My Path to Magic 2: A Combat Alchemist (20 page)

He stopped
and pulled out of his pocket a hand gripping a large silver amulet, full of colored rhinestones. What a vulgarity! I prepared my shields. Not so many lethal spells existed in white magic, but the shield against them had to be incredibly dense. And dark anti-spells could not reflect or neutralize hostile white magic, so we protected ourselves by changing the medium through which the white spells spread. It was like thickening a gel around ourselves, sort of, although eerily inefficiently.

G
olden flashes struck my eyes over and over again. They did not cause any harm or pain. I sensed that this boy was not a serious threat to me. "Tell me what you want to accomplish; maybe I will help?"

The brash young man turned pale
, threw his amulet in my direction, turned around, and ran away.

"
Capture him!" I ordered. My zombie-dog stayed at the pub, but there was Sorcar, and the reflexes of both to fleeing prey were absolutely the same. The "cleaner" quickly caught the hapless villain and started beating him with his feet. I picked up the amulet and slowly approached the fighting mages. It wasn't easy to pull Sorcar away from the enemy; however, I had to talk to the captive. I slapped my hands twice before Sorcar's face, and he leaned back, instinctively avoiding contact. "Enough! Let's take him and go back."

"Why
?" the "cleaner" frowned.

"We need to interrogate him."

"I'll kill him, you'll raise him, and we will find out everything!"

"I'm not going to mix my memories with
the shit this moron has in his head! My intellect may be adversely affected. If you don't agree, I'll help you forget about your Source for another six months!"

This
threat had a better effect - Sorcar stopped beating the white. And we drove back to the village, three of us on one motorcycle. The artisan constantly slipped off the bike, striking his feet against the stones on the road or smashing his nose into the red-hot cylinder. Sorcar raged and offered to tie him to a rope and drag. I weakly opposed, not willing to terrify the locals with our atrocities.

The village met us with
dead silence; even the "cleaner" started worrying. There were no angrily grumbling men or anxious women in sight; dogs didn't bark, chickens didn't run! Finally we spotted a group near the pub. The Kashtadarian guy stood in the middle of the street with a hefty ax in one hand and a familiar crossbow in another. Alex sat on the footboard of the truck, leaning against the door. Judging by his blood-stained face, he was knocked on the head. The black-eyed witch bandaged his wound.  She worked very professionally, in my opinion; they seemed to stock bandages in abundance. Peaceful settlers, indeed!

The
Kashtadarian man expressed incredible relief when he noticed us. Max already hurried toward me, wagging his tail and looking like a tangle of knitting - three crossbow bolts protruded from his body at different angles.

"Who dared sho
ot my dog? I'll burn you down!" My words caused a moment of confusion in the Kashtadarian guy - he painfully searched for words. Alex tried to shake his head and utter something. And I blazed with anger. Though Max kept me from overdramatic actions: my dog would not wag his tail near bad people.

"
These are not my bolts! They ran away! They tried to overtake the truck," the Kashtadarian said.

T
he witch finished bandaging Alex and purposefully strode in our direction. She grabbed the captive and began pounding his head against my motorcycle.

"Hey, stop it!"
I feared she would peel enamel along with the color changing spells off my bike - they were dearly important to me! Sorcar grabbed the riotous woman and started pushing her towards the pub. I relieved my dog of the questionable jewelry, renewed the resuscitating curses, and left Max to safeguard our vehicles.

"
They came on horseback…"

"The
se were the miller's horses," the pub owner interjected, bringing us drinks without prodding.

"…
attacked people with 'fright' and ran to the truck."

The
Kashtadarians proved to be familiar with Ingernika's term "fright" for the white spell, which caused an irresistible desire to run and hide, and they had a protective amulet against it in their wagon. According to the foreigners, artisans brazenly came to the village, dispersed the locals with magic, knocked out Alex, who got in their way, and tried to climb into the truck's cabin. That's when Max bit their asses. The fight was short but bloody – the dog's teeth were long, and their white curses didn't affect my zombie. The Kashtadarian guy had waited until the white crossbowmen finished their stock of bolts and joined the fun.  "Those people were not w-white…"

"Then who
were they - bandits with white magic amulets?" I asked.

Alex kept
silence, embarrassed. One thought comforted me: all militant white mages belonged to the sect of artisans. The white, not affected by the artisans' teaching, were very nice, soft and quiet, and well-behaved people.

I entrusted
Sorcar, as a professional, to interrogate the captive, and the black-eyed witch suddenly volunteered to help the "cleaner". I was unaware of what they did to the unfortunate guy, but in less than an hour he was ready to cooperate. "I did not want it!" said the young artisan, dripping with saliva. Naturally, he didn't want to be captured. He was ready to kill a dark, but did not think he would suffer, too. In all other respects, the guy behaved like a boy who got caught stealing candy.

"Where
do your people go to?"

"No ide-a-a!"

"What are your goals?"

"No ide-a-a!"

He was in a group of home-grown magicians who followed their leader without asking questions; everyone was happy that they participated in the Holy Deeds. They were initiated within the sect and taught some combat magic skills; however, judging by the fact that the captive did not know the simplest things, their task was plain: to enable their amulets at the right time.

"How does the amulet work?"

"No ide-a-a…"

"I see."
After such an informative talk the artisan was locked in a closet. I sat under the awning and examined the trophy in twilight. I didn't cherish the thought that any idiot could kill a combat mage with this amulet. Why wasn't I affected by it, then?

"What is it?" Sorcar was gloomy.

"How do I know?"

I remembered
an intense feeling I experienced on the road when the amulet was triggered. A white magic curse was surely inside it. Alex could not help me. Artisans were morons, but they wouldn't go into battle with a broken weapon.

"Empty out your pockets!"

Sorcar frowned: "Why?"

"Because this
amulet won't kill anybody by itself. Artisans easily murdered your colleague Officer Gatay in Tyukon Town, but you and I weren't hurt. Your Source is temporarily suppressed; I am not officially employed as a combat mage yet. The question is: what did Gatay have that I don't? You took along all your stuff - turn your pockets inside out!"

Sorcar
covered the table with a bunch of various objects, from a penknife to the "whistle".  I started gently moving his things, trying to recall their structure and function.

"Is that all?
Everything that you must have on you at all times? Bear in mind: they are sure the amulet will work with every dark mage."

Sorcar merely shrugged.
Typically, a combat magician carried a lot of useful things: elixirs, samplers, various amulets (protective and not). Which of them could be the target of the artisans' amulet? It would be next to impossible to distort the design of a dark curse with a white amulet, so I excluded purely dark magic gadgets. The elixirs were developed by white mages, but they needed to be consumed for the amulet to start acting. So I ruled out potions, too. Half a dozen gizmos were left in front of me that had either a complex or unfamiliar design. That's when I got frightened.

"What
's this?"

"A 'keeper'."
Sorcar wasn't much for subtleties.

I frantically tried to recall
the theory behind the "keeper". The death of the owner would turn it on, safeguarding the dark mage's soul from any necromantic rituals and from being overtaken by the otherworldly of his corpse. The "keeper" totally destroyed the mage's body by burning it to ashes. In combat with the otherworldly, a mage-loser could become a
Lich
– a being with dark magic possessed by a hostile entity, the most dangerous of all ghouls. The liquidation of such a ghoul-mage was an extremely complex task. It occurred especially frequently in the case of half-educated dweebs, which most of the "cleaners" and army mages were, so carrying the "keepers" was mandatory for them.  The "keeper" was a small elegant thing, sort of a pendant that dark mages wore constantly, demonstrating their toughness. I refused to carry the "keeper", considering myself a hard core alchemist.  Did artisans manage to intervene in the work of this deadly amulet?

Sorcar
gladly agreed to get rid of the "keeper"; he picked it up from my table with a two-tooth fork and threw the amulet in the garbage - perhaps he was afraid to even touch it now.

After figuring out what
had taken place in town, we pumped ourselves up to the eyebrows with free beer and went to sleep in the back of the truck (we declined the pub owner's offer to take a room, for health and safety reasons). I already imagined myself in the train and in my apartment in Redstone, taking a shower with plenty of hot water and soap, fluffy towels, and under electric light (no more candles!).

I woke up
at night, wet from a cold sweat; in my mind I saw a map of Arango, the same one that Ridzer showed me on the train - when we talked about the route of his group to the field army camp at the Kashtadarian border. A military operation to clear the East Coast of the otherworldly was about to start from there. More than half of the army mages - the elite combat mages of Ingernika - were there. I realized why artisans sent several groups to Arango - their target was the army camp. They didn't aim to attack every dark separately; obviously, they planned something much more scalable.

S
leep was no longer on my mind. I stepped out of the truck and tried to gather my thoughts. Sorcar joined me almost immediately. Something bothered him, too - clearly, his Source was getting stronger.  It was a good thing that the thought of my seniority became firmly imprinted on his brain. Okay, I uncovered the terrible sectarian plan; what did I have to do now? Did I really care about military thugs, whom I would never see again?

"Never
again," someone else's memory sighed inside me. Messina Fowler lost her loved one; she remembered how she looked forward to meeting him, hoped for intimacy, and then realized that their interrupted conversations would never continue, ever. I didn't want to acquire such experience. Hence, I had to do something about the artisans' plan. The simplest thing would be to get to the train station and make a phone call.

Sorcar patiently waited for my decision.
"Get ready," I said, "we'll go to the south."

We
packed up in five minutes, woke up Alex, and told him to take the dog and drive to the station. The Kashtadarians agreed to accompany Alex and guard him. The pub owner was warned that if their warden let the captive go, the authorities would punish them. Then we filled spare canisters with oil and raced off into the night.

If I was told a month ago that I would rush at breakneck
speed to save the lives of a gang of military mages, I would be cackling like a hyena. The motorcycle roared like a beast, tore the steering wheel out of my hands, and jumped on the potholes of the broken-down road heading to Illsill.  The roofs of some villages flashed occasionally on both sides of the road, but I didn't care if there was anyone alive inside. If I had taken a boat from Gilead to Illsill, I would have been there long ago! On the other hand, I would have missed a chance to learn about the mass murders of dark mages that the artisans were about to accomplish, and watched them helplessly dying around me, not being able to figure out the cause.

We had to spend night in the field, almost on bare land (
the thrifty Sorcar took only two blankets and sandwiches for the trip). There was nothing to argue about and nobody to fight with; I lay on my back and watched the starry sky, and memories of Messina Fowler intermingled in my head with Charak's stories. The previous picture of the world, simple and clear, trembled and blurred; my former goal to build myself a tower to live in solitude seemed silly now. I finally understood that I wouldn't be able to live my life not delving into the problems of others. Perhaps the dark would have to unite to survive.

Morning was cold, and we had nothing to eat.

"Let's turn back?" Sorcar suggested warily.

I shook my head
in rejection.

We
didn't catch up with the artisans (maybe they knew a different way to the army camp), but in late afternoon we came across numerous tire  tracks - only dark drivers cut corners through pastures so rudely and insolently. Apparently, there was a busy traffic area nearby; maybe there was a train junction or a police station, and they would have a phone line.

"
Do you see the hill with trees over there? Let's climb up and look around," I asked Sorcar.

In Arango,
they called a hill anything that was just slightly above the plain; but this one rose up about sixty feet. Its flat top bristled with ruins and half-burned large oaks, obviously hit repeatedly by lightning. I climbed up the tree that looked strongest. To the south, almost at the horizon, I noticed gray patches of houses among the greenery; to the west, a lot closer, there was yellow-colored smoke.

"
There is a town within a couple hours' drive. Let's go there and ask directions."

We
returned to the pothole road, leaving behind strange yellow smoke. I felt uneasy; the smoke reminded me of a pentagram with colored candles - it was a ritual, but which one? I didn't want to rush to the place to find out that someone was expelling
morla
out of a barn. We were about to get to the town soon, I would find the authorities, and the rest would be none of my business.

Five minutes later Sorcar started
pinching me and hissing in my ear. I barely managed to stay in the saddle, and he tried to get me off my motorcycle! I stopped with the clear intention of hitting him in the face. But my restless rider jumped off the bike and frantically gestured: "There, there!"

I glanced to where the "cleaner" pointed and realized that I foolishly miscalculated the si
tuation: a flashing ring of golden-white color hung high above the plain. It was a stationary pentagram and certainly not for the
morla
. We would not reach the town in time to report on the artisans. My thoughts started galloping.

A dark mag
e cannot untwist a white spell; it's impossible even in theory. The same is true for the white mages in relation to dark curses. Whites can convince Air, Water, Soil, and Fire to help, but the dark are able to combat and/or use the supernatural not belonging to any of the Elements. Would it be enough to stop the white curse? I was about to find out soon.

I called
my Source and surrounded the flashing ring that stretched into an oval with a tightening net of green necromantic strands, hoping to affect their minds. Shit. It did not look like anyone over there had suffered from my attack. Perhaps, their pentagram effectively protected them from the direct attacks of my magic, just as my pentagram would have protected me. The last option left open to me was an attempt to distort their magic via the superimposition of my weavings on top of theirs.

I formed
numerous, very dense weavings of all the sorts I ever learned and threw them into their flashing oval, which was acquiring a spear-like shape directed to the south. I was working at full capacity for a while already, but to no avail, and my heart sank. Then suddenly, strange compactions appeared in the white spear - a first sign of the spell's distortion. On my last legs, I sent a sharp, thin impulse into the spear.

No,
I didn't break their spell, but its structure became stratified and gave rise to patterns of third and fourth levels.  These patterns helped me guess that the ritual was being performed by a group of mages under the control of one leader. Would the head magician be able to bring their weavings into synchrony now? The difference in the experiences of the whites participating in the ritual became more evident now, and this fact played its disorganizing role: the spell clearly displayed five centers, deviating from the common rhythm. Only one of the white mages knew what he was doing and controlled the power of all the other Sources, but he was busy now with saving his own soul - their magic went out of his control.

The sky
raged; thick black clouds instantly swelled high above; branching orange lightning, surrounded by a purple halo, struck the land. This was developing in absolute silence.

Excellent
! Perfect!

And then I realized that
the energy of my own weavings would return to me in a second - it would backfire with a deadly force, because the ritual wasn't completed. I would not be able to dissipate it, and I either would be roasted alive or become a complete idiot. My chances of survival were close to zero, especially without the help of a good healer. To say that it was painful is to say nothing. The pain was so excruciating that I couldn't breathe; I bit my lips and scratched my face and shoulders till blood flowed.  But thankfully, my memory became spotty after that. I vaguely recalled sending Sorcar away. When I came to my senses - six days later - I lay naked, shivering, wrapped in a wet sheet; and a smiling Captain Ridzer stood nearby asking: "Listen, don't you want to take the Army oath?"

Hearing this
, I darted from him naked. He caught me and reassured me that "he didn't mean what I thought he did". I was angry with the healers who gave this psychopath access to me; they certainly didn't care about my nerves.

My muscles
shook, immobilized for a few days; bristles grew on my chin; oatmeal jelly sloshed in my tummy. I had never driven myself to such a condition before, but I was alive and sane. It turned out, while I was unconscious, they gave me an inhibitor and stripped me naked, trying to bring my temperature down. Fortunately, I was treated not by a rural horse doctor, but by professional military healers, who encountered similar situations on a regular basis. One could even say that I became a hero with minimal risk to my life.

The m
ajority of combat mages come under the effect of a kickback at least once in their life (playing with the dark Source without scalding yourself is very difficult); in such situations their survival depends on how much rebound energy they manage to dispel. Of my fifteen university classmates, two dark were seriously hit (though not fatally), and I now joined their unfortunate company. Why was the rate of injuries among students so high? Because our teachers didn't explain well that the weaving of a lethal curse must not be performed by one mage alone, or a rebound would kick such a fool hard. It was true not only for the dark magicians; from my white opponents in that last group, two died and one became mentally deranged. I did not ask what happened to the rest of them. Probably, all survivors were sent for interrogations to a military base in Caffolk, the secluded and infamous place. I think that the general public would never learn about their fate.

When I passed out, Sorcar acted properly:
he mounted my motorcycle and sped away for help. Thus, he had saved not only me: army mages did not know about the deadly weapon the artisans prepared for them, but they spotted very well the orange lightning; they were about to go there to find out what was happening and, by statute, their munitions were bound to include the proverbial "keeper". Having received the new information, the dark reacted very rationally: a team of healers was sent to search for my unconscious body, while all combat mages went to capture the artisans with bare hands, after taking off all amulets, whether dark or white. The unfortunate subversives defended themselves by shooting from their crossbows, but their bolts did not stop the dark.

The a
rtisans correctly grasped a weak spot of the state machine – excessive control over the dark magic - and cunningly found a way to use it. But I couldn't understand how they planned to expel the otherworldly from Arango without the aid of dark mages.

"I guess they figured that Kashtadar would help," Ridzer said.

"Wouldn't it be foolish to change the known dark for new other ones, complete strangers? What's the point?"

Ridzer shrugged,
"Perhaps, artisans like the order of things in Kashtadar: the dark in isolation from the rest of society."

I chuckled.
To invite Kashtadar to Arango would mean to surrender it. So, artisans were about to grant such a big piece of land to a foreign state? What was the point? Former residents wouldn't be allowed to come back; Kashtadarians wouldn't let their stupid benefactors spoil their own breed.

A smiling assistant healer fed me
restoring potions and, in between, as a physical exercise, took me down the hall of a tiny rural hospital. I guess I was the most grateful of her patients, because I was ready to swallow anything just to get out of there as soon as possible. The hospital was crowded with visitors; healers periodically kicked them out and locked the doors, but the idling public persistently came back. It took me some time to realize why they were so many: military mages, civilian personnel of the Army, policemen, and the most desperate townsfolk tried to get a glimpse of a fierce fighter who defeated a whole regiment of artisans.

The attack on the military - the basis of Ingernika's
power - caused a lot of noise. General Zertak, realizing what a shit storm just whizzed over his head, came to me too, to have a look at the surviving hero. At that moment I was still unconscious and missed my chance to talk with the great man, but I had absolutely no regrets.

I was
already unforgivably late for my last university exam and would have to beg Satal for help graduating. I had to flee to Redstone as soon as possible.  As it turned out, it was much easier to negotiate with the army healer than with his civilian counterpart in NZAMIPS, and learning that I urgently needed to go back to Redstone, he did not object: "I'll give you potions for the duration of your trip and will write a note to my Redstone colleagues. Go see a staff healer in your division right after your arrival!"

I nod
ded diligently; I already knew the road to the Redstone healers. Soon they would start showing me to their students as an exhibit: I became possessed by
Rustle
, and then was hit by a necromantic rebound. Where else would they find another such loser?!

"
Corporal Liken will go with you."

"Why?" I became
alarmed.

"Because of your zombie!"

Oh, yes, someone would have to refresh the revivifying spells on Max. Hopefully, my dog would not go berserk from being treated by a military mage.

"Will you
be able to handle it?" I asked the corporal.

"Do not worry,"
the guy smiled at me - he seemed to be proud of the assigned task. "I studied the basics of retrospective animation in the course on preliminary interrogation."

Hmm.
Better not ask him what kind of job the army necromancers were engaged in.

At
the train station we met a crowd of refugees who were returning to Arango. Ridzer said something about the nationalization of the land in the province, but I didn't believe it could be done so fast. The refugees were headed by a vaguely familiar short man (the one who harassed me at the ill-fated meeting in Ho-Carg?), and at his chest he kept a bundle of books.  There I recognized with great surprise my Krauhardian brochures on magic safety. A bilious gentleman with a bag and a cane strode beside him. Did they finally hire a dark magician? What striking progress in their worldview!  Now they certainly had a good chance to populate their land again.

The military train did not stop in Ho-Carg:
quarantine was declared in the city, and it was under martial law. How about my report? I worked so hard to have it done! I decided I could deliver it through Satal.

* * *

"Here's the report, sir, which you have waited for so long. I would like to comment that General Zertak's competence was greatly exaggerated."

"
The report is a top secret document, Mr. Satal."