“I’ve got Defensive Magic tomorrow,” Alassa said. “I think the course is really meant as a primer for Martial Magic...”
Emily scowled, remembering Aloha’s reaction to discovering that Emily had been put into Marital Magic. Aloha had worked very hard to enter the class during her Second Year, but Emily had just jumped ahead, pushed by Void and the Grandmaster. She’d threatened Emily with a fate worse than death if Emily let her down, although she’d calmed down after Emily had beaten Shadye. Emily couldn’t have done much more to prove herself.
“My father won’t let me take Martial Magic,” Alassa supplied, a moment later. “Too much chance of serious injury—or death.”
“True,” Emily agreed. She’d been injured more than once during Martial Magic, where a mistake could have ghastly consequences. “But if you do well on Defensive Magic, you might be able to get him to change his mind.”
“Maybe,” Alassa said, doubtfully. She looked down at the timetable for a long, thoughtful moment. “Law is something I probably need, sadly. I studied the law in Zangaria, but not the law elsewhere in the Allied Lands. And things are changing quite rapidly, thanks to you.”
Emily flushed. Many of her changes had already started having unintended consequences.
“Animal bonding might be fun, but father probably wouldn’t let me put it into practice,” Alassa continued. “Imaiqah was talking about Artwork; she thinks she might enjoy it. Construction and Warding are definitely worth taking—I think they’re actually taught by the same teacher. And then there’s more formal etiquette lessons. You probably need them.”
“Not if I can get out of it,” Emily said, quickly.
Alassa gave her a droll smile. “You’re a baroness,” she said, dryly. “Every time you pick up the wrong fork, you are diminished in the eyes of everyone watching you. Make enough mistakes and people will think that you are going soft and start plotting against you.”
“I think I preferred it when you taught me,” she admitted. Most of the etiquette she’d been taught made no sense, but Alassa had managed to hammer it into her head somehow. “You were patient.”
“That’s true,” Alassa agreed. She looked oddly pensive, recalling her childhood. “My mother was patient too.”
Emily poured herself another cup of kava and then settled back in her chair. “Are you going to be coming to Healing?”
“I think it might be useful to know the basics,” Alassa said. “Father might have other ideas for my future classes, of course. He wouldn’t want his daughter to be a healer, bound by Healer’s Oaths. At least he knows and respects Lady Barb. I hear she was a very strict teacher. Imaiqah would probably want to go too.”
“I should go to the library later,” Emily said, thoughtfully. She’d missed Whitehall’s vast library almost as much as she’d missed everything else. “It’s been too long...”
“There won’t have been time to mess up the books,” Alassa assured her. “Why don’t we go for a swim instead? There won’t be anyone in the lake at this hour.”
Emily laughed. “You do remember that it’s snowing out there?”
“Heating charms,” Alassa said. “I checked it out last year. During wintertime, the lake is warmed by magic. We will probably need additional spells on us too, just in case, but we should be fine.”
“Or we could go for a snowball fight,” Emily suggested. She’d never actually had one in her life, ever. Proper snowball fights required friends. “Or see what magic can do to snowballs.”
“Turn them into walking, talking snowmen,” Alassa hazarded. She looked contemplative for a moment, then shook her head. “But swimming would be preferable. It’s good exercise and it would be warm.”
Emily sighed and gave up. “All right,” she said, “but I don’t think we should be late for Lady Barb’s class. I think she would be very strict indeed.”
Chapter Five
THERE’S NO ONE HERE,” ALASSA SAID, as they entered Lady Barb’s classroom. “I told you that we were leaving too soon.”
Emily shrugged. She’d enjoyed the swim, even though the lake had been surrounded by snow and flakes had dropped into the water from high overhead, but she didn’t want to be late for her first class. They’d had to climb out of the water, use charms to dry themselves and then dress rapidly—and, somehow, the charms never left her feeling completely dry. Her robes were still threatening to cling to her body.
The classroom was massive, easily large enough to hold fifty students at once. There was a single large metal table in the center of the room, surrounded by desks and chairs. The walls were covered in parchment drawings of human anatomy, including a surprisingly detailed chart of the human skeleton. Others were explicit enough to make Emily blush and look away. High overhead, powerful light globes orbited, casting brilliant white light down on the table below. Emily realized, as she found a desk and sat down, that the room was spelled to allow them all to see what was being done at the center.
This is partly a practical class, she recalled, and shivered.
The classroom slowly filled up as the other students filed in. Emily smiled at Imaiqah as she entered, carrying a large roll of parchment under one arm. Several other students were carrying their own parchment; Imaiqah explained, when Emily asked, that she’d been in Artwork and the parchment was her very first drawing. When she unfurled it, Emily saw a sketch of Imaiqah’s mother and father. She felt a flicker of envy as she realized that Imaiqah had a genuine talent for Artwork.
“There was plenty of your paper there,” Imaiqah muttered. “We spent almost the whole class drawing. This”—she tapped the parchment—“was my final piece of work for the day.”
“It’s very good,” Emily said, sincerely. “You should stick with it.”
“I’m certainly going to try,” Imaiqah said. “But father wasn’t sure what use it might be in the future.”
Emily and Alassa exchanged glances. If Imaiqah hadn’t been ennobled, a talent for drawing and painting might have taken her far, particularly once they started infusing magic into their artwork. But it would be a lower-status occupation for her now, even if her father hadn’t wanted her to remain involved with the family’s growing business. He was planning to sell steam engines to the world once they had improved on the design.
“It might give you some personal fame,” Emily pointed out, finally. Imaiqah’s father could start the ball rolling by promoting his daughter’s work, just like artists had had noble patrons before the internet and art journals. “Or...”
She was interrupted by a loud bang as Lady Barb strode into the room, closing the door firmly behind her. Emily watched Lady Barb march up to the desk and turn to face the class, her face set in a grim expression that reminded Emily of Sergeant Harkin. Lady Barb had donned a white jacket and pair of trousers that set off her blonde hair nicely, but utterly failed to conceal that she was a very dangerous person. And she looked thoroughly unhappy.
“It is now five chimes past the bell,” Lady Barb said. Her voice was very cold, very composed. “In future, the door will be locked at the precise moment that class is due to start. Should any of you be late and find yourself unable to gain entry, you can save me some time by reporting directly to the Warden. And you will also be marked as absent from the class, which may lead to your eventual removal if you make a habit of it.”
Emily winced. She wasn’t the only one. That didn’t sound fair. What if the student had a very good excuse?
Lady Barb’s gaze swept the room. “This is a very important class that requires absolute concentration and dedication,” she continued. “Many of you will not have the talent or dedication to become a healer. This lesson will assist you in discovering if you do have a talent for it—and to save you from spending the rest of the year here, should you not have a talent. As you should have been informed, you may leave within a month without repercussions.”
She smiled, but it didn’t quite touch her eyes. “How many of you have used standard healing spells
?”
Emily put up her hand, joined by almost all of the class.
“Very good,” Lady Barb said. For a moment, her gaze rested on Emily, then moved on to the next student. “Do you also understand their limitations?”
There was a long pause.
“Clearly not,” Lady Barb said. She clasped her hands behind her back, as if she were at parade rest, and carried on. “The standard healing spells are understandably crude, as they are designed for people who may not know what they are doing. Repairing a broken bone sounds like a laudable goal—and it is—but the standard spells can cause additional damage to the person undergoing treatment. That is why you are all told to ensure you see a qualified healer as soon as possible.
“More complex work requires more than a standard spell,” she continued. “Repairing a person’s eyes, for example, is beyond any pre-designed spell. Purging poison from a person’s bloodstream can go horrifically wrong unless the magician is directly involved with the process from start to finish. Learning to direct the magic that is necessary for carrying out more complex healing sessions is an important part of this course. Those of you who do not have the talent for it will be removed very quickly.
“Completing the first year of Healing will give you the ability to treat a wide range of injuries and diseases, as well as a firm grounding in medical magic. You will not, however, be bound by Healer Oaths, nor will you be considered qualified healers. Should you have the talent and inclination to go onwards, you will have to take the oath, even if you don’t wind up serving as a healer. Those oaths are magically-binding and they will bite if you end up abusing your position.”
She paused, looking around the classroom. “Do any of you want to leave now?”
No one moved.
“Good,” Lady Barb said. “I will now give you a brief overview of what we will be looking at over the year.
“First, we will be looking at more complex healing spells. You will learn how to manipulate the spells in response to feedback from the injury and how to compensate for unexpected responses. This is not an easy skill to master, but once you have mastered it you will be able to perform proper healing magic, without having to worry about finding a qualified healer afterwards. Those of you intending to become combat sorcerers or court wizards will find it a very useful skill indeed.”
She moved, pacing around the room. No one said a word until she started to talk again.
“Second, we will be looking at curse-breaking and other counters to magically-inflicted injuries. You will know, of course, just how easy it is to get injured while practicing magic—or how easily a mundane can be cursed by a magician. Healing such damage is an important part of your training. Again, it will be a very useful skill, once mastered.
“Thirdly, we will be looking at mundane healing methods,” she concluded. “As you may well expect, healing magic can be very draining. Mundane methods, healing without magic, may be nowhere near as convenient, but they may be all you have to use when you’ve drained your magic completely. Those of you who faint at the sight of blood are not advised to stay in this class, because there will be blood. And guts. And gore. Ideally, you will never have to actually use these skills, but they are an important part of becoming a healer.”
She paused. “Are there any questions?”
Emily hesitated. Something was missing, but it had taken her several seconds to realize what. Lady Barb had said nothing about any form of mental care or psychiatric treatment. Physical injuries were one thing; mental injuries were quite another. A knock on the head, she knew, could have effects that standard healing spells couldn’t cure. Indeed, they’d been told to avoid using the standard spells on skull injuries. It would be far too easy to accidentally disrupt someone’s mind.
But it was something she was going to have to ask later. She wanted to stay behind in any case.
“We’ve already looked at curse-breaking,” one of the other students said. She was one of the transfer students, Emily guessed, if only because she didn’t even vaguely recognize the girl. “Why are we going to look at it again?”
“Curses that attach themselves to the human body can have very nasty long-term effects,” Lady Barb said, simply. “There is, for example, a cutting spell that is completely impossible to cure using the standard healing spells. The designer of the spell actually wanted to ensure that the damage would get worse if the standard spells were used—and he succeeded, far too well. People have died because well-meaning magicians tried to use the standard spells to save their lives.
“In such cases, the curse must be removed before any form of healing can take place,” she added. “Failing to remove the curse would, at the very least, make healing impossible.
“There’s also the danger of the curse migrating from the victim to anyone else in the area, including the healer. Better to get rid of it as quickly as possible.”
She gave the girl a droll smile. “Does that answer your question?”
“...Yes,” the girl said.
Lady Barb clicked her fingers over the metal desk and a humanoid figure appeared. Emily stared, wondering how she’d managed to make the teleport spell work within Whitehall—and then realized that the figure had always been there, just hidden under an invisibility spell. No wonder she hadn’t seen him when she came into the room.
“This is Paddy,” Lady Barb said. “As you may have deduced, he is a homunculus, a copy of the human body. Paddy was created by a team of the most capable and dedicated healers in the Allied Lands to allow youngsters such as yourself a chance to practice without actually killing anyone. His responses to your spells will be identical to an actual human. Should you injure Paddy too badly, however, he will simply switch into regeneration mode and start rebuilding himself. So far, no students have ever actually managed to destroy him.”
There were a handful of nervous chuckles.
Emily studied the homunculus carefully. He had skin tinted a very odd shade of brown, no hair and wore nothing, not even a piece of underwear. She couldn’t tell if he was anatomically correct or not from her angle, but she had the feeling that the designers would have reproduced as much as they could. He would have been far less useful if he wasn’t as close to humanity as possible.
“Later on, you will be practicing certain spells on each other—as well as volunteers from the other classes,” Lady Barb continued. “However, for the moment, we will stick with Paddy, as you will be unable to cause permanent harm to him.”
She paused, her gaze moving from person to person. “I will be operating under the assumption that Paddy is a real human being,” she added. “If I think you’re cutting into him for the hell of it, or if you’re being careless because you think he isn’t important, you will regret it. A sadistic attitude to Paddy may lead to a sadistic attitude to one’s patients and that leads to a dangerously unstable healer. Or worse. I will not hesitate to kick you out of the class if I feel that you will prove a danger to others or...yourself.
“Healers have the most important job in the Allied Lands. It is vitally important that we do nothing to tarnish their good name. A healer who abuses his or her powers will be hunted down and executed, if they are not killed by breaking their oaths. Healing is serious business. If you’re here because you think the class will let you have a chance to look at naked bodies, think again.
“There are plenty of other courses you can take at Whitehall that you can actually turn into a career—or a vocation—if that is all you want. You do not need to feel that you are wasting your time here.
“I will tolerate nothing less than your complete concentration, dedication and focused study,” she concluded. “We have a lot of ground to cover, all of which will be mentioned on your exams—and tested, extensively. Students have been known to break under the pressure of healer exams. I know I felt myself pushed right to the edge when I was a student.”
Emily nodded in understanding. Her last set of exams had been nerve-wracking, even though Mistress Irene
had hinted that the school might have given her a free pass, after she’d beaten Shadye. Somehow, it just hadn’t seemed right to accept the offer. And she’d wanted to know just how well she was doing, compared to the other students.
Lady Barb looked down at Paddy, then back up at her students. “If you don’t want to be here, you may leave now,” she said. “Everyone else, stand up and gather around Paddy.”
Emily watched in some amusement as a handful of students headed for the door and escaped out into the corridor, then she stood and walked to the main table. Up close, it was easy to see that Paddy was male; she blushed furiously when she saw his manhood between his legs. She wondered, absently, how they were going to practice working on a female body, then pushed the question to one side. It was something she could ask later.
“Feel free to touch his body,” Lady Barb said. “You’ll notice that it feels human.”
She was right, Emily realized, as she touched Paddy’s leg. It felt rougher than her own leg, but it was warm and very human. If his skin color hadn’t been so unnatural, he could easily have passed for a human being. But then, creating homunculi that could pass for a specific human was banned by the Allied Lands. The thought of being replaced by a copy was probably one of the nightmares that kept King Randor up late at night. Would anyone realize if the King were no longer himself?
Presumably, she told herself, the homunculus would be unable to act like the King—but there might be spells to ensure that wasn’t a problem. Or perhaps the entire court could be replaced, quickly and efficiently. Or perhaps the King’s brainwaves could be copied and used as a template for the homunculus...
Lady Barb produced a small knife and jabbed it into Paddy’s chest. The homunculus let out a cry of pain and everyone jumped.
“Human reactions,” Lady Barb said, flatly. “You’ll be expected to master spells that can cancel out pain, but there are some curses that counteract them—and situations where using them is dangerous to both parties involved. Paddy and I will be simulating such situations for you over the next few months and you will learn from them. By the time exams roll around, I expect you to have mastered the basics. If you haven’t, there will be no point in going for the exams.
Study in Slaughter (Schooled in Magic) Page 5