by Alex Kosh
“Go take a hike,” Alice said good-naturedly.
I sighed in relief. Now Chas would launch into one of his squabbles and leave me alone for a while.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Chas said to me. “Come on, tell us the whole story. Spit it out. Confess, and we’ll understand, we might even forgive you. If we’re in a good mood, that is.”
“Okay, I did it, so what?” I exploded. “Are you envious?”
“Yep,” said Chas. “Now, a few more details, please.”
So I had to tell him how I’d gotten even with the joker who had ruined my hairstyle two months earlier. I must admit, I was proud of what I’d done, and I would have been quite happy to teach the same lesson to certain jokers from the faculty of water. I’d spent a whole week preparing for Operation Vengeance – the idea had come from one of my acquaintances in the faculty of earth and, strangely enough, the vampire who had dropped by to see me that evening.
The use of magic was strictly forbidden within the Academy building, and anywhere apart from in my own room, I would have been caught. But outside the building, just as I had hoped, it proved possible to work a moderate spell or two. I found out that when the Academy was isolated (that is, when time in the Academy moved at a different speed from in the outside world), the building was surrounded by a force field, which was virtually impossible to penetrate. But! This field was about twenty feet away from the walls. This was the space that my vampire flew in, and it could be used to get from one level to another. Which was just what I did.
I was helped by the fast growth spell that we put on a small vine, which I had also created. In half a night it reached up three whole stories, which meant that I could climb up into the joker’s room (he happened to live directly above me). While he was sound asleep and suspecting nothing, I – his uninvited guest – shaved off all his hair. When I got back to my room, I burned the vine, without leaving any ash, and calmly went back to bed. What an uproar there was in the morning!
The joker complained to everyone he could think of, including our teacher Shins. They even set up a special committee, but it couldn’t find any traces of magic in his room, which was hardly surprising – it’s kind of hard to find what doesn’t exist.
Of course, the joker guessed who had taken his revenge (judging from the unfriendly glances he cast my way every time we met), but he couldn’t prove anything. So now I walked around the Academy with a mysterious smile (at least, I hoped that’s what it was) on my face.
To be quite honest, the reason I did it wasn’t really because I wanted my revenge so badly – it was because of Alice. I remembered what she’d said about respecting those who knew how to avenge themselves.
“Well done.” Alice remarked when I finished my story. “But there is just one little thing ...”
“What’s that?” I asked warily.
“Do you honestly think that the Craftsmen are so stupid they couldn’t figure out how you got into the room?”
I hadn’t really thought about that. Maybe they hadn’t guessed. That sort of thing happens, doesn’t it?
“Your uncle covered up for you again.” Alice declared.
“How do you know that?” I asked with a frown.
“I heard,” the vampiress said with a shrug.
“Aha,” I said gleefully. “More eavesdropping. But tell me this ...” I paused for effect “... do you really think the Craftsmen are so stupid that they don’t notice you hanging about on their level all the time, eavesdropping?”
From the bemused look on the vampiress’s face, I knew I’d hit the bullseye. She hadn’t thought about that.
“And by the way,” Chas put in. “Who is it you’re spying for? Could it be your vampire relatives, perhaps? Maybe they’re planning an attack on the Academy?”
Chas and I roared with laughter. That was the most stupid idea imaginable – an attack on the Academy. Ha!
“We’re not interested in your Academy,” Alice growled. “We have enough problems of our own.”
“Then what do you do it for?” Chas scoffed, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“I don’t,” the vampiress said angrily. “I don’t eavesdrop, it’s all in your imagination.”
Chas and I exchanged glances and decided not to pursue this ticklish subject.
“Okay, it’s time for us to go serve our sentence,” Chas reminded me.
“That’s really appalling,” said Alice. “Even on the day of the competition they still make you work in the kitchen!”
“Ah, never mind,” I said. “You can get used to anything if you have to. We’ll do our shift and then come straight to the competition.”
We walked out of my room and set off towards the teleports. They really were very convenient, those teleports – no matter what principle it was they worked on. I could just imagine how hard it would to walk up and down the stairs from the fortieth floor to the seventieth and back again. And try doing that ten times a day. The idea made me shudder!
“Make sure you’re not late,” the vampiress advised us before she stepped on her teleport.
“I wouldn’t mind being late,” Chas said thoughtfully. “Only I’m afraid our unknown opponents would be only too delighted by my late arrival.”
“In a few hours we’ll know just who our unknown opponents are,” I reminded him.
“All the more reason to be on time,” he agreed.
That day the dining hall was more crowded than ever. They’d obviously decided to put all the different years together before the competition. In any case, as I walked into the hall, I ran into the couple I knew from the final year of our faculty.
“Hey there, lad. I know you,” the boy chuckled.
What was his name now? It had slipped my mind.
“Serge, we’re late,” said the girl, giving him a shove. And then she looked at me. “Ah, it’s you. Hi, Zach.”
Ah yes. He was called Serge. And his girl ... she was Anna, wasn’t she?
“Hi,” I said, shaking the hand that was held out to me.
Chas looked at my acquaintances, then at me ... then he just waved his hand at me and went on to the kitchen.
“How’s the studying going?”
“Good,” I muttered. “Excuse me, but it’s high time we were handing out the plates.”
“Oh, I see you’ve already managed to distinguish yourself, then,” said Anna.
I couldn’t help sighing.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Serge, putting one hand on my shoulder. “We’ve all done our time in the dining hall, it’s a kind of initiation.”
“Yeah, an initiation into the brotherhood of waiters,” I agreed.
“Okay, see you again, I hope,” said Anna. “We’ve got to go, we have to prepare for the competition.”
“Then we’ll see other there,” I said happily. “We’re representing our faculty in the team duels.”
“Now that’s a real achievement,” Serge remarked. “I wish you luck.”
“See you there,” I said with a nod.
“We’ll be rooting for you,” Anna told me.
When I reached the kitchen, Chas had already put on an apron and grabbed a tray.
“Don’t just stand there! Get to work!”
The entire Academy had gathered in the Main Hall or, at least, it seemed like that to me. Of course, I could have been mistaken, it was hard for me to judge without even an approximate idea of how many people there were in the Academy just at that moment (or at any other).
I remembered that the Middle Hall of Power was full when our entire year gathered there after we were duped by those two jokers, but the Main Hall was ten times as big! Even so, there was hardly room enough to catch a breath. It was obvious just how important this competition was – by my reckoning there were almost as many Craftsmen in the hall as pupils.
“Look, there are our friends,” said Chas, pointing out the three guys we knew from the faculty of water.
“I see them,” I said, n
odding. “Maybe they’re taking part in the team duels too?”
“That would be good,” Chas said dreamily, rolling up his eyes. “Oh, we’ll give them a good roasting.”
“Or they might put our fire out,” I said, dampening his enthusiasm.
For once Chas decided not to answer me back. Evidently the tension before the duel was beginning to tell.
By the way, I thought we were lucky. In my opinion, team duels were less dangerous than the individual kind. When you’re in a team, you know your friend is there beside you, and you feel a lot more confident than when it’s just you and your opponent standing face to face. The fight itself might be more complicated, though, after all, you never know which of your five opponents is going to attack you at any particular moment. I was responsible for our defence, by the way. My invisible wall was still the most effective defensive spell in our faculty. Romius had told me in secret that my weaving was pretty much third-year level. Romius himself had repeated it with no problem and even improved it. But my friends couldn’t get even halfway through the weaving – they said the energy streams were too fine for them. I was the only one who could weave fine threads of energy like that. So the five of us were going to be defended by my wall and my snakes, which had now learned to “pop” not just fireballs, but also the simplest spells from other spheres, like the airy fist, the green thorn and the ice arrow.
Of course, the spearhead of our team’s attack was Naive, who worked in conjunction with his brother, while Alice and Chas, as the most agile and consistent members, were responsible for keeping our opponents occupied. Theoretically, the other schools should have chosen similar tactics, but that was something we were about to find out.
As usual, I was roused from my reverie by Chas who gave me a dig in the side with his elbow.
“Look, they’re going to tell us something important.”
I looked at the open space and spotted signs of movement.
A High Craftsmen I didn’t know walked out to the centre of the space and made an announcement: “Good day, worthy Craftsmen and you who will be Craftsmen in the future ...”
“Yeah,” Chas whispered in my year. “We know just how worthy they think we are! Somehow I haven’t noticed too many signs of the honourable sentiment of respect.”
“Shshh!” hissed one of the pupils sitting near us. He wasn’t from our faculty, if he had been, he’d have know it was best not to get into an argument with Chas.
“Why, is this old dodderer really worth listening to?” Chas asked him.
“... First there will be the individual duels between the best pupils of each faculty ...”
“Well, well, he’s really smart, isn’t he?”
“... Then there will be the team duels between the best groups of five ...”
“Maybe we ought to go down and say something ourselves?”
“... I hereby declare ...”
“Right, you asked for it.”
“ ... the competition open!”
“Ooh, now I’m frightened!”
“And first of all I invite onto the field the representatives of the spheres of earth and water for the individual duel.”
The lad that Chas had been arguing with instantly forgot all about their quarrel and hurried off towards the open space.
“He’s chicken,” Chas declared rather uncertainly.
“In your dreams,” I said, watching the lad make his way through the crowd and out onto the field. “I think you’ve just been quarrelling with the best pupil from the faculty of water or earth. ...”
The DED appeared, and the duel began.
“Water,” Chas told me as soon as the pupils exchanged their first spells
“Has it already started? Did we miss anything interesting?” asked the Vickers brothers, who had just arrived.
“Nothing special,” I replied, and couldn’t resist adding: “Apart from Chas challenging the best pupil in the faculty of water to a duel. And by the way, the lad’s just won his bout pretty smartly.”
“But we’re still forbidden to fight duels with the other faculties,” Neville remarked.
“In two weeks and one day it will be allowed,” I reminded him. “And Chas’s first duel will be with that likeable young man.”
Chas turned slightly pale.
Serve him right, Next time he’ll think before he shot his mouth off.
“Have you seen Alice anywhere?” I asked. “We parted at the teleports this morning, and I didn’t notice her in the dining hall.”
“We haven’t seen her either,” the Vickers brothers said, surprised. “We thought she was with you, as usual.”
“I don’t like this,” Chas said anxiously. “What if she doesn’t show until the competition’s over?”
“Someone should go and look for her,” said Neville.
All three of them looked at me.
“What are you looking at me for?” I asked indignantly, but my friends’ gaze soon broke my resistance. “All right, I’m going.”
“Why did you hesitate?” said Chas, nodding as I left. “And make it quick, please.”
Easily said – make it quick. If Alice wasn’t in her room, I’d have to search the whole Academy for her. And that could take days.
Alice, Alice ... What a stupid mistake I made the first time I walked I her to the teleports ... In the name of a dragon, why, oh why did I start taking about those questions that Caiten was so interested in? I felt as if she’d taken a step towards me, and I’d just stuck out a foot and tripped her up ... no wonder she was more distrustful than ever now. But there was no point in wallowing in my misery. The important thing now was to find her before the duel began.
The corridors of the Academy were empty. No pupils scurrying to and fro, no Craftsmen striding along pompously ... no one at all. As if I was right, and the entire Academy really had gathered in the Main Hall. But in that case, I couldn’t help being surprised at how few people there were in the Academy, if they all fitted into one – admittedly, rather big – hall.
Just as I feared, Alice wasn’t in her room on the girls’ floor. I could only hope that she’d already arrived at the competition while I was on my way to her place. But why hadn’t she turned up, anyway? What could possibly have happened to stop her?
Anyway, just to be on the safe side, I decided to take a stroll round the Craftmens’ level. I know, it was a very long shot, but I had to check it out.
The moment I emerged from the teleport, I knew it had been a good idea to come here. The entire level was empty, apart from Alice, who was lying on the floor near the teleports.
I dashed across to her, wondering on the way if it was possible to take a vampire’s pulse. I was pretty sure it was, but what would the result mean?
There was a pulse, and Alice had no visible injuries, which in theory meant that everything should be all right.
Suddenly I sensed a movement behind me. The old skills of the Art came back to me in a flash, and I sprang off to one side. Just in time. A knife flashed through the point in space where my neck had been a moment ago.
The person dressed in the yellow livery of a pupil dived into a teleport before I could get up off the floor. I would have gone after him, but I couldn’t risk leaving Alice lying on the floor.
I tried to calm the furious pounding of my heart.
Well now, there was something scary going down in the Academy. To put it mildly ...
I just hoped that Alice was all right.
I decided to try patting her gently on the cheeks, that might bring her round.
Pat, pat.
“Oh!”
She had come round. That was good, of course. But why did she have to hit me like that? Why knock me down?
“What are you doing here?” asked Alice, springing to her feet in a flash.
“You’re asking me? What are you doing here lying on the floor?” I asked indignantly. “The competition’s started already, and we haven’t got a full team.”
Alice w
as obviously only just beginning to realise that she was in a corridor, and not in her room.
“How did I get here?” she asked herself, confused. “Well, I remember how I got here, through the teleport. But why was I lying on the floor? I remember I was on my way ...” – she hesitated – “... to do something, and the next moment I was woken up by someone slapping me across the cheeks.”