Faculty of Fire (47 page)

“You saw me,” he laughed. “Do you really not remember?”

I pondered for a while, trying to recall that day.

“No, I would definitely have remembered you,” I replied eventually.

“I’ll give you a hint. At that moment I looked a bit different.”

“I don’t know,” I said, starting to get irritated. “Stop teasing and tell me.”

“I ran past you, surely you remember that?”

This time I didn’t have to think for long.

“No one ran past me apart from Alice ...” Then it suddenly hit me: “Oh no, don’t tell me that was you!”

“All right, I won’t,” Kelnmiir agreed. “But you’ve already guessed anyway.”

“But how?” I asked in amazement.

“A slight change of appearance – nothing to it,” the vampire replied.

Now I remembered: at that first lecture, Alice was surprised at first when I mentioned her being late. She must have been one of the first to go in ... and maybe she didn’t even know exactly how Kelnmiir had got inside the Academy. Now it was clear why she had never invited me to her room ... and maybe that was why she had never let me walk her back there. Maybe ...

We travelled the rest of the way in silence. Each with his own thoughts.

After yet another drop, Kelnmiir suddenly said: “That’s it, we’re here.”

He broke the window and jumped into the corridor. I climbed down off him very slowly and tried to stretch my arms and legs. Everything hurt horribly.

But Kelnmiir immediately ran off to scout out the entire floor, as if it wasn’t him who’d just been leaping from windowsill to windowsill with me on his back.

“No one on this level,” Kelnmiir said when he came back.

“Are we on the twenty-first floor now?” I asked to make sure.

“That’s right,” the vampire replied brightly.

“And how will we get into the Main Hall?”

“Oh! That’s a secret ...”

I summoned all of my patience to assist me.

“Kelnmiir, stop dragging it out, tell me!”

“Do you remember that I picked up a certain smallish object off the floor of the Museum?”

“I do recall something,” I agreed. “Why, is it going to help us get into the Main Hall?”

“And how!”

I counted to ten before I asked: “And how does it work?”

The vampire evidently decided to take pity on me.

“It’s very simple,” he began. “This ...” – he took a small flat disc about four inches across out of his pocket – “... is a disposable teleport with directional function. Anticipating your next question, allow me tell you that directional function means relocation a specific distance along a straight line. In this particular case we’ll tune it to a downwards vertical displacement of five metres.”

“Did I hear right?” I asked. “A disposable teleport? So we won’t be able to get back?”

“No, we won’t,” Kelnmiir agreed, taking his sword from me. “But we still don’t know what’s going on in the Main Hall. Maybe it’s still under siege, or maybe it’s been captured ... how could we know? We have to solve problems as they come along. Right now we need to get into the Main Hall, and we
will
get into it.”

“And what are we going to do
when
we get into it?”

“We’ll decide that when we get there,” the vampire said airily. “If you’re afraid, you can have your battle broom ready, it might come in handy.”

Let’s assume that I was planning to have my all-purpose battle broom at the ready in any case. But how could we act so rashly? We needed to think everything through, weigh everything up ...

“Come over here please,” Kelnmiir said to me.

I did as he had asked.

“Have you got your broom ready?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied in a detached voice. “Listen, let’s figure out a plan of action in case ...

Suddenly everything went blurred, and the next moment Kelnmiir and I started falling. We didn’t fall for long, I didn’t even have time to get really scared, but the landing was pretty hard. And we didn’t land on the floor, we just landed on people’s heads.

The villain! He hadn’t even warned me before we teleported!

“What the ...” I heard angry, hostile voices saying underneath me.

“Weren’t we expected?” Kelnmiir asked, jumping to his feet.

I was amazed the vampire hadn’t injured anyone with the sword as he fell. And his boundless energy was really beginning to irritate me. I couldn’t match it and it took me a good minute to get to my feet.

“Zach?” one of the people I’d fallen on asked in surprise.

“Angel?” I recognized the skinny young guy straightaway.

What a pity I hadn’t squashed him ...

“How did you get here?” asked Lens who, naturally, was hanging about beside Angel.

“Teleported in,” I replied, picking my broom up off the floor.

“But the teleports aren’t working,” Angel said with a frown of annoyance.

“For you they’re not working,” Kelnmiir answered for me. “Excuse me, children, but we have to have a word with the Craftsmen.”

And so saying, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me off through the crowd.

Our sudden appearance had not gone unnoticed, and people squinted at us suspiciously and pointed at us. Some tried to talk to us, and there were even some who tried to stop us. But the vampire tossed all and sundry out of the way as he moved steadily way towards the Craftsmen, who had occupied the platforms. They must certainly have seen our unexpected appearance more clearly than the others, because the platforms offered an excellent view of the entire hall, but for some reason, no one came running forward to greet us.

As we made our way to the platforms, I managed to take a look around, and I realised there was no sign of a siege. People were hanging around the hall with nothing to do, sitting on the floor, generally looking bored ... On one of the platforms I even saw several druids who were meditating.

“I don’t get it,” I whispered to the vampire. “Where’s the siege?”

“What siege?” Kelnmiir asked in surprise. “There are no windows in the hall, and the only way to get in here is via the teleports. All you have to do is switch off the teleports, and that’s it ... all these people are prisoners for life. What kind of idiot designed this tower, eh? Why couldn’t he build staircases, like normal people and vampires, instead of showing off ?”

“I don’t understand that either,” I admitted. “They were too clever by half, and now they’re caught in their own trap ...”

We walked up to the platforms and several Craftsmen came out to meet us: my uncle, Shins and a fat, bald man. They were all obviously tired, and they had dark patches under their eyes. But after all, it was only a few hours since the subversive activity had started.

“How did you get here?” was the first question, from Romius to Kelnmiir.

“I happened to be walking by,” the vampire said with a shrug. “And I saw you were in a spot of trouble ... I felt quite offended. Trouble, and I wasn’t involved.”

“So you decided to get involved,” Romius summed up. “Well-well ... And you Zach, where did you come from? And in such strange company?”

“Oh, that’s a long story,” I sighed.

“And you’re going to tell us right now, with all the details,” my uncle said with surprising sternness.

Scene 5

“So, they’ve reached the History Museum,” Romius said slowly when I got to the end of my story.

“If they can take even a few small items out of the Academy, then we’ll have serious problems,” the fat Craftsman remarked.

“As if you didn’t have any serious problems already,” Kelnmiir laughed.

“Yes indeed. By the way, speaking of problems,” said Shins, giving me a strange look. “Romius, bring your vampire friend and let’s step aside for a couple of minutes.”

Romius nodded in agreement, took Kelnmiir by the arm and followed Shins.

“What are they doing?” I asked the fat Craftsman.

He just shrugged.

We waited for ten minutes. During that time the fat Craftsman, who was called Revel, by the way, told me what had happened in the Main Hall while I was away. Actually, nothing much had happened at all. The tower had swayed (that was probably caused by the explosion in the reservoir), and all the teleports had stopped working. At first the Craftsmen moved to fix them, then suddenly crowds of trolls had come pouring out of the “broken” teleports. The Craftsmen dealt with them very easily, but they soon ran out of energy, and there was now way to get any more... so the next wave of trolls subdued all the Craftsmen with no difficulty, and then calmly left again via the teleports. They were right – after all, the Craftsmen had no energy left, and they were trapped on the twentieth floor. They weren’t dangerous any more.

For some reason Revel refused to tell me about the Energy reservoir, but I think I understood what it was for anyway. Energy was pumped like air from the Reservoir into the Academy, which was isolated by the energy field. The energy field was a kind of barrier between the time outside and the time inside ... and energy didn’t pass through it. All very simple. The Reservoir had exploded and the energy had been released in the explosion that rocked the Academy. That’s more or less how I pictured it.

When he came back Romius acted rather strangely.

“Right then, Zach, you can go and take a rest,” he said in a quiet voice and walked away again, this time with Craftsman Revel.

Shins stood there for a while, glaring at me with his gimlet gaze, but he soon left. “What are they up to?” I asked Kelnmiir in surprise.

“Better not ask,” the vampire said. “It will only put you in a bad mood.”

“As if I was in a good one now,” I said with a mirthless laugh.

“Believe me, it would be far worse. And anyway, Romius asked me not to tell you anything ...”

“Don’t tell me that vampires take their promises all that seriously.”

Kelnmiir thought about that.

“Actually, promises are very important to us,” he said and suddenly laughed. “But I didn’t say that I promised ... I only said that he asked me.”

“Stop the torture,” I implored him, “just tell me.”

Kelnmiir looked around: “Well, you see, they think you’re a traitor.”

“I’m a traitor?” It was a good thing I was already sitting down, or I would have collapsed. “But why ... why would they think that?”

Were they completely out of their minds?

“Quiet,” the vampire hissed. “Remember I said you were carrying clear signs of hypnosis?”

So what was new? As if I didn’t know that.

“But it’s not that kind of hypnosis,” I protested. “I know why I was hypnotised, and I even know exactly who did it.”

“Okay, so tell me,” the vampire said curiously.

“My aunt did it. She hypnotised me so that I would be late for the first day at the Academy.”

“What an interesting aunt you have,” Kelnmiir remarked. “A what effect does this hypnosis have?”

“I see the sun in the sky a bit behind where it ought to be,” I said, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

It sounded stupid, but it was the truth!

The vampire burst into laughter.

“Your aunt has some imagination,” he said when he stopped laughing. “Or maybe it’s your imagination that’s perverted? I don’t know, but in any case ... if you like, I could conduct a preliminary diagnosis of the hypnosis that was used on you. I probably won’t be able to unravel it completely, but I
might
find out something a bit more definite ...”

“I’d be delighted!” I exclaimed enthusiastically.

And my uncle would be ashamed when he learned the results!

“But don’t we have more important things to be doing right now?” I asked, suddenly concerned. “We have to get out of here.”

“You know, I think there are plenty of other people to think about that,” Kelnmiir said breezily. “They’ve been here for a few hours, and they probably have a few ideas already ...”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Get started then.”

He was right, why should I strain my brains for them anymore? If they thought I was a traitor? I wondered how they thought I’d managed to put the teleports out of action and blow up the Reservoir? That was actually quite flattering ...

“First of all, let’s move to somewhere a bit less crowded,” Kelnmiir told me.

We moved from the very centre of the terraced platforms to the far corner (if curved terraces can have a corner, that is) and shooed away a few pupils in yellow livery.

“Right. Now lie down, relax and listen to my voice,” the vampire went on. “I’m going count backwards from ten, and when I say ; one’ you’ll fall asleep.”