Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Lord Alfred never saw magic as the be-all and end-all of his life. He saw it as nothing more than a tool, one of many. And it is that approach, I think, that preserved him from the fate of so many other DemonMasters. He went to his death knowing that his death would serve a greater purpose. And for that I honor him.”

  Emily found herself blinking away tears as other masters—even Master Chambers—rose to add their own recollections of the dead. Lord Alfred had helped a young man win the love of a good woman, Master Drake said; Master Chambers insisted that Lord Alfred had been involved in a project to tap the power of the moon by dragging it down to the planet. Emily doubted that was true—dragging the moon down would have destroyed the entire world—but she had to admit it was a good story. And there were more ...

  No wonder there are so many stories about him, she thought. They just kept growing in the telling.

  “Life goes on,” Whitehall said, once the bier had burned to ashes. “It gives me great pleasure to tell you that my daughter Julianne will marry Apprentice Bernard in five days, when the summer is at its height. Their children will carry on our legacy. Life goes on.”

  “Life goes on,” the crowd echoed.

  “Tomorrow, we will start organizing formal lessons,” Whitehall concluded. “But tonight, we will remember the man who gave his life to allow us to proceed.”

  He lifted his glass in a silent toast, then drank the wine. Emily hesitated, then took a tiny sip from her own glass. It tasted smoky and left a burning trail down her throat, as if someone had distilled fire. She cursed herself under her breath. Alcohol and she didn’t mix, even if it was a wake.

  “We’d better go back to bed,” Julianne said, as the crowd started to disperse. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  “I know,” Emily said. She remembered trying to teach Tama and scowled. “But at least the rest should have less to unlearn.”

  Chapter Thirty

  AN APPRENTICE RAN AROUND THE CORNER and stopped dead as he stepped on a rune, his entire body frozen in place. Another followed, running straight into the first apprentice and winding up stuck too. Emily wondered, as she watched from her position, if all eight of her pupils were about to wind up stuck together, but the third apprentice was a little more careful and managed to avoid the trap before it was too late. He walked around the trapped apprentices and hurried down the corridor, eyes scanning right and left for more traps. Emily smiled to herself as he neatly avoided a second trap just before running right into the third trap and finding himself stuck to the wall.

  And he doesn’t seem to have considered the virtues of freeing the others, she thought, as the fourth apprentice ran right into the first and second, winding up stuck too. The fifth, who seemed to have actually listened when Emily told them they needed to work together, took the time to destroy the rune, freeing all three of the trapped apprentices. They landed in a heap, stunned and disoriented. But at least they’ve learned something useful.

  She put her fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly as she stepped out of concealment. It had been Bernard’s idea to teach the apprentices through playing games and, Emily had to admit, it was working surprisingly well. But then, most of her pupils had almost no formal training at all. They had nothing to unlearn. Tama and his ilk were still reluctant to admit that she had anything to teach them.

  “As you can see,” she said, “runes may not look flashy, but they pose a danger to even experienced magicians.”

  A bell rang, the sound echoing through the corridor. “It’s time for you to proceed to your next class,” she added, after a moment. “And I strongly suggest you concentrate hard on your brewing.”

  She watched them go, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Julianne. Even the inexperienced apprentices still believed that brewing was women’s work, although Emily had a feeling that would change once it became obvious that skilled brewers were also better at casting spells. And they would be, too. Potions—and alchemy, when it came into being—taught students how to modulate the flow of magic into the cauldrons as well as how to brew miracles.

  Turning, she strode along the corridor and down the flight of stairs into the underground chambers. Master Wolfe had rigged up a complex set of wards to keep unwanted guests—including the new masters and apprentices—out of the area, but Emily had a private suspicion that she could have hacked her way into the network even without being one of the school’s founders. Wolfe’s spellwork was nowhere near as complex as Professor Lombardi’s.

  She glanced into the library as she passed—Master Wolfe had rigged up another set of complex wards to protect the books—and then made her way into the statue chamber. It had taken her three days—she’d started the day after they’d returned from the Gathering—to isolate the chamber from the rest of the complex, then ensure that she—and only she—could walk through the wards and into the room. It wouldn’t do to have her vanish from the castle, only to be replaced by a statue of herself. Someone was bound to ask a few awkward questions. She grinned at the thought as she sat on the stone floor, then slowly started to input her spells into the wards. If they drew power from the nexus point—and they would—they should last long enough for her past self to touch the statue.

  And no one will be able to enter without me, she thought. I’ll remain isolated from history until my past self comes along.

  She cursed under her breath as the spellwork took shape and form. There was no escaping the simple fact that she’d used far too much guesswork. Turning herself into a statue was easy; freezing her own thoughts, so she wouldn’t have to endure nearly a thousand years of complete immobility, was a great deal harder. If she wasn’t very careful, there would come a time when she literally became a statue, her thoughts evaporating into nothingness. It had been hard enough keeping her thoughts together when she’d turned herself into a rat ...

  And none of the prank spells can be adapted to fit the situation, she told herself. I’d spend too long trapped in stone, unable even to scream.

  An hour later, she rose to her feet, testing and retesting the spells. They should work, she told herself, although the only way to be sure was to do it. If she said her goodbyes after the wedding, perhaps after Bernard and Julianne had a week together, she could slip down to the chamber and freeze herself in stone. History would add its own gloss to the Dark Lady, she was sure; there would be nothing to suggest, by her time, that the Dark Lady had been a traveler from the future. And some of the stories she’d read had been quite shocking, when the storytellers even admitted that the Dark Lady had existed. The first female apprentice ... or Whitehall’s wife or lover ...

  “It should do,” she muttered, pushing thoughts of posterity aside. “And if it doesn’t ...”

  She cursed under her breath as she headed for the door. She knew from her own recollections that a statue would be found, but she had no way of knowing just how sane she’d be. The only hopeful sign was that the books from the library chamber had gone missing, just before the collapse began, and that her contemporary self had been lured down to the nexus point and shoved into the past. But that didn’t prove that her future self would be sane. Perhaps she should cast some compulsion spells on herself to make sure she actually did as history required ...

  Don’t be stupid, she told herself, sharply. That would be absolutely insane.

  Master Wolfe was standing just inside the library as she passed, inspecting one of the parchment rolls. Emily hesitated, then stepped into the room. One of the carpenters had put together a protective box for the Books of Pacts, trapping their aura to ensure they couldn’t be sensed by any passing magicians. Emily still felt her skin crawl, every time she looked at the box, but she had a feeling it was purely her imagination. She still didn’t understand why Whitehall hadn’t destroyed the books immediately.

  “Emily,” Master Wolfe said. “I trust that lessons are going well?”

  “They’re making progress,” Emily said. If a Manavore showed up, her students should
be able to destroy—or banish—it. “And yours?”

  “Much the same,” Master Wolfe said. “And they’re gaining in enthusiasm after discovering just how useful it can be.”

  They shared a smile. She hadn’t been surprised to discover that the strongest apprentices—Robin and Bernard—were at the top of the totem pole, dominating and bullying the weaker apprentices. But now, with the weaker apprentices learning how to use their powers more effectively, the balance of power was slowly shifting towards the smarter apprentices. Those who weren’t smart enough to learn how to use their powers properly would fall by the wayside ...

  Or turn into necromancers, she thought. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had happened to Master Wolfe’s copy of the necromantic rite, but it hardly mattered. Anyone with a working knowledge of spellwork could reinvent the rite in an afternoon. The necromancers are so powerful that there is a limit to what smarts can do against them.

  “They’re also putting forward suggestions of their own,” Master Wolfe added. “And so we are advancing in leaps and bounds.”

  Emily nodded. It was all crude, but the bare bones of the system she’d been taught, right from the start, were already taking place. Julianne’s work on alchemical experiments, she suspected, would eventually lead to genuine alchemy ... she just hoped Julianne was careful enough to avoid an accident. Potions were reasonably safe, as long as one knew what one was doing, but alchemy was far more dangerous.

  She looked at the boxes and frowned. “When are they going to be destroyed?”

  “Once we figure out how,” Master Wolfe said. “Master Gila’s Book of Pacts was easy to destroy, but these will be a little bit harder. There are still demons attached to them, you see.”

  Emily winced. “What would happen if we just threw the books in the fire?”

  “It would depend on what protective spells were layered on the books,” Master Wolfe admitted. “It’s possible the books would be destroyed, but equally possible that they’d be unharmed or the demons would be released. DemonMasters are always very protective of their books.”

  “Because if they lost their book they’d lose their power?” Emily guessed. “Or is that too simple?”

  “It depends on just what spells they used to protect the books,” Master Wolfe said. He turned and led the way into the control room. “But most DemonMasters would prefer not to take chances. Removing a demon’s sigil from a book might just be enough to break the contract.”

  The Warden had grown, Emily noted, as she followed Master Wolfe. Master Keldor was standing behind the homunculus, putting together the finishing touches. There was no way the entity would ever pass for human, but history said that wouldn’t matter. The Warden would be tied into the control network and serve as an interface, as well as the school’s future disciplinarian.

  “It should be ready soon,” Master Keldor said. “And once it is linked to the nexus point, it should be effectively autonomous.”

  “Quite,” Master Wolfe said.

  Emily studied the Warden for a long moment. It was hard to escape the impression that he—it—had been made out of mud and then baked in a kiln, although there was a leathery feel to its skin. There were no genitals, no sign of any muscles ... but then, they wouldn’t be necessary. The Warden was not human. He would never be able to outgrow his programming—or his purpose.

  And yet he will develop an intelligence, of sorts, Emily thought. She couldn’t help wondering when and where that would happen. Master Wolfe had programmed an adaptability into the spellwork—his spells would adapt to new circumstances—but there were limits. And yet, at some point, the Warden would cross the line. I wonder who did that—and why.

  Master Wolfe glanced at her. “What do you make of him?”

  “He seems suitable,” Emily said. “He’ll just need a cloak and cowl to hide his true nature.”

  “We’ll be keeping him out of sight,” Master Keldor said. “We don’t want too many people looking at him.”

  Emily had to agree. The discipline of wardcrafting was still in its infancy—if that—but most magicians would assume that whoever owned the castle had a direct link to the wards, allowing them to control it at will. Letting outsiders know about the Warden would tempt them to try to destroy the homunculus, even though it would be practically impossible as long as it was linked to the wards. It was a risk, she admitted, but the benefits outweighed the disadvantages. The wards could be passed from Grandmaster to Grandmaster without using blood magic.

  She bid them a polite farewell and headed back to the stairs, walking up to the inhabited levels. Master Chambers stalked past, giving her a look that suggested she was something nasty he’d scraped off his shoe, but said nothing. Emily wondered just what Robin had said to him, if anything. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t brought plenty of young and unattached girls back to the castle. Robin might be on his way to becoming a DemonMaster, but he was still a very good catch.

  Whitehall is planning to grant Bernard his mastery, Emily thought, as she walked towards Julianne’s classroom. Robin won’t be far behind, I think.

  Julianne was seated behind a desk, peering dubiously into a simmering cauldron. The other desks were empty. Emily stepped inside, feeling her stomach rumble. Lunchtime had become a matter of opinion over the last few days. She’d been too wrapped up in her work—and then assisting Master Wolfe—to bother to eat. And yet she needed to eat to replenish her reserves ...

  “I’m not sure what he managed to do to this one,” Julianne said, as Emily closed the door and walked over to the desk. “It seems to be doing something, but what?”

  Emily frowned. “What were you trying to brew?”

  “Painkilling potion,” Julianne said. “As you can see, the consistency is all wrong.”

  Emily nodded. Julianne’s painkilling potion was green, but the bubbling mixture in front of her was a sickly yellow color. Her spells insisted that the potion would be safe to drink, yet that only meant it wouldn’t kill her outright. Professor Thande had sometimes encouraged his students to drink their brews, even knowing they’d be spending the next few hours throwing up everything they’d eaten for the last few days. He’d insisted, when his students had complained, that it taught them to be careful. Just because something wasn’t poisonous didn’t mean it was safe to drink.

  “I think you should be very careful,” she said. “You’re getting married in two days, remember?”

  “I might just have forgotten,” Julianne said. She giggled. “Do you mind sleeping alone?”

  Emily shrugged. She wouldn’t be in the castle long enough for it to get wearying. Besides, she liked sleeping alone. It had been hard enough to get used to sharing a room with two other girls, let alone sharing a tent with male and female classmates. Julianne thought she was letting Emily down, but the truth was very different.

  “I’ve been writing and rewriting the vows,” Julianne added. “Bernard’s agreed to let me continue to study magic—and teach.”

  “Good for him,” Emily said. “And what will you be vowing?”

  “To be a good wife,” Julianne said. “But it’s not going to be easy, is it?”

  Emily shrugged. It wasn’t going to be easy. Bernard had been raised in a culture that expected the wife to stay at home and raise the children while the husband worked for a living. It wasn’t as if they were farmers, with everyone expected to work the land, or nobility, with servants to do all the work. Bernard would have problems, she suspected, adapting to a woman who wanted a more public role. But he’d just have to get used to it.

  “You’ll need a lot of respect,” she said, instead. Even if she’d liked Robin, she wouldn’t have married him. Not when it meant putting everything in the hands of a man. Her mother had made that mistake and it had been disastrous. “And you’ll have to be prepared to stand your ground.”

  She wondered, absently, just what else she should say. Bernard was a trained magician—and Julianne was heading down the same road. The dynamics of
their relationship would be very different to anything either of them would have seen, not in a time when female magicians were almost unknown. Bernard might be stronger, physically, than Julianne—she would have been surprised if he wasn’t—but magic would even the odds. The near-equality of male and female magicians in her time stood mute testament to just how much magic evened the odds.

  But it won’t be easy for them, she thought. Bernard will be expecting to dominate her if they have a fight.

  “Marriage is never easy,” Julianne said. “There was a time when I thought I would never marry.”

  Emily shrugged. She’d felt the same way too.

  “There were wives—Eldora, for example—who had a purely beastly time of it,” Julianne said, softly. “And there were others who wore themselves out though having as many babies as they could. Their husbands wanted sons and more sons ... some of them even asked me for potions that would guarantee sons. And others ... had a good time with their husbands, but their mothers-in-law were absolute bullies. That won’t be a problem for me.”

  “I know,” Emily said.

  “And I do want children,” Julianne admitted. “And if you’re right, I can have children and practice magic.”

  “I am,” Emily said.

  She leaned forward as Julianne put out the fire and left the mixture to cool. “Are you going to be doing anything the night before your wedding?”

  “I’m supposed to hold a vigil,” Julianne said. “But I don’t know if I really want to.”

  Emily frowned. “What would your father say?”

  “He’d say that I should follow my heart,” Julianne said. “And I already know I want to marry him.”