My Path to Magic 2: A Combat Alchemist (17 page)

Nursen
showed up, accompanied by the captain, and we slowly began to board the ship.

"
Ehh…is this all your luggage?" he nodded.

"Yes, it is!"
The night before I packed one bag - the suitcase that I left in the
Drunken Flounder
to preserve it from damage by saltwater - and travelled light.

The
crew started the boat engine with difficulty. Black smoke went out of the stern extension, and all passengers, as if they were in collusion, moved to the opposite end of the ship.

"What is this?" I was interested in
an object sticking out of the schooner's nose - always curious to see the wonders of engineering.

"Oh,
it is a genuine invention: a thrower with a chemical charge," the captain announced proudly.

"What kind of
chemicals?" I became alert.

"
A mixture of pyroxylin and nitrate…"

I became thin
in the face and moved backwards. Holy shit! I did not suspect that my death walked so close to me.

"
Throw this thing away immediately! Do you want to kill us all?"

"Don't be afraid, the mixture is perfectly safe!"

"You're delusional…"

"
For years we used this mix without any accidents!" he boasted.

"With magicians on board?" I asked surreptitiously.

Heavy mental work reflected on the faces of the participants of our expedition, who listened to our conversation. Most knew the basics of alchemy - the mix in the thrower could blow from any kind of magic, dark or white - if anybody nearby decided to use it.

"You highly exaggerate your significance," the captain snapped.

"You feeble-minded moron of the third generation!" I was furious. I had lost my sense of humor this morning. "One unfortunate curse will detonate all volatile chemicals at once! Do you have a safety fuse on the device?"

A
shock of understanding appeared on the faces of the people around me. You bet! Of all the participants of the expedition, only Barray lacked the Source.

"
Especially d-dangerous," Alex intervened, "are c-curses of the 'flattering' type…"

"
I don't care what type of curse will detonate us! I am not going anywhere with this thing on board!" I yelled at that moron.

Mr. Barray
came to his senses first; he immediately took the captain in hand: "Dear captain, Mr. Tangor is somewhat right! Involuntary magical emanations may seriously…"

In short, the explosives were
immediately removed from the ship. Two full boxes of the damned chemicals had neither gaskets, nor basic safety amulets on them. Crazy barbarians! I could have fallen asleep against the wall of storage with the explosives. It's really risky for a dark magician to visit such a god-forsaken place.

The schooner
-steamboat sluggishly rattled to the exit from the bay. I hoped that in the open waters they would raise sails and speed up. It was time to find a comfortable place on the deck and nap till mooring. Judging by the talks on the deck, the way to the base camp of the expedition would take eight hours in a favorable wind. No one wanted to talk to me - even the cheeky philosopher in the sweatshirt with printed quotes whom I met yesterday. The trip promised to be calm.

A group of well-wishers gathered on the breakwa
ter; likely, they wanted to say bon voyage to us, because one of them cast an illusion of the
Travelers' Star
(incidentally, it was a typical "flattering" spell) and launched it over the strait towards us.  They were lucky that they stayed far away from the boxes of explosives we unloaded; otherwise they would have blown themselves to the moon, suicides! These stupid people didn't have the slightest idea about magic safety! Alex perked up and started waving to them, but none of the well-wishers responded, for some reason.

* * *

It is common knowledge that dark mages do not have true friends and cannot feel affection, devotion, or loyalty, because of their kinship with the otherworldly. Rem Larkes could refute this statement: he experienced a strong and bright feeling, which remained a secret to the others - an ambitious magician with modest power could not afford to look strange. This feeling arose long ago: life was simpler then, both of them were dark magicians, and Larkes firmly believed that he would sort out his odd affection for his friend later. But Fate decreed otherwise.

The a
bsurd death of Toder Tangor - ironically, the strongest magician in their generation was killed by a bolt - did not break or weaken Larkes' attachment to his friend; instead, it turned into insatiable hatred. If a staff empath had known about Larkes' love, he would have thought of something to soothe Larkes' sorrow, but the dark mage did not trust anybody from his childhood. Larkes did not care that, as time passed, his feeling increasingly resembled a rare and destructive madness. The obsessed magician was heading toward his goal, compensating for his weak inborn potential with persistence and hard work. The artisans could not commit a worse faux pas than killing his friend; the days of the sect were numbered since then.

In all of his offices Larkes always hung on the walls portraits of
the twelve greatest magicians of Ingernika, and his deceased friend was inevitably among them. Now, looking at the large, slightly officious daguerreotype, the First Aide to the Minister melancholically pondered whether the striking resemblance of father and son was a sign sent purposely and personally to him. He came to the conclusion that it was definitely a sign. The young guy with somnambulistic accuracy bumped into artisans wherever he was heading. He figured out the shelter of the old fox Sigismund Salaris in Mihandrov; his elegant-in-its-negligence attack prevented the coup in the capital. Larkes was older than he looked - he was brought up in the old-fashioned tradition, on tales about
The
Soul of the World
and
The
Lady Fate
. It was quite obvious to him WHAT drove the boy, even if Thomas Tangor himself did not suspect anything.

His se
cretary calmly waited when the First Aide would deign to break from contemplation of the portraits.  The clerk was convinced that the dark mage harbored a dream to be among the elect.

"Speak out!"

"A message from Arango, sir! A dark magician, one of the 'cleaners', disappeared; likely, he was killed.  One uninitiated dark was presumably abducted.  In both cases NZAMIPS found traces of white magic. Should we begin deployment of the project?"

Larkes
turned his head to the wall displaying a map of the continent.

"Ignore
this! The ritual had never been undertaken before more than three hundred miles away from King's Island. Hand your materials over to General Zertak without comment. Let him solve his problems."

The secretary bowed and left.
Larkes returned to the contemplation of the portraits.

When the
ship dropped us off at steeply sloping rocks, I unconsciously waited to see a duplicate of King's Island.  However, it quickly became evident that the place was unfit for the otherworldly: fancifully weathered rocks baked under the sun, and nature had left no shaded cracks for supernatural creatures. Combat mages could relax.

As soon as
our schooner disappeared over the horizon after unloading, an all-terrain rubber-tired truck appeared out of the wide cleft and cheerfully drove us across the island. It was a tiny piece of land - approximately a mile by a mile in size; at its southern end rain filled the crater of an ancient volcano, forming a small lake. The northern, flatter part of the island hosted a well-equipped camp with huge army tents, a field kitchen, showers, and toilets. For a moment, I regretted that I wasn't an archaeologist, but then I recalled another name for their profession - pit diggers - and I stopped envying.

An a
bundance of dark magicians around didn't allow me perceive this place as a resort. As far as I knew, I was brought here to participate in the Circle of mages for a necromantic ritual and, apparently, it was some military project.

They treated me tactfully, with
respect: they provided a bed to rest, gave me plenty of grub, and didn't talk about the work. One ban was in effect for everybody: no spitting or swimming in the lake; it was the only source of drinking water on the island. Once, in Redstone, I saw a brochure advertising the holidays on the South Coast; the area around the camp was exactly like from the brochure's pictures, except for a lack of palms.  There was even a tourist attraction – the ruins of a pirate fortress on the slope of the crater (nothing special, just a pile of rocks as high as humans).  My impression of the island was a bit spoiled by dark mages, who walked around my tent like cats near a plate of sour cream. I did not feel like sleeping, and after tossing and turning in bed, I decided to familiarize myself with the island. I thought I needed to demonstrate to all that I wasn't a mollycoddled retard!

The first
dark I bumped into on the path was a short skinny man in an old-fashioned striped suit of venerable age. He was more curious than aggressive.

"How are you?"
the man raised his straw hat.

Mr.
Barray appeared in my peripheral vision.

"Fine, thank you.
How are you?" I decided to be polite with him. "We have not been introduced."

"Kraps," he smiled politely
, "from the Attorney General's Office."

"Thomas Tangor
, a freelancer," I decisively squared my shoulders. "He would regret it if he dared to mock me."

The ne
cromancer noticeably brightened: "Toder's son? Please accept my condolences! He was a very capable…ehh…man."

I was glad that I
already knew about my father's death from Hemalis. Thanks, mother, for your secrecy…I nodded solemnly, accepting his condolences, "It was a great loss for all!"

To my surprise, he
agreed.

"What brought you
to the island?" the old man asked.

"I have some
work to do here."

"Good for you!
We are about to start a very interesting experiment, if things will work out, naturally."

I pretended that I understood.
Mr. Barray decided to intervene: "Mr. Tangor, will you have a few minutes to talk with the expedition's leadership? Mr. Nursen will explain your role to you."

Why
did Nursen hide this till now? I could never understand these "nerds" with their secrecy! I nodded, and we went to the dining area to meet my boss. I was introduced to some new people whom I had not seen in Gilead: an army officer, an old alchemist, and a girl who seemed to be a healer. Ironically, Mrs. Clements - an archeologist from the expedition to the King's Island and Alex's former supervisor - was not among them; it turned out that Alex grew up into an independent researcher.

"Why
do you think we brought you here?" the army officer with the last name of Stephenson asked me (judging by his firm look, he was a colonel, at least).

"
No idea. Nobody says anything!"

Jim
Nursen immediately started educating me. Mr. Barray secretly sighed; I did the same. At least Nursen did not stutter!

"We've made major discoveries in the City of Nabla," the archaeologist declared proudly
. And shut up.

"
Where-where?" this part was worthy of continuation.

"In the settlement of the most ancient civilization of
our world."

"Ahh," I heard
nothing about it.

He stared at me suspiciously,
expecting a different reaction. "Have you ever been interested in ancient history?"

"N
ot quite…"

"
I see," he sighed ruefully. "Then I'll start from the beginning. The history of mankind is very complex and ambiguous. The so-called City of Bekmark is officially acknowledged as the oldest human settlement. This ancient metropolis was buried under a giant landslide approximately thirty thousand years earlier than people settled in Capetower, the second oldest town."

"Okay," I read about Cap
etower when I searched for information about technomagic.

"I do not know what you
have read about it," he said as if he had heard my thoughts, "but if we assume a high level of civilization at Capetower, for the Bekmark civilization we have absolute proof of their extraordinary technical progress. A self-propelled vehicle identical to ours in everything except for exterior design was restored from a pile of rust in excavation by means of retrospective necromancy."

I
was stunned by his statement. An imprint of the essence of an artificial object? How could it be possible?

"Yes," he grinned, "ar
chaeology is moving forward. And we have found a third layer of civilization here, on this island."

In short, th
is discovery was made by laypeople. During the last conflict with Kashtadar, one of the navy officers noticed that the Bird Islands had a strange shape. The guy, abusing the privileges of his position, convinced the magicians on his ship to probe the sea floor in the area. He thought the island served as an ancient port, and along with the port he hoped to find sunken treasures. The results were discouraging: something huge, round, and metallic was sitting on the continental shelf of Bird Island. Naturally, military leadership became interested in the discovery. They invented an underwater bell for greater depths (it was designed specifically for Bird Island) and performed extensive research on the anomaly. Many theorists speculated about the nature of the object, but none came close: when the bell's operator dug the silt a couple of times, the sediment crumbled and revealed the tip of a giant glass hemisphere. Thus they found a real sea treasure - the City of Nabla.

"It's
a titanic construction!" Nursen sighed. "Our technological progress hasn't reached that level yet, which will not allow us to create anything similar. The underwater dome has retained air inside, only its door hatches had corroded slightly. If the general public had learned of the underwater city, it would have been the biggest sensation of the last millennium."

"If
three civilizations have already vanished, it can happen again with the current one," Mr. Barray commented quietly.

"Yes,
it's true!" Nursen responded. "Three civilizations successively replaced each other in our world, all three disappeared almost without a trace, and two of them were superior to ours. Our archaeological community barely accepted the existence of the Bekmark civilization - people do not want to admit that humankind could revert to primitiveness or go extinct; but here it is - proof that regressions of such magnitude did take place in the past. Moreover, each time collapse was virtually instantaneous. Ancient Capetower's records unequivocally say that the world outside their island disappeared in one day, though many historians commonly interpret this revelation as a later insertion made by copyists. Personally, I believe that in the underwater dome of Nabla people died all at once, as in Bekmark: dead bodies lay randomly along the corridors, some - right where they worked.  One corpse fell with his hydro suit half-off. A terrible picture," he frowned, "two of my colleagues went mad after working in Nabla. What will the impact of this discovery be on the ordinary people, do you think?"

Yeah
…A sudden, unexplained apocalypse, regularly mowing the inhabitants of our world. An upsurge of religious fanaticism would be the most innocent consequence.

"We need to
figure out what happened to them to save our own civilization," Mr. Barray summed up. "And we invite you to the City of Nabla."

Now, once
I learned of the existence of such a place, they couldn't keep me away from it. My student practice, graduation, and contract work for NZAMIPS didn't matter anymore; I was ready to risk my life just to have a peek at such a miracle!

"
Okay," it took from me Herculean efforts to hide my avidity for the treasure. "I realize the importance of our work and will make every effort to do my job properly."

Jim
Nursen began smiling cheerfully, while Mr. Barray squinted suspiciously - he certainly knew a bit more about the dark.

The following day I devoted to meeting with
my colleagues and to practicing work as a team. None of the senior necromancers refused to participate in the training, and I did not want to stand out. The enlisted necromancers were about eighty years old on average (maybe even older - the dark always look younger their real age). It was evident that soon the government would face a serious shortage of…hmm…retrospective animators. I made a note of this for my future salary negotiations with NZAMIPS.

At dawn
the next day we boarded a large high-speed steamship, from stem to stern decorated with Navy pennants. There were no civilians among its crew, perhaps in order to ensure the utmost secrecy of the location of the glass dome.

Th
e sun was rising over the ocean and slowly filling the endless space of water with light. Light golden haze hung over the waves. From horizon to horizon there was nothing in sight except for water. Our journey resembled a trip to the enchanted land. Noisy sea birds were left behind; only the steady hum of the turbine and smarmy rustle of waves broke the silence. The elderly necromancers dozed, Alex joyfully smiled at the wind, and I thought of the technology the Navy used to probe the ocean bottom.  Our steamer made a sharp turn and docked to another ship, taller and wider, with no markings on it. Authorities were safeguarding the horrible secret very seriously…I was the first to climb a rope-ladder.

The
construction designed for deep water research was called a bell, and it was far bigger than I expected - about seventy feet long - and shaped like a cigar. Its coin-sized dowels made me think of an inside-out boiler, and it had a cap with the flywheel of a notorious fermentation vat - and we were about to dive into this vat. Other details of the design were not visible; the bell was almost entirely in the water. For its rise and dive the ship had a special hole in the middle.  Such flight of imagination and scale of preparation for the underwater research appealed to me.

"
A good iron pot!"

"Actually, it's made of bronze;
the bronze keeps spells longer," one of the crewmembers replied.

My rating of the monstrous construction sharply
surged: the fact that they used magic in the design testified that developers approached their work seriously. "How many people does it take?"

The sailor hesitated
, "About fifteen passengers. Of course, it's uncomfortable."

And now the pot
was to carry twelve necromancers at once, not including the crew of three people. Lovely! All my life I wanted to sit on someone's head.

"G-good luck!"
Alex looked at the underwater boat with reverent awe.

"
You'd better wish me patience."

My colleagues began to
board the pot. Judging by their gloomy faces, they were well familiar with the boat.

"Can'
t we dive in groups?" I watched as the crew packed us inside.

"No.
The hours of operation of the oxygen regenerator are limited."

If
I hadn't had a burning desire to get to the underwater city, I would have found what to say to the crew.  The elderly magicians sat closely on the benches, stared point-blank at each other, and breathed angrily. The creators of the underwater boat apparently hadn't thought through its design. We were like twelve genies in a bottle or, rather, in a pitcher.

Our diving into the abyss took more than half an hour.
I was bored and pondered why our forefathers built a city in such a shithole. Surely, we were fortunate it was underwater - nothing would remain of it on the ground, but I couldn't grasp their logic. According to my notions, developers either saw something insanely valuable in this place or were hiding from something or someone. My speculations on this topic gradually became more and more perverted: from the domination of dragons on the surface, which forced the Nabla civilization to move into the ocean, to the commodity-money relations of our ancestors with the distant circles of Hell.