Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (11 page)

He looked up. His father had told his children
never
to perform a spell unless they knew what it did – or at least what it was
meant
to do.

“It’s harmless,” Elaine assured him. She must have known what he was thinking, but then it
was
a standard safety precaution. “You can cast it without needing to worry.”

Johan hesitated, then muttered the words and performed the gestures. Nothing happened.

“Maybe I need a wand,” he said, despondently. His second try was no more successful than his first. If he had true magic, why didn’t it work properly? Surely none of his siblings had had so many problems. “Can I get one?”

Elaine snickered, although Johan didn’t see the joke. “I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret,” she said, dryly. “You
don’t
need a wand to perform magic.”

“I know that,” Johan snapped, feeling a flicker of anger. “But all my family have wands ...”

“They’re nothing more than focusing devices,” Elaine said. “I know, I know, the wand-makers tell you that you need a specific wand. But it’s just a trick to convince people to buy the most expensive wand they can afford. You could cast a spell using a pencil if you tried.”

Johan couldn’t help himself. He started to laugh. Jamal had been
delighted
with his wand, which had gold and silver worked into the wood; he’d boasted endlessly for
months
after he’d bought it. The thought of using a pencil as a wand ... it was hilarious. Jamal might as well have saved the fifty gold he’d spent on it.

“It’s a con,” he said. “Why do they ...?”

“Money,” Elaine said, dryly. “Why would anyone spend twenty gold on a wand when they could take a stick off a tree and use that instead? As long as there isn’t any iron in the wand, anything would do.”

She leaned forward. “The spell is designed to cool the air,” she said, shortly. “I want you to cast it again.”

Johan looked down at the instructions, trying to see how they actually worked. But it seemed impossible. Spell-crafting, according to his father, was immensely complicated and difficult. Very few people had the mindset to create truly new spells ...

Shaking his head, he raised his hands and cast the spell for the third time.

The temperature plunged rapidly.

Chapter Nine

Elaine cursed her own mistake as she felt the protective wards
scream
in her head. She’d assumed that Johan’s problems with the light spell had stemmed from inexperience, not something inherent to his newfound powers. The fact he hadn’t been able to cast the spell without knowing what it did should have warned her. Most magicians could cast a spell without understanding it – that was why they were cautioned not to cast spells without knowing what they actually were – but Johan was clearly an exception to the rule.

She cast a warming charm as her teeth began to chatter, silently grateful that the library’s wards were designed to minimise the effects of rogue magic. They were also far more powerful than the ones protecting the hospital. If they hadn’t been, a simple cooling charm would have frozen them both to death. A spell designed for a homemaker would have killed them ... the irony would have amused her, if she’d had a chance to meditate on it. Instead, she had to deal with the results of her experiment ...

“Cancel the spell,” she ordered, sharply. The spell shouldn’t have lasted long, but Johan’s magic might keep it going. She’d written restrictions into the spell that Johan might have left out, quite by accident. “Tell it to fade away!”

Johan stared at her, clearly unsure of what to do. Elaine held his eyes, silently willing him to concentrate and, a moment later, the temperature began to rise. She cancelled her own charm and smiled weakly at Johan, who seemed equally stunned. In hindsight, perhaps they should have looked at cancelling charms first.

You wanted to experiment
, she told herself.
Idiot
.

“That ... was interesting,” she said, out loud. She concentrated, sending out a specific request to the library’s wards. “You seem to break some of the known laws of spell-casting.”

She looked up as a pair of mugs floated into the room. “Take this,” she ordered, picking one of them out of the air and passing it to Johan. “You need something to warm you up.”

It wasn’t uncommon for magicians to hurt themselves, but none of the books in her head suggested that a magician had managed it with such a simple charm. She took her own mug and sipped the hot chocolate gratefully, wondering if they would ever be able to control Johan’s magic. The wards around the compartment hadn’t been damaged as badly as the ones in the hospital, but it was clear that there
had
been some damage. Luckily, the library was already regenerating the wards.

“Thank you,” Johan said. The gratitude in his voice bothered her. Hadn’t anyone been nice to him in the past? “What happened?”

“I think that your problem isn’t too much power,” Elaine said, carefully. “I think your magic is ... different.”

There were legends, the books had told her, of magicians who seemed to break all known laws of magic. The seventh son of a seventh son, a magician with multiple lives, a dark wizard who split his soul into seven separate pieces, an enchanter who aged backwards, growing younger as he grew older ... but none of them had ever been substantiated. Large magical families were the norm, yet the seventh-born had never seemed to have any real advantage over his siblings ... and Johan was the third-born, not the seventh.

And he’d seemed powerless. Until now.

Johan looked both delighted and terrified. “What ... what does that mean?”

“It means that you need to be tested,” Elaine said. Logically, Johan’s gift couldn’t be
too
different from hers ... could it? “And that we need to figure out how to train you to control your magic.”

She finished her hot chocolate, thinking hard. “Time for another test,” she said, once he had put his mug aside. She took the notebook back, turned a couple of pages, then passed it to him. “Cast
that
spell.”

Johan muttered the words, but – as Elaine had expected – nothing happened.

“It looks as though you need to know what you’re trying to do to actually make it work,” Elaine said, as Johan looked disappointed. “I want you to try something else.”

That was ...
odd
, but it could have been worse. She’d feared that his magic would be driven by emotion ... and
that
was the short route to madness and dark wizardry. Sure, emotion could power spells, but the price for that was becoming far too attached to that emotion, which might be anger or hatred. Madness would beckon and the magician would be too far gone to notice.

Some trainee magicians were allowed to practice on each other, but Elaine had a feeling that would be very dangerous, at least until they had a better handle on how Johan’s powers actually
worked
. If a lighting charm and a cooling charm had produced near-lethal results, what would a levitation charm do, let alone a transfiguration spell? She had a mental vision of the unhappy student being slammed into the ceiling at terrifying speed, and shuddered. Most of the transfiguration spells would be worse than lethal ...

She crossed her legs and sat, as comfortably as she could. “Sit in a manner you find comfortable,” she ordered. Surprisingly, he knelt back on his haunches. Elaine frowned, wondering if he’d been treated like a servant – or a slave – and then remembered that his family worshipped a god that demanded kneeling as part of the rites. “I want you to close your eyes and listen for your heartbeat.”

The comforting sound of her own heartbeat echoed in her ears as she cleared her mind. It was a basic exercise, one she’d been taught in her first year at the Peerless School ... and one of the few exercises that she’d mastered before Millicent and her cronies. It didn’t require magical strength; rather, it required an awareness of one’s own mind and how best to calm it down.

“Focus on your heartbeat,” she ordered, trying to split her attention between her own mind and issuing instructions to him. She honestly had no idea how her tutor had managed to teach an entire class when sinking into her own mind had to be a colossal temptation. “Listen to it pounding inside your chest. And then see if you can touch your magic.”

It was there, shimmering throughout her body. Elaine felt ...
aware
of it, aware of the raw power ... and the faint, almost imperceptible dark sheen that hung over her magic like a cloud. Heat seemed to stab through her eyes, only to vanish moments later, leaving her grimly aware that it was still there. No matter how often she washed, she knew, part of her would always feel unclean.

“Focus,” she said, forcing herself to remain awake. She’d often slipped fully into the trance in the past, using the exercise to merge fully with her magic. “Concentrate on your magic.”

“I
can’t
,” Johan said. The frustration in his voice was enough to bring him out of the trance, if he’d ever been in it. Boys tended to have a harder time picking up the skill than girls, which often led them to underestimate the value of the exercise. But without it, their magic would be dangerously crippled. “What am I supposed to do?”

Elaine opened her eyes. Johan’s eyes were squeezed shut.

“You’re trying too hard,” she said, reaching out to take his hands. He jumped at her touch, his eyelids flying open. Had no one touched him before? How many people, Elaine thought, had refused to even
talk
to a Powerless, for fear that it might prove contagious? It might have been kinder to send Johan to an orphanage. “Relax.”

She talked him through it again, careful not to close her own eyes. Johan relaxed slightly, although it was clear that he still had his doubts. Elaine wasn’t too surprised. She was so practiced that it was hard for her to remember just how difficult it had been at the start.

“I can hear my heartbeat,” Johan whispered. “But I can’t feel anything else.”

His magic is all in his mind
, Elaine thought. The standard exercises were focused on the heartbeat because magic ran through the entire body, but Johan’s magic was concentrated in his mind. For once, she found herself at a complete loss. All of the exercises she had been taught assumed that the magician was ... normal. Johan very definitely was
not
.

The exercises wouldn’t hurt, she knew. Mundanes used them too, even if they didn’t have magic. But they probably wouldn’t
help
.

“Open your eyes,” she ordered. “Unless you actually
want
to sleep.”

Johan grinned, embarrassed. “How often do people drop off while they’re practicing?”

Elaine grinned back. “It’s the one class in the Peerless School where you can fall asleep and not be punished for it,” she said. One of her tutors had had the nasty habit of firing hexes at any student foolish enough to fall asleep in her class. The others had normally just sent the offending student to the Administrator for punishment. “But you are expected to master the art before moving up to the next level.”

“Maybe you should tell me what the exercise is supposed to
do
,” Johan said. “If I need to actually
know ...
”

Elaine felt a hint of pride. Her student had figured something out for himself, despite an almost-complete lack of magical education.

“Magic flows through our bloodstream,” she said, then hesitated. “Well, a normal magician’s magic flows through her bloodstream. It’s why magicians heal so quickly from injuries and rarely catch diseases, among other things. The exercise is designed to allow you to make contact with your magic on a conscious level and direct it, both inside and outside your body. You could, for instance, tell it to heal you quicker – or channel it out deliberately.”

Johan hesitated, then scowled in understanding. “Jamal is never ...”

He broke off and started again. “But I couldn’t feel my magic,” he said, carefully. “What does
that
mean?”

“Your magic is concentrated in your brain, as far as I can tell,” Elaine said. She cast another diagnostic charm and studied the results. There didn’t seem to be any major change since the last time she’d checked him. “Nor does it seem to be spreading out through your blood. I may have to speak with some of my old tutors and ask for advice.”

“I see,” Johan said. Elaine rather suspected that he didn’t. Magical control was largely instinctive for young magicians. His siblings had probably had a great deal to unlearn when they’d gone to the Peerless School. “So what do I do with it?”

“I’m not sure,” Elaine admitted. She looked down at her hands for a long moment. “I would like to take a blood sample, for tests. Would you allow that?”

She saw the conflict on Johan’s face and felt a stab of guilt. Giving a blood sample away was dangerous for
anyone
, but it was hellishly dangerous for a magician, particularly an untrained one. Blood rites were either strongly controlled or very definitely illegal, with very good reason, yet dark wizards weren’t known for caring about the law. Even though he’d been a Powerless, access to Johan’s blood could have been used by a dark wizard to endanger his entire family.

“I want your sworn word that you will not let the sample be taken or used by anyone else,” Johan said, after a long moment. “As a magician, you can swear such an oath.”

“I would have to run the tests myself,” Elaine hedged. Johan had been told to be careful with oaths ... as had she, with far more reason. An oath sworn on her magic would have disastrous consequences if she broke it deliberately. But part of her didn’t want to share her experiments with anyone else. “Very well. I will swear.”

She made the oath, then used her wand to draw a small blood sample out of Johan’s arm. It was clear that he
didn’t
heal quickly, she realised, as she bottled the sample and stowed it away in her personal pocket dimension. Even Dread or Light Spinner would have had problems breaking in and, if they did, a second spell would destroy the interior, reducing the blood sample to worthless ash.

“It didn’t hurt,” Johan marvelled. “Why did it always hurt before?”