Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7) (11 page)

Lady Barb cleared her throat. “Am I interrupting something?”

Imaiqah, wisely, shook her head, and looked back at her packet. Emily smiled to herself and checked the third sheet of parchment. A Healer was sworn to do everything in his power to save lives, to forsake all debts that might otherwise have been incurred, not to take sides in political disputes, to keep the secrets of rich and poor alike...and not, under any circumstances, to use their powers for ill. The explanatory notes below the oath itself warned that a Healer could not kill, save in direct self-defense, and even then the oaths might kill them if there were any other options. Emily frowned, then looked up at Lady Barb. Surely
she’d
killed in the past and she was still alive...

She shook her head, putting the question aside for later, and picked up the fourth sheet. It was crisp and clear, covering the questions that would be asked of any prospective candidate, starting with a warning that anyone who couldn’t give the proper answer would summarily be evicted from the class. Emily skimmed it and swore inwardly. The spells Aurelius had taught her, back in Mountaintop, would automatically disqualify her from taking the oaths, even though she’d never used them. Apparently, reading between the lines, she was only meant to learn them
after
taking the oaths.

Because if I spent half my power in saving a life, the person I saved would owe me a considerable debt
, she thought, numbly. Lady Barb was going to be disappointed, if she’d thought Emily would go on to be a Healer. She knew a spell that induced a form of cancer that killed within seconds, administered through bodily contact, and another that worked through sexual intercourse and did far worse than kill the victim outright.
Those spells can be perverted far too easily
.

Lady Barb tapped the table, meaningfully. Emily jumped.

“You should all have had a chance to read the important parts,” Lady Barb said. “Do you have any questions?”

“Yes,” Tam said. “What happens if I decided to leave the course halfway through?”

“You’d still be bound by the oaths,” Lady Barb said, curtly.

Emily swallowed. Healers might do good, but they also lived very
restricted
lives. A Healer couldn’t do anything, apart from Healing. There could be no involvement in local politics, even something as minor as suggesting the introduction of proper sanitation or not taxing peasant villages so highly their inhabitants had far too little to eat. A Healer could fix the damage, if a wife was beaten into a bloody pulp, but not do anything to the husband, no matter his crimes.

And if you took the oaths and then failed
, she thought,
you’d still be stuck.

Lady Barb’s gaze swept the room. “A Healer can do great good - or great evil,” she warned, her voice softening slightly. “In order to learn how to
heal
, you have to learn how to
kill
; you have to learn how to inflict pain and suffering on the human body. Those oaths are the only thing preventing you from becoming monsters, should you become detached from the realities of life - and many Healers do. Once you start on this path, you will be committed.”

She paused. “I won’t say it isn’t a rewarding life,” she added. “You will save countless people from injuries and curses that would prove fatal. You’ll watch as newborn children are brought into the world, children who would have died in the womb were it not for you. You will pass through a community, then leave, knowing that everyone behind you is healthier than they were when you arrived. Healers know the satisfaction of doing nothing but good.”

Emily felt almost wistful, just for a moment, before dismissing the thought. It wasn’t something she’d want, not really; she’d enjoyed part of her time in the Cairngorms, but there had been too many horrors for her to be comfortable working their permanently. A Healer could
heal
, perhaps, yet he could do nothing about the cause of the problem.
She
could, if she didn’t take the oaths.

“You will have your career sessions later in the month, I believe,” Lady Barb said. “By then, I expect you to decide if you want to go on to become a Healer or not. If you do, check and double-check the requirements, then take the forms with you to the career adviser. They will go through everything with you, then help you to apply. Regardless...”

She looked from face to face before she continued. “This year, there will be more practical work than ever before,” she explained. “There will be field trips to both Dragon’s Den and the Halfway House, where some of the worst curse victims are housed while Healers search for a cure or a counter-curse. You will see some of the greatest horrors the human mind, armed with magic, is capable of producing. Some of you, I think, will be unable to tolerate the encounter, even under controlled conditions. I do not advise anyone who feels that way to try to continue to Fifth Year.”

Emily nodded.
That
was understandable.

“Those field trips will probably include only three or four of you at a time,” Lady Barb added, curtly. “While I’m gone, classes will be supervised by Mistress Kyla, Whitehall’s Healer. I suggest, very strongly, that you use the opportunity to question her about her job and the problems she faces here. I also suggest you don’t cause problems for her. She takes the post far more seriously than myself.

“And that,” she concluded, “leads to a final point.

“In Dragon’s Den, you will be assisting people who have
volunteered
to allow you to examine them. Pregnant women, giving birth; men who have injured themselves and require the services of a Healer to regain full use of their bodies; children born with deformities that make it impossible for them to have a normal life...they have all
volunteered
to be examined and worked on by you. We don’t charge anyone for the service, nor do we pay them.

“Understand this: if any of you, and I mean
any
of you, mocks them, or treats them as anything other than decent people, you will regret it. Whatever happened to them, be it tragic or funny, I expect you to be professional at all times. You will not mock, you will not judge, you will not dispense unwanted advice. If you break this rule, you will not be allowed to take part in any more field trips and it will be reported to the Quorum of Healers. There is a very strong chance they will deny you the chance to enter Fifth Year.”

She scowled. “I may also put you in the stocks for the rest of the day,” she added. “A few hours of people throwing rotten vegetables at you would probably teach you a lesson, don’t you think?”

Emily winced, inwardly. Lady Barb had a point. She would have hated to be gawked at by a handful of trainees while someone was trying to heal her...and to have those trainees mock her would be more than she could bear. But Lady Barb hadn’t issued such a warning while they’d been in the Cairngorms. Had she assumed Emily wouldn’t be foolish enough to mock the people they were trying to help, or had she planned to cut Emily off the moment she started?

And it would be worse if I were giving birth
, she thought. She’d seen a woman give birth in the Cairngorms, a woman who might have lost the baby without the two magicians.
I’d hate to be stared at by a pair of male magicians
.

“We will go through the procedures for visiting both Dragon’s Den and the Halfway House later, once we have a visiting schedule,” Lady Barb said. “I will be giving priority to those who plan to take the oaths and go on to Fifth Year. Are there any final questions?”

Melissa raised a hand. “If we’re going to the Halfway House,” she said, “is there any actual danger?”

“There
may
be some danger,” Lady Barb said. “Some of the cursed can behave unpredictably, others are cursed in a manner deliberately designed to harm or kill anyone who tackles the curse. You will be warned before meeting any truly dangerous patients and talked through security precautions. If you do feel yourself to be in any danger, you are authorized to use magic to escape.”

Alassa coughed. “If the curses cannot be removed,” she asked, “why are they still held at the Halfway House?”

“The Healers in charge have not given up on removing the curses,” Lady Barb said. “Bear in mind that the only other option, with some of the patients, is to kill them. Indeed, in some cases it might be a mercy.”

But a Healer cannot kill, not even to put someone out of his misery
, Emily thought, glancing down at the oath and its ramifications.
The Halfway House is stuck with patients it can’t cure, kill or release.

There was a long pause. “You may come to me at any moment if you wish to discuss the issue further,” Lady Barb concluded. She made a show of looking at the clock. “And now, unless there are any more questions, we will make good use of the remaining time by reviewing the material we covered in Third Year.”

The class groaned. “Penelope,” Lady Barb said. “Why is it dangerous to offer Sleeping Potion to a victim of the Night Terror Hex?”

Penelope gulped. “Because...because it actually enhances the effects of the hex,” she said, desperately. “The victim will fall further into its clutches.”

“Very good,” Lady Barb said, without a trace of irony. “Tam. Why can’t you use a simple canceling charm on the victim of a compulsion curse?”

“Because the curse might react badly unless the charm is applied properly,” Tam said. “I...”

“Close enough,” Lady Barb said, “but do a little additional reading. The curse might only be partly cancelled, causing mental problems for the victim.”

Emily sighed and glanced at her watch. There was only half an hour to go before the end of class, but it was going to feel longer. Much longer.

And then she really needed to talk to Lady Barb.

“E
MILY,” LADY BARB SAID WHEN THE
class came to an end. “Stay behind a moment.”

Emily nodded, relieved. “I’ll meet you in the bedroom,” she muttered to Alassa. “You can tell me about your day.”

“Of course,” Alassa said. Her blue eyes glimmered with concern. “Take care of yourself, all right?”

Emily nodded, and waited for the classroom to empty. Lady Barb relocked the door as soon as Melissa had left - she’d hung around long enough for Emily to suspect she wanted to talk to Lady Barb, too - and led Emily through a door into a sideroom. Inside, there was a pair of comfortable chairs, a table, and a pot of steaming liquid. Lady Barb motioned for Emily to sit, then poured a couple of mugs of Kava. Emily took hers and sipped gratefully.

“It’s going to be a very busy year for me,” Lady Barb said, bluntly. “I may have less time for you than you might have hoped. If the Grandmaster hadn’t needed a second tutor at such short notice...”

She shrugged, and sat facing Emily. “As your adviser, it is my duty to discuss your career options with you before you go to your career session,” she added. “I should tell you, right now, that you probably wouldn’t make a good Healer.”

Emily blinked, stung. “Why not?”

“A Healer requires a certain degree of empathy,” Lady Barb said, flatly. “You’re not very good at noticing when someone else is in pain, or feeling
any
strong emotion. I think you could probably master the healing spells - no one would deny you’re good with charms - but you’d have problems actually coping with the job. How long did it take you to notice that Alassa and Jade were in love?”

“I had my nose rubbed in it,” Emily said, ruefully. In hindsight, it had been alarmingly obvious. “I didn’t notice at all.”

“Quite,” Lady Barb agreed. “There are times when a Healer has to speak to a patient and gently coax them to talk about their problems, some of which are embarrassing and some of which will reflect badly on others. I don’t think you have the empathy required to handle the job.”

I helped Frieda
, Emily thought, mulishly. But how long had it taken her to notice that Frieda was suffering?
And I...

She recalled everything she’d seen in the Cairngorms and shuddered. Lady Barb was right; she’d either ignore a problem, missing its very existence, or go overboard in trying to fix it.

And you know you can’t take the oaths anyway
, her own thoughts mocked her.
Why are you trying to stop someone dissuading you from even trying
?

“I do want to finish the year,” she temporised. “But I don’t think I could become a Healer permanently.”

“It
would
be permanent,” Lady Barb said, tartly. “That’s the point of the oaths.”

Emily
looked
at her. Something
clicked
in her mind. “You’re not a Healer, are you?”

“They wanted me to become a Healer,” Lady Barb said. “I was told I had a natural talent for Healing. It wasn’t true, of course. I merely had my mother teaching me the basics long before my father sent me to Whitehall. By the time I finished my Fourth Year, the pressure to become a Healer was almost overpowering. My tutor even offered to take me on walkabout, just as I took you, to see that the job needed doing.”

“I see,” Emily said. “What happened?”

Lady Barb met her eyes. “The third village we visited was dominated by an old crone, a witch with a handful of spells and infinite malice. The day after we arrived, she blinded a young girl for an imaginary offense. Can you imagine what it would be like, growing up in a tiny village, unable to see anything?”

Emily shuddered. The villagers in the Cairngorms hadn’t been able to provide for cripples, not when there was barely enough to feed the men and women who did the hard work of tending to their tiny farms and growing food. If the girl had been lucky, she would have been bought by someone who needed a wife and didn’t care about her blindness; if she had been unlucky...Emily shook her head, cursing silently. There was no such thing as a
happy
ending for a cripple in the mountains.

“The spell was easy to break,” Lady Barb said. “I broke it. I freed the girl...and then I hunted down the witch. By the time my tutor caught up with me, I had flayed the skin from her bones, using spells my father had taught me to keep her alive. The moment the spells broke, the witch died in agony. My tutor...quietly understood, I think. She took me straight back to Whitehall, and nothing else was said about me becoming a Healer.”