Later, the history books talked about the flourishing of arts and sciences but, in fact, the inhabitants of White Halak were not capable of doing anything that required the throes of creation, any somewhat serious effort, or complicated training. And they did not need it—they lived a pale imitation of life.
That strange perversion of human nature did not horrify me (by the way, the real undead did not frighten me either), but I felt disgusted. No, better let the white be what I had gotten used to: harmless nitwits. They are not so useless if you take the time to think about them. I would treat them cautiously (I succeeded with Lyuchik), protect and indulge them, and they wouldn’t create any extraordinary troubles for me.
That would be idyllic, wouldn’t it?
Chapter 21
Finally, the forty days of my quarantine were over. No, not like that. They had ended!!!
The last two days were especially difficult—the damned otherworldly settled in my head and enjoyed it as much as it could. I physically couldn’t stay at home days and nights: clocks had started ticking too loudly. But on the streets a glance at any living object caused in my mind a rapid string of images of his or her past, present and, at times, future. Why the hell did I need to know what the neighbor’s dog ate in the morning, why a kitten was hungry, or how a hangover pained Mr. Rakshat? And, as a final touch, I could not read a book about the eviction of Rustle—my vision was failing me.
I had never believed before that a dark mage could seriously think about suicide.
I barely managed to last until the end of the forty days, but after the magic date had passed, the problems with the monster abruptly went down. My mind became acclimated, maybe? Bleak hallucinations and moments of sharpened hearing made me shudder a few more times, but then I realized that the problems were gone. The only left over issue was that a thought of the white was giving me willies and reminder that the Rustle-inspired memories would stay with me forever.
Why did I need alien problems? I had plenty of my own.
I felt blissfully happy, gradually tying the broken threads of my former plans and events, pondered where to find a buyer for Uncle’s rarities, and fondly looked forward to the terrible revenge that I would strike upon the wretched creature. The encyclopedia said that Rustle was practically the only otherworldly phenomenon that a dark mage could summon at will (there were precedents). I wondered how many Rustles existed, and how would I choose the right one? I will challenge them one by one and torture, tantalize, crucify…
The people around me didn’t know the nature of my problems and guessed that I did not have enough sleep. I couldn’t care less; let them think what they wanted. I did not see or hear their thoughts anymore, and that made me feel immensely happy.
But the world had lost its familiar simplicity. The euphoria and temporary insanity that I was awarded by Rustle could not hide the unpleasant fact that people started gazing at me strangely. Did I carry some signs on my face? I asked Quarters straight out and received an unexpected response: “You’ve, sort of, crossed the road to the artisans.”
“When?!”
“Did you not get that?”
I fell deep in thought, sifting through the events of recent difficult days. Well, people with a fairly sick imagination could perceive my talks about Uther as a hostile attack. On the other hand, no malicious sect could surpass Rustle in its meanness; it wasn’t realistic. Anything that was less evil I didn’t care about, I declared to Quarters.
“Whatever you say, Tom,” he shook his head. “I can’t understand you, the dark.”
Brave bully Quarters… scared?
As it turned out, he was not alone in that. Outside the university, the white moved only in groups of three or four now; they had gone through some kind of “safety” training and became atypically anxious thereafter. Freshmen were counted twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. Students self-organized into patrol groups with men on duty, and these guards imposed the dormitory curfew. I wondered how they intended to make the dark mages observe all these rules. Especially the novice magicians, who were finishing regular classes well after midnight and by the end of the day were in such condition that no artisans were necessary.
Organizing the dark proved to be easy. They were offered a cab and a free dinner daily. With beer. Freebies! All the dark students appeared right on time, by 12 am, without fail. Even I felt the temptation to freeload in the dormitory and barely suppressed it. Are we, the dark, so predictable?
These extraordinary measures fostered a serious mood. For a while I honestly tried to scare myself, picturing that I was being hunted by freaks, but could not continue in that vein for long—it was boring. What could they do to me? Kill me? The most horrible thing I could imagine was a burnt out light bulb at the porch and Rustle waiting for me at the door, but that could not happen in the city (knock on wood)—too many ward-off spells were pinned around, and NZAMIPS was on standby. The maximum that I managed to achieve was to develop a habit of looking on both sides of the street and staying sober in unfamiliar places.
I was not allowed to attend dark magic classes—the doctor from Krauhard informed the university about my injury (what a pathetic snitch; one excuse - he was white). I spent spare time in the library, as a good student.
I had two topics of interest. The number one was Rustle. Certainly I wasn’t the first dark magician it infected; people must have tried to get rid of the creature before, and some reports on the progress made should exist somewhere. I couldn’t believe that one of my kind had successfully expelled Rustle and hadn’t bragged about it. However, material on the most dangerous otherworldly phenomenon was surprisingly scarce. The reasons for that could be twofold: either Rustle was of no interest to anyone but me (nonsense!), or the results achieved were “not for mere mortals”. I needed to ask the captain about Rustle, but instead I inquired about some white idiots.
Second, Uncle’s book burned in my hands. I asked Johan’s advice without going into detail and learned that the address on the parcel wasn’t even a building—it was a botanical garden. The name also seemed suspicious, for Pierrot Sohane was a character in a fairly well-known fable. Combined, the two facts pointed to a white magician who lived in solitude and kept neutrality. Clearly, he wasn’t a merchant, because a seller would not name a buyer “my precious friend” and wouldn’t complain, “I hadn’t hoped to find you alive”. Moreover, he would not persuade in his letter that he “solemnly kept without any selfish interest an ‘unnamed something’ just for the sake of continuity”. A rhythm of these phrases stuffed up my ears, and I wasn’t eager to meet the “insignificant master of mirrors”. Thus, I needed to figure out what I had in hand not to be strangled at the first attempt to sell the rarity. And what if the book was stolen?