Instrument of Peace (Symphony of the Cursed Book 1)

by Rebecca Hall

  Right then, no Tarzan impersonations for him. He spat, trying to get the taste of regurgitated lunch out of his mouth and took a couple of deep breaths. After a moment’s thought he was able to recall the calming exercises that they’d run through in one of Cullum’s counselling sessions and after another moment Mitch was able to climb to his feet. Keeping his eyes glued to his destination he leapt.

  It turned out he could make the jump from a standing start. He made it so well he almost tumbled over into a pit of giant spiders.

  “What next?” he muttered, staring down at them, “the kitchen sink?” The spiders were comparatively small after the weta; they were only the size of poodles. Mitch was sure that he’d provide a welcome distraction from their current meal of web wrapped spider. Cannibalistic little bastards. He inched back until he lay in the middle of the path and unsteadily rose to his feet. He never wanted to see another maze again. As he walked, the path began to undulate underfoot like a swing bridge and then sway from side to side like a swing bridge caught in a gale force wind. With each swing it twisted a little more and while it was wide enough to walk along without a handrail no amount of width would make it walkable once it ended up perpendicular to the ground. He started crawling, the lowered centre of gravity giving him a little more balance, and finally resorted to slithering along it like a snake. He wished he hadn’t thought of snakes; he hadn’t met one of those yet but he wouldn’t be surprised to run into a basilisk. The bridge began to buck wildly and all he could do was cling to it. He could feel the spiders watching him with their greedy little eyes, waiting for him to fall into their trap, and tried not to throw up again. With his luck he’d probably end up wearing it.

  Think Mitch, think. This was a practical magic class and they were always tailored specifically to the abilities of their students. There had to be a way off this bridge that didn’t involve becoming a spider snack. It was a good thing that they didn’t seem inclined to leave their pit; Mitch didn’t think they’d have any difficulty with the bridge. Mitch smiled, “I’m spider man,” he whispered to himself. He lessened his death grip on the path and began to crawl along it. “I’m spider man, I’m spider man,” and I sound like a complete and utter tool but it was working. He snapped his mouth shut and decided to experiment with other superpowers if he ever got out of this maze. God damn them all. Why did his teachers have to be so in love with lateral thinking and problem solving? Why couldn’t they just teach him out of a grimoire like all of those fictional wizards out there? He stubbornly ignored the tiny voice in his head that was telling him exactly why. The bridge finally twisted around 180 degrees and he barely kept himself from being sick again. For some reason none of the books he’d read or movies he’d seen had mentioned how nauseating it was to crawl across the ceiling with nothing to hold onto and a pit of hungry spiders below. He wondered if the spiders would like vomit. “I’m spider man.” Spider man never threw up and neither would he.

  The path flipped around and for a single blessed second, just long enough for him to think it might have stabilised, it stayed flat and then it began to twist in the opposite direction like some insane sideshow ride. He was going to find the genius responsible for this horrific piece of magic and... and... he couldn’t think of a fate horrible enough. Maybe he would feed them to that giant weta and never mind that it was a herbivore, he was sick of everyone telling him that the big, scary monsters were herbivores. That weta was going to eat whoever was responsible for this and it was going to enjoy it.

  He was so caught up in his thoughts of revenge that he didn’t even notice at first when the bridge stopped undulating and twisting and otherwise trying to inconvenience him. He spidied his way back onto the top of the bridge and lay there panting, not quite daring to let go of the spider man magic. If he never saw another swing bridge it would be too soon and as for those spiders, he shuddered, suddenly a lot more understanding of those people who jumped and squealed whenever they saw one.

  He sat up, feeling utterly exhausted, and tried to work out where to go next. There was a ladder leading up to the ceiling which he immediately dismissed, a forking path ahead of him, a quick check revealed that there was no pit of spiders below this one and threatened to make him pass out, and a ramp leading back to the ground. There was still no sign of his classmates and he was beginning to wonder if the maze was deliberately hiding them from him. Nothing was obviously booby-trapped and he didn’t want to waste his remaining magic checking for the less obvious traps. He made a mental note to stay away from the pink cloud consuming half the maze and followed the path down to the ground.

  After the chaos that he’d already battled through, the ground proved to be refreshingly normal and stable. He had to dodge between thickets of rose bushes connected by long thorny vines but they weren’t actively trying to kill, maim or otherwise inconvenience him as he staggered along, swaying from side to side, his eyelids heavy with exhaustion. Roses were blooming all around him, bright vibrant red blooms that were the size of his hand and filled the air with an intoxicating scent. He didn’t notice as the path grew narrower, his clothes snagging on the thorns. He didn’t notice when one of the thorns grazed his leg and drew blood. He didn’t even notice when he stood on another thorn and it drove its way up through his shoe and into his foot. He was just so tired. He had used so much magic and it was getting late. Dark was falling, the world closing in around him until it was impossible to move without scratching himself on the thorns.

  “Just five minutes,” he mumbled, his eyelids drooping.

  The buzzer rang. Mitch jerked awake, yelping as the thorns tore into his arms and legs. More pricked his back and clawed at his torso. Why had he decided to go to sleep in a thorny rose bush? He tried to free himself without inflicting more damage but only succeeded in tangling himself further before he realised that the thorns were already withdrawing. A few minutes later and he could have been standing in a well-tended hedge maze though most mazes didn’t shape the rose buds into arrows that pointed the way out.

  He struggled to his feet and swore as something dug into his foot. He hopped around, almost crashing into the rose bush and decided that he’d be better off sitting no matter how hard it was to get up again. His fingers slipped constantly as he struggled to extract a large thorn that had somehow become embedded in his shoe and when he finally pulled it out blood oozed from the hole. He was tempted to just crawl the rest of the way out, or go to sleep here, the ground would be a lot more comfortable than the rose bush had been, but his classmates would laugh at him. He limped towards the exit.

  He rounded a corner and found himself staring at the exit and Dr Maclyn. She beckoned to him and he staggered out of the maze and into the changing room. No one else was there.

  “Two of your classmates have already made it out and left,” Dr Maclyn informed him as he sagged onto a bench. “The remainder had to be taken to the infirmary, most as the result of backstabbing and sabotage. Plainly my message about teamwork went unheeded. No one made it to the centre of the maze.” Mitch guessed that made him one of the top three. He didn’t feel like celebrating. “You’d best hurry if you wish to clean up before dinner, Dr Dalman has an announcement to make and tardiness will not be tolerated.”

  RIOT

  “Right then,” Dr Dalman said, standing at the head of the room, “Now that you are all here we can begin.” Mitch smirked, they weren’t all here; the day’s lessons seemed to have set a new record for sending students to the infirmary.

  “Where’s Belle?” he hissed at Mindy, seeing that her usual table was empty.

  Mindy shrugged, “She’ll be in detention soon, I saw her in the dormitories so I know she made it through today’s classes.” Mitch glanced at Gwen, apparently he was allowed to look at empty tables but he knew that all Hell would have been let loose if Hayley had been there, and he’d only just managed to make up with Gwen. Bates and Richard were both missing though he wasn’t sure how you could injure someone who specialised in walking
through walls. There was no sign of Adnan either and given the number of empty seats Mitch thought that they might have succeeded in filling the infirmary for once.

  “They really had it in for us today didn’t they?” Gwen asked, tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear.

  “No kidding,” Mindy laughed.

  “Silence,” Dr Dalman barked. She fiddled with the microphone and they all winced as feedback echoed through the speakers. The dozens of whispered conversations came to an abrupt halt.

  “Last term saw some truly disgusting behaviour from all of you. Truancy, backtalk, breaking curfew, sleeping in class. I heard every excuse in the book and then a few new ones and as of today it will stop. I don’t want to hear that your alarm clock broke, the Taniwha ate your homework or the textbook was made of whipwood. I don’t want anyone else in my office claiming that they took a wrong turn on their way to the dormitories. I don’t know what got into you all but it will stop now before I am forced to take more drastic measures.”

  “Yeah, well maybe if you weren’t so demanding we wouldn’t have to break the rules,” yelled Greg, a student from the year above. He jumped onto the table and the rest of the students muttered agreement. Mitch hadn’t thought that the workload last term had been that bad, sure it had been heavier than he was used to and sucked up a lot of his free time but he suspected it was largely due to their teachers trying to get them ready for exams. He’d managed to get through it all and still have time for a massive fight with Gwen.

  “Maybe if you stopped throwing us in detention for sneezing too loudly we wouldn’t have to stay up half the night.” Mitch snorted, if that was all it took to earn a detention Nikola would never see the light of day but everyone else seemed to have different ideas.

  “Stop giving us detention!”

  “No more twenty page readings!”

  “No more imaginary numbers!”

  Mitch blinked, what was so bad about imaginary numbers? He could think of far worse imaginary things and after the maze he was beginning to think that doing so was their teachers’ favourite pastime. He could think of far worse numbers as well, starting with the cosine of 75.5 degrees. Maths wasn’t exactly hard, you just followed the rules. It wasn’t full of exceptions like most languages were.

  Greg swooped and picked up a coffee cup, holding it up like the worst battle standard in history. An image that was helped when hot chocolate slopped over the side and burnt his hand. Even a bread knife would have been more impressive, or a spoon. He really should have gone for the table cloth, a table cloth would make a decent sized flag.

  “Give us more free time!” Greg roared. He swung his coffee cup through the air and spilt the rest of its contents across his neighbours. They flinched and yelped before taking up the chant. Mitch shook his head, Greg really should have picked a different battle standard.

  “What do we want?”

  “Free Time.”

  “When do we want it?”

  “Now.”

  One by one the entire dining hall took up the chant, even Gwen and Mindy. Gwen elbowed him and he started opening and shutting his mouth like a guppy, relying on the noise to cover the fact that he wasn’t actually participating in this idiocy. The entire school had gone mad.

  “What do we want?”

  “Free Time!”

  They started to drum on the table with cups and cutlery and bare hands though Mitch saw that no one else had Greg’s verve and they all used hastily drained cups. Mitch was suddenly glad that they hadn’t served dinner yet, seeing that much cutlery moving in unison was rather unsettling.

  “When do we want it?”

  “Now!”

  Dr Dalman was slowly turning scarlet, the colour highlighting the nasty burns covering her face and making her look like something out of a nightmare. Mitch thought that it might have been better for her if they had had to ask for a Sidhe healer, no matter what the price. The sound of feedback screamed through the sound system and was drowned out.

  “WHAT DO WE WANT?”

  “FREE TIME!”

  Some of the cups shattered, leaving the students armed with broken shards and more and more of them were joining Greg on the tables and stamping their feet in time to the beat.

  “WHEN DO WE WANT IT?”

  “NOW!”

  Greg was marching on the spot, waving his now empty coffee mug to and fro and egging them on. Impossibly, the volume seemed to grow even louder. Mitch got to his feet and Gwen shot him an encouraging smile. Had she completely lost her mind?

  “WHAT DO WE WANT?”

  Mitch edged around the table while Gwen and Mindy climbed onto it.

  “FREE TIME!”

  Confident that all eyes were on Dr Dalman he started working his way towards the doors and his escape from this insanity.

  “WHEN DO WE WANT IT?”

  He cast one last look at Gwen and that was enough to tell him that he would have to corral a herd of wild horses to drag her away.

  “NOW!”

  He could feel magic thickening in the air. This was about to get nasty; nastier, he corrected himself. Magic and broken cups couldn’t possibly be a good combination. He gave up on all pretence of subtlety and bolted for the doors, sprinting as hard as he could on his injured foot.

  “WHAT DO WE WANT?”

  He struck the doors at as close to a dead sprint as he could manage and they swung open, allowing him to face-plant in the foyer.

  “Ow,” he muttered, pushing himself up and rubbing his nose. His hand came away wet with blood.

  “FREE TIME!” The words almost seemed to have physical force and all of those lectures on emotional outbursts in magically saturated areas came rushing to the forefront of his mind. If high amounts of background magic on the battlefield could create vampires he didn’t want to think about what the same could do when wielded by a horde of angry students.

  The door butted into his foot and he jerked it out of the way, a second later the door closed leaving him alone in blissful silence.

  “I think you need this.”

  Mitch span and found Nikola sitting in the lee of the doors. He was holding out a tissue. He thought he saw a flash of silver around Nikola’s wrist but there was nothing there. Must have been the light reflecting off something, Nikola wore his watch on the other wrist.

  “Thanks,” Mitch mumbled. Nikola passed the tissue to him and watched as Mitch struggled to clean himself up. Mitch tried not to pass out. He didn’t think his nose was bleeding that much but it had been a long day and he didn’t like his chances of getting dinner in the near future. “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

  “Eavesdropping.”

  “You could do that inside,” Mitch pointed out, “and without getting detention.”

  “Like you?” Nikola raised an eyebrow, “I doubt they’re worried about us.” He winced, “Star-cursed empaths.”

  “That’s the principal you’re swearing at,” Mitch said; there weren’t any other empaths at the Academy. He lowered the tissue and cautiously felt at his nose, it had stopped bleeding. Now he just had to worry about his rumbling stomach. “Can your eavesdropping tell us when dinner is?” Mitch asked though he wasn’t sure how Nikola could hear anything.

  “Come with me,” Nikola smiled and scrambled to his feet. Mitch was too tired to argue, or to ask questions, he tucked the bloody tissue into a pocket and followed Nikola out around the side of the building and to the kitchen’s service entrance. He rapped on the door and a minute later it was opened by one of the kitchen staff.

  “We had to go to the infirmary,” Nikola lied, “and by the time they released us the dining room was already closed.”

  “Wait here, I’ll get you something,” the chef bustled away and returned with several cartons full of food. Mitch’s stomach growled again and his mouth started to water. They were presented with four cartons each, along with plastic cutlery and napkins and as hungry as he was Mitch wasn’t sure how he would eat it all.


  “How’d you do that?” Mitch asked once the door closed behind them. He’d tried begging for food between meals before and it never worked.

  “They feel sorry for me, most of the staff do. And they’re convinced I’m on the brink of starvation.” Mitch could easily see why they might feel that way. The doors to the common room swung open at Nikola’s approach and Nikola grinned at the empty room. Mitch found it a little eerie. The fire at the end of the room roared into life, rapidly devouring kindling and setting the larger pieces alight in a feat of pyromancy that Mitch would never be able to replicate.

  Nikola sprawled in front of a coffee table by the fire and Mitch realised just how long he was. He’d always known that Nikola was taller than him but it had been abstract knowledge. Mitch seized a couple of cushions off a couch and tried to make himself comfortable. Nikola looked faintly surprised that Mitch had joined him, Mitch wasn’t inclined to go and eat alone in his room like a hermit. For a second he felt guilty; Nikola always ate alone.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” Mitch asked as he investigated his dinner. It proved to be apricot chicken, mashed potato and far too many vegetables for his liking. There was apple crumble covered in melting cream for dessert.

  “Why wouldn’t I be nice?” Nikola asked between mouthfuls. He didn’t seem concerned by the amount of vegetables and it looked as if he had even more than Mitch.

  “We haven’t exactly been nice to you,” Mitch pointed out, “you should hate us.”

  “I’ve never been very good at that, besides, you’re not really worth it.”

  “You broke Richard’s nose.” It was the only time anyone had ever got a rise out of him.

  “Impulse control is another thing that I’m not particularly good at. You should eat before it gets cold.”

  Mitch took the hint and started eating. Somehow Nikola had already managed to devour most of his vegetables and a drink bottle had appeared on the table.