Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  She shook her head. “They should share ideas,” she said, instead. “How many spells are invented, lost, and then reinvented because the original inventor doesn’t share them?”

  “A long-standing problem,” Whitehall said, dryly. Wolfe had said the same thing. “But trying to convince magicians to work together is quite hard enough without asking them to share their secrets too.”

  He sighed. “It’s rare to have a commune with more than four masters,” he added, “and even then they tend to keep their distance from one another.”

  Emily nodded. “But I can ask them?”

  “Of course you can ask,” Whitehall said. He sounded annoyed, although Emily wasn’t sure why. It didn’t seem to be directed at her. “But don’t come crying to me when they refuse to share anything with you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  AS SHE WALKED THROUGH THE CASTLE, Emily was surprised to discover that Master Wolfe had moved into a much larger chamber near the nexus point. It was a dark room, illuminated only by a trio of lanterns hanging from the walls; three rickety-looking wooden tables had been placed in the center, surrounded by a couple of stools. They all looked as if they had been constructed overnight, Emily decided, as she knocked on the open door. The commune’s carpenters were very efficient.

  “Ah, Emily,” Master Wolfe said, opening the door. “And you brought lunch!”

  “Master Whitehall insists that you eat,” Emily said. She’d carried the heavy tray herself, declining Robin’s offer to carry it for her. “He said I was to force you to eat, if necessary.”

  She didn’t dare put the tray on one of the tables—they were covered in parchment scrolls that were probably irreplaceable. Master Wolfe seemed to be the kindest of the masters in the commune—although she had to admit she hadn’t spoken with many of the others—but she had a feeling he’d explode with rage if any of his parchments were damaged. And she wouldn’t blame him, either. Parchment and vellum were both expensive, even in her time. It would probably be years before the Whitehall Commune could start producing it for themselves, if they were allowed to settle peacefully in the castle.

  “I don’t have time to eat,” Master Wolfe said. His eyes were bright, too bright; his hands shook as if he were cold, even though the room was surprisingly warm. Emily suspected that he hadn’t slept all night. “I have too much to do.”

  “You need to eat,” Emily said, firmly. She picked up the bowl of stew and held it out to him, hoping he’d take it without further argument. “Please.”

  Master Wolfe sighed, but took the bowl and sat down facing her. “I’ve been dissecting Robin’s spell,” he said. “There are no surprises, as far as I can tell.”

  “Master Whitehall said as much,” Emily said. She sipped her own stew thoughtfully, using a spoon to pluck out and nibble the meat. It tasted of lamb, but—as before—she didn’t recognize the vegetables. “But it uses a great deal of power.”

  “Precisely,” Master Wolfe said. He jabbed his spoon at her as he spoke. “I could devise a better spell, if I had time. But it won’t be so easy to cast.”

  Emily shrugged. The spell drew on so much power that she suspected Robin was actually filling the holes in the spellware with raw magic. It was certainly possible—whatever his flaws, Robin was a powerful magician—but it was grossly inefficient. The light spells she’d been taught were commonly taught to First Years; Robin’s spell would be tricky for a Fourth Year student to cast. Anyone younger probably wouldn’t have the raw power to make it work.

  “I’ve also been improving the nexus point spells,” Master Wolfe said. He finished his bowl and dropped it back on the tray, then rose. “Tell me what you think of this?”

  Emily put her bowl to one side and joined him as he stood by one of tables. A large roll of parchment had been unfolded, allowing Master Wolfe to draw out a set of complicated spell notations. Emily took a long look—and then sucked in her breath as she understood what she saw. Master Wolfe had taken the spells she’d used, down in the nexus chamber, and expanded on them. Each of his pieces of spellwork was designed to grow, rather than remain rigid: they would automatically adapt as the power ebbed and flowed through the nexus point. And the longer the spellwork remained in place, the more they’d be able to do with it.

  Given time, Emily thought, they’d be able to build up Whitehall itself.

  “I’m altering the spellwork so it expands outside our normal world,” Master Wolfe told her, as he pointed to a cluster of elaborate notations. “Should something go wrong—and it might—the remainder of the system will compensate automatically. A major power surge will be shunted sideways ...”

  Emily frowned. “You’ll still need a way to control it.”

  “I know,” Master Wolfe said. “But crafting a genuine mind will not be easy.”

  The Warden, Emily thought. We need to craft the first Warden.

  “I’ve been looking at ways to transpose my own mind into the spells,” Master Wolfe added, after a moment. He picked up a large sheet of parchment and held it out to her. “This should be workable, if I could muster the power ...”

  Emily took the sheet and had to bite her tongue to keep from swearing out loud. Master Wolfe’s notation was odd—there were runes she didn’t recognize included within the bundle of notes—but there was no mistaking the proto-mimic. She’d done her best to duplicate what she’d seen, back in Second Year, yet she knew there had been pieces missing. Now ... now she knew what had been missing.

  Soul magic, she thought. The Mimics don’t just drain magic and life from their victims, they practically copy their very souls. And they don’t even realize that’s what they’re doing.

  She shuddered. She’d had nightmares—everyone in Whitehall had had nightmares—about being replaced by a Mimic, utterly unaware of what had happened to her. She would be dead, but she wouldn’t know it ... until the Mimic ran out of power and reverted to its natural form, shedding what remained of her as it started to hunt for a new target. The proto-mimic didn’t look like a hunter—indeed, it seemed designed to serve as a host for Master Wolfe’s mentality—but it wouldn’t be able to keep going indefinitely. How could it?

  “This is madness,” she said, softly. “How could you even power the spellwork?”

  “Like this,” Master Wolfe said. He held up yet another sheet of paper. “I devised this rite myself. It was so simple that I don’t understand why no one ever thought of it before.”

  Emily took it—and blanched. There was no mistaking the necromantic rite, the simple spell that allowed a necromancer to use murder as a source of magic ... at the price of everything from sanity to humanity. Shadye had been utterly insane, fighting desperately to find more and more sources of power as his mind collapsed in on itself, while Mother Holly had lost sight of why she’d sacrificed herself in the first place. Master Wolfe would be driven insane if he attempted the rite ... if he was prepared to sacrifice someone to save his life.

  “Madness,” she breathed. “You’d go mad.”

  “All magicians go mad, eventually,” Master Wolfe said, stiffly. “The smart ones kill themselves before it’s too late.”

  Emily looked at him, then down at the sheet of paper. The necromantic rite was simple—and therein was the danger. Anyone with a tiny spark of magic could trade their sanity for power, if they were prepared to keep murdering people to stay alive. Grandmaster Hasdrubal had even told her, years ago, that particularly foolish magicians saw the necromantic rite as a shortcut, but it led right off a cliff. Shadye probably hadn’t even remembered why he’d become a necromancer by the time he’d kidnapped Emily. All he’d cared about was remaining alive.

  “You couldn’t handle the surge of power,” she said. “Your mind would snap at once.”

  Master Wolfe and Whitehall had looked for a sting in the tail, she thought, when they’d dissected Robin’s spell. They’d even been surprised when they found nothing. But it had been hiding in plain sight. The sloppy magic spilling around, whenever
the spell was cast, would damage Robin’s mind. Each successive use of the spell would cause more and more problems, eventually driving him insane. And the more unstable he became, the more likely it was that he’d summon a demon without taking any precautions.

  And it’s true of all their spells, she thought. They’re slopping so much magic around that it’s damaging their minds.

  She sat down, hard. Master Gila’s eyes were going red, necromancer-red. Was that a side-effect of the slow descent into insanity? Mother Holly’s eyes had gone red too. Perhaps someone had tried to use the necromantic rite before, only to discover that they couldn’t find enough power to keep themselves alive. But it hardly mattered. Sparks of power burning through a magician’s mind would be enough to eventually drive them mad.

  And that explains the curse too, she told herself. If they’re slopping magic around, it might well make them sterile.

  “Emily,” Master Wolfe said. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “You must not use that rite to empower yourself.”

  Her mind raced. Lady Barb had told her, back in Second Year, that there were curses that rendered women barren and men sterile. And while the latter could be reversed, the former were permanent. There was nothing that could be done, Lady Barb had said, to undo the destruction of a woman’s eggs. The female reproductive system was far more delicate than the male ... a female magician might accidentally render herself barren, simply by allowing her magic to slop around her body.

  And if she believes it will make her barren, her own thoughts added, it will.

  “Explain,” Master Wolfe ordered.

  “There will be a surge of power,” Emily said. It would be worse for Master Wolfe, unless he had wards she hadn’t sensed. “You won’t be able to contain it. The surge will just burn through your mind. If it doesn’t kill you, it will drive you insane. You’ll be running around, lashing out at random.”

  They must have improved upon the spells they use, she thought, as Master Wolfe took back the parchment and stared at it. If they learned to use less and less power, to focus it properly, they’d avoid doing any damage to their bodies or minds. And that’s what I learned to do when I arrived at Whitehall.

  Master Wolfe looked dubious. “I can alter the spell matrix,” he said, studying the proto-mimic. “It should be enough ...”

  “The surge would be an order of magnitude more powerful than anything you’re used to handling,” Emily warned. “A human mind would be unable to handle it.”

  “And if you’re wrong,” Master Wolfe said, “you’re denying me the chance to boost my magic.”

  “I’m not wrong,” Emily said. She took a breath. “You could rewrite some of the more common spells to use less magic.”

  Master Wolfe lifted his eyebrows. “Is that what you were taught to do?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, reluctantly. There was no help for it, not now. Professor Lombardi had taught her to always work out what the spell actually did—and rewrite it, if necessary—before trying to cast it. “You said that magicians always go mad?”

  “They do,” Master Wolfe confirmed. “Master Gila’s eyes are already red. He is not long for this world.”

  Emily nodded. “He’s probably used too many spells that have nasty side-effects. And that spell of Robin’s will damage his mind, if he uses it extensively.”

  Master Wolfe cocked his head. “And how would you suggest rewriting it?”

  Emily held out her hand and cast a light-spell. A glowing ball of white light hovered above her palm, casting an eerie radiance over the table. Master Wolfe stared at it with genuine fascination, then cast a spell of his own. Emily felt her magic waver, but the light globe merely flickered once before returning to normal. Master Wolfe reached out, very gently, and held his palm over the globe. It didn’t seem to bother him.

  “It’s cool,” he said, in wonderment. “There’s no heat.”

  “It produces light,” Emily said. Was Robin at risk of setting fire to something? His light globes had been quite warm, after all. “It doesn’t produce anything else.”

  “Very clever,” Master Wolfe said. He frowned, stroking his chin, as the light globe finally flickered and died. “I shall have to give the subject some thought.”

  “You could start rewriting some of the other spells,” Emily said. “If you could get the same effect with less power ...”

  “If,” Master Wolfe said. He sighed, heavily. “There are spells I could never get to work because I didn’t have the power.”

  “Not casting those spells might have kept you sane,” Emily pointed out.

  She looked down at the necromantic rite, feeling a twinge of sympathy. Everyone had different levels of magic—she’d been taught—but how one used what one had was often just as important as their power reserves. A magician with vast power might throw it around carelessly, expending it until he was left drained; a magician with limited power might spend it carefully, hoarding it until it could be used for best effect. But here, where crudeness and brute force spells seemed to be the order of the day, Master Wolfe would be at a staggering disadvantage. No wonder he’d been willing to invent—perhaps reinvent—the necromantic rite, and then plan to use it.

  Shadye might have been like that too, Emily thought. It still galled her that she knew little of Shadye’s past, other than the simple fact that he’d been expelled from Whitehall in Second Year. Perhaps he’d been looking for ways to boost his power even then, rather than put in the hard work necessary to learn how to use what he had. He wanted a shortcut too.

  Master Wolfe gave her a sharp look. “Why do I have the feeling you’re not telling us everything?”

  “I swore oaths to my tutor,” Emily said, hastily. She’d given Master Wolfe too much, too quickly. “He wouldn’t want me to share everything.”

  “I see,” Master Wolfe said. Emily rather suspected he didn’t believe her, not completely. “I will consider your words. But for the moment ...”

  He pulled out a new sheet of parchment and started to talk through what he’d already done, explaining his work on the nexus point. Emily was quietly impressed, although she had the feeling that it would be years before the spellware was firmly locked in place. Master Wolfe talked about spells that were only theoretical, spells that were beyond even the powers of the strongest magicians ... spells that might become possible, once the nexus point was turned into a source of unlimited power. He was, Emily reminded herself again, a genius. His understanding of the nexus point, based on only a week of study, was far superior to hers.

  “Some of the traps we found were quite odd,” he commented, softly. “Did you have a hand in creating them?”

  Emily shook her head. “I didn’t place any traps here,” she said, truthfully. “We never stumbled across any either, back when we first entered the castle.”

  “A shame we don’t know how long it was between your arrival and ours,” Master Wolfe mused. “It might tell us useful things about the nexus point’s interaction with the local magic field.”

  He didn’t seem inclined to keep studying the matter, to Emily’s private relief. She had the feeling she’d said too much already, although she’d had no choice but to keep him from trying to use the necromantic rite. If he’d chosen to sacrifice someone to boost his own powers ... Master Wolfe didn’t seem like a monster, yet she knew that magicians rarely thought highly of mundanes. And now, when magicians were hunted by mundanes, who could blame him?

  And if they do manage to devise spells that are less dangerous to human minds, she thought, they could actually take their place in society.

  “Your magic is odd,” Master Wolfe said. He rolled up two sheets of parchment as he spoke, not quite looking at her. “I can tell you’re a magician, but you honestly seem less powerful than I. And yet I have been told that you turned Bernard into a frog, an act that requires staggering levels of power.”

  Emily sighed. She was surprised someone hadn’t already asked her that question.
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  “I was taught to mask my power,” she said, flatly. “My tutor ...believed a magician shouldn’t show off his power unless it was necessary.”

  Master Wolfe frowned. “To keep people from realizing that you were a magician?”

  “Among other things,” Emily said. In her time, deliberately showing off one’s power was a challenge to a fight. “He believed that one should always conserve power.”

  “Because one never knows when one might need power,” Master Wolfe said.

  Emily nodded, and asked a question that had been nagging at her. “Why don’t you have an apprentice?”

  “Most apprentices prefer to apprentice themselves to someone who can show them more powerful spells,” Master Wolfe said. “They don’t appreciate the potential of my work.”

  “They should,” Emily said. “Why don’t you start teaching the basics to some of the unattached apprentices?”

  “Because they wouldn’t learn,” Master Wolfe pointed out. He nodded towards the sheets of parchment. “They would assume this is useless.”

  He shook his head. “My master wouldn’t have taken me on,” he added, “if he’d had someone with more power who was also willing to learn. And now ... many of the secrets he uncovered—the secrets he taught me—will die with me.”

  “They don’t have to,” Emily said. The thought of Master Wolfe being forgotten was horrifying, although she already knew that history had forgotten him. Every last discovery made during this era was credited to Whitehall. “You could share them ...”

  She paused. “And if you can work out ways to cast spells with less magic,” she added, “you’ll have many more potential apprentices willing to work for you.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Master Wolfe said.

  He paused. “And now, if you don’t mind, we need to tighten up the spells,” he added. “I want to be sure we have everything under control before we start turning our dreams into reality.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE DOOR LEADING TO MASTER GILA’S chambers felt ... ominous.