SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Three
“Would somebody get a teacher, please?” Nick screamed.
Of the few students who hadn’t vamoosed, only one responded to his cry for help, speeding off in search of a teacher.
Nick scrambled on palms and heels. The gargoyle, large as a lion, bobbed its head as though sniffing at the air. Scraping sounds as its granite tongue darted out of its mouth and licked stone lips. Its steps were accompanied by thuds, like someone dropping bowling balls. Nick tried not to think about what it was going to feel like getting trounced by this thing.
It was right on top of him, larger than life and ugly as sin. The gargoyle opened its maw, revealing a mouth brimming with indestructible teeth, and then raised and shook its head as though emitting a hungry growl. A thought occurred to Nick as he considered his impending demise. Scrambling in his pockets, he retrieved the tiny medallion Lamborghini had given him. He held it up and closed his eyes.
Ten seconds later, surprised to still be alive and in one uneaten piece, Nick opened his eyes. The gargoyle was glaring at the Dorm Necromancy pin with stone gray peepers. When Nick dared lower his hand along with the pin, the beast began to circle him, its nose never more than an inch from Nick’s body. Was it smelling him? Did it like the scent?
“Whoa,” a voice said. A short man, dark bags beneath his eyes, widow’s peak up above, gestured wide, keeping the remaining students from approaching, though this seemed pointless to Nick, as no one dared approach.
“What is it doing?” Nick demanded of the man. The gargoyle’s nose arrived at his noggin, where it hesitated.
“Apparently it senses you don’t belong here,” the man said. He spoke in a faux kindly manner like a man playing at being a loving father. “Throw me that pin.”
“I’m pretty sure this pin is the only thing keeping me alive,” Nick cried.
The man huffed. With tedious, almost mock slow motion movements, he walked up to Nick and the gargoyle. The mythic whipped round to face the man and then crouched into a standing-by position. Once the man had shown his own Dorm pin to the mythic, and it had turned its head for one final look at Nick, it returned to its perch beside the dorm door.
The man pulled Nick to his feet. “Well, that was something. Now, show me that medallion.” He took the pin from Nick, scrutinized it as if hoping to identify it as a fake. “Who gave you this?”
“Ms. Lamborghini.”
The man nodded, returned the pin. “I don’t remember you from the sorting ceremony. What’s your name?”
“Nick Hammond.” As had become his custom in recent years, Nick watched the face of the stranger he’d introduced himself to, searching for signs of recognition. He spotted them; the man’s face, clean shaven and only just beginning to develop crow’s feet (but not laugh lines), crinkled up briefly.
“I see,” he said. “Well, Mister Hammond, I am Vesper Ussane, head of this dorm. You might want to consider another dorm; our resident gargoyle appears to have taken a disliking to you. It is all very curious.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Nick said, still panting, voice still hysterical. “Why’d it act like that? And who decided it was a good idea to station frigging gargoyles inside a school?”
The man made a sucking noise. “No one decided. They just wandered in one day. Normally it’s not a problem. Gargoyles sense those who don’t belong in the room they are guarding; for example, they help keep the boys out of the girls section, and they even sense where the transgenders belong, saving us a load of annoying lawsuits and pointless confusion. This mythic must’ve sensed you don’t belong here.”
“But it didn’t eat me,” Nick pointed out, swallowing his usual smart-aleck tone.
“Yes, how . . . fortunate.” He stared at Nick with a piercing gaze, as though hoping to penetrate this mystery by burrowing directly through Nick’s forehead and into his thoughts.
The man started ushering students into the dorm past the now statuesque gargoyle. Over his shoulder Ussane said, “Why don’t you go in and find your bed. Go on, Mister Hammond, it’s just in there, past the mythic. Take your time. I understand if you’re scared.”
Though indeed terrified that he might upset the beast, Nick nevertheless yanked down on his ruffled, blue flannel shirt and marched right by Ussane and the gargoyle. Neither one attacked. Once he was safely inside, Nick looked back at Ussane. He thought he saw a flicker of disappointment trek across the dorm heads taut features. But that might’ve just been his face.
The room he found himself standing in might’ve been reconstructed from the remains of a medieval castle. A wooden landing led down a few steps into the room. Full suits of armor rusted where they stood, guarding either side of the landing; Nick eyed them both suspiciously, hoping they were not yet more mythics. Knightlings, or some such gobbledygook. He didn’t think he could take any more monster madness today.
The darkly stained wooden floor added a warmth to the room that the rest of the castle found wanting, while the white wall—faded as it was by ages of neglect—added a brightness lacking in the halls, and the cathedral ceiling twenty feet overhead contributed to an overall sense of lavish grandeur, though the room couldn’t be more than twenty-five by fifty feet.
As he stepped down, treading further into its beauty, a creaking sound of metal on metal froze Nick in his tracks. He turned, looked at the suit of armor. Had its helmet been turned that way before? Nick didn’t think so. He shook this thought aside and entered further into the room. A huge Tudor bay window dominated the end wall opposite the entrance. About fifteen feet tall, the jutting glass and wood structure looked out over the dark grounds and Lake George. Nick pictured himself curled up inside this bay window, reading one of his books.
“That was totally wild,” Bruno playfully socked him in the shoulder. “You confused the piss out of that gargoyle. How red would your face have been if it had decided to eat you?”
Nick shook his head. “This common room is pretty cool, but where do we sleep?”
Bruno nodded towards a pair of doors and landings to the left, separated by twenty feet or so. Nick froze. Another gargoyle guarded each door, the girls’ rooms and the boys’ rooms. Hesitantly he climbed the three steps. This gargoyle twitched and crunched as it turned its neck to look at him. Fortunately it did not climb down for a sniff. Perhaps it had communicated with its brethren somehow.
A long square room stretched out before them. Unlike the castle proper, which had been carved out of the mountain, this room had been constructed with mortar and stone. Dozens of simple wood framed beds lined the walls on either side.
An exasperated gush of air escaped Nick’s mouth.
“What?” Bruno said.
“Well, look at it. It looks like the sleeping quarters for a frigging boot camp. I think we got gypped. Are all the dorms like this? Maybe I should transfer to Dorm Shaman.”
The big bully dropped into the nearest bed where a novice boy was busy arranging candies. Bruno ignored the kid, even when he uttered a shy complaint. He asked Nick “What were you expecting, the Hilton?”
Nick stepped aside to let the scarecrow kid enter. “I don’t know. Something amazing, like the room Harry and Ron and Neville shared. You know, circular, cozy, cool.”
Bruno swiped a couple of the chocolates from the novice before standing. “Well, there is the Hall Monitors bunk down at the end. It fits only three or four beds, has its own wood stove and little toilet room and it’s supposed to have a secret passage the monitors use to get around quicker for their stupid monitoring program stuff.”
Happily following his oversized peer down the bunk line, Nick mentally patted himself on the back for making peace with such a useful goon.
At the end of the aisle to the right was an arched door. Instead of knocking like a decent human being, Bruno shoved on the thick wood door, and led Nick inside, down the three wooden steps. This space was a miniature of the common room, maybe one fifth its size, the décor modern mediaeval, with more of those doubly-anachronistic Edison bulbs lighting the rooms’ dark-stained pine walls. A single lonely curtained window would no doubt provide a fine view in the morning. Noticing the curved walls, Nick realized they must be standing in one of the turrets of the castle, or what passed as a turret.
“Alright munchkins, I ain’t here for the company, I’m here for the room, everybody out,” Bruno declared in his best tough guy voice.
The two younger apprentice wizards instantly rushed out, snatching up their packs as they scrammed. The third boy was Richard Warfield, and he responded by aiming that peculiar knowing grin in their direction. “Which bed would you like, Groothius?”
“Nice try, preacher boy. Get out.”
Richard dropped into the closest bed, a twin mattress nestled beside the wall to the left of the window. “Those two buggers you sent out won’t tell on you because they’re afraid of you. That won’t be the case with me if you force me out.”
“Oh what,” Bruno moved toward Richard, who seemed unfazed, “you’re not afraid of me?”
The strange boy shrugged and then dumped the contents of his pack onto his bed. Bruno moved even closer until he was looming over Richard. “You think your God will protect you?”
“He doesn’t have to,” Richard eased away from Bruno so he could store his vials of powder and leaves inside the locker standing beside his headboard. “Logic is on my side here. You could bully me out, maybe beat me into submission, but I’d still end up going to the Dean about it; he’ll force you out, punish you. I guess you could kill me, but that would look awful suspicious, what with my corpse hanging around and you mysteriously taking my place in the monitors bunk.”
That abnormal grin never left Richards face, even when he mouthed off at Bruno, even when his defiant pose showed him to be a good eight or nine inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter.
A moment pregnant with tension crept by with neither party budging from the staring contest. Finally, Nick cleared his throat. “It’s okay, Bruno. We can just take the regular beds out there.” When the bully failed to respond, Nick felt panic creeping in. “Listen guys, I don’t need any more trouble. Let’s just take a couple of deep breaths and walk away.”
Nick cringed as a flash of white filled his vision. When he opened his eyes, he was surprised to find no one had been hurt. Bruno had merely plopped onto the bed nearest the door, arms crossed over his pudgy chest.
“No,” Bruno scowled at Richard. “We’ll all stay. Fetch my bag, Dick.”
Nick could only hold his breath in anticipation. How much verbal abuse would this weird boy take before exploding?
Twenty seconds passed. Richard walked out the door, marched down the aisle, paused to speak with the two apprentice boys who’d fled Bruno, and returned with Bruno’s pack, which had been placed beside one of the dorm beds. He set it down gently on Bruno’s newly requisitioned bed in the monitors bunk, along with two monitor’s badges. “If you’re going to stay here, you’ll need to take over their duties.”
Bruno grinned, swiped up one of the badges. “That could be fun.”
The three frenemies spent the rest of the evening settling in, stocking their lockers, investigating the restroom, and searching for the rumored secret passageway. All in silence. The pressure in the room eased up a bit when a third year journeyman delivered their schedules. “Bestiary, fifth period tomorrow. Is that what I think it is?” Nick asked the room.
“Oh yeah,” Bruno replied, examining his own schedule. “Me too. Finally get to see some mythics in captivity. Been waiting eight years for this. I hope Duchaine has some trolls I can poke. Hey preacher-boy, you think mythics have souls?”
Richard sighed.
An hour later, Nick dug a small bottle out from the bottom of his pack and dry-swallowed one of the pills. When Richard, who lay awake on his bed, asked what they were, Nick replied, “Sleeping pills. I have a hundred questions. No way I’m getting any sleep tonight without a pill.”
“Questions about the classes?” Richard asked.
Nick shrugged, realized this was a pointless gesture in the dark. “Mostly, but also about . . . other stuff.”
“Well I can’t sleep either. Why not ask me? I might know. I know a little something.”
From the other bed a derisive snort escaped Bruno’s nose.
“Okay,” Nick said. “You know about my being genetically engineered in a lab, right?”
Richard replied, “Sure. Everyone knows about that. My parents said it was in all the papers back in the day, wizard and buffer papers.”
“Yeah, well, this geneticist guy, he managed to circumvent the voodoo infertility curse on my mom to, you know, create me. Thing is, he was in the mall today. He approached me.”
“No kidding?” Richard leaned up onto his elbows. “What’d he say?”
Nick hesitated. For years there’d been stories circulating in the wizarding community about how some buffer scientist had managed to undo what no witch doctor or warlock could. If Nick revealed what he had found out only just this morning . . . it would rock the community. Who knew what all the consequences would be. “Never mind.”
“You don’t trust me?” Richard said. “I know you won’t believe me, but I am the most trustworthy person in this entire school.”
“Oh right, because you’re so righteous?” Bruno snapped.
“At least I’m not a reeking pile of clichés,” Richard said. “Bullies are dumb and useless and they never get the girl. Plus you suck at symbols and sigils.”
“That’s it,” Bruno whipped off his covers. “You want to go, Dick?”
“Case in point,” Richard replied. “Only dumb clichéd bullies say ‘You wanna go.’”
The pill kicked in and Nick drifted off to the land of Nod to the sounds of Bruno and Richard verbally bashing each other.
It came as a slight surprise to find them both alive and well next morning. Sunbeams stabbed in through the window, highlighting dust motes and putting a smile on Nick’s face. My first day of classes at the Adirondack Institute of Magic. Finally, life is good.
For a full two minutes he gazed out the window at the grounds. It seemed he could see for miles. Early morning fog comprised most of those miles, but he was able to make out some of the length of tall fencing surrounding and stretching away from the castle. Down below, about a hundred yards from what looked to be a stone deck, labyrinthine topiary wound its serpentine way like an anaconda on uppers.
Nick inhaled, deep and slow. “Way better than outside my bedroom window.”
At the foot of his bed he found Severus in his carrying case, and let the tomcat out. He’d have to find out about the litter box and cat food pretty soon. There were small bowls at the foot of the other beds. Checking them, Nick discovered to his surprise that Bruno’s familiar was a little orange and green newt (he’d been expecting something a bit more sinister; maybe a tarantula, or a bat), while Richard owned an angelfish.
Following a visit to the bathroom, Nick followed the traffic out, past the gargoyles, and downstairs to the dining hall. Here he enjoyed the tastiest oatmeal, toast, and fruit dish breakfast of his life. When the meal was over and bells gonged, everyone got up and started heading off to their first round of classes.
Nick padded his belly, “Those gnomes sure can cook.”
“The gnomes don’t cook the food, idiot,” Delrisa Morgana said as she darted around Nick. “Everyone knows the gnomes merely grow the produce. But I guess we shouldn’t expect too much out of a wizard who’s spent his entire life in buffer school.”
Through squinty eyes Nick watched the girl walk away—and tried not to enjoy the sight. “What is her problem?” he huffed at Richard.
“Delrisa?”
Nick nodded while following Bruno on their way to Amulets and Talismans.
“Gee, I don’t know, Nick,” Richard joshed him. “It couldn’t possibly be that you stared at her chest the entire ride up the mountain yesterday.”
“It wasn’t for the entire time,” Nick argued. “And it’s not my fault. If she doesn’t like guys staring then she shouldn’t wear that tight outfit.”
Richard laughed as they rounded a corner, passing a suit of armor. “It’s her school uniform!”
“Well she obviously bought a size too small. On purpose too I bet, just to tease us.”
They’d run into a bottleneck in the breezeway, and were forced to wait for it to clear. “You know,” Richard whispered, “I heard this rumor that girls like to look hot, so they wear things that make them look hot.”
“Yeah, so that we’ll check them out,” Nick was getting into the groove now. “Only it’s a trap. We check them out, they get pissed. Let’s face it; all girls are sociopaths.”
“I’m not a sociopath,” a pint-sized girl with long blonde curls said. She’d appeared beside the boys just as the bottleneck was beginning to clear. “I’m Lisa, and I like people. All kinds of people. And I’ve never dressed to look hot, not once.” And with that she skipped away, disappearing into the crowd.
Nick believed the girl too, about not dressing hot; her school robe was loose and too long for her petite frame, and slung around her neck and wrists was a collection of amulets and talismans representing various tribes and all five Branches of magic, comprised of so many gems and elements that Nick doubted he could identify them all.
The boys parted ways at the end of the breezeway, Richard heading into Lamborghini’s Healing Arts class as Nick determinedly looked anywhere but at the teacher he’d already come to despise. A few doors down he followed Bruno’s broad back into Amulets and Talismans. Everyone settled into their seats. Nick spotted the tiny blonde a couple tables over. She was staring at him.
Hmm, he ruminated, maybe I should get all pissed and start insulting her.
“Good morning class,” a tall blonde woman stood in a shaft of light streaming in through the window.
Nick could’ve sworn he saw a halo revolving over her head. The name on the chalkboard—scrawled in pink chalk—read Mrs. Willowroot. In this morning light she reminded him of the beautiful mysterious angel who’d been haunting his dreams for the past few weeks, ever since his parents had told him about the W.A.N.D. Project.
“Today we will be learning how to create basic talismans. Now, as it is a Tuesday, the corresponding planet is Mars, so we will be using iron as our base metal. You can each choose whichever attribute mineral you wish for the purpose of your talisman, and later we will bring them to Shamgar to fuse together.” Mrs. Willowroot paused, her keen eyes taking in the entire class, pausing first on Nick, and then on the little blonde who’d skipped past him earlier.
“Now, let’s make sure our intent is fully understood and united under this understanding. Without opening Spell Crafts: Creating Magical Objects, can anyone tell me the main difference between amulets and talismans?”
Almost every hand in the room shot up. Mrs. Willowroot nodded at someone up front Nick could not see. When the student answered, he recognized the voice. It belonged to Delrisa. “Amulets are objects charged with magical power to defend the witch or wizard, and are usually made of naturally occurring, easily shaped elements.”
Nick rolled his eyes at her verbatim answer from Spell Crafts.
Mrs. Willowroot nodded. Delrisa continued. “A talisman is essentially witch’s tool imbued with power for more specific purposes and intents, like winning at gambling or . . .”
“Boosting memory before a test,” a boy interrupted. Laughter followed.
“All right, all right, settle down,” Mrs. Willowroot said. “Delrisa is absolutely right. Talismans are some of the most essential tools a practitioner can possess. Jimmy, would you mind passing out the iron discs?”
Jimmy obeyed. Iron blanks in hand, they settled in to the working. Nick found his fingers going numb with the intricate labor when, an hour later, a bell chimed. The students stood and deposited their bagged, tagged, and incomplete talismans in a bin on Mrs. Willowroot’s desk. As they flowed through the door, she called out, “Tomorrow we’ll take a trip out to Shamgar’s forge and see if he won’t let us help him complete these in his fires.”
Second period Sigils and Symbols went smoothly, with Nick impressing the teacher, Melisandra Mannik, with his grasp of the Enochian alphabet. Unfortunately his innate gifts also alienated him from those students hailing from Dorm Enochian. Though viewed as the advanced class at the Institute, they couldn’t quite match Nick’s mastery of the angelic symbols.
Richard Warfield, however, seemed oddly pleased with Nick’s grasp of Enochian.
And then it was off to third period Divination.
Of all their classes, Divination was the one for which Nick had been salivating. It was essential to his Plan that he not only master this subject, but go beyond its established boundaries. To succeed in Divination meant discovering the answers his parents refused to give and to uncovering the mystery of the geneticist’s revelation that his magic originated from someone unknown person or being.
But he would have to be cunning. Priestess Carnivales had a reputation; a legend back in her day, Carnivales had been known to delve so deeply into her scrying mirror, Thackery, that she’d perceived not just glimpses of the future, but visions of another world. They also said this had cost Carnivales her sanity.
Located on the third floor, Divination was a bit of a hike and Nick, absent the guidance of anyone he knew to lead the way, ended up lost. He startled a transgender in the third floor ‘Other’ bathroom, and later walked into Fukushima’s den of smoldering wick, a room dominated by hundreds of candlesticks, stalagmite globs of melted wax, and some candles so fresh they were still paired together by their wicks.
With a little prodding Nick managed to siphon directions from the janitor’s noggin, and three minutes later he came panting up to the Divination door at the very end of a hallway. He paused just outside to catch his breath and then shoved on the door. Opaque fumes enveloped him three steps in. Nick detected essence of rue, valerian root, maybe mugwort, and something so faint and unfamiliar it seemed to be coming from another world.
“What is that?” a groggy female voice asked the fumes. Nick stepped forward. “Oh dear, it’s a . . . oh,” the voice continued. “Everyone relax. It is only a boy. A wayward student, no doubt. Go back to your mantra. And you, boy, come, yes, come in to me,” the voice beckoned.
Penetrating deeper into the fumes, Nick approached Priestess Carnivales. His lids began to droop and his body started to sag, as if in this space gravity had doubled its hold.
Carnivales was draped in a frilly dress so colorful it looked like something a rainbow might’ve puked up; even dimmed by the murky cloud it shone offensively vibrant. As Nick shuffled closer, he observed that her pupils were pinpricks, and that she had a pleasant but strained look as of a woman who had once been pretty but was now fighting a losing battle with Time. He tried not to stare too long; she gave off a baked-out-of-her-gourd vibe that reminded him of a stoner cashier he knew in Philicity.
Raising her hands in slow motion to either side of Nick’s face, Carnivales said in her sluggish voice, “If you are to be late again, don’t bother entering. You risk interrupting the group projection into the Dreaming . . . oh yes, I see it too. He is definitely a channel, quite a powerful one, I’d say.”
“Who is? Me is?” Nick asked.
Despite the powerful desire to crumple into a heap and fall asleep, he found himself enthralled by this sudden declaration. Hoping to keep her talking, he said, “What’s in the fumes? I recognize the three sleep-inducers, but the fourth smell, I can’t place it. Is it some sort of root?”
“You can sense that?”
Nick nodded.
“My dear boy, you possess the gift of clairolfaction. You can perceive scents from other dimensions, even while awake. Remarkable.” Nick was about to ask for more information, but Priestess Carnivales started shuffling him over to a large cushioned area rug where she ordered him to sit down with the ring of students.
Reluctantly (and suspecting but not caring that he would never do such a thing when sober) Nick held hands with the boys on either side of him. Despite the haze he managed to make out their dorm pins: they were both from Dorm Shaman. Shamans excelled at the mantic arts, most specifically at astral projection. He hoped his close proximity to two apprentice Shamans might boost his ability to project. Within moments he took up the mantra, a gentle, almost rhythmic chant reminiscent of prayerful Gregorian monks. Soon his eyes were closed, the lids too heavy to keep propped up. In mystical harmony Nick and his classmates fell silent simultaneously, waiting to receive spiritual guidance from their teacher.
“Deep, slow breaths,” Carnivales’ voice was faint and seemed to echo in Nick’s head. “This is your first time entering the Dreaming, so we will only seek a glimpse of the Veil. Everyone set your minds on encountering the Pillar of the Silver Net.”
A gush of wind breezed past Nick, rustling his hair. He shivered. In his mind’s eye a vast chain-linked net of pure glimmering silver stretched out before him, expanding left and right and above and below as far as the eye could see. There was nothing the net did not conceal. Here he knew, with a certainty alien to teenagers and unnatural to most adults, that all his questions could be answered—on the other side of this net. But it seemed impenetrable.
His astral form, or wraith, floated before the expansive net, moving up and down in search of an entrance into the Dreaming. It seemed hours had passed by when Nick sensed intruders. His wraith twirled. It was only his classmates, catching up. As if it had been waiting for this moment, an impossibly tiny tear opened up in the net before Nick. No one else seemed to notice. He floated towards the tear, ethereal hand stretched out to touch it. The moment his finger made contact, the Net opened up. A mirror in the shape of an arm reached through the aperture and grabbed Nick’s wraith.