Kitabı oku: «Methodius Buslaev. Ticket to Bald Mountain», sayfa 3

Chapter 2
A Spirit Pygmy

Eugeny Moshkin, Petruchio Chimodanov, and Nata Vikhrova were sitting in the fireplace hall in 13 Bolshaya Dmitrovka and waiting for the return of Daphne and Methodius, who had gone to the taxidermist for fresh skins for business correspondence. They were bored, and for something to do, Nata began to ask Moshkin and Chimodanov whether they had ever fallen in love.

“Love? For me it’s irrelevant! I haven’t yet achieved anything real. I emphasize! I simply have no time for it,” Petruchio snorted.

“Now you underscore it!” Nata chuckled and raised an eyebrow threateningly.

“BUT! I’m also not very afraid… If your magic works on me, then not for long!” Chimodanov stated.

“Why’s that?”

“I was born on the same day as you. I have primordial immunity to your magic. Julitta told me this… Sooner or later I’ll recover and take vengeance. I’ll send a whole bunch of plasticine killers to you! Thousands of them! They’ll climb out of all crevices and sewers, and each will have a poisoned pin in its hand!”

Nata shivered. “I have had enough of your Zuduka! It always hides in some corner and makes mischief! It recently filled my whole pocket with toothpaste!” she muttered conciliatorily.

Realizing that he had won this round and Nata’s magic would not threaten him, Chimodanov grinned contentedly. “Here’s what I think. The smarter and more complex the creature, the more time passes from the moment of birth to the moment it falls in love. Well, for example, the hamster. It’s all of three months old and it’s already a father. In six months, a grand-dad… But an elephant will have a family only after fifty years.”

“What are you, an elephant? Thanks for admitting it,” Nata remarked mercifully.

“It’s also the same with people,” Petruchio continued, not listening to her. “Some, well, like you, Vikhrova, have already stopped developing at thirteen. And what’s there for them to do next? Unwilling to learn. Too early to lie in a coffin. Still have time to work. The only thing remaining is to fall in love. Those who are smarter, first learn, get settled in life, and then fall in love at around thirty or thirty five. I don’t know why, but it’s always this way.”

Nata looked at Chimodanov through a hole in her fist. “Here’s what I suggest to you,” she purred maliciously. “When would you intend on falling in love? At thirty-five? Why so early? What if you don’t manage? Fall in love at seventy! In the meantime, take mama by the arm and install traffic lights with her.”

Chimodanov could not find an answer, and Nata had already turned to Moshkin, “And you, Gene? Were you ever in love?”

Eugeny moved his lips and glanced hesitantly at her. His answer sounded strange. “Do dreams count?” he asked.

Nata’s jaw dropped like the rating of a politician who accidentally ate a live kitten in front of the camera. “How’s that? You dreamt of someone? Or you were in love in a dream?”

“Why was? I still am,” Moshkin replied seriously and did not answer any more questions, despite all of Nata’s persuasion.

Vikhrova’s curiosity was never satisfied. She had no choice but to stroll around the hall, examining and twirling the occasional knickknacks and black magic protective talismans in her hands.

The hall, recently arranged from nothing in the literal sense by the efforts of Ares with Julitta helping him, was located on the second floor exactly between the student rooms. Four doors faced each other in pairs.

“It’ll be quite good for you here, my chicks! All kinds of trash eternally crowd in reception below. Not a single succubus will poke in here, and I don’t even talk about agents!” Julitta said.

“Shielding runes?” Moshkin asked, having had time to pick up superficial knowledge.

“Nope. Ask her over there!” Julitta said and somehow incomprehensibly looked at Daphne, either approvingly or, on the contrary, defiantly.

Daph smiled modestly. “Just a twig of an Eden beech… I accidentally had it in my backpack and I slipped it under the threshold. Spirits of Gloom can’t stand our plants.”

“And Ares? He allowed it?” Nata asked incredulously.

“Not enough power in a small branch to bother him particularly.”

“So, does he know or not?”

“Not that he knows, and at the same time not that he doesn’t know… Let’s say this: he closes his eyes to small things, because his office is downstairs, and Tukhlomon annoyed him badly…” Julitta announced with a smile.

The aforementioned conversation took place the previous night, and in the morning, Ares and Julitta took off in haste to Tartarus for some celebration connected with the hunchback Ligul. Methodius did not particularly get to the heart of it. Ares said that he would explain everything later. Soon, Methodius and Daph also left. As already said, to the taxidermist.

* * *

“I didn’t really have one sneaker, no? Well, this morning?” Moshkin suddenly asked. He had already sat for about three minutes with an unhappy face, gathering courage for this simple question.

“Not one,” Nata assured him.

“You’re sure? Hundred percent?”

“Over two hundred.”

“Then I’ve lost the second one! Did anyone see it anywhere?” Moshkin complained.

“Watch over your goulashes yourself, dearie! I’m not the sultan’s eighteenth wife to you, in charge of shoes,” Nata remarked.

“I did… Took them off for all of a minute, and then…” Eugeny, smiling guiltily and amiably, showed off a foot in a white sock.

“I love looking at other people’s socks! And if I throw up?” Nata asked.

Chimodanov chuckled. As recently as the morning before yesterday he had the opportunity to observe how Nata learned to read a rat’s innards. However, the divination did not go right from the very beginning, according to Julitta’s assertion, because Nata was chewing gum while gutting the dead rat.

“It’s disrespectful. Magic doesn’t like that,” Julitta remarked.

“You think… I don’t care…” Nata said.

Now she was sitting at the table, on which Marie de’ Medici² once kept the severed head of her favourite, and drinking tea, stirring the sugar in the cup with a silver spoon. This was the spoon of the famous pharmacist-poisoner, who lived in town N. of the Tula province in the middle of the XIX century. Next to it was a small sausage knife, with which Yashka the convict ambushed two merchants in the inn’s courtyard.

Yes, all the objects in the fireplace hall had just such gloomy history. Thus, taking from the table a random pencil stub, it was possible to assume with confidence that either it had been shoved into someone’s eye, or Lavrentii Beria,³ sitting at home on a settee under a fig tree, had made notes with it on official papers.

At first, it was not too pleasant for Methodius and the rest to be among such objects; however, they soon got accustomed to it. Well, a chair is a chair, a table, a table, and a knife, a knife. Man was created such that nothing terrifies him infinitely. What is the difference who, when, and whom, if the firewood in the fireplace, which once warmed the great inquisitor, crackles so comfortably at home? Possibly, this was Gloom’s plan – to gradually, step by step, concession after concession, to erode the ability to wonder and be horrified and to push back the boundary of tolerance, until finally, permissiveness becomes all-encompassing.

Zuduka, the only one of Chimodanov’s artificial monsters he brought with him, jumped out from under the table. Hobbling, Zuduka made its way to Moshkin, dragging a sneaker by the lace.

“You found it! Smart boy! Good boy!” Eugeny was moved.

Zuduka hurriedly hobbled to him, for some reason continually looking back.

“Don’t! I don’t advise it!” Chimodanov said lazily, cutting a wafer cake with Yashka the convict’s knife.

“Why? It’s mine!” Eugeny was surprised. The sneaker was already in his hand.

Zuduka, which he was about to thank, fled with all possible haste, not waiting for a reward.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with your sneaker, but if I were you, I wouldn’t put it on…” Petruchio continued thoughtfully.

“Yes, but…”

“You don’t notice anything suspicious? That’s right! A smoldering fuse! Throw it, idiot!”

Moshkin obediently threw it. A white flash tossed the sneaker up and tore it to shreds. Tongues of flame danced on the curtains. Eugeny put them out with water left in the carafe the minute he glanced at it.

“Zudu-u-uka!” Chimodanov screamed, shaking his fist. “Zudu-u-ka! I’m going to kill you!”

The bald monster, giggling, hid under the sofa, on which the actor playing Othello, overdoing it, once strangled the actress playing Desdemona.⁴ There was no possibility whatsoever to pull Zuduka out from there. After kicking the sofa several times for order, Chimodanov squatted down and picked an empty small box off the floor. Then another, and another…

“Everything’s clear. It stuffed the whole sneaker with match heads! It must have been planning a big bang!” he informed them.

“Why?” Moshkin asked.

“Just because. It’s a genius of malicious thoughts. You didn’t offend it?” Chimodanov asked.

“No. I didn’t even look at it!” Moshkin said, losing confidence with each following word.

Petruchio nodded. “Clear,” he said.

“What’s clear?”

“It’s angry that you didn’t pay it any attention. Zuduka is terribly self-centred.”

“And who would?” Nata chuckled. “His owner is solid ‘b-but!’ with double underscores.”

Nata got up and, having approached the mirror, began to examine herself attentively. She did not do this like teenage boys and their fathers, i.e. statically, without changing anything in himself and only visually evaluating the width of the shoulders and how the suit fits, but very actively, in a feminine way. Her hands flittered, now fixing her hair, now anxiously touching different parts of her skin, which must have seemed problematic to her.

“How do you like it here? This house in the centre and the other absurdities?” she asked languidly.

“It’s quite something… If we forget that we were recently nearly finished off,” said Chimodanov. “Besides, there’s no need to hide monsters from anyone! Even if Zuduka smashes all the walls here, Ares only grunts. At home, if you accidentally break the TV, you’ll be nagged to death… ‘Think about your behaviour! Do you need to put road signs in the hallway?’ And all that… What, is it my fault that Zuduka found a chainsaw? Huh?! Why did you saw the legs off the nightstand, scamp?” Petruchio kicked the sofa again. Something moved under the sofa.

“Do you miss your mother?” Moshkin asked.

Chimodanov shrugged his shoulders uncertainly. “I see her a couple of times a week. That’s enough for me. I didn’t think she would give in to me studying in some boarding school, but Glumovich charmed her terribly! He joined her in the civil commission! Counts traffic lights on Tverskaya Street, translates letters into English, and recently unscrewed a No Entry sign somewhere and presented it to her together with a bouquet,” he yawned.

“And if your mama has a fancy to appear unexpectedly at the school to visit you there?”

“Don’t think so. Ares swore that she wouldn’t even have such thoughts,” Petruchio said confidently.

“And you, Moshkin, how do you like it here?” Nata asked.

Eugeny honestly thought about it. “I don’t know. Still not used to it. Although Ares said that, in addition to water, I’ll possibly be able to control fire in a couple of years. It seems, I only need to grasp the essence… The main thing is primary magic and the gift of a guard. The rest is here!” he touched his forehead with a finger.

“And how do you like it here?” Chimodanov asked.

“It’s cool here,” Nata said. “Better than home. A massive room with an oak bolt. No one can poke his nose in.”

“Don’t you miss home?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t want to be home! I essentially didn’t have a home,” Nata stated.

“How’s that?”

“It’s like this. Mama has a new husband. All the time this ‘attention!’ Butts in telling me how to dress. ‘This is indecent! You’re running around with such hair?’ And all that. And then my older sister got married. If mother’s husband is a soldier, then this one is a bozo. He put a password on the computer. Takes my tapes without asking and writes some of his own nonsense on them.”

“How many rooms do you have?”

“Two,” Nata said.

“Oho. Fun for you! And you didn’t think to… well, you know?” Petruchio uttered.

“Zombify? Are you kidding? Then where would I go to get away from those two baboons? They so hate each other. Mama’s husband is this soldier all over, while Inka’s husband dodges the army.”

Nata said this so disdainfully, as if her mother and sister were married not to people but to some irksome cockroaches. Moshkin thought that it was better not to pity her now. You would only get it in the nose for pity.

Nata’s gaze stopped pensively at Methodius’ door. “By the way, who thinks what about Buslaev? In my opinion, he’s all right, a normal guy, although this girl that’s with him… pfff…”

“Are you talking about Daph?” Chimodanov asked dreamily.

“Yeah. Some walking absurdity! How she squints her eyes when she’s angry! I’m, you know, good and all that, but you got to me. The enthusiasm? The backpack? A cat with wings! And the balalaika in a holster?”

“I emphasize: it’s a flute,” Chimodanov said drily. Whatever Nata might say, he liked Daphne. But he liked Methodius considerably less. Although, it was not surprising. People are much more lenient to creatures of the opposite sex. They willingly forgive everything that, for which their own sex would have been smeared on the wall long ago.

Nata looked at Chimodanov very sourly. “You already emphasized. Imagine, I surmised…”

“Apparently, you’re provoking us to disapproval. Are you sure that it’s the correct way?” Moshkin said. Like the majority of timid people prone to reverie, he was very smart and observant.

“And you, cornstalk, jump on one leg and keep quiet! You’ll soil your nose!” Nata frowned.

Zuduka crawled out from under the sofa, holding in its teeth a kind of fly swatter on a long handle, the wide end of which was all studded with nails, and began to sneak up on Nata. Chimodanov discreetly showed it a fist. Pictorially playing bewilderment, Zuduka sat down on the floor and started to scratch its back with the fly swatter handle.

* * *

Methodius and Daphne returned at about ten in the evening. After disgustedly dumping about three dozen rat skins and two dog skins into the corner, Methodius washed his hands for a long time.

“We in Eden write on birch bark, effortless and pretty. Or on papyrus. Or on eucalyptus leaves. You write and you appreciate the fragrance!” Daph said, teasing him.

“Birch bark is the skin of birches. If so, then I prefer a well-skinned rat,” Methodius said and leaned over, pretending that he wanted to snatch a rat skin with his teeth.

Daphne recoiled in fear. Depressiac, having accidentally dozed off on her shoulder, fell down into the wine fountain and, after jumping out, sticky and disgusting, began to scamper around reception, toppling everything that could be overturned in theory and in practice.

On hearing the noise, Nata, Chimodanov, and Eugeny Moshkin went down.

* * *

About two hours later Julitta arrived. Alone. She was pale and exhausted. She looked bad. Her plump, usually rosy, full-of-life face resembled a balloon from yesterday’s party, which had already begun to deflate. There were blue shadows under her eyes. Having just teleported, she went up to the fireplace hall, went to an armchair, and collapsed into it, worn out.

Daph silently nudged Methodius with an elbow. “Ares!” she whispered. “Why is she alone?”

“I see,” Methodius replied. He was smart enough not to ask questions.

The curious Chimodanov walked around the armchair several times, trying to catch her attention. “Ahem! How was the trip? Got an account for the team? Will you present it?”

Julitta raised her head and looked at him blankly. It seemed, on the whole, that she vaguely understood who was before her.

“Something nasty, huh? I emphasize: I’m indeed also a guard now, huh?” Petruchio continued.

Zuduka’s dangling feet peeped out from under his thin sweater. In spite of its tendency to pull pranks, the monster feared to be left alone. Not possessing vocal cords, it sought other means to express its horror. For example, it located an empty saucepan and banged the walls until everyone in the neighbourhood, having the good fortune to hear it, began to bang their heads against the walls in turn. It also feared the dark, by the way, and spent the night in the same bed with Chimodanov. This gave Nata the excuse to declare that the demonic Petruchio slept with a plush bunny.

“So, where’s Ares? Why are you so utterly sickly?”

“Go away! I’ll get up, and you’ll lie down!” Julitta said through her teeth.

The persistent Chimodanov did not leave her alone. Then Julitta actually got up. And Chimodanov actually lay down, thrown several metres by an unknown force. Meanwhile, the witch – Methodius and Daph were ready to swear – did not even move a finger.

Having dealt with Chimodanov, Julitta laboriously approached the mirror and looked at herself. What she saw was the last straw. The witch again collapsed into the armchair and burst into tears – convulsively, with whines and whimpers. The walls trembled. One of them cracked. A sudden hurricane swept through Bolshaya Dmitrovka. It inflated ads, snatched several umbrellas, rummaged through the books on the second-hand bookseller’s table, shattered a dozen windows, showering the roadway with glass, and caused several minor accidents.

Met, Moshkin, and Chimodanov, no longer lying but sitting on the floor, immediately took a back seat. The witch’s intense emotions were not for their delicate nervous system. Daph and Nata instantly rushed to calm Julitta and give her something to drink. At such moments, girls, as Methodius had observed, act much more sensibly and with more experience. Someone else’s tears, even the most inconsolable, do not frighten them as much.

About ten minutes later, Julitta’s sobs began to subside. She got up, approached the wall, and tore the rug from the wall with a single movement of her hand. Methodius saw a large stone, polished to a shine, with one long and crooked crack cutting it from the top left corner to the lower right.

“Don’t you want to ask me what this is?” the witch asked dully.

“A tombstone,” Methodius answered without hesitation for everyone. He had already had time to become accustomed to the unique stylistics of their establishment.

“Precisely. Not just wizards have zoomers. Don’t you want to watch the news? They can’t not talk about this…” Julitta uttered and sobbed again. However, this sobbing, fortunately, did not develop into hysteria. Strength is needed in order to sob in full voice. Julitta no longer had strength.

The tombstone was wrapped in a dense greenish fog. A flabby face vaguely appeared through the fog.

“Did they smudge my teeth with soil? Put worms in my ears? No again? Away with the makeup technician! What! Yesterday again? It’s clear now why the soap was so terrible in the morning! I hope they’ve at least found the suicide who is going to lift my eyelids in the finale? How did she change her mind and run away? Oh, poor me! Doing everything myself again… What are you whispering over there? Shooting now? I beg your pardon, gentlemen! On air is Venny Vii and his analytical program Cadaveric Eye.”

At this point, Venny, as usual, paused and smiled into the camera, baring his terrible, green-tinged teeth. The acquaintance with those same teeth brought the life of many dentists closer to the end of the rope. Yes, those very dentists whom he loved to visit in his spare time.

“As is known, there are three kinds of news: sensational, simple, and bad,” Vii continued. “We’ll start with the bad. Nagiana Pripyatskaya again won the main prize as presenter of the year… Well, old age – ho, ho! – should be rewarded on merits. Personally I don’t envy Nagiana, especially as the prize was just an ordinary prophetic pharaoh’s mummy. In order that it doesn’t whither and continues to play the oracle, one has to feed it with an eyedropper and sleep with it under the same blanket at least once a week. And in general, Nagiana’s broadcast hasn’t been as successful recently as, say, Coffinia Cryptova’s program. I’m forced to admit this, although this girl also allowed herself to dominate me in spirit: ‘you’ll open your eyes, you’ll stretch out your legs!’ Very funny joke, girl, very funny! One eye specialist asked me roughly with the same zeal to open my eyes.”

Vii’s heavy eyelids trembled threateningly and lifted one-tenth of the way. Hundreds of spectators rushed screaming away from the screens; however, it did not go any further. The eyelids again descended under their own weight and the weight of the clinging earth.

“Other news: the search continues for the fairy Middlelina, suspected of the theft of an artifact from the depository. The raciness of the situation is enhanced by the fact that no one knows precisely what artifact was stolen and what unpleasantness this can cause. Taking into account that Middlelina was never found on Bald Mountain, they are searching for her from now on in the moronoid world. Our noble combat wizards, naturally, report that the circle of search has shrunk. Sure, the earth is round.

“And finally, the sensational! The recent events in the world of guards of Light and Gloom are followed with interest on Bald Mountain. After the definitive destruction of Kvodnon, there is only one individual who can theoretically take his place. This is the well-known to all heir of Gloom Methodius Buslaev. Taking into account that this gifted adolescent not so long ago gave up guns and cars, the high council of Gloom gathered this morning for decision making. And then, my untrue friends, keep your eyes open! You’ll be able to see how everything was… The footage, it goes without saying, was shot with a hidden camera. The operator subsequently… eh-h… was forced to stop the filming. Please!”

Venny Vii snapped his fingers. The tombstone rippled. Methodius saw a long, infinitely long table. The table ended with a short cross-beam like the top of the letter “T”. There, on an unprepossessing office chair, Ligul the hunchback sat in solitude and gnawed his nails. Then he raised his head, grinned, and shouted boomingly, “Summon everyone!”

His voice had not even fallen silent, when the spirit-courtiers started to flicker in the air like specks, in small ripples, like crumpled cigarette wrappers. And a minute had not gone by, when the pig snout of agents started to grunt along the corners of the room. They licked their faces, their black bulging eyes sparkled, the stubbles on their snouts stood on end, and rigid hair curled out of their ears. Attentive, they looked hard at each other. Their mouths were narrow, straight, like the slots of piggy banks. Their intrigue was considerable, the scumbags – there were not enough positions, and every year, the list from Tartarus was reduced. Here the agents were also spinning. Someone just opened his mouth and the rest already caught his words in a notebook. Even now, each pressed a leaflet to his chest, which he hurried to hand over to Ligul personally or at least place on the edge of his desk.

“Go with the denunciations! No time for you now!” the hunchback bellowed.

No sooner had the agents disappeared, when the succubi, rubbing each other, climbed out of windows, cabinets, and doors. They flirted, fluttered, giggled, sighed, and clambered to kiss. The succubi curtseyed on their hind legs and swooned quietly in front of Ligul, robed in ceremonial regalia.

Someone was inadvertently pressed down in the darkness and he yelped loudly. The yelp was immediately drowned in the dissatisfied grumbling of the crowd, seeing it as an attempt to draw attention to himself.

Suddenly all the lightweights fled. The bosses of Gloom – the heads of all the national divisions with their secretaries and entourages – had arrived. The long table was filled so that a pea had nowhere to fall. Ares with Julitta flickered for a moment among the crowd.

Methodius looked around at the witch. She sat white as a sheet. He touched her hand reassuringly. Julitta smiled weakly in thanks.

The camera again stopped at Ligul. Placing his thumbs in his belt, he wriggled the rest of his fingers precisely like the tentacles of an octopus. The division heads waited. A sucking silence filled the infernal Chancellery.

Finally, Ligul grunted and clapped his hands. At the same moment, an enormous silver cup filled with something thick, red, and frighteningly clear emerged on the table in front of him. After removing from his neck a large medal on a chain – a medal, on which someone’s face in relief was discernible, Ligul brought it to the cup, and, unclenching his hand, dropped it to the bottom. All eyes were directed to it. Having taken the cup with both hands, the chief of the Chancellery began to drink greedily. The blood flowed down his cheeks and neck, spilling onto his ceremonial suit.

At last, the cup was empty. Ligul retrieved the blood-stained medal and examined it, as it seemed to Methodius, anxiously. Then he suddenly jerked up the hand with the medal over his head and burst out laughing. And instantly, enthusiastic wild shouts, howls, and laughter, in which there could not be anything human, swept the entire hall.

The lens of the concealed camera, attempting to catch a close-up of the medal, suddenly tossed about. The image wavered and a short shriek was heard. The camera fell and lay on its side, filming feet. Shortly, a hand appeared in the frame, holding by the hair a severed head with a large wart on its nose.

“Well, smile into the camera! Yet another operator from Bald Mountain thought that an invisible cloak would save him!” a voice uttered contentedly. A boot stepped on the lens. Everything disappeared. Eternal night came for the concealed camera.

Venny Vii again appeared on the zoomer screen. A black hanky was clutched in his bluish chubby hand, with which he was wiping away from those closed eyelids tears existing only in his imagination.

“Death at work! How this touches the calloused hearts of the brasses! Now you understand what I had in mind, saying that the operator was forced to stop filming? Ahh! It was my best ghoul. A courageous and completely mindless staffer. Mindless, alas, already in the literal sense of the word.⁵ Fortunately, everything that was shot was immediately transmitted through telepathic channels to our centre… And now, my friends, if you’re interested, Venny will report how the high council of the guards of Gloom ended and what it decided. First: Ligul the hunchback is now not only the head of the Chancellery, but also the temporarily acting sovereign of Gloom. Until now, this post was nominally occupied by Kvodnon, who is finally out of the game now.”

“How does he know all this?” Methodius asked.

“Probably enticed one of the agents. Wizards pay rather well for information they’re interested in,” Julitta said indifferently.

“Pay with what? Money?” Chimodanov asked.

“What’s money got to do with it?” Julitta replied with the deepest contempt.

On the screen, Venny Vii brushed away adhered dirt from his shirtfront with a learned gesture. “I’ll continue! The speed of Methodius Buslaev’s degradation has been declared by Gloom as insufficient. The presence of his self – the unsold and un-pawned eidos – has been declared scandalous. It has been decided to appoint him a new guardian until he comes of age. I suspect either Ligul himself or someone he’ll assign to this post. The old guardian, the swordsman Ares, has been indicted and exiled to Lower Tartarus. Ares refused the demand to return his sword. As a result of his arrest, a number of vacancies in some divisions of Gloom have become available.”

“Ares has been seized?” Methodius asked, in disbelief.

“He killed three guards, but then they disarmed him anyway! You should’ve seen how he left! A lion surrounded by mongrels! And they were all jumping and shouting, ‘Death to him!’” Julitta replied, sobbing.

“Yes, everything was neatly arranged! Ligul used the destruction of Kvodnon to appropriate power till Methodius’ maturity. Moreover, Ligul himself or one he sends will train Methodius!” Chimodanov estimated, having had time to delve into the basic power structure.

“But why didn’t they execute Ares?” Daphne asked. The mores of dark guards, very far from sentimentality, were well known to her.

“Ligul didn’t dare. I suspect he’s slightly afraid. Not now, but for the future, just in case. Everything might turn around! For this same reason he spared my life and even allowed me to leave Tartarus. I didn’t expect that!” Julitta said with contempt.

“Afraid of whom?” Daph clarified.

The witch did not answer, only squinted quickly at Methodius. Daphne sighed. She had managed to fall in love with the guy whom even the head of the Chancellery of Gloom fears! And not only fall in love, but tie her wings and her eternity together with him.

Strong blows shook the reception door.

“Who else is there? We aren’t expecting anyone!” Nata said with unease.

The blows did not subside. They did not become more violent, but rather nastier. The one banging this way knew that he was heard and sooner or later it would open. This was the knock of a master of the situation.

“Are we letting him in?” Daph asked.

Julitta shook her head slowly. “No.”

“Why?”

“If it’s a moronoid, the rune will stop him. If not, he’ll enter and…” the witch did not finish and waved her hand.

The sound of a door being opened was heard. Apparently, the one who knocked was tired of waiting for the grass to grow.

“No, not a moronoid…” Daph said quietly, observing how Depressiac’s back acquired the resemblance of a question mark and the short leathery nose cut through three deep folds.

Julitta kept silent. Everyone, including Depressiac and Zuduka, attentively listened as someone walked with a shuffling and unsteady gait in reception below. Now he pushed aside a chair, now he opened the door into Ares’ office and glanced casually in it. Now steps approached the inner staircase. The rickety oak rails began to creak. A gurgling cough was heard. It seemed something vile and repugnant was crawling up the stairs from below.