Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I think it would be spread too thin if you tried to make it bigger,” Emily said. The general rule for protective wards was one ward, one hex. She’d also been taught to keep moving because no protective ward could stop everything. “And you’d also have the risk of being too attached to it, allowing it to drain your power.”

  “But someone could get a hex around it,” Frieda complained. “It doesn’t even cover my body, let alone yours.”

  “Try not to get hit, then,” Emily said. She summoned a ward of her own and tested it, lightly. “Or should I charge you with breaking out of the freeze spell?”

  Frieda shook her head. She’d never been able to break loose under her own power. Emily wasn’t too surprised. Frieda was nowhere near capable of being able to cast spells without using her hands to help focus and guide the magic.

  Magical combat isn’t about exchanging spells one by one, in a civilised fashion, she recalled Sergeant Miles saying, once. Magical combat is about exhausting or defeating your opponent as quickly as possible.

  She shook her head, feeling a sudden pang of loneliness. At Whitehall, there was always someone she could talk to, be it Lady Barb or Sergeant Miles. Some of the instructors liked her more than others, but she’d never really doubted they had her best interests at heart. Even Master Tor had shown redeeming features, although it had taken her time and reflection to realize they were there. But at Mountaintop... who could she talk to? Whatever she said might well end up being used against her.

  And you weren’t trying to sneak around at Whitehall, either, she reminded herself. Here, you don’t want to get caught doing anything you shouldn’t. Again.

  She sighed. Sneaking around at Whitehall–breaking curfew and wandering around outside the dorms at night–had been part of the fun. Alassa had encouraged her to take part, pointing out that it was good training for later life. But at Mountaintop, it was dangerous, particularly after she’d been caught in the caves. Whatever was through that door had to be deadly secret, or they would never have put so much effort into warding it. And they’d barred her path quite effectively.

  There was a loud bang. Emily jumped, then realized that Frieda had tossed a spell at her. “Why did you do that?”

  “You’re woolgathering,” Frieda told her. “Come and play if you don’t have spells of your own to practice.”

  “Who are you,” Emily muttered, “and what have you done with Frieda?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind,” Emily said. The change in the younger girl was quite remarkable; perhaps, just perhaps, her life in the mountains hadn’t been as bad as Emily had thought. She’d known other children on Earth who’d had decent families, but had remained permanently on the verge of starvation. “What do you want to play?”

  She looked up as the door opened. Nanette stormed into the spellchamber. “Why... why are you here?”

  Emily frowned. “Because there’s nothing else to do?”

  Nanette reddened with astonishing speed. “You were caught in the caves, breaking bounds, and he let you get away with it?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, pulling herself upright. She was tired of everyone’s social pretensions, more tired than she cared to admit. “I think he thought I hadn’t really committed a crime.”

  “Beyond being stupid enough to be caught by the proctors?” Nanette snapped. “How many allowances is he going to make for you?”

  “I don’t know,” Emily said. She suddenly felt very tired, mentally if not physically. The potion she’d drunk seemed a distant memory. “I don’t understand him.”

  “I do,” Nanette said. “He wants to be MageMaster. He wants to be the master of the school.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And he thinks you can help him reach his lofty goal.”

  Frieda leaned forward. “And he told you that?”

  Nanette didn’t look at the Shadow. “It’s obvious,” she said. “What other goal would be worth playing for?”

  Emily smiled. “The ultimate defeat of the Necromancers?”

  Nanette glared at her. “You shouldn’t be teaching any of the First Years,” she said. “And I think that quite a few other tutors are growing more than a little exasperated with you. The Administrator isn’t all-powerful. He can’t shield you forever.”

  Her face lapsed into a smile. “Perhaps I should teach you something instead. I think we should test each other, don’t you?”

  She motioned towards the wards. “Would you care to duel?”

  “I thought I wasn’t allowed to duel out of class,” Emily said.

  Nanette smirked. “You can duel with me, if you dare.”

  Emily hesitated. Jade had told her, once, that he’d had to test himself against another student who had challenged his authority, back during a group exercise. Emily had thought at the time that it was another piece of macho stupidity, but he’d insisted there was a serious point to it. She had not been convinced. Maybe she had the legal right to beat Frieda for talking back to her, yet that wouldn’t make the younger girl wrong. How could it?

  But Nanette seemed to want to duel...

  She considered it, briefly. She’d tested herself against older students in Martial Magic and, all too often, found herself wanting. They were more practiced, more capable of establishing wards and casting spells with lightning speed–and often more capable at breaking spells than Emily herself. She’d done better as she’d grown older, but she’d often found herself outmatched. Her few victories had been very hard-won.

  “Why?” She asked. “What do you gain from testing yourself against me?”

  “That isn’t the question you should be asking,” Nanette taunted. “The question is what do you get from testing yourself against me?”

  It struck Emily, suddenly, that Nanette was jealous. But jealous of what? Emily’s reputation? The Administrator favoring her to the point he spared her a punishment Nanette certainly believed Emily deserved? Or something else? The whole point of the duel might not be so much about testing herself than about teaching Emily a lesson. But if Nanette believed Emily to be a favored student, injuring her could be a deadly mistake. She might just seek to humiliate Emily instead.

  She was tempted to decline. But part of her was reluctant to surrender so easily. And besides, she might learn more about Nanette if she faced her in a dueling ring.

  “Very well,” she said. She inclined her head towards the ring. “Shall we?”

  Frieda coughed. “Is this...?”

  Nanette waved a hand at her. Frieda froze.

  “I wouldn’t expect a First Year of no parentage to understand,” Nanette said, as Emily glared at her. “This is for the more powerful students.”

  Emily followed, feeling a cold simmering anger rise in her breast. Nanette was more than just jealous, she saw now; Nanette saw Emily as a challenge to her authority. What was the point of Nanette being Head Girl, Emily asked herself, if one or more of the students was exempt from her discipline? There might be no formal rule forbidding Nanette to reprimand or punish Emily, but if the Administrator favored her...

  Or was there something else going on? Nanette might come from a powerful family–it was possible that the Head Girl was selected after careful negotiations between the families, rather than the basis of merit–but there were other students from powerful families, other students who might be able to get her in trouble if they felt they had been punished unjustly. It seemed unlike the girl Emily had come to know to risk her position in a personal feud, if that was what it was. The more she looked at the tangled web of magical politics, the less she felt she understood it.

  Nanette reached the other side of the dueling ring and turned to face her. “We shall fight until one of us is immobilized,” she said, grandly. It would have sounded more impressive if Emily hadn’t known that first blood or death duels were strictly forbidden between students, no matter the provocation. The Dueling Mistresses had warned, in no uncertain terms, that issuing such a challenge could mean instant expulsion, ev
en if the duel was never fought. “I will count to five, then we will begin.”

  Emily nodded, gathering herself. Nanette had more formal training in dueling, she was sure, but–perhaps–less experience in rough-and-tumble fighting. It might just give Emily an advantage... if, of course, she managed to get her spells off in time. Nanette paused, bowed in a manner that was more mocking than respectful, then started to count.

  Emily threw a standard freeze charm as soon as Nanette reached five, then followed it up with several other spells, all relatively simple. Nanette blocked them all with contemptuous ease, then started tossing spells at Emily. Emily ducked and dodged as quickly as she could, trying to make it harder for Nanette to take aim at her. There were so many spells coming her way that she knew she didn’t dare take more than one or two hits. They bounced off the wards, one almost reflecting right into Nanette’s face before fading into nothingness. Emily noted it in passing as she cast a more complex spell of her own. A thought nagged at the back of her mind.

  She finished her charm, then yanked on the magic as hard as she could. Nanette might have protected herself against all kinds of spells, but she hadn’t thought to protect her boots! She fell over backwards as Emily’s magic caught hold, hitting the ground hard enough to hurt. A moment later, her boots came off, revealing oddly pockmarked feet. Emily had no time to gloat before Nanette moved her hand and hit Emily with a wave of magic, knocking her back into the wards and pinning her against them. It wasn’t quite enough to win the duel outright, but it trapped her...

  Emily thought fast as Nanette pulled herself to her feet, her eyes glittering with fury. Being knocked down so easily had to be a blow to her pride. Emily cast a cancelation spell, then darted to one side and generated a whole series of illusions of herself, each one running in a different direction. Unlike Shadye, Nanette was experienced enough not to fall for the illusions. Emily ducked sharply as another wave of magic spilled through the air, wiping out her doppelgangers until only one Emily was left. Moments later, she was pinned back against the wards again.

  Nanette advanced on her, slowly and steadily. “Is that the best you can do?” She asked. “I expected better from someone who has killed two Necromancers.”

  She lifted a hand and cast a series of spells, one after the other. Emily batted them away one by one, realizing that Nanette wasn’t actually trying to immobilize her and win, merely to force her to expend energy. She wanted Emily to become completely drained. The thought spurred her on; she gritted her teeth, allowed a transfiguration spell to strike her wards and summoned a fireball. Nanette jumped back as the fireball launched from Emily’s hand and flashed towards her, narrowly missing the outer edge of her wards. It struck the far side of the dueling ring and exploded, releasing a wave of heat.

  Nanette stared at her. “Are you mad?”

  Emily threw two more fireballs, carefully aiming to miss. The fireball was simple and unimaginative, Sergeant Miles had taught her, but it was also the most practical of the military spells. Nanette deflected the second fireball, just in time to have Emily hit her with a ward-breaking hex. Her body shimmered with green light as the hex burned through her wards one by one, ripping the spells apart. Emily thought for a moment that she’d won, then everything went dark.

  Panic gibbered at the corner of her mind as she realized Nanette had struck her blind. It was one of the prank spells that was utterly forbidden at Whitehall.

  She moved to one side blindly, desperately trying to cast the counterspell. It took two tries to make it work, far too long. Nanette had freed herself from Emily’s hex, probably through dumping her wards completely and starting again, and threw back something nasty of her own. Emily felt her hair try to stand on end as magic crackled around her, but her wards managed to keep the spell away from her body. And then Nanette slammed her back into the circle’s wards. Again.

  Emily knew she was running out of magic, yet she didn’t want to lose. Bracing herself, she recalled the spellwork she’d been taught in Wards and focused her mind. There was no anchorstone here to hold the spell in place; it wouldn’t last more than a few seconds, at best. But it would be long enough. She looked up at Nanette, her face twisted with a rage and bitterness Emily didn’t fully understand, and triggered the spell. A wave of... nothingness seemed to wash out from her as the anti-magic ward did its work.

  Nanette’s spell–and her wards–collapsed.

  Emily launched herself forward as the older girl recoiled, stunned, and slammed her fist into Nanette’s nose. The older girl hadn’t thought to worry about physical attack, let alone protect herself. She fell backwards, with Emily landing on top of her.

  For a long moment, Emily just stared down at Nanette. Nanette seemed equally surprised.

  “Well,” she said, finally. “Are you going to let me up, or are you going to ravish me instead?”

  Emily felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. She was suddenly very aware of just how Nanette’s body was pressing against hers. But she knew better than to just roll off her, not now.

  “Concede?” Emily asked, instead. She knew better than to let someone move before they had formally surrendered. “Give up?”

  Nanette smiled, surprisingly. “I concede,” she said. “Although someone could argue that was dirty fighting.”

  Emily shrugged. “There are no laws in war,” she said, quoting Sergeant Harkin. “And if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”

  She rolled off Nanette and stumbled to her feet. Nanette sat up; sweat stained her dark hair and blood leaked from her nose. She’d been forced to fight harder than she’d expected, Emily decided, although something continued to nag her at the back of her mind. But she was too tired to think about it, let alone decide what it meant.

  “I can help you clean up,” she offered, feeling a hint of guilt. “Or...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nanette said. “But can I ask you a favor?”

  Emily lifted an eyebrow. “You can ask,” she said. “But I may say no.”

  Nanette smiled. “Don’t tell anyone about this duel. You may discover it reflects badly on you.”

  “Is that really why you want me to keep it to myself?” Emily asked. “Out of concern for me?”

  Nanette shrugged. She would be mortally embarrassed if the school found out she’d been beaten by a Third Year. Her authority would be fatally undermined. But, Emily suspected, the fireballs alone would get her in real trouble if anyone found out she’d used them in a casual duel. And they’d certainly bent the rules against dueling without supervision. They both had good reasons to keep their mouths shut.

  “You don’t tell anyone and I won’t tell anyone,” Emily said. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Nanette said. “And I will even throw in a lesson or two for Frieda in exchange for her silence.”

  “Good,” Emily said.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  SOMEWHAT TO EMILY’S RELIEF, NANETTE STAYED out of Emily’s way as the holidays came to an end. She had no idea what she should say to the older girl, or even where they stood now Emily had won a duel. Frieda pointed out that Emily might well have won more than just the duel, given that it had clearly been a grudge match, but Emily wasn’t interested in supervising the dorm herself. Besides, questions would definitely be asked and she didn’t want to have to answer them.

  Eventually, the holidays came to an end. The students returned, just as they had at the start of the year, chatting happily about their vacations. Emily half-expected one of the tutors to assign essays on what the students did on their holidays, but–instead–the workload doubled, then tripled. The exams, it seemed, had separated the students who had genuinely advanced from those who had learned nothing. Emily found herself doing something she’d thought was impossible and working harder than ever before, fighting off exhaustion when she wasn’t actually in class.

  She wasn’t the only one. Several students received detentions for falling asleep in class, two were told to stand up in the ho
pes of keeping themselves awake and a number of others resorted to various potions to keep up with their workload. Emily overhead Nanette lecturing Helen and Olive on the dangers of using such potions on a regular basis before she forced them both to pour their bottles down the sink. It was a waste, Emily thought, but she understood the potential risks. No magician could afford to become addicted to potions.

  By the time Aurelius called her into his office, she felt like a nervous wreck.

  “The second semester is always like that,” Aurelius said, as soon as she sat down. She was too tired to try to hide it. “It’s our way of weeding the weak from the strong.”

  “I think you’re just working us too hard,” Emily said. The only real break she’d had had come during dueling, where the disputes between First Year students had forced the dueling mistresses to put Emily to one side as they struggled to keep the peace. “I don’t know how long we can keep up this pace.”

  “Long enough,” Aurelius said. He smiled as he sipped his drink. “It does tend to become easier at the end of the first month, normally.”

  Emily sighed. She was tired, cranky and her wrists ached after spending hours writing out a particularly complex edit to a paper. If the magical typewriter had worked without needing the spells to be constantly replenished... she sighed. She’d drawn out plans for a typewriter that could work without magic, but the craftsmen had yet to turn her notes into a workable design, let alone something that could be mass-produced. But once she had a typewriter, she swore to herself, she was damned if she would look back.

  “I hope you’re right,” she said, out loud. She was too tired for a proper conversation, let alone another lesson in dubious magics. “Is there any way I can get a detention that involves sleep?”

  “Not unless you have an accident with a sleeping potion,” Aurelius said, dryly. “When I was a lad, we had a practical joker who used to pretend to commit suicide by drinking the wrong potion, then having us carry him out as though he were dead. The tutors didn’t see the funny side.”