Not too powerful, though, she realized, as she leafed through the book. A protective spell could be hacked by another magician, one who knew what she was doing, or it could simply be overpowered by force. Some simple wards were actually tougher than the more complex wards, but they could still be broken. And if she happened to be knocked out, it was quite possible that most of her protections would collapse.
Finally, she cast two protective spells on herself and tried to figure out a way of testing them. Perhaps she should talk loudly in the library.
She was still considering the possibilities when the door opened and Aloha stormed into the room. Her roommate looked angry; when she saw Emily, she glared at her in a manner that left Emily in no doubt that she was being blamed for whatever had upset Aloha.
But what had she done to her roommate? They merely shared the same room.
“What have you done?” Aloha demanded, echoing Emily’s own thoughts. Magic seemed to crackle around her, as if she were on the verge of losing control. “What were you thinking?”
Emily blinked, completely confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Martial Magic,” Aloha snapped. “How in the name of all the gods did you even get into the class?”
Aloha raged on before Emily could say a word. “Do you know how hard I had to study to get into that class? Do you know how hard it was to convince the General and the Sergeants that I could handle the pressure? I spent months practicing for the chance to enter the class–and you are just given it on a silver platter!”
Emily held up a hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, as evenly as she could. Aloha had to be much more capable–and dangerous–than Alassa. “What is Martial Magic?”
“You should be learning like the rest of us, but no,” Aloha snapped. “You’re a freaking Child of Destiny and so you are given something that normal students have to study hard to even hope to achieve!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emily repeated, more sharply this time. What was all this about? “I spent the day learning about Charms...”
“You haven’t even passed Basic Charms,” Aloha said. “How can they consider you for Martial Magic?”
Emily took a breath and repeated her question. “What is Martial Magic?”
Something in her tone got through to Aloha. “You don’t know?”
“No,” Emily snapped. “I don’t even know why you’re so angry!”
Aloha stepped backwards and sat down on her bed, staring at Emily with unblinking eyes. “I want to be a combat sorceress. And to be a combat magician of any kind you have to pass Martial Magic. It’s an advanced class focusing on magic in military operations. Students have to know what they’re doing, but they also have to have the maturity to handle spells that are deadly, intended to kill.”
Emily doubted that. The Harry Potter books might have deemed killing and torturing spells to be unforgivable–never mind that Harry himself had used both types of spells on occasion–but that magical world suffered from a shortage of imagination. It was easy to use a simple lifting charm to kill someone–either by dropping them from a great height or hurling them into orbit–and the intention of murder would be the same. There was no reason why Alassa couldn’t kill with magic, at least not once she passed Basic Charms and learned how to modify a practical joke spell to kill.
“And I applied for the position and was finally accepted after six months of slaving to convince the Sergeants that I could handle it,” Aloha added. “Do you know how few second-years get to even try out for the class? And here you are, a first-year, and someone just hands it to you on a platter? They wouldn’t allow Alassa, a freaking Royal Princess, to take the course without testing her ... when were you ever tested?”
Aloha’s face twisted. “I was so proud of what I’d done ... ”
Emily felt awkward. Back home, it wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe it would; perhaps a long-serving cheerleader would be kicked off the squad to open a space for a newcomer who happened to be incredibly talented, or whose father enjoyed political power. But cheerleading was a role for girls who thought that bouncing around wearing skimpy clothes constituted academic achievement and Martial Magic–she assumed–was something a great deal tougher. There hadn’t been any classes that picked and chose their students so carefully at her old school.
But she could understand why Aloha was so angry. She’d earned her place–and Emily, the unskilled and untutored newcomer, had been given what she had worked so hard to achieve.
“I didn’t put my name into the hat,” Emily said, quietly. “I don’t know why it happened.”
“I do,” Aloha said flatly. “They’re expecting you to save the world.”
Emily wondered if she could find a spell that would allow her to do something humiliating–or painful–to Void. He had to have told the Grandmaster that Emily was a Child of Destiny, without bothering to explain that while it might be literally true, it wasn’t true in any useful sense. No doubt he’d sworn a magical oath that it was true and had a good snigger afterwards at how easily his words had been misunderstood. Why not? The mishap that had brought Emily to this world would have given him the idea.
“I’m not a Child of Destiny,” Emily said, finally. “I ... ”
But she couldn’t explain the truth.
Aloha just looked at her. “I think that you’re not going to embarrass me on the field. If I have to kick you to keep you going, I will kick you to keep you going. Do you understand me?”
“No,” Emily said. “Why do you care if I succeed or not?”
Her roommate stared at her. “You really don’t know?”
Emily shook her head.
“In Martial Magic,” Aloha said, “the class is divided up into squads. The squads either pass or fail as a group. If too many squads fail, the entire class fails. You know next to nothing about magic and yet my grade will be dependent upon yours!”
Emily felt a cold chill wafting through her body. “You’d better start learning fast,” Aloha snapped. She produced a book from her cupboard and tossed it at Emily, who caught it awkwardly. “That’s the basic textbook for the pre-class studies and trials. I know it all by heart. And if you think that you’re going to pass the class ...”
“I didn’t ask to be put into this class,” Emily protested.
“... You’ll have to know it all too,” Aloha continued, ignoring her. “And I swear to you, upon my mother’s life, that if you ruin this class for me I will turn you into a piece of underwear and leave you out for the boys to wear.”
The threat would have been laughable–or disgusting–if it hadn’t been deadly serious.
Emily watched as Aloha stormed out, leaving Emily alone in the room. She stared down at the book she’d been given, cursing both Void and Shadye in her mind. What had they gotten her into now?
Chapter Thirteen
PROFESSOR THANDE LOOKED LIKE A MAD scientist.
Or so Emily thought, the moment she walked into his large classroom. He was a tall lanky man with unkempt hair and a slightly manic grin, reminding her of David Tennant, the actor who had played the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who. Thande was leaning over a cauldron perched on top of something that looked like a Bunsen Burner, dropping a handful of ingredients into the liquid. It smelled very faintly of spice, and boiling alcohol.
Unlike the other tutors she’d seen, Professor Thande wore a shirt and trousers instead of robes, as well as a belt that carried several different tools for his work. When he turned slightly to study his class, Emily saw a nasty burn mark on his cheek. A second accident–at least, she hoped that it had been an accident - seemed to have left his left hand badly scarred. He wasn’t the first teacher she’d seen with a damaged hand, she recalled. It seemed to be a common magical injury.
“Be seated,” Thande said, as he returned his attention to the boiling caldron in front of him. “I won’t be a minute.”
Emily sat down at one of the desks and f
orced herself to compose her mind. She’d been accosted by five different older pupils on the way to Alchemy Class, all of whom shared Aloha’s fears about what a first-year student would do to their shared grade in Martial Magic and had even more inventive threats for what would happen if she let the class down. Emily had seriously considered going to Mistress Irene to ask to be removed from the class, then her natural stubbornness had kicked in. Now, she was determined to do her very best.
Besides, part of her mind whispered, Shadye had marked her for death. Martial Magic might provide her with the knowledge she needed to live a full life rather than remain a prisoner at Whitehall for the rest of her life.
The desk itself was odd, rather like one from an old-time school - a box on legs. When she opened the lid, she saw a dozen cloth bags, each one smelling of something different. Sniffing one of them made her head spin and she put it down quickly, trying to resist the urge to take tight hold of her desk and never let go. The sensation faded quickly, but the lesson wasn’t lost on her. Sniffing something when she didn’t know what it was could be dangerous.
Looking around the classroom, she saw stained and blackened walls, the result–she assumed - of previous experiments. Thande didn’t look as if he was inclined to follow the scientific method. Instead, he looked as if he’d be happy to mix two liquids together and strike a match, just to see what would happen. The walls were completely bare, apart from the one ahead of her, where Thande had placed a green-gold object that looked oddly familiar. She couldn’t remember where she’d seen something like it, but she was confident that she had. The thought nagged at her as the classroom slowly filled up with her fellow pupils, until it finally clicked. She was looking at a single dragon scale.
Thande moved to the front of the classroom and clapped his hands together for attention. “I am Professor Thande, Head of Alchemy. You’re here for Basic Alchemy, a required class for studying Advanced Alchemy, followed by various specialist departments of Alchemy. Are all those facts correct?”
Emily nodded automatically. There was no sign of Alassa in this class, which suggested that she’d managed to pass it - or that she’d never taken it at all. Emily had expected all students to take the same classes at first, but chatting to the handful of students who would talk to her had confirmed that there were hundreds of different paths through Whitehall. Only a handful of the classes were truly mandatory for all of the students. Unfortunately for Alassa, that included Basic Charms.
“Good,” Thande said. He clapped his hands together again. “For those of you who haven’t bothered to read your textbooks–a fairly common problem, it seems–you will find that you are lacking in basic knowledge. Can anyone tell me the fundamental difference between Alchemy and Charms?”
There was a pause, and then one of the boys raised his hand. “Alchemy involves brewing things, sir?”
“A very incomplete answer–and nowhere near accurate enough,” Thande said briskly. He didn’t seem angry, more like he was amused. “Would anyone care to take another guess?”
A girl with skin so white that she had to be an albino raised her hand. “Alchemy involves using natural magic, sir, and Charms involves using your own magic?”
“Much better,” Thande said, approvingly. He rubbed his hands together as he started to lecture. “You are aware, of course, that mana is everywhere in the world. High levels of mana cause unpredictable changes in plants, animals and even the very air itself. What that means, for those of us who are ruthlessly practical, is that mana creates magical qualities in natural material.”
He picked up a glass decanter from his table and held it up in front of him. “Eye of newt,” he said, as he rotated it so that they could see the eyes. Emily felt sick and, judging from the sounds behind her, she wasn’t the only one. “What magical uses do these eyes have for the Alchemist?”
There was another pause, broken by the albino girl. “They help you to see, sir?”
“I’m afraid not,” Thande said. His gaze swept the room. “The mana in eye of newt is useless for any practical purpose, at least as far as we have been able to determine. Perhaps one of you will become an Alchemy Researcher and discover a use, but right now eyes of newt are useless. Completely useless, unless you want to separate a qualified alchemist from someone who merely brags of his own skills.”
He put the decanter down and picked up a small glass jar. This one, as far as Emily could tell, held hair. “Shaved hamster hair,” Thande informed them. The sounds of disgust grew louder. “And what sort of magical powers do they possess?”
This time, no one dared answer. “In their natural form, they are poisonous,” Thande said, answering his own question. “But when boiled in water for seventeen hours and combined with a drop of the patient’s blood, they provide an excellent energy boost for a magician who has pushed himself to the limit.”
Emily stared at him. What sort of person would shave a hamster and then boil the poor creature’s hair for hours, just to see what would happen? Coming to think of it, how had they even known that something would happen? Her mind spun, making her wish that she’d borrowed a book on Alchemy from the library as well as the spellbooks for self-defense and practical jokes.
No wonder science was so badly retarded in this world!
“Those of you who are familiar with Basic Charms will know that spells can mutate if they are not defined perfectly,” Thande continued. “The magic in the natural world has mutated, twisted in ways that are difficult to imagine. You may consider Alchemy to be partly about mixing different spells together, but that tends to limit your imagination. Which”–he held up his scarred hand–“can be no bad thing.”
His voice sharpened. “There are rules for learning Alchemy and I expect them to be followed to the letter. Those of you who break these rules will be used as test subjects for my experiments, experiments that have been known to get out of control and”–he showed them his hand again–“cause unexpected injury. Anyone who continues to mess around after that clearly has the right attitude to become a Master Alchemist, but you can do your research on top of a mountain or in the middle of a desert. It will be safer for everyone else.
“First rule: learn everything you can about Alchemy.” He pointed a scarred finger at Emily. “What happens if you mix cornflower with icing sugar and blow it into a candle?”
Emily hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally.
“A very good answer,” Thande said. “Should you ever be in doubt about what will happen when you carry out an experiment, try and look up the answer first. Which, by the way, is a small explosion.” He moved his finger to another boy. “What happens if you mix cat and dog hair together in water and then drink it?”
The boy looked around, desperately. “You turn someone into a cat or a dog?”
“Wrong,” Thande said. His face darkened. “You make them bark and meow helplessly for several minutes. And, incidentally, it doesn’t work if you only use hair from one animal.”
He looked up, glancing from student to student. “Ignorance can kill. If you are in doubt about anything, look it up or ask a trained alchemist.
“Second rule: always carry out your experiments behind wards to provide safety. Yes, there are any number of alchemists who lower the wards for more contact with the experiments–and most of them come to regret it, sooner or later. You are all students and while you are studying here you will keep experimental wards up at all times.
“In addition to that, you will also confine any experimentation to the warded alchemy rooms. Anyone caught practicing alchemy elsewhere in Whitehall will be severely punished.
“Third rule: always cast a testing charm before drinking anything you have produced for yourself. A single mistake can kill you outright. If you’re not confident with the charm, ask one of your classmates to cast it for you. Refusing to cast the charm for one of your fellows, if asked, will also result in severe punishment.”
He paused for a moment to allow that to sink in,
then continued. “Also, when drinking other potions, it’s a good idea to cast the charm anyway. Some of the newer potion recipes are still producing odd effects if left alone too long. A charm will ensure that it won’t kill you outright.
Thande gave them all a commanding stare. “If you are in doubt, ask me or another alchemist. I will not punish anyone for making mistakes, or asking questions, merely for placing their own lives–or that of others–in danger.
“Fourth rule: check everything. Alchemy is, in its own way, as precise as anything you might learn in Charms. Now, open your desks.”
Emily obeyed, looking down at the small collection of ingredients.
“You will see a seal on each of the bags,” Thande said. “That seal belongs to Elmer, one of the apothecaries who works under me. Apothecaries produce materials for alchemists and, once they verify that they are whatever they claim to be, they bag them up and place their seal on them. The seal will vanish if something else is left in the bag for an unwary alchemist, so make sure that it is still there every time you take something from the bag. If the seal vanishes, take the bag to the disposal chamber and throw it out, along with the entire remaining contents. You’re not ready to experiment with materials that may be compromised.
“If you don’t use material from an apothecary, check everything; where it comes from, how it was harvested, how it was stored ... everything. A single mistake can prove fatal.” He smiled, thinly. “An apothecary who provides bad materials can be executed, if the buyer doesn’t kill him first. Murdering someone who conned an alchemist is perfectly legal throughout the Allied Lands.”
Thande snorted. “Oh, and always use natural materials. If you transfigure grass into mandrake root, just because you cannot afford mandrake, the transfigured grass will still have a magical signature that will throw a stone into the alchemical process. That’s a good way to get yourself killed if you’re not careful.
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