My Path to Magic

by Irina Syromyatnikova

  "Well, how are things at home?" I tried to be polite.

  "Fine. Thomas," my mother hesitated, but I patiently waited, "we need to have a serious talk."

  When she called me by my full name, I knew it was something serious.

  "Yes?"

  "Lyuchik has revealed a talent," she took a deep breath. "A white one."

  "Congratulations!"

  What else could I say? A young white magician is like a naked nerve, totally susceptible to any outside influence. A wrong word, a sharp look, and the kid would fall into deep emotional distress. Later he would grow older, stronger, but right now… And moreover, his brother, a dark one, came to see him.

  "You see..." my mother began in embarrassment.

  Now, after two years at Redstone, I was genuinely able to see.

  "I'll be careful!" I promised sincerely.

  I was sure of myself, but what about the others? There was no place less appropriate for a young white mage than Krauhard.

  "How will he cope in our village?"

  The best for them would be to move away from here; it was long overdue. Mother shrugged:

  "We are trying to accommodate him, but with our income one cannot expect much."

  "Has my father left nothing? I cannot believe that a dark magician did not know how to make a living!"

  “You probably do not remember… We did not struggle like now when he was alive. There were some savings, but when your father... died so suddenly, I could not find what he had invested his money in."

  A silly situation, isn't it?

  "We had a state pension previously, but when you turned eighteen, they took us off the payroll."

  And a family of four was left to live on only a schoolteacher's salary.

  "You should have mentioned that to me; I would have sent you money!"

  She smiled: "What kind of money does a student have?"

  Indeed, what money was I talking about? Oh, the money...

  "I would have thought of something!" I replied stubbornly.

  "Do not spout nonsense; you need to focus on studying. You are very talented! Your father would be very proud of you."

  The cunning plan to increase my monthly allowance failed splendidly. Well, now my conscience would not let me take a cent from her. It was a blow... But if I did pick up something from the white magicians, it was their ability to treat all setbacks philosophically. A very important quality! Well, I will enjoy my vacation in Krauhard then.

  The horse hoofs clicked loudly on a cobbled road, and the old carriage's springs creaked in accompaniment. The fog thinned, revealing moss-covered granite boulders, curved trees, and trailing shrubs. It was summer and bindweed was in bloom. The carriage had passed a cleft, and a valley, fairly wide for Krauhard, opened up in front of us. Its gently sloping southern side was covered with greenery, cattle grazed in the pastures, and the windows of houses with roofs of brown shale glimmered happily. Another half an hour, and I would be at home!

  The reception was cordial and loud. Lyuchik, all grown up, shouted and jumped as if there were four of him, although his younger sister barely remembered me at all and felt shy. But virtually nothing had changed. It was the same country house with boisterous chickens in the yard and a neat small front garden, where my stepfather tried to grow roses in a climate perhaps only suitable for sagebrush.

  I noticed small, colorfully painted boxes in the garden.

  "What is it?" I asked, shuddering inwardly, already suspecting the answer.

  "You know, while you were gone, I thought..."

  "Bees," I stated in a suddenly sunken voice.

  If there are any creatures in the world that I cannot stand at all, it would be those nasty, buzzing, biting insects. Yes, it will be a fun summer.

  My mother prepared a table on the open patio. And when I say open, I mean indeed, open for everything and everyone. In addition to the expected guests, the smell of freshly made bread and baked apples attracted the unwelcome visitors. The joy of my return home was spoiled, not to mention my appetite.

  The bees treated me with suspicion. Small aviators flew around me with a thoughtful humming, trying to get in my face.

  "Do not fear them!" Lyuchik tried to persuade me.

  A young white magician was comforting me, an initiated dark! If I relax for a moment and they bite me… I didn't want to think about it! I knew nothing about taming my Source, and its second awakening might be much worse than the first one with the cops. The lecture of the female police officer came alive in my memory with an amazing clarity—especially the photos with bodily fragments. I have to control myself; I cannot harm people I love, whether they are white or dark. But that was easier said than done.

  I had to spend only half a day there to understand that the night when something would buzz over my head would be the last one for all dwellers of the house. It was not a joke. I urgently had to consult with another dark magician; luckily for me, they weren't exactly hard to find in Krauhard.

  "Ma, I'll drop by Uncle Gordon's to say hi. He hasn't moved out, has he?"

  "Where would he go to, that old bore!" mother snorted. "Go, go. He already stopped by here today and asked about you, but the bees scared him off."

  Poor Uncle Gordon.

  My desire to visit the old man did not surprise anybody—he was closer to me than my stepfather; he was a second father to me. It is an axiom that raising a dark mage requires another dark; even ordinary people do not cope well with the task, not to mention white mages. This was the case when you had to be firm and flog a child severely for seemingly innocent pranks to discourage the youngster from trying something nastier next time. Don't preach to me about the fragile psyche of children, I know what I am talking about! While growing up, you begin recognizing your wrongdoings at some point, but you are yet too young to have the strength to cope with the dark nature. Having been beaten, you give yourself a solid pledge—never again!—and sometimes you even keep your word.

  As far as I can remember, Uncle Gordon has always been a friend of our family. I owe him my love for alchemy and a relatively flawless character. He was also the only inhabitant of the valley who built a house on the northern slope, among stunted trees and lichen. It was not because of his nature: he had a lot of machinery in his yard and barn—Uncle was the village mechanic. When I showed up, he was tinkering with his broken-down truck; the clunker puffed even more smoke than two years ago, if that were at all possible. Uncle noticed me and waved to go straight to the kitchen, where he appeared a few minutes later, wiping his hands with a cloth. He smiled with a tint of malice:

  "How do you like your home?"

  "Uncle, do not even start!" I brushed him off and then put the question squarely. "We must do something, or else I'll kill them all!"

  Uncle Gordon jerked his brow.

  "Are you that edgy?"

  "I can barely control the Source."

  "But your initiation is supposed to happen in the fall!"

  "Has happened already."

  He put his chair in front of my own and ordered: "Speak!"

  Well, I told him everything. I did not think that it would be quite so unbearably shameful to narrate to him my shady dealings. But Uncle was not angry, he was deathly serious: "Don't tell anyone else about it! Got it?"

  "Why?"

  "Because an uncontrolled 'wild' Empowerment means an almost guaranteed ban on practicing magic. At best, they will expel you from the university, at worst, put the shackles on you, and you will have to register with NZAMIPS office every week."

  "But why?!"

  Uncle Gordon sighed.

  "Have you read about Bloody Baldus? About Crom the Ripper? An uncontrolled Empowerment brings Power with unpredictable properties; the most common spells in your case could act as the armory curse. Mental instability and risk of madness go hand in hand with it. Who would allow such a risk?"

  "But... what should I do?"

  "Keep silence!"

  "Is that legal?" I was amazed. U
ncle usually didn't give advice with a criminal tinge.

  "Look at it this way: the authorities keep silence about what has happened to you. These bloodsuckers have recorded an imprint of your aura. The moment of the Empowerment should be clearly visible on your chip, but had they admitted that you were injured because of them, someone in NZAMIPS would have been in big trouble. Their chicanery annoys many, believe me! They are waiting for you to wag your tongue or lose control on the official test, and then you will never be able to prove their guilt."

  "I needed to speak out right away..."

  "No, you have done everything right! You were alone, you had no witnesses—especially mage-witnesses—and you will never get access to your aura crystal. They aren't stupid! So why should you be the one taking the fall? I'll show you how to fake the Empowerment on the official test. Of course, from now on, you will have to be very careful, think a hundred times before doing something, and visit an empath upon noticing any deviations, but your life does not have to end here."

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "You are Toder's son. I owe much to your father and hate to think that they will destroy your future to cover their own mistakes. Keep your pecker up! In the past, all dark magicians went through spontaneous Empowerment, and it worked out fine; only a few of them had problems."

  I immediately thought of Baldus the Bloody. Uncle went to the kitchen, rustled with something in the closet, and returned with a small opaque vial in his hands: "Here it is, drink this. It'll suppress all your magic abilities. A folk remedy. Though the stomach will feel a little twisted for a while."

  I sniffed the bottle suspiciously—the liquid inside had a scent of garlic.

  "Stay at home for a couple days so that NZAMIPS won't become suspicious. Then I will get you into an expedition."

  "Where to?"

  "Where necessary! Some morons from Ho-Carg came to our village, some kind of archaeologists from the capital. They are going to dig on the King's Island and are looking for seasonal workers. Of course, no locals will work for them (no fools here), so they will grab someone like you immediately. I suppose I will also have to go with you..."

  Having heard that, I gulped down the content of the bottle with no objections. The strange liquid flowed into my stomach as if it was lead, but it did not cause any immediate catastrophic changes. In fact, it produced no changes at all. No matter how much I tried, I could not detect in myself a sensation of decreasing Power, or any kind of internal weakness. Uncle noticed my anxiety, smiled, and told me to go home.

  Yes, it was time to go home: night was falling, and the village was not illuminated. What could you do? The countryside isn't quite like your typical city. I ran home following a long familiar path (directly across the rocks, the creek, and by the gardens), and my thoughts swirled around the strange turn of my fate. From whatever side I looked at it, Lady Luck smiled at me. Please get me right, I don't give a shit if I can't practice dark magic (I am going to be an alchemist anyway), but the general public is suspicious of people that are under NZAMIPS' supervision. For them, the mere existence of surveillance implies psychopathic behavior. I would have died from the effort of trying to explain that I wasn't the one to blame! But the problem had been solved even before it manifested itself.

  And then, as if in compensation for my anxiety, an exotic excursion materialized on the horizon. Holy crap, the King's Island! Well, who of the dark magicians wouldn't love a chance to feast their eyes on that place? How timely was my arrival in Krauhard!

  Chapter 3

  My summer vacation, so troublesome at the start, returned to normal: Uncle's potion spoiled my appetite but seriously improved character. I never thought that fluctuations in the Source could so strongly influence my mood.

  The potion happened to be very timely: now I could handle my younger sister and brother without irritation. No, I'm not against children, but two years ago, when we were on equal terms, the little ones had not pestered me that much; their attention was mainly focused on our parents then. Now little Emmy was teaching me to recognize different flowers. She was taking me to some buttercups, poking at them, and saying something like, "This is a chicken gizzard plant!"

  I was much more worried about zoology than botany: my stepfather cast a spell on my room's window that repelled the bees, but the little beasts caught up with me outside the house. For two days none had stung me, but I was afraid that my luck would not last long.

  Lyuchik ran around, happy and shining, and talked about everything. Literally, about everything. It was an unhindered flow of consciousness, the sense of which I could not catch, even when I tried. Unusual behavior for an eight-year-old boy. If those were the symptoms of an awakening white Source, then what did the awakening of a dark one look like? I tried to remember what I used to do to get on my relatives' nerves at his age.

  "You know, when we just discovered your dark talent, you tried to control everyone," my stepfather Joe said at lunch, following his offspring with a look full of adoration. "Virtually everyone, even cats. That was so endearing..."

  It was a blessing that my memory hadn't retained these events.

  For two days I was miraculously showcasing self-control and restraint; even the pickiest empath could not say that I fell short of the image of a perfect genius Big Brother. On the third day, Uncle Gordon, as promised, told my parents about the expedition. We enjoyed tea on the deck that was under a spell of repulsion against bees. The brazen creatures flew to the edge of the spell's shield and hung out there, buzzing ponderously. I was pouring honey over my pancakes. I did not like bees, but I loved sweets, and the idea that the treat was taken away from the hated insects and spiced with their corpses improved the flavor for me.

  My mother responded to Uncle's offer without enthusiasm.

  "Thomas came here to relax..."

  I tore myself away from the pancakes: "Ma! It's the King's Island!"

  "Besides, the kid could make some money," Uncle said into his cup. Money? I had not thought about this aspect of the expedition.

  "How much do they pay?" Joe became interested.

  "Seventeen crowns per week," Uncle said. "Plus three meals a day."

  Fifty crowns for three weeks! My look must have said everything: I already saw that money in my pocket. I already felt the weight in my hands. My mother sighed.

  "Stop it, Millie!" Uncle smiled. "It will only take a month. You'll still have time to enjoy each other."

  "Are you going to the island with the ghosts?" Lyuchik widened his eyes.

  "Do not be afraid, kid!" I scoffed. "If they appear, your brother will seal them all."

  "Nothing has been going on there for a hundred years now," my stepfather took my side.

  "Because no one has been living there for a hundred years," mother pointedly replied.

  They argued a little longer, but the last word, as always, was left with me. Was I a dark mage or not? Mother sighed and started packing my things for the trip. Joe was getting in our way, greatly irritating both me and my mom. One thing was good: on the day of my departure it rained in the valley, and the bees did not see me off.

  The whole way to the coast Uncle and I drove in silence, but not because there was nothing to talk about—the old wreck jumped on potholes like a jerboa, howling on the rises and rattling deafeningly downhill. Any communication under such circumstances could cost us our tongues. A few travelers that we saw on our way quickly jumped to the side and incanted averting spells, cows started kicking, and horses were rearing up. Ha, imagine what would have happened had they known where we were going to!

  As far as I knew, the island had always been closed for visitors. Under the old government, there was a prison, the most horrible place in all of Ingernika. The current authorities closed it out of compassion for the warders, but since then a belief had sprung up that the souls of the dark magicians came to live there after death. About a hundred years ago a chain of enchanted beacons emerged around the island, scaring off fishing boats
with their sad ringing. Opinions regarding the reason for the strict prohibition against visitors differed: some thought that there were gates to the underworld on the island, while others claimed that the authorities guarded the tomb of the island's namesake king. Others, referring to the legends, hinted that the king would be fully able to protect himself. The island had never been a tourist destination, any interest in it was discouraged, and I hadn't seen its picture even once.

  Still more surprising was the appearance of dandies from the capital in Krauhard. What could attract their interest in a place where no one ever lived?

  Archaeologists were going to sail to the island from a tiny fishing village with the strange name of Canine Beach; I do not know about others, but in my mind that name was associated with corpses and garbage. Uncle and I were the first to arrive at the village. I sweated hard in my thick knitted jacket hoping that it would be as cold on the sea as promised.

  The employers showed up when it was already past noon. A hefty truck, nearly new if judged by its exhaust, rolled up to the pier, and a paramilitary off-road minivan (only the army used diesel engines in small vehicles) followed it. Movers and security guys jumped out of the truck, while our future bosses slowly poured out of the minivan.

  "These guys have money," Uncle remarked thoughtfully.

  I did not try to sustain the conversation; the hangover from the anti-magic elixir was surprisingly miserable.

  "I won't give you more," Uncle said at the time of departure. "Taking this elixir for a long time causes hallucinations and bouts of schizophrenia."

  I nearly choked.

  "Why didn't you warn me?"

  "Did you really have a choice?" Uncle argued. "Let's not draw attention to us. The elixir's effect will end in two days, and we will start training. Let me warn you: I am no good as a teacher, so do not expect too much. You are not a fortuneteller like Coy Gorgun; your task is to learn how to confidently call upon and dismiss your Source, and even an idiot can cope with it after practicing. Got it?"

  I nodded; my head did not ache yet then. The prospect of making money, walking around the forbidden island, and learning a little more magic looked quite attractive. Who knew that I would be feeling so sick?