The Rithmatist

  The professor gasped, rubbing his eyes, and Joel yelped, scrambling away down the second-floor hallway. In his panicked mind, he thought to make for Melody’s room, where he could use the aforementioned tree to climb away. He heard Nalizar follow, cursing.

  Joel smacked straight into something invisible. It threw him backward to the ground, stunned. The hallway was barely lit, and he hadn’t seen the Line of Forbiddance on the ground.

  “Foolish child,” Nalizar said, grabbing him by the shoulder.

  Joel yelled and punched as hard as he could at Nalizar’s gut. Nalizar grunted, but didn’t let go. Instead, he stuck his foot out, scraping it along the ground. It left a chalk line behind it.

  Chalk on the bottom tip of the shoe, Joel thought. Good idea. Hard to draw straight lines, but good idea.

  Nalizar shoved Joel to the floor, then finished a Box of Forbiddance around him. Joel groaned at the pain in his arm—Nalizar had a powerful grip.

  Trapped.

  Joel cried out, feeling at the invisible box. It was solid.

  “Idiot,” Nalizar said, wiping his face with a dry section of his coat. “If you live this night, you’re going to owe me a new coat.” The professor’s skin looked irritated from the acid, and his eyes were bloodshot. The acid used wasn’t powerful enough to be truly dangerous to a person, however.

  “I—” Nalizar said.

  One of the doors in the hallway opened and interrupted him. Nalizar spun as a large figure stepped out into the hallway. Joel could just barely make out the face in the dim light.

  Inspector Harding.

  Nalizar stood for a moment, dripping acid. He glanced at Joel, then back at Harding.

  “So,” Nalizar said to Harding, “it is you. I’ve tracked you down at last.”

  Harding stood still. In the shadowed light, his domed police officer’s hat looked an awful lot like a bowler. He lowered his rifle, resting his hand on the butt, the tip against the ground. Like a cane.

  His hat was pulled down over his eyes so that Joel couldn’t see them. Joel could see the inspector’s ghastly grin. Harding opened his mouth, tipping his head back.

  A swarm of squirming chalklings flooded out of his mouth like a torrent, scurrying down his chest and across his body.

  Nalizar cursed, dropping to his knees and drawing a circle around himself. Joel watched as Nalizar completed the Easton Defense with quick, careful strokes.

  Harding, Joel thought. He said there was a federal police station near Lilly Whiting’s house. And he said he was on patrol in the very area where Herman Libel was taken—Harding claimed that the Scribbler was taunting him by striking so close.

  And then Charles Calloway. While we were investigating Charles’s house, Harding mentioned that he’d been there the very evening before, trying to get the family to send their son back to Armedius.

  When Harding charged to the gates after being called on the night I was attacked, he came from the east. From the direction of the general campus, not the Rithmatic one. He’d been over there, controlling the chalklings.

  Exton wasn’t the only one in the room who heard Professor Fitch say how important I was—Harding was there too.

  Dusts!

  Joel screamed for help, slamming his fists against the invisible barrier. It all made sense! Why attack the students outside campus? Why take the son of the knight-senator?

  To inspire panic. To make the Rithmatic students all congregate at Armedius, rather than staying at their homes. Harding had secured the campus, brought all of the Rithmatists here, including the half who normally lived far away, and had locked them in the dorms.

  That way, he had them all together and could take them in one strike.

  Joel continued to pound uselessly at the walls of his invisible prison. He yelled, but as soon as his voice reached a certain decibel, the excess vanished. He glanced to the side, and there saw one of the Lines of Silencing, hidden against the white of the painted wall. It was far enough away that it only sucked in his voice when he yelled, not when he spoke normally.

  Joel cursed, falling to his knees. Harding dismissed the Line of Forbiddance in the hallway, the one Joel had run into, and the multitude of chalklings swarmed forward and surrounded Professor Nalizar, attacking his defenses. The man worked quickly, reaching out of his circle and drawing Lines of Vigor to shoot off pieces of chalklings. That didn’t seem to have much effect. The formless chalklings just grew the pieces back.

  Joel pushed at the base of his prison, looking for the place that felt the weakest. He found a section that Nalizar had drawn with his foot that pushed back with less strength. The chalk there wasn’t as straight.

  Joel licked his finger and began to rub at the base of the line. It was a poor tactic. Lines of Forbiddance were the strongest of the four. He could only rub at the side, carefully wearing away the line bit by bit. It was a process that the books said could take hours.

  Nalizar was not faring well. Though he’d drawn a brilliant defense, there were just so many chalklings. Inspector Harding stood shadowed in the darkness. He barely seemed to move, just a smiling, dark statue.

  His arm moved, the rest of him completely still. He lowered the tip of his rifle, and Joel could see a bit of chalk taped to it. Harding drew a Line of Vigor on the ground.

  Only it wasn’t a Line of Vigor. It was too sharp—instead of curves, it had jagged tips. Like the second new Rithmatic line they had found at Lilly Whiting’s house. Joel had almost forgotten about that one.

  This new line shot forward like a Line of Vigor, punching through several of Harding’s own chalklings before hitting the defenses. Nalizar cursed, reaching forward to draw a curve and repair the piece that had been blown away.

  His sleeve dripped acid. That acid fell right on his circle, making a hole in it. Nalizar stared at the hole, and the chalklings shied away from the acid. Then, one threw itself at the drop, getting dissolved. Another followed. That diluted the acid, for the next one that touched the acid didn’t vanish. It began attacking the sides of the hole the acid had made.

  “You are making a mistake,” Nalizar said, looking up at Harding.

  Harding drew another jagged line. This one shot through the hole, hitting Nalizar and throwing him backward.

  Joel gaped. It’s a Line of Vigor that can affect more than chalk, he realized. That’s … that’s amazing!

  The scribbled, shifting chalklings withdrew. Nalizar lay in the middle of his circle, unconscious. Harding smiled, eyes shadowed, then walked to the next door in the hallway, one just to Joel’s right. Harding pushed it open, and Joel could see young women slumbering in the beds inside.

  Wild chalklings swarmed in behind Harding and flooded the room. Joel screamed, but the Line of Silencing stole his voice. One of the girls stirred, sitting up.

  The chalklings crawled over her, swarming her body. Her mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. Another Line of Silencing hung on the wall there, drawn to keep sound from waking the other students.

  Joel could only watch, banging against his invisible wall, as the girl shook and writhed, a group of the chalklings climbing into her mouth as she tried to scream. They pinched at her skin, causing pinpricks of blood. More and more of them crawled into her mouth.

  She didn’t stop shaking. She shook and shook, spasming, falling to the floor and rolling as she seemed to shrink and flatten. Her figure began to waver. Joel watched, horrified. Soon the girl was indistinguishable from the other scribbled chalklings.

  Harding watched with a broad grin, showing teeth, his eyes lost in shadow.

  “Why?” Joel demanded of him. “What is going on?”

  Harding made no reply as his chalklings took the other girls in the room. One by one, two other girls were consumed and transformed. The awful sight made Joel look away. The chalklings that had been dissolved in the acid were re-forming, pulling themselves out of the pool and coming back to life.

  Harding moved to the next room, passing Joel. He opened the door an
d stepped inside, and Joel could see a Line of Silencing had already been drawn on the door. Harding had probably done them all first.

  The scribbled chalklings flooded the hallway behind Harding, then disappeared into the room. Joel felt sick, thinking of the girls sleeping inside. He dropped to his knees and continued scratching at his line, trying to get through. He wasn’t doing much.

  A chalkling suddenly moved in front of him and began to attack the line.

  Joel jumped back, grabbing his coin and trying to use it to ward the creature away. It ignored both him and the coin.

  It was at that moment that Joel realized the chalkling was a unicorn.

  He glanced to the side, where a face peeked around the corner ahead of him, farther down the hallway. Melody drew another unicorn, sending it to help the first. Joel stepped back, amazed at how quickly the unicorn made holes in Nalizar’s line.

  She really is good with those, Joel thought as they broke through a large enough section for him to squeeze past. Sweating, he dashed to her.

  “Melody,” he whispered. As long as he didn’t yell, the Lines of Silencing wouldn’t steal his voice. The sound wouldn’t carry far enough, he guessed, to hit the lines and activate them.

  “Joel,” she said. “Something’s very wrong. There aren’t any policemen at the gates or at the office. I tried pounding on the doors of the professors, but nobody answered. Is that Professor Nalizar on the ground?”

  “Yes,” Joel said. “Melody, come on, we—”

  “You defeated him!” she said with surprise, standing.

  “No, I think I was wrong about him,” Joel said urgently. “We need to—”

  Harding stepped out of the room and looked toward them. He was between them and the way to the stairwell. Melody screamed, but most of it dampened, and Joel cursed, pulling her after him. Together, they scrambled farther down the hallway.

  The dormitory hallway was a square, with rooms on the inside and out. If they could go all the way around, they could get to the stairs.

  Melody ran beside him, then suddenly yanked him to the side. “My room,” she said, pointing. “Out the window.”

  Joel nodded. She threw open the door, and they were confronted by chalklings crawling in the open window, moving across the walls like a flood of white spiders. Harding had sent them around the outside of the building.

  Joel cursed, slamming the door as Melody screamed again. This scream was dampened less than the others; they were getting away from the Lines of Silencing.

  Chalklings crawled under the door. Others scurried down the hallway from Harding’s direction. Joel pulled Melody toward the stairs, but froze as he saw another group of chalklings coming from that direction.

  They were surrounded.

  “Oh dusts, oh dusts, oh dusts,” Melody said. She fell to her knees and drew a circle around them, then added a Square of Forbiddance around it. “We’re doomed. We’re going to die.”

  Harding rounded the corner. He was a dark silhouette, stepping quietly, not speaking. He stopped as the chalklings began to work on Melody’s square, then he reached up and twisted the key on the nearby lantern, bringing light to the hallway.

  He seemed even more twisted by the half-light than he had in the dimness.

  “Talk to me!” Joel said. “Harding, you’re my friend! Why are you doing this? What happened to you out there, in Nebrask?”

  Harding began to draw one of his modified Lines of Vigor on the floor. Melody’s square had failed, and the chalklings were starting to work on her circle. They squirmed and shook, as if anticipating biting into Joel’s and Melody’s flesh.

  Suddenly, a voice rang in the hallway. Clear, angry.

  “You will leave them alone!”

  Harding turned toward a figure standing in an open Rithmatic coat at the other end of the hallway, holding a piece of chalk in each hand.

  Professor Fitch.

  CHAPTER

  Professor Fitch was shaking. Joel could see that, even from the distance. The flood of chalklings turned away from Joel and Melody and rushed toward him.

  Harding raised his rifle.

  Fitch dropped to his knees and drew a Line of Forbiddance on the floor. There was a loud click and a rush of air as the rifle fired.

  The bullet shot through the hallway, then hit the line’s wall and froze a few inches from Fitch’s head. The bullet lost its momentum and was pushed back and away. It hit the floor with a clink.

  Harding let out his first sound then, a roar of anger. It was quieted by the Lines of Silencing. Still, it was loud enough to make Fitch waver, and he looked up, eyes widening in fear. Hesitating.

  Then he looked at Joel and Melody, trapped in their failing circle. Fitch’s jaw set and his hands stopped shaking. He looked down at the flood of chalklings approaching him, and reached out with both hands to snap his chalk to the ground on either side of him.

  Then he drew.

  Joel stood up straight, watching with awe as Fitch spun about, using his chalk to draw two Lines of Warding, one inside the other, both as perfect as Joel had ever seen. Fitch added smaller circles on the outside, one after another in rapid succession, one hand drawing each circle even as the other drew a Line of Forbiddance inside each one as an anchor.

  The Taylor Defense.

  “Professor…” Joel whispered. The defense was perfect. Majestic. “I knew you could to it.”

  “Yeah, Joel?” Melody said. “Hello. Pay attention. We need to get out of here.”

  She knelt down, using her chalk to dismiss the Line of Warding around them.

  “No,” Joel said. He looked down at her. “Melody, those chalklings aren’t natural. Fitch can’t fight them; they can’t be destroyed. We need to help him.”

  “How?”

  Joel looked back. “Dismiss the rest of those lines around us.”

  As she did so, Joel knelt down, taking a piece of blue chalk out of his coat pocket.

  “Hey, you started carrying some!” Melody exclaimed.

  “My father’s chalk,” Joel said, sketching out a long rectangular maze pattern on the floor. “Go draw this in the corridor there. Make it as long as you can, and leave this little section open on the side and at the far end.”

  She nodded, then moved over to begin drawing. Joel took his chalk and closed off the hole she left open.

  “What good will that do?” she asked, drawing urgently.

  “You’ll see,” Joel said, spinning back toward Harding and Fitch. Fitch drew furiously and was faring far better than Nalizar had. He had managed to enclose a couple of the Scribbler’s chalklings within boxes, trapping them.

  Unfortunately, his outer defenses were nearly eaten away. He wouldn’t last long like this.

  Joel gave Melody as much time as he dared. Then he yelled, “Hey, Harding!”

  The inspector turned.

  “Wednesday night,” Joel said, “you tried to kill me. Now is your chance. Because if you don’t, I’m going to go get help and—” He cut off, yelping. Apparently Harding didn’t need any encouragement, for a good third of his chalklings began scrambling back down the hallway toward Joel and Melody, taking some of the pressure off the beleaguered Fitch.

  Joel turned and dashed down the hallway. Melody had drawn quickly, and while her lines weren’t perfectly straight, they would do. Joel entered the long corridor of chalk she’d made, with Lines of Forbiddance to either side of him, then wove through the short maze of lines.

  As he’d expected, the chalklings piled in after him. They could have gotten through to Melody if they’d known that the section of the lines that Joel had drawn wasn’t Rithmatic—but, just like before, chalklings seemed as fooled by a fake line as a human might be, at least at first.

  Joel burst through the hole in the end of the small maze. “Close it!”

  Melody did so, blocking the chalklings. The things immediately turned around to escape back out the front of the maze.

  “Come on!” Joel said, running, Melody at hi
s side. They raced the chalklings, who had to weave through turns to get to the end. Joel and Melody passed through the gap where he had drawn a non-Rithmatic line, then Melody closed off the entrance to the maze.

  She stood, puffing, the chalklings inside shaking angrily. They began to attack the walls.

  Joel turned around. “Melody!” he said. Another group of chalklings had broken off from Professor Fitch and were heading toward him and Melody.

  She yelped, drawing a line across the corridor, then down the sides of the wall to protect her and Joel.

  That trapped them again. Harding left the second batch of chalklings there, chewing on the line blocking Joel and Melody from the combat.

  “That’s all we can do, Professor!” Joel called, just quiet enough that the Lines of Silencing had no effect. Then, more softly, he added, “Come on.…”

  Fitch drew with a look of intense concentration on his face. Every time he seemed to waver, he glanced up at Melody and Joel surrounded by chalklings. His face grew more determined, and he continued his work.

  Harding—the Scribbler—growled, then began launching his enhanced Lines of Vigor at Fitch. The professor drew expert Lines of Forbiddance to not just block, but deflect the Lines of Vigor.

  Joel watched, breathing quickly, following Fitch’s moves as Melody shored up their defense, drawing reinforcing lines where the chalklings looked like they might be close to getting through.

  “Come on…” Joel repeated. “You can do it.”

  Fitch worked furiously, drawing with both hands. His defense was expert—he coaxed the chalklings toward weak points, then blocked them off inside Lines of Forbiddance.

  Then, with a smile, Fitch reached out and drew a jagged Line of Vigor like Harding had been doing.

  It shot across the room and hit the surprised inspector, throwing him backward. Harding hit the ground with a grunt. He groaned, then stood back up, drawing a Circle of Warding around himself, followed by a Line of Forbiddance in front of it.

  When did Harding become a Rithmatist? Joel thought, realizing the oddity for the first time. That Line of Warding is almost inhumanly perfect. And he drew it at a distance, with chalk on the end of his rifle!