Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (49 page)

She felt the tears well up, again, as she worked her way through the scroll. Bernard and Julianne
had
had children, one of them named after Emily herself. She shook her head—Emily was an uncommon name, suggesting that history had forgotten the other Emily—and then read onwards. Bernard admitted, gently, that the stories surrounding her had already gotten out of hand, even after his father-in-law had started trying to suppress them. It hadn’t been until later, much later, that Whitehall had told Bernard the truth.

We argued
, Bernard wrote.
I accused him of trying to hide your involvement, of trying to hide everyone’s involvement. We were arguing so badly that I didn’t quite believe it when he told me that you were from the future. We nearly fought a duel over it
.

Emily stared. Whitehall and Bernard had nearly fought a duel? Bernard hadn’t believed his old master? But he would have found the truth unbelievable ...

And then he stopped telling everyone about me
, Emily thought. The Dark Lady would become a half-remembered myth, a woman who might well not have existed at all. Her stories would grow and change until they were completely unrecognizable.
And that ensured that history remained on course
.

The last section noted that the tunnels would be sealed, ensuring that no one could gain access to the control spellware. Reading between the lines, Emily suspected that someone
had
tried to do just that ... Bernard referred to a handful of events without actually going into details. It was frustrating—he’d probably assumed she could just look up the details in a history book—but there was nothing she could do about it. Her friends had long since passed away, leaving a legacy that had changed the world.

She read the final line, then closed her eyes in pain. To her, Bernard, Julianne and Lord Whitehall were living, but they had lived and died nearly a thousand years in the past. She would never see them again; no one would. And so much had been forgotten that the full story would never be known. It would be buried in the depths of history ...

I’m sorry
, she thought.
I wish ...

She blinked away tears, then rolled up the scroll and went back to work. Master Wolfe’s notes, books “borrowed” from the Black Vault, her own observations ... she had everything she needed to plan her next move. And when her past self came to fix the damage Professor Locke had inadvertently inflicted on the school, she’d be ready.

And then I can step back into the school
, she thought. She couldn’t wait to see everyone again. She’d seen a few of her friends through the wards, before she’d forced herself not to do it again. Looking at Caleb had only made her heart ache.
And perhaps the rest of the term will pass uneventfully.

The thought made her smile, sardonically. She knew she wouldn’t get her wish.

H
ERE WE GO
,
EMILY THOUGHT, WATCHING
as her past self ran into the control room and blasted Professor Lombardi. Professor Jayne had barely any time to react before she was hexed too, although she shrugged off the hex within seconds.
Here we go ...

Her past self touched the column and thrust her mind into the network. Emily altered the wards just a little, enough to ensure that neither of the professors could intervene, then touched the control systems herself. The repair work was already well underway, but it was inadequate. She cringed at the thought of just how close they’d come to complete disaster as she started to complete the job, fixing mistakes in the programming as soon as her past self made them. It wasn’t an easy task, but she had the advantage of knowing precisely what she’d done in the seemingly recent weeks of hard work to identify and devise solutions to each of the problems.

And some of my additions held even after the entire structure started to collapse
, she thought, morbidly. She checked on the tutors as her past self finished the job. They didn’t seem inclined to interfere, thankfully. Emily didn’t want to hurt either of them.
The rest of the programming could be smoothed out too
.

She shook her head, hastily. Master Wolfe’s core programming was still in existence, even though it had grown until it was almost unrecognizable, but she doubted that smoothing it out would be a good idea. Unpicking every last spell component would take decades; it made her think, suddenly, of some of the stories she’d heard about
really
old computers. They’d had programs that ran, automatically, at preset times ... and no one, at least no one still working for the owners, had known what they did, or why they’d been written.

And they were afraid of what would happen if they took them out of the system
, she recalled, wryly.
They just didn’t want to rock the boat
.

Her past self tried to scan the school for the books. Emily
pushed
, hard; she thrust her past self right out of the network. She watched through the wards, grimly, as Professor Lombardi put her past self to sleep, then levitated her up and out of the chamber. He was going to bear a grudge, she suspected, even though he had forsaken—or would forsake—the right of vengeance. She, a mere student, had blasted an experienced professor into the wall.

My grades are going to suffer
, she thought. Professor Lombardi would probably be justified in demanding higher standards from her now, although his standards were already terrifyingly high.
And Professor Jayne won’t be much better
.

She watched and listened, through the wards, as Professor Lombardi told Grandmaster Gordian what had happened. Emily couldn’t help wondering—not for the first time—just how strong the temptation had been, for Gordian, to slit her throat while she slept. But he merely listened to the explanation, without saying a word. Perhaps he was a better man than she’d thought.

And it’s time to make the final set of preparations
, she told herself.
And if I mess this up, history is screwed
.

Gordian, thankfully, had banned all further visits to the control room, using the wards to seal the chamber. He hadn’t realized—yet—that
Emily
would always be able to go in and out of the chamber, unless she removed her own access permissions from the spellware. Hell, Professor Locke would never have
discovered
the chamber in the first place, if Emily hadn’t been with him. She checked to make sure he
was
taken out of the castle, as Gordian had told her, then started to work. Blood magic was complex and dangerous even when used on a different person.

And all my defenses will be useless against myself
, she thought.
And her thoughts might slip into my mind
.

The nexus point, she discovered as she went to work, existed at all points of time simultaneously. She couldn’t help wondering if it was linked to the demons in some manner—they too existed outside normal space and time—although it didn’t
seem
to have a will of its own. And yet, setting up the equations to send her past self back in time proved a daunting challenge, particularly as she had to pop out at a specific point. She had a feeling that it might be easier to jump to another nexus point—she’d heard stories of people walking into one nexus point and coming out of another—but she worked on the problem until she thought she had a solution. If she appeared a handful of seconds before her magic started to weave itself into the spells taming the nexus point, it should work.

She rubbed her forehead as she hurried back to the chamber to get some sleep. Just how far
could
history be bent before unleashing havoc? She had no idea ... she swore, under her breath, as she realized the demon might have been bluffing. Demonic predictions
had
to come true, didn’t they? And all but one of the predictions involving her had yet to take place ... she might just have been able to force the demon to help anyway or risk setting off a cascade of failure. And who knew what would have happened then?

I suppose I will never know
, she thought.

The wards alerted her the moment her past self awoke and spoke to the Grandmaster, before asking Caleb to share a bed with her. Emily watched, feeling oddly annoyed at her own conduct; Caleb had his flaws, but he was no Robin. Or Bernard, for that matter. His mother would never have let him get away with treating women like
objects
, as if their thoughts and feelings were of no concern. And he was a good man. She made a quiet resolution in the privacy of her own mind, then walked into the nexus chamber and cast a series of wards into the air. It was vitally important, she knew, that her past self never laid eyes on her.

She checked the wards, carefully, as soon as she walked into the nexus chamber. Her past self was lying in Caleb’s arms, looking surprisingly content. Emily flushed at the thought, then cut her palm and used the blood to draw out a trio of runes on the stone floor. Her awareness of her other self grew stronger, so strong that it nearly dragged her into sleep. She’d never heard of
that
being a problem, not when blood magic had been used elsewhere, but how often did people cast blood magics on themselves? It didn’t happen.

Gritting her teeth, fighting against a whirlpool that threatened to drag her into a maelstrom, she reached out through the connection and jerked her past self awake. The surge of emotion surprised her, even though she’d prepared for it as best as she could. She hadn’t quite realized what it
meant
, not when they were the same person. There was no difference between their thoughts.

Get up
, she thought, as the link grew stronger. She sent a whole series of calming impressions, trying to make sure there was no flash of anger or fear that would break the spell.
Get out of bed
.

She pushed the call forward as strongly as she dared, battling hard to keep her past self calm and composed. The flurry of emotions told her, as if she hadn’t already known, that her past self knew that
something
was wrong; she held the spell in place, tugging at her mind to make it harder for her past self to form a coherent thought. If anything, she thought, she’d underestimated the power of blood magic. A more ruthless practitioner could use blood magics to bind someone to him permanently.

The world seemed to blur around her. Gritting her teeth, she split her attention; one half keeping her past self under control, the other half opening doors and making sure that there was no one in a position to intercept the sleepwalker before it was too late. A pair of girls were blocking her past self’s way; she cast a strong compulsion charm, holding them both in place until her past self had made her way past them. Gordian would know that
something
was up—she hadn’t been able to find a way to lock him out again without setting off all kinds of alarms—but he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Or so she hoped.

He didn’t
, she told herself, firmly.
No one got in my way
.

Her past self moved slowly, too slowly. But there was no way to force her to move faster, not without risking everything. She didn’t dare lose control, not now. If she did, her past self might be able to put up defenses or scream for help. Either one would be disastrous. She pushed more and more calming impressions into her target’s mind, trying to block the growing awareness that she was being compelled by an outside force. She couldn’t afford to let go, not yet.

A flash of magic impinged on her attention. Gordian was awake and, unfortunately, aware that something was wrong. She hastily uploaded new orders into the wards, locking Gordian out completely. She’d probably be made to pay for it afterwards, but she found it hard to care. It was too difficult keeping her grip on her past self while, at the same time, fending off Gordian’s increasingly desperate attempts to regain control of the wards. He’d uploaded some commands of his own, it seemed, after the command network was repaired.

He’s got a short memory
, she thought, nastily.
Didn’t he realize that meddling with the system was what damaged it in the first place?

She sucked in her breath as Gordian blasted his bedroom door with a hex she didn’t recognize, blowing it off its hinges and sending the wood crashing to the stone floor. He ran out of the room, hurrying down towards the gates. Emily split her attention—again—and barred his path, altering the corridor so it led right to the top of the castle. Gordian ran into the old barracks and stopped, dead. She hastily repaired the damage she’d done to the corridor, leaving him with ten flights of stairs to run down before he could get to the nexus point.

Her past self stopped, struggling to break free. Emily felt sweat running down her face as she reasserted control, forcing her past self to keep moving. It would have been easier, she thought, to use a direct compulsion spell—the one Robin had thrown at her hovered at the back of her mind—but her past self might well have fought it off. And besides, she needed Void’s protections one last time.

Or Robin would have had me
, Emily thought.
And any hope of maintaining the timeline would be lost forever.

She concentrated on her past self and pushed her into the corridor leading to the nexus chamber, carefully freezing or deactivating a wide range of hexes intended to keep curious students and intruders out of the area. They hadn’t bitten her before, she recalled, but there was no point in taking chances. Shadye had walked through the defenses, seemingly untouched; she was fairly sure Shadye wasn’t a founder. Unless he was related to one of them ... she dismissed the thought with a flicker of irritation. If Shadye
had
been related to Whitehall or Wolfe or any of the others, it hadn’t helped him. He’d been such a poor magician that he’d turned to necromancy and lost his mind.