Chapter 2 Enrolment

"Do you feel special?"

The question was asked by Principal—or, to give him his correct title,

Praetor Quivocat—Dahl, the Head of Wargsnouts College for Warlocks. Phil

had only just arrived and here he was, right in the office of the chief warlock.

He didn't know the answer or even how he should answer. Yesterday he'd

been flipping burgers in the back of a fast-food restaurant.

The Principal's room was a little strange. Not totally strange, a little

strange, Half of the shelf space was filled with ordinary-looking textbooks and lever arch files. The

other half…

There were skulls. They sat nonchalantly in the spaces, serving as

grotesque, grinning bookends. One skull had a pentagram etched into the bone

of the forehead. Other bric-a-brac sat on the plain wooden shelves—glass

phials and strange metal implements Phil couldn't even begin to guess the

purpose of. There were other books, but they looked so ancient Phil wondered

what languages, or even speakers, had been around for them to record.

It was all mixed up. A glossy black and yellow copy of Computers for

Dummies sat in between two hidebound tomes so old the lettering had long worn

off the spine. A ring binder labelled with "home accounts" leant against a

glaring, horned skull cast in bronze.

The same contradictions were present on the desk. A tacky bobbing bird

office toy stood next to a shrivelled up wizened thing whose ugliness was only

surpassed by the awful realisation it had once been alive to hop, flop and gibber.

The walls were painted a cheery cream colour. The effect was rather spoilt

by an esoteric scrawl of strange overlapping circles, cryptic symbols and

intricate designs. Phil had a horrible suspicion they were drawn in neither ink

nor paint.

"I…don't know," Phil answered the question.

Dahl nodded. Like his room, the Praetor Quivocat was a strange mix of

contradictions. On the surface he looked old—the kind of old that doesn't have

an age, just old—and a bit decrepit. His thick white hair stood up in clumps all

over the place. Unlike the rest of the staff Phil had seen, who all seemed to

prefer long black robes and looked like slightly sinister monks, Dahl wore a

plain woollen jumper and faded black jeans. While that might have suggested

someone's dotty old grandfather, it wasn't the whole story. Dahl's beard, in

contrast to his hair, was neatly trimmed and shaped into a pointed devil's goatee

—grey maybe, but still the same kind of beard as favoured by pantomime villains

everywhere. A pair of dagger earrings added to his roguish appearance, as did

an evil-looking skull ring of dark metal on his left ring finger. Dahl's face was a

mass of wrinkles and his grey eyes looked washed-out and flat, but every so

often Phil caught a glint in those eyes that indicated the old man was far more

aware of what was going on around him than his appearance might indicate.

In short, like his room, Praetor Quivocat Dahl was a mass of parts that

didn't really fit together.

"A sensible attitude," Dahl said. "A lot of our outreach students arrive here

with the strange notion they've been admitted to a privileged elite. Anyone can

summon a daemon if they put their mind to it. Controlling that daemon…well

that's a whole new kettle of fish. Walking around with a cocksure belief of being

'chosen' is a sure-fire path to a grisly end."

Dahl noticed Phil's alarmed expression.

"Oh don't worry," he said. "We pride ourselves on our greater than fifty

per cent survival rate."

He held out a hand and gave Phil a wide grin.