CHAPTER TWO MAX’S DREAM

I was dreaming of fire. It was burning everywhere around me. Beams, blackened by the fire, fell like dark spears engulfed in flames. And the wooden building, the scene of this conflagration, was collapsing before my eyes. The roof, gradually losing its support and also seized by the furious flames, caved in parts, each collapse sending up a giant shower of sparks, almost extinguishing momentarily. But within a minute, the flames rose again with renewed vigor. I wandered in this fire, trying to find a way out. Strangely unharmed. Although I felt the heat of the fire, it caused no pain. Why? I tried to understand, but that wasn’t the main concern. There was something else troubling me. Like anyone in a dream, I was unaware that everything around me was unreal. I took it all at face value. Finally, I burst outside through a collapsed, burning door into the daylight. Outside, there was a crowd of people. At first, they seemed to have tried to extinguish the fire, but now they had given up. The fierce flames were unstoppable at this stage. Let it burn out. Let it burn to the ground; nothing else could be done. That seemed to be their decision. Strangely, they paid no attention to me. None at all. As if I were a ghost. Invisible and inaudible. Yet, they parted ways when I approached the crowd. Maybe they didn’t see me come out? Impossible, I thought. And it was only then that I realized something was amiss. The people were dressed differently! Not in the way I was accustomed to seeing in my era. They wore fashions from the thirties. But not in American fashion, rather in old Soviet style. Caps made of light grey cloth. Plaid and white shirts. Trousers and worn brown boots. The scuffed leather jackets of the NKVD with cross belts. And they were there too. With holsters and Nagant revolvers, just as I had seen in movies. In the dream, a part of my memory about Bridgeport and the transition to a world of magic was completely blocked. I didn’t remember it. I only remembered the year 1999. Ukraine. My night drive to Odessa in a ‘Niva’. That’s it! This was the last point of reference in my memory from where this inexplicable journey began.

I surveyed the unfamiliar place, turning my head from side to side. A massive construction site. With prisoner laborers, Red Army soldiers. Endless lines of people with shovels and single-wheeled barrows on wooden planks laid over the mush of brown earth. People digging in a huge pit, in the ground. From somewhere to the right, large columns of unclear purpose protruded. Judging by the sunlight glistening off them, they were made of metal. At the top, they expanded like the caps of honey mushrooms. Between the towers was a stretched red canvas with a huge inscription: “Glory to labor! Glory to the USSR!”

I began to wander through this construction site, filled with incomprehensible machinery, until I stumbled upon a group of supervisors. They stood near the machines, in white shirts with their light jackets casually draped over their shoulders, held by two fingers. Nearby stood a military officer. Without shoulder boards, as was customary at the time. With diamonds, the meaning of which I didn’t know. He could have been a commander or someone higher up from the People’s Commissariat of the USSR. However, what drew my attention most was not him or the engineers in caps. It was a tall, mustached man with grey hair and a piercing gaze. In a black suit and a plaid shirt. There was a vague sense of recognition. I had seen him somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember. A tall, gray-haired, elderly man. He kept spinning in my head. Any moment now, I’ll remember, I told myself, but I couldn’t. Meanwhile, the gray-haired man smiled when the military officer whispered something in his ear. It was a condescending smile, as if he held all the secrets of the world but couldn’t reveal them due to the level of incomprehension of those around him.

“And what are you loitering around here for?”

I turned around in surprise, expecting the question was directed at someone else. But I found that the guy in the plaid cap, with his jacket held behind his back and a cigarette between his teeth, was addressing me personally.

“Excuse me? Are you talking to me?” I asked, still in disbelief. I thought I was a ghost!

“Who else?”

He shifted the cigarette in his mouth. I took in his attire, so familiar from the movies. He could have been Fred Astaire, ready to break into a lively tap dance in those fashionable boots. Or, like in ‘Jolly Fellows’, start marching to the beat of brass instruments.

“And what’s it to you?” I retorted, deciding to be bold. In any case, in such situations and with such characters, fawning wouldn’t help.

“Mr. Tesla, Mr. Tesla!”

This shout distracted me. It struck me like a blow and doused me in cold water. Tesla! Tesla! So that’s who he was! No wonder he seemed familiar. But what was he doing here? I turned around, trying to catch a glimpse of the greatest inventor of all times and peoples, when suddenly my interlocutor grabbed me by the throat. I kept trying to turn around out of inertia. But his strength was monstrous. He lifted me with one hand as if he were a robot, without any strain. And when I looked at him again, I was hit with a wave of heat for the second time. His appearance was blurring, melting away in some strange, hellish fire, revealing beneath it a glossy black skin. And horns. Long ones, at least half a meter. A monster! Demon Malgib from another dimension! I was gasping for air, but couldn’t tear my gaze away, hypnotized, watching this incredible transformation. He grew, tearing his clothes, and simultaneously, beneath them emerged his armor. Strange one, it seemed not just armor, but... rather look like as a strange battle gear of a space marine! High-tech from the future. With all its trappings. As if somewhere in the vastness of the Universe, a space cruiser’s paratrooper turned mutant with a half-scorched face had now returned for revenge against the captain and crew. I kicked my legs, clinging to his arm, unable to either pull it off or avert my gaze from his emerald, serpent-like bright eyes, which turned out to be lenses, as if lit from within by green LEDs. Malgib! Demon Malgib! As I nearly lost consciousness, he moved his hand away and flaunted me around. Triumphantly, like a hunter with a captured pray. Or like the predator in Schwarzenegger’s film. I saw Tesla looking in our direction. The others continued their conversation, watching the burning barracks, but something troubled the old man. He was looking at us. I wanted to shout to him, but it was useless. Death had grasped my throat. The curse of Dan-Dan-Flors. Of the famous and long-dead dynasty of wizard-kings.

“Max!”

A voice ripped through the space and time with a lilac flash, bright as a supernova. The demon growled, squeezing even tighter, trying to strangle me faster. But the lilac flash burned brighter and brighter, scorching his hand. The grip began to weaken; I started gasping for air, trying to breathe. The demon shook me, but his fingers inevitably unfolded under the pressure of the lilac light.

“I WILL NOT LET YOU KILL HIM! DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! NEVER! MAX IS MINE!”

“ASAN!”

“AGADESH!”

“AYUR!”

Malgib’s face began to burn with blue flames, and with a wheeze, unable to bear it any longer, he flung me away.

“MY SACRIFICE! MINE!” he rasped, trying to reach me again, but the purple fire barred him, burning with the furious wrath of the fairies.

“ASAN!”

“AGADESH!”

“AYUR!”

The verbal magic of the fairies was almost tangible. As if made of solid matter, not just sound waves. Such powerful words! I felt their weight and ancient power, back when verbal magic could create worlds. It’s not for nothing that it’s said: in the beginning was the Word. I now could believe in it.

At that very moment, as I fell to the ground like a doll, I was instantly pulled from the deadly slumber. I heard Shani’s crying for the first time. Drenched in sweat, I found myself on the bed. Dina and Tus were holding my legs and arms, while Shani pressed her palms against my cheeks. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. My throat was unbearably sore. Could it be that I was actually being strangled in my sleep?

“What happened?” I asked them with a hoarse, strained voice.

Tus replied, “Your demon almost took you. A bit ahead of schedule.”

“Where’s Pars?” I asked, trying not to focus on the tears dropping from Shani’s eyes onto my forehead. She still held me, still whispering the words of her spell: asan, agadesh, ayur. Although the magic called by them dissipated away.

“He’s never around when you need him,” said Dina, clearly frightened too.

“He wouldn’t have been any help,” Tus retorted, releasing my legs which I must have been thrashing violently in my sleep during the strangling attempt. “And you’ve got a strong fairy there, boss. I’ve never seen anything like it. But she won’t be able to help a second time. You need to do something. And fast.”

“The fool,” Dina remarked. “That’s supposed to be comforting?”

“The Boss needs to hear the truth. He’s a strong man; he’ll cope.”

Tus patted me reassuringly on the shoulder.

“Get me some water,” I requested, soothingly stroking Shani’s hand with my own.

I was making a mistake. I had been making the same mistake all along. All my actions – all this running around to different sorcerers and mages – only added to the problems. So much so that in the end, I became a target of one of the most powerful communities in this world. I had put my hopes in specialists. In magic specialists. That was a mistake. A fatal one! I should have just been myself. A detective of the modern world. After that dream, I began to understand something about this curse. Far better than all the mages of this world combined. Tesla! The armor of a space marine! These were pieces of a mosaic, all swirling at the edge of consciousness. And if I didn’t die first, I had to put this puzzle together. I cranked up my analytical abilities to the max. Think, Max, think!

…

“This is the last time! The last time!” I told Pars when he burst in, jubilant, the next morning after that ill-fated night with the “demon” attack, dragged me out of the house, and took me to the city magistrate. He supposedly had found a way to make a royal official from the ministry help me, through his “magical” connections here. Through the wizards’ guild present in every city.

I let him persuade me one last time. The futility of asking for help in this place, simply emanating fierce hatred towards ingineers, was so obvious after our first unsuccessful attempts that I didn’t rely on this approach at all. To hell with these magic racists, I decided then and there. But there’s always a last chance when it’s the last chance.

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Pars stopped a cab. But the driver, seeing my shadow, immediately drove off. A pariah! Like a leper! Pars cursed under his breath, and we continued on foot. Striding swiftly through the streets of the medieval city, paved with gray and red cobblestones, amidst such lazily moving crowds. The street movement, so unlike the rapid pace of civilization in Bridgeport or back on Earth. Pars continued to loudly curse the cab driver, claiming he would cast a spell to enlarge his nose to the size of a cucumber. This amused me. Of course, he wouldn’t do it. Wizards are not allowed to use magic against people or other sentient beings, only for self-defense. Only criminal mages break this rule. Magical criminals. A rarity. Studying magic requires diligence, constant reading, and intellect. Not a great combination for fostering crime within that community. But exceptions do occur. Occasionally.

“He’s right,” I commented on his grumbling. “Don’t curse. The man is afraid for his life, and rightly so. I need to get out of this city as soon as possible.”

“Why?” Pars asked, slowing down his brisk pace.

“Enough with the pretense, Pars. Do you really think the demon will stop at just me when the time comes? You don’t have to reassure me that it’s not true, but I’ve figured it out. It’ll kill all of you too if you’re nearby. Especially Shani. And she, the poor thing, will surely try to interfere. So let’s do this: once we get out of there and your magical racists send us away as usual, you’ll use your magic and tell me exactly how much time I have left. Okay? And help me distance myself from the guys. I don’t want them to be dragged into this as well.”

“We are your friends!”

I waved dismissively at his indignant shout.

“Cut the melodrama, Pars – son of Paridia. I don’t want anyone to die because of me. There’s no sense in it. Besides, I think best when I’m alone. The threat to your lives distracts me. I know something. Saw it in a dream today. And it seems like nobody in your world knows about it.”

“What do you mean? Tell me.”

“Later. First, we follow your plan. Okay?”

“Okay?”

“It’s just a word. Okay. Strange you don’t know it. The Americans must have brought it over. Guess it didn’t catch on. It’s quite a sticky word, actually. Damn sticky.”

Pars shook his head, then dismissed it with a wave, as if to say, ‘whatever, Max’, and quickened his pace. We were walking through the awakening morning streets of the city. More and more people appeared. Yet, our movement was unobstructed. It simply couldn’t be otherwise. My shadow dispersed everyone.

“You know, you’re right,” Pars remarked as we had completed our journey and the view of Blind Dunn Square opened up before us, named after the ancient fighter of the magic rat plague. Of course, not just any rats, but mutants. In the square stood his statue, flanked by a couple of rats as large as dogs, perched on the pedestal.

“What am I right about?”

“That you shouldn’t be in the city. The city authorities will surely drive you out when there’s only a day or two left before Malgib appears. If you were an ordinary person, they’d have you chained in a basement or somewhere in the woods, so the demon could kill you quietly and not harm others – random people who might be nearby.”

“Why aren’t they doing that now?”

“Shani.”

“I see. Let’s move faster. Run. Though it’s unbecoming for us.”

I switched to a light jog, drawing surprised looks. Pars hesitated at first; for a wizard of his level, it was unseemly to run like a boy through the yellow-brick paved squares, but then he spat and also started to run. Time – that was the most valuable thing to me at the moment. He perfectly understood it too.

Finally, we arrived, panting, at the archway leading into the building. At the gates stood several guards in what I considered outrageously ornate uniforms. Red jackets, feather plumes on blue berets. They were armed with crossbows, heavy steel bows, and large daggers sheathed at their waists. Pars, unaccustomed to running, couldn’t catch his breath.

“What is this building?” I asked, slightly supporting him. Pars bent over halfway.

“You need to start jogging in the mornings; your stamina is terrible,” I added.

“I promise... if you survive. This is... the Ministry of Langvar Offensive,” Pars replied in between breaths.

“What?” I thought I had misheard him.

“The Ministry of Offensive,” Pars repeated.

“Usually, normal people have a ‘Ministry of Defense.’”

“No. There’s a Ministry of Defense when you plan to defend. When you’re planning to attack, it gets reformed into the Ministry of Offensive. Though in Northern Deiria, I’ve heard, they have both ministries at the same time. But that’s just a senseless waste of the state budget, maintaining two organizations instead of one.”

My jaw dropped at his matter-of-fact explanation. Stupid, from our Earthly perspective, but somehow devilishly logical. We climbed the stairs; the guards didn’t check us, didn’t pay us any attention at all. I didn’t even understand why they were there in the first place. It seemed like they should have asked for a pass, by our Earthly standards. Or a mandate, like in the times of the revolution. ‘Where are your mandates, comrades?’

“On Earth, we only have a Ministry of Defense,” I noted.

“Really?” Pars seemed surprised. “And what do you do when you’re planning to attack?”

I scratched my head. What a question!

“We don’t do anything. We just keep calling it the Ministry of Defense.”

“But isn’t that illogical and untruthful?”

I shrugged. Cultural differences between the magical and non-magical worlds. To heck with it.

“Wait here,” Pars said.

We were in a large reception area, with a long bench lined with red cushions for a more comfortable seating experience, along the wall. Opposite were massive white doors leading to various offices of royal officials. Just like in some mayor’s reception or another high-ranking bureaucrat’s office back home.

“Deputy Minister of Offensive Legiy Chahrumm” – read the sign on one of them. On the second door: “Battle Mage of the First Hundred, Surus Paava.”

The fact that Pars managed to arrange such a meeting was surprising. I hadn’t had the chance to ask him how he did it in such a short time. Pars disappeared behind Chahrumm doors, whoever he was, and I was left waiting in the reception area.

Several people were already waiting in line: a half-elf in white robes, as tall as a watchtower, with an aloof stone-cold gaze in his light-green eyes; an old man in a plaid jacket – a dwarf with a long heather pipe; and a whole family of aristocrats, oddly dressed in very chic, all-black attire, possibly barons or marquises – a mother, father, and their minor son and daughter. I positioned myself away from them; thankfully, my shadow wasn’t visible in the room. Though towards the end of the curse, Pars said it would be noticeable even in twilight. A nearly materialized shadow.

The old man in plaid suddenly sidled up to me, puffing on his pipe. I glanced at him sideways. I had absolutely no time for idle chatter. And old people always enjoy talking about various topics with strangers. I moved slightly further to the edge, but the old man puffed on his pipe and shuffled closer again. Sideways, once more. In another situation, I might have found this amusing, but not now.

“From far away?” the old man asked, not bothering with a greeting or any other form of introduction.

“Uh-huh,” I grumbled unfriendly.

“Been here long?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you like it here?”

I was about to say ‘uh-huh’ out of inertia, but caught myself in time.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

I was about to say ‘because it sucks,’ or rather, the local equivalent of this Earthling expression, but at that moment, the door opened. Pars came out, and behind him, I caught a glimpse of the deputy’s office through the half-open door. Pars gestured to me that everything was okay. But then the unexpected intervened again. The door to the left of the second office opened, and a gaunt, scarred, weathered, long-haired man in a high-collared, gold-embroidered brown velvet doublet with a large silver chain appeared. His grim face would have struck terror in the hearts of enemies, so expressive and menacing it was. But that wasn’t the main point. Casting a quick glance around, he noticed Pars:

“Hey, you, have you brought the traitor from Bridgeport who’s going to help us?”

I spat. Right onto their red carpet. I stood up and headed for the exit. I could picture the scene behind me as well as if I had seen it with my own eyes. Pars, probably frozen as if struck by a meter-long arrow in the heart. The grim man watching me with a puzzled look.

‘Traitor!’ It really did look like that. I would be consulting them on how to defeat Bridgeport. In return, they would summon the Abbot of the Semenites, with whom the king has a connection through the ‘scribe’ – a notebook of magical communication. I hadn’t even realized it myself! Angrily, I slammed the door and ran down the stairs to the exit. Behind me, I heard the sound of Pars hurried footsteps. He’s finally snapped out of it!

Right at the exit, he caught up with me. But I didn’t let him say anything.

“Stop, Pars! Stop!”

Pars skidded to a halt, gasping for air like a fish on the shore, his mind probably filled with those clichéd phrases: ‘you’ve got it all wrong,’ he’s a fool’, ‘he doesn’t understand, he didn’t mean that’, ... blah-blah-blah, ready to spill out like water from an overfilled bucket.

“Stop. Go home, Pars. Just go home.”

“But you?”

“I’m not upset,” I reassured him. “Go to the guys. Tell them I’ll be there soon. Tell them not to worry. I know how to solve this problem. Wait, hold on. Get me the book.”

“The book?”

“Yes, the one you showed me. With the demon.”

“But it’s from the library. You can’t take it out without permission!”

Pars was as thrown off by my calm reaction to the recent insult as he was by my odd request. Pars had taken me to the magical library of Langvar, which housed a rare book about absolute curses, complete with illustrations of the demons they summoned.

“Do whatever you want, but if you really want to help, get it for me. Steal it if you have to. I’ll wait for you by the statue of the ‘Hamelin Rat-Catcher.’ Over there.” I pointed towards the monument.

“How much time do you need for that?”

Pars finally recovered from the shock.

“An hour,” he replied with sudden composure and determination. “I’ll be here with the book in an hour.”

“Excellent!” I slapped his shoulder. “Go on, Harry Potter!”

“What?”

“Never mind. Don’t waste time.”

Pars left, or rather, ran off. I approached the statue, sat on the edge of the pedestal, and, while absentmindedly watching the passersby who glanced at me warily, began to wait for Pars return.

I had made a mistake. A fatal one, I thought. I should have analyzed it myself, tried to find an antidote against the curse. Not rely on the local magical obscurantism. Malgib – he’s not a demon. I remembered the dream. What kind of demon is he! High-tech titanium armor, back-mounted manipulators with servo motors that look like horns from the front but are actually meant to hold rocket launcher blocks. Laser targeting system: look and you lock. The round metal plate on the chest, probably a mini nuclear reactor – such an exoskeleton would require a ton of energy. And that burned, blackened face? What burned it? With a laser? A burst of cosmic ultraviolet? And what about Tesla? Did Tesla ever come to the USSR? What was that construction about? Tesla, being Serbian, surely couldn’t have had ill feelings towards Russia. But what was he doing there? Could he really have been fulfilling some contract with the USSR’s People’s Commissariat for constructing something? In those years of industrialization, there were loads of American engineers in the USSR building factories and things like Dnieper Hydroelectric Station. Not to mention the ‘Salvation Army’ feeding ten or twenty million people in the Volga region, practically saving them from extinction. They built something there, under the guidance of the genius Tesla. Near Odessa. I remembered the group of engineers standing by the cars in the picture from my dream. Were they? The founding fathers of Bridgeport?

“Master!”

What? Huh? I was jolted from my thoughts by a boy in black. The snot-nosed kid from the reception area. From that family of either barons or marquises. I hadn’t quite figured out the local aristocratic hierarchy yet. He was tugging at my sleeve, insistently trying to get my attention.

“What do you want?” I asked with a smile, finally coming back to my senses. The boy couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old.

“They told me to give this to you, master,” he said, and only then did I notice he was pressing a cloth-wrapped bundle to his chest. Wrapped in fabric, the object was the size of a thick book or a large briefcase, as we used to say back in my Earthly days.

“Who told you?” I asked sternly, standing up.

“The old man with the pipe. The scary, small one. He was sitting with you, master. He said to give this to you and then he left.”

The boy pointed towards the Ministry of Offensive. I took the bundle. And then the short-lived spell of forgetfulness, used by that damn old man at each of our meetings, like back in the café, dissipated.

“So, it was Kulu-Kulu!” I exclaimed.

“Aha, that’s what he called himself,” the boy confirmed my guess.

“That crafty old man, when will he stop being so pretentious and mysterious? I don’t have time for such nonsense,” I grumbled into the void. Catching him was impossible. The old man had been hiding for a hundred and fifty years. Good luck finding such a master of disguise. And to think he had the nerve to converse with me, unrecognized!

“Master, why does your shadow have horns?”

In the sunlight, the shadow was clearly visible. The boy was too young to know about absolute curses.

“That’s because I didn’t listen to my sister Alenushka. Drank from a puddle. Now I’m turning into a goat. See the horns? You better go back to your parents; they must be worried.”

I took the bundle and sent the boy, puzzled by my silly answer, on his way. The bundle was heavy, as if filled with lead. A veritable weight. Weighing about five kilograms. I sat back down on the edge of the monument’s base and began to unwrap the cloth. What could this be, I wondered?