Ruskin was used to heavy, rhythmic noises. He had lived among people beating anvils all his life. He failed to notice Wermacht and went on talking. “The dwarfs’ way is the old way. It goes back to before the dawn of history.”
“Shut up, you,” ordered Wermacht.
Ruskin’s round blue eyes flicked to Wermacht. He was used to overbearing people too. “We’d been writing notes for centuries before we wrote down any history,” he told Elda.
“I said shut up!” Wermacht snapped. He hit the lectern with a crack that made everyone jump and followed that up with a sizzle of magefire. “Didn’t you hear me, you horrible little creature?”
Ruskin flinched along with everyone else at the noise and the flash, but at the words ‘horrible little creature’ his face went a brighter pink and his large chest swelled. He bowed with sarcastic politeness. “Yes, but I hadn’t quite finished what I was saying,” he growled. His voice was now so deep that the windows buzzed.
“We’re not here to listen to you,” Wermacht retorted. “You’re only a student – you and the creature that’s encouraging you – unless, of course, both of you strayed in here by mistake. I don’t normally teach animals, or runts in armour. Why are you dressed for battle?”
Elda’s beak opened and clapped shut again. Ruskin growled, “This is what dwarfs wear.”
“Not in my classes, you don’t,” Wermacht snapped, and took an uneasy glance at the vibrating windows. “And can’t you control your voice?”
Ruskin’s face flushed beyond pink, into beetroot. “No. I can’t. I’m thirty-five years old and my voice is breaking.”
“Dwarfs,” said Elda, “are different.”
“Although only in some things,” Felim put in, leaning forward as smooth and sharp as a knife edge. “Wizard Wermacht, no one should be singled out for personal remarks at this stage. We are all new here. We will all be making mistakes.”
Felim seemed to have said the right thing. Wermacht contented himself with putting his eyebrows up and staring at Felim. And Felim stared back until, as Claudia remarked to Olga afterwards, one could almost hear knives clashing. Finally, Wermacht shrugged and turned to the rest of the class. “We are going to start this course by establishing the first ten laws of magic. Will you all get out your notebooks and write. Your first big heading is ‘The Laws of Magic’.”
There was a scramble for paper and pens. Olga dived for her cloak pockets, Elda for her feathered bag and Ruskin for the front of his armour. Felim looked bemused for a moment, then fumbled inside his wide sash until he found what seemed to be a letter. Ruskin passed him a stick of charcoal and was rewarded with a flashing smile of gratitude. It made Ruskin stare. Felim’s narrow, rather stern face seemed to light up. Meanwhile, Elda saw Claudia sitting looking lost and hastily tore her a page out of her own notebook. Claudia smiled almost as shiningly as Felim, a smile that first put two long creases in her thin cheeks and then turned the left-hand crease into a dimple, but she waved away the pen Elda tried to lend her. The words ‘Laws of Magic’ had already appeared at the top of the torn page. Elda blinked a little.
Lukin just sat there.
“Smaller headings under that, numbered,” proclaimed Wermacht. “Law One, the Law of Contagion or Part for Whole. Law Two— You back there, is your memory particularly good or something? Yes, you with the second-hand jacket.”
“Me?” said Lukin. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I’d need a notebook.”
Wermacht frowned at him, dreadfully. “That was extremely stupid of you. This is basic stuff. If you don’t have this written down, you’re going to be lost for the rest of the time you’re here. How did you expect to manage?”
“I – er – I wasn’t sure. I mean—” Lukin seemed completely lost. His good-looking but sulky face grew even redder than Ruskin’s had been.
“Precisely.” Wermacht stroked his little pointed beard smugly. “So?”
“I was trying to conjure a notebook while you were talking,” Lukin explained. “From my room.”
“Oh, you think you can work advanced magic, do you?” Wermacht asked. “Then by all means, go ahead and conjure.” He looked meaningly at his hour-glass. “We shall wait.”
At Wermacht’s sarcastic tone, Lukin’s red face went white – white as a candle, Elda thought, sliding an eye round at him. Her brother Blade went white when he was angry too. She scrabbled hastily to tear another page out of her notebook for him. Before she had her talons properly into the paper, however, Lukin stood up and made a jerky gesture with both hands.
Half of Wermacht’s lectern vanished away downwards into a deep pit that opened just in front of it. Wermacht snatched his hour-glass off the splintered remains of it and watched grimly as most of his papers slid away downwards too. Deep, distant echoings came up from the pit, along with cold, earthy air.
“Is this your idea of conjuring?” he demanded.
“I was trying,” Lukin answered. Evidently he had his teeth clenched. “I was trying for a paper off your desk. To write on. Those were nearest.”
“Then try again,” Wermacht commanded him. “Fetch them back at once.”
Lukin took a deep breath and shut his eyes. Sweat shone at the sides of his white face. Beside him, Olga began scrabbling in her cloak pockets, watching Lukin anxiously sideways while she did so. Nothing happened. Wermacht sighed, angrily and theatrically. Olga’s hawk-like face took on a fierce, determined look. She whispered something.
A little winged monkey appeared in the air, bobbing and chittering over the remains of the lectern, almost in Wermacht’s face. Wermacht recoiled, looking disgusted. All the students cried out, once with astonishment, and then again when the wind fanned by the monkey’s wings reached them. It smelt like a piggery. The monkey meanwhile tumbled over itself in the air and dived down into the pit.
“Is this your idea of a joke?” Wermacht snapped at Lukin. “You with the second-hand jacket! Open your eyes!”
Lukin’s eyes popped open. “What do—?”
He stopped as the monkey reappeared from the pit, wings beating furiously, hauling the missing part of the lectern in one hand and the papers in the other. The smell was awful.
“That’s nothing to do with me,” Lukin protested. “I only make holes.”
The monkey tossed the piece of lectern against the rest of it. This instantly became whole again, and it tossed the papers in a heap on top. With a long, circular movement of its tail, a rumbling and a crash and a deep growling thunk, like a dungeon door shutting, it closed the hole, leaving the stone floor just as it had been before Lukin tried to conjure. Then the monkey winked out of existence, gone like a soap bubble. The smell, if possible, was worse.
Olga, who had gone as white as Lukin, silently passed him a small, shining notebook. Lukin stared at it as it lay across his large hand. “I can’t take this! It looks really valuable!” The book seemed to have a cover of beaten gold inlaid with jewels.
“Yes, you can,” Olga murmured. “You need it. It’s a present.”
“Thanks,”
