The Last Watch:

  ‘About a “Last Watch”?’ Zabulon asked, clearly emphasising the capital letters in his intonation. ‘My dear enemy, even among the Dark Ones there are any number of sects, groups and mere clubs that I have never even heard of. But there are some that I have heard of. And the names that you come across! “Children of the Night!”, “Watchmen of the Full Moon”, “Sons of the Wind”. And, by the way, I recall one group of children – human children, not Others – who love to play at vampires. Perhaps we ought to bring them here? To make them realise that a vampire is not really an imposing gentleman in a black cloak who lures maidens into an ancient castle? It’s not that Gothic at all …’

  ‘Zabulon, have you heard anything about the “Last Watch”?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Gorodetsky has suggested’ – Gesar paused and looked at me – ‘that it’s what the three Others who tried to get their hands on the artefact in Edinburgh call themselves. The Dark One, the Inquisitor and the Light One.’

  ‘The Dark One is Saushkin, the Inquisitor is Edgar,’ Zabulon said, nodding. ‘But who is the Light One?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ve checked all the Higher Ones, they’re clean.’

  ‘Well, Saushkin wasn’t a Higher One …’ Zabulon said with a shrug. ‘Although … it’s easier for vampires. And then, what about Edgar? Gorodetsky?’

  ‘I didn’t have time to study his aura thoroughly,’ I replied. ‘There was a battle going on … and he was also hung with amulets from head to toe. Give me five minutes in a quiet situation, and I’ll know everything there is to know about him …’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ Zabulon insisted, ‘I know what happened on the Plateau of Demons. In general terms. So tell us about it.’

  ‘In battle he behaved like a Higher One,’ I stated after seeing Gesar nod reluctantly in consent. ‘There were three of us … well, two, if you don’t count Afandi, although he tried his best too. We had a set of protective amulets from Gesar, all very well chosen. But he was almost a match for us. I even think that he might have been able to continue the fight and have a chance of winning. But when Rustam left, Edgar had no reason to carry on fighting.’

  ‘And so we have an Other who has managed to raise his level,’ said Zabulon. ‘My dear Gesar, don’t you think that the Inquisition did get hold of the Fuaran after all?’

  ‘No,’ Gesar said firmly.

  ‘If Kostya had survived,’ Zabulon said, thinking out loud, ‘then we might have hypothesised that he had memorised the formulas in the Fuaran. And managed to create some – er – copy of the book. Perhaps not as powerful, but still capable of raising Edgar to the Higher level. And then a Light One could have been subjected to the same procedure.’

  ‘And then we could suspect any Light One,’ Gesar summed up. ‘But fortunately for us, Kostya is dead and he wasn’t able to reveal the secret of the Fuaran to anyone.’

  ‘Did he not have time to share the contents of the book with his father?’

  ‘No,’ Gesar replied firmly. ‘It’s a book of enchantment. You can’t retell it over the phone, you can’t photograph it.’

  ‘What a shame, that would be such a good idea,’ Zabulon said, clicking his fingers. ‘A little witch showed me just recently that there’s this thing in cellphones, it’s called MMS messaging! You can send a photograph over the phone.’

  At first I thought Zabulon was being witty again. Talking with a straight face about the MMS messages that little kids cheerfully send each other in class, he looked very comical.

  And then I realised he was being serious. Sometimes I forget just how old they are. To Zabulon a cellphone is like magic.

  ‘Fortunately it’s not possible,’ said Gesar. ‘He could have memorised something and reproduced it … but no, that’s nonsense. Even that’s impossible. The nature of a vampire is different from the nature of a witch. Only an experienced witch could recreate the Fuaran, even in a weaker form …’

  I looked at Gesar and asked:

  ‘Tell me, Boris Ignatievich … can a witch become a Light One?’

  The happiest moments in the life of the parents of a small child are from a quarter to nine until nine o’clock in the evening. Fifteen minutes of happiness while the child joyfully watches adverts for yogurt and chocolate (even though that is a bad thing) and then his or her eyes are glued to Piggy, Crow, Stepashka and the other characters in the programme Good Night, Kiddies.

  If only the people who allocate time for children’s programmes on TV sat with their own children in the evening, instead of dumping them on highly trained nannies, then Good Night would last half an hour. Or an hour.

  And by the way, that would be great for improving the birth rate. Fifteen minutes is not very long, whichever way you look at it. At least there would be time to drink a cup of tea in peace.

  I didn’t tell Svetlana the details of what we had seen in Saushkin’s flat. But she understood everything perfectly well, even from a very brief account. No, it didn’t spoil her appetite, she carried on drinking tea. We had seen plenty of worse things in the Watch. But, of course, she turned a bit gloomy.

  ‘We have a theory about the Light One,’ I said, trying to lead the conversation on to a different subject. ‘Gesar checked out all the Higher Ones, no one’s under suspicion there. Well, Edgar had a lot of charms on him. That’s the work of a witch. So I thought …’

  ‘That Arina had changed colour?’ Svetlana asked, looking at me. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You squeezed her pretty hard that time,’ I said. ‘You must have felt her mind. Do you think she could have become a Light One?’

  ‘For an ordinary Other, it’s impossible,’ Svetlana said. ‘Or almost impossible … For a Higher One … for Arina …’

  She paused, remembering. I waited, glancing now and then at the TV screen, where a sad little girl was dragging a mitten along on a string and imagining that it was a puppy. How terrible! That would be the end of all our mittens and gloves. Nadya wouldn’t actually turn them into dogs, of course – any magic has its limits. But there would be more toy dogs in the apartment from now on.

  It was time to buy her a puppy, before life became unbearable.

  ‘She could,’ Svetlana said. ‘She could have become a Light One. Her soul is very strange, everything’s mixed up together inside it … there weren’t any particular atrocities, though. But Arina swore an oath to me that she would live for a hundred years without killing a single human being or Other. She can’t go against that.’

  ‘And she hasn’t killed anyone,’ I observed. ‘But as for supplying Edgar with amulets and raising his level of Power … nothing was said about that. Arina has enough wisdom to interpret your prohibition like that.’

  ‘Anton, we’re talking about the wrong thing,’ Svetlana said, putting down her cup. ‘Arina, who has become a Light One, or some other enchantress – that’s not the point at all. The important question to ask is: What are they trying to achieve? What has united them? The ambition to destroy the entire world? Nonsense! You only find people who want to destroy the world just for the sake of it in stupid films. Power? But that’s stupid too, Anton! They have enough Power already. No artefact, not even one made by a crazy magician fifteen hundred years ago, will allow them to achieve absolute Power. Until we understand what they are trying to achieve, what they want to find at the bottom of the Twilight, then it’s completely irrelevant whether it is Arina or not, if she has become a Light One, or disguised herself so that Thomas couldn’t recognise her.’

  ‘Sveta, do you have any hunches?’ I pretended not to notice that she had said ‘we’. It’s true what they say – you never really leave the Watch completely.

  ‘The Crown of All Things erases the barriers between the levels of the Twilight …’ Svetlana said and paused.

  ‘Mama, the cartoon’s over!’ Nadya shouted.

  ‘Try comparing it with the White Mist. The spells obviously have a single root …’ Svetlana said, getting up and walking towards Nadya. ‘Time for bed.’ br />
  ‘A story!’ Nadya demanded.

  ‘Not today. Daddy and I have to talk.’

  Nadya looked at me resentfully, fiddling with the thin string of turquoise beads round her neck. She muttered:

  ‘You’re always talking … And Daddy’s always going away.’

  ‘That’s Daddy’s job,’ Svetlana explained calmly, grabbing hold of her daughter’s hand. ‘You know he fights against the forces of darkness.’

  ‘Like Harry Potter,’ Nadya said rather doubtfully, looking at me. I suppose I didn’t have the spectacles or the scar on my forehead that were needed to match up to the image.

  ‘Yes, like Harry Potter, Fat Frumos and Luke Skywalker.’

  ‘Like Luke Skywalker,’ Nadya decided and gave me a smile. Obviously that was the character she thought I resembled most of all. Well, that was better than nothing.

  ‘I’ll be straight back …’ said Svetlana, and the two of them went to the nursery. I sat there, looking at a chocolate sweet with a bite taken out of it. It had alternate layers of dark chocolate and white chocolate. When I counted seven layers, I laughed. It was a graphic illustration of the structure of the Twilight. The White Mist folded all the layers together, turning any Others who got in the way into stone. Okay, let’s sidestep the effect of the spell in battle. What happened afterwards? I closed my eyes, trying to remember.

  Afterwards the Twilight straightened out again. The levels of the Twilight returned to their old places.

  Why had we decided that the Crown of All Things would join the Twilight and the real world together for ever? Simply because we believed what Rustam had said? But how did he know … The Twilight would fold up – and then expand again. As it left our world the Twilight would spread out its layers again. It was like a stiff spring – you could compress it, but it would straighten back out.

  And that was interesting. I didn’t believe in a Merlin who had created a magical bomb to destroy the entire world simply for the fun of it. He wasn’t that kind of Other. But I could easily believe in Merlin as an experimenter who had invented a new amusement but had decided not to try it out.

  What might happen if all the levels of the Twilight were united with the real world for a short time?

  Would all Others die out?

  Hardly.

  In that case Merlin would surely have boasted of his power.

  But he had thought up a kind of allegorical riddle for his message …

  I recited the verse in a low voice as I watched Svetlana walking back quietly into the kitchen.

  ‘The Crown of All Things is here concealed. Only one step is left.

  But this is a legacy for the strong or the wise –

  You shall receive all and nothing, when you are able to take it.

  Proceed, if you are as strong as I;

  Or go back, if you are as wise as I.

  Beginning and end, head and tail, all is fused in one,

  In the Crown of All Things. Thus are life and death inseparable.’

  ‘Trying to understand it?’ Svetlana asked as she sat down beside me. ‘You know what I was thinking – why did we decide that the Twilight would come together with the world for ever? Most probably it would move back out again.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking too,’ I agreed. ‘Like with the White Mist. But what would that lead to? Blue moss starting to grow in our world?’

  Svetlana laughed.

  ‘Wouldn’t the botanists have a field day! A new form of plant life, and one that reacts to human emotions. They’d write millions of doctoral theses … ’

  ‘They’d open factories for processing blue moss,’ I added. ‘Start spinning threads out of it, making blue jeans … ’

  Svetlana suddenly turned serious.

  ‘And what would happen to those who live in the Twilight?’

  ‘The disembodied Others?’ I asked.

  Svetlana nodded.

  ‘Life and death,’ I said, and nodded too. ‘I don’t know. Do you suppose they might be … resurrected? Come to life again in our world?’

  ‘Why not? We know they live there. I even saw one on the fifth level, when I was fighting Arina …’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me,’ I commented.

  ‘You know it’s best not to talk about these things. It’s best not to know about it if you can’t get there yourself. I’m not at all sure that everybody ends up there, perhaps it’s only the most powerful. The Higher Ones, for example. Why should all the rest know that they won’t have any existence after death?’

  ‘Thomas the Rhymer said that down there on the lower levels of the Twilight there are magical cities, dragons and unicorns – all the things that don’t exist in our world, but could have done.’

  Svetlana shook her head

  ‘Thomas seems like a very good man to me. But he’s a bard. A poet. You can’t cure that, Anton. You talked to him when he was in his Twilight Form, dreaming about unicorns and fairies, and magical cities, Others who have built a world of their own and don’t live as parasites on the human world. I wouldn’t count too much on all that being true. Perhaps there are only little huts and wooden houses there. And no fairies and unicorns.’

  ‘That’s still not too bad,’ I said. ‘Very many people would gladly swap the heaven they desperately hope to get to some day for eternal life in a hut out in the countryside. There are certainly trees there.’

  ‘The Other I saw didn’t look very happy,’ Svetlana said. ‘Of course, he was … well, kind of blurred, not very clear. But that’s only natural, if his usual habitat is the seventh level of the Twilight. But he looked so … creased and rumpled. And he ran towards me, as if he wanted to tell me something. But I had other things on my mind at the time, you understand.’

  ‘And I saw a former Other on the first level,’ I recalled. ‘When I was hunting that wild White One, Maxim.1 He even gave me a bit of help, told me which way I should go.’

  ‘It happens sometimes,’ Svetlana agreed. ‘Not often, but I’ve heard a few stories. And you already told me …’

  Neither of us said anything for a while.

  ‘Maybe they really would be brought back into our world,’ Svetlana said. ‘And that might be enough to make Edgar, Gennady and Arina work together. They must all have lost loved ones, not just Saushkin. And probably anyone who has lost loved ones would be thrown off balance by an opportunity like this.’

  ‘It would throw anyone at all off balance,’ I said.

  We looked at each in alarm. It was good that now we were guarded round the clock. It was bad that our potential enemies were three Higher Ones.

  ‘I’ll put up a few more protective spells for the night,’ said Svetlana. ‘Don’t think me a coward.’

  ‘The Crown of All Things can be reached by force,’ I said. ‘By breaking through to the seventh level of the Twilight. But I couldn’t do it. Probably Nadya could. If only I knew how to get through by using my wits … by cunning. I’d use that artefact myself. There’d be about the same number of Light and Dark magicians down there – we’d manage.’

  ‘And what if we’re wrong, and it’s nothing but a bomb that will destroy the world?’

  ‘That’s why I prefer not even to think about how to reach the artefact. I’ll leave that headache to Gesar and Zabulon.’

  ‘Let’s go to bed and sleep on it,’ Svetlana said. ‘Tomorrow’s a new day.’

  But we didn’t go to bed straight away. First Svetlana put up several new protective spells around the apartment, and then I did the same.

  1 This story is told in the second part of the book The Night Watch.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE MORNING TURNED out so fresh and clear that all of the previous day’s doom and gloom seemed to have evaporated into thin air. Nadya meekly ate the rice porridge that she didn’t like, and Svetlana didn’t say a word when I casually told her that I was thinking of going to work early. But she did suggest that I should come back home early too, so that all of us could go to watch som
e family movie that her friends had told her was really great. I imagined the Dark Ones who were guarding Nadya being forced to watch a romantic fairy tale in which, naturally, good defeats evil, and I smiled.

  ‘Definitely. I just want to find out how things are going. Maybe there’s been some kind of breakthrough.’

  ‘They would have called you,’ said Svetlana, scattering my idle dreams like smoke.

  But that didn’t spoil my mood. I got ready quickly and grabbed my suitcase full of papers (oh, yes, even Light Magicians have to do their paperwork), then kissed my daughter and my wife and walked out of the apartment.

  On the next floor down Roma, an amiable young lummox who had been working in our Watch for about two years, was making lively conversation with a thin, pretty young woman, one of the Dark Ones that Zabulon had assigned to guard us.

  I greeted them both and walked on, shaking my head.

  That was the way romances with unhappy endings got started. The way it had happened with Alisa and Igor …

  The weather was so good that for a second I hesitated, standing outside the door of the building and wondering if I ought to walk to the metro. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to go into the metro at all. Those hot trains, those jostling crowds – the rush hour in Moscow ends at somewhere around midnight.

  No, the car would be better. Svetlana wasn’t planning on going anywhere. And if I checked the probability lines, I could skip past the traffic jams and be at work in just twenty minutes.

  I removed the protective spells that wouldn’t have done me any harm but would have made sensitive drivers give my car a wide berth. I got into the driving seat, turned the key in the ignition and closed my eyes to check the best route for me to drive. The result was rather discouraging. For some reason all the probabilities were centred on Sheremetievo Airport, which was crazy since I had no intention of going there!

  I felt something fluffy twine round my neck, and an amiable voice with a slight drawl asked:

  ‘Does the king have a long journey to make today?’

  I looked in the rear-view mirror and didn’t like what I saw.