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 bo
ss 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
EXCERPT FROM NEW WATCH
Coming in May 2014 from Harper, the newest book in the internationally bestselling Night Watch series:
New Watch
This is a dubious text for the Cause of Light.
—THE NIGHT WATCH
This is a dubious text for the Cause of Darkness.
—THE DAY WATCH
PART ONE
DUBIOUS INTENT
PROLOGUE
SENIOR SERGEANT DMITZY PASTUKHOV WAS A GOOD POLIZEI.
Of course, for the purpose of enlightening drunks who got a bit above themselves he sometimes employed measures not actually prescribed by the regulations—a few good smacks in the teeth or well-aimed kicks, for instance. But only in cases where the dipso concerned was getting a bit too pushy about his rights, or refusing to proceed to the drunk tank. And Dima wouldn’t actually spurn a five-hundred note shaken out of some lunk from the Ukraine or Central Asia who didn’t have a residence permit—after all, what with police pay being so low, the offenders might just as well pay him their fines directly. Nor did he raise any objections when he was poured a shot of cognac instead of a glass of water in eating joints on the territory under his purview.
After all, it was a demanding job. It was dangerous and difficult. And at first glance people hardly even seemed to notice it. There had to be some material incentives.
But, on the other hand, Dima had never beaten money out of prostitutes and pimps. On principle. Something in the way he’d been raised wouldn’t let him do it. Dima didn’t waste time dragging slightly tipsy citizens off to the sobering-up station while they still retained a glimmer of reason. And when he uncovered a real crime he launched himself into pursuit of the perpetrators like a shot. He always searched conscientiously for clues and submitted reports on instances of petty theft (that was, if the victims insisted on it, of course) and he made an effort to remember the faces of persons on the “wanted” list. He had several significant arrests under his belt, including a genuine murderer—a man who had first stabbed his wife’s lover (which was forgivable) and then his wife (which was understandable) and then, still brandishing the knife, had gone after the neighbour who had informed him about his wife’s infidelity. Outraged at such black ingratitude, the neighbour had locked himself in his apartment and called the police on 02. Arriving in response to the summons, Dima Pastukhov had first detained the murderer, who was pounding impotently on the iron door with his blood-smeared, puny little intellectual’s fists, and then struggled for a long time with his own desire to drag the whistle-blowing neighbor out onto the stairs and rearrange his face.
So Dima regarded himself as a good policeman—which wasn’t really all that far from the truth. Compared with the example set by some of his colleagues, he stood out, seeming every bit as diligent as the militiaman Svistulkin in that old Soviet children’s favorite Dunno in Sunshine City.
The only blot on Dima’s service record dated back to January 1998: still young and green then, he had been on patrol in the Exhibition of Economic Achievements district with Sergeant Kaminsky, who was by way of being the young militiaman’s mentor. (They were still called “militiamen,” or simply “cops,” back then: the fashionable word “policeman” and the slightly offensive term polizei hadn’t come into use yet.) Kaminsky was very proud to be playing this role, but his admonitions and advice all basically came down to where and how you could pick up a bit of easy money. On that particular evening, when Kaminsky spotted this half-cut young guy (he even had an open quarter-liter of vodka in his hand) dashing out of the metro station toward the pedestrian underpass, he whistled in delight and the two partners moved in to intercept their prey. All the indications were that this drunk was about to part with a fifty note, or maybe even a hundred.
And then everything went pear-shaped. It was some kind of black-magic voodoo. The tipsy suspect fixed the two partners with a surprisingly sober stare (that stare was sober all right, but there was something savage and chilling about it, like the look in the eyes of a stray dog that had lost all faith in people a very long time ago) and advised the militiamen to get drunk themselves.
And they did as he said. They walked over to the trading kiosks (Yeltsin’s chaotic reign was already in its final years, but vodka was still sold openly in the street) and, giggling like lunatics, they each bought a bottle exactly like the one carried by the drunk who had given them such sound advice. Then they bought another two. And another two.
Three hours later Pastukhov and Kaminsky, feeling very witty and merry at this stage, were picked up by one of their own patrols—and that was what saved them. They caught it in the neck, all right, but they weren’t flung out of the militia. After that Kaminsky gave up drinking altogether and swore blind that the drunk they’d met must have been a hypnotist or even some kind of psychic. Pastukhov himself didn’t slander the man pointlessly or indulge in idle speculation. But he clung on very tightly to the memory of him . . . with the sole intention of making sure he never crossed his path again.
Perhaps it was the powerful memory of that shameful binge, or perhaps Pastukhov had simply developed some unusual abilities, but after a while he started noticing other people with strange eyes. To himself Pastukhov called these people “wolves” and “dogs.”
The first group had the calm indifference of the predator in their gaze: not malicious, no, the wolf harries the sheep without malice—more likely, in fact, with love. Pastukhov simply steered clear of their kind, trying hard not to attract any attention in the process.
The second group, who were more like that first young drunk, had a dog-like look in their eyes. Sometimes guilty, sometimes patient and concerned, sometimes sad. There was just one thing that bothered Pastukhov: that wasn’t the way dogs looked at their masters, at best it was t
he way they looked at their master’s whelp. And so Pastukhov tried to steer clear of them too.
And for quite a long time he managed it.
If children are life’s flowers, then this child was a blooming cactus.
He started yelling the moment the doors of the Sheremetyevo-D terminal slid open and he came in. His mother, red-faced with anger and shame (the shouting was obviously a repeat performance), was dragging him along by the hand, but the boy was leaning backward, bracing himself with both feet, and howling:
“I won’t! I won’t! I won’t fly! Mummy, don’t! The plane’s going to crash!”
His mother let go of his hand and the boy slumped to the floor and stayed sitting there: a fat, hysterical, tear-stained, unattractive child, dressed a little bit too lightly for the Moscow weather in June—there was obviously a flight to warmer climes in prospect.
A man sitting at a cafe table about twenty meters away from them got up, almost knocking over his unfinished mug of beer. He looked for a few moments at the boy and the mother, who was trying to din something into her son’s head. Then he sat down and said in a quiet voice: “That’s appalling. What a nightmare!”
“I think so, too,” agreed the young woman sitting opposite him.
She put down her cup of coffee and gave the boy a hostile look. “I’d call it sordid.”
“Well, I don’t see anything sordid about it,” the man said gently. “But it’s certainly appalling . . . no doubt about that . . .”
“I personally—” the young woman began, but stopped when she saw the man wasn’t listening.
He took out a phone. Dialed a number. Spoke in a quiet voice: “I need a level-one clearance. One or two. No, I’m not joking. Try to find one . . .”
He broke off the call, looked at the young woman and nodded. “I’m sorry, an urgent call . . . What were you saying?”
“I personally am child-free,” the young woman declared defiantly.
“Free of children? Are you infertile, then?”
The young woman shook her head. “A common misapprehension. We child-free women are opposed to children because they enslave us. We have to choose—between being a proud, free individual or a social appendage to the population’s reproductive mechanism!”
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