Faculty of Fire (48 page)

“But what if I don’t?”

“You will, don’t worry. Ten ... nine ... eight ...”

I wondered how long ago my uncle had decided I was a traitor.

“Seven ... six ... five ...”

And if the hostile way Shins looked at me meant anything, he suspected me too.

“Four ... three ... two ...”

Maybe that was why he was always ...

“One.”

I had another strange dream. A crowd of people – young guys and girls sitting on poles stuck in the ground in an odd sort of way.

“It was a good day,” said a girl with long hair. “Today some of us visited the Museum ... and we saw lots of interesting things there. And some of us even picked up souvenirs ...”

Suddenly the picture changed completely.

I saw a bird’s eye view of a fortress standing in the middle of a sea. Gradually my view moved closer the fortress, and soon I could see the people standing on the wall. Then I moved even closer, until I was looking at the people from very close up. A man with a beard, a beautiful young woman ... and six other people I couldn’t make out clearly, because they looked slightly blurred.

“Well then,” said the man with the beard. “For this test we will require a strong man.”

A young man stepped forward, but to be quite honest, I wouldn’t have called him strong ...

“In order to pass this test, you will have to use a sword. Have you ever held a genuine double-handed sword in your hands?”

Then the picture suddenly changed again.

A beautiful young woman was sitting at a table, holding a gold ring in her hands.

“Lot number eighty-eight, a ring...”

“... ten,” I suddenly heard Kelnmiir’s voice say.

It took me a little while to realise I wasn’t sleeping any more. I felt as if I’d slept for a whole day and night. My mind was clear, my body was rested ... it was marvellous. I wondered how long I’d really been asleep.

“If you only knew what I just saw in my dream,” I sighed, slowly getting up off the bench and stretching.

“If you only knew what I found out,” the vampire laughed, “you’d soon forget about all your dreams.”

“You’re wrong,” I disagreed. “My dreams often turn out to be almost prophetic ...”

“Just wait a moment before you tell me about those dreams of yours,” Kelnmiir said dismissively. “Listen to what I discovered: the shift in the sun’s position as you see it wasn’t what the hypnosis was meant to do, it was simply a side effect ...”

“Then what was it meant to do?” I asked, confused.

“To find that out, I need a lot more time than just half an hour,” the vampire said, shaking his head. “So we’ll have to figure that out later. If, of course, there is any “later” for us.”

“Why so pessimistic? Stop ...” I exclaimed, suddenly realising the implications. “You mean I really am a spy?”

“I mean you really COULD BE a spy. But I’m still not too sure about that, because the hypnosis was applied too long ago ... about ten years ago, in fact. I doubt very much that the lads over in Tabernacle are perceptive enough to foresee that you would get into the Academy ten years before it happened.”

“I see,” I said slowly. “I’m afraid an explanation like that won’t be good enough for uncle Romius. And as for Shins ...”

“It’s not Romius and Shins you should be afraid of, but Revel,” Kelnmiir informed me.

“Revel?” I asked in surprise. “Don’t be silly, he’s just a kind, jolly fat man.”

“It’s precisely jolly fat men like that who prove the most dangerous. Kind, jolly fat men who work in the security services ...”

“Are you sure?”

“Believe me, I know about these things,” Kelnmiir sighed.

“I believe you,” I said. “But what are our plans now? Have the Craftsmen thought of a way for us to get out of here?”

Kelnmiir, didn’t answer, he just pointed to the other side of the terraced platform we were on. That was where the Higher Craftsmen were sitting ... simply sitting. And there was no sign of any mental effort in their faces. They were sitting there, as bored as all the pupils who filled the hall.

“They look a bit miserable to me,” I remarked.

“That’s right,” the vampire agreed. “I have a feeling we’ll be sitting here until the invaders decide what to do with us.”

“You know,” I whispered to Kelnmiir. “Without any energy these Higher Craftsmen don’t look so very high. Just a group of old men ...”

“You noticed that, did you?” the vampire laughed. “You’re growing, my friend.”

“All right, let’s assume the Craftsmen can’t think of anything. But you could probably do something if you had a drink of blood ...”

“Would you like to donate?” asked Kelnmiir, baring his fangs in a smile. “Okay, I’m joking. I don’t have any tricks in my arsenal that could help us. No matter how many litres of blood I might drink ... I can’t break through several metres of Distant Mountain stone, and teleportation isn’t one of our specialities.”

Kelnmiir picked his sword up off the floor.

“Well then, shall we go and have a word with your uncle?”

But of course! The sword!

“Kelnmiir, could you charge a technomagical device with energy?”

“Let’s think logically here,” the vampire declared. “If I could charge technomagical devices, I would have charged this thing a long time ago ...” he took the teleport disk out of his pocket “... and cleared out of this place.”

Ah, I’d forgotten about the teleport. I wondered how much energy it needed.

“Yes,” I said, jumping up off the bench. “I need to talk to my uncle urgently.”

“And what was it I just said to you?”

We didn’t have to look for my uncle very long. He found us.

“Where are you going?” Romius called as soon as we’d taken a few steps.

Was he following us, then?

“We were on our way to find you,” the vampire said happily. “Zach has something to tell you.”

“I wonder what that could be?” Romius enquired.

“You don’t really think I’m a traitor, do you?” I suddenly blurted out. I didn’t mean to say it, honestly, it just came out ...

“Why use the word traitor?” asked Romius, not embarrassed in the least. “You might not even know that you’ve become a spy for the other side. You’re carrying signs of hypnosis ...”

“That was applied ten years ago,” Kelnmiir interrupted. “Do you seriously think he was programmed by Tabernacle specialists ten whole years ago?”

“Are you sure?” Romius asked. “How can it be ten years? I was told that when he entered the Academy, the signs of intervention were still fresh!”

I stood there without saying anything and listened while they discussed me as if I wasn’t there.

“Maybe even longer than ten years. Maybe fifteen ... I wasn’t able to determine the precise period from a superficial check. And as for the fresh traces, they were merely signs that the program was malfunctioning. On that day something disrupted it quite seriously, and certain side effects surfaced.”

Side effects? So maybe my sensitive shock was one of those side effects? Or maybe not ... maybe I’d been programmed ten years ago to get into the Academy and commit sabotage? Stop! They’d really got me going. What sabotage? What spying? I could remember everything I’d done quite clearly. I hadn’t tried to ferret out any information ... Nonsense. What was I thinking of? Me, a spy? It was simply im-poss-ib-le.

Then, let’s say that’s the case,” Romius agreed hurriedly. Too hurriedly, in my opinion. “Zach, what did you want to discuss with me?”

“Have you thought of any way for us to get out of here?”

Romius was embarrassed: “Well, we’re working on that problem ...”

“Very amusing,” Kelnmiir remarked.

“I have a question,” I went on. “As I understand it, the teleport that we used to get here can be recharged. But for some reason Kelnmiir can’t do it ...”

“Of course he can’t,” Romius agreed. “Vampires use a quite different form of energy, it can’t even be measured in our usual mags, and all the technomagical devices work on simple mags from our Reservoir.”

“How many mags does it take to charge up a teleport?” I asked, and held my breath as I waited for the answer.

“About a hundred.”

A hundred. Well, that left me with egg on my face.

“That’s a pity,” I sighed.

And I’d been hoping I could use the ring to charge the teleport ... Stop! The ring ... the sword ... from my dream! That was it! What if we tried using the sword?

I grabbed the stonecutting sword out of the vampire’s hands.

“What about this sword that cuts through stone? How many mags does it need to work?”

Romius shrugged.

“Well, that’s fairly simple technomagic, so five or ten mags would do it.”

Yes! I was a genius!

“A sword that cuts through stone!” Kelnmiir exclaimed in amazement. “I just picked that lump of metal up off the floor ...”

Yes that was a real stroke of luck. And it was good thing Kelnmiir had decided to keep the sword and not the poleaxe.

“Then one final question,” I said, trying hard to conceal the note of triumph in my voice. “Can you cut through the walls of the Academy with a stonecutting sword?”

“Are you crazy?” Romius asked in amazement. “Distant Mountain stone is one of the strongest minerals in the world. And it’s quite impervious to any kind of magical influence.”

I’d goofed again. Me and my dreams ...

“Then there are no more questions,” I sighed miserably.

“But a stonecutting sword doesn’t have an independent power source,” said Romius. “How were you thinking of charging it if it really could cut through Distant Mountain stone?”

“I have this little trinket that I picked up in the Museum,” I confessed.

I took the ring out of my pocket.

“Aha ... a charge ring,” Romius exclaimed delightedly. “I think we’ll be able to find some use for that. Well done, Zach!”

Praise at last. Well, thanks for that, at least. But the clear message written on his face was: “Well done, of course, but better let the grown-ups deal with these problems, and you go and take a rest.”

“You go and take a rest,” Romius told me with a smile. “And Kelnmiir and I will think about how to use this advantage that we have unexpectedly acquired.”

There, what did I tell you? They thought of me as some strange mixture of ordinary child and dastardly spy.

I sat back down on the bench and couldn’t help heaving a miserable sigh. Now what was I supposed to do? Sit there and wait until all my friends were captured by the invaders? I just hoped that Chas and Alice hadn’t been caught yet ...

But I wasn’t allowed to just sit there and wait. It all started with a girl who sat down beside me for no obvious reason in particular.

“How are you getting on?” she asked with a sweet smile.

“Fantastic,” I replied with a sad smile. “This is a great way to pass the time, isn’t it?”

The girl nodded.

“I saw you arrive in the hall.”

“Really?”

“I thought magic wasn’t working in the Academy.”

“It isn’t,” I confirmed.

“Then how did you get in here?” the girl asked curiously.

“It was just that Kel ...” – and then I realised why the girl had sat down beside me. “Well, you see, I can’t tell you anything right now, you understand ... The Craftsmen have forbidden it ...”

“I understand,” the girl sighed. “But you can tell me ... in secret ...”

So that’s what it was. Oh yes, I knew that kind of secret – in half an hour there wouldn’t be a single person in the hall who didn’t know it..

“I can’t,” I said more firmly and turned away.

After that they came thick and fast. Absolutely everybody came up and sat near me: pupils, senior pupils, even a few Craftsmen. I could sympathise, really, I could, everyone wanted to know what was going on; everyone wanted to know why I miraculously arrived with a vampire. It was getting on my nerves. Suspicion and curiosity were a powerful combination. I was approached by my acquaintances Nick, Anna and Serge, the whole of our faculty of fire, and even Angel and Lens had the audacity to come up and try to draw me into friendly conversation.

Eventually I got fed up of sitting there with a guilty expression on my face, trying to explain that I couldn’t tell anybody anything. I had to explain the same thing over and over again. After half an hour I was ready to blow my top. For the sake of my nerves and the health of everyone around me, I had to hide among the Craftsmen.