Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8) Read online

  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.

  Chapter Five

  “YOU 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.”

  “But at least you passed,” Song said. “I was stuck as a goat for the remainder of the exam period.”

  Emily shook her head, stumbled back to bed and closed her eyes. It felt as if she hadn’t slept at all when she awoke the following morning and headed into the examination chamber for the second time. The Healing exam was, if anything, far harder than the Charms exam; she answered a whole series of practical questions, then healed a couple of volunteers from Dragon’s Den. Emily wasn’t sure who had thought it was a good idea to keep several people injured or unwell for some considerable time, just so they could be healed by trainee magicians, but she made a mental note to give that person a piece of her mind if she ever found out. One of her volunteers was a young boy who’d broken his leg...and it could have been healed instantly, if a magician had been nearby. Leaving it broken for hours, let alone days, was just cruel.

  They could have broken someone’s leg specifically to let me mend it, she thought, crossly. It was cruel too, but with the right spells it would be painless and Whitehall could certainly afford to pay any volunteers handsomely. But they couldn’t infect someone with a disease, could they?

  She finished the exam, checked her written answers again and headed back to the dorm for the second time. Alassa joined her a moment later, looking as tired as Emily felt, but she insisted that Emily eat something before they went to bed. Imaiqah had been held back for some reason; she didn’t join them until they’d almost finished eating.

  “There was a problem with one of my patients,” she said, shortly. “The supervisor said I could have extra time, if I wanted.”
r />   Emily nodded slowly. Lady Barb had told them, right from the start, that every patient was different. Some of them could be healed quickly - broken bones could be mended by almost any magician - while others would require hours of patient work. She wasn’t surprised that Imaiqah had been given extra time, even though they hadn’t been told it was a possibility. In hindsight, it was obvious. It might take longer than they thought they had to cure a particularly difficult patient.

  And if we’d tried to hurry, she thought, we might have been marked down.

  She smiled wanly at the thought as they walked back to their beds. Lady Barb would have been furious if they’d tried to rush their work, particularly if there was an innocent life at stake. She’d hammered it into their heads, time and time again, that they were to be careful and take their time when they healed a patient. Emily wouldn’t have cared to face her after a patient had died, if her carelessness and haste had caused the death. She’d have been lucky not to be summarily booted from the class.

  The next exam, Subtle Magic, was just as difficult, although she was starting to get used to the pace. Subtle Magic was tricky because of the rune in her chest, which started to burn the moment she stepped into the pre-prepared examination chamber; it wasn’t easy to find and neutralize the runes carved into the room with her chest feeling as if it were going to catch fire at any moment. But it would have been harder still, she suspected, if the subtle magic had been messing with her mind from the start. She removed the final runes, answered the theoretical questions and then headed back to the dormitory, where she discovered she was the first to finish. The others had taken longer to find and remove the runes.

  “Alchemy today,” Alassa said, the next day. “Good luck.”

  Emily shivered. Alchemy had never been her favorite subject, although she had managed to pass the classroom tests by strict attention to detail and extreme care. She wasn’t reassured when she stepped into the examination chamber and discovered that it was surrounded by heavy-duty wards, ready to contain an explosion. The supervisor nodded to a large workbench supporting three caldrons and a small pile of ingredients, and told her to sit down at a smaller desk.

  “There are three practical tests, following your theoretical exam,” he told her. “For the first test, you have to pick a potion from a list and brew it to an acceptable standard. For the second, you have to salvage an alchemical brew that is on the verge of exploding; for the third, you have to analyze a brewed potion and determine both its ingredients and its function.”

  He paused. “Do you have any questions?”

  Emily hesitated. “Do I get told what the second alchemical brew was meant to be?”

  “Clear Sight Potion,” the supervisor said. “You’ll find a list of ingredients and instructions beside the caldron.”

  Emily closed her eyes in pain. She’d tried to brew Clear Sight Potion herself, in class, and it had rarely worked. Stopping an explosion wouldn’t be hard - she’d just have to add something that would nullify the magic - but that would put the potion completely beyond repair. She’d have to work out what had gone wrong very quickly and then apply corrective measures....

  And be ready to dive under the table if it boils out of control, she thought. She’d seen a string of nasty accidents in Alchemy, including at least one student who’d been blinded for a week following an explosion. This could get very bad.

  She took the paper when it was offered and worked her way through the questions. They looked to be reasonably simple, easier than she’d expected, but they weren’t the true meat of the exam. It was the practicals that would determine her final grade. She finished writing out the answers, rose to her feet and walked over to the workbench. The first caldron was empty; the other two were held in stasis. They’d be released the moment she touched them with her fingertip. Gritting her teeth, she picked up the list of recommended potions, selected the easiest and went to work. An hour later, she bottled up the brew and turned her attention to the third caldron. She’d have to leave the second caldron until last, just in case it blew up in her face.

  And I might end up as scarred as Caleb, she thought, as she prepared a handful of diagnostic spells. Would he still be interested in me if my face looked like Emperor Palpatine’s?

  She pushed the morbid thought aside as she went to work, releasing the stasis field and studying the blue-green liquid in the caldron. The analysis spell showed her some of the ingredients, allowing her to mentally add several more; she knew, from experience, that several ingredients wouldn’t mix with others without exploding or turning the liquid into useless sludge. In fact, the more she saw of the ingredients, the more she believed it was a modified strengthening potion. It wasn’t a recommended recipe - unless she was very wrong, it would be dangerously addictive - but she was sure she knew what it was meant to do.

  Just as long as no one tries to drink it more than once, she thought, as she wrote down her conclusions. Professor Thande - she was certain he’d brewed the potion - loved varying the recipes, just to see what would happen. They’d become addicted within two or three doses.

  She pushed the thought aside as she turned her attention to the second caldron and read through the list of instructions carefully. It was hard to be sure, as there were three separate parts where the tiniest mistake might have led to an explosion, but she had a feeling - going by the colorcolor - that the mistake was in the final section. The brewer had added too much of one ingredient, overbalancing the potion. She gritted her teeth, prepared a handful of countering agents and released the stasis field. The smell made her gag - she had to fight to keep from diving under the table at once - but she poured the first countering agent in, watching carefully to make sure it wasn’t about to explode. It bubbled unpleasantly; she hastily added the remaining agents, praying desperately that she hadn’t unbalanced the recipe in a different direction. There was a long pause, then the brew settled down. Emily breathed a sigh of relief, bottled four samples and turned away from the workbench. It was done.

  “You may leave,” the supervisor said.

  Emily nodded and walked back to the dorm. Alassa and Imaiqah were already gone - Alchemy was their last exam - but Melissa and the Gorgon were still waiting for the second Healing exam. She nodded to them both, then settled down on the bed to go to sleep. No one had told her anything about the Military Magic exam, but she had a feeling she should wait until she knew what was happening. But she wanted to leave...

  She was woken, four hours later, by the supervisor. “You have been entered for the Military Magic exam by Sergeant Miles,” she said. “You’ll only get half credit, because you’ve only been entered for the theoretical side...”

  Emily rubbed her forehead, but nodded reluctantly. Sergeant Miles presumably knew what he was doing. She’d ask him when she left the examination halls. Until then...she ate, slept and followed the supervisor into the examination chamber for the final exam. Behind her, the handful of girls taking the second Healing exam waited for their supervisors to arrive.

  The Military Magic supervisor looked her up and down as soon as she arrived, then pointed to a desk and waited for her to sit down. “It is irregular for a person to take half of the exam,” he said, “but apparently it has to be tolerated. You have two hours to answer as many questions as you can. Do not leave the room...”

  “I understand,” Emily interrupted. She just wanted to get it over with. “Can I begin?”

  “Of course,” the supervisor said. He made a show of turning a giant hourglass over to mark the start of the exam. “Off you go.”

  Emily scowled at the paper as she opened it. Like the other exams, it contained a list of questions that forced her to think rather than merely scribble answers down by rote. Some of them were easy enough - Sergeant Miles had talked her through the basics of military affairs in Martial Magic - but others were too complex for her to answer. She did the best she could - she pulled one solution directly from Earth - and finished the paper just in time for the las
t of the sand to run out. The supervisor took it, opened the door for her and pointed to the exit. Emily glanced back at the dorm, hurried down the corridor and out of the exam complex.

  And I won’t see it again until the end of Sixth Year, she thought, as she passed through the door. The wards resealed themselves behind her. If they let me stay...

  “Emily,” Lady Barb said. She was standing at the far end of the corridor. “I trust you’re ready for a nap?”

  Emily ignored the question. “Why did Sergeant Miles put me in for the final exam?”

  “Because you might need it,” Lady Barb said. “And because it will be a useful thing to have.”

  And, no matter how many times Emily asked, Lady Barb refused to be drawn any further.

  Chapter Six

  “YOU MIGHT WELL ALREADY HAVE SUFFICIENT credit to win a pass in Military Magic,” Alassa mused, four hours later. “Master Grey would certainly give you a pass.”

  “I don’t think he would have wanted to give me anything other than a knife in the back,” Emily muttered. Her head hurt, even though she’d managed several hours of sleep before her friends had returned. “He wanted me dead.”

  “That might explain it,” Alassa said. “You did kill a combat sorcerer in a duel. That, combined with a high score on your papers, might be enough to win you a pass.”

  She shrugged. “Or they may think you’d have a use for the paper qualification in the future,” she added. “You’d better see if you can get a straight answer out of the sergeant.”

  “The paper qualification won’t be enough,” Imaiqah pointed out. “If she hasn’t done the practical...”

  Emily held up a hand. “Does it really matter, right now?”

  “Probably not,” Alassa said. She turned and picked up a letter from her trunk. “My father sent you a letter. Do you want the crib notes from me or do you want to unpick the letter for yourself?”