Faculty of Fire (36 page)

“Or they might put our fire out,” I said, dampening his enthusiasm.

For once Chas decided not to answer me back. Evidently the tension before the duel was beginning to tell.

By the way, I thought we were lucky. In my opinion, team duels were less dangerous than the individual kind. When you’re in a team, you know your friend is there beside you, and you feel a lot more confident than when it’s just you and your opponent standing face to face. The fight itself might be more complicated, though, after all, you never know which of your five opponents is going to attack you at any particular moment. I was responsible for our defence, by the way. My invisible wall was still the most effective defensive spell in our faculty. Romius had told me in secret that my weaving was pretty much third-year level. Romius himself had repeated it with no problem and even improved it. But my friends couldn’t get even halfway through the weaving – they said the energy streams were too fine for them. I was the only one who could weave fine threads of energy like that. So the five of us were going to be defended by my wall and my snakes, which had now learned to “pop” not just fireballs, but also the simplest spells from other spheres, like the airy fist, the green thorn and the ice arrow.

Of course, the spearhead of our team’s attack was Naive, who worked in conjunction with his brother, while Alice and Chas, as the most agile and consistent members, were responsible for keeping our opponents occupied. Theoretically, the other schools should have chosen similar tactics, but that was something we were about to find out.

As usual, I was roused from my reverie by Chas who gave me a dig in the side with his elbow.

“Look, they’re going to tell us something important.”

I looked at the open space and spotted signs of movement.

A High Craftsmen I didn’t know walked out to the centre of the space and made an announcement: “Good day, worthy Craftsmen and you who will be Craftsmen in the future ...”

“Yeah,” Chas whispered in my year. “We know just how worthy they think we are! Somehow I haven’t noticed too many signs of the honourable sentiment of respect.”

“Shshh!” hissed one of the pupils sitting near us. He wasn’t from our faculty, if he had been, he’d have know it was best not to get into an argument with Chas.

“Why, is this old dodderer really worth listening to?” Chas asked him.

“... First there will be the individual duels between the best pupils of each faculty ...”

“Well, well, he’s really smart, isn’t he?”

“... Then there will be the team duels between the best groups of five ...”

“Maybe we ought to go down and say something ourselves?”

“... I hereby declare ...”

“Right, you asked for it.”

“ ... the competition open!”

“Ooh, now I’m frightened!”

“And first of all I invite onto the field the representatives of the spheres of earth and water for the individual duel.”

The lad that Chas had been arguing with instantly forgot all about their quarrel and hurried off towards the open space.

“He’s chicken,” Chas declared rather uncertainly.

“In your dreams,” I said, watching the lad make his way through the crowd and out onto the field. “I think you’ve just been quarrelling with the best pupil from the faculty of water or earth. ...”

The DED appeared, and the duel began.

“Water,” Chas told me as soon as the pupils exchanged their first spells

“Has it already started? Did we miss anything interesting?” asked the Vickers brothers, who had just arrived.

“Nothing special,” I replied, and couldn’t resist adding: “Apart from Chas challenging the best pupil in the faculty of water to a duel. And by the way, the lad’s just won his bout pretty smartly.”

“But we’re still forbidden to fight duels with the other faculties,” Neville remarked.

“In two weeks and one day it will be allowed,” I reminded him. “And Chas’s first duel will be with that likeable young man.”

Chas turned slightly pale.

Serve him right, Next time he’ll think before he shot his mouth off.

“Have you seen Alice anywhere?” I asked. “We parted at the teleports this morning, and I didn’t notice her in the dining hall.”

“We haven’t seen her either,” the Vickers brothers said, surprised. “We thought she was with you, as usual.”

“I don’t like this,” Chas said anxiously. “What if she doesn’t show until the competition’s over?”

“Someone should go and look for her,” said Neville.

All three of them looked at me.

“What are you looking at me for?” I asked indignantly, but my friends’ gaze soon broke my resistance. “All right, I’m going.”

“Why did you hesitate?” said Chas, nodding as I left. “And make it quick, please.”

Easily said – make it quick. If Alice wasn’t in her room, I’d have to search the whole Academy for her. And that could take days.

Alice, Alice ... What a stupid mistake I made the first time I walked I her to the teleports ... In the name of a dragon, why, oh why did I start taking about those questions that Caiten was so interested in? I felt as if she’d taken a step towards me, and I’d just stuck out a foot and tripped her up ... no wonder she was more distrustful than ever now. But there was no point in wallowing in my misery. The important thing now was to find her before the duel began.

The corridors of the Academy were empty. No pupils scurrying to and fro, no Craftsmen striding along pompously ... no one at all. As if I was right, and the entire Academy really had gathered in the Main Hall. But in that case, I couldn’t help being surprised at how few people there were in the Academy, if they all fitted into one – admittedly, rather big – hall.

Just as I feared, Alice wasn’t in her room on the girls’ floor. I could only hope that she’d already arrived at the competition while I was on my way to her place. But why hadn’t she turned up, anyway? What could possibly have happened to stop her?

Anyway, just to be on the safe side, I decided to take a stroll round the Craftmens’ level. I know, it was a very long shot, but I had to check it out.

The moment I emerged from the teleport, I knew it had been a good idea to come here. The entire level was empty, apart from Alice, who was lying on the floor near the teleports.

I dashed across to her, wondering on the way if it was possible to take a vampire’s pulse. I was pretty sure it was, but what would the result mean?

There was a pulse, and Alice had no visible injuries, which in theory meant that everything should be all right.

Suddenly I sensed a movement behind me. The old skills of the Art came back to me in a flash, and I sprang off to one side. Just in time. A knife flashed through the point in space where my neck had been a moment ago.

The person dressed in the yellow livery of a pupil dived into a teleport before I could get up off the floor. I would have gone after him, but I couldn’t risk leaving Alice lying on the floor.

I tried to calm the furious pounding of my heart.

Well now, there was something scary going down in the Academy. To put it mildly ...

I just hoped that Alice was all right.

I decided to try patting her gently on the cheeks, that might bring her round.

Pat, pat.

“Oh!”

She had come round. That was good, of course. But why did she have to hit me like that? Why knock me down?

“What are you doing here?” asked Alice, springing to her feet in a flash.

“You’re asking me? What are you doing here lying on the floor?” I asked indignantly. “The competition’s started already, and we haven’t got a full team.”

Alice was obviously only just beginning to realise that she was in a corridor, and not in her room.

“How did I get here?” she asked herself, confused. “Well, I remember how I got here, through the teleport. But why was I lying on the floor? I remember I was on my way ...” – she hesitated – “... to do something, and the next moment I was woken up by someone slapping me across the cheeks.”

“Not slapping, but patting gently,” I corrected her.

“Patting me gently,” Alice agreed. “And I ... gave him a gentle shove.”

“Not a gentle shove, but a whop to the solar plexus.”

“Ah yes,” the vampiress agreed again without arguing. “And anyway, what are you doing sitting around here? We’ve got a competition!”

“You shouldn’t have hit me,” I growled as I got up off the floor. “Let’s go, quick.”

We reach the competition just in time for the final solo duel, between our best pupil, Steel (who had already won his fight with the representative of the faculty of air) and the lad that Chas had been arguing with (who had just got back from the treatment station).

Chas’s loud exclamations made it easy to locate our friends in the crowd,

“Come on! Burn him!”

“Chas, they can’t hear you,” I told him, walking up and slapping him on the shoulder.

“They can’t hear me,” Chas agreed, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy shouting my heart out. Give him a fireball! Burn him!”

Chas’s phrase “Burn him!” was soon picked up by our entire faculty. So thanks to Chas, we now had our own battle cry.

Chas only noticed Alice when his voice gave out from all the yelling.

“Where were you?”

“I overslept,” she said, giving me a warning glance.

Okay, if the girl wanted me to keep my mouth shut, then I’d keep my mouth shut. And I decided to keep quiet about having been attacked by someone with a knife too. I hadn’t even told Alice about that ... yet.

Meanwhile the duel had started.

Don’t be surprised if I don’t describe any of the duels except ours. I can’t tell you how tired of them I was by this time. The worst thing of all was that there was nothing new to see. I knew all these spells off by heart, the sight of all those shields and fireballs and fists was enough to make me feel sick ... If only, just once, I could have seen a duel between real Craftsmen, or at least senior pupils. In the whole two and a half months, there had only been one duel between senior pupils, and we hadn’t seen it, because we were in Shins’s class at the time.

Anyway Steel lost his duel. I didn’t know what Shins would do to him now (in the last two weeks I had realised that for some reason this competition was very important to our teacher), but the lad did everything he could. The duel was very close, with both opponents down on the floor more than once. Steel had a shining black eye, and his opponent was singed by a fireball that had broken through his water shields. But despite his burns, the lad managed to hit Steel from behind with a column of water. After a blow that hard, our best pupil was carried straight from the field to the treatment station on a stretcher. The victor followed him there, but on his own two feet.

And that left our faculty in second place in the overall standings. If we won our team duel, we could easily find ourselves in first place. If we won ...

“We’re on soon,” Chas said, getting agitated. “Does everyone remember what we have to do?”

“Win,” Naive said.

Chas looked at Vickers junior as if he was his bitterest enemy, but he controlled himself and said nothing.

“Let’s move closer to the field,” Neville suggested. “That way we’ll see who we’re drawn against too.”

Scene 7

“Earth would be the best,” Alice mused as we made our way through the crowd to the field.

In principle, I agreed with her. The main advantage we had over earth magic was that fire was better than anything else at dealing with all kinds of vegetation. And the second was that vegetation had to grow. Magical plants grew fast – they took anything from a tenth of a second to several minutes – but even in that short time there was a lot that you could do. But then, of course, there was more to earth magic than just plants, those lads could make the earth shake and create stone walls. Only there was no earth on the floor where the duels took place, and there were no stones either (apart from the floor and the walls, which, according rumour, it was impossible to damage). Fortunately. I was always amazed at how happily their green vegetation flourished on a bare stone floor ...

“I think water would be best,” Neville disagreed.

He was wrong there, of course. Water is fire’s worst enemy, and a duel with pupils from that faculty would be very tricky. Our only advantage, which was what Neville was relying on, was his aptitude for water magic. Very rarely – almost never, in fact – it happened that someone had an equal aptitude for working with opposed elements. That was what Neville was counting on. And apart from that, I suspected that he simply wanted to test his skill.

We walked through the crowd and came out right beside a group of four Craftsmen who were the first-year teachers. They were arguing about something as we appeared beside them, but when Shins spotted us, the argument immediately broke off.