– Don’t call unnecessarily! – the student jabbered in the tone of a failed student trying to get at least a C on the last possible retake. – It’s written in large scarlet letters on the first page of every textbook!
Proclaiming the basic principle of the science he was studying, the young necromancer put his hand to his heart, where on his blue student robe he had the same skull with a lightning bolt embroidered on his cap as the master’s.
– And where is the need? – Julius snorted, catching Adolf Hitler by the collar. – Children’s pranks!
The miniature dictator, like a hamster sold in a pet store, waved his arms and legs until the master put him on the hill where Stalin and Grozny, who had fallen earlier, had managed to climb.
Dan, looking down, shifted from foot to foot. Yes, there was no apparent need for his mega-project… yet. And the master immediately understood this. Why are teachers so insightful?
«I see,» Julius concluded, leaving the table without attention and going to the window. – And how do you not get a headache from the persistent smell of incense in your own room?
The black dragon, Dan’s pet, was snoring on the green sofa, emitting not the most pleasant odors from his nostrils. The animal had nothing to do with his wonderful owner, much less his teacher.
– By the way, what kind of guy is this? – the master pointed at the window.
There, in the courtyard among the pigeons on the observation deck, from which the whole of Prague was visible at a glance, a short bald man in a cassock sat on his haunches and drew suns on the ground with chalk.
– Akhenaten! – Dan declared proudly.
The master’s face turned purple, and he began to yell, waving his fists, that the young experimenter could only hide from the righteous anger of his mentor or wake up the dragon so that he would breathe on the master. True, the latter is fraught with an order to expel from school.
– Bastard! What are you doing? Were you able to summon a full-fledged person?!
– And more than once. As always, for three days,» the guy waved it off, as if what he had done was quite ordinary, «my next scientific experiment, Master Julius.»
«Do you even know,» the teacher did not stop yelling, «that your, if I may say so, hmm, experiment, killed all the sheep and goats in the corral…
At this news, Dan doubled over with laughter and wiped his face with the sleeves of his robe.
– Should you have heard his sermons in church…
– For… this is why I called the first religious reformer. I filmed his entire performance for the archive. You are… Master Julius… don’t worry so much, otherwise your heart will begin to play pranks, you will die… Am I going to have to call you to lectures later? And this one… he will go back to the dead tomorrow. It’s strange that you didn’t notice Isaac Newton among the gardeners last week.
The magician’s face stretched out in surprise.
«So this is who collected all the unripe apples in the Hradcany gardens…» he whispered, slapping his hand on his forehead.
Dan made a displeased grimace: wow, he is conducting the most ingenious experiments, but they can’t at least praise him, for some reason they are angry. While making justification speeches, the young necromancer backed away from the master advancing on him, and perhaps he would have crushed the composition, carelessly sitting on the table, if the mentor had not stopped the onslaught due to an absurd reason.
The necromancer’s wonderful dragon, an animal no larger than a German shepherd, could not stand the noise and, waking up, clung to the master’s robe just below the waist.
– Well done, dragon! – the guy winked at his pet, which angered the master even more.
«He’s lived in the world for a quarter of a century,» he said offended, «and he’s having fun like a little child.»
With a withering glance, he looked at the presumptuous dragon, who, looking guiltily at the master, crawled to the far corner of the room and began to write something down in a thick notebook with a spring.
«I would have kicked you out a long time ago, Dan,» Julius muttered, adjusting his robe, «but I can’t.» Not a single student of our school has had such strength as you have since the time of the great Wenceslas. If we let you go, then the time is not far off when personalities like the Devil from Old Town Square will become interested in you.
The master sat down on the edge of the sofa, where the dragon was sleeping a minute ago. It was clear that he wanted to make peace with the student, despite the scandal he had just created. The old necromancer patted the sofa next to him with his palm, saying, go, Dan, there’s something to do.
More than anything else, the young magician was afraid of being expelled: graduating from a regular school, college, taking up one of the branches of magic, and then being so absurdly thrown out of a magical institution – a shame for a hereditary necromancer. What does it look like if you are expelled not from some provincial school, but from the world-famous School of Necromancy in Prague Castle?
The last thing Julius said gave Dan hope: if the mentor was able to recognize the remarkable strength in him, then he was unlikely to send him away. And he, picking up the hem of his robe, sat down next to her.
At the same time, the young necromancer’s conscience whispered: «Where is your pride, Dan? This man almost crushed you to dust a few minutes ago!»
«You are very strong, Dan,» Julius sighed, «but, unfortunately, you are too careless and defenseless.» Do you think it was just that the great Wenceslas wrote the main rule back in the twelfth century – do not call unnecessarily? And you use very strong magic to satisfy your curiosity. I repeat, not once in five hundred years has a single necromancer managed to summon a person for more than ten minutes. I’m generally silent about your hotbed of celebrities.
«What is it, a breeding ground,» Dan waved his hand, «childish pranks, reincarnated mice, boring stuff.»
Judging by what he had just said, he was not at all aware of his strength. Julius looked in horror at the young necromancer, who had just turned twenty-five two weeks ago, and who naively considered such powerful magic to be nothing. The mentor himself, for example, would not have been able to hold out such a rat city for more than five minutes, and even after the end of the operation he would have lain around in a sleepy state for half a day and would have eaten for three.
He remembered his first experience very well. Then, three hundred years ago, when Julius was not much younger than his current student, he went to the cemetery at night to call his drowned sister back into the world. Fifteen years have already passed since the dishonored girl threw herself into the waters of the Vltava, but the then young necromancer brother was sure that sister Katinka would want to look at the blue sky again and climb the mountain in Petřín. Exactly at midnight, the young magician began the ceremony: he lit a candle and began to read invoking spells. And the girl returned. In the dim light, the brother saw her pale violet skin, tangled bleached hair, empty eye sockets and… long nails that no one had cut in fifteen years. Before he had time to realize that Katinka did not want to live, these uncircumcised claws, stained with earth and the flesh of the dead, dug into his cheek. The magician screamed, trying to cast a spell and call his sister away, but the revived suicide decided to take revenge on her brother to the last, and grabbed his chest with her other hand. The necromancer screamed in hellish pain. And Julius would not have taught the young boy Dan three hundred years later if that night and at the very moment when the sister wanted to tear his heart out of his brother’s chest, a priest had not appeared at the cemetery. As soon as drops of holy water touched the girl’s body, she released the helpless magician and went back to the grave.
