“Interesting,” Professor Locke said. He didn’t seem to notice her problems. “Very interesting indeed.”
Cabiria coughed as she kicked up great clouds of dust. “What was that?”
“A labyrinth spell,” Professor Locke said. Oddly, he sounded disappointed. “They were quite common as a defensive spell for several hundred years, until someone came up with a relatively simple counterspell. A magician would cast it on his house, secure in the knowledge that any intruders would be trapped within the spell until he came to inspect and release them. It was simple enough to key it to the magician’s bloodline.”
Emily nodded, inwardly, as they reached the end of the corridor. There was no spell, she’d been told, that didn’t have a counterspell, nothing so powerful that it simply couldn’t be stopped. One day, she felt sure, the wards she used to protect her home and notebooks would be broken as casually as Professor Locke broke the labyrinth spell. By then, she hoped, society would have advanced to the point where there were countermeasures to some of her more dangerous ideas. If anyone with magic could blow up a city, which they could with the nuke-spell, she doubted society would last more than a few years.
The corridor opened into a small chamber, with doors leading in three different directions. Professor Locke strode to the middle door, then stopped as he glanced at the door to the right. Emily blinked in surprise as he turned and practically ran into the chamber, moving with astonishing speed for a man of his age. She hesitated, unsure if something hadn’t lured him inside to a grisly fate and then hurried forward when she heard a cry from inside the room. Bracing herself, she walked forward...
... And felt her mouth open with delight.
The chamber was a small library. A stone bookshelf had been carved into the wall, holding thirty to forty manuscripts so ancient she doubted they could be touched safely without magic. Nearby, a wooden desk and chair had been placed against the wall, clearly designed to allow a reader to study the books without removing them from the chamber. Indeed, if some of the stories about old libraries Lady Aliya had told her were true, trying to remove the books would prove fatal. The Librarians Guild had no hesitation in cursing or hexing anyone foolish enough not to return their borrowed books on time.
Professor Locke started forward, but stopped as magic flared in the air. He muttered a vile word, just loudly enough for Emily to hear, as he produced a silver wand from his belt and waved it towards the wards. Spellwork flickered in and out of existence, revealing a complicated network of wards that both preserved and protected the books. Emily had seen Lady Aliya cast similar wards, back when she’d been working in the school library, but these were an order of magnitude more complex. Taking them apart would take hours, she suspected, even for Professor Lombardi. She had no idea if Professor Locke could crack the protections himself.
She exchanged another look with Cabiria, then cleared her throat. “Professor...”
Professor Locke swung round to glare at her. “What?”
“Wouldn’t it be better,” Emily asked, “to allow Professor Lombardi to study the ward network before you try to break it?”
“These books could hold the answers to everything,” Professor Locke snapped. His eyes blazed with a wild light. “The answers to the questions I have been asking for years could be right in front of us!”
“Yes, but the protections might destroy them if they think they’re under attack,” Emily pointed out. She understood his feelings all too well. “The ancients might have keyed the wards to keep their knowledge out of unfriendly hands.”
“Inconceivable,” Professor Locke thundered.
“They wanted to keep their secrets,” Cabiria added, as if to the enfeebled. “Professor, they didn’t know that we would be the first people to set foot in this chamber for centuries.”
Professor Locke’s face darkened, but he nodded ruefully and led the way back out of the chamber. “No one is to go in there without my authorization,” he said, firmly. “And you are not to mention the books to anyone. Each of those manuscripts is literally priceless. I know men who would cheerfully sell their entire families to the necromancers just to get their hands on one of those books.”
Emily nodded in understanding as they walked through the middle door, down a long corridor that pulsed with magic. She wanted the books too, wanted to know their secrets and understand just how Whitehall had been created... she wanted them desperately. But she doubted the secrets in them would ever become public, even though the printing press could produce hundreds of copies relatively easily. Gordian would want to keep everything under control as long as possible.
She frowned as she felt a strand of magic pushing against her protections, testing her. Her blood turned to ice as she realized, to her horror, that someone had designed the corridor to keep out intruders, somehow crafting the spell to keep it hidden until it was too late. And it definitely was too late...
“We’re dead,” she breathed.
She thought fast, but nothing came to mind. There was no way that any of them were on the authorized list, given that the list had been created hundreds of years ago. And while it was possible that Cabiria or Professor Locke were distant descendents of one or more of the ancients, there was no way she was related to anyone on the Nameless World. They were dead...
The spell probed her for a long, chilling second, then withdrew. She blinked in surprise as Professor Locke kept walking through the arch at the end of the corridor. How the hell had they passed through the defenses? They should have been ejected, at the very least, or frozen in their tracks until someone came to investigate... someone who would never come. Had the defenses developed problems? Or had one of them been close enough to a very distant ancestor to be presumed to have permission? She honestly didn’t see how that was possible. Eight hundred years of genetic drift would ensure there was very little connection between the ancients and their descendents.
There’s no one claiming descent from Whitehall, she recalled. Professor Locke had been very clear on that, asserting that Lord Whitehall had either never had children or his descendents were keeping their heads down. Or, perhaps, that they had no idea that they’d had such an illustrious ancestor. If they knew, they might even have a claim on the school.
She stepped through the arch and stopped, dead. The chamber was glowing with light; giant crystalline structures were scattered everywhere. There was something oddly familiar about it, she noted, as Cabiria pushed her forward, into the chamber. It nagged at her mind, puzzling her as she studied the spellwork running through the crystals. She was sure she’d seen something like it before.
“This is the heart of Whitehall,” Professor Locke breathed. He stood very close to one of the crystalline structures, his hand almost touching it. “Can’t you sense the power?”
Emily nodded. Power ebbed and flowed through the chamber, drawn down from the nexus point and directed through the spellware. She’d thought the Mimic was complex, but the spells surrounding her were far worse. A dull thumping, like the beating of a giant heart, echoed through the chamber as Professor Locke sat down on one of the wooden chairs. And, suddenly, Emily knew precisely where she’d seen something like it before.
A starship bridge, she thought, remembering innumerable movies and television shows. This is a control room.
She looked around with new insight, feeling everything clicking into place. The crystalline structures weren’t just pieces of spellware, they were control systems. Professor Locke was right. This was the heart of Whitehall School. A person who stood in this chamber, she realized numbly, could do anything. Lord Whitehall hadn’t just tapped the nexus point, he’d tamed it.
The systems I used to kill Shadye must have been added later, Emily thought. She’d wondered why the Grandmasters hadn’t been able to see below the school, but now she thought she knew the answer. The control system had never been designed to rest its power in one man. Someone else, many years ago, must have modified the system. It would keep people
from trying to open up the underground network.
“This is beautiful,” Professor Locke exclaimed, grinning broadly. He cast a whole string of analysis spells, one after the other. “Look how small their spellwork is... and yet it works!”
Emily’s eyes narrowed. The spellwork was far too small to work. It should have been swept away and destroyed the moment someone tried to force magic through it. And yet, there was an odd sort of permanence about it, as if it were held firmly in place by an outside force. Her head swam, again, as she peered at the spellwork. There was something about it that nagged at her mind, something that bothered her more than she cared to admit.
“It shouldn’t work,” Cabiria said. She sounded perplexed. “Professor, how did they make it work?”
“The secrets are here,” Professor Locke said. He took out his notebook and began to copy down the spellwork, smiling in honest delight as the ancient mysteries unfolded in front of him. “This is where Lord Whitehall worked!”
He reached out and touched one of the crystalline consoles. Emily opened her mouth to shout a warning—last time he’d touched something had been quite bad enough—but it was already too late. A dull tremor ran through the ground, just as the room darkened for a long second. Up above, she thought she heard someone cry out in shock, the sound cut off a second later. And then the lights came back, dimmer than before...
“I think we need to get out of here,” Cabiria said.
“I think you’re right,” Emily agreed. “What have you done?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
EMILY HALF-EXPECTED TO DISCOVER THAT they were trapped within the control chamber, or find it impossible to get back up to the school, but it was surprisingly easy to retrace their steps to the upper level and make their way to the gates. Someone—she suspected Sergeant Miles—had ordered the underground network to be evacuated, sending dozens of students hurrying back up the tunnels into Whitehall. Emily felt her blood run cold—again—as they reached the top of the corridor. The chamber past the gates was different, the stone walls now covered with angry-looking runes, while a number of statues glared towards the gates. Everything had changed...
She turned as she heard angry footsteps behind her and saw Gordian storming towards Professor Locke. “What have you done?”
Emily stared in disbelief as the Grandmaster caught the older man by the lapels and lifted him into the air. “What have you done?”
“I found the secrets of the ancients,” Professor Locke stammered. “Grandmaster...”
“You’ve killed us all,” Gordian snapped. “You utter... what did you do down there?”
Emily swallowed, unsure what to say or do. She didn’t blame Gordian for being angry, although she had no idea what had actually happened. But she didn’t want him to summarily strangle Professor Locke either. She opened her mouth, but Cabiria elbowed her before she could say a word. Despite herself, Emily was almost grateful. Gordian looked mad enough to expel both of them and worry about the consequences later.
She looked past Gordian as Sergeant Miles and Master Tor hurried into the room, both looking deeply worried. Emily shuddered inwardly, wondering what could worry Sergeant Miles. He’d always seemed calm and composed, even when the Mimic was slowly making its way through the school, killing students and tutors with abandon. But now his face looked pale and wan. It didn’t bode well for the future.
“Emily,” Sergeant Miles said. “What happened down there?”
Emily stepped past Gordian, who was demanding answers from Professor Locke. “We found a room that appears to be at the heart of Whitehall—a control room,” she said, carefully. “Professor Locke touched one of the controls and the entire complex shuddered.”
“Careless oaf,” Master Tor bit out.
“We hurried back here at once,” Emily continued. “Sergeant, what happened?”
Surprisingly, it was Master Tor who answered. “The castle has rearranged itself and the doors and windows are gone,” he said, grimly. “There’s no way out.”
Cabiria gasped. “Are you saying we’re trapped?”
Emily swallowed, hard. Whitehall was a pocket dimension in its own right, far larger on the inside than the outside. Lord Whitehall had been a genius to harness the nexus point, let alone craft a pocket dimension that had remained stable for over eight hundred years. And yet, if they were trapped inside the castle... what would happen if the pocket dimension began to collapse? Or snap out of existence...
I know what will happen, she thought, numbly. We’ll all die like Shadye.
“Correct,” Sergeant Miles said. “We are unable to leave the school. We don’t even know if every student is accounted for.”
Master Tor rubbed his forehead. “What did he do?”
“Meddled with the control system,” Emily said, bluntly. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“There are books,” Professor Locke insisted, loudly. Emily turned to see that Gordian had let go of him, although the Grandmaster’s face remained thunderous. “We can figure out how to fix the damage and return to the normal world!”
“My connection with Whitehall has been lost,” Gordian snapped. His gaze fell on Emily for a long moment, then he looked past her. “We can’t even find out how to move from one specific room to another!”
Emily closed her eyes, silently querying Whitehall. Normally, the wards easily imparted directions, but they no longer responded. Her blood ran cold as she thought through the implications. A dozen students could be trapped in rooms that no longer had doors, just like Cabiria and herself; no one would know about it, let alone be able to free them, until it was far too late. She doubted that many students could teleport out.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“Quite,” Gordian agreed. “Tell me about these books?”
“A collection of textbooks, hidden away near the control room,” Professor Locke said. He rubbed his neck as he spoke, as if Gordian actually had tried to strangle him. “They were protected, but they can be recovered.”
“With help from Professor Lombardi,” Emily said, quickly. “The charms protecting them were strong.”
Gordian nodded, curtly. “Sergeant, escort Professor Locke and Professor Lombardi back down there and recover the books,” he said. “If that fails, I want Professor Lombardi to take a good look at the control room and figure out how it works. If we can’t get out of the pocket dimension, we’ll either suffocate or starve.”
Emily nodded to herself. She’d looked up ways to transfigure oxygen from carbon dioxide, but it was a challenging spell. Getting oxygen itself was easy—she’d used similar spells during her duel with Master Grey—yet getting the right atmospheric mix was considerably harder. Pure oxygen would be poisonous, as well as a fire risk. And transfiguring food was even harder.
“Master Tor, escort Emily and Cabiria to the waiting room near my office, assuming it’s still there,” Gordian added. “I want them both to remain there until we recover the books.”
“Of course, Grandmaster,” Master Tor said. He glanced at Emily. “If you’ll come with me...?”
Emily sighed inwardly, but followed him as he led her through the door and up a long flight of stairs. Everything had changed, she realized numbly as they reached the top of the stairwell. What should have led them to the main corridor now went straight to the upper floors, without any way to get off below the fifth level. A handful of deeply confused students milled around, unable to find their bedrooms. Master Tor ordered them to head to the Great Hall and then led Emily and Cabiria down two more flights of stairs. The Grandmaster’s office had gone down a level, Emily saw, and was now flanked by a charms classroom and the Warden’s chamber. She glanced through the open door and shivered as she saw the unmoving homunculus. The Warden had clearly been disabled too.
“The waiting room seems to have gone,” Master Tor said. He sounded uneasy, deeply uneasy. It took Emily a moment to remember he’d been at Whitehall when the Mimic ravaged the school. There was no sign
of Griselda either. “We’ll wait in the classroom.”
“We’re lucky we found the classroom, sir,” Cabiria said, as they entered the room and sat down at the nearest desks. “Will the Grandmaster be able to find his office?”
Emily shuddered at the thought. If the school kept randomly changing its interior, she suspected, getting from place to place would be impossible. How could students hope to go to classes if the classroom might be in a different place every day... assuming, of course, that the pocket dimension didn’t simply collapse. They were trapped. Or were they?
“The doors may have simply changed position,” she said.
Master Tor scowled at her. “What do you mean?”
“The doors may not have been closed,” Emily pointed out. “They may simply have moved position.”
“That’s a good point,” Cabiria agreed. She smiled, tiredly. “The doors might be accessible through the changing rooms.”
“I shall discuss it with the Grandmaster,” Master Tor said. “Now tell me. What happened down there?”
Emily sat back and listened as Cabiria outlined everything that had happened, from the moment they’d entered the tunnels to their hasty retreat from the control room. Master Tor listened, asking questions from time to time, barely even looking at Emily as Cabiria described the control room. Emily used the time to consider just how the control room might work, recalling how the spellwork had channeled the power of the nexus point and shaped it into magic. It might be so advanced that it was effectively a computer in its own right. Someone could push the reset key on a laptop and lose their work without ever understanding how the laptop worked.
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