Firetale (22 page)

“
Show me the way to the next
whiskey bar. Oh, don’t ask why.”

The Doors
, “Alabama Song”

Greg did not need much time to
collect
his
things. He threw his crystal ball, black candles, some food, and a
couple of T-shirts into a backpack and was ready to leave. Mr.
Bernardius had asked him not to make long goodbyes, so the magician
kissed Martha and hopped into the Galaxie, where the tentmaster was
waiting for him in the front passenger seat.

“
Well, where are we going?” Greg
said as he started the car. Lazarus had never learned to drive, so
Greg would be doing the driving. Lazarus didn’t like cars and
tolerated them only because they were incomparably more useful than
horsed wagons. Of course, his nomadic life forced him to spend much
time on the road. Most of the towns where the circus performed had
only one road in and out, and the road usually connected the town
with the circus’s next destination. Lazarus had little interest in
what lay beyond them. He did not like to leave his circus. But now
the situation was exceptional.

“
We are going to see an old
friend,” said Mr. Bernardius.

“
Is that so? Didn’t know you had
friends,” Greg said with a grin, receiving Lazarus’s cold gaze in
response. “I mean, outside of the circus.”

“
Just drive. I’ll show you how to
get to the place,” said Bernardius.

“
No maps? No names? You just say,
‘Turn left, turn right’, like that?”

“
Exactly.”

Greg wanted to protest, but he
changed his mind
, realizing that the tentmaster was not in the mood for
long conversations. The magician put the car into gear, and they
were off. One road led out of the town, and they went through it
heading south. The first half hour, Lazarus was silent, staring
intently at the landscape outside the window, as if seeking some
guidance. A couple of times he started to say something to Greg but
thought better of it, and they kept going straight. Several times
when Lazarus asked Greg to branch off, they either ended up in the
forest at a dead end, or Mr. Bernardius swore, cursing himself for
the mistake before asking Greg to turn around and go back the way
they had come. After half an hour, Greg’s patience had run
out.

“
Maybe you’ll tell me what we’re
looking for,” he said irritably.

“
Signs.”

“
There are road signs
everywhere!” Greg almost yelled.

“
Not just road signs. Special
signs to show us the way to my friend.”

“
Maybe you could just recall
where he lives and tell me,” Greg said to Lazarus as to a
grandfather who had difficulty with memory.

“
I do not know the address,”
Lazarus replied as if it were obvious.

Greg gripped the steering wheel
so
tightly
that his knuckles went white. “You’re telling me you don’t know the
address of your friend?”

“
We have not seen one another in
a long time.”

“
How long?”

“
About thirty years or more,”
replied Bernardius.

Greg thought he sounded sad, a rare
emotion for Lazarus, so the magician decided to remain silent and
concentrate on the road.

Lazarus was grateful for
the silence and
continued to keep watch from the car window. They had not spotted
any signs, and that frightened him. He reproached himself for his
carelessness. Why had he hoped to find signs or pointers? Why here?
Why not elsewhere in the country? Or in another country? How could
he promise to help Greg without the absolute certainty that he
could do so?

They
had driven for more than three hours
when Lazarus finally noticed a sign. It was a tree, different from
the others. The other trees grew straight and tall, but one was
shorter, and its trunk was bent in the middle, as if it had changed
its mind about rising up toward the sun and decided to grow down
toward its roots. Lazarus asked Greg to turn left and go slowly,
and ten minutes later he found another sign. Among the rocks on the
shoulder of the road, one rock caught his attention. Greg stopped
the car, and Lazarus went to check the stone. It was as gray as the
other stones, but had a different shape. Lazarus examined it and
noticed a strange deepening on its surface. He scraped off dried
mud with his finger, and knew what it was—a large stone with the
letter R carved on it. It was a gravestone.

He saw more signs. The skeleton of a mole,
six flowers growing together in the rocky soil, an abandoned but
not destroyed anthill, an old piece of charred cloth, a puddle with
an artificial green eye in the bottom of it.

These signs could not be mere coincidence,
and Lazarus was sure they were heading the right way. His friend
had left traces, as they had agreed more than thirty years ago.
Noticing that Mr. Bernardius had become more cheerful, fidgeting in
his seat because of some excitement, Greg decided it was time to
ask the big question.

“
I want to know how the Judge
found me,” Greg said. Lazarus seemed to be deep in thought, and the
magician’s words fell on deaf ears. But a moment later, the
expression of joy on Lazarus’s face disappeared.

“
I already told you—apparently
Zinno told Caius about you,” replied Mr. Bernardius.

“
How could that damn little
bastard do that? How could he find a Judge?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
We need to find out.”

“
It’s late. After the Judge’s
visit, Zinno escaped. I checked his camper—he was not there at
night or in the morning.”

“
Mr. Bernardius, I hope you
understand that this runt could never find a Judge himself. If
someone helped him, then perhaps other lives are at stake, not just
mine. Maybe even Martha’s.”

“
I’ve been thinking about this,
Greg. I’ll deal with it, I promise.”

They rode again in silence, interrupted
only by Mr. Bernardius telling Greg where to turn.

The magician finally broke the silence. “I
do not blame you, Mr. Bernardius. If you hadn’t sent Zaches after
me, everything would be as before. But I do not blame
you.”

Lazarus was
about to say something when they
heard sounds coming from beyond a turn in the forest road, loud
music mixed with laughter and roaring engines.

“
Seems we’ve made it,” Lazarus
said.

When they got out of the car, they saw a
hut in the forest, a one-storey wooden building with a porch. It
was old but sturdy, and could have used a facelift. It was a bar in
the woods. Choppers were parked in front, and their owners, hairy
and bearded and dressed in leather pants and jackets, were talking
and laughing and spilling beer from bottles. The old Galaxie did
not go unnoticed. The people standing in front of the shack quieted
down, and their looks made it clear that strangers were not
welcome.

“
Great! Your friend is hanging
out with bikers,” Greg said. “How long is it that you haven’t seen
him? More than thirty years? His life is in full swing!” Greg gave
Lazarus a thumbs-up, but his smile clearly lacked sincerity. “Well,
time to meet.”

When they got out of the car,
some
of the
hostile looks changed to expressions of puzzlement. Greg, who wore
a leather jacket and jeans tucked into heavy unlaced boots, didn’t
draw much attention. But in his 19th-century suit and with his top
hat in his hand, Lazarus riveted the onlookers. Lazarus and Greg
exchanged glances and proceeded to the entrance of the bar. They
reached the porch. Lazarus was calm, and Greg was looking around at
the locals with interest. They were about to enter the bar when
their way was blocked by a couple of two-meter-tall
huskies.

“
Where are you going?” one of
them growled under his mustache. Greg thought the local bikers
looked exactly like the ones in the B-movies from his childhood,
like
Angel
Unchained
.
Leather, jeans, chains, mustaches and beards, weird hats. Someone
had a helmet with a spike on top. Someone else had a top hat that
looked exactly like Bernardius’s.

“
To see an old friend,” Lazarus
said calmly. Despite the size of the questioner, the circus manager
still looked down at him.

“
You have no friends here,” said
the second biker blocking the entrance. He was shorter than the
first, but much more massive. His greasy shirt, once black and now
gray, barely covered his belly.

“
You have exactly one minute to
get in that rattletrap of yours and knock the hell out of here,”
the first biker said. “A minute later, you’ll still disappear from
here, but not in one piece. The clock is ticking,
whitebeard.”

“
Gentlemen, it would be easier
for everyone if you let us enter and not make empty threats,”
Lazarus said, his tone still placid. He was not pleading nor trying
to sooth. He was cool and calm. The growling biker frowned, and his
massive companion wrapped a chain around his fist. The others
behind Lazarus and Greg put their bottles down and reached for tire
irons, brass knuckles, and knives. A few just clenched their
fists.

“
Mr. Bernardius, you know, it
seems to me that this trick is not gonna work here,” said Greg.
“You will always be against it, but honestly, I’m exhausted driving
through the boondocks without a map, and I just don’t have the
energy to negotiate with people who understand only brute force.
Hide somewhere.”

Greg palm
’s blazed up and turned into tongues
of flame. One grazed the snarling biker’s beard, and the man
screamed, a fire under his nose. The other whirled his chain and
aimed a blow at Greg’s head. The iron instantly became white-hot,
causing the biker to jerk back his hand and leave the chain with
Greg. He turned to the crowd behind him, threw the chain at it,
aiming nowhere in particular, and was pleased to hear a muffled
crackle. The magician had no need of chains. He had something
better. The flames from Greg’s hands grew longer, taking the form
of whips as thick as a grown man’s forearm. They writhed through
the air, aiming for victims, and blazed heat. Wherever the fire
whips touched the wooden porch, the boards turned black.

Greg waved
the flames and whipped the
crowd. Most backed away, but the fire caught some beards and hit
some chests. The air filled with the smell of singed hair. Bikers
in leather jackets were not harmed by the fire strikes, but others
were desperately flapping their arms against their chests to
extinguish the flames.

Greg continued to randomly
strike
with
his whips. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, just scare them. He
suppressed the idea to hit the motorcycles; explosions in such a
small space might do more damage than he desired, even kill
someone. Greg’s flame whips scalped the earth, not allowing the
bikers to the porch. A few produced guns, but Greg struck their
hands with the flame, and the guns were quickly dropped. Knives
were heated to red-hot, and bats instantly flashed like
matchsticks. In short order, almost all of the attackers had been
disarmed.

While Greg worked
his magic in front
of the bar, the fat man who had blocked the way to the bar came
around and tried to attack the fire mage from behind. He was about
to strike the magician with his fist when Mr. Bernardius hit him
with his cane, and the man went down, unconscious. By now, people
in the bar who had heard the commotion in the yard were rushing
out. Lazarus stopped the first two with precise cane blows, one in
the nose, the other in the stomach. Seeing the failure of their
comrades, more patrons hurried from the bar to help. Greg grabbed
Lazarus by the arm and dragged him from the porch.

Mr. Bernardius and the
magician
stood back to back, surrounded by angry bikers who were
blocking both the path to the car and the entrance to the bar. The
ringmaster held his cane like a club, ready to repel any and all,
and Greg tirelessly snapped his fiery whips, keeping the attackers
at bay. The fire mage felt tired. Sooner or later, his strikes
would begin to peter out, emboldening the bikers, who would have a
chance to attack. If that happened, Greg would have to stop
thinking about how to avoid killing them.

“
Wrap it up, boys,” came a
commanding shout. The bikers stopped dead and ceased their attacks.
“Let these two assholes inside the bar.”

The voice belonged to a young
black woman who stood on the porch, hands on hips. Her posture and
her voice revealed that she was in charge, and the
bikers
’
reaction to her order only confirmed this. She looked like an angry
panther. She wore tight-fitting black leather pants, emphasizing
her strong thighs, and a black shirt with sleeves rolled up to the
elbows. Her hair was short, and her face was graceful but angry.
Only her playful eyes suggested that her expression was more
histrionic than genuine.

“
What the hell do you think you
are doing, Mr. Bernardius!” shouted the young woman. “I’ve saved
your ass. But if you do not compensate me for all this damage, I’ll
turn you over to the tender mercies of my boys before you know it.”
She paused, and then laughed and ran down the steps to embrace
Lazarus.