The Fixer Of God's Ways (retail)

by Irina Syromyatnikova

  Alex was a second-generation archeologist. He accompanied his mother in archeological expeditions since twelve years of age, and he was well aware that the small scoops of archaeologists often dug out of the ground frightening things, like evidence of a terrible end to yet another civilization. Archaeology was a natural choice for him, and it evolved into the object of his passion, the principal business of his life.

  Last year Alex devoted to studying magic - this decision was a result of his long reflections and unforgettable adventures in the company of two combat mages. The white was far from thinking that he could be a fighter on par with the dark, but he got tired of being a victim of external circumstances. He had to spend one semester at another faculty - his own Faculty of Antiquities offered no opportunities for graduate students to practice magic.

  A call from Jim Nursen came unexpectedly, in early spring. "Are you free now? We are planning a chic trip to the mounds! You could go as my assistant."

  "Now?" The time was unusual - in the middle of the semester, which signified that cheap and relatively skilled student labor would be unavailable for the expedition.

  "It's Polisant! It's a humid oven in summer. I'd rather soak under the rain than die from heatstroke."

  Alex agreed without hesitation. Of course, it wouldn't be a familiar team, but the newly-fledged mage wasn't going to miss such a great opportunity. The Polisant burial mounds were dated to the time of the White Princedom's breakdown - the topic of his dissertation. He hoped to dig out something useful for his work.

  An archaeological party is not just a group of people gathered to go somewhere to look for something. It's sort of a family, with seniors (wise patriarchs) and juniors (naive, enthusiastic students). Year after year, tiny caravans unite by powerful human passions - curiosity, a desire to hit the road, to challenge the wilderness, to experience a lack of comfort, to be in a hostile environment, anticipating a miracle, or colliding with the wondrous souls of even the most cynical coffin-diggers. Most of the white are romantics.

  Preparations for the expedition were done with haste, atypical for respectable archaeologists. The expedition members met for the first time on the train to Polisant. Only Nursen and Pierre Acleran were familiar to Alex. They were glad to have him on board; the rest reacted warily to the appearance of the white mage. Alex thought they were afraid he would be a burden in the field. He personally believed that he wasn't a problem before - all the more so now - when he became an initiated magician and learned how to use the white Source.

  Alex looked for an occasion to talk to his friends about his new abilities, but Nursen was busy with his own stuff: "I'm glad you've joined us. We are short of stuff - the time is inopportune, and exam session is nearing."

  "Why such urgency?"

  If the expedition was announced a couple weeks earlier, interested students would make arrangements to take their exams ahead of time or move them to the fall.

  "The government!" Nursen lifted his eyes to the sky. "After the Nabla, the military got interested in antiquities. We'll see whether it's good or bad for archeology."

  Hearing the word "mound", Alex imagined majestic rocky slopes with eagles hovering over them. Instead, he saw humble fifty-foot tall hills here and there, covered with green bushes, which towered above the steppe due to the general flatness of the relief. Their task was to investigate an ancient tomb. Alex wondered how the tomb was found amidst abundant vegetation, if no signs of previous excavation or construction work were anywhere in sight.

  Field workers, reservedly cursing, began setting a camp. Alex stared at flowers and birds - everything blossomed around, inspired by spring rains. The ancient tomb was under an unremarkable hill. Nursen wasn't restrained by a budget and hired an extra dozen workers in the nearby village to dig a tunnel to the tomb, and the work started boiling.

  "The hill is an artificial construction. It was built of granite with a clay cap on top," Nursen crumpled a ball of clay that lingered on a sieve. "Ancient builders knew that clay soils aren't suitable for construction and made a granite base. They didn't strive for profit at the expense of reliability."

  Alex threw a new look at the mound: up to a third of its height was rock delivered from the Blind River - forty miles away as the crow flies - without any trucks; perhaps, on horse carts. People must have really cared about the safety of the tomb under the hill.

  The field camp steadfastly acquired the appearance of a settlement; large military trucks made a road amidst the hills, delivering food and water daily. For greater safety, two arrogant, sassy "cleaners" joined their expedition. Alex sympathized with the indomitable energy and boundless self-confidence with which they began to bring the camp into accord with safety standards, known only to them.

  "It's risky to sleep between the hills and so close to them," declared the youngest of the "cleaners".

  "We are more than three hundred feet away from the hills, and you set a perimeter around the camp!" Alex retorted.

  "Locals don't even graze goats here - that means something!" the senior "cleaner" argued.

  Now Alex understood why grass was so tall in the area. "Who found the tomb, then?" he still couldn't find an answer to this question.

  "I have no clue!"

  Two government officials arrived at the camp soon after the "cleaners". On the same day workers dug out the mouth of a twenty-foot well, leading down to the tomb. The well was filled with rocky debris - crushed marble decorations, statues, obelisks. Alex was puzzled: where did the tomb builders bring this stuff from? There were no quarries amidst the steppe.

  A thick iron gate made of good quality steel was discovered at the bottom of the well; it did not fit the era of the White Princedom. Alex and Jim unclenched the folds of the gate with a hoisting jack. The junior dark climbed down to the tomb first, followed by Pierre, the bravest (or the most foolish) of the members of the expedition.

  "Strangely enough, I don't sense otherworldly here," the senior "cleaner" shrugged.

  "Look, these things were right at the entrance!" Pierre stuck out his head and handed Jim a half-dozen discs of cloudy glass with colored metallic inlays.

  "Had you marked the place where they had been?" Nursen frowned.

  "Naturally! They lay under my feet; I almost stepped on them. I feel they were simply pushed inside through the gap in the gate," Pierre explained, getting out of the tomb.

  Nursen and Pierre went to the camp to register and pack the findings. Alex glanced into the darkness of the tomb with one eye, while the "cleaners" were closing the gate, and felt an incomprehensible shudder: the entire place didn't look at all like the ruins of the White Princedom.

  "It's very strange," the white muttered to himself and hurried after his colleagues.

  It took a long time for the camp to calm down that night. In the ghostly blue light of enchanted fixtures, the archaeologists planned the next day's activities. Alex didn't participate in the discussion - he knew they wouldn't let him go down yet and experienced a strange relief. He mindlessly stared at the stars, imagining the people who once hid this tomb from prying eyes. They destroyed exquisite marble decorations, dragged their debris through the sultry wasteland to fill the well, then piled on top of the marble tons of dense soil. Titanic work!

  Next morning, most of the expedition gathered at the well's mouth. Equipment was dropped down first: blue lights, enchanted brass seals, hammers, ropes, and other small auxiliary stuff. The senior "cleaner" was silent and gloomy.

  Nursen folded his fingers into an ancient aversive sign and said, "Move!"

  Pierre resolutely climbed down and opened the gate folds. The rope quickly slipped through the gate down into the tomb. Alex heard something click or a barely audible buzz deep inside; he thought it was autosuggestion. Pierre was given fifteen minutes for the initial examination, but the trouble came much quicker.

  A wave of human agony hit Alex's nerves - somebody just died somewhere down the well. "It was Pierre! We are in trouble!" he gasped, tryin
g to cope with internal trembling.

  Nursen also heard a scream distorted by the tomb's walls. The government official turned pale, "It cannot be! They said the guards wouldn't reach upper levels!"

  Nursen hesitated no longer: "Run!"

  The archaeologist-practitioners had a good habit: they ran from an excavation site at the slightest sign of anything inexplicable, without wasting time on thinking. Sometimes they dug up an active otherworldly or a dangerous magic artifact, and a quick reaction significantly reduced mortality rates among people of their profession.

  Everybody rushed away from the well: both the venerable professors and the uneducated villager-diggers. The less experienced slowed their run in a few minutes, but seasoned veterans did not stop. The puffing crowd stretched along the road to a distant lake. The younger "cleaner" was securing the retreat of the people. The clay walls of the excavated tunnel fell in, filling up the hole to the well. Nursen shouted and gestured to the men in the camp, but Alex doubted that they understood him. The indistinct cries of the chief archaeologist weren't loud enough to convince the remaining people that they needed to run away as far as they could from the excavation site. So Alex turned to the camp.

  The echo of someone's death wandered in his blood, awakening primal horror. What could possibly survive after centuries or even millennia of staying behind the thick iron doors? Before diving into the tall bushes, he turned around and saw that the worst of his fears came true: blackness seeped through the clay. It was something mobile and unlinked: neither smoke, nor liquid. A swarm of insects?

  Alex's knees buckled; the white fell down in panic and lost his bearings. He hid in the bushes, afraid to breathe. Then he heard screams - they seemed to come from all sides. Waves of human agony lashed against his nerves, someone's pain and fear burned his heart as molten lava. The white tried to calm his pulse and not let panic reach the Source. Suddenly his pain was over; he fell into a stupor, which was like death. His heart reluctantly thrust blood into his chest; every next breath was more stifled than the previous one. His scorched feelings fell asleep - his fear of death, concern for self and others gone. A wadded coverlet of eternal sleep crept on Alex, isolating him from the horror he experienced.

  A loud laugh brought him to his senses.

  'People! Alive!' Alex tried to call for help, but his forefathers decided to protect their ne'er-do-well offspring - he lost voice. It didn't occur to him that normal people would not laugh over the corpses of their comrades. His numbed muscles poorly obeyed him; he could not stand up to his full height. The young mage turned awkwardly on all fours and began crawling to the voices, slowly and persistently. When he lifted his head, he noticed how unfamiliar people in long rubber gloves searched the corpses. A sense of their wrongdoing pierced his mind, and Alex silently fell down, hiding in the tall grass.

  "Teacher, we've found all of them!"

  "Excellent. Put the amulets in my case."

  "We've left too many traces, teacher."

  "It doesn't matter! By the time they find the bodies, it won't be possible to determine the cause of their deaths. Start the car, Rapash. We need to get out of here before twilight."

  The aliens calmly talked, putting their bloody gloves in a bag. Nearly two dozen corpses didn't bother them whatsoever, and soon they left.

  Alex remained alone. All the other members of the expedition died. The underground monster dismembered even military trucks: their wheels were torn out and alchemical guts scattered on the ground.

  'That evil from the mound was enormously powerful,' the white impartially noted. 'The official mentioned a guard. Obviously, he knew more than he had disclosed to us. And some freaks used up this information to their advantage.'

  Alex didn't dare to plod into the night and face the unknown. There was another way to call for help…

  He got out of the bushes, trying not to think of the mysterious guard nearby, and began looking for the remains of the "cleaners". At about a hundred-foot distance he spotted the familiar uniform jacket in a glittering pile of human flesh. "These are just the bodies, the people are in heaven by now," he tried to persuade himself.

  Swallowing hard knots in his throat, Alex pulled the edge of the blood-soaked uniform (he had a feeling that the lower and upper halves of the body were disconnected) and took out of his pocket a "whistle". He pressed the button and started waiting for whichever would come sooner: the ancient guard from the tomb or rescuers from NZAMIPS.

  Sounds of a non-existent surf pounded into Alex's ears; the faces of murdered coworkers superimposed on one another in his eyes. He promised himself that he wouldn't give up; he would survive and make sure that justice prevailed. Someone knew the tomb was deadly dangerous and condemned to death their entire expedition. They would have to take responsibility for this!

  'I've recognized you, teacher!'

  Chapter 18

  Having said farewell to Hemalis, we got on a train to Finkaun to search of my father's cache. Since my last visit Finkaun became noisier and more crowded. From the train station we went to the city on foot via a long pedestrian bridge. I led Clara by the hand and, with the look of a connoisseur, pointed to the local attractions. She feared heights, and I tried to distract her attention from the trembling floor of the bridge and the locomotives passing beneath. I told her that if she had joined me a few months earlier, she would have had to climb down a thousand-foot mine, in comparison to which this bridge was nothing - just a hundred feet in height. I managed to make Fiberti doubt if her decision to follow me was wise.

  To find my father's cache in the three-dimensional maze of the city, which had been built and rebuilt many times over the last twenty years, was not a trivial task. Rustle didn't respond to my requests for help. The Salem Brothers' report mentioned that Toder Tangor's widow lost her belongings in a fire after the funeral. But I saw our Finkaun house during my previous visit: it was never touched by fire – otherwise, centuries-old plane trees that grew close to its front side would have been damaged. And that was the only real estate my father had ever owned, according to the documents.

  I decided to collect information about that fire. It must have been mentioned somewhere: either in the daily newspapers for that period or in the municipal archives. Naturally, as a dark magician, I could not stoop to work with dusty papers; Clara, as my aide, had to accomplish that feat. I made up a story about being busy; perhaps she saw through me, but didn't refuse to help. In half a day we became the happy owners of the coveted address and immediately went to the place. For the sake of conspiracy, we got off the tram two stops early and walked the last span on foot.

  The block of Linden Street that we were interested in did not have continuous numbering of houses. House number one-three-six perched itself next to number twenty-four; mansion number fifty-eight neighbored number two-hundred-three. The area had long ceased to be a suburb; only a few islands survived from a line of lime trees. All houses were fenced, and their gates were adorned with shiny plaques displaying names of wealthy dark magicians, healers, and functionaries of city hall.

  "Did they mention any landmarks in the newspapers?" I asked with hope.

  "No, they didn't," Clara replied. "How about you? Do you remember anything from your childhood?"

  "I was less than five years old at the time!"

  "We can check with the municipality if the blue prints are still available," Clara proposed.

  I winced, "We'll alert smart-ass officials. Let's book a room in the nearby hotel and walk around this place. We'll waste an extra day or two, but we won't raise unnecessary interest."

  No sooner said than done.

  One day passed, then another, but we weren't moving forward; the property at thirteen Linden Street remained invisible to us. Even Fiberti lost her usual sense of humor and started asking, "Could the place be hidden magically?"

  "I feel no strong magic here, except for standard aversive signs on the fences," I muttered in reply.

  "We've checked everywhere…"


  "Not everywhere, if we can't find it. There are houses numbered eleven and fifteen; there should be a thirteenth, too! What if it sits on a panhandle lot? We'll continue tomorrow."

  The same evening a stupid incident happened: somebody stole my diary from the hotel room. Frustrated by a bad day, I went down to the front desk and stared into the eyes of the owner.

  "What happened, sir?" the man became nervous.

  "I am missing a thing," I ushered in a tragic tone. "It's a book. It belonged to my daddy!"

  "Sir, are you sure…"

  "Absolutely!" I let my voice fall to a dramatic whisper. "The book lay on the table, and now it's gone."

  "Sir, my people couldn't enter…"

  "Somebody cleaned my room." Did he take me for an idiot?

  The guy surrendered, "Wait a minute, sir. I'll talk to my wife. She cleaned your room. I am sure she'll explain what happened."

  Meanwhile, Fiberti joined us, demonstrating her extraordinary flair for other people's troubles. I was disguised as a white again and, not knowing how they usually behaved in such situations, I stood speechless, waiting for the owner to finish his investigation. A quarter-hour later, the owner of the hotel reappeared, with angry shouts dragging a boy of thirteen by the ear. The man was short in stature, while the boy was lanky, so as the owner bent down the boy's head was almost to his knee.

  "I'm so ashamed, sir, so ashamed! What a disgrace! My own son debased himself by stealing from our guests!"

  "I would have returned!" the guy whined, trying to wriggle out of his father's clutches.

  "Okay, give it to me," I agreed.

  "It caught fi-i-ire! And disappeared!" the young thief cried.

  From his sobbing we learned that he was intrigued by the magic look of my diary - it had a black skull on the cover, and he opened it to find out what was written there. My protective spell had worked well, and the kid was lucky that the fire didn't spread around.