Faculty of Fire Read online

  The Faculty of Fire

  by

  Alex Kosh

  THE FACULTY OF FIRE

  All Rights Reserved © 2013 by Alex Kosh

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Alex Kosh

  Contents

  Prelude

  Act One: Fateful

  Act Two: Linking

  Act Three: Uncompromising

  Epilogue

  PRELUDE

  It was a normal morning on a normal day in a perfectly normal city. The sun rose above the vaults of the golden roofs and the boundless city districts of Lita, the capital of the Empire of the Elirs. Lita? What city is that? You might ask. You might claim that no such city exists on any map. And you would be right…but only half-right. There is no such city on any map of YOUR world, it has never existed and never will exist in YOUR time. But perhaps Lita exists in a different time and a different world? Who knows? This city is very hard to get to ... practically impossible, in fact (I’ve been trying to get there for a whole year). I’d like to hope the scientists of YOUR world will never get there. It’s a very special kind of city. That is, of course, if it really does exist. But let us accept the existence of this extremely beautiful city as a fact, and let us also accept as fact the sun rising over it (or suns – it all depends on the time of year). And if that’s the case, then ...

  The sun rose over the golden city. There’s nothing so unusual about that, it has been rising over the city for thousands of years. Dawn brings an end to the terrors of the night: the pitiless, piercing shafts of light drive out those faceless shadows that live a hidden life, forcing the nocturnal hunters to take shelter in narrow crevices and basements. And at this moment, when the sun has just barely appeared above the horizon, the day begins. The “daisies” open in order to catch the rays of the sun – it is their job not to let a single drop of magical energy go to waste. The city is transformed into a huge garden with a single kind of flower – golden daisies of all different sizes.

  “Daisies” appear on the streets and squares, and on the roofs of houses belonging to the prosperous. Ordinary people, who can’t afford the complicated structures of the “daisies”, use the roofs of their houses, covering them with a special mixture that is cheaper, but also less effective at capturing energy.

  The biggest daisy of all towers up above the imperial palace. This lovely building was erected long ago, even by the reckoning of the famously long-lived vampires and druids, and everyone, whether he is a visitor to the city or a native son, is positively blinded by its beauty and magnificence. The ornamentation of the round, golden towers astounds with its elegance, the shimmering of the light on the precious stones is so enchanting that it is impossible to tear your eyes away. In the entire city there is only one building that can challenge its magnificence … the Academy.

  The Academy is the largest (in fact, the only) tower that soars up above the city, and it is surrounded by high walls. However, the tower’s most distinctive feature is not its height, but the material from which it is constructed – a remarkable kind of stone, quarried in the Distant Mountains. Against the background of the whimsical forms of the golden houses, this stone appears intimidating, to say the least. Every inhabitant of the city has been in the square in front of this building at least once in his (or her) life, but only a chosen few have ever been able to enter it – the Academy guards its secrets carefully.

  And now, in the two hundred and fiftieth year since the great Emperor Sirius ascended the throne, the eagerly awaited day of enrolment in the Academy arrived, just as it has every thirty-three years. This was the day when all the inhabitants of the city, great and small, young (but not younger than fifteen) and old alike, gathered outside the gates of the Academy to take the tests used to select those who would later acquire the name of adepts or, to put it more simply, pupils. Taking the tests was by no means compulsory, and anyone who didn’t want to take them was quite free to stay at home. But every citizen dreamed of getting into that tower. Even those who had failed to get into the Academy thirty-three years before, or even earlier than that, still gathered to test their destiny once again. And although there were few cases of anyone getting in at the second or third attempt, they continued to cherish the hope of becoming one of the chosen. Here I should note that the number of chosen was always rather small – about two hundred people. And this was at a time when the population of the city numbered tens of thousands (and not just people, but several other kinds of beings as well). Vicious tongues declared that the population was degenerating – after all, the number of people being taught in the tower used to be far greater – others maintained that the requirements had simply been made far more severe, so that every year it was harder and harder to get into the Academy. But they said all this in low voices (such is the nature of vicious tongues – to speak quietly), and despite all the rumours, every thirty-three years people came back to try their luck again.

  Anyone could take part in the tests, regardless of age, sex, height, weight or social origin. All were equal. And they all came – parents with their children, and wives with their husbands – in the hope of being chosen to study … the CRAFT.

  ACT ONE

  Fateful

  There will be a new intake soon. I have high hopes of it.

  A phrase spoken in passing by a certain highly esteemed Craftsman.

  Where did you get these thickheads from?

  An exclamation by an unidentified teacher.

  Learning is light, but that by no means signifies that vampires do not hanker after knowledge.

  These words are usually ascribed to one of the most bloodthirsty vampires of modern times, who wiped out several cities for the fun of it.

  Scene 0

  The “daisies” had captured their first precious measures of magical energy and people started bustling about and hurrying on their way to the enrolment ceremony at the Academy. But there were other places in the Empire of the Elirs, where the sun never shone. And the inhabitants of those places had no need to hurry anywhere. After all, they had an entire eternity before them … provided, that is, that they didn’t go looking for trouble and risk their lives unnecessarily.

  Unfortunately, however, the instinct of self-preservation weakened in vampires during early childhood. This was apparently a natural mechanism that regulated the population of these remarkable creatures. Exceptionally hardy, intelligent and strong, they would have taken over the entire world if not for their compulsive curiosity, blood lust and almost total lack of common sense.

  That was the way genuine vampires were.

  Kelnmiir had always thought of himself as a typical vampire. It was just that his blood lust had been blunted a little by the passing centuries, the lost common sense rediscovered…but the curiosity had become an absolute mania. There were not very many things left in this world that could surprise the old vampire – and for quite a while all his free time had been devoted entirely to the search for these most amazing things. But recently, something new and very important took over Kelnmiir’s daily schedule– “survival!” One of the oldest of all vampires was actively pursued by a huge number of people, a rather large number of his fellow vampires and even several druids (those fanatical pacifists).

  It’s hard to say what exactly had brought Kelnmiir to the underground catacombs, curiosity or flight from pursuit. Most likely both factors played their part. But in any case, for the best part of four hours the vampire had been crawling through a narrow passage that was very much like an ordinary sewage pipe. The ide
a of a sewerage system was reinforced by the smell and the enormous number of large and insolent rats. But the insolence of the grey masters of the sewerage system evaporated as soon as Kelnmiir breakfasted on a couple of them.

  “Yes, indeed,” Kelnmiir laughed to himself, “you’ve really hit rock bottom, last King of the Vampires. Feeding on rats, crawling through filth and garbage. Aren’t you ashamed?”

  He thought for a moment and decided that he wasn’t. There could be something very interesting waiting for him at the end of his journey. According to certain information, a colony of vampires from the Noos Clan – the Day Clan – ought to be located somewhere under the ground in this district.

  Kelnmiir had been obsessed with the mystery of the appearance of this clan for several months now. It was a long time since he’d felt such a keen thrill, had the spirit of the hunt course through him…probably not since his last dragon hunt in the Distant Mountains … when was that, now? Ten, maybe eleven centuries ago, he thought.

  And now here he was creeping through the sewers. It wasn’t as if there was no other way to reach the refuge of the Day Clan, it was just that the Emperor’s men had almost caught the vampire the last time he paid a visit to his old friend, Neil, at the School of the Arts. Old Neil’s health had deteriorated recently, and the vampire tried to see him as often as possible. Knowing this, the Emperor’s men had been lying in wait for him on the way to the School, and Kelnmiir had had to beat a hasty retreat (or, rather, flee for his life) through the sewerage system. Rather fortunately, he remembered a map of the tunnels under the city that he had studied a long, long time ago. As if he had known what was coming, he had studied every pipe and every sink in the golden city!

  Now there should be a turn to the left … yes. And now crawl a little bit further forward and … stop!

  Kelnmiir halted in confusion.

  There shouldn’t be any fork in this tunnel. He chuckled – seems like I chose the right place to look, unless, of course, some prosperous Great House has built itself a few extra wells since that dragon’s map was drawn.

  Kelnmiir crawled on, looking around carefully.

  Just more pipes … although they were a bit cleaner than the ones a mile back … Aha! Cleaner, you say? Strange, why would some pipes in a sewerage system be any cleaner than others?

  From somewhere ahead he heard surprisingly loud voices.

  So that was it!

  “You wouldn’t dare!” a man’s voice said threateningly.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  That was a woman’s voice, and quite young too.

  “I won’t allow it!”

  “You won’t allow it?”

  Kelnmiir chuckled.

  A genuinely substantial dialogue, he thought, no denying that. But that didn’t matter, the important thing was that he’d finally found the day vampires. He could sense their unique aura quite clearly now.

  “You said yourself that we’re hardly any different than people.” There was a pleading note in the female voice. “So why can’t I join the Academy?”

  Now that was interesting. A female vampire wanting to join the Academy? Kelnmiir imagined the Craftsmens’ faces when they saw this marvel appear in the square and he barely managed to stop himself laughing out loud.

  “If only because our relatives, who are so hostile to the humans, won’t allow you to get anywhere near the Academy of the Craft! You should never have announced your intentions so openly. If you’d done everything quietly, you might still have had a slight chance. But now … they’ll kill you the moment you go outside!”

  “We’ll see who kills who,” the girl hissed.

  Kelnmiir mentally applauded her spirit.

  Good for you, my girl!

  “May a dragon take you, I forbid it!”

  “You’re not my father!” the girl vampire retorted brazenly. “And I’m not a little girl any longer!”

  There was the sound of a slap and rapid footsteps … a door slammed shut … a bolt closed.

  “Hey now! The girl’s been locked in!” Kelnmiir thought in surprise and started crawling cautiously further along the pipe.

  The sound of the girl-vampire’s sobbing became clearer and clearer and he could sense her aura more and more distinctly. Finally his nose came up against an iron grille.

  “I could take advantage of this opportunity,” Kelnmiir thought, but then he immediately tried to dismiss the thought. For some time his customary treachery and villainy had failed to bring him the usual sense of satisfaction, quite the opposite in fact – they had begun to depress him. His own explanation for this was that even vampires, who resembled children in their emotional character, eventually grew up … but no one believed him, not even his only friend, old Neil, who was slowly fading away …

  Even so, Kelnmiir was unable to resist staging his own appearance as befitted a true vampire. After making sure that the girl vampire’s attention was occupied elsewhere, he gently tore the grille out of the wall, crawled out (the pipe ran into the room at floor level – and did I forget to say that it was no more than eight inches wide? But what’s so surprising about that? Vampires are very flexible creatures) and put the grille back in place just as quietly.

  “Pardon me, Miss, can you tell me how to get to the library?” he said, politely.

  “Straight along the corridor, first turn on the left,” the girl replied automatically, and a second later shot up into the air, morphing into battle form. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  “What an impolite way to address your elders,” Kelnmiir sighed. “After all, we haven’t even been introduced.”

  “Name yourself,” the girl vampire shouted.

  “Have it your own way, then,” Kelnmiir agreed. “Allow me to introduce myself, one of the oldest members of the ruling clan of Miir, the last King of the Vampires … Kelnmiir.”

  And he bowed, unable to resist the temptation to strike a pose.

  At that very moment the girl vampire tried to attack him. The attempt was foolish, certainly, but it was amusing.

  Kelnmiir laughed, grabbed the girl vampire by the scruff of the neck, lifted her into the air and shook her: “You seem to be having trouble with your hearing. I’ve introduced myself, be so kind as to introduce yourself to me.”

  “Alice,” the girl blurted out, as she dangled limply in Kelnmiir’s tenacious two-handed grip. She had realised it was useless to resist.

  “A nice name,” Kelnmiir said approvingly, and hoped the trembling in his voice had not given him away. Painful memories flared up in the vampire’s soul when he heard his new acquaintance’s name … memories that he tried to bury as deep as possible ...

  “Right, now we’ve introduced ourselves,” he went on, driving away his gloomy thoughts. “That wasn’t so very hard, was it?”

  The girl didn’t answer.

  Kelnmiir gently put her down, warning her as he did so: “No foolish tricks, all right? I’d hate to spoil such a pretty little face.”

  Actually, the little face was anything but pretty. A vampire’s battle form is hardly fit for a beauty contest. But then the girl immediately reversed her transformation.

  “Incredible …” Kelnmiir whispered quietly. “You look so much like her …”

  The girl vampire proudly stuck her nose up in the air to indicate that admiration of her beauty had long ago become a common, everyday matter. The fine features of her face and the neat little nose really did make the dark-haired girl extremely attractive, and those tidy fangs and red eyes – a typical sign of hereditary vampires – lent her a quite definite charm. Of course, Kelnmiir’s taste differed substantially from that of a human.

  “So what are you doing here, last King of the Vampires?”

  Now that she was back on the ground, the girl seemed to be feeling more confident.

  “I beg your pardon, but where is ‘here’?” Kelnmiir asked in reply. “You see, I just happened to be taking a stroll through the sewers nearby and completely by chance I
overheard your conversation with …”

  Kelnmiir gave Alice an enquiring look.

  “That was my step-father.”

  “Yes indeed, your step-father,” Kelnmiir continued. “I gathered that you would like to enter the Academy. And for some reason he won’t let you …”

  “He’s just worried about me,” the girl vampire said in a quiet voice. “It’s the others who won’t allow me to enter the Academy.”

  Kelnmiir actually caught his breath, he found this so intriguing.

  “Which ‘others’, if it’s not a secret?”

  “Since you’ve already found your way in here, I suppose it isn’t. Our clan …” Alice glanced at Kelnmiir and he nodded to indicate that he knew which clan she meant. “… has divided into two parties. The first, and most numerous, believes that we must secure the support of one of the vampire clans, or even join one of them, but the other party prefers to cooperate with humans. I must admit that this party only has a few members, including myself. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this …”