Zak Turner - A Twist In Time (35 page)

Professor Trell, John, and Jenny sat down on one side of the table, with all five children on the other side.  A sleepy but happy looking Bjarne sat quietly in the middle between Zak and Sophie, with Freya next to her mother, and Tallion next to his father. 

Talk over dinner was easy, with the adult witches and wizards enquiring after and showing great interest in John’s building work, amongst other things.  The children talked amongst themselves about what was happening at the different schools they attended, and what their friends were up to.  The subject of homework came up, with Zak telling Bjarne that he should make the most of hardly having any because when he got to secondary school it would all change! 

The meal itself was, as always, excellent, and the choice of desert was second to none, with a number of favourite magical dishes making a re-appearance.  The ‘Oh my!’ pie was back and went down a treat.

As everyone sat back replete, the dirty dishes faded from view, and were replaced by glasses of warm bramble wine for the adults, self-toasting mallow milkshakes for the children, and plates of Witch Frail’s Fragrant Fudge Fingers, and Harry Hallow’s Honey Snap Squares to nibble. 

Sir Philip soon introduced the subject of Mhonarr Castle, and the boys’ attendance there the following week.  Bella had already spoken with Jenny about it, so it was no surprise to the Turners, and the headmaster took the floor.

He quickly ran through the activities that the first years undertook at wizard school, some of which left the Turners a bit bemused, but he got their agreement that they were happy for Zak to take part in everything.  He then moved onto the arrangements for the week.

Zak and Tallion would leave for Mhonarr Castle on Sunday afternoon at three o’clock, which would allow Zak to play football for the dale that morning, and then have his lunch at home.  They would return on Saturday evening after dinner at the school which would again allow Zak to play football the following Sunday.

“I have just one question that I’d like to ask the boys if I may.  Will that leave you enough time to get your academy homework done?  We can arrange your magical life around the academy but it’s rather more complicated to do it in the other direction.”

It was almost as if the headmaster had been reading their minds!  The two boys glanced at each other and held a quick thought conversation before turning back to him and confirming that they’d probably manage, but might have to postpone some of their magical reading if they ran out of time.

Bjarne had been letting the conversation wash over him as he tried to keep his eyes open, having effectively just spent the entire night reading a couple of books about potions, followed by only a couple of hours sleep in the Tomb, as he now secretly referred to his reading room in the LookOut tower.  His brother’s comment about having to put off some reading because he might not have enough time to do it registered with him though, and the glassy look left his eyes and he became wide awake.

“That’s no problem, Tallion,” said his father.  “You need to keep up with your academy homework first at the moment.”

“Right, so that’s settled then!” exclaimed the headmaster happily, beaming his infectious smile round the room. 

“Oh, just one more thing.  I want you to make the trip by yourselves if you feel up to it boys.  We need to get you both used to porting on your own, and this will be a good opportunity.  Happy?  Splendid!” 

Sir Philip glanced sharply at the headmaster, but got only the merest hint of a serene wink back before the aged wizard continued.

“All that remains is for me to watch you doing a bit of duelling before I leave, maybe in half an hour or so?  With your permission of course Philip!”

“You don’t need to ask my permission Orion, you’re in charge of their education!  For what it’s worth though, permission granted.”

“Excellent!  See you in the duelling room in thirty minutes then boys.  Now Philip, do we have time to review those papers you mentioned in your study?”

No other wizard would ever have dared to suggest to Lord Middleham of the High Wizard Council what to do in his own castle, but it just came naturally to the headmaster!  With only faint smiles of resignation from both Lord and Lady Middleham, the baronet nodded his head, uttered a magnanimous, ‘Of course!’ and stood up from the table.

* * *

“Tallion, Zak, wait!” called out Bjarne, racing after his brothers as they climbed the marble stairs a few minutes later.  “I need to talk to you and show you something.”

The two eleven-year-olds focussed in on Bjarne’s thoughts as they waited for him to catch them up, and were surprised that it all seemed to be about time.

“Have you got a few minutes for me to show you something in the LookOut tower?”

“Yeah, of course!” answered Zak immediately, starting to follow the multiple trains of thought that were running through his adopted brother’s mind.

Bjarne grinned, and headed for the shortcut to the bottom of the tower.  Once they were in the secret passage he spoke again.

“I’ve just solved your ‘running-out-of-time’ problem for your reading!  You’ll easily be able to get through all your homework now, although you’ll have to watch out for getting a bit tired!”

The boys came out of the passage into the room at the bottom of the tower, and didn’t say anymore as they raced up the stairs to the ninth floor.  The exertion of the climb made talking impossible anyway, and even Bjarne’s thoughts became disjointed and hard to follow!

“We need to go in here quickly, there’s no time to lose if you want to get back to the duelling rooms for seven.”

To the consternation of his natural brother, who unlike Zak knew of his father’s prohibition on entering the room, Bjarne plunged his hand down on the ornate handle and swung open the door to Tai Tuie’s Tomb!

Tallion then recalled that the he’d recently walked through the door too!  It was a few weeks earlier when his father had been helping him recover from being hit by the Libra Mortis at Zak’s football match.  For some reason he’d sent him out of the door, and then instantly met him on the other side to take him back in again!  The room had looked like a school dorm then, but now it looked like a small library!

Zak vaguely recognised the room too from the time he’d spent in there with his soul mate, but it was only because he was sharing Tallion’s mind that he worked out
why
he recognised it.

“Bjarne, we’ll get into real trouble for coming in here!  Father said not to!  Ever!”

“Well, if he finds out maybe we will, but that’s really unlikely, unless you tell him!”

“Of course I won’t tell him, but how come he won’t find out?  What if he comes up here while we’re inside?!”

“He won’t.  He can’t.  While we’re in here, time stops outside the door.  It’s a time capsule!  Our lives are now the only lives in the whole world that are moving forward, everything else is frozen!”

“What?  You’re talking nonsense!”

“I’m not!  Honestly!  I found out about it by accident one day because of Uncle Theodore, but I’ve proved it over and over again since.  Time stands still outside this room for as long as you’re inside.  No-one else can come in while we’re in here either, because we’re only in here for a couple of seconds, just while we open and close the door.  So long as no-one is standing in the passage watching, then they can never catch us in here.  I’ve read all about time travel since I worked out what the room does, and it’s fascinating.  It can be really dangerous of course if you mess it up, but this room is absolutely safe.”

“So let me get this straight,” said Zak, comprehension slowly dawning.  “If we stay in here for two hours doing our homework, when we walk back out of the door it’ll still be exactly the same time as when we walked in?”

“Yes!  It’s brilliant!  The gift of time!”

“And we can still get a full night’s sleep then too,” mused Tallion looking around, “so it’s better than using a wakefulness potion!  How do you know how long you’ve been in here though?”

“The grandfather clock.  It always says the correct time when you walk in the door, whatever time you arrive, and then it just clocks up the time that you’re in here.  I got curious one day and went out of the room, which took me back about five hours, and then I opened the door again and the grandfather clock had reset back to the same time as the rest of the castle!” 

“I’ve been using the room now for weeks to let me read without having to stay up all night.  It’s a bit tiring, but so long as I make sure I’m back in my own room by nine p.m.
real
time, then I can still get a good nine or ten hours before morning which seems to get me through the day.  I often have a short kip in here for a few hours too, just to top up!” 

“I’m a bit knackered now though because I’ve already been in here for twelve hours since I got back from school this afternoon, and I only had a couple of hours sleep on the sofa before I came down for dinner.”

Tallion was staring at his brother with a rather incredulous expression on his face which was slowly turning into amusement and understanding.

“So that’s why you’ve been a bit spaced out when we’ve seen you in the evenings in the library?  You’ve been spending hours in here reading!”

“Yeah.  Don’t tell Father I know about this place though, I really need it.  I’ve become totally addicted to it, but I realised at dinner that you two need it too.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t let on, and you’re right, we really need it too!  Fantastic!  Problem solved!”

“Do you think we could bring Steven in here to do his homework too?” asked Zak.  “He’s desperately short of time in his life with all the extra farm work he’s trying to do!”

“I’m sure we could.  The only danger is that Father or Mother will get suspicious about why we keep coming up the LookOut tower!”

“We’ll just have to tell them the truth when they finally ask us!  Right, we need to get going if we’re going to get down to the duelling room for seven, look at the clock, we’ve been in here for twenty minutes already!”

Bjarne was shaking his head with a grin on his face, and it took a few seconds for Zak to work out why.  Then he slapped his hand against his forehead and closed his eyes as he shook his head.  Time outside the room wasn't moving; it was still only six thirty five in the rest of the castle!

* * *

“Right boys, I
do
want to see your duelling skills, but first I need to talk about Mhonarr Castle,” said the now serious faced headmaster, as they gathered at seven o’clock in the duelling room.

“You met Sargas Malchus on your first evening at Mhonarr Castle, and from the account that Arcturus gave me, he showed up in his true colours; not pleasant to behold!  I’ll not beat about the bush Tallion; he wants you dead.  He only wants that because his father wants that, and he won’t do it himself because that would land him in jail.  He’ll bewitch someone else to do it.”

“That gives us, and you, a problem.  I suspect, but simply can’t prove either way, that the bewitching has already happened, and that your assassin is unwittingly lying in wait for you, simply going about their everyday schooling.  A terrible situation for them and a terrible situation for you!”

“We have a choice, as always in life.  You can come back to school and face up to whatever befalls, or you can stay here and never set foot in the school again.  Well, for at least seven years until all the current students have moved on.  Doing that of course will leave any possible bewitchment still in place to get you later in life, if you happen to run into the bewitched witch or wizard.”

Zak and Tallion’s minds were both in turmoil, although Tallion was much the calmer of the two.  He’d grown up in the wizarding world and accepted that death was always just a curse away.

He felt his soul mate’s anxiety keenly though, and quickly took his hand to calm and reassure him.

Don’t worry Zak.  It’s no different than going to school each day down the dale.  Antares Malchus could pop out from behind a bush anywhere along that road and get us if he wanted.

No different?!  Living for a week in the same building as someone who’s been programmed to kill you on sight?  It seems pretty flippin’ different to me!

Hey!  That’s not the Zak Turner I know speaking, where’s the calm, confident friend I used to have?

He’s still here, just coming to terms with living next door to a murderer who wants to kill him!

They’re after me, not you.

I am you!  We’re the same person remember!  Would you feel any different if it was me who was about to die instead of you?

Good point, but we’ll manage.  I’m not spending the rest of my life hiding in this castle!

Well, me neither, but…

“We’ll be fine, Sir,” said Tallion, much more confidently than he felt, “and we both want to come back and face the danger, and fix it if possible.”

The headmaster smiled at Tallion and put his hand on the eleven-year-old’s shoulder giving it a squeeze of encouragement.

“That’s the spirit, Tallion!  Your father would have done just the same at your age!  We will of course be helping you, and providing a lookout for you both, but you’ll need to be totally alert the whole time you’re out of your dorm.  As we’re talking about students, they won’t be able to use any restricted or advanced curses, but all the same, I can’t promise you won’t get hurt.  Knowing Sargas, he
might
have tried to bewitch someone in Moncero, but my feeling is that they’re all a bit too smart to be caught.  However, we’ll find out on your first night back…”