Faculty of Fire Read online

  My idyllic trance was interrupted by a strange sensation, as if someone was studying me very carefully. And not studying me superficially, either, but looking deep into my soul. A probing, evaluating kind of glance … horrible …

  I quickly opened my eyes and looked around. The people were still moving past us in both directions, but no one was taking any notice of me, as if they couldn’t see me against the background of the gold wall (I knew it!). The girls were still gazing at their newspaper, and there was nothing left for me to do but to go back to listening to the music. Only I couldn’t relax any more.

  Another five minutes or so went by, and then a murmur ran across the square. The annual parade of the Craftsmen was making its way across the golden city. Initially it had been held only on the day of enrolment in the Academy, when the Craftsmen walked across the city in search of people with outstanding abilities. But now it had become a mere formality. The last time anyone with such a high level power had turned up was about four hundred years ago -- he became the most highly skilled Craftsman of his time … I think he was the one who invented the pupils’ rings that helped to develop magical abilities …

  I switched off the musicale and watched as the crowd parted for the teachers and students dressed in red and blue livery.

  The red livery belonged to the teachers of the Academy, the Craftsmen, and the blue livery belonged to the senior pupils. But from where I was standing, I couldn’t see anyone who looked like Senior Craftsmen. As far as I could recall, they wore grey and black, and I would have spotted them straight away. In all the years I’d been watching these parades I’d never seen anyone wearing the dark livery– apparently they preferred to spend their time in more productive activity. I can understand that very well, since I heartily dislike the entirely unnecessary formalities that go with my own position in society.

  The Craftsmen moved closer to us, and I leaned forward, in order to get a better view of the procession (and also so I wouldn’t merge into the wall any more). After all, this was the first time in my life that I’d seen the parade of the Craftsmen on the actual day of enrolment in the Academy. It had to be different in some way from the plain annual routine.

  The Craftsmen in red livery walked at the front, followed by others in blue. I had always been struck by the expressions on the faces of the teachers in red livery, or rather, their complete lack of expression. It was hard to tell whether they liked what they were doing or were simply bored out of their minds. By the way, the Craftsmen didn’t leave the Academy very often, they preferred to remain within its walls. I used to see the pupils quite often, they moved around the city quite freely on various errands. Cheerful young men and women, genuinely delighted to be out of the Academy, but silent on any questions concerning what went on inside the tower.

  I really didn’t understand why all the pupils of the Academy were so amiable. Right now, as I watched the senior pupils walking by only a couple of yards away from me, I couldn’t help recalling our School of the Art. The Art is a system of self-defence that allows you to draw on your internal energy. Individuals of all different kinds, from every stratum of the population (sometimes even from different biological species), studied in the Schools of the Art, although the abyss that separated them outside the Schools was sometimes absolutely amazing … but in the Schools these people (or non-people) were all part of a single organism – the group. These future Craftsmen were just the same – some of them laughed, some of them gazed thoughtfully into the distance, some of them walked along with their arm round a girl’s waist. Perfectly ordinary people. If I met them without their blue costumes, I wouldn’t really notice them. What an immense difference there was between the pupils and the Craftsmen walking at the front. Surely a person didn’t change that much when he attained the exalted title of Craftsman? Perhaps at that moment he lost something very important … Who could tell?

  I got so caught up in my thoughts that without realising it, I got in the way of several pupils who had fallen slightly behind the procession.

  “Hey there, what are you pondering so deeply?” a merry voice exclaimed.

  Startled, I glanced up.

  He was a tall lad, walking arm-in-arm with a dark-haired girl. They smiled merrily at me while I tried to think of an answer.

  “… I was just wondering whether blue would suit me,” I said, gathering my thoughts quickly.

  The couple stared at me in astonishment, and then burst into laughter.

  “You have to win the blue livery first,” the lad said when he stopped laughing. He was about to walk on, but he suddenly stopped and added: “Pass the tests, then maybe we’ll see each other again.”

  He gave the girl a gentle nudge, and were off to catch up with the other pupils.

  Just as they were about to turn the corner, the girl looked back and winked at me. I blushed and tried to merge back into the wall beside the twins as quickly as possible. The irksome pair had forgotten all about their newspaper.

  “He’s in love, he’s in love,” they started chirping as soon as I got close to them.

  “Shut up!” I barked, trying to conceal my red cheeks and I switched the musicale on again to drown them out.

  But before I could dissolve into the music, Chas came diving out of the crowd, no longer with his pretty friend in tow, and strode briskly towards us.

  “Right then, let’s go to the gates, I saw your aunt there. We can hand these two juveniles over to her,” he said, pointing at the two girls who were pouting resentfully, “and then move on quickly to join the Academy.”

  I envied his confidence. When I considered that they would only choose two hundred people out of tens of thousands, it made me feel sad. Who was I, to think of getting into the Academy? I couldn’t even manage the everyday devices of technomagic, so how could I master the higher techniques? The only things I was good with were musical instruments. But what chance did an ordinary musician have when what was needed were people with specific abilities – the abilities required for the genuine CRAFT?

  We set off towards the gates. Strangely enough, my suit was still clean, and out of habit people made way, although it sometimes seemed to me that the crowd would have been only too happy to trample us into the dust when they saw the gold colour of the Higher Houses. I caught angry glances cast in my direction, but no one actually dared to attack me while Chas was there towering up beside me. The twins kept up with us and we soon reached the gates.

  The gates of the Academy are quite incredible– a huge archway ten storeys high and about the same distance across. The archway is decorated with unbelievably beautiful carvings and literally glows in the sunlight. The light of the archway is gold – the colour of our city in general – and it is decorated with precious stones of every possible kind; you get the impression that all the stones saved over from the building of the stone tower were used on this structure. And the tower is very, very big …

  Our city had always been famous for its wealth, and everyone knew that if you wanted to earn a real reputation as a jeweller or a creative artist, you had to go to Lita. This wealth had its drawbacks. While the Empire was still developing, there were constant raids by pirates, and at one time the numbers of rogues and bandits almost exceeded the native population of the golden city. The Emperor was obliged to seek help from the Craftsmen, and the night creatures appeared – faceless beings who became the guardians of the night, and later the scourge of our city, when they bred without restraint (I couldn’t understand how shadows could reproduce). The secret of the creation of these bloodthirsty creatures had been lost, like many other secrets, and now no one with any common sense went out at night without protective medallions that cost incredible amounts of money, because they were so difficult to make – they were introduced under the skin in some cunning fashion. Protective spells for houses had also become a regular item of income for the Craftsmen …

  But let us get back to the gates.

  The most striking thing about these gates was t
he beautiful rainbow hanging in the air above them. I couldn’t help stopping to admire it, and I almost ran into one of the well-fed citizens walking past me with a miserable expression on his face. They said this rainbow was a copy of those that appeared in the Rainbow Sea after especially powerful storms. I didn’t know about that, I’d never sailed anywhere, and I’ve only seen the sea in pictures and in books. Why? Because my aunt had made sure, and she still made sure, that not a single hair should fall from my priceless head. I’ve never even been outside Lita … But let’s not talk about sad things.

  The blindingly brilliant rainbow only appeared above the gates on enrolment day, and this was the first time I’d seen it. The colours were all incredibly intense, and they glittered in the sunlight, like thousands of little fireworks silently exploding in the air.

  I looked at the rainbow until my eyes began to itch and red circles appeared in front of them.

  “Ah yes, this is your first time at an enrolment,” said Chas, putting his hand on my shoulder. “This is well worth a look.”

  Ah, of course, I remembered. Chas had already tried to get into the Academy. Although we looked about the same age, he was actually twenty-eight years older than me. I suddenly felt sorry for my friend, he really had only one chance in a million of being accepted into the Academy – less than I had. And even that chance was purely theoretical.

  Once, a long time ago, one of the Craftsmen had surmised that people’s magical abilities (the ability to control the energy measured in “mags”) increased over time. Maybe so, but they still couldn’t increase by tens of times, which was what they would have to do in order to interest the Academy. As a rule these abilities were either very weak – only strong enough to manage household tasks (that’s me) – or strong enough for the individual to become a genuine Craftsman (that’s not me). Chas has pretty good abilities (which was already an exception to the rule), but were they good enough to pass the tests, especially the second time around?

  I looked at my friend thoughtfully.

  I didn’t really have anything to lose – if I didn’t pass, so what? Even my aunt’s nieces, trotting along behind, had greater magical abilities than I did. But Chas had always been crazy about the Academy, and I sincerely hoped that he would manage to get in.

  “Ye-es …” I drawled. “It was worth getting up at six in the morning for this.”

  Chas gaped at me in amazement.

  “Are you joking? You got up at six o’clock?”

  “Well, I didn’t get up, they got me up,” I explained. “Aunt Eliza shook me awake and made me take a shower and tidy myself up …”

  “Well, your aunt’s a real heroine. I wouldn’t risk waking you up that early even under threat of execution,” he said over his shoulder as he elbowed his way through the crowd to get to the gates.

  “And I wouldn’t risk arguing with my aunt, even under threat of execution,” I muttered too quietly for Chas to hear me.

  I soon realised that the time spent standing in the queue had been greatly exaggerated, because we had already covered half the distance to the gates.

  Soon we saw my aunt, standing beside the entrance and talking to one of the guards.

  “Aunt Eliza!” Chas cried as he covered the last two yards to the gates. “I’ve brought your girls. Now can we go?”

  I gasped at such brazen effrontery

  He’d brought them? And who’d been looking after them for the last half hour? But before I could open my mouth to say what I thought about him, someone jumped onto my shoulders from behind.

  “How are you doing, Zach?” asked a painfully (that’s right, painfully) familiar girl’s voice.

  “Hi there, Liz,” I said, trying to hide my annoyance.

  “How are you? Have you already taken the test?”

  Chas ran one finger across his throat to indicate that it was time to wind things up and get out of there.

  “I’m just about to …” I began

  “Well, good luck, I’ve got to be off. I’ll introduce you to Angel later – he’s my new … friend, he passed the tests today, so come to the Gold Half Moon this evening, we’re going to celebrate the auspicious event there.”

  She turned away and ducked into the crowd, leaving me with my mouth hanging open and a phrase half-spoken.

  “That’s the way she’s always treated you,” Chas said sympathetically.

  “Oh, not always,” I tried to object.

  “Always, always, you just didn’t notice it before.”

  Well thanks. Today is obviously my day for compliments.

  The two sisters started giggling repulsively again.

  “But he’s already found himself a new girl,” one of them said – maybe Flo, but then who could tell?

  Chas gazed at me in amazement again. It looked like he was going to spend the whole day being amazed.

  My aunt, who had so far maintained a tactful silence, shook her head.

  “Liz is a very worthy girl from a very worthy family. And you Zach, are still too young and stupid to realise that.” My aunt nodded to the two girls. “Well, we’ll be getting on, we won’t delay you. I’ll see you this evening, lads, good luck to you.”

  Somehow my aunt’s voice didn’t sound particularly optimistic.

  She darted in through the gates, pulling the twins after her…I was about to dash after them, but Chas held me back by the shoulder, and the gates closed in front of my nose.

  “Where are you off to? The others will be here in a minute, then we’ll all go in together with the next group. And what’s this about a new girl?” he asked, winking at me. I blushed again. Why couldn’t they leave me alone?

  “Don’t listen to their nonsense,” I said, trying to brush him off, and then exclaimed happily: “Here come the others now!”

  My voice probably sounded too happy. But I can’t help it, I don’t like conversations about girls. Girls are the most terrifying creatures in the world, apart from dragons, if they actually exist (I mean dragons).

  There were the lads from our School of the Art walking towards us. All tall and muscular types. Alongside them I cut a rather poor figure. I’m not actually short, and I’m not really skinny either, but they make me look really small. There’s nothing I can do about it, it’s just the way I was born. But at the School I was always on equal terms with them and I could match them in the Art … that is, until they started drawing on their inner resources. When it came to that, Chas and I clearly lagged behind the others, mostly because we hadn’t been studying for that long.

  “The Art” … what a lot of meaning that simple phrase contains. As much as there is in the phrase “the Craft”. The Art is a technique that allows you to control your own body so that you can fight and survive in any circumstances. And outside the city you needed to know how to survive. True, I’ve never been outside the city and I hoped I never would, but everybody said it was really dangerous out there. Apart from that, the Schools of the Art taught people techniques for working with energy, so that in time you could learn to do certain things, like levitate or fire energy bolts … but that stage only came after thirty or forty years of intense training …

  I was the youngest student in the Central School of the Art, and I couldn’t expect to achieve anything especially brilliant in the next ten years, but overall I felt rather well prepared both physically and mentally, although Chas was way ahead of me.

  “Well lads, are you ready to take this kid’s test?” I joked as soon as they reached us.

  They nodded to me without saying anything, then turned away and stood in line outside the closed gates. They seemed too tense somehow.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I asked Chas in surprise.

  “Ah, of course, you don’t know … The point is, people who study the Art don’t have much aptitude for the Craft. That is, at first they have the same as everyone else, but in time the Art blunts the ability for the Craft, or rather, it doesn’t blunt it, it directs it into a different channel. The Craf
tsmen mostly direct energy outwards, while the Artists direct it inwards, into themselves. Get it?”

  I got it, all right, but why were they acting so sullen? If you know you won’t be able to get into the Academy, why study the Art?

  I’m lying in my teeth – I didn’t understand a thing, but I really don’t feel like going into details. Inwards, outwards … who needed all that? In a School of the Art they taught you how to fight, in the Academy they taught you all sorts of magical tricks. Why complicate things?

  Chas sighed.

  “As usual, you haven’t understood everything properly, if you’ve actually understood anything at all. They can get into the Academy, and it’s happened quite a few times, it’s just that they’ll have to concentrate all their effort and spend all their time learning how to use their abilities differently than in the Art.”

  “There’s always something new to learn, but I wonder why nobody ever told me this before?”