The Gordian Knot (Schooled in Magic Book 13)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The basic shield has some advantages over an embedded ward,” she said, demonstrating the spell. A translucent disc appeared in front of her. “Its weakness, however, is that a solid blow against the magic can force you backwards or even knock you over, even if the blow isn’t strong enough to break through. It also won’t cover everything, which means that someone can still sneak a spell through your defenses.”

  She ran through a couple of other spells, then looked at the other groups. Older students were snapping off hexes and jinxes at each other with a great deal of enthusiasm, while Cirroc, Jacqui and Cerise moved from circle to circle, correcting technique or offering advice when it seemed to be needed. Emily couldn’t help noticing that most of the students had paired off against other students in their year, although there were some exceptions. Both Frieda and Tiega were hurling hexes at students a year older than them. Emily wondered, absently, what would happen if they were paired up. They both had a desire to overcome their pasts and succeed.

  “The shield keeps shattering,” one of her students said. “I can’t get it to solidify.”

  Emily dragged her attention back to him with an effort. “You’re not pushing enough power into the spell,” she explained. “You want to envisage it as a solid wall, not as something insubstantial.”

  Cirroc wandered over to join her. “It’s going to be a while before we can get them outside,” he said, cheerfully. “The rules haven’t quite bedded in yet.”

  “I suppose,” Emily agreed. Far too many students would have been taught to reach for the dangerous spells first. “Take care of the firsties for a while, okay?”

  “Of course,” Cirroc said.

  Emily nodded, then strode off to watch the others. A number of younger students were lining up in front of Cerise to have various spells removed, ranging from a pig’s snout to a full-body transformation. The remainder were dueling with more intensity; Frieda was still sparring with her opponent, even though he was a year older. What she lacked in finesse, Emily noted, she made up in raw power and determination. Blood trickled down her cheek, but she didn’t seem to care. And her opponent didn’t seem to be able to match her.

  “Keep dodging,” Jacqui called.

  Emily turned to see Jacqui supervising a pair of third year students.

  “You don’t want to waste power on defending yourself,” Jacqui added.

  Emily rolled her eyes. That wasn’t the only problem. The two students were treating the duel as a ballet, rather than an actual fight. They were both showing off, wasting magic in a manner that would have cost them the duel if their opponent had been more interested in winning than looking good. The only good thing was that one of the duelists had transfigured her dress into a pair of trousers.

  She shook her head. Sergeant Miles would be furious if someone played games like that in Martial Magic—and she didn’t want to think about Lady Barb’s reaction. The two students were just playing games, bouncing spells around ... they’d lose, and lose badly, in the contest, if they chose to take part. But instead ...

  Jacqui looked up at her. “They’re having fun. And they’re at least smart enough to keep moving.”

  Emily nodded, shortly. It was better to dodge a spell rather than waste magic blocking, deflecting or casting the counterspell. But she could envisage a dozen spells—half of them non-lethal—that could have won the duel in an instant, if her opponent didn’t react with lightning speed. And yet ... she sighed, inwardly. One didn’t win a chess match by sweeping one’s opponents to the floor, any more than a football player was allowed to win by bringing a battleaxe onto the field. Victory only counted if it was won by the rules.

  But not in a real fight, Emily thought. Lady Barb had hammered that into her head, time and time again. When everything is at stake, the rules go out the window.

  Jacqui headed off to watch another duel. Emily kept watching the first set of duelists until one of them finally managed to score a lucky hit, turning her opponent into a snail. It was all Emily could do to refrain from pointing out all the mistakes, starting with treating the entire match as a game. But she supposed it did teach them to cast spells in a hurry ...

  A thunderclap shook the room. Emily spun around, raising one hand in a casting pose, as she felt the wards scream in alarm. Her ears rang. Tiega stood in the center of a widening circle, Jacqui standing next to her and her opponent lying on the ground ... Emily ran forward, pushing some of the younger students out of the way. Tiega’s opponent looked dazed, but otherwise unhurt. Tiega herself looked torn between relief and fear.

  “I slammed a force punch into his shield.” Tiega glanced at Jacqui, then back at Emily. “I didn’t expect that to happen.”

  “I advised her to put some more oomph into it,” Jacqui said, quietly. “It helped her to win.”

  Emily took a firm grip on her temper. Slamming a force punch into a shield would have been a gamble, even for a far more powerful magician. If the shield hadn’t broken, the blowback would have thrown Tiega right across the hall. But the shield had clearly broken, which had injured her opponent ...

  She forced herself to keep her face blank, even though she wanted to glare—and scream—at Jacqui. Her advice hadn’t been bad, for a duel, but it had risked causing serious injury. And that could have been very bad for Tiega. Emily turned and knelt beside the stunned third year, checking for injuries. There were none, as far as she could tell. His shield had clearly absorbed or deflected most of the blast.

  He should have angled the shield, just a little, she thought. It would have redirected the force punch rather than trying to block it outright.

  She found herself torn. Part of her wanted to tell Tiega off, but she hadn’t caused any serious injury ... and she had won. And part of her wanted to tell Jacqui off instead. Even a relatively harmless spell could cause injury if it was overpowered. She’d faced necromancers who overpowered their spells. She wouldn’t take anything lightly just because it was a simple first-year spell.

  “Don’t do that again,” she said, finally. She wondered if she should come up with a list of forbidden spells, then dismissed it as pointless. A rules lawyer would argue that a potentially dangerous spell was legal if it wasn’t on the list. She looked up at Jacqui. “See me afterwards.”

  Jacqui gave her a completely sweet, completely fake smile. “Of course, My Lady.”

  Emily eyed her for a long moment, then checked her watch. It had been over an hour since she’d thrown open the doors. Most of the younger students looked tired, unsurprisingly. They’d been expending magic at a fearsome rate. Even the older students were starting to look a little worn down. They were more used to placing demands on their magic, but most of them had never fought in a duel. Frieda’s opponent looked utterly drained.

  “Stop casting spells now,” Emily said, using magic to boost her voice. The remaining duelists stepped back, watching their opponents nervously. “I hope you all enjoyed yourselves—” there was a brief, if tired cheer “—and you’ll be glad to hear that supper will be served in the dining hall. Go there and eat something before going back to the dorms for a shower and a rest.”

  She paused. “The club will meet twice a week from now on,” she added. Gordian had wanted three meetings a week, but she’d turned him down. “If you want to come again, remember the rules; if someone new comes along, they’ll have to be taught the rules ahead of time. And anyone who breaks the rules will not be allowed to return.”

  The doors opened. She watched the duelists leave, then turned to Jacqui. “Tell me,” she snapped. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Jacqui looked back at her, evenly. “I told her how to win!”

  “At the risk of doing her opponent an injury.” Emily allowed her anger to flow into her voice. “And at the risk of being kicked out.”

  Jacqui shrugged. “People are injured all the time.”

  Cerise snickered, behind her.

  “The wards would have prevented a serious injury, would they
not?” Jacqui asked.

  Emily felt her blood boil. “And would you be prepared to bet your life on it?”

  “I wouldn’t have used a flat-edged shield to defend myself,” Jacqui said, sharply. “My shield would have deflected her spell.”

  “She does have a point,” Cirroc said. He sounded oddly irked. “Like it or not, there will always be a chance of someone being hurt.”

  “He did recover quickly,” Cerise put in.

  “Yes, he did,” Emily conceded. “And next time, we might not be so lucky.”

  She met Jacqui’s eyes. “If you want to do something dangerous, you can do it on your own time,” she snapped. “Here, we are trying to minimize the danger.”

  “Which will not prepare them for a real duel,” Cirroc objected.

  Emily felt a hot flash of anger. She didn’t know Cirroc that well, but he was one of Caleb’s friends. And he did have interests of his own. A watered-down dueling club—and contest—would be less impressive than something that could pass for a real duel.

  But she didn’t care. “We are trying to minimize the dangers,” she repeated. “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Of course,” Jacqui said. Her voice was very sweet. “I understood you perfectly.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  EMILY HAD HOPED, AGAINST ALL REASON, that the demands on her time would ease off a little as days turned into weeks. Gordian and the other tutors couldn’t keep discovering new things she had to do, could they? But it seemed that every day brought a new problem needing the Head Girl’s personal attention, from homesick firsties to older students in detention who needed to be supervised. There was barely any time for Emily to relax, let alone go walking with Frieda or talk to her friends through the chat parchments. Her life seemed to have devolved into an endless series of classes, duties and naps ... naps that were often interrupted by the next urgent matter. If Gordian was trying to keep her busy and out of trouble, she reflected, she had to admit he was succeeding. She had hardly any time to herself.

  “I wish we’d been able to meet earlier,” she said to Caleb. It was the first time they’d been together for two weeks. They still had a private workroom for their project, but they hadn’t been able to use it. Or at least she hadn’t been able to use it. “I just keep getting overloaded.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Caleb looked rueful. Every time they’d planned a review session, something had come up. “I hear you’re a soft touch, for a Head Girl.”

  Emily gave him a sharp look. “Compared to who?”

  “Apparently, Aloha was a great deal stricter.” Caleb grinned at her. “And Roberson would send younger students to the Warden if they even looked at him funny. Or thrash them himself, when he was in a foul mood.”

  “Bastard,” Emily said. She’d grown used to corporal punishment, but she had no intention of ever administering it herself. “Is being soft a bad thing?”

  “It depends on how much you let people get away with.” Caleb smiled, rather thinly. “My mother never let us get away with anything.”

  “Your mother would make a very good teacher,” Emily said. She swallowed the urge to point out that Sienna wasn’t a perfect mother, although she was far better than Emily’s mother. “But there’s a fine line between being authoritative and dictatorial.”

  “Or being kind and being soft.” He opened his folder and held out the paperwork. “Do you want to put the project on hold, for the moment?”

  Emily looked at him and felt a sudden rush of affection, mingled with concern. “Are you sure?”

  Caleb looked back at her. “No,” he admitted. “We’re not dependent on completing the project—not now—but we will risk being marked down.”

  “Or being called quitters,” Emily muttered. She’d thought that applying for extra credit was a good thing. The project had taught her a great deal about runic tablets and virtual spellware. She’d used what she’d learnt in Old Whitehall and, later, in Heart’s Eye. “Can your marks survive?”

  “I would need to do very badly indeed to risk having to retake the year,” Caleb assured her, after a moment. “If, of course, they would let me retake the year.”

  Emily nodded. Caleb had already retaken a year, although a charitable mind would probably point out that he hadn’t actually completed the year he’d had to retake. Being injured so badly he’d lost the use of his hands for several months had made it impossible to continue, after all. But Gordian might well refuse him a second chance to retake a year. It would be harder to argue for sympathy, this time.

  “The project can be put aside for a year or two,” Caleb said. “Or taken elsewhere ...”

  “We can work on it at Heart’s Eye,” Emily said. She still wanted to found a university, damn it. Surely, she and Caleb could put their past behind them and cooperate. “We might need it there.”

  “Along with quite a few other things,” Caleb said. “Who actually owns the city near the school?”

  Emily shrugged. She didn’t think the city was hers. In any case, it had been abandoned years ago. The inhabitants had either been forced to flee across the desert or sacrificed by the necromancers. As far as she knew, no one had returned to the ruined city since she’d killed the necromancer. There probably wasn’t anything there worth taking. The necromancers and their servants would have stripped the city bare long ago.

  “I doubt anyone will return there in a hurry,” she said. “The desert will make it hard for them to support themselves, at least for a while.”

  “I thought you said the desert would retreat,” Caleb said.

  “I think it will take years,” Emily said. She’d restarted the nexus point, but she had no idea how long it would take for the land to come back to life. The Desert of Death was thoroughly unpleasant, choking the life out of any communities unlucky enough to be close to the edge and expanding in all directions. If that had changed ... she knew it might be years before anyone saw any improvement. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Caleb nodded. “Are you all right with putting the project aside, for the moment?”

  Emily hesitated, unsure how to answer. It did feel like giving up, even though they’d long-since completed the compulsory requirements. Most projects weren’t that innovative, but her project ... she’d had high hopes for the future, particularly after she’d put their work to practical use. The thought of stopping—at least for a year or two—wasn’t one she wanted to contemplate. But, at the same time, she was being worked to death. She supposed she was lucky that Caleb was being reasonable about it.

  “I think I don’t have the time to do it properly,” she said. Caleb could do all the work, if he wanted, but then he’d get all the credit. Frieda had the same problem, only worse. She had to complete her project. “Do you mind?”

  “I can survive,” Caleb said. “And the project isn’t really something I can show to a potential master.”

  “True,” Emily agreed.

  Caleb reached into his folder and produced another sheet of paper. “We have to fill this in, then give it to Master Tor. I don’t think you can approve this, can you?”

  “I doubt it,” Emily said. Technically, they should go to their advisers, but she’d never tried to replace Lady Barb. She hadn’t wanted to replace Lady Barb. And Grandmaster Hasdrubal had been Caleb’s adviser. Master Tor would be able to approve their request or point them to the person who could. “I just hope Gordian doesn’t cause trouble.”

  “He really doesn’t like you, does he?” Caleb shook his head, slowly. “Did he even make you take the oaths?”

  “No,” Emily said. She hadn’t been too displeased—she certainly wasn’t going to ask to take the oaths—but it was a curious omission. “Why?”

  “They come with mutual obligations,” Caleb reminded her. “I suspect he isn’t eager to assume them himself, either.”

  Emily nodded. “I suppose.” She took the sheet of paper and read it, quickly. There were no multiple-choice questions. Whitehall expected it
s students to demonstrate comprehension and contextualization at all times. Even now, they were expected to put forward a comprehensive reason why they should be allowed to back out of their extra credit project. “What happens if he refuses to allow us to quit?”

  Caleb smiled. “We do nothing. And we get zero marks. It won’t ruin our graduations unless we fail everything else too.”

  “Maybe,” Emily said.

  She looked down at the paper, wondering what it would do to her grades. She wasn’t obsessed with getting the highest marks—she’d been convinced that her GPA was useless on Earth—even though high marks at Whitehall were a form of validation. Aloha had been both Head Girl and valedictorian. Emily doubted she would do so well. Melissa might have the best shot at the title, unless politics intervened. Caleb probably had a good shot at it too. Unless Gordian decided to hold the project against him ...

  “It might cost you your chance to be valedictorian,” she said. “Are you sure?”

  Caleb shrugged. “I don’t need it.”

  Emily smiled, remembering—again—why she’d liked him. It was tempting to reach out and pull him to her, even though she knew it would be a mistake. She could kiss him and then ... and then what? After everything they’d done together, could they just have fun? She knew it wouldn’t work out ...

  No, she told herself, firmly.

  She kept her expression blank as she tried to figure out what to write. Blaming the whole mess on Gordian was tempting, but it was unlikely to get them very far. Citing time commitments might work ... she sighed, realizing that Gordian might hold that against her too. But he hadn’t bothered to warn her that she might be made Head Girl. The thought had never crossed her mind. If she’d known it was a possibility, she might have held back on any extra credit projects until she found out the truth.

  “You could tell them we had a messy break-up,” Caleb said, a hint of pain in his words. “Or maybe just say that we have too many other commitments.”