The Fixer Of God's Ways (retail) (7 page)

When writers want to heat
up the atmosphere in their opuses, they say, "The shadow of the King touched his heart." In one play a hero uttered this sentence ten times. The phrase was probably borrowed from some magic folio, because when Charak showed up at the door of my house, a shadow of the King really touched me.

The old necromancer vividly reminded me
of Uncle Gordon: he was dressed in a shabby rustic jacket, a faded shirt, and darned trousers. In Redstone he was painfully accurate! And he came alone, though a mage of his rank seldom left his home unaccompanied by security. Did his shadow remain in the car? Charak couldn't get here on foot. All in all, his appearance was quite odd.

"H
ow have you been, kid? I've heard about your exploits."

"
You know, teacher, I was nearly killed twice because of your damned necromancy!"

He wanted to protest, but changed his mind and took a deep breath
: "Will you accept compensation for this?"

I
dropped my jaw. A four-hundred-year-old magician apologized! Admitted his guilt!

"
Yes, I will. If you could explain first, why were you gone so abruptly? Not only you, but all veterans!"

Charak frowned,
collecting his thoughts, glanced in shock at Mr. Flap who brought us tea, and suddenly asked, "Had you experienced a reluctance to go to Finkaun?"

"
Yes, I had," I nodded gravely.

"
Then why did you go?"

"
I am not a coward! Teacher, I asked first."

Charak sighed
heavily, "You see, there are some necromantic traditions I had no time to tell you about - our class was so abruptly interrupted…Have you finished reading books from the list I gave to you?"

"
I couldn't find them anywhere, not in any public library." Even the ministry's library, with restricted access, lacked them.

"
I am sorry to hear that. Veterans of the Circle are like members of the clan; we trust each other with our lives, after all. Rivalry in our job is unacceptable: the stronger each of us is, the safer we feel. When authorities invited us to Finkaun, one of the members experienced a vague premonition, and he got in touch with the rest. It turned out that others were worried, too…"

So they didn't care about me
: the geezers conspired to slip away and left me alone.

I
n the dark mages' community, "traditions" exist only within your own flock; your own clan is the maximum amount of people we can care about. These century-old dodderers hadn't considered the fresh graduate a member of their circle. My reverence to Charak's skill and experience vanished, but I let him speak out - to learn from where the wind blew.

"
We decided to play safe," the old fogey rounded up.

I nodded sagely. Charak fidgeted in his chair -
it was too tall for the magician's height. Johan usually sat there.

"
I am very glad that all ended happily for you. But something else brought me to your house," he continued after a pause.

With
the gesture of a trickster, he pulled from an inside pocket a pack of tissue paper with scribbles of colored ink on it and laid them before me in a semicircle. I glanced at the sheets; if he wanted to dissipate my anger with such a primitive red herring, it wouldn't work.

"These are
the ritual schemes the artisans tried to perform in the North recently. The ritual is known: it's called
The Liturgy of the Light
. White Halak began with it once. You may ask why any description of it hasn't been wiped out. It's because we thought that the ritual couldn't be run without an ancient artifact, destroyed after the fall of Halak. But one genius has recreated the artifact…"

I looked at the scheme
s - just could not resist, it was a historical rarity, after all. The drawings seemed to be copied from the original onto tracing paper and then painted in colored ink by hand. I wasn't an expert in white magic, but something in the lines looked familiar.

"
Where is the catch?" I couldn't refrain from asking Charak, despite my wish not to talk to him. "At a glance, there is nothing extraordinary."

"
The catch, young man, is that
The
Liturgy of the Light
sharply reduces the occurrence of otherworldly phenomena, but no longer than a hundred years. Did you hear about the unexplainable minimization in otherworldly activity in Ingernika that lasted for fifteen years? During the lull, the government laid off half of NZAMIPS combat mages; Arango's division was abolished entirely. Now we observe a surge of the supernatural. In Suesson it isn't so evident – the presence of mines did not let NZAMIPS relax. But in the central regions "cleaners" strain themselves to the utmost. Perhaps, government will summon the dark."

"
What do I have to do with this?"

Charak pursed his
lips and snorted angrily; clearly, he needed something from me. "My other colleagues are too old. You are the only able necromancer in decent physical shape. Will you prefer to wait for the official call up for service?"

He shouldn't have said that
. "Yes, I will. This way I will get paid. And I'm no longer with NZAMIPS."

His
Source awakened - the old man was angry with me; he barely kept himself in hand. He thought he would show up and play with the young puppy as he liked! I called my Source, too, and fully opened the power channel. My house was surrounded by a six-layer perimeter; even if we started a duel here, the sensors of instrumental control would register nothing but noise.

Charak
sat still for about five minutes. Our Sources were of almost equal power. The old man was the strongest living necromancer, but a mediocre combat mage, or else he wouldn't have fled Redstone, fearing a stupid attempt on his life. I was trained by Edan Satal himself. And Charak knew that.

"
I understand your feelings," Charak's voice did not show the slightest emotion. "Your superiors made you risk your life, and you were nearly killed. You are unhappy. What if I compensate you for this? Would you be willing to sign another agreement with NZAMIPS?"

"
Here is my compensation - I do not want to see any of you again! Ever," I smiled meanly.

"
That is unreasonable. I hope you'll change your mind. I'll wait." He stood up and went out without saying goodbye, leaving his colored drawings on my table. If he hoped to sow a shadow of doubt in my soul, he miscalculated. Did he think that at the word "artisan" I would go on the warpath? He didn't know I had already avenged an attempt on me in Finkaun! Their local leader still saw giant roaches everywhere. Did Charak rely on my respect for him as a teacher? I was his disciple for two months; what kind of loyalty did he hope to earn in such a short time?!

I didn't discard his
sheets with the ancient artifact schemes, due to my Krauhardian miserliness. Instead, I neatly folded them and tucked them into my diary. After all my misfortunes, which accompanied my work at NZAMIPS, I deserved a trouble-free life for a few years. I stopped thinking of Charak's visit and returned to my usual work - I was up to my neck in work.

My
second winter in Suesson passed uneventfully. The moment of truth for our project was approaching - spring was the time to assess the results. The spring sun warmed up the water, the inhabitants of our pools came to life, and piles of rocks began to disappear rapidly.

On that
day I was busy with pools, checking that urchins didn't gnaw through the concrete foundation. They were extremely energetic bastards! As it turned out, they relentlessly scratched any solid support, no matter if it was the ore or the concrete. Hopefully, our white mage would instill a sense of taste in the next generations.

When
a loud bang reached my ears, I shuddered - it sounded like an explosion. Black smoke rose above the roof. I left the urchins and rushed home, fearing that someone was hurt.

G
listening fragments of shattered glass blinded my eyes. A cloud of ash from burning flesh and rubber hung in the air. Flame lazily licked my motorcycle's rim, and charred pieces of a human body were littered around.

A
truck on wide tires, roaring, drove away through Suesson's impassable mud.

Stunned
, I looked around for my companions and finally spotted Polak and Johan. They held on well. Ron was not at home; by elimination I figured that a leg in the middle of the yard belonged to Mr. Flap.

They killed my zombie! A
timid, harmless creature! Who committed such barbarism? And why? I called my Source and probed the smoldering wreckage for the presence of any residual aura. Alas, only Mr. Flap's was sensed there! I needed to examine the place where they threw the bomb.

Johan noticed me, and his face reflected
incredible relief, "Oh, Tom, we were so scared! We thought you were killed."

My friends
were right: Mr. Flap looked like me and was dressed in my clothes. The murderers saw my motorcycle in the yard - another confirmation that I was at home. They took Mr. Flap for me - the bomb was meant to kill me! No need to ask who to blame for this - militants of the sect, of course!

My
first impulse was to catch the villains. But to chase them on foot would be idiotic. My motorcycle was shattered, and I hadn't bought a truck yet. I needed to run to the nearest farm (it was five kilometers away from my house) and borrow a vehicle. They would be long gone in the meantime.

P
oor Mr. Flap died a second time! He had a truly angelic nature: he meekly did what we told him to do; without a word of complaint he carried out all the hard work around the house (now his job would become my duty again). He helped Johan set a garden in the backyard. I think he enormously enjoyed simple household chores. Mr. Flap even volunteered to wash my motorcycle. He absolutely didn't deserve an incendiary bomb for all his suffering!

And then a s
ickening internal shudder pierced my body: I knew the enemies would come and still missed them. If I continued along the same lines, my family would be under attack. How long would it take for sectarians to kidnap my white bro or sis? I would punish them sooner or later! But what would guarantee the safety of my family? I cast an appraising glance at the scraps of flesh in the yard and decided: "I'll have to stage my own death."

* * *

Powerful dark mages preferred to live farther away from each other. More than a year had passed since Satal quit his senior coordinator job; however, he didn't undertake any steps to move out of Redstone. For some reason, the presence of the spirited Larkes in the same city suited him well. It was nonsense. It felt wrong, until
Rustle
finally explained that it was his sense of self-preservation that compelled him to become a part of the hierarchy, to endure discomfort for the sake of predictability in his children's future. Many long hours spent with
Rustle
changed the dark magician: his subconscious forever imprinted the feelings of mages, who lost their loved ones because they had nobody to help. Born in peaceful times, Satal thought and acted like a hundred-year-old wizard.

A premonition of trouble
led the mage to the office of his boss. NZAMIPS staff was nervous, and this only reinforced Satal's suspicions.

D
isheveled Larkes sat at the desk and looked at a decanter of a peculiar shape. The bottle was practically empty. The smell of alcohol hovered in the room. A broken glass lay on the floor - the senior coordinator threw it against the wall.

Satal didn't
expect this from his boss and was afraid to guess what misfortune caused Larkes' grief.

The senior coordinator
noticed Satal, though not right away. "It did not work out," he said with drunken gravity.

Sata
l wanted to call Kevinahari; but, according to her own words, Larkes pathologically hated empaths. He decided to wait until his boss would speak out.

Larkes
pushed a piece of letterhead with a telephone message on it to his guest.

The
Suesson NZAMIPS office reported that on such and such date, at about eleven o'clock a.m., a former NZAMIPS employee, a magician-animator named Thomas Tangor, was killed in his house by a powerful explosive device. The investigation was underway. Satal read the paper several times - he didn't feel that his former student was dead.

The senior c
oordinator sniffled. Satal glanced at him warily - dark magicians in such a condition behaved oddly: some writhed in hysterics, others went on a rampage. One thing was certain: after such a show Larkes wouldn't keep his job, but surprisingly Satal did not want him to go.

"
What are you going to do?"

"
What is here to do?" the drunken magician asked. "He's dead, he is no more."