The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1 Read online

  Alana had, with a certain amount of glee, ignored Ms. Preville’s warning and used a glamour to turn herself into a copy of Ms. Genovia, complete with large boots for stomping frogs. Spencer had taken a different approach, coming up with an image of King Wilford on the basis that it was hard for people not to tell you things when they thought they were being royally commanded. As for Wirt…

  He knocked on the door to Ender Paine’s office, just to be sure that the Head was not in, then pictured him in his mind as he set about constructing the illusion. He just hoped that it would be good enough to fool anyone who showed up unexpectedly. Wirt tried the door, and was almost surprised to find that it opened under his touch. Inside, the office was just as he remembered it, from the book-lined shelves to the table in the middle.

  Wirt hoped that, by searching through those bookshelves, he might be able to find something on the chalice. Or maybe he’d find the chalice itself.

  What he mostly found were files. Reports, graphs, and memos, scattered across the desk in an order that you probably needed to be a wizard to make any sense of. Some of them showed unmistakable signs of having been chewed by a rabbit. Wirt started to flick through them. At the back of his mind was the thought that, even if there weren’t anything about the chalice, there might still be a note somewhere about him, and exactly what Ender Paine intended for him.

  There didn’t seem to be anything like that though. It was, Wirt felt, more than a little disappointing.

  On the other hand, some of what was there caught his attention a little. Now, Wirt wouldn’t have reckoned himself the greatest when it came to understanding complex financial information, and at least one of the memos was written in an ugly looking language that tried to squirm out of the way of his eyes anyway, but from what he could see, he got the impression that things were getting difficult for the school. There was at least one file labeled “budget cuts”, while several of the graphs had a definite downward trend to them.

  That, though, was not helping Wirt to find the chalice, so he decided to try searching the shelves. Wirt scanned the titles, hoping for clues. They were an eclectic mixture composed of biographies, history, and novels.

  Others had what Wirt felt was a more traditional feel to them. They were bound in a number of leathery substances, with titles picked out on the spine in characters that hurt just to look at. In the middle of a cluster of them was a rather simpler looking book, with the words “Home Sweet Home” in place of a title. Wirt reached out for it without thinking.

  He blinked, and found himself standing in a huge marble hall that looked like something out of a Roman palace. Pictures and tapestries lined the walls, set in between stone benches, alongside which were a number of small, golden cages. In each sat some kind of bird or small animal, from hamsters to lizards. Wirt found himself comparing Ender Paine to the kind of person who might normally keep so many pets, and found that he just couldn’t get the two images to match.

  Then he thought of Ms. Genovia’s transformation spell. With some trepidation, Wirt undid the latch on one of the cage doors, letting a songbird hop out. In a swirl of green smoke, a slender woman wrapped in layers of green silk stood in front of him. Her features were sharper than most people’s, and her ears were every bit as pointed as Ms. Preville’s. Her red hair was close cropped, leaving the main impression of her face as just a pair of piercing green eyes.

  “What do you want now, Ender?’

  Wirt remembered the glamour disguising him, and wondered what the Head would say at this point. Probably not very much, given his chances of getting a word in edgeways.

  “Coming here, time after time, pulling me from my cage at all hours. Is it not enough that you torment me by…hang on, you aren’t Ender, are you?”

  Wirt found his wrist snatched and held up for inspection. The glamour on it flickered, and the woman’s eyes narrowed. She snapped a couple of words, and Wirt found himself staring at his own arm again.

  “Well, this is unexpected. And dangerous, of course. You really should not be here, child.”

  “I’m not a child,” Wirt said.

  “Of course you are. And a foolish one too, to come here clothed in such a weak glamour. You need to leave, before Ender catches you and you end up like everyone else who has annoyed him.” She gestured to the other cages. “And this is if you are lucky. How did you even come to be here… Wirt?”

  Wirt didn’t bother asking how she knew his name. Instead, he gave the woman a short version of events to date. Since she was already in a position to get him into trouble with the Head, there didn’t seem to be much point in avoiding it.

  “I am not in a position to do much, in my cage,” the woman said, “but I do have a piece of advice for you, young Wirt. Beware of Ender Paine.”

  Wirt shrugged. “That’s hardly news.”

  The woman’s eyes flashed. “Don’t trust your Ms. Lake too much either. She’ll betray you. It’s what she does. No, I don’t expect you to believe me. For now though, you need to leave.”

  “And how do I do that?” Wirt asked.

  “Like this.”

  Wirt found himself standing in Ender Paine’s office once more, which was both a relief and a worry. A relief, because at least he was not talking to strange women in a room full of cages. A worry, because the door to Ender Paine’s office seemed to be opening, and Wirt realized that since he was not covered by his glamour anymore, he was not going to cut a very impressive figure behind the Head’s desk.

  Why he reached for Ms. Genovia’s transformation spell rather than another glamour, Wirt couldn’t say. Maybe it was the thought that his first attempt had been so easy to see through, or that things hadn’t gone very well for him in the original lesson. As a result he found himself saying the words to the other spell, and trying to concentrate on the image of the Headmaster.

  Wirt just had time to catch a glimpse of Ender Paine stepping into his office just before the world disappeared upwards, perhaps it wouldn’t. Presumably, the Headmaster would have had a better idea than most that the version of him standing in front of him was not the real one, had Wirt succeeded.

  As it was, Wirt found himself under the table, with the familiar green feet of a toad spread in front of him. He hopped further under the table, out of sight, as Ender Paine came fully into the room, apparently arguing with someone.

  “No Aloea, selling off artifacts is not the way to stabilize the school’s financial position.”

  “Something has to be.” Wirt recognized the voice of Ms. Preville, which he considered to be quite a feat considering his current condition. ‘And you won’t even consider it.’

  “I won’t consider it because it is foolish, and puts power into hands it shouldn’t be in.”

  “Hands other than yours, you mean,” Ms. Preville shot back.

  “Be very careful, Aloea.”

  “At least tell me that you will consider it.”

  “If you felt this way,” Ender Paine said, “you should have made the case for it at the board meeting. Not that it would have helped. You know that our custodian of artifacts would have opposed it.”

  “Oppose it? The odds are that she has already started it. That chalice has to have gone somewhere. Really, Ender,” the tone of Ms. Preville’s voice changed abruptly, ‘is there nothing I can do to persuade you? I’m sure between us, we could…”

  “I think you should leave now, Aloea, unless you have a particular desire to experience life as… I think an alley cat would be appropriate, don’t you?”

  Ms. Preville said a word that Wirt suspected teachers weren’t supposed to know, and he heard her opening the door. It occurred to him that, as a toad, he wouldn’t be able to do the same. He hopped after her as quickly as he could. He made it through just before Ms. Preville slammed it after herself. Wirt tried not to think about just how flat it would have made him had he moved a little slower, without a great deal of success.

  He sat there panting croakily until the teacher had disa
ppeared down the hall and stepped into the transport tube. Now all he had to do was sit and wait for the spell to wear off…

  Except, had that been the version of the spell he had used? Wirt had, with Ender Paine coming in, instinctively said the first version of the spell that came to mind. He had a horrible feeling that it might have been the permanent one. In which case, with no vocal chords to undo it, he was stuck as a toad.

  No. He couldn’t be. Could he? He couldn’t really be condemned to a life of hopping about on lily pads, catching flies with his tongue, and keeping a careful eye out for the shape of herons in the air, not after everything he’d been through. There had to be some way of undoing it. Wirt cast his mind back to Ms. Genovia’s class, trying to recall everything she had said, while simultaneously trying to ignore the parts that had involved boots. Hadn’t she joked about having to spend years looking for a princess? At the time, it had seemed like a terrible thing to Wirt. All that effort, all that searching, and when it came to it, even if you did somehow find one, you probably wouldn’t get much further than the castle moat.

  He had one slight advantage there though, because Wirt already knew exactly where he was going to find his princess. With a happy croak, he hopped his way into the transport tube.

  Chapter 9

  The ride to the landing where Alana and Priscilla had their room was a terrifying one. The tubes were bad enough when you were human shaped, but at least then they had probably been designed with you in mind. The effects of the forces involved on an amphibian body meant that Wirt spent the whole journey wondering if he was about to become nothing more than a faint greenish stain on one of the walls. He shot out of the tube at the end like the contents of some kind of toad cannon, landing clumsily, before hopping his way to the door he recognized as the correct one.

  It was closed, which created some problems. Wirt tried staring at it and waiting, but he didn’t have the patience for it, so he tried hopping at it instead. It felt a bit like shoulder charging a cliff face, but he succeeded in giving the door a couple of solid thumps before settling back in front of it.

  “Who is it?” asked the voice of his potential savior. The door swung open to reveal Priscilla, dressed in a leaf green ball gown that almost matched Wirt’s current skin tone. She looked round, over Wirt’s head, before shrugging and shutting the door again. Wirt croaked angrily, before launching himself at the door again.

  “This isn’t funny!” Priscilla said, tearing the door open and scanning the hall. She looked like she was going to slam the door again, so Wirt decided to try croaking. Slowly, Priscilla looked down.

  “Eek! A toad! Well, Ms. Genovia told me what to do with you.”

  From Wirt’s perspective, it was a bit like startling King Kong, particularly since Priscilla brought her foot down onto the patch of ground he would have occupied had he not had the foresight to hop out of the way. It was like being in the middle of an earthquake. Wirt hopped this way and that, avoiding Priscilla as best he could, croaking at her reproachfully as he did so.

  “Priscilla, what are you doing?” Wirt had never been so relieved to hear someone’s voice as he was to hear Alana’s right then. Priscilla seemed almost as glad, pausing in her stomping long enough to give the other girl an imploring look.

  “Oh, Alana, it’s been terrible. There’s this… this toad. And it was knocking on my door. And I think I must not have the right kind of boots, because I’ve tried and tried, but I still can’t squish the stupid thing.” Priscilla sounded on the verge of tears, which seemed a bit strong to Wirt, given that he was the one only a single footstep away from being squished like a bug.

  Alana put her hand on the other girl’s arm. “You say it knocked on your door?”

  Priscilla nodded. “And then croaked to get my attention.”

  Alana looked down at Wirt. “This is a toad, not a frog.” Alana looked very carefully at Wirt before picking him up with one hand and raising him to eye level. “Priscilla? I’d like you to come with me please. Spencer will just have to catch up to us later.”

  Thankfully, the princess didn’t argue. Wirt, of course, didn’t get much choice. Together, the three of them headed down through the tree, and then out from it, into the meadow beyond. That worried Wirt a little, because there was always a chance that Alana was simply taking the “return him to the wild” approach to toad-disposal, but it was not like he was in a position to complain. Alana turned to her friend.

  “Now, Priscilla, where do toads live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wirt heard Alana sigh. “How about ponds, streams, and other wet places. Is there anything like that here?”

  Priscilla shook her head.

  “And toads don’t usually knock on doors,” Alana said, before turning her attention to Wirt. “Croak twice if you aren’t really a toad.”

  Wirt did it as loudly as he dared. Alana acquired the slightly smug look of someone whose theory had just been proved right. Priscilla was not so happy about it.

  “So someone turned into a frog to sneak into our room? That’s… that’s disgusting.”

  “No, Priscilla,” Alana said. “It was not trying to sneak in. I think it wanted you to kiss it.”

  “Kiss it? After it tried to sneak in?”

  “Priscilla, it didn’t. I just told you that. Now please, just kiss the toad.”

  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 hav
ing 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.