by Victor Kloss
Joshua raised both hands in mock defence. “Are you threatening me?” His friends started chuckling and making baiting noises. One of the boys gave Ben a little push.
“Joshua, what are you doing?”
Natalie stepped into the fray, attempting to get between Joshua and Ben. She tried to push Joshua back. He appeared unwilling to use any force against her, but a tall spindly girl next to Joshua intervened, and shoved Natalie away.
“Get lost, Natalie,” she said.
“Oi!” Charlie stepped in, despite being several inches smaller than everyone else; his soft face was creased with anger and he raised a chubby finger at the skinny girl. “Don't push her.”
“You going to stop me, midget?” the girl said, with a cruel laugh.
There was only one way this was going to end, Ben realised. He clenched his fists into balls. If he could take Joshua out quickly, they might have a chance, but the girls – especially the tall one – looked like they could fight.
A horn blasted, so loud it made Ben's body vibrate. Everyone turned, the potential melee momentarily forgotten. From the door that cut into the glass gable came a girl – or woman to be more precise; she looked at least eighteen and had five colourless diamonds on her shoulder. In her hand was a curved horn.
“Positions, apprentices!” she shouted. “The prince is on his way up. Look lively!”
There was a murmur of surprise, which quickly turned to alarm. Joshua's friends ran, and Joshua followed, with one last calculating look at Ben.
“I've got to run,” Natalie said, looking anxiously towards the door the prince would come out of.
“What are we supposed to do?” Ben asked.
“Just look busy,” Natalie said, giving them both a smile. “I'll be back as soon as the prince has gone.”
And with that, she too darted off.
Ben looked helplessly about. Everyone seemed to start working at twice their original pace.
“Get your shovel,” Ben said, picking his up. “Let's go find William.”
The paddocks were large, and with the sloping glass roof in the middle, it was impossible to see more than one side at a time.
“Follow the smell of pooh,” Ben said, his eyes scanning the area.
“I'm covered in it. I think it's overwhelmed my senses. I can no longer smell anything,” Charlie said, sniffing. “I can't see William anywhere. Should we just stop and pretend to be working? That might look less conspicuous.”
“Good idea.”
But the moment they started genuinely wanting to shovel pooh, there was none to be had. They had obviously entered an area where their fellow Ones had already cleaned. Ben started getting anxious; the prince would be turning up any moment.
“Psst – over here!”
The call came from a couple of apprentices whose paddock they were just passing. They were standing near a gate, loading the final bits of pooh onto their cart. The animal was nowhere to be seen.
Ben and Charlie hurried over, entered the paddock and, with grateful smiles, started helping with the shovelling. They made it just in time. A quick glance up revealed three figures walking down the muddy path parallel to the glass gable. Two figures walked in front of the prince, a man and a woman, both with four green diamonds over their shoulders, but it was the man behind them who Ben was drawn to. Prince Robert was tall and well built, with dark hair and peculiar gold-flecked eyes. He wore a deep red cloak emblazoned with the Royal Institute of Magic emblem. For the first time, Ben noticed the diamonds on the prince's shoulder. He had five, one of each colour representing the departments in the Institute. This was the first time Ben had seen Robert genuinely looking like a prince, and it was an impressive sight.
“Stop staring,” one of the apprentices whispered in his ear.
Ben quickly lowered his eyes, but not before the prince turned and looked his way. There was a moment, no more than a second, where they locked gazes. Ben's heart jumped. Should he bow? The prince gave the most subtle of nods. It was all over in a heartbeat, as the prince and his two Spellswords passed them by and were soon out of sight.
“That was crazy!”
Ben turned to the apprentices who had saved them. It was Billy and Hans, the two scrawny boys William had chided for slacking off. Billy was the one who had spoken and was looking at him with something approaching awe.
“The prince looked at you! I've never seen him look at an apprentice before, let alone recognise that we exist.”
Ben turned back to where he had last seen the prince, thoughtful. He remembered Natalie's words when she had described the prince. “Instead of leading the Institute, he spends his time travelling to the most obscure places in the Unseen Kingdoms. It was the same with his father; in fact, the last three commanders have all died while travelling. They become obsessed with it.”
Ben hadn't thought much about Natalie's comments until he had been thrown into a memory spell left by his parents, where he saw his ancestor Michael entrusted with Elizabeth's sword and re-uniting her Armour. But that wasn't all – the Queen had issued a firm warning about her son. “If Henry has even the slightest inkling of the Armour's whereabouts, he will go mad searching for it. Should he don the Armour, the consequences would be dire.”
Which begged the question: was Prince Robert looking for the Armour? Was that why he had been searching for Ben's parents?
— Chapter Thirteen —
Apprenticeship Training
“There are other departments besides Spellsword, Ben,” Charlie said.
They had changed into their spare clothes and went straight to lunch, where they had far too much to eat. They were letting it digest by relaxing in the common room – a place full of squishy armchairs, low-lying tables, and a thick red carpet Ben longed to sink his feet into. In the corner was a snack bar, manned by an apprentice, serving hot drinks and freshly baked treats. The smell filled the room and, despite Ben's full stomach, he had to use considerable willpower not to grab a sticky bun. There were others reading, chatting, and Ben even spotted two playing Captains of Magic, the multi-tiered chess-like game Charlie had tried at the hotel a few weeks ago.
“Charlie is right, Ben,” Natalie said. “I think it might be a good idea to try out each department before racing ahead in just one.”
“We're not racing ahead,” Ben said firmly. The three of them formed a small triangle of chairs, with a table in the middle. Charlie and Natalie had their handbooks open on their laps. “I just think we should do the practical step that accompanies the theory before moving on to a different department. That way we can practise what we learned, else we might forget it.”
That certainly wouldn't be the case with Charlie, who rarely forgot anything. The Spellsword training involved the least theory and Ben hadn't found the first theory test easy. He had passed, with 88% (Charlie got 100%), but wasn't looking forward to future tests.
“Fine,” Charlie said, slapping his handbook shut. “But tomorrow I'm choosing the next department to study.”
“Let me guess – something boring?”
“Scholar.”
“What a surprise,” Ben said.
“The Department of Scholars isn't as bad as it sounds,” Natalie said. “There's a lot of really interesting knowledge that will help you better understand the Unseen Kingdoms.”
“Like history,” Charlie said, pointing a chubby finger on the cover of his book. His eyes had lit up. “There's some incredible stuff about what really happened during the Spanish Armada. You know the Institute helped us win?”
“Really?” Ben, who hated history at school, suddenly had a feeling it would be different here. But he was determined to hold his ground. “No, we do the Spellsword training practical first.”
Charlie reluctantly agreed.
“I need to get going,” Natalie said, glancing at her watch. “Let's meet up again at 3pm.”
As Ben climbed the stairs with a slightly downbeat Charlie, the excitement started building. Would they
get their own spellshooters? Visions of loading it up with some serious spells and fighting mock battles with spell-generated bad guys filled his head all the way through the department's double doors and along the hallway to a door marked “Spell Training”.
“Here we go,” Ben said, rubbing his hands.
“Let's just hope I don't embarrass myself too much,” Charlie said, rubbing a hand on his forehead.
The room was exactly as Ben remembered. The high ceilings gave the room a feeling of space. There was a large table, chest high, and a few apprentices were sat on stools, fiddling with their spellshooters. All the action was to their right. A series of long, narrow rooms were partitioned by glass walls so that you could see through each one. At one end of each room was a circular target, and at the other was one or two apprentices, taking turns to shoot spells at it. There were balls of fire, ice-like spears and many other spells of different elements and shapes, all bombarding the targets with varying degrees of effectiveness.
“Ahah, Ben Greenwood! I've been expecting you,” a booming voice said. “And Charlie Hamburger!”
“Hornberger,” Charlie said, with a resigned voice that indicated that was not the first time his name had been pronounced wrong.
James McFadden was just as imposing as Ben remembered. He must have been at least six and a half feet tall, with shoulder-length blond hair and shoulders so broad they could probably carry a small car.
“I bet you're anxious to get going, eh?” James said, slapping both of them on the shoulder; Charlie almost fell over. James led them to another door Ben hadn't noticed, on the opposite side of the room.
“Keep working, everyone! Don't think I can't see you just because I'm not in the room,” James shouted at his students, as they passed through the door.
The room was a pale imitation of the one they had just left. It was far smaller, with five small targets at one end that Ben could reach with a moderate throw. At the other end was a shelf with five drawers, labelled one to five. In each one were mounds of spell pellets.
“Hi, guys!”
Jimmy's clothes were dirty, with several brown stains that looked as though they had been vigorously scrubbed without success. Clearly he had forgotten to bring spare clothes, but this did nothing to dampen his cheerful demeanour. There were two brown-haired girls next to him who were trying to stand as far away as possible and Ben spotted them waving their hands in front of their noses. When they spotted Charlie and Ben, they gave a cheerful wave and introduced themselves as Emma and Debbie. Ben felt Emma's eyes linger on him a little longer than necessary.
All three had red pellets in their hands. Jimmy closed an eye, stuck out his tongue and, with a back swing that looked like a baseball player, threw his pellet at the dartboard. It missed entirely and bounced harmlessly onto the floor.
“That was hopeless, even for you, Jimmy,” James said, hands on hips. “You're distracted. Concentrate!” He said the last word so loud that Jimmy's feet left the ground.
The two girls at the end of the room fared better. They threw their pellets with swings that instantly told Ben they were both sporty. Both hit the target, and both pellets exploded in little puffs of flame.
“Good, good!” James said, nodding. “How many in a row?”
One girl held up two fingers; the other, three.
“Get to five and you can progress to the next grade. Keep going!”
Ben watched with a mixture of fascination and disappointment. There was no spellshooter in sight. Charlie, though, was looking a little brighter.
“You're not ready for them, not by a long shot,” James said, with a chuckle, when Ben asked the question. “You need to master these spells first and show you have what it takes to command a spellshooter.”
“What about the spells in the shop?” Ben asked. “Charlie and I both threw those.”
“Pah,” James said, scrunching his face and waving a gigantic dismissive hand. “Those things are designed to work for all but the weakest minds.” He walked over, and pulled a small red spell from a shelf that was clearly labelled “One”. It was tiny, and James' fingers looked like they would squash it any moment.
“This is your first test. There are five difficulties of spells you will need to master. When you can make the most difficult one explode, you will move on to the spellshooter.”
James threw it, without even looking. It hit the middle of the target and burst into flames. James casually walked over and picked up another one.
“There are three factors to getting any spell to cast: willpower, concentration and vision, in that order of importance. You must will the spell to do as you command. You must be able to concentrate, and block out any exterior distractions – not easy when you might have a screaming, man-eating troll bearing down on you. Finally, you must be able to envision what you want the spell to do. With this little spell, you simply want it to explode into a little flame when it comes into contact with something.”
Ben's disappointment at not getting hold of a spellshooter had disappeared. He was looking at the shelf of spells, itching to get his hands on one and launch it at one of the targets. But James had other ideas and, barring a handful of times when he excused himself to check on the other room, he spent the next half an hour lecturing them on exactly what did and did not constitute willpower, concentration and vision, until Ben felt he could recite every definition of each word. When that was done, James spent another fifteen minutes telling them how to handle the spell (“Do not squash it; the magic could leak out and it would become worthless”) and even how to throw it (“If you spin the spell, it could lose its potency and perform in unexpected ways”).
“I think you're ready to give it a go,” James said, rubbing his huge hands together. “I've only given you a basic overview, but it should be enough to get started on the first spell.”
James had them stand opposite the two remaining targets, and placed a spell each in their hands, with surprising delicacy.
“Your first spell,” James said, with a solemn nod. “An important moment in any apprentice’s journey. The question is – will you be the first to successfully cast a spell on their first go?”
“Nobody has done it before?” Ben asked, holding the little spell up to his face.
“It takes, on average, two dozen attempts before you get one to cast,” James said. He stood back and folded his arms. “I will be counting for both of you.”
Ben felt a little rush of adrenaline. Jimmy had stopped throwing, and even the two girls, Emma and Debbie, had paused, to watch. James gave them a frown, but didn't tell them to return to practice.
The small pellet weighed more than he expected, enough to give Ben confidence that he could throw it a good distance. The target was no more than thirty feet away, a series of red and white concentric circles, standing just in front of the wall. Willpower. Confidence. Vision. James' booming voice kept running round his head, making it difficult to clear his mind. He could feel eyes on him and he had the sudden urge to look up. Little noises like James' annoying nasal breathing and occasional sniffs suddenly seemed difficult to ignore. What had seemed like the simple task of hitting a large dartboard with a pellet suddenly became infinitely more difficult. Concentrate! Vision. That was easy, at least. He wanted the spell to burst into flames in the middle of the target. Ben positioned himself in line with the target. He raised his arm, and threw, his whole body following through like a tennis player. The little red spell flew forwards and just missed the bull’s-eye. There was a tiny flashing glow and, for just a moment, Ben thought it was going to ignite. But instead it bounced off the target and hit the floor. He stared at the pellet on the floor with a mixture of disappointment and frustration, his confidence deflating like a popped balloon.
“Very good!” James said, breaking the silence, and clapping. Jimmy joined in enthusiastically, and the two girls gave him admiring looks before turning back to continue their training.
“Really?” Ben said, lifting his head. �
�It looked a bit pathetic to me.”
“Not at all. You achieved a minor glow on your first attempt. That’s rare – very rare. Your willpower is excellent and there was nothing wrong with your vision. But your concentration needs work. Go and get another spell.” James turned to Charlie. “Right, your turn. Remember, don't worry about throwing it as hard as you can. That isn't important.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes, and Ben saw a steely determination that few people knew existed. He threw the pellet; it hit the outer rim and bounced harmlessly away.
Charlie smiled brightly. “I'm quite pleased with that. Did you see me hit the target?”
“I've seen worse first efforts,” James said, glancing briefly at Jimmy. “Your concentration was good, but you need to work on your willpower. Believe that you can make the spell cast and it will.”
Ben hurried over to pick up his spell and get back into position. He was determined to make it cast second time. Has anyone ever managed that? he wondered. Ben took a deep breath, to relax his body. He wound his arm back, his eyes fixed on the bull’s-eye. A loud cough echoed in the small room just as Ben was swinging through. He jerked and the spell hit the target just to the right of the bull’s-eye. It glowed again, brighter this time, before bouncing to the floor.
Ben turned angrily, assuming it was Jimmy. But someone else had entered the room, leaning casually against the door frame with his legs crossed.
“I'm sorry, did I distract you?” Joshua asked with a smirk. “I had something in my throat.”
Ben was furious. He made a move for the door, but a huge hand clamped down on his shoulder.
“I'm coming over to inspect your snow storm spell in a minute,” James said, staring hard at Joshua. “I expect to see a vast improvement.”
Ben was pleased to see the smirk wiped off Joshua's face and he turned to go.
“Wait,” James ordered, and Joshua turned round. “I want you to watch Ben's next attempt.”
