When she glanced backwards, the forest seemed to go on forever, with no sign of Whitehall or of their fellow students. She couldn’t even hear Harkin’s bellow as he prepared to send in the next team.
“This way,” Jade said, taking the lead and casting a basic spell into the air. “Watch out for traps.”
Emily flushed. She should have thought of that. The Sergeants might have created a magical minefield just to test their prospective students, rather than simply using a mana-tainted forest that might behave in an unpredictable manner. They might want to push the students to the limit, as well as weeding out those who couldn’t hack it, but she doubted that they wanted to kill them.
Their surroundings became eerier as they walked further into the darkness. Strange lights flickered in the distance, tiny flashes of lightning that danced at the corner of her eye.
They crossed a stream that made no sound, as if someone had cast a silencing charm over the entire running water–but they could still hear themselves talk. Emily stopped dead when Jade halted, holding out one hand. A moment later, she sensed a spell waiting for them just ahead.
“Stay very still,” Jade whispered. The spell seemed to be moving slightly, as if it were a snake preparing to strike. “We’re going to have to dispel it.”
Emily blinked at him, keeping her own voice low. “Why can’t we just creep backwards?”
“Because any motion will attract it,” Jade said. “We stumbled right into it and now we have to either dispel it or let it strike us.” He scowled. “Judging from all the warnings, it will probably give us a nasty shock even if it doesn’t do anything else. Stay still.”
He held up one hand and started casting charms towards the spell. Emily was impressed. One of them was the standard dispelling charm, but the other three were unfamiliar. The spell ahead of them seemed to pause, and then vanished into nothingness.
Jade grinned at her in triumph and walked forward. A moment later, there was a flash of light. His entire body locked solid.
Emily stared in disbelief, slowly realizing what had happened. The Sergeants had hidden a second spell behind the first, knowing that anyone who dispelled the first spell would rush onwards without taking the time to check for a second surprise. Carefully, she cast the analysis spell into the air, praying that it would work perfectly this time. Somewhat to her surprise, it did, revealing that the paralysis spell was simple enough that it could be easily dispelled.
She started to cast the dispelling charm, before hesitating and running a detection charm over the entire area. Two more nasty surprises revealed themselves before she accidentally triggered them. And, she realized, they were designed to ensure that anyone who tried to deactivate them in the wrong sequence would trigger the spells instead.
Devious, she thought. How much time did they have in the forest? Carefully, she picked the spell she thought was the right one and dispelled it. Nothing happened to her, but the next spell was coming to life. Working quickly, she dispelled it too, then removed the paralysis spell gripping Jade.
He stumbled and almost fell to the ground.
“I ... my thanks,” he said, flushing awkwardly. “I should have thought to check for other surprises before I dispelled the first spell.”
“You would have done it for me,” Emily assured him, although she wasn’t sure if that were true. Jade might have been one of the students who resented her appearance in Martial Magic, even though he’d never threatened her before class. “Now ... how do we get out of here?”
“This way,” Jade said. “Or do you want to go first this time?”
The question proved moot. Three steps later, they found themselves in bright sunlight, right at the edge of the forest. Emily glanced behind them in confusion and saw an impenetrable mass of trees and darkness. The noises of the natural world suddenly blared in her ears and she staggered, hearing birds calling to their mates and horses neighing in the distance. High overhead, she thought she saw–just for a single moment–a dragon.
“We’re third,” Jade said, in annoyance. “How did they get ahead of us?”
He’d spoken quietly, but Miles had very sharp ears. “They didn’t waste so much time dispelling spells after stumbling into obvious traps,” he said dryly. “Next time, what are you going to do?”
“Check first,” Jade said, finally. He looked embarrassed. “I didn’t think to check.”
Emily looked over at Aloha, who had managed to emerge from the forest with her partner. Her roommate looked surprised, and then nodded slowly. Emily hoped that meant she’d decided there might be a place for Emily in Martial Magic after all, even though she still felt decidedly out of place–and unhealthy.
Sergeant Harkin cleared his throat. “Three teams ended up stuck in the forest,” he pronounced, rather like a judge passing sentence. “Why, one person didn’t even help his partner–and ran straight into another trap!”
His voice darkened. “Remember this experience. Take nothing for granted. Watch your back. And help your partner. The next proper exercise will be a great deal worse.”
The Sergeant chuckled. “Everyone who made it through the forest can go wash and then have dinner,” he said, with a grim smile. “Everyone else can wait until we free them.”
Emily nodded, feeling her body aching after one day of Martial Magic. What would the next day be like?
Chapter Fifteen
“ONE WHOLE WEEK OF SCHOOLING,” MISTRESS Irene said. “You seem to be coping reasonably well.”
Emily scowled. Her body ached. Running so fast during Martial Magic class had left her breathless for the rest of the first day. Then, when she’d woken up the following morning, her legs had been aching and her chest hurt. Aloha had been just as exhausted, but her roommate had had several months to prepare herself for Martial Magic, including doing more exercise on a regular basis than Emily had ever done in her life. In hindsight, deciding to avoid sports because most school sports were pointless might not have been the brightest decision of Emily’s life.
“Thank you,” she said instead. The book on Martial Magic said that there would be pain, pain and more pain, and after that some painful pain. Each class would be harder than the last, pushing the students right to their limits. “I’m trying to learn as quickly as I can.”
“Your Basic Charms are coming along nicely,” Mistress Irene said. “You seem to have already made the conceptual breakthrough that so many others fail to grasp. Professor Thande says that you need to be more precise with your Alchemical work, but you only just started. You should master it before you start wasting expensive ingredients.”
Emily nodded and asked the question that had been bothering her for three days. “Who was it who submitted my name for Martial Magic?”
Mistress Irene gave her a sharp look. “Given your ... circumstances you should not refuse to learn how to fight properly. There are rumors about you all over the Allied Lands.”
“No,” Emily said.
“Yes,” Mistress Irene confirmed. “The girl who came to school on a dragon, who may be a Child of Destiny...”
“I’m not a Child of Destiny,” Emily snapped. “Should I have claimed that I only came on a dragon because it was the quickest way to school?”
“Dragons don’t give lifts to every human who summons one of them and asks nicely,” Mistress Irene said. She shrugged. “But it works out in your favor. A Child of Destiny is supposed to be a little strange–and more advanced than her years. Your presence in Martial Magic will surprise no one.”
Emily shook her head slowly. She’d never wanted to advance through favoritism, even back home when the worst that could happen was failing an exam. Here ... well, there had to be a reason why someone as irritating as Alassa was not permitted to advance in Charms until she had mastered the basics. And what sort of idiot thought that Alassa could fake competence indefinitely anyway?
But Whitehall was hardly a regular school. In this particular place, it was easy to forget that the Allied Lands
were under threat, from enemies both within and without, and that they needed every magician they could muster to hold back the necromantic tide. That was why Whitehall taught all new students the basics. Apparently, the second-year classes were optimized for individual success.
Perhaps if more students had started formal study after they’d learned to read and write back home, all kids would get a better education.
“I see,” Emily said, after a long pause. It was bad enough that everyone glanced at her when they thought she wasn’t looking, but if it was part of her cover story ... There were gaps in her knowledge that had to be explained somehow, or else the students would realize that she came from an entirely different world. As it was, she hadn’t even realized that she had to turn down her sheet to protect her blanket, as it wasn’t something that she’d learned back home. “Would it really matter if they knew that I was from a different world?”
“Bad idea to admit more than you have to admit,” Mistress Irene said, after a moment of thought. She looked at Emily and shook her head. “You never know what might wind up being used against you.”
A moment passed, before Mistress Irene picked up a metal wand. “Your spellcasting is good, although you have a tendency to slop your mana outside the spell structure,” she added, looking down at the wand. “That isn’t too uncommon in a new magician, but you have to work on minimizing leakage. The results may not be pleasant.”
Emily nodded. At best, she’d waste mana for no purpose; at worst, she would either ruin her own spell or cause chaotic effects. A sudden change in the local mana field–caused by a magician losing control of her powers–might create new alchemical ingredients, or become a hazard to anyone who walked into the field without proper preparation. Her books had warned her that it was better to learn control using small, basic spells before trying to advance to the more advanced parts of the syllabus.
“Keep practicing,” Mistress Irene ordered. She put the wand down and smiled at Emily. “Do you have any issues that should be raised?”
Emily hesitated. She needed advice, yet she wasn’t sure who she should ask–or could ask. Whitehall might be a magical school, but magic didn’t seem to have improved human nature or prevented academic backstabbing as well as bullying. What if Mistress Irene decided to mislead her? But she needed advice and she had no idea who else to ask.
“Tell me something,” she said slowly. “Can I patent an idea?”
“I’m not sure I understand the question,” Mistress Irene said. “What do you mean by patent?”
“If I come up with a new way to do something,” Emily explained, “I claim it as mine, because I was the first person to think of it, and everyone else who uses it in the future has to pay me a small sum of money.”
Mistress Irene chuckled. “Goodness, is that how things work on your world? How do you encourage debate and research if people have to pay to use your idea?”
Her face sobered as she considered the question. “I hope you are not trying to devise entirely new spells already. You’re nowhere near ready to try to do more, right now, than modify a handful of the variables. Even that would be chancy until you master the art of precision.”
“No,” Emily said. She looked around the office for something that would illustrate what she had in mind, eventually pointing to the lamp on the desk. “I mean something physical ...”
“I see, I think,” Mistress Irene said. She frowned, deep in thought. “It’s very different to prevent someone from using a new magical concept. Once someone invents it, everyone else realizes that it is actually possible and starts trying to work out how it was done. If you came up with a new spell and used it in public, your friends could analyze it to see how it went together.”
Her frown deepened. “I don’t think you could claim a physical design permanently,” she added, a moment later. “You might be able to convince one of the Allied Lands to forbid anyone to produce it, apart from yourself, but the rest of the Alliance might refuse to honor the edict. And it would cost thousands of gold coins in bribes.”
That, Emily decided, made a certain kind of sense. Ideas did spread rapidly–and it would be very hard to prohibit someone else from using your idea, at least without creating laws that would be impossible to enforce. This world might have had vampires, werewolves and necromancers, but it didn’t seem to have lawyers. Apparently, it was possible to claim a trading monopoly; unsurprisingly, smugglers took advantage of it to sell goods to people who didn’t want to pay the inflated prices demanded by the monopoly-holder.
“Your sponsor might have left you with some money for ... personal use,” Mistress Irene said, “but it isn’t enough to bribe even a minor functionary.”
Emily blinked. The idea that Void might have given her some pocket money had never occurred to her. “He did?”
“Most students ask about spending allowances within the very first day,” Mistress Irene said with a grin. “You are entitled to five silver coins a month, with an additional gold coin for every time you gain an excellent mark on your exams. Should you wish to save them, you may place them in storage or keep them within your room. Any purchase requiring more money than you have will require you to convince your supervisor–me–that it is a necessary purchase.”
“Five silver coins,” Emily said. “And how much are they worth? I mean, how much will they buy me?”
“Depends where you shop,” Mistress Irene said. “And what you want. And how much effort it takes to produce it. You can get five or six decent robes for one silver coin, or you can have one made from rare and expensive materials for the same amount.”
Emily nodded thoughtfully. Back home, children had wasted their money buying designer clothes that really weren’t that different from cheap outfits, just because they believed that one brand was intrinsically superior to another. Here, they might have a point; materials like silk would be much more expensive than simple cloth. She had no doubt that Alassa and her cronies would have their robes produced to order and made from the finest materials available.
Mistress Irene shook her head. “What exactly do you have in mind for your first ... idea?”
Emily hesitated again. In theory, there were countless ideas from her old world that could be introduced to the new world, but she’d run into problems at once. No one had ever taught her how to construct a computer from scratch, or even something as simple as a radio transmitter or telephone. She was sure that she could eventually deduce some of the basic principles just by reasoning from what she already knew, but she doubted that she could put it into practice. And how did someone produce electric power anyway?
Once, years ago, she’d read a book about a girl who had been stranded on a primitive desert world. The girl had promptly introduced gunpowder to the locals and became a millionaire, as well as winning a war against their enemies. Because of this, Emily had already checked to see if there was anything like gunpowder in her new world and there didn’t seem to be anything remotely like it, not even fireworks. But there was one small problem with making gunpowder for herself, she didn’t actually know how to make it. The book she’d read had claimed that one person could produce a gunpowder factory from scratch. It might have been possible, but Emily didn’t know how. Modern schools disapproved of teaching children how to make explosive materials.
Maybe she should have had a paranoid kook for a father.
The first workable idea had been simple, so simple that she’d almost discarded it before she’d started taking the concept seriously. Madame Razz had issued her five pairs of knickers, but she hadn’t given Emily even one bra. The undershirt provided no support at all for her breasts. She’d wondered in some alarm if everyone would be able to see her nipples before realizing that the white robe hid everything from prying eyes. Eventually, she’d asked Imaiqah and discovered that the closest thing to a bra in the new world was a corset-like outfit worn by aristocratic women who wanted the support. Peasant woman merely bound their breasts with uncomfortable strips
of cloth.
“If I tell you,” Emily said, finally, “can I ask you to keep it to yourself?”
Mistress Irene gave her a long look, and then smiled. “I am your Guardian,” she said. “It is my job to look after you while you’re attending Whitehall. I will keep anything you tell me to myself unless it poses a threat to you, your fellow students or the school itself. And I have enough money not to need more.”
Emily found herself flushing and cursed inwardly. “I was thinking of something like this,” she said, and outlined the concept of a bra. “Do you think that it is workable?”
“I’ve certainly seen girls who could use it,” Mistress Irene said. There was a long pause. “I confess that I have never seen anything like it, certainly not for the common folk. Do you realize just how hard it would be to prevent other tailors from duplicating your work?”
“I was going to sell them the idea,” Emily said, then stopped. There were no big multinational corporations here, or clothing factories. Clothes were produced by seamstresses and tailors, who apprenticed themselves to masters until they had learned enough to strike out on their own. She could sell the idea to one or two of them, but it would spread rapidly. There would be no way to hold a monopoly for more than a few weeks. “I ... that isn’t entirely workable, is it?”
“No,” Mistress Irene said. “You might be able to earn some money that way but I don’t think that it would last for very long. Unless...you sold the idea to the right person, who could then establish himself as the premier producer of your...breast-supporting garments. I believe that your roommate’s father might be able to help you market the idea. He would want a share in the proceeds, however. No one does anything for free.”
Emily nodded sourly. Hopefully, selling bras would give her enough money to start experimenting with other concepts.
As it was, the world economy could only really be described as basic, with little concept of actually making more money. One of her Home Economics classes had discussed just how the concept of lending money, at a small rate of interest, could boost the overall economy, at least until there was a major panic. Opening a bank might work as a way to make money through interest, but that would have to wait until she had a great deal of money to use as a base.
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