Schooled in Magic (23 page)

“You,” a voice snapped. Emily glanced up sharply. Alassa was walking out of the trees that had concealed her presence, accompanied by two of her cronies. All three of them were holding wands. “Do you know what you did to me?”

Emily glared at her, feeling rage burning through her mind. “Do you know what you did to
me
?”

Alassa brandished her wand, threateningly. Emily hesitated. Using a wand was a sign that the carrier was not a skilled magician, but it didn’t mean that the carrier wasn’t a
strong
magician. And
she
had never been allowed to use a wand. She hadn’t seen Aloha use one either–and her roommate
was aiming to become a combat sorceress. Sparks snapped out of the tip of Alassa’s wand, but Emily held her ground. There was no way that she was going to back down in front of the royal bully.

“I gave you what you deserved, you insufferable
commoner
,” Alassa snapped. “You...”

Words failed her as Emily stared at her in disbelief, followed by slow-burning horror. Alassa would have been raised to
know
, with every inch of her being, that she was born to rule–and that those who happened to be common-born were her servants. She wasn’t allowed to doubt that, not even slightly–and it would provide a justification for anything she wanted to do. No, she wouldn’t even
bother
with a justification. The sense of her own superiority was too strong to need to convince herself of the rightness of her own actions.

It was wrong. It was completely wrong. It was so wrong as to be unquestionably wrong. And it was so fundamentally wrong that Emily had difficulty in coming up with an explanation of
why
it was wrong.

Alassa’s hand moved and a spell lashed out towards Emily. It struck Emily’s protective wards and bounced off, magic crackling around her skin before it faded away into the background
mana
.

Emily started to cast a spell of her own–a freeze charm she’d memorized for emergencies - only to see it deflected away by one of Alassa’s cronies.

A second later, Alassa hit her with a second spell. Emily’s wards were torn away.

Alassa’s third spell slammed into Emily’s unprotected body.

She tried to open her mouth, but an eerie tingle spread over her body and the world began to blur. Alassa’s spell seemed to grow stronger as the world shrank, somehow dislocating Emily’s mind from her body. It was suddenly very hard to hear anything ... it struck her, in a flash of pure terror, that Alassa had transfigured her into something small and immobile.

Imaiqah’s words came back to her and she wondered if she was about to become convinced that she was a broom, or something worse. But Alassa could only cast spells she’d memorized. No one would have taught her a flawed spell ...

At least, Emily hoped that was the case. Someone might have given Alassa a useless spell in the hopes it would give her bad habits. But that thought was too terrifying to contemplate ...

The world had faded into a confused mass of impressions. Perhaps she no longer had eyes, so how could she see? But Emily definitely saw something ... Alassa and her cronies were advancing on Imaiqah, intending to teach the common-born girl a nasty lesson for daring to befriend someone who might help her to stand up for herself. Words came to her as though she was hearing them through water: Alassa threatening, Imaiqah pleading ... she sounded terrified. Alassa would tease and torment Imaiqah and then Alassa would do whatever she wanted to a helpless girl.

Pure rage boiled through Emily’s mind as she struggled with the spell Alassa had cast on her. It should have been easy to shape a dispelling charm, but it was so hard to think clearly with her thoughts slowly blurring into a daze. A human mind
had
to be dislocated if its body were to be transformed, she realized, as she struggled to counter Alassa’s spell. The alternative was what had happened to poor Broomstick.

Imaiqah screamed.

Emily threw caution to the winds, blasting Alassa’s spell with all the
mana
she could summon and direct. The spell simply melted away while the world spun crazily around Emily as she snapped back into her human form. Somehow, the rage made it easier to hold onto her magic.

Her eyes returned to normal. She clearly saw that Imaiqah’s face was bruised; she’d been slapped, hard. And she’d been so terrified that she hadn’t even tried to defend herself.

Alassa turned, raising her wand even as her face was twisted by horrified disbelief.

Emily’s rage was making it hard to think. She found two spells in her mind, spells she’d memorized that were both intended to stop a bully in her tracks. She hesitated, just for a second too long–which one should she pick?

Alassa started to cast another spell ...

Emily sensed the surge of magic and knew that her time had run out. Frantically, she tried to cast both spells at once.
Mana
flared through her body, sending her staggering to her knees. She heard, very dimly, someone screaming in pain. Alassa? Or was Emily screaming herself? She squeezed her eyes shut as blinding light burned at her eyelids. Her head hurt, as if she’d been violently sick inside her own mind, or taken something that had intoxicated her.

She managed to open her eyes, then recoiled in horror.

Alassa lay, stunned on the ground in front of her ...

... And her lower jaw was warped and twisted into eerie yellow stone.

W
HAT HAD SHE DONE?

Emily heard someone scream in the distance, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Alassa’s face. What had she done?

Alassa seemed trapped midway through transformations, as if the transformation had proceeded only so far, then stopped. The morbid part of Emily’s mind pointed out that it was lucky that Alassa had been knocked out, or she would have been in terrible pain; the rest of her wondered if she’d
killed
the bully outright. What if she had? She’d been so happy at Whitehall, so happy that she’d never seriously
considered
going home. They’d expel her, and then Alassa’s royal parents would kill her...

A hand caught her and shook her, roughly.

Emily turned to see one of the tutors, an elderly man she didn’t recognize. Another tutor, with dirty black hair and an unpleasantly jaundiced face, used magic to pick up Alassa, then they both vanished in a flash of light. To the school’s infirmary, Emily hoped, and prayed inwardly that they weren’t going to the morgue.

What had she done?

Mixed magic
, part of her mind answered. Two spells. She’d tried to cast two spells at once and they’d interacted.

How
could
she have been so stupid? Broomstick’s roommate had been a genius compared to Emily. Emily had let rage and hatred trick her into losing control. She could have protected herself and Imaiqah,
then
cast a single spell on Alassa, or she could have simply thrown a punch right at the bully’s face. In a world where magic was exalted above all else, Alassa might not have thought to shield herself against physical blows.

Her head spun again. Emily felt as if she were about to vomit. What had she done? Alassa might not recover at all, or ... she might have permanently mutilated the girl, or ... too many horrific possibilities ran through her mind. She might as well have been playing with a gun, unaware that it had been loaded until the moment she pulled the trigger ... no, she’d
known
that magic could be very dangerous.

She had no excuse.

The tutor’s face showed nothing but grim anger. Emily couldn’t blame him.

There was a crowd gathering to witness her shame and humiliation. Emily wanted to hide, but where could she go? They would all know that she’d almost killed Alassa, even if the royal princess had thoroughly deserved punishment for her bullying. What would they think of her now that she actually
cared
about the opinions of her peers?

Maybe she should kill herself. She’d thought about ending her life years ago, when she’d realized just how little she had to look forward to, but what she’d done now was far worse than merely having had enough of a pointless life. A girl had been badly injured, left on the verge of death, and it was all Emily’s fault. There was no escaping her responsibility for losing control of her own magic. A few seconds of actual
thought
would have allowed her to teach Alassa a lesson without nearly killing her.

She swallowed hard and looked up at the tutor. “Go to the Hall of Shame,” he said, in a voice that refused to brook disobedience. “Now!”

Emily nodded, very slowly. Somehow–her legs felt wobbly, unwilling to obey orders–she managed to walk forwards, towards the nearest entrance to the castle. The crowd of students drew back, as if she were carrying a contagious disease and they were afraid of catching it. None of the tutors looked happy; no doubt anyone who spoke out of turn would regret it for a very long time.

She felt eyes boring into her back as she reached the doorway and entered the castle. Somehow–maybe not surprisingly–the door led her right into the Hall of Shame.

She’d seen it before, the first time she’d entered the castle. Students who had broken the rules were sent there to wait for sentence to be passed, although she wasn’t sure who did the sentencing. Somehow, she doubted that just anyone would decide her fate. By now, the Grandmaster probably knew and was discussing her future with Void. She could just imagine what the sorcerer who had risked his own life to save hers would say once he heard that she’d ruined her own future. And Alassa’s parents would want her dead ...

... Emily shivered, unsure of what to do. Maybe she could just run.

“Hi,” a voice said.

She looked up to see Jade standing there. She blinked hard to clear her eyes. They’d expel her from Martial Magic for sure, even if they allowed her to remain in the school.

His voice was surprisingly soft, almost gentle. But he didn’t know what she’d done. “What are
you
doing here?”

Emily shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I’m a Prefect,” Jade reminded her. “It’s my turn to monitor the Hall of Shame.”

Of course he would be, Emily realized. They’d want a potential combat sorcerer like him to have leadership experience if he had to go to war.

Jade made a show of glancing up and down the corridor. “You seem to be alone,” he said, after a moment. “No one
ever
gets in trouble when there’s a
Ken
match on.”

Emily flushed, fighting down the urge to cry. She’d definitely go down in the school’s history, perhaps under the heading of “what not to do.” And to think that it had something to do with sport ...

She looked down, unwilling to let him see her eyes filled with tears. “Am I the worst pupil in the school?”

Jade caught her shoulder and shook it, gently. “You’ve only been here a week. Do you think you’re worse than the idiot who thought that a shark would make a good pet? She transformed it into a cat and used it as a familiar. The monster scratched everyone until it vanished into the kitchen and was never seen again.”

Emily stared at him, wondering why his touch was actually reassuring. “Did the shark kill people?

“No, but some of them wished they were dead,” Jade said, with droll amusement. “Did they say how long you were to stay here?”

“No,” Emily admitted. The tears were still falling. He passed her a handkerchief, allowing her to try to dry her eyes. “I don’t know how long to stay here.”

“That’s a bad sign,” Jade said. He looked as if he wanted to pry, particularly after she’d asked if the shark-cat had killed someone, but held his tongue. “You see the marks on the floor? Go stand there, as still as you can, with your hands on your head. Someone will eventually call you into the Warden’s office, where ...”

Sentence will be passed
, Emily thought, numbly. “What happens if I move?”

“The Warden will know and he will take it into account,” Jade said. “Don’t annoy him, whatever else you do.”

Emily almost giggled. As if that would matter!

“Thank you,” she said, finally. She dabbed her eyes and then passed the handkerchief back to him. “I ... thank you.”

The Hall of Shame seemed larger than she remembered, but then she was the only pupil there. She stopped at the glowing marks, hesitated, then stepped onto them, realizing that everyone who walked by would see her and know that she was being punished. They would probably have heard rumors already, she thought bitterly. The Child of Destiny, who had arrived on a dragon, had almost killed a fellow pupil. She might even
have
killed a fellow pupil.

“Hands on your head,” Jade called. “Now, if you please.”

Emily hesitated, and then slowly obeyed. The pose was humiliating as hell, intended to make it clear that she was
definitely
being punished. No wonder it was such an effective punishment ... her stomach churned rapidly as she remembered what she’d done, and the horror-struck looks on the faces of Alassa’s cronies. They might have been
encouraged
by the princess’s parents to guard her. If so, Alassa had been badly injured on their watch. But they could have been encouraged to show her a better way to live ...