My Path to Magic (23 page)

Who would doubt that!

"Aliens?"

"No, our own people."

"What do they hope to accomplish?" the captain got interested.

Mr. Satal shrugged: "Power.  Wealth.  Satisfaction of their brutish instincts.  What else can they get by fishing in troubled waters?  I don’t know whether you follow politics," Locomotive chuckled knowingly, "but suggestions to 'improve' the social order of Ingernika come regularly."

"Can't we just bring these wiseacres to reason?"

"Unfortunately, the people who generate the ideas and the ones who implement them are not the same; so far we can't prove a connection between them.  And an attempt to ban debate would have violated the principles of democracy.  Our options are education and prevention of violence and destruction." 

"Don't you think that letting them stay on the loose is kind of... dumb?"

"Risk is inevitable, but our society must prove its historical sustainability continuously, whether it wants to or not."

The dark spoke about the problem as if he were reading a piece of paper, quietly and impartially, perhaps exactly as he perceived it.  Locomotive was an ordinary man, and he couldn't detach himself the same way.  He thought about casual witnesses, innocent victims, children whose lives would be crippled by their fanatical parents.  How many of the forty thousand inhabitants of fallen Nintark really wanted to participate in the large-scale magic experiment?

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.