Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Because...I saw the results of rogue magicians,” Emily said, after an internal debate. “I saw Shadye, but I also saw the results of petty evil, evil that left its victims marked for life. I can’t just sit there and do nothing.”

  “The Halfway House, I presume,” Master Gordian said. He looked down at the parchments for a brief moment. “You might also work as a researcher, solving the problem of breaking the unbreakable curses.”

  “I could,” Emily agreed. “But I’d want to be doing something.”

  “The glory may go to those on the front lines,” Master Gordian said. “But those at the rear, those who solve previously unsolvable problems, are often just as important. You might save more lives as a researcher than you would as a Mediator.”

  He had a point, Emily had to admit. But there were more reasons than just fighting evil, reasons she didn’t really want to discuss. The Allied Lands needed to work together to stave off the necromancers, perhaps eventually defeat them. If she could do something to keep them together, she had to do it.

  Master Gordian sat back and cleared his throat. “Very well,” he said. “I’ve looked at your grades. Based on your current progress, I believe you will qualify to proceed into Fifth Year without needing to retake your exams. If you are serious about being a Mediator, you will need to stick with several of your current courses and add a couple of new ones. You will also need additional training in Martial Magic before you take up an apprenticeship.”

  He paused. “You may, at the time, be able to trade training for serving as an assistant,” he added. “However, I believe Sergeant Miles would be reluctant to take you on.”

  Emily nodded, unsurprised. Lady Barb had told her, more than once, that it was rare for a woman to serve as a tutor in Martial Magic. The male students required a father figure, someone who could serve as the alpha male; the female students needed to learn, if they wanted to become combat sorcerers, or soldiers, that they would have to forsake both modesty and feminine pursuits. It hadn’t struck her as fair, at the time, but she could see the logic.

  “Otherwise, you would probably need to make arrangements with someone separate,” Master Gordian said. “You would be able to do that through the school administration, although you’d have to pay for it yourself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said.

  “The real stumbling block would be Cockatrice,” Master Gordian warned. “As a Mediator, you would be expected to be neutral at all times. You would not be permitted to own lands in a kingdom.”

  “I know, sir,” Emily said. “When would I have to make my choice?”

  “Before you started your apprenticeship,” Master Gordian told her. “However, you should properly make the choice before then, so you know where you’re going. And there are other implications...”

  He paused. “You wouldn’t just be renouncing your title, permanently,” he added. “You’d be renouncing any future claim your children might have, too. I don’t think you could pass the Barony to any child you happened to have now, before starting your apprenticeship.”

  “I don’t have a child,” Emily said. It wasn’t uncommon for girls in the Nameless World to marry young, but even if she’d had a child the year it had become physically possible the baby would be only five or six. “But couldn’t I pass the lands to someone I chose?”

  “It would depend on your liege lord,” Master Gordian said. “I imagine King Randor would want a say in the disposition of your territories. But...the White Council would not want a Mediator who could be influenced by family, friends or former masters. Whatever happened to your lands would have to be something that satisfied them. You couldn’t be allowed to put the lands aside, while you work for the Allied Lands, and then return to them once you retire.”

  Because Randor could hold them over my head, Emily thought. It made sense, in a way; no one would want a Mediator who had good reason not to be neutral. Would he try to manipulate me if I did complete an apprenticeship?

  She shuddered. She had a feeling that the answer to that was yes.

  “It’s a worthwhile job,” Master Gordian said. “However, you will need to work very hard to achieve the grades necessary to undertake an apprenticeship. On the other hand” - he shrugged, expressively - “you will have two more years to work on Martial Magic. You may have started from a very low position, thanks to your father’s influence, but you should be well above average by the time you reach Sixth Year.”

  “I hope so,” Emily said.

  Master Gordian met her eyes. “Did your father express any opinion?”

  “No,” Emily said. She imagined it would have stung, if Void had been her real father. “Why does everyone keep asking that question?”

  “Because the opinions of parents and guardians cannot be dismissed,” Master Gordian said, dryly. “What about your other tutors?”

  “They told me I’d need to work hard,” Emily said.

  “And they were right,” Master Gordian said. He sighed. “I’ll have a copy of the formal set of requirements sent to you. Now, are you serious about becoming a librarian?”

  Emily hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It is something I would like to do, but...”

  “But you’re wealthy enough to set up your own library, if you wished,” Master Gordian said. “I don’t think you’d need any formal qualifications, let alone guild membership.”

  I have set up my own library, Emily thought. Or at least she’d started her own legal deposit system. It wasn’t a far cry from that to setting up a national library. But that was part of working in Cockatrice.

  “You would be well-advised to have some kind of backup plan,” Master Gordian added, softly. “If you take on an apprenticeship and then flunk out, you will be left landless if not penniless. A librarian is one option, true. But there are others.”

  He paused. “Have you thought about working for the White Council?”

  Emily took a moment to think. “In what capacity?”

  “You killed two necromancers,” Master Gordian said. “I dare say we could find a post for you. Your father worked for the council for a while.”

  “He never talked to me about it,” Emily said. “What would you have me do?”

  “You’re a magician of great power,” Master Gordian said. “You have to realize that there are people out there who consider you a potential threat, and others who think of you as a pawn in their games. The White Council could keep you out of the political wars, if you wished, and help you face the necromancers. They’re not going to forget you.”

  Emily nodded, sourly. The necromancers weren’t a united force - if they had been, they would have overrun the Allied Lands by now - but a single necromancer and his army of monsters would be a very real threat. They’d been quiet for the last three years, after Shadye’s death, yet she knew better than to think that would last indefinitely. Sooner or later, they’d need more victims to feed their magic. And she knew, on that day, she’d be one of their first targets.

  “I didn’t want to be famous,” she muttered. It was true; she’d have been quite happy making a new life for herself at Whitehall, perhaps eventually becoming a tutor in her own right. “Why...?”

  “Stories grow in the telling, particularly when someone wants to believe them,” Master Gordian said, dryly. “You can try to assume command of your own destiny, like your father, or you can find a way to work with others to shape a life for yourself. The sheer level of power you demonstrated two months ago won’t let you do anything else.”

  Another trick, Emily thought. The weight of the battery, in her pocket, was suddenly much heavier. What would they think of her if they knew the truth? Hell, what would they do if they knew the truth? It wouldn’t be long before someone started duplicating batteries and using them for themselves. I can’t let that secret get out.

  Master Gordian cleared his throat, loudly. “I’ll send you the paperwork for becoming both a librarian and a teacher,” he said. “In the case of the latt
er, you should know that most schools demand a considerable amount of practical experience, after graduation, as well as paper qualifications. Professor Thande, for example, spent years risking his life in alchemical research before transferring to Whitehall to teach.”

  “I know, sir,” Emily said, still feeling down. “Is it wrong of me to want to become a generalist?”

  “You have the money, if you wish, to be anything you want,” Master Gordian said. “You don’t really need to find a job, Lady Emily. I requested to speak with you so soon precisely because you are not an urgent case. If you want to spend the rest of your life hiring tutors and just learning, you can. However...”

  He held up a hand before Emily could say a word. “However, your power, reputation and position all make you the object of fear, hatred and envy,” he added. “You can either choose to take control of your life, if you wish, or allow others to try to control you.”

  Emily swallowed. Aurelius of Mountaintop had offered her power and knowledge in exchange for assisting him with his plans to become MageMaster and reshape the Allied Lands. If things had been different, if she hadn’t learned just how Mountaintop treated those it considered to be inferior, she would have been tempted. No, she had been tempted. He’d understood her very well. Indeed, if Frieda hadn’t been there, Emily had to admit she might well have been seduced.

  And you went into Mountaintop with your eyes wide open, she thought, numbly. What might happen if you allowed yourself to be unwary?

  She smiled, tightly. “Is there a career path towards becoming a Lone Power?”

  Master Gordian barked a laugh. “You need power, control, and a complete lack of willingness to allow others to dictate your path,” he said. “I should point out that, for every magician who achieves that honored status, there are hundreds who fall by the wayside.”

  Emily nodded, slowly. She knew Void was powerful, but was he more powerful than the combined forces of House Ashworth or House Ashfall? And yet, did it matter? If Void could inflict a horrendous price for any attempt to take him down, the Houses might choose to leave him alone rather than pick a fight. She recalled Shadye tearing through Whitehall and shuddered, inwardly. Void might not have that level of raw power, but he had the control to make his magic far more dangerous.

  “You will have the opportunity to change your mind as you go along,” Master Gordian informed her. “You may discover that another job suits you better, or you may find yourself called to pure research rather than active service. However, once you start your apprenticeship, you will be committed. Even if you fail your apprenticeship, you will still have abandoned your titles.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said. “Do you think I can do it?”

  “I think that if you don’t have faith in yourself, it doesn’t matter who else has faith in you,” Master Gordian said, sarcastically. “I’ve reviewed your grades. You have the raw intelligence to cope with the theoretical part of the job, while you have accumulated a great deal of practical experience. On the other hand, you seem to lack in self-confidence, which is odd given your record. I would have expected you to be more confident after flattening a pair of necromancers.”

  Emily frowned. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “You’re not arrogant,” Master Gordian said. “But confidence and arrogance are not always the same thing.”

  He tapped Emily’s mug. “You didn’t drink?”

  “I was distracted,” Emily said. She’d never liked cold Kava, but she drank it anyway. “It’s strong.”

  “It’s meant to be,” Master Gordian said. “Students have been known to survive on naught but Kava.”

  He rose to his feet and held out a hand. “I will be here for another month,” he told her. “If you change your mind, or you want to discuss other options, you may make an appointment with me, once I have seen the rest of the students. I should add that any second appointment won’t come with an automatic excuse note.”

  Emily had to smile. “Thank you, sir,” she said. She rose and walked to the door. “I’ll make an appointment if I need anything.”

  Caleb was waiting outside, looking nervous. “Emily,” he said, as she entered the corridor and closed the door behind her. “Do you have time to work on our project?”

  Emily glanced at her watch. It was probably too late to sneak into Alchemy, not when the door would be locked and the lesson already in progress. She’d definitely have to borrow notes from Alassa and Imaiqah and try to catch up.

  “I think so,” she said. “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “Lady Barb said you’d probably need a distraction,” Caleb said. He smiled at her. “Am I distracting enough?”

  “The project is very distracting,” Emily said. She gave Caleb a sidelong glance. “But you’re distracting too.”

  Caleb beamed at her as they walked down to the workroom. “I would like to get a working model finished by the end of the month,” he said. “We need to show it off to the Grandmaster.”

  “I know,” Emily said. She sighed, inwardly. It felt like she’d been back at Whitehall for years, rather than three weeks. If Fourth Year was so hard, what would Fifth Year be like? “We should have one ready in time.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  NONE OF THE TUTORS SEEMED INCLINED to let up, Emily discovered, as she worked her way through the first term. Professor Thande, Professor Lombardi and Lady Barb kept piling practical exercises on her in class, accompanied by massive piles of homework, while Master Grey put Aloha and Emily through their paces time and time again. Each session, she left feeling tired, sore and increasingly determined to grit her teeth and work her way through it, rather than complaining to Lady Barb or anyone else. By the time the end of term rolled around, she was both looking forward to the chance to relax, if only for a few days, and fearing what the next term would bring.

  She wasn’t the only one to be stressed, she discovered, as the last few days of term slowly came to an end. There was a fight in the corridor between two students that sent several more to the infirmary, a screaming fit between Pandora and Alassa about using the library after hours, and someone hexed Alassa while she was trying to catch them out of bounds. She returned to the bedroom furious, practically spitting with rage, but had to admit that she didn’t know just who’d turned her into a statue with a spell so powerful she’d been unable to escape without assistance. Madame Beauregard had been very sarcastic about the whole affair.

  “When I get my hands on the bitch, I’ll strangle her,” she vowed, as Emily did her best to calm her friend down. “It could have cost me my job!”

  “Set a trap next time,” Emily advised. Some of Master Grey’s training exercises could only be beaten, she’d discovered the hard way, by teamwork. “Have someone guard your back while you patrol the corridors.”

  “I couldn’t bring you with me,” Alassa muttered, as she undressed and climbed into bed. Her body moved stiffly, unsurprisingly. She’d been trapped in stone for nearly an hour before she’d been released. “Or anyone else, unless I convinced a prefect to join me.”

  And that wouldn’t work, Emily thought, darkly. Alassa had to stand up for herself, not go running to an older student when she encountered something she couldn’t handle. It definitely wasn’t a job she wanted, no matter how good it looked on her record. She closed her eyes and forced herself to sleep, knowing that the morning would bring a difficult new task. Caleb and she would be presenting their project to the Grandmaster.

  “Good luck,” Imaiqah said, once they’d eaten breakfast. Emily felt so nervous that she’d had to force herself to eat more than a couple of pieces of dry toast. “You’ll be fine, really.”

  “I hope so,” Emily said. She’d arranged to meet Caleb in the workroom and carry their project to the office. “What about yours?”

  “That’s this afternoon,” Alassa put in. There weren’t any classes on Friday, allowing the students who would be making presentations to do their final preparations. “I’m not looking forward t
o it.”

  Emily nodded. Alassa and Imaiqah had been tight-lipped about what they were actually trying to do, but reading between the lines, Emily had the idea it had something to do with negotiations. She’d spent hours trying to figure it out - they’d been warned in Third Year that they weren’t allowed to ask what someone was doing for their joint project - before giving up and waiting for them to tell her. So far, they’d kept it firmly to themselves.

  “You’ll be fine,” Alassa said, patting her arm. “I don’t think they’d fail you unless you accidentally blew up the South Wing.”

  “We came close to blowing up the room,” Emily muttered. The second experiment with spell mosaics had worked perfectly, but the third had started well and then exploded with staggering force. Neither she nor Caleb had been able to figure out where the energy had come from. “If we blow up the Grandmaster...”

  “You’ll probably be expelled,” Alassa said, mischievously. “Once they put enough of the pair of you back together so you can be expelled, that is.”

  Emily groaned, waved goodbye and walked through the maze of corridors towards the workroom. Caleb was already there, inspecting the pieces they’d painstakingly put together over the last couple of months. Uniformity was a joke, unsurprisingly, but with the help of a pair of woodcarvers and a blacksmith they’d managed to reduce the unwanted variables to a minimal level.

  Or so Emily hoped. A single mistake at the wrong time might cause another explosion, right in front of the Grandmaster. They’d probably be failed on the spot.

  “It’s ready,” Caleb said. He sounded as nervous as Emily felt. “Are you all right?”

  “My mouth is dry,” Emily admitted. She swallowed hard - she hadn’t felt so nervous when she’d gone into the exams at the end of First Year - and picked up one of the boxes. “Coming?”

  They walked back through the corridors until they reached the testing chamber and tapped the door. The door opened, revealing the Grandmaster, Mistress Irene, a man Emily didn’t recognize and - her heart sank - Master Grey. He gave her a cruel smile as she placed the box on the table, and turned to look at the Grandmaster. Beside her, Caleb did the same.