Partington wasn't in the Chamber. I had almost forgotten what Tina had told me, up in the clock tower — they had been warned to stay away from me.
“Avis! You don't look as dashing in the cold light of day!” cried a voice — Jasper, he was standing, as if about to make a speech. “Everyone hates you for tricking them into liking you with black magic,” he announced.
Blood burned my veins with anger as he revelled in the audience of the entire Chamber, while I simultaneously tried to think of which invisibility spells I could get away with and which spells to attack Jasper with. “… And they said you were a good Blackthorn? Blood runs deep!” he called.
The Chamber watched Jasper with glee, turning from him to me with wide eyed expectancy. “And I am sure, they will all want to know what it was you did? Well… I will tell you all what Avis Blackthorn did! For I was the one who beat the truth out of him in a duel high up in the school tower!” The crowd bayed, looking around at each other muttering.
“Don’t…” Tina pulled his sleeve. But Jasper wasn’t listening, he was enjoying himself too much, finally the chance he had been waiting for had arrived, and he wasn’t wasting a second.
“Avis did black magic to conjure… a demon! He used its power to weave a jumper that made Tina, my girlfriend, fall in love with him! Because he was jealous!” the Chamber crooned. “But because it was black magic and he didn’t know what he was doing, it went wrong, and you all fell in love with him!”
Screams of no way! And that’s why! And I knew there was something dodgy about him! Rang about the chamber.
“And this is the worst bit…” Jasper cried, one long finger pointing at me. “He… he…” but Jasper stopped, shaking his head, as if struggling to utter the next words. Then he shuddered — he couldn't speak. His mouth was sealing shut!
“Spit it out!” shouted Jack Zapper. But Jasper couldn't. I watched on with the rest of the Chamber, as Jasper’s lips shut tighter, fading away until… he had no mouth! He snatched at them, trying to pull it open, but to no avail. It was sickening.
“His mouths gone!” shouted Rahmid Khan excitedly.
“That’s a black magic spell!” said a fifth year.
My brother Harold was the only one on the Magisteers table who wasn't looking up and continued to sit there while the other Magisteers rushed over to help Jasper. His dark eyes swam slow as a ship along the horizon to me, then away, back to his porridge. It was him. He did that to Jasper. I knew my brother, and I knew that look in his eye.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Seven Sided Room
I was pacing nervously around the dorm. The Magisteer that was helping me vanquish the Djinn was about to arrive.
I had almost worn out the carpet, much to the annoyance of Graham and Dennis who were trying to do their homework together. Graham had been rather behind everyone else in the class and Dennis had taken it upon himself to help.
A short small knock at the door told me the Magisteer was here. A wave of panic ran through me. Who would it be? Partington perhaps? The Lily even? I opened the door slowly to reveal the long, tall, stick thin figure of Magisteer Straker. A cold stone dropped inside me. Of course, it was Magisteer Straker. He looked down at me with all the warmth of an ice cube. He was a strange looking man — he had a completely straight back, with a long neck, and a tall head. His hair was short and black, speckled with grey. The rest of his clothes were grey too, apart from one white lace handkerchief, folded in his breast pocket.
“Come on then,” he turned and walked beckoning me to follow.
I followed Straker for what felt like miles, in absolute silence. We walked and walked and walked. Up one corridors and down the next. I looked up at the tall grey figure, gliding along just in front of me with a bored, annoyed face (or was that his normal expression?) We walked all the way along the the Big Walk, past all the people emerging after a lovely big dinner, my stomach rumbled. Then, all the way along the fourth year dorms, past everyone going to get washed and ready for bed.
My legs started to ache, we were high up in the school where the seventh years slept now. Straker continued to walk slowly, eyes fixed ahead and nothing coming out of his mouth. I mean, I would have perhaps liked an introduction like ‘this is how you vanquish a Djinn,’ or ‘we will walk this way to see if its down there.’
Maybe Straker would just deal with it if we found it? Yeah, I mean, they couldn't expect me, a child, to deal with it could they?
We were down low, in the cavernous dungeons. The walls were black, there was no light and my skin bobbled with goosebumps. Straker sighed, he looked tired and bored too.
“Erm… Sir, how long do you think we will be… walking.”
“Oh it speaks,” he said. “I was perhaps under the suspicion that you were a mute.”
“But… I thought you didn't want me to speak?”
“This is your mission. I am the helper,” said Straker, rolling his eyes sounding peeved. “I am following you.”
“But I was following you?”
“I know you were,” he said. I blinked, feeling too tired for this confusion. “You are in charge. You are the boss,” Straker had a way of talking that made you feel unsure the whole time, as if, he didn't really mean what he said. “Perhaps you could start by telling me what happened. The truth.”
“What you mean about the Djinn?”
“Yes,”
We continued to walk, and I thought about where to start as I peered through darkness. Straker sniffed. “If you want me to make a light, just ask.”
“Yes please,” I said. A few seconds later a line of blue fire lit the ceiling of the dungeons and ran all the way along. As I looked around my heart started to race, for bones of animals and… things, lay on the dungeon floor. “And…”
“Find a way out of the dungeon?” he offered.
Every night at 6pm on the dot, Straker would knock upon my door and escort me around the school. He was acting like a petulant elemental at first—he wouldn't do anything unless I specifically asked him too. After a short while though it fell into a familiar routine. I would gather some food from the Chamber on the way back from my last lessons, place all the sandwiches and snacks into a hubris hide bag that Jake lent me, slung it over my shoulder and waited for Straker. I mean, he almost got used to me too. Last year he hated me — he was the one who found us after Hunter was attacked by Malakai.
Straker was well known to have a soft spot for some of the Blackthorns. I don’t think it meant he was a dark Wizard, but he simply admired all magic. Behind the grey and boring exterior, lay an enthusiastic individual, interested in everything. Straker completely surprised me, he was nothing like I had imagined.
As we scanned the fifth floor classroom areas, Straker had his eyes narrowed and walked like a cat, coiled up as if ready to pounce.
“Is there a something I can do to be able to see better?” I said.
“Yes. But you will be disappointed, there is no magic spell,” he turned and looked as if he was sniffing the air. “You narrow your eyes until reality starts to blur and flicker.”
I tried it, the corridor ahead did blur and flicker about in a sepia haze. I opened them again, not sure how this would help find a Djinn.
“Djinn work on the periphery of senses. Half in our world, half in another. Only by lessening your senses do you sharpen them. When you lessen your sight, you begin to see in peripheral vision, you see?”
“Kind of,” I said carrying on walking, slightly miffed that their wasn't a spell. There probably was but he wasn't allowed to give me it. “What do I do if I find it?”
“Don’t you know?” said Straker in an amused tone, staring ahead.
“Well, no, that’s why I am asking.”
“You must learn it fully and commit it to memory.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Ok,” Straker smiled. Waving a hand, a pamphlet dropped out of mid air and fell gracefully into my hand. It was a dozen pages thick or less.
The pages were detailed with pictures and instructions.
“Commit it to memory,” Straker repeated. I tucked it away in my back pocket and said I would.
We ate the sandwiches in a disused classroom on the third floor, it was a really old one, for it had statues either side of the blackboard. I think I ate more dust than sandwich.
“Don’t like egg sandwiches,” said Straker like a grumpy toddler before eating it anyway. After a while of sitting in silence, my eyes stinging due to tiredness, for it was very late, Straker looked up at me quizzically. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” I said.
Straker picked the corner of his lip with a long grey finger. “Raise the Djinn?”
I looked up at the ceiling, I thought everyone knew? “For the wish,” I said.
Straker nodded. “And what did you wish for?”
I paused, feeling embarrassed. “I wished for… popularity… to be liked.” Straker looked utterly dumfounded, and disappointed.
“You had a wish from one of the most powerful Djinn ever, and you wished for…” he swallowed, the burst of anger subsiding as he looked out the window. Then he laughed. “Goodness me. You could have wished for anything.”
“I know…” I said, and he suddenly looked sympathetic.
“You must have been really sick of being unpopular?” he said as if the concept was foreign to him. “There’s so much to do in the world. Good or bad, liked or not liked. We as Wizards have that privilege.”
“I just… you know, wanted to be liked by people.”
“I was the same when I was young,” said Straker. “Never wanted to be a Magisteer… I had a good job before, working for the Magical Council in central Dodecagon. It was an exciting job, every day was different and filled with adventure. Lot’s of travelling, meeting important people and keeping the peace between rival Wizarding factions. I was what they call a Mediator. I made sure that each rival faction offered a fair deal — it could get quite scary sometimes.” Straker’s eyes glazed over.
“Why did you leave?”
He blinked. “Too much politics… I got too old… too many bad things… many reasons.”
When I got back to the dorm room, Robin was still up, standing still over the fireplace. An orange glow reflecting off the front of his spectacles, and a strange pair of khaki trousers on with lots of pockets which were bulging with objects.
“What are you still doing up at this time? And dressed like that?” I nodded towards the trousers and laced boots.
“Sounds to me like you are not having much luck finding it?” he whispered. “You could probably do with these?” he pointed to his spectacles. “And I’ve got a pocket full of magic. Shall we go?”
I could hardly refuse. I made a pit stop at the Chamber. Lit by one solitary fire bracket, leaving it horribly dark and empty, and poured myself a big cup of stuff the outsiders drink — coffee. Apparently it made you more awake. So, with a hot cup of disgusting brown stuff, we set off.
“I had to help,” said Robin. “I don’t want to be here without a best friend,” he said marching so fast along the Big Walk that I was struggling to keep up with him. “Do you have any idea where about’s it could be?”
“Up high I think,” I said, panting.
Robin nodded fervently with his tongue out, then looked at me. “Can’t you narrow it down a bit?”
“The Lily said that it would be within a few hundred yards from where it was raised.”
Robin nodded. “Right, let’s start up near the clock tower then. Occulus!” said Robin, darting behind a pillar pulling me with him. A small white eyeball tip toed silently along the corridor past us. Robin craned his neck watching it disappear down another hallway. “Coast is clear…”
We climbed the spiral staircase upwards, through the slits in the wall all I could see was black, with the occasional white wisp of cloud. Up here were all the turrets, some had classrooms, others were seventh year dorms, private rooms and places to keep people who had been really bad.
I huffed and puffed as we climbed, already having been up and down these stairs twenty times today already. “We’re not going to find anything… if Straker can’t see anything then I doubt we will!”
“But you’re forgetting I have the spectacles of sight.” Robin said proudly, he had taken to calling them the spectacles of sight, because he thought it sounded clever. I didn’t. “I am getting used to them,” he said. “I can spot an Occulus a hundred paces away.”
Halfway up the spiral staircase, with my legs burning, we exited through a small doorway. We were somewhere just above the clock tower right in the centre of the school.
“So…” said Robin with his hands on his hips and looking around like a builder. “Within this vicinity, to about a hundred feet, the Djinn should be. Do you know what to do if we actually find it?” he said looking at me, suddenly concerned.
I pulled out the pamphlet and waved it. “Should be fine. I’ve got this, step-by-step instructions on how to vanquish a Djinn…” I said sarcastically, but he didn't notice it — nodding appeased and walking on.
“These corridors go round in one big square,” he said. The corridors up here had long windows from floor to ceiling on our left, continuously the whole way around. Pierced only, by long hanging blood red curtains with gold fasteners, brown doors, lots of green drapes and the occasional statue. I knew another secret entrance to the clock tower was up here somewhere, behind a drape, followed by a climb down a rickety wooden staircase underneath lots of spindly beams.
“What was that?” said Robin, holding a hand out. I listened. A door was creaking open behind us. We exchanged looks. Robin turned slowly and peered through the darkness behind us.
“What is it?” I whispered barely audibly.
Robin was staring hard through the glasses. Before he started to back away, pulling me behind a curtain. He didn't take his eyes away from the end of the corridor — I strained my eyes and squinted them, but couldn't see a thing.
“It’s… completely shrouded in dark magic.” He whispered as low as he possible could. “It’s gone… wait here.” I could hear Robin’s heart beating in its cage next to me. “I don't know what it was… it was small and hunched, and cloaked in black…”
“Where did it go?”
“Down the spiral staircase.” Robin moved away from the window, suitably reassured that the mysterious thing was gone. “Do you think that was the Djinn?”
“I’ve already described what the Djinn looks like.”
“Hmm… then what was that?” he said. We carried on, hearts beating fast. It was well into the morning hours now, and I had homework due in for tomorrow. Magisteer Wasp was not going to be happy. He was already in a mood with me after finding out about the jumper — along with everyone else.
“I was almost getting somewhere with her you know, Felicity. Until you decided to mess it up for me… I blame Hunter.”
“Why Hunter?” I said.
“He was the one who suggested we go and check out Magisteer Simone’s. That giant boulder that spiked the jumper, made the jumper all weird, got you caught. Made Felicity hate me…” he muttered.
“She doesn't hate you,” I said, he was being melodramatic.
Thankfully, he changed the subject. “You know that giant boulder was an illusion? There was no damage in the school. It was a hex — an illusionary booby-trap.”
“If it was an illusion, how did it rip my jumper?” I said, after laughing at Robin saying booby-trap.
“Illusions can still rip jumpers,” he said matter of factly. “It’s about your belief of them. The mind is more important than you think.”
“Right…” I said, my eye lids drooping. “Can we go back soon?”
“I’ve just realised that there are no Occulus’s up here. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Not really, I don’t think there’s any point. No one comes up here.” As we rounded the next corner Robin stopped again, and began looking arou
nd, squinting at the floor.
“Here…” he passed the spindly wire glass frames to me. “Tell me what you see.”
I put them on and looked. Instantly light danced around in front of me. Without them on the corridor looked like all the others, drab and grey. But now, there was light… and it was all concentrated in a small stream towards a place in the wall. The light was multi-coloured and it took my eyes a while to sort through it. Thick pulsing yellows, bright burning reds and fizzing purples clumped together like a massive tangle of technicolour string. There was a lot of magic leading directly into the stone wall.
“It all leads into that wall…” I said.
Robin grinned. “It’s not a wall…” An ordinary drape lay over the wall.
“Their must be a door behind it?” I said. But a trickle of fear slid through me, what if, behind that door was the Djinn? Robin didn't look too concerned and was scanning the outline of the wall with his spectacles as I held the drape up.
“It’s not dark magic,” he said to me addressing my concerned face. “Honestly, I know the difference now… Aha!”
“What?”
“Found the doorknob, so to speak. It’s an energetic doorknob.” He pointed to a stone that looked the same as all the others in the wall. “These glasses show a very feint hand print. They must have done magic just before they pressed their hand to the wall,” he looked at me. “Press your hand onto that stone,”
I did what he said. The wall in front of us evaporated like it was made of mist. A small enclosed tunnel exactly my height opened. We stepped though slowly. Yellow light zoomed around the cracks between the stones in the tunnel, casting a fizzing sound overhead. After four or five steps, I suddenly found myself in a room.
“Woah…” said Robin behind me as he entered. It wasn't big, but it was impressive. There were seven sides to the room and the roof pitched high with old hanging beams. Light came from candles, lots of them scattered around the room, burning soft orange light. A comfy chair sat nearest the window, with a plethora of half read books on a stool next to it. In the middle of the room and taking up most of the space sat the oldest, intricate and decadent round table. On it lay more books, papers and magical devices, some of which I had never seen before. A simple fireplace lay with the faintest of embers.
Avis Blackthorn and the Magical Multicolour Jumper (The Wizard Magic School Series, Book 2) Page 24