“Office, to arms!” I announced from the doorway. “Let’s go gather evidence.”
He began rushing around the office like a frightened rabbit.
“Freeze! Do you have a cart in your possession? We cannot take your vehicle—it would unmask us.”
“My nephew has a two-wheeled gig.”
“It will work! Take it and let’s go.”
The horse is not a car; it takes half an hour to harness it. By the time unhappy Alfred returned with the cart, Clarence had stuffed a whole field lab into his suitcase—from a magnifier to a spirit lamp. The purpose of half the objects in the suitcase remained a mystery to me. We climbed into the seats and pretended that it was casual: I, dirty like a pig after two days of camping, and the distinguished representative of the town’s authorities were going somewhere on business together.
“We need to approach the school from behind, from the direction of the park. Can we?”
“There is no road in that area, but I’ll try.”
A curved dirt walkway barely conquered the hills surrounding the lake, made a steep turn, and disappeared in the middle of the clear steppe; from that point onward our hope was on the strength of the cart axis. The gig jumped on hummocks and wriggled between thickets of thorns, blindly hitting some holes and rocks hidden in the grass. I kept the suitcase on my knees, trying to quench the jolts and shocks—it wasn’t altruism on my side; if not for that job, I would have to handle the horse.
“How far?” Clarence asked, his teeth clattering.
“My mate will meet us.”
“What?”
“Come on, drive!”
The horse sensed the zombie first; it began to snort and jump anxiously from side to side.
“That’s it, we have arrived! Tie up the horse—we’ll walk from here.”
“What’s the matter; can you explain?” the white mage muttered discontentedly after I had returned his suitcase.
I sighed and tried to convey all the brilliant simplicity of my plan to the provincial policeman.
“I will explain it one time only: from the side of the lake, the transition to the ‘rollback’ zone is very sharp; we reached the place of ‘normal appearance’ in three hours. Under the ‘normal appearance’ I mean presence of animals, predatory birds, and blood-sucking insects. From the side of the railroad lane, the transition is almost imperceptible. Believe me. I conclude that a pentagram that generates the shield is somewhere around here.”
“I should have taken more people for the search.” When a white mage starts to snap that means he is extremely irritated.
“Don’t fret, chief! My mate had already looked around.”
Clarence wasn’t convinced.
Max silently came out of the bushes; from the lingering grace of its movements one wanted to turn around and run away. You cannot hide the otherworldly nature! The monster that hid under the disheveled brown hair could not be seen but was felt quite clearly. Dear God, where could it pick so many thorns and spines in its fur? The white squinted warily and started unconsciously rubbing his hands against the jacket’s pocket (perhaps he kept some amulet there). There was no sense in hiding my dog any further. We were in the same boat.
I called Max and presented it to the lieutenant: “Meet my mate.” Clarence leaned over to stroke the dog. “It’s a zombie,” I finished, grabbing the shattered lieutenant by the elbow. “Quiet, quiet! Max is tame.”
Max brushed its bangs to the side and squinted whitish, lifeless eye at Clarence with interest; the head of Mihandrov’s NZAMIPS unsuccessfully tried to calm his heavy breathing. And this man was a salaried “cleaner”?!
“I was aware that all darks were crazy, but not to such a degree!”
“Well,” I was sincerely offended, “my superiors are okay with it.”
“But that creature is a zombie!”
“A silly superstition. A zombie is just a reanimated body, not a genuine supernatural phenomenon. Max is stable, that’s the main thing, and extremely helpful! You will see.”
“You should have warned me,” the gallant officer muttered angrily and pretended that he could walk by himself now.
I shrugged and followed Max; now both of them—the suitcase and the white—were hanging on me.
By the way, Clarence was fundamentally wrong about “taking more people”—the problem was not in the scale of the search. Our enemy was a magician; hence, he was able to hide traces of his activity much more reliably than ordinary people. But not from the zombie—the reanimated corpse always finds another corpse, no matter if it’s enchanted, or sprinkled with an odor-killing potion, or buried masterfully. Where hundreds of chartered detectives would have worked for a month, Max just ran around for half an hour. Now the dog trampled merrily on an unremarkable piece of grass, in the middle of a clear field, where there was absolutely nothing eye-catching.
“We will be digging here,” I concluded with a straight face.
We marked up the plot according to archaeological science and began removing sod gently. The grave was shallow; just twenty inches under the surface my shovel groped a skeleton’s hand.
“There it is…”
I heard only rustling of grass in response —Clarence rushed into the nearest bush, to vomit. The chief of NZAMIPS! What a joke! A quarter of an hour I spent bringing the white to senses, and then he lasted long enough only to make a formal report of the findings and test a couple of standard police spells on it.
“A young man, died three years ago, hard to say any more with certainty. There are traces of some magic; I’ll take its imprint. I need to bring experts to find out more.”
“Too early. For one corpse they will send ordinary criminal experts, but we need “cleaners”. I do not think that the maniac dragged the corpse on his back, and the gig won’t get here. We will search for the pentagram.”
“It’s getting dark,” the lieutenant objected weakly.
“I don’t care! Darkness sharpens the senses.”
We split up and went along an expanding spiral; Max was helping us as well, but I did not rely on it, and this proved to be right. Clarence found the oddity, not by the magic trails, but for a completely idiotic reason; he did not like the bush.
“Mr. Tangor!”
I tried to remember the place where I stopped, gave up, and went to the call.
“Well?”
“Don’t you think they are sort of… wrong?”
“Wrong” was an evergreen shrub with spikes of such size that I got sick from just looking at them.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Too straight. Too dense.”
And that was true—the wild bush looked more like a cropped hedge. It was a typical look for a garden, but completely unnatural in the wilderness. I carefully pulled apart the branches.
“Are we going inside?”
The white looked doubtfully at the prickly hedge.
“You’d better take the suitcase, or we will have to come back for it.”
The bamboo stick I left in the police office would have come in very handy! The combat magicians of the past were experts at this. To say that we got scratched by the spikes was to say nothing: one spike cut through my arm almost to the bone, and I was struck with pure and sincere hatred for the villain who set that all up. Let me get to him: he will be mutilated!
Behind the dense ring of branches the bush sharply cut off, opening up nearly empty space thirteen feet in diameter, without a hint of vegetation. The magic background intensified, and I squatted, studying the dirt.
You would guess that such an impermanent thing as chalk lines would disappear without a trace after the first rain. Perhaps, this is true for the regular chalk, but if magic energy went through the contours of the signs, the traces of whitening would be stronger than after kindling a fire. Nothing would grow in their for a long time. Even if someone put sod on top of a pentagram, it would not change anything; the grass would wither and crumble into fine dust or would be strongly inhibited. In that place t
he grass dried out, but slowly and in patches, circles and triangles; using a pen knife, I was able to find traces of chalk on the ground. I stood up, looking at the drawing vaguely showing through the turf.
Excellent! It did not matter whether the pentagram was related to the disappearance of people or to a weather spell; we discovered the traces of a ritual, the corpse, and now we could call the combat mages.
“Make a record of it!” I ordered Clarence, smiling predatorily.
The poor lieutenant, looking very much like a ghoul, took the necessary tools out of the suitcase.
On the way back to town I rode the gig myself. The white could not pull himself together. Of course, I was no good as a cart driver, but the horse was eager to reach its home stall, and even if I wanted to I wouldn’t be able to slow it down.
“Call Alfred now; do not wait until morning. Put evidence in the sealed envelope and send it by courier with the highest degree of urgency. I will write a cover letter to scare them. They will be forced to rush here!”
“And then what?”
“Let’s make them search for the remaining eight bodies; it will take no less than a month without Max. During this time we will make noise, find journalists among the tourists or students’ parents, and publish an article in the regional press with ‘artisans’ in every line. The scribblers are so sensitive to that word! We must turn things in such a way that for your ‘cleaners’ catching the perpetrator will be a personal challenge. And let the experts estimate for how long the shield will maintain the created effect. If we are fortunate, you will lose one of your jobs.”
“I do not mind.”
“And if we aren’t, you will have to hire a private combat mage. It’s not cheap, but you cannot leave town without the protection of a dark magician; this is not the case when you can count on luck.”
Chapter 32
The next day I intended to rest and slept until 11 a.m. without any remorse. I deserved it! My vacation turned out to be a real business trip; I worked seven days a week, knocking myself out. Good that at least my hostess was compassionate: if yesterday night, after three hours of combing my zombie’s hair, I couldn’t take a bath (it was after one a.m.), I would have burned all of Mihandrov today. A nervous breakdown wasn’t the exclusive privilege of the white mages!
Dropping by the school just to check, I discovered that my diversion with the trip brought unexpected results: instead of playing pathfinders and building huts, children enthusiastically argued. It looked hilarious in the performance of the white: they stood and talked very quickly all at the same time, perhaps not even catching the meaning of each other’s words. I got so curious that came up closer to listen to them.
“Thomas!” Lyuchik finally noticed me.
I got surrounded by kids with such speed that I even started.
“Tell me, tell me,” Lyuchik was tugging at my sleeve, “why the snake takes off its skin?”
“Because it has always done that,” I shrugged. “Why not?”
“But I do not shed my skin!”
Dear god, was that the reason for their hysterical quarrel? No, I will never get the job of an empath; I cannot grasp such things.
“Bro, in fact, you are shedding constantly, and the snake only once a year. It’s questionable who is better off—you or the snake.”
“Really?” Lyuchik frowned in puzzlement.
“Of course! The snake doesn’t have to wash, and they don’t stink.” If I remembered correctly, the snakes did not have sweat glands.
“But the snake will get cold,” sobbed a girl in bows. “They need clothes.”
I pictured a snake in the coat and gave a raucous neigh. Perhaps it was wildly anti-pedagogical, but I couldn’t stop.
“How about buttons?” I squeezed the question through tears. “How will they zip up buttons?”
The children became puzzled. What bedlam! Of course, I knew the white had a peculiar vision of the world, but not to that extent… I should be lenient and make allowance for age, after all. I tried to formulate my thoughts in a simpler way: “Clothes were invented by people because humans were bald, but the snake and mice do not need coats. In the areas where they live, their skin is exactly what they need. They’re animals! Don’t your teachers tell you anything about animals?”
“The snake is a reptile,” a bespectacled kid with a toy bear corrected politely.
“Good for you! Then you know that the snake is cold-blooded. Why would it need a coat if it is heated from outside?” I ruffled Lyuchik’s hair. “Do not worry! The snake has lived on earth for millions of years, so all that is necessary for their survival they have already acquired.”
“Our teacher told us that some species of snake have become extinct,” the four-eyed kid said.
That was where the problem originated! Quite a bizarre run of associations.
“Animals become extinct because people plough virgin lands and build houses. Animals need wilderness; if we do not interfere with them, they will be all right. Got it?”
Everybody calmed down. Good. I was lucky that the kids didn’t ask the sacred question about a fried piglet; I cannot talk on this topic, but I know a bunch of jokes. Like, once a vegetarian married a butcher’s daughter… ‘Maybe the kids’ moronity was the result of the rollback,’ suddenly came to my mind. On the other hand, teachers also ought to think before they say something. Anything. I fished out my brother from the crowd of pacified whites and took him for a walk to the park, vaguely sensing the lack of something of great importance.
“Where is Petros?”
My brother sighed. “Mr. Fox does not let him out for a walk.”
“How is it possible that he doesn’t let him out?” I was taken aback.
“Mr. Fox said that Petros got sick, but Petros wrote me a note that he wasn’t sick, only his feet hurt a little.”
My God, they were exchanging notes already, teen-conspirators?! Should I have a serious talk with the assistant principal? If I wanted to get that crazy kid under my wing, then yes, I had to immediately rush into a quarrel. But a sudden idea came to my mind: if Petros disappeared from the horizon, it would be much easier to take Lyuchik away from Mihandrov. So I decided to act in a civilized manner.
“Let’s go talk to the headmistress of the school.”
Mrs. Hemul was glad to see me, but she looked tired and agitated. You know, the emotional and physical conditions of a magician are strongly related. As if by magic, a cup of jasmine tea and a basket of fancy cookies appeared on the table (Lyuchik began to dig into them, searching for the sun-shaped ones). She understood the meaning of my question at once, saying, “This is an unfortunate incident, a totally unacceptable situation. Mr. Fox unpleasantly surprised me. To put it bluntly, he reacted very painfully to your visit; however, I was sure that he was coping with his emotions. But it happened so suddenly—and absolutely without a motif! The problem is that Mr. Fox is the legal guardian of Petros; it’s in his power to simply take the boy out of the school and leave. I need time to find Mrs. Kormalis and resolve this issue. Unfortunately, she is not in Mihandrov.”
“Suddenly left the town, am I correct?” an unpleasant ache developed in my stomach.
“Just before the holidays,” Mrs. Hemul nodded. “I’m sure she is about to come back.”
Maybe she will return. I thought that Clarence’s attention to the missing people and the commission’s work calmed down the maniac, but what if they didn’t? Though such complex coincidences just could not happen.
“I am glad that you are not letting the matter slide.”
She became a little confused. “Regarding this, I have a favor to ask from both of you…”
I already knew what she was driving at.
“Mr. Tangor, could I ask you to refrain from visits to the school for some time?”
“What do you think, brother?”
A heavy fight between a few mutually exclusive desires reflected on Lyuchik’s face. “If that is necessary for Petros… But for h
ow long?”
“For a couple of days,” Mrs. Hemul soothed him.
“Please keep in mind that I can stay here only until the end of the holidays,” I warned her.
“Do not worry; the misunderstanding will be resolved very quickly.”
“Good. I’ll call tomorrow then.”
Lyuchik and I finished the tea and said goodbye to Mrs. Hemul.
Lyuchik followed me to the gate; we sat in the park for a bit. I finally came to the conclusion that I would not leave my brother alone with the curse and the nutty teachers at Mihandrov. I didn’t have custody rights, but I was paying for his tuition, and Joe would follow my advice.
“I’m being serious with you; think hard about changing schools. Redstone is a big city with plenty of entertainment and a zoo.”
“What if everywhere is like here?” Lyuchik asked sadly.
“No, there is obviously something wrong with this place.”
“And what do you think is wrong with our school?” Fox turned out to be near.
The assistant principal looked cheerful—no doubts tortured him. He seemed to be in a hurry to push me out of the gate. He hung over Lyuchik in such a manner that I could hardly restrain myself from hitting him with a curse. Watch out, Mr. Fox!
I shrugged indifferently. “For example—you. A normal teacher would not lie right in the students’ faces.”
He was taken aback. “I’ve never…”
“To Milos the day before yesterday? Why did you lie to him that his cat would be with him forever? As if you do not know that animals and humans have different life span!”
He was surprised; maybe he thought that I was blind and deaf to everything around me.
“Would you have had me say that his pet would die in his hands?” Fox softly smiled having recovered from the surprise.
“You should have said that the kitten was not invented for his entertainment. The kitten wants to walk on roofs, make love with she-cats, and piss to mark its territory. Wanting from the kitten something that does not conform to its nature is selfishness, and to demand its immortality is pure necromancy. Do you expect to raise a necromancer from Milos?”
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