My Path to Magic (27 page)

"What did they mean by the 'treatment'?"  Something in her story alerted me.

The charming secretary did not know anything about magic.  She tried to recall diligently the explanations given to her, using terms like "dissection of the contour" and "setting the axis".  I carefully listened, gradually realizing a nasty thing: she could say goodbye to Uther.  When the poor girl, biting her lower lip from effort, drew on a piece of paper the sign used in the "procedural room", my doubts were confirmed.

"They used the
shackles of deliverance
on the uninitiated magician," I concluded.  "Your boyfriend is already gone."

Her eyes opened wide in indignation.

"There's nothing you can do about it, dear, that's life.  You may think of him as passed away, and if he is still breathing, it is not an indication that he will live.  Any mage will say the same thing to you."

"No, they would not harm..."

"This is another issue: how they dared to perform that on him.  What kind of a doctor was that, who didn't know the basics?  Have you seen his license?"

She visibly shivered and timidly shook her head: "No, I haven't.  It was Mrs. Melons' Medical School..."

"I do not care about the school—the license of the healer is what is important.  Magic is as much a part of the human being as is the liver or the heart.  An initiated magician is taught how to separate the Source from himself; magic is like his third hand, so it can be cut off.  That would be unpleasant, but not deadly.  For an uninitiated mage, an attempt to remove the Source is equivalent to a strike by a hammerhead in the chest: the mind and personality get broken into debris and the body is still breathing, but the mind isn't functioning.  The body without the soul does not live long."

Bella seemed to grasp the meaning of what had occurred.

"Yeah, dear, they killed him.  I do not know purposefully or not.  It was like hitting him with a knife, only there was no blood.  If his relatives have not yet reported the case to NZAMIPS, being in your shoes, I would have done it immediately so that those charlatans won't kill someone else."

She became very pale and began to fuss, grabbing her purse, then her phone, then her purse again.

"Go, I'll let Polak know," my generosity knew no bounds.  "NZAMIPS head office is on Park Road; tell their chief that I referred you."

She sniffled, jumped up, and ran away.

Blessed silence!

I got back to my desk, habitually rubbed my cup to warm the coffee, and braced to familiarize myself with the shape the sewage tank had acquired in my absence.  My enjoyment was spoiled by waves of approval from
Rustle
.  Can you imagine—the revenant wight had demonstrated high ethics norms!  Had I known how, I would have killed it.  By the way, I should delve into the literature; perhaps there is a way to get rid of the monster.

It was mind-boggling how the brainless creature managed to find the only weak spot in the dark magician.  If
Rustle
had dared to pester me with visions of burning cities and the walking dead, I would have laughed.  But since childhood I have been told that helping people is a must!  Normally, I more or less ignored the unnatural impulses, pretending not to see anything heartrending, but
Rustle
pitilessly poked me into a conflict between my white upbringing and my dark nature. 

Too bad to be a dark raised in a white family.

I didn't see Bella the next day—she picked up her stuff from the office and disappeared forever.  Quarters said that the girl burst into asceticism and devoted her spare time to studying; she was going to be a doctor.  A useful thing to do!

But my involuntary humanism resulted in some consequences.

Surprisingly, NZAMIPS reacted vigorously to the incoherently mumbling girl: when the assault squad broke into the dubious clinic, the ill-fated Uther had already been dead and prepared for cremation, and there were two other dark children waiting in line for "treatment".  NZAMIPS apprehended everyone from the director to the floor cleaner, but most of the staff were peaceful herbalists, unaware that the owner of the establishment was playing with forbidden divination.  The tabloids came out with headlines like "Revival of the Inquisition" and "Police Lawlessness"; however, that did not stop the prosecution.  Authorities announced that the clinic would be closed and demolished, as the building had been desecrated by the sacrifice.

"Can you imagine—I had been there," the unusually serious Quarters twisted an almost full glass in his hands, "and saw that woman."

"Wanted to get a treatment?"  I was sarcastic.

"Bite your tongue!" Ron got angry.  "You're in a better position than me—your folks are far away, but mine see me every day.  Mother was a girlfriend of Melons’; they're now organizing a club of supporters."

"Supporters of whom?  Bella or Uther?"

"You won't understand," he brushed me off.  "Melons was... well... a typical white!"

"White is not synonymous with good," I said instructively.

"I know," Quarters frowned, "I did not think that everything had gone that far."

"Rent an apartment!" I advised sincerely.  "There is nothing better than life without neighbors."

Especially when you have the financial resources for that.

Uther was buried on the first day of the new school year, and not even one f*cking newspaper put a line in about him!  It was outrageous!

We railed in unison with
Rustle
; the result was frightening.  I did not know what
Rustle
was going to do, but I went to the university and personally asked every dark magician whose name I was able to recall (it turned out that I remembered quite a lot of them) whether he was aware that a white mage had killed a dark.  And guess what?  Everyone showed the liveliest interest to the case.  That was when I first heard the strange word "Artisan".  The oldest teachers spoke the word through clenched teeth with such hatred that I was ready to believe in the reality of a war between the dark and white.  By the end of the day, someone had painted on the walls of the central building the distinctive sign of a blood feud with the words, "Nintark is not forgotten!"  I wondered where that was.

White mages whispered in the corners about their enchanted friends, kidnapped and enslaved; freshmen, eyes round with terror and delight, questioned each other about some priests, but I had no clue about the artisans whatsoever.  It must have been something that I was supposed to learn through my family, but I never knew my father-dark, and Uncle did not condescend to enlighten me (though I shouldn't speak ill of the dead).

I tried to shake my classmates; it didn't pan out.  Nobody wanted to elaborate on the topic.  And then I recalled who owed me a favor.

Ironically, Captain Baer was not opposed to a chat.

"Remember, you promised me an answer to one question?"

"Yeah, you jackanapes!"

"I am what I am.  So, is your boss aware of the crystal?"

"Not yet.  What do you want to know?"

"About the artisans."

"That is a banned topic."

"Then lift the ban!"

For some time we looked into each other's eyes, and I got suspicious whether Captain Baer was a veiled uninitiated Dark.

"Why do you want to know?" he sighed, conceding.

"They could be a threat to me."

"I won't show you any documents, of course, but I can tell you if you pledge your word of honor.  Okay?"

"Fine!"

"Do you know the history of the First Period?"

I thoughtfully frowned.

"Okay, let's get more to the point, what is Roland the Bright famous for?"

"Isn't he a saint?" I ventured to suggest.

"Not only that," the captain sighed.  "Well, let's try a different approach.  Imagine that someone in Ingernika still believes that the source of the supernatural has been the dark magicians."

"Ha-ha!"

"Have I answered your question?" he raised his eyebrows.

"No, of course not."

"Then shut up and listen.  Do you think NZAMIPS deals with the dark only?  Hell, no!  Our main contingent is white magicians.  Don't laugh.  Try to picture for yourself what a white mage is.  I don't believe you can succeed, but try, at least!  They put other people on a par with themselves—and not only people.  They perceive both positive and negative emotions, without discrimination.  Do you understand?"

I recalled my experience with my own family and involuntarily winced.  The captain slightly brightened.

"It's good if a white mage grew up in a village; they see how nature works and learn about real life.  In a sense, they know that rabbits eat grass and people eat rabbits, and they do not put an equals sign between their family and the cows, for example.  A city-grown mage cannot put a rabbit in a cage (the animal would feel bad).  Their reactions are aggravated to hysteria, and they can do nothing with that—such is their nature.  Of course, NZAMIPS does its job, and empaths help, but the issue cannot be fully resolved.  Ordinary people laugh at the problems of the white; it's the theme of jokes.  And that is a mistake!"

The captain raised his finger: "A white takes on the entire pain of the world, and the desire to get rid of the pain is a very strong stimulus.  For such an incentive they would give away their life.  Most of them adapt somehow, especially the initiated ones—they can mute their Source.  But some can't or don't want to, or were stressed too much in childhood.  The latter becomes a problem: a request to ban eating meat, a fight for the rights of pets, a fight to take sewer rats under protection.  Or worse: they bother people and want to teach them how to live 'rightly'.  Those latter are our clients."

From his frequent repetition of the word "white",
Rustle
's tricks began to revive in my mind, and I decided that it was time to finish the verbiage: "What do the artisans have to do with that?"

"A lot!  The artisans and the like are sects relying on mentally unstable people, mostly from the white mages.  They exploit the legend of White Halak (read about it—this topic is not banned) and promise to build a world where everyone would be happy.  An ordinary man cannot understand the danger they carry.  The dark are almost impossible to manipulate; they're too independent.  But the white are trusting, suggestible, and industrious.  Before you know it, you are already opposed to the crowd of fanatics who firmly believe that they are fighting for the happiness of all humankind.  As a rule, they begin trying to 'treat' or simply exterminate all the dark within their reach."

"Sweet."

"And pointless.  One could build a world without grief only by annihilating all who could feel compassion.  These homegrown saviors are simply unable to grasp the simplest truth: life is suffering; life includes birth, disease, and ultimately death, and that is realistic."

So, all my visions had some basis, but it remained unclear whether that was good or bad.  However, I didn't have deep sympathy for an abstract white—abstraction lacked personality.  To
Rustle
with them!

"Are these idiots able to accomplish anything serious?"

The captain shrugged: "People don't really care.  In my youth, it was fashionable to believe in good intentions, and the artisans had become almost an official organization.  The upshot was that they had covered a whole city by a spell, thinking to save its inhabitants from evil thoughts."

"Is this possible?" I was shocked.

"It is possible, but for a very short time.  The real White Halak had existed for around seventy years; Nintark hadn't lasted over eight months.  They had lost forty thousand 'trial' people and another eight hundred men from NZAMIPS, standing in the cordon."

"I do not understand.  Was that an effect of the white spell that killed them...?"

"No, it wasn't.  It was an unidentified supernatural phenomenon.  White mages are absolutely helpless before the otherworldly—even more helpless than ordinary people.  The revenant creatures tend to crash a party, and they do not require dark mages to spawn them.  Therefore, we will fight these 'activists', no matter where they'll show up and what they'll call themselves.  We'll cry and sympathize, but beat them.  Got it?"

I hesitantly nodded.

"Now answer me," Captain Baer frowned, "was that you who blabbed about Uther?"

I straightened up shoulders and militantly jerked chin: "Yes, that was me!"

"Thanks."

I was taken aback: "For what?"

He shrugged: "We could have missed the boat with that case, because Mrs. Melons was a doctor.  And the capitol authorities advised us not to panic...  So, thank you.  You did well."

"You are welcome!" I could offer plenty of such services to them.

At night I had a dream about White Halak; the fact that I had never seen the town, even in pictures, did not hinder me.  People, no different from the
ghoul
s except for their red blood, walked along its streets.  They were as the blind—"see no evil, speak no evil"—because they could not even imagine that someone may (and had the right to) grieve, experience pain... die.

They weren't compassionate; no, they wanted suffering to disappear, and these are two different things.  All people should have been healthy and happy, or shouldn't have been at all—the happy zombies did not tolerate the elderly and sick among themselves.  In my dream I saw the mighty zombies that protected the borders of the fairy kingdom of White Halak by simply killing any creature that attempted to cross them.  The same zombies worked at the factories and fields, because the residents of Halak weren't able to put forth the effort needed for regular work; that is, work when it was necessary, but not when they wanted.  Why work?  The thirst for deeds could be satisfied in other ways.  They walked, ate, and painted strange scrolls on canvas and felt touched by them; they multiplied useless things and sounds; they slept together and did not know what to do with the resulting children—often getting rid of them before their birth.  I couldn't picture how the upbringing of children was done in their world, unless they assigned that job to the zombies too: to raise a full-fledged person is hard work, impossible without the use of some coercion.