Instruction — A Corpse of Doubt

Methodius opened his eyes. He looked with surprise at the unknown ceiling and walls, not understanding why he did not hear the morning snore of Eddy. And only then he comprehended the reason. On the adjacent bed, casting fearful looks at Met with round owlish eyes, lay the already awake Vovva Skunso.

“Hello, skull! Are you not bored with kissing boots?” Methodius greeted him.

Skunso with a jerk turned to the wall and covered himself with the blanket.

“Glad to see you too!” Methodius added and hung his legs down from the bed, considering what to do with himself.

He really did not know whether he was to go to classes in the high school and become acquainted with the new people, or... What did Ares say there the day before? “If I don’t call you, then you have a normal school day. If I call, you set off for the residence.”

Unexpectedly something knocked. The book in the soft binding fell from the chair. Classics and contemporaries, N.V.Gogol, Dead Souls, Methodius read on the cover. Having picked up the book, he opened it to the thirty-first page and found the thirteenth line

‘What is the price?’ Manilov again said and stopped...

For some time Methodius was searching for a deep meaning to this phrase and then, recollecting, provoked tear and blinked.

Come immediately! Ares, he read.

Methodius quickly got dressed and went down. It was half past seven on the clock. The guard in the booth by the school gates looked at him with surprise and said something interrogatively into the communicator.

Looking around, Methodius noticed how Glumovich, pale from lack of sleep, was looking at him from the window of the annex on the first floor. When their eyes met, Glumovich hastily moved back into the shadows. Methodius thought that he already knew what had taken place at night in one of the common rooms.

The guard opened the gates. Soon Methodius was already on Bolshaya Dmitrovka and dived under the scaffolding of the residence of Gloom. A couple of early pedestrians glanced at him with curiosity. Methodius, having already grasped the situation, did not hide from them. He already understood that, if some outsider took it into his head to stick to him, he would find himself in an empty house with collapsing floor and broken steps.

The fountain was murmuring. Having settled in the armchair, Julitta placed a box of candy on her knees and was turning the rotary dialler of a telephone. Traditional guards of Gloom treated all moronoid inventions with disgust, including the telephone. Ares was no exception; however, Julitta contrived to dig up the decrepit apparatus in one of the rooms of house № 13 and at the same time devised this absurd game for herself.

The rules of the game were simple. Julitta arbitrarily picked a phone number, not even bothering with memorizing the sequence of numbers, and, when someone answered the call, she said in her silky, well-delivered voice:

“Hello! It’s me!”

“Who’s me?” The one at that end of the wires was surprised. Anybody could answer — a man, a woman, a child. It was all the same to Julitta whom she made a fool of.

“Yes, me!” The witch impatiently repeated. “Don’t recognize me?”

“No.”

“How about that! Good heavens, not recognizing your own! Getting stuck up? Found treasure?” Julitta said with conviction. This was the most critical moment: whether the fish would bite or not. And the fish usually did.

“Valya perhaps? Olya? Anna Valerevna?” The voice irresolutely asked.

“Think, think! Still cold!” Julitta encouraged.

“Ritka! Rit, it’s you?”

“Really cold,” Julitta was offended. “Well, I’ll give a hint! I was even at your place!”

“Ah, you’re Tolik’s sister! Galya!” The voice squealed.

“Well, and didn’t that take a hundred years!” Julitta evaded. “I forgot something at your place!”

“Serious? Likely forgot nothing...”

“Please recall! Decided to play, eh?” Julitta merrily asked.

“At least you’ll tell me: what?”

“Think for yourself!”

The collocutor began to have his doubts.

“Not an umbrella, no? But it likely has been hanging here for a long time!”

“The same! And you only try to lose it! I’ll soon be in a tank accompanied by the Special Force!” Julitta said and hung up for effect.

Sometimes Julitta creatively changed the end piece. After she was recognized, instead of a banal move she added intrigue into her voice and said:

“Listen, only don’t you be surprised. I buried my gold ring in your sugar bowl.”

“A ring in the sugar bowl? Why?” The person was frightened.

“The deuce knows why. I was tipsy, and it jumped off my finger. Will you look?”

Approximately, in a third of the cases the collocutor actually agreed to look in the sugar bowl. And here was already triumph. At this moment when Methodius dropped in on her, Julitta was experiencing the next triumph.

She shot up on the armchair, dropping the candy, and roared:

“Dig deeper, deeper! Scoop with a spoon, and now pour through the fingers! What do you mean no? Listen, you didn’t swallow it?”

Noticing Methodius, Julitta hung up. The game had begun to annoy her.

“Strange essences, these moronoids! They don’t need the gist of the matter but only your confidence that you know the gist. A firm voice, a little secret — and that’s it, they’re yours. And notice — no magic, not even the least bit, pure technology. If I dropped by to gather all the umbrellas, bags, and cosmetics that they promised me, I would earn a hernia! True, there would emerge complications with the recognition. After all, I have less ability than any ordinary werewolf for a change of guise... Do you remember, we ordered silver collars for them? Otherwise they’ll come the following Friday — pulverize everything here,” she stated to Methodius.

“Don’t remember... Listen, why do you do this? In the sense, why do you tease the poor suckers?” Methodius asked.

Julitta thought for a bit. She sadly picked up a dropped candy from the carpet, removed a hair stuck to it, blew on it, and ate it.

“I’ll not die from microbes. I’ll die of hunger,” she drawled pensively. “You ask: why? Hm... well, on the whole, it’s amusing. And one more reason. Intrigue... I’m indeed dreadful like mortal sin! Normal fellows don’t fall in love with me. But on the telephone my voice is an outright hit... You realize that?”

“And you didn’t try magic to make them fall in love?” Methodius asked.

“Boring with magic. Easily possible, but boring... But then, so far I still haven’t met the one at whom I want to swoon at any cost and at any price... Here it’s a sacred matter for the nose to move,” Julitta assured him.

***

With a sign, Ares ordered Methodius to approach. A mysterious smile roamed on his cut face. The lock of hair like a pointer ominously crawled on his forehead.

“How did you sleep?” He asked.

“Okay.”

“New friends?”

“First class kids, with imagination. I think we’ll become friends,” Methodius said after a delay.

He surmised that Ares, even without his narrative, knew what had happened at night in the school. In general, hardly anything could be kept from the Baron of Gloom.

Ares looked at him not without approval.

“Excellent. I don’t like people who complain, with the inclination to reduce the collocutor to an emotional wreck. With such a wuss it would be worthwhile to sear the tongue already after the first warning... Now, here’s what. A package for you was delivered from the Chancellery tonight. Didn’t think that this would take place so soon. Usually they stretch till the last... Look!”

On the alarmingly black table of Ares, into which a glare would sink as in a bog, lay a long wooden case. Ares, with a push, moved the case up to Methodius.

“Open it!” He ordered.

Methodius raised the lid. A sword with a narrow blade was laying on velvet the colour of dried blood. The handle, modest and plain, was approximately twice the length of Methodius’ hand. Buslaev stared. The sword was dull and had about a dozen shallow notches and one deep one. The end of the sword was broken slantwise. This reminded Methodius somewhat of his front tooth and he smiled.

“Take it!” Ares demanded.

Methodius stretched out his hand and touched the handle of the sword. The Baron of Gloom looked searchingly at him.

“Do you feel anything?” He asked.

“Don’t know... Nothing, probably.”

“Neither pain nor rejection?”

“No.”

“And what do you think of the sword itself?”

“Not bad. But I understand nothing at all about this.”

“Not bad,” said Ares. “It would be worse if you started to babble about the balance, attempted to twirl the blade like a samurai, or discussed the sharpening job. Then I would understand absolutely that you would never become an intelligent swordsman. Now wave the sword! Hit the table, the case, the armchair a few times... The hell with the furniture! So!”

Methodius unskilfully lifted his hand with the sword. Rather heavy. It required getting accustomed to chop with it. In a real struggle he, most likely, would choose a battleaxe.

“Hit!” Ares ordered. “So!”

Methodius uncertainly chopped the chair. The chair swayed but remained standing. A long crack appeared on the back, but it could also be caused by an impact with any pointed piece of iron.

“Well! Hit again!” Ares shouted dangerously.

He continued to look intently at Methodius. He was clearly interested not in the power of the hits, not the technique, not the feeling of the blade, but in something else. Something only he, the Baron of Gloom, knew.

Methodius struck the chair with the sword two or three times, treating this slaughter indifferently. Then, gradually getting into a rage, he dented the wall and broke the frame of the hunchback Ligul’s ceremonial portrait. Ligul, depicted in oil, with disgust shook the splinters of glass from his armour and, grumbling, like a vampire threatened with an aspen stake, slowly set off to the edge of the portrait. Ares laughed out loud. Ligul, exactly as alive, straightened the head curvedly set, looked askance at the swordsman, and disappeared behind the broken frame.

“Bravo, my young friend! One less spy, and only a good dozen of them here,” approved Ares.

Methodius was distracted listening to him, forgot about the sword he was carrying, and already wanted to mechanically lower the blade when suddenly the sword, not exactly against the will of his arm but as if in conspiracy with it, traced an arc and easily, almost playing, split the rather thick tabletop. The table swayed on its curved legs and fell down into two pieces.

Methodius unclenched his hand, leaving the sword in the table, and fearlessly stared at his own fingers. Did they really split the table? Or did they not? Ares calmly looked at his split table. When the blade, striking the table, passed his head in dangerous proximity, only his nostrils flared. And that was it. He showed nothing more of his own excitement.

“So that’s how it is,” said Ares quietly. “I surmised that it doesn’t like me. But why! It remembers! How do you like that, a clever piece of iron... Even now, after so many centuries.”

“Remembers what?” Methodius asked.

“Unimportant. Once we were acquainted with its previous owner... Then the acquaintance ended. But now something else is more important,” mysteriously said Ares.

“What is important?”

“The sword recognized not only me, but also you. It saw in you the new owner; otherwise it would never have obeyed. I’m satisfied. Return it to the case. Let us continue the training later,” said Ares.

“What do you mean?! But I’m only beginning to enjoy it! What, the sword could disown me?” Methodius asked.

The Baron of Gloom nodded:

“Completely. The weapon is wilful. As far as I know, it cut off the leg of a previous owner, one of the toadies of Ligul. Personally, I’m not surprised by it. After all, this is the former sword of The Ancient One. Does this name not tell you anything?”

“Ne-a.”

“Once this sword served Light and even now, having gone the long road of transformations, it doesn’t love the absolute dark. Even battling on the side of Gloom, it doesn’t overdo low acts. Strange but frequently common duality...”

Ares tapped with a nail on the case. As before, he avoided touching the blade.

“We’ll discuss the sword later. A sword is nothing but a weapon. If we liken everything to the human body, then a weapon is the hand, and intuition — the eye. A guard without intuition is a creation on the verge of an incident and doesn’t have the right to life. All the same, he will be killed sooner or later. You understand what I’m talking about?”

“Vaguely,” said Methodius.

“Now you will understand,” Ares remarked softly.

Methodius had time neither to jump nor to take a step sideways. He simply heard a crash. Something stung him along the cheek, and then he understood that he was standing inside a heavy hoop. The chain of the enormous lamp, earlier hanging quietly in the Baron’s office, fell onto the floor and locked Methodius in a moulded ring. Only more to the right or more to the left and it would have crushed his head. Now the lamp contented itself with crumbling the parquet floor by his feet.

“Wipe the blood, Signor Tomato! Julitta will dress the wound later... As you see, the blade solves nothing. You could be a thousand times greater master but you would not have time even to reach the sword. The fate of a battle is more often decided before the battle. For this, there is intuition!” Ares said, leniently observing how Methodius managed to get out of the moulded ring.

Buslaev cautiously checked by sight what was still around and from where something could fall down on him. It turned out that much could fall down and from different places.

“And how will we train intuition?” He asked not without fear.

Ares cast a sharp look at him:

“You’re indeed not a telepath, no? Well! I thought so: you don’t mirror, then it seems you see auras and energy fluxes. Furthermore, you have special connection with the surrounding world: elements, objects... Wonderful, we will develop this gift. Close your eyes! No, not enough: tie them so there will be no temptation to open them! Take that black ribbon there! Lively!”

Methodius did not even have time to feel the ribbon and it was already over his eyes, unceremoniously pressed into a narrow strip by a knot at the back of his head. The ribbon was not simply opaque. It literally obliterated the concept of light. Methodius even did not know where the window was located. He understood suddenly that he would not be able to tear it off until Ares wished it.

“Bravo, Signor Tomato! Glad that the ribbon likes you. And even better that you don’t know its history. Trust me, it, that is to say the history, oppresses any yesterday’s moronoid. But, ‘the less you know, the better you work with a spoon,’ as one poison handler of my acquaintance loved to say now and then,” he heard the voice of Ares.

Methodius touched the ribbon with his fingers. It was slippery like snakeskin. He tried to pull it off, he tugged: it was useless.

“Don’t panic!” Ares ordered. “In any case, now the eyes will not confuse you. In such things they, trust me, are superfluous. And now do what I tell you. Let your consciousness become empty. Imagine that you’re standing before a calm, mirror-like pond and see all the things reflected.”

Methodius honestly attempted to visualize the pond. Dark water, water lilies, frogs in the reeds.

“Now, I didn’t ask for frogs! It’s pure amateurish performance. Well, yes okay, if it’s simpler for you this way. And now tell me: what am I holding now in my hand?”

“Don’t know!” Methodius said.

“Think!”

“A pencil, no? Then, a leather folder? Ash tray?” Methodius asked hopelessly.

“You’re trying to recall what’s lying on my table. That’s not the way. Look at the water! Concentrate! Well! It’s in you, or I wouldn’t demand the impossible! And don’t try to peek. Trust me, it’s useless.”

Methodius looked closely into the dark water of the imaginary pond. He was looking hard but saw nothing. Only the ribbon sunk its teeth into his eyes.

“Don’t strain yourself! No excess efforts. Simply look, and that’s all! Do you see?” Ares asked angrily.

“No.”

“Ares, you’re intimidating him. As perhaps our little one was weakened when you almost nailed him with your stupid lamp? May I propose? Met, how many fingers do I show?” Julitta shouted, looking in from reception.

“One, the middle,” even without turning around, Met despondently said.

“Here you see! Correct, one. But how did you guess?” The little witch was triumphant.

“You only show it. Not difficult to guess. Go to your mail genies!” Methodius growled.

Ares cleared his throat.

“Oho, the process began! The boy is already rude to other’s secretaries! Base magic like in a dead horse, but how much assurance! Now think, Met, or for variety, I’ll begin to shoot at you from a crossbow! Trust me, it clears the brain of weakened guards splendidly,” he threatened.

“No need. I’m fine. I’m allergic to crossbow arrows,” said Methodius.

“Then answer!”

“Ash tray... oh... I said... Inkpot? Dagger? Seal?”

“Julitta, crossbow!” Ares coldly ordered. “And stretch the bowstring tighter... If Signor Tomato doesn’t want to train his intuition, we’ll train his skill to fight fire with fire.”

“Darn... Not enough to stun me with the fixture...,” said Methodius. He suddenly saw very clearly how the short crossbow arrow-bolt was going for him from the back.

“I’m waiting!” Ares hurried him.

Methodius already did not try to see the pond. He suddenly began to turn his back on the water lilies and black water. Then unexpectedly he realized that the ribbon tightened over his eyes had its flaws. Exactly in the region of Methodius’ right eye the tightly woven cloth parted, and light broke through there. He tried to focus on this tiny speck of light. For a long time he got nothing, and then he nevertheless understood that with a large effort he could see something. Indistinct, vague, but he could...

“You have nothing in your hands. You’re simply stroking your scar with your fingers,” Methodius said, not too confidently.

Ares quickly looked up:

“And now it’s already to a T! What am I doing now?”

“You touched your moustache... Now the fingers touch the forehead... And now you precisely have a dagger in your hand... No, its scabbard...”

“How did you guess?”

“Well... I don’t know...”

“Tell the truth!”

“I spied. The ribbon has a hole,” confessed Methodius.

“Really? But where?” Ares asked with sudden curiosity.

“By the right eye, only from below! Replace it so it would not be visible?”

“Not worth it. The ribbon is ideal. Trust me, not one needle in this world can pierce it and no scissors can cut it. Simply your consciousness has made a breach precisely there, and your right intuitive eye broke the shell sooner than the left. Of course, I would prefer the left, but this is also not bad. Let’s continue! What am I doing now?”

“You’re twirling on your finger the clasp of a raincoat.”

“And what does it look like? Describe it in more detail, in the smallest details! What’s the pattern on it?”

“I can’t see... too small.”

“Try! Size has a value only with choosing watermelons.”

“Similar to a cockleshell... A small band...” said Methodius and suddenly perceived that a tiny opening had also appeared in the ribbon by the left eye. Now he was seeing with both eyes, moreover better with one than the other.

Little by little, Methodius was distinguishing Ares increasingly distinctly. It seemed the holes in the bandage gradually widened, and the bandage itself was coming apart at the seams. Now Methodius saw not only that which was taking place before him, but also that which was behind the wall. He even knew how to distinguish Julitta, who was sitting at the secretarial desk and popping chocolates from the box like shells from a cartridge clip.

“Don’t be distracted! What am I doing now?” Ares said sternly, for some reason knowing everything that was going on.

“You touched your darx!”

“I touched it? You’re sure?”

“Ah, no! You’re playing with it... Now you’re swinging the chain.”

“Excellent, Met, excellent! But, only you were mistaken!”

“How’s that? Yes, you’re playing with your darx! Really!” Methodius was even offended.

“And I tell you that you were mistaken! You see everything now in a bluish haze, is that not so?”

“Eh-eh, well, yes!”

“So here it is: I did not touch my darx. I was only intending to do this. Now something in you actually begins to break out of the shell here. This is foresight! At first, it was only intuitive sight... One more try?”

The voice of Ares did not change, but Methodius suddenly perceived how a bent blade of the two-handed sword was rushing towards his neck. Cold — and here his cut-off head was already rolling along the parquet. Methodius yelled and quickly squatted, with his hands grabbing his head from behind. And... understood that it was in place.

The bandage fell from his eyes. He saw Ares, who was pensively smoothing out the black ribbon — absolutely whole. There was no sword whatever in his hands.

“Bravo, Signor Tomato! I’m almost satisfied. It cannot be said that you’re taking seven-mile steps, but nevertheless dragging little by little...” he said.

Outside a door creaked uncertainly, the one leading from house № 13 outside, under the scaffolding covered by dusty netting.

“Who is this? Answer without turning around,” ordered Ares.

“Eh-eh... Tukhlomon. Someone else with him... A girl!” Methodius said not without pride. Between him and the agent, there were all of two continuous walls.

“Describe her!”

“About my age. Bright downy hair, tied into two braids on her head — sticking out at unthinkable angles. Jeans. On the neck a lace with small wings. A ring in her lower lip. Knapsack with something like a pipe.”

“And you lumped together the ring and the knapsack... A likable girl?” Suddenly Ares interrupted him.

“Well... yes! Awfully,” said Methodius, feeling himself blushing slightly.

“So you’re saying, likable?” Ares squinted.

“I didn’t say ‘likable’! You said it!” Methodius was agitated.

Ares beat around the bush.

“But then you said: ‘Aw-fully!’ And between ‘aw-fully likable’ and simply likable there’s a monstrous gap. Be careful, boy. Don’t trust daughters of Eve too much. Possible that we’ll have to blow off the head of this girl in the nearest future.”

“Why?” Methodius tensed up.

“Because three trills of her flute can make a colander out of you and free all eide from my darx. Have in mind that according to all the signs this girl is a guard of Light.”

Chapter 9

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 554