Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) Read online

  Past Tense

  (Schooled in Magic X)

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Twilight Times Books

  Kingsport Tennessee

  Past Tense

  This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Christopher G. Nuttall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Twilight Times Books

  P O Box 3340

  Kingsport TN 37664

  http://twilighttimesbooks.com/

  First Edition, July 2016

  Cover art by Brad Fraunfelter

  Published in the United States of America.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Appendix: Magic and the Magical Community Pre-Whitehall

  Prologue

  THEY WERE DOOMED.

  Lord Whitehall knew it, knew it with a sick certainty that could not be denied. The magic swirling around the small gathering of magicians would overwhelm their defenses soon enough, no matter how hard they struggled. The brilliant—and sickly—light burned into their minds, making it hard to think clearly. Their wards were cracking, on the verge of breaking, yet abandoning the work would spell instant death as the tidal wave of magic from the nexus point overwhelmed their defenses and crushed them like bugs. It would have been safer to stand in the path of a rushing river and demand it bow to their collective will.

  Coming here had been a dreadful mistake, he knew now. The castle had seemed their only hope—it was far from civilization, far from anyone who might want to hunt their commune—but the nexus point beneath the castle was a wild thing. It could not be tamed; the merest touch had unleashed a surge of magic so strong that all of the masters, working together, had barely saved themselves from instant death. And yet they could not even break free to warn the rest of the commune to evacuate the castle. They—the masters and a handful of their most trusted apprentices—would only be the first to die.

  His head started to pound as he thrust more and more magic into the wards, knowing it was futile. All he could hope to do was keep his people alive for a few more seconds, before the wild magic slammed into them. Those who lived would envy the dead, if the whispered rumors were true. The monsters they’d encountered as they hacked their way through the forest, towards the castle, might have been human once, before the wild magic transformed them. Now? They were just beasts.

  I’m sorry, he thought.

  He wasn’t sure who he was apologizing to. His teacher, the man whose secrets would now be lost; his fellow masters, who would die beside him; his apprentice, who would never become a master in his own right; his daughter, who would never have a husband or children of her own ... ? He’d failed them all. They were all going to die in the next few minutes, no matter what he did ...

  The demon tricked us.

  It was a bitter thought. He’d known for years—his master had hammered it into his skull, when he’d been a young man barely starting out as a magician—that demons were untrustworthy, but they’d been desperate. They’d known they were desperate. And so Lord and Master Alfred had summoned a demon and put the question to the entity, asking where they could go that was safe. The demon told them about the nexus point ...

  ... And sent them straight to their doom.

  Power surged around him as the nexus point grew larger, wild magic spilling into the air and pressing against the wards. They couldn’t hold for more than a few seconds ... he heard someone screaming, but he couldn’t tell who it was. Perhaps it was himself, in the final seconds of his life, all dignity torn from him by the grim awareness that he’d led his people into a trap.

  And then there was a flash of light and ... someone ... was kneeling in the middle of the circle, just in front of the nexus point.

  There was no time to stare. The wave of magic—the final wave of magic—built up, slowly sliding forward as if it were guided by a mind that wanted the magicians to watch helplessly as their doom approached them. He pushed the last dregs of his power into the wards, knowing it would be futile ...

  ... And then the newcomer added his strength to the wards.

  The wards changed, snapping into a new and complex configuration that was bizarre, yet perfect. Whitehall would’ve been astonished if he hadn’t been concentrating on holding the outer wards in place. It was working! Whatever the newcomer had done, it was working!

  The wild magic flashed and flared inside the wards, but it couldn’t escape. A final shudder ran through the entire building, then the wild magic was gone. The blinding light vanished at the same moment, plunging the room into near-darkness. And the nexus point hung in the middle of the room, tiny and yet immensely large at the same time, tamed.

  They’d tamed a nexus point!

  He found it hard to keep from giggling inanely as he collapsed to the stone floor. For a long moment, all he could do was lie there and fight to keep himself awake. Everything around him blurred as fatigue threatened to overcome him. And then, drawing on his last strength, he pulled himself to his feet, grabbed a torch and stumbled towards the newcomer, heedless of the risk of stepping too close to the nexus. He ...

  ... No, she.

  Whitehall stared. He’d traveled widely, first with his master and then with a string of apprentices, but he’d only heard wild rumors about witches. He’d certainly never met a real witch, just a handful of women who knew a couple of spells. And yet, the girl before him was clearly a full-fledged magician. Her power was faint, perhaps as drained as his own, but he perceived it as it surrounding her, infusing her body and giving her a strength she would not otherwise possess.

  She blinked up at him, clearly half-blinded by the light. Her face was perfect, almost too perfect; there were no scars or blemishes, none of the marks carried by the girls and women waiting in the castle above. Her arms were muscular, but it was clear that she was not used to the backbreaking labor of a farmwife. And she was clean, as if someone had scrubbed away all the torments of womanhood and lef
t behind nothing but purity. She was tall, almost as tall as he was; she was easily the tallest woman he’d seen outside royalty. Her long brown hair hung down to the small of her back, contrasting oddly with the shapeless grey garment she wore. He’d never seen anything like it ...

  And he couldn’t even begin to guess at her age. But she looked young…perhaps too young.

  He held up a hand, motioning for the others to stay back as the girl looked at him. He couldn’t help noticing that her eyes were soft, with none of the hardness that he was used to seeing in women. His own wife had lived a harsh life, even after she’d married a magician; she’d never dared reveal such ... vulnerability to anyone, not even him. The women upstairs, waiting to hear what the magicians had done, were hardly less harsh. Whitehall knew the world was an unkind place, but it was harder on women. And yet, the girl before him was different.

  And she was a magician.

  The girl seemed to steady herself. “Who ... who are you?”

  Whitehall contemplated her for a long moment. Her words were understandable, but they were oddly accented. The common tongue was clearly not her first language, he decided; boys were normally taught the common tongue in childhood, while girls were rarely taught anything other than their mother tongue unless they were destined to marry a merchant or a magician. His wife had spoken three languages and considered herself accomplished, for the youngest daughter of a magician. She’d been a remarkable woman. And yet, she’d died in childbirth ...

  “I am Lord and Master Whitehall,” Whitehall said, gravely. He didn’t miss the expression of shock that passed across the girl’s face. This was not someone, he reasoned, who was used to concealing her feelings or minding what she said. Had she an indulgent father and no husband? Or perhaps she was powerful enough not to care about her words. “Who are you?”

  He held out a hand to help the girl to her feet. It was dangerous, but his instincts insisted that the girl wasn’t a threat. She seemed oddly hesitant to take his hand—that, at least, was a normal reaction—but she eventually allowed him to help her up. Her legs were concealed within her garment, but Whitehall could tell she was tired and drained. Doing what she’d done—doing the impossible thing she’d done—had to have cost her dearly.

  “I ... I am Emily,” the girl managed. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  Whitehall surprised himself by laughing. “Nor should we,” he said. “Nor should we.”

  He snorted, then pushed his humor aside as he heard the others whisper behind him. Solving the mystery of just how the girl—Emily—had arrived in the castle was important, but he would be damned if he was going to rip her mind open to find out. They owed her their lives—and those of the men, women and children who had followed them to the castle.

  “We are in your debt,” he added, grandly. “And you are welcome here.”

  Chapter One

  “I AM LORD AND MASTER WHITEHALL,” the man said, gravely. For a moment, Emily honestly thought the translation spell had glitched. “Who are you?”

  Emily stared up at the speaker in absolute disbelief. She couldn’t have gone back in time, could she? It was impossible! Going forward in time was easy enough—she’d adjusted the flow of time within pocket dimensions to skip forward nearly an entire day—but going backwards in time was impossible. Or so she’d been told. Five years ago, she would have believed that turning someone into a frog was impossible, too!

  Her head spun. “I ... I am Emily,” she said. She could feel the nexus point behind her, twisting in and out of her awareness as though both infinitely large and impossibly tiny. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  She tried hard to think clearly as Whitehall helped her to her feet and welcomed her to the castle. Her head hurt as she considered the implications. If she was lost in time, she didn’t dare say or do anything that might alter the timeline for fear of accidentally altering the series of events that led up to her departure from Earth. But, at the same time, she’d already interfered—and, in doing so, protected the timeline. Everyone knew Lord Whitehall was the first man to tame a nexus point. No one had ever suggested that he might have had help from the future.

  And if I’m meant to be here, she thought numbly, what else am I meant to do?

  She looked at Whitehall, feeling oddly intimidated. She was in the presence of a legend, the man who would found Whitehall School and lay the groundwork for educating hundreds of thousands of young magicians. The men behind him, watching her with wary eyes, had to be part of the Whitehall Commune. She wondered, absently, if she knew their names, and if recorded history had been remotely accurate. There were so many gaps in the records that it was hard to know just who was truly significant and who had merely been shoehorned into reconstructions of past events because his writings had survived.

  Whitehall himself looked nothing like his portraits. They’d depicted a grand old wizard, Emily recalled, but the man before her was clearly in his late forties rather than pushing into a second century. His face was a dark olive, his beard slowly shading to white as he grew older. His hair was cropped close to his skull; his eyes, darker than hers, seemed to bore into her very soul. She couldn’t help thinking of owls as she let go of his hand, trusting her legs to hold her upright. There was something about the way he moved that reminded her of an owl.

  He wore no robes, she saw, as he turned to face his companions. Instead, he wore heavy trousers and a dark shirt, making him look more like a laborer than a magician. Runes and sigils were sewn into his shirt, almost all of them unknown to her. And yet, she recalled seeing a handful of them in the tunnels below Whitehall ... below old Whitehall. If she was truly back in the early days of the school, perhaps even before the school, the tunnel network might not have been constructed yet. She reached out to the familiar wards, but sensed no response. They didn’t exist either, not yet. The only thing she could sense was the constant presence of the nexus point.

  She rubbed the snake-bracelet on her wrist, silently grateful that she’d kept it on when she prepared for bed. She wouldn’t be completely friendless ...

  “Master Baju-Merah is dead,” a voice said. “The strain killed him.”

  Emily sucked in her breath as she saw the body. The man—the old man—had died badly, his face twisted in pain. A heart attack, perhaps, judging from the lack of physical wounds on his corpse. There was no way to know. Perhaps a strand of wild magic had escaped ... she shook her head, dismissing the thought. If the wards had cracked, even slightly, everyone in the chamber would be dead…or wishing they were.

  She looked at the other magicians as they clustered around the body, glancing at her as they talked in low voices. There was no point in trying to match names to faces, not when the portraits were so wildly inaccurate. They looked ... odd, at least compared to the magicians she knew. A number looked surprisingly old, surprisingly dirty, for magicians; others looked physically young, but mentally old. She found herself staring at a young man who was looking at her, unable to be sure just how old he actually was. But then, she’d never been very good at guessing ages on the Nameless World. People without magic aged at terrifying speeds.

  They’re all men, she thought, numbly. There isn’t a single woman amongst them.

  The realization struck her with terrifying force. My God, she thought. I’m the Dark Lady.

  Her legs buckled, threatening to send her crashing to the stone floor. The Dark Lady was a legend, a person who was only mentioned in a couple of sources ... a person who half the historians in the Nameless World believed to be nothing more than a myth. Her story had either been wildly exaggerated or written out altogether ... there was no way Emily and she could be the same person. And yet, it was impossible to convince herself that she wasn’t. It didn’t look as though there was any other role to play.

  She closed her eyes for a long moment, trying to decide what to say when Whitehall finally demanded answers. He would demand answers too, she knew ... and she doubted the Sorcerer’s Rule held sway a thousand years
ago. Or was it only seven hundred? The thought made her smile, despite the shock and growing fear for the future. She might be able to learn answers to questions that had vexed historians for the last thousand years.

  I have to get back, she told herself. The past was fascinating, but she wanted to get back to her Whitehall—and Caleb. And everyone else she knew and loved. I can’t stay here forever.

  “Emily,” Whitehall said. She opened her eyes. He’d dismissed most of the magicians, leaving only himself and the young man in the chamber. “I need to ask you some questions.”

  Emily nodded, sensing Whitehall’s exhaustion under his words. Up close, it was surprisingly easy to sense his magic. He didn’t seem to be masking his power at all. That was—would be—considered incredibly rude in the future, a bare-faced attempt to intimidate her, but his body language didn’t suggest anything of the sort. He certainly wasn’t trying to lean into her personal space. Perhaps he was just too tired to keep his magic under control. There was certainly something ... discordant ... about it. Behind him, it was impossible to sense the young man’s magic at all.

  “This is quite a hard place to reach,” Whitehall said. “How did you get here?”

  The young man leaned forward. “And how did you appear in the chamber?”

  “Bernard,” Whitehall said, reprovingly. “One question at a time.”

  Emily felt her mouth drop open. The young man before her was Bernard De Born? The man who would be the first true Grandmaster? The man who would write a history of Whitehall and dozens of other books that had been lost over the years? It was impossible to reconcile the image of the older man with the younger one in front of her.

  She forced herself to focus on choosing her words. There was no way she could tell Whitehall the truth, even if she swore him—both of them—to silence. And yet, the more lies she told, the greater the chance of being caught out. Whitehall wouldn’t trust her—at all—if he caught her in a lie. She would be surprised if he wasn’t already concerned—and suspicious—about her appearance. She’d arrived right at the moment of their greatest need.