My Path to Magic 2: A Combat Alchemist (4 page)

T
he elderly necromancer frowned: the alignment of two v. two did not suit him. "Are we going to wipe up his snot further?"

"You
have to decide," a polite smile appeared on Satal's lips, while his eyes remained cold as ice. "Do you want to train a necromancer or kill a competitor?"

A moment later
I was the only one who had not calmed down his Source yet. I never knew that combat mages could possess such self-control. That's what real mastery meant!  My dark nature still demanded blood, but I overcame myself and deactivated my Source.  From the produced efforts I shook and sweated like a mouse.

The crazy company eyed me with some medical interest.

"Yes," Charak agreed with some delay, "it does make sense to postpone our talk."

Wishing you all to die!
Speaking of poisons…

"Goodbye, Mr. Tangor," t
he curator politely bowed to me. "I hope you'll think about our offer at your leisure."

I decided not to turn my back
to them and walked backwards right up to the river bank, taking the risk to awkwardly plop my butt down.  Nobody was looking at me anymore: Curator Pearson spoke quietly, the mages exchanged brief remarks.  When dunes hid me from my enemies, I relaxed a bit and ran the rest of the way to my motorcycle.

I wanted
to leave this accursed place immediately, but I waited for a quarter of an hour until my hands stopped shaking.  It would be foolish to lose my life to a traffic accident after escaping death in the conflict with the mages. Meanwhile, the corporal whistled to two nurses from the van, and the indifferent-to-everything corpse was carried off the training ground.  By the time I was ready to drive, I thought over the mages' offer and became horrified; no, not because I was too close to die today.

When I was a child,
my teachers told me about situations in which our instinctive bodily reactions could prevail over our reasoning, and they advised us not to drive ourselves into this. What I witnessed today flatly contradicted their teaching: the three adult dark mages could not give in to an impudent youngster, once the matter descended into direct threats and calling upon the Sources. But when a non-mage voiced a rational argument, they agreed with him and called their powers off, despite the fire in their blood, the drumbeat of their hearts, the rage obscuring their eyes. They simply twisted their essence inside out like they rung out a wet rag. One cannot mock oneself like that!

My way back to town took longer than usual
: I needed to think, and a leisurely drive from point A to point B was best for that. The extension they granted to me till Tuesday simply meant that next time they wouldn't accept my rejection, unless, of course, I found a patron mightier than the senior coordinator within the next two days. I was given time to "ripen". I pictured how I would surprise them with a poisonous aerosol. The only thing that would stop me from applying it was a lack of control over the poison once it was in the air. What if the wind would suddenly change?

After rolling
my motorcycle into the garage and bowing to the regulars of the junk yard, I realized that I had some kind of leverage: they needed something from me, and they would not be able to get it by force. I could negotiate some acceptable terms or, in the worst case, dig in my heels. My mood immediately improved.

* * *

The reddish glow of gas lamps and bright flashes of magic advertisements from across the street diluted the darkness outside the windows of the police headquarters.  There was no sense in closing the curtains; the fourth floor was above the roofs of neighboring houses.

Conrad Baer glanced over the room again, making sure everything was ready for tomorrow's work: current
papers were stacked accurately on the edge of the desk; folders with files took their place on the shelves of bookcase; sharpened pencils and a gold-plated "eternal" pen rested in the pen holder. He had a passion for order, so his forced move to a smaller office did not affect the quality of his work. Except, perhaps, for meetings: his subordinates had to carry chairs from the accounting department.

The captain sighed
: soon he would have to change his habits. If his relationship with Ms. Oakley developed further, his future wife would be unlikely to allow her husband to work 24/7, despite all her patience and understanding.  Did he really need to work so hard?

He had already opened the door and stepped over the threshold w
hen the phone on the desk rang. He did not expect any calls: not many people knew the captain's habit to work on weekends, especially at such a late hour. After some hesitation, Locomotive picked up the call.

"Captain Baer."

"Hello, my friend, am I too late?"

The captain recognized the
voice in the tube.  All of the alarm bells in his soul began to ring at once: he disbelieved that dark magicians could remember any good you did to them, especially the magician who called him tonight. It was Larkes, the former senior coordinator and head of Redstone's NZAMIPS. Baer knew that Larkes was skilled in the art of mental trickery and could portray a good friendship, never really experiencing it himself. The fact that Larkes called his subordinate for the first time in the year and a half since he left the region meant he needed something.  Judging by his attempt to invoke the captain's sympathy, that something was not quite legitimate.

"You caught me by chance;
I was going home," the captain muttered in a friendly voice into the phone, noting on a sheet of paper the exact time of the call.

"I heard you are having guests from the capital?"

"Yeah, some auditors," the captain replied a little carelessly. "They haven't talked to us yet."

"I see,
" the other end of the line replied calmly. "Why now?"

"I have no idea.
Is there any problem?"

"No, no.
Can you find out what they want?"

"I would prefer to
stay low," Baer said sincerely. "My hair hasn't grown back yet from the last time."

He
heard a low chuckle in the tube, "I understand. Well, I am not going to keep you any longer. Call me, if anything."

The captain
waited till he heard some short beeps and hung up. The offer to call was a formality, like any mention of "favors" or "I owe you" that Larkes threw out thoughtlessly, not interested in whether the callee actually knew his phone number to call back.  His former boss was one of the reasons why Baer portrayed himself as a stupid policeman - for self-preservation.

He
wrote on a piece of paper the end time of the call and immediately dialed the operator: "It is Baer. Find out where the last call came from, but without fanaticism. Report to me by tomorrow morning."

The policeman
hesitated for a few more moments, then locked the room and went down two floors.  He knew that his boss was still working; Satal was too agitated from arguing with his capital counterpart to go home.  He was about to spend the night in the office in order to not frighten his three children by the looks of a brutalized dark. Satal had already thrown a prudently stored blanket over two pushed-together chairs and changed his official suit to soft jersey pants and a knit jacket. The office smelled of mint.

"What's up?"

"Perhaps it's nothing serious…"

"Go straight
to the point. I am about to sleep."

"Larkes just called me
: he wondered what the visitors from the capital wanted."

The s
leepiness in the coordinator's eyes changed to sharp concentration:

"What did you
reply?"

"I sai
d I did not want to be involved, I had enough trouble last time."

"Good.
Where did the call come from?"

"
We are working on that."

Satal
fiercely rubbed his face, trying to gather his thoughts. "No, I am too tired today.  We'll think about it tomorrow morning. Be very careful with this guy!"

"I know.
I worked with him for fifteen years, although we rarely saw each other. By the way, what position does he hold now?"

"Funny
, but no one knows it. As soon as I start asking this question, people poke and roll their eyes up. For fifteen years of distinguished service as a senior coordinator, he managed to let our business slide way down. And yet he resigned in a very timely manner."

"I thought so, too," the captain admitted.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow. Seriously. I have no idea what bothers Larkes. But I do know that artisans will not turn a blind eye to the loss of their financial adviser…"

All Monday morning I nurtured
the idea of becoming a necromancer in order to raise my father from his grave and tell him what I thought of him. Why the hell did he leave his own clan?! If the Tangor family had my back, no one would have dared to talk to me in a raised voice; dark mages' clans value their reputation and do not care about justice.

Of course, I could send
my half-witted teachers to hell and forget about a dark mage career. But neither my job at Biokin, nor the cash flow from my patented inventions, would feed me forever; I would have to say farewell to my wealthy future and the limos with the leather seats. And the mudslingers from NZAMIPS would not forget me. The alternative was to flee the country without a degree and the seal of a mage when only a few months remained till graduation. In the whole world there were only three countries where a dark magician could live relatively safely: our Ingernika, Kashtadar, and I'Sa-Orio-T. In Kashtadar, all combat mages were united in a special order with military hierarchy and discipline, which I didn't like, and in the Sa-Orio Empire a foreigner could not make a decent career - all the good jobs were taken by natives. Other countries seemed pygmies compared to the first three and always rushed from one powerful patron to another; even if there was a place for a lonely outcast there, I did not know of such a place. And my alchemic classes would come to an end. My innate dark talent shaped my fate no worse than a curse.

T
hough there was still Krauhard. I could always go back home and stay there for good. It would not be the first time the gloomy county hid someone from the outside world. I would flee and become nobody, a countryside alchemist, a mechanicus in a village of twenty-two houses, a respected owner of the machine yard, never leaving his home for more than a week. Could I put up with Uncle Gordon's "career", having already tried so many different things?

The telepathy does not exist, but all people
are empaths to some extent: looking at my calm face, my schoolmates tried not to touch me and would not even come close. When our classes ended, they ran away from me in all directions like charges of the same polarity: as far as possible via the shortest path. Well, I did not care. One more day remained till my meeting with the necromancer; I urgently needed to make up my mind: to flee or to stay.

I
came home, put myself in order, and dressed in my best clothes; my shoes shined as if for an appointment with Quarters' uncle. The time to pretend to be someone else was over - either they would accept me for who I was or we would break up. I was going to start with curator Kevinahari as the weakest link.

The work day in the police headquarters was not over yet,
business bustle reigned all over. The empath's office was in the so-called "new wing", which NZAMIPS staff shared with the criminal police. The wing was bright, with spacious rooms and an elevator, though not as elegant as the floor of superiors. My fascination with the elevator was a cause of great displeasure in the elevator attendant - the man refused to carry passengers down, referring to some stupid rules, and I never had time to check the accuracy of his words.

I
slipped into the elevator booth, called the last - fifth - floor, and enjoyed the creaks of the winch and the roar of the well-oiled machine. No one attempted to take it down. The staff followed the rules! In the police headquarters, where half of the employees worked with dark magicians and another half were them, I was never nudged or sworn at, so the local culture of communication was up to the mark.

Kevinahari
worked in her office. I always wondered what the empath did when she was alone; it turned out, she was making records – she probably drew up detailed dossiers on all the people with whom she had a chance to talk that day. I broke into her room without knocking; Kevinahari looked at me over her heavy horn rimmed glasses and immediately made the right conclusion. She put down her pen and moved the massive ledger to the edge of her desk.

"What happened, Thomas?"

"Something awful. I lost my patience, and it was really scary. Do you know that some damned necromancer from the capital harassed me? I am a respected dark mage, I obey the law," well, most of the time, "and I do not commit crimes!" In a systematic way, at least.

"I understand," the empa
th cheerfully climbed out of her desk. "Follow me!"

And she pro
mptly flew out of the office. In order to say anything else I had to catch her first.

We rolled down the stairs and raced
down a couple of passages, reaching Satal's office on the shortest path. The senior coordinator, not expecting a thunderstorm, was quietly reading some papers.

"How
long is this going to continue?" the empath tragically ushered herself in over the threshold and dragged me into Satal's office, though I would have preferred to stay outside.  "I work hard, like a squirrel in a cage, and you nag each other's nerves! You are destroying all my work!"

"
Ehh, Rona," Satal began, but the empath did not let him continue.

"I
've been Rona for thirty years!" she screamed, while falling into a chair for visitors with somnambulistic accuracy; her voice was filled with tears.

Oh shit…
Our curator was hysterical; I had never seen her so agitated before. I began figuring out how to disappear without losing my dignity.

"If you do not immediately explain the situation to the boy, I'll tell him everything myself!" Kevinahari threatened grimly.

At that moment my ears started ringing. Revelations from the empath?

"Please
don't!" Satal reacted quickly. "I'll do it myself."

The senior coordin
ator nodded at me to take a seat. We stared silently at each other over his desk for a while. Kevinahari took out her handkerchief and began shedding tears into it. The magician looked at her as at a dubious pentagram - activation succeeded, but what would happen next?

"Ingernika is in danger," he said sternly
. "Your country needs your special abilities. Do you understand?"

"No," I said gloomily, "I
'm kind of occupied as a university student."

We were not called up for service, even during a war, because alchemists
did much more good inside the country, and dark magicians were always plentiful at the front line.

"Don't you want to help you
r own country?"

"What is
'my country', and why is it kin to me?"

T
he senior coordinator frowned. A patriotic dark magician - what a show! However, having met an otherworldly with high morals, I could believe anything.

Kevinah
ari deafeningly blew her nose. Satal surrendered.

"Well," he sighed, "listen here!
The frequency of registered supernatural phenomena varies strongly with time."

I nodded:
"Yes, Uncle told me that. It was even worse previously."

"Not exactly!" Satal brushed
my reply aside. "Look broader. Before the advent of NZAMIPS, nobody kept statistics of breakthroughs, and 'worse' and 'better' were subjective concepts. When our analysts had reviewed the data accumulated over a hundred years, they found that the frequency of supernatural occurrences grew steadily across all types of phenomena. And it was the same not only here, in Ingernika, but in Kashtadar as well. About fifteen years ago an unexplained decline was noted, though now it is being rapidly compensated. The experts were tasked with developing a long-term forecast."

Satal thoughtfully pointed his finger up, and I realized that he was
about to reveal an important secret to me.

"Our smart alecks contrived and found long
term cycles of supernatural phenomena frequency.  The last minimum happened four hundred years ago, just before the reign of King Girane. Have you heard of him? Everyone was happy for a while, but then Ingernika barely survived."

I nodded;
in those times Roland the Bright became a saint.

"The
next peak is expected in two hundred years. We should be ready for it: dark magicians must be supported and all known artifacts and curses retained. Two years ago people suddenly recalled necromancers. For your information: long ago dark Empowerment was a spontaneous process; then some eggheads insisted on supervision of the ritual. The idea was good: to reduce the mortality rate during the process. But under the guise of safety these wiseacres imposed restrictions on the parameters of opening power channels. Thus they suppressed the necromantic potential of mages going through the ritual. They claimed that they softened the cruelty of the process. Soon we will quietly return the ritual to its original form," Satal winced, "but the harm has already been done, the time has passed. A necromantic talent is a rare thing; old masters are passing away and leaving no disciples. Charak is one of the last grand masters, a living legend. We showed him all the records of our wards with a suitable magic profile, and he has chosen you, 'the ideal candidate'. Do you understand now?"

"So what?"

" 'So what?' Who will replace the old necromancer when he dies?"

I could have answered Satal's question briefly and succinctly,
if not for the presence of the lady. I couldn't care less about their problems.

"You possess a unique talent," Kevinahari
uttered quietly from the depth of her chair.

I winced.
If I agreed, all the people who needed necromantic services would trample me because I would be the youngest.  And instead of being in a bright alchemical lab I would spend half of my life in morgues and cemeteries, until a new generation of necromancers would grow up to carry it on. However, Satal himself suggested a way out for me: to put in a little time, and then, hopefully, the old necromancer would kick in, and the matter would stall by itself.

"We'll make sure your
talent belongs only to you," the empath replied to my thoughts.

"How?"
Satal and I asked at the same time, I - distrustfully, he - with suspicion.

"We'll make a one-time contract,
" she explained patiently. "Charak always works on a contract basis. We describe the obligations of the parties and the level of remuneration, but we don't set the dates."

"Remuneration?" Satal frowned.

"Oh Dan, stop it! Whose money are you trying to save? We want some service from our young man, and you have to pay for it. Why should he do unpleasant work for free?"

I
t was nice for a boy to become a young man in one day, but the voiced proposal was not good enough for me: "And I'll choose my thesis topic myself!"

"What's wrong with
your topic?"

"
It's all wrong. Tell me, what sort of innovations does combat magic require?"

"Do you want to take Charak as
your thesis supervisor?"

Picturing
the old necromancer at my thesis defense threw me into tremors.

"Never!"

"Why?" Satal cheered up. "Searching for corpses with a zombie-dog is quite an innovation!"

"Uh-huh.
Then my specialization would be the animation of biological objects, and till the end of my life I would be explaining to everybody what that means."

"D
o not disclose it then."

"Hey, it's my degree!"

Satal looked at me colorlessly: my enthusiasm seemed to offend him somehow. I even pitied him after all - he failed to instill patriotism in me. I felt I should cheer him up: let him teach me what he wanted. Do you think dark mages do not know how to suck up to their bosses? We do!

"Teacher,
I have great respect for you. You opened me up to a new perspective on dark magic. In Mihandrov, your instructions saved my life, no kidding," Satal noticeably mellowed. "But my university degree is sacred. To the damned piece of paper I devoted four years of my life, and everything in it should be harmonious. If my degree refers to biological objects, people will think that I am a taxidermist."

"What
field do you want to choose for your thesis?"

"
Protective magic combined with controlling magic."

"I'm not very good at
the controlling magic," Satal confessed.

"It's not a probl
em, teacher, Rakshat will help if you authorize the topic."

The se
nior coordinator hesitated and then waved his hand: "Okay! Blame yourself later. You could have passed all of your exams with little to no effort. But if you don't work hard on your necromantic training," the beloved teacher gave me a stern look, "you'll be in trouble."

I fervently nodded.
Yes, I was going to work hard. The fact that I pushed through my own thesis theme was already a big step forward. After all, they were not so awful, those mighty magicians.

Satal and
I made an agreement. We were both quarrelsome assholes, but if the balance of power was obvious, and both sides' interests were met, I was not against playing by the rules, at least some time. Naturally, Satal didn't believe me in the least: he suspected that I would deny my promise after pondering it. So in an hour, a local lawyer showed up with a notorious one-time contract, the strangest of all the ones that I had seen. The contract mentioned "forced animation" only once; the words "body", "zombie", or "dead" were totally absent. There were endless references on every line to private circulars, regulations, and secret lists that Satal relentlessly pulled from the safe and laid out before me. I had the silly feeling that they gave me a standard necromantic contract. Wasn't necromancy forbidden by the law? I read the text twice: to understand what it referred to was completely unrealistic for a newbie, but the sum of one thousand crowns on the last page (plus travel expenses and accommodation at the expense of the client) gladdened my heart. Perhaps, my decision was stupid, but I took the risk and signed the paper. My heart was warmed by the thought of the look on Rakshat's face when I showed him the topic of my thesis with Satal's authorization.