Schooled in Magic (17 page)

She’d read of any number of fantasy universes where technology had simply refused to work, either because the author had determined that technology was incompatible with the laws of her universe or because the author in question been a great believer in the evils of technology. Clearly, those authors had never had to live in a world with lousy plumbing, much less antibiotics and modern sewage. But their concept made no sense at all. The basic laws of the universe had to be identical to Earth’s laws or it was quite possible that the human race wouldn’t be able to exist at all. Changing a universal constant might kill the entire planet.

But universal constants
were
changed. People could be turned into statues, or frogs–so what happened to the rest of their mass? Even the smallest student at Whitehall would have far more mass than a frog; logically, that mass had to go somewhere else. And yet if it was permanently separated from the spell’s victim, wouldn’t that be the same as killing her?

Unless magic is grafted on
, Emily thought.

Maybe all the universal laws worked as they did back home, but magic–
mana
–also existed. How could she test that theory?

A finger nudged her. “You were staring off into space,” Imaiqah said, concerned. “And you were muttering. Are you all right?”

“I was thinking,” Emily said. She shook her head. If she’d paid more attention to her classes at her old school, she might have been better prepared for scientific experiments. She didn’t have the slightest idea where to even
start
building a computer, or a car, or pretty much anything else that she’d taken for granted back home. A thought struck her and she smiled. “Do you know if there are engines that run on steam?”

Imaiqah blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”

Putting it into words was harder than Emily had expected. The basic concept behind steam engines wasn’t
that
difficult to understand, once she had worked out the gaps in her knowledge and deduced the solutions. Build a tank of water and heat it until the water became steam, then push the steam through pipes at force, using the pressure to produce motive power. That power could be used to run a very basic railway engine. Logically, it could be used to run a car too, but she’d never heard of a steam-powered car in real life. Maybe the engine had to be larger than a certain size to actually work properly.

“I’ve never heard of anything like it,” Imaiqah said, finally. “People just use the roads to get from city to town, if they get to travel at all.”

“Right,” Emily said. Of course, people who lived in a medieval society wouldn’t go halfway around the world for a holiday. They might not even recognize the concept of taking a holiday, not when their world was still under the delusion that aristocrats had a right to rule and the lower classes were there to serve. “How far does your father travel in his job?”

Imaiqah gave her an odd look. “He doesn’t. He owns a shop in a city.”

Emily shook her head ruefully. No big multinational corporations in this world, thankfully. Everything was on a much smaller scale. For all she knew, the necromancers hadn’t managed to match Hitler or Stalin in slaughtering helpless victims. And to think that Imaiqah’s father was actually one of the most successful businessmen in the world, at least according to Imaiqah. On Earth, he would have been considered nothing more than the owner of a “Mom and Pop” grocery store.

An idea struck her and she smiled. “If I was to send your father ideas for products, would he try to market them?”

“Maybe,” Imaiqah said. She frowned, thoughtfully. “But he wouldn’t want to gamble everything on one product.”

It took Emily a moment to realize what she meant. Building a steam engine would be difficult in this world, as producing advanced metals was much harder. She’d already realized that aluminum was rarer than gold; now, she saw that there would be no steel or metal composites either. Even a small steam engine to test the concept would be incredibly expensive.

I should have brought a few good scientific textbooks with me
, she thought, sourly. But Shadye hadn’t exactly given her time to pack.
Something that would tell me the practical background that I never learned at school.

She bounced another question at Imaiqah. “What sort of money do you use in your kingdom?”

Imaiqah
looked
at her. “Where
do
you come from? Gold, silver and bronze coins, of course.”

Emily thought about trying to explain the concept of paper money, or credit cards, before realizing that it would be a waste of time. “And those coins are actually made out of real gold?”

“Well, of
course
,” Imaiqah said. “What
else
would they be made of?”

“So I could take a gold coin from Umbria and spend it in Cayce?” Emily asked. “Or could I transfigure a bronze coin into gold?”

“You could spend a gold coin anywhere,” Imaiqah said, slowly. “My father would weigh the coin to calculate how much it is actually worth, but gold is gold. Transfiguring something into gold ... there are
laws
against that everywhere. You could be
hung
!”

Emily wasn’t surprised. If one lived in a world where magicians could use magic to turn lead into gold, surely the value of gold would plummet though the floor. But if they had a way of testing the gold to ensure that it was
real
gold ... they’d
have
to have such a method, or their economy would have collapsed long ago. Or perhaps changing more than a tiny amount of lead into gold was incredibly difficult. Maybe that explained why the economy was on such a small scale.

She’d need money, both for experiments and to keep herself fed and clothed. And she had no particular compunction about stealing ideas from her world and claiming that they were her original inventions. But what could she introduce that she actually knew how to produce?

It struck her–not for the first time–that she was terrifyingly ignorant. Back home, she hadn’t had to know anything about how technology worked in order to use it. Now, she was trapped in a world that knew nothing about the scientific method–and she didn’t know enough to introduce it herself. Or maybe this world knew a method that involved magic, rather than science, because magic twisted the very structure of the world.

The next period was a free period, so she went back to her bedroom and cracked open the first of the library books. One glance was enough to show her how Alassa could cast so many spells and yet know almost nothing about how they worked. There was no explanation of the variables, or how they went together, merely a formula for the magician to run through her mind. A very simple hex–the book claimed that it gave its intended target a nasty pinch–used only three components. The designer had crammed all of the actual formula into a single component.

Carefully, Emily copied the spell down into her own book–being careful to leave out the startpoint–and broke the spell down to see how it went together. It was surprisingly simple, but looking at the variables convinced her that she’d better be very careful if–
when
–she started modifying them. Altering the variable that governed how hard the target was pinched might be enough to crush bones and kill outright. Another spell seemed to give hypnotic suggestions to its target, suggestions that could cause considerable embarrassment before they wore off.

And to think they gave these mental manipulation spells to kids!

She opened the book of protective spells and found a handful that provided basic protection against charms and hexes. Working out how to cast them was trickier than it seemed; unlike the pinching spell, the protective spells had to be run constantly in her mind. Emily couldn’t see how to cast two spells at once until she realized that she’d taken the computer analogy too far. She could cast the spell and leave it fixed in place until she dismantled it.

Not too powerful, though
, she realized, as she leafed through the book. A protective spell could be hacked by another magician, one who knew what she was doing, or it could simply be overpowered by force. Some simple wards were actually tougher than the more complex wards, but they could still be broken. And if she happened to be knocked out, it was quite possible that most of her protections would collapse.

Finally, she cast two protective spells on herself and tried to figure out a way of testing them. Perhaps she should talk loudly in the library.

She was still considering the possibilities when the door opened and Aloha stormed into the room. Her roommate looked angry; when she saw Emily, she glared at her in a manner that left Emily in no doubt that she was being blamed for whatever had upset Aloha.

But what had she done to her roommate? They merely shared the same room.

“What have you done?” Aloha demanded, echoing Emily’s own thoughts. Magic seemed to crackle around her, as if she were on the verge of losing control. “What were you thinking?”

Emily blinked, completely confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Martial Magic,” Aloha snapped. “How in the name of all the gods did you even get into the class?”

Aloha raged on before Emily could say a word. “Do you know how hard I had to study to get into that class? Do you know how hard it was to convince the General and the Sergeants that I could handle the pressure? I spent months practicing for the chance to enter the class–and
you
are just given it on a silver platter!”

Emily held up a hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, as evenly as she could. Aloha had to be much more capable–and dangerous–than Alassa. “What is Martial Magic?”

“You should be learning like the rest of us, but no,” Aloha snapped. “You’re a freaking Child of Destiny and so you are given something that normal students have to study hard to even hope to achieve!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emily repeated, more sharply this time. What was all this about? “I spent the day learning about Charms...”

“You haven’t even passed Basic Charms,” Aloha said. “How
can
they consider you for Martial Magic?”

Emily took a breath and repeated her question. “What is Martial Magic?”

Something in her tone got through to Aloha. “You don’t know?”

“No,” Emily snapped. “I don’t even know why you’re so angry!”

Aloha stepped backwards and sat down on her bed, staring at Emily with unblinking eyes. “I want to be a combat sorceress. And to be a combat magician of any kind you have to pass Martial Magic. It’s an advanced class focusing on magic in military operations. Students have to know what they’re doing, but they also have to have the maturity to handle spells that are deadly, intended to kill.”

Emily doubted that. The
Harry Potter
books might have deemed killing and torturing spells to be unforgivable–never mind that Harry himself had used both types of spells on occasion–but
that
magical world suffered from a shortage of imagination. It was easy to use a simple lifting charm to kill someone–either by dropping them from a great height or hurling them into orbit–and the intention of murder would be the same. There was no reason why Alassa couldn’t kill with magic, at least not once she passed Basic Charms and learned how to modify a practical joke spell to kill.

“And I applied for the position and was finally accepted after six months of slaving to convince the Sergeants that I could handle it,” Aloha added. “Do you know how few second-years get to even try out for the class? And here you are,
a first-year
, and someone just hands it to you on a platter? They wouldn’t allow Alassa, a freaking Royal Princess, to take the course without testing her ... when were
you
ever tested?”

Aloha’s face twisted. “I was so proud of what I’d done ... ”

Emily felt awkward. Back home, it wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe it would; perhaps a long-serving cheerleader would be kicked off the squad to open a space for a newcomer who happened to be incredibly talented, or whose father enjoyed political power. But cheerleading was a role for girls who thought that bouncing around wearing skimpy clothes constituted academic achievement and Martial Magic–she assumed–was something a great deal tougher. There hadn’t been
any
classes that picked and chose their students so carefully at her old school.

But she could understand why Aloha was so angry. She’d earned her place–and Emily, the unskilled and untutored newcomer, had been given what she had worked so hard to achieve.

“I didn’t put my name into the hat,” Emily said, quietly. “I don’t know why it happened.”

“I do,” Aloha said flatly. “They’re expecting you to save the world.”

Emily wondered if she could find a spell that would allow her to do something humiliating–or painful–to Void. He
had
to have told the Grandmaster that Emily was a Child of Destiny,
without
bothering to explain that while it might be literally true, it
wasn’t
true in any useful sense. No doubt he’d sworn a magical oath that it was true and had a good snigger afterwards at how easily his words had been misunderstood. Why not? The mishap that had brought Emily to this world would have given him the idea.