Night Watch

Prologue

The little man had swarthy skin and narrow eyes. He was the ideal prey for any militiaman in the capital city, with a confused, slightly guilty smile and a glance that was naive and shifty at the same time. Despite the killing heat, he was wearing a dark suit, old-fashioned but hardly even worn, and as a finishing touch, an ancient tie from the Soviet period. In one hand he was carrying a shabby, swollen briefcase, the kind agronomists and chairmen of progressive collective farms used to carry around in old Soviet movies, and in the other a string bag holding a long Central Asian melon.

The little man emerged from his second-class sleeper car with a smile, and he kept on smiling: at the female conductor, at his fellow travelers, at the porter who jostled him, at the young guy selling lemonade and cigarettes from a stall. He raised his eyes and gazed in delight at the roof covering Kazan Station. He wandered along the platform, occasionally stopping and adjusting his grip on the melon. He might have been thirty years old or he might have been fifty. It was hard for a European eye to tell.

A minute later a young man got out of a first-class sleeper car in the same Tashkent-Moscow train, probably one of the dirtiest and most run-down trains in the entire world. He looked like the little man's complete opposite. Another Central Asian type, maybe Uzbek, but his clothes were more in the modern Moscow style: shorts and a T-shirt, with a little leather bag and a cell phone hanging on his belt. No baggage and no provincial manners. He didn't gaze around at everything, trying to spot the sacred letter «M» for metro. After a quick nod to the conductor of his car and a gentle shake of his head in reply to the offers from taxi drivers, two more steps saw him slipping through the bustling crowd of new arrivals, with an expression of mild distaste and alienation on his face. But a moment later he was an integral part of the crowd, indistinguishable from any of the healthy cells in the organism, attracting no interest from the phagocyte militiamen or the other cells beside him.

Meanwhile, the little man with the melon and the briefcase was pushing his way through the crowd, muttering countless apologies in rather poor Russian, looking this way and that with his head drawn down. He walked past one underpass, shook his head, and set off toward a different one, then stopped in front of a billboard where the crush was less fierce. Clutching his things clumsily to his chest, he took out a crumpled piece of paper and studied it closely. From the look on his face he knew perfectly well he was being followed.

The three people standing over by the wall were quite happy with that: a strikingly beautiful redhead in a slinky, clinging silk dress, a young guy in punk-style clothes with a bored expression in eyes that looked surprisingly old, and a rather older, sleek-looking man with effete mannerisms.

«It doesn't look like him,» the young guy with the old man's eyes said doubtfully. «Not like him at all. I didn't see him for very long, and it was a long time ago, but…«

«Perhaps you'd like to ask Djoru, just to make sure?» the girl asked dismissively. «I can see it's him.»

«You accept responsibility?» There was no surprise or desire to argue in the young man's voice. He was just checking.

«Yes,» said the girl, keeping her eyes fixed on the little old man. «Let's go. We'll take him in the underpass.»

They set out unhurriedly, walking in step. Then they separated with the girl sauntering straight ahead, while the men went off to each side.

The little man folded up his piece of paper and set off uncertainly for the underpass.

The sudden absence of people would have amazed a Muscovite or a frequent visitor to the capital. After all, this was the shortest and easiest route from the metro to the platform of the mainline station. But the little man took no notice. He paid no attention to the people who were stopped behind his back as if they'd run into an invisible barrier and walked off to the other underpasses. And there was no way he could have seen that the same thing was happening at the other end of the underpass, inside the railroad station.

The sleek man came toward him, smiling. The attractive young woman and the casually dressed young guy with an earring in his ear and torn jeans closed in on him from behind.

The little man continued walking.

«Hang on, old timer,» the sleek man said in a friendly voice that matched his appearance—high-pitched, affected. «Don't be in such a hurry.»

The Central Asian smiled and nodded, but he didn't stop.

The sleek man made a pass with one hand, as if he were drawing a line between himself and the little man. The air shimmered and a cold breath of wind swept through the underpass. Up on the platform children started crying and dogs started howling.

The little man stopped, looking straight ahead with a thoughtful expression. He pursed his lips, blew, and smiled cunningly at the man standing in front of him. There was a high-pitched jangling sound, like invisible glass breaking. The sleek man's face contorted in pain and he took a step backward.

«Bravo, devona ,» said the young woman, halting behind the Central Asian. «But now you definitely shouldn't be in any rush.»

«Oh, I need to hurry, oh yes I do,» the little man jabbered rapidly. «Would you like some melon, beautiful lady?»

The young woman smiled as she studied the Central Asian. She made a suggestion:

«Why don't you come with us, respected guest? We'll sit and eat your melon, drink some tea. We've been waiting for you so long; it's not polite to go running off immediately.»

The little old man's face expressed intense thought. Then he nodded:

«Let's go, let's go.»

His first step knocked the man with affected manners off his feet. It was as if there were an invisible shield moving along in front of the little man, an immaterial wall of raging wind: The sleek man was swept along the ground with his long hair trailing behind him, his eyes screwed up in terror, a silent scream breaking from his throat.

The young guy who looked like a punk rocker waved his hand through the air, sending flashes of scarlet light flying at the little man. They were blindingly bright when they left his hand but started fading halfway to their target, and they reached the Asiatic's back as a barely visible glimmer.

«Ow, ow, ow,» the little old man said, but he didn't stop. He twitched his shoulder blades, as if some annoying fly had landed on his back.

«Alisa!» the young guy called, continuing his useless attack, working his fingers to compact the air, drawing the scarlet fire out of it and flinging it at the little old man. «Alisa!»

The girl leaned her head to one side as she watched the Central Asian walking away. She said something in a quiet whisper and ran her hand across her dress. Out of nowhere a slim, transparent prism appeared in her hand.

The little old man started walking faster, swerving left and right and holding his head down in a funny way. The sleek man went tumbling along in front of him, no longer even attempting to cry out. His face was ragged and bleeding; his arms and legs were shattered and useless, as if he hadn't simply slid three meters across a smooth floor but been dragged three kilometers across the rocky steppe by a wild hurricane or behind a galloping horse.

The girl looked at the little man through the prism.

First the Central Asian started walking more slowly. Then he groaned and unclasped his hands—the melon smashed open with a crunch against the marble floor, the briefcase fell with a soft, heavy thud.

«Oh,» gasped the man that the girl had called a devona . «Oh, oh!»

The little man slumped to the floor, shuddering as he fell. His cheeks collapsed inward, his cheekbones protruded sharply, his hands were suddenly bony, the skin covered with a network of veins. His black hair didn't turn gray, but it was suddenly thinner and dusted with gray. The air around him began to shimmer, and invisible currents of heat streamed toward Alisa.

«What I did not give shall henceforth be mine,» the girl hissed. «All that is yours is mine.»

Her face flushed with color as rapidly as the little man's body dried out. Her lips smacked together as she whispered strange, breathy words. The punk frowned and lowered his hand—the final scarlet ray slammed into the floor, turning the stone dark.

«Very easy,» he said, «very easy.»

«The boss was very displeased,» said the girl, hiding the prism away in the folds of her dress. She smiled. Her face radiated the same kind of energy women sometimes show after a vigorous sexual encounter.

«Easy, but our Kolya was unlucky.»

The punk nodded, glancing at the long-haired man's motionless body. There was no particular sympathy in his eyes, but no hostility either.

«That's for sure,» he said, walking over confidently to the desiccated corpse. He ran his hand through the air above it and the corpse crumbled into dust. With his next pass the young guy reduced the melon to a sticky mess.

«The briefcase,» said the girl. «Check the briefcase.»

A wave of his hand—and the worn imitation leather cracked apart and the briefcase fell open, like an oyster shell under the knife of an experienced pearl-diver. But to judge from the young guy's expression, the pearl he'd been expecting wasn't there. Two clean changes of underwear, a pair of cheap cotton tracksuit pants, a white shirt, rubber sandals in a plastic bag, a polystyrene cup with dried Korean noodles, a spectacle case.

The young guy made a few more passes and the polystyrene cup split open, the clothing came apart at the seams, and the case opened to reveal the spectacles. He swore.

«He hasn't got anything, Alisa! Nothing at all!»

An expression of surprise slowly spread across the witch's face.

«Stasik, this is the devona , the courier. He couldn't have trusted what he was carrying to anyone else!»

«He must have,» the young guy said, stirring the Central Asian's ashes with his foot. «I warned you, didn't I, Alisa? You can expect anything from the Light Ones. You took responsibility. I may be a weak magician, but I have more experience than you—fifty years more.»

Alisa nodded. There was no confusion in her eyes now. Her hand slid over her dress again, seeking for the prism.

«Yes,» she said softly. «You're right, Stasik. But in fifty years' time our experience will be equal.»

The punk laughed, then squatted down beside the long-haired man's body and started going through the pockets quickly.

«You think so?»

«I'm certain. You shouldn't have insisted on having your own way. I was the one who wanted to check the other passengers as well.»

The young guy swung around to protest, but it was too late—the hot currents of life energy were already streaming out of his body.

Chapter 1

The Oldsmobile was ancient, which I liked. But the open windows were no help against the insane heat rising from the road after the sun had been scorching it all day long. It needed an air-conditioner.

Ilya was probably thinking the same thing. He was driving with one hand on the steering wheel, glancing around all the time and chatting with everyone. I knew a magician of his level could spot probabilities ten minutes in advance and there wasn't going to be any crash, but I was still feeling a bit uneasy.

«I was thinking about putting in an air-conditioner,» he told Yulia in a guilty voice. The young girl was suffering worse than anyone else from the heat; she had a blotchy rash on her face and her eyes looked glazed. I was just hoping she wasn't going to be sick. «But it would have ruined the entire car; it wasn't meant to have one! No air-conditioner, no cell phones, no onboard computers.»

«Uh-huh,» said Yulia, with a feeble smile. We'd all been working late the day before. No one had gone to bed at all; we'd been stuck in the office until five in the morning and then stayed the rest of the night there. I suppose it's pretty mean to make a thirteen-year-old girl slave away with the grown-ups. But it was what she'd wanted; no one had forced her.

From her seat in the front, Svetlana shot Yulia an anxious look.

Then she shot Semyon a look of extreme disapproval. The imperturbable magician almost choked on his Yava cigarette. He breathed in and all the cigarette smoke drifting around inside the car was drawn into his lungs. He flicked the butt out the window. The Yava was already a concession to popular opinion—until just recently Semyon had preferred to smoke Flight and other repulsive tobacco products.

«Close the windows,» said Semyon.

A moment later it suddenly started getting cold. A subtle, salty smell of the sea filled the air. I could even tell that it was the sea at night, and quite close—the typical smell of the Crimean shoreline. Iodine, seaweed, a subtle hint of wormwood. The Black Sea. Koktebel.

«Koktebel?» I asked.

«Yalta,» Semyon replied. «September tenth, nineteen seventy-two, about three a.m. After a small storm.»

Ilya clicked his tongue enviously.

«Pretty good! How come you haven't used up a set of sensations like that in all this time?»

Yulia gave Semyon a guilty look. Climate conservation wasn't something every magician found easy, and the sensations Semyon had just used would have been a hit at any party.

«Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich,» she said. For some reason Yulia was as shy of Semyon as she was of the boss, and she always called him by his first name and patronymic.

«Oh, that's nothing,» Semyon replied calmly. «My collection includes rain in the taiga in nineteen thirteen, and I've got the nineteen forty typhoon, a spring morning in Jurmaala in fifty-six, and I think I've got a winter evening in Gagry.»

Ilya laughed:

«Forget the winter evening in Gagry. But rain in the taiga…«

«I won't swap,» Semyon warned him. «I know your collection; you haven't got anything nearly that good.»

«What about two, no, three for one…«

«I could give you it as a present,» Semyon suggested.

«Go take a hike,» said Ilya, jerking on the steering wheel. «What could I give you that would match that?»

«Then I'll invite you when I unseal it.»

«I suppose I should be grateful for that.»

He started sulking, naturally. I always thought of them as more or less equal in their powers, maybe Ilya was even a bit stronger. But Semyon had a flair for spotting the moment that was worth recording with magic. And he didn't waste his collection without good reason.

Of course, some people might have thought what he'd just done was a waste: brightening up the last half hour of our journey with such a precious set of sensations.

«Nectar like that should be breathed in the evening, with kebabs on the barbecue,» said Ilya. He could be incredibly thick-skinned sometimes. Yulia went tense.

«I remember one time in Yemen,» Semyon said unexpectedly. «Our helicopter… anyway, never mind that… we set out on foot. Our communications equipment had been destroyed, and using magic would have been calling way too much attention to ourselves. We set out on foot, across the Hadramawt desert. We had hardly any distance left to go to get to our regional agent, maybe a hundred kilometers. But we were all exhausted. And we had no water. And then Alyoshka—he's a nice young guy who works in the Maritime Region now—said: 'I can't take any more, Semyon Pavlovich; I've got a wife and two children at home, I want to get back alive.' He lay down on the sand and unsealed his special stash. He had rain in it. A cloudburst, twenty minutes of it. We drank all we needed, and filled our canteens, and recovered our strength. I felt like punching him in the face for not telling us sooner, but I took pity on him.»

After a long speech like that, nobody in the car said anything for a minute, Semyon had presented the facts of his stormy biography so eloquently.

Ilya was the first to gather his wits.

«Why didn't you use your rain in the taiga?»

«What a comparison,» Semyon snorted. «A collector's item from nineteen-thirteen and a standard spring cloudburst collected in Moscow. It smelled of gasoline, would you believe!»

«I believe it.»

«Well, there you are. There's a time and place for everything. The evening I just recalled was pleasant enough, but not really outstanding. Just about right for your old jalopy.»

Svetlana laughed quietly. The faint air of tension in the car was dispelled.

The Night Watch had been working feverishly all week long. Not that there'd been anything unusual happening in Moscow; it was just routine. The city was in the grip of a heat wave unprecedented for June, and reports of incidents had dropped to an all-time low. Neither the Light Ones nor the Dark Ones were enjoying it too much.

Our analysts spent about twenty-four hours working on the theory that the unexpectedly hot weather had been caused by some move the Dark Ones were planning. No doubt at the same time the Day Watch was investigating whether the Light Magicians had interfered with the climate. When both sides became convinced the anomalous weather was due to natural causes, they were left with absolutely nothing to do.

The Dark Ones had turned as quiet as flies pinned down by rain. Despite all the doctors' forecasts, the number of accidents and natural deaths across the city fell. The Light Ones didn't feel much like working either; the magicians quarreled over unimportant trivia; it took half the day to get the simplest documents out of the archives; and when the analysts were asked to forecast the weather they replied spitefully with some eighteenth-century gibberish like: «The water is dark in the clouds.» Boris Ignatievich wandered around the office in a total stupor: Even with his oriental origins and rich experience of the East, he was floored by the heat, Moscow style. The previous morning, on Thursday, he'd called all the staff together, appointed two volunteers from the Watch to assist him and told everyone else to clear out of the city. To go anywhere, to the Maldives or Greece if they wanted, down to the devil's kitchen in hell if they liked—even that would be more comfortable. Or just to a summerhouse outside town. We were told not to show up in the office again until lunchtime on Monday.

The boss waited for exactly a minute, until the happy smiles had spread across all the faces there, then added that it would be only fair to earn this unexpected bounty with a burst of intensive work. That way we wouldn't end up feeling ashamed of wasting away the days. The title of the old literary classic was true, he said—«Monday starts on Saturday.» So having been granted three extra days of vacation, we had to get through all the routine work in the time we had left.

And that's what we'd been doing—getting through it, some of us almost until the morning. We'd checked on the Dark Ones who were still in town and under special observation: vampires, werewolves, incubuses and succubuses, active witches, all sorts of troublesome riffraff from the lower levels. Everything was in order. What the vampires wanted right now wasn't hot blood but cold beer. Instead of trying to cast bad spells on their neighbors, the witches were all trying to summon up a little rain over Moscow.

But now we were on our way to relax. Not as far as the Maldives, of course—the boss had been too optimistic about the finance office's generosity. But even two or three days out of town would be great. We felt sorry for the poor volunteers who'd stayed behind in the capital to keep watch with the boss.

«I've got to call home,» said Yulia. She'd really livened up after Semyon swapped the damp heat in the car for cool sea air. «Sveta, lend me your cell.»

I was enjoying the coolness too. I glanced into the cars we were overtaking: in most of them the windows were rolled down, and the people glared at us with envy, assuming, of course, our ancient automobile had a powerful air-conditioning system.

«The turn's coming up soon,» I said to Ilya.

«I remember. I drove here once before.»

«Quiet!» Yulia hissed fiercely and started jabbering into the cell phone. «Mom, it's me! Yes, I'm here already. Of course, it's great! There's a lake here. No, it's shallow. Mom, I can't talk for long, Sveta's dad lent me his cell. No, there's no one else. Sveta? Just a moment.»

Svetlana sighed and took the phone from the young girl. She gave me a dark look and I tried to put on a serious expression.

«Hello, aunty Natasha,» Svetlana said in a squeaky child's voice. «Yes, very pleased. Yes. No, with the grown-ups. Mom's a long way off, shall I call her? Okay, I'll tell her. Definitely. Goodbye.»

She switched off the phone and spoke into empty space:

«So tell me, my girl, what's going to happen when your mom asks the real Sveta how the vacation went?»

«Sveta will tell her we had a great time.»

Svetlana sighed and glanced at Semyon as if she were looking for support.

«Using magical powers for personal goals leads to unexpected consequences,» Semyon declared in a dry, official voice. «I remember one time…«

«What magical powers?» Yulia asked, genuinely surprised. «I told my friend Sveta I was going off for a party with some guys and asked her to cover for me. She was staggered, but of course she agreed.»

Ilya giggled in the driving seat.

«What would I want with a party like that?» Yulia asked indignantly, clearly not understanding what was so funny. «That's the way the human kids amuse themselves. So what are you laughing at?»

For every member of our Watch, work takes up the greater part of our lives. Not because we're wild workaholics—who in his right mind wouldn't rather relax than work? And not because the work is so very interesting—we spend most of our time on boring patrol duty or polishing the seats of our pants in our offices. It's simply that there aren't enough of us. It's much easier to keep the Day Watch up to strength; any Dark One is only too keen for a chance to wield power. But our situation's quite different.

Outside work, though, every one of us has his own little piece of life that we won't give up to anyone: not to the Light and not to the Darkness. It's all ours… A little piece of life that we don't hide, but we don't put it out on display either. What's left of our original, basic human nature.

Some travel every time they get a chance. Ilya, for instance, prefers standard tour packages, but Semyon likes basic hitchhiking. He once traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok without a single kopeck in record time, but he didn't register his achievement with the League of Free Travelers, because he used his magical powers twice on the way.

For Ignat—and he's not the only one—vacation always means sexual adventures. It's a stage almost everyone goes through, because life offers Others far more opportunities than it does to human beings. It's a well-known fact that people feel a powerful attraction to Others, even though they may not realize it.

There are plenty of collectors among us too. From modest collectors of penknives, key rings, stamps, and cigarette lighters to collectors of weather, smells, auras, and spells. I used to collect model automobiles, paying really big money on rare models that only had any value for a few thousand idiots. I dumped the entire collection into two cardboard boxes ages ago. I ought to take them out in the yard and tip them into the sandbox for the little kids to enjoy.

The number of hunters and fishermen is pretty high. Igor and Garik enjoy extreme parachute jumping. Our useless programmer Galya, a sweet girl, grows bonsai trees. I guess we cover pretty much the entire range of amusements that the human race has invented.

But what Tiger Cub did for amusement, I had no idea, although we were on our way to her place. I was almost as eager to find out as I had been to escape the scorching heat in town. When you spend a bit of time at someone's place, it doesn't take too long to find out what their special little quirk is.

«Are we almost there yet?» Yulia asked in a whining voice. We'd already turned off the main highway and traveled about five kilometers along a dirt road, past a little summerhouse settlement and over a little river.

«Yes, we're almost there,» I answered, checking the image of the route that Tiger Club had left us.

«In fact, we are there already,» said Ilya, swerving the car off the road, straight at the trees. Yulia gasped out loud and covered her face with her hands. Svetlana reacted more calmly, but even she put her hands out, expecting a crash.

The car hurtled through the thick bushes and over the fallen branches, and crashed into the solid wall of trees. But, of course, there was no impact. We leapt straight through the magical mirage and landed upon a well-surfaced road. Straight ahead there was a little lake glinting like a bright mirror in the sun, with a two-story brick house standing by the shore, surrounded by a tall fence.

«What always amazes me about shape-shifters,» said Svetlana, «is how devoted they are to secrecy. Not only does she hide behind a mirage, she has a fence too.»

«Tiger Cub's not a shape-shifter!» young Yulia objected. «She's a transformer magician.»

«That's the same thing,» Sveta said gently.

Yulia looked at Semyon, clearly expecting him to back her up.

«In essential terms, Sveta's right. Highly specialized combat magicians are like any other shape-shifters. But with a plus sign instead of a minus. If Tiger Cub had been in a slightly different mood when she first entered the Twilight, she'd have turned into a Dark shape-shifter. There are very few people whose path is completely determined in advance. There's usually a struggle during the preparation for initiation.»

«And how did it go with me?» asked Yulia.

«I've told you before,» Semyon growled. «It was pretty easy.»

«A mild remoralization of your teachers and parents,» Ilya said with a laugh as he stopped the car in front of the gates. «And the little girl was immediately filled with love and kindness for the whole world.»

«Ilya!» Semyon said sharply. He was Yulia's mentor, a rather lazy mentor who almost never got involved in the young sorceress's development, but he obviously didn't like Ilya's wisecracks.

Yulia was a talented young girl, and the Watch had high hopes for her. But not so high that she had to be driven through the tortuous labyrinth of moral logic at the same speed as Svetlana, a future Great Sorceress.

Sveta and I must have had the same thought at the same time—we looked at each other. And after we looked, we turned our eyes away.

We could feel an invisible pressure bearing down on us, forcing us apart. I'd be a grade-three magician forever. Any moment now Sveta would outgrow me, and in a short while—a very short while, because the Watch's management thought it necessary—she would become a sorceress beyond classification.

And then all we'd have left would be friendly handshakes when we met and an exchange of greeting cards for birthdays and Christmas.

«Are they asleep in there, or what?» Ilya asked indignantly. His mind wasn't distracted by the kind of problems we had. He stuck his head out the window, and the car immediately filled up with hot air, but at least it was clean. He waved his hand, staring into the TV camera attached to the gates. He sounded his horn.

The gates started opening slowly.

«That's a bit better,» the magician snorted as he drove the car into the yard.

It was a large plot of land, thickly planted with trees. The amazing thing was that they'd managed to build the house without damaging the giant pines and firs. Apart from a small flowerbed beside a little fountain that wasn't working, there were no other signs of cultivation. There were five cars already standing on the concrete apron in front of the house. I recognized the old Niva that Danila used out of a stubborn sense of patriotism, and Olga's sports model—how had she managed to drive over the dirt road in that? Standing between them was the battered station wagon that Tolik drove about in and two other cars I'd seen at the office, but I didn't know whose they were.

«They didn't bother to wait for us,» Ilya said indignantly. «They're already partying, getting it on while the best people in the Watch are still bouncing over the country roads.»

He switched off the motor and Yulia immediately screeched in delight:

«Tiger Cub!»

She scrambled straight over me, opened the door, and jumped out of the car.

Semyon swore and followed her out, moving incredibly fast. Just in time.

I don't know where those dogs had been hiding. In any case, they were still camouflaged until the moment Yulia got out of the car. But the moment her feet touched the ground, the light-brown shadows closed in on her from all sides.

The young girl shrieked. She was more than powerful enough to deal with a pack of wolves, never mind five or six dogs, but she'd never actually been in a genuine fight, and she lost her head. To be quite honest, even I hadn't been expecting an attack—not here. And especially not this kind. Dogs never attack Others. They're afraid of the Dark Ones. They like the Light Ones. You have to train an animal really long and hard in order to suppress its natural fear of a walking source of magic.

Svetlana, Ilya, and I scrambled out of the car. But Semyon beat us all to the punch. He grabbed hold of the girl with one hand and made a pass in the air with the other. I thought he would use fright magic, or withdraw into the twilight, or reduce the dogs to dust on the spot. A reflex response usually relies on the simplest spells.

But Semyon used the temporal freeze. He caught two of the dogs in the air: Their bodies were left hanging there, enveloped in a blue glow, with their narrow, snarling muzzles reaching forward, the drops of saliva falling from their fangs like gleaming blue hail.

The three dogs who'd been frozen on the ground weren't quite so impressive.

Tiger Cub came running over to us. Her face was white and her eyes were wide open. She looked at Yulia for a moment. The girl was still whining, but she was getting quieter, through sheer inertia.

«Everyone okay?» she asked eventually.

«Fortunately,» mumbled Ilya, lowering his wand. «What kind of animals are you keeping here?»

«They wouldn't have done anything,» Tiger Cub said guiltily.

«Oh yeah?» Semyon took Yulia out from under his arm and set her down on the ground. He ran one finger thoughtfully over the bared fang of a dog hanging in mid-air. The film of the time freeze was springy and elastic under his hand.

«I swear!» said Tiger Cub, pressing her hand to her heart. «Guys, Sveta, Yulia, I'm sorry. I didn't have a chance to stop them. The dogs are trained to knock strangers down and restrain them.»

«Even Others?»

«Yes.»

«Even Light Ones?» There was a note of dubious admiration in Semyon's voice.

Tiger Cub dropped her eyes and nodded.

Yulia went over, snuggled up to her, and said in a more or less calm voice:

«I wasn't frightened. Just taken by surprise, that's all.»

«It's a good thing I was slow to react too,» Ilya commented gloomily, putting his weapon away. «Roast dog's too exotic a dish for me. But your dogs know me, Tiger Cub!»

«They wouldn't have touched you.»

The tension slowly eased. Of course, nothing too serious would have happened; we know how to heal each other, but it would have put a damper on the picnic.

«I'm sorry,» Tiger Cub repeated. She looked at us all imploringly.

«But listen, why do you need all this?» asked Sveta, with a glance at the dogs. «Can you explain that to me? Your powers are strong enough to beat off a platoon of Green Berets. What do you need rotweilers for?»

«They're not rotweilers; they're Staffordshire bull terriers.»

«What difference does that make?»

«They caught a burglar once. I'm only here two days a week, I can't go back and forth to town all the time.»

The explanation wasn't all that convincing. A simple frightening spell would have kept any normal people from coming anywhere near the place. But no one got a chance to say it—Tiger Cub got in first:

«It's just the way I am, okay.»

«How long are the dogs going to stay hanging there like that?» asked Yulia, snuggling up against Tiger Cub again. «I want to make friends with them. Otherwise I'll be left with a latent psychological complex that's bound to have an effect on my personality and my sexual preferences.»

Semyon snorted. Yulia's crack had finally defused the conflict—but it was anybody's guess how spontaneous or how calculated it had been.

«They'll start moving again before the evening. Well, hostess, are you going to invite us in?»

We left the dogs hanging and standing around the car and walked toward the house.

«What a great place you have, Tiger Cub!» said Yulia. She was ignoring the rest of us completely now, clinging to the young woman. As if the sorceress were her idol and she could be forgiven for anything, even over-vigilant guard dogs.

Why is it that the powers we can't develop are always the ones that obsess us?

Yulia's a magnificent analytical sorceress. She can untangle the threads of reality and reveal the concealed magical causes of events that seem ordinary. She's really smart, and everyone in the department loves her, not just as a cute little girl, but as a comrade-in-arms, a valued and sometimes quite irreplaceable colleague. But her idol is Tiger Cub, a shape-shifting sorceress, a combat magician. Why couldn't she decide to imitate good-hearted old Polina Vasilievna, who worked in the analytical department half-time, or fall in love with the head of the department, the impressive, middle-aged lady-killer Edik.

But no, she'd chosen Tiger Cub as her idol.

I started whistling a tune, as I walked along at the back of the procession. I caught Svetlana's eye and gave her a quick nod. Everything was fine. We had whole days of doing nothing ahead of us. No Dark Ones or Light Ones, no intrigues and plots, no confrontations. Just swimming in the lake, sunbathing, eating kebabs from the barbecue, and washing them down with red wine. And in the evening—the bathhouse. A big house like this had to have a good bathhouse. And then Semyon and I could take a couple of bottles of vodka and a jar of pickled mushrooms, get as far away as possible from the rest of the crowd, and drink ourselves stupid, gazing up at the stars and making philosophical conversation.

Great.

I want to be a human being. For at least twenty-four hours.

Semyon stopped and nodded to me.

«Let's take two bottles. Three, even. Someone else might decide to join us.»

«It's a deal,» I said with a nod. He hadn't been reading my thoughts, it was just that he had so much more experience of life than I did.

«It's easier for you,» Semyon added. «I almost never get the chance to be a human being.»

«Do you need to?» Tiger Cub asked, halting by the door.

Semyon shrugged:

«Of course not. But I kind of like the idea.»

We went into the house.

Twenty guests were a bit too much even for this house. If we'd been ordinary people, it would have been different. But we made too much noise. Try bringing together twenty kids who've been studying hard for months, give them the free run of a well-stocked toy shop, let them do anything they like, and see what you end up with.

Sveta and I were just about the only ones not really caught up in the noisy fun and games. We grabbed a glass of wine each off the buffet table and settled down on a leather couch in the corner of the living room.

Semyon and Ilya locked horns in a duel of magic. Very cultured, peaceful, and amusing for the others who were watching—at first, that is. Semyon must have wounded his friend's vanity in the car: Now they were taking turns changing the climate in the living room. We'd already had winter in the forest outside Moscow, and autumn mist, and summer in Spain. Tiger Cub had categorically forbidden any kind of rain, but the magicians weren't trying to summon up a violent display of the elements. They'd obviously imposed some restrictions of their own on the extent of climatic change, and the competition was less about who could produce the most unusual moment of nature ever recorded than who could deliver something that suited the mood of the moment.

Garik, Farid, and Danila were playing cards. A perfectly ordinary game, with no frills, but the air above the table was sparkling with magic. They were using magical means for cheating and protecting themselves against it. It made no real difference what cards they were holding in their hands.

Ignat stood by the open doors, surrounded by all the women from the research department, with our useless programmers in tow. Our sexual giant must have suffered some kind of romantic reversal, and now he was seeking comfort from a close circle of friends.

«Anton,» Sveta asked in a low voice, «what do you think—is all this for real?»

«What exactly?»

«The happy mood. You remember what Semyon said, don't you?»

I shrugged:

«Can we come back to this when we get to be a hundred? I'm feeling good. It's that simple. I don't have to go running off anywhere; I don't have to do any calculations. The Watches are lying low in the shade with their tongues hanging out.»

«I feel good too,» Svetlana agreed. «But there are only four of us here who are young, or almost young. Yulia, Tiger Cub, you, and me. What are we going to be like after a hundred years? Or after three hundred?»

«We'll have to wait and see.»

«Anton, listen to me,» Sveta said, touching my cheek lightly with her hand. «I'm very proud that I joined the Watch. I'm happy that my mother's well again. My life's better now, no doubt about it. I can even understand why the boss put you through that ordeal…«

«Don't, Sveta.» I took hold of her hand. «Even I understood that, and I got the worst of it. Don't talk about it.»

«I wasn't going to.» Sveta drained her glass of wine and put it down. «Anton, what I'm trying to say is—I can't see any real joy.»

«Where?» Sometimes I must seem incredibly thick-headed.

«Here. In the . In our close, friendly team. After all, every day is just one more battle for us. A big one or a little one. With a crazed werewolf, with a Dark Magician, with all the powers of Darkness at once. Summon up those sinews, jut out those chins, prepare to block that gun port with your bare chest, or squat on a hedgehog with your bare ass.»

I snorted with laughter.

«Sveta, what's so bad about all that? Yes, we're soldiers. Every last one of us, from Yulia to Gesar. Sure, it's no great fun being at war. But if we pull back, then…«

«Then what?» Sveta asked. «Will the Apocalypse arrive? The forces of Good and Evil have been fighting each other for a thousand years. Tearing at each other's throats, setting armies of human beings against each other—and all for their loftiest goals. But tell me, Anton, have people really not become any better in all that time?»

«Yes, they have.»

«And what about since the Watches were set up? Anton, my darling, you've told me so many things, and not just you. That the most important battle is for people's souls, that we're preventing mass slaughter. But are we? People still kill people. Far more than they used to do two hundred years ago.»

«Are you trying to tell me that the work we do is actually harmful?»

«No,» said Sveta, with a weary shake of her head. «No, I'm not. I'm not that conceited. I was just trying to say that maybe we're simply the Light, and that's all there is to it… You know, they've started selling fake New Year Tree decorations in Moscow. They look just like the real thing, but they don't bring people any joy at all.»

She told the short joke with an absolutely straight face, without even changing her tone of voice. She looked in my eyes.

«Do you understand what I mean?»

«I understand.»

«Maybe you do. The Dark Ones have started doing less Evil,» said Svetlana. «These mutual concessions of ours, good deed for bad deed, licenses for murder and healing, that can all be justified, I'm sure. The Dark Ones do less Evil than they used to, and we don't do Evil by definition. But what about the people?»

«What have people got to do with it?»

«What do you mean? It's them we're defending. Tirelessly, self-sacrificingly. So why aren't their lives getting any better? They do the work of Darkness themselves. Why? Maybe it's because we've lost something, Anton? The faith the Light Magicians used to have when they sent entire armies to their death, and marched in the front ranks themselves? The ability not just to defend people, but to bring them joy? What good are secure walls if they're the walls of a prison? People have forgotten about genuine magic; people don't believe in the Darkness, but they don't believe in the Light either! Yes, Anton, we are soldiers! But people only love the army when there's a war going on!»

«There is a war going on.»

«Who knows about it?»

«We're not just plain soldiers, I suppose,» I said. It never feels good to retreat from old, familiar positions, but there was no other way out. «More like hussars. Taram, taram, taram…«

«The hussars knew how to smile. But we hardly ever do.»

«Then tell me what I ought to do,» I said, realizing that what had promised to be a beautiful day was rapidly running downhill into a dark, stinking ravine filled with old garbage. «Tell me! You're a Great Sorceress, or you soon will be. A general in our war. I'm just a simple lieutenant. Give me my orders, and make sure they're the right ones. Tell me what I should do!»

I noticed that the entire living room had fallen silent; nobody was listening to anything but us. But I didn't care.

«Tell me to go out in the street and kill Dark Ones, and I'll go. I'm not very good at it, but I'll give it my best shot! Tell me to smile and shower Good on the people, and I'll go and do it. Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, we use these words so often we lose sight of what they mean; we hang them out like flags and leave them to rot in the wind and the rain. Then give us a new word! Give us new flags! Tell me where to go and what to do!»

Her lips started trembling. I stopped short, but it was too late.

Svetlana sat there crying, with her hands over her face.

What on earth was I doing?

Had we really forgotten how to smile at each other?

Maybe I was absolutely right, a hundred times right, but…

What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?

I jumped up, put my arm around Svetlana's shoulders and led her out of the living room. The magicians all stood there, looking the other way. Maybe it wasn't the first time they'd seen scenes like this. Maybe they understood the whole thing.

«Anton.» Tiger Cub appeared beside me without making a single sound. She pushed me forward and opened the door, looking at me with a mixture of reproach and unexpected understanding. Then she left us alone.

We stood there for a moment without even moving. Svetlana cried quietly, sobbing into my shoulder, and I waited. It was too late for words now. I'd said far too much already.

«I'll try.»

I hadn't been expecting that. Anything at all: resentment, a counter-attack, complaints, anything but that.

Svetlana took one hand away from her wet face. She shook her head and smiled.

«You're right, Antoshka. Absolutely right. So far all I've done is complain and protest. I whine like a child and I don't understand anything. Everyone just sticks my nose into my porridge and let's me play with fire and waits for me to grow up a bit. So I'll just have to do it; I'll try, I'll give you new flags.»

«Sveta…«

«You're right,» she interrupted. «Only I'm a little bit right too. But I shouldn't have cut loose like that in front of the others, of course. They're only having fun the best way they know how. Today's a day off, and nothing should be allowed to spoil it. Deal?»

I felt that wall again. The invisible wall that would always stand between me and Gesar, between me and the top bosses.

The wall that time would build between us. That day I'd laid a few rows of cold crystal bricks in it with my own hands.

«Forgive me, Sveta,» I whispered. «Forgive me.»

«Let's forget it,» she said very firmly. «Let's forget it. While we still can forget.»

We finally looked around.

«The study?» Sveta guessed.

Stained oak bookshelves with the volumes protected by dark glass. A massive desk with a computer on it.

«Yes.»

«Does Tiger Cub live alone, then?»

«I don't know,» I said, shaking my head. «We don't usually ask about things like that.»

«It looks as if she does. Right now, at least.» Svetlana took out a tissue and began dabbing the tears off her face. «She has a nice house. Let's go, everyone must be feeling awkward.»

I shook my head:

«They must have sensed that we're not quarreling.»

«No, they couldn't have. There are barriers between all the rooms here; you can't sense anything through them.»

I looked through the Twilight and spotted the concealed glimmering in the walls.

«I see it now. You're getting more powerful every day.»

Svetlana smiled, a bit tensely, but with pride. She said:

«It's strange. Why put up barriers if you live alone?»

«And why build them if you don't?» I asked in a low voice that didn't require an answer. Svetlana didn't try to give me one.

We walked out of the study back into the lounge.

The atmosphere wasn't totally funereal, but it was close enough.

Either Semyon or Ilya had made a supreme effort and filled the room with a damp, marshy smell. Ignat was standing with his arms around Lena and gazing miserably at everyone else. He preferred fun, in absolutely any form; any quarreling or tension was like a knife in the heart to him. The card players were staring silently at a single card lying on the table, and as they looked, it twitched about, changing its suit and its value. Yulia looked sulky. She was asking Olga about something in a quiet voice.

«Will someone pour me a drink?» Sveta asked, holding me by the hand. «Didn't you known the best medicine for hysterical women is a shot of cognac?»

Tiger Cub, who had been standing by the window looking unhappy, walked quickly across to the bar. Did she really blame herself for our argument?

Sveta and I took a glass of cognac each, clinked glasses demonstratively and kissed each other. I caught Olga's glance: not delighted, not saddened, just interested. And just slightly jealous.

I suddenly had a bad feeling.

As if I'd emerged from a labyrinth I'd been wandering around in for days, for months. And when I came out I saw only the entrance to the next set of catacombs.

Chapter 2

It was another two hours before I got a chance to talk with Olga alone. The merrymaking that had seemed so forced to Svetlana had already moved outside. Semyon was in charge of the barbecue, handing out kebabs to everyone who wanted them—they seemed to me to cook with a speed that definitely hinted at the use of magic. There were two crates of dry wine standing in the shade nearby.

Olga was having a friendly chat with Ilya, both holding kebab skewers and a glass of wine. It was a shame to interrupt the idyll, but…

«Olya, I need to have a word with you,» I said, going across to them. Svetlana was completely engrossed in an argument with Tiger Cub—the girls were having a passionate discussion about the Watch's traditional New Year Carnival, which they'd moved on to from the subject of the hot weather. The moment was just right.

«Excuse me, Ilya,» said Olga with a shrug. «We'll come back to this, okay? I find your views on the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union very interesting. Even though you're not right.»

Ilya smiled exultantly and walked away.

«Ask away, Anton,» Olga said to me in exactly the same tone.

«Do you know what I'm going to ask?»

«I think I can guess.»

I glanced around. There was no one near us. It was still that brief moment at the beginning of a summerhouse picnic when people want to eat and drink, before their stomachs and their heads both start to feel heavy.

«What's in store for Svetlana?»

«It's not easy to read the future. Especially the future of Great Magicians and Sorceresses…«

«Don't avoid the issue, partner,» I said, looking into her eyes. «Stop it. We worked together, didn't we? We were partners? When your punishment was still in force and you didn't even have that body. And your punishment was just.»

The blood drained from Olga's face.

«What do you know about my offense?»

«Everything.»

«How?»

«I work with the data, after all.»

«You don't have high enough clearance. And what happened to me has never been entered into the electronic archive.»

«Circumstantial evidence, Olya. You've seen ripples running out across water, haven't you? The stone might be lying on the bottom already, deep in the silt, but the circles still keep on going. Eroding the banks, casting up garbage and foam, even overturning boats if the stone was really big. Let's just say I've spent a long time standing on the bank, Olya. Standing and watching the waves wearing it away.»

«You're bluffing.»

«No. Olga, what happens to Sveta next, after this? What stage of the training?»

The sorceress looked at me, completely forgetting her cold kebab and half-empty glass. I struck another blow.

«You've been through that stage, haven't you?»

«Yes.» It looked like she was going to open up. «I have. But I was prepared for it more slowly.»

«So what's the great hurry with Sveta?»

«Nobody was expecting another Great Sorceress to be born this century. Gesar had to improvise, make things up as he went along.»

«Is that why they let you have your old form back? Not just for doing a good job?»

«You say you understand everything!» said Olga, her eyes glinting angrily. «So what's the point of tormenting me?»

«Are you monitoring her training? On the basis of your own experience?»

«Yes. Satisfied?»

«Olga, we're on the same side of the barricades,» I whispered.

«Then don't stop your comrades from doing their jobs.»

«Olga, what's the ultimate goal? What was it you couldn't do? What is it Sveta has to do?»

«You…« she said, genuinely confused now. «Anton, you were bluffing!»

I didn't answer.

«You don't know anything! Ripples on the water! You don't even know which way to look to see them!»

«Maybe so. But I got the important thing right, didn't I?»

Olga looked at me and bit her lip. Then she nodded.

«You did. A straight answer to a straight question. But I'm not going to explain anything. You shouldn't even know about it. It doesn't concern you.»

«That's where you're wrong.»

«None of us wish Sveta any harm,» Olga said sharply. «Is that clear?»

«We don't know how to wish anyone harm. It's just that sometimes our Good is no different from Evil.»

«Anton, let's stop right there. I have no right to answer your questions. And we shouldn't spoil this surprise vacation for the others.»

«Just how much of a surprise is it?» I asked suggestively. «Well, Olya?»

But she'd already pulled herself together, and her expression remained impenetrable. Much too impenetrable for a question like that.

«You've found out too much already.» Her voice was louder; it had assumed its former tone of authority.

«Olya, we've never been sent off on vacation at the same time. Not even for one day. Why has Gesar sent all the Light Ones out of Moscow?»

«Not all.»

«Polina Vasilievna and Andrei don't count. You know perfectly well they're just office workers. Moscow's been left without a single Watch operative!»

«The Dark Ones have gone quiet too.»

«So what?»

«Anton, that's enough.»

I nodded, realizing I wouldn't be able to squeeze another word out of her.

«Okay, Olya. Six months ago we were on equal terms, even if it was only by accident. Now we're obviously not. I'm sorry. This is clearly a situation for someone with more experience.»

Olga nodded. It was so unexpected I could hardly believe my eyes.

«You've finally got the idea.»

Was she kidding me? Or did she really believe I'd decided not to interfere?

«I'm pretty quick on the uptake,» I said. I looked at Svetlana. She was chatting happily with Tolik about something or other.

«Are you angry with me?» Olga asked.

I touched her hand, smiled, and went into the house. I wanted to do something. I wanted to do something as badly as a genie who's been let out of his bottle for the first time in a thousand years. Anything at all: Raise up castles, lay waste cities, program in Basic, or embroider in cross-stitch.

I opened the door without touching it, by pushing it through the Twilight. I don't know why I did it. I don't often do things like that, just sometimes when I've drunk a lot, or when I get really angry. The first reason didn't fit here.

There was no one in the living room. Why would anyone want to sit inside, when outside there were hot kebabs, cold wine, and more than enough beach chairs positioned under the trees?

I flopped down into an armchair. Picked up my glass—or Sveta's—from the low table and filled it with cognac, then downed it in one, as if it were cheap vodka, not fifteen-year-old Prazdnichny. Poured myself another glass.

That was when Tiger Cub came in.

«Don't mind, do you?» I asked.

«Of course not.» The sorceress sat down beside me. «Anton, has something upset you?»

«Just ignore me.»

«Have you had a fight with Sveta?»

I shook my head.

«That's not the problem.»

«Anton, have I done something wrong? Aren't the guys having a good time?»

I stared at her in genuine amazement.

«Tiger Cub, don't be stupid! Everything's just great. Everyone's enjoying themselves.»

«And you?»

I'd never seen the shape-shifting sorceress look so uncertain of herself. Were they having a good time or weren't they—you can't please everyone.

«They're moving ahead with Svetlana's training,» I said.

«What for?» the young woman asked with a slight frown .

«I don't know. For something that Olga couldn't do. For something very dangerous and very important at the same time.»

«That's good.» She reached for a glass, poured herself some cognac, and took a sip.

«Good?»

«Sure. That they're training her, giving her direction.» Tiger Cub looked around, trying to find something, then frowned and looked at the music center by the wall. «That remote's always going missing,» she said.

The music center lit up and Queen started to play «It's a Kind of Magic.» I was impressed by how casually she did it. Controlling electronic circuits at a distance isn't a simple trick; it's not like drilling holes in a wall just by looking at it or keeping the mosquitoes away with fireballs.

«How long did you train to work in the Watch?» I asked.

«I started at around seven years old. At sixteen, I was already involved in field operations.»

«Nine years! And it's easier for you—your magic's natural. They're planning to turn Svetlana into a Great Sorceress in six months or a year!»

«That's tough going,» the young woman agreed. «Do you think the boss is wrong?»

I shrugged. To say the boss was wrong would have been about as stupid as denying that the sun rises in the east in the morning. He'd been learning how not to make mistakes for hundreds—even thousands—of years. Gesar might act harshly, even cruelly. He might provoke the Dark Ones and leave the Light Ones to carry on alone. He might do anything at all. Except make a mistake.

«I think he's overestimating Sveta's strength.»

«Come off it! The boss calculates everything.»

«I know he calculates everything. He plays the old game very well.»

«And he wishes Sveta well,» the sorceress added stubbornly. «Do you understand that? In his own way, maybe. You would have acted differently; so would I, or Semyon, or Olga. Any one of us would have done things differently. But he's in charge of the Watch. And he has every right to be.»

«So he knows best?» I asked.

«Yes.»

«And what about freedom?» I asked, pouring myself another glass. I didn't really need it; my head was already starting to hum. «Freedom?»

«You talk like the Dark Ones do,» the young woman snorted.

«I prefer to think they talk like I do.»

«It's all very simple, Anton.» Tiger Cub leaned down over me and looked in my eyes. She smelled of cognac and something else, a light floral smell. It wasn't likely to be perfume: shape-shifters don't like anything that is scented. «You love her.»

«Sure, I love her. That's no news to anyone.»

«You know she'll soon be on a higher level of power than you?»

«If she isn't already.» I didn't mention it, but I remembered how easily Sveta had sensed the magical screens in the walls.

«She'll go way beyond you. Her powers will totally dwarf yours. Her problems will seem incomprehensible to you; they'll seem weird. Stay with her and you'll start feeling like a useful parasite, a gigolo; you'll start clutching at the past.»

«Yes.» I nodded and was surprised to notice my glass was already empty. My hostess watched me closely as I filled it again. «So I won't stay. I don't need that.»

«But there isn't anything else on offer.»

I'd never suspected that she could be so hard. I'd hadn't expected her to be so worried about whether everyone liked her hospitality and her home, and I hadn't expected to hear this bitter truth from her either.

«I know.»

«If you know that, Anton , there's only one reason you're feeling so outraged about the boss dragging Sveta upward so fast.»

«My time will soon be gone,» I said. «It's sand running through my fingers, rain falling from the sky.»

«Your time? Yours and hers, Anton.»

«It was never ours, never.»

«Why?»

It was a good question. Why? I shrugged.

«You know, there are some animals that don't reproduce in captivity.»

«There you go again!» the young woman exclaimed indignantly. «What captivity? You should be glad for her. Svetlana will be the pride of the Light Ones. You were the first one to discover her; you were the one who saved her.»

«For what? One more battle with Darkness? An unnecessary battle?»

«Anton, now you're talking just like a Dark One yourself. You love her! So don't demand or expect anything in return. That's the way of the Light!»

«Love begins where Darkness and Light end.»

Tiger Cub was so indignant she couldn't even answer that. She shook her head sadly and said reluctantly:

«You can at least promise…«

«That depends on what.»

«To be sensible. To trust your senior colleagues.»

«I promise halfway.»

Tiger Cub sighed and then said reluctantly:

«Listen, Anton, you probably think I don't understand you at all. But it's not true. I didn't want to be a shape-shifting magician. I had healing powers, and pretty serious ones.»

«Really?» I looked at her in amazement. I'd never have thought it.

«Yes, I did,» the young woman confirmed casually. «But when I had to choose which side of my powers to develop, the boss called me in. We sat and talked over tea and cakes. We talked very seriously, like grown people, although I was only a little girl, younger than Yulia is now. About what the Light needed and who the Watch needed, what I could achieve. And we decided that I should develop my combat powers, even at the expense of everything else. I didn't much like the idea at first. Do you know how painful it is when you change?»

«Into a tiger?»

«No, changing into a tiger's okay; the hard part's changing back. But I stuck with it. Because I believed the boss, because I realized it was the right thing to do.»

«And now?»

«Now I'm happy,» the young woman declared passionately. «When I see what I would have lost, what I would have been doing with my time. Herbs and spells, fiddling with distorted psychic fields, neutralizing black vortices, mixing up charms…«

«Blood, pain, fear, death,» I said in the same tone. «Doing battle on two or three levels of reality simultaneously. Dodging the fire, tasting the blood, going through hell and high water.»

«That's war.»

«Yes, probably. But why do you have to be the one in the front line?»

«Someone has to be, don't they? And then, after all, I wouldn't have had a house like this.» Tiger Cub waved her hand around the living room. «You know yourself you can't earn much from healing. If you heal with all your power, it just means someone else keeps killing people.»

«This is a nice place,» I agreed. «But how often are you here?»

«Whenever I can be.»

«I guess that's not very often. You take shift after shift; you're always where the action's hottest.»

«That's my path.»

I nodded. What business was it of mine? I said:

«You're right. I suppose I must be tired. That's why I'm talking such nonsense.»

Tiger Cub looked at me suspiciously, surprised I'd given in so quickly.

«I need to sit here with my glass for a while,» I added. «Get totally drunk all on my own, fall asleep under the table, and wake up with a splitting headache. Then I'll feel better.»

«Go on, then,» the sorceress said, with a slightly nervous note in her voice. «What did we come here for? The bar's open; you can choose whatever you like. We can go and join the others. Or I could stay and keep you company.»

«No, I'd be better off on my own,» I said, slapping my hand against the pot-bellied bottle. «In absolute misery with no food to go with the drink and no company. Look in before you go for a swim. Just in case I'm still capable of moving.»

«Okay.»

She smiled and went out. I was left all alone—unless the bottle of Armenian cognac counted as company. Sometimes it helps to believe it does.

She was a fine girl. They were all fine and wonderful, my friends and colleagues at the Watch. I could hear their voices through the music of Queen, and I liked that. I got along really well with some of them and not so well with others. But I had no enemies here and I never would have. We were a close team, we always would be, and there was only one way we could ever lose each other.

So why was I so unhappy about what was going on? I was the only one—Olga and Tiger Cub approved of the boss's plan, and if I asked the others, they'd all feel the same way.

Maybe I really wasn't being objective?

Probably.

I took a sip of cognac and then peeped through the Twilight, trying to locate the pale lights of alien, unintelligent life in the living room.

I discovered three mosquitoes, two flies, and one spider, right up in a corner under the ceiling.

I shuffled my fingers and made a tiny fireball, two millimeters across. I took aim at the spider—a fixed target is best for practicing on—and sent the fireball on its way.

There was nothing immoral about my behavior. We're not Buddhists, at least most of the Others in Russia aren't. We eat meat, we kill flies and mosquitoes, we poison cockroaches: If you're too lazy to learn new frightening spells every month, the insects quickly develop immunity to your magic.

Nothing immoral. It was just funny; it was the proverbial «using a fireball to kill a mosquito.» A favorite game with children of all ages when they're studying in the Watch's courses. I think the Dark Ones probably do the same, except that they don't distinguish between a fly and a sparrow, a mosquito and a dog.

I fried the spider with my first shot. And the drowsy mosquitoes weren't any problem, either.

I celebrated each victory with a glass of cognac, clinking my glass against the obliging bottle. Then I started trying to kill the flies, but either I already had too much alcohol in my blood or the flies were much better at sensing the little ball of fire approaching. I wasted four shots on the first one, but even though I missed, at least I managed to disperse the first three in time. I got the second fly with my sixth shot, and in the process I managed to zap two balls of lightning into the glass of the cabinet standing against the wall.

«Sorry about that,» I said repentantly, downing my cognac. I got up and the room suddenly swayed. I went over to the cabinet, which contained swords hanging on a background of black velvet. At first glance I thought they looked German, fifteenth or sixteenth century. The lighting was switched off, and I didn't try to determine their age more precisely. There were little craters in the glass, but at least I hadn't hit the swords.

I thought for a while about how to put things right and couldn't come up with anything better than putting the glass that had been scattered around the living room back where it had come from. It cost me more effort than if I'd dematerialized all the glass and then recreated it.

After that I went into the bar. I didn't feel like any more cognac, but a bottle of Mexican coffee liqueur looked like a good compromise between the desire to get drunk and the desire to perk myself up. Coffee and alcohol, all in the same bottle.

When I turned back around I saw Semyon sitting in my chair.

«They've all gone to the lake,» the magician told me.

«I'll be right there,» I promised, walking toward him. «Right there.»

«Put the bottle down,» Semyon advised me.

«What for?» I asked. But I put it down.

Semyon looked hard into my eyes. My barriers didn't go up, and when I realized it was a trick it was too late. I tried to look away, but I couldn't.

«You bastard,» I gasped, doubling over.

«Down the corridor on the right!» Semyon shouted after me. His eyes were still boring into my back; the invisible connecting thread was still trailing after me.

I reached the toilet. Five minutes later my tormentor caught up with me.

«Feeling better?»

«Yes,» I said, breathing heavily. I got up off my knees and stuck my head into the sink. Semyon opened the faucet without saying anything and slapped me on the back.

«Relax. We started with basic folk remedies, but now…«

A wave of heat ran through my body. I groaned, but I didn't complain anymore. The dull stupefaction was long gone already, and now the final toxins came flying out of me.

«What are you doing?» I asked.

«Helping your liver out. Have some water and you'll feel better.»

It helped all right.

Five minutes later I walked out of the toilet, sweaty and wet, but absolutely sober. I even tried to protest at the violation of my rights.

«What did you interfere for? I wanted to get drunk and I did.»

«You young people,» said Semyon, shaking his head reproachfully. «He wanted to get drunk? Who gets drunk on cognac? Especially after wine? And especially that quick, half a liter in half an hour. There was this time Sasha Kuprin and I decided to get drunk…«

«Which Sasha's that?»

«You know the one, the writer. Only he wasn't a writer then. We got loaded the right way, the civilized way, totally smashed, complete with dancing on the tables, shooting into the ceiling, and wild debauchery.»

«Was he an Other then?»

«Sasha? No, but he was a good man. We drank a quarter of a bucket, and we got the grammar school girls tipsy on champagne.»

I slumped down onto the couch. I looked at the empty bottle and gulped, starting to feel sick again.

«A quarter of a bucket; you must have got really drunk?»

«Of course we got drunk!» Semyon said. «It's okay to get drunk, Anton. If you need to real bad. Only you have to get drunk on vodka. Cognac and wine—that's all for the heart.»

«So what's vodka for?»

«For the soul. If it's hurting real bad.»

He looked at me in gentle reproach, a funny little magician with a cunning face, with his own funny little memories about great people and great battles.

«I was wrong,» I admitted. «Thanks for your help.»

«No problem, my man. I once sobered up another Anton three times in the same evening, when he needed to drink without getting drunk; it was work.»

«Another Anton? Chekhov?» I asked in astonishment.

«No, don't be stupid. It was another Anton, one of us. He was killed in the Far East, when the samurai…« Semyon flipped his hand through the air and stopped. Then he said almost affectionately. «Don't you be in such a hurry. We'll do things the civilized way this evening. Right now we've got to catch up with the others. Let's go, Anton.»

I followed Semyon meekly out of the house. And I saw Sveta. She was sitting on a lounger, already wearing her bathing suit and bright-colored skirt, or rather a strip of cloth around her hips.

«Are you okay?» she asked, looking at me in surprise.

«Absolutely. The kebabs just didn't agree with me.»

Svetlana stared hard at me. But apparently the dark flush on my face and my wet hair were the only signs I'd gotten drunk so quickly.

«You should have your pancreas checked out.»

«Everything's okay,» Semyon put in rapidly. «Believe me, I studied healing too. It was the heat, the sour wine, the fatty kebabs—nothing more to it. What he needs now is a swim, and in the cool of the evening we'll polish off a bottle together. That's all the treatment he needs.»

Sveta got up, walked up to me, and looked into my eyes sympathetically.

«Maybe we should just sit here for a while? I'll make some strong tea.»

Yes, probably. It would be good. Just to sit here. The two of us. And drink tea. Talk or not say a word. That didn't matter. Look at her sometimes or not even look. Just hear her breathing—or stop up my ears. Simply know that we're together. Just the two of us, and not the entire Night Watch team. Together because we want to be, not because of some plan hatched up by Gesar.

Had I really forgotten how to smile?

I shook my head, twisting my stubborn face into a cowardly smile.

«Let's go. I'm not a doddery old veteran of the magic wars yet. Let's go, Sveta.»

Semyon had already gone on ahead, but somehow I could tell that he winked. In approval.

The night didn't bring any real coolness, but at least it took the edge off the heat. From about six or seven the company split up into little groups. The indefatigable Ignat stayed down by the lake with Lena and, strangely enough, Olga. Tiger Cub and Yulia went off to wander through the forest. The others were scattered around the house and the surrounding yard.

Semyon and I occupied the large balcony on the second floor. It was cozy in there; with its comfortable wicker furniture, the breeze blows through—the perfect place for hot weather.

«Number one,» said Semyon, taking a bottle of Smirnovskaya vodka out of a plastic bag with an advertisement for «Dannon kids'» yogurt.

«Do you recommend that?» I asked doubtfully. I didn't regard myself as a great specialist on vodka.

«I've been drinking it for more than a hundred years. And it used to be far worse than it is now, believe me.»

He took two plain glasses out of the bag, a two-liter jar with little pickles floating in brine under its flat tin lid, and a large container of sauerkraut.

«What about something to drink with it?» I asked.

«You don't drink anything else with vodka, my boy,» said Semyon, shaking his head. «Only with the fake stuff.»

«There's always something new to learn.»

«You'll learn this lesson soon enough. And there's no need to worry about the vodka, Chernogolovka village is in the territory I patrol. I know this wizard who works in the distillery there, small-fry, not particularly nasty. He gets me the right stuff.»

«An exchange of petty favors,» I commented.

«No exchange. I pay him money, all honest and above board. It's our private business, nothing to do with the Watches.»

Semyon deftly twisted the cap off the bottle and poured us half a glass each. His bag had been standing on the veranda all day, but the vodka was still cold.

«To good health?» I suggested.

«Too soon for that. To us.»

When he'd sobered me up, he must have done a thorough job and not just removed the alcohol from my bloodstream, but all the metabolic by-products as well. I drank the half-glass without even shuddering and was amazed to discover that vodka could taste good after the heat of a summer day, not only after a winter frost.

«Well, now,» said Semyon with a grunt of satisfaction, settling down more comfortably. «We should drop a hint to Tiger Cub that a pair of rocking chairs would be good up here.»

He took out his appalling Yavas and lit up. When he spotted the expression of annoyance on my face he said:

«I'm going to continue smoking them anyway. I'm a patriot, I love my country.»

«I'm a patriot too, I love my health,» I retorted.

Semyon chuckled.

«There was one time this foreigner I knew invited me to go around to his place,» he began.

«A long time ago?» I asked, playing along.

«Not really, last year. He invited me around so I could teach him how to drink Russian-style. He was staying in the Penta hotel. So I picked up a casual girlfriend of mine and her brother—he was just back from prison camp, with nowhere to go—and off we went.»

I imagined what the group must have looked like and shook my head.

«And they let you in?»

«Yes.»

«You used magic?»

«No, my foreign friend used money. He'd laid in plenty of vodka and snacks; we started drinking on April thirtieth and finished on May second. We didn't let the maids in and we never turned the television off.»

Looking at Semyon in his crumpled, Russian-made check shirt, scruffy Turkish jeans, and battered Czech sandals, I could easily imagine him drinking beer poured out of a three-liter metal keg. But it was hard to imagine him in the Penta.

«You monsters,» I said in horror.

«Why? My friend was very pleased. He said now he understood what real Russian drunkenness was all about.»

«What is it about?»

«It's about waking up in the morning with everything around you looking gray. Gray sky, gray sun, gray city, gray people, gray thoughts. And the only way out is to have another drink. Then you feel better. Then the colors come back.»

«That was an interesting foreigner you found yourself.»

«Sure was!»

Semyon poured the vodka again—this time filling the glasses a bit less full. Then he thought about it and filled them right up to the top.

«Let's drink, my man. Here's to not having to drink in order to see the blue sky, the yellow sun, and all the colors of the city. Let's drink to that. We go in and out of the Twilight, and we see that the other side of the world isn't what everyone else thinks it is. But then, there's probably more than one other side. Here's to bright colors!»

I downed half my glass, totally dumbfounded.

«Don't blow it, kid,» Semyon said without changing his tone of voice.

I drained my glass and followed the vodka with a handful of sweet-and-sour cabbage.

I asked him:

«Semyon, why do you act like this? Why do you need to shock people with this image of yours?»

«Those are very clever words; I don't understand them.»

«But really?»

«It's easier this way, Antoshka. Everyone looks after himself the best way he can. This is my way.»

«What should I do, Semyon?» I asked, without explaining what I meant.

«Do what you ought to do.»

«And what if I don't want to do what I ought to do? If our bright, radiant truth and our watchman's oath and our wonderful good intentions stick in my throat?»

«There's one thing you've got to understand, Anton,» said the magician, crunching on a pickle. «You should have realized it ages ago, but you've been tucked away with those machines of yours. Our Light truth may be big and bright, but it's made up of lots and lots of little truths. And Gesar may have a forehead a meter wide and the kind of experience you could never even dream of. But he also has hemorrhoids that were healed by magic, an Oedipus complex, and a habit of reconfiguring old schemes that worked in the past to make them look new. Those are just some examples; I don't really know what his oddities are; he's the boss, after all.»

He took out another cigarette, and this time I didn't object.

«Anton, I'll tell you what the problem is. You're a young guy, you join the Watch, and you're delighted with yourself. At last the whole world is divided up into black and white! Your dream for humanity has come true; now you can tell who's good and who's bad. So get this. That's not the way it is. Not at all. Once we all used to be together. The Dark Ones and the Light Ones. We used to sit around our campfire in the cave and look through the Twilight to see where the nearest pasture was with a woolly mammoth grazing on it, sing and dance, shoot sparks out of our fingers, zap the other tribes with fireballs. And let's say there were two brothers, both Others. Maybe when the first one went into the Twilight he was feeling well-fed; maybe he'd just made love for the first time. But for the other one it was different. Some green bamboo had given him a bellyache; his woman had turned him down because she claimed she had a headache and was tired from scraping animal skins. And that's how it started. One leads everyone to the mammoth and he's satisfied. The other demands a piece of the trunk and the chief's daughter into the bargain. That's how we got divided up into Dark Ones and Light Ones, into good and evil. Pretty basic stuff, isn't it? It's what we teach all the little Other children. But who ever told you it had all stopped?»

Semyon leaned toward me so abruptly that his chair cracked.

«That's the way it was, it still is, and it always will be. Forever, Antoshka. There isn't any end to it. Today if anyone runs riots and sets off through a crowd, doing good without permission, we dematerialize him. Into the Twilight with him; he's a hysterical psychopath; he's disturbing the balance—into the Twilight. But what's going to happen tomorrow? In a hundred years? In a thousand? Who can see that far? You, me, Gesar?»

«So what do I do?»

«Do you have a truth of your own, Anton? Tell me, do you? Are you certain of it? Then believe in it, not in my truth, not in Gesar's. Believe in it and fight for it. If you have enough courage. If the idea doesn't make you shudder. What's bad about Dark freedom is not just that it's freedom from others. That's another explanation for little children. Dark freedom is first and foremost freedom from yourself, from your own conscience and your own soul. The moment you can't feel any pain in your chest—call for help. Only by then it'll be too late.»

He paused to reach into the plastic bag and took out another bottle of vodka. He sighed:

«Number two. I have a feeling we're not going to get drunk after all. We won't make it. And as for Olga and what she said…«

How did he always manage to hear everything?

«She's not envious because Svetlana might be able to do something she didn't do. And not because Svetka still has everything ahead of her while Olga, frankly speaking, has it all behind her at this stage. She envies Sveta because you love her and you're there for her and you'd like to stop her. Even though you can't do a thing about it. Gesar could have, but he didn't want to. You can't, but you want to. Maybe in the end there's no difference, but it still gets to her. It tears at her soul, no matter how old she might be.»

«Do you know what they're preparing Svetlana for?»

«Yes,» said Semyon, splashing more vodka into the glasses.

«What is it?»

«I can't answer that. I gave a written pledge. Do you want me to take my shirt off, so you can see the sign of chastising fire on my back? If I say a word I'll go up in flames with this chair, and the ashes will fit in a cigarette pack. So I'm sorry, Anton. Don't try to squeeze it out of me.»

«Thanks,» I said. «Let's drink. Maybe we will get smashed after all? I certainly need it.»

«I can see that,» Semyon agreed. «Let's get to it.»

Chapter 3

I woke up very early. It was quiet all around, that living silence you get in the country, with the rustling of the morning wind after it's finally turned cool. Only that didn't make me feel any better. The bed was soaking wet with sweat and my head was splitting. Semyon was snoring monotonously on the bed beside me—three of us had been put in the same room. Tolik was sleeping on the floor, wrapped up in a blanket. He'd turned down the hammock he'd been offered, saying his back was hurting—he'd injured it in some ruckus in 1976—and he'd be better off sleeping on a hard surface.

I held the back of my head in my hands to stop the sudden movement shaking it to pieces and sat up on the bed. I looked at the bedside locker and saw two aspirins and a bottle of Borzhomi mineral water. Who could this kind soul be?

The evening before, we'd drunk two bottles between us. Then Tolik had turned up. Then someone else, and they'd brought some wine. But I hadn't drunk any wine; I still had enough sense left for that.

I washed the aspirins down with half a bottle of mineral water and sat there stupidly for a while, waiting for the medicine to take effect. The pain didn't go away. I didn't think I'd be able to stand it for long.

«Semyon,» I called in a hoarse voice. «Semyon!»

The magician opened one eye. He looked perfectly okay. As if he hadn't drunk far more than me the day before. So that was what an extra hundred years of experience could do for you.

«Fix my head, will you…«

«I don't have an axe handy,» the magician muttered.

«Ah, you…« I groaned. «Will you fix the pain?»

«Anton, we drank of our free will, didn't we? Nobody forced us, did they? And you enjoyed it!»

He turned over onto his other side.

I realized I couldn't expect any help from Semyon. And anyway he was right; it was just that I couldn't take it anymore. I slipped my feet into my sneakers, stepped over Tolik's sleeping body, and went out of the room.

There were two rooms just for guests, but the door of the other one was locked. On the other hand, the door at the end of the corridor, leading into our hostess's bedroom, was open. Remembering what Tiger Cub had said about her healing powers, I walked straight in without any hesitation.

It looked like everything was ganging up on me today. She wasn't there. And despite my suspicions, neither were Ignat and Lena. Tiger Cub had spent the night with Yulia, and the young girl was sleeping like a child, with one arm and one leg dangling over the side of the bed.

I didn't care anymore who I asked for help. I tiptoed up, sat down beside the massive bed, and whispered her name:

«Yulia, Yulienka…«

The girl opened her eyes, blinked, and asked sympathetically:

«Hangover?»

«Yes.» I didn't risk a nod, someone had just set a small grenade off inside my head.

«Uh-huh?»

She closed her eyes, I even thought she'd dozed off again, but she kept her arm around my neck. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the pain started receding rapidly. As if someone had opened a secret faucet in the back of my head and started draining out the seething, poisonous swill.

«Thanks,» I whispered. «Thanks, Yulienka.»

«Don't drink so much; you can't take it,» the young girl mumbled and immediately started snoring softly and evenly, as if she'd simply flipped a switch from work to sleep. Only kids and computers can do that.

I stood up, delighted to see the world in color again. Semyon had been right, of course. You have to take responsibility for your actions. But sometimes you simply don't have enough strength for that. I looked around. The entire bedroom was decorated in beige tones; even the inclined window was slightly tinted. The music center had a golden finish; the thick, fluffy carpet on the floor was light-brown.

I really shouldn't be doing this. No one had invited me.

I walked quietly toward the door, and when I was already halfway out, I heard Yulia's voice:

«You owe me a Snickers bar, right?»

«Two,» I agreed.

I could have gone back to finish my night's sleep, but my memories of the bed weren't very pleasant ones. It felt like all I had to do was lie down and the pain lurking in the pillow would pounce again. I just dropped back into my room to grab my jeans and shirt and put them on, standing in the doorway.

Was everybody really asleep? Tiger Cub was wandering about outside somewhere, but surely someone must have sat up until morning, talking over a bottle.

There was a little hall on the second floor. I spotted Danila and Nastya in there, sleeping peacefully on the couch, and beat a hasty retreat. I shook my head: Danila had a very pretty and attractive wife, and Nastya had an elderly husband who was madly in love with her.

But then, they were only people.

And we were Others, the volunteers of the Light. How could it be helped if we had a different morality? It was like a battle-front, with its field-army romances and the young nurses comforting the officers and the men, and not only in the hospital beds. In a war the appetite for life is just too strong.

There was a library there too. I found Garik and Farid in it. They'd spent all night talking over a bottle—and not just one. And it obviously wasn't long since they'd fallen asleep in their armchairs: Farid's pipe was still smoking faintly on the table in front of him. There were piles of books that had been pulled off the shelves lying on the floor. They must have had a long argument about something, appealing for support to writers and poets, philosophers, and historians.

I went down the long, wooden spiral staircase. Surely I could find someone to share this peaceful, quiet morning with me?

Everybody was still asleep in the living room too. I glanced into the kitchen, but there was no one there except for a dog, cowering in the corner.

«Moving again?» I asked.

The terrier bared his fangs and gave a pitiful whine.

«Well, who asked you to play soldier yesterday?» I squatted down in front of the dog and took a piece of sausage off the table. The well-trained animal hadn't dared steal it. «Here, take it.»

The jaws clicked shut above my open palm, licking it clean.

«You be kind and people will be kind to you!» I explained. «And stop cowering in corners.»

Surely I could find someone around here who was awake?

I took a piece of sausage for myself and chewed it as I walked through the living room into the study.

They were asleep in there too.

Even when it was opened out, the couch in the corner was narrow, so they were lying very close. Ignat was in the middle with his muscular arms flung out wide and a sweet smile on his face. Lena was pressed up against his left side, with one hand clutching his thick shock of blond hair and her other arm thrown across his chest, with her hand on our Don Juan's other partner. Svetlana had her face buried in Ignat's armpit, with her arms reaching in under the blanket that had slipped halfway off their bodies.

I closed the door very quietly and carefully.

It was a cozy little restaurant. As its name suggested, the Sea Dog was famous for its fish dishes and its shipboard interior. And what's more, it was right next to the metro station. And for a puny middle class that was sometimes prepared to have a fling in a restaurant but liked to save money on taxis, that was a factor of some importance.

This customer had arrived by car, in an old but perfectly serviceable model 6 Zhiguli. To the well-trained eyes of the waiters the man looked a lot more prosperous than his automobile suggested. The calm way he consumed his expensive Danish vodka without inquiring about the price or thinking about any possible problems with the highway patrol only served to reinforce this opinion.

When the waiter brought the sturgeon he'd ordered, the man glanced up at him briefly. Before that he'd been sitting there, tracing lines on the tablecloth with a toothpick, occasionally stopping and gazing at the flame of the glass-bodied oil lamp, but now he suddenly looked up.

The waiter didn't tell anyone what he thought he saw in that instant. It was as if he were gazing into two blinding well shafts. Blinding in the way the Light blinds when it sears and becomes indistinguishable from the Darkness.

«Thank you,» said the customer.

The waiter walked away, righting against the urge he felt to walk faster. Repeating to himself: It was just the reflection of the lamplight in the cozy gloom of the restaurant. Just the way the glitter of the lamp happened to catch his eyes.

Boris Ignatievich continued sitting there, breaking toothpicks. The sturgeon went cold, the vodka in the crystal carafe got warm. On the other side of the partition made out of thick cables, fake ships' wheels, and fake sailcloth, a large gathering was celebrating someone's birthday, there were speeches of congratulation and complaints about the heat, taxes, and some gangsters who weren't doing things «the right way.»

Gesar, the head of the Moscow office of the Night Watch, waited.

The dogs who'd stayed outside shied away at the sight of me. The «freeze» had been really tough on them. Their bodies had refused to obey them; they hadn't been able to draw breath or bark; the saliva had congealed in their mouths; the air had pressed down on them with a hot, heavy delirious hand.

But their spirits were still alive.

The dogs had had a hard time.

The gates were half-open. I went out and stood there for a moment, not quite sure where I was going and what I was going to do.

What difference did it make, anyway?

I didn't feel resentful. I wasn't even in pain. The two of us had never made love. In fact, I was the one who'd been careful to erect barriers. I didn't just live for the present moment; I wanted everything right now, but I wanted it forever.

I found the disc-player on my belt and switched it on at random. That always worked for me. Maybe because I'd been controlling the simple electronic circuits for a long time, like Tiger Cub, without knowing it?

Who's to blame if you're so tired?

And haven't found what you were longing for?

Lost everything you sought so hard,

Flown up to the sky and fallen back again?

Whose fault is it that day after day

Life walks on other people's paths

But your home has become lonely,

With darkness behind its windows,

And the light dims and sounds die

And your hands seek new torment,

And if your pain should ease—

It means a new disaster's on the way.

It was what I myself had wanted. I'd tried to make it happen. And now I had only myself to blame. Instead of spending all evening with Semyon, discussing the complex issues of the global conflict between Good and Evil, I ought to have stayed. Instead of getting angry with Gesar and Olga for their cunning version of truth, I ought to have insisted on my own. And never, ever have thought that it was impossible to win.

Once you start thinking like that, you've already lost.

Who's to blame, tell me, brother,

One is married, another's rich,

One is funny, another's in love.

One's a fool, another's your enemy,

And whose fault is it that there and here

They wait for each other, it's how they live,

But the day is dreary, the night is empty,

The warm places are crowded out,

And the light dims and sounds die,

And your hands seek new torment,

And if your pain should ease,

It means a new disaster's on the way.

Who's to blame and what's the secret,

Why is there no grief or happiness

No victories without defeats,

And the score of luck and disaster is even.

And whose fault is it you're alone,

And your one life so very long,

And so dreary and you're still waiting,

Hoping some day you will die.

«Oh, no,» I whispered, pulling off the earphones. «That's not for me.»

We'd all been taught for so long to give everything and not take anything in exchange. To sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, to face the machine-gun fire. Every glance noble and wise, not one single empty thought, not one sinful intention. After all, we were Others. We'd risen above the crowd, unfurled our immaculately clean banners, polished up our high boots, pulled on our white gloves. Oh, yes, in our own little world we could never go too far. A justification could be found for any action, a noble and exalted justification. A unique act for the first time in the ring—here we are all in white, and everyone else is covered in shit!

I was sick of it!

A passionate heart, clean hands, a cool head… Surely it was no accident that during the Revolution and the Civil War, almost all the Light Ones had attached themselves to the Cheka? And most of those who didn't had died, at the hands of the Dark Ones, or even more often at the hands of those they were defending. At the hands of human beings, because of human stupidity, baseness, cowardice, hypocrisy, envy. A passionate heart and clean hands. But keeping a cool head was more important. That was absolutely essential. I didn't really agree with all the rest. Why not a pure heart and hot hands? I like the sound of that better.

«I don't want to protect you,» I said into the quietness of the forest morning. «I don't want to! Children and women, old men and imbeciles—none of you. Live the way you want to, get what you deserve! Run from vampires, worship Dark Magicians, kiss the goat under his tail! If you've deserved it—take it! If my love means less than your happy life, then I don't wish you happiness!»

They can become better, they must, they're our roots, they're our future, they're our responsibility. Little people and big people, road sweepers and presidents, criminals and policemen. They carry within them the Light that can burst out in life-giving warmth or death-dealing flame…

I don't believe it!

I've seen all of you. Road sweepers and presidents, robbers and cops. Seen mothers killing their children, fathers raping their daughters. Seen sons throwing their mothers out of the house and daughters putting arsenic in their fathers' food. Seen a husband smiling as he sees the guest out and closes the door, then punches his pregnant wife in the face. Seen a smiling wife send her drunken husband out for another bottle and turn to his best friend for a passionate embrace. It's very simple to see all this. All you have to do is look. That's why they teach us not to look before they teach us to look through the Twilight.

But we still look anyway.

They're weak, they don't live long, they're afraid of everything. We mustn't despise them and hate them; that would be criminal. They must only be loved, pitied, and protected. That is our job, our duty. We are the Watch.

I don't believe it!

Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves. No matter what the circumstances of life are, there are no justifications and there never will be any. But people look for justifications and they find them. All people have been taught to do that, and they've all proved diligent pupils.

And we're probably just the best of the best.

Yes, of course, there have been, there still are, and there always will be those who have not become Others, but managed somehow to remain people. But there are so few of them, so very few. Or perhaps we're simply afraid to look at them more closely? Afraid to see what we might discover?

«Am I supposed to live for your sake?» I asked. The forest didn't answer; it was already prepared to accept anything I said.

Why must we sacrifice everything? Ourselves and those we love?

For the sake of those who will neither know about it nor appreciate it.

And even if they did find out about it, all we'd earn for our efforts would be an amazed shake of the head and the insulting exclamation: «Stupid hicks.»

Perhaps it would be worth just once showing humankind who exactly the Others are? What one single Other is capable of when he's not shackled by the Treaty, when he breaks free of the Watches?

I actually smiled to myself as I pictured the whole scene. The general picture, not just my place in it: I'd be stopped soon enough. So would any Great Magician or Great Sorceress who decided to violate the Treaty and reveal the Others to the world.

What a hullabaloo there'd be!

Aliens landing at the Kremlin and the White House wouldn't even come close.

Impossible, of course.

Not my path.

In the first place, because I didn't want to take over the world or throw it into total turmoil.

I wanted only one thing: that they not force the woman I love to sacrifice herself. Because the path of the Great Ones is genuine sacrifice. The appalling powers they develop change them totally and completely.

None of us are quite human. But at least we remember that we used to be human. And we can still be happy and sad, feel love and hate. The great magicians and sorceresses move beyond the bounds of human emotions. They probably feel emotions of their own, but we can't understand them. Even Gesar, a magician beyond classification, isn't a Great One. And Olga somehow failed to become a Great One.

They'd bungled something. Failed to pull off some grandiose operation in the struggle against the Darkness.

And now they were willing to fling a new recruit into the breach.

For the sake of human beings who didn't give a damn about the Light and the Darkness.

They were jumping her through all the hoops an Other is supposed to jump through. They'd already raised her powers to third grade; now they were working on her mind. Very, very rapidly.

There had to be a place for me somewhere in this insane pursuit of some unknown goal. Gesar made use of everything that came to hand, including me. Whatever I did—hunting vampires, chasing down the Maverick, talking to Sveta in Olga's body—all that was just playing into the boss's hands.

Whatever I did now was bound to have been foreseen too.

My only hope was that not even Gesar was capable of foreseeing everything.

That I could find the only way to act that would ruin his plan. The great plan for Sveta's powers.

And avoid causing Evil in the process. Because if I did, it would be the Twilight for me.

But in any case, I'd be doing Svetlana a great favor.

I caught myself standing with my cheek pressed against the trunk of a scraggy little pine tree. Standing there, hammering my fist against the wood. In fury or in grief, I couldn't tell which. I stopped my scratched and bloody hand from moving. But the sound didn't stop. It was coming from somewhere in the forest, from the very boundary of the magical barrier around the house. Blows in the same rhythm, a rapid, nervous drumbeat.

I bent over and ran between the trees, like some grown-up still playing at paintball wars. I already had a pretty good idea of what I'd see.

There was a tiger jumping around in a little clearing. Or rather, a tigress. Her black and orange skin gleamed in the rays of the rising sun. The tigress didn't notice me; right then she wasn't capable of seeing anybody or anything. She dashed between the trees, with the sharp daggers of her claws ripping the bark. White scars sprang out on the pine trees. Sometimes the tigress stopped, rose up on her hind legs, and started slashing at the tree trunks with her claws.

I set off slowly back to the house.

All of us relax the best way we can. All of us have to struggle, not just against the Darkness, but against the Light. Because sometimes it blinds us.

But don't feel sorry for us: We're proud, very proud. Soldiers in the worldwide war between Good and Evil, eternal volunteers.

Chapter 4

The young man walked into the restaurant as confidently as if he came there every day for breakfast. But that wasn't the case.

He went straight over to the table where the short, swarthy man was sitting, as if they'd known each other for a long time. But that wasn't true either. With his last step he sank smoothly to his knees. He didn't slump; he lowered himself calmly, without losing his dignity or bending his back.

The waiter who was walking past gulped and turned away. He'd seen all sorts of things in his time, let alone petty incidents like a mafia underling kowtowing to his boss. Only the young man didn't look much like a minion, and the swarthy man didn't look much like a mafia boss.

The trouble he could smell in the air threatened to be far more serious than a mobsters' shoot-out. He didn't know what exactly was going to happen, but he could feel it coming, because he was an Other himself, although he wasn't initiated.

But only a moment later he had completely forgotten what he'd seen. He had nothing but a vague sense of unease somewhere in the region of his heart, but he couldn't remember why.

«Get up, Alisher,» Gesar said in a low voice. «Get up. We don't do that around here.»

The young man got up off his knees and sat down facing the head of the Night Watch. He nodded.

«We don't either. Not any longer. But my father instructed me to bow on my knees to you, Gesar. He followed the old rules. He would have knelt. But now he will never be able to.»

«Do you know how he died?»

«Yes. I saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, suffered his pain.»

«Give me also his pain, Alisher, son of a devona and a human woman.»

«Take what you ask, Gesar, Exterminator of Evil, equal of the gods, who do not exist.»

They looked into each other's eyes. Then Gesar nodded.

«I know the killers. Your father will be avenged.»

«I must be the one to do it.»

«No, you will not be able to do it, and you have no right. You have come to Moscow illegally.»

«Take me into your Watch, Gesar.»

The head of the Night Watch shook his head.

«I was the best in Samarkand, Gesar,» the young man said, staring hard at him. «Don't smile; I know that here I would be the lowest of the low. Take me into the Watch. As a pupil of your pupils. As a guard dog. I ask this in honor of my father's memory—take me into the Watch.»

«You are asking too much, Alisher. You are asking me to give you your death.»

«I have already died, Gesar. When they drank my father's soul, I died with him. I walked along with a smile while he distracted the Dark Ones. I walked down into the metro while they were trampling his ashes underfoot. Gesar, I have a right to ask this.»

Gesar nodded.

«Let it be so. You are a member of my Watch, Alisher.»

Not a trace of emotion showed in the young man's face, but he nodded and pressed his hand to his heart for an instant.

«Where is the thing that you have brought, Alisher?»

«I have it, my lord.»

Gesar reached his hand out across the table without speaking.

Alisher opened the little bag on his belt and took out an oblong bundle of coarse fabric, handling it with great care.

«Take it, Gesar, and relieve me of my duty.»

Gesar covered the young man's open palm with his hand and closed his fingers. When the young man withdrew his hand a moment later, it was empty.

«Your service is completed, Alisher. Now let us simply relax. Let us eat, drink, and remember your father. I will tell you all that I can remember.»

Alisher nodded. It was impossible to tell if he was pleased by what Gesar had said or simply willing to accept whatever the older man suggested.

«We will have half an hour,» Gesar stated simply. «Then the Dark Ones will arrive. They must have picked up your trail, even if they did so too late.»

«Will there be a battle, my lord?»

«I do not know,» said Gesar with a shrug. «What does it matter? Zabulon is far away. I have no reason to fear the others.»

«There will be a battle,» Alisher said thoughtfully. He looked around the restaurant.

«Drive all the customers away,» Gesar advised him. «Gently, unobtrusively. I wish to observe your technique. And we will relax while we wait for our guests.»

About eleven everyone started waking up.

I was waiting on the terrace, lazing in a beach chair with my legs stretched out, taking occasional sips from a tall gin and tonic and savoring the sweet pain of a masochist. Every time someone came out through the doors, I greeted them with a friendly wave and a little rainbow that sprang from my spread fingers and went soaring up into the sky. It was a bit of childish fun, and everybody smiled. When Yulia saw my greeting, she stopped yawning, squealed, and replied with a rainbow of her own. We competed with each other for a couple of minutes, and then made a rainbow together, a big one that stretched away into the forest. Yulia told me she was going to go and look for the pot of gold, and she strode off proudly under the multi-colored arch, with one of the terriers running obediently by her feet.

I was waiting for certain people.

The first to come out was Lena. Bright and cheerful, wearing just her swimsuit. When she saw me she was embarrassed for a moment, but then she nodded and ran toward the gates. I enjoyed watching the way she moved: slim and graceful, full of life. Now she'd plunge into the cool water, frisk about on her own for a while, and come back for breakfast with a keen appetite.

Next to appear was Ignat. In his swimming shorts and rubber sandals.

«Hi, Anton!» he shouted happily. He came over, opened up the next chair, and flopped down into it. «How are you doing?»

«I'm in a fighting mood!» I told him, raising my glass.

«Good man.» Ignat looked around for a bottle and didn't see one. He reached out for my drink and took a sip. «Too weak, too much mixer.»

«I got plastered yesterday.»

«In that case you're right; better watch yourself,» Ignat advised me. «We were guzzling champagne all evening. Then we threw in some cognac later. I was afraid I'd get a headache, but it's okay. I got away with it.»

It was impossible to be offended by him.

«Ignat, what did you want to be when you were a kid?» I asked.

«A hospital attendant.»

«What?»

«Well, they told me boys didn't work as nurses, and I wanted to help sick people. So I decided that when I grew up I was going to be a medical attendant.»

«Great,» I said. «But why not a doctor?»

«Too much responsibility for me,» Ignat admitted. «And you had to study for too long.»

«So did you get to be a medical attendant?»

«Yes. I used to ride around in an ambulance, with the psychiatric team. All the doctors loved working with me.»

«Why?»

«First, because I'm extremely charming,» Ignat explained, praising himself ingenuously. «I can talk with a man or a woman in a way that calms them down and makes them agree to go to a hospital. And second, I could see when someone was really ill and when he was just seeing something invisible. Sometimes I I was able to whisper in the doctor's ear, explain that everything was okay and no injections would be required.»

«Medicine has suffered a great loss.»

«True,» Ignat said with a sigh, «but the boss persuaded me that I'd be more useful in the Watch. And that's right, isn't it?»

«I suppose so.»

«I'm bored already,» Ignat drawled thoughtfully. «Aren't you bored? I want to go back to work.»

«I think I do too. Ignat, have you got a hobby? Outside of work?»

«What are you interrogating me for?» he asked in surprise.

«I'm curious. Or is it a secret?»

«What secrets do we have?» Ignat asked with a shrug. «I collect butterflies. I've got one of the best collections in the world, It fills two entire rooms.»

«Very laudable,» I agreed.

«Come around sometime and take a look,» Ignat suggested. «Bring Sveta; she tells me she likes butterflies too.»

I laughed so long even Ignat got the point. He got up, smiling uncertainly, and muttered:

«I think I'll go help get breakfast ready.»

«Good luck,» was all I said. But I just couldn't help myself, and when our handsome Casanova reached the door, I called to him, «Listen, is the boss right to be worried about Svetka?»

Ignat propped his chin on his hand, striking a dashing pose, and thought for a moment.

«You know, I think he is. She's all tensed up somehow, just can't let go and relax. And she's got big things ahead of her, not like you and me.»

«You tried your best, did you?»

«What kind of question's that!» said Ignat, offended. «Come around, honest, I'd be glad to see you!»

The gin had turned warm, the ice in the glass had melted. There was a slight trace of lipstick left on the plastic. I shook my head and put the glass down.

Gesar, you can't foresee everything.

But to fight you, not in a duel of magic—that would be just plain ridiculous—to fight you in the only arena where I have a chance, in words and actions, I have to know what you want. I have to know how the cards lie in the pack. And what you're holding in your hand.

Who were the players?

Gesar, the originator and organizer. Olga, his lover and consultant, a sorceress who had been punished for some crime. Svetlana, who had to complete the project and was being prepared with great care. Me—one of the instruments of her education. Ignat, Tiger Cub, Semyon, and all the other Light Ones could be left out of my calculations. They were instruments too, but only secondary ones. And I couldn't count on them for support.

The Dark Ones?

Naturally, they were involved, but not in any obvious way. Zabulon and his henchmen were concerned about Svetlana's appearance in our camp. They couldn't do anything openly right now. But they could try to sabotage things on the sly or prepare a crushing blow that would bring the Watches to the brink of war.

What else?

The Inquisition?

I drummed my fingers on the armrest of the lounger.

The Inquisition. The structure that stood above the Watches. It reviewed disputes and punished those who had violated the Treaty—from either side. It was vigilant. It collected data on every one of us. But it intervened only in extremely rare cases, and its strength lay more in secrecy than in fighting power. When the Inquisition considered a case involving a powerful magician, it drafted fighters from the Watches.

But the Inquisition was involved somehow. I knew the boss. He squeezed the last drop out of every opportunity. And the recent business with Maxim, the maverick Other, the Light One who had gone to work in the Inquisition, was a good example. The boss had exploited the affair to train Svetlana and teach her the lessons of self-control and intrigue, but at the same time he'd discovered a new Inquisitor.

I wished I knew what they were preparing Svetlana for!

So far I was groping in the dark. And the worst thing of all was that the gap between me and Sveta was getting wider and wider. I put on the headphones and closed my eyes.

Tonight the fern will unfold its miraculous flower,

Tonight the spirits will come back home,

Clouds from the north, wind from the west,

Soon the enchantress will wave her hand to me.

I live waiting for a miracle, like a Mauser in its holster,

Like a spider in its web,

Like a tree in the desert,

Like a black fox in its hole.

I was taking a risk. I was taking a great risk. Great Magicians became great by trampling over their own kind, but even they didn't dare go against their own. Isolated individuals didn't survive.

I was running through the telescopes, away from the frightened eyes of children,

I wanted to sleep with a mermaid, but I didn't know how to act with her,

I wanted to turn into a streetcar and drive into your window.

The wind blows from the borderlands, we don't care anymore,

The wind blows from the borderlands, we don't care anymore.

Be my shadow, my squeaking stair, my bright-colored Sunday, my sunshine with rain,

Be my god, my birch-tree juice my electric current, my bent rifle.

I can bear witness that you are the wind, you blow in my face and I laugh,

I do not wish to leave you without a battle, since you dream of me.

Be my shadow…

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

«Good morning, Sveta,» I said and opened my eyes.

She was wearing shorts and a swimsuit. Her hair was wet and neatly arranged. She must have taken a shower. While I, being a filthy swine, hadn't even thought of taking one.

«How are you after yesterday?» she asked me.

«Okay. And you?»

«All right,» she said and turned away.

I waited. With Spleen playing in my earphones.

«What were you expecting from me?» Sveta asked sharply. «I'm a normal, healthy young woman. I haven't had a man since last winter. I realize you've got it into your head that Gesar threw us together, like coupling horses, so you're just being stubborn.»

«I wasn't expecting anything.»

«Then I'm sorry you got a surprise!»

«Did you sense my trail in the room? When you woke up?»

«Yes.» Svetlana pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket with a struggle and lit one. «I'm tired. Maybe I am still only learning, and not working yet, but I'm tired. And I came here to relax.»

«You were the one who started talking about everyone faking a good time…«

«And you were only too happy to back me up!»

«True,» I agreed.

«And then you went off to guzzle vodka and organize conspiracies.»

«What conspiracies?»

«Against Gesar. And against me, by the way. How absurd! Even I sensed it! Don't get the idea you're some great magician who can…«

She stopped short. But too late.

«I'm not a great magician,» I said. «I'm third grade. Maybe second, but no higher than that. We all have limits of our own that we can't go beyond, not even if we live for a thousand years.»

«I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you,» Svetlana said, embarrassed. She lowered the hand holding the cigarette.

«Forget it. I'm not offended. Do you know why the Dark Ones form families of their own so often , and we prefer to choose our wives and husbands from among ordinary people? The Dark Ones find it easier to bear inequality and constant competition.»

«A human being and an Other—that's even more unequal.»

«That doesn't count. We're two different species. That means nothing counts.»

«I want you to know,» said Svetlana, taking a deep drag on her cigarette, «that I wasn't intending to let things go so far. I was waiting for you to come down and see us and get jealous.»

«I'm sorry, I didn't know I was supposed to get jealous,» I said repentantly.

«And then everything just got crazy and I got carried away.»

«I understand everything, Sveta. It's okay.»

She looked at me in confusion.

«Okay?»

«Of course, it happens to everyone. The Watch is one big, tight-knit family. With all the consequences that follow from that.»

«What a bastard you are,» Svetlana exclaimed. «Anton, if only you could see yourself now from the outside! How did you ever end up on our side?»

«Sveta, you came to make up, didn't you?» I asked in surprise. «So I'm making up. It's all okay. Nothing counts. That's life; all sorts of things happen.»

She jumped up and glared icily at me for a second. I started blinking rapidly.

«You idiot,» Svetlana blurted out and went back into the house.

So what had I been expecting? Hurt feelings, accusations, sadness?

But more important, what had Gesar been expecting? What would change if I stopped playing the role of Sveta's ill-starred lover? Would someone else take on the role? Or was it already time for her to be left alone—all alone with her great destiny?

The goal. I had to know what Gesar's goal was.

I sprang up off the beach chair and walked into the house. I immediately spotted Olga, alone in the living room. Standing in front of the open display case, holding a sword with a long, narrow blade out in front of her. She wasn't looking at it the way you look at an antique toy. Tiger Cub probably looked at her swords in the same kind of way. But her love of old weapons was abstract and Olga's wasn't.

When Gesar came to live and work in Russia—because of her, by the way—swords like that might still have been in use.

But eighty years ago, when Olga had been deprived of all her rights, wars were already fought differently.

A former Great Sorceress. A former Great Goal. Eighty years.

«It's all so well planned, isn't it?» I said.

Olga started and swung round.

«We can't defeat the Darkness ourselves. The little people have to be enlightened first. Become kind and loving, industrious and intelligent. So that every Other can see nothing but the Light. What a great goal it was; how long the ripples lasted when it was drowned in blood.»

«You figured it out after all,» said Olga. «Or did you just guess?»

«I guessed.»

«Good. Now what?»

«How did you slip up, Olga?»

«I accepted a compromise. A little compromise with the Darkness. And because of that we lost.»

«We did? We'll always survive. Adapt, fit in, find our place. And we'll continue the old struggle. It's only people who lose.»

«Retreats are inevitable sometimes,» said Olga, gripping the double-handed sword easily in one hand and swinging it above her head. «Do I look like a helicopter with its engines idling?»

«You look like a woman waving a sword around. Do we really never learn anything, Olga?»

«Sure we do. This time everything's going to be different, Anton.»

«A new revolution?»

«We didn't want the last one. It was all supposed to happen almost completely without bloodshed. You understand: We can win only through ordinary people. When they become enlightened, when their spirit is uplifted. Communism was a wonderfully well-calculated system, and it's all my fault that it wasn't realized.»

«Oho! Why aren't you in the Twilight already, if it's all your fault?»

«Because everything had been agreed. Every step of the way approved. Even that ill-fated compromise, even that seemed acceptable.»

«And now—a new attempt to change people?»

«One more in the series.»

«Why here?» I asked. «Why in Russia again?»

«Why not?»

«How much more of this does our country have to put up with?»

«As much as it takes.»

«Come on—why here again?»

Olga sighed, deftly slipped the sword back into its scabbard, and put it back on its stand.

«Because, my dear boy, in this arena it's still possible to achieve something. The potential of Europe and North America has already been exhausted. Everything that was possible has already been tried there. There are a few things being developed right now. But all those countries are already half asleep. A healthy retiree in shorts with a digital camera—that's the prosperous countries of the West. We need to experiment with the young ones. Russia, Asia, the Arab world—these are where the battles of the present day are fought. And don't look so offended, I love my country as much as you do! I've spilled more blood for it than you have flowing in your veins. What you've got to understand, Antoshka, is that the battlefield is the entire world. You know that just as well as I do.»

«Our war's with the Darkness, not with human beings!»

"Yes, with the Darkness. But we can only win by creating an ideal society. A world that will be ruled by goodness, love, and justice. The Watches don't exist to capture psychopathic magicians on the streets and issue licenses to vampires! All those little things take up time and energy, but they're by-products, like the heat from an electric light bulb. Light bulbs are meant to produce light, not heat. We have to change the human world, not just neutralize Darkness's minor outbursts. That's the goal. That's the path to victory!»

«Olga, I understand that.»

«Wonderful. Then you have to understand something that's never said in so many words. We've been fighting for thousands of years. And all that time we've been trying to change the course of history. To create a new world.»

«A brave new world.»

«Don't be so cynical. We have achieved something, after all. Through all the blood and suffering the world is becoming a more humane place. But we need a real, genuine revolution.»

«Communism was our idea, then?»

«No, not ours, but we supported it. It seemed quite attractive.»

«So now what?»

«You'll see.» Olga smiled. A friendly, sincere smile. «Anton, everything will be fine. Trust me.»

«I need to know.»

«No. That's exactly what you don't need. And you don't need to worry, we're not planning any revolutions. No prison camps, execution squads, or military tribunals. We're not going to repeat our old mistakes.»

«We're going to make new ones instead.»

«Anton!» she said, raising her voice. «Think about it, will you; what are you doing? We have a really good chance of winning. Our country has a chance of living in peace and flourishing. It could become the vanguard of humanity. Defeat the Darkness. It's been twelve years in the making, Anton. And it's not just Gesar's project; the whole top level's been working on it.»

«What?»

«Yes. Did you think it was all being done off the cuff?»

«You were keeping tabs on Svetlana for twelve years?»

«Of course not! A new social model has been developed. Various elements of the plan have already been put into action. Not even I know all the details. Since then Gesar's been waiting for the key players in the plan to come together in space and time.»

«Who exactly? Svetlana and the Inquisitor?»

The pupils of her eyes contracted, and I knew I'd guessed it. Or part of it.

«And what else. What part am I supposed to play in all this?»

«You'll find out when the time comes.»

«Olga, so far magical intervention in human life has never led to anything good.»

«Don't give me those old childhood maxims,» she said, getting really worked up now. «Don't think you're any wiser than anyone else. We've no intention of using magic. Calm down and relax.»

I nodded.

«Okay. You've explained your position. I don't agree with it.»

«Officially?»

«No. In a private capacity. And as a private individual I believe I have the right of opposition.»

«Opposition? To Gesar?» Olga's eyes opened wide, and the corners of her lips curved up in a smile. «Anton!»

I turned on my heel and went out.

Yes, it was laughable.

Yes, it was absurd.

It wasn't just a crazy project dreamed up by Gesar and Olga. It wasn't just an attempt to repeat a failed experiment. It was a meticulously prepared operation, planned over a long period of time, and it had been my bad luck to get caught up in it.

An operation approved at the highest level.

Approved by the Light.

Why was I getting so involved? I had no right to be. None at all. And I had no chance either. Absolutely none. I could console myself with the wise parable about the grain of sand that stopped the clock, but right now I was a grain of sand caught between mill wheels.

And the saddest thing of all was that these were friendly and caring mill wheels. Nobody would persecute me. Nobody would fight against me. They'd simply stop me doing all those stupid things that wouldn't do any good in any case.

Then why did I feel this pain, this unendurable pain in my chest?

I was standing on the terrace, clenching my fists in impotent fury, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

«Looks like you've managed to figure something out, Anton?»

I glanced at Semyon and nodded.

«Hard to take?»

«Yes,» I admitted.

«Then just remember one thing, please. You're not just a grain of sand. Nobody's just a grain of sand. Especially if he's an Other.»

«How long do you have to live to be able to guess what someone else is thinking like that?»

«A hundred years, Anton.»

«So Gesar can read any of us like an open book?»

«Of course.»

«Then I'll have to learn how not to think,» I said.

«For that you have to learn how to think first. Did you know there's been a ruckus in town?»

«When?»

«A quarter of an hour ago. It's all over already.»

«And what happened?»

«A courier arrived to see the boss, from somewhere in the East. The Dark Ones tracked him and tried to eliminate him. Right there in front of the boss.» Semyon laughed.

«That means war!»

«No, they were within their rights. The courier entered the city illegally.»

I looked around. Nobody was in any hurry to go anywhere. They weren't starting up their cars or packing their things. Ignat and Ilya were heating up the barbecue again.

«Shouldn't we be getting back?»

«No. The boss handled things his own way. There was a small fight, without any casualties. The courier's been made a member of our Watch, and the Dark Ones had to leave empty-handed. The restaurant suffered a bit, that's all.»

«What restaurant?»

«The restaurant where the boss met the courier,» Semyon explained patiently. «We've been told we can continue with our vacation.»

I looked up at the blindingly blue sky, swelling with the heat.

«You know, somehow I'm not in the mood for a vacation. I think I'll go back to Moscow. I don't suppose anyone will mind too much?»

«Of course not.»

Semyon took out his cigarettes and lit up. Then he said casually:

«In your place, I'd find out exactly what the courier brought with him from the East. Maybe that's your chance.»

I laughed bitterly.

«The Dark Ones couldn't find out. Are you suggesting I should start rummaging in the boss's safe?»

«The Dark Ones couldn't take it. Whatever it was. You have no right to take what the courier brought or even touch it, of course. But just finding out…«

«Thanks. I really mean that.»

Semyon nodded, accepting my gratitude without any false modesty.

«We'll settle up in the Twilight. You know, I've had enough of vacation too. After lunch I'm going to borrow Tiger Cub's motorcycle and go back to town. Can I give you a lift?»

«Uh-huh.»

I felt ashamed. It was the kind of shame probably only Others can feel. We can always tell whenever someone's helping us out, when they're giving us something we don't deserve but can't possibly refuse.

I couldn't stay there any longer. Stay there and see Svetlana, Olga, and Ignat. Listen to their truth.

I would always have my own truth.

«Can you handle a motorcycle?» I asked, trying clumsily to change the subject.

«I rode one in the first Paris-Dakar rally. Let's go give the guys a hand.»

I glanced sullenly at Ignat. He was chopping wood, handling the axe like a real virtuoso. After every blow he froze for a moment and looked around quickly at everyone, flexing his biceps.

He really loved himself. Sure, he loved the rest of the world too. But he came first.

«Let's do that,» I agreed. I swung my arm back and hurled the sign of the triple blade through the Twilight. Several blocks of wood flew apart into neat sticks of firewood just as Ignat had raised his axe for the next blow. He lost his balance and almost fell. Then he started looking around.

Naturally, my blow had left a spatial trace. The twilight was vibrating, greedily drawing in energy.

«Antosha, what did you do that for?» Ignat asked in an offended voice. «What for? That's not the sporting way!»

«But it is efficient,» I said, walking down from the terrace. «Shall I chop some more?»

«Don't bother,» said Ignat, bending down to collect up the firewood. «Carry on like that and we'll end up grilling the kebabs with fireballs.»

I didn't feel at all guilty, but I started helping anyway. The firewood had been chopped cleanly and the cuts glittered a rich amber yellow. It seemed a shame to put something so beautiful on the fire.

Then I looked at the house and saw Olga standing in the ground-floor window.

She'd been following my little escapade very seriously. Far too seriously.

I waved to her.

Chapter 5

Tiger Cub's motorcycle was really good, if that vague word can ever be applied to a Harley, even the simplest model. After all, there are motorcycles, and then there are Harley-Davidsons.

Why Tiger Cub needed it, I couldn't tell. As far as I could see, she only rode it once or twice a year. Probably for the same reason she needed a huge house on the weekends. In any case, we arrived back in town before it was even two in the afternoon.

Semyon handled the heavy two-wheeled vehicle like a master. I could never have done it, not even if I'd activated the «extreme skills» implanted in my memory and reviewed the reality lines. I could have got there almost as fast by expending a considerable portion of my reserves of Power. But Semyon simply drove—and his superiority over an ordinary human driver was because of nothing but his great experience.

Even riding at a hundred kilometers an hour the air still felt hot. The wind lashed at my cheeks like a hot, rough towel. It felt like we were riding through a furnace, an endless asphalt furnace full of vehicles that had already been roasted in the sun and were slowly crawling along. At least three times I was sure we were going to crash into a car or an inconveniently sited pillar.

It wasn't likely that we'd be killed outright. The other guys would sense what had happened and come and put us back together, piece by piece, but it wouldn't exactly be fun.

We arrived without any mishaps. After the Ring Road Semyon used his magic about five times, but only to make the highway patrolmen look the other way.

Semyon didn't ask my address, even though he'd never been to my place. He stopped outside the door of the building and switched off the engine. The young teens swilling cheap beer in the little kids' playground stopped talking and stared at the bike. How great it must be to have such clear and simple dreams: beer, ecstasy at the discotheque, a hot girlfriend, and a Harley to ride.

«How long have you been having premonitions?» Semyon asked.

I started. I hadn't really told anyone that I'd been having them.

«Quite a long time now.»

Semyon nodded. He looked up at my windows. He didn't tell me why he'd asked the question.

«Maybe I ought to go up with you?»

«Listen, I'm not your date who needs to be seen to her door.»

The magician smiled.

«Hey, don't get me confused with Ignat. Okay, it's not such a big deal. Be careful.»

«Of what?»

«Of everything, I suppose.»

The bike's engine howled. The magician shook his head.

«There's something coming, Anton. Coming this way. Be careful.»

He zoomed off to roars of approval from the adolescents, and slipped neatly through the gap between a parked Volga and a slow-moving Zhiguli. I watched him go and shook my head. I didn't need any premonitions to know that Semyon would spend the whole day zooming round Moscow. Then he'd attach himself to some group of bikers, and a quarter of an hour later he'd be a fully fledged member, already creating legends about a crazy old biker.

Be careful…

Of what?

And more important, what for?

I tapped the code into the lock, walked into the entrance, and called the elevator. That morning I'd been on vacation with my friends, and everything had been fine.

Nothing had changed now, except that I wasn't there any longer.

They say that when Light Magicians go off the rails, the first sign is always flashes of insight, like the ones epileptics have before a fit. Then the pointless use of power, like killing flies with fireballs and chopping firewood with combat spells. Quarrels with the people they love. Sudden disagreements with some friends and equally unexpected warm relations with others. Everyone knows that, and everyone knows what happens after a Light Magician goes off the rails.

Be careful…

I walked up to the door and reached for my keys.

But the door was already unlocked.

My parents had a set of keys. But they would never have come all the way from Saratov without giving me any warning. And I would have sensed that they were coming.

No ordinary human thief would ever break into my apartment; the simple sign on the threshold would have stopped him. And there were barriers against Others too. Of course, they could be overcome with sufficient Power. But the sentry systems ought to have been triggered!

I stood there, looking at the narrow crack between the door and the doorjamb, the crack that shouldn't have been there. I looked through the Twilight, but I didn't see anything.

I didn't have a weapon with me. The pistol was in the apartment. So were the ten combat amulets.

I could have followed instructions. A member of the Night Watch who discovers that a home secured by magical means has been penetrated by strangers must first inform the duty operations officer and his supervisor, and then…

But the moment I imagined appealing to Gesar, after he'd casually scattered the entire Day Watch only two days earlier, I lost any desire to follow instructions. I folded my fingers into the sign for a rapid «freeze» spell, probably because I remembered how well it had worked for Semyon.

Be careful?

I pushed open the door and walked into the apartment that had suddenly stopped being mine.

And as I walked in, I realized who had enough power, authority, and sheer effrontery to come calling without an invitation.

«Good afternoon, boss!» I said, glancing into the study.

I wasn't entirely mistaken.

Zabulon was sitting in a chair by the window, reading. He raised his eyebrows in surprise and put down the newspaper Arguments and Facts . Then he carefully took off his spectacles with the slim gold frames.

«Good afternoon, Anton. You know, I'd be very glad to be your boss.»

He smiled. A Dark Magician beyond classification, the head of the Moscow Day Watch. As usual, he was wearing an immaculately tailored black suit and a light-gray shirt. An Other of indeterminate age with a lean frame and close-cropped hair.

«My mistake,» I said. «What are you doing here?»

Zabulon shrugged:

«Take your amulet. It's in the desk somewhere, I can sense it.»

I walked over to the desk, opened the drawer, and took out the ivory medallion on a copper chain. I squeezed the amulet in my fist and felt it growing warm.

«Zabulon, you no longer have any power over me.»

The Dark Magician nodded:

«Good. I don't want you to feel any doubts about your own safety.»

«What are you doing in a Light One's home, Zabulon? I would be within my rights to report you to the Tribunal.»

«I know,» Zabulon said with a shrug. «I know all that. I'm in the wrong. This is stupid. I'm exposing myself to reprisals and exposing the Day Watch too. But I haven't come to you as an enemy.»

I didn't say anything.

«And you don't need to worry about any observation devices,» Zabulon added casually. «Either your own, or the ones that the Inquisition installs. I took the liberty of, shall we say, putting them to sleep. Everything we say to each other will remain just between the two of us forever.»

«Believe half of what a human says, a quarter of what a Light One says, and not a word of what a Dark One says,» I muttered.

«Of course, you have every right not to trust me. It's your duty not to! But please hear me out.» Zabulon suddenly smiled in a remarkably open and reassuring fashion. «You're a Light One. You are obliged to help everyone who asks for help, even me. And now I'm asking.»

I hesitated, then went across to the couch and sat down. Without taking my shoes off, without canceling the suspended «freeze,» as if it weren't totally absurd to imagine myself doing combat with Zabulon.

There was an outsider in my apartment. So much for «my home is my castle»—and I'd almost started to believe it during the years I'd been working in the Watch.

«First of all, how did you get in?» I asked.

«First of all, I took a perfectly ordinary lock pick, but…«

«Zabulon, you know what I mean. The sentry systems can be destroyed, but they can't be tricked. They should have been triggered by any unauthorized entry.»

The Dark Magician sighed.

«Kostya helped me to get in. You gave him access.»

«I hoped he was my friend. Even if he is a vampire.»

«He is your friend,» Zabulon said with a smile. «And he wants to help you.»

«In his own way.»

«In our own way, Anton. I've entered your home, but I have no intention of causing any harm. I haven't looked at any of the official documents you keep here. I haven't left any monitoring signs. I came to talk.»

«Then talk.»

«You and I have a problem, Anton. The same one. And today it reached critical proportions.»

The moment I saw Zabulon, I'd known what we'd be talking about, so I just nodded.

«Good, you understand.» The Dark Magician leaned forward in his chair and sighed. «Anton, I'm not under any illusions here. We see the world differently. And we understand our duty in different ways. But even under those conditions our interests sometimes coincide. From your point of view, we Dark Ones have our failings. Sometimes our actions seem rather ambiguous. And we are obliged by our very nature to be rather less caring with people. That's all true. But note that nobody has ever accused us of attempting to change the entire destiny of humanity. Since the Treaty was concluded we have simply lived our own lives and we'd like you to do the same.»

«Nobody has ever accused you,» I agreed. «Because whichever way you look at it, time is on your side.»

Zabulon nodded:

«And what does that mean? Perhaps we're more like human beings? Perhaps we're right? But let's not get into those arguments; there's no end to them. I repeat what I have said before. We honor the Treaty. And we often observe it far more closely than the forces of Light.»

A standard tactic in an argument. First admit to some kind of generalized guilt. Then gently reproach your opponent with being equally guilty of the same general kind of fault. Reproach them a bit and then drop it. Let's just forget the whole thing!

And then move on to what's really important.

«But let's deal with what's really important here,» said Zabulon, getting serious. «There's no point in beating about the bush. In the last hundred years the forces of Light have launched three global experiments. The revolution in Russia. The Second World War. And now this new project. Following the same scenario.»

«I don't know what you're talking about,» I said. I suddenly had this desperate, aching feeling in my chest.

«Really? Let me explain. Social models are developed that should eventually—at the cost of massive upheavals and immense bloodshed—create the ideal society. Ideal, that is, from your point of view, but I won't argue about that! Certainly not. Everyone has a right to his own dream. But your path is so very cruel…« Another sad smile. «You accuse us of cruelty, and not entirely without reason, but what's one child killed in a black mass compared with any fascist children's concentration camp? And fascism was another of your inventions. Another one that got out of control. First there was internationalism and communism—those didn't work. Then there was national socialism. Another mistake? You put your heads together and examined the result. Then you sighed, wiped the slates clean, and started experimenting all over again.»

«They turned out to be mistakes thanks to your efforts.»

«Of course! We do have an instinct of self-preservation, you know. We don't construct social models on the basis of our ethics. So why should we tolerate your projects?»

I didn't say anything.

Zabulon nodded, apparently satisfied.

«So you see, Anton. Maybe we're enemies. We are enemies. Last winter you caused us some inconvenience, serious inconvenience. This spring you frustrated me again. You eliminated two Day Watch agents. Yes, of course, the Inquisition declared that your actions were committed in self-defense out of absolute necessity but, believe me—I was not pleased. What kind of leader is it who can't even protect his own subjects? So, we are enemies. But now we have a unique situation. Yet another experiment. And you're indirectly involved in it.»

«I don't know what you're talking about.»

Zabulon laughed and raised his hands in the air.

«Anton, I'm not trying to coax any secrets out of you. I'm not going to ask any questions. Or ask you to do anything. Just listen to what I have to say. And then I'll go.»

I suddenly remembered how the young witch Alisa had used her right to intervention up on the high-rise roof the previous winter. A very minor intervention: All she did was allow me to speak the truth. And that truth had turned Egor to the side of the Dark Ones.

Why did things happen that way?

Why was it that the Light acted through lies, and the Darkness acted through the truth? Why was it that our truth proved powerless, but lies were effective? And why was the Darkness able to manage perfectly well with truth in order to do Evil? Whose nature was responsible, humankind's or ours?

«Svetlana's a wonderful sorceress,» said Zabulon. «But her future is not to lead the Night Watch. They intend to use her for just one single purpose. For the mission that Olga failed to complete. You know, don't you, that a courier from Samarkand entered the city illegally this morning?»

«Yes, I know,» I admitted, without really knowing why.

«And I can tell you what he brought with him. Would you like to know?»

I gritted my teeth.

«You would,» said Zabulon, with a nod. «The courier brought a piece of chalk.»

Never believe what the Dark Ones say. But somehow I got the feeling he wasn't lying.

«A little piece of chalk.» The Dark Magician smiled. «You could write on a school blackboard with it. Or draw hopscotch squares on the sidewalk. Or chalk your pool cue with it. You could do all that, just as easily as you could use a large royal seal to crack nuts. But things change if a Great Sorceress picks up that piece of chalk—it has to be a Great one, an ordinary sorceress wouldn't be strong enough; and it has to be a sorceress; in male hands the chalk will remain nothing but chalk. And in addition to that the sorceress has to be a Light One. This artifact is useless for Dark Ones.»

Did I imagine it, or had he just sighed? I said nothing.

«A small piece of chalk.» Zabulon leaned back in his armchair. «It's already worn down; beautiful young women with bright fire in their eyes have picked it up in their slim fingers several times already. It has been put to use, and the earth has trembled, the boundaries of states have melted away, empires have risen, shepherds have become prophets and carpenters have become gods, foundlings have been recognized as kings, sergeants have risen to become emperors, seminarians who failed to graduate and talentless artists have grown into tyrants. A little stub of chalk. Nothing more than that.»

Zabulon stood and spread his hands in a conclusive gesture.

«And that's all I wanted to tell you, my dear enemy. You'll understand the rest for yourself—if you really want to, that is.»

«Zabulon.» I unclenched my fist and looked at the amulet. «You're a creature of the Darkness.»

«Of course. But only of the darkness that was in me. The darkness that I chose myself.»

«Even your truth works evil.»

«To whom? The Night Watch? Of course. But to human beings? There I must beg to differ.»

He walked toward the door.

«Zabulon,» I said, calling him by name again. «I've seen your true appearance. I know who you are and what you are.»

The Dark Magician stopped dead in his tracks. He slowly turned around and passed his hand over his face—for a moment it was distorted; the skin was replaced by dull scales and the eyes became narrow slits.

Then the illusion disappeared.

«Yes. Of course you've seen it,» said Zabulon, in his human form once again. «And I have seen you. And permit me to state that you were no white angel with a gleaming sword. Everything depends on your point of view. Goodbye, Anton. Believe me, I shall be glad to eliminate you at some later time. But for now I wish you good luck. From the depths of the soul that I don't have.»

The door slammed behind him.

And immediately, as if it had just woken up, the sentry system howled out of the Twilight. The mask of Chkhoen on the wall twisted into a ferocious scowl, with fury glinting in the wooden slits of its eyes.

My security guards…

I silenced the system with two passes and hurled the «freeze» that I'd prepared at the mask. The spell had come in useful after all.

«A little piece of chalk,» I said.

I'd heard something like that before. But it was a very long time ago, and I hadn't really been paying attention. It could have been a few phrases thrown out by one of my tutors at a lecture, or idle social gossip, or a student myth. But there definitely was something about a piece of chalk…

I got up off the couch, raised my hand in the air, and threw the amulet onto the floor.

«Gesar!» I called through the twilight. «Gesar, answer me!»

My shadow shot up toward me from the floor, grabbed hold of my body, and sucked me into itself. The light dimmed, the room swayed, the outlines of the furniture blurred. It was suddenly unbearably quiet. The heat had receded. I stood there with my arms thrown out wide as the greedy Twilight drank my power.

«Gesar, by your name I summon you!»

Threads of gray mist drifted through the room. I didn't give a damn who else might be able to hear me shouting.

«Gesar, my mentor, I call on you—will you answer?»

Far away in the distance an invisible shadow sighed.

«I hear you, Anton.»

«Answer me!»

«What question do you want answered?»

«Zabulon—did he lie to me?»

«No.»

«Gesar, stop!»

«It's too late, Anton. Everything's going the way it's supposed to go. Trust me.»

«Gesar, stop!»

«You have no right to make any demands.»

«No right! If we are part of the Light, if we do Good, then I have every right!»

The boss didn't answer right away. I even thought he'd decided not to say anything else to me.

«All right. I'll be waiting for you in an hour at the Para Bar.»

«Where?»

«The Parachutists' Bar. Near the Turgenevskaya metro station, behind the old central post office.»

Then there was silence.

I took a step backward, out of the Twilight. It was an odd sort of place to meet. Was that where Gesar had had his showdown with the Day Watch? No, that was in some restaurant or other.

Oh, well, what did it matter—the Para Bar, Rosie O'Grady's, even the Chance Club. It wasn't important. Who cared?

But there was one other thing I had to find out before I met Gesar.

I took out my cell phone and dialed Svetlana's number. She answered immediately.

«Hi,» I said simply. «Are you at the summerhouse?»

«No.» She seemed startled by my brisk, businesslike tone. «I'm on my way into town.»

«Who with?»

She paused.

«With Ignat.»

«Good,» I said, quite sincerely. «Listen, do you know anything about chalk?»

«About what?»

This time the puzzlement was obvious.

«About the magical properties of chalk. Have they taught you anything about its uses in magic?»

«No, Anton. Are you sure you're all right?»

«I'm better than that.»

«Has something happened?»

The eternal female habit of asking every question in two or three different ways.

«Nothing special.»

«Do you want me…« She hesitated. «Do you want me to ask Olya?»

«Is she there with you as well?»

«Yes, the three of us are coming back to town together.»

«I don't think so. Thanks.»

«Anton…«

«What, Sveta?»

I walked over to the desk and opened the drawer with all my magical junk. I looked at the dull crystals, at the clumsily carved magic wand from the time when I still wanted to be a combat magician. I pushed the drawer back in.

«Forgive me.»

«There's nothing you need to be forgiven for.»

«Can I come around to your place?»

«How far away are you?»

«Halfway there.»

I shook my head and answered:

«It won't fit. I've got an important meeting. I'll call you back later.»

I cut off the call and smiled. Very often the truth can be malicious and false. For instance, when you tell only half the truth. Like telling someone you don't want to talk without explaining why.

Permit me to do Good through Evil. I don't have any other way right now.

Just to be sure I walked around the apartment, looking into the bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen. As far as I was able to tell, Zabulon really hadn't left any «presents» behind him.

I went back into the study, switched on my computer, and inserted the disk with the general database on magic. Typed in the password. Typed in the word «chalk.»

I hadn't been expecting anything special to come up. What I wanted to know could easily require such a high security clearance that it had never been included in any databases.

There were three entries for the word «chalk.»

The first was a reference to a chalk quarry where a first-grade Light Magician and a first-grade Dark Magician fought a duel in the fifteenth century. Both of them died of simple exhaustion of their powers—they didn't have enough strength left to emerge from the Twilight at the end of the duel. During the following five hundred years almost three thousand people had died at the site of the duel.

The second entry referred to the use of chalk for drawing magical symbols and protective circles. There was a lot more information here, and I read through it all quickly. There was nothing of interest. Using chalk had no particular advantages over charcoal, pencil, blood, or oil paint. Except maybe that it was easier to erase.

The third reference came in the section «Myths and Unconfirmed Data.» Of course, this section was full of rubbish like the use of silver and garlic in fighting vampires and descriptions of non-existent ceremonies and rituals.

But I'd come across cases before when genuine information had been completely forgotten and hidden away among the myths.

And then chalk was mentioned in the article «The Books of Fate.»

I read halfway through it and realized I'd hit the bull's-eye. The information was just lying there in full view, accessible to any novice magician—it might even be available in sources that were open to ordinary people.

The Books of Fate. Chalk.

It all fit.

I closed the file and switched off the laptop. Then I sat there for a while, chewing things over. Then I looked at the clock.

It was almost time for me to set out for my strange rendezvous with Gesar.

I took a shower and changed my clothes. I took three amulets with me—Zabulon's medallion, the Night Watch badge, and a combat disc Ilya had given to me—an ancient round piece of bronze a bit bigger than a five-ruble coin. I'd never used the disc before. Ilya had told me the amulet had only one charge left—maybe two at most.

I took my pistol out of its hiding place and checked the clip. Explosive silver bullets. Good against werewolves, of doubtful use against vampires, totally effective against Dark Magicians.

As if I were going off to war, not for a talk with my boss.

The cell phone rang in my pocket when I was already at the door.

«Anton?»

«Sveta?»

«Olga wants to talk to you; I'll give her the phone.»

«Okay,» I agreed, unlocking the door.

«Anton, I love you very much. Please don't do anything stupid.»

I couldn't think of anything to say. Olga took the phone.

«Anton. I want you to know that everything's already been decided. And it's all going to happen very soon.»

«Tonight,» I said.

«How do you know that?»

«I can just feel it. That was why the Watch was sent out of town, wasn't it? And why Svetlana was put into the right mood.»

«What do you know?»

«The Book of Destiny. Chalk. I understand everything now.»

«That's bad,» Olga said curtly. «Anton, you have to…«

«I don't have to do anything for anyone. Except for the Light inside me.»

I cut off the call and switched off the cell phone. I'd had enough. Gesar could easily contact me without any technical devices. Olga would only keep trying to change my mind. And Svetlana wouldn't understand what I was doing and why in any case.

I decided to see things through just as I was, all on my own.

«Sit down, Anton,» said Gesar.

The bar turned out to be absolutely tiny. Six or seven tables separated off by partitions, plus the bar itself. The air was filled with smoke. A television with the sound switched off, showing free-fall jumps. A photograph of the same thing on the wall—bodies in bright-colored overalls spread-eagled in flight. There weren't many people there, maybe because of the time: It was too late for lunch, and there was still a long time to go before the evening peak. I glanced around and saw Boris Ignatievich sitting in the corner.

The boss was not alone. There was a bowl of fruit on the table in front of him, and he was lazily plucking grapes off a bunch. An olive-skinned young man was sitting a short distance away from him, with his arms crossed. Our eyes met and I felt a slight but distinct pressure.

He was an Other too.

We looked at each other for about five seconds, gradually building up the pressure. He had powers, substantial powers, but he didn't have much experience. As soon as I got the chance, I relaxed my resistance, dodged the young man's probe, and scanned him before he had time to raise his defenses.

Other. Light. Grade four.

The young man grimaced as if he were in pain. He looked at Gesar with the eyes of a beaten dog.

«Let me introduce you,» said Gesar. «Anton Gorodetsky, Other, member of the Moscow Night Watch. Alisher Ganiev, Other, new member of the Moscow Night Watch.»

The courier.

I held out my hand and lowered my defenses.

«A Light One, grade two,» said Alisher, looking into my eyes. He bowed.

I shook my head and answered:

«Grade three.»

The young man glanced at Gesar again. This time he looked surprised, not guilty.

«Grade two,» the boss confirmed. «You're at the top of your form, Anton. I'm delighted for you. Sit down and we'll talk. Alisher, you observe.»

I took a seat opposite the boss.

«Do you know why I decided to meet here?» asked Gesar. «Try the grapes, they're very good.»

«How should I know? Maybe they have the best grapes in Moscow?»

Gesar laughed.

«Bravo. However, that's not a very important thing. We bought the fruit at the market.»

«The pleasant surroundings, then.»

«Nothing of the kind. Just one small room, and if you go through that door, there are two more tables and a pool table.»

«You're a secret parachutist, boss.»

«I haven't jumped for twenty years now,» Gesar countered imperturbably. «Anton, my dear boy, I came in here for a bite of potato and beef stroganoff simply in order to show you a micro-environment. A tiny little society. Just sit there for a while and relax. Alisher, a glass of beer for Anton! Take a look around, soldier. Look at the faces. Listen to the talk. Breathe in the air.»

I turned away from the boss and moved to the end of the wooden bench, so that I could at least see the other people there. Alisher was already standing at the bar, waiting for my beer.

The regulars in the Para Bar had strange faces. All alike in some strange, indefinable way. Distinctive eyes, distinctive gestures. Nothing really special, just the same stamp on every one.

«A team,» said the boss. «And a micro-environment. We could have had this conversation in the gay club Chance, or in the restaurant of the Central Writer's House, or in a snack bar next to some factory. That didn't matter. What did matter was that there had to be a small, close-knit team. More or less isolated from general society. It couldn't have been McDonald's or a luxurious restaurant; it had to be an official or unofficial club. And you know why? Because this is us. It's a model of our Watch.»

I didn't answer. I watched a young guy on crutches hobble up to the next table, wave away an invitation to sit down, lean on the partition, and start talking about something. The music drowned out his words, but I could absorb the general meaning through the twilight. A parachute that didn't open and had to be dumped. A landing with the reserve chute. A broken leg. And now six damn months without jumping!

«The public here has a very specific profile,» the boss continued calmly. «Risk. Intense thrills. Little understanding of other people. Their own slang. Problems normal people couldn't possibly understand. And also, incidentally, regular injuries and death. Do you like it here?»

I thought for a moment and said:

«No, you have to be one of the in crowd here. There's no other way you can be here.»

«Of course. It's interesting to drop into any micro-environment like this—once. After that you either accept its laws and join its little society, or you're rejected. Well, we're no different. In essential terms, that is. Every Other who has been found and has accepted his own nature is faced with a choice. He either joins the Watch on his side, becomes a soldier, a warrior, who inevitably risks his life. Or he keeps living an almost human life, without developing his special magical powers, making use of some of the advantages of an Other, but suffering all the disadvantages of living like that. The most painful situation is when the initial choice is wrong. When for some reason the Other doesn't wish to accept the laws of the Watch. But it's almost impossible to leave our organization. Tell me, Anton, could you live outside the Watch?»

Of course, the boss never makes abstract conversation.

«Probably not,» I admitted. «It would be hard, almost impossible in fact, for me to keep within the limits of what an ordinary Light Magician is allowed to do.»

«And without joining the Watch, you wouldn't be able to justify your magical actions by citing the interests of the struggle against Darkness. Right?»

«Right.»

«And that's where the difficulty lies, Antoshka, that's the whole problem.» The boss sighed. «Alisher, don't just stand there.»

He was really giving the young guy a hard time. But it wasn't hard to guess why: The courier had wormed his way into the Moscow Watch, and now he had to take the inevitable consequences.

«Your beer, Light One Anton.» The young guy put the glass in front of me with a brief nod.

I accepted the beer without saying anything. This young, talented magician wasn't to blame for anything. I was sure we could be friends. But just then I was actually feeling angry with him: The delivery Alisher had brought to Moscow would separate me from Svetlana forever.

«Anton, what are we going to do?» the boss asked.

«Just what, exactly, is the problem?» I answered, looking at him with the eyes of a devoted Saint Bernard.

«Svetlana. You're opposing her mission.»

«Of course.»

«Anton. There are basic principles involved here. Axioms. You have no right to object to the policy of the Watch on the basis of your own personal interests.»

«What have my own personal interests got to do with it?» I asked, genuinely surprised. «I regard the entire operation that's being planned as immoral. It won't be of any benefit to ordinary human beings. Like it or not, every attempt to bring about a fundamental change in human society has been a failure.»

«Sooner or later we shall succeed. Note that I don't even claim that this attempt will bring success. But the chances are better now than ever before.»

«I don't believe it.»

«You can lodge an appeal at the highest level.»

«Will they have time to consider it before the day Svetlana picks up the chalk and opens the Book of Destiny?»

The boss closed his eyes and sighed.

«No, they won't. It's all happening tonight, just as soon as our time begins. Are you happy now that you know when exactly it's all going to happen?»

«Boris Ignatievich,» I said, deliberately using the name by which I'd first known him. «Listen to me, please. You once left your homeland and came to Russia. Not to serve the interests of the Light, not for the sake of your career. Because of Olga. I don't know very much about your past history, how much hate and love, how much betrayal and nobility there is in it. But you have to understand me. Because you can.»

I don't know what kind of answer I'd expected. Maybe I thought he'd look away, or promise to cancel the project.

«I understand you very well, Anton,» the boss said with a nod. «In fact, you can't even imagine how well. That's exactly why the plan will go ahead.»

«But why?»

«Because, my boy, there's such a thing as destiny. And there's nothing stronger than destiny. Some are destined to change the world. Some are not. Some are destined to bring entire states to their knees, and some to stand in the wings holding the puppets' strings, with their hands covered in chalk dust. Anton, I know what I'm doing. Believe me.»

«I don't believe you.»

I got up, leaving my untouched beer with its wilting cap of foam. Alisher gave the boss an inquiring look, as if he were prepared to stop me.

«You have the right to do whatever you want,» said the boss. «The Light is in you, but the Twilight is always waiting behind you. You know where any false step will lead. And you know that I am willing to help you; I am obliged to help you.»

«Gesar, my mentor, thank you for everything that you have taught me,» I said with a bow, and the parachutists cast curious glances in my direction. «I believe I no longer have the right to expect your help. Please accept my gratitude.»

«You are free of all obligations to me,» Gesar replied calmly. «Act as your destiny requires of you.»

That was all. He cast off his former pupil as simply as that. I wondered how many pupils he'd had who failed to acknowledge his supreme goals and sacred ideals?

Hundreds, thousands.

«Goodbye, Gesar,» I said. I glanced at Alisher. «I wish you luck, new watchman.»

The young man looked at me reproachfully:

«If I may be allowed to say something…«

«Say it,» I told him.

«In your place, I would not be in any hurry, Light One Anton.»

«I've already lost too much time, Light One Alisher,» I said with a smile. I was used to thinking of myself as one of the most junior magicians in the Watch, but everything passes. And for this novice I was an authority. For the time being at least. «One day you will hear the sound of time rustling as it slips through your fingers like sand. Remember me then. I wish you luck.»

Chapter 6

Heat.

I was walking along Old Arbat Street—artists sketching cartoon portraits, musicians playing clichéd music, street traders all selling the same souvenirs, foreigners with the standard look of interest in their eyes, Muscovites in their usual irritated mood running past the stalls of sham craftwork.

Should I shake you all up a bit?

Should I put on a little show for you?

Juggle a few bolts of lightning? Swallow genuine fire? Make the paving stones open up to reveal a fountain of mineral water? Heal a dozen crippled beggars? Feed the homeless urchins darting around with cakes conjured up out of thin air?

What point would there be?

They'd toss me a handful of small change for the fireballs that should be used to kill creatures of evil. The mineral water fountain would turn out to be a broken water main. These crippled beggars are already healthier and richer than most of the people walking by. And the homeless urchins would run for it, because they learned a long time ago that there's no such thing as free cakes.

Yes, I could understand Gesar, I could understand all the higher magicians who'd been fighting against the Darkness for thousands of years. You can't live forever with a feeling of powerlessness. You can't keep sitting in the trenches forever: That kills the army more surely than the enemy's bullets.

But how did I come into it?

Did the banner of victory really have to be sewn out of the fabric of my love?

And how did these humans come into it?

Turning the world upside down and then turning it back again was easy enough, but who'd stop all the people from falling off?

Were we really incapable of learning anything?

I knew what Gesar was planning to do, or rather, what Svetlana was going to do on his instructions. I knew how it might turn out, and I could even imagine which loopholes in the Treaty would be used to justify interference with the Book of Destiny. I had information about when the act would be performed. The only thing I didn't know was the place of the operation and whose destiny was to be changed.

And that was a fatal gap in my knowledge.

Almost fatal enough to make me pay Zabulon a visit.

But then I'd be dispatched into the Twilight.

I was halfway along the Old Arbat when I sensed a surge of Power—very faint, at the very limits of my sensitivity. There was magical activity taking place somewhere very close, not very strong, but even so…

The Darkness!

Whatever I might think about Gesar, no matter how much I disagreed with him, I was still a soldier of the Night Watch.

I reached into my pocket for my amulet, summoned my shadow, and stepped into the Twilight.

Oh, how neglected everything was!

It was a long time since I'd walked round the center of Moscow in the Twilight.

Everything was covered with a thick carpet of blue moss. The slow oscillations of the short threads created an illusion of trembling water. Circles ran out from where I was standing as the moss simultaneously drank in my emotions and tried to creep away from me. But I wasn't interested in the Twilight's petty pranks right now.

I was not alone in the gray space under that sunless sky.

I looked for a second at the girl standing with her back to me, and I could feel a wicked smile spreading across my face. A smile unworthy of a Light Magician. Some «moderate intervention» this was!

A third-level magical intervention?

Oho!

That's very serious, my girl. So serious, you must be absolutely crazy. Third level's way beyond your powers; you must be using someone else's amulet.

But I'll use my own powers to investigate.

I walked up to her and she didn't even hear my steps on the soft blue carpet. The vague, shadowy forms of humans were sliding past us, and she was too absorbed in what she was doing.

«Anton Gorodetsky, Night Watch,» I said. «Alisa Donnikova, you're under arrest.»

The young witch screeched and swung round. She was holding an amulet in her hand, a crystal prism through which she had been viewing the people walking by. Her first instinctive gesture was to try to hide the amulet; then she tried to look at me through the prism.

I grabbed her arm and forced her to stop. We stood close to each other for a second as I slowly increased the pressure, twisting the witch's wrist. A scene like that between a man and a woman would have looked shameful. But for us Others, physical strength doesn't depend on our sex, or even on how well-developed our muscles are. Strength lies all around us—in the Twilight, in people. I couldn't tell how much Alisa might have extracted from the world around her. It could even be more than I had.

But I'd caught her at the scene of the crime. And there could be other Watch members nearby. Resisting a member of the other Watch who had officially declared you under arrest was cause for immediate elimination on the spot.

«I'm not resisting,» said Alisa, and she opened her fingers. The prism fell into the soft moss, and it swirled and seethed, enveloping the crystal amulet.

«The prism of power?» I asked rhetorically. «Alisa Donnikova, you have performed a magical intervention of the third level.»

«Fourth,» she replied quickly.

I shrugged.

«Third or fourth, that's of no real importance. It still means the Tribunal, Alisa. You're in big trouble.»

«I didn't do anything.» The witch was trying hard to look calm. «I have personal permission to carry the prism. I didn't make use of it.»

«Alisa, any higher magician can extract all the information from this thing.»

I reached down toward the ground, forcing the blue moss to part and the prism to jump up into my hand. It was cold, very cold.

«Even I can read the history from it,» I said. «Alisa Donnikova, Other, Dark Witch of the Day Patrol, fourth level of power, I hereby formally accuse you of violating the Treaty. If you offer resistance I shall be obliged to eliminate you. Put your hands behind your back.»

She obeyed. And then she started talking, quickly and urgently, trying desperately to persuade me:

«Anton, wait, please, listen to me. Yes, I did try out the prism, but you must understand, it's the first time I've ever been trusted with such a powerful amulet! Anton, I'm not so stupid as to attack people in the center of Moscow, and why would I want to? Anton, we're both Others! Can't we settle this amicably? Anton!»

«Amicably?» I said, putting the prism in my pocket. «Come on, let's go.»

«Anton, a fourth-level intervention, or third-level! Any third-level intervention carried out in the interests of the Light! Not like my stupid game with the prism, a genuine intervention!»

I could understand why she was panicking. This business could easily end in dematerialization. A Day Watch agent sucking the life out of people for her own personal ends—that would be a tremendous scandal! They'd hand Alisa over without the slightest hesitation.

«You have no authority to make such compromises. The leader of the Dark Ones will not ratify your promise.»

«Zabulon will confirm it!»

«Will he?» I was staggered by the certainty in her voice. She was probably Zabulon's lover. But even so, it was surprising. «Alisa, I once made an amicable agreement with you.»

«Yes, and I was the one who suggested overlooking your intervention.»

«And do you remember how it all turned out?» I asked with a smile.

«This is a different situation; I'm the one who's broken the law,» said Alisa, lowering her eyes. «You'll have the right to strike back. You don't need permission for third-level Light magic, do you? Or for any Light magic? You could remoralize twenty blackhearted scoundrels and turn them into righteous men. Incinerate ten murderers on the spot! Prevent a catastrophe, create a localized time warp! Anton, isn't that worth overlooking my stupid trick? Look around, everyone here's still alive! I hadn't done anything yet. I'd only just started…«

«Everything you say can be used against you.»

«Yes, I know, I know!»

There were tears glittering in her eyes. Probably quite genuine ones too. Beneath her nature as a witch she was still a perfectly ordinary girl. A pretty girl frightened by the mistake she'd made. And was it her fault that she'd ended up on the side of the Darkness?

I felt my emotional shield starting to buckle and shook my head:

«Don't try to put pressure on me!»

«Anton, please, let's settle this business amicably. Wouldn't you like the right to a third-level intervention?»

Oho, wouldn't I just? It was every Light Magician's dream to be given carte blanche like that! Just for a moment to feel that he was fighting like a genuine soldier and not sitting in the trenches, being eaten by lice and gazing dejectedly at the white flag of truce.

«You have no right to make such proposals,» I said firmly.

«I shall have!» Alisa shook her head and took a deep breath. «Zabulon!»

I waited, clutching the little combat disc in my hand.

«Zabulon, I summon you!» Her voice had become a high-pitched screech. I noticed the human shadows around us beginning to move a little faster: A vague, inexplicable feeling of alarm was making the people lengthen their strides.

Would her summons reach the head of the Dark Ones again?

Like that time at the Maharajah restaurant, when Zabulon had almost killed me with Shahab's Lash?

But he hadn't killed me. He'd missed.

Even though the whole operation had been planned by Gesar, and Zabulon really seemed to believe that I was guilty of killing Dark Ones.

Did that mean he'd already had other plans in mind for me?

Or had Gesar intervened, secretly and unobtrusively, diverted the streaks of lightning away from me?

I didn't know. As always, I didn't have enough information for analysis. I could have come up with thirty-three different explanations, all contradicting each other.

I was almost hoping Zabulon wouldn't respond. Then I'd be able to pull Alisa out of the Twilight, call in the boss or one of the operatives, hand the fool over to them, and receive a bonus at the end of the month. But what did I care about bonuses right now?

«Zabulon!» There was genuine supplication in her voice. «Zabulon!»

She was crying now, without even realizing it. The mascara had run under her eyes.

«Don't waste your time,» I said. «Let's go.»

Just at that moment a Dark Portal opened only two meters away from us.

First there was a blast of cold that chilled me to the bone, and I started thinking fondly about the heat in the human world. The moss burst into flames and burned all the way down the street. Naturally, Zabulon hadn't set it on fire deliberately; it was just that the opening of the portal had spilled so much Power that the moss couldn't assimilate it all.

«Zabulon,» whispered Alisa.

From out of the paving stones about five meters away a ray of violet light shot up into the sky. The flash blinded me and I automatically squeezed my eyes shut. When I looked in that direction again, there was a bluish-black bubble hanging in the gray mist, with something looking vaguely like a man clambering out of it, bristling with spiny scales. Zabulon had responded to the summons by traveling through the second or third level of the Twilight. The time we were moving in would have seemed as slow there as human time did to us.

I suddenly had the old feeling of powerlessness that I thought I'd come to terms with a long time ago. The abilities that Zabulon or Gesar used so casually were so far beyond me that I simply couldn't comprehend them.

«Zabulon!» Still holding her hands behind her back, Alisa dashed toward the monstrous creature and pressed herself against it, burying her face in the bristly scales. «Help me, help me!»

Of course, Zabulon hadn't appeared in demonic form just to make an impression on me. In human form he wouldn't have survived a minute in the deep layers of the Twilight. And he'd probably have to travel for hours, if not days.

The monster cast a baleful glance at me from its narrow slits of eyes. A long, forked tongue slithered out of its mouth and slid across Alisa's head, leaving a trail of white slime on her hair. A scaly hand with long claws took hold of Alisa by the chin and gently lifted up her head. Their eyes met. The exchange of information was brief.

«Little fool!» the demon roared. The tongue withdrew into the mouth and the jaws clacked shut, just missing it. «Greedy little fool!»

Well. So much for my right to a third-level intervention.

The demon's short tail lashed Alisa across the legs, tearing the silk dress and knocking her to the ground. The monster's eyes flashed; the witch was enveloped in a blue glow and she froze.

So much for the help Alisa had wanted.

«May I take my prisoner away, Zabulon?» I asked.

The monster stood there, swaying on its crooked paws, with the claws on its toes sliding in and out. Then he took a step and stood between me and the motionless young woman.

«I ask you to confirm the legality of the arrest,» I said. «Otherwise I shall be obliged to summon help.»

The demon began transforming. The proportions of its body changed and its scales disappeared, its tail was drawn back into its body, and its penis stopped looking like a club studded with nails. Finally clothes appeared on Zabulon's body.

«Wait a moment, Anton.»

«What should I wait for?»

The Dark Magician's face remained inscrutable. Presumably in his demonic form he felt far more emotions, or at least he didn't feel any need to conceal them.

«I confirm the pledge made by Alisa.»

«What?»

«If this matter is not made official, the Day Watch will accept any magical intervention you make, up to and including the third level.»

He seemed to be absolutely serious.

I gulped. A promise like that from the head of the Day Watch…

Never trust the Dark Ones.

«Any intervention up to and including the second level.»

«Are you that eager to avoid a scandal?» I asked. «Or do you need her for something?»

A tremor ran across Zabulon's face.

«I need her. I love her.»

«I don't believe you.»

«As the head of the Moscow Day Watch I ask you, watchman Anton, to settle this matter amicably. It is possible, since my ward Alisa Donnikova had not yet caused any significant harm to humans. As compensation for her attempt» —Zabulon laid strong emphasis on the last word—«to perform a magical intervention of the third level, the Day Watch will accept any Light intervention that you may perform up to and including the second level. I do not ask for this agreement to remain secret. I do not impose any restrictions on your actions. I confirm that for the offense she has committed Day Watch agent Alisa will be severely punished. May the Darkness bear witness to my words.»

A faint trembling. A rumbling under the ground, the roar of an approaching hurricane. A tiny black ball appeared on Zabulon's open palm, spinning rapidly.

«What do you say?» asked Zabulon.

I ran my tongue over my lips and looked at Alisa's magically frozen body. She was a real bitch, no doubt about it. And I had a personal score to settle with her.

Maybe that was why I didn't feel like settling this business with a compromise? Maybe it had nothing to do with the danger of an agreement with the Darkness? Alisa had tried to use the prism of power to extract part of the life energy from humans. That was third– or fourth-level magic. I'd be able to perform a second-level intervention, and that was a very, very big deal. A genuinely massive intervention! A city without a single crime for a whole day. A brilliant and unequivocally good intervention. How many times in the history of the Night Watch had we needed to make a third– or fourth-level intervention but didn't have the right, and we'd had to just go ahead and risk it, terrified by how the other side might respond?

And now I could have a second-level intervention for free, or as good as.

«May the Light bear witness to my words,» I said, and held my hand out to Zabulon.

It was the first time I'd ever called on the primordial powers to witness anything. I only knew it didn't require any special incantations. And there was no real guarantee that the Light would deign to become involved in our affairs.

A petal of white flame flared up on my open palm.

Zabulon winced, but he didn't take his hand away. We sealed the agreement with a handshake, the Darkness and the Light coming together. I felt a stab of pain, like a blunt needle piercing my flesh.

«The agreement is sealed,» said the Dark Magician.

He frowned too. He had also felt the pain.

«Do you hope to gain from this?» I asked.

«Of course. I always hope to gain. And I usually do.»

At least Zabulon wasn't obviously delighted with the deal we'd made. Whatever he might be hoping for as a result of our agreement, he wasn't completely certain of success.

«I've found out what the courier brought to Moscow from the East and why.»

Zabulon smiled gently.

«Excellent. I find the situation upsetting, and it is a great relief to know that now my concern will be shared by others.»

«Zabulon, has there ever been a single case when the Night Watch and the Day Watch collaborated? Genuine collaboration, not just catching violators and psychopaths?»

«No. In any collaboration one side or the other would be the loser.»

«I'll bear that in mind.»

«You do that.»

We even bowed politely to each other. As if we weren't two magicians on opposite sides, an agent of the Light and a servant of the Darkness, but two acquaintances who got along perfectly well.

Then Zabulon went back to Alisa's motionless body, lifted it up easily, and threw it across his shoulder. I was expecting him to withdraw from the Twilight, but instead of that the leader of the Dark Ones gave me a condescending smile and stepped into the portal. It remained visible for a moment, and then began to fade. I was going a different way.

It was only then I realized how tired I felt. The Twilight likes it when we enter it, and it likes it even more when we're agitated. The Twilight's an insatiable whore, glad to take on anyone.

I chose a spot where there weren't many people and tore myself out of my shadow.

The eyes of the people walking by swung away in the usual way. You meet us so often during the day, you humans… Light Ones and Dark Ones, magicians and werewolves, witches and healers. You look at us, but you're not allowed to see us. May it always be that way.

We can live for hundreds and thousands of years. We're very hard to kill. And for us the problems that make up human life are no more than a primary-school pupil's distress at his bad handwriting.

But there's a downside to everything. I'd gladly trade places with you, humans. Take this ability to see the shadow and enter the Twilight. Take the protection of the Watch and the ability to influence people's minds.

Give me the peace of mind that I have lost forever!

Someone jostled me to get me out of the way. A tough-looking young guy with a shaved head, a cell phone on his belt, and a gold chain around his neck. He looked me up and down disdainfully, muttered something through his teeth, and swaggered on down the street. The girlfriend clinging to his arm made a rather unsuccessful attempt to imitate his glance, the kind that petty gangsters use for jerks who are a «soft touch.»

I laughed out loud. Yes, I probably looked a fine sight! Standing stock still in the middle of the street, apparently ogling at a stand covered with ugly bronze figurines, wooden matryoshka dolls with politicians' faces, and fake Khokhloma painted boxes.

I had the right to shake up the entire street. To perform a mass remoralization—then the guy with the shaven head would take a job as an orderly in a mental hospital and his girlfriend would dash to the train station and go to see the old mother she'd managed to forget, somewhere out in the sticks.

I wanted to do good—my hands were just itching to do it!

And that was why I mustn't.

The heart might be pure and the hands might be hot, but the head still had to be cool.

I was an ordinary, rank-and-file Other. I didn't have the power granted to Gesar or Zabulon, and I never would have. Maybe that was why I took a different view of what was happening. And I couldn't even use this unexpected gift—the right to use Light magic. That would be joining in the game that was being played out above my head.

My only chance was to drop out of the game.

And take Svetlana with me.

And in the process ruin the operation the Night Watch had been preparing for so long! Stop being a field agent of the Watch! Become an ordinary Light Magician, using mere crumbs of my powers. That was in the best case, of course—in the worst case scenario it was the eternal Twilight for me.

Today, today at midnight.

Where? And who? Whose Book of Destiny would the sorceress open? Olga had said they'd been planning the operation for twelve years. Twelve years spent searching for a Great Sorceress who could use the little piece of chalk that had been kept safe all that time. Stop!

I could have howled out loud at my own stupidity. But my expression probably said it all for me anyway, and why put it into words if it's already written on your face?

Higher magicians plan many moves ahead. There are no accidents in their games. There are queens and there are pawns. But there are no superfluous pieces!

Egor!

The boy who had almost become a victim of illegal hunting. Who'd entered the Twilight in a state of mind that had nudged him toward the Dark Side. The boy whose destiny was still not determined, whose aura still had all the colors of a child's. A unique case. I'd been amazed when I saw him for the first time.

I'd been amazed, and then forgotten the moment I found out the kid's powers had been artificially increased by the boss to mislead the Dark Ones and allow Egor to offer at least some resistance to the vampires.

And for me he'd become a personal failure—after all, I was the first one to discover he was an Other—and a good person, at least so far, and a future enemy in the eternal struggle between Good and Evil. The memory of his undecided destiny had remained buried somewhere deep under all the rest.

He could still become absolutely anyone. His future potential was indeterminate. An open book. A Book of Destiny.

He was the one who would stand in front of Svetlana when she picked up the piece of chalk. And he would do it gladly, once Gesar had explained what it was all about. A serious, logical explanation. The boss of the Night Watch, the leader of the Light Ones of Moscow, a great and ancient magician—he'd be able to explain everything clearly. Gesar would talk about correcting mistakes. And it would be the truth. Gesar would talk about the great future that would open up for Egor. And even that would be true! The Dark Ones could lodge a thousand protests, but the Inquisition would certainly take into account that the boy had initially suffered from their actions.

Svetlana would certainly be told that I was depressed by my failure with Egor. And that the main reason the boy had suffered was because the Watch had been busy saving her.

She wouldn't even hesitate.

She'd accept everything she was told to do.

She'd pick up the piece of ordinary chalk that could be used to draw squares for hopscotch in the street or to write «2 + 2 = 4» on a school blackboard.

And she'd start shaping a destiny that hadn't been defined yet.

What were they planning to make him into?

Who?

A chief, the leader of new parties and revolutions?

A prophet of religions that hadn't been invented yet?

A thinker who would found a new school of social thought?

A musician, a poet, a writer, whose work would alter the consciousness of millions?

Just how many years into the future did the plan of the powers of Light extend?

The original essential nature of an Other could not be changed. Egor would always be a very weak magician, but thanks to the intervention of the Night Watch, he would be a Light Magician.

And in order to alter the destiny of the human world, you didn't have to be an Other. It could even get in the way. It would be much better to have the support of the Watch while you led the human crowd that was so much in need of the happiness we had invented for it.

And he would lead them. I didn't know how, and I didn't know where, but he would lead them. But that was when the Dark Ones would make their move. An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.

No, we hadn't learned a thing. Probably because we didn't want to.

But at least I still had a bit of time in hand. And the right to make my move. My only move.

If only I knew what it was.

Should I appeal to Svetlana not to accept what Gesar said, not to get involved in higher magic, not to change anyone else's destiny?

But why should she agree? Everything was being done correctly. Mistakes that had been made were being put right, a happy future was being created for a single individual and humanity as a whole. I was being relieved of the burden of the mistake I'd made. Svetlana was being relieved of the knowledge that her good fortune had been paid for by someone else's tragedy. She was entering the ranks of the Great Sorceresses. What did my vague doubts mean compared to all that? And what were they really?

How much of them was genuine concern, and how much petty self-interest? Where was the Light, where was the Darkness?

«Hey, friend!»

The street trader who owned the stall I was standing in front of was staring at me. Not really an angry look, just a bit annoyed.

«You buying anything?»

«Do I look like an idiot?» I asked him.

«Sure you do. If you're not buying, move on.»

From where he stood he was right. But I was in the mood to talk back.

«You don't realize how lucky you are. I'm collecting a crowd for you, attracting customers.»

He was a colorful kind of character. Stocky, red-faced, with huge thick arms, rippling masses of fat and muscle. He sized me up, obviously didn't see anything threatening, and got ready to make some caustic remark.

Then suddenly he smiled.

«Okay, if you're collecting a crowd, put a bit more effort into it. Pretend to buy something. You can even pretend to pay me some money.»

This was a pleasant surprise.

I smiled back at him:

«Would you like me to buy something for real?»

«What would you do that for? This is garbage for the tourists.» The trader stopped smiling, but there was no tension or aggression left in his face. «This damn heat, I keep losing my temper. I wish it would rain.»

I looked up at the sky and shrugged. Something seemed to be changing. Something had shifted in the transparent blue dome of the heavenly oven.

«I think it's going to,» I told him.

«Great.»

We nodded to each other and I walked away, slipping into the stream of people.

I didn't know what to do, but I already knew where to go. And that was a good start.

Chapter 7

Our powers are borrowed to a large extent.

The Dark Ones draw theirs from the suffering of others. Things are a lot simpler for them. They don't even have to cause people any pain. They can just wait. Just keep their eyes open and keep sipping away at people's suffering, like drinking a cocktail through a straw.

We can do the same, only with one small difference. We can draw strength from people who are feeling good, when they're happy. But there's one little difficulty that makes the process easy for the Dark Ones and almost forbidden to us. Happiness and sorrow are not just two levels on a single scale of human emotions. If they were, there'd be no such thing as radiant sorrow or malicious joy. They're two parallel processes, two equal currents of Power, which Others can feel and use.

When a Dark Magician drinks in someone's pain, it only increases.

When a Light Magician takes someone's joy, it decreases.

We can absorb power at any moment. But we very rarely allow ourselves to do it.

That day I decided that I was entitled.

I took a little bit from a couple locked in each other's arms at the entrance to the metro. They were happy, very happy just then. But I could tell that the lovers were parting, and for a long time, and sadness would inevitably come to them anyway. I decided I had a right to do it. Their joy was bright and rich, like a bouquet of scarlet roses, proud and delicate.

I touched a child as he ran past—he was happy; he didn't feel the oppressive heat; he was running to buy an ice cream. He would soon restore his power. It was as simple and pure as wild flowers. A bouquet of daisies that I gathered without hesitation.

I saw an old woman in a window. The shadow of death was already hovering over her, she could probably sense it herself. But she was still smiling. Her grandson had come around to see her that day. Probably only to check if his grandmother were still alive, or if the expensive apartment in the center of Moscow were free now. She understood that too, but she was still happy. I felt ashamed, unbearably ashamed, but I touched her and took a little Power. A fading orange and yellow bouquet of asters and autumn leaves…

I walked along just as I used to in my nightmares, when I handed out happiness to everyone on all sides, making sure no one went away without his share. But the trail I left behind me now was quite different. Slightly faded smiles, wrinkled foreheads, lips pressed together in doubt.

It was pretty easy to see where I'd been.

If I met a Day Watch patrol, they wouldn't stop me.

And even if any Light Ones saw what was happening, they wouldn't say anything.

I was doing what I thought was necessary. What I believed I had a right to do. Borrowing. Stealing. And the way I used the Power I'd taken would seal my destiny.

Either I'd pay back all my debts in full.

Or the Twilight would open its arms to embrace me.

When a Light Magician starts drawing Power from humans, he's gambling everything on a single throw of the dice. And the usual balancing of accounts between the actions of the two Watches didn't apply.

Not only did the amount of Good that was done have to exceed the amount of Evil I had caused; I would have to be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'd paid everything back in full.

The lovers, the children, the old people. The group drinking beer by the statue. I'd been afraid their happiness might turn out to be a sham, but it was genuine, and I took their Power.

Forgive me.

I could apologize to every one of them three times over. I could pay for what I'd taken. But I wouldn't really mean it.

I was simply fighting for my love. In the first place. And only after that for you, the humans for whom this new happiness was being prepared.

But what if I was really doing that as well?

What if, every time you fought for your love, you were fighting for the whole world?

For the whole world—not against the whole world.

Power!

Power.

Power?

I gathered it in crumbs, sometimes gently, sometimes in crude haste, to prevent my hand from trembling and my eyes from looking away in shame, as I took almost all there was.

Maybe happiness was a rare experience anyway for this young guy?

I didn't know.

Power!

Maybe without this smile, this woman would lose someone's love?

Power.

Maybe tomorrow this strong man with the ironic smile would die!

Power.

The amulets in my pockets wouldn't be of any use. There wasn't going to be a fight. The «top form» the boss had mentioned wouldn't help me either. That wouldn't be enough. And the right to carry out a second-level intervention that Zabulon had granted me so generously was a trap. There wasn't a shred of doubt about that. He'd framed his own girlfriend, drawn the lines of probability together so that we'd meet, and then handed me his deadly gift with a mournful expression on his face. I couldn't see far enough into the future to be sure the Good I did would never become Evil.

But if you have no weapon—accept one, even from the hands of your enemy.

Power!

Power.

Power!

If I'd still been connected with Gesar by the slim thread that maintains contact between a young magician and his mentor, he would have sensed what was happening a long time ago. Sensed the energy building up inside me, the massive energy I'd gathered for some unknown purpose.

What would he have done?

It made no sense to try to stop a magician who had started down this path.

I was walking in the direction of the Economic Exhibition metro station. I knew where it was all going to happen. Coincidences aren't coincidences when they're controlled by higher magicians. The absurd «house on stilts,» the matchbox standing on its end—that was where Zabulon had lost the battle for Svetlana; that was where Gesar had unmasked the Light Magician he'd placed in the Inquisition, teaching Svetlana a lesson in the process.

The focus of Power for the whole complex maneuver.

For the third time.

I didn't feel like eating or drinking at all, but I stopped once, bought a coffee and drank it. It was tasteless, as if the last drop of caffeine had been filtered out of it. People started making way for me, even though I was walking in the ordinary world. The magical tension around me was rising.

There was no way I could conceal my approach.

But I didn't want to creep up on them anyway.

A pregnant young woman was walking along the sidewalk cautiously. I shuddered when I saw that she was smiling. And I almost turned away when I realized that her unborn child was smiling too in its own safe little world.

Their Power was like pale-pink peonies—a large blossom and round bud that hadn't unfolded yet.

I had to gather what I found along my way.

With no hesitation or pity.

There was something happening in the world around me too.

The heat seemed to have got stronger. In a single desperate surge.

The Dark and the Light Magicians must have had good reason to spend all those days trying to disperse the heat. Something was going to happen. I stopped and looked up at the sky through the twilight.

Subtle, twisted coils of swirling air.

Sparks on the horizon.

Gloom in the southeast.

A glowing nimbus round the needle of the Ostankino television tower.

It was going to be a strange night.

I touched a little girl running by and took the naive joy she felt because her father had come home sober. Like snapping off a briar branch, prickly and fragile.

Forgive me.

It was almost eleven o'clock when I reached the «house on stilts.»

The last person I touched was a drunken factory worker, slumped against the wall in the alley. The same alley where I'd killed a Dark One for the first time. He was barely even conscious. But happy.

I took his Power too. A dusty, trampled stem of coarse plantain, a crude, dirty-brown candle.

That was Power too.

As I crossed the road, I realized I wasn't alone. I summoned my shadow and withdrew into the Twilight world.

The building was cordoned off.

It was the strangest cordon I'd ever seen. Dark Ones and Light Ones jumbled up together. I spotted Semyon and nodded to him. He gave me a calm, slightly reproachful look. Tiger Cub, Bear, Ilya, Ignat…

When had they been summoned? While I was wandering around the city, gathering Power? Sorry about that vacation, guys.

And the Dark Ones. Even Alisa was there. The witch was a terrible sight: Her face looked like a paper mask that had been crumpled and straightened out again. It looked as if Zabulon hadn't been lying when he told me she'd be punished. Alisher was standing beside Alisa, and when I caught his eye, I could tell the two of them would clash in mortal combat. Maybe not now. But someday.

I stepped through the ring.

«This is a restricted zone,» said Alisher.

«This is a restricted zone,» echoed Alisa.

«I have a right to enter.»

I had enough Power in me to enter without permission. Only the Great Magicians could stop me now, but they weren't there.

They didn't try to stop me. Someone, either Gesar or Zabulon, or maybe both, must have ordered them just to warn me.

«Good luck,» I heard someone whisper behind me. I swung round and caught Tiger Cub's eye. I nodded.

The entrance hall was empty. And the house had gone quiet, like the time when the immense inferno vortex was spinning over Svetlana's head: the Evil that she had summoned against herself.

I walked on through the gray gloom. The floor echoed hollowly under my feet. In the Twilight world even the ground responded to magic; even the shades of human buildings did.

The trapdoor to the roof was open. Nobody was trying to put any obstacles in my way. The trouble was I didn't know if I really ought to be pleased about that.

I emerged from the Twilight. I couldn't see any point in it. Not now.

I started climbing the ladder.

The first person I saw was Maxim.

He looked quite different from the way he had before, the spontaneous Light Magician, the Maverick who had killed minions of the Darkness for years. Maybe they'd done something to him. Or maybe he'd just changed. There are some people who make ideal executioners.

Maxim had been lucky. He'd become an executioner. An Inquisitor. Standing above the Light and the Darkness, serving everybody—and nobody. He had his arms crossed on his chest and his head slightly lowered. Something about him reminded me of Zabulon, the first time I'd seen him. And something reminded me of Gesar. When I appeared, Maxim raised his head slightly and cast a casual glance at me. Then he lowered his gaze.

So I really was allowed in on the whole show.

Zabulon was standing at one side, wrapped in a light raincoat. He took no notice of my arrival. He'd known I'd be there anyway.

Gesar, Svetlana, and Egor were standing together. They gave me a much livelier reception.

«So you came after all?» the boss asked.

I nodded and looked at Svetlana. She was wearing a long white dress and her hair was hanging loose. She had a small, glittering box made of white morocco leather in her hand. It looked as if it was meant for a brooch or a medallion.

«Anton, you know then?» Egor shouted.

If anybody there was happy, he was. Perfectly happy.

«Yes, I know,» I answered. I walked up to him and ruffled his hair.

His Power was like a yellow dandelion.

Now I felt like I'd collected all I could.

«Full to the brim?» asked Gesar. «Anton, what are you planning to do?»

I didn't answer. Something was bothering me. There was something wrong here.

That was it! Why wasn't Olga there?

Had the final briefing already been given? Did Svetlana already know what she had to do?

«A piece of chalk,» I said. «A little piece of chalk, pointed at both ends. You can use it to write on anything. In a Book of Destiny, for instance. Cross out old lines, write in new ones.»

«Anton, you're not going to tell us anything we don't already know,» the boss said calmly.

«Has permission been given?» I asked.

Gesar looked at Maxim. As if he could feel the glance, the Inquisitor raised his head and said in a hollow voice:

«Permission has been given.»

«The Day Watch wishes to object,» Zabulon said in a dull voice.

«Denied,» Maxim replied indifferently and lowered his head back onto his chest.

«If a Great Sorceress picks up the chalk,» I said, «every line in the Book of Destiny will take a particle of her soul. And return it to her, changed. You can only change a person's destiny by giving away your own soul.»

«I know,» said Sveta. She smiled. «I'm sorry, Anton. I think this is the right thing to do. It will be good for everyone.»

There was a brief glint of concern in Egor's eyes. He'd sensed something was wrong here.

«Anton, you're a warrior of the Watch,» said Gesar. «If you have objections, you may speak.»

Objections? To what? To Egor becoming a Light Magician instead of a Dark one? To an attempt, even if it was bound to fail, to bring Good to humans? To Svetlana becoming a Great Sorceress?

Even at the cost of sacrificing everything human she still had inside her.

«There's nothing I wish to say,» I said.

Did I imagine it, or was there a glint of surprise in Gesar's eyes?

It was hard to tell what the Higher Magician was really thinking.

«Let's begin,» he said. «Svetlana, you know what you have to do.»

«I do,» she said, looking at me. I moved a few steps away from her. So did Gesar. Now there were just the two of them standing together—Svetlana and Egor. Both equally anxious. Equally tense. I looked across at Zabulon; he was waiting. Svetlana opened the little box—the click of the catch sounded like a gunshot—and slowly took out the piece of chalk, almost as if she didn't want to. It was tiny. Had it really been worn down so much by the Light's attempts to alter the destiny of the world over the millennia?

Gesar sighed.

Svetlana squatted down and began drawing a circle around herself and the boy.

I had nothing to say. I didn't know what to do.

I'd collected so much Power that it was bursting out of me.

I had the right to do Good.

There was just one little thing missing—I didn't understand exactly how.

The wind stirred. Timidly, cautiously. Then it faded away.

I looked up and shuddered. Something was happening. Here, in the human world, the sky was covered with clouds. I hadn't even noticed them appear.

Svetlana finished drawing the circle and stood up.

I tried glancing at her through the Twilight and immediately turned away. She seemed to be holding a red-hot coal in her hand. Was she feeling any pain?

«There's a storm approaching,» Zabulon said from one side. «A real storm, the kind we haven't had for a long time now.»

He laughed.

Nobody paid any attention to what he said. Except perhaps the wind—it started blowing more evenly, growing stronger. I looked down at the street; everything was calm. Svetlana was tracing the chalk through the air as if she were drawing something only she could see. A square outline with some design inside it.

Egor gave a quiet groan and threw his head back. I took half a step forward and stopped. I couldn't get across the barrier. And there was no point anyway.

When you don't know what to do, don't trust anything. Not your cool head, not your pure heart, not your hot hands.

«Anton!»

I looked at the boss. Gesar seemed worried.

«That's not just a storm, Anton. It's a hurricane. People will be killed.»

«The Dark Ones?» I asked simply.

«No, the elements.»

«Maybe you overdid it slightly with the concentration of Power?» I asked. The boss ignored the jibe.

«Anton, what level of magical intervention are you allowed?»

Ah, of course, he knew about my deal with Zabulon.

«Second.»

«You can stop the hurricane,» said Gesar. A simple statement of fact. «Reduce it to no more than a cloudburst. You've collected enough Power.»

The wind sprang up again. And this time it wasn't going to stop. It tore and tugged at us, as if it had decided to blow us all off the roof. The rain started lashing down.

«It looks like your last chance,» the boss added. «But then, it's up to you.»

The defensive shield sprang up around him with a glassy, tinkling sound. It was as if Gesar had suddenly been covered with a soft cellophane bag. It was the first time I'd seen a magician use such defensive measures against the ordinary excesses of the elements.

Svetlana continued drawing the Book of Destiny, with her dress billowing out around her. Egor didn't move a muscle, as if he were crucified on an invisible cross. Maybe he couldn't see or understand what was going on. What happens to someone when his old destiny is taken away and he still hasn't been given a new one?

«Gesar, the typhoon you're about to unleash will make this storm look like nothing,» I shouted.

The wind almost drowned out my words.

«That's inevitable,» Gesar replied. He seemed to be speaking in a whisper, but every word was perfectly clear. «It's already happening.»

The Book of Destiny had become visible even in the human world. Of course, Svetlana hadn't been drawing it in the literal sense of the word; she'd been extracting it from the deepest levels of the Twilight. Making a copy, so that any changes she made in it would be reflected in the original. The Book of Destiny looked like a model, a replica, made out of fiery threads of flame hanging motionless in the air. The raindrops sizzled when they touched it.

And now Svetlana would start changing Egor's destiny.

And later, decades later, Egor would change the destiny of the world.

As always, trying to shift it toward the Good.

And, as always, failing.

I staggered. In a single instant, completely without warning, the strong wind had become a hurricane. The scene around me was incredible. I saw cars stop on the avenue up close against the curb—as far away as possible from the trees. A huge billboard collapsed onto an intersection without a single sound—the roaring of the wind completely drowned out the crash. A few little figures made a belated dash for the buildings, as if they hoped to find shelter by the walls.

Svetlana stopped. The red-hot coal was still glowing in her hand.

«Anton!»

I could hardly make out what she was saying.

«Anton, what should I do? Tell me, Anton, should I do this?»

The chalk circle was protecting her but not completely—the clothes were still being torn off her body—but at least it allowed her to stay on her feet.

Everything else seemed to have disappeared. I looked at her, and at the glowing piece of chalk, already poised to change another person's destiny. Svetlana was waiting for an answer, but I had nothing to say to her. Because I didn't know the answer either.

I lifted my arms up toward the raging heavens. I saw the spectral blossoms of Power in my hands.

«Can you handle it?» Zabulon asked sympathetically. «The storm's quite wild already.»

Even through the clamor of the hurricane, I could hear his voice as clearly as the boss's.

Gesar sighed.

I opened my hands and turned the palms toward the sky—the sky where there were no stars, the sky full of dark, roiling clouds, torrents of rain, flashes of lightning.

It was one of the simplest spells. Almost the first one everybody was taught.

Remoralization.

Without any limiting conditions.

«Don't do that!» Gesar shouted. «Don't you dare!»

In one swift movement he dashed across to shield Svetlana and Egor from me. As if that could stop the spell. There was nothing that could stop it now.

A ray of light that human beings couldn't see shot out of my open hands. It was the scraps that I'd gathered so mercilessly from all those people. The scarlet flame of roses, the pale-pink of peonies, the yellow glow of asters, white daisies, and almost black orchids.

Zabulon laughed quietly behind my back.

Svetlana stood there, holding the chalk poised over the Book of Destiny.

Egor was frozen in front of her, with his arms flung out.

Pieces on a chess board. The Power was in my hands. I'd never had so much Power. It was overflowing; I could direct it at absolutely anyone.

I smiled at Svetlana. And very slowly raised my palms with their fountain of rainbow light toward my own face.

«No!»

Zabulon's howl didn't cut through the roar of the hurricane; it completely drowned it. A bolt of lightning flashed through the sky. The leader of the Dark Ones rushed toward me, but Gesar stepped out to meet him, and the Dark Magician stopped. I didn't really see all this, I felt it. My face was enveloped in the shimmering colors. My head was spinning. I couldn't feel the wind anymore.

There was nothing left except a rainbow, a never-ending rainbow, and I was drowning in it.

The wind raged all around me without touching me. I looked at Sveta and heard the invisible wall that had always separated us breaking down. Breaking down and forming a protective barrier around us. Her fluttering hair settled gently around her face.

«Did you use it all on yourself?»

«Yes,» I said.

«Everything you collected?»

She still couldn't believe it. Svetlana knew what the price for borrowed Power was.

«Every last drop!» I answered. I had an incredibly light feeling.

«Why?» The sorceress held out her hand toward me. «Why, Anton? When you could have stopped this storm? You could have brought happiness to thousands of people. How could you use it all on yourself?»

«In order to avoid making a mistake,» I explained. I felt slightly embarrassed that a Great Sorceress like her didn't understand such a minor detail.

Svetlana said nothing for a moment. Then she glanced at the piece of chalk glowing in her hand.

«What should I do, Anton?»

«You've already opened the Book of Destiny.»

«Anton! Who's right? Gesar or you?»

I shook my head.

«You decide for yourself.»

Svetlana frowned.

«Anton, is that all? Why did you take so much Light from others? What have you wasted your second-level magic on?»

«Listen to me,» I said, not sure how much conviction there was in my voice. Even now I wasn't entirely convinced myself. «Sometimes the most important thing isn't to do something. Sometimes it's more important to not do anything. Some things you have to decide for yourself, without any advice. From me, or Gesar, or Zabulon, or the Light or the Darkness. All on your own.»

She shook her head.

«No!»

«Yes. You must decide for yourself. And nobody can relieve you of that responsibility. And whatever you do, you'll always regret what you didn't do.»

«Anton, I love you!»

«I know. And I love you. That's why I won't say anything.»

«And you call that love?»

«There isn't any other kind.»

«I need your advice!» she shouted. «Anton, I need your advice!»

«We all create our own destinies,» I said. It was a little bit more than I ought to have said. «Decide.»

The piece of chalk in her hand flared up in a slim needle of fire as she turned back to the Book of Destiny. She swept her hand through the air, and I heard the pages rustling under the blinding eraser.

Light and Darkness are only spots on the pages of destiny. A flourish of the hand. A rapid stroke.

Words of fire streaming across the page.

Svetlana opened her fingers and the chalk of Destiny fell at her feet. As heavily as if it were a lead bullet. The hurricane tumbled it across the roof, but I managed to bend down and put my hand over it.

The Book of Destiny started to dissolve.

Egor staggered, doubled over, and fell on his side, with his knees pulled up to his chest, curled up into a pitiful little bundle.

The white circle around them had been washed away by the rain, and I could walk over to them now. I squatted down and took hold of the boy's shoulders.

«You didn't write anything!» Gesar shouted. «Svetlana, you only erased things!»

The sorceress shrugged. She looked down at me. The rain had already broken through the fading barrier and soaked the white dress, transforming it into transparent muslin that no longer concealed the forms of her body. A moment earlier Svetlana had been a priestess in white robes, and now she was a young woman soaked to the skin, standing in the eye of a storm with her arms held helplessly at her sides.

«That was your test,» Gesar said to her in a quiet voice. «You've missed your chance.»

«Light One Gesar, I do not wish to serve in the Watch,» the young woman replied. «I'm sorry, Light One Gesar, but it's not my path. Not my destiny.»

Gesar shook his head sadly. Zabulon came across to us with a few quick steps.

«Is that it?» the Dark Magician asked. He looked at me, at Sveta, at Egor. «Didn't you do anything?» He looked at the Inquisitor, who raised his head and nodded.

Nobody else answered him.

A crooked smile spread across Zabulon's face.

«All that effort, and it's all ended in a farce. And all because a hysterical girl didn't want to leave her indecisive lover. Anton, I'm disappointed in you. Svetlana, I'm delighted with you. Gesar»—the Dark Magician looked at the boss—«my congratulations on having such remarkable people on your staff.»

A portal opened behind Zabulon's back. He laughed quietly as he stepped into the black cloud.

I heard a heavy sigh rising up from the ground. Although I couldn't see, I knew what was happening. One after another the members of the Day Watch were emerging from the Twilight and dashing to their cars to move them as far away as possible from the trees. Or hunching over and running to the nearest buildings.

After them the Light Magicians abandoned the cordon. Some for the same simple, human reasons. But I knew that most of them stayed where they were, looking up at the roof of the building. Tiger Cub, wearing a guilty expression just in case. Semyon, with the gloomy smile of an Other who'd seen worse storms than this one. Ignat with his eternal expression of sincere sympathy.

«I couldn't do it,» said Svetlana. «I'm sorry, Gesar. I couldn't.»

«You never could have,» I said. «And you were never meant to.»

I opened my hand and looked at the little piece of chalk, which while I held it was no more than that—a wet, sticky piece of chalk. Pointed at one end. Broken off unevenly at the other.

«How long ago did you realize?» asked Gesar. He came across and sat down beside me. His shield extended to cover us, and the roar of the hurricane faded away.

«Only just now.»

«What's going on?» exclaimed Svetlana. «Anton, tell me what's going on.»

Gesar answered her.

«Everyone has his or her own destiny, my girl. For some it means changing other people's lives and destroying empires. For others it simply means getting on with life.»

«While the Day Watch was waiting for you to act,» I explained, «Olga took the other half of the chalk and rewrote someone else's destiny. The way the Light wanted it to be.»

Gesar sighed. He reached out and touched Egor. The boy stirred and tried to get up.

«No rush, no rush,» the boss said gently. «It's all over now, or almost.»

I put my arm round the boy's shoulders and rested his head on my knees. He calmed down again.

«Why all this?» I asked. «If you knew in advance what would happen?»

«Even I can't know everything.»

«But why all this?»

«Because everything had to look natural,» Gesar said, slightly annoyed. «That was the only way Zabulon would believe what was happening. He had to believe in our plans, and believe that we failed.»

«That's not the full answer, Gesar,» I said, looking into his eyes. «It's not even close!»

The boss sighed.

«All right. Yes, I could have done things differently. Svetlana would have become a Great Sorceress. Against her own wishes. And Egor would have become our instrument, despite the fact that the Watch was already in his debt.»

I waited. I was very interested to see if Gesar would tell the whole truth. Just once.

«Yes, I could have done it that way,» said Gesar, and he sighed again. «But you know, my boy… Everything that I've done in the twentieth century, apart from the great struggle between the Light and the Darkness, has been dedicated to a single purpose that, naturally, brought no harm to our cause…«

I suddenly felt sorry for him. Incredibly sorry. Perhaps for the first time in a thousand years the Great Magician, the Most Light Gesar, destroyer of monsters and guardian of states, had been forced to tell the entire truth. Not the beautiful and exalted truth that he was used to telling.

«Don't, don't. I know!» I shouted.

But the Great Magician shook his head.

«Everything I've done was dedicated to that purpose. To force the top levels to repeal Olga's punishment completely. To force them to restore her powers and allow her to pick up the chalk of Destiny once again. She had to become my equal. Otherwise our love was doomed. And I love her, Anton.»

Svetlana laughed. Very, very quietly. I thought she was going to slap the boss's face, but I suppose I still didn't understand her completely yet. Svetlana went down on her knees in front of Gesar and kissed his right hand.

The magician trembled. He seemed for a moment to have lost his infinite powers: The protective dome began shuddering and dissolving. Once again we were deafened by the roar of the hurricane.

«Are we going to change the destiny of the world again?» I asked. «Apart from our own little personal concerns?»

He nodded and asked in return:

«Why, don't you like the idea?»

«No.»

«Well, Anton, you can't always be a winner. I haven't been, and you won't be either.»

«I know that,» I said. «Of course I know it, Gesar. But still, it would be nice.»

January-August 1998

Moscow