Schooled in Magic (43 page)

“Yes,” Emily said tightly. But if all six of the defenders had remained in place, they would still have been caught between two fires. Three, perhaps, if Jade ran forward to join the attack. “I understand.”

“Make sure that you read the list of camping supplies carefully,” Harkin added. “I won’t be assigning a team leader to
this
trip.”

So we can make our own mistakes
, Emily thought, sourly. But it did make a certain kind of sense.

“And draw some potions from Mistress Kyla,” Harkin said. If Emily hadn’t known better, she would have thought that he was embarrassed. “There are specific potions for these camping trips. Make sure you bring them with you, or it won’t be so pleasant.”

He pointed her towards the showers and Emily nodded, walking through the door and into the changing room. Thankfully, Aloha had finished washing and gone to eat, leaving Emily alone as she stripped off and dumped the muddy uniform in the cleaning basket. The water was hot and clean, much to her relief. There had been times when they had been forced to shower with cold water. Incentive, Aloha had pointed out later, to learn how to cast heating spells for pails of water.

Her body ached as she finished washing and used a towel to dry before donning her robes and wrapping up her hair. Outside, she was surprised to walk right into Jade and the rest of the Redshirts, all standing to attention.

“Well done, Captain,” Jade said. The praise didn’t seem forced at all. “Come join us for dinner.”

Emily flushed, and then allowed them to lead her to the dining hall. Harkin had held her back. Had he
known
this would happen? They hadn’t escorted Jade anywhere when
he’d
led the team to victory, but Emily had pulled off the first bloodless victory the Redshirts had enjoyed. It seemed to be something to celebrate.

“You won,” Bran said. He winked at her. “Next time, I’ll win.”

E
MILY STOPPED DEAD. THERE WAS A
shambling monstrosity in the middle of the ceremonial garden. At first, she’d thought that it was a thoroughly weird scarecrow, but then the creature had started to move. It looked like a towering column of jelly, wearing what the remains of an oversized set of robes, topped with a single eye that looked permanently malevolent. Slimy tentacles emerged from within its bulging robes, each tentacle carrying a different kind of gardening tool.

She found it hard to speak as the creature’s eye fixed on her. “What is
that
?”

“No one’s quite sure,” Imaiqah admitted. “Apparently, Professor Thande once threw a thousand different potion components into a caldron and boiled them up just to see what would happen. When it had finished bubbling, that ...
thing
crawled out and pronounced itself to be a thinking being. Naturally, they put it in the gardens.”

Alassa looked equally stunned. “It’s
alive
?”

A long tentacle reached out towards her and tapped her on the forehead. “I think I am alive, so I
am
alive,” the monster said, in a burbling voice. “Is it really such a surprise to discover that intelligence takes on many different forms?”

“Don’t scare the children, CT,” a feminine voice said. Emily turned, and saw a young woman who wore a green robe and carried a small knife in one hand. “This is their first lesson in Magical Creatures. We want them to come back next week.”

The creature seemed to nod–it was hard to be sure, as it was difficult to tell where its head actually began–and shambled away down a long row of flower beds.

Alassa rubbed at her forehead where CT had touched her and sent Emily an appalled look. Emily silently agreed with Alassa’s assessment, although Emily
had
encountered other intelligent creatures in this world. But CT was definitely something different. Had Thande really produced it in a fit of absent-mindedness, or was that a cover story hiding something far worse?

“Welcome to Magical Creatures,” the woman said. She seemed almost insultingly healthy, with bronzed skin and a smile that lit up her face like the sun. “I am Mistress Kirdáne, charged with ensuring that you know enough about magical creatures to survive, should you encounter any of the really
dangerous
animals. If any of you prove to have a genuine talent for handling magical animals, I will make arrangements for you to study the subject in your second-year onwards, perhaps with an eye towards becoming an animal mage. It isn’t a common talent, though, so I will not be disappointed if none of you decide to stay in the course in second-year.”

Her smile grew even brighter. “Some of these animals are very dangerous, while others are intelligent. If you don’t know how to handle them, stay back and let me show you what to do. Follow me.”

The zoo–or so Emily came to think of it–stretched out for miles. There were a small set of blockhouses that housed some of the animals, but most of the rest lived in their natural habitats, or as close to them as Whitehall could produce. Strange mists shimmered in the air, which prevented the students from looking deeply into the fields.

Then they reached a small doorway in the middle of nowhere that stood upright without any visible means of support. Mistress Kirdáne winked at her class, stepped through the door and vanished.

After a moment, the students, led by Imaiqah, followed her through the doorway and the world changed around them.

They appeared to be standing on a hillside, far away from any human habitation.

In the distance, Emily could see what looked like a herd of horses, but as they walked closer Emily could make out horns sprouting from their foreheads. Each of them was a different color, ranging from house-brown to bright pink. Emily had never enjoyed playing with toy ponies as a child, yet there was something about the unicorns that called to her, inviting her to play with them. Up close, they smelled of a strange, almost seductive perfume. Their eyes were soft, warm and infinitively caring.

“Boys, remain where you are and don’t try to approach the herd,” Mistress Kirdáne said. The class halted. “Unicorns don’t like men approaching them at any time; if you go too close, you may be gored or hexed by their magic. They’re creatures of wild magic, so undoing whatever they do to you may be impossible.”

Her voice softened as she looked back at the unicorns. “Girls, you may approach the herd carefully, but if they move away don’t follow them. Their tolerance for women is limited, even though they do have a certain affinity for unmarried girls.”

The unicorns were so strange that they were almost surreal. Emily had grown used to magic, to charms and potions and even the rigorous training the Sergeants offered, but the unicorns left her feeling numb, as if they couldn’t be real. She walked towards a unicorn–one roughly the size of a small pony, with bright red fur–feeling her senses starting to swim. The creature eyed her, winked–she was sure that she had winked–and then walked away, as if she were daring Emily to follow her.

Emily took two steps after her before she remembered the warning and stopped. She backed away and walked towards a different unicorn, one with green fur and over-large brown eyes. This one seemed willing to allow Emily to stroke her fur, but not to touch its horn. She felt a strange tingle as she reached for it, warning her not to press any further. Emily tried to send the creature an apologetic look; the unicorn merely shook her mane in response. She was definitely a creature of wild magic.

It was impossible for her to imagine that the creatures might be dangerous, she realized. They were ... well,
innocent
in a way that few humans could equal, and yet they had wild magic running through them. Professor Thande had said, in passing, that the horn of a unicorn had any number of alchemical uses. Emily found herself wondering just how many unicorns had been killed by men for them to develop a refusal to even
tolerate
human males. Or was there a deeper significance to their actions?

She looked down at the unicorn, then forced herself to look away. Mistress Kirdáne was looking at her, one eyebrow raised.

Emily looked around at the rest of the class. Imaiqah and Alassa were playing with a unicorn infant, which rubbed her head against their legs. Most of the other girls had found a unicorn willing to play with them; one of the girls was actually trying to
mount
a unicorn with white fur. It seemed to think that it was just a big game and kept moving at precisely the wrong moment. The boys watched resentfully, but they were apparently unwilling to risk coming too close.

Then again, anyone who grew up in this world would understand the dangers of wild magic.

Emily gave the unicorn one final stroke, then walked over to the tutor. “How do you tell which of them is male and which is female?”

Mistress Kirdáne laughed. “They’re
all
female. And to answer what I believe will be your
next
question, we don’t know
how
they reproduce. No one has ever managed to convince them to tell us.”

Emily stared at her. “But there must be males, right?”

“We assume so,” Mistress Kirdáne said. “We just don’t know for sure. If anyone has ever encountered a unicorn herd of males, they have never returned to tell the tale.”

She clapped her hands and led the class back down towards the doorway back to Whitehall. Once they were through the gate, she led them into one of the blockhouses and cast a spell in the air, allowing them to see in the dark.

At first, Emily could see nothing, but then she realized that the darkness itself was alive. It loomed towards her with deadly menace. She caught a glimpse of wings–or at least she thought they were wings–in the darkness, before the creature butted right into an invisible field and stopped dead.

Several of the girls gasped in shock.

The wards
, Emily realized. They were safe.

“Nightshades are very rare, thankfully,” Mistress Kirdáne informed them. “They are only active at night. The creatures hunt large animals so they can drag them back to their lairs and consume them over the space of a few days.”

Emily swallowed. She wasn’t the only one who looked nervous–or shocked.

Mistress Kirdáne continued, giving them no time to digest what she’d said. “You can’t see their claws without proper lighting, but suffice it to say they carry a deadly poison that paralyses the victim and holds them in suspension as the Nightshade devours them. There was no cure until Professor Thande invented a potion that counteracts the worst of the damage. Even so, the victim is permanently scarred by his experience.”

Emily had no trouble believing it as she took one last look at the Nightshade. There was
nothing
like it on Earth, any more than there were unicorns, fairies and ... whatever CT was. What
else
didn’t she know about her new home? Her tutors seemed to assume that she knew everything a normal pupil would know, without taking her origins into account.

She was still mulling it over as Mistress Kirdáne led them to the next blockhouse. This one was situated next to a field containing a dozen sheep, bleating pathetically at the students as they passed. Emily felt strong wards surrounding the blockhouse as Mistress Kirdáne opened the door–which was made of solid iron, apparently–and beckoned for them to follow her inside. The light was dim, but there was no need to use a spell to see.

Emily’s thought the blockhouse was empty at first–and then she saw the mist. It hung in the absolute centre of the pen, a sparkling mass that glowed, pulsing with malevolent intent. Emily looked at it and shuddered, having the uneasy sense that the mist was looking right back at her. The more she looked at it, the more she
knew
it was alive and intelligent, a predator in a world of prey. She wanted to run; only pride kept her in her place.

Whatever it was, it was behind the wards. They were perfectly safe.

“By the Goddess,” Alassa breathed. “Is that ... is that a
Mimic
?”

“Quite right,” Mistress Kirdáne said, surprised. “That
is
a Mimic. Again, they are very rare, but as no one is quite sure how to kill them, they can cause great suffering wherever they go.”

She clicked her fingers. A door opened in the far wall, revealing a sheep that was slowly dragged into the room by an unseen force. The animal was
terrified
, Emily realized. As soon as the magic snapped out of existence it tried to flee back through the door it had used to enter. But that door was now closed.

As the sheep started to try to find another way out of the room, the mist’s glow grew brighter. A moment later, the sheep staggered to the ground, collapsing into dust. Emily felt cold horror, but the worst was yet to come. The mist, chillingly, began to take on a sheep-like form. The mimicry was so perfect that if Emily hadn’t seen it, she wouldn’t have believed it.

“The Mimic becomes a copy of its prey,” Mistress Kirdáne explained, as they stepped back out into the light. “Though a magic we don’t fully understand, the creature even takes on the
memories
of its prey, which allows it to pass for human when it devours a human life force. It does it so well that it doesn’t
know
that it isn’t human until the human form starts to break down, which can take several years. Once it returns to its normal form, it starts to hunt for other prey.”