My Path to Magic mptm-1

by Irina Syromyatnikova

  The coordinator noticed a shadow on the face of his subordinate and nodded: “There will be victims. But that’s the distinguishing feature of our adversaries’ regimes—attempts to avoid casualties at all costs. You already know the results that come of their actions. We are required to limit the death toll to the members of the risk groups.”

  Who would be in those groups? A few days ago Locomotive was visited by a relative, who promised to show her children the zoo during summer break. The cop’s little niece (his second or third cousin from the side of his mother’s sister’s husband) told him with excitement that the Dark Knight came to their town in winter, ousted a ghost from the town hall, and gave the children a ride on his motorcycle two times around the church. The captain checked reports regarding the incident and realized that he could never have met that relative of his again. And the one to blame would be Grokk and, through him, indirectly, the people who carefully planned and organized chaos in Redstone county to achieve their filthy goals. Therefore, whatever the dark mage had said about historical necessity, Locomotive hoped to find the villains and render them harmless, even if his actions would be excessive.

  God knows, it will strongly improve the social order.

  Chapter 18

  Lyuchik saved me.

  Our novice white mage and his buddies snuck their way into the funeral feast to watch the boozers. Please don’t think that Krauhardians often get dead drunk. He watched me going behind the garage, but did not see me come back. Despite the risk of being punished for lewdness, Lyuchik went to the elders and demanded to find me. When a group with charmed lamps (we take them everywhere in Krauhard) turned round the garage, Rustle disappeared without a trace. Thus, one brother saved another.

  Then Joe gave me CPR and heart massage for forty minutes without a break until the headman’s truck reached the county hospital. (Anyone who has tried giving CPR even once would understand Joe’s heroism; I would have lasted for a maximum of fifteen minutes). I regained consciousness after two days in intensive care, and for the first five minutes I was convinced that I woke up in heaven: everything was white, luminous, and slightly hazy. I seemed to see angels even… Still not sure whether it was my imagination or something else.

  Nobody was able to understand the depth of my problems there. I bent over backwards to convince the healers that I was healthy, but the attending doctor proved the opposite with perverse pleasure. And he called himself a white! By the end of the week I got sick to death of his saying “my friend”. In part, he was right: for a couple of days my eyesight occasionally weakened and sharp pain pierced muscles on any attempt to get up; but eventually all these symptoms were gone.

  “Do not argue with me, my friend,” the doctor lisped good-naturedly, tapping me on the knee with his knocker. I was lucky that he didn’t use needles! He laughed, “The injection you received would have killed an ordinary man on the spot, but dark mages are exceptionally strong bastards.”

  If the doctor said so, I had to believe him. As a result, he forbade me to cast spells at least for another two months; he even wrote a letter to the university to that end.

  “Why are you in a hurry?” Chief Harlik asked when he came to interrogate me. “We called your boss, he reacted with understanding, and you are free until the beginning of the semester. I wish I had a boss like yours!”

  Should I explain to the man that if I do not renew the revivifying spell, Max would bite half of Krauhard’s residents? I did not want to teach cannibalism to my dog.

  “So, what happened then?”

  He listened attentively to my story and confirmed with a nod the suspicion that Uncle was poisoned, but did not share the progress of the investigation: “We will find those two. It’s a pity that you did not descry them better. Do you know what they were looking for?”

  “I have no idea. I thought Uncle had said something to you.”

  He pursed his lips.

  “We’ll return to that later. Two days before his death, Gordon had received a parcel, something small and light. Do you know from whom?” Perhaps he understood my answer by the expression on my face. “Okay, have a rest. Talk to you later.”

  And then I decided to ask a very important question: “How do people die from an attack of Rustle? I’ve wanted to ask for a long time.”

  He shrugged: “Hard to say—there used to be no witnesses. Typically, only bones and a puddle of brown foam remain on the spot.”

  At that moment I recalled the caretaker on King’s Island. On the other hand, I doubted that he tore off his own jaw.

  “How do you treat the victims?”

  “We don’t! Just wait until they will recover on their own. The victims show a positive reaction to the presence of the supernatural in their bodies for life. Rustle, you know, does not forget the ones that it has marked. I hope that was a rhetorical question?”

  I raised my eyebrow: “A professional one. We had a lecture about it at the university.”

  “Yeah, I heard that story!” he perked up. “Some dude from the dark had fun there, didn’t he?”

  I winced: “NZAMIPS shook up all the dark mages in the vicinity after that.”

  “It’s only for the benefit of our kind!”

  He went off, and I was left to ponder about the vanity of vanities. Had I told them about Rustle, they would have simply locked me up for forty days; by that time my zombie-dog would have gone berserk. On the other hand, no one else saw the monster; if I showed a positive reaction later, I could always say that was the result of my visit to the King’s Island. Go prove it! I just needed to be more careful and leave quicker: bones and brown foam were not my style.

  The next day I was discharged from the hospital and found out that I couldn’t leave for Redstone right away.

  My relatives all came together on the spacious headman’s truck to take me home. Lyuchik was as happy as if I had returned from the dead (which was almost true), and my mother cried on my chest. I am, of course, a dark mage and surely heartless, but I couldn’t leave them just by saying “ciao!”—my sudden departure would not fit the situation logically. I had to stay with my family for at least a week. And not go anywhere at night.

  “What a terrible thing happened!” I did not know how many times my mother repeated those words. On the way home she calmed down, but clung to my hand as if I were about to be taken away. “Somebody tried to break into Gordon’s house: they broke the windows and left.”

  I knew what had scared them off. They must have had fantastic cheekiness to appear twice in the place, guarded by the zombie-dog.

  What were they looking for? Certainly they had not found it, or wouldn’t come for a second time. Small, lightweight, measuring just over the size of a notebook—that was how Chief Harlik seemed to describe the thing. My fantasy didn’t go further than a hundred thousand crowns in bonds or a confession from the Prime Minister’s wife, though hardly anyone would be killed over the latter. The poison still reared its ugly head in my weakness and difficulty in concentrating attention. I got tired on the short trip home, as though I were walking on foot through all of Krauhard from end-to-end. Joe even had to help me undress. I hadn’t experienced such weakness since I was seven years old! Yes, I was obviously sick, and home care would not hurt; perhaps it would be a good idea to rest for a week or two—home cooking, full relaxation, and no visits to the shit factory. As a typical dark, I couldn’t care less about the doctor’s ban on spellcasting; as to Rustle, I was inclined to think that it had missed its chance to reach out for me.

  A man can hope for the best, can’t he?!

  The last week of vacation was horrible—my own weakness angered me, and the thought of a valuable treasure being found by others led me into frenzy, as if I were going to give away something of my own. All my spare time was split between the hunt for a cache in Uncle’s house (under the pretext of sorting out his stuff) and the interrogation of witnesses. Not every police officer was capable of obtaining a simple answer to a specific question
from a resident of Krauhard (whether dark or not), but I was relentless, like a runny nose. The fact that I was the only alchemist in the valley now was helping me in the investigation; with all their problems, the villagers were forced to go to me. The postman remembered that the parcel Uncle received two days before his death had Ho-Carg’s address. An old tippler who confided in me at the funeral feast said that Uncle had lived in the capital for some time and returned to the village about twenty years ago, without explaining his circumstances.

  Mom was upset, saying, “You work too hard,” and Joe gently assented to her. I smiled sweetly and asked my stepfather to join me in doing everything that I could think of. It was my little revenge for the insects that were still flying around the garden. The little beasts could not bite me anymore because I prudently stocked up on an amulet that turned away bees, mosquitoes, bugs, and all other creatures that could attack the human body; even Quarters lost desire to pat me on the shoulder. That was the true power of magic!

  Max had the best time of all; the zombie-dog felt blissfully happy in the tall grass, having fun studying rodent burrows and chasing butterflies.

  The murderers did not show up anymore.

  Uncle Gordon’s house was gradually emptied. First of all, I dragged his large oak table to our attic. I loved its beautiful design. In Uncle’s toolbox I found a chic set of lock picks; in the bedroom—cute cupronickel beads, the mandatory attribute of a dark magician: each bead could hold a couple of spells, easily capable of replacing a combat curse. Uncle must have been unable to manipulate the flow of Power. My booty was his workbooks, the last record in which was made twenty years ago. I hoped to find inside a recipe of the potion that inhibited magic power and pour it into Mr. Rakshat’s tea. To delve into Uncle’s stuff was not tedious, just a little sad. That kind of work reveals the true nature of death: you can change nothing after you have passed away; all that was dear to you is left at the mercy of the alive. I sorted out my findings into three piles: stuff that would go to the trash, commemorative things that I would keep in memory of Uncle, and the rest that could have a useful application. In the end, the house would become devoid of any individual touch; it was about to be occupied by a new alchemist in a week. I did not want to wait for the newcomer just out of precaution, because I did not know if my pernicious nature would accept an outsider. My huge suitcase was ready for the trip and the chic suit waited on the rack for its hour, but my conscience was burdened by a small, though urgent, task: fixing up the ward-off spells around Uncle’s home. Their absence was becoming noticeable—mice appeared in the garage. That would be the last thing I could do in honor of Uncle to observe his traditions.

  On the day of my departure, I woke up very early from a sleep in which I was fixing some strange alchemical devices capable of flying without wings. I was awakened by the smell of fresh pancakes and by Lyuchik, of course. My grown-up brother was running around the garden with a problem, the gist of which could be grasped only by a white. Maybe he worried that the burrow had gotten too narrow for the mice? I should bring him a cat as a present next time…

  I was not given a chance to stay in bed.

  “Breakfast!” mother’s voice came from downstairs.

  Squeals and clatter signaled that I would not be the first at the table. Not good! Having pulled on my pants hastily, I left my bedroom.

  Despite the early hour, the entire family was at the table.

  Joe was sipping milk from a beer mug with a satisfied air. Little Emmy used pancakes as an excuse—she licked jam off of them and asked to put more on. Hopefully Mom would be able to wash her off afterwards. Lyuchik, excited, did not see what he was eating—a surprisingly active child. Bees left the sugar bowl with a displeased buzz upon my appearance.

  “Are we going to the station together?” I wanted to clarify, just in case.

  “Yeah,” Joe nodded genially.

  I needed to change plans. I wouldn’t dare load Max on the train for all my family to view. Joe was unlikely to poke his nose into my business, but little Emmy would want to flatter my “fur” pet for sure. I sensed my zombie-dog would have to run home on foot. It should be okay as Max was a clever beast (I sometimes wondered why he was so highly intelligent), and the dog could cope alone with the trip.

  Lyuchik barely managed to finish his meal and started telling me a story about his new school, friends, and some white mage (or was it just beard of his teacher that was white?). That became almost a ritual at the table. I nodded with a straight face and enjoyed quickly decreasing hillock of pancakes. My little brother wasn’t embarrassed by the fact that he had told me all his stories about twenty times already. We had just approached the most disappointing part—his classmates did not believe that his brother was a dark magician, when a truck wearing the NZAMIPS logo raced with a terrible roar past the passage into the valley. All of us, without saying a word, fixed our eyes on the truck.

  What was that? New clowns or Chief Harlik to visit us? And my zombie was running around out there…

  “Good for you!” I habitually complimented Lyuchik (little white mages should be praised frequently). “I’ll drop in at Uncle Gordon’s; I forgot to fasten a padlock on his door.”

  All nodded understandingly.

  My first worry was Max, who had saved my life twice already. The dog met me at the edge of the village: it rustled in the grass, patrolling and snapping its jaw in an attempt to catch butterflies. I hobbled slowly down the path, enjoying the overall harmony of life. The truck that I had spotted in the morning shone with its emblems halfway to the passage to the valley. That was for better: I did not want a company of combat mages.

  So, mice were on the agenda. Because of them I had to climb into the gully: the ward-off spells at the bottom of the slope were in order. I deliberately delayed the ascent, trying to catch if some kind of unhealthy interest in Rustle’s temporary lair would arise in me. It didn’t. That day was remarkably clear for Krauhard; at such an early hour the sun slightly touched the roof of the garage, slipping into a crack between rocks. After fastening the padlock on the barn, I whistled to Max and reluctantly plodded to the place where I had endangered my life so stupidly. A typical dark won’t let such things happen to him, even when he is drunk!

  Now it was easy to find the place where they killed Uncle: yellow flags appeared on the rocks. The police tried to mark the pose in which the body had been found. I grasped why the two strangers were worried—the spot where they attacked me was a mere twenty steps away from the location of the murder. Everything seemed to suggest that the old man fell, climbing up the slope, coming back from the gully to the garage.

  I glanced down, tensely aware that I might start feeling an involuntary urge to continue the walk. The gully was deep and dark; any place that the sun never reaches is definitely a dangerous one, by Krauhard’s standards. If the cause of the damaged ward-off curses was sitting there, I wouldn’t risk my life again—let the curses stay unrepaired!

  But mice are the eternal enemy of alchemists. They gnaw the wiring, make their nests in the most important parts of machines, and leave their droppings in the fuel oil, thus spoiling it forever. I do not count their stamping and squeaking at night. I will never forget how I found a dead mouse in the milk—I have been unable to drink any white liquids since then.

  All pests need to be exterminated!

  I walked back and forth around the gully. The line of seals was well visible even from the top. One washer clearly stood out among the old stones for its newer look and different texture—clearly, someone was tempting me to climb down there. Who? Why did I decide that it was Uncle? One couldn’t accidentally get into a place like that—sane children do not play there, and the insane do not survive in Krauhard. Should I call Chief Harlik?

  If I called him, I would lose the treasure. No!

  I did everything possible to secure myself: I went back to Uncle’s house, explained the situation on a piece of paper, and shoved it into Max’s mouth with the instruction
s to deliver it to people if I didn’t return before noon. Perhaps my desire to check the washer was all Rustle’s call, and if it proved to be true… I habitually clenched the Source, and it nervously vibrated in response. If so, then the creature would regret touching me!

  Cautiously descending the scree, I picked up the washer to examine it. The ward-off curse, rustling, closed around me.

  I did not understand. Truly, I did not understand.

  It seemed that Uncle climbed down there not to fix the spell, but to break it. That would be stupid! Why would anyone want to damage the rodent traps? I inspected the seal—on its underside somebody had scratched an arrow that pointed to a mountainside, where the gully converged into a narrow slit with a trickling stream of water. If it was a tip, who had made it? And for whom? I did not believe that some stranger, unfamiliar with the spell, could unlock it so cleverly to engrave the hint; that meant the strange message could be left only by the former owner of the house.

  I pondered it for a while.

  Couldn’t Uncle have been affected by Rustle when manipulated with the washer? The fact that he was a dark magician did not provide automatic protection from the supernatural. And why would some place in the rocks be a better cache than a compartment in the attic or in the basement? Perhaps, the reason was that the tip could be discovered only by another mage, and the two strangers were not magicians. I would have to climb there, no matter how reluctant I was. And if the mysterious seal was just a silly joke, I would spit on that comedian’s grave!

  Repeating the previous order to Max, I cautiously stepped onto the slippery rocks. I managed to reach the bottom without hurting myself, figuring that I had totally lost my mind. It would be so stupid to get into that shithole, guess Uncle’s obtuse clues, and die on the way back! The treasure that he hid must be really valuable, or I must have completely misread Uncle. And his cache was the most disgusting place you could imagine—only a burial vault would be worse. No wonder that Rustle hid there.