Готовый перевод Житие Мое / Life of Mine: Глава 1

Life of Mine

Black mages often write books about themselves. As a rule, they either brag about their inexplicable awesomeness or complain about how they are harassed. (Have you ever tried to harass a black magician? You'd better not!) In reality, life is much more prosaic, and everything seems rather dull and ordinary. But who would write about it...?

From the unfinished treatise " About Power"

Part One

King's Island,

Chapter 1

Don't think I'm making excuses. Black mages are really very respectable people! And financially well-off, by the way. It so happens that in this wonderful world, there are many strange, irrational forces and creeping phenomena before which white wizards are helpless as children. People want to live in safety. And people know that without black magic it is unachievable. Therefore the real black magician is a highly paid and scarce specialist. After all, the ratio of white and black in the majority of the fiefdoms is twenty or even thirty to one. Such is the consequence of the inept policy of previous years, which undermined the genetic heredity of the best part of the nation. The descendants have repented and realized. That is why in the present it is so a real black magician is a very respected person, but all kinds of amateurs and self-taught people are persecuted by the cantonal police with unprecedented force.+++

+++Which is understandable and natural: while a white fool's mistake will result in burnt biscuits or hail instead of rain, a screwed-up black man risks causing a real disaster. Zombies, ghouls, invisible predators, unquenchable fires, and death-sleep epidemics are at the bottom of the list. As such, all black magicians are enlisted and work for the government, and black magic is often bashfully referred to as 'combat magic'. There is no room for amateurs in our craft!

Now tell me, how can you improve your skills in such an environment? I am not talking about the small side income that every student needs.

In my first year, I could afford to work as a dishwasher and a waiter in a tavern, but gradually it became clear that spending that much time on crap was a luxury I couldn't afford. For the sake of a couple of hundred crowns in the present, I risked ruining my bright, figurative future. I had to find an occupation that would allow me to earn the money I needed for a couple or three hours a week, or six years of ascesis, fasting, and abstinence awaited me. The grant from the Roland the Light Foundation covered my living expenses and tuition, but the allowance that my dearest relatives sent me was only enough for bread and milk in the big city. I could, of course, borrow against future earnings at the Guggenzolger Bank, as many students did. But that meant that for a good ten years after graduating from the Redstone University of High Magic, I would not belong to myself but to those hunchbacked crooks. Fuck it, fuck it!

And then, of course, it was my natural talent, my unparalleled, exceptional gift for black magic. I didn't intend to summon evil or play with the undead, and I couldn't do it, but I could see magic. And small magical phenomena, even black ones, were vulnerable to the most mundane of rituals. I knew my limits, and I never took on anything I couldn't handle. I even reinsured myself, focusing on spontaneous curses, "donkey ears," "loser's tail," evictions of violent house-dwellers - anything that wasn't deadly but made life very difficult. In terms of our craft, it's called "taking out the trash". I was inexpensive, did the job well, and always took the client's wishes into account.

It ended stupidly. Some profiteer imagined that his measly twenty crowns were grounds for a terrible scam and ratted me out to the cops. I called him on the phone, you see! As is often the case with ordinary people, he was convinced that all mages are the same and molded the average image of a mage from an adept of the powers of light. Because there are more of them. All white mages actively dislike the technique because it is unnatural and against nature. Quite seriously! They prefer to walk across town to their clients or send a messenger... Black mages, on the other hand, get along well with machinery because moving inanimate things are our style.

In the end, the idle and bored Watchdog fighters got me right on the spot, luckily before I could do something. It's not easy to catch a black man in the act! No, the thought of a police ambush never crossed my mind, but my sense of self-preservation demanded a good look around before going anywhere. So they had no evidence whatsoever. A criminal record would have put an end to my future career, and I had no choice but to refuse. Simply put, I categorically denied everything.

Despite the violent temperament of black mages, I'd never been in the police station, much less the Special Mages Department. Still, I thought it was supposed to be a different kind of public office. I mean, not like a grimy basement with furniture bolted to the floor and an electric light bulb on a string. But there could be no mistake: everyone who worked there flaunted badges bearing the acronym NZAMIPS. No official paper, as far as I knew, deciphered this designation which left plenty of room for imagination. Mages and laymen alike referred to it simply as "Watchdog".

As we walked down the corridors, everything looked nice and civilized: inspectors talking to visitors, messengers scurrying back and forth, typewriters clicking away, green blooming in tubs. But then we went down to the cellar and turned into this room, and there... Dirty plaster with brown stains, crumbling tiles on the concrete floor, a dim light bulb flickering under the ceiling, an iron table against the far wall, and no chairs. The place retained the refined atmosphere of the days when people were burned in the square, and the specialization of 'black magician' would have been considered a silly joke. I felt as if I'd had a puddle of cold water thrown over me.

Wasting no time, the attendants pushed me to the center of the room and chained me to a chain hanging from the ceiling. Oh, dear mother! There was a real iron chain with enchanted bracelets. I've only seen them in the movies before. Yes, it's a movie... It doesn't work like that.

A door creaked obnoxiously, and a new character appeared.

The police officer who entered was an ordinary man, not a mage, and of such stature that just looking at him made me feel ill at ease. //So that's why the books depict magicians as runts! - I thought to myself.

"Well, kid, shall we confess?" The son of a goblin and a steam train smiled wickedly, rubbing his hairy paws together.

Actually, black mages are very belligerent, but even the belligerence of black mages has a limit. In short, out of fear, I forgot everything I was going to say.

"I didn't do anything!" I voiced my final argument.

In half the cases, the problems for which people turn to mages are of a purely psychological nature. It is enough to have a heart-to-heart talk with the troublemakers and give them a scented candle, and their troubles dissolve on their own. It is not without reason that half of the subjects at University have nothing to do with magic! There were no mages among my clients, which meant there was no way for the police to prove witchcraft. Except now, I wasn't sure that anyone needed proof.

The investigator banged his fist on the table, and it was clear why the table was iron.

"Don't bullshit me! I can see right through!" He grabbed me by the collar and lifted me above the floor. "Talk!!!"

It had been a long time since anyone had touched me without permission - for a black mage, it was the same as an invitation to a fight. I would have had to claw at anyone else's face, no matter their height or weight. Even if my hands were tied, I'd bite his nose off with my teeth. But a policeman! Everyone knows the squabbling nature of blacks. No one would believe that I was not to blame for what had happened. I tried to swallow the insults from my tongue and stifle the fiery flames of the Source of Power. Cast on a policeman on duty was exactly what I needed right now. Even if I wasn't a full-fledged mage, I could make macaroni out of that jerk.

Meanwhile, the goblin seemed intent on committing suicide. He kept shaking me like a pear, and then he leaned back and swung his ponderous fist, aiming for my chest. I did not believe to the last that he would hit me. In our enlightened world, our cantonal police beat a minor... I had no time to prepare, and that made my wheezing sound particularly pathetic.

And then the rest of the story was a mess. In fact, the sacred sacrament that black mages call the Acquisition of Power. And it has nothing to do with the Initiation of the Light. The difference is profound: whites have to coddle and flirt with their Source to get the Power out of it without scaring them, while our Source can scare anyone. Or even gobbles them up. In the normal course of events, the Acquisition of Power is a lengthy ritual, the essence of which is carefully concealed from neophytes. It is performed in the presence of at least three recognized masters and occasionally ends fatally. Well, I got into it without any safety net.

For a moment, the dark flames blinded me, rushing down my throat in a hot wave, trying to take away my mind and my will. It was worse than the encounter with the prosecutor. My own Power was preparing to crush and subdue me. You can't prepare for this. You can't train this skill. The Acquisition of Power is a moment of revelation, after which you either remain yourself or you don't. And in this particular case, there were two lives at stake: one single protuberance out of control would turn the dumbass policeman into an animated skeleton. + ++

There was no time to think. Waiting for instructions was pointless. I had to grab into the rampaging Power with my claws and teeth and tear, tear, tear... And guess what? The sneaky thing was doing the same thing. For a minute, we were picturing a yin-yang symbol in the form of two cats clutching each other, and then by an incredible effort of will, which I would not have believed possible before, I managed to shut it up, tame the flow and surface it under the blinding light of an electric bulb.

The episode passed as quickly as it started.

The Source was hiding somewhere inside me, like a stray dog in a kennel. It took a lot of hard work to train it to serve and give its paw, but the beginning had been made. Not daring to believe in my salvation, I cautiously took a breath. I immediately stared at the policeman, who was looking at me with suspiciously intelligent eyes.

I was, after all, a wizard, and for a wizard, the mental shock was worse than physical trauma. The effort required to complete the ritual drained my reserves to the bottom. All the creepy things-the walls, the light bulb, his face - it's crossed in my mind like in a lens, and I groaned and collapsed without feeling. The last thing that remained in my memory was the swearing investigator trying to hold me upright.

I don't know how long I was there, but it must have been a long time because, by the time I opened my eyes, there were more people in the cell. In addition to the goblin, there was now a young officer (a black mage, by the looks of it) and an older white man with a stethoscope on his chest. The faces of all three showed a purely medical interest.

"How are you feeling, young man?" The old man asked me affectionately. I mumbled something indistinctly, which pleased him. "Well, the first acquaintance may be considered a success!"

For some unknown reason, the attitude toward me had changed dramatically. Even the goblin-like interrogator no longer yelled and hummed almost kindly. He didn't leave, though.

In the clean, spacious, and sunny office, a nice-looking female officer was talking to me. She was rather giving a long, heartfelt lecture on the dangers of reckless witchcraft and occasionally slipping me a nasty picture with a policeman's number on it. I knew what she was saying in theory before, but I would have gladly refrained from seeing any stumps and scraps, but I didn't want to start a discussion. I nodded vigorously and agreed.

The shock of encountering the prose of life must have made my words particularly convincing, and in the end, they believed me. They warned me that they would be watching me, wrote down my coordinates, threatened to call the dean's office, and sent me out the door, not caring how I would get home in my condition.

"That's all right. You'll be tougher!" The goblin chuckled. "When you've finished the Uni, come and join us! There's always room in General Michaelmas for an adventurous lad."

And at that moment, a revelation hit me: I realized that I would never, ever work for the police in my life.

As I was making my way out of the building, I bumped into my frustrated client in the corridor. The man was still giving his statement, but when he saw me, he got agitated and waved his hand.

"I realize," he began business-like, "we can't make it today, but maybe on Thursday..."

He seemed to think that, after all, that had happened, I would work for him. Truly holy simplicity is worse than witchcraft.

"I don't know what you talking about," I muttered and waddled away.

Let him deal with his jinx! He'll be lucky if the municipal cleaning service charges him less than two hundred crowns for this work.

As I passed through the gleaming glass and copper front porch of the police headquarters, I still did not fully believe in my luck. My imagination turned the bindings of the windows into camouflaged bars, interpreted every movement behind them as surveillance, and behind the courtyard archway, it pictured an entrance to a crypt. I turned into a small square and sat down on the nearest bench, trying to clear my troubled mind. The evening had not yet come; four hours at the most had passed since I had entered the client's flat.

It was as if a lifetime had passed.

Thoughts slowly caught up with the silly head.

It looked like I wasn't in danger of going to court. It wasn't that I didn't know what I was doing (black mages were taught the basics of the law in school, otherwise, it would have been easier to put us all in jail), but I honestly thought that, given the precautions I had taken, I could afford a loose interpretation of some of the articles. So typical! How many times do you have to hear the phrase: "Matches are not toys for children", before you realize that this applies to you too?

//"This world doesn't belong to mages, white or black," I remembered Uncle Gordon saying (he wasn't really my uncle, but it didn't matter at the time). -Do you think there haven't been enough clever people trying to prove otherwise?"

Yes, Uncle, there were quite a few of them, and the fact that they were all idiots was no accident. Magic, especially white magic, is essentially a beautiful trick, a ruse; it cannot turn lead into gold, make bread from sand, or wine from water. Bread, gold, and wine are made for magicians by ordinary people, and therefore one should never make them angry - it is too expensive. This is not a theory but a proven fact.

But what about the innate qualities, the character traits that have long been the talk of the town? When you've been taught the rules for twenty years, but your mentors turn their backs, and you get your own way. It's sad to say, but black mages are better at science through their backsides, and I'm no exception to the rule. Maybe I should be thankful for the Watchdogs: they slapped me on the wrist in time to stop my pathological tendencies from developing. You have to be able to fight bouts of excessive cunning! A very relevant skill.

The only obscure point remained the behavior of the goblin in uniform. Of course, he wasn't the real victim of the secondary magical mutation, but the resemblance was striking. What did he really want from me, and why did he give up? It wasn't likely that my fainting had been the cause. If he was afraid of complaining, he shouldn't have invited witnesses while I was lying unconscious. A personal grudge against black mages? Then he wouldn't have been able to stay in NZAMIPS! Even if his own hadn't kicked him out, his clients would have nailed him.

But, in essence, do I give a shit what complexes police officers have?

I was quietly blissful while the tamed Source nursed my wounds faithfully.

Only a black mage could relax sitting at a busy intersection. All the white mages I knew were obsessed with face-to-face contact and could only relax in a familiar, chamber-like environment. I, on the other hand, was more relaxed by the impersonal, mechanical movement of the masses. I perceived the never-quiet noise of the city as music.

A team of heavy wagons staggered across the pavement, pulling a wagon bearing the logo of a well-known shipping company. The enormous beasts, nearly three meters tall at the withers, had been bred with and controlled by magic. An abundance of "cattle drive" was a trademark of Redstone. For those who wanted speed and weren't laden with luggage, a jolly tram rumbled down the tracks. A limousine with an "alcoholic's dream" engine blew past the crossroads with a loud murmur, and I sniffed my nose in hope of catching a familiar scent and looked enviously at the car. Yes, this is no tram!

The only thing I had great respect for was steam engines, but there could not, by definition, be steam engines in the Redstone city limits; there were too many white wizards at the university to be bothered by the hissing and hissing thing to cause severe stress and nervous disorders. They'd put everyone on horseback if they got their way. The municipality took great pride in the fact that all the powerful power plants had been moved to the suburbs.

I smiled dreamily, imagining myself in a limousine. A successful black magician could afford more than that. As long as I hadn't made any fatal missteps, no charges were pending, and there was no need to flee. The bottom line is two things: first, congratulations - I'm a full-fledged mage now, and second... where am I going to get the money now?!

* * *
The current chief of the Wizarding Department was a sixth or even seventh-generation law keeper. His ancestors had begun serving the law soon after the last kings had left Ingernika and had steadfastly preserved the peace of their fellow citizens through the bad years of the Plague and the troubled times of the millennium, with occasional distractions for civil wars and changes of power. The Behr family's unique physical attributes were the key to the dynasty's success: the appearance of the NZAMIPS chief discouraged even the most raucous of black magicians from trespassing. Conrad Ber was proudly nicknamed 'Steam Train' and was the first member of his family to be promoted to Captain. The latter was a source of pride, sometimes with a touch of annoyance.

It was with incredible relief that Captain Ber freed himself from the antimagic protection suit. The government artisans had made the thing look like a normal police uniform, but it weighed like good armor. But what can't he wear to save his skin? Dealing with young mages of unknown power and temperament required extreme precautions.

Wiping the sweat on his neck with a paper towel, Steamtrain pulled up the phone and dialed the familiar number. The massive device, with its brass knob and mother-of-pearl inlay on the dial, liked to jerk, but it always found this caller the first time.

"Dance!" the captain announced to the invisible interlocutor. "I met your godson today."

"And how?" The phone inquired indistinctly.

"Nothing! I thought the file had been messed up on the magic orientation. He fainted. Can you believe it?"

There was a quiet chuckle coming from the receiver.

"Yes, his father was also very reserved. A strong mage he would be!"

"Strong, that's for sure. I've written down his spectrum. If you have time, come and have a look. We'll pray together."

"Thank you!" the phone picked up. "I owe you."

The NZAMIPS chief waited until the receiver beeped, but did not put it back on the device. Instead, he took a bottle of barley whisky from his desk drawer and measured a glass for himself. He did not usually drink when he was working, but this day was particularly nerve-wracking.

Konrad Ber was not a mage and had no sense of magic. The only way he could understand what had happened in the cell was to look at the recording crystal, which recorded the event for his superiors. That's when he was thirsty. Because of the proximity of Redstone University, his department had a special unspoken function: to taunt aspiring black magicians to get a print of their aura. This not entirely legal operation avoided future identification problems, but it was advisable to do it before the mage gained power, not after, and certainly not during the process.

Captain Behr, a seasoned policeman of fifteen years of experience, stupidly and ineptly set himself up to be hit by a combat wizard. No amount of anti-magic protection would have saved him had the mage lost consciousness three seconds earlier. It was hard to say what something that rushed toward the Captain from the netherworlds would have become, but he'd seen the consequences of such events before. Rooms with walls melted to a glassy sheen, puffy blue bodies of zombies in police uniforms, puddles of green sludge where there'd just been a man. Black magic is full of creepiness. The boy had retained control of his power, and for that, he deserved at least a good discount, if not forgiveness for his sins.

But such revelations cannot be entrusted to the telephone, so not a single living soul knew about Captain Bera's second birthday, and the celebrations had to take place in solitude.

* * *

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