Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Maybe he was trying to make a point,” Emily said. It was a mystery to her too. “Perhaps he thought people would believe that he was preparing me for the duel.”

  Lady Barb snorted. “If he offers you any special training, you would be well advised to refuse,” she warned. “I wouldn’t trust him not to cripple you in some way.”

  “I don’t think he would need to bother,” Emily said. Two decades of experience would be hard to beat. “Old age and treachery beats youth and enthusiasm any time.”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Lady Barb said. “Rigging the arena may be impossible, but finding ways to hamper your opponent is an old and dishonorable tradition.”

  She sighed as they stopped outside the Grandmaster’s office. “I’ll speak to you about training later,” she said. “Until this state of emergency ends, we may as well make good use of the time.”

  “Yes,” Emily said. She surprised herself by giving the older woman a hug. “And thank you.”

  Lady Barb hugged her briefly, and headed off down the corridor. Emily sighed, turned to the door and knocked once. It clicked open, allowing her to step inside. The Grandmaster was seated in front of his desk, poring over a book. His blindfold was lying on the table, exposing his eyes. Emily recoiled in shock as he looked up at her, revealing that both of his eyeballs were missing. Two empty sockets looked back at her.

  “Not many people have seen that,” the Grandmaster observed. He reached for his blindfold and pulled it back over his eyes. “I suggest you keep it to yourself, please.”

  “I will,” Emily promised. It was an order, however phrased, and she’d be wise to treat it as such. “How do you read books?”

  “Magic,” the Grandmaster said, dryly. “There is no shortage of spells for overcoming physical disabilities, if you have enough magic.”

  He cleared his throat and pointed at the chair on the other side of his desk. “Sit,” he ordered. “Did you find anything?”

  “I may have,” Emily said. She glanced at the book he’d been reading, but it was upside down and she couldn’t make out the title. “Did you?”

  “Not much,” the Grandmaster said. “I spent several hours divining the nature of the demon and the spells binding it in place. Shadye was really quite lucky the demon didn’t break free and devour him years ago.”

  Emily nodded impatiently. She’d already figured that out.

  “Shadye could probably tell the demon to leave and it would have to go,” he added, after a moment. “But we couldn’t banish it ourselves.”

  “Maybe we can,” Emily said. “It called me Shadye’s Heir.”

  The Grandmaster frowned. “You might be able to tell it to leave,” he said. “But it may choose to refuse to accept you as holding any authority. Demons can always be relied upon to interpret the rules in their favor and...well, you’re not Shadye’s blood relative. It could assert that it was I, not you, who brought it into Whitehall. Or it could simply claim that the normal rules of inheritance don’t apply to bound demons.”

  He looked up. “Do you want to try?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Emily said. And if it didn’t work, there was always her other idea. “I can go back into Alassa and...”

  The Grandmaster seemed to peer at her. “And what?”

  “Tell it to leave,” Emily said. “It might work.”

  “And what else?” The Grandmaster asked. His voice was deceptively mild. “I can tell when someone is holding back the truth.”

  Emily swallowed. The Grandmaster had looked into her mind once, when Shadye had used her as his puppet to break through the defenses. It had left her feeling naked and vulnerable...she thought, now, she was protected, that Void’s spell could keep her mind inviolate. But she didn’t want to find out if she was wrong.

  “There’s another option,” she said. “I can offer myself to the demon.”

  “Yourself,” the Grandmaster said. His voice went flat. “And what makes you think the demon will want you?”

  “I’m Shadye’s Heir,” Emily said. “I also killed Shadye, depriving the demon of its chance to exact revenge. And I’d be offering myself freely, in exchange for the release of its victims and the demon returning home.”

  “Taking you with it,” the Grandmaster said, flatly. “Emily, you’d spend the rest of eternity in its clutches.”

  “There are too many students caught in its clutches,” Emily pointed out. “If it will take me in exchange for them...”

  “It should, according to the laws,” the Grandmaster said. “And yes, it could accept you as Shadye’s Heir...”

  His face twisted into a grimace. “But you would, at the very least, wind up dead.”

  “I know,” Emily said. “But Master Grey is going to kill me anyway, isn’t he? If the demon kills me instead, my property will be distributed in line with my will, not transferred to him.”

  “That’s arguable,” the Grandmaster said. “But it would probably stand up in court, if Master Grey felt inclined to challenge it. I don’t think he will.”

  Emily nodded slowly. Alassa and Imaiqah would receive money; Frieda would receive the Barony, if King Randor saw fit to accept her as Emily’s heir. Lady Barb would inherit the notebooks Emily had stored in her trunk, along with the books and the snake-bracelet. She would have to see if Frieda could take Aurelius as a familiar, or destroy the snake if the younger girl couldn’t bond with him. The Death Viper was just too dangerous to be left alone if he couldn’t find another partner. She smirked at the thought of Master Grey picking up the bracelet from her dead body, then getting a horrific surprise as Aurelius reverted back to his natural form. It might well prove fatal.

  “I can do something to make sure of it,” the Grandmaster added. “Under the circumstances, it would be the least I could do.”

  Maybe I should leave the bracelet to Master Grey, Emily thought. Alter the spells, keeping the snake in that form for several hours without me...

  She pushed the thought aside and looked at the Grandmaster. “I am willing,” she said, feeling oddly free. If she couldn’t win, and it seemed to be a choice between Master Grey and the demon, she could at least pick the time and place of her death. “Can we start now?”

  “Soon,” the Grandmaster said. “Do you not wish to speak to anyone...?”

  “No,” Emily said. She didn’t want to speak to anyone, not with the knowledge of her impending death hanging over her like a shroud. Lady Barb and Frieda - and Caleb - would be horrified, while her other friends were in comas. “I’ll write letters for them, if you don’t mind.”

  “I will see they are delivered,” the Grandmaster said. He tilted his head to one side, almost like an owl. “You do realize that you will be leaving many people who love you behind?”

  “I know,” Emily said. “But I will be leaving them now or leaving them when Master Grey kills me.”

  Or when I go on the run, she added, silently. She couldn’t accept Caleb’s offer, not when it meant separating him from his family permanently. I couldn’t take anyone with me either.

  “Welcome to power,” the Grandmaster said.

  Emily frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Making the choice about who lives and who dies,” the Grandmaster said. “That is true power. Everything else is just window-dressing.”

  “I see,” Emily said. She took her courage in both hands and asked the question that had been nagging at her, ever since the first meeting with the demon. “What happened to make you blind?”

  The Grandmaster looked at her. “And if I told you that merely asking that question would get you in a great deal of trouble, young lady, would you still ask it?”

  Emily had to smile. “Can I get in worse trouble?”

  He smiled back. “My father was an odd man,” he said, softly. “He believed there were ways to gain power through twins, even though magical twins simply don’t exist. His solution to this problem was to marry four wives and impregnate them all at the same time. He
calculated that the babies - all sons - would be born within days of each other, all half-brothers.”

  He paused. “It worked better than he had hoped,” he said. “We were all born on the same day.”

  Emily blinked. “Did he plan it that way?”

  “Maybe,” the Grandmaster said. He shrugged. “Our father always kept pushing the limits, Emily. He managed to kill himself when we were nine years old, after yet another demented experiment went badly wrong. None of us really missed him. He wasn’t abusive, but he kept forcing us to try different spells in the hopes of bringing out our magic early. He had this theory that the four of us would balance each other, making it easier for us to handle magic as children. Nothing worked, thankfully. We wouldn’t have survived puberty.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” the Grandmaster said. “Our mothers weren’t regarded as welcome by the rest of our father’s family. His family took most of what our father had left behind, leaving us with a pittance. You won’t believe just how resentful we were at how we were treated, at how easy it had been for our uncles to take everything. If our father hadn’t paid the fees for Whitehall in advance, we would have been left without any hope of training.

  “It left us with a hunger for power. By the time we were in Sixth Year, as the oddest family in Whitehall, we wanted more. Brilliant careers, brilliant apprenticeships, loomed. But it wasn’t enough for us. We’d explored the forbidden sections of the library and...recovered...our father’s old books. One of them told us how to summon a demon. It promised great power to anyone who raised a demon with the proper ceremonies. We wouldn’t need to spend years developing our powers, we thought. All we needed to do was raise a demon and make a deal.”

  “But if it was so easy,” Emily said, “why doesn’t everyone do it?”

  “A question we would have been wise to ask,” the Grandmaster said. “I - we - spent the last few months at Whitehall looking for problems, but we found nothing. It seemed safe, so after we graduated we found a secluded place up in the mountains and performed the ritual. It went badly wrong. Two of my brothers died; I was blinded. The fourth was left with scars on his soul. No one ever knew what we’d done. When I was asked, later, why I was blind, I told them I’d traded my sight for knowledge. Everyone assumed I’d performed a Know Thyself ritual and accepted it without question. I studied under a master, completed an apprenticeship and went into teaching. Eventually, I became Grandmaster.”

  “The demon said you were blind to demons,” Emily recalled.

  “It never occurred to me that Shadye would have successfully raised and bound a demon,” the Grandmaster said. His voice darkened for a long moment. “If it had, I would have brought someone else along, someone who might have sensed the demon’s presence before I took it back to Whitehall.”

  Emily frowned. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  The Grandmaster sighed, heavily. “Everything comes with a price, Emily,” he said. “I can see magic, still, but not demonic energy. It nearly killed me twice before I realized what I’d lost, when my eyeballs burst in my head. To a demon, destroying my eyes would have been more than a mere sadistic joke. Symbolically, it removed my ability to see or sense demonic presences.”

  “A loophole,” Emily said, slowly. Her blood ran cold as something fell into place. “Demons see the future, or glimpses of it. Could Shadye have summoned the same demon as you and your brothers? Could it have blinded you then to allow itself access to Whitehall now?”

  “It’s a possibility,” the Grandmaster said. He looked down at the table. “Emily, my brothers and I held the top spots at Whitehall. The only student currently at school who may match us, one day, is Aloha. Even you don’t have the same level of genius.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said, sourly.

  “Shadye was a lukewarm student at best,” the Grandmaster added, ignoring her remark. “The thought of him not only being able to summon the demon, but bind it successfully where we failed, is galling. He had raw power and nothing else. On the other hand, the demon might have played along. It was certainly willing to torment me while it had me in its grasp.”

  Emily shook her head. “We may never know,” she said. She cleared her throat. “What happened to your other brother?”

  “We rarely talk,” the Grandmaster said. He rose and started to pace the room. “Our uncles died shortly afterwards. I always assumed it was his work, but I never asked. It wasn’t something I wanted to know for sure, not really. After our mothers died...I cut my remaining ties with the family for good and shed my name. I don’t even know if they know I was promoted to Grandmaster.”

  He sighed. “That isn’t something I ever told anyone else,” he added. “Emily...”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Emily promised. “There won’t be time, will there?”

  “It probably doesn’t matter,” the Grandmaster said. He sat down, resting his hands on the table. “My family probably prefers to forget that the four of us ever existed. We were just another crazy experiment that went wrong.”

  Emily nodded. She had a feeling her mother - and her stepfather - felt the same way. If her mother could forget having a daughter when they were sharing a home, she’d probably not even noticed when Emily had vanished one day. Maybe someone at school had noticed she was missing and called the police. It was even possible her stepfather had been arrested for murder...

  Or that they think I just ran away, she thought. She understood, all too well, why the Grandmaster and his brothers would want a little revenge. Whatever their father had been, treating his children as pariahs because of it was unforgivable. If I could go back, with magic, I’d want revenge too.

  “Go write your letters,” the Grandmaster ordered. “And update your will, if you wish. I’ll meet you in the infirmary in a couple of hours. I have some preparations to make.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ALASSA HADN’T MOVED.

  Emily felt another chill run down her spine as she entered the private room and sat down facing her friend. Alassa’s body looked completely still, as if she were a waxwork rather than a living human; Emily honestly wasn’t sure if she was breathing. She touched her friend’s hand lightly and recoiled at the clammy feel of it, as if Alassa was no longer human. The demon was slowly laying claim to her body as well as her soul.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, very quietly. “I wish I had the chance to talk to you one last time, but I don’t and I won’t. I’m sorry.”

  Alassa showed no reaction.

  Emily shook her head, bitterly. Friend or foe, Alassa had always been alive; now, she might as well be dead. She had no idea what weaknesses and insecurities the demon had used to worm its way into her mind, but it had succeeded magnificently. Alassa couldn’t hope to free herself, not now. All she could do, if she was aware at all, was pray that someone else managed to free her.

  Of course she will be aware, Emily thought. The demon will want her to understand just how badly she’s screwed.

  She closed her eyes for a long moment, opening them and looking up as the door opened and the Grandmaster stepped into the room. He had discarded his normal robes; instead, he wore a long dark cloak that wrapped around his body, concealing everything. Emily raised an eyebrow, but he merely shrugged and sat down on the other side of the bed. It looked as though he’d pulled his blindfold so tight that it was clear he no longer possessed eyeballs, although that could merely be her imagination filling in the blanks. She knew his eyeballs had been taken long ago.

  Everyone makes mistakes, she thought.

  She sighed, bitterly. It seemed to be true of all magicians, herself included. If the young Grandmaster could summon a demon and pay for it, her own mistakes seemed small and tragic in comparison. But she’d meant well...of course she had, she told herself, and so had the Grandmaster. Demons might have little real power in the human realm, at least without being summoned by humans,
but they were skilled at luring people into temptation and using that temptation to overcome their reservations. Someone could be tricked into surrender long before they realized they’d gone too far down the slippery slope. Who knew what had happened to the Grandmaster’s surviving brother?

  “Emily,” the Grandmaster said. “Are you sure you wish to proceed?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, flatly. There was no choice. She surrendered to the demon, freeing her friends in the process, or she waited for Master Grey to kill her. Or she could run, knowing she was abandoning everything she cared about. “I am ready.”

  The Grandmaster passed her a small knife. “I believe you know the procedure,” he said, calmly. His voice was very flat. “Unless you wish to say goodbye to anyone else...?”

  “I wrote letters,” Emily said. She’d written to everyone: Frieda, Jade, Lady Barb, Caleb, and everyone trapped within the demon’s grasp. “I don’t really want to face anyone right now.”

  “I understand,” the Grandmaster said. “But you do have friends, Emily. More, I think, than you realize.”

  Emily shrugged. It had been hard for her to get used to the idea of having friends; harder still, perhaps, to understand what friendship meant. Part of her had always envied the people who’d made friends easily, who could walk into a gathering and make themselves heard; part of her had always known it came with a price. And Caleb? It struck her, suddenly, that she might have been granted an unexpected advantage. The books seemed to agree that demons prized the souls of virgin girls and she was virgin. But then, Imaiqah was not and the demon had swallowed her too.

  “They’ll understand,” she said, finally. “Can we get on with it?”

  The Grandmaster gave her a long look, then nodded. “If we must,” he said, “we must.”

  Emily took the knife and cut into her skin before taking Alassa’s palm and pressing her bloodstained hand against the scar she’d made earlier. Nothing happened; grimly, she pressed the knife against Alassa’s flesh and cut her gently, allowing their blood to mingle. There were places, her mind noted, where sharing blood was considered a marriage rite...the thought made her smile, just before she felt her mind being tugged forward into the demon’s spell. She didn’t try to resist as she plummeted through the mists to where the demon waited, lounging on a stone throne.