by Dante Graves
Chapter 16: The Magician & the Hermit
“Show me the way to the next whiskey bar. Oh, don’t ask why.”
The Doors, “Alabama Song”
Greg did not need much time to collect his things. He threw his crystal ball, black candles, some food, and a couple of T-shirts into a backpack and was ready to leave. Mr. Bernardius had asked him not to make long goodbyes, so the magician kissed Martha and hopped into the Galaxie, where the tentmaster was waiting for him in the front passenger seat.
“Well, where are we going?” Greg said as he started the car. Lazarus had never learned to drive, so Greg would be doing the driving. Lazarus didn’t like cars and tolerated them only because they were incomparably more useful than horsed wagons. Of course, his nomadic life forced him to spend much time on the road. Most of the towns where the circus performed had only one road in and out, and the road usually connected the town with the circus’s next destination. Lazarus had little interest in what lay beyond them. He did not like to leave his circus. But now the situation was exceptional.
“We are going to see an old friend,” said Mr. Bernardius.
“Is that so? Didn’t know you had friends,” Greg said with a grin, receiving Lazarus’s cold gaze in response. “I mean, outside of the circus.”
“Just drive. I’ll show you how to get to the place,” said Bernardius.
“No maps? No names? You just say, ‘Turn left, turn right’, like that?”
“Exactly.”
Greg wanted to protest, but he changed his mind, realizing that the tentmaster was not in the mood for long conversations. The magician put the car into gear, and they were off. One road led out of the town, and they went through it heading south. The first half hour, Lazarus was silent, staring intently at the landscape outside the window, as if seeking some guidance. A couple of times he started to say something to Greg but thought better of it, and they kept going straight. Several times when Lazarus asked Greg to branch off, they either ended up in the forest at a dead end, or Mr. Bernardius swore, cursing himself for the mistake before asking Greg to turn around and go back the way they had come. After half an hour, Greg’s patience had run out.
“Maybe you’ll tell me what we’re looking for,” he said irritably.
“Signs.”
“There are road signs everywhere!” Greg almost yelled.
“Not just road signs. Special signs to show us the way to my friend.”
“Maybe you could just recall where he lives and tell me,” Greg said to Lazarus as to a grandfather who had difficulty with memory.
“I do not know the address,” Lazarus replied as if it were obvious.
Greg gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles went white. “You’re telling me you don’t know the address of your friend?”
“We have not seen one another in a long time.”
“How long?”
“About thirty years or more,” replied Bernardius.
Greg thought he sounded sad, a rare emotion for Lazarus, so the magician decided to remain silent and concentrate on the road.
Lazarus was grateful for the silence and continued to keep watch from the car window. They had not spotted any signs, and that frightened him. He reproached himself for his carelessness. Why had he hoped to find signs or pointers? Why here? Why not elsewhere in the country? Or in another country? How could he promise to help Greg without the absolute certainty that he could do so?
They had driven for more than three hours when Lazarus finally noticed a sign. It was a tree, different from the others. The other trees grew straight and tall, but one was shorter, and its trunk was bent in the middle, as if it had changed its mind about rising up toward the sun and decided to grow down toward its roots. Lazarus asked Greg to turn left and go slowly, and ten minutes later he found another sign. Among the rocks on the shoulder of the road, one rock caught his attention. Greg stopped the car, and Lazarus went to check the stone. It was as gray as the other stones, but had a different shape. Lazarus examined it and noticed a strange deepening on its surface. He scraped off dried mud with his finger, and knew what it was—a large stone with the letter R carved on it. It was a gravestone.
He saw more signs. The skeleton of a mole, six flowers growing together in the rocky soil, an abandoned but not destroyed anthill, an old piece of charred cloth, a puddle with an artificial green eye in the bottom of it.
These signs could not be mere coincidence, and Lazarus was sure they were heading the right way. His friend had left traces, as they had agreed more than thirty years ago. Noticing that Mr. Bernardius had become more cheerful, fidgeting in his seat because of some excitement, Greg decided it was time to ask the big question.
“I want to know how the Judge found me,” Greg said. Lazarus seemed to be deep in thought, and the magician’s words fell on deaf ears. But a moment later, the expression of joy on Lazarus’s face disappeared.
“I already told you—apparently Zinno told Caius about you,” replied Mr. Bernardius.
“How could that damn little bastard do that? How could he find a Judge?”
“I don’t know.”
“We need to find out.”
“It’s late. After the Judge’s visit, Zinno escaped. I checked his camper—he was not there at night or in the morning.”
“Mr. Bernardius, I hope you understand that this runt could never find a Judge himself. If someone helped him, then perhaps other lives are at stake, not just mine. Maybe even Martha’s.”
“I’ve been thinking about this, Greg. I’ll deal with it, I promise.”
They rode again in silence, interrupted only by Mr. Bernardius telling Greg where to turn.
The magician finally broke the silence. “I do not blame you, Mr. Bernardius. If you hadn’t sent Zaches after me, everything would be as before. But I do not blame you.”
Lazarus was about to say something when they heard sounds coming from beyond a turn in the forest road, loud music mixed with laughter and roaring engines.
“Seems we’ve made it,” Lazarus said.
When they got out of the car, they saw a hut in the forest, a one-storey wooden building with a porch. It was old but sturdy, and could have used a facelift. It was a bar in the woods. Choppers were parked in front, and their owners, hairy and bearded and dressed in leather pants and jackets, were talking and laughing and spilling beer from bottles. The old Galaxie did not go unnoticed. The people standing in front of the shack quieted down, and their looks made it clear that strangers were not welcome.
“Great! Your friend is hanging out with bikers,” Greg said. “How long is it that you haven’t seen him? More than thirty years? His life is in full swing!” Greg gave Lazarus a thumbs-up, but his smile clearly lacked sincerity. “Well, time to meet.”
When they got out of the car, some of the hostile looks changed to expressions of puzzlement. Greg, who wore a leather jacket and jeans tucked into heavy unlaced boots, didn’t draw much attention. But in his 19th-century suit and with his top hat in his hand, Lazarus riveted the onlookers. Lazarus and Greg exchanged glances and proceeded to the entrance of the bar. They reached the porch. Lazarus was calm, and Greg was looking around at the locals with interest. They were about to enter the bar when their way was blocked by a couple of two-meter-tall huskies.
“Where are you going?” one of them growled under his mustache. Greg thought the local bikers looked exactly like the ones in the B-movies from his childhood, like Angel Unchained. Leather, jeans, chains, mustaches and beards, weird hats. Someone had a helmet with a spike on top. Someone else had a top hat that looked exactly like Bernardius’s.
“To see an old friend,” Lazarus said calmly. Despite the size of the questioner, the circus manager still looked down at him.
“You have no friends here,” said the second biker blocking the entrance. He was shorter than the first, but much more massive. His greasy shirt, once black and now gray, barely covered his belly.
“You have exactl
y one minute to get in that rattletrap of yours and knock the hell out of here,” the first biker said. “A minute later, you’ll still disappear from here, but not in one piece. The clock is ticking, whitebeard.”
“Gentlemen, it would be easier for everyone if you let us enter and not make empty threats,” Lazarus said, his tone still placid. He was not pleading nor trying to sooth. He was cool and calm. The growling biker frowned, and his massive companion wrapped a chain around his fist. The others behind Lazarus and Greg put their bottles down and reached for tire irons, brass knuckles, and knives. A few just clenched their fists.
“Mr. Bernardius, you know, it seems to me that this trick is not gonna work here,” said Greg. “You will always be against it, but honestly, I’m exhausted driving through the boondocks without a map, and I just don’t have the energy to negotiate with people who understand only brute force. Hide somewhere.”
Greg palm’s blazed up and turned into tongues of flame. One grazed the snarling biker’s beard, and the man screamed, a fire under his nose. The other whirled his chain and aimed a blow at Greg’s head. The iron instantly became white-hot, causing the biker to jerk back his hand and leave the chain with Greg. He turned to the crowd behind him, threw the chain at it, aiming nowhere in particular, and was pleased to hear a muffled crackle. The magician had no need of chains. He had something better. The flames from Greg’s hands grew longer, taking the form of whips as thick as a grown man’s forearm. They writhed through the air, aiming for victims, and blazed heat. Wherever the fire whips touched the wooden porch, the boards turned black.
Greg waved the flames and whipped the crowd. Most backed away, but the fire caught some beards and hit some chests. The air filled with the smell of singed hair. Bikers in leather jackets were not harmed by the fire strikes, but others were desperately flapping their arms against their chests to extinguish the flames.
Greg continued to randomly strike with his whips. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, just scare them. He suppressed the idea to hit the motorcycles; explosions in such a small space might do more damage than he desired, even kill someone. Greg’s flame whips scalped the earth, not allowing the bikers to the porch. A few produced guns, but Greg struck their hands with the flame, and the guns were quickly dropped. Knives were heated to red-hot, and bats instantly flashed like matchsticks. In short order, almost all of the attackers had been disarmed.
While Greg worked his magic in front of the bar, the fat man who had blocked the way to the bar came around and tried to attack the fire mage from behind. He was about to strike the magician with his fist when Mr. Bernardius hit him with his cane, and the man went down, unconscious. By now, people in the bar who had heard the commotion in the yard were rushing out. Lazarus stopped the first two with precise cane blows, one in the nose, the other in the stomach. Seeing the failure of their comrades, more patrons hurried from the bar to help. Greg grabbed Lazarus by the arm and dragged him from the porch.
Mr. Bernardius and the magician stood back to back, surrounded by angry bikers who were blocking both the path to the car and the entrance to the bar. The ringmaster held his cane like a club, ready to repel any and all, and Greg tirelessly snapped his fiery whips, keeping the attackers at bay. The fire mage felt tired. Sooner or later, his strikes would begin to peter out, emboldening the bikers, who would have a chance to attack. If that happened, Greg would have to stop thinking about how to avoid killing them.
“Wrap it up, boys,” came a commanding shout. The bikers stopped dead and ceased their attacks. “Let these two assholes inside the bar.”
The voice belonged to a young black woman who stood on the porch, hands on hips. Her posture and her voice revealed that she was in charge, and the bikers’ reaction to her order only confirmed this. She looked like an angry panther. She wore tight-fitting black leather pants, emphasizing her strong thighs, and a black shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Her hair was short, and her face was graceful but angry. Only her playful eyes suggested that her expression was more histrionic than genuine.
“What the hell do you think you are doing, Mr. Bernardius!” shouted the young woman. “I’ve saved your ass. But if you do not compensate me for all this damage, I’ll turn you over to the tender mercies of my boys before you know it.” She paused, and then laughed and ran down the steps to embrace Lazarus.
