First Witch's Tale

Afterward

At this point, the scroll ends.

It is not clear what happened to Janis after this. What few records we have of Early Whitehall suggests the school was attacked, frequently, until it managed to carve out a niche for itself as part of the newborn Empire. If she followed the same path as her peers - most of whom have left no trace on the historical record - she would have graduated a few years after the events depicted in the scroll, and then gone on to serve the school in some capacity. It is possible she was the first housemother, supervising the new female students, but we have no clue one way or the other. There are references to a female staff member a few years after the scroll who could have been Janis, yet we may never know.

There is some evidence to suggest that there were, at one point, other scrolls. It is unlikely that this is the only scroll Janis ever produced, given that there are hints she graduated school and survived for quite some time afterwards. It is, however, impossible to be sure. Our records are just too garbled. There are faint references to a Janis two hundred years later, but it seems unlikely that is the same person. We are forced to assess the scroll based on what she tells us and little else. It is not an easy task.

The idea that a woman could not study magic, and not match her male counterparts, seems strange and alien to us now. Generations of mixed-sex education have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that women are not inherently inferior to men when it comes to using and developing magic. Many popular spells were developed by female magicians; many female magicians have served as everything from healers to alchemists, enchanters and combat sorcerers. Indeed, given the importance of weaving new magical potential into long-established bloodlines, the idea of ignoring half the candidates because they were born female is just absurd.

And yet, it took longer than one might expect for women to start studying formal magic.

It is difficult to understand why, without a solid grounding in early spellcasting. In mundane terms, the early spells inflicted considerable damage upon their casters. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the raw magic damaged the magician’s body and mind, resulting – eventually - in madness and death. This often resulted in outright sterility, to the point that it was relatively rare for the early magicians to have children. Males got low sperm counts; females, unfortunately, were rendered almost completely sterile. It was not until formal magic was introduced, with the magic toned down to limit the damage as much as possible, that both men and women were able to study magic freely.

It was true, also, that witches tended to be feared. The average villager of those times would tolerate, rather than like, the village witch; it was not unknown, particular in the days of the magical purge, for the witch to be driven out of the village or forced to live at some distance from the town itself. This may seem absurd today, when a lynch mob could be turned into toads with the wave of a witch’s hands, but the spells for human transfiguration had yet to be developed. Indeed, most girls who showed signs of magic were quietly advised to leave the village, pointed towards Whitehall or a distant witch, or simply murdered. The risk of them losing control of their powers was simply too great. Our heroine, assuming she existed at all, was very lucky. Her father would have been quite within his rights to kill her and his community would certainly have expected him to do so.

If this document is genuine, it represents the first major insight we have into the period of early magical schooling. It shows us a fascinating glimpse of early Whitehall and how the commune’s practices slowly morphed into the system of education we still use today. It also introduces us to someone who should be entered into the historical record, and honoured for her contributions to the school.

It is unclear, of course, if it is genuine. It is quite possible that the scroll was written considerably later, then concealed within the school for reasons unknown. There were certainly times within the history of the school where the tunnels might have been opened and then resealed, although we have little hard information. If that is the case, the document would have passed many magical checks and verifications spells without raising suspicions.

That said, the document is not written in High Speech or the cruder forms of Low Speech. The scroll is written in one of, if not the, oldest known languages, a formal script that eventually evolved into Imperial Script and eventually both High and Low Speech. It is astonishingly difficult for anyone in this day and age to write so fluently in the script and indeed, a great deal of information has been lost - up to and including what the contemporaries actually called the script. Many a fake document has been discovered by the forger carelessly referring to the script as Old Script, the term developed by the History Guild several centuries later; it goes without saying, I think, that Old Script was not the original name. The writer clearly learnt to read and write late in life, as there are random errors within the text that would be extremely difficult to fake. Old Script was more tolerant of errors than the later High Speech, and none of the contemporaries would have any difficulty reading the scroll; indeed, the lack of any more recent flourishes is solid proof the scroll is what it claims to be.

It is worth noting, also, that my female colleagues insist there is something decidedly feminine about the writing. This is something that would be unapparent in any document written in High Speech, where the writing is designed to be largely sexless and rhetorical flourishes are strongly discouraged. This is often blamed for the lack of riveting documents and texts produced between the First Emperor and the Empire’s fall, centuries later. It is unlikely that anyone who wrote during that period would be able to escape the conventions of the time.

Set against this, however, there are the references to magics that literally do not exist. The Lay of Lord Alfred makes many references to impossible feats, from strange creatures at his beck and call to the ancient magician plucking the moon out of the sky, and it is far from alone in attributing wondrous powers to individuals who may never have existed at all, but this document is different. The thing might be one of the Awful Folk, as Janis speculated, or it might have been made up of whole cloth. There is certainly nothing like it active today.

It is quite possible, of course, that certain spells and magical rites were lost over the years, particularly after the disaster that destroyed a number of noted magical bloodlines, but is very rare for magical knowledge be lost completely. That said, magic was far less understood in those days and the combination of that lack of understanding and entities dwelling within nearby high-magic zones might easily have created tales of magic and powers beyond human comprehension.

This is not unknown in other fields. Castle Corte appeared to showcase a whole new method of construction, but attempts to duplicate it proved futile. It was not until several failed attempts that the builders realised the original design had only worked because the castle rested on very solid ground indeed. The early magicians could have had the same problem.

My personal belief is that the scroll is genuine. There are too many details that ring true from the point of view of the founders, but not today. The tendency to view the past through a modern-day lens makes it difficult to understand the limitations facing the founders, their apprentices and students, and everyone else caught up in great events.

But I could be wrong.

Historian Titus, History Guild