Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Emily would have gritted her teeth, if she had been able to move. She knew how to counter the regular freeze spell, but this was a whole different animal. Normally, she could tell if someone had turned her into a statue, rather than simply freezing her in place; this spell, whichever one had struck her, was different. Her body felt numb rather than just petrified.

  Then concentrate on breaking free, she thought. The spell might fade on its own - or it might hold her until she freed herself or someone else released her. You’ve done it before...

  Or had she? She still had nightmares about the day she’d almost killed Alassa, way back in First Year, when she’d accidentally mingled two spells together. How many hexes had struck her unprotected body before Master Grey had blown the whistle? The looks some of the Third Years were shooting her were far from pleasant...was she merely frozen or had parts of her body been transfigured? Cold ice ran down the back of her neck as she remembered Alassa, in the weeks after her lucky escape. It had been a long time before Alassa had recovered fully from the experience.

  “Emily, you have thirty minutes to free yourself,” Master Grey said. He nodded to her curtly, then turned and motioned the younger students out of the chamber. “If you are not free by then, you will regret it.”

  I already do, Emily thought, as the door closed behind the laughing and joking Third Years. Master Grey had a talent - no, a gift - for triggering her insecurities, for making her feel worthless...Lady Barb was right, she realized numbly. The more she failed to learn how to stand up for herself, the worse it would be when she left Whitehall. But how do I get out of this?

  Panic welled up in her mind as she recalled Alassa, then she forced it down and tried to break the spell conventionally. It didn’t work. Either the freeze spell wasn’t the only thing affecting her or it was something very different from the standard spell. Mentally gnashing her teeth, she focused her mind and reached out, feeling for the hexes surrounding her. There seemed to be at least twelve hexes, meshed together into one whole. She could easily have been killed, she realized, if things had been a little different. Master Grey had brought her to the edge of death.

  And if I start fiddling with the spells, I may make things worse, she thought. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. She was tempted just to wait, even though she knew he was right; she would regret it. Not because of any punishment, but because she would have let him win their silent struggle. I need to get out of this for myself.

  Bracing herself, she plunged her mind into the maelstrom surrounding her. The entire edifice of spellwork was strange, unsurprisingly; it hadn’t been intended as a single unit at all. She probed it mentally, testing the links, then threw her magic at the weak points. The edifice came apart, spell components shattering around her...and then one hex came right at her, slamming into her body. She swore mentally as she shrank, her uniform falling around her as she became a mouse...whoever had cast that spell, she knew, would have been in real trouble if he’d done it elsewhere. Turning someone into an animal or an object was fine, according to Whitehall, but stripping them naked was not.

  She scuttled out from under her uniform, marvelling at how strange the room seemed when seen through the eyes of a mouse, and then cast the counterspell. As soon as she was human, she yanked on her clothes and headed to the door. It was locked. She tested it quickly, unsure if Master Grey had meant for her to escape the room as well as the hexes; it didn’t seem likely, if only because the lock was easy to undo. Opening the door, she stepped outside...and walked right into Master Grey. He’d been waiting for her.

  “That could have killed me,” she protested.

  “Indeed,” Master Grey said. He didn’t seem amused or annoyed at her protestations, merely unconcerned. “How many things do you think there are, out there, that can kill a Mediator?”

  “I have no idea,” Emily said.

  “Then you had better find out,” Master Grey said. “Follow me.”

  He didn’t say a word until they were both in his office, with the door locked. “You’ll find bread, cheese and water in the side room,” he added. “Make yourself something to eat, then come back here.”

  Emily nodded and did as she was told. She was hungry, more hungry than she cared to admit, but somehow she managed to prepare the food and pour herself a glass of water. It crossed her mind that she should ask if he wanted something, yet the stubborn part of her mind refused to let her check. If he wanted something, he could damn well ask for it.

  “Tell me,” Master Grey said, once she’d finished eating her sandwich. “What did you do wrong?”

  Stayed in your class, Emily thought. It was hard to maintain her resolve when she was pushed to the limits every time she entered his domain. If I didn’t need the class...

  “I could have reflected more spells at them,” she said, slowly. “But those wards drain more energy than normal wards.”

  “You could also have altered the environment to suit yourself,” Master Grey pointed out. “It wouldn’t have been hard to create a wall to add extra shielding, or even craft a warding circle...”

  Emily swore. She hadn’t thought of that, not really. Master Grey had told her she couldn’t hit back, not that she couldn’t mess with the spellchamber. Hell, there had been nothing stopping her from fiddling with the oxygen in the air, or creating a vapor-based sleeping potion, or...

  Maybe that would have broken the rules, she thought. But it would have given me a chance.

  “Other than those oversights, you could have done a great deal worse,” Master Grey said. “I will expect you to do better, next time. Of course, they will know your weaknesses too.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said. If she’d cared more for her reputation, she might have been alarmed at the prospect of being listed as the Fourth Year who’d been beaten by a pack of Third Years. As it was, she still knew that nine on one wasn’t exactly fair odds. “Are we going to do this again?”

  Master Grey gave her an evil look. “What do you think?”

  Emily shivered.

  “You will write an essay over the next week on other options for tackling the problem,” Master Grey said. “In particular, I want you to think outside the circle...”

  “You said I couldn’t leave the circle,” Emily protested.

  “Your next statement had better be very insightful,” Master Grey said, “or you will have another demerit for parroting back what I told you.”

  Emily groaned, inwardly. Working off a single demerit would take more time than she cared to think about, not when she had another pile of work to do. And kissing with Caleb...

  It struck her the moment she thought about him. “I could have moved the circle,” she said, shaking her head. Caleb seemed to like thinking outside the box. “It wouldn’t have been hard to move it into a corner and dig in there.”

  “No, it wouldn’t have been,” Master Grey agreed. He checked his watch. “But if that had been a real battle, Lady Emily, we would be burying your ashes now.”

  “If that had been a real battle,” Emily countered, “I could have hexed them back.”

  “True,” Master Grey agreed. He looked her in the eye. “Go to the kitchens and tell them I ordered you to eat,” he said. “You can work off your demerit tomorrow.”

  When I have even less time to spare, Emily thought. She had three two-hour classes, then she was meant to spend another hour with Caleb. That’s not merciful at all.

  Biting back the response she wanted to make, she rose.

  “And Emily,” Master Grey added.

  Emily looked at him. “Yes, sir?”

  “Well done,” Master Grey said. He gave her a humorless smile. “I’m afraid the next test will be harder.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I’M AFRAID FRIEDA IS NOT IN her room,” Madame Razz said. “And if you bother me with this again, you will regret it.”

  Emily groaned. She’d looked for Frieda everywhere - at lunch, at dinner; she’d done everything short of breaking into a
class she knew the younger girl would be taking - and found nothing. She had known Frieda was hurt, but a whole week of hiding somewhere when she wasn’t in class? Emily couldn’t help wondering if she’d hurt Frieda far worse than she’d feared.

  Maybe she’s ashamed of me as well as hurt, she thought, grimly. It was astonishing just how badly that thought stung. It didn’t take long for everyone to hear I was overpowered by a bunch of Third Year kids.

  She sighed as she turned her back and started the walk down to the Armory. If Master Grey had told the Third Years to keep their mouths shut - and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to extend him that much credit - it hadn’t lasted. The entire school knew and, after what she’d done in Cockatrice, they didn’t seem to know what to make of it. Some students were laughing at her, which she’d ignored; others thought she’d deliberately allowed the Third Years to win, despite the risks. She’d done her best to ignore the comments, but some of them still hurt. It would have been so much easier if she’d been a nobody, the kind of student who blended into the background and no one ever really saw. The kind of student, she reflected, that she’d been on Earth.

  But you’re not, she told herself, as she stepped into the Armory. Everyone knows your name...

  She pushed the thought to the back of her mind as she saw Master Grey doing one-handed push-ups on a mat. Whatever else could be said about him, she had to admit, he was quite capable of doing more than just keeping up with them. He turned his head and saw her, and stood up in one smooth motion. Behind her, she heard a clatter as someone else entered the Armory.

  “Emily, Aloha,” Master Grey said. He pointed to the mat, and smiled at them. “Fifty press-ups, if you please.”

  Aloha hurried forward and dropped down to the mat. Emily followed, more reluctantly. It had hurt, the first time she’d gone through her exercises; even now, she still ached after working her way through a demerit. Master Grey watched them both, his cold eyes missing nothing. Emily forced herself to think about something - anything - else as she pushed herself to her limits. She’d survived Shadye and Mother Holly. Who knew? Maybe Master Grey’s training would help her to survive a worse threat.

  “Emily,” Master Grey snapped, as she went through the seventeenth press-up. “You have just found an object that may be cursed. What do you do?”

  Emily would have smiled, remembering one of the few happy days of her childhood, if she hadn’t been so tired. “You cast at least five separate detection spells,” she said. “If one of them shows a curse, you run through the remaining spells anyway; you maybe add a couple more, just to be sure. If the curses can be removed safely, you do so; if not, you destroy the object.”

  “Seems a bit of a waste of time,” Master Grey observed archly. “Why so many detection spells?”

  I’m not going to be tripped up so easily, Emily thought. Sergeant Miles taught us how to handle curse detection and removal back in Second Year.

  “Some curses are designed to be invisible to one or two detection spells,” Emily said. It had caught her out, several times, in Blackhall. “You use multiple detection spells to ensure you miss nothing.”

  Master Grey snorted, but didn’t try to correct her. Emily smiled inwardly, knowing she’d gotten the answer right. He wouldn’t have hesitated to point out, in great detail, just where she’d gone wrong if she had made a mistake. Instead, he turned to Aloha and asked her a more complex question relating to the detection of poisons and battlefield medicine. Emily listened, thinking hard. She knew the next question might be harder.

  “You have a badly-wounded comrade and no magic,” Master Grey said, turning back to her. “What do you do?”

  Emily hesitated. “If you have the equipment to treat the wound, you do so,” she said, vaguely. “If not...”

  Pray for his soul, her thought finished. Medical science on the Nameless World, at least when magic wasn’t involved, was terrifyingly bad. She’d seen too many long-term problems caused by surgeons who acted more like butchers to be sanguine about placing her life in their hands. Magic could cure most anything that wasn’t immediately fatal, but without magic...she wouldn’t have cared to live in the Nameless World. There would be nothing you could do for him.

  Master Grey went on. “And if you have a choice between saving the life of one badly-wounded man and tending to two mildly-wounded men, what do you do?”

  “You treat the two men,” Emily said. It wasn’t a thought she liked, but Lady Barb had taught the class a great deal about battlefield medicine. Someone so badly wounded would be a drain on very limited resources. Emily hated the thought, yet - no matter what she did - she couldn’t deny the logic. “You can save two men instead of one.”

  “If the first man is not beyond all hope anyway,” Master Grey agreed. “Aloha...”

  Emily watched him through narrowed eyes. It was impossible to be sure - and she knew she didn’t dare speak to anyone about it - but she was starting to wonder if Master Grey was bipolar. On one hand, he was a good if unpleasant tutor; on the other hand, he seemed determined to make her life as miserable as possible, dropping demerits and detentions at the slightest provocation. Did he really dislike her, she wondered, or was he trying to show her that life outside the school wasn’t fair? Or was he treating her more as an apprentice, someone who could spend all her time with him, rather than a student? She hadn’t exactly volunteered to study with him.

  She shook her head as the session finally came to an end, Master Grey dismissing them both with some cutting comments about their homework. Maybe he was tired too, Emily considered, as they made their escape. He didn’t seem inclined to spend so much time telling them - or at least her - off as usual. She said goodnight to Aloha, slipped back up the stairs and through the door into the dormitories.

  “Tonight’s the night,” Alassa said, as she entered the room. “Are you ready?”

  Emily yawned. She wanted - needed - rest; a hot bath wouldn’t have been amiss either. But Alassa had been planning their feast for over a week, silently gathering the food and drink they’d need to have a good time. She really didn’t want to disappoint her friend, even though she wanted to sleep. At least tomorrow was a Saturday. She could sleep in if necessary.

  “Just let me have a shower first,” she said. They’d need to wait an hour or two after Lights Out, just to be sure the tutors were asleep too. “Master Grey is still being a pain.”

  “Tell the Grandmaster you don’t want to take his class any longer,” Imaiqah advised. “He’d listen to you.”

  “Then I’d fail,” Emily pointed out. She had wondered why Lady Barb had told her there was a way out, if she wanted to quit...but that would be giving up. The last thing she wanted was to let Master Grey win. “I don’t want to give the asshole the satisfaction of watching me go.”

  She removed her clothes, stepped into the shower and inspected herself in the mirror. This time, at least, there were no new bruises, although there were some marks around her shoulders and elbows. The skin must have been stretched further, she reasoned, as she turned on the water and washed away the dirt and grime from her body. The more she exercised, the easier it became...or it would have, if Master Grey wasn’t so good at adding more exercises, just to keep pushing her limits. He was very good at his job.

  “Jade’s watching his parchment,” Alassa said, as Emily stepped back out of the shower. “I was telling him about your problems.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said, rather sourly. She picked up her parchment and discovered, not entirely to her surprise, that whatever else they’d said to one another had been scrolled off the page. “I’ll ask him about his former master.”

  It felt odd, writing her messages and seeing Jade’s words appear below them, but she was growing used to it. Jade had apparently had a hard time too, although he had volunteered for the apprenticeship. He wondered, gently, if Master Grey hadn’t realized that Emily was effectively a conscript. It made a certain kind of sense, Emily reasoned, as Jade outlined some of the m
ore soul-crushing exercises he’d been made to do. If the Mediators needed the best of the best, driving away anyone who couldn’t live up to their standards might not be a bad idea. But she hadn’t volunteered for the training from hell...

  “Time to go,” Alassa said, softly. Emily glanced at her watch and realized it was nearly midnight. “Say your goodbyes and then follow me.”

  Emily yawned again, but nodded. Placing the parchment back in the drawer, she wrapped a cloak around her shoulder - Whitehall could be very cold at night - and then followed Alassa and Imaiqah out the door. The Gorgon, Song, and Pandora were waiting outside, their faces glowing with nervous anticipation. Emily felt a flicker of anticipation too; she’d been loath to admit it, but she’d always enjoyed sneaking through Whitehall at the dead of night.

  “Cast a night-vision spell,” Alassa ordered. “We don’t dare show a light at night.”

  The door opened, allowing them to slip into the main corridor towards the stairs leading up to the battlements. Emily shivered - the school felt so different at night, as if it was a whole new world - and glanced around, seeing the shadows crawling around them like living things. The wards shimmered at the back of her mind: strong, powerful and somehow not quite right. And yet, the sensation faded the moment she tried to work out why the wards felt strange. Maybe she was just tired and imagining it.

  Should have brought Caleb, she thought. The idea of sneaking off to a classroom and kissing him was surprisingly attractive. There was no rule against bringing a boy to the bedroom, provided her roommates agreed, but she was too embarrassed to ask them. Maybe if Alassa had brought Jade, I could have worked up the nerve.

  The thought faded as they slowly climbed up the stairs to the very highest level. Alassa went to work on the door at the top, poking and prodding at it with her magic until it finally unlocked, allowing them to step onto the battlements. It didn’t seem very secure, Emily thought, but anyone who tried to climb up the walls would be thrown off, while the wards would prevent anyone from flying into the school. Shadye’s army of monsters had made it up, yes, yet he’d had inside help. The nexus point ensured that Whitehall was impossible to take without it.