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

Emily shook her head. It was possible, quite possible, that Bernard’s Gathering was the start of the tradition she’d encountered in the future, but there was no way to know for sure.

“You should have gone,” Bernard said. “There were masters and apprentices from all over the kingdom, gathered together to exchange news. But there were rumors too, rumors of ...
things
... attacking magicians. Villages being destroyed, masters being killed ... apprentices being left to roam free. We didn’t want to believe them, but they were spreading too rapidly for our comfort. I recall Lord Alfred summoning demon after demon, trying to glean some hint of what was going on from them.”

He paused, his face darkening with remembered horror. “Seven months ago, more or less, we went to a village that had welcomed us before,” he continued. “It had been destroyed, houses smashed flat and temples pounded into rubble. There was no sign of any bodies, no sign of who had attacked a magical settlement and destroyed it. We didn’t know who to blame.”

Emily frowned. “Mundanes? People without magic?”

“The king has banned the hunting of magicians,” Bernard said. “As long as we take magical children away from their families, they have as little to do with us as possible.”

He shook his head. “It was only the first village to die. Another died a month later, even though the masters had tightened their defenses; two more died afterwards, with no clue as to who was doing the attacking. And then a number of refugees ran into our village, apprentices and camp followers from another nearby village. They claimed that the village had been attacked by monsters.”

Emily frowned. “Monsters?”

“Monsters,” Bernard repeated. “And then we were attacked ourselves. The defenses were broken with very little effort and so we had to flee. I saw them, but ... but I can’t remember what they looked like. No one can. They just came and killed and destroyed and hunted ...”

His voice trailed off. Emily forced herself to think. If he couldn’t remember what the creatures had
looked
like ... it suggested subtle magic or a very powerful and unusual glamour. And yet, subtle magic worked best when its victim had no idea he was under attack. Breaking the spell—by hitting the target directly—would ruin the effect.

“We fled,” Bernard said. “Masters Poe and Wallace talked about making a stand, but it was useless. They were crushed. We picked up more masters, more apprentices, but we didn’t know where to go. In the end, Lord Alfred summoned a demon and put the question to it.”

“And the demon pointed you here,” Emily mused.

The thought made her smile, humorlessly. She’d heard plenty of stories about Lord Alfred, but most of them had been badly exaggerated. Even
Professor Locke
had believed that Lord Alfred’s reputation had grown in the telling, something that was genuinely surprising when Professor Locke had believed that the ancients had possessed all kinds of long-forgotten magics. And if Lord Alfred had been a DemonMaster ...

“It did,” Bernard said. “We thought we’d gathered enough supplies, but we were on the verge of starvation when we finally reached the castle.”

He frowned. “How did you get here?”

“We walked,” Emily said, shortly. “Getting here was not easy.”

She rubbed her forehead, feeling her temples start to pound. She needed time to think. She’d assumed that the commune had been fleeing mundanes, but it was clear that things were a little more complex than she’d thought. If the creatures were truly inhuman, they might well have some connection to the Faerie. The Faerie War couldn’t be
that
far off. And if they were hunting magicians specifically ...

But they didn’t follow the commune to Whitehall
, she thought.
Were they afraid to go too close to the castle?

Bernard met her eyes. “How many people accompanied you to the castle?”

“Just me and my tutor,” Emily lied. She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You should,” Bernard said, earnestly. “It might help you come to terms with losing him.”

Emily sighed. Talking about it was the
last
thing she wanted to do. If she was caught in a lie, she would be in real trouble. But she didn’t dare tell the truth.

“Let him rest in peace,” she said, instead. “Were those creatures going after mundanes too?”

“I don’t believe so,” Bernard said. “But we rarely spoke to mundanes.”

Emily cocked her head. “You never went back to see your family?”

“They wouldn’t want to see me,” Bernard said. “Having a magician in the family isn’t a good thing, Emily. They see it as a sign of tainted blood. My father ... my father wondered if he was truly my father. Magicians ... don’t have good reputations when it comes to women.”

“Lord Wolfe said that magicians had a tendency to go mad,” Emily said. And Bernard had said that Lord Gila was on the verge of going mad. “Is that what they meant?”

“Among other things,” Bernard said. “If I didn’t have my father’s nose--” he pushed his finger against the tip of his nose “--I would wonder if someone had seduced my mother nine months before I was born.”

“There are paternity tests,” Emily commented. “Can’t you check ...?”

“I have no idea how,” Bernard said. He looked down at the rug for a long moment. “And even if I did know, I wouldn’t
want
to know. My father discarded me the day my magic first started to reveal itself. Master Whitehall is my father now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Emily said, seriously.

She rubbed her forehead again. There was something about the whole explanation that didn’t make sense, something she was missing, but she was too tired to put her finger on it. It was easy to believe that a mundane family might discard a magician child—Frieda had certainly been discarded and Imaiqah might have gone the same way—yet something was nagging at the back of her mind. What was it?

Bernard looked back at her. “Tell me about your family.”

Emily winced, inwardly. She should have seen that question coming.

“Father died when I was very young,” she said. She had no idea what had happened to her
real
father, but she’d certainly never seen him again. “Mother remarried. My stepfather didn’t like me very much, so ... things were a little rough. And then my tutor found me and took me in.”

“That was lucky,” Bernard said. “You would have died in the cold, if he threw you out.”

Emily nodded. Her stepfather had been thoroughly unpleasant, but a stepfather from the Nameless World might well have been worse. No one would have given a damn if he’d kicked an unwanted girl-child out of his house or sold her to a passing merchant or a brothel, particularly if he’d had children of his own. The cold logic of survival, in the Cairngorms, dictated no less. Old folks sometimes walked outside to die—or were thrown out—because their families could no longer afford to feed them. It still horrified her to see just how casually some were sacrificed so that others could live.

“He gave you a good grounding in magic,” Bernard added. “I was surprised he didn’t show you more.”

“He was never interested in socializing,” Emily said. “If he hadn’t sensed me, I suspect he would have remained alone for the rest of his life.”

“I see,” Bernard said. “And did he ...?”

It took Emily a moment to realize what he meant. “He wasn’t that sort of person,” she said, flushing.
None
of her tutors had ever shown
that
sort of interest in her. “He was like a father to me.”

Bernard looked relieved. “I’m sorry.”

He sighed as he rose to his feet. “We should go find Robin and help clear the corridors,” he said. “A few hours of clearing away the nastier traps should keep us on our toes.”

Emily nodded, happy that he wasn’t asking any more questions. Hopefully, he wouldn’t pry further into her cover story. She doubted it would survive if he kept poking away at it, looking for discrepancies. She simply knew too little about her new environment to tell convincing lies.

And the more I lie to them
, she thought as she rose and followed him,
the harder it will be to keep everything straight
.

“B
E CAREFUL,”
R
OBIN CALLED, AS THEY
walked up the stairs. He stood above them, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “There’s something very nasty at the top.”

Emily frowned as she sensed the swirling magic. A young apprentice stood at the top of the stairs, trembling like a leaf. He wasn’t frozen, she realized; his feet were stuck to the ground. She wondered if he’d had the sense to try to remove his shoes and escape, leaving them trapped, but a closer look told her it would be futile. Bending over to try to undo his shoes would merely trap his hands too.

“Bastards,” Bernard said. “Who the hell puts a trap like that at the top of the stairs?”

“Someone who wanted us to be caught,” Robin said, dryly. He gave Emily a sardonic smile. “Do you think you can break the spell?”

Emily frowned as she reached the top of the stairs. The spell—the booby trap—was very much like spells she’d seen in martial magic, although it looked as though it shouldn’t have endured for very long. And yet, it was more advanced than anything she’d seen from Whitehall and Bernard. She couldn’t help wondering if it was actually drawing power from the nexus point. There didn’t seem to be any other source of power.

“I think so,” she said. She allowed herself a moment to study the spellwork. A simple cancellation spell ought to be enough—indeed, she was surprised Robin and the other apprentice hadn’t already tried. Unless they didn’t know how to cancel spells ... it was possible, she supposed. None of their spells seemed very well crafted. “Let me try?”

Robin shrugged, expansively. “Why not?”

Emily gave him a dark look. She had the feeling she was being tested—and judged—but there was no way she could simply leave the apprentice stuck permanently. If Whitehall and his commune didn’t know how to cancel spells, they’d have to use brute force to destroy the trap ... which might injure or kill the victim. She cast a basic cancellation spell and watched, holding her breath, as the trap faded back into the ether. The apprentice jerked free a moment later and darted back down the stairs.

“He thought he was going to be trapped permanently,” Robin said. He sounded amused, rather than concerned. “I
told
him not to take anything for granted.”

“Good advice,” Bernard said. He looked at Emily. “How did you
do
that?”

“All spells have a weak point,” Emily said, vaguely. “Lord Wolfe would probably be able to explain better than I.”

Bernard frowned. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

“Maybe,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure when such spells had been invented. Lord Wolfe might well be able to duplicate it though, once he heard what she’d done. “We can take a look at it later, if you like.”

Robin grinned, showing teeth. “We just broke into this floor,” he said. He pulled a wooden stave from his knapsack, pressed it against his torch until it caught light and then passed it to Bernard. “There was a particularly unpleasant trap down at the bottom of the stairs. Master Drake had to untangle it for us.”

He must have thrust his magic into direct contact with the trap
, Emily reasoned.
She
could have done that—she
had
done that, during exams—but why take the risk?
Their magic seems to be far more brute-force than ours
.

“And now we have a whole new world to explore,” Bernard said. He grinned back at Robin, then motioned down the corridor. “Shall we?”

Emily followed the two men as they inched down the corridor, checking constantly for other booby traps. Whoever had last occupied the castle, she decided, as a series of traps were uncovered and disarmed, had to have been both skillful and paranoid—and, perhaps, a little insane. There were traps scattered everywhere, but there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their placement. One was lurking behind a door, while another was hidden on a window frame or by a fireplace. Some of them were certain to catch a mundane who wandered into the castle; others were all too likely to be nothing more than wasted effort.

Bernard put her thoughts into words. “Who hides a booby trap up a chimney?”

Someone who doesn’t want a visit from Santa Claus
, Emily thought.

Robin snorted. “Someone could sneak through the chimneys if they wanted to pass unnoticed,” he said. He peered up the shaft thoughtfully. “They’d climb up to where this chimney merges with another, then crawl back down into the next room.”

“Pretty uncomfortable if there’s a fire in the grate,” Bernard pointed out.

Emily suspected that Robin was right, but she kept her thoughts to herself. King Randor’s castle was
crammed
with secret passageways, some intended to keep the servants hidden from their lords and masters, others designed to allow the royal family to move around unseen. Using a chimney struck her as risky, but the shaft was easily large enough to allow her to scramble up, if there were enough handholds. Dropping back down into the next room wouldn’t be too difficult, either.

Unless there was a fire
, she thought, wryly.
The smoke would make navigating the chimney difficult
.

It was hard to believe that she was in the castle that would eventually become Whitehall School. The rooms they swept for traps were completely empty, nothing left behind to betray their original function; the corridors were bare stone, without even the omnipresent runes she’d seen on the lower levels. Robin and Bernard chatted as they walked, but they started to speak in hushed tones as their torches began to flicker and die. The atmosphere grew more oppressive the further they moved into the castle.

“We need better lighting,” Robin said, as his torch died completely. “I don’t know who built this place, but they didn’t know anything about lighting a castle.”

Emily had her doubts. A mind capable of creating the booby traps they’d disarmed would certainly be capable of crafting a light globe, with or without tapping the nexus point. They shouldn’t have had any problems lighting the castle. She was tempted to cast a spell herself, but she held back. Robin might have a different solution in mind.