“You shielded me,” Emily said, as he sat upright. “If you hadn’t been there...”
She kissed him, feeling a flood of relief and gratitude that surprised her in its intensity. If Caleb hadn’t been there, she would have been stunned too... and who knew what would have happened then? How long would it have been before Gordian sent someone down into the tunnels to look for them? She kissed him again, then helped him to his feet and turned to check the tutors. They were all stunned, despite their protections. The sheer level of raw power behind the spell was staggering.
“The counterspell seems to need repeated tries to work,” Caleb said, bending over Professor Locke and casting the spell again. “It’s as if they were hit several times with the same spell.”
“Odd,” Emily said. “Turning someone into a frog time and time again doesn’t make it any harder to use the counterspell.”
She frowned at the thought. Turning someone into a frog—and then turning them into a frog again, without bothering to change them back—was pointless. Layering stunning spells over a helpless victim should be equally pointless. Maybe it was just a side-effect of an overpowered spell... or perhaps she was missing something. Professor Lombardi might be able to understand it, after he recovered from the spell. She woke him, then dug out the water from her knapsack. They all needed a drink.
“The spell went wrong,” Lombardi said, as he took a long swig. “And I don’t know why.”
“Then we’d better find out,” Professor Ronald said, curtly.
“You meddled in the secrets of the ancients,” Professor Locke said. “That’s why it reacted so badly to your touch.”
“Your spell wasn’t tuned to fit into the pocket dimension,” Emily guessed.
“Maybe,” Professor Lombardi said. He rose. “We’d better get back to the surface and report to the Grandmaster.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
NOT ENTIRELY TO EMILY’S SURPRISE, GETTING back to the surface was an immensely difficult task. The corridors had not only been plunged into darkness, they’d been rearranged; all the maps they’d drawn, in the months since they’d started exploring the tunnels, were completely useless. And, just to make matters worse, the wards seemed to be randomly attacking their light globes, snuffing some of them out with casual ease while leaving the others strictly alone. By the time they reached the gates and made their way up to the castle, none of them were in any fit state for a conversation.
“Everything’s changed up here,” Sergeant Miles said. He was waiting at the gates, his face illuminated by a non-magical lantern. “The entire school has gone dark.”
Emily shivered. It was bitterly cold, far too cold to be natural. The combination of five light globes and the lantern drove the shadows back, but they refused to stay beaten for long. They swarmed around the pools of light like living things, watching and waiting for the chance to swallow up the handful of surviving humans. She eyed them nervously, keeping one hand ready to cast a spell while holding Caleb’s hand with the other, knowing the darkness itself wasn’t the problem. The real concern was what lurked in the darkness.
“There are spells to let us see in the dark,” she said, trying not to think about the possibilities of freezing to death. The cold might get them long before they ran out of food. “Can’t we use them?”
“They seem to be unreliable,” Sergeant Miles said. “I’ve tried to cast one twice and neither spell worked.”
“The wards have gone rogue,” Professor Lombardi said. He sounded deeply concerned. “If they’re attacking spellwork at random, they might start working away at the spells holding everything in place.”
“I saw something similar at Mountaintop,” Emily added. “They keyed their wards to make it impossible to see in the dark.”
“And our wards seemed to have developed the same trait,” Sergeant Miles said. He turned, motioning for them to follow him. “I don’t like this.”
Anything could be out there, she thought, as Sergeant Miles led them back to the Great Hall, gathering up a handful of students on the way. Who knows what’s sharing the darkness with us?
She shuddered at the thought, gritting her teeth as they stepped into the hall. A number of students were already there, constantly casting and recasting light spells, but others were missing. There was no sign of Cabiria, the Gorgon, Cirroc, Lillian, Jasmine, or Melissa. Frieda sat against the stone wall, her eyes wide with fear. Emily winced in sympathy, then headed over to the younger girl. The flickering darkness had to be bringing back memories of Mountaintop for her.
“I was in the charms classroom,” Frieda muttered, as Emily sat down next to her. “The doors just vanished, then reappeared in a different place.”
Emily nodded. If everything had changed, again, it was not going to be easy for the remaining students to find their way to the Great Hall. Nothing would be where it had been, barely an hour ago. They’d traced safe routes from bedrooms to classrooms and back again, but those could no longer be trusted. Some of the remaining first-year students had to be scared out of their minds.
She glanced around the room as several new students entered, but she didn’t see Lillian or Jasmine. Adana and Julia were playing cards with several other students in their year, while Dulcet and Tiega seemed to be reading. But it was clear, by the way they were hunched over their textbooks, that they were scared. Emily sighed, intending to stand and take the two girls into her care. But Gordian strode into the room and cleared his throat for attention before she could rise.
“The school has changed again,” he said, curtly. “A number of students and staff remain missing. However, it is possible that the doors can now be located. Therefore, you will be paired up into search parties and distributed through the school. Should you encounter any of your fellow students, you will direct them back towards the Great Hall; should you discover the doors, one of you is to make an immediate escape while the other is to return to the Great Hall to alert the staff. Sergeant Miles will brief you on search procedures and distribute the remaining supplies.”
Emily glanced at Caleb, then nodded at Frieda, indicating she would prefer to be paired with the younger girl. Caleb nodded back in understanding. As an older student, he would probably be paired with someone younger too, although the First Years were being left in the Great Hall to wait for their fellows. Sergeant Miles passed her a bottle of water and a couple of sheets of paper, reminding her to make notations about how the corridors had changed and where the classrooms were now located. Emily privately suspected it was a waste of time, but she didn’t bother to argue. If nothing else, it would keep the students occupied.
“I’ll be talking to you later,” Gordian said, as she led Frieda towards the exit. “Once you return, leave your friend here and report to me.”
“Yes, sir,” Emily said.
Whitehall looked different as they left the Great Hall and edged slowly down the corridor, disturbing flickers of movement constantly visible from the corner of her eyes. The shadows were definitely moving, changing position whenever she wasn’t looking; the suits of armor lining the hallway took on nasty appearances, even though she would have been hard-pressed to say what had actually changed. She found herself glancing from side to side constantly, convinced she was being watched by unseen eyes. Frieda, walking beside her, didn’t seem to feel any better.
“All the angles are slightly wrong,” Frieda said, quietly. “Look at them.”
Emily nodded. Frieda was right. The corridor looked as if it had been taken apart, then put back together by a slightly-different set of plans. And yet, whenever she looked directly at one of the altered angles, it seemed normal. It was just everything else that was wrong.
The school is partly built out of raw magic, she thought. It would be a staggering feat—conjuring even a tiny item out of raw magic, and nothing else, was incredibly difficult—but Lord Whitehall had had access to a nexus point. And now the spellware holding it together is beginning to fade.
She gritted her te
eth as they found a stairwell and peered upwards, into the darkness. The stairwell looked crooked, utterly uneven, each of the steps larger or smaller than the one behind it. She wouldn’t have cared to run down the stairs, not when missing her footing could send her flying into the darkness... she wasn’t sure she wanted to walk up them, even though her bedroom was in the upper levels. Or, at least, it had been a couple of hours ago. Who knew where it was now?
“The builder was an incompetent buffoon,” Frieda said, trying to make a joke. “And an idiot.”
“He should have been given the sack,” Emily agreed, as she slowly picked her way up the staircase. The steps felt unstable, as if the slightest misstep would be enough to break the marble and send her plunging into the unknown. “Everything is just a little out of place.”
The stairwell should have led all the way to the uppermost levels, but instead it came to a halt in front of a large pair of wooden doors. Emily glanced at Frieda, then tested them gingerly, expecting to find them impossible to open. Instead, they opened smoothly, revealing a long corridor lined with portraits. Emily shook her head in disbelief as she floated a light globe down the corridor, wondering just who had decorated the chamber. The walls were utterly covered in portraits: large paintings of famous wizards, smaller ones of men and women she didn’t recognize. Dozens of others leaned against the wall, turned away from her. It looked like a dumping ground.
“I’ve been here,” Frieda said. “This is where they store the portraits they don’t want to display and they don’t want to throw out.”
Emily glanced at her. “Where was it?”
“On the fifth level,” Frieda said. “Madame Beauregard caught us playing freeze tag and sent us up to dust all the portraits. She must have been feeling particularly sadistic that day.”
“I think that was probably the fifth or sixth time she caught you playing,” Emily said, as she inched down the corridor. “It certainly isn’t on the fifth level now.”
Frieda looked at her. “How would you know?”
Emily shrugged. In truth, there was no way to know.
She paused as they reached the end of the corridor, frowning as she realized just how badly the entire section had been twisted out of shape. There was another stairwell, leading up and down; it looked, very much, as though the entire portrait corridor had been split into three levels. She peered down into the darkness, then glanced at Frieda. The younger girl didn’t seem any more enthused about walking into the shadows than Emily herself.
“I meant to ask,” Frieda said, as they started up the second set of stairs. “How are you getting along with your Shadows?”
“I’m mentoring them,” Emily said. “They’re not my Shadows.”
She sighed. “One of them is receiving nasty notes from someone else,” she added. “And I can’t figure out who’s sending them.”
Frieda shrugged. “Probably one of her fellows,” she said. “An older student wouldn’t take the risk, I think.”
“That’s what I thought,” Emily said. “But the notes are just too constant, too clean, for one of the younger students.”
She glanced at Frieda. “You’re not sending them, are you?”
Frieda elbowed her. “And risk getting expelled?”
Emily flushed. Frieda had been jealous, when she’d started to date Caleb, but there was a marked difference between trying to provoke a fight between two older boys and deliberately tormenting a younger girl. The former would be laughable, if the staff ever found out about it, yet they’d take a very dim view of the latter. Frieda would be expelled, with a report that would practically guarantee she wouldn’t be able to gain admission to any of the other magical schools. Unless she found a private tutor, which was unlikely, her magical education would come to a complete stop.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a bad joke.”
Frieda stuck out her tongue. “So you should be.”
Emily sighed as they reached the top of the stairs. “Who would you suspect?”
“The person you would least suspect,” Frieda said. She stuck out her tongue, again. “I bet it’s Caleb sending the notes.”
“I’m sure he has better things to do with his time,” Emily said. She supposed she deserved that, even though Caleb was a far less likely suspect than Frieda. Picking on a student six years younger than himself? His mother would disown him. “Who would you really suspect?”
“It would depend on where the notes were found,” Frieda said. The next corridor was lined with stacks of portraits, almost all of them covered in thin layers of dust. “If they were only found in her room, I’d suspect one of her roommates. Or both of them. But if they were found everywhere else, I’d suspect one of her classmates.”
“They were found in both,” Emily said. She glanced at one of the paintings and smiled, despite herself, as she realized it was one of the grossly-inaccurate portraits of her. Gordian had ordered them all taken down and dumped in the corridor. “And yet, her roommates are innocent.”
“So it seems,” Frieda said. “The question then becomes... who else has access to her room?”
Emily shook her head. She had access, but she knew she wasn’t sending the notes; Madame Razz and the staff had access, yet they wouldn’t be sending notes to a student. A mundane servant? It was possible, she supposed, but they wouldn’t have access to the rest of the school. No, all the evidence pointed to one of the first year students. She just didn’t know which one.
“I don’t know,” she said, finally. “I...”
A dull quiver ran through the school. She glanced up, surprised, as the lights came on, driving the shadows away. The entire corridor was suddenly illuminated, allowing her to see right down to the bottom. There was a solid wall at the far end, yet—as the lights grew brighter—it became clear that there was something wrong with it, something her eyes refused to see. It bulged in impossible directions...
“Emily,” Frieda said. The entire corridor was starting to shake, dust rising from the paintings and floating in the air. It was even growing warmer... Emily felt sweat prickling down her back as the temperature rose, sharply. She swallowed, suddenly, as she realized just how many flammable paintings were right next to them. “Emily, what’s happening...?”
Emily stared. The corridor ahead of them was twisting, moving backwards and forwards like a hose. It was hard to see, but everything seemed to bend in unnatural directions, warped out of shape like a concave mirror. She saw a painting of a long-dead Grandmaster twisted and warped as the wall shifted around it, then torn to pieces as it fell from the wall and crashed in tatters to the ground.
“Run,” she snapped. The shaking was growing worse. A chandelier crashed from the ceiling and smashed on the floor, sending fragments of glass flying everywhere. “Hurry.”
She caught Frieda’s hand and yanked her backwards, feeling the gravity shift below their feet. The entire corridor started to tip, as if a giant had decided to turn it sideways. They were running up the inside of a chimney, she realized numbly; gravity itself was no longer reliable. She glanced backwards as a stack of paintings started to fall sideways, past them and down the corridor; she saw everything twisting into a pocket dimension—or a black hole. Even light was bending around it, twisting around the darkness before taking the plunge.
The gravity twisted badly, then reversed itself, throwing them off their feet and hurling them down the corridor towards the stairwell. Emily hastily cast a spell to keep them from slamming straight into the wall, only to have the spell come apart within seconds. She barely managed to cast it again—successfully this time—before they struck the wall and bounced back towards the black hole. Frieda cast a spell herself, pulling them back and tossing them down the stairwell. Emily yelped in pain as she banged her leg, feeling a trickle of blood running down her skin, but there was no time to stop. The shaking was only getting stronger... a large portrait flew past her and vanished into the distance...
“It’s gone,” Frieda shouted.
She waved towards the wooden doors they’d used to enter the corridor. It was gone. In its place, there was nothing but bare stone. “Emily!”
Emily looked around. The entire section was shattering, coming apart into a hailstorm of stone, chunks of wood and other pieces of debris. Was this it? Was this the end of Whitehall School? She reached out with her magic, hoping desperately to find a way to gain control of the wards, but nothing happened. It was almost as if their section was completely cut off from the rest of the school—or, perhaps, that the remainder of the school was gone.
She heard someone cry out and looked up. The ceiling was disintegrating; she saw a young student, a second-year by his robes, falling through the air and plummeting towards the black hole. She tried to catch him with a spell, but it was far too late; he fell into the darkness and vanished, completely. And yet, there was now a way out. Emily grabbed hold of Frieda, then cast a spell to hurl herself into the air, throwing them towards the gash in the ceiling as it threatened to crumble to dust. If only she could fly!
The gravity pulled at them, threatening to yank them into the black hole. She poured more and more power into the spell, pushing herself to the limit. The world seemed to twist around them, then the gravity let go. Her spell propelled them forward at terrifying speed...
“Catch on to something,” she shouted, as they plunged through the gap and bounced off the ceiling, rolling down the corridor before finally coming to a halt. The spell came apart seconds later, leaving her feeling tired and drained. She sagged on the floor, unable to move or rise. Her limbs refused to listen to her. “Now...”
The ground rumbled loudly, one final time. Emily sensed the floor below her disintegrating, but she couldn’t muster the energy to run. Frieda grabbed her arm, pulled her to her feet and half-dragged her down the corridor, just as the rumbling finally came to a halt. Emily glanced behind her, just in time to see the gash in the floor widen, as if it were chasing them down the corridor. And yet, it looked as though it was finding it harder to make progress... perhaps, she thought desperately, the collapse was more localized than she’d thought. The remainder of the wards were still in place.
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