Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7) (35 page)

Emily blinked. There were
several
uses for it...but most of them involved potions. “It makes people throw up,” she said, finally. “If someone has eaten poison, the plant can be used to make them expel the poison from their body. You need to mash it down into mush, then make them drink it with water.”

“Correct,” Master Grey said. “What would happen if you tripled the dose?”

“They’d have an attack of diarrhoea, too,” Emily said, grimacing.

“Correct,” Master Grey said. “What precautions should you take if administering the cure?”

“The victim will need plenty of water to drink,” Emily said. She took a moment to remember what she’d been taught. “They will also need something soft to eat, but only after they’ve finished...emptying themselves.”

“Correct,” Master Grey said. He jabbed a finger at another plant, a bush covered in purple flowers Emily didn’t recognize. “Name me two uses for that plant.”

“I don’t know,” Emily said. She knew better than to guess. “I haven’t seen it before.”

“It can be used to prevent infection, if one is desperate,” Master Grey said. He didn’t seem inclined to berate her for ignorance, for once. “It can also be used as a poison, if treated correctly. There are people who like dipping their arrowheads in the liquid before letting fly, just to make sure the target is poisoned.”

He kept tossing questions at her until they reached a line of bushes, half-hidden by subtle magic. Emily felt her chest burn uncomfortably as Master Grey glanced around, then turned to look at her. His gaze was suddenly very cold.

“This is your one chance,” he said. “Did you bring anything magical with you?”

“No, sir,” Emily said. She looked down at her chest. “There’s a rune here...”

“That won’t matter,” Master Grey said. He performed a detection spell on her, and looked relieved at the results. “I want you to understand, Lady Emily, that I am bringing you here against my better judgement.”

Emily held herself steady, refusing to say anything.

“You are
not
to use any magic beyond this point, unless it is in direct self-defense,” Master Grey continued, coldly. “If you do, I will flay the skin from your bare back. Cleaning up the mess will be so expensive that you’ll have to pawn your entire Barony to pay back the debt.”

“Yes, sir,” Emily said.

“I mean it,” Master Grey said. “No magic beyond this point.”

“I understand,” Emily said.

“I’d be surprised if you did,” Master Grey said. “And if you bring any of your friends here without permission, you will very likely be expelled.”

He gave her one final look that warned her to take him seriously, then stepped up to the bushes and through a path that was barely wide enough for him. “Keep sensing the magic, if you wish, but don’t cast any spells. And do
not
step off the path.”

Emily bit down the urge to say something nasty as she followed him through the bushes, keeping her hands firmly to herself. The first line of bushes looked normal, but the second line was poisonous - she’d had a nasty rash for a week after touching one back in First Year - and the third line was actively dangerous, ready to snap at anyone who crossed the line. She winced, remembering how one of the plants she’d seen had tried to chase Jade, moving with an implacable determination that was more terrifying than anything else. They’d had to burn the plant to ashes to get it to stop.

She closed her eyes as she sensed the flow of magic. It had been ever-present in the Nameless World, once she’d grown accustomed to the sensation, but now...it seemed to flow
towards
her, as if it were being directed away from whatever was at the end of the path. She couldn’t help smiling as it washed over her, but gasped in surprise when it abruptly vanished into nothingness. They had reached a clearing at the end of the path.

“Tell me,” Master Grey said, as they walked towards a small wooden hut. “What happens to the magic here?”

Emily considered it for a long moment. “You use runes to guide the magic away from the hut,” she said. “Why?”

“Correct,” Master Grey said. He produced an iron key from his belt and used it to open the door. “Do
not
cast a light globe within this hut.”

Good thing you reminded me
, Emily thought, as Master Grey led her inside and started to light a handful of lanterns hanging from the walls.
It’s become habit to use magic in my daily life
.

“You may eat your sandwiches now, if you wish,” Master Grey said. “You’ll need energy for what is to come.”

Emily frowned, then sat down on the wooden floor and opened her knapsack. Master Grey pottered around for a long moment, searching for something, then sat down facing her and started to dig out his own food. For a long moment, they ate in companionable silence. Food always tasted so much better in the open air, Emily had discovered; it wasn’t something she’d ever learned on Earth. Master Grey ate quickly, then tossed a handful of questions at her, forcing her to think before answering. None of the questions seemed particularly important...

“This isn’t something taught to everyone,” Master Grey said, when they were finished. “I strongly advise you not to discuss this with
anyone
else. If the Grandmaster hadn’t insisted, I would have refused to teach you. You’re dangerous enough without giving you more ideas.”

He paused, waiting for a reaction. Emily kept her mouth firmly shut. She’d seen him at work, dueling challengers at the first Faire she’d attended...and he thought
she
was dangerous? But then, she
had
turned the Allied Lands upside down. Some of her ideas would completely reshape the world, given time. Steam engines alone would change everything, and as for gunpowder...

“This place is designed to keep the level of ambient magic as low as possible,” he continued, when it became clear she wasn’t going to say a word. “A great deal of time and effort was spent cleansing this clearing, then establishing defenses to keep other magicians from contaminating our work. If you use any magic here, even something as minor as a detection spell, you will force us to cleanse the place once again.”

“Yes, sir,” Emily said.

Master Grey rose to his feet and paced over to a locked cupboard. “This is one of the greatest secrets in the Allied Lands,” he said. “We call it Wildfire.”

He opened the cupboard and produced a handful of unbreakable bottles. “I want you to stand there,” he said, pointing to the other side of the table. “You are
not
to touch anything without my express permission. In fact, keep your hands clasped behind your back. A single mistake here could kill both of us.”

Emily scowled, but did as she was told. Master Grey gave her a probing glance before he placed the bottles on the table beside a glass cauldron. It must have cost hundreds of gold coins, Emily realized; she’d never seen anything like it in Professor Thande’s classroom. But then, she supposed she wouldn’t have wanted a fragile and expensive dish anywhere near rampaging students. Perhaps the Fifth and Sixth Years got to play with them.

“There are seven separate potions here,” Master Grey told her. “Only a dozen alchemists, all working for the Allied Lands, know how to brew them. Three of them, in particular, are so complex and unstable that they have to be brewed in a magic-less environment. Trying to brew them in Whitehall would lead to complete disaster. You will not” - a thin smile flickered across his face - “be taught how to make them.”

Emily kept her voice as calm as she could. “And what if I
need
to make them?”

“Only an experienced alchemist would have any hope of brewing them,” Master Grey said, coldly. “
Manaskol
is simplicity itself compared to the easiest of the potions here...”

“I see,” Emily said. “
You
can’t brew them, then?”

Master Grey’s face flickered, just for a second. “No,” he said. She half-expected a demerit, but he merely nodded to her. “It is a wise magician who knows his limits.”

He picked up one of the bottles and opened it, carefully. “Should you need any of these potions, you would apply to the White Council,” he said, as he sniffed the contents. “They would decide if your request had merit and, if they agreed, ensure you were sent a sufficient quantity. If they felt otherwise, no amount of arguing, pleading, begging or outright threats would make them change their minds.”

Emily grimaced as he held the bottle out to her. She sniffed...and recoiled, instinctively. It smelled worse than the cheap alcohol her mother used to buy. Master Grey smiled at her reaction, then poured a small amount of the black liquid into the glass cauldron. Emily couldn’t help noticing that it was thick, like sludge or heavy oil. He followed it up with five more bottles, each one marginally lighter. It looked as though the order had been carefully devised by the first alchemist to create the potion.

“You will notice that I have not stirred the mixture,” Master Grey said. “All that really matters, at this point, is that all of the potions are in the same cauldron.”

“Yes, sir,” Emily said. The different liquids had separated out, like oil in water. “You don’t need to do anything else, either?”

“Not really,” Master Grey said. “The genius and danger of this...
particular
brew is that it doesn’t require much expertise to make, once you have the ingredients. You can, for instance, make it under battlefield conditions.”

A shadow crossed his face for a long moment. “I have,” he added. “Once.”

He picked up a small basin, placed it on the table and poured one of the remaining bottles into it. Emily watched, fascinated, as he produced a firelighter, scratching it along the table until it caught fire. He pressed the firelighter into the basin, which caught fire at once, eerie blue flames reaching up towards the ceiling. Visibly bracing himself, he pushed the basin under a rack and placed the cauldron on top of the rack. Moments later, the contents started to bubble.

Emily stared. “What...?”

A sheet of white flame exploded out of the cauldron, lashing around as if it were a living thing in search of sustenance. Emily stepped backwards hastily as it flickered towards her, then powered up towards the ceiling. She looked up and saw the wood had become scorched and pitted; it struck her, suddenly, that this could hardly be the first time Wildfire was demonstrated to a student. The flames flickered one final time, fell back into the cauldron, and vanished.

“Do
not
touch it,” Master Grey ordered, as an unholy stench filled the air. “What do you make of it?”

“It burns,” Emily said. Now she’d had a moment to think, it was clear the tendrils of fire had reached out towards him too. All the precautions suddenly made sense. “It burns magic.”

“Yes, it does,” Master Grey said. “It prefers the focused magic generated by long-established wards, Lady Emily, but it will eat any kind of
mana
, given a chance. Using it in a combat zone is always a risk because it doesn’t discriminate; it will happily go after one side, then the other, rather than being aimed at its target. It has rarely been used against anything other than a heavily-warded fortress.”

“It could have been used on Shadye,” Emily pointed out. The Grandmaster could have presumably gathered the ingredients from the hut while waiting for Shadye and his army to reach Whitehall. “Why wasn’t it?”

Master Grey quirked an eyebrow. “Something that draws on magic for fuel, something that won’t stop easily, right next to Whitehall and the nexus point?”

Emily felt her face heat. “Sorry.”

“So you should be,” Master Grey said. “The true danger of Wildfire lies in the simple fact that it is impossible to control. No one, not even a Lone Power, can steer it towards a target. Using it on a moving necromancer would simply be ineffective.”

He paused. “And there are only two ways to stop it,” he added. “How would you do it?”

Emily considered, rapidly. “Starve it of power,” she said. “It wouldn’t have anything to burn.”

“Correct,” Master Grey said. “And the other?”

Water
, Emily thought. But perhaps that was too obvious.
Anyone would think to pour water on a fire
.

“Sand,” she guessed, remembering sand buckets from Earth. “You pour sand on it.”

“Good thinking,” Master Grey said. “You need to
bury
the fire in sand, or earth, or anything, as long as it is cut off from the air. Even after the main blaze has been suppressed, there may be moments when smaller blazes will blow up again. Ideally, you need to get people without magic to handle the task. As far as the fire is concerned, people like you and me are a walking source of fuel.”

He gave her a long glance, then sighed. “I’m going to check the outer edge of the defenses,” he said. “Wait until everything is cool, then pick up everything I’ve used and put it into the sack. We’ll be taking it back with us.”

“Yes, sir,” Emily said. She hesitated before asking the question that was nagging at her mind. “Why don’t we recycle the cauldron?”

“Because it’s badly damaged,” Master Grey said, simply. “
Look
at it.”

He had a point, Emily had to admit. The glass was not only scorched, it was warped and threatening to shatter. It would be useless for anything else, she suspected, even if it could be cleaned. The blackened remains of the mixture had bonded so firmly to the glass that nothing short of a monofilament knife would be able to cut them free. If anyone had hoped to recycle the remains, she realized, they would be disappointed.

“I’ll be back,” Master Grey said. He opened two of the windows, allowing cool air to blow through the hut. “And remember, no magic.”

“Yes, sir,” Emily muttered. “No magic unless in direct self-defense.”

He gave her one last look before hurrying out the door.

E
MILY HAD HOPED, AGAINST ALL HOPE
, that the Grandmaster would have found a solution by the time they returned to the castle. That perhaps everything would return to normal. But, as the day turned into evening, it became clear that nothing had really changed. Alassa, Imaiqah, and the rest were still in their comas, joined by two more Third Year students who’d started to rant in the library before they collapsed. The epidemic, whatever it was, seemed to be spreading.