Jake's Quest - Wizards V (20 page)

The students cheered. The distortion field wasn’t visible here and I saw Esta had completed her strip and stood naked. She stared ahead blankly, waiting for further orders. Meanwhile Torphic was continuing his lecture.

“The fourth magic you must never use is Energy Conversion. This is a little difficult to demonstrate safely as allows you to convert anything into a bomb.”

He grinned at Jeram. “If I was to convert you, Hedge Wizard, I could trigger you to explode with enough energy to destroy the arena. However, I think I will save you for the final demonstration.”

Torphic took a tiny glass cube from the folds of his cloak. It was smaller than a sugar cube. I could still use my magical senses from Glim and I saw what he did to it. It was the same magic that had blown Auntie May to pieces.

He threw the cube into the air and used his magic to send it through the black dome above us and high into the stratosphere. The explosion that followed was bright enough to be seen through the dome. The sound of the explosion came many seconds later.

“I think it’s clear why we don’t allow that.”

Torphic turned to Jeram. “The last forbidden magic is Mind Theft. It sucks all knowledge from a victim so there is nothing left. Are you frightened yet, hedge wizard?”

Jeram flung a wave of energy at Torphic that should have torn him to pieces. Torphic laughed and I saw magical forces pin Jeram rigid. Lana tried more of the same. But he dissipated her magic as if it was nothing. He knocked her across the stage with a flip of his hand and when she landed, she didn’t move.

What had started as a lecture had descended into something out of a horror movie and I didn’t have a clue how to get out of Glim. I’d never figured it out when Fluffy did it and I’d experienced that hundreds of time. There had to be a way to stop Torphic before he killed my friends.

Torphic must have said something because Esta stepped out of the distortion field and began to perform a series of explicit poses much to the delight of the male students.

I felt in my pockets, though I couldn’t have said why. My hand touched the knife on my belt. Though I had no idea what truth it could show, I pricked my thumb with the point of the knife and smeared blood over the blade.

My vision shuddered and I saw a layer of black film over Torphic’s head. He was under the same mind control as he’d put on Esta. Energy flowed out of the blade as a bright flash and the film vanished from Torphic and Esta’s heads. A point of normal space showed through where the tip of the blade had been. I slashed a large X in Glim and stepped through. The hole closed behind me as soon as I was back in normal space.

Torphic was holding his head and groaning. Esta put a shield of darkness around herself. Lana was waking up while Jeram collapsed as the magic around him vanished.

“Kill the bastard,” Lana shouted. She staggered across the stage, a six inch knife in her hand. She threw it at Torphic. I stopped it in mid-air.

“He was under Mind Control,” I shouted. Lana looked at me blankly and then like she was going to kill me later. Jeram was the first to take it in and he nodded.

“That would explain a great deal. How did you get it off him?”

I slipped the Knife of Truth into my pocket.

“You learn a thing or two when you live with a dragon. The dragons use Half-Hopping all the time.”

Jeram nodded as though that made sense though I was sure he knew it didn’t.

“Where am I?” Torphic asked.

Before any of us could answer, Esta strode up to him and slapped him across the face so hard I saw a tooth fly out of his mouth. Then she strode from the stage.

“Did I deserve that?” Torphic asked in a dazed voice.

“Yes,” Jeram said..

“First time in fifty years that’s happened to me and I can’t even remember why.”

“You have been under Mind Control. What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked.

“A student visited me. Daffith Smith, do you know him?”

I felt a chill run through me.

“I plan to.”

33.
              
Permission

Manda looked up as we entered the outer office. She sniffed disdainfully at Lana and Jeram, but smiled at Esta. She gave me a look of mild approval.

“The Chancellor is waiting for you in his office.”

As we went past her she beckoned Esta over and whispered something in her ear.

The Chancellor stood as we entered and came over to shake our hands.

“Terrible business,” he said to Lana, “Though Wizard Coin bore the worst of it. I swear we will destroy every picture recorded of you or Esta.”

Esta entered the room and the Chancellor rushed over to greet her. He thought he was whispering to her, but I heard every word he said.

“The pictures are everywhere. We have issued a proclamation making possession of one an expellable offence, but young men will be young men.”

Esta’s answer was inaudible, but I saw the Chancellor flinch.

“We are doing our best. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

Esta’s reply was again inaudible.

The Chancellor’s face flushed red.

“I can assure you they won’t.”

“If they do, I will take action myself,” Esta said coldly. “And someone will die.”

She stepped away from the Chancellor to join the rest of us. The Chancellor recovered his dignity and went to sit behind his desk.

“It’s been four days,” I said.

“It took time to search through Grand Mage Torphic’s memories and to reach conclusions. The poor man is in a state of shock.”

“And your conclusions are?”

The Chancellor picked up some papers on his desk and then put them down again.

“It is as you said. The student Daffith Smith used Mind Control on Torthic, overcoming sophisticated blocks in Torphic’s mind that should have rendered the attack useless. His orders were to humiliate the four of you until you attacked him and then use self-defense as an excuse to kill you.”

I nodded. Those had been my conclusions, though it hadn’t taken me four days to reach them.

“He was ordered to regard Wizard Morrissey as particularly dangerous and to kill him as soon as possible.”

“He put me in gli.. that half-hop space, which wasn’t going to kill me.”

The Chancellor locked eyes with me.

“The reason it is forbidden is that getting out without help is impossible, and if you had moved any distance, no one would have been able to get you back. I still don’t understand how you got back and how you lifted the mind control.”

Jeram stepped forward. “We work as a team and our combined magic can do extraordinary things.”

“And if nobody knows how we did it, nobody can stop us doing it again,” Lana continued.

“We might even be able to locate every picture of me and dissolve the eyes of those looking at them,” Esta put in. She gave the Chancellor a smile Esmeralda would have been proud of, innocence laced with vengeful malice.

It scared me, and I vowed to destroy the three images I’d received on message paper, as soon as I got back to my room.

“There is no need to make threats,” the Chancellor said, though from the look in his eyes, that last threat had been particularly effective. I decided to turn the screw od Esta’s behalf.

“That wasn’t a threat; it was more in the way of a promise. As soon as we find a way to limit the magic to the one looking and not everyone else in the room we will unleash it.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the Chancellor said firmly. “All the pictures will be destroyed before the end of the day.”

Esta smiled, and this time it was genuine.

The Chancellor wrote something on the message paper connecting him to Manda outside. I inverted the writing in my mind and read.

‘Issue the destruction order.’

Manda replied and I read her words as they appeared on the paper.

‘What about the collateral damage?’

‘Do it now.’

The Chancellor sighed and looked up at us.

“You may go after Daffith Smith. The President and the Council have decided that it will be safer for the University and Balmack to send you all off planet and as it is what you want, we all gain something from the deal.”

“What is Smith doing?” Jeram asked.

“The world he is on is about to make the choice of whether to follow technology or magic. They have an abundance of both. Student Smith’s assignment is to observe their decision making process.”

“Observe only?” Lana asked. I wouldn’t have bothered asking because I’ve seen too much sci-fi on television and knew how this worked.

“No. He is expected to provide stimulus to see how it influences the population in reaching their decision.”

That was a surprise.

“It may be your only way of finding him,” the Chancellor continued. “Any major incident that affects their choice will probably be something he created. We have a small building in Bellweather, one of Whydar’s many capital cities. You will find local clothes there and possibly some currency, though Smith may have taken it all with him.”

Jeram pulled up his sleeve and waved his bracelet at the Chancellor. “Will you remove these when we get there? They will cripple us.”

The Chancellor hesitated. “I’ll ask the President, but I suspect the answer will be no. I’m sorry.”

Jeram cursed and stepped back. Lana reached for the sword she wasn’t carrying. Obviously, I wasn’t all that bothered.

“When can we leave?” Esta asked. Given all the salacious comments she’d had to endure these last few days I wasn’t surprised she wanted to get away from the university as quickly as possible.

“Tonight, if you wish. Will that give you enough time to put your affairs in order?”

“Tonight then,” I agreed. If the others had a problem with it they could stay behind.

The Chancellor gave us a wave of dismissal and started looking at the papers on his desk. Jeram opened the door and shouts of anger greeted us.

“Shut the door behind you,” the Chancellor said, raising his voice to be heard over the din.

“I’ve lost every message I sent or received in the last year,” a young man yelled at Manda.

“That’s nothing. My whole thesis just went up in flames,” another man said, almost in tears. It wasn’t exclusively men in the crowd, but they were in the majority.

More people were jostling to get access to the office. It looked like we might never get out. Manda had had enough of the crowd.

She walked around the desk and the students backed away. She struck an intimidating pose and grew as high as the office ceiling would allow.

When she spoke it was like she was using a rock concert sound system. The walls trembled.

“You all had pornographic pictures of this young lady.” She indicated Esta, who was looking pleased with herself. “Which could have got you expelled. Instead we destroyed all the message papers with her images on them. You should be thanking us for our mercy. Now GO AWAY.”

People backed out of the office hurriedly.

I turned to Esta. “Did you know he could do that?”

“A little bird told me he could do something if I pushed him hard enough.” She took my arm in hers. “And you were magnificent.”

“I don’t think we are going to be very popular around here,” Jeram pointed out.

“Who cares?” Lana put in. “None of them are a loss.”

I herded my friends out of the office and away from Manda’s hearing.

“Did I mention I know how to nullify the bracelets?” I asked.

“I knew it,” Lana said, and grinned wolfishly. “Am I better than your wives now you have been able to carry out a direct comparison?”

I pretended to think carefully about the matter before giving my answer.

“Are you better than my wives in bed? Out of ten?” I tapped my finger on my lower lip as if striving to do a difficult mathematical calculation. “About a two, maybe as much as a three,” I suggested.

Then I ran for my life.