Schooled in Magic

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Emily snorted, then left the room. Outside, a handful of girls glanced at her and then looked away, too quickly.

  Feeling as if someone were drawing a targeting crosshairs on her back, Emily left the dorms and headed down the corridors towards the library. Everyone seemed to be looking at her, staring at the girl who had come so close to murdering a right royal brat. No one said anything, but she could feel their gazes boring into her from behind. It seemed to take hours to reach the library and pass through the silencing field that kept the room reasonably quiet.

  Imaiqah wasn’t here to help this time, but Emily was starting to see how the library went together. There was a long section on Charms, including several books that discussed magical accidents caused by sorcerers who didn’t cast their spells properly.

  After picking one of them up and reading for a while, Emily realized in horror that the Warden had actually understated the danger. One idiot girl, having brewed a potion to make herself look like another girl, had made the mistake of using a cat hair as the source of genetic material. She’d turned herself into a cat-girl from a comic book, at least on the surface; inwardly, she’d warped her body so far that recovery was impossible. The poor girl would forever remain one of a kind, a strange hybrid of human and cat. Apparently, the book concluded, her technique had been duplicated, deliberately, by a sorcerer who wanted an army of inhuman soldiers. It hadn’t worked as well as the monsters created by the necromancers, but it had been bad enough to require a full regiment of troops and a squad of combat sorcerers to clear up the mess.

  The next book included brightly-painted images of just what could go wrong. One immature boy had set out to improve his genitals. Emily took one look at the picture and shut the book quickly, fighting the urge to be sick. Another sorceress had used magic on her womb while carrying a child, apparently because she believed that it would make the child the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Instead, the child had been born dead, yet somehow alive. A cautionary note suggested that someone else doing the same experiment might have been responsible for the first zombie plagues to hit the Allied Lands.

  Even minor accidents could have lethal consequences. Emily started to make a list: the boy who’d stopped his father’s heart, the girl who had tried to help her ugly friend by transfiguring her face into that of an angel, only to somehow poison her by botching the transformation ... the list went on and on. And most of the accidents, she realized, had been caused by only one spell. Her mistake had been caused by trying to cast two spells at once.

  Sitting on a cushion, wincing at the pain, she started to outline the essay. The Warden wanted her to learn; she swore to herself that she would learn. She would not make the same mistake again.

  Behind her, she knew that they were still staring. Did they fear her, as Aloha had suggested, or were they laughing at her when they thought she wasn’t looking? Emily didn’t want to know. It would be so easy to become angry and lash out and...

  Wind up a statue, she thought, ruefully. As if I had time for that.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ALASSA DIDN’T RETURN TO CLASSES FOR three days, by which time everyone in the school seemed to have not only heard what had happened, but added their own spin to each of the crazy rumors whispered around the building. Apparently, the girl was dying and her ghost had already been seen haunting the Garden of the Stoned Philosophers. Exactly why she had turned into a ghost when her body was still alive was not explained. A second set of rumors had it that her parents, the King and Queen of Zangaria, had declared war on Whitehall and dispatched an army to bring back Emily’s head, preferably not attached to her body. That rumor had caused ungrounded panic before a helpful fifth-year had caused more grounded panic by pointing out that if the King and Queen demanded the head of a student–any student - they would hopelessly compromise Whitehall’s neutrality.

  Emily had considered pointing out that the school wasn’t anything like as neutral as it claimed, but held her tongue. There was no point in pouring fuel on the flames.

  She’d been a social outcast before, but this was different. Her peers, the other first-years, seemed terrified of her, apart from Imaiqah. She had become worshipful, even though she’d received a stiff letter from her father that suggested that he simply didn’t know what his daughter had been doing to the King’s daughter. Emily had read the letter with a growing sense of disbelief; if Imaiqah hadn’t been her friend, she would have looked elsewhere for a suitable merchant and ally. The older students pointed and stared at Emily, as if they wondered what else she might do. One older student had even seemed to be on the verge of throwing a spell at her, before he’d looked into her eyes and backed off hastily. What had he thought she could do to him?

  It was almost a relief when she saw Alassa walking into Basic Charms, even though she looked like a whipped puppy. Her head was lowered, as if she didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. A ripple of...something ran through the class and Alassa flinched, unable to hide her reaction.

  “Your seat has moved,” Lombardi said to Alassa. “You will sit next to Emily until you have both passed Basic Charms.”

  Emily inwardly winced, feeling guilt twisting at her soul. Lombardi had given her a sharp lecture on the dangers of mixing spells without carefully checking to make sure that they melded together perfectly, even implying that the only reason Alassa hadn’t been killed had been because Emily had left both endpoints in the combined spell. Emily wasn’t entirely sure what she’d done, but she’d listened to the lecture and promised herself not to make a second mistake on such a scale. It had been tempting to ask if some of the horror stories about magical accidents had been real, yet she’d held her tongue. She didn’t want to know.

  She looked over at Alassa as she sat down beside her, studying her jaw. Alassa had always been pale–skin color didn’t seem to matter in this world, but Alassa had almost been albino–yet now, her lower jaw was almost pearly white, as if the skin had been replaced and the replacement hadn’t yet become its natural color. She remembered seeing girls sunbathing and how their underwear could shield part of their skin from tanning, leaving outlines on their bodies. Perhaps the basic principle was the same.

  Alassa winced slightly as she shifted on the seat, enough to convince Emily that she’d been punished as well, probably for instigating the fight. Or perhaps Alassa had been told that she was being punished for picking on a Child of Destiny. Who knew what her parents would have said to the Grandmaster, once they got over their outrage at their daughter almost being killed? It was just possible that someone had pointed out to Alassa that she would have to rule their kingdom one day and picking on people with magic might not help keep her throne stable. Apparently, necromancers weren’t the only rebels against the Allied Lands. Some of the rebels actually had a cause.

  “We will commence by considering a simple unlocking charm,” Lombardi informed the class. He spoke quietly, but they heard every word. “Or is the charm really as simple as I suggest?”

  Emily frowned. Once she’d been slotted into the class - after the first private session with the professor - she’d discovered that he spent one hour lecturing them on various charms and the other hour forcing them to work at practical problems that could then be tested. And she was far from the only pupil who’d had her palm struck to remind her to concentrate and plot out all of the components before actually trying the spell.

  “Of course it isn’t,” Lombardi said, answering his own question. “To unlock a door, what do you need? You need a key–and you need the unlocking charm to duplicate the key’s effect. So, what do you do?”

  Alassa shifted beside Emily, and then leaned over to mutter in her ear. “You transfigure the lock to dust and then push the door open,” she whispered. “Why waste time analyzing the lock when you can destroy it?”

  Emily blinked in surprise. She was the last person she expected Alassa to whisper to, not when it might get both of them punished–again. Was the royal brat trying to be frie
ndly? Or was she simply unable to refrain from chatting in the classroom and Emily was the only person close enough to hear her?

  “You start by analyzing the lock and seeing how it works,” Lombardi explained. If he’d heard Alassa’s comment, he gave no sign of it. “This particular component”–he drew the symbols out in the air for them–“determines how the lock can be unlocked. The second component actually does the unlocking. Should you happen to discover that the lock might be spelled to make it difficult to use an unlocking charm, you can add a dispelling charm to the overall spell in the hopes that it will prevent the spell from holding the lock firmly shut.

  “And in answer to your question, Alassa,” he added, a moment later, “the smart sorcerers work wards into doors to prevent someone from simply destroying the lock. A prison intended to hold a magician would be spelled to make it impossible for a small amount of magic to allow the prisoner to break free. So would a doorway you might have to open without being detected.”

  Emily flushed in alarm. He had heard the whispered comment. But at least he’d answered it–and who would have thought that Alassa had made a valid point? Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising. She had grown up in a place where she was expected to learn all sorts of tricks, studying under her parents ... and what she’d read about their kingdom suggested that they spent half of their time either plotting or warding off outside plots. The Mafia didn’t seem to have been half as unpleasant as Alassa’s distant relatives.

  “But I won’t be teaching you how to break out of prison just yet,” Lombardi reassured the class. There were some titters. “Instead, we will start practicing on the locks in your desks. Get them out and start trying to unlock them. Now.”

  Emily opened her desk and found a lock that seemed too big to be real. It took her a moment to realize that the locks she’d known from back home were the product of modern metals and production methods, while the locks here could probably be picked by someone with a hairpin and enough patience. And, she guessed, enough magic to sense a spell standing guard over the lock. No doubt the locking spells were programmed to give anyone who tried to pick them a nasty shock. Experimentally, she picked up the key and placed it into the lock, turning it backwards and forwards. There might be nothing particularly complex about the inner workings at all, but there was no way to be sure. Lombardi had been careful to provide locks that were solid enough to prevent them from simply opening them up and taking a look inside.

  “Waste of time,” Alassa muttered. “I could blast through that lock in seconds.”

  Emily shook her head. “You have to walk before you can run,” she said. What had the Roman Dictator Sulla said to the son of one of his worst enemies? “Learn to row before you take the helm.”

  Alassa gave her an odd look. “What?”

  “Never mind,” Emily said. She set the lock on the table and placed the key next to it. “Let’s see what happens when we cast the spell.”

  The first time she tried, nothing happened at all. A quick check revealed that nothing seemed to be wrong, so she tried again. Alassa smirked as the second experiment also failed, before she tried to cast the charm herself, both with and without the wand. Emily didn’t bother to smirk back at her for her failure. Instead, she started trying to see what was going wrong. The spell seemed to be drawing on mana; it just didn’t seem to be doing anything else.

  Mana fades into the background once spells are cast, she recalled. Sorcerers had worked hard to measure just how magic and mana were interlinked over the years. They seemed to agree on the basic details and then started arguing over the specifics. One section of the library was full of magical journals, written on parchment, with articles by esteemed sorcerers who seemed more interested in winning the debate than actually advancing the frontiers of knowledge.

  Shaking her head, she started to take a more careful look at the charm itself. A startpoint, an analysis component, an action component and an endpoint. But a piece-by-piece look revealed that there was no actual link between the analysis and action components; the first time she’d cast the spell, the action component had simply been bypassed and the spell had gone directly to the endpoint.

  Giving Lombardi a sharp look, Emily altered two of the variables and recast the spell. The lock screeched loudly enough to force her to cover her ears as it slowly opened.

  The class chuckled as the sound faded away. “Not a very ... subtle way to unlock a door,” Lombardi observed, mildly. “Perhaps you could do something about that?”

  Alassa jabbed her elbow into Emily’s arm, hard. “How did you do that?”

  Emily was tempted not to explain, but her grade was dependent upon Alassa passing Basic Charms. “I looked at the spell,” she said, and pointed to the missing link. “The spell he gave us was incomplete.”

  She shook her head. “And unless you understand what a spell is,” she added, “you won’t ever be able to know what you’re doing.”

  Back home, children had played with building blocks; she’d once owned a space shuttle built out of Legos that had provided hours of enjoyment. She still remembered the day when she’d realized that interlocking the tiny plastic bricks would make the final structure much stronger than simply piling the bricks up in straight columns. Reaching for the parchment she was using for notes, she added Lego bricks to the list. They might not be able to produce plastic in this world–she couldn’t recall how to even begin making plastic–but they could presumably carve bricks out of wood. If they hadn’t thought of it already...

  “Show me,” Alassa said.

  Emily tapped the charm and pointed out what was missing. Without the two components linked together, the spell would simply refuse to work. While Alassa worked on producing her own spell, Emily started working on making the unlocking process quieter. If she ever wanted to unlock a door to break into a house, she would have to avoid alerting the owner or anyone else in the neighborhood. But even though she studied the charm carefully, she honestly couldn’t see what was producing the noise, or how to stop it.

  The lock screeched again as Alassa finally managed to open it. “Not bad,” she said, once she took her hands away from her ears. “I made it!”

  Emily swallowed the urge to point out that Alassa wouldn’t have done anything without Emily’s help and tapped the charm in some frustration. “I cannot see what is causing the noise,” she said. She took a careful look at the lock and blinked in surprise as she realized that the answer had been right in front of her nose all the time. The lock had never been cleaned, let alone oiled. She explained what she’d deduced and then looked over at Alyssa, puzzled. “What do we do to stop that?”

  Alassa smirked, rather like a cat that had swallowed the canary. “It’s simple,” she said. “We just stick a silencing charm on the lock first.”

  She moved her wand, casting the charm, and then repeated the unlocking spell. The lock clicked open in absolute silence. After a moment, Emily looked down at the original spell and added a third component, muffling sound as the charm did its work. When she finally cast it, it worked perfectly.

  “Good work, both of you,” Lombardi said. The rest of the class seemed to have finally figured out the missing link as well. “You may go to a study room and tackle your next assignment.”

  Emily would have liked to have had the study rooms in her old school. They were small, but comfortable; equipped with parchment, pencils and a jug of something that tasted rather like fresh orange juice. If Alassa hadn’t been there ... her back twitched, almost as if she expected Alassa to slam a spell into her while she was looking away, but nothing happened. Instead, Emily picked up the assignment and studied it. They had been ordered to compose a spell that would create an image of herself that floated in midair. The instructions didn’t use the word hologram–absently, she wondered how many other words were missing from their lexicon–but she couldn’t think of it as anything else.

  “You could have killed me,” Alassa said as she knelt on the chair rather than sitting p
roperly. There were no cushions in the room. “I ... ”

  Emily felt her temper rise and fought it down savagely. “Listen to me,” she said, as calmly as she could. “You are a Royal Princess who will be Queen, one day, of a very powerful country. That country will not survive your reign unless you start realizing that there are limits to your power and you learn how to handle people properly!”

  Alassa flushed, one hand twitching towards her wand before she caught herself. “Who are you to lecture me on anything?”

  “I’m a Child of Destiny,” Emily said, before she could think better of it. “What might happen to you if you pick a fight with someone like me? What might happen to your Kingdom?”

  The whole concept still seemed a little absurd to her, but Alassa rocked back as if she had been slapped. If someone like George Washington was a Child of Destiny, did that mean that he simply couldn’t fail? But Washington had lost battles and come alarmingly close to losing the entire Revolutionary War on more than one occasion. Could one really claim that a higher power had been guiding and protecting him, or was he merely that rare combination of vision and practicality? And if there was a higher power, what did that say about General Howe, or Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne ... or Benedict Arnold? Arnold hadn’t been a traitor to the newborn United States at first, and might never have become a traitor if Congress hadn’t kept unjustly attacking him. Had a higher power pushed him into treason to boost Washington’s statue?

  But if that were true, she asked herself, what happened to free will?

  “You make enemies,” she said out loud, “and some of them are going to become real sorcerers. Others might become necromancers if you treat them so badly they forget the dangers and reach for whatever source of power they can find. Or maybe one day, all of your population will rise up and hang you in the streets.”