My Path to Magic

Chapter 1

Please do not think that I am making excuses; dark magicians are really very respectable people! And well provided for, by the way. Our world is full of odd, inexplicable powers and chilling phenomena that white wizards are helpless against. Commoners want safety and security that is unattainable without the dark magic power. Therefore, a dark magician is a highly paid and scarce specialist; in most counties, for every twenty and even thirty white enchanters, there is only one dark mage. Such was the consequence of an unwise policy of previous years that impaired that particular heritage in the nation. At least their descendants have realized it and repented. Therefore, the situation currently is like this: a genuine, professional dark magician is a very respectable man, but any self-taughts and amateurs are heavily persecuted. This is fair: while a white idiot’s mistake results in scorched cookies or hail instead of rain, a screwed up dark spell will trigger a disaster. Zombies, vampires, invisible beasts, ever-burning fires and an epidemic of lethargic sleep are some of the most innocuous consequences of our mistakes. That’s why we are all conscripted to serve in the army and almost entirely employed by the government; that’s why dark magic is often shamefully called “combat.” Our craft is not a good job for idiots!

Now, tell me how a student dark mage is supposed to develop his skills—not to mention some cash on the side—so needed by every college student?!

Well, in my first year I allowed myself to moonlight as a dishwasher and a waiter in a pub, but I gradually learned that wasting so much time to earn scraps was an unacceptable luxury. For the sake of a miserable couple hundred crowns in the present, I risked ruining my “bright” dark future. I had to find a job that for a couple hours a week would earn me the same money; otherwise, I would have looked forward to six years of penance, fasting, and abstinence. A grant from Ronald the Bright’s Fund covered tuition and housing, but the cash allowance from my dear family wasn’t enough for anything better than bread and milk in the big city where I lived. I could, perhaps, take a credit from the Gugentsolger’s Bank secured by my future earnings, as many students did, but that meant I would belong to these crooked penny-pinchers for a whole ten years after graduation from Redstone University of Higher Magic. Hands off me!

Of course, I meant to use my natural talent in the dark arts. I wasn’t going to call forth any filth or to flirt with the supernatural, but I could handle some magic. Small otherworldly phenomena were vulnerable to even the most ordinary rituals. I knew when to stop, never took up what I couldn’t manage, and even played it safe, relying on spontaneous curses: “donkey ears,” “loser’s tail,” “eviction of violent hobgoblins”—anything that did not carry deadly threat but made life difficult. (In our trade it was called “taking out the garbage”.) I charged little and did a thorough job, always taking into account the client’s wishes. Alas, it had ended stupidly. One bozo had fantasized that I cheated him out of his pitiful twenty crowns and reported me to the cops. He thought I tried to con him because I called him on the phone, imagine it! As it often happened with the commoners, he was convinced that all magicians were the same, and an image of a decent mage in his mind was that of an ordinary white magician. There were more of them, after all. All the white wizards actively dislike technology since it is unnatural, they think. I am dead serious! They prefer to drag themselves to a client through the whole city or send a courier. But the dark magicians coexist perfectly with any machinery: animated nonlife is right up our alley.

Mad with boredom, the cops had found me right away, but, fortunately, before I did anything. It’s not that easy to catch a dark mage with his pants down! I had never worried about ​​a police ambush before, but my common sense has always directed me to carefully consider my surroundings before venturing into something. Thus, they had found no evidence. However, any possible conviction for illegal spellcasting would put an end to my future career, and I had no choice but to deny everything.

Despite my exuberant character, typical for a dark magician, I had never even been to the police before, much less to the Special Department of Magic Affairs. And yet it seemed to me that the government agency should have looked somewhat different. That is, not a filthy basement with furniture bolted to the floor and light bulbs hanging loose on the cords. However, there was no mistake: everyone who worked there sported a badge with the abbreviation NZAMIPS. As far as I knew, this designation wasn’t decrypted in any official document, letting your imagination fly. Both the magicians and the townsfolk called this office simply, “NZAMIPS”.

At first, as we walked through the corridors, everything looked fine and civilized: inspectors spoke with visitors, couriers scurried back and forth, typewriters snapped, potted ficus trees blossomed. But then we went down to the basement and walked into that room: muddy plaster with brown stains, crumbling tiles on a concrete floor, dim light bulb flickering on the ceiling, iron table against the far wall and no chairs. This place had the refined atmosphere of the times when people could be burned alive just on a suspicion of being a magician. I felt as if I had been dunked into a tub of cold water.

Wasting no time, my convoy pushed me to the center of the room and handcuffed me to a chain hanging from the ceiling. Dear mother! There was a real iron chain with magic bracelets. I had seen such in a movie before. No, this couldn’t be real; I was sleeping.

The door had creaked nastily, and a new character showed up.

The new policeman was an ordinary man, not a magician, but with such a build that simply glancing at him made me uneasy. ‘That’s why all the books depict wizards as weaklings!’ whirled in my mind.

“Well, punk, are you gonna squeal?” this cross of a goblin and a steam train smiled sinisterly at me, rubbing his hairy paws.

Typically, the dark magicians are hostile, but even our militancy has some limit. In abject fear, I forgot everything that I was intending to say.

“Didn’t do anything!” I voiced my last argument.

In half of the cases, problems that people bring to magicians are purely of a psychological nature. A soulful conversation and an aromatic candle are usually enough to cure their woes. No wonder that a lot of university courses have nothing to do with magic! Among my clients there were no mages, so the cops couldn’t prove the fact of my witchcraft. I just was not sure anymore that they needed any proof.

The investigator slammed his fist on the table, and it became clear to me why the table was made of iron.

“Don’t try to lie to me! I see right through you!”

He grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me off the floor.

“Confess!”

It’s been a long time since someone dared to touch me without my permission—to a dark magician that was an invitation to fight. Was it any other guy, I would slam his face with my fists regardless of his body size. Even with my hands tied up, I would have chewed off his nose. But not with that cop! Everyone knew the gruesome nature of the dark magicians; no one would believe that I was not at fault. I tried to swallow a curse rushing from my tongue and smother the flames of my Source. To cast a spell on the policeman would be exactly the opposite of what I needed at the moment. Even not being a full-fledged mage, I would have chopped this idiot up like wood.

Meanwhile, it seemed the goblin had determined to commit suicide: he kept shaking me like a ragdoll and then leaned back and swung his hefty fist, aiming at my stomach. Until the very last moment, I had not believed he would hit me. In our modern, humane world, would our police really beat up a minor?! I hadn’t been prepared for that—that’s why my wheeze sounded especially pathetic.

What had started then was a nightmare: a sacred ordinance called by the dark mages the Empowerment and not similar at all to the Initiation of the white magicians. The difference between them is fundamental: the whites are forced to beg and flirt with their Source to extract its Power and not to frighten it; but our Source itself will scare off, if not drain, anyone. Under normal circumstances, the Empowerment is a long process, the essence of which is carefully concealed from the novices. The procedure requires the presence and assistance of several recognized masters to reduce the possibility of deadly outcomes. I, however, got smacked into this with no safeguards.

For a moment, a dark flame had blinded me, darting to my throat like a hot wave, trying to take away my senses and willpower. It was worse than being in front of a judge: my own Power was ready to crush and subdue me. It was impossible to be prepared for this, as such readiness could not be developed even with time and practice; the Empowerment was a moment of revelation, after which you either remained yourself or ceased to exist. And in that particular case two lives were at stake: a tiny protuberance of the Power escaped from my control would have transmuted the foolish cop into a skeleton. There was no time left for deliberation. Waiting for instructions (from whom?) was senseless; I had to cling to the raging Power with all my claws and teeth and tear, tear, tear… And you know what? That despicable thing was doing the same to me. For a few minutes we were like two grappling cats, my yin to its yang, and then, with an incredible effort of will, in the existence of which I had not believed before, I managed to plug and tame that flow and emerge on its surface, under the blinding light of the bulb.

The attack had passed as quickly as it had begun.

The Source hid somewhere inside me like a dog who had soiled the floor. To teach it to serve me and give me its “paw” in submission required long and hard work, but the process had been initiated. Not daring to believe in my salvation, I cautiously took a deep breath. And then my gaze fell upon the cop, who looked me in the eye with a suspicious gleam of intelligence.

I am a magician, and for the magicians the psychic shocks are worse than physical trauma. The effort that was required to complete the ritual had bottomed out my reserves. All of these terrible things: the walls, the light bulb on the cord, his face—came together in my brain, magnified as if by a lens; I gasped and fell unconscious. The last thing left in my mind was the cursing cop trying to keep me upright.

I do not know for how long I was passed out, but probably for quite a while; by the time I opened my eyes, there were more people milling about. Besides the goblin, I saw a young officer (a dark magician, if my senses are correct), and an elderly white mage with a stethoscope on his chest. On the faces of all three I read a purely medical interest.

“How are you feeling, young man?” That was the old guy. I mumbled in reply something that satisfied him. “The first acquaintance was a success!”

For some strange reason, the attitude toward me had changed dramatically. Even the goblin-like cop hadn’t yelled, instead grunting almost kindly.

The next thing that I remembered was a conversation with a pretty woman officer in a sunny and spacious room. Honestly, it would be a stretch to call it a conversation; she gave me a long, heartfelt lecture about the dangers of careless witchcraft, occasionally slipping under my nose disgusting photos from the police files to illustrate her thesis. What she said I knew already in theory and would have preferred to avoid looking at human stumps and giblets, but I did not want to open a lengthy discussion. I nodded and agreed with everything.

Perhaps the shock of clashing with the prose of life added some credibility to my words; ultimately, they believed in my virtue. They put me in a file, warned me that I would be under the watch, threatened to call my dean’s office, and finally kicked me out, not caring how I’d get home in such condition.

“Breathe! It will only make you stronger!” goblin laughed. “Join us after graduation—General Miklom will always find a job for a brave kid.”

At this point, I was caught up in revelation: I realized that I would never, ever work for the police.

Making my way to the exit of the building, I ran into the stoolie, my backstabbing client. The guy was still giving his testimony, but, seeing me, he became agitated and waved his hand.

“I understand,” he began briskly, “you cannot help me today, but, perhaps, on Thursday…”

Apparently, he thought that after all that had happened I would still work for him. Truly, the sweet simplicity is worse than witchcraft.

“I do not understand what you are talking about,” I muttered and stumbled away.

Let him deal with the “evil eye” by himself! He will be very fortunate if the “cleaning” service charges him less than two hundred crowns.

Passing through the gleaming glass and copper of the main entrance of the police department, I still could not fully comprehend my luck. My imagination turned window designs into camouflaged jail mesh, and every move behind them betrayed a spying gaze on me. An arch over the courtyard resembled an entrance to a tomb. Having moved away from the police building to a safe distance, I turned into a small park and sat on the nearest bench, trying to put my jumbled feelings in order. The evening had not yet come; from the moment I had entered the client’s apartment, four hours had elapsed at most.

But it sure felt like a lifetime had passed.

Thoughts slowly caught up with my stupid head.

Apparently, there wasn’t going to be a court trial. Not that I did not understand what I was doing (dark magicians start learning the law while still in high school), but I sincerely believed that I could afford some flexibility in interpretation of the legislation by taking precautionary measures. So typical—how many times do we have to hear that the matches are not toys before we realize that the rule applies to us as well?

“This world does not belong to magicians, either white or dark,” I recalled the words of Uncle Gordon (to tell the truth, he was not quite my uncle, but I digress). “Do you think there have not been enough wiseasses trying to prove otherwise?”

Yes, Uncle, there have been quite a lot of them, and it isn’t by chance that they were all idiots. Any magic, especially white, doesn’t make new things; its essence is an illusion. It won’t turn lead into gold or make bread out of sand or wine out of water. Bread, wine, and gold for magicians are made by real people, so you should never anger them—you cannot afford it (and this isn’t just some theory, it’s a verifiable fact)!

But what to do with our innate nature, our character traits that have long become a byword? For twenty years you learn the rules, but once your mentors are done with you, you immediately forget them and go back to level zero. It’s sad to admit, but dark magicians are more receptive to learning lessons through getting their ass kicked, and I was no exception to the rule. I guessed I should be grateful to the cops: they slapped my wrists right on time, halting the development of pathological inclinations in my character.

The only confusing moment left was behavior of the goblin-like officer (of course, he was not an actual victim of a secondary magic mutation, but a striking similarity to a goblin in appearance was there). What did he really want from me, and why did he give up? It was unlikely that my fainting had caused him to stop; if he feared accusations of police brutality, he would not have called witnesses while I lay unconscious. Personal prejudice against dark magicians? Then NZAMIPS wouldn’t keep him—if he were not expelled by coworkers, then customers would beat him up for sure. But do I really care for the issues that cops might have?

My tamed Source was devotedly licking my wounds, while I quietly enjoyed the happy ending. Only the dark magicians are able to relax while sitting on a busy intersection. All the white mages familiar to me were obsessed with face-to-face contacts and personal space and could loosen up only in tranquil surroundings. But to me, the impersonal, mechanical movement of the masses had a more profound calming effect. The never-ending city noise I perceived as music.

Carthorses pulling a covered wagon emblazoned with the logo of a famous transportation company sullenly marched along the pavement. The huge beasts, almost three meters at the withers, were bred by magic and controlled by it. An abundance of “horse power” was typical for Redstone. For those who liked speed and weren’t burdened with luggage, a merry tram rang along the rails. A rumbling limousine propelled by an “alcoholic’s dream” engine had crossed the intersection. I had sniffed after it, hoping to catch a familiar scent of spirits, and enviously watched the car passing by. No comparison with the tram! I had great respect only for the steam engines, but within the city boundaries the trains were not allowed: too many university students were white magicians, for whom a clash with a hissing and steaming iron horse caused severe stress and nervous disorders. Give them any authority, and they would make all of us change back to horses! The municipality was very proud of the fact that all of the power plants had been relocated to the suburbs.

I smiled dreamily, imagining myself in a limousine. A successful dark magician could afford more than that. So far, I hadn’t committed any fatal missteps, hadn’t been charged with anything, and didn’t need to run away. In essence, two ideas were crowding my mind: first, I could be congratulated on becoming a full-fledged magician, and second… how was I supposed to make money now?

The current chief of the Department of Magic Affairs, Conrad Baer, was a cop of the sixth or even seventh generation. His ancestors began to serve the law shortly after the last king had left Ingernika. They had steadfastly safeguarded their fellow citizens during the awful years of plague and in the times of trouble at the turn of the millennium, occasionally distracted by civil wars and revolutions. The key to the success of the dynasty was the unique physical characteristics of the Baer family: the look of the Department’s chief could discourage even the most boisterous dark magicians. Since his college days, Conrad proudly carried the nickname “Locomotive” and was the first member of his dynasty to be promoted to captain. This latter fact was considered a source of pride, but sometimes with a touch of bitterness.

With noticeable relief, the captain took off his anti-magic protective suit. Government specialists made this thing look like a regular police uniform, but it weighed as heavy armor. But wouldn’t you put on anything for the sake of saving your own life? Contact with young magicians, possessing unknown powers and temperament, demanded extreme precautionary measures.

Wiping sweat from his neck with a paper towel, Locomotive pulled out a phone and dialed a familiar number. The massive apparatus with brass handle and a pearl insert on the disk liked to play tricks on the captain, but it always connected him to this number on the first attempt.

“Lucky you!” the captain announced to an invisible interlocutor. “I met your godson today.”

“How did it go?” someone on the other end wondered vaguely.

“Hard to say. Initially I thought they had messed up his file, attributing him to the mages. He fainted, can you imagine?”

A quiet chuckle came out of the phone.

“Yes, his father was also very reserved. He will become a powerful magician!”

“Strong, that’s for sure. I have recorded his aura; drop by when you have time, take a look. We’ll pray together.”

“Thanks!” the tube commented. “I owe you.”

The captain waited until he heard a dial tone but did not put the phone back. Instead, he took a bottle of malt whiskey out of a drawer and measured a cup. Usually, he did not drink during work hours, but today was especially nerve-wracking.

Conrad Baer was not a magician and did not feel magic powers. He understood what had happened in the cell only after viewing a record on a crystal that permanently engraved this event for his superiors. It was then that he decided to have a drink. Due to the proximity of Redstone University, his department had a special covert function: to tease dark magicians in order to get an imprint of their aura. The not-quite-so legitimate procedure was helpful in avoiding problems with their identification later on, but it was recommended before the initiation of a magician and certainly not during it.

The captain, being a knowledgeable police officer with fifteen years of experience, stupidly and foolishly put himself under the attack of the combat magician; any anti-magic protection would not have saved him if the kid had lost consciousness three seconds earlier. It was hard to tell what the thing rushing toward him from the transcendent depths was willing to incarnate into, but the consequences of such events the captain had seen before. The glitter of the walls fused into glass, puffy bluish dead bodies in the police uniform, green pools of slime in the spots where people stood a minute before—that was only a small part of the surprises that dark magic concealed! The boy kept control over his power, and for that he deserved if not full forgiveness of his sins then at least a good discount.

But one couldn’t trust the phone with such revelations, so nobody knew about Captain Baer’s second birthday, and he had to celebrate it alone.

Chapter 2

An echo of the encounter with NZAMIPS reached me on Tuesday, during a lab on alchemy. I had already handed in my notebook with finished lab assignment and idly wondered if I could remotely ignite magnesium shavings in a flask on the professor’s desk. Close connection with the Source inside provided me with interesting possibilities… One thing stopped me: I was the only magician in the classroom. That wasn’t a joke! Half of the students at the University of Higher Magic were not magicians; our school became well-known for its Faculty of Alchemy instead. It is believed that the alchemic talent is as inborn in people as a talent for magic, only it is harder to find. By the way, I received a scholarly grant from Ronald the Bright’s Fund for winning an alchemical tournament. I always liked to watch the pendulum swing, play with lens light refraction, and mess around with chemicals, especially with those that had a propensity for burning and exploding. Unfortunately, due to that, lab classes turned for me into a real torture—I could hardly keep myself from trifling.

Before I had a chance to pull off something nasty, a freshman had opened the door without knocking and cried out: “Provost calls for Tangor!” and ran away.

My mood went sour immediately.

A dark magician in a bad mood is the worst curse possible. Dying of curiosity, my classmates pretended to rifle through their notebooks, but they hesitated to offer any comments. After the bell had rung, Ronald Rest, known as Ron Quarters, burst into the classroom, almost knocking the professor down. Clearly, he wasn’t scared of mages, either dark or white.

“What’s up, Thomas?” Quarters yelled. “Dragon summons you!”

Thomas Tangor is me. I categorically do not accept any nicknames, because “Tangor” is already short enough.

“Hi,” I muttered, unwilling to develop the conversation further.

“What have you done?” Quarters poked about.

“Got into a fight.”

“Ooh,” he stretched the sound out in disappointment and left.

Yes, a fight involving a dark mage student is corny, boring, and uninteresting. Fits the dark magician image too closely. In contrast to the faint-hearted white enchanters, we love open conflicts, and the sight of blood pleasantly excites us. Not of our blood, naturally. University administrators have always been faced with a tragic dilemma: to order the dark to behave the same way as other students is useless, but to leave such behavior unpunished is untenable. And then some smartass (if I had known who, I would have raised him from the grave!) had found the perfect solution: correctional work. Something like scraping pots in the university canteen or cleaning stables and toilets. To refuse meant a discharge from the university for breach of the discipline code. For three years I was able to avoid this dubious “joy”, but yesterday’s visit to NZAMIPS seemed to put an end to my fortune…

No, I have nothing against discipline, but I would like to note that some of the so-called “mere humans” turned out to be bigger assholes than any dark magician. Look at Ronald Rest, who got his nickname because each time before getting piss drunk he demands “just a quarter” of booze and, having loaded up, begins harassing all males and flirting with all females. Taught by bitter experience, his classmates learned to leave a pub at his appearance. Well, Quarters perceived correctional work as an outrageous indulgence for the dark magicians.

Anything but the stables…

I came up to the door of the Vice Chancellor’s Disciplinary Office for problematic students (a euphemism used at the university to name the dark mages), feeling apprehensively sick in advance. A brass plate on the door announced that Prof. Darkon dwelled behind it.

Contrary to my expectations, the prorector did not look angry or irritated.

“I was told that you spent a couple of hours in our favorite facility yesterday,” he winked conspiratorially, while I shuddered at the memory. “Do not take the incident to heart.” In response to my puzzled look he explained, “All dark magicians are brought to the police at least once during their studies. This is another law of nature, and you are not the one to break it.”

Personally, I did not care about the statistics, but keen interest flashed in the prorector’s eyes:

“Did you try your magic on the cop?”

I shook my head frantically. “How could I dare?! An assault on a law enforcement officer with application of magic would be pure suicide.”

“Congratulations! Therefore, the first record in your file will be ‘very trustworthy’. Believe me, for your career it will mean more than the best references,” the professor switched to a confidential tone. “With years of experience behind my back I believe that they aim at driving detainees out of their wits; perhaps, it’s the only way to understand a magician’s potential. A rather risky way, though.”

I parted with the prorector; we shook hands as people united by the injustice we both experienced. I was dying to learn what offense he had committed in his time. After leaving the office, I recalled that I did not mention that Empowerment had already happened to me. Okay, maybe next time. I will just be a little more careful.

Now that my affairs with NZAMIPS had been settled, another problem loomed: making cash. Recount and rigorous calculation of my expenses showed that my savings would last for a month or two. My acquaintance with the goblin was still too fresh in the memory, and I did not dare to earn money illegally.

I had to find a job.

As a man of action, I walked around the neighborhoods adjacent to the campus, looking for a vacancy that would open by summer. The University of Higher Magic was a special school; it did not impose any exams, except at admission and graduation, which was quite logical. The art of magic could not be mastered in a hurry. Education was divided into many, many intermediate control points; however, following an ancient tradition, teachers took a break twice a year: two months in summer and three weeks in winter. During winter breaks, most of my classmates stayed in town, but in summer the university was almost deserted. The time just before the summer vacation was best to grab someone else’s place…

Alas! Most vacancies implied a job for white magicians; in rare cases, for ordinary people, but no employers wanted problems with a dark mage student, especially on the eve of Empowerment. Despicable discrimination! If you are a dark magician, do you not need money?

The only real option was to clean the floors in the tram depot at night. No, thank you, when would I sleep then? In the third year, students began specializing. Since I had already been initiated, it made sense to take the full course of witchcraft. To cerebrate over a pentagram after physical work, risking my life? No way, better to hit myself in the head with a stone.

I had two choices: to apply for a credit from Gugentsolger’s Bank or ask my family for assistance. The problem had to be solved fast. I decided to start with the family. What the hell? A lineage of hereditary dark magicians could not be poor! I didn’t need much—just 50-60 crowns a month; my mother was sending me 20, or occasionally 30 (on Christmas), and sincerely believed that was sufficient. We needed to talk seriously in person, not through the mail. For the first time in two years I decided to use one more privilege of the Roland the Bright’s Fund fellowship—a paid roundtrip home.

Actually, summer visits home are more typical for the white mages. I always wondered how they managed to come back on time, if they did not travel in an “iron horse.” Ron Quarters was about to leave for the Southern Coast accompanied by two sophomore girls and invited me along, but I stubbornly declined his invitation and spread rumors that I had some serious business to do at home. I desperately did not want to look like a poor beggar in the eyes of my friends.

Purchasing a ticket was easy—the first railcar in the train was not popular among passengers. Very few people traveled to our region in summer, just like in any other season for that matter. For starters, the mountainous plateau at the western extremity of the continent was famous for the worst climate throughout Ingernika. It was neither cold nor hot, the number of sunny days in a year could be counted on one’s fingers, and fog was very common. Second, the inhabitants were kind of savages: Krauhard’s peasants were full of prejudices and superstitions, they interweaved silver threads into horses’ manes and dark cat fur into their blankets, and they nailed ram’s horns over the gates. A place of depression, with icy rain and squally winds—the white mages would not be able to stand it. Furthermore, this was the place for the otherworldly creatures. The supernatural manifestations occurred here much more frequently than in any other place. To the local folks, it was a matter of pride and a source of permanent anxiety. Even children knew of the simplest rituals of expulsion; ancient, covered with cryptic signs and stelae were on every street corner, and on clear days one could see from the shore the frightening and alluring King’s Island. Hardly a surprise, then, that one in five Krauhardians was a dark magician.

I sat on the bench of a railroad car alone and mindlessly gazed at the passing landscape through puffs of smoke. The thick greenery of the windbreak looked like a tunnel; fields, cows, white cottages, and enormous straw bales flashed through the rare breaks in the trees. With hidden impatience I waited for the evergreen trees to be replaced with low-lying shrubs and weeds, and fields with rocky wastelands and deep ravines, but the first greeting from the motherland came as rain. Of course.

I slept through most of the trip, and the time of our arrival—despite its early hour—was cheerful and fresh. Luggage-wise, I had almost nothing: a small backpack and a wicker basket. I also could not resist the temptation and had bought a couple of gifts for my mom and younger siblings, firmly sending my finances into the red. The conductor, heroically restraining his urge to yawn, courteously unfolded a ladder onto the platform. He helped me off and sincerely wished me a good trip, while thick, milky fog reigned all around.

As soon as I dove into the moist, faintly roiling haze, I realized how badly homesick I was. All that I liked in urban settings—the fumes of vehicles and their never-ending movement—was only a poor surrogate for this mysterious, enveloping pseudo-existence. The steam engine, invisible in the fog, whistled pitifully, the departing train faintly clanged, and I strode along the platform, past the “Wildlife Outpost,” trying to remember the location of the descending path.

The fog started barely breaking away from the ground; in an hour there would be no trace of it. Thanks to its lift, I first noticed feet of people meeting me and only later discerned their faces. I was greeted by a pair of ladies’ shoes on low heels (simple and worn-out), men’s boots of the type “not afraid of mud,” and four horse hooves. It was the hooves that I recognized—you do not often see a horse with all four legs of different colors.

“Hi, Mom!”

A woman in a black knitted jacket rose out of the fog. I would have recognized her anytime and anywhere. She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek.

“Hi, Tommy! How are you? How was your trip?”

“Excellent!”

“Hello, Thomas. The children have been waiting for you for three days; all the neighbors know that their brother is coming back. Don’t be alarmed.”

Before turning to the speaker, I took a deep breath, bringing myself into the state which I commonly used when communicating with my clients: detached benevolence, respect without familiarity. I was sure I was better at it now than two years ago. He stood next to my mother, smiling, one of only three white magicians in Krauhard. My stepfather.

“Let’s go,” my mother hurried me to a horse carriage.

I caught myself thinking that, while imagining this meeting, my memory had been skipping over, in some tricky way, a man I had known for more than ten years; that is to say, not even a sole thought of him had arisen in my mind. Perhaps the brain cannot remember what it does not understand. My stepfather climbed onto the coach box, and my mother sat down next to me, while I, smiling, was still striving for a sense of recognition.

Dark and white magicians cannot unite in a single family. These are two different species of people, different universes. As common interests, we had food only; indeed, we even slept in different ways. Regarding to my upbringing, my stepfather could not argue with me at all, and punishing me was completely unrealistic. Since our first acquaintance (me—eight, him—thirty-two) he was just Joe to me, but I was Thomas to him (at first, even Mr. Thomas). I always considered myself senior to him. The reason did not lie in any magical metaphysics, because my dark talent was still asleep, and his white one was never too strong. Personalities, attitudes, perception of the world—everything was different between us as night and day.

He liked to sit by the fire and read a book, while I showed up at home only long enough to eat. He tended and nurtured flowerbeds with exotic daisies; I repaired a lawn mower in the barn. He brought a good-natured rough-legged horse to our house that took pleasure in carrying our family to the market and to neighbors on weekends. I had bought a scooter on my first salary, awfully rattling and reeking of alcohol, and, whenever I had time, rolled it out to the driveway in front of the house and cleaned, adjusted, and fine-tuned. That way, we grated on each other’s nerves for long six years after his marriage to my mother. Only now, after studying at Redstone University for two years, did I understand the nightmare he had been living in. The day I received a scholarship from Roland the Bright’s Fund must have been the happiest day of his life.

“Well, how are things at home?” I tried to be polite.

“Fine. Thomas,” my mother hesitated, but I patiently waited, “we need to have a serious talk.”

When she called me by my full name, I knew it was something serious.

“Yes?”

“Lyuchik has revealed a talent,” she took a deep breath. “A white one.”

“Congratulations!”

What else could I say? A young white magician is like a naked nerve, totally susceptible to any outside influence. A wrong word, a sharp look, and the kid would fall into deep emotional distress. Later he would grow older, stronger, but right now… And moreover, his brother, a dark one, came to see him.

“You see…” my mother began in embarrassment.

Now, after two years at Redstone, I was genuinely able to see.

“I’ll be careful!” I promised sincerely.

I was sure of myself, but what about the others? There was no place less appropriate for a young white mage than Krauhard.

“How will he cope in our village?”

The best for them would be to move away from here; it was long overdue. Mother shrugged:

“We are trying to accommodate him, but with our income one cannot expect much.”

“Has my father left nothing? I cannot believe that a dark magician did not know how to make a living!”

“You probably do not remember… We did not struggle like now when he was alive. There were some savings, but when your father… died so suddenly, I could not find what he had invested his money in.”

A silly situation, isn’t it?

“We had a state pension previously, but when you turned eighteen, they took us off the payroll.”

And a family of four was left to live on only a schoolteacher’s salary.

“You should have mentioned that to me; I would have sent you money!”

She smiled: “What kind of money does a student have?”

Indeed, what money was I talking about? Oh, the money…

“I would have thought of something!” I replied stubbornly.

“Do not spout nonsense; you need to focus on studying. You are very talented! Your father would be very proud of you.”

The cunning plan to increase my monthly allowance failed splendidly. Well, now my conscience would not let me take a cent from her. It was a blow… But if I did pick up something from the white magicians, it was their ability to treat all setbacks philosophically. A very important quality! Well, I will enjoy my vacation in Krauhard then.

The horse hoofs clicked loudly on a cobbled road, and the old carriage’s springs creaked in accompaniment. The fog thinned, revealing moss-covered granite boulders, curved trees, and trailing shrubs. It was summer and bindweed was in bloom. The carriage had passed a cleft, and a valley, fairly wide for Krauhard, opened up in front of us. Its gently sloping southern side was covered with greenery, cattle grazed in the pastures, and the windows of houses with roofs of brown shale glimmered happily. Another half an hour, and I would be at home!

The reception was cordial and loud. Lyuchik, all grown up, shouted and jumped as if there were four of him, although his younger sister barely remembered me at all and felt shy. But virtually nothing had changed. It was the same country house with boisterous chickens in the yard and a neat small front garden, where my stepfather tried to grow roses in a climate perhaps only suitable for sagebrush.

I noticed small, colorfully painted boxes in the garden.

“What is it?” I asked, shuddering inwardly, already suspecting the answer.

“You know, while you were gone, I thought…”

“Bees,” I stated in a suddenly sunken voice.

If there are any creatures in the world that I cannot stand at all, it would be those nasty, buzzing, biting insects. Yes, it will be a fun summer.

My mother prepared a table on the open patio. And when I say open, I mean indeed, open for everything and everyone. In addition to the expected guests, the smell of freshly made bread and baked apples attracted the unwelcome visitors. The joy of my return home was spoiled, not to mention my appetite.

The bees treated me with suspicion. Small aviators flew around me with a thoughtful humming, trying to get in my face.

“Do not fear them!” Lyuchik tried to persuade me.

A young white magician was comforting me, an initiated dark! If I relax for a moment and they bite me… I didn’t want to think about it! I knew nothing about taming my Source, and its second awakening might be much worse than the first one with the cops. The lecture of the female police officer came alive in my memory with an amazing clarity—especially the photos with bodily fragments. I have to control myself; I cannot harm people I love, whether they are white or dark. But that was easier said than done.

I had to spend only half a day there to understand that the night when something would buzz over my head would be the last one for all dwellers of the house. It was not a joke. I urgently had to consult with another dark magician; luckily for me, they weren’t exactly hard to find in Krauhard.

“Ma, I’ll drop by Uncle Gordon’s to say hi. He hasn’t moved out, has he?”

“Where would he go to, that old bore!” mother snorted. “Go, go. He already stopped by here today and asked about you, but the bees scared him off.”

Poor Uncle Gordon.

My desire to visit the old man did not surprise anybody—he was closer to me than my stepfather; he was a second father to me. It is an axiom that raising a dark mage requires another dark; even ordinary people do not cope well with the task, not to mention white mages. This was the case when you had to be firm and flog a child severely for seemingly innocent pranks to discourage the youngster from trying something nastier next time. Don’t preach to me about the fragile psyche of children, I know what I am talking about! While growing up, you begin recognizing your wrongdoings at some point, but you are yet too young to have the strength to cope with the dark nature. Having been beaten, you give yourself a solid pledge—never again!—and sometimes you even keep your word.

As far as I can remember, Uncle Gordon has always been a friend of our family. I owe him my love for alchemy and a relatively flawless character. He was also the only inhabitant of the valley who built a house on the northern slope, among stunted trees and lichen. It was not because of his nature: he had a lot of machinery in his yard and barn—Uncle was the village mechanic. When I showed up, he was tinkering with his broken-down truck; the clunker puffed even more smoke than two years ago, if that were at all possible. Uncle noticed me and waved to go straight to the kitchen, where he appeared a few minutes later, wiping his hands with a cloth. He smiled with a tint of malice:

“How do you like your home?”

“Uncle, do not even start!” I brushed him off and then put the question squarely. “We must do something, or else I’ll kill them all!”

Uncle Gordon jerked his brow.

“Are you that edgy?”

“I can barely control the Source.”

“But your initiation is supposed to happen in the fall!”

“Has happened already.”

He put his chair in front of my own and ordered: “Speak!”

Well, I told him everything. I did not think that it would be quite so unbearably shameful to narrate to him my shady dealings. But Uncle was not angry, he was deathly serious: “Don’t tell anyone else about it! Got it?”

“Why?”

“Because an uncontrolled ‘wild’ Empowerment means an almost guaranteed ban on practicing magic. At best, they will expel you from the university, at worst, put the shackles on you, and you will have to register with NZAMIPS office every week.”

“But why?!”

Uncle Gordon sighed.

“Have you read about Bloody Baldus? About Crom the Ripper? An uncontrolled Empowerment brings Power with unpredictable properties; the most common spells in your case could act as the armory curse. Mental instability and risk of madness go hand in hand with it. Who would allow such a risk?”

“But… what should I do?”

“Keep silence!”

“Is that legal?” I was amazed. Uncle usually didn’t give advice with a criminal tinge.

“Look at it this way: the authorities keep silence about what has happened to you. These bloodsuckers have recorded an imprint of your aura. The moment of the Empowerment should be clearly visible on your chip, but had they admitted that you were injured because of them, someone in NZAMIPS would have been in big trouble. Their chicanery annoys many, believe me! They are waiting for you to wag your tongue or lose control on the official test, and then you will never be able to prove their guilt.”

“I needed to speak out right away…”

“No, you have done everything right! You were alone, you had no witnesses—especially mage-witnesses—and you will never get access to your aura crystal. They aren’t stupid! So why should you be the one taking the fall? I’ll show you how to fake the Empowerment on the official test. Of course, from now on, you will have to be very careful, think a hundred times before doing something, and visit an empath upon noticing any deviations, but your life does not have to end here.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You are Toder’s son. I owe much to your father and hate to think that they will destroy your future to cover their own mistakes. Keep your pecker up! In the past, all dark magicians went through spontaneous Empowerment, and it worked out fine; only a few of them had problems.”

I immediately thought of Baldus the Bloody. Uncle went to the kitchen, rustled with something in the closet, and returned with a small opaque vial in his hands: “Here it is, drink this. It’ll suppress all your magic abilities. A folk remedy. Though the stomach will feel a little twisted for a while.”

I sniffed the bottle suspiciously—the liquid inside had a scent of garlic.

“Stay at home for a couple days so that NZAMIPS won’t become suspicious. Then I will get you into an expedition.”

“Where to?”

“Where necessary! Some morons from Ho-Carg came to our village, some kind of archaeologists from the capital. They are going to dig on the King’s Island and are looking for seasonal workers. Of course, no locals will work for them (no fools here), so they will grab someone like you immediately. I suppose I will also have to go with you…”

Having heard that, I gulped down the content of the bottle with no objections. The strange liquid flowed into my stomach as if it was lead, but it did not cause any immediate catastrophic changes. In fact, it produced no changes at all. No matter how much I tried, I could not detect in myself a sensation of decreasing Power, or any kind of internal weakness. Uncle noticed my anxiety, smiled, and told me to go home.

Yes, it was time to go home: night was falling, and the village was not illuminated. What could you do? The countryside isn’t quite like your typical city. I ran home following a long familiar path (directly across the rocks, the creek, and by the gardens), and my thoughts swirled around the strange turn of my fate. From whatever side I looked at it, Lady Luck smiled at me. Please get me right, I don’t give a shit if I can’t practice dark magic (I am going to be an alchemist anyway), but the general public is suspicious of people that are under NZAMIPS’ supervision. For them, the mere existence of surveillance implies psychopathic behavior. I would have died from the effort of trying to explain that I wasn’t the one to blame! But the problem had been solved even before it manifested itself.

And then, as if in compensation for my anxiety, an exotic excursion materialized on the horizon. Holy crap, the King’s Island! Well, who of the dark magicians wouldn’t love a chance to feast their eyes on that place? How timely was my arrival in Krauhard!

Chapter 3

My summer vacation, so troublesome at the start, returned to normal: Uncle’s potion spoiled my appetite but seriously improved character. I never thought that fluctuations in the Source could so strongly influence my mood.

The potion happened to be very timely: now I could handle my younger sister and brother without irritation. No, I’m not against children, but two years ago, when we were on equal terms, the little ones had not pestered me that much; their attention was mainly focused on our parents then. Now little Emmy was teaching me to recognize different flowers. She was taking me to some buttercups, poking at them, and saying something like, “This is a chicken gizzard plant!”

I was much more worried about zoology than botany: my stepfather cast a spell on my room’s window that repelled the bees, but the little beasts caught up with me outside the house. For two days none had stung me, but I was afraid that my luck would not last long.

Lyuchik ran around, happy and shining, and talked about everything. Literally, about everything. It was an unhindered flow of consciousness, the sense of which I could not catch, even when I tried. Unusual behavior for an eight-year-old boy. If those were the symptoms of an awakening white Source, then what did the awakening of a dark one look like? I tried to remember what I used to do to get on my relatives’ nerves at his age.

“You know, when we just discovered your dark talent, you tried to control everyone,” my stepfather Joe said at lunch, following his offspring with a look full of adoration. “Virtually everyone, even cats. That was so endearing…”

It was a blessing that my memory hadn’t retained these events.

For two days I was miraculously showcasing self-control and restraint; even the pickiest empath could not say that I fell short of the image of a perfect genius Big Brother. On the third day, Uncle Gordon, as promised, told my parents about the expedition. We enjoyed tea on the deck that was under a spell of repulsion against bees. The brazen creatures flew to the edge of the spell’s shield and hung out there, buzzing ponderously. I was pouring honey over my pancakes. I did not like bees, but I loved sweets, and the idea that the treat was taken away from the hated insects and spiced with their corpses improved the flavor for me.

My mother responded to Uncle’s offer without enthusiasm.

“Thomas came here to relax…”

I tore myself away from the pancakes: “Ma! It’s the King’s Island!”

“Besides, the kid could make some money,” Uncle said into his cup. Money? I had not thought about this aspect of the expedition.

“How much do they pay?” Joe became interested.

“Seventeen crowns per week,” Uncle said. “Plus three meals a day.”

Fifty crowns for three weeks! My look must have said everything: I already saw that money in my pocket. I already felt the weight in my hands. My mother sighed.

“Stop it, Millie!” Uncle smiled. “It will only take a month. You’ll still have time to enjoy each other.”

“Are you going to the island with the ghosts?” Lyuchik widened his eyes.

“Do not be afraid, kid!” I scoffed. “If they appear, your brother will seal them all.”

“Nothing has been going on there for a hundred years now,” my stepfather took my side.

“Because no one has been living there for a hundred years,” mother pointedly replied.

They argued a little longer, but the last word, as always, was left with me. Was I a dark mage or not? Mother sighed and started packing my things for the trip. Joe was getting in our way, greatly irritating both me and my mom. One thing was good: on the day of my departure it rained in the valley, and the bees did not see me off.

The whole way to the coast Uncle and I drove in silence, but not because there was nothing to talk about—the old wreck jumped on potholes like a jerboa, howling on the rises and rattling deafeningly downhill. Any communication under such circumstances could cost us our tongues. A few travelers that we saw on our way quickly jumped to the side and incanted averting spells, cows started kicking, and horses were rearing up. Ha, imagine what would have happened had they known where we were going to!

As far as I knew, the island had always been closed for visitors. Under the old government, there was a prison, the most horrible place in all of Ingernika. The current authorities closed it out of compassion for the warders, but since then a belief had sprung up that the souls of the dark magicians came to live there after death. About a hundred years ago a chain of enchanted beacons emerged around the island, scaring off fishing boats with their sad ringing. Opinions regarding the reason for the strict prohibition against visitors differed: some thought that there were gates to the underworld on the island, while others claimed that the authorities guarded the tomb of the island’s namesake king. Others, referring to the legends, hinted that the king would be fully able to protect himself. The island had never been a tourist destination, any interest in it was discouraged, and I hadn’t seen its picture even once.

Still more surprising was the appearance of dandies from the capital in Krauhard. What could attract their interest in a place where no one ever lived?

Archaeologists were going to sail to the island from a tiny fishing village with the strange name of Canine Beach; I do not know about others, but in my mind that name was associated with corpses and garbage. Uncle and I were the first to arrive at the village. I sweated hard in my thick knitted jacket hoping that it would be as cold on the sea as promised.

The employers showed up when it was already past noon. A hefty truck, nearly new if judged by its exhaust, rolled up to the pier, and a paramilitary off-road minivan (only the army used diesel engines in small vehicles) followed it. Movers and security guys jumped out of the truck, while our future bosses slowly poured out of the minivan.

“These guys have money,” Uncle remarked thoughtfully.

I did not try to sustain the conversation; the hangover from the anti-magic elixir was surprisingly miserable.

“I won’t give you more,” Uncle said at the time of departure. “Taking this elixir for a long time causes hallucinations and bouts of schizophrenia.”

I nearly choked.

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Did you really have a choice?” Uncle argued. “Let’s not draw attention to us. The elixir’s effect will end in two days, and we will start training. Let me warn you: I am no good as a teacher, so do not expect too much. You are not a fortuneteller like Coy Gorgun; your task is to learn how to confidently call upon and dismiss your Source, and even an idiot can cope with it after practicing. Got it?”

I nodded; my head did not ache yet then. The prospect of making money, walking around the forbidden island, and learning a little more magic looked quite attractive. Who knew that I would be feeling so sick?

Besides us, three more workers were going to the island, and, judging by their clothing, they were not local. Nobody wore shirts with short sleeves in Krauhard, not even in summer—health is more important than comfort. The guys did not attempt to make introductions, but I realized that all of them were students, either from the capital or from its suburbs. They took swigs out of a large leather flask and laughed; they looked like they knew little about the King’s Island. I had already pictured in my mind a company of cabinet scientists committing a raid on historical places on their university’s budget, when the paramilitary truck approached the pier. A mountain of bales, boxes, and barrels grew rapidly on the berth; a couple of burly men in uniform overalls received the cargo at the pier and chased the curious away; one of the two had a nightstick hanging on his belt, and another one had a knife tucked in his boot. The ship that lazily dangled off the coast started steaming.

I tried to fight off nausea and think sensibly: the car, the boat, and the guards implied that the superiors of the expedition were not just after the money, they knew what kind of place the island was. I started wondering:

“What are we going to look for?”

Uncle just laughed in response: “I did not ask. Do not worry, nephew, we’ll be cautious.”

The students roared, welcoming the director of the expedition, a short, lean, and remarkably ugly woman. Hers was one of those cases when even a white magician would not be able to help: having proper facial features and smooth, ivory skin, she sported heavy eyelids of a habitual drunkard and a sardonic smile that would have scared a crocodile. The director was followed by a man a head taller than she, deliberately overdressed and bearing the obvious signs of a dark magician.

No surprise there; bringing a specialist in the supernatural to the island was a very wise decision, but we all knew how costly the services of a dark magician with military bearing were.

“Gentlemen,” the lady-crocodile began her greeting speech, referring mainly to the two of us, “I am your queen and god for the next four weeks. Please address me ‘Mrs. Clements’ and nothing short of it. Just so we are clear, I will not tolerate any drunken debauchery during our expedition,” she pierced me with a glare, though the flask was in the hands of the students, “and I am warning you: all that you will see or find on the island is the exclusive property of the expedition. Got it? Those who do not agree better stay on the mainland.”

“Everything is clear, Mrs. Clements!” Uncle sang in a tone that was typically used for courting an obstinate mare.

The lady-crocodile jerked her head in a rather horse-like manner, but the man who stood behind her coughed politely, and a scandal did not unfold.

“Next to me is Mr. Smith,” she said through her teeth, “he is our safety expert. Given the specificity of our place of work, I am asking you to report to him any oddities or unusual events immediately.”

All of us nodded, but I became a little disappointed. What, I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about the island?! The trip was turning out to be somewhat schizophrenic from the outset.

A lifeboat with a crackling ethanol engine cast off from the ship. Local fishermen that gathered on the shore watched the boat with interest: would it stall or wouldn’t? If the alcohol was local, then it surely would; I tested it on my moped many times. Either the climate here was very humid, or vendors were particularly shameless, but I failed to achieve any stable engine operation. It would be dubious fun to get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

But on a bright sunny day the boat looked good, and it flew—not sailed—across the waves.

“Roll call!” Mrs. Clements captured my attention again. “Pierre Acleran…”

Students readily raised their hands, Mr. Smith and the two guards were accounted for too, and someone called Mermer was marked as being on a ship. Uncle and I were the last on the list.

“Gordon Ferro…”

“Present!”

“…and Thomas Tangor.”

“Here,” I raised my hand for clarity. Mr. Smith gave me an interested look.

“All aboard!”

Mrs. Clements was hasty, of course, when she commanded everyone to board: only four people and a couple of boxes at a time could fit onto the boat. Mrs. Clements and the students went first, but I did not envy them: the three of them would have to receive and arrange all of the expedition’s belongings. On the shore, Uncle was able to maneuver so that he involved everyone in the loading, including the guards and the driver of the truck. Naturally, we finished the job faster. The last boat (already free of its boxes) took to the ship those who lingered over on the shore. Mr. Smith sat down across from me and stared at me during the ride.

“Why have you joined the expedition, Mr. Tangor?” he asked finally.

“Money, sir!” I smiled broadly. A universal reason.

“What about you, Mr. Ferro?”

“Someone has to watch my nephew.”

“Hmm.”

“Why are you going there, Mr. Smith?” I could not restrain my curiosity.

He jerked his eyebrow in surprise. I wondered what his expectation was when he started a conversation with a dark mage.

“My job is to ensure the safety of this stupid expedition!” he admitted with surprising sincerity.

“I feel sorry for you,” Uncle intoned.

But Mr. Smith stubbornly shook his head: “Everything is under control. There won’t be any problems.”

As they say, Let us pray, Brothers and Sisters.

But perhaps that was a perfect example of a rational approach based on knowledge rather than on local superstitions. I have been pestered with safety rules since I was five; I knew about the supernatural manifestations so much that I could lecture at Redstone University. Yet in my memory, nothing occurred in our valley like what was depicted in old men’s stories. Well, a couple of imbeciles had been injured, of course… Cattle raged at night as well… But against Krauhard’s sinister reputation it was hardly noteworthy. Perhaps, rumors exaggerated the King’s Island’s danger too. It happened now and then!

It took us almost twenty-four hours to reach the place. Of course, we could have sailed faster, but nobody wanted to land on the island in the dark. I slept soundly under the quiet whistle of a steam turbine, the nausea was gone, and my mood could not be better. Time to look around—assess where exactly I ended up.

The ship slowly and cautiously made its way through the fog that was much thinner over the water and smelled subtly of the sea. There were no birds; the only sources of sound were the boat and the surf slowly roaring somewhere nearby. We had passed the beacon line at night, and now there were jagged cliffs and boulders, stretching to the right of the ship, protruding from the sea as if guarding some ancient fortresses. I idly watched seaweed floundering about in the foam between the rock teeth. The members of the team who were not struck down by seasickness woke up and got out on the deck. It was at that exact moment that the island chose to surprise us.

The shore cliffs snuggled close to the ground, revealing a large cleft: water and wind corroded stone, and the rock broke like a bad tooth. A metal castle appeared in the inner cavity. It was perfectly exposed before our eyes. My jaw dropped. Almost untouched by rust, massive metallic plates enclosed the structure from the outside; where the rocks had overcome the metal, the eye caught layers of inner levels in a jumble of steel construction. Years had stripped away the extra stuff, and whatever resisted belonged to the centuries, millennia, eternity. The castle seemed to be tired of solitude, and it leaned out of the rocks to look at us with its dark maw. Below the castle, a ledge sprinkled with crushed stone was sticking out above the shore line, and powerful steel trusses could be seen under the ledge. From the ship, it seemed like the cliffs were but a false front, lined with stone and hollow inside.

“A gorgeous place!” the words escaped my mouth unbidden. Indeed, if the expedition let at least one picture leak to the world at large, no enchanted beacons would hold people back.

The armored plates over a foot thick suggested such reliability and power that you just wanted to sink your teeth into them. Was there anything left inside?

“Get out of here! The place is ugly as hell,” one of the students gasped.

I raised my eyebrow unwittingly. I thought he was pale because of seasickness. Was he scared by the island?

“Ah,” it dawned on me, “you are the white, aren’t you? I got it.”

“What did you get?” his companion protested.

“Nerves,” I shrugged.

Uncle struggled out from the hold and, having discerned the shore, began to rub his hands involuntarily: “Wow, how deliciously captivating! What’s inside?” he asked Mrs. Clements.

“It should not concern you!” she said coldly. “The ruins are under the state’s protection, and you will not approach them.”

What a witch… Uncle saddened noticeably.

We quickly left behind the mysterious construction, but I was still puzzled, trying to figure out in what era our ancestors could build something like that. As an alchemist, I knew how heavy one such plate could be, and it was incomprehensible how the plates were assembled in such a big stack. And how they worked from the inside, not the outside. History wasn’t my strongest subject, but I always thought that in previous centuries people lived somewhat simpler.

The situation intrigued me; surprises on the King’s Island were in store for all.

“As you know, I do not like to hire locals!” Mrs. Clements thoroughly stirred a spoonful of white powder in a quarter of glass of water and swallowed the resulting mess in one gulp. The taste of the medical medley made her shudder. Her conversation partner lazily mumbled something from his bunk.

“Especially those, who are also wild drunks,” she hid a box of medicine in a leather case. “You get little help but problems through the roof from them.”

“Do not rush to conclusions, they were not drunk,” Mr. Smith got up on his elbow. “As to their uproar… Both of them are dark—a huge fortune! Hiring those two in Ho-Carg would have eaten our entire budget, but here they will work for us almost for free. Let me deal with them, okay?”

“No problem!” Mrs. Clements easily agreed. “I do not think that we will need their skills. The last commission had worked on the island three years ago, and their review was favorable. The caretaker still lives in the castle, and NZAMIPS would not have allowed this if they had any doubts.”

“The last three years… These three years have been too strange,” Mr. Smith sighed, “but I hope you’re right. That will be better for all of us.”

Chapter 4

The island rejected us. It became clear from the very first minute of our stay there.

The fog cleared when we reached our destination. The sun did not show up; instead, the sky was filled with a translucent pearl-gray haze—a common phenomenon for Krauhard. When the monotony of the landscape became tiresome, the cliffs parted, revealing an entrance to a deep bay, the ancient name of which had been reliably forgotten long ago, and for the last three hundred years it was known simply as the Prison Bay. On the far side of the island one could see buildings of the type more common for Ingernika: rough masonry made from local stone, guarded windows, rusty stains on the walls. The buildings were subtly immersed in landscape, pretending to be a mirage; only their roofs of red tiles dotted the background of gray rocks. There were no external walls - the place had never been used as a fortress. And who would ever think of guarding the King’s Island? From the outset, the complex was built as a prison, Vale of the Doomed—a name that had become a household word. If memory served me correctly, it was the first specialized institution of that kind; before, criminals were either flogged publicly or had their heads lopped off, nothing in between. Indubitably, given their particular character, there were far more dark mages held there over the years than anyone else, and that brought about all sorts of silly superstitions. A black slab of some unknown material, obviously predating the construction of the prison, served as its foundation.

Crossing the natural breakwater, the ship gave a signal. Then another one. And another. Then the noise of the engine changed: the team started backing up; it seemed that the captain did not dare to approach the pier head-on. After a short meeting, they lowered the dinghy on the water and Mr. Smith went ashore with one of the guards. They returned two hours later and, after another meeting, the ship finally moved forward. Lady-crocodile, as if nothing had happened, began directing the unloading.

I drew two conclusions from what was going on: first, something went wrong, and second, mere mortals were not supposed to know what exactly went wrong.

“Keep your eyes open,” Uncle whispered to me.

The unloading made me set my concerns aside for a moment. Students, cursing, hauled a cart with the expeditionary belongings to a building (at least we had a cart. Without it, to carry that mountain of stuff over would have taken until the end of summer). Uncle Gordon and I, armed with poles, rolled barrels with fuel for the generator up the hill (not really a difficult task, but it looked technically daunting from outside). That white guy was busy with the dynamo-machine in the outbuilding. I couldn’t believe my eyes: didn’t they find a dark mage to send?! After the third barrel, I really wanted to ask what he was doing there for so long. After the fourth one I acted.

The outbuilding strongly smelled of oil; the white had managed to fuel the tank. Burnt fuses lay on the floor: an emergency breaker was triggered, but, at first glance, neither the generator nor its winding looked damaged. The student was yanking the start-up handle again and again to no visible results. The poor fellow was in a trance; the machine was not working. I needed to rescue the guy and myself. Literally. That was one of the most annoying traits in the white mages—if something really upsets them, they could cry for weeks. More than once had I witnessed a funeral of a broken cup, not to mention of dead mice and birds. The most unforgettable spectacle for me, though, was a man gently carrying a caught cockroach into the street. Imagine: the cockroach must have been captured first and then carried outside without being hurt. In short, I was not thrilled with the prospect of spending four weeks in the company of the emotionally shell-shocked white. Much less so, on King’s Island. Ha!

“Hey, make way for an alchemist!”

He sulked and started looking like Lyuchik.

“Don’t lose heart!” I patted him on the shoulder. “I will fix it right away.”

The problem was as simple as a stump and wasn’t related to alchemy at all, but rather to the “science of shitty contacts”—that sorry excuse for a mechanic had not pushed the fuses far enough into the slots, causing the generator not to start up. When the machine started, the student genuinely lit up.

“If something else happens,” I smiled amicably, “call me. I’ll try my best to help!”

He nodded and smiled.

“Mr. Tangor! What are you doing there?” Mr. Smith barked from somewhere.

“I’m taking out the garbage!” I yelled out the first thing that came into my mind, winked, and was gone.

As it turned out, Mr. Smith yelled for a good reason—the weather had changed dramatically. Although the day was at its height, a strip of thick fog crept out from the sea to the shore. It looked utterly suspicious. Our superiors began fretting; we were ordered to grab and drag everything that could be damaged by dampness into the house and leave the rest outside in its place. The boat started backing up to anchor somewhere in the middle of the bay, out of harm’s way. By the time the trembling white curtain of fog reached the shore, the doors of the prison’s only residential building had been closed tightly, and the members of the expedition had made their home as comfortable as they could.

We were given a corner room overlooking the prison yard, though we couldn’t see anything because of the fog. In the light of the day, such as it was, the room looked cozy, just a little dusty. Uncle checked for ward-off spells on the windows, clicked his tongue, and did not change anything. The thick fog splashed outside, like milk, and poured into the water; the sun illuminated it from within, and the air seemed to glow faintly. An infernal spectacle that we, Krauhardians, did not like to admire.

“Uncle, don’t you feel that something is wrong here?”

“The supernatural,” he nodded with the look of a connoisseur. “It looms so close to the borders of reality that it presses on our nerves. Actually, our whole venture is starting to smell.”

“Well, they ought to have known where they were going to.”

“Are you sure?” Uncle chuckled. “The situation can change very quickly. They expected to be met. Have you noticed? Who was supposed to meet us, and where is he now?”

I shuddered involuntarily. So far, I hadn’t met anything deadly dangerous that could take away a man’s life. The only guests from the other world in our valley were ignes fatui—flashes of light that wandered in fog—quite a harmless phenomenon, as long as you didn’t touch them.

Somebody knocked on the door politely.

“Come in,” Uncle offered.

The white mage from the generator room timidly peeked through the door and said: “Mrs. Clements has asked for everyone to gather downstairs.”

“We are coming!” I tried to remember where I put my shoes.

“What’s the urgency, I wonder?” Uncle grunted and pulled out of his bag a pair of felt slippers. Alas, I lacked the foresight to bring the same.

“Maybe she wants to bid us farewell?” I giggled hysterically.

Perhaps, the prison’s administration used to live in this building at one time: rooms were spacious, narrow hallways with multiple doors were absent, and a spacious hall was right behind the front door. There, among a heap of unsorted equipment, Mrs. Clements decided to gather us. In the absence of chairs, we had to sit on the luggage. The atmosphere at the meeting was quite peculiar: there appeared to be no immediate danger, but something strange was certainly going on. The problem, in my opinion, was that the capital residents thought that otherworldly threats were severely exaggerated (you can afford an attitude of that sort only if you live on top of salt marshes—the supernatural doesn’t like salt). Nobody seemed to realize that there was nothing alive, not even rats, on the King’s Island. Intuition stubbornly kept telling me that Krauhard wouldn’t forgive such an attitude.

Two students conversed in hushed tones, the white from before (I remembered his name now—Alex) looked depressed. Uncle was the only one who showed up at the meeting in slippers. Mr. Smith looked like he just crawled out of some hole and smelled musty and dank. Only Mrs. Clements was cheerful and unfazed. I thought the audience was in for a lecture on the rules of safe conduct, but instead she delivered a speech about the necessity of hard work: “The expedition has to work on a tight schedule; attaining our goals will require a thoughtful and responsible approach to the job from everyone. Simple execution of assigned tasks will not be enough. Upon successful completion of the project there may be bonuses.”

“What are we looking for?” I could not resist asking.

She glanced at me in irritation: “If you permit me, Mr. Tangor, I will get to it in a minute.”

The students readily giggled. I shrugged; two years in Redstone had taught me to ignore simple jabs.

“This island safeguards the sanctity of the mysteries of the most ancient civilization in the world,” Mrs. Clements informed us loftily and launched into a lengthy description of someone’s work, citing authors and the results of their excavations. Students were hastily scribing it down.

My attention to the lecture quickly wavered. History was never in the sphere of my interests; I failed to see the point in gathering thousands of useless things. The idea that from these fragments one could draw pictures of the lives of past generations seemed funny to me (will you agree? If not, try to assemble even an ordinary alarm clock from scattered debris), and the aesthetic value of shards and fragments was even more arguable. Archeology, in my eyes, was a costly foolishness based on insatiable human curiosity.

“…and to assess the level of the technomagic development of that era,” Mrs. Clements finished her next premise.

That brought me out of my stupor: “Alchemy?”

Mrs. Clements gave me a scornful look.

“Tech-no-ma-gic,” she repeated almost syllable by syllable, “differs from alchemy in its ability to manipulate very delicate structures of matter, and it allows the execution of these fine operations thousands and hundreds of thousands of times, without any deviation from the original.”

I pulled from the pile of things a box of fuses that survived contact with Alex.

“Like this?” I asked. Let the one who thought that it deviated from the original cast a stone at me.

She scrunched her face: “No! On a much more subtle level, commensurable with the effect of magic!”

“The lost alchemical techniques,” Uncle Gordon concluded competently.

I shrugged and decided not to push the argument; there are people who have an irrational aversion to alchemy. Usually, they belong to the whites, but you can also meet them among ordinary people. And their ostentatious dislike for the “artificial” nonetheless sits perfectly well with love for products of white magic, like all those trans-horses, trans-rabbits, and trans-cows. Mrs. Clements belonged exactly to that category. My Redstone experience suggested that an altercation with such personalities was pointless and unproductive.

After a lengthy lecture about the grandeur and uniqueness of the technomagic, we finally learned what we were here to look for: the audience was shown drawings, diagrams, and reconstructions of ancient objects. They looked like small, angular beetles with varying numbers of legs and no distinction between their front and rear ends. The latter fact amused me a lot, but I managed to keep myself from laughing until we were back in our room.

“Don’t cackle,” Uncle remarked, watching my convulsions. “If they find at least a dozen of these, it will more than compensate for the cost of the expedition. These things used to be called ‘sand gnats’, and their artificial origin was discovered not too long ago. Ever since then, they have been in sharp demand by everybody: the military, academia, private developers. No one knows what they are, but they are wanted by all. I heard that one of their intact nests was sold for one and a half million crowns.”

“One and a half million…” my mirth left me in a flash.

“Don’t even think about it!” Uncle warned me. “Why do you think this island hasn’t been ransacked yet, despite all the bans? Remember the castle. Inside it is dark all around; there has been no light for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Understand my point?”

I caught his meaning, and it made me sick. I recalled a theory to that effect: the longer an otherworldly phenomenon existed, the stronger and more evolved and unpredictable it became. It explained why there was such a strong magic ambiance here! For thousands of years even a primitive ignis fatuus could turn into a fiery phantom, not to mention the more complex entities. What a fabulous island this was…

“We are waist deep in…” I began.

“Ah, you got it at last!” Uncle rejoiced. “Don’t fear! Just mind your surroundings; there is little hope for help from our companions. Those two blockheads are just mirror images of the king’s godfather, and the woman is probably the same.”

In Krauhard’s mythology, the “godfathers of the King” were the doomed ones, people carrying the mark of impending death. In this case, the nickname was a good match, too good, even. Unthinkable! Why did NZAMIPS let us come here, a pack of civilians accompanied by only one official dark magician? From childhood I had been taught that, when confronted with otherworldly forces, your main weapon is stealth, but a big expedition invading the island could only remain unnoticed through pure chance. I came to the conclusion that somebody was set to kill us.

I am still young; I don’t want to meet the King just yet!

“Uncle, perhaps we should get out…”

“Practice your power, kiddo!” he proclaimed sternly. “You might need it very soon.”

I was “overjoyed”, as they say.

We agreed to get up early, before breakfast, to start the training that I needed so badly and that had gotten me in this deep shit.

“Not too early?” I clarified.

“No, otherwise it will be too late.”

Now I recalled how annoyed I was as a child at the way Uncle Gordon “comforted” me: he used to say, “Torn pants aren’t a big deal,” adding, “you’ll get flogged once or twice for the sake of propriety, so what?” I wondered if he realized that his nephew had grown a bit.

Breakfast was set at eight, and we went down to the shore at seven in the morning; we grabbed our towels and pretended to be going for a swim. Why not? The bay’s water was warm in summer, and its cleanliness around the island was almost assured. Yesterday’s fog had left no traces, the day promised to be sunny and warm, and shoals of fry flashed in the waves, immune to the dark curses.

“Climb!” Uncle requested, pointing to a lonely rock protruding from the water.

“Maybe I’d better practice on the beach?”

“Well, only if you wish to summon all the neighboring undead…”

I sighed, undressed, and jumped into the water. By the way, the water was really warm. Climbing on a slippery boulder wasn’t an easy task; teetering on the top, I called out, “Now what?” Immediately after, I felt a pebble hit my back. “Hey! What are you doing?”

“Invoke your Power!” Uncle ordered.

“How?”

“As you did the first time.”

The next pebble struck me on the buttocks.

“Invoke your Power.”

“Give me at least a minute!”

I tried to recall the circumstances that surrounded my Empowerment. Should I get angry or scared? Another pebble!

“Stop it! Are you crazy?”

“Do what I said.”

“I’m doing it!”

“You are not. Emotions facilitate the call, but they are not part of it. You need neither anger, nor wrath, but Power! Let me see it!”

“Wait a minute!” I frantically tried to figure out what to do. Go down there and try to kick his ass? He was older and still stronger than me.

“Better. Go on!”

What exactly had I done? Again a pebble!

“Don’t relax.”

I strained myself so heavily that almost fainted and then began projecting something outward, so hard that my brains felt like they were leaking out.

“Go on, more confidence!”

Preserving some degree of pressure, I ventured to open my eyes: a black mirage floated in front of me—the same black flame that blinded me during the Empowerment. And then I lost my breath, saw circles swirling in front my eyes, and fell off the rock. Uncle pulled me out of the water.

“Enough for the first time,” he concluded, “rest now. And remember, if you try to suppress the dark Source, you’ll cease feeling a difference between the presence and absence of Power, and thus you’ll lose control over it. An attempt to forget your essence always ends in madness for a dark magician. Empowerment is a one-way road only. You don’t have a choice; you ought to call your Power again and again until it is no longer associated with any particular emotion, and until it reveals itself fully. You must learn to treat it like your arm or leg. This can only be accomplished through continuous training and repetition. Got it?”

“Yes, Master!” I tried to catch my breath, lying on the rocky shore. Colored circles floated before my eyes.

“You spend too much energy on the call, but that’s for lack of habit; you’ll get used to it.”

I very much hoped so! My nausea had subsided, being replaced with weakness and trembling of the muscles. And it was only seven o’clock in the morning; we still had to work all day!

“Get up!” Uncle kicked me in the ribs. “Break stereotypes. You’re not tired physically; it’s a mental illusion.”

Screw that, an illusion!

We left the shore to get breakfast. I was wet and angry; Uncle was also wet, but filled with a sense of accomplishment. Damned tutor! If I had a choice, would I have allowed him to treat me so?

At breakfast our life became more interesting: Alex sat down next to us. The dark power still paced in me, and I barely restrained myself from insulting him.

“What’s the matter?”

Alex hesitated for a while, eventually uttering, “May I move in with you?”

His question surprised me so much that I even forgot to get angry: “What the hell?”

“I… okay, forget it!” He attempted to leave.

Without any explanation? No way! I immediately changed my tune, letting in a note of confidence and irony: the whites are almost all empaths, which means they subconsciously perceive the moods of people close to them. They also tend to mirror other people’s emotions and the younger the magician, the worse he controls it.

“Don’t be rash now. We do not mind.” I glanced at Uncle who merely shrugged, “It’s just a little unexpected.”

Alex, not sensing that he was caught in a trap of the master manipulator, relaxed a little, but didn’t open up immediately. He looked a bit crumpled, and for empaths, their health depends heavily on the overall emotional ambiance…

“Are your friends scaring you?” I guessed.

He nodded quietly.

What did I say before? Ordinary people could be worse than any of the dark magicians. They could have picked a better place to screw with their friend’s nerves! Odds were, if I left him alone, he would eventually go nuts, lose his temper, and pay for their jokes with his blood. Indignation dilated my nostrils and awakened my urge to beat someone up.

“Uncle?”

He shrugged again: “Let him move in! Just one thing: give him the ‘safety instructions’ to avoid surprises.”

For the remainder of the leisure time after breakfast, we moved Alex’s belongings over under the pensive gaze of Mr. Smith. I instructed my new friend: “Don’t fear! You can feel that something strange is going on around. But I know some simple rules, and if you follow them, you will minimize your risk. Believe me! I grew up in Krauhard.”

“Do you think there are the otherworldly here?” the white mage asked with an unhealthy interest, packing into his bag the sundries that he had unloaded before.

“I guarantee! It’s the King’s Island, after all. Remember, you cannot go to a place that lacks light, even if you carry a lantern. The places where sunlight does not reach are especially dangerous—caves, cellars, and such. Don’t let your curiosity trap you, especially if you are alone. If you notice any strange sounds, rustles, movement—skidoo and run to Mr. Smith. And do not hesitate; he is a dark mage, he will understand. If it gets worse, remember the sea is your ​​salvation; no otherworldly creature can sneak up on you over the salty water. Another rule: if you see any humans, ask them to name themselves, and if you do not get a response, run. The mute do not live in Krauhard. Here they are killed in infancy as unholy spawns. And surely, do not open cursed doors, do not break protective signs; if you mess anything up, just call Mr. Smith immediately. He is paid to provide our protection, so let him do his job. Got it?”

“Yeah.” He put his bag in the corner of our room and looked around with interest.

“The main thing is to follow the rules all the time, regardless of circumstances. Imagine that they are the laws of nature, and you cannot break them physically, no matter who asked you to.”

“And run away to Mr. Smith at once,” he smiled.

“Well done, chap!”

On that day we worked long hours. The job, from my point of view, was moronic: we hand-sorted rocks at the dump. When clearing the site and erecting the prison’s wall, ancient builders had produced a mountain of debris, which they piled up right there, on the beach, without thinking twice. Before making a raid to the core of the island, Mrs. Clements wanted to know whether there was anything interesting that had been dug up earlier and discarded as useless. To assess the treasures in the dump, we chose a few sites to go through stone by stone to the solid rock beneath, carefully recording our findings. Alex was paired with me. Two other students dug together, and Uncle and the guards continued to unload the ship. Guess which of us worked longer?

Alex was again in good spirits and full of enthusiasm. Luckily, yesterday’s worries had no serious impact on his health. He lectured me about the subtleties of archaeological research, without asking whether I needed that or not: “Rocks in these parts of the dump can be distinguished by color and size; clearly, they have been brought from different places. If we find something, we might be able to track its source and understand where to focus our attention. We are short on time!”

I nodded and diligently, one by one, shifted the rocks to the cart. So far, in front of me, there were rocks, rocks, and more rocks.

“Here you are!” Alex showed me a fragment with jagged scars on the edge. “The material was clearly treated with a chisel. I think our section contains masonry waste; it’s unlikely there is anything else of interest.”

Who would have doubted that! I was sure that Mrs. Clements would not entrust me with such an important task, since I was so skeptical about the technomagic. The hill of displaced rocks grew; Alex found time to tell me what university he was a student of, about his interests, why he joined the expedition, and how cool it was to be an archeologist. My habit of ignoring idle chatter, practiced to perfection on my younger siblings, was the only thing that saved me now. He gibbered and muttered like rustle of wind and rain, occasionally dropping meaningful phrases. According to him, Mrs. Clements was a rising star of archaeology that got the wealthy and the military interested in her studies, though I had already figured that out myself. The subject of her research interest was the most ancient of the known civilizations, presumably found in Capetower (Capetower was the steel fortress we had seen) but little studied. Among the apparent reasons for that was the antiquity of the culture in question, as well as its clear connection to the supernatural manifestations; the majority of the excavations were visited by archeologists once or twice at most, and every time with serious risk to their lives. It was incomprehensible that a white magician would choose this line of business.

At the depth of two feet the soil suddenly changed its properties. The rough stone fragments were replaced with tightly packed sand with splashes of colorful scales and large debris; among the inorganic dust I noticed a white spot—it was a fish skeleton. Oh my, a fish that had been eaten three hundred years ago! I sure had found a treasure. Alex hopped enthusiastically around the pit: “This is it! The stuff that was taken out of the ancient ruins before the construction! Now we’ll know how it all looked before!”

What an optimist! Mrs. Clements approached us, praised Alex (hey, what about me?), and began explaining to him how to keep proper records. The boundaries of the excavation had been changed; now envious students had to dig close to us. In all this activity, time was flying.

The King’s Island waited in ambush. Nothing strange happened, the fog did not return, and the days were sunny and warm. Uncle and I went to “swim” every day and, I had to admit, my skills were improving noticeably. The food was good (Mr. Mermer turned out to be an excellent cook), our work wasn’t difficult, and entertainment was present as well: Uncle Gordon began arguing with Mr. Smith. I expected that to happen as soon as I saw them together, but I hadn’t imagined them to quarrel with such enthusiasm.

It all started on the third day when I, once again having fallen down from the rock, was recovering on the shore. I was basically sunbathing.

“What a brazen face he has…” Uncle muttered suddenly.

I half-rose on one elbow and looked around the rocky beach. Pierre Acleran was approaching us through the boulders.

“Mr. Smith is looking for you,” the student told us gleefully.

“It’s still a quarter of an hour till breakfast,” Uncle cut him off.

“You tell him that!”

We did not rush: the sea salt had to be washed off (we brought a bucket of freshwater with us). We poured the water on our bodies, dried off, and put on our clothes. That is to say, we arrived barely in time for breakfast.

Mr. Smith met us on the path leading from the beach to the prison quarters. His eyes were shooting lightning bolts: “You will not leave the camp from now on!”

“Unlikely,” Uncle smiled calmly. “Or you believe that the prison has not been shut down yet?”

“These places are…” Mr. Smith began talking.

“My home,” Uncle finished for him. “I’ve lived here twice as long as you have existed. I do not need to be taught cautiousness. Instead, you’d better give a lecture to your students—they swarm over the ruins with a simple lantern.”

The oil lantern was a child’s toy; to feel safe in this neighborhood you had to carry a special lamp, enchanted with blue light. Mr. Smith gritted his teeth and left us to brainwash the capital fools. It was fun to have three dark magicians in one place!

That day I barely followed the development of the conflict; my thoughts were busy with some other stuff. Frankly speaking, the problem I faced was unusual: the night before Alex had advised us that the following day the ship would sail back to the mainland. He asked if I wanted to send a word to my family.

“Why?” I had never written letters to anyone; even the date of my return home I reported by telegram.

“What do you mean?” Alex became surprised in turn. “They are probably worried.”

Mom was surely worried. The day before I merely shrugged at Alex’s words, but since then a thought about sending her a letter visited me with obsessive regularity. Of course, my mother knew me inside and out, and if she loved me so far, nothing would change that.

I was troubled by this question for half a day, watching with annoyance as Mr. Smith hounded Uncle on trifling issues. The old contrarian loudly criticized all of the security measures taken. The two fools began attracting attention, but no one wanted to give ground. Doing so would mean accepting the other side’s superiority. They stood on their haunches, eyes shooting sparks; it was a good thing that they did not reach the stage of throwing curses at each other. In fairy tales, dark magicians always lived in towers alone and were never in anyone’s service. I wondered how the military coped with schooling its contingent. Judging by Mr. Smith, they didn’t.

Alex tried to draw my attention to the conflict, but I brushed him off and advised to turn his back on the problem; they would sort it out by themselves. I had a more serious question: what to do with the letter. To write or not to write? In the end, it was worth a try, at least. During the lunch break I borrowed some ink and paper from Alex, set myself up on the steps of the residential quarters, and began doing the most unnatural thing in my life—corresponding.

Right off the bat, it turned out that I did not have any idea how a letter should look. Well, I sure knew how to address an envelope. But what about the contents inside? I vaguely recalled the contents of an official invitation that came to me from Redstone University.

‘Hello all,’ I wrote at the top and paused again.

In principle, the guiding reason behind my decision to write was my mother’s concerns. What should I write to calm her worries?

‘It is good here.’

‘Where is here?’ I crossed out the last words and wrote differently: —We have arrived on the island without any problem. I’m sending a letter at the first opportunity. The situation is good, the food is excellent. I swim in the sea every morning; haven’t caught a cold yet.’

I was pleased with the result of my efforts. It was brief, informative, correctly spelled. Legible. I could have wrapped it up right there, but I began enjoying it. What else could be written about?

‘You’re probably wondering why I left home to come here.’

What if she got offended? I spent just three days at home before leaving for the island. It was worth it to add a bit of candor: ‘Joe’s new hobby caught me by surprise.’

It was a gross understatement!

‘Please get me right, I do not want to limit his self-expression. I just need time to prepare for it mentally.’

And physically, if the dark Source could be considered a physical phenomenon.

‘I am sure that by the end of the expedition I will be able to control myself sufficiently.’

…And to control my power too. At least, Uncle Gordon was confident about it.

‘I guess I should have warned you in advance about my coming back.’

Unfortunately, some things you understand only in hindsight. It was good that I hadn’t asked them for money via telegram! My mother would have sold everything and left my little bro and sis without their sweets. How would their older brother look in that case?

Deciding that my duty was fulfilled, I signed the letter and went to look for Mrs. Clements; Mr. Smith was not in the right mood to play the role of a mailman. The rest was simple: in the mailbox there was a whole pack of letters with Alex’s neat handwriting. The white mage had probably written to all of his acquaintances whose addresses he was able to recall. I added my modest contribution to his titanic work and lightheartedly went to poke around in the dump.

Meanwhile, the war between the mages was flaring up. In the evening Uncle had attempted to recruit me into his army but was sent to hell. In the morning Mr. Smith went to the beach with us and, instead of training, we were forced to actually swim. During the day Uncle had caught students in an attempt to get into the basement of the watertower, and for a while criticized Mr. Smith for not watching them properly. In the evening—at midnight—the security expert showed up to verify the integrity of the protective spells on our window. With his own lamp.

The nerves of the audience broke down first.

“Why are they doing this?” Alex asked plaintively. The white mage still shared our room; he was in no hurry to leave us.

I sighed heavily: “They are the dark.”

“You are a dark as well, yet you do not behave like them!”

“I am not just dark, I’m… smart.” When I talked about myself, I didn’t sell myself short in front of the audience.

What sense did it make to turn this into a circus, confirming the scandalous reputation of the dark magicians? I’m not talking about how much worse it made things, but those two removed any room for maneuvering, clashing head-to-head like a pair of mules. Now they were left with no other way to solve the conflict but banal fisticuffs; the question was just how soon they would overcome the aversion to violence diligently drummed into every magician’s head. I made a bet on Mr. Smith: he was a military guy, they were taught differently, and he could give Uncle a decent head start both in physical shape and in magic power. So far, they both still remembered that fighting was not good, and that kept them angry and others anxious.

The return of the ship calmed the brawlers down for some time but did not solve the dilemma—someone’s blood had to be spilled. I waited with interest; I had never seen a fight between adults, let alone between initiated magicians. Would they risk using magic? And what would the island’s response to it be? I’d better prep the lifeboat, just in case…

And then came the day that promised to be “the one”. Noticing the signs, I quietly took Alex aside and asked him not to talk with Uncle, not even to say hello. Actually, there was no need to alert people. Uncle disappeared in the morning, and at lunch both magicians looked so spiteful that even the meanest of the students, Pierre, did not dare to screw around. During the day, Uncle Gordon was digging furiously, muttering something inaudibly (he was probably counting the offenses he had incurred), and Mr. Smith was milling around the shore looking dispassionately at the sea (probably doing the same thing as Uncle Gordon, but silently). For the final collision they had to be brought closer. Alex wanted me to help them, right?

Seizing the moment when Mrs. Clements called Mr. Smith over to inspect some findings, I dropped my basket next to them as if by chance and asked, as though making small talk: “If we find any bones, will we be able to figure out what had killed their owners?”

“No,” Mr. Smith muttered over his shoulder.

Uncle’s snort was deafening: “They can’t do anything now, but in my time this could be done very easily.”

“How?” I took a lively interest in it, since I didn’t know the answer.

“Raising the dead and asking who had killed him and why! There is no such thing as an unmarked grave in Krauhard.”

“Shut your maw!” Mr. Smith snapped at once. “Are you going to teach necromancy to a child, you old fart?!” And addressing me, he shouted, “Don’t you dare even to think about it, it’s illegal!”

The old magician broke into a cheeky grin: “Excuse me, I forgot! The capital fools had invented rules for themselves in their infinite wisdom, and now they are all like a bunch of castrates—understand everything, can do nothing.”

Mr. Smith tried to pull himself together: “One more word, and you will continue your speech in front of your watch officer at NZAMIPS.”

The threat did not even faze Uncle: “Naturally, you know them so closely—same office, tea breaks together! It’s true what I was told: the dark cannot serve in NZAMIPS. Their brain leaks out of their ass in the course of their duties.”

Mrs. Clements, who listened to the squabble perplexedly, did not understand Uncle’s attitude toward his superior. She was outraged, “Watch your tone!”

I sighed in frustration—she could have been the last straw. Why was she trying to get into the middle of this?

“Let them bark at each other, Mrs. Clements! This is a kind of dark magic sport. As they say, being fools is in the darks’ nature.”

The lady crocodile seemed to understand what I was talking about. She snorted disdainfully and walked away, sashaying her hips. Mr. Smith coughed in embarrassment, glanced at me gloomily, and hurried after her.

As soon as he had passed out of sight, Uncle also started coughing, “You know you shouldn’t treat magicians like that!”

“What have I done?” I was genuinely surprised.

“That… You know.”

Damn it! Both were mature, initiated magicians: what could I tell them about dark magic that they would not know already?

After the incident, the conflict sharply died down, as if a bucket of water was dumped on brawling cats. I did not know whether it was the role my words had played, or Mrs. Clements had managed to cool down her subordinates’ souls, but common sense unexpectedly prevailed over magic. They began treating each other in a formal manner (“Mr. Ferro”, “Mr. Smith”), speaking in a jaw-twisting literary style. I sighed furtively; other members of the expedition stayed quiet. Yes, that’s what happens when the number of dark magicians per square meter goes overboard. Will I grow up the same? How sad that would be.

Chapter 5

After a week of digging in the dump, we found a variety of items, but they were all related to the period of the prison’s construction and didn’t have any historical value. Talk started that there were no sand gnats on the island or they were apparently not associated with Capetower. Mrs. Clements categorically disagreed with that view.

“We need to expand the boundaries of the excavation,” her eyes burned with fanaticism. “The commission’s report talks about ruins five kilometers to the south. There we will surely find something!”

More ruins and uninhabited at that. Magnificent! Intuition told me that we might find something there that we did not expect.

Mr. Smith took Pierre as an assistant for the initial examination of the new place, and the fool was terribly proud of it. Strangely enough, they both returned safe and sound. Mr. Smith was carrying a chest, the contents of which he did not show to anyone but Mrs. Clements. There was something important in it, no doubt, because all discussions had come to an end, and our redeployment was scheduled for the next day.

Uncle Gordon and I, and Pierre and one of the guards, Gerick, volunteered. I noticed that the base camp remained without any dark mages, but I thought that Mr. Smith knew better where we were needed most.

“What, they didn’t take your bootlicker?” Uncle remarked venomously.

It took me some time to realize who he had in mind.

“I never thought that you would have such a thirst for power, nephew! I would never be tempted to lord over that pale worm.”

Was he talking about Alex? I hadn’t noticed any ass-kissing in the white—it was just his admiring nature. Of course, I was flattered that the guy only a year older than me recognized my authority. The point was not in lording over him, but rather in my Big Brother complex, an attitude that awoke in me after visiting home. I hadn’t previously known how much I would like the feeling of being in charge of the family. But why was Uncle sticking his nose into my business?

“Jealous?” I asked innocently.

Ha! He was jealous and even blushed! Yes, Uncle, you used to be the first guy in the village, but it won’t stay that way forever: young people are nipping at your heels. Call me wicked, but to be an object of envy is an awesome feeling! Uncle, realizing his mistake, did not touch this subject any longer, but harm had been done already: for the first time I clearly realized that we were the dark too, which meant that a time would come to sort things out between us. Not yet; right now my Source of Power, threats of the King’s Island, and the ever-present money shortage problem were on the agenda. No time for rearranging our hierarchy! I needed to figure out how to divert Uncle from thinking about it. Maybe I should confront him with Mr. Smith again?

As it turned out, I worried for nothing—the King’s Island found a way to distract us.

The new excavation site was located in the most inaccessible part of the shore. How the notorious commission had managed to discover it remained a mystery. Nevertheless, it had been found, identified on maps, and even given a name: Cape Solitude. We landed there almost as a real military unit, on a dinghy from the main ship, literally squeezing through the coastal cliffs. I was a little worried that we would have to commit such a feat every day. Behind the rocks there wasn’t even a bay, but just a shallow lagoon, where remnants of an ancient road began. Nobody could guess when, why, and by whom it was built; it would have been impossible for a cargo ship to access that place. Our goal was located well above sea level, on top of a mountain with a cut-off summit where geometrically proportional heaps of sand and gravel signified the remains of three or four large buildings. By size they resembled Capetower, the steel fortress; apparently, that was the reason why Mrs. Clements liked them. For about twenty minutes we clambered up to the top like beasts of burden and quietly swore. After I dumped my first cargo load on the ground, I allowed myself to breathe and wander through the ruins.

Close up, the ruins looked rather chaotic. The landscape was typical for the King’s Island: rocks, rocks, and more rocks. Not a speck of green, not even moss. The walls of the ancient houses had settled and collapsed unevenly; in some places there was only debris lying in big heaps, while in others you could guess the contours of the first floor. There were no steel plates, but we came across broken glass, thin and opaque, and once I spotted something resembling a weathered bone. Everything else… did not look like people ever lived here. The place lacked many small details, traces of human hands; it had almost returned to the silence of the primeval wilderness, became dissolved in time.

I was overcome by a feeling of something unnatural, but I could not quite pin down its cause. After a walk around the ruins, the strange feeling hadn’t left me but rather increased in intensity, as if I had seen something odd but could not place when or where. Drawn by the hard-to-explain concern, I entered the remnants of the ancient edifice and looked around: a mountain of rubble towered to the right, presumably the former top floors of the structure; to the left small stones ran down the stairs to the entrance of the basement. Darkness glowered at me through the basement’s doorway slit. The silence was soft and promising. At night it was probably quite ugly here; if anything happened, there would be nowhere to run. I cautiously peered down and began actively disliking the place.

The stones cracked behind my back—Pierre stepped into the ruins after me.

“What, are you scared?” he snorted and pretended to push me into the basement. My elbow in his stomach was quite real: some things you just don’t play around with. “What the..? It was a joke!”

“You’re an idiot!” I was furious. “There’s something… someone over there! I feel it!”

Uncle came close at the sound of our quarrel, looked down into the basement, and turned very gloomy: “Call Smith over here! There is something otherworldly in there, but I can’t make out what; I am only the sixth level.”

At Redstone, you couldn’t get higher than a lab techie with the sixth level. Why in hell did Uncle pick a fight with a combat magician then?

Our overseer was unhappy that we distracted him from the unloading, but when he looked into the hole, he didn’t just turn pale—he became downright green.

“Get out of here immediately!”

Pushing puzzled Pierre aside, I ran head over heels to the shore; when a dark magician orders you to take off, you obey quickly. And cowardice has nothing to do with this.

“Into the boat, into the boat!” Mr. Smith must have torn his lungs up screaming. “Abandon equipment, leave now!”

I got there first, charging up the slope in a record-breaking six minutes; Uncle was not far behind me, and Mr. Smith bravely walked last, almost backwards, though the day was bright, and the supernatural wasn’t supposed to haunt us just yet. What had we discovered there?

“If we’re lucky, that was Rustle,” Uncle growled, answering the unasked question. “If not…”

It was difficult to imagine something worse than Rustle, except for a gang of ghouls: the latter could chase you even in the day time. Had Pierre entered the basement, Rustle would have marked him and, perhaps, let him go the first time. But after a few days the victim would have experienced an unbearable urge to come back and, preferably, not alone. Children were particularly susceptible: there were times when the first victim of the monster’s hug came back accompanied by ten to fifteen people—friends, acquaintances, parents. In contrast to the predatory echo, Rustle was a mobile creature, which meant that it could try to catch us in the darkness.

“Are we going back to the base camp?” Gerick inquired.

“No!” Mr. Smith interrupted him. “We’ll go directly to the Trunk Bay.”

Surely, they suspected Rustle. Moreover, quite active Rustle, because they didn’t notice the otherworldly on their first trip, but it was present now. Suspicion of possible contact with the creature was enough to hold us in the Trunk Bay for a month—there was a local NZAMIPS’ center and a special hospital for victims of otherworldly creatures. For those victims who were still alive, of course.

“Will the quarantine days be paid for, sir?” Uncle took a businesslike tack. “My nephew and I are surely clean.”

“Are you going to argue with NZAMIPS’ officers, Mr. Ferro?” Mr. Smith narrowed his eyes.

Uncle Gordon shrugged. Shit, that was it for my salary! We will be paid, at best, for one week. Well, at least I had seen the King’s Island; not many could boast that. The ship passed by the prison wharf, hanging its flags and giving a signal, but nobody appeared on the shore. Mr. Smith ordered the ship to slow down and climbed to the signal mast to examine the camp with binoculars.

“It looks like we have to go there, sir!” Uncle approached Mr. Smith while the latter came down. “They should hear us by now.”

Smith stared intently at the pier.

“A couple of hours, that’s all we have, sir,” Uncle nagged.

“I know! You’ll go with me.”

Their eyes met. The issues of hierarchy were left behind, disagreement forgotten—they had a common enemy now, and that reconciled dark magicians better than any preaching.

“Let’s take my nephew—his eyes are better than mine!” Uncle offered generously.

I wasn’t particularly happy about his suggestion, but did not object; they could use an extra pair of hands, and people insensitive to dark magic should not go there. Mr. Smith was giving the final instructions: “Whoever tries to follow us should be tied up and watched after—very likely, he is infected. Do not approach the bank, even if I myself call to you. On our way back to the ship, call us; if we don’t answer, do not let us come close, just go to the open sea. Do not wait till sunset. Go to the Trunk Bay and ask for help.”

The captain nodded hard, while Uncle Gordon filled large flasks with sea water. It is salt, not silver, that is most effective against otherworldly entities of low caliber, while the stronger ones are basically immune to common rituals with salt.

We approached the shore at the slowest speed. Uncle steered and Mr. Smith looked for all sorts of threats on land. As a result, it was me who noticed a strange something at the moorage. Something floundered about in the water. A corpse? Uncle brought the boat almost to the shore, where the surf hissed on the boulders, and a strange white object rolled and pitched in the waves. Mr. Smith sorted it out at once and cursed; it was Alex, alive but nearly frozen to death. We dragged the poor guy into the boat (he could not move) and tried to bring him back to life. One look was enough to realize that he was not just swimming. Alex got into the water fully dressed, even in his shoes, though one sleeve of his shirt was practically absent. He had a long white scratch on his cheek. That couldn’t be from a fight; these weren’t the type of people to brawl. Alex wasn’t in a condition to explain the reasons for his grievous state; he was desperately shaking and had managed to bite his lips until bleeding. He kept pointing in the direction of the prison and moving his hands up and down.

“The tower?” Uncle guessed.

The white mage nodded, though it looked more like a convulsion.

“Follow me!” Mr. Smith jumped onto the dock.

I gave my jacket to Alex, shouting, “Stay here! Do not go ashore; if we show up, call us. If we do not come back until sunset, go to the ship, but first call them, too. They are all on alert now.”

The expedition camp was suspiciously quiet: no one walked, no one talked. The generator stalled again, which implied something serious. Keeping the jars of saltwater ready and trying to stay away from windows and doorways, we advanced into the prison, where sounds of scuffling could be heard distinctly.

The water tower was the only structure that the prison’s architects decided to leave as it was, probably because they were not going to live there. Actually, that thing should have been called “a water tower pond”: the tower wasn’t stuck in the middle of the yard but was adjoined to the rock; above the construction there was a huge reservoir, half of which rested on man-made supports, and another half on the rock. The reservoir was filled with streams flowing down from the mountains after rain—the only source of water on the island. If the developers had limited themselves to a plain dam, their descendants would have had no problems, but the former owners wanted to squeeze in a distribution system with pipes and valves. That was why the ancient foundation was raised and fortified, and the tower itself was tightly packed with stairs and bridging. No space left for windows, and oil lanterns were the only source of light inside. The place turned into a cozy, dark room, as though specifically designed for otherworldly creatures. At the time of the expedition’s arrival, the tower had stayed unlocked for over a hundred years, and any protective or ward-off spells had long worn down.

Near the entrance to the water tower we found a crowd of people: the guard that remained in the camp, the cook, and the student, whose name I could not remember. Mrs. Clements did not let them go inside, clinging to the door with a dead man’s grip. The ensorcelled people were not smart enough to grab her by the arms or to bend down and get past; they stupidly pushed and impeded one another. Still, there were three of them, and she was alone.

“Hold on, Rina,” Mr. Smith gasped.

“It’s Rustle, and it’s everywhere!” she croaked in response.

Uncle popped open a flask and splashed into the darkness. We heard a sound resembling rustle of many dry, falling leaves; a lantern above the door flashed brighter, and the attack of the enchanted people subsided.

“Grab them!” Mr. Smith ordered and jumped first, pulling out from the heap a burly security guard and wringing his hands behind his back. I focused on the cook—he was shorter.

Mrs. Clements, dirty and tired, followed us.

“I thought it was the end,” she groaned. “They were dragging me with them!”

“When had it found time to seize so many?” Uncle puffed (the student he dealt with began to resist). “We’ve been here for only a week.”

“Knuckleheads!” Mr. Smith hissed through his teeth. “I told you, you should have hired only local workers for the expedition, or the dark mages, but not these donkeys!”

Yes, in Krauhard only a small child could fall prey to Rustle’s charm.

“Arguing now is pointless,” Mrs. Clements sighed. “The caretaker disappeared before our arrival. In this place, Rustle’s activity grows stronger than elsewhere; this should have been taken into account.”

“Here is your caretaker!” Uncle announced in a cheerful voice.

On the shore, between us and the dock, stood a man, dead by all indications. The lower half of his face was missing completely; the wound had had time to dry out and turn black, and there was no fresh blood left in him. Softened tissues melted off the bone, kept in place by the skin only. As such, the body could only be preserved on the King’s Island—the place was almost sterile. For some reason, I did not want to know what this corpse was capable of.

Mr. Smith squeezed the guard’s neck and lowered the unconscious man to the ground, “Rina, watch him!”

The dark magician stepped forward, blocking the dead man’s way; threads invisible to the naked eye danced around his hands, a whole lace of black silk. There it was, real magic! When the weaving had been done, Mr. Smith threw it forward, as if it were a catching net. The body of the deceased caretaker was instantly fettered with black strands and began to sink. Nothing could keep it upright, the bones broke through the skin, and the smelly, bubbling mess plopped to the ground.

“Move, move, move,” Mr. Smith muttered, turning to the guard again.

There was no need to persuade us. I enjoyed the spectacle of the dark magician performing enchantment. The group of people, enchanted by Rustle, had slightly sobered up, so it did not take much time to tie their hands and place them on the boat. The sun had touched the water by the time the ship picked us up, and the King’s Island sank into a deep shadow. It was clear to all that the expedition had come to the end.

Perhaps, those who had bet on the deceased King were right—he really knew how to stand up for himself.

We were leaving the accursed island, having lost no one, but having gained nothing (except for the valuable life experience, of course). Expeditioners, affected by Rustle, were tightly bound and locked in the hold, while the ship’s crew was making warning signs against us. Uncle looked like he had single-handedly saved all of us and triumphed over the King himself. Mrs. Clements cried on the shoulder of Mr. Smith for the rest of the trip to the Trunk Bay (six hours at full speed). He stroked her hair and whispered in her ear something soft and comforting. I did not dare to ask about their relationship; there were questions that a dark magician would not hesitate to give a box on the ears for.

Chapter 6

Early the next morning, our ship entered the Trunk Bay; signal flags hung off the mast, and a dull, monotonous warning bell, ringing loudly from the ship, carried the plague alarm. The guard towers winked with lights through the morning fog, and at the entrance to the channel we were met by the iron gates that quickly reminded me of Capetower, though the gates were opened this time. Our captain was nervous, Mr. Smith impatiently tapped on the rail, and it took a good half hour for the quarantine staff to wake up, notice us, and point to a berth for mooring the ship.

Contrary to our expectations, the expedition’s appearance did not make a sensation in the Trunk Bay.

The head of the quarantine service and concurrently the chief of the local NZAMIPS’ office took news of the death of the prison’s caretaker with gloomy fatalism, “We were telling him: ‘Get out of there while your head is still on your shoulders,’ and his response always was: ‘Everything is under control, everything is under control!’”

The chief of NZAMIPS, Mr. Harlik, was a longtime friend of Uncle Gordon and a man of good sense, so in the quarantine zone we were immediately enlisted into the conditionally healthy and employed as civilian nursing assistants. Surprisingly, the staff had almost no dark magicians. Chief Harlik, chronically suffering from misunderstandings around there, poured his heart out to us, inviting for tea every evening.

“Will you be expelling Rustle?”

“Where would I find it now? This abomination preys on people and then goes into hiding at once. No, I will collect the caretaker’s remains and conserve the building; now, finally, the capitol authorities won’t argue with that.”

“How had people lived there before?” I wondered.

“Before… three years ago our hospital was nearly closed—no patients; nowadays we are building a new one. Not enough beds. Before, we were barely surviving. Now, we live.”

It was difficult to argue with Chief Harlik—he knew too much about everything.

For me, twenty-eight days at the Trunk Bay was a real vacation: full board, comfortable rooms, and a rich cultural program. Chief Harlik was an expert in Krauhard’s folklore and a very sociable man—a rarity among the dark. He willingly offered his insights on everyday happenings, did not ask any questions about my training with the Source under the guidance of Uncle Gordon, and taught me basic expelling rituals (just in case). How simple could life be when your superiors were of your own kind!

I wrote a letter to Mom, delighting her with the news that the work on the King’s Island was over, and complaining that we would have to wait a bit for the transport to go home (she did not need to know about the quarantine). Meanwhile, my theoretical knowledge of the otherworldly was enriched with practical content: doctors began inviting us for reception of new patients and suppression of the most violent—only the dark magicians were able to react properly and quickly enough to the attacks of the consciousnesses, plagued by the otherworldly. I dealt with children: many, many children with smiles, jerky movements, and unpredictable mood swings. In each of my little patients I seemed to see Lyuchik, and soon I clearly understood that my white family must move out of Krauhard.

“The kids come from the Brand’s Valley,” Chief Harlik explained. ” A town with a lot of foreigners sprang up there in the last ten years. Now the rules of dealing with the supernatural are taught in schools as the main subject; I would have started teaching them even earlier, but parents are against it—a child’s psyche is unstable and all that stuff. So now children are being taken to us, while their parents aren’t; they die on spot because they don’t know the rules half as well as their kids.”

Well, at least regarding knowledge of the rules, I wasn’t worried for Lyuchik.

For our voluntary assistance as nurse aides, we had accrued salary of one crown per day. Together with twenty crowns, earned in less than two weeks during the expedition, our total amounted to nearly fifty. Please note that it was earned through honest hard work! Still, that money couldn’t come close to solving my financial woes, and I started crying to Uncle about my bitter fate. How could it happen that my father, a dark magician, did not leave any inheritance to his son?

Uncle shrugged: “If you want to, I’ll ask Harlik to find out what happened. In his last years your father had no contact with me, but you’re right, it does look strange. Me—I am a mediocre alchemist, but he was a real magician, tough and mighty. What happened to him?”

It was so great to have good friends, even though for the dark it was the exception rather than the rule.

We returned home with less than ten days left until the end of my summer vacation. Joe hid the hives somewhere (though the bees were flying in the garden), but they didn’t bother me anymore. I had become a real dark magician, tough and brave.

The time left before my return to Redstone was spent tastefully: I drove a moped around, scared cows, told stories of the King’s Island to the younger ones (that were nothing like reality), helped Uncle Gordon catch up with the work that had accumulated in his garage over the past month, and collected rumors about events that took place in Krauhard. Chief Harlik was right: everything pointed to the return of the ancient, legendary times. I finally decided to talk about it with my stepfather.

“Joe, I heard rumors that Krauhard is getting restless of late. You ought to move somewhere closer to Redstone or to the capital.”

My stepfather sighed sadly: “We should. But we have no money to move, Thomas, even if I immediately find a job after the move.”

“Then at least Lyuchik has to be sent away. To some boarding school or maybe to your relatives, if you have any.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

I put my honestly earned fifty crowns on the table. “Take this! When I’m back at Redstone, I’ll send you more. Think harder.”

He hesitated, but didn’t rush to take the money. Another helpless white on my hands!

“What now?”

“You are so concerned for the family, you do so much for the kids… and I have never apologized to you!”

“For what?” I did not understand.

“I invaded your house, took the place of your father… perhaps, you’re angry with me.”

I sighed. How typical for the white to apply his standards to everybody. And I thought he was an empath.

“Have you not been lectured about the psychological differences in the school of magic?”

“Yes I have, of course. I always tried to… well… to treat you with understanding…”

But he never understood me fully, anyway.

“If my father had spent enough time at home to be remembered. If you had come to our house when I was eight, not eleven. If you had tried to preach to me. If you had forbidden me to buy that damn moped. If you had bought those fucking bees before I left… Anyway, if you had done things differently, I would have hated you to the depths of my soul. But you hadn’t… I think blood parents also don’t always understand their children, but somehow they do well.”

He smiled.

“You have become more mature. Wiser.”

Just one thing left now: I had to find a job. Oh, money, money…

The day I was leaving for Redstone turned out to be noisy and senseless. On the eve of my departure, I went to the station and performed a little trick: I sold my express non-stop railroad ticket to one lucky guy. I was going to return to Redstone by suburban railroads, changing them at every town. It was not quite legitimate, but that way I would save an extra eighteen crowns. The bad thing was that the way back by the suburban railroad would take twice as much time.

My mother kept trying to shove a jingling worn-out wallet in my backpack, and I kept taking it out.

“Tommy, please, take it for your trip!”

“I don’t need money!” I was dead set on that. “You need it more. I can always make money in the city.”

If I only knew how!

At the last moment it turned out that the train I needed did not stop at the Wildlife Outpost, and Uncle Gordon had to give me a ride on his jalopy through two mountain passes. There were pros to it—no time for a teary parting, and cons—I did not manage to talk to Mom about my father again.

I started my irritatingly slow travel via local rail lines that departed rarely and stopped at every shabby station. Good thing that Mom had shoved some grub into my bag, and Joe had poured a calabash of mead of his own make (it was so much more fun to travel with that drink). It took me 26 hours to reach Ekkverh Junction. From there, trains to Redstone departed twice a day, and I had to waste another three hours between routes. Taking a nap at the station was fraught with troubles, and I did not want to squander money on a baggage locker, so I sat in the waiting room, hugging my backpack and dying of boredom.

At first, I entertained myself by visualizing a speech that I would be making in front of Quarters, who would certainly want to know what I was doing the whole summer. Should I tell him about the island and the quarantine? Then on my last penny left after the ticket purchase, I bought a local paper from a newsboy (you could put it under your ass, and the seat wouldn’t be so freezing cold) and read it from cover to cover. The contents of eight yellow pages captured the essence of provincial life: a harvest festival, local news, anecdotes, obituaries, ads, and crosswords (the latter turned out to be amazingly stupid).

I quickly looked through the ads: farmers selling cattle, furniture, tractors and equipment, unusually few suggestions to buy puppies and kittens, and an entire section at the end devoted to magical services. Three dozen wizards offered local townsfolk remedies for male potency, cockroach extermination, improving the tempers of horses, and the treatment of root rot in roses. Naturally, there were no dark magicians among them: which of us would voluntarily agree to live in the boonies? The dark mages are irresistibly attracted to big, crowded cities, full of amenities and devoid of insects. There was no work for NZAMIPS here as well, and I sympathized with the poor fellows who operated the local “cleaning” service—they must have been sent there for some mortal sin. However, if the situation in Ekkverh was changing the same as in Krauhard…

And then, as though an invisible hand squeezed my mind, the sense of a touch on the back of my head became so vivid that I turned around.

Surely, in this preserve of white magic, there wasn’t a single NZAMIPS’ office (perhaps, local farmers didn’t even know what that was). For the whole county, there was one on-site inspector, and he lived somewhere in Redstone. Hardly any of the locals knew the subtleties of the licensing of dark magicians and the limitations that NZAMIPS imposed on our practice—they used to pay cash after the work had been done without asking for a receipt or invoice. You couldn’t meet representatives of the government there even by accident, and a bit of competition wouldn’t hurt the local “cleaning” service.

I carefully pulled off a newspaper coupon for a free ad, took a pen from a news vendor and filled in: “A dark magician, specialist in the undead and otherworldly phenomena. Pricelist available. Warranty. Free consultation.” As a contact number I provided the phone of a girl I knew who worked in the answering services. She was the half-blind girl with well-developed vocal strength who was a secretary for three or four small companies that were too poor to keep a separate office. She was valued for her good telephone manners: the girl never asked stupid questions like: “Who are you looking for?” Another advantage—she lived near the university, not far from me to check for the news regularly.

Finally, I fell back into my old ways. As they say, you can’t wash the stripes off a zebra.