Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “My tutor and I made our way here,” she said, finally. “He had a theory about ...”

  “He?” Whitehall repeated. “He?”

  Emily cursed under her breath. She had the nasty feeling she’d just put her foot in it. But there was no going back now.

  “He had a theory about taking control of a nexus point,” she said. “He’d worked out a complex set of spells he believed would be sufficient to take control. But it wasn’t enough to save his life. There was a flash of light and I saw him die, a moment before you arrived.”

  Bernard’s eyes narrowed. “There was no one in the chamber when we arrived.”

  “She might have been trapped in the nexus point,” Whitehall pointed out. “And our attempt to tame the wild magic freed her.”

  “Then I thank you,” Emily said. “But I don’t recall anything between his death and your arrival.”

  Whitehall frowned. “Who taught you?”

  A dozen answers ran through Emily’s head. She could claim to have been taught by Dumbledore, or Gandalf, or Yoda ... it wasn’t as if Whitehall could disprove her words. But she needed to keep it as simple as possible. She knew enough about telling lies to know just how easy it was to say too much and give the listener the key they needed to untangle the entire web of deceit.

  “I swore an oath to keep the details of my training to myself,” she said, finally. If Whitehall and his commune were anything like the magicians she knew, they’d respect an oath. “Even though he’s dead, he never saw fit to release me from it.”

  Whitehall nodded. “It is ... uncommon for a girl to be schooled in magic,” he said. “Your father, perhaps? Teaching you because he had no son?”

  Emily kept her face blank with an effort. Whitehall—her Whitehall—taught girls and boys equally, assuming they had magic. But the history books had made it clear that girls were not originally taught magic. It had been Bernard—Grandmaster Bernard—who’d first permitted girls to study at Whitehall, assuming that wasn’t something else the history books had managed to get wrong. There was no point, not any longer, in pretending to be an untrained magician. They’d seen what she’d done to the nexus point.

  “I swore an oath,” she said, again.

  Whitehall nodded. “I understand,” he said. “He must have been a very smart man.”

  “He taught a girl,” Bernard said. “How is that smart? The curse ...”

  Emily frowned. “What curse?”

  “He didn’t even tell you that?”

  Bernard turned to his master. “She’s lying,” he said. “I sense no magic from her.”

  “I sense no magic from you either,” Emily snapped back.

  Whitehall gave her an odd look. “My apprentice has more than enough magic,” he said, coldly. “But yours is well hidden.”

  Bernard stepped forward. “This is a joke, master,” he said. “I don’t know how she got here, but she is no magician.”

  Emily scowled at him, feeling oddly disappointed. This was the Grandmaster who would invite girls to study alongside the boys? She reached out with her senses and frowned as she sensed magic surrounding Bernard for the first time. He wasn’t trying to mask his power at all; indeed, the only reason she hadn’t sensed it earlier was because Whitehall’s magic had obscured his apprentice’s power. Professor Lombardi would have summarily failed any student who failed to mask his power within his personal wards, she knew. Allowing one’s power to roam free was ... sloppy.

  “You sensed what she did to the nexus point,” Whitehall said. He sounded puzzled, but calm and composed. There was no anger in his tone. “She showed us how to patch the wards in place to tame the wild magic.”

  “She’s a girl,” Bernard protested.

  Emily felt her temper snap. “Then fight me,” she said. “I challenge you to a duel, if you dare.”

  Bernard glared at her, then turned to his master. “Master ...”

  “She challenged you,” Whitehall said. He smiled, rather dryly. “Are you going to take up the challenge?”

  “It wouldn’t be a fight,” Bernard objected.

  Emily resisted—barely—the urge to stick out her tongue. “Then you don’t have anything to fear,” she said, instead. “You’ll beat me with ease.”

  “Fine,” Bernard snapped. He turned and paced across the chamber, then turned to face her, his hands clenching into fists. “Master, will you set up the warding circle?”

  “I doubt one will be necessary,” Whitehall said. He stepped to one side, nodding shortly to Emily. “Try not to kill each other.”

  Emily kept her expression blank as she tensed, testing her protections carefully. Challenging Bernard was a risk. She could lose. And yet, his casual dismissal of her abilities hurt. She was damned if she would allow him to talk down to her, let alone treat her as a silly girl who needed a man to make all the decisions for her. It wasn’t as if she was one of the stupid noblewomen who’d made Alassa’s wedding preparations such a trial. And Bernard was a disappointment anyway.

  “Begin,” Whitehall said.

  Bernard didn’t hesitate. His hand snapped down as he unleashed a spell she didn’t recognize, a spell that bled mana in all directions. It was sloppy work—Professor Lombardi would probably have broken Bernard’s hand if he’d cast that in class—but it was powerful. The spell slammed into her protections, shaking them roughly, yet it was really nothing more than brute force. Part of her mind analyzed the spell quickly, noting how it made no attempt to seek out weaknesses in her protections and break through the cracks. Bernard had a great deal of raw power, although it was so sloppy she couldn’t tell just how much power, but very little actual skill.

  “Impressive,” Whitehall commented.

  Emily kept her eyes on Bernard as she deflected or drained the last remnants of his spell. He looked stunned, as if he’d expected her to be knocked out ... or killed ... by his magic. Emily wasn’t quite sure what the spell had actually been intended to do. It had just been thrown together so poorly that merely striking her defenses had been enough to disrupt the spellware beyond repair. She gathered her own magic, readying a retaliatory blow, but waited to see what he would do. And then he tossed a second spell at her. This one was tighter and sharper ... and felt unpleasant as it crawled across her wards. She felt a flicker of horror as she realized what that spell was meant to do.

  “Careful,” Whitehall said. His smile was gone. “Using that in a duel could get you in real trouble.”

  I suppose it could, Emily thought. Trying to take control of your opponent ...

  She summoned a fireball and threw it at him, watching dispassionately as it crashed into his magic and exploded into nothingness. His protections were nothing like hers, she saw; they were crude, utterly unfocused. It looked as though he was using his own magic as a baseball bat, swatting away spells as they approached, rather than embedding wards within his magic and concentrating on offense. Emily hated to think what Sergeant Miles would have said to any of his students stupid enough to try that. Splitting their attention between offense and defense meant that they couldn’t concentrate on either.

  Bernard flung a third spell at her, so powerful that she stepped aside rather than try to catch it on her protections. Bracing herself, she threw back a ward-cracking spell of her own and followed up with a prank spell. Bernard let out a yelp of shock and pain as his wards came apart—Emily realized, too late, that the ward-cracking spell had actually attacked his magic directly—and then shrank, rapidly, as the prank spell took effect. Moments later, a tiny green frog was looking up at her with disturbingly human eyes.

  “I think I win,” Emily said.

  She looked at Whitehall and saw him looking back in shock. “You did it so casually?”

  “I had a good teacher,” Emily said. She cursed her mistake—if it had been a mistake—under her breath. She had no idea when transfiguration spells had been invented, but it was possible that Whitehall didn’t know how to use them—or regarded them as too demanding t
o be practical. “He taught me everything I know.”

  Whitehall studied her for a long moment. “I think you win too,” he said. “Undo the spell, please.”

  Emily nodded and cast the counterspell. Bernard looked astonished as he reverted to human form, his face pale and wan. A lingering greenish tone hung over his skin for long seconds after the spell faded back into the ether. He would have been trying to break free, Emily knew. If he had no experience with pranking spells—the spells Emily had learned in her first year of studies—he might assume that his mind was on the verge of sinking into the frog’s and being lost forever.

  “I am sorry for doubting you,” Bernard said. He stood upright, then held out a hand. Emily shook it firmly. “And you are clearly a great magician.”

  “A useful lesson, young man,” Whitehall said. “You are strong, but your training is far from complete.”

  Emily kept her thoughts to herself as Whitehall turned towards the gaping door. Bernard, at least, didn’t seem to bear a grudge. But then, Sergeant Miles had told her she might have to fight to prove herself, if she was dumped in with the men. Beating a man fairly would work far better, he’d said, than whining to his superiors. The former would earn respect, the latter would breed resentment.

  She rubbed the side of her head as she followed Whitehall, Bernard falling into step beside her. Her head hurt, a dull ache that was making it hard to think. She’d been awakened in the middle of the night, after all. She needed to sleep, to rest and figure out a way home before she accidentally tore a hole in history and erased her friends from existence.

  And hope I can survive here long enough to find a way home, she thought, grimly. This isn’t the Whitehall I know.

  Chapter Two

  IF THE HISTORY BOOKS WERE TO be believed, Emily recalled, Whitehall Castle predated the Whitehall Commune by at least two hundred years, perhaps longer. No one knew who had built the castle or why, let alone what it had been called before Whitehall arrived, but it was clear that the multidimensional interior had come later. Old Whitehall looked like a darker, grimmer version of King Randor’s castle: stone walls, no windows, empty rooms or sealed doors. The passageways were hauntingly familiar, yet all the details were gone. There was so much dust and grime on the floor that they left trails as they made their way up to the Great Hall. The only source of light was burning torches, which hung from the walls and added an unpleasant stench to the air.

  “Stay on the beaten track,” Whitehall called back, without looking around. “We found hundreds of traps scattered throughout the castle. Clearing a path down to the nexus chamber took a week.”

  Emily nodded, silently grateful he couldn’t see her face. She would have been fascinated with the castle if she hadn’t been tired and hungry. Her headache was refusing to fade, while her stomach insistently reminded her that she hadn’t eaten for hours. She had to concentrate to keep walking, unwilling to show weakness in front of either of the men. Bernard didn’t seem to like the idea of women learning magic—at least, he didn’t like it now—and Whitehall was a hero. But then, just how much of what she knew about him in the future was false, based on half-remembered stories and outright lies? Professor Locke, for all of his research, had never had a clear idea of just how much his idol had actually done.

  He’d love to be here, Emily thought. She’d love it too, if there was a way home. The chance to actually meet the ancients in person ...

  Whitehall tossed questions at her as she walked, asking if she knew the name of any of the local kings or warlords—or magicians. Emily was quietly impressed—if she’d been telling the truth, it would have allowed him to deduce how long she’d been trapped in the nexus point—but she pleaded ignorance on all such matters. She was a peasant girl, after all; a peasant girl would not be expected to know the name of the king, not when she would probably never leave her home. Whitehall seemed to understand her ignorance, although it was hard to know what he thought. She could only hope that he’d accept her story without asking too many more questions.

  They stepped through a stone archway and into the Great Hall. Emily stopped and stared in disbelief at the scene before her. This—this—was the Whitehall Commune? Dozens of people—men, women and children—sitting on the stone floor, their eyes going wide as they looked up and saw Emily. Their clothes were ragged, their faces were dirty ... it looked like a refugee camp, not the start of a brand new era. She couldn’t help noticing just how many of the people before her were scarred, a handful nursing broken bones or walking on wooden legs. Healing—true Healing—had come later. The thought made her feel sick.

  She sucked in a breath and instantly regretted it. The Great Hall smelled worse than the slums she’d seen outside Swanhaven, a year in her past and nearly a thousand years in their future. Too many people in too close proximity, too little washing ... she looked towards a makeshift tent and shuddered, inwardly. Whitehall had been the cleanest place in the Allied Lands, by her reckoning; she was, perhaps, the only student whose living conditions had degenerated after moving to the school. But that, too, was in the future. A handful of children—she thought they were five or six years old—had pockmarked faces, while most of the adults looked almost painfully thin. Disease and deprivation had to be rife.

  They’re running, she thought, shocked. And they’re on the brink of starvation.

  They stared back at her, their faces torn between hope and fear. The women, in particular, seemed to find it hard to look at her, even though she caught them glancing at her when they thought she wasn’t looking. Several mothers even caught their children and pulled them away from Emily, while a number of young men stared at her as if she was a vision from heaven. It struck her, suddenly, that she was the cleanest person in the room, even though her nightdress had picked up a great deal of dust and grime. And if women weren’t allowed to study magic, the young men might not know how to relate to her at all.

  “Wait here,” Whitehall ordered, nodding to a small campsite. Someone had set up a fire for warmth, adding to the smell. Emily hoped they had good ventilation within the castle, although it seemed unlikely. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Emily sat, crossing her legs and wishing—desperately—that whoever had pulled her out of bed and lured her down to the nexus chamber had thought to make her get dressed first. The nightdress was surprisingly decent, compared to some of the garments Imaiqah had worn during her time at Whitehall, but she was still underdressed compared to most of the women in the hall. They wore several layers of clothing apiece, judging by the way their garments bulged in odd places. Were they trying to cover themselves, or were they merely trying to stay warm? It had been cold, down in the nexus chamber. It might well be cold in the upper levels too.

  And I don’t even know the time, she thought, grimly. It could be the middle of the night for all I know.

  Whitehall had walked over to a handful of men—she recognized four of them from the chamber—and was chatting with them in a low voice, too low for her to hear anything more than a couple of words. She briefly considered trying to cast a spell to make it easier to overhear their conversation, but she knew there was a very good chance she’d get caught trying. The tutors at Whitehall—her Whitehall—wouldn’t be amused if someone tried to spy on them, and she dared not assume that Whitehall was any different. His commune had no reason to trust her.

  I did help them tame the nexus point, Emily reminded herself, as Whitehall beckoned a young woman to join the group. Surely they’ll want to keep me around.

  She settled back—Bernard had headed off to join a couple of other young men—and studied the Great Hall. It seemed to be no smaller than the hall she remembered from the future, but the walls were nothing more than bare stone, save for a handful of runes carved just below the ceiling. She didn’t recognize them from her studies, but she did recall seeing a couple just like them in the tunnels below Whitehall. The fireplace was gone—no, it hadn’t been built yet. Her head swam as she tried to grapple with
the implications. It was hard, so hard, to know just how much she knew about the castle might still be relevant.

  A young woman walked towards her, carrying a bowl in one hand and a mug in the other. Emily looked up and frowned as the girl stared at her, her face torn between fear and ... and a kind of awe that she’d seen on peasants, back in Cockatrice. The girl was strikingly pretty—she had soft blonde hair and blue eyes that shone, despite the dirt and grime on her face—yet there was a hardness to her that chilled Emily to the bone. This was a girl who had seen terrible things.

  “This is all we have,” the girl said, as she passed the bowl to Emily. “Father”—she nodded towards Whitehall—“bids you eat.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said. Her mind reeled. Whitehall had a daughter? There was no mention of any children in the texts, as far as she could recall. But a daughter might go unrecorded. She smiled at the girl, forcing herself to be friendly. “I am called Emily. What are you called?”

  “Julianne,” the girl said. She stepped backwards. “I must go.”

  Emily watched her go, then turned her attention to the bowl. It contained something that resembled stew, although it didn’t smell very appetizing. But then, some of the meals Sergeant Harkin had concocted hadn’t smelled very appetizing either. He’d insisted that skunks could be eaten, when wandering travelers couldn’t catch and butcher rabbits. And yet, she’d been able to eat his food without stomach cramps afterwards.

  She used a spell to test the stew, just to make sure it was safe to eat, then started to eat with her fingers. The food tasted little better than it smelled, as if it had been cooked for so long that all the flavors had merged into sludge, but she was too hungry to care. She wolfed it down with her fingers, then checked the water. Her spell warned her that it was far from pure, so she used a third spell to purify it before taking a long gulp. The food made her feel somewhat refreshed as Whitehall finally separated himself from the other magicians and walked back towards her. She started to rise to her feet, but he motioned her back down. He sat, facing her.