The Road to Magic (Book 1 of the Way of the Demon Series)

by Alexey Glushanovsky

  ‘The reason? Why, I can tell you that. It’s simply that up till now you have heard history from the mouths of the descendants of those who condemned us to this existence. But there is of course another side to the coin. Our side. Listen to how it looked for us, the Union of Free Magicians of Oner, as we called ourselves in those days.

  ***

  ‘The Orchisites attacked out of the blue. The Forest Guard, protected by amulets and thus undetectable by magical means, stealthily slaughtered the watchmen stationed around the city. By morning the army of His Highness Villam the Second Kreghist was at the walls of Oner. The municipal guards barely had time to close the gates and citizens who hadn’t managed to get inside the city fell into the hands of the ambushers. The soldiers fell on them with unbelievable ferocity. Neither women nor children were spared. We watched, helpless, while their swords rose and fell, their lances thrust in and out. Few had the courage or ability to fight back. In the end, nearly all were slaughtered, save those held for torture. ‘Three of the magicians and two druids were immediately sacrificed along with Tarid, one of the city’s best healers. They were lucky. The screams of the other captives coming from a small hillock clearly visible from the city walls could be heard for all the three days of the siege. Villam’s henchmen were experienced and did their best to carry out the command of their leader: “Whatever you do, take your time. Make sure those pagans feel the full force of the Light-Bearer’s wrath.” They treated the women they captured particularly horrendously. The magicians were powerless, they couldn’t even remove their suffering for them as the victims had to put those same amulets on before they were tortured.

  ‘Then the rest of their army came--wave after wave of infantry and heavy cavalry, followed by the great, rumbling catapults and trebuchets. They came marching in strict order, so many shining coats of mail, so many glittering helmets, so many waving banners and fluttering mantles. All followed by the grim magicians—so grim, so determined. A great host against our pitiful few, now without the massacred citizens, or the sacrificed magicians. All the while tortured screams rent the air.

  ‘Then the storming began. Right from the outset it was clear that the city was doomed. There were not many warriors among the magicians in Oner at the time, only three in fact. Two Light ones – Teodulf Flaming Guard and Vittor Blade of Light – and one dark one, a retired warrior necromancer dabbling in research in the field of chimerology who had come to Oner with his students for a seminar– Viss, Knight of Despair. Moreover, initially it was only the necromancer and some of his older students who were able to do any vaguely serious damage to the enemy. Teodulf’s fireballs and Vittor’s bolts of lightning didn’t bring any kind of harm down on the Orchisites, protected as they were from the direct use of force. But on the other hand the zombies raised by Viss obediently ripped the king’s soldiers and the priestly guards to shreds, paying no heed to the amulets. However, the light magicians soon adapted to this unusual situation and set about throwing rocks and opening up the earth under the feet of the attackers thereby evening out the score somewhat.

  ‘The other magicians in the city belonged to strictly peaceful orders--Druids, healers, animal lords, and weather makers among the light magicians, and spiritualists, chimerologists and black sorcerers on the dark side. It goes without saying that they all took part in the battle, but you couldn’t really compare their power to that of the warrior magicians.

  ‘On the morning of the third day of the siege, despite all the efforts of the magicians and citizens, the armies of Fenrian breached the walls and entered Oner. As they came pouring through a violent battle was joined; twice our forces fighting like demons, threw them back. But nothing could stop them. While we made them pay for every foot of our ground that they gained, more and more of our defenders fell. Under the protection of a small section of the garrison, the women and children, along with the magicians, barricaded themselves into the citadel where the magicians began preparing a stable portal to Valensia. The menfolk, along with most of what was left of the garrison, kept up the battle in the city to slow down the oncoming army and win enough time to create the portal and transfer the people.

  ‘They had almost succeeded. Using blood magic (Teodulf, Vittor and Sadir, an elderly Seli spiritualist willing sacrificed themselves) enabled them to fill an ancient accumulator with energy, enough to open the portal, but just at that moment Kreghist’s armies broke through the defences and came up to the walls. Viss and his students headed to the walls to bolster what was left of the garrison. The light healer Goran joined them with his young daughter Leya. She had recently finished the third course at the Faculty of Druids with flying colours and to celebrate her father had taken her with him to the seminar. A highly experienced healer can be very handy when there are wounded and Leya came, too; she categorically refused to be parted from her father and there was no time to convince her to change her mind.

  ‘With the support of the necromancer and his students, the remaining garrison had sufficient strength to keep the army at a respectful distance. Kreghist’s engineers gathered their siege catapults and began to fire from afar, wary of coming too close to the tower.

  ‘At last the magicians managed to open a portal in the upper room of the magical tower where the accumulator was, and the light magicians transported through it to Valensia to keep the exit channel open. The dark magicians stayed in the tower, sustaining the entry point; to suddenly burst in on Valensia without being accompanied by light magicians was too risky for them despite the truce. At first the flow through the portal was fragile, but then it became an ever-increasing human current. However, that didn’t last long.

  ‘By that time the besiegers had managed to drag a huge trebuchet onto the square near the gates and the first shot they fired from it had catastrophic consequences.

  ‘The projectile flew over the wall and struck the very roof of the magical tower with incredible force. Smashing it, the heavy boulder tumbled down breaking the crossbeams and maiming people. As it fell, it caught the ancient accumulator, shattering it with one blow and releasing all the energy locked within it. The magical tower of the Oner citadel blazed brighter than the sun for a second, and then disappeared in an explosion of incredible force. With it perished everyone who had not managed to get through to the portal – dark magicians, women and most of the children. Only the light magicians and about five hundred children aged between five and twelve, who had managed to cross through the portal before the explosion were saved.

  ‘… And so we were left on our own,’ the necromancer continued his tale. ‘At the moment when about half the city’s population perished, there was a colossal expulsion of necro-emanation which I partly managed to store. I decided then to use it to raise all those who had died in the city as zombies and unleash them against the king’s army to at least partially avenge the children’s murder. But things turned out differently. After the magical tower exploded, we all fell into despair. We were filled with pain and hatred towards the aggressors. And then Goran suggested a plan. You have probably heard the legend of the fall of the state of Reir. The Elves drowned it as a punishment for the rape of one of their own at the hands of the crown prince of Reir. The broad outline of that ritual is known to many magicians as it is described in one of the Elfish books that has come down to us. But the page with the concluding section of the ritual is missing, so no human had ever dared to perform it. But we dared to! One way or another, none of us was planning to hand ourselves over to the Orchisites alive - we had seen only too well how magicians died on the altar of the Light-Bearer. Incidentally, we never would have survived long enough to complete the spell. The accumulator no longer existed and we were forced to sacrifice each other during the ritual in order to charge the spell with enough energy.

  ‘Everything worked. I was worried about Leya, she was young and hadn’t gone through the necessary training in the Dark Citadel, where studying the rules governing ritual suicide is compulsory for students. But the girl mana
ged. She’d seen the sacrificial altar of Orchis, too. It was my turn right after her. Goran went last. As a healer, he was the most alive among us and we knew he should be able to live long enough after the blow in his heart to complete the ritual. Before plunging the poignard into my own chest, prompted by some kind of premonition, I cast a simple spell over all of us, over those who’d just died as well as over those who were still alive. It was a spell of non-decay and the regeneration of dead flesh, and I also cast a spell I had developed for binding the soul to the body. I devoted all the energy I had gathered as a result of the explosion in the magical tower to it. The result is what you see before you.

  ‘The next evening, I rose. In those days I wasn’t the worst warrior necromancer of the Dark Empire and I had put all the necessary charms on myself. But even so, I was astounded. Usually a risen magician who has retained the major part of his magical powers becomes not much more than a dull doll with one fixed thought: vengeance on enemies. But nothing like that happened with me. The poignard wound healed and I looked almost alive. And it was then that I remembered the spell I had cast before I died. After that I raised all those I could. Unfortunately, as I was sacrificing myself, I had only cast the spell over the magicians, the warriors from the garrison became simple dull zombies. Nevertheless, I raised all the magicians. Fifty students of the fifth year who had been with me in my seminar: Ratek, who was only a pretender to the student gown; Goran, and Leya. As light magicians, it was particularly hard for them.

  ‘Thanks to the spell for regenerating flesh, the wounds healed over and the non-decay allowed us to look almost alive, while the bound soul meant that we could think, feel emotions and dream; dream about the possibility of becoming alive again, even for just a split second, to feel the warmth of the sun and the caress of a woman. Or maybe the taste of Leya’s apples,’ the necromancer added with a wry grin.

  ‘We’ve existed that way for fifty years now. The healer and I are busy with research, looking for the possibility to return at least a part of life back to us. Along the way we help my older students, the chimerologists who have seriously undertaken to ensure the safety of our abode, and who are always creating more and more new Guards. The younger ones patrol the grounds. Leya takes care of order and beauty in our abode, experimenting with various types of plants. She keeps us cheerful, jokes and smiles, forces us to take care of our appearance … and cries quietly when she thinks no-one’s watching.

  ‘And that’s our story. But now, however, my dear Arioch, it’s your turn. I must admit, I’m very curious as to how you appeared in these parts, a human endowed with both an incredibly strong potential for the light magic of fire and talents for dark magic, too, and what’s more the Transformed magic!’

  ‘Well, perhaps you, my dear Viss, would be so kind as to enlighten simple uneducated me, as to what is particularly surprising in my talents?’

  ‘Aha, simple and uneducated! But I’ll explain. First of all, you simply reek of fire magic. To be honest, I didn’t think a human could possess capabilities of such magnitude. It’s more fitting for some sort of fire spirit, say an iphrite or even a young and weak Elemental. But that can still be explained. They say that once in a thousand years a magician of improbable power is born. But apart from the fire magic, I can sense dark magic in you, too. Admittedly, as yet I can’t say whether you are a black sorcerer or a necromancer, it’s all masked by the stronger smell of fire, but that’s not the point. That just doesn’t happen! A human is only capable of housing one side of the force. If we turn to the light, we cannot reach the shadow, for those sunk in the darkness the light is not visible. That is the first law of magic, which, until now, has been considered unbreakable. And here we have a living refutation! And as if that weren’t enough, your dark force bears clear traces of the transformation which a magician’s force obtains when he has passed through death! That multiplies a dark magician’s strength manyfold; I, for instance, am much stronger now than I was when alive, but no one obtains this willingly – who wants to die? But you can’t go through that alive. These capacities only appear after a personal encounter with Madame Death, or at least, that is what was thought till now. So, that’s why you are refuting this supposition. You are, without a doubt, alive, unlike me and yet you, like me, carry the stamp of death - which, incidentally, would give you a very great advantage should you decide to take up dark magic. Actually, it’s already giving you an advantage: it was precisely because your power has been transformed in a similar way to ours that the Dark Hounds took you for one of us.

  ‘Not to mention the fact that among your travelling companions you have the ruler of Fenrian, who hasn’t yet gone through the coronation – an empty ceremonial rite, by the way. So you can see for yourself, I am indeed very curious as to who you are. And where you appeared from.’

  Oleg thought seriously. Then, throwing caution to the wind, he told Viss the story of his adventures. The dark magician somehow aroused intuitive trust, and Oleg had recently learned to trust his intuition. Moreover, he really needed a good advisor, and ideally, a guide.

  Viss listened to the story with great attention. He was particularly interested in how Oleg was killed by the thugs and his appearance in the world of Heliona. He often interrupted Oleg to quiz him, carefully examined the tear in his jacket, calculating where the blow had struck and thoroughly asked about Oleg’s feelings. After Oleg had told him about Heliona’s warning and gift, he smirked, muttering ‘So that’s where the fire comes from!’ When Oleg reached the point when she recommended he study dark magic, he muttered, ‘Very wise, very wise,’ and then went back to listening carefully.

  Finally Oleg finished his tale.

  ‘Well, what can I say,’ Viss drawled with obvious satisfaction. ‘You are extremely lucky, young man. I wonder why that goddess took such an interest in you and why she invested such power in you?’

  ‘But Heliona says she’s not a goddess,’ Oleg said in amazement.

  ‘She can say what she likes. I can tell you that I’m not a master of necromancy who died fifty years ago but a grey rabbit. And what do you think, after that I’ll grow ears and get an unbearable urge to eat carrots?’

  ‘That depends on how well I’ve mastered the magic of transformation by then. So the urge might come upon you,’ Oleg countered.

  ‘Take a walk!’ the magician exclaimed with obvious satisfaction. ‘The magic of transformation doesn’t work on the Undead. And that is precisely what I am now, an Undead. There are at least some advantages in my situation. I don’t need to worry about any pranks the students might get up to.’ Viss made a mock serious face.

  ‘I wouldn’t count on that too much if I were you. I should warn you that I have a very vivid imagination…’

  ‘And a very unhealthy one. I see, I see...’ and the necromancer laughed gaily.

  ‘And as for Clear Flame, she may say she is not a goddess. She may even sincerely believe she is a simple Elemental. But as a magician who knows a bit about the magic of beings - and not just from hearsay - albeit from a rather different angle, the dark side, I can tell you that reading minds, let alone resurrecting the dead and giving them additional magical appearances is simply impossible for an Elemental. And in general, resurrecting the dead is an ability which belongs solely and exclusively to the gods. And even for them it demands an awful lot of energy. A willing sacrifice gladdens any god, of course, but if that were all there was to it, she wouldn’t have resurrected you. She would have just organized a good afterlife for you at best. You can take my word for it, I’ve studied this matter very carefully while I was looking into the possibility of resurrecting us!’

  ‘But I told you that anyone who finds themselves in that world by invitation is immediately given a new body. Why don’t you try it? Ok, it may not be your body, but at least you’ll be alive.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but as you said yourself, by invitation! And unlike you, no-one has invited us, it’s a real stroke of luck, and I’ll devote all my e
fforts to get that lucky strike!’

  Oleg thought for a while. On the one hand, he didn’t want to raise the lich’s hopes, especially as he was far from sure that he could indeed help them. But on the other hand, he saw that they desperately needed at least the hope that there was a possibility they might become alive again. After thinking a little longer, Oleg made up his mind.

  ‘I don’t want to promise anything, but maybe I can help you a bit. Judging from some of Heliona’s remarks, that was definitely not the last time I’ll be invited. If I find myself there again, I promise I’ll mention your predicament. Maybe she’ll be inclined to help.’

  ‘I doubt it. The fact that she revived you is odd enough. As for reviving a whole group, like ours…no, I doubt you can find a god crazy enough to get involved in that. But you’ve given me a good idea. We’ve been hanging on to these dead bodies, trying to revive them. But sometimes it’s easier to build a new one than repair the old. We just need to create or grow ourselves new bodies, and then transfer our souls into them. That’s well within the powers of Goran and myself. So please accept my sincere gratitude. It may not be soon, but the first real chance of life is ahead of us now! We’re used to waiting. But we must go. I expect they’re fed up of waiting for us in the festival hall. I sent Ratek, he should have returned with your musical instrument. We all miss music terribly, as only Lir and Tobi play. And it’ll be interesting to hear some songs and something more besides. Leya doesn’t have a bad voice, but after fifty years you begin to want to hear something new.’