Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Come on,” Robyn said, as Steven banged the gavel. “There’s dirty work afoot. But there might be cakes, too.”

  Emily sighed and followed her back to the table.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “THAT’S AN INTERESTING QUESTION,” AURELIUS SAID. “Might I ask what brought it on?”

  Emily hesitated. She’d chatted to Claudia, then Helen, then even Rook and Ten. They’d all been surprisingly happy to talk to her about life in the Great Houses and, as far as she’d been able to tell, they’d been honest. Life in the Great Houses was better than life as a common-born magician, but it also carried so many obligations that Emily was surprised the entire society hadn’t collapsed under its own weight. There were so many pitfalls waiting for an unwary magician that she was quite certain she didn’t want to be part of it herself.

  And then she’d asked why a patriarch had so much power over his family.

  “I am being tutored in social etiquette,” she said, finally. “And I discovered just how many arrangements a paterfamilias could make for his family.”

  “They do have a considerable amount of power,” Aurelius agreed. “But then, they also inherit the family’s obligations and debts.”

  “I know,” Emily said, softly. “But does that give them the right to control their children’s lives? Or to make certain that newcomers to their society are magically crippled?”

  “Some would argue that they do,” Aurelius said. “Others would point out that there’s no way to make them follow outside laws.”

  Emily sighed. She was used to thinking in terms of a nuclear family; one mother, one father and a handful of children. But the Great Houses were practically clans in their own right; it was tricky, immensely so, to work out just who was related to whom. If they hadn’t had a habit of integrating new blood from common-born magicians, Emily was sure, they would probably have had very real problems with incest and inbreeding by now. Markus had over a hundred relatives, all bearing the Ashfall name.

  Maybe that’s why they put so much weight on honor, she thought, sourly. There’s no other way to express their disapproval.

  “It’s stupid,” she said. It crossed her mind that saying it aloud could be a mistake, but she was too tired to care. “The Necromancers are pushing against the walls and they’re fighting over... over who has the right to do what to whom.”

  “I quite agree,” Aurelius said. “But convincing even a small number of magicians to work together, let alone accept another’s leadership, is like herding fire drakes.”

  With the added disadvantage that those fire drakes have magic, Emily thought, remembering Lady Barb’s frustration with the same problem. You might be stronger than one of them, but all of them?

  He gave her a wintry smile. “It is good that you have come to recognize the flaws in the established order,” he said. “But have you also come to understand why the established order exists?”

  “I think so,” Emily said, slowly. “It’s to keep magicians from fighting each other too openly.”

  “Among other things,” Aurelius agreed. He rose to his feet and turned to walk towards a door. “And, speaking of the Necromancers, there is something I want to show you.”

  Emily followed him through the door and down a long flight of stairs that seemed to reach down into the bowels of the Earth. Magic flickered and flared around her, some understandable privacy wards, others so soft and subtle she barely sensed their existence until it was too late. The rune on her chest burned suddenly–she gasped in pain, suddenly shocked into full awareness–as she moved further down the stairs. It was nearly a minute before the pain faded away. Aurelius, it seemed, had been so tightly focused on what was below him that he hadn’t even looked back at her gasp.

  She tested the magic, carefully. It wasn’t focused on her, but more of a generalized "don’t look here” sensation. Now that she knew it was there, she could just disregard it... and, as she kept moving, it faded away completely. All it did was help to keep the underground complex hidden.

  “This is one of the most secure chambers in the world,” Aurelius said, as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “And what I am about to show you is one of its greatest secrets.”

  He paused before turning to face her, his face illuminated by his light globe. “There are people who would look askance at you if they knew you’d been here,” he told her. “You must never discuss it with anyone, ever. The consequences would be dire.”

  Emily watched him turn and walk through a doorway carved in stone, wondering what was worse than summoning demons. She followed him, curiosity winning over caution, and entered a large chamber, illuminated by a pearly white light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. And, throughout the room, there were giant crystal structures, each one holding a figure–or a creature–trapped like flies in amber.

  She found her voice. “What is this?”

  “This is where we study the innermost workings of magic,” Aurelius said. “And what the Faerie did to humans to make them monsters.”

  Emily peered into the first structure and froze. She was staring into the eyes of a male Gorgon, seemingly older than the Gorgon she knew. The mass of snakes surrounding its head were still, instead of the constant rustling motion Emily recalled, while his face was caught in a mask of terror. And someone, she saw, had been drilling into his skull. He was trapped on the verge of death.

  The next structure held a white-faced man, completely bald and naked. There was nothing between his legs, while his pasty-white head was oddly inhuman. In all truth, she wasn’t even sure it was male. She frowned, trying to think of what it could be, then looked a question at Aurelius. He smiled, then indicated the mouth. Two small fangs could be seen protruding from its upper jaw.

  “A vampire,” Aurelius said. “A deeply magical creature, bound by laws we do not fully understand. Strong, capable of shapeshifting into bats or mist, almost unstoppable save by magic or a wooden stake. And powerfully hypnotic. We’ve seen people become slaves and lure others to be eaten. Rumor has it that some of the mundane aristocrats are actually vampires, feeding on their populations.”

  They wouldn’t need to bother to be vampires, Emily thought, remembering the Baron she’d displaced at Cockatrice. He’d been nothing more than a parasite with more power than concern for his people. But then, Robyn had made it clear that few magicians cared for the common folk. The only one she’d ever heard express genuine concern, without any regard for his own activities, was Master Tor. And wasn’t that ironic? Master Tor had never liked Emily, and she tended to return the sentiment.

  She looked up at Aurelius, dismissing the thought. “Why don’t you do anything about it?”

  “It isn’t our problem,” Aurelius said. “And besides, there are agreements. The Compact should not be threatened.”

  Emily frowned. “The Compact?”

  “An agreement that we won’t interfere openly in mundane society,” Aurelius said. He led her to the next piece of crystal as he spoke. “We don’t interfere in their affairs, they don’t interfere in our affairs. And so the balance is maintained.”

  “And the real reason?” Emily asked. “I don’t think King Randor could stop you if you wanted to march in and take over Zangaria.”

  Aurelius gave her a twisted smile. “Think about it,” he said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  Emily considered it for a long moment, then blinked in surprise as she looked into the third crystal. A girl stood inside, wearing a long white robe that reminded Emily of the first set of robes she’d been given, two years ago. Her face was tormented, as if she was struggling against something inside of her; her body looked to be on the cusp of womanhood. It was always tricky to estimate ages in the Allied Lands–people on Earth grew up faster–but Emily would have placed her age as somewhere around twelve.

  “She developed magic when she was five,” Aurelius said, softly. There was a bitter note in his voice. “At that age, Emily, one does not need to use complex spe
lls to make things happen. But when she started growing into a woman she lost control of her magic. We had to seal her into a spell, trapping her forever.”

  He sighed. “Every magician both hopes for and dreads his children developing magic in childhood,” he said. “It is always a sign of powerful magic, perhaps more powerful than any Lone Power, but so few of them survive the passage into adulthood. And we don’t know why.”

  “They’re scared,” Emily said, without thinking.

  Aurelius swung around to face her. “Why...?”

  Emily swallowed. She wasn’t sure she could answer without tipping off Aurelius that she hadn’t been born on the Nameless World. But she knew he would never let her go without answering the question, not now.

  “It’s... it’s something of a girl thing,” she said, reluctantly. It wasn’t a discussion she had ever envisaged having with anyone, let alone Aurelius. “As we grow into adulthood, we can be scared by the changes in our bodies. Some of us try not to eat in the hopes that our bodies won’t change any further.”

  “I confess I have never heard of anything like it,” Aurelius said, slowly. “But what does that have to do with developing magic?”

  Emily wasn’t surprised. The Allied Lands feared mental problems, particularly in magicians. And eating disorders, either brought on by fear or poor self-esteem, were a mental problem, if one that could be overcome. Besides, the Allied Lands weren’t particularly fond of coddling children. Emily could imagine what sort of response a child would get if he or she insisted she wasn’t eating something on a given day.

  “Their magic is more responsive to their feelings,” she said. “If they hate the changes in their bodies that much, their magic will try to bend and snap the bodies back to where they think they should be. And this kills them, because they don’t know what they’re doing...”

  “Like a very poorly made de-aging potion,” Aurelius said. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  He took a breath. “Do you have a cure?”

  “I don’t think so,” Emily said. She’d never had a chance to develop an eating disorder herself. “Nothing that will work here, in any case.”

  Aurelius gave her a sharp look, but quietly led the way past a whole series of crystal columns and into another room. Emily followed, seeing hundreds of creatures, some humanoid, some very strange to her eyes, trapped in Mountaintop. The next room held a skeleton so big it took her a long moment to comprehend what it actually was. But then, she’d never actually seen a dead dragon before.

  “Dragons are powerfully magical,” Aurelius said. There was a hint of heavy satisfaction in his voice. “And the older, the better.”

  He led her through another door into a much smaller chamber. One wall was crammed with potion bottles, filled with dozens of different liquids; the other three were bare, save for drawings of humans in various stages of dissection. There was no real photography in the Allied Lands, Emily reminded herself, as Aurelius waved her to a chair. The chair was positioned next to a medical table, like the one in Mistress Granite’s classroom.

  “Tell me something,” Aurelius said, as he pulled a second chair over to the table and sat down facing her. “What would you say is the greatest threat to the Allied Lands?”

  “The Necromancers,” Emily said, at once. “They nearly won the war two years ago.”

  “True,” Aurelius agreed. “And how far would you be prepared to go to stop the Necromancers?”

  “As far as necessary,” Emily said. She had no illusions about what the Necromancers would do to the Allied Lands. The population would become sources of food and magical sustenance, while the land itself would eventually be drained dry, leaving a barren wasteland behind. “What about you?”

  “Some of us take the threat of the Necromancers very seriously,” Aurelius said. He placed his elbows on the table. “Others... are more interested in private disputes than watching the barricades. They think the Necromancers are thousands of miles away and aren’t likely to be a problem. Or that the Necromancers will eventually run out of energy and collapse into dust.”

  Emily couldn’t dispute his words. She knew they were true.

  Aurelius changed the subject, suddenly. “Do you have any long-term plans?”

  “No,” Emily said.

  It wasn’t something she had thought about, despite spending over two years in the Allied Lands. Everyone seemed to expect she would go back to Zangaria after graduation and take up her post as Baroness, then become Alassa’s closest advisor when the Princess succeeded her father and took the throne. Quite a few people who remembered Alassa’s time as a royal brat had been very pleased with even the slightest prospect of her having an advisor who couldn’t be intimidated.

  But there were other prospects. She was tempted to join Lady Barb in doing what she could for the common folk, or apply to become a tutor at Whitehall, or even try to become a librarian. And then there were all the innovations she planned to introduce through Imaiqah’s father. She certainly had gleaned a few other ideas from Aurelius’s books that she intended to use, once she returned to Whitehall. One of them would make banking a much more viable option.

  “I ask because what I am about to show you will automatically bar you from becoming a Healer,” Aurelius said. “You will not be able to take advanced training, let alone apprentice with a qualified Healer. They will ask you to swear certain things, and you will be unable to do so.”

  Emily considered it. Healing was not one of her strong subjects, even though Lady Barb had taken it in her first year. Mistress Granite hadn’t been any better for her, she had to admit; it was clear that all tutors who tried to take Healing rapidly started snapping at their charges for even the slightest mistake. Lady Barb was respected by most of her students, but she certainly wasn’t liked. Emily knew, without false modesty, that she had barely scraped through the Second Year exam. It was unlikely she would ever be a Healer.

  “I don’t think I could be a Healer,” Emily confessed. She liked helping people, but she couldn’t master the more complex spells. “Will it bar me from anything else?”

  “No,” Aurelius said. He took a breath. “Do you want to learn what I have to show you?”

  Emily nodded, with some trepidation.

  “Are you aware,” Aurelius asked, “that the power to heal is also the power to kill?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, flatly. On Earth, doctors always made the worst criminals. The Allied Lands insisted on Healers taking certain oaths before they practiced. Even so, Lady Barb had admitted once, there was plenty of scope for abuse. “You could kill someone without leaving a trace.”

  “There’s more than that,” Aurelius said. He met her eyes. “Healing can create... obligations between the Healer and his client. To save a life can entail the highest of debts. The most potent of spells can have the strangest effects on both parties. Healers take oaths to forswear all such debts forevermore.”

  It dawned on Emily, suddenly, that he found the conversation as awkward as she did.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “I doubt you do,” Aurelius said. “These spells have been used for dreadful purposes in the past. And you won’t be taking the oaths to prevent abuse.”

  He took a ragged breath. “But you need to know them,” he said. “How were Necromancers killed before you arrived on the scene?”

  “Poison,” Emily said. No one had gone into details. Her eyes narrowed as she recalled just how inhuman Shadye had become, before his death. Had he still been human enough to be poisoned? “How... ?”

  “That is what I am about to show you,” Aurelius said. “And others, too, if you wish it.”

  Emily stared down at her hands. The knowledge sounded dangerous–and she already knew far too many secrets. But she was also tempted. She’d been lucky with both Shadye and Mother Holly... and she wouldn’t get lucky again, not like that. What if she had to trigger a colossal explosion in the middle of a city? Thousands of innocents would die at her hands.
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  And what, a nasty little voice asked at the back of her mind, if it’s a choice between killing them quickly, or allowing a Necromancer to use them as a power source?

  “Teach me,” she said.

  “Very well,” Aurelius said. “This is a basic charm for healing the body–with a nasty little twist.”

  It was several hours before Emily stumbled back up the stairs and out into the corridors, cursing her own curiosity under her breath. Aurelius hadn’t been joking when he’d said that some of the spells were very dangerous. If she’d realized just how dark some of them actually were, even though they were supposed to heal a mortally-wounded person, she would have had second thoughts. But she couldn’t lose the knowledge now. One charm, one complex healing charm, would kill at her command. Another would slowly drain the victim’s magic until they were left a powerless husk. A third would leave a dead body with no trace of any cause of death. Even a trained Healer would be unsure of just what had happened to the victim.

  And there was one she knew she didn’t dare use. The obligations she would assume from using the spell were just too high.

  Nanette nodded to her as she entered Raven Hall, but said nothing. Emily had no idea why the Head Girl stayed up, now she knew Emily was visiting the Administrator. It didn’t look as though any of the other girls were out of bed, although Emily had heard that Helen and Rook had managed to get out of the Hall and roam the corridors for hours last week before being caught. The old tradition was still carried on.

  Emily nodded back to Nanette, then slipped into her own bed and glanced at Frieda. The younger girl was sleeping, her face oddly relaxed in the semi-darkness. Emily felt a surge of affection that surprised her. She had never had a real sister, but she was starting to think of Frieda as a little sister who needed love and protection.

  She smiled to herself, then activated the privacy wards. She was too tired to undress, so she lay down and closed her eyes. Sleep came quickly...