Instrument of Peace (Symphony of the Cursed Book 1)

by Rebecca Hall

  Mitch did as he was told although he still wasn’t entirely sure about the whole going to class thing. Nikola met him at the door, hugging a new book to his chest.

  “That doesn’t look like anything from our library,” Mitch said. The Academy library was quite extensive but he didn’t think they had anything handwritten in Old English.

  “Gawain gave it to me before he left,” Nikola said. “It’s an Arthurian legend.”

  Mitch shook his head, that book was probably worth a small fortune.

  “Why does he let you stay here?” Mitch asked. “Surely he knows that you don’t like it.”

  Nikola laughed, “Can you imagine what would happen if I was taken away by one of the Fae? He was against me going to school at all, even Munich. My guardian sent me anyway.”

  “Sorry.” No doubt Nikola’s mysterious guardian had reasons for sending him to the Academy, Mitch hoped that they were worth it. “Are you really going to spend the holidays learning Sumerian?”

  “What else would I do?”

  “Travel,” Mitch said before remembering Nikola’s dislike of public transport, “visit friends and family. Not study.”

  “I have a cousin at the Munich Academy but our holidays don’t exactly match up. Other than that,” Nikola shrugged, “Gawain needs to play with my brain a little more.”

  “He what?” Mitch barely managed to choke out.

  “He remapped a significant portion of my brain when I was eight,” Nikola said. “He’ll have to keep making... adjustments until it’s fully developed.”

  Mitch shuddered; he could never be so relaxed about someone messing around with his brain. He shuddered again when he realised that Nikola thought that it was normal, Gawain had been playing with his brain for half his life and his partially remembered lessons on human biology suggested that he would continue doing so well into Nikola’s twenties. He pulled open the dormitory door and almost walked straight into Bates.

  “Hi,” Mitch said, backing up so Bates could get out, there was no point in making him late for class as well.

  “Hi,” Bates said stiffly.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” Bates pushed past him, maybe it was later than he thought. He checked his watch before remembering that he’d broken it. He wondered if magical maelstrom was covered under the warranty; his watch was one of the few things Mum had bought for him that he actually liked.

  “We don’t have that much time,” Nikola said pulling him through the door, “I’d offer you mine but it would never fit around your wrist.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same anyway,” Mitch muttered, maybe they could say it was damaged in a car crash or something. Mum would take care of it, she was good at talking to sales people, Mitch wasn’t even sure where to find them and doubted he’d get a chance to before exams. Nikola left him at his bedroom door and he reluctantly abandoned his watch for the rest of the term.

  YEAR’S END

  Their exams were surprisingly easy. Maybe all of that time he’d spent studying with Nikola had paid off, even Alchemy hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected, or maybe their teachers had rejigged them to allow for the two terms they’d spent under the influence of the Twisted Curse. It was probably the former; their teachers would make their exams easier when the Earth reversed its direction of spin.

  The only thing left now was the testing. It had always seemed horrendously unfair to him that the one exam that didn’t require any study was last. There were good reasons for it being last of course, the testing required an inordinate amount of magic. If it was first then everyone would be too busy sleeping to study for their exams. Instead their teachers contrived to ruin the first weekend of their holidays.

  At least the testing promised to be interesting this time around. The Twisted Curse had upset a lot of people’s specialities, there’d been an almost unprecedented number of changes in the year above his, and Bates had set up a number of pools on the people whose magic had obviously changed. Mitch had been amused to see that he was on the list and disappointed to find that he couldn’t bet on himself. And then there was his brother’s year; they’d be undergoing the testing in a few days for the first time. Mitch wondered if their parents would come to watch, it was traditional although the final testing at the end of year twelve was much more likely to be accurate.

  Mitch tugged at the plain robe he was wearing. He didn’t like robes even when they weren’t splattered in blood, gore and vomit. At least this one wasn’t a bathrobe. He swallowed, if he threw up on this one then he’d have to take another freezing shower. He readjusted it. There had to be some secret to wearing the damn things, some way of making them comfortable while allowing the wearer to look like something other than an utter twit in bad cosplay. He wished he knew what it was.

  An excited murmur filled his ears, suggesting that Mindy was done and Nikola’s testing was underway. They’d decided against testing Hayley again; they still didn’t know what had gone wrong the first time. The murmur increased in volume, none of his classmates particularly cared about Nikola’s consistently inconclusive speciality but a number of experts and theoreticians had been drawn to the Academy by Belle’s unprecedented scores and most had decided that they might as well come early and watch Nikola as well.

  “Mr Mitchell.” A silver tray was presented to him with a needle in sterile packaging. Like the robe, the needle would only be used once. He tore into the plastic and clasped the needle in one sweaty hand. He hated needles. A bell chimed and the door opened, allowing him onto the Obsidian Mirror. Mitch gulped, this was his seventh time, there was no reason to be nervous. He was though, and nothing that he’d learnt about the Obsidian Mirror helped in the slightest.

  He eyed the sigils laid out before him, wishing he had the spatial awareness necessary to complete the testing with his eyes shut. He found it impossible to focus on the sigils; lines of inlaid silver should not appear to move. They continued to undulate anyway. He could feel the magic in the air, saturating his surroundings and distorting space. One of the things he’d learnt was that the Mirror took ages to discharge magic. For the most part it redirected the power funnelled into it, allowing it to compensate for the younger students who couldn’t power it on their own.

  “In your own time Mitchell,” Mr McCalis prompted. There were more people than he’d expected to be watching, forcing him to wonder just how many people had entered Bates’ pool. At least most of the adults seemed more interested in conversing with one another. Maybe Nikola would finally get his specialisation.

  Mitch took a deep breath and stepped onto the mirror. As always the sense of movement intensified, almost as if the mirror was aware of his presence. Now there was a terrifying thought, he really hoped that the damned thing wasn’t sentient. Powerful magic was known to have some extremely odd side effects but someone would have told him if part of the school was aware. He swallowed, once again hoping that he wouldn’t be the first person in the Academy’s long and prestigious history to throw up on the mirror. He wondered if it would mess up his results or just make a mess. Probably better not to find out. He really hated the Testing.

  He shuffled across the mirror, keeping his eyes fixed on the people assembled above and doing his best to ignore the shifting sigils. It would have been a lot easier if the bloody things had appeared to stay still. He had to squint against the midday sun as it reflected off the brightly coloured hourglasses and spilt through the crystal sands to dazzle him with rainbow lights. As if it needed to be more nauseating than it already was.

  He risked looking down again. No matter how much of a twit he looked in this ridiculous robe with its conjured memories of Halloween it was important to remember that there were dozens of ways to look like an even bigger twit and overshooting the mark was one of them. Just a couple more steps he saw as he squeezed shut watering eyes.

  He stopped at the centre of the heptagram and fumbled with the needle. The second way of making yourself look like a giant twit was
dropping the damn thing no matter how slippery it might be. It would probably be really loud and echoey. He didn’t think the Obsidian Mirror had any acoustic properties whatsoever but the needle would still find a way to echo and everyone would stare at him and very politely not laugh and say reassuring things when he escaped this torture.

  He secured the needle. Now for his least favourite part of the procedure. He took a deep breath. He didn’t hate blood, he just preferred for it stay inside him where it belonged. Besides, the Testing only required a single drop. He gritted his teeth and resisted the temptation to squeeze his eyes shut, they would laugh if he managed to miss his own thumb with the not-yet-bloody needle. He scored a direct hit and the blood welled up out of the tiny puncture wound into a single bright drop.

  He knelt carefully. The blood had to go dead centre. He had no idea what would happen if it fell off centre, hopefully nothing other than the aforementioned danger of making himself look like a twit. He preferred not to find out. For a supposedly simple and straightforward ritual there were a fuck-ton of ways of screwing it up and Mitch was certain that at least one of them would be deadly.

  ‘It wouldn’t be magic if it were safe lad.’ One of his teachers had told him that during his first magic lesson on the senior campus. Until then it had been safe, the primary kids did generalised magic that was harmless unless abused. He couldn’t even remember what task of magical madness he’d been assigned that day; he probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid at it now.

  ‘If there ain’t a chance of dying then you ain’t doing it right and if you ain’t doing it right then you’re probably about to die.’ Well he hadn’t died yet. And how was it that he could perfectly recall words spoken three years ago, but not the alchemical classifications of alkaline metals. Why was he even thinking of that now? That exam had been four days ago.

  The blood on his thumb was beginning to darken and dry, adding yet another thing to his list of ways to look like an absolute twit; having to prick your thumb a second time. He pressed his blood to the centre of the sigil.

  Familiar silver light flared to life and spread across the mirror. It snaked up the hourglass and leeched into their multi coloured sands. The hourglasses began to spin, sending a dazzling array of colours across the mirror, their motion blurring as they accelerated. As always Mitch braced himself as he rose to his feet, waiting for the moment when two of the hourglasses collided and began a chain reaction that would shatter them all and see him pelted with shards of glass. He’d probably be safer if he stayed huddled on the ground. As always the hourglasses failed to collide, ensuring that he would have to endure this again next year.

  The hourglasses stopped. He hadn’t memorised the layout or what strains of magic the different sands reacted to but he did know what area to look in. He frowned, there didn’t seem to be enough sand in the bottom bulbs. He was definitely looking at the hourglasses for self-manipulation but... he span slowly, fighting back nausea. The sigils were settling back into place, trying to look as if they had never moved. Mitch ignored the knowledge that they hadn’t.

  There. He stared at the hourglasses, trying to remember which ones they were and what that particular combination meant. The silver light receded from the hourglasses and they reset themselves. Mitch felt a faint tingle as it flared around him and for a second he found himself unable to breathe. He wondered if it affected everyone that way or if it just didn’t like him. He’d never been able to make himself ask. The light vanished, it had only held him captive for a second, and he gasped for breath.

  Mr McCalis beckoned to him from the edge of the mirror and Mitch walked towards him on stiff legs, his head already beginning to spin. He sighed in relief when he settled both feet on non-enscrolled ground. Mr McCalis was conferring with the testers so he hurried into the familiar side-room where his clothes had been placed to change before anyone saw him up close in the ridiculous robes.

  Nikola waved at him tiredly from one wall. Mitch cursed himself, of course Nikola would be there, the Academy liked to feed them after wringing them dry, and shut himself in the tiny cubicle. Mr McCalis was waiting for him when he staggered out and took a seat next to Nikola, snagging a couple of cookies and a sandwich on his way. Nikola was working his way through a small mountain of fruits and pastries.

  “Well?” Mitch asked between mouthfuls.

  “Congratulations Mitchell,” Mr McCalis said, “you have an affinity for cryomancy.” He handed Mitch a piece of paper covered in figures and calculations. Mitch groaned. Cryomancy; he’d never get away from that bloody lake now, not even the prospect of more lessons with Miss Sindri could make up for that.

  #

  His parents had failed to make an appearance. Mitch had cursed them and dragged Bates along to watch Cullum’s testing. He would have dragged Nikola but he’d left as soon as his testing was done. Bates dragged Mindy along too. Mitch had been torn between grim satisfaction at her being forced to attend after he’d been made to watch Belle’s testing and a burning desire to keep her away from Cullum. Why couldn’t their parents have come a single day earlier? Was it really that onerous for them to spend time together?

  Beside him Cullum kicked at his suitcase, already bored with waiting. Mitch checked his watch, cursed when he remembered that it was broken and twisted around, craning his head until he could make out the clock in the foyer. Their parents were already an hour late. Everyone else’s parents had come on time, Gwen and Richard had left together with Gwen’s parents. Mindy and Belle were gone as well, Belle looking less than pleased about being forced into the backseat with her sister.

  He sat up when he saw motion along the road and slumped again when he saw a brightly coloured van. He got up to stretch his legs, exchanging polite greetings with Sam’s parents and grinning when she somehow finagled them into carrying all of her bags.

  “Say hi to Sven for me,” Mitch said. Sam meant to try and visit him over the holidays.

  “I will, see ya next year.” They hugged quickly and Sam waved as they drove off. Somehow she managed to displace her Dad and secure the front seat in the van. Mitch sighed and sat down again. It was tempting to ferret out a Frisbee or a pack of cards. Hell, he was even considering grabbing a newspaper from the dining room and doing the crossword puzzle but knowing his luck he would have just made himself comfortable when his parents showed up and Mum would be snappy and irritable at having to wait for him.

  “Still here?” Bates said, strolling down the stairs to him.

  “Still here,” Mitch confirmed, “maybe Mum and Dad finally forgot about us.”

  “They did not!” Cullum said. His next kick missed the suitcase and connected with Mitch’s leg instead. At least Cullum was wearing jandals, it was hard to kick properly in jandals. Mitch resolved to ensure that Cullum never got steel-capped boots, he wouldn’t like an ‘accidental’ kick from one of those.

  “They’re probably arguing over directions,” Mitch said though after eleven years of picking him up and dropping him off they should know the way. He was surprised that they hadn’t started insisting that they take the Academy bus up to Taupo; it would cut down on the amount of time they spent trapped in a car together. He wished they’d just admit that they were divorced already. Everyone and their dog seemed to know except for Cullum. His brother could be remarkably dense sometimes.

  “What about you?” he asked Bates, “shouldn’t you be gone by now?”

  “My flight’s not until tomorrow morning.” Mitch snorted, Bates would be gone anyway if he’d woken up in time for the morning bus to Taupo.

  “Which airport?”

  “Rotorua.”

  “Want a ride?” Mitch offered. His parents always rented the biggest car available and Dad still insisted that it was too small. Nothing Dad classified as large would actually fit on the roads here.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” Strictly speaking Rotorua was a slight detour but they went through it every year anyway. Mitch figured an extra thirty minute
s on the road was worth the chance to stop and stretch his legs in a decent sized city. If his parents didn’t arrive soon they’d have to get dinner there.

  “Want to help me bring everything down?”

  Mitch sighed and followed him back inside. With both Nikola and Mindy gone things almost seemed to be normal between them. They’d managed to eat lunch together without arguing and Bates had even talked about visiting over New Year. Mitch didn’t think it would last.

  They’d just moved the last of Bates’ bags downstairs when a car ground to a halt in a squeal of brakes. Mum got out a second later and Cullum cannoned into her. There was no sign of Dad.

  “I offered Bates a ride to Rotorua,” Mitch said. Mum nodded and hugged Cullum.

  “Where’s Dad?” Cullum asked. For a second Mitch thought that maybe they’d decided to come clean after all.

  “Something came up at work,” Mum said, plastering a fake smile across her face, “he’ll join us in time for Christmas.” Mitch raised an eyebrow, ‘something came up at work’ was probably parent code for they had another argument, that or Mum had caught Dad screwing his secretary. He winced and turned towards his bags, that was not a mental image he needed. He didn’t even know if Dad had a secretary.

  “He’d better,” Cullum said, no doubt thinking about all of the presents he wouldn’t get if Dad wasn’t there.

  “We should get going,” Mum said, “I don’t want us to be out too late.” Mitch sighed, she wouldn’t actually help them load the boot, not when it might ruin her perfectly manicured nails and he knew better than to expect Cully to help. He dumped the first case into the boot and turned to find himself face to face with Hayley.

  “You looked like you could use some help,” she said, sliding another case past him.

  “Th–thanks,” Mitch said, pretending not to hear Bates snigger. Between the three of them it didn’t take long to pack everything though it would have been nice if Cullum had at least tried to help. He called dibs on the front seat instead, leaving the back to him and Bates.