“Very good.” Samra waved a hand at a table. A pair of scrolls sat there, surrounded by a protective charm. “Emily, I need to have a word with Melissa. While we’re gone, read those scrolls and consider them carefully. I’ll call you into the next room when we’re ready.”
Emily nodded, shortly. The idea of sitting down sounded good, all things considered. It had been a long and thoroughly unpleasant day. Professor Armstrong had insisted she had to rework her personal wards, Professor Lombardi had questioned her judgement after a tiny error had threatened to snowball into a major disaster and Professor Thande had made the entire class repeatedly brew an alchemical concoction of no obvious value. If she hadn’t been summoned to attend an impromptu class on soul magic, she would have gone straight back to her bedroom and taken a nap.
She sat down and opened the first scroll. It was nothing more than an attempt by an unknown writer to translate the terms of soul magic into something common magicians could understand. Emily found herself struggling to parse it out, understanding—not for the first time—why most magicians shied away from soul magic. Altering a single variable in a charm could prove disastrous, but the effects could be anticipated and countered, while in soul magic alterations and effects seemed to be completely unpredictable. The writer concluded by stating it should be possible to weave soul magic into a standard ward, but Emily couldn’t swear to it. His argument relied upon so many buzzwords—half of which seemed to have been invented specifically for the scroll—that it was impossible to follow his words.
No wonder Frieda is having problems, she thought, feeling a flicker of sympathy. The writer seemed to be an older version of Celadon. I can’t make heads or tails of this scroll either.
She put it aside and opened the other one. It felt old against her bare fingers. Whoever had written it had used Old Script rather than the common tongue, forcing her to translate it as best as she could. Her head was pounding by the time she managed to decipher the first passages, leaving her wondering why no one had bothered to do an official translation. But an account of the first person to experiment with soul magic—or at least the first person to survive the experience—wasn’t something that anyone would want translated. It sounded as though the writer hadn’t enjoyed himself.
The door opened. “Emily,” Samra called. “Replace the protective charm and join us, if you please?”
Emily nodded, rolling up the scrolls before carefully resetting the charm. The parchment probably had some magic woven into the material, just to keep it intact. It awed her to think that it might have been passed down from master to master ... she wondered, suddenly, if it predated Lord Whitehall and his commune. She hadn’t heard anything about soul magic during her trip to the past, but the commune had been fairly isolated. Magicians didn’t start sharing secrets openly until after Whitehall School was established.
She rose and walked into the next room. Melissa was sitting in an armchair, so stiffly that Emily wondered if she’d been frozen in place. Only the rise and fall of her breasts—and her blinking eyes—suggested otherwise. Her face was so tightly controlled that Emily knew she was unhappy. She glanced at Samra, wondering just what the old woman had done. It would have to be something bad after everything else Melissa had done in the last few months.
“Close the door,” Samra ordered. “Melissa, say something.”
Melissa opened her mouth and brayed like a mule. Emily jumped. There was no shortage of spells that made people talk like animals—there was no shortage of spells to turn people into animals—but she wouldn’t have expected one of them to work on Melissa. She was a sixth-year student, for crying out loud. Melissa should have had no trouble shrugging off a spell that even firsties could counter after a few weeks of training. And yet ...
“Melissa has been cursed,” Samra said. “Say something else, my dear?”
Melissa tried to say something, but clucked like a chicken instead. Emily reached out with her senses, but felt nothing. Melissa seemed to have removed all of her personal wards, leaving her effectively naked. And yet, there was no hostile magic surrounding her. A simple jinx should be easy to detect and remove, but ...
“The curse in question is a very nasty piece of work indeed,” Samra said, conversationally. Emily felt a flash of hatred that surprised her. Melissa didn’t have to be humiliated, not like this. “I believe the person who invented it must have known something about soul magic, as the curse is quite hard to remove without using soul magic. And yet, it can be cast by any reasonably competent magician.”
Emily made a face. She had been warned, time and time again, not to cast a spell if she didn’t know what it did. On one hand, not knowing what the spell did would make it harder to cast; on the other hand, it would also make it harder to counter or remove the spell if it turned into something dangerous. Professor Lombardi had made them read hundreds of horror stories about magicians who didn’t parse out spells before casting them. The lucky ones were often scarred for life.
Not that an angry magician would bother to read the warnings first, she thought. She’d read a couple of books on dark magic. They don’t care about the side effects.
“Indeed, the vast majority of unbreakable curses owe something to soul magic,” Samra added, seemingly unaware of Emily’s growing anger. “They are simply too firmly embedded in a person’s soul to be easily removed, at least without causing real harm in the process. The patients in the Halfway House, alas, cannot be cured without killing them.”
“You cast the spell on her,” Emily growled.
“Quite,” Samra agreed. “Melissa knows she has been cursed, of course. And yet she can no more remove it than she can perform major surgery on her body. Variations on this spell make it impossible for her to speak of it, if she even realizes that she has been cursed.”
“To speak of it,” Emily repeated. Melissa brayed, loudly. “Why ...?”
“She could write a note,” Samra said, sarcastically.
She paced around Melissa and stopped, behind her. “Your task is to remove the curse. You have twenty minutes. I suggest you get it right the first time.”
Emily glared at her. “If this could cause her permanent harm ...”
“Name me a class in Whitehall that doesn’t risk permanent harm,” Samra challenged. She met Emily’s eyes, silently daring her to object further. “And Melissa did volunteer for this ...”
She’d be happier volunteering to take off her clothes in a junior healing class, Emily thought, grimly. Lady Barb had hired volunteers from Dragon’s Den for anatomical studies. Emily suspected it had been a very good idea. Looking a fellow student in the eye—after that student had stripped naked in front of the entire class—would have been difficult. This could be really dangerous.