rebuild an arm from scratch. The Allied Lands did have peg-legs and hooks, but she’d never seen a prosthetic arm.
Rudolf looked down at her, nervously. “Is there anything you can do?”
“I think I need a second opinion,” Emily confessed. She waved frantically to Lady Barb, who was pulling a new shirt over her head. “Maybe Lady Barb can do something.”
Lady Barb shook her head as soon as she saw the damage. “You could purge the body of poison, but not repair the wounds,” she said. She looked up into the frightened girl’s face. “We’ll have to take the arm, completely.”
Emily closed her eyes in pity. The girl – it struck her suddenly that she didn’t even know the girl’s name – would be permanently crippled, in a world that wasn’t kind to the injured and disabled. And it was her fault for bringing the Death Viper into the castle. The girl hadn’t asked to be mind-controlled into servitude, or used as a servant by a madwoman. She’d never had a choice at all.
Lady Barb poked her arm. “Not your fault,” she said. “And don’t you forget it.”
Emily said nothing as Lady Barb carefully severed the arm from the rest of her body, then broke it down into dust. The girl started to cry again, helplessly. Rudolf eyed Lady Barb for a long moment, then sat down and took the girl in his arms. Somehow, the girl found it more comforting than Lady Barb’s looming presence.
The castle shook again, very gently, as the wind battered against the damaged walls. “This place will have to be evacuated,” Lady Barb said, standing up. “Take your people and get them down to the town.”
Lady Easter nodded and started to issue orders to her guards. A long line of guards, servants and conscripted soldiers filed through the room, heading out. Emily rolled her eyes as several of the maids arrived, carrying a stretcher, which they used to help carry the injured girl out of the castle. She prayed silently that the wind wouldn’t send them falling like ninepins before they reached safety, if there was any safety to be had in the town. The storm was only getting stronger.
Could it be Mother Holly’s work? Weather manipulation w
as possible, but the books at Whitehall hadn’t gone into detail about how it was actually done. Emily had a feeling that large-scale manipulation would require more than one magician, perhaps using a ritual like Lady Barb had shown her, yet there was no way to be sure. Necromancers might not work together, but they had enough raw power not to need to work in groups.
She took a piece of bread and cold meat from one of the servants and chewed it quickly, realizing – for the first time – just how ravenous she’d become. Lady Barb didn’t press for them to move as they ate, suggesting that she was building up her strength, too. Once they finished eating, Lady Barb spoke briefly to Lady Easter, then motioned for Emily to follow her out of the castle. Rudolf started after them, but a sharp look from Lady Barb froze him in his tracks.
Outside, the wind was howling through the mountains, blowing rain into their faces. Both of the protective wards surrounding the castle had vanished, along with Mother Holly. Emily guessed that her burst of magic had shattered more than just the walls protecting the castle.
She cast a night vision spell, then found where she’d hidden the book and dug it up for Lady Barb. The older woman inspected it carefully, then swore for several minutes. Emily listened, silently committing several of the words to memory. Lady Barb had an impressive vocabulary.
“This shouldn’t even be here,” Lady Barb muttered, when she had finished swearing. “How did a hedge witch get her hands on this?”
Emily looked at her, silently casting protective wards to keep the rain from touching the book – or themselves. “Do you recognize it?”
Lady Barb hesitated, then made a visible decision to talk. “It doesn’t have a name,” she said, finally. “Most students of grimoires call it nothing more than Malice. The book doesn’t just list hundreds of very unpleasant spells, it affects the mind of whoever tries to use the more complex hexes and curses. There are only five copies, as far as I know, and all five are under tight security. No one knew there was a sixth.”
Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) Page 35