Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “No time to waste,” Lady Barb said, briskly. If she thought the surroundings were ominous too, she kept it to herself. “Come along.”

  She turned and started to walk up the path. Emily followed, silently grateful for the long marches in rough terrain the sergeants had forced upon her. Without them, she knew she would have had real trouble walking up the path. The footing was unstable and there were nasty-looking jagged rocks everywhere, as if whoever had made the pathway had deliberately set out to make it all but impassable. She heard the sound of water tinkling in the forest, but saw nothing within the shadows. There didn’t even seem to be any animals anywhere nearby.

  “Jasmine was very interested in your offer,” Lady Barb said. She didn’t sound winded by the march. “I gave her a signed paper to show to the recruiting officers, when she comes into her magic. Her fees will be paid at that time, if she still wants to go.”

  Emily nodded. “Will she actually go?”

  “It depends,” Lady Barb said. “She may not develop enough magic to fit in at Whitehall – or she may never develop magic at all. If so...”

  Her voice trailed off, but Emily understood. There were a handful of people who had magic, but were never able to actually access and use it. For an ordinary person from an ordinary family, it was no hardship; they might never even know what they had. But for someone from a magical bloodline, being unable to use magic would be disastrous. There were only a handful of courses at Whitehall that didn’t include magic.

  She shivered. It hadn’t taken her more than a few days before she’d learned enough spells to make her really dangerous, at least to someone without magic. That, she’d been told, was the real reason why Whitehall and the other magical schools recruited from non-magical bloodlines, quite apart from any genetic requirements. It simply wasn’t safe for magical children to be taught alongside non-magical children.

  “We shall see,” she said, out loud. “That was an impressive spell you used on the brats.”

  Lady Barb smiled. “Keep concentrating and you might be able to do it yourself,” she said, dryly. “But it isn’t particularly easy.”

  They walked in companionable silence for nearly thirty minutes before they came to a bridge. Emily felt a chill running down her spine as she looked at the bridge – and at the rushing water underneath, racing towards an unknown destination. There were enough jagged rocks half-hidden by the water to make crossing without a bridge a dangerous prospect. But there was something about the bridge that bothered her, even though she couldn’t place her fingers on it.

  “Look at the logs,” Lady Barb said. She pointed a finger towards the pieces of wood. “They weren’t cut with axes or saws.”

  Emily frowned. They looked almost like someone had chewed them. Something very big. The teeth marks looked several times the size of her mouth, yet there was something disturbingly human about them. Lady Barb looked around, studying the water, then smiled and pointed towards a large rock on the far side of the river. Emily followed her gaze, but frowned in puzzlement. The rock was large enough to stand on, easily. But there was nothing else odd about it.

  “Watch,” Lady Barb said. She picked up a stone and tossed it towards the rock, striking it easily. “Watch and learn.”

  Emily jumped as the stone started to move, standing upright and revealing a humanoid form. For a moment, she thought it was made of stone, before she realized that it was actually very good at blending into its surroundings. Emily couldn’t help thinking of a giant misshapen baby, made of grey flesh. It had to be a troll, a wild troll. The creature stood, dark eyes searching for the person who had dared to set foot on his bridge.

  “Don’t worry,” Lady Barb said, before Emily could say a word. “Just don’t show any fear and it will be fine.”

  Emily swallowed nervously. Trolls were slow, she knew from lessons, but they never gave up their prey without a fight. And their thick skins protected them from all kinds of magic.

  Lady Barb stepped forward, holding her staff in one hand. The troll stopped moving its head and glared at her, never taking its eyes off the staff. It recognized it, Emily realized.

  “Follow me,” Lady Barb hissed. She knelt down and started to crawl across the bridge. The troll made a hissing sound, like a kettle that had been left on too long, but made no attempt to grab her. “Hurry!”

  Emily hesitated, then crawled after the older woman. The bridge felt terrifyingly unstable, as if one false move would toss her off into the troll’s waiting jaws. It hissed again as she passed over its position, then fell back into hiding. Emily sighed in relief as she reached the far side of the bridge and looked back. The troll was almost completely concealed within the rushing water.

  “They’re not very smart,” Lady Barb commented, as they walked away from the bridge, “but they have a natural talent for building bridges that appear safe until it’s too late. Most people who live here know to look for signs a troll built the bridge.”

  Emily frowned. “Why don’t the locals try to kill it?”

  “They’re not fond of visitors in these parts,” Lady Barb admitted. “They wouldn’t care too much if the troll ate someone, particularly a taxman.”

  She smirked. “But those particular people are probably inedible,” she added. “They couldn’t be eaten at all.”

  Emily had to smile, feeling some of the tension draining away. “What about the children?”

  “They generally learn better from a very early age,” Lady Barb said. “Although they have to be careful. Some of the creatures that lurk in the innermost reaches of the forest are quite cunning and very dangerous.”

  She launched into a story that reminded Emily of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, except the boy actually did see a dangerous creature, which vanished the moment he called for his father and uncles. His relatives didn’t believe him, beat him and left him alone with the sheep. But the creature reappeared and kept reappearing until the boy no longer cried for help. And then it ate him up, followed by the sheep.

  Emily had no trouble that the story was factual, at least in some ways, even if it did raise the question of just who had managed to tell anyone what had happened. There were all kinds of monsters running loose in the world, from centaurs to goblins and orcs. Even dumb animals could develop a kind of intelligence if they were exposed to wild magic – or to the experiments of magicians with more power than ethical boundaries. Hell, there were even magicians trying to breed intelligent horses, claiming they would be useful in war. But there were so many variables in magical breeding that Emily suspected the whole idea was asking for something to go badly wrong.

  They were trying to breed royals, she thought. Alassa’s beauty wasn’t natural; it was the result of decades of magical experimentation. But it comes at a cost of near-sterility.

  She mulled it over as she kept walking, wondering just where the troll had come from. It might have looked humanoid, but there was no hint of humanity around its eyes, suggesting that it wasn’t a descendent of a human who’d been touched by the Faerie. Maybe it had just evolved through contact with wild magic, like the dragons and the other completely non-human creatures that hid from human eyes. She shook her head, dismissing the thought. It was unlikely she would ever know.

  They reached a clearing and stopped long enough to catch their breath. Emily looked up towards the higher mountains and saw a dark castle perched on a peak, towering ominously over the land. It didn’t look any bigger than her castle in Cockatrice, although it was difficult to be sure.

  “It belongs to the local lord,” Lady Barb said. She shrugged, expressively. “You can imagine how hard it was to build, even with magic.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. If there was one constant between this world and Earth, it was that the rich and the powerful demanded accommodation in line with their status. The aristocrats built towering castles and manor houses for themselves, while the commoners had to struggle in tiny hovels, fighting to survive another day. This was something she knew her innovations
would eventually challenge, but it wasn’t going to be an easy transition. There were times when she wondered if she shouldn’t have kept her mouth shut instead of introducing new ideas to the Allied Lands.

  But gunpowder might make it easier for them to fight the necromancers and their armies, she thought. Orcs were tough and bred like rabbits – and the necromancers could intimidate them into unquestioning obedience. And each of them was tougher than the average human. And English letters will allow millions to learn to read.

  Lady Barb smiled at her before leading her back to the path. This time, it snaked into a long, tree-covered valley. Emily was suddenly very aware of birds flying through the trees, while a handful of small animals could be heard in the undergrowth. It was almost as if someone had flipped a switch, turning on the sound. She shook her head in puzzlement as she heard something ahead of her, then caught sight of a handful of sheep – and a pale-skinned boy watching them. He started, lifting a heavy wooden stick, but relaxed when Lady Barb held up her hands.

  “We’re almost there,” Lady Barb commented. “Not long to go now.”

  Emily nodded at the boy, who smiled shyly. She had to look strange to him, she realized slowly, almost like someone from a different planet. Even though she was wearing a basic walking outfit rather than robes, she still looked different. She wondered, absently, what sort of life the boy led among the mountains, but she didn’t dare pause long enough to ask. Lady Barb was walking faster now that the end of the walk was in sight.

  “A word of warning,” Lady Barb said, once they were out of earshot. “You’ve grown used to magic at Whitehall.”

  Emily hesitated. She’d been at Whitehall for two years and there were times when magic – and the customs of the Allied Lands – could still surprise and horrify her. There was so much she had to learn, more – she suspected – than she would ever be able to learn, no matter how much time she spent in the library. And then there was the strange and confusing history of the Allied Lands. The more she looked at it, remembering what she knew from Earth’s history, the more she suspected that history had been ineptly rewritten.

  “Yes,” she said, finally.

  “You use magic as naturally as breathing, now,” Lady Barb continued. “When you are injured, you can be healed within a day. You turn your friends and rivals into small animals or objects and think it’s nothing more than a great joke.”

  Emily shook her head. Magical transformation – voluntary or involuntary – might be a regular part of life at Whitehall, but it wasn’t something she suspected she would ever grow used to. And then there were the transformed beasts she’d seen hunted in Zangaria...

  Lady Barb looked into her eyes. “That isn’t true for the people here,” she warned. “Magic is strange, powerful and unpredictable...for them. They’ve seen people warped and twisted by wild magic, to the point where they’re often glad to give up their children who happen to have developed magical powers. Quite a few of your fellows at Whitehall will never go home once they graduate. Some of them may not even wait that long to break all contact with their families.”

  Emily swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She had never really wanted to go back home, but surely someone who had a loving family would feel differently. But if the locals were so scared of magic...

  “Don’t use magic directly, unless you have no other choice,” Lady Barb said, gently. “We don’t want to scare them if it can be avoided.”

  She turned and led the way down the path. Emily followed after a moment, remembering how much magic she’d seen in Whitehall – and how little she’d seen in Zangaria. But even there, among the aristocracy, there was power enough to allow them to stand as equals to magicians. Here...she swallowed again, realizing just how powerless the locals actually were, compared to her friends. Magic would terrify them.

  “They used to kill very young children who showed signs of magic,” Lady Barb called back to her, without turning around. “We think it still goes on, in places.”

  The path broadened as it led down into the village. Emily wrinkled her nose as the smell hit her, a combination of dirty animals and filthy humans that reminded her of some of the smaller hamlets she’d seen on the trip to Zangaria. Basic sanitation, it seemed, had never reached this village. The handful of locals she saw looked filthy, wearing clothes that wouldn’t even have been used as rags in Whitehall. A handful of children, too young to be put to any proper work, were gathered outside one of the houses, listening to a lecture from a man who looked old enough to be Emily’s great-grandfather.

  The houses looked strange to her eyes. Most of them were built out of wood – there was no shortage of wood in the mountains – a handful were built using stone. She guessed they belonged to the handful of important men in the village; if they followed the same pattern as villages in Zangaria, there would be a headman who served as the village boss. But there would also be some degree of discussion among the older villagers, she suspected. The headman wasn’t powerful enough to keep everyone in line if they decided they wanted to get rid of him.

  Lady Barb strode directly into the village, heading straight for a large stone house. A door opened and a man strode out, followed by a teenage boy. Emily found herself disliking both of them on sight; the older man had a greedy fleshy face, half-concealed behind a short reddish beard, while the boy made no attempt to hide the fact he was staring at her chest, even though her shirt was largely shapeless. She fought the urge to hide behind Lady Barb as the older man came to a halt in front of her and bowed, politely. Lady Barb nodded in return.

  “My Lady Sorceress,” the older man said. “I bid you welcome to my village.”

  Emily studied him thoughtfully. His clothes were obviously homemade, but they were slightly better than the clothes worn by the other villagers—they looked almost new, lacking the patched holes the other villagers showed on their clothes. He wore a thin gold chain around his neck, an oddly girlish decoration that – she suspected – marked him out as the headman.

  “We thank you,” Lady Barb said. She indicated Emily with a nod. “This is my apprentice, Millie.”

  “Charmed,” the younger man said.

  His father gave him an indulgent smile. “My son, Hodge,” he said. “A fine young man.”

  Emily kept her face expressionless, somehow. Hodge was a younger version of his father, save for not having a beard. She didn’t like the look in his eyes at all, or the way his gaze kept dropping to her chest and below. When he looked up again, she looked away, unwilling to meet his stare. It was a relief when the headman turned and led the way towards another stone building right in the center of the village.

  “I will have food and drink sent to you,” the headman assured Lady Barb. “How long will you be staying?”

  “Two to three days,” Lady Barb said. “We will start seeing people tomorrow.”

  Her voice hardened. “And I trust there will be no delays this time?”

  Emily gave her an enquiring look, but Lady Barb said nothing.

  The guesthouse was larger than Emily had expected, yet it was all one room. There were two beds placed against one wall, a large pail of water and an empty bucket. It took her a moment to realize, with a shudder, that it was intended to serve as a chamberpot. At least they weren’t expected to go outside to do their business, she told herself. It wasn’t very reassuring.

  “Set up the cauldron, then start brewing all of the potions, one by one,” Lady Barb ordered, as she erected wards around the guesthouse. “There should be ingredients in the cupboard. Make a list of everything you take and use. Someone will have to replace them, sooner or later.”

  Emily nodded. “I will,” she said. “What was the delay?”

  “Some people didn’t want their relatives to seek treatment,” Lady Barb told her. “The mountainfolk can be very secretive at times. And they often have things they want to hide.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE BED WAS UNCOMFORTABLE AND ITCHY. Emily tossed and turned fra
ntically for a couple of hours, despite her exhaustion, before giving up and taking a swig of sleeping potion. She still felt tired when Lady Barb poked her in the ribs, snapping her awake. Muttering curses under her breath, Emily rolled out of bed and glared down at her body. There were tiny insect bites covering her legs.

  “Next time, set wards against them,” Lady Barb reminded her.

  Emily groaned. She knew how to cast an insect-repelling ward, but she’d forgotten to set one before she went to bed.

  “Rub a potion on them,” Lady Barb suggested. Her voice lightened. “There’s an anti-itching potion in my bag. Then get into your working robes.”

  Emily nodded and did as she was told. Lady Barb didn’t seem fazed by their living conditions, but as a combat sorceress she’d seen much worse. The sergeants hadn’t insisted on camping in the middle of an insect nest, no matter how hard they’d made her march from Whitehall to a camping site and then back again. She wiped her body with cold water, then pulled on her robes. Thankfully, the charms on the robe would help keep other insects away.

  “There’s food on the table,” Lady Barb added. “I let you sleep in a little. You needed it.”

  The food turned out to be bread, milk and cheese. All three tasted stronger than anything she’d eaten at Whitehall, the cheese powerful enough to make her breathe through her mouth while she ate it. She guessed that they were all produced locally, rather than obtained from a larger town. The villagers would have to support themselves.

  “They do,” Lady Barb confirmed, when Emily asked. “They have cows and sheep, as well as whatever they can hunt and kill in the forest. The real problems come in wintertime.”

  Emily shivered. Snow hadn’t been a problem for Whitehall, but it would be murderous for isolated villages on mountainsides. She could imagine the snow pressing down until the villages were completely buried, their inhabitants frozen to death. They’d have to store enough food to keep themselves alive over the winter. And if they didn’t have enough, they would starve even if they didn’t freeze. Or have their hovels collapse in on them when the snow piled high on the roofs.