by Kailin Gow
“Ha, puny human!” the giant bellowed. “Your magic is weak. I will-”
Wirt didn’t get to find out what it would do, because at that moment, half the ceiling collapsed on top of the creature in a shower of stone and dust. The giant fell to the ground, pinned under and howling with pain.
“I’ll kill you,” it promised. “I’ll eat your bones and render you down for soup!”
Roland stepped forward then, rolling up his sleeves. The black lines crawled across his skin almost like tattoos, though Wirt knew from having shared a room with him for weeks that he had no such thing.
“We should kill it before it gets up,” Roland said.
“It’s not going to get up, is it?” Spencer asked, looking worried.
As if in answer to that, the giant shifted, and the pile of rubble shifted with it. For the moment at least, it seemed that the creature was still pinned, but it was surely just a matter of time before it broke free.
“We should kill it,” Roland repeated, raising his arms.
Wirt moved in front of the other boy. “We aren’t killing anything.”
“But it wants to eat us.”
“Because we broke into its home,” Wirt pointed out. “Because you wanted to steal its eggs rather than look for the magical ropes.”
“Ropes?” The giant squirmed under the rubble. “There aren’t any ropes here. So you will be devoured for nothing!”
For nothing. All this trouble, and it was a dead end. Had Roland known that before he came this way? Of course he had. His conversation with the box last night proved that. And now Alana had been hurt for it.
“Well, I’m not letting this be for nothing,” Roland declared, and made for the pile of golden eggs once more. Wirt had finally had enough. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, whispered the words to a transportation spell, and jumped them both back to their room in the academy.
“What? Wirt, what did you do? You had no right-”
Wirt wasn’t listening. Instead, he jumped straight back to the giant’s home. He grabbed Spencer next, dropping him in the solarium before going back for Alana. Where should he take her? As Wirt tried to work it out, the giant shifted again, rubble starting to peel off it.
“I will find you,” it promised. “I will sniff you out and-”
“And when you do, I will bring more than a ceiling down on you,” Wirt promised. He wasn’t sure where the words came from but he knew that they were true even as he said them. This creature had hurt Alana. “We came into your home when we shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry for that, but if you try to follow me or hurt my friends, I swear it won’t be me who dies.”
With that, Wirt put a hand on Alana’s shoulder and jumped the pair of them to Ms. Lake’s office. There was a shielding spell around it, but Wirt cut through that with barely a thought about it. Thankfully, the teacher was in.
“Wirt, what do you think you’re doing, transporting yourself in here when there’s a perfectly good door you could… what happened to Alana?”
“A giant,” Wirt explained. “Please, Ms. Lake, there’s no time.”
Ms. Lake seemed to agree, because she took one closer look at Alana and hurried off to fetch Ms. Genovia the transmutation teacher. The strange looking woman with her fragments of animal features knelt beside Alana, using transmutation spells to undo the damage to Alana’s body. Even so, it was long minutes before Alana’s eyes flickered open.
“W…what? Ms. Genovia? Ms. Lake? What am I doing here?”
She started to stand, but then stumbled back, wincing.
“Easy there girl,” Ms. Genovia said. “I’ve healed some of the damage, but you had broken bones there, and it’s always best if you heal the last parts of those yourself. You certainly won’t be doing anything strenuous for a week or two.”
“But I can’t… the tests.”
“The tests will just have to wait,” Ms. Lake said, helping Alana to a chair.
Ms. Genovia spent a little time checking that Alana didn’t have any unexpected pain, and then declared that the girl was as fit as could be expected, considering the amount of damage she had just suffered. After that, the transmutations teacher took her leave, saying something about a cauldron full of frogs on the boil.
Ms. Lake waited until she was gone before turning back to Wirt and Alana. “Now, is one of you going to explain to me what happened here? What was that you were saying about a giant, Wirt?”
“Um…” Wirt wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell a teacher the whole story. Not when the four of them had clearly been in the wrong, breaking in like that.
“Wirt.” Ms. Lake’s tone had a warning.
So Wirt told her the whole thing, or at least the parts of it that he thought applied. He left out what he’d heard Roland saying the previous night, saying instead that Roland just seemed to have an idea where the ropes were, and then that he got distracted by the thought of the golden eggs.
Ms. Lake nodded sadly. “That can happen. And then Alana, I take it you got in the giant’s way?”
Alana nodded. “I just thought that if we all stopped to talk-”
Ms. Lake shook her head. “There’s probably a lesson in that somewhere. As nice as it would be if everyone wanted to sort their problems out as sensibly as you, dear, it doesn’t always work that way.”
Alana bit her lip and nodded. It seemed to be good enough for Ms. Lake.
“Obviously, I can’t condone what happened up there,” the teacher said. “Trying to steal the eggs was wrong of Roland. But I guess you all had a good reason to believe the ropes might be there.” She cocked her head to the side. “Hmm… it seems that we actually have news on that front. Come with me.”
Ms. Lake didn’t wait for Wirt and Alana to follow, but instead merely transported them up to the solarium, where the second year students were assembled. She left Wirt and Alana in the crowd as she walked to the front, where the headmaster was standing with a group that included the red-haired boy from the attempts to find Priscilla: Thomas.
“I can’t believe that you told Ms. Lake about Roland wanting the eggs,” Alana whispered to Wirt, sitting down on a nearby plant.
“Why not? He did want to steal from there.”
“I’m sure there was a better explanation,” Alana insisted. “If we had actually asked Roland, maybe he would have had an answer.”
Wirt shook his head. “You didn’t see him, Alana. He wanted to kill that giant in cold blood.”
“You’re right, Wirt.” Alana shook her head. “I didn’t see him do that. And I know you don’t like him much, but saying that kind of thing is just going too far.”
“You think I’m making this up?”
Wirt didn’t get an answer to that, because Ender Paine chose that moment to silence the throng of students. In that silence, Wirt spotted Spencer and Roland standing off towards the back. Neither looked happy.
“It seems that we have a winner in our quest to recover the magical ropes taken from the school’s collection,” the headmaster said. “Step forward, Thomas.”
The red-haired boy moved forward a little, looking as though he expected a standing ovation. He mostly got resentful looks from the other students.
“Thomas here,” Ender Paine patted the boy on the shoulder, “correctly identified that the ropes were hidden in the castle of a giant, connected to the school via a beanstalk. He retrieved them and has returned them to the school’s keeping.”
Wirt winced at those words. The ropes had been there. So Roland’s attempt to grab the eggs was just him being greedy, trying to get a valuable object as well as the credit for returning the ropes. Only they had come away empty-handed, while Thomas got the credit. Wirt found himself wondering how Thomas had worked it out. For all Wirt knew, the other boy had simply followed them, though he suspected that it would probably be far more complicated, involving some kind of spell.
It didn’t really matter either way. What mattered was that the other boy had gotten to the objects of the q
uest faster than Wirt and the others. Meaning that he would now get full marks for finding the ropes, while they got nothing. Well, Wirt assumed that it would be full marks. It depended on whether Roland would have left all the ropes there for the boy to find, or whether he might have held one back. Wirt didn’t know.
He did know, however, that it was time for him to finally tell someone exactly what he knew about what Roland was up to. Alana was out. She had proved that with her reaction to the news that Roland had wanted to kill the giant. Ms. Lake would want proof, while the headmaster would probably think that a student involved in some kind of dark plot merely showed initiative. That left one person who would undoubtedly believe anything bad Wirt had to say about Roland.
It was time to talk to Spencer.
Chapter 18
Since they’d gone off to the giant’s home without Wirt getting breakfast, he went down with Spencer to the school cafeteria for lunch. Thankfully, the nymphs seemed to be in a good mood with him, producing a pie full of summer fruits. Unfortunately, given what Wirt had to tell Spencer, he wasn’t sure that he had much appetite.
“Spencer,” he said, once they were safely at a table, “I think that Roland isn’t everything he seems.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that,” Spencer pointed out. “I mean, he comes in here, goes after Alana, and now he’s stupid enough to try to grab golden eggs when he should have been looking for the magical ropes.”
Wirt shook his head. “That’s just it, Spencer. I don’t think it was just him being stupid. And it’s more than him just being unpleasant.”
“Isn’t that bad enough?”
“Not compared to this,” Wirt insisted, “I think that Roland is actually plotting something worse.” Wirt took a breath and started to explain. “I’ve caught him a couple of times now talking to this… thing in a box. Explaining how well their plan was going. Explaining how they had something big planned for the middle of the term.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Spencer said, but Wirt could tell he was only trying to keep from getting too worked up by it.
“Really? I know he had something to do with the ropes disappearing. Last night, he was talking to that box of his about putting them back somewhere they could easily be found.”
“So he’s trying to cheat his way through the tests?” Spencer sounded a little more angry at that, but he still obviously hadn’t grasped the full implications.
Wirt shook his head again. “He’d already used the ropes for something, so I think he was just trying to cover his tracks. And I think leaving them in the giant’s castle was to give him a legitimate excuse to go after the eggs. I mean, if he had come back with some, no one would have made him give them back, would they?”
Spencer paled at that, and Wirt knew that his friend had begun to see just how dangerous Roland was.
“So all the danger we were in… Alana getting hurt…”
“Wasn’t an accident,” Wirt said. “It was all part of whatever game Roland is playing. Even him making Alana like him is part of it, I think. He said something to his box about getting close to a girl as part of his plan.”
“So that isn’t even real?” Spencer looked calm, but Wirt had the feeling that it was that tense, still calm that came before a storm. “Alana likes him so much, she’s so totally infatuated with him, and it’s all just part of some plan on his part?”
Wirt nodded. He didn’t know what to say. Perhaps he should have told someone all this far earlier. Perhaps if he had, Alana wouldn’t have been hurt, and none of this would have happened with Roland.
“I’m sorry, Spencer. I should have told you.”
“No, it isn’t your fault. It’s… it’s his.”
Spencer stood up as he said it, and Wirt realized a fraction of a second too late that he was staring across the cafeteria with a determined expression. By the time Wirt had looked around, spotted Roland standing in line by the serving hatch and turned back to Spencer, his friend was already up and moving, striding across the cafeteria floor.
Roland saw him coming, but obviously didn’t read Spencer’s expression very well, because he was his usual taunting self.
“Spencer. You’ll have to do some extra work to catch up, not getting any marks in that last-”
The punch from Spencer was far better than Wirt might have believed he could throw, catching Roland cleanly on the jaw before he piled in, bearing the other boy to the ground in a tangle of limbs, lashing out wildly. Roland fought back, trying to wrestle his way to the top while throwing punches of his own, and when Wirt tried to pull the two of them apart, he caught a stray fist right in the eye. It said a lot about the chaotic scramble that he couldn’t even tell which of the two had thrown it.
Things went rapidly downhill from there, as more students tried to help break up the brawl, only to be dragged into it. It seemed that the students of the Alchemists Academy liked nothing so much as a good fight, and they were only too happy to join in. Maybe it was just the stress of the last few weeks of tests letting itself out in one huge explosion of action, but the fight sucked in student after student, until practically everyone seemed to be involved.
The strange thing though was that none of them used magic. Wirt would have thought that, with almost all of them able to manipulate the elements, or transform one another into things, there would have been spells flying in every direction. Somehow though, it was only fists, though that was bad enough, when he was caught near the center of the sudden outbreak of violence.
“Stop this at once!”
Ms. Burns’ voice cut through the chaos, and the amazing thing was that it did stop, both instantly and completely. Students looked around in confusion, looking at the people they were fighting with the slightly embarrassed expressions of people who weren’t quite sure why they were doing it.
“Now, does somebody want to tell me what happened?” the teacher demanded. “Come on, who started this?”
All the eyes in the room turned to Spencer and Roland. Oh, and to Wirt, which Wirt felt was exceptionally unfair. Particularly given what Ms. Burns said next.
“Spencer, Roland, Wirt. To the headmaster’s office. Now.”
******
Ender Paine kept them waiting, of course, leaving them sitting on those hard benches outside his office, under the scrutiny of those vile-looking statues. Wirt, Spencer and Roland occupied different benches, generally not looking at one another, and certainly not talking. Wirt could feel the beginnings of a black eye forming, while both Roland and Spencer sported bruises.
They sat there for what felt like an eternity before the door to the headmaster’s office swung open and they found themselves summoned inside. Ender Paine was waiting for them, sitting behind his desk and gazing at the three of them calmly as they stood before him.
“Would one of you care to explain what happened to turn part of my school into such chaos?”
Wirt thought about explaining everything, up to and including what he had heard from Roland, but he’d had time to think, on the benches. That wasn’t the way to deal with this.
“Well then,” the headmaster continued, “would you like to suggest to me why I shouldn’t trap each of you in an inter-dimensional space and keep you there for the safety of my remaining pupils?”
It was Roland who spoke up. “Mostly, headmaster, because that would mean the school no longer received my fees.”
Wirt waited for the headmaster to explode at that, or to turn Roland to stone, or something equally unpleasant. For a moment, it seemed that the room itself darkened, and power rushed in until Wirt could feel the hairs on his arms standing up. He wanted desperately to take a step back, but his feet appeared to be stuck to the carpet. Ender Paine stood, dark fire dancing between his fingers.
Then he smiled. “True. And also true of young Spencer, of course. As for Wirt here… well, I am sure you would only escape. I really do hope that this isn’t going to be a repeat of what happened when your fathers
were here.”
Wirt didn’t understand, and it seemed that some of his confusion must have shown on his face, because Ender Paine raised a hand and the dark fire he had been holding leapt from it to form a flat surface, not unlike Priscilla’s mirror.
In it, Wirt saw two figures who looked enough like Spencer and Roland that Wirt knew they had to be their fathers when they were their age. Spencer’s father was holding a ball. Except that, as he spun it between his hands, Wirt saw that it wasn’t just any ball. It was a quantum ball, like the one Roland kept beneath his bed, the one that could disintegrate a target once it was at full speed.
It was at full speed in the image Ender Paine showed them, glowing with all the weird colors of its twisted rainbow at the moment the young Mr. Bentley threw the ball at the boy who looked like Roland. Only it didn’t hit him. It should have. It was heading straight for him. Yet at the last second, a second form threw itself in front of Mr. Black. It was a girl, and Wirt just had time to see that she was very pretty in the instant before she disintegrated completely.
“Ah, Elise,” Ender Paine said. “Such a sweet, innocent, and above all foolish girl. And apparently, the cause of so much trouble. Do I need to show you the part after this, when the young Henry Black tried to murder her killer with magic? Or have we all learned enough for now?”
The headmaster was looking straight at Wirt. Not at the others. At him. Apparently, it was Wirt he wanted to learn whatever lesson he had in mind here. Wirt nodded.
“Good,” Ender Paine said. “Then I am prepared to let this go with only a minimal punishment. Each of you will translate for me a page of the Book of Klaa by this time tomorrow. If it is not on my desk by then, of course, I will think up something suitably unpleasant in terms of your endless torment.”
Spencer raised his hand. “Um… excuse me, Headmaster.”
“Yes boy?”
“Isn’t the Book of Klaa the one that drives those who read it insane?”
“And your point is?” For a moment, the headmaster’s eyes went cold again.
