The Zero Blessing

by Christopher Nuttall

  I heard a couple of gasps from the rear of the room. Sir Travis Mortimer was either a hero or a villain, depending on who you asked. A light wizard, or a dark magician. The saviour of the kingdom, or a vile traitor ... I’d read about him in school. Half the books had insisted he was the greatest man ever to live, while the other half had accused him of all sorts of crimes, including some that had only been considered theoretically possible and a few more he’d invented specifically. Writing about him would be fun, but which angle should I take?

  “That concludes the lecture,” Magistra Solana said. Half the class breathed a sigh of relief, which the teacher pretended to ignore. I probably wasn't the only one feeling headachy. It was only mid-morning, but it felt like afternoon. “We will now continue with our practical tests.”

  I groaned inwardly, even though I had the earrings and both rings on my fingers. I hated Magistra Solana’s practical tests. They were really nothing more complex than shooting hexes at each other, but I couldn't cast spells ...

  “Akin and Adamson,” Magistra Solana said, once we had moved into the next classroom. “Why don’t you take the lead?”

  Adamson looked pleased as he headed to the duelling circles Magistra Solana had drawn out on the floor. The combatants weren't allowed to get close to one another, but he didn't care. Akin didn't seem quite so happy, although I knew he was a powerful magician. I suspected Isabella bossed him around a lot. Magistra Solana counted to three as soon as the two boys were facing each other, then told them to start. Adamson had his first hex on the way a second before she finished the order.

  I watched, as dispassionately as I could, as they exchanged spells. Adamson was powerful, tossing off spells in rapid succession; Akin was blocking or dodging, rather than throwing back anything of his own. And yet, I couldn't help noticing that Adamson hadn't come close to scoring a hit. Each of his spells was either blocked or absorbed by the wards. He was draining himself at terrifying speed ...

  Akin smirked, then cast a single spell of his own. Adamson, caught by surprise, tried to raise his defences, but it was too late. He shrank rapidly, letting out a strangled cry as his arms and legs sprouted fur. A second later, a small dog was sitting in the middle of the duelling circle, barking loudly. Magistra Solana counted to ten, giving Adamson a chance to break the spell, then declared Akin the winner. He cancelled his spell as he strode back to the wall. I couldn't help noticing the look he shot at Isabella.

  He’s not as pushy as his sister, I thought. But he may be a more competent magician.

  “Very good,” Magistra Solana said. She gave Adamson a few more words of advice, then glanced from face to face. “Rose ... why don’t you and Zeya show us how it’s done?”

  Rose shot me a worried look, then stepped into the circle. She’d learned magic terrifyingly quickly, but Zeya had been honing her powers since her seventh birthday. I honestly wasn't sure why Zeya and her sister were so attached to Isabella. Perhaps their family had a secret alliance with House Rubén. I made a mental note to ask my father. It was certainly worth checking at some point.

  I watched as they traded spells, silently rooting for Rose. But Zeya’s greater experience in both casting and blocking gave her an advantage. I looked away as Rose blocked one hex, only to have another sneak through her protections. She yelped and clutched her eyes. A second later, she was frozen in place.

  “Zeya,” Magistra Solana snapped. “What have I told you about blinding hexes?”

  “Sorry,” Zeya said, unconvincingly.

  “Detention, this evening,” Magistra Solana said. She undid the hexes with a wave of her hand. “And you will write me five hundred lines for Friday. I will not blind my opponents in class.”

  I gave Rose a tight hug. I hadn't experienced the blinding hex very often - my father had flatly banned my sisters from using it, except in direct self-defence - but I hated it. Being blind, utterly unable to see ... it was a nightmare. I was more scared of it, really, than I was of being turned into a slug. I couldn't help myself.

  “Caitlyn,” Magistra Solana said. “Perhaps you and Alana could have a try.”

  I sighed as I stepped into the duelling circle. Behind me, I heard sniggers. It had always been disastrous before - all I could do was dodge - but this time ... maybe things would be different. Sadly, I couldn't leave the circle and punch her before it was too late.

  “Go,” Magistra Solana ordered.

  Alana took her time, waggling her fingers at me before throwing the first hex. I dodged it, keeping my eyes open for the second. She enjoyed watching me jump and dive, knowing my luck would run out eventually. But this time ...

  I triggered the ring. Rose’s protection spell, the one I’d stored in the gemstone, shimmered to life. The second hex splintered, then vanished. I heard someone clapping behind me, but I didn't dare turn my head to see who it was. Rose, perhaps. She was the only one who knew what I’d done.

  Alana’s eyes went wide. She’d just seen me use magic.

  I winked at her. She recovered and shot a freeze spell at me. I couldn't dodge in time.

  “Hah,” she said.

  “One,” Magistra Solana said. “Two. Three ...”

  I braced myself. If I was right, the spell shouldn't last more than a few seconds. And then ...

  The spell came apart. I waved my hand and triggered the second ring, grunting in pain as it flared with heat. Alana had no time to react before a freeze spell struck her. She was trapped.

  “One,” Magistra Solana said, again. “Two ...”

  She reached ten. Alana didn't move.

  “Well done, Caitlyn,” Magistra Solana said. There was a smattering of applause. I turned to see Isabella staring at me, dumbfounded. “That was a very effective spell. I’m glad to see you’re finally applying yourself.”

  “Thank you, Magistra,” I said. “I was lucky.”

  “It was a very well timed spell,” Magistra Solana said. She unfroze Alana with a gesture. “Full marks.”

  I smiled, pleased. But I wondered, deep inside, just how long I could keep up the pretence.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Is there any way we can get out of going to netball?”

  I shrugged as Rose and I made our way down to potions. My bag felt heavy. I’d crafted a couple of new Objects of Power, then charged them up with Rose’s help. But there was nothing - short of getting another set of detentions - that would save us from having to watch Isabella and her friends running around on the field. And I didn't want another set of detentions. I was already in quite enough trouble.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, tiredly. “We could bring books, couldn't we?”

  “I think they want us to watch,” Rose said. She smirked. “She might lose.”

  I shrugged. Isabella had been eying me oddly all day. She thought I was a zero ... and yet, she’d seen me use magic. But ... I wondered, suddenly, if she’d noticed I was wearing jewellery. It wasn't uncommon among young girls - Alana wore enough gold necklaces to keep a commoner family fed for life - but I hadn't made a habit of wearing anything. It got in my way when I was forging.

  And besides, I thought, it's easy to hex someone’s jewels.

  Magistra Loanda watched from her desk as we filed into her classroom, her face set in a dark frown that made me wonder just what had happened in the previous class. The air smelt faintly of smoke and one of the desks was missing. I spotted it a moment later, placed against the far wall. The entire wooden top, hardened to resist even the most unpleasant accidents, was charred and broken. I hoped that whoever had been sitting behind it had been quick enough to get out of the way before the explosion.

  The door slammed closed. Magistra Loanda rose and paced around the desk.

  “I should not have to tell you,” she said, “to be very careful when you bottle ingredients for later use. One particularly careless student was stupid enough to put Manticore Eyes in a bottle marked Gorgon Eyes. The resulting explosion was spectacular--” she waved a hand tow
ards the ruined desk “--and put seven of your fellow students, all fifth-years, in the infirmary. Two of them may have been crippled for life.”

  I shivered. Beside me, Rose looked pale.

  “As yet, I have been unable to identify the idiotic student responsible,” Magistra Loanda continued, after a chilling moment. I felt, more than heard, a feeling of guilt running through the room. “Everyone above third year is a potential suspect. They may be unaware, themselves, of just what they did. They may never know, they may never even suspect, that they are responsible for injuring seven other students. But I warn you, here and now, that if I catch any of you mislabelling ingredients or returning them to the wrong bottles, it will be the last time you ever set foot in a potions lab.”

  She looked around the class, her eyes lingering on me long enough to send icy shivers down my spine. “I will do everything in my power to have you expelled,” she added. “And I will report you to the Potioneers Guild. You will be blacklisted. No one will take you on, neither as a student nor an apprentice. Do not try me on this.”

  I swallowed, hard. If some of the victims were to be crippled for life ... some of the potion’s more dangerous ingredients must have been embedded in their bodies. They’d be enduring surges of raw power that would react badly to healing spells, preventing the healers from removing them. And that meant ...

  The opposite of my problem, I thought. I have too little magic and they have too much.

  Rose nudged me. “What does that mean?”

  Magistra Loanda had very sharp ears. “It means, young lady, that anyone who gets blacklisted will never be able to work with potions, ever again,” she said. “And it will ruin them for life.”

  I kept my face impassive. Magistra Loanda was right. The Potioneers Guild could and would blacklist someone for extreme carelessness. It was vaguely possible that the careless idiot in question would find a teacher who was willing to defy the guild, but he’d never be able to get any qualifications anyone would recognise. His best bet would be to leave the kingdom altogether, yet any nearby country would certainly check with our guild before offering him training. They wouldn't want him either.

  “You will all have an extension on your last piece of homework,” Magistra Loanda concluded. “This week, you will all write an essay on the importance of labelling your potions and their ingredients correctly.”

  She launched into a lecture, marching back and forth as she spoke. We scrambled for our notebooks, and started to take notes as she talked about more advanced potions that demanded careful handling. This one, apparently, was really two potions blended together, requiring no less than three infusions of magic. I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d been careful enough to prepare three stirrers, then hurriedly scribbled down the next set of detailed notes. Magistra Loanda was on the warpath, and no one wanted to catch her ire.

  At least they can't blame this on me, I thought, as the lecture finally came to an end. It wasn’t my fault.

  “You will all have a bottle of quelling solution beside you,” Magistra Loanda stated, pointing to the storeroom. “If there is even a hint of an explosion, you will dump the solution into the liquid and throw it away.”

  I nodded. It was wasteful, but I understood. Magistra Loanda didn't want another explosion.

  “This is going to be tricky,” Rose said, as we started to sort out the caldrons. “Timing isn't going to be easy.”

  “Start preparing both sets of ingredients first, then start brewing the first potion,” I said. The first potion needed an extra ten minutes before it reached the boil. “They have to start the cascade within two minutes of each other or we’ll have to throw them out and start again.”

  I pulled the wooden runic sheet out of my bag and placed it on the table, gemstone face-up, then went to get the ingredients. This time, there was no pushing and shoving. Magistra Loanda had scared us all into mute obedience. I found the containers we needed, carefully measured out enough for each of us, then checked the ingredients carefully. Everything looked to be in order.

  When I got back to the table, Magistra Loanda was studying the runic sheet.

  “What is this?”

  “An experiment,” I said. “It was something I devised in Forging to detect if the potion is about to explode. The surge of magic will cause the gemstone to glow, giving me a few extra seconds to jump under the table.”

  Magistra Loanda eyed me, suspiciously. “A skilled brewer would be able to sense the flare of magic.”

  “Yes,” I said. Thankfully, I’d anticipated the question. “However, this rune is considerably more sensitive than the average magician. It will give us a few seconds of extra warning.”

  Her expression darkened. “I trust you are not planning to blow up the caldron just to see if it works,” she said. “I would be most displeased.”

  “No, Magistra,” I said. “If nothing goes wrong, it should be fine.”

  She put the rune back down and headed off, moving from table to table. I breathed a sigh of relief, then started to sort out the ingredients. I hadn't lied to her, but I’d known she might want me to remove it. Potions tended to react badly to unexpected surges of magic and a rune, even an uncharged rune, could be dangerous. Clearly, she either thought it was worth trying or she believed it was harmless.

  And it is far more sensitive than I claimed, I thought. If, of course, the books were correct.

  “Remember to clean the nettle leaves individually,” I said to Rose. No one liked doing it, even with gloves, but unclean leaves could cause problems. “They have to go in one by one.”

  “Good thing she didn't look at the stirrers,” Rose told me. She reached for the bottle of dried fish eggs and started to spoon them into her caldron. “What would you have said then?”

  I shrugged. Making one’s own tools was a time-honoured tradition, although - much to the annoyance of my father - it was slowly going out of fashion. One got better results from tools one made, he insisted. Magistra Loanda had no legitimate grounds to forbid me from carving my own and bringing them into class, but she could make a fuss on the grounds that everything had to be standardised. She was, after all, the school’s Master Brewer.

  No one would accept that argument in Shallot, I thought, as I sliced the onions. But we're not in Shallot.

  Alana, behind me, let out a disgusted sound. I guessed she’d found the beetles she was supposed to dissect. I didn't like it either, even when the beetles had been killed peacefully rather than smashed with a hammer, but it had to be done. Some of the boys chuckled, only to quiet down rapidly as Magistra Loanda’s gaze moved across them. They thought it was gross, not disgusting.

  I smiled. I’d put beetle eggs in Alana’s bed, once. The scream had made the lecture I’d got from Mum worthwhile.

  “I think that’s everything ready,” I said, rereading the instructions one final time. It felt as though I was checking them again and again, but it was better to make entirely sure that I knew what I was doing. “Good luck.”

  I dropped the ingredients into the water, one by one. The liquid slowly started to turn apple-green, souring to light brown as I added more caterpillar legs. Rose looked to take it in her stride, but I could hear a couple of girls muttering their disgust. I rolled my eyes, wondering precisely which magician had thought that dissecting a beetle would lead to new and interesting potions. I’d wanted to be a researcher, once upon a time. That hope had died with my dreams of magic.

  But now you can do something new, I told myself, firmly. Or something very old.

  The second potion was less complex, but more fiddly. I counted the seconds as I added the ingredients, one by one. I’d watched my mother brew the potion years ago and she’d said it was very unforgiving. A loud hiss from behind me, followed by a small explosion, told me that someone hadn't been as careful. Isabella’s voice muttered a couple of nasty curses, followed by a grunt of pain. I guessed the hot water had splashed on her.

  “Detention, young lady,” Magistra Loa
nda said. “And you should just have enough time to start again.”

  I felt a flicker of sympathy, which I rapidly suppressed as two more potions exploded in quick succession. Bella was whimpering ... I turned and cursed under my breath as I saw greenish warts popping into existence on her dark face. She’d been unlucky - the nettle juice had mingled with the beetles before they’d exploded. Magistra Loanda checked on her, then ordered her to go to the healers. I hoped, as I turned back to my brew, that she'd be all right.

  “Nearly time to stir,” Rose whispered. “Do you want me to ...?”

  I shook my head, shortly. Magistra Loanda was keeping an eye on us, even though we hadn't caused any explosions. I didn't really blame her. The explosion we had caused had been far worse. And besides, I had to know if the stirrers worked. I took the first one out of my bag, followed by the other two. Hopefully, Magistra Loanda wouldn't look too closely. She might ask, quite reasonably, why I’d brought three stirrers ...