Instrument of Peace (Symphony of the Cursed Book 1)

by Rebecca Hall

  Almost against his will, his eyes unglued themselves from Hayley and rose to the tiny hourglass for celestial magic. It glowed brightly with the same golden light that had engulfed the mirror and the bottom bulb was full. The hourglasses reset themselves but the sigils continued to glow even though they should have returned to dormancy. The air should have been full of the murmur of voices as their teachers analysed the results and the excited babble of the students as Bates announced the winner. Instead there was only silence pierced by screams.

  Mitch raised his eyes from the mirror and looked around. The platform was almost empty making it easy to see where Dr Dalman writhed on the ground. Her skin was blackened and blistered and slicked in blood and pus. The teachers gathered around her while the remaining students seemed torn between watching in horrified fascination and throwing up. Gwen was still there, the light wouldn’t have bothered her, and a few others including Belle. Mitch rushed over to her, this wasn’t something that she should see and Mindy was still below. He pulled her towards the stairs, fighting the urge to gag when his eyes fell on Dr Dalman. The cold came rushing back with a freezing gust that reminded Mitch he’d unbuttoned his jacket. He shivered and continued to herd Belle towards the stairs. She seemed reluctant to leave, she probably wanted to watch Mindy’s testing but Mitch had a hard time believing that they’d go ahead with that with the mirror still glowing and Dr Dalman mercifully unconscious. Mitch assumed that was why she had stopped screaming, he didn’t want to think about the alternative.

  “What just happened?” Gwen asked, joining him at the stairs. She was shivering and her breath made little puffs of fog. Mitch shrugged and pulled Belle aside, flattening them against the railing as the doctor rushed up the stairs followed by a nurse and a stretcher. He hoped that they’d be able to help Dr Dalman though they’d been unable to do anything for the burns that had marred her arms after her last encounter with Hayley’s magic. He swallowed guiltily; he really needed to give that feather back but he couldn’t imagine how Gwen would take that. Perhaps he should ask Bates to do it for him. He’d half expected Hayley to demand its return by now, maybe she really didn’t care about her birth parents.

  Gwen glared at Belle though she couldn’t possibly think that he was cheating on her with a girl that was the same age as his brother. Belle was only twelve for god’s sake. Mindy would kill him, bring him back to life and kill him again if he looked at her. He didn’t even want to think about what she might do to him while he was dead and Bates would probably help her. Hell, if he touched Belle he’d deserve it.

  “Let’s go,” Mitch said starting down the stairs and pushing Belle ahead of him. Hayley met them at the bottom of the stairs and Mitch breathed a tiny sigh of relief when Belle ran over to her, talking at a million miles an hour. He doubted Hayley would take her back up to Dr Dalman and Gwen’s glare was in danger of melting a hole in the back of his head. It would be better if Belle wasn’t a part of whatever came next.

  “Do you want to watch a movie?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at her. “You can pick,” he held out his hand. “Come on Gwen.” The surrounding snow had been ground into slush by the people coming and going but it was beginning to freeze again. Mitch didn’t think it had been touched by the golden flames at all but that wouldn’t stop them from slipping over on it.

  Belle and Hayley started towards the dormitory and Mitch noted that Hayley’s eyes were their usual shade of pale blue though she looked a little unsteady. Mitch smiled, it was nice to see that something could unsettle her.

  “Come on Mitch,” Gwen said, taking his hand and yanking him forward so hard he almost face planted. “Angel Girl can take care of herself.” He let her drag him away but he couldn’t resist one last look back to see Belle and Hayley following behind and the staff carrying Dr Dalman towards the infirmary.

  UPSET PLANS

  Gwen decided to skip the annual Whakapapa ski trip. Mitch decided not to argue; Gwen was still pissed at him for some inexplicable reason and all the magic in the world couldn’t make him any good at skiing. Having Bates beat him down every hill had gotten old years ago and now Cullum was beginning to beat him as well.

  Instead they rented a car, Gwen using magical trickery to get the clerk to lend a car to a couple of sixteen year olds who were only on their restricted licences. The Academy was willing to teach them how to drive if they were willing to give up their weekends for it but it wasn’t willing to let them have their own cars. They spent the day driving up to Auckland and ate in the Sky Tower’s slowly revolving restaurant. Gwen even smiled at him as they made polite small talk but that was all she did and they didn’t share a bed when they got to the hotel. Mitch was just happy she hadn’t insisted on separate rooms.

  For once Mitch woke up first and he ordered breakfast, doing his best to remember Gwen’s favourites. Tea, bagels slathered in cream cheese, fresh strawberries, it was the middle of winter but he asked anyway, and crispy bacon for himself.

  It wasn’t until they were on the road again and well and truly lost that it occurred to him that they should have asked for directions to Cape Reinga. He hadn’t even thought about it. State highway one was well signposted but he appeared to have turned off it at some stage and he had no idea where they were now. He glanced sideways, Gwen seemed to be enjoying his discomfort rather than being pissed at him for getting them lost. She could probably remember the route back to the main road but Mitch couldn’t bring himself to ask. They should have paid extra for a GPS system though with two magicians in the car it would have worked erratically at best.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” Mitch said as the radio began to cycle through the frequencies again. For once he didn’t think it was their magic that was stopping them from getting a signal. They were miles from anywhere.

  “It still sounds better than your singing.”

  Mitch bit back a retort. He was supposed to be making up with Gwen not fighting with her. He’d been somewhat embarrassed when he discovered that singing was part of his education as a magician who specialised in self-manipulation but he did know how to carry a tune and his voice wasn’t half bad.

  Mitch peered ahead, hoping to spy a familiar green sign that would point them in the right direction. All he saw was trees, hundreds and hundreds of trees. They weren’t the nicely laid out rows of pine trees that fuelled the lumber industry either, oh no, they were surrounded by dense, untamed forest. It was probably full of native tress and kiwis and hundreds of giant weta. He shuddered, he didn’t mind spiders, they were easily squashable, but giant weta were a different story.

  The sensible course of action would be to do a u-turn, backtrack and hope that Gwen really did remember how they’d got here. Mitch kept going instead. No one made roads to nowhere; sooner or later they would encounter human habitation or, more probably, the coast. They hit farmland instead and Mitch perked up again, they’d find human habitation soon, or Hobbits, or even orcs. At this stage he wasn’t inclined to be picky about who he got his directions from as long as it wasn’t Gwen.

  “Look.” Gwen pointed to the long awaited road sign. It didn’t tell Mitch which way to go but it did tell him that they were in Pawarenga. Pawarenga didn’t qualify as a village by Mitch’s standards, not even one of those blink and you’ll miss it places because there was nothing for them to miss. They had a nice view of the coast, which another sign helpfully informed them was Whangape Harbour and that was it. They hit an intersection adorned with a sign that said ‘Church’ and Mitch started down the new road. Maybe there’d be someone there whom he could ask for directions, if not he’d have to resign himself to asking Gwen.

  The new road had signs of human habitation looking lonely and out of place amidst the farmland. Mitch drove past them all and turned into the excessively long driveway leading to the church. There was a tiny graveyard outside it and Mitch couldn’t help crawling past it on the far side of the road. Six feet under was nowhere near deep enough with necromancers
around; magicians were always cremated. Thankfully actually resurrecting someone required a touch of celestial magic but someone like Mindy would have no problems making a zombie army. There were rules about that of course but she had to be studying something.

  The church itself was hunched over the ground, cowed by the weight of the surrounding emptiness, its white walls and red roof out of place against so much green. The steeple looked out over the harbour. The arched red double doors opened easily at his touch and let them into the dark interior of St Gabriel’s church. Gwen looked at the painted images adorning the walls and drew a little closer to him. Other churches might have pretty stained glass windows but this one had paintings that were horribly realistic.

  “Hello?” he said as they walked along the rows of pews. He couldn’t quite bring himself to raise his voice. “Is anyone there?” He reached for Gwen’s hand and she took it, her touch almost enough to dispel the creeping oppressiveness of the church. “Hello?”

  “Let’s go,” Gwen said, “no one’s–”

  “Ah, I thought I heard voices.” They turned to face the middle-aged man who’d just come in behind them. “Kia ora,” he smiled at them, “we don’t often get visitors.” The man didn’t look like a priest; though most of Mitch’s images of priests came from movies and TV shows, he doubted many wore plaid shirts, worn jeans and jandals. If it weren’t for the crucifix around his neck Mitch would have assumed he was just one of the locals passing by.

  “H-Hello sir,” Mitch said awkwardly. He should offer his hand or something but Gwen was holding his right hand and he didn’t have a hat to take off.

  “Hmmm, you wouldn’t be the poor girl who was abandoned here would you?” the priest asked, peering down at Gwen, “you look to be the right age.”

  “What? I–”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything else I can tell you. I put everything I remembered in the emails.”

  “Emails?” Gwen asked, sounding just as puzzled as Mitch felt.

  “I think you have us mistaken for someone else,” Mitch said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed... well never mind.”

  “Who would abandon a child out here?” Gwen asked, looking around dubiously. Mitch supposed that the remote location guaranteed anonymity but there had to be safer places to abandon a child.

  “That’s the great mystery isn’t it? It’s been sixteen years and we still don’t have a clue. I thought I heard something while I was watching the news, some story about an earthquake off the coast of Fiji, so I came out and there she was.” He pointed at the altar and shook his head. Mitch agreed with him, it was a miracle the baby hadn’t fallen off before being found. “She had big blue eyes and the only thing she’d been left with was a golden feather, no blanket, no toys...” he sighed. “I looked outside but there was no car and no people. It was like she just appeared out of thin air. I took her over to the Marae and called the police. They had to come from Kawakawa and then more came up from Auckland but they couldn’t find anything either.”

  Mitch gulped, thinking of the feather back in his room, he thought he knew exactly who the priest was talking about. Gwen was going to kill him; she’d probably think that he’d brought them out here on purpose. He risked a sideways glance at her and found her smiling sweetly.

  “What happened to her?” Gwen asked.

  “She was taken to Auckland and adopted, poor thing, no one deserves such a horrible start to life.” He sighed, “I doubt you’re here because of a sixteen year old mystery.”

  “Err, yeah,” Mitch said, “we were going to Cape Reinga and we took a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “Several it would appear,” he smiled at them, “don’t worry I can set you straight but you won’t make it anywhere civilised before nightfall.” Gwen scowled, no doubt she’d blame him for this later.

  “Why don’t you come over to the Marae,” the priest suggested, “we can put you up for the night and draw you a map back to the state highway. If you leave bright and early you should be able to make it by midday.”

  “Gwen?” Mitch asked.

  “That would be lovely,” she said. Over at the Marae they were given roast beef and an air bed piled high with blankets, and the next morning they were provided with fried bread for breakfast, and the promised map.

  #

  The dining room was surprisingly full. Mitch scanned the seats, picking out people that he knew had gone on the ski trip. They weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow. Hayley and Belle were in their usual corner and Mitch felt a flash of guilt, he hoped Gwen wouldn’t spread the story they’d heard. It had been in all of the newspapers at the time but not many of his classmates read today’s newspapers, let alone ones sixteen years old. Gwen herself had decided to stay in Taupo a couple more days and he’d overheard some of the girls organising a shopping trip to Mount Maunganui before school resumed.

  There was no sign of Bates and Mindy, or Richard, but he did spy Sam and Sven sitting so close together it was seriously impeding their ability to use cutlery. Half the dining room was closed in an attempt to limit how much of a mess they could make and most of the tables were full. He went and sat opposite Nikola.

  “What happened to the ski trip?” Mitch asked.

  Nikola stared at him, “I hear there was an avalanche on the first day. On the second day Ruapehu erupted, it’s still spewing smoke into the air. It was all over the news.”

  “I was busy,” Mitch said. Once they’d made it to Cape Reinga he’d finally managed to convince Gwen that he wasn’t interested in Hayley or any other girl. “Are you ok? You said you ah...” Mitch paused, unsure of how to put it.

  “I was in Rotorua, I hate snow.”

  “Have they announced Hayley’s speciality yet?” They’d resumed the testing after running every conceivable test on the obsidian mirror and finding nothing. They hadn’t put Hayley through it again but they’d suggested that Mitch was developing a gift for cryomancy. Nikola was still inconclusive but Mitch was beginning to think that they needed to add something to the long lists of tables they’d had to study, just for him.

  “Hoping to claim your winnings?” Nikola smirked, “officially she’s going down as inconclusive, unofficially they have no idea and they’re not running her through the testing again.”

  “Damn,” Mitch muttered. He had eventually bet on inconclusive, earning himself a raised eyebrow from Bates, but he suspected that Bates would cancel the bet rather than pay out.

  “Any good news?”

  “Dr Dalman regained consciousness. They were worried that they’d have to ask the Court for a healer but she came around a couple of days ago and they expect her to make a full recovery.”

  “The Court,” Mitch squeaked. They hadn’t covered the Seelie and Unseelie Courts in class yet but he’d grown up hearing stories about them. Given the time of year they would have had to call on the Unseelie Court and the one thing everyone agreed on was that you didn’t want to owe either Court a favour.

  “They do have the best healers,” Nikola pointed out, rubbing his chest. Mitch sighed, healing was another skill that required celestial magic; nothing else would give someone that much control over another person’s body, and no one had has much experience as the Fae.

  “Why didn’t they just send for a human healer?”

  Nikola treated him to another blank stare, “Because that would have entailed sending for a necromancer as well, the last healer died a decade ago.”

  “How do you know so much about it?” Normally he would have assumed that Nikola had heard it in the infirmary but Nikola didn’t look as if he’d been ill recently.

  “I grew up in a magical community, I know a lot about magic.” This time it was Mitch who stared. The magical communities were mostly inhabited by Teratos and the odd eccentric human and were built far away from anywhere civilised.

  “Couldn’t you have studied magic there then?” Mitch asked.

  “I did but my guardians thought that I needed
a more conventional curriculum and human friends so they sent me away.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “What about them?”

  “Nothing,” Mitch said sheepishly. He decided to focus on eating his dinner before it got any colder. Nikola’s family was none of his business. It wasn’t as if they were friends, he didn’t even like the guy.

  TERM THREE

  MAGICAL MONSTER MAZE

  Mitch slouched against the wall and wondered what new Hell their teachers had in store for them today. ‘Challenging’ was the word that they liked to use for the first practical magic class of the term. Mitch preferred far more accurate and descriptive terms like perverse and dangerous. He already knew that magic was dangerous, he didn’t see the need for the incessant reminders. At least this particular lesson was being held in the gym rather than the semi-frozen lake although nothing that required the use of the whole gym could possibly be good, not when the gym had been closed all day so they could set it up.

  His classmates didn’t look any more enthusiastic than he felt and none of them really had any magic in common. That was never a good sign; Mitch didn’t like it when their teachers decided to get creative.

  “Excellent,” Dr Maclyn said, striding into the changing room where they all waited, “I see that you’re all here and on time.” Someone had been late to every single one of Mitch’s classes today and he’d heard similar reports on the other classes. “Today’s task is a simple one,” Dr Maclyn announced. Mitch winced; they probably would have described dipping his hand in a bowl of hydrochloric acid as simple as well. Dr Maclyn unlocked the gym doors and pushed them open, revealing a convoluted cross between an obstacle course and a maze that climbed to the ceiling.