City of the Dead

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “I can’t give them to you, Master Mage, since I’ve only been through the first part of the initiation. I haven’t stood before the face of the god, yet. In exchange for a KORT-II ray pistol that was taken out of circulation, I was given a class and a skill, but I don’t have access to any other functionality.”

  “There was a ray pistol here?!” the mage explained, though he quickly regained control. “Tell me what happened.”

  No less surprised than the mage, and really more so, Tailyn began his story again without missing a single detail. Like never before, he used impressive words, most of which he was hearing for the first time. He talked about how he was looking for loaches, how he saw the stranger, how the stranger strangled Dort, how he found himself being chased, how he fell, how he got the virtual storage with three alchemical scrolls, how the KORT-II pistol adapted to him, and how he’d taken out his assailant with one lucky shot by pressing the activation button. After that, the pistol had been deactivated. The god had given him a class, though it hadn’t unlocked access to the main functionality: logs, the mission list, groups, clans. With an enormous feat of willpower, Tailyn was able to keep the crystals and voice recording out of his story. For whatever reason, he was positive that if the mage had found out he used the crystals on himself, it would have been curtains for him.

  “So, you can’t open your status table for me?” the mage asked, and Tailyn shook his head. He really couldn’t. “How about your inventory?”

  There was no problem with that, and the rows of cells once again appeared in front of the boy. To his own amazement, Tailyn mentally tapped one of the corners and selected demonstration in the list that popped up. His inventory was projected right on the ground between him and the mage.

  The investigator had a hard time remaining calm. Thirty-eight cells was more than impressive for a boy ten years of age, though that was nothing compared to the seventy-nine units of arcane dust. Even by his standards, that was a huge number. Each packet in the boy’s inventory was worth at least a hundred gold—why had Elass Jing, only at level four, headed off to some god-forsaken backwoods town loaded with a treasure like that only to attack some kids? He’d even gone dashing over the rocks like a madman, risking his own neck in the process. And then, there was the fairly dangerous weaponry. Neither the whip with its bloodletting ability nor the poisoned blade were there for self-defense. No, they were for killing. But why did Elass need them? Had the mage really gotten lucky enough to happen across a crystal fence?

  It was just a shame Elass was already dead. If the mage could have, he would have given the ignorant kid’s life for a chance to talk with Elass without a second thought, only that wasn’t an option. The boy was right—the god had punished his assailant, not him. Finding a level two ray pistol and being able to use it was an incredible coincidence. What else could have explained that chain of events besides divine intervention? And not only had the kid been able to use it; he’d scored a hit. He really was lucky. The mage made a mental note to tell the dean about him.

  The spell ran out, and Tailyn sighed noisily. As his inventory was still projected between the two of them, he went back into the list he’d found and unclicked demonstration. The boy’s eyes shown in wonder—he knew what he was doing. Even Mistress Valanil hadn’t told him how to work with the god’s tables, and there it was, almost as if he’d known and subsequently forgotten. That alone was worth the fear he’d been dealing with.

  “Come here.” The mage called the boy over and tied the rope around him. There was no way he was getting out on his own—without the agility skill, it was impossible. Although… The mage took another look at the boy, who’d managed to calm down. Before that day, he’d assumed it was impossible to collect flowers without the requisite skill, but the armful of loaches Tailyn had shown him had put paid to that idea. Perhaps, the boy would have found a way out if he’d left him there, but he wasn’t going to test that out. The city guards wouldn’t have understood.

  Looking around the cave again and giving orders to pull Tailyn up, Forian Tarn, second-class investigator and level twenty-five mage, activated his vertical takeoff and flew up toward the hole leading out of the cave. Elass had definitely been a crystal fence, and his meeting with the city elder’s son could only mean one thing: they’d been trying to agree on a deal. The arcane dust was perfect for Dort’s designer skill. His father had presumably bought his beloved son the ability to make magic cards, though the question there was where he’d come up with the coins. Without them, he wouldn’t have been able to buy anything, and the arcane dust would have been useless.

  A grin spread across Forian’s face. If everything went according to plan, not only would he ferret out illegal crystal trade; he’d also get his hands on a dirty elder. Bribe-takers had no place in the empire. There were enough of them at the academy as it was.

  Chapter 3

  WHEN THEY GOT to the spot where Dort had been killed, Tailyn found himself staring in surprise at a first aid tent. He shivered involuntarily—there was another man in a white mantle stepping out of it. Two academy mages in their town was unheard-of, something the townspeople would be gossiping about for years.

  “How is he?” asked the mage who’d pulled Tailyn out of the hole.

  “He’ll make it. In ten hours or so, he’ll wake up, and he’ll be back to normal in three days. He’s lucky we were in the city. The locals wouldn’t have been able to handle a broken neck, and his back was in bad shape, too.”

  “There’s no such thing as luck. Everything that happens was foreordained by the god, so just the fact that we were here means that was its will. Can we move the kid? I can’t stick around here three days. Before we move on, we need to finish the mission.”

  The god had already shown Forian what was next for him. He needed to figure out who was involved in the illegal crystal trade, and he couldn’t leave the city until the job was done.

  Finally, it hit Tailyn that the mages were talking about Dort as though he was alive. But that was impossible—his neck had been broken. The crunch had been so loud, everyone in the general vicinity had to have heard it.

  “I already sent a messenger for a wagon, so it should get here in about three hours. But who’s this?” The second mage nodded in Tailyn’s direction, and the boy wanted to melt into the ground. The subject of the mage’s intent gaze, he had the uncomfortable feeling he was completely transparent, all his innermost thoughts right there for anyone to see. And that wasn’t too far from the truth. The mage frowned.

  “How has he only gone through the first initiation? And he has mana, too, plus, he’s an alchemist. Forian, what’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you in the city—there’s no time now. Although… You said the wagon will only be getting here in a few hours? Tailyn, come here.”

  The boy walked stiff-legged over to the mages.

  “Did you grab your pictures?” the mage Tailyn assumed was named Forian asked. The boy nodded. He certainly hadn’t been about to leave his treasure in the cave. Forian pulled a deck of cards out of his inventory, finding one labeled Herbalism—loach. It wasn’t his most useful, as evidenced by the fact that it still had all fifty charges available, but it finally had a chance to shine. He needed to know for sure if there were any of the flowers in the area. Whispering the activation phrase, Forian warmed the card with his breath, watched the image materialize, and blew it away into the air. The area around transformed for him as the ancient city turned out to be surprisingly rich in loaches.

  “Okay, Tailyn, you have three hours to find ordinary loaches and bring them to me. If you pull it off, you’ll get a reward. If you don’t, I’ll be disappointed. The more flowers you find, the better your reward will be. Got it? All right, get to work.”

  New mission: Flower Collector. Description: find ordinary loaches for Forian Tarn. The more flowers you find, the better your reward will be. The flowers in your inventory don’t count toward the mission. Time limit: 3 hours. Not a divine mission.r />
  Tailyn froze, staring at the message in front of him. Everything inside fluttered and pounded. He wanted to jump and shout for joy, only that might have scared the two mages. It was a mission, and it was for him. The kind he could take care of right there. Of course, he wasn’t going to get promoted to level two, but he would still be getting a reward.

  “Did I stutter? Why are you still here? Get going!” Forian yelled in a rage when he saw the boy was in no hurry to head off. That did the trick, and Tailyn was gone. Pulling the pictures out of his boot, he found the one of a loach and began picking his way through the rocks.

  “The academy’s apparently a bad influence on you,” Keran Tisor, a level 24 healer mage, said thoughtfully. “The boy doesn’t have herbalism. What kind of flowers are you expecting him to find? Trash? And where did you even find someone like him who isn’t even completely initiated? Also, how is that possible?”

  “I wish I could say it was a long story, but lying isn’t a good idea. It’s like this…”

  Forian went back over everything that had happened in the cave, at least, the way he understood it and the way the boy had told him under the influence of the true word spell. Without interrupting once, Keran just occasionally glanced over thoughtfully at Tailyn, who was crawling around on his stomach off in the distance. Unlike his partner, the healer had herbalism with advanced loach, which meant he could see all the available flowers in the area. The boy had somehow stopped exactly where they were growing, and he was busy comparing each plant to his drawing, after which he plucked the right ones and went on looking. In the short amount of time it took Forian to tell the story of the crystal fence and the mission, Tailyn found at least five flowers. It was incredible. Food for thought. How was the useless kid able to find the divine plants? By smell?

  “We should take him to see the dean,” Keran said.

  “That’s what I was thinking, too. We’ll be back in the Gray Lands in a year, a year and a half. If the god really wants to give the boy a different fate, it’ll make sure he lives to see our return.”

  “Obviously, you’re going to help him along with that,” Keran said, sarcasm creeping into his voice. He knew what kind of person his partner was and why the latter had initiated the mission.

  “A card or two won’t change whatever the god has planned,” Forian replied with a shrug. “If Tailyn gathers more than ten flowers, he’ll have earned a quick lesson.”

  “Just don’t tell me you see yourself in that street urchin,” Keran grimaced. “Don’t even try that with me.”

  Forian said nothing. Coming from a long line of the-god-only-knew-how-many mages, he had nothing to prove or explain. At his activation, his father had made sure he had a +500 bonus, the highest possible, which meant the god had given him both a mana bar and four skills right off the bat. When he turned six, Forian went through initiation and got to level two; at twelve, he joined the academy. He even stayed there after his studies were complete. By the time he turned thirty-two, he was one of the most promising mages in the magic card department, and the dean had gone so far as to send him to the Gray Lands on a secret mission. If it hadn’t been for the guard’s crazed kid running into the city yelling about how the elder’s son had been killed, he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help Tailyn. He hadn’t even known the kid existed. But the god’s ways were inscrutable. The fact that it had put the boy in Forian’s path meant it wanted the mage to give him a shove in the right direction.

  Tailyn was doing his absolute best. Mistress Valanil would have been proud—two and a half hours later, he’d clambered over innumerable ridges and secluded corners, the kind loaches liked to hide in, and found fifteen of the flowers. An entire fifteen. The only problem was that his luck had run out. Over the previous twenty minutes, he hadn’t found a single one. The boy climbed higher and higher, balancing on weather-beaten rocks, but it was useless. There weren’t any more loaches.

  Suddenly, a shimmering, or rather sparks, caught his eye. He’d seen something like that when he’d materialized the scroll for the rare elixir. The boy crawled closer. The little green stars were coming from an unusual plant that kept alternating red and blue. It was like it was alive, pulsing in time to inaudible music, the shifting colors a kind of dance. One of the boy’s hands reached out, but he was able to jerk it away in time. No good. It could have been a poisonous shark flower, in which case it would have been curtains for him. Still, the boy was so bewitched he couldn’t tear his glance away. Crouching down nearby, he forgot everything else, focused entirely on the flower and the otherworldly beauty that was the halo of green sparks.

  Flower Collector failed. You didn’t make it back to Forian in time.

  The message popped up in front of the boy, and he sniffed in annoyance. But while the words distracted him from the beauty, the habit instilled in him of carefully reading whatever the god had to say made him focus on the text. He’d failed a mission? And who was Forian?

  Tailyn’s already-wide eyes widened still further. The loaches. He was supposed to collect them for the mage, not sit there like a little idiot. Jumping up, the boy dashed off dangerously quickly in the hopes that Master Forian would have pity and accept the mission.

  But it was not to be. The guards were already loading Dort’s body onto a stretcher, the cart having arrive to carry the wounded boy back to the city. A panting Tailyn ran over to the mages, though they ignored him. Only Forian responded coldly without looking away from the ongoing process.

  “You’re late. I wasted my time on you.”

  “Master, I gathered fifteen flowers,” Tailyn replied, holding out the plants. Nobody paid any attention. “I completed the mission, Master! I found fifteen—”

  “Motar, he’s getting in the way,” Forian said to the head of the guard. The latter snapped at Tailyn, and the boy’s head drooped. Tears appeared in his eyes. But nobody cared about yet another kid coming up with some excuse or other. Suddenly, however, an angry resolution came over Tailyn. He knew whose fault the whole thing was.

  “It’s all because of that stupid glowing flower,” he muttered to himself. “I should have picked it and stomped it to death!”

  “A glowing flower?” One of the mages turned suddenly to Tailyn’s surprise. Not Forian, the other. The healer. “Describe it.”

  The order was unusual, but the boy followed it. And as soon as he told how the plant changed colors, Forian turned, as well. Pulling the pack out of his inventory, he went through them and showed a card to the boy. There was a picture of a flower on it.

  “Is this what you found?”

  Tailyn glanced at the picture and shook his head.

  “It’s close, Master Forian, but that’s not it. The flower I saw had little compressions on the leaves. The petals were curved the other way, too.”

  The mages glanced at each other, and Tailyn thought he saw confusion in their eyes. Forian dropped the thick deck into his pocket and pulled out a different one. The second was much thinner, with just a dozen or so cards. Pulling one out, he showed it to the boy. Tailyn’s eyes lit up when he saw yet another magic trick. Unlike the others, that card was alive—the flower changed colors, and green sparks were coming from the card itself.

  “That’s it!” Tailyn exclaimed happily. “That’s what I was watching so long I lost track of time until the god told me I failed the mission.”

  “That can’t be!” The healer mage yanked the card out of Forian’s hand and shook it in front of the boy’s face. “Are you positive? You found an amilio?”

  The mage’s behavior took him aback, and Tailyn cringed in expectation of a blow.

  “Easy, Keran. He has no idea what you’re asking about,” Forian said in a soothing voice. “Tailyn’s just going to show us where he found the flower. Do you remember where it is?”

  “Y-yes, Master,” the boy replied with a nod. He pointed in the direction of the ancient city. “Over th-there.”

  “Lead the way,” Keran said. They got to yet another rid
ge, and Forian grabbed Tailyn by the hand so they could soar up together. The quick flight took the boy’s breath away as he clung to the mage. Apparently, his fear of flying was worse than his fear of Forian, though that at least made their trip much faster. A few short flights later, they found themselves in a small open area. It was somehow hidden by dilapidated walls and thorn bushes. They were what kept the sparkling little miracle from being seen by the world.

  “It really is an amilio,” Forian snorted as he eased Tailyn to the ground. The boy’s mind sailed away once again as soon as he laid eyes on the flower, though that time he was careful enough to look away. There was no way he was going to let the stupid thing interfere with his life yet again. “Can you handle it? Or do you need help?”

  “Hush.” Keran pulled out a long, slender knife, crouched down, and began crawling slowly forward. A few times, he swung the knife, cutting threads only he could see. Amilio, which meant the “color of thunder,” was such a rare plant that the god made sure it was kept safe. It created around the plant an entire protective network of webs the normal eye couldn’t see, and touching any of them would have resulted in the plant disappearing and reappearing somewhere else randomly selected. And that could have been a step or hundreds of kilometers away. Nobody knew when or where amilios grew.