Emily swallowed as another possibility occurred to her. One could be missing and no one knew it. “What are you going to do with this copy?”
“I should be asking you,” Lady Barb said. She passed the book back to Emily, who took it in surprise. “You captured the book.”
“Oh,” Emily said. “But I stole it.”
Lady Barb shrugged. “I don’t think the magician who crafted the book gave a hoot about stealing,” she said. “All that matters is that you took possession of it. The magic woven into the book probably sees you as its owner now. If I tried to take it, the results might be unpleasant.”
Emily frowned. “But I took it,” she pointed out. “Why didn’t it object to me taking it?”
“No way to know,” Lady Barb said. “It depends what magic was woven into the book.”
Magic, Emily thought. Every time she though she understood it, something happened to remind her that there were entire fields of magic beyond her understanding. Although, if the book had been written in the writer’s blood, it was quite possible that it had absorbed more magic than a more normal book from Whitehall. Besides, the magician who had crafted the textbook might want it to move from weak magicians to more powerful ones.
“Besides, tradition says it belongs to you, too,” Lady Barb added. “Just make sure you don’t lose it.”
Emily nodded and followed Lady Barb as she made her way down the slippery path. Water splashed around her ankles, washing down into the darkness. Emily shivered despite the protective wards. They were being thoroughly soaked.
“She won’t have gone back home, will she?” Emily asked. “We know where she lives.”
“Her place of power,” Lady Barb answered, bluntly. She turned and gave Emily a grin, illuminated by a flash of lightning from high overhead. “If you ever feel the urge to fight the Grandmaster, don’t do it in Whitehall. He’s practically unbeatable as long as the wards protect him.”
Emily nodded, remembering Sergeant Miles talking about how dangerous a magician’s home could be. There could be so much magic flowing through the walls that the slightest mistake could have disastrous consequences. And magicians could legally do whatever they liked to anyone who tried to break through their wards.
Mother Holly, knowing that they would come after her, might well try to choose the battleground. A place where she had woven spells for years would give her a definite advantage.
“Maybe we should face her somewhere else,” Emily said. She stopped as she realized the flaw in that plan. “But how do we get her elsewhere?”
Lady Barb smirked. “You don’t,” she said. “If she has any sense at all, she’ll stay in her valley and build up her power.”
“I didn’t see anyone else there,” Emily said. But she hadn’t seen all of the valley – and Mother Holly could have transfigured her captives and then hidden them elsewhere for later sacrifice. She’d certainly had the power and knowledge to make such spells work. “Do you think she’s completely lost it?”
“If she was under the influence, possibly,” Lady Barb said, shortly. She stopped, then took hold of Emily’s arm. When she spoke, her voice was deadly serious. “We cannot afford to hold back, Emily. If you get a clear shot at her, take it.”
Emily felt the blood drain out of her face. She’d killed before, directly or indirectly, yet it always pained her – and she hoped it would always pain her. But Lady Barb was right. By now, Mother Holly had to be completely insane, utterly beyond reason. And, once she built up enough power, she might well become unstoppable. The only hope was to get to her before she could slaughter an entire village of innocent victims and use them for power.
She looked up at Lady Barb as the older woman let go of her. “Do you believe her? When she said she was trying to help people?”
Lady Barb hesitated, then made a face. “I believe that she might have believed, once upon a time, that she could improve the lot of the people around her,” she said. “But necromancy” – she nodded to the book in Emily’s hand – “and certain other kinds of magic have always made it harder to maintain a moral center. You should know that by now.”
Emily nodded, doubtfully. She wasn’t so sure. Most of the people in the village hadn’t spoken highly of Mother Holly; they’d clearly been more than a little scared of her, not without reason. Something that had been a minor prank at Whitehall could be disastrous if used in the countryside, away from magicians who could repair the damage if necessary. Mother Holly had been shunned and excluded, merely for being what she was. Emily wouldn’t have been too surprised if the madwoman saw preying on the town children as a form of revenge, even if she was reluctant to admit it to herself. Maybe she’d already been half-mad and that had given her some protections from the ravages of necromancy.
“But it doesn’t matter,” Lady Barb said, unaware of Emily’s inner thoughts. “Whatever she was, whatever reason she used to start her rampage, she’s become a monster – a deadly dangerous wild animal that needs to be put down. We have to stop her.”
“I understand,” Emily said, bracing herself. She clutched her staff in one hand, inserting spells. Lady Barb hadn’t reacted to its presence at all, beyond a simple raised eyebrow. But, unlike some teachers at Whitehall, she wasn’t the type to make a fuss when there was a valid reason for breaking the rules or disobeying orders. Emily knew she could expect a long talk about it in the future, but probably not any form of punishment. “Do you have a plan of attack?”
“Wear her down, force her to expend power and keep moving,” Lady Barb said. “By now, she might be too far gone to form proper spells, but don’t take that for granted. Try and send your little friend to poison her, if possible. She might have passed beyond the stage where she can be poisoned.”
Emily shuddered, remembering Shadye’s obsession with the nexus under Whitehall. As far gone as he’d been, he needed a constant source of power just to stay alive, let alone complete his transformation into an eldritch abomination. The nexus would have provided such a source of power, she knew, or overloaded him so badly that the explosion would have devastated the country for hundreds of miles in all directions. But Shadye had been a necromancer for over a decade, as far as she knew. Maybe Mother Holly had only become a necromancer recently...
“We should call for help,” she said. “Couldn’t more magicians be teleported here?”
“Not easily,” Lady Barb admitted. She shook her head as lightning flashed high overhead, illuminating the rocks surrounding them. “It would take far too long to organize a group of magicians to help.”
Emily wished, bitterly, that she had some way of calling Void. Or the Grandmaster. Or even Master Grey, as unpleasant as he’d seemed. They needed help, but there was no one close enough to get to the mountains in time. And they’d wear themselves out teleporting into the valley...she shook her head, running her fingers through her damp hair. No, they were on their own. She looked over at Lady Barb and smiled.
“I meant to ask,” she said, as another flash of lightning blasted through the sky. Each flash seemed to make it harder for night vision spells to work. “What happened to you?”
Lady Barb stiffened. “There was a trap for magicians near the hovel,” she said. She sounded privately furious with herself. “I...I walked right into it.”
Emily gaped at her. “You walked into a trap?”
“Don’t rub it in,” Lady Barb said, crossly. “Sergeant Miles definitely will.”
She shook her head, sourly. “There was no magic in the trap at all,” she added. “I didn’t have anything to sense, so...it escaped my notice. If I’d thought through the implications of facing a hedge witch, with the limited power that implied, I would have been more careful.”
Emily nodded, wishing she dared say something sympathetic. Some of the traps in Blackhall consisted of trapdoors or falling pieces of masonry...or even contact poisons on doorknobs and other items an unwary visitor might be expected to touch. It was why they’d been taught to take extreme c
are...and why relaxing after dismantling a particularly complex set of wards could be disastrous. She’d lost count of the number of times a simple trick had caught her or one of the other students.
“He’ll probably force you to run through Blackhall again,” she said, instead.
Lady Barb gave her an odd look, but said nothing.
“The transfiguration spell keeps defeating me,” Emily said. “No matter what I do, I wind up a cat or another small animal.”
Lady Barb snorted. “There’s no way out of the trap,” she said. “The trick is to avoid the spell altogether.”
“But there’s no way to avoid the spell,” Emily protested. “Or...what did I miss?”
“The spell is keyed to affect a human,” Lady Barb pointed out, dryly. “Turn yourself into something else first, then open the door. Or you can try going through the pipes anyway, but that would make life difficult for you...”
Emily nodded. The pipes had been bad enough when she’d been a cat. As a human, they would be impossibly claustrophobic – and the snakes a deadly threat. She touched the one at her wrist thoughtfully, wondering if that was still true. The Death Viper could certainly clear the way.
“Thank you,” she said, irked. The trick, in hindsight, was simple. Most of the tricks at Blackhall generally were, she had to admit, but they fooled most of the students. “Will the sergeant be annoyed with you for telling me?”
“Probably,” Lady Barb said. There was an oddly fond note in her voice. “But he will probably want to give you a more personalized curriculum for next year, then you can retake the second year of Martial Magic in Fourth Year.”
Emily looked at her. There was something in her tone...she had a sudden flash of insight and blinked in surprise. Did Lady Barb fancy the sergeant?
The thought left her feeling oddly conflicted. If Lady Barb developed a relationship with someone else, where would that leave Emily? She’d come to think of Lady Barb as a mother...but when her biological mother had remarried it had destroyed Emily’s life.
She damned herself for her own selfishness a moment later. Lady Barb deserved a chance to be happy. And Sergeant Miles was a good and decent man.
She pushed the thought aside as the rain stopped, so abruptly that Emily couldn’t help wondering if someone had turned off a tap. High overhead, the clouds were thinning out, allowing the moon to shine through and cast rays of light over the darkened landscape. Emily looked up at the bright object, wondering briefly if magic could take her to this moon, then back down into the valley. Ahead of her, she saw the first plants of the garden...
And then there was a pulse of magic, dead ahead.
Lady Barb swore. They were too late.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
EMILY CAUGHT HER BREATH AS WAVES of magic crackled out, setting fire to the plants surrounding Mother Holly’s home. The flames grew brighter as the magic grew stronger, wiping out decades of work in mere seconds. She spared a thought for the creatures Mother Holly had kept as potions ingredients, then braced herself as the necromancer appeared, walking through the flames towards them. Her eyes were brilliant red.
Just like Shadye, Emily thought.
Lady Barb nodded to her, stepping to the side. It was a bad idea to stand close together. The necromancer would surely start throwing blasts of raw magic at them. Emily held up her staff, preparing to channel magic through it, as the necromancer came to a halt. Her eyes, no longer remotely human, stared at them with cold malice. Behind her, illuminated by the fires, Emily saw three bodies.
All children. All dead.
She shuddered. Just how many children had died to fuel Mother Holly’s dreams of power?
Mother Holly let out a screech before throwing a fireball towards Lady Barb. The combat sorceress ducked, then threw back a fireball of her own. Mother Holly didn’t do anything to block it, but when it struck her body it did nothing.
Emily shuddered as the implications sank into her mind. Mother Holly had already started the transformation into something inhuman –and, if she escaped, she would be able to find enough victims to keep her alive.
Lady Barb kept moving, ducking and dodging as Mother Holly threw fireball after fireball at her. Emily noted, as she started to throw fireballs of her own, that Mother Holly still seemed to recall some of the habits of a hedge witch. She wasn’t used to having such vast power at her disposal; even now, her spells were conserving power. Normally, Emily would have been impressed, but now it was deadly dangerous. She thought wistfully of the drain a spell like Berserker could have caused, then jumped aside as another fireball slashed past her and struck the far side of the valley. A dull explosion told her just how much power Mother Holly was feeding into her attacks. One hit would be lethal.
Emily threw a set of lightning bolts, then tossed a transfiguration spell at her target. Mother Holly didn’t show any reaction to either, as if she was no longer human enough for the transfiguration spell to work. The hedge witch made a gesture, and a wave of flames blasted towards Emily, then vanished once Emily hastily summoned water and threw it at the blaze. Mother Holly inched forward, then stopped as Lady Barb struck her back with a rock. The necromancer turned angrily, forgetting Emily as she reached out with her magic towards Lady Barb...and found nothing.
Mother Holly screamed in rage, blasting out a wave of raw magic. Emily hesitated, then cast another series of spells of her own, directing them at the ground below Mother Holly’s feet. It turned to mud, then quicksand; the necromancer started to sink, her feet caught in the mire.
Mother Holly kicked angrily – she didn’t seem to realize where the attack had come from – and then struck again with her magic. The shockwave shook the ground, sending Emily to her knees, but it also blasted Mother Holly free.
Emily cursed and pulled herself to her feet, just as a knife struck Mother Holly’s back. Lady Barb had hidden herself, then attacked from the rear.
For a moment, seeing the magic crackling around the blade, Emily thought they’d won. But then the blade shattered, tossing pieces of red-hot metal everywhere.
Mother Holly turned, moving with inhuman speed, and caught hold of Lady Barb’s shirt before she could retreat. There was a flash of light and a rat jumped out, scurrying across the ground before Lady Barb snapped back to normal.
Emily took advantage of the necromancer’s confusion to blast her with a lethal spell, one that should have killed her instantly. It didn’t work.
She felt the snake-bracelet around her wrist, but dismissed the thought of trying to use it against the necromancer. If killing spells didn’t work, poison was unlikely to do any better – and besides, there was so much energy crackling around that the snake might be vaporized instantly. She darted to one side as yet another fireball narrowly missed her, then twisted in midair and came after her. Emily barely had a second to block it before it struck, the explosion picking her up and tossing her through the air. Somehow, she managed to keep hold of her staff. She landed badly, almost breaking her leg. Gritting her teeth, she applied a quick-heal spell even though she knew she would pay for it later. There was no time to have Lady Barb heal her.
Lady Barb tossed an odd spell at Mother Holly. Emily frowned in puzzlement; the spell didn’t look even remotely dangerous.
But Mother Holly howled in outrage and started lashing out, blindly.
She was blind, Emily realized. The spell was one of the pranks they were forbidden to use at Whitehall, a spell considered too cruel even for magicians who regularly turned their rivals into animals or inanimate objects. Emily could understand their logic, although she thought it was long overdue. She pulled herself back to her feet as the necromancer stopped, as if she were listening. But if she was blind, she couldn’t see them coming.
Seeing a large rock, Emily cast a levitation spell on it and launched the rock towards Mother Holly’s head at colossal speed. She must have sensed something, because she started to move just before the rock hit her, but it was too late. There was a colossal
explosion as the rock disintegrated, revealing a battered human form blazing with energy. For a moment, Emily thought that Mother Holly’s body – more energy than living flesh – was about to explode and braced herself, before the energy faded back into nothingness. Moments later, Mother Holly pointed a finger at Emily and she had to jump aside, a moment before a supercharged spell blazed through where she had been standing. The blindness spell had been broken.
“Do it again,” she called to Lady Barb. She’d never learnt how to cast the spell herself, even in Martial Magic. “Hurry!”
Mother Holly howled and struck the ground. An earthquake rocked the valley, forcing Emily to lean on her staff to remain upright. In the distance, she heard the sounds of trees falling and rocks crashing down the edge of the valley...just how far had the earthquake reached? She glanced towards the castle, only to see nothing but darkness. What if the castle, already damaged, had been ruined by the earthquake? Or the town they’d stayed in the previous day...?
Emily lifted her staff as the shaking subsided and cast a series of spells, one after the other, feeling her magic flow through the staff. A prank spell turned the ground under Mother Holly’s feet to ice, sending her falling to the ground. Another triggered a blaze of fire under the necromancer’s body, a spell she’d been taught to reserve for zombies and other forms of undead life. Mother Holly howled, but showed no sign of harm as she climbed back to her feet. A spell from Lady Barb sent her back down again. The ground shivered, as if it was repulsed by Mother Holly’s touch, sending chills down Emily’s spine.
And then the necromancer turned to look at her.
Red eyes, blazing with inhuman power and madness, met Emily’s gaze. She froze, like a deer staring into headlights, remembering Shadye and just how close he had come to killing her and taking Whitehall for his own. She’d cheated then, drawing on the power of the nexus and Earth’s concepts of science to wipe him from existence, but there was no nexus here. All they could do was hope they could exhaust the necromancer, a necromancer born from a woman who knew how to conserve her power. It struck Emily as she stood, helpless, that they might not win this battle.
Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) Page 36