Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (45 page)

“We have to find him,” she said. “Come on.”

Bernard looked astonished as she led the way towards the door, then hurried past her and into the corridor. Emily was surprised he didn’t send Julianne back to her room, although she supposed he might just have believed that Julianne was safe with him. Tama was in for a horrific time, Emily was sure, when Bernard realized what he’d done to his wife. She just hoped he didn’t blame Julianne for it too. She’d known men who’d done just that ...

Because they believe it’s impossible to rape a good woman
, she thought, grimly. It had made her sick when she’d had to stand in judgement, knowing that the law of the land and her sense of right and wrong were in conflict.
And because they think a woman can only get pregnant if she enjoys herself
.

She pushed the thought aside and reached out, again, with her senses. There was another battle going on in the Great Hall. She tapped Bernard on the shoulder and muttered advice, then followed him as he slipped down towards the hall. The waves of magic were getting stronger, mingled with flickering bursts of concentrated malice that sent shivers down her spine. There were demons ahead of them, waiting. And she knew she couldn’t ask anyone to sacrifice themselves on her behalf, not for a second time.

There has to be a way to banish them
, she told herself.
But how?

Whitehall was standing, his back to them, as they entered the Great Hall. Master Chambers was standing at the other end of the room, his eyes burning with red light as he hurled spell after spell towards his former friend. Emily felt sick as she tasted the magic, grimly aware that Master Chambers was working demonic power into his spells. It made her wonder if it had been Chambers, rather than Robin, who’d bargained for the control spell. He might have nudged Robin into using it in the hopes of provoking a confrontation.

“You,” Master Chambers howled. Emily shuddered as she saw the rage and hatred on his face. His sanity was gone, gone completely. The invisible presences surrounding him were laughing at her. “You ...”

She threw herself to the side as a wave of magic lashed out at her, but she couldn’t move fast enough to escape. The magic slammed into her protections, crawling along them as it searched for weaknesses. There was no elegance to the spell, but it hardly mattered. The demonic malice—and his madness—gave it power. She thrust the wards away from her, hoping that it would be enough to keep the spell from touching her. Master Chambers would never be satisfied with merely killing her.

“Enough,” Whitehall said. “Chambers ...”

“
Die
,” Chambers screamed.

Dear God
, Emily thought, as another wave of magic slammed into Whitehall’s shield.
He’s a necromancer
!

She threw a spell of her own, hoping Master Chambers hadn’t been using necromancy long enough to start the transformation into an eldritch abomination. Perhaps he’d had enough experience controlling his own mind, after using demonic magic, to avoid the first bouts of outright madness. But the spell merely glinted off him, as if he was already too far gone to be stopped. Emily shuddered as Bernard, Julianne and the other magicians started pouring spells into Chambers’ wards. She knew with a sick certainty that it wasn’t going to be enough.

A wave of pain almost drove her to her knees as the door behind Master Chambers bulged in a direction her eyes couldn’t follow, a creature slipping into a room. Master Chambers turned, letting out a terrible scream as he saw the Manavore; magic boiling around him as he readied himself to attack ...

And then, quite casually, the Manavore opened its mouth and swallowed him.

A
BSOLUTE SILENCE FELL
.

The Manavore stood there, looking at them with semi-translucent eyes. Once again, Emily found it hard to even
look
at the creature, as if there was something about it that defied her imagination. It was a spider, but it wasn’t a spider; it was a mangled construct of a dozen different animals, her mind desperately trying to make sense of something completely beyond its comprehension. The walls were faintly visible
through
the translucent creature, but they were bent and twisted, as if the mere
presence
of the Manavore was enough to bend reality around it.

Master Chambers unleashed a vast amount of magic, and Master Keldor took down most of the wards
, Emily thought. In his bid to prevent Whitehall from reshaping the magical community, Master Chambers might well have destroyed it. There had been nothing about
this
in the history books.
We might as well have been announcing our presence to every last Manavore in the world
.

The magicians seemed entranced. Emily glanced from side to side; Bernard and Julianne were staring at the Manavore in horror, but most of the others were just stunned, as if it had cast a spell over them.
None
of them had seen a Manavore before, not directly. Even when they’d fled, they’d seen nothing beyond flickering impressions that had rapidly faded from their minds. But now ... now they were looking straight at their foe. They would have been safer staring into the face of a medusa.

She gritted her teeth in pain as the magic field shifted and tilted towards the Manavore. The shock jerked the others out of their trance; they started casting spells, only to watch helplessly as their spells struck the Manavore, broke apart into glistening flickers of magic and vanished into its aura. It was feasting, she realized; there was so much magic in the air that it was blinded to their presence. But that wouldn’t last ...

“Emily,” Julianne screamed.

Emily turned and swore as she saw the doorway bulging, distorting out of shape until a second Manavore entered the hall. Something nagged at her mind—the Manavores seemed to need to use doors, despite their transdimensional nature—but she had no idea how to make use of it. She glanced at Whitehall and cursed again. The older magician was staring around him, his eyes wide with shock. His dream was dying, and he could do nothing. And then he snapped out of his trance.

“Get out of the room,” he bellowed. “Set up the runes in the corridor!”

The magicians turned and ran towards the final door. Emily couldn’t help noticing that several of the younger men and women were panicking, their faces utterly terrified. She didn’t blame them. They’d grown used to being powerful, to being unstoppable ... and then the Manavores had shown them that they were small fish in a very big ocean. They’d watched helplessly as a DemonMaster, who also happened to be a necromancer, had been destroyed in passing.

She glanced back and swallowed, hard, as more Manavores swarmed into view. They’d consume the stray magic from the battle, then come hunting more. Stopping one or two with the runes she’d devised might be possible, but stopping five or six ...? She had no idea if they were smart enough to recognize the threat and avoid it—if they didn’t already know what had happened to the first Manavore—yet it didn’t matter. One Manavore might be trapped, while the others killed the trappers and then fought their way onwards, hunting down the remaining magicians.

Whitehall caught her arm and yanked her forward, slamming the door behind him. Emily rather doubted it would stand up to a good kick, let alone a Manavore. Perhaps they
needed
an open door—the laws of magic governing magical creatures often made no sense—but even if they did, there was no reason they couldn’t go out through one of the other doors and scuttle around the corridors until they found their prey. And their distortion effect
probably
meant they could fit down even the narrowest corridors ...

“Every magician for a hundred miles is here,” Whitehall snarled. “Even those who opposed me were brought here by Chambers!”

Emily swallowed, hard. Had history been derailed beyond repair?
Both
sides in the conflict were on the verge of being wiped out. The nexus point—and the castle—would be forgotten soon enough, an experiment that had failed. And her? Would she simply blink out of existence, or would history rewrite itself to allow her to exist? She glanced at the demon on her shoulder, but no answers were forthcoming. Maybe it was just waiting until she died before returning to the Darkness. None of the books she’d read had said much about the demonic realm, but she found it hard to imagine that it was a very pleasant place.

“Bernard,” Whitehall snapped. “You need to set up the runes. Organize teams to slow them down.”

“Yes, Master,” Bernard said. He was
still
holding Julianne’s hand. “What about ...?”

“If you find any of
his
supporters, put them to work,” Whitehall ordered. “Hurry.”

He glanced at Emily, tightening his grip on her hand. “Come with me.”

Emily nodded as he pulled her down the corridor. “We need to retune the wards!”

“If we can get control,” Whitehall snapped. “What happened?”

“Keldor betrayed you,” Emily said. She caught one last glimpse of Bernard and Julianne, then followed Whitehall down the corridor. “He damaged the control systems.”

Whitehall looked pained. “How badly?”

“I’m not sure,” Emily admitted. “He locked me out, somehow.”

She met his eyes. “Did you order Master Wolfe to prepare wards to stop my magic?”

“Yes,” Whitehall said. He had the grace to look ashamed. “I’m sorry.”

Emily sighed. “I survived,” she said. She ran through the rest of the story as they passed the frozen sellswords and hurried down the stairs. Whitehall glanced at them, but said nothing. “And the school itself has to survive.”

“Because of the
future
,” Whitehall said.

“Yeah,” Emily said. She allowed herself a moment of bitter regret. “You know, don’t you?”

“It took me a long time to figure it out,” Whitehall said. He reached out and squeezed her hand, gently. “You’re from the future.”

Emily nodded. “You can’t make a record of that,” she said. How had Whitehall figured it out? “And you mustn’t tell
anyone
.”

“Of course,” Whitehall said.

“Thank you,” Emily said. She gave him a sidelong look. “How did you figure it out?”

“You were too good,” Whitehall said. “You spoke with too much assurance. You knew spells Wolfe insisted were too advanced for anyone, even him, yet there were also odd gaps in your knowledge. And the demons Master Chambers summoned to interrogate insisted that you hadn’t existed prior to the moment you fell out of the nexus point.”

“And so you knew I was lying,” Emily said.

“I knew you were lying about
something
,” Whitehall said. “And there were too many odd discrepancies in your story, things that didn’t quite make sense. And eventually I patched it all together.”

He leaned forward. “How far back did you come?”

“I’m not sure,” Emily admitted. They reached the nexus chamber and paused to allow Whitehall to inspect the wards. “Our records aren’t that good.”

“I see,” Whitehall said, tartly. “Do they remember me?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “But that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

Whitehall scowled, but nodded reluctantly. “Do you want me to do anything for you? I could leave a note for my successors ...”

Emily considered it, briefly. Would she have fewer troubles with Gordian if he’d had a note, purportedly from Lord Whitehall himself? One telling him, perhaps, to listen to her? But she doubted that any such note had been found. It had been nearly a thousand years, after all; there was no way they could be
sure
that such a note would survive. And she didn’t
know
that one
had
survived.

“No,” she said, slowly. “Just ... try to forget the details.”

Whitehall nodded as they walked into the nexus chamber. She knew he had to be brimming with questions, but he held his tongue. Emily knew
she
wouldn’t be able to avoid asking questions about the future, despite the risk of damaging the timeline still further. Whitehall seemed more capable of controlling himself.

He asked if they remembered him
, she thought.
And that was all he wanted
.

“He didn’t damage the spellware that much,” Whitehall said, thoughtfully. The nexus point glittered in front of them, waiting. Emily couldn’t help wondering just how long it would be before the Manavores came down to consume it. “But it will take some time to expel the creatures completely from the castle.”

“Chambers inadvertently called them,” Emily said. “The magic he unleashed ... it summoned them.”

“So I gathered,” Whitehall said. “And he was killed before he could do anything.”

Thank God
, Emily thought.

She nodded as Whitehall went to work. For the first time, she sensed a flicker of motion from the demon on her shoulder, a sense that it had turned its head to watch Whitehall at work. She eyed it warily, wondering if she should make her way down to the statue chamber while Whitehall was working on the nexus point. It would be simple enough to take advantage of his work to ensure that the chamber remained undiscovered, at least until her past self came along. The demon might have its own plans for the nexus point.

“I want you to do something for me,” Whitehall said. Emily glanced at him, worried. “You remember the Books of Pacts? I want you to take them into the future and destroy them there.”

Emily gave him a sharp look. “Are they safe?”

“Lord Alfred had many demons under his command,” Whitehall said. “And some of them were never successfully bound by anyone else. Those books are going to be targets for every thief in the world as word spreads—and you know it will spread.”

“The demons will make sure of it,” Emily said.

“Take them into the future,” Whitehall said. “Go
now
. Keep them out of reach. And once you’re there, destroy them.”

Emily sucked in her breath. The books were tempting, even though she’d felt the evil surrounding them every time she’d laid eyes on them. And yet, now she had a demon on her shoulder, it was all too easy to wonder if that was still true. Could she touch the books without being repulsed? Could she
use
the books without feeling as though she was touching something unbearably filthy?