My Path to Magic (42 page)

When I heard the familiar screech of Mihandrov's police car's transmission, I mistook it for the sound of the silly alarm clock.  I would need to ask Clarence...  But instead of the lieutenant some absolutely unfamiliar people came out of the bushes, and, judging by the fact that their very appearance aroused my irritation, at least one of them was a dark magician.

"Shit...!" a burly fellow with a crew-cut in a dark red field uniform expressed what they were thinking as they approached.  With such a face he could only be the commander.  "Sergeant Claymore," he introduced himself, shook hands, and jerked me, forcing to stand up.  "Your work?"

To tell him it was not mine?  Maybe he saw some other dark magicians here?

"Squalor," a thin sharp-nosed nerd with a goat-like squint muttered through his clenched teeth.  Either he needed glasses, or he hadn't been beaten by the dark for very long.

"Stop talking!" the sergeant barked, the sharp-nosed shut up, and even I no longer wanted to object. "Remove the unauthorized persons.  Where is Rispin?"

Another dark, younger, burst through the bushes with two huge trunks.  Well, it looked like they were itching to climb the hill, but to go through the wicket—no way!  Was there some hidden sense in that?  I wasn't going to wait until they pushed me out and began a slow descent to the road.  The trio left an elephant trail behind.  At the bottom of the hill, Clarence gently helped me get into the back seat of his limousine; alas, he did not have a second blanket for me.

"What's going on there?" the lieutenant asked tensely.

I tried to shrug.  My brains thawed slowly from the stress; I wanted neither to speak nor to think.

"Will they cope?" Clarence worried.

How should I know?

"You'd better U-turn your car right here," I advised him, "driving in reverse isn't speedy."

There were no streetlights in Mihandrov, so nights were very much like in Krauhard here: dark and misty.  The lake breathed out fog, and a rather chilly breeze came out of the steppe; the sun rose fast, and day started instantly.  I slept peacefully under Clarence's jacket for an hour and a half and was awakened by a strike of lightning, typical for the expelling curse.  It blew off so strongly that the car bounced.  The lieutenant ruthlessly pulled the improvised blanket off me.  The sky was already bright.

The sergeant climbed down the slope, swearing, along with the sharp-nosed assistant with
my
staff in his hands!  Their younger colleague, named Rispin, showed prudence and went through the gate—an extra one hundred meters, but much more convenient.

"In my twenty years of experience I haven't seen such a hefty creature before," the sharp-nosed guy said, trying to push me out of the car, but I tenaciously clung to the seat.  Clarence's cabriolet was not designed for five, but it was not my problem.  Let them sit on each other's knees!

"Gorchik, as you were!" the weary sergeant ordered and decisively took a seat beside the driver.

Rispin pushed on Gorchik with his hip, the compacted people compressed to the limit.  And we were off.  Personally, I was happy at how everything turned out; I even began to doze off again, and only Gorchik, sandwiched in from both sides, angrily sniffed and almost pinched us in annoyance.

"Drop me off at the school," I asked Clarence.

"No need to," the lieutenant advised.  "Yesterday I warned Mrs. Hemul; it's all under control.  And the perimeter is working; the gates will stay locked until 11 a.m."

I asked about the time—there was more than an hour before the school's opening—and I had to agree: showing up looking like I had a sleepover in the bushes would discredit the image I had created.  And to stay awake for another two hours was beyond my strength.

"I'll be waiting for you in the office at seventeen hundred!" the sergeant shouted at our parting.

"It won't work," I warned him honestly.  I would be sleeping, no matter what.

"Well," he displayed some compassion, "then tomorrow at ten hundred—no excuses!"

And they drove off.  With a short delay, I began to feel resentful.  Geez, he wasn't even my commander!  And he wasn't at home!  What right did the guy have to order me?  But, on second thought, I decided that to learn about the plans of the long-awaited "cleaners" was absolutely necessary; hence, I had to go.  But I would stop their every attempt to benefit at my expense!  If the dark mages cut their way to higher status, they become absolutely unbearable.

In the mansion, the tender-hearted Mrs. Parker released Max from the bathroom.  Either she was a secret necromancer or believed that the dark magician's dog had the right to be strange, one way or another.  Mrs. Parker recognized in the preservative solution a remedy against fleas, and she washed and brushed Max's coat with a special homemade lotion that kept its hair not just shiny, but also tangle-free.  With the thought that I ought to get the magic recipe from her, I fell into bed and slept for almost twenty-four hours.

* * *

Mrs. Hemul watched the assistant principal walking around his office, and tried not to display her concern.  Mr. Fox no longer cast even a shadow of sympathy—rather, he frightened her.  Where did he hide such a chasm of complexes and prejudices, and why hadn't she noticed them before?  All his quirks and reservations from the last six months now acquired a much more sinister meaning.

"It's the dark mage's fault!" Mr. Fox insisted feverishly.  "Our troubles started after his arrival."

Long ago, at the time of the Inquisition, it was proved that the occurrence of supernatural phenomena did not depend on the will of the dark, but on the properties of the environment.  The arsenal of dark magicians has plenty of abominations, but guests from the other world are not part of it.  But Fox rejected the truisms straightaway, and to reach out to his common sense was getting more and more difficult.

"Even if it is so, would you prefer that the breakthrough occur in his absence?  We had lived for ten years without any supernatural manifestation; it was too long even for the capital."

"Who told you that?" Mr. Fox frowned in annoyance.

"Lieutenant Clarence came to see us yesterday.  We talked."

It was the young policeman, pale from shock, who told her about the need to lock the ward-off perimeter—not the experienced assistant principal, too busy buying train tickets to carve out a minute and call to warn her.  In the morning the whole school had seen an ugly scandal: Fox yelled at her for not unlocking the gate for him to leave.  The assistant principal did not accept the directrix' explanation that, if she unlocked the perimeter, they wouldn't be able to repeat the reactivation sooner than in four hours - he needed to go.  Mrs. Hemul cowardly regretted that she hadn't let Petros out of the gate with suitcase earlier.  They would have already been freed from the presence of Fox, who created problems for everyone, but the assistant principal hadn't informed her about his intention to take Petros out of the school, either.

"You have to forbid unauthorized persons from accessing the school territory!"

"No, I don't.  I have invited experts from NZAMIPS to check the ward-off perimeter.  After repairing the fence, some signs need to be replaced.  In addition, I will arrange for a safety lecture.  Do you think Mr. Tangor will agree to help?"

"It's irresponsible!"

"Irresponsible to repair the perimeter?"

"That insolent dark..."

"Saved Mihandrov.  Did you want to say that?"

The mention of the young dark magician produced a strange reaction in Mr. Fox: he winced, grimaced, and began to shake his head.  The white in general tolerate stress poorly, but that show looked more like a nervous breakdown.  How else could one explain that, in rushing to save one child, he had forgotten about the fate of a hundred others?

"Nobody asked him about that!"

"Exactly.  He showed concern for others, voluntarily and knowingly.  His behavior must become a model for us."

"Do you blame me for something?"

"Yes, I do.  Your duty as a teacher is to take care of the children.  What have you done for that?"

"You are too young, girl; you still have much to learn.  There are times in life when we must act decisively to save at least somebody.  You'll lose plenty of people before it settles in your pretty little head!"

Mrs. Hemul smiled - a healer specializing in disaster medicine learns of inevitable casualties in the first place.  Five years of experience, and no one better than she could walk the fine line between dead and barely alive, which would also die if left without help.  She remembered the terrible fire at the Hotel "Palladium", a train crash near Turik, hundreds of smaller incidents; only the birth of her twins made her change the career path.  But she never treated people like lifeless flesh, even if they had only fifteen minutes left to live.  It seemed that Mr. Fox conceitedly considered as "inevitable victims" the entire boarding school.

"Have I missed something?  Someone has died?"

It seemed he did not understand the meaning of her words. 

"Mihandrov needs a dark magician.  I was right, and you were mistaken."

Mr. Fox broke into an incomprehensible monologue about purity of thought and harmony of being.  Interesting that yesterday he didn't even intend to call and warn her; on the contrary, if he could, he would have left without saying a word.  Mrs. Hemul felt nauseous at the sound of his voice, but she patiently listened, occasionally pointing out errors in his reasoning.  A white experiences unbearable difficulty trying to insist on something, unless he is obsessed.  She wanted to calm down the tension, forgive his sins, and send him off, but it was better to let him make noise in her office than run around the school scaring students and staff.

She needed to get rid of that man, quickly and under any pretext.  Unfortunately, having learned that NZAMIPS experts had eliminated the urgent threat, the assistant principal abruptly changed his mind and came into her office with strange fabrications about the inevitable evil.  He seemed confident that it was Mrs. Hemul who ought to behave differently.  Oh, yes!  On the director's desk there was already a report, demanding rather than requesting the Board of Trustees to fire the inadequate assistant principal.  In a few minutes a courier, called for that purpose, would take it to Artrom.  It would be even better to talk to the trustees personally, but Mrs. Hemul could not leave the school while Fox was there.  Her intuition literally screamed for caution in dealing with the mage-practitioner.  She was doing that for the sake of the children, and the assistant principal wouldn't get young Petros either, even if Mrs. Kormalis wouldn't return home at all.

Chapter 33

I entered Mihandrov's office of NZAMIPS at half past nine as a civilized looking person.  To be honest, I wanted to speak to the lieutenant, but the tiny room was already occupied by dark mages.

Gorchik sported a bruised face.  If he had found such trouble in such a quiet town as Mihandrov in one day, he was a real combat mage!  From Mrs. Parker (with whom we got along very well now), I knew that the incident occurred in the same local pub closing after the sunset.  The visiting dark (with an exceptionally subtle body) quarreled with the owner, who had a surprisingly melancholic personality, and the former was thrown out to cool down outside.  Gorchik was about to employ combat magic on the full-body brewer, but he was stopped by the other "cleaners" in time.  I think the fear that they would have to stay sober until the end of the trip if the brewer was hurt stimulated them much more than the prospect of the
shackles of deliverance
on their mate.  Now, a bitter wrinkle lay above the brow of the unfortunate magician; he was figuring out a way of getting into the pub again without losing his dignity.

There were not enough chairs, so Lieutenant Clarence was standing—not a very advantageous position psychologically.  I carefully removed the flower pots from the windowsill and motioned him to sit beside me.

"Okay," the sergeant fidgeted, trying to settle comfortably on a hard office chair, "let's introduce each other."

I secretly poked the lieutenant with a finger and waited for a continuation.  The "cleaner" did not notice the purposeful pause and introduced himself first: "Master Sergeant Otto Claymore, my assistants—Philip Gorchik, Keane Rispin, of the Rapid Response Team, Polisant Regional Office."

"Aren't you from Artrom?" I clarified.  It was important.

"Civilian mages are in Artrom, but we're from Polisant," Gorchik grinned contentedly.

Obviously, it was some local twist, but their regional coordinator was still Axel.

"Thomas Tangor," I humbly introduced myself, "an out-of-staff employee."

"What's that?" the sergeant did not understand.

"It means I work two days a month."

The "cleaners" stayed silent for a while, trying to comprehend such blatant injustice.

"Clever," the master sergeant commented, "I hope what we saw was not an example of your work?"

I shrugged and didn't stoop to meaningless excuses: he grasped the situation without my help, and I let him leave his gibes to himself.  Sergeant Claymore finally started feeling tension and sat down a bit straighter.  "I understand the case could be closed now."

It was very typical: they had just arrived and already intended to leave.  And they would leave, if we gave them at least half a chance to throw their work on the other people's shoulders.

"Have you already found all the missing people?"

"Finding the corpses is just a matter of time.  The combat group isn't needed for that."

"Excuse me, how has your assignment been formulated?"

"Never mind.  We have expelled the otherworldly."

"What does the supernatural have to do with it?  I don't care about the supernatural.  You will be accountable for the artisans, not for the supernatural."

"Are you being rude?"

"Yes!"

Sergeant Claymore got behind Clarence's desk quite voluntarily; now, the same desk restricted him from coming and taking me by the shirt.  Also, I was sitting in such a way that all three "cleaners" were before me, and the door was right beside me.  It wasn't very conducive to the development of a conflict; however, the sergeant tried.  He got up, and I did too.  He defiantly stared at me; in return he got exactly the same challenging look from me.  We were of the same height, and that greatly simplified the matter.