LITMIR.BIZ

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jet sofa and flew to Leopold Grotter.”

      “You flew on the jet sofa?”

      Chernomorov was embarrassed. Nevertheless, one can hardly say very.

      “Yes, I understand what you want to say: someone among the students, especially from the “black,” could see and make a laughing stock of me. I’ll say: academician, laureate of the award of Magic Suspenders, head of the legendary Tibidox flying on a tattered sofa with plucked chicken wings… A sofa, from which copper springs stick out… It was already late, and no one saw me… And how? Would someone really look out the window, having heard nothing but a little rumble… Mm… I even almost ran into the stained-glass panel of the Hall of Two Elements, but if the glass also crumbled, then through the course of time… Nevertheless it was seven hundred years old…”

      “A nightmare! And I thought that the stained-glass panel was fractured by lightning!” Medusa thought.

      “At first I wanted to use a flying carpet, but to set out on a carpet in this dampness would be a waste: moth would damage it. Besides, the jet sofa is almost one-and-a-half times faster… Well, and I don’t speak of boot-runners at all. Since, as they were hexed, their accuracy of landing is almost twenty versts… Oh, of course, I could take a mop with propeller or a flying vacuum, but you know full well that they are uncomfortable. One’s back becomes numb during long flights on them, and the absence of baggage carrier interferes with taking even the smallest load with you.”

      The instructor of studies of evil spirits sighed very quietly. For a long time, those in Tibidox were already used to Academician Sardanapal’s eccentricities. He could very well, mixing up the epochs, appear at work in a Roman toga or set someone’s ear wax on fire by mistake, after confusing it with a grey chemical. And what about that case with the guest from Bald Mountain, when the academician sent him on a three-month sleep, having accidentally read to him the hibernation spell for gophers instead of the salutatory speech? But whatever you may say, nevertheless he was the greatest magician since The Ancient One.

      “Are you listening to me, Medusa? In my opinion you were distracted!” The academician reproachfully glanced at his companion, and she, worrying, understood too late that she forgot to protect her thoughts with a guard spell.

      When you deal with a powerful magician, never overlook any small detail.

      “So, I flew to Leopold,” continued Sardanapal. “The wind was favourable, so that I was on the road for no more than three hours. Before reaching the place, I detected a great number of evil spirits swarming around his house. They were behaving very strangely – muttering something, panting, walking in circles, and were generally somewhat dejected. Noticing me, the evil spirits dispersed in countable minutes. You know these essences: first many of them, then suddenly, at one go, none…”

      “And no one even attempted an attack?” Medusa was astonished.

      “Absolutely not. I did not believe my own eyes. Only Plague-del-Cake could assemble so many evil spirits in one place, and she would indeed not miss a chance to settle a score with me. Here’s the riddle – only very recently the evil spirits were ready to tear us into shreds, but now it’s as if we don’t exist for them… Busy with their own little squabbles.”

      “And then you surmised that She-Who-Is-No-More vanished?”

      “Well, I haven’t quite surmised yet, but I’m already pondering. I approached the house of Leopold, knocked – no sound in answer. Then I pushed the door, and it opened. It didn’t even open but simply fell from a single touch. In the house everything was turned upside down. Internal walls had collapsed, handrails were charred, only chips left from the furniture. Likely someone endowed with immense magical power uttered a spell of total annihilation. I rushed into the laboratory. It suffered most of all. Even the granite boulder that served Leopold as a table for experiments crumbled into powder, I hardly touched it…” the voice of Sardanapal trembled. “Grotter and his wife Sophia… there was already no help for them. Even I could not help, although, as you know, Medusa, I slightly understand magic. But here’s a miracle – in the middle of the laboratory, on the floor dented by the spell, among the crumbled plaster lay a case for a double bass, and in it – a tiny little girl, their daughter… We knew the Grotters well, Medusa, they were people of skill, magicians of superior material. Magic and music were what they lived for. They didn’t even have a baby carriage for the child, managed entirely with a case for the double bass. Afraid that the girl was also dead, I leaned over the case, and – oh, a miracle! – she was sleeping serenely, and gripped in her palm was a silver scorpion of Plague-del-Cake…”

      Medusa straightened abruptly. Her copper-red hair again hissed like snakes.

      “How? That same scorpion-killer which She-Who-Is-No-More sent to sting her victims when she wanted to take pleasure in their tortures?”

      “Yes. But it couldn’t injure the girl, although on the tip of her nose I noticed two red spots. Likely, the scorpion stung her directly on the birthmark. Even a light bite was usually sufficient to kill an adult magician… But she, this baby, simply crushed it. A year-old girl, not even awake, dealt with the silver scorpion.”

      “However, it’s incredible that she survived. But if the scorpion got rid of its venom? Or was it used earlier?” Gorgonova asked with distrust.

      “No, there was enough venom. And Plague-del-Cake didn’t keep old scorpions. But even if we forget about the scorpion, another thing remains: the spell of complete annihilation – this terrible white flash which burns out everything all around – also couldn’t harm Tanya. Indeed this form of magic is not among those directed selectively. It destroys everyone and everything that happened to be close by, with the exception of the one who cast it.”

      Tears rolled down Medusa’s cheeks and fell onto the pile of maple leaves. The leaves began to smoke. The first unknown folk narrator calling female tears hot was likely acquainted with a sorceress.

      “The unlucky Grotters! But what about the Talisman of Four Elements?” Medusa sobbed.

      “I was never able to find it,” said Sardanapal. “It was not near Leopold nor his wife Sophia nor the child… It was nowhere in the house. Most likely, it was destroyed by the spell together with all the rest of Grotter’s inventions. True, at first I suspected that Plague-del-Cake took it, but, if this were so, we would already have known about it. No, it actually disappeared, and the strange behaviour of the evil spirits – a better confirmation of that. I don’t know what happened in the house of the Grotters, but this tiny little girl did what no single magician could… She stopped She-Who-Is-No-More…”

      Only now detecting the burning leaves under her feet, Medusa uttered a short spell accompanied by a sign, which her magic ring traced directly in the air. The fire went out. For a little while, the sign traced by Medusa hung in the air, weakly wavering. Gorgonova angrily wiped it off with her palm.

      “But why do you want to give the girl up to Durnev? Why send her to the moronoid world? Why can’t we bring her up in Tibidox?” she asked with vexation.

      “Medusa, have you forgotten what place Tibidox is? You should indeed know, but there’s absolutely nothing for a child to do there. Only imagine to yourself, Tibidox – and suddenly a child?

      “And if Eyeless Horror comes to the surface? Or, let us say, Dumpling Maker let go of his Coffin Lid, and it, like last time, lying in wait for students lingering on the dark stairs? And the cyclopes, getting violent each full moon? And Ripper, whom, by the way, you wrongfully dragged out of the scorching cave in the Earth’s core, where he was incarcerated.”

      “He promised that he would drop all his habits and would be our porter. You yourself know that it’s complicated to rely on the cyclopes. These dimwits have heads like sieves,” Medusa said, justifying herself. “And later… well, you yourself know what happened later…”

      “Precisely… The invisible Ripper walks along the corridors of Tibidox, howls, croaks, and does what suits him, and even we cannot catch him because he can be reflected only in the Mirror of Fate, but he doesn’t show his nose there!” Sardanapal shouted angrily. “And you want me to let the daughter of Grotter

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