My Path to Magic 2: A Combat Alchemist

by Irina Syromyatnikova

  Derik pondered. He never had prophetic visions, but a feeling of wrongness persistently pursued him. "I sense that something is going wrong, but what could this be?"

  The old man nodded, "Very good that you can feel it! Keep in mind that a premonition has an otherworldly nature. Therefore, to search for its cause by way of reason and logic is meaningless. That dark magician can bring death to all of us or not wake up tomorrow morning. It would be foolish to guess!"

  "Do we need to ignore premonitions?" Derik frowned.

  "Another mistake! A premonition makes us focus on our problem once again, look at it from another angle, complicate the scheme. You should not act rapidly and fuss for nothing. A premonition is an aide, but also a common cause of failures. Now go back to your business!"

  The cat jumped up on the knees of the teacher, demanding attention. Derik bowed respectfully and left, once again amazed at the wisdom of the old magician. Now he needed to get rid of Ilan's body…

  Chapter 27

  By the end of the day I realized that the commissioner of the Ronald the Bright Fund deliberately didn't disclose to my employers that their new alchemist would be a dark magician - he was afraid that nobody would take me. He did not care how many problems this would create for me.

  To begin with, a fellow of the fund was eligible for free housing, but I rejected the dwelling Kvayfer had found for me - with children running about. To relax, I needed a lack of prying eyes and silence.

  "What will I say to Mother Tirlen?" Kvayfer started worrying.

  "Say that my dog doesn't like children."

  "Woof!" Max disagreed with me, but I did not take his opinion into account.

  We returned to the town called Upper Shaft in the late afternoon. I thought that I would have to stay overnight in the hall of the train station.

  Mr. Brian patiently waited for us near the town council; he made no snide comments. He was a true professional! "I thought you wouldn't like it at Mother Tirlen's. If I may, I would like to suggest an alternative," he said.

  Naturally, we let him step up with his offer (Kvayfer had no fall-back options). Already at dusk we drove into the yard of a deserted large farm with a house, a large barn, and a water tower.

  "It's the house of the guy who hanged himself!" one of the Kvayfer's assistants gasped anxiously.

  "A combat mage isn't afraid of ghosts," Mr. Brian replied reservedly.

  "Because there are no ghosts here," I squinted professionally. "What's the problem with this house?"

  "I'll tell you later. These are the keys!" he pulled out a heavy bunch from the glove compartment of his car.

  Kvayfer's guys moved my stuff on the porch and left, but the chief of the Suesson NZAMIPS lingered. I guessed he had some urgent work for me.

  "How about a drink?" Mr. Brian finally made up his mind. "They brew a good beer here."

  "Okay!"

  He pulled out from under the seat two large pitchers. Apparently, he kept them there since morning, but the weather was chilly, so I didn't worry about the drinks. We set the table in the kitchen, quickly wiping off dust and spiders.

  "Mr. Brian, what do you want? I don't believe that I interest you as a dark mage," I tried to make him talk openly.

  Brian pursed his lips - he seemed to prefer a more diplomatic approach. "You see, it was hinted by a friend of mine from Redstone that a rare specialist in…ehh…would move to my district."

  I realized that he was trying to avoid the word "necromancy".

  "A specialist in retrospective animation?"

  "Yes, that's it!" Brian sighed with relief. "I suppose it's you?"

  "Why do you need him?"

  He clenched his teeth, "In short, I am investigating the murders of children. Last spring we found eight corpses, all belonging to kids under twelve years old, on the border of districts Wendell and Suesson. They were buried side by side."

  "Were they dark?"

  He winced: "Experts aren't sure - the corpses were highly decomposed. Six boys and two girls were killed approximately five years ago. We haven't identified them yet; no children were reported missing, at least not in our district. I thought that maybe…ehh…"

  "A retrospective animator could help you find the murderers?"

  "Yes, exactly!"

  "Are you aware that I don't work full time for NZAMIPS? Okay, now you know this. Just keep in mind, I won't be able to fully reconstruct their consciousness - that requires a different ritual. I could look into some parts of their memory. Let's say, I'll try to see and hear what they experienced in the last moments of their life. Will it be enough for you?"

  I had already practiced this a couple of times under the guidance of Charak. Obviously, experts in the forensic department did something similar, though most of them possessed much lower qualifications than what was required for the Circle. Manipulation of the memory of the deceased children, which I offered to Mr. Brian, was considered a relatively safe ritual.

  "Anything, if it helps find the bastards," Mr. Brian sighed.

  "Don't you want to use the staff necromancer?"

  The chief jerked - he did not like to call a spade a spade. "My turn to use his services will come in six months. Such a delay is unacceptable!"

  Dark mages are comfortable with the concept of death, that of others and of their own; but the thought that someone systematically killed kids of Lyuchik's age was distasteful to me.

  "Tomorrow I will be busy with alchemists till six p.m. - drop by after six. By the way, what happened to the previous owner of this house?"

  "Some nonsense! The guy was from the capital, an amateur archaeologist. For many years he used to come here to rest, but six months ago he hung himself, all of a sudden. It was a simple suicide, but local folks had spun some tales, and now nobody wants to live here. For no reason - it's a good piece of land for farming."

  Already lying in bed covered with fresh linen (the chief knew how to please the people he needed), I wondered why my childhood life seemed so simple, but now I faced strange events daily. Was life always like that, but I existed in just one plane of it? Meanwhile, Rustle cautiously inquired into what kept me busy the entire day (after the incident in Arango the freak decided that he had to watch me). I habitually scared the intrusive creature off. In perspective, my life in Suesson did not look so bad: I had a job and a place to live; all that remained was to clean up the murderers from the area, and it would become paradise on earth.

  Next morning I realized that the alchemical division was just another name for the sinecure invented for retaining more or less decent alchemists in rural areas. And some of its local employees had already complained to me that Suesson was the trashy armpit of nowhere. "Not true!" I replied to them. "This place is no worse than my native Krauhard. And the climate here is milder." They looked at me with compassion.

  Our office didn't do installations or repairs. The alchemists were supposed to write reports - about the depreciation of capital assets, recommendations for installation of new equipment, expert opinions about the causes of accidents - there were a lawyer and a typist for that. The municipality did not need our reports very often, so the rest of the time the alchemists made money on the side (exactly as I expected).

  "Do not worry, kid, local folks are not barbarians," Mr. Kvayfer calmed me. "It's just that we live far from the center, and often the new stuff doesn't get through to us." My boss urgently needed a person knowledgeable about current trends in alchemy. It was implied by default that my job would be to supervise the implementation of new technologies that somehow reached Suesson.

  Of all the unthinkable variety of choices, the latest innovation, purchased with local farmers' money pots, was Biokin's tubular gas generator. You cannot imagine my feelings when I looked at the device! These gas generators haunted me! The situation was aggravated by the fact that the farmers saved on installation services, so I had to go through the nauseating routine, which was usually Carl's duty. I managed, but it took me almost a month to fix the
mistakes they had already made in the generator's assembly. But at the end all farmers called me Master (!) Tangor. For my skills, they overlooked everything, even my mean dark nature.

  I had much less success with Chief Brian's job. We had performed the appropriate ritual almost immediately. It wasn't particularly complex: cuddling an obliquely dissected skull, I fell into a trance for two hours and then spent another hour putting my thoughts in order.

  "Any luck?" Mr. Brian asked me with hope (by the way, he had the rank of captain).

  "Not really. The child was given a potion before his death, so he hadn't seen his killers."

  "Our experts said the same," he recalled. "They believe that a white ritual was performed on the kids. But even artisans don't practice lethal rituals on ordinary people, as far as I know."

  I wasn't so sure about that.

  "Well, dark magic has nothing to do with these murders, I guarantee. Moreover, the boy was feeble-minded. He knew neither his name, nor his home address. The killers did not foresee one thing." I took a blank sheet of paper and wrote down a string of characters. "This was written on the gates of the orphanage where the kid lived. Most likely, villains took him out of the orphanage quite legally."

  "The Walnut Grove?"

  "Yes. Don't ask me where that place was. I learned from the boy that it snowed in the locality, and the snow cover was dirt-gray. Perhaps, nearby there was a plant, infusing the snow with soot."

  "We'll check…"

  "Good luck. I probably could identify his teachers, if the memory of a mentally retarded person passes for proof."

  The next seven rituals, carried out strictly at intervals prescribed by the regulations, showed that all victims had certain mental defects, making ascertainment of their identity and residence nearly unattainable. The impression was that the criminals took into account the possibility of necromantic ritual on their victims. Only two children were actually abducted (in my opinion); the rest were adopted. I particularly remembered a blind girl, who from the beginning suspected the new "guardians" of evil intent, but was unable to flee or resist. Having surprisingly sensitive hearing, she made out the name of the place to where she was taken: "Undegar". The word was scary to her; in her strange mind it was associated with a large cold space. In reality, Undegar, known for the ruins of ancient mines, was a place in the southern part of Suesson, where the murdered children were found.

  "The Undegar tunnels extend underground for many miles. God knows what else we will find there," Brian told me grimly.

  I was seriously entertaining the notion of involving Rustle in the investigation, but the monster's mind had a problem with specifics. In the abyss of his strange memory, events of five and five thousand years ago were equal; in order to extract something useful from the stream of his nonhuman consciousness, I needed some additional keys, which I hoped the police would find in Undegar. I entrusted the investigation to Chief Brian's sensitive hands, making him promise to keep me informed - all the more so because I had less and less free time; my alchemical business finally started growing. No wonder, since I rode everywhere with my advertising on my back! Having arrived someplace on my motorcycle clean and neatly, I stimulated an unhealthy interest. Soon I received plenty of orders for my unique amulet that deflected dirt from the vehicle.

  "It's expensive and requires regular charging!"

  "Don't say a word about the cost!" clients advised ominously. "Will you do this or not?"

  Naturally I did, but I couldn't understand the reason for my amulet's popularity until the first winter rain, which continued without interruption for three days and turned all of Suesson's roads into endless streams of liquid mud. Since then, I always carried along an extra canister of oil - the amulet ate it faster than the engine.

  "Local soil is fine-grained, and it liquefies easily," one of the clients stood up for his native land. "Why haven't you cobbled or elevated your roads?"

  "Who cares enough?"

  Suesson had only one normal road (I even went there to check if it really existed), and its origin was legendary - the road was built long ago, under the reign of kings. It was elevated two meters above the plain and, due to a well-designed drainage system, survived unrepaired into our day. Local folks did not plan to start another gigantic construction project any time soon. And they continued driving through the mud…

  I gradually became accustomed to Suesson. I learned the shortest routes to the important places, the names of influential people, and local traditions, the observance of which made my life considerably easier. Time went on. After receiving a long letter from Lyuchik, I caught myself thinking that I had not heard from Chief Brian for a while. His image became firmly associated in my mind with failure - partial - but failure nonetheless, and I actively forced him from my memory.

  This trivial observation shocked me. To let my dark nature decide what was important to me and what was not?! I tossed and turned for half of the night without sleep and then found an idiotically brilliant solution - I decided to start a diary. No, it wasn't going to be a report made to an invisible friend that white mages loved to write - I preferred a classical research project with a list of tasks, activities, and interim reminders to myself. I bought a posh pad in leather binding and attached to it four different incinerating curses against the misplaced curiosity of some people, and the Diamond Rune that would let me restore my diary from ashes if it was burned.

  My visit slightly surprised Chief Brian. He knew I was disappointed with the results of my previous attempts to help him. The chief told me that they managed to identify three children, but it didn't help capture the criminals - adoption documents for the kids were cleverly forged. "As I see it, the orphanages were happy to get rid of the cripples and didn't ask questions."

  "Anything interesting from Undegar?"

  "Nothing in particular. The place is deserted and monitored only by amulets of instrumental control. No progress, in short."

  As I expected. When I let things take their course, everything became stalled. The killers probably neighed like hyenas watching how our investigation developed. Perhaps, they already eyed new kids…

  "I've got to go there, it may stir memory. Not mine, of course."

  Mr. Brian offered me a ride to the place (the municipality paid for his fuel expenses). I had never been there before and stared with interest at the area, called "deserted," undeservedly. The roads to Undegar were well trodden, and traces of some large-scale earthworks could be seen between the hills. New mines? I thought that everything worthwhile was taken out very long ago, when Ingernika wasn't mapped yet.

  "You are looking at future water reservoirs for the irrigation of cotton," Brian said. "Some guys from the Southern Coast want to grow cotton in our area."

  I made a note in my diary to meet these businessmen. In Suesson, I started reading The Business News; recently, they talked about a boom in commercial crops.

  "Are you making work records? An interesting method to focus attention!" I suspected that Brian was teasing me. I needed to crush in the bud his suspicion that my memory was weak.

  "No, it's a new dark magic method of tracking criminals: by the stars," I lied. "I determine the coordinates of the wanted in reference to the World Axis."

  "Do you think the World Axis exists?" It turned out that Brian was broadly educated.

  "I guarantee it!"

  Fortunately, my boss did not ask me to specify the location of the mysterious artifact.

  We toured the Undegar mines abandoned in distant antiquity, feasted our eyes on their vent shafts - each vent was capped by a protective sign - and made a victory lap around huge heaps of waste, stacked by ancient miners to incredible heights.

  I trusted the experts from the local police: if they hadn't found evidence of killings there, then I wouldn't find it either. That didn't mean that the kids were murdered somewhere else.

  "Hey, these reservoirs, when were they dug out?"

  "Do you think the southerners could be invo
lved?"

  "Not really. What if the soil from the site of the ritual was dispersed in the vicinity? We won't find any residual aura then, right?"

  Mr. Brian started looking like a predator getting on the trail. "We'll check this out!"

  In the meantime, we had nothing else to do in Undegar. Referring to my dark magic needs, I collected pieces of various rocks from the heaps - I needed them for the second project on my wish list. It was time to send word to Polak.

  Chapter 28

  New senior coordinator Larkes did not revoke the innovations and allowances permitted by Satal, but he issued a new circular that accomplished the same: he restored the previous order in Redstone's NZAMIPS. For the first time in a long while Baer saw gloomy Fatun in a colonel's uniform. For some staff the real rank of the "eternal corporal" came as a surprise.

  It seemed that his life got back to the old routine, and the captain would have enjoyed it if not for the results of an interrogation of a group of artisans. They were detained in the course of the examination of James and William Satal's abduction. Baer did not hope to identify highly covered up leaders of the sect, but even the scant information that became available to the ordinary captured sectarians was enough to understand that artisans were cooking something up. They wanted to make recording sensor amulets of instrumental control not susceptible to magic bursts from certain types of white spells; experts currently analyzed what alternative detection methods could supplement defective sensors, if artisans succeeded. Baer also worried about amulets taken by Satal from the secret vault - they weren't found. The amulets - material evidence of past crimes - had been gathering dust in the vault for over twenty years; they were seized in those "happy" times when apprehending criminals was often a battle with no survivors. Nobody knew the functions of the missed amulets, but experts believed that they needed to be bundled with other artifacts to work.

  The captain didn't discuss his concerns with Larkes or Kevinahari. The empath literally fell for the new chief - she wanted to understand the character of the strange magician, though Larkes perceived her attention with restrained disgust. When the new coordinator left for an inspection tour of the region, Baer could not resist it anymore and went to the only living soul knowledgeable enough to comment on his suspicions.