The Quantum Games(The Alchemists Academy)

Chapter 8





The next morning brought bruises, because it turned out that Ms. Burns’ students could throw balls with remarkable accuracy. Yet there weren’t quite as many as he’d thought there would be. He’d been hit by the first few balls, but then he had started to dodge, and to his surprise he had been able to start avoiding the throws of Ms. Burns’ students quite easily. He hadn’t dove or spun with Roland’s agility, but gradually he’d been able to extend that same awareness he’d had in the forest, letting him see the worst of the “attacks” coming. And when he couldn’t dodge physically, Wirt had transported himself out of the way. He’d still been hit from time to time, because there were a lot of students, but it was only very occasionally.

“Are you getting out of bed at any time today?” Robert asked, adjusting the clothes he’d picked out. Today it was a tunic and hose in bright red and gold that seemed opulently noble until Wirt realized that it was probably about as close as Robert could get to a jester’s motley these days.

“Why?” Wirt asked. “It’s not like I have classes.”

“Even if that were true, I would expect you to be up and about, training for the Games. I wouldn’t want to lose my advisor so soon. As it is, you are my advisor, and so you do have classes.”

“What classes?” Wirt asked.

“My classes, of course. Or did you think that Alana followed Priscilla for no reason?”

Wirt got up and dressed for class, picking out a similar set of clothes to the day before. In theory, his magical box wardrobe could have produced almost anything for him to wear, but in practice, that just meant he tended to settle on the same few things.


“All right, but what classes do you even take? I mean, I’ve heard you talking about things like heraldry, and I know you had a kind of catch up class with the headmaster last term… please tell me that we aren’t going to that.”

“Oh no,” Robert said with a smile. “The headmaster taught me a lot about magic, but he apparently isn’t interested in a student who, in the middle of attempts to contact evil creatures living outside the realms of human understanding, is inclined to tell them jokes.”

Wirt looked at Robert in something approaching horror, which shifted to admiration as he started to understand. “You did it deliberately so that he wouldn’t want to teach you anymore.”

Robert shrugged. “Comedy has many uses. Getting into some classes where my teacher isn’t trying to show me runes that will melt the unprepared brain is just one of them.”

Again, Wirt couldn’t help feeling that there was more to Robert than met the eye. When he’d first arrived there, Wirt had been convinced that Robert was nice enough but essentially useless. A bit like his sister, only without Alana’s guiding hand. Now, it seemed that Robert was genuinely clever, and able to manipulate the people around him a lot more effectively than Wirt had given him credit for.

“So,” he asked. “What is our first class?”

It turned out to be a class on warfare. Apparently, the potential rulers of a kingdom full of knights and monsters needed to understand how to command troops, which meant spending time in the classroom of a large, bearded wizard in black robes whose office door proclaimed him to be Prof. Gen. Augustus Hiatus, commander of the Dread Legion (Ret). With a title like that, Wirt was expecting another Ender Paine, yet General Augustus, as he insisted on being called, turned out to be a surprisingly amiable old man, mostly interested in segueing the lesson into old war stories.

Alana and Priscilla were in the same class, and it seemed to consist of playing out an imaginary war using illusions and glamor to make armies move across the general’s desk in miniature. It was, Wirt decided, a bit like playing a video game back home, and he quickly started to get the hang of the tactics involved. Robert turned out to be quite an inventive tactician in his own right, favoring traps and ambushes that suggested he’d learnt at least as much about warfare from leaving buckets of paint on top of doors as from his knightly training.

Alana was every bit as sneaky, using feints and deceptions with all the ease that she normally used enchantments, so that pretty soon, Wirt wasn’t sure what she was doing. Priscilla was the biggest revelation, since she had a ruthless streak when it came to their illusory battlefield that seemed to impress even General Augustus.

“It reminds me of some of my own more glorious charges. Ah, such slaughter! Truly, you take after your father, Your Highness. Of course, this battlefield isn’t quite like a real one. There, you can have so much more fun, but there is more of a chance of being flash fried by a passing dragon, and of course, you have the fog of war to worry about. Why, I can remember my siege of the swamp city of Urruk perfectly…”

Eventually, they got on their way to their next class, which again seemed to feature all four of them. Wirt was surprised to find Alana stopping to talk to him on the way.

“How are you enjoying being Robert’s advisor?”

“I think it’s going to take some getting used to,” Wirt admitted. “I didn’t realize there was so much to do.”

Alana smiled. “It isn’t so bad. It’s the best way to build a good relationship with someone you’ll probably spend your whole life working with. And remember, we’re learning something in every class we have with them, just the same as they are.”

Wirt hadn’t thought of it like that, and he realized then that Ms. Burns had done him a big favor by persuading Robert to take him on as an advisor. It meant that, instead of being stuck in a kind of limbo, waiting for the Quantum Games, he was still learning, because he was accompanying Robert.

The next class turned out to be about using magic to benefit the whole kingdom, literally connecting a ruler or their advisor to their kingdom using magical power so that they could have a small positive effect on things like growing crops and even the weather. Robert, Priscilla and Alana all seemed to find it difficult, although they managed it eventually, but for Wirt, it was easy. It was just the same as what he had done in the forest, only now he was reaching out through that connection, applying power at one end of a chain so that an effect would happen further away.

More lessons followed, and Wirt quickly found himself enjoying working with Robert. When they were out in public, the other boy spent at least as much time falling over, juggling, or making very bad puns as he did paying attention, but he was always ready with a response when Wirt made a suggestion. In fact when they had to go to the library to do a joint assignment reading through the terms of a hypothetical treaty, it was Robert who picked up on the fundamental flaw in it. Quickly, Wirt realized that his job as an advisor wouldn’t be so much to provide Robert with all the answers to a kingdom’s problems as simply keeping him focused long enough to find them for himself.

In the afternoon, the two of them headed off to the practice field for some weapons training, supposedly so that Robert could work on his skills. It was obvious though that the whole thing was for Wirt’s benefit, because pretty soon, Robert was teaching him the basics of using three different types of sword.

“I thought you just, you know, held the blunt end and stuck the sharp end in people,” Wirt said.

Robert smiled. “A lot of people think that. Often not for very long, on a battlefield. Every weapon is different. Come on, I’ll show you.”

They sparred for a little while. The most worrying part of it was that Robert insisted on using live weapons.

“You’re going to be taking part in the Quantum Games soon,” he pointed out. “If you aren’t used to dangerous things by the time they show up, then you could find yourself freezing when you should act. I saw you in Ms. Burn’s lesson. How many times did you get hit by the ball before you finally did something? One time is all you’ll get with the quantum ball.”

So they sparred, and it was obvious from the start how much better Robert was with a sword than Wirt. He held his two handed, battering through Wirt’s defenses and somehow managing to attack in a way that simultaneously pushed aside every strike Wirt tried. Robert started to go into a complex, whirling movement, and suddenly something about his face changed. Wirt saw him appear to stumble, somehow losing his grip on his sword so that it sailed upwards through the air. He fell over, and the sword embedded itself in the ground a few inches from his head.

“You’re going to have to come up with a better sparring partner than that royal idiot if you’re going to have a hope of beating me,” Roland said, approaching. He looked down at Robert with faint disgust as the prince pulled himself unsteadily to his feet.

“I must have tripped,” Robert said, though Wirt knew with one look at him that he hadn’t. He’d done it deliberately. Did he want people to underestimate him that much?

“Maybe you’ll allow me to give you another sword lesson before the Games, Wirt,” Roland suggested with a sneer. Wirt could remember the one time they’d practiced. Roland had beaten him senseless for the fun of it. “It will save me the trouble of disintegrating you.”


Wirt started to take a step forward, but then got more of a grip on himself. Roland wasn’t worth it. “Just stay away from me until the Games, Roland.”

“Or what?”

“You know,” Robert said, “I’m sure I know the perfect ‘knock knock’ joke for this situation. Knock knock.”

“What?” Roland said, obviously as confused as Wirt was in that moment.

“No, you’re supposed to say ‘who’s there’?” Robert smiled. “And then I say ‘the prince of this kingdom, whose advisor you are threatening’. Hmm… maybe it still needs some work.”

Roland gave Robert a vicious look, then stalked off. Wirt looked at Robert in surprise.

“Thanks,” he said, “but you didn’t need to do that.”

Robert shrugged. “It was the easy way to do it. Now come on. Ms. Lake was talking about putting on a special class in making your way through obstacle courses blindfolded, and I want to attend. Well… I want to watch mostly, but you get the idea.”

Wirt did. Despite everything that was in the school rules, and despite their own lives, everyone there seemed to be going out of their way to help him prepare for the Quantum Games. Robert, Ms. Burns, and now Ms. Lake. It was like they all saw something in Wirt that he didn’t. He just hoped that he could live up to it. Especially since living up to it meant staying alive when it came to the Games themselves.