My Path to Magic (8 page)

The nerves of the audience broke down first.

"Why are they doing this?" Alex asked plaintively.  The white mage still shared our room; he was in no hurry to leave us.

I sighed heavily: "They are the dark."

"You are a dark as well, yet you do not behave like them!"

"I am not just dark, I'm… smart."  When I talked about myself, I didn't sell myself short in front of the audience.

What sense did it make to turn this into a circus, confirming the scandalous reputation of the dark magicians?  I'm not talking about how much worse it made things, but those two removed any room for maneuvering, clashing head-to-head like a pair of mules.  Now they were left with no other way to solve the conflict but banal fisticuffs; the question was just how soon they would overcome the aversion to violence diligently drummed into every magician's head.  I made a bet on Mr. Smith: he was a military guy, they were taught differently, and he could give Uncle a decent head start both in physical shape and in magic power.  So far, they both still remembered that fighting was not good, and that kept them angry and others anxious.

The return of the ship calmed the brawlers down for some time but did not solve the dilemma—someone's blood had to be spilled.  I waited with interest; I had never seen a fight between adults, let alone between initiated magicians.  Would they risk using magic?  And what would the island's response to it be?  I'd better prep the lifeboat, just in case...

And then came the day that promised to be "the one".  Noticing the signs, I quietly took Alex aside and asked him not to talk with Uncle, not even to say hello.  Actually, there was no need to alert people. Uncle disappeared in the morning, and at lunch both magicians looked so spiteful that even the meanest of the students, Pierre, did not dare to screw around.  During the day, Uncle Gordon was digging furiously, muttering something inaudibly (he was probably counting the offenses he had incurred), and Mr. Smith was milling around the shore looking dispassionately at the sea (probably doing the same thing as Uncle Gordon, but silently).  For the final collision they had to be brought closer.  Alex wanted me to help them, right?

Seizing the moment when Mrs. Clements called Mr. Smith over to inspect some findings, I dropped my basket next to them as if by chance and asked, as though making small talk: "If we find any bones, will we be able to figure out what had killed their owners?"

"No," Mr. Smith muttered over his shoulder.

Uncle's snort was deafening: "They can't do anything now, but in my time this could be done very easily."

"How?" I took a lively interest in it, since I didn't know the answer.

"Raising the dead and asking who had killed him and why!  There is no such thing as an unmarked grave in Krauhard."

"Shut your maw!" Mr. Smith snapped at once.  "Are you going to teach necromancy to a child, you old fart?!"  And addressing me, he shouted, "Don't you dare even to think about it, it's illegal!"

The old magician broke into a cheeky grin: "Excuse me, I forgot!  The capital fools had invented rules for themselves in their infinite wisdom, and now they are all like a bunch of castrates—understand everything, can do nothing."

Mr. Smith tried to pull himself together: "One more word, and you will continue your speech in front of your watch officer at NZAMIPS."

The threat did not even faze Uncle: "Naturally, you know them so closely—same office, tea breaks together!  It's true what I was told: the dark cannot serve in NZAMIPS.  Their brain leaks out of their ass in the course of their duties."

Mrs. Clements, who listened to the squabble perplexedly, did not understand Uncle's attitude toward his superior.  She was outraged, "Watch your tone!" 

I sighed in frustration—she could have been the last straw.  Why was she trying to get into the middle of this?

"Let them bark at each other, Mrs. Clements!  This is a kind of dark magic sport.  As they say, being fools is in the darks' nature."

The lady crocodile seemed to understand what I was talking about.  She snorted disdainfully and walked away, sashaying her hips.  Mr. Smith coughed in embarrassment, glanced at me gloomily, and hurried after her.

As soon as he had passed out of sight, Uncle also started coughing, "You know you shouldn't treat magicians like that!"

"What have I done?"  I was genuinely surprised.

"That…  You know."

Damn it!  Both were mature, initiated magicians: what could I tell them about dark magic that they would not know already?

After the incident, the conflict sharply died down, as if a bucket of water was dumped on brawling cats.  I did not know whether it was the role my words had played, or Mrs. Clements had managed to cool down her subordinates' souls, but common sense unexpectedly prevailed over magic.  They began treating each other in a formal manner ("Mr. Ferro", "Mr. Smith"), speaking in a jaw-twisting literary style.  I sighed furtively; other members of the expedition stayed quiet.  Yes, that's what happens when the number of dark magicians per square meter goes overboard.  Will I grow up the same?  How sad that would be.

Chapter 5

After a week of digging in the dump, we found a variety of items, but they were all related to the period of the prison's construction and didn't have any historical value.  Talk started that there were no sand gnats on the island or they were apparently not associated with Capetower.  Mrs. Clements categorically disagreed with that view.

"We need to expand the boundaries of the excavation," her eyes burned with fanaticism.  "The commission's report talks about ruins five kilometers to the south.  There we will surely find something!"

More ruins and uninhabited at that.  Magnificent!  Intuition told me that we might find something there that we did not expect.

Mr. Smith took Pierre as an assistant for the initial examination of the new place, and the fool was terribly proud of it.  Strangely enough, they both returned safe and sound.  Mr. Smith was carrying a chest, the contents of which he did not show to anyone but Mrs. Clements.  There was something important in it, no doubt, because all discussions had come to an end, and our redeployment was scheduled for the next day.

Uncle Gordon and I, and Pierre and one of the guards, Gerick, volunteered.  I noticed that the base camp remained without any dark mages, but I thought that Mr. Smith knew better where we were needed most.

"What, they didn't take your bootlicker?" Uncle remarked venomously.

It took me some time to realize who he had in mind.

"I never thought that you would have such a thirst for power, nephew!  I would never be tempted to lord over that pale worm."

Was he talking about Alex?  I hadn't noticed any ass-kissing in the white—it was just his admiring nature.  Of course, I was flattered that the guy only a year older than me recognized my authority.  The point was not in lording over him, but rather in my Big Brother complex, an attitude that awoke in me after visiting home.  I hadn't previously known how much I would like the feeling of being in charge of the family.  But why was Uncle sticking his nose into my business?

"Jealous?" I asked innocently.

Ha!  He was jealous and even blushed!  Yes, Uncle, you used to be the first guy in the village, but it won’t stay that way forever: young people are nipping at your heels.  Call me wicked, but to be an object of envy is an awesome feeling!  Uncle, realizing his mistake, did not touch this subject any longer, but harm had been done already: for the first time I clearly realized that we were the dark too, which meant that a time would come to sort things out between us.  Not yet; right now my Source of Power, threats of the King's Island, and the ever-present money shortage problem were on the agenda.  No time for rearranging our hierarchy!  I needed to figure out how to divert Uncle from thinking about it.  Maybe I should confront him with Mr. Smith again?

As it turned out, I worried for nothing—the King's Island found a way to distract us.

The new excavation site was located in the most inaccessible part of the shore.  How the notorious commission had managed to discover it remained a mystery.  Nevertheless, it had been found, identified on maps, and even given a name: Cape Solitude.  We landed there almost as a real military unit, on a dinghy from the main ship, literally squeezing through the coastal cliffs.  I was a little worried that we would have to commit such a feat every day.  Behind the rocks there wasn't even a bay, but just a shallow lagoon, where remnants of an ancient road began.  Nobody could guess when, why, and by whom it was built; it would have been impossible for a cargo ship to access that place.  Our goal was located well above sea level, on top of a mountain with a cut-off summit where geometrically proportional heaps of sand and gravel signified the remains of three or four large buildings.  By size they resembled Capetower, the steel fortress; apparently, that was the reason why Mrs. Clements liked them.  For about twenty minutes we clambered up to the top like beasts of burden and quietly swore.  After I dumped my first cargo load on the ground, I allowed myself to breathe and wander through the ruins.

Close up, the ruins looked rather chaotic.  The landscape was typical for the King's Island: rocks, rocks, and more rocks.  Not a speck of green, not even moss.  The walls of the ancient houses had settled and collapsed unevenly; in some places there was only debris lying in big heaps, while in others you could guess the contours of the first floor.  There were no steel plates, but we came across broken glass, thin and opaque, and once I spotted something resembling a weathered bone.  Everything else… did not look like people ever lived here.  The place lacked many small details, traces of human hands; it had almost returned to the silence of the primeval wilderness, became dissolved in time.

I was overcome by a feeling of something unnatural, but I could not quite pin down its cause.  After a walk around the ruins, the strange feeling hadn't left me but rather increased in intensity, as if I had seen something odd but could not place when or where.  Drawn by the hard-to-explain concern, I entered the remnants of the ancient edifice and looked around: a mountain of rubble towered to the right, presumably the former top floors of the structure; to the left small stones ran down the stairs to the entrance of the basement.  Darkness glowered at me through the basement's doorway slit.  The silence was soft and promising.  At night it was probably quite ugly here; if anything happened, there would be nowhere to run.  I cautiously peered down and began actively disliking the place.

The stones cracked behind my back—Pierre stepped into the ruins after me.

"What, are you scared?" he snorted and pretended to push me into the basement.  My elbow in his stomach was quite real: some things you just don't play around with.  "What the..?  It was a joke!"

"You're an idiot!"  I was furious.  "There's something... someone over there!  I feel it!"

Uncle came close at the sound of our quarrel, looked down into the basement, and turned very gloomy: "Call Smith over here!  There is something otherworldly in there, but I can't make out what; I am only the sixth level."

At Redstone, you couldn't get higher than a lab techie with the sixth level.  Why in hell did Uncle pick a fight with a combat magician then?

Our overseer was unhappy that we distracted him from the unloading, but when he looked into the hole, he didn't just turn pale—he became downright green.

"Get out of here immediately!"

Pushing puzzled Pierre aside, I ran head over heels to the shore; when a dark magician orders you to take off, you obey quickly.  And cowardice has nothing to do with this.

"Into the boat, into the boat!" Mr. Smith must have torn his lungs up screaming.  "Abandon equipment, leave now!"

I got there first, charging up the slope in a record-breaking six minutes; Uncle was not far behind me, and Mr. Smith bravely walked last, almost backwards, though the day was bright, and the supernatural wasn't supposed to haunt us just yet.  What had we discovered there?

"If we're lucky, that was
Rustle
," Uncle growled, answering the unasked question. "If not…"

It was difficult to imagine something worse than
Rustle
, except for a gang of
ghouls
: the latter could chase you even in the day time.  Had Pierre entered the basement,
Rustle
would have marked him and, perhaps, let him go the first time.  But after a few days the victim would have experienced an unbearable urge to come back and, preferably, not alone.  Children were particularly susceptible: there were times when the first victim of the monster's hug came back accompanied by ten to fifteen people—friends, acquaintances, parents.  In contrast to the
predatory echo
,
Rustle
was a mobile creature, which meant that it could try to catch us in the darkness.

"Are we going back to the base camp?" Gerick inquired.

"No!" Mr. Smith interrupted him.  "We'll go directly to the Trunk Bay."

Surely, they suspected
Rustle
.  Moreover, quite active
Rustle
, because they didn't notice the otherworldly on their first trip, but it was present now.  Suspicion of possible contact with the creature was enough to hold us in the Trunk Bay for a month—there was a local NZAMIPS' center and a special hospital for victims of otherworldly creatures.  For those victims who were still alive, of course.

"Will the quarantine days be paid for, sir?" Uncle took a businesslike tack.  "My nephew and I are surely clean."

"Are you going to argue with NZAMIPS' officers, Mr. Ferro?" Mr. Smith narrowed his eyes.

Uncle Gordon shrugged.  Shit, that was it for my salary!  We will be paid, at best, for one week.  Well, at least I had seen the King's Island; not many could boast that.  The ship passed by the prison wharf, hanging its flags and giving a signal, but nobody appeared on the shore.  Mr. Smith ordered the ship to slow down and climbed to the signal mast to examine the camp with binoculars.