Emily realized in horror that Alassa’s spell would keep her down until the bullies returned, or until someone tried to use the classroom for lessons. It was impossible to stand up, let alone walk, as long as her legs kept jerking of their own accord.
You’ve been hexed, you idiot, Emily thought sharply. She felt the spell pressing in around her, constantly sparking with magic as she tried to move. And you know how to dispel hexes.
She concentrated, trying to cast the spell that Mistress Irene had taught her. The first time, she failed, feeling the strength draining out of her as she lay on the ground. Hot tears of humiliation and rage stung her cheeks. Angrily, she tried to climb to her feet, only to be knocked down once again. Alassa’s spell seemed to be growing stronger, making it impossible to crawl further than a few feet; in some ways, being turned into an inanimate object would be less embarrassing. Her body could no longer be trusted.
Angry thoughts burned through her mind. And you’re going to stay on the ground and take it? It was a bitter pill to swallow, but in truth she’d never seriously considered trying to convince Void–or anyone else–to send her home. Life in a magical world had seemed more attractive than anything waiting for her in the cold sterile world that had given her birth, but now she wasn’t so sure. All she knew was that she had to get up and fight the bullies, or they would win ...
Frustrated, she tried to cast the counter-spell again, and again, but she failed both times. However, casting the spell the second time allowed her to sense how Alassa’s spell had blurred into the magic field. Naturally, the bully had mastered a spell intended to be more humiliating than harmful–and improved it to the point where it wasn’t so easy to dispel. Emily closed her eyes and reached out with her mind, trying to remember the sensation of touching spells from her first lessons, six hours ago. The spell glittered in her mind’s eye, a spinning construction of magic words put together to create something far greater than the sum of its parts. And yet she could see the spell’s construction clearly now.
Carefully, she cast the counter-spell one final time, concentrating on the weak points in Alassa’s hex. There was a brief moment when she thought that she had failed again, but then, thankfully, the hex simply snapped out of existence.
Emily lay on the floor for a long moment, feeling her heart thumping inside her chest. Them, somehow, she pulled herself to her feet. Her legs still felt wobbly, but at least the unnatural twitching was gone. She staggered over to a chair and collapsed into it, feeling sweat trickling down her back as her head collapsed onto the desk. Happiness and relief warred with fear in her mind. Alassa and her cronies could have beaten Emily half to death while she’d been affected by the spell and she wouldn’t have been able to fight them off.
She was exhausted, but her mind refused to rest. She’d thought she’d understood the dangers, yet she hadn’t, not really. The Grandmaster wouldn’t have issued a warning against nationalism if it hadn’t been a major problem–and someone like Alassa would have plenty of enemies from other kingdoms, people who considered themselves to be her social equals, or superiors. Back home, the most popular girls and boys had always had followers, cliques that hoped some of their glamour and popularity would rub off on them. Here, where birth was important ... there had to be more than one major group of bullies, if only because others would need to form gangs of their own merely to survive. And she was alone, defenseless. No one would come to her aid. The bullies could do whatever they liked to her.
And then there was Shadye, of course. He wanted to kill her.
You’ll have to learn faster, she thought bitterly. Alassa had beaten her through superior magic skill; Emily would have to learn to beat her, whatever it took. Mistress Irene had unlocked Emily’s magic. Now, Emily would have to learn on her own. There was a library, she’d been told. Surely it would have books that would teach her how to defend herself. Surely...
The door opened and Emily looked up in alarm. If the bullies had come back - no, it was a middle-aged tutor, peering at Emily in some surprise. She looked rather like an older version of Emily’s mother, with black hair tied in a bun and a permanently grim expression. The robe she wore was yellow and black, reminding Emily of bees and wasps. Emily had to fight to keep the amusement off her face.
“Is there a reason,” the tutor demanded, “why you’re in my classroom?”
Emily hesitated. She could tell the truth, but that would be tattling. It wouldn’t solve anything in the long run, not really. Besides, Alassa had been at the school for months, perhaps years, and the tutors hadn’t yet slapped her down. They might have found it diplomatically impossible to punish a royal princess. For all Emily knew, Alassa had grown up in a kingdom that insisted royal children had to have whipping children, boys and girls from poor families who were whipped whenever their royal charges misbehaved.
“I needed to sit down,” she said finally. “I ...”
“You have a bedroom for resting,” the tutor snapped, interrupting Emily. She walked over to her desk and produced a box of mirrors. “Seeing as you wish to be here, you can place one of these mirrors on each of the desks. Or you can report to the Hall of Shame for detention.”
Emily stood up and took the box. The mirrors were small, barely larger than her hand, yet the moment her fingers touched them she felt a flicker of magic. Looking at her reflection, she nearly jumped out of her skin when her reflection winked at her. A moment later, the image shifted, revealing a dark-skinned woman with deep black eyes.
“Put them on the tables,” the tutor ordered impatiently. “Class starts in seven minutes.”
Emily flushed. Alassa had intended to humiliate her in front of an entire class of students . If Whitehall was anything like the other schools she’d known, word would have been all over the school in an hour. Everyone would have heard about the new girl who’d arrived on a dragon; they’d hear about how she’d been hexed and waited helplessly until someone arrived to help. But she’d freed herself ...
Shaking her head, she passed out the mirrors, refusing to look into them again. Instead, she passed the box back to the tutor and made her escape into the corridors, heading back to her bedroom. Her head was spinning and she definitely needed to lie down before she went to the library.
Chapter Ten
“I’M SORRY ABOUT HER,” IMAIQAH SAID, twenty minutes later. She’d been in the bedroom when Emily had entered and thrown herself down on the bed. “She’s a...”
Imaiqah shrugged helplessly, unable to find a suitable word.
Emily smiled, despite the exhaustion crippling her body. “A right royal pain in the bum?”
Imaiqah flushed. “Yes,” she agreed finally. “She hasn’t managed to test out of half of the basic classes and she’s still a pain.”
Imaiqah had asked Emily what had happened and Emily had told her, although she wasn’t entirely sure why she’d told her friend everything. Part of her wanted to keep it to herself.
“Oh,” Emily said. A moment later, she realized what Imaiqah had said. “Test out of the basic classes?”
“Everyone has different levels of power and skill,” Imaiqah pointed out, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. The teachers Emily had known back home wouldn’t have admitted that out loud, even if they’d had to come up with complex explanations for why something that was so evidently true was actually false. “You must have noticed that some of the students in your first class were much older than you.”
Emily nodded, slowly. She’d assumed, when she’d thought about it, that Professor Locke’s warning about the perils of missing history had eventually convinced older students to return to his class. But it did make sense; why should a genius student from the first year remain in a basic class if they could work at a much higher level?
Her head swam again and she started to retch, then cough. The world began to fade out around her ...
“Eat this,” Imaiqah ordered. She was suddenly much closer–had Emily blanked out for a long moment? “Y
ou pushed yourself too far.”
Emily took the food–it looked like fudge to her–and tasted it, before taking a bite and swallowing it as quickly as possible. There was a sudden surge of energy running through her body, one so powerful that she realized just how far she’d pushed herself–and just how worn she’d been afterwards. She should have gone straight to the kitchens to eat after freeing herself from the hex.
“Keep eating,” Imaiqah said. She passed Emily two more packets of food, which Emily devoured greedily. “And relax!”
She cleared her throat, and then returned to the original subject. “The basic classes teach the basics. You have to master them to proceed to the more advanced classes, and then–if you want–to follow a specialist path. If you don’t master the basics, you have to stay and repeat the class time and time again until you get it right.”
“I see,” Emily said. A thought struck her. “So I could move ahead to an advanced class now, without taking the basic class?”
“If you could pass the tests,” Imaiqah said. She looked up, her eyes wide. “Could you pass the tests?”
“Probably not,” Emily admitted. She shook her head, wondering how Imaiqah had managed to remain so sane, stuck in a school where she was very much a social outcast. “I’ll just have to learn as quickly as possible.”
Imaiqah nodded. “There’s a rumor going around that you’re a Child of Destiny,” she said. “Even I heard the rumor. Is that true?”
Emily froze. She thought hard. A dragon ... and now a rumor that she was a Child of Destiny. No wonder Alassa had been so interested in her, even though she hadn’t mentioned that particular issue to Emily when she’d been trying to bully her into her clique. Alassa’s parents would probably trade half of their kingdom for a real Child of Destiny who was willing to work for them. They might even have put pressure on Alassa to try to make friends with Emily.
“Not really,” Emily said, finally. She doubted that the literal truth would amuse anyone, least of all Alassa. Absently, she wondered just how much trouble she would have found for herself if her father had been named Fate. “I’m just a normal student -”
“- Who arrived on a dragon,” Imaiqah finished, with a grin. “Do you realize just how many social queens you embarrassed just by arriving on a dragon?”
Emily flushed. It hadn’t been her who’d summoned the dragon, let alone enrolled at Whitehall; indeed, she hardly seemed to do anything. She hadn’t chosen her parents, or to be kidnapped by Shadye - and Void had pushed her into attending the school rather than teaching her himself. Her status as a semi-Child of Destiny came from birth, rather than actually achieving it for herself. Alassa gloried in the accident of birth that had made her a Royal Princess; Emily found it rather irritating. Perhaps, if Alassa had been fawned upon from the day of her birth, it explained her vast sense of entitlement. Or perhaps she was just a silly girl with more magic than sense.
“I didn’t mean to do anything of the sort,” she mumbled. Who was spreading the rumors in the first place? Void? Or the Grandmaster? But why would they tell the students that one of their number was a Child of Destiny? The necromancers wouldn’t be the only adults who might want a Child of Destiny dead before she came into her own. “I’ll try and come on foot next year.”
Imaiqah giggled. “I came in a coach. It was the first time I’d ever left my home.”
Emily settled back and started to ask questions, trying to learn as much as she could about her new friend. Imaiqah freely admitted that she’d been born in Zangaria, which was–Emily guessed–at least partly why Alassa thought that she could push Imaiqah into doing her homework and other services. Her father had been a reasonably successful merchant with five children, enough that he’d been happy to allow Imaiqah to go to Whitehall when a travelling magician spotted her talent and offered her a scholarship. The description of life as a merchant’s daughter didn’t sound appealing, although Emily suspected that Imaiqah’s family were far more prosperous than the peasants in the kingdom. As far as she could tell, Zangaria was a near-absolute monarchy. That didn’t bode well for the Kingdom’s future, or for Imaiqah herself.
The door banged open and Aloha marched in, followed by two of her friends. One of them, Emily was surprised to see, was a teenage boy with an oddly freakish body, as if he’d tried to force himself to grow up faster and bungled the spell. His arms and legs were the size of a mature man, while his chest was still small and ill-proportioned. The other was a girl with hair so black that it seemed to absorb light, carrying a small cat in her arms. Emily was charmed until she saw the cat’s eyes. They were glowing with an eerie green light.
“You two - get out, now,” Aloha ordered. “Go play in the common room or something.”
Emily opened her mouth to protest, but Imaiqah caught her arm and tugged her out of the room before she could say a word. “She’s in charge of the room,” Imaiqah explained, as soon as they were outside the door. “She can order us out if she likes.”
“Huh,” Emily said. Alassa had been bad enough. This ... frustration burned through her mind, making it hard to think clearly. Humiliation warred with rage in her soul. Was everyone in the school a self-obsessed fool with magic to burn? “What gives her the right to do that?”
“She’s senior to us,” Imaiqah explained simply. “Where do you want to go?”
“The library,” Emily said. It was where she had meant to go before she’d become sidetracked talking to Imaiqah. “I want to see it for myself.”
“You should get something to eat first, something proper,” Imaiqah warned. “Those sugar bars don’t last very long.”
“And let Alassa have a chance to take another shot at us?” Emily asked. “We’d better go to the library first.”
The amulet glowed as they walked out of the sleeping compartment and into the main corridors. Emily allowed the light to guide them while she stared at the students thronging about. They still seemed to be busy, even though classes had officially ended for the day. But then, there was homework for some of the classes and probably activities that were carried out after regular hours. No doubt there were clubs and other such arrangements for students who might have gotten into mischief if they were left alone for too long.
A male student looked up and caught her eye, his stare boring into her skull. Uncomfortable with male attention, Emily looked away. Thankfully, he didn’t appear to want to follow them. She breathed a silent sigh of relief and forced herself to relax. This wasn’t Earth and those she feared were countless worlds away.
She could feel the building reconfiguring itself as they entered a new corridor, walking down towards a simple stone door at the far end. It slid open as they approached, revealing a massive room utterly crammed with bookshelves and books. Some of the books were chained to the shelves, with a handful of students standing and flicking through them, making notes on sheets of parchment. This world probably hadn’t invented the printing press: Emily wondered if she could deduce how to make one. It would reshape this world.
“Ah, the lady who came on a dragon,” a voice said. Emily turned to see a tall bald man, inhumanly thin, standing behind a desk. “We shall be expecting great things from you, young lady.”
“Thank you,” Emily said, flushing. Odd waves of magic seemed to shimmer just inside the library. “I ...”
Her voice tailed off as she realized that she didn’t have the faintest idea what to say next.
“Every book we have on dragons has been signed out,” the librarian informed her. “I haven’t seen so many books taken out since Professor Novus insisted that everyone read his autobiography before attending his classes. Those who actually wanted to attend his classes, that was. I think that most of them changed their minds after ploughing their way through the first two chapters.”
His gaze sharpened. “Books that rest freely on the shelves can be taken out for a week,” he added, in tones that suggested that he gave the same lecture to every student who entered his domain. “You may
take out a maximum of six books at any time, although they must be returned at once upon demand. Books chained to the shelves may be consulted, but not borrowed without a signed permission slip from the Grandmaster. Books in the restricted section may only be consulted with a signed permission slip from a senior tutor. Talking too loudly, fighting, or attempting to remove books from the library without signing them out will result in an hour’s petrification.”
Emily blinked. “What?”
Imaiqah pointed a finger behind her.
Emily turned around and saw five statues standing there, all composed of grainy grey stone. She shivered as she realized that the statues were simply too perfect to be anything, but humans turned briefly into stone. As punishments went, it was terrifying. Were the victims aware of their own immobility inside their stony prisons? Could they still think, even as they waited helplessly for the spell to wear off?
“This is a library, not a place to pick fights,” the librarian said. “I suggest that you bear it in mind at all times.”
Emily nodded tightly and walked away from the desk, then headed towards the bookshelves.
Imaiqah and Emily passed through a second line of magic - a ward, she guessed–and silence fell immediately. Hardly any of the other students were talking; none of the talkers were speaking in anything above a whisper, even the ones who were poring over textbooks and trying to complete their homework. Having seen the statues, Emily could understand a certain reluctance to speak too loudly. She didn’t want to know what it felt like to be stone from the inside–and she was sure that none of the other students did either.
As a young child in school, she’d spent a term working as a volunteer in the library. She’d picked up enough to know that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as a librarian, although she’d had the impression that it wouldn’t be a bad job if she’d been allowed to bar all readers from her library. The system governing Whitehall’s library, however, seemed far more complex than the Dewey Decimal System she’d had to learn as a child. If indeed there was a system. None of the books seemed to be in any kind of order.
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