Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) (21 page)

But what did she want?

She mulled it over as she walked behind Lady Barb. A gentle man, she decided, someone clever enough to hold a conversation, yet also willing to give her time to herself. Jade wouldn’t be that kind of husband, she had to admit, not if the way he’d courted her was any indication. He would always want to be doing things with her; riding, swimming, exploring...and everything else. She would never be alone.

“This looks a good place to stop,” Lady Barb said, as they reached a large clearing. It didn’t look particularly natural. Someone had carved it out of the trees and then done something to ensure that nothing grew to replace them. “Set up the cauldron and make us some Kava.”

Emily realized, to her surprise, that her legs ached. How far had they walked? She nodded and set to work, while Lady Barb paced the clearing and set up a handful of wards, then strode back to her and watched as the Kava boiled. Emily poured it into a pair of mugs, blowing on the liquid to cool it down. Using magic to cool drinks never seemed to work quite right.

“So,” she said, as she took a sip. It always tasted better in the open air. “Why are we here?”

“Miles from anyone else,” Lady Barb said. The smile on her face took the sting from her words. “Good a place as any to practice some magic that cannot be performed in Whitehall.”

E
MILY COULDN’T HELP FEELING A FLUSH
of excitement as Lady Barb started to draw runes on the ground.

“The first time you tried to create a pocket dimension,” she lectured, “you tried to do it inside another pocket dimension. You were very lucky not to be expelled for gross stupidity.”

Emily winced, remembering Master Tor’s anger – and the dead Warden. Most students were given a list of things they shouldn’t try to do in Whitehall, but Emily had accidentally fallen through the cracks in the system. Void had assumed that the Grandmaster would teach her, she suspected, and the Grandmaster had overlooked the fact
Void
hadn’t taught her. And, as Master Tor had believed Void was her father, he had assumed that she was deliberately breaking the rules.

“This time, you shouldn’t have any external problems affecting your magic,” Lady Bar continued. “However, you should still be very careful. Pocket dimensions can be tricky things to create and maintain.”

She finished drawing runes, then reached into her bag and produced a handful of sticks, which she fitted together to make a square. Emily looked down at it in puzzlement, then realized that they were going to focus on the most basic pocket dimension design of all. There was no point in trying to run, she knew, before she could walk. The book Yodel had loaned her had skipped quite a few steps.

“The simplest form of pocket dimension is a bubble attached to an object,” Lady Barb continued. “They can be moved with the object, but not separated from it. Nor can they be easily accessed without the object. Should it be destroyed, the pocket dimension will collapse, blasting its contents outwards. Most dimensions have safety spells woven into their structures to prevent that from happening.”

Emily nodded. There were pocket dimensions that could be accessed from anywhere, or not bound to a particular object, but they were far more complex. Even the most powerful sorcerers, she’d been told, preferred to avoid them, if only because anyone with the right coordinates could get into the dimension. It was easier to carry a bag that was larger on the inside then risk losing one’s property.

“Sit down,” Lady Barb directed. She passed Emily the square, motioning for her to hold it up so she was looking through it. “Are you ready?”

Emily nodded.

“I want you to close your eyes and imagine that the interior of the square is solid,” Lady Barb said. “I want you to try to visualize the fabric of reality itself.”

Emily concentrated. It was easy to
imagine
a shimmering layer inside the square, like a soap bubble, but harder to convince herself that it was real. The pocket dimension would expand outside reality, just like a far smaller version of the TARDIS...or was she actually expanding the space inside the square? Not entirely to her surprise, the books hadn’t been too clear on what she was actually doing. There were entire fields of study that were unknown at Whitehall.

“Now,” Lady Barb said. “I want you to imagine the fabric expanding, becoming a bubble.”

Just like blowing bubbles
, Emily thought. She felt her magic shift in response, then fade again as her imagination faltered. The pocket dimension didn’t seem to be manageable without her constant attention and she couldn’t concentrate on anything for that long. She opened her eyes, just in time to see the light bending around the magic...and then the pocket dimension collapsed.

“Not too bad, for a first attempt,” Lady Barb said. She didn’t sound angry, merely calm and thoughtful. “Try again?”

Emily nodded and closed her eyes again. This time, the magic seemed to flow easier and, when she opened her eyes, she had the strange impression she was looking through a reversed telescope. It took her a moment to realize that light itself was actually bending around the dimension, distorting her perceptions. A moment later, the dimension snapped back out of existence. Emily rubbed her forehead and felt sweat prickling there. It might not feel like a huge effort, but it was definitely draining.

“Close enough, for the moment,” Lady Barb said. “The real trick is stabilizing it, then binding it in place.”

She rested a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Ready to try?”

Emily swallowed. Two years at Whitehall had helped her get casting basic spells down to a fine art. Where she’d once had to build the spells up piece by piece, she could now cast many of them with a thought. But now she would have to go back to first principles and start building the spell-structure up from scratch. And she would have to do it while maintaining the pocket dimension in place.

“Yes,” she said. She took out her notes and stared down at them, then closed her eyes. “I’m ready.”

It was, she decided, rather like building something that had to be anchored to the seabed. An open tube could be lowered to the bottom of the water, then the water could be pumped out and concrete poured into the tube. This time, the spells that held the pocket dimension together had to be placed, one by one, inside the dimension, each one forming part of a chain that was greater than the sum of its parts. Each spell was simple by itself, but the real trick was getting them to work together.

Her first attempt at splitting her attention failed miserably. One of her teachers on Earth had assured her, with a particularly nasty smile, that girls could do two things at once, but she couldn’t hold the dimension in place and assemble the spells at the same time. The second time, she managed to get two spells inserted before the dimension collapsed, striking her with a backlash from her own magic. Her hands tingled, forcing her to slap them against her thighs,

Crossly, she tried for the third time...and discovered that she could only get a handful of spells inserted before her concentration slipped. She honestly didn’t understand how Yodel had made something as complex as her trunk.

“Drink this,” Lady Barb said. “And then try to relax.”

Emily took the mug of water and sipped gratefully. She hadn’t realized how parched her throat had become until she drank. Lady Barb passed her a bar of sour chocolate and she ate it, wondering bitterly how Yodel managed to make a living. It was terrifyingly easy to manipulate dimensions with a nexus point – Emily knew that, better than anyone – but without one at her disposal she was just playing with sticks and stones. There had to be something she was missing.

“Figure it out,” Lady Barb said, mischievously. “You should
know
the answer.”

“I don’t,” Emily said, casting her mind back to recall what had been written in the books. None of them had suggested anything other than what she was doing...but she knew, from bitter experience, that some textbooks left out steps to force readers to actually comprehend what they were doing. She had to admit that they were quite effective at
that
, far better than anything she’d read on Earth. “The spells just don’t form...”

She swore under her breath as she made the connection. Mistress Sun had taught her how to prepare spells ahead of time, nestling them within her wards. There was no reason why she couldn’t do the same with the spells for the pocket dimension, apart from the fact that she would have to push them away from her wards and into the dimension rather than simply triggering them. She explained her breakthrough to Lady Barb and was rewarded with a brilliant smile.

“Good thinking,” Lady Barb said. “Try it.”

Emily picked up the square again, then put it on her lap as she built up the dimensional spells, one by one. They were actually simpler than most of the spells she’d lodged within her wards before, something that actually worked in their favor. The more complex a spell, the more likely it was to degrade rapidly over time. Once she was ready, she picked up the square, concentrated on the dimension and thrust her spells forward, into the growing bubble. There was a flare of magic as the bubble tried to collapse, but found itself firmly anchored in place. And yet it still wasn’t right...

“The spells aren’t chained together perfectly,” Lady Barb said. She held up a hand before Emily could banish the dimension and start again. “But you should be able to modify them without collapsing the dimension.”

Emily reached out with her magic...and realized, once again, just how skilled Yodel actually was. She’d tampered with her trunk on the road to Zangaria, damaging the spells that held it together, yet it hadn’t collapsed or exploded.
Her
dimension was nothing more than a bubble of space and yet she was nervous about touching anything. The slightest movement could collapse the entire dimension into nothingness. It took her several minutes to lock each of the spells in place...

“Good enough,” Lady Barb said. “The walls of the dimension are anchored firmly in place.”

Emily opened her eyes and looked. Inside the square, she could see a thin grey space, oddly disconcerting to her eyes. She’d never really seen the raw material of her own trunk, even when she’d been trying to work out a way to safely retrieve her books without releasing the Cockatrice. And the dimension she’d tried to craft at Whitehall had been neutralized by the wards before she’d had a chance to see inside it.

Her eyes hurt suddenly as she stepped backwards, one eye seeing the trees at the edge of the clearing while the other looked into the dimension. She understood, suddenly, just how confused the Doctor’s companions had been when they’d opened the TARDIS doors for the first time. The police box was tiny, but inside was an entire universe...it was difficult, somehow, to reconcile the two. Human understanding found it hard to grasp that an object could be bigger on the inside than the outside.

Perhaps it’s easier for the people here
, she thought.
They’re used to magic
.

“This dimension won’t last
that
long,” Lady Barb warned. “You’d probably need to carry it with you or make sure it could draw a trickle of power from the ambient magic in the air.”

Emily nodded. She’d have to draw runes around the square...how the hell had Yodel done it? She hadn’t seen runes on her trunk.

“Part of the stasis charm holds the trunk secure,” Lady Barb told her once Emily had asked. “As long as that’s in place, the decay is minimized.”

Emily took one last look into her dimension, before she put the square down on the ground. Someone could fall right
inside
, she told herself a moment later. A hidden pitfall...she’d seen something like it when Shadye’s forces were besieging Whitehall. But she couldn’t leave it indefinitely.

“No,” Lady Barb said, when she asked. “You’ll have to dispose of it, then start again.”

The next two hours were spent creating, dissolving and recreating the pocket dimension. Like all magic, it grew easier the more she practiced, although there were hitches every time she tried to make the spells holding the dimension together more complicated. Emily remembered her notes for a dimensional shelter and realized it might be months before she could perfect the technique, if she could perfect it at all. She wasn’t even sure what it would be like to hide in a pocket dimension. Technically, she’d done just that at Whitehall, but Whitehall was special. The entire castle rested inside a pocket dimension.

“That’s what they do for certain prisoners,” Lady Barb said. “They craft a pocket dimension and toss the prisoner inside. No one, not even the most powerful magician, could break out without help from the outside. Inside, there’s nothing to mark the passage of time and so they lose track of how long they’ve been imprisoned.”

Emily felt her blood run cold. That was close – alarmingly close – to what she’d done to Shadye. A normal pocket dimension couldn’t be snapped out of existence, along with its contents, but she’d used the nexus to erase Shadye from existence. Under the circumstances, she was surprised that no one had ever guessed the truth – or tried it for themselves.

She pushed the thought aside. They
knew
that a collapsing pocket dimension would expel its contents back into the world. It was quite possible that they wouldn’t accept that could be changed. Besides, without the nexus, it would be impossible to repeat the feat.

A thought struck her. “How do they eat and drink in such a place?”

“They don’t,” Lady Barb said. “The spells keep them alive, no matter how hungry they become. It’s torment.”

Emily shuddered. There were spells that kept someone awake and reasonably active, but they came with a cost. She’d used one once, during a cramming session before the exams, and started to hallucinate after a few short hours. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. The lecture she’d received from Mistress Irene had been even worse.

“I need to see what it’s like to be inside,” Emily said, pushing the thought aside. She wasn’t sure why, she just wanted to know. “Can you hold it open for me?”