Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (37 page)

“Whitehall,” Master Chambers said. He cast a sharp glance at Emily, then looked back at Whitehall. “What have you done?”

“Invited others to the castle,” Whitehall said. “Enough apprentices and tradesmen came with us to make a start on a
real
community. We even recruited three new masters.”

“I do not recall granting permission to recruit other masters,” Master Chambers said. “Is it not traditional that masters may only be admitted to the commune with the agreement of every
other
master?”

He looked past Whitehall, frowning. “And where is Alfred?”

“Dead,” Whitehall said. “He fought a duel with Lord Fire.”

Master Chambers’ face flickered with an emotion Emily couldn’t read. “Lord Fire?”

“Their demons broke loose and killed both of the combatants,” Whitehall said, stiffly. He’d kept his grief to himself, but Emily had been able to tell he
was
grieving. “They lost control of their ...
tools
.”

“I will mourn his death,” Master Chambers said, slowly. He gazed at Whitehall for a long moment. “But accepting other masters ...”

“They will not have access to the nexus point,” Whitehall said. “And they have agreed to teach magic to multiple apprentices.”

Master Chambers scowled. “Do you imagine they will be satisfied with an inferior position?”

Whitehall sighed. “I imagine we will have time to ...
discuss
accepting them fully into the commune,” he said, tartly. “Or are you going to insist that they leave?”

“No.” Master Chambers said. “I would lose that vote, would I not?”

Hopefully
, Emily thought. She was still surprised that Master Drake had sided with Master Chambers, at least until a compromise had been worked out.
But every new master reduces the influence and power available to the other masters—and they know it
.

Whitehall raised an arm to indicate the rest of the travelers. “We have enough apprentices—untrained apprentices—to make a genuine start,” he said. “And enough workers to build a small township, if we can’t fit them into the castle. We can make our dream real.”

“We can make
your
dream real,” Master Chambers said.

“Yes,” Whitehall said. “And with your permission, we will start organizing their sleeping arrangements for the night.”

Master Chambers stepped aside, his face unreadable. Emily glanced at him as she followed Whitehall into the school, but he didn’t respond to her. Julianne shadowed her as they walked into the Great Hall, where Master Wolfe and Master Drake were waiting. Whitehall took the Books of Pacts out of his knapsack and placed them on the nearest table. The aura of evil and malice, once again, filled the room.

“Lord Alfred and Lord Fire are dead,” he said, bluntly. “Their books survived.”

“Destroy them,” Master Wolfe urged.

“I doubt they can be destroyed so easily,” Master Drake said. He opened one of the books and turned the pages, inspecting the sigils. A number were still blood-red. “They didn’t expend all of the contracts.”

“They didn’t make their orders precise enough,” Whitehall said. “And so the demons broke free.”

He wrapped the books up again, then handed the knapsack to Master Wolfe. “Put these somewhere safe, then use the nexus point to protect and conceal them,” he ordered. “We’ll try to destroy them later, once we have integrated the newcomers into the commune, but for the moment they will just have to be hidden.”

“Understood,” Master Wolfe said. He took the knapsack and glanced at Emily. “I have some ideas I want to show you ...”

“Later,” Whitehall said. “We will be holding a ceremony for Lord Alfred this evening.”

He dismissed Emily and Julianne, ordering them to head back to their bedroom, then hurried to the courtyard. Emily didn’t envy him, she decided. Master Chambers was not going to be welcoming to the newcomers—and, as a master who had helped take control of the nexus point, his opinions could not be easily dismissed. Maybe Whitehall had pushed a little too far by recruiting masters as well as apprentices, although he’d made no secret of his plans to do just that. Master Chambers had a perfect opportunity to undermine his position amongst the rest of the original commune.

She pushed the thought aside as she caught sight of Robin, walking down the corridor towards them. He lowered his eyes theatrically, pretending to stare at the stone floor as they walked past. Emily sighed, then told herself that it was for the best. She wasn’t sure just
what
had happened in the forest, but she didn’t have any feelings for Robin. Besides, she’d have to make the jump to the future soon. She felt the weight of history pressing down on her.

“I’m sorry the two of you couldn’t be together,” Julianne said, as they stepped into the bedroom. “It would have made matters so much easier.”

Emily barely heard her. She’d had neatness and tidiness hammered into her head almost from the very day she’d entered Whitehall to the point it was almost second nature. It was impossible to be
sure
, but she thought someone had entered the bedroom while they’d been away and searched it thoroughly. The more she looked from place to place, the more certain she was that
someone
had broken into the room. Too many things were out of place. She hesitated, cursing her own caution under her breath. Warding the room as carefully as she would have done back home would have been far too revealing, if someone had tangled with the wards.

“Check your stuff,” she ordered, grimly. “Someone was in the room while we were gone.”

She cast a spell, searching for traces of magic, but found nothing apart from the background hum of the nexus point. It wasn’t as if anyone would have
needed
vast amounts of magic to break into the room. Besides, if someone had entered shortly after they’d left the castle, there would have been plenty of time for any traces to fade into nothingness. She checked her small collection of clothes carefully, half-expecting to find a nasty jinx or hex hidden within the cloth, but found nothing. Perhaps she was just being paranoid.

“My supplies were turned over,” Julianne said. “But nothing was taken.”

Emily puzzled over the mystery as they unpacked, wondering just what the mystery intruder had actually
wanted
. If he’d wanted to make it clear that her privacy had been violated, surely he would have ransacked the room; if he’d wanted to take something, surely he would have taken it. Unless, of course, he hadn’t found it ... but what had he wanted? Master Gila’s Book of Pacts had been destroyed and she didn’t have anything else worth the effort, save perhaps for the snake-bracelet. But she’d worn that on her wrist, taking it with her to the Gathering.

“I don’t get it,” Julianne said. “They took nothing.”

“Me neither,” Emily said. “Do we even have anything worth stealing?”

Bernard tapped on the door a minute later, inviting them back down to the dining hall. Emily followed Julianne out of the door, taking the time to set up a hex that would surprise anyone who made it into the room, then walked behind them as they hurried down the corridor. Bernard and Julianne held hands, even though Whitehall couldn’t turn a blind eye to anything they did in front of his fellow masters. Perhaps Whitehall had already informed the rest of the commune that they were engaged.

Robin was standing by the door, handing out tiny glasses of wine. Emily took one, sniffed it doubtfully and then held it, rather than drinking. Robin still refused to meet her eyes as Bernard led her further into the room, pushing through the gathered crowd until they stood at the front. A large bier sat in front of them, a wicker effigy of a man placed on top. She realized, with a chill, that it was meant to represent Lord Alfred.

“Lord Alfred was a remarkable man—and a talented liar,” Whitehall said. “I have never known anyone so full of contradictions. He would happily tell a story about his early life—and then tell another, the day after, that contradicted the first story completely. I know nothing about his birthplace or about his early life. And I know nothing about which of his stories are true, which are merely exaggerated and which are outright lies. The only thing I know for sure is that he was a DemonMaster.

“He would, I think, find it amusing that we would tell lies about him after his death,” he added, “even though it flies in the face of tradition. And yet, we have no way to know what
is
a lie. One of his stories might be a lie; another might be true. We have no way to know which ones should be told and which ones should be politely forgotten. But there is one of his stories that has always stayed with me. And I tell it now because it speaks, I think, to the person he was.

“Many years ago—or so he told me—there was a king in a far-distant land. And that king was very—very—fat. He was so grossly overweight that he looked like an immense slug. His health had suffered so badly that it took five strong men to help him in and out of his bed each day. And every time a magician came to his city, the king would demand a cure. But how many magicians would dare to tell the truth? That the king was so fat because he ate and drank his fill, without working it off afterwards? How many would dare tell such a man that he was a lazy slug?”

Very few
, Emily thought.

“Lord Alfred tricked him into exercising, so the story goes,” Whitehall continued. “He told the king that he could cast a spell to help him regain his health, but the king would have to follow his instructions precisely or the spell would not work. And the king, so desperate for a cure, did as he was told. He forced himself to walk every day, then to run, then to climb hills and dig ditches ... eventually, one day, he looked in the mirror and saw a healthy man looking back at him.

“Lord Alfred never saw magic as the be-all and end-all of his life. He saw it as nothing more than a tool, one of many. And it is that approach, I think, that preserved him from the fate of so many other DemonMasters. He went to his death knowing that his death would serve a greater purpose. And for that I honor him.”

Emily found herself blinking away tears as other masters—even Master Chambers—rose to add their own recollections of the dead. Lord Alfred had helped a young man win the love of a good woman, Master Drake said; Master Chambers insisted that Lord Alfred had been involved in a project to tap the power of the moon by dragging it down to the planet. Emily doubted
that
was true—dragging the moon down would have destroyed the entire world—but she had to admit it was a good story. And there were more ...

No wonder there are so many stories about him
, she thought.
They just kept growing in the telling
.

“Life goes on,” Whitehall said, once the bier had burned to ashes. “It gives me great pleasure to tell you that my daughter Julianne will marry Apprentice Bernard in five days, when the summer is at its height. Their children will carry on our legacy. Life goes on.”

“Life goes on,” the crowd echoed.

“Tomorrow, we will start organizing formal lessons,” Whitehall concluded. “But tonight, we will remember the man who gave his life to allow us to proceed.”

He lifted his glass in a silent toast, then drank the wine. Emily hesitated, then took a tiny sip from her own glass. It tasted smoky and left a burning trail down her throat, as if someone had distilled fire. She cursed herself under her breath. Alcohol and she didn’t mix, even if it was a wake.

“We’d better go back to bed,” Julianne said, as the crowd started to disperse. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“I know,” Emily said. She remembered trying to teach Tama and scowled. “But at least the rest should have less to unlearn.”

A
N APPRENTICE RAN AROUND THE CORNER
and stopped dead as he stepped on a rune, his entire body frozen in place. Another followed, running straight into the first apprentice and winding up stuck too. Emily wondered, as she watched from her position, if all eight of her pupils were about to wind up stuck together, but the
third
apprentice was a little more careful and managed to avoid the trap before it was too late. He walked around the trapped apprentices and hurried down the corridor, eyes scanning right and left for more traps. Emily smiled to herself as he neatly avoided a second trap just before running right into the
third
trap and finding himself stuck to the wall.

And he doesn’t seem to have considered the virtues of freeing the others
, she thought, as the fourth apprentice ran right into the first and second, winding up stuck too. The fifth, who seemed to have actually
listened
when Emily told them they needed to work together, took the time to destroy the rune, freeing all three of the trapped apprentices. They landed in a heap, stunned and disoriented.
But at least they’ve learned something useful
.

She put her fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly as she stepped out of concealment. It had been Bernard’s idea to teach the apprentices through playing games and, Emily had to admit, it was working surprisingly well. But then, most of her pupils had almost no formal training at all. They had nothing to unlearn. Tama and his ilk were still reluctant to admit that she had anything to teach them.

“As you can see,” she said, “runes may not look flashy, but they pose a danger to even experienced magicians.”

A bell rang, the sound echoing through the corridor. “It’s time for you to proceed to your next class,” she added, after a moment. “And I strongly suggest you concentrate hard on your brewing.”

She watched them go, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Julianne. Even the inexperienced apprentices still believed that brewing was women’s work, although Emily had a feeling that would change once it became obvious that skilled brewers were also better at casting spells. And they would be, too. Potions—and alchemy, when it came into being—taught students how to modulate the flow of magic into the cauldrons as well as how to brew miracles.