Schooled in Magic (10 page)

Emily hesitated. She’d wondered, last night, about changing her name completely, but she wanted to cling onto the name she’d been given at birth. Emily alone, it seemed, would be safe to use. Her surname had never been spoken in this new world.

“Emily,” she said, finally. Judging from the other names she’d heard–at dinner and breakfast–it wouldn’t be
too
strange to local ears. Or so she thought, although she still wasn’t entirely sure of what the translation spell was actually doing. Besides, it
was
her name. “You can call me Emily.”

“Very well,” Mistress Irene said. She looked up, her dark eyes fixed firmly on Emily’s face. “
Mana
exists throughout the world. Magic is powered by
mana
. Your body produces
mana
. Do you understand me?”

Emily stared at her. “I think so,” she said, finally. Inwardly, she wasn’t so sure. Did her body produce
mana
itself, or was she drawing on an energy field surrounding the new world? Or both? Perhaps the human race
produced
the power that kept dragons aloft ... there was no way for her to know. Maybe she’d have a chance later on to apply the methods of rationality to magic and deduce its underlying rules. “That’s what makes me a sorceress?”

“A
potential
sorceress,” Mistress Irene snapped. “When you cast a spell, you power it with
mana
from your reserves. Learning how to power spells is the single most important lesson you’ll learn at this school. Overpowering your spells will result in disaster.”

There was a long pause. “There are other forms of magic, but you have to master your own first or you’ll never be anything more than a journeyman,” she added, in a gentler voice. She picked up a piece of paper and passed it over to Emily, who looked down at it, puzzled. “The relationship between magic and spells is both simple and complex. Simple, because the spells help steer the magic in the right direction; complex, because you have to tie the two together in your mind.”

Emily nodded, carefully. “You mean...pouring magic into a given shape, like pouring clay into a mould,” she hazarded. “Or do smaller spells work as building blocks for larger spells?”

“As good an analogy as any,” Mistress Irene said. “Can you read the word on the paper?”

“No,” Emily said, after a moment. She’d half-expected a recognizable alphabet, but in hindsight that had been foolish. The letters she was looking at seemed a cross between Arabic and Chinese. “I can’t read them.”

“Good,” Mistress Irene said. Emily blinked in surprise as her tutor continued. “Had you been familiar with the language, we would have had to find another one for you to use. It is vitally important that you never relax while casting spells, even when you become proficient enough to cast them without verbalizing. A single mistake can be disastrous. Using a different language forces you to
think
.”

Emily had to smile. Mistress Irene seemed to like warning her about potential dangers.

“This is a charged wand,” Mistress Irene said, picking up a wand from her desk and passing it to Emily. “Wands are normally used for focusing magic; this one has spells inside it, already primed. Can you feel the spells?”

The wand seemed to sparkle in her hand, as if it were alive. Emily
felt
it twisting like a snake, even though she could see no sign of independent movement. Holding onto the wand was tricky, but the more she held it, the more she was aware of ...
spells
waiting for her. And as she became aware of them, she became aware of the
mana
inside her, waiting to be released. Her magic seemed to be crackling with life.

“Try to cast one of the spells,” Mistress Irene said. “Focus your mind on it and trigger the spell.”

Emily reached out with her mind, unsure of what she was doing. The spell glittered in her mind, but it seemed frustratingly insubstantial, as if the spell existed only in potential. An engine, she reasoned, but one that required fuel to run. The trick was to draw the
mana
from inside her body and use it to power the spell. But she wasn’t sure how to form the link between her mind and the wand, let alone the spells waiting for her power. Her power seemed to stop at her skin ...

“
Abracadabra
,” she muttered, in frustration.

Something
clicked
in her mind. Power shimmered out of her and into the wand; a moment later, the spell blazed with light in her mind and vanished. Emily opened her eyes, unsure of just when she had closed them, and saw a shimmering image of herself hanging in the air. She let out a yelp in shock, just before the image vanished into nothingness.

“Did ...” Emily swallowed and started again. “Did I do that?”

“You powered the spell,” Mistress Irene said sardonically. “Everyone has their own way to tap their
mana
.”

Emily put it together, slowly. There was a muscle for magic in her mind and she had to learn how to use it, but–like every other muscle–she didn’t really issue precise instructions to her body and mind. The trick was learning how to issue basic orders. When she’d spoken the magic word aloud, her subconscious mind had done the hard work–and now that she knew what she was doing, she could do it again.

“Try the second spell,” Mistress Irene said. “See if you can figure out how to make this one work.”

“Right,” Emily said. She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind, right into the wand. The spell was just waiting for her ... this time, there was no need to struggle to channel power into the spell. It flared to life in her mind and, when she opened her eyes, she saw a second image of herself. This one seemed alarmingly substantial. Her head started to spin a moment later as it glowed brighter. Something was draining the
mana
out of her body. “I ...”

Mistress Irene muttered a word. The image snapped out of existence. A moment later, the sense of being drained faded away.

Emily rocked back on her chair. The spell ... the spell hadn’t
stopped
, she realized in alarm. It had just kept draining power from her until Mistress Irene had cancelled it. What would have happened if the spell had
kept
draining her? Would it have killed her outright, or merely knocked her out for a few hours?

“Something else to remember at all times,” Mistress Irene said. “
Never
let a spell demand unlimited power. Magicians, even sorcerers, have been known to kill themselves through trying to use a spell before checking it carefully.
Do not
try to use
any
spell until you see how it goes together.”

She stood up and picked a book off the shelves. “I’m going to give you a basic translation spell. It will only last a couple of months, but by then you should be capable of renewing it for yourself. Sit still and
don’t
resist.”

Emily shifted uncomfortably as Mistress Irene muttered several words into the air, moving her hand in a complicated gesture. She felt ...
something
gossamer-thin shimmering into existence around her, as insubstantial as a spider’s nest, before it fell down and over her body, embedding itself in her mind. It was all she could do to remain still until the spell was completed. The spell was so uncomfortable that it could
never
be a permanent solution.

The Grandmaster had been right. She
would
have to learn to read the local language, just as soon as she possibly could.

“Now,” Mistress Irene said, once the translation spell had been completed. “It’s time to start looking at how spells go together.”

The next hour passed very slowly as Emily puzzled over the building blocks of magic. Spells, Mistress Irene explained carefully, were made up of smaller spells; it was possible to memorize a more advanced spell, but without an understanding of the underpinning spells it would be impossible to progress any further. Looking at the magic words, Emily was reminded of a simple computer language, one that ran in her brain. One of her nerdy friends had bought an ancient computer and experimented with one of the earliest computer languages, before graduating to more complex systems. She was sure that
he
would have had little difficulty in learning to cast spells because of how familiar he was with arcane computer languages.

“Keep them in your mind,” Mistress Irene said, again and again. “Concentrate on breaking down spells into their smallest components.”

Emily scowled, feeling her head starting to pound. A computer language didn’t actually
do
anything unless it was in a computer; writing a line of computer code on blank paper didn’t automatically alter the coding inside the computer. Logically, she had to consider herself a magical computer and run the coding–the spells–inside her own head, but sometimes it didn’t seem to work out that simply. Writing down a magic spell was sometimes exactly the same as casting it, sometimes not. Worse yet, it took several tries before she managed to learn how
not
to infuse power into the spells.

And then there were spells–natural and unnatural–infused into people, objects or even the empty air. According to Mistress Irene,
mana
was everywhere, allowing creatures to evolve into forms that could draw on it for themselves. She didn’t want to even guess at what sort of evolutionary history might have produced dragons, gorgons or elves, but it made a certain kind of sense. Maybe, just maybe, orcs and goblins were humans who had been warped into something inhuman by exposure to the magic field.

“It’s a very good idea to test everything for infused magic before you touch it,” Mistress Irene said. “Your fellow students
love
playing practical jokes. One of them even managed to rig his friend’s textbook so that it would turn him into a frog when he opened the book. Most of them won’t be skilled enough to
hide
a spell-trap from basic detection spells directly, but there are plenty of tricks they can pull to make it harder to detect a hidden trap.”

Emily looked down at the spell and nodded, before carefully casting it out loud. The room seemed to dim for a moment, just before a number of objects started to shimmer with an eerie red glow. She looked around, noticing the spells on the desk, the bookshelves, the globe and crystal ball in the corner ... and there were dozens clustered around the door. Some of them looked harmless, even in the red light, but a number looked downright ominous. She had the distant feeling that trying to take a book off the shelves without permission would be very dangerous.

“Good,” Mistress Irene said. “Now, a second spell ...”

It didn’t seem to do anything, at least at first, until Mistress Irene passed her a small goblet and invited her to repeat the spell. The red glow surrounding the goblet faded away into nothingness, leaving her looking down at a harmless object.

“The simple spell for dispelling trap spells has a much shorter range,” Mistress Irene explained. “Should you be unable to remove a spell someone might have left on your property, bring it to me or one of the other tutors. Naturally, removing the more complex trap spells is a great deal harder.”

Emily nodded. There would be no point in using any sort of spell to keep her property private if it could simply be dispelled. The spells crawling over Mistress Irene’s door looked a great deal more complex, suggesting that cracking them would be difficult, if not impossible. She wondered, absently, what they actually
did
to intruders. Freeze them in place, transform them into something else ... or kill them outright?

No
, she thought,
that couldn’t be possible
. Whitehall might take a more relaxed attitude to students injuring themselves and others than any school she knew back home, but there had to be limits.

The second hour passed far more quickly than the first as Mistress Irene pushed her into memorizing and practicing a dozen different spells. One of them was a very simple defensive spell, enough to deflect many hexes and charms away from her body and soul. Emily shivered at the implications of students needing to know
that
spell as quickly as possible, forcing herself to keep it firmly in her mind. Another spell checked to ensure that a potion was safe to drink, although Mistress Irene warned her that it only picked up on potions that were lethal; she could still become very ill from drinking the wrong potion.

A more complex spell, one that Emily couldn’t master in the first session, was designed to analyze other spells, allowing the caster to see how they had been put together by the original magician. Mistress Irene made it work with ease, but Emily couldn’t quite keep all the different variables straight in her head. Finally, Mistress Irene told her to leave the spell for now; they’d return to it in two days.

“I’m going to permit you to enter the library and borrow books suitable for a first year student,” Mistress Irene said. “I know that students practice spells with or without our permission, so I’d just like to remind you that hurting another student will leave you–at the very least–unable to sit comfortably for several days. If you manage to hurt yourself, you’ll have us laughing at you as well.”