My Path to Magic (24 page)

Lyuchik barely managed to finish his meal and started telling me a story about his new school, friends, and some white mage (or was it just beard of his teacher that was white?).  That became almost a ritual at the table.  I nodded with a straight face and enjoyed quickly decreasing hillock of pancakes.  My little brother wasn't embarrassed by the fact that he had told me all his stories about twenty times already.  We had just approached the most disappointing part—his classmates did not believe that his brother was a dark magician, when a truck wearing the NZAMIPS logo raced with a terrible roar past the passage into the valley.  All of us, without saying a word, fixed our eyes on the truck.

What was that?  New clowns or Chief Harlik to visit us?  And my zombie was running around out there...

"Good for you!" I habitually complimented Lyuchik (little white mages should be praised frequently).  "I'll drop in at Uncle Gordon's; I forgot to fasten a padlock on his door."

All nodded understandingly.

My first worry was Max, who had saved my life twice already.  The dog met me at the edge of the village: it rustled in the grass, patrolling and snapping its jaw in an attempt to catch butterflies.  I hobbled slowly down the path, enjoying the overall harmony of life.  The truck that I had spotted in the morning shone with its emblems halfway to the passage to the valley.  That was for better: I did not want a company of combat mages.

So, mice were on the agenda.  Because of them I had to climb into the gully: the ward-off spells at the bottom of the slope were in order
. 
I deliberately delayed the ascent, trying to catch if some kind of unhealthy interest in
Rustle
's temporary lair would arise in me.  It didn't.  That day was remarkably clear for Krauhard; at such an early hour the sun slightly touched the roof of the garage, slipping into a crack between rocks.  After fastening the padlock on the barn, I whistled to Max and reluctantly plodded to the place where I had endangered my life so stupidly.  A typical dark won't let such things happen to him, even when he is drunk!

Now it was easy to find the place where they killed Uncle: yellow flags appeared on the rocks.  The police tried to mark the pose in which the body had been found.  I grasped why the two strangers were worried—the spot where they attacked me was a mere twenty steps away from the location of the murder.  Everything seemed to suggest that the old man fell, climbing up the slope, coming back from the gully to the garage. 

I glanced down, tensely aware that I might start feeling an involuntary urge to continue the walk.  The gully was deep and dark; any place that the sun never reaches is definitely a dangerous one, by Krauhard's standards.  If the cause of the damaged ward-off curses was sitting there, I wouldn't risk my life again—let the curses stay unrepaired!

But mice are the eternal enemy of alchemists.  They gnaw the wiring, make their nests in the most important parts of machines, and leave their droppings in the fuel oil, thus spoiling it forever.  I do not count their stamping and squeaking at night.  I will never forget how I found a dead mouse in the milk—I have been unable to drink any white liquids since then.

All pests need to be exterminated!

I walked back and forth around the gully.  The line of seals was well visible even from the top.  One washer clearly stood out among the old stones for its newer look and different texture—clearly, someone was tempting me to climb down there.  Who?  Why did I decide that it was Uncle?  One couldn't accidentally get into a place like that—sane children do not play there, and the insane do not survive in Krauhard.  Should I call Chief Harlik?

If I called him, I would lose the treasure.  No!

I did everything possible to secure myself: I went back to Uncle's house, explained the situation on a piece of paper, and shoved it into Max's mouth with the instructions to deliver it to people if I didn't return before noon.  Perhaps my desire to check the washer was all
Rustle
's call, and if it proved to be true...  I habitually clenched the Source, and it nervously vibrated in response.  If so, then the creature would regret touching me!

Cautiously descending the scree, I picked up the washer to examine it.  The ward-off curse, rustling, closed around me.

I did not understand.  Truly, I did not understand.

It seemed that Uncle climbed down there not to fix the spell, but to break it.  That would be stupid!  Why would anyone want to damage the rodent traps?  I inspected the seal—on its underside somebody had scratched an arrow that pointed to a mountainside, where the gully converged into a narrow slit with a trickling stream of water.  If it was a tip, who had made it?  And for whom?  I did not believe that some stranger, unfamiliar with the spell, could unlock it so cleverly to engrave the hint; that meant the strange message could be left only by the former owner of the house.

I pondered it for a while.

Couldn't Uncle have been affected by
Rustle
when manipulated with the washer?  The fact that he was a dark magician did not provide automatic protection from the supernatural.  And why would some place in the rocks be a better cache than a compartment in the attic or in the basement?  Perhaps, the reason was that the tip could be discovered only by another mage, and the two strangers were not magicians.  I would have to climb there, no matter how reluctant I was.  And if the mysterious seal was just a silly joke, I would spit on that comedian's grave! 

Repeating the previous order to Max, I cautiously stepped onto the slippery rocks.  I managed to reach the bottom without hurting myself, figuring that I had totally lost my mind.  It would be so stupid to get into that shithole, guess Uncle's obtuse clues, and die on the way back!  The treasure that he hid must be really valuable, or I must have completely misread Uncle.  And his cache was the most disgusting place you could imagine—only a burial vault would be worse.  No wonder that
Rustle
hid there.

At the bottom of the gully, two steps away from the slit, two boards lay on the rocks, and a rope hung from the top.  I didn't grab for it—it wasn't clear what was fixing it in place.  Getting wet and dirty, I finally reached the slit and stood stock-still in surprise.

What the hell!

Immediately after the narrow orifice, the slit expanded to the size of a small cave.  Sunlight just barely passed through to the center, and eternal darkness swirled in the corners and behind rocks.  A huge chest towered in the center of a bright spot on a water-washed rock.  Judging by its size, the chest must have been assembled on the spot.  The place reeked of dark magic in its most ancient and gloomy sense.

I cautiously entered the cave.  The cache had been made a very, very long time ago, and not by Uncle.  Certainly, there was some supernatural being nearby, because my hair stood on end the entire time I was there.  The most superficial examination of the chest revealed three layers of magical protection: from the water, from the fire, and from all living things.  On the top of the chest I found an amulet-key with an ornate monogram of the capital letter "T".

Wow, that was the Tangors' secret lair!

My mother and I lived apart from my father's relatives; therefore, I did not know the Tangor's legends.  Who and when made the cache and how Uncle discovered it was unclear.  My curiosity overcame common sense; I took the key and climbed into the chest.

Two-thirds of it was filled with strange stuff: unusually shaped knives, inlaid polished skulls, and flutes made from bones.  Had I brought some of these things to the university, I would have been instantly apprehended for necromancy.  In a separate niche I found books, entirely written on parchment, bound in suspiciously fine leather, with meaningful runes on the cover.  Surely, those were the treasures of a dark magician, a necromancer, an ancient one.  What the dark were doing in the past, I don't have the right words to describe.  But by today's standards, the collection was of no use, except as antiques.  A mail package, tied up with string, lay over the dubious treasures; I took it and left the lair, slowly and cautiously backing to the exit.  I never thought that such a probably wrong word to use here place could be in our valley!  And it was only mine now.

The zombie-dog watched with interest as its master clambered over the rocks, using one hand only.  At some point my nerves could not take it anymore (I was still far up the slope from Uncle's house); I aimed my find and threw it toward the barn wall.  It wasn't glass, after all!  Having climbed down, I disemboweled the parcel, untying the string and unwrapping it.  There was a return address!  The postman was right; the parcel came from the capital.  Inside, there were several sheets folded in half—a letter—and a small book, ancient in appearance; I immediately grabbed it, opened it, and...

And couldn't understand anything.

Incredibly thin, translucent pages were protected by so much magic that they had become almost metallic—elastic and solid.  Blue squiggles of handwriting ran over a yellowish background; no magic runes, circuits, or signs were there.  Some letters looked familiar, but the meaning of the words remained a mystery.  That must have been one of those ancient relics that Mrs. Clements had been looking for, the same one hundred thousand crowns—not in bonds, but in one piece.  I did not think that Uncle was involved in business with rarities!  An explanation had to be in the letter, but I didn't have time to read it—while I was searching the cache, the NZAMIPS truck moved from the pass to the village.  My family waited for me at home, and some of my kinsmen could drop by Uncle's house at any time.  I needed to go back.

But I had to protect the book: Uncle was murdered for it, somebody tried to kill me, and who knows what else they would do.  I did not want to carry it in my luggage; there was another way...  I put the letter and the address, torn from the wrapper, between the magically protected sheets of the book, and re-packaged it.  Then I shoved the parcel into Max's mouth with instructions to deliver it to my garage at Redstone.  That method of transportation seemed to be the most secure to me: no one would notice the zombie among bushes and rocks and, even if someone did, he or she wouldn't catch the dog.  And the zombie didn't have my name on it.  I could always say it wasn't mine.

Finally, I was ready to leave Krauhard.  With calm soul and conscience, but with agitated nerves.  All the way to the village my palms and shoulder blades were itching so much that I wanted to bob up and down like Lyuchik.  The enthusiasm of the white is contagious.  And I couldn't tell anyone...

Returning home, I found Chief Harlik drinking tea on the veranda with the leftovers of cold pancakes (there were no bees).  It was outrageous—in my absence my mother let another man in and fed him my meal!  I was about to revile the NZAMIPS boss, but Mom deftly put scrambled eggs in front of me.  My dark nature was pleased—my meal was bigger.  Harlik gave a sour look toward my plate, but did not say anything; yes, he was older, but it was my home.

"I see you've recovered."

I allowed myself to swallow a piece of egg and then replied: "I have!"

"We have found those murderers," Harlik paused meaningfully.  "It's a pity that we couldn't interrogate them."

I felt like the scrambled egg got stuck in my throat.  Hmm.  I wondered what Max was doing yesterday.  I had not watched the zombie at all.

"Wolves?"

"No,
Rustle
."

So, that rascal hadn't gone far away.  Supposedly, it was waiting for me!

"Obviously, they weren't local," Harlik explained when I did not respond.  "They came in the evening, hoping to get to the village at night.  That's when the otherworldly caught and killed them."

Yes, only barbaric townsfolk could do business in Krauhard at night.  Well, even if they saw my dog, they wouldn't be able to tell anyone about it now!"

"Bad luck," I mumbled, returning to the food.

"You don't look very upset," Harlik noticed.

"I am not upset at all," I agreed, chewing non-stop.  Mother sighed softly, and I had to explain my point to her, "I know what Uncle had gone through before he died. 
Rustle
is far too humane for them!"

I reminded myself not to blab out to the chief that I was now personally familiar with
Rustle
.

Joe cautiously approached the veranda: two dark magicians at a time were too much for his nerves.

"I am leaving," Harlik stood up.  "Call me, if anything."

Mom gently nodded.

"What was he talking about?" I asked suspiciously when the back of the chief was out of sight.

"He is worried that the interest in Gordon would pass onto us," she answered serenely.

That was unconvincing.  Though why would Mother lie?

And I threw Harlik out of my head; I had far too many impressions today.

* * *

Locomotive wasn't able to take the student to the coordinator: the enterprising kid had left town right before the authorities expressed interest in him.  The captain flirted with the idea of contacting Krauhard's department of NZAMIPS, but decided against it: fables of mutual cover-up and conspiracy among the local dark could be true.  None of the dark magicians was ever caught in Krauhard for the entirety of NZAMIPS' history.  The captain had to wait until the guy returned to Redstone on his own.

Mr. Satal reacted to Locomotive's misfortune quite emotionally: "What the hell!  Next time I should be the first to know, got it?"

"Yes, sir," Locomotive did not argue.

Morning briefs of NZAMIPS higher-ups became regular, and Captain Baer had to attend them alone—his subordinates were losing their operability after meetings with the senior coordinator.

It was difficult to say whether there was any benefit from the meetings.  The coordinator wished to know everything that was happening in Redstone—Redstone alone and nowhere else.  Sometimes Conrad Baer asked himself: was the situation in his town unique?  Had anything similar happened before?

"A new informant let us approach the elder who acts in the southwestern part of the town.  His name is Godovan Boberri; he has been detained for illegal practice of magic.  Boberri is clearly a priest and had a few disciples, three of whom have been arrested."