The Time Master

by Dmitry Bilik

  Jan shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t have the Calligraphy ability.”

  Calligraphy? I made a mental note. I really needed to expand my list of skills. All I had at the moment was Insight. Not exactly the worst of abilities, but still.

  “So it’s this building?” I pointed to a cross on the map.

  “Yes. The Magister himself doesn’t go out. And the Seers don’t return until nighttime. They spend the whole day poking around the city. People are spreading different rumors.”

  “Like what?”

  “That someone killed a Kvorull. And he was some sort of a top gun or something like that.”

  “Chorul,” I corrected him. “So I guess you don’t know what that is.”

  “No, no one ever talked about anything like that in Noggle. Nor here, at least not until now... so where’s your expert?”

  I wasn’t going to tell Jan that Litius wasn’t an expert but just a brilliant creature with an amazing memory. For one thing, it was none of Jan’s business, and for another, I simply couldn’t break the non-disclosure oath. I had no idea what might happen to me if I did.

  “He’s on his way,” I said.

  We were sitting in a cheap tavern — one of those places where you couldn’t tell whether it stank of piss or beer. For some reason Litius wouldn’t let us visit him at home. Rather, he would have let me visit, but when he heard about Jan, he began stuttering and ultimately refused to have us come over. In short, he started to act like an ignorant Beastman.

  “There he is,” I said, sitting higher in my chair.

  Jan stood up and offered Litius his hand. Apparently, Jan knew nothing of the scorn that Players had for these cat people. Or rather, he hadn’t yet had a chance to imbibe it. Since Noggle was near Ullum, Jan used to see a lot of Beastman Seekers after he’d been initiated, so to him that was quite normal.

  “Did you g-g-get it?” Litius asked.

  “Here,” I said, holding out Jan’s artwork.

  Litius didn’t laugh at the sight of the clumsy drawing. Rather, he nodded approvingly, running a finger along the paper.

  “Can I get you something?” a server had materialized next to Litius.

  “A beer, please,” he said. When the girl had walked away, he gave us a long look. “Please don’t s-s-say you were expecting me to order some m-m-milk.”

  “Well, to be honest...” I began.

  “No, Sergei,” Jan shook his head. “They may be animals but they drink like fish. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right,” Litius shrugged. “It’s true. I would have said we drink like pigs. Anyway, look at this.”

  I leaned over the table and noticed that Litius had stopped stuttering.

  “The Seers have taken over the third building to the left of the Syndicate. You can’t reach it from the main entrance.”

  “Shit. So much for all the trouble.”

  “But,” Litius said, raising a finger, “you can access it along the roofs of the neighboring houses, starting from the commoner district.

  “Sorry! My name’s not Spiderman,” I said.

  “But you have a mage friend,” the Beastman pointed out.

  “I’m not Spiderman either,” Jan said, shaking his head.

  “What’s your Witchcraft level? Do you know the Ivy spell?”

  “It’s thirty-eight. I do know Ivy, and I also know Wild Ivy and Poison Ivy. But why-” Jan stopped mid-word, his eyes wide open. He looked first at me and then at Litius.

  “Damn man, you’re a freakin’ genius. I never would have thought of that.”

  “Can someone explain?” I demanded. “What’s with this Ivy thing?”

  “It’s a spell. It conjures up — surprise! — ivy,” Jan explained. “It’s a combat spell usually used to either immobilize or strangle your opponent.”

  Litis nodded. “In this case you’ll cast ivy from one roof to the next. Then just walk across it,” he picked up his beer, lapped it up quickly with his tongue, and then guzzled the rest in two huge gulps. “And you’ll keep doing that until you get to the Seers’ residence.”

  “Cool,” I nodded. “That’s what we’ll do, then.”

  “Sergei,” Jan said, elbowing me. “Are you sure this is worth it? If it doesn’t work, it’ll be our heads on the line.”

  “That’s why you two aren’t coming. I have no intention of blowing your covers. The Seers are looking for me and they won’t rest until they find me. The only option I have is to pay them a visit myself. But it needs to be impromptu and without warning, just a quick chat with their boss. Preferably involving strong arguments,” I lovingly stroked my knife, looking pensively at the two.

  “I hope there are no Prophets among them,” Jan said.

  “A Prophet isn’t omnipotent,” Litius pointed out. “He or she can’t consider all the options. But the Oracle is something else entirely.”

  “Then I hope there are no Oracles among the Seers.”

  For some reason, my response made them laugh. Not chuckle or smirk as well-behaved gentlemen are supposed to: no, the two guffawed like a pair of donkeys.

  “You can be sure that there’s only one Oracle in Cesspit,” Jan said. “And he doesn’t belong to any Order.”

  “In that case, this mission can succeed,” I said, getting up and shaking their hands. “See you tomorrow.”

  Jan nodded. “Two p.m.”

  I took all the necessary precautions on the way home: I rode one stop too far and walked back across the maze of backyards until I came to the semi-legal garages behind my house. I went into the lobby, walked up the stairs, and unlocked my door.

  I was greeted by silence permeated with the breathtaking aroma of deep-fried dough. I shut the door, took off my jacket, and practically ran to the kitchen.

  A plateful of sweet wafer rolls sat on the table, still soft and clearly mouth-watering. Never mind the condensed-milk filling was missing. I knew very well why: it’s been a while since I’d shopped for one of those delicious white cans[14].

  “Bumpkin, you’d better own up,” I said with my mouth full. “What have you done this time?”

  “Nothing really,” I heard from somewhere in the air either above or behind me. “I just dropped something.”

  Then it hit me: there was no music playing. I didn’t hear any of those Russian folk songs that the house goblin loved so much.

  I darted into the living room and turned on my computer, my fingers still greasy from the rolls. I spent a couple of agonizing minutes waiting, but fortunately there was no reason to be anxious. Everything was fine.

  “Bumpkin, come here.”

  The house goblin materialized next to me.

  “What did you break?”

  “I dropped it,” my freeloader answered curtly and pointed at the television.

  My so-called television was supposed to symbolize the long and winding road of progress. It was one of the first LED ones bought secondhand together with its heavy stand. I wouldn’t say that I used it often, as it was hardly a necessity.

  I turned it on and immediately saw some defective pixels on the left side of the screen, right where the channel’s logo belonged. It was actually more fun this way, trying to guess what channel you were watching.

  “Vera, you misunderstood me,” an actor babbled on screen.

  “Jesus! Can one get anything to eat in this house?”

  Aha, that was The Voronins, a brain-dead excuse for a sitcom. Therefore, this was STS.[15]

  Click.

  “...both the civilization and all knowledge of it sank into oblivion. Its traces weren’t uncovered until the early 20th century, strangely coinciding with the time when Rockefeller became one of the wealthiest men on Earth,” a voiceover pontificated.

  I couldn’t name the exact program, but the channel just had to be REN-TV.[16]

  Click.

  “And that’s why it happened the way it happened,” intoned an obese ex-celebrity.

  TNT.[17] Click.

  “They themse
lves sponsor terrorism and all sorts of lowlifes and then they say we’re the bad ones. That’s twisted logic.”

  This was either Channel One or Rossiya.[18] Whichever option you prefer.

  I pressed the red button. The screen went black, but I also pulled the plug out of the socket for good measure.

  “You know what, Bumpkin? You didn’t do anything bad.”

  For the rest of the day I did a little studying, texted with Julia for a while, ate the rest of the wafers, and nearly died from a burst stomach.

  In the morning I even woke up with a smile on my face. Bumpkin was puttering around in the kitchen, my phone showed a few new messages from my new crush, and instead of feeling fear in the face of a bold plan, I was actually quite confident of my powers.

  “Why are you glowing?” Hunter looked at me warily.

  “I just got enough sleep.”

  My Lying skill didn’t level up this time, which meant Hunter hadn’t believed me. He motioned me to the mats, and our usual training began.

  In fact, today I was in top form. Naturally, when it came to hand-to-hand, I was still no match for Hunter. But when we switched to knives, I managed to parry a few complicated blows that in the past I would have missed.

  Your Short Blades skill has increased to level 8.

  “Not bad. You have a knack for weapon fighting.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Was he praising me now, for the first time since we’d been working together?

  “If you keep up with that, we’ll move on to swords pretty soon.”

  That was quite a change! The only question was how I was supposed to carry a sword in public. It would be pretty conspicuous, wouldn’t it? A knife was much more unobtrusive.

  I laughed. I was an idiot, wasn’t I? What was my bag there for? That’s why I’d never seen a single Player in the community wearing full armor or clutching a battleaxe. You could stash everything away in your inventory.

  With that, we bid our good-byes and went home. A little later I looked through the peephole on my door and saw Hunter go downstairs, heading to work. If the truth were known, I should also come up with some sort of cover story. On the other hand, he was obliged to live a double life. How could you explain to people why a grown-up man still far from retirement age wasn’t working? You couldn’t. On the other hand, there were plenty of young people like myself loafing around doing nothing.

  I waited until I had to leave and crept out into the lobby. Bumpkin tut-tutted disapprovingly by way of goodbye. I walked past the school to the next bus stop over and rode to the community — or more precisely, a little past it. I went around it from the side of the old commoner buildings, where I met up with Litius and Jan.

  “Here,” Litius said, handing a piece of paper to Jan.

  It showed a sketched diagram of the buildings. It wasn’t like Jan’s childish drawing, but a proper scheme with starting and ending points.

  “If everything turns out OK, call me in three hours. If not, then...” he made a helpless gesture.

  “Got it. We’ll get to the house and then Jan will leave.”

  Jan nodded in agreement. We may have been friends, but he wasn’t signing up to be a suicide case.

  “If the shit hits the fan, we don’t know each other. Okay? Should we get moving?”

  We stepped into a small courtyard with a dilapidated sandbox at the center, two parked cars — a rusty Moskvich and a small Toyota — and a few dead branches of a young poplar poking through the cracked tarmac. Judging by the state of the battered two-story buildings, the residents were obviously waiting to be rehoused.

  “I hope no one sees us,” Jan said worriedly.

  “I have Smoke and Mirrors if anything happens,” I said just to calm him down.

  I chose not to tell him that its range was short and it only worked on one person. It would be useless against a crowd of gawkers.

  Jan went close to the wall and reached out his hand.

  A thick, sprightly green shoot appeared on the ground in front of him, breaking through the pavement. Submitting to his will, it looped several times, taking the form of something like a staircase, then stretched upward.

  “Let’s go,” Jan said quietly. We clambered up the plant onto the sloping roof of the house.

  “Litius, stay here. Take this,” I held out a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “If anything happens to me, call this person. His name is Hunter. Tell him everything.”

  Litius didn’t have to be told twice. He wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to cosplay running along roofs and chasing pigeons.

  Jan looked down and waved his other hand, destroying the Ivy. The plant wilted like a bush shredded with garden clippers. Jan reached out and waved his right hand again, casting Ivy on the neighboring building.

  We set off together, crouching down, as if that would help. It was rather frightening to say the least. Even though the stalk was covered in small, tiny bristles, you couldn’t quite call it hard. It caved in under our feet and sort of floated away down below.

  On top of that, when I’d almost reached the neighboring roof, a notification flashed before my eyes.

  Your Stealth skill has increased to level 1.

  You’ve reached level 5.

  Available points: 3

  Strength: 26 (x2)

  Intellect: 16 (x2)

  Fortitude: 20 (x)

  Agility: 17 (x4)

  Stamina: 15 (x)

  Rhetoric: 12 x3)

  Speed: 16 (x3)

  You’ve improved your current branch. You may decrease the number of charges used by one point for each use or increase the duration of the rewind by one second.

  This abundance of information made me lose my balance and almost come crashing down. Jan grabbed me, dragged me onto the roof and gave Litius a thumbs-up, signaling that everything was OK.

  “What’s up with you?” he demanded angrily.

  “Just a sec.”

  First I invested in Intellect — seeing as it had been sort of stuck; Agility, since I got such a big bonus; and Rhetoric. What did it say about the charges? Now I had 34 of them. Even if I decreased the number of charges by one point, I still had enough for three rewinds, not more. That meant I should increase the duration of the rewind.

  All set, now I could travel back four seconds. You’d better watch out, whoever you are!

  “Everything’s fine. Let’s go.”

  Jan nodded. I tried to walk around the roof to see if I could do it. These damned old houses! It was so easy to fall to our deaths — all it took was for you to let your mind wander for a split second.

  I crouched — not because I was trying to level up Stealth (there was no one here to hide from, was there?), but in order to be able to latch on to the roof with my fingers if I slipped. Finally, we reached the edge. Jan looked at the map, then at Litius, nodded, and cast Ivy again.

  Before stepping onto it, I looked around. The place was just too remote for my liking. Far ahead, I could make out the entrance to the community. In front of us lay the last commoner building, one story taller than the previous one.

  With the agility of a tightrope walker, Jan climbed the stalk and waved his arm. I just hoped I wouldn’t receive any notifications.

  And I jinxed it, didn’t I? Talk about the devil.

  Your Acrobatics skill has increased to level 3.

  I was already glad I didn’t get bombarded with more messages. Jan checked the map and waved again.

  This roof was nothing like the other ones. For one thing, its surface was flat and even: you could lie down on it and sunbathe if you wanted. Next, it offered an excellent view of the community. If any hapless commoners ended up here, they’d just see a bunch of dilapidated buildings — while we saw Players moving in and out in every possible direction. Archali, humans, Abbasses, even an occasional Beastman and a weird-looking creature I’d never seen before, all covered either in bark or in some green growth. Shame I wasn’t able to take a good long look at him. There
were also a few Guards.

  Jan yanked me by the arm, pointing first at the map, then at Litius. The Beastman was looking at us intently, like before — I would even say too intently. Never mind. What did we have here?

  This building proved much longer. When we got to the end, I realized that we were on the edge of the central square.