Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8) (7 page)

“You’ll find robes in the lockers,” Lady Barb said. “Place
everything
in the lockers, unless you feel it deserves special permission. Do
not
waste my time.”

Alassa opened one of the lockers and pulled out a long dark robe that looked several sizes too small to fit her. Emily frowned, then realized it was charmed to resize itself to fit its wearer; Alassa pulled off her robes and underwear in one smooth motion and pulled the robe over her shoulders. It fitted tightly - too tightly - to her body. No one could be in any doubt she wasn’t hiding anything.

“I don’t think I can keep the knife with me,” Alassa said, pulling it from her ankle holster and holding it up to the light. “I’d be too tempted to bury it in an examiner.”

“I think that would be an automatic fail,” Imaiqah said, as Alassa hid the knife in the locker and closed it firmly. “I’d be tempted too.”

Emily laughed, despite herself. They’d been told stories about examination board supervisors who’d vanished one day and been discovered, a year later, in the frog pond, but they’d also been warned that attempting to hex the supervisors was a guaranteed fail. They were powerful and experienced magicians, after all. Getting caught trying to...
convince
them to give someone a pass would be embarrassing.

“Come on, Emily,” Lady Barb called. Most of the girls had already passed through the other door, leaving Emily and her friends alone. “Use a glamor to hide yourself if you wish.”

Emily nodded and undressed slowly, before pulling the robe on. It adjusted itself automatically, as she’d expected, but it was far too tight around her body. She’d never worn anything so revealing, even though everything below her neck was covered by black fabric. Caleb would probably like to see her in it, the treacherous part of her mind noted, as she hastily cast a glamor over herself. She had never dared let him do anything more than hug and kiss her.

“I need to keep this with me,” she said, holding up the snake-bracelet. “It’ll revert to its normal form soon, without me.”

“Keep it,” Lady Barb said, after a moment. Emily allowed herself a moment of relief as she returned the bracelet to her wrist. “Are you carrying anything else?”

“Only my hairpins,” Imaiqah said. She took one of them from her hair and held it up, allowing her hair to drop down to her shoulders. “Should I dump them?”

“Yes,” Lady Barb said. She took them from Imaiqah and dropped them into a box, which she marked with Imaiqah’s name. “Anything else?”

Emily shook her head. Lady Barb gave her a sharp look, then motioned her up the corridor and into the dorm. She felt spells crawling over her as she walked through the corridor, probing at her body to make sure she wasn’t hiding something. It was paranoid, she had to admit, but she knew why. Whitehall’s reputation rested on its exam results. They couldn’t afford to allow anyone to cheat, even though it would catch up with the cheater sooner rather than later.

A dark-skinned young woman in a black robe counted them into the dorm, then closed the door and motioned them towards the beds. Emily frowned in dismay as she realized she’d be sharing a room with forty girls, but there was clearly no point in arguing. Besides, no one would dare pick a fight on the night before the exams. She sat down on the bed, picked up an envelope with her name written on the front and opened it carefully, pulling out her timetable. It was as bad as she had feared.

Imaiqah waved to the supervisor. “Where are the boys?”

“They have their own dorm,” the supervisor said, curtly. “You won’t be seeing them until after the exams.”

Good
, Emily thought. She didn’t want any of them, even Caleb, to see her in such a revealing outfit. The glamor might not work perfectly.
There won’t be any distractions for either of us
.

“Charms first,” Alassa said, reading the timetable. “That’s not a surprise; Healing tomorrow...I’d have expected that later, really.”

“Some of the students will be taking a second Healing exam,” Imaiqah commented. “The ones who want to become Healers have to prove they can handle it.”

“It isn’t listed here,” Emily mused. She ran her eye down the list, mentally ticking off the exams she’d prepared for. The second Healing exam had probably been left off, as there was no way she could become a Healer. “We have Alchemy on Day Three. And here...”

She frowned, then waved to the supervisor. “I’ve got Military Magic listed here,” she said, puzzled. “I didn’t apply for it.”

“One moment,” the supervisor said, checking her record book. “Sergeant Miles put your name down for it. You’re only doing the theoretical section, it would seem. Didn’t he mention it to you?”

Emily shook her head, blankly. She hadn’t
seen
the sergeant since the Grandmaster’s funeral. Lady Barb certainly hadn’t mentioned it to her. She hadn’t even
revised
!

“I’ll check that,” the supervisor said. She took Emily’s timetable and inspected it. “You’re scheduled to take it on Day Seven, I see. I’ll let you know before then what’s happened. It may be just a mistake.”

Maybe
, Emily thought. She hadn’t wanted to take Martial Magic - and she hadn’t taken Military Magic at all. It was a special course, as far as she knew; she didn’t know anyone who’d taken it. Jade might have done, in his fifth year, but it was already far too late to ask him.
Or someone might have entered my name for other purposes
.

She shook her head and turned back to the timetable, just as a bell rang. The supervisor cleared her throat, loudly.

“The compartment has been sealed,” she said. She jabbed a finger towards a set of doors at the far end of the room. “One of those doors leads to the washrooms; you may use them up to thirty minutes before the exams. Another leads to the dining room, where you can eat whatever you want; again, the doors will be locked thirty minutes before the exams. The toilets are always open, but I suggest you don’t get caught in there when the exams start. If you fail to present yourself for the exams, you will be marked as non-attending and you will fail.”

Emily swallowed. Beside her, Alassa and Imaiqah looked equally nervous.

“Your first set of exams starts in two hours,” the supervisor finished. “Those of you who are attending should be lined up in front of the door” - she pointed a finger - “ten minutes before the start time. Once you are in your private rooms, you will be told when to start and finish. Until then, I suggest you relax as best as you can or talk quietly. If you sleep, bear in mind
I
will not be waking you.”

Alassa elbowed Emily. “Are we ever going to get more than someone wittering away at us?” she whispered. “So far, we’ve been lectured by two separate people...”

“Yes,” Emily said, before the supervisor could overhear. “In two hours, we start Charms.”

She looked at the washroom door, then lay back on the bed. There was nothing to do, save rest and clear her mind as best as she could. She was almost glad of the lack of anything to distract her. Once the exam started, she knew all too well, they would be pushed to the limit. And afterwards...

Alassa will be married
, she thought. It was a galling thought. She didn’t begrudge Alassa her happiness, but Alassa would have less time for Emily in the future.
And Imaiqah will be going to stay with her in Zangaria, while I stay here. And even if I learn to teleport, we won’t be able to be so close after they leave. And...

She shook her head, firmly. She’d go to the dining room in an hour and eat as much as she could, then relax until the exam started. Charms would be heavily practical, she knew; she’d need the energy just to make sure she didn’t run out of magic midway through the exam. And if Void hadn’t forced her to keep practicing, learning how to handle a sudden excess of power...

Relax
, she told herself firmly.
There’s nothing else to do until the exam starts
.

“Y
OU MAY BEGIN,” THE SUPERVISOR DRONED
, once Emily was inside the exam room with the door closed. He looked bored; he hadn’t even looked up at her when she’d walked through the door. He certainly hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. “Water and rations are on the table. If you need to go to the toilet, it’s in the side compartment; if you leave the chamber, you will not be permitted to return.”

Emily nodded, opened the paper and got to work. The first set of questions was largely theoretical, but a couple of them were nasty; she read through the list, answered the ones she felt she could answer correctly and moved on to the next section. She’d been warned, more than once, that she shouldn’t
try
to answer unless she was fairly sure she knew the correct answer. Some mistakes would be counted against her, while honest ignorance would be commended. It would have been absurd on Earth, she knew, but she understood. A tiny mistake in charms could have disastrous consequences.

The supervisor moved round to watch her carefully as she began the practical exercises, one by one. Some of them demanded that she perform a certain spell successfully, on her first try; some of them required her to unravel another set of spells or combine a handful of her own spells to produce a specific result. She felt her head starting to pound, but forced herself to carry on; she had no intention of simply giving up, even if she
was
hurting. The annoying part, she noted, was that she could have achieved the same results with a
single
spell, but she’d be marked down for trying. She was being tested on her ability to make several spells work together.

She opened the third section and winced. The explanatory notes informed her that she would be hexed by the supervisor, forcing her to free herself before it was too late. Emily shuddered at the thought - she knew too many hexes that could turn lethal, if they remained in place for too long - and looked up at the supervisor. He was holding a wand in one hand, waiting for her.

“Drop your wards,” he said. “And say the word.”

Emily glanced down at the papers. She was fairly sure she wouldn’t be hexed with anything intentionally lethal, but if she was injured she’d be taken to the infirmary and probably fail the rest of her exams. It wouldn’t be remotely fair, yet she knew all too well that no one would really care. Life wasn’t fair in the slightest. Under her breath, she cursed whoever had come up with the examination structure, then met his eyes as she dismantled her protections from within. It left her feeling uncomfortably naked.

“Do it,” she said.

The hex, whatever it was, was powerful. She shuddered as she felt it crash into her mind, pushing her to her feet. Her body twitched and rose, despite her strongest commands. A sense of hopelessness flared through her mind, telling her it was useless to resist; she had to tell herself, firmly, that she
could
fight back before it was too late. Her body stumbled towards the door and she cursed, before grabbing hold of herself. He was trying to force her to leave the room, conceding the rest of the exam...

No
, she thought, savagely. She’d practiced shielding her mind time and time again. This time was no different.
I won’t give in
.

She pulled her magic around her and froze her feet to the floor, then concentrated on finding and removing the hex before it pushed her into releasing herself. It was a tricky spell, all right; she couldn’t help admiring the skill of whoever had created it even as she sought to remove it from her mind. The prank spells she’d used at Whitehall were blunt instruments, easy to remove if one knew what one was doing. This spell was far more dangerous...

Got you
, she thought. She isolated the spell and ripped it out of her mind, shoving the last shreds of magic away from her.
And I win
.

“Done,” she said, releasing her feet. “What...”

The second spell struck her before she could finish the question. She barely had a moment to yelp in pain before her body morphed into a dog. The wave of doggy sensations - simple emotions, so powerful that they threatened to overwhelm her - washed through her mind. It was suddenly very hard to remember that she was human, particularly when the supervisor knelt down and held out a hand, offering to play. She spun around madly when he tossed a ball at her; the doggy part of her mind wanted to play fetch, while the human part was on the verge of panicking. The longer the spell held her in canine form, the harder it would be to summon the willpower to turn herself back.

She held tightly to her human thoughts as she cast the counterspell. There was a flash of light and she found herself kneeling on the floor, human again. She eyed the supervisor warily, wondering what other spells he’d use, but he did nothing apart from placing his wand back on his belt and returning to his chair. There was no way to know if she’d passed or failed; she’d broken both spells, yet she knew she might not have done it quickly enough to pass. She sighed, sat back down and concentrated on running through the remaining questions and trying to answer them as best as she could. By the time the bell rang, her head was pounding so badly that she would have sold her soul for a painkilling potion.

The supervisor collected her papers, watched carefully as Emily sealed them personally and then opened the door. Emily staggered out, stumbled to the dorm and threw herself on the bed, too tired to speak to anyone else. Alassa already lay on her bed, she noted, blonde hair spilling out around her like a shroud, but there was no sign of Imaiqah. She took a quick drink of water from the jug beside her bed, then closed her eyes and forced herself to sleep. There was no point in worrying about how well she’d done.

“I think I did all right,” Alassa said, later. They were eating dinner before going back to bed for the night. “But I nearly failed the final hurdle.”

“Tell me about it,” Imaiqah agreed. “I still feel like I’m a chicken.”

“I think
she
thinks she’s a pig,” Alassa said, nodding towards Penelope. The pale girl was eating with her hands, stuffing food into her mouth as if it would vanish at any second. “That spell was
nasty
.”