Faculty of Fire

by Alex Kosh

  There was a jingling sound.

  That was one of the shields breaking ... or both of them?

  “Just a moment,” Shins whispered.

  A duelling dome appeared over our heads.

  “That’s a bit better,” Shins said. “They can’t break through that shield so easily ...”

  A trickle of blood appeared in the corner of the Craftsman’s mouth.

  Things were looking bad. Shins had strained himself too much ... or maybe his injuries were just too serious.

  “We have to do something,” Alice said firmly. “We can’t just sit here.”

  “Sure we can,” Chas disagreed. “How are you planning to get out of the duelling dome?”

  That was right, a duelling dome wasn’t a pitiful little shield ... it was a complex pattern that only Craftsmen could produce.

  I glanced out from behind the stones again, more confidently this time. I was seriously worried about one thing: What had happened to Kelnmiir?

  The vampire wasn’t in the square. At least, I couldn’t see him. The only ones standing up were eight pupils in yellow livery and five battered trolls. The stone remains of trolls were scattered across the square, and among them I could make out two spots of colour. Yellow and blue – a pupil and a senior pupil ... Caiten. Could they really be dead? Or had they just been knocked out?

  The other eight pupils were standing in a semi-circle round our dome and blasting it monotonously with all the spells they could think of. It was a good thing Caiten was unconscious (I hoped very much that he was alive) – the pupils couldn’t destroy the dome, but as a former Craftsman, Caiten certainly could have...

  “What’s happening out there?” Shins asked in a quiet voice.

  “We’re not in any danger yet,” I replied. “If the dome holds ...”

  “The dome will hold,” Shins said adamantly. “You know, you three ...”

  The three of us moved closer to him.

  “You’re my best pupils. I think you’ll make good Craftsmen.” He looked at me and laughed: “Even you, Zach.”

  There! Even at a moment like this he found a way to taunt me!

  “Don’t talk like that,” Alice sobbed.

  Shins slowly closed his eyes. At first I was afraid he was dead ... but he was still breathing, so he must have passed out.

  The flashes of spells smashing against the dome suddenly stopped.

  “What are they up to?” Chas asked in surprise, and glanced out from behind the heap of stones. “Hooray! The cavalry have arrived!”

  Scene 10

  Alice and I jumped up to get a look at the Craftsmen dealing with the hypnotised pupils, but we were too late. It must have been over very quickly. All eight pupils were lying motionless. I hoped the Craftsmen had been careful not to hurt them at all ... and I hoped they were alive! Neville and Naive were there with the others ... they just had to be alive!

  The Craftsmen included my uncle and my new acquaintance Revel. Well, those two couldn’t have blundered ...

  We waved to them through the duelling dome.

  “Over here, quick!”

  The Craftsmen ran over to us with untypical haste, and when they saw Shins pinned to the ground behind the dome, they shut down the DED in an instant.

  “He’s alive,” said Romius, but I wasn’t sure if he was telling us or asking.

  “He is,” Alice rapidly assured him. “But he needs help urgently ...”

  “Don’t even think of lifting the boulder,” Craftsman Revel warned us, as if we really could have done so. “They’ll bring the druids in a moment, and they’ll do everything necessary.”

  “And now you, young people, tell us briefly what happened.”

  Chas and Alice both looked at me. Clear enough. It was up to me again.

  I told him as briefly as I could what had happened to me after I was captured.

  “Well, well,” said Revel, clicking his tongue. “How very amusing ...”

  Amusing? He thought this was amusing?

  We left our refuge in order to not to get in the druids’ way. Standing in the middle of the square, we looked around, feeling rather dazed. It was a scene of real devastation. The first thing that attracted our attention was the huge hole in the wall of the Academy. Romius told us that the beam of energy had pierced right through the tower! And we could have been in the way of that beam ... may a dragon take all this magic!

  “But where’s Kelnmiir?” I asked. “I can’t spot his yellow livery anywhere.”

  “Oh him?” Romius drawled slowly. “The last time I saw him, he and a troll were helping us to escape from the Main Hall. If not for him, we probably wouldn’t have got out until dawn. Even though you destroyed the field, not much energy had found its way into the Academy yet.”

  Would you believe it? And there was I thinking he hadn’t survived. But it turned out that he was the one who had saved us ... that vampire was some operator, he’d been everywhere. And he’d taken Dogron with him ... that was logical. Without a troll the teleports wouldn’t have worked.

  “Way to go, vampire,” Chas said admiringly. “Now I see why they live so long. With that kind of power, anyone could live a couple of thousand years!”

  “It was a good thing you decided to give him some blood after all. Without it he wouldn’t have been able to give us so much help ...”

  “Blood?” There was puzzlement clearly written on Romius’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said cheerlessly.

  So Kelnmiir had lied. I wondered where he got the blood from?

  “And what’s going to happen to them now?” asked Alice, nodding at the pupils who had been hypnotised, lying in the yard.

  “Yes, what’s going to happen to them?” Chas put in. “Some of them are our friends ...”

  “Don’t worry,” Craftsman Revel reassured us. “They’re all alive, and nothing’s going to happen to them. The traitor is most likely one of them ...”

  “Which of them is the Master?” Chas asked. “I’d like to look into that bastard’s eyes ...”

  “I think a lot of people would like to do that,” Romius laughed.

  “And how will you find out which of them is the traitor?” I asked.

  “Hypnosis,” Revel said with a shrug. “We’ll give every one of them a thorough checking ... By the way ...” – he looked at me – “... I’m sorry, of course, but you will be checked too.”

  I sighed.

  “You mean you really think he’s a traitor after everything that’s happened?” Alice asked in astonishment.

  “No,” Romius replied. “And I didn’t think he was a traitor before. But we need to get this hypnosis business sorted out as soon as possible.”

  “I agree,” I said, nodding. “That’ll make me feel a whole lot better too.”

  Even though we felt deadly tired, we decided to hang about in the square for a bit longer and watch what they did with the Vickers brothers and Caiten. We were really worried about what would happen to them ...

  “You should go into the building,” said Craftsman Revel, trying to get rid of us. “Make yourself comfortable in one of the studies, rest ...”

  But we stood our ground. Until we were sure that the Vickers brothers were all right, we weren’t going anywhere.

  Speaking for myself, apart from concern for our friends, I had a hunch that made me want to stay in the square ... some time earlier, I’d had this interesting idea about how to identify the traitor. Logically speaking, he should be the only one of the ten who wasn’t hypnotised. Maybe the Craftsmen couldn’t tell that right now and the spy would be discovered during the check ... but I wanted to be the one to expose him. It would be my little revenge.

  All ten of them were brought round. I didn’t know what the Craftsmen had done to them, but they behaved very calmly – they didn’t attack anyone and they didn’t try to run away.

  “They’re tied up,” Romius explained. “You just can’t see it.”

/>   “And where will they take them now?” Chas asked.

  “We have a special place,” Romius replied. “With energy insulation and strong iron doors.”

  The description reminded me of an ordinary prison.

  “How long will they be there?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “And what’s going to happen to Shins ... Shinesimus?” asked Alice. “Can they cure him?”

  “No doubt about it,” Romius reassured her. “The druids will put him back on his feet in no time, and it wouldn’t do you any harm to go and see them too,” he said, casting an eloquent glance at her lips. “Rest now, and then you must definitely go to the treatment station.”

  Romius said goodbye to us and told one of the Craftsmen to show us to one of the studys, so we could get a rest and also ... so we wouldn’t get under their feet.

  We walked past just a couple of yards away from the pupils, who were standing absolutely still. Their eyes were glassy, their gazes were completely blank ... Maybe my idea wouldn’t work, but there was nothing to stop me trying, was there?

  When we had passed the entire row, I stopped and swung round.

  “Oh, by the way, Dkharm!”

  Maybe I imagined it, but I thought Steel started slightly. Only slightly ...

  “What’s going on?” Chas and Alice asked in surprise.

  “Ah, it’s nothing,” I said airily. “I thought I saw something ...”

  We entered the Academy through the breach in the doors and one of the Craftsmen showed us to a study and then brought us supper. Actually, when I thought about it, for the last two weeks, all our meals had been supper ...

  We chatted for a little while longer and settled down to sleep where we could – Chas and I in armchairs, Alice on the couch.

  I was woken a few hours later. Alice and Chas were still sleeping, but I thought I saw a pair of red eyes glint in the darkness.

  Revel himself had come for me.

  “Ready?” he asked instead of saying hello.

  I yawned.

  “For the check?”

  “It’s not a check,” Revel reassured me. “Whatever we think about the others, it would be a mean, lowdown trick not to trust you after what has happened. Do you think we’re such rotten swine?”

  I was rather startled by that.

  “No, I don’t,” I hastily reassured him.

  “Then don’t asked foolish questions.”

  We reached the teleports.

  “Have the teleports already been repaired?” I asked in surprise. “So quickly?”

  “Not all of them,” Revel admitted. “Only the ones leading to the accommodation floors and the Craftsmens’ floor. By the way, someone, rummaged through them pretty thoroughly ...”

  And I knew who it was. Everywhere I’d been during that day had been left in ruins or right royal disorder.

  “Trolls, probably,” I suggested.

  “Of course, who else?” Revel laughed.

  Something told me he knew perfectly well exactly who was responsible for all the destruction.

  We transited to the seventh floor, where Romius and Kelnmiir met us.

  “Good morning, Zach,” said the vampire, breaking into a smile.

  “Good morning,” I muttered

  I had certain suspicions concerning this vampire. It seemed to me that he had been lying to me from the very beginning ...

  “Well now, the time has come to learn your secret,” Romius told me.

  “I don’t have any secrets,” I replied sullenly. “What’s happened to Shinesimus? Is he all right?”

  “What could possibly happen to him?” Revel said with a casual wave of his hand. “I can say hello to him for you. I’m just going to visit his ward.”

  “Yes, you must,” I responded. “And for Chas and Alice too.”

  Master Revel left us, and we moved on down the corridor at a leisurely pace.

  “And how are Caiten and all the others doing?” I asked.

  “We’re working on them,” Romius said with a shrug. “No results so far.”

  “No results?” I exclaimed, aghast. “You mean they’re going to stay like that?”

  “No,” Romius said in a tired voice. “They’ll remove the effects of hypnosis. But we can’t identify the spy yet ...

  “You know,” I said pointedly, “I have a few suspicions ...”

  “Suspicions?” Romius asked. “All right, let’s hear them ...”

  “I noticed a number of odd things, but these are only my inferences,” I said, making my excuses in advance. “Anyway ... I’ll tell you everything, and you make up your own mind. When the reservoir was blown up, we were on our own floor, and after the explosion we ran to the teleports, where we came across a troll. I told you about that already. Well, when we asked Steel later where the troll had caught him, he said he said he’d been to the restroom on his own floor ... that is, on our floor, because we all live on the same floor. So we ought to have run into each other, but we didn’t.”

  “Pretty dubious,” the vampire mused.

  “I agree,” I said with a nod. “But that’s still not all. Later, when we decided to go to the History Museum, Steel told us he’d never been there before. But that’s not true. Neville saw him in the Museum ...”

  “Now, that’s a bit more serious,” Romius admitted. “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to conceal my feeling of triumph. “Today, as I walked past him in the square, I casually called out a name that I’d heard the trolls use. I thought that it must be the traitor’s name ... because it’s definitely Tabernaclian. The trolls’ names sound different ...”

  “What is the name?” Kelnmiir asked curiously.

  “Dkharm.”

  Romius and Kelnmiir looked at each other.

  “Yes, that’s definitely a Tabernaclian name. But all ten of them were hypnotised. Even if that is his real name ... He was probably using a psychomatrix ...”

  “Using what?” I asked, startled.

  “Let me explain. To make it harder to identify a spy if he is caught, they use a method called a psychomatrix. The spy gives a mental command, and a different personality is imposed on top of his own. It’s like a special kind of self-hypnosis ... So he couldn’t possibly have responded to his own name.”

  Kelnmiir protested sharply: “Why couldn’t he? Over his lifetime a man develops a reflex response to his own name. And by no means all phychomatrices are capable of suppressing it. I doubt that the spy had time to prepare a really good-quality psychomatrix ...”

  “Stop. You mean to say that if Steel is the spy, his personality is no more than a well-made psychomatrix?”

  “Clever boy,” Kelnmiir said with a nod. “But which one is the psychomatrix, Steel or Dkharm ... that’s something we don’t know yet. So did Steel react to the Tabernaclian name or not?”

  “I thought he did.”

  “You thought?” the vampire asked. “All right, I’ll try to get to the bottom of this. When you know what you’re looking for and where to find it, it simplifies the process of searching considerably. But we’ll get to that later, right now let’s get to work on you.”

  They took me to a rather strange room. It was small, with soft walls and a solitary bed standing in the middle.

  “Lie down,” Romius told me and walked out.

  I obediently lay down on the bed.

  “Kelnmiir,” I said to the vampire. “I have a question for you ...”

  “What is it?”

  “Where did you get the blood from? The Craftsmen didn’t give it to you, I asked them.”

  The vampire burst into laughter.

  “Do you think I could hold out for two and half months in the Academy without blood?”

  ““What ...” it was a good thing I was already lying on the bed, or I might have fallen over. “You drank blood from one of the pupils?”

  “No,” the vampire said briskly. “Any other theories?”

  “Just don�
�t try to tell me that you brought in supplies of blood ...”

  “You said it.”

  “But that means ... you always had blood with you! And you could have handled those trolls who grabbed Caiten and the Vickers brothers ...”

  Kelnmiir stuck a strange-looking gold bracelet on my wrist,