Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (43 page)

“We have to take this with us,” Emily said, placing the book under her arm. “And we have to go to the castle.”

Rudolf gave her a sharp look. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t know where else to go,” Emily said, simply. Had Lady Barb gone to the castle after searching the hovel? There was no sign of a fight. But somehow Emily doubted that Lady Barb would have missed the grimoire. “If we can’t find her there...”

She refused to consider the possibility as she led the way outside, into the slowly darkening sky. Clouds were gathering overhead, threatening to pour rain on their heads. Emily cast a protective charm over the book, wondering if she should destroy it. But she couldn’t bring herself to destroy any book, no matter how evil. Instead, she kept it under her arm, despite her fears. The book was surrounded by magic that might seek to do her harm.

Rudolf followed her outside. “And what if we can’t get into the castle?”

“You go back to your father and alert him,” Emily said, nettled. She didn’t want to consider the possibility of failure. “I go down to the Allied Lands and call for help.”

Moments later, the first raindrops started to fall.

E
MILY HAD INTENDED NOT TO RISK
using magic to shield them from the rain, but within moments she realized that she had no choice. The downpour grew so rapidly that their clothes were drenched within minutes, while visibility fell so badly she could barely see more than a foot or two ahead of her and thunder crackled in the sky overhead. If she hadn’t been so determined to reach the castle, she would have found a place for them to hole up and wait for the storm to end.

She cast another protective charm on the grimoire, then looked over at Rudolf. He looked like a drowned rat – she knew she probably didn’t look much better – but was grimly determined to follow her to the castle. Emily briefly considered suggesting that he took the book back to the guesthouse, then reminded herself that Rudolf wouldn’t be able to get through the wards and into the building. Bringing him with her was risky, but she suspected he wouldn’t go quietly if she asked him to go back to the village.

The rain grew stronger, beating against her wards and washing against her feet. Any tracks that might have been left would be obliterated, she realized numbly. There was no proof that Lady Barb had actually reached the castle. Coming to think of it, she thought sourly, there was no proof Lady Barb had ever entered the hovel. She might have been waylaid somewhere just outside the building.

“She could have rebuilt the wards,” Rudolf pointed out. “And
then
gone to the castle.”

Emily had her doubts. Lady Barb was far more skillful with magic than Emily, but rebuilding Mother Holly’s complex series of wards would be very difficult – and besides, she’d left the grimoire in place. And there had been no trace of her magic in the wards. No, Emily decided, Lady Barb had
not
gone into the hovel. So where had she gone?

She paused in thought. There had been no sign of a battle outside the shack. Lady Barb wouldn’t have gone quietly, certainly not to a hedge witch, so what had happened to her?

Emily briefly considered releasing the Death Viper and inspecting the rest of the plantation, but it would probably be useless. The ground would be sodden by now, all tracks and scents utterly destroyed. It was a marvel that the plants had lasted long enough under the bombardment of rain to supply generations of hedge witches.

“I don’t think so,” she said. Lady Barb was still bound by her oaths. If she encountered a grimoire, she was required to confiscate it at once. Instead, she’d just left it in the hovel – if, of course, she had seen it at all. Emily suspected she hadn’t seen the cursed book. “I think something happened to her along the way.”

She jumped as a row of small animals ran across the path and into the undergrowth. Rudolf didn’t seem too surprised; Emily guessed he was used to it. As an aristocrat, he could spend time hunting while peasants worked; he’d probably spent weeks out in the countryside, merely enjoying himself. But Rudolf was an only son. Like many of the older noble children of Zangaria, surely he would be expected to spend time learning to rule.

“Father always said that all he needed was an awareness of the realities,” Rudolf said. “He never wanted me to learn to read.”

Emily shuddered. It still surprised her that so many people had been unable to read, even in the script the Allied Lands had used before she’d introduced English letters. Magicians could generally read – Whitehall offered classes for students – but the other segments of society were largely illiterate. No wonder the Scribes Guild had got away with so much for so long.

“You should learn,” she said, although she suspected the words would fall on deaf ears. On Earth, reading might be a gateway to countless other worlds, but the books simply didn’t exist in the Allied Lands. Not yet. “It can be quite helpful.”

Rudolf snorted and changed the subject. “Shouldn’t we get help to storm the castle?”

Emily looked at him. “From whom?”

“My father...”

His voice trailed off. It would take at least two days to get his father’s troops to Easter...and that would be too long. Emily wondered, absently, if he’d ever considered arming the peasants and sending
them
against the castle, but it was the sort of tactic that only worked in bad vampire movies. In the real world, any magician could deal with an angry mob and – if the magician happened to be a necromancer – use them as a power source. They’d just be giving the enemy more targets.

And Lord Gorham is still too ill to lead his troops, in any case,
Emily thought.

“If you want to go back to your father and ask,” she said, “you can. But it won’t make much difference.”

Rudolf scowled at her. It took Emily a moment to realize she’d effectively accused him of being a coward, a sure-fire invitation to a duel in the Allied Lands. For Rudolf, given his leanings, the suggestion had to sting. Emily mentally rolled her eyes. There was nothing wrong with being scared of a necromancer, not when even the most powerful magician would think twice before challenging one. She was scared herself.

“Come on,” Rudolf said, stalking past her. “We need to get there before the rain stops.”

Emily concealed her amusement as she followed him up the rocky path. The castle was a dark brooding shape in the distance, larger than Lord Gorham’s castle but much more vulnerable. Thankfully, the designer hadn’t seen the merits of placing it on top of a needle of rock, with only one way to reach the entrance. Even so, it was still a forbidding shape.

“Stop there,” she called, as they reached the edge of the path. “Let me check for surprises first.”

Rudolf looked impatient, but paused.

Emily gritted her teeth as she sensed the first ward surrounding the castle. It wasn’t anchored properly, nothing like the wards surrounding Lady Barb’s home, and there was something about it that puzzled her. She probed it, carefully, and realized that it didn’t seem to be attached to any warning system. It could just be taken down...and no one would notice.

Emily shook her head in disbelief before probing further. A second ward was nestled behind the first, monitoring its existence. If she crossed or took down the first ward, it was the second that would sound the alarm.

“Clever,” she muttered. She’d seen something comparable in Blackhall – and had been caught, every second time she’d attempted to sneak through. “And we don’t have any blood this time.”

Rudolf gave her a sharp look. “Blood?”

“You can trick a ward if you have blood from someone keyed into their structure,” Emily said, absently. She’d done it herself in Zangaria, but those wards hadn’t been linked into a magician’s mind. They certainly hadn’t been smart enough to notice that one person was in two separate places at the same time. “But we don’t have any, so it doesn’t matter.”

She probed further, satisfied herself that there wasn’t a third ward monitoring the first two, then looked up at Rudolf. “When I start moving,” she ordered, “follow me as closely as possible.”

Rudolf nodded. Emily took a breath, then reached out with her magic and touched the first ward. Breaking it would have been simple – it was a very basic design – but that would have alerted the second ward. Instead, she twisted the ward, praying silently that the second ward was incapable of noticing anything less dramatic than the first ward snapping out of existence. But then, it would be tricky to program for
every
contingency without a nexus for power.

She took a step forward, then another and another, bending and twisting the ward around them. Rudolf followed her, his breath touching the back of her neck, unaware of the complex interplay of magic surrounding him. Emily let out a breath as the first ward snapped back into place, seemingly unaware of being warped out of shape. The second ward did nothing in response. As far as Emily could tell, they’d made it through without being detected.

“The gates are locked,” Rudolf observed, as Emily caught her breath. She was sweating, despite the cold. The effort had taken more out of her than she’d expected. “But we could climb the walls.”

Emily looked up at the smooth stone and shivered. Sergeant Miles had taught her how to climb – she’d been up and down structures she would have sworn were impossible to climb before his training – but the walls of the castle seemed too dangerous to risk. One gust of wind and they would be sent falling to their deaths. But there was no way through the gates either, she realized, grimly. The guards would know they’d broken through the wards and alert their superiors.

She took the bracelet off and placed it on the ground. Rudolf gave it a wary look, clearly expecting her to send the snake through the portcullis to kill the guards. Emily doubted it would work. The guards might well be innocent...and, in any case, the wards would probably monitor their condition. She dared not make any assumptions about what the wards would or would not consider alarming. Mother Holly wasn’t a properly-trained magician.

The best swordsman in the world doesn’t fear the second best,
Sergeant Miles had said.
He fears the worst, because he doesn’t know what the idiot will do
.

Emily looked up at the battlements. It was hard to be sure, but there didn’t look to be any guards up there. But then, in this weather they were probably hiding in the guardhouse. She shaped a plan in her mind, then looked at Rudolf. Some magicians would have pushed ahead without asking, but she knew how badly it would hurt him if she did. She wasn’t one of those magicians.

“I can turn you into something small, then turn myself into a bird and carry us both up there,” she said. She would have to carry the snake-bracelet in any case. Transfiguring something into one form and then into another could have dangerous side effects. They’d been taught never to do it, unless there was no other choice. “Unless you really think you can climb up there?”

Rudolf looked torn. Emily left him to think about it while she buried the grimoire, then left a couple of protective and concealment spells to ensure that it remained unharmed – and undiscovered. Like most people, Rudolf probably dreaded the thought of being transfigured, particularly as he had no way to reverse the spell himself. But climbing up the walls might prove impossible. If Mother Holly had established wards, she might have worked a few nasty surprises into the walls, too. Whitehall certainly had a few tricks to deter students from climbing the walls.

“Do it,” he said.

Emily felt a surge of respect and admiration as she cast the spell. Rudolf shank and became a small statue of himself. Emily gritted her teeth, then sat down and cast the second spell. Her vision warped and twisted; she closed her eyes too late to stop her seeing feathers growing out of her hands. When she opened them again, she was staring through the eyes of a hawk.

She picked up the bracelet in her beak, then the statue in one claw and took off, feeling the winds gusting around her. The hawk’s mind seemed to love the thunderstorm, even though Emily’s human awareness was tempted to panic. She’d never flown before coming to Whitehall, but being on a dragon’s back was far superior to flying under her own power. Maybe it would have been different if she’d been able to fly on a broom.

The hawk’s mind screamed at her as she dropped towards the battlements, sweeping the stonework with eyes that were so sharp she could see tiny marks on the stone. It didn’t like trying to land, but Emily forced it down. She didn’t dare let go of herself, not now. It wasn’t possible to protect her mind from a spell she’d cast on herself. If she fell into the hawk’s mind, no one would ever see her again.

There were no guards on the battlements, she realized, as she finally forced the hawk to land and released the spell. She slipped, almost at once, and barely managed to catch herself before either dropping her cargo or falling over the edge. The hawk’s eyes had seen the battlements as more than large enough to protect her, but in truth they were barely larger than something from a model village. Desperately, Emily crawled forward until she was lying on flat stone. The designer of the castle, she realized, hadn’t really given any thought to protecting the soldiers on the roof. They might be blown off by a gust of wind if they got careless.

Carefully, she returned the bracelet to her wrist and released the spell on Rudolf, using a minor sticking hex to hold him in place until he had gathered himself, his eyes wide and staring. Emily felt a shiver of guilt, which she ruthlessly suppressed. Rudolf wasn’t unaware that he lived in a world where magicians could turn men into swine with a wave of their hands, but he’d never experienced anything like this until now. How could he take it in stride? But there had been no alternative...

“The guardhouse,” Rudolf said. He pointed towards a small stone hut; Emily couldn’t help thinking of a penthouse perched on top of a skyscraper. “The stairs will be hidden inside.”

Slipping and sliding, they made their way to the door. Rudolf opened it – and came face to face with a guard. He cocked his fist as Emily readied a spell, then hesitated. The guard was standing still, as if he was utterly unaware of their presence. He didn’t even show any reaction as Rudolf waved a hand in front of his face.