Chapter 6
‚ZUTAN '– The Impossible Magic
Rufus and Pars brought us to the dining hall. The room had a low ceiling and long tables, each seating twenty or more, arranged in neat symmetry along the walls. The walls were adorned with strange and incomprehensible symbols which I had no idea of. I had no clue whether they were paintings of local avant-garde artists or some kind of magical trinkets. I had heard, though, about a special form of magic associated with artistic drawing skills. The lights hung from the ceiling on green-painted chains and gave off a dim light until Rufus waved his hand carelessly. The remote-magic control was activated and the room was suddenly illuminated brightly. It was still a far cry from electric lighting though, more reminiscent of forty-watt bulbs in terms of intensity.
When we settled down at the table, Pars glanced at the head with a nod and then addressed us:
"Are you hungry? I can bring something to eat from the kitchen. What would you like?"
I shrugged:
"It doesn't matter. Bread, cheese. Something to drink."
But Dina decided we were in a restaurant:
"Do you have 'arramanskaya fish' with tartar sauce?"
I looked at her, sitting across from me with a mocking smile, but was immediately embarrassed by Pars's affirmative response.
"Of course. It will be ready in fifteen minutes."
Gee, I should have ordered some lobsters, I thought too late.
Dina stuck her tongue out at me triumphantly.
"Well, go on then," said Rufus, shuffling on the bench and pulling the blanket tighter around himself as Pars went to fulfill our order. I had decided it was best not to mention my earthly origins, mages and engineers don't tend to appreciate that kind of thing. And yet, I am unmistakably a creature from that place, a living relic to them.
I began my story the moment I decided to participate in this accursed shooting competition. Rufus listened without interrupting, but the tension in his face gave away his excitement. I would even say he was inspired by my story. By the end, he was listening with his chin resting on his palms, nodding his head, and making gestures as if to say, "Well, well!"
Somewhere around the middle, Pars joined us with our food. He froze in place with the tray, listening to my detective adventures of the past two days. When I finished, he almost dropped it. With a quick spell, he caught it before it hit the ground, though he did manage to spill some of the mustard sauce on the floor.
Ignoring this annoying hindrance, he noticed Rufus with undisguised excitement:
"It's ZUTAN!"
"Nonsense," Rufus replied almost instantly. "It can't be ZUTAN. He's not a mage."
"What about Ita? I saw her dead myself," Pars insisted.
"Are you sure? Maybe it was an imitation. Or a zombie."
Dinah triumphantly stuck out her tongue at me, "I told you!"
"What the hell has a zombie got to do with it, Enger? It's ZUTAN. It all fits. This Kulu-Kulu lived during the first massacre. He can't be alive. He was at least a hundred and two hundred years old back then."
"Why is that? Terber the Nettle lived for four hundred years, and nothing happened. There are ancient mages who lived even longer."
"Terber is a specialist in extending life through magical means. That's been his life's work. And he's also a half-elf. Kulu-Kulu is a military master of the old council. Three hundred years is the limit for the dwarf race. Same as for Zingaru."
"He could have changed his specialization after the massacre and escape. He had plenty of time for that."
"Come on, you know it can only be THE ZUTAN. You're just afraid to make a mistake!"
I got tired of their incomprehensible chatter, completely ignoring our presence with Dina, and stood up, interrupting their 'exciting' discussion about some 'ZUTAN'.
"Guys! All of this is certainly really interesting for you. But we need to eat and get the list that Professor Torrin promised me. Doesn't matter if it's with zutan or without zutan, whatever that silly word means!"
They both stopped their argument and turned towards me. Pars blushed like a teenager on his first date:
"Sorry," he said and immediately laid out the food in front of me and a smiling Dina. Apparently, she hadn't heard of zutan either. The word, that so concerned the magicians, did not affect her at all.
We ate in silence for a while. Rufus and Pars were shooting glances, quivering with excitement, and Enger even walked around the dining room back and forth, but he didn't say anything while we ate. I ate deliberately slowly and carefully. Just like Dina, who savored her dish, dipping small pieces of fried fish into the sauce and licking her fingers. If I were Rufus, I think I would have strangled her.
I finished eating before my young captive did. And together with the students of the magical academy, we began to watch the girl. In the end, I couldn't take it anymore and turned to them:
"Don't pay attention to her, she can eat while we talk. Besides, she has very little to do with my business."
Dina shot me an angry glance. And the students, noticeably amused, chattered away. Simultaneously. Then they fell silent, looked at each other, and Pars nodded, indicating that it was his turn, as the senior.
"You need to leave Bridgeport. The Harijan will kill you if you stay. The sooner you go beyond the Wall, the better. Do you understand?"
I looked him in the eye. What about all this talk about the 'ZUTAN'? Such an abrupt turn.
"Impossible," I replied. "I need to rescue Shania. Without her, I won't go anywhere."
"Shaynar Fairy doesn't need human protection, Master Light. It is a very powerful magical being. Extremely pacifistic in its views, but self-sufficient. If it's disturbed, it will just leave. Fade away as if it never existed. Death to them is not the same as it is to humans. You should know this."
I shook my head:
"I don't want it she just leaves or fade away. It's a normal being that feels pain and sorrow just like anyone else. Besides, I'm cursed and running away to the gates of Agartha won't save me. Harijan's are much more influential beyond the Wall than here."
"Not everywhere. There are kingdoms where Harijan are strongly hated. Langvar, for example. And it's not so far from the Wall. You could wait there. Besides, your curse has been extended. You have a month or two. Maybe you can even make it to the Semenites. The Magister of the Semenites is capable of defeating a curse of that level."
"Not a fact that it will help." Pars intervened with a short pessimistic remark.
"Yes. The Semites don't like Bridgeport," Rufus confirmed. "Although they can make an exception for you. Especially if you tell them about ZUTAN."
"What is it? Can you explain?" I asked, slightly annoyed. These guys didn't offer anything resembling optimism or encouraging words like Ita Torrin did.
"To put it briefly, 'Zutan' is magical nonsense. The word translates from an ancient language, when verbal means were widely used to weave spells. Verbal magic is rare now, but the language developed for its invocation is still mandatory for those studying magic."
At this point, Dina choked on water, waved her hand, and said, "Can't you be even shorter?"
"He's not telling you. Don't interrupt," I interjected.
Rufus continued. "Basically, it's hard to explain to someone who isn't initiated. You've seen and talked to dead people. If it was a Zutan, of course. A mean a real BIG ZUTAN."
"Ghosts?" I asked.
"No. Zutan is not a vision in the astral realm. Everything was real. But if you go back to that place now, you won't even find the house, let alone the characters who are long dead. What happened to you was impossible. Magus Kulu-Kulu has been dead for decades. And Professor Torrin passed away a year ago.
"Is there a logical explanation for this?" I asked, utterly amazed.
"Yes. For example, Professor Ita isn't dead, she faked her death. And Magus Kulu-Kulu is a supercentenarian, and they are both hiding and planning something. What that is, who knows.
"How do we verify this?"
Rufus shrugged.
"Dig up the grave where Ita's body is buried. Although magicians of that level can fake a body if they want to."
"I still don't understand how dead people could have welcomed me into their home, woven spells for me? Have ordinary political conversations, as if they were alive?!"
Rufus shrugged his shoulders: "Zutan. It's a phenomenon of violating the fundamental laws of the universe. A crack in the world where something completely strange happens. Zutan is an extremely rare occurrence, and something as detailed and prolonged as yours had only happened a few times in recorded history. If it was the Zutan, of course. More likely the second option."
"Wait, how did I even get that address? How could the disenchanter give the address of dead or hiding people to a stranger like me?"
The students exchanged glances.
"And where did you hear about this disenchanter? What was his name?"
"I found him through an ad section of the 'Morning Herald of Bridgeport'."
"In the day before yesterday's issue?"
"Yes."
"Pars!"
Pars already got up and ran off for the newspaper, just for a second outrunning the headmaster. After three minutes he burst back in with a stack of newspapers.
"Here!" he said. "This is yesterday's, and the day before."
Rufus gestured invitingly, and I started to search through the column of announcements for 'mine'. However, to no avail; I couldn't find the announcement of the disenchanter, despite remembering its contents perfectly. I fumbled through all the pages, twice.
"What the devil?" I thought.
"Do you remember the address at least?" Rufus asked after a few long minutes while I was looking through all the issues of the past week, maybe it was in another issue."
"Of course. Dead King's Alley, number twenty-three. Doctor Leticia Sirus, the disenchanter. I wrote down the phone number too," I showed them my notebook with the address and number.
Pars chuckled triumphantly and said:
"This is ZUTAN, I told you. Simply amazing! I never thought there would be ZUTAN in my life! So many great mages have passed away without even getting to see a glimpse of that thing. Dead King's Alley, by the way, is right across the road from the rose cemetery."
"And what does that have to do with anything?" I asked.
"The thing is, Ita Torrin is buried in the Rose Cemetery. It's just a part of ZUTAN. You entered it at some point when you were looking at the ads, and you left it when you returned to the road to Bridgeport."
"That proves nothing," Rufus stubbornly objected. "Stop deluding yourself with false hopes. Remember the rule of thirty-three."
"A mage doesn't believe without evidence," Pars muttered the rule of some magical catechism and added, "I'll go there when it's dawn."
"Me too," I said.
"You can't!" both students almost simultaneously exclaimed. "The harries will kill you if you wander around the city, Max!"
"I'll take the risk."
"No, don't," Pars begged. "We'll hide you here. We can dress them up as students," he added, now addressing Rufus.
The president nodded in agreement.
"There's no point in going there as a group. Moreover, there's probably no such person with that address."
"I can call," I said.
Rufus said, a bit embarrassed, "We don't have a phone here." Probably embarrassed of the magical world's disregard for technical innovations and excessive conservatism in front of me.
"It's alright," I said, "I'll call from the payphone on the street."
"Fine then, let's go," Rufus said, standing up. "We can send the girl to the ladies' wing, and you can have a free bed in my room. You need to get some rest."
I really did need to sleep. The stress of the shootout at the warehouse had passed, and my body was demanding rest. Tiredness washed over me. In fifteen minutes I was already in Rufus's room.
I fell asleep instantly, as soon as my head hit the pillow...