I nodded, suddenly aware – too - of just how terrible I looked. My clothes were torn and tattered, my hair dripping out of my scarf and spilling around my shoulders. I should have donned male guise, but I doubted it would have fooled anyone … and it might have been worse for me if it had. I didn’t look like a prospective apprentice. I looked like someone who had been living in the forest for the last year.
“I came from Bramble Fire,” I said. I knew even as I spoke that he would never have heard of my home village. It was one of many such villages that were barely known outside the district. “I … My Lord, I … I heard Whitehall was taking female students.”
“Did you now?” Bernard De Born’s expression gave nothing away. “And where did you hear that?”
I felt a sudden terrible fear that my entire journey had been for nothing. “A peddler passed through the village. He told us that the school was accepting students, people willing to be educated in the new way of magic. He said there were female students already and that … and that any who went would be welcome. I …”
My legs buckled. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“It is true the risks of teaching magic to women, and encouraging them to use it, have been much reduced,” he said. His tone was flat, his face unreadable. “But we have no female students. Julianne … is not precisely a student.”
My heart sank. “Then let me be the first!”
He smiled, just for a second. “You have nerve. I’ll grant you that, if nothing else. But do you have the stubbornness, and determination, to succeed in magic? To learn the trade without shortcuts, the kind of shortcuts that are explicitly forbidden within the school? To bear the burden of knowledge, knowledge that will cut you off from your relatives … perhaps forever? If you step through these doors, your life will never be the same again.”
“My relatives don’t want to see me again,” I said. I feared it was true, even though my father hadn’t actually kicked me out and disowned me. “I really don’t have anywhere else to go.”
The magician pointed north. “There’s a small town on the other side of the mountains,” he said. “You could go there and live there, if you wish. You will be safe.”
“I don’t want to be safe,” I said. The magic bubbled within me. “I want to learn magic.”
“I see.” Bernard De Born met my eyes. “What happened?”
I hesitated, unsure what - if anything - I should say. I knew what he was asking. He wanted to know how I had discovered I had magic, why my family might have disowned me. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I feared I had no choice. Lying wasn’t an option. I had the feeling the magician would spot a lie as quickly as my father. And if I lied to him …
“There was a young man,” I said, finally. My heart twisted. I would have been happy with David, if things had been different. “We went walking out together. He … he tried to kiss me and I panicked and my magic sparked … and I hurt him. I didn’t mean to hurt him and yet … since then, I’ve been practising, but … I want to learn how to use magic. My magic.”
“You’ve been practising,” Bernard De Born said. “What can you do?”
I hesitated again. No one had caught me practising magic in the village. If they had … I would be lucky if they had only beat me halfway to death and thrown whatever was left of me out to die. Father would have had no choice but to kick me out – or worse. I would have sooner undressed in front of an audience, than performed magic in front of a stranger. And yet … I had to prove I was worth taking on as a student and apprentice. I held out my hand, cupping my palm, and concentrated. A flame appeared, dancing above my skin without ever quite touching it, and grew rapidly. Bernard looked impressed, just for a second. I hoped that was a good sign.
“Crude,” he said. “But effective.”
I nodded, the flames flickering and dying as I lost my grip on the power. My legs wobbled unsteadily as the last of the flames vanished, a grim reminder that pushing myself too far was dangerous. I had discovered the hard way that trying to experiment too much was asking for trouble. I had been very lucky not to faint in the forest, so far from the village that it was unlikely anyone would find me before I died of exposure. Or worse. If they realised what had been doing …
“You have potential,” Bernard De Born said. “Come with me.”
He turned and led the way through the gap in the wall. I hesitated, then forced my wobbly legs to follow him. Magic sparkled around me, growing stronger as we made our way towards the castle. It towered over us, so large I had difficulty believing it was even real. The largest building I had seen in my entire life was a longhouse belonging to an extended family, with room for over forty men, women, and children, but the castle made it look tiny. I got dizzy just looking up at the sheer immensity of the building. It was difficult, if not impossible, to believe it was made by human hands. I learnt, later, that no one knew who had really built the castle. It had been deserted when Lord Whitehall arrived to lay claim to the nexus point and name the castle after himself.
Bernard kept walking, but reduced his pace so I could look around. It was just too big. The hallway was immense, the stone corridors large enough for three or four men to walk abreast comfortably, the handful of teaching halls seemingly big enough for much bigger classes. I spotted a number of young men practising their spells, watched carefully by older magicians. There were no women. I wondered, suddenly, if Bernard was going to get into trouble bringing me into the castle. It was unusual for women to be allowed to enter the headman’s hut when he was passing judgement, after extensive consultation with the village elders. I had certainly never been allowed to enter myself, even after what had happened to David.
I swallowed, then asked. “Will your master be angry if you bring me to him?”
The magician chuckled, as if I had said something funny. “I shall have a few sharp words with myself later,” he said. “I am the master of the school.”
My complexion, thankfully, hid my embarrassment. And confusion. Lord Bernard was the master of the school? What had happened to Lord Whitehall? And what … I pushed the thought out of my head as Lord Bernard led me into an office and pointed me at a chair. My stomach growled uncomfortably as I sat, reminding me it had been too long since I had eaten something. Anything. Lord Bernard shot me a sympathetic look, then snapped his fingers. A young woman entered a moment later, bearing a tray of food. I hesitated, even as the food was placed in front of me. I had been cautioned never to eat food without a clear invitation.
“Please, eat,” Lord Bernard said. The servant retreated and returned a moment later the second tray, which she placed in front of her master. “A magician has to eat to power his spells. We discovered that a long time ago.”
“I never knew,” I muttered. The stew in front of me looked and smelled delicious. The bread was clearly new, baked only a few short hours ago. I was very familiar with stews intended to use up the last of the slaughtered animal, but this … I shook my head as I started to eat, hoping I wasn’t making a bad impression. “No one ever told me …”
“No one told me either, until …” Bernard shook his head. “What else do you know about magic?”
I took a bite of bread, trying to compose an answer. “Very little. I was told magic was inherently dangerous, that men who practised magic could be very dangerous and women shouldn’t practice magic at all. The hedge witch couldn’t give me much instruction. I thought … that’s why I came here.”
Bernard leaned back in his chair. “Magic is … complicated. In the olden days, using magic damaged the body and mind alike. Men who used magic risked going insane, a problem made worse by … well, we’ll talk about that later, if you stay. Women who used magic lost their ability to have children, for various reasons. It took us years to determine ways to cast spells that limited the damage to the human body. There are still issues, for reasons we have never been able to determine, but it is much safer – now - for both men and women.”