A coil of crackling golden magic erupted from Escher’s palm. He pushed Natalie’s magic aside, but Jari was ready with the cavalry. He sent a ripple of glowing amber toward Escher in a thin wisp that struck the professor in the shoulder. Tremors shook Escher’s body as the spell did its work, wrenching Escher’s limbs into violent spasms that sent him crashing to the floor.
Natalie sent the tendrils snaking back beneath Escher’s skin and gripped her fingers tightly into her palms as she held her magic inside him, controlling his body and his magic, preventing him from fighting back.
Alex watched in amazement as Natalie lifted Escher to his feet and jerked him back toward the chair, throwing him down with a graceless thud. His eyes glittered furiously beneath his mask as he struggled to break free of Natalie’s hold, but she had truly become an exceptional Mage. Nobody could deny it—her magic was extraordinary.
“Don’t mind the intrusion.” Jari grinned as he undid a silvery coil of rope and tied Escher’s hands behind his back. Alex was confused, knowing a simple rope wouldn’t keep Escher at bay, but it seemed Jari had learned some new tricks too as he fed a weaving pattern of magic into the rope itself. It seemed to keep Escher frozen to the spot, just as Natalie’s control magic had done.
“What the hell?” cried Alex, gesturing toward the door.
“Apologies for the surprise. We saw an opportunity and we improvised a little.” Natalie grinned, though her brow was creased with the exertion of holding Escher in place.
“Yeah, it was a bit scrappy, but it seems to have done the trick,” said Jari as he fastened a tight knot into the last bit of rope. “You can let go now,” he told Natalie. She released her tightly clenched fists with a sigh of relief.
Alex moved to the other side of the table. Professor Escher was oddly silent as he sat there, bound by the enchanted ropes. He stiffened as Alex approached.
Alex reached down for the edge of the delicate mask, with its complex pattern of gold and silver vines that curled elegantly across a white veneer. Escher tried to strain away from Alex’s touch, but he could not escape.
The man’s almond-shaped eyes glowered as Alex slowly lifted the mask. Shock shivered through Alex as he stared at the face before him, losing his grip on the mask. It tumbled to the floor, the porcelain cracking down the center.
Aamir stared back.
Chapter 26
“Aamir?” whispered Alex in disbelief.
All along it had been their friend. He did not know how any of them could have missed it, but Aamir had changed in the time since they had last seen him. He had aged, grown taller and broader, his face bearing a thin trace of stubble along his grimly set jawline, though his brown eyes and black curls were the same as ever. It was definitely Aamir; it was not a glamor or a trick of the eye. It was definitely him.
A still silence spread across the ballroom as the gathered friends glanced at one another. Aamir gnashed his teeth as he strained against his bonds, his eyes flashing angrily.
“You will let me go!” he barked. The mask must have been altering and distorting Aamir’s voice, as it no longer sounded the same as it had beneath the eerie porcelain. It was closer to the voice Alex remembered. Even so, it was not quite the same; there was a rich, deep authority that had not been there before.
“No, Aamir,” said Alex, shaking his head.
It was hard to look at Aamir and not think of their old friend, buried deep beneath the savage exterior of the man who sat before them. He was the Deputy Head, and the only person who stood between them and the opportunity they had been waiting for. It would be foolish to remove his restraints, and Alex knew that Aamir was no longer to be trusted. There were going to be some tough choices ahead, and it would be easier to pretend Aamir wasn’t the boy they had known. Even watching him strain and pull and growl against the ropes that held him was hard enough.
He was working for the Head now. He was no longer on their side.
Suddenly, Aamir broke free of the bonds holding his hands. Golden shards shot from the coiling strands that wove about his fingertips as he lashed out against his former friends, narrowly missing Jari’s heart with a sharp blade of glinting gold. Jari cried out, his face crumpling in a wince of pain as the bolt hit him just below his shoulder blade.
Alex ducked a spear intended for his head as he rallied on Aamir. The brown eyes of his old friend were narrowed and alien, his face twisted viciously into a changeling version of Aamir as he released wave after wave of destructive magic. He was as far from the Aamir they knew and loved as it was possible to be, a throaty growl emitting from the depths of his lungs as he shouted his defiance.
“You will not get away with this! There is no escape from the manor, and there is no escape from the Head! He will discover your treachery, and he will punish you brutally for it. There will be nowhere you can hide from his vengeance! The Head will crash down on you all, and you will rue the day you thought you could defeat him!” roared Aamir, his brown eyes shot through with threads of red. His face was contorted by a terrifying rage as he let out an inhuman howl. “LET ME GO!” he screamed, pulling against his leg restraints.
Alex watched Natalie as she struggled to regain control of Aamir. Sweat ran down the side of her face, the strain seemingly taking its toll. Aamir was stronger than he had been, and Natalie was struggling against his defenses as he fired golden artillery in her direction. As she turned quickly, avoiding a nasty dart of energy, Aamir seized the opportunity and snapped the ropes keeping his legs bound.
Stepping in, Alex conjured tendrils of black and silver beneath his palms, focusing hard on Aamir as he let his power slither undetected across the floor and up over the towering figure. As he had done with the wine bottle in the cellar, Alex forged a dense shield of pulsing silver light, shot through with swirls of a deep bluish black. The shield swooped across Aamir, who thrashed against it, unable to fire any magic from within his glittering prison. Sparks rippled from the points of impact where Aamir was trying to conjure magic, but the shield held. It seemed to work both ways, protecting the person inside from any outside harm and protecting those outside from the person within.
Alex gripped his hands tightly, holding the shield in place, feeling confident that it would stay standing as long as his focus remained. It took a vast amount of energy, but he could feel the flow of it holding more easily than he had expected.
He caught sight of Natalie and Jari staring at him in quiet awe. They had not had a chance to see his newly learned skills.
Jari gave a low whistle. “Nice trick,” he muttered, a strange look on his face.
“Thank you,” replied Alex, his mouth set in a grim line.
“Where did you learn this control?” asked Natalie, her voice oddly envious.
Alex smiled. “I’ve had a little help.”
It was clear to Alex that they had all been acting badly toward one another, keeping secrets and telling half-truths, but he felt as if this sudden union—this need to work together—was a small step in repairing the fractures in their friendships. He made a note to come clean with everything, once they had a moment to themselves.
“From whom?” asked Natalie, wiping away a sheen of perspiration with the back of her hand.
“I’ll tell you another time,” promised Alex. “Now, what are we going to do with him? I can’t hold him forever.”
Furiously, Aamir hammered against the ripple of the dark shield. Alex knew his powers still weren’t as strong as they could be, but the barrier seemed to be keeping Aamir at bay. Curious, Alex knelt down onto the floor and pressed his hands down into the polished, cold surface of the black marble. Gathering his energies, he sent a pulse of anti-magic through the floor and up through the smooth, fluid fabric of the shield, anchoring it to the ground. As he removed his hands, the shield held.
“Natalie, you and Jari should go and see if you can prepare the cellar and use it to keep Aamir locked up, until we can come up with a better way of keeping him restrained,” sa
id Alex firmly as he glanced anxiously toward the rooted shield. “I’ll stay and watch over Aamir. I don’t know how long the shield will hold, but hopefully it’ll stay until you get back. If it doesn’t, I’ll think of something,” he added with a dour smile.
“Good plan,” Jari said as he cast a miserable glance at his beloved friend. It was uncomfortable for anyone to see Aamir like that, but Alex knew it must have been hitting Jari the hardest.
“Work as fast as you can!” Alex said. Natalie and Jari nodded and jogged to the two vast doors. Pulling the hinges open, they staggered backward as a swarm of students flooded into the room. Alex stared in surprise, recognizing a few from Jari’s lunchtime training sessions.
“What are you doing here?” yelled Alex.
“We are here for the Uprising!” shouted a tall, slim figure at the very front of the group. His name was Jun Asano, and he stood a good head taller than most of the other students. Alex knew him to be a final year, one of the students who was on his way to graduation.
Jari turned toward Alex, looking sheepish. It seemed there were even more secrets that had been kept from Alex, just when he had thought they were all out in the open. He had never heard the word ‘Uprising’ mentioned, but the group seemed riled and ready for action, their collective glare directed at the shrouded figure of Aamir.
“We want retribution! Kill Escher!” cried a blond-haired girl beside Jun. The group bellowed behind her. Alex could see they were already in the throes of full-blown mob mentality, waving their fists and yelling at the top of their lungs, baying for the blood of whoever was closest to the Head—whoever could offer them the revenge they thirsted for. At that moment in time, that title fell upon Aamir.
They could not see that the man behind the shield was their one-time classmate and friend. They saw only Escher, the Deputy Head, and he was close enough to the real thing to slake their thirst for blood.
Alex ran across the marble toward them, standing in front of Natalie and Jari.
“Stop! Your anger is misplaced,” Alex stated. “The person in there is not who you think he is. He is not some faceless, masked monster who wants to hurt you, and there is no Professor Escher. That man in there is Aamir—your friend and classmate. He is suffering under a curse, laid upon him by the Head. He is not responsible for any of this.” Alex gestured toward the walls of the manor. “Your anger is with the Head, not with Aamir, who needs our help as much as anyone.”
“This could have happened to any one of us,” Natalie declared, nodding to Alex before turning to the mob. “Aamir was only doing what the Head made him do. He could not say no, the same way none of us could have refused if we had been in his position.”
“You’re only saying that because he was your friend!” sneered Jun. The group behind him grumbled in agreement.
“It’s not Aamir’s fault!” snarled Jari.
“Of course you’d say that. You were his pet. Always tagging along behind him like a lost puppy,” laughed Jun with a cold mockery.
“You shut your mouth!” yelled Jari as Alex held him back.
“All of you, stop!” Alex shouted. “We have to work together and use this opportunity. Aamir could know something we can use against the Head, and you can be sure that if any of you harm him, the Head will come running.”
Jun frowned. “You’re lying,” he hissed.
The mob shouted insults and angry slurs behind their leader, howling for Aamir’s comeuppance, furious at being held back by three upstarts. It didn’t matter that two of them had helped train them; they seemed hell-bent on their revenge.
Jun raised two cupped hands with a sneer, posed to strike. But before he could even twist his wrists to release a spell, Natalie had formed a shining shield of gold between them. It thrummed powerfully as the mob stepped back with a cry of discontent.
“Give us Aamir!” Jun shouted, those behind him echoing the call.
“Do you really want to wait here until my shield falters?” Natalie challenged.
“It’ll be days,” Alex said, casting Natalie a wry smile.
Jun snorted and formed a ball of energy between his palms, throwing the glowing orb toward Natalie. The blow ricocheted off the shield, crackling above the gathered heads of the mob and frying the top of the doorframe with a sharp sizzle, blackening the wood. No one else dared attempt to break the shield after that, though a few shouted brazenly that they might.
Jun motioned for his entourage to gather around, and they set into a hushed debate about their next plan of attack, flashing furtive glances toward Natalie and her glinting barrier. Her own gaze never faltered.
Alex gave a low sigh at the raging voice of Aamir, who was screaming abuse from across the ballroom, doing himself no favors. Unfortunately, it seemed the shield did not silence the person within, only kept their magic from doing any harm.
“You’ll all pay for this! You are nothing! When the Head returns, he will punish you all! You will wish you had never set a foot out of line, you fools!” he bellowed from within his pulsing cell, his words descending into a bitter cackle.
Alex stepped into Jari’s place as the blond-haired boy moved quickly back toward his friend and knelt on the floor in front of the rippling barrier of his prison. He could not reach Aamir through Alex’s anti-magic, which burned his hands with a sharp wince as he attempted it. Alex felt the judder of Jari’s impact, feeling sorrowful as he watched Jari try to grasp his dear companion by the shoulders. Alex would have lowered the shield, but was too worried about what Aamir might do. He watched Jari sit cross-legged on the floor and talk softly to Aamir.
“I am your friend. Aamir, it is me. I have been with you from the beginning, through thick and thin in this place. You have to listen to me. You have to know it is me,” begged Jari, his voice heartbreaking to hear. “Remember my first night, when I was terrified and had been chucked into the room by Siren Mave? I couldn’t stop crying, do you remember? Remember me, Aamir. Remember all the times we have shared together, as the closest of friends,” he whispered, reaching his hand up as if he were about to test the barrier again. He held it there, frozen, instead.
Aamir smashed against the shield, bouncing back. He roared up close to the very edge of the barrier, screaming in Jari’s face. Alex saw Jari flinch, but the younger boy was not deterred.
“Please, Aamir. I’d still be a shivering wreck if it hadn’t been for you,” he whispered.
Alex listened as Jari recounted colorful tales of laughter and mischief from before Alex had arrived. A prank gone awry, leading to Renmark emerging from the teachers’ quarters in nothing but his underwear. Races with clockwork beetles along the wooden benches in the mechanics lab. Jumping from the stacks of the library for the first time and seeing who could land the farthest. Aamir always helping Jari out of a situation, like his futile attempt at wooing Ellabell. With each story, Jari’s throat tightened, the emotion evident in his voice.
But none of the stories seemed to be getting through to Aamir, who thrashed wildly against the shield. Alex could feel the ripples coming from it, but didn’t dare add another layer of anti-magic to the barrier until the mob had dispersed. Who knew what they would do to him if they discovered his secret? They were already hungry for a lynching.
“I know you’re in there, Aamir,” Jari murmured earnestly, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “It’s not you speaking. It’s that golden line playing tricks with your mind. It’s not you—it’s the Head controlling you.”
Alex frowned at Jari’s whispered words, and a thought rushed into his head. He turned to the gathered students.
“It’s not Aamir speaking,” Alex repeated. “It’s the golden line they put on his wrist, controlling him. You know, like the ones they put where we’re not supposed to go?”
The mob nodded uncertainly. Natalie looked at Alex and tentatively lowered her shield, the relief clear on her face as the angry tension in the room dissipated and morphed into an atmosphere of collective curiosity.
“Well, they can use them on us, too. They used one on Aamir. They put it on his wrist and made him do as they pleased,” Alex said, his voice rising. He had to make his argument convincing enough to rile them up against the Head instead of the Head’s innocent avatar.
Alex still didn’t know how much control the golden line had over Aamir, but he guessed the Head must be using magic through the golden band to distort Aamir’s emotions. It made Alex uneasy, wondering what else the Head knew through the golden band.
“The Head may know what has gone on here,” declared Alex, his voice rich with gravitas as he stood before the crowd of murmuring students. They quieted at his words, and he continued. “Through the golden line, the Head will know that Aamir has been apprehended, and now we’re running out of time. The Head will return to regain control of the manor. We must make sure we’re ready for when that happens.”
A murmur of worried surprise rippled through the mob, their gazes turning from Aamir to Alex, waiting for him to speak again. Alex wasn’t sure if what he said about the golden line was true, but he had an inkling it might be.
“We must prepare ourselves for the return of the Head, because he will be coming,” Alex went on, feeling their eyes on him, watching him intently. “You can count on that. We must be ready if we are to overcome him. This is our opportunity. This is what we have been waiting for. This moment may be our only chance to break free of this place.” His voice was thick with emotion as he thought of his mother and the offer he had been given to see her again. “Think of your families, out there beyond the horizon. Think of those people you were taken from, against your will. Think of them, left to wonder what happened to you. This is your chance to go home.”
The mob’s voice rose in a rush of agreement, the glitter of tears prickling in the eyes of many gathered there.