Infinite Regress (14 page)

“Ouch,” Caleb muttered.

“Cast the spell,” Professor Armstrong ordered. “And then infuse it into the hearthstone.”

Emily nodded, then shaped the spell in her mind. It felt hard to put it together piece by piece, now that her abilities had expanded sharply, but the textbooks she’d read had warned her that it would make it easier to move to the next step. Normally, a spell would be infused into a wand without being charged; this time, she had to charge it first... she felt it waggling backwards and forwards over her fingertips, then humming as she pushed her hand against the hearthstone and tried to let go of the spell. It shimmered with power, then flickered out of existence. Emily swallowed a curse as she stared down at the grey stone. It almost seemed to be mocking her.

“It isn’t primed yet,” Professor Armstrong said. Emily looked up, sharply. She hadn’t heard him approaching, even though he strode around the room like a charging elephant. She’d been too intent on the spell to notice. “You need to use a far more gentle touch.”

“Yes, sir,” Emily said.

“Try again,” he ordered. “And this time, be gentle.”

Emily nodded and went back to work. It took her four tries to get the spell infused into the hearthstone without losing it, although she had a feeling it would get easier as the stone became more used to the presence of magic. Hearthstones
channeled
magic, projecting wards out... she shuddered, inwardly, as she recalled Shadye looming over her with a stone knife. He’d intended to use it to suck out her magic and use it for himself.

“You’re pushing too hard,” Professor Armstrong said to Pandora. “You need to be gentle.”

“I
was
gentle,” Caleb muttered. He’d succeeded on his second try. “But the spellwork doesn’t last very long.”

“It needs to be charged,” Emily muttered back. “But how do we charge it without overbalancing it?”

She sighed in frustration. It was definitely a balancing act; too little power and the spell would snap out of existence, too much power and the spell would come apart at the seams. She silently thanked Void for making her start again from the beginning, no matter how much she’d resented it at the time. If he had let her have her way, when her magical reserves had expanded so radically, she doubted she would have been allowed to remain in Professor Armstrong’s class. She would probably have accidentally destroyed the hearthstone within the first hour.

Professor Armstrong strode back to the front of the classroom. “You have all managed to put a working spell into the hearthstone,” he said. “But it didn’t last very long. Why?”

“It didn’t have enough power to remain active,” Cirroc said, quickly.

“Quite right,” Professor Armstrong said. “I’m glad you learned
something
over the last year, young man. And for a
second
point, why don’t you tell us how to
fix
this problem?”

Cirroc leaned forward. “We rewrite the spell to allow us to recharge it, once the spell is firmly in place,” he said. “It’s a complex piece of work...”

“But doable, at your stage,” Professor Armstrong said. His gaze swept the room for a long moment. “Each of you is to write out a
modification
to the spell that allows you to recharge it, once the spell is firmly embedded in the hearthstone. I want you to do this
alone
, without even a
hint
of help from the person next to you. Anyone caught helping or asking for help will be in deep trouble.”

Emily winked at Caleb, then produced her notepad from the desk and went to work. Writing out the spell notation was second nature now—she still cringed at the memory of some of her early mistakes—but it was never easy to rewrite a spell on the fly. Indeed, she’d never really
had
to annotate a spell she’d used for a wand. It was really just a matter of pushing power through the wand, making sure not to accidentally destroy the spellwork in the process. But the hearthstone was a little more complicated.

She wrote out the original spell, then carefully added a pair of modifications. One would allow her to charge the spell, while the other would balance the power, giving the spell a power reserve. It wouldn’t last long—power leached away from improper spellwork—but at least it would hold long enough to master the trick. She glanced at Caleb, his head bent over his own notebook, and smiled. Their joint project—which they would have to work on at some point—might benefit from some of their new skills.

“Let me see your work,” Professor Armstrong said. “Do
not
attempt to actually
use
the spellwork without my permission.”

He strode from desk to desk, reading the paperwork and offering comments. Cirroc was given nothing, while Pandora was told off sharply for missing out on the power reserve, which would have destroyed her spellwork if she’d actually tried to use it. He glanced once at Caleb’s and nodded in approval, then picked up Emily’s paper and read it twice before scowling in disapproval and pointing to a single line.

“Emily,” he said, sharply. “What’s wrong with this?”

Emily hesitated, suddenly aware that everyone was looking at her. “It channels power,” she said. She felt her cheeks grow warm under his stare. “I don’t know what’s wrong...”

“This isn’t a wand,” Professor Armstrong said. “What you have is something that will spend its power in a single moment, then stop working. Stone channels magic, but in this case the power will spew out in all directions. It is not a workable solution, which is a shame because the rest of the spellwork is quite good.”

He stepped backwards, leaving Emily to fix the mistake as quickly as she could. In hindsight, it
was
an obvious mistake—and a common one. Prunella received the same lecture, along with two other students. Emily didn’t want to look at Caleb, even though she knew he wouldn’t laugh at her. It was embarrassing.

“Tonight, you are to read about the properties of different kinds of material,” Professor Armstrong said, as he returned to the front of the classroom. “Tomorrow, we will be taking your spellwork and actually putting it to the test. Those of you who fail to learn from mistakes—yours and others—will not get very far.”

He paused. “And one other thing...

“Many of you will want to compare notes, once you’re out of the classroom,” he added, darkly. “And if you
understand
what you’re doing, that’s fine. But if you don’t understand what you’re doing, you’re only hurting yourself.”

The bell rang. “Class dismissed.”

Emily returned the hearthstone to the desk, then rose and headed for the door. She needed Kava. Professor Lombardi was presenting her next class, after lunch, and he didn’t suffer fools gladly. And Caleb wouldn’t be taking it with her. It would just be her.

“Interesting class,” Caleb observed, once they were outside. “And very educational.”

“We could use some of the techniques,” Emily said. “When are we restarting work on the joint project?”

“Once you know where you stand with Professor Locke,” Caleb said. “I think we can put it off for a month, if we try.”

“I hope you’re right,” Emily said.

E
MILY COULDN’T HELP FEELING A TINGLE
of nervousness as she stepped into Professor Lombardi’s new ritual magic classroom, even though she’d had him as a tutor since First Year. The chamber was surprisingly comfortable: a handful of chairs, a single sofa and a desk, parked at the front of the room. Several students were already there; Melissa, the Gorgon, Prunella, Pandora... just for a moment, she wondered if only female students had been accepted for the class. And then Mathis and Johan followed her into the classroom.

Silly thought
, she told herself, as she found a seat.
Ritual Magic isn’t a sex-specific class
.

She sighed, inwardly. Melissa and the Gorgon were sitting together, leaving her feeling isolated. She didn’t know Mathis and Johan, while Pandora and Prunella had never been her friends. Emily shook her head, wishing that Alassa or Imaiqah had stayed in Whitehall for two more years, then dismissed the thought. She could cope with being alone for a while.

Professor Lombardi, like Professor Armstrong, chased the last couple of students into the classroom, then closed and locked the door. “The same rules apply here as they do to my Charms lessons,” he said, shortly. “Given that these classes are largely practical, missing more than one or two classes will guarantee failure. I will not hesitate to dismiss anyone who misses more than two lessons. Be warned.”

He stalked up to the front of the classroom and turned to face them. His appearance didn’t seem to have changed much from her first lessons; he was a short, light-skinned man, with an afro that seemed to change color randomly. Once, she’d thought she was imagining it; now, she could sense the twisting magic that sparkled around his hair. She assumed it had some form of practical use—Professor Lombardi wasn’t the type of person to bother with fashion—but she couldn’t imagine what.

The Professor stared at them, his gaze hard. “Before we start, I must warn you that you are absolutely
forbidden
to practice or experiment with ritual magic outside this classroom, regardless of how much supervision you have,” he said. “I don’t care how desperately you need to catch up with the class. There are
no exceptions
to this rule. If you are caught practicing or experimenting, you will be unceremoniously expelled from the school. There will be no further warnings.”

Emily swallowed. She’d known Professor Lombardi was strict, but this was harsh even for him. And yet, Lady Barb had told her that rituals could be immensely dangerous—and they could be perverted quite easily. Professor Lombardi probably had a point. She might well be the only student in the class, even counting the ones with a magical background, who had any experience of rituals at all. Lady Barb had shown her a ritual—and she’d seen others at Mountaintop—but she’d been warned, in no uncertain terms, not to discuss her experiences with
anyone
.

“There are a handful of textbooks that are assigned to you and waiting in the library,” Professor Lombardi continued, after a moment. “Those books are charmed to ensure that only authorized students can read them, so don’t show them to your friends! Anyone who does will have a great deal of explaining to do and will probably be expelled. Rest assured, unauthorized readers will be blinded due to trying to read these books and we
will
know what blinded them.”

A gasp ran through the classroom. Emily honestly didn’t know why they were so shocked at the suggestion, even though blinding hexes were on the list of forbidden pranks. There was no shortage of books that had been marked forbidden, after all; it should have been no surprise that they would be charmed to deter unauthorized readers. Blinding someone was a little excessive, but it made it impossible for the crime to remain undetected. The victim would have to go to the tutors to get the curse removed.

“I advise you to keep the books in the library and consult them there,” Professor Lombardi concluded. “If you
do
take them to your bedrooms, rest assured that you
will
be blamed for anything... unfortunate.”

Gordian would probably be delighted if I gave him cause to expel me
, Emily thought, as the class shuffled nervously.
And I wouldn’t be able to argue that I wasn’t warned
.

Professor Lombardi cleared his throat. “Ritual magic involves the deliberate
sharing
of magic amongst magicians, each one contributing a little
mana
to a working that would completely drain the caster or be otherwise impossible,” he said. “The
mana
is extruded from one’s body, then shaped by pre-prepared runes into spellwork that can then be triggered at will. Designing one’s runic circles requires nothing less than the highest precision, as a single mistake may mean failure or randomized effects. You do
not
want to get caught up in a flash of wild magic!”

There was a long, chilling pause. “Ritual magic requires a high degree of vulnerability among those who contribute to the spells,” he warned. “It is not unknown for casters to be caught during the working and killed by their enemies, either because they were contributing too much magic or because they didn’t dare halt the ritual. Those of you with an interest in becoming combat sorcerers may wish to remember what happened at Hobbs End. There is no doubt that the devastation was caused by a ritual gone badly wrong.”

Emily frowned. She hadn’t heard of Hobbs End. Professor Lombardi didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, so she made a mental note to look it up later in the library. Perhaps it was one of the cautionary tales they were told, regularly, but in that case surely Professor Lombardi would have told them what had happened in gruesome detail. Or maybe the casters did nothing wrong. She knew enough about rituals to know that if someone had interrupted the spell at the worst possible moment—and she suspected that was what had happened—there would be nothing the casters could do to save themselves.

Look it up later
, she told herself.
He’s still talking
.

“Ritual magic requires absolute trust among the casters,” Professor Lombardi concluded, darkly. “Wags”—his expression flickered with displeasure—“have compared taking part in a ritual to undressing in front of one’s fellow casters. You will be making yourselves vulnerable, very vulnerable. That, among other reasons, is why practicing rituals outside this classroom is strictly forbidden. The dangers are not always as obvious as a sudden and devastating surge of power, but they are there.”

He clapped his hands together. “I want you in groups of two,” he added. “Pair up, now.”

Emily glanced around the room. The Gorgon and Melissa were already together; Pandora seemed to have teamed up with Mathis, while Johan and Cirroc were sharing a desk. She sighed, inwardly, as it became clear she was partnered with Prunella by default. The only consolation was that Prunella didn’t seem any happier about it than Emily herself.