Schooled in Magic

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  It was wrong. It was completely wrong. It was so wrong as to be unquestionably wrong. And it was so fundamentally wrong that Emily had difficulty in coming up with an explanation of why it was wrong.

  Alassa’s hand moved and a spell lashed out towards Emily. It struck Emily’s protective wards and bounced off, magic crackling around her skin before it faded away into the background mana.

  Emily started to cast a spell of her own–a freeze charm she’d memorized for emergencies - only to see it deflected away by one of Alassa’s cronies.

  A second later, Alassa hit her with a second spell. Emily’s wards were torn away.

  Alassa’s third spell slammed into Emily’s unprotected body.

  She tried to open her mouth, but an eerie tingle spread over her body and the world began to blur. Alassa’s spell seemed to grow stronger as the world shrank, somehow dislocating Emily’s mind from her body. It was suddenly very hard to hear anything ... it struck her, in a flash of pure terror, that Alassa had transfigured her into something small and immobile.

  Imaiqah’s words came back to her and she wondered if she was about to become convinced that she was a broom, or something worse. But Alassa could only cast spells she’d memorized. No one would have taught her a flawed spell ...

  At least, Emily hoped that was the case. Someone might have given Alassa a useless spell in the hopes it would give her bad habits. But that thought was too terrifying to contemplate ...

  The world had faded into a confused mass of impressions. Perhaps she no longer had eyes, so how could she see? But Emily definitely saw something ... Alassa and her cronies were advancing on Imaiqah, intending to teach the common-born girl a nasty lesson for daring to befriend someone who might help her to stand up for herself. Words came to her as though she was hearing them through water: Alassa threatening, Imaiqah pleading ... she sounded terrified. Alassa would tease and torment Imaiqah and then Alassa would do whatever she wanted to a helpless girl.

  Pure rage boiled through Emily’s mind as she struggled with the spell Alassa had cast on her. It should have been easy to shape a dispelling charm, but it was so hard to think clearly with her thoughts slowly blurring into a daze. A human mind had to be dislocated if its body were to be transformed, she realized, as she struggled to counter Alassa’s spell. The alternative was what had happened to poor Broomstick.

  Imaiqah screamed.

  Emily threw caution to the winds, blasting Alassa’s spell with all the mana she could summon and direct. The spell simply melted away while the world spun crazily around Emily as she snapped back into her human form. Somehow, the rage made it easier to hold onto her magic.

  Her eyes returned to normal. She clearly saw that Imaiqah’s face was bruised; she’d been slapped, hard. And she’d been so terrified that she hadn’t even tried to defend herself.

  Alassa turned, raising her wand even as her face was twisted by horrified disbelief.

  Emily’s rage was making it hard to think. She found two spells in her mind, spells she’d memorized that were both intended to stop a bully in her tracks. She hesitated, just for a second too long–which one should she pick?

  Alassa started to cast another spell ...

  Emily sensed the surge of magic and knew that her time had run out. Frantically, she tried to cast both spells at once. Mana flared through her body, sending her staggering to her knees. She heard, very dimly, someone screaming in pain. Alassa? Or was Emily screaming herself? She squeezed her eyes shut as blinding light burned at her eyelids. Her head hurt, as if she’d been violently sick inside her own mind, or taken something that had intoxicated her.

  She managed to open her eyes, then recoiled in horror.

  Alassa lay, stunned on the ground in front of her ...

  ... And her lower jaw was warped and twisted into eerie yellow stone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  WHAT HAD SHE DONE?

  Emily heard someone scream in the distance, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Alassa’s face. What had she done?

  Alassa seemed trapped midway through transformations, as if the transformation had proceeded only so far, then stopped. The morbid part of Emily’s mind pointed out that it was lucky that Alassa had been knocked out, or she would have been in terrible pain; the rest of her wondered if she’d killed the bully outright. What if she had? She’d been so happy at Whitehall, so happy that she’d never seriously considered going home. They’d expel her, and then Alassa’s royal parents would kill her...

  A hand caught her and shook her, roughly.

  Emily turned to see one of the tutors, an elderly man she didn’t recognize. Another tutor, with dirty black hair and an unpleasantly jaundiced face, used magic to pick up Alassa, then they both vanished in a flash of light. To the school’s infirmary, Emily hoped, and prayed inwardly that they weren’t going to the morgue.

  What had she done?

  Mixed magic, part of her mind answered. Two spells. She’d tried to cast two spells at once and they’d interacted.

  How could she have been so stupid? Broomstick’s roommate had been a genius compared to Emily. Emily had let rage and hatred trick her into losing control. She could have protected herself and Imaiqah, then cast a single spell on Alassa, or she could have simply thrown a punch right at the bully’s face. In a world where magic was exalted above all else, Alassa might not have thought to shield herself against physical blows.

  Her head spun again. Emily felt as if she were about to vomit. What had she done? Alassa might not recover at all, or ... she might have permanently mutilated the girl, or ... too many horrific possibilities ran through her mind. She might as well have been playing with a gun, unaware that it had been loaded until the moment she pulled the trigger ... no, she’d known that magic could be very dangerous.

  She had no excuse.

  The tutor’s face showed nothing but grim anger. Emily couldn’t blame him.

  There was a crowd gathering to witness her shame and humiliation. Emily wanted to hide, but where could she go? They would all know that she’d almost killed Alassa, even if the royal princess had thoroughly deserved punishment for her bullying. What would they think of her now that she actually cared about the opinions of her peers?

  Maybe she should kill herself. She’d thought about ending her life years ago, when she’d realized just how little she had to look forward to, but what she’d done now was far worse than merely having had enough of a pointless life. A girl had been badly injured, left on the verge of death, and it was all Emily’s fault. There was no escaping her responsibility for losing control of her own magic. A few seconds of actual thought would have allowed her to teach Alassa a lesson without nearly killing her.

  She swallowed hard and looked up at the tutor. “Go to the Hall of Shame,” he said, in a voice that refused to brook disobedience. “Now!”

  Emily nodded, very slowly. Somehow–her legs felt wobbly, unwilling to obey orders–she managed to walk forwards, towards the nearest entrance to the castle. The crowd of students drew back, as if she were carrying a contagious disease and they were afraid of catching it. None of the tutors looked happy; no doubt anyone who spoke out of turn would regret it for a very long time.

  She felt eyes boring into her back as she reached the doorway and entered the castle. Somehow–maybe not surprisingly–the door led her right into the Hall of Shame.

  She’d seen it before, the first time she’d entered the castle. Students who had broken the rules were sent there to wait for sentence to be passed, although she wasn’t sure who did the sentencing. Somehow, she doubted that just anyone would decide her fate. By now, the Grandmaster probably knew and was discussing her future with Void. She could just imagine what the sorcerer who had risked his own life to save hers would say once he heard that she’d ruined her own future. And Alassa’s parents would want her dead ...

  ... Emily shivered, unsure of what to do. Maybe she could just run.

  “Hi,” a voice said.

  She
looked up to see Jade standing there. She blinked hard to clear her eyes. They’d expel her from Martial Magic for sure, even if they allowed her to remain in the school.

  His voice was surprisingly soft, almost gentle. But he didn’t know what she’d done. “What are you doing here?”

  Emily shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m a Prefect,” Jade reminded her. “It’s my turn to monitor the Hall of Shame.”

  Of course he would be, Emily realized. They’d want a potential combat sorcerer like him to have leadership experience if he had to go to war.

  Jade made a show of glancing up and down the corridor. “You seem to be alone,” he said, after a moment. “No one ever gets in trouble when there’s a Ken match on.”

  Emily flushed, fighting down the urge to cry. She’d definitely go down in the school’s history, perhaps under the heading of “what not to do.” And to think that it had something to do with sport ...

  She looked down, unwilling to let him see her eyes filled with tears. “Am I the worst pupil in the school?”

  Jade caught her shoulder and shook it, gently. “You’ve only been here a week. Do you think you’re worse than the idiot who thought that a shark would make a good pet? She transformed it into a cat and used it as a familiar. The monster scratched everyone until it vanished into the kitchen and was never seen again.”

  Emily stared at him, wondering why his touch was actually reassuring. “Did the shark kill people?

  “No, but some of them wished they were dead,” Jade said, with droll amusement. “Did they say how long you were to stay here?”

  “No,” Emily admitted. The tears were still falling. He passed her a handkerchief, allowing her to try to dry her eyes. “I don’t know how long to stay here.”

  “That’s a bad sign,” Jade said. He looked as if he wanted to pry, particularly after she’d asked if the shark-cat had killed someone, but held his tongue. “You see the marks on the floor? Go stand there, as still as you can, with your hands on your head. Someone will eventually call you into the Warden’s office, where ...”

  Sentence will be passed, Emily thought, numbly. “What happens if I move?”

  “The Warden will know and he will take it into account,” Jade said. “Don’t annoy him, whatever else you do.”

  Emily almost giggled. As if that would matter!

  “Thank you,” she said, finally. She dabbed her eyes and then passed the handkerchief back to him. “I ... thank you.”

  The Hall of Shame seemed larger than she remembered, but then she was the only pupil there. She stopped at the glowing marks, hesitated, then stepped onto them, realizing that everyone who walked by would see her and know that she was being punished. They would probably have heard rumors already, she thought bitterly. The Child of Destiny, who had arrived on a dragon, had almost killed a fellow pupil. She might even have killed a fellow pupil.

  “Hands on your head,” Jade called. “Now, if you please.”

  Emily hesitated, and then slowly obeyed. The pose was humiliating as hell, intended to make it clear that she was definitely being punished. No wonder it was such an effective punishment ... her stomach churned rapidly as she remembered what she’d done, and the horror-struck looks on the faces of Alassa’s cronies. They might have been encouraged by the princess’s parents to guard her. If so, Alassa had been badly injured on their watch. But they could have been encouraged to show her a better way to live ...

  But none of that mattered, she reminded herself dully. She was responsible for her own actions, including a failure to think before acting. All the excuses in the world wouldn’t change that simple fact. What had happened to Alassa was her fault and her fault alone.

  Time ticked by slowly, to the point where she felt that she’d waited in the corridor for hours. She somehow managed to hold still, apart from twitching, but her arms were starting to ache from the uncomfortable posture. Her eyes flickered from side to side.

  Jade was seated at his desk, reading a book. How could he read at a time like this?

  The butterflies in her stomach were mating and having children. God alone knew what was keeping them from summoning her to face judgment. How long had she even been standing in the Hall of Shame?

  A voice echoed through the corridor. “Emily. Enter the office.”

  Emily’s arms creaked as she managed to make her body move, cramping slightly when she walked towards the heavy wooden door. It didn’t open at her approach, forcing her to open it with her bare hands. Yet another twist of the knife. Her arms hurt as she pulled open the door, but it hardly mattered. She felt as if she were walking to her own execution.

  She stepped inside and looked around. The Warden’s office was completely bare, apart from a desk, a pair of chairs pushed against the far wall and a locked cabinet. There were no personal touches at all. A single glowing ball of light hung in the air, casting a cold radiance over the entire chamber. The effect it created was very much like a prison cell.

  The Warden–at least, she assumed he was the Warden–was seated behind his desk, wearing a monk’s cowl that had been charmed to shroud his face in darkness. Emily tried to look into the shadow and saw nothing, not even a hint of human features under the hood. A chill ran down her spine as she came to a halt in front of his desk, wondering if he was even human. There had to be a reason why he was hiding his identity.

  “Emily,” the Warden said. His voice was almost completely toneless, leaving her to wonder if he was using a spell to disguise his voice as well as his face. “What exactly happened today?”

  Emily swallowed hard and started to explain. The Warden listened carefully. Like the Grandmaster, he seemed capable of listening without interrupting and asking stupid questions. Alassa hated her and her friend, Alassa had transfigured her and hurt Imaiqah - and Emily had lashed out at her without thinking. She admitted that it had been her fault at the end and then stopped, waiting to hear what the Warden said. Whatever it was, she told herself, she could take it.

  “Your two spells merged to produce an unexpected effect,” the Warden said. “You turned her lower jaw into stone.”

  He paused, as if inviting comment. Emily said nothing, although inwardly she was relieved. At least she hadn’t killed Alassa ...

  “An inch higher and you would have killed her,” the Warden added. His voice was still toneless, but she thought she detected cold anger behind the mask. “You did not focus either spell very well, so there was effectively no focus at all. It could have transfigured part of her brain into stone while the rest remained flesh and blood. The result would have been fatal.”

  Emily blanched. A person could be a variable in a spell; she’d learned that much from Professor Lombardi. Turning Alassa’s entire body into stone wouldn’t have been fatal–it certainly wasn’t fatal when it happened to noisy students–but if half of her brain had simply stopped working properly, the rest of her brain wouldn’t work. Emily knew very little about how brains functioned, yet she could see how the spell would have been lethal. And she hadn’t even bothered to aim properly!

  “As it was, Alassa was shocked into unconsciousness,” the Warden said. “Which is lucky; the Healers had to dismantle what you did carefully and her thrashing about trying to cast healing spells on herself would quite possibly have made the problem worse. Even so, you could easily have mutilated her permanently.”

  Emily gulped. One of the books she had read for Charms covered healing spells–and the very first page had warned students never to try to heal themselves unless there was no one else within shouting distance. There was too much chance of the spell going badly wrong if the caster was in pain, causing additional damage that would need a trained healer to fix.

  “You didn’t, thankfully, but you may well have caused additional problems for her in the future.” The Warden’s voice grew stronger, darker. “Partial transfigurations are always dangerous. The spell for turning a person’s hand int
o stone should be on the banned list, if you ask me. The only thing that keeps it off the banned list was the simple fact that it was only targeted on the victim’s hand, with safeguards that your botched spells managed to bypass. We will have to reconsider that position.

  “You could have inflicted mental trauma on her,” he continued. “If you’d aimed lower you could have suffocated her to death, or permanently damaged her reproductive system. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, of just how politically disastrous it would be to have the Crown Princess of any Kingdom rendered infertile?”

  His voice hardened. “The first duty of any Monarch, be they male or female, is to have a child of their body who can be linked into the spells they use for keeping their thrones in their bloodlines. If Alassa was unable to bear children, the throne would have to be passed to the next person in line–and that person happens to be married to the Crown Prince of a neighboring Kingdom. The political shockwaves would have been bad enough if anyone had done it, but everyone seems to think that you are a Child of Destiny. They would be wondering if your destiny was to destroy her Kingdom.”

  Emily found herself speaking before she could stop herself. “Why do you let her bully anyone who doesn’t suck up to her?”

  The Warden seemed to look at her, but it was impossible to be sure. “Excuse me?”

  “The first time I met her, she acted like a bully,” Emily said. “The second time, she and her cronies stuck a jinx on me that I had to fight to remove. The third time, she deliberately picked a fight and then tormented my friend! Why do you tolerate it in a place where an accident could kill someone, even if it didn’t unleash such political repercussions?”

  There was a long chilling pause. “We are preparing children to fight in a war,” the Warden said. “It is important that we teach them the skills they need to defend themselves, or the wisdom to understand their place in the Allied Lands. You developed defensive skills very quickly, did you not? Alassa needs them too. When she becomes Queen of her land, she will have no one that she can trust completely. Students need incentive to learn.”