SIDE EFFECTS. Capable of causing vertigo and temporary loss of memory, especially during simultaneous application with other magic means.

WARNING. To avoid the loss of one’s own appearance it is necessary to erase the rune no later than an hour from the moment of putting it on. Furthermore, try not to lose anything. The action of the rune does not extend to lost (aloof) objects belonging to you.

Just in case Daph still looked in the book about the magician La Femme, but the article about him turned out to be quite brief. It only informed that the magician mentioned above was seized in Hades after the unsuccessful theft of Cerberus’ charon-shaped caries, escaped using the famous rune, and in a couple of years was captured again in the Garden of Eden for an attempt at the theft of the fruits of immortality. During the detention by golden-wing guards he had time to nibble on a fruit and, taking into account the acquired immortality, he was kept under house arrest for a thousand years; however, he ran off after six months, using jumping socks and enticing scarves tied together while in captivity. The further fate of La Femme was unknown.

Daph’s love of reading vanished with this.

Daph sighed and, after taking the Book of White Guards with her, set off to search for the white marble gravestone. If something was bothering her at the given moment, then it was the need to pierce her finger deeply. She did not like blood donation in such forms.

***

That same night Daph broke into the depository of artefacts next to Troil’s office and stole the horn. Silence met her in Troil’s office, which she sneaked past crouched down. The door was open slightly. Beside it, wings spread out, lay a strangely motionless peacock. However, Daph was in too much of a hurry and too scared of meeting a guard to pay attention to this.

It was already the third hour, when she finally left the House of the Highest Light. After speeding on her wings over the Garden of Eden quietly dozing in the embrace of the warm night, she flew up to the wall. The wall was indeed not too high, it was simply more a rock fence of about two metres in height, but Daph knew that if she tried to fly over it now without a pass, the wall would grow to the sky and would not let her through. The guarding magic of the wall was as ancient as Eden itself. And very reliable.

For almost half an hour Daph searched for a suitable crack within the wall, one in which the horn could go, and nearly let the time slip past. And here, when not more than ten minutes were left till the end of the period, she found a suitable crack, which almost half of the horn of Minotaur went into, after touching the wall with the part where strange patterns began.

The horn flared up in the same instant, and a small part of the wall lit up with a green radiance, forming a semicircular trapdoor, where it was just barely possible to squeeze through crouched down. Daph did not see what was created on the other side. Depressiac, forced against Daph’s leg, started to hiss. It did not like the horn at all. It did not like everything going on altogether.

After getting down on all fours, Daph irresolutely touched the wall with her palm, felt a tingling, and carefully moved her hand further. For a while, the hand moved as if through melted butter, until finally it went out on the opposite side. Daph felt that her fingers had dipped into a void. The trapdoor continued to shine — it first became brighter, and then went out completely. Daph was afraid that she could be stuck inside the wall if she wasted time and pulled her hand back. The hand was covered with a brownish slush from the melted stone. Daph checked whether it could be rubbed off. The slush in principle could be rubbed off, but no better than machine oil or grease.

Having shifted her spirit psychologically to “Don’t snivel!” Daphne lay on her stomach, closed her eyes tightly and, trying not to breathe, crawled forward like a grass snake. The stone, melted by the magic of the horn, was sticky and disgusting. When Daph touched it with her head, the loathing of imagining what had become of her hair nearly made her puke. Soon Daph found herself outside, on a flat stony plateau by a desolate camp. It required great imagination in order to assume that upwind stretched the sweet-smelling Garden of Eden, unattainably far and simultaneously close.

Daph was alarmed that Depressiac had remained in the Garden, but the cat had already squeezed its way through the trapdoor, slippery, frightful, displeased, but terribly sure of itself! Oh, heavens!

“If they dropped you into margarine, and then rinsed you in a vat of resin, you would look better,” Daph said to it.

The cat, naturally, let her words slip past its ears. It only became anxious regarding what to do for food or with whom to fight.

Daph pulled out the marble horn, the tip of which was visible out of the wall. The radiance gradually grew dim. Daphne understood that she had deserted Eden, but sensed no special happiness about this.

“Well, now that’s it!” She thought and, after touching the hardened stone with her fingers, teleported into the world of the moronoids.

The rest of the night Daph spent washing herself clean in the ocean by the island of St. Helena, using all the magic known to her and suitable for the moment. Then somehow determined her position with the direction of light and, keeping above the waves, flew towards Moscow...

***

The spring morning groped in the bed for the essayist Sergey Basevich, as for any man leading a superfluously healthy way of life. After thinking for a little bit, Basevich decided not to run today, especially as Zozo Buslaeva assured him the day before that she would not be able to keep him company in connection with a complete cleansing of chakras and a withdrawal to a 24-hour meditation. She asked him not to phone for the same reason.

Worrying about the work of his stomach, as the first business of the day Basevich sipped a glass of untreated spring water. Then the pride of Russian essayists went solemnly into the bathroom and gargled with water and iodine. To do this, he drew the water in through the nose and let it out through the mouth. Finished with gargling, Basevich carried out a shortened set of morning exercises for ten minutes and at the end of the morning wanderings honoured the kitchen with his presence.

“Aha!” He thought, having critically studied the contents of the refrigerator. Generally, Basevich was a vegetarian, but twice a week he allowed himself fish. The essayist put on the electrical kettle and, looking at the plate with the cut herring, began his daily exercises of the mind.

“The Atlantic herring, taking a fragrant bath of vegetable oil, luxuriated on a long dish covered with onion, in the escort of a retinue of boiled eggs,” he blurted out in one breath and thought for a bit.

“No, ‘luxuriated’ — bad,” analyzed Basevich. “‘Stretched’ would be better. ‘The Atlantic herring, floating in an ocean of vegetable oil, stretched trembling on the long dish…’ No, ‘stretched’ is also bad. Really can a herring stretch? What about: ‘The herring was lying on the dish, quivering before the unavoidable end in the Gehenna of the stomach...’ Aha! Indeed good! Now... he-he... I’m in great form!”

The contented essayist already wanted to set this still life, executed in words, down into the special booklet bought for intellectual exercises, but suddenly a strong pain caused his egg-shaped paunch to swell up. Squeaking from the pain, the essayist bounced on the chair. For a moment, it seemed to him that the volcano Etna had lodged in his bowels and would spew out lava.

“Really a pang? And how strong! Ah-ah-ah!” Basevich was frightened, dropping the booklet and instantly forgetting about mental gymnastics.

In timid expectation of a new awakening of the volcano, Sergey Tarasovich froze on the chair; however, the agonizing pain fortunately stopped. His usual self-reliance soon returned and, attacked by appetite, he suspended the fork above the herring, aiming at a rather good piece.

At this bad moment, the dressed herring doubled up on the plate and, opening a dead mouth, reproachfully said:

“Aleutian god! Were you absolutely messed up in your youth? What if I get a boo-boo?”

The fork fell with a “bing” onto the table. Basevich froze, swallowing air with his mouth like a fish. His frightened eyes were glued onto the herring, but that one already without any new sign of life was again lying on the plate. Moreover, one could see very well that it was gutted.

“Cursed cocktails! You never know what kind of kick they’ll give you! The blackguard Wolf almost ruined me!” The essayist thought uncertainly, recalling yesterday’s reception in the French cultural centre, where the critic Wolf Cactusov was forcing weird cocktails on him. The envious Cactusov hoped that Basevich, if drunk, would make some fatal blunder, but he certainly miscalculated. Even after the sixth cocktail Basevich behaved like a true wise man: saw everything, heard everything, ate everything, and at the same time kept mum.

But then, now, the day after the reception, the cocktail, it seemed, by some strange means was calling out as a speaking herring.

Having explained to himself how everything happened, Basevich calmed down. He did not want to look at the herring. He drank tea, glanced at the clock, and, recollecting that at twelve he was invited to the opening of the personal exhibition of the avant-garde artist Igor Khmaryba, hurried to the Central House of Artists. Haste had affected the way the venerable essayist travelled by the most improbable means. From a respectable gallop he jumped to a full gallop, and from there, after considering that he was indeed absolutely late, rushed with a fast Cossack full gallop to the metro.

Igor Khmaryba’s exhibition was held in one of the private little galleries on the grounds of the Central House of Artists. After greeting the artist warmly and congratulating him on definite creative success, Basevich rapidly looked at the works on display. Then he ate three sandwiches and drank two glasses of champagne. After which he quietly opened a small notebook and with an air of importance walked along the wall, examining pictures in more detail and making brief notes. He had been invited particularly for this. It was necessary to work for the sandwiches and champagne.

After noticing a red fish on a plate in one of the pictures, Basevich shuddered. He already had time to forget about the morning’s incident; however, now this involuntary recollection forced his heart to beat with inexplicable despair. It was pounding in such a way as if his chest had long become loathsome to it, became tight and tedious, as if the heart wanted to break away and fly off to where a sliver of dark-blue and enthusiastic sky cheekily seeped through the window. Of course, Basevich, as a particularly materialistic man, did not understand the weariness of his heart and explained everything very simply: “Ah-ah-ah, warming up to coronary problem! Forty-eight years old — the age for blockages. So now it’ll pester once and that’s it!”

“Ah-ah-ah, you’re my darling! What’s with you? Your cheeks are like paper! Perhaps, a little Valocordin?” An insinuating voice unexpectedly sounded beside him.

Basevich turned around and saw Wolf Cactusov, his enemy and competitor. Arms crossed on his breast, the critic with a long mane was looking at him with big hope. Villainous smiles were roaming along his face.

“And don’t hope, Judas! Let’s see still who will earn thirty bucks on whose obituary!” Basevich thought and unexpectedly felt much better. The heart, after understanding that it would not break away, rushed for the last time with doomed effort and, having been subdued, beat evenly.

“Thanks, Wolf, no need. I was simply looking and reflecting whether there is Matisse’s influence here! Do you remember his Red Fishes in a Glass?” The essayist said in his most normal lively voice.

Basevich could not see his own face; however, he felt that his cheeks were flushing with the usual bloom, possibly even healthier than before. Wolf Cactusov also noticed this change. He paled and, after growling out something unconvincing, withdrew. The bitter presentiment that articles in glossy periodicals would slip away again this month to the enemy and again he had to be limited to one or two reviews in small circulations, preyed on the wretch Wolf, working for the same magazines as Basevich.

After staining a couple of pages of the notebook with a discussion on the creative individuality of Khmaryba, Basevich patronizingly slapped the beaming artist on the stomach and sailed away in a hurry. Mysterious excitement got hold of him: it suddenly seemed to Basevich that he was in a great hurry and more so — he was late.

Like an old regimental jade hearing the trumpet, the art critic paused for a minute, pulled up his pants, took a deep breath from the stomach to the chest — and set off with a jerk. Exactly like a Mexican hurricane, he rushed without restraint along the dusty courtyard, leaving behind a slight noise of cutting through air. Metro stations, concrete fences, dumpsters, and concert posters flashed by, escalators squeaked alarmingly, automobiles buzzed, but Basevich was flying, noticing nothing around.

Getting up to his place on the eighth floor, he turned the key in the door — and collapsed into the cool silence of the apartment. Only here did the worker of art come to his senses, after understanding that in reality there was nowhere for him to rush to, and, having realized this, he was frightened.

“What’s this I’m doing? What has come over me? Drink some motherwort, perhaps?” He posed a question to himself, removing his boots bespattered with mud.

Suddenly a sad ringing sound, as if a spoon jumped in a glass, reached him from the kitchen.

“Who’s there?” Basevich hailed.

Silence. And again a spoon tinkled.

“Who’s there?” Basevich repeated, getting even more frightened.

On tiptoes, with his heart fallen into the precipice of uncertainty, Sergey Tarasovich stole up to the kitchen door, opened it, and looked in. At first it seemed to him that no one was in the kitchen, it was totally quiet, but then a low hacking from the direction of the table attracted the essayist’s attention. All the pieces of herring, not removed since the morning, leaped up, leisurely raised themselves a little from the plate, formed an uneven pyramid, and got up on the tail. The decapitated fish head stared at Basevich with red swollen eyes.

“Hand over the eidos!” It demanded threateningly, opening and shutting its mouth.

“Hand over to whom?” Basevich whispered without understanding.

“Say ‘I give away my eidos and renounce all rights to it!’ Repeat!” The herring hissed indeed quite threateningly and swam through the air up to the very nose of the essayist. An onion ring was stuck to the nostrils of the herring and this little circle, sufficiently ordinary in every respect, now for some reason especially scared Sergey Tarasovich.

“No!”

“WHAT?! I WILL GIVE YOU ‘NO’! I WILL BOIL YOU IN OIL! NOW REPEAT PROMPTLY!” Goggling frightfully, the herring began to cackle.

“I give away my eidos and renounce all rights to it!” Stuttering, Basevich repeated, not giving a moment’s thought to the meaning of the uttered words. He balanced on wadded feet and most of all wanted the delusion to disappear.

“Well done!” The herring approved. “Half the deal is done. Still a little phrase, I beg you: ‘I agree to the eternal imprisonment of my eidos in the darx!’ ”

“I agree… to the eternal imprisonment in the darx,” not understanding anything, Basevich pronounced loudly.

“Eidos, my dear! Eidos! Do not leave out any words!” The herring prompted.

“Eidos,” Basevich obediently repeated.

“Merci! I think it’s done! Ah, Aleutian god, you’re simply in my little palm! So compliant, my dear!” The herring was touched and nodded favourably with its decapitated head.

In the following moment, the pieces of fish crumbled onto the plate, and near the table, where the shadow of the curtain fell onto the dense English oilcloth with poppies, there was a short man with a wrinkled face and stooping with protruding shoulder blades.

Having approached the startled Basevich, the little fellow hung onto his neck and, snivelling from tender emotion, kissed him three times on both cheeks.

“Oh! I’m flattered, a very magnanimous gift! And five minutes for all the work now and a minute in the morning! I adore intellectuals! Six minutes for everything in total! Inspired fear with the herring, bellowed — and that’s it, the deal is done: please pack the goods!” He said enthusiastically and started to babble complete nonsense.

The frightened essayist vaguely grasped that he heard complaints about non-payment of percentages to agents. The possessor of the wrinkled face described this as arch-infamy and caddishness squared. However, according to that greediness, with which he spoke about the percentages, and on how he puckered even without his face crumpling, it was perceived that the strange visitor of Basevich was an essence, although pitiful and crestfallen, but sly and aggressive at his best.

Once again kissing Basevich with fishy-smelling lips, the stranger decisively stretched out his hand and... stuck it directly into the essayist’s chest. There was neither blood nor pain. Everything took place like in a dream. Basevich with horror watched how the hand, after entering his body almost up to the shoulder, was fumbling for something there.

“Phew! Fell down somewhere, under the liver! And I was indeed frightened someone stole it before me!” The little fellow said happily a little time later, extracting his hand from the essayist’s chest.

For a moment, it seemed to Basevich that something flashed sharply and in farewell in the agent’s palm. The wrinkle-faced one thoroughly hid the tiny bluish point, no bigger than the head of a match, inside a button loose from the sleeve of his weather-beaten coat.

Basevich became bitter and sad, although he actually did not sense the loss. The lungs were breathing, the heart was beating, the stomach was properly digesting nourishing gruel, and the brain was briskly cracking logical problems. The organism did not notice the disappearance of the eidos.

After obtaining what was necessary to him, the agent began to shuffle to the exit, but, after taking several steps, he slapped himself on the forehead and turned around.

“Ah yes, completely forgot! If any confusion should emerge after death, they say, what did you do with the eidos, this and that, some kind of mess — you will say, my eidos is deeded to Tukhlomon! There they will understand. Not the first time!” He explained in a business-like manner.

After complaining once more about low fees and leaving the stock-still theorist of art standing in the kitchen, the wrinkle-faced agent went out onto the landing and carefully closed the door behind him.

***

On the stairs, Tukhlomon reached for a small notebook and with delight put down a big fat cross. Then, not able to restrain himself, he rubbed his yellowish palms with pleasure.

“One more!” He muttered with special importance and, extremely contented with himself, began to go down the stairs. Agents adore raining curses on stairs, clothing, footwear, and everything else that brought them together with moronoids and allowed them to be at least something instead of not being anything.

He went down to the third floor, when suddenly something forced him to experience sharp anxiety. Outwardly, everything was normal — the patches of sun on the stairs, walls with spray-painted writings, but a feeling suggested something was not quite right. The careful agent tried to teleport, disappearing into the entrance floor lined with tiles, but the magic for some reason did not snap into action. Tukhlomon, grasping such things perfectly, understood that, basically, he was wrapped in cotton wool. All his magic was blocked. Somewhere here, on the walls or the ceiling, in the motley confused patterns scratched with a nail, an ominous rune was hiding, nullifying all of his abilities. Guards of Light drew a great number of such runes in the moronoid world, aiming at limiting the authority of messengers of Gloom. It was necessary to find the rune and erase it — to find it urgently, while it was not too late. If the rune was old — no problem, he would erase it. It would be more dangerous if the rune had appeared recently and the guard of Light who did this was still somewhere hereabout...

Sniffing and looking around, Tukhlomon slowly began to go down. At this moment, he resembled more a lynx ready to spring than an agent on a search. His view slid along the walls. Primitive revelations on the theme of personal life, someone’s declaration of love, a cigarette butt pressed into the plaster. Where is it, after all? Tukhlomon already began to worry, when suddenly something precisely pricked his eye. Here it is, the rune of Light — small but clear, similar to the sharp stroke of a pen!

Having sneaked up, the agent hastily squatted down and stretched out his forefinger with a long and sharp nail, intending to destroy the ideal integrity of the rune with one extra line. However, an instant before his nail touched the rune, someone invisible unceremoniously pushed his shoulder with a foot.

The agent rolled down the stairs, counting the steps with his plasticine head. After the eleventh step, the drop started to slow down, and he travelled with his back along something relatively flat.

“The landing!” Tukhlomon understood, opening his eyes and resetting his pressed-in nose. He tried to get up, but a bayonet attached to a flute rested on his chest.

“Don’t move, don’t blink, don’t breathe! Don’t stir your toes! Don’t move your eyeballs! Don’t use magic!” Someone bellowed, materializing in the middle of the landing.

A broad-shouldered strong young person with a regular nose and thin lips was leaning over Tukhlomon. It was Populus, the guard from the House of the Highest Light. After the recent embarrassment, when he scandalously arrested an elder keeper of Light, who, due to distraction, did not answer the guard’s questions, Populus and his partner Rufinus were removed from guarding the House of the Highest Light and sent to patrol the moronoid world.

Now Rufinus was standing behind his partner’s back, keeping his flute in readiness. Thin chains with gold wings gleamed on the necks of both guards. “Regiment of golden-wings! Special raid,” Tukhlomon realized with horror. Guards of Gloom composed legends in verse about golden-wings. Only the best soldiers, such as Ares, having mastered the force of hundreds of eide and techniques of magic battle, could allow themselves not to be afraid of unexpected attacks.

Like all agents acting at their own risk, Tukhlomon was terribly afraid of being caught. He took all precautionary measures and had never been caught, although he had been working for many hundred years. Not without reason he surpassed the majority of agents of Gloom in the quantity of eide obtained. But now here... And how could this have happened?

“What were you doing here, pitiful? You really knew nothing about the ban for you, a servant of Gloom, to hunt in the moronoid world?” Populus asked threateningly.

“You’re saying this to me? I was not hunting, I simply went for a walk!” Tukhlomon mumbled piteously. All his magic was blocked. He could do nothing and now had no more abilities than any ordinary moronoid.

“How touching! Did you breathe any fresh air?” Rufinus asked.

“Yes, fresh air! What, I cannot?” Tukhlomon squeaked and for effectiveness started to breathe like a mammoth, having covered a marathon distance. In a split second, the entrance glass steamed up.

“Stop puffing! I hate your agent stink!” Populus ordered.

Tukhlomon obediently stopped.

“For air, you say? Then why in the entrance? Why not in the Siberian taiga?” Populus asked with mockery.

“The air in the taiga is too fresh! I’d catch cold in the draught! I’m weak!” Tukhlomon sobbed so sorrowfully that even a professional beggar would involuntarily be sorry for him and give him a kopeck. The plasticine face was so radiant with benevolence.

However, this did not touch the guards of Light.

“I’ll go, guys? Less people — more oxygen,” said Tukhlomon ingratiatingly.

“You forgot to return something to us!” Rufinus beat around the bush.

“Really I took something from you? You’re confusing me with someone else! I’m merely a modest salesman of disinfectant soap! And in general I don’t understand you! I need simultaneous translation into Ukrainian!” Tukhlomon started to whine.

“Don’t play dumb! We need the eidos!” Populus said quietly.

“A nose? What nose? They did not hospitalize me with this diagnosis!” Tukhlomon was sincerely astonished. But he immediately understood that he had overplayed it. The golden-wings exchanged glances.

“Eidos! You will return it to me now!” Populus pronounced very distinctly.

Tukhlomon inquisitively glanced into his eyes and read something there such that he became terrified. Tukhlomon suddenly recalled that the flute of a guard of Light possessed sufficient force to destroy his immortal essence.

“Okay, okay!” He said conciliatorily. “Why cut to the basics so fast? Everyone is nervous. I’m nervous, you’re nervous... I took it simply as a souvenir. They begged me! I could not refuse on account of weakness of character. I entreat you, please move your sharp little stick aside a bit! I’ve feared toothpicks since childhood.”

Populus hesitated and withdrew the hand with the flute, however, continuing to keep it not far from his lips. Tukhlomon hastily unscrewed one of the buttons and threw it to the guard.

“Your disgusting eidos is there, inside! Take it, wicked!” He said in a whine. “And now please let me go! It’s cold for me to lie here. I’m a sick old man! I have radiculitis and dandruff! I’ve eaten nothing for three days! Hey, why don’t you pick up the button?”

“Leave it for yourself, my friend! We need the other one, from your sleeve!” The guard said.

“Gloom, take me! They know it!” The agent thought.

Tukhlomon understood that someone from his own had given him away. Otherwise, the guards of Light would never surmise where he hid eide. “Skunks, no corporate solidarity! I’ll find out who — I’ll put him through the meat grinder, then glue him back and put him through again!” He thought.

“The button from the sleeve! Quick!” Populus repeated.

“I won’t give it! I had you in mind, disgusting snakes!” Losing courage before his eyes, Tukhlomon squealed.

“THE BUTTON! NOW!” Populus blew briefly into the flute, forcing the agent to do a somersault on the landing. “Have you come to your senses? I’m waiting!” Threatening, the guard of Light again brought the flute to his lips. Tukhlomon in horror covered up his ears and screwed up his eyes. Any sounding of a flute of Light was unbearable for servants of Gloom. “I’m waiting!” Populus repeated quietly and indeed quite threateningly.

Tukhlomon opened first one eye, then the other. What, they were making him an offer!

“Yes, here you are, here! Take everything!” The agent squealed hysterically.

Breaking the threads, he decisively ripped the button from the sleeve and flung it to Rufinus. The button, cut from a bone of the terrible Typhon, a patron of First Gloom, was bewitched so that it only served Tukhlomon alone. If any stranger, even Ares himself, decided to touch it, his hand, having instantly stopped obeying, would snatch the dagger out from the scabbard and stick it into the owner’s chest. If there turned out not to be a dagger, the hand would grab the throat in a death grip and squeeze it until the hand was chopped off. No other method existed for removing black magic from fingers that touched the button.

However, the experienced Rufinus, who knew all the tricks of Gloom, did not take this bait. He indifferently waited until the button fell, then brought the flute to his lips and split the button with one sharp trill.

“My little button! My little glorious one! For my goal, it cost me three eide! You broke it, disgusting fools!” The distressed Tukhlomon lamented. He extremely valued his button and had high hopes for it.

Rufinus leaned down, using the bayonet moved apart with distaste the two halves of the split button, and with great care picked up with two fingers the eidos from the floor. The tiny grit gratefully lit up with a soft bluish light, not quite like the sharp prickly light, which flared up when Tukhlomon’s fingers touched it. The bluish shining spiral slid to the window and melted away, hiding where the fingers of Gloom would never be able to reach it. Your lucky fate, Mr. Basevich! Although you have to remain heartless to the end of your life, your eidos has been saved.

The agent howled from disappointment. The eidos! The guard of Light has his eidos! If he could tear them apart now, burn them alive — he would do it. His soft face was distorted. Poisonous saliva dripped from his corroded teeth.

“It was mine! The owner renounced it!” He shouted, stretching out a hand with gnarled fingers.

“Well, so? The moronoid wretch didn’t know the true value of eidos!” Populus said severely.

He lightly blew into his flute, nailing Tukhlomona to the floor. Meanwhile Rufinus with the edge of his flute drafted a rune around the agent.

“The time to pay has come. You know the law, agent. We could destroy your essence; however, we’re not going to do this. This is only a rune of expulsion! Now you’ll leave for Gloom, and for a thousand years the doors of the mortal world will be closed to you!” Rufinus said.

“Ah! Don’t! I don’t want to be in Gloom! I’ll be in decline in the dark!” Tukhlomon quickly stated.

He was downright frightened. A thousand years in the society of those like himself — so sly, aggressive, and greedy, who see right through you and cannot be deceived! He, vulnerable little Tukhlomon, will not be able to stand this nightmare!

Rufinus traced the concluding line. The rune started to shimmer. The guard of Light nodded with satisfaction. Everything was drawn correctly. Now there remained only to play the maglody on the flute and that would be all. The agent would leave for Hades.

“Guys, don’t! This is a misunderstanding!” Tukhlomon begged. “I’ll do everything you want, only please don’t torture me with Gloom! Please tell me what guards of Light love. Beautiful plumes! Ah-ah, you’re all musicians! Do you want me to get you the original of Strauss’s notes? There on one of the sheets — I swear on my stomach! — is the print from a chop! The crafty Chopin threw it!”

Rufinus shrugged his shoulders.

“We don’t negotiate with servants of Gloom!” He said and slowly began to play. In the run of a simple motif divined the age-old: Nemo prudens punit, quia peccatum est, sed ne peccetur. (“A sensible person does not punish a man because he has sinned, but in order to keep him from sin,” Seneca, About Anger.)

Tukhlomon began to squeal, attempting to crawl out from the rune. He knew that when the last part of the melody corresponding to the word peccetur sounded, the rune would dispatch him to Gloom.

And here the entrance glass shattered. Rufinus, surprised, became silent and lowered the flute. An emaciated cat with leathery wings flew in onto the landing. It looked as if it had recently miraculously fled from the table of a taxidermist. The cat jumped onto Populus, improved his face with two sharp-clawed slaps and, after tearing away with its teeth the gold wings on a chain from Populus’ neck, it dashed upstairs.

Populus was at a loss. He had never battled with cats before. But the cat did not linger. Its tail, naked like that of a rat, flickered on the upper landing. Populus and Rufinus rushed after in pursuit. For a self-respecting golden-wings to be deprived of his wings was as bad as a guard of Gloom losing his darx.

Without his wings, all his magic would dry up, even the flute would stop working, and the guard would find himself forever chained to the moronoid world. To say nothing about how simply humiliating it was to be deprived of his wings. Even if a guard returned sometimes to Eden after this, for long centuries an indelible spot of disgrace would be attached to him. He would not be given a second set of wings, and, devoid of the possibility to regain his magic powers, the guards would wander along the Garden of Eden and moan piteously, scaring timid spectres and making insolent house-spirits laugh.

***

Daph herself did not know what compelled her to rush to the aid of Tukhlomon. True impromptu. She was sitting at the edge of the roof — why was she drawn to these moronoid roofs? — on the stone barrier covered with tin and, with her legs hanging down, dangling her barefooted soles above the asphalt abyss of the courtyard with the multicolour spots of automobiles and crawling points of moronoids.

New sneakers, which Daph had teleported by the most insolent means from one of the shop windows — to spit on Troil’s warning not to use magic, were beside her. The sneakers evaporated to an unknown direction before the eyes of the sports store’s fat owner, who quietly fell down and settled heavily onto the box of tennis balls. He watched how the girl, playing on a flute, walked past the shop window, but she clearly did not touch the sneakers, since the rather thick glass separated her from them.

“And no need to stink — I’m saving your world. And to do this barefooted is not always convenient...” thought Daph, hiding the flute.

The owner of the store still did not know that Daph, true to the principle of guards of Light to take nothing for reward, obligingly showed her gratitude by presenting him the gift of foresight. From now on, he would always know how much money a buyer coming into his store had, how serious were his intentions, and whether he was a petty swindler, dreaming of distracting a sales clerk and swiping a Swiss army knife with two dozen blades and tweezers. Subsequently, if we run ahead, since our road will hardly cross that of this hero in the future, he closed the store, opened an occult salon, began to practice as the White Magician Fedul, grew a beard, purchased a second-hand limo and, eventually becoming stuck-up, broke a leg stepping onto the loose grid of a rain drain. This proves once again that the less a moronoid knows, the more useful it is for him and his surroundings.

Suddenly Depressiac, strolling along the roof, started to hiss and arched its back. He saw before Daph the two white points. The points, something resembling seagulls in a distance, emerged in the sky somewhere above Kursk Station and slid slantwise to one of the buildings located not far away.

“Depressiac, what’s with you, my pigeon? See a bloody parakeet again?” Daph wondered.

After tracing the direction of the cat’s line of vision, she noticed the swift silhouettes, when they were already almost hidden inside the building. The bronze wings on Daph’s chest grew perceptibly warm. They always reacted this way to the proximity of their kind. Afraid of being caught, Daph dived behind the barrier, only sticking out her head.

“It’s golden-wings! Combat patrol! What are they doing here?” She whispered, turning to the cat.

Depressiac, naturally, refrained from answering.

“Interesting, who are they searching for? If for you and me, then why into that building? How about flying closer and checking?” Daph continued.

Depressiac, with its gift of getting into any mess, was only “for.” It jumped over the barrier, past a couple of floors like a normal cat falling from the height, and only then opened its leathery wings. Daph touched the cavity in the bronze amulet and took a step downward, sensing how the air was resilient against her wing feathers. What enjoyment to fly after all!

Daph turned up at the necessary window almost at the same time as the cat. Having looked carefully through the glass, they saw both the guards of Light at the same moment when they demanded from a wrinkled shrieking individual — clearly an agent — the stolen eidos. Daph recognized Populus and Rufinus. “Rufinus is still not too bad, not entirely dregs, but here it’s better not to show myself to Populus, especially after my escape from Eden. He’s capable of detaining his own grandmother for violation of visa regulations and rules of stay in the moronoid world,” she thought.

Daphne immediately wanted to disappear further away from trouble, but Depressiac was in high spirits. After looking at the gold wings enticingly swinging on a chain on Populus, the cat found that they were similar to a bird, and Depressiac was always wonderfully worked up by birds. Daph missed the instant when a maniacal lustre appeared in the cat’s eyes, and the following moment the glass had already shattered.

While Daph was still gathering her thoughts, the maniacal cat had already torn the wings away from Populus and, proud of its booty, dashed upstairs. The guards followed it.

Using the moment, Tukhlomon crept out from the rune and attempted to bolt. However, his attempt at flight was noticed. Rufinus turned around, brought the flute to his mouth and immobilized the agent with the incantation of capture — ancient as the battle between Light and Gloom. Now Tukhlomon could only jabber and stir with his pupils — and nothing more. Any opportunity disappeared on its own.

Tukhlomon was lying and very quietly lamenting, gradually resigning himself to his future journey to Gloom. Someone’s thin hand pushed through the broken glass and opened the window. Tukhlomon stopped keening and squinted, trying to understand what was happening so far, happening in his interest.

A girl with a little gold ring in her lower lip jumped down from the windowsill. She was dressed in a sweater and shabby jeans. Behind her back hung a small denim backpack, out of which peeked a flute. Small bronze wings on a lace were swinging on the girl’s chest. The experienced Tukhlomon immediately grasped that this was someone from the guards of Light. Now only what is the girl doing here? Possibly, she came here with the golden-wings. But, if not? Hope began to appear in Tukhlomon. He recalled suddenly that somewhere he had heard about a girl-guard with a gold ring in her lower lip, the mistress of a cat that strongly resembled the cats he saw in Hades. Thoughts began to click efficiently and hurriedly in the agent’s consciousness like beads in an abacus.

“I’m wretched, unlucky! I have no strength! Help me!” He whimpered.

“Why are they doing this to you?” Daph asked.

“Don’t ask, my dear! I’m simply in shock. Guards of Light had their eyes on the darx, which dear old Tukhlomon had reserved for his own honest old age! Can you remove this invocation from me? Only do this fast before the bad golden-wing uncles return!”

Daph squinted. She already understood how she could make use of Tukhlomon for her own interest. Now only will it work? But trying is not torture.

“So! Possibly, I would be able to help you. But for what reason? I don’t give to charity on Fridays!”

Suddenly the agent’s eyes flared up, and his face became sweet, almost syrupy. He finally understood who was before him.

“I know! You’re Daph — the guard on the run, the stolen horn of the Minotaur is worth at least hundreds of eide!” He exclaimed.

“Serious? You haven’t hurt your head? Here I indeed didn’t think that this marble icic... oh!” Daph suddenly remembered, having grasped that she had given herself away lock, stock, and barrel.

Tukhlomon beamed. Now the sly agent knew exactly that he had not been mistaken.

“You’re Daph, don’t argue! How about a service for a service? You save me from these two stupid bunglers, I... well will also do something for you.”

“Somehow sounds destructive. I need full specific service. You will lead me to Ares. I’m in hiding, and I need help,” said Daph.

Depressiac heart-wrenchingly meowed three times on the landing above. It seems the guards had caught him nevertheless.

Hearing the name of his chief, Tukhlomon inquisitively and suspiciously stared at Daph.

“Why did you say ‘to Ares,’ girl? First time I hear this name! How can poor little Tukhlomon lead you to one he doesn’t know?” He whined.

“Fine. Now they’ll dispatch you to Hades for a thousand years — you’ll find out,” Daph comforted him.

Tukhlomon was alarmed. They would not pet his head for giving out to a guard of Light, even a fugitive, the address of the secret residence of Gloom, where they were holding the very Methodius Buslaev. Ares and Julitta could be mighty angry with him. On the other hand, a thousand years in Gloom, without the possibility of roaming freely in the moronoid world — oh, no! Only not this!

“Fine, I agree,” he said, hoping to dodge her somehow. “And now quick, rub out that blocking rune there on the wall. I need my magic.”

Daph smiled:

“First you take an oath. You really think that I’ll believe you without an oath!”

Tukhlomon listened. His sensitive hearing had already distinguished the voices of guards. They were returning. Depressiac, deprived of its “bird,” was hissing angrily following them.

“Okay, okay! I swear, a hundred times I swear. Lux ex tenebris! (Light from Gloom (Lat.))” Tukhlomon blurted out.

Daphne shook her head:

“You’re boring me, dimwit! You’re still saying lux in tenebris. It’s not an oath. It’s a motto! First yours, then ours... I know your oath for agents!”

“Really? Oh, oh, my leaky head! What oath do we have? I forgot!”

“Tobne ginus ittsa oteste!” Daph said.

“Tobne ginus ittsa oteste! I will guide you anywhere! But now rub off the rune faster: these freaks are upon us!” Tukhlomon squeaked, something sparkled strangely in his eyes.

“Marvellous,” said Daph. “Now the oath is correct, you’ll not break it. Only you were playing with the words of your oath! I don’t need to be guided anywhere! I’ll guide myself anywhere! Swear to lead me to Ares, moreover precisely to the swordsman. Distinctly and clearly!”

Tukhlomon began to grit his teeth. Cursed girl. It seems, indeed cannot fool her!

“Tobne ginus ittsa oteste! I promise to lead you to the swordsman Ares, the Baron! Satisfied, nasty girl? Got everything you wanted, petty nasty girl? And now rub off the rune! Awful for Tukhlomon! He doesn’t want to be in Hades!”

“Very well,” said Daph, leaning down.

Three events took place almost simultaneously. First: Daph blew into the flute, nullifying the action of the capture magic, and with a nail drew a short line across, cancelling the ideal balance of the rune. Second: Populus and Rufinus appeared nearby, bearing on their faces explicit marks of acquaintance with Depressiac’s claws. And the third: the old fox Tukhlomon disappeared in an unknown direction and could now be anywhere, even on Everest. Now, to find him would require the power of an entire regiment of golden-wings, even then the result would be the most uncertain.

The guards froze. They did not immediately manage to understand what was happening here.

“What are we doing, guys? Torturing agents? Teasing a little cat? The society of veterinary surgeons conducting a travelling conference?” Mustering impudence, Daph asked.

Here she, must confess, applied the brakes. She should disappear together with Tukhlomon, but in the depth of her soul, she still did not believe that she was banished from the Garden of Eden forever.

Populus took a good look at the girl’s face. His face grew red.

“Rufinus! I swear by Light, it’s Daphne! The fugitive assistant to junior guard! Here’s where you are!”

“And here’s where I am?” Daph mechanically paraphrased.

Lately she had begun to notice that she talked before she thought. She first started talking, and only then gradually began to think. Or not think at all. Depending on the situation.

“Daphne, guard of Light, now a guard of Gloom! You are under arrest on charges of theft of an artefact, aid to servants of Gloom, and attempted murder!” Populus said distinctly.

“What, are you crazy? What murder?” Daph could not believe it. It seemed to her that she misheard.

Populus took a determined step towards her. Rufinus was standing beside him, holding his flute to his lips. Daphne knew that one light puff was enough to spread her on the wall. It was well known to all in Eden that golden-wings were taught secret maglodies.

“Hand over your flute and your wings, assistant to junior guard! Don’t make us use force!” Populus began to roar.

Daph moved back. No way could she be deprived of the flute and wings now. It would mean failing the mission right at the very beginning. What kind of secret service agent of Light in Gloom will she be after this! What, have they gone out of their minds? Attempted murder? And who is the victim? Perhaps the very healthy Populus on whom she set Depressiac?

“Hey! You didn’t answer! Who is it I tried to kill?” She asked.

“They will explain this to you in Eden. Don’t move! Don’t make us use force!” Rufinus said.

The guards’ faces were stern. Daphne realized that it was time to skip away. But, before Daph could strengthen in her consciousness the visual means necessary for teleportation — it was one of the dangerous methods, not using any incantation or maglody — Rufinus, no change in the magic field could escape him, quietly began to play on the flute. It was not yet an attack: he only deprived Daph of the possibility of instantaneous teleportation.

“No nonsense, Daph! You are not to slip away! Populus! Take away her flute!” He ordered.

Rufinus’ face, which seemed nice to Daphne earlier, now frightened her. She clearly read in the eyes of the golden-wings that to all respectable guards of Light she was now a traitor, for whom there was no forgiveness.

Daph began to squeal in a most natural manner — like a normal thirteen-year-old moronoid girl would — and, panicking on the double, rushed to the stairs — where she was hiding not long before and now Depressiac was meowing somewhere above. Rufinus again began to play the flute. Sounds that were pleasant and quite rounded before now became prickly and sharp. Incidentally, Daph knew this form of attack of the golden-wings. Sniffka, having violated all bans in her love of the art, sometimes loved to show her students one or two secret magic techniques.

Knowing that there was no way to run from this magic at all and that after a series of short sounds the entire magic would be concentrated in one long shrill note, which would put her in a long sleep, Daph did the only thing that could save her. At the moment when there were some portions of the bar left till the long note, she suddenly changed the direction of her run and jumped from the upper rung onto Populus, hanging onto the neck of the golden-wings. Populus tried to get her off himself, but Daph attached herself like a cat.

Rufinus, understanding what she was planning, pulled back the flute from his lips, but it was already too late. The long note had already begun to sound. The attack magic passed through Daphne, but, since her feet were off the ground, could not lock on her, got confused, and pounced on Populus.

The powerful hands of the golden-wings relaxed. The serenely snuffling guard froze on the spat-upon entrance floor, sweetly turning in his sleep and smacking his lips. Minimum two hours of health-improving sleep were guaranteed to him.

Now of Daphne’s enemies there remained only Rufinus. The powerful guard shrugged his shoulders:

“Do you think you have outwitted us? Child’s play! I don’t even need the flute to catch you!” He said.

Daph in a hurry snatched out her own flute and rained down on the guard a couple of attack maglodies, but Rufinus took them on his armour, even without blocking them. He was clearly amused.

“Not bad, little one! A good thing, this chain mail! Well, yet another pair of maglodies! You show that you know how!” Rufinus took a big step towards her. Now only about two metres separated him from Daph.

Suddenly Daphne felt something burning her thigh, as if someone slipped a red-hot iron bar under the belt of her jeans. She shrieked; without turning it over in her mind, pulled this disgusting something out from under her belt and, hands scorched, flung it away from herself. She did not aim it at Rufinus, had forgotten about him altogether, she was in such pain. Likely, Rufinus himself made a mistake, taking a step towards her precisely at this moment.

The abandoned object hit the golden-wings on the knee. Dual flash blinded Daph. The shielding magic of the golden-wings’ armour entered into a dual with the magic of the unknown and... lost. The chain mail grew dim. The icy armour implacably collapsed along the legs of Rufinus, forging his body. The flute slipped from his stiff fingers and jumped twice, hitting the steps.

Swaying on legs suddenly becoming strange, Rufinus preserved equilibrium with difficulty and, leaning his head down, looked at the white elongated object lying at his feet.

“The horn of the Minotaur! So that’s how you vanished, traitor!” He said with effort.

“I’m not a traitor!” Daph was agitated.

“You’re even a killer! On that night when you stole the horn, someone stealthily placed a box with the teeth and scales of Typhon in the office of Guard General Troil. Troil opened it... It was stored in the same cabinet as the hor... horn...”

Rufinus coughed. Ice already rose to his chest. His cheeks and hair were already covered with hoarfrost.

“How cold! They only found Troil in the morning. His life... no one knows when it will end.”

Daph shuddered. She heard that any part of the ancient monster, mate of Echidna and parent of Chimera, was mortally dangerous for a guard of Light.

“It’s not me!” She shouted.

“They found a feather from your wing in Troil’s office... Better surrender, all the guards are searching for you! Lux in tenebris!” Rufinus said.

Ice forged his lips. His eyes became glassy. And then the ice suddenly became marble... The magic cycle was complete. In front of Daph was a statue. Populus continued to snuffle on the landing, turning from side to side. Perhaps he was uncomfortable on the tile. However, Daph knew that he would soon come to. But here Rufinus... Rufinus would not come to in a hurry.

Daph leaned down and mechanically picked up the marble horn of the Minotaur. She felt sick. Spasms gripped her stomach. It was good that she plainly had not eaten yesterday or today, otherwise she would throw up.

She recalled suddenly how she had penetrated into the depository of artefacts, sneaked past the granite walls with a small pattern of runes drawn on them and the bronze hoops around the columns. In the centre of the depository were two large mahogany cabinets with a set of boxes of different sizes.

Daph stopped in confusion, not knowing which box to begin with and fearing to produce excess noise.

“Second from lower left!” An unknown voice whispered to her.

Daph opened the box. In the darkness, something similar to a bull’s horn was twinkling threateningly and coldly. The tip of the horn had been chopped off. Small defects and bulges were visible. Twice Daph stretched her hand to it, and twice the horn flared up with an icy light tearing away from it. Daphne indecisively took her fingers away, understanding that the artefact did not tolerate her. This was the first and only warning. Touching the horn, she would first become an icy chunk, and then marble. Her eyes, brain, body, and heart would become marble.

Suddenly, when Daph was already weighing whether it would be right to take the horn together with the box, not touching it with her hands, letters flared up on the marble:

Einaros kuollis gunnorbian veddos

“Do you want me to read aloud? What does it mean?” Daph asked.

The horn lay motionlessly in the box, only the letter glittered in the darkness.

“Well, okay, you persuaded me. Einaros kuollis gunnorbian veddos!” With a sigh, Daph read and at the same moment understood that the horn was already in her hand. She did not remember the instant when she took it. She only felt how the freezing cold ran along all her veins and then changed suddenly into heat. The horn had accepted her, had become her artefact, but in the end there was nothing good in this. Not without reason experienced guards always said that the horn of the Minotaur was a trophy artefact of Gloom.

“I hate you! I don’t need you! What have you done?” Daph said to the horn, examining the marble body of Rufinus.

She wanted to draw her arm back and throw the horn far away to the side, but she suddenly perceived that she would never do this. They were in the same boat. Their fates were connected, and the stream would carry them somewhere.

***

Tukhlomon poked his curious nose out from the wall. With the needle-like hair crawling across the forehead his crimson face was flat as if after an encounter with a frying pan. It seemed that the agent, whose magic had returned in full after the destruction of the rune, had made a slight blunder with the materialization.

On seeing the two guards — one turned into stone and the other sleeping, Tukhlomon squatted down and stretched out his hands in surprise. However, he quickly came to and even unceremoniously slapped Populus on the cheek.

“Oho, little one Daph!” He exclaimed. “To kill two golden-winged immediately! At the same time! I thought, my dear, only Ares and Ligul are capable of such a trick. But what a little one!”

Daph angrily took a step towards the agent, squeezing the horn of the Minotaur. The horn began to trumpet invitingly by itself, as if confirming that to change Tukhlomon into marble would be a mere trifle. From horror, the agent’s soft legs were put back together with knees backwards.

“Don’t, mistress! Little Tukhlomon will take back his words and be ready to voluntarily be choked by them!” He stated and, pretending he caught something in the air, began amusingly to shove it into his mouth.

Daphne lowered her hand. She suddenly understood that she could not even be angry with this nitwit.

“Tukhlomon, do you know the ancient language of Chaos? Such as: einaros kuollis gunnorbian veddos?” Daph asked.

She was sure that the answer would be “no,” but the agent suddenly nodded.

“Tukhlomon knows everything. All languages. Once he was a spirit, and this is innate in us. What did you say, ‘gunnorbian veddos’? It means: ‘I came to return you to Gloom.’”

“Thanks!” Daph thanked him.

Tukhlomon twitched. His face fearfully pressed in like a punctured ball.

“And now forget this word! Any ‘save...’ and so on! Such are slanders for us... Although what is to be expected from you, a former guard of Light?”

“Don’t chatter, let’s go!” Daph said. “You will lead me to Ares!”

“Naturally, mother-commander! I’ll shut up! But, a second! Nearly forgot! Such things shouldn’t be thrown about!” Tukhlomon said abruptly.

He approached the guards in a waddle and pulled the gold wings off their necks. Even on the marble Rufinus the wings did not harden. Hoar frost also did not affect the lace. Tukhlomon did not dare touch the wings themselves; therefore he held them by the chains.

“Oh, that! As presents for each chief!” He explained to Daph, swinging the trophy wings. “Ares and Ligul will be satisfied. And when the authorities is satisfied, Tukhlomon is satisfied! And now, Daph, take your cat, and let’s go... And you, little tailed protagonist, no hissing at papa! Trust me, in comparison with creatures from Hades, which papa had to see, you’re still a nice pussy!”

Daphne thought that she could not even interfere with him in order not to raise suspicion. Simultaneously she terribly wanted to rip Tukhlomon’s plasticine ear off. However, staring at his ears sitting crooked, she understood that she was far from the first who had this idea in mind.

Chapter 8

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 632