Faculty of Fire (35 page)

“You know, I have to leave the Academy for a while. Business in the Borderland,” the vampire said suddenly. “So I won’t be here for the next month. Write your dreams down, will you.”

I looked at him, feeling rather puzzled.

“Leave the Academy? But is it that easy to get out through the exclusion field?”

“Get out through it, no, but it is possible to leave by teleport.”

“A-ah ...”

So there were teleports that led outside the Academy? Very interesting.

“I decided to drop in and wish you good luck before I go,” said the vampire, absolutely dumbfounding me. “I think you have a competition in a month, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“I hope you win.”

“Thank you,” I replied in amazement.

What had happened to him? I’d never seen him show that kind of consideration before.

The vampire got up off the chair and walked across to the door.

“And in general, you take care,” Velkheor advised me. “You’ll be useful to me again.”

I was struck dumb by his sheer impertinence.

But the vampire had already left.

“Creep,” I remarked in a quiet voice, and went to take a shower.

Scene 6

It’s physically quite impossible for me to describe the next two weeks. More than half of the time that I was awake (which happened to be about eighty per cent of all the time), I was walking around in a kind of fog. I seem to remember that all sorts of things happened, but ... I was watching it all from the outside, I didn’t actually
live
through any of it.

Through all of my trials and troubles, my friends were always there at my side. Chas and I worked in the dining hall three times a day, slowly turning into total and absolute zombies, and Neville always covered for me during the team duelling sessions. And every day one of our team went with me to the treatment station, which was all because, instead of reducing the pressure on us, Shins actually stepped it up. That’s right – the pressure on
us
. All five of us were now the target for his carping and fault-finding. Sometimes we suspected our malicious teacher didn’t want us to survive until the competition. In my case the nervous tension was so great that I started having nightmares – about being burned alive, about a thousand fireballs all coming at me at once, about running away from a huge firebird ... basically, I was teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Ever since Alice and Neville found out that they could practise magic in my room without worrying about being punished for it, my few free hours had become a continuation of my nightmares. I was often woken by the bang of a fireball exploding or lulled to sleep by the whining of a fiery whirlwind. All these experiments left the walls of my room covered with a thick layer of soot, which did nothing to improve the quality of the air, or of my brief periods of sleep. I could only hope that soon we’d be taught a few useful spells from the repertoire of water magic, so we could clean up my humble abode a little bit. But for the moment, unfortunately, we didn’t have either the energy or the time for household chores. Just training, training and more training. Who was it that said Higher Craftsmen can do anything they like with a single wave of the hand? If he only knew everything that lies behind that wave – all those formulas and flow designs ... it would blow his mind! In any case, my mind was all set to blow already. Things got so bad, I didn’t even notice when I rose a few inches into the air during the evening meditation session. I wasn’t trying to do anything of the kind, I didn’t know how to do it, I just got absorbed in my own thoughts ... and it happened. After that Chas kept saying that if I could fly in my sleep, I must really be growing fast. But he wasn’t being spiteful, just feeling envious. After all, he couldn’t fly yet.

So this whole period was very productive, but very tedious. And believe me, there’s nothing more to be said about it.

A gentle voice said decisively: “The victory is yours, the reward is ours.”

Or maybe what it said was: “Your victory is our reward...”

But what difference did it make what the voice said? I’d been having very strange dreams, and most of them were to do with events awaiting me in the future ... or was that just a wild guess?

“So how long are you going to hold out on us?” Chas yelled.

“What are you talking about?”

I had to shout above the roaring of the flame that was blazing at the very centre of my room.

“Alice, switch your lamp off!” Chas yelled, exasperated.

“It’s not a lamp,” the vampiress retorted indignantly. “It’s a pillar of flame!”

She glanced at the pillar of flame, and it obediently blinked off.

“Looked like a perfectly ordinary lamp to me. No good for anything much, just a bright light, but I still wouldn’t use it for reading,” said Chas. “But I guess it would make a passable heater too.”

“Go take a hike,” Alice said good-naturedly.

I sighed in relief. Now Chas would launch into one of his squabbles and leave me alone for a while.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Chas said to me. “Come on, tell us the whole story. Spit it out. Confess, and we’ll understand, we might even forgive you. If we’re in a good mood, that is.”

“Okay, I did it, so what?” I exploded. “Are you envious?”

“Yep,” said Chas. “Now, a few more details, please.”

So I had to tell him how I’d gotten even with the joker who had ruined my hairstyle two months earlier. I must admit, I was proud of what I’d done, and I would have been quite happy to teach the same lesson to certain jokers from the faculty of water. I’d spent a whole week preparing for Operation Vengeance – the idea had come from one of my acquaintances in the faculty of earth and, strangely enough, the vampire who had dropped by to see me that evening.

The use of magic was strictly forbidden within the Academy building, and anywhere apart from in my own room, I would have been caught. But outside the building, just as I had hoped, it proved possible to work a moderate spell or two. I found out that when the Academy was isolated (that is, when time in the Academy moved at a different speed from in the outside world), the building was surrounded by a force field, which was virtually impossible to penetrate. But! This field was about twenty feet away from the walls. This was the space that my vampire flew in, and it could be used to get from one level to another. Which was just what I did.

I was helped by the fast growth spell that we put on a small vine, which I had also created. In half a night it reached up three whole stories, which meant that I could climb up into the joker’s room (he happened to live directly above me). While he was sound asleep and suspecting nothing, I – his uninvited guest – shaved off all his hair. When I got back to my room, I burned the vine, without leaving any ash, and calmly went back to bed. What an uproar there was in the morning!

The joker complained to everyone he could think of, including our teacher Shins. They even set up a special committee, but it couldn’t find any traces of magic in his room, which was hardly surprising – it’s kind of hard to find what doesn’t exist.

Of course, the joker guessed who had taken his revenge (judging from the unfriendly glances he cast my way every time we met), but he couldn’t prove anything. So now I walked around the Academy with a mysterious smile (at least, I hoped that’s what it was) on my face.

To be quite honest, the reason I did it wasn’t really because I wanted my revenge so badly – it was because of Alice. I remembered what she’d said about respecting those who knew how to avenge themselves.

“Well done.” Alice remarked when I finished my story. “But there is just one little thing ...”

“What’s that?” I asked warily.

“Do you honestly think that the Craftsmen are so stupid they couldn’t figure out how you got into the room?”

I hadn’t really thought about that. Maybe they hadn’t guessed. That sort of thing happens, doesn’t it?

“Your uncle covered up for you again.” Alice declared.

“How do you know that?” I asked with a frown.

“I heard,” the vampiress said with a shrug.

“Aha,” I said gleefully. “More eavesdropping. But tell me this ...” I paused for effect “... do you really think the Craftsmen are so stupid that they don’t notice you hanging about on their level all the time, eavesdropping?”

From the bemused look on the vampiress’s face, I knew I’d hit the bullseye. She hadn’t thought about that.

“And by the way,” Chas put in. “Who is it you’re spying for? Could it be your vampire relatives, perhaps? Maybe they’re planning an attack on the Academy?”

Chas and I roared with laughter. That was the most stupid idea imaginable – an attack on the Academy. Ha!

“We’re not interested in your Academy,” Alice growled. “We have enough problems of our own.”

“Then what do you do it for?” Chas scoffed, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“I don’t,” the vampiress said angrily. “I don’t eavesdrop, it’s all in your imagination.”

Chas and I exchanged glances and decided not to pursue this ticklish subject.

“Okay, it’s time for us to go serve our sentence,” Chas reminded me.

“That’s really appalling,” said Alice. “Even on the day of the competition they still make you work in the kitchen!”

“Ah, never mind,” I said. “You can get used to anything if you have to. We’ll do our shift and then come straight to the competition.”

We walked out of my room and set off towards the teleports. They really were very convenient, those teleports – no matter what principle it was they worked on. I could just imagine how hard it would to walk up and down the stairs from the fortieth floor to the seventieth and back again. And try doing that ten times a day. The idea made me shudder!

“Make sure you’re not late,” the vampiress advised us before she stepped on her teleport.

“I wouldn’t mind being late,” Chas said thoughtfully. “Only I’m afraid our unknown opponents would be only too delighted by my late arrival.”

“In a few hours we’ll know just who our unknown opponents are,” I reminded him.

“All the more reason to be on time,” he agreed.

That day the dining hall was more crowded than ever. They’d obviously decided to put all the different years together before the competition. In any case, as I walked into the hall, I ran into the couple I knew from the final year of our faculty.

“Hey there, lad. I know you,” the boy chuckled.

What was his name now? It had slipped my mind.

“Serge, we’re late,” said the girl, giving him a shove. And then she looked at me. “Ah, it’s you. Hi, Zach.”

Ah yes. He was called Serge. And his girl ... she was Anna, wasn’t she?

“Hi,” I said, shaking the hand that was held out to me.

Chas looked at my acquaintances, then at me ... then he just waved his hand at me and went on to the kitchen.

“How’s the studying going?”

“Good,” I muttered. “Excuse me, but it’s high time we were handing out the plates.”

“Oh, I see you’ve already managed to distinguish yourself, then,” said Anna.

I couldn’t help sighing.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Serge, putting one hand on my shoulder. “We’ve all done our time in the dining hall, it’s a kind of initiation.”

“Yeah, an initiation into the brotherhood of waiters,” I agreed.

“Okay, see you again, I hope,” said Anna. “We’ve got to go, we have to prepare for the competition.”

“Then we’ll see other there,” I said happily. “We’re representing our faculty in the team duels.”

“Now that’s a real achievement,” Serge remarked. “I wish you luck.”

“See you there,” I said with a nod.

“We’ll be rooting for you,” Anna told me.

When I reached the kitchen, Chas had already put on an apron and grabbed a tray.

“Don’t just stand there! Get to work!”

The entire Academy had gathered in the Main Hall or, at least, it seemed like that to me. Of course, I could have been mistaken, it was hard for me to judge without even an approximate idea of how many people there were in the Academy just at that moment (or at any other).

I remembered that the Middle Hall of Power was full when our entire year gathered there after we were duped by those two jokers, but the Main Hall was ten times as big! Even so, there was hardly room enough to catch a breath. It was obvious just how important this competition was – by my reckoning there were almost as many Craftsmen in the hall as pupils.

“Look, there are our friends,” said Chas, pointing out the three guys we knew from the faculty of water.

“I see them,” I said, nodding. “Maybe they’re taking part in the team duels too?”

“That would be good,” Chas said dreamily, rolling up his eyes. “Oh, we’ll give them a good roasting.”