Hasdrubal's Tale

Chapter Five

Professor Bodoh had always been my favourite teacher.

It was hard to say why. He was a tall, powerfully built man who didn’t suffer fools gladly and had no qualms about smacking our hands when we messed up our spellwork beyond any hope of recovery. The combination of icy blue eyes and hair cut close to his scalp gave him a devastatingly intimidating appearance, to the point his mere presence could calm a corridor riot in the blink of an eye. It was no mere pretence either. He had a list of duelling trophies — legal and semi-legal — longer than my arm. I should not have liked him and yet I did. He was so different from our uncle that there was simply no contest.

“Hasdrubal,” Professor Bodoh said, as I stepped into the chamber. “You’ve come back.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I understand you require an assistant.”

“Among other things,” Professor Bodoh said. There were other charms tutors, but they guarded their semi-independence closely. I suspected I knew, now, why they’d been so few candidates for the post. “What have you been doing with yourself, since the apprenticeship?”

I felt another pang of guilt as he bounced questions off me and I did my best to answer. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t precisely lying to him, but I had no intention of taking up the job either. Even if our experiment failed… I sighed inwardly. I could take up the job, if I wanted, but it would mean giving up all hopes of being recognised as one of the family. And working under Boscha…

The discussion lasted nearly an hour and I felt exhausted at the end, even though the interview was meaningless. Professor Bodoh had never been one to leave any stone unturned — I was glad it hadn’t been him who’d discovered us near the shrine — and he questioned me mercilessly about my work experience. It would be difficult to return to the school as a professor, he warned, when I’d only graduated three years ago. There’d be senior students who remembered me as a student, students who could be relied upon to act out in my class. I’d have to come down on them hard… I cut that line of thought off mercilessly. I wasn’t going to become a tutor. The last thing I wanted was to be under Boscha’s thumb.

“I’ll be in touch,” Professor Bodoh said, when we’d finished. “By the way, what are you doing at the shrine?”

“Draining wild magic,” I said, silently relieved we’d gone through the cover story time and time again. “We intend to cleanse the land, then claim the reward.”

“Interesting,” Professor Bodoh said, neutrally. “Good luck.”

I stood, bowed, and left the room. Robin stood outside, his face blank. I felt my heart twist painfully. The charms we’d woven into the coin were subtle, designed to avoid detection, but once they took root they were almost impossible to resist. We’d had no choice — brute force charms were all too noticeable, if someone took a close look — yet I still felt guilty. I hoped Robin was one of the prefects who abused his powers. They deserved more than a little painful humiliation…

And you’re not the one who has to hand it out, I told myself, sharply. You’re not a student any longer.

“Take us to the storeroom,” I ordered.

Robin turned and walked down the corridor. It looked strikingly natural — he didn’t look as though he were in a trance or fighting to resist a compulsion charm — but I kept a wary eye for other students and tutors anyway. It was the weekend and most of the students would be tormenting the townspeople, while their tutors took a break from tormenting them, yet there was no way to be sure. We’d spent quite a few weekends in the school, raiding the library or experimenting in the spellchambers or, in one case, sneaking into a prefect’s room and enchanting her bed to toss her onto the floor the moment she fell asleep. She’d deserved it too… it would be ironic, I supposed, if we were caught because someone was trying to follow in our footsteps.

The storeroom was locked and warded, but a prefect had free access. Normally. I braced myself as Robin pushed open the door, revealing row upon row of shelves crammed with everything from simple tools and weapons to complex magical devices that needed an enchanter to craft them from scratch and then infuse them with magic. The handful of protective charms inside the door were designed more to warn unwary students than keep them out, but we carefully probed their structure before taking the spellware apart. I was not surprised to discover alarm charms, hidden within the warnings. Professor Bodoh never missed a trick.

“Stand there and wait,” I ordered, pushing the door closed. “Void?”

Void stepped out of the shadows. “We have to hurry,” he said. “Boscha may or may not be here, but even if he isn’t someone is probably monitoring the wards.”

“Over there,” Himilco said. He pointed to a shelf. “Be careful when you bring it down.”

I nodded as I hurried to the wardstone and held out my hand, checking for unpleasant surprises. The school’s wardstones were unique, designed to hold a ward and then, when the student was done, have that ward swept away without damaging the wardstone itself. It was a remarkable piece of work, even though I knew they’d never be used to anchor a real set of wards. They’d suffice for us though, if we were careful. I tested the stone, and then the shelf, and then the surrounding air before carefully lifting the wardstone from the shelf and placing it on the table. It seemed to glow with potential, just waiting to be used. I marvelled at its size — no bigger than a football — as Void picked up a chest and placed it beside the wardstone. We had to hurry. Time was no longer on our side.

The chest was dull wood, lined with iron. I braced myself and cast a handful of concealment and containment charms around the chest, sinking them into the wood. They wouldn’t last for more than a couple of hours or so, but they’d suffice. There was no way to carry the wardstone out without setting off every alarm in the school, yet if it was concealed within the chest it should be undetectable. I hoped. It wouldn’t be easy for us to walk out with the chest, no matter what charms we used. But Robin could.

“Done,” I said, as I placed the wardstone into the chest. “Are you ready?”

Void nodded, raising his hand to cast spells of his own. “On three?”

I counted. “Three… two… one… now!”

The chest clicked shut. Void cast his spell at the same time, interfacing with the monitoring wards and convincing them the wardstone hadn’t simply popped out of existence. I didn’t know if they’d notice — if you got through the outer layer of wards, the inner layer had a nasty habit of assuming you had every right to be there — but there was no point in taking chances. If we were noticed before we left, we’d have to fight our way out and that might prove impossible. Himilco stood ready to quash the wards if they sounded the alarm… nothing happened. I hoped that meant they’d been fooled. There’d be no escape if they’d sounded a silent alarm instead.

They can’t, I told myself. We’d have sensed something even if there wasn’t an audio alarm.

I took a knapsack, checked it for protective charms, and slipped the chest into the leather bag. Robin would have no trouble carrying it out of the school and it was unlikely anyone would try to question him. Prefects didn’t like being questioned and they tended to hand out everything from beatings to detentions to anyone who dared. I muttered orders to Robin, telling him what to say or do if someone got in our way, then waited for Void and Himilco to obscure themselves again before we headed for the door and out into the corridor. It was still empty, but — when we made our way down the corridor — we ran straight into Professor Bodoh.

It took years of practice to keep from swearing, or cursing in both senses of the word. The tutors weren’t stupid, but decades spent under Boscha had made them very good at not seeing things they didn’t want to see. Professor Bodoh, on the other hand, was observant enough to notice the faint signs something was deeply wrong with Robin and powerful enough to do something about it. The three of us would be hard-pressed to take him, if it came down to a fight, and even trying would set off alarms throughout the school. Hamilcar wouldn’t have the slightest idea what had happened to us until it was far too late.

“Robin.” Professor Bodoh scowled. “Why have you not shown our guest to the door?”

“He wanted to see the classroom, sir,” Robin said. “He was…”

“I asked him to show me,” I said, quickly. “It hasn’t changed that much since I left the school.”

Professor Bodoh said nothing for a long moment, then shrugged. “I suppose I can’t really blame you,” he said. “But I would have shown you if you’d asked.”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” I told him. Professor Bodoh had had a nasty habit of snapping at anyone who disturbed him unless the matter was urgent. He’d once told us that urgent meant a matter of life or death. “Robin was kind enough to show me the classroom. Please don’t punish him for it.”

Professor Bodoh nodded, curtly. “Show him out,” he ordered Robin. “And then resume your duties.”

I tried not to exhale in relief as we resumed our walk. Professor Bodoh might have noticed something and then… I shook my head as we made our way up the stairs, passing a pair of students clearly looking for a place to make out and several more returning from town with sweets, books, and whatever else they’d been able to buy or extort from the townspeople. I wished, not for the first time, that there was something I could do about it. Sooner or later, our treatment of the townspeople was going to bite us. Hard.

The other two stayed close behind me as we walked down the road and through the gatehouse — and the wards. Sweat prickled at my back. The wards weren’t designed to stop anyone from actually leaving, not when the school wasn’t in immediate danger, but Boscha could have adjusted them on the fly if he’d realised what we were doing. I glanced back, feeling magic flow around the school. Boscha shouldn’t be grandmaster. It should be someone who actually gave a damn about his students.

“Well,” Void said. His voice was so low I could barely make out the words and only then because of our mental link. “That went well.”

“Stay quiet,” I hissed. “We’re not home yet.”

I kept walking. There were dozens of students around us, some on the roads and others running through the woods. I felt a flicker of pity as I saw a young boy running for cover, a trio of older thugs following him. They tripped and fell as they crossed the road, their faces striking the cobblestones hard enough to break noses and teeth. Void had hexed them, the spell so low-power it was barely noticeable. He’d always been the best of us when it came to casting such spells.

It was nearly an hour before we could step off the road and into the woods, muttering concealment spells as we picked our way through the overgrown path. No one would be able to see us, I hoped, and no one would be able to scry us from a distance. There was so much wild magic in the forest, even miles from the shrine, that there’d be no way for anyone to pick us out from the haze. Or so we told ourselves.

“Put the pack down,” I ordered Robin. His face was bland, as he were a wallflower at a family dance. A pleasant and utterly meaningless smile gave him an eerie look. “And then wait.”

“It worked,” Void said. “I told you it would.”

“Yeah,” Himilco said. “I expected tighter security.”

Void snorted. “How many people would want to steal a student-grade wardstone?”

“Point,” I said. The wardstone wasn’t designed to be permanent. I’d seen tutors casually undermine and collapse ward networks that had become tangled messes or actively dangerous to their casters. “We’d have a harder time getting our hands on rare potion ingredients.”

I sighed, inwardly. How long would it take to uncover the theft? I’d served detentions where I’d had to go through the shelves and check that the supplies actually matched the inventory. Professor Bodoh wasn’t one of the teachers who believed in corporal punishment when the student could do something that would be useful as well as teach them a lesson. The theft might be discovered a week from now or a month or any time in between. We would have to move fast. If the school realised the wardstone was gone, they’d start taking a careful look at everyone who’d visited since the last inventory.

“True.” Void pointed a finger at Robin, who regarded him absently. “We’ll have to dispose of him.”

“You mean kill him,” I said, flatly. “No.”

“It’s too dangerous to leave him alive,” Void argued. “If they discover the charms on him…”

“He’s a student, not a dark wizard,” I argued. “He doesn’t deserve to die.”

“He’s a prefect,” Void growled. “How did he get the post unless he spent a lot of time kissing Boscha’s ass?”

“He doesn’t deserve to die,” I repeated. Yes, there had been some prefects who could only have been improved by being dropped into a volcano. Robin might not be one of them. Even if he was, his disappearance would be noted. It would take some time, I thought, before it dawned on the staff he hadn’t been turned into an object and stuffed somewhere out of sight, but once it did they’d start searching in earnest. “Void, we cannot kill him.”

“He’s a massive security risk,” Void said. “If he talks…”

I scoffed. “Have some faith in me,” I said. “He won’t remember a thing.”

Robin came at my command. I led him some distance away, then muttered instructions while carefully untangling the charms so they’d vanish before anyone got a good look at them. He wouldn’t remember Void or Himilco or anything beyond walking me down to Dragon’s Den, then going to a brothel with the tip I’d given him. His subconscious would fill in the details as he walked back to the school, ensuring that he didn’t think to question his own memories. It would be more convincing, to him, than me spinning an entire story. There’d certainly be fewer rough edges that might prove key to unlocking the truth.

“Go,” I ordered.

He went. The spells would fade away when he reached the road, reality and false memories merging into a seamless whole. There should be no reason for anyone to ask questions. I hoped…

I returned to my brothers. “He thinks he went to a brothel,” I told them. It wouldn’t be the first time a prefect had been ordered to go to the town, then take advantage of the lack of supervision to stay longer than his superior had intended. Prefects could get away with things normal students could not. “They’ll understand.”

“A good chance to do nothing while following orders,” Himilco agreed. “No one will look too closely.”

“I hope you’re right,” Void said. “We could have killed him, or even kept him prisoner, long enough to complete the ritual. Letting him go might have been a mistake.”

“And if we’d killed him, we would have tainted the ritual,” I countered, as we started to walk back to the shine. Hamilcar would be wondering what had happened to us. “We have to enter the rite with the best of intentions.”

Void didn’t look convinced. I understood. We were already too exposed. Grandmaster Boscha and Professor Bodoh knew we were at the shine, they knew our cover story; they might just ask questions, even if they didn’t realise they’d lost a wardstone. It was just a matter of time before someone asked the right questions, or contacted our uncle to ask what we were doing. Uncle Mago might be quietly hoping we’d buggered off for good — I knew how he thought — but he’d be shocked into action if the Grandmaster asked what was happening. And who knew what would happen then?

“We got the prize,” Void said, as we reached the shrine. Hamilcar stepped back from his work and waved to us. “We can do the final preparations now, then start tomorrow at midnight.”

“It is supposed to be the best time,” I agreed. I didn’t pretend to understand it — most charms could be cast at any time of day — but all the books on demon summoning insisted the summoning needed to be performed in darkness. There was no point in taking chances by ignoring the rules, as absurd as they seemed. “And we have to prepare ourselves too.”

“Quite,” Void agreed. He rubbed his hands together, eyes alight with the promise of future glories. “If we can make this work…”

We concealed the wardstone, then returned to our tents to build a fire and cook dinner. It was… it was pleasant, to talk to my brothers and share food with them. And yet, it was just another meal. If we’d known what was going to come… if we’d known…

But we didn’t. And so we walked to our fate.