Schooled in Magic (61 page)

...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 that 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 handful 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.

“Y
OU 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.”

Emily found that she could talk again. “You’d let them live?”

“I will not kill them,” Shadye said. He looked back at her. “I swear upon my power that I will release them into the forest, free to make their way back into the Allied Lands.”

Emily felt cold.
He
had sworn the oath, knowing that once Emily was tainted by necromancy she would want to kill them herself. And even if she didn’t kill them, the journey back to Dragon’s Den–let alone further north–would be through lands infested with monsters. They might well die anyway, but there would be no deliberate breach of his oath.

A thought struck her. She could tell him about the fairies, deliberately breaking her own oath in the certain knowledge that it would kill her. He wouldn’t let her try to kill herself, she suspected, but he wouldn’t realize that she’d sworn a binding oath until it was too late. And then he would be deprived of her services ...

She opened her mouth to say it, then hesitated. Suicide would be the end of everything. Even now, she couldn’t take that final step.

“Choose one,” Shadye repeated. He sounded ...
impatient
. And to think that he’d waited patiently for her to go to sleep so he could manipulate her mind. “Choose one to die and the others will live.”

Emily felt her hand shiver where it grasped the knife’s hilt, but her hand didn’t move. Shadye didn’t seem inclined to puppet her body in order to kill one of the captives. This was puzzling until she realized that necromancy was a deeply personal art. If she didn’t kill the captive deliberately, of her own free will, the ritual might fail. And who knew
what
would happen then? Maybe Shadye would drain the power himself, as he’d used her body as a weapon, or maybe it would just fade away into the background.

She felt hot tears prickling at the corner of her eye. How could
anyone
make such a choice?