The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

a large, rather red-faced man who wore an ermine-lined cloak over a tunic, hose and shoes that were fabulously well-made and encrusted with jewels. He looked uncomfortable in it, as though he would rather be wearing armor. Behind him came six more men and women who varied from a tall, lizard-featured creature to an almost stick-like man clutching a briefcase like his life depended on it. The final individual in their line was a woman in her thirties, with slightly pointed ears and a kind of delicate, fine-boned beauty to her. She wore a long black dress, though it was not the kind of old-fashioned thing Ms. Lake wore. Rather, it looked like the kind of thing a movie star might wear to a premiere, and Wirt could not help staring at her.
    As though the woman felt his gaze on her, she turned just long enough to wink at him, before following the others into one of the transportation shafts that lined the tree and disappearing upwards.
    “It seems that Ms. Pretty likes the bad boys, Wirt,” Alana joked beside him, and he thought he heard her mutter something that sounded a lot like “not that I blame her”.
    “Ms. Pretty?” Wirt asked. That couldn’t be someone’s name.
    “Ms. Preville,” Spencer supplied. “She’s one of the management board for the school, reporting to the governors.”
    Wirt found himself thinking of the statues he had seen outside Ender Paine’s office. He certainly would not have wanted to report to some of the things he’d seen there.
    “Who were the others?” he asked.
    “The one in front was King Wilford,” Alana said. “Priscilla’s father. I don’t know about the rest.”
    “We should be getting on,” Spencer said, looking up at the wall, where a clock that seemed to run on dripping water hung. “We will be late for class. Wirt, are you going to be okay here?”
    Wirt’s brow furrowed, puzzled now. “I’m not in this class?”
    “Not unless you really want to do a class on advising royalty,” Alana said. She took a piece of paper out of her bag. “Today’s lecture is called “Phrases To Avoid When Dealing With Kings”. Trust me, it will be even worse than the title sounds.”
    Spencer shook his head. “It’s not that bad, but if I remember the class schedule that got dropped off right, Wirt is already signed up for a different class. He’s doing advanced transportation later.”
    Wirt dug the scrap of paper out of his pocket. Sure enough, the abbreviation “AdTrans” was down on a slot for an hour or so from then. He didn’t know whether to be amazed that Spencer had memorized his class schedule at a glance, or simply annoyed that he didn’t seem to get any say in what was on it. Still, if this was what would get him home, it was probably the best choice.
    “I’ll meet you back at our room before the class, and show you the way to where you’re going,” Spencer said. “Don’t try and get there yourself. If you don’t know where you’re going, there are so many paths in this tree that you could end up anywhere.”
    “A couple of hundred thousand,” Alana added. The number seemed too big to Wirt, even for a tree this size. He said as much. Alana shook her head. “I don’t really understand it, but the tree isn’t just in this world. It kind of connects to…I don’t know…”
    “Pockets of other realities,” Spencer supplied. “So when I say that you could end up anywhere, I mean anywhere. The principles of it are really quite fascinating…”
    Alana shook her head, looking to Wirt. “You see what you have done? I’m going to get a lecture on folding space, now.”
    She and Spencer headed off to their class, leaving Wirt to contemplate what Spencer had said. If the tree could connect to parts of other worlds, was it possible that part of it connected to his? Might he be able to use it to get home? Wirt suspected that just stepping into one of the transport holes and thinking “home” would not be enough. More than that, he suspected that it