A Spell for Death: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts

by B. C. Palmer

  To the headmaster’s credit, he always seemed to be able to tell when I was approaching that point and let me take a break. I didn’t hear a word of praise from him—not that I should have needed it, I know—until it was almost winter break, with midterms underway. Without Lucas and Isaac and, in his own way, Hunter, I would have walked away from summoning and possibly checked myself into a psych ward somewhere. Hello, yes, lines and circles are driving me insane, please put me in a padded cell somewhere. I was trembling with frustration at myself after having drawn one of the fine lines of the summoning template wrong—again—and had to keep my hands still before I tore the paper up.

  Sinclaire swiped the paper off the desk in his office and held it up. To my shock, he actually smiled. “You’ve become very adept at this, Miss Cresswin. Only eight critical errors. That’s a long way from where you started, and in truly remarkable time. Well done.”

  I came close to jamming my fingers in my ears to look for wax. Surely, I had misheard that. “I… really? It’s only sixty of the lines and I didn’t even realize there were two other mistakes. Which ones?”

  “Twelve, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine—they’re dependent on one another, it’s almost impossible to get the one wrong without miscalculating the other—forty, forty-six, fifty-four, and I suspect you know that sixty is incorrect.” He laid the paper back down and patiently showed me where I’d gone wrong in my math, and how that affected the lines.

  When I corrected them, he gave a shallow, pleased nod. “You see?”

  I did, and was embarrassed to have entirely overlooked two of the hypothetical variables he’d given me for the chart. “Jupiter’s third moon,” I said. “And the azimuth of Mars. I thought I’d accounted for them; I must have forgotten. I’m sorry, Headmaster, next time I’ll pay more attention.”

  He sank into his chair and continued to shock me by producing a bottle of something dark. “Brandy,” he explained. “Just the once, I think, before winter break. Here, I insist.”

  He pushed one of two glasses he’d poured toward me, smiling.

  I didn’t trust it. For the past month and a half, our three-hour private lessons, four days of each week after class, had been full of torn-up charts, stern reprimands, insistence that I wasn’t “thinking it through” or that I had no real desire to learn this “highest of magical arts”. I couldn’t be entirely sure this wasn’t a test. “I… don’t think I should.”

  “Nonsense,” Sinclaire said. “I’m well aware the students take their fair share of drink. Even the most focused of you do so on the weekends, in the cottage. There will be no classes until after the break, and that includes our private lessons. Consider this the beginning of your holiday festivities, please. You really have earned it, Amelia.”

  He never called me by my first name. I took the glass cautiously and gave it a sip. Brandy, I decided, was not a drink I particularly cared for. Still, it wasn’t impossible to drink and I smiled as though I enjoyed it. “Thank you, Headmaster.”

  “Tell me, Amelia,” he said conversationally but with that bit of heaviness that made me worry what he was going to ask before he asked it, “if magic could accomplish absolutely anything for you, without restriction, what would you do with it for yourself?”

  I blew out a long breath and stalled with another sip. “Uh… well, I guess for a start I’d do something big. Reverse climate change, maybe? End war in the Middle East. Make food plants that would grow anywhere and—”

  “I mean for yourself,” he interrupted gently, one hand raised. He gestured at me. “Something entirely selfish, just for you. Think on it a moment. It’s a question every magician ought to ask themselves from time to time. Revealing, many believe.”

  I opened my mouth to answer easily but he quirked one of his graying eyebrows and I paused and tried to give it more thought. It didn’t take very long, of course. “I’d bring back the people I’ve lost,” I said. “My godmother, Laura. My parents, of course. I have a lot of questions and would love to get answers from them directly. I’d want to know if Laura knew about Rosewilde, and my parents, and if so why she didn’t tell me.”

  He hummed thoughtfully, nodding slowly as he swirled his brandy in the cup. I don’t know why, but I swirled mine as well. Maybe it made the stuff taste better.

  “You must have so very many questions about them,” he said. “There’s rarely any true closure when we lose someone at a young age or very suddenly. Necromancy does allow us to get some of those answers but rarely the most important ones. It certainly can’t bring anyone back. Or at least, true resurrection is a sort of holy grail for a necromancer—the elusive pinnacle of the art. What would you ask them precisely?”

  That was a loaded question with no simple answer, and the one answer I did have immediately I wasn’t about to give to Sinclaire. “I… guess I’d ask if they—”

  I was spared having to make up an answer when someone knocked at the door, then opened it partially. It was a student, a girl I’d seen around, and maybe a senior? But I didn’t know her personally. “Headmaster?”

  “Yes, Miranda?” Sinclaire answered, setting his glass down.

  Miranda spotted me and gave an apologetic grimace. “Sorry to interrupt, but… there’s been an incident. Professor Naranyan sent me to get you.”

  Naranyan taught Hunter’s elemental magic classes. It was Friday. Hunter had a class with her but I couldn’t remember when. “What happened?”

  Miranda only pressed her lips together and waited for Sinclaire to respond.

  “Fatalities?” he asked.

  She gave a single nod.

  A knot of ice formed in my gut, and I was on my feet before I realized I hadn’t asked if this lesson was dismissed. Sinclaire had stood as well, though, and gave me a look of idle curiosity as he buttoned his suit jacket. “You should come along,” he said as he rounded the desk. “In an ideal world, we would never lose a student. When we do, however, it’s important that the stakes are made clear.”

  I didn’t have a response to that, and Sinclaire didn’t seem to expect one. He went to the door and waited for me to go through it before he closed it behind him and muttered a security spell on it. And then another. And a third. Maybe in a school full of budding magicians, a headmaster had to be extra careful. I’d seen the room, but I supposed I hadn’t combed through it to see what all was there. The only summoning texts in the school, for a start. No telling what else was in there.

  We marched quickly through the halls to an area of the Academy I hadn’t been to before. The magic in this part of the school was thick enough to feel it in the floorboards and walls, the doors banded with metal that had sigils and formulae engraved on them. I recognized elements from at least one, though—containment wards. Hunter had mentioned there were specially warded work rooms where volatile magic could be practiced. I imagined someone had lost control of a spell.

  I knew we were getting close when I saw the black marks around the floor and doorway of one of the rooms. It was accompanied by a sickly sweet scent that I had never smelled before. It put me immediately on edge, and on some level I knew what it was before we got close enough to see the wreckage of the door and the room beyond it.

  Four bodies were inside. As much ash as there was still smoking around the room, it was possible there had been more. The students who had been burned only down to their bones were at the epicenter. Professor Naranyan had her arm already wrapped, and healer magicians tended her and one other student who I couldn’t even look at for more than a second. Burns had covered much of his upper body, and he was thankfully unconscious.

  Sinclaire picked his way across the room toward Professor Naranyan, Miranda and I in his wake. Miranda didn’t make any small talk, but she did cast a wary, regretful sort of look my direction as I followed them.

  “Rani,” Sinclaire said sadly as he neared the professor, “I’m glad to see you’re in one piece. What happened?”

  Professor Naranyan was staring at the four bodie
s, her face pinched and drawn. I couldn’t tell if it was a look of bitterness or sadness. Both, I supposed. “It was the elemental manifestation part of the exam,” she said. “They attempted to put their own spin on it. I had warned them, Augustus. Not sternly enough, I think. By the time I realized what they meant to attempt, all I could do was try to protect the other students.”

  I glanced at the burned student. His face was unfamiliar now, but I wondered if I knew him. I wanted to ask if Hunter had been in this class, or to try and Whisper him, but it seemed wrong to do either in the moment. The student with the burns wasn’t big enough. Were any of the bodies? It made me nauseous to look at them but I tried. If any of them had been Hunter, it was impossible to say now. They were just blackened bones.

  My arms had gone to my stomach without my realizing it. I tried to lower them, to look more dignified somehow, but they wouldn’t go. Miranda was in the same position, at least, and looked just as affected as me.

  “The elemental was lightning, fire, and air,” Naranyan said, shaking her head. “They proposed this two weeks ago. I told them not to do this. I told them. Foolish boys. When the interactions became unstable, one of the other students attempted to dispel the construct. I don’t know what he did wrong. The whole thing burst free. I barely managed to protect myself, let alone Miss Farad. If she hadn’t cast her own protections, I think we both would have burned as well.”

  Miss Farad? I looked at the burned student again and realized her chest was lopsided under the burns. Now, I almost did throw up.

  “File a report tomorrow,” Sinclaire said gently. “I’m so sorry, Rani. You did what you could.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “Professor… I’m sorry,” I rasped, “I know one of your students. Was… was Hunter Webb in this class?”

  My throat caught when she turned her dark eyes on me, waiting to hear that he was among the ashes. She released me with a word, though, and I nearly broke into tears. “No.”

  Sinclaire appraised me with enigmatic eyes before he gave Professor Naranyan his condolences again and led me out of the room.

  “How could this have happened?” I asked when we were in the hallway again. I couldn’t escape the smell, and it was starting to burn in my nostrils. I took shallower breaths.

  “How do you think it happened?” he asked. “What do you think went wrong in that room?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t… I haven’t even taken an elemental—”

  “Not the magic,” he said. “Not the technique—what do you think went wrong ideologically?”

  At first, I didn’t understand what he meant. It took me a moment to connect the two things, and when I did, I realized Sinclaire didn’t see this as some tragic accident. “They took an unnecessary risk,” I said quietly. “Is that it?”

  “That’s the consequence,” he said. “The problem is that they did not respect the forces they attempted to control. Much of your first year will be simple magic—straightforward, utilitarian spells that form much of the foundation of a magician’s training. It may lead you to believe that magic is not dangerous, that with the right knowledge and technique it can be mastered.” He pointed into the room behind me. “Turn around.”

  I did, slowly.

  “Look at the burned corpses of those students,” he ordered. I did that, too, and when he spoke again it was closer to my ear. “It is easy to believe that magic is wonderous, and even friendly. Using it feels good. That, Amelia, is the reality. Magic is volatile, adversarial, and obeys the magician only insofar as the magician respects the forces he or she wields. You do not have the luxury of enjoying a first year of cantrips and child’s magic. The forces you must learn to master as a summoner are the most dangerous, the most volatile, the most deadly of any magic yet discovered. Do you understand now why I have been so hard on you?”

  There were no words. The images of those skeletons would be burned into my brain forever. I could only nod.

  “You may go,” he said. “Good luck on your midterms, Miss Cresswin. I’ll see you the day after winter break, same time, my office. Yes?”

  “Yes, Headmaster,” I rasped, and had to choke down a sob.

  “Have a pleasant break, Miss Cresswin,” he bid me, his easy smile back on his face though it didn’t reach his eyes.

  I muttered something similar back and then made my way stiffly down the hall, containing myself all the way until finally I reached my room. Hunter was there, of course—he always was.

  “Amelia?” he asked when I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it, finally unable to hold back the tears or the sobs that had tried to take me when I first stepped into that room.

  Hunter stood, confused. “What’s—”

  I threw myself to him, hugging his waist tightly, pressing my face against his chest as I let it out. In his confusion, Hunter’s arms only hovered as he stiffened. Only when the outburst grew violent enough to rack my body with jerky, ugly shaking did his arms finally settle around my shoulders, and then tighten into a hug I desperately needed.

  He held me until it was all out, and never once asked me what was wrong. Only shushed me quietly, his cheek pressed to the top of my head. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “It’s all right, Amelia. You’ll be okay. I’m here.”

  Amelia

  Midterms were barely interrupted by the deaths of what turned out to be twelve students. Professor Naranyan recovered with significant magical assistance in the Academy clinic and was back to teaching in just two days. Kira Farad took a leave of absence, shipped off to some special hospital for magicians. There was a memorial, but it only lasted an hour and then it was back to business as normal, even for the students who had lost friends.

  “It happens at least once a year,” Lucas explained somberly after the memorial. “Usually in a junior or senior class. Students who know enough to kill themselves but not enough to know better than to try that sort of thing.”

  He was far from cavalier about it but still… I didn’t quite understand how the whole school didn’t just shut down for a while. What was worse? There was no in-depth investigation. No police came, no detectives to question students and find out if it was really an accident or not. I understood the usual law enforcement agencies couldn’t have gotten involved. But even the security office seemed to write it off.

  What was worst of all, though? Everything returned to normal so quickly that I found myself swept up in it, and by the time winter break rolled around I had narrowly passed my midterms and almost forgotten that it happened unless I thought about it.

  Hunter gave me a sad smile as I lay on the bed worrying about it. “Don’t beat yourself up,” he said. “These things happen. Magic is dangerous.”

  I rolled to my side to stare at him. “That’s just it, though,” I countered, “it shouldn’t be as simple as that. Twelve people died. Our peers, people our age. And we just get together for an hour to say how unfortunate it is and then move on. What about their parents? Or siblings?”

  “They’ll have been informed,” he said.

  “Informed,” I breathed. “Seriously? ‘Informed’? Won’t they, I don’t know, sue the school? Or something?”

  “In what court?” he asked.

  “Isn’t there a magician court or something?” I asked. “I mean… what happens when a magician commits a crime? Do we not murder, or steal, or anything that would require some kind of justice?”

  “Sure,” he said easily. “And we mete out magician justice when that happens. It’s a pretty effective deterrent. Sort of an eye-for-an-eye style of justice. There’s a magician court, but they mostly handle high crimes—crazy magicians who try to end the world, that sort of thing. We get one now and again. But generally speaking, if one magician murders another one, or steals, or violates someone, well… we tend to handle it ourselves, and it’s usually not pretty.”

  It was horrifying to think about. People with the kind of power magicians had just running around doing whatever they w
anted, virtually no real accountability. I was one of them now, of course, and I would never do things like that. Vigilante justice didn’t seem terribly effective—what happened when there was a magician too powerful or clever? But I could see that Hunter didn’t sympathize, so I dropped the matter. Maybe when you grew up in the magician life, it all looked different.

  “Are you going home for winter break?” I asked. The school was already nearly empty. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere. I hadn’t seen Serena around yet and wondered how she handled breaks, given that she also didn’t come from a magical family.

  Hunter nodded. “Back to Appalachia. My parents do a big Yule thing. We’re old-world pagans where I’m from. Everyone in town is a magician, or a witch, or something else.”

  I perked up at that. “Something else?”

  He smiled. “Sure. You don’t think magicians are all there is, do you? You haven’t wondered?”

  “That if magic is real, other things must be, too?” I asked.

  “Mm-hm.”

  I had to admit, I really hadn’t. Maybe I’d just been too busy to consider the implications. “So, what else is there? Is Santa real?”

  Hunter shuddered, grimacing. “You… really don’t want to know. What about you?”

  I had a stab of hurt that wasn’t his fault, so I curbed my knee-jerk reaction. “Ah, no,” I said. “I don’t really… it’s just an empty house, so. May as well stay here and get some studying done, work on getting caught up.”

  “Fuck,” he whispered. “Amelia, I’m sorry. I should have thought before I spoke. I didn’t mean—”

  I sat up. “It’s okay. Really. I forget sometimes, too. This place has been a big distraction from the rest of my life. I do have a house, back in Cambridge. Inherited from Laura. My friends would probably be visiting but… honestly I’m not even sure I could hold a conversation after all this. I guess they think I’m at MIT, ignoring them…”