Faculty of Fire (5 page)

It happened that I had to walk past a group of Craftsmen and pupils standing at the very centre of the square. My gaze instantly picked out familiar faces: the young man and girl I had met in the parade earlier in the day cast sympathetic glances in my direction. Of course, they realised that I hadn’t even passed the very first and simplest test. The girl’s smile was especially sympathetic …

The musicale was playing a very cheerful melody, and basically I was far from thinking that my life was over. I hadn’t been planning to join the Academy anyway. But Chas had got what he was dreaming of – the chance to test his power. I hoped he would have enough to get through this test, and after that it was a matter of skill. My redheaded friend was always raving about the Academy, he probably had enough knowledge and savvy to get through the all the other stages.

As I approached the gates, I noticed a strange short of glimmering to my right out of the corner of my eye. Hope stirred feebly somewhere deep in my heart. What if this was that certain “something”? I swung round sharply and immediately noticed a strange blob of energy, shimmering with all the colours of the rainbow. Somehow, when I heard the word “prism” I had imagined something quite different … certainly not an incomprehensible lump with no definite shape and an absolutely repulsive colour. Where were those four colours that ought to be jumbled together? There were a hundred of them here, and they were all shimmering, as if something was energetically stirring this blob in an attempt to merge all the colours into one homogenous tone.

And how come I hadn’t noticed this thing before?

I must admit, I didn’t like the colour of this bundle of energy one little bit. I got such a strong feeling something wasn’t right that I simply reached out to the blob with my mind and tried to bring all this mish-mash into decent order. I’d never had an impulse like this before, but now I wanted desperately to pick at least a few normal colours out of that repulsive shimmering from beige to dirty purple.

Imagine my surprise when the entire mass stirred and heaved, as if the process of mixing the incomprehensible mess had somehow gone into reverse, and started taking on the colours of the ingredients combined in it. It was all over in a couple of seconds – hanging there in the air in front of me, instead of that strange, shapeless mass, there was a neat prism with four colours. So now what was I supposed to do? Admire my creation?

Each of the prism’s four sides glowed brightly with the colour of its own mags. They shone so brightly that they started making my eyes sting. After less than two seconds of mute delight, the pain became simply unbearable, my eyes started to water, and I started seeing red rings. I staggered, without really understanding what was happening to me.

And then someone touched me gently on the arm.

“Lad, don’t be upset, you can try again next time,” I heard a girl’s voice through the mist shrouding my mind, “let me see you home.”

That was nice, of course, and I would have gladly strolled home with the girl, but I couldn’t see her. And my temples had started aching as well.

“Turn off the light!” I shouted, unable to stand it any more.

My eyes could no longer make anything out; instead of the yard, all I saw was a bright blur, shimmering with those four colours of the rainbow.

“Hey! He’s got sensitivity shock!” a male voice shouted. “Look at the prism!”

Several people immediately came running over to me.

“Get him out of here and take him into the tower,” a calm male voice ordered.

They grabbed me under the arms and started dragging me off. Just as I was on the point of losing consciousness, I had the irrelevant thought that some rogue had snatched my musicale and stopped the jolly melody.

And at that very moment consciousness decided not to abandon me after all. It stayed, together with a fierce pain in my eyes. But even that pain was nothing compared with what had gone before it.

I staggered in surprise and gave such a loud sigh of relief that the people leading me along involuntarily recoiled. Two blue blobs took shape before my eyes, and I made the logical assumption that my guides were senior pupils of the Academy.

“It’s all right, I’m feeling better,” I said with a painful effort.

“What happened to you?” asked a startled female voice, and I finally managed to focus my eyes on the face of the girl I had met on the square.

I shuddered and started blinking rapidly, trying to drive the red haze out of my eyes, and instead I acquire a headache that was three times worse than before.

“Well, there I was looking at that weird blob of colour … Do you ever think about what you’re doing? I was almost blinded! You told me the first test wasn’t dangerous, and then this …” I choked on my own sense of indignation.

The strange thing was, I had no idea of the absolute nonsense I was spouting, and was quite incapable of making myself stop until I’d used up all the air in my lungs.

The girl gave me a suspicious look and asked in a surprisingly calm and quiet voice, “Are you joking?”

I gazed at her in amazement. The girl looked back at me, staring hard into my red, watering eyes until I staggered again and leaned against a young guy who happened to be standing in just the right place.

“Oh, you’re really in a bad way,” she said, and turned to the young guy, who was patiently supporting me by the arm. “Take him to Master Romius’s study, he can deal with this … ‘prodigy’ as soon as he’s finished here.”

I had the feeling she almost used some other word. Now why was that?

The girl turned away and walked back into the yard, and there was nothing I could do but follow the senior pupil.

“It’s all right,” I said, resisting all his attempts to support me by the elbow, “I’ll manage, just show me the way. What’s your name, by the way, this is a bit awkward …”

The young guy laughed: “Nick.”

Dark hair like mine, a thin beard just starting to sprout, and eyes with a bright twinkle. All in all, a perfectly ordinary young lad, apart from the fact that he was one of the senior pupils at the Academy, as testified by the dark-blue colour of his livery (I mention that just in case you happen to have forgotten).

“I’m Zach,” I told him. “Pleased to meet you.”

I didn’t have time to say anything else, because we’d reached the entrance to the tower. The huge doors looked as impregnable as the tower itself. But as soon as my guide touched them they opened with an incredibly gentle movement, revealing an immensely long corridor.

Nick stepped inside and beckoned for me to follow. I hung back for a moment, suddenly aware that I was entering the Academy for the first time in my life. It was considered a great honour to be allowed inside if you weren’t a pupil or a Craftsman. Even our own ruler and specialists from other countries could only enter the tower by special invitation.

I stepped on to the carpet and felt the doors close soundlessly behind me. If not for a gentle breath of wind on my back, I wouldn’t even have noticed it.

We walked unhurriedly along the corridor, with a gold carpet rustling under our feet. Apparently the Craftsmen aren’t immune to the general mania for the colour of gold, I thought, gazing around curiously.

The stone walls of the corridor were depressing. We walked past lots of doors that were all the same and I was soon bored by the lack of variation in our surroundings. So what was so special about this tower? I wondered. Sure, it’s tall … but behind those fairytale gates there lurks a grey, humdrum reality.

My guide didn’t seem to want to talk, and my head was still aching fiercely, so all I could do was look around. The lamps hanging above us seemed perfectly ordinary, working on “mags”, but when I looked a bit closer I soon realised they were far from simple. By the light they gave, we cast no shadows at all. And neither did any other objects – the vases and beautiful gold coats of armour that we came across occasionally. But the lamps were set ten yards apart. A single lamp like that could have lit up quite a decent-sized square.

We finally reached yet another standard door. Nick’s light touch on the doorframe revealed a rather large hall with low round platforms about ten inches high set at regular intervals on the floor. They were all covered in gold, like most of the things created by the Craftsmen.

These were the famous teleports!

Teleports were used only inside the Academy, and I only knew about them from stories that had somehow managed to seep out through the walls of this venerable educational institution. I remembered that one of the Great Houses had complained that the entire city could be equipped with these teleports, but the Academy had no intention of sharing them with anyone. Teleports were still used only for the Academy’s own requirements.

“Should I … get on?” I asked, gazing at a round platform rather fearfully.

As if was winking at me, the teleport lit up as soon as my guide approached it.

My apprehension was understandable since I had no idea how teleports worked. Of course, there were numerous rumours in circulation among especially curious admirers of the Craft. For instance, there was the theory that a teleport broke you down into tiny little pieces and then put them back together in a different place. I was definitely not keen on the idea of being disassembled – what if some of the bits weren’t put back together right afterwards?

Nick gave me an understanding smile.

“I suppose you’ve heard the popular theories about how the teleports operate?”

I nodded in agreement.

“Well, you can relax, they’re all pretty wide of the mark. In fact, I can tell you in secret that the Academy puts out most of them itself.” He raised his hand in a gesture of warning: “Don’t ask, it’s just that the Academy has its own complicated politics. I can promise you, there’s nothing to fear. You won’t be split up into atoms, and there won’t be any copies made of you.”

Although I had absolutely no idea of what “atoms” were and how they could be split up, what the young guy said sounded convincing enough. And how could I not believe him, after all, the Craftsmen never lied – at least, that was what many people thought.

“What do I do?” I asked as cheerfully as I could.

“Just step on that glowing circle, and when you find yourself in a different room, get off it.”

I obediently stood on the teleport and, naturally, I blinked, because the light coming from the platform half-blinded me. When I opened my eyes, I was amazed to see that I’d already been teleported, and I was in an ordinary-looking formal study with bookshelves lining the walls, a large desk and a pair of armchairs in the centre of the floor. The only source of light was a small lamp hanging from the ceiling. For some reason the study had no windows.

I was so intrigued by what I saw that I almost forgot to step off the teleport.

The moment I stepped aside, Nick appeared in a flash of light.

“I warn you straight away, don’t touch anything, or you’ll get turned into a frog. Sit there,” he said, pointing to a massive armchair facing the desk. “And wait for Craftsman Romius. I have to get back to the enrolment, it’s not over yet by a long way.”

And with that he stepped quickly up onto the teleport and disappeared from the bottom up … as if he was being erased …almost instantaneously in a gentle flash of light. I cautiously tiptoed over to the armchair. The Craftsmen were clearly fond of their own comfort – the chair was incredibly soft and it instantly assumed the most comfortable shape for my body.

Although my head was still hurting rather badly, I made an effort to concentrate and think through what had happened to me that day. It was a good thing that I had some definite information about the tests, thanks to my redheaded friend’s fanatical interest. Chas had always shared his information about the Craft with me. He knew everything about it that anyone who wasn’t on the inside could know.

The first test determined a person’s level of power and affinity for the elements. First the general abilities were identified, then the predisposition for the elements, and that determined the selection of one of the four spheres. Then the level of power was measured – when a facet of a “prism” was assembled together, how brightly it glowed depended on how much power a person had. Naturally, everyone perceived the glowing of the prism in his own way. There was nothing surprising about my seeing a prism and even managing to assemble all four facets. That happened fairly often, all it meant was that I had an equal predisposition for all the elements. But the reason why I’d been blinded was a mystery. There was no way I could have such outstanding abilities for the Craft, even when I recorded a new album of music I had to sit there slaving away with the musicale for days at a time, taking breaks for lunch and supper. But Chas could do all the same things, apart from actually writing the music, in just a few minutes. If I had as much power as the test indicated, then my best friend was almost a demigod. Ha-ha. Chas – a demigod, what a laugh!

And there was another thing I was curious about: why had I seen the magical prism so late? A minute later, and I would have left the yard without noticing it.

To help myself think more clearly, I settled down in the armchair as comfortably as I could and didn’t even notice when I dozed off.