Faculty of Fire (17 page)

“Well, if you don’t like that term, which is borrowed from the vocabulary of the Art, you can replace it with …” – Caiten chuckled – “… with practical exercises in pairs.”

That reassured the girl a bit. Yes, someone like her would be better off not going to any genuine sparring sessions. I remembered, once during our training at the School of the Art …

“I wouldn’t mind if we had her for a sparring partner,” Chas whispered in my ear, as if he’d read my mind. He was rewarded with a disapproving glance from Caiten.

“My mouth is sealed,” my friend murmured almost inaudibly, ostentatiously putting his hand over his mouth.

“And will all our lectures be given by senior pupils?” another girl asked flirtatiously.

“By no means,” said Caiten, pouring cold water on her enthusiasm. “Only some of them. Most of the lectures are given by Craftsmen teachers. And the practical classes are all given by Craftsmen teachers. And every subgroup – by the way, I’ll divide the late arrivals into subgroups after the lecture – is assigned its own instructor. Practical classes are the most important part of your studies, and they have to be closely supervised. That applies especially to the early classes.”

“And what other disciplines will we be studying in the immediate future?” someone enquired.

“In the immediate future, apart from my introductory course, you will be taught a course on history, tactics and ethics. During the first month the main emphasis is placed on practical classes, so you’ll be spending almost all your time in the Meditation Halls.”

“In what halls?” several absolutely astonished voices asked at once.

Chas and I exchanged knowing glances. At one time, shortly after we joined the School of the Arts, we’d spent weeks in the Meditation Hall. At the time, we didn’t understand the point of clearing the mind, or all those breathing exercises … In fact we still hadn’t really mastered all those systems for controlling energy, but at least we understood something about the whole business. And the most important thing we knew was just how necessary and important those exercises were.

“The Meditation Halls,” Caiten repeated. “Controlling energy requires total concentration, and the basics have to be studied very thoroughly and precisely. That’s why you are divided up into subgroups – so that a Craftsman teacher can observe you all the time, correct your mistakes and direct your efforts. How well you do later depends on how good a foundation you lay.”

“With meditation?” asked the girl who had been so frightened by the sparring sessions. She still wasn’t convinced.

“Precisely,” the senior pupil said with a nod.

“And what did you mean by sparring sessions?” I said, finally asking a question.

Caiten looked at me very carefully, as if he was deciding whether he ought to answer it.

“Raise your hand, everyone who has studied the Art,” he said instead of answering.

In addition to Chas and me, about eight people raised their hands, including the Vickers brothers and, naturally, Alice. Not a lot. Not very many people studied the Art, it was only a compulsory discipline in the Great Houses. Ordinary people usually didn’t consider it, primarily because studying the Art was incredibly expensive. And as well as that, the Emperor’s new policies meant it was no longer prestigious. Nowadays the druids were a lot more popular than the vampires – the founders of the School of the Arts – and if the druids had been able to accept ordinary people into their schools, there would definitely have been crowds queuing up to apply. But only a few years earlier things had been quite different. It was all due to the Emperor and his idiotic ideas …

“Well then, those of you have studied the Art should know what sparring is. It’s only the means that are different: in the Art you use physical strength and internal reserves of energy, but in the Craft you use knowledge, skill and talent without any physical contact.”

“A duel of spells?” Chas asked.

“You could put it that way,” Caiten agreed.

“Is physical contact forbidden or is just that it’s rarely used?” Alice suddenly asked.

And I’d forgotten she was sitting beside me, I was so absorbed in the lecture.

Caiten shrugged. “It’s simply that physical contact is practically impossible. The sparring partners are quite a long distance away from each other, and moving too close to your opponent, at the risk of getting a bundle of energy straight in the forehead … well, it’s very dangerous, to put it mildly.”

Alice nodded, and there was brief glint of something like superiority in her eyes. As if she knew something or could do something that the others didn’t know or couldn’t do … But then, she was a vampire, and they drank in the Art with their mother’s milk … ermm … with the blood of their first victim.

I wonder why it didn’t disgust me to look at Alice. After all, most average people didn’t like vampires, in fact I would have said they loathed them. That was the reason why those vampire castles first appeared along the Borderland, and why the vampires who were left within the city limits preferred to leave their homes only at night. Of course, I could understand a certain mistrust of creatures who fed on blood. Not human blood, just blood. Everyone has his own particular tastes, of course, but as far as I knew, vampires could get by on just animal blood. For the majority of people, vampires were “foul bloodsuckers”. That was why, when Chas and I walked into the auditorium, Alice was sitting separately from the two brothers, and why no one would even try to get to know her. She was
persona non grata
everywhere …

I looked at the vampiress thoughtfully. She pushed aside the dark hair that was falling over her eyes and caught my thoughtful glance. For a second she hesitated, but then her face set in a haughty mask of inscrutability.

No, I couldn’t see Alice as anything except a beautiful and rather sweet girl. And the haughtiness was just her defence against the cruelty of our world …

“… we’ll postpone further study of this question until the next class,” Caiten concluded, and I realised I’d been sitting there for quite a long time, absorbed in my own thoughts, letting everything the senior pupil said go straight over my head. I could only hope I hadn’t missed anything especially valuable.

“Now I’ll give you a short general briefing, and then you can go to the dining hall and have some refreshment before your next classes.”

My stomach started rumbling. Naturally enough – I hadn’t eaten anything since the evening before. In the morning I’d left the house in such a hurry that there wasn’t any time for breakfast.

“Right, you’ve been given rooms on levels fifty to fifty-nine, with the girls on a separate level of their own. No, don’t think we have any rules here against visitors in rooms, you’re all adults, it’s just that this arrangement is more convenient. Levels seventy-one to seventy-nine are occupied by the faculty of air, sixty-one to sixty-nine by the faculty of water, forty-one to forty-nine by the faculty of earth, and fifty-one to fifty-nine, as I already informed you, by our faculty, the faculty of fire. The other floors are occupied by laboratories and the Higher Craftsmen’s studies. The teleports that you found it so hard to come to terms with today work on the principle of symmetrical fields. That is, they are arranged in two rows. Starting from the corridor, one row leads progressively downwards, and the other leads upwards. And between the rows there are three other teleports: the central one leads to the first floor, and the two others lead to the nearest floors of the next sets of ten. Altogether, as you’ve probably already figured out, that makes thirteen.”

“That helpful number again,” I exclaimed, and Chas chuckled understandingly. He knew my dislike of that number went all the way back to our school days, when I was always number thirteen on the list. I was number thirteen when I took part in the music composition contest too, and I came in second because my musicale, which had always been completely reliable, suddenly cut out at the worst possible moment. I’d never really been on very good terms with that number.

“But why couldn’t they just make one teleport that lets you choose the floor you want?” someone in the class asked.

“It’s not efficient,” Caiten explained, “which is demonstrated, among other things, by the principle of symmetrical fields, which you will study in your next classes. The point of exit from a teleport made on this principle is fixed once and for all. Each pair of linked teleports is installed by two Higher Craftsmen, and it takes them several hours. The process consumes a huge amount of energy, and the teleports have to be constantly restored. That’s the reason why no teleports have been installed anywhere except in the Academy building; it’s not because we don’t want to share our knowledge. Why would any Higher Craftsman want to spend his time dashing around all over the place, restoring teleports for highly placed individuals who want to enjoy the luxury of rapid transport?”

“But why does it take two Higher Craftsmen to do it?” Chas enquired.

“Because only Higher Craftsmen can utilise the amount of energy consumed by the teleports,” said Caiten, and chuckled. “Well, you could figure out how to do it another way … it would take … about five Craftsmen, or about twenty-five senior pupils. Imagine what a performance that would be!”

“Fun and games for everyone, I think?” the bald pupil suggested.

“Indeed,” Caiten agreed. “There are about two hundred teleports altogether, so how many senior pupils would that make it? About five thousand? And then it takes some time to recover afterwards … well, it takes a Higher Craftsman an hour or two to recover after heavy work like that, but it would take a senior pupil a couple of days. Shall we calculate how long it would take to restore all the teleports?”

A whisper of amazement ran through the auditorium. No one had imagined it was all so complicated.

“And how often are they restored?” asked a girl in one of the back rows.

“About once a year.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “So are all the other technomagical items as complicated to make and recharge with energy?”

“No, of course not, many things are a lot simpler, but some are far more complicated than teleports.”

“Which ones are more complicated?” asked Chas, trying to be smart.

Caiten shook his head: “That’s something you’ll find out later. But now, if there are no objections, I’ll continue.” Naturally, there were no objections. “You can move freely between the residential floors and the laboratory floors. The other levels are off limits to pupils. If you try to step on a teleport that you have no right to access, it won’t work. There used to be alarms on the teleports, but the pupils kept stepping on the prohibited teleports too often ‘by accident’.” He smiled. “So the teleports were redesigned, and now they don’t work if you don’t have access.”

I could imagine how often the alarms must have gone off. The first thing Chas and I would have done – and probably everyone else too – was try to find out what lay on the other side of the forbidden teleports. If they installed deadly traps on those teleports, the Academy soon wouldn’t have a single pupil left.

“All right, that’s probably enough for the first time,” said Caiten, suddenly getting up from behind his desk. “In conclusion, please note that there is a single communal dining hall, and it’s on the twentieth floor. It is now half past twelve, and your shift starts at one o’clock precisely. It lasts until two, and in that time you have to eat and vacate the dining hall in time for the next shift. You are free to go,” Caiten said at last, and the pupils instantly got up from their seats. “Apart from those who were late, who will stay for now,” the senior pupil concluded.

Everyone sat back down again, except for the five of us. We looked at each other uncertainly and set off towards the door.

“Goodbye,” we said almost in chorus as we walked out of the auditorium.

“There’s something a bit strange about him,” the younger blond said with a shrug.

Alice pretended that she wasn’t with us and had nothing to do with us.

“How many senior pupils have you ever known, to go drawing conclusions like that?” the older blond asked. He obviously had good reason to be sceptical.

His younger brother didn’t answer.

“By the way, lads, as I understand it, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, aren’t we?” I pointed out. “We ought to get to know each better over lunch, you know.”

“What’s there to talk about?” the older blond brother sneered.

“Especially with her,” the younger brother added, pointing at Alice rather rudely.

She replied by baring her fangs in a half-smile.

“Now, now, boys and girls,” Chas put in hastily. “No quarrelling. We’re all one big happy family now.”

Both brothers stopped and exclaimed almost in a single voice. “One big happy family? With bloodsuckers? What kind of relationship is that?”

“We give them blood, and they give us love and affection,” Chas laughed. “At least, some of us,” he added, giving me an eloquent look.

Alice pretended not to have heard anything. She obviously thought it was beneath her dignity to reply to these young guys’ jibes.