The Tower's Magic ― Chapter Seven

Margaret awoke on the floor. Again. She was becoming rather tired of passing out.

She peeled open her eyes, expecting to find herself back in her bedroom. Instead, she found an unfamiliar study, luxuriously furnished with cream-colored walls inlaid with gold and a plush red carpet. 

Sitting at an intricately carved desk right next to her was a man, bent over his work. Margaret froze. She hadn't yet seen another person in this school except for Elena, and this stranger came as a surprise. She lied still for a few moments, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, she sat up slowly. She realized that she had a blanket laid over her, and she shoved it off and stood up.

The man finally looked up, noticing her for the first time. He leaped up, knocking his chair over backwards as he did so, and Margaret got a good look at him. He was handsome, with kind, dark eyes and a sharp jaw. He was dressed richly, ornate gold embroidery practically dripping from his shirt. Despite his finery, the man looked disheveled. His hair looked like it hadn't been combed in months, and bags hung under his eyes. Most notable to Margaret, however, was the fact that he was grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh good! You're awake! I thought maybe that spell might have been too much, but you seem pretty alright. You're not dizzy or anything, are you?”

“Er, no I’m fine.” Margaret wanted to ask what was going on, but before she could say anything, the man cut her off.

“Excellent! Perfect! I was a little concerned, you see, because if I had lost you I don’t know what I’d do. I won’t be able to find anyone quite as perfect for the job as you. I have all these people coming through here, and none of them are ever up to the task.”

This raised more questions than it answered for Margaret. “Excuse me.” She tried to make her voice more commanding without actually raising it, and was surprised to find that it worked.

The man stopped talking. He looked taken aback for a moment, but then the grin returned in full force. “Yes, ma’am.”

Margaret glared at him suspiciously. Surely it couldn’t be that simple. She charged ahead anyway. “I’d like to know who you are.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, my conversation skills are a bit rusty, you see. I’m Neil.” The man held out a hand across the desk. Margaret hesitated a moment, then shook it.

“I see. I’m Margaret.” The man hadn’t given his last name, so Margaret wasn’t about to give up hers either.

“Yes, I know. I’ve been watching you.” He froze. “Uh, that came out wrong. What I meant was… well, you know…” He coughed. “So I guess I should explain a little, yeah?”

“Yes, please do.”

“Alright. Well.” He shuffled around a little. “I swear this gets harder every time,” he muttered under his breath.

“How about you take a seat? I think we could be here a while.” He gestured to the chair in front of Margaret. She took a seat, still on edge about the whole situation.

“Well, I suppose it begins with the school itself. We, that is, my co-founder and I, once ran this school ourselves.” Margaret stared. This man was one of the founders? But surely he’d be long dead by now!

The man didn’t seem to notice her shock. “It was fine at first. Very few people ever wanted to become wizards. It’s not exactly easy to learn, nor is it ever totally safe to perform magic. We had a few assistants to look after the building, and between the two of us, Seth and I, we had enough magic to keep the enchantments functional. After a while, though, things started to get out of hand. We had to hire help, mostly from former students, but even then the strain was getting to us.

“Seth, my co-founder, had an idea to make things easier. With enough skill one of us could essentially become the school. We could merge with it, draw power from it, control everything in the building. The mirrors, the stairs, the lake, we could become any or all of it at will. The enchanted mirrors you’ve been training with? I controlled them.”

Neil paused. Margaret stared across the table at him. This man has to be crazy, she thought. She decided it might be best to hear him out. “Alright…”

He smiled. “It amazes me that you can be so level-headed about this.”

So he knows he’s crazy. Is that possible?

He coughed awkwardly into his hand. “So, that’s what we did. One of us would cast the spell to make the other become a part of the school. The caster would rest while the other of us ran the school. When we were ready to work again, we would free whoever was in the school and take our own turn. After a while, though, I started to notice that I was taking longer and longer turns, and that Seth wasn’t quite holding up his end. I put up with it, though. I trusted Seth, and he wasn’t doing any real harm.

“One day, though, he didn’t remove the spell. I couldn’t disenchant myself from within the school; I had to have someone else do it from outside. Seth left me here, and I still don’t know why or where he went.” Neil paused a moment, then continued talking. “I tried asking some of my more trusted students if they could help, and they tried. Seth put some kind of lock on the enchantment, a powerful one that even I don’t understand. No one could free me, and I’m still just a part of the school to this day.”

Margaret cast about for something to say. “Uh… Sorry?”

Neil chuckled. “I figured that wouldn’t make much sense.” He shifted in his seat. “I suppose I should get to the part that’s relevant to you, shouldn’t I?”

“Go ahead.” Margaret settled back in her seat. Maybe if she just heard him out, he’d go away.

“Seth cast more spells than I thought he had, most I didn’t notice until later. Students kept arriving at the school, unaware that no one else was here. I didn’t know what to do with them, so I just did what I did with the other students. I let them in, gave them a room, and tried my best to teach them. Eventually I figured out what else Seth had done. If the students stayed too long at the school, they’d become trapped here, just like I am. They became objects in the school. The mirror in your room? That girl has been trapped there for almost a year now. She still is, but you’ve given her a bit more freedom than she had before.”

Margaret wanted to take a minute to process all this, but Neil pushed on ahead.

“The other issue is that students can’t leave the school until they’re able to break his other spell. I can’t teach students any faster then they’re able to learn, so most don’t break the barrier in time.

“I think, though, that maybe you’ll be able to do it and maybe a lot more as well. I think that with your magical talent and power of all the people trapped in the school, you might be able to free everyone.”

Neil leaned forward in his seat, his grin back in place. “You can’t have this many people in one place without accumulating a bit of power. You can’t do it alone of course. No one could wield that much power on their own. That’s what your friend is for. You call her Elena. She has almost as much magical potential as you do, and if you two form a strong enough bond, you could use all the power in the school and get us out of here. That’s why she’s that only person you’ve seen here. I need you two to learn to work together. Maybe you can―”

Now it was Margaret’s turn to cut someone off. “No.”

Neil froze. The smile slid off his face. “What?”

“I won’t do it.” Margaret stood up. This was too much. She couldn’t save anyone. She needed to get out of here, now.

She looked over the room, searching for an exit. There were no doors in the room, only a small window. I’m leaving. I’m going back to my room.

Margaret closed her eyes and concentrated. How hard could magic be? I’m going back to my room. Margaret felt something snap in the air around her. She opened her eyes. She was standing in her room, facing the door. She hadn’t expected that to actually work.

Margaret walked over to her bed and threw herself down on it. She was just now realizing how exhausted she was. Whatever that had been about, Margaret wanted no part in it. She had more than enough on her plate.

She curled up in her bed and tried to fall asleep.