"What did your other experts say about the last bone?" I asked him while taking a seat in his car.
"Nothing yet. They received the object just yesterday."
So I was the first to work with the finding. He really had faith in me! "How about if I stop by them and ask?"
The chief was not opposed; perhaps, he thought about it himself. Instead of my home, we went to the Upper Shaft, to the NZAMIPS office. Inspector Giom's car was already parked in the courtyard.
"He'll steal your evidence," I chuckled.
Brian flew out of his seat as if he was kissed by Rustle. As I expected, the inspector confiscated our bone and the experts' report along with it. The chief managed to make a copy of the report, and I read it as Brian drove me to my home. The police criminalists concluded that the bone's injury was ante mortem - in other words, the deceased was still alive when his jaw was fractured, but they found a fresh imprint of magic on it, of course, of the white variety. The experts noted the similarity of this imprint to the magic aura on the remains of the murdered children. What a pity that NZAMIPS doesn't take records of the aura of the white magicians!
I made Brian promise to keep me informed; he had vowed and quickly left, wearied by the inspector and me. A week passed without a single piece of news from him. Then I heard a rumor (not from Brian) that the inspector arranged for a press conference. I came to the event uninvited.
The room, proudly called a conference hall, could accommodate a maximum of twenty people; for this reason only six journalists were invited to it, and the general public wasn't told anything. The policemen at the door stopped me, and showing him my temporary NZAMIPS employee card didn't help. He let me in only when I threatened him with pocket sized lightning.
The story the inspector told at the press conference was idiotically simple: Giom declared the artisans guilty in the death of eight children. He claimed it so confidently that reporters didn't doubt his statement (I suspected he was using magic to help the audience believe). The sectarians allegedly tried to get out of the mines some archeological rarities, getting them with the blood of innocent victims; now access to Undegar's mines would be totally sealed, and no more murders would happen again. The only truthful part of the inspector's speech was his words that the case revolved around the archaeological rarity - the ancient bone.
Suddenly I recalled the previous owner of my house: the man who hung himself was an amateur archaeologist, and he committed suicide just after they found the remains of the children. The police surely did not interrogate him.
When the press conference was finished, I approached Brian. "One question, chief: do you agree with the inspector's interpretation?"
He grimaced: "No!"
"Then stop by my place this evening. Let's talk". I meant, with the deceased archaeologist-hobbyist. I didn't doubt that the chief would give me permission to perform another ritual. The walls of my house witnessed death which, I believed, was a result of a white magic spell. Perhaps, I could see his last minutes from the imprint on the walls, though, maybe, not as clearly as I would from the corpse.
In anticipation of Brian's arrival, I prepared crayons and candles, and even brewed green tea. I made sure that nothing in the house would hamper the ritual, and even found the place where the archeologist hung himself. It was already twilight when I heard the sound of Brian's car. The timing for the ritual was just right.
As an unpleasant surprise, the chief brought the inspector and his bodyguard along. I guessed it was Giom's initiative. Naturally, the bony dark mage barged into my house without asking permission, which was unacceptable among the dark - perhaps he thought that the authority of his superior would protect him. I decided to treat him like a piece of furniture. I put three cups on the table and offered him tea.
Our conversation took a strange turn. Without questioning the inspector's story about the artisans, I hinted at a chance of identifying specific perpetrators. The ritual I implied wouldn't violate any regulations, because it was in the chief's authority to allow additional investigation, and the court frequently accepted evidence from the deceased. To my surprise, Brian hesitated, mumbling something indistinct in reply.
"I did check: the posthumous imprint of the previous owner's aura is very clear. Within a few hours I will fish out memories of his last two days, minute by minute. We'll know for sure whether he was involved in the case of the murdered children."
The inspector frowned with hostility: "Haven't you done this already?"
"I perform necromantic rituals only after obtaining a written permit from NZAMIPS."
Brian muttered "ehh" and "ehh" like an idiot, and the white mage confidently took matters into his own hands.
"There will be no ritual!" Mr. Giom said firmly. "You've gone too far, young man."
I looked at the wry smile on his bodyguard's face, pondered for a bit, and overturned a salt shaker from the table on Brian's head. The stunned chief jumped up and began to shake the salt off, rubbing the white powder further into the folds of his clothes. No, the salt wouldn't be effective against a powerful spell, but I hoped that the white mage had used something mild on the chief not to alarm the sensors of instrumental control - NZAMIPS closely monitored Suesson lately.
"Do not touch your eyes - it's salt!" I advised Brian.
"How dare you, scoundrel?!" the inspector's anger had no limit.
The chief finally began to understand the peculiarity of our situation: we were about to confront two aggressive mages, dark and white, at once. And this time the bony bodyguard was prepared well for the fight. Why did Giom react so negatively? I wondered in what situation I would have acted as he.
I smirked, turning to the inspector: "I see that you are as skilled as me in the craft of retroactive animation."
Giom startled. Bingo! And I continued to improvise with inspiration. "You know well that white magicians are also able to awaken a deceased personality. The problem is in the control of an absorbed alien mind. You cannot withstand the pressure from an alien psyche and preserve yourself - you need an intermediate person, a medium. And kids are best for that, especially the feeble-minded! Their crippled, immature souls are seized by the raised alien personality. The poor kids can't sever the connection with the psyche of the guy from their own! It was you who killed them all!"
Brian's jaw dropped; the bony magician was about to attack me, but I hesitated. I wanted to give Giom the chance to exonerate himself or convince my humane monster that the inspector was guilty. The dumb creature was slow tonight - of course, dealing with the real villains was not as simple as harassing humble necromancers!
"Do you really care? Do you want to get in trouble with the leadership of NZAMIPS? Forget everything you just said. And Brian will forget it too, I promise. Unfortunately, this house will have to be burned down." Giom felt no guilt whatsoever.
"What does the NZAMIPS leadership have to do with the murders of children?"
"Because I carried out the order given to me by my higher-ups!"
Brian stared at us horrified; the world as he knew it was collapsing before his eyes.
"Why didn't you use the Circle? The necromantic ritual wouldn't require the lives of kids."
In the classic version of the ritual, I, along with other mages of the Circle, would pull out from that bone every possible and impossible bit of information. Even on my own, without the help of other necromancers, I could have learned what caused the death of the ancient man - I did not need to raise his personality.
The inspector's face acquired a cold and haughty expression. "We are trying to solve the enigma of the civilization collapse. How can we trust the dark with such a serious issue? Nonsense! The death of ten cripples is a tiny fee for uncovering the truth and saving the lives of millions."
So two more bodies were yet to be found.
I realized that somewhere and somehow Giom crossed the line that separated him from normal people. I saw the white mage who betrayed his nature. Did he become a dark? I believed
that most of us, dark, would never kill a child for any reason whatsoever, especially if there was an alternative. "If our leadership confirms your statement, I'll have no questions for you." After all, who was I to teach my commanders? "Help with the search and identification of the two remaining bodies - all your innocent victims must be buried properly."
Hi twitched at the word "innocent". Apparently, bits and pieces of his white nature couldn't come to an agreement with his doings.
"Shut up! Rick will take care of you! Do not pretend that you care about someone's bones. Take your things and go away. Otherwise, you'll get burned with the house!" The bony Rick smiled particularly abominably at Giom's last sentence.
I was in no hurry to leave my home. First, I didn't belong to the modern necromancers who found the word "cleaner" to be creepy; if it would come to a fight, all their amulets would not help them against me. Second, I did care about the children and Rustle, too. Giom was in trouble.
I turned away from the two freaks and reached for the switch on the wall behind my bookcase - it was hiding the seal of the protective perimeter around my house. It was a piece of cake for a mage of my skill to break the feeble seal unnoticeably.
"May I ask what you are doing?" Inspector Giom was calm and cold again.
"I call it God's justice. It's midnight, I have just turned off the security perimeter, and any creature can enter my house. If you manage to flee with your lives - so be it."
Giom's eyes narrowed. "I thought you were a professional magician. Do you really believe that we will die the moment you disconnect your perimeter? The likelihood of the appearance of a ghoul in the next few minutes is close to zero."
"I do know one extremely mobile monster with high moral standards." In fact, the creature was always with me, if not materially, then mentally for sure. Rustle had just finished the inspection of my premises, saw no perimeters or traps, and began to rapidly manifest himself into reality.
My room boiled with a swirl of black leaves; even I didn't feel well from the proximity of the otherworldly, but I stoically endured. I wondered what he would do with them.
"I'll eat them!" Rustle showed me his angry side and filled my house with the stench of ammonia and rotten eggs.
Honestly, I could cope with Giom and his bodyguard; without Rustle I just didn't want to break the law. The monster was a perfect instrument of justice - who would dare to punish the otherworldly, and how? When the endless rustling subsided, there were two bubbling brown piles with interspersed bones on the floor, and Brian and in the room. Max barked in the yard.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel like gagging!" the chief of NZAMIPS convulsively clenched his teeth and rushed out.
I was glad that Brian controlled himself well enough to get out of the house in time; otherwise, I would have had three piles of shit on the floor. I opened the windows, shut the door, and walked into the kitchen to brew a soothing tea for the chief - he could not drive home in such condition.
"What a bastard, what a bastard!" my boss muttered, sipping my herbal tea.
Hopefully, he didn't mean Rustle.
"And who is not?" I cynically shrugged.
"You…"
"Me? I set Rustle against those two, knowing exactly how it would end. I wanted to punish them. There wouldn't be such a chance another time: the inspector would have come through unscathed."
"Maybe there was another way…" a doubt stirred in Brian's mind.
"Bullshit! Our Circle provides full access to the personality of the deceased and a comprehensive picture of his life. I know it as a member of the Circle. These guys killed ten children only because they didn't want the dark to be involved! Our leadership doesn't trust the dark but confides in the murderers of little kids!"
It was most hurtful. I killed almost no one, at least deliberately, in my life and was punished by being forced to work for NZAMIPS. But these assholes committed a real massacre with impunity! Moreover, our precious government (I would hit it in its collective face) had authorized all of it. Dealing with necromancers wasn't acceptable for them, but to disembowel children - no problem.
Okay, those two were dead; now I had to whitewash myself.
"What do we do next?" the chief was slowly coming back to his senses.
"It's not a big deal - we are not responsible for Rustle. I turned off my perimeter - I was about to install a new one. They showed up unexpectedly in the midst of my work. That's why the tragedy occurred."
"And I stopped by your place to check the setting up of the new perimeter. We did not expect them to show up here." Brian supported the emerging plot.
"What a tragic accident! This could happen even to the best of us."
"Amen!" the chief nodded gravely. He put his cup on the table - his hands did not tremble any more - and went to call the morgue. A group from NZAMIPS, along with the police, arrived in the morning. By that time I had removed the affected planks with brown goo from the floor in the living room. NZAMIPS didn't offer me money for the damaged floorboards.
Chapter 30
The path to the world recognition of my genius began prosaically - from an intense correspondence with Redstone.
Before my meeting with Giom I wasn't sure if I could succeed in the project designed to bring happiness to the mankind. But if a white mage managed to learn the art of necromancy, then solving the problem of stupid ore bacteria should be a piece of cake for me. We needed a place for experiments, and I decided to buy the house of the suicide archeologist. The municipality asked mere pennies for it. Only a madman would be willing to live in there (or a dark magician).
I replaced the floorboards in the living room myself, with a hammer and nails - carpenters were scared to touch them. I was lucky that they agreed to sell the timber to me. What would Johan say after discovering the cause of the repair? The white mage from Biokin was the main scientific force in our project.
My companions came to Suesson along with Quarters.
"Why did you come here? You wanted to start a car business?" I asked him.
"It didn't go well," Ron shrugged and lowered his voice. "Do not tell anyone, okay? Do you remember I had a row with my relatives?"
"Yes, why are you asking?"
"I was recently tipped off that my mother wanted to declare me insane."
He didn't look certifiable: his hair was combed, he didn't slobber, his gaze was moderately sassy.
"Nonsense! Did you complain to your uncle?"
"I did. He advised me to disappear for a while. My mother has friends among the healers. She can arrange almost anything she wishes for. I would be arguing for the rest my life that I am not crazy."
"Hmm, it proves that my family is not the worst that can happen. But you've chosen the wrong place, anyway."
"Are you afraid of competition?" Ron frowned.
"Not at all! I've already earned a good reputation and clients."
With the arrival of new residents my large house instantly became noisy and crowded. For the first three days my companions did nothing but talk about their trip: Quarters made fun of their numerous transfers (by the way, I had one extra compared to them), Polak was angry with the poor train service (he never travelled with a motorcycle in his luggage, it would have been a good reference point for him). As for Johan, the white mage was in such shock from the trip that I wasn't sure he would ever recover from it. Johan brought a bunch of cans and glass tanks with him and did not realize his luck yet - nothing was stolen or broken.
In the evenings Polak listened to music on my gramophone.
I regretted that I postponed the delivery of equipment for our project - I would have sent everyone to the barn to work and freed some time for myself. As usual, in order to save money I used freebies offered by my new acquaintances - the cotton growers; they rented an entire cargo train and found some spare space for my stuff. I expected the cargo to arrive any day now. I hoped the story with two mages on my floorboards receded into the past without any unpleasant consequ
ences for me. In Redstone, my superiors' limitless power provided me with impunity. But I was now in Suesson. My return to reality was tough: Lemar, Brian's assistant and replacement, brought to me the head of Suesson's "cleaners" armed with a full set of combat amulets.
"Colonel Reich wants to talk to you," a sneaky guy chirped and briskly galloped back to his car, apparently not wishing to be present at the conversation between two combat mages.
I tried to grasp the seriousness of my new problems - dark mages do not visit each other without reason.
"Can we talk inside?" the colonel suggested.
He comported himself a little too calmly, and his gaze was too clever for a "cleaner". I brought him to the living room; his glance darted to where a stain from the missing bookcase was still noticeable and thus disclosed the reason for his visit: that skunk Brian had spilled the beans! I thought the chief of Suesson's NZAMIPS would know how to keep his mouth shut! But Brian was now in quarantine…I even wondered why Reich did not take stormtroopers along.
"Have you heard the news?" the intruder asked in indifferent tone. He held his hands behind his back and seemed to be in no hurry to activate his Source.
"Which one?"
"Big bosses want to set a hunt for artisans in our district, the ones that your deceased friend Giom talked about at his press conference."
I winced. He surely teased me about my "friend", but he was in his right.
"And?"
"And I do not need a gang of idiots in my district trying to find a cat where it is not."
"What do I have to do with this?"
"The first thing I'll do is send an inquiry about your immunity to Rustle and the level of risk you present to the general public as the carrier of this creature."
He did not need to continue. A bunch of hunters, angry from a lack of the artisans, would find a suitable victim - me, despite the difference in Sources used for killing the kids. I thought for a while.
"It was self-defense!"
"People were burned for such 'self-defense' in the past", Reich cut me hard.
My Path to Magic 2: A Combat Alchemist Page 26