The Day Watch (50 page)

Igor poured himself some vodka and drank it quickly, without waiting for Anton, then filled the glasses again. He said, “That’s when I became what I am. When I left my home, with my medals jangling and Vilena roaring, “It’s all lies what they told you, the bitches, I was faithful to you!” I walked along the street, with something burning away in my soul. It was May, Anton. May 1945. Immediately after Germany capitulated, Gesar pulled me back from the front and told me: “From now on your front line is here, Captain Teplov.” And back then people were… they were different, Anton. Their faces were all shining! There were plenty of foul Dark creatures around, I won’t deny it, but there was a lot of Light as well. And as I walked along the street the little kids darted round me, looking at my chest full of medals, arguing about which one was for what. Men shook my hand and invited me to take a drink with them. Girls came running up to me… and kissed me. Kissed me like their own boyfriends, who hadn’t come back yet, or had already been killed. Like their own fathers, like their own brothers. Sometimes they cried, kissed me, and went on their way. Do you understand me? No, how could you… You worry about our country

too, you think how bad everything is right now, what a lousy hole we’re all in… You suffer because the Light Ones won’t all get together to help Russia. Only you don’t know what it’s like to be in a real hole, Anton. But we do!”

Igor drained his glass again. Anton raised his glass without speaking and nodded in support of the toast that had not been spoken aloud.

“That was when I became what I am,” Igor repeated. “A magician. A field agent. Eternally young. Who loves everybody… and nobody. I’d already made up my mind that I would never fall in love. Never. Girlfriends were one thing, love was something quite different. I couldn’t love a human being, because human beings were weak. I couldn’t love an Other, because any Other was either an enemy or a comrade-in-arms. That was the principle I adopted for my life, Antoshka. And I stuck to it as closely as I could. It seemed like I was still the same young man who came back from the front, who still had plenty of time to think about falling in love. It’s one thing to take a whirl with a girl on the dance floor…” he said, and laughed quietly, “or leap about in cool threads under the ultraviolet light at the discotheque… what difference does it make if it’s jazz, rock, or trash, what length the skirt is and what the stockings are made of… It’s all good. It’s the way things ought to be. Have you seen that American cartoon, about Peter Pan? Well, I became like him. Only not a stupid little boy, but a stupid young man. And I felt just fine for a long time. Supposedly I’ve outlived the time granted to a man, and it would be a sin to complainI haven’t had any helpless old age or other problems. So don’t you torment yourself unnecessarily, Anton.”

Anton sat there with his head in his hands, not speaking. It was as if he’d opened a door and seen something behind it… not something taboo, and not something shameful either… Just something that had absolutely nothing to do with him. And he realized that behind every door, if-may the Light forbid!-he was able to open it, he would see something equally alien and… personal.

“I’ve reached the end of my road, Anton,” Igor said almost tenderly. “Don’t be so sad. I understand that you came here hoping to shake me up, to get all this nonsense out of my head, to carry out your instructions. Only it won’t work. Like a fool, I really did fall in love with a Dark One. I killed her. And it turns out I killed myself too.”

Anton didn’t say anything. It was all pointless. He was overwhelmed by someone else’s anguish, someone else’s grief. Instead of simply bringing a parcel to a sick friend, here he was sitting with him at his own wake…

“Anton, don’t go away today,” Igor said. “I won’t sleep anyway… soon I’ll catch up on my sleep forever. To be honest, I’ve got another three bottles of vodka in the refrigerator. And there’s a restaurant five floors down.”

“Then we’ll fall asleep at the table.”

“We’ll be okay, we’re Others. We can take it. I want to talk. To cry on someone’s shoulder. I’ve started feeling afraid of the dark. Can you believe that?”

“Yes.”

Igor nodded. “Thanks. I’ve got my guitar here, we can sing something. Or I’ll sing. You know, singing for yourself is just the same as… well, you understand. And apart from that…”

Anton looked at Igor-his voice had suddenly become more focused. Stronger.

“I’m a watchman, after all. I haven’t forgotten that, you can be quite sure. And it seems to me that in all this mess, I’m no more than a pawn… no, probably not a pawn… A rook who has taken one of the other side’s pieces and occupied a square in the line of fire. Only unlike the other pieces, I can think. I hope you haven’t forgotten how to do that, either. I don’t care about myself anymore, Anton. But I do care who wins this game. Let’s think together.”

“Where do we begin?” Anton asked, feeling amazed at himself. Surely he hadn’t accepted what Igor had said and agreed to think of him as a piece who had already been removed from the board… or who at least was already doomed as the invisible player reached out his hand for him…

“With Svetlana. With the Chalk of Destiny,” said Igor, watching carefully to see how Anton’s face changed. He laughed smugly. “Well, have I guessed right? You’ve been having the same thoughts?”

“And so has Gesar…” Anton whispered.

“Gesar’s a clever one,” Igor agreed. “But we’re no fools, are we? Anyway, why don’t we try thinking with our heads and not our hands for once?”

“Okay, let’s try,” Anton said with a nod. “Only…”

He fumbled in his pocket for the amulet that Gesar had given him. He crushed the little ball in his hand and felt the bone needles prick his skin. There was never any gain without pain… He said:

“Now for twelve hours no one will be able to see us or hear us.”

“Are you sure?” Igor asked. “Won’t the absence of information alert the Inquisition?”

“There won’t be any absence,” said Anton. “As far as I understand it, if they have any observational devices here, or if they’ve cast any tracking spells-they’ll provide false information. It’s a quality scam.”

“Gesar’s a clever one,” Igor repeated with a smile.

Edgar sat by the window, smoking and slowly sipping a glass of flat champagne. It still tasted good.

His girlfriend was sleeping peacefully in the next room, satisfied and happy. She had turned out to be a fine girl. A German student with some Scandinavian blood, reasonably passionate and reasonably cheerful. But a bit too fanciful in sex for Edgar’s taste. Unlike most of his colleagues, Edgar was very conservative in such matters. He didn’t take part in orgies, he didn’t have underage girlfriends, and out of all the possibilities he preferred the classic missionary position.

But there was no denying that in that position he had achieved perfection.

Edgar stretched sweetly and carefully opened the window. He stood up and breathed in the cold, frosty air. The new day had begun and perhaps the Tribunal would give its verdict that very evening. Then he’d be able to relax and enjoy the festive season, without worrying about all these intrigues.

But who was behind this intrigue, after all… the Day Watch or the Night Watch?

And most important of all-what role had been assigned to him?

Could Yury’s hint really be right, was he supposed to be sacrificed, just like Alisa?

“Here, look…” Igor spread out a large sheet of paper on the table and took a pack of felt-tip pens out of his pocket. “I’ve already drawn a few diagrams… and some things fit together. This is Svetlana.”

Anton looked thoughtfully at the circle drawn with a thick yellow line and said, “It doesn’t look much like her.”

Igor laughed. “All right… very witty. But look at the way things shape up. We and the Dark Ones had a balance, a precarious one, but still a balance… Here are the magicians with first-to third-level powers on our side… here are their equivalents on the Dark Side… Both the ones in active service and the others who can easily be mobilized.”

The paper was quickly covered with small circles. Then Igor divided the sheet in two with a sweeping gesture. At the top of one side he wrote “Gesar,” and at the top of the other, “Zabulon.” He explained: “They’re not really in the game. They’re the players, but we’re interested in the pieces. Look at how things changed with Svetlana’s appearance.”

“It depends what piece we decide she is,” Anton said cautiously. “Right now she’s a first-level enchantress… or rather, she was.”

“And what does that mean? Just look how many magicians there are at about the same level as her.”

“She’s a pawn,” said Anton, feeling surprised at his own words. “Svetlana’s no more than a pawn for years and years to come! While she nurtures her Power, learns to control her abilities, acquires experience… She’s more powerful than me… or she was. But I’d have been able to handle her if I’d been on the other side.”

“Precisely, Anton,” said Igor, deftly pouring himself a glass from the second bottle of vodka-the first was already standing empty under the table. “Precisely! Svetlana made the Night Watch significantly more powerful. And in the future she could easily reach the same level as Gesar. But that’s a matter of decades, or even hundreds of years.”

“Then why all this activity by the Dark Ones? They almost violated the Treaty, simply in order to get Svetlana out of the game.”

“Think,” said Igor, glancing into Anton’s eyes. “Let’s take the chess analogy all the way…”

“A pawn that reaches the far side of the board…”

“… becomes any other piece.”

Anton shrugged. “Igor, that’s obvious anyway. We’re all pawns, but some of us have a chance to become queens.

Svetlana has. You don’t, I don’t, Semyon doesn’t… but it’s a long way to the far
e.g.
of the board, and the Dark Ones don’t need to be in such a hurry to eliminate Svetlana.”

“The Chalk of Destiny,” said Igor.

“What about it? Gesar wanted to use Egor, the boy without any destiny to make him into…”

“Into what?”

Anton shrugged. “A prophet, a philosopher, a poet, a magician… I don’t know. Someone who would lead humanity toward the Light. Or perhaps a Mirror? Another Mirror, like Vi-taly Rogoza, only he would be on our side?”

“But Svetlana didn’t want to interfere,” Igor said with a nod. “The boy Egor was left with just his own destiny.”

“But then…” Anton began and stopped short. He didn’t know if he had the right to tell Igor the truth he had discovered, even under the protection of the amulet.

“But then Olga rewrote someone’s destiny with the other half of the Chalk,” Igor said with a laugh. “That’s an open secret already. The important thing is that the operation was successful anyway. Svetlana didn’t do it, but Olga did. And incidentally Gesar managed to have Olga rehabilitated.”

“Incidentally?” Anton queried, shaking his head. “Okay, let’s say incidentally… But that’s the second layer of the truth. I’m sure there’s a third layer too.”

“The third layer is the person whose destiny Olga rewrote. As soon as Zabulon heard she’d been rehabilitated, he

realized he’d been duped. Taken in by a simple diversionary maneuver. And the Dark Ones started looking. They checked poor Egor a dozen times-in case the Book of Destiny had been rewritten twice for him…”

“And how do you know that?”

“I was keeping an eye on the boy. Gesar told me to-it was obvious the Dark Ones would start looking for a trick.”

“And?”

“No, there were no tricks with Egor. It wasn’t his destiny that was rewritten.”

“Then whose was it?”

Igor looked into Anton’s eyes without saying anything. As if he didn’t have the right to say it himself.

“Svetlana’s?” Anton exclaimed in sudden realization. And he suddenly thought that in his place any Dark One would have squealed, “Mine?”

“It looks like it. A brilliant and elegant move. There was such an ocean of Power raging around her that it was impossible for anyone to notice what was being done with her Book of Destiny. And the Dark Ones can’t check her Book of Destiny-that would be as good as a declaration of war.”

“Gesar wants to accelerate Svetlana’s transformation into a Great Enchantress?”

“Out of the question. That’s a violation of the Treaty. Dig a bit deeper.”

Anton looked at the circles on the paper. He took a felt-tip pen and drew a bright scarlet line upward from Svetlana, then another circle where it ended. An empty circle.

“Yes,” said Igor. “Precisely. You know what time this is now, don’t you?”

“The end of the millennium…”

“Two thousand years since the birth of Jesus Christ;” Igor said with a laugh.

“Ieshua was a supreme Light magician,” said Anton. “I don’t even know if we can call him a magician… he was the Light itself… but… Gesar wants a second coming of the Messiah?”

“You said it, not me,” Igor replied. “Let’s drink… to the Light.”

Anton drank a full glass in total bewilderment. He shook his head. “No, but this… Igor, this is playing with the pure powers. With the foundations of the universe! How could he take the risk?”

“Anton, I’m certain that’s the way it was all planned. Judge for yourself-there’s a boom in religious faiths everywhere, one way or another everybody’s expecting either the end of the world or the Second Coming… but then, they’re the same thing.”

“Not everybody…” Anton protested. “Don’t exaggerate.”

“Not everybody, but enough people for the torrent of human expectations to start reshaping reality. And if you could just help things along a bit, if you could rewrite someone’s destiny… Gesar went for broke. Gesar wants to add someone new to our ranks, an Other so powerful that none of the Dark Ones will be able to match him. Not Zabulon, not a certain modest California farmer, not the owner of a small hotel in Spain, and not a popular Japanese singer… no one.”

“That might be true,” Anton admitted. “But Svetlana’s lost her Power now, and for a long time.”

“And what of it? Does that prevent her from having a child?”

“Stop,” said Anton, waving his hands in warning. “Now we’re getting ahead of ourselves! We can believe any hypothesis, but first let’s look at the other events. The Mirror, for instance.”