Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Just me and my tutor,” Emily lied. She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You should,” Bernard said, earnestly. “It might help you come to terms with losing him.”

  Emily sighed. Talking about it was the last thing she wanted to do. If she was caught in a lie, she would be in real trouble. But she didn’t dare tell the truth.

  “Let him rest in peace,” she said, instead. “Were those creatures going after mundanes too?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Bernard said. “But we rarely spoke to mundanes.”

  Emily cocked her head. “You never went back to see your family?”

  “They wouldn’t want to see me,” Bernard said. “Having a magician in the family isn’t a good thing, Emily. They see it as a sign of tainted blood. My father ... my father wondered if he was truly my father. Magicians ... don’t have good reputations when it comes to women.”

  “Lord Wolfe said that magicians had a tendency to go mad,” Emily said. And Bernard had said that Lord Gila was on the verge of going mad. “Is that what they meant?”

  “Among other things,” Bernard said. “If I didn’t have my father’s nose--” he pushed his finger against the tip of his nose “--I would wonder if someone had seduced my mother nine months before I was born.”

  “There are paternity tests,” Emily commented. “Can’t you check ...?”

  “I have no idea how,” Bernard said. He looked down at the rug for a long moment. “And even if I did know, I wouldn’t want to know. My father discarded me the day my magic first started to reveal itself. Master Whitehall is my father now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Emily said, seriously.

  She rubbed her forehead again. There was something about the whole explanation that didn’t make sense, something she was missing, but she was too tired to put her finger on it. It was easy to believe that a mundane family might discard a magician child—Frieda had certainly been discarded and Imaiqah might have gone the same way—yet something was nagging at the back of her mind. What was it?

  Bernard looked back at her. “Tell me about your family.”

  Emily winced, inwardly. She should have seen that question coming.

  “Father died when I was very young,” she said. She had no idea what had happened to her real father, but she’d certainly never seen him again. “Mother remarried. My stepfather didn’t like me very much, so ... things were a little rough. And then my tutor found me and took me in.”

  “That was lucky,” Bernard said. “You would have died in the cold, if he threw you out.”

  Emily nodded. Her stepfather had been thoroughly unpleasant, but a stepfather from the Nameless World might well have been worse. No one would have given a damn if he’d kicked an unwanted girl-child out of his house or sold her to a passing merchant or a brothel, particularly if he’d had children of his own. The cold logic of survival, in the Cairngorms, dictated no less. Old folks sometimes walked outside to die—or were thrown out—because their families could no longer afford to feed them. It still horrified her to see just how casually some were sacrificed so that others could live.

  “He gave you a good grounding in magic,” Bernard added. “I was surprised he didn’t show you more.”

  “He was never interested in socializing,” Emily said. “If he hadn’t sensed me, I suspect he would have remained alone for the rest of his life.”

  “I see,” Bernard said. “And did he ...?”

  It took Emily a moment to realize what he meant. “He wasn’t that sort of person,” she said, flushing. None of her tutors had ever shown that sort of interest in her. “He was like a father to me.”

  Bernard looked relieved. “I’m sorry.”

  He sighed as he rose to his feet. “We should go find Robin and help clear the corridors,” he said. “A few hours of clearing away the nastier traps should keep us on our toes.”

  Emily nodded, happy that he wasn’t asking any more questions. Hopefully, he wouldn’t pry further into her cover story. She doubted it would survive if he kept poking away at it, looking for discrepancies. She simply knew too little about her new environment to tell convincing lies.

  And the more I lie to them, she thought as she rose and followed him, the harder it will be to keep everything straight.

  Chapter Eight

  “BE CAREFUL,” ROBIN CALLED, AS THEY walked up the stairs. He stood above them, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “There’s something very nasty at the top.”

  Emily frowned as she sensed the swirling magic. A young apprentice stood at the top of the stairs, trembling like a leaf. He wasn’t frozen, she realized; his feet were stuck to the ground. She wondered if he’d had the sense to try to remove his shoes and escape, leaving them trapped, but a closer look told her it would be futile. Bending over to try to undo his shoes would merely trap his hands too.

  “Bastards,” Bernard said. “Who the hell puts a trap like that at the top of the stairs?”

  “Someone who wanted us to be caught,” Robin said, dryly. He gave Emily a sardonic smile. “Do you think you can break the spell?”

  Emily frowned as she reached the top of the stairs. The spell—the booby trap—was very much like spells she’d seen in martial magic, although it looked as though it shouldn’t have endured for very long. And yet, it was more advanced than anything she’d seen from Whitehall and Bernard. She couldn’t help wondering if it was actually drawing power from the nexus point. There didn’t seem to be any other source of power.

  “I think so,” she said. She allowed herself a moment to study the spellwork. A simple cancellation spell ought to be enough—indeed, she was surprised Robin and the other apprentice hadn’t already tried. Unless they didn’t know how to cancel spells ... it was possible, she supposed. None of their spells seemed very well crafted. “Let me try?”

  Robin shrugged, expansively. “Why not?”

  Emily gave him a dark look. She had the feeling she was being tested—and judged—but there was no way she could simply leave the apprentice stuck permanently. If Whitehall and his commune didn’t know how to cancel spells, they’d have to use brute force to destroy the trap ... which might injure or kill the victim. She cast a basic cancellation spell and watched, holding her breath, as the trap faded back into the ether. The apprentice jerked free a moment later and darted back down the stairs.

  “He thought he was going to be trapped permanently,” Robin said. He sounded amused, rather than concerned. “I told him not to take anything for granted.”

  “Good advice,” Bernard said. He looked at Emily. “How did you do that?”

  “All spells have a weak point,” Emily said, vaguely. “Lord Wolfe would probably be able to explain better than I.”

  Bernard frowned. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

  “Maybe,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure when such spells had been invented. Lord Wolfe might well be able to duplicate it though, once he heard what she’d done. “We can take a look at it later, if you like.”

  Robin grinned, showing teeth. “We just broke into this floor,” he said. He pulled a wooden stave from his knapsack, pressed it against his torch until it caught light and then passed it to Bernard. “There was a particularly unpleasant trap down at the bottom of the stairs. Master Drake had to untangle it for us.”

  He must have thrust his magic into direct contact with the trap, Emily reasoned. She could have done that—she had done that, during exams—but why take the risk? Their magic seems to be far more brute-force than ours.

  “And now we have a whole new world to explore,” Bernard said. He grinned back at Robin, then motioned down the corridor. “Shall we?”

  Emily followed the two men as they inched down the corridor, checking constantly for other booby traps. Whoever had last occupied the castle, she decided, as a series of traps were uncovered and disarmed, had to have been both skillful and paranoid—and, perhaps, a little insane. There were traps scattered everywhere, but there
didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their placement. One was lurking behind a door, while another was hidden on a window frame or by a fireplace. Some of them were certain to catch a mundane who wandered into the castle; others were all too likely to be nothing more than wasted effort.

  Bernard put her thoughts into words. “Who hides a booby trap up a chimney?”

  Someone who doesn’t want a visit from Santa Claus, Emily thought.

  Robin snorted. “Someone could sneak through the chimneys if they wanted to pass unnoticed,” he said. He peered up the shaft thoughtfully. “They’d climb up to where this chimney merges with another, then crawl back down into the next room.”

  “Pretty uncomfortable if there’s a fire in the grate,” Bernard pointed out.

  Emily suspected that Robin was right, but she kept her thoughts to herself. King Randor’s castle was crammed with secret passageways, some intended to keep the servants hidden from their lords and masters, others designed to allow the royal family to move around unseen. Using a chimney struck her as risky, but the shaft was easily large enough to allow her to scramble up, if there were enough handholds. Dropping back down into the next room wouldn’t be too difficult, either.

  Unless there was a fire, she thought, wryly. The smoke would make navigating the chimney difficult.

  It was hard to believe that she was in the castle that would eventually become Whitehall School. The rooms they swept for traps were completely empty, nothing left behind to betray their original function; the corridors were bare stone, without even the omnipresent runes she’d seen on the lower levels. Robin and Bernard chatted as they walked, but they started to speak in hushed tones as their torches began to flicker and die. The atmosphere grew more oppressive the further they moved into the castle.

  “We need better lighting,” Robin said, as his torch died completely. “I don’t know who built this place, but they didn’t know anything about lighting a castle.”

  Emily had her doubts. A mind capable of creating the booby traps they’d disarmed would certainly be capable of crafting a light globe, with or without tapping the nexus point. They shouldn’t have had any problems lighting the castle. She was tempted to cast a spell herself, but she held back. Robin might have a different solution in mind.

  Bernard looked doubtful as the shadows grew and lengthened. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  Robin smirked. “I don’t know,” he said. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking I’m thinking?”

  He reached into his knapsack and produced a small, leather-bound book. Emily recoiled in shock as Robin sat down, unable to hide her reaction to the pervasive aura of evil surrounding the book. It rolled off it in waves, a chilling sense that even touching it would mean eternal damnation. She’d had bad reactions before, touching books she knew to have something to do with the dark arts, but this was terrifying. Merely looking at the tome made her want to wash herself thoroughly.

  “Master Whitehall will not approve,” Bernard said, as Robin opened the book. “He ...”

  “He isn’t my master,” Robin said. He held up the book, showing a blood-red rune dominating the first page. “And my master approves of demons.”

  “That’s a Book of Pacts,” Emily said.

  Robin frowned. “You’ve never seen one before?”

  “No,” Emily said. Aurelius had made use of demons—he’d even shown Emily books about demons—but if he’d had a Book of Pacts, he’d never shown it to her. “I’ve heard of them, but ...”

  “Each page is devoted to a single demon,” Robin said. He opened the book to a second page, revealing a very different rune. No, Emily recalled; they were sigils, not runes. “I summoned each of these demons and bound them to my will, allowing me to call on them whenever I need them to work a particularly complex piece of magic.”

  “At a price,” Bernard said in edged tones. “What do you pay for these spells?”

  “A little blood,” Robin said. “I have plenty.”

  Emily blanched. She, of all people, had good reason to know precisely what someone could do with a sample of her blood. Whoever had summoned her down to the nexus chamber and thrust her into the nexus point had worked through all of her protections, even though she’d spent the last four years mustering all the defenses she could. Robin was being careless—hideously careless. She opened her mouth to point out just how many horrible things she could do to him with a drop of his blood, but closed it without speaking. If he didn’t know the dangers by now, her words would merely give him ideas.

  “And a little of your strength,” Bernard said. “Is it worth it?”

  “Yes,” Robin said. “You spent weeks learning to levitate a single stone into the air, didn’t you? I spent an hour learning how to summon a demon and have it levitate the stone for me.”

  He smiled up at Emily. “Lord Whitehall believes that demons are dangerous,” he said, darkly. “But they are so very useful.”

  “That’s the trap,” Bernard said, flatly. But he didn’t sound as though he believed his own words. “If the demon is doing everything for you, how will you ever be able to do it for yourself?”

  “Demons have shown me how to work spells,” Robin said.

  Emily frowned. “What spells?”

  “A few,” Robin said, vaguely. He gave her a challenging look. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  Bernard snickered. “Smooth ...”

  Emily felt her cheeks heat. “It would depend on what spells you have to offer.”

  “I have a lot to offer,” Robin said, complacently.

  He placed the book on the floor, then drew a small knife from his belt and made a cut on his hand, allowing the blood to drip onto the sigil. Emily felt a sudden surge of magic—tainted magic—and stepped backwards sharply until she felt her back pressing against the stone wall. Robin tossed her a mischievous look, then began to chant in a language she didn’t recognize. The magic built up rapidly, gathering above the book until it coalesced into a tiny imp. It looked vaguely human—the haze of magic was so strong that it was hard to pick out any details—but the proportions were all wrong. And the sense of malice surrounding the creature was terrifyingly strong.

  “Well, now,” it said. It looked male, insofar as any gender could be assigned to such an odd apparition, but the voice was distinctly female. “I have not seen you in many days.”

  Emily blanched. Days? Not weeks or months or years? Robin called upon this creature regularly? Was he out of his mind?

  “I bind you by rod and book, by blood and light,” Robin said. Emily looked at him—it was preferable to looking at the demon—and saw a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. He might act as though it was all a game, but he was clearly nowhere near as confident as he pretended. “I bind you ...”

  “Come now,” the demon said. Its voice became ingratiating. “There’s no need for such words between old friends.”

  “Our way needs to be lit,” Robin said. He hunched forward until he was almost squatting in front of the demon. “I require a spell of light.”

  The demon giggled. “But of course, my son,” it said. “And what will you offer in return?”

  Robin made another cut on his hand, allowing the blood to rest on his palm. The demon leaned forward and licked the blood. Emily’s gorge rose and she turned, hurrying out of the room and down the corridor as the demon’s hissing laughter echoed in her ears. The sense of its presence only grew stronger, pervading the atmosphere with something unbearably foul, then it was gone, as if someone had simply flicked a switch. Emily stopped and leaned against the wall, breathing hard. Robin and Master Chambers had to be completely out of their minds. Using anything from that creature would be utterly disastrous.

  And a demon led them here, she thought, numbly. She closed her eyes as her body began to shake. There has to be a nasty sting in the tail somewhere.

  “Emily,” Bernard called. “Are you all right?”

  Emily forced
herself to stand upright, opening her eyes. Bernard was hurrying down the corridor towards her, Robin following at a more sedate pace. The look on his face reminded her of the drug addicts and drunkards she’d seen on the streets, back on Earth. A light globe, flickering and flaring, hung above his head, pulsing brightly enough to make Emily’s eyes hurt. It reminded her, all too well, of the light globes she’d tried to create after the duel, when she’d pumped too much power into the spell.

  “I’ve been better,” she said, looking at Robin. “How ... how can you stand those creatures?”

  Robin shrugged. “I was nervous, the first time I summoned a demon,” he said. “But I soon got used to calling on them.”

  He elbowed Bernard. “But his master won’t let him summon a demon.”

  “Shut up,” Bernard said.

  “I could show you how,” Robin said. He looked at Emily. “Or you. Do women call on demons?”

  “I don’t need demons,” Emily said, tartly. She eyed Robin nervously, unable to comprehend how he could summon and use such creatures. And now ... he was acting like someone who’d had far too much to drink. She nodded up at the light globe? “Did it teach you that spell?”

  “Yes,” Robin said. “It’s better than the one my master uses.”

  Emily eyed the globe doubtfully. It was still brightening and darkening, seemingly at random. She wanted to cast a spell to analyze the spellwork, but she didn’t quite dare, not when it would reveal far too much about her to the boys. Robin gave her a wink, then directed the light globe down the next corridor, the pulsing light driving back the shadows.

  “I can teach you the spell,” he called back. “But it will cost you.”

  Bernard looked sullen as Robin hurried ahead. “It would take me weeks to master such a spell,” he said, sourly. Emily would have been surprised if she hadn’t seen how clumsy many of Lord Whitehall’s spells actually were. “And he gets it in bare minutes!”

  He strode off down the corridor, leaving Emily staring after him. Bernard wasn’t stupid, she knew; how could he envy Robin? But then, she had a feeling that she understood him all too well. Robin appeared to be moving ahead by leaps and bounds, while Bernard was stuck repeating the same spells over and over again until he understood them perfectly. And her presence probably didn’t help much either, she had to admit. She’d not only distracted Bernard’s master from his education, she was both a woman and a superior magician. He would have to be more than human if he didn’t resent it, just a little.