Love's Labor's Won (Schooled in Magic Book 6)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “More than suitable, Janice,” she said. “You have warned the other maids that the rules about my rooms extend here, too?”

  “Yes, your ladyship,” Janice said. “This room will remain sealed, without any attempt to clean it, unless you give your specific permission.”

  “Good,” Emily said. She levitated her trunk into the room, and nodded. “You may go.”

  Janice curtseyed hastily and retreated out the door. Emily didn’t blame her. She remembered touching quite a few things she shouldn’t have in Whitehall, during her first year, and that had been in a school of magic, where help had been available for anyone who ran into trouble. As soon as the door closed, she raised her hand in concentration and cast the first set of wards. Piece by piece, they fell into place, providing both privacy and security. Thankfully, the room was small enough for her to put up a comprehensive set of wards, rather than the relatively weak set covering the castle as a whole.

  I need to isolate this section completely, she thought, as she carefully linked one set of wards to the other. I don’t need to set off my own alarms when I do experiments.

  Once the final set of wards was in place, she opened the trunk and dug out her equipment, placing it on the table. Some of the equipment was fairly common — by now, she was used to using both wand and staff — while other pieces had been designed by Professor Thande or Lady Barb. They both believed that a magician should have all the tools he or she could possibly require; Emily had purchased everything she thought she’d need, as well as a few other devices that had caught her eye. She rather liked the idea of tinkering on her own, even if she didn’t want to seek total isolation. Magicians who did that tended to be a little strange.

  “Well,” she said, although there was no one to hear her. “Here we are.”

  She rooted through her equipment until she found an iron ring and placed it in the middle of the table, carefully moving the remainder of the equipment to the bookshelves. There had been nothing particularly special about the iron ring when she’d purchased it, but she’d used magic to carve a handful of runes into the metal, gathering magic that would help shape and contain her own magic. Lady Barb had helped her with the theory — she’d forced Emily to produce a new pocket dimension every weekend — but she’d done the runes herself. It simply felt like the way it should be done.

  The more I do for myself, the more it belongs to me, she thought. It was something she doubted she would ever fully understand. Magic behaved oddly, compared to science; if she performed magic on herself or her tools, it worked better than magic performed by someone else. She rubbed the rune on her chest absently, then walked back to the trunk. Carefully removing a wand and one of her journals, she placed both on the table next to the ring. And it’s time to finally see if I know what I’m doing.

  She sat down on one of the chairs, which rocked alarmingly, and picked up the journal. Lady Barb had ordered her to protect her writings carefully, using several different security spells, and untangling them all took time. It wasn’t convenient, she had learned from experience, but she’d already had one set of notes stolen. This set would be worse, if it fell into the wrong hands; she’d drawn lessons from Mountaintop’s library as well as the books she had access to in Whitehall. Someone could use them to build a case against her – she knew that all too well.

  And there are already idiots who believe I’m a necromancer, she thought. It didn’t seem fair, somehow — Shadye and Mother Holly had both been completely insane — but logic and reason rarely had any influence with people who already disliked her. They’d start thinking I was a Dark Wizard, too.

  She shook her head before opening the journal to the correct page to run through her notes one final time. Lady Barb had offered to assist her with the experiment, when she ran through every step for the first time, but Emily had declined. If there were risks performing the experiment, even here, she didn’t want anyone else to face them. The notes seemed as clear as ever, now that she understood the theory...but she knew there was a considerable gulf between theory and practice.

  Here we go, she thought, and picked up the wand. Please, let this work.

  The wand was nothing more than a piece of wood, she knew. Frieda had told her there were students in Mountaintop who bragged of the modifications they’d made to their wands, but Emily knew from experience that such modifications were pointless. All one could do with a wand was lodge spells within the wood for later activation. In many ways, she reflected, it seemed the ultimate end result of Caleb’s spell mosaics, save for the simple fact that a spell couldn’t be modified, once lodged. It could only be triggered.

  She gritted her teeth — she distrusted wands on principle — before assembling the first set of spells in her mind. They glimmered in her awareness, slid through her fingertips and out into the wand. She felt the wood grow hot as the last spell slipped into place — she hastily raised a ward to protect herself, just in case — and then cooled, rapidly. They wouldn’t last, she knew; the spells were too complex to remain in the wand for more than an hour, if she was lucky. But they would last long enough for her to complete the rest of the experiment.

  Good, she thought. Her heart was suddenly racing. Two years of research, two years of practice, all boiled down to the ring and wand in front of her. The first time she’d tried anything like it, Master Tor had been horrified, with reason. Now...now, there was no one at risk, but herself. Let’s see if this works.

  Emily braced herself before picking up the ring. It felt oddly heavy in her palm, even though it wasn’t any bigger than the snake-bracelet and shouldn’t have been much heavier. She eyed it carefully, fixing its dimensions in her mind, then closed her eyes in concentration, running through the first set of spells to form a pocket dimension. For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen...

  And then the space inside the ring expanded, like a child blowing up a balloon.

  She’d had problems, at first, grasping how it actually worked — Earth science refused to admit the possibility of something being larger on the inside than on the outside — but two years of work had helped her overcome that issue. Besides, it was hard to deny it was possible when living at Whitehall.

  It still seems like a TARDIS, she thought with droll amusement. What will happen if they ever lose control of the interior dimensions?

  She pushed the thought aside, concentrating on the pocket dimension. It fluctuated, like air alternatively being pumped in and allowed to escape from a balloon, but remained intact. The magic she was allowing to flow into the ring was holding it firmly in place, even though nature resisted its presence. Emily silently thanked Lady Barb for her endless lessons — not to mention the blunt insistence that Emily practice, time and time again — then carefully picked up the wand with her right hand. The spells twitched at her touch — she checked them, just to make sure they hadn’t decayed — and shimmered as she held the wand close to the ring. For a moment, she thought the magic would interact badly, before the two seemed to blur together. Bracing herself, she pushed the wand through the ring, into the pocket dimension, and triggered the spells. The pocket dimension expanded rapidly, but froze as the spells fitted themselves solidly into place. It could no longer collapse in on itself, even after Emily stopped feeding magic into the ring.

  The spells hold it up, she thought, as she watched the spells interlock together. She couldn’t help thinking of building blocks, from kindergarten. If they were interlinked together, they were much stronger than if they were merely piled on top of one another. And the dimension is secure.

  Emily ran a hand though her sweaty hair, placed the ring on the table and stepped backwards, monitoring it from a distance. The magic holding the spells in place, which in turn held the pocket dimension in existence, shouldn’t have anywhere to go. It was, in a sense, a perpetual motion machine. But even the tiniest leak could be disastrous, in the long run; the dimension would either deflate slowly, like a balloon, or explode like a bubble pricked by a pin. She
wasn’t quite sure what would happen if the dimension exploded — there wasn’t anything in the dimension apart from her spellwork, which would shatter before the dimension burst — but she doubted it would be pleasant. But, as she watched and waited, it became clear that the dimension was firmly fixed in place.

  Wait, she told herself, firmly. You need to know it remains solid.

  She reached into her trunk and found her copy of Caleb’s notes, reading through them once again. The proposal didn’t need many changes, she was sure, but she did need to leave her fingerprints on it somewhere. They were already going to be marked down, Lady Barb had warned, because she’d come to the project late. Emily wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed on Caleb’s behalf, because he hadn’t expected his partner to desert him, or irked because she’d been denied a chance to claim full marks.

  And you should stop feeling sorry for yourself, her own thoughts mocked her. Would you rather redo Third Year from the start?

  It would be humiliating, she thought. And yet the idea had a certain charm. She could delay any long-term decisions about Cockatrice until she graduated, but then she would have to make a final decision. Should she stay and remain baroness — as well as Alassa’s closest advisor — or should she abandon the barony? The question haunted her; she disliked the idea of giving anything up, yet she knew she was ill-suited to the role. And there were limits to how much Bryon could do in her name.

  She pushed the thought aside, and started to make notes on the proposal paper. Caleb could review what she’d done — she wondered, suddenly, what he would make of her project — and then they could decide how best to present the revised paper once they returned to Whitehall. She’d be going back early...maybe Caleb would like to go back, too. Or maybe he’d want to go be with his family for the last week of holidays. Just because his father was strict and wanted a soldier, instead of a...well, a nerd...didn’t mean they didn’t love each other.

  An hour later, she put the papers to one side and picked up the ring. It felt warm to the touch, but not warm enough to burn her skin. Carefully, she tested the dimension, probing the spellware with her mind, and relaxed when she realized it was solidly in place. The magic hadn’t faded at all.

  Thank you, Lady Barb, she thought, as she put the ring back down. The project might have been Emily’s idea, but it had been the older woman who’d made it work. And now for the final test.

  She stood and walked to the bookshelves, picked up a leather bag, and opened it. A handful of knives sat inside, each one made from a different material. She picked up the silver knife, checked the charms placed on the blade carefully, and carried it back to the table. Once she was seated, she picked the ring up again, and used the knife to make a thin cut on her palm. Blood — and magic — welled up in front of her.

  It felt weird, almost uncomfortable. Lady Barb had taught her how to focus and channel her magic for rituals, but she’d never had to do it alone. Indeed, rituals were almost never performed by fewer than three magicians, allowing them to balance their power. Her head swam for a long second before she managed to gather herself long enough to direct a stream of raw magic into the ring. The spellwork inside shimmered, then seemed to collect itself, steering the magic — her magic — into the heart of the pocket dimension. Emily shivered violently, suddenly feeling very cold, and carefully sealed the dimension before she could collapse. It was all she could do to put the ring and knife back on the table before her legs buckled. If she hadn’t been sitting, she would have fallen to the floor.

  It might be better to do this on a rug, she thought, as she leaned on the table and tried to pull herself back together. It felt thoroughly weird, as if she was both happy and sad at the same time. She rubbed her eyes as she felt tears starting to form, but forced herself to stand up and pace the room. The motion made her feel better, although she still felt drained. But then, she had pumped a considerable amount of magic into the ring...

  Opening her trunk, she removed a ration bar and nibbled it carefully. Lady Barb had also told her to have something sweet on hand, ready to eat, as soon as she had completed the experiment. The ration bar tasted almost too sweet, but it made her feel better. She kept pacing, trying to drive away the last vestiges of the strange feelings. What she’d done had made her feel vulnerable, and she didn’t like it.

  Well, she thought, as she finally turned back to the ring. Did it work?

  She touched the ring...and felt, instantly, her own magic welling up to meet her. It reminded her of some of the exercises Mistress Irene had taught her, when she’d first entered Whitehall, but different, although she couldn’t put her finger on why. She was sensing her own magic, yet it felt separate from her...but she was sure, if she wished, she could absorb it back into her own body. She’d just have to be very careful not to overwhelm her mind, she reminded herself sharply. Necromancers went insane because no mortal mind could handle the sudden influx of magic without going mad.

  Dear God, she thought. I’ve done it.

  The Nuke-Spell had been bad enough, she knew. If the theory leaked out, every magician with a grudge against his neighbor would be setting off atomic blasts, utterly destroying civilization. But at least the Nameless World didn’t know about atoms, let alone what happened if someone started splitting them. Pocket dimensions and rituals...? Far too many magicians knew about them. It was something of a mystery why enchanters like Yodel hadn’t invented their own batteries long before Shadye had kidnapped her from Earth.

  Unless they did, and decided no one would want to use them, she thought. Pouring so much magic into the ring had left her exhausted, easy prey for anyone with bad intentions. But if the magic has nowhere to go, it can stay where it is indefinitely.

  She looked at the ring, picked it up, and placed it in her pocket. It wasn’t something she wanted to leave lying around, not when there were so many trained and experienced magicians wandering the castle. They might have been told not to go past the first two levels, but she rather doubted they would heed the warning. Magic-users might be protected by the Sorcerer’s Rule, which prevented magicians from being forced to share their secrets, but it didn’t prevent other magicians from engaging in industrial espionage. And she knew, all too well, that she was a target.

  This will change the world, she thought. Lady Barb had warned her that it might even make necromancy practical, which would be disastrous. And what do I do with it?

  She dug the charmed parchment out of her pocket and glanced down at it. Aloha and the Gorgon were chatting about charms, including a handful of twinned charms that would be covered in Fourth Year. They’d seemed to become friends, of a sort, Emily noted. She was surprised — it was rare for students to socialize with students from other years — but she had to admit that Aloha and the Gorgon had a great deal in common. They were both brilliant and, to some extent, determined to prove themselves. And the Gorgon had actually been held back a year.

  HI, she wrote. THE FAIRE IS HUGE.

  HI, EMILY, Aloha wrote back. ARE THERE ANY RARE BOOKS?

  A COUPLE, Emily wrote. BUT NOTHING SPECIAL.

  WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? The Gorgon wrote. NO ONE WOULD SELL A UNIQUE BOOK.

  Emily smiled, then swore as she felt the wards tingle. Someone — somewhere — had used magic, hostile magic, in her castle. And yet, most of the guests were at the Faire...she glanced at her watch, but it didn’t seem likely that any of them would be coming back so early. Dinner was at seven bells, after all.

  MUST DASH, she wrote. CRISIS TIME.

  Chapter Eighteen

  SHE HEARD THE SOUND OF SOMEONE shouting as she turned the corner and strode towards the guest quarters. A woman was shouting at a man, who didn’t seem interested in shouting back; Emily flinched, remembering some of the arguments her mother had had with her stepfather, but forced herself to go on.

  “I told her to clean the room,” the woman said. “Father, you should have left the charms off the bed!”

  Emily peered into the room. A mai
d stood in front of the bed, frozen in place, while a middle-aged woman shouted at a man who looked as old as Fulvia. He waved a wand with one hand, while the other held a tankard of something that smelled suspiciously like mead. Emily gritted her teeth and stepped into the room, crossing a protective ward. The old man glared at her, but the woman caught his wand arm before he could point it at Emily.

  “I let no one make my bed!” The old man thundered. He pulled away from his daughter, but she managed to pull the wand out of his hand before he could start casting spells. “I refuse to allow anyone...”

  “Shut up, father,” the woman snapped. “Lady Emily, I apologize for my father.”

  “Good,” Emily said. “Please explain what happened.”

  The woman sighed. Just for a moment, Emily saw a look of resignation cross her face, the look of a woman who found herself trapped, taking care of her elderly father.

  “I asked the maid to clean our rooms,” the woman admitted. “I explained all of this to my father, but...but he’s deaf...”

  “I am not deaf,” the old man bellowed.

  You mean he hears what it suits him to hear, Emily translated, silently. She felt a flicker of sympathy for the woman. Having to take care of an elderly man would be bad enough if the man hadn’t had magic.

  “And he froze the maid when she started to change his sheets,” the woman continued, desperately. “Please forgive him, Lady Emily. He’s not what he once was.”

  “I’m as fit as I ever was,” the old man thundered. He leered at the maid, an expression that was strikingly repulsive. “Give me back my wand!”

  “Not until you’ve had your nap,” the woman countered. She waved the wand at the maid, who unfroze and staggered. Emily caught her before she could collapse to the floor. “I am sorry, Lady Emily.”