Faculty of Fire (26 page)

Only it was really hard to find the special spot on that round ball of fire. There were so many different shades of red, staring at them made my eyes water. How could I find that damned weak spot?

Of all the possible ways of searching I chose the simplest – good old unscientific hit-and-miss. Why hadn’t Tyrel suggested we try that? Trial and error was the surest method of all!

Chas sat down on the bed and opened a book on tactics.

“You get on with it, and I’ll read.”

“Of course,” I agreed, without even thinking.

It must have been about an hour before I heard that familiar sound again and the fireball disappeared.

Pop.

“At last,” exclaimed Chas, who was dozing over his book. “Do you remember what spot you hit?”

“No,” I replied honestly.

“Then have another try,” Chas said with a shrug and created another fireball in the middle of the room. “I’ll get some sleep, if you don’t mind. Wake me up when you put it out.”

And before I could answer, he brazenly stretched out on my bed and fell asleep.

It’s great to have the support of a true friend.

Okay, so now I had to try to think logically. In order to “pop” someone else’s spell, all I had to do was create one little spark about a quarter of an inch across and hit the right spot with it. But it was hard to find the right spot. So, if I didn’t want to keep on searching until I fainted from hunger, I had to program the spark to search out the vulnerable spot for itself. But once it touched the fireball, my spell would disappear too. So I had to make it seek out the weak spot without any contact ... and that meant by identifying some distinguishing feature. The different colour! I hadn’t been wasting my time in Caiten’s classes on artificial intelligence in spells after all.

I started putting together a new spell by the light of Chas’s fireball, which was hanging in the air, lighting up the room like a lamp. What is a spell? It’s a model for weaving together filaments of energy, assembled according to definite rules and laws. So what did a Craftsman who was creating a new spell need? What he needed was a pencil and paper.

Chas woke up about three hours later. He rubbed his red eyes and stared at me in surprise.

“Haven’t you extinguished that thing yet?” he asked.

“I’m still doing the theoretical calculations,” I said casually, carefully studying the table of the fireball’s colour range that I had drawn up for myself.

“Is it really so hard to keep jabbing at big fireball with a small one until the big one disappears? Would you like me to show you how it’s done?”

Chas flexed his fingers theatrically.

“And are you going to keep jabbing at someone else’s fireball for minutes at a time during a duel too?” I asked him.

“Why should I bother?” Chas said breezily. “I don’t need to, I’ll put up a shield, and the job’s done.”

“Then don’t interrupt.”

He’d woken up at just the wrong moment, when I’d almost finished the sampling routine that ought to locate a fireball’s weak spot by its colour. Now it was time to try it out.

I visualised the interwoven pattern of energy that was required, and it went streaming out of my fingers in a thin ribbon of fire.

“What’s that you’re doing?”

Chas watched my invention curiously as it flew round his fireball.

Pop.

The room suddenly went dark. I’d been using Chas’s fireball as a lamp all this time. Economising. You can’t help learning to economise when you have to weave spells using such tiny crumbs of energy.

“Well, well,” said Chas, and he sounded pleased. “Didn’t I say practising would get you a result? Will you teach me?”

I tried my best to explain my design to him, and he actually understood, but he couldn’t reproduce it.

“You know, this is all too small and fiddly for me,” he admitted eventually. “You’re the only one who can control tiny energy flows like that.”

“That’s right, I agreed. “Because larger flows are beyond my power.”

To be quite honest, I was triumphant. For the first since I started my studies, I felt like a real Academy pupil. I had invented something that no one else had thought of before.

“Put up another couple of fireballs,” I told Chas.

For an occasion like this, Chas made a really special effort and created three of them.

I easily visualised the design of my new creation, and three slim, fiery snakes came flying out of my fingers.

Pop, pop, pop.

“Bravo,” said Chas, applauding. “But now we really ought to get some sleep. I feel quite worn after all this.”

He felt worn out? After his sleep in the corner, while I was slaving over my brilliant invention?

“I entirely agree,” I said with a yawn. “Especially since we have morning meditation in only ... four hours’ time.”

Before he left, Chas slapped me on the shoulder.

“You’ll really show them tomorrow.”

Scene 2

A strange fat little man in glasses and a grey suit was holding forth ecstatically: “This bird likes to make its home near people and feed at their expense. The size of the bird varies from very small to absolutely huge. It has negative colouring and a wide wingspan ... Anyway, I’m sure you must have come across the flopingo bird numerous times in your own home ...

It was a terrible morning. Getting just a few hours sleep after such an exhausting day is no fun, I can tell you. Even Chas failed to spring out of his den in his usual lively fashion, and he looked even worse than I did. I was pepped up by my little victory – my ace in the hole for today’s practical classes.

“Next time you can practise without me,” Chas muttered instead of saying good morning. “Ask that vampire girl. She’ll probably like the idea, and you won’t get bored.”

I frowned at the mention of Alice. It was two months now since that memorable conversation in her quarters, and she still hadn’t let me walk her back to her room. Now I was fixated on the goal of getting her to say yes, and doing everything I possibly could to achieve it. If the vampiress allowed me to see her back to her room, that meant she was ready to open up to me ... and that meant I had a chance. And I thought Alice had accepted the rules of this game.

“Okay, let’s go, genius,” said Chas, giving me a nudge.

We were a pretty good team. A Fiery Boy, a Child Wonder and a Genius. Now we just had to define the distinctive (or deviant) qualities of Neville and Chas. I’d already thought up a name for Chas – Lash. In honour of his restless tongue, which always seemed to cause problems for me and no one else.

But then, Chas had changed a lot over the last two months. He used to rave about the Academy and collect every little crumb of information he could find – but now? Now he’d completely lost all interest in theoretical knowledge. He just lazed around in lectures and in the exams he cribbed – from me! From someone who had no idea about the working principles of a lamp, let alone “the theory of energy balances”, until he got into the Academy! I used to think of him as a kind of older brother, but during the last two months he had turned into a kind of boneheaded younger brother for me. Sure, he’d always been a joker, but he could always be serious when he wanted to, and find an answer for any problem, but now more and more often, I was the one who had to do that.

We met the others at the door of the Small Meditation Hall, as usual. And as usual, in the morning, our universal sociability rating was zero.

We nodded to each other and walked into the hall. Craftsman Tyrel greeted us with a crooked smile and aromatic green tea. As usual. He wasn’t in the mood for talking either.

After the tea, it was time for relaxing meditation. We were supposed to maximise the amount of energy passing through us, but not alter it. This was the safest kind of meditation for us, because it didn’t give Naive a chance to envelop us in the flames of hell. Not only because we didn’t have to weave any energy patterns (quite often we indulged ourselves and did that), but for the simple reason that Naive slept through almost all the morning meditation sessions.

I won’t tell you about the four hours spent in the Meditation Hall. Not now, or later. Because it’s pointless trying to explain your experiences, you have to feel them. How can you explain the beauty of a rainbow to a blind man? And if you’re blind ... what point is there in explaining it?

At the end of the four hours, we left the hall wide awake, feeling fresh and keen to socialize.

“Can you tell me where they’ll send us if we don’t pass these dragon’s exams?” Chas enquired. “And what title we would take with us on departing these hallowed halls?”

“The title of loser,” Alice prompted.

Chas thought about that for a second.

“That’s not a title, that’s a destiny,” he said eventually. “But seriously, have you ever seen anyone in the Academy apart from Craftsmen and pupils?”

“Higher Craftsmen,” Neville quipped.

“And who else?” Chas persisted.

“I saw a janitor once,” Naive piped up.

“What janitor? Are you crazy?” I asked. “All the cleaning here is done automatically by spells.”

“It’s just a dream he had during the morning meditation session, when he was sleeping like a log, as usual,” said Neville, slapping his younger brother on the back.

Naive sniffed angrily, but before he could reply, Chas continued: “But apart from pupils, Craftsmen of all ranks and a phantom janitor, have you ever seen anyone?”

Of course, I could have said that I’d seen a vampire from the Kheor Clan, but I was afraid my friends might not believe me, to put it mildly.

The others thought about it for a while.

“No, we haven’t seen anyone,” I answered for all of us.

“Exactly!” Chas exclaimed. “And now tell me, just how far away do you have to exile someone so that that no one ever hears anything about him again, eh? It’s hard even to imagine it. There aren’t any of these people inside the Academy, there aren’t any of them outside the Academy ... so where are all the rejects?”

“In our first class, Craftsman Tyrel said they were sent to the distant garrisons,” Alice recalled.

“Ah, tell me another!” Chas laughed. “Can you tell me what ‘distant garrisons’ our Empire has? You can cross the glorious Empire of the Elirs in two or three days on a horse! Maybe they send the failures to the Borderland? To the border with the Tabernacle Caliphate? Great! But that’s only a week’s journey away at the most.”

“What are you getting at?” I asked, delighted that Chas was more like his old self again.

“What I’m getting at is that you can always get a message home, even from the most distant garrisons, even from Tabernacle itself. Right?”

“Right,” I agreed.

“Then explain to me why there has never been a single message? Rumours spread like wildfire in the city, we’d have been sure to hear about it!”

“Sure, but ...” I had found the fault in my friend’s reasoning “... but then, if one of these failures disappeared without trace, his family would create a ruckus! And we’d be certain to hear about that too!”

“That’s right,” Chas admitted. “This needs thinking about ... although, I must admit, the only thoughts that come to mind are pretty frightening. So maybe it’s best
not
to think about it?”

I must admit I was afraid to think about it too. Especially when I remembered I wasn’t exactly making brilliant progress, and I must be somewhere near the top of the list of candidates for expulsion. I’d have to have a word about it with Romius. I didn’t think he would lie to my face ... well, probably not ...

The atmosphere at breakfast was friendly, if you disregarded the petty spats between Neville and Alice, but they were basically a matter of habit – during the last two months their mutual hostility had practically evaporated and given way to mutual respect.

Next on our schedule was our class with Shins, who took us for the practical sessions. This was the worst part of the day for me – after almost every practical class I walked (or was carried) to the druids’ emergency treatment station to have my burns treated. Apart from the damage I suffered during the training duels, our teacher often demonstrated new spells on me, and that did nothing to improve the state of my health. I had no idea why he’d taken such a dislike to me. In fact, I remembered that our first class had actually gone rather well ... from my point of view.

Pupils who achieved the so-called break-through, that is, who had lit the candle in the Meditation Hall, were transferred to Shins’s classes. Shins taught us how to weave patterns of energy, or spells. When I first arrived in the Hall of Low Power, there were eight people studying with him, including Alice.

The vampiress had told us about these classes, so I arrived with at least some idea of what was expected of me. But it was a very superficial idea. How does that saying go? I hear the chime, but where’s the bell?