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“Where? Ah, I forgot! This is charisma from the charismatic tree! They made off with half a bucket of these from the Garden of Eden for one of our clients. Eh… a loud politician, who sold his eidos to us. Well, I also pocketed a couple. I was going to eat it, but then decided that I have enough charisma myself… Keep it!”
“A-ah!” Methodius drawled. He very vaguely pictured to himself what charisma was, but decided not to ask. Moreover, Julitta in a business-like manner glanced at the stale night clouds and unexpectedly rushed. “Well, that’s it! Till the meeting, great magician! If there are problems – howl!” she said mockingly.
The witch winked at Methodius, turned, and quickly went away. After reaching the corner of the building, she turned around, waved at Methodius, and very simply dissolved in the air. There were neither dazzling sparks nor incantations of teleportation nor rings nor magic wands, nothing… Everything took place instantly and effectively. Guards of Gloom preferred to manage without excess motions and vivid gestures. True force – economy of force.
***
A puzzled Methodius ran to the place where Julitta was standing recently. He discovered no trace – neither burnt spots on the asphalt nor the sharp smell of sulphur. Nothing remarkable. An old man’s shoe of size forty-three, lying on the glass-plot and snapping an unglued sole jealously at the world, clearly contained nothing weird.
Methodius, trying to digest what had happened, slowly wandered into the entrance. “Someone, who wants something from me, sent her. This someone is undoubtedly a wizard, moreover monstrously powerful. If he wishes to turn up beside me this second – he would do it also without Julitta. That means, it’s important to him that I go to the meeting voluntarily and the meeting will take place precisely there, in that house on the spot of the Skomoroshya Cemetery,” he thought, going up in the elevator.
Edward Khavron, it goes without saying, was not home. At this hour, he was still catching tips on modest ledger bait using his brutal appearance in conjunction with reasonable caddish behaviour. This was precisely that Molotov cocktail, which office ladies visiting Ladyfingers especially fell for. Zozo Buslaeva, who had time to cry over her female fate, had long ago washed off all the make-up and was now with appetite eating the trophy cake, chasing it with a crunchy pickle. The gustatory preference of Zozo was slightly off, as if she was eternally in a state of pregnancy. “What took you so long?” she asked her son.
“It’s this… Listen, why did you name me Methodius?”
Zozo wrinkled her forehead, “Methodius… Ah, I remember! When we went to register you at the Civil Registry Office, your papa intended to name you Misha. Misha Buslaev and all that. Along the way I argued with him, he jumped into a shuttle and left, and I, to spite him, when I filled out the form, wrote you down as Methodius. You know, how your papa hit the ceiling when I showed him your birth certificate. All the time he was to change your name, but never made up his mind about it. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Very funny,” Methodius side gloomily. “But why precisely Methodius?”
“Don’t know why… Somehow, it jumped into my head. Misha is M, Methodius is M… Well, you’re not mad at me, kid? You’re satisfied?” Zozo suddenly thought.
“Kid is happy and satisfied!” Methodius confirmed and went into the room.
He suddenly felt enormous irritation. Such irritation that he was afraid to even look at the wallpapers and the objects in the room, vaguely fearing that they would now flare up. Instead of this, Methodius turned off the light, approached the window, and began to look into the courtyard, at the dumpster illuminated by a searchlight, seemingly tiny like a matchbox from the height. “Excellent! Now we’ll check if I have magic power or not!” Methodius said to himself. He decided that if he had the ability to cause fire from this great distance, it would really prove that he had a gift. He concentrated. He tried to visualize the dumpster nearby. Here are the packets, here are tied up ski boots, proudly raised above all kinds of scattered rubbish, a doll without a head, broken wooden blocks, crumpled advertising newspaper…
Methodius exerted himself. Time after time, he imagined how he set the newspaper on fire, and the fire was already leaping over from the newspaper onto the blocks. It was useless. Nothing happened. Methodius got tired and despaired. “From what did I decide this, that there are stumps and newspaper? Obviously nothing! And indeed Julitta mixed me up with someone else altogether! There’s less magic in me than in a rotten egg!” he thought, examining the dumpster through the window.
It became unimportant to him whether he had magic power or not. What is the difference after all? Consciousness blanked out and became absolutely lifeless. Suddenly, precisely at this moment of internal devastation, Methodius saw a dancing flame, appearing from heaven knows where and sliding along the arrow of his sight. He blinked in amazement and immediately calmed down, after understanding that this was most likely the light of distant headlight, licking the asphalt snake of the Moscow Ring Highway, smearing the sky. “Well now! No magic power!” Methodius thought with satisfaction. He drew the curtains, undressed, and lay down to sleep.
He was already asleep when above the dumpster a puff of smoke ascended. The painted blocks burned for a long time. At first, the flame only crackled, but soon the entire container was blazing. Even the ski boots and packages with half-eaten food were burning. It was already towards the morning, when the rubbish had burnt down and the first floors of the building were wrapped in thick fumes, that the fire engine arrived, and for a long time was standing by the container, soundlessly blinking its warning lights.
***
Methodius woke up around eight. He woke without the alarm clock, but with the unpleasant sensation that no one had cancelled school. The kingdom of dream was reigning over their room. From under the blankets projected the heels of Eddy Khavron, having returned towards the morning. If some reckless author of puzzles tries to find seven differences between the heels of the great waiter, he would be impaired by overexertion, because there were only two differences. One heel was slightly more pink and smoother; the other had a small birthmark and often shuddered a little in his sleep. “Hey you, newbie, don’t push me with the tray! You smudge the suit, you’ll get a knee in the romance department!!” Khavron distinctly said in his sleep, turning to an invisible collocutor. His noble sister Zozo Buslaeva was sleeping on a sofa bed in plaid, moth-eaten for years. “Met, eat something for breakfast and go somewhere! To school then!” she said languidly from under the blankets.
“Breakfast on what?” Methodius asked.
“Whatever you want. And, I beg you, don’t depress me with life! I beg you!” Zozo asked and rolled over onto the other side. She hoped to see again in dream the modest young millionaire, trembling with love, shyly open for her the door of the white Mercedes.
Methodius cut a piece of fish and cake – remains of yesterday’s splendour – and left for school. Approaching the school, Methodius noticed not without regret that the school was safe and sound. All professional and non-professional terrorists at night went around it. Sticking out of the doors of the school was the sixteen-year-old forehead with the touching last name of Krovozhilin, having appointed himself to the critical post of person-on-duty, and he was checking the second pair of shoes. Subjects without smenki got from Krovozhilin a whack to the back of the head. But then the magnanimous Krovozhilin rewarded all happy possessors of smenki with a powerful kick. Simply for historic injustice it is worth noting that Krovozhilin himself was also without smenki, but this is already excessive detail, which must be chased from the prose like a ram from the new gates. As a result a small crowd of seventh- and eighth-graders were standing on the side, patiently waiting until the wind of change would take Krovozhilin away for a smoke behind the school.
In Methodius again sprung up the temptation to verify his magic gift. He stared at Krovozhilin from a distance and thought with concentration, “Away from here! Be gone! Take a hike!” However, Krovozhilin did not think of vanishing anywhere, remaining indifferent to all suggestions. Only about five minutes later, a worked-up Krovozhilin, not making a distinction, accidentally gave a kick to a senior student and, avoiding retribution, dissolved into space like a genie. However, this happened without any magic interference, but particularly on the internal impulse of Krovozhilin himself. “It’s useless! I’m without talent like a toilet seat cover! Julitta really simply mixed me up with someone else!” Methodius thought and sadly pushed the school door.
Methodius ran into the classroom three seconds after the bell. The chemistry teacher had a stern disposition. She loved to summon precisely the late ones first. However, instead of the chemistry teacher, the principal Galina Valerevna, like a round loaf getting thin, rolled into the classroom. “Unfortunately, Frieda Emmanuelovna has had a great misfortune. She will not be able to come, since she has to be in surgery,” she informed them in a funeral voice. Half of the class issued a joyous howl, but, after recollecting, they unskilfully transformed it into a sympathizing sigh.
“Frieda Emmanuelovna’s Doberman has twisted bowels. They’re operating at this exact moment,” continued Galina Valerevna. “But I have good news for you. I do not remember which thinker said it, but let’s not lose in vain a breath of our precious life. The girls will tear off the wallpaper in the cloakroom of the old sports hall, and the boys will throw the old linoleum on the scrap heap! And a last announcement. Who thinks that he can manage much more important and interesting work?” Borya Grelkin raised his hand. Methodius, sitting at the same desk with him and having heard the principal’s question, also raised his hand, simply for company. No more hands went up. “Wonderful, Grelkin and Buslaev! The school and our native land are proud of you! You will transfer twelve stumps from the basement into the assembly hall – decoration for the play Yaroslav the Wise,” said Galina Valerevna.
Along the way, half of the people sent to tear off wallpaper and to take out linoleum disappeared somewhere. These were the smarter ones, who believed that nevertheless no one would make a note of their absence. But then Grelkin and Buslaev were not going to vanish anyhow. No one called off the stumps, and responsibility was personal.
In the basement, where they were steered, Methodius dourly examined the stumps for a long time. They turned out to be genuine and very heavy. In time immemorial, some fool had sufficient mind to saw a log, and then even cover all the sawn parts with paint… under the wood. Probably, so that the wood would be a little less like itself.
“Why did you raise your hand?” Methodius attacked Grelkin.
“Huh?” Grelkin was astonished.
“Your hand, I say, why did you raise it?” Methodius almost began to howl.
“Who, me? I didn’t!”
“What? You didn’t? Then who did?” Methodius roared, without noticing how the paint on the end stump was beginning to melt under his gaze.
“Really, didn’t you raise your hand first? My ears are stuffed up from a head cold,” sniffing suspiciously, Grelkin whined.
“Idiot!” Methodius growled. He had already calmed down. It was indeed not possible to be angry with Grelkin – that would be like being offended by a penguin.
Borya carefully sat down on one of the stumps and slowly began to eat a banana taken out of his bag. Grelkin was a sad chubby silent type. He usually inhabited the last desk, yearning sadly, and with incomprehensible significance cast looks at the window, where stood a pot with a withering violet as cheerful as him. Borya answered the majority of questions monosyllabically: “Well?” “A!” “Ne-a!” Teachers neither praised nor berated him. They even rarely called him to the board, simply preferring to forget about him. In a word, Borya Grelkin was one of those, whose presence classmates did not notice even with the largest magnifier.
“Do you intend to drag the stumps or what?” having calmed down finally, Methodius asked him after about five minutes. He remembered to try to talk softly to Borya if possible so that he would not die of horror.
Grelkin pensively looked at his stomach and shook crumbs off it. “I can’t lift anything. I had a hernia last year,” he informed despondently.
“Then why did you not tell the principal?”
“But she didn’t ask.”
Methodius blinked, finished counting mentally to ten in order not to break Borya into ten small idiots, and began to move the stumps by his lonesome. The stumps were quite heavy, and it was necessary to roll them to the stairs, storming each step. He had had such a hard time with the first stump already that, after rolling it into the assembly hall, he got back down barely alive.
When he again tumbled into the basement, Borya Grelkin had finished pensively licking his fingers. “You know, it’s a somewhat strange taste! But on the whole, generally speaking, trash!” Grelkin uttered a phrase of a length simply phenomenal for him.
“What’s ‘it’?”
“The prune!”
“What prune?” Methodius did not understand.
“There, lying in your knapsack. Your knapsack dropped with a crash from the stump, I began to gather your textbooks, and there – pop! – a prune. I gobbled it. You don’t mind?”
Methodius pondered slowly. What prune! He had already leaned over in order to take the next stump, when suddenly he froze in the stupid pose. The fruit from the charismatic tree, it was in the box! In the morning before school, he hid the box with the stone among old notebooks, and the fruit for some reason slipped into the knapsack. And now it was safely resting in Borya Gelkin’s stomach. Methodius stared narrowly at his classmate. No special changes had taken place in Borya Grelkin. Outwardly he was still the same amusing penguin, but already slightly more talkative and with a smile. Probably, basic magical changes were still ahead. Methodius wanted to deal a blow to Borya Grelkin, but this was so not possible, like kicking a chow-chow puppy. Borya emitted such geniality. Methodius spat and rolled from the basement the stump next in line…
Borya Grelkin stroked his own tummy with his hand and uttered several grating phrases, inspirational for the task. His usual caked dirty-white aura rapidly thickened and was saturated with colours, involuntarily attracting and charging those, whose energy outlines were weaker. But Methodius was indifferent to it. His energy outlines were strong, and in his immediate plan, eleven more stumps still loomed.
Chapter 3
The House with a View of Gloom
The day and the evening passed dully, this was, however, completely in the spirit of their family. Eddy Khavron hung out at home and, panting, was lifting weights, not forgetting while pausing to call Methodius a wimp and a sap. The very strong sweaty body of Eddy Khavron smelled of a stable. “At your age… huuu… I was unlike those, who… in short, you’re a fool!” he summed it up, lowering the weights so decisively that his sweat pants began to crack.
His sister Zozo Buslaeva had locked herself in the bathroom, turned on the water, and was talking on the phone. Once in a while Methodius heard how his mother laughed loudly and provocatively, even muffling the water. This laughter indicated only one thing: Zozo was concocting for herself a date with the next-in-line example with no understanding of women. Even now, Methodius, in advance, was ready to swear that this was some mothball dolt poured into another mould. He determined this by Zozo’s strained laughter, which was heard twice more often than normal. A feeling suggested to Methodius that the collocutor bored mother stiff and she had already mentally written him down as surplus.
Methodius usually endured Eddy’s laughter and commentaries. His patience was wasted if and only if Khavron blurted out, “Listen, I understand that you’re doing homework! But could you not write smaller so that the ink in the pen isn’t used up so fast?”
“Fine!” Methodius said obediently and thirty times finely wrote on the last page of the notebook: Eddy is a fat hippo, squared! “Like this?” he asked, showing the notebook.
“Smart kid! Excellent!” Eddy said with approval. Methodius understood that he read nothing and in general was already distracted from his economic daydreams.
“Ha-ha-ha! You’re such a dear! It seems I’ve known you for a hundred years! No, two hundred years! Ha-ha! Certainly, I don’t have in mind that you’re so old! For a man the main thing is the soul… What you did say, pardon me, is the main thing? Ah, what a comedian you are! Simply Petrosyan Khazanovich Zadornov!” Zozo trilled from the bathroom and shouted with suffering laughter.
Methodius drew a long thick line and shoved the notebook into the drawer. He was fed up with this delirious pair. He felt that he was ready to throw open the window and take a step directly from the windowsill to the clouds. At this moment he understood that today, he would definitely draw on the carpet that same rune from the bottom of the box. Come what may, but he simply could not remain here any longer. Methodius recollected about the three scoops of ashes, which would be left of him, if he incorrectly drew the rune, but even this suddenly seemed unimportant. Either he would become a wizard and flee from here, or let them gather him from the carpet.
***
The genuine Swiss clock of Chinese manufacturing squeaked unmusically and pitifully, indicating midnight. Methodius, getting up on his elbows, waited patiently until the clock finished torturing the small battery. Not so long ago Edward Khavron had gargled in the shower and run off somewhere. Possibly even to work. He would positively not appear until morning. Zozo Buslaeva was lolling about on the narrow sofa. She had an unhappy look even when sleeping. In the morning, she was expected to get up at the crack of dawn and run five kilometres, teasing doggies out for a walk, and jumping over puddles.
She was introduced to the new admirer, the essayist Basevich from the newspaper Yesterday’s Truth, at the exhibition of auto tires, where the creative person was thoughtfully picking at a Matador tire with his nail, vaguely hoping to scrape up a theme for his new article. Besides work, Basevich turned out to be a health nut. He ate only beets, cooked onions, cabbage, and millet sprouts. Sometimes a couple of cucumbers and a peach. And nothing else.
“A woman, who doesn’t drink a glass of untreated spring water on an empty stomach, does not exist for me!” he stated to Zozo in the first five minutes of acquaintance. Clever Zozo immediately assured him that she drank untreated spring water not only on an empty stomach, but also in place of dinner, and she loved cooked onions only more than beets. She did not suspect that she was a ten. Against a background of mutual love for cooked onions, their hearts rushed towards each other. Moreover, Zozo, never getting up earlier than noon, to the happiness of Basevich, turned out to be a fan of early morning runs. Basevich immediately became happily excited and, while the highly experienced Zozo was turning over in her mind what the deuce attracted her beyond his language, he stated to her that for the first time after his three unsuccessful marriages, he saw not a frivolous female bitten by the rabid dog of materialism, but a real wise woman.
Overall, the romance developed rapidly and was interrupted for two days only by the unsuccessful experience with the hog. Fortunately, the fan of millet sprouts did not find out about it. About that approximate time, he had scorched his vocal chords gargling with iodine, for two days could not talk on the phone, and was only croaking hoarsely. However, even in this state he had sufficient strength to phone Zozo on the previous night and croaked that the next day at six in the morning he was coming on the subway in order to jog a little under the windows of the dear woman. It was necessary for Zozo to dig out her tracksuit urgently from the mezzanine and to take Methodius’ running shoes. Luckily, their shoe sizes coincided.
Methodius took out the box and carefully opened it. The bottom of the box was flooded by a deathly glow. The transparent stone blazed in the darkness. The fog inside stretched out and attempted to take the shape of a rune – the same one as on the bottom. The rune suddenly seemed awfully hideous to Methodius. It was like a crushed beetle spreading half-bent legs in different directions. The centre was a circle.
“It’s time!” Methodius thought. Cautiously looking over at the sleeping Zozo, on whose face the bluish light from the box fell, Methodius hurriedly got dressed, sneaked into the kitchen, and placed the box on the table. He stretched out his hand and decisively took the transparent stone. It was only slightly warm to touch, but, when Methodius, becoming familiar with the rune jumping like a cardiogram, made several strokes in the air, the stone heated up and became almost scorching. The fog inside became a reddish snake, throwing itself to the walls, positively trying to break loose.
“Aha! I can’t even try it out! It’s simply a monumental dirty trick!” Methodius growled and, not giving himself a chance to change his mind, quickly traced the rune on the kitchen floor. This was doubly complicated, since the stone left no trace on the linoleum. It was necessary to draw blindly. Sweat appeared on Methodius’ forehead. Mentally he was already ashes scattered all over the kitchen, soiling Eddy Khavron’s dried shirt, which quivered on the chandelier like a white spectre, chained by a hanger to a bend in the wire.
Methodius drew the last line and stepped back, just like an artist attempting to survey his creation. The stone gradually cooled in his hand, and then suddenly – without any warning or sign – shattered into a fine glass powder in his palm. In the same moment, the rune flared up. A particularly bright flame was on its bent legs. But the centre, where Methodius with foresight drew a big circle, was much paler. Without waiting until the rune faded, Methodius carefully took a step into its centre. He expected tingling, flash, pain – anything, but what took place. Methodius suddenly understood that the kitchen with the dark-blue photo-wallpaper had disappeared, and he was standing in a completely different place.
Small puddles scattered on the asphalt. The wind, playing, chased the plastic from cigarette packages. The red eyes of traffic lights smashed into pieces in windows and shop windows. The sky, interlaced with cables and billboards, was dusted with stars. Methodius turned around and immediately leaping into his view was a plaque “Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 13,” fastened at the corner of a long grey house, a large part of which was enclosed in safety construction netting for repairs. “Skomoroshya Cemetery my foot!” Methodius thought.
***
House № 13 on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, solidly but boringly built, had already been staring with its small windows for almost two centuries at the opposite side of the street. House № 13 is so dull and cheerless that even with one accidental look at it, the mood barometer would come to rest on the “melancholy” point.
At one time, on the same space – possibly the foundation was still preserved – was the Church of Resurrection in Skomoroshkakh. And here, up to the church, solidly buried over the centuries, stretched the naughty Skomoroshya Settlement with saloons, fiery dances, and tamed bears. They led these last ones by a ring in the nose, forced them to dance, and soldiers brought them home-brewed beer in a pail. Robbers played pranks almost every night here, with knives gleaming, clubs brandishing, undressed down to the waist, and even beat to death those who overindulged in drinks.
During the immense fire of 1812, engulfing Moscow from three sides, the Church of Resurrection in Skomoroshkakh burned down, and soon on its foundation the priest Belyaev built a dwelling. But the clerical estate could not be supported at the cursed place – as if the bones of the skomorokhi chased it away. And two decades had not yet passed, when the Versailles Furnished Rooms appeared here, with the sooty tunnel of a corridor, bug spots on the walls, and an eternal smell of cheap tobacco from the rooms. Every evening there were drinking bouts and card games in the furnished rooms, and in the corner room lived a cardsharper, a Pole with dyed moustaches, who played the clarinet well. He lived here for about five years and would have lived longer, had his marked deck not been put on the spot once and a juiced-up artillery major not turned up with a charged revolver.
The Versailles Furnished Rooms were located on the second floor. Setting up shop on the lower floor of house № 13 was the optometrist Milka, from whom Chekhov ordered a pince-nez for himself. From the alley, finding a spot for itself was the little store Foreign News, where high school students bought cigarettes with powder, firecrackers, and frivolous pictures from under the counter. In secret, as if to justify the exorbitant prices, it was reported that the cards were from Paris, although in actuality the thread stretched to Gazetnyi Pereulok, to the photographer Goldenveizer – a sentimental Bavarian and a splendid artistic painter of animals.
In the Soviet times, house № 13 first turned into the Hotel Mebelprom, and then the united archive of Moscow Waterworks Management moved into it. Brisk archivists in sleeve guards made excerpts, and the first chief of the archive Gorobets, a former midshipman of the Baltic Fleet, cut liver sausage on the varnished desk of Milka, who had died of typhus in Kharkov in ’21.
This way – with furnished rooms, store bustling, and glossy sleeve guards – day after day and year after year the forgotten altar of the Church of Resurrection in Skomoroshkakh was defiled, until once at dawn two people walked out from a secluded wall of the neighbouring wing of a former military school. One was an ugly hunchback. Traffic lights reflected off his silvery armour, which for some reason seemed splashed with blood. On his belt, passing through a ring, hung a sword without scabbard. The sword was of a strange shape. It ended in a hook with notches. The blade was covered with cabalistic symbols. The other, a stocky man moody and stern like a pagan idol, was black-moustachioed, with grey streaks glistening like silver in his beard. A red loose garment with black inserts flowed exactly from his shoulders.
The guards of Gloom, emerging so unceremoniously, looked around. The fog, reeking like a damp blanket, was lying in pieces on the asphalt. The black-moustachioed man raised his eyebrows interrogatively and glanced back at the hunchback. “Well, and? I’m waiting, Ligul!” he said, breathing with effort through a broken nose.
“Yes, Ares. This is that same house. A rare place, all energy flows necessary to us converge here. Everything necessary is ready. I have seen to it. Shielding magic, fifth dimension… Agents and succubae have been notified. Tomorrow you’ll begin the work: the movement of reports, the sending of eide, and so on. Usual routine work of Gloom. It goes without saying, in the given situation it’ll be more distracting; however, it’s not worthwhile to ignore it. Eide aren’t scattered all over the road. What your primary task will be is known to you,” said the hunchback patronizingly.
“Excellent. Well, titan of spirit and prisoner of body, what else do you have to say? What else have you hit upon in those centuries that we did not meet?” Ares asked ironically. The pretentious tone of the hunchback clearly irritated him.
“That traitors don’t exist, instead there are only morally adjusted people,” the hunchback answered in a thin throaty voice.
“Not badly said, my cemetery genius! You’re a poet and a philosopher, cultivated on the sickly soil of the Chancellery of Gloom. In that case, Judas is nothing but an intellectual, acutely in need of a handful of silver coins, deciding to earn extra money… But enough feeding each other a stew of paradoxes. Let’s return to business. You’re sure that the time has come?”
The hunchback jerked his head up. His voice sounded fanatical, “Yes. The day has come increasingly closer when Light and Gloom will again join in battle! And Gloom will prevail! The wizards of Light will cease to interfere with us, will hide in their burrows beyond the clouds, and the eide of moronoids, which we now rip out of them with such difficulty, will gush out to us in an endless stream… Everything that we need – this is the last effort!”
Ares looked at him with badly hidden mockery. “I’m well posted. Very nice that you reminded me…” he said.
Ligul glanced sharply at him. His hand involuntarily slid to his thigh, where the sword was hanging. “Indeed you hate me, Ares? You would take my head with pleasure, with the hook of your sword you would pluck the darc off me and smash it. And would take away for yourself all eide incarcerated in it!” he hissed.
Ares shrugged his shoulders. “Possibly. And you hate me, Ligul. We all hate one another. It’s the usual story for Gloom. Do you want us to fight? Perhaps you’ll be luckier and precisely your boot will come down on my darc,” he said coldly.
The hunchback fixed his eyes on him with hatred. It seemed lava was boiling at the bottom of his pupils. “Now a fight between guards of Gloom is impossible. Must not kill our own while the guards of Light are in power. But later I’ll meet you and let the strongest one win,” he said.
Ares smiled. His teeth were square and wide, the trustworthy colour of ivory. “Knowing you, I would say: let the most immoral one win. Isn’t that true, Ligul?” he refined.
The hunchback began to grit his teeth, but he got the better of himself. His hand let go of the hilt. “One day we’ll still return to this conversation. But for the time being get busy with the boy! Twelve years have already passed. His gift is necessary to us,” he said in a honeyed voice.
“Gift, gift… It’s necessary to Gloom, it’s necessary to the guards of Light… As far as I know, until now, they haven’t determined in the Chancellery how worthwhile it is for us to trust the boy. And the main thing, why his gift emerged. Or am I mistaken?” Ares smiled.
“It’s not worthwhile to underestimate the Chancellery of Gloom, swordsman… We haven’t determined only because we don’t want to draw hasty conclusions. We’re interested only in what’s known for sure. The gift of the boy is a dark gift, but he’s managing excellently without darc, which is already suspicious in itself. To manage without darc is a quality of guards of Light. He alone among us doesn’t need eide to support and augment his power. And his power is very significant. He, born at the moment of the eclipse, absorbed into himself the enthusiasm and horror of millions of mortals observing true darkness. And precisely then the gift woke up in him. Without realizing it himself, he learned to amass the most diverse energies: love, pain, fear, enthusiasm – whatever he likes. He makes them his own and can make use of them. The boy works like an enormous storage battery of magic. This side of his gift is completely known to us.”
“That is, our dear Methodius Buslaev is a bio-vampire?” Ares refined with irony.
The hunchback shook his head, sitting so crookedly on his body as if it had been pulled down in a great hurry. “No. A bio-vampire is one who wrings out energy, attaching by suction to the energy aura of man and drinking it to the last drop. A pitiful essence, a jackal. The boy wanted to shrug off all kinds of auras there, although he also sees them. He’s unique; he catches the spontaneous outbursts of energies. A person doesn’t even notice this. He discards his anger into space simply to get rid of it, and that serenely falls into our boy’s storage, the boy doesn’t even suspect this. Methodius can become an irreplaceable soldier in the struggle with the guards of Light. He’ll mow them down by the dozens, even the golden-wings. If we, of course, know how to properly prepare him. A guard of Gloom not knowing how to manage his gift is nothing. But again – the first tasks of Methodius will not be battles. Soon he’ll be thirteen, and you know where he must be on this day.”
“One more thought deep as our abysses, Ligul… Today you’re in great form – you speak solemnly of common truths with a speed very much like that of a high school teacher. You would agree, if not for the training of the boy, you would manage very well without me?”
The hunchback grinned, showing small, corroded teeth. “Ares, no one argues that you’re the best of the soldiers of Gloom. I would like to know what method of battle you don’t know. And you know extremely well how to impart your knowledge. However, allow me to remind you of something. Once you were even somewhat related to ancient gods, and the uncivilized glorified you as a god. Next, already in the Middle Ages, after that incident, I’ll not remind you which, you went into exile. Don’t forget where you were until I pulled you out! An unpleasant, dim, cheerless place. It seems, a desolate lighthouse on a distant northern cliff in the ocean? I’m not mistaken?”
Ares broodingly looked at the hunchback. “You’re not. Indeed, you precisely also arranged this exile for me, Ligul. You arranged and you pulled out. An old enemy is more reliable than a friend is already what I always remember about you. And, you know what’s the most amusing? That I also did not forget,” he said quietly.
The hunchback rapidly and uneasily glanced at him. “Well-well, no need for thanks, old chap. What kind of old scores can be here?” he said. “You’ll find the boy, get in touch with him, and you’ll train him! He must become the horror of Gloom, the nightmare of Gloom, the retribution of Gloom – whatever he wants! This girl, what’s her name there… your servant… will help you… Isn’t that so?”
“Julitta is not a servant! Mark this on your… hump!” Ares said quietly.
Ligul turned pale. The blow hit the mark. “She’s worse than a servant!” he shouted. “She’s a slave of Gloom. She was cursed even in infancy, moreover by her own mother, who dealt with black magic. They took away her eidos, leaving only a hole. According to the book of life and death, your Julitta had died a long time ago. And the worms should have eaten the girl long ago! Turned out to be an irregularity, eh? Argue with death itself, which isn’t aware of mistakes! It was necessary to finish the girl off, but here you appeared. Why, for what joy? You even gave her some portion of your abilities. If she would at least be a beauty, but only so-so… We gave up on this. A baron of Gloom having lost his mind occupies himself in his deserted lighthouse, what difference does it make?”
“Shut up! Don’t touch with your dirty fingers the memory of one whose nail is worth more than you!”
“You have flawed notions about the market cost of nails,” the hunchback said maliciously. “Yes indeed, of course… Old foolish Ligul! How would he understand the moral castings of Baron Ares, swordsman of Gloom! Only think, what an original story! When you fell in love with a mortal, breaking our laws, had a daughter with her, and saving this ridiculous idyll, you committed massive follies… So much happened at the lighthouse. Waves, stones, and wind should have cleansed your brains. And what? Even at the lighthouse, you didn’t get some sense into your head. Saved this moronoid girl, whom her confused mother had condemned to death. Interesting, for what joy? Or did she remind you of your daughter, whom you couldn’t save? At some point, you’ll finally learn that we are immortal, and moronoids and the children of moronoids – they’re such expendable material… Pawns in the eternal game of good and evil. Foolish flesh, clay with a flickering flame of eidos, which heaven knows why landed there!”
“You got carried away, hunchback! Perhaps, for variety, you should live your own life for a while?”
The hunchback shook his head. In his eyes appeared some kind of dry, feverish lustre. “Well indeed no! For the time being, yours suits me! I want to understand! Well, tell me, why was that duel necessary to you? Why kill your own while enemies are living? Perhaps they didn’t teach you that you always reserve sweets for dessert?”
“I took vengeance upon those, who crossed my path – directly or indirectly. And, what torments me is that I haven’t taken vengeance on all. One is still living…” Ares said, looking to the side. The plastering of the neighbouring house, 15 Bolshaya Dmitrovka, began to smoke from his look.
“They wanted much better, Ares… They saved you from the vileness of life. You yourself know that magicians, long rubbing shoulders with moronoids, lose their magic! Wallowing, like in a swamp, in petty everyday concerns! Such guards are lost to Gloom. Lost forever!” the hunchback said with conviction.
