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 dec
orations 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.
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