Schooled in Magic (24 page)

But none of that mattered, she reminded herself dully.
She
was responsible for her own actions, including a failure to think before acting. All the excuses in the world wouldn’t change that simple fact. What had happened to Alassa
was
her fault and her fault alone.

Time ticked by slowly, to the point where she felt that she’d waited in the corridor for hours. She somehow managed to hold still, apart from twitching, but her arms were starting to ache from the uncomfortable posture. Her eyes flickered from side to side.

Jade was seated at his desk, reading a book. How could he read at a time like this?

The butterflies in her stomach were mating and having children. God alone knew what was keeping them from summoning her to face judgment. How long had she even been standing in the Hall of Shame?

A voice echoed through the corridor. “Emily. Enter the office.”

Emily’s arms creaked as she managed to make her body move, cramping slightly when she walked towards the heavy wooden door. It didn’t open at her approach, forcing her to open it with her bare hands. Yet another twist of the knife. Her arms hurt as she pulled open the door, but it hardly mattered. She felt as if she were walking to her own execution.

She stepped inside and looked around. The Warden’s office was completely bare, apart from a desk, a pair of chairs pushed against the far wall and a locked cabinet. There were no personal touches at all. A single glowing ball of light hung in the air, casting a cold radiance over the entire chamber. The effect it created was very much like a prison cell.

The Warden–at least, she assumed he was the Warden–was seated behind his desk, wearing a monk’s cowl that had been charmed to shroud his face in darkness. Emily tried to look into the shadow and saw nothing, not even a hint of human features under the hood. A chill ran down her spine as she came to a halt in front of his desk, wondering if he was even
human
. There had to be a reason why he was hiding his identity.

“Emily,” the Warden said. His voice was almost completely toneless, leaving her to wonder if he was using a spell to disguise his voice as well as his face. “What exactly happened today?”

Emily swallowed hard and started to explain. The Warden listened carefully. Like the Grandmaster, he seemed capable of listening without interrupting and asking stupid questions. Alassa hated her and her friend, Alassa had transfigured her and hurt Imaiqah - and Emily had lashed out at her without thinking. She admitted that it had been her fault at the end and then stopped, waiting to hear what the Warden said. Whatever it was, she told herself, she could take it.

“Your two spells merged to produce an unexpected effect,” the Warden said. “You turned her lower jaw into stone.”

He paused, as if inviting comment. Emily said nothing, although inwardly she was relieved. At least she hadn’t killed
Alassa
...

“An inch higher and you would have killed her,” the Warden added. His voice was still toneless, but she thought she detected cold anger behind the mask. “You did not focus either spell very well, so there was effectively no focus at all. It could have transfigured part of her brain into stone while the rest remained flesh and blood. The result would have been fatal.”

Emily blanched. A person could be a variable in a spell; she’d learned that much from Professor Lombardi. Turning Alassa’s entire body into stone wouldn’t have been fatal–it certainly wasn’t fatal when it happened to noisy students–but if half of her brain had simply stopped working properly, the rest of her brain wouldn’t work. Emily knew very little about how brains functioned, yet she could see how the spell would have been lethal. And she hadn’t even bothered to aim properly!

“As it was, Alassa was shocked into unconsciousness,” the Warden said. “Which is lucky; the Healers had to dismantle what you did carefully and her thrashing about trying to cast healing spells on herself would quite possibly have made the problem worse. Even so, you could easily have mutilated her permanently.”

Emily gulped. One of the books she had read for Charms covered healing spells–and the very first page had warned students
never
to try to heal themselves unless there was no one else within shouting distance. There was too much chance of the spell going badly wrong if the caster was in pain, causing additional damage that would need a trained healer to fix.

“You didn’t, thankfully, but you may well have caused additional problems for her in the future.” The Warden’s voice grew stronger, darker. “Partial transfigurations are
always
dangerous. The spell for turning a person’s hand into stone should be on the banned list, if you ask me. The only thing that keeps it
off
the banned list was the simple fact that it was only targeted on the victim’s hand, with safeguards that your botched spells managed to bypass. We will have to reconsider that position.

“You could have inflicted mental trauma on her,” he continued. “If you’d aimed
lower
you could have suffocated her to death, or permanently damaged her reproductive system. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, of just how politically disastrous it would be to have the Crown Princess of
any
Kingdom rendered infertile?”

His voice hardened. “The first duty of any Monarch, be they male or female, is to have a child of their body who can be linked into the spells they use for keeping their thrones in their bloodlines. If Alassa was unable to bear children, the throne would have to be passed to the next person in line–and that person happens to be married to the Crown Prince of a neighboring Kingdom. The political shockwaves would have been bad enough if
anyone
had done it, but everyone seems to think that you are a Child of Destiny. They would be wondering if your
destiny
was to destroy her Kingdom.”

Emily found herself speaking before she could stop herself. “Why do you let her bully anyone who doesn’t suck up to her?”

The Warden seemed to look at her, but it was impossible to be sure. “Excuse me?”

“The first time I met her, she acted like a bully,” Emily said. “The second time, she and her cronies stuck a jinx on me that I had to fight to remove. The third time, she deliberately picked a fight and then tormented my friend! Why do you tolerate it in a place where an accident could
kill
someone, even if it didn’t unleash such political repercussions?”

There was a long chilling pause. “We are preparing children to fight in a war,” the Warden said. “It is important that we teach them the skills they need to defend themselves, or the wisdom to understand their place in the Allied Lands. You developed defensive skills very quickly, did you not? Alassa needs them too. When she becomes Queen of her land, she will have no one that she can trust completely. Students need
incentive
to learn.”

Emily tried to fight down her rising anger and failed. “I suppose that being turned into a frog from time to time does encourage someone to learn how to prevent it from happening again. Does that even work?”

“There are rules,” the Warden said. “Rules which are largely unspoken; rules that you have broken, if accidentally. We do not seek to pit untrained first-years against sixth-years who should be qualified magicians. Those we allow to ...
bully
are stronger than their victims, but not insurmountably strong. You could have bested her after little more than a week of training.

“But you acted badly–worse, foolishly - and you must be punished.

“Some of the Senior Tutors wanted to expel you,” he added. “They said that you might never learn discipline, or that you now posed a demonstrable threat to other students, or even that your
mana
might be permanently slopping around you. Others wondered about the political issues. Should we throw you to the wolves, just to prevent a major political struggle in the Allied Lands? And several remembered who sent you here and asked if we should risk annoying him.”

Emily flinched.

“The Grandmaster concluded that you were a new student, that you were provoked badly and that Alassa had been allowed to get too far out of hand,” the Warden said. “She was learning nothing from her actions and indeed the only one of her victims who can be said to have learned anything is you. The lesson may have convinced her that there are limits to how far she can go,
whatever
she may have been taught by her parents. If not, it is unlikely that she will master enough magic to be secure on her throne.”

Or
, Emily thought,
now that she has been publicly beaten, all of her old victims will be lining up to take shots at her
.

“There will be three punishments for you,” the Warden said. “First, you will be assigned to assist Alassa in passing Basic Charms. Your grade will be dependent upon how well
she
does on her next exam. Should she
still
fail to pass, you will keep tutoring her until she does. It is fortunate indeed”–his voice dripped irony–“that we are forced to run new Basic Charms classes constantly.”

Emily shuddered. Trying to teach someone something when they didn’t want to learn - that was always horrific. And somehow she doubted that it would lead to friendship, whatever those dorky parenting manuals claimed.

“Second, you will write a three thousand word essay, due in next Sunday, about just how many things could have gone horrifically wrong when you mixed two different spells together.

Emily winced. Three thousand words! Writing all that out would be a nightmare without computers, or even typewriters.

“Should your essay, which will be marked by Professor Lombardi personally, not reach a sufficient grade, we will have to talk again.”

He stood up and walked around the desk, one hand holding a long thin stick. “Third,” he said, as Emily stared at the cane in horror, “bend over and place your hands on the desk.”

“But ...”

“
Now
,” the Warden ordered. Emily couldn’t believe what was happening, even though her hand had been struck to remind her to be careful with her spells. “I won’t ask you a third time.”

Trembling, Emily obeyed, silently praying that her robe would offer some protection. The first stroke proved that it provided no protection at all. Pain flared across her rear as she yelled. She started to move backwards, only to discover that her hands were stuck to the desk. Five more strokes followed in quick succession, before the Warden stepped back and nodded for her to leave the room.

Clutching her bottom, Emily fled. All she wanted now was to reach her room and cry.

“H
OW ARE YOU FEELING?”

Emily didn’t want to talk to anyone, least of all Aloha. Her roommate didn’t seem to like her–and resented her for being included in the Martial Magic class, even though that hadn’t been Emily’s own choice. And Emily hurt. The red-hot pain in her posterior had faded to a dull burning ache that made it impossible to do anything but lie on her chest and hope that it healed before she had to return to classes.

Part of her mind insisted that it wasn’t
fair
! Alassa was a brat, plain and simple, and she’d provoked Emily too far.

The rest of her pointed out that Alassa didn’t deserve to be killed–or nearly killed–just for being a brat. A better-trained magician could have slapped Alassa down without risking permanent side effects that would have destroyed Alassa’s future in a moment of hot anger. The world wasn’t fair ... but then, Emily had known that since she was a kid.

“Go away,” she told Aloha, finally. She wanted to read, or to start thinking about the essay that the Warden had ordered her to write, but she couldn’t think straight. Pain and humiliation warred with the knowledge that she’d almost killed someone, and that the Warden had caned her buttocks. The entire school would know what had happened to her. “Go away and leave me alone.”

Aloha ignored her. “There are some charms that are effective in reducing the pain,” she said, a faint hint of sympathy in her voice. “Or you can learn to make a numbing potion in Alchemy. There are some students who make a fair profit selling such things to the naughtier kids.”

Emily looked up at her with tear-stained eyes.

She patted Emily on the back. “Come on,” she added, lightly. “Do you think you’re the only one to ever have been punished by the Warden?”

Emily flushed, embarrassed. “Was I the only one who nearly killed someone?”

“Rumor has it,” Aloha said, “that you challenged Alassa to a formal duel and put her in the infirmary. The smarter idiots claim that the tutors stopped you before you killed her, as a formal duel always ends with the death of one of the participants. They think the reason you’re still here is because the duel was averted, which isn’t actually permitted, even to save a princess’s life.”

Her voice shifted. “Or there’s the rumor where Alassa’s spell reflected off you and struck her instead. Apparently, your special nature as a Child of Destiny prevents you from being rendered completely helpless, so Alassa put herself in the infirmary. The reason they think you haven’t been expelled was that she cast the near-fatal spell.