by Alex Kosh
Alice twirled one finger beside her head once again to indicate that she didn’t understand this little family unit at all.
I hastily changed the subject to something less provocative.
“Alice, are you really going to eat vegetarian food?” I asked and suddenly felt slightly embarrassed, when I realised my choice of subject wasn’t quite appropriate. “Well … I mean … you probably, that is … well …”
“She drinks blood,” Chas put in helpfully.
“Yes, yes …” I said with a withering glance at Chas. “You feed on vital energy, and how much vital energy is there in a carrot?”
“You what?” Chas hissed. “Don’t you ever dare say that in front of druids. For a comment like that they’ll use you as fertiliser for their favourite weeds.”
“Are they really that sensitive?” I asked in surprise, delighted that the conversation had taken a new direction.
“No, not really,” said Chas, twirling one finger beside his head – he must have picked up the gesture from our vampiress. “It’s just that they’re absolutely gaga about those carrots of theirs – but don’t misconstrue my meaning.”
Alice laughed, and I could hardly repress a smile. Even Vickers senior allowed himself a smile, but he kept his hands on his brother’s ears.
“Your jokes are a bit on the dirty side …” I remarked.
“That’s not true, I always wash them before use,” Chas retorted.
Our duel of words was interrupted by a waiter who began setting out plates on the table with suspicious stealth. The plates contained some strange-looking green substance. And another strange thing was that it was a different waiter.
Chas sniffed at the contents of his plate with obvious suspicion.
“They won’t poison us, will they?”
“They shouldn’t, really,” I mused. “They must know it’s not that easy to poison a vampire, and Alice would avenge us, wouldn’t she?”
“Of course,” the vampiress agreed.
The final plates clinked as they were tossed onto the table and the waiter disappeared. It seemed like everyone in the place was feeling rather nervous.
There was another appalling racket as the waiter running away from our table crashed at full speed into the same hefty guy with a moustache, who had only just finished swearing and picking up the plates that he’d dropped. The waiter ran past our table, followed by the hefty guy waving a massive ladle.
“I wonder if he’ll catch him?” Neville asked, taking his hands off his brother’s ears as soon as the pair ran out the door.
“I hope not,” said Chas, shaking his head. “I feel sorry for the lad …”
My friend’s attention was focused on the peculiar green slush in his plate. It was obviously intended to bear the proud title of soup.
“This is going to kill me,” Chas declared.
I looked mournfully at my own plate and mentally agreed. I never thought life in the Academy would be as hard as THIS.
I was distracted from my gloomy thoughts by Vickers junior, who was crunching gleefully on some product of progressive horticulture. There was no danger of this lad going hungry, he could eat absolutely anything at all.
To my surprise, Alice was crunching on something green and round with equal gusto. The vampiress replied rather sharply to my enquiring glance: “Do you find the peculiarities of my biology so very fascinating? In that case, let me tell you that I eat the same food as normal people. Would you like any more physiological details?”
I stopped Chas just in time – I was quite sure he was about to tell her which physiological details he thought I’d like to know about. A dig in the side with an elbow prevented the smart ass from completely ruining my relationship with the vampiress … if the relationship existed, that is … and if a relationship was actually possible between a vampiress and a member a Great House.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly, waving an inconspicuous fist at Chas.
Alice just snorted at my apology, and Chas apparently didn’t even notice my threat.
“So do you plant rows of vegetables round your castles, then? A kind of kitchen garden … for vitamins?” Chas asked Alice as he puzzled over the fruit – or maybe vegetable, who could tell the difference? – that he was twirling in his fingers. “You’re pretty quick at picking your way through those fruits.”
“No lad, you’re wrong,” Neville told him. “The castles belong to the older clans. The Noos Clan doesn’t live in castles.”
“Then where do they live?” Chas asked in surprise.
“I’ve no idea,” Neville replied. “Ask your little girlfriend here.”
“She’s not exactly my little girlfriend,” Chas laughed, with a sly glance at the vampiress, who was taking absolutely no notice of him. “More like Zach’s little girlfriend.”
The smart ass inconspicuously dodged the inconspicuous blow from my elbow and sank his teeth into a tuber as if nothing had happened.
But strangely enough, he was quite right – Alice really was choosing her fruits quite confidently, and she clearly knew what they tasted like. As for me, I didn’t have a clue about all this green stuff (actually it was fruit and it was different colours, but we couldn’t think of all this vegetarian food as anything but “green”) and I didn’t know what it tasted like. For instance, I was quite certain that what I had in front of me was a common or garden tomato, so I salted it, but that was a mistake … later Alice gave us a brief introduction to biology, and I learned that the sweet red fruit was called an apple. A variety that had been produced only a few months earlier, in the Academy’s laboratories. But how Alice knew that and why she needed to know such things anyway remained a mystery to us.
And in any case, we were in a state of mild shock at the idea of a vampiress(!) teaching us about vegetarian nutrition.
Alice answered all our questions with a vague chuckle and a shrug, but she was as stubborn as a partisan fighter under interrogation.
“Well now …” Chas declared with his mouth full. “And they say our Emperor’s losing his grip. But just look – he’s even got the vampires on his dragonish vegetarian diet.”
“You know, it’s actually quite delicious,” remarked Vickers junior, who had polished off his own portion a long time ago and moved on smoothly to mine.
“So you’d be happy never to eat meat again?” his older brother asked.
The younger brother’s face reflected a painful process of thought.
“Never ever?” Naïve asked eventually.
“Right,” muttered Chas, giving all his attention to something large and yellow, but still trying to take part in the conversation.
“O-oh no-o,” the young gourmand said slowly. “Imagine life without any veal or chicken or salami sausage …”
“Or rissoles, or chops, or meatballs …” Chas continued dreamily.
“Soups with thick broth, shish-kebabs, meat pies …” said Vickers junior, staring in loathing at the apple in his hand. “I want to go home …”
Alice couldn’t help chuckling, and that set the rest of us laughing. Naïve was the only one who didn’t laugh – he was obviously suffering …
We were distracted from his torment by a new squabble, this time one in which we weren’t involved. Two of the lads at the next table jumped up from their seats and started arguing in loud voices.
“Your firebird is no match for my butterfly!”
“Your butterfly can’t even come close to my firebird!”
“Why should it come close, when it flies so much faster?”
“Tomorrow we’ll see just how tough your butterfly really is!”
“You want a duel?”
“Sure!”
“At dawn?”
“Sure, I like to win my victories before breakfast.”
While this dialogue went on the rest of the dining hall was absolutely silent.
We simply couldn’t believe our luck – on our second day in the Academy, we were going to see a genuine duel
!
“Did you hear that?” Chas asked in a whisper. “It seems like fortune has smiled on us.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, glancing round sceptically at the suspiciously quiet pupils from the senior classes. It was natural enough for the new arrivals to hold their breath and hang on every word, but why had the senior pupils stopped talking?
“You sceptic,” Chas said disdainfully. “So, before our next breakfast we head for … where exactly do we head for?”
“Yes, where?” put in Vickers junior. “I wouldn’t miss a sight like this for anything. I want to see these mysterious birds and butterflies …”
“Let’s try to find out,” said Chas, getting up from the table and looking around. “You finish eating, I’ll take a stroll and find out what’s what.”
We watched in amazement as Chas walked away, and then looked down at our empty plates.
Vickers junior judged his brother with his elbow and asked in a confused voice: “What’s he talking about? There’s nothing left to eat …”
“It’s a joke,” Neville said condescendingly.
“Ah … a joke …”
Alice and I exchanged knowing glances and had to stop ourselves smiling. The naiveté of young Vickers knew no bounds. It seems he was aptly named.
We waited about half an hour for Chas. All that time I kept trying to strike up a conversation with Alice, but I didn’t get anywhere. Maybe it was because the others were there, or maybe I was doing something wrong ... It must have been my fault, of course. How could we possibly be bothered by Vickers junior interrupting us all the time? Or his older brother trying everything he could (meaning subtle comments like “choke the bloodsuckers” or “break their fangs off”) to show the vampiress just how much he despised her?
When Chas came back he found us all sitting in total silence, in a very black mood. Alice was emphatically not looking at Vickers senior, and he was defiantly not looking at her … and I was sitting right between them. And Naïve was wearing a gloomy expression out of solidarity with his brother.
“As I recall, when I left the atmosphere wasn’t quite so dismal,” Chas remarked as he sat down.
The answer was silence.
“So don’t you want to hear what I found out?” Chas enquired with a smile.
“Of course we do,” I couldn’t resist replying. “Especially since we’ve been waiting for you for half an hour, and our shift’s almost over.”
In fact, there was no one left in the dining hall apart from the five of us. The waiters would have thrown us out long ago, but the vampiress’s discontented glance wandering round the hall seem to blunt their enthusiasm. Nobody wanted to take her on.
“Duels between senior pupils take place in the Hall of Mean Intensity, which occupies the entire tenth floor. Those two are planning to hold their duel before breakfast, at about eight o’clock in the morning,” Chas told us. “And by the way, we don’t have any more classes today, they’re giving us some time to settle in, so we can spend the rest of the day in feckless idleness. I suggest studying our clothing, it’s pretty weird …”
“That’s a good idea,” the Vickers brothers chorused.
Alice shook her head.
“You don’t want to?” Chas asked the vampiress. “Feeling shy? We’re all friends here. You could say we’re family.”
“You should see my family,” the vampiress laughed. “No, my schedule includes a nap after lunch.”
“Can I see you to your room?” I asked immediately.
“You could try.”
Alice got up and walked towards the door of the dining hall, and I sat there, thinking over her reply. Either she had nothing against the idea, or she was warning me not to push my luck …
“Go on, see her to her room, now that you’ve offered,” muttered Neville, and I think he surprised himself as much as me.
I obediently jumped up and went running after Alice.
But strangely enough, I didn’t catch up with her. I ran as far as the teleports, but I still didn’t see Alice. She must have decided to cut and run. Was I really such a pest that the girls had to run away from me? I found that kind of hard to believe …
Well anyway, now I’d obviously have to spend the rest of the day on the highly interesting activity of tying little knots on our new clothing. How did that proverb go? “Clothes upon clothes – clasps upon clasps?” They’d tried to frighten us with slavery, with studying round the clock. But it was all just a big swindle. There was absolutely nothing to do, and not even anything to look at in this glorious Academy of theirs.
I was rescued from the slowly but surely rising tide of apathy by the appearance of Romius out of thin air. No, of course, he didn’t actually appear out of the air, he appeared out of a teleport … but this was only my first day in the Academy, and I wasn’t used to these little magical tricks yet … Anyway, I must have jumped back about twenty feet in surprise.
“Aren’t you pleased to see your uncle?” Romius asked, looking at me thoughtfully. “How’s your first day in the Academy?”
“Strange,” I admitted quite honestly. “I imagined it would all be rather …”
“Different?” Romius prompted.
“That’s it, different. Where’s all your famous magic? I thought Craftsmen flew down the corridors, and trays of food just appeared on the tables and there were duels over every little thing …”
The Craftsman waved his hand wearily: “You’ll see plenty of all that, and there’ll be so many duels, you’ll get tired of watching them. Let’s go to my study, I need to have a serious talk with you.”
Oh yeah, another serious talk … the last time I found out that with a little bit of luck I could become the Emperor. What would I find out this time?
Actually, this time it was much worse. Waiting for us in Romius’s study was a vampire.
The Magical Order was housed in a low, square building. Unlike the tower of the Academy, which proudly dominated the entire city of Lita, it did not differ in any way from the other grey buildings in the dominant “square” style of Tabernacle. It was not that the Tabernaclians wished to be different from the Empire of the Elirs in all things, including architectural style. Nothing of the sort. It was the Elirs who were always trying to be different. In Tabernacle they preferred to build the levels of their buildings not upwards, but downwards. That is, even the most unattractive little house might easily have as many as ten underground stories. So what, then, of the Magical Order? Well, at the time of our story it had about thirty underground levels, and the work had only just begun.
The Council of Inquisitors had gathered on the very lowest level. Not because this precaution was necessary, but because it was prescribed by the decree on security measures for secret meetings. And the Inquisitors were always meticulous in following regulations to the letter.
“This meeting commences in accordance with protocol three point eight. The main subject is policy and military measures relating to the Empire of the Elirs.”
So began the address by the Senior Inquisitor.
“Until the Academy of the Craft appeared, Tabernacle did not take the Empire of the Elirs seriously or regard this small state as a serious adversary. Indeed, the Elirs had nothing really outstanding to boast about: their sailors and fishermen were poor and incompetent, their soldiers were mediocre, their workers were idle. The only forest on the territory of the Empire was securely guarded by druids, the mountains were guarded by trolls, dragons and other wildlife. The soil in the Empire of the Elirs was not fertile. In general, it seemed likely that our neighbour would soon suffer famine and choose to join the Caliphate, as all the other neighbouring states have done. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The Elirs took the unforeseen initiative of establishing an educational institution for magicians. They gave sanctuary to infidels, who rapidly assumed power in the Empire and started inculcating their own social regime. Now all their cities are saturated with magic, the people have become a herd of obedient cattle, and the so-cal
led Craftsmen control everything.”
“Permission to speak,” said a tall, thin Inquisitor, rising from his seat.
“Of course, of course,” the Senior Inquisitor agreed hastily, “Representatives of the Chasteners have the right to speak at any time.”
The Chasteners was the group of Inquisitors responsible for hunting down infidels. An elite operational division, they were trained to fight Craftsmen and other “non-humans”.
“Indeed,” the Chastener began suavely. His tall figure towered a full head above everyone else present. “If not for the protection of the Craftsmen, we would long ago have annexed the Empire of the Elirs as one of our provinces. Therefore, the only problem we face is the Academy of the Craft, located in the capital of the Empire. We long ago developed a plan that will allow us to strike right to the heart of this problem, and today I am proud to announce ...” he paused briefly “…that the operation to destroy the Academy has begun.”