Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  The castle felt empty—it was empty—as they walked back to their room. They were still sharing, but they had been moved into a bigger room once Julianne started to unpack her tools and ingredients for brewing. There was no sign of a proper bed—they were still using blankets—but there was a table and a pair of rickety stools. Julianne could—and did—use the room as a workplace, despite the risks. Emily would hate to know what Professor Thande would have said about it.

  “You promised me lessons,” Julianne said, once the door was closed. “Are you going to keep your promise?”

  Emily sighed, inwardly. Julianne had been very good about not nagging her, in the wake of Master Gila’s death, but Emily had promised. She motioned for Julianne to sit down on the floor, then picked up one of the newer wooden spoons that a carpenter had carved for her. It wasn’t quite a wand—and wands could be dangerous anyway, if the novice used them too often—but it would suffice. She cast a pair of privacy wards around the room and then sat facing Julianne. The younger girl’s eyes were alight with anticipation.

  This could go very badly wrong, Emily thought, grimly. What if she doesn’t have magic?

  It was a chilling thought. Lady Barb had told her, during their preparations for visiting the Cairngorms, that some students chose not to study magic. Sometimes, they could—and did—pick it up later, but at other times they lost the ability altogether. Julianne came from a powerful bloodline—Emily had no doubt that Whitehall was incredibly strong—yet she’d been denied the chance to practice. And she might have lost the ability through no fault of her own.

  “If you want to learn, you have to do what I tell you,” she said, firmly. She wasn’t a teacher who had to put up with a disobedient student. “If you disobey me, for any reason, there won’t be any more lessons.”

  Julianne nodded. “I understand.”

  Emily held the spoon up as she carefully embedded a spell into the wood. It didn’t seem to work perfectly, much to her annoyance, but it would suffice. “Take this,” she said, passing the spoon to Julianne. “Can you feel anything?”

  “There’s .... there’s a tingle,” Julianne said, after a moment. “What is it?”

  “Magic,” Emily said. She braced herself. Julianne sensing the magic was a good sign, but it was only the beginning. This could definitely go very wrong. “Try to reach out with your mind and trigger the spell.”

  There was a pause. Nothing happened.

  “I don’t know,” Julianne said. Her voice was level, but she was clearly worried. “How do I do it?”

  Emily winced. “Imagine you’re standing above the spell,” she said. Lady Barb had talked her through a handful of procedures, but she’d never actually had to use them. “And then imagine power flowing through your hands and into the spoon.”

  There was a surge of magic. Emily barely had a moment to throw up a shield before the makeshift wand exploded into splinters. Julianne stared at the stub in her hand, then started to giggle helplessly as she dropped it. Emily joined her a moment later, shaking her head in amused disbelief. The wood hadn’t been strong enough to take the magic.

  “Well,” Emily said. “At least we know you can do something.”

  “It feels like ... like when I make some of the more complex potions,” Julianne said. “But different, too.”

  Emily frowned. Alchemy and potions were sometimes considered separate subjects, although there was so much overlap that Professor Thande preferred to keep them together and ignore the times when they were separate. But she’d seen enough to know that while potions could be brewed by mundanes, alchemical concoctions needed a magician to brew them. The magician used his magic to force the ingredients to blend in a particular way.

  “You may have been using magic all along,” she mused. “Can anyone make your potions?”

  Julianne shrugged. “Not everyone wanted to learn,” she said. “Fanny was asked to study with her mother—my aunt—but she refused. She wanted to get married and have children.”

  Emily looked up. “What happened to her?”

  “She got married to a magician and moved away,” Julianne said. “I don’t know what happened afterwards.”

  Of course not, Emily thought. No email, no telephones ... even letter-writing doesn’t really exist here. Julianne’s cousin might as well be on the other side of the moon.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said. She picked up a second spoon and turned it over and over in her hand, then embedded a spell into the wood. “Shall we try again?”

  Julianne nodded and took the spoon. This time, the spoon merely cracked in two places before warming up so rapidly that Julianne yelped and dropped the remains on the floor.

  “We’re going to need better wands,” Emily said, finally. “I’ll work out something for the carpenters to do.”

  “Thanks,” Julianne said. “But ... what about my lessons?”

  “They’ll have to wait until we get the wands,” Emily said. “You need to learn how to channel power properly.”

  She held up a hand before Julianne could say a word. “And you are not to experiment with anything on your own,” she added. “You would run the risk of hurting yourself quite badly.”

  “Very well,” Julianne said. She sounded disappointed. Emily just hoped she had enough sense to listen to instructions. But then, it hadn’t taken Emily long between learning to use her magic and finding new spells to cast, with or without supervision. “Do you want to learn a recipe?”

  “Yes, please,” Emily said.

  She watched, thoughtfully, as Julianne started to sort out her ingredients, naming them as she worked. Alfalfa and Chamomile, Fennel and Ginger, Burdock and Chaste Tree ... it was easy to work out that Julianne was trying to make a potion to comfort the drinker and provide mild pain relief. And as Julianne worked, Emily could sense sparks of magic crackling around her and flowing into the liquid. They were so subtle that she suspected Whitehall couldn’t sense them—his senses were used to far more powerful magicians—but they were there.

  “Done,” Julianne said. She sniffed the brew, then left it to cool. “You’ll probably need some of this yourself.”

  Emily frowned. The potion—she thought she’d seen something like it among the Travellers—was designed to help women cope with their menstrual cycles, dulling the cramps and making the experience easier to endure. It wasn’t something she’d given any thought to—she’d taken a monthly potion at Whitehall and felt nothing—but she had a feeling it would be a problem soon. Her last dose of potion would be out of her system by the time that point in her cycle rolled around again.

  And there aren’t any sanitary pads here, she thought, grimly. How the hell do they cope?

  “I’ll have some later, when the time comes,” she said. How did Julianne cope? “How ... how do you handle the blood?”

  Julianne gave her a sharp look—clearly wondering how Emily had managed to avoid the problem—and then launched into a clinical explanation that left Emily feeling dreadfully embarrassed. She’d never liked talking about it, even when some of the girls at school—back on Earth—had bragged about having their first period. For them, it was a step into adulthood; for Emily, it had been the start of her stepfather looking at her with lusty eyes ...

  “I can help,” Julianne said, finally. She sighed. “I used to help quite a few people back in the village. Their parents didn’t want to talk about it to them.”

  Emily rolled her eyes, although—if she was forced to be honest—her parents hadn’t talked about it to her either. But then, she’d had the internet and largely-pointless classes on sex education. Villagers ... she was surprised that village women didn’t tell their daughters the facts of life. Imaiqah had definitely known how things worked long before she’d gone to Whitehall.

  She put the matter aside for later consideration and leaned forward. “There’s something you have to know,” she said. “When you’re making a potion, you’re using magic.”

  Julianne stared at her. “I’m usi
ng magic?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “You’re using magic to encourage the ingredients to blend together to produce the effect you want.”

  “You ...” Julianne slapped the table, making everything jump. “Are you ... are you telling me that I’ve been using magic all along?”

  “I think so,” Emily said. “You were taught—accidentally—how to use magic to make potions. And you never realized this because you only met a couple of other brewers.”

  “There are people who do make potions without magic,” Julianne said. “Aren’t there?”

  Emily met her eyes. “How would you know?”

  “Father doesn’t know,” Julianne said. “He would have forbidden me from brewing if he knew.”

  “Probably,” Emily agreed. “But you are the only brewer the commune has, aren’t you?”

  “Until I train someone else,” Julianne said. “I never ... I never thought it might need magic.”

  Emily shrugged. “How do you feel when you’re brewing something?”

  Julianne hesitated. “It depends on the potion,” she said. “There are some recipes that are quite forgiving, ones you can throw together in a hurry if necessary; others that require intensive concentration, recipes that will go wrong very quickly if you take your eye off them or stir harder than strictly necessary. With them, I feel ... intensely focused.”

  “Magic,” Emily said. “You’re not just producing magic, you’re controlling its flow perfectly.”

  She picked up the third and final wooden spoon, embedded a spell within the wood and passed it to Julianne. “Pretend you’re brewing a potion,” she said, “and let the magic glide into the spoon.”

  Julianne nodded, holding the spoon as if she were about to dip it into the cauldron. Emily braced herself, hastily setting up a pair of protective wards, but this time the spell worked perfectly. The end of the spoon began to glow with torchlight, casting an eerie pale radiance into the air. Julianne stared at it, then started to laugh in childlike delight. Emily smiled as the light winked out, knowing that Julianne would treasure that memory for the rest of her life. She could do magic!

  “That’s wonderful,” Julianne said. She sobered, sharply. “My father won’t want to see it, will he?”

  “I don’t think so,” Emily said, dryly. She reached out with her senses, but felt only hints of magic surrounding Julianne. Whitehall would probably miss them altogether as long as Julianne was careful. “Don’t do it in front of him, all right?”

  “I won’t,” Julianne said. She took a breath. “What else can you teach me?”

  “Quite a bit,” Emily said. She looked at the cauldron. “Have you ever considered experimenting with other ingredients?”

  “I’ve never had the time,” Julianne admitted. “When I wasn’t brewing, I was tending the sick or injured, helping to cook food or clean the castle.”

  Emily felt a stab of sympathy mixed with guilt. Julianne had always been out of place, neither one of the magicians nor one of the wives or serving girls. Her father clearly hadn’t known quite what to do with her. She made a mental note to convince Whitehall to ensure that Julianne could take an apprentice of her own, someone who could help take some of the burden of brewing off her shoulders and give her more free time to experiment. If this was the birth of alchemy, Julianne definitely needed more time to develop the scientific method ...

  “You could always try to teach Eldora,” she said. “She’ll need something to keep her mind off everything that happened to her.”

  “I could try,” Julianne said. “But she’s old.”

  “No one is too old to learn,” Emily countered. Eldora was old, true, but she deserved a second chance at life. The thought of letting Master Gila cast a long shadow—even in death -- was unpleasant. “Ask her, if she’s willing to learn.”

  Julianne didn’t look pleased. Eldora was at least fifteen years older than her, perhaps more—she wouldn’t take kindly to being taught by a young girl. And Julianne wouldn’t carry the natural authority of her father or one of the other masters. But it was a good thought.

  “My father may insist on selecting the candidate,” Julianne mused. She frowned as another thought struck her. “Emily ... what would happen if the candidate had no magic?”

  “Some of the potions wouldn’t work,” Emily said. There were ways, Lady Barb had said, to use high-magic ingredients to kick-start the process, but she doubted Julianne could get her hands on dragon scales or basilisk eyes. “Others would, just not as well as they would have done with magic.”

  “Then we’d need a girl with magic,” Julianne said. She shook her head. “Is there a test?”

  There was, Emily knew, but that hadn’t been developed—wouldn’t be developed—for hundreds of years. Or so she thought ... it was hard to say what had been developed and then lost between Whitehall’s era and her arrival in the Nameless World. But anything created at Whitehall had a good chance of surviving the years to come.

  And blowing a hole in the timeline, if it wasn’t meant to happen, Emily mused. Not knowing was worse than knowing too much. And what will happen then?

  “I don’t think so,” she lied.

  “I could look for a girl fathered by a magician,” Julianne said, finally. Emily nodded in agreement. Magic ran in the blood, after all; Julianne was very much her father’s daughter. “If there are any reports of ... odd things ... happening around her, consider accepting her as an apprentice. If not ... I can teach her the basics and see if she can do the more advanced brews. ”

  “Good idea,” Emily said.

  “Try to teach two or three girls at the same time,” she added, thoughtfully. “The basic recipes should work for that—I think. And then those girls can teach two or three others, each.”

  Julianne stared at her. “But the secrets ...”

  “Will be useless if they die with you,” Emily said. She knew it could be done. Professor Thande had taught fifteen to twenty students at a time, despite the risk of accidents. Emily suspected she’d go mad very quickly if she’d had to teach so many students in a large classroom. “This way, you will have dozens of apprentices instead of just one or two.”

  And, she added silently, as Julianne started brewing another potion, the groundwork for teaching more than one person at a time will be laid.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I WAS WONDERING WHEN YOU WERE going to come visit me,” Master Drake said, as Emily stepped into his office. He was seated behind a desk, studying a leather-bound book; he motioned to a chair on the other side of the desk and watched as she sat down. “You’ve visited Master Reaper and Master Keldor over the last four days, haven’t you?”

  Emily nodded as she took the proffered seat. She would have been surprised if Master Drake hadn’t known she was moving from master to master, in-between helping Master Wolfe with his plans to tap the nexus point and teaching Julianne several new spells. Master Reaper hadn’t had much to offer her—he’d barely spoken a word to her—but Master Keldor had been happy to teach her things she hadn’t wanted to know about the uses and abuses of dead bodies, including how a magician could fake his death for a short period. Perhaps leaving Master Gila’s body alone for several days before cremating him hadn’t been a mistake after all.

  She pushed the thought aside with an effort and studied Master Drake with interest. Bernard had admitted to being scared of him—not without reason—and Robin had outright told her that the man had an odd sense of humor. Emily wouldn’t have cared to meet anyone who thought that turning people into animals was funny, particularly without the carefully-crafted prank spells she’d learned in her first year of studies, but she had no choice. She had a theory—and an idea she wanted to try—and she needed Master Drake to help her do it.

  He was tall, easily the tallest person in the commune. His face was pinched and sallow, as if he were constantly sucking on a lemon; his eyes seemed fixed on her face, as if he was determined to see who would blink first. The magic surrounding hi
m didn’t feel anything like as tainted as Master Gila’s—there was no trace of red in his eyes—but it was clearly powerful. And, if half of what she’d been told about him was true, he might well rival Whitehall for power.

  “I’ve been told you practice transmutation,” she said, carefully. “I ...”

  “A remarkable piece of intelligence,” Master Drake interrupted. There was a faint, but clearly audible sneer in his voice. “Who could possibly have told you that, I wonder?”

  “They say you can change lead into gold,” Emily continued, ignoring the jibe. “How do you do that?”

  “Magic,” Master Drake said. He smirked. “You were expecting a different answer?”

  “I would have liked to hear how you did it,” Emily said.

  “And I would like to hear how you turned Bernard into a frog,” Master Drake said. “Was it something like this?”

  He lifted his hand and threw a spell at her. Emily nearly fell backwards as her protections shivered under the impact, threatening to shatter into nothingness as they strove to break up and dispel the spell before it was too late. There was enough power, she sensed, to do much worse than merely turn her into a frog. Master Drake’s spell would strip her of humanity too, trapping her as a frog until he chose to release the spell. It was hard, so hard, to deflect enough of the spell to take it apart, but somehow she made it work ...

  ... And then the spell simply dissolved back into the ether.

  Master Drake inclined his head, one magician to another. “Your protections are impressive,” he said, sounding as if he would sooner have had teeth pulled without anesthetic than admit it. “I have never seen the like.”

  “Your spell was powerful, but blunt,” Emily said. She refused to show him just how badly his spell had damaged her protections, even though she wasn’t sure she could hold off another such spell. “My protections broke it into nothingness.”

  “So they did,” Master Drake said. He gave her a considering look. “And you managed to turn Bernard into a frog?”