Firebreak, page 11
A girl in the back row raised a timid hand. “Yes, Professor?”
“I see you’re from Parallel Nineteen. You have two hearts, correct?”
She scrunched up her face, confused. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“We’ll be providing a slightly modified curriculum for you.” He addressed the class again. “You will be tested on all of these techniques, and as was true last year, any failure will result in expulsion. If you cannot master self-defense, you are a danger to yourself. If you cannot render assistance to your fellows in need, you are a liability in the field. I will not allow any student who exhibits such deficiencies to graduate. I do not enjoy repeating myself, so consider this your only warning. Now let’s get to work.”
As he walked to the blackboard, cane-clicks echoing through the lecture hall, a faint whisper drifted to Amy’s ear: “Seriously? You only have one? You all only have one? How does that even work?”
The professor pointedly cleared his throat.
“In the field, knowing and trusting your allies is often the difference between survival and death. In times of chaos, a group divided is easily turned upon itself. On Parallel Twenty-Six, the War-Dancers of Orinoco devised a solution. It’s called the Serpent Rhythm.”
As he spoke, he drew a rough outline of a human body on the board. A network of spidery veins ran from the brain to the heart, then out to the arms and legs.
“Magicians on many worlds have uncovered principles of bio-magic, tracing the way supernatural energy flows through the human body and how it can be manipulated by a skilled practitioner. Here at Saunders, we call this internal alchemy. Other terms you may have heard, depending on your world of origin, include chi, aracolistic flow, kundalini, or the Fourteenth Principle. These terms are not remotely synonymous, but they all fit under the very broad umbrella of internal alchemy, as does the Serpent Rhythm.”
His sketch done, he turned back to the gallery.
“Let me address a frequently voiced concern before it comes up. Some of you may have experience with such systems, and on some worlds their use is associated with…physical intimacy.” He paused, considering his words carefully. “For reasons which I hope are plainly obvious, such acts will not be a part of your instruction at this school. More importantly, the methods I will teach you do not require it. While I dislike speaking about my personal life, let me share this in order to assuage any lingering fears you may have: I have never in my life been burdened with the desire for a physical relationship. This has not been an obstacle to the pursuit of excellence in my field. It will not be an obstacle to you either.”
He turned, leaning into his cane with one hand and holding up a latex-gloved finger with the other.
“Emotional intimacy, however, is a hurdle that all working magicians must learn to surmount, unless they intend to spend their careers in monastic solitude. And even then, in complete and total isolation…there you are. The one person you can never escape.”
A knock sounded at the classroom door.
“Late,” Chalk muttered under his breath. He made it sound like a curse word. “Enter.”
Gecka skipped into the room, eyes bright and feral, her pleated skirt swirling as she pranced up to the desk. Amy sat a little straighter in her chair, fighting the urge to cast a glance at Vail. Seeing that checkered scarf, that arrogant sharp-toothed smile, set Amy’s nerves on edge. A dozen knotted-up thoughts lashed her at once.
One of them.
She’s trying to take my girlfriend away from me.
No. You’re being mean. Stop it.
Gecka’s not even that bad. That first time at the Night Market, she helped us find Nora.
If she ‘wasn’t that bad’ she wouldn’t be one of Jellica’s cronies. They all suck.
But Vail is…
But Vail is what?
She didn’t have an answer, and she was afraid to keep asking herself questions, and the class was moving on without her, so she tried to climb out of her own head for a minute. Professor Chalk was talking.
“—can be performed with any willing partner, so long as you both have the required skill. Beyond skill, the only prerequisite is a foundation of mutual respect. Respect for your partner, and respect for yourself.” He cast a sidelong glance at Gecka. “A personal connection can assist the process. Miss Xaro and I hail from the same homeworld; the same city, in fact, which means we have certain understandings and cultural touchstones in common.”
“He killed my uncle in a duel,” Gecka casually added.
The room fell silent. Everyone, including Amy, stared at her. One of Professor Chalk’s eyebrows slowly lifted.
“What?” Gecka’s eyelashes fluttered, all innocence. “He was a bad person. I’m not sore about it. No big deal.”
"I need four students to assist us with this demonstration,” Chalk said, briskly changing the subject. “You, you, and…you two. Join us at the head of the classroom, please.”
Amy was one of the lucky four. She stood with the others, uncertain, as the professor took four painted billiard balls from the top drawer of his desk and handed them out. She held a yellow-striped nine-ball, the ivory heavy in her palm. At Chalk’s direction, two of the students stood on the left side of the room, two on the right.
“When I say ‘throw,’ and not before,” he instructed, “you will hurl your projectiles at myself and Miss Xaro with the intent to do us bodily harm. Throw at whichever person is not looking in your direction. Is that understood?”
Amy joined the chorus of uncertain nods. She weighed the ball in her hand.
“Very good. Miss Xaro? Are you prepared?”
The tip of Gecka’s tongue flicked across her lips. Chalk’s nose wrinkled in distaste, but he took that as a yes.
“Then let us begin.”
Chapter fifteen
The head of Professor Chalk’s cane plunged down, striking the weathered floorboards with a snap that echoed through the drafty lecture hall. He followed it up with two swift strikes, a rhythm born from the silence. Crack. Crack-tap. Crack. Crack-tap. His body remained stone still, save for his forearms as he played his cane like an instrument. The sound shot through Amy’s body, rising from the vibrating floorboards through her bones, tension gathering and growing in the pit of her stomach.
Gecka’s hands clapped together on the counter-beat. Once, then twice, sharp and ringing, and she began to move. She sauntered around the professor, a strut that became a slow, hungry dance. The winds of magic began to blow. Amy saw them in her second sight, her intuition tracing the weave of the spell. She saw the movement as twin to the percussion, part of the same song, Gecka’s panther prowl playing counterpoint to Chalk’s controlled stillness.
As a kid in science class, Amy had played with powerful magnets, fascinated by how polarity worked. Put two poles together the wrong way and it felt like a force field driving them apart, a bubble of space she couldn’t see but could feel against her fingertips. Turn one magnet around, and suddenly they thrust toward one another, invading each other’s spheres, hell-bent on collision. Gecka and the professor were both chanting now, hissing the barbarous words not in unison but in rounds — Chalk wove a magic theme and Gecka played its counterpoint, her whisper rhyming, rolling, chasing his chant and catching it, leaping ahead and daring him to chase as she taunted him with a shake of her hips.
Amy’s heel struck the floorboard with a thunderous crack at the exact same moment as the rest of the class, dozens of shoes stomping in unison. She didn’t plan it, didn’t think about it — her leg jerked like someone had struck her knee with a reflex hammer. Hands clapped as one, a second removed from Gecka’s beat, a third percussion line. And through it all ran the chanting, fast and soft and sibilant, Chalk and Gecka’s invocations overlapping and resonating so that there was no space for breath, no space for silence.
Gecka swooped and darted toward the professor, her arms spread behind her like wings, a bird of prey in flight. Chalk flipped his cane high in the air as she passed beneath its shadow, then grabbed it in his opposite hand when it landed, bringing it down in time with the rhythm.
A bank of filing cabinets against the far wall, beneath the windows, rippled open as if yanked by invisible hands. They rattled in a wave, left to right, then slammed shut from right to left. Stray papers billowed across the lecture hall. The clapping, stomping beat grew faster, a perfectly syncopated frenzy.
Gecka bared her teeth, crouched low, then charged straight at Professor Chalk. Her sleeve hissed as she split the air with a punch, but his shoulders jerked to one side and his head bobbed out of the way at the last second. His cane fell, hitting the faded floorboards with a clatter. He retreated as she advanced, matching her footstep for footstep, head snapping left and right as he dodged blow after blow.
He can walk without the cane? Amy thought. Then she saw the weave glowing bright, neon green threads linking their bodies as they moved in perfect symmetry, and she understood.
No. SHE can.
The battle became part of the dance, was always the dance, as Chalk blocked Gecka’s thrusts with timed swings of his arms. Wrist to wrist, clenched fists crossing, eyes locked as they waltzed forward and back in front of the professor’s desk. The space between them was fixed, measured to the micron. Polarity. Chalk’s left wrist swept against Gecka’s right, his right against her left. Then he swung her around on her heel and pulled her tight against him, her shoulders to his chest.
Gecka flipped one hand high, fingers uncurling in a flourish, and unleashed a gout of flame. Black smoke roiled, the fire bright enough to linger on Amy’s retinas in an after-flash.
I didn’t think Gecka could…no. Her motion. His magic.
Professor Chalk took his partner’s hand. She spun away from him, leaned back, and raised her free hand. Her fingers snapped.
“Throw,” the professor barked.
The billiard ball was heavy in Amy’s hand. Gecka was looking her way, but Chalk’s face was turned toward the two volunteers on the opposite side of the room. He had told them to throw at whoever wasn’t facing them, so she reluctantly wound up and hurled straight at the back of her professor’s head, praying she hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.
Still linked, hands clasped, Chalk and Gecka whipped each other around and let go. Chalk’s hands snapped out, snatching two of the flying balls from the air. Gecka grabbed the other two, four perfect catches in the space of a second as the final beat of the song — hers, his, the stomping feet of the class, all hammered down in a single thundering crescendo.
Then silence.
Chalk set the billiard balls on his desk before slumping against it, suddenly breathless and haggard. He braced himself against the wood, fingers twitching a little as they stretched out. Gecka looked spent herself, her waxy face glistening with sweat, but she grabbed his cane from the floor and eased it into his grip, steadying him with her other hand.
“Thank you, Miss Xaro.” He coughed wetly into his sleeve and took a second to catch his breath. “An adequate demonstration. You may return to your regularly scheduled class.”
“Ta,” she said. Gecka wriggled her fingers on her way out, pointedly waving at Vail. Then she locked eyes with Amy, giving her a tiny smirk before slipping out through the lecture hall door, her ghost receding behind the pebbled glass. Professor Chalk leaned into his cane until the tremors in his hands subsided.
“In the craft of battle-magic,” he finally told the class, “the Serpent Rhythm is a force multiplier. Two bodies become one, sharing the strongest attributes of both. Two pairs of senses become one, sight and sound merging in all directions. The effect is brief and it will sap your strength, but it can save your life if you employ it judiciously.”
His cane tip-tapped softly as he hobbled to the blackboard. Next to the diagram of the body, he scratched out chapters and page numbers.
“You will find the pertinent ritual in chapter twelve of Praxithea’s Memoirs of Two Rivers. Make sure to reference the supplementary tables on pages two-thirty-eight through two-forty-one. You will also want to review chapter fourteen for the author’s personal observations. She recounts several of her own attempts, and you may find her notes quite useful. Discerning which are important and which are not is an exercise I leave to you.”
Olivia held up her hand, still poleaxed by the display they’d just witnessed. “You want us…to do that?”
“Nothing so dramatic, Miss Renn. And you, in particular, know my policy about younger students taking part in dangerous demonstrations. No one will be throwing billiard balls at your head. Not even balls of soft foam this time around. No, your challenge is simply to carry out the instructions successfully, with a partner, and demonstrate your ability to understand and perform the rite to my satisfaction. Acrobatics will not be required, only magical prowess.”
He stepped back from the slate and began to pace the boards.
“If you cannot find a partner, one will be assigned to you. However, I urge you to do your best to find one on your own. A partner you know, someone you trust, ideally a friend, makes for the strongest magical connection. The greatest hurdle, for most of you, will be yourself. The Serpent Rhythm will require you to step into a place of vulnerability. To open yourself to your partner and let them see you, just as you are. It may be a very unpleasant experience. Nonetheless, I teach it to my second-years because even a very unpleasant experience can be worth having. Also, this will prepare you for much more complicated and emotionally intensive work in your third and fourth years of study.”
“Assuming we make it that far,” piped up a second-year on the far side of the lecture hall. A cluster of giggling voices fell into sudden silence as Professor Chalk turned his icy gaze in their direction.
“I make,” the professor said, “no such assumptions.”
***
After class, the school library was bustling. Swarms of firefly docents danced ahead of students, leading them through the towering maze of stacks, while others wandered alone, faces lit by the glow of frosted violet globes. Amy approached the front desk where Adelaide, flickering in the glow of her magical film projector, was engrossed in a paperback novel. The cover sported a shirtless pirate embracing a comely young maiden on the deck of a ship at sea.
“Excuse me, Miss Adelaide?”
The librarian held up a finger. She turned the page and kept reading, silent, until she seemed to reach the end of the chapter. Only then did she put the book down.
“You’re here for a copy of Praxithea’s Memoirs of Two Rivers. Unfortunately, as I tell the distinguished Professor Chalk every year, we only have two copies, and that’s hardly enough for twenty-odd students to share. My little helpers are in the back room making photocopies of the assigned chapters, and you can pick one up in an hour or two.”
“Photocopies? I kinda figured we’d use…I don’t know, magical quills or something.”
“That would be an exceptional amount of added work,” Adelaide said, “and a waste of a perfectly good copy machine. Was there anything else you needed?”
“Actually, yes. Do we have any books about the original founders of Firebreak Island? The people who ran the underwater lab.” And the submarines, she thought.
The librarian flashed a sparkling smile. “I believe we have an old field report in the stacks. It’s reference-only, so you’ll have to read it here, but look for… Mm, what was that called again? Yes. A Resource Survey of Firebreak Island and Initial Work Order Recommendations, by Clarence DeWitt.”
“You remembered that off the top of your head?”
Adelaide spread her glowing hands. Through the beam of the projector, Amy could make out the hazy outline of the chair she sat in.
“I’m an un-dead scholar who lives in a library. I also don’t get invited to a lot of parties, at least not since 1901. Now, I warn you, you’ll find far more questions than answers in that book. We don’t really know much about the original settlers, save that they seem to have made some absolutely ghastly decisions. And paid for it dearly. I’ll call a firefly to light your way.”
Chapter sixteen
Fifteen minutes later, Amy was sitting at a study desk with a fat tome in front of her, the pages lined with faded mechanical type and bound with an old plastic spiral comb. The technical jargon made her eyes water as much as the occult argot. From what she could gather, the author was part of a crew hired to study Firebreak Island — and the entirety of this world, designated PT-1 — with an eye to rehabilitating it long after the original colonists had disappeared without a trace.
I don’t think this guy worked for the school, she thought, flipping pages. More like whatever he got hired for didn’t pan out, and the school piggybacked on his work years later. At one point the text referred to the undersea lab by the nickname “Deep Six” and mentioned that it “appears to be completely intact and running on a magical reactor, with a string of beacons set to keep the hostile lifeforms at bay.” Given that she’d been told the place was a flooded wreck, clearly something had happened in the years since.
There is no question that PT-1 deserves the new ‘tangent’ label,” he wrote. “The world was cultivated by means unknown, with an atmosphere and geography that cannot be explained by any natural formative process. The surface landmass appears to serve a single purpose: to act as a staging ground for submersibles to come and go from Deep Six. While I’m openly speculating at this point, I believe the pioneers decided this would be a far safer means of bringing people to and from this ‘pocket world’ than staging an interdimensional portal inside the laboratory itself. Everything, from the water conditions to algae and undersea flora to the ambient temperature, has been engineered to create a marine biologist’s paradise. Marine-life studies could be carried out here with more speed and precision than in any known—
