The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1

by Kailin Gow

  “I am not!” Dr Brown complained. “I just happen to apply the basic principles of physics-“

  “And he’s easy to tease.” Henry Word grinned as he said it. “Come on, let’s take you to Percy’s home-from-home. That should calm him down.’

  This door, Gem noted, had an electronic lock added to the wood. Henry Word punched in the combination and it swung open, revealing the kind of room that never should have lived behind a wooden door. A sliding, motion sensing, high-tech door perhaps, but not a wooden one.

  The space was almost as big as the Great Hall, and was not cluttered up with things like long tables. All the tables here were individual workstations, holding computers, people working at the computers, and the kind of small fluffy toys that inevitably collect around them. The people were mostly casually dressed, and would occasionally look up to ask one another questions, but mostly they kept their eyes glued to the screens. The floor around the walls was a mess of wires, looking like someone had spilled a plate of spaghetti and then decided to connect it to the mains. Most of them ran into a blocky server station at one end of the room at some point.

  “This is where we run Wordwick,” Henry Word announced. “I’ve got some of the finest computer minds in the country, the world even, working constantly to build it, update it and keep it running.”

  “It’s very impressive,” Gem said. One of them had to.

  “Impressive.” Dr Brown shook his head. “Hardly. We’re not running nearly as efficiently as we should be, and then there are the overheating problems, the-“

  “I think that’s our cue to leave Percy to it,” Henry Word suggested, and the six of them left as the advisor started issuing instructions to people at the nearest terminals. “I think perhaps we should try the gardens next.”

  They did. Gem kept pace with the wheelchair, and Sparks kept up with her. Rio lagged behind a pace or two, as though showing enthusiasm about a garden was not the kind of thing you were supposed to do. Kat and Jack brought up the rear, mostly because Jack’s own enthusiasm kept fixing on parts of the castle architecture, or particularly interesting heraldic shields, or any one of the hundred other things there were to catch a history buff’s eye. As far as Gem could see, Kat was more or less dragging him along.

  They followed Henry Word outside, then around the side of the main keep, through a small gate in a walled off area of the castle. Gem found herself hit by the scent of roses, and looked around to see them in every shade from white to the deepest red, growing on trellises, or out of flowerbeds, or around benches.

  “This is beautiful,” Gem said.

  “You’d never be able to skate it properly though,” Kat said from behind her. “And roses? It’s so…girly. Just your kind of thing, probably,” she added in Gem’s direction.

  “Well, everyone has their own opinion.” Henry Word’s tone was carefully diplomatic. “I kept the rose garden on from the previous owners. I find them rather peaceful.”

  That peace was briefly shattered as a screeching sound cut through the rose garden. Gem jumped at it. The only consolation was that it caught everyone else almost as much by surprise.

  “What was that?” Rio demanded. “Some kind of cat?”

  “It’s a peacock,” Gem guessed.

  “That’s right.” Henry Word looked pleased. “You get used to the noise after a while, so don’t let it bother you. If we are lucky, they will be out on the lawns where we can see them.”

  He led the way through the other side of the rose gardens, to a spot overlooking a garden that was more like a park in size. It had been laid out in ordered shapes that made it look like the pieces to some giant jigsaw puzzle from their vantage point.

  “Another inheritance from the people I bought the place from,” Henry Word explained. “Though they had let it go quite a bit. I learned that it had been laid out a few hundred years ago by the great garden designer Capability Brown, and I was able to find the plans. It seemed like a good idea to have it put back as it was.”

  He led them along the garden paths, and as Gem had noticed when she arrived, the gardens contained a maze of hedges that reached over head height. Given how uninterested she had been in the rose garden, Kat seemed to like the maze, asking how difficult it was to get through. She obviously caught Gem’s surprised look at that, because she shrugged.

  “What? I like puzzles.”

  The final stop on their tour was the castle’s lake, which was really an extension of the moat. It stretched out for what had to be half a mile, and Gem could only just make out the small summerhouses and boathouses on the other side.

  “This is even more space than back home,” Sparks observed.

  “Yeah, well imagine what it’s like for the rest of us, farm boy,” Rio muttered softly. Gem doubted that the other boy heard. Maybe Henry Word did though, because he chose that moment to bring the tour to a close, saying that they should get back to the house. He led the way again, and the two older boys kept pace. Gem found herself walking with Kat and Jack.

  “So,” she said to Jack, “what did you think of the tour?”

  “It was… that is… I um…” he hurried away to catch the others.

  “I think he must be nervous,” Gem said to Kat.

  “Funny that. He was not nervous around me.”

  They got back to the lobby ok, and Henry Word led them to the last of the doors leading off from it, which turned out to be for an elevator. He waited until they were all inside before speaking.

  “Right, that’s most of the tour. I will take you up to your rooms now, and you can settle in. You might want to get some sleep. Before that though, I know you have all been dying to find out more about Wordwick’s Anachronia level, so I won’t keep you waiting any longer.

  “It’s very straightforward really. Your goal when playing it will be to win the crown of the kingdom of Anachronia, using all your wits, skills and talents. The people will only give the crown to someone who can do three things: end the threat of the three-headed dragon terrorizing the land, unite the two warring clans that live there, and help the people of Anachronia flourish. Is that clear?”

  Gem nodded. Several of the others did too.

  “It sounds simple,” Sparks said, beside her.

  “Oh, it’s not as easy as it sounds,” Henry Word continued, “which is why there are a few other things you should know. First, beware the Wickedly Woods where the dragon lives. It isn’t the only danger there. Second, remember that you can work together, even if only one of you can rule in the end. Third, and most importantly, remember that words have power in Anachronia, finding the right words, the Ruler Words, along the way will make your time far easier.”

  The elevator came to a halt then, and Henry Word led them to a hallway that was almost a mirror of the lobby, except that the five doors here were open, and led to bedrooms. Gem could see that her bags had been brought up and left just inside the door to one of them. She walked over.

  It was a surprisingly large bedroom, and it was warm thanks to the rows of tapestries covering the walls. There was a bookshelf with a few volumes, set above a small desk that stood next to a chest of drawers. The bed was a curtained four-poster affair that looked like it knew the same swallowing people up trick as the chairs in the recreation room.

  The only thing that didn’t fit lay on one side of the room, and it really didn’t fit. It was as though the same people who had been so meticulous in finding genuine medieval objects to decorate the rest of the castle had suddenly thrown up their collective hands in defeat and shoved in something from a science fiction show. It was a pod, just a little larger than a person, made of a clear plastic substance with holes in it for air. There was a screen built into the open lid, along with a big red button that looked like the kind of thing they had on machinery to stop it in emergencies.

  “Those are our gaming pods,” Henry Word explained. “We think they will give you a… fuller gaming experience. Well, I’ll let you all get to sleep. Goodnight.”
>
  As he left them, Gem knew that the others’ eyes would be firmly on the pod in their room. She knew hers were.

  Jack spent a couple of minutes looking at the pod before he climbed into it. It was even more interesting than the castle, and a lot easier to deal with than talking to beautiful girls. He lay down, checked briefly to make sure that his glasses were in place, and closed the lid…

  Sparks took a little longer, mostly because he wanted to get a better look at how the thing worked. He was impressed. Whoever had designed this was a genius. With the kind of speed he normally reserved for dodging high-school linebackers, he leapt into the thing and let the top swing down…

  Kat unpacked before she got round to the pod, though since her method of unpacking was simply to shove things into any drawer that looked about the right size, it didn’t take long. When she did look at it, it occurred to her that it looked a bit like a coffin, so as she lay down she folded her arms and did her best to affect a Transylvanian accent, not entirely successfully. “Off to Anachronia ve go…”

  Rio watched the pod for almost half an hour before he tried it. He was trying to think of all the angles this Word guy could be playing. Eventually though, he realized that the others had probably already begun using the pods. At the thought that the quarterback would probably already be there, showing off to the pretty blonde, he scrambled in and brought the lid down quickly. After all, the last thing he wanted was to look scared…

  For her part, Gem had a couple of books open. One was a history of medieval Europe. Another was a dictionary. That was open to A, where she had penciled a ring around the word anachronism. Well, she thought, if there was ever a thing in the wrong historical period, it was the pod in the corner of the room. She took a deep breath, walked over, and lay down inside…

  From the Author of The Alchemists Academy is another Middle Grade and Up Series

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