Faculty of Fire Read online

  Chas chuckled grimly and shook his head: “Only on what’s accessible to the general population. And that’s very, very little. But when it comes to how the teleports work, I don’t have a clue.”

  “Then how can we …”

  “By hit and miss,” Chas interrupted me. “If they haven’t explained how they work in words of one syllable, then it must be very simple. So simple that even nitwits like Liz’s little friends can understand. How hard can it be for bright young lads like you and me?”

  I could easily have edited that phrase “bright young lads”, especially the plural form of the noun, but I tactfully said nothing, hoping to preserve at least a shred of my self-respect.

  The teleport room appeared suddenly from round a bend, but we were very surprised that there was no one in it. We must have come early, while all the other adepts were still busy sorting out their things in their rooms. There were only ten identical teleports in this room. But there was also a board on the wall with the number of the level.

  “Well, ready to give it a try?” Chas asked.

  “Of course,” I agreed straightaway. “Let’s take turns. First you go through a portal, look around and come back, then I run through the same procedure.”

  “Excellent, you go first,” Chas responded. “And don’t hang about longer than necessary at the other end, just look at the board, and that’s all.”

  Chas nudged me towards the nearest teleport, and I instinctively closed my eyes. When I opened them I was standing in another room just like the first one, and the board on the wall said “52nd Floor”. Short and simple.

  I stepped back onto the teleport.

  “Well?” Chas asked eagerly.

  “Fifty-two,” I replied.

  “Now I’ll go,” said Chas, rubbing his hands, and almost jumping into the next teleport in line.

  After half an hour we had investigated all the teleports on our floor and moved to another one. A little while later we finally managed to find the teleport we needed (or rather, Chas found it) and went hurrying down the corridor to find the auditorium.

  According to Chas’s watch, we arrived a few minutes before the appointed time. The door of the lecture hall was standing open and we glanced inside, feeling at a bit of a loss.

  The space looked just like an ordinary school classroom. There were chairs and desks set in rows in a very plain, undecorated room. Also, I’d say this “auditorium” was actually smaller than the school classroom. A classroom could hold about a hundred people, but there was only room here for about forty.

  There were three people already in the auditorium. Two of them were lads I’d never seen before, and the third was Alice (who, strictly speaking, was a vampiress, not a young person, but who cares?). They were all sitting there with bored expressions on their faces. The brainiacs must have set out earlier than we did, or got the hang of the teleports quicker. Oh, and did I mention that our new yellow clothes looked just great on Alice?

  “Are we late?” asked Chas, heading straight for the desk right at the back.

  “Of course not,” I heard a voice say behind me. “But the others definitely are.”

  Glancing round quickly, I saw a senior pupil entering the lecture hall. The blue livery made it quite clear that he was senior pupil. His skinny, almost emaciated face looked anything but bored. On the contrary, it was glowing with calm confidence, and its expression was slightly derisive.

  “Aha, no doubt they forget to tell them how the teleports work too,” mused one of the two lads sitting at the front desk.

  “Why do you think they forgot?” the senior pupil asked in surprise. “No one ever planned to tell you. What good to the Academy are adepts who can’t even find their way to the lecture hall?”

  “Then that makes us advanced adepts, does it?” Chas asked. “Will they give us a cookie for getting here before all the others?”

  I was watching Alice all this time, and at this point she snorted, but that was as far as her contribution to the conversation went.

  “Some chance,” the senior pupil said with a smile. “Just the opposite, more likely. By the way, I congratulate you – for practical work the entire group is divided up into subgroups of five. And the first subgroup has already been formed.”

  All five of us, including me, exchanged surprised glances. Alice, Chas and I knew each other, but we didn’t know anything about the two lads, and they knew nothing about us. We tried to sum each other up, and I thought everyone was more or less satisfied. Both of the lads were medium height, with blond hair. The older one was thin, but the younger one was pretty fat. I would have thought they were twins, if not for the obvious difference in their ages.

  Chas immediately moved to sit with them and they struck up a lively discussion. I preferred to take a seat by Alice.

  “There was a Craftsman looking for you back there at the teleports,” I told her, to get the conversation started.

  “So what?” the vampiress asked languidly, but from the brief glint of alarm in her eyes I realised she was anxious.

  “Nothing really. I told him I hadn’t seen you,” I replied just as languidly.

  “And you didn’t,” Alice muttered gruffly.

  “Oh, didn’t I?” I asked, surprised. “You ran past me right in front of the teleports.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alice asked with a frown.

  “About when you …”

  Suddenly she put her arms round me and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Thanks for not giving me away.”

  It was all over so fast, I didn’t have time to react. Alice sat there with that inscrutable expression on her face again, and every trace of the kiss had vanished, apart from my memory and the astonished looks on the faces of the four adepts in the room.

  “Don’t mention it,” I replied, feeling slightly shocked. “Any time. But what actually happened?”

  Alice cast a glance at the senior pupil hunched over one of the desks.

  “What about him?” I asked, puzzled.

  Alice began making incomprehensible gestures, but gave up when she saw the dumb look on my face.

  “A Craftsman can easily hear what I say, even if he isn’t in the room, but inside the auditorium you can’t keep any secrets from him.”

  “So it won’t do any good if I sit at the desk in the back of the room?” I said, disappointed. “Then I might as well sit at the front desk.”

  I glanced at the two lads sitting at the front desk with Chas, realising they’d figured everything out while I was still thinking … regular eggheads. If it made no difference whether you sat at the front or the back, you might just as well sit right in front of the teacher, to show him your heartfelt aspiration for learning. And it’s a lot easier to ask him about something you don’t understand when you’re sitting at the front desk.

  “So have you figured out the teleports?” I asked, dropping the subject, but hoping to come back to it again later.

  Alice bared her little fangs in a smile.

  “No problem. In just three minutes.”

  “Three?” I asked. “Chas and I spent half an hour on it. You’re a real genius!”

  Alice broke down under my admiring gaze and confessed “Actually, I was just lucky. The third teleport I tried brought me to the right floor.”

  Yes, that really was lucky. I wondered when the others would show up. Nobody else was likely to be as lucky as Alice, and lots of people might not want to skip from one teleport to another the way Chas and I did. Especially some member of one of the Great Houses who was full of his own self-importance.

  “Alice, I suggest we move to the front desk,” I said after a while, when I saw that Chas’s discussion with our new team-mates was obviously highly interesting and worth listening to.

  At first Alice wanted to refuse – the scornful grimace that flashed across her face gave her away – but common sense prevailed. After all, we were going to spent three months in very close contact with each other – that is
, if the membership of the subgroups wasn’t changed, say, every month. But I realised that the idea of close contact with Alice was very pleasant, changing partners didn’t appeal to me at all.

  We stood up – I gallantly offered my hand to Alice, but she waved it aside – and moved to the desk where the lively discussion was taking place.

  “But are you certain the theory of currents really ought to be considered in the context of ordinary space?” one of the blond lads asked Chas with a smile.

  “Of course not,” Chas retorted. “All I’m saying is that context makes it possible to express the value of certain magnitudes, such as intensity and the Kelnmiir modulus.”

  Alice and I exchanged glances, both pleased to note that neither of us understood what the conversation was about.

  “By the way, this is Zach and Alice,” Chas introduced us. “And these are the Vickers brothers: the older one’s Neville, and the younger one’s Naïve.”

  Aha! So I was right– they were related! How come they’d both managed to get into the Academy? According to probability theory the chances of that were equal to the chances of … ah, yes … the chances of Chas or me getting in the Academy. But here we were, sitting in the lecture hall and waiting for the lecture to start … life certainly throws up surprises sometimes.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking hands with both brothers. Alice limited herself to a restrained nod.

  All this time the senior pupil sat quietly at his desk, but as soon as there was the sound of footsteps outside the door he said in a loud voice, “The lecture’s already started, and thirty-five people are obviously late. This won’t do.”

  The footsteps halted and a complete bald head appeared in the doorway.

  “May I come in? I’m sorry I’m late, but it took me a long time to work out how to put on these strange clothes of yours.”

  The senior pupil cleared his throat and gestured for the other person to come in.

  An awkward figure in a floppy yellow cloak (I really couldn’t call the fabric weirdly draped across that body a livery) took a seat at the desk next to us.

  “Wasn’t the livery put on for you when it was delivered?” asked Chas, turning towards him.

  “Yes, it was,” said the bald man. “The lad even explained how to put it on, but when I tried, it turned out I didn’t remember anything the lad told me. A dragon knows how long I struggled with it. I got the job half-done, but I’m afraid it will all come apart at the first careless movement.”

  I couldn’t help laughing as I imagined the sight.

  Just then three people appeared in the doorway.

  “Those dragon’s teleports wouldn’t work right,” one of them growled, and all three walked through to the desk in the back.

  During the next half hour the remaining thirty-two pupils showed up. Some of them apologised for being late, some complained about “those dragon’s teleports”, and some even threatened to complain to persons unknown. The senior pupil, apparently in no great hurry to start the lecture, waited patiently until everyone took a seat. Incidentally, I should note (with all due respect to Alice) that there were six other girls in the group, which I really couldn’t help feeling quite pleased about …

  “Well now,” the senior pupil eventually began, and all the conversations in the lecture hall suddenly stopped. “The lecture is starting forty-five minutes late, and therefore it will continue for an extra two hours. Those who were late will stay behind at the end of the lecture in order to be assigned fatigue duties for lateness.”

  “But the teleports …” said one of the pupils who were late.

  “The teleports are a very simple transport system that any child could master. If you can’t come to terms with a simple technomagical device like that, you should go back to elementary school,” the senior pupil snapped.

  After that, no one felt like arguing with our Teacher again.

  “Well then, my name’s Caiten. I’ll be taking you for all the disciplines connected with technomagic, and a new discipline that has just appeared in the schedule this year – the theory of the artificial intelligence of spells. I am also your junior counsellor until the end of the first year course. Today’s introductory lecture will give you a general idea about what you’ll be studying and how much effort it will cost you.”

  Scene 8

  “When we speak of the Craft in general, it can be defined, as you have no doubt already guessed, as the ability to direct and change energy. When we speak of directing energy, we mean the straightforward use of energy without transforming it. For instance, straightforward levitation …” – Caiten effortlessly rose two feet into the air – “… is a perfectly simple use of the element of air. By changing energy, we mean the complete transformation of that energy, say, the energy of air, into energy of a different type … for instance, the energy of fire.”

  Caiten sank back down onto the floor, and a small orb of fire lit up right in front of his face.

  “All the elements are closely interlinked with each other, but that by no means makes the transformation of energy from one form into another a simple process. And naturally – if you have not forgotten your school studies – what is required for the transformation of energy?”

  “Energy,” Chas muttered under his breath.

  “That’s right, energy,” Caiten agreed.

  Chas slapped his palm against his forehead. Of course, he knew the senior student could hear even the quietest word spoken in his auditorium, but it’s not that easy to get used to something like that.

  “Well then, transforming energy of the element of air to energy of the element of fire consumes about thirty per cent of the energy involved. And the other transformations are almost as demanding. From which we can conclude that for any particular kind of magic, it is far more convenient to use the appropriate source of energy.” Caiten sat back down at his desk. “Any questions?”

  “What about the energy of life, or the energy of death, as they’re called in the Art? Are they used in the Craft?” Chas enquired.

  “Scarcely,” said Caiten, shaking his head. “We gave up the practise of blood sacrifices twenty centuries ago.”

  The class laughed.

  It was true – apart from vampires, no one really knew how to use the energy of life and death. That ability was the reason why they lived so long. Yes, and that raised an interesting and rather improper question … just how old was Alice?

  “At the enrolment test we all demonstrated a capacity to work with fire, does that mean it’s the only form of energy we’ll be working with?” asked one of the blond brothers.

  “Of course not,” said Caiten, not in the least surprised by the question. “The test only showed what sphere of energy you have the greatest aptitude for working with. However, that certainly doesn’t stop you studying all four spheres. And although you will only be able to create genuinely powerful spells from the energy of your own sphere, you will have to work with all the forms of energy. Don’t forget that you will be involved in tournaments and contests with pupils from the other faculties, and that means you have to know the distinctive features of each form of energy.”

  There was a pause. All the questions on this subject had clearly been exhausted—for now.

  “All right,” Caiten went on. “Now let’s talk about the way your education is organised. There are four basic elements. Firstly there are lectures, secondly there are practical classes, thirdly there is independent study, and fourthly are exams, tests and sparring sessions. Is that clear?”

  “Sparring sessions?” a rather frail-looking girl asked uncertainly.

  “Well, if you don’t like that term, which is borrowed from the vocabulary of the Art, you can replace it with …” – Caiten chuckled – “… with practical exercises in pairs.”

  That reassured the girl a bit. Yes, someone like her would be better off not going to any genuine sparring sessions. I remembered, once during our training at the School of the Art …

&n
bsp; “I wouldn’t mind if we had her for a sparring partner,” Chas whispered in my ear, as if he’d read my mind. He was rewarded with a disapproving glance from Caiten.

  “My mouth is sealed,” my friend murmured almost inaudibly, ostentatiously putting his hand over his mouth.

  “And will all our lectures be given by senior pupils?” another girl asked flirtatiously.

  “By no means,” said Caiten, pouring cold water on her enthusiasm. “Only some of them. Most of the lectures are given by Craftsmen teachers. And the practical classes are all given by Craftsmen teachers. And every subgroup – by the way, I’ll divide the late arrivals into subgroups after the lecture – is assigned its own instructor. Practical classes are the most important part of your studies, and they have to be closely supervised. That applies especially to the early classes.”