Zak Turner - A Twist In Time (4 page)

He hadn’t tried to revive any of them yet, because he was still unsure what had happened, but they all seemed to be stable and just magically stunned.  He shared the good news with the remaining shocked students in the portal room, who all seemed to be relieved that they weren’t standing in a morgue after all!  The headmaster encouraged them to step between their fallen fellows, and make their way down the stairs to the entrance hall below. 

The aged wizard then made his way over to the Kirkstall portal and looked round.  He recognised Tallion instantly, and noted that he’d fallen across Zak’s legs.  He was perturbed to see the very clear scorch marks on both boys’ robes though, and realised that they must have been standing right in front of the portal as it exploded. 

He quickly examined them and a frown crossed his face again.  Both of them seemed to be suffering from a total depletion of magical
and
physical energy!  It was almost as if they’d expended all their power to counteract something.  They were still breathing though, but looked significantly worse than the students at the other side of the room.

He stood and turned around to examine the destroyed Kirkstall portal.  He needed to understand what had caused the explosion, because only then could he safely start to revive the students.  Magic always left traces, and a skilled wizard could deduce what spells had been cast if he got to the scene quickly enough.  As the headmaster ran through a small armoury of detection charms, his frown deepened. 

“Surely not!” he eventually murmured to himself as he dropped his wand disbelievingly to his side.  “They’re just children!”

He cast a final charm at the fireplace, and felt his heart go cold as the walls inside the fireplace glowed red.  His final surmise had been correct.  Someone had cast a Libra Mortis at his students!

“Never in all my days…” he murmured to himself, shaking his head in what looked like bewilderment!  He swung round, suddenly suspicious, to see which other students were still in the room, and his eyes settled on one who was slumped against the far wall next to the Birr portal.  The headmaster’s eyes narrowed as his face darkened.

“Sargas…  No surprise there!  This
was
attempted murder, and there was even an insurance policy…!”

The quick-witted headmaster soon joined together what had happened, and couldn’t believe the conclusion he drew.  Antares Malchus appeared to have targeted both of the Middlehams, but failed to get either of them!  He shook his head in disbelief at how fate had protected the wizard lord and his son.

“But what was Sargas going to do?” he murmured to himself.  “Surely he wouldn’t have killed the boy himself?  That would have been far too much bad publicity.  No, I know his style, he’d have bewitched another student to do it for him.” 

That bode very ill for Tallion’s future at the school, and for the other students!  He’d never be safe here now, not as long as Sargas was a student!  This needed some careful thought.  He longed to rid the school of the pagan poison that the Malchus children brought to it, but there was no easy way to do it!  The headmaster sank into a reverie while his sharp mind raced off in twenty different directions, the unconscious students at his feet apparently forgotten as he stitched together what had happened and why, and started to plan his response.

* * *

Sir Philip remembered that Cammy and the two seventh year students were somewhere out in the cloister, and decided he’d better get them away from the Abbey.  They needed to get to the safety of the school, but the Kirkstall portal was going to be out of action for some time.  Raby was the nearest alternate, but it was a good sixty miles north.  He stood up and walked out to the cloister again.

“Cammy, how are you feeling?  Are you up to taking these two admirable young men to school via Raby?”

“Aye Sir Philip, I’m fine apart from t’ shock o’ bein’ felled by me own reboundin’ spell!  Have ye caught ‘em?  Murderous swine!”

“There’s no sign of them Cammy, but the cellar with the portal in it has collapsed, so maybe they’re under the rubble.  I have to say that would be a fitting reward for their work today.  Natural justice!”

“It’s a pity we don’t use t’ death sentence anymore Sir Philip, there’s some as would definitely deserve it!  Firing off Libra Mortis curses at kids, outrageous!”

“They were using Libra Mortis?!  Against the children?!”  Sir Philip’s already tortured emotions suffered yet another blow.

“Aye, Sir Philip!  I know Tallion were with me today, and ‘is pal Zak, but from talking to Sam ‘n James ‘ere, the both of ‘em were fighting back pretty darned fierce like!  I’m sure they’ll ‘ve escaped, grand lads they are, them two!”

Sir Philip paled still further as he heard that his two boys had fought back instead of running… 

“Cammy, there’s no defence against a Libra Mortis, you know that!  You can’t deflect it, block it, or rebound it!  You can only dodge it!  The boys are too young to fight against that kind of magic, they just barely know how to defend themselves against tickling spells…”

“Sir,” piped up Sam, who was the second seventh year who’d been standing with Zak, “I think that Zak, and probably Tallion, just re-wrote the rules.  I was standing with Zak and I saw him repeatedly block the incoming Libra Mortis spells, five or six times at least before I was hit by my own rebounding Firmus.”

“He blocked them?  How?  That’s not possible!  What happened?”

Sam pointed at the walls of the Cloister where three huge scorch marks surrounded holes where chunks of masonry had been blasted out by the deflected Libra Mortis curses.

“That’s what happened, Sir.  Somehow he just deflected them!  I don’t know what spell he was using, but each time there was a huge explosion as the Libra Mortis crashed into it.  His spell was destroyed as they collided, but each time the Libra Mortis veered off in a different direction.  Some of them went upwards into the air, but a few hit the walls…”

Sir Philip was incredulous, and it showed clearly on his perplexed face!  The power in these two boys was unbelievable!  He dared to hope that somehow they might have survived after all.  After a minute studying Sam’s face, and gazing at the scorched walls, he spoke again.

“Cammy, take the boys to Raby and try to get into the school, hopefully the portal will still be open.  If not, then go back to Upper Nettleton and I’ll meet you all there at Procyon Proudfoot’s house.  You’re all in danger whilst you’re in the open until we find out who did this.”

“Right yeh are Sir Philip, we’ll be getting on.  Come on lads, stack hands, we’re off ter Raby Castle!”

Sir Philip walked back into the Warming Room, reluctant to leave the unknown seventh year student, who lay half-crushed under the rubble, and possibly his own sons too.  He didn’t know any of the seventh years who’d travelled to Kirkstall from Upper Nettleton this year, but he intended to reward them all for their courage as they’d fought to defend their fellow students!

* * *

“Orion!  Don’t just stand there, do something!”

The headmaster snapped out of his reverie as his deputy head finally made it up the stairs.

“What would you suggest, Cleo?  The students have all been hit by unknown magic, and although they’re all alive, I have no idea what will happen if we try to revive them.”

“What do you mean unknown magic?” said the deputy head warily.

The headmaster waved his hand vaguely behind him at the blackened fireplace that used to be the Kirkstall Abbey portal. 

“A powerful Libra Mortis was fired at Tallion Middleham as he flung himself through the portal.  From what I can deduce, it looks like the portal was closing behind him as the curse hit him, or maybe it missed him by a fraction of an inch.  Either way, the curse definitely hit the portal.  As we all know, there’s no magic that can stop a Libra Mortis, and the curse therefore travelled through the portal, with Tallion, to the castle here hundreds of miles away.”

The headmaster, who’d turned to look at the portal as he spoke, now turned back and surveyed the scene in the room, and made a sweeping gesture with his hand as he spoke again, cutting off his deputy head who’d opened her mouth to answer.

“The portal then exploded, combining its own powerful magic with the Libra Mortis, and did this!  All these students, and the two porters who were up here with them, were hit by that ‘unknown magic’.  To my knowledge, no-one has ever blown up a portal using a Libra Mortis before, especially while a large group of people were standing on the other side of it!”

“Well we can’t just leave them, Orion!  We need to try and revive them!”

“Which of our students would you like me to experiment on first?” asked the headmaster eyeing his rather irate looking deputy with a very ironic expression.

She opened her mouth to answer very forthrightly, and then realised that there wasn’t an answer, so she shut it again looking perplexed! 

“Well, none of them, obviously!” she finally said.  “We can’t experiment on students!”

“Precisely.  So now that we’re of the same mind, my suggestion is that we experiment on one of the porters, do you agree?”

The rather flustered deputy head looked perplexed, and then rolled her eyes in resignation.

“Yes, I agree.  So what are you going to try?”

“Me try?  Alright then, well, just a normal Enervate to start with.  That’s usually enough to invigorate the mind and body.  If that doesn’t work, what spell
do
you cast to revive someone who’s been hit by a Libra Mortis?”

While Cleo McCathie stared unflinchingly back at the headmaster, with one eyebrow raised and pursed lips, he smiled graciously back and turned away toward the nearest porter.  In her opinion, this wasn’t the time for levity, and she was pretty sure that Orion Trell was deliberately trying to wind her up!

“Enervate,” commanded the headmaster flicking his wand at the porter.  Nothing. 

“Enervate!” he spoke again, much more firmly and with a little oomph behind it.  Still nothing.  He glanced across at his watching deputy head and raised his eyebrows.  You weren’t supposed to cast this spell very powerfully; it could cause all sorts of problems with blood pressure and hallucinations.  He had no choice though, and poured his full magical energy into his next attempt.

“ENERVATE!”

This time he got a reaction as the porter’s eyes instantly popped open, and a surprised look crossed his face.  After a few seconds, he realised where he was, and who was standing over him pointing his wand at him, and he sat up quickly.

Bad move.  His head began to spin and he immediately lay back down again.

“What happened to me?”

“You got hit by an exploding portal, Albert, and in my view you’re fairly lucky to be alive, not least because we just had to experiment on you to revive you!  Try and move as soon as you can, there’s a good chap, because we need to know how quickly the effects of the portal magic wear off.”

Albert closed his eyes, and turned his head slowly from side-to-side, checking to see how dizzy he really was.  After a minute, he gingerly tried to sit up again, and this time managed to get fully upright.

“It’s not the magic headmaster, it’s my age!  If
you
tried sitting bolt upright ten seconds after you’d been unconscious, you’d go dizzy too!”

“Quite likely, my dear chap, quite likely!  Okay, time to try on a student I think.  Cleo, can you wake up our second porter, Rab, please, for a practise.”

The headmaster found that he only needed about half the power he’d used to wake up Albert when he was reviving the students, and he systematically set off round the room one way while his deputy head went the other.  By the time the last student was sitting up twenty minutes later, they were both feeling exhausted.

The last student that is, except Zak and Tallion. 
They
were the only ones suffering complete depletion of magical energy, and the headmaster agreed to let Nurse Salvae take them to the infirmary to let them rest and see if their energy levels started to recover before blasting them with an Enervate.  He’d made sure they were well out of sight before he revived any of the Malchus children!

It was only at this point that the headmaster suddenly realised that Sir Philip was probably unaware that his son was still alive.  He quickly sent him a messenger, and asked him to come to the school.

He sent a revived student back through each of the three working portals to tell the waiting students it was now safe come in to the school, and then fixed the other stalled portals one by one.  He went through each one himself to test it before he would allow students to go through, and soon the portal room was alive with excited, chattering students again as the normal first-day-of-term chaos resumed.  The headmaster looked at his deputy head and mouthed the words, “That’s more like it!” 

She just shook her head in exasperation!

* * *

Sir Philip arrived through the Raby portal about five minutes after he got the headmaster’s messenger, having left two shadow-wizards guarding the destroyed Kirkstall cellar and the half-buried body of the seventh year student.

After explaining quickly what had happened in the Abbey, he headed to the infirmary to see his sons.  The headmaster put the deputy head in charge of the school and went immediately to Kirkstall Abbey.