Faculty of Fire (4 page)

“Hi there, Liz,” I said, trying to hide my annoyance.

“How are you? Have you already taken the test?”

Chas ran one finger across his throat to indicate that it was time to wind things up and get out of there.

“I’m just about to …” I began

“Well, good luck, I’ve got to be off. I’ll introduce you to Angel later – he’s my new … friend, he passed the tests today, so come to the Gold Half Moon this evening, we’re going to celebrate the auspicious event there.”

She turned away and ducked into the crowd, leaving me with my mouth hanging open and a phrase half-spoken.

“That’s the way she’s always treated you,” Chas said sympathetically.

“Oh, not always,” I tried to object.

“Always, always, you just didn’t notice it before.”

Well thanks. Today is obviously my day for compliments.

The two sisters started giggling repulsively again.

“But he’s already found himself a new girl,” one of them said – maybe Flo, but then who could tell?

Chas gazed at me in amazement again. It looked like he was going to spend the whole day being amazed.

My aunt, who had so far maintained a tactful silence, shook her head.

“Liz is a very worthy girl from a very worthy family. And you Zach, are still too young and stupid to realise that.” My aunt nodded to the two girls. “Well, we’ll be getting on, we won’t delay you. I’ll see you this evening, lads, good luck to you.”

Somehow my aunt’s voice didn’t sound particularly optimistic.

She darted in through the gates, pulling the twins after her…I was about to dash after them, but Chas held me back by the shoulder, and the gates closed in front of my nose.

“Where are you off to? The others will be here in a minute, then we’ll all go in together with the next group. And what’s this about a new girl?” he asked, winking at me. I blushed again. Why couldn’t they leave me alone?

“Don’t listen to their nonsense,” I said, trying to brush him off, and then exclaimed happily: “Here come the others now!”

My voice probably sounded too happy. But I can’t help it, I don’t like conversations about girls. Girls are the most terrifying creatures in the world, apart from dragons, if they actually exist (I mean dragons).

There were the lads from our School of the Art walking towards us. All tall and muscular types. Alongside them I cut a rather poor figure. I’m not actually short, and I’m not really skinny either, but they make me look really small. There’s nothing I can do about it, it’s just the way I was born. But at the School I was always on equal terms with them and I could match them in the Art … that is, until they started drawing on their inner resources. When it came to that, Chas and I clearly lagged behind the others, mostly because we hadn’t been studying for that long.

“The Art” … what a lot of meaning that simple phrase contains. As much as there is in the phrase “the Craft”. The Art is a technique that allows you to control your own body so that you can fight and survive in any circumstances. And outside the city you needed to know how to survive. True, I’ve never been outside the city and I hoped I never would, but everybody said it was really dangerous out there. Apart from that, the Schools of the Art taught people techniques for working with energy, so that in time you could learn to do certain things, like levitate or fire energy bolts … but that stage only came after thirty or forty years of intense training …

I was the youngest student in the Central School of the Art, and I couldn’t expect to achieve anything especially brilliant in the next ten years, but overall I felt rather well prepared both physically and mentally, although Chas was way ahead of me.

“Well lads, are you ready to take this kid’s test?” I joked as soon as they reached us.

They nodded to me without saying anything, then turned away and stood in line outside the closed gates. They seemed too tense somehow.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked Chas in surprise.

“Ah, of course, you don’t know … The point is, people who study the Art don’t have much aptitude for the Craft. That is, at first they have the same as everyone else, but in time the Art blunts the ability for the Craft, or rather, it doesn’t blunt it, it directs it into a different channel. The Craftsmen mostly direct energy outwards, while the Artists direct it inwards, into themselves. Get it?”

I got it, all right, but why were they acting so sullen? If you know you won’t be able to get into the Academy, why study the Art?

I’m lying in my teeth – I didn’t understand a thing, but I really don’t feel like going into details. Inwards, outwards … who needed all that? In a School of the Art they taught you how to fight, in the Academy they taught you all sorts of magical tricks. Why complicate things?

Chas sighed.

“As usual, you haven’t understood everything properly, if you’ve actually understood anything at all. They can get into the Academy, and it’s happened quite a few times, it’s just that they’ll have to concentrate all their effort and spend all their time learning how to use their abilities differently than in the Art.”

“There’s always something new to learn, but I wonder why nobody ever told me this before?”

“It makes no difference to you, or me. We haven’t studied the Art enough to get into the habit of using our abilities in way. We really still don’t know how to use them at all … You know that after a while in a School of the Art they start teaching you to work with energy. Well the ways you work with energy in the Art and the Craft are too … different. But that doesn’t concern you and me, because we haven’t been taught anything like that yet. We’re just beginners …”

Well, who would ever have guessed? I remembered him throwing hefty guys who had been studying twice as long as us all over the place … but then, I must admit, that was only if they didn’t use their skill in working with energy …

“So don’t go getting any foolish ideas into your head. Let’s go and get into the Academy, and this evening we’ll celebrate.”

Scene 2

When the gates opened and the previous group of “testees” emerged, Chas and I quickly slipped through into the yard of the Academy. This was where the first, simplest and most important stage of the testing took place.

While the yard was empty, I was able to take a calm look around.

The entire surface of the yard of the Academy was laid out with designs in stones brought from every corner of the Empire (I had acquired this information from Chas). There were incredibly huge sapphires, and diamonds, and simple stones like gravel – they were all represented in this immense mosaic. And if you looked at the yard from the height of a bird in flight, or from the windows of the Academy, it was clear immediately that the different patterns came together to form a single symbol known to the entire world – the symbol of the Craft. This symbol was shown on all the items made within the Academy. And although similar designs were used by many amateur “Craftsmen”, the symbol itself was regarded as the exclusive property of the Academy, where all the newest designs were developed and the finest technomagical products – items that used the energy of “mags” – were produced.

The symbol represented a gold dragon curled into the letter “R” set in a silver circle. Why exactly it’s a gold dragon, I didn’t know, but I thought it was connected with some legend or other that I hadn’t heard since I was a little child. Of course, I’d completely forgotten it, since I preferred more plausible literature to fairytales.

While we stood there looking around, quite a lot of people gathered in the yard. Only there wasn’t the same hubbub and crush as on the square outside the entrance to the Academy. No. The atmosphere in here was completely different, and it was dominated by a solemn spirit of acceptance. Everyone who found himself in the yard froze (just as we had a minute earlier) as they realised they had finally reached the place where people’s destinies were decided.

We loitered at the entrance for a little while as we gathered our wits, then walked to the centre of the yard, where our group of testees was assembling at a respectful distance around Craftsmen in red livery, Higher Craftsmen in grey livery (the first I’d ever seen) and senior pupils in blue livery. The people were precisely assembling, not jostling as they had on the outside, but gathering together into small groups, maintaining their distance and not crowding or shoving.

We also stopped not far from the “enrolment commission”, that is, the Craftsmen in their various liveries, and waited. Silence fell. Everyone froze in anticipation.

After less than a couple of minutes, we were addressed by a calm male voice.

“Good day, ladies and gentlemen. You are present at the first stage of the enrolment. For those who do not know what that is, let me explain. At this stage the ability for working with energy that each one of you possesses is determined. It’s a matter of who was lucky when mother nature was handing out her gifts …”

I turned my head this way and that to see where the voice was coming from. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, but of course that couldn’t be right.

“Don’t waste your time,” Chas whispered to me when he saw my state of confusion. “You won’t find any devices. That’s the genuine Craft, it doesn’t require any props. Just a Craftsman and a few mags.”

I listened carefully and was astonished to realise that the voice wasn’t loud at all, it just sounded close, as if the person talking was standing right beside me. In addition, the voice sounded lifeless somehow. I don’t why I got that impression, there was just something not right about it … but the way it spread right across the entire yard was fantastic. What an effect! If only I could learn to listen to music like that or, even better, play like that at concerts. It was fabulous! And no musicales or other devices at all. It was better than fabulous – it was a dream.

Meanwhile the strange voice continued, “It’s quite simple. Each of you will look around. If you notice something unusual or strange, then immediately move towards it. To make this clearer for you, let me explain – it looks like a prism suspended in the air. If you see it, that still doesn’t mean that you have passed the test. You will have to mould the bundle of magic into a solid field of a particular colour through an effort of thought. Imagine clearly to yourself how the colours start to move, and you will be successful. A consolidated field of one colour or another will mean that you have enough ability to take subsequent tests, and its colour will indicate an affinity for a specific sphere of the ether. If you fail to see anything or were unable to assemble the puzzle completely, you will have to try your luck the next time round.”

I had been told something similar hundreds of times. Now everybody would start looking around, trying to see something unusual. After ten minutes, those who had seen what they were supposed to see would be standing still on the spot, staring intently into empty space. Every prism was tuned to the wavelength of the first person to spot it, and apart from that testee, no one would be able to see the puzzle until it had been assembled. When some lucky individual assembled his puzzle, one of the ubiquitous Craftsmen would be there beside him (they could certainly see all the prisms on the square).

According to Chas, the prism had only four sides (who would ever have thought it?) with an appalling jumble of mags taken from the various spheres on each of them. There are only four basic spheres: fire, water, air and earth. Each represents its own element, and everything is arranged so that only someone with a certain level of affinity for a particular sphere can pick out the mags of its colour and move them to one of the planes of the prism. When the Great Craftsman finished speaking, the puzzles would start working and every testee with sufficient ability would immediately see his or her own prism. As a rule, there were usually quite a lot of them, but only a few would be able to separate out one of the spheres completely.

The final phrase had barely died away when a fantastic scene broke out in the yard. People started darting from corner to corner, straining their eyes to make out something in the air. In all honesty, everyone knew that if they hadn’t seen their own puzzle after a minute, there was no point in searching any more … but who could easily admit that his dreams had collapsed?

Chas and I looked at each other and spontaneously set off round the yard in opposite directions. We walked unhurriedly, looking around and trying to spot a magical prism. From time to time someone shoved us, and we could have been trampled many times, but it’s not that easy to knock down a man who studies the Art, even if – as in my case – he has only been studying it for five years.

Suddenly Chas stopped and started staring at a spot three yards above the ground with his eyes slightly unfocused. It looked like he’d already found his prism, and all I could do was wish him good luck.

I wandered on round the yard for a little while, but after a couple of minutes I had to accept that I wasn’t going to see any puzzle. A pity, it could have been really entertaining.

I stopped for a second to switch on the musicale, and glanced round the yard one last time. Almost everybody had already gathered at the gates, apart from the solitary figures of the fortunate individuals who were puzzling over their own magical prisms and, of course, the groups of Craftsmen carefully following the efforts of the testees. I lost sight of Chas, and after I switched on the musicale, I set off towards the gates with bored guards standing at each side.