“Everyone does that after taking one of her exams,” Lerida told her. “I always feel as though I messed up completely. I think it is how she welcomes us back to school.”
There was a cough at the door. “How who welcomes you back to school, Lady Lerida?”
Emily jumped, almost spilling her Kava. Mistress Mauve was standing there, looking annoyed. It was a truly fearsome expression.
“I... I was talking about the Head Girl,” Lerida said, desperately. “She...”
“Was not in her post last year, as she was absent,” Mistress Mauve said. There was something in her voice that suggested she thought that being absent was a crime deserving nothing less than a good old-fashioned hanging. “Report to me at the end of the day, Lady Lerida. And do not corrupt the newcomers with your dreams.”
She turned on her heel and swept out of the room.
“She’s strict,” Lerida said, softly. “But she does know what she’s talking about.”
Emily didn’t doubt it. Whitehall–and, she suspected, Mountaintop as well–placed a great deal of focus on practical work. It was impossible for anyone to fake competence when they had to demonstrate the spellwork on a regular basis, although she knew from bitter experience that knowledge alone didn’t make someone a good teacher. She had started off poorly with Master Tor, and their relationship had never really improved.
“We’d better get back to class,” Lerida said, finishing her drink and placing the mug in a sink. She didn’t bother to wash it. “We don’t want to be late, not now.”
“No,” Emily agreed. She hesitated, then swallowed the questions she wanted to ask. Lerida might be a good source of knowledge, but she would also be talkative. Too talkative. And it would be dangerous to underestimate her anyway. “Let’s go.”
They walked back into the classroom and took their seats, just in time to avoid being caught trying to sneak in late. Mistress Mauve handed out detentions with a vicious glee that surprised and terrified Emily, then closed and locked the door before striding up to the front of the room. If the rules of Mountaintop were anything like Whitehall, anyone who turned up after the door was locked would be denied entry–and given good cause to regret it. None of the teachers tolerated interruptions after classes resumed.
“Most of you are at an acceptable level,” Mistress Mauve said, once silence had fallen over the classroom. “A number of you require more of a review”–she waved a hand in the air and several rolls of parchment flew off her desk, dropping down in front of a handful of students–“and a couple of you have shown rare promise. However, it will only get harder from here.”
She paused, menacingly, then waved her hand again. This time, the rolls of parchment went to everyone, including Emily.
“Read them now, and prepare yourself for a private discussion with me tomorrow,” Mistress Mauve ordered. “We will discuss your mistakes in considerable detail.”
Emily nodded, and reached for the roll of parchment and unfurled it slowly. There were actually five sheets of parchment, the top one ordering her to report to Mistress Mauve at eleven bells the following day. She didn’t think she had anything on her timetable that would clash with the appointment, but she reminded herself to check before anything else happened and she found herself expected to be in two places at once. It had happened, more than once, at Whitehall.
She opened the remaining sheets and read through them carefully. She’d managed to get more of the questions right than she’d thought, but two of her mistakes were terrifyingly bad and–as Mistress Mauve noted in neat precise script–would have caused disasters if the spells had actually been triggered. Emily swallowed the reaction that came to mind, and checked some of her work against the textbooks. Mistress Mauve was correct. She’d missed several variables in one question and it could have been disastrous.
“You will find your homework assignment in the baskets by the door,” Mistress Mauve said, coldly. “I expect it handed in by the beginning of next week–Monday at the latest. I suggest you work on it carefully, as it will merely be the start of a series of assignments that will each build on the previous assignment. Thirty percent of your final grade for the year will depend on your work outside class. I would suggest”–she smirked, rather coldly–“that you think ahead before committing yourself.”
She paused. “My office will be open from four till six for anyone who wishes to ask questions,” she added. “Stupid or useless questions, however, will not be tolerated.”
Emily winced, inwardly. Somehow, she doubted that anyone would visit Mistress Mauve unless they were truly desperate. It might cut down on the number of people who bothered them outside class–she had the feeling that quite a few of the teachers she’d known had disliked children and teenagers intensely–but it also meant that someone in trouble would be unwilling to seek help until it was too late. She sighed, then got to her feet with the rest of the students. There was nothing she could do about it. If she needed help, she’d just have to brace herself and visit the teacher’s office.
Outside, Lerida caught her arm before she could make her escape and half-dragged her to the refectory. Unlike Whitehall, the room seemed to be far less ordered; Emily caught sight of students from all years and halls jumbled together, their faces blurring slightly as they used privacy wards to hide their words. Lerida pulled her to a chair, waved to a younger girl to bring them plates of food, and started to bombard Emily with questions. Emily sighed and started to ask questions of her own.
“Most students have older or younger siblings in the school,” Lerida explained. “Outside classes and halls, they tend to sit together. And if you happen to have a boyfriend, the only place you can sit with him openly is here.”
Emily frowned, surveying the crowd. Now that Lerida had pointed it out, she could see that the students were gathered in groups, some of them clearly cutting others dead. It reminded her of the aristocrats of Zangaria, who were seated according to who was feuding with whom at the moment, but somehow different.
Or perhaps it wasn’t different at all. Magic crackled through the air, as if the students were about to start hexing each other. Emily fought down the urge to dive under the table and forced herself to eat, instead. She could dump Lerida later.
“We have Alchemy next,” Lerida said, checking her timetable. “It’s always more fun than Charms.”
“Maybe,” Emily said, doubtfully. Her success rate at Alchemy was poor... and that was with a crazy, but likeable teacher. Zed, she suspected, would be grateful to find any excuse to have her punished. “I used to like Charms.”
“You still can,” Lerida said. “Most of us study privately as well as attending classes. You would be welcome to attend.”
“I’ll see,” Emily said. She had liked studying with Alassa and Imaiqah, but neither of them treated her as anything special. Lerida would be very different. “But give me some time to get used to the school, please.”
“Whitehall must be very different,” Lerida said. “Why didn’t your father send you here, instead?”
“I think he went to Whitehall,” Emily said. It was odd; she’d looked Void up in the school’s rolls, but she’d found nothing. Of course, she knew, he probably hadn’t called himself Void at the time. “And so he chose it for me.”
Chapter Nine
EMILY WASN’T SURE WHAT SHE’D EXPECTED when she stepped into Zed’s Alchemy classroom, but she hadn’t expected a handful of desks–ten in all–surrounding a central table. Each of them had a wok, rather than a cauldron, and a wand placed neatly on the table. A roll of parchment sat within the wok, while a small pile of ingredients rested within the drawer under the table. It was enough like Whitehall’s arrangement to make her feel homesick, while being different enough to be disconcerting.
She sat down at a desk and forced herself to remain calm. Zed might have good reason to dislike her, even to hate her, but he couldn’t actually kill her, not when his bosses wanted Emily to join them. She might have to endure a tongue la
shing, or having her work marked down unfairly, yet she’d endured worse. Her stepfather had been a master at getting under her skin and making her feel weak and helpless. Somehow, she doubted Zed could be any worse.
The remaining students from Raven Hall filled the classroom, chatting quietly amongst themselves as they waited for the teacher. Emily had to admit that the idea of having fewer students to a class, particularly when the class included various substances that exploded when someone looked at them the wrong way, made a great deal of sense. But it also meant there were fewer students for her to hide behind if Zed tried to be genuinely nasty. She pushed the thought to one side as the door opened one final time, then closed and locked itself. A man strode past her and up to the front of the classroom. The students rose to their feet in respect.
For a moment, Emily was sure she’d been wrong and that it wasn’t the same Zed after all. He was tall and thin, rather than the jovially plump man she remembered from Zangaria, wearing stained robes rather than fine outfits suited to a Court Wizard. And then she saw his eyes and realized that she’d been right all along. The eyes were very familiar indeed. And, as his gaze passed over her and froze for a long second, she knew he knew who she was.
He looks thinner, the compassionate part of her mind noted. Is that my fault?
She was fairly sure he wouldn’t have starved, even if he had been unceremoniously fired by King Randor. He was a trained Alchemist, after all, and the Allied Lands had a permanent shortage of trained Alchemists. If he’d been desperate for money, he could have produced potions for city-states or towns... or even moved to another Kingdom and traded his knowledge for a place to live and work. Coming to Mountaintop to teach might even be a step upwards, at least in magical society. They didn’t always take Court Wizards very seriously.
But he still had good reason to dislike her.
“Be seated,” Zed grunted. His voice was the same, although there was a harder edge to it than she remembered. “We have much to cover and very little time.”
Emily sat, smoothing out her skirt, and waited. Whatever was coming, she told herself firmly, she could endure it.
“Safety is, always, the highest priority,” Zed informed them, bluntly. “We will be working with both increasingly dangerous ingredients and several charms over the following months, so I expect each and every one of you to be very careful and not take risks. Those who do and are caught at it will not sleep comfortably for a week. Those who are not caught will probably end up wishing they had been.”
Emily shivered. Professor Thande had said much the same, back when she’d taken her first lesson in Alchemy. A single mistake could cause an explosion–or worse; she knew, all too well, just how easy it was to screw up. And that had been when she’d liked the teacher. She forced her thoughts not to wander as Zed ran through the same lecture, almost word for word, as Professor Thande. The only real difference was his flat warning that they were not to teach anything they learned from his classes to any younger students without his permission.
But no one would have been interested in learning from me when I was a First Year, she thought. It still shocked her to recall just how ignorant she’d been, back when she’d first come to the Nameless World. I barely knew how to do anything.
Zed paused to allow his warning to sink in, then leaned forward. “Over the last year, you learned a number of potions from me, potions considered both easy and very useful. Indeed, some of them are so simple they can be produced by mundanes, with the right amount of care and modification. This year, we will spend most of it concentrating on something altogether different. We will be producing Manaskol.”
He spoke the word as though it should mean something to them, but Emily had never heard it before in her life. Or had she? It wouldn’t be the first time that she’d discovered a concept, spell or potion that had two different names. She would just have to wait and see what Manaskol actually did.
“The disrespectful amongst us call it Magic Ink or Magic Glue, depending on precisely what additions are made to the baseline recipe,” Zed informed them. “That is, as always, a way to trivialize both the importance of Manaskol and the skill involved in actually producing it from scratch. To be blunt”–his gaze rested on Emily for a long moment–“Manaskol is so important that producing several pints of it, in certain places, is considered a suitable way to pay tax. A few weeks of work would allow you to save all of your hard-earned money.”
He smirked for a moment, then sobered. “The importance of Manaskol lies in its ability to absorb certain types of magic,” he continued. “For example, in its ink form, it serves as the underlying structure for magical contracts–or secret messages, readable only by the intended recipient. Alternatively, in its glue form, it binds together stone walls, allowing the magician to create and secure wards that remain firmly in place. In many ways, it is the base of our entire society.”
Emily thought fast. There had been references to... something... that might serve the same role in the books she’d read, but they hadn’t provided any details. Maybe the writers had expected their readers to know all about Manaskol anyway, she thought, or maybe the details had been deliberately obscured. After she’d managed to get into terrible trouble after borrowing a book from Yodel, she was fairly sure that some details were definitely hidden, just to make sure that anyone trying to use the books had a proper background education. But something as important as Manaskol couldn’t be hidden indefinitely.
“I would be very surprised,” Zed concluded, “if any of you managed to produce it correctly the first time. It is immensely complicated. The instructions are on the parchment; read them carefully, then commence. And don’t hesitate to ask if you need help.”
Emily nodded to herself, then reached for the parchment and removed it from the wok. The instructions were written in Old Script, unsurprisingly; thankfully, she’d memorized enough letters to read it without any real problems. If there was one definite advantage the Allied Lands had over Earth, it was that there was a common language, both spoken and written. Even the alchemical notations were identical everywhere. She could be fairly certain she could read and understand anything she found in the Allied Lands.
Unless some dotty old sorcerer wrote the book, she thought, recalling Lady Aylia and her stories of adventures as a junior librarian. Some sorcerers used their own notation, often altering the figures to the point where their recipes and spells were useless or actively dangerous, while others often scribbled down nonsense as well as useful information, forcing researchers to check everything before actually trying any of the spells. That won’t happen here, will it?
She looked up and shivered as she realized Zed was watching her. For a moment, she wanted to leave the class and never return. But she knew it was impossible.
Gritting her teeth, she bent her head back to the wok. The instructions for Manaskol were, as he’d said, extremely complex. She’d never quite seen anything like it, let alone instructions to use a wand during several stages of the brewing process. The wok itself, she discovered when she examined it, was actually designed to hold spells too. It was very different from the cauldrons Professor Thande had insisted they use for brewing potions.
Carefully, she started to sort out the ingredients she needed, refusing to allow her nerves to push her into making mistakes. Lady Barb had taught her, more than once, that an unflinching refusal to be bullied and manipulated could save her from making all sorts of stupid choices. People would always want to see her stumble, Lady Barb had warned... and she’d talked about people who had no personal grudge against Emily. Zed would probably be delighted if she managed to kill or injure herself while brewing a complex mixture.
She finished sorting out the ingredients and swore under her breath as she realized she didn’t know how to use the wok. It wasn’t something she’d been taught at Whitehall. She hesitated, wising there was someone else she dared asked, then raised her hand to call the teacher. Zed stepped over to stand beside her, his gaze col
d with disdain, and quirked an eyebrow. Emily gritted her teeth and forced herself to meet his eyes.
“I don’t know how to input spells into the wok,” she said. Now she was looking, she realized there was no candle under the basin. Normally, heating charms or candles were used to heat cauldrons. “I haven’t used one before.”
“Something that would normally be covered at the end of Second Year,” Zed said. His voice was dry, but there was a hint of cold amusement at Emily’s expense. “Why didn’t you learn how to use them?”
Emily felt her cheeks heat as she flushed with anger. “I wasn’t told that it would be necessary,” she said, keeping her outrage in check. There would be worse to come, she was sure. “It was not mentioned on any of the preparation materials for Third Year.”
“It is generally assumed to be obvious,” Zed muttered. He held a hand over the wok, and cast the first spell. Emily watched as it sank into the wok. “I have prepared the wok for you, this time, but I suggest you learn how to do it yourself in future.”
Emily nodded, surprised. She’d expected a scathing lecture on her own incompetence.
“Thank you,” she said, softly. Another thought struck her. “It’s been a long time since I used a staff, sir, and I have never used a wand.”
“So I was led to believe,” Zed grunted. He picked the wand up and held it in front of her face. “Use the same basic procedure as you would use for a staff, but be gentle when you allow power to flow through the wood. If it starts to splinter, drop it at once and then...”
He broke off as one of the woks exploded into a sheet of fire. Emily stared as the classroom’s wards fought to contain the blast, directing it up and away from the students, several of who took their eyes off their own woks to watch the flames. Moments later, two other woks went the same way. One of the students jumped backwards, cursing out loud; the other seemed rather less surprised.
“You overpowered the blending spell,” Zed said. He waved his hand, clearing up the mess and disposing of the remains of the wasted ingredients. “Remain behind after class so we can discuss the matter more thoroughly.”
Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks Page 9