The Vallière library took up almost a quarter of the second floor of the house. Louise had always loved it in there, where the musty smell of old paper and the shadowy alcoves always made her feel like she was in some kind of mystery adventure. The library was large, and old – at least as far as private libraries went. Obviously the palace maintained a much more impressive collection, in which, so it was said, were held such items as the Founder's own prayer book, the Cytherian Scrolls (recovered from the elves, at great cost), and the original collection of tales about 'Honest' Jacques Argent, the highwayman and folk hero. Each of the academies also had their own collection, less valuable but more scholarly.
But still, the amount of books collected by the Vallière duchy over the years was considerable. They lined the walls from floor to ceiling – and the ceiling in the Vallières' main house was not low. For this reason, there were ladders that allowed a reader to reach the books on the top shelves. Or, if you were thirteen and still waiting for your growth spurt, the middle shelves… and the upper bottom shelves too.
Louise reached the floor, book in hand, and reflected on how unfair life was. Her mother and father were both tall, Éléonore too, so why wasn't she? Even Cattleya, although short for a woman, was still tall enough to rest her head on Louise's when they hugged – which was nice, but it was still unfair. No, instead Louise seemed to have grown hardly at all since she was about ten.
One more way she was different from the rest of her family, she supposed.
Shaking her head to clear it, Louise placed the book on the large desk in the centre of the library, next to the twenty or so others she'd already retrieved. That would probably do to be getting on with.
There was a lamp on the desk – powered by old Fire magic, of course, no-one would risk an actual flame near all these books if they could help it – and Louise reached across to switch it on. It cast a clean yellow light, and would be perfect to read by… if the desk didn't come up to Louise's chest. Honestly, why was everything in this house too large for her?
Really, she should take all these books to the solar, or the reading room, where large windows let in plenty of light to read by and there were proper reading desks which Louise could sit up on. On the other hand, Louise didn't want to carry all these books over there, and the armchairs here were much more comfortable.
Fortunately, Louise had a solution. She picked up the first book – Magic, Willpower and the Mage – and snuggled herself into one of the alcoves. Then, she looked at the lamp and twitched her fingers. The surface of the desk went dark, and the alcove was illuminated. In between, motes of dust danced, as if in a sunbeam.
Louise smiled, and settled down to read.
That spell, the light-bending one, wasn't something that Louise had been taught by Maestro Rossi. She'd just come across it one morning, when a crack in her curtains had shone sunlight in her face when she was trying to have a lie in. She'd wanted the light to go away… and it had.
She hadn't had her wand with her at the time, either.
This was odd, because mages used wands to cast spells, everyone knew that. Louise was starting to suspect she might be doing magic all wrong, or at least very differently to how Maestro Rossi was teaching it.
For example, the candle spell was the basics of the basics, and any dot fire mage who could do anything would be able to cast it – everyone knew that too. But, there was Louise, who just couldn't get the hang of it.
After almost six months of tutoring, Louise remained unable to produce even a single flame. Maestro Rossi insisted it would come in time – for a Fire mage, he was incredibly patient – but Louise had her doubts. To her, it didn't feel like a problem practice would solve. Instead, she was missing something basic and vital.
Or at least, looking at things a different way. Her tutor had said her control was incredible for a just-started dot mage, and he was right – already she could boil a pan of water by simply raising its temperature until it bubbled, and make a candle burn so bright it illuminated the whole room. Usually that kind of fine control of light and heat was a mark of a mage on the verge of Line skill, but to Louise it came naturally.
Still, she couldn't just muddle through with intuition and self-experimentation forever, and so on Maestro Rossi's advice she'd decided to study up on various magical theories in the hopes that one of them might spark a flash of insight. So far, it wasn't working.
Magic, Willpower and the Mage was just repeating what Maestro Rossi had already told her, and insisted that focus and intent would get results with practice. A Primer for Practical Magic was a bit dry and dusty, but said pretty much the same thing, and From Dot to Line was a bit simplistic and focused more on exercises for a new mage. Well, she hadn't really thought the basic textbooks on magic would get her any further than her dedicated one-to-one tutor could.
None of the books mentioned being able to see magic directly, as Louise did. At most, there was vague mentions of 'feeling' what you were doing, but it was never elaborated on – the important thing, according to the authors, was to shape your will into the correct form of the spell, and then make it happen through sheer force of willpower.
The reason why one mage was more powerful than another wasn't that they were any more precise with forming their spells, it was that they had a clearer vision of what the spell should look like, more willpower to go into making it happen, and they wasted less willpower through distraction.
Thus, if Louise's father wanted to, say, raise a pillar from the ground, it would take him far less energy than if a dot Earth mage were to do the same, and he'd be able to focus on more while he did it, and he'd have more energy to spare once he was done. His vision of what he wanted the earth to do was just that strong.
Louise wasn't entirely sure how the process of adding an extra element worked, though. Obviously she could see that there was more involved – her mother and father both had quad-colour auras, while her sisters only had three – but just how a mage went about adding more, or why four was the limit, was a mystery to her.
In any case, she could relate to the idea of having a strong vision of what a spell was meant to do. Certainly she needed to do the same in order to cast what little magic she could. But clearly that wasn't all there was to it. Louise knew exactly what her Fire spells should look like, because not only had Maestro Rossi demonstrated it about a thousand times by this point, but she could see exactly how the magic moved within the old man and formed itself into Fire. She'd tried and tried to copy it, but hadn't been able to. It wasn't like she could ask for help either, since saying 'I can't move the magic in my aura the same way you do' would only earn her blank looks.
Clearly another approach was needed. The next books she looked through, therefore, were a bit more speculative. Surely, surely Louise couldn't be the first person in the history of Halkeginia who did magic a bit differently to other people, it was silly to even think so. What she needed to find, ideally, was someone else who'd had the same issue, and find out how they'd got past it.
Well into the afternoon, Louise continued to read, growing more and more frustrated. Finally, she closed Peculiar Practitioners: Mages Who Bucked the Trend with a snap, and flounced across the room to put it back on the shelf.
Nothing, for all her efforts. It looked like every authority on magic was in agreement, and all of them said that her way of doing things shouldn't work. There were tales of mages who could do things others couldn't, plenty of them – but in almost every case it was either a powerful mage who'd invented a new spell that was difficult to replicate, or else some researcher experimenting with elemental combinations. Or both, in the case of Angus McCorrah, an Albionese wizard from a couple of centuries ago who'd been one of the few rare Square Mages with an elemental 'full set'.
Every case that wasn't something like that was unconfirmed, vague, and probably apocryphal. Fairy tales, in other words.
Louise had looked through those too, looking for inspiration. It wasn't impossible that mages of her 'type' were just so rare that they entered the realm of folklore… but no luck there either. Oh, there were figures like Honest Jacques Argent, who used odd powers in every story he was in, but it was always something like cursing a tax collector with terrible bad luck until he gave bags of money to a beggar, an old woman and a sickly child (all of whom turned out to be Jacques in disguise). Storybook 'magic', nothing like what real mages did.
There were also all the stories about Brimir, obviously, but that was religion rather than fairy tales, and Brimir was using the Holy Void so of course it wouldn't be quite the same as the other elements. Louise gave it a quick look through just in case, even though she knew the tales and parables off by heart. One part in particular caught her eye:
And though the Gandalfr did ready her blade Brimir smiled, and said, "Fear not! Though the King of Clay sends the earth itself against us I say to thee this is thy country, and never shall it harm thee,"
And Brimir invoked the Holy Void, so that all magic was torn from the King of Clay's vast army, leaving naught but statues where golems had once stood.
It was the closest Louise had seen to anything describing anyone manipulating magic directly… but it still didn't fit. Of course the Holy Void would be able to trump any lesser spell, when wielded in the hands of Founder Brimir. To even consider that Louise herself might be a Void mage was bordering on the blasphemous – and in any case Louise was pretty sure she was a Fire mage, if an odd broken sort of one.
No way around it – if you did magic, there was only one way to do it. Unless you were Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, in which case you were on your own.
Well, fine. If that was how it was going to be, Louise was fine with that. She stood up and carefully put away all the books she'd read, then left the library and made her way to her room.
On her bedside table was the notebook she'd been working with to write down what people's magic and auras looked like under her true sight. Even with all her family and Maestro Rossi, it still only came to a couple of pages at the start. Louise drew a line under it, tapped her pen on the paper a couple of times, then started a new page. She divided into three columns:
What can I do?
What can I see?
What can I try?
Even the ancient mages had started from somewhere, right? It would take trial and error, and a lot of work, but Louise was determined. She'd keep looking for clues as to how magic worked, how it really worked. There had to be sources that weren't in the Vallière library, after all. And if she couldn't find any? Louise had gotten this far on her own, and she wasn't giving up now. She'd be a great mage like the rest of her family someday, even if she had to build a whole system of magic from the ground up.
"Right," Louise said, once everything had been set up and the chatter had died down. "Let's go over the rules again."
Across the courtyard, Kirche put a hand on her hip and cocked her head. "There's nothing wrong with my memory, Vallière. Quit trying to stall for time and get on with it!" There were catcalls from the students gathered around the edges of the space. It might have been Louise's imagination, but there seemed to be more than there were when Kirche had first challenged her.
Although it was outside, and winter only just giving way to spring, the courtyard was warm and the grass soft. Fire and Earth magic, respectively – just like the rest of the Academy, magic was woven into the very stones here.
Louise held one hand up in a placating gesture. "I just want to make sure there are no misunderstandings. It would be very embarrassing for me if you were to wriggle out of your obligations under some technicality, after all."
The other girl raised an eyebrow, and Louise thought she saw the spark of a smile. "Oh? Arrogant, aren't you?"
"Not really," Louise said, but didn't elaborate.
"Hmph. Go on then."
"Very well." Louise went over the correct etiquette and form in her head for how something like this was announced. It probably didn't matter, not for what was basically a student scuffle, but better to learn now than later, right? "The event: a contest of magic between Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst, hereafter referred to as 'the challenger', and Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, hereafter referred to as 'the challenged'. The challenged has the right to pick the nature of the event."
A good thing too. Louise was good, she knew that, but she'd need to play to her strengths against a Triangle mage. Fortunately, Kirche was exactly the best type of person for Louise to show off those strengths.
Not that she was obsessed with getting her classmates' recognition, or anything! She knew she was a mage, and that was enough for her… but a little bit of terrified awe couldn't hurt, could it? It was all in the name of making good connections, after all!
"Well?" Kirche prompted. "You've teased us long enough, Vallière – if I don't see some action soon I'm going to assume you're just not up to it… and I'll be very disappointed."
Louise gave her opponent a look. Had she just…? Oh, never mind.
"The nature of the event: as this is a contest of Fire, each contestant shall take it in turns, starting with the challenger, to attempt to burn one of two identical objects, chosen by the challenged. The first to burn such object, here defined as reducing it wholly or partly to ashes, or otherwise destroying it such at it is rendered unusable, shall be declared the winner, and claim the agreed-upon prize – that is, one favour from the loser to the winner.
No magic is to be used on one's opponent. We're not supposed to be duelling, after all. And should anyone other than the contestants interfere in any way, the contest is void and neither of us is the victor."
Kirche grinned. "Hah. You may as well give up now, then. After I'm done with whatever it is you pick there won't be enough to fit in a matchbox. So what's it gonna be? A tree? A rock? A sword? Bring it on – my Fireball spell is hot enough to melt steel, easy peasy!"
Louise rummaged in her bag. "It'll be these," she said, holding up the items she'd selected.
Kirche stared. "Are… are you serious?"
"Very."
"That's paper! You're asking us to burn paper! I was doing that at four years old!"
Louise wiggled the sheets of paper she was holding, making a fwapapap noise. "Does the challenger have a problem with the item chosen by the challenged? Does she feel it is in some way unfair?"
Kirche stared some more, then snorted and tossed her hair. "Yeah, unfair to you, maybe. I get to go first, right?"
"I thought you said there was nothing wrong with your memory?"
The disbelieving expression on her opponent's face gave Louise a little warm fuzzy feeling inside, and she giggled. She couldn't help it, really.
Kirche schooled her expression. "You cheeky little brat," she said, sounding almost impressed. "Well, fine. Don't come crying to me if I burn your piece to ashes along with mine, though, alright?"
"Should such an event occur, I will be sure not to come crying to you," Louise promised. She looked around at the students. Where was an Earth mage… ah, there. "You – Guiche de Gramont, wasn't it? Can we get a plinth or something to hold these sheets up? We wouldn't want to scorch the grass, after all."
The blond boy she'd pointed at blinked as Louise held the sheets of paper out towards him. "Uh… alright," he said, then rallied. "I mean, of course, Miss de la Vallière! Your dedication to the Academy you have made your home does you credit."
Louise rolled her eyes, but watched with interest as Guiche waved his wand. The earth surged upward, forming two pillars a couple of paces apart, each one trapping a sheet of paper in the top like a vice. The sheets fluttered in the wind, but remained upright. It was pretty good work, for something done on the fly.
"Does it matter which one I aim at?" said Kirche, as if suspecting a trick.
"Not at all. Feel free to inspect them if you like. I haven't secretly transmuted one to steel or anything if that's what you're asking."
"Eh, it wouldn't matter if you had. I'm just curious as to how it is you think you can win, is all."
Louise couldn't suppress a smirk. "Well, you'd better hurry up and start the contest then. We have homework to be getting on with after all." She put her hands behind her head.
"Ooh, you little – fine. Let's get this over with. Fireball!" Kirche suddenly whirled, drawing her wand and brandishing it at the pair of pillars in one smooth motion.
A blast of flame erupted from the end of her wand, so strong that Louise could feel her eyebrows singing even though she was nowhere near its path. This was what a Triangle Fire could do? Yikes. Louise was glad she hadn't intended to fight fairly.
The fireball flew at the pillars, fast as an arrow – and then disappeared as though it had never been.
"Huh?" said Kirche. Her face showed utter shock, and from a quick look at the gathered crowd she wasn't the only one.
"Oh dear," said Louise, a positively evil grin on her face. "That's not gone well, has it? Would you like another go?"
Kirche looked between Louise and the space where her fireball had vanished. "How… what did you do!?"
"Me?" said Louise, trying to sound shocked. "How could I have done anything? My wand isn't even in my hand!" She held her hands up front of her and wiggled her fingers to show the other girl.
The other girl's eyes narrowed. "You're up to something. I don't know what, I don't know how, but I know it. You're going to learn that- Fireball!"
Again the wand snapped to the side, again the blast of white-hot flame. To go from conversation to casting a spell of that strength instantly… Kirche really was impressive.
But Louise still wasn't taken by surprise. How could she be? She'd seen the buildup of blazing, blinding magic in Kirche plain as day, watched it flow down her arm and into her wand. As it came out, she saw the point where it stopped being magic and started being Fire – and at that point, she grasped control of it with her own magic and quenched.
Louise couldn't create fire. Not a lick of flame, no matter how she tried. But her control over it was unmatched. If she wanted to smother it, to choke it out and kill its heat so that it never even warmed the sheets of paper it was supposed to burn… well, that was what would happen.
The fireball disappeared just like the last, not even a burst of hot wind to mark its passage.
"Are you done?" said Louise. "So sad. I guess that's what happens when you try to cast using such a fleeting emotion as passion. Don't worry, the teachers here in Tristain will set you right."
A part of Louise was holding its hands over its mouth in horrified outrage at how, well, nasty she was being. She remembered well how it felt to have every spell you try fail, and wouldn't wish the same on anyone, even a Zerbst. On the other hand, well, Kirche did start it, and it wasn't like Louise was taking her magic off her forever, and she was only doing to uphold the good name of Tristain… and also it felt kinda nice to be able to show off for once.
But Louise saw the confused, shocked and kinda hurt expression on Kirche's face, and relented. There was also a familiar sense of rising tension in the air – an odd not-quite-electric tingle that meant Louise was pushing her luck. Better resolve this fast, in any case.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that. I was just jealous. You're much stronger than I am, I admit it."
"What?"
"I think you misunderstood earlier. I never meant to say that I was stronger than you. I'm not." Louise sighed. "I'm actually really weak. Even if I can control fire, I can't create it. I hope I'll get better," oh God, how she hoped, "and I'm pretty good with heat and light, but for now I'm still only a dot mage."
The class accepted the lie with nods of sympathy, especially from those who were only dot themselves. Kirche blinked, confused.
"So, if you can't create fire, does that mean you give up?"
Louise smiled. "I never said that." She drew her wand from its holster at her hip. It was a simple thing, just a slender foot-long rod made of steel that her mother had given her as a going-away present. A reminder to stay strong, no matter what – the Rule of Steel that had carried Karin the Heavy Wind through countless battles.
But more than that, too. It was engraved with flowery patterns and tiny pictures of animals, with horses most prominent. Cattleya had done it herself, after taking one look at the plain metal wand a delighted Louise had shown her and declaring it 'not nearly cute enough for my little sister, I don't know what Mother was thinking…' She'd almost exhausted herself casting the engraving spell, but had waved away Louise's protests and forged on regardless.
Her wand was the most precious thing Louise had ever owned.
She pointed it at her piece of paper, and admired the play of sunlight along it. Then she focused beyond it, at the one specific point that was her target. Her hand moved, ever so slightly, and she said the word everyone else was expecting to hear.
"Ignite!"
A lance of pure heat, no wider than a coin, speared the paper. The air rippled in between Louise's wand and the pillar – before she grasped that heat and redirected it into the sheet of paper too. One spot immediately began to smoulder – and then, as Louise maintained the heat in the same spot, burst into flame. Her classmates applauded politely as she lowered her wand.
Kirche pouted and huffed, but inclined her head in a gracious bow anyway. "Ugh, fine," she said. "I suppose you won, technically."
Apparently deciding that the fun was over, Louise's classmates started drifting out of the courtyard in ones and twos. Guiche de Gramont flicked his wand, returning the pillars he's conjured into the earth. For a moment it looked as though eh was going to say something, but he apparently thought better of it. Before long, Louise and Kirche were left in the courtyard alone together.
Louise nodded to Kirche, and made to leave. Before she could, though, the other girl called form behind her.
"Vallière, wait!" Louise turned. Kirche was regarding her with a serious-looking expression. "I have to know – how come my Fireball spell didn't work?"
"Oh, that? That's a secret." When Kirche raised an eyebrow, clearly unsatisfied, Louise sighed and went on. "I promise I didn't break any of the rules we set up, or have anyone counter your spell for me. I'll tell you that much at least. That's a Vallière promise, so you know it's good," Louise said. She tucked her wand away into her belt.
"Nah," said Kirche. "Nuh-uh. I know very well how to do a simple Fireball spell, and I know it's not so simple to just… just make it go away like that. There's being good at controlling heat, and then there's that – and I don't believe for a second you can be that good and still not be able to create fire."
"It's the truth," said Louise. "I really can't."
"I… look, I don't want to officially doubt your 'Vallière Promise', but I don't believe you. You did something. Was it a magic item of some kind? Something that puts out fires nearby? What?"
Louise winced. This was getting into dangerous territory. "I told you, it's a secret. Don't make me make you stop asking about this as your favour to me."
"Not good enough. If you interfered, that means you cheated, and that means I don't owe you anything."
Damn. "Technically, it would only be cheating if I cast magic on you. I stopped your magic directly, so…"
Kirche looked almost impressed. "That's sneaky… and we never actually forbade magic items either, come to think of it."
"Yes. So. Do I have to make you stop asking about this?"
The other girl grinned. "Yep."
Louise stamped her foot in frustration, she couldn't help it. "But why? I already told you, I wouldn't tell!"
"Eh, I'm counting on being more persuasive than you are stubborn. That being the case, if I get out of it with a favour as easy as that, how can I refuse? Who knows what you'd make me do otherwise? I know what you Tristainians are like behind closed doors, after all…" Kirche made a show of fanning herself.
"Ooh, you… you!" Louise said, fists balling. "Well, fine! I'll take that challenge too! As my favour, you're going to write a letter to your family, telling them how you lost in a contest of Fire to a Vallière. Feel free to ask me all you like about how I did it, because I'm never telling, never ever!"
Kirche had stopped grinning in a hurry. "Um, I… do I really have to? I mean, it was only a silly little challenge, no need to get our families involved…"
"Well, you should have thought of that before-" Louise stopped, breathing hard. It really wouldn't be very nice of her to make Kirche lose face in front of her family like that. Even if she totally started it. "Oh, whatever then, I suppose it's not worth crushing you over something like this."
Kirche perked right back up, but it was obvious how relieved she was. "Awesome! And, uh, thanks, seriously."
"No problem," Louise said. "I guess, for my favour, maybe don't be so quick to jump to conclusions? I'm really not interested in competing with you, or putting you down, or anything like that."
"Well, when you put it like that, I just feel unwanted. Don't you want to have even a little rivalry?"
"I seriously don't." Louise considered for a moment, then said, "If you're interested, try the little blue-haired girl. Tabitha, or something? She's the only one in the class more powerful than you." She felt a little bad dropping Tabitha in Kirche's sights like that, but if she was a Triangle she'd be able to handle it. Or not. She didn't care that much, as long as Kirche wasn't busy messing up her school life.
"Hm. And how would you know that? She doesn't seem the type to show off."
Damn it. Checking for people's magic had become so automatic to Louise that she often forgot other mages couldn't do it. She didn't have an explanation, so she just shrugged.
Kirche narrowed her eyes. "There's something odd about you, Vallière… I'll get to the bottom of it, mark my words!"
"Do you have to?"
"Well, what else am I going to do with my school year? I mean, the academic approach is good and all, but let's face it, it wasn't designed for Triangles. I really should have skipped a year, but my written Tristainian's a little rusty. I didn't want to jump straight into the more advanced stuff before getting a handle on the vocabulary, you know?" Kirche sighed. "All this entry-level stuff, though… it's not even been a day and I'm already bored."
Louise nodded. Thanks to her own independent studies trying to get a handle on her magic, she was very familiar with a lot of the material as well. She could only imagine what it must be like to be doing the same, in a different language, in a different culture.
"Would you like a hand with the Tristainian?" Louise asked, without thinking.
Kirche looked at her, shocked. Louise looked back, almost as surprised herself. Why had she said that?
For a moment it looked as though Kirche was going to refuse on principle, but eventually she said, "Sure. Actually, that'd be really helpful."
Fair enough, but Louise hadn't been expecting that. What was she going to do? She wasn't a teacher!
"I, ah, guess we can make it an evening thing?" she said, not sure why she was phrasing it as a question. "Meet up after dinner in the library, go through a few things?"
In response, Kirche snapped her fingers. "Ah, actually, that's no good, I'm meeting a guy after dinner."
"What?" Louise spluttered. "Who? Why?"
"Well, I actually don't know his name, just his room number. As for the why, when two hormonal teenagers bump into each other after the welcoming ceremony-"
"Okay!" Louise shouted, face as pink as her hair. "I don't need to hear anymore!"
Kirche laughed and stretched, revealing a hint of bare brown skin beneath her untucked shirt before Louise very hurriedly wrenched her eyes upwards. "Honestly, you Tristainians are such prudes. Anyway, I'm guessing that won't take more than half an hour, so I could come find you in your room after?"
Face now as red as Kirche's hair, Louise opened her mouth and closed it a few times. Eventually she gave up on words, and turned on her heel and stormed off, leaving Kirche in the courtyard alone.
"Um," called Kirche. "So, is that a yes or a no?"
