Faculty of Fire (25 page)

In the two weeks that had gone by since then, we had learned a great deal – how to weave strands of fire into fantastic patterns and control them, how to use energy efficiently. Tyrel said it was far easier to blast someone with a huge fireball than to weave a fiery butterfly with the minimal waste of power, but I wasn’t so sure about that. I could easily weave any fancy patterns, but it was incredibly difficult for me to create a fireball any larger than a fist. Likewise, my fiery butterfly was no larger than a real one, and my firebird looked like a starving sparrow. For the sake of comparison, Chas’s firebird had a wingspan of five feet, and his fireball was larger than my head.

But when it came to sheer power, none of us could compare with Naive ... there was no one in the entire faculty who could. It seemed quite likely that he actually had more power than even the most powerful Craftsmen. Unfortunately, as we had already learned to our own cost, power isn’t everything. Every time Naive tried to weave any kind of pattern, from the simplest to the most complicated, someone got hurt. The first time it was Alice who suffered. The second time, when Naive tried to weave a fiery butterfly, it was our teacher, Craftsman Tyrel, who was the victim. Fortunately, he somehow managed to throw up an energy shield in time, otherwise he would have suffered more than just slight burns – he was blown right over our heads and thrown against the wall, but his shield held. He swore for a long time, and most of his curses were directed against the bad luck that had landed him with a group of hopeless idiots. The rest of us agreed with most of what he said. Naive was badly frightened by what had happened, but delighted at the same time, and he walked around for a whole week, boasting about how he’d created a butterfly with a ten-foot wingspan. I don’t know about that, all we saw was a wall of flame coming straight at us. It was lucky that the Craftsman happened to be between us and Naive, and he bore the brunt of the blast.

The really annoying thing was that Naive had very good reason to be proud himself. It was a long time since the Academy had had any pupils with that kind of power. It was just a pity that so far we were the only ones to have suffered from his exceptional gift.

“I have a suggestion,” Chas said in a serious voice. “Why don’t the four of us and Tyrel meditate in the corner of the hall, as far away as possible, and when Naive throws up one of his tricks, we can put up a quintuple shield. We might just survive ...”

“No,” said Alice, shaking her head. “What I’d do is send our fiery boy to practise with the senior classes. After a week with him, I doubt if any of those jokers would feel like joking any longer.”

That was a great idea! After two months my hair still hadn’t grown back properly. If my aunt could only see me now, she was always a keen follower of fashion, and a “pudding-basin” cut wasn’t exactly the latest chic.

Naive turned away, offended, and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Craftsman Tyrel’s rumbling voice said from inside.

Vickers junior slipped in through the doorway. We heaved a long, collective sigh and followed him.

“Whose turn is it to sit next to fiery boy today?” I asked.

Ever since Naive started pulling his tricks, none of us had been very keen to take the place of honour beside him. The safest place was behind him, we knew that from experience. Tyrel had to sit at one side, so that he could see all of us, and we sat in a row. Naive was put as far away as possible in the corner.

“Why bother asking, when you already know?” Neville retorted angrily. “Or are you just checking in the hope that we’ve forgotten whose turn it is today?”

Yes, he had me here. It was definitely my turn today. I would have to place my life in serious jeopardy. Ah, if my aunt only knew ... but what could she know? Outside the Academy, only twelve hours had gone by since we started our studies! It staggered me just to think about it. A day went by in here, but outside it was only twenty minutes. It was crazy!

“Well, Zach, disgraced yourself again, did you?” Craftsman Tyrel asked me.

It wasn’t that he was mocking me, just that the system of training here was based on mockery.

“What can I do,” I sighed, “you know the extent of my abilities.”

“I do,” the Craftsman agreed. “And that’s why I tell you in all seriousness that you can win if you make a real effort. Power’s not that important,” he said, with a knowing look at Naive. “The important thing is what’s up here.” And he tapped me on the head.

The sound that made was rather hollow. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Well, then it’s definitely a hopeless case,” Chas said in a low voice.

Alice snorted, but there was a glint of sympathy in her eyes.

“Sit down, lady and gentlemen, let’s get started,” Tyrel rumbled. “Today we’re going to change our usual routine and try something quite different.”

We quickly arranged ourselves on the floor.

“So far we have only studied how to weave patterns of fire, but today I’m going to teach you how to destroy them. These techniques are usually taught in the second year, but I think you could make good use of them now, and this lesson will be particularly useful for you, Zach.”

I nodded, although I didn’t really understand exactly what he meant

“Let’s take a perfectly simple fireball,” the Craftsman went on. “Chas, make us a perfectly simple fireball.”

Chas obediently created a smallish fireball in the centre of the hall.

“How can we deal this delightful bundle of sparks? We can put up a shield, we can dodge out of the way. What else?”

We fell quiet as we tried to think.

“Well, we can also destroy it,” the Craftsman went on after a pause. “And not by using the magic of water or air, you don’t know how to weave the spells of those schools just yet, but by using the magic of fire against it. Every spell has a weak spot. Watch.”

Tyrel gazed at the fireball, and then shot a small spark at it ... and the fireball disappeared. Dissolved into the air with a hiss.

We blinked in amazement.

“You did that with one little spark?” Neville asked.

“Of course,” Tyrel said with a smile.

“And how do you find the weak spot?” Alice, ever practical, immediately asked.

“A good question,” the Craftsman remarked. “The location of the weak spot is specific to each particular spell.”

I sighed in bitter disappointment. I’d been hoping I’d be able to give someone a pleasant surprise, but by the time I could find the weak spot in a fireball flying at me, my precious carcass would be roasted twenty times over.

“But how do you find it?” Alice persisted.

“That what we’re going to learn. I’ll work with Alice today, the rest of you split into pairs, and we’ll begin.”

Chas and Neville moved off into the furthest corner, leaving me to be mauled by Naive.

“First one of you creates an average-sized fireball, and then the other tries to find the weak spot. The fireballs should just hang in the air, at least ten feet away from both of you. That especially applies to you, Naive. You can locate the weak spot by the slightly different colour of the flame.”

“Wonderful,” I muttered under my breath. “Naive, you go first ...”

“Gladly,” Vickers junior said in a happy voice, and he created a fireball right in front of my nose.

“... at trying to find the weak spot,” I concluded, moving further away from the six-foot wide fireball that was scattering sparks in all directions. At least it was just hanging there without moving ...

I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and glared at the fireball. The fire looked perfectly ordinary – no special variations at all. Maybe our fiery boy didn’t have any weak spots in his spells? Was that possible?

I was so intent on studying the fireball that it was a while before I noticed it was moving slowly towards me.

“Hey! What are you doing?” I said, seriously frightened.

“Ah, sorry,” Naive replied. “I got distracted.”

He got distracted. The element of fire just happens to be the most dangerous one to study! The one that causes the worst injuries! And he gets distracted!

I cast a glance of angry frustration at Chas and Neville. Traitors. But they hadn’t managed to find any weak spots yet, either. And Alice wasn’t doing any better.

Well, at least I wasn’t the only one.

More out of despair and anger than calculation, I shot a small spark at Naive’s fireball. Its structure was basically like a fireball, only much simpler.

Pop.

The huge six-foot fireball disappeared with a strange squelching sound.

“I did it,” I said rather uncertainly as Tyrel walked up to me.

“Yes you did. Now do it again.”

“No problem,” I said breezily. “Let me have your spell.”

To be quite honest, I was absolutely certain I wouldn’t be able to do it again. And I couldn’t. In fact, when the class ended, no one but me had managed to do anything of the kind. The Craftsmen expressed the opinion that it was probably too early to teach us this lesson after all. We felt offended.

It was almost “night”, so our team made short work of supper and we all went off to sleep. I didn’t see Alice to her room, for the simple reason that every time I tried to do it, she disappeared. And apart from that, every time I suggested visiting her, I received a categorical refusal. But surprisingly enough, that didn’t stop her accepting my attentions and coming to visit me ... although the two of us were never alone, there was always someone else there. What is it with girls? Especially vampire girls ...

“Why does he keep picking on us like that?” Chas asked in exasperation as the two of us walked along the corridor. “Anyone would think we were a bunch of dunces. Alice is a real child prodigy, and Naive’s a genuine arsonist boy-wonder. But that’s not good enough for Tyrel.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, while I tried to understand what Chas was so annoyed about.

“He’s right, though,” I answered eventually. “You’re all doing great, but what about me? I still haven’t won a single training session.”

Chas stopped dead in his tracks.

“So what? Is that what really matters? None of us can weave spells as well as you can. You might not have much power, but you know how to use it a lot better than we do.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you win your duels. How do you think it feels to keep losing one after another?”

“Not too good, I’m sure,” Chas agreed. “But today you managed to find the weak spot in Naive’s fireball; you just need a bit of practise and you’ll be fine.”

“Where are we going to practise?” I almost shouted. “The meditation halls are all booked for every last minute of the day, and they won’t let us into the Hall of Low Power because we used up our time allocation ages ago.”

Chas nodded in agreement, but, being Chas, he just had to find some way round the problem.

“Then let’s do it the simple way,” said Chas, looking round cautiously to make sure no one was listening. “Let’s go to your room.”

“Why my room?” I protested, realising immediately what he had in mind.

“I don’t get it – who needs this, me or you?”

“Me,” I admitted dismally.

I had a feeling we could run into trouble. But without constant practise there was no way I was going to pass the exams. Ha, what am I saying? ... just practising wouldn’t be enough, I had to come up with something special. Romius had tried to help me by recreating the state I’d slipped into when I took the entrance tests, but it did no good. I listened to my music, meditated, remembered my dreams detail by detail (although it was the strange vampire who was interested in my dreams, rather than Romius), but nothing helped. At least I’d only spoken to that vampire with the stupid sense of humour a few times. There was something I didn’t like about him ... and I hadn’t seen much of my uncle recently, either, he never seemed to be around.

The room was a real mess.

Chas cast a sceptical glance at the books and clothes scattered all over the place.

“We need to rake all this clutter into the corners to make sure a spark doesn’t set anything on fire.”

I agreed with him on that. I wouldn’t want my textbooks on tactics or energetics to get burned by accident.

Just to be on the safe side, we moved the bed into a corner of the room as well.

“Right then, I create a small fireball, and you try to extinguish it,” Chas suggested.

“Don’t you remember them telling us we could only practise magic in the meditation halls and the Low Power Hall, under the supervision of a Craftsman?” I reminded him gingerly.

“Forget that,” Chas said, preparing to create his fireball. “Who’s going to find out? And how?”

“I don’t see how they can,” I agreed, but that doubt was still gnawing away somewhere inside me.

Chas created a fireball in the middle of the room; I heaved a deep sigh and started walking round it in circles. I was concerned about breaking the rules, but I was even more fed up of losing all the time. And Chas was right, I needed to add a new trick to my arsenal, it would come in very useful.