Infinite Regress (21 page)

Emily sagged, suddenly feeling exhausted. Sweat trickled down her back as she stumbled forward and leaned against the gates. It was hard, so hard, to keep her eyes open. Only the grim awareness that a secondary defense system might be causing her tiredness kept her awake. If she fell asleep, there would be plenty of time for the first spell to erase her memory and push her away.

Professor Locke summoned a light globe and sent it drifting forwards, into the darkness. It lit up the surroundings, revealing a long stone corridor sloping downwards towards a second door, seemingly identical to the first. He walked down the corridor, one hand holding a divining rod; he beckoned Emily and Cabiria forward as soon as he reached the bottom. The tiredness started to melt away as they walked down, keeping a wary eye out for traps. Emily had spent too long fighting her way through Blackhall to trust that a seemingly empty corridor might be actually empty—or safe.

Unsurprisingly, Professor Locke seemed delighted, practically dancing as he turned to face them. “That spell would have driven us away, if we’d let it,” he said. “Have you heard of
anything
that can do anything like it?”

Cabiria looked as tired as Emily felt. “A nightmare hex, perhaps,” she said. Her voice sounded drained. “But they don’t have such
power
.”

“Exactly,” Professor Locke said. “Who knows what
else
might be lurking down here?”

He pushed his hand against the second door. Emily tensed, but it opened easily, revealing another set of corridors. A moment later, she took a breath and gagged as musty dry air filled her lungs. She choked violently, fighting the urge to vomit, as she hastily cast a spell to filter the air. Dust billowed around them, so thick that she couldn’t imagine
anything
surviving under the school for hundreds of years. She’d wondered if the tunnels had truly been left untouched for so long, but the layers upon layers of dust proved it.

“Water,” Cabiria gasped.

Emily unhooked a canteen from her belt and passed it to Cabiria, then took a long swig herself when she passed it back. Her throat felt dry, unpleasantly dry. Only Professor Locke seemed unbothered. He took a step forward, dust billowing around his feet, then stopped dead as the lights came on. Emily tensed again, half-expecting a lethal trap to greet them, but nothing happened.

“Someone turned on the lights,” Cabiria observed, dryly. “Are we expected?”

“Some of the older parts of the school turn off the lights if there’s no one there,” Professor Locke said. He sounded delighted. “The spellwork in this part of the school is still intact.”

He grinned at them both and led the way down the corridor. Emily exchanged a glance with Cabiria, then made certain to mark their route on the dusty walls as they followed the professor. The chalk, despite being charmed, didn’t stick very well. It worried her, even though their pathway was clearly visible in the dust. She couldn’t help comparing it to walking through snow.

“Old Whitehall,” Professor Locke called back. Dust floated down from the ceiling as his words echoed back to them. “All the secrets we seek are in here!”

Emily frowned. She could still sense the nexus point, but the thrumming had faded to a dull awareness at the back of her mind. And yet, when she reached out with her mind, she could sense flickers of magic passing through the stone walls. She reached out and brushed away some of the dust, revealing runes—runes she didn’t recognize—that had been painstakingly carved into the stone. Magic spun around them, heading onwards to a space directly under the nexus point. She was awed—and terrified—that the spells had lasted so long.

Cabiria caught her arm. “How many more levels are there?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said. She’d touched the nexus point, but there hadn’t been any time to feel out the contours of the school. “If...”

“Come on, girls!” Professor Locke shouted. “This way.”

Emily sighed and led the way down the corridor, following the dusty footprints. There didn’t seem to be anything dangerous in the lower levels, but she couldn’t help thinking that Professor Locke was allowing his enthusiasm to override his common sense. At the rate he was running, he was likely to run straight into a trap before realizing it was there...

He’s following the magic
, she thought, as they stepped into a larger chamber.
But where does it lead...
?

The corridor warped around them. Emily recoiled in shock, just for a second, as it seemed to stretch into directions at right angles to reality. Her mind refused to grasp what she was seeing; she closed her eyes, hastily, as the world spun around her. She heard Cabiria cry out in pain and opened her eyes, just in time to see another room opening in front of them.

“Shit,” Cabiria said. Emily glanced at her. “What was that?”

Emily shook her head. She knew that Whitehall sometimes reconfigured itself, but she’d never been
in
a corridor when it decided it needed to lead somewhere else. She’d always assumed that the school
didn’t
reconfigure itself when there was someone inside. And yet, maybe the lower levels didn’t have any safety precautions...

Or maybe they change more
, she thought, as she led the way into the new chamber.
And...

“We lost the professor,” Cabiria said. “Where
are
we?”

They stared at each other in horror, then looked back. The corridor they’d been in was gone, completely gone. A new corridor yawned open, waiting for them, but there was no trace of their passage in the dust. Emily swore inwardly, suddenly very glad she’d listened to Caleb and brought supplies. If they had to go wandering through the lower levels just to find the gate back to Whitehall, they’d need them.

“He could be anywhere,” Emily said. She looked up at the chamber. “But right now I think we have other problems.”

She gritted her teeth, then led the way forward into the chamber. It was huge, easily as large as the Great Hall, a circular structure that reminded her of King Randor’s dance hall. Exits were spaced evenly around the room, leading to unknown destinations, so dark and shadowy that she was reluctant to try walking down them. The lights, it seemed, weren’t turned on in those sections. She felt ridges beneath her feet and glanced down to see runes carved in the stone floor. They were devoid of magic now, she thought; the dust had clogged them so badly that they were completely ineffectual.

“A circle,” Cabiria said. She sounded awed. “This whole room is a spellchamber.”

“Maybe,” Emily said. She wasn’t so sure. Something was nagging at the back of her mind, something oddly familiar about the whole setting. And yet it refused to come forward and allow her to recognize what she saw. “It’s a very odd spellchamber. I would have said it was far too big.”

“Professor Locke did say the ancients knew magics that were long lost,” Cabiria pointed out, thoughtfully. “Perhaps they knew a way to make a bigger spellchamber.”

“But if they had more powerful magic, surely they would have needed more powerful spellchambers,” Emily pointed out. “They’d have real problems safeguarding students without them.”

“If they bothered,” Cabiria said. “My uncle used to say that there was no gain without risk.”

“And yet a mistake could kill a student, if she practiced outside a spellchamber,” Emily countered. “She wouldn’t deserve to die, but it would be the end.”

“Maybe they had a different attitude,” Cabiria said. “It isn’t as if the tutors safeguard
everything
for us.”

Emily nodded. Whitehall’s attitude to student safety was sometimes terrifyingly lax. She understood the reasoning behind it, but she doubted she would ever approve. Surely, students could learn without taking so many risks. A single mistake during alchemy could kill someone effortlessly, if the tutor wasn’t always alert. And charms...

Cabiria frowned. “It could be a dueling circle.”

Emily hesitated. It
was
possible, she conceded, yet her mind kept insisting it was something else, something she’d seen before. She removed a sheet of paper from her belt and started to sketch what she was seeing. Maybe Professor Locke or one of the other professors would be able to work out what it was.

If we ever get back
, she thought, numbly.
We could die down here
.

She shuddered at the thought. She’d found it hard enough to even
see
the gates on the school side; now, she wasn’t even certain where to start
looking
to find the gates to return. If the corridors kept changing on them, too, they might never find Professor Locke, let alone make it back to the upper levels. And how long would it be before Sergeant Miles came after them? Hell, did he even have a hope of finding them? He might just get lost himself.

“There’s a light at the end of that tunnel,” Cabiria said. She pointed one finger towards a tunnel on the far side of the chamber. Sure enough, the tunnel was dark but there was a light at the end. “You want to go down it?”

Emily shrugged. It wasn’t as if she had any better ideas. She cast a light globe and sent it down the tunnel ahead of them, then followed it while watching for traps. The corridor was decorated with more and more unfamiliar runes, including a number that looked too elaborate to be real. She sketched out a couple and added them to her collection of drawings as Cabiria made her way further down the corridor. At the end, it opened into a giant chamber dominated by a map. Someone had painstakingly carved it into the wall.

“My God,” Emily breathed.

There were two continents and some significant island chains on the Nameless World, she’d learned in history; a north continent and a south continent, the latter largely dominated by the necromancers. But the map in front of her showed a
third
continent, far to the west. Emily recalled wondering if there
was
something out there, but she’d learned that anyone who attempted to sail out into the oceans never came back. The Nameless World was round—no one believed the planet was actually flat—yet no one had ever managed to sail around the world.

“A third continent,” Cabiria said. She shook her head slowly. “How old
is
this map?”

Emily shrugged. “If the tunnels were sealed after Whitehall,” she said, “the map is at least seven hundred years old.”

Cabiria stared at her. “How does one lose a whole continent?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said.

She contemplated possibilities for a long moment. The Vikings
had
discovered America, if she recalled correctly. But they’d never settled the continent—indeed, they might never have realized what they’d found. Even Columbus hadn’t grasped it. The Native Americans had been branded Indians because Columbus had believed he’d discovered India, rather than a whole new continent. If the Nameless World had a third continent and contact had been lost, somewhere between Lord Whitehall’s era and her arrival, it might have rapidly become a myth.

And Professor Locke believed a great many records had been destroyed
, she thought, recalling their first talk.
If the records of the third continent were also destroyed...

Cabiria headed to the next room as Emily sketched out the map, hoping they had a chance to get word back to the sailors. Perhaps, with the prospect of a whole new continent, they’d be willing to try to sail across the open sea. Or maybe they’d be worried about unfriendly natives. It was quite possible that the ships that
had
tried to circumnavigate the world had been sunk with all hands. Or worse. Who knew
what
lay on the other side of the world?

It would be interesting to go see
, she thought.
If nothing else, it would provide a refuge from the necromancers.

“Emily,” Cabiria called. Her voice echoed back from the next chamber. She sounded astonished. “Come and look at this!”

Emily tucked the notebook under her arm and hurried into the next chamber. It was larger than the map room, but bare. There were no runes on the stone walls. The only object of interest was a marble statue, standing in the exact center of the circular chamber. A young woman, her hair tied back in a long braid that hung down to the small of her back, a large book tucked under each arm. The detail was fantastic, she had to admit. She’d never been a fan of the arts—she’d always preferred reading to looking at paintings and sculptures—but every crease in the young girl’s odd-looking dress was visible. Even her individual hairs stood out perfectly...

“It’s impressive,” she said. She reached forward in wonder, but some instinct told her not to touch the stone. If it had survived so long, deep below Whitehall, it must be protected by powerful magic. “It’s...”

Cabiria let out a spluttering sound. “Emily,” she said. “Don’t you
recognize
her?”

Emily frowned. “I...”

“Emily,” Cabiria said. She gave Emily an incredulous look as Emily turned to face her. “It’s
you
!”

E
MILY STARED.

She’d grown far too used to portraits of herself that bore little resemblance to reality. But the statue before her was perfect, right down to the snake-bracelet on her wrist. The detail was so incredible that she would have wondered if the statue was actually a petrified girl... if
she
hadn’t been standing right in front of it. It was just perfect.

“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “That’s me!”

“Well, it
could
be a statue of someone who just
happened
to look
like you,” Cabiria said, mischievously. “I have a cousin who looks alarmingly like me.”

Emily shook her head. It could be a coincidence, she supposed. If artists could paint portraits that made her look like Melissa, why couldn’t sculptors do a statue of someone that looked exactly like her? And yet, the level of detail was far too perfect. Up close, the only real difference—save for the clothes—was a scar marring her left cheek. Hardly anyone
knew
she had the snake-bracelet...