My Path to Magic (41 page)

I already knew what she was driving at.

"Mr. Tangor, could I ask you to refrain from visits to the school for some time?"

"What do you think, brother?"

A heavy fight between a few mutually exclusive desires reflected on Lyuchik's face.  "If that is necessary for Petros...  But for how long?"

"For a couple of days," Mrs. Hemul soothed him.

"Please keep in mind that I can stay here only until the end of the holidays," I warned her.

"Do not worry; the misunderstanding will be resolved very quickly."

"Good.  I'll call tomorrow then."

Lyuchik and I finished the tea and said goodbye to Mrs. Hemul.

Lyuchik followed me to the gate; we sat in the park for a bit.  I finally came to the conclusion that I would not leave my brother alone with the curse and the nutty teachers at Mihandrov.  I didn't have custody rights, but I was paying for his tuition, and Joe would follow my advice.

"I'm being serious with you; think hard about changing schools.  Redstone is a big city with plenty of entertainment and a zoo."

"What if everywhere is like here?" Lyuchik asked sadly.

"No, there is obviously something wrong with this place."

"And what do you think is wrong with our school?" Fox turned out to be near.

The assistant principal looked cheerful—no doubts tortured him.  He seemed to be in a hurry to push me out of the gate.  He hung over Lyuchik in such a manner that I could hardly restrain myself from hitting him with a curse.  Watch out, Mr. Fox!

I shrugged indifferently.  "For example—you.  A normal teacher would not lie right in the students' faces."

He was taken aback.  "I've never..."

"To Milos the day before yesterday?  Why did you lie to him that his cat would be with him forever?  As if you do not know that animals and humans have different life span!"

He was surprised; maybe he thought that I was blind and deaf to everything around me.

"Would you have had me say that his pet would die in his hands?" Fox softly smiled having recovered from the surprise.

"You should have said that the kitten was not invented for his entertainment.  The kitten wants to walk on roofs, make love with she-cats, and piss to mark its territory.  Wanting from the kitten something that does not conform to its nature is selfishness, and to demand its immortality is pure necromancy.  Do you expect to raise a necromancer from Milos?"

Fox went pale.  "The zombie is more up your alley," he almost hissed.

I did not argue: "Yes, I make them, but I can destroy them.  But Milos will manage only the first part, at best.  What will the guy do when he realizes that the animated corpse is not his pet?"

I sensed growing attention on me with all my skin; I was looked at from all sides, and I felt like making a speech.  "The world must be loved for what it is; we must not pick out the most delicious parts of it, like raisins from a bread loaf.  Not all of what we like is good, and not everything that hurts us is evil.  Among your pupils there are girls—how will you explain to them what childbirth is?"

He even turned green at that.

"Don't you like babies?" I purred softly.  "Don't you know where they come from?"

Fox turned and fled.  I showed him
us
—the dark!  All the white minnows in the park ran to the side with a soft shur-shur-shur.  I beat Fox with means specific to the white—I gave a different explanation—and now kids would not calm down until they determined which of us was right.  Poor teachers!  To be honest, the phrase about the bread loaf was prepared ahead of time; I came up with it when tried to get rid of the nightmares caused by visions of White Halak.

The dark, having nightmares!  If I said that to anybody, I would be laughed at.

"If you decide to stay here," I told Lyuchik, "never trust to what that guy says.  He is crazy!"

"I thought so too," the kid nodded very seriously, "but I do not know why."

God knows how sick I was of their gooing!

"Don't be puzzled about 'why', " I chuckled.  "Teachers must understand more than students, not just talk convincingly.  He is a theoretician on life, damn it."

So, I finally got two days off.  Now I had plenty of time to wander around and visit Mihandrov's barely any sightseeing spots.  Still, the town itself was quite interesting.  It was in the condition of "antiquity without decrepitude".  I didn't mean miserable huts hanging onto each other in clusters.  This condition is laid with the first stone of the foundation, ripens for centuries, and is lost if the ancient brew is diluted with even a drop of contemporary design.  So, Mihandrov was soaked in the antiquity so strongly that its age was nearly impossible to determine.  I was sure that the town was like that before the deadly spell, and it would maintain the same appearance many, many years later: white walls, slate roofs, low stone fences—like the pictures of ancient towns in school textbooks. 

Vines did not grow in the neighborhood of Mihandrov (Alfred had said something to that effect, but I did not save it in my memory); however, there was a man living on the lakefront who regularly supplied the town with fresh beer.  I knew the road to his pub, a stylish basement with huge barrels, wooden tables, and indispensable bundles of garlic.  Compared to the best Redstone restaurants, it differed only by the
absence of a fireplace (the latter was not needed here) and by a shorter menu list (mostly fish was present).  I seriously considered buying a house in Mihandrov, although it will be scorching heat here in the middle of summer...

I know it sounds selfish, but I vitally needed a break in communication with the white.  In the end, a mage's physical state depends on the condition of his soul, and my contacts with the white drove me crazy lately.  Besides, the "cleaners" from Artrom were expected to come to town any minute now, and a sharp transition to communication with the combat mages could be harmful to my health.  Who would need me then as a cripple?

I did not manage to get drunk on light beer, and stronger drinks were unavailable in Mihandrov at all.  I was too lazy to drag to the train station for liquor and went back to the mansion to swing in a wicker chair, take a nap, and think how nasty Satal felt in Redstone now (it was freezing cold there).  Clarence didn't bother me.  Twilight began to darken, dinner was getting closer, and the smell of fried fish wafted from the windows of the kitchen.  Fish was everywhere in Mihandrov.

And then it struck.

No, there was no sound; it just felt as if a big toothy saw touched the nerves of Max and me.  The dog that had been soaking in a tub with some preservative since morning howled hoarsely.  I told it to shut up and stay in the bath, clicked the "whistle" in my pocket, and ran to pick up my traveling kit.  The unforgettable feeling that mauled my nerves could mean only one thing: the supernatural was hovering nearby.

With the staff and the suitcase in hands (just like in a fairy tale), I rushed to where my intuition strictly forbade me to go.  In a hurry, I burst straight in, cutting corners on the slopes where one wrong move would make you fly headfirst to the lake below.  Yet I was glad that I wasn't running in the direction of the school.  Somewhere halfway up hill, I caught up with Fox, who wheezed on the rise.  I wondered where the man was going to.  Pulling up my socks, I overtook him, and while the white climbed the slope, I made a loop and broke into the overgrown park from the other side (first!).  There it was!  A large open space covered before with grass and bushes was now filled with ash-gray dust.

"
Witch's baldness
!" Fox breathed out, having made his way up through the thickets of the wild rose.

I wondered how come he knew what that was.  
Witch's baldness
was a rare type of supernatural phenomenon, surprisingly difficult to get rid of: the source of the supernatural was deep underground.  That is, a normal pentagram won't decimate
the bald
unless you draw it after removing the top five feet of dirt, standing right in the centre of contamination.  I had to move backwards - the border of the
baldness
shifted significantly closer to me.

"I have never seen them growing so quickly!" I gasped in shock.

"What should we do?" Fox screamed in panic.

That was a good demonstration of his self-control.

"I will take care of it, and you run and tell people to get out of their homes.  They are too close!"

"Close" was not the right word: roofs were already visible at the bottom of the hill slope.  They were within a stone's throw!  The NZAMIPS' "whistle" was of no use—they were too far to help.  Alfred, sent as a courier to Artrom, wouldn't be able to come back earlier than in twenty-four hours, and I didn't need another white here.  The lieutenant would be a burden.

The bad news was that I could not kill such a huge otherworldly creature alone, and at the speed it grew (thirty feet in diameter for half an hour that we took to reach the place) very soon the power of the combat mages of the whole Ingernika wouldn't be enough to cope with it.  When the "cleaners" arrived at the place (if they hurried up), only one remedy would be left: the armory curse.  It required five to seven victims - people who did not manage to get away from Mihandrov in time.  Theoretically, one experienced dark mage would be enough to kill the supernatural with the armory curse.  But I wasn't taught at the university on how to perform it.

I wasn't taught...

And then I thanked all the gods for putting in my way that loathsome creature, Edan Satal.  No, he did not teach me the deadly curses—he was not suicidal—but he set my teeth on edge with all sorts of high-level shields and barriers.  I recalled what I needed; however, my knowledge was purely theoretical.  But when had it stopped me before?  After assessing the growth rate of the
witch's baldness
, I breathed out a fire weaving that burned down bushes in a sixty-foot radius, took a marker out of the bag, and began to draw.  That would be a perimeter, a simple ward-off perimeter, only turned inside out: it would keep the creature inside.

There was no time to measure out the sectors; I had to act by eyeballing it.  As a result, instead of the minimal twelve signs per perimeter, I drew eleven.  I hoped it would work anyway!  The marker ran out before the last couple of lines were drawn—it was not meant for spells of that size—and I didn't have time to look for a replacement.  No more than half a meter remained between the
baldness
and the line.  Simple chalk was no good for such a surface, and to redraw the pentagram on a larger scale was meaningless.  A perimeter of such size could not be activated.  This was the end, not for me, but for most of the townsfolk for sure.  Such a crowd of people would not be able to leave the town quickly.

I threw off the empty marker tube and screamed hoarsely, like an animal.

"This?  This?" someone poked me in the back.

That was Lieutenant Clarence, white as chalk, with the exact same bag as mine and with the same token from the sorcerer's traveling kit.  My God, what did he need it for?

I snatched from his hand the white tube and finished drawing in feverish haste.

"I-isabertana dar-ram!"

A wave of power from the Source, zonked from such treatment, swept through the line of signs, activating the spell—akin to what Uncle Gordon used to scare mice.  Smaller in size, but with a higher price tag.  The toothed crown of the three-dimensional perimeter soared above the ground and struck inward.

I had done what I could.  If this failed, I would have to grab Lyuchik and run away.  I heard a thump behind my back—Clarence fainted.  Of course, he was drenched in my power!  I looked—the
witch's baldness
stopped growing and even slightly leaned back from the burning line of signs—then I heaved the brave warrior on my shoulder and carried him to the road, bypassing the
baldness
.

Fox was waiting next to a striped police car; hence, he had not warned the residents of nearby houses.  What a jerk!  Well, at least he didn't run away.

"What's the situation?"

"I have locked the
witch's baldness
by a reverse perimeter; meanwhile, it's holding up, but I can't do any more alone.  We have already called the 'cleaners'; they should be here soon.  Can you drive?  Go to the train station and wait!  Bring Clarence to life and let him call the 'cleaners' and prepare for evacuation in the event of the armory curse.  I will stay here and maintain the perimeter."

For a white mage, Fox recovered very quickly, but he couldn't steel himself to follow my orders.

"Why?" he demanded explanation.

I thought his question referred to the strange supernatural entity.

"Your town's suburbs are absolutely sterile—I mean, relative to dark magic.  No disturbances, no complex flows.  If an otherworldly creature comes into such environment, it begins to develop explosively.  Have you ever heard of Nintark?  Here you go!  Something similar happened there.  When you meet our team of mages, tell them about this; the 'cleaners' are not that bright and may not guess themselves."

It seemed he did not accept my answer.  He wanted to say something but refrained, nodded, and finally left, and I went back to the
baldness
—to terrorize my Source and pour power into the perimeter.  The waiting promised to be long.

The chalk marks were ill-suited for the long-term divination, and my asymmetrical, unbalanced perimeter powered out like a leaky tub.  I had to update the curse virtually every fifteen minutes, to sit to the side and keep watching.  How inopportune was that beer!  It was getting dark and cold.  A perked-up Clarence returned to me with blankets and sweet juice: a magician's first aid.  I sent him for an alarm clock; I feared to death that I would miss the
baldness'
growth.  The moon slowly drifted over the lake and down the hills, the east brightened, and it started smelling of trouble.

No, I wasn't tired; it just became awfully difficult to concentrate on the perimeter and even to remember to watch it.  My thoughts ran like mercury balls; clearly, if the 'cleaners' did not arrive by the early morning express, I would have to flee.  It would be even wiser to take the very same express myself, but that sound idea came into my head too late.