by Alex Kosh
“Because your room’s right at the end of the corridor!” Alice replied and looked at me. “Zach, you prepare your spell on the way. There’s no way we can get out of here without it.”
She was right.
We ran past the teleports again and turned into the corridor where Naive lived.
“Now you’ve really made me angry!” a furious voice rumbled behind us.
After that announcement our speed almost doubled, and we reached Naive’s room in seconds flat.
“Barricade?” Naive asked briskly.
“Useless,” responded Alice, who in some subtle way had now become our leader. “We have to sit here and keep absolutely quiet while we wait for Zach to weave his spell ...”
“Yeah, and then wait for the plant to grow,” Chas reminded her helpfully.
I wasn’t paying any attention to their conversation. All my thoughts were focused on weaving the spell. The important thing was for no one to distract me ...
“Zach, get a move on, will you,” said Chas, giving me a friendly slap on the shoulder.
I opened my mouth to say what I thought of him, but just at that moment we heard a terrible racket at the other end of the corridor.
“I’m coming to look for you!” the troll roared
Boom!
“That’s a door,” Neville theorised.
Boom!
“And another.”
I couldn’t help myself, I swore out loud ... and wove the final pattern of the spell. A solitary shoot suddenly appeared on the windowsill and rapidly increased in size.
Boom!
How many doors are there on this corridor?” Neville asked nervously.
Boom!
“About twenty,” Chas estimated.
Boom!
“That’s good,” Naive said joyfully, then he thought for a moment and added. “Twenty’s better than ten ... although fifty would be better than twenty, and it would be even better if ...”
“Shut up!” Neville and Chas hissed at him in chorus. “Have you forgotten why we came to your room in such a hurry? Go and eat something while you have a chance, or you might not get another one ... in this life.”
Boom!
“But what did I…but I ... I’m not hungry anymore!”
Boom!
The sound of a door being broken down merged with the sound of Alice’s polite cuff to the back of Naive’s head.
The shoot had already grown to about five feet long.
“Well, would you believe it, it’s growing,” Chas remarked.
Boom!
“Only very slowly,” said Naive, casting a wary glance at the vampiress.
Neville wasted no time and fetched more water. Maybe the trick would work a second time.
Boom!
The “weed” was already partly hidden from view outside the window.
“There now, another five minutes and we can climb it,” I said, trying to reassure my friends.
Boom!
“But do we have five minutes?” Naive asked anxiously.
Boom!
“No,” Alice replied honestly.
Boom!
“That troll’s awfully close,” Neville remarked. “Are there definitely twenty doors?”
Boom!
“Definitely,” Chas answered. “Only bear in mind that Naive’s room isn’t right at the end of the corridor. If I’m not mistaken, there are another three ...”
Boom!
“Very close,” Neville said, in case we hadn’t realised. “That thing hasn’t grown long enough yet, we won’t all have time to climb it.”
Boom!
Everyone gazed at the creeper. Mmmm ... it was still a bit too short.
“We’ve got to distract him,” Neville said very quietly. “All right, lads ... if anything happens to me, take care of my brother.”
Boom! Right beside us! The next door!
Neville opened the door of our room and skipped out into the corridor with his iron bucket of water ... to meet the troll.
“Surprise, surprise!” he yelled and poured the water under the stone-brained creature’s feet. After that the ice spell should have followed ... but somehow Neville couldn’t get it to work ...
“I haven’t forgotten you,” the troll rumbled. “Now I’ll teach you not to knock me over, you little pest!”
“We have to help him!” Naive exclaimed, jerking towards the door.
“Stay there,” said Chas, grabbing him by the shoulder. “We couldn’t handle a troll, even if there were ten of us.”
“Nothing will happen to Neville,” said Alice, backing up Chas. “The troll said he wants us alive. We’ll retreat now, and then we’ll rescue your brother later.”
“Oh no!” said Naive, shrugging off Chas’s hand. “I’ll show him ...”
To judge from his posture, he was about to fling his royal fireball at the troll.
“Look out, Neville,” Naive shouted and ... nothing happened.
The magic failed to work again.
“It didn’t work,” Naive complained, and just at that moment Neville was caught by the troll’s fist. I hardly need to say that the blow from that hand of stone swept him off his feet, and not even all his skill in the Art could save him.
“Onto the creeper, quick,” Alice exclaimed just as the troll turned his attention to us.
“I won’t leave him!” Naive said stubbornly.
To be quite honest, I could understand him .... but nonetheless, I realised that I had no right to stay. No matter what, someone had to let people know what had happened here.
Chas was already clambering up the “weed” to the next floor. Alice climbed out after him.
“Naive?” I asked, looking into his eyes.
He shook his head.
“We’ll be waiting for you to come back,” he said in farewell.
And I clambered onto the “weed”, feeling like an absolute creep. Only a creep could abandon his friends in trouble like this ...
No. I couldn’t do it.
“Good luck!” I shouted to Alice and Chas, and jumped back down into the room.
Naive was just about to close the curtains over the creeper. I rushed to help him, but we were too late anyway.
“What’s all this?” the troll thundered, glancing into the room and seeing only two people instead of the four who ought to be there. “Where are the other two?”
“They jumped out the window,” I replied cheerfully as I neatly covered the window with the curtains.
“Right, out of the way, small fry,” the troll roared, tossing Naive and me aside with a single gentle push, as if we were as light as feathers.
“What kind of wonder is this?” he exclaimed when he saw my “weed”. “Aha. They climbed out along this thing ...”
“Aha,” I confirmed. “And that thing won’t hold you.”
“Why would I even want it to?” the troll asked in surprise. “Three of you are enough for me. And they’ll catch the rest on the next floor.”
I must confess that I felt relieved. I was afraid he might try to pull the “weed” off or, even worse, climb out after Alice and Chas. But apparently he wasn’t going to do anything of the sort, because he believed they’d be caught on the next floor anyway. So there were trolls wandering around on the other floors too? Now that was news! A full-scale invasion from the sound of it.
“And you, small fry, have really got my goat now,” the troll remarked, grabbing Naive by the scruff of the neck and trying to fling him out through the open door.
I decided to try the civilised route of negotiation.
“I beg your pardon, I don’t know the proper way to address you, but we’ll go with you quietly, there’s absolutely no need ...”
The troll was clearly not as civilised as I might have thought. Otherwise he wouldn’t have thumped me on the ear ...
A young man dressed in bright-coloured hand-me-downs declared in swashbuckling fashion:
“If you know everything you want ...
”
“ ... either you don’t know very much ...” a beautiful girl continued.
“Or you don’t want very much,” the young man concluded.
I came round in a medium-sized hall with one curved wall (it was a perfectly standard hall, the Academy had hundreds like it). No windows, walls that were, naturally, completely smooth, with a blue sheen. It reminded me of the Meditation Hall where we had spent so much time, except for one thing – standing in the middle of this hall was a strange object made up of a huge number of prisms connected together at all sorts of tricky angles. The sum total of this combination looked rather like a human figure. Some kind of monument that they’d stuck up to someone, maybe?
“At last someone’s come round,” a strange rumbling voice muttered.
I’d heard that voice before somewhere.
“Hello,” I said uncertainly, and looked around to see who it was.
It turned out I really wasn’t alone in the hall. But the other four people lying on the floor beside me (three in yellow livery and one in blue) were all unconscious. “I beg your pardon, but who are you?” I enquired, looking closely at everyone on the floor, in case one of them moved his lips.
“I’m the automag,” the voice replied.
Ah, the automag! Yes, I’d heard that before. Wasn’t that the entity that Caiten created using his own technology, which nobody really understood apart from him? It was the automag’s voice we’d heard before the first test at the enrolment, and then afterwards in the Golden Half-Moon. The first-year students weren’t really supposed to know about this, but our tutor often used to tell us about his inventions during lectures ... and on a couple of occasions he had mentioned his pride and joy – the automag. Although I hadn’t really understood much of his explanations ...
“My name’s Zachary,” I said, introducing myself.
“I know,” the automag replied.
“Then maybe you know what’s happening in the Academy?” I asked eagerly, getting up rather unsteadily off the floor.
I was still dizzy and my head was aching. The troll had really clouted me hard.
“Yes, I do,” the automag replied. There has been an attack on the Academy and most of the students and Craftsmen are barricaded in the Main Hall.”
Then there was silence.
I walked over to one of the people on the floor.
Neville. He was breathing. So he was all right.
“Who has attacked?” I asked.
“Trolls ... mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Well ... there’s someone who let them in. It was almost certainly a man who did it.”
That was logical. It was probably impossible to take the Academy by surprise without help from a traitor.
I walked over to the man in blue livery. Caiten? So they’d caught him too? I wonder how they’d managed that.
“It wasn’t difficult,” the automag replied. “When magic doesn’t work, most of the Craftsmen are absolutely helpless.”
“I see,” I muttered.
Stop! I hadn’t asked my question out loud, so how could he have answered it?
“I tuned myself to the wavelength of your thoughts,” the automag answered. “I hope that our conversation will move along more quickly now.”
He hopes ...
I hastily walked round the other two lying on the floor-- Naive and Steel. Both were breathing regularly, so they were alive. So that meant they hadn’t caught Chas and Alice yet? I hoped they were all right ...
“And why are you in such a great hurry?” I asked absentmindedly.
“In a few minutes my energy will run out and I’ll switch off.”
“What? I thought the Academy had endless amounts of energy ... after all, they work spells here all the time ...”
“Nonsense,” the automag interrupted. “Energy has to come from somewhere ...”
And it has to go somewhere. I knew that.
“Well ... that’s clear enough, they get it from the rays of the sun, from the earth, from the air ...”
“Precisely,” the automag agreed. “But the Academy uses an immense amount of energy every day, more than the Emperor ever dreamed of.”
““And where does it come from?” I asked.
“Every ‘daisy’ in the city sends a tenth of the energy it gathers during the day along a special energy line to the Academy’s reservoir.”
Oho! That was some admission. So the Academy lived at the city’s expense?
“You could put it that way, yes.”
He was reading my thoughts again.
“And why has the energy stopped coming in now? That’s why you’re running out of energy, isn’t it?”
“It’s not just me that’s running out of energy, but the whole Academy,” the automag replied, and I could hear a note of resentment in his voice. “One of the Higher Craftsmen took advantage of the fact that almost all the Craftsmen and pupils were in the Main Hall and realigned the teleports with the external force field dividing us off from the outside world. Now the teleports can only be used by trolls, and the external defences won’t let anyone out. And worst of all – this someone has drained our Energy Reservoir!”
A traitor? In the Academy?
“But what about the Higher Craftsmen? Haven’t they done anything?”
“Yes,” said the automag.” The first wave of invaders that broke into the Main Hall was wiped out in an instant.”
“And then?”
“Then the Craftsmen used up all the energy that they could obtain.”
“And there was nowhere for any new energy to come from ...” I half-asked, half-stated.
“Precisely so,” the automag agreed. “And without energy the mighty Craftsmen were left as helpless ...”
“As little children,” I concluded for him.
It was strange, at first I’d thought this automag was some kind of stupid elemental who could only think with difficulty. But now his speech had become a lot more human, and he had begun to express his thoughts much more clearly.
“In general, I’m forbidden to talk freely with people, but I think the situation we have now is special,” said the automag, replying to my thoughts. “I’ve got almost no time left. Listen carefully, the only chance you have is to make your way to the History Museum.”
“The History Museum,” I repeated passively. “There is one here, but where exactly? I’ve never been there. Why do we want to go there?”
“Just tell father that you should go to the Museum.”
“Whose father?” I asked, puzzled.
“My father,” the automag growled.
I didn’t think he could get angry.
“You have a father?” I asked, astounded.
“Tell Caiten,” the automag said in a surprisingly quiet voice. “Caiten ... Caiten ... Cai ...”
“Automag!”
Silence.
“Switched off,” I declared. “Okay then, let’s wake up our army...”
I decided to wake up Neville first, as the most cool-headed.
“Neville,” I called to my friend, shaking him by the shoulder.
“Ah? What?” he muttered, struggling to open his eyes, then suddenly leapt to his feet and howled: “Where’s the troll?”
It was so unexpected that I was struck dumb for a moment. So much for being the most cool-headed.
“He’s not here,” I explained hurriedly. “I think he brought us here, and then went to collect the next batch.”
“May a dragon take him,” Neville swore, rubbing his back. “That stone blockhead really belted me hard ...”
“Right royally,” I agreed, automatically raising a hand to my own aching head. “We’re in an awful mess now ...”
“Come on then, tell me,” said Neville.
“No, not like that,” I said, talking a grip on myself. “First let’s bring the others round, and then I’ll tell you everything I’ve found out.”
Scene 2
“And before he switch
ed off, he just had time to say that we should go to the History Museum.”