Unseasoned Adventurer

2. Hamlet’s Discovery

2

HAMLET’S DISCOVERY

Two days later, once Thordric had recovered sufficiently and finally relented to being the next High Wizard once Vey stepped down, Kal knocked hard on his door again.

‘Come in, Kal,’ he said, not even bothering to look up from his notes.

‘How did you know it was me?’ Kal asked, eyeing Thordric suspiciously. Thordric grinned.

‘No one else would knock on my door quite that hard…well, Vey might, but only if it was really urgent, and since he has his long-distance communicator with him all the time, he usually calls me on that,’ Thordric said, prodding his own long-distance communicator. It was a small box with a button sticking out of the back and, curiously, a small, blue flower poking out of a hole on the top. The communicators had been Thordric’s invention, having made them for his journey to Neathin Valley three years before, and relied on the strong connection between parts of a plant that have been divided.

It was in Neathin Valley that he’d first met Kal, who had accidentally managed to cause one of the biggest disasters that Dinia had ever seen. Once the damage had all been rectified, Vey had thought it best for Kal to be given some serious instruction on how to use his magic, nominating Thordric to take him on. But even now Thordric thought that might have been a mistake. He barely had control over his own magic, let alone trying to teach someone else.

‘Oh,’ Kal said, a little sheepishly. ‘I thought you would like to know that Hamlet’s back. He’s in the dining hall now, talking to Vey. He seemed very excited about something.’

Thordric chuckled. ‘It doesn’t take much to make him excited. Last month I showed him the bones of a goat that Vey had found tucked away in one of the rooms full of Kalljard’s old junk, and he leapt on them and started telling me they must be from a species that’s extinct. He went on about it for days.’

‘Were they from a goat species that’s now extinct?’ Kal asked, tugging at his short dreadlocks. They were a recent addition, because Thordric had gotten fed up with him for leaving trails of hair all over the bathroom floor.

‘Well, yes, I think they were, actually,’ said Thordric dismissively. ‘But anyway, I’d better go and see him before he comes rambling in here and knocks over my work.’

Kal sniggered and left the room with Thordric in tow, making their way to the dining hall. The hall had been freshly decorated that morning, as it was now the custom for the colour to be changed every month –an idea of Vey’s to help make it more inviting not only for the council wizards, but for anyone visiting.

As they walked through the door, they saw Hamlet’s unmistakeable blond hair and pale face grinning at them from one of the tables at the far back of the room. Despite how much sun he always got from spending time doing archaeological field work, his skin never turned darker than a glass of milk. He waved to them and pulled out their chairs, but Kal mumbled an excuse about leaving a potion brewing and dashed off to drain it.

‘Nice to see you back, Hamlet,’ Thordric said as he took his seat. He eyed the room. ‘I thought Vey was in here with you?’

‘Oh, he was, but he’s just gone to pack,’ Hamlet said cheerily, watching the teapot Thordric had summoned from the serving table pour him a large cup of tea. He took it and sniffed. ‘Oh good, I like this one—’

‘Sorry, did you just say Vey has gone to pack?’ Thordric choked.

‘Yes, why?’ Hamlet said, taking a sip of his tea, oblivious as to why the head of the Wizard Council suddenly up and leaving was a strange idea.

‘Where’s he going?’ Thordric pressed.

‘He’s coming with me. We’re leaving right after dinner. Anyway, have a look at what I’ve discovered,’ he said, opening his bag, which was so over-filled that Thordric’d had to put a strengthening spell on the seams last time he had seen him. Hamlet pulled out several large notebooks filled with sketches and diagrams, and something that looked like an overlarge mushroom made from vine roots and glass. He was about to tell him about it when he saw Thordric’s face. ‘Did you want to know where we’re going?’

Thordric tried not to let out a growl of frustration. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

‘It’s not far from here; only takes a few days to get there. I was on my way back when Kal contacted me on the long-distance communicator, saying that you’d had a fainting spell and he needed a particular plant to make a potion for your recovery. I was near a forest at the time and happened to see the plant he described to me. I suppose I got rather distracted and decided to have a look around. That’s when I saw them; two strange figures carved out of some kind of crystal. I didn’t have time to look at them properly, but they were fascinating. When I told Vey that I was going back to check them out, he decided to come with me.’

Thordric’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s unusual for him to go on a trip so spontaneously.’ He scratched his chin, feeling that there was stubble there. His mother had made him shave the week before for his twin little sisters’ birthday party, but shaving was something that he felt was a waste of time. Plus, when he had a beard, he could tug at it when he was thinking.

‘Well, I think he mentioned something about Lizzie wanting to come over for tea tomorrow, but he thinks she wants to check up on how the council’s running from the inside. Now that he’s allowed the public to come in any time they want, she wants to make sure it’s tidy and that any dangerous magic going on is kept away from people.’

‘That does sound like Lizzie. At least it explains Vey’s behaviour,’ Thordric said, unable to suppress his grin.

Hamlet looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean? He’s very excited about what I’ve found, I’m sure he’s leaving so soon because he can’t wait to see for himself.’

Thordric opened his mouth but closed it again quickly. He wasn’t sure he had the heart to tell Hamlet how wrong he was.

True to their word, Hamlet and Vey left after dinner that evening, though not before Hamlet had given Thordric an extensive breakdown of everything he’d discovered on his latest expedition.

Instead of nodding off as usual whenever Hamlet talked for a long time, Thordric listened with genuine interest. It appeared that Hamlet had found out a lot about the cultures that’d lived in the area before Kalljard had taken over and built Jard Town a thousand years ago.

Due to Kalljard’s influence over the people, much of history before that had been forgotten or purposely concealed, and it was only now he was gone that archaeologists like Hamlet were given free rein to dig around wherever they wanted. One of the most interesting theories Hamlet was working on was that there used to be women born with magic as well as men, which was completely unheard of. However, though he’d found plenty of evidence for this to be true, what Hamlet couldn’t fathom was why it no longer happened.

‘Perhaps you’ll find that out later,’ Vey suggested, trying to herd Hamlet out the large double doors. He waved goodbye to Thordric, and sternly told his guards that if they came after him, he would force them to drink some of the potion that Kal was currently working on. None of them took even a step after that and closed the doors reluctantly behind him.

Thordric lingered in the hall, watching the guards mutter under their breath as they went away to their rooms, before heading back to his own. He sat down at his desk, taking his notebook out of the drawer, but it was no use. His eyes were so heavy that he simply couldn’t bring himself to do anymore work that night. Not to mention the dread he felt, now that Vey had left him in charge while he was gone.

Lying down on the bed, he buried his head in his pillow, ready to sleep, but then a thought occurred to him. Why had Kal contacted Hamlet on the long-distance communicator instead of going to look for whatever plant he needed himself?

Thordric’s rule was that if Kal wanted to make any kind of potion, he had to research and collect all the ingredients himself. And where had Kal been at dinner? Now that Thordric thought about it, he hadn’t seen him anywhere. Indeed, Vey wouldn’t have made such a comment about his potions if he had actually been there. Upsetting people was the last thing that Vey did.

Sighing, Thordric got up, deciding to investigate Kal’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, he tripped over his trailing bed sheets and plummeted into the bookshelf again, hitting his head a mere inch from where he’d hit it last time, but much harder. He muttered a string of colourful curses that no one but Vey and Hamlet knew he knew and took a vial of bright orange potion out from one of his drawers. He unscrewed the cap and tipped a splodge onto his fingers, and then massaged it into the bump that was now forming on his head. The potion was thick and slightly greasy, but it took the pain away almost instantly.

He put the potion back in his drawer and then eyed his bedcovers angrily, before leaving the room and turning left up the corridor towards the main part of the building. Kal’s room wasn’t actually in the council building at all but was located at the Training Facility which had been built facing the back of the council, completely hidden from view by a large wall of thick trees. The idea was that if any of the wizards in training did something wrong, it wouldn’t alarm any of the townspeople walking past.

As Kal wasn’t actually a student at the Facility, when he made a mistake, it was up to Thordric to see that no one had been hurt in the process. On the brighter side, Kal hadn’t caused any major explosion for the past two months.

Thordric reached the door to the training Facility and knocked, hearing it echo through the halls behind for almost a minute. When the door finally opened, a wizard dressed in an apron and carrying a mop and bucket stood there. When he saw Thordric, however, he almost shut it again in fear.

‘Hello, Rarn,’ Thordric said to him cheerfully. ‘Can I come in?’

The wizard called Rarn didn’t answer but continued to stare at Thordric as though he thought he might attack him. Thordric couldn’t blame him; when he’d first joined the council, Rarn had been less than welcoming and had also kept Kalljard’s plan to eradicate all the half-wizards a secret from everyone else. So Thordric had done the proper thing and set a stone statue chasing after him for nearly three days.

Vey had then decided to make it Rarn’s job to clean the Training Facility on a daily basis. He hadn’t shown himself at the council since.

Taking Rarn’s silence to mean ‘yes’, Thordric stepped into the hall. He thought about asking him where Kal’s room was but figured that would merely lead to more silence.

He decided to take the passage to the right. That was where Kal’s room had been the last time Thordric had been there, but as the students changed rooms every year, he knew that it was probably somewhere different now. However, much to his luck, it appeared that Kal had been moved just a few doors down from his old room and happened to open the door as Thordric walked past.

They both jumped violently.

‘Thordric! What are you doing down here this late?’ Kal asked once they’d regained their composure.

‘What do you think?’ Thordric replied, rolling his eyes. ‘I was looking for you, of course.’ He glanced down, his eyes latching on to Kal’s hands. They were heavily bandaged.

Kal hid them hastily behind his back.

‘What happened?’ Thordric demanded. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘I…had a bit of an accident with that potion I was brewing,’ he said, staring at the floor. His dreadlocks hung in front of his eyes, shielding them from Thordric’s stare. ‘When I was cutting up the ingredients, I, uh, accidentally cut myself a few times with the knife. And when I rushed back earlier to drain the potion off, it splashed on my hands, and went into the cuts.’

‘What potion was it? I don’t remember asking you to try any this week,’ Thordric said.

Kal avoided his gaze even more, and then said quietly, ‘It was to get rid of acne. One of my friends has got it really badly.’

Thordric had surmised as much, though he knew it was really Kal’s acne that was bad. If only he’d asked, Thordric would have given him some potion from his stores. ‘Let me see them,’ he said.

Kal reluctantly held up his hands. Using his magic, Thordric unwrapped the bandages quickly…and gaped. Kal’s hands were covered in what looked like small craters, and one of them had sunk into his skin so much that it had almost reached the bone.

‘Come with me,’ Thordric said, grabbing Kal by the arm and marching him out of the building.

They bolted back to Thordric’s chambers, where he dug around in his drawers for more of the orange potion he’d used earlier. He found it and spread it thickly over Kal’s hands. ‘This will only reduce the holes a fraction, but the pain should stop,’ he said.

Kal winced as the cold potion touched his hands.

‘Right, then,’ Thordric continued, standing up again. He grabbed his long-distance communicator and pressed down the single button. ‘Vey?’ he spoke into it, loudly and clearly.

‘Thordric?’ Vey’s voice came back out of it. The blue flower poking out of the top bobbed about from the vibrations. ‘Having trouble already? We’ve only been gone a few hours,’ he joked, but Thordric cut across him.

‘Vey, I need your help. Kal had a mishap with one of his potions and now he’s got craters all over his hands. I’ve given him some pain reducing potion, but I don’t know what else to do.’

‘Hmm,’ Vey said. ‘Up in my chambers you should find a bottle of what looks like liquid silver. Try putting it on each of the craters. It should speed up the skin growth in those areas. Be careful though, I haven’t quite finished testing it yet.’

Thordric thanked him and took Kal up to Vey’s room. It was back to how it usually looked now, with Vey’s large wooden bed in the middle and his desk opposite. The room was circular, with bookshelves lining it entirely. Thordric scanned Vey’s desk and saw the potion he’d told him about. He picked it up and looked at the label. Vey had written ‘Super Cells’ on it with his small, hasty writing.

‘Come here, Kal,’ he said over his shoulder, as Kal was trying to prise a large book off one of the shelves, trying not to use his hands too much.

Kal straightened, pushing the book back in place, and hurried over to where Thordric was standing. Thordric unscrewed the bottle and held it over Kal’s hands. The orange potion was all gone now, absorbed quickly by Kal’s skin. The craters looked less raw, but they were still deep. Carefully, Thordric poured one drop of the silver potion on each crater. ‘Here it goes,’ he said, as they watched it pool apprehensively.