by Kailin Gow
Chapter 3
“Wake up, Wirt, or we’re going to be late.”
Spencer’s voice cut through the last hints of Wirt’s dreams, destroying any hope that the part where he had been transported to a magical kingdom might be one of them. Wirt rolled sleepily from the bed and regarded his roommate, who was already dressed in uniform black, set off here and there by flashes of silver.
“We’ll miss breakfast if you don’t hurry,” the other boy warned. Wirt made an effort to dress quickly, ignoring another offer of clothes from Spencer in favor of his own. He wanted to hang onto familiar things as long as he could.
“How do things work around here, anyway?” Wirt asked. He liked to know how things worked, if only so he could tell where he would end up getting into trouble.
“Well, we’ve got classes, obviously,” Spencer said. “You are in my year, so you will have most of the same classes that I do. Alchemy, Transmutation, Glamours, classes on the worlds that you might end up serving in as a wizard, special assignments, that kind of thing. There are usually a couple of free choice classes too, though some of those have started to get a bit odd. Recently, the Headmaster introduced one called “The Advisor and Royal Relationship”. My father wants me to take it.” Spencer passed him a class schedule, and Wirt saw that his name was on it. “Someone dropped this off for you. Are you ready yet?”
Wirt was, so they headed out from their room to the landing and the waiting transportation shaft. Spencer grinned. “Remember to think of the cafeteria. Though you probably won’t want to think about some of the food.”
He stepped into the thing and shot off downwards. Wirt gritted his teeth, forcing himself to concentrate on what he thought of as a typical school cafeteria, before making himself step out into space. The ten seconds that followed made him wonder how anyone managed to make themselves eat afterwards.
The room he arrived in was huge, set with small circular tables that seemed to mirror the one in Ender Paine’s office, around them sat more students than Wirt would have believed, tucking into cereal, or toast, or fruit. Most of them seemed to be boys, but there were a few girls here and there, mostly in clusters that looked out on the boys around them with what Wirt felt was a fairly typical mix of indifference and amusement.
He looked around until he saw Spencer, deciding that it was probably better to stick with someone he knew, and found him standing at a hatchway, taking a plate loaded with fruit and toast. Wirt joined him, but his eyebrows drew together. There didn’t seem to be any way to order food.
“How do you choose what you want?” he asked Spencer, who shook his head.
“You don’t, unfortunately. The dryads who run the kitchen got hold of a crystal ball a while back, so they are supposedly able to send up exactly what you want without being asked.”
“Supposedly?” Wirt did not like the sound of that. Spencer leaned closer, lowering his voice.
“I think the ball is on the blink,” he whispered, “because I hate toast. Plus, the dryads seem to be on some kind of healthy eating kick ever since this TV cook from one of the outlying worlds came in and complained about what they were giving us. You used to be able to get sausages and bacon and things. The trouble is, if you argue about what you get, you just end up with porridge. Lumpy porridge.”
“I like porridge,” Wirt said, opening the serving hatch. What he found was not porridge, though, but a croissant with an apple beside it. He took them both. Spencer led him through the clustered tables, and Wirt could not help noticing that they were attracting some attention. Most of it seemed to be directed at Spencer. Every table he passed seemed to have someone saying hello from it, while the occasional knots of girls glanced shyly at him. At them, actually. Wirt seemed to be attracting his fair share of glances, too.
Wirt was quite surprised to find the two young women from the day before at the table Spencer finally led him to. The blonde-haired one still wore an elegant gown, this time in a deep red silk that didn’t entirely suit her, while the dark-haired one was dressed in an outfit that nearly matched Spencer’s. She smiled as they approached.
“Hi Spencer. You’re showing Appearing Boy around then? And copying my wardrobe while you’re at it.”
“I’m copying you?” Spencer shot back. Wirt got the feeling that the banter between the two of them was a regular feature. “I thought you hated wearing black.”
“Yeah, well, anything to get in with the Head right now. So,” she turned her attention to Wirt, and he felt the full intensity of those deep, brown eyes, “enjoying your first day?”
Wirt shrugged. “There hasn’t been much of it, yet.”
“True. I’m Alana. You gave us quite a shock yesterday, just showing up like that, right Priscilla?”
The other girl giggled, looking away.
“So if you’re staying,” Alana continued, rolling her eyes, “does that mean that you’re on a scholarship?”
“I guess so,” Wirt said, “though I think I might be more of a ‘stuck here’ student.”
Alana raised an eyebrow. “Well, either way, it is nice to meet someone else who isn’t stinking rich. Unlike these two, of course.” She nodded good-naturedly to Spencer and Alana. “Spencer’s family could probably afford to buy the school.”
“Assuming father thought it was a good investment,” Spencer added, grimacing as he ate his toast.
“Assuming that, of course, while as for Priscilla…”
“Daddy already did think it would be a good investment,” the other girl said, with an accent so posh it could have etched glass. “Which is why the school is in our kingdom.”
“Your kingdom?” Wirt asked. Alana nodded.
“Maybe I should have gone for the slightly more formal introduction before. Wirt, I would like you to meet Her Royal Highness, Princess Priscilla of Aravalia. Technically, I think she’s also a countess or something, too.”
“Comtessa of Blairsbrook, Lady of Larovia and Duchess of Ilfshire. Though I tend to ignore the duchess part. I always think it makes me sound fat.”
Wirt did his best to keep the word “airhead” out of his mind. It was not terribly easy. Alana gave him a look that dared him to say something about her friend.
“Suffice it to say that Priscilla’s father, King Wilfred, likes to give her things,” she said.
“Just never the one thing I actually want,” the princess countered. “You get to do all the magical classes, while I am stuck with special lessons on being royal instead. I don’t need lessons on being royal. Lessons on turning people into things, on the other hand…”
Wirt saw Alana give her hand a reassuring pat.
“It’s not as much fun as it looks. Besides, you will have a court wizard to help you out with that kind of thing. Or a court witch, of course.”
From the way Alana smiled when she said that, Wirt had a pretty good idea of just whom she thought that might end up being.
“So, are you two roommates?” he found himself asking. Alana nodded.
“I do my best to put up with the mess. Technically, of course, I’m also Priscilla’s Peer Advisor as a condition of my scholarship, so it helps if we share.”
“Daddy wants to make sure that I have time to get to know my future advisor,” Priscilla said. “Alana is so clever and poised. Not like me at all.”
“I do my best,” the dark-haired girl said.
“Plus,” Priscilla added, “I think he likes the thought of someone else being around to help with my… problem.”
Oh good, Wirt thought. Not only was the beautiful rich girl the sort to giggle and wonder whether being called a duchess sounded fat, she also had the kind of problem that had earned itself a significant pause. Spencer came to the rescue in the silence that followed.
“Alana has always been good at keeping people in line,” he said. “She certainly did a good job with me. We go back a long way,” he added, seeing Wirt’s questioning look.
Wirt thought he saw Alana flush slightly at that, but he
did not have time to question it, because Priscilla chose that moment to stand, hugging her friend.
“Well, I had best be going. Time for class and so on.”
“I’ll see you after school,” Alana promised, and the princess hurried off, the red dress billowing behind her in a way that made it look like she was being chased by a small hot-air balloon.
Wirt took advantage of the comment to reach down and bite into his apple. He only glanced away for a moment. By the time he looked back though, things had changed dramatically. They were not in the cafeteria, for one thing. Instead, he found himself seated at a desk in what appeared to be a small laboratory. At the front of it, there was a chalkboard, on which the word “ALCHEMY” was written in large letters. Spencer was sitting next to him, so Wirt leaned over.
“What just happened?”
Spencer shrugged, like the sudden appearance of a science lab was not a big deal. “Alchemy is all about changing things, so generally the teacher just changes whatever spot they’ll let him have into a classroom. In theory, it is so nobody who isn’t meant to be in the class can look in. In practice, I heard that it has something to do with every real classroom used for it getting destroyed.”
“I heard that, Spencer.” The voice came from the front, where an elderly man in a battered and rather stained white robe stood, a pair of thick half-moon spectacles perched on his nose. From where he sat, Wirt noticed that the teacher was missing both eyebrows. “Now, if everyone will give me a minute, we’ll begin with some simple sovereign remedies.”
The teacher snapped his fingers, and a flame appeared in midair, apparently unsupported. Over it, he arranged a stand and a bowl, before starting to add ingredients to it.
“Unicorn horn is generally regarded as the most important ingredient here,” the teacher said over his shoulder. Wirt saw twenty or so students start to make notes, and looked around for something to write on. From his other side, Alana pushed a couple of sheets of paper and a pencil in front of him. “Of course, that is nonsense. The same effects can be achieved just by…”
The teacher droned on. As he did so, words appeared on the board in front of him, along with diagrams that Wirt could barely begin to understand. The teacher was not doing any writing. Indeed, he did not seem to be doing much of anything until he looked up quite suddenly.
“I am afraid we have an unstable reaction, class. Places please.”
With that, he dove behind a desk with the kind of speed Wirt wouldn’t have believed possible from a man his age. Wirt felt a tug on his arm, and didn’t protest as Spencer dragged him below the level of their workbench. Alana was already crouching there. Wirt could not help noticing now that the desk was extremely solidly built. Even as Wirt thought it, there was a bang that made his ears ring, and the desk shuddered. For no apparently reason, a dozen white doves flew overhead.
“Am I still dreaming?” Wirt asked softly. He heard Alana laugh. She reached out to touch his hand.
“You come out of thin air, and you are still wondering that? It feels real, doesn’t it?”
It did. It also felt surprisingly nice. Wirt looked into Alana’s eyes again, and decided again that there were at least some good points to being trapped on another world.
“Right class, let’s try that once more, shall we?”
Chapter 4
The alchemy class lasted for the space of another two explosions and a minor melting, before being dismissed and allowing the cafeteria to fade back into being. Wirt was so relieved that, when Spencer and Alana picked up bags and headed down into the school’s lobby, he followed without question. As he arrived, Spencer held out an arm to hold him back before Wirt could step into the path of a group of seven figures who looked rather odd even by the standards of this strange place.
At their head was a large, rather red-faced man who wore an ermine-lined cloak over a tunic, hose and shoes that were fabulously well-made and encrusted with jewels. He looked uncomfortable in it, as though he would rather be wearing armor. Behind him came six more men and women who varied from a tall, lizard-featured creature to an almost stick-like man clutching a briefcase like his life depended on it. The final individual in their line was a woman in her thirties, with slightly pointed ears and a kind of delicate, fine-boned beauty to her. She wore a long black dress, though it was not the kind of old-fashioned thing Ms. Lake wore. Rather, it looked like the kind of thing a movie star might wear to a premiere, and Wirt could not help staring at her.
As though the woman felt his gaze on her, she turned just long enough to wink at him, before following the others into one of the transportation shafts that lined the tree and disappearing upwards.
“It seems that Ms. Pretty likes the bad boys, Wirt,” Alana joked beside him, and he thought he heard her mutter something that sounded a lot like “not that I blame her”.
“Ms. Pretty?” Wirt asked. That couldn’t be someone’s name.
“Ms. Preville,” Spencer supplied. “She’s one of the management board for the school, reporting to the governors.”
Wirt found himself thinking of the statues he had seen outside Ender Paine’s office. He certainly would not have wanted to report to some of the things he’d seen there.
“Who were the others?” he asked.
“The one in front was King Wilford,” Alana said. “Priscilla’s father. I don’t know about the rest.”
“We should be getting on,” Spencer said, looking up at the wall, where a clock that seemed to run on dripping water hung. “We will be late for class. Wirt, are you going to be okay here?”
Wirt’s brow furrowed, puzzled now. “I’m not in this class?”
“Not unless you really want to do a class on advising royalty,” Alana said. She took a piece of paper out of her bag. “Today’s lecture is called “Phrases To Avoid When Dealing With Kings”. Trust me, it will be even worse than the title sounds.”
Spencer shook his head. “It’s not that bad, but if I remember the class schedule that got dropped off right, Wirt is already signed up for a different class. He’s doing advanced transportation later.”
Wirt dug the scrap of paper out of his pocket. Sure enough, the abbreviation “AdTrans” was down on a slot for an hour or so from then. He didn’t know whether to be amazed that Spencer had memorized his class schedule at a glance, or simply annoyed that he didn’t seem to get any say in what was on it. Still, if this was what would get him home, it was probably the best choice.
“I’ll meet you back at our room before the class, and show you the way to where you’re going,” Spencer said. “Don’t try and get there yourself. If you don’t know where you’re going, there are so many paths in this tree that you could end up anywhere.”
“A couple of hundred thousand,” Alana added. The number seemed too big to Wirt, even for a tree this size. He said as much. Alana shook her head. “I don’t really understand it, but the tree isn’t just in this world. It kind of connects to…I don’t know…”
“Pockets of other realities,” Spencer supplied. “So when I say that you could end up anywhere, I mean anywhere. The principles of it are really quite fascinating…”
Alana shook her head, looking to Wirt. “You see what you have done? I’m going to get a lecture on folding space, now.”
She and Spencer headed off to their class, leaving Wirt to contemplate what Spencer had said. If the tree could connect to parts of other worlds, was it possible that part of it connected to his? Might he be able to use it to get home? Wirt suspected that just stepping into one of the transport holes and thinking “home” would not be enough. More than that, he suspected that it would probably end up putting him down somewhere incredibly dangerous. He had a good idea of how his luck worked with these things.
Instead, he resolved to return to his and Spencer’s room to wait for the other boy. As he was stepping into the hole that would take him there though, Wirt found himself thinking of the people who had just passed in the hall. Surely one of them would know
the limits of the tree. Or if not them, Ender Paine.
The thought was enough. Wirt found himself being whisked upwards at the kind of speed normally only experienced by astronauts, then wrenched sideways through another channel that barely seemed wide enough to fit him, then heading upwards again. Unfortunately, this time Wirt seemed to be heading upwards towards something. Specifically, towards some kind of shimmering barrier, and there did not seem to be anything Wirt could do to slow himself down.
Was this it? Had he really traveled between worlds, spent the night in a tree, and endured a rambling lecture punctuated by explosions only to end up squashed against some kind of magical force field? In the absence of any better solutions to the problem, Wirt settled for shutting his eyes and hoping.
Several seconds passed, which was strange in itself, given that it seemed to Wirt that he’d had less than a second until impact. More than that, he still seemed to be moving upwards, though even as he thought it, Wirt felt himself begin to slow. When he came to a halt, he opened his eyes, trying to make some sense of where he was. It was not easy, both because the room he was in was largely dark, and because it took him a second to realize that he was standing on a balcony that looked over another room.
That room was large with smooth glistening stones encrusted in the floor and round. In the center of the room was yet another of the tree’s circular tables and looked like it could seat an entire army. Currently, eight figures were seated around it, and Wirt recognized Ender Paine’s tuxedo clad form, along with the people who had passed him in the lobby. As Wirt huddled back on the balcony, hoping that he would not be seen, snatches of conversation drifted up from that lower level.
“We seem to have fewer students enrolling, Ender.”
“That is true. What would you like me to do about it, Urlando?”
“You could try changing some of your policies for the school perhaps,” a female voice said. It was rich, and honeyed, and Wirt just knew it had to be that of Ms. Preville. “Not everyone wishes to become a dark wizard, Ender. My people-”