Emily found herself silently praying that they were wrong, even as she stood there, trying to fight down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her.
Distract him, part of her mind yammered. Keep him busy while you think!
She cleared her throat. “How did you manage to control me?”
“Our first meeting in three months and that’s your question?” Shadye asked. He sounded inordinately amused, as if she’d said something funny. “I have a sample of your blood, remember?”
“But we cut the ties between it and me,” she protested. Or the healers had tried, at least. “How did you use it to manipulate me?”
Shadye snorted. “You’re not from this world. There is no one else like you anywhere in this universe. Your blood is unique. Diffusing the link between you and your blood won’t break the connection permanently.”
Emily cursed under her breath. It should have occurred to her before it was too late, even if it wouldn’t have occurred to Kyla or anyone else who didn’t know where she’d come from. Shadye was right. She was unique. There would be no relatives to make it difficult, if not impossible, to target the spell precisely. Shadye had thought of something completely out of left field, but she should have thought of it, too. All the ideas she’d brought into this world ... but she hadn’t come up with the one that would have saved Whitehall from destruction.
Shadye stepped forward.
Emily stumbled backwards, unwilling to be too close to him.
The necromancer stopped in front of Malefic and looked down at the stunned Dark Wizard, his expression hidden by the cowl. He reached down after a moment and cast a spell Emily didn’t recognize. Malefic jerked once, then returned to his enforced slumber.
“He failed me,” Shadye said. “I do not tolerate failure.”
“Of course you don’t,” Emily said, still backing away. “How did you tolerate yourself when I escaped your clutches?”
Shadye laughed unpleasantly. “Do you really believe that you managed to escape without my permission?”
He continued before Emily could say a word. “I permitted you to leave, knowing that you would upset the balance of power in the Allied Lands. And you have played your role magnificently. Political chaos in one of the most important Kingdoms in the world will weaken them to the point where my puppets can take power and shatter the Allied Lands.”
His voice darkened. “And I knew that I could use you to bring down the wards protecting Whitehall. You have been my puppet all along.”
Emily stared at him, her thoughts churning madly. He was lying. He had to be lying. How could he have predicted everything from Void’s rescue to her rivalry - then friendship - with Alassa? Or, for that matter, how did he know that she would go into partnership with one of the other girls from the school? Or that she would actually know something of use to this world? Emily had been far from an ignorant girl, like the cheerleaders she’d known from back home, but she’d still found herself having to reinvent the wheel–or the printing press–with only the vaguest knowledge of their principles.
If Shadye had wanted to influence the world, he might have done better if he’d kidnapped a professor of medieval history and the early industrial age, or someone with a background in engineering and chemistry. Emily could have easily failed to introduce anything.
“A Child of Destiny as a puppet,” Shadye gloated. “How could I fail to win?”
Cold logic told her that Shadye was lying. She clung to the thought as the necromancer stepped over Malefic’s body and strode towards her. There was no way he could have predicted everything, or he wouldn’t have needed her to introduce new factors into an already unstable situation. And besides, it was impossible to look into the future and glean anything but the vaguest hints of what might come.
Both science and magic agreed on that point.
But when she looked up at Shadye, she realized that it didn’t matter. The necromancer believed every word he said.
She shivered as she backed away, creeping down the corridor.
Shadye had a strong personality; he had to have a strong personality, or necromancy would have killed him long ago. But he couldn’t allow himself to doubt, or question, for fear of losing himself. And that meant that every reversal he suffered had to be explained, at least to himself, as just another part of his plan. He had to believe that he wanted his enemies to score a local victory–and that this victory would lead to their defeat.
Offhand, she couldn’t recall if such a scheme had ever worked outside comic books.
But I’m not a Child of Destiny, her mind insisted. She could tell Shadye that, but he would ignore her. He took her successes in upsetting the world as proof that she was a Child of Destiny.
Besides, what would he do if he ever found out the truth? Would he consider that to be part of his grand plan too?
“Right,” she said after a long pause. “And I assume that you’re about to sacrifice me to the powers of darkness?”
Shadye chuckled, humorlessly. “I have far more ... interesting uses for a Child of Destiny than just another sacrifice,” he said sardonically. “Instead, you will become a necromancer and join me as we crush the Allied Lands.”
Emily stared at him in horror. If he truly believed that, maybe he had intended to lure Void into rescuing her, knowing she would be his Trojan Horse. But if that was the case, why would he need Malefic to secure some of Emily’s blood? He could have taken it from her before she woke up in his prison cell.
No, she told herself firmly; he had to have improvised a new plan once she’d been plucked out of his grasp. Even Batman couldn’t come up with such a plan right from the start and expect it to work.
But Shadye was insane. And therefore unpredictable.
“You want to change things,” Shadye whispered. “You are a Child of Destiny, born to change the world. With necromancy, you will be able to change the world in ways beyond your imagination.”
And go insane doing it, Emily thought.
The awful temptation gnawed at her soul. There was no way she could win a straight duel with Shadye, not one that matched their respective powers directly against each other; he was vastly more powerful than any other magician she’d met. If she fought, Shadye would win–and then finish the task of destroying Whitehall. And once she was drained, she would be completely helpless. No doubt Shadye would have some special way to re-educate her if she refused to do as he wanted.
But if she tapped into necromancy herself, she would be as powerful as he–and she already knew she had tricks that no one from this world had ever seriously considered. Using light as a weapon? She could make a laser beam if she tried, one that would go through most wards because they weren’t configured to block the light. Or she could transfigure the air around her target into poison gas, or produce hydrogen from water ... she’d even had a half-formed idea for producing gold from seawater. She could beat him...
...But if she did that, she’d lose her soul.
No one had ever survived contact with necromancy without going mad, often unaware that they were going mad until it was far too late. Of course; they had no real way to monitor their own brains for madness. And if their universe was changing and all the tools they had to measure the universe were changing as well?
She believed, firmly, that royal birth didn’t equate to anything special, but necromancy could change that opinion ... and she wouldn’t even notice.
The temptation danced in front of her, mocking her. There had to be another way to beat him, but she couldn’t think of anything she could produce quickly enough. If she refused his gift, he would take her anyway and then continue destroying Whitehall, sacrificing the remaining students to power his magic. But if she accepted his gift, she would become a worse threat than any ordinary necromancer because of all she knew. And because of her friends. She might end up reprogramming Alassa to deliberately destroy her Kingdom once she assumed the throne.
An idea struck her. “No,” she said, hoping t
hat it would distract him from what she was doing. “You will never turn me to the Dark Side. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”
It was a bad example for all kinds of reasons, but it would mean nothing to the necromancer. Luke Skywalker’s father had been a Jedi–and a bratty teenager–and he had turned to the Dark Side, which made it a very stupid example, although it was very dramatic. And in some of the Expanded Universe comics, the ones she preferred to forget existed, Luke had joined his father as a servant of the Dark Side. And she was pretty sure that necromancy was even more seductive and dangerous than the Dark Side of the Force. The Emperor would have been infinitively preferable to a necromancer who had to sacrifice his own people to survive.
Shadye seemed ... surprised. “You were a powerful magician back home?”
“Something like that,” Emily lied. She composed the charm in her head. “I come from a place where there were far worse dangers than you.”
“I’m sure there were,” Shadye said as he took another step forward. “But your father is far from here.”
“My father is dead,” Emily said. She released the charm. “Die!”
A blazing beam of light tore into Shadye’s wards. She felt his power come to life as he attempted to defend himself, even though he might not be truly aware of what she was doing to him. She saw, just for a second, that his robes had blown away, revealing something so horrible that her mind refused to process it properly ...
Then she released the second charm. A direct assault was unlikely to succeed–Shadye had enough raw power to bat away almost anything–but he might not be prepared for something as simple as a practical joke. The hex caused limited forgetfulness, just enough to confuse someone in a duel ...
For a moment, she thought that she’d succeeded.
And then Shadye waved his hand at her, summoned a gust of wind and used it to blow her down the corridor.
Emily grunted in pain as she slammed into the wall next to the Orcs, half-convinced that she’d broken something. Desperately, she pulled herself to her feet -
- As Shadye started to advance on her, his red eyes burning brightly in the darkness of his cowl. Brilliant energy sparkled around his hands–which looked almost like claws now, she saw–and flashed out at her.
Malevolent energy crawled towards her, but Emily managed to throw herself out of the way. The flickering pulses of balefire crawled over the walls, cracking the solid stone and leaving black scorch marks in their wake.
Shadye seemed to have given up on the idea of taking her alive.
“You cannot escape your destiny,” Shadye informed her. “You will be mine.”
Emily ran.
The corridor twisted around her and she found herself running right towards Shadye. Of course, her mind noted with an odd detachment as she skidded to a halt. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Shadye had forced his will on the castle’s very structure. There was no reason why he couldn’t force it to keep Emily trapped, or the rest of the students until he needed them.
Shadye reached towards her.
Emily backed off, only to run into a wall that hadn’t been there before. The necromancer snickered as she started to press back into the wall, unable to escape.
“You will learn respect for your tutor and master,” Shadye said. His red eyes promised no mercy. He would reach into her brain and rewrite it at will. “You will join me.”
Desperation gave her inspiration. She threw a hex she’d learned in Martial Magic at Shadye, knowing that he would have no difficulty warding it off. But it gave her time to use her magic to pick up a piece of debris and throw it at him with considerable speed.
The debris struck the necromancer’s wards hard enough to send him staggering backwards His wards held, but they weren’t able to contain the kinetic force that powered the piece of debris.
Emily took her opportunity and jumped past him, hoping to escape his field of influence before it was too late. She picked up and threw other pieces of debris at him, before almost running right into another stone wall. The corridor had suddenly become a dead end.
What could she do? What else did she know? Nothing came to mind.
A moment later, she felt the strength drain out of her body.
“These games are amusing,” Shadye proclaimed, from behind her, “but they are at an end.”
Emily felt her body turn around, moving of its own accord. Shadye held a tiny glass vial in one hand, one that contained a reddish liquid. The subtle magic flickering around it was enough to tell her, if she hadn’t already guessed, that it was her blood. She’d been asleep the last time he’d controlled her, and she hadn’t been able to fight. This time, she was awake–but it made no difference. Her body did as Shadye’s will commanded and, no matter how much she struggled, it refused to break free.
The Grandmaster had said he had protected her. But he’d been wrong.
“You will become my servant. My slave,” Shadye said. He was unmistakably gloating now, enjoying his triumph. “Your unique talents will be bent to serve me. And though you will become a necromancer, you will still be mine. You will never grow to supplant me.”
Emily shuddered, remembering the concepts she’d tossed around for a magical processor. It might not have been immediately workable, but Aloha’s friends had been making progress–and, at least in theory, a magical processor would be able to process vast amounts of mana without going insane. And then there were the inherent possibilities in splitting atoms. If someone could build a makeshift atomic bomb using magic, they could wreak vast devastation on the world.
It occurred to her that she could try to encourage Shadye to build one, in the hope that he would accidentally blow himself up while testing the device, but the plan might not work. If she had been controlling another magician, she would ensure that the magician couldn’t act, directly or indirectly, against her. She had to believe that Shadye would be equally prudent.
Shadye tossed the vial of blood from hand to hand, taunting her. “On your knees,” he hissed. “Show your tutor proper respect.”
She struggled, desperately, but knew it was futile. Her body sank to its knees, moving down until her head was touching the floor in full prostration, a position of total submission. Shadye stepped forward and placed his foot on the back of her neck; Emily cringed, expecting him to push down, before he walked away from her. But she couldn’t move.
She smelled the Orcs coming up behind her before they came into view and picked up Malefic. The stunned Dark Wizard was powerless to escape. They carted him off to an unknown destination. Emily suspected he would meet his end on the sacrificial table.
“Stand,” Shadye ordered.
Emily’s body obeyed, even as she searched for ways to beat his control. There had to be a way to counter it, or whoever had first invented blood magic would still be ruling the world. Maybe they were, part of her mind whispered in a desperate attempt to distract herself; Alassa had mentioned a Royal Bloodline, after all. And there was powerful magic woven into other royal families as well, according to the books. Some of them were even stranger than Alassa’s family.
“Follow,” Shadye said.
He led her down a flight of stairs and past a small pile of bodies, both human and monster. The defenders had sold their lives dearly, but in the end they’d lost–and died. Emily felt tears welling up in her eyes as she remembered how the scenes of an utterly destroyed school had manipulated her - the scenes that Shadye had made real.
She caught sight of a dead body–a fifth-year student she vaguely recognized–and wanted to be sick. But Shadye’s control over her body was so powerful that she couldn’t even retch.
Don’t panic, part of her mind insisted. Study the problem, find the magic, then counter it.
But it seemed futile.
The dining hall had been almost untouched by the fighting, she saw, as Shadye led her into the hall. He’d turned it into a prison camp as a dozen students and a pair of tutors were held in chains, guarded by a h
andful of Orcs. They didn’t seem to be resisting, but the Orcs had beaten them savagely anyway. They were wearing anti-magic shackles. Escape was impossible.
And one of the wounded tutors was Sergeant Harkin.
Chapter Forty-Six
“YOU WILL SACRIFICE ONE OF MY prisoners,” Shadye said. His hissing voice broke into Emily’s panicked thoughts. “His power will be added to your own.”
Emily stared helplessly at the Sergeant. Even the thought–the repugnance - of killing a man she respected, even liked, wasn’t enough to break the bonds Shadye had put on her mind. And she had a feeling that after she took the first draught of necromantic power, she would no longer want to stop. Necromancers were literally addicted to the surge of power they enjoyed as they killed their victims.
The Sergeant was beaten bloody. One of his arms had clearly been broken, but his one visible eye was bright and calculating. Emily thought she saw understanding, even forgiveness, in his brown eye before he looked up at the necromancer. Shadye didn’t seem to intimidate him, even though Shadye was powerful enough to reduce the Sergeant to ashes with a wave of his hand. Or maybe Harkin was just very good at controlling his reactions.
Shadye loomed closer, but Emily couldn’t even flinch away as he reached into his robe and produced a stone knife with eerie black runes carved into the blade. Emily felt her hand reach out as he held it towards her. No matter how much she screamed inside, her body was going to take the knife ... her hand closed around the hilt. The knife felt...evil, utterly repulsive, the moment she touched it. It was no ordinary knife, but one crafted specifically for necromancy. The charms on the blade helped to direct the surge of mana from the victim into the necromancer.
“Choose one,” Shadye ordered, turning to study his captives. “Choose one to die - and the others will live.”
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