My Path to Magic (28 page)

Later, the history books talked about the flourishing of arts and sciences but, in fact, the inhabitants of White Halak were not capable of doing anything that required the throes of creation, any somewhat serious effort, or complicated training.  And they did not need it—they lived a pale imitation of life.

That strange perversion of human nature did not horrify me (by the way, the real undead did not frighten me either), but I felt disgusted.  No, better let the white be what I had gotten used to: harmless nitwits.  They are not so useless if you take the time to think about them.  I would treat them cautiously (I succeeded with Lyuchik), protect and indulge them, and they wouldn't create any extraordinary troubles for me.

That would be idyllic, wouldn't it?

Chapter 21

Finally, the forty days of my quarantine were over.  No, not like that.  They had ended!!!

The last two days were especially difficult—the damned otherworldly settled in my head and enjoyed it as much as it could.  I physically couldn't stay at home days and nights: clocks had started ticking too loudly.  But on the streets a glance at any living object caused in my mind a rapid string of images of his or her past, present and, at times, future.  Why the hell did I need to know what the neighbor's dog ate in the morning, why a kitten was hungry, or how a hangover pained Mr. Rakshat?  And, as a final touch, I could not read a book about the eviction of
Rustle
—my vision was failing me.

I had never believed before that a dark mage could seriously think about suicide.

I barely managed to last until the end of the forty days, but after the magic date had passed, the problems with the monster abruptly went down.  My mind became acclimated, maybe?  Bleak hallucinations and moments of sharpened hearing made me shudder a few more times, but then I realized that the problems were gone.  The only left over issue was that a thought of the white was giving me willies and reminder that the
Rustle
-inspired memories would stay with me forever.

Why did I need alien problems?  I had plenty of my own.

I felt blissfully happy, gradually tying the broken threads of my former plans and events, pondered where to find a buyer for Uncle's rarities, and fondly looked forward to the terrible revenge that I would strike upon the wretched creature.  The encyclopedia said that
Rustle
was practically the only otherworldly phenomenon that a dark mage could summon at will (there were precedents).  I wondered how many
Rustles
existed, and how would I choose the right one?  I will challenge them one by one and torture, tantalize, crucify...

The people around me didn't know the nature of my problems and guessed that I did not have enough sleep.  I couldn't care less; let them think what they wanted.  I did not see or hear their thoughts anymore, and that made me feel immensely happy.

But the world had lost its familiar simplicity.  The euphoria and temporary insanity that I was awarded by
Rustle
could not hide the unpleasant fact that people started gazing at me strangely.  Did I carry some signs on my face?  I asked Quarters straight out and received an unexpected response: "You've, sort of, crossed the road to the artisans."

"When?!"

"Did you not get that?"

I fell deep in thought, sifting through the events of recent difficult days.  Well, people with a fairly sick imagination could perceive my talks about Uther as a hostile attack.  On the other hand, no malicious sect could surpass
Rustle
in its meanness; it wasn't realistic.  Anything that was less evil I didn't care about, I declared to Quarters.

"Whatever you say, Tom," he shook his head.  "I can't understand you, the dark."

Brave bully Quarters... scared?

As it turned out, he was not alone in that.  Outside the university, the white moved only in groups of three or four now; they had gone through some kind of "safety" training and became atypically anxious thereafter.  Freshmen were counted twice a day, in the morning and in the evening.  Students self-organized into patrol groups with men on duty, and these guards imposed the dormitory curfew.  I wondered how they intended to make the dark mages observe all these rules.  Especially the novice magicians, who were finishing regular classes well after midnight and by the end of the day were in such condition that no artisans were necessary.

Organizing the dark proved to be easy.  They were offered a cab and a free dinner daily.  With beer.  Freebies!  All the dark students appeared right on time, by 12 am, without fail.  Even I felt the temptation to freeload in the dormitory and barely suppressed it.  Are we, the dark, so predictable?

These extraordinary measures fostered a serious mood.  For a while I honestly tried to scare myself, picturing that I was being hunted by freaks, but could not continue in that vein for long—it was boring.  What could they do to me?  Kill me?  The most horrible thing I could imagine was a burnt out light bulb at the porch and
Rustle
waiting for me at the door, but that could not happen in the city (knock on wood)—too many ward-off spells were pinned around, and NZAMIPS was on standby.  The maximum that I managed to achieve was to develop a habit of looking on both sides of the street and staying sober in unfamiliar places.

I was not allowed to attend dark magic classes—the doctor from Krauhard informed the university about my injury (what a pathetic snitch; one excuse - he was white).  I spent spare time in the library, as a good student.

I had two topics of interest.  The number one was
Rustle
.  Certainly I wasn't the first dark magician it infected; people must have tried to get rid of the creature before, and some reports on the progress made should exist somewhere.  I couldn't believe that one of my kind had successfully expelled
Rustle
and hadn't bragged about it.  However, material on the most dangerous otherworldly phenomenon was surprisingly scarce.  The reasons for that could be twofold: either
Rustle
was of no interest to anyone but me (nonsense!), or the results achieved were "not for mere mortals".  I needed to ask the captain about
Rustle
, but instead I inquired about some white idiots.

Second, Uncle's book burned in my hands.  I asked Johan's advice without going into detail and learned that the address on the parcel wasn't even a building—it was a botanical garden.  The name also seemed suspicious, for Pierrot Sohane was a character in a fairly well-known fable.  Combined, the two facts pointed to a white magician who lived in solitude and kept neutrality.  Clearly, he wasn't a merchant, because a seller would not name a buyer "my precious friend" and wouldn't complain, "I hadn't hoped to find you alive".  Moreover, he would not persuade in his letter that he "solemnly kept without any selfish interest an 'unnamed something' just for the sake of continuity".  A rhythm of these phrases stuffed up my ears, and I wasn't eager to meet the "insignificant master of mirrors".  Thus, I needed to figure out what I had in hand not to be strangled at the first attempt to sell the rarity.  And what if the book was stolen?

To identify my treasure was no easier than to pin
Rustle
down.  I couldn't match the text with any known writing style and could not exclude the idea that the content was simply encrypted.  The only recognizable elements were numbers at the beginning of each chapter, though there was a chance the numbers were dates, and they would be current in a couple thousand years.  My research revealed a similar font in one place, in a copy of the legendary
The Word about the King
.  These were the most ancient extant chronicles, and my treasure looked like a luxurious notebook in comparison.  To focus my search, it wasn't enough to just browse through its illustrations—I needed to attain a thorough grasp of the subject and honestly tried, but it was impossible to achieve. 

Of all the historical nonsense discovered, I was pleased with one interesting fact: it turned out that Roland the Bright was a holy dark magician.  Funny, Ronald the "Bright" was dark!  Well, at least not "white".  How this man could stand such a moniker was mind-boggling.

* * *

The senior coordinator of the region sat in his office, happy and well-fed, like a big black tomcat.  Shadows of thinning foliage fluttered on the walls, creating a feel of the jungle.  Locomotive knew that he would never occupy that room again—associations would be too strong.

"One is apprehended," Satal rumbled.

Captain Baer gently shook his head: "Why have you decided that Melons was one of the artisans?  She is accused of illegal practices and a murder, but that is just one episode.  We didn't find any evidence that somebody was behind her.  What if she is just another red herring?"

"She confessed to the murder too lightly," the coordinator hemmed.  "There was a chance that she managed to impose the
shackles of deliverance
on the first attempt, but why did the peaceful herbalist place the pump-sign on the table top?"

"The means of inorganic estrangement of the channel," Locomotive corrected habitually.

"Forget about the terms!" Satal brushed him aside.  "There is only one application for the Source that was detached from its managing will—the armory curse.  Especially powerful.  A peaceful herbalist?  Ha!"

"You propose a special interrogation?"

"Wanna bet?" Satal snorted.  "She will die in our hands under the interrogation, and all the newspapers will shout about the 'police brutality'," the coordinator obviously mimicked someone and was pleased with that.  "Let everything go its normal way."

"Unauthorized use of the
shackles
," Locomotive stated, "and theft of the Source."

"Death penalty," the coordinator confirmed, "and I will not permit any advocate to find extenuating circumstances in this case.  She was a certified magician and could not be unaware of what she was doing; the fact that the kid died before they managed to find an application for his Source was pure luck.  Our luck."

The dark magician enjoyed the hunt for invisible artisans amidst the stone jungle.  The beast followed the trail of another beast—they were human beings only partially... Locomotive blinked, driving off an ugly image.  The dark could not behave differently, but Baer was a regular human being—he had to take care of people instead of Satal.

"Our guy came into the spotlight in this case."

The coordinator got a little distracted from his triumph: "Leave him.  You won't do anything."

Locomotive frowned: "I do not understand what you mean, sir."

"You do," Satal dismissed.  "He is dark; you can't say to him, 'Go here but don't go there.'  If you start taking care of him, he will resist and become less manageable.  Hopefully, the sect will be disoriented without Melons, and we will apprehend them before they get ready for some serious steps.  Let's go back to work, back to work!"

Captain Baer shook his head again.

He participated in the arrest of Mrs. Melons and watched the doctor at that very moment when all her plans were dashed.  Her face, the face of a white magician who deliberately decided to kill, stuck in Locomotive's memory, and one word swirled in his head: "witch"!  The captain was accustomed to the intricate logic of the dark, to the delirious talks of the street preachers—but a normal-looking person, behaving as if she lived in another dimension, was something new for him.  The relativity of good and evil was brought to absurdity when the good was measured not even by profit, but by some unattainable and unknown ideal that, for some reason, justified any crime.  He was there at the moment when Melons made a decision that determined her future behavior and confessions, and he could swear that this story wouldn't end well.

The armory curse.  God save us...

Chapter 22

I was bored.  I couldn't get drunk, unless I did it at home - it was safe in there, but the pleasure wasn't the same.

The biggest problem of any dark mage is what to do with his spare time, particularly if a reliable source of livelihood has been found already.

My work at BioKin had come to a halt: Polak negotiated the acceptance of the prototype of the gas generator with the client, and we all awaited the result.  Johan, in his work time, scribbled an article about the new approach to the application of advanced micro-organisms and pestered me with questions about the alchemical part.  Carl scoffed at the fermentation vat, throwing into it all sorts of rubbish to test.  We both knew that a device with such parameters would thresh any sewage with the equanimity of a pinion, and all these "tests" for the machine were like spitting in the locomotive firebox.  The red-haired cousin of Quarters went on maternity leave, the father was an alchemist's assistant (also red-haired), and their child would probably have fire-red hair that one could only touch with mittens.  The future father was present at work only as a piece of furniture; his thoughts hovered somewhere far away.

I brewed coffee for myself and counted days until the moment that I would join my magic classes again.  I never thought I would miss them!  Of course, I could quit and forget the entire shit business, but I was expecting triumph ahead, and it would be a disappointment not to share it.

My third wish was to find new sorts of fun;
Rustle
heard it but did not fulfill.

I decided to act rapidly; I bought a ticket to the theater for a play with the neutral name "The Road to Exile".  And I liked it.  After the first three scenes I began quietly giggling, at the end of the first act I already roared with laughter, and in the middle of the second act the attendant requested that I be quieter.

"I do not know what you have found so funny about the drama, young man," an elderly gentleman, sitting right next to me, noted after the performance.

Still twitching convulsively, I explained to him in what condition a dark mage must have been to start talking with his crosier.  Again, a crosier!  A purely phallic symbol.  The idea of its magic properties must have been introduced to the masses by combat mages, but I knew that the only real use of that thing was beating enemies on the head (which, probably, was widespread entertainment in the past).  An ideal object to store spells has a round, at most cylindrical, shape; one object can't hold more than one spell at the same time.  So, a really mighty magician is a man, adorned with silver beads from head to toe, but on the stage he would be mistaken for a homo.