Graduation Day (Schooled in Magic Book 14)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Emily, Gordian sent. What did Fulvia do?

  Emily didn’t bother to hide her anger. She didn’t think he’d pick up on the emotion - they weren’t touching mind-to-mind - but she was past caring. You altered the wards in hopes of locking me out, she thought. And then one of her people added more modifications. And now the whole system is collapsing.

  She gritted her teeth, silently hoping he’d actually help. He did, pushing out more chunks of malware and deleting others. Emily allowed herself a moment of relief, then concentrated on trying to determine just what Fulvia was doing. She didn’t think Fulvia had expected to do quite as much damage to the wards, but ...

  This is neutral ground, she thought, genuinely shocked. What is she thinking?

  Something slammed into her mind ... no, her body. She crashed back into herself, losing her link to the wards an instant before her body hit the ground. Someone landed on top of her ... she had a moment to realize he was holding a glowing knife before a silver blade cut off his head. Emily stared, disoriented, as blood splashed everywhere. What had happened?

  “We need to move,” Sienna snapped. She caught Emily’s arm, yanking her up. “Hurry!”

  Emily looked around. Four bodies lay on the ground, all men. Lady Barb was standing over one of them, sword in hand. The lights were dim ... for a moment, she thought she was losing her sight before she realized the school’s lights were failing. An instant later, they blinked out altogether, plunging the room into utter darkness. Emily had to concentrate hard to cast a night-vision spell. The effort tired her more than it should.

  The lights are connected to the wards, she thought, as Sienna pulled her towards the door. And the wards are being hacked ...

  She reached out again, despite the throbbing pain in her head. But the wards were flickering and flaring out of existence. She couldn’t touch them, not without going down to the chamber under Whitehall ... she cursed Gordian under her breath. If he’d left well enough alone, Fulvia would never have been able to sneak attackers into the school, let alone cripple the wards.

  A man blurred out of the darkness, moving with inhuman speed. Lady Barb launched a fireball at him, followed up by a force punch. He was picked up and hurled down the corridor, slamming into a wall so hard that Emily knew he was out of the fight. Two more appeared, moving with the same strange jerky motions. They had to be hyped-up on something, Emily realized numbly. Fulvia had to know she’d just stepped on a hornet’s nest.

  And no one has the slightest idea of what is actually going on, she thought. Even Fulvia doesn’t know ...

  She forced herself to think. What was Fulvia doing? Taking down Whitehall’s wards was a declaration of war against Whitehall itself and hundreds of parents. She had to be out of her mind, assuming - of course - that she’d meant to cause such a disaster. House Ashworth would disown her the moment the grown-ups realized how many families and factions would be turned against them. But ... what had she actually intended?

  The wards brushed against her mind, as heavy as the touch of an unwelcome lover. A shiver ran down Emily’s spine. Fulvia hadn’t wanted to bring down the wards, she’d just wanted to divert them. And that would give her time to do ... do what? Kill Emily? Or ...

  She grabbed Lady Barb’s arm. “We have to go to the infirmary,” she shouted. “She’s after Frieda!”

  Lady Barb looked back at her, sharply. “Don’t you think she’s a little past that now?”

  “It’s her only hope,” Emily shouted back. “There’s nowhere she can go, not now! Everyone will be after her. But if she kidnaps Frieda, she can force me to give up secrets she can use to save herself!”

  There was a long pause. Emily waited, unsure which way Lady Barb would jump. She knew most of Emily’s secrets, some of which would upset the balance of power permanently. And Emily was sure she was right. Fulvia had compromised herself beyond repair. Her only hope now was to play the game out to the bitter end.

  Lady Barb won’t want me to hand anything over to Fulvia, Emily thought. And she might be right.

  They reached the stairwell and headed up. It was sheer luck that most of the students were outside, hopefully well clear of Fulvia’s forces. She had to have sneaked a small army into the building, piece by piece. Emily understood how it could be done too, if one knew about the chinks in the wards. Fulvia would just turn her men into inanimate objects and leave them that way until it was time to move. And the wards might not even react if she turned them back from time to time. Emily knew how the wards thought. The intruders were already inside the building, therefore someone had to have authorized their presence.

  Three men stood at the infirmary door, wearing black robes and carrying staves. Lady Barb and Sienna looked at each other, then moved forward in unison. Emily covered her eyes as brilliant spells started burning through the darkness, driving the shadows away. A low hum ran through the building, the wards suddenly pressing into her mind so strongly that the pressure almost sent her to her knees. She pushed back, trying to muster the power to help the older women. But they seemed to be doing fine on their own.

  The lights blazed, flaring so brightly that Emily looked down. One of the men fell, struck by a powerful hex, but his companions were still fighting with savage intensity. Emily gathered herself, then shot a transfiguration spell in their general direction, triggering it a moment before it hit the wards. She heard them laugh, knowing they’d dismiss it as a weak spell even as it transfigured the atmosphere to pure oxygen. An instant later, one of them tried to cast a fireball, triggering an explosion. They had no time to react before Lady Barb and Sienna finished them.

  “No insignia,” Lady Barb said, bending over the nearest corpse. “No one to say who they truly work for.”

  “Fulvia,” Emily said. The lights snapped off again, plunging the school back into complete darkness. She could hear someone fighting in the distance, but she had no idea who was fighting or why. “Who else could have done this?”

  Lady Barb nodded, curtly, as she pressed her fingertips against the door. “It’s sealed,” she snapped. “Someone barred and warded it thoroughly.”

  “Blast it down,” Emily said.

  “I don’t know what’s on the other side,” Lady Barb said. Her fingers danced over the wood, parsing out the spellwork. “Let me see if I can break the wards down first!”

  Emily felt sick as a dull hum echoed through the school, the lights coming on just long enough for her to feel hope before the building plunged back into utter darkness. Panic bubbled at the back of her mind as she wondered just how far the malware had spread. If it started attacking the spellware holding the pocket dimension together, the entire school was doomed. There would be no last-second reprieve, not this time. She’d made the whole structure stronger, after the near collapse last year, but her work wouldn’t survive if malware started gnawing at the school’s vitals. She damned Fulvia and Gordian in the same breath. Between them, they’d nearly destroyed the school once again.

  She leaned against the wall, closing her eyes as she tried to reach through the mental link to Melissa. But there was nothing on the far end ... Emily hoped that meant the link had simply collapsed after Markus’s injury. Melissa was supposed to be in the infirmary, looking after her wounded husband. If she’d been attacked ...

  Fulvia wants her dead too, Emily thought. A low rumble ran through the school, followed by an earthquake that shook the entire building. She might just have settled old scores while kidnapping Frieda.

  “I think I have a lock on it,” Lady Barb called. “When I tear the wards down, get inside and take them out as hard as you can.”

  Emily gathered herself. Her power felt weird ... it took her a second to realize that the wards were actively impeding her. It felt oddly unfocused, as if the wards themselves didn’t seem to understand what they were doing. And yet ... she wished, suddenly, that they had time to call for others, even students. The dueling club suddenly seemed like a very good idea indeed. But there was no tim
e.

  And the tutors have to be dealing with the mess, she thought. The wards grew stronger, just for a second. She moaned in pain as an invisible fist squeezed her head before vanishing back into nothingness. We’re on our own.

  “Do it,” Sienna said. “Take out the door completely.”

  The door shattered into dust. Sienna ran forward, magic crackling around her fingertips as she searched for targets. Emily followed her ... only to run straight into an empty room. No, not quite empty. Melissa was lying on the floor, unconscious or dead. Emily checked her pulse, then breathed a sigh of relief as she realized Melissa was alive. There was a very nasty bruise on her cheek, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. The wards grew stronger, again. Emily frowned, puzzled. She’d thought they were trying to weaken her, but ... there was something odd about it.

  She glanced into the open ward and cursed. A dozen bodies - hopefully stunned - were lying on beds, utterly unmoving. Jacqui’s body was on the floor, her dark skin bruised and battered. Someone had punched her, repeatedly. She was alive, at least. Emily wondered sourly what Fulvia had thought, when she’d found Jacqui. Jacqui had come very close to screwing up her plans, after all.

  “They’re in the next room,” Sienna said. “Hurry!”

  Emily followed her, feeling the wards getting even stronger. Her hair tried to stand on end as an electric sensation ran through the air. Something was happening in the next room, something the wards were trying to stop. She tried to reach out with her senses, but the wards were making it impossible to sense anything. And yet, the wards themselves were having problems focusing.

  Sienna stopped outside the door and frowned. “Necromancy?”

  “Maybe,” Lady Barb said. She didn’t sound convinced. “Let me work on the door ...”

  Emily shuddered. Fulvia would have to be completely mad to risk necromancy, particularly now. But maybe she felt she had no choice ... Emily looked back at the bodies and decided it was unlikely. There was no reason why it had to be Frieda who had her throat slit, beyond personal hatred. Anyone who knew anything about the necromantic rite - and was willing to do it anyway - knew they needed a stockpile of living victims. Fulvia didn’t seem to have bothered to collect up the stunned and sacrifice them for power.

  The door exploded outwards, along with most of the wall. Emily threw up a shield instinctively, blocking the debris before it could touch her. Fulvia stood on the far side, one hand raised in a casting pose. She held onto a stunned Frieda, one arm wrapped around the younger girl’s neck. It looked as though Fulvia was on the verge of choking Frieda.

  “Let her go!” Emily shouted.

  She scanned the room. Fulvia appeared to be alone, save for Frieda. But there was no way to be sure. Flashes of light sparkled at the edge of her eyes as the wards battled to recover, fighting to purge the malware and re-establish themselves. Anything could be hiding in the shadows, shielded from eyes and senses alike. God alone knew how many allies Fulvia had brought to the school. She couldn’t have taken the infirmary alone, could she?

  Fulvia stabbed her finger at Emily. A burst of red lightning flashed through the air, so powerful that she knew it would break through her weakened wards. And then Lady Barb shoved her to one side, hard. Emily spun around, just in time to see the lightning burn into Lady Barb’s shoulder. The older woman staggered under the impact. The stench of burning flesh filled the air ...

  ... The electric sensation in the air grew stronger. A faint white light pulsed around Fulvia, growing brighter and brighter with every second. Emily reached for her magic, realizing in horror what was about to happen. Fulvia had wanted to take down the wards long enough to allow her to teleport out safely. And she’d succeeded. The wards were fraying at the edges, weakening to the point where a powerful magician could teleport without being dumped into the oubliette.

  “Let go of her,” Emily said. Beside her, Sienna raised her hand, but did nothing. There was nothing they could do without fatally weakening the spell. And yet, even if they did nothing, there was so much interference around that Fulvia might teleport straight into a mountain or high orbit, which would kill Frieda. “Please ...”

  Fulvia’s face twisted in hatred. An instant later, she vanished in a flash of white light.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “SHE TOOK A VERY NASTY CURSE,” Madame Kyla said. The healer looked utterly exhausted. “I think she’ll be fine, but she’ll need weeks to recover.”

  Emily looked down at Lady Barb. The older woman looked diminished, somehow, with dozens of bandages wrapped around her shoulders. Madame Kyla had removed everything above the belt, revealing Lady Barb’s bare breasts and far too many scars for Emily’s peace of mind. The cursed wound had started to fester before Madame Kyla had reached them, plunging Lady Barb into a desperate fight for life. Emily had seen her injured or ill before, but this was different. Lady Barb had been grievously injured saving Emily’s life.

  And Fulvia got away, Emily thought. We don’t even know if she made it back home.

  She shook her head as she walked out of the private room. Most of the students had been outside when all hell broke loose, but there were still dozens of injuries that needed to be healed before it was too late. It was sheer luck, Emily thought, that Markus hadn’t been killed when Fulvia’s goons had rampaged through the infirmary. Fulvia had already tried to kill him once. Emily was surprised she hadn’t taken the time to finish the job.

  The wards buzzed against her mind. She shuddered at the sensation, feeling a tangled web of spellware spreading through the school. Gordian had purged the malware, thankfully, but it would take weeks of effort to repair the damage. She cursed him under her breath as she made her way through the antechamber and headed out the door. The corridor was lined with worried students, waiting to find out just how badly the wounded were hurt. They all looked utterly stunned. Emily didn’t blame them. Their world had turned upside down in the space of an hour.

  Cirroc stepped in front of her. “Emily,” he said, respectfully. “The Grandmaster would like to see you in his office.”

  Emily nodded, fighting down a wave of tired anger. She wanted to see Gordian too, although she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. Scream at him for accidentally weakening the wards? Or demand he help her track Fulvia down before it was too late? There was no way to know where Fulvia had aimed her teleport, not with the wards so badly disrupted that they hadn’t even been able to prevent her from jumping out. And there was no way to know if Fulvia and Frieda had even reached their destination. They might be nothing more than atoms by now.

  They have to be alive, Emily told herself. Fulvia would have known to compensate for any problems the wards might have caused her.

  She walked down the corridor and headed up the stairs. Whitehall felt odd: the school had been attacked, yet there was very little damage outside the infirmary. The handful of students she saw looked shell-shocked. They’d believed - they’d all believed - that Whitehall was invulnerable, protected by long-standing traditions as well as powerful wards. Fulvia’s attack might not have done as much damage as Shadye’s, but it had definitely undermined hundreds of old certainties. The world might never be the same.

  And no one expected her to simply grab Frieda and run, Emily thought, grimly. What was she thinking? Was she even thinking at all?

  She put the thought out of her mind as she walked into the office. The antechamber was empty, but the door to the inner office was open. She wondered, sourly, if Madame Griselda had actually been working for Fulvia, given her absence. Gordian would have bound his secretary to him with powerful oaths, Emily was sure, but there were always loopholes. Or perhaps Madame Griselda was dead. A skilled magician might be able to hold the oath-magic at bay long enough to complete the betrayal before dying.

  Gordian was seated in his office, looking calm and composed. Spellware floated around him, linked to the wards. He was still working on them, then. Emily took one look at his face and felt her temper snap. What had he
been thinking? How dare he? Didn’t he know what he’d done?

  She leaned forward, resting her hands on the table. “What were you thinking?”

  The Grandmaster looked at her, slowly disconnecting himself from the wards. Emily could feel them snapping and snarling at her, as if they no longer liked her. Gordian couldn’t separate her from the original wards, not without her assistance, but he could make it harder for her to touch them. The building no longer felt friendly.

  She slapped the table. “What were you thinking?”

  “Sit down,” Gordian ordered.

  Emily ignored him. “You brought strangers into Whitehall to work on the wards,” she snapped, remembering the wardcrafters she’d seen in the tunnels below the school. “And one of them weakened the wards enough to allow Fulvia to teleport out! What were you thinking?”

  “I said, sit down,” Gordian said. There was a hard edge to his voice, suggesting that - despite his composure - he was as tired and worn as herself. Reshaping the wards single-handedly had to have drained him badly. Emily would have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t accidentally caused the disaster. “We have a lot to talk about ...”

  “There’s only one thing to talk about,” Emily said. She took a step back, but didn’t sit down. She was done with him. “What were you thinking?”

  Gordian looked back at her, evenly. “I made a mistake,” he said. The admission cost him, even if he had to know there was no point in trying to hide it. Emily knew precisely what he’d done. “And Fulvia took advantage of it.”

  “She kidnapped a student from Whitehall,” Emily reminded him. She wasn’t sure if Gordian had sensed the teleport, given how badly the wards had been screwed up, but someone would have briefed him. “We have to get after her.”