The Fixer Of God's Ways (retail) (12 page)

"
What will we do next?"

"We
'll seek the primary source - my father's collection." Now I understood where all the family fortune went to. Dad spent the Tangors' money well. If he had left cash, my mother wouldn't have dared to use it, and inflation would have eaten it all.

I
t was high time to finish our family's fight with the artisans. They lingered too long in this world! I must find and destroy their nest!

* * *

Larkes' search for the prodigal necromancer moved on slowly, but only death could stop the senior coordinator - he took the orders of his superior very seriously. The first item on his agenda was to identify the personality of pseudo-Kitoto, and it suddenly became a problem. Many people saw the pretender, but all of them described him as a white mage ("the white, beyond doubt"). The coordinator's only hope was Inspector Graft.

The policeman was willing to
help. The case was closed, and the inspector didn't mind sharing some minor details with his superiors.

But the
inspector's success was of no interest to Larkes. "Initially you hypothesized the involvement of a white mage in the murder. You must have interrogated all the whites on the train."

"
So we did."

"
Was Johan Kitoto among the questioned?"

"Yes, he was! He had
been a great help in the investigation."

"
Describe the man to me."

And the
policeman, whose profession was to unmask the criminals, described the appearance of a WHITE mage. The inspector's eye noticed features that were relevant only for the white.

"Enough,"
Larkes resolutely stopped the guy. "Now imagine that Mr. Kitoto was an ordinary man, and try to describe him again."

I
nspector Graft frowned, surprised by such an unusual task. When he spoke again, the height, complexion, and facial features of pseudo-Kitoto proved to be identical to Tangor's. "And he is very educated!" the policeman added suddenly. "He knows so much about…eh…retrospective animation. I see why Ms. Fiberti managed to create such a realistic plot in her book."

Larkes inquiring
ly bent his head, and the policeman elaborated: "Yes, the very same Fiberti, sir. The author of
The Dark Knight
! They were together."

The word "writer"
in Larkes' mind was firmly associated with "scribbler", and "journalist" - and the senior coordinator pathologically hated them. They always muddied the water! What were Fiberti's interests? There was nothing in common between the two. Tangor and Fiberti together was a puzzle, the more so because they seemed to dissolve in the air after their arrival in Ho-Carg. They managed to escape registration in hotels, hostels, and bed and breakfasts, no matter under the guise of a dark or white, or any other color. Despite the fact that registration rules in the capital were strictly enforced as of late!

In a fit of intuition
, Larkes bought the book referred by the inspector: a hefty volume with a grotesque dark figure on the cover. As he was reading through it, his hair stood on end. Where was the censor?! The tabloid novel disclosed to the general public the secret features of dark magic practice, as well as the special habits of the otherworldly that not every "cleaner" even knew of! Soon the main character in the book started looking very familiar…The coordinator figured out who blabbed to a complete stranger about the combat magic techniques. Once again Larkes regretted that senior Tangor wasn't alive - otherwise he would have instilled in his son the due respect to their craft. The magician put the questionable book in his case, making a mental note to withdraw the book from the sale. He should solicit a personal curator for the boy. Usually, magicians under thirty didn't know enough to represent a serious danger to society, but this case was particular: a talented necromancer with gaps in upbringing, a victim of multiple magic diversions, and a strong fighter with a quarrelsome character. The coordinator recalled Satal - the feebleminded "cleaner" - taught the boy combat techniques, instead of etiquette. Of course, it wasn't the young magician's fault that he didn't know tradition - Larkes himself grew up in the same situation. The main thing was to not let him continue to wander in darkness. Larkes pondered on things, which he, as a dark, would never do when visiting a city. Tangor's next move became obvious to him.

* * *

Hemalis was having green tea. At the peak of the midday heat he always took a break from business and devoted this time to the tea ritual. The doorbell rang. His customers could visit him even at this time. Wealthy people, they were able to afford a ride in a limousine with a heat pump. The old man hastily dragged his feet to the door.

A
dark magician of indeterminate age, of short stature, stood at the door with a completely impervious expression on his face: "Mr. Hemalis?"

Hemalis felt an irresistible urge to slam
and lock up the door in front of the visitor's nose. But it would be impolite, so the old white nodded timidly.

"Does
Thomas Tangor live here?"

The old
guy sighed with relief, "He moved out! He drove away in the morning, and I do not know where to."

"
Thank you." The dark mage turned around and walked toward the elevator.

"And you have a cool day,
sir." The white carefully locked the door behind his unwelcome guest.

Alex
Clement would have told a lot about White Halak and
The Liturgy of the Light
, but Thomas Tangor didn't catch him in the capital - the young researcher set off for an expedition to Polisant.

Alex was a second-generation archeologist. He
accompanied his mother in archeological expeditions since twelve years of age, and he was well aware that the small scoops of archaeologists often dug out of the ground frightening things, like evidence of a terrible end to yet another civilization. Archaeology was a natural choice for him, and it evolved into the object of his passion, the principal business of his life.

Last year
Alex devoted to studying magic - this decision was a result of his long reflections and unforgettable adventures in the company of two combat mages. The white was far from thinking that he could be a fighter on par with the dark, but he got tired of being a victim of external circumstances. He had to spend one semester at another faculty - his own Faculty of Antiquities offered no opportunities for graduate students to practice magic.

A call from Jim Nursen came
unexpectedly, in early spring. "Are you free now? We are planning a chic trip to the mounds! You could go as my assistant."

"Now?"
The time was unusual - in the middle of the semester, which signified that cheap and relatively skilled student labor would be unavailable for the expedition.

"It's Polisant!
It's a humid oven in summer. I'd rather soak under the rain than die from heatstroke."

Alex agreed without hesitation. Of course, it wouldn't be
a familiar team, but the newly-fledged mage wasn't going to miss such a great opportunity. The Polisant burial mounds were dated to the time of the White Princedom's breakdown - the topic of his dissertation. He hoped to dig out something useful for his work.

A
n archaeological party is not just a group of people gathered to go somewhere to look for something. It's sort of a family, with seniors (wise patriarchs) and juniors (naive, enthusiastic students). Year after year, tiny caravans unite by powerful human passions - curiosity, a desire to hit the road, to challenge the wilderness, to experience a lack of comfort, to be in a hostile environment, anticipating a miracle, or colliding with the wondrous souls of even the most cynical coffin-diggers. Most of the white are romantics.

Preparation
s for the expedition were done with haste, atypical for respectable archaeologists. The expedition members met for the first time on the train to Polisant. Only Nursen and Pierre Acleran were familiar to Alex. They were glad to have him on board; the rest reacted warily to the appearance of the white mage. Alex thought they were afraid he would be a burden in the field. He personally believed that he wasn't a problem before - all the more so now - when he became an initiated magician and learned how to use the white Source.

Alex
looked for an occasion to talk to his friends about his new abilities, but Nursen was busy with his own stuff: "I'm glad you've joined us. We are short of stuff - the time is inopportune, and exam session is nearing."

"
Why such urgency?"

If the
expedition was announced a couple weeks earlier, interested students would make arrangements to take their exams ahead of time or move them to the fall.

"
The government!" Nursen lifted his eyes to the sky. "After the Nabla, the military got interested in antiquities. We'll see whether it's good or bad for archeology."

Hearing
the word "mound", Alex imagined majestic rocky slopes with eagles hovering over them. Instead, he saw humble fifty-foot tall hills here and there, covered with green bushes, which towered above the steppe due to the general flatness of the relief. Their task was to investigate an ancient tomb. Alex wondered how the tomb was found amidst abundant vegetation, if no signs of previous excavation or construction work were anywhere in sight.

Field
workers, reservedly cursing, began setting a camp. Alex stared at flowers and birds - everything blossomed around, inspired by spring rains. The ancient tomb was under an unremarkable hill. Nursen wasn't restrained by a budget and hired an extra dozen workers in the nearby village to dig a tunnel to the tomb, and the work started boiling.

"
The hill is an artificial construction. It was built of granite with a clay cap on top," Nursen crumpled a ball of clay that lingered on a sieve. "Ancient builders knew that clay soils aren't suitable for construction and made a granite base. They didn't strive for profit at the expense of reliability."

Alex
threw a new look at the mound: up to a third of its height was rock delivered from the Blind River - forty miles away as the crow flies - without any trucks; perhaps, on horse carts. People must have really cared about the safety of the tomb under the hill.

The f
ield camp steadfastly acquired the appearance of a settlement; large military trucks made a road amidst the hills, delivering food and water daily. For greater safety, two arrogant, sassy "cleaners" joined their expedition. Alex sympathized with the indomitable energy and boundless self-confidence with which they began to bring the camp into accord with safety standards, known only to them.

"It's
risky to sleep between the hills and so close to them," declared the youngest of the "cleaners".

"
We are more than three hundred feet away from the hills, and you set a perimeter around the camp!" Alex retorted.

"
Locals don't even graze goats here - that means something!" the senior "cleaner" argued.

Now Alex understood why
grass was so tall in the area. "Who found the tomb, then?" he still couldn't find an answer to this question.

"
I have no clue!"

Two g
overnment officials arrived at the camp soon after the "cleaners". On the same day workers dug out the mouth of a twenty-foot well, leading down to the tomb. The well was filled with rocky debris - crushed marble decorations, statues, obelisks. Alex was puzzled: where did the tomb builders bring this stuff from? There were no quarries amidst the steppe.

A
thick iron gate made of good quality steel was discovered at the bottom of the well; it did not fit the era of the White Princedom. Alex and Jim unclenched the folds of the gate with a hoisting jack. The junior dark climbed down to the tomb first, followed by Pierre, the bravest (or the most foolish) of the members of the expedition.

"
Strangely enough, I don't sense otherworldly here," the senior "cleaner" shrugged.

"
Look, these things were right at the entrance!" Pierre stuck out his head and handed Jim a half-dozen discs of cloudy glass with colored metallic inlays.

"
Had you marked the place where they had been?" Nursen frowned.

"Naturally!
They lay under my feet; I almost stepped on them. I feel they were simply pushed inside through the gap in the gate," Pierre explained, getting out of the tomb.

Nursen
and Pierre went to the camp to register and pack the findings. Alex glanced into the darkness of the tomb with one eye, while the "cleaners" were closing the gate, and felt an incomprehensible shudder: the entire place didn't look at all like the ruins of the White Princedom.

"
It's very strange," the white muttered to himself and hurried after his colleagues.

I
t took a long time for the camp to calm down that night. In the ghostly blue light of enchanted fixtures, the archaeologists planned the next day's activities. Alex didn't participate in the discussion - he knew they wouldn't let him go down yet and experienced a strange relief. He mindlessly stared at the stars, imagining the people who once hid this tomb from prying eyes. They destroyed exquisite marble decorations, dragged their debris through the sultry wasteland to fill the well, then piled on top of the marble tons of dense soil. Titanic work!

Next
morning, most of the expedition gathered at the well's mouth. Equipment was dropped down first: blue lights, enchanted brass seals, hammers, ropes, and other small auxiliary stuff. The senior "cleaner" was silent and gloomy.

Nursen folded
his fingers into an ancient aversive sign and said, "Move!"

Pierre resolutely climbed down and opened the gate folds.
The rope quickly slipped through the gate down into the tomb. Alex heard something click or a barely audible buzz deep inside; he thought it was autosuggestion. Pierre was given fifteen minutes for the initial examination, but the trouble came much quicker.

A
wave of human agony hit Alex's nerves - somebody just died somewhere down the well. "It was Pierre! We are in trouble!" he gasped, trying to cope with internal trembling.

Nursen
also heard a scream distorted by the tomb's walls. The government official turned pale, "It cannot be! They said the guards wouldn't reach upper levels!"

Nursen
hesitated no longer: "Run!"

The a
rchaeologist-practitioners had a good habit: they ran from an excavation site at the slightest sign of anything inexplicable, without wasting time on thinking. Sometimes they dug up an active otherworldly or a dangerous magic artifact, and a quick reaction significantly reduced mortality rates among people of their profession.

Everybody r
ushed away from the well: both the venerable professors and the uneducated villager-diggers. The less experienced slowed their run in a few minutes, but seasoned veterans did not stop. The puffing crowd stretched along the road to a distant lake. The younger "cleaner" was securing the retreat of the people. The clay walls of the excavated tunnel fell in, filling up the hole to the well. Nursen shouted and gestured to the men in the camp, but Alex doubted that they understood him. The indistinct cries of the chief archaeologist weren't loud enough to convince the remaining people that they needed to run away as far as they could from the excavation site. So Alex turned to the camp.

The e
cho of someone's death wandered in his blood, awakening primal horror. What could possibly survive after centuries or even millennia of staying behind the thick iron doors? Before diving into the tall bushes, he turned around and saw that the worst of his fears came true: blackness seeped through the clay. It was something mobile and unlinked: neither smoke, nor liquid. A swarm of insects?

Alex's knees buckled;
the white fell down in panic and lost his bearings. He hid in the bushes, afraid to breathe. Then he heard screams - they seemed to come from all sides. Waves of human agony lashed against his nerves, someone's pain and fear burned his heart as molten lava. The white tried to calm his pulse and not let panic reach the Source. Suddenly his pain was over; he fell into a stupor, which was like death. His heart reluctantly thrust blood into his chest; every next breath was more stifled than the previous one. His scorched feelings fell asleep - his fear of death, concern for self and others gone. A wadded coverlet of eternal sleep crept on Alex, isolating him from the horror he experienced.

A
loud laugh brought him to his senses.

'
People! Alive!' Alex tried to call for help, but his forefathers decided to protect their ne'er-do-well offspring - he lost voice. It didn't occur to him that normal people would not laugh over the corpses of their comrades. His numbed muscles poorly obeyed him; he could not stand up to his full height. The young mage turned awkwardly on all fours and began crawling to the voices, slowly and persistently. When he lifted his head, he noticed how unfamiliar people in long rubber gloves searched the corpses. A sense of their wrongdoing pierced his mind, and Alex silently fell down, hiding in the tall grass.

"
Teacher, we've found all of them!"

"
Excellent. Put the amulets in my case."

"
We've left too many traces, teacher."

"
It doesn't matter! By the time they find the bodies, it won't be possible to determine the cause of their deaths. Start the car, Rapash. We need to get out of here before twilight."

The alien
s calmly talked, putting their bloody gloves in a bag. Nearly two dozen corpses didn't bother them whatsoever, and soon they left.

Alex
remained alone. All the other members of the expedition died. The underground monster dismembered even military trucks: their wheels were torn out and alchemical guts scattered on the ground.

'That evil from the mound was enormously powerful,' the white impartially noted.
'The official mentioned a guard. Obviously, he knew more than he had disclosed to us. And some freaks used up this information to their advantage.'

Alex didn't dare to
plod into the night and face the unknown. There was another way to call for help…

He got out of the bushes, trying not to
think of the mysterious guard nearby, and began looking for the remains of the "cleaners". At about a hundred-foot distance he spotted the familiar uniform jacket in a glittering pile of human flesh. "These are just the bodies, the people are in heaven by now," he tried to persuade himself.