The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1 (7 page)

Alana held Wirt up to lip level. Priscilla made a face.

“But it’s all slimy. I don’t suppose you…no, you’re not the princess, are you?”

“Kiss. The. Toad.”

“Is this really all I’m good for?” Despite the complaints, Priscilla leaned closer to Wirt. She screwed up her eyes tightly, and, very delicately indeed, pressed her lips to Wirt’s green skin.

The world returned to its normal size in an instant, and Wirt was relieved to see his normal clothes, not to mention his normal arms and legs, when he looked down.

“About time,” he said, before looking at Priscilla. “Was there really any need to try and squash me?”

“I didn’t
have
to kiss you, you know. Also…yuck.”

Wirt didn’t know what he could say to that, so he was grateful when Spencer, or at least King Wilford, chose that moment to show up.

“Daddy?” Priscilla asked, before frowning. “No, you’re not daddy.” She said a few words, and Spencer was suddenly there.

Wirt looked at Priscilla. “I thought you didn’t get to do the magic classes.”

“I don’t, but Alana tends to leave her books out, and I get bored. I’m not a complete airhead, you know.”

Wirt was not sure about that. Still, he let it go. He had more important things to say. “You’ll never guess what I managed to find out,” he said to the others. They didn’t guess, but he told them anyway.

“The school is in financial trouble. There was stuff in the Headmaster’s office talking about cuts, and Ms. Preville was talking to him about wanting to sell off some of the artifacts the school houses.”

“She isn’t the only one,” Alana confirmed. “When I was Ms. Genovia, a couple of the other teachers were muttering about it. I think they were worried about being heard though.”

“They would be,” Wirt said. He told them about the animals that Ender Paine kept. “What I don’t get is why he’s so hot on keeping hold of them. He seems like someone who would sell his grandmother if he thought it would make a profit.”

“Maybe he just wants to control them,” Alana suggested. “Presumably even he is a little worried about people running around with powerful magical artifacts. After all, they might get used on him.”

Wirt could imagine that, but somehow, it didn’t feel like the whole story. Spencer coughed.

“I think I might know what it is,” he said, “Did you know that the main reason this kingdom lets the school stay here is because of all the magical artifacts it houses? While I was pretending to be King Wilford, a couple of my advisors pointed out that if more artifacts got stolen, the benefits of having it here would be reduced dramatically.”

“Oh yes,” Priscilla said. “Daddy is always going on about how having a magical arsenal like that around is better than a dozen armies.”

“I guess,” Wirt interrupted, “it might make a kind of sense. After all, if it looked like the Headmaster were about to lose the school its place here, he might be in trouble.”

“Almost certainly,” Alana said. “Besides, from what I heard, looking after those magical things is written into the school’s charter. Merlin and the people who founded the school wanted to look after them.”

“Merlin?” Wirt asked. “Like,
the
Merlin?”

“There has only been the one,” Spencer said. “Not that the school really runs the way he wanted it to. We don’t really mention it. It annoys the Headmaster, not to mention how much it upsets Ms. Lake.”

Wirt’s brow furrowed. “Why would it upset her?”

“Oh,” Priscilla said, “because she was the one who put him to sleep, silly.”

“What?”

The others looked uncomfortable for a moment. Apparently, what Priscilla had just said was another of those things you didn’t say. Wirt looked at them expectantly until they caved in.

“Ms. Vivaine Lake started life as Vivaine, the lady in the lake,” Alana explained. “She put Merlin to sleep. Some say in an enchanted forest. Some say somewhere under a tree.” She gave the school building a pointed look. “Though if he is under there, he could be anywhere, what with all the pathways.”

“Is under there?” Wirt echoed. “Wouldn’t that make him incredibly old? Actually, wouldn’t that make
Ms. Lake
incredibly old?”

“I use a lot of moisturizer.” Wirt turned at the words with the speed of one caught, and found himself staring at Ms. Lake who was staring right back.

“Transportation spells are useful, aren’t they?” she said, in answer to the unasked question of how she had shown up like that. Wirt expected her eyes to be roiling with anger, but in fact, she just looked sad.

“You really put Merlin into an enchanted sleep?” Wirt asked, before he could stop himself. He had to know, if only because of what it would say about the teacher in front of him. Ms. Lake nodded.

“Yes, and that’s all I’m prepared to say on the subject, so please don’t ask anything else. Priscilla, if you don’t run along right now, I’ll have you doing lengths of my lake until your fingers go wrinkly.”

The princess scurried off. “So,” Ms. Lake asked, “what did you find out, while you were pretending to be members of staff?”

“How did you guess?” Wirt asked.

Ms. Lake smiled. “Who do you think gave Aloea and Gertrude the idea?”

They recounted what they had heard, along with a brief version of Wirt’s adventure. Ms. Lake nodded.

“Perhaps I was a little harsh on Priscilla then, if she helped. I will apologize the next time I see her. For now though, we have to think about whether all this brings us any closer to actually finding the chalice.”

“I suppose,” Alana offered, “that it means we know of at least one group of people with motive to take it.”

“That’s true, and I will keep my ears open for any news of one of them trying to sell something powerful.”

“My money is on Ms. Preville,” Wirt said. Ms. Lake shrugged.

“Maybe. We must continue to explore all options though. It might be that someone has taken the chalice for a different reason. It is very powerful. It let Morgana heal many of Arthur’s wounds on the boat to Avalon, and that was just a small use of its power. Who wouldn’t want the ability to bring back loved ones?”

Wirt swallowed, thinking of his parents. Yes, he thought. Practically anyone would want it.

Chapter 10

B
ecause there didn’t seem to be any obvious way of working out who had taken the chalice, life continued as normal at the school. Or at least, at what passed for normal there. Over the next couple of days, he found himself learning lessons that made storm clouds about six inches across spark with lightning, that made dancing colors appear briefly in mid-air, and that, in the case of Mr. Fowler’s alchemy class, made a complete mess of yet another classroom.

Then there were the Transportation lessons. Wirt found himself enjoying them, partly because Ms. Lake did most of the teaching, and partly because he seemed to have a natural talent for it. Where the others in the class needed Ms. Lake’s help at first, Wirt found himself making short hops without her from the start. Even in the brief spaces when the Headmaster took over, things went well for Wirt.

“Yes,” Ender Paine said partway through one of his contributions to a lesson, “we’ll soon have you making true jumps, young Wirt. Of course, then the question will become one of what you do with that talent. You could…go a long way.”

Wirt was not sure whether he was meant to laugh at such a bad joke, but he didn’t bother. He did, however, find himself wondering exactly what the Headmaster had in mind for him. And what Ms. Lake had in mind too. As much as Wirt wanted to ignore the warning of the woman who had been a songbird, he found that he couldn’t. There was something about the way Ms. Lake kept such a careful eye on his progress, something about the way she had manipulated Ender Paine into letting him into the school, that said the teacher had as many plans for Wirt as the Headmaster did.

Right now though, her plans didn’t seem to include an obvious one for finding the chalice. She actually said as much the next time Wirt, Spencer and Alana met with her, out on the meadow in front of the tree. It was a location that meant Priscilla could just happen to be having a picnic nearby, along with her brother, who busied himself by trying, and largely failing, to juggle a trio of apples. Wirt had the feeling that Robert was not quite as interested in this Quest as his sister was.

“Until we can think of something better to do,” Ms. Lake said, “I think that we will just have to try searching the tree.”

“I thought that it was too big to search,” Wirt pointed out, and Ms. Lake nodded.

“It is, if we’re searching it thoroughly. But maybe we will get lucky. At any rate, it is something to try until a better idea comes. Maybe someone will reveal their hand. Maybe one of them will try to sell the chalice. Until then, we search the tree.”

From their picnic blanket, Priscilla yawned and stretched.

“You know, Robert, what I need right now is a long walk. Possibly several long walks. All around the tree.”

“And it seems that our unofficial royal helper agrees,” Ms. Lake said.

“So should we split up?” Wirt asked. Part of him didn’t like the idea, because he suspected that things might get dangerous if they actually found the chalice, but then he considered the possibility that he might be paired up with Alana. “I think we should split up.”

Ms. Lake shook her head. “I don’t think that is a good idea. Try to stick together. You should probably keep an eye on Priscilla and Robert, too. Though I suspect,” she added, “that might not be as easy as it sounds.”

So they searched, and in the process, Wirt started to get some idea of just how impossibly huge the school within the tree was. They looked down hallways thick with dust. They stared into storerooms full of crystal balls and even baskets full of rope.

In between lessons, the five of them rode the transport tubes of the tree to every corner they could find, from library-like rooms where it proved impossible to speak, to the gymnasium where wizards in short robes lifted weights without touching them. Briefly, they stepped into what appeared to be a crypt, before beating a hasty retreat as shapes started to move in the shadows. Nowhere did they find any sign of the chalice.

Wirt was starting to feel exhausted. Running around all over the largest tree in the universe was not exactly easy, even when it had its own transport system to help. Doing it while still trying to learn things in between was proving almost impossible. He vented out his frustration to Spencer and the others when they met up.

“We should still try,” Spencer said. “Remember that we’re being marked on this. Father would be so disappointed if I just gave up.”

“And finding the chalice is important,” Alana added. Priscilla murmured her agreement, but Robert shook his head.

“We could be at this forever without achieving anything.”

“How about if we do just one more stop today?” Wirt suggested. That got general agreement. Unfortunately, it also meant that the others looked to him when it came to deciding where they should go, and Wirt didn’t have the faintest idea. All he could do, as he stepped off from the side of the hole leading to the rest of the tree, was think “somewhere that will help us”.

If Wirt was worried in the first few seconds, because he suspected that the tubes needed something more specific than that, he was absolutely terrified in the ones that followed it. Though to be fair, he was not alone. The five of them fell, and fell, and fell, picking up speed until they were going faster than Wirt had ever been in the tubes before. Would they fall until they hit the ground? Surely there were some safety features built into the tubes?

He almost didn’t notice when they started to slow, finally drifting to a halt on a stone floor, with not a few sighs of relief all round. Wirt surveyed his surroundings as best he could. It seemed to be some kind of cave. It was brightly lit by mysteriously glowing moss along the walls.

It was at that point that a voice came to the five of them, echoing with what Wirt could only think of as a strong Welsh accent.

“Oh, I was not expecting visitors. Bore Da, all of you. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Bore what?” Alana asked.

“I think it’s a Welsh greeting,” Wirt answered, before realizing that people from another world probably wouldn’t have the faintest idea of where Wales was. Which raised the question of exactly how someone Welsh had come to be there. Determined to find an answer, Wirt started forward, closely followed by the others.

As they approached the back of the cave, Wirt saw a man approaching from a side tunnel. He was tall-well over six feet- and his hair was fire engine red, falling well below his shoulders. He wore a shirt and slacks of deep burgundy, which seemed to shimmer in the soft light of the cave. Wirt found himself looking more at the man’s shadow than at the rest of him, though. Where the cave wall should have sported the silhouetted figure of a man, instead it featured something huge, and clawed, and winged. Apparently, the others saw it too.

“What are you?” Spencer asked. Alana just gasped.

What happened next was, Wirt decided afterwards, like looking at one of those pictures where you could either see a face or a pair of candlesticks, depending on how you looked at it. One moment he was looking at a man in a red shirt. The next, he was staring into the maw of a huge red dragon, looming over him with wings spread wide. Priscilla summed up the general mood quite nicely, by screaming.

And just like that, they were looking at a man again. A man with his fingers in his ears, as it happened.

“Would you mind not doing that? I’m Llew, by the way.” He looked the five of them over, pausing when he came to Wirt. “It’s not often I run into someone who knows about the old country.” Llew thought about it. “Not ever, come to think of it. Tell me, do they still talk about me?”

“Um… I think you might be on the flag,” Wirt said. Llew grinned.

“I knew they’d remember. So, who are you all, and what can I do for you?”

Quickly, Wirt introduced the five of them.