Knight of the Black Rose (24 page)

Jevidah walked over to their table finally, and picked up the swopping wet cones. "What is this?"

"I'm sorry sir..." Catherine said upset.

Jevidah turned on Lucy. "Well Miss Shepherd you seem to be doing well, is there a reason why you didn't inform them of what they were doing, was wrong? Did you want them to get it wrong so that you would look good?"

"What, no," Lucy said offended and upset by his question.

"Then why?" Jevidah asked her.

"I...err..." Lucy stammered.

"It isn't a hard question," Jevidah said, as he walked over and inspected her incense cones and then Will's. "Well, it looks as though you knew what you were doing, which meant that it would have only took you a moment to inform them,"

"But sir..." Lucy said, not knowing what to say to him to defend her self; wondering if he was right and she should have told them, but would they even have listen to her.

Jevidah walked off writing again in his notebook as he went onto the next table, while Lucy slumped into her chair and Will tried to reassure her that everything was alright, but all she wanted was the lesson to be over after waiting ages for this, but he had ruined it for her.

Finally after they had cleared everything away the bell for lunch rang and they were all dismissed, Lucy couldn't get out of their quick enough; her friends closely behind her, ignoring the comments from the Disa lot as she passed them.

"Wait up Lu!" Troy shouted as he jogged to keep up with her, she finally slowed down so that they could catch up. "You know he only said that to you because he was probably annoyed that the Disa lot had no idea what they were doing."

"Yeah, they didn't even get one point," Alex agreed.

"I heard a rumour that he favours the Disa, so yeah; he'd be annoyed if we all did better than them," Eddie told her as he walked past.

"See there you go," Will said. "Your work was great, it isn't your fault that they didn't have a clue what they were doing, or that he didn't tell anyone what they were really supposed to be doing,"

"I did wonder about that...it was like; yes create incense now, as though we all knew how to do that," Jess said agreeing with them all, as she herself was a little confused about what she had been doing to begin with. "So, unless you actually looked it up in your book you wouldn't know,"

"It was a test," Selena told them. "He wanted to know how much we knew, and probably if we could follow basic instructions,"

"So he gave us a test on our first day...how is that fair?" Will said annoyed.

"Well come on...lets forget about it for now," Jess told her as she linked her arm and they headed up the corridor for the food hall as it was finally lunch time.

Once the others had gotten far enough in front with Will, Troy and Alex hanging back slightly, did they finally look around to see if anyone else was close by.

"So...what do you want to do?" Troy asked.

"I'm surprised that you don't want more food?" Will teased.

Troy smiled. "We can grab some food before we have a look around,"

"We'll do that then...the building does have four floors after all," Alex said as they started to walk.

"What about the kitchen's?" Troy asked thoughtfully.

They came out into the lobby of the ground floor, doors were open that lead into the loud food hall; to their right was the lifts and stairs to the upper levels. They walked over to them debating which way would be best to checkout.

"I say we take the stairs," Will suggested.

"Are you kidding?" Alex said not at all impressed.

Will pushed him forward so that he would have to go first. "Come on,"

They went up the stairs, which were painted basic white; but every so often Will noticed that the wall seemed to shimmer but whenever he touched it, it was just a solid wall. As they got to the fourth floor after quickly checking out each floor, realising that they're all basically set out the same they decided that they might as well get something to eat before they carried on. This food hall wasn't as packed as the others, in fact most of the students in here were much older, probably in their last two years at school and had piles of books laid out on their tables.

"Wow...it's only the first day and they have that much work," Alex whispered as they walked over to the buffet that lined the wall, and grabbed a plate and tray.

"I still can't believe how much food there is in this place," Troy said.

Will filled his plate beside them. "It's probably easier considering how many students there are in the school, this way if you put out a selection like this you can have whatever you want,"

"There's no pudding," Troy said as he skipped to the end of the buffet.

"Maybe that's just for special occasions," Alex suggested. "It is in my house,"

"I guess," Troy agreed giving the buffet one more scan, while Will went over to the nearest table sitting down; when there wasn't anything he wanted at the moment he went back over and joined them.

"There must be something interesting to find in this place, it's big enough," Alex said disappointedly.

"It's only one building, and anyway...what if they're rooms hidden by magic?" Will suggested.

Troy smiled. "That sounds cool...but how are we supposed to find them?"

"I'm not sure, but we'll figure it out," Will told him.

"Lucy, we could ask her," Troy suggested.

"She is always up for anything," Alex agreed looking at Will for support.

"Fine...we'll ask her at the weekend, if we haven't figured it out ourselves," Will told them, as he thought it would be more fun to try to figure it out themselves instead of having everything handed to them; as Lucy did kind of find that sort of thing a lot easier than them, not that he knew how she managed it.

Chapter Ten

Tuesday morning, they had gotten up early and were at school even earlier than they were the day before, mainly because of the subject they were taking this morning. This was the lesson that they were all looking forward to, though perhaps just not who they were having the lesson with, as it was Disa again; it was one of the things that they didn't like about their lesson schedule. As they walked onto the corridor of the fourth floor, they realised that they weren't the only ones that had turned up early for the lesson; it looked as though everyone was looking forward to it, because most of the Disa class was already here.

Reagan stepped forward from his friends."You might have shown off yesterday in potions, but today we're going to show you how it's really done,"

"I bet he hasn't got a clue," Lucy whispered behind Troy.

"We'll soon find out," Troy said.

"It would probably be wrong to show him what we can do before class even begins right?" Will asked.

"Maybe we should," Alex said grinning broadly.

"Probably not such a good idea," Lucy said looking up the corridor behind everyone distractedly; they followed her line of sight but there wasn't anyone there, nor anything else what they could see.

The bell rang finally and the door opened on its own, like with the rest of their classes; everyone slowly made their way inside and again checked the tables to find out where they were sitting. While Ordin Domnus stood at the front of the classroom watching them, and waiting for them to settle; he was dressed in a basic black suit and shirt, without a tie.

"We're going to show you just how it's really done," Reagan whispered as he pushed past Lucy and Troy to get to his desk.

"Come along now, take your seats, you've already been informed that you sit next to the same person in every lesson," Ordin told them.

They hurried up into their seats and then waited for him to speak again.

"Well then, I'm Professor Domnus, and I will be taking you for Defence. Before I go on, I want to make sure that I understand what you all think it is, before I tell you what it really is."

The class was silent again like when they had been in potions, a few people looked around to see if they would hold their hand up, but it seemed as though no one was brave enough to speak aloud.

"Now I know for a fact that some of you know," Ordin said, a little annoyed that no one was answering his simple question, and if someone didn't even attempt it, he was going to start signalling people out.

Methos slowly raised his hand, and Ordin nodded. "It’s the practice of defensive magic against the dark arts,"

"Thank you," Ordin said. "Now, what that means is that you will learn counter spells to defend yourself and then as the class advances over the next couple of years you will also learn some spells to attack with. That doesn't mean that you are allowed to hurt someone, the spells will be none lethal, only to disable your opponent. Now, can anyone tell me the different ways we use defensive magic."

This time Will put his hand, he knew the answers this time, it was just embarrassing speaking in front of all these people and most of them he didn't even know. "They can of course be used in duelling, when trained properly a kind of dance to incorporate the proper movements of each spell cast."

"Very good Mr Ryker, I'm glad that you spoke up," Ordin said. "Anyone else,"

Lucy again raised her hand. "It can be used in hand to hand, channelling your magic through you without your wand. Though I have been told that not everyone can do that, you have to be at least a level four or five."

"Also very good Miss Shepherd, someone else that I would expect an excellent answer from," Ordin said. "Yes, these are the two basic forms of dense that you will learn in my class. Only the higher years in their selected classes learn the more advanced ways of defence. While in my class, you will learn to defend yourself against others of your kind, dark beings and creatures. You will also learn how to defend yourself against someone who doesn't have any powers, because it is against the law to use your magic against them, which is being re-enforced once more now that we have come out into the open once more on Earth. Now I hope that you've all at least looked at your book for his subject, if you haven't then for your homework as we'll be going over this in class you are to read up on detection spells; first chapter. Again, does anyone know what a detection spell is?"

Again no one answered at first, but then both Lucy and Eddie put their hands up.

"Two of you, though seeing as Miss Shepherd has already answered once, we'll give Mr Tormond a chance," Ordin said pleasantly.

"It detects if there are any stray spells about, as some can linger in the air...basically like a trap," Eddie answered.

"Very good, and Miss Shepherd do you have anything to add?" Ordin asked.

"Well...err...objects can be bespelled and cursed, and also little baggies and sachets and talisman’s," Lucy answered. "You would be able to tell if they're around and will do you harm,"

"Again very good Miss Shepherd," Ordin said. "I believe, that is twenty-five points to Cadell; five of you answered, so five points to each of you. So yes, to begin with you must learn to detect spells aimed to harm you; once you have mastered this then we will move onto defending yourself against them."

Everyone pulled their defence book out of their bags, while Ordin wrote the first spell on the board behind him, as they only had a short lesson with him today they were only going to go through the basic's so that they could get straight into it next lesson.

About half an hour later they were chatting away as they piled into their next classroom, though this time it wasn't with Disa, but with Clarus, which Lucy had been looking forward to because her friend Nathan was in this class.

"That was kind of hard," Libby said as she walked behind them up the aisles of desks looking for their names again.

This classroom didn't seem as big as the others they have been in so far and the desks were set out differently as well, instead of in two's they were in fours; and there was only one large board on the wall.

"It might be until you get used to focusing your powers," Lucy told her as she looked over Will's shoulder at the long desk that his friends had sat down on, and yes she was sat with them, not that she was overly bothered by this.

"You sound like a teacher," Troy told her.

"Whatever, but it's true...it's what my dad told me when he trained me up, you know on the basic's," Lucy told him.

"Well your dad is kind of hard on you," Troy agreed, as the door slammed shut startling everyone into silence.

They turned around and watched the head of Punga walk to the front of the classroom; he looked around the room and then cleared his throat loudly.

"Welcome, I'm Professor Prewitt, you're History teacher. Before we get started I'd like to take a couple of minutes to explain just what you will be studying in my class. Those of you from non-magical families would think that we will be studying human history with some of ourselves thrown in to show how we've lived along side them all these years. But you would be wrong; we are going to be studying History on whole. As you must have gathered, Burnaby isn't anywhere that you have ever been before, in fact we're not even on the same planet. We on the planet, Narganse, which is basically a colonised world made up of several mixed races. The race that colonies this world in the beginning were the Tel’lanerian’s, those you would call witches...you can be writing all of this down..."