“There’s always been three general attitudes running though the magical community,” Brier said. She waved a hand at the books. “I can show you documents that suggest all three attitudes existed well before the Faerie Wars and the End of Empire. They just became a little sharper after the Fall and...well, a lot sharper in the last two months. The Necromantic Wars are over. What now?”
Emily frowned. “Do you think people regret ending the necromantic threat?”
“No,” Brier said. “Don’t let anyone suggest otherwise. We all knew it was just a matter of time before the necromancers broke through the mountains and came for us, even though our lords and masters preferred to pretend they didn’t exist. You ended that threat and everyone is deeply grateful. But that doesn’t keep us from having to handle the aftermath.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Emily muttered.
“These are the problems of victory,” Brier pointed out. “The other side is dead.”
“Effectively dead,” Emily corrected. “There are still necromancers out there.”
Brier shrugged. “I told you there are three general attitudes concerning mundanes running through our community. The first is that we and they are both part of the same world. We depend on each other, in ways both subtle and blatantly overt. There’s no hope of divesting ourselves completely, so there’s no point in even trying. And we probably couldn’t make it stick even if we want to try.
“The second is that we and they are dangerous to each other, just by existing. The Isolationists want to separate the magicians from the mundanes as much as possible, to the point of driving out the mundanes from Pendle and separating magical communities from the surrounding kingdoms, so we can live a completely separate existence. They see it as being for everyone’s good. They might even be right. Clashes between the two societies are dangerous for both.”
“Except there isn’t a separate existence,” Emily said. “How can there be?”
“That’s the problem,” Brier said. “They have all these grand concepts, but how are they going to implement them? I don’t think any of them have so much as considered the practicalities of the situation. Where does our food come from? Who collects the basic potion ingredients? Who forges the tools we use, the...”
She shrugged. “You get the idea,” she said. “There’d be so many issues with divesting magicians from mundanes that it would take years, even if everyone agreed.”
“Which they won’t,” Emily said. “There’s a lot of magicians who have mundane relations.”
“Quite.” Brier met her eyes. “The third attitude is that we should rule. A sizable number of royal and aristocratic families already have magic. The remainder don’t matter. We could simply take over, brushing aside whatever opposition manifests itself, and then reorder society to suit ourselves. Magicians would be ranked by power, with the strongest and most capable at the top. Again, there hasn’t been much thinking about how this is actually to be done. Even ranking magicians by power is an exercise fraught with peril.”
“Because power levels aren’t always stable,” Emily said.
“Precisely,” Brier said. “And magicians can always team up to oppose someone with more power than sense. It’s happened before and it will no doubt happen again.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Damia is an Isolationist. She wants as little contact between magicians and mundanes as possible. I think - I don’t know - that she had a bad experience when she was a child, back when the terrible lizards ruled the world. If she becomes headmistress, she’ll probably move to close down Pendle and send the mundanes packing.”
Emily shook her head. “Where will they go?”
“Who knows?” Brier shrugged. “Jens is a Supremacist. Allworth is an Integrationist. They both have staff and students who follow them, with varying degrees of conviction. It’s very easy to become convinced you’re special, if you’re born with power; it’s also very easy to decide you have the right to meddle, even if the people you’re trying to help don’t want you to meddle. The Integrationists have made just as many mistakes as the Supremacists. They just have different reasons.”
“The path to hell is paved with good intentions,” Emily said.
“Oh, yes,” Brier said. “Do you know there’s no chirurgeons in Pendle? The healers from the school take care of anything, from minor diseases to broken bones. Anything that isn’t instantly lethal can be cured, right? Except... they started to try this in a bigger city and discovered, too late, that they couldn’t keep it up. They just didn’t have enough healers to do it. And by the time they found this out, they’d put the chirurgeons out of business.”
She grinned, but there was something sharp in the expression. “And elsewhere... someone had the bright idea of using portals to ship food to a region that was experiencing a famine. What happened?”
Emily could guess. “The local farmers were driven out of business, too?”
“Correct,” Brier said. “I could give you hundreds of examples. It doesn’t help that a lot of the problems are caused by poor or bad kings and lords, which the Supremacists use to justify their position. Of course mundanes can’t govern themselves! Of course they can’t avoid being pushed around by their lords! Of course the Supremacists won’t make the same mistake. Of course...”
“They will,” Emily predicted.
“Of course.” Brier laughed. “I’m sure some of the Supremacists really believe the world will be a better place, if they ruled it. But there are plenty of examples of the Supremacists making life worse for people.”
“Including themselves,” Emily said. “Slavery degrades the slaves, but it also degrades the slaveowners.”
“Exactly,” Brier said. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t see that, even when it’s staring them in the face.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Emily said. “What does Pendle have to do with all this?”
Brier didn’t look surprised by the question. “Well, the thing you have to understand is that Pendle lived hundreds of years ago. There aren’t many written records from that era. The handful that did survive are contradictory, to the point a great many historians believe that some or all of them are fakes. The only thing we really know about Pendle is that she founded the school and, somehow, isolated it from the neighboring kingdom.
“And that means, I’m afraid, that Pendle is all things to all women. To the Isolationists, she’s a symbol of magical isolation from the mundane world. To the Integrationists, she’s a person who interacted with mundanes... she considered them nothing more or less than people. To the Supremacists, she’s a witch who enforced her will on the mundanes and forced them to acknowledge her power. You could make a case for any or all of these interpretations, depending on which documents you choose to believe.”
“And which ones you view as fakes,” Emily said.
“Yes,” Brier said. “Anyway... legend, and here we are firmly in the hands of myth, insists that Pendle is sleeping somewhere under the school and that she’ll awaken, if the correct rites are performed. The Old Woman is supposed to know the Rite of Pendle, a spell that is meant to summon Pendle; she’s supposed to be able to use the rite if the school is threatened and there’s no other choice. I actually asked her about it, when I took up my post, and she assured me it didn’t exist. I believe her.”
Emily raised her eyebrows. “You think there’s no truth in the legend?”
“We’ve been through bad spots before,” Brier pointed out. “The school’s been attacked by everything from dark wizards to monsters from the greenwood. If Pendle wasn’t recalled then, and there are no suggestions she was, why would she be recalled now? The school isn’t in serious danger.”
“It might be,” Emily mused. “If the wrong ideology takes control...”
She stared down at her empty mug. “And they all think Pendle will support them?”
“Pendle lived in a very different time,” Brier said. “If she is sleeping under the school, what wi
ll she know about the modern world? She was a strong magician - she must have been - and yet the merest firstie has access to spells beyond her imagination. The Empire has been and gone since she went to sleep, if indeed she didn’t die like a normal person. There’s no reason to think she’d be capable of picking a side, at least without taking the time to study all the angles. And how much do we take for granted that she wouldn’t even know exists?”
Emily nodded, slowly. George Washington had lived in an age of muskets, sailing ships and achingly slow communications. The world had moved slowly when he’d been the first President of the United States. He might have been a military and political genius, but he and the other Founding Fathers would have been utterly out of their depth in the modern world. Pendle, assuming she was still alive, would have the same problem. Perhaps it would be worse. She wouldn’t realize just how much had changed until it bit her. Hard.
“They used to think women couldn’t be magicians,” she said. Lord Whitehall had been extremely progressive for his time, yet - by modern standards - he’d been so conservative he wouldn’t even embrace the wheel! “How many outdated attitudes would Pendle hold?”
“I have no idea,” Brier said. “Like I said, there’s a lot we simply don’t know. There are hundreds of stories, as you’ve probably heard, all of which contradict the others. Even the more reliable stories include a lot of guesswork. If Pendle really was a princess, we can say things about her early life by generalizing from others, but... again, we don’t really know anything. The most reliable stories gloss over her childhood, as if she came into existence at the ripe old age of...”
She laughed. “Again, we don’t know.”
Emily had to smile, then sobered as she remembered something she’d forgotten. “Dionne was buying an old book called The Tales of Pendle. Is that a dangerous book?”
“No.” Brier sounded a little perplexed. “Copies are rare, I’ll grant you, but it’s really just a collection of stories. The author didn’t bother to question anything, she just wrote them all down. I believe the printing presses have been turning out more copies... worthless copies, really. Half the spells described in the book simply don’t exist.”
“So it’s just like the Lay of Lord Alfred,” Emily said. “A collection of myths and legends rather than real history.”
“It’s worse,” Brier said. “Because the book is nothing more than a collection of contradictory stories. Pendle is both a princess and a commoner, an ally and an enemy to a king, a perfectly normal magician and a creature from the greenwood... a woman so powerful she can destroy a kingdom with a snap of her fingers and yet one so weak she is dependent on complex spells to isolate her school from the surrounding world. It’s simply impossible to draw anything useful from it.”
She shrugged. “If Dionne wants to waste her time on it, let her. It can’t do any harm.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Emily said. She made a mental note to read the book herself, just in case. “I …”
The dinner bell rang. “I’d better go.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” Brier said. She indicated a door. “I can have food brought up for us, if you like.”
Emily hesitated, feeling oddly unsure. “I...”
Brier smiled. “Not interested?”
“No.” Emily felt herself flush. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for wanting, or not wanting,” Brier told her, flatly. “It’s only a problem when you start forcing your will on people.”
“Yeah,” Emily said. “Just ask Penelope.”
She stood, then stopped. “You never said,” she added. “Which side are you on?”
“I think things are fine just the way they are,” Brier said. “People who want to isolate themselves can do so. People who want to help folks can do so. People who want to rule can set up kingdoms and see if they can attract settlers. Does that answer your question?”
Emily had to smile. “Good answer.”
“All three factions have valid points,” Brier said. “And none of them are completely right or wrong.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“YOU HAVE TO TIGHTEN THE SPELL,” Lillian said. “Right now, you’re not focusing the magic.”
Emily watched, feeling a twinge of nostalgia, as Lillian taught Polly how to raise a simple defensive ward. The spell wasn’t that complex, but the younger girl had been having real trouble channeling enough magic into the spellwork. Jens hadn’t taught her properly. Emily was surprised Damia hadn’t caught it, well before Emily had become her junior assistant. It should have been easy to spot, particularly when the ward kept breaking under the slightest hint of pressure.
Polly just kept getting knocked down, Emily thought. And she just didn’t have the confidence to do something about it.
She raised her head, her eyes sweeping the chamber. The review classes were going better than she’d expected, at least partly because Dionne and her cronies had chosen to skip them and go elsewhere. And because she’d convinced the older students to start teaching their young counterparts. It was ironic, Emily supposed, that the mysterious intruder had actually done a lot of good for Lillian. She’d put the younger girl’s education on a firm footing by the time she’d been forced to flee the school.
And we still don’t know what she really wanted, Emily mused. It was hard to believe there wasn’t a connection between the intruder and the crisis, but... she knew it was quite possible. There was no proof the incidents were connected. A conspiracy theorist might draw together a number of different incidents and insist they proved his narrative, yet... there was no solid proof. Just because they seem to fit together doesn’t mean they actually do.
She frowned as she watched a pair of girls struggling over their alchemy homework. They were having problems turning theory into reality, particularly as they weren’t allowed to brew outside the alchemy labs. The alchemy teacher had flatly refused to allow the younger girls to brew without her direct supervision, something Emily understood and accepted even though it rankled. Alchemy was one of the more dangerous classes. The prospect of a girl accidentally killing herself on Emily’s watch wasn’t one she liked.
Her legs twitched. She was tempted to walk over to them and point out what they were doing wrong, but... she couldn’t just give them the answers. In the short term, they’d probably be delighted; in the long term, it would cripple their development. They had to understand the theory so they could apply it; they had to understand the underlying logic if they wanted to proceed to mastery. Emily detested alchemy, but she knew it was important. And that she had to wait for them to ask before she tried to steer them towards greater understanding.
“I think it works,” Polly said. She cast the spell. A shimmering ball of magic enveloped her. “How’s that?”
“Too much power,” Lillian said, dryly. “You’re going to waste everything.”
“But it will work, until you run out of magic,” Emily said. She was tempted to suggest Polly learn to cast wards that would block physical attack, but she wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough to cast them for more than a few seconds. Even the strongest magician would have problems keeping them in place for long. “Or until someone pops the bubble.”
She gave the girl an encouraging look as she cancelled and recast the spell. This time, the ward was almost invisible. Emily tested it lightly and decided it was as good as it was going to get, at least for the moment. Polly would have to work hard to develop her magic before she could anchor the ward and maintain it unconsciously. It had taken Emily months to do it properly and even then, the ward could be snapped by an older student. She’d gone through it time and time again in Martial Magic.
But Polly shouldn’t have that problem, she thought, as Lillian turned her attention to her own work. She shouldn’t be challenged by an older student.
Emily allowed herself a moment of satisfaction, mingled with concern, as she surveyed the room. She’d convinced older girls to assist
the juniors in everything from classroom studies to basic etiquette, but it was hard to ensure the teachers stayed on topic. They were helping their juniors, passing along the help that had been offered to them in turn... she sighed, inwardly, as she watched an older girl educate a junior on how to comport herself in magical society. The rules were different wherever you went, Emily knew, and it wasn’t easy to adapt to them. God knew she’d had problems. But the more one adopted the newer culture, the harder it would be to fit in back home.
She tried not to yawn as the evening slowly turned to night. She was starting to think Damia had had ulterior motives in allowing her to run the review classes, either to get more time for herself or to keep Emily busy. It certainly made it harder for her to explore the school, let alone think up ways to defeat a hostile ideology. It was easy to understand, now, why so many people had embraced fascism and communism. Their early arguments were hard to counter. But they led, inevitably, to tyranny and disaster.
And by the time everyone realized the danger, it was too late to do anything about it, she mused. Before then, no one believed the warnings.
“Lady Emily?”
Emily looked up to see Karalee peering at her, worriedly. She was surprised the girl attended review classes - Dionne and her friends were encouraging their cronies not to go - but Karalee was showing hints of independent thinking. Emily had no idea if that would last, yet... it was worth trying to encourage it. Karalee was probably in for a shock, when she graduated. She might find herself permanently bound to Dionne...
“Yes?” Emily forced herself to smile. “What can I do for you?”
“I don’t understand this,” Karalee said, holding out a sheet of parchment. “There doesn’t seem to be an answer.”
Emily took the parchment and frowned. “Healing? Have you asked Mistress Allworth?”
“She said there is an answer,” Karalee said. She sounded desperate. “And I can’t see it.”
Emily scanned the parchment. Mistress Allworth was nice, but she took her subject seriously. Very seriously. Healing was no joke. Emily was surprised the girls were taught so much without being expected to take the oaths, although - looking at the records - it was clear they didn’t move on to advanced healing until sixth year. Emily thought she understood the logic - a half-trained healer was better than nothing - but it opened the gate for abuse. She knew how easily healing spells could be turned into weapons...
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