Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks

by Christopher Nuttall

  Frieda nodded. “I...”

  She broke off as something–someone?–tapped against the privacy ward. Emily braced herself, before lowering the ward enough to see Helen standing there, looking annoyed and a little fearful.

  “I wish to apologize for my Shadow’s actions, Lady Emily,” Helen said, bluntly. “She has been thoroughly punished for her misdeeds and I do not believe they will reoccur. I also wish to apologize for my own.”

  Emily wondered, suddenly, just what Nanette had said to Helen and Rook. A reminder that Emily had killed two Necromancers? Threats of dire punishment if she ever put Nanette in a position that could cost her the Head Girl’s badge again? Or, perhaps, a droll warning against fighting in the hall?

  “I accept,” Emily said. She decided to swallow her pride. “I also wish to apologize for slapping your Shadow. I was out of line.”

  Helen nodded, then turned and walked away. Emily caught a glimpse of a frog hopping on Helen’s bed before she replaced the privacy wards and turned to face Frieda.

  The younger girl stared at her in astonishment. Frieda must never have heard anyone apologize for how she’d been treated in the past.

  “We’d better go get something to eat,” Emily said. She rubbed her bottom, decided she could sit on a hard chair without wincing too openly, then reached for a cloth to wipe her face. “Get changed into something that doesn’t have blood on it, and make sure to get rid of the blood.”

  She paused as a nasty thought struck her. “You do know how to dispose of your blood safely?”

  Frieda nodded, then scrambled to her feet and reached for the drawer under her bed. Emily watched numbly as she stripped off her top, revealing bones that were all too visible under her skin. How could it have passed unnoticed in a school of magic? No wonder her magic had been seen as weak. She would have had real trouble casting more than a handful of spells a day.

  I’ll speak to the Administrator, she promised herself. If nothing else, she was privately sure she could drop Void’s name once or twice. He had paid her Whitehall fees, after all. And the Administrator, she suspected, wouldn’t want to upset him openly. And see if I can draw on my funds.

  Chapter Eighteen

  AS IT HAPPENED, IT WAS MONDAY morning before Emily was able to approach the Administrator. She had attempted to visit his office on Sunday, but the main door was locked and she had no idea where he slept. She’d taken the chance of leaving a note in the library, then spent most of the day reading a handful of books from his vast collection and making notes in her own private book. There were hints of ways to open communications over vast distances between two magicians that would have been very useful, when she’d been trapped in Zangaria. If she managed to master them...

  Aurelius didn’t look particularly surprised to see her when she knocked on his door, the following day. Emily couldn’t help wondering what–if anything–he knew of the weekend’s events, but she rather doubted he would say anything about it. What happened in Raven Hall stayed in Raven Hall, Nanette had said. Even if she had given Aurelius a private briefing, he wouldn’t be inclined to admit it. Nanette’s authority had been weakened enough already.

  “Lady Emily,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  “Not for another thirty minutes,” Emily said. Warding, for whatever reason, started later than the other morning classes. One of her fellow classmates had joked that Professor Clifton always took longer than the other tutors to get out of bed in the morning. “I have a quick request for you, sir.”

  Aurelius lifted his eyebrows. “A request?”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said. “My Shadow needs to be appropriately fed. I want to pay for her meals, as they do not seem to be included in her scholarship.”

  She’d wondered what Aurelius would make of her request, but the flicker that passed over his face told her nothing. Instead, he settled back in his chair and studied her thoughtfully, then smiled in approval.

  “It speaks well of you that you care,” he said. His tone wasn’t mocking, but it stung. She knew she hadn’t cared until it was almost too late. “But will your Shadow’s pride survive it?”

  “She needs to eat,” Emily said, flatly. She understood–she’d always hated the thought of charity herself–but there was no room for pride now. “And I believe I have the funds to make it happen.”

  “I will inform the cooks that she is to eat as much as she wishes,” Aurelius said. He gave her an odd little smile, as if he were expecting her to share a joke. “Your fees are in an awkward position right now, Emily, but we can certainly arrange for her to be fed properly.”

  Emily’s eyes narrowed. “If it’s that simple,” she said, “why doesn’t everyone get fed properly?”

  “We do try to teach basic accounting here as well as magic,” Aurelius said, slowly. “And it is the responsibility of Patrons to help their Shadows overcome certain problems.”

  Emily clenched her fists in genuine outrage. She’d been neglectful, but she was sure, now that she’d started looking for the signs, that other Patrons were outright abusive. Ten might have been pushed into Helen’s care by her family, which might explain how angrily Helen had reacted when Emily had slapped her, but others had no such protection. And the Hall Supervisors didn’t seem to care. Nanette certainly hadn’t scolded Emily until the situation had already managed to get out of hand.

  “The Patrons don’t care,” she said, fighting to keep her voice under control. “And you never even told me what being a Patron entailed.”

  “Authority is an odd thing,” Aurelius said. “We do not grant it as a matter of right, but as a matter of determining who can be trusted to wield authority in the outside world. A taste of power could easily have turned you into a monster. You were given power over that young girl in the hopes you would learn how to use it.”

  “And who,” Emily asked bitterly, “would protect her from me?”

  “You,” Aurelius said. “You have to learn self-restraint.”

  “I don’t accept that,” Emily said. She wanted to scream at him. “You gave me total authority over someone else, then... what would you have done if I’d abused her? Or worse?”

  “You would not have become a prefect, let alone Head Girl,” Aurelius said, flatly. “What is the point of giving you a test of character if you knew it was a test?”

  “A secret test of character,” Emily said, slowly. “That’s what it is?”

  “Yes,” Aurelius said. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell any of the other students about the true nature of the system. It would only upset them.”

  Emily could see the logic in it, from Aurelius’s point of view. Give a student a chance to wield authority and see what they did with it. But it meant exposing Shadows, most of whom were completely defenseless, to older students who might take advantage of them, at the very least. And none of the Shadows were that young. It was all too easy to imagine other, more horrifying possibilities for abuse.

  “I don’t like the system,” Emily said, flatly.

  “Most people don’t, when they realize what it entails,” Aurelius told her. “It’s what marks them out as students of quality.”

  “Many of those students will end up permanently victims,” Emily snapped. “How many magicians have you lost because the system crushed their souls?”

  “And those who overcome it will be great,” Aurelius countered. “You don’t learn through having everything given to you on a silver platter, Lady Emily. You learn from adversity, through meeting and overcoming challenges. Or was it different for you?”

  Emily hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

  “There’s something else I wanted to request,” she said, slowly. “My father has left me very ignorant in a number of ways.”

  “That is true,” Aurelius agreed.

  Emily flushed, even though she knew it wasn’t her fault. “I didn’t know about the Shadows and I didn’t know about... other matters,” she said, softly. “Are there etiquette lessons
for younger students? Something to tell them how to behave?”

  “Those lessons are normally given by the Great Houses or Patrons,” Aurelius said, thoughtfully. “But your father would not care for etiquette. I fancy anyone expecting him to bow as he enters their house would be very disappointed.”

  “Very disappointed,” Emily agreed. Void had walked in and out of Whitehall without the Grandmaster’s permission, a serious breach of etiquette. Even she knew that. “He never bothered to teach me how to act around other magicians.”

  “I will see what I can arrange,” Aurelius said. “But you are in an odd position. You could not Shadow for anyone, not as a Third Year with a Shadow of your own. It might be better for you to learn from a quarrel mate. Have you chosen a quarrel yet?”

  Emily shook her head.

  “Then when you do, ask one of the older students for help,” Aurelius said. “One of the girls, by preference. They tend to be more aware of etiquette than boys. It’s no shame to admit ignorance to someone in the same quarrel. You’re all in the group together.”

  Emily sighed. She’d had a feeling that the quarrels were far too much like social cliques on Earth–and nothing she’d seen at the first meeting had disproved it. Being a member was tempting, she had to admit; she’d hated the cliques on Earth, but perversely she’d also envied their camaraderie. But what would she be asked to do if she was a full member?

  “I’ll ask Claudia,” she said. Perhaps she should ask Helen, if she didn’t want to get any further involved with the quarrel, although she wasn’t sure she would trust anything the other girl said. “I’m sure she could help.”

  “Smart choice,” Aurelius said.

  He paused. “I’ll see you this weekend,” he added, dryly. It was very clearly a dismissal. “And remember what I told you.”

  Emily rose to her feet, then walked out of the office and down towards the classroom, where students were already gathering outside the door. Professor Clifton was late, again. She sighed and joined the line, waiting as patiently as she could. It was several minutes past the deadline when the tutor arrived and swept into the classroom, followed by his students. At least he didn’t seem to want Emily to sit in the front.

  She sighed. Professor Clifton was definitely a drunkard. Emily had seen too many drunks in her time on Earth to miss the signs. At least he seemed to be an amiable drunk, unlike her mother or stepfather. But his nose was red, he slurred some of his words and he seemed to have great difficulty in focusing on any individual student. Perhaps it was for the best, she decided. Some of the girls in the class were quite attractive and she knew, from bitter experience, just how horrific it was to be stared at by a drunk.

  “Be seated,” Professor Clifton said. “In our previous classes, we have covered the techniques for producing an anchorstone. Have you all mastered the basic spell I taught you?”

  Emily nodded, along with the other students. She’d been told never to visit the Professor’s office outside class; fortunately, she’d managed to master the spell relatively quickly. It hadn’t taken her long to recognize that some elements of producing anchorstones were related to the basic necromantic rite, although none of the other students seemed to have made the connection. Stone channeled magic, Emily knew. Done properly, it could channel a vast amount of magic.

  “Good,” Professor Clifton said. He paused, as though he wasn’t quite sure what he intended to say, then waved a hand at the blackboard. A list of spell components appeared in front of them. “You have all mastered the basics, which allow you to tweak and control your own spells perfectly. This is something rather more complex.”

  Emily leaned forward, trying to parse out the spell components. Some of them were understandable, simple chains of spellwork rather like the ones she’d studied under Mistress Sun and Mistress Mauve, others were so complex she couldn’t follow them properly. She disliked using spells she didn’t understand, but there didn’t seem to be a choice. The professor was already speaking.

  “When you come to set up an establishment of your own,” Professor Clifton said, “you will wish complete control over the use of magic within your territory. The wards we will be studying over the coming weeks are all related to magic detection, magic suppression and–if necessary–direct countering of magic spells. A basic anti-magic ward, if set up with due care and power, can prevent people from casting spells without your permission, at least long enough for you to deal with them. You would find it a very useful tool in defending your home.”

  Emily nodded. The whole system was rather akin to setting up an Internet message board, with different levels of permission for different users. It was considered rude to use magic in a magician’s home without permission–and the wards would make sure that any attempt to use magic would be noted and logged. Now that she knew what the wards were designed to do, it was easier to parse out some of the more complicated pieces of spellwork. They effectively broke up and absorbed magic as soon as it was cast, preventing the spell from actually working.

  She smiled. This was one thing she definitely intended to master as soon as possible. Unlike most of the students, she actually did have a home of her own, one that had too many servants and other visitors for her liking. She would need to master the wards simply to ensure that any unpleasant surprises the previous baron had left behind were removed before they exploded in her face. And besides, she liked the idea of preventing her guests from trying to harm or kill each other with magic. It made her wonder why there weren’t such wards in Raven Hall.

  Professor Clifton tapped his table, meaningfully. “You can start experimenting with your spellwork now,” he said, addressing the class. “And remember to make sure you place the entire spell within the anchorstone. You don’t want to have it leaking, or it will simply collapse into nothingness.”

  Emily sighed, then reached into her bag and produced her first true anchorstone. It didn’t seem particularly impressive–it was no bigger than her fist–but she could sense the spell pulsing within the stone, just waiting to be activated. Extending it so it would spread through an entire room, let alone a small castle, would be complex, but she had several private thoughts about using her previous experiments with magical batteries to make the whole process considerably easier. Done properly, she wouldn’t even need a team of Wardmasters to secure her home against intrusion.

  She placed the stone on her desk, then glanced up at the blackboard, trying to memorize all the spell components. After a moment, she gave up and copied them down in her notebook, then started to try to put the spell together in her mind. It was fiendishly complex, far more than any of the wards she used for self-protection, but then those wards drew on her magic directly. These wards needed to draw magic from the local magic field.

  But they leak too, she thought. It was the old problem of actually storing magic. The only way she’d found to store magic was through pocket dimensions. Given time, any ward would eventually collapse, no matter how strongly it was anchored, without proper maintenance. The only real exceptions to the rule were wards anchored to a nexus point, like Whitehall. In that case, there was an infinite supply of power for maintaining the wards without direct intervention.

  But there were weaknesses too, she acknowledged. No sorcerer worthy of the name would be happy allowing someone else to control his wards, yet no sorcerer could control or manipulate Whitehall’s wards for long. Emily had touched the user interface once, and the shock had almost killed her. And if Shadye hadn’t been loose in the castle, she doubted she could have touched it at all.

  She held the stone in one hand and concentrated as she tried to create the spell, uploading it into the stone. There was a brief moment when she thought she’d succeeded...

  And then the spellware fragment simply came apart and evaporated. Emily swore under her breath, using several words she’d picked up from Lady Barb, and tried again. This time, the entire anchoring spell came apart.

  “It isn’t the easiest of spells to control,”
Professor Clifton said. Emily looked up to discover him standing in front of her desk. She hadn’t even heard him approach. “You need to use a very gentle touch.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said, cursing herself. Up close, the Professor’s breath stank of alcohol. It was a mystery to her why he was still allowed to teach. A sadistic professor might be less dangerous than a drunkard in a magic school, where a single mistake could prove disastrous–or fatal. “Why doesn’t it work?”

  “You have to merge the two spells together,” Professor Clifton explained. He picked up her anchorstone and examined it carefully, then inserted the spells himself. Drunkard or not, the spells fitted in perfectly. “It requires practice, practice and more practice.”

  He passed it back to her with a smile. “Try building the second set of spells in your mind,” he added. “Get it down perfectly, then start tweaking the magic to fit it into the anchorstone. Right now, you’re trying to do too much at once. This isn’t a simple transfiguration spell, you know.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said. He was right, she admitted to herself, even though it meant going back to first principles. It had taken months to learn to cast spells on automatic–and then, in some ways, she had limited herself, as if she’d started to use a wand. “I’ll start again from scratch.”

  The professor nodded before turning to inspect several more students and their work, leaving Emily alone.

  She concentrated, putting the spell together in her head. It didn’t get any simpler, but not worrying about fitting the two spells together made it a little easier. The ward twisted and turned in her head–it wasn’t one that could be safely anchored to her body–then faded out of existence. Emily did it again and again until she was sure she could run through all of the steps without any mistakes, then reached for the anchorstone and rebuilt the holding spell. As soon as it was ready, she reshaped the ward and shoved it into the stone. It held, long enough for her to feel convinced she was on the right track. And then, as before, it evaporated into nothingness.