Schooled in Magic (11 page)

Her eyes narrowed. “Every student has a different level of power,” she added, a moment later. “Push your limits, but don’t push too far, too fast. If you feel unwell, or headachy, stop casting spells and rest; eat something sweet to replenish your energy. The kitchen staff will provide you with something to eat if necessary.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” Emily said, finally. Her head already felt uncomfortable; when she stood up, her legs suddenly weakened and she had to grab the chair to keep herself from falling over. “I ...”

“You’re going to the dining hall, where you will eat a large meal,” Mistress Irene said,. “This afternoon”–she produced a sheet of paper, which Emily took automatically–“you will be joining the History of Magic class, followed by a free period during which you are expected to study. You’ll begin proper classes tomorrow.

“Fortunately, we start basic classes throughout the year, as we never know when someone knew is going to come to the school. But you have to test out of them before you can proceed.”

Emily glanced down at the paper. It was a class schedule, written out in a neat, precise hand. The school day was divided up into eight periods, seven of them assigned to actual studies and one assigned for lunch. There were thirty minutes between classes, either to keep the students from becoming exhausted by giving them a chance to get something to eat, or to ensure that if one class ran late there would be no delay for the second class. Being tardy, she suspected, would earn one a detention at Whitehall–or worse.

“I shall assign your roommates to assist you, as you are unfamiliar with our world,” Mistress Irene added. Emily gulped; she liked Imaiqah, but she had the feeling that Aloha would be much less willing to help a newcomer explore the school. “Imaiqah needs to retake two classes, so she will accompany you to Transfiguration and Mentalist Magic. Depending on how you progress, you may be moved up to a more advanced class within the next two months.”

Emily nodded. The schedule listed a dozen different classes for a first year, including Alchemy, Charms, Cryptozoology, Divination and Ethics. A number of periods had been left blank, but she wasn’t sure if they were free periods for private study or if Mistress Irene hadn’t assigned her to specific classes for those times yet. Two periods on Tuesday and Thursday had simply been marked sport. Emily scowled at the thought. She’d moved to a completely new world and she was
still
forced to attend gym class.

Mistress Irene smiled. “You haven’t done that badly,” she said. “Void was right. You do have potential.”

Emily flushed. “But I couldn’t master the analysis spell. I ...”

The tutor laughed. “I’d be embarrassed if you mastered it without weeks of practicing. Do you know how long it took me to master it?”

Mistress Irene shook her head. “Go to the dining hall and eat,” she ordered. “And then let your amulet guide you to History of Magic.”

Emily nodded and left the office, thinking–as she left–that Mistress Irene wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps she even had a heart of gold.

“H
ISTORY IS NOTHING MORE THAN A
series of opinions about the past,” Professor Locke informed his class. He was a short, elderly man with long white hair, wearing a pair of spectacles through which he peered suspiciously at his students. “Who, I might ask you, won the Battle of Janus?”

A male student raised his hand. “We did, sir.”

Another student jumped up almost before the first speaker had finished. “No,
we
won!”

Professor Locke smiled. “A perfect demonstration of the essential truth of my statement. The Battle of Janus was fought out between Umbria and Holm for domination of the city of Janus, and the trade routes that ran through the Janus mountain range. While Umbria was pushed back, allowing Holm to claim a victory, the battle was so costly that reinforcements from Umbria were able to push Holm back out of the city within the month.”

His smile grew wider. “So tell me. Who
really
won the battle?”

Emily considered the question while the more nationalistic of her classmates argued the point. Destroying an empire to win a battle was no victory, as she’d learned playing computer games; a victory that cost an army could be fatal if there was no time to produce a second army. There had been a Greek King who’d fought the Roman Republic, she recalled, who had bemoaned his exceedingly costly victory in one battle–and lost the war.

“The Allied Lands may have united to fight the necromancers,” the Professor said, “but they still disagree on many things. One of them is on history. No Kingdom or City-State shares the same view of history, which can be irritating if one happens to be a historian. And yet our history, which is shared even if they don’t want to admit it, explains why we ended up facing the necromancers today.”

There was a long pause. “Thousands of years ago, the human race warred with the elves. The elves were magic, the elves were formidable ... but there were
millions
of humans. It was
our
time, we believed, and we no longer wanted to be dominated by the Fair Folk. So we warred with them until they were driven back into their hidden settlements and built the First Empire in the rubble of
their
empire.

“But we made a dreadful mistake. We could have reached out to the orcs and goblins, offshoots of humanity created by the elves. Instead, also we warred with them, forcing them into an alliance with the remaining elves. Many years later, they returned and waged war on the First Empire itself. They destroyed the First Empire.”

Emily shivered, remembering what she’d seen as the dragon had carried her from Void’s tower to Whitehall. Destroyed cities, including structures she was convinced hadn’t been produced by human beings; their populations slaughtered or driven away to starve. Had that been the result of the war against the elves, or had it had a far darker cause?

“Those were terrible days,” Professor Locke said. “The elves raised countless monsters to lay waste to our lands. Millions died as fire-drakes blew their poisonous breath over human settlements, and giant crabs emerged from the seas to destroy harbors while mermen sank ships in the ocean. The only solution seemed to be to reach for far greater magic and so we did. We discovered that we could use murder to power our spells and use them to strike back against the elves. Eventually, we rallied and drove the elves to the brink of extinction.

“But, as so often happens, the weapon we used to win the war turned in our hands. The necromancers were unable to channel the vast power they possessed without going mad, becoming monsters in human form. They didn’t want to stop drinking in the
mana
from thousands of slaughtered humans, or basking in the sheer joy of power. Eventually, they attempted to take over the Second Empire. The battle to stop them also shattered any hope of establishing a new human unity.”

Emily considered it, wondering–absently–why
murder
was required. Why not a willing sacrifice? Would it have made any difference if the sacrifices had
volunteered
themselves to the necromancers?

But Shadye had definitely been insane. No matter how genteel he’d acted, he’d planned to sacrifice Emily to the Harrowing, whatever
that
was. And his plan would have exploded in his face if Void hadn’t intervened.

Professor Locke nodded towards the map on the wall. Emily studied it with interest; the continents bore little resemblance to anything she remembered from her own world. One vast continent was roughly the size of Europe, Asia and America put together, while a smaller continent to the south was little bigger than Australia. A network of islands–Japan and Britain put together, she decided–dominated the final part of the globe. They
did
know that their world was a sphere.

But it didn’t seem to have a
name
.

Thirty-two states were part of the Allied Lands, if she was reading the map correctly. Most of them were grouped to the north of the largest continent, with a handful in the smaller continent and islands. Below them, there was a wasteland; it had to have been where Shadye had attempted to sacrifice her, after she’d been kidnapped from her world. She remembered the barren lands she’d flown over and shivered. The battle to stop the necromancers might as well have been fought with atomic bombs. It might even have been kinder in the long run.

“The necromancers fled into the dead lands to the south,” the Professor said. “There, they built their strongholds, grew their slaves and eventually mounted a new assault on the Allied Lands. Their threat is overwhelming; given enough time, they will produce more armies of monsters to turn against us and crush the Allied Lands. The only thing that has saved us so far is their disunity. We cannot expect them to remain disunited forever.”

Their disunity
? Emily wondered. She’d had the impression that Shadye was acting independently of the other necromancers. He’d certainly not summoned any others to join him in sacrificing her for power ...

One of the students stuck up his hand, interrupting Emily’s thoughts. “Can we not
keep
them disunited, Professor? We could offer to dicker with them if they fought each other ...”

“It has been tried,” Professor Locke said. He tapped a darkened patch on the map. “The King of Halers believed that he could buy off one of the necromancers, an unpleasant fellow called Gower. Gower was sent hundreds of the king’s subjects as sacrifices in the hope that it would buy the king’s independence. But Gower wormed his way into the kingdom’s power structure and turned the nobles against the king, the peasants against the nobles and the army against everyone. Eventually, Halers was so badly wracked by civil war that the necromancer was able to walk in and take over.

“Gower destroyed the kingdom. His monsters wiped out the remaining nobles, before killing enough of the peasants to keep the rest thoroughly cowed, those that didn’t flee in time. Now, it is a source of monsters and magical sacrifices for the necromancers, all because a king was foolish enough to believe that a necromancer could be bribed into good behavior. We cannot negotiate with the necromancers. All we can do is muster our own power and prepare for the coming struggle.”

Emily knew–looking at the map–that it would be difficult. Void had told her that the necromancers were slowly outflanking the Allied Lands, but he hadn’t managed to convey just how desperate the situation was. If the necromancers managed to cooperate long enough to mount a major offensive, they could drive up through the mountains and split the Allied Lands in half. They’d then have access to vast resources–and humans for sacrifice–that they could use to crush the rest of the Allied Lands. And then they could turn their attention to the other continents.

“We do have some advantages,” Professor Locke said. “Most importantly, necromancers are driven insane by the sheer power they channel through their minds. They have been known to lash out at each other without premeditation, as well as planning betrayals for reasons that only make sense in their own addled minds. Their power levels also slowly kill them as their brains cannot tolerate the pressure they put on them for long. As they grow older, they are forced to channel more and more power to keep themselves alive, slowly becoming undead lich-creatures. The true horror of necromancy is that eventually they will run out of humans to sacrifice and die out, leaving the land behind them a waste.”

Emily spoke before she could think better of it. “Did the elves teach the first necromancers how to become necromancers?”

Professor Locke studied her for a long moment, thoughtfully. “And what, young lady, do you mean by that?”

His gaze was disconcerting. Back home, she would rarely have been called to justify herself to anyone at school. Here ...

“If necromancers need a constantly increasing supply of power merely to keep themselves alive,” Emily said, hastily formulating her thoughts, “eventually they’re going to run out of power.”

“As I said,” the Professor reminded her, impatiently.

“Well ... yes, but they have to know that,” Emily countered. “So why did they even
start
, back when their brains were presumably
not
addled by necromancy? They had to have realized that necromancy would eventually exterminate the entire human race. But the elves might have given them the idea
knowing
that the human race would either have to abandon necromancy or destroy itself. Either way, they would win.”

“An interesting theory,” Professor Locke said, finally. “And quite possibly accurate.”

He leaned back, thoughtfully. “But tell me ... how could we have beaten the elves
without
necromancy?”

Emily knew better than to continue the argument. She simply didn’t know enough to make a good case one way or the other. And if necromancy had made the difference between victory or defeat, even the alien-minded Fair Folk of fantasy novels would have hesitated before giving such a weapon to humanity. Unless they believed that humanity would discover it for themselves anyway...she shook her head. That way led madness and a lifetime of raving about conspiracy theories on the internet.

“As I said at the start, history is really nothing more than opinions,” Locke said, turning back to the class at large. “Can anyone tell me when the Treaty of Umbria was signed?”