Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Chapter Fourteen

  “THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE ARE TO REMAIN behind,” Lady Barb said, as the first Healing class of the week came to an end. “Emily, Imaiqah, Pandora, Johan and Robin.”

  Emily winced, inwardly. Thanks to Master Grey’s detention, she hadn’t managed to complete her assignment for Lady Barb...the assignment that had to be turned in incomplete. If she’d been held back alone, she would have wondered if Lady Barb had already noted and intended to chew her out for it, but instead...five students had been told to remain. She forced herself to stay calm, knowing that she was in trouble, and waited until the other students had left the room.

  Lady Barb closed the door, studying her students carefully. “By a stroke of luck - for whatever definition of luck suits you - the Halfway House has agreed to open its doors for my classes this Friday. This required some careful negotiation as classes from both Mountaintop and Stronghold also need access to the Halfway House. You five will be the first to go, as it offers a chance for any doubters to see the worst of a Healer’s job.”

  But Alassa doesn’t want to become a Healer, Emily thought, and I can’t. Why take me and not her? Or the ones who are certain they want to become Healers?

  “You will assemble in the Portal Chamber immediately after lunch on Friday, wearing the outfits I will provide for you,” Lady Barb continued. “The Halfway House only opens its portals at the exact moment specified, so anyone left behind will be unable to go and may not be given another chance. These papers” - she picked a pile of packets off her desk and started to hand them round - “give a brief outline of the facility, the details of the patients you will see and the potential dangers. If any of you think better about going, after reading these papers, let me know and I’ll drop you from the list.”

  She paused. “Most of the patients are harmless,” she warned, “but some can get violent or nasty. If you feel threatened, get out; if you can’t get out, use magic to defend yourself. It is not your task to do anything to help the patients; we are only there to observe. Put your safety first and leave the rest to the staff.”

  Emily swallowed. How many horror movies had started with a bunch of nervous co-eds making a trip to a mental asylum? She’d seen enough such movies to imagine the dangers in far too great detail. What if...she pushed the thought aside, remembering that she had enough magic to defend herself, if she didn’t freeze up and forget she had it. She’d frozen once before and it had almost gotten Imaiqah and her killed.

  Lady Barb cleared her throat, loudly. “Are there any questions?”

  “Yes,” Pandora said. Emily didn’t know her very well, even though they’d shared three years of schooling together. She’d been nothing more than a face in the background. “Why do we have to wear your outfits?”

  “Because they may try to grope you,” Lady Barb said, bluntly. “The outfits provided by the facility are charmed to protect you from lecherous patients who have very little to fear, given the nature of their condition. If you’re not wearing protective clothing, young lady, the facility staff will not allow you to pass through the entrance hall.”

  She glanced from face to face, her eyes resting for a long moment on Emily. “Are there any other questions?”

  There was a pause. No one said a word. Emily felt nervous, looking down at the packet in her hands and resolving to read it as soon as possible. She’d honestly thought the trip to the Halfway House would be later in the term, if it took place at all. Lady Barb knew that she wasn’t going to become a Healer.

  But she may feel you need to see the place, Emily thought, grimly. She was showing you other parts of the world on your travels.

  “Dismissed,” Lady Barb said. “If there are any further questions, after you read the materials, I will be in my office after classes for the rest of the week.”

  Emily met Imaiqah’s eyes and tried to tell her, silently, to go ahead. Imaiqah nodded slowly, then rose with the other students and left the room. Emily watched the door close, then turned back to look at Lady Barb, who eyed her with a quizzical expression. It wasn’t usual for students to remain behind after a long session, not when they needed to shower, eat and rest, preferably in that order. Emily was about the only one who would.

  “Emily,” Lady Barb said. “Do you have a question?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, slowly. She knew she couldn’t delay indefinitely, but maybe if she asked a question first Lady Barb would be in a better mood. “Why am I going to the Halfway House?”

  “Because you need to see it,” Lady Barb said. “You may never serve as a Healer, Emily, but you may wind up condemning someone to the facility.”

  “Condemning,” Emily repeated. It didn’t sound pleasant. The Nameless World had magical healing, on one hand, and mundane medical proceedings that made leeches look a safe and sane approach to medicine. Those who couldn’t afford to hire a magician tended to take their lives in their hands, every time they approached a doctor. “What’s it like?”

  Lady Barb gave her a wintry smile. “You’ll see,” she said. “Unless you choose to back out, you will visit the facility on Friday.”

  She met Emily’s eyes, then sat down facing her. “And what do you actually want to talk to me about? I do have another class in an hour and I have to eat something first.”

  Emily winced. She had another class in an hour, Alchemy. And she needed to eat something herself too, before trying to use magic in the class. Professor Thande wouldn’t be pleased if she turned up drained of energy, or too tired to think straight.

  “I didn’t manage to complete my homework,” she confessed. There was no point in trying to hide it, not when she knew Lady Barb marked her assignments the evening they were turned in. “I had detention yesterday.”

  Lady Barb eyed her with cool disapproval. “And how did you manage to get detention on a weekend?”

  “I asked Master Grey a question,” Emily said, bitterly. “He gave me detention.”

  “I see,” Lady Barb said. “And was it a particularly stupid question?”

  Emily hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she confessed. She’d never been told not to take younger students into the forest, but she’d been the youngest student in Martial Magic. Hell, as far as she knew, she still was. “I wanted to take Frieda for a run along the marked track.”

  Lady Barb frowned. “You do realize just how many horrific things could happen to a young girl in a forest deliberately rigged to make life...interesting for students?”

  Interesting, Emily thought, sarcastically. “I thought the track was safe.”

  “It should be,” Lady Barb confirmed. “Now tell me; would you have stayed on the track?”

  “I think so,” Emily said. But Frieda would have wanted to explore, wouldn’t she? Maybe they would have stepped off the beaten track...“It’s just like Master Tor, isn’t it?”

  Lady Barb quirked her eyebrows. “Is it?”

  Emily hesitated, trying to think clearly. Master Tor had taken a dislike to her as soon as they’d met, perhaps earlier, but he’d always had a point, even if she hadn’t been in a fit state to appreciate it at the time. He’d been the only senior magician, with the possible exception of Lady Barb and Emily herself, to express any concern over the lives of mundanes, men and women who lived on Emily’s lands and were at her mercy. She’d seen enough, back during the holidays, to know it wouldn’t be hard for her to make their lives miserable.

  “I don’t know,” Emily admitted, finally. “He’s always disliked me.”

  Lady Barb reached out and tapped Emily’s hand, forcing her to look up. “How would you feel if someone ran around from place to place, disrupting everything?”

  “I’m not like that,” Emily protested.

  “You could be,” Lady Barb said.

  She shrugged. “Whatever career you seek, whatever you want to do with your life, you will remain very important to the Allied Lands and the White Council,” she added, slowly. “It isn’t unsurprising for him to want to test you, to pus
h you hard enough to see where your buttons are. He may well believe that it would be better for you to break here, where there is help on hand if you need it, than out in the field. It’s his job.”

  Emily blinked. “To push me?”

  “To find your limits and help you to overcome them,” Lady Barb said. “I thought I was pretty good when I left Whitehall, but my Master soon showed me I had a long way to go.”

  “Oh,” Emily said. Jade had told her that Master Grey was a tough tutor, although she hadn’t really understood what he’d meant. “And I have a long way to go too, don’t I?”

  “Yes, you do,” Lady Barb said. She leaned back, smiling thinly. “You’re a Fourth Year student, at least two years younger than anyone he would have taught personally. Jade is...what? Five years older than you?”

  “Thereabouts,” Emily said.

  “You need someone to kick you in the ass from time to time,” Lady Barb told her. “Do you want to leave his classes?”

  Emily stared down at her hands. She’d thought of Master Grey as a monster, not as a tutor in his own right, or someone who might have had a point. But she’d only asked a simple question...what would he have said, she wondered, if she’d been caught taking Frieda into the forest without bothering to ask permission? She doubted it would have been anything pleasant.

  “I need to learn,” she said. “Don’t I?”

  “Yes,” Lady Barb said. “And I’ll tell you one other thing.”

  Emily looked up, waiting.

  “Combat sorcerers, male or female, are always tested to the limit,” Lady Barb said, flatly. “I was tested intensely, first by my master and then by a handful of others. We need to know where the weaknesses lie, which of us is scared of spiders, which of us has problems keeping his wards up when faced by a seductive young woman, which of us...”

  She shrugged. “Parsing out your weaknesses, here and now, isn’t a bad thing,” she added. “It won’t cripple you to truly understand your fears.”

  Emily swallowed. She knew what she feared: helplessness. Maybe that was why she disliked Master Grey, because he made her feel helpless. There was no shortage of spells that could render her helpless and vulnerable, even though she’d been working on learning how to counter them, but she didn’t fear those as much as people with bad intentions. And while she’d feared Master Tor, she knew he’d meant well.

  “You can back out, if you like,” Lady Barb said, softly. “I can go to the Grandmaster, as your adviser, and tell him that it isn’t working out.”

  Aloha would like that, the treacherous part of Emily’s mind muttered. She’s practically in love with Master Grey.

  “No,” she said, steeling her resolve as best as she could. “He may be an asshole, but I can and I will learn from him.”

  Lady Barb’s lips twitched. “It isn’t generally considered good manners to call one tutor an asshole in front of another.”

  Emily felt her face heat. “I’m sorry...”

  “Don’t do it again,” Lady Barb said. She cleared her throat. “There is, of course, the matter of your incomplete homework.”

  “I know,” Emily said, feeling her heart sink. “I’m ready.”

  She forced herself to remain calm, even though it wasn’t easy. Lady Barb was utterly merciless. She locked the doors as soon as the bell rang, checked homework with a fine-toothed attention to detail and handed out punishment assignments to anyone who failed to hand it in on time. There was no way she’d allow Emily to get away with not completing her assignment, no matter what she offered as an excuse. Hell, she needed to make it clear she wasn’t showing favoritism to Emily. She’d be lucky if she wasn’t called out and dressed down in front of the entire class.

  “For punishment, you can go to Master Grey and ask him about working as a Mediator,” Lady Barb said. “He will provide you with some basic information, at least, and point you in the direction of more. I will be checking, so make sure you do it before Friday.”

  Emily gritted her teeth. Resolve or no resolve, she wanted to see as little of Master Grey as possible. Which was the point, she suspected; Lady Barb had taken advantage of her failure to create a situation where she had to face her fear.

  “Cruel and unusual punishment,” she muttered.

  “There are crueler punishments,” Lady Barb pointed out, dryly. “I do happen to need a living subject for the Third Year classes. They have to study living humans to get much further...”

  Emily shook her head, hastily. “I’ll speak to him,” she said. The idea of undressing in front of a class of students was horrific. Lady Barb normally hired people from Dragon’s Den and paid them through the nose. “But what if he just tells me to go away?”

  “He’s trying to teach you,” Lady Barb said. “Ask him a question and he will try to answer.”

  “Very well,” Emily said, reluctantly. “I’ll ask him after class, tomorrow.”

  Lady Barb checked her watch. “Go to lunch,” she said. “I’ll take a look at the assignment this evening, then either give it back to you to redo or add it to the records.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said. Maybe, just maybe, she’d written down enough to earn more than a bare pass. If she hadn’t she would have to redo the assignment...and, no matter how well she’d done, she’d only be marked as a pass. It would be reflected in her grades later. “I’ll let you know what happens.”

  “Good,” Lady Barb said. She gave Emily another smile, and pointed at the door. “Go.”

  Emily nodded, hurrying through the door and down to the Dining Hall. It was packed with students trying to eat before going to their afternoon classes. The normal seating order seemed to have broken down; students were sitting wherever they saw a space, or even leaning against the walls to eat from plates. Emily shook her head - it was rare for more than half of the student body to have the same lunch time - then hurried over to the tables and took some curry and rice for herself. She’d never really liked the curries she’d tried to make for herself, back on Earth, but here they tasted far better. Alassa and Imaiqah were leaning against the rear wall, eating dessert. Emily hurried over to join them, picking her way between tables with practiced ease. It helped that many of the older students drew away from her as she approached.

  “Everyone decided to have lunch at the same time,” Alassa said, as Emily reached her friends and leaned against the wall. “It’s sheer chaos in here.”

  “There must have been a timetable glitch,” Emily agreed. She’d never heard of one before, but she supposed it must happen from time to time. Her timetable in Third Year had had to be revised regularly, just to allow her to cram so many classes into her schedule. “Maybe they thought they were opening up the Great Hall for lunch as well as dinner.”

  Alassa smiled. “Or maybe someone just made a mistake,” she said. “Better eat quickly; we’ll be tossed out of here soon.”

  Emily nodded and tucked into her curry. The noise was growing louder as students argued about where they should be sitting, with older students pushing younger students out of chairs they’d already claimed. She saw Aloha and a couple of other prefects trying to maintain order, but there were too many tempers fraying for them to impose calm. It wasn’t until the Grandmaster stalked in, surrounded by a wave of power that cowed many of the nearby students, that everything quietened down.

  “Sit down and eat your food,” he ordered, curtly. It struck Emily, suddenly, that there might not be enough food. The cooks wouldn’t have expected every student in Whitehall to turn up at once. “Afternoon classes will be delayed by half an hour so that everyone can be fed.”

  Emily rolled her eyes as a cheer rippled through the room. It wasn’t as if the classes were being shortened, merely put back half an hour. They would still have two straight hours of Alchemy, followed by another two hours of Charms. She doubted that either Professor Thande or Professor Lombardi would allow their classes to end early, just so school could break up at the normal time. The advantage of living in a boarding sc
hool was that they could stay longer, if necessary.

  But you don’t get away from your classmates either, Emily thought. It suited her, she had to admit, but would it suit everyone else? You spend all your time with them, friends and foes alike.

  She finished her curry and checked her watch. There wasn’t time for a shower and a change before Alchemy, so they headed down to the classroom. Professor Thande was standing outside, holding a test tube in one hand as he talked to Master Grey. The look Master Grey shot Emily, when he saw her, was far from friendly.

  But I’m going to learn from you, Emily promised herself, meeting his eyes. And I will not let you break me down.

  Chapter Fifteen

  EMILY DARTED BACKWARDS AS MASTER GREY lashed out at her with a wooden sword, blocking his blow as best as she could. He gave her a cold smile, jumped forward and slapped the flat of his blade against her hands. Emily yelped in pain and dropped the sword, grunting as he stabbed forward and struck her chest. She was wearing protective padding over her uniform, but it still hurt.

  “You need to move quicker,” he told her, gruffly. “Show me your hands.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily muttered through gritted teeth. Her hands hurt, but it didn’t look as though there was any permanent damage, or anything that couldn’t be cured by time and rest. “I don’t think there’s any damage...”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Master Grey said. He took her hands in a surprisingly gentle grip and inspected them, thoroughly. “You shouldn’t need any real treatment, but if they’re still sore tomorrow go see the Healer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said.

  “You need to keep moving,” Master Grey added. “If I’d been using a real sword, Lady Emily, you would be bleeding out by now.”

  Emily nodded, feeling the pain in her chest. She was going to have more aches and pains tomorrow, she was sure, but he was right. If he’d struck her with a real sword, she would probably be dead. She’d learned more than she’d ever expected to learn about swordfighting, but she honestly couldn’t say she was any good at it. Magic was so much easier to use.