by Kailin Gow
Priscilla moved forward, waving at her father and brother.
“Hello Daddy, hello Rob.”
Alana’s greeting was more formal. She swept into a full curtsey, while Spencer bowed beside her.
“Ah,” King Wilford said. “At last, my daughter deigns to arrive. And with her advisor. Tell me, advisor, why did you not advise my daughter to be on time?”
Alana looked up. “Forgive me, your majesty.”
Wirt rankled at that. After all, it wasn’t Alana’s fault. Though he guessed that blaming Priscilla wouldn’t go down well with the king. At least Priscilla had the grace to step in.
“Sorry, Daddy. I forgot to tell her.”
“Hmm… I guess that is acceptable then. You, boy, why aren’t you bowing?” Wirt looked around himself, but no, the king was definitely speaking to him.
“Should I be?” he asked.
Ender Paine whispered something to King Wilford as the monarch’s expression reddened in anger.
“Him? Even so, Ender…” Another hurried bout of whispering. “Oh, very well. Just remember to bow in future, boy, or I’ll have your knees lopped off.”
Wirt lowered his head in a perfunctory nod. It didn’t seem like a good idea to try King Wilford’s patience. Finally, it seemed that the king was ready to make his announcement.
“Robert, Priscilla. I have heard that you both have a wish to learn magic. Is that true?”
“Oh, yes please Daddy!” Priscilla bubbled. But then, she would. She had already spent time trying to teach herself using books left to her by one of her aunts. Robert was less enthusiastic, but at a pointed look from his sister, he nodded.
“Yes, Father.”
“Very well,” King Wilford said. “Since Robert has given up on his Foolishness, and since you seem so keen on it, daughter, I have spoken with Ender Paine. Since it seems that you might have some small talent for magic, we have agreed that you will be permitted to attend one class each.”
Priscilla rushed forward, hugging her father. “Oh, thank you Daddy! And I know just the class I want to take!”
“Well, that’s for you to sort out with the school,” King Wilford said. “Perhaps you should discuss it with your advisor, too.”
Priscilla was so excited that she just nodded. Wirt wasn’t quite so thrilled about it. Priscilla was enough of a menace when she didn’t have much in the way of magic to back her up. Now, Wirt just hoped that Alana would be able to keep some sort of control of her, or they could very well wake up one morning to a school that was no more than a large crater. With any luck though, Alana would be able to talk Priscilla into doing something relatively harmless-
“I want to do transmutation,” Priscilla declared.
“Transmutation?” Ender Paine sounded thoughtful.
“Transmutation?” Alana’s tone was a lot less happy, and Wirt could guess why. Transmutation, the art of turning things into other things, provided plenty of scope for Priscilla to get herself into trouble. It was also easily Alana’s weakest subject, and one that Wirt guessed she would have been hoping to drop at the first opportunity. “Are you sure that’s such a great idea, Priscilla?”
“Of course it’s a great idea!” Priscilla exclaimed. “Getting to turn things into other things sounds like fun.”
“So you wouldn’t prefer to do glamours?” Alana suggested.
Priscilla’s brow wrinkled. “I thought there wasn’t a specialist glamour teacher anymore. Besides, you’re already good at glamours, so you can do those for me.”
“If I get to keep working with you,” Alana pointed out.
“Of course you will,” Priscilla said. “Besides, I want to do transmutation. That way, I can turn people into things if they annoy me.”
King Wilford looked curiously proud of that sentiment, and moved onto asking Robert what he wanted to do. Robert, it turned out, actually wanted to do some work with glamour, Wirt guessed on the basis that it made it easier to play tricks on people. Of course, there wasn’t a teacher for it, but now that royalty wanted to do the subject, Ender Paine was all too willing to agree to teach Robert the basics. Priscilla raised her hand.
“Could Alana go in Robert’s lessons? She’s good at glamour, but she doesn’t get to do it this year.”
“This is meant to be a private tutorial, your highness,” the headmaster said. “It is not a free for all.”
“But weren’t you saying that people should work on their talents?” Priscilla countered. Wirt had to admit, she was brave, standing up to the headmaster like that. Though it probably helped having her father there.
“How about it, Ender?” King Wilford said. “I won’t have my daughter’s advisor half trained.”
To Wirt’s surprise, the headmaster nodded. “Very well. Though I would have thought that your daughter’s peer advisor would have wanted to be in class with her.”
He said it very smoothly, but Wirt saw the look of pain that flashed over Alana’s face. Technically, the headmaster was right. Alana should probably be in the same class as Priscilla, if only to stop her from turning herself into a frog or something. Saying no would undoubtedly get her into trouble with King Wilford. Yet Ender Paine had to know as well as anyone that transmutation was Alana’s weakest subject. If she took it, she would be as good as condemning herself to falling outside the elite class. It was the kind of impossible situation the headmaster was probably secretly loving.
“I’ll keep an eye on Priscilla in transmutation,” Spencer said.
Ender Paine raised an eyebrow. “You will?”
“You will?” Alana asked, seeming as shocked as anybody.
Priscilla’s eyes narrowed. “Why does everybody think I need watching? I’m not stupid, you know.”
Alana put her hand on the other girl’s arm. “No one’s saying you are. It just wouldn’t be right, you being without an advisor around, would it?”
“Oh, like a protocol thing?”
Alana sighed. “Exactly, Priscilla.”
Ender Paine watched the exchange, and Wirt swore he saw the faintest flicker of a smile on the older man’s features. Maybe he just liked how Alana had manipulated the princess. Finally, he nodded.
“Very well,” he said, looking over at Alana and Robert, “the girl can join Prince Robert in my glamour tutorials. I will expect both of you to have read up on faerie masking spells before our first session.”
He gave King Wilford a perfunctory bow and vanished, leaving Priscilla to hug Alana, her brother, and anyone else who got in the way.
“I get to learn magic!”
Chapter 11
Spencer’s decision to help out Alana seemed to thaw relations between the two of them a little. They weren’t exactly as close as they had been before the summer, but they were at least prepared to talk. It made things a lot easier for Wirt, having both of his friends around and on good enough terms that he didn’t constantly feel like he was refereeing an argument.
Perhaps part of it was Alana’s nervousness over having to take a class with the headmaster. For all that she’d joked about it the previous day, it was likely that Ender Paine would have Alana and Robert focusing on aspects of glamours that even Ms. Preville wouldn’t have gone near. Wirt wasn’t entirely sure what sort of evil you could do with magic that focused on deceiving the senses, but he was sure that the headmaster would know every facet of it.
Then there was the reading Alana had to do for her class. She spent most of the next day or so weighed down under books that seemed to be written in half a dozen different languages, picking through them largely with the aid of Priscilla’s mirror, which claimed to be able to understand all tongues, and which the princess kindly lent to her. Though, from some of the translations the magic mirror offered up as Alana showed it pages, Wirt suspected that the thing was making the translations up as it went.
Finally though, it was time for Alana’s class. She went off to it with a look of trepidation, while Spencer went off with Pricilla to Ms. Genovia’s trans
mutation class. Wirt would have liked to go to that one too, but he had transportation with Ms. Lake, and had to spend the next hour or so jumping around to locations picked out seemingly at random by the teacher. Wirt was, even he had to admit, getting a lot better at it.
He was getting so good, in fact, that when the bell for the end of class came, he jumped straight to his next one, which happened to be one of Ms. Burns’ lessons on elemental manipulation. Spencer, Alana and the other second years arrived, and together, they started to learn about forming and manipulating rain clouds. Ms. Burns told them all about air pressure and moisture content, manipulating small breaths of air and making tiny temperature changes, so that one by one, they started to pull together tiny clouds over their desks, making the little things rain down into carefully positioned buckets.
Alana was sitting next to Wirt, concentrating hard as she pulled hers together scrap by wispy scrap.
“How was it with the headmaster?” Wirt whispered across to her.
Alana shot him a look. “I’m trying to concentrate, Wirt.”
“Sorry, I was just wondering-”
“It wasn’t so bad. Robert and I spent most of the lesson just disappearing. Now let me focus.”
Wirt knew enough to be quiet then, and Alana’s cloud let a few drops of rain fall into the bucket.
“Not bad,” Ms. Burns said, walking past. “With a little more practice you’ll do well, Alana.”
Roland, meanwhile, had succeeded in producing a small torrent of water from his cloud, though Wirt couldn’t help noticing that he had “accidentally” lost control of it, so that the thing wandered over to Spencer and rained down on him.
In fact everyone in the class seemed to be doing well with the clouds, so that the classroom was very soon thick with rain. Everyone, that was, except Wirt.
“I thought you were meant to be the one with special talents,” Roland called out.
Ms. Burns gave him a hard look. “I’ll thank you not to talk in class, Roland Black. Now Wirt, come on. I want to see a real effort from you.”
Wirt made the effort. He didn’t want to let Ms. Burns down, and he certainly didn’t want to be the only one in the class unable to do this. Not with Roland watching. Not with Alana watching. And Roland was right. Wirt was meant to be the one with a talent for this.
Wirt bent his will to the task, picturing everything Ms. Burns had explained, visualizing roiling clouds, and lashing rain, and thunder. He whispered the words to the spell, though the last two times Wirt had manipulated the elements, he hadn’t needed words. He focused all the effort he could.
Nothing happened. Someone, probably Roland, laughed.
And then Wirt heard the first rumble of thunder. They all heard it. It was impossible not to, when it was loud enough to roll through the tree, muffled only slightly by the thing’s outer bark. Ms. Burns smiled and waved a hand, doing her trick of reducing the outer wall to a curtain of water once more. She stepped through, and Wirt followed.
Clouds spun overhead in colors that ranged from inky black to purple. Lightning cut the sky in jagged arcs. And rain? Rain fell like a vertical river, so that Wirt was soaked just standing there. Just once, he thought, it would be nice to get through a lesson with Ms. Burns without getting drenched. The teacher, of course, seemed perfectly dry.
“I did all this?” Wirt asked.
Ms. Burns nodded. “An A for effort, I think. Though possibly an F for aim.”
She looked like she might say more, but then cocked her head to one side. Wirt didn’t like that. It reminded him too much of the way Ms. Lake had looked last year, shortly before announcing that the cup had disappeared.
“There’s an alarm, isn’t there?” Wirt guessed.
Ms. Burns nodded, and went back inside. “Wait for me here, everyone,” she said, and vanished. It was almost five minutes before she reappeared, and in that time, Wirt had the chance to think of every possible thing that might be going wrong. Given the nature of the school, that particular chain of thought covered everything from a fire to an invasion of tentacled monsters in the cafeteria.
By the time Ms. Burns finally reappeared, half the class was convinced that something terrible was happening, and the teacher’s expression didn’t do much to dispel that idea. She looked grave, glancing around the assembled second years before speaking.
“It seems that we have a problem,” Ms. Burns said. “One of our students has gone missing, and we believe she may have been attacked. As such, I am going to have to call a halt to this class while I and the other teachers conduct a search of the school and its surroundings. In the meantime, it is vital that you all treat this as a time of heightened security, and take appropriate precautions. Do not be alone. Do not go wandering off. Until we have located the student, we cannot know what kind of threat we are facing.”
Wirt asked the obvious question. “Who is the student, Ms. Burns?”
The teacher hesitated for a moment, looking at Alana with something approaching sympathy. “Priscilla,” she said. “It is Priscilla who has gone missing. I’m sorry. I cannot say more than that just now, and I have to get going. I have to look for her. If we’re lucky, she’s just managed to get herself lost somewhere.”
Ms. Burns vanished again. Almost as soon as she was gone, Wirt looked over to Alana. The girl looked distraught, her face creased with emotion as the shock of what had happened hit her. Wirt could see tears starting to roll down her cheeks.
He knew he ought to comfort Alana. To tell her that it would be all right. He knew how much effort Alana put into keeping Priscilla out of trouble, and this would hit her hard. Wirt started to step over to put an arm around Alana, and found himself colliding with Spencer, who had apparently had the same idea. They crashed into one another and fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs where it was hard to work out which leg belonged to whom. By the time they had worked it out enough to stand with looks of embarrassment, Roland was already holding Alana, making soothing noises.
“It’s not your fault,” the boy said. “There wasn’t anything you could do.”
“There was,” Alana insisted. “I could have stayed with her. You don’t know her, Roland. You don’t know what she’s like.”
Spencer started towards Alana. “Roland’s right, Alana. This isn’t your fault.”
Alana looked up, fixing Spencer with a glare that actually made the boy take a step back. “And where were you when Priscilla was getting abducted?”
“I-”
“You promised me that you would look after Priscilla while I had my class with the headmaster. You promised me, Spencer.”
“But I-”
“I should have known that what you say isn’t worth anything. It didn’t mean anything over the summer, and it doesn’t mean anything now. You can never understand what this means to me, Spencer, and you’ve gone and blown it. I should never have listened to you. This is my fault.”
Spencer started forward again. “Alana-”
Roland moved between them. “Don’t you think you’ve said enough?” the other boy demanded. “Come on, Alana, let’s get you out of here.”
His arm still around Alana, he headed for the exit to the classroom. The two of them disappeared into the hallway, leaving Spencer and Wirt to look at one another.
“I don’t like this,” Spencer said. “Did you see how fast Roland moved in on Alana? And she just went along with it. She obviously can’t see what he’s like. She’s completely under his spell.”
Wirt nodded. He didn’t like the way things were going with Roland either, but he didn’t trust himself to say anything about that, in case it revealed too much about what had almost happened between him and Alana.
“And blaming me for Priscilla?” Spencer added. “I did my best, Wirt. I swear I did. I went to class with her, and I saw her safely back to her room. I don’t know what else I could have done to keep her safe. Believe me, whatever happened to her, it didn’t happen to her on her way back from transmutation class.�
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“I believe you, Spencer,” Wirt said. He knew that his friend, already almost annoyingly conscientious at the best of times, would have taken extra care after his promise to Alana. “I think Alana blames herself more than you. We just have to hope that nothing has happened to Priscilla.”
Wirt didn’t mention all the things that might have happened. The academy was a dangerous enough place at the best of times, but Wirt knew enough about fairytales to know that some of the things that followed Priscilla around didn’t have happy endings. She was generally careful, but how many times did you have to get it wrong, when doing so meant being cursed, or sent to sleep for years, or poisoned? And somehow, Wirt suspected that King Wilford wouldn’t react well to any injury to his daughter.
No. They all had to hope that Priscilla would come through this all right.
Chapter 12
They had to wait almost an hour before Ender Paine summoned them up to the solarium. He stood in front of the foliage there as the second years filed in, regarding them all with his usual impatience. Once they were inside, the headmaster started to speak.
“As you know, one of our students has gone missing. More importantly, she is the daughter of one of the school’s major benefactors, and we cannot go around losing princesses any old how.”
The headmaster’s tone made it perfectly clear that losing any of them, on the other hand, would have been entirely acceptable.
“As such, you will all be expected to help in the search for Princess Priscilla. You are, after all, the ones closest to her. Form yourselves into groups and begin at once. That is all.”
People started to group themselves together. Wirt noticed that Alana moved to stand next to Roland almost immediately, while Spencer went over to join them. Wirt winced at that, expecting Alana to tell him to leave them alone, but she didn’t. Maybe she wanted to give Spencer the chance to make up for losing Priscilla, or maybe she just still had feelings for him. Wirt didn’t know which.