Faculty of Fire (29 page)

But naturally, my hopes were dashed to smithereens, the way they usually are. After less than two minutes, the door opened and Caiten appeared.

“Oh, what are you doing here?” he asked in surprise. “You’ve got a class.”

“Craftsman Tyrel excused me,” I explained. “I haven’t recovered from my injury yet.”

“I see,” said Caiten, walking past me and sitting in his chair. “But what do you want?”

“Well, actually,” I said scratching my head, “I don’t want anything, really.”

“Well, off you go and rest then.”

I was just about to walk out when I remembered about Shins. I didn’t know for certain if he’d gone or he was waiting for me, so he could escort me to my class. That would be just like him.

“Excuse me,” I said, turning back to Caiten, “but did you see ...”

The tutor looked at me in surprise, then suddenly laughed out loud.

“So that’s what you’re doing in here – hiding from Shins?”

I gave a shamefaced nod.

“I think he was standing in front of the teleports when I walked past,” Caiten recalled. “Let’s just check.”

He made a few passes with his hands, and the door suddenly disappeared.

My jaw dropped open and I stared at the doorway in amazement. There was Shins, standing by the teleports about twenty-five yards away, keeping a keen eye on the corridor, but taking no notice of the empty doorframe.

“Don’t worry,” Caiten reassured me. The door’s still there, it’s just transparent from our side now. A little trick I picked up from a vampire friend of mine. And talking about vampires, since you’re intending to stay here ... You are intending to stay for a while, aren’t you?”

What else could I do? I had absolutely no desire to talk to Shins again. But I was really astounded by how understanding our tutor was. Maybe that was because he wasn’t a Craftsman yet. A senior pupil would probably feel a lot closer to us than those old blockheads (no offence intended, of course).

“That’s what I thought,” he said, taking my silence for consent. “Have a seat.”

Right ... and put it on that other place instead ...

“How are things between you and your colleague Alice?”

I blushed bright red to the tips of my ears at this unexpected and tactless question.

“There isn’t anything between us,” I replied, struggling to contain my indignation. After all, this was an entirely personal matter, between me and Alice.

“I don’t mean those kinds of things,” Caiten hastily reassured me. “It’s just that in the entire history of the Academy, no vampires have ever studied here. There have been a few druids, but not purebloods, more like distant cousins. But vampires ...”

At this point I suddenly remembered a question that had been on my mind. You could never tell, maybe Caiten knew the answer.

“Actually, there is one question that’s been bothering me.” I concentrated for a moment, gathering my thoughts. “I thought that vampires ... how shall I put it ... drank blood. Alice has been here for two months. How can she manage without blood?”

No, don’t get me wrong. I hadn’t forgotten what Alice said about her clan not drinking “human blood”, but that meant they
did
drink some kind of blood. Didn’t it?

“I have no idea,” Caiten admitted honestly. “Nobody really knows anything much about the Day Clan, maybe they don’t drink blood at all ... How would I know? Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

Now that was cunning. Why didn’t I ask, and then tell him what I found out? I could act as his spy.

“And in, er, company, does she behave normally,” the tutor carried on picking my brains.

“Yes,” I said with a shrug. “Just a normal girl.”

“Now that’s strange,” Caiten remarked mysteriously. “Have you ever had any dealings with vampires before?”

I immediately remembered the strange vampire in Romius’s study. Or maybe he wasn’t strange at all, but perfectly normal. After all, I’d never seen any vampires but him. Well, there was Alice, but Caiten seemed to think the way she acted was abnormal…for vampires.

I didn’t say anything and, of course, Caiten concluded that I thought the same way he did.

“Then you realise that she doesn’t behave much like a genuine vampire. In any case, the Day Clan openly admits that they aren’t ordinary vampires. They even use simple human names, instead of the usual prefix with the name of the clan, as if to indicate that they’re as close to humans as they are to other vampires.”

Well, all this was just speculation, unless, of course, Caiten had discussed the question with day vampires in person.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he went on. “It’s not just idle curiosity. I don’t know why, but the Day Clan are opposed to Alice studying at the Academy. On enrolment day they sent a delegation that tried very hard to persuade us that the Academy was no place for vampires. Almost all the members of the Assembly of Craftsmen were in complete agreement, but there isn’t a single point in the rules that prohibits vampires from studying the Craft. And the Craftsmen in our assembly are very, very old-fashioned. The rules mean everything to them. So the vampiress was not expelled from the Academy, and she won’t be, to judge from the progress she’s making ...”

Now why would he be telling me all this?

“You’d like to know why I’m telling you all this?”

I certainly would.

“It’s just that I’d like you to find out – and, by the way, I’m not the only one – why her relatives are so opposed to her studying in the Academy. When the vampires were leaving, they said all sorts of unpleasant things, and I’m wondering how far they might be prepared to go.”

So it was about Alice’s relatives. Would those be the relatives she was hiding from in my house? If she needed a crossbow to defend herself against them, they obviously weren’t real kin at all. I was afraid to imagine what might have happened if Alice had been handed over to these “relatives” of hers.

“I can ask her, of course,” I agreed cautiously. “But if she asks why I want to know, I’ll tell her the truth.”

“Yes, of course,” Caiten agreed. “I’d ask her myself, but vampires are very secretive ... and distrustful. Somehow I think she’s more likely to open up to you.”

Why would she? She tried to keep me at arm’s length, like everyone else. Unfortunately.

“Okay,” Caiten said abruptly. “Let’s forget about vampires for the moment. What about the duels? Do you think they’re a bit too tough?”

“They seem okay, really,” I said with a shrug. “We’re still alive.”

“Never mind, in a couple of years you’ll remember these duels and laugh.”

“Laugh?” I asked in amazement.

What was he talking about?

“They’re just children’s games. You can’t even imagine how very ... naive these duels of yours are. All these firebirds, and fireballs ... it’s kindergarten stuff.”

“So what they do in the senior classes is a lot more interesting?” I asked curiously.

“Interesting?” Caiten laughed. “One second-year student could handle ten lads like you without even trying.”

“Without even trying?” I asked resentfully.

“Just think about it: in the second year you cover multi-layer shields and self-homing attack spells that are far more intelligent than those simple firebirds. And every pupil knows how to disrupt the other pupils’ spells: I mean the shields
and
the attack spells. So you have to weave every spell in a special way, try to confuse your opponent, so that he can’t find the weak spot. But the spells you use now are like things made by two-year-olds in kindergarten.”

“Gee, thanks.”

I didn’t much like the comparison with kindergarten, but what Caiten said made me feel really curious. It was frightening even to imagine what they must learn after the second year ...

“Look, I think Shins is leaving,” Caiten said suddenly.

I turned to the doorway, just in time to spot the Craftsman disappearing into one of the teleports.

“All right, off you go,” Caiten told me. “But don’t forget about our little talk.”

I nodded in agreement, although I was feeling a bit uneasy. Had I just become a spy? No, I just had to tell Alice everything, and she could decide for herself whether to tell me or not, and what to tell me. And which parts of what she told me I could pass on to Caiten.

When I said goodbye to the junior tutor and walked out of his study, I suddenly realised I didn’t want to go and see my uncle any more. I wasn’t in the mood, and I didn’t feel like wandering round the Academy during class hours. There was way of telling who else might spot me – and then how would I explain that I wasn’t cutting classes?

So I went back to my room and waited for my friends to come back. I felt the urge to practise a bit of magic several times, only that damned sensor spell that hidden somewhere in the room put a damper on that. But I did have a few ideas about how to locate and outwit that sensor.

First of all I identified the most likely locations for the spell, and then I set about my theoretical research. Half an hour later I had surmised, devised, calculated and deduced that I couldn’t find the concealed spell, but there was just a slight possibility that I could locate the slim thread connecting the spell with whoever had installed it.

My idea was very simple – find the connecting line and cut it. Then the signal indicating that I was practising magic wouldn’t reach whoever was spying on me. The only downside was that they could have made provisions for locating a break in communications ... and then someone would soon show up to find out what had happened. And then ... and then what? They couldn’t prove I was the one who had broken the link. At least, they probably couldn’t ... In any case, it was worth trying.

So now I had to enlist the help of logic ... Stop! Why did I have to bother with finding that communications link anyway? All I needed was a thin shield than contained all the space in my room and fitted tightly against the walls. I wouldn’t have the power to maintain a shield like that, but that wasn’t necessary. I only had to create it for just a fraction of a second – that ought to be enough to snap the thread linking the sensor spell with the duty Craftsman!

No sooner said than done.

I spent a while preparing to create the spell and gathering my strength. Eventually, with a hesitant sigh (that was from my weakness after the injury) I created the pattern of a simple energy shield the size and shape of my room in my mind.

When everything went dark in front of my eyes and room started spinning round, I realised I’d overestimated my strength slightly.

“Life is like a set of black and white stripes,” the old man with grey hair said. “And as a rule both colours are present in equal amounts ...”

Knock-knock.

A strange kind of knocking. Insistent and irritating. As if someone was knocking on my head, not the door.

“I’m not here,” I tried to shout, but all I could manage was a quiet whisper.

Whoever it was had apparently decided to break the door down instead of waiting for me to open it. They were thinking along the right lines – I wasn’t going to get up and open the door anyway – but breaking the door down was going a bit too far.

“Zach,” said a voice outside the door, an agitated female voice.

A female voice? Agitated?

I forced myself to get up off the floor (ah, yes, that’s where I was) and walked across to the door – slowly, so that the contents of my brain pan wouldn’t slop over the edge.

The lock yielded at my third attempt and the door immediately swung open. Alice came flying in, muttered something like “shuthdoor”, and darted into the bathroom. In the course of this manoeuvre she accidentally caught me with her shoulder.

When the vampiress finally emerged from the bathroom, I was still sitting on the floor, gazing vacantly into space. Naturally, I hadn’t closed the door.

“Are you crazy?” she asked in amazement, darting around me and closing the door.

Are you crazy ... Why did you have to knock me down?

“I’m all right,” I replied honestly, still gazing blankly straight ahead. I didn’t even have the strength to look up.

“What have you been doing in here?” Alice asked, giving me a suspicious look, then she picked me up by the scruff of the neck (did she think I was a kitten, or what?) and carried me across to the bed.

I yawned sweetly and stretched out comfortably.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I half-mumbled. The vampiress’s looked vaguely surprised ... or maybe she wasn’t surprised?

“You might not be here tomorrow,” she hissed.

“All right, leave me alone,” I muttered, and then the meaning of what she’d just said hit me. “What?”

I leapt up off the bed, but then the weakness overwhelmed me and I collapsed back onto it.

“Is it because of what I did to their sensor?” I asked in slightly trembling voice.