Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (32 page)

Emily scowled. It was possible, she knew, but she didn’t know
how
.

“It’s the Manavores that pose the real problem,” Master Wolfe added. “There’s too much ambient magic flowing through the castle to starve them.”

“We could try overfeeding them instead,” Emily offered.

“There’d be an explosion of raw magic when they reached capacity,” Master Wolfe pointed out, thoughtfully. “And the wards might not be able to handle it.”

“Particularly if they’re already being drained,” Emily mused. Perhaps they could start creating the multidimensional interior, then simply reconfigure and delete entire sections to trap and kill the Manavores. She’d done something similar to Shadye. “Or we could try to cut them off from their power source.”

“Perhaps,” Master Wolfe said. “I cannot account for them.”

Emily bit her tongue. She was almost sure the Manavores were merely the first of the terror weapons the Faerie would unleash, in the not too distant future. But she could think of another possibility. If some enterprising DemonMaster had asked for a weapon he could turn against his enemies, a conniving demon might have taught him how to produce a Manavore in the certain knowledge that it would get out of hand. And they
had
gotten out of hand. It was impossible to be
sure
, but everyone agreed there was definitely more than one. Perhaps they’d been breeding when they hadn’t been hunting magicians.

“Setting that concern aside for the moment,” Master Wolfe said. He produced a large piece of folded parchment, placing it on the table and carefully unfolding it. “What do you make of this?”

“It’s ...
complex
,” Emily said. In truth, she was reminded of the spells Master Wolfe had crafted to make use of the nexus point. “And it’s ...”

She sucked in her breath as she realized she was looking, for the first time, at a complete Mimic. No, at the spellwork that would
become
a Mimic. It was
fantastically
complex, perhaps the most complex piece of spellwork she’d ever seen ... she’d thought her work with Caleb was complex, but this was an order of magnitude greater. No single magician could
hope
to cast such a spell ...

And yet, if Master Wolfe was right, it should be possible.

She forced herself to think through it logically, dissecting the spellwork into its component subsections. First and foremost, there was the necromantic rite: ready and able to consume enough power to fuel the spellwork. And then there was a complex mixture of soul and illusionary magic, the former providing the framework for the latter. She’d assumed that the Mimic merely
copied
its victims—an impressive feat in its own right—but in some ways it
was
its victims. The intelligence that underlay the whole framework was both staggeringly capable and yet very limited. It was smart enough to take command and hunt for new prey when it found itself running out of power.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You could make it smarter.”

“I could transfer myself into the spellwork,” Master Wolfe explained. “It doesn’t
have
to be smarter.”

Emily shook her head. “The power demands would be staggering,” she said. “And what would happen when you targeted someone new?”

“I wouldn’t,” Master Wolfe said. “I’d be drawing power from the nexus point.”

“Clever,” Emily said. “But what happens when you get it wrong?”

“I’m an old man,” Master Wolfe said. “And I want to live to see the coming generations.”

You’ll be seeing more than that
, Emily thought. Transferring himself into the Mimic wasn’t a bad idea, but the power requirements would eventually force the hindbrain to take control and start hunting for a new victim.
And when something goes wrong ...

She frowned as she considered the implications. Clearly,
something
had gone wrong along the way. By her time, everyone had forgotten that the Mimics were spells. They’d assumed they were just odd creatures. And in a world where dragons flew through the skies, it wasn’t a bad assumption.

Just wrong
, she added, silently.

She closed her eyes in pain. She could tell him to stop. She could try to tell him to accept his death, knowing that his place in history was already assured. And Whitehall would listen to her, she thought, if she went to him and urged him to forbid Master Wolfe from experimenting further. A plague—a terrible plague—would never be released. But history said that the Mimics
would
escape,
would
become a nightmare ...

...And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Test everything,” she urged, finally. “And be
careful
.”

Master Wolfe snorted. “If we were careful all the time,” he said, “would we get anywhere at all?”

Emily shrugged.

“I’m going to be keeping the notes in this chamber,” Master Wolfe added. “You’ll have access, of course. I trust you won’t abuse it?”

“No, Master,” Emily said. She already knew she’d be taking the books from the tiny library later, centuries in the future. And then ... she’d have to have a careful look at the books before deciding what to do with them. There were already secrets within the tomes that Professor Locke would have sold his soul to see. “It will never be abused.”

Master Wolfe launched into a long and complicated explanation of the spellwork he and his team were slowly slotting into the Warden. Emily listened, injecting the occasional suggestion, as Master Wolfe described how
replacing
the Warden could be done by inputting the correct string of commands into the growing spellwork. Building a homunculus was tricky, he admitted, but the nexus point made animating it a great deal simpler. Given the right materials, the Warden could practically be replaced overnight.

As long as there’s nothing interfering with the process
, Emily thought.
How long did it take us to replace the last Warden?

Her head was pounding by the time she was finally dismissed. Master Wolfe was definitely a genius, an
eccentric
genius. He’d already invented a prototype analysis spell that new apprentices could learn, one that she was sure would eventually turn into the spell she’d been taught by Mistress Irene. Emily was honestly nervous about saying
anything
in front of him, just because he had a habit of taking wild ideas and running with them. He was already halfway towards devising more and more wards to sweep the castle for dark magic.

And it will give whoever is in control vast power over the school
, she thought, as she made her way up to the bedroom.
They’ll be able to see into every last nook and cranny
.

She tensed as she turned the corner and saw Tama, standing next to two other apprentices and scowling fiercely. He balled his fists, then muttered a couple of words as he hurled a spell towards her. Emily felt too tired to try to catch and dissect it, so she stepped aside and allowed the spell to splash harmlessly against the stone wall. Tama grunted and tossed another spell at her, a lightning bolt that flashed through the air and spent itself uselessly against her protections. There was no shortage of power in his magic—although he was nowhere near either Bernard or Robin—but he had almost no control at all.

The apprentices are going to go mad
, she told herself. She didn’t want to fight, but she was so
tired
. Tired of being treated either as an inferior or someone who needed to be protected, someone who couldn’t look after herself.
They’re slopping magic through their brains ...

“Fight me,” Tama snapped. He hurled another lightning bolt at her, brilliant flashes of light dancing off her wards and making her hair want to stand on end. “Robin’s not here to defend you,
bitch
.”

Emily fought down the urge to throw a lethal curse—or something too far out of place—back at him. Instead, she shaped a spell in her mind and cast it, hurling it right towards him and his watching friends. He was going to hate her more—they were all going to hate her—but she found it hard to care. The spell she’d hurled wasn’t powerful, nowhere near as powerful as the lightning spells he’d cast at her, yet that hardly mattered. He’d underestimate the spell ...

Tama’s eyes went wide as his lower body suddenly froze, sending him and his friends tumbling to the ground. Emily felt a flicker of sympathy for one of them—he’d cracked his head against the stone floor—but he didn’t look to be seriously injured. Tama stared at her, then let loose a flurry of inventive curses as he cast another spell. He didn’t even seem to be trying to
free
himself.

He thinks my spell won’t last
, Emily thought. Against Robin or Bernard, he might well have been right. He hadn’t even tried to ward the spell off because it had been weak, but that had been a fatal error.
He’s trapped and he doesn’t even know it
.

She lifted a hand and cast a prank spell on all three of the boys. Their hands were suddenly glued to their sides, held in place by an invisible force. A second spell shut their mouths, holding their lips together ... Tama’s eyes went wide with shock. He’d genuinely thought she wasn’t a true magician, she realized. And his friends hadn’t even
talked
to her ...

“You underestimated the spells I used,” she said, “because they weren’t very powerful.”

Tama glared at her, his magic field flaring around him. Emily watched him warily for a second, then decided he didn’t have the power or the precision to break the spells ahead of time. He’d definitely learned far too much for his own good before losing his master and fleeing to the commune. What had he
thought
would happen? He’d overwhelm her magic and then have his way with her? Or merely humiliate her in front of his friends?

“Their power doesn’t matter,” she added. Tama had definitely not been trained in casting spells without using his hands. “All that matters is that the spells are designed to make it impossible for you to break free. Your power is nowhere near sufficient to break free before I cut your throats.”

She felt a stab of guilt at the sudden panic on his face and told herself not to be silly. He probably hadn’t planned to rape her—Whitehall would have killed him, quite literally, if he had—but humiliating her would have been a different story. Would Whitehall have reacted
quite
so badly if she’d been stripped naked and displayed to the world?

But if he was right about how I became his apprentice
, she thought,
my master would be insane with rage
.

She shook her head. Tama was an idiot. It never seemed to have occurred to him that he might have been wrong ... and the consequences of actually being
right
would be a great deal worse. Village boy or not, he should have known better. Perhaps his father had been the headman, like Hodge. The bastard hadn’t had the wit to think twice before trying to rape a magician either.

“You need to learn how to use your power more efficiently,” she added, forcing the thought aside. “Right now, even a weaker magician with more skill can tie you up in knots. I could kill the three of you, right here, and you couldn’t hope to stop me. I
suggest
, very strongly, that you go to Master Wolfe and beg him to teach you before it’s too late.”

She walked past them, resisting the urge to kick Tama while he was down. “The spells will wear off, sooner or later,” she told them. “When they do ... learn from the experience. Or die, the next time you challenge a more capable magician.”

Gritting her teeth, she kept walking, feeling sweat running down her back. It was hard to walk slowly—she wanted to run—but she forced herself to keep going at the same pace until she was round the corner and heading up a flight of stairs. God alone knew what Master Whitehall would say, when he heard about what she’d done. But then, it was quite possible that
no one
would stumble across the trio until the spells had worn off. Would they make a complaint?

They’ll be laughed at if they do
, she thought.

She couldn’t help smiling at the thought, even though it wasn’t particularly funny. It was one of the ironies of a world that was blatantly sexist, if not misogynistic. She’d seen it in Cockatrice. A man might beat his wife—perfectly legally—and she might complain to her father or the local headman, but no self-respecting husband would dare complain about his wife beating
him
. He’d be a laughingstock. And while a man could be punished for excessive beating, a wife couldn’t be punished without making her husband the butt of countless bad jokes.

And I’d better tighten up my protections
, she told herself as she entered the bedroom and closed the door behind her. Thankfully, Julianne was somewhere else.
Tama might just learn a lesson—but he might also take another shot at me
.

She shook her head as she started to put the spellwork together. The past had always fascinated her, but living in it ... that was a different story. And she wanted to go home.

“O
PEN YOUR BAG,”
L
ORD
A
LFRED ORDERED
, as Emily entered the small chamber. “Lord Whitehall insists that I need to see what you’ve packed.”

Emily scowled, but opened the knapsack without comment. A change of clothes, a couple of potion gourds, a handful of pieces of vellum ... there wasn’t anything else. She would have liked to bring a book or two with her, but there
weren’t
many books in the castle and those that were there were literally irreplaceable. It would be nearly a thousand years before the printing press was invented, allowing them to be copied easily. Master Wolfe’s small collection of books was a treasure beyond price.

“Good,” Lord Alfred said. “I trust you have
everything
you might need?”