The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1 (6 page)

Chapter 8

A
s he stood in the hallway in front of the Head’s office, trying to ignore the feeling that the grotesque statues of the school’s governors were staring at him, Wirt wondered for what had to be the several millionth time if this was really such a good idea. It had seemed so simple when he’d discussed it with Alana and Spencer after Ms. Preville’s class. They would each assume the form of someone important in the school, and so they would find out more about what was going on with the chalice. It was obvious that they weren’t being told everything.

Alana had, with a certain amount of glee, ignored Ms. Preville’s warning and used a glamour to turn herself into a copy of Ms. Genovia, complete with large boots for stomping frogs. Spencer had taken a different approach, coming up with an image of King Wilford on the basis that it was hard for people not to tell you things when they thought they were being royally commanded. As for Wirt…

He knocked on the door to Ender Paine’s office, just to be sure that the Head was not in, then pictured him in his mind as he set about constructing the illusion. He just hoped that it would be good enough to fool anyone who showed up unexpectedly. Wirt tried the door, and was almost surprised to find that it opened under his touch. Inside, the office was just as he remembered it, from the book-lined shelves to the table in the middle.

Wirt hoped that, by searching through those bookshelves, he might be able to find something on the chalice. Or maybe he’d find the chalice itself.

What he mostly found were files. Reports, graphs, and memos, scattered across the desk in an order that you probably needed to be a wizard to make any sense of. Some of them showed unmistakable signs of having been chewed by a rabbit. Wirt started to flick through them. At the back of his mind was the thought that, even if there weren’t anything about the chalice, there might still be a note somewhere about him, and exactly what Ender Paine intended for him.

There didn’t seem to be anything like that though. It was, Wirt felt, more than a little disappointing.

On the other hand, some of what was there caught his attention a little. Now, Wirt wouldn’t have reckoned himself the greatest when it came to understanding complex financial information, and at least one of the memos was written in an ugly looking language that tried to squirm out of the way of his eyes anyway, but from what he could see, he got the impression that things were getting difficult for the school. There was at least one file labeled “budget cuts”, while several of the graphs had a definite downward trend to them.

That, though, was not helping Wirt to find the chalice, so he decided to try searching the shelves. Wirt scanned the titles, hoping for clues. They were an eclectic mixture composed of biographies, history, and novels.

Others had what Wirt felt was a more traditional feel to them. They were bound in a number of leathery substances, with titles picked out on the spine in characters that hurt just to look at. In the middle of a cluster of them was a rather simpler looking book, with the words “Home Sweet Home” in place of a title. Wirt reached out for it without thinking.

He blinked, and found himself standing in a huge marble hall that looked like something out of a Roman palace. Pictures and tapestries lined the walls, set in between stone benches, alongside which were a number of small, golden cages. In each sat some kind of bird or small animal, from hamsters to lizards. Wirt found himself comparing Ender Paine to the kind of person who might normally keep so many pets, and found that he just couldn’t get the two images to match.

Then he thought of Ms. Genovia’s transformation spell. With some trepidation, Wirt undid the latch on one of the cage doors, letting a songbird hop out. In a swirl of green smoke, a slender woman wrapped in layers of green silk stood in front of him. Her features were sharper than most people’s, and her ears were every bit as pointed as Ms. Preville’s. Her red hair was close cropped, leaving the main impression of her face as just a pair of piercing green eyes.

“What do you want now, Ender?’

Wirt remembered the glamour disguising him, and wondered what the Head would say at this point. Probably not very much, given his chances of getting a word in edgeways.

“Coming here, time after time, pulling me from my cage at all hours. Is it not enough that you torment me by…hang on, you aren’t Ender, are you?”

Wirt found his wrist snatched and held up for inspection. The glamour on it flickered, and the woman’s eyes narrowed. She snapped a couple of words, and Wirt found himself staring at his own arm again.

“Well, this is unexpected. And dangerous, of course. You really should not be here, child.”

“I’m not a child,” Wirt said.

“Of course you are. And a foolish one too, to come here clothed in such a weak glamour. You need to leave, before Ender catches you and you end up like everyone else who has annoyed him.” She gestured to the other cages. “And this is if you are lucky. How did you even come to be here… Wirt?”

Wirt didn’t bother asking how she knew his name. Instead, he gave the woman a short version of events to date. Since she was already in a position to get him into trouble with the Head, there didn’t seem to be much point in avoiding it.

“I am not in a position to do much, in my cage,” the woman said, “but I do have a piece of advice for you, young Wirt. Beware of Ender Paine.”

Wirt shrugged. “That’s hardly news.”

The woman’s eyes flashed. “Don’t trust your Ms. Lake too much either. She’ll betray you. It’s what she does. No, I don’t expect you to believe me. For now though, you need to leave.”

“And how do I do that?” Wirt asked.

“Like this.”

Wirt found himself standing in Ender Paine’s office once more, which was both a relief and a worry. A relief, because at least he was not talking to strange women in a room full of cages. A worry, because the door to Ender Paine’s office seemed to be opening, and Wirt realized that since he was not covered by his glamour anymore, he was not going to cut a very impressive figure behind the Head’s desk.

Why he reached for Ms. Genovia’s transformation spell rather than another glamour, Wirt couldn’t say. Maybe it was the thought that his first attempt had been so easy to see through, or that things hadn’t gone very well for him in the original lesson. As a result he found himself saying the words to the other spell, and trying to concentrate on the image of the Headmaster.

Wirt just had time to catch a glimpse of Ender Paine stepping into his office just before the world disappeared upwards, perhaps it wouldn’t. Presumably, the Headmaster would have had a better idea than most that the version of him standing in front of him was not the real one, had Wirt succeeded.

As it was, Wirt found himself under the table, with the familiar green feet of a toad spread in front of him. He hopped further under the table, out of sight, as Ender Paine came fully into the room, apparently arguing with someone.

“No Aloea, selling off artifacts is not the way to stabilize the school’s financial position.”

“Something has to be.” Wirt recognized the voice of Ms. Preville, which he considered to be quite a feat considering his current condition. ‘And you won’t even consider it.’

“I won’t consider it because it is foolish, and puts power into hands it shouldn’t be in.”

“Hands other than yours, you mean,” Ms. Preville shot back.

“Be very careful, Aloea.”

“At least tell me that you will consider it.”

“If you felt this way,” Ender Paine said, “you should have made the case for it at the board meeting. Not that it would have helped. You know that our custodian of artifacts would have opposed it.”

“Oppose it? The odds are that she has already started it. That chalice has to have gone somewhere. Really, Ender,” the tone of Ms. Preville’s voice changed abruptly, ‘is there
nothing
I can do to persuade you? I’m sure between us, we could…”

“I think you should leave now, Aloea, unless you have a particular desire to experience life as… I think an alley cat would be appropriate, don’t you?”

Ms. Preville said a word that Wirt suspected teachers weren’t supposed to know, and he heard her opening the door. It occurred to him that, as a toad, he wouldn’t be able to do the same. He hopped after her as quickly as he could. He made it through just before Ms. Preville slammed it after herself. Wirt tried not to think about just how flat it would have made him had he moved a little slower, without a great deal of success.

He sat there panting croakily until the teacher had disappeared down the hall and stepped into the transport tube. Now all he had to do was sit and wait for the spell to wear off…

Except, had that been the version of the spell he had used? Wirt had, with Ender Paine coming in, instinctively said the first version of the spell that came to mind. He had a horrible feeling that it might have been the permanent one. In which case, with no vocal chords to undo it, he was stuck as a toad.

No. He couldn’t be. Could he? He couldn’t really be condemned to a life of hopping about on lily pads, catching flies with his tongue, and keeping a careful eye out for the shape of herons in the air, not after everything he’d been through. There had to be some way of undoing it. Wirt cast his mind back to Ms. Genovia’s class, trying to recall everything she had said, while simultaneously trying to ignore the parts that had involved boots. Hadn’t she joked about having to spend years looking for a princess? At the time, it had seemed like a terrible thing to Wirt. All that effort, all that searching, and when it came to it, even if you did somehow find one, you probably wouldn’t get much further than the castle moat.

He had one slight advantage there though, because Wirt already knew exactly where he was going to find his princess. With a happy croak, he hopped his way into the transport tube.