Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (47 page)

She felt the snake-bracelet around her wrist, but dismissed the thought of trying to use it against the necromancer. If killing spells didn’t work, poison was unlikely to do any better – and besides, there was so much energy crackling around that the snake might be vaporized instantly. She darted to one side as yet another fireball narrowly missed her, then twisted in midair and came after her. Emily barely had a second to block it before it struck, the explosion picking her up and tossing her through the air. Somehow, she managed to keep hold of her staff. She landed badly, almost breaking her leg. Gritting her teeth, she applied a quick-heal spell even though she knew she would pay for it later. There was no time to have Lady Barb heal her.

Lady Barb tossed an odd spell at Mother Holly. Emily frowned in puzzlement; the spell didn’t look even
remotely
dangerous.

But Mother Holly howled in outrage and started lashing out, blindly.

She
was
blind, Emily realized. The spell was one of the pranks they were forbidden to use at Whitehall, a spell considered too cruel even for magicians who regularly turned their rivals into animals or inanimate objects. Emily could understand their logic, although she thought it was long overdue. She pulled herself back to her feet as the necromancer stopped, as if she were listening. But if she was blind, she couldn’t see them coming.

Seeing a large rock, Emily cast a levitation spell on it and launched the rock towards Mother Holly’s head at colossal speed. She must have sensed something, because she started to move just before the rock hit her, but it was too late. There was a colossal explosion as the rock disintegrated, revealing a battered human form blazing with energy. For a moment, Emily thought that Mother Holly’s body – more energy than living flesh – was about to explode and braced herself, before the energy faded back into nothingness. Moments later, Mother Holly pointed a finger at Emily and she had to jump aside, a moment before a supercharged spell blazed through where she had been standing. The blindness spell had been broken.

“Do it again,” she called to Lady Barb. She’d never learnt how to cast the spell herself, even in Martial Magic. “Hurry!”

Mother Holly howled and struck the ground. An earthquake rocked the valley, forcing Emily to lean on her staff to remain upright. In the distance, she heard the sounds of trees falling and rocks crashing down the edge of the valley...just how far had the earthquake reached? She glanced towards the castle, only to see nothing but darkness. What if the castle, already damaged, had been ruined by the earthquake? Or the town they’d stayed in the previous day...?

Emily lifted her staff as the shaking subsided and cast a series of spells, one after the other, feeling her magic flow through the staff. A prank spell turned the ground under Mother Holly’s feet to ice, sending her falling to the ground. Another triggered a blaze of fire under the necromancer’s body, a spell she’d been taught to reserve for zombies and other forms of undead life. Mother Holly howled, but showed no sign of harm as she climbed back to her feet. A spell from Lady Barb sent her back down again. The ground shivered, as if it was repulsed by Mother Holly’s touch, sending chills down Emily’s spine.

And then the necromancer turned to look at her.

Red eyes, blazing with inhuman power and madness, met Emily’s gaze. She froze, like a deer staring into headlights, remembering Shadye and just how close he had come to killing her and taking Whitehall for his own. She’d cheated then, drawing on the power of the nexus and Earth’s concepts of science to wipe him from existence, but there was no nexus here. All they could do was hope they could exhaust the necromancer, a necromancer born from a woman who knew how to conserve her power. It struck Emily as she stood, helpless, that they might not win this battle.

Mother Holly gestured with one clawed hand, and an invisible force yanked the staff out of Emily’s hand. Emily screamed, feeling as if part of her had been ripped away as the staff flew through the air and into Mother Holly’s grasp.

She stared down at the staff, as if she wasn’t quite sure how it worked, then focused her magic on it until the staff disintegrated into sawdust.

Emily stared in horror, feeling her magic flickering helplessly without the staff. Mother Holly looked up, triumph somehow readable on her maddened face, and flicked a finger at her. Emily found herself tossed through the air and slammed against a rock, held in place by an irresistible force.

She felt panic bubbling at the corner of her mind as Mother Holly started to advance towards her, one hand clutching the stone knife. Shadye had wanted to sacrifice her, too...but she’d been alone then.

The knife flew out of Mother Holly’s hand, then slammed into a fireball Lady Barb had created and tossed into the air. It shattered into pieces of stone. The force holding Emily in place vanished.

Mother Holly turned to face Lady Barb, curling her hands into fists and then uncurling them to reveal inhuman claws. Magic flashed around her as she prepared yet another strike.

Lady Barb acted first.

For a moment, Emily thought that Lady Barb had summoned Basilisks or another set of giant snakes to help. They seemed to come out of nowhere, crashing into Mother Holly and grinding her into the ground. It took her a moment to realize that Lady Barb had animated them from rocks, a feat Emily knew she couldn’t hope to match for years. Magic flared around the snake that was trying to kill the necromancer, then it glowed with light and disintegrated.

Emily barely managed to raise a ward before pieces of stone flew everywhere, several bouncing off her protections. Lady Barb started to throw more spells as Mother Holly rose back to her feet...then floated upwards into the air.

Emily hesitated. Part of her wanted Mother Holly to run, but she knew the necromancer would just find more victims and devastate the countryside. She gritted her teeth and cast a spell intended to cancel the witch’s flying spell, but nothing happened.

Horror flared through her mind as she realized she’d become far too dependent on the staff. She closed her eyes, recalled her very first lessons in magic, then recast the spell. Magic flashed around her and she almost collapsed in relief, then opened her eyes as Mother Holly hit the ground. The witch looked absolutely furious.

Cold ice ran down Emily’s spine as Mother Holly stood up. Emily was tired – and Lady Barb, despite having more reserves, couldn’t be in a much better condition. If they exhausted themselves, rather than the necromancer, they were both dead.

Then Emily remembered what she’d done to Shadye and cast an illusion spell, creating copies of herself that advanced towards Mother Holly with threatening intent, while she ducked and hid.

Mother Holly didn’t seem to care about which Emily was actually real; she threw blasts of magic at each in quick succession. The blasts passed through the illusions and slammed into the far edge of the valley, exploding in light and fire.

Emily shuddered – if one of those blasts hit her, she would be vaporized – and then created more illusions. Mother Holly kept blasting them, one after the other. There was so much magic flaring through the air that Emily couldn’t help wondering what it would do to the local environment.

Lady Barb added her own illusions, creating copies of herself and several other magicians. Emily saw a Master Grey blown apart by a blast of magic, then a Grandmaster smirking as he lifted his staff. But the illusions weren’t actually dangerous...Mother Holly must have come to the same conclusion, as she stopped throwing magic at them.

Emily braced herself and shaped a very deadly spell in her mind, then stood up and cast it. For a long moment, nothing happened...

And then, Mother Holly started to choke. The spell transmuted the oxygen in the air around her to something else. Sergeant Miles hadn’t known just what it did, merely that the spell made it impossible for the target to breathe.

And since Mother Holly
did
need to breathe, Emily wondered if she dared unleash the snake. Maybe poison would work after all.

But then the madwoman stopped choking...

Emily cursed under her breath, searching her mind for ideas. Prank spells prevented panic – she’d never quite realized that she wasn’t breathing when she was turned into something inanimate – but other spells didn’t have safety features built into their structure. Mother Holly must have believed that she needed to breathe, even if she’d passed beyond such human weakness. But once it had been put to the test, she’d discovered the truth.

Emily stood, catching her breath. Everything seemed very still; she was vaguely aware of Lady Barb, standing behind the necromancer. Even Mother Holly didn’t seem inclined to keep fighting. But she knew it was just a matter of time. Emily was sweaty, exhausted and pushed to the edge of her endurance. Unless Mother Holly ran out of energy in the next few minutes, they were going to lose.

An idea occurred to her, an idea that might at least allow them to take Mother Holly down even as they fell themselves. She hesitated, then started to work her way around Mother Holly, heading towards Lady Barb. The necromancer eyed her through brilliant red eyes, but did nothing to stop her.

Lady Barb held up a hand, warningly. They didn’t dare get too close together or Mother Holly might try to kill them both at once.

“You’re being consumed by your own madness,” Lady Barb said, addressing Mother Holly in tones one might use to address a dangerous animal. She sounded calm, reasonable and, above all, understanding. “But you can still stop this.”

Emily gaped at her. Was she trying to talk Mother Holly out of embracing necromancy? Surely it was already too late. Mother Holly had passed beyond humanity into a twilight stage between human and something else, a stage that would need a constant influx of power to maintain. She would die if she couldn’t find more victims to sacrifice. Or did Lady Barb believe that Mother Holly could be useful? The thought was horrifying, but easily dismissed. Even if the Allied Lands had been prepared to tolerate someone taking innocent children and using them for power, her madness would make her an unreliable weapon.

No
, Emily realized. Lady Barb needed to regenerate her powers, just as much as Emily herself.
She’s trying to buy time
.

Mother Holly turned to face her, but said nothing. Emily wondered if she was still
capable
of speech – Shadye had been able to talk, right up until the end – then decided that it didn’t matter. She might have plunged further into madness than Shadye – or any other necromancer who had learned to live with his new existence. Emily felt a stab of pity – all Mother Holly had wanted to do was make things better – then carefully shaped the spell in her mind. A single mistake might prove disastrous.

She held up her hands, signaling to Lady Barb. Sign language was nowhere near as developed in the Allied Lands as it had been on Earth, but she’d been taught the basic signs in Martial Magic, as well as how to use them in combat situations. Lady Barb lifted her eyebrows as she saw the instructions –
knock her away from us
– but nodded and cast a spell on the ground below the necromancer’s feet. Before Mother Holly could react, she was lifted up and flung across the valley. Magic flared around her as she hit the ground, mocking Lady Barb. Even being slammed into a rocky wall wasn’t enough to kill her. Emily could only hope that her secret weapon
was
.

It would change the world, she knew, if it worked. Every magician with ambition would be trying to duplicate it. And it might kill all three of them...and devastate the valley...and cause hardship to the local population. But there was no choice. Mother Holly had to be stopped.

Emily cast the nuke-spell, praying desperately that it would work. There had been no way to test it, even if she’d dared find somewhere uninhabited. She felt the magic shivering into existence, brewing in power. It would detonate within seconds, she hoped, although she wasn’t entirely sure. There were too many variables within the spell, not to mention fixed limitations she’d engineered in when the full implications struck her. Her nightmares had suggested that it was entirely possible that using magic to split atoms would result in cracking the entire planet in half.

She ran over towards Lady Barb as the spell started to work. It felt evil...or perhaps it was just her imagination. “Teleport us out,” she snapped, grabbing hold of the older woman. “Now!”

Lady Barb stared at her. “I can’t,” she snapped back. Her face was torn between horror and puzzlement. The nuke-spell was coming to life, a faintly shimmering hex that was both beautiful and deadly...and it was completely outside of her experience. “I don’t have the power left!”

Emily looked over at the magic – and, beyond it, Mother Holly rising to her feet. The hedge witch was staring at the spell as if hypnotized. Emily hesitated, wondering if all three of them were about to die, then hastily closed her eyes and concentrated on creating a pocket dimension. All the variables she’d designed when Lady Barb was ill sprang into her mind, then into her spellwork. There was no time to test it, no time to ensure that it was actually
safe
; she opened her eyes, then yanked the dimension forward, surrounding them. Mother Holly’s angry face vanished into a grey haze...

...And then there was an odd sense of timelessness, as if the stasis spell hadn’t worked quite right...

...And then they were in the midst of hell.

“Emily,” Lady Barb said. She sounded badly shaken – and drained. “Emily, what the hell have you
done
?”

E
MILY HAD NO ANSWER
.

It was broad daylight, almost noon, judging by the position of the sun. But the valley had been completely devastated, burned to a crisp. Some parts of it were still burning, as if the spell had set the very stones themselves on fire. The hovel and all that remained of the garden were gone, replaced by a blackened crater that seemed to shimmer ominously. She looked up, towards the castle, and saw a ruin. The blast might have been directed up and outward by the shape of the valley, but the castle had been slapped hard enough to complete its destruction.