Infinite Regress (46 page)

She gritted her teeth as they found a stairwell and peered upwards, into the darkness. The stairwell looked crooked, utterly uneven, each of the steps larger or smaller than the one behind it. She wouldn’t have cared to run down the stairs, not when missing her footing could send her flying into the darkness... she wasn’t sure she wanted to walk
up
them, even though her bedroom was in the upper levels. Or, at least, it had been a couple of hours ago. Who knew where it was now?

“The builder was an incompetent buffoon,” Frieda said, trying to make a joke. “And an idiot.”

“He should have been given the sack,” Emily agreed, as she slowly picked her way up the staircase. The steps felt unstable, as if the slightest misstep would be enough to break the marble and send her plunging into the unknown. “Everything is just a little out of place.”

The stairwell should have led all the way to the uppermost levels, but instead it came to a halt in front of a large pair of wooden doors. Emily glanced at Frieda, then tested them gingerly, expecting to find them impossible to open. Instead, they opened smoothly, revealing a long corridor lined with portraits. Emily shook her head in disbelief as she floated a light globe down the corridor, wondering just who had decorated the chamber. The walls were utterly
covered
in portraits: large paintings of famous wizards, smaller ones of men and women she didn’t recognize. Dozens of others leaned against the wall, turned away from her. It looked like a dumping ground.

“I’ve been here,” Frieda said. “This is where they store the portraits they don’t want to display and they don’t want to throw out.”

Emily glanced at her. “Where
was
it?”

“On the fifth level,” Frieda said. “Madame Beauregard caught us playing freeze tag and sent us up to dust all the portraits. She must have been feeling particularly sadistic that day.”

“I think that was probably the fifth or sixth time she caught you playing,” Emily said, as she inched down the corridor. “It certainly isn’t on the fifth level now.”

Frieda looked at her. “How would you
know
?”

Emily shrugged. In truth, there was no way
to
know.

She paused as they reached the end of the corridor, frowning as she realized just how badly the entire section had been twisted out of shape. There was another stairwell, leading up and down; it looked, very much, as though the entire portrait corridor had been split into three levels. She peered down into the darkness, then glanced at Frieda. The younger girl didn’t seem any more enthused about walking into the shadows than Emily herself.

“I meant to ask,” Frieda said, as they started up the second set of stairs. “How are you getting along with your Shadows?”

“I’m mentoring them,” Emily said. “They’re not my Shadows.”

She sighed. “One of them is receiving nasty notes from someone else,” she added. “And I can’t figure out who’s sending them.”

Frieda shrugged. “Probably one of her fellows,” she said. “An older student wouldn’t take the risk, I think.”

“That’s what I thought,” Emily said. “But the notes are just too constant, too clean, for one of the younger students.”

She glanced at Frieda. “You’re not sending them, are you?”

Frieda elbowed her. “And risk getting expelled?”

Emily flushed. Frieda
had
been jealous, when she’d started to date Caleb, but there was a marked difference between trying to provoke a fight between two older boys and deliberately tormenting a younger girl. The former would be laughable, if the staff ever found out about it, yet they’d take a very dim view of the latter. Frieda would be expelled, with a report that would practically guarantee she wouldn’t be able to gain admission to any of the other magical schools. Unless she found a private tutor, which was unlikely, her magical education would come to a complete stop.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a bad joke.”

Frieda stuck out her tongue. “So you should be.”

Emily sighed as they reached the top of the stairs. “Who would
you
suspect?”

“The person you would
least
suspect,” Frieda said. She stuck out her tongue, again. “I bet it’s
Caleb
sending the notes.”

“I’m sure he has better things to do with his time,” Emily said. She supposed she deserved that, even though Caleb was a far less likely suspect than Frieda. Picking on a student six years younger than himself? His mother would disown him. “Who would you
really
suspect?”

“It would depend on where the notes were found,” Frieda said. The next corridor was lined with stacks of portraits, almost all of them covered in thin layers of dust. “If they were
only
found in her room, I’d suspect one of her roommates. Or both of them. But if they were found everywhere else, I’d suspect one of her classmates.”

“They were found in both,” Emily said. She glanced at one of the paintings and smiled, despite herself, as she realized it was one of the grossly-inaccurate portraits of her. Gordian had ordered them all taken down and dumped in the corridor. “And yet, her roommates are innocent.”

“So it seems,” Frieda said. “The question then becomes... who else has access to her room?”

Emily shook her head.
She
had access, but she knew
she
wasn’t sending the notes; Madame Razz and the staff had access, yet
they
wouldn’t be sending notes to a student. A mundane servant? It was possible, she supposed, but they wouldn’t have access to the rest of the school. No, all the evidence pointed to one of the first year students. She just didn’t know which one.

“I don’t know,” she said, finally. “I...”

A dull quiver ran through the school. She glanced up, surprised, as the lights came on, driving the shadows away. The entire corridor was suddenly illuminated, allowing her to see right down to the bottom. There was a solid wall at the far end, yet—as the lights grew brighter—it became clear that there was something wrong with it, something her eyes refused to see. It bulged in impossible directions...

“Emily,” Frieda said. The entire corridor was starting to shake, dust rising from the paintings and floating in the air. It was even growing warmer... Emily felt sweat prickling down her back as the temperature rose, sharply. She swallowed, suddenly, as she realized just how many flammable paintings were right next to them. “Emily, what’s happening...?”

Emily stared. The corridor ahead of them was twisting, moving backwards and forwards like a hose. It was hard to see, but everything seemed to bend in unnatural directions, warped out of shape like a concave mirror. She saw a painting of a long-dead Grandmaster twisted and warped as the wall shifted around it, then torn to pieces as it fell from the wall and crashed in tatters to the ground.

“Run,” she snapped. The shaking was growing worse. A chandelier crashed from the ceiling and smashed on the floor, sending fragments of glass flying everywhere. “Hurry.”

She caught Frieda’s hand and yanked her backwards, feeling the gravity shift below their feet. The entire corridor started to tip, as if a giant had decided to turn it sideways. They were running up the inside of a chimney, she realized numbly; gravity itself was no longer reliable. She glanced backwards as a stack of paintings started to fall
sideways
, past them and down the corridor; she saw everything twisting into a pocket dimension—or a black hole. Even light was bending around it, twisting around the darkness before taking the plunge.

The gravity twisted badly, then reversed itself, throwing them off their feet and hurling them down the corridor towards the stairwell. Emily hastily cast a spell to keep them from slamming straight into the wall, only to have the spell come apart within seconds. She barely managed to cast it again—successfully this time—before they struck the wall and bounced back towards the black hole. Frieda cast a spell herself, pulling them back and tossing them down the stairwell. Emily yelped in pain as she banged her leg, feeling a trickle of blood running down her skin, but there was no time to stop. The shaking was only getting stronger... a large portrait flew past her and vanished into the distance...

“It’s gone,” Frieda shouted. She waved towards the wooden doors they’d used to enter the corridor. It was gone. In its place, there was nothing but bare stone. “Emily!”

Emily looked around. The entire section was shattering, coming apart into a hailstorm of stone, chunks of wood and other pieces of debris. Was this it? Was this the end of Whitehall School? She reached out with her magic, hoping desperately to find a way to gain control of the wards, but nothing happened. It was almost as if their section was completely cut off from the rest of the school—or, perhaps, that the remainder of the school was gone.

She heard someone cry out and looked up. The ceiling was disintegrating; she saw a young student, a second-year by his robes, falling through the air and plummeting towards the black hole. She tried to catch him with a spell, but it was far too late; he fell into the darkness and vanished, completely. And yet, there was now a way out. Emily grabbed hold of Frieda, then cast a spell to hurl herself into the air, throwing them towards the gash in the ceiling as it threatened to crumble to dust. If only she could fly!

The gravity pulled at them, threatening to yank them into the black hole. She poured more and more power into the spell, pushing herself to the limit. The world seemed to twist around them, then the gravity let go. Her spell propelled them forward at terrifying speed...

“Catch on to something,” she shouted, as they plunged through the gap and bounced off the ceiling, rolling down the corridor before finally coming to a halt. The spell came apart seconds later, leaving her feeling tired and drained. She sagged on the floor, unable to move or rise. Her limbs refused to listen to her. “Now...”

The ground rumbled loudly, one final time. Emily sensed the floor below her disintegrating, but she couldn’t muster the energy to run. Frieda grabbed her arm, pulled her to her feet and half-dragged her down the corridor, just as the rumbling finally came to a halt. Emily glanced behind her, just in time to see the gash in the floor widen, as if it were chasing them down the corridor. And yet, it looked as though it was finding it harder to make progress... perhaps, she thought desperately, the collapse was more localized than she’d thought. The remainder of the wards were still in place.

But we’re still in danger
, she told herself.

She forced herself to run as the shaking resumed, the corridor walls suddenly looming closer and closer. But it was hard to keep going... Frieda gave her a shove when they could no longer run side by side, then slammed a force punch into her back. Emily flew forward and landed badly, rolling over and over in a desperate attempt to absorb the force of the blow. But when she caught herself and turned back to Frieda, there was no sign of her friend. There was nothing behind where she’d been, but bare stone...

Frieda was gone.

E
MILY STARED AT THE BARREN STONE
, unable to believe her eyes. Frieda couldn’t be dead, not like that... she deserved so much better than to die in the collapsing remains of the school. And yet... Emily tapped on the stone, praying desperately that Frieda was alive, merely trapped on the far side. If she was, if she answered, they could blast her out...

... But there was no reply. Either the walls were too thick, or Frieda was in no state to reply. Frieda couldn’t be dead; she’d been too full of life to die. And yet Emily had learned, all too often over the past five years, that death could come for anyone, at any time. There was no way to
guarantee
that someone would remain alive.

She sank to the floor, kneeling as she wiped tears from her eyes. Frieda was dead—or trapped, somewhere behind the wall—and it was her fault. If Emily had not accompanied her, Frieda might well be alive... it was silly, she told herself, but it might be true. Her entire body shook with grief and a dull, bitter frustrated sorrow, one that burned her very soul. Frieda had been her friend... she told herself, again, that no
proof
Frieda was dead, but she had no proof
Shadye
was dead either. The black hole she’d seen was the final bitter jest, mocking her. She didn’t want to go on.

Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to rise and mark the wall, before turning to look for a way out. The doorway opened into a history classroom—she bit off a savage curse aimed at Professor Locke—that had been turned into a debris field by the earthquake. If he hadn’t been exploring the tunnels under Whitehall, if he hadn’t touched something that should have been left untouched, Frieda would be alive. She threw a fireball at the desk, just for the satisfaction of watching it explode, then walked through the second door. It led to another corridor, one that led down. She listened, hearing voices below, then walked down to the bottom. Master Tor and Sergeant Miles stood there, talking together in low voices.

“Emily,” Sergeant Miles said. It looked as though he was standing in front of the doorway to the Great Hall, but it was firmly closed. “Are you all right?”

“Frieda isn’t,” Emily said, bitterly. She looked around for Caleb, but saw no sign of him—or of anyone else. Bracing herself, she ran through a complete explanation. “She’s... she’s
trapped
.”

“She isn’t the only one,” Sergeant Miles said. He sounded worried. Somehow, that bothered Emily more than she cared to admit. “The recent change cost us half of the rooms and corridors we’d rediscovered. If this goes on...”

“Whitehall is doomed,” Master Tor said. He looked as ghastly as Emily felt. “Two-thirds of the students are unaccounted for, along with at least a quarter of the staff.”

“We may relocate them,” Sergeant Miles said. But he didn’t sound optimistic. “It’s clear that at least
some
of the wards are still working...”

Emily sighed, leaning against the wall. She just wanted to sit down and cry, then think of something—anything—that would allow her to find her friend. Maybe she could find those damned books, wherever they were, or maybe there was something hidden away in Professor Locke’s collection of manuscripts.
He
hadn’t found anything, but that didn’t mean
she
couldn’t. She wondered, vaguely, if he knew where his office was now. If he did, she could go there...