Schooled in Magic

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  His smile melted away. “Cast an illumination spell that only works for you,” he ordered, his tone darkening. “When we’re in the tunnels, walk up the exact centre; do not try to enter any of the side tunnels. The scorpions will not like you wandering into any of their nests. If you see one of them, which is unlikely, keep your distance. They’re very territorial and they might mistake you for a rival.”

  Jade coughed. “What if they mistake us for prey?”

  “Use a fire spell if there is no other choice, and be prepared to kill,” Sergeant Miles said. “If you do have to fight one, you can’t force it to back away. Kill it and then leave the carcass strictly alone.”

  Emily was still trembling at the thought as Sergeant Miles cast a light spell, then stepped into the tunnel. Jade followed him; Harkin pushed Emily to go immediately afterwards. Darkness dropped on her like a physical blow, reminding her to cast her own spell to light her way. Slowly, she followed Jade up the tunnel, feeling an uncomfortable itching sensation pressing down on her mind. It was impossible to escape the sense that they were being watched.

  The passage was far more than just a tunnel, she realized, as she glanced around. It looked as though someone had carved out an entire town which had then been buried under the mountain. But she couldn’t tell if it had been an accident or if someone had started to carve into the rock deliberately. Strange writing was scattered everywhere, all completely indecipherable. In the distance, she thought she heard something scuttling in the darkness. A scorpion, perhaps, or maybe it was something else. What little she’d read about mana-touched creatures suggested they evolved very rapidly.

  Sergeant Miles led them onwards, passing a set of dark doorways that led further into the mountain. As instructed, Emily kept her distance from them, although she couldn’t resist peeking as they passed. She saw nothing, apart from vague hints of something lying there, watching them. The tunnel narrowed as they left the doors behind, forcing them to walk in single-file. It wasn’t very reassuring.

  Before Emily knew it, the tunnel widened to reveal a river running right through the mountain. If they hadn’t been casting charms to light their way, they would have walked right into the water and been swept away to their deaths. It was hard to tell in the strange light, but the river looked to be the color of blood ...

  ...And it was completely silent. The running water made no noise. Which was impossible, wasn’t it?

  “The bridge is there,” Miles whispered. It sounded deafeningly loud in the confined space. “I will cross it first; follow me one person at a time. Do not clown around while you’re on the bridge.”

  Emily shivered as she saw the bridge for the first time. It seemed solid enough, but it was barely forty centimeters wide, seemingly too thin for safety. Jade followed Miles as he crossed the river, but Emily hesitated for a long moment before she stepped onto the bridge. It felt fragile as she advanced; she kept her eyes off the drop and on her destination, and hoped that the bridge would hold up. Somehow, when she reached the far end, it felt as if she had been crossing the bridge for an eternity.

  “We don’t know where the river comes from,” Miles commented. “A team of explorers set out to map these caves some years ago. We never heard anything from them after they left.”

  “The scorpions got them,” Jade suggested.

  “Or something else, something that preys on scorpions, got them,” Harkin added. “There are hundreds of places like this, left behind after the war with the Faerie. Very few of them have ever been charted and rendered safe.”

  The tunnel banked upwards after the bridge. They saw light streaming in from the far end.

  As they stepped out of the tunnel, into another valley filled with trees and running water, Emily sighed in relief. She caught sight of another pond and stared at it suspiciously, before making a mental note not to go anywhere near it. And then she turned and looked upwards.

  A giant statue stood in front of the mountains, towering high overhead. She remembered that she’d seen it when the dragon had flown her from Void’s tower to Whitehall. Behind the statue, she saw the rest of the city–and shivered as she realized, for the first time, just how eerily alien it was. She’d understood the buildings in Dragon’s Den even if they were primitive, but these didn’t seem designed for human occupation at all.

  “Well, here we are,” Sergeant Harkin said. He nodded towards the setting sun. “We can camp here, and hunt for food. And tomorrow the real fun begins.”

  Emily blinked in surprise. “Near that pool of water?”

  Harkin tossed a stone into it. Nothing happened. “This place is safer than the hidden valley,” he said. “Even so, you did well to question. You have to be very careful in these places.”

  The team started to unpack, setting up the tent and preparing to sleep, while Sergeant Miles hunted for an animal. He came back with a deer he’d killed with an arrow, allowing him to give Emily her first lesson in cutting up an animal for the cook-pot. Emily could barely stand to watch as he sliced the meat away from its bones and passed it to Jade, who put it in the cook-pot. She was suddenly very aware of just where all of her food came from.

  But then, that had been true of farms back home too. No one could really believe that raw meat came out of nowhere.

  “I’d prefer to roast it on a spit,” Miles said as he stirred the stew. “But that takes too long.”

  He took Jade’s bowl, ladled him out a decent helping and motioned for him to sit near the tent. Emily passed him her bowl, watched as he spooned meat and liquid out for her, and then took it to sit next to Jade. The stew was hot, but surprisingly good. After they’d all been served, Miles prepared the pot to simmer overnight. The remainder of the meat would be taken with them, apparently.

  “Sleep tight,” Harkin ordered. He would be taking the first watch. “Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day.”

  She felt dirty and smelly as they settled down to sleep, too tired to care that she was sleeping next to seven older men. Her entire body ached, but sleep came easily. There weren’t even any nightmares to trouble her dreams. After everything they’d seen on the hike the absence of nightmares would have surprised her, if she hadn’t been too tired to care.

  For this one evening, she was just too tired to dream.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, HER ENTIRE BODY hurt.

  She stumbled out of the tent and tried to run through the basic exercises she’d been taught. Her body felt as if she had been brutally beaten by a small army of thugs. She didn’t want to undress and look at herself for fear of seeing her entire body turned black and blue.

  Sergeant Harkin gave her a sharp look as he prepared the cook-pot. “I take it you never marched like that before?”

  Emily nodded, then tried to do a push-up. Her arms failed her after two single movements and she collapsed on the grass. She needed a hot bath and a massage, but she wasn’t going to get either. No wonder few of the infantrymen in pictures had looked happy ... and they were experienced soldiers. She had never walked so hard, or carried so much in her entire life.

  “Keep moving,” Harkin suggested as Jade and Bran stumbled out of the tent. Emily was relieved to see that both of them looked as though they were aching too. “And drink some of the potion. You’ll find that it helps with the pain.”

  He grinned nastily. “In fact, why don’t the three of you run over to the tunnel and back? It will get your blood flowing again.”

  Emily obeyed and discovered, rather to her surprise, that he was right. If something had been chasing her, she wasn’t sure she could have escaped, but her attempt at running did make her feel better. Once drunk, the potion sent a warm glow throughout her entire body and eased away some of the pain. It might be hours before she could walk properly, but at least she could move.

  Breakfast consisted of more of the deer, some bread from their rucksacks and a stew made from various plants the Sergeants had found. Emily watched as they cooked it, reminding
the students–again–that they had to be very careful when picking certain plants because it could be difficult to tell which ones were safe to eat. There were spells for checking, but apparently they weren’t always completely reliable. Mushrooms, it seemed, could fool the spells and poison anyone stupid enough to eat the wrong one. They’d been taught how to tell if something was safe to eat, but only in theory. Emily had never had to try in real life.

  “The Dark City was once the home of the Faerie,” Sergeant Harkin said as he spooned out the stew to his students. He nodded towards the giant statue, which had sharply pointed ears and a face too narrow to be human. “From here, they ruled most of the world, until a necromantic storm drove the Great Lords of the Fair Folk away from humanity. Their city was left behind to rot into nothingness.”

  His eyes narrowed. “We bring you here to show you what you may be fighting and to introduce you to some of the stranger natural magic out there. Remember everything we taught you about avoiding magical traps, because there are dangers in what remains of the city and some of them can be fatal.”

  “Most of them can be fatal,” Miles added. “Or they’ll make you wish you were dead.”

  Emily nodded. She’d read books on just what the Fair Folk had done to humans who had fallen into their clutches and most of them had made the necromancers look sane and reasonable. There had been a young boy who’d been given a tongue that always rhymed, forcing him to become a poet; a young girl who had been frozen at nine years old, no matter how old she became; a married couple who had literally been bound together ... and, unlike other curses, Faerie “gifts” were impossible to remove. It hadn’t been clear if the Faerie thought they were actually giving gifts or if they were just tormenting people, but the end result was always the same.

  Those who were given gifts by the Faerie came to regret it.

  The stew tasted surprisingly good in the crisp morning air. They checked the pond again before taking water from it to wash their plates, piling them up in the tent along with most of the supplies. Sergeant Miles cast a simple ward to keep away bandits, thieves and wild animals, ensuring that they didn’t have to carry the rucksacks up to the Dark City. Emily was relieved as they started on the trail up to the giant statue. The path was hard enough without carrying a massive rucksack with them.

  Up close, the statue was inhumanly perfect as well as alien, leaving her to wonder if there had been a giant Faerie who had been petrified by some long-forgotten magic. Strange wisps of wild magic danced around the statue’s feet, suggesting that it might be dangerous to go too close.

  Emily was grateful when Sergeant Miles led them around the statue and into the city proper. She felt her eyes go wide as she stared, unable to fully comprehend the alien majesty of the city. It was a maze of giant ziggurats, pyramids and statues of strange creatures that couldn’t possibly exist in real life. A chill ran down the back of her neck as she realized that parts of the city seemed to change every time she looked away, pathways twisting in and out of existence, probably leading to places beyond her comprehension.

  The sense of being inside something completely alien grew stronger as she realized what was missing. There was no sound at all within the city, not even the chirping of flying birds. She couldn’t see any living thing at all, apart from the team.

  One of the buildings, a giant pyramid, was covered in strange pictures, none of them very pleasant. One showed an elf tormenting a group of humans, the second showed a strange hybrid between human and animal and the third showed an elf being strangled to death by a hangman’s cord. She looked away for a heartbeat, then looked back; she realized in horror that the elf in the third picture had moved slightly.

  Could that picture be real? Or was it just a twisted form of artwork? There was no way for her to know.

  A second building seemed to be built from mirrors. Emily looked into it and saw her reflection looking back at her, just before her reflection twisted and started to change. She saw herself wearing a ballroom gown and smirking, rather like Alassa before she’d been shocked into changing her ways, before the gown became rags and she found herself on her knees. The image blinked out of existence a moment later, only to be replaced by a black-suited Emily carrying a gun in one hand and a small computer in the other. And then there was a version of her with vampire fangs, wearing a gothic outfit that she wouldn’t have touched in a million years...

  Emily stumbled back in shock.

  “We don’t know what that building does,” Miles offered. The Sergeant didn’t seem surprised by her reaction. “One of the Professors from Whitehall believes the Faerie could see into alternate worlds and show us what we might have been, if we’d grown up in a different world. Another believes that it merely shows us nightmares from our own minds. There’s no way to tell the difference.”

  “Yeah,” Emily said, glancing back at the mirror. She saw a tall sorceress carrying a wand, her face twisted in a permanent sneer. It took her a moment to realize that it was her, just with different hair and wearing a dress that made the gothic outfit look reasonable. Maybe if she’d allowed Alassa to corrupt her instead of trying to change the Princess ... or was it her future, if she kept playing pranks and abusing her powers? “Can ... can just anyone use it?”

  “Anyone who comes here can use it,” Miles said. “But very few people come to the city.”

  Emily could see why as they walked through the remainder of the complex. It was eerie, so eerie that she would have run away long ago if she’d been alone. It was deserted, yet she sensed she was being watched at all times. Some of the doorways gaped invitingly, suggesting that she could follow the Faerie to wherever they’d gone after being defeated by humanity. And yet she had the feeling that following them would be the worst thing she could do.

  The next part of the city was a strange pool of shimmering liquid. It felt dangerous, even though she couldn’t put a finger on why; it was a relief when Harkin ordered them to stay away from it. Perhaps there was something lurking in the liquid, or perhaps it was something far more dangerous than any human could comprehend. She was reluctant to turn her back on it and, as they all headed back towards the open square in the centre of the city, she saw that the others had the same reaction.

  The city was a place of nightmares.

  She could have asked if the Sergeants knew what the pool was, but she didn’t want to know.

  “The Faerie used to bring humans here for their amusement,” Harkin said. Somehow, even his voice sounded tinny and weak in the Dark City. “They would play with their captives, controlling their every movement–or throw them to the monsters they developed in their secret laboratories. Each death made the Faerie laugh. They sucked up souls and stored them for later use. And when the Faerie were finally defeated, the souls were completely destroyed, just out of spite. They were not allowed to pass on to the next world.”

  Emily shivered. She’d never been very religious, but even she had problems accepting the thought that something could destroy a soul.

  Or could it? Perhaps the Faerie had been wrong and they’d held nothing more than an impression of each person they’d killed, their souls going onwards to the next world. But if ghosts existed in this world, did that mean there was no afterlife?

  The thought bothered her as they explored the remainder of the city. No human was comfortable with the thought of their existence being completely terminated. Even the idiots who blew themselves up for political reasons believed in an afterlife where they would be rewarded by God for their suicides. But if their lives–and all that they were - just stopped when they died ... the thought was awful.

  What if there was no afterlife?

  Maybe it was fear of discovering that death was truly the end that drove necromancers to suck out life and mana from their victims. They knew that they would vanish when they died.

  And if there was no afterlife, no judgment, why not indulge yourself as much as possible?

  Emily had been horrified when Alassa had frozen
the maid, believing it to be an abuse of power as well as an unprovoked attack on an innocent. Alassa hadn’t really understood Emily’s point, because her culture said that the lower classes were there for the use of the upper classes. But if there was no final judgment, then who was to say which system of morality was right?

  Perhaps there was no such thing as morality in the first place. All they had was the delusion that they had a working system.

  She was still mulling over this question when they started to clamber down out of the Dark City and back towards where they had left their tents. As before, the Sergeants gave the forest a wide berth, even though they had told their students that it was safe. Emily allowed herself to wonder if they had their own reasons for avoiding it, or if they were just trying to keep the students aware of possible dangers. It was a more productive thing to wonder about than the existence–or non-existence–of souls.

  “There are creepier places to visit,” Miles said, in answer to a question from Jade. “You may be lucky enough to visit Ashfall one day. A necromancer died there, fifty years ago, and the land is still screaming.”

  “No one wants to go there,” Harkin added dryly. “What about the Desert of Death?”

  Emily looked at him. “The Desert of Death?”

  “Rumor has it that an immensely powerful witch was beaten to death there for daring to fall in love with the wrong man,” Harkin informed her. “Which does, of course, raise the question of how she was killed in the first place, if she was so powerful.”

  Harkin snorted. “When she died, she cursed the entire land to wither and die. The land became barren within a year, and the entire population had to flee. I think many of them became slaves in the nearby countryside because there was nowhere else to go.”

  “That’s one story,” Miles said, with a shrug. “Another one is that the local lord was experimenting with necromancy and it all went horribly wrong, or more horribly wrong than normal, seeing that no experiments with limited necromancy ever end well. Somehow, and no one knows how, he drew the life out of a hundred square miles around his castle, wiping out his subjects, their livestock and every plant in the area. The entire country became a desert afterwards.”