My Path to Magic

by Irina Syromyatnikova

  I turned to the docks. North Creek is not a commercial port: people in such places are kind of slow, know each other (even if they are not formally acquainted), and don't interfere in each other's business, but they always know who went with whom and where to.

  Cozily nestling among the boxes and empty barrels, a group of fishermen was having breakfast on the dock. My stomach reminded loudly of itself at the sight of fresh bread and roach (yesterday's feast had already left my body). I needed to end this manhunt!

  "Where is Laurent?" I confidently asked them, not bothering with a salute.

  "There!" they waved in the direction of the long sheds.

  Luck was with me that day. Maybe I could get my money back—I desperately did not want to trudge home on foot. A small side door was open, and loud voices could be heard inside—Laurent was not alone.

  "Hey, morons!" I started talking right from the door. "Haven't expected me?"

  Two athletic guys gazed at me in surprise. The third, a blond hunk in a white captain's jacket, lightly pursed his lips. Apparently, he swore to himself.

  "The same to you, Laurent!" I nodded to him. "What else can you say?"

  He looked at me with a mixture of disgust and perplexity, and my dark character immediately took a fighting stance. I hated snobs and copycatting captains! If you want to walk on my roof, show me your claws.

  "You have a lot of nerve to come here..." he started wearily.

  "What choice do I have?" I shrugged. "Your half-baked morons can't talk, and I need specifics. I had to drag myself here, teacher. On foot. By the way, I rubbed my feet sore!"

  Who can tell me why I was in such a hurry? There were three artisans before me, the very same that had alarmed all of Redstone and stirred up the university. Moreover, one of them was certainly a magician, and not the last one in his gang. Wasn't I in the position of a lapdog barking at an elephant?"

  But it was too late to retreat. Where power doesn't save, audacity will help!

  "Confess what you have done, assholes!"

  Laurent closed his eyes, as if demonstrating an abyss of patience, and tried to keep silence. He seemed to know little about the nature of the dark.

  "Do not tell me that you are a magician-inventor. I won't believe you—you don't have the right physiognomy."

  "Of course, I used nothing out of ordinary," the artisan refrained, "Only the shackles of deliverance! Is this term familiar to you?"

  "Didn't you mess something up?" I asked strictly and shocked him completely.

  I felt no discomfort (neither cold, nor emptiness, nor loneliness) from the loss of my Source. It was strange. I hadn't seriously considered magic as one of my limbs, but I thought that the infamous shackles should be sensed somewhat differently. Was that really the very same thing that dark magicians feared the most, to the point of hiccups? Enough to make a cat laugh!

  "Do not doubt," he assured me. "You must feel sad about ending your magician's career so early?"

  I wondered if he mistook me for someone else.

  I shrugged. "Not really. Actually, I am going to be an alchemist. But I'll report on you to NZAMIPS anyway, as a warning."

  They abruptly saddened.

  "It looks," Laurent sighed, "like you do not understand what favor we have done to you by releasing from the pernicious influence of the Evil..."

  I replied to him with an obscene gesture.

  "...Or has the vice too deeply rooted in your soul? You're forcing us to resort to extreme measures!"

  Did he threaten a dark mage? What a brazen white! Even if I did not have access to magic, I could still give him a fistfight, and I immediately told Laurent as much. Instead of a reply, the two muscles scowled and moved in my direction.

  Look at them, half-baked goblins of the dwarf species!

  In a good fight three adversaries at a time would be a guaranteed defeat. If these were wicked city teens before me, I would turn around and run—the dark are not afraid to retreat timely. But these were just musclemen—cultured boys who decided to become cool through weight training; their combat skills hadn't been polished in dozens of minor skirmishes with broken noses and dark blue bruises. Against the ragamuffin from Krauhard's backwoods, they were like well-groomed pets against a stray alley cat.

  While Laurent's friends clucked their beaks, I knocked off a barrel at their feet—they had to attack me one at a time now. The floor was swept very poorly, much to my advantage. Pretending to take a lower stand, I scraped a pinch of sand from the floor and threw it in the face of the approaching enemy. He was taken aback for a moment and recoiled, protecting his eyes, and immediately got a shoe kick on the knee from me—an inexpressible feeling, I knew for myself.

  "Son of a bitch!"

  They really had a bee in their bonnet about my relatives! I didn't have time to respond to the insult—the second opponent rushed to attack. I did not know where they took their combat lessons from, but the money was spent in vain: a one-on-one fight, without weapons, is not a fight but a pub brawl. And the techniques should be appropriate for the brawl. I grabbed him by the clothes, pulled toward myself, and in a couple of seconds he glided down on one of the boxes. I could have applied more skill to make his head meet the corner, but then there would be a warm corpse on my hands, and I wasn't accustomed to killing people.

  I had underestimated Laurent; he had realistically assessed his chances against the dark—even if the latter wasn't a magician anymore. While his comrades were getting their asses kicked, he ran into the back room and was now ready to show his skill: "It's all over for you, accursed sorcerer!"

  Laurent was holding an object, for the possession of which he could be jailed right on the spot for three years: a huge crossbow with an arrow, thick as a finger. Quite an exotic arsenal for a white magician. That thing hardly differed from the armory of a combat mage, except that the crossbow took more time to charge, and it did not leave aural imprints or require special abilities. The smooth arrowhead was stained with something greasy; I had no desire to test whether it was oil or poison.

  Forgetting everything, I made the simplest ward-off weaving and threw it at my opponents.

  A bright light ignited. I sensed a puff of heat and a rancid stench. When I was able to see again, it was very quiet around, and black flakes of soot were falling on the floor. My opponents could not be seen anywhere. I heard neither frightened screams, nor footsteps, nor creaking floorboards, nor slamming doors. Only black dust was powdered all around... When I understood what had happened, my blood drained from the brain, and the heart retreated to my heels. I rushed headlong from the hangar without looking to where I was running.

  Yellowish smoke that scattered at the ceiling and flakes of soot were all that remained of a combat crossbow and three people who dared to argue with a dark magician.

  The problem was not that I deprived someone of life (I wasn't cognizant of that fact yet)—things just happened very quickly and without any conscious effort on my part. Uncle's words about the armory curse surfaced in my memory. Was that a manifestation of my non-standard channel of power? But I had repeated that same curse many times in the classroom, and it only made balls bounce!

  I rushed home like crazy: my apartment was at least six miles away, on the other side of the river. The concierge looked at me and silently gave a spare set of keys (she wasn't suicidal, apparently). I was hungry but couldn't eat. I was too emotional. Totally shocked.

  I took a spoon of valerian and went to bed but didn't sleep for long. The doorbell rang; it was the owner of the stables. Smiling, he handed me my wallet: "As I said, it was an unfortunate misunderstanding. My guy did not notice in the darkness the thing you had forgotten. He had gotten sick."

  By the time of their alleged conversation, Laurent was dead and could only be collected by shoveling. So the owner surely lied. I don't know how the enterprising boss managed to get into the apartment of the dead artisan, but he took out the only thing that could point to my relationship with the victim.


  "Thanks!" I was sincerely gratified.

  "Any more questions for us?"

  "No! I'm really thankful to you."

  I took more valerian and went to bed again. The doorbell rang; this time it was Captain Baer in black overalls, smelling horribly of smoke and breathing heavily. I said, "You stink," and closed the door.

  I went to bed again, the bell rang again, and Uncle was at the door, smiling, wanting to enter. I screamed and woke up. What an eerie dream!

  Chapter 23

  The infamous College of St. Johan Femm burned vigorously and for a long time.

  Locomotive went there for the second time: two years ago, when Larkes was in charge, a few young scumbags castrated a kid—an uninitiated white—and were killed by the elemental curse, first and last in the short life of the white boy. Sixty-four students and attendants were slaughtered along with them, all of whom the dying wizard managed to douse with his rage. Who says that the white magic is harmless?

  Firefighters poured nearly half of the river on the island, but if it had not been for the sake of the investigation, Conrad Baer would have let the fire frolic freely. It was a place nobody wanted to buy. Being a privileged school not long ago, the college was completely abandoned now. Sooner or later, the abandoned buildings always become infested with some yuck. Though Locomotive did not expect that it would be the warm-blooded yuck.

  In the yard flooded with water and trampled by firefighters, healers calmed down a heavily burned white. He did not want to leave and assured everyone that he had lost his soul "here, exactly right here", and begged to help him with the search.

  "Another fool got hit by a beam," the healer said to Locomotive with cynicism, typical for the police practitioners. "Perhaps, it will be better for him that way."

  "Dragon tears?" the captain pointed to the injured white.

  "No, more like a lobotomy. I will give more details after the examination—if he stays alive until then."

  Locomotive nodded and went inside the building blackened by soot. It smelled disgustingly of smoke, water squelched under his feet and dripped on his head.

  "Yours are there," a firefighter stowing a tarpaulin sleeve waved in the direction of the hall.

  He found the senior coordinator in the hall that had clearly been an epicenter of the fire. The floor boards were burned through to the rocky foundation there, and Locomotive moved via flimsy footbridges, thrown by the firefighters over the structures that survived the fire. Everybody's attention was focused on the crumpled skeleton of a surgical table: around it, buried in black trash almost to the elbows, magician-experts and Mr. Satal personally crawled on their knees in search of evidence. All were unhealthily agitated.

  Locomotive came up closer, expecting to see the charred remains.

  "The same style as last week," Satal sighed, straightening up. "But there is a difference."

  The captain looked at the ashes with understanding, but the dark magician smiled: "No, it's not about them. The artisans performed the shackles ritual last night, likely successfully, because this time their victim was an initiated dark."

  Locomotive got a nasty sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  "The pump-sign stayed for eight hours, but then something happened," Satal gestured around the walls, gnawed by fire. "This couldn't be done by a human being. The channel is very different from the standard one; a magician with such a Source would not live through the Empowerment.

  "A dark mage," Locomotive stated.

  "Rather, an otherworldly creature. A mature one, rich in energy, confidently orienting itself in the material world, affecting the environment with rare strokes, not wasting its power. Perhaps it has a material carrier."

  Captain Baer tried to picture such a horror walking along the streets of his city and failed.

  "I don't understand another thing: how did those two men survive? They were injured later and only because they didn't get out of the fire in time," Satal mentioned and nodded to an expert that had dug some crumpled round piece out of coal. "Send it to the lab and let me know the result!"

  "Couldn't that be the armory curse work?" the captain asked with an inner shudder.

  Satal frowned. "I doubt it. The pump-sign broke up from an external impulse, but not due to the release of energy of the Source. The perturbation was extremely local, at least this time."

  Baer realized that he had not seen typical human remains in the mud: "Where is the victim?"

  "Obviously, he or she woke up and ran off," the dark shrugged indifferently. We haven't seen any belts; the victim was held onsite only by the pump-sign. Rather thoughtlessly on their part."

  "Crazy psychos!" the captain could not resist shouting. "The third case. What do they want to accomplish?"

  "Probably the same thing as Melons, had she not been arrested."

  "One more artisan?"

  "Not likely," the coordinator nearly spat on a pile of evidence, but managed to restrain himself. "That bitch seemed to coach a follower; he didn't make the grade by just a bit. He knew what to do and how, but wasn't sufficiently accurate, so the first two victims died during the ritual. And he was not explained how risky it was to put the pump-sign on an initiated mage. Here's the result!"

  The coordinator looked again at the blackened walls.

  "And the white bastard is still at large," Baer added gloomily.

  "Then go back to work!" Satal soared. "Look for witnesses; he didn't get here by air, did he? And I'm not done with evidence yet!"

  Locomotive did not quarrel in response, although his patience was stretched to the limit. He was the head of Redstone's NZAMIPS, there were four hundred men under his command, and he wasn't going to lisp with a milksop—even if the latter was a dark magician. He wouldn't be a scapegoat! None of the emotions raging in his soul reflected on Captain Baer's face. He turned around and walked to the door in silence, habitually pondering whether he should immediately quit. Yes, five more years remained until his full pension, but he had already surpassed the length of service for an officer, and an old bachelor like him wouldn't need a lot. Numerous relatives would welcome an uncle from the city; he wouldn't be bored. Locomotive saw only one obstacle: if he left, he would completely lose the chance to influence events.

  A young policeman in motorcycle goggles and gloves trampled on the steps of the college. He got agitated, seeing the captain, and started waving his hands. Not a moment of rest! Baer pushed his way through scurrying firefighters and approached the policeman. The guy's face expressed embarrassment.

  "Eh, sir..."

  Locomotive looked down and cursed in a fit of anger.

  "Damn, it's all dirty here, too! What else do you have for me?"

  The motorcyclist handed him a piece of mail, and Baer realized that shit was about to hit the fan. What could happen in the town that the chief of NZAMIPS had to be notified by courier? Locomotive pulled out of the dense envelope a letter, read it, and wished he carried a poison: in full compliance with the statute, the team of instrumental control informed the authorities about a powerful surge of magical activity around Quay Barco. Had they missed the alpha and omega?

  "Pass it to Senior Coordinator Satal, okay?"

  The policeman saluted and briskly splashed through the water on the sodden floor. He didn't know what a mine he was carrying.

  While a striped NZAMIPS car was making its way through the crowd of firefighters, Locomotive intensely pondered the situation; none of his subordinates would guess that behind his usual mask of calm was carefully suppressed panic. Not without reason the artisans hid on the river: the magic activity in Redstone was traditionally tracked well, mainly because of the presence of the university. Amulets scattered around the city were officially regarded as protection against the supernatural, but they could also fix any spike of magic background, regardless of its nature. On a daily basis the monitoring team recorded dozens of small flashes, but there were plenty of magic artifacts on the streets that could cause them; records of the
place and time of the outbursts assisted in NZAMIPS investigations from time to time, and that was it. The magic surge was very serious, if the magicians on duty recalled the statute and decided to play it by the book.

  The driver brought the captain to the Quay Barco in less than ten minutes. Locomotive expected to see signs of panic and destruction, but the street was quiet and sparsely populated. Still, that didn't mean anything in the case of a magic attack. A policeman, meeting NZAMIPS cars, waved his hand, inviting them to turn toward the docks.

  The situation at the docks was peaceful and sort of ordinary. A police officer questioned a company of drunken fishermen, and a criminal police van was parked to the side, meaning there were victims. The cops pulled a striped ribbon around a large boat hangar and chased the curious away. Locomotive went inside, not stopping for talk.

  Well, the hangar consisted of nothing ordinary. There was neither blood on the walls, nor a cadaveric stench, nor traces of fire, nor damage, except for an overturned barrel. And piles of dust were all around. Magician-criminologists were rummaging there, too, but of a lower rank, local from Redstone. One of them habitually saluted: subordinates respected Locomotive.

  "Amulets of instrumental control recorded an outburst of magic of level eight, no less, at 2:32 pm. There appear to be human remains—ashes. I cannot say yet how many people died. I'd like to show you something interesting."

  Carefully avoiding forensic specialists, rustling with their brushes, and stacks of boxes, the magician-criminologist took the captain into the back room. A seasoned professional, Locomotive whistled in surprise: against the wall there was a rank of crossbows, cocked and ready for firing; three or four more in the process of assembly were laid out on a long table; two uncovered boxes labeled "Hardware" predatorily gleamed with familiar parts. Boards on the far wall were pierced with bolts: the assembled weapon was tested in action.