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.