Fascinating geography

Chapter 1. Everyday life of a young resurrector

The caravel of the Spanish discoverer Columbus floated along the river, President Reagan filmed him, John Ke

The young man looked at the resulting composition and smiled contentedly, rubbing his hands. At that moment he looked like Napoleon Bonaparte, who tells his entourage about the success in the Battle of Austerlitz, standing at the map.

The table top was huge, almost the size of a standard te

Here and there, mostly on the hills, there were small two-story houses. But… a miniature landscape is not at all surprising if no one lives in it. Any even more or less savvy architecture student can create the exact same terrain. But only those who are able to call upon the souls of once dead people are able to bring life into their micro-world.

The guy, the author of the miniature world, was in seventh heaven. And rightly so, he spent a whole six months creating his ingenious project: he skipped lectures at the school of necromancy, owed a lot of coursework and was simply overworked. Well, this man was not interested in summoning the souls of dead partridges: it’s all boring and hackneyed, but having your own little world, your own civilization on a separate table is a completely different matter! Orwell’s pig farm is resting! Why isn’t anyone doing similar experiments?

– Dan, I feel sorry for your parents! – an old master declared from the threshold and entered the guy’s room.

Like all teachers of the school of necromancy, he wore a long crimson robe trimmed with a white border. He looked like a wizard from pictures in children’s books: shoulder-length gray hair, an unkempt beard tucked into the belt of his robe, sad eyes, a wrinkled forehead, a potato nose. If he held a magic wand in his hands, it would be easy to confuse the necromancer with some ordinary sorcerer. But the master put on his head a hat that was completely uncharacteristic of wizards – a rag one, with two white fake horns and a golden school coat of arms on the front side. The exact same symbol with the image of a skull pierced by lightning, cast from pure gold, hung from the master’s neck on a long silver chain, very similar to those worn by new Russian businessmen in the mid-nineties of the last century.

The young necromancer smiled welcomingly and, squinting his left eye, scratched the back of his head, ruffling the silver hair on the crown of his head.

«I feel sorry for them too, Master Julius.» Because…

«They paid one hundred thousand crowns for you,» the master did not listen to Dan, «and you absolutely do not need training at our school!»

– Like this? – the guy was sincerely surprised, straightening his bangs that had fallen over his right eye. – I consider myself the best necromancer in the Czech Republic.

In response to the student’s impudent statement, the teacher only sighed heavily and began to look at everything that was on Dan’s table. It would be clear to any educated person that the young necromancer was wasting time and a lot of energy for the sake of his own entertainment and, quite possibly, to satisfy his curiosity. So many historical figures coexisted in the world he created that it was scary to imagine such an idea put into practice not on a separate te

But to be honest, the once great and powerful rulers of the past after death, it turns out, had to be content with the happy face of a young necromancer experimenter and trample a clearing of green velvet. It looked too cynical from the outside.

«Dan, for five years, not only have you been constantly skipping classes, disappearing into the library for masters, you have also managed, with all your desire for knowledge, not to master the main principle of necromancy!» «Julius hit the velvety grass with his fist in a rage, and Stalin and Grozny rolled head over heels from the earthquake and plopped into the river.

– Don’t call u

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 u

«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.