Back to the original racial integration. There were some sorcerers who couldn’t cut it. They didn’t have the supernatural juice to learn what the witches were teaching them. So, as any group with an ounce of ingenuity and pride does when it can’t fit into the larger society, these sorcerers reinvented themselves, breaking away from their brothers and declaring themselves a new race: magicians. Rather than fight a losing battle to learn higher magic, they would concentrate on the lesser skills of illusion and sleight of hand, and be happy with what they were.
A very noble plan of modern-day self-affirmation. Unfortunately, as they soon discovered, those lesser skills weren’t good for a whole helluva lot. Magicians ended up forming two factions: entertainers and con artists—and the lines between the two weren’t always that clear. Today, almost all the magicians who remain fall into the latter category. In a world accustomed to David Copperfield no one will pay to see a guy pull a quarter from behind your ear.
In Bulgaria, circa 1926, though, things were different and, as the Fates explained, that’s where Andrei Dachev had made a name for himself with his sideshow acts, traveling from town to town, bringing light entertainment to a country still reeling from the Balkan conflict and the First World War. Although Dachev was an accomplished magician, the real attraction at his circus was the freak show. And I don’t mean sword swallowers or fire-breathers. Dachev’s freaks were the type that children would dare one another to look at, then suffer weeks of nightmares if they did. His freaks were born severely deformed or had been mutilated in horrific accidents, and all were young women, adding to the titillation value.
For three years Dachev toured Bulgaria and surrounding countries, sticking to the rural areas, avoiding cities and larger urban areas where his freaks might be less welcome. And if, over those three years, the occasional girl disappeared from a town he passed through, well, Dachev was a handsome charmer, with an eye for the ladies, and these things happened.
Eventually, though, one of these missing girls had a beau who didn’t buy this “ran away with the circus” explanation. He followed Dachev. Soon, he discovered that the circus freaks hadn’t suffered a cruel twist of genetics or accidental fate. They were man-made. Though he managed to rescue his fiancée before Dachev started in on her, when it came to the other half-dozen victims, the authorities decided to quietly provide them with a fast-acting poison and allow them to make their own decision. All chose death, and Andrei Dachev was executed as a serial killer.
“And you unleashed this…this thing back into the world?” I said.
The eldest Fate appeared, mouth a thin, tight line. “We did not unleash—”
“Yeah, he was a ghost. Powerless. Found a way around that one, though, didn’t he? What the hell do you think he’s been doing down there all these years? Hail Marys? He’s been reliving his glory days, just itching for the chance to—”
“No, he has not.”
“Oh, and you know that because—”
“Because he cannot.” She paused, and her middle sister took over. “Andrei Dachev has no memories of the atrocities he committed, Eve. That is part of their punishment. We take away all memory of their lives before they died. They can’t relive their crimes, their fantasies, even their impulses. It’s all gone. Then they are cast into a plane where, when their urges and impulses resurface, they have no possible outlet.”
“Because they’re in a world of killers.”
She nodded. “A world without victims, without even those that they might see as a potential victim, no female killers, no weaker males—”
“All predators and no prey. Okay, so he can’t remember his crimes. But those impulses you mentioned? First time he sees a pretty girl, even if he can’t remember ever seeing one—”
“The memory loss sometimes has a second, reformatory effect. Erasing their memories may erase the source of some of their urges. If their lives were warped by extreme circumstances, such as early abuse, then—”
“When they can’t remember the abuse, they become a different person, someone who isn’t a killer?”
“Which, granted, happens very, very rarely,” the Fate said. “But it does happen. That’s what we believed had happened here. For ten years, Andrei Dachev gave no sign of having any of the urges that possessed him to commit these crimes.”
“He played model prisoner.”
“Played. Yes, most likely, though every test we gave him indicated that he had indeed reformed. Perhaps even he thought he