First Witch's Tale

I also cannot swear the scroll is genuine. Forged historical documents are common and fakes difficult to spot without the proper spells. The sheer lack of hard data ensures that fast-talking conmen can explain the historical discrepancies, even when dealing with a properly trained academic archaeologist. My guild has spent years developing techniques for verifying the age of new documents, particularly when they were discovered under dubious circumstances, yet we have to admit that we have been fooled more than once. Indeed, one particularly good forgery remained undiscovered for nearly a decade and was only revealed as part of a confession when the forger was arrested for an unrelated matter. This was, of course, hugely embarrassing. A number of careers had been built on the forged document.

This scroll was discovered under the school, in a sealed compartment that was only revealed by chance, and it has passed all the tests. However, it contradicts so much of what we know - or think we know - that it is difficult to be entirely sure.

I advise you to bear that in mind.

Historian Titus, History Guild

Chapter One

Chapter One

On my fifteenth birthday, I ran away from home.

It was something I had been mulling over for the last two years, ever since I’d turned into a young maiden, ever since I had realised I had magic. I had grown up in Bramble Fire, and never gone more than a few miles beyond the town’s perimeter, but I had never truly fitted in. People had pointed and whispered from the very first day, when my father introduced me as his daughter, and it had never gotten any better. The magic just made it worse. Women with magic were dangerous. Everyone said so.

I hadn’t meant to hurt David, really I hadn’t. But he had tried to kiss me and I had panicked and my magic had sparked and now when he looked at me I saw nothing but fear in his eyes.

I’d laid my plans carefully, ever since a passing Peddler had told me the news. I had packed a knapsack with everything I needed, everything that belonged to me. Never let it be said that I was a thief, picking what rightfully belong to others. I did my last set of chores as I waited for nightfall, for the brief hour between sunset and complete darkness, then slipped out of the house - bidding my siblings a silent goodbye - and made my way across the fields to the trees. I was a skilled woodsman. There were few who could match me when it came to slipping through the forest without being spotted. As long as I left without being noticed, I would be well away by the time the alarm was sounded. If it ever was. I suspected Bramble Fire would be quietly glad to see the back of me.

My father caught me at the edge of the fields.

“And where,” he asked, “do you think you are going?”

I tried not to flinch, caught red-handed. My father - Gurdon - was a decent father, as fathers went, but I was trying to run away from home. I hesitated, torn between the urge to tell him precisely where was going and a strange guilt for leaving him and the rest of the family. Children had obligations to their parents, including the obligation to look after them as they grew older. I might not be a son, or even his eldest child, but I still had duties. And I was planning to travel much further than one of our neighbouring villages. If something happened to my father, I might never hear about it - or if I did, it would be too late to do anything about it.

Father cocked his head. “Where?”

“Whitehall,” I said. The peddler had told me the castle, the school for young magicians, was now accepting female students. It had been rare for women to be schooled in magic, unless she wanted to be a hedge witch, and even then the training had been very limited. “I’m not coming back.”

The words cost me. I had grown up with the disdain of the entire village, but my father had never treated me as anything other than his daughter. The idea of abandoning him didn’t sit well with me, even if there was no other choice. I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying a farmer boy and bearing his children, spending my entire life as a broodmare … if, of course, I could find a man willing to marry me. There were no secrets in small towns and everyone knew what I’d done to David. No one believed it had been an accident.