Past Tense
	
	(Schooled in Magic X)

	Christopher G. Nuttall

	

	

	

	

	
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.
First Printing, July 2017
Cover art by Brad Fraunfelter

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
About the author

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 left 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.
“My tutor and I made our way here,” she said, finally. “He had a theory about ...”
“He?” Whitehall repeated. “He?”
Emily cursed under her breath. She had the nasty feeling she’d just put her foot in it. But there was no going back now.
“He had a theory about taking control of a nexus point,” she said. “He’d worked out a complex set of spells he believed would be sufficient to take control. But it wasn’t enough to save his life. There was a flash of light and I saw him die, a moment before you arrived.”
Bernard’s eyes narrowed. “There was no one in the chamber when we arrived.”
“She might have been trapped in the nexus point,” Whitehall pointed out. “And our attempt to tame the wild magic freed her.”
“Then I thank you,” Emily said. “But I don’t recall anything between his death and your arrival.”
Whitehall frowned. “Who taught you?”
A dozen answers ran through Emily’s head. She could claim to have been taught by Dumbledore, or Gandalf, or Yoda ... it wasn’t as if Whitehall could disprove her words. But she needed to keep it as simple as possible. She knew enough about telling lies to know just how easy it was to say too much and give the listener the key they needed to untangle the entire web of deceit. 
“I swore an oath to keep the details of my training to myself,” she said, finally. If Whitehall and his commune were anything like the magicians she knew, they’d respect an oath. “Even though he’s dead, he never saw fit to release me from it.”
Whitehall nodded. “It is ... uncommon for a girl to be schooled in magic,” he said. “Your father, perhaps? Teaching you because he had no son?”
Emily kept her face blank with an effort. Whitehall—her Whitehall—taught girls and boys equally, assuming they had magic. But the history books had made it clear that girls were not originally taught magic. It had been Bernard—Grandmaster Bernard—who’d first permitted girls to study at Whitehall, assuming that wasn’t something else the history books had managed to get wrong. There was no point, not any longer, in pretending to be an untrained magician. They’d seen what she’d done to the nexus point.
“I swore an oath,” she said, again.
Whitehall nodded. “I understand,” he said. “He must have been a very smart man.”
“He taught a girl,” Bernard said. “How is that smart? The curse ...”
Emily frowned. “What curse?”
“He didn’t even tell you that?”
Bernard turned to his master. “She’s lying,” he said. “I sense no magic from her.”
“I sense no magic from you either,” Emily snapped back.
Whitehall gave her an odd look. “My apprentice has more than enough magic,” he said, coldly. “But yours is well hidden.”
Bernard stepped forward. “This is a joke, master,” he said. “I don’t know how she got here, but she is no magician.”
Emily scowled at him, feeling oddly disappointed. This was the Grandmaster who would invite girls to study alongside the boys? She reached out with her senses and frowned as she sensed magic surrounding Bernard for the first time. He wasn’t trying to mask his power at all; indeed, the only reason she hadn’t sensed it earlier was because Whitehall’s magic had obscured his apprentice’s power. Professor Lombardi would have summarily failed any student who failed to mask his power within his personal wards, she knew. Allowing one’s power to roam free was ... sloppy.
“You sensed what she did to the nexus point,” Whitehall said. He sounded puzzled, but calm and composed. There was no anger in his tone. “She showed us how to patch the wards in place to tame the wild magic.”
“She’s a girl,” Bernard protested.
Emily felt her temper snap. “Then fight me,” she said. “I challenge you to a duel, if you dare.”
Bernard glared at her, then turned to his master. “Master ...”
“She challenged you,” Whitehall said. He smiled, rather dryly. “Are you going to take up the challenge?”
“It wouldn’t be a fight,” Bernard objected.
Emily resisted—barely—the urge to stick out her tongue. “Then you don’t have anything to fear,” she said, instead. “You’ll beat me with ease.”
“Fine,” Bernard snapped. He turned and paced across the chamber, then turned to face her, his hands clenching into fists. “Master, will you set up the warding circle?”
“I doubt one will be necessary,” Whitehall said. He stepped to one side, nodding shortly to Emily. “Try not to kill each other.”
Emily kept her expression blank as she tensed, testing her protections carefully. Challenging Bernard was a risk. She could lose. And yet, his casual dismissal of her abilities hurt. She was damned if she would allow him to talk down to her, let alone treat her as a silly girl who needed a man to make all the decisions for her. It wasn’t as if she was one of the stupid noblewomen who’d made Alassa’s wedding preparations such a trial. And Bernard was a disappointment anyway.
“Begin,” Whitehall said.
Bernard didn’t hesitate. His hand snapped down as he unleashed a spell she didn’t recognize, a spell that bled mana in all directions. It was sloppy work—Professor Lombardi would probably have broken Bernard’s hand if he’d cast that in class—but it was powerful. The spell slammed into her protections, shaking them roughly, yet it was really nothing more than brute force. Part of her mind analyzed the spell quickly, noting how it made no attempt to seek out weaknesses in her protections and break through the cracks. Bernard had a great deal of raw power, although it was so sloppy she couldn’t tell just how much power, but very little actual skill.
“Impressive,” Whitehall commented.
Emily kept her eyes on Bernard as she deflected or drained the last remnants of his spell. He looked stunned, as if he’d expected her to be knocked out ... or killed ... by his magic. Emily wasn’t quite sure what the spell had actually been intended to do. It had just been thrown together so poorly that merely striking her defenses had been enough to disrupt the spellware beyond repair. She gathered her own magic, readying a retaliatory blow, but waited to see what he would do. And then he tossed a second spell at her. This one was tighter and sharper ... and felt unpleasant as it crawled across her wards. She felt a flicker of horror as she realized what that spell was meant to do.
“Careful,” Whitehall said. His smile was gone. “Using that in a duel could get you in real trouble.”
I suppose it could, Emily thought. Trying to take control of your opponent ...
She summoned a fireball and threw it at him, watching dispassionately as it crashed into his magic and exploded into nothingness. His protections were nothing like hers, she saw; they were crude, utterly unfocused. It looked as though he was using his own magic as a baseball bat, swatting away spells as they approached, rather than embedding wards within his magic and concentrating on offense. Emily hated to think what Sergeant Miles would have said to any of his students stupid enough to try that. Splitting their attention between offense and defense meant that they couldn’t concentrate on either.
Bernard flung a third spell at her, so powerful that she stepped aside rather than try to catch it on her protections. Bracing herself, she threw back a ward-cracking spell of her own and followed up with a prank spell. Bernard let out a yelp of shock and pain as his wards came apart—Emily realized, too late, that the ward-cracking spell had actually attacked his magic directly—and then shrank, rapidly, as the prank spell took effect. Moments later, a tiny green frog was looking up at her with disturbingly human eyes.
“I think I win,” Emily said.
She looked at Whitehall and saw him looking back in shock. “You did it so casually?”
“I had a good teacher,” Emily said. She cursed her mistake—if it had been a mistake—under her breath. She had no idea when transfiguration spells had been invented, but it was possible that Whitehall didn’t know how to use them—or regarded them as too demanding to be practical. “He taught me everything I know.”
Whitehall studied her for a long moment. “I think you win too,” he said. “Undo the spell, please.”
Emily nodded and cast the counterspell. Bernard looked astonished as he reverted to human form, his face pale and wan. A lingering greenish tone hung over his skin for long seconds after the spell faded back into the ether. He would have been trying to break free, Emily knew. If he had no experience with pranking spells—the spells Emily had learned in her first year of studies—he might assume that his mind was on the verge of sinking into the frog’s and being lost forever.
“I am sorry for doubting you,” Bernard said. He stood upright, then held out a hand. Emily shook it firmly. “And you are clearly a great magician.”
“A useful lesson, young man,” Whitehall said. “You are strong, but your training is far from complete.”
Emily kept her thoughts to herself as Whitehall turned towards the gaping door. Bernard, at least, didn’t seem to bear a grudge. But then, Sergeant Miles had told her she might have to fight to prove herself, if she was dumped in with the men. Beating a man fairly would work far better, he’d said, than whining to his superiors. The former would earn respect, the latter would breed resentment.
She rubbed the side of her head as she followed Whitehall, Bernard falling into step beside her. Her head hurt, a dull ache that was making it hard to think. She’d been awakened in the middle of the night, after all. She needed to sleep, to rest and figure out a way home before she accidentally tore a hole in history and erased her friends from existence.
And hope I can survive here long enough to find a way home, she thought, grimly. This isn’t the Whitehall I know.

Chapter Two

If the history books were to be believed, Emily recalled, Whitehall Castle predated the Whitehall Commune by at least two hundred years, perhaps longer. No one knew who had built the castle or why, let alone what it had been called before Whitehall arrived, but it was clear that the multidimensional interior had come later. Old Whitehall looked like a darker, grimmer version of King Randor’s castle: stone walls, no windows, empty rooms or sealed doors. The passageways were hauntingly familiar, yet all the details were gone. There was so much dust and grime on the floor that they left trails as they made their way up to the Great Hall. The only source of light was burning torches, which hung from the walls and added an unpleasant stench to the air.
“Stay on the beaten track,” Whitehall called back, without looking around. “We found hundreds of traps scattered throughout the castle. Clearing a path down to the nexus chamber took a week.”
Emily nodded, silently grateful he couldn’t see her face. She would have been fascinated with the castle if she hadn’t been tired and hungry. Her headache was refusing to fade, while her stomach insistently reminded her that she hadn’t eaten for hours. She had to concentrate to keep walking, unwilling to show weakness in front of either of the men. Bernard didn’t seem to like the idea of women learning magic—at least, he didn’t like it now—and Whitehall was a hero. But then, just how much of what she knew about him in the future was false, based on half-remembered stories and outright lies? Professor Locke, for all of his research, had never had a clear idea of just how much his idol had actually done.
He’d love to be here, Emily thought. She’d love it too, if there was a way home. The chance to actually meet the ancients in person ...
Whitehall tossed questions at her as she walked, asking if she knew the name of any of the local kings or warlords—or magicians. Emily was quietly impressed—if she’d been telling the truth, it would have allowed him to deduce how long she’d been trapped in the nexus point—but she pleaded ignorance on all such matters. She was a peasant girl, after all; a peasant girl would not be expected to know the name of the king, not when she would probably never leave her home. Whitehall seemed to understand her ignorance, although it was hard to know what he thought. She could only hope that he’d accept her story without asking too many more questions.
They stepped through a stone archway and into the Great Hall. Emily stopped and stared in disbelief at the scene before her. This—this—was the Whitehall Commune? Dozens of people—men, women and children—sitting on the stone floor, their eyes going wide as they looked up and saw Emily. Their clothes were ragged, their faces were dirty ... it looked like a refugee camp, not the start of a brand new era. She couldn’t help noticing just how many of the people before her were scarred, a handful nursing broken bones or walking on wooden legs. Healing—true Healing—had come later. The thought made her feel sick.
She sucked in a breath and instantly regretted it. The Great Hall smelled worse than the slums she’d seen outside Swanhaven, a year in her past and nearly a thousand years in their future. Too many people in too close proximity, too little washing ... she looked towards a makeshift tent and shuddered, inwardly. Whitehall had been the cleanest place in the Allied Lands, by her reckoning; she was, perhaps, the only student whose living conditions had degenerated after moving to the school. But that, too, was in the future. A handful of children—she thought they were five or six years old—had pockmarked faces, while most of the adults looked almost painfully thin. Disease and deprivation had to be rife.
They’re running, she thought, shocked. And they’re on the brink of starvation.
They stared back at her, their faces torn between hope and fear. The women, in particular, seemed to find it hard to look at her, even though she caught them glancing at her when they thought she wasn’t looking. Several mothers even caught their children and pulled them away from Emily, while a number of young men stared at her as if she was a vision from heaven. It struck her, suddenly, that she was the cleanest person in the room, even though her nightdress had picked up a great deal of dust and grime. And if women weren’t allowed to study magic, the young men might not know how to relate to her at all.

“Wait here,” Whitehall ordered, nodding to a small campsite. Someone had set up a fire for warmth, adding to the smell. Emily hoped they had good ventilation within the castle, although it seemed unlikely. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Emily sat, crossing her legs and wishing—desperately—that whoever had pulled her out of bed and lured her down to the nexus chamber had thought to make her get dressed first. The nightdress was surprisingly decent, compared to some of the garments Imaiqah had worn during her time at Whitehall, but she was still underdressed compared to most of the women in the hall. They wore several layers of clothing apiece, judging by the way their garments bulged in odd places. Were they trying to cover themselves, or were they merely trying to stay warm? It had been cold, down in the nexus chamber. It might well be cold in the upper levels too.
And I don’t even know the time, she thought, grimly. It could be the middle of the night for all I know.
Whitehall had walked over to a handful of men—she recognized four of them from the chamber—and was chatting with them in a low voice, too low for her to hear anything more than a couple of words. She briefly considered trying to cast a spell to make it easier to overhear their conversation, but she knew there was a very good chance she’d get caught trying. The tutors at Whitehall—her Whitehall—wouldn’t be amused if someone tried to spy on them, and she dared not assume that Whitehall was any different. His commune had no reason to trust her.
I did help them tame the nexus point, Emily reminded herself, as Whitehall beckoned a young woman to join the group. Surely they’ll want to keep me around.
She settled back—Bernard had headed off to join a couple of other young men—and studied the Great Hall. It seemed to be no smaller than the hall she remembered from the future, but the walls were nothing more than bare stone, save for a handful of runes carved just below the ceiling. She didn’t recognize them from her studies, but she did recall seeing a couple just like them in the tunnels below Whitehall. The fireplace was gone—no, it hadn’t been built yet. Her head swam as she tried to grapple with the implications. It was hard, so hard, to know just how much she knew about the castle might still be relevant.
A young woman walked towards her, carrying a bowl in one hand and a mug in the other. Emily looked up and frowned as the girl stared at her, her face torn between fear and ... and a kind of awe that she’d seen on peasants, back in Cockatrice. The girl was strikingly pretty—she had soft blonde hair and blue eyes that shone, despite the dirt and grime on her face—yet there was a hardness to her that chilled Emily to the bone. This was a girl who had seen terrible things.
“This is all we have,” the girl said, as she passed the bowl to Emily. “Father”—she nodded towards Whitehall—“bids you eat.”
“Thank you,” Emily said. Her mind reeled. Whitehall had a daughter? There was no mention of any children in the texts, as far as she could recall. But a daughter might go unrecorded. She smiled at the girl, forcing herself to be friendly. “I am called Emily. What are you called?”
“Julianne,” the girl said. She stepped backwards. “I must go.”
Emily watched her go, then turned her attention to the bowl. It contained something that resembled stew, although it didn’t smell very appetizing. But then, some of the meals Sergeant Harkin had concocted hadn’t smelled very appetizing either. He’d insisted that skunks could be eaten, when wandering travelers couldn’t catch and butcher rabbits. And yet, she’d been able to eat his food without stomach cramps afterwards.
She used a spell to test the stew, just to make sure it was safe to eat, then started to eat with her fingers. The food tasted little better than it smelled, as if it had been cooked for so long that all the flavors had merged into sludge, but she was too hungry to care. She wolfed it down with her fingers, then checked the water. Her spell warned her that it was far from pure, so she used a third spell to purify it before taking a long gulp. The food made her feel somewhat refreshed as Whitehall finally separated himself from the other magicians and walked back towards her. She started to rise to her feet, but he motioned her back down. He sat, facing her.
“We don’t know when you entered the castle,” Whitehall said. He sounded tired, as if he’d pushed himself right to the limits of his endurance. “And we have no idea what happened to your family.”
“Neither do I,” Emily said, truthfully.
Whitehall shrugged. “We are grateful for your help,” he added, after a moment. His daughter brought him a mug of water and he sipped it gratefully, without using any magic to cleanse the water. “We would not have survived the day without you.”
Emily nodded. She’d had no time to analyze the spells they’d been using, but it was clear that they’d been on the verge of losing control completely. And once they lost control, they wouldn’t have had a hope of surviving more than a few seconds. There were horror stories about what happened to people who lost control. The surge of wild magic would have killed everyone in the castle.
“Still, we don’t know what to do with you,” Whitehall added. “Some of my ... companions are proposing that you should be sent out of the castle. Others ... think you should join the women.”
That’s gratitude for you, Emily thought, darkly. 
The thought made her scowl. She couldn’t afford to leave the castle, not when the nexus point was probably her only hope of getting home. And yet, it didn’t look as though the women were treated as equals. She was damned if she was allowing herself to be bossed around like a servant. But what could she do? She could hide—probably—but it wouldn’t give her any time to plan a way home.
“I have decided to offer you a provisional apprenticeship, at least for the moment,” Whitehall said, after a moment. “You are clearly a trained magician, despite being a young woman.”
Emily nodded, relieved. Whitehall would be foolish to simply let her go, after she’d saved their lives and beaten his apprentice in a duel. And yet, she didn’t want to swear any oaths to him, certainly not ones that would oblige her to tell him the truth. She didn’t dare tell him that she was from the future. It would change history and quite probably erase her from existence.
“I can do that,” she said. “But I can’t offer you any oaths.”
Whitehall eyed her, narrowly. “Your tutor is dead.”
Emily cursed under her breath. Telling them that her tutor was dead had been a mistake, clearly. She could have claimed she had no idea what had happened to him and escaped the need for swearing oaths. It wasn’t as if she could be oathsworn to two different masters.
“Some of his family may still be alive,” she said, reluctantly. “I must keep their secrets as long as I suspect the oath binds me.”
“True, I suppose,” Whitehall said. He didn’t sound pleased. She rather suspected he’d been intending to grill her extensively. “You do understand that refusing to swear an oath means I won’t be teaching you some of my private spells?”
Professor Locke would give his right arm to see them, Emily thought. She was starting to think the Whitehall Commune was nowhere near as powerful as the legends insisted. The magicians were clearly powerful, but their magic was slopping everywhere and they hadn’t shown any of the subtle spells she used on a daily basis. But would they be worth the risk of damaging the timeline?
“I understand,” she said. “But I am already a trained magician.”
Whitehall nodded, curtly. “You’ll be learning alongside Bernard, for the moment,” he told her. “Treat your fellow apprentices with respect—and if you can’t do that, try not to kill each other.”
Emily had to smile. Some things never changed, it seemed. Magicians would always be competing, always testing their powers and skills against their fellows. It would be different too, she suspected, when there was one master to one apprentice. The masters would be pleased to see their apprentices win fights, even though they were supposed to remain above the fray. But judging from some of the arguments she could see on the other side of the hall, they weren’t that far above the fray.
They’re only teaching one student at a time, she reminded herself. They have far more emotional investment in their apprentices than any of the tutors from Whitehall.
“I can try,” she said, dryly.
She wondered, briefly, what Bernard De Born would think of Whitehall taking on a second apprentice. She’d already beaten him in a duel. Would he accept her presence or would he resent her? And what would Whitehall do if they started fighting?
“It won’t be easy,” Whitehall warned. “Apprenticeships are never easy.”
“I know,” Emily said.
Whitehall gave her a sidelong look. “Why did your tutor choose to teach you?”
Emily frowned to herself. Was Whitehall always going to be prying? But then, it was hard to blame him for being curious. Emily had shown him two impossible spells in less than an hour, assuming she was right about prank transfigurations coming later. He had to be wondering just who had taught her and why he hadn’t heard of him. And, perhaps, just what other secrets might be locked up in Emily’s head.
“I believe I was a good choice,” she said, tartly.
It was hard to keep her voice under control, but she had no choice. She didn’t want to tell too many lies or she’d have problems keeping them all straight. Whitehall might not be as capable as Void or Lady Barb, but he was far from stupid. If he caught her in a lie, he’d start hacking the rest of her story apart. And who knew what would happen then?
She hesitated, then asked the question that had been bothering her from the moment she’d entered the Great Hall. “Who are you running from?”
Whitehall tensed. “You don’t know?”
“No,” Emily said. She kept her face under tight control. Was it common knowledge, something she should have learned when she was studying magic? Her ignorance would be suspicious, but what else could she do? “What drove you to the castle?”
His eyes studied her face for a long moment. Emily forced herself to look back, even though she was afraid that he might be able to tell she wasn’t being entirely honest. No magician in her era would want to mess with a sworn oath, but that might not hold true for Whitehall and his commune. They might not understand Soul Magic—the power that binds oaths—any more than they understood Healing.
“We were attacked,” Whitehall said. “We were being hunted.”
Emily leaned forward, alarmed. “By who?” 
Or what, her mind added.
“We don’t know,” Whitehall said. “But they seem to hunt magicians.”
He rose, slowly. “Bernard will take care of you, for the moment,” he added. Emily had the feeling he was going back to consult with his fellow masters. “And then I think you had better bed down with Julianne.”
“I need some sleep,” Emily agreed. She also needed more food, but she suspected the commune simply didn’t have any to spare. It wasn’t as if they could walk down to Dragon’s Den to purchase food. The town had only been founded three hundred years—give or take a few decades—prior to her arrival. “Which tent is hers?”
“We cleared a room for her,” Whitehall said. He made an odd gesture with his hand, casting a spell. “I’ll have her take care of you instead, if you don’t mind. You can talk to Bernard tomorrow.”
Emily nodded, relieved. Bernard might seem to be the typical cocky teenager, but she’d read his writings, his future writings. He’d been no fool. And she was too tired to engage in pointless verbal duels. Besides, she’d probably shocked him quite badly. A good night’s sleep would do them both a great deal of good.
Julianne walked over to her father, looking as tired as Emily felt. She gave Emily a sharp glance as Whitehall explained what he wanted her to do, then beckoned for Emily to follow her towards the nearest door. The corridor outside was dark, illuminated only by a single burning torch. Emily resisted the urge to cast a light globe as Julianne led the way down to a line of doors and opened one, revealing a tiny bedroom. A handful of blankets lay on the floor.
“This is my room,” Julianne said. There was an odd note in her voice—resentment? “I’ve only got a couple of blankets.”
“I don’t mind,” Emily said. She’d slept in worse places on camping trips. And there were spells she could use to keep warm, if necessary. “Thank you for sharing.”
“Father insisted,” Julianne said, wryly.
She nodded towards a bucket at the far end of the room. “Make sure you don’t tip it over,” she added. “You’ll have to help me scrub the floor if you do.”
Emily shuddered. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
“I will,” she said. She took one of the blankets and lay down. “And thanks again.”

Chapter Three

She couldn’t sleep.
Her body felt tired, her mind felt tired, but she just couldn’t fall asleep. The floor was hard, despite the blanket; no matter how she tossed and turned, she just couldn’t get comfortable enough to relax. And she was too tired to cast any spells that might have made the makeshift bedding more comfortable. She could hear Julianne snoring quietly, sleeping peacefully, yet Emily couldn’t follow her into dreams. The constant sense of being out of place, of being in danger, nagged at her mind.
She sat upright, cursing her body as she rose. It had taken her time to get used to sharing a room at Whitehall, but it shouldn’t be a problem any longer. She’d had no trouble sharing her bedroom with Cabiria. And yet ... now, she just couldn’t sleep. Her mind was too active to let her rest. She tested the privacy ward she’d cast on the door—Julianne hadn’t noticed, somewhat to Emily’s surprise—and then stepped through the door, out into the corridor. It was as dark and cold as the grave. Someone should be on watch, she thought, down in the Great Hall, but she could hear nothing. She closed the door behind her and cast a night-vision spell, then started to walk up the corridor towards the stairs. They, at least, seemed to be where they should be.
No one blocked her way as she reached the stairwell and headed upwards, reaching out with her senses for traps. Whitehall had warned her, after all, but she sensed nothing until she reached the fifth floor. A nasty little hex lay on the stairwell, ready to blast anyone stupid enough to step on it. It looked odd, compared to some of the hexes Sergeant Miles had taught her; she honestly wasn’t sure just how it had endured for so long. It didn’t seem to be connected to the nexus point.
And power doesn’t run through these wards, she thought, as she dismantled the hex and walked further upwards. Two more hexes barred her way, but she took them apart just as easily. These hexes couldn’t have been set that long ago.
She reached the top of the stairs and stepped out onto the battlements. Her eyes widened as she saw the night sky, the stars twinkling down in all their glory. There was nothing beyond the battlements, save an utterly unbroken darkness. The wind blew hot and cold, blasts of icy air alternating with gusts of warmth that left sweat trickling down her back. She was used to the weather surrounding Whitehall being somewhat unpredictable, but this was odd. There was magic in the air, she realized slowly, that was far stronger than anything she’d sensed back in her day.
Bracing herself, she inched up to the low barrier and stared out into the darkness again, trying to see something—anything—that would remind her of the world she’d left behind. But she saw only darkness. The lights that would have marked Dragon’s Den were gone; the lights that marked the edge of the wards surrounding the castle hadn’t been created yet. It struck her as she turned to peer east that she was actually back in the era before the necromancers, before the southern continent was overrun and turned to ash. The Blighted Lands had yet to exist.
And the reality of where she was crashed down like a physical blow.
This is not good, she thought, numbly.
She sat down on the hard stone and forced herself to think. She’d fallen back in time—and she had no way back to the future. Or did she? If she’d crafted a pocket dimension that had allowed her to skip forward a day, she could create one that would last for much longer ... couldn’t she? And yet, she wasn’t remotely sure just how long she’d need to hide in the pocket dimension before emerging back into her world. Professor Locke had made it clear, more than once, that even the dating system was imprecise. She had no way to be sure how much time had passed between Whitehall and Grandmaster Hasdrubal, let alone timing her emergence to make sure she didn’t clash with her past self. And if she went too far into the future, she wouldn’t have a hope of getting back.
No, she told herself. This is definitely not good.
She frowned, considering her options. Perhaps she should simply leave the castle and step outside recorded history. It was the safest way to ensure she didn’t fiddle with the historical record—unless, of course, she was meant to be there. She’d seen nothing to disprove her theory that she was the Dark Lady. And if she did leave, what would that do to history? She was living proof that different worlds and alternate universes actually existed, but if time changed around her ... what would happen? Would there be two timelines, or would she simply blink out of existence? Or would she set off a series of catastrophic changes in history?
A flash of light, in the distance, caught her eye. She was on her feet before her mind had quite registered what she was doing, peering into the darkness in desperate hope of seeing something—anything. A flicker of lightning danced in the air for a long moment, followed by faint glimmering lights near the ground. It looked almost like a forest fire, save for the eerie—almost translucent—lighting. Wild magic hummed on the air as she looked closer, then pulled back before she could accidentally tumble over the battlements and fall to her death. There was more magic in the past, she realized dully, than she’d ever seen in the future.
Rain started to fall seconds later, drenching her. She cast a spell to shield herself from the downpour, then cast a second one to dry her clothes. The magic felt normal, as far as she could tell, but there was a faint resonance in the mana that bothered her. And yet, the spells had worked perfectly. She turned to watch as the rain fell harder and harder, water washing over the battlements and draining over the edge; she hoped—prayed—that someone had had the sense to set out barrels to collect the falling water. But would it be safe to drink?
She cursed inwardly as her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anywhere near enough. But there was nothing she could do about it ... she shook her head, irritated, at just how spoiled she’d become in five years. There had been days on Earth when she’d eaten so little that she’d had trouble concentrating on anything, yet she’d managed to keep going until she’d finally had a bite to eat. But three regular—and large—meals a day at Whitehall had clearly ruined her endurance. Hell, thanks to the sergeants, she could even live off the land, if necessary. She disliked cutting up rabbits or fish, but she could endure it if there was no other choice.
But I have to stay here until I find a way home, she told herself, firmly. If nothing else, I’ll need the nexus point to power my spells.
She wished, bitterly, that Lady Barb had fallen through time with her. Or Sergeant Miles. Or even Master Tor. Someone—just someone—who would have understood what she was going through, someone whose understanding of modern magic was far in advance of her own. She thought she could construct a pocket dimension, with or without the nexus point, but keeping it going for nearly a thousand years would be beyond even her magical reserves. And yet, the spellware that had controlled the nexus point in her time didn’t exist yet. She’d have to wait until it did before using it to get home.
The downpour stopped, as suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch. She looked up as the skies cleared rapidly, revealing the stars once again. Sergeant Miles had tried to teach his class how to read them, to use them to navigate, but Emily had never mastered the skill. And yet, even if she had, she doubted the skies changed that much in a mere thousand years. She couldn’t even begin to use them to deduce how much time had passed between Lord Whitehall and her arrival on the Nameless World. It should be possible, in theory, but she didn’t even know where to begin. Maybe some of the people sleeping below her knew, yet she didn’t dare ask. It would be far too revealing. 
They wouldn’t know what the skies looked like in the future, she told herself, as she peered back into the darkness. And I couldn’t tell them that either.
She shivered, cursing the nightgown under her breath. It was heavy, but hardly warm enough to serve as an overcoat. Julianne had promised to find her something to wear, in the morning, yet Emily doubted the commune had much to spare. Was someone going to be walking around naked because of her? She could transfigure her nightgown into something more useful, she knew, but it wouldn’t last forever. A single cancelling spell, cast at the wrong time, would put her right back in the nightgown. She shook her head, dismissing the thought, then resumed her silent vigil. The darkness almost seemed to welcome her.
A chill ran down her back. The strange glimmering lights were still there, flickering out in the darkness. She couldn’t escape the feeling that something out there was looking back at her. Whitehall—this Whitehall—was no longer safe, had perhaps never been safe. Who’d laid the traps? Who’d been so determined to build a castle around a nexus point and then abandon it? All the records agreed that the castle had been empty when the Whitehall Commune arrived ...
Maybe they were experimenting with the nexus point, Emily thought, as she forced herself to turn away from the darkness. And something went wrong, killing them.
She yawned, tiredly. Gritting her teeth, she walked back through the door and down the stairwell. It was harder to know just how far down she had to go now, she discovered; there was no way she could use the wards for directions. Her footsteps were barely visible in the dirt and grime ... she shook her head as she reached what she thought was the right floor and padded towards her bedroom. And then she stopped as she heard voices ahead of her, a faint mumbling that drew her onwards. She resisted the urge to use magic to spy on the speakers, even though she had a feeling it would be safe enough. Instead, she slipped closer and listened.
“... Not natural,” a voice was saying. “She shouldn’t have survived for a second in the nexus.”
“People have been killed or transformed by wild magic,” a second voice said. “Why can’t they be trapped in a nexus?”
“She’s a magician,” the first voice said. “The wild magic should have killed her outright.”
“Maybe she’s a fake,” the second voice said. “How many women do you know who can cast spells?”
Emily felt her cheeks heat. They were talking about her!
The first voice sounded amused. “You were there when she saved us all,” he said. “She is very definitely a magician.”
“Then she’s cursed,” the second voice insisted. “You know it to be true.”
Emily blinked. Cursed?
“She’s dangerous,” the second voice continued. “If she could beat Bernard in a duel ...”
“Whitehall has chosen to take her as an apprentice,” the first voice pointed out.
“An unwise choice,” the second voice snapped.
“She’s a magician,” the first voice reminded him. “Do you want her walking around with incomplete training?”
He spoke on before the second speaker could interrupt. “If she’s cursed ... well, it’s not our problem,” he added. “She’s already gone too far to step back to safety. It isn’t as if she was ever our responsibility.”
“Whoever taught her was derelict in his duty,” the second voice snapped. “Do you think her story makes sense?”
“Her tutor is dead, if she is to be believed,” the first voice said. “And if you have a problem with her joining the commune, take it up with Whitehall.”
Emily heard the man striding along the corridor and pushed herself into an alcove, calling on magic to hide her presence. Sergeant Miles would probably not have been fooled, certainly not if he was looking for her, but the first speaker strode past her and into the distance without looking back. She stared after him, then peered back down towards the Great Hall, feeling oddly conflicted. Cursed? She wasn’t cursed. What did they mean?
I need answers, she thought. Her thoughts churned as she slipped back down the corridor and into the bedroom. And I don’t even know who to ask.
She glanced at Julianne—still sleeping peacefully on the stone floor—and then settled down herself, closing her eyes as she tried to concentrate on her meditation. Maybe, just maybe, she could go to sleep now. And yet, sleep was elusive ... her mind just kept going back to the conversation she’d overheard, wondering just what they’d meant. A curse on female magicians? She’d never heard of such a thing ... or had she? There had been that vague note from one of Professor Locke’s books, suggesting that female magicians had trouble bearing children. But she could name a dozen magicians she knew who had had children. 
Whitehall won’t believe how ignorant I am, if I start asking questions, she thought. She’d been given a great deal of slack when she’d first come to Whitehall because she wasn’t even from the same world, but she’d already told Whitehall that she’d had a tutor. And yet, if I don’t know the basics, I will keep making mistakes.
She sighed. It was clear that not everyone had believed her story. She really shouldn’t have been surprised. But it had been the best story she could make up on short notice ... if she’d known she was going to fall back in time, she’d have taken the time to do her research and compose an airtight cover. And yet, given how inaccurate the history records seemed to be, it was unlikely she could have come up with something perfect. Maybe, just maybe, she’d come up with something that would suffice. Maybe ...

There was a flicker of magic. Emily jerked awake, shocked. She’d fallen asleep ... when had she fallen asleep? Julianne knelt beside her, unable to move. Emily stared at her, blearily. It took her several seconds to realize that Julianne had tried to wake her, only to trigger one of her protective spells and wind up frozen. Surely, that spell had been invented before Whitehall ...?
“I’m sorry,” Emily said, sitting upright. The spell was normally an easy one to cancel, but she took a moment to catch her breath before casting the counterspell. Julianne unfroze and toppled forward; Emily caught her before she could hit the ground. “That’s just one of my protections.”
“It must be a very useful protection,” Julianne said. She sounded annoyed—and bitter—as she pulled free of Emily and stood. “I wish I could do that.”
Emily frowned. “Your father hasn’t taught you?”
“Girls are forbidden to learn magic,” Julianne said, flatly. “Those who do are cursed.”
“Cursed,” Emily repeated. “In what way?”
Julianne shook her head. “There’s a set of trousers and a shirt for you,” she said, tossing Emily a bundle of clothes. “They should fit, but if they don’t I’ll make the alterations now, before we go to breakfast.”
Emily frowned as she unwrapped the bundle. Julianne wore a long dress that wouldn’t have been out of place on a peasant farm in Zangaria, but Emily had been given male clothes. She had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with her status as an apprentice, yet she didn’t want to ask when Julianne was clearly out of sorts. Did she want to learn magic? If she had the talent—and she should have the talent—she shouldn’t have any trouble learning ...
I could teach her, Emily thought. But what would her father make of that?
There were no underclothes, she discovered, as she undressed and started to don the new outfit. The clothes were clean, but itchy against her bare skin; the shirt was loose, while the trousers felt uncomfortably tight. Emily couldn’t help thinking that the outfit had been designed to show off male muscles, just like some of the more absurd fashions she’d seen at King Randor’s Court. Julianne looked disapproving, then motioned for Emily to step back out of the trousers and let her fiddle with them. Moments later, the trousers were much looser around her thighs.
“You look relatively decent,” Julianne said, finally. “But you really should cut your hair.”
Emily gave her a sharp look. “Why?”
“You never know what might try to grab hold,” Julianne said, evasively. Emily couldn’t help noting that her hair was long too. “I can cut it for you now, if you like.”
“No, thank you,” Emily said. She hadn’t cut her hair for nearly a year. It was her one true vanity. Besides, Caleb liked playing with her hair. “I like it the way it is.”
“As you wish,” Julianne said.
Emily sighed, inwardly. There was so much she didn’t understand, so much she didn’t know ... so much she didn’t dare ask about, when it would reveal just how much she didn’t know. If only someone else had fallen through the nexus and into the past with her!
There was a sharp knock at the door. “Company,” Julianne said. “Are you ready?”
Emily glanced down at herself. She looked odd, she thought, in clothes that had definitely been designed for a man, but Julianne was right. She was decent.
“Yeah,” she said. “Shall we go?”
Chapter Four

“Lady Emily,” Bernard said, as Julianne opened the door. “My Master—our Master—bade me escort you down to breakfast.”
Emily nodded, slowly. Bernard didn’t look as though he bore a grudge, she decided; indeed, there was something about him, now she’d had a good night’s sleep, that reminded her of Caleb or Jade. His face had been washed clean—she hoped she could find a place to wash after breakfast—although it remained pockmarked. Either he couldn’t remove the marks, or he just didn’t care enough to try.
Another boy stood behind him, gazing at Emily. His face was scrubbed clean and very pale; his short dark hair was cropped close to his skull. Emily could sense his magic jumping around him, flickering and flaring in a manner she found rather alarming. The last person she’d sensed with such chaotic magic had been in the Halfway House. He wore a brown shirt and a pair of trousers exactly like the ones Julianne had given to Emily, although there was an odd rune sewn into the garment just below his right shoulder. She didn’t recognize the rune at all.
“This is Robin De Bold,” Bernard said, introducing the stranger. “Apprentice to Lord and Master Chambers.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Emily said. She didn’t recall a Robin De Bold from any of the books she’d read, although that proved nothing. Master Chambers had only been mentioned once or twice. “I think I saw you in the nexus chamber.”
“You did,” Robin said. He had an odd voice. He spoke as though he was trying for dignity, but his voice wasn’t deep enough to pull it off. “I thank you for saving my life.”
“All of our lives,” Bernard corrected. He glanced at Robin. “Perhaps you could escort Lady Emily down the corridor ...?”
“Of course,” Robin said. He smirked. “Remember to leave the door open.”
Bernard wants to be alone with Julianne, Emily realized, as Robin led her through the door and a short distance down the corridor. He likes her.
She shook her head at the thought—people never changed, no matter the time or place they were born—and then leaned against the wall, waiting. Julianne was unlikely to be in any real danger, certainly not from her father’s apprentice. Bernard didn’t have anything like enough power to challenge his master, unless he was far better at masking it than she assumed. She found it hard to believe that Whitehall would allow his apprentice to molest his daughter—and besides, she didn’t get those sorts of vibes from Bernard. He might be a jerk—he’d certainly acted like a jerk—but he didn’t seem the sort to be a rapist.
Her stomach growled, unpleasantly, as they waited. She didn’t know what to say and Robin seemed content to keep his mouth closed, although he looked at her with undisguised curiosity. There was something about him that bothered her, something that put her hackles up, something that was oddly familiar. And yet it was impossible to put her finger on it.
“Thank you,” Bernard said. He strode down the corridor, Julianne following a pace or two behind. “Shall we go eat?”
Emily glanced at Julianne—she looked red, but otherwise unharmed—and then allowed the two boys to lead the way down to the Great Hall. Sunlight was streaming in from the far wall, something that caught her by surprise—the wall she knew, from her time, was solid, impossible to move. A number of young men—she put them between thirteen and twenty—were sitting on a rug, eating bread and butter. Bernard glanced back at her, then walked over to a smaller rug, waving to a pair of young women. Julianne threw Emily an unreadable look and then strode away. Bernard didn’t seem inclined to call her back.
“We don’t have much to eat,” Bernard said, as he sat down on the rug and motioned for Emily to sit facing him. “But you are welcome to join us.”
“Thank you,” Emily said, as she sat and looked around. Save for herself, the only women in the hall seemed to be servants. “You don’t want to join the others?”
“They’re not linked to a proper master,” Robin said. “They cannot share our food.”
Emily frowned as a serving girl brought bread, honey and a jug of water, which she placed in front of them. “They’re not apprentices?”
“They’re apprentices,” Bernard explained. “But they don’t have a master.”
Emily’s confusion must have shown on her face, because he hastened to explain. “There was an attack on another commune, near where we were staying. Their masters were killed, but the apprentices fled to us. Lord and Master Whitehall took them in, even though teaching them more than the basics is impossible.”
“This is the largest commune in the world,” Robin added, with obvious pride.
“It is,” Bernard agreed.
Emily took a piece of bread, spread some honey on it and ate slowly, savoring the taste. It was clear that someone had found the kitchens and started to bake fresh bread for breakfast—and, perhaps, located a beehive too. Or maybe they’d just carried it with them as they’d made their way to the castle. It wasn’t the breakfast she was used to, in the future, but it would have to do.
“And so you came here,” she said. “Why did you come here?”
“My master, Lord and Master Chambers, is one of the greatest DemonMasters of all time,” Robin said. “It was his idea to consult a demon to find a safe place for the commune.”
“It was Lord Alfred who actually summoned the demon,” Bernard countered, rudely. “He ...”
Emily barely heard him. A demon ... she was back in the time of the DemonMasters! Her blood ran cold as she considered the implications. Meddling with demons was considered part of the Black Arts, in the future; but she’d seen demons. They lived outside the normal framework of time and space, free from the petty concerns of cause and effect ... a single demon could break her cover easily, if anyone thought to ask.
And if one of them urged the commune to head to the castle, she thought numbly, there’s probably a sting in the tail somewhere.
“Emily,” Bernard said. “Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.”
Emily gathered herself. “My tutor forbade me from summoning demons,” she said. It was true enough. Aurelius had warned her never to take the risk unless she was desperate. At best, demons were always jerkass genies, taking advantage of each and every loophole to screw around with the fools who summoned them. “I’ve never dared use them.”
“Mine won’t allow me to use them either,” Bernard said, regretfully.
Robin smirked. “I have seven demons under my command,” he said. “Master Chambers allows me to use them for anything I wish.”
Bernard sighed.
“You should summon one secretly,” Robin urged. “I could show you how.”
Emily stared at him, shocked. His magic had felt oddly familiar ... was it because he had used a demon? And then she saw the little creature sitting on his shoulder. It looked humanoid, but it was barely larger than a finger ... and, the more she stared at it, the more she sensed a limitless malice hidden within the tiny form. The demon stared back at her, its eyes cold and sharp and very cruel. She had no doubt it would tear them apart if Robin ever lost control.
“You shouldn’t,” she said, unable to tear her eyes from the demon. “It would be very dangerous.”
“Life is dangerous,” Bernard said. He sounded tempted. “And demons could teach me so much.”
“You could never trust them,” Emily said. “Ever.”
Robin sorted. “And yet a demon led us to you.”
“I know,” Emily said. She forced herself to look away from the demon. “And what did it have in mind when it did?”
She changed the subject quickly, before Robin could talk Bernard into doing something incredibly stupid. “How many people are in the commune?”
Bernard looked relieved to be able to talk about something else. “There are seven masters and fifty apprentices,” he said. “I think ...”
“Seven of us are real apprentices,” Robin injected. “The remainder are just ... hangers-on.”
“They have some skills,” Bernard countered. Emily had the feeling that it was an old argument between the two of them. “And they can learn more.”
He cleared his throat. “There’re also two hundred others; workers and camp followers ...”
“And whores,” Robin added.
“And a number of children,” Bernard said, ignoring the interruption. “This is very much the largest commune in the world.”
“And also the biggest target,” Robin pointed out. “If something is hunting magicians, Bernard, this commune makes a pretty big target.”
Emily frowned, wondering just how far she dared probe. Magicians were being hunted? By what? And why couldn’t they defend themselves? Whitehall was a solidly powerful magician and she assumed the others masters were almost as good. But if they were on the run ... she recalled the refugee camp-like atmosphere and shuddered. The castle might be their last hope of survival against a powerful and deadly foe.
It could be the Faerie, she thought. If the history books were accurate, she could have arrived just before the First Faerie War. Or mundanes hunting dangerous magicians ...
She leaned back and listened as the two young men bickered. They seemed to be close friends, yet there were discordant flickers in their words that bothered her. Bernard seemed to envy Robin, while Robin seemed too conceited to care. Their magic flickered around them, pushing at their emotions ... they didn’t seem to know how to mask their powers, even if they cared enough to do it. The more she looked at it, the more it bothered her.
Bernard turned to look at her as she finished the last piece of bread. “Why were you trained?”
“My tutor believed I would be a good student,” Emily said, stiffly. “Why were you trained?”
“Touché,” Bernard said. “But still ... it’s unusual for girls to be trained.”
“I might just have noticed,” Emily said, dryly.
Robin laughed. “You’ve certainly done your tutor proud.”
“Thank you,” Emily said.
She allowed herself a moment of relief as a middle-aged man carrying a staff strode towards them. Bernard and Robin hastily stood and bowed; Emily followed suit, unsure if it was the right thing to do or not. The man gave her a long considering look, then turned his gaze on Robin.
“I want you to assist in clearing the upper levels today,” he stated. Emily had to fight to keep her expression under control as she recognized the voice. He was the speaker who’d doubted her, even after she’d saved them all. “I have too much else to do to teach you. Drake will show you what to do.”
Robin bowed his head. “Yes, Master.”
Master Chambers, Emily thought. Up close, his magic was discordant, wilder than Whitehall’s. She thought she could sense the lurking presence of a demon as he peered back at her, although she couldn’t see anything. A DemonMaster ...
She studied him, grimly aware of his eyes scrutinizing every inch of her. Master Chambers was tall and muscular, his brown hair cropped close to his skull. That, at least, explained why Julianne had wanted Emily to cut her hair. Demons had a nasty habit of grabbing hold of exposed hair and tugging, hard. Sometimes, she’d been warned, they yanked hard enough to pull the magician across the circle and into their hands. And no one, not even a Lone Power, could hope to escape. 
And he didn’t like her. She could see the distrust in his eyes as he gazed back at her.
Of course he doesn’t trust me, she thought, as Master Chambers finally looked away. He knows nothing about me.
“Bernard, your master will meet you outside in forty minutes,” he added. “Take ... Lady Emily ... with you.”
“Of course, My Lord,” Bernard said.
Master Chambers gave Emily one final look, then turned and strode away. Robin nodded politely to them both, then hurried off towards the nearest door. Emily felt an odd stab of sympathy. Having Master Chambers for a tutor, she rather suspected, wouldn’t be a comfortable experience. But then, anything involving demons was incredibly dangerous.
“Demons,” she said. “Is he really the most powerful of the DemonMasters?”
“He claims to have thirty-one demons in his thrall, bound to his power,” Bernard said. “I have no reason to doubt his claim.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Emily said. From what she’d been told, holding even one demon in thrall was hard enough. “Thirty-one?”
“He couldn’t fool my master,” Bernard said. There was a hint of obvious pride in his voice as Julianne reappeared and started to collect the plates, jug and honey pot. “Julianne’s father is not so easily fooled. He never lets me get away with anything.”
Emily concealed her relief with an effort. Bernard might try to summon a demon, if Robin gave him the instructions, but Lord Whitehall would never let him get away with it. The stink of demonic malice would give him away, long before he could come up with a plausible lie ... if, of course, there was such a thing. Could anyone hope to conceal a demon? Shadye had concealed a demon within a ring, she recalled, but he’d had the demon’s cooperation. She doubted that any demon would see value in assisting Bernard to stay out of trouble ...
And if he does get caught, he’ll be in deep trouble, she thought. Whitehall, if the stories are true, never liked demons.
She watched Julianne leave—and watched Bernard, watching Julianne leave. He was smitten; the tenderness on his face made him look very different. She wondered, absently, just what Julianne thought about him. Maybe she should ask. She’d always found it hard to talk about such matters, but ...
“Forty minutes,” Bernard said. “What do you want to do until then?”
“Get clean,” Emily said. “Is there a place I can wash up?”
Bernard looked awkward. “I’ll have to ask Julianne,” he said. “She’s the person to ask if you want anything like that. We just had a basin of warm water.”
“That would be enough,” Emily said.
She frowned as she spotted one of the other masters entering the hall. “I meant to ask,” she said, remembering how they’d bowed to Master Chambers. “How does one address a master?”
Bernard considered it for a moment. “You were never taught etiquette?”
“Not enough,” Emily said. It was likely to have changed and evolved before she’d arrived at Whitehall. Besides, if nothing else, talking about etiquette would keep Bernard from asking more awkward questions. “I don’t know how to introduce myself, let alone ask for help without getting into trouble.”
“I imagine your tutor didn’t plan to introduce you,” Bernard said.
He paused, stroking his chin. “You address your master as Master or My Master,” he said, after a moment. “In conversation, you would call him Master Whitehall. All other masters are addressed as Lord or My Lord, unless you were friends before he reached his mastery. In that case, you can address him by name. Apprentices can be addressed by name, unless you have a reason to give their rank—in which case, you would address them as Apprentice Whatever.”
Emily nodded. “Why is Whitehall ...”
Bernard pointed a finger at her. “Master Whitehall.”
“Why is Master Whitehall called Lord and Master Whitehall?”
“He combines both titles,” Bernard said. “Address him as Master unless you’re being strictly formal or begging for mercy.”
He shrugged. “If a master approaches you first, make sure you rise and bow to him,” he added. “If you approach him, go down on your knees and wait for him to acknowledge you before rising. Should he offer something to you, take it with your casting hand. Do not offer your other hand, whatever happens, unless you need both hands ...”
Emily held up a hand. “My casting hand?”
“The hand you use to cast spells,” Bernard explained. His eyes narrowed. “How do you not know that?”
“I was taught to use both hands,” Emily said. She was right-handed, but her tutors had insisted on their students using alternating hands when they cast spells. Only a couple of students in first year had been unable to use both hands—and the problem had cleared up, she recalled, with practice. “Aren’t you?”
“That’s odd,” Bernard said. “I was always taught to use my right hand.”
He frowned. “I suggest you hold out both hands, then,” he added. “But be careful.”
Emily swallowed. Whitehall—her Whitehall—had been very different from Earth. But this Whitehall was familiar enough to be disconcerting. Something that would have passed unremarked in her Whitehall might start a fight here, hundreds of years in the past. She’d have to watch herself, but she wasn’t sure how.
“I will,” she said.
Bernard rose. “I’ll find you a place to wash,” he said. “And then my master will ...”
He paused, then bowed hastily as an older man hurried over to them. Emily bowed too, realizing that she was looking at yet another master. He looked to be in his nineties, although that proved nothing; he might well be no older than forty. She couldn’t help thinking of Albert Einstein as the man studied her. He had the same impression of being nothing more than a kindly old grandfather.
“Lady Emily,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
Bernard cleared his throat. “Lord Wolfe, Master Whitehall wishes to talk to her in thirty minutes,” he warned. “I ...”
“I will have her there for him,” Lord Wolfe said.
“Don’t worry,” Emily said. “I’ll be fine.”
Bernard nodded. “I’ll inform my master,” he said. “He may want to give you more time with Lord Wolfe.”
“That would be good,” Lord Wolfe said. He grinned at Emily. “This way, please.”

Chapter Five

The camp followers had done a remarkable job at cleaning the dirt and grime from the floor, Emily decided as she followed Lord Wolfe through a maze of disconcertingly familiar corridors. It might not be anything like as clean as King Randor’s castle—at least, not yet—but the future school was starting to look livable. Small groups of workers swept the corridors, while apprentices—some throwing doubtful glances at her as she passed—prowled the corridors, searching for more traps.
Probably keeping them busy, she thought, as they walked into a small room. They will have cleared or triggered all the traps in this section, surely?
“I have no idea what this room was, once upon a time,” Wolfe said. He closed the door behind them, but made no move to cast a privacy ward. Was that technique still to be discovered too? “But it will suffice as an office, for the moment.”
Emily nodded. Someone had set up a rickety-looking wooden table and a single chair that seemed to be on its last legs, but otherwise the room was bare. The only source of light was a torch, burning merrily against the stone wall. It made her realize, again, just how lucky she’d been to live in a world where electric power was cheap and simple. Castles without magic were dark and gloomy places.
Wolfe motioned with his hands towards the table, which was covered in ancient books and pieces of parchment. One of the rolls of parchment was unrolled, with the four corners held in place by small stones. Emily took a look at the writing; her eyes widened as she realized she was looking at spell notations. Very primitive, compared to what she was used to, but clearly a step in the right direction. She took a step forward, wondering if Wolfe would seek to bar her from studying the parchment, yet he made no move to stop her. His eyes merely watched as she bent over the table, slowly tracing out the notations.
“You’ve seen something like it,” Wolfe said. It wasn’t a question. “What do you make of this?”
Emily hesitated, unsure how much she could say. It was hard to be certain—there were plenty of differences between the spell notation in front of her and the techniques she’d been taught by Professor Lombardi—but it looked as though Master Wolfe had been trying to unlock the secret of tapping a nexus point. She couldn’t think of any other explanation. The spells he’d detailed required a power source an order of magnitude more powerful than any living sorcerer.
“You’re trying to tap the nexus point,” she said, carefully. There was no point in pretending to be an idiot. She’d shown too much command of magic. “How long have you known the point was here?”
“There were stories of nexus points,” Master Wolfe said, vaguely. “I’ve always wondered what one could do with a great deal of power.”
“Anything,” Emily said.
She studied the diagrams for a long moment, slowly working her way through them. They were flawed—she could see a number of serious problems that Wolfe would have to overcome—but she could recognize the bare bones of what would eventually become the control room. The control room they’d discovered under Whitehall. It had a long way to go ...
Perhaps too long, she thought. Master Wolfe had done a good job, but his proposed network of spells was far too inflexible to control a nexus point. And yet, the nexus point was tapped in this time.
“Your tutor clearly had some idea of what to do,” Master Wolfe said. He picked up a roll of parchment and unfurled it. “The spells you used to tap the nexus point worked.”
“Imperfectly,” Emily said, as she studied the parchment. Master Wolfe was clearly brilliant, perhaps the smartest man she’d ever met. He’d not only copied the work she’d done, with assistance from the commune, but used it as a starting point to devise his own spellwork to control the nexus point. “It nearly killed me.”
“But it worked, once you had help,” Master Wolfe said. “Your tutor must have been truly brilliant. Master Stark? Master Joffre? I know that both of them chose to withdraw from society to carry out their own research, rather than taking more apprentices. One of them could have taught you.”
Emily shook her head, wordlessly. It was tempting to claim she’d studied under one or both of them, but Master Wolfe had known the two men he’d mentioned. He’d catch her in a lie and then she’d be in real trouble. She considered, briefly, telling him the truth, yet she knew she didn’t dare take the risk. It would blow a hole in established history. And yet ...
She looked back at the parchment. Master Wolfe had done a remarkable job, but he still had a very long way to go before he could hope to tap the nexus point properly. It was unlikely that he would make the breakthrough he needed tomorrow. The more she looked at his work, the clearer it became that he’d crafted a brute-force solution to the problem, rather than something capable of adapting and evolving to changing circumstances. There was no Warden—and there wouldn’t be, if he didn’t alter his approach.
And if this is a stable time loop, she thought, I need to help him.
She leaned on the table, thinking hard. If time couldn’t be changed, then she was meant to be here -- meant to be in the past. And if that was true, perhaps she was meant to be helping Lord Whitehall and Master Wolfe establish the school. It was what the Dark Lady had done, if the remaining stories were to be believed. And no other candidate for the role had shown up, as far as she knew. None of the other women in the castle knew magic.
The possibilities opened up before her. If she was meant to help Master Wolfe, she’d have a chance to use the nexus point to get back home. And watching—and helping—as the original spellwork slipped into place would show her how to do it for herself, later. She’d be able to answer all of Professor Locke’s questions, even if it didn’t look as though there were any real secrets of the ancients. Only demons ... and the start of something more.
Find out what else needs to be kicked off, she told herself. She’d have to pick Bernard’s brains and find out what he knew—and what he didn’t know. And then see how you can start the ball rolling.
“Lady Emily,” Master Wolfe said. “Are you going to answer my question?”
Emily blinked. What question?
“I’m sorry, Master,” she said. “I was miles away.”
“I could tell,” Master Wolfe said, sardonically. “I was asking you what your tutor taught you about controlling a nexus point.”
“I didn’t learn everything,” Emily said, carefully. “He didn’t trust me with all of his secrets.”
“A common problem,” Master Wolfe said, disdainfully. He sounded angry, although not with her. “A sorcerer discovers something new, then refuses to share it with his friends and apprentices. The secret is lost when he dies, only to be rediscovered years later by another sorcerer.”
“And the whole pattern just keeps repeating itself,” Emily said. “Time and time again.”
“I’ve been trying to convince some of the other masters to share their secrets more openly,” Master Wolfe told her. “But very few of them are willing to discuss such matters.”
He sighed, then looked up at her. “What did your tutor tell you?”
Emily took a breath, thinking hard. She didn’t know everything. She’d barely had the time to start unlocking the secrets beneath Whitehall before she’d been tossed back into the past. She couldn’t help feeling that Professor Lombardi would have done a better job, if he’d been sent back in time instead. But what she did know would be enough to start Master Wolfe working towards a proper control system. And he’d put it together personally, so he’d understand—at a very basic level—how it worked.
“He believed that basic spellware was too ... rigid to handle the power flow,” she said, reaching for a sheet of parchment. She stopped herself a moment later. A piece of parchment would be hideously expensive in this time. Paper ... there was no way she could introduce paper, not now. “You need something that adapts to changing circumstances.”
“Like a living mind,” Master Wolfe said. She’d half-expected him to dismiss the concept out of hand, but he sounded thoughtful rather than dismissive. “Did your tutor believe he could take control of the nexus point directly?”
“He might have,” Emily hedged. Shadye had certainly believed he could take direct control of the nexus point, but he’d been halfway to being an eldritch abomination at that point. “I think it wouldn’t have worked.”
“Trying to channel that much power would have been fatal, surely,” Master Wolfe said. “Do you think that was why he died?”
Emily shrugged. She had no idea what would have happened if Shadye had tapped the nexus point, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way. If necromancy could drive a person mad, she hated to imagine what tapping a nexus point could do. Perhaps it would simply have shattered his mind beyond repair ... or, perhaps, it would have turned him into a dark god. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
“There are supposed to be rituals for transferring power,” Master Wolfe mused. “But they don’t always work.”
He looked down at the parchment for a long moment. “The spellwork would have to be more than merely adaptable,” he said. “It would have to be a living mind. But how to make it work? How to make it survive?”
“Tell it to survive,” Emily said.
Master Wolfe looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll be setting the conditions when you create the living mind,” Emily said. “You can just tell it that it can handle the power. It won’t be smart enough to realize it should be dead.”
“I shall have to meditate on that,” Master Wolfe said, slowly.
He reached for a slate and started to scribble down notes. “Taking control of the nexus point was risky enough,” he added. “But if we have so much power at our disposal, making it do anything—without worrying about spell structures—would be quite possible.”
Emily watched as he worked, unsure if she’d said too much or too little. There were too many gaps in her knowledge, both of the school’s history and of the ancient piece of spellwork, for her to be sure. Master Wolfe seemed to have taken her ideas and run with them, but who knew how far he could go? How much did they know?
“I wish your tutor had left you some notes,” Master Wolfe said, grimly. “Did he have anything written down?”
“Not as far as I know,” Emily said. It was true enough. “All I have is my memory.”
Master Wolfe muttered several unpleasant-sounding words under his breath as he returned to scribbling. Emily didn’t blame him for being frustrated, not if new tricks and techniques were discovered, lost, and then rediscovered time and time again, rather than allowing later researchers to build on the early discoveries. Even in her time, the Sorcerer’s Rule had made it harder for research notes and details to propagate through the Nameless World. A sorcerer could not be forced to share his work ...
... And even though it had worked in her favor, she knew it was a problem.
It will be worse here, she thought, numbly. If history was to be believed, Lord Whitehall had been the first person to set up an actual magic school. The unattached apprentices are lacking even the basics of magical education.
She cleared her throat. “Do you share what you know of spellwork?”
“Far too many magicians are not interested in my work,” Master Wolfe said, flatly. “I have offered, regularly, to teach them, but they do not care.”
Emily blinked in surprise. Spellwork—understanding spellwork—was the key to everything from transfiguration to subtle magic and wardcrafting. She’d thought Master Wolfe’s spell notation was primitive ... perhaps it was primitive. Perhaps she was looking at the very early stages of what would become charms ...
“I care,” she said. “My tutor cared.”
Master Wolfe looked up. “Master Myrddin? Myrddin the Sane? No one knows what happened to him after Lord Whitehall was released from his apprenticeship.”
Emily shook her head, surprised. Myrddin ... Myrddin was an old name for Merlin, a very old name. A coincidence? Or, perhaps, a hint that she wasn’t the first person from Earth to walk the Nameless World. She’d often wondered just how humans had managed to evolve in a mana-rich environment, but perhaps they hadn’t. If she could be yanked across the dimensional barriers and dumped into the Nameless World, why not a few hundred thousand others?
“I’ve never heard of him,” she admitted. “Who was he?”
Master Wolfe gave her an odd look. “Only the sorcerer who managed to make magic work,” he said, softly. “Without his work, none of us would be here. He shared his secrets.”
Emily met his eyes. “What happened before him?”
“Sorcerers would go mad very quickly,” Master Wolfe said. “They would start showing signs of magic as they grew older, then rapidly lose control as their powers grew. No one could reason with them ... they did terrible things to everyone unlucky enough to be nearby ... men were killed, women were enslaved, children were blinded merely for laughs. Smart villagers killed magicians as soon as they began showing signs of power, which didn’t make matters any better. But what choice did they have?”
“None,” Emily said, quietly.
“None,” Master Wolfe agreed. “You don’t know any of this?”
“I had a very sheltered upbringing,” Emily said.
Master Wolfe frowned. “Your tutor did you no favors,” he said. “But then, teaching women to use magic is frowned upon.”
He went on before Emily could ask why. “Master Myrddin was the first to work out how to control and channel magic to prevent accidents,” he said. “He devised the first true spells and taught them to others. In his later years, he would walk from village to village, taking magical children and teaching them how to control their powers. Those magicians, in turn, taught others.”
Emily considered it for a long moment. She had heard of Myrddin, she recalled now, but only as a throwaway line in Life of Whitehall. Offhand, she couldn’t remember if he’d been mentioned in any of the other history books she’d read. But then, there were so many legends about the time that it was impossible to tell just how much was true and how much had been added later. Lord Whitehall might well have overshadowed his former master.
“I see,” she said, finally. Necromancy drove its practitioners insane, but she’d never heard of other magicians going mad. And yet, all of the older magicians were a little erratic. Lady Barb had even suggested that Void was dangerously unstable. “I didn’t know any of this.”
“Then I suggest you learn,” Master Wolfe said. He gave her a reassuring smile. “You’re part of our commune now.”
He frowned down at his notes. “The spell structure will have to be built up, piece by piece,” he said. “Putting something so ... so big ... together would be impossible, even for us. I’m going to have to give this a great deal of thought. The binding we’ve placed on the nexus point may not last if we start fiddling with it.”
“Channel the power elsewhere,” Emily suggested. “Make it work for you.”
She closed her eyes in thought. It wouldn’t be hard to make one of her batteries—she’d practically have to make one of her batteries to expend her power, unless Whitehall kept her busy casting spells. They could channel the power from the nexus directly into a pocket dimension, then use it to power ... something. But they could only do that if they could tame the nexus.
Master Wolfe scowled as there was a sharp knock at the door. “Enter!”
The door opened. A boy—he looked around twelve, although there were faint hints of stubble on his dirty chin—stepped into the room and knelt before Master Wolfe. He didn’t look at Emily. “My Lord,” he said, “Lord Whitehall wishes to remind Lady Emily that she is to meet him in the courtyard.”
“Then she will go to the courtyard,” Master Wolfe said. He looked at Emily. “I’ll want to go through this in more detail with you later.”
“Of course, My Lord,” Emily said. If nothing else, she had a feeling that Master Wolfe was well on his way to understanding how to tap and manipulate the nexus point. How long would it be before he started crafting basic wards? “Just call me when you need me.”
She turned and nodded to the messenger, who looked back at her with a mixture of curiosity and bitter resentment. It puzzled her until she realized that she’d taken one of the handful of apprenticeship slots, even though she’d only been with the commune for less than a day. The other apprentices would have to wait longer for formal training, thanks to her. She’d be unpopular through no fault of her own. And it was hard to blame the apprentices for feeling that she’d gained an unfair advantage.
But there was nothing she could do about it. Shaking her head, she motioned for the messenger to lead the way and followed him out of the room. 

Chapter Six

Emily hadn’t realized just how foul the air inside the castle was until she stepped into the courtyard and took a breath of fresh air. A sweet scent hung on the air, tantalizing her senses as she walked towards where Whitehall and Bernard stood, at the far end of the courtyard. The sky was a brilliant clear blue; she could hear the sounds of birds singing in the trees, not too far away from the castle. And the courtyard itself didn’t look too different, although the carriages and carts she recalled from her time were missing. It made her feel as though she was back home.
“Lady Emily,” Whitehall greeted her. His voice was strictly formal. “I trust Master Wolfe didn’t give you too much of a headache?”
“It was very interesting,” Emily said. She saw Bernard’s eyes open wide with astonishment and smiled. “I enjoyed it.”
“I enjoyed it, My Master,” Bernard said, although there was no real rebuke in his tone. “You have to be polite.”
Whitehall shot him an amused glance, then looked back at Emily. “Before we begin the task of completing your education,” he said, as he turned towards the gates, “we have to know where you are. Did your tutor give you any idea of how long it would be before your apprenticeship was declared concluded?”
“I’m afraid not, My Master,” Emily said. She still had a year and a half at Whitehall School, but she had a feeling that her experience and his would be incompatible. “He would never be drawn on such matters.”
“Most masters would refuse to answer unless they felt the student was on the verge of being ready,” Whitehall said. He didn’t seem surprised by her response. “How long were you his student?”
Emily frowned. She had no idea what a convincing answer would be.
“Around three years, My Lord,” she hedged. “I was never very good at keeping track of time.”
“It does feel much longer,” Bernard said.
“Disrespectful young man,” Whitehall said. He didn’t sound angry. Indeed, he sounded rather amused. “The average apprenticeship lasts around five to ten years, unless something goes very wrong early on and both parties agree that the bonds should be dissolved. Bernard has been with me for five years.”
Emily glanced at Bernard as they strode through the gate and into the field. The sculptured gardens she recalled were missing; instead, there was a large grassy field that led towards a forest. A handful of horses—smaller than the ones Alassa had taught her to ride—grazed peacefully near the walls, watched by a pair of young boys. She looked back at the castle, feeling her head spin. Whitehall seemed to be what she remembered, but the Arena and the Zoo were also missing. She wondered, vaguely, when they’d been built.
“Don’t worry,” Bernard whispered, as Whitehall motioned for them to stop. “He’s not going to push you too hard.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Emily whispered back. She was nervous, despite herself. “What does he want me to do?”
“He wants you to copy his spells,” Whitehall said, sternly. Emily flushed. Whitehall’s hearing was evidently better than she’d assumed. “Do what I do.”
He held up his right hand and cast a fireball spell, throwing it down the grassy field and straight into a tree. Emily shuddered—the spell leaked badly, by her standards—and watched as the tree shuddered, then tumbled to the ground. Lady Barb had taught her to use similar spells to produce firewood, if one was in a hurry, but she’d never had to use it for real.
“Try it,” Whitehall ordered.
“Yes, My Lord,” Emily said.
She braced herself, wondering if she should try to mess up the spellwork. Whitehall’s fireball had looked odd, wavering backwards and forwards as if it had been permanently on the verge of exploding or simply flickering out of existence. Indeed, there had been something remarkably oily about the way the fire had moved. And it had leaked mana in all directions ...
Bad habit, she reminded herself, as she cast the spell. Professor Lombardi would rap my hands.
The fireball lanced across the field and struck a tree, sending it crashing to the ground. It was hard to be sure, but she thought Whitehall looked impressed. Her fireball had been a real fireball. Whitehall turned slightly, lifted his hand and threw a second fireball of his own. It flew barely twenty yards before it exploded outwards and vanished. The spell simply hadn’t held together very long.
“See how far you can throw the fireball,” Whitehall ordered.
“Yes, My Lord,” Emily said.
She tossed the second fireball and watched, feeling a mixture of pride and sadness, as it covered fifty yards before exploding. Whitehall was powerful—she could sense his power even from five yards away—but he didn’t have the skill Professor Lombardi and Lady Barb had hammered into her. How could he? She’d been the beneficiary of hundreds of years of spell research and development in the school he’d founded.
“Not bad,” Whitehall said. 
Emily heard Bernard gasp behind her. Not bad? She’d thrown a fireball further than his master. She smiled at the thought, then looked at Whitehall. He was studying her with a contemplative expression that bothered her. It was one thing to outdo his apprentice, she realized dully, but what if she outdid him? He might not take that very kindly at all.
“Not bad,” Whitehall repeated. “Let’s see what else you can do.”
Emily held back, as much as she could, as he showed her a handful of other spells. There was nothing subtle about his magic, no hint that he understood the spells he used; he was powerful, true, but he was wasting a great deal of his magic. She rather suspected he was far more powerful than she was—he might actually be stronger than Sergeant Miles or Professor Lombardi—yet he was draining his reserves at a terrifying rate. If she had to fight him, she might even be able to lure him into expending power fast enough to allow her to win.
“You don’t seem to be able to fly,” Whitehall observed, nearly two hours later. “Is there a reason for that?”
“My master never taught me, My Lord,” Emily said. “Can you fly?”
Whitehall levitated himself into the air and looked down at her. “It’s not a hard skill to learn,” he said. “But it requires a great deal of concentration.”
“And magic,” Bernard put in. “I have never been able to master it.”
And you could be knocked out of the sky easily, Emily added, silently. A single spell—or a simple ward—would be enough to send you plummeting to your death.
“I will teach you,” Whitehall assured her, vaguely. He gave her a sharp look. “Let’s see what else you can do.”
Emily was sweating, hard, by the time he finally stopped showing her spells and inviting her to try them for herself. His spells were simply too crude for her to duplicate easily, not when conserving her power had been beaten into her from the day she’d started. Whitehall seemed to push the limitations of spellware through raw power. He could transfigure something, if he tried, but it took so much power that she suspected he’d prefer to avoid it.
“You’re holding back,” Whitehall said. He gave her a sardonic look. “Do you know what the penalty is for lying to your master?”
“I’m not lying,” Emily protested.
“You’re holding back,” Whitehall said. “And that is a form of lying.”
He met her eyes. “You don’t have to worry about Bernard,” he added. “I assure you his ego will survive meeting someone better than him.”
Emily glanced at Bernard, who shrugged. “It does happen,” Bernard said. “Robin is better than me at many things.”
Whitehall’s expression darkened. “And many of those things are forbidden,” he said. “How many times do I have to remind you of that, My Apprentice?”
Demons, Emily thought. She shivered, even though it was a warm sunny day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Bernard wants to play with demons.
“I understand your feelings, My Master,” Bernard said.
“But you do not agree,” Whitehall stated. “Consider it incentive to learn.”
Bernard smiled. “That is what you said about dueling with stronger opponents, My Master,” he said. “Learning to lose is important.”
Emily smiled. Sergeant Miles had said something similar, long ago.
Lord Whitehall looked at her. “Your tutor clearly saw remarkable promise in you,” he said, seriously. “Enough, perhaps, to ignore the curse.”
“The curse,” Emily repeated. “What curse?”
Whitehall frowned. “You do not ... ah, you wouldn’t have been told,” he said. “Women who use magic are cursed.”
“I am not cursed,” Emily said, flatly. Her temper flared. “Do you refrain from teaching women magic for fear they will be better than you?”
Bernard started to laugh, but stopped when Whitehall tossed him a sharp look. Emily wondered, suddenly, if she’d crossed a line, then decided it didn’t matter. She needed to know what the curse was, if there was a curse. Her Whitehall was split evenly between male and female students. There was certainly no suggestion that any of the female students were cursed. They had the same chances as their male counterparts.
“Women with the gift are needed to bear children,” Whitehall said, quietly. “Magic is a rare gift and it does not always breed true.”
Emily stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Women who use magic openly cannot have children,” Whitehall explained. “They ... they lose the ability to have children or care for them.”
“That makes no sense,” Emily breathed.
“No female magician has ever had children,” Whitehall said. “My daughter wants to learn magic, but if I teach her I will deprive her of the chance to have children of her own.”
Emily considered the problem for a moment. Whitehall was wrong. She knew he was wrong. Fulvia had been a powerful magician and she’d had children. And she was hardly the only female magician Emily knew who was also a mother. There was no way so many girls would be invited to study at Whitehall if learning magic cost them the chance to have children. But Whitehall clearly believed it was true.
She looked up at him. “How many female magicians have you met?”
“You’re the most powerful witch I’ve encountered,” Whitehall said, flatly.
Emily met his eyes. “How many witches have you encountered?”
“I’ve encountered a few women who were able to do basic spells,” Whitehall told her. “None of them had children. And I have never heard, in all my travels, of a woman who was both a witch and a mother.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Emily protested.
She tossed it over and over in her head, thinking hard. Master Wolfe had told her that the early magicians had rapidly turned into monsters ... had they only been men? Or were female magicians killed quicker? She could believe it—as horrible as it seemed, male children were often regarded as more important than female children. And yet, she hadn’t learned anything to suggest that magicians had trouble conceiving. Caleb’s mother had five children.
Her face fell as she remembered her boyfriend. She’d left him in bed when she’d been summoned ... what had happened to him? Would she be back before he realized she was gone? Or would she overshoot the mark by days or weeks?
“Your master should have told you,” Whitehall said, gently. “He should have offered you the choice.”
It took a moment for Emily to realize that he’d misinterpreted her expression. He thought that she was mourning the loss of her children, the children he thought she could never have ... not wondering what had happened to the world she’d left behind. Cold anger flared through her, driven by rage and bitter grief. To deny his daughter the chance to learn ...
“You didn’t offer your daughter the choice,” she snarled. She, of all people, ought to have known better. The past wasn’t a long-lost paradise. “If Julianne wants to learn magic, why don’t you let her?”
“Because girls with the gift are badly outnumbered by the boys,” Whitehall said. “We cannot afford to lose someone who can bear magical children.”
That’s not a problem back home, Emily thought, sourly. But if there really are so few magicians here, he might have a point ...
She closed her eyes for a long moment. Julianne wasn’t mentioned in any of the books, as far as she could remember. She’d just fallen out of history, like so many others. It didn’t matter, she supposed, if Julianne learned to use her magic or not. Whatever happened to her had already happened, from Emily’s point of view. And yet, she was an individual in her own right, a living breathing person.
Bernard coughed. “Can you bear children?”
Emily colored, angrily. “I assume so,” she said. She certainly had no reason to assume there was anything wrong with her reproductive system. None of her medical checks at Whitehall had shown any problems. “And Julianne should be able to bear them too.”
She scowled. She’d never really considered the idea of having children, even after she’d started her first serious relationship. Her mother had soured her on the idea of being a mother herself. And yet, she knew Caleb wanted children. She’d be the mother ...
Unless I never get home, she thought, morbidly. A year ago, she wouldn’t have believed she could have real feelings for a young man, but now ... the thought of losing him was unappealing. How long will Caleb wait for me before he finds someone else?
Whitehall cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should discuss something more relevant to your apprenticeship,” he said, stiffly. “There is definitely something odd about your techniques.”
“I use less power,” Emily said. She was silently glad he’d seen fit to change the subject. “I think you use too much.”
“Explain,” Whitehall ordered.
Emily took a moment to gather her thoughts. “You’re a strong man carrying a ... a very heavy object to and fro,” she said, finally. It was a fairly good analogy, although it did have its weaknesses. “I’m placing the object on a wheelbarrow and pushing it to and fro. We’re both accomplishing the same thing, but I’m using less energy to do it.”
“Which gives you more power to use for other things,” Bernard observed. “Could you teach me?”
“No,” Whitehall said, sharply.
Bernard looked down. “But Master ...”
“No,” Whitehall repeated. “Learning magic from two different magicians is likely to complicate your studies.”
He had a point, Emily suspected. Given how crude his spells were, there was a good chance that his training wasn’t compatible with any of the other masters. Master Chambers might be able to cast his own fireballs, but they’d be very different from Lord Whitehall’s. That wasn’t a problem in the future—she’d had no difficulty studying charms in both Whitehall and Mountaintop—yet it was clearly a problem now. If she taught Bernard something—anything—it might make it harder for him to learn from his master.
“Yes, Master,” Bernard said, reluctantly.
“You can experiment on your own, after your apprenticeship is complete,” Whitehall told him, gently. “Right now, you have to learn from me.”
He gave Emily a long look. “There isn’t much more I can teach you, without the oaths,” he said. “Did you really enjoy spending time with Master Wolfe?”
“It was interesting,” Emily said. “He has a number of thoughts and concepts that reminded me of my tutor.”
“You will have more time to spend with him,” Whitehall said. “He stayed up all night studying the spells you used to bind the nexus point. I couldn’t stop him raving about them this morning. Your master must have been a remarkable man.”
“He was,” Emily said.
“He’s dead,” Whitehall reminded her. “You are no longer bound by any of the oaths you swore to him.”
“I don’t know what will happen if I break them,” Emily said, quietly.
“If he’s dead, nothing will happen to you,” Whitehall said. “Even a vow of perpetual secrecy loses its power over time. But you’re right. You shouldn’t take too many chances.”
Emily nodded, relieved. Breaking a magical oath was impossible, as long as one knew one was breaking the oath. They could only be abandoned by believing, truly believing, that the oath was no longer valid. That, it seemed, was true in Whitehall’s time too.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Whitehall told her. “I swore oaths to my master too.”
He paused, staring towards the forest as a handful of young men emerged. “But I do think we should talk about your techniques at some point.”
“Yes, Master,” Emily said.
She watched the young men hurrying towards the castle, carrying a number of dead animals over their shoulders. One of them was carrying a wild boar and grinning hugely from ear to ear. Emily understood. Wild boars were tasty, she had to admit, but killing one without magic was difficult. They were savage creatures. Sergeant Miles had warned his students not to mess around if they had to hunt for food.
But at least we’ll have something more to eat, she thought. We need food to power our magic.
“Dinner,” Bernard said, cheerfully.
“One would hope so,” Whitehall said. He looked at Bernard. “I need to think. Take Emily and get some lunch, then join the teams sweeping the upper floors. I’ll restart your lessons tomorrow.”
“Yes, My Master,” Bernard said. “Do you want me to bring you some food?”
“I have to speak to Alfred,” Whitehall said. He shook his head. “We’ll come down and get something ourselves, afterwards.”
Bernard bowed, then motioned for Emily to follow him. 

Chapter Seven

“I think you impressed him,” Bernard said, as he led the way into the dining hall. There was still no sign of any tables. “I never saw him quite so much at a loss for words before.”
“Thanks,” Emily said, dryly.
She saw Julianne on the other side of the room, talking to a pale-faced older man and waved to her. Julianne nodded back as Bernard sat down on the rug and waited, looking impatient. Moments later, a serving girl hurried over with two bowls of soup, bowing deeply as she presented them and withdrawing as soon as she could. Emily watched her go—clearly, the tradition of treating servants well hadn’t started yet—and then tested her soup before starting to drink. It tasted faintly oily, a taste that grew stronger with every mouthful. She decided, reluctantly, that she didn’t want to know what had gone into the soup.
Probably the remains of an animal, she thought, wryly. Sergeant Miles had insisted that every last part of a slain animal was useful for something. Boiling the bones added flavor to stock, if nothing else. The legs, perhaps, or the bones.
“Your tutor must have been very capable,” Bernard said, after he put his bowl aside. “I’ve never seen spells like yours.”
“He was a good teacher,” Emily agreed. “I’ve never seen spells like yours either.”
“Master Whitehall says I need to grow older before I can use some of his spells,” Bernard said, ruefully. “I just don’t have the reserves to make them work.”
Because you can’t redesign the spells to use less power, Emily thought. Bernard was strong, perhaps stronger than she’d been a year ago, but his spells were as crude as his master’s. The spellwork you dismiss as boring is the key to becoming a more powerful and dangerous magician.
Bernard nodded over at two of the other apprentices, who didn’t look pleased to see either him or Emily. “It could be worse,” he said. “We could have to wait for our education.”
“They might wait too long,” Emily mused. She had no idea what would happen if someone’s gift wasn’t used, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be pleasant. “The old system is doomed.”
Bernard looked up at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“You have one apprentice to one master,” Emily commented. “And here you have umpteen apprentices per master, some of whom may never get a complete education.”
“They can’t get a complete education without a master,” Bernard pointed out. “They need one-on-one education.”
“You could also teach them in groups,” Emily countered. Whitehall School had taught a number of students at the same time. The largest class she recalled had had twenty students, all learning from a single teacher. “But that would be difficult with your magic.”
“Yes, it would be,” Bernard said. He rubbed his forehead. “Master Whitehall took weeks to show me how to cast spells safely.”
“I learned quickly,” Emily said. “But I think I started with smaller spells.”
She leaned forward. “What can you do?”
Bernard looked back. “What do you mean?”
“I saw you cast a handful of spells,” Emily said. “Could you turn me into a frog?”
“Of course not,” Bernard said. He shook his head firmly. “That’s advanced magic, you know. Even Master Whitehall would have problems doing it so casually.”
And first-year students at Whitehall can turn their fellows into frogs or mice or small bedside ornaments, Emily thought. It only took me a week or two to master some really dangerous spells.
She contemplated the problem for a long moment. “What can you do?”
“I can use my magic to fight or defend myself,” Bernard said. “Or defend others, if necessary. What else do I need to do?”
He frowned. “What else should I be able to do?”
Emily leaned forward. “Can you heal a wounded man?”
“No,” Bernard said. “Lord Gila was once a great healer, but he’s now advancing towards utter madness. His poor apprentice will take his place once his mind snaps completely.”
“And you can’t heal yourself,” Emily mused. She’d have to learn what Lord Gila had been able to do and compare it to what she knew from her own time. “Did you ever think to ask him to teach you the skill?”
“Master Whitehall would never have permitted it,” Bernard said.
Emily nodded in irritation. None of the tutors in Whitehall School would have been upset if their students had asked other tutors for advice, certainly not when the other tutors were specialists in their fields. But here ... Lord Whitehall had made it clear that she wasn’t to teach Bernard anything, not as long as he was Lord Whitehall’s student. Afterwards ... she shook her head. She had no idea if she’d be remaining in the past long enough for Bernard to graduate or not.
“I should talk to Lord Gila,” she mused. “See just what he could do.”
“He’s on the verge of madness,” Bernard said. “Talk to his former apprentice, if you must.”
“Understood,” Emily said. She frowned, trying to remember what other skills she took for granted. “Can you work alchemy?”
Bernard frowned. “What’s alchemy?”
“Tapping the magical proprieties of plants and animals,” Emily said. “Brewing potions to help people ...?”
“No,” Bernard said. “I didn’t even know it was possible.”
Emily frowned. He didn’t know ... alchemy had been invented at Whitehall. Or so history said. Was it something else she was meant to introduce? She had hardly been a stellar student, but she knew enough to get them started. She’d just have to see if she could find the ingredients and then brew a potion or two, just to prove the concept was workable.
And that won’t be easy, she thought. She knew where to find some ingredients—Professor Thande and Sergeant Miles had taught her a little about harvesting supplies—but Whitehall School had sat at the center of a trade network that had spanned the entire continent. It was quite likely that she’d never be able to find any of the rarer ingredients she’d used in her first year. But I should at least try.
“It is possible,” she said. “I’ll have to show you.”
Bernard eyed her. “Your tutor taught you this ...this alchemy?”
“Yes,” Emily said, flatly. “He was a man of varied interests.”
“So it would seem,” Bernard said. He sounded envious. “My master is rarely interested in anything other than his magic.”
Emily nodded, then spent the next twenty minutes bouncing questions off him. Bernard knew nothing of teleporting, nor subtle magic; he certainly didn’t understand how the runic alphabet worked or how to use it to craft spells. He talked about a couple of ceremonies that sounded like rituals, but they bore so little resemblance to anything Emily knew that she had no idea what to make of them. And his wardcrafting was appallingly weak.
I could punch though his wards by brute force, she thought. But I could also break them by cracking through the weak points.
But there were also some oddities in what he knew. He knew how to craft illusions, but they didn’t seem to behave like the illusions she knew; he understood how to influence a person’s mind, yet not how to avoid doing real damage while tampering. Whitehall had even taught him how to shield his mind without using magic, just in case he was captured and deliberately drained by his captors. Emily had heard of similar techniques, but she’d never had to use them. Void had made sure of that.
“We should talk about something else,” Bernard said, finally. “I feel a headache coming on.”
Emily nodded, feeling a glimmer of sympathy. She wouldn’t have enjoyed the interrogation either. Whatever Whitehall said, she would have been surprised if Bernard hadn’t been a little embarrassed—and humiliated—by watching her outclass him so effortlessly. Perhaps, by their standards, she was practically at master-level already. And if Whitehall spent more time with Emily, he’d have less time for his apprentice.
And that would relegate him to join the others, Emily thought. He’d hate that.
“I think it’s time you answered a different question,” she said, sternly. “Why did the commune flee to Whitehall? Who was chasing you?”
“We don’t know,” Bernard said.
Emily stared at him. “You don’t know?”
Bernard took a breath. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Really.”
“Then start at the beginning, go on to the end and then stop,” Emily said. Professor Lombardi had said that to her, after she’d messed up badly in her second year. “Who’s chasing you, and why?”
For a moment, she thought Bernard wasn’t going to answer. And then he started to talk, so quietly that she had to struggle to hear him.
“I was born in a small town,” he said, gently. “I started to show signs of magic at twelve, so my parents sent me to the Gathering. Master Whitehall met me and tested me, then offered me an apprenticeship with the commune. We had a small village to ourselves, deep in the forest: masters, apprentices, and servants. Master Whitehall taught me how to control my powers ...”
He broke off for a long, chilling moment. “The commune was a lot smaller then,” he added, slowly. “There were just four masters and four apprentices. But there were other villages nearby, so we would travel to them or they would come to us ... and, of course, there was the yearly Gathering. Did your tutor never take you?”
Emily shook her head. It was possible, quite possible, that Bernard’s Gathering was the start of the tradition she’d encountered in the future, but there was no way to know for sure.
“You should have gone,” Bernard said. “There were masters and apprentices from all over the kingdom, gathered together to exchange news. But there were rumors too, rumors of ... things ... attacking magicians. Villages being destroyed, masters being killed ... apprentices being left to roam free. We didn’t want to believe them, but they were spreading too rapidly for our comfort. I recall Lord Alfred summoning demon after demon, trying to glean some hint of what was going on from them.”
He paused, his face darkening with remembered horror. “Seven months ago, more or less, we went to a village that had welcomed us before,” he continued. “It had been destroyed, houses smashed flat and temples pounded into rubble. There was no sign of any bodies, no sign of who had attacked a magical settlement and destroyed it. We didn’t know who to blame.”
Emily frowned. “Mundanes? People without magic?”
“The king has banned the hunting of magicians,” Bernard said. “As long as we take magical children away from their families, they have as little to do with us as possible.”
He shook his head. “It was only the first village to die. Another died a month later, even though the masters had tightened their defenses; two more died afterwards, with no clue as to who was doing the attacking. And then a number of refugees ran into our village, apprentices and camp followers from another nearby village. They claimed that the village had been attacked by monsters.”
Emily frowned. “Monsters?”
“Monsters,” Bernard repeated. “And then we were attacked ourselves. The defenses were broken with very little effort and so we had to flee. I saw them, but ... but I can’t remember what they looked like. No one can. They just came and killed and destroyed and hunted ...”
His voice trailed off. Emily forced herself to think. If he couldn’t remember what the creatures had looked like ... it suggested subtle magic or a very powerful and unusual glamour. And yet, subtle magic worked best when its victim had no idea he was under attack. Breaking the spell—by hitting the target directly—would ruin the effect.
“We fled,” Bernard said. “Masters Poe and Wallace talked about making a stand, but it was useless. They were crushed. We picked up more masters, more apprentices, but we didn’t know where to go. In the end, Lord Alfred summoned a demon and put the question to it.”
“And the demon pointed you here,” Emily mused. 
The thought made her smile, humorlessly. She’d heard plenty of stories about Lord Alfred, but most of them had been badly exaggerated. Even Professor Locke had believed that Lord Alfred’s reputation had grown in the telling, something that was genuinely surprising when Professor Locke had believed that the ancients had possessed all kinds of long-forgotten magics. And if Lord Alfred had been a DemonMaster ...
“It did,” Bernard said. “We thought we’d gathered enough supplies, but we were on the verge of starvation when we finally reached the castle.”
He frowned. “How did you get here?”
“We walked,” Emily said, shortly. “Getting here was not easy.”
She rubbed her forehead, feeling her temples start to pound. She needed time to think. She’d assumed that the commune had been fleeing mundanes, but it was clear that things were a little more complex than she’d thought. If the creatures were truly inhuman, they might well have some connection to the Faerie. The Faerie War couldn’t be that far off. And if they were hunting magicians specifically ...
But they didn’t follow the commune to Whitehall, she thought. Were they afraid to go too close to the castle?
Bernard met her eyes. “How many people accompanied you to the castle?”
“Just me and my tutor,” Emily lied. She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You should,” Bernard said, earnestly. “It might help you come to terms with losing him.”
Emily sighed. Talking about it was the last thing she wanted to do. If she was caught in a lie, she would be in real trouble. But she didn’t dare tell the truth.
“Let him rest in peace,” she said, instead. “Were those creatures going after mundanes too?”
“I don’t believe so,” Bernard said. “But we rarely spoke to mundanes.”
Emily cocked her head. “You never went back to see your family?”
“They wouldn’t want to see me,” Bernard said. “Having a magician in the family isn’t a good thing, Emily. They see it as a sign of tainted blood. My father ... my father wondered if he was truly my father. Magicians ... don’t have good reputations when it comes to women.”
“Lord Wolfe said that magicians had a tendency to go mad,” Emily said. And Bernard had said that Lord Gila was on the verge of going mad. “Is that what they meant?”
“Among other things,” Bernard said. “If I didn’t have my father’s nose--” he pushed his finger against the tip of his nose “--I would wonder if someone had seduced my mother nine months before I was born.”
“There are paternity tests,” Emily commented. “Can’t you check ...?”
“I have no idea how,” Bernard said. He looked down at the rug for a long moment. “And even if I did know, I wouldn’t want to know. My father discarded me the day my magic first started to reveal itself. Master Whitehall is my father now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Emily said, seriously.
She rubbed her forehead again. There was something about the whole explanation that didn’t make sense, something she was missing, but she was too tired to put her finger on it. It was easy to believe that a mundane family might discard a magician child—Frieda had certainly been discarded and Imaiqah might have gone the same way—yet something was nagging at the back of her mind. What was it?
Bernard looked back at her. “Tell me about your family.”
Emily winced, inwardly. She should have seen that question coming.
“Father died when I was very young,” she said. She had no idea what had happened to her real father, but she’d certainly never seen him again. “Mother remarried. My stepfather didn’t like me very much, so ... things were a little rough. And then my tutor found me and took me in.”
“That was lucky,” Bernard said. “You would have died in the cold, if he threw you out.”
Emily nodded. Her stepfather had been thoroughly unpleasant, but a stepfather from the Nameless World might well have been worse. No one would have given a damn if he’d kicked an unwanted girl-child out of his house or sold her to a passing merchant or a brothel, particularly if he’d had children of his own. The cold logic of survival, in the Cairngorms, dictated no less. Old folks sometimes walked outside to die—or were thrown out—because their families could no longer afford to feed them. It still horrified her to see just how casually some were sacrificed so that others could live.
“He gave you a good grounding in magic,” Bernard added. “I was surprised he didn’t show you more.”
“He was never interested in socializing,” Emily said. “If he hadn’t sensed me, I suspect he would have remained alone for the rest of his life.”
“I see,” Bernard said. “And did he ...?”
It took Emily a moment to realize what he meant. “He wasn’t that sort of person,” she said, flushing. None of her tutors had ever shown that sort of interest in her. “He was like a father to me.”
Bernard looked relieved. “I’m sorry.”
He sighed as he rose to his feet. “We should go find Robin and help clear the corridors,” he said. “A few hours of clearing away the nastier traps should keep us on our toes.”
Emily nodded, happy that he wasn’t asking any more questions. Hopefully, he wouldn’t pry further into her cover story. She doubted it would survive if he kept poking away at it, looking for discrepancies. She simply knew too little about her new environment to tell convincing lies.
And the more I lie to them, she thought as she rose and followed him, the harder it will be to keep everything straight.

Chapter Eight

“Be careful,” Robin called, as they walked up the stairs. He stood above them, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “There’s something very nasty at the top.”
Emily frowned as she sensed the swirling magic. A young apprentice stood at the top of the stairs, trembling like a leaf. He wasn’t frozen, she realized; his feet were stuck to the ground. She wondered if he’d had the sense to try to remove his shoes and escape, leaving them trapped, but a closer look told her it would be futile. Bending over to try to undo his shoes would merely trap his hands too.
“Bastards,” Bernard said. “Who the hell puts a trap like that at the top of the stairs?”
“Someone who wanted us to be caught,” Robin said, dryly. He gave Emily a sardonic smile. “Do you think you can break the spell?”
Emily frowned as she reached the top of the stairs. The spell—the booby trap—was very much like spells she’d seen in martial magic, although it looked as though it shouldn’t have endured for very long. And yet, it was more advanced than anything she’d seen from Whitehall and Bernard. She couldn’t help wondering if it was actually drawing power from the nexus point. There didn’t seem to be any other source of power.
“I think so,” she said. She allowed herself a moment to study the spellwork. A simple cancellation spell ought to be enough—indeed, she was surprised Robin and the other apprentice hadn’t already tried. Unless they didn’t know how to cancel spells ... it was possible, she supposed. None of their spells seemed very well crafted. “Let me try?”
Robin shrugged, expansively. “Why not?”
Emily gave him a dark look. She had the feeling she was being tested—and judged—but there was no way she could simply leave the apprentice stuck permanently. If Whitehall and his commune didn’t know how to cancel spells, they’d have to use brute force to destroy the trap ... which might injure or kill the victim. She cast a basic cancellation spell and watched, holding her breath, as the trap faded back into the ether. The apprentice jerked free a moment later and darted back down the stairs.
“He thought he was going to be trapped permanently,” Robin said. He sounded amused, rather than concerned. “I told him not to take anything for granted.”
“Good advice,” Bernard said. He looked at Emily. “How did you do that?”
“All spells have a weak point,” Emily said, vaguely. “Lord Wolfe would probably be able to explain better than I.”
Bernard frowned. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
“Maybe,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure when such spells had been invented. Lord Wolfe might well be able to duplicate it though, once he heard what she’d done. “We can take a look at it later, if you like.”
Robin grinned, showing teeth. “We just broke into this floor,” he said. He pulled a wooden stave from his knapsack, pressed it against his torch until it caught light and then passed it to Bernard. “There was a particularly unpleasant trap down at the bottom of the stairs. Master Drake had to untangle it for us.”
He must have thrust his magic into direct contact with the trap, Emily reasoned. She could have done that—she had done that, during exams—but why take the risk? Their magic seems to be far more brute-force than ours.
“And now we have a whole new world to explore,” Bernard said. He grinned back at Robin, then motioned down the corridor. “Shall we?”
Emily followed the two men as they inched down the corridor, checking constantly for other booby traps. Whoever had last occupied the castle, she decided, as a series of traps were uncovered and disarmed, had to have been both skillful and paranoid—and, perhaps, a little insane. There were traps scattered everywhere, but there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their placement. One was lurking behind a door, while another was hidden on a window frame or by a fireplace. Some of them were certain to catch a mundane who wandered into the castle; others were all too likely to be nothing more than wasted effort.
Bernard put her thoughts into words. “Who hides a booby trap up a chimney?”
Someone who doesn’t want a visit from Santa Claus, Emily thought.
Robin snorted. “Someone could sneak through the chimneys if they wanted to pass unnoticed,” he said. He peered up the shaft thoughtfully. “They’d climb up to where this chimney merges with another, then crawl back down into the next room.”
“Pretty uncomfortable if there’s a fire in the grate,” Bernard pointed out.
Emily suspected that Robin was right, but she kept her thoughts to herself. King Randor’s castle was crammed with secret passageways, some intended to keep the servants hidden from their lords and masters, others designed to allow the royal family to move around unseen. Using a chimney struck her as risky, but the shaft was easily large enough to allow her to scramble up, if there were enough handholds. Dropping back down into the next room wouldn’t be too difficult, either.
Unless there was a fire, she thought, wryly. The smoke would make navigating the chimney difficult.
It was hard to believe that she was in the castle that would eventually become Whitehall School. The rooms they swept for traps were completely empty, nothing left behind to betray their original function; the corridors were bare stone, without even the omnipresent runes she’d seen on the lower levels. Robin and Bernard chatted as they walked, but they started to speak in hushed tones as their torches began to flicker and die. The atmosphere grew more oppressive the further they moved into the castle.
“We need better lighting,” Robin said, as his torch died completely. “I don’t know who built this place, but they didn’t know anything about lighting a castle.”
Emily had her doubts. A mind capable of creating the booby traps they’d disarmed would certainly be capable of crafting a light globe, with or without tapping the nexus point. They shouldn’t have had any problems lighting the castle. She was tempted to cast a spell herself, but she held back. Robin might have a different solution in mind.
Bernard looked doubtful as the shadows grew and lengthened. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
Robin smirked. “I don’t know,” he said. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking I’m thinking?”
He reached into his knapsack and produced a small, leather-bound book. Emily recoiled in shock as Robin sat down, unable to hide her reaction to the pervasive aura of evil surrounding the book. It rolled off it in waves, a chilling sense that even touching it would mean eternal damnation. She’d had bad reactions before, touching books she knew to have something to do with the dark arts, but this was terrifying. Merely looking at the tome made her want to wash herself thoroughly.
“Master Whitehall will not approve,” Bernard said, as Robin opened the book. “He ...”
“He isn’t my master,” Robin said. He held up the book, showing a blood-red rune dominating the first page. “And my master approves of demons.”
“That’s a Book of Pacts,” Emily said.
Robin frowned. “You’ve never seen one before?”
“No,” Emily said. Aurelius had made use of demons—he’d even shown Emily books about demons—but if he’d had a Book of Pacts, he’d never shown it to her. “I’ve heard of them, but ...”
“Each page is devoted to a single demon,” Robin said. He opened the book to a second page, revealing a very different rune. No, Emily recalled; they were sigils, not runes. “I summoned each of these demons and bound them to my will, allowing me to call on them whenever I need them to work a particularly complex piece of magic.”
“At a price,” Bernard said in edged tones. “What do you pay for these spells?”
“A little blood,” Robin said. “I have plenty.”
Emily blanched. She, of all people, had good reason to know precisely what someone could do with a sample of her blood. Whoever had summoned her down to the nexus chamber and thrust her into the nexus point had worked through all of her protections, even though she’d spent the last four years mustering all the defenses she could. Robin was being careless—hideously careless. She opened her mouth to point out just how many horrible things she could do to him with a drop of his blood, but closed it without speaking. If he didn’t know the dangers by now, her words would merely give him ideas.
“And a little of your strength,” Bernard said. “Is it worth it?”
“Yes,” Robin said. “You spent weeks learning to levitate a single stone into the air, didn’t you? I spent an hour learning how to summon a demon and have it levitate the stone for me.”
He smiled up at Emily. “Lord Whitehall believes that demons are dangerous,” he said, darkly. “But they are so very useful.”
“That’s the trap,” Bernard said, flatly. But he didn’t sound as though he believed his own words. “If the demon is doing everything for you, how will you ever be able to do it for yourself?”
“Demons have shown me how to work spells,” Robin said.
Emily frowned. “What spells?”
“A few,” Robin said, vaguely. He gave her a challenging look. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
Bernard snickered. “Smooth ...”
Emily felt her cheeks heat. “It would depend on what spells you have to offer.”
“I have a lot to offer,” Robin said, complacently.
He placed the book on the floor, then drew a small knife from his belt and made a cut on his hand, allowing the blood to drip onto the sigil. Emily felt a sudden surge of magic—tainted magic—and stepped backwards sharply until she felt her back pressing against the stone wall. Robin tossed her a mischievous look, then began to chant in a language she didn’t recognize. The magic built up rapidly, gathering above the book until it coalesced into a tiny imp. It looked vaguely human—the haze of magic was so strong that it was hard to pick out any details—but the proportions were all wrong. And the sense of malice surrounding the creature was terrifyingly strong.
“Well, now,” it said. It looked male, insofar as any gender could be assigned to such an odd apparition, but the voice was distinctly female. “I have not seen you in many days.”
Emily blanched. Days? Not weeks or months or years? Robin called upon this creature regularly? Was he out of his mind?
“I bind you by rod and book, by blood and light,” Robin said. Emily looked at him—it was preferable to looking at the demon—and saw a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. He might act as though it was all a game, but he was clearly nowhere near as confident as he pretended. “I bind you ...”
“Come now,” the demon said. Its voice became ingratiating. “There’s no need for such words between old friends.”
“Our way needs to be lit,” Robin said. He hunched forward until he was almost squatting in front of the demon. “I require a spell of light.”
The demon giggled. “But of course, my son,” it said. “And what will you offer in return?”
Robin made another cut on his hand, allowing the blood to rest on his palm. The demon leaned forward and licked the blood. Emily’s gorge rose and she turned, hurrying out of the room and down the corridor as the demon’s hissing laughter echoed in her ears. The sense of its presence only grew stronger, pervading the atmosphere with something unbearably foul, then it was gone, as if someone had simply flicked a switch. Emily stopped and leaned against the wall, breathing hard. Robin and Master Chambers had to be completely out of their minds. Using anything from that creature would be utterly disastrous.
And a demon led them here, she thought, numbly. She closed her eyes as her body began to shake. There has to be a nasty sting in the tail somewhere.
“Emily,” Bernard called. “Are you all right?”
Emily forced herself to stand upright, opening her eyes. Bernard was hurrying down the corridor towards her, Robin following at a more sedate pace. The look on his face reminded her of the drug addicts and drunkards she’d seen on the streets, back on Earth. A light globe, flickering and flaring, hung above his head, pulsing brightly enough to make Emily’s eyes hurt. It reminded her, all too well, of the light globes she’d tried to create after the duel, when she’d pumped too much power into the spell. 
“I’ve been better,” she said, looking at Robin. “How ... how can you stand those creatures?”
Robin shrugged. “I was nervous, the first time I summoned a demon,” he said. “But I soon got used to calling on them.”
He elbowed Bernard. “But his master won’t let him summon a demon.”
“Shut up,” Bernard said.
“I could show you how,” Robin said. He looked at Emily. “Or you. Do women call on demons?”
“I don’t need demons,” Emily said, tartly. She eyed Robin nervously, unable to comprehend how he could summon and use such creatures. And now ... he was acting like someone who’d had far too much to drink. She nodded up at the light globe? “Did it teach you that spell?”
“Yes,” Robin said. “It’s better than the one my master uses.”
Emily eyed the globe doubtfully. It was still brightening and darkening, seemingly at random. She wanted to cast a spell to analyze the spellwork, but she didn’t quite dare, not when it would reveal far too much about her to the boys. Robin gave her a wink, then directed the light globe down the next corridor, the pulsing light driving back the shadows.
“I can teach you the spell,” he called back. “But it will cost you.”
Bernard looked sullen as Robin hurried ahead. “It would take me weeks to master such a spell,” he said, sourly. Emily would have been surprised if she hadn’t seen how clumsy many of Lord Whitehall’s spells actually were. “And he gets it in bare minutes!”
He strode off down the corridor, leaving Emily staring after him. Bernard wasn’t stupid, she knew; how could he envy Robin? But then, she had a feeling that she understood him all too well. Robin appeared to be moving ahead by leaps and bounds, while Bernard was stuck repeating the same spells over and over again until he understood them perfectly. And her presence probably didn’t help much either, she had to admit. She’d not only distracted Bernard’s master from his education, she was both a woman and a superior magician. He would have to be more than human if he didn’t resent it, just a little.
But Whitehall is right, Emily thought, as she followed him. That spell might actually be dangerous. And Robin doesn’t even know it!
Robin was showing off, she realized, as she caught up with the two boys. He was creating a whole string of light globes, one after the other, directing them to hover in the corridors or float into unoccupied rooms. Emily had to resist the temptation to cast her own light globes—better than any Robin could have managed—as she walked into one of the rooms, following the light globes. It was a bare room, like every other chamber in the castle; grimly, she took advantage of being alone to examine the light globe.
Sloppy, she thought, as the spellwork unfolded in front of her. The light globe looked to have been patched together from two different spells, the sort of hodgepodge that would have had Professor Lombardi exploding with rage and demanding expulsions. She doubted that any student at Whitehall would have dared present him with such a poor piece of work. Sloppy ... and dangerous.
She scowled as she realized just how dangerous it actually was. The spellwork wasn’t remotely focused; it worked, she noted, but it was so inefficient that raw magic was spilling in all directions instead of being concentrated on the spell. Robin was wasting his strength and he didn’t even know it! She dreaded to imagine what it would do to his mind if he kept pumping out so much uncontrolled magic. Void had admitted, to her face, that he’d been ready to kill her if her boosted magic had driven her insane. Robin ...
He’ll become unstable, she thought, angrily. The demon hadn’t been particularly subtle, but it hadn’t had to be subtle. Robin would use the spell gleefully and teach it to others, unaware of the damage it would be doing. And he’ll drive hundreds of others insane.
“Emily,” Bernard called. He sounded ... odd. “Can you come out here?”
Emily tensed, hastily cancelling her analysis spell. Bernard definitely sounded odd. Had something gone wrong already? She readied a couple of defensive spells, then strode through the door, leaving the light globe behind. The spellwork was so mangled that it was impossible to say just how long it would last. Bernard stood outside, looking down the corridor. Julianne Whitehall waited for them at the top of the stairs, looking tired and worn. And yet, the long dress she wore made her look attractive. Emily couldn’t help a flicker of envy.
Robin nudged her as Bernard hurried down the corridor. “He needs a chaperone,” he said, mischievously. “He can’t talk to Julianne alone.”
“Oh,” Emily said.
“And now you know why he likes you,” Robin added. His smile grew wider. “You can watch his master’s daughter for him.”

Chapter Nine

Emily found it hard to conceal her amusement as she and Robin followed Bernard down the corridor. She doubted that Bernard would try to do anything stupid with Julianne—she was the daughter of one of the most powerful magicians in the world—but she knew just how much could happen by accident. Whitehall had been a young man himself, once upon a time; he wouldn’t be too happy at the thought of his apprentice courting his daughter. But what did Julianne herself think about it?
“Julianne,” Bernard said. He suddenly sounded very shy. “You’re looking good.”
Julianne smiled back at him, her eyes flickering from Emily to Robin and back again. Emily knew she wasn’t the most observant of people—she’d been the last person to realize that Jade and Alassa had fallen in love—but she thought that Julianne had feelings for Bernard too. It made her wonder just what Bernard thought of Julianne asking her father—begging her father—to be taught magic. Would he approve, if they became husband and wife, or would he refuse to teach his wife himself? He’d want children, wouldn’t he?
“We’ll just be down the corridor,” Emily said. “You can talk in private.”
Julianne gave her a look. “You can stay, if you like,” she said. “Father ...”
Emily nodded, torn between envy and sympathy. To have a father who cared ... she’d have given a great deal to have a father who actually cared. But there was a fine line between being caring and being overbearing and most fathers on the Nameless World definitely were overbearing. King Randor was a better father to Alassa than Emily’s father or stepfather had ever been to her, yet he’d planned to marry his daughter to someone who suited his long-term plans for the kingdom, not someone who suited her.
“Marry me,” Bernard said, suddenly. “Julianne ...”
A dozen emotions flashed across Julianne’s face. Emily found it hard to follow them; Julianne seemed to move from relief to fear, pride to concern. She thought—she still thought—that Julianne had feelings for Bernard, but were they really romantic? Or had she placed him firmly in the friend-zone? She doubted it—friend-zoning wasn’t really a thing on the Nameless World—but she had to admit it was possible. Julianne would have a closer relationship with her father’s apprentice than she would have with almost anyone else in the commune.
And an apprentice is practically part of the family, Emily thought. She might not see Bernard in that light at all.
“I can’t,” Julianne said, finally. “I’ve already told you how I feel. My father is not marrying me off without my consent.”
Emily frowned. Clearly, she was missing something. Had Whitehall attempted to convince Julianne to marry Bernard? Or was she waiting until Bernard gained his mastery? Or was Emily misreading the situation so badly that she was completely wrong? She wasn’t sure how she could ask Julianne, let alone Bernard. Both of them might tell her it was none of her business.
“I can get his consent,” Bernard said, earnestly. “He has no reason to disapprove of me.”
“But I won’t be married off without my consent,” Julianne said. She turned, slightly. “My father cannot be asked, not yet.”
Emily felt Robin nudge her and glanced at him. He beckoned her back down the corridor as Bernard and Julianne talked in low voices, their words rapidly becoming inaudible. Emily wasn’t too keen on the idea of being alone with Robin—she couldn’t trust anyone who relied on a demon—but she didn’t see any polite way to avoid it. As long as Bernard and Julianne were within eyeshot, she would be comfortable enough.
“They’ve been dancing around one another for the last two years,” Robin said. He sounded faintly amused. “He spends half of his time moaning about her.”
Emily narrowed her eyes. “And why doesn’t she marry him?”
Robin shrugged. “Who can fathom the mind of a woman?”
“Another woman,” Emily said, tartly. “Is Bernard as ... inconsiderate ... as you?”
“He keeps promising her the world,” Robin said. He shrugged, expressively, ignoring her comment. “Her father should just marry her off to him. She’s of good blood, he’s a skilled and powerful magician ... their children will be great. And we are short on children.”
There’s more to women than merely producing children, Emily thought, crossly. In her era, male and female wizards were regarded as equals. But here women aren’t permitted to learn magic.
She leaned against the wall, keeping one eye on Bernard. “What has her father said about it?”
“By custom, he can’t say anything until Bernard asks for her hand in marriage,” Robin said, bluntly. “And then he can either give his consent or refuse.”
Emily frowned. “And what would happen if he refused?”
“I imagine Bernard would be sent away,” Robin said. “It would be quite awkward all around.”
He looked up at Emily. “Do you have a father?”
“Not among the living,” Emily said. Her father wouldn’t be born for the next eight hundred years, give or take a few centuries. “Why do you ask?”
Robin smiled. “Who would someone ask if they wanted your hand in marriage?”
“Me,” Emily said, flatly.
“A woman as pretty as you should be married already,” Robin said. “Do you not have anyone?”
“I don’t know,” Emily said. Caleb, too, wouldn’t be born for another eight hundred years or thereabouts. She felt her cheeks redden as she realized that Robin was trying to flirt with her, poorly. “I ...”
“You don’t know,” Robin repeated. “How can you not know?”
“I had someone,” Emily said. It was true enough. “But I haven’t seen him for a very long time.”
“Then he’s probably married off by now,” Robin said. “You don’t need to worry about him.”
Emily shook her head. If there was no chance of getting home, she’d have to admit that she would never see Caleb again. There was no hope of him jumping back in time, not when neither he nor anyone else—save for the person who had shoved her into the nexus—knew what had happened to her. She’d turn to dust long before Caleb was even born. But then, she wasn’t about to give up so quickly. She had an idea. And given time and access to the nexus point, she could make it work.
“He won’t have been faithful,” Robin pointed out. “How long were you trapped in the castle?”
Emily scowled at him. “And what would you suggest?”
“Find someone else,” Robin said. He leaned forward, parting his lips as if he were inviting her to kiss him. “I think it would be for the best, don’t you?”
“No,” Emily snapped.
She found herself unsure of just what she should say, let alone do. Robin was flirting with her, he was flirting clumsily with her ... and she had no idea how to handle it. She didn’t like him personally—or at least she didn’t like the stench of demons that surrounded him—but what should she do, if there was no hope of getting back to the future? Find a husband and get married—or walk into the shadows and stay out of history?
“You have a duty to the community,” Robin said, softly. “If you can have children ...”
Emily turned and stalked down the corridor to where Bernard and Julianne were standing together, just an inch too close for friends. They did like each other, Emily realized, but she thought she understood Julianne’s concerns. If her father approved the match, it would become compulsory soon enough. Julianne would lose what little freedom she had to a husband who might not be so tolerant of her wish to learn magic.
“Lady Emily,” Julianne said. “There will be a bath for us before supper, if you would like to join me.”
“That would be good,” Emily said. She knew she was grimy. The only reason no one had commented on it, she suspected, was because everyone else stank worse. “Where do we go?”
“It’s been set up next to the kitchens,” Julianne said. She glanced past Emily and looked at Bernard. “If I go grab some clothes for us, can you show her to the kitchens?”
“Of course,” Bernard said.
Emily watched Julianne go, then glanced at Bernard. He had an oddly mournful expression on his face. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“And smart, too,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure just how smart Julianne actually was, but her father was brilliant. And very well-connected. “Do you like her?”
Robin cleared his throat, loudly. “Of course he likes her!”
Bernard scowled. “Go tell Master Whitehall just how much of the corridors we’ve cleared,” he ordered. “I’ll show Emily to the kitchens.”
Emily looked at him as they hurried down the stairs. “Do you want her to learn magic?”
“I don’t know,” Bernard admitted. His face heated. “You know about the curse, don’t you?”
“You were there when I was told about it,” Emily said. “Would you want her to learn magic?”
Bernard stopped and turned to face her. “I want her to be happy,” he said. “And if she wants to learn magic, I can teach her magic. But we wouldn’t be able to have children. And I want children, too.”
Emily frowned. Bernard was young, but a forty-year-old man would be considered old on the Nameless World. It wasn’t unknown for young commoner women to be grandmothers by thirty, assuming they survived long enough to see their grandchildren. Even for magicians, there was strong social pressure to marry and have children as soon as one graduated. And if that was true of her era, how much worse was it in a time when medical care was weak and female magicians practically non-existent?
“You might have to decide what’s more important to you,” she said, finally. It wasn’t as if she had any right to advise someone on their love life. “Having children or allowing her to study magic.”
“Her father wouldn’t approve of her studying magic,” Bernard said. “He could have taught her ...”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Give it time,” Emily advised. “And don’t try to push her into anything.”
“I won’t,” Bernard promised. “But she’s almost nineteen. It won’t be long before she’s too old to get married.”
Emily shook her head in grim amusement. On Earth, nineteen would be considered far too young to get married by most civilized people. But it made sense in a world where life expectancies were so much shorter. Julianne would be lucky—very lucky—if she lived to fifty. Emily was mildly surprised she wasn’t married already. It suggested that Whitehall was ridiculously progressive, by the standards of the time. She couldn’t help wondering just what—if anything—he knew of the relationship between his daughter and his apprentice.
“Give it time,” she repeated.
Bernard looked at her. “How did you avoid getting married?”
“There was a young man I was seeing,” Emily said. It was true enough. “But we came to the castle and ... and I have no idea what happened to him.”
“He wouldn’t have waited for you,” Bernard said. “If he had no idea what happened to you, Emily, no one would blame him for marrying someone else.”
Emily shrugged. Bernard was trying to be nice, she realized, but she didn’t want to talk about it. It was the same old problem, over and over again. The more lies—or half-truths mixed with lies—that she told, the greater the chance of tripping up badly. And then they’d know she was lying about something. And then ...
“Your young man,” Bernard said. “Didn’t he know about the curse?”
“He believed I could have children,” Emily said, stiffly. “And I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
Bernard gave her an odd look, but said nothing else as they reached the bottom of the stairs and headed down to the kitchens. The smell of roasting meat wafted out towards them as they walked past the open door—Emily glanced in to see a makeshift fire burning merrily in the center of the room—and down towards a larger room. A grim-faced woman was standing in front of a door, her arms crossed under her breasts. She looked to be in her late sixties, although Emily suspected she was much younger. And the look she gave Bernard was far from friendly.
“You can’t go past this point,” she said, sternly.
“Of course,” Bernard said.
Emily glanced at him. “I’ll see you at dinner?”
“Probably,” Bernard said. He gave Emily a mischievous smile. “I don’t know where you’re going to sit, of course.”
He turned and strode off before Emily could ask what he meant. She watched him go, then shrugged and turned back to the door. The old woman stepped aside without a word, her eyes flickering over Emily’s body in a manner that seemed to combine fear and disdain—and an odd sort of yearning that worried Emily more than she cared to admit. She pushed the door open and walked into the room. Inside, a large wooden tub of water sat on the ground, a handful of smaller buckets piled up against the wall. Julianne stood on the far side of the room, placing two small bundles on a single large chair.
“Make sure you lock that door,” Julianne advised, as she picked up one of the buckets and carried it to the tub. “We don’t want any of the lads walking in on us.”
“Definitely not,” Emily agreed.
Julianne gave her an odd little smile. “They don’t know what to make of you,” she said. She poured the water into the tub, then started to undress. “They keep asking if you’re really a magician.”
Emily snorted. “You could answer that question,” she said.
“Yes, I could,” Julianne said. “But I won’t.”
She stepped out of her dress and started to splash water on her body. Emily blinked in surprise, then reminded herself that a hot tub of water was the height of luxury outside Whitehall, even in her time. Hot and cold running water was a rarity, certainly outside the mansions and castles of the rich and powerful. The servants—the camp followers—would have collected the water from the lake and carried it up to the castle ... she shook her head, feeling a stab of sympathy, as she started to undress. Their work would never end.
“You’re perfect,” Julianne said. She looked up at Emily, studying her body with an intensity that made Emily blush. “There isn’t a scar on your skin, just ...”
She indicated the rune between Emily’s breasts. “What is that?”
“Protection,” Emily said, shortly. “I carved it myself.”
Julianne nodded, her eyes still sweeping Emily’s body. Emily sighed, pushing her embarrassment aside as she looked in turn. Julianne was beautiful, but she was dangerously thin and she had a nasty-looking scar on her right arm as well as reddish pockmarks on her feet. She’d seen similar pockmarks before; they were almost always proof that their bearer hadn’t been able to afford decent medical care. A dark patch was clearly visible just below Julianne’s left breast, a purplish bruise that Emily hoped desperately was a birthmark. If someone had actually injured her ...
Poor nutrition, she thought. She was hardly the tallest student in Whitehall in her time, but here she was amongst the tallest people in the castle. Poor nutrition, and a lack of decent medical care.
“I always thought I was too pale,” Emily said. She started to wash herself, splashing warm water over her face. There was no soap, let alone shampoo or anything else she could use to wash her hair. “I didn’t get enough sun when I was younger.”
“You’re perfect,” Julianne said, again. She gave Emily an odd little smile. “What do you think of my father?”
“I think he’s an interesting man,” Emily said, after a moment. She was too tired for word games. “I’m grateful for the chance to study under him.”
Julianne’s expression twisted. “My mother died in childbirth,” she said. “I never knew her.”
Emily frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that ...”
“He needs a wife,” Julianne added. “You could ...”
Emily had to fight down the absurd urge to start giggling. “Are you seriously suggesting I marry your father?”
Julianne colored. “It would give you a place ...”
“Your father is old enough to be my father,” Emily said. She had no idea how old Whitehall was, but if his daughter was nineteen, Whitehall had to be at least thirty-five. Not that old, not compared to Void or Grandmaster Hasdrubal ... she shook her head. Even if she was inclined to marry someone, it wouldn’t be a man nearly twice her age. “And I don’t need a place.”
A hint of bitterness flickered across Julianne’s face. “Every woman needs a place,” she said, sourly. “And I’m the only one in mine.”
Emily frowned. “There are other young women here ...”
“Yes, there are,” Julianne interrupted. “But I’m the only magician’s daughter. I have no place amongst the magicians and no friends amongst the other women.”
“I would have thought that wouldn’t matter,” Emily said, after a moment. She tied her hair back as she splashed more water on her face. “You’re all on the run, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Julianne said. Her face twisted, as if she had bitten into a lemon. “But it does matter.”
“I know,” Emily said.
She understood. She understood all too well. Julianne was isolated by gender, by birth, and by social status in a world where such status could be lost in a heartbeat. She was no serving girl, nor was she a magician. She had no place; she could not join the magicians any more than she could join the servants and camp followers. And she would never be anything other than her father’s daughter—or, if she married Bernard, his wife.
Poor girl, Emily thought. And yet, she’s in the most progressive place in the world.

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