Infinite Regress

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “He’ll just find something else for me to do,” Emily predicted. “I won’t get away that easily.”

  Caleb leaned forward and kissed her again, wrapping his arms around her to bring her into a hug. Emily felt her heart began to pound harder as his hands stroked her back, gently encouraging her to relax. She kissed him back, feeling torn between pushing it further and drawing back. His kisses were growing harder, more demanding...

  The door opened. Emily jumped back, in shock, as Cabiria stepped into the room.

  “Put up a privacy ward,” she suggested, as Emily and Caleb stared at her accusingly. “Or go to his room.”

  “We can’t,” Caleb said. He sounded more than a little embarrassed. “Cirroc had a nasty fight with his girlfriend—his ex—and now he’s fighting off the effects of a very nasty hex.”

  Emily smiled. She had a feeling she knew which one. Imaiqah had used it once or twice, on a pair of boyfriends who refused to recognize that the relationship was over. It was technically forbidden, but she doubted any of the victims dared go to a tutor to have the spell removed. Quite apart from the embarrassment, they’d have to answer some very searching questions afterwards. But the hex did no lasting harm, if it was allowed to fade away on its own.

  “Poor him,” Cabiria said, crossly. She glanced at Emily. “You’d better be certain to teach that hex to your students. You never know who might want to take advantage of them.”

  “Good idea,” Emily agreed. She rose. Cabiria might say she didn’t mind having Caleb in the room, but Emily was embarrassed to kiss him in front of her. They could go for a walk instead, if Caleb’s room was off-limits. “I dread to imagine what they’d do with it.”

  “So does everyone else,” Cabiria said. “But you should find teaching them the spell fun.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “YOU LOOK GOOD,” CALEB SAID, AS he met her in the courtyard. “Are you dressing to impress?”

  Emily shrugged. She’d thought hard about what to wear when she met Mistress Danielle; school robes would remind the older woman that Emily was still a student, while one of her long dresses would make her look insincere about lessons. Eventually, she’d settled on a comfortable working outfit: a loose shirt, trousers and shoes. It wasn’t what she would have preferred to wear, but it would have to suffice.

  Unless Mistress Danielle would prefer I wore something else, she thought, looking Caleb up and down. He’d simply not bothered to change out of his school robes. On Earth, it would have made him look stupid, but it wasn’t socially awkward on the Nameless World. And he looks good in them.

  “I think there’s no point in trying to impress her,” Emily said, as she took his arm and led him towards the coaches. “She’s a combat sorceress...”

  “And you killed the combat sorcerer who trained her,” Caleb pointed out, dryly. “She’ll be very impressed.”

  “She wasn’t pleased about her role in the duel,” Emily recalled. They walked towards the carriages, following Cirroc and a blonde-haired girl who clung to his arm. Master Tor stood beside the nearest carriage, making notes on a piece of paper. “I think she thought he was doing the wrong thing.”

  “He was,” Caleb said. “I...”

  “Emily,” Master Tor said, bluntly. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Emily blinked. “Dragon’s Den,” she said, puzzled. For a moment, she wondered if Gordian had been reading her mail and decided she wasn’t going to have private lessons. “I don’t have anything this afternoon...”

  “No, you don’t,” Master Tor agreed. “But do you have permission from Professor Locke to leave the grounds?”

  “... No,” Emily said. She’d briefly considered lying, but Master Tor would probably have checked with Professor Locke, landing her in hot water when she returned to the school. “I didn’t realize I needed it.”

  “You do,” Master Tor said, bluntly. He cocked his head to one side. “He’s in his office. I suggest you go ask him now, before the carriages leave.”

  Emily felt a hot flash of embarrassment, followed by rage, as several of the students turned to look at her. Even if only one carriage was held back long enough for her to find Professor Locke and ask his permission, she would be delaying their visit to Dragon’s Den by at least ten minutes, perhaps longer. And they’d blame her...

  “I’ll hold the carriage,” Caleb said. “You go.”

  Emily turned and ran back into the school, cursing Master Tor and Grandmaster Gordian under her breath. She’d read the rules for probationary students, but she hadn’t realized she needed to seek specific permission to leave the grounds. No one had complained when Frieda and she had gone hiking, although that had been before term officially started. She dodged a pair of younger students playing Freeze Tag and tapped sharply on Professor Locke’s door. What the hell would she do if he refused her permission?

  “Emily,” Professor Locke said, as the door opened. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need permission to go to Dragon’s Den for the afternoon,” Emily said, forcing herself to speak calmly. “Please, can I go?”

  “Of course,” Professor Locke said. He gave her an odd look. “Just remember to report to me on Sunday morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said.

  She turned and hurried back to the courtyard. All but one of the carriages had departed; Caleb stood beside the last carriage, alternatively glowering at the driver and looking frantically towards the castle. He gave Emily a smile of relief, then opened the door to allow them both to climb inside. There was no sign of Master Tor.

  “What a dickhead,” Cirroc said, as the carriage rattled into life. “What’s he got against you, anyway?”

  Emily shrugged and averted her eyes. Cirroc’s new girlfriend was practically sitting in his lap, slobbering over him. She leaned back against Caleb as the carriage rattled down the road, silently brooding over Master Tor’s upset to her plans. They might not even have time to go for a drink before she had to meet Mistress Danielle! But as she hadn’t been denied permission to leave the castle, she could only assume that neither Tor nor Gordian knew what she was planning to do.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Caleb muttered. The carriage stopped with a jerk. “He’s just being an ass.”

  Cirroc threw the door open and jumped down to the cobbled street. Emily wrinkled her nose at the stench, which hadn’t faded despite the new regulations the City Fathers had introduced to combat disease. Dragon’s Den had heard of modern plumbing, but the inhabitants still preferred to empty their chamberpots into the streets rather than build sewers and pipes. She was silently grateful that her house had magical facilities. The idea of using what passed for a toilet in Dragon’s Den sickened her.

  “There’s not enough time to go for a drink,” Caleb said, regretfully. “I’ll walk you to her apartment, then go find our supplies.”

  Emily gave him a grateful kiss, then allowed him to lead her through the streets towards a set of new apartment blocks. Dragon’s Den hadn’t changed that much in the last four years, save for a handful of new bookstores selling printed books and services. The City Fathers probably disapproved of the new printing industry, but the demand for books was skyrocketing. It served as proof that not all of the changes she’d brought to the Nameless World had been bad.

  None of them are bad, she told herself, firmly. They just had some unfortunate side effects.

  “Good luck,” Caleb said. “I’ll see you back here in a couple of hours, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. She sensed the ward floating in the air and triggered it, gently, with her magic field. Trying to enter the apartment complex without permission would have been, at best, a serious breach of etiquette. “Take care.”

  Mistress Danielle opened the door and peered out, then beckoned Emily to enter. It reminded her oddly of Earth, although the stairwell was lit with magic and the entire complex was only four or five stories high. Emily followed Mistress Danielle up one flight of stairs and into a
small apartment, barely roomy enough for a single person. It looked very much like a studio apartment from Earth.

  “Take a seat,” Mistress Danielle ordered. “I’ve heard a great deal about you recently.”

  Emily nodded and sat down at the table, studying the older woman thoughtfully. She was in her early thirties, Emily thought; her dark skin marred with a handful of scars she’d either been unable or unwilling to remove. Her eyes were darker still, while her dark hair was tied back in a long ponytail, hanging down over a white shirt that had been cut to leave her muscular arms bare. Emily couldn’t help feeling a little intimidated. Mistress Danielle looked as formidable as Lady Barb.

  “Teleporting out of a warded chamber,” Mistress Danielle added, sitting down and resting her elbows on the table. “I don’t know many magicians who would have taken the risk.”

  “I was desperate,” Emily said.

  “You must have been,” Mistress Danielle said. She leaned forward so her dark eyes bored into Emily’s. “What do you want from me?”

  Emily took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I completed all three years of Martial Magic at Whitehall, passing all of the exams,” she said. She’d failed the second year course, but she’d been allowed to retake the exams at the end of her third year. “Whitehall does not offer any other instruction in combat magic, yet I cannot allow my skills to atrophy. I require private tuition.”

  Mistress Danielle frowned. “You would be better working with me over the summer,” she said, after a moment. “Right now, how often can you leave Whitehall?”

  “Once a week,” Emily said. “I don’t know what I’ll be doing next summer.”

  “I might be available, if you want more intensive lessons,” Mistress Danielle said. She closed her eyes for a long moment. “Once a week... it will be awkward. I have a leave of absence from my duties, but I’d prefer not to waste it.”

  “I can pay,” Emily said, quickly.

  “Pay isn’t the issue,” Mistress Danielle said. “Being here for seven months, without doing anything else...”

  She shrugged. “I’m not the sort of person who likes sitting around,” she added, after a moment. “But I’ve always wanted to explore the Craggy Mountains.”

  “They’re beautiful,” Emily said.

  “But only on one side,” Mistress Danielle said. “I understand you visited the Blighted Lands.”

  Emily shuddered. The land had changed, sharply, as soon as they’d crossed the Craggy Mountains and entered the Blighted Lands. Ash had lain everywhere, choking the land and destroying any hope of it regenerating itself; the handful of settlements they’d passed had been dead and cold, their inhabitants having long since fled or taken for sacrifice by the necromancers. No one in their right mind would want to stay in the Blighted Lands.

  “It was not pleasant,” she said, with deliberate understatement. “Shadye destroyed everything.”

  Mistress Danielle nodded. “This will not be a formal apprenticeship,” she said, returning to the matter at hand. “I will certainly not uphold the conventions of the master-apprentice relationship. If you decide to quit, you may quit; if you mess around, I will kick you out and end our training sessions without hesitation. I have neither the time nor the patience to put up with misbehavior. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  “Good,” Mistress Danielle said. “And so...”

  She lifted her hand and snapped off a spell, hurling it directly into Emily’s wards. Emily shrank back as it started to tear them apart, threatening to leave her unprotected. She gritted her teeth, then cast a whole set of new protections, pushing the old set away from her and discarding them. The hex flickered out of existence, just as Mistress Danielle cast a second spell, aimed at the newer defenses. Emily cursed under her breath and cast a fireball, throwing it right at Mistress Danielle’s face. Not entirely to her surprise, the fireball flickered out of existence long before it struck its target.

  Mistress Danielle tossed a third spell at her, a thin smile playing over her dark face. Emily caught it on her wards, swearing under her breath as she realized it accelerated the destruction of her remaining protections. Rage billowed through her as she felt... something... catch hold of her feet, trapping her. She ran her hands under the table, casting a levitation spell and hurling the table up and straight towards Mistress Danielle. It splintered to cracked ruin, scattering pieces of wood everywhere, but it bought her enough time to free her feet and dive out of the chair, hastily canceling her protections and regenerating them. Mistress Danielle was evidently very fond of ward-cracking spells.

  She scrambled to her feet, ducking a freeze spell that wouldn’t have trapped a younger student for very long and hastily glanced around for cover. There was none; bracing herself, she cast a freeze spell and followed it up with a melting spell aimed at the floor, hoping it would be enough to distract her target. If this was a test...

  Mistress Danielle snorted as she batted away both spells, aiming the freeze spell back at Emily. Emily ducked it, casting a whole series of fireballs towards the older woman and then a ward-cracking spell of her own. Mistress Danielle did... something... and the spell vanished without doing any harm. Emily had barely a second to realize that the spell had failed completely before Mistress Danielle tossed back two of her own. Her protections, already weakened, shriveled to nothing. A moment later, she was frozen and helpless.

  Break the spell, she thought, desperately. Mistress Danielle paced towards her, one hand drawing a silver knife from her belt. Near-panic made it hard to concentrate.

  Break the spell...

  She lurched forward as the spell snapped, too late. Mistress Danielle caught her effortlessly and held her knife to Emily’s throat. Emily froze, suddenly unsure of the older woman’s intentions. Did she want revenge for her dead master? She’d been so sure Mistress Danielle had disapproved of Master Grey’s final duel...

  Mistress Danielle peered down at her. “Yield?”

  “Yield,” Emily said. Her breath came in ragged gasps; the older woman didn’t even seem winded. “I yield.”

  “You didn’t do too badly,” Mistress Danielle said. She returned her knife to her belt, then helped Emily to stand upright. “Throwing the table at me was a good thought, but I caught you by surprise and weakened your wards. And you were holding back, too. What happened to the champion who killed Master Grey?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” Emily said. “I thought that something more dangerous might kill you.”

  “Perhaps,” Mistress Danielle said. She turned and strode towards the chair. “And what if I had been trying to kill you?”

  Emily had no answer. Instead, she looked around the apartment. The table had been smashed beyond repair, one of the chairs had been broken... she scowled as she realized that several of her fireballs had struck cupboards on the wall and knocked them down to the floor, scattering their contents all over the room. Mistress Danielle clearly hadn’t bothered to take the lesson to a spellchamber, where damage would have been minimized. But then, Emily had to admit, she wouldn’t have been quite so surprised.

  She rubbed her forehead, feeling sweat pricking her brow. “What did you do to my spell?”

  “I extruded a ward forward and caught it,” Mistress Danielle said. “There was very little magic for the spell to eat so it just died a natural death. It’s a relatively simple technique, but it requires a great deal of concentration until it’s second nature.”

  Emily sighed. “What about the mess?”

  “I’ll be paying the landlord well above the going rate,” Mistress Danielle said. She picked up the broken chair and muttered a quick spell, fixing the damage. “But he owes me a favor in any case.”

  Emily winced as Mistress Danielle shoved the chair towards her. The Nameless World hadn’t had the concept of mass production, at least until she’d introduced it. Plastering the wall, replacing the table and repairing the cupboards would require skilled craftsmen, unless the l
andlord could do his own repairs. The cost might be quite high. She sat down, wondering if she should offer to pay. She’d been the one who’d tossed most of the fireballs.

  “You have a great deal of raw power,” Mistress Danielle said. She took the other chair and crossed her shapely legs. “You lack two things: the knowledge to use your power effectively and the killer instinct. The former will come in time, the latter requires practice. You must learn to show no mercy to your enemies.”

  “I could have killed you,” Emily protested.

  “A risk I took,” Mistress Danielle said. “You fought Master Grey, I suspect, because you saw no way out. Here, you held back. That could prove fatal in combat.”

  Emily nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  “Our next meeting will be at the spellchambers,” Mistress Danielle said. “I will hire one for every Friday afternoon, at least until you cancel our arrangement. If you can come at other times, please do, but there will be no guarantee of being able to obtain a spellchamber. It would be a great deal easier if we could use one at Whitehall.”

  “I doubt that will be possible,” Emily said, tiredly.

  Mistress Danielle lifted her eyebrows, but nodded. “So I hear,” she said. “The other point I should bring to your attention is this: there is a good chance you will be injured, perhaps badly. This is not Whitehall. There are few protective spells and fewer Healers. I will do what I can, of course, but I have my limits. Do you understand the risks?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. She’d been hurt before in Martial Magic, sometimes badly. Keeping up with the spell-casting had been hard but doable; physically, she had always been at the bottom of the class. “I understand.”

  “Very well,” Mistress Danielle said. “Inform me if, for any reason, you are unable to meet me. I will not be pleased if you miss a class without warning me.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Emily said. “I can make you a chat parchment, if you like...”

  “It requires blood, I’ve heard,” Mistress Danielle said. “So no. But it was a good thought.”