Schooled in Magic (14 page)

Emily nodded, slowly. She’d assumed, when she’d thought about it, that Professor Locke’s warning about the perils of missing history had eventually convinced older students to return to his class. But it did make sense; why should a genius student from the first year remain in a basic class if they could work at a much higher level?

Her head swam again and she started to retch, then cough. The world began to fade out around her ...

“Eat this,” Imaiqah ordered. She was suddenly much closer–had Emily blanked out for a long moment? “You pushed yourself too far.”

Emily took the food–it looked like fudge to her–and tasted it, before taking a bite and swallowing it as quickly as possible. There was a sudden surge of energy running through her body, one so powerful that she realized just how far she’d pushed herself–and just how worn she’d been afterwards. She should have gone straight to the kitchens to eat after freeing herself from the hex.

“Keep eating,” Imaiqah said. She passed Emily two more packets of food, which Emily devoured greedily. “And relax!”

She cleared her throat, and then returned to the original subject. “The basic classes teach the basics. You have to master them to proceed to the more advanced classes, and then–if you want–to follow a specialist path. If you don’t master the basics, you have to stay and repeat the class time and time again until you get it right.”

“I see,” Emily said. A thought struck her. “So I could move ahead to an advanced class now, without taking the basic class?”

“If you could pass the tests,” Imaiqah said. She looked up, her eyes wide. “
Could
you pass the tests?”

“Probably not,” Emily admitted. She shook her head, wondering how Imaiqah had managed to remain so sane, stuck in a school where she was very much a social outcast. “I’ll just have to learn as quickly as possible.”

Imaiqah nodded. “There’s a rumor going around that you’re a Child of Destiny,” she said. “Even
I
heard the rumor. Is that true?”

Emily froze. She thought hard. A dragon ... and now a rumor that she was a Child of Destiny. No
wonder
Alassa had been so interested in her, even though she hadn’t mentioned that particular issue to Emily when she’d been trying to bully her into her clique. Alassa’s parents would probably trade half of their kingdom for a real Child of Destiny who was willing to work for them. They might even have put pressure on Alassa to try to make friends with Emily.

“Not really,” Emily said, finally. She doubted that the literal truth would amuse anyone, least of all Alassa. Absently, she wondered just how much trouble she would have found for herself if her father had been named Fate. “I’m just a normal student -”

“- Who arrived on a dragon,” Imaiqah finished, with a grin. “Do you realize just how many social queens you embarrassed just by arriving on a dragon?”

Emily flushed. It hadn’t been
her
who’d summoned the dragon, let alone enrolled at Whitehall; indeed, she hardly seemed to do anything. She hadn’t chosen her parents, or to be kidnapped by Shadye - and Void had pushed her into attending the school rather than teaching her himself. Her status as a semi-Child of Destiny came from birth, rather than actually achieving it for herself. Alassa gloried in the accident of birth that had made her a Royal Princess; Emily found it rather irritating. Perhaps, if Alassa had been fawned upon from the day of her birth, it explained her vast sense of entitlement. Or perhaps she was just a silly girl with more magic than sense.

“I didn’t mean to do anything of the sort,” she mumbled. Who was spreading the rumors in the first place? Void? Or the Grandmaster? But why would they tell the students that one of their number was a Child of Destiny? The necromancers wouldn’t be the only adults who might want a Child of Destiny dead before she came into her own. “I’ll try and come on foot next year.”

Imaiqah giggled. “I came in a coach. It was the first time I’d ever left my home.”

Emily settled back and started to ask questions, trying to learn as much as she could about her new friend. Imaiqah freely admitted that she’d been born in Zangaria, which was–Emily guessed–at least partly why Alassa thought that she could push Imaiqah into doing her homework and other services. Her father had been a reasonably successful merchant with five children, enough that he’d been happy to allow Imaiqah to go to Whitehall when a travelling magician spotted her talent and offered her a scholarship. The description of life as a merchant’s daughter didn’t sound appealing, although Emily suspected that Imaiqah’s family were far more prosperous than the peasants in the kingdom. As far as she could tell, Zangaria was a near-absolute monarchy. That didn’t bode well for the Kingdom’s future, or for Imaiqah herself.

The door banged open and Aloha marched in, followed by two of her friends. One of them, Emily was surprised to see, was a teenage boy with an oddly freakish body, as if he’d tried to force himself to grow up faster and bungled the spell. His arms and legs were the size of a mature man, while his chest was still small and ill-proportioned. The other was a girl with hair so black that it seemed to absorb light, carrying a small cat in her arms. Emily was charmed until she saw the cat’s eyes. They were glowing with an eerie green light.

“You two - get out, now,” Aloha ordered. “Go play in the common room or something.”

Emily opened her mouth to protest, but Imaiqah caught her arm and tugged her out of the room before she could say a word. “She’s in charge of the room,” Imaiqah explained, as soon as they were outside the door. “She can order us out if she likes.”

“Huh,” Emily said. Alassa had been bad enough. This ... frustration burned through her mind, making it hard to think clearly. Humiliation warred with rage in her soul. Was everyone in the school a self-obsessed fool with magic to burn? “What gives her the right to do that?”

“She’s senior to us,” Imaiqah explained simply. “Where do you want to go?”

“The library,” Emily said. It was where she had meant to go before she’d become sidetracked talking to Imaiqah. “I want to see it for myself.”

“You should get something to eat first, something
proper
,” Imaiqah warned. “Those sugar bars don’t last very long.”

“And let Alassa have a chance to take another shot at us?” Emily asked. “We’d better go to the library first.”

The amulet glowed as they walked out of the sleeping compartment and into the main corridors. Emily allowed the light to guide them while she stared at the students thronging about. They still seemed to be busy, even though classes had officially ended for the day. But then, there was homework for some of the classes and probably activities that were carried out after regular hours. No doubt there were clubs and other such arrangements for students who might have gotten into mischief if they were left alone for too long.

A male student looked up and caught her eye, his stare boring into her skull. Uncomfortable with male attention, Emily looked away. Thankfully, he didn’t appear to want to follow them. She breathed a silent sigh of relief and forced herself to relax. This wasn’t Earth and those she feared were countless worlds away.

She could
feel
the building reconfiguring itself as they entered a new corridor, walking down towards a simple stone door at the far end. It slid open as they approached, revealing a massive room utterly crammed with bookshelves and books. Some of the books were chained to the shelves, with a handful of students standing and flicking through them, making notes on sheets of parchment. This world probably hadn’t invented the printing press: Emily wondered if she could deduce how to make one. It would reshape this world.

“Ah, the lady who came on a dragon,” a voice said. Emily turned to see a tall bald man, inhumanly thin, standing behind a desk. “We shall be expecting great things from you, young lady.”

“Thank you,” Emily said, flushing. Odd waves of magic seemed to shimmer just inside the library. “I ...”

Her voice tailed off as she realized that she didn’t have the faintest idea what to say next.

“Every book we have on dragons has been signed out,” the librarian informed her. “I haven’t seen so many books taken out since Professor Novus insisted that everyone read his autobiography before attending his classes. Those who actually wanted to attend his classes, that was. I think that most of them changed their minds after ploughing their way through the first two chapters.”

His gaze sharpened. “Books that rest freely on the shelves can be taken out for a week,” he added, in tones that suggested that he gave the same lecture to every student who entered his domain. “You may take out a maximum of six books at any time, although they must be returned at once upon demand. Books chained to the shelves may be consulted, but not borrowed without a signed permission slip from the Grandmaster. Books in the restricted section may only be consulted with a signed permission slip from a senior tutor. Talking too loudly, fighting, or attempting to remove books from the library without signing them out will result in an hour’s petrification.”

Emily blinked. “What?”

Imaiqah pointed a finger behind her.

Emily turned around and saw five statues standing there, all composed of grainy grey stone. She shivered as she realized that the statues were simply
too
perfect to be anything, but humans turned briefly into stone. As punishments went, it was terrifying. Were the victims aware of their own immobility inside their stony prisons? Could they still think, even as they waited helplessly for the spell to wear off?

“This is a library, not a place to pick fights,” the librarian said. “I suggest that you bear it in mind at all times.”

Emily nodded tightly and walked away from the desk, then headed towards the bookshelves.

Imaiqah and Emily passed through a second line of magic - a ward, she guessed–and silence fell immediately. Hardly any of the other students were talking; none of the talkers were speaking in anything above a whisper, even the ones who were poring over textbooks and trying to complete their homework. Having seen the statues, Emily could understand a certain reluctance to speak too loudly. She didn’t want to know what it felt like to be stone from the inside–and she was sure that none of the other students did either.

As a young child in school, she’d spent a term working as a volunteer in the library. She’d picked up enough to know that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as a librarian, although she’d had the impression that it wouldn’t be a bad job if she’d been allowed to bar all readers from her library. The system governing Whitehall’s library, however, seemed far more complex than the Dewey Decimal System she’d had to learn as a child. If indeed there
was
a system. None of the books seemed to be in any kind of order.

Imaiqah leaned close to her, close enough to whisper in her ear. “What are you looking for?”

Emily wasn’t sure herself. Half of the books didn’t have a title on the spine; half of the ones that did have a displayed title were so badly blurred that she couldn’t tell if it was simply the age of the manuscripts, or if some other magic was refusing to allow her to read them. For all she knew, Mistress Irene’s translation spell might not be working either. And those that were readable often didn’t make sense.
Blood and Guts and Magic. Charms for the Charming. Basic Mist and Misting. Madame Goatherd’s Basic Guide to Animal Magic. The Prisoner of Magic ...

“Self-defense spells,” Emily whispered back, finally. She didn’t dare speak any louder. “Something I–we–can use against Alassa.”

Imaiqah stared at her. “But ...”

“But nothing,” Emily whispered. She could understand why Imaiqah might not want to go looking for a fight–Alassa’s family literally ruled her country–but a fight might find Imaiqah anyway, whatever she did to avoid it. “We need to learn how to defend ourselves.”

Imaiqah nodded reluctantly and led her towards a different set of bookshelves. A number of books were clearly missing–there were gaps in the shelves–and the remainder were very well thumbed, suggesting that every student in Whitehall studied them from time to time. Picking up one of the unmarked books, Emily opened it and saw the title,
Basic Charms for Imbeciles.
She had to fight down a laugh, remembering the “whatever for dummies” books from back home, before turning to the next page. The first charm was one she already knew–the counter-charm that Mistress Irene had taught her–but the second was something new, designed to repel insects from the caster’s vicinity. Emily wondered, looking at the diagram, if the spell couldn’t be altered to sic insects on an unsuspecting victim.

There was no contents page or index, forcing her to thumb through it to look for interesting and useful spells. Some seemed completely pointless, unless she intended to take up hierology for a career, others appeared to be more adapted for domestic work than fighting enemies. She leaned over to ask Imaiqah if she could see any books that might be more practical. Imaiqah hesitated, then passed her another well-thumbed volume. The title,
Practical Jokes
, made Emily feel doubtful until she opened it to a random page and saw a spell for making an unwitting victim speak only in rhyme. She checked a second page and discovered a hex that caused its victim to lose control of their bladder.
That
was a terrifying thought.