(The Zero Enigma Book 6) The Family Pride

by Christopher Nuttall

  But it was covered with dust, so much that it was clear no one had entered the room in years. Ours were the only visible footsteps. There were no hints that anyone else even knew the room existed, let alone that they’d bothered to visit. I imagined the scavengers would have been through years ago, then left it alone. Or maybe it had simply been stripped bare when it had been abandoned.

  “We should find a safer room,” Louise said. “One with proper protections and wards.”

  “One where everyone will know where to find us,” Francis pointed out. “And we won’t be able to ... protect the room, not properly.”

  “Hah,” Louise said. “You really think someone is going to spy on us?”

  “It’s part of the game,” Francis reminded her. “Didn’t you read the rules?”

  I rolled my eyes, then started to cast spells. The dust reared up at my command, gusts of controlled wind pushing it towards the far walls. Saline smiled and began to cast spells of her own. The dust congealed into dustballs, which slowly solidified until they took on the consistency of snowballs. They’d make good weapons, I thought, if we ever had to throw them at someone. If nothing else, it wasn’t the sort of weapon anyone would expect. Francis looked down at his sports kit, then started to push the desks to one side. Louise joined him a moment later. The floor was slowly becoming clear.

  “Pretty,” Saline commented. “But dead.”

  I followed her gaze. Someone had drawn a complicated network of runes and sigils on the floor, a pattern that had once summoned and shaped magic. Now, it was dead. Whoever had sealed the room had made sure of it, cutting across the incantation lines to make sure that the magic had dispelled long ago. I reached out with my senses, making sure there truly was nothing there. There was no hint of magic, save for the ever-present background hum of the school’s wards. I’d long since grown used to their presence.

  “I’ll be picking dust out of my hair and dress for weeks,” Louise complained. “I hope this is worth it.”

  “You should have worn your gym kit,” Francis said. “It’s a lot easier to clean.”

  “I burnt it after I became an upperclassman,” Louise said. “Four years of running around on a muddy field was quite enough.”

  “Hear, hear,” I said. I hadn’t burnt my gym clothes, but I’d taken a certain childish glee in leaving them at the hall when I’d become an upperclassman myself. “I quite understand.”

  “You’ll just have to put up with the dust.” Francis finished pushing the desks aside and came back to the centre of the room. “And next time, perhaps you should wear something you can move in.”

  Louise coloured, but said nothing. I had to admit - privately - that Francis had a point. Louise’s dress would have looked elegant at a party, but it was utterly useless for anything that required physical activity. I honestly wasn’t sure why she’d worn it. There were plenty of options that didn’t involve trousers. Besides, Louise was a commoner. She wouldn’t face quite so much comment if she dared to wear trousers.

  I put the thought aside and started to cast privacy wards. Francis joined me a second later, layering one set of wards on top of the next. I had no illusions - a master wardcrafter would have no trouble taking them down - but the cluster of warning spells should at least tell us if we were being watched. Louise and Saline watched, Louise’s hand twitching as if she wanted to help. I was glad she didn’t. I’d never worked with her before. Our magics wouldn’t mesh together properly.

  We’ll have to fix that, I mused. I finished casting the wards, keyed them to the four of us and sat down. By the time we go into the field, we’ll have to be ready.

  I cleared my throat. “I hereby call this meeting to order,” I said. My father had said the same, often enough, although he managed to make it sound dramatic. I had the feeling that I sounded like a prat. “First order of business: deciding just what we’re going to do.”

  “You’re the boss,” Francis said. “You tell us what to do.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” Louise said, immediately. “If you make decisions for me, without consulting me, I reserve the right to disregard them.”

  “He’s trying to get your goat,” Saline said. She knelt beside Louise, brushing down her long black skirt. “And he’s succeeding, too.”

  “We need to work together,” I said, quickly. “I’ve been giving the matter some thought.”

  I took a breath. “There are obvious limits to what we can produce for ourselves and carry onto the field,” I said. “And as we don’t know what we’ll actually be doing, it’s hard to tell what we might need.”

  “We already know that,” Francis said, dryly.

  “I'm just setting the stage.” I pulled my notebook off my belt. “I think we should concentrate on three things. Weapons, tools and food. And drink. We may discover that we’re expected to spend days or weeks undertaking the Challenge.”

  Louise paled. “And they won’t feed us?”

  “We’re meant to fend for ourselves,” I reminded her. “Do you know how to conjure food from thin air?”

  “No,” Louise said. “Do you?”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t impossible to conjure food, but it required more power and discipline than I had. And the food had a tendency to vanish, shortly afterwards. Anyone who stuffed themselves with conjured food might discover they became hungry again, at the very least. At worst ... they might find their lives at risk. It was easier and safer to transmute something I didn’t like into something I did, but even that had its perils. I wouldn’t care to rely on transfigured food when I might be miles from medical help.

  “So we take some food and bottles of water,” Francis said. He shrugged. “We don’t know if there’s water there either, do we?”

  “No.” I knew spells to clean water, but they’d be useless if there was no water in the first place. “But they can’t want us to die of thirst.”

  Francis snickered. “Are you sure?”

  Louise gave him a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

  “Perhaps the real purpose of the contest is to remove magicians who might prove dangerous,” Francis said. “If you’re too good at magic, you die in the contest and no one bats an eyelid.”

  “... Impossible,” Louise said. “Someone would have noticed!”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of all the paranoid conspiracy theories ...”

  “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you.” Francis leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. “We know so little. We don’t even know the rules.”

  “We know some of them,” Louise said.

  “Yes, but are they all of the rules?” Francis chuckled. “For all we know, they won’t tell us about the rest of the rules until it’s too late.”

  “That wouldn’t be fair,” Louise insisted. “They can’t blame us for breaking rules we didn’t know existed.”

  “Debate it later,” I told them. “Right now, we have work to do.”

  I opened the notebook and showed them the first page. “It shouldn’t be difficult to get our hands on food and drink. We can brew a handful of nutrient potions - I know they taste foul, but they’ll keep us going. If we each carry a handful of vials, we should be able to cope if we lose one or two ...”

  “If they get stolen, you mean.” Francis looked grim. “The other teams may be planning to take what they need from us.”

  Saline laughed. “If everyone is planning to steal from everyone else, there will be nothing to steal.”

  I grinned. “That would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Louise said, primly. “We’d all be in trouble.”

  “I understand you’re good at brewing potions,” I said, to Louise. “Can you brew these for us?”

  “Yes.” Louise studied the list thoughtfully. “I don’t have the knack, I’ve been told, but I can make these.”

  “We should look for a brewer,” Francis said. “We need at least two more teammates.”


  “Everyone who hasn’t been snapped up has declared their neutrality,” I said. “We can’t ask them ...”

  “Then we look at the lower years,” Francis said. “There are a couple of promising sixth-years ... hey, we could ask Penny.”

  “That’s a thought.” I didn’t think Penny would want to join. And even if she did, she would be two years behind most of the contestants. “I’ll think about it.”

  “I can brew the potions,” Louise said. “I just need the supplies.”

  “I’ll see to it,” I told her. I took back the notebook and flipped to the next page. “We’ll also need a handful of medical potions and suchlike.”

  “We do have healing spells,” Francis pointed out.

  “Potions are more reliable,” I reminded him. “And now ...”

  I turned the page, again. “I intend to forge a number of Devices of Power,” I said. I held out the list. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  “More spellcasters,” Francis said. He frowned. “Why are you going with Tennant’s Multitool when you could be going with Davidson’s? Or Whittaker’s?”

  “Tennant’s is more versatile,” I said. “It isn’t as precise as Davidson’s or Whittaker’s, but you can do more with it. If I knew what we were facing ...”

  I shrugged. “We have to cover as many of the bases as possible. And there are, as always, limits to what we can carry.”

  “It’s a good list.” Saline looked bored. “Are we going to practice magic now?”

  “Yeah,” Francis said. He jumped to his feet. “Let’s cast spells, shall we?”

  “I can forge all of these and store them here until we need them,” I said. “But do we need anything else?”

  “I’ll think of something.” Francis smirked. “But now ... magic.”

  Louise clambered to her feet. “Where do we start?”

  “Basic hexes and spells, then work our way onwards,” Francis said. He winked at me. “That’s how I do it on the sports field.”

  “I don’t want to know what you do on the sports field,” I muttered, as I stood. “Where shall we begin?”

  Francis grinned and started to demonstrate a handful of first-years spells, including a couple of uses I’d never considered, Louise looked bored at first, then rapidly got interested as Francis talked about how they could be used on the sports field. Neither of the girls had any trouble mastering the spells, the handful they didn’t already know. It wasn’t until we reached fifth-year spells that they started to have problems.

  “You need more power,” Francis told Louise, flatly. “Your spellcasting is good, but you don’t have the power to back it.”

  “And how do I get the power?” Louise grimaced, as if she’d bitten into something unpleasant. “You don’t just wish for it.”

  “You work hard,” I said. “And you practice.”

  I turned to Saline, leaving Louise and Francis to practice spells. It wasn’t Louise’s fault that she was underpowered, compared to the rest of us. Francis, Saline and I had been practicing magic since we were five years old. We’d developed power reserves Louise didn’t even know existed. She would catch up, unless she’d already peaked, but ... she would never be a match for Alana. She was skilled at making use of what she had, yet ...

  Intelligence can always beat raw power, I thought, remembering something my first tutor had used to say. A person who knows what he’s doing will always have the edge. But if that person is facing someone with more power who also knows what he’s doing ... he’ll lose.

  Saline gave me a shy smile as she tried to cast a complex spell. I frowned as I watched, trying to see what was actually happening. Saline had the raw power to cast the spell, but she wasn’t casting it quite right. There were odd little gaps in her spellcasting, flaws that weakened or neutralised the spell. I could feel the waves of raw power radiating out from her spellcasting. She had the power, all right. But she didn’t have the comprehension.

  “Try again,” I said. “Do it piece by piece.”

  Saline nodded and started again. I sensed the magic starting to take shape, the building blocks of the spell falling into place. It was ... crude, in many ways, without the elegance I’d come to expect from my peers. And yet, it worked. Saline just had to keep plodding, it seemed. She couldn’t progress in leaps and bounds.

  “Well done,” I said, when she cast the spell. “It worked!”

  She smiled at me. She was very pretty when she smiled.

  “But she has to cast the spell quicker,” Francis said. “Try it again.”

  Saline looked downcast, but went to work. The spell started to build ... and Francis threw a hex at her, freezing her in place. The magic surrounding her faded back into the aether as I rounded on Francis. He looked utterly unrepentant, utterly unmoved by my anger and Louise’s shock. Indeed, he was smirking.

  “You utter ...” Louise bit off a word young ladies weren’t supposed to know. “What did you do that for?”

  “She was taking too long to cast her spell,” Francis said. He stepped past her and stopped in front of Saline. “In the time it took for her to cast the spell, I could have done a lot worse to her than simply freezing her in place. She would be first person taken off the field ...”

  “You don’t know that,” Louise snapped.

  “Yes, I do.” Francis tapped Saline’s forehead. “You have played dodgeball, have you not? The slowest players are always the ones taken off first.”

  Louise cast the counterspell. Saline stumbled forward, nearly losing her balance and falling to the floor. I put out a hand to steady her. Her eyes were wide with shock, but she wasn’t angry. I wasn’t sure why. I wouldn’t have been happy if someone had attacked me like that ...

  “You should have let her free herself,” Francis said. “It’s the only way she’ll learn.”

  “She needs practice,” Louise insisted.

  “Exactly,” Francis said. “And you’re not giving her the practice!”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Have you ever tried casting spells together?”

  “You mean, as a team?” Louise glanced at Saline, who shrugged. “I was ... I was never allowed to practice.”

  “Odd.” Francis frowned. “Did you ever try?”

  Louise flushed red, but didn’t rise to the bait.

  “Try now,” I said. “If Saline provides the power, Louise should be able to cast the spell.”

  Francis glanced at me. “This could prove dangerous.”

  I didn’t believe it. “And when did you care about danger?”

  “We’ll cast a spell on him,” Louise said. She walked around until she was standing in front of Saline. “Are you ready?”

  Saline rested her hands on Louise’s neck, her fingers touching bare skin. “Ready.”

  I stepped to one side as the power began to build. Saline was putting out a lot of power ... my hair tried to stand on end as electric sparks flickered in and out of existence between the two girls. Louise started to cast the spell, the power rapidly taking on shape and form ... Francis raised a shield charm, but it was too late. The charm shattered, pieces of magic flying in all directions. And Francis’s body melted into a dog.

  Saline giggled. “It suits him.”

  “It should have been a worm,” Louise said. “Or a slug. But that would have been redundant.”

  Francis barked, loudly. I could tell he was trying to break the spell, but ... it still took him several tries before the spell broke and his body snapped back to normal. He was on all-fours, looking incredibly silly ... I bit my lip to keep from laughing as he stumbled awkwardly to his feet. The spell had been incredibly powerful. I’d sensed the overspill from metres away.

  “Hah,” Francis said. “I broke the spell.”

  Louise gave him a sweet smile. “And I could have stepped on you before you escaped, if I’d wished.”

  Francis glared at her. “I ...”

  “Good work,” I said, cutting him off. We didn’t have time for another argument. “Now
, we need to practice ...”

  “Wait.” Francis held up a hand. The alarm on his face was striking. “Check the wards. Can you feel that!”