Oathkeeper (Schooled in Magic Book 20) Read online

  Oathkeeper

  (Schooled in Magic XX)

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Twilight Times Books

  Kingsport Tennessee

  Oathkeeper

  This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 Christopher G. Nuttall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Twilight Times Books

  P O Box 3340

  Kingsport TN 37664

  http://twilighttimesbooks.com/

  First Edition, July 2020

  Cover art by Brad Fraunfelter

  Published in the United States of America.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue I

  Prologue II

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen (Emily1)

  Chapter Fifteen (Emily2)

  Chapter Sixteen (Emily1)

  Chapter Seventeen (Emily1)

  Chapter Eighteen (Emily2)

  Chapter Nineteen (Emily1)

  Chapter Twenty (Emily2)

  Chapter Twenty-One (Emily1)

  Chapter Twenty-Two (Emily2)

  Chapter Twenty-Three (Emily2)

  Chapter Twenty-Four (Emily2)

  Chapter Twenty-Five (Emily1)

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Appendix: The Blighted Lands

  Prologue I

  EMILY DREAMS.

  She knows she is dreaming, although she isn’t sure how. The dreams are a blur of visions, of things that happened and things that didn’t happen and things that happened, but happened differently. She sees faces - Alassa, Frieda, Jade, Cat - in places they’d never been, doing things they’d never done. The dreams are so confusing that she can barely follow the thread, if indeed there is one. And every time she wakes, the dreams are gone.

  In her dream, she is a firstie again, in a class she shouldn’t have taken. Not yet. She sees herself - and Jade, and Cat, and Aloha - running through the valleys and mountains, trying to escape the orcs. Sergeant Harkin leads them, bellowing encouragement as he fights to buy them time. She sees an orcish blade slice through his neck...

  She wakes, tears stinging her cheeks. It didn’t go that way!

  And then she dreams again. The orcs are surrounding them, closing in... each a shambling parody of the worst of humanity. She wants to run, but there is nowhere to go... Jade is dead, Cat is dead, Aloha is dead... Alassa is dead. Alassa wasn’t there... the alternates buzz through her dreams, each bringing new horrors. She dies, the last of the team to fall. The orcs take them, doing unspeakable things before they finally die; the orcs hand them over to Shadye, who takes her power and uses it himself. Whitehall falls, the wards shatter, walls cracking like eggshells. And a new monster is born.

  But it didn’t go that way!

  She tries to focus, tries to break out of the nightmare. It didn’t go that way! She tries to recall what really happened, how they escaped from the orcs... some memories are missing, her imagination trying to fill in the gaps and failing. Others... she twists, crying out in her sleep. The dreams haunt her, mock her. Nothing is real. Everything is real. All is real, and nothing is real...

  They were on a forced march. She remembers that much, although it’s hard to be sure. Not in the dream. And they were attacked by Shadye’s minions. And she escaped and...

  The alternates surge forward, driving her memories - the real memories - away. She dies, and wishes she lives. She lives, and wishes she died. Her friends die, time and time again; her tutors and mentors curse her name, curse her for what she brought to their walls. She lives long enough to see everything broken, to see a dark and hungry god unleashed upon the land. She watches, helplessly, as a nightmare moves north, killing everyone brave enough to stand against it. Brave or coward, it matters not. They die. The world dies.

  But it didn’t go that way!

  The memories surface, briefly. She made a deal. She made a promise. And she sworn an oath to the Unseelie. And she saved her friends. And...

  Emily wakes to a bed drenched in sweat. The dream overshadows her mind. She isn’t sure if she is awake, or if she still dreams. The waking world seems a fragile place, weak and frail compared to the realm of nightmares. She fears she is losing her mind; she fears she is trapped forever within the dream. She blinks...

  ... The alarm rings...

  ... And the dream is gone.

  Prologue II

  THE CHAMBER WOULD HAVE HORRIFIED ANY normal man, Rangka knew. It would have horrified him, in the half-forgotten days before he’d embraced necromancy. It was a barren cave, the walls unmarred by paintings or runes or anything else that would have marked it as the home of an intelligent creature. Servants scurried about, trying not to catch his bright red eyes. They knew he could kill them - or worse - on a whim. There was no point in being loyal if one knew it would never - could never - be recognized, let alone rewarded. Their master was mad.

  Rangka knew it to be true. He was mad. He was the oldest necromancer known to live, a feat he couldn’t have managed if he hadn’t kept some grip on reality, but he felt the madness howling at the back of his mind. It didn’t bother him, even though he knew - on some level - that it should. The person he’d been - the name he’d abandoned long ago - would have been horrified to know what he’d become. That didn’t bother him either. The person he’d been was dead and gone.

  Power throbbed through the air, his awareness reaching out to encompass the approaching armies trudging their way through the ashy mud. Neither of his prospective allies had come alone, knowing - as well as he did - that the rewards of treachery could be great indeed. Thousands of orcs, creatures raised from the depths... and, behind them, slave-soldiers bound to their master’s will. He drew his awareness back, slightly, as the other two necromancers made their shambling way through the caves, their mere presence sending Rangka’s servants fleeing for their lives. A single necromancer was a nightmare beyond comprehension. Three in one spot heralded the end of all things. Reality itself seemed to hang on a knife edge as the necromancers faced each other. The only thing keeping them from trying to kill each other was the certain knowledge that the first two to fight would be the losers. And yet... the chamber hummed with tension. Being together, being so close, felt unnatural. It was the one thing, Rangka acknowledged privately, that the necromancers had in common with their enemies. They should not be together.

  He wanted to reach out with a spell to soothe their tempers, to make them listen to him, but he knew such subtle magi
cs were beyond him. He’d paid a price for his power, a price he hadn’t realized until it was too late. He had immensely destructive spells at his fingertips - power burned through his veins, threatening to burst out and consume everything if he lost his grip - but he could no longer cast the simple spells of his childhood. They were beyond him, despite his power. He could no longer shape the spellwork... and besides, the others wouldn’t be affected. They were creatures of magic now, not men. They couldn’t be manipulated through magical means.

  Rangka braced himself, trying to shape his arguments. Cold logic told him they should work together, against the common foe, but logic and reason had no control over them. He found the idea of sharing the risk and the reward difficult to comprehend, even though - again - logic told him there would be enough rewards for everyone. It wouldn’t last, he knew. They would battle their enemies until they were victorious, then battle each other until there was only one, standing in the midst of a dead world. A dark god, a power beyond imagination... a hungry creature that would eventually - inevitably - starve.

  No! He refused to think about their fate. It could not be true.

  He looked from one to the other. Bersuit was a hooded man, his skin blackened and burnt by fires. He was the most human of the necromancers, yet - perhaps - one of the most dangerous. His body looked humanoid, to the naked eye. Rangka could sense things writhing under the cloak, things that defied even his senses. Gerombolan was a walking skeleton wrapped in blue fire. His red eyes were the only hint he so much as had a face. It wasn’t clear how he walked. And Rangka himself was a rotting corpse, animated only by his magic. He’d long since ceased to care.

  “Dua Kepala is dead,” Rangka said, curtly.

  “Good.” Bersuit’s voice was as cracked as his soul, a rasping screech that would have deafened a normal man. “His lands will be ours.”

  “And so is Shadye,” Rangka said. “They were both killed by the same person. A sorceress called Emily.”

  “The Necromancer’s Bane.” Gerombolan’s voice was utterly inhuman. “They say she is our doom.”

  “She has killed two of the most powerful of us, in less than seven years,” Rangka said. It was hard to measure time in the Blighted Lands. “They’re dead and gone.”

  “And so their lands are ours,” Bersuit hissed. His armies were already laying claim to Shadye’s former territories, doing their level best to avoid the Inverse Shadow. “So what?”

  Rangka stared at the hooded man. “How long until she comes for us?”

  “She will not kill me,” Gerombolan said. “I am beyond death.”

  “Shadye thought the same,” Rangka reminded him. “He was wrong.”

  He understood, better than he cared to admit. Necromancers died all the time. A sorcerer who was unable to handle the sudden burst of power would be destroyed by it; a newborn necromancer, a beacon of power to those with eyes to see, could be killed by an older necromancer before he had a chance to establish a power base, seizing lands and human livestock to make something of himself. And even the older necromancers weren’t that old. The Blighted Lands were a constantly-shifting morass of endless scrabbling, wars and treacherous backstabbing. They were penned in, held prisoner by the terrain and the ever-watchful guards. There was nowhere to go. Shadye had attacked Whitehall and Dua Kepala had crossed the Desert of Death; neither had returned alive.

  “How long will it be,” he repeated, “before she comes for us?”

  The words hung in the air. It was hard to believe a lone girl could defeat one necromancer, let alone two. The stories he’d heard credited her with killing ten necromancers - or a hundred, or a thousand - and he knew that wasn’t true, but neither Shadye nor Dua Kepala had survived their wars. Rangka had heard enough to believe there was some truth to the story. It was a rare magician who took on a necromancer and lived to tell the tale. A lone girl killing two - or more - necromancers was difficult to believe. And yet it had happened.

  “We will end her, if she comes,” Gerombolan said. “She will feed us...”

  “If we survive long enough,” Rangka said. “We cannot let her come to us.”

  He pointed towards the walls - and the distant mountains beyond. “We must fight now, before she comes for us. We must get over the mountains and ravage the lands beyond.”

  Gerombolan made a hissing sound. “And how do you intend to achieve this... wonder?”

  “By working together, we can break through the mountains,” Rangka said. “If we combine our powers, and our forces, we can break into the lands beyond. And then there would be no stopping us.”

  He saw it, a vision on the verge of becoming reality. The Allied Lands had been lucky. They could hide beyond high mountains, impassable oceans and passes guarded by a network of fortresses and walls. They couldn’t match the necromantic forces in hand-to-hand combat, or sheer power, but they could slow them down immensely. If the mountains were to be destroyed, or merely weakened, the armies could advance through the rubble, an endless wave of blood-maddened orcs and monsters and slaves...

  His rotting mouth fell open in a smile. It was going to be glorious.

  He spoke on, telling his allies his plans...

  ... All the while, preparing to betray them the moment they outlived their usefulness.

  Chapter One

  “I HAVE GROWN TO HATE MIRRORS,” Emily said.

  She stood in the spellchamber, eying the mirror warily. It was the only object within the chamber, a large freestanding mirror big enough to show her body from tip to toe. There were no magics surrounding it, nothing suggesting it was enchanted - or a gateway to another realm - but she didn’t feel any better as her image looked back at her. She looked... tired and worn. The dreams she couldn’t remember had disturbed her more than she cared to admit.

  She rubbed her eyes, feeling them narrow as she studied her reflection. Was her hair a little darker? Were her eyes a little harder? Her bearing a little straighter? Eleven months of apprenticeship, eleven months of everything from magic study to tests that were disguised missions, had changed her in ways she was only beginning to appreciate. Void was a good teacher. He knew things she’d never even known existed. And yet, she was slowly starting to realize he also had his own agenda. The missions she’d carried out on his behalf had served a greater purpose. She just wished she knew what it was.

  Forget it, for the moment, she thought. Right now, you need to stay focused.

  She studied her reflection thoughtfully. She hadn’t changed that much, had she? It was hard to be sure. Void had kept her hopping, practicing magic daily. She’d grown used to being his student. And yet... she rested her hands on her hips, studying herself in the mirror. The black apprentice robe was strikingly simplistic, nothing more than a shapeless black dress. Void had given her very clear orders not to wear anything else, even hairpins or the snake-bracelet. She’d let her hair fall down her back and left the transfigured snake in her bedroom. He wouldn’t have told her to wear as little as possible if he hadn’t had a good reason.

  “Emily.” Void stepped into the room, his face calm and composed. “Are you ready?”

  Emily turned to face him, clasping her hands behind her back. Void was inhumanly tall, easily a head taller than herself. His face was oddly timeless, framed by dark hair that seemed to have grown a little longer in the past few months. It was hard to remember, at times, that he was literally old enough to be her great-grandfather. And yet... she could sense his power bristling around him like a thunderstorm. He wasn’t making any attempt to mask himself. No magician her age had such a presence.

  “I think so,” she said. They’d gone over the spellwork time and time again, assessing each and every section of the bilocation spell. It was easy to see, now, why so few magicians risked casting it, even when it would have come in handy. Being in two places at once wasn’t as simple as it sounded. “Are you?”

  “I’m not the one who has to cast the spell,” Void said. He moved past her, peering suspiciously
into the mirror. “If you want to back out, now is the time.”

  Emily shook her head. She understood the risks. The books he’d given her to read had discussed them in graphic detail. They’d even included illustrations that - Void had told her - were surprisingly close to reality. But she also knew she couldn’t step back now. Mastering magic - and using it - had become her cause. She wanted - needed - to keep going until she reached the top. The very serious possibility that there was no top didn’t deter her.

  And yet, she reflected as Void paced around the mirror, such power came with a price. It was harder and harder to remember, sometimes, that there was an outside world. The missions he’d sent her on, over the past few months, had felt like distractions from her real work. The ever-growing pile of letters from her friends - and others - rested on her desk, largely unopened. It was hard to keep track of what was happening with them. She had to force herself, sometimes, to go outside. Even meeting her friends in person was difficult.

  She yawned, suddenly. The dreams she couldn’t remember haunted the back of her mind, tormenting her. She’d wondered if they were a sending, a subtle attack from one of her enemies, but it was hard to imagine a spell that could reach through the wards. Void’s tower was practically invulnerable, even to a magician who operated on the same level. Emily had lived in the tower for months and yet she knew she hadn’t even come close to learning all its secrets. It was bigger on the inside, with chambers and lairs she barely knew existed. She wondered, at times, what might be within the structure that she didn’t even imagine existed.

  Void glanced at her. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” Emily unclasped her hands, steadying herself. “I’m ready.”

  “Stand in front of the mirror,” Void instructed, as if he hadn’t gone over the details time and time again. It was a measure of how dangerous the spell could be, if the casting went wrong, that he’d practically nagged her into memorizing each and every detail. It was so out of character for him to nag her that she’d studied the spell and all its variants extensively. “Make sure your entire body is reflected in the mirror.”