Schooled in Magic (30 page)

...The feeling of overwhelming confidence faded away.

Emily found herself struggling to hold the desk upright. Mistress Irene silently cast a moving charm and lowered the desk to the ground as Emily sagged and settled on the floor. She suddenly felt very tired. She had been unable to even question what she was doing under the
Berserker
spell; it hadn’t occurred to her that something was wrong. If she used that spell in combat, she might march right at the enemy convinced that they could do nothing to harm her.

For a long moment, she hovered on the edge of fainting. She could barely hear the tutor’s next words.

“Yes,” Mistress Irene said. “You see now. It is too dangerous to use without desperate need.”

E
MILY DIDN’T FEEL RIGHT FOR SEVERAL
hours after casting the
Berserker
spell on herself. Mistress Irene had tried to warn her, but the warning was pitifully inadequate compared to how she felt after leaving her mentor’s office. Emily was exhausted, completely drained, and yet ... part of her wanted to recast the spell.

To feel that inhuman confidence all the time... Cold logic told her that she had hurt herself just from a few short minutes of being under the spell; in some ways, she’d gotten off lightly. Emily could easily have damaged the tutor’s office–or worse. But cold logic seemed almost unreasonable compared to the thought of using the spell again.

No wonder, she told herself, that the
Berserker
spell was so dangerous. A magician could easily become addicted to the sensation.

The thought of addition was chilling. As a little girl, she’d tried to smoke ... and quickly discovered that cigarettes made her cough. Unpleasantly. But if she’d continued to smoke, she suspected, eventually she would have become addicted to the sensation and smoked a dozen a day, like some of the older girls she’d known back home. And there were people who drank all day and drug addicts who would steal from their grandmothers for one more hit and ... she shuddered as she realized the only person she would be stealing from would be
herself
.

Yes, the spell offered a chilling temptation. It was one that she had to resist. Because it would be too easy to become an addict and lose all control.

She stumbled back to her bedroom and collapsed on her bed, sleeping for several hours before she woke up, very early at five bells, the following morning. Neither Aloha nor Imaiqah seemed to have tried to wake her, which was probably fortunate. She’d been so drained that their efforts would only have given her a headache. Leaving them to sleep –she had no idea when either of them had gone to bed–she stumbled into the washroom. She inspected her face in the mirror and shuddered. She looked like an addict who had been forced to go cold turkey.

After washing her face, she stumbled back outside and noticed a small box someone had placed beside her bed. She’d been warned that it was a good idea to check for magical surprises before touching anything that looked out of place, but she was too drained to focus enough magic to cast even the testing charm. There didn’t
seem
to be any
mana
surrounding the box. Shaking her head, she pulled it open and saw what looked like several slabs of milk chocolate and a handwritten note suggesting that she eat all of the chocolate as soon as she woke up. There was no signature.

Sniffing the chocolate suddenly made her aware of just how ravenous she was, so she took a bite and chewed it thoughtfully. It tasted odd to her, sharper than the chocolate she’d enjoyed back home, although that could be nothing more than differences in production. As a kid, she’d been forced to do a project on making chocolate, which she’d thought would be interesting until she’d discovered that they weren’t going to actually
make
chocolate for themselves. Early chocolate, if she recalled correctly, had been sharper than modern hyper-processed chocolates. She couldn’t remember why.

The chocolate made her feel better very quickly, replenishing much of the energy she’d lost in casting the spell. Indeed, she felt as if she could recast the charm ...

Furiously, she shook that thought out of her head, cursing herself under her breath. That charm, she knew, would be a temptation until the end of her life. Worse, it was one that she would
have
to use from time to time, for perfectly legitimate reasons. It wasn’t as if she could thrust the knowledge out of her head and never find it again.

No
wonder
Mistress Irene had banned her from discussing it with the other students. Emily, at least, knew the dangers of addition. The other students wouldn’t know
anything
about the dangers of drugs, alcohol or smoking. Coming to think of it, did they even have tobacco?

If they don’t, Shadye will probably try to import it
, she thought as she dressed. It was funny how quickly she’d become used to wearing the robes, as well as the undershirt and the slightly itchy knickers. She found her essay in the pockets and glanced at it quickly, wincing at the handful of spelling mistakes. Back home, misspelling a word could lead to embarrassment; here, the consequences could be worse.
Who knows what kind of damage that could do
?

Leaving the other two to sleep, she walked out of the bedroom and down to the massive dining hall. It was almost deserted, apart from a pair of older girls and a handful of boys from the
Ken
teams, bulking themselves up before morning practice. A couple of them shot sharp glances at Emily, but the remainder ignored her completely, too busy arguing over tactics for the next game with one of the other schools. Emily had the impression that there was no such thing as tactics in
Ken
; the game seemed to go to the team that was better at reacting, improvising and cheating. Apparently, cheating was legal if the team got away with it.

Her own table was completely empty, unsurprisingly, but the chefs had food ready to go. Emily took a plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and bread, as well as a sauce that tasted like a strange combination of tomato and chili, and walked back to the table to eat in peace. She couldn’t deny that she was eating more at Whitehall than she’d ever done back home, but maybe it wasn’t too surprising. Magic cost energy and energy could be replenished by eating; indeed, she hadn’t seen any real fatties among the students at all. Even the least sporting of them still had to cast magic. She hadn’t put on any extra weight at all.

“But I’m telling you that Jolie has a weak spot,” one of the sporting boys said, loudly enough for her to hear him without straining. “I’ve watched every game and I’m telling you that he can’t tell the difference between a real ball and an illusion cast by another player. All we have to do is throw a real ball and a few illusions at him and he’ll be in the sin bin for
hours
!”

Emily rolled her eyes as she ate, listening to the argument without paying particular attention. Some things never changed, it seemed, and one of them was school sports. The jocks who were top of the social scale just for kicking a ball around considered themselves the best of the best, and were in for a nasty surprise when they graduated and discovered that playing football wasn’t considered a marketable skill. And they’d considered themselves God’s gift to girls ... she shuddered at the memory of her stepfather’s boasting, then pushed it aside. If he’d had as many conquests as he claimed, on or off the field, he would never have married Emily’s mother.

It might be different in a magical world, she told herself.
Ken
taught skills that might be desperately needed in wartime.

The dining hall was slowly filling up as she finished her meal and carried the plate to the collection hatch. Too many of the students were glancing at her and then trying to make it look as if they’d been looking at something else, enough to make her feel horribly exposed. How could they believe
all
the nonsense rumors about her that were spreading through the school? Half of them contradicted the other half, or were demonstrably incorrect. They thought that she was a Child of Destiny, or they were scared to death of her ... Emily shook her head as she walked out of the door and headed up to the library to get some reading done before first period.

Surprisingly, the day went quickly until the final two periods. Basic Charms was simple–this time, Lombardi had given them a complex spell that could be knocked down easily to a pair of components–and she actually managed to brew a working potion in Alchemy. She took the opportunity to ask Thande if they could create transfigured ingredients for alchemical research, ones that actually
relied
on having been touched by magic. Once she’d managed to explain herself, Thande had pointed out that it would still be an unreliable process. If a transfigured ingredient was different from a natural ingredient, and it was, trying to take advantage of it could be dangerous.

“And here we are again,” Harkin announced, when they reached Martial Magic. He stood in front of them, one hand tapping his baton against his leg. “I trust that you all managed to have a proper lunch before coming to the field?”

Emily nodded. A couple of students from the first class hadn’t eaten properly and regretted it very quickly. After that, they’d all learned their lesson; they should eat and sleep whenever they could, because they never knew when they might be in combat. Harkin often offered words of advice, wisdom passed down from soldier to soldier, that often turned out to be practical surprisingly quickly. He wasn’t just telling them stuff, but
showing
them as well. It was a far superior way to learn than anything she’d seen back home.

“Excellent,” Harkin said, once they had all nodded. “Now, the squads. There are twenty-four of you, so four teams of six. Let’s see, shall we?”

Emily winced as Miles stepped forward, lifting one hand to cast a spell. She’d always hated team selections back home, largely because the team captains always picked her last, along with the fat boys that everyone knew were useless in games. It had been a relief when they’d stopped picking her altogether, if only because she couldn’t bring herself to care who won and who lost. There was no way that could be important to her, not back home. But it would be important in Martial Magic.

Miles cast a row of lights into the air; red, green, blue and yellow. There was a moment where the lights stayed stationary in the air, then the lights flashed towards the students, splitting up so that there was one light floating over each head. Emily looked up and saw a red light hanging over her head, just like the one over Jade and four other students. She winced inwardly as she realized that she would be sharing a team with five older boys, all of whom would presumably know more magic than her. At least Aloha wouldn’t be dragged down by being on the same team as Emily.

“Divide into your teams,” Harkin ordered. Oddly, there was one girl per team. Emily couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. “You have ten minutes to learn about each other. I suggest you hurry.”

Jade waved to her as the line broke up and Emily walked over to him, slightly puzzled.
She
hadn’t known
anyone
until she’d come to Whitehall, but surely the others would know each other ... or perhaps not. Jade was sixth year: two of the others were fifth year and the remaining two were fourth year. They might not be aware of each other unless they happened to have a reputation, like Emily. She winced again, and then shook her head. At least it wasn’t a reputation for being a slut or a tease.

“My name is Jade,” Jade said. He sounded so serious that Emily found herself smiling helplessly. “My father was a Knight of the Allied Lands; my mother is a seamstress in Farfel City. I had hoped to become a Knight myself, but when I developed magic I was sent directly to Whitehall. And I am a Prefect.”

“Yes, I
know
,” one of the fourth year boys said. “Does that make you the leader?”

“I think we rotate the position of leader,” the other fourth year boy said. “That makes
much
more sense.”

Jade tapped his palm impatiently. “You can introduce yourself next. Who are you and where do you come from?”

Emily listened as Cat, Bran, Pillion and Rupert introduced themselves. Cat and Pillion, like Jade, were the children of soldiers, although Cat’s father was apparently a high-ranking General while Pillion’s father was a mystery. Bran and Rupert came from trading families and neither of them had expected to join the military until they’d been tested and told that they would do well in Martial Magic. Finally, Emily’s turn came and she hesitated. At least she now had a workable cover story.

“My guardian is an eccentric magician,” she said. It was true enough. She didn’t understand the relationship between Void and Whitehall–partly because no one seemed willing to talk about it to her–but Void
was
her guardian, standing in place of her parents. “He discovered that I had a talent for magic and sent me here.”

Which was true enough, she knew, in the same sense that one could call a werewolf a fur rug by leaving out most of the important details. Apparently, it wasn’t
that
uncommon for independent sorcerers to have servants, and Emily
could
have been the daughter of one of those servants, picking up magic from her mother’s master. Unspoken, it seemed, was the possibility that the sorcerer might have
been
her father. And it gave her a good excuse to be reluctant to talk about her origins, or being unsure of the correct etiquette, or simply being unaware of the fragile balance of power in the Allied Lands.