The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1 (11 page)

Chapter 16

“
W
hat’s going on?” Spencer demanded again. This time, Alana looked up at him too.

“Spencer, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Spencer asked. “How can you ask what’s wrong when I see the two of you in here like this?”

“You think that Wirt and I…” Alana laughed. Wirt felt that was a bit harsh, given that they had kissed outside the tree. On the other hand, nothing had happened since. “Spencer, you aren’t jealous, are you?”

“Why would I be jealous, if there’s nothing to be jealous of?” Spencer countered. “But why are you even here? You know you are not supposed to be in the boys’ rooms.”

“And there’s the officious Spencer we’ve all come to know and love,” Alana shot back. Wirt was starting to feel like nothing more than a spectator. “Have a good time with your father, did you, while we were out taking all the risks?”

“Alana,” Wirt said, “maybe you shouldn’t…”

“Shut up, Wirt.” Alana looked at him in a way that made it clear she did not want his help.

“What kind of risks?” Spencer asked. “Please tell me you didn’t do anything stupid.”

“
Don’t
call me stupid,” Alana snapped back. “Could you have held an illusion of Aloea Preville so realistic that even Mr. Roth, who looks like he’s in love with her, couldn’t tell the difference?”

The note of jealousy was back in Spencer’s expression.

“In love? How did you find that out?”

“It’s none of your business, Spencer. You don’t get to be jealous. It’s not like I’m good enough for you, is it?”

Wirt found himself looking back and forth between the two of them, like a spectator at a particularly vicious tennis match.

“You know it is not that, Alana. It’s just… my father… if he ever found out…”

“Oh, so it is just that I am not good enough for
him
then? And of course, you’re too weak to ever stand up to him.”

“At least I’m not the one going behind someone’s back with his roommate.”

“Oh, I
hate
you, Spencer Bentley.”

Wirt took a deep breath. “Shut up! Both of you.”

That got silence. It was a silence filled with glares from the others, but it was silence.

“Spencer,” he said, “I don’t know what you think you saw, but Alana and I were just happy because we had managed to find out about Ms. Preville and Mr. Roth. And frankly, since Mr. Roth is now convinced that I’m the kind of person who lurks outside Ms. Preville’s office because he has some kind of crush on her, I could do without this.”

“He thinks
what
?” That got the beginnings of a smile from Spencer.

“Well, one of us had to act as a lookout.”

Spencer shook his head. “You wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t gone to break into someone’s room.”

“How else would we have found out whether Ms. Preville was behind this?” Alana demanded. She stood up, and Wirt knew that things were about to take another turn for the worse. Alana jabbed a finger at Spencer. “What would you have done? Asked her nicely if she was secretly evil?”

“I wouldn’t have broken who knows how many rules. As for evil, in case you hadn’t noticed, that applies to half the teachers here. Mostly the half that aren’t just crazy.”

“Sometimes, you have to break rules,” Alana shot back. Wirt wanted to agree, but he had more sense. “At least, if you want to get anything done.”

“The only thing you are going to get done, is getting us expelled. Do you want to know what Father had to say during lunch?”

“Something about the stock market?” Alana said. “How you need to work twenty-seven hours a day?”

“He
actually
warned me not to involve myself any further in the search for the chalice,” Spencer said. “He said it was dangerous, stupid and none of my business. Well… actually he said it was ‘ill advised’ but that’s what he
meant.
And you know what? He was right.”

“Big surprise there,” Alana said. “You always think he’s right.”

“I do not. But do you want to put yourself in danger for something that no one will thank us for?” Spencer looked suddenly much more sheepish. “Sneaking up to the office like that, you could… you could have been hurt, Alana.”

“But she was not,” Wirt pointed out. “Someone has to do this, Spencer, unless you want some evil sorceress destroying the school?”

“Of course I don’t, but you had no business putting Alana in danger like that.”

Wirt saw Alana bristle.

“Wirt did not
put
me in anything, Spencer. I can make my own decisions, you know. Or maybe you don’t know. You seem to want to tell me what to do right now. Just because your family is rich, doesn’t mean you get to do that.”

“Alana, I don’t want to tell you what to do. Just listen, for once.”

Alana rolled her eyes. “Oh, what’s the point?”

With that, Alana got up and stalked out. Wirt thought about going after her, but given Spencer’s expression, that didn’t seem like a very good idea. The boy sat at his desk, looking at Wirt with a sullen expression.

“Are you going to sulk all day?” Wirt asked, “or are you going to help me figure out what all this means?”

“What all what means?” Spencer demanded. “As far as I can tell, all you have learned is that two of the teachers here are an item. It’s useful if you want to start some gossip, but it’s not exactly proof that either of them is up to anything nefarious.” Spencer paused. “Or at least, anything more nefarious than passes for normal around here.”

Wirt smiled at that. “I suppose it is pretty hard to find a villain when you suspect the Headmaster is worse than they could ever be.”

Spencer returned the expression. “That’s true.” He sighed. “You know, Father wanted me to complain about having to share a room with you. He thinks you’ll be a bad influence on me.”

“Well,” Wirt said with a shrug, “hopefully.”

“Yes,” Spencer said, “I suppose someone has to be.”

“What was all that with Alana?” Wirt asked.

“She is just so… infuriating sometimes. She always has been. Honestly, some days, I don’t know why we’re even friends.”

Wirt doubted that. “So, how are you two going to make it up to one another? Send each other flowers or… oh.” Wirt paused as an idea occurred to him. One he hadn’t even considered before.

“What is it?” Spencer asked. Wirt tried to get his thoughts into some kind of order.

“You remember when I had a look in Mr. Roth’s office?”

Spencer sighed. “All too well, and I still think that’s what gave Alana the idea to do something like this, Wirt.”

“Spencer, concentrate.”

“Sorry.”

“I saw a vase of flowers in there, with a note saying “to my darling A-a present”. At the time, I wondered if Roth had a middle name, but now, it’s obvious that they’re for Ms. Preville.”

“Aloea, right,” Spencer said. “But what does that tell us? So Mr. Roth wants to give Ms. Preville flowers. So what?”

Wirt shook his head. “Spencer, you aren’t getting it. The flowers were in this really ugly vase. Hideous, like the kind of thing someone might have made if they were only in an evening class because they had to be.”

“So he doesn’t have any taste in art?”

Wirt sighed. Was Spencer making this difficult on purpose? He certainly was not this slow normally.

“Spencer,” he tried, “what if the flowers weren’t the present? What if the vase was?”

“If it is as ugly as that, why would he give her… oh, I get it. You mean that the vase-”

“Is the chalice.”
Finally
, Wirt thought.

“It’s a bit of a long shot,” Spencer said.

“Is it?” Wirt ticked the points off on his fingers as he made them. “First, we know that the chalice doesn’t always look like a chalice, so it’s probably fairly easy to change even before you start using the kind of transmutation spell Ms. Genovia was showing us, and it would easily provide the power to keep a spell like that going. Second, we know that Ms. Preville is a big fan of Ervana.”

“We
think
that she is,” Spencer corrected him. “We can’t prove it.”

“All right,” Wirt admitted, “but let’s pretend for a moment that she is. Thirdly, we know that Urlando Roth fancies her, and wants to give her a vase that no one in his right mind would give to someone just for decoration. It has
to be the chalice.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Spencer said. He thought for a moment, “but it might be. Why would he do something like that?”

Wirt shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he believes Ms. Preville when she says that Ervana is not dangerous. Maybe he just loves her so much that he doesn’t care, so long as it makes her happy. Maybe he thinks that being attacked by an evil sorceress would be good for the school’s finances.”

That train of thought found itself interrupted by a knock at the door, which was probably just as well, given that Wirt would probably have had some trouble explaining just how an attack might be good for the school’s cash flow problems The door opened to reveal Priscilla, who had picked out a surprisingly nice dress in black without the aid of her mirror. She was looking at her knuckles, as though surprised that they had been able to make quite so much noise.

“You know,” she said, “normally, I have heralds and things for that kind of thing.”

“What do you want, Priscilla?” Spencer asked.

“Well, you being less mean to my friend would be nice. But until then, you both coming back to our room will do. Alana sent me to fetch you.”

“Has something happened?” Wirt asked. Priscilla nodded.

“It’s no fun if I just tell you, though. Come on.”

She led the way from the room, clearly expecting them to follow. Wirt and Spencer both did, though for Wirt at least, it had more to do with Alana asking than with the princess. Priscilla led them up to the room she shared with the other girl, where Alana was staring at Priscilla’s mirror. She looked round as they entered.

“You three took your time. Didn’t Priscilla tell you what was happening?”

Priscilla huffed. “I’m a princess, not a messenger.”

“The mirror has spotted something,” Alana said, by way of explanation. She pointed to it. In it, Wirt could just about make out a boat, with the familiar figure of Ms. Preville in the stern, and Mr. Roth rowing hard in the bow. “They’re heading for the island. My pretending to be her must have worried them.”

“We need to tell someone,” Spencer said. Alana shook her head.

“Tell them what? That two people have decided to take a boat trip? They wouldn’t care. We have to go.”

“We can’t.”

“We can,” Alana insisted, “and I am.”

“So am I,” Wirt agreed. “We have to stop them.”

Spencer looked uncomfortable for a moment, before nodding. “Oh, all right then, but we’re leaving a note for Ms. Lake before we go. Those are teachers out there, which means they know more about magic than us.”

“I’m going too,” Priscilla declared. Alana put her hands on the other girl’s arms.

“Priscilla, it might be dangerous.”

“If you get to go, so do I.”

“Priscilla…”

“I’m the Princess here, remember? You can’t tell me I can’t. Only Daddy can do that, and he isn’t here.” Priscilla reached under her bed, and to Wirt’s shock, drew out a sword almost as big as she was.

“Where did you get that?” Alana demanded.

“Oh, one of my aunties gave it to me when I first came here. Auntie Edith said that a girl all alone with only a fool for a brother should be able to look after herself.” Priscilla hefted the sword. “I always liked Auntie Edith.”

Chapter 17

T
he first trick was to get out to the island. After all, Ms. Preville and Mr. Roth had taken the only boat. Wirt stared out over the water, trying to decide if he could manage a transportation spell for everyone over that distance, and decided that he didn’t want to find out that he could not only when they all ended up in the water. Particularly not when he currently had a rather heavy burden strapped to his back like a shield, covered with a cloth.

Priscilla briefly tried to persuade Llew the dragon to carry them over, but that got a curt response.

“Do I look like a bus to you?”

“A bit,” Wirt pointed out. After all, the dragon was about the same size in his natural form, and just as red as an English double-decker. Llew gave him an annoyed look, which turned to a surprised one when Priscilla put the point of her sword just beneath his chin.

“Either you help us,” the Princess said, “or… well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it probably won’t be very nice.”

Wirt saw Spencer roll his eyes.

Alana moved over to Priscilla. “I’m not sure that helped, Priscilla.”

“That was the worst attempt at a threat I’ve ever heard,” Spencer put in.

The princess looked downcast. “Oh,” she said, lowering the sword, “sorry.”

She sniffed.

“Oh, please don’t cry,” Llew said. “I can’t stand it when princesses cry. It’s so depressing. It’s why I had to get out of the whole “chaining them to rocks and threatening to eat them” gig in the first place.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” Priscilla sniffed again, rather more pointedly. “It’s just that the thought of not being able to get out to that island makes me
really upset.
No. I’m going to cry, I’m definitely…”

Two minutes later, the dragon was out on the beach in his natural form, blasting white-hot fire down onto the sand until it melted into glass. He shaped it with his claws, and then blew on it to cool it. The result was a glass-bottomed oval like a giant glass coracle.

“There,” the welsh dragon said, “no need to cry now. And I’ll just bet there’s some driftwood in my cave you can row with.”

There was, though in the absence of Robert, Wirt and Spencer had to do the best they could. It was not easy. Their efforts were rather more effective than the previous time though, and they soon found themselves speeding across the lake, working from Alana’s directions again once the islands disappeared. It was not long before they were scraping their way onto the beach, dragging their boat up next to the rowing boat. The four of them set out along the path to the stone garden. Wirt just hoped that they would be in time.

The stone of the garden seemed more threatening this time than it had before. Maybe it was just the thought that two teachers were waiting at the end of the path, trying to wake up an evil sorceress. Then again, maybe it had something to do with the way some of the statues around the path seemed to be moving. Wirt thought for a second that maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, but no, the head of one of the more realistic statues had definitely just turned towards him.

The others seemed to have noticed it too. At least, they were staring at the statues around them with increasing worry. The statues also held stone swords that appeared very sharp. Alana said calmly.

“I think we should probably run now.”

Wirt was already running, but the direction that they needed to run in was littered with more statues. Within a minute, the four of them were surrounded by a circle of stone statues.

Wirt searched around for a weapon, finally breaking off a branch from a nearby stone tree. Spencer and Alana did the same. Priscilla twirled her sword in a move that looked as likely to cut her own head off as that of an opponent, before coming on guard in a position that Wirt suspected she had probably spent time practicing in front of a mirror.

Wirt swung his makeshift club at the nearest of the stone warriors. It parried in a spray of stone chippings, then brought its stone sword round in an arc that Wirt had to duck to avoid. He slammed his club into the thing’s leg, breaking both the club and the leg in a single crack of stone. The creature toppled over and Wirt snatched up its sword in time to parry a blow from his next opponent.

Spencer and Alana were fighting back to back. Neither looked to be particularly expert with their makeshift weapons, but every time a blow was aimed at one of them, the other would be there to parry. Priscilla was shouting and hacking, spinning the oversized sword in combinations that would probably have been deadly if any of the statues came near her. She paused just long enough to look back at Wirt.

“Shouldn’t you bunch be using magic
or something? You know, what with being trainee
wizards
and everything?”

That, Wirt felt, was a good idea. He tried whispering the words to a transportation spell and ended up on the other side of a statue warrior, in a position to hack it down with a blow from his stone sword. He saw Alana disappear amid a haze of rainbows that made her hard to pick out, while Spencer seemed to be reciting numbers to himself.

Wirt was too busy fighting his own opponents to think about it. He sidestepped a thrust, shoved one stone warrior into another, and then recited the words to Ms. Genovia’s frog spell from memory. The statue immediately transformed into a small stone frog who tried to jump on Wirt, who managed to kick it away in mid-air.

Alana tried something complex, which fizzled out half way through when a stone warrior swung a mace at her head. She threw herself to one side, and Priscilla tripped the stone statue up, whirling back into the battle.

“Swinging this thing is jolly hard work!” she exclaimed, taking a swipe at a passing statue. Alana joined her in pushing the statue over.

“It’s still more relaxing than a hockey lesson with Ms. Genovia.”

More stone soldiers stumbled at Wirt, and more after that. With rocks for brains, it was like fighting zombies that kept appearing and reappearing. Whenever Wirt would hack one down, another two would stand in its place. Without the ability to hurt the stone statues permanently, Wirt and the others were looking at an endless tiring battle ahead of them.

Wirt knew he had to do something. With so many opponents, it was just a matter of time. Somewhere in his counting, Spencer missed a number, and found himself knocked sprawling by a backhanded blow. He struggled to his feet in time to parry the continued assault, but his concentration was broken and he gave ground.

Wirt lunged at one of the stone soldiers, but forgot to recover when the blow was parried, a wrench and a twist later, and his blade was flying from his hand. That it hit another of the stone creatures on the back of the Head was a small consolation, especially when half a dozen more of the things started to close in on him. Wirt searched around for another sword, for something he could use as a weapon. Nothing came to hand.

He tried the frog spell again, trying to turn the wall of stone statues into small frogs. Wirt drew himself up to his full height, put his hands together in what he hoped was the right configuration, and started to say the spell.

What came out of his mouth was not at all like the words used for Ms. Genovia’s frog spell. These were different. His voice took on a sibilant, hissing quality with a creaking edge to them. Just saying them made Wirt feel like the coldest reaches of the universe were being pulled through him, scraping along his insides as they went.

The whole effect made him feel like the world’s biggest ventriloquist’s dummy. The wind in the garden picked up, and the stone flowers swayed with it. The drone of the stone bees grew to something unbearable. Wirt saw something start to flake from the stone warriors nearest to him, and he realized that it was sand-sized chips of stone. The flow of the stuff turned into a torrent, swirling and blowing away in the breeze as the statues suffering centuries of erosion in just seconds. Soon, there was nothing left around Wirt but sand in neat, careful piles.

Alana and Spencer both looked at Wirt with something approaching shock. Wirt, himself, was busy looking down at his hand with the same expression.

“How did you do that?” Spencer demanded.

Wirt shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Was it a spell someone showed you?” Alana asked. “Or maybe…”

“I
don’t know,
” Wirt repeated. He was not sure he wanted to know, either.

“Um…” Priscilla began, “shouldn’t we be moving on? I am sure that Ms. Preville and Mr. Roth will be trying to free their sorceress any minute now. Aren’t we supposed to get there before they do that?”

Thank goodness for slightly scatterbrained princesses, Wirt thought, because otherwise he would probably have stood there staring at his hands for the rest of the day. Instead, he nodded.

“You’re right. We should go.”