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Laura had drawn of him burst into flames with enough force to bounce the box onto the floor. In the limited confines of the box, the flames flared up and quickly died down. The picture was totally consumed and the paper turned to black ash
    Laura recovered consciousness and felt dizzy. There was a weight on her groin and she looked down her body to see Tom’s head in her lap. His face was blue and he didn’t appear to be breathing.
    “There’s never a Healer around for a Healer when you need one and that’s a fact,” she muttered irritably and sat up enough to slap him hard across the face.
    “Wake up, Tom, or I shall never forgive you,” she told him severely. It seemed to do the trick as he drew in a great breath of air at her words. “Now keep breathing, you wonderful gorgeous boy,” she instructed. As he began to breathe in fits and starts she gently caressed his face. “You saved my life in some impossible way and I shall not forget it, Thomas. I shall not ever forget it.”
    Tom opened his eyes and tried to smile, but he only managed a lopsided grin.
    “I shall hold you to that,” he said and then closed his eyes and began to snore gently.
    “Isn’t that just typical of a man?” Laura said in exasperation, but she made no attempt to remove Tom’s head from her lap.
    She could hear police whistles blowing in the distance and the sounds of racing horses on cobbles. It seemed to her as if the sounds were coming from everywhere, but one thing she was certain of was that they were coming closer and would soon be with her.

Chapter 6           Aftermath
     
    The start of the age of military magic is disputed by historians. Some claim it started in 1810 with the induction of the first squad of magicians into the army. Others claim it started in 1814 with the first deployment of Spellbinders and Healers against the American colonial rebels, while a small but influential group claim it started in 1823 with the discovery of the first Class A Spellbinder.
    Lord Magus established a method of assessing magical talent in 1812. In essence this divided those with magic into five grades. Magical talent is assessed as a mix of two elements, what can be done and how much can be done within a space of time. Using magic is not without consequences for the practitioner and there are physical limits on what they can do before exhaustion sets in.
    Grade 1 on the Magus Scale embraces the highest capabilities while Grade 5 encompasses those with a level of talent close to useless for anything but party tricks. A magic user’s grade quickly became a matter of pride or embarrassment.
    In 1823, Ethan Phillips unexpectedly grew in power shortly after his sixteenth birthday. His tenfold increase in power put him well beyond anything a Grade 1 could accomplish. Rather than change the existing system a new category ‘Class A’ was created.
    If several Grade 1 s can win a battle, a Class A can win a war. Each is regarded as more powerful than a fleet or a regiment. Phillips was assassinated in his home by spies of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1832. Since that time, the Ministry of War keeps secret the identities and whereabouts of its Class A Spellbinders.
     
    - from A Short History of Military Magics by Sir Anthony Barrett
     
    Carmichael ran as if the hounds of hell snapped at his heels. In normal circumstances such running might have drawn attention to him, but circumstances were far from normal. Police whistles sounded from every corner, constables yelled at people to get indoors and shut their windows. As they spread panic to everyone who heard them they shouted for the people to stay calm.
    The constables didn’t look very calm. They looked at least as panicked as the citizens they shouted at. Each carried a strange contraption round their necks. The device consisted of a rubber tube with a mouthpiece at one end and connected at the other to a small brass cylinder. A red knob turned a valve on the end of the