Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (3 page)

Emily nodded and cast the counterspell. Bernard looked astonished as he reverted to human form, his face pale and wan. A lingering greenish tone hung over his skin for long seconds after the spell faded back into the ether. He would have been trying to break free, Emily knew. If he had no experience with pranking spells—the spells Emily had learned in her first year of studies—he might assume that his mind was on the verge of sinking into the frog’s and being lost forever.

“I am sorry for doubting you,” Bernard said. He stood upright, then held out a hand. Emily shook it firmly. “And you are clearly a great magician.”

“A useful lesson, young man,” Whitehall said. “You are strong, but your training is far from complete.”

Emily kept her thoughts to herself as Whitehall turned towards the gaping door. Bernard, at least, didn’t seem to bear a grudge. But then, Sergeant Miles had told her she might have to fight to prove herself, if she was dumped in with the men. Beating a man fairly would work far better, he’d said, than whining to his superiors. The former would earn respect, the latter would breed resentment.

She rubbed the side of her head as she followed Whitehall, Bernard falling into step beside her. Her head hurt, a dull ache that was making it hard to think. She’d been awakened in the middle of the night, after all. She needed to sleep, to rest and figure out a way home before she accidentally tore a hole in history and erased her friends from existence.

And hope I can survive here long enough to find a way home
, she thought, grimly.
This isn’t the Whitehall I know
.

I
F THE HISTORY BOOKS WERE TO
be believed, Emily recalled, Whitehall Castle predated the Whitehall Commune by at least two hundred years, perhaps longer. No one knew who had built the castle or why, let alone what it had been called before Whitehall arrived, but it was clear that the multidimensional interior had come later. Old Whitehall looked like a darker, grimmer version of King Randor’s castle: stone walls, no windows, empty rooms or sealed doors. The passageways were hauntingly familiar, yet all the details were gone. There was so much dust and grime on the floor that they left trails as they made their way up to the Great Hall. The only source of light was burning torches, which hung from the walls and added an unpleasant stench to the air.

“Stay on the beaten track,” Whitehall called back, without looking around. “We found hundreds of traps scattered throughout the castle. Clearing a path down to the nexus chamber took a week.”

Emily nodded, silently grateful he couldn’t see her face. She would have been fascinated with the castle if she hadn’t been tired and hungry. Her headache was refusing to fade, while her stomach insistently reminded her that she hadn’t eaten for hours. She had to concentrate to keep walking, unwilling to show weakness in front of either of the men. Bernard didn’t seem to like the idea of women learning magic—at least, he didn’t like it now—and Whitehall was a hero. But then, just how much of what she knew about him in the future was false, based on half-remembered stories and outright lies? Professor Locke, for all of his research, had never had a clear idea of just how much his idol had actually done.

He’d love to be here
, Emily thought.
She’d
love it too, if there was a way home.
The chance to actually meet the ancients in person ...

Whitehall tossed questions at her as she walked, asking if she knew the name of any of the local kings or warlords—or magicians. Emily was quietly impressed—if she’d been telling the truth, it would have allowed him to deduce how long she’d been trapped in the nexus point—but she pleaded ignorance on all such matters. She was a peasant girl, after all; a peasant girl would not be expected to know the name of the king, not when she would probably never leave her home. Whitehall seemed to understand her ignorance, although it was hard to know what he thought. She could only hope that he’d accept her story without asking too many more questions.

They stepped through a stone archway and into the Great Hall. Emily stopped and stared in disbelief at the scene before her. This—
this
—was the Whitehall Commune? Dozens of people—men, women and children—sitting on the stone floor, their eyes going wide as they looked up and saw Emily. Their clothes were ragged, their faces were dirty ... it looked like a refugee camp, not the start of a brand new era. She couldn’t help noticing just how many of the people before her were scarred, a handful nursing broken bones or walking on wooden legs. Healing—true Healing—had come later. The thought made her feel sick.

She sucked in a breath and instantly regretted it. The Great Hall smelled worse than the slums she’d seen outside Swanhaven, a year in her past and nearly a thousand years in their future. Too many people in too close proximity, too little washing ... she looked towards a makeshift tent and shuddered, inwardly. Whitehall had been the cleanest place in the Allied Lands, by her reckoning; she was, perhaps, the only student whose living conditions had degenerated after moving to the school. But that, too, was in the future. A handful of children—she thought they were five or six years old—had pockmarked faces, while most of the adults looked almost painfully thin. Disease and deprivation had to be rife.

They’re running
, she thought, shocked.
And they’re on the brink of starvation
.

They stared back at her, their faces torn between hope and fear. The women, in particular, seemed to find it hard to look at her, even though she caught them glancing at her when they thought she wasn’t looking. Several mothers even caught their children and pulled them away from Emily, while a number of young men stared at her as if she was a vision from heaven. It struck her, suddenly, that she was the cleanest person in the room, even though her nightdress had picked up a great deal of dust and grime. And if women weren’t allowed to study magic, the young men might not know how to relate to her at all.

“Wait here,” Whitehall ordered, nodding to a small campsite. Someone had set up a fire for warmth, adding to the smell. Emily hoped they had good ventilation within the castle, although it seemed unlikely. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Emily sat, crossing her legs and wishing—desperately—that whoever had pulled her out of bed and lured her down to the nexus chamber had thought to make her get dressed first. The nightdress was surprisingly decent, compared to some of the garments Imaiqah had worn during her time at Whitehall, but she was still underdressed compared to most of the women in the hall. They wore several layers of clothing apiece, judging by the way their garments bulged in odd places. Were they trying to cover themselves, or were they merely trying to stay warm? It had been cold, down in the nexus chamber. It might well be cold in the upper levels too.

And I don’t even know the time
, she thought, grimly.
It could be the middle of the night for all I know
.

Whitehall had walked over to a handful of men—she recognized four of them from the chamber—and was chatting with them in a low voice, too low for her to hear anything more than a couple of words. She briefly considered trying to cast a spell to make it easier to overhear their conversation, but she knew there was a very good chance she’d get caught trying. The tutors at Whitehall—
her
Whitehall—wouldn’t be amused if someone tried to spy on them, and she dared not assume that Whitehall was any different. His commune had no reason to trust her.

I did help them tame the nexus point
, Emily reminded herself, as Whitehall beckoned a young woman to join the group.
Surely they’ll want to keep me around
.

She settled back—Bernard had headed off to join a couple of other young men—and studied the Great Hall. It seemed to be no smaller than the hall she remembered from the future, but the walls were nothing more than bare stone, save for a handful of runes carved just below the ceiling. She didn’t recognize them from her studies, but she did recall seeing a couple just like them in the tunnels below Whitehall. The fireplace was gone—no, it hadn’t been built yet. Her head swam as she tried to grapple with the implications. It was hard, so hard, to know just how much she knew about the castle might still be relevant.

A young woman walked towards her, carrying a bowl in one hand and a mug in the other. Emily looked up and frowned as the girl stared at her, her face torn between fear and ... and a kind of awe that she’d seen on peasants, back in Cockatrice. The girl was strikingly pretty—she had soft blonde hair and blue eyes that shone, despite the dirt and grime on her face—yet there was a hardness to her that chilled Emily to the bone. This was a girl who had seen terrible things.

“This is all we have,” the girl said, as she passed the bowl to Emily. “Father”—she nodded towards Whitehall—“bids you eat.”

“Thank you,” Emily said. Her mind reeled. Whitehall had a daughter? There was no mention of any
children
in the texts, as far as she could recall. But a daughter might go unrecorded. She smiled at the girl, forcing herself to be friendly. “I am called Emily. What are you called?”

“Julianne,” the girl said. She stepped backwards. “I must go.”

Emily watched her go, then turned her attention to the bowl. It contained something that resembled stew, although it didn’t smell very appetizing. But then, some of the meals Sergeant Harkin had concocted hadn’t smelled very appetizing either. He’d insisted that skunks could be eaten, when wandering travelers couldn’t catch and butcher rabbits. And yet, she’d been able to eat his food without stomach cramps afterwards.

She used a spell to test the stew, just to make sure it was safe to eat, then started to eat with her fingers. The food tasted little better than it smelled, as if it had been cooked for so long that all the flavors had merged into sludge, but she was too hungry to care. She wolfed it down with her fingers, then checked the water. Her spell warned her that it was far from pure, so she used a third spell to purify it before taking a long gulp. The food made her feel somewhat refreshed as Whitehall finally separated himself from the other magicians and walked back towards her. She started to rise to her feet, but he motioned her back down. He sat, facing her.

“We don’t know when you entered the castle,” Whitehall said. He sounded tired, as if he’d pushed himself right to the limits of his endurance. “And we have no idea what happened to your family.”

“Neither do I,” Emily said, truthfully.

Whitehall shrugged. “We are grateful for your help,” he added, after a moment. His daughter brought him a mug of water and he sipped it gratefully, without using any magic to cleanse the water. “We would not have survived the day without you.”

Emily nodded. She’d had no time to analyze the spells they’d been using, but it was clear that they’d been on the verge of losing control completely. And once they lost control, they wouldn’t have had a hope of surviving more than a few seconds. There were horror stories about what happened to people who lost control. The surge of wild magic would have killed everyone in the castle.

“Still, we don’t know what to do with you,” Whitehall added. “Some of my ... companions are proposing that you should be sent out of the castle. Others ... think you should join the women.”

That’s gratitude for you
, Emily thought, darkly.

The thought made her scowl. She couldn’t afford to leave the castle, not when the nexus point was probably her only hope of getting home. And yet, it didn’t
look
as though the women were treated as equals. She was damned if she was allowing herself to be bossed around like a servant. But what could she do? She could hide—probably—but it wouldn’t give her any time to plan a way home.

“I have decided to offer you a provisional apprenticeship, at least for the moment,” Whitehall said, after a moment. “You are clearly a trained magician, despite being a young woman.”

Emily nodded, relieved. Whitehall would be foolish to simply let her go, after she’d saved their lives and beaten his apprentice in a duel. And yet, she didn’t want to swear any oaths to him, certainly not ones that would oblige her to tell him the truth. She didn’t dare tell him that she was from the future. It would change history and quite probably erase her from existence.

“I can do that,” she said. “But I can’t offer you any oaths.”

Whitehall eyed her, narrowly. “Your tutor is dead.”

Emily cursed under her breath. Telling them that her tutor was dead had been a mistake, clearly. She could have claimed she had no idea what had happened to him and escaped the need for swearing oaths. It wasn’t as if she could be oathsworn to two different masters.

“Some of his family may still be alive,” she said, reluctantly. “I must keep their secrets as long as I suspect the oath binds me.”

“True, I suppose,” Whitehall said. He didn’t sound pleased. She rather suspected he’d been intending to grill her extensively. “You do understand that refusing to swear an oath means I won’t be teaching you some of my
private
spells?”

Professor Locke would give his right arm to see them
, Emily thought. She was starting to think the Whitehall Commune was nowhere near as powerful as the legends insisted. The magicians were clearly powerful, but their magic was slopping everywhere and they hadn’t shown any of the subtle spells she used on a daily basis.
But would they be worth the risk of damaging the timeline?

“I understand,” she said. “But I am already a trained magician.”

Whitehall nodded, curtly. “You’ll be learning alongside Bernard, for the moment,” he told her. “Treat your fellow apprentices with respect—and if you can’t do that, try not to kill each other.”

Emily had to smile. Some things never changed, it seemed. Magicians would always be competing, always testing their powers and skills against their fellows. It would be different too, she suspected, when there was one master to one apprentice. The masters would be pleased to see their apprentices win fights, even though they were supposed to remain above the fray. But judging from some of the arguments she could see on the other side of the hall, they weren’t
that
far above the fray.