The Road to Magic (Book 1 of the Way of the Demon Series)

by Alexey Glushanovsky

  Ratek had indeed already raced off and was back, holding the guitar in his outstretched hands like something of great value.

  Oleg looked around; the so-called festival hall was on the ground floor of the tower and had once, apparently, been used as a meeting room. The chairs and tables were still there, now blackened with time but still robust enough, it seemed. Choosing one which seemed less dusty, he moved it to a table and began tuning his guitar, thinking feverishly all the while what he could play to touch the hearts of this lot, standing nearby in a compact group.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Oleg said, nodding at the chairs next to him. ‘What are you standing around for?’

  ‘Thanks for your concern,’ the short, stocky lad with brown hair standing closest to Oleg smirked, showing his white teeth. ‘But we’d rather stand. We don’t care whether we stand or sit. And what’s more, unlike you, we won’t have to wash our trousers.’ Settling himself more comfortably, Oleg strummed a few trial chords on the strings.

  At first the performance went badly. Oleg was tired and would far rather have slept than sung songs, especially sober. The liches had lost the habits of normal life and didn’t think to put either food or even a drink on the table. How could he play like that? Nor was there any sign of the third factor which stimulated creative talent, namely the close proximity of pretty girls. It goes without saying that Leya was quite pretty (Ataletta had once commented that all female magicians were very beautiful since they could change their appearance as they pleased), but she had one very serious flaw which prevented him from seeing her as an object of sexual interest – she was dead! There were no living girls present – or guys either, for that matter--apart from Oleg himself.

  He rather half-heartedly played “Blood Group” by Viktor Tsoi and a few songs by Alia for which he received equally half-hearted applause. But Oleg gradually began to get angry. He’d gotten used to his music arousing widespread rapture and this indifferent calm on the part of the liches was getting on his nerves. But he realized that he couldn’t blame it on his audience’s lack of musical taste, but on the quality of the performance, and this made him even madder.

  Finally Oleg couldn’t contain himself.

  ‘No, I can’t go on like this! I’m playing awfully and I can see that myself! Do you have anything to drink?’

  Some alcohol was found. One of the passing merchant caravans had fallen prey to the Dark Hounds just beside the city itself. The practical Tobi, who, it seemed, fulfilled the role of manager in this little closed-off world, dragged its load into the citadel’s cellars and all this, judging from Viss’s raised eyebrows, unbeknown to his teacher. “Why do we need reserves like that? After all, we can’t get drunk or even taste the wine?” Viss said bluntly.

  “It makes your soul ache to see three crates of reserved “Valensian Ruby” go down to the marsh devils.” Tobi explained. He watched with great envy as Oleg took the first sip right from the bottle and helped it down with a bite from an apple plucked straight from the tree.

  Having decided to leave the hall where he’d made such an ugly fiasco, Oleg suggested they move into the garden. The wine was indeed splendid, and Oleg’s good mood gradually returned. And then an idea flashed through his mind. He had always played songs which were most suited to the situation he was in at the time. Now he bent this rule, albeit jokingly, so as not to awaken any unpleasant associations for his new audience. ‘I should give it a go,’ Oleg decided and drawled the first song which entered his head: “Dead Anarchist”, about a short-sighted old magician who accidentally spills some magical elixir while wandering in a graveyard one night. Consequently, the dead awaken and wreak mayhem in the nearby village.

  The song was met with a cheer. That is, almost everyone liked it. Admittedly, the response was rather inadequate – the liches just doubled up with laughter. The only ones not laughing were Leya and her father, who had finally come out of his study. But not even they could hide their smiles. When he’d calmed down, Viss furnished the discouraged Oleg with the necessary explanation: ‘From a professional point of view – and here all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, are inevitably professionals in this matter - raising such a large number of zombies who, judging by how talkative they are, must be third or maybe even fourth level, looks like a highly improbable occurrence. Let alone some shoddy little wizard who can’t even correct his own eyesight raising them by chance…’ he stopped talking and giggled again. Finally, having laughed his fill, he asked curiously: ‘Do you know any more songs about necromancy or the like?’

  ‘Yeah, quite a few! Though the style is a bit different…’ A potpourri of songs by the group “Aria” was whirling in Oleg’s head; at one time they’d devoted quite a bit of attention to this subject.

  ‘Go on!’ the liches cried out.

  Oleg looked around him. The moon had risen long ago and her pale light was illuminating the ruined castle. The trees were rustling. They were surrounded by the mysterious Black Marshes where Dark Hounds, karongs and masses of other quite unpleasant Unclean roamed. Almost two dozen living dead were sitting primly nearby, listening attentively to his songs. In short, it was a most fitting situation for Aeia’s famous song, “Zombie”. And after a short introduction, Oleg began in an insinuating half-whisper:

  The moonlight destroys your earthly dream

  Midnight throws a bewitched metal…

  His voice gathered strength. While singing the next line he flung out a mental invocation with a request for support – and he was heard!

  The hound howls with a deceased soul…

  The magnificent, sorrowful crying howl of the leader of the Dark Hounds ripped through the night’s silence.

  The tombstones tumble down…

  Here Oleg had to provide the effects himself. However, the strange mixture of projected thoughts, the magic of illusion and the fire landscape he created momentarily, enabled the liches around him to see for an instant the picture recreated in his mind: a graveyard at night and a half-decayed hand reaching up out of a collapsed tombstone.

  Oleg stopped for a second. He sensed something strange in himself and in the air. No longer trying to conjure up anything, Oleg clearly noticed that some sort of force was flowing out of him nevertheless and insinuously mingling with the words of the song and the sound of the guitar, catching the rhythm and lending the unfinished song new possibilities and meaning. Incidentally, that same force didn’t let him pause for long and with a quick glance at the motionless eyes of his unusual audience, he went on:

  Zombie!

  Your murderer sleeps soundly but you’ll find him!

  Zombie!

  Prayers and holy lies won’t save him.

  The moonlight is your master, it’s at your back.

  Only a bloody price will return your peace to you.

  The illusion continued. Now it seemed to Oleg as though invisible threads, sung by him, were streaming out into the distance, dived into the earth and, returning, heaped a leaden heaviness on him. The sense of this frightening, incredible weight pressing down not on his body but on his soul was growing stronger with every second. It was heavy. It was VERY HEAVY! Unable to stop singing for even an instant and well aware that he would only be able to bear the weight pressing down on him for only a few seconds, the astounded Oleg did the only thing he was used to doing in dangerous situations: he turned to his demonic strength. It helped. No, the weight didn’t lessen, it even increased. But now it was as though an invisible demon were standing next to him taking on himself the lion’s share of the load falling on Oleg.

  At last the song was over and the heaviness disappeared instantly. Oleg gave a sigh of relief and turned to Viss for an explanation. The latter was in a state of profound shock.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Oleg was surprised to find himself concerned. What if it had been some sort of attack and he wasn’t the only one to have come under it? What if the others, including Viss, hadn’t been able to withstand it? After all, they didn’t have such
a useful, and often simply life-saving, demonic form.

  While Oleg was carefully winding himself up, Viss came out of his stupor and looked Oleg over attentively as though seeing him for the first time. Giving a low whistle, he muttered to himself: ‘And he’s not even panting! I never thought I would witness such a thing, especially not in the dark tonality.’

  Oleg, who’d become very concerned, was elated. With a joyous cry of “Viss, you’re alive!” he threw himself at the necromancer.

  ‘Well no, actually, not for a long time.’ Viss’s composure, perfected after years of teaching, was enough to rouse the envy of a stone. ‘I’m fine. But why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, you didn’t say anything and you looked weird… And before that there was some kind of heaviness... I thought that, maybe, it was an attack…’ Oleg was completely at a loss and looked around at Viss’s students who were still in a stupor.

  ‘Look, you were in the same state as they are! And what is it, by the way?’

  ‘Nothing special, just an elevated state of amazement. One doesn’t often get the chance to be present at such a rare event.’

  ‘What sort of event? And what was that heaviness? I haven’t a clue about what’s going on!’

  ‘A simple event. The activation of a song-spell, which in and of itself is very rare. You don’t find many such--hmm, how can I put it?--mentally underdeveloped people who are also endowed with magical powers, who would risk undertaking such a thing. And among those who would risk it, the number of those who survive makes up a very small percentage. And then… although it had been calculated theoretically that song-spells were possible for both light and dark magicians alike, until now no single song was known in the dark tonality. Maybe because on the whole the dark magicians are wiser or, as the light magicians say, because the rules governing composition and most of the songs themselves came to humans from the elves who were very fond of such spells, and who were also organically incapable of dark magic.’

  ‘Are you trying to say that my song acted like a spell? But – why? And even if that is the case, what’s so special about it? After all, magicians often use incantations. So what’s the big deal, this was another one, albeit a bit unusual? And if it was an incantation, then who affected it?’

  ‘I’ll answer one by one, in order: yes, your song acted as an incantation and like all songs, a very potent one. What is so special about it? You see, magic is largely art, not science. An incantation is just a word crutch, indispensable for a novice magician to invoke the indispensable combination of thoughts, images and moods, and he utters them to give his force the indispensable form. By the way, a powerful magician can easily do without incantations and creates the necessary conditions just by an effort of will. But that is by the by. All spells are checked many times and create precisely the effect which the person who says them expects. Song is another matter. The soul bursts which are invoked during singing cannot be controlled. One and the same song can evoke very different wishes in different people. They have one common characteristic – they are all grandiose, magnificent. And therein lays the main danger. The magical song begins to bring them to life. And, like most incantations, it dredges up the power to do this from the very person who carried out the incantation. What’s more, whereas the majority of spells have escape-points where the magician performing them can stop safely if he feels that he has got into magic which is beyond his powers, there’s nothing like that in a song, of course. When the singer’s magical energy is consumed, the song begins to kill the singer. And as for the result of your incantation – take a look.’ Viss raised his arm and pointed to the gates.

  Oleg took a look and gasped. A wave of people was pouring through the castle gates. No, not people, but phantoms…or skeletons? Not clear. Bare bones clearly shone through the shining deathly-pale light of something like bodies. Bony hands firmly grasped the rusty hilts of swords with ghostly blades. The column was headed by a tall skeleton with the lower part of his jaw missing and a broken forehead. On his chest swung little bits of rusted metal, though it was unclear how they were fixed there. That was if you didn’t pay attention to the spectral shine. But if you looked at the ghostly glow around the skeleton, then it became obvious that this was a mighty warrior at the zenith of his power, clad in a warrior’s chainmail and with a long two-handed sword in his hands.

  Viss was looking searchingly at the procession, and suddenly whispered to Oleg.

  ‘I know him. It’s Eisenhard, the head of the Oner garrison. He and his soldiers, along with any citizens capable of fighting, stayed to cover the entrance to the citadel while we were creating the portal. I never thought I would meet him again.’

  By that time, the one who had once been the brave head of the Oner garrison addressed Oleg. You couldn’t call his address either speech or telepathy. It was more like machinations of some strange kind, unlike anything else, with a virtual lack of emotional undercurrent. Oleg’s inner translator went off the scale. His head spun for an instant. He and the creatures he had invoked, former people, thought too differently to have the possibility of full communication.

  Nevertheless, after a short spell of dizziness, Oleg was able to understand, with difficulty, all that Eisenhard wanted to communicate to him:

  ‘We slept (rested/were unfit for action/knew no desires). You woke us (gave us desire/forced us to act). Now we want to take revenge (punish/establish justice). Lead us, show us the way (send us), where the enemy is.’

  Oleg didn’t like this news one bit.

  ‘Who do you call the enemy?’ he tried to convey to him. To his amazement, they understood him.

  ‘The one (the ones) who killed (removed living bodies/interrupted existence) us. Our memory doesn’t work well (fails/lets us down). You will show us the enemy (tell us who to punish/overcome in battle/command us).’

  ‘I see. But I have no time now. I have other business. Can you wait to take revenge?’ Oleg was afraid that these strange creatures, brought to life by his song, might sense a lie and so he avoided lying, even in trivial things. But it could be a long wait. A very long wait. Oleg was not about to send a party of Undead on people whose only crime was that at one time their ancestors had behaved themselves far from well when they took the city.

  ‘Here (now/in the world of the living) we are eternal (long-term/can wait). Complete (finish/fulfil) all your business and return (come here again). We will be waiting (we will come as soon as you call/we will return at your first invocation). Shall we go (hide/become invisible/fall asleep for a short while) now?’

  ‘Yes, that would be best.’ Oleg hadn’t dared to hope that this problem could be solved so easily. Had it ever come to pass that it was enough to say to the invoked evil force: “Oops, so sorry. I made a little mistake. Actually I don’t need your services at all just now” and it would simply depart like a polite travelling salesman, leaving a business card as a keepsake?

  ‘When you return (are ready/want) to lead us, come here again (return) and call out loud (shake the air/like a human) my name (title/meaning) which I used when alive. It was told (informed/made clear) by the one I befriended when alive. Tell him that I remember him (respect/greet). He will be glad. And we (I) shall depart (fall asleep/conceal ourselves) until the signal!’ And the army of zombies – for that is what Oleg decided to call these creatures, for after all, that is what the ones invoked in the song were called – went out of the gates and disappeared into the city.

  Oleg turned back to the park, wiping sweat away. The “conversation” with the “zombie” had knocked him decidedly off balance. Gulping some wine straight from the bottle, Oleg turned to Viss who was waiting phlegmatically with his students who had begun to recover from their shock.

  ‘So it looks as though I can’t sing anymore. Will there always be some kind of foul play?’

  ‘Why do you call it foul play? Now you’ve brought to life a very good army. Of course, I wouldn’t advise you to lead them into a civilized land, all kinds of lig
ht magicians would fall on them at once, but here in Fenrian such an army can do quite a lot. Zombies are not sensitive to the signs of Orchis. And as for singing… Well, sing away, sing as much as you like, and whatever comes into your head. Only, when you sing, try to keep out of magic. It’s not worth mixing them unless there is some dire need. However, in cases of severe trouble, I recommend you remember that you have this extremely potent weapon. Oh, and one other thing. I would advise you to be more careful with wine. You’re already on your second bottle. If you carry on like that, you’ll soon be as drunk as a skunk.’

  ‘Ah, wise Viss, you have seen through my cunning plan,’ Oleg cried jokingly and indeed he did feel a pleasant spinning sensation in his head. ‘I do indeed intend to get pissed! Because I can’t bear all these songs, sorcery, zombies, tales of fallen fortresses and so on with a sober head anymore!’