Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks

by Christopher Nuttall

  “We will review the matter,” Steven said. He looked oddly disappointed, although Emily wasn’t sure why. “The inner council will continue to discuss issues; everyone else may go.”

  “Come on,” Claudia said, as the students rose to their feet. “You’re going to want to see this.”

  She pulled Emily through a curtain and into a makeshift spellchamber. Emily studied it as a handful of other students assembled, wondering at how they’d managed to construct it without the staff knowing about it. And then, as one of the older girls brought a younger–blindfolded–girl into the chamber, she realized the staff did know about it. Some of them were probably members of the quarrel themselves. They might even have a hand in picking new members.

  “The purpose of this part of the meeting is to learn new spells,” Claudia said. “Some of them simply aren’t taught here, some of them are unique to the quarrel. You might find some of them very interesting.”

  Emily had her doubts. The blindfolded girl looked terrified as the older girl removed her blindfold. Emily’s eyes narrowed as the older girl turned to face them, her face calm and very composed. But there was an underlying excitement in the way she held herself that bothered Emily in a manner she didn’t quite understand.

  “That’s Nadine,” Claudia said. “She’s a Fifth Year–and one of the most capable students around. You could learn a great deal from her.”

  “This is Rose,” Nadine said. Her voice was very precise. “She has volunteered to be our test subject for the day.”

  She cast a spell on the younger girl, who instantly fell into a trance. Emily shivered in horror, then watched with a growing sense of disbelief as Nadine demonstrated how to insert post-hypnotic commands into the girl’s mind. Rose clucked like a chicken, crawled on the ground like a frog and recited limericks whenever Nadine said the right keywords.

  Emily elbowed Claudia as Nadine started inviting others to practice with the spell. “Is this permitted?”

  “You can do anything, as long as you don’t make them late for class or inflict permanent harm,” Claudia said. She didn’t sound very concerned, just puzzled at Emily’s attitude. “Nadine will have paid Rose a considerable sum to get her to volunteer...”

  “I’d like to go back to Raven Hall,” Emily said. She suspected she should stay with the quarrel, in hopes of gathering intelligence, but she couldn’t bear to watch any longer. She’d had mind control spells cast on her and hated the experience. How was Nadine any different from Shadye? “How do I get back?”

  “Just think of the hall and use a seeking spell,” Claudia said. “But...”

  Emily turned, walked through the curtain and left, leaving Claudia behind. For a moment, she thought Claudia would follow her, but as she passed through the illusionary wall it became clear that her dorm mate had no intention of leaving the quarrel. Emily suspected, bitterly, that Claudia really wanted to learn that spell. It would be quite useful, if one didn’t have moral objections to using it. Or if the target had no ability to fight it off.

  For long minutes, she just wandered through the empty corridors, lost in her own thoughts. It was nearly an hour before she recollected herself, then made her way back to Raven Hall, noting–absently–just how much work had gone into turning the caves and tunnels into a place where humans could live. There would be a way to reach the surface, she was sure, and then... she wasn’t certain what she could do afterwards. If she broke through the wards, which would be difficult for a single magician, she would still have no idea where she was.

  Don’t get involved in quarrels, Master Grey had said.

  Emily shook her head. She hadn’t understood at the time, but she did now. She’d never been a joiner, but part of her would have loved to be asked to join a group. And yet, now she’d been offered it on a silver platter, she was horrified. Who knew what else the quarrel taught its members to do? And peer pressure alone would make sure that most of them just took part in the lessons, even if they were secretly horrified.

  She walked back into Raven Hall and stopped, dead. She could hear giggling–and whimpering.

  And the whimpering was coming from her bed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  EMILY HESITATED, UNSURE OF WHAT TO do, then lifted a hand in a spell-casting pose and took a step forward. The whimpering grew louder as she approached the bed and peered through the handful of privacy wards. Frieda was lying on her bed, tossing and turning and scratching herself madly. Her skin, always pale, was covered with unpleasant blotches where she’d scratched herself raw. Emily stared, then stepped forward, lowering her hand. It was easy to see that the girl had been hexed.

  “Lie still,” she said, as Frieda turned to stare at her. Blood was dripping from her arm, staining the bedclothes. “Please, just lie still.”

  The hex didn’t fade. Emily gritted her teeth then cast the most powerful counterspell she knew. She’d seen something like the itching hex before, in Martial Magic; the Sergeants had used it to ensure that anyone who was knocked down stayed down. It was a nasty little spell, almost impossible for the victim to remove. Emily would have had problems removing it herself, as a Third Year. There was no way Frieda could be expected to free herself from the hex.

  “Lie still,” Emily repeated, as the hex faded away. Now she had stopped twitching, it was clear that Frieda was hurt far worse than Emily had realized. Her scratches might become infected, if they weren’t healed quickly. “Who did this to you?”

  She heard a giggle and looked up to see one of the other Shadows, smirking at Frieda. Emily felt her temper snap. She hated bullies. They picked on people who were unable to defend themselves and attacked their self-esteem so comprehensively that they were never able to rise above the torment or found ways to strike back at their enemies. Emily reached out, casting a spell, and dragged the girl over to the bed. The Shadow’s giggles faded away as she found herself looking at Emily’s face. Emily wasn’t even trying to disguise her anger.

  “Why?” She demanded. “Why did you cast the spell?”

  The Shadow–it dawned on Emily that she didn’t even know the girl’s name–giggled, despite being held by Emily’s spell. “It’s fun,” she said, seriously. She smirked at Frieda, as if she expected Emily to share her amusement. “And it...”

  Emily felt a wave of pure rage and slapped the Shadow, hard. She saw blood trickling down from the girl’s jaw, but she felt no guilt, just an overpowering urge to hurt the girl. The spell holding the girl in place snapped as she fell backwards; Emily rose to her feet and towered over the girl, rather than use magic to catch her again. The girl tried to scramble backwards, her face torn between pain and surprise. She obviously hadn’t expected Emily to be furious with her.

  “Do you think that was funny?” Emily demanded. “Being picked on by someone bigger than you?”

  She reached out and hauled the girl to her feet. It was something she could never have done on Earth, but two years of Martial Magic had given her more muscles than she’d ever thought possible. The girl felt heavier than she’d expected, but not heavy enough to keep Emily from pulling her upright.

  “I could snap your neck or turn you into a frog and you couldn’t stop me,” Emily snapped, shaking the girl violently. She pushed the girl out into the center of the hall. “Would that be funny, too?”

  “...N-no,” the girl stammered. Magic crackled around her fingertips, but she was clearly unable to cast a spell. “I...”

  Emily stared down at her, feeling her rage slowly being replaced with a cold burning anger–and horror. She’d seen how casually the older students used the younger ones, but this was different–or maybe she was just being naïve. Part of her was shocked at how easily she’d terrified the girl, but the other part of her felt it was no more than the girl deserved. Frieda certainly didn’t deserve to be picked on; no one deserved to be picked on. And yet...

  She sensed the surge of magic from behind her and jumped backwards as a flash of light passed through where she’d been, sec
onds ago. Helen was standing there, looking furious; behind her, Rook seemed equally angry. Part of Emily’s mind noted that while they were close to Claudia, they hadn’t been invited to the quarrel. The rest of her concentrated on defending herself as the two girls hurled spell after spell at her. Neither of them had any proper Martial Magic-style training, but they knew how to duel. It gave them an advantage in cramped confines, particularly as Emily didn’t dare use any of the nastier spells she’d been taught.

  “She’s mine,” Helen snapped. She threw a transformation spell at Emily that had more power than skill behind it. Emily jumped to one side and threw back one of her own, then hurled a hex at the floor. The resulting shockwave knocked Helen back on her ass, then sent her scurrying backwards to find cover. “You don’t touch something that belongs to me!”

  “You taught her that spell,” Emily shouted back. In hindsight, it was clear that someone had to have taught the Shadow that spell. Why not Helen? The girl might have acted like Claudia’s crony, but she wouldn’t have stayed in school if she were stupid. “Why didn’t you teach her not to pick on others, too?”

  Helen looked uncomprehending; Rook scrambled over Olive’s bed and threw herself at Emily. Emily dodged, too late. Rook crashed into her and knocked her to the ground, raising her fists rather than relying on magic. Emily hastily shaped a blasting spell in her mind and detonated it, wincing in pain as she took half of the blast herself. But it knocked Rook away from her before she could start pounding Emily’s head into the stone floor. Helen threw something nasty at Emily, which missed, then stopped. Emily had no time to realize what that meant before magic flared around her and she found herself helpless, unable to move, too.

  “I believe I told you,” Nanette said sweetly, “that you are not allowed to fight in the dorms.”

  Emily wanted to protest the unfairness of it all, but she couldn’t move a muscle. She honestly wasn’t sure how she could even breathe. Nanette strode into view, eying first Helen, then Rook, then finally Emily, her face under very tight control. Emily recalled her first impressions of Nanette and felt cold, despite the spell. Part of her had wanted to impress the Head Girl.

  “Several badly damaged beds, one cracked floor and a smashed mirror,” Nanette added, darkly. “The costs will be billed to your families, I imagine, and I dare say the rest of Raven Hall will not be too pleased. And what, precisely, was worth breaking the rules?”

  “She was attacking me,” Helen’s Shadow said. “All I did was...”

  “We will discuss this in good time, Ten,” Nanette said. She looked up at the frozen girls. “Helen and Rook will accompany me into my office, where the truth will be discovered; Emily will wait in the corner until I have spoken to the other girls.”

  Emily tried hard to break the spell as Nanette levitated her into the corner, but nothing worked. All she could do was wait, helplessly, all too aware of the other girls whispering behind her back as they cleaned up the mess. A stab of guilt tore at her as she realized they’d damaged several beds and property belonging to girls who hadn’t been involved in the fight, although they’d done nothing to stop it. What would Void say, she asked herself silently, when he was presented with a bill for damages? It wasn’t as if he had any obligation to pay for her mistakes.

  She heard the sound of a sob, hastily choked off, behind her, before the spell suddenly collapsed. Emily stumbled, then fell to the ground as her body shuddered violently, grunting in pain as she banged her elbows against the floor. She heard, rather than saw, Nanette stride up behind her, tapping her feet impatiently. Feeling oddly vulnerable and isolated in a way she hadn’t felt since her first experiments with pocket dimensions, she staggered to her feet and followed Nanette back to her office. The privacy wards around Helen and Rook’s beds were so strongly in place that she could not see or hear anything inside their protections.

  But it was clear that they’d done a lot of damage, she realized, grimly. One bed would probably have to be replaced, and another might need replacement. The looks some of the other girls were shooting her were far from friendly, although Lerida and Astra were eying her speculatively. Emily knew Lerida had never stopped her hero-worship, but Emily had no idea what motivated Astra. Perhaps she simply hadn’t liked Helen and Rook and enjoyed seeing them taken down a peg or two.

  “Inside,” Nanette ordered.

  Emily obeyed. She had never been in Nanette’s office before and hadn’t really wanted to go there, not after a couple of girls had told her horror stories about what happened to people invited to visit the Head Boy or Girl. It was surprisingly barren compared to Markus’s office; there were no paintings, no books, merely a dark stone desk with a single chair. Emily realized, numbly, that she was expected to stand in front of the desk, rather than sit down.

  Nanette closed the door behind them, activated a privacy ward and then strode around the desk and sat down, staring up at Emily. It was, Emily knew, a tactic to make her sweat before she started the lecture, but her awareness of what was actually going on didn’t make her feel any better. No matter how much Ten had deserved to be scared out of her mind, the other girls hadn’t deserved to have their property damaged by a savage fight. And Nanette didn’t deserve the problems Emily had caused.

  “Perhaps you could explain to me,” Nanette said, after what felt like hours, “precisely what happened before I arrived?”

  Emily took a breath and started to explain, leaving nothing out. She talked about discovering the hex on Frieda, she talked about Ten... and how Helen and Rook had attacked her. The Head Girl listened in silence, saying nothing, allowing Emily to save or damn herself with her own words. Her face was a blank, emotionless mask. Emily would have been impressed if her future at Mountaintop hadn’t been on the line. Did they expel students for breaking the dorm rules?

  “What you did was immensely stupid,” Nanette said, when Emily had finished. “I am aware that there are no Shadows at Whitehall, but you should at least be aware that it is the duty of an older pupil to look after her Shadow. You should have taken your complaints to Helen.”

  Emily bit her lip to keep from scowling. “And would she have done anything about it?”

  “Perhaps,” Nanette said. “Ten’s behavior would have reflected badly on her, after all, as you should know. She would have been forced to rebuke Ten, at the very least. It would also have been added to the girl’s permanent record, if you chose to make a formal complaint instead of a private one. But you had no right to attempt to discipline Ten yourself.”

  “She inflicted harm on my Shadow,” Emily said, feeling an odd burst of protectiveness. Her own thoughts mocked her. Had she not practically ignored Frieda since she’d first met the girl? She’d thought it was the best thing for her. Frieda was in her First Year, after all. She didn’t need to go running around at Emily’s slightest whim. “I had to cancel the hex myself...”

  “And Helen should have disciplined Ten for it,” Nanette said, coldly. “You should not have done anything yourself, Emily.”

  Emily gritted her teeth. It wasn’t time to argue. “No,” she said, shortly.

  “Helen shouldn’t have attacked you, either,” Nanette conceded. There was an odd note in her voice, almost a hint of resentment. “I imagine she feels a certain protectiveness towards Ten, Emily. There were a considerable amount of strings pulled to ensure that Ten would become Helen’s Shadow. Their families are related.”

  Emily blinked. “Why?”

  “I imagine it had something to do with one young man marrying a young woman,” Nanette said, tartly. “You do understand how children are produced, don’t you?”

  She smirked, suddenly, as Emily flushed. “Or did you mean the string-pulling?”

  “Yes,” Emily agreed.

  “All students are expected to serve as Shadows,” Nanette said. Her voice was back to being tightly controlled. “Certain well-connected students are pushed into taking Shadows from powerful families, providing them with some degree of protection an
d supervision other Shadows lack. It doesn’t give them personal servants, but it does pay off in the future.”

  “I see,” Emily said.

  She shuddered. The discrepancies made sense now. No one would dare abuse a student from a powerful family, even if they had formal power over their Shadows; students like Claudia and Markus had probably never done more than clean clothes, make the beds, fetch the Kava and a handful of other minor tasks. But a student like Frieda would have no protection whatsoever. Emily could have used her as a test subject for all kinds of spells and she would have had to stand there and take it.

  Nanette met her eyes. “But you should have taken more interest in your Shadow,” she added, warningly. “I believe Frieda was considered isolated by the younger students because her Patron showed no interest in her.”

  “I understand,” Emily said.

  “I’d be surprised if you did, at least completely,” Nanette said. “Whitehall has no Shadows, after all, merely roommates. You were not encouraged to develop friendships with older students.”

  “I did,” Emily said. But she’d been unusual. “Should I spend more time with her?”

  “Yes,” Nanette said, flatly.

  She took a breath. “Your behavior broke several of the rules,” she said. “This creates something of a problem. I understand why you did what you did, but I cannot allow it to go unpunished.”

  Emily swallowed. Her mouth was suddenly very dry.

  “I can handle it myself,” Nanette added, “or you can insist on facing the Administrator instead. If the latter, I’ll have to take you there now.”

  For a moment, she looked oddly nervous. “I would advise you to deal with me,” she said. “I don’t believe the Administrator would look kindly on the whole affair.”

  It took Emily a moment to realize what she was being told. Quite apart from whatever punishments were meted out to Emily, Helen and Rook, Nanette would look very bad for allowing a dorm spat to come to the Administrator’s attention. She might lose her place as Head Girl or face punishment herself, just for not putting a stop to the disagreement before it turned violent. Emily felt a flicker of sympathy for the older girl. She might be able to get away unpunished, if Aurelius was keen to show her outright favoritism, but Nanette would have no such option. And besides, taking Emily to Aurelius would undermine her authority in the eyes of the other girls.