Schooled in Magic

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “They can’t,” Alassa said, genuinely shocked. “They love their princess ... ”

  “Caesar talked about himself in third person too,” Emily muttered. “But Caesar had a hell of a lot more reason to be pleased with himself.”

  She took a breath. The life of Julius Caesar wouldn’t mean anything to Alassa. “There once was an Emperor”–the word Tsar meant Emperor–“who shared the same delusion. But he was an incompetent man trying to govern a country by himself, unwilling to either let his subordinates have enough authority to solve problems themselves or to grant his people the freedoms they desperately needed. Eventually, his land collapsed into civil war and the Emperor and his entire family were executed by the rebels. The rebels were so hardened by their experience that they effectively created their own Emperor to rule their country. And it kept falling apart around them until it was too late.

  “You want to rule? Learn how to rule first,” Emily snapped. “Not just how to give orders, but how to give the right orders–and when to step back and not issue orders. Because you have enemies and the next one might deliberately set out to kill you!”

  She found herself wondering just what Alassa’s more distant relatives would do when they realized how close the princess had come to death. Would they see advantage in pushing her into tempting fate again? Or would they suggest–snidely–that Alassa return home, crippling her magical studies? Or ... there were just too many possibilities, few of them good.

  Emily shook her head. “We’re going to pass Basic Charms. And you are going to work with me, parsing spells out piece by piece. And once you master it, you can finally go on to the advanced classes.”

  Alassa’s blue eyes stared into Emily’s for a long moment, before Alassa nodded. Up close, she looked alarmingly fragile, as if the healing spells hadn’t been quite perfect. Or perhaps the Healers had just wanted to leave her with a mark to remind her of her own foolishness. It would probably fade away sooner or later.

  “Good,” Emily said. “Now, where should we begin?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “TODAY’S LESSON PLAN HAS BEEN ALTERED,” Sergeant Harkin said, glaring at his students. “It has, in fact, been altered because of one of you.”

  Emily stood as close to ramrod straight as she could, trying to keep her expression blank. She would be astonished if he were talking about anyone else. The Sergeant knew that Emily had nearly killed Alassa and if Emily had done something so stupid in his class she would have been expelled on the spot. And everyone else should know it too. The rumors that she’d killed Alassa had faded away when the girl had returned to classes, but it didn’t stop all the whispers.

  “Emily, step forward,” Harkin ordered.

  Reluctantly, Emily obeyed.

  “In the military, it is vitally important to learn from your mistakes–and you will make mistakes. It is also important”–his gaze swept the remaining students–“to learn from someone else’s mistakes. And cheaper than learning from your own.”

  Emily braced herself, knowing that this wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  “Emily did not seek out conflict with Princess Alassa,” Harkin informed them. “But when challenged, she was too slow to strike at her enemy before she was already affected by Alassa’s spell. She managed to break it–a not-inconsiderable feat–and then allowed rage and panic to blind her. By putting two spells together, she nearly killed the Princess.”

  His voice tightened. “Neither spell on its own was meant to be lethal. Put together, the results could have been disastrous.” He tapped his baton against his leg as he paused to allow the message to sink in. “You will all be casting spells intended for battle in this class–and, should you graduate, you will have the opportunity to serve the Allied Lands in combat. You cannot allow panic, or rage, or fear, to govern your response to a threat. If you did, the results can be dangerously unpredictable.”

  He looked at Emily, his scarred face impassive. “To add to that, Emily did nothing to knock down Alassa’s cronies. If they had decided to kill her there and then, they could have done so. Emily allowed the horror of her own mistake to paralyze her. The ultimate objective of warfare is victory; Emily could have won one battle and lost the overall war. She took her eyes off the prize out of horror at what she had done.

  “We will be teaching you how to react calmly and appropriately to threats, whatever the provocation,” he concluded. “And I will be expecting you all to learn to keep your minds focused, even when your bodies are hurting and enemies are pressing in from all sides. Using poorly-cast spells in combat can be more dangerous to your own side than to the enemy.”

  Emily felt the students staring at her, even though she didn’t dare take her eyes off the Sergeant. “Step back,” he ordered, finally. “And don’t be so careless in my class.”

  There was a long pause as the class digested the unexpected lesson. “Now,” the Sergeant said, “can anyone tell me how many official spying spells there are at the moment?”

  “Five hundred, or thereabouts,” Jade said. He seemed to have everything memorized, Emily thought; her own reading had been nowhere near as complete. But then, he’d had five years at the school to memorize everything he could. “I think there are some that are not recommended.”

  “Five hundred and sixty-four, as of the last publication of Peeking Toms,” Harkin said. Some of the students giggled and he glared at them. “The sorcerer who edits it has a warped sense of humor. How many unofficial spells are there?”

  Jade hesitated and one of the girls jumped in. “I read that there were thousands of makeshift spells to spy on someone. There were so many variants that most of them were related to others in some way.”

  “Indeed,” Harkin agreed. “Spying spells are fairly easy to design, so the same spells have been created by several different magicians at the same time. Some magicians tried to keep their own personal spells to themselves, only to read with horror that someone had independently duplicated their work and published it for everyone to see.”

  He smiled, unpleasantly. “So tell me ... how effective are those spells?”

  “They’re not,” Emily said, quickly.

  Harkin turned his gaze on her. “All those spells are not effective? And are all those sorcerers wasting their time inventing them?”

  Emily refused to allow him to intimidate her any further. She’d seen spells for spying on friends, enemies and love interests in the book of practical jokes, only to see that someone had scrawled, just past the front cover, a droll note that most of the spying spells wouldn’t work inside Whitehall’s protective wards. It was, apparently, a quick way to get a very unpleasant encounter with the Warden.

  “Spying spells can be countered,” she said. Professor Lombardi had pointed out that there was no such thing as an invincible charm, even if it was produced by a necromancer and powered by mass murder. “If you were a sorcerer who wanted to work in privacy, you’d put up wards to prevent someone from peeking in on you. They might come up with something new, but it would quickly be analyzed and countered by the other sorcerers. Any advantage someone gained by inventing a new spell wouldn’t last very long.”

  “Quite right,” Harkin said. He turned his gaze back to the rest of the class. “And what, from a military perspective, does this mean?”

  “It means you can’t spy on your enemies,” a burly boy said. He seemed to be from the same year as Jade and the look he tossed at Emily was far from friendly. His gaze made her want to cringe back and hide. “You’d never know what they were doing.”

  Emily frowned, considering the possibilities. Yes, you could move an army under cover of magic, creating a giant blank spot where spying spells couldn’t work properly. But if you did so, the watching defenders would surely spot the zone where their magic didn’t work and conclude that the enemy army was hiding in the void. She had a sudden vision of enemy sorcerers creating dozens of blank spots to confuse the defenders, with only one blank spot hiding the real army. Or they m
ight not conceal the army at all, gambling that the defenders would spend so much time trying to penetrate the blank spots that they wouldn’t realize that the advancing army was in plain sight.

  “True enough,” Harkin said. “Although unless they establish a base camp and stand still, their passage is going to be noted. You cannot move upwards of a thousand men without leaving a trail–and that trail will be very visible once the concealment spells fade away.”

  He smiled, rather darkly. “One sorcerer had the bright idea of trying to create a single spell that would blanket an entire country,” he added. “What do you think went wrong?”

  Aloha spoke up before anyone else could say a word. “The defenders were affected by the spell directly and they were able to dispel it. That was the Battle of Thornton’s Reach.”

  “A classic example of a sorcerer coming up with a brilliant idea and then being so impressed with his own brilliance that it blinded him to the spell’s shortcomings,” Harkin agreed. “The idea was tried again the following year, with some slight modifications. It didn’t work because the defenders were still able to analyze the spell and, instead of breaking it, simply altered their own spying spells to look through the loopholes. That particularly brilliant and stupid sorcerer died in the second battle, thankfully. Who knows what he might have thought of next if he had survived?”

  He rubbed his hands together. “So ... how many loopholes are there?”

  The boy standing next to Jade started to list them on his fingers. “You can try to alter your own spying spells to match the enemy’s spells, in the hopes that they will work perfectly through the enemy’s concealing spell. You can take a piece of hair from an enemy commander and use it to gain a sense of him; that’s hard to block without specific charms and plenty of people don’t bother ... ”

  “I recall a hustler who tried to sell Captain Hawke a pair of skulls that, he claimed, belonged to General Yeller at two different parts of the General’s life,” Harkin commented. There were some chuckles, although Emily couldn’t see how anyone could expect a half-way intelligent officer to fall for such a stupid con. “It isn’t actually that easy to lay your hands on a piece of hair from an enemy commander’s head, let alone flesh, or blood, or bones.”

  “... Or you could try to slip into the enemy camp,” the boy concluded, looking a little nervous. “Maybe you could pose as an enemy commander and ... ”

  Harkin snorted. “Do you think you could pretend to be me well enough to fool Sergeant Miles?”

  The boy shook his head, embarrassed.

  “Yet another clever idea that never works out quite right in practice,” the Sergeant commented. “Although it has been tried.”

  “As it happens, one final loophole is to actually spy on the enemy camp with your own eyes,” he continued. “It is possible to evade or fool most detection spells–and you can use a twinned mirror to get the message out as quickly as possible. If you got caught, of course, you might well be tortured, or hanged as a spy. Is anyone brave enough to volunteer?”

  His voice sharpened. “There’s an enemy army marching on your city. Your King needs to know where it is to place his own army to intercept it. And he needs to know how strong it is, so he can prepare his battle plans. Will you volunteer to go to take a look at the enemy army, knowing that it could cost you your life?”

  “Yes,” Jade said flatly.

  There was a dull rumble of agreement. “Glad to see that we have so many brave soldiers in our midst,” Harkin said. He pointed towards the forest. “A rebellious sorceress, the Lady Ravenna, has determined to wage war on your Kingdom. Having raised a dark army, she now makes her camp in the forest while awaiting the return of her brother and his raiding party. Your mission is to get through the forest, get into a position where you can spy on the army, and report back to your King using the twinned mirrors. Should you be caught, I need not add, you will regret it.”

  He looked at them. “I’m going to send you in, one by one. You know what you have to do, but remember–any sorcerer or sorceress can be a tricky opponent. Remember what happened the first time you walked through the forest and watch where you put your feet. Jade, since you were the first to volunteer, you can go first.” He tossed Jade a small mirror, wrapped in paper. “Oh, and keep your head down.”

  Emily watched as Jade walked up to the edge of the forest and was swallowed by the blackness. One by one, the other students followed him, until it was her turn. Shivering slightly, she stepped under the canopy and grimaced as darkness fell over the forest. The darkness seemed almost alive, leaving her glancing around nervously before she started picking a path through the trees. There was no sign of any other students.

  The sense of being watched grew stronger as she slipped onwards, picking a course at random. She had the feeling that the forest, like everything else in Whitehall, was far larger than it seemed on the outside, perhaps being specially designed to serve as a training area for military students.

  A moment later, she jumped backwards as her boot threatened to sink into a hidden bog. She hadn’t even realized that it was a bog until it had been almost too late. It seemed nearly impossible to separate the dangerous place from the mud ...

  She picked up a stick and used it to test the ground. The bog was everywhere, even behind her. Cursing the Sergeants under her breath, Emily realized that magic ran through the ground, trying to trap her. If she sank in the mire, could they save her before she drowned? Or what if ...

  Desperately, she cast a freeze charm ahead of her. The mud froze, creating an icy path running through the forest. She picked her way along it, slipping and sliding, until she reached the end of the bog and returned to solid ground.

  In the distance, the sound of horses neighing broke the eerie silence. Carefully, Emily walked closer to the sound, trying to use the trees to give her some additional cover from prying eyes. A moving shape caught her attention and she stared at an animated suit of armor. Its eyes, if it had eyes, were sweeping the forest. Instinctively, she dropped to the ground, feeling something pass over her back. If it had caught her in the open ... she didn’t know what it would do, but she doubted it would be pleasant.

  The ground was muddy, and smelly, but she forced herself to crawl forwards, noting that the armor wasn’t looking behind itself, just ahead. She slipped past it and towards a light in the distance, where she could see something moving. It was difficult to slip much closer because there didn’t seem to be much that she could use as cover. Then she saw a large bush. She was careful to check the bush for hidden surprises before she moved. Apparently, according to one of the books she’d read, some plants were animate and snatched anything–or anyone–who came too close. She wouldn’t have put it past the sergeants to hide one of those plants in the forest, just to teach the trainees a lesson about not taking anything for granted.

  As she inched forward, the army came into view. Half of it seemed to be composed of other animate suits of armor, although they were walking freely and might have been nothing more remarkable than men clad in armor. The remainder...looked like men, but as they came into view she saw chillingly inhuman faces. They were crossbreeds between humans and something else, something very different. Everything she knew about genetics said that interracial hybrids, such as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, were impossible. But in a world of magic, who knew what was possible? Maybe orcs and goblins had started out human and had been transfigured by powerful magic, the changes passed down to their descendants. Or maybe...

  Ninety-seven suits of armor, she thought, counting silently in her head. And seventy inhuman creatures ...

  A hand grasped her leg and yanked her backwards with terrifying force. Emily cried out in shock as she was flipped over and found herself staring up into a face that looked to be a nasty cross between human and snake. A moment later, the face shifted and she saw tiny snakes emerging from its head ...

  A medusa, her mind screamed at her. Mirror. You need a mirror!

  There was a blin
ding flash of light. Her body locked solid. The ... creature, whatever it really was, looked down at her for a long moment before it walked away into the forest, leaving her petrified and utterly immobile.

  Emily fought down panic and tried to cast a dispelling charm, but whatever the creature had done to her was far stronger than anything she’d yet seen. She tried to run through all of the cancelling charms she could recall, yet nothing worked and her mind started to blur into nothingness and ...

  ... And then she lay on the ground, outside the forest. Her entire body felt stiff, but at least she was flesh again. And she hadn’t been the only one to be caught. Of twenty-four students, only three of them had completed their mission. She cursed her own mistake as she tried to sit upright, before climbing to her feet. Of course there would have been more guards that just a single suit of charmed armor.

  “Not a good display, I feel,” Harkin said. “Three of you were caught by Snake Face and turned into stone. Five of you got caught in the bog, which would have killed you if you made a mistake like that in combat. Two of you made the mistake of trying to fight the charmed armor and were knocked on the head. Seven of you got too close to Ravenna and were turned into her puppets. And two more of you talked too loudly and brought the goblin hybrids down on your heads. Those massive ears they have aren’t just for show. Didn’t anyone tell you that they can hear a cat farting from the opposite side of town?”

  Emily hoped that was an exaggeration. She’d made enough noise moving through the forest to alert the goblins if they were really that capable. Perhaps Harkin was teasing them, while making a point. They’d all taken too much for granted.

  Aloha had a different question. “You keep a pet medusa? I ... I thought that those were illegal?”

  “Oh, they are,” Harkin said. “And if Snake Face hadn’t been properly gelded ... why, who knows what might have happened to you?” He gave her a sharp look that seemed to put her firmly in her place. “Tell me something. Was there something I said, at any point, to suggest that Martial Magic was actually safe?”