Schooled in Magic

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “A terrible defeat for the Snakes,” Harkin observed, without preamble. “Where, exactly, did you go wrong?”

  Aloha’s current team leader spoke up, reluctantly. “We didn’t watch all of the possible angles of approach. And we allowed ourselves to be forced to remain under cover.”

  “A good answer,” Harkin said. “Where else did you go wrong?”

  There was a long pause, before Aloha tried to answer. “We sent three people away to counterattack. We weakened ourselves at the wrong moment.”

  Harkin smiled. “And was that really a mistake?”

  It was a trick question, Emily was sure. The books noted that in war, the simplest things were hard and the easy answers tended to lead to more problems further down the line. And yet they’d also been told that to stand still risked eventual defeat. There didn’t seem to be any real answer at all.

  “Yes,” Aloha’s leader said. “It weakened us at the wrong moment.”

  “As Aloha said,” Harkin reminded him, coldly. “But she was right, for the wrong reason. Why was it a mistake? Why would it have been a mistake even if Emily had launched a frontal assault with her entire team?”

  We’d have been slaughtered, Emily thought. Losing everyone would have been a black mark on her record, even if there were no other repercussions. Unless ...

  Harkin looked from face to face. “Would anyone like to tell him the answer?”

  Emily saw it in a sudden flash of inspiration. “They had reinforcements on the way. All they had to do was hold on until relieved.”

  “And how do you know,” Harkin inquired, in a uncomfortably polite voice, “that they had reinforcements on the way?”

  “Because they should have called for them as soon as Jade launched the frontal assault,” Emily said, fighting to keep her temper under control. The Sergeant could get under her skin far quicker than any other tutor, even though there was no genuine malice in his words. “They would have had to call, because we might have been the spear-point of an entire army intending to ram itself through the hole.”

  There were some chuckles, which faded away as the Sergeant glared around him. “You’re right,” he said finally. “By splitting their numbers, the defenders weakened themselves when all they had to do was wait and hold position. They were aggressive and paid for it by losing their position. The road to the nearest city now lies open.”

  He looked over at the defenders, and then back at the Redshirts. “I’ve told you before that the objective is victory. Throwing away your own people for nothing weakens you more than it weakens the enemy. Always keep one eye on your final objective.

  “Congratulations, Redshirts,” he concluded. “And now that we have all had a chance to discuss the recent exercise, you can follow me on a run. Incidentally, anyone who falls behind Sergeant Miles will be the punching bag in the next exercise.”

  He turned and sprinted off towards the running track. There was a pause, and then Jade led the students after him. Emily forced herself to keep her speed under control as she ran, having learned that pushing her legs to run as fast as they could go would exhaust her very quickly. Sweat poured down her back as she heard Miles barking encouragement behind her, along with the occasional tap of his baton to the rear of any straggling student. She’d been tapped enough with his baton to know that she didn’t want to be tapped again.

  “Come on,” Harkin bellowed, just like a gym teacher. “You think that the enemy’s going to stop chasing you because you’re tired?”

  Emily winced. One of their exercises had involved trying to hide from enemy huntsmen who knew the forest like the back of their hands. She’d been caught quickly, tied up and left helpless until the exercise had terminated. The huntsmen had known more about tying knots than the Sorcerer Malefic, she’d decided later. Escape had been completely impossible. Harkin had promised them that they’d do the exercise again, later. Emily wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Her heart was pounding and she was breathing heavily when Harkin finally called a halt, just outside the school. Before, she wouldn’t have been able to complete such a run, not without staggering to a halt and begging for mercy. Now, she knew that she would recover very quickly, if only because of a mixture of good food and solid exercise. Harkin cast an eye over them as they lined up in front of him, studying their muddy uniforms. At least he didn’t seem to expect them to keep their clothes clean.

  “Good,” he said, finally. “We may be graduating to more advanced running next week.”

  Emily groaned, inwardly. More advanced running? She could see ways to toughen up the other exercises, or the climbing frame device that he’d used to teach them how to scramble up and down trees, cliffs and even house walls, but how could they run harder? Maybe he intended to force them to run faster, or get walloped with the baton. It seemed clear to her that both of the Sergeants were deliberately holding back as they ran.

  “Each team will also be expected to join us on a ramble through the countryside,” the Sergeant added, after a moment. Emily suspected that it was going to be more of a hellish cross-country march. “There will be five days spent away from Whitehall in the mountains, where we will live off the land as we visit some places of historical interest. We will sleep under the stars, just as fully-trained soldiers do when on campaign.”

  He smiled, rather dryly. “You are responsible for ensuring that your other tutors know that you will be gone, once we post the rota,” he warned them. “There shouldn’t be any real disruption to your studies, but if your tutors kick up a fuss, inform us and we’ll see what we can do. If worst comes to worst, we can add you to a different team for the trip. I suggest that you do your reading and make sure you know what you want to bring.”

  Emily winced at the droll amusement in his voice. He’d let them make mistakes because they hadn’t read the material properly, and then pointed them out after it was too late to easily fix the mistakes. It wasn’t a mistake she intended to repeat, particularly if they had to carry everything on a five-day route march. The five-mile marches were bad enough.

  “Now, you may go shower,” he concluded. “Emily, stay behind for a moment.”

  Emily watched as the rest of the class headed for the showers, wondering nervously what Harkin intended to say to her. It could be anything from congratulations to a private rebuke, one so unpleasant that even the Sergeant would hesitate to issue it in front of the entire team.

  “You did well,” Harkin said. “But you do realize that you capitalized on an enemy mistake?”

  “Yes,” Emily said tightly. But if all six of the defenders had remained in place, they would still have been caught between two fires. Three, perhaps, if Jade ran forward to join the attack. “I understand.”

  “Make sure that you read the list of camping supplies carefully,” Harkin added. “I won’t be assigning a team leader to this trip.”

  So we can make our own mistakes, Emily thought, sourly. But it did make a certain kind of sense.

  “And draw some potions from Mistress Kyla,” Harkin said. If Emily hadn’t known better, she would have thought that he was embarrassed. “There are specific potions for these camping trips. Make sure you bring them with you, or it won’t be so pleasant.”

  He pointed her towards the showers and Emily nodded, walking through the door and into the changing room. Thankfully, Aloha had finished washing and gone to eat, leaving Emily alone as she stripped off and dumped the muddy uniform in the cleaning basket. The water was hot and clean, much to her relief. There had been times when they had been forced to shower with cold water. Incentive, Aloha had pointed out later, to learn how to cast heating spells for pails of water.

  Her body ached as she finished washing and used a towel to dry before donning her robes and wrapping up her hair. Outside, she was surprised to walk right into Jade and the rest of the Redshirts, all standing to attention.

  “Well done, Captain,” Jade said. The praise didn’t seem forced at all. “Come join us for dinner.”
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  Emily flushed, and then allowed them to lead her to the dining hall. Harkin had held her back. Had he known this would happen? They hadn’t escorted Jade anywhere when he’d led the team to victory, but Emily had pulled off the first bloodless victory the Redshirts had enjoyed. It seemed to be something to celebrate.

  “You won,” Bran said. He winked at her. “Next time, I’ll win.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  EMILY STOPPED DEAD. THERE WAS A shambling monstrosity in the middle of the ceremonial garden. At first, she’d thought that it was a thoroughly weird scarecrow, but then the creature had started to move. It looked like a towering column of jelly, wearing what the remains of an oversized set of robes, topped with a single eye that looked permanently malevolent. Slimy tentacles emerged from within its bulging robes, each tentacle carrying a different kind of gardening tool.

  She found it hard to speak as the creature’s eye fixed on her. “What is that?”

  “No one’s quite sure,” Imaiqah admitted. “Apparently, Professor Thande once threw a thousand different potion components into a caldron and boiled them up just to see what would happen. When it had finished bubbling, that ... thing crawled out and pronounced itself to be a thinking being. Naturally, they put it in the gardens.”

  Alassa looked equally stunned. “It’s alive?”

  A long tentacle reached out towards her and tapped her on the forehead. “I think I am alive, so I am alive,” the monster said, in a burbling voice. “Is it really such a surprise to discover that intelligence takes on many different forms?”

  “Don’t scare the children, CT,” a feminine voice said. Emily turned, and saw a young woman who wore a green robe and carried a small knife in one hand. “This is their first lesson in Magical Creatures. We want them to come back next week.”

  The creature seemed to nod–it was hard to be sure, as it was difficult to tell where its head actually began–and shambled away down a long row of flower beds.

  Alassa rubbed at her forehead where CT had touched her and sent Emily an appalled look. Emily silently agreed with Alassa’s assessment, although Emily had encountered other intelligent creatures in this world. But CT was definitely something different. Had Thande really produced it in a fit of absent-mindedness, or was that a cover story hiding something far worse?

  “Welcome to Magical Creatures,” the woman said. She seemed almost insultingly healthy, with bronzed skin and a smile that lit up her face like the sun. “I am Mistress Kirdáne, charged with ensuring that you know enough about magical creatures to survive, should you encounter any of the really dangerous animals. If any of you prove to have a genuine talent for handling magical animals, I will make arrangements for you to study the subject in your second-year onwards, perhaps with an eye towards becoming an animal mage. It isn’t a common talent, though, so I will not be disappointed if none of you decide to stay in the course in second-year.”

  Her smile grew even brighter. “Some of these animals are very dangerous, while others are intelligent. If you don’t know how to handle them, stay back and let me show you what to do. Follow me.”

  The zoo–or so Emily came to think of it–stretched out for miles. There were a small set of blockhouses that housed some of the animals, but most of the rest lived in their natural habitats, or as close to them as Whitehall could produce. Strange mists shimmered in the air, which prevented the students from looking deeply into the fields.

  Then they reached a small doorway in the middle of nowhere that stood upright without any visible means of support. Mistress Kirdáne winked at her class, stepped through the door and vanished.

  After a moment, the students, led by Imaiqah, followed her through the doorway and the world changed around them.

  They appeared to be standing on a hillside, far away from any human habitation.

  In the distance, Emily could see what looked like a herd of horses, but as they walked closer Emily could make out horns sprouting from their foreheads. Each of them was a different color, ranging from house-brown to bright pink. Emily had never enjoyed playing with toy ponies as a child, yet there was something about the unicorns that called to her, inviting her to play with them. Up close, they smelled of a strange, almost seductive perfume. Their eyes were soft, warm and infinitively caring.

  “Boys, remain where you are and don’t try to approach the herd,” Mistress Kirdáne said. The class halted. “Unicorns don’t like men approaching them at any time; if you go too close, you may be gored or hexed by their magic. They’re creatures of wild magic, so undoing whatever they do to you may be impossible.”

  Her voice softened as she looked back at the unicorns. “Girls, you may approach the herd carefully, but if they move away don’t follow them. Their tolerance for women is limited, even though they do have a certain affinity for unmarried girls.”

  The unicorns were so strange that they were almost surreal. Emily had grown used to magic, to charms and potions and even the rigorous training the Sergeants offered, but the unicorns left her feeling numb, as if they couldn’t be real. She walked towards a unicorn–one roughly the size of a small pony, with bright red fur–feeling her senses starting to swim. The creature eyed her, winked–she was sure that she had winked–and then walked away, as if she were daring Emily to follow her.

  Emily took two steps after her before she remembered the warning and stopped. She backed away and walked towards a different unicorn, one with green fur and over-large brown eyes. This one seemed willing to allow Emily to stroke her fur, but not to touch its horn. She felt a strange tingle as she reached for it, warning her not to press any further. Emily tried to send the creature an apologetic look; the unicorn merely shook her mane in response. She was definitely a creature of wild magic.

  It was impossible for her to imagine that the creatures might be dangerous, she realized. They were ... well, innocent in a way that few humans could equal, and yet they had wild magic running through them. Professor Thande had said, in passing, that the horn of a unicorn had any number of alchemical uses. Emily found herself wondering just how many unicorns had been killed by men for them to develop a refusal to even tolerate human males. Or was there a deeper significance to their actions?

  She looked down at the unicorn, then forced herself to look away. Mistress Kirdáne was looking at her, one eyebrow raised.

  Emily looked around at the rest of the class. Imaiqah and Alassa were playing with a unicorn infant, which rubbed her head against their legs. Most of the other girls had found a unicorn willing to play with them; one of the girls was actually trying to mount a unicorn with white fur. It seemed to think that it was just a big game and kept moving at precisely the wrong moment. The boys watched resentfully, but they were apparently unwilling to risk coming too close.

  Then again, anyone who grew up in this world would understand the dangers of wild magic.

  Emily gave the unicorn one final stroke, then walked over to the tutor. “How do you tell which of them is male and which is female?”

  Mistress Kirdáne laughed. “They’re all female. And to answer what I believe will be your next question, we don’t know how they reproduce. No one has ever managed to convince them to tell us.”

  Emily stared at her. “But there must be males, right?”

  “We assume so,” Mistress Kirdáne said. “We just don’t know for sure. If anyone has ever encountered a unicorn herd of males, they have never returned to tell the tale.”

  She clapped her hands and led the class back down towards the doorway back to Whitehall. Once they were through the gate, she led them into one of the blockhouses and cast a spell in the air, allowing them to see in the dark.

  At first, Emily could see nothing, but then she realized that the darkness itself was alive. It loomed towards her with deadly menace. She caught a glimpse of wings–or at least she thought they were wings–in the darkness, before the creature butted right into an invisible field and stopped dead.

  Several of the girls gasped
in shock.

  The wards, Emily realized. They were safe.

  “Nightshades are very rare, thankfully,” Mistress Kirdáne informed them. “They are only active at night. The creatures hunt large animals so they can drag them back to their lairs and consume them over the space of a few days.”

  Emily swallowed. She wasn’t the only one who looked nervous–or shocked.

  Mistress Kirdáne continued, giving them no time to digest what she’d said. “You can’t see their claws without proper lighting, but suffice it to say they carry a deadly poison that paralyses the victim and holds them in suspension as the Nightshade devours them. There was no cure until Professor Thande invented a potion that counteracts the worst of the damage. Even so, the victim is permanently scarred by his experience.”

  Emily had no trouble believing it as she took one last look at the Nightshade. There was nothing like it on Earth, any more than there were unicorns, fairies and ... whatever CT was. What else didn’t she know about her new home? Her tutors seemed to assume that she knew everything a normal pupil would know, without taking her origins into account.

  She was still mulling it over as Mistress Kirdáne led them to the next blockhouse. This one was situated next to a field containing a dozen sheep, bleating pathetically at the students as they passed. Emily felt strong wards surrounding the blockhouse as Mistress Kirdáne opened the door–which was made of solid iron, apparently–and beckoned for them to follow her inside. The light was dim, but there was no need to use a spell to see.

  Emily’s thought the blockhouse was empty at first–and then she saw the mist. It hung in the absolute centre of the pen, a sparkling mass that glowed, pulsing with malevolent intent. Emily looked at it and shuddered, having the uneasy sense that the mist was looking right back at her. The more she looked at it, the more she knew it was alive and intelligent, a predator in a world of prey. She wanted to run; only pride kept her in her place.