a surfeit of wizards 11

 

Chapter 11

 

Dressed in plain brown academic robes and without my staff, I accompanied Frigermar to the academy.  He presented Ogramir with the letter of dismissal from Dragovar.

Ogramir paled.

“But you’re a failed wizard,” he whined.

“And Dragovar and the Towermaster think I was robbed,” said Frigermar. “And be that as it may, they trust me to put right all your right royal fuck-ups.”

“I’ve got friends in high places,” threatened Ogramir.

“None who trump Dragovar,” said Frigermar, who had really come out of himself since being given responsibility and – I suspect, more so, from having beaten his father into a pulp.

He left, grumbling.

I used my new abilities to fly and did so under invisibility to go up the outside of the tower of the School of Summoning, peering in the windows on various levels.

I was vindicated. I had not wanted to be.

The schools had a main teacher who taught basics to the youngest classes, but they had experts within their fields as part of their faculty who followed the specialities of the higher years.  Some of these were essentially student teachers doing coaching work or overseeing personal projects.

All the seniors were learning demonology, not just how to safely summon demons; and the point at which I lost all semblance of being an impartial observer recording the abuses, and actually burst into a classroom was where I saw a young female tied to a stone in the centre of a summoning circle, naked, terrified, and the teacher standing over her with a knife. As he was lecturing, I let him condemn himself out of his own mouth in explaining to the rest of the class that the unfortunate Evdika was going to suffer a fatal accident, which would be presented as through her own carelessness, having brought it on herself for suggesting that summoning demons was dangerous and rather foolish. I judged it to be the fifth year where they were receiving their first tasters.

I hurled myself through the window.

What else could I do?

I incinerated the staff member, and burned off the summoning circle. Even without my staff, the Tower was with me.

The class scattered. 

I untied Evdika.

She was sobbing. Unsurprisingly.

“The rest of you, to the principal’s office, now!” I snapped.

They went. I found some clothes for Evdika, and followed them down, carrying her.

“By the gods! What were we doing?” cried one of the others on the way.

By the time we reached Frigermar, all but one of them were sobbing in horror. It seemed that the Control teacher was not the only one to rape the minds of the students.

  I called in Beretrulle’s troops and arrested the whole of the Summoning faculty and dosed them thoroughly with truth serum. And Ogramir, who was still packing.

Once they were glassy eyed and quiescent with enough truth serum in them to be unaware if they were human beings or overripe peaches, they sang like birds.

Ogramir, it seemed, had no idea of what was going on. He made helpless noises. Apparently he did not even enter the individual towers, and only appeared to be a good administrator by staying within budget and reading the reports and precising them.

The rest of the summoning faculty knew. They had been discussing raising a demon to help on the faculty; sacrificing Evdika was to accomplish that, but at least they had not got that far.

Fortunately, as I found out from crispy guy’s notes, the demon he was trying to summon was Pointy-Teeth; Crispy man had, apparently, been a lover of Renilla’s and was unaware how thoroughly Chessina and I had banished their patron, and believed we could have done no more than disrupt a summoning.

Mind, with a virgin sacrifice, it might have overcome it.

And some of the senior students were going to be arrested as well.  But we did not yet have a full-scale demon incursion, and that was because none of the faculty were strong enough to do any real harm.

Some of their students might have caused serious trouble. Some were brainwashed; and we called in the mind-healers again for the traumatised and the brainwashed and tramped thoroughly through the minds of everyone first because we had no choice.

Fortunately, most of what we found was no more than roiling adolescent angst of the usual kind being twisted; and it was soon enough to heal the damage.

Maybe, at last, we might be able to stop the rot.

I couldn’t even go and get drunk; I could not let my guard down.

It took days to get through the interrogations. I called in Chessina to help. We told Frigermar an edited version of her story.

“I withdraw my objections over why someone who looks so young should be an expert,” he said. “My sincere commiserations; and my respect to you, Towermaster, for your steadfast love.”

It went a long way towards making him a friend.

As he picked up spells that were needed quickly and readily, I saw no reason not to have him presented with papers of merit, and, indeed, I quickly ran him through most of what he needed to know to be signed off as a Journeyman, so that I could sign his papers myself.

It did not hurt that he had studied on his own in the Royal Library.

“Work with Dragovar, and let him bring you up to mastery in more than one field,” I said. “You need to understand enough to have a good overview of the school, and if you do decide to return to the library, it will help you in finding books required by wizards to whom it is open.”

“I confess, the project of stimulating young minds to achieve their full potential is attractive to me,” said Frigermar. “And I would like to give at least another year to those who nominally fail, in order to see if they have broader abilities, or indeed, like me, very specific interests, and encourage them to be as good as they can be.  I fear it will be called ‘Failures Tower’ but I will endeavour to get it called ‘Misfits Tower,’ for those who do not fit a mould. And I will make sure the kids know it is my own place.”

“You’re a good man, Frigermar,” I said.

 

Meanwhile, rather than risk any of those we arrested having sold their souls, we presented Duke Brandel with a new flock of sheep. With specific instructions. They were plainly different as we made them black sheep; they were not to be tupped, or slaughtered for meat, only shorn for the wool, which I made sure was long and silky so they were too valuable to kill. All the shepherds needed to know was that it was a tainted bloodline which was a failed breeding experiment, and they birthed only travesties like two-headed lambs. The shepherds nodded wisely, and made comments about fool wizards, setting a tup on his sisters or daughters to increase a trait, when everyone knew it caused trouble. We listened meekly to them having a laugh at our expense.

The healing priestesses had been helpful here, too, casting permanent sterility spells on the sheep, just in case. They understood the need for any ties to any demons to wither away from an animal intelligence.

You didn’t think we turned them into sheep out of mercy, did you? It was purely to prevent them from empowering Pointy-Teeth. Sterility is not a spell the healers will cast readily, but like the followers of Silvana, they can be implacably ruthless in preserving the status quo.

I should not have incinerated crispy man of course, but hopefully, if he was a part of Renilla’s inept band, he had not yet given part of his soul to Pointy-Teeth. Frigermar went through the main school library, the faculty library, the School of Summoning library and all the personal quarters of the faculty thereof, and confiscated all books on demonology which would go into Dragovar’s personal collection. We argued over which books on the summoning of demons should be permitted, with Chessina’s input.

“You were summoning a malodorous runt when I used the portal you were opening and leaped in it,” said Chessina. “There is no question of a soul being put in jeopardy in summoning such feeble creatures for services. They are commanded, not bargained with; it is the point at which bargaining is entered into that the danger begins. And that is why demonology is such a dangerous short-cut past summoning itself, as the useful idiots who do it haven’t got a clue, most of the time, what they are getting themselves into.”

“What is the chance that any other more powerful demon might see a portal forming and jump into it?” asked Frigermar.

I was concerned about that myself.

“Vanishingly small,” said Chessina. “I was desperate; terrified; in pain, and, frankly, ready to take a risk. I was ready to do anything for anyone on the other side because I did not think it could be as bad.  And I got lucky.” She frowned. “No, I don’t think it was luck,” she amended. “I think Arcana needed Castamir to receive a sudden education in demons, and my reward was in being released from being soulless and trapped in the Abyss, and the chance to be human again. Arcana meddles a lot. More, I suspect than the Commissioner of Souls would sanction if He knew…” she giggled. “She pouted, and said ‘quiet, you,’ to me. But we needed the meddling.”

“So, a more powerful demon would not choose to usurp the summoning of a less demon?” I asked.

“No, because they have no control over where they are going, and have no idea what they will find.”

“Renilla wasn’t expecting Pointy-Teeth to turn up in person,” I said.

“No, but he was already her patron, Castamir,” said Chessina, patiently. “Therefore, he was aware of any summoning she did, because her soul had ties to him. That was why you turned her into an ass, because the ties will decay in an animal mind. Hence the sheep. But she wanted a demon and he chose for it to be him, not one of his minions.”

I sighed with relief.

“I think that summoning any extra-planar creatures should be confined to the most senior students,” I said.

“And I’m not sure it should be more than theory,” added Frigermar. “How much summoning did Harmon do with you, regarding demons?”

“None,” I said. “He taught me how and warned me well about the dangers of dealing with demons.”

“Then no more should be taught in school,” said Frigermar, firmly.

With this, I concurred, and so did Chessina.

At the moment it was a moot point, having no faculty members capable of summoning anything more than a flea; but it needed to be a point in place for when there were able teachers.

“What about the pupils?” asked Chessina.

“Move them all into a single class, and revise all the other fields of study,” I suggested. “Then arrange accelerator classes for the older ones in whichever field they test out, or use them as the start of your Misfits, to learn general wizardry. It’s not their fault, those who have been brainwashed, that their chosen field was usurped. I suspect that with the trauma they have suffered, and compulsions not to think about demonology laid on them, they will never want to summon so much as an earthworm. And watch any who do.”

“They will need to summon Invisible servants,” said Chessina.

“But it requires no ritual,” I said. “They can learn the spell without being told it is part of summoning. The older ones will have covered it, and may find they cannot do it. This is unfortunate, and in binding them with geasa and compulsions, the school and those of us who have done this are responsible for their care, and for finding them jobs after school, because they have been damaged by the school. And whilst part of me feels there should be full disclosure to their parents or patrons, part of me feels it is unwise.”

“No disclosure,” said Frigermar. “A letter home stating that some of the faculty were part of a ring of child-spoilers, and that all have been dealt with and the children given counselling.”

“That should work,” I said, relieved. “Some parents will disown their children.”

“I will state that not all were touched, but the others were traumatised for seeing it happen and ask that it not be mentioned,” said Frigermar. “Which is not how to treat abuse, but I’ll put the blame on the healers.”

It wasn’t ideal, but it was what we had.

“It’s a trouble averted,” said Dragovar.

 

It took almost until the solstice to sort things out; Chessina and I popped back and forth to the Tower, taking care of sundry things for the villagers, and giving time to Elizelle. We decided to bring Harmana back to the Merchant’s house so at least she got some schooling. We were appearing desultorily at court, but also spending time helping Frigermar with his rather sudden group of pupils, and it did Harmana no harm to come to the school and play with other children her age, and have some lessons with people who had a different way of doing things.

None of the teachers made a peep about it; I don’t think they wanted to offend someone who thought nothing of incinerating one of the faculty.

Which wasn’t fair, as I wasn’t incinerating him for bad teaching, but for attempting to sacrifice one of his pupils, but I always got the impression they looked on me rather nervously after that.

Oh, well. You can have power, or popularity. And I’ve never courted popularity.

Harmana got on like a house on fire with Ches Kettle, which was nice. I was seriously considering taking him on as an apprentice, if only to give her a playmate who would not draw away from her as she learned more.  After all, it was as easy to teach two as one.  And he was to spend the three day solstice holiday with us, as it was too far to travel home.