The Spellbinder (Tom & Laura Series) (2 page)

Chapter 2
         
A Matter of Pride

When Colonel Bertram White discovered the secret books of Sir Isaac Newton he immediately saw the military potential of the magic they described. He scoured the country seeking magic users who possessed the talents Sir Isaac had described. Most of those he found had no idea they had such abilities, as without training these talents remain dormant.

Colonel White, later to become Lord Magus, recruited and trained two Grade 1 Spellbinders in military magic. He persuaded the British Army to allow his team to enter the American Colonial war in 1814 resulting in significant military victories.

From that point on, no British army would be complete without its Spellbinders and Healers. Laws were passed to ensure that all those with magical talent were identified from an early age. A government funded school system was established to train magically gifted youngsters to acquire the skills they would need in service of the Empire. Existing public schools were required to take and train such pupils regardless of their family background. Military schools of magic were established across the country.

- from A Short History of Military Magics by Sir Anthony Barrett

Tom Carter strolled across the grounds of
Lord
Barnes
School
for Strong Gentlemen feeling particularly pleased with himself. He had managed to return to school the previous day without being missed and was currently contemplating the meeting he planned to have with Laura in a couple of hours’ time.

His training session as a Healer had gone well that morning and his magic tutor had suggested he might achieve Grade 2 status before the tests. His healing ability seemed to have increased since the previous week and he was certainly showing ability at the higher end of Grade 3.

“Carter, Thomas Carter.”

Tom looked around and spotted the boy calling him. Browne was slightly older than Tom at seventeen and was due to start military service after Christmas. He and six others were setting up stumps on the playing field some distance away.

“Good afternoon, Browne. Can I be of assistance?”

Browne smiled. “Do you care to join us in a game of cricket?”

Tom thought about it. “I can only play for a couple of hours.”

Browne held out his cricket bat. “Fair enough, you can bat first.”

Ronald Carmichael looked out of his study window and snarled at the sight of Thomas Carter making practice swings with a cricket bat as other boys took up fielding positions across the grass.

“That bind should have lasted for at least a day,”
Carmichael
grumbled. He had a training session with Snood in less than half an hour and he’d promised his tutor that Carter would be history by now. Failure to return for the night would have resulted in his expulsion, which had been the whole purpose of the exercise.
Carmichael
had no idea why Snood wanted Carter expelled, but he had no intention of crossing him. Snood showed no mercy with the cane or the martinet.

He saw Carter put down his bat and point at the toilets to some laughter from the other boys on the field. This was his chance to create a new bind while Tom was safely out of sight of the others.

Carmichael
took a sheet of the best vellum and quickly trimmed the quill of his pen with a pocket knife. He carefully constructed the Latin phrase he needed before he began to write. The bind would be a plea to the gods to allow Carter to be changed into a cat. Some claimed that it didn’t matter what you wrote provided you concentrated on what you wanted but
Carmichael
found it much easier to do it the way he had been taught. Latin gave the bind a certain gravitas.

The ink bubbled dry as soon as it hit the paper with little spurts of steam rising behind the tip of the pen. That showed the bind was taking.

Tom returned to the playing field to ribald laughter and looked down to discover part of his shirt sticking out between the buttons of his fly. He made a rude gesture to those laughing at him and tucked his shirt properly into his trousers.

Positioning himself in front of the stumps he tapped the turf with the end of his bat and waited. Browne’s first ball bounced wide of the stump and Tom took great pleasure in knocking it over the head of the boy in the outfield.

Dominican Snood paced his bookshelf lined office and went to stand at the paneled window with his hands gripped tightly behind his back. “Where is the damned boy?” he muttered irritably. He was not used to waiting on pupils, no matter what their promise in the magical arts.

Carmichael
entered the room without bothering to knock. He was very much the worse for wear. His face was an unnatural red, as if he had held it close to an open fire for many minutes. He was bereft of his normally bushy eyebrows.

Snood heard the click of the door as it closed and spun around to face his pupil without looking at him.

“I told you to get Carter expelled. Important people have asked me to ensure it happens. People you would be wise never to cross. But I have seen him out there playing cricket as if he doesn’t have a care in….” Snood paused, taking in the state of the boy in front of him. “What have you done to yourself?”

Carmichael
seemed close to hysteria.

“I tried to fix him, sir. I turned him into a dog as you suggested. But after an hour the bind burst into flame. A few minutes ago I used my best vellum to change him again. As soon as I finished writing it, the bind burst into flames, and now look at me.”

Snood considered the possibilities that raised and dismissed them in disgust.

“You must have done something wrong, boy. That simply can’t happen.” Snood leant over
Carmichael
using the desk for support. “No one he knows could make that happen.”

“Well, you try it then,”
Carmichael
shouted. Anger and pain made him forget for a moment who was the master and who the pupil. His face stung terribly and he had seen how he looked in a mirror. The boys in his dorm would poke fun at him tonight and he was not looking forward to it. A number of them were looking for the opportunity to get even with him.

“Very well,” Snood said curtly, determined to take up his pupil’s challenge. “What exactly were you trying to change him into?” Snood slipped easily into the role of tutor. He enjoyed the part he had been given to play. In particular, he enjoyed the brutal beatings he could mete out to any who failed to live up to his exacting standards.

His was a comfortable and well-paid job, teaching some of the most talented Spellbinders in
London
. It was a much better job than working as a General’s Spellbinder on the Indian front, or even worse, on a ship of the Royal Navy, picking weevils out of his biscuits before he ate them. Snood shivered at the thought.

Snood was not a powerful Spellbinder. He recognized that
Carmichael
might well excel him in raw power. However, whatever Snood lacked in power, he made up for in materials and technique.

He went over to his cupboard and withdrew a small sheet of the finest vellum, especially made for Her Majesty’s Military Spellbinders by Potter’s of St Giles’ Square. The best magical parchment it was possible to buy. The ink he took from a drawer was special too. Made with a mix of lead to conduct the heat the spell generated evenly across the paper, making the bind less likely to combust early. Only agents of the Crown were allowed to buy that ink.

“I was trying to turn him into a cat, since the dog form didn’t last long,”
Carmichael
said as he leant over to watch his master prepare the bind. ‘
What I could do with those’
he thought covetously at the sight of the paper and ink.

“Watch closely, boy. See how an expert Spellbinder conducts himself.” Snood wrote his bind with thick even strokes of his pen. He constructed the words that would turn Thomas Carter into the cat he so thoroughly deserved to be. Snood thought that with any luck, the boy would be missing long enough to get expelled from the school, or even better, killed by the wild dogs roaming the outskirts of
London
by night. ‘I should never have entrusted this mission to the boy,’ Snood thought as he worked.

Snood had forgotten he gave
Carmichael
the task to have someone to blame should it become necessary. In such an event, investigators would only see a boyish prank by an up and coming Spellbinder. The Military Magic branch of the armed forces needed powerful Spellbinders far too much to punish them for minor offences.

He hunched closer to the paper as he finished the last stroke to create the bind.
Carmichael
leant closer as well. It was almost as if he could see the power flowing down the pen and into the ink.

There was a blinding flash followed by a deafening bang.

Carmichael
lay coughing on the floor, his face felt as though it was on fire and he smelled the distinct scent of burning hair. White smoke obscured his vision. He could barely see his own hand when he held it to his face. A scrambling on the floor told him someone was moving close to him and he felt a strong hand seize his leg before working its way along his body towards his head.

Snood appeared like an apparition of death, face bright red and blistered, eyebrows gone with smoldering hair sticking out in all directions.

He pulled himself forward until their faces were almost touching.
Carmichael
tried to look away, but Snood grabbed his head and forced him to look at him. The pain of the hand touching his face almost made him faint. Tears formed in his eyes. Spittle dripped from the side of Snood’s mouth onto
Carmichael
cheek and the boy desperately wanted to wipe it off.

“That’s the work of a Grade 1 Spellbinder, boy. Carter has a truly powerful magician as a friend. Didn’t I ask you to find out about his friends?” Snood shook the boy demanding an answer, but all
Carmichael
could manage was a rattling cough.

Carmichael
thought the suggestion was insane. Carter had only recently arrived from
Windsor
, which lay many miles from
London
. He had made no friends to speak of since he arrived, and in any case, there were no other Spellbinders in the school higher than Grade 4.

Carmichael
found he had spoken his thoughts aloud. Snood let go of him and staggered unsteadily across the room. Snood’s masters had failed to give him an important piece of information about Carter. They had told him this task would be trivial.

“You must find out who this Spellbinder is, boy,” Snood snarled. He looked a like an apparition, smoke continuing to rise from his hair. “Then you shall use a bind I will prepare for you. I have a score to settle with this Spellbinder and Thomas Carter. Oh yes, and it will turn out to be a fatal score. Of that you can be certain.”

Carmichael
eyes opened wide in shock. If this really was the work of a Grade 1 Spellbinder the police would never stop searching for the one who killed him. Grade 1’s were far too valuable to Her Majesty to allow one to be killed without stretching the neck of the perpetrator as an object lesson to others.

‘What am I going to do?’
Carmichael
thought as he fingered his neck nervously. He could almost feel the noose slipping around it.

Chapter 3
         
Flight of Fancy

The Seven Branches of Military Magic

The principles of magic established by Sir Isaac Newton state that individuals may only possess one of these magical abilities.

- from A Short History of Military Magics by Sir Anthony Barrett

Laura stood in the line of schoolgirls keeping her face impassive and her arms straight at her sides. Miss Pringle was wont to read a smile as a supercilious grin and that would result in two strokes of the cane across the back of the legs. In Laura’s opinion, Miss Pringle took the maxim
spare the rod and spoil the child
to unreasonable lengths.

“What do you call that girl?” Miss Pringle demanded of Elspeth Wright. Elspeth was a mouse of a girl, a Grade 4 Healer, not it would do her any good, Laura thought sadly. Healers cannot heal themselves.

Laura risked a glance in the girl’s direction as Elspeth quivered in fear.
 
The offending item was a badly tied bow behind the girl’s back, something Elspeth could not even see.

“Wh-wh-what, Miss?”

“And don’t stutter. I hate that in a girl. Hold out your hand.”

Elspeth reluctantly held out her hand straight out in front of her and Miss Pringle brought her ruler down on it three times. Laura saw tears in the girl’s eyes though Elspeth made no sound. Even to cry out would risk further punishment.

“May I straighten her bow, Miss?” Laura asked, keeping her eyes straight in front. Miss Pringle had been known to increase the punishment if faults were not corrected and Elspeth still didn’t know what she was being punished for.

“Be quiet, Miss Young. No you certainly may not.”

Elspeth had taken the hint and was already adjusting the bow behind her back. Miss Pringle sniffed in what might have been disappointment and stepped along the line to face Laura. She stared straight ahead as Miss Pringle’s eyes scanned her body looking eagerly for anything to find fault with. She made Laura turn around when nothing obvious revealed itself.

“Congratulations, Miss Young. Your maid seems to have done an excellent job in dressing you this morning.”

“I will pass on your comment to her, Miss.” Laura said being careful to keep her voice neutral.

Miss Pringle sniffed and waved her hand at the class. “Take your seats, young ladies. We will be delving into the delights of algebra this afternoon and I expect you to pay close attention if you do not want to face severe consequences.

Laura kept her face impassive as she turned towards her desk. There had been animosity between them ever since Miss Pringle had suffered from severe pains in her right arm, despite repeated visits to doctors and healers. It had lasted for weeks and the school had gone as far as searching Laura’s desk looking for a bind. The Headmistress even wrote a letter to her parents asking them to do the same. Sadly for Miss Pringle, her parents were unaware of some of Laura’s special hiding places.

Her desk was by the window and that allowed Laura to glance outside whenever Miss Pringle’s back was turned. It was a beautiful day and birds were singing in the trees.

Laura found algebra boring. What did it matter if you could find the relationship of x to y? She could change anything into anything with a bind so the whole thing seemed stupid.

It occurred to Laura that if she wanted, she could energize the equations she wrote and change mathematics so that her answers were right. The trouble with such binds was that they always failed eventually and quite quickly if many others strongly believed something else.
 
She decided not to risk it as having her paper catch fire would certainly bring Miss Pringle’s wrath down upon her. Ever since the arm incident, Laura had been very careful to avoid giving Miss Pringle the slightest excuse to beat her.

Miss Pringle droned on as she wrote equations on the blackboard. A thin sour faced woman in her thirties, her voice was every bit as grating as the squeak of her chalk on the board. She was unmarried and likely to stay that way, given her age. Laura wondered which had come first, the woman’s bitter expression or her lack of suitors. She could see how one might lead to the other, whichever way it was.

Laura knew she should be paying attention, but it was so difficult now she had a handsome young man to think about. Tom had certainly been dashing, Laura had a good memory and the sight of him prancing on the hot gravel of the path in the all-together was deeply embedded in her mind. She also had a pleasing memory of how he looked before he managed to get his hands into place. In the livestock evaluations she had used in the country he would rank high in the stud book.

Laura wondered what Tom was doing at school. Perhaps only girls had to learn algebra and he might be doing something interesting and useful like learning how to maintain and fire a rifle. She could see the point of that. It was a practical skill. She had used a shotgun in the country, but her father had never let her clean the weapon.

Looking around at the rest of the class, Laura noted that the other young ladies appeared every bit as bored as she was. She glanced again out of the window wishing she was outside enjoying the sunshine. The window was open as it was so warm. Laura relished the feel of the cool breeze on her arm and breathed in the scent of freshly mown grass. It wasn’t fair to be stuck inside learning mathematics.

Laura spotted a dove perched at the top of the flag pole and an idea occurred to her. She checked on Miss Pringle who still had her back to the class as she wrote on the board. Laura reached into her valise and surreptitiously pulled a sheet of parchment from it.

The school ink would be good enough for the task as she didn’t need the bind to last long. She dipped her quill into the ink pot at the front of her desk and stroked the edge of her pen nib against its side. She thought for a moment before writing and then began. The dove on the flag pole turned to stare at her in a most unnatural way. It flew across from the pole to the windowsill and looked deep into her eyes. Laura felt the dove’s hostility. Birds do not like being controlled. Nevertheless, Laura was determined that this one was going to do exactly what she wanted.

She wrote a message onto a small strip of paper she tore from her notebook. She wrote the message in tiny writing and then folded the paper together into a tiny parcel. Completely lost in the task, she didn’t notice Miss Pringle as the teacher finished writing on the blackboard and turned back to the class.

Laura added a few extra instructions to the bind. The bird obediently opened its mouth and Laura gave it the message. The dove turned and flew away.

Miss Pringle tapped her foot loudly and Laura looked up in shock to find the teacher staring at her. That was one of the problems with spellbinding; it took up all the binder’s concentration. Laura felt dread run through her like electricity. She could expect no mercy now she had giving her teacher the opportunity she’d been looking for.

Once she had Laura’s attention Miss Pringle spoke slowly and with clear anticipation.

“Miss Young. You shall receive six of the best for your disrespectful behavior.”

The other girls in the class were staring at her, Elspeth with sympathy and dismay. Miss Pringle knew how to wield a cane ferociously. That was why Laura had disabled her arm in the first place. A couple of the girls were licking their lips in anticipation. Miss Pringle always put on a good show and Laura was far from the most popular person in the room. A Grade 1 Spellbinder was going to soar right passed the others no matter how hard they worked and most of the girls in the class resented that fact.

Blushing at the realization at what was going to happen; Laura stood up and walked slowly to the front of the room. She raised her skirts and bent over the teacher’s desk. Laura held tight to the sides of the desk in the certain knowledge of how much the cane would hurt. Miss Pringle awarded extra strokes if a pupil stood without permission or reached back to touch her bottom during the punishment.

The next few minutes were hard on Laura, Miss Pringle always left exactly sixty seconds between each stroke to give her victim time to fully appreciate the pain and time to anticipate the next. Some of the girls in the school believed that Miss Pringle practiced with the cane each and every night to perfect her art.

The dove flew purposefully through the sky until it reached Tom’s school where it circled until it spotted Tom playing cricket on the playing field. Laura had impressed her memory of Tom’s features into the bird’s mind along with the location of the school.

The bind forced the dove to deliver the note to Tom, but there was a little leeway in the instructions and the dove chose to release the note so it dropped down the back of Tom’s shirt. The other boys laughed as Tom struggled to get at the note, which had stuck halfway down his back.

“
Carmichael
must really hate you,” Browne said as Tom dropped the cricket bat so he could use both hands. “Still, it could have been worse, it was only paper.”

Tom retrieved the paper and put it in his pocket. He didn’t want to read it in front of the others. He picked up his bat and waved it at Browne.

“Come on then. You have two balls left.”

Laura returned to her desk and sat down carefully. While she couldn’t stop the pain from showing on her face as she lowered her bruised posterior onto the chair she was determined not to cry. She didn’t want to give Miss Pringle the satisfaction. School would be over in less than an hour and she could keep her pain to herself for that long.

“Now that we have put a certain member of this class in her place perhaps we can get back to the purpose of this lesson,” Miss Pringle said with considerable satisfaction. “Miss Wright, will you come up to the blackboard and write down your answer to question two?”

“I’ve got to go, chaps,” Tom shouted from the outfield. The school clock was showing a quarter to four and he needed to get a move on.

The others jeered good naturedly at him and Browne waved him off. He’d have to remember to ask about the final score when he got back.

As soon as he was out of sight of the other boys Tom took out and read the note. It told him Laura wanted him to meet her in the park after school, which he had planned to do anyway. But it was good to get such a clear signal from her that she hadn’t forgotten about him. He wondered how she’d got the bird to deliver the note. Tom knew little about spellbinding, beyond that there were four Class A Spellbinders in the Empire and that they were worth more than their weight in gold. Class A was a special level of power above Grade 1 that almost no one possessed.

Carmichael
had been keeping a watch on Tom from the corner of the dormitory building. He saw Tom yelp and grab at his back when the bird dive bombed him. It didn’t take much effort to deduce that Tom had received a message from his mysterious Spellbinder friend.

‘
Well, Carter’
,
Carmichael
thought,
‘Now I’ll be able to find out exactly who this friend of yours is. Not that either of you will be around for long after I do.’
He touched the parchment in his pocket for reassurance and shivered.