The Quantum Games (Alchemists Academy #3)

by Kailin Gow

  Spencer was right. It was a standoff. Wirt could feel the tension. Neither of them was making a move to throw the ball at the moment, but how long would that last? Eventually, Spencer would get nervous and fling his quantum ball at Wirt, and then Wirt would throw his back at Spencer… so maybe Wirt should just throw his now to get the advantage? No, that was the kind of thinking that would make it happen. They could hold like this.

  How long, though.

  “Stop. Please, both of you, stop.”

  Both Wirt and Spencer looked around in shock as Alana walked into the center of the maze. She looked as beautiful as ever, but it was clear that she had been crying, and there was another look to her too. One of total determination, mixed in with a kind of desperation, as though she knew exactly what she was going to do. As though there weren’t any choices left for her.

  How had she gotten there? The maze was closed off, so how had she managed to sneak in? Wirt found himself thinking about Ms. Burns’ absence from the stands. Had she had something to do with it? No, she wouldn’t do that, would she? She wouldn’t do something with such potentially disastrous consequences. Would she?

  Right then, Wirt didn’t know. Spencer didn’t seem to know either.

  “Alana,” Spencer said. “You can’t be here. You have to go.”

  “What? So you two can kill one another?” Alana looked from him to Wirt and back. “I won’t let that happen. I won’t. I’m not going to let you die, whatever it takes.”

  Whatever it takes. Wirt knew what it might take if he and Spencer threw the balls they held. He knew what might happen, what was going to happen, because it had happened before. He’d seen it. They all had.

  “Spencer,” he said, “we have to stop. This is going to be like your father and Elise.”

  “It’s not going to be like that,” Spencer said. “Alana wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wouldn’t she?” Wirt looked at Alana. “Why are you here, Alana? What are you here to do?”

  Wirt watched the emotions flicker across Alana’s face. Determination, fear, love and confusion vied for space on her features over the course of a couple of seconds.

  “I… don’t know.”

  “You do know,” Wirt insisted. “We all know. Don’t do it, Alana.”

  “I have to,” she said, shaking her head. “I have to stop this. I can’t let the two of you die.”

  They stood there like that, all so still, and Wirt could feel the tension there. None of them wanted to do the things they were so close to doing. Spencer didn’t want to throw the ball he held. Wirt didn’t want to throw his at Spencer. Alana clearly didn’t want to throw herself between them, intercepting the flight of the quantum balls with her body and letting them disintegrate her. Wirt could see her shaking with the thought of it, fresh tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

  Yet they were going to do it. Wirt could feel the inevitability of it like a lead weight pressing down on him. He could feel the pressure of the crowd’s eyes on them, willing them to do it, almost pushing them towards it. It was like the weight of everything that had happened before was shoving its way through into the world, forcing the three of them along the paths that were to come like actors playing out their parts in a script.

  Then Wirt felt it. There was something else there, barely discernible, just on the edge of everything he could make out. It was a thought that didn’t fit, a sound on the fringes of hearing, something not quite seen out of the corner of his eye. A thin tendril of magic wrapping around the three of them.

  “Alana, Spencer, listen to me,” he said. “This isn’t just history repeating. This is magic. There’s something here trying to get us to kill one another. There’s something pushing us to do it. We need to fight it, all of us.”

  Spencer shook his head, sudden fury seeming to take over his expression. “It’s a trick. You want me to put down my quantum ball. You want to make it easy to kill me.”

  “No, Spencer,” Wirt insisted. He looked across to Alana, but she seemed to be as caught up in it as Spencer was. Her eyes were glassy, as though seeing something completely different to what was actually happening. Wirt tried looking up into the stand, but Ender Paine was apparently in deep, whispered conversation with Ms. Lake, who had returned from wherever she had gone and now looked ashen. There was no chance of catching their attention.

  Which meant that it was going to happen. Unless Wirt could do something, it was really going to happen. Alana would die. He or Spencer would die. There would be so much pain. So much destruction. Wirt fought it. He reached down into himself and grasped for the thread of power he could feel there, and he managed to get a hold on it. He could feel the connections to Spencer and Alana. He could feel the connections to some larger pattern too, half glimpsed, but right then Wirt needed all the strength he could find. He threw it at the little thread of magic, attacking it, pulling at it, trying to hold it back.

  Slowly though, so slowly, Spencer started to raise his hand to throw the ball. Alana seemed to tense, ready to jump, and Wirt strained as he fought not to react. But it was hard. Too hard. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t…

  “Stop!”

  Ender Paine’s voice carried over the maze, and as it did so Wirt felt the tendrils holding him snap.

  “Stop,” the headmaster repeated, and his face looked as pale as Ms. Lake’s had. “The Quantum Games are at an end.”

  Chapter 20

  Wirt turned to stare at the headmaster, and as he did so, Alana and Spencer did the same. Ender Paine looked completely different to any way Wirt had seen him look before. He looked almost… shaken by something. Ms. Lake stood by his side, one hand on his shoulder in an apparent gesture of comfort. Why would Ms. Lake comfort the headmaster? Why would he allow it?

  Ms. Lake murmured something and the hedges around Wirt gave way, receding into the lawn so that in a matter of seconds there was no sign that they had ever been there. Wirt kept staring up.

  “The Quantum Games are over?” he said, echoing the headmaster’s words.

  Ender Paine nodded. “Both you and Spencer Bentley hereby have places in the elite class. We will need both of you, if what Vivaine tells me is…” he shook his head, apparently unable to go on. Wirt couldn’t believe that. The headmaster was normally as emotionless and uncaring as a rock. He turned to Ms. Lake. “Tell them.”

  “There has been an attack,” Ms. Lake said.

  Wirt didn’t understand. They all knew about the attack. They’d been there when Roland had done it, and it had made no difference then, so why should it now?

  “A series of attacks, in fact,” Ms. Lake continued. “Attacks on the rulers and heirs of many of the Hundred Kingdoms. Attacks on some of the foremost magical minds in the realms. Attacks that all seem to have had something in common. This school.”

  She paused, looking around the assembled crowd of parents and students. “It is with great regret that I have to inform you that large numbers of our former students are dead, but I’m afraid the news is worse than that. Approximately half of our current elite class is also dead. I know many of you here have friends or family in that class. I am sorry for your losses.”

  Ms. Lake bowed her head for a moment and Ender Paine looked up. Now, Wirt understood the pain on his face. The Alchemists Academy was the only thing he cared about, and at a stroke, someone had done more damage to it than it was possible to believe. For him, it wouldn’t be about the individual students -Wirt doubted that the headmaster could even begin to understand that kind of pain- but he would feel the damage to the school.

  “Someone will pay for this,” Ender Paine said softly, and the words carried across the field. “I promise you that. Someone will pay.”

  “Ender.” Ms. Lake said it softly, her hand on his shoulder again. “Come inside. Come on. You shouldn’t stay here.”

  That was almost the hardest part of it, Wirt thought afterwards. Ender Paine was normally so terrifying, even if it was occasionally a ludicrous kind of terror.
Now though, Ms. Lake led him back inside the school like a parent leading a child, and he let her do it. That, more than anything, brought home the sheer scale of the blow.

  People drifted off in ones and twos, looking for answers or explanations, seeing that the entertainment was over or trying to work out what was happening. There was a sense of things slowly falling apart, and of no one being truly in charge. The attack by Roland had been bad enough, but this? This meant something else entirely.

  And at the heart of it, the three of them stood for a long time. Finally, Alana threw her arms around Wirt’s neck.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for not doing it. For not throwing your quantum ball. I don’t know what I would have done…”

  Wirt could see the way Spencer was looking at them, and he gently disengaged Alana’s arms from him. “It’s all right. I’m just glad I didn’t do it, Spencer.”

  “Me too,” the other boy admitted, and then Alana went to him, kissing him. Wirt tried to push down the hurt he felt in that moment.

  Alana pulled back from Spencer and then, to probably everyone’s surprise, including her own, she slapped him. “Don’t you ever do anything that stupid for me again, Spencer Bentley. I couldn’t have stood to lose you. Either of you. What if you’d been killed? What if you’d killed Wirt?”

  Spencer looked like Alana had hit him a lot harder than she had, and Wirt could guess why. The same reason that his own guts were tying themselves in excited knots. Alana cared about him as much as she did about Spencer? He had to say something. He had to. Yet how could he, there and then, in front of the friend he had only just narrowly avoided having to kill?

  “How did you even get into the maze?” Spencer asked Alana.

  “I… I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Ms. Burns asked me to follow her, and the next thing I remember, I was walking through it.”

  Ms. Burns. Wirt remembered looking for her in the stand, but she hadn’t been there. What kind of game was she playing here? She’d refused to answer that so many times, but now… now it felt like it mattered more than anything. So much was happening around the school, that if she knew something…

  What? How would someone like Wirt ever get answers from someone like her? He couldn’t do anything to make her tell him. Yet at the same time, it seemed so vital that he should find out, because this wasn’t just the usual politics of their mad, impossible school anymore. People were dying, apparently in ways that suggested something was attacking the school.

  It wasn’t just the school though. Roland had been aiming to kill both him and Spencer. Whatever force had pushed at them in the test had been trying to achieve the same thing, only more subtly. Was Ms. Burns a part of that? Wirt didn’t know, but when something wanted him, his closest friend, and the girl he… and Alana dead, he was going to find out.

  “Promise me you won’t do anything so foolish again,” Alana said to Spencer, but she glanced at Wirt too. “Now, I should go look for Priscilla. After everything that’s happened, I want to keep an eye on her.”

  She walked off, and Wirt watched her go. Spencer watched her too, but Wirt could see the way his friend’s eyes flickered over to him. He could see the flicker of anger there. Maybe what had almost happened in the Quantum Games wasn’t just because of some kind of malign influence. Wirt knew he needed to say something. He needed to talk to Spencer. He needed to talk to Alana.

  He needed to let her know that he still felt the way he always had about her. He needed to make her see just how much he cared about her. Spencer turned and walked off, following Alana, obviously not looking happy. Wirt knew though that if he used transportation magic, he could get to her before his friend did. He could whisk her away to a spot where Spencer wouldn’t find them, and they could talk properly, without…

  A hand touched him lightly on the arm and Wirt spun, his hands coming up to cast defensive magic. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that it was Ms. Lake. How had the teacher gotten behind him? Wirt knew better than to ask that. She was almost as good with transportation magic as he was.

  “I would suggest that you don’t react so quickly,” Ms. Lake said with a gentle smile that didn’t quite erase the troubled look in her eyes, “but perhaps in the times we face, that kind of response will keep you alive. Something obviously wants you dead.”

  Wirt swallowed nervously at the thought of that. “I guessed that.”

  Ms. Lake’s smile became a little more genuine. “I knew that you would. That’s part of what makes you special, you know.”

  “I thought that was the magic?”

  Ms. Lake shook her head. “Oh, there are those who will say that, and it is a powerful gift, but why should someone praise you for a simple accident of birth? It is like being strong, or handsome, or born into the right family. The things you do aren’t just based on that though. Take the way you distracted Roland. How many other students would have dared to interrupt a magical battle like that?”

  “How is Roland?” Wirt asked.

  Ms. Lake’s expression tightened a little. “As well as can be expected under the circumstances.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Ms. Lake shook her head. “That’s the thing about this life, Wirt. You don’t get a right to all the answers, and there are things that sometimes you never learn. You just have to do the best with the situation as it is.” She brushed a strand of dark hair out of her eyes. “Though I’ll admit that this particular situation is going to take a lot of dealing with.”

  They both stood there like that for a moment or two, and Wirt found that there was a question he needed to hear an answer to more than he’d thought.

  “Is the headmaster… will he be all right?”

  Ms. Lake smiled. “You know, I don’t think anyone else in the history of this school has ever thought to ask that about Ender. Mostly with good reason. The answer is that I’m not sure. My guess is that this will harden into something like anger in him, but it could do other things too. He loves this school, Wirt. Whatever else is true, believe that.”

  “And you love him.” Wirt said it without thinking, instantly regretting it, but knowing he had to go on. “You’re closer than anyone to him, and the way you were with him after what happened…”

  Ms. Lake shook her head. “Maybe once. Ender and I have a lot of history, but with the ways magic can keep people alive, everyone here has a lot of history. Let’s just say that I’ve known him when he’s been a better man. And a worse one.”

  “Worse than he is now?” Wirt said. Believing that took some effort.

  “Oh, much worse,” Ms. Lake said. She sighed. “We all have our regrets, Wirt. Sometimes though, they come back to haunt us.”

  Wirt looked at her. “Is that what this is?” he asked. “Something coming back to haunt the school?”

  Ms. Lake smiled. “Remember what I said about not always getting the answers? Sometimes, it’s about not having the answers in the first place. Like Alana. I’m not sure even she knows how she feels right now.”

  She’d seen that? Wirt hesitated. Of course she’d seen that. Ms. Lake saw a lot more around the school than most people gave her credit for.

  “Now,” Ms. Lake continued, “I didn’t come here for that. I came here because it occurred to me that, in the excitement, no one would have done something very important.”

  She pressed her hands together, murmured something, and slowly drew them apart. Between them hung a brightly colored scarf, which she held out to Wirt.

  “Welcome to the elite class, Wirt Newton. You’ve worked hard for it, and you deserve it.” She smiled almost sadly. “I just hope that it proves to be a happier time for you than it seems that it might be. But let’s not think about that. The important thing is that you’re in.”

  Wirt took the scarf and wrapped it around his neck. Ms. Lake was right. Whatever was going to happen, the important thing was that he’d made it. He was in the elite class. He was going to stay at the school and find out what exactly wa
s this destiny everyone knew he had.

  *****************

  Wirt, Spencer, Alana, Priscilla, and Robert’s Adventures continue in:

  The Year of the Elite

  Alchemists Academy Book 4

  EXCERPT FROM

  RISE OF THE FIRE TAMER

  Wordwick Games #1

  by

  kalin gow

  Prologue

  The deadline slipped past, as deadlines tend to. Around the world, hungry eyes pinned themselves to computer screens, waiting for news. When it came, it came in the form of a simple video file, which when opened showed the familiar head and shoulders of Henry Word, the owner of Wordwick Inc. As heads went, it was not too bad. Although he had hit forty, there weren’t any signs of gray in the sandy-blond hair, and the cleft chin was still as defined as ever. In the second or two before he started speaking, there was a twinkle in the green eyes that said that Henry Word was enjoying the suspense.

  “Well,” he began, “you’re probably all waiting with baited breath for me to announce the winners of the Wordwick Games Contest, designed to find our ultimate fans. After all, you probably want to know who’s getting the prize of spending a week in the castle you all know and love from the game.” A mischievous smile flickered across his features for a moment. “Well, simply telling you would hardly be much fun, would it? Instead, I think I’ll keep you all in suspense just a little while longer, and our winners…” Henry Word raised a remarkably old-fashioned pocket watch to eye level and spun it like a carnival hypnotist. “Well, our winners should be finding out very soon indeed.”

  TUMBLEWEED didn’t twist its way across the ranch, because that would have been too much like something happening. Stieg Sparks had learned many things in the past seventeen years, and one of them was that nothing much ever seemed to happen on days when you really wanted them to. Particularly not on his parents’ ranch. A few cattle, though not as many as there once had been, stood and stared at Sparks as he sat on the front porch, and he stared back, more for something to do than from any particular interest in them.