Lady Barb placed a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “I know how you feel,” she said, quietly. “But you have to understand the dangers. Don’t touch the books.”
“I won’t,” Emily repeated.
Lady Barb strode over to the bookshelves and pulled a book off the shelf, followed by three more. “These are for you to study, when you’re not brewing potions,” she said. “Be warned; I shall expect you to be perfect with the potions. The people we will be visiting will have no other sources, but us. A mistake could have lethal consequences.”
Emily gritted her teeth. Alchemy – which included potions – was not her best subject, despite a handful of private lessons with Professor Thande. She knew she could brew most of the First Year potions in controlled conditions, but she’d come alarmingly close to flunking the exam completely. If Lady Barb hadn’t forced her to take advantage of being a Second Year to use one of the private rooms to practice, she suspected she wouldn’t be able to make the potions she wanted now.
Lady Barb smiled at her expression. “I think you’ll do fine,” she said, placing the books on the table. “Consider this your reward.”
Emily glanced down at the covers. One of them was a guide to the Cairngorm Mountains, where they would be travelling, but the others...all three of them were on enchantment. She recognized one of the titles and winced, remembering the book she’d borrowed from Yodel that Master Tor had confiscated. But why did Lady Barb have a copy?
“You can read these books,” Lady Barb said, “but no experimenting without my agreement and supervision. I expect you to study them carefully, write out whatever you have in mind and then discuss it with me thoroughly before we actually try any experiments. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Emily said, flinching under Lady Barb’s gaze. The last time she had tried an unauthorized experiment, it had nearly got her expelled from Whitehall. If the Mimic hadn’t started its murder spree at the same time, she knew it would have been a great deal worse. “I won’t try anything without your presence.”
“Good,” Lady Barb said. She tapped the table. “You can take the books to your room, if you like, but don’t try to remove them from the house. The wards will take exception to it.”
She turned and marched out of the library. “There are three floors to this house,” she said, as Emily hurried after. “Don’t try to enter any locked doors; they’re rooms belonging to other members of my family and I can’t vouch for any wards or other unpleasant surprises they might have left behind. Your room is safe, but feel free to erect wards of your own – just remember to dismantle them before we leave the house for good.”
Emily followed her into a smaller room. “This is the guestroom,” Lady Barb said, by way of explanation. She dismantled a set of stasis wards surrounding the bed, which was larger than Whitehall’s standardized beds but smaller than the beds Emily had enjoyed in Zangaria. “There’s a bathtub in the next room, beside the toilet. You’ll have to use magic to heat the water, I’m afraid.”
“Ouch,” Emily said. Sergeant Miles had taught her a whole series of spells that would be useful on camping trips, starting with a simple spell to boil water, but he’d also warned her of the dangers. Making the spell too powerful was a good way to get burned. “No hot running water?”
Lady Barb snorted. “This isn’t Whitehall, you know,” she said. “And everyone who lives here has magic.”
Emily nodded. Running water was rare outside Whitehall and various aristocratic castles – and hot running water was even rarer. Imaiqah had told her once that she had fallen in love with Whitehall’s showers, even though they were weaker than showers on Earth. But, in many ways, Emily was the only student at Whitehall whose living conditions had actually worsened since coming to the school. Hot and cold running water was one of the things taken for granted on Earth.
“Get a good night’s sleep,” Lady Barb said, as she turned and headed towards the door. “My room’s at the bottom of the corridor, but don’t disturb me unless it is truly urgent. I don’t like being disturbed at night.”
“Me neither,” Emily said. She’d had to disturb Madame Razz more than once, when she’d had nightmares after the Mimic had been destroyed. The housemother had not been pleased at all. “And thank you.”
Lady Barb smiled, rather coldly. “This is the easy part,” she said. “It will get harder – much harder – once we’re on our way.”
She was right – again. Emily had done enough forced marches with the sergeants to know just how difficult it could be to walk from place to place carrying a bag. There were no cars in this world, no helicopters or airplanes. There was nothing more advanced than a horse and cart for the average non-magical citizen. And she still hadn’t learned how to teleport.
Pity no one flies broomsticks here, she thought, ruefully. But it would be way too easy to knock them out of the sky.
Emily watched Lady Barb go, closing the door behind her, before she turned to look around the room. It was bare, no more decorated than any of the other rooms, but there was a simplicity about it that appealed to her. She opened the door and walked down to the kitchen to pick up her bag, then walked back to the room, feeling the wards pressing in around her as she moved. The house felt far less friendly than Whitehall, no matter how much its mistress liked her guest. But the effect faded as soon as she was back in the guestroom.
She undressed rapidly, then opened her bag and produced the nightgown. She’d never been able to sleep naked in her life, certainly not since her mother had remarried. The house was empty, apart from Lady Barb, but Emily still couldn’t relax. She pulled the gown over her head, used a simple spell to clean her teeth and then reached back into the bag for a phial of sleeping potion. Placing it by the bedside, she climbed into bed and took a sip. As always, it tasted unpleasant. But it did its job.
And then the nightmares started.
Chapter Four
...THE MIMIC ADVANCES TOWARDS HER, A glowing mist of eerie blue-white light. Emily raises her hands to cast the counter-spell, but the Mimic doesn’t even flinch. It just keeps coming. She feels her mind start to shiver under the pressure of its magic, her thoughts scattering in preparation for being absorbed. The Grandmaster should be here, but he is gone...Emily stumbles, then falls to her knees. Her body starts to break up into dust...
Emily snapped awake, screaming.
For a long moment, she fought for control. Her entire body was drenched with sweat, soaking her gown. It took minutes to remember where she was and what she was doing, lying in an unfamiliar bedroom. Somehow, she managed to sit upright and push the blankets aside, then swing her legs over the side of the bed and stand. Her legs felt wobbly and unstable.
A dream, she told herself, firmly. It had all been a dream.
But her mind refused to believe it, not really. She’d had nightmares for the first month or two after the Mimic had been destroyed, but then they’d faded away. Now, however, with the change to a new bedroom...she gritted her teeth and walked towards the bathroom, hoping that the water wasn’t too cold. She needed to wash the sweat from her body and hope it helped her recover from the nightmare.
The bathroom was larger than she’d expected, with a large bathtub in one corner. Emily turned on the tap and splashed water on her face. The shock woke her up, allowing her to concentrate on casting a heating spell for the water. It bubbled rapidly and started to steam, but she kept pouring cold water into the tub until it was warm rather than boiling hot. As soon as she could, she removed her gown and climbed into the bathtub, washing the sweat from her body. The water, thankfully, helped her relax.
She winced at the half-remembered dream as she allowed the water to work on her tense muscles. There was much to admire in Whitehall and the surrounding world, but one thing she couldn’t admire was the complete absence of psychologists. She couldn’t talk to anyone about PTSD, not when any hint of mental instability was sure to cause a panic. Mental instability was associated with one particular kind of magician
-- necromancers. If she’d gone to someone – anyone – and confessed to any form of mental disorder, she suspected she wouldn’t like the consequences.
In some ways, it made sense. No one wanted the necromancers to discover a way to come to terms with their own madness. Shadye had been dangerously irrational, lashing out with a staggering amount of power...and completely fixated on the so-called Child of Destiny he’d kidnapped from Earth. If he’d been less focused on Emily, he might well have destroyed Whitehall completely and killed Emily herself. But it was no reassurance when she wanted someone to talk to.
Naked, she stepped out of the tub and dried herself with a spell, then glanced in the mirror. Her eyes looked tired, her face pale; she scowled in annoyance before she walked into the bedroom. Lady Barb hadn’t issued any instructions for what she should wear, so she reached for the standard student robes. Alassa might bemoan their shapelessness, but Emily had always found them reassuring. Besides, there was no need to wear anything underneath them apart from a set of equally shapeless panties and one of her makeshift bras.
Carefully, she opened the door and smiled as she smelled something cooking down below. It smelled faintly of bacon and eggs, although there was something else in the mix she didn’t recognize. She walked down and into the kitchen, where Lady Barb was frying something on the grill. The older woman looked up and frowned when she saw Emily.
“Rough night?”
Emily flushed. “You could hear me?”
“Your face tells it all,” Lady Barb said. She ladled eggs, bacon and fried bread onto a plate, then passed it to Emily. “What did you dream about?”
“The Mimic,” Emily confessed. The food smelt heavenly. “Is there no potion for barring nightmares?”
“You soon wouldn’t be able to sleep at all without it, if you took it more than once,” Lady Barb pointed out, dryly. She placed a plate of her own on the table, then sat down facing Emily. “The best cure for nightmares is to work hard, sadly.”
Emily nodded as she started to eat. The bacon tasted lovely, the eggs were nice...but there was something odd about the bread. It struck her, a moment later, that she wasn’t entirely sure it was bread. Or, if it was, it was a very strange kind of bread.
“We’re going to leave after eating breakfast,” Lady Barb said. “I suggest you wear your dress robes, unless you have a very strong objection.”
She smiled at Emily’s expression. “And saying you don’t like the style doesn’t count,” she added. “I expect you to wear them today, then perhaps you can leave them behind.”
Emily made a face. Her normal robes were brown, but the dress robes were golden and made her look faintly ridiculous. Only the fact that everyone else in Second Year and above was expected to wear them too made them even remotely bearable. Alassa looked good in them, but Alassa looked good in everything. Emily, on the other hand, had no real sense of vanity, yet she still felt absurd in the robes.
“You’ll be fine,” Lady Barb assured her. She finished her food and banished the dishes to the sink. “Go get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs in twenty minutes.”
Sighing, Emily obeyed. The dress robes weren’t comfortable, no matter how many charms she used to try to make them tolerable. She looked at herself in the mirror, then strode downstairs, unable to escape the feeling that she looked a giant target and nothing else. Lady Barb met her at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a long black set of robes that marked her as a sorceress. Emily felt a flicker of envy which she rapidly suppressed. Lady Barb had worked hard to become a combat sorceress.
“Two words of warning,” Lady Barb said, as she opened the door. “This is neutral ground, so be polite to everyone you meet. You don’t want or need more enemies. And, if you have to come back to the house, just remember what I said about the locked doors. The house is always more aggressive about guests when none of its family are home.”
Emily swallowed, then nodded.
Outside, the air was fresh and clean, smelling faintly of honeysuckle. Emily saw tiny insects buzzing through the garden, while birds flew high overhead, calling out to their fellows. The garden looked even less tidy in daylight, but she had to admit that it was all the more attractive. She’d seen organized gardens in Zangaria, where not a leaf was out of place, but they seemed unnatural compared to the wilderness.
“My grandmother used to grow her own herbs in the garden,” Lady Barb said, as they walked out the gate and started down a long road. “I didn’t inherit her talent, so I merely left the plants to grow as they saw fit. Whenever I wanted something from the garden, I’d just take it; sometimes, I’d let my cousins explore the garden for something they wanted for themselves.”
The road led downwards into a large valley. Emily sucked in her breath as she saw the tents coming into view, crammed together around a handful of larger houses. There were hundreds of people milling around, chatting and looking at stalls. Emily fought down the urge to run as she realized just how many people had gathered, instead forcing herself to follow Lady Barb down towards the gates. A ward brushed against her mind and she shuddered, before the magic parted to let her through.
“The only people allowed to enter are magicians,” Lady Barb said, softly. “But not all magicians. One of your friends would not be welcome here. Can you guess who?”
Emily remembered Lady Barb’s warnings about the books and nodded. “Imaiqah.”
“Wrong,” Lady Barb said. “It’s Alassa. She would not be welcome here.”
Emily blinked in surprise. “Why?”
Lady Barb shrugged. “She lucked into her position, purely through choosing the right parents,” she said. “The Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Great Houses fight for their positions, testing magical skill against magical skill. They make certain to breed their children with new magicians, just to strengthen their talents. Alassa’s father...will breed her with someone who suits his kingdom, not her magic. She wouldn’t be welcome here.”
“It sounds absurd,” Emily said.
“It’s the way they are,” Lady Barb said, without seeming to take offense. She smiled at Emily. “Welcome to the Annual Faire.”
Emily followed Lady Barb through the maze of stalls and performance artists, unable to believe the sheer variety. There were stalls overloaded with potion bottles, wands, magical tools and books. Behind them, hundreds of sellers chatted rapidly to prospective customers, their words blurring together into an omnipresent buzzing that threatened to overwhelm Emily’s senses. She couldn’t help pausing in front of one of the bookstalls and looking at the titles, although there didn’t seem to be anything too interesting. Most of the texts on offer were textbooks she’d seen at Whitehall.
“Most of the...more sensitive titles are kept hidden,” Lady Barb explained, as Emily followed her away from the stall. “If you happened to want a copy, you’d have to give the Bookseller’s Guild a request – and they’d find it for you, if they could. Some books you can’t have for love or money.”
She paused, nodding to another bookstall. “But you might have changed all that, Millie.”
Emily followed her gaze. The bookstall was crammed with books produced by a newfangled printing press, one of the later designs out of Zangaria. Unlike the previous stall, there were several copies of each title on display, just waiting for someone to pick them up. None of the titles looked particularly interesting, save two. One discussed famous magicians of the last century, the other claimed to be a history book. She picked the latter up and saw another book underneath. This one was a reprint of a textbook she recalled from First Year, one so rare that the only copies in Whitehall were in the library.
“Traditionalists say that the printing press takes something out of us,” the seller said, as she examined the book. “But for us, business is booming.”
Emily had to smile. The printing press had revolutionized the world already – and the pace of change was only going to increase. There were already dozens of newspapers in Zangaria and the rest of the Alli
ed Lands, while producing copies of older books would help knowledge to spread quickly from place to place. In ten years, perhaps less, every student at Whitehall would be able to have their own copies of each and every textbook required for their studies. Emily almost envied them. As exams grew nearer, competition for rare copies of books only grew more and more fierce.
“You can look for books later,” Lady Barb said, firmly. “There are quite a few other people you should see.”
She pointed towards a group of women sitting behind a long table. Somewhat to Emily’s surprise, they were wearing face veils that concealed almost everything. Their robes were even more shapeless than Whitehall’s standard robes. Behind them, a second set of women wore chainmail bikinis and carried long swords as well as staffs. They glared at anyone who paid too much attention to the first set of women. Emily’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement. The table was almost completely empty, despite its size.
“They’re the Virgin Sisterhood,” Lady Barb explained. “There are certain rites that can only be performed by a maiden, a virgin girl. The women in veils are the virgins, the ones who can and will do the work. Their sisters, the ones behind them, are their guardians and protectors. If someone wanted to harm a maiden, their sisters would die in their defense.”
Emily found herself giving the women a second look. It was hard to take a chainmail bikini seriously, no matter how dramatic it looked. But perhaps wearing them was a statement, reminding everyone of their femininity, rather than an attempt at protection. “They’re combat sorceresses?”
“Some of them are,” Lady Barb said. “Others...are mere fighters, which doesn’t stop them being dangerous.”
Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) Page 4
