Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (13 page)

Poor girl
, Emily thought.
And yet, she’s in the most progressive place in the world.

T
HE
D
INING
H
ALL WAS LOOKING RATHER
more like its old—or new—self, Emily decided, as she followed Julianne into the giant chamber. There were still no tables, but the servants had sorted out the rugs so there was a clear social hierarchy: masters at the top of the room, attached apprentices just below them, unattached apprentices in the middle and everyone else at the bottom. Emily hadn’t realized just how large the commune actually was until she saw almost all of its members gathered in one place. Ten masters, seven attached apprentices, fifty unattached apprentices and over a hundred men, women and children serving as camp followers.

It’s a start
, she told herself.
And Whitehall School will be far larger
.

“You should be sitting with the attached apprentices,” Julianne said, as they walked up towards the top of the room. Emily was uneasily aware of stares—not all of them friendly—following her every movement. “I’ll ... I’ll be sitting by the domestics.”

“Sit with us,” Emily urged. It would be easy for Julianne to sit next to her, in the absence of tables and chairs. “You won’t get into any trouble.”

Julianne gave her a surprised look, then led the way over to where Bernard and Robin were sitting. The former gave Julianne a startled look, followed by a smile; the latter raised a glass of dark red liquid to Emily, then drank it in a single gulp. Emily frowned as she smelled the wine—she’d detested alcohol long before coming to the Nameless World—and silently warned herself to keep an eye on Robin. His behavior after summoning the demon had been quite worrying enough without adding alcohol into the mix.

“Lady Emily,” Bernard said, as they sat down. “And Julianne.”

Emily lifted her eyebrows. “Why am I a
Lady
?”

“My master—
our
master—commanded it,” Bernard said. He shot Julianne a shy smile. “I did not see fit to question his reasoning.”

“Oh,” Emily said. She glanced towards the master magicians, but they seemed to be lost in their own conversation. The scent of magic hung thick in the air, threatening to overpower her senses. “Bernard ... can you tell me who they are?”

“Of course he can,” Robin said. “But is he going to?”

Bernard shot his friend a stern look, then nodded. “Master Whitehall and Lord Chambers you know, of course,” he said. “They’ve been friends for ... for longer than I’ve been alive, so they’re pretty much the co-leaders of the commune. Lord and Master Incánus Wolfe joined them shortly afterwards, seeking out the last apprentice of Myrddin the Sane.”

Emily nodded, tersely. “I know them,” she said. “Who is the man next to Master Wolfe?”

“That’s Lord and Master Alfred,” Bernard said. “He’s a little dotty, but he means well.”

“I know the type,” Emily said. Alfred could have passed for an older and balder version of Professor Dumbledore. His face was strikingly hairy, even though his head had been shaved clean; his eyes seemed to wander in all directions, as if he wasn’t really controlling them at all. “He’s a DemonMaster, right?”

“One of the oldest,” Bernard confirmed.

Emily sucked in her breath. Lord Alfred was mentioned in a dozen textbooks, the star of a hundred different stories ... none of which made sense. Professor Locke had practically driven himself mad by studying stories of terrifyingly advanced feats of magic and trying to work out how they’d been done. Lord Alfred was supposed to have plucked the moon from the sky, seduced a princess who’d been enchanted to deny men, battled a hideous monster that consumed virgins, tamed a dragon ...

She shook her head. It was impossible to believe that the gentle-looking old man in front of her was responsible for
any
of those feats. The stories
had
to be exaggerated.

Unless a demon did them
, she thought.
Unless ...

Bernard nodded to the grim-faced man sitting at the end of the rug. “That’s Master Gila,” he explained. “I believe I mentioned him to you.”

Emily’s eyes went wide as Master Gila
looked
at her. His face was scarred, but it was his eyes that caught Emily’s attention. Even at a distance, she could see a hint of red light within his pupils, a red light she’d always associated with necromancy. The more she looked at him, the harder it was to get any real sense of what he
looked
like. There was something about his appearance that reminded her of Shadye in his last few seconds of life.

“You said he’d gone mad,” she whispered.

“You don’t want his attention,” Julianne warned. “That’s his wife down there.”

Emily followed her gaze. An older woman—she looked around thirty—sat with the other women, her face contorted in absolute misery. Emily
knew
—knew beyond a shadow of a doubt—that her husband abused her, that he beat her and cursed her and did all manner of other horrible things to her, but there was no way she could escape. She was his property, as far as everyone else was concerned; there was nothing they could or would do to help her.

A good reason not to get married here
, she thought, morbidly.

She looked back at Whitehall, who was still chatting with Master Chambers. How could he tolerate Master Gila? The man was a monster! But if he was steadily going mad, he might not have started out as a monster. The thought was no comfort. His poor wife would have watched, helplessly, as her husband degenerated, unable to do anything to save his mind from collapse. It wouldn’t be long before he was gone for good.

And that might be a relief
, Emily told herself.

“He used to be very skilled at healing,” Bernard said. “But right now ... he’s losing his mind.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment. “We might all go that way, one day.”

“I won’t,” Robin said. He smiled. “You have to be optimistic about these things.”

Emily kept her expression blank. She could still sense the lingering presence of the demon surrounding Robin, its magic tainting his very soul. And he wasn’t the only one, either; three of the other apprentices had clearly summoned their own demons. Bernard might be frustrated at the slow pace Master Whitehall had set, but it was all that stood between him and outright madness. His magic was far from perfect, yet at least it wasn’t
demonic
.

“Lord Drake is very skilled at transmutation,” Bernard added. He nodded towards a tall, thin-lipped man chatting to Master Wolfe. “He’s the only person I’ve met who has been able to turn people into frogs--” he winked at Emily “--as well as change lead into gold and a few other useful tricks. He’s also incredibly conceited. His apprentices have to come up to his high standards ...”

“Which is why he doesn’t have one,” Robin put in. He waved a hand towards the unattached apprentices. “Fifty young men, all growing older by the day, in search of someone to teach them how to handle their magic ... and Master Drake refuses to teach them. They’re not good enough for him.”

Emily frowned. Changing lead into gold was tricky, although—according to Professor Thande—changing gold into lead was remarkably easy. And yet, without the solid base of knowledge she’d used in her own time, how did Lord Drake do it? Had he been the one to lay the foundations for what would become transfiguration?

She looked at Bernard. “Do you know how to transmute anything?”

“Of course not,” Bernard said. “I don’t even know the fundamental basics of transmutation.”

“You know who you could ask,” Robin pointed out.

Julianne paled. “My father would kill you.”

Robin smirked. “Do it a long way from here ...”

Emily tuned out the ensuing argument as she thought, hard. Transmutation would
have
to be the first step towards transfiguration, although she’d have to ask Lord Drake just how far he’d managed to progress on his own. She had a sneaking suspicion that putting Lord Drake and Master Wolfe together would actually lead to some interesting discoveries ... but if Bernard was right, Lord Drake was unlikely to cooperate with anyone. Unless, of course, she could find something to use as a bribe ...

“Tell me something,” she said. “Does Lord Drake talk to anyone?”

“Hardly anyone,” Robin said. “I once disturbed his studies and spent the rest of the day as an ass.”

“Oh,” Bernard said. “Why didn’t he try to turn you back?”

Julianne giggled.

Emily sighed as the good-natured argument grew louder. If Robin was telling the truth, Lord Drake wasn’t likely to talk to her ... and
trying
to talk to him might prove fatal. Or, at least, embarrassing. Emily was confident that she could handle anything Bernard or Robin threw at her—although Robin’s demons were dangerous wild cards—but could she handle a master sorcerer?
Whitehall’s
magic was blunt and crude compared to the spells she’d seen Void or Sergeant Miles use, yet he was also immensely powerful. Lord Drake might be able to crush her defenses through simple brute force.

I’ll have to think about it later
, she told herself.
And keep working on ways to get home
.

Bernard sighed, loudly. “Lord Reaper is another DemonMaster,” he said. “He shouldn’t be here at all, but Lord Chambers insisted after his home was destroyed. Lord Keldor specializes in death magics, working with dead bodies ... I think he’s a DemonMaster too, but there’s no actual proof. And Lord Bones is good at charms.”

“There’s a couple of others,” Robin added. “Apprentice Sake will probably be raised to mastery soon.”

“He’s Lord Gila’s apprentice,” Julianne explained. “He’s nowhere near as bad as his master.”

“Poor bastard gets beaten every day,” Robin said. “I don’t know why he stays.”

Bernard’s face darkened. “A year ago, a skilled healer could live anywhere,” he said, “and he would be welcome. Now ... now I don’t know what would happen if he tried.”

Emily shuddered. If Gila was so far gone that he was taking it out on his wife and his apprentice ... she glanced at the madman and winced, again, as he met her eyes. Just for a second, she felt an unpleasant pressure in her mind, as if Gila had just tried to break through her defenses and ransack her thoughts. She gritted her teeth as her head began to pound, tightening her shields even as she forced herself to break eye contact. Her headache rapidly faded as soon as she looked away, but she was grimly aware of red eyes staring at her as she turned her head.

Bernard frowned. “Emily?”

Emily shook her head. She’d had her mind ransacked once—by Grandmaster Hasdrubal—and she’d hated it, even though she knew the Grandmaster hadn’t had a choice. No one had suggested that any of the magicians in the past could look into her mind ... but she’d never thought to ask. Who
could
she ask? If Bernard didn’t know ...

Ask Whitehall
, she told herself.
He might be able to answer any questions you have
.

She looked up as the servants entered, carrying large bowls of stew and placing them in front of the magicians. There was no formality, Emily noted; the diners filled their bowls as soon as the food was in front of them and started to eat with their fingers. Emily tested her own meal, just to make sure it was safe to eat, then started to pick at her food herself. The stew tasted faintly unpleasant, as if the meat was reaching the end of its life, but her spells insisted it was safe to eat. Beside her, Julianne ate so rapidly that Emily worried she was going to be sick.

“At least we have something better to eat,” Bernard said. “And a whole castle to use as a base.”

“Until the bastards get after us,” Robin pointed out. “Do you think that
they
will find the forest impregnable?”

Emily frowned. She’d never been a good tracker—Sergeant Miles had said many sarcastic things about her ability to follow people through the forests surrounding Whitehall—but even
she
would have found it easy to track a group of two to three hundred men, women and children. Whoever—whatever—was hunting the commune wouldn’t have any trouble doing the same, unless they were concerned about the nexus point. Perhaps they thought the commune
already
had the nexus point under control.

Or perhaps they think the nexus point will kill the commune for them
, she thought. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but it had to be faced.
And if I hadn’t been there, they would have been right
.

“Or the castle,” Robin added, after a moment. “Can we defend the building?”

“We have magic,” Bernard said.

“Magic hasn’t been enough,” Julianne warned.

Emily felt a shiver running down her spine. “We’ll have to get the nexus point under control,” she said, softly. “It’s the only hope we have.”

She forced herself to sit back as Bernard, making a determined effort to push away the gloom, started to introduce her to the other apprentices. The attached apprentices seemed more curious than doubtful, but the unattached apprentices regarded her with either open dislike or contempt. Emily sighed inwardly—the unattached apprentices would take months, perhaps, to get over their irritation at her presence—and nibbled on her bread as Bernard moved on to identifying the camp followers.

“It’s a small village,” she said, as Bernard pointed out the carpenters, the blacksmiths, the potters and even a couple of farmers. “You could set up a village of your own.”

“Master Whitehall had a dream,” Bernard said. “One day, there would be a whole
settlement
of magicians and the trades that support them. He thought ... he thought that it would be one good way to increase our numbers.”

Emily had to smile. Was that—
that
—the idea that had become Whitehall School?

“It didn’t work,” Julianne said, bitterly. “It
couldn’t
work.”

Robin snorted. “Magicians didn’t want to do all the hard work themselves,” he said, “so they needed a staff of mundanes to do everything from forging swords to growing crops. And then the mundanes didn’t want to live near the wizards ... the only way to keep them there was to enslave them, which made their work useless.”