Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks

by Christopher Nuttall

  “So you said,” Emily said.

  “It bears repeating,” Mistress Mauve snapped. “You must never forget that this is a raw piece of spellwork, put together on the go. You cannot treat it as a prank spell or something else that has been devised by teams of experts and then tested thoroughly until all of the glitches have been removed. One failure when you are casting the spell and you will die. If you play around with this spell, you will die. And if you act like an idiot while I’m trying to teach you, you will wish you were dead when I am finished with you.”

  She glared at Emily, then down at the table as if it had personally offended her. “This room should be heavily warded to prevent your classmates from causing havoc,” she said. She held up a hand, then waved it in an odd gesture. The wards, which had been a background noise so low Emily had been barely aware of them, snapped out of existence. “Right now, there are no wards in the room. I want you to watch as I cast the first set of spells.”

  Emily marvelled at the tutor as she stood up, using magic to shove all the desks and chairs against the walls, then started to cast the spells, slowly and carefully. She’d known the woman was both powerful and disciplined, but she hadn’t realized just how disciplined until she’d watched the chain of spellwork shimmer into existence. To cast the spells was hard enough, yet she was also showing Emily what she was doing...

  There was a flash of light, then another. Mistress Mauve vanished from one side of the classroom and reappeared on the other side of the room. Emily frowned, grimly. She doubted she could hold the spells together long enough to actually trigger them, even if she did have a destination in mind. And how did she designate the arrival site within the spells?

  “That was a very basic teleport,” Mistress Mauve said, as she strode back to the desk. “Do you have any questions before we start to begin?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “How do you designate your arrival site?”

  “If you know where you are going, you can guide your magic naturally,” Mistress Mauve said, flatly. “But if you don’t, you have to weave your location into the spell, then the destination. You have to tell it where the destination is in relation to your starting point before you go anywhere. It isn’t easy.”

  She seemed lost in thought for a long moment. “I imagine we will be going over the math in quite some detail,” she added. “No student outside Sixth Year has mastered it. I highly doubt you will be the first.”

  Once she had finished talking, she started Emily on a series of exercises. None of them were easy, although Mistress Mauve showed a surprising amount of patience as Emily worked her way through them, only pointing out–once or twice–when Emily made a major mistake. By the time she was finished, Emily was having her doubts about ever getting the spells to work properly, at least before she’d left school. They were easily the most complex spells she’d yet seen... and to think that Void and Lady Barb had cast them with ease.

  You have a lot to learn, she thought, bitterly. And the sooner the better.

  She discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that the maths for calculating her destination were relatively easy. Earth had taught her quite a bit of math beyond that used by the Allied Lands, much of which was applicable to teleporting. It did require some imagination, along with the ability to think in three dimensions, but it was simple enough once she’d worked out what she was actually being told to do. But she still wasn’t sure she understood how the spell actually worked.

  “You need to focus your mind, then start testing the spells,” Mistress Mauve said. “And be careful.”

  Emily obeyed, but mastering the chain of spells was almost impossible. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t muster the spells, or even set them up inside a wand for later use. The tutor looked oddly confused–Emily’s skill with the maths had baffled her–but talked Emily through each step, time and time again. But by the time her private lesson came to an end, Emily hadn’t progressed very far.

  “Do not practice these spells without my supervision,” Mistress Mauve said. “I don’t care who tells you to practice, or what they say about it. Do not practice them without me, or I won’t be answerable for the consequences.”

  “I won’t,” Emily promised. She rose to her feet, then paused. “And thank you.”

  The teacher scowled at her. “I have never been ordered to teach a student spells that might well hurt her badly, if she managed to bungle the casting,” she said. “Not until now, at least, and it does not sit well with me. If you master the spells, if you manage to use them safely, you can thank me then. Until then...”

  She pointed at the door. “Out,” she ordered. A wave of her hand replaced the wards around the classroom. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

  Emily stepped outside, right into the middle of a fight. Several students, First or Second Years, were battling it out, exchanging spells with more enthusiasm than skill. Emily hastily raised her wards, then did her best to sneak past the combatants before either side could take aim at her. But one girl, lying on the ground and crying heavily, caught her eye and forced her to stop. Shaking her head, Emily walked towards her, silently daring the combatants to try to stop her. Instead, they retreated in opposite directions.

  She knelt down next to the girl and helped her to sit upright. “They hate me,” the girl sobbed, tears staining her First Year robes. A large badge on her chest proclaimed her to be a member of one of the Great Houses. “They really hate me.”

  Emily gave her a quick once over. There was nothing wrong with the girl, apart from scraped knees, but the mildest injuries often seemed the most painful. She thought for a moment, then sighed inwardly and wrapped her arms around the girl. What had just happened to her? Or who, for that matter, had picked on her? But there had been a fight going on...

  She sighed, then stood and helped the girl to her feet. “I’ll walk you back to your dorm,” she said, grimly. She hated bullies. The girl was clearly defenseless. She hadn’t even had a wand in hand. “And then you can tell your Patron who did this to you.”

  The girl clung to Emily’s robes as they walked through the darkened corridors. Two proctors passed, their hooded faces utterly invisible. Emily shivered as she felt the odd traces of magic surrounding them, but forced herself to look away. A handful of other students walked past them before they reached the hall, which was closed. Emily gently disengaged the girl from her robes, then pushed her towards the door and turned to walk back to her hall. Behind her, she heard the girl start to cry again.

  There was no one else in sight until she finally reached Raven Hall, where Nanette stood at the door. Emily frowned–it was hardly dinnertime, let alone bedtime–then sighed as Nanette motioned for Emily to follow her into her office. They’d barely exchanged two words since the duel, choosing to ignore one another as much as possible. Emily had a nasty feeling that Nanette would have preferred to keep her distance and that her calling Emily now was not good news.

  “Your Shadow has been causing more trouble,” she said, bluntly. “It is suggested you deal with her.”

  Emily swore under her breath. The girl she’d rescued had been a First Year from one of the Great Houses. Had she been obnoxious when she’d been in charge, then utterly demoralized when the common-born First Years had learned how to fight back? Alassa had gone through much the same, Emily recalled, but Emily had never felt like making matters worse. And then she’d befriended Alassa instead of keeping her as an enemy.

  You idiot, she told herself. Didn’t you realize that they would want to do more than just defend themselves?

  She sighed, then left the office and walked into the sleeping dorm. Frieda was standing in the Silent Corner, her hands on her head, next to two other Shadows. Emily guessed their Patrons were still in class. She called Frieda to her and watched the other girls shake. They would have to wait and, as Emily knew from bitter experience, the waiting could be worse than the punishment.

  “You’re getting out of control,” she said, once she had ere
cted a handful of wards. She understood the impulse to just hit back, to make the bullies become the bullied, but it would be disastrous. The Administrator had tried to warn her, she realized now. “You cannot keep hitting back at them.”

  Frieda eyed her, sullenly. “Traitor.”

  “And who,” Emily demanded, fighting down her temper, “taught you to fight in the first place?”

  “You,” Frieda said. She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “So you should be,” Emily said. “How long until this stops?”

  “Until they stop treating us like... like dirt,” Frieda said. She smiled, suddenly. “But we are winning, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t think anyone wins such a war,” Emily said. If she could move to Frieda’s defense, what stopped the other Patrons from getting involved? Or the tutors simply running out of patience and expelling more students? “In the future, I want you to defend yourself, nothing more.”

  “You have to understand,” Frieda pleaded. “They need to learn, too...”

  “And when,” Emily snapped, “does it stop?”

  She understood. She understood all too well. But she also knew it couldn’t go on.

  “Frieda, listen to me,” Emily said. “If this goes on, if none of the tutors will do anything to stop you, you’ll become just as bad as they are. You’ll become a worse bully than Ten!”

  “How?” Frieda asked. She sighed, loudly and dramatically. “I don’t have money or connections or...”

  Wrong. Frieda had one, Emily knew; Emily herself. But Emily had her limitations. And she wouldn’t be at Mountaintop next year. And if Aurelius was refusing to do anything about Frieda because of Emily, next year the younger girl would be horrifyingly vulnerable. Emily wondered, briefly, if she could convince Frieda to transfer to Whitehall. But what would happen to her there?

  “And if the tutors do stop you, you’ll wind up expelled,” Emily snapped. To be expelled from Whitehall was her worst nightmare, even if she did have an entire barony to use as a home and base of future studies. She loved Whitehall. “Where would you go then?”

  Frieda glowered at her. “Don’t you understand?”

  “Of course I understand,” Emily said, wearily. “I understand the urge to just hit back and keep hitting. But I also understand that this isn’t going to end well for anyone.”

  She took a breath. “Stay out of the fighting from now on,” she ordered. “Please.”

  “I can try,” Frieda said, reluctantly. She looked oddly hopeful for a second. “But what happens if I get attacked?”

  “Defend yourself,” Emily told her, meeting Frieda’s eyes. Judging by the rules she’d been taught for dueling, goading someone younger into issuing a challenge was acceptable behavior. “And nothing more.”

  Frieda looked mutinous. “You say you’re on my side, then you refuse to help me,” she said, spitefully. Her words stung more than Emily cared to admit. “Which side are you on?”

  “You need to worry about completing your schooling, learning how to master the magics that will let you have a place in this world and suchlike,” Emily said. It sounded unconvincing and she knew it. “It isn’t about sides.”

  She considered–quite seriously–draping Frieda over her knee. It was well within her rights as Frieda’s Patron. But she didn’t want to punish the girl, not really. She understood Frieda’s feelings all too well. And besides, given how badly Frieda had been treated in life, Emily would have had to thrash the girl well beyond the line just to make an impression on her. She wouldn’t - she couldn’t - do that to anyone.

  Shaking her head, she reached for a book and started to read. There would be time to visit the library later, after dinner, by which time everything would have calmed down a little and they could get their food in peace. If not... she cursed, not for the first time, the attitude the Nameless World showed to what Earth would unhesitatingly call bullying. Everyone in the whole affair needed more than a little attitude adjustment.

  Starting with the tutors, she thought. Politics shouldn’t play any role in how a school was run, although she wasn’t naïve enough to think they didn’t. Ten’s parents had probably whined and moaned to her tutors after Frieda had started fighting back. And she would have been very surprised if Aurelius was the only tutor who had his eye on becoming MageMaster of Mountaintop. Whitehall’s Grandmaster wielded staggering amounts of political power as well as his personal and positional power. It was hardly a stretch to think that the MageMaster might have similar amounts of power, a reward well worth any effort to take it.

  And Aurelius brought me to Mountaintop, perhaps without the approval of all the tutors, she added, in the privacy of her own head. She couldn’t imagine Zed happily agreeing to bring Emily to Mountaintop. A gamble that could easily cost him all his hopes...

  She sighed in frustration, then lost herself in the book.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  EMILY CAREFULLY CAST THE FINAL SPELL - and waited.

  The mixture in her wok bubbled once, then came to a simmer. Magic flickered over the purple surface, easy to sense now that everything had fallen into place, then stabilized the liquid and held it steady. Emily let out a sigh of relief and raised her hand.

  Zed turned and walked towards her table, his eyes shifting left and right as he checked on the other students. He never left anyone completely unwatched.

  “Let me see,” he said. He eyed Emily’s wok, carefully. “It appears to be stable.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Emily said, relieved.

  Zed smiled. “Have you prepared the parchment and the contract?”

  Emily scrabbled within her desk for the two pieces of parchment she’d prepared earlier, when it was clear she was approaching the final stage of producing Manaskol. One was blank, ready to be turned into a contract, while the other held a draft version of the contract she’d written in pencil. Zed took the latter, read it quickly, and then passed it back to her without comment. Several of the other students had made mistakes with their contracts that could have been disastrous, if he’d let them actually try to make the contracts magically binding. Emily reread it anyway, just to be sure. She wouldn’t entirely put it past Zed to deliberately allow her to make a harmless, but humiliating mistake.

  “Add the base liquid, then start writing the contract,” Zed ordered. “And be careful.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said.

  She dripped water into the wok until the mixture started to take on the consistency of ink, then lowered her wand into the liquid and triggered the spell. There was a surge of magic–for a moment, she thought she’d messed up again and it was about to explode–before the mixture stabilized again. Bracing herself, she retrieved an old-fashioned ink pen from her desk and lowered it into the mixture, sucking some of the ink into the container. And only then she placed the second piece of parchment on the desk and started to write.

  “Any fool can sign a piece of paper,” Master Tor had said, nearly a year ago. “In order to make a contract magically binding, the signer has to know what he’s signing–and sign it in such a manner to make the magic bind itself to him.”

  Emily hadn’t understood at the time just how complex the process of creating contracts actually was. It needed the magic ink–she kept the smile off her face at that thought–and very careful drafting, even now. Ironically, her introduction of English letters might lead to more contractual problems in the future if more people learned to read and write. There would certainly be many more contracts, she suspected, and the magic bound into the parchment made it possible for them to apply to mundanes. But the contracts were still not as reliable as sworn oaths.

  She finished writing out the sheet of paper and dried it with a simple spell. The words looked loose and untidy compared to her normal handwriting–she wasn’t used to using such a pen–but they were easy enough to read. Whoever signed the contract had to wear a black shirt for the next few hours or suffer an itchy nose, rather than any of the dire consequences Master
Tor had warned were used to enforce more serious contracts.

  Zed took the contract, examined it carefully, and smiled.

  “Very good, Lady Emily.

  Emily smiled back, then carefully bottled and labelled her Manaskol. Zed had already told the class they would be paid a small amount for each successful brew, based on how valuable it was to magical society. As soon as she was finished, she cleaned up her workspace and headed for the door, as Zed had dismissed the students who had completed their work before her. But she was called back. Emily flushed, while a handful of remaining students tittered.

  “Come back here at the end of the period,” Zed ordered. “We have much to discuss.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said, checking her watch. There were twenty minutes until the class was officially supposed to end. “I’ll be back.”

  She made her escape, then headed to the refectory for a mug of Kava and some fresh fruit. Inside, there were a handful of older students, some eying Emily with obvious curiosity. Emily kept her distance–some of the older students she’d met at the quarrel, both boys and girls, had seemed more interested in her than she liked–and found a couple of apples to eat, then sat down to cut them apart. Sergeant Harkin had insisted, firmly, that she try to eat at least two pieces of fruit a day. Emily had to admit she’d felt better since she’d started to follow the older man’s advice.

  The thought made her feel melancholy. She’d killed Sergeant Harkin–and even though she knew she’d had no choice, she still felt guilty. He’d been tough and fearsome and utterly merciless to his students, and yet she’d liked him. Unlike so many others, he hadn’t been wrapped up in his own skill and strength or inclined to abuse it. Or, for that matter, to single Emily out for special treatment. It was pretty much the last thing she wanted.

  She sighed, finished her drink and walked back to the alchemy classroom. Lerida, the only student left in the room looked rather distraught as she entered, the mixture in her wok having somehow turned into an ashy mess that was clearly useless for anything other than a teaching aid. Judging from Zed’s dark expression, Lerida had messed up completely and had detention, as well as a long essay to write on precisely what she had done wrong. Emily felt a flicker of pity as Lerida made her escape, which she hastily pushed aside. Few of her schoolmates at Mountaintop wanted pity.