The Fixer Of God's Ways (retail) (11 page)

T
he transcontinental train stopped in the capital for half an hour and departed, enveloped in steam, carrying away the shameful secret of my disguise. I should forbid Fiberti to write about this embarrassing period of my life in her new book. And it would not be a bad idea to read the first one.

Spring in Ho-Carg was
more pleasant than summer: the midday heat was mild; at dawn, the dry desert air squeezed out cold drizzle, and local residents wore heavy woolen cloaks. We rented two rooms in an unpretentious hotel, without fireplaces, and padded quilts didn't keep me warm at night. I started catching cold and wanted to leave the hotel as soon as possible. I thought of asking my acquaintance Tamur Hemalis for a couple-day sleepover. Surely, having a dark mage in the same flat would be stressful for the old white but, hopefully, not as horrible as keeping the company of a stuffed bird.

I looke
d in the mirror and saw myself, the dark mage, in the black classic suit, and it gave me great satisfaction.

My companion sighed sadly,
"You shouldn't have given up your disguise. It was a great image!"

"
No, not here, not in Ho-Carg. I'll be dealing with people who are involved in illegal near-magic business. They will see my nature through any masquerade. I won't deceive them."

I knew that many
criminals sensed troubles like clairvoyants. On the day when the police rounded up Redstone's junkyard, half of its residents did not show up.

We
waited until a new receptionist would start his shift at the front desk and left the hotel. I found Hemalis' address in yellow pages. I must say, the former sufferer settled chicly - two blocks away from the Ministry of Public Safety, in a quiet place. The building lacked a flower garden on the roof, as at his previous house, but the stucco was unbroken and the entrance was clean. My old friend didn't expect trouble from me and let us in.

"
Hey, I don't want to give out my name to a concierge, unless it is absolutely necessary. You'll start talking first. Say that you need a translator from Sa-Orio."

Clara
readily nodded. I pushed the door.

A
watchful concierge, fully awake, looked suspiciously at the strange visitors with suitcases: "Mr. Hemalis does not take visitors without an appointment!"

Fiberti
politely wrangled with him for a quarter-hour. I gave up: "Please call him and tell him that Tangor's here."

In
a minute a disheveled Hemalis in slippers and bathrobe came running into the hall and chirped, "Master Tangor! I'm so glad, so glad!"

The look of the hustling-bustling
white caused in my soul a warm, cozy feeling. I instantly felt at home. Hemalis dug out guest slippers for us and hung our coats on the rack. He seemed to be paid well for the translation of the empire's languages. The floors in his apartment were covered with green, deep carpets from Sa-Orio. I loved their soft feel! Traditional metropolitan furniture: short ottomans, tables, and cushions stuck out above the green sea. Silk muslin swayed on the windows instead of curtains. Despite an abundance of books, there was no smell of dust. I really enjoyed his home.

The w
hite quickly removed thick dictionaries and piles of handwritten sheets from the table.

"I am v
ery, very busy!" he complained. "Orders are coming one after the other."

"
Business correspondence?" Fiberti smiled encouragingly.

"Mainly
alchemical treatises."

"Alchemical
?" I became interested.

"
Yes, with an emphasis on healing. Sa-Orio has been famous for potions with the most amazing effects."

I snorted.
Poisons and dopes - that's what our overseas neighbors were known for. Luckily, Ingernika is separated from the empire by a wide strait. What Sa-Orio smugglers carried into the neighboring Urpada, not every customs officer risked touching with bare hands. I trusted the authority of Master Tiranidos, who spoke very sarcastically about imperial alchemists' pursuit to make their potions exclusively from mineral sources.

Hemalis went on
talking, effortlessly weaving an intricate ligature of words, peppered with quotations and epithets. The gist of his heartfelt speech could be summarized as: "Hi, I am glad to see you!" I gave him an opportunity to speak out and relax, and let Clara deal with him. She was my aide, after all! That's why I did not want to keep an image of the white: I couldn't play such clownery physically - after five minutes of talking my tongue would have tied into a knot.

"
I'll make tea!" I announced and went to look for a kitchen. Hemalis attempted to follow me, but couldn't tear himself between us and remained in the living room to entertain the lady.

The kitchen
was tiny - a short countertop had space only for a kettle or a coffee maker. The kitchen entrance shyly pretended to be a closet, which I passed twice before I recognized it as a door. There was practically nothing to eat; in his previous home Hemalis had more food. Maybe it was due to the shortage of water. I hadn't seen how people washed dishes here - it was probably a spectacle not for the faint of heart.

The w
hite pulled himself together remarkably quickly; when I appeared at the door with cups and a tray, the indefatigable Fiberti was already interviewing the old man. Hemalis' recollection of events two years old surprised me: "Master Tangor pulled the levers in the government, and that same night the bastards were apprehended! If not for him, I wouldn't get justice for many more years."

I shrugged
. I wouldn't interfere in other people's fantasies.

"
For the first time in many years the townsfolk felt safe!" Hemalis shed tears from an excess of emotions.

Well,
he exaggerated the safety of Ho-Carg: a year ago the capital was stricken again. However, it was time to get down to business. I passed a tray with the kettle to the white, and he, as the host, began pouring tea. It distracted him from his enthusiastic speech.

"Master Hemalis, may
we stay at your place for a few days?"

The w
hite bloomed: "Yes, of course! You will love this area. Safe and close to everything!"

He did not even ask
why we came to the capital. It was so typical of all the white.

"
Thank you, we'll try not to bother you. I want to buy some books. As I remember, you had connections with book dealers…"

"
What interests you?" the white snapped. "I will inquire immediately!

Oh my
god, he was too enthusiastic…Soon the entire white community of Ho-Carg would learn about the arrival of an artisan fighter.

"No, no, M
aster Hemalis, we don't want to distract you from your work. Just jot down a list of dealers, and we will do the rest."

I
merely needed information about the ritual of
The Liturgy of the Light
, but I could not ask this question directly. Surely, the
liturgy
(and the famous artifact) had been described in detail long ago; I just had to find the right books.

Hemalis, sipping his tea, continued to rant,
recalling my deceased father; Clara strangely glanced at me over her glasses every now and then. I pretended to be dumb and deaf.

* * *

Larkes began fulfilling his promise to the minster with a visit to his subordinate. The senior coordinator sat patiently in his car for half an hour, waiting for Satal's twins to go for a walk with their athletic nurse, and then climbed the porch. The happy father enjoyed silence at home.

The senior c
oordinator made a grimace of cardiac sympathy: "How is your wife doing?"

Sata
l raised his eyebrow in surprise: "She is fine. Three more months left. She is staying with her mother now."

Sata
l was going to become a father for the fourth time. Larkes did not understand such heroism and suspected deep inside that his younger colleague was a pervert. However, if his next baby was dark, Satal would be able to claim his own clan. Was it Satal's genuine goal?

"How about
your lovely daughter?"

"My
daughter sent her family to hell and set off the furthest from Redstone College," Satal grinned.

"A smart girl."

"Why do you ask about my family, Rem?" Satal's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Larkes habitually
changed his grimace. "Do not flare up; I'm here to ask a couple questions. Do you think your former disciple had really died?"

"
Who led the investigation: you or me?" Satal retorted in surprise. "I have no idea what happened to him."

"
When he was locked underground in Undegar, it was you who told me he was in danger."

Satal
smiled and relaxed in his chair, "Are you talking about
Rustle
? I did not ask the creature."

"
I must find Tangor for the sake of our country!
Rustle
can track him. If you ask…"

"
It won't work," Satal frowned. "The boy is the creature's favorite, sort of an "adventure in progress". How can I motivate
Rustle
to rat on his minion?"

Larkes'
eyebrows flinched, as if he didn't understand.

Sata
l noticed the confusion of his boss and genially explained, "For
Rustle
, every contactee is a window into the world. The creature has no purpose for its existence and no offspring to take care of. I believe he borrows from Tangor a purpose for being, as well as feelings and sensations. In short, he lives Tangor's life. Let's be honest: Tangor will make the grade as the second Roland. If I had asked
Rustle
, not only would we have learned nothing, but he would have notified the kid about our interest. Who knows where he would hide then?"

"Got it,"
Larkes never thought about the terrible creature in this way.

"
Anything else?"

"
Did you spot anything odd in Tangor's behavior?"

Sata
l looked at his boss for a few seconds and then guffawed. Laughing carved tears from his eyes. "This guy is one big oddity!"

Larkes
took his leave, pondering that last Satal's remark was much closer to the truth than the former coordinator thought.

He
would have to search for Tangor with traditional police methods.

As the head of Northwestern NZAMIPS,
Larkes received plenty of reports; for example, every day he browsed through lists of people who were issued identification card replacements. The senior coordinator was surprised when the same name appeared twice within a couple-day interval. After talking to the genuine Johan Kitoto in Suesson, Larkes suspected that Redstone's Kitoto was Thomas Tangor, but he couldn't believe that the necromancer would be traveling around the country under the guise of a white. It was unimaginable! Absolutely impossible!

'
I'll search for him myself. I can't rely on subordinates with this. A dark disguised as a white! If it leaks to the media, real bedlam will begin." So he headed straight to the house of the woman who had testified for pseudo-Kitoto. Her name was Clara Fiberti.

I sincerely believed that
we wouldn't stay in Ho-Carg for long, but when did something happen exactly as it was planned?

Hemalis
gave us a list of one hundred forty-three names of book dealers. ("I might have missed some newbies.") Soon we figured out that most of them considered the books "ancient," written a hundred years ago. What we needed they called "legendary rarities". Okay, if the rarities didn't exist anymore in original, there should be books telling about them. Alas! Drawn by a vague suspicion, I went to educational and esoteric bookstores. As it turned out, this season it was fashionable to read about Kashtadar's claims on Arango and Sa-Orio's intervention in the internal affairs of neighboring countries. Our society wasn't interested in legendary rituals or former civilizations; disasters of the past were pushed back by the acuteness of modern events, as if to be slaughtered by the imperial commandos was more horrible than to be eaten by the otherworldly (though the war with the empire was yet in the planning stage, while the threat from the otherworldly was permanent).

I thought of talking to
historians and hoped to renew acquaintance with Alex. Alas, his name wasn't in the phone book. Nobody at the metropolitan university knew an archaeologist with a defect of diction, though I called the faculty of archeology for an entire whole day. I called Dr. Nursen - he was on the list of university professors, but his phone was silent, too.

After
visiting a dozen of booksellers, we learned that there existed three major private collections of "literary rarities" in Ingernika: one of the collectors preferred religious texts, another - manuscripts, and the third's interests matched mine. Unfortunately, the owner of the last collection was a highly respected white mage, a member of government, a philanthropist, a fighter against the Inquisition and so on…Pronouncing his name, the booksellers slightly lowered their voices. I didn't have any desire to seek help from such a colossus.

T
he time oozed through my fingers. Hemalis was busy with his translations and did not pester his guests, and when he wanted to communicate, Clara took the stage. A couple times dust storms covered the city, and we were forced to stay at home; on these days I tried to involve
Rustle
in our search. The monster was willing to help, but he needed to know exactly what I was looking for, and I couldn't formulate it.

After two weeks of
fruitless searching, Hemalis "pleased" me with news: "My acquaintances wondered if I knew the two people who were interested in ancient books. I said that they hadn't approached me yet. Did I reply correctly?"

Thank g
od, the white had learned a lesson to be suspicious!

"
Yes, Master Hemalis, you've answered absolutely correctly. You haven't met us yet!"

I
surely didn't want to make acquaintance with the people who looked for us. It was time to leave the hospitable capital.

Necessity
is the mother of invention, and when someone is puffing at your back, your thoughts get a wonderful acceleration. I made one last attempt: I drew on a paper a symbol from the underground lair of the golem in Undegar and bluntly asked in the antique store if an artifact with such a sign would interest them. The owner urged me for two hours to bring the artifact to him, but I replied steadfastly that I had to find out what it was first. In the end, for a modest fee of twenty crowns, he handed me the address of an expert who should be able to tell me more about the symbol.

E
xplaining to us how to get to the place, Hemalis frowned: "It's not a nice area. It's the Settlement, a place where indigenous people reside. They don't deal with newcomers. Do you trust the address is correct?"

"
I have to go there. It is a matter of life and death." To me, it seemed logical that the expert lived in the inexpensive area: the book dealer wouldn't send me to a competitor who could afford to buy up the mysterious artifact.

It took us
a long time to reach that place: the cab driver refused to go to the Settlement. True, the Settlement's streets were so narrow that a cab wouldn't be able to get in. Zigzag-shaped courtyards and the dark doorways of its houses were sterile, like dunes in the desert; a subdued smell of food pointed to the existence of pubs; public baths smelled of lavender. The very first settlement of nitrate miners started from here and gave rise to the township, later turning into Ingernika's capital on someone's whim. The expert lived in a half-burned house; its walls, plastered from the outside, struck one's imagination by their thickness. The house was barely habitable; the stench of its long-clogged sewer pipes mingled with the smell of cooking food from a nearby pub, leaving a nasty bitter taste on our tongues.

"
Rasmus Iberli, Appraiser of Antiquities
," the inscription on the door read. The bell did not ring, so I had to knock.

"Go away
," somebody shouted inside and added, "It's not locked."

I decided to follow the second part of the
welcoming phrase. The residence was soaked in cheap sterilizing potions - the dweller didn't want to die from the gray plague, but to bathe daily seemed to be too expensive for him. With a robe over his naked body, he sprawled on a pile of greasy pillows next to a huge hookah, which exuded smarmy sweetness.

The
guy strangely stared at me. Perhaps, Rasmus Iberli knew my father. He threw a doubting glance at the mouthpiece of the hookah, probably thinking that he was hallucinating.

"My name is Thomas Tangor.
"

"Man, are you real?"
He put the hookah aside and sat up straighter. "What the hell do you want?"

"
To ask you a few questions."

Clara
pinched me and pointed to a more or less tidy corner of the room. A large daguerreotype - a woman, a man, and a charming kid - lay on a bedside table; one of its angles was carefully blackened. I barely recognized the man in the picture in the man before me.

Rasmus Iberli
vigorously rubbed his face, trying to regain a fraction of sanity: "You are still alive," he said in a strange tone.

"
When did your family pass away?" I blurted out.

"
At the same time," he clenched his teeth.

I
instantly recalled Larkes' story about murdered booksellers and their families: "Did you lose them because of
The
Word about the King?"

"F*
ck off!" he swore dirtily and grabbed the hookah. "Monsters. All of you. You can't calm down. Leave me alone…"

I shrugged,
"I have the book. Don't be so nervous. I came to ask about another thing."

My words finally dre
w his attention. Rasmus' eyes began glittering feverishly: "Have you…read it?"

"It's
not readable," I said politely. "The text is absolutely non-translatable. But the contents of
The
Word
can be learned via magic methods." I hoped
Rustle
did not mind that I called him a "magic method".

Rasmus left
the hookah and gazed at me with interest.

I
was lucky to find him alive. People loaded so heavily with narcotics typically live two-three years. Rasmus probably tried to fight his dependency, maybe went to healers, and then took up his old ways.

The a
lleged associate of my father shook his head vigorously in denial: "Do you think I'll get myself involved into it again? Kiss your ass!" His voice oozed scorn. "Because of your damned curiosity, I lost everybody…everything…"

The impression wa
s that he was making no distinction between me and my deceased dad. His drug was surely strong! An empath would find a way to bring him back to reality, but what could I do?

I
met Rasmus' glance - it was the hopeless look of a dead man; I can't explain it better. He did not want to part with his past. I knew what to say to this living corpse, "You are mistaken. My goal isn't a satisfaction of curiosity. I'll destroy their dream, which is dearer than life to them! I'll make impossible what they strive to repeat for centuries! I'll tear out their sting! Never again will they make people suffer."

In the twilight
, his toothless smile looked like the grimace of a gargoyle: "He was tough, but they killed him."

"I am not him.
I am stronger and I have friends…" I refrained from adding 'among otherworldly'. "They tried to kill me thrice, but I am still alive, as you see."

"
You are self-confident, as are all of you dark," his laugh turned into coughing.

"I am an
alchemist."

He
fell into thought for a while: "If you are an alchemist, you might have a chance to accomplish what you want. Dark power alone won't work here. Good brains are needed, too. Toder was very strong - he could defeat an army of alien mages, but he wasn't the best strategist. Do you see my point?"

I
nodded. Wisdom comes to dark mages at the twilight of our lives, and even then - not to everyone.

"
What do you want to know?"

"
In White Halak they ran the ritual of
The Liturgy of the Light
. I have the scheme of the ritual, but it lacks a very important part. I know this, because the ritual's energy expenditures and the scale of the expected impact do not match. What is this part?"

"Y
ou really know your stuff," he grimaced, pulled out from under the pillows a flat flask, and took a couple of sips from it. "Okay, I'll tell you what I remember. Bear in mind that I don't know much: some of your father's books were left untranslated. Connoisseurs of ancient languages were rare at that time and even more so now." And Rasmus Iberli started talking.

I
gestured to Clara; she took a notebook and a pencil and began writing - she was a good stenographer.

The ancient books
, which Rasmus translated for my father, talked about civilization that didn't know magic. As he continued his story, memories of Messina Fowler, the deceased woman from the City of Nabla, refreshed in my mind. Her civilization had made amazing discoveries in alchemy, but died from
phoma
. Rasmus said that they called the invasion of the supernatural an "unknown evil." Eventually, survivors invented a "weapon" against the otherworldly enemy. I wondered in what epoch that happened. Not in Nabla's time, for sure. Was the "weapon" developed by the Bekmark or the Capetower civilizations? Deceased Mr. Flap was from Capetower, but his memories had never surfaced in my mind.

"
The weapon was developed by so called 'celestial knights'. I saw their emblem in a few manuscripts: wings on a starry background," Rasmus groped for the hookah's mouthpiece; to focus on the story was all the more difficult for him. "Then, for an unknown reason, people decided to get rid of this weapon - either they didn't like the result or there were some side effects. Authors of books urged not to mess with the 'knights', no matter what they promised. Toder thought that another name for the celestial warriors was 'artisans.' "

Rasmus'
information was better than nothing, but insufficient for my purposes. "Where are the books that you had translated?"

"
They belonged to Toder. He bought them and paid me for their translation. Nothing surfaced on the market after he had been killed. I had thought the collection was inherited by his widow, but now I believe the books were destroyed."

It's not easy
to destroy the enchanted grimoires, I could have assured him. More likely, my dad put them in a clever cache, like Uncle Gordon - I recalled his cache in Krauhard. It was a good moment to find out where father could keep his treasures.

"Do you know
if he visited other towns before bringing you books, or after picking them up from you?"

"
Hard to say. We both lived in Finkaun, but he was traveling all the time."

I
decided I would start my search for dad's inheritance from Finkaun. "Thank you, Rasmus," I reached into the pocket and wrote a check on one of my anonymous accounts. "Please take it and get well. I might need your help in the future."

We
went out of his stinking apartment and left the crookedly grinning Rasmus to crumple my check in his hands. My silly conscience was clear. Let god decide whether anything humane remained in him. With the money he had now, healers would get him back into shape. The rest was not up to me.

N
othing more kept me in Ho-Carg.

"
Thomas, do you think it is for real? The weapon against supernatural?" Clara asked me in an undertone.

"N
onsense," I walked through a maze of dark houses, lost in thought. "If this weapon did work against the otherworldly, why do we fight with the supernatural up until now? Surely it was invented for some other use."

"
Like what?"

I shrugged
, "Who knows? Maybe the word for this has vanished from our language. Or our civilization hasn't encountered such a problem yet."