Faculty of Fire (43 page)

Scene 3

“Without Kelnmiir we don’t have a chance against the trolls,” Neville summed up the situation, looking around warily.

“I agree,” Caiten said with a nod. “All right, I think it’s the second turn we need after all. Let’s go, quickly.”

And we went.

We walked for about twenty minutes along corridors that were all the same, their walls lined with masses of shelves stacked with wooden boxes, scrolls, writing implements and stacks of paper. Then we passed areas where there were no shelves, just statues of all sizes, some tiny, some gargantuan, standing on the floor. Everything seemed to be tagged, but the tags only had a series of numbers written on them.

I asked indignantly what sort of museum this was if everything was lying in boxes and the tags didn’t tell you what anything was. I was told this wasn’t the museum, just the repository, the storage section. The History Museum proper, which was on the other side of this floor, was entered through completely different teleports.

“Mmmm ...” said Caiten, halting indecisively. “It must have been the third turn after all. I made a mistake. It happens.”

“Seems to me he’s making altogether too many mistakes today,” Steel whispered to me.

“And what do we do now?” asked Neville.

“I suggest we try looking in those boxes,” said Naive, pointing to the nearest shelves. “We might find something useful.”

“Right,” said Neville, looking at his brother as if he was an idiot. “Someone tried that already. And now where is he?”

As if in answer to his question we heard the sound of crates falling somewhere in the distance.

“He’s having fun,” Steel chuckled.

“I’m afraid we’re in for the same kind of fun soon,” Neville remarked. “So I suggest we move on. And then we’ll see what happens.”

“I agree with Neville,” Caiten said slowly. “Only let’s move in a definite direction, that is, towards the exhibition hall of the Museum. At least every item there has a plaque in front of it, explaining its operating principle. And since there’s no energy, the protective fields over the exhibits aren’t operating – we can take whatever we need.”

We walked on along the corridor and soon came across the first signs of the struggle between the vampire and the golem. Several sets of shelves were lying on the floor, and the boxes and their precious contents had been scattered all around and thoroughly trampled.

“Oh, someone will catch it from the curator for this,” Caiten said to no one in particular.

Who cared about the curator? There were trolls following us and he was worried about the museum curator! And just where was this curator when we needed him so badly?

There was a terrible crash from up ahead.

“Right,” said Caiten, quickening his stride. “It seems like they’ve reached the exhibition hall!”

“What difference does that make to us?” Steel muttered.

We moved rapidly towards the source of the sound, until we finally came to the boundary between the repository and the exhibition hall.

In front of us was a sheer unbroken wall with a small door, behind which, a plaque informed us, was the Museum. A little distance to the left of the door, the wall had been broken through by something with an outline that vaguely resembled the form of a man (I suspected that in this case it wasn’t a man, but a vampire). And a slightly greater distance to the right of the door, there was a huge, gaping hole. Apparently the golem was wide awake now and sparing no effort in his pursuit of the agile vampire.

“That takes some strength,” Neville said, looking at the huge gap in amazement. “How come these golems didn’t wipe out all the vampires?”

“Iron golems probably have their weak points,” Caiten said. “And vampires are born killers – they find those weak points fairly easily.”

And so saying, Caiten stepped over the broken fragments of the wall and through the breach. We followed him.

“Wowee!” Naive exclaimed in delight. “Look at all that stuff ...”

There really was an awful lot of “stuff”. The huge open space was packed with all sorts and sizes of tables, plinths, stands and display cases ... and there were all sorts and sizes of doodads and knick-knacks lying or standing or scattered about on every shelf and every table top. The sizes of the exhibits varied from very small (too small to be seen with the unaided eye) to absolutely huge (some of them almost touched the ceiling). Any attempt to describe the scope of this legacy is pointless. Imagine anything you like, and in some corner of the Museum you would find something it. Here, I was happy to note, the sections were clearly labelled and all the exhibits had little cards that explained what each item was, what it was used for and, better still, how to use it.

From somewhere up ahead of us we periodically heard the sound of ancient artefacts falling, breaking and smashing.

“Right, this is what we’ll do,” said Caiten. “We spread out along the rows and move towards Kelnmiir to help him. On the way, read the plaques on the exhibits carefully and look for something that will be useful to us. Don’t forget, only items with their own source of energy will work, and there aren’t too many of those here. And please, look for things that are simple. The switch-it-on-and-away-you-go kind, not items with an instruction manual in several volumes – there are plenty of those in here.”

“Understood,” we all rapped out and went dashing off to start our search.

It was really interesting to rummage through all those things. To be quite honest, I felt like a child in a toy shop.

The first item to catch my eye was a beautiful double-handed sword. I spotted it from a distance and hurried over to get a closer look. The plaque beside it said “Stonecutting Sword”. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. This was a real stroke of luck! It was hard to imagine a better weapon against stone trolls ...

Lower down on the plaque was a detailed description of how to use the sword: “Take the sword in the right hand if you are right-handed and in the left hand if you are left-handed. Take good aim at the enemy before swinging, in order to avoid unnecessary damage to the surroundings. All that is required to activate the special powers of the sword is to direct a flow of energy into it ...” There was no point in reading any more. Where would I get a flow of energy from? Although ... if I gave this thing to the vampire, it might just work ...

I picked up the sword ... doublehanded .... and long, almost as long as me. And a heavy brute ... No, I didn’t think the vampire would like it. Definitely not. An ironcutting sword would be more use to him right now.

A few steps further on, I came across a huge double-handed poleaxe. The plaque above it read: “Ironcutting poleaxe”. A really big poleaxe, double-handed ... No, I thought, vampires didn’t like poleaxes. I was sure they didn’t.

The next exhibit to catch my eye was a small ring. The plaque gave brief but comprehensive instructions: “Charge Ring. Stores up to ten mags of energy. To use the ring, rub it.”

I immediately groped all over the table top, hoping to find another ten of these obviously useful trinkets. But there was only a single specimen of every exhibit in the Museum. I just hoped the ring was already charged with its ten mags. Of course, I could have rubbed it to find out ... but then I could forget about the energy. I’d rather just believe the energy was in the ring. That felt much better.

And now ... how could I use this energy? Fireballs and other such small change were a waste of time against an iron golem ... and against trolls too. But I couldn’t do anything else. Maybe I should give the ring to Caiten? That was a much better idea.

I put the ring on my finger and walked on, periodically looking round at my friends. Neville was walking on my left, slightly behind me, carrying a strange object that looked like a long, bent spear over his shoulder. Steel was striding along further to the left – and he was hung from head to foot with lengths of some kind of rope. I couldn’t spot the others, they must have been hidden from me behind the shelves.

The sounds of a struggle were growing louder, so I guessed we must be approaching the site of the battle between the vampire and the iron golem. It was about time I found myself an appropriate weapon ...

And strangely enough, quite soon an appropriate weapon turned up – it was a rather battered broom. The plaque beside it said: “All-Purpose Broom. Before the creation of autonomous spells, it was used in all aspects of daily life (2600 – 2980 l.a.). Has an independent power source designed to last a week. To engage discharge mode, press the power switch and wave the broom. The strength of discharge depends on how hard you press.”

An independent power source – that was really great! Only I didn’t quite grasp how this all-purpose broom actually worked ... But since the broom had power for a week, I could check to see.

To do that, I pressed good and hard on the power switch and waved the broom ...

The shelves standing quite a long distance away from me were shattered and scattered in all directions. And the crash it made, oh the crash ...

Well that really was some discharge, no doubt about it. But the question that came to mind was: How could anyone use this thing to clean a house?

“What are you doing?” screamed Neville – it was a miracle that he had managed to dodge the exhibits and fragments of shelving that went flying his way.

“Sorry,” I said with a guilty shrug. “I was testing my all-purpose battle broom.”

Neville twirled one finger beside his head.

“Let you loose, and you’ll knock the entire Academy down, stone by stone ... I’m not testing my weapon.” He nodded at the sharply bent spear hanging over his shoulder.

“What is that?” I enquired.

“It’s a..uh…bent spear ...” Neville replied.

“What?” I asked in amazement.

“ ... that was created especially for hunting dragons.”

“For hunting dragons!” I laughed. “Well, well ... and why is it bent?”

Neville scratched his head: “Apparently the dragon proved stronger than the spear after all ...”

“And where are you going to find a dragon in the Academy?”

“Ah ...” said Neville with a mysterious smile. “The properties of this spear will help us fight trolls and golems, as well as dragons ...”

From the expression on Neville’s face, I knew he wasn’t going to tell me anything about the mysterious properties of his spear.

“Well, you might at least straighten it out,” I growled. “It looks pretty stupid the way it is.”

“It the first place, it’s heavy, and it’s a lot easier to carry it like this, and in the second place, this is a History Museum! Every exhibit has its own story ... they mustn’t be damaged.”

We both looked at the exhibits that had been scattered about by my all-purpose battle broom.

“Good going,” Neville summed up. “If it comes up, we can blame all the destruction on the iron golem. Otherwise you’ll be stuck in the kitchen for the rest of your life.”

I nodded.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait,” said Neville. “I want to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Today Steel pretended that he’d never been in the Museum, but that’s not true. I saw him when I visited the Museum. He was in the other group ...”

“So the lad forgot,” I said blithely. “It happens all the time ...”

“Doesn’t it seem suspicious to you?”

“Not in the least,” I said honestly.

We had enough problems already, without starting to suspect each other.

I heard Caiten’s voice on my left. He was calling to me and Neville.

“On our way!” We responded and beat a hasty retreat from the scene of the crime.

We found Caiten, Steel and Naive standing beside a strange-looking structure with a shape that vaguely resembled a huge bird. This thing was absolutely colossal – about thirty feet long and forty-five across.

“What was that crash?” Caiten immediately asked.

“What crash?” I asked, trying to sound as natural as possible. “We didn’t hear a crash. Did we, Neville?”

Neville shook his head.

“It must have been the iron golem on the rampage, we were too busy to take any notice. But now we have a weapon,” said Neville, nodding proudly at his bent spear.

“Yes, just the weapon we need,” Caiten laughed and turned to look at me. “And you’ve decided to clean up in here after the riot. Very praiseworthy, of course ...”

“That broom is a terrible weapon,” Neville said very seriously. “Believe me.”

Caiten looked suspiciously, first at Neville, and then at me, but he refrained from asking any more questions.

“The gang’s all here,” he declared. “Let’s try to help Kelnmiir.”

“But should we bother?” Steel asked in a low voice. “Kelnmiir can take care of himself.”

No one took notice of his comment. Steel had been making far too many comments like that. I guessed it was the nervous strain starting to tell ... or was Neville right? No that was nonsense ...