Schooled in Magic

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Imaiqah leaned close to her, close enough to whisper in her ear. “What are you looking for?”

  Emily wasn’t sure herself. Half of the books didn’t have a title on the spine; half of the ones that did have a displayed title were so badly blurred that she couldn’t tell if it was simply the age of the manuscripts, or if some other magic was refusing to allow her to read them. For all she knew, Mistress Irene’s translation spell might not be working either. And those that were readable often didn’t make sense. Blood and Guts and Magic. Charms for the Charming. Basic Mist and Misting. Madame Goatherd’s Basic Guide to Animal Magic. The Prisoner of Magic ...

  “Self-defense spells,” Emily whispered back, finally. She didn’t dare speak any louder. “Something I–we–can use against Alassa.”

  Imaiqah stared at her. “But ...”

  “But nothing,” Emily whispered. She could understand why Imaiqah might not want to go looking for a fight–Alassa’s family literally ruled her country–but a fight might find Imaiqah anyway, whatever she did to avoid it. “We need to learn how to defend ourselves.”

  Imaiqah nodded reluctantly and led her towards a different set of bookshelves. A number of books were clearly missing–there were gaps in the shelves–and the remainder were very well thumbed, suggesting that every student in Whitehall studied them from time to time. Picking up one of the unmarked books, Emily opened it and saw the title, Basic Charms for Imbeciles. She had to fight down a laugh, remembering the “whatever for dummies” books from back home, before turning to the next page. The first charm was one she already knew–the counter-charm that Mistress Irene had taught her–but the second was something new, designed to repel insects from the caster’s vicinity. Emily wondered, looking at the diagram, if the spell couldn’t be altered to sic insects on an unsuspecting victim.

  There was no contents page or index, forcing her to thumb through it to look for interesting and useful spells. Some seemed completely pointless, unless she intended to take up hierology for a career, others appeared to be more adapted for domestic work than fighting enemies. She leaned over to ask Imaiqah if she could see any books that might be more practical. Imaiqah hesitated, then passed her another well-thumbed volume. The title, Practical Jokes, made Emily feel doubtful until she opened it to a random page and saw a spell for making an unwitting victim speak only in rhyme. She checked a second page and discovered a hex that caused its victim to lose control of their bladder. That was a terrifying thought.

  “Pity it isn’t written in fake Latin,” she muttered to herself. Imaiqah shot her an enquiring look. “Never mind.”

  The next book she discovered that interested her was entitled A Fence Against Magic and appeared to concentrate on defensive spells. Again, she knew the first one already from Mistress Irene, but the others were more complex and powerful, allowing the caster to shield herself or place defenses in a room or even an entire building. The more powerful spells seemed hideously complex, too much for her to cast at once. Indeed, one of them involved so many elements that she wondered if anyone could cast it properly.

  “You might want this one,” Imaiqah whispered, passing her a fourth volume. It focused on countering other magic, ranging from simple hexes to outright dark magic. Emily opened it and saw an illustration that made her feel sick. The picture–a man warped into a monster by black magic–was horrifying. Back home, no one would have allowed such an illustration into a school library.

  She’d thought that Alassa’s hex was bad, but it was nothing more than a practical joke compared to outright dark magic.

  “Or this one ...” Imaiqah suggested.

  The fifth book was an overview of the Allied Lands, written by a historian who called himself a History Monk. Professor Locke had mentioned them, although Emily couldn’t quite remember what he’d said. Something about them being the only ones who recorded history without the nationalist bias? Absently, she flicked to the chapter covering Zangaria and skimmed the first section. She’d been right; Alassa’s father was the absolute monarch of his country, but the Barons seemed to keep a tight grasp of their own powers. The writer noted that the failure to share power with anyone else, even the growing middle class of tradesmen, was likely to cause problems in the future, particularly when the next monarch took the throne. Emily didn’t doubt it for a second.

  She picked up a sixth book on different magical types and then glanced around at the other shelves, finally stopping to peer at a solid metal gate that led into another room. The sense of protective magic surrounding the gate was almost overwhelming, as if the spells were alive and constantly searching for possible intruders. She didn’t need Imaiqah to tell her that it was the restricted section. Two students, both older boys, were standing inside the room, reading chained books. Emily hoped that they weren’t secretly planning to become necromancers.

  Picking up all six books, she started to walk towards the desk.

  Then she saw Alassa sitting at a desk, reading a book. The princess was alone; her cronies nowhere to be seen; Emily blinked in surprise before she realized that Alassa probably needed to study alone if she wanted to pass her basic classes. It was odd–surely her family could have afforded a tutor for their royal daughter–but maybe Alassa was just lazy. Considering the spells Mistress Irene had taught her, Emily suspected that someone could learn a great deal of magic simply by memorizing spells, without ever grasping the underlying principles that allowed them to work, which might be Alassa’s problem. That would account for the fact that Alassa knew how to hex someone, yet be unable to graduate.

  The bully looked up and glowered at Emily.

  Quickly, before she could think better of it, Emily made a rude face at Alassa. The bully opened her mouth to deliver a scathing retort, but she only got two words out before there was a flash of light. Alassa’s entire body turned to stone. A moment later, the newly-made statue lifted up into the air and drifted towards the front of the room, where it was dumped among the other statues. Emily had to fight down the urge to giggle, if only out of fear of ending up with a stony personality herself, and winked at Imaiqah. Her friend was staring back at her with a mixture of horror and awe.

  Emily passed the books to the librarian and had them stamped out to her, before glancing over at the statue Alassa had become. It had seemed funny–it had been funny –but at the same time it was horrifying. There would be no permanent damage from the spell, she told herself firmly, yet did even the spoilt princess deserve to spend an hour as a statue? Who knew what it would do to her personality?

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Imaiqah said, once they were outside the library. “Don’t you know what she will do to us?”

  Truthfully, the thought hadn’t crossed Emily’s mind. “The worst thing you can do with a person like that is let them walk all over you,” she said simply. She held up one of the books meaningfully. “We’d better start studying quickly.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “BUT WHY CAN’T I GO ON to advanced class?” a familiar voice protested as Emily reached Professor Lombardi’s office door. She paused outside to listen. “I’ve taken your class three times already!”

  “You can’t go on because I have caught you cheating five times already,” a male voice said. The speaker was clearly on the verge of losing his temper. “The purpose of Basic Charms, Alassa, is to demonstrate that you understand the building blocks of spells before you move on to a more advanced class. While you have memorized countless advanced spells, you haven’t actually mastered the underlying principles at all.”

  “But ... but I can do the spells,” Alassa protested. She sounded as if she were pleading for her life, rather than just a chance to move ahead. Emily leaned against the wall out of sight and listened carefully as Alassa went on. “But ... ”

  “But you don’t know what you’re doing,” the speaker–Professor Lombardi, Emily guessed–interrupted. “Until you understand the basic principles, young lady, you will learn nothing from the advanced class.
All you will do is waste my time.” He cleared his throat in a manner that cut off a renewed bleating from Alassa. “I suggest that you sit down in class this afternoon and actually concentrate on learning something. You can retake the test in a month if you feel confident ...”

  Alassa rudely interrupted him. “But my parents...”

  “Would not be happy if their daughter was so incapable as to allow even a weaker mage to hack through the weaknesses in her spells and overwhelm her,” Professor Lombardi snapped. “You can report to the Hall of Shame at sixteen bells.” There was a gasp from Alassa. “Now, get out of my office and don’t bother me again until you’ve decided to study.”

  Emily slipped backwards as Alassa stormed out of the Professor’s office and down the corridor, muttering to herself in a language that Shadye’s spell refused to translate. The princess didn’t look happy at all.

  After she was gone, Emily hesitated, then stepped into the doorway, tapping on the opened door.

  Professor Lombardi looked up at her. He nodded, thoughtfully.

  “Take a seat,” he said, returning his attention to his desk.

  Emily nodded, taking advantage of the delay to study the Professor. He was a short man, with lightly-tanned skin and a bushy afro hairstyle that seemed to move of its own accord. It also seemed to change color, although she was honestly not sure if it was magic or if she was merely imagining it. His fingers, long and thin, shaped gestures and invocations of their own accord, as if he were constantly casting spells. She couldn’t help noticing that his right arm had a rather nasty scar.

  His desk was completely empty and the walls of his office were bare, apart from a single painting of a cute blonde witch hanging behind his chair. And yet Emily could sense magic flickering through the room, focused on Lombardi himself. He’d cast countless protective charms into the air to safeguard his possessions, or to protect his students as they came into their magic.

  The Professor wrote out a short note on a piece of parchment that vanished as soon as he had signed it, then looked back at Emily. “The Grandmaster informs me that you are from another world.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said.

  “And Mistress Irene has already taught you a handful of basic spells,” Professor Lombardi continued. “And a full-fledged sorcerer says that you have potential.”

  His eyes narrowed, suddenly. “Whitehall is about developing magical potential. Charms is one course you cannot afford to flunk. If you fail to master the building blocks of magic, you will be forever crippled as a magician and never advance to become a sorceress in your own right. I advise you to bear that in mind at all times.”

  Emily nodded, then asked a question that had been puzzling her ever since she’d entered Whitehall. “When do I get my wand?”

  Lombardi eyed her in some surprise. “A wand serves as a focusing tool for a practicing magician,” he said. “A sorcerer needs to learn to cast spells without a focusing tool of any kind. You would be well advised never to use a wand unless you wish to become dependent upon it.”

  Emily frowned. Alassa used a wand...did that mean that she couldn’t perform spells without waving it in the air? Or did she simply need to use it until she mastered casting spells in her own mind? Emily made a mental note to try to remove Alassa’s wand and then see how well she performed without it.

  “I’ve seen some people using wands,” she said, careful not to mention Alassa’s name. “Why would they use them if they were useless?”

  Lombardi gave her a hard look. “There are certain forms of spell work that can be made easier by using a wand. It is also possible–as you already know–to embed spells in wands for later activation. And there are wands that have come to us out of legend and have been passed from master to master, learning more and more from each owner ... but it is unwise to depend too much upon them. There’s no such thing as an invincible wand.”

  He peered into Emily’s eyes. “Do not try to use one until you have your magic firmly under control,” he added. “You run the risk of crippling your development.”

  Like the Royal Brat, Emily thought.

  The Professor stood up. “You have already memorized some spells. What you are going to do now is see how they go together”–he eyed her for a moment–“if you haven’t already mastered that technique. You have potential, do you not?”

  Emily flushed. Everywhere she went, it seemed as if people paid attention to her–and never for anything she’d done on her own. Shadye had believed her to be a Child of Destiny, Void had said that she had potential–and sent her to school riding a dragon. Were all the teachers at Whitehall expecting her to be an instant super-magician? Or were they just setting her up to fail?

  Lombardi cast a simple spell into the air, which created a glowing ball of light, and then followed up with the analysis charm Mistress Irene had tried to teach Emily. The first spell’s components flickered to life in front of them, four separate components in all. Lombardi pointed to each of them in turn and started to explain what they did.

  “The first section–the startpoint - informs the magic that you’re crafting a spell,” Lombardi said. “Most magicians in training will train themselves to ensure that they cannot use magic without a specific starting impetus and then leave that part of the spell out while they’re parsing the rest of the spell. As always, you need to charge magic words with mana to actually make them work; mastering the act of devising words without accidentally triggering them is the first step towards mastering charms.

  “The second section sets the first set of parameters for a spell. In this case light, no heat, not particularly large ... leaving any of those variables to random chance can produce surprising or unpleasant results. I’ve seen young magicians burn themselves severely because they forget that they have to ensure there isn’t any heat, or blind themselves because they make the light too bright. It is far too easy to forget about setting the parameters once you become used to casting a spell all at once.”

  Emily nodded, understanding Alassa’s frustration with Basic Charms. It was the difference, she decided, between using a computer program someone had designed for the world and one you had built for yourself. The former might be convenient, but the latter would be far more flexible. In fact, continuing the analogy, if someone managed to figure out how to hack into and defeat a publicly-available charm, he or she might be able to do the same thing to everyone who used that charm. But a charm created by a single magician for her own use would be much harder to break.

  “The third section,” Lombardi continued, giving Emily a long look when she said nothing, “is the second set of parameters; specifically, time and key. Time determines just how long the spell remains in existence before fading away; key specifies just how the spell may be unlocked–and by whom. This spell, as you will notice, can be dispelled by anyone. A more complex spell might be keyed to a specific user. It doesn’t make it completely impossible for another magician to crack, but it can make it incredibly difficult.”

  His voice sharpened. “I must warn you that creating a locked spell can, in certain circumstances, be grounds for immediate expulsion from Whitehall. Two years ago, a student was expelled for using a locked spell to turn his worst enemy into a pig, then refusing to undo it. It took two trained sorcerers to undo the spell he’d created.” He shrugged. “Pity, really. That young man had potential.”

  Emily gulped. “What happened to him?”

  “Good question,” Lombardi said. “I’ll let you know if we ever find out the answer.”

  Emily opened her mouth, but then realized that it might not be a wise subject to discuss, at least not yet. Instead, she considered what she’d just been told. She’d wondered why Alassa and others like her were allowed to bully at will, but now it seemed that there were limits, ones harshly enforced by the staff. No permanent harm, the Grandmaster had stipulated. As a way to encourage learning among students, it was hard to see how it could be beaten.

  But Alassa had a gang of cronies..
.how could one magician beat them all?

  Through knowledge, she thought, and looked back at the professor.

  “The final section of this spell is the endpoint,” Lombardi concluded. “It locks the spell structure firmly in place, preventing it from mutating out of control and becoming something very different from what you might have intended. Spells can shift very rapidly when mana is pouring through them, even if you set the variables with extreme care. This spell might well start to generate heat if it was allowed to mutate, or interact with other spells in the general area. Unlike the startpoint, the endpoint does nothing on its own, so don’t forget to place it at the end of any spell, even if you don’t intend to charge it with mana. Accidents happen, particularly when young magicians are involved.”

  He paused, significantly. “Did you understand all that?”

  Emily hesitated, and then nodded slowly. A computer geek would probably become the most powerful–or at least capable–magician in existence, if he were transported from Earth to her new home, but she knew enough to at least concentrate on the basic principles. Besides, Alassa would want revenge for Emily’s trick in the library. She’d just have to keep studying as hard as possible.

  “Good,” Lombardi said. He grinned, evilly. “Because we’re now going to start practicing writing out spells.”

  He opened a drawer and produced a sheet of parchments and an odd-looking pencil. It took Emily a moment to realize that it had been hand-carved, rather than looking like the mass-produced pencils she was used to from back home.

  She took the strange pencil when it was passed to her and examined it thoughtfully. Judging from the marks, it had been sharpened with a knife rather than a pencil sharpener. Making a mental note to import proper pens and pencils if she ever managed to open up a permanent link to Earth, she took the parchment and wrote her name on the top of the page.