The driver would probably have been very disappointed to see me walk straight past the entrance to the market. No, of course I was planning to visit it. There was work to do, but I still had to gather some impressions to take away with me.
But now wasn’t the time.
And so I elbowed my way out of the noisy crowd outside the entrance to the market, walked past a herd of Japanese (they’d even found their way here!) who all had the usual tiny cameras and video cameras dangling from their necks and their shoulders, then set off to walk around the Bibi-Khanym Mosque. It really was impressive. The ceramic tiling of the huge dome glinted a bright azure blue in the sunlight. The doorway was so huge that I thought it looked bigger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the absence of any bas-relief work on the wall was more than made up for by the intricate patterning of blue glazed bricks.
But the place I was headed for was no glamorous tourist spot.
Every city has streets that were built under an unlucky star. And they don’t have to be located on the outskirts, either. Sometimes they run alongside gloomy factory buildings, sometimes along the railway lines or main highways, sometimes even beside a park or ravine that has survived through some oversight by the municipal authorities. People move in there reluctantly, but afterward they don’t leave very often-they seem to fall under the spell of a strange kind of drowsiness. And life there follows quite different laws and moves at quite a different pace…
I remember one district in Moscow where a one-way street ran alongside a ravine overgrown with trees. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary dormitory suburb, but it was under that spell of drowsiness. I found myself there one winter evening on a false alarm-the witch who was making love potions had a license. The car drove away, leaving me to draw up a report noting the absence of any complaints on either side, then I went out into the street and tried to stop a car-I didn’t want to call a taxi and wait for it in the witch’s apartment. Although it wasn’t very late, it was already completely dark, and there was thick snow falling. There was absolutely no one on the street, everyone took a different road from the metro station. Almost all the cars had disappeared too, and the ones that did drive by were in no hurry to stop. But right at the edge of the ravine there was a small amusement park, surrounded by a low fence: a little hut for the ticket-seller, two or three roundabouts, and a children’s railway-a circle of rails about ten meters in diameter. And in the total silence, under the soft snow falling from the sky, against the background of empty, lifeless blackness, the tiny locomotive was running around the circle, jingling its bell and blinking its little colored lights as it pulled along two little carriages. Sitting absolutely still in the first one was a boy about five years old, dusted with snow, wearing a large cap with earflaps and clutching a plastic spade in his hand. He was probably the ticket-seller’s son and she had no one to leave him with at home… It didn’t seem like anything special, but it gave me such a bad feeling that I used magic and made the driver of a passing truck stop and take me to the city center.
Allowing for the difference between the cities, that was pretty much the kind of street where the Night Watch office was located. I didn’t need a map, I could sense where I needed to go. And I only had to walk for ten minutes from the marketplace, which was right at the center of town. But I seemed to have entered a different world. Not the bright world of an Eastern fairy tale, but a kind of ordinary, average place that you can find in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, Turkey, and the southern countries of Europe. Half Europe, half Asia, with far from the best features of either part of the world. A lot of greenery, but that’s the only good part-the two-or three-story houses were dusty, dirty, and dilapidated. If they were less monotonous, they might at least have rejoiced the eye of some tourist. But even that variety was lacking here, everything was dismally standard: paint flaking off the walls, dirty windows, entrance doors standing wide open, washing hanging on lines in the courtyards. The phrase “frame-and-panel housing construction” surfaced from somewhere in the depths of my memory. Its bleak, bureaucratic tone made it the perfect description of these buildings that were meant to be temporary but had already stood for more than half a century.
The Night Watch office occupied a small, dilapidated single-story building that was surrounded by a small garden. I thought that a building like that looked just perfect for a small kindergarten, filled with swarthy, dark-haired little kids.
But all the children here had grown up long ago. I walked around a Peugeot parked by the fence, opened the gate, went past the flowerbeds in which withering flowers were struggling to survive, and shuddered as I read the old Soviet bureaucratic-style sign on the door.
NIGHT WATCH
SAMARKAND BRANCH
BUSINESS HOURS:
20:00-8:00
At first I thought I must have gone crazy. Then I thought I must be looking through the Twilight. But no, the inscription was absolutely real, written in yellow letters on a black background and covered with a cracked sheet of glass. One corner of the glass had fallen off, and the final letter of the word “Watch” was tattered and faded.
The same text was written alongside in Uzbek, and I learned that “Night Watch” translated as “Tungi Nazorat.”
I pushed the door-it wasn’t locked, of course-and walked straight into a large room. As is customary in the East, there was no entrance hall. And that was right-why would they need a hallway here? The weather was never cold in Samarkand.
The furnishings were very simple, reminiscent in part of a small militia station, and in part of an old office from Soviet times. There was a coatrack and several cupboards full of papers by the door. Three young Uzbek men and a plump middle-aged Russian woman were drinking tea at an office desk. There was a large electric samovar, decorated in the traditional Khokhloma folk style, boiling on the desk. Well, how about that-a samovar! The last time I’d seen one in Russia was at the Izmailovo flea market, with all the matryoshka dolls, caps with earflaps, and other goods for the foreign tourists. There were several other desks with no one sitting at them. An ancient computer with a massive monitor was clattering away on the farthest desk-its cooling fan ought to have been replaced ages ago…
“Assalom aleikum,” I said, feeling like a total idiot who’s trying to look intelligent. Why on earth hadn’t Gesar taught me Uzbek?
“Aleikum assalom,” the woman replied. She was swarthy-skinned, with black hair-quite clearly Slav in origin, but with that remarkable change in appearance that happens without any magic at all to a European who spends a long time in the East or is born and lives there. She was even dressed like an Uzbek woman, in a long, brightly colored dress. She looked at me curiously-I sensed the skillful, but weak, touch of a probing spell. I didn’t shield myself, and she gathered her information with no difficulty. Her expression immediately changed. She got up from the desk and said, “Boys, we have a distinguished visitor.”
“I’m here entirely unofficially!” I said, raising my hands in the air.
But the fuss had already begun. They greeted me and introduced themselves-Murat, sixth-level; Timur, fifth-level; Nodir, fourth-level. I thought they looked their real age, about twenty to thirty. According to Gesar, there were five Others in the Samarkand Watch…and according to Alisher, the members of the Watch in Tashkent were younger. How much younger could they be? Did they take on children from school?
“Valentina Ilinichna, Other. Fourth-level.”
“Anton Gorodetsky, Other, Higher,” I said in turn.
“I run the office,” the woman went on. She was the last to shake my hand and in general she behaved like the most junior member of the Watch. But I estimated her age as at least a hundred and fifty, and her Power was greater than the men’s.
Another peculiarity of the East?
But a second later any doubt about who was in charge here was dispelled.
“Right, boys, get the table set out quick,” Valentina commanded. “Murat, you take the car, run arou
nd the route quickly, and call into the market.”
And so saying, she handed Murat the key to a huge old safe, from which the young guy took out a tattered wad of bank-notes, trying his best to do it inconspicuously.
“Please, there’s no need!” I implored them. “I’m only here for a brief, entirely unofficial visit. Just to introduce myself and ask a couple of questions… And I have to call in to the Day Watch too.”
“What for?” the woman asked.
“There were no Others at the border check at the airport. There was just a notice in the Twilight, saying Light Ones should register with the Day Watch on arrival, and Dark Ones should register with the Night Watch.”
I wondered what she would have to say about such a flagrant piece of incompetence. But Valentina Ilinichna merely nodded and said, “We don’t have enough members to maintain a post in the airport. In Tashkent they do everything properly… Nodir, go and tell the ghouls that Higher Light One Gorodetsky is here on a visit from Moscow.”
“I’m here unofficially, but not exactly on personal…,” I began, but no one was listening to me any longer. Nodir opened an inconspicuous door in the wall and walked through into the next room, which I was surprised to see was equally large and half empty.
“Who are the ghouls?” I asked, struck by an unbelievable suspicion.
“Oh, that’s the Day Watch office. They haven’t really got any ghouls, that’s just what we call them…to be neighborly…” Valentina Ilinichna laughed.
I followed Nodir into the next room without saying anything. Two Dark Others-one young and one middle-aged, fourth-and fifth-level-smiled at me amicably.
“Assalom aleikum…,” I muttered and walked through the large room (everything was just the same, even the samovar was standing in the same place) and opened the door to the street running parallel to the one from which I had entered the building.
Outside the door there was an identical garden and on the wall there was a sign:
DAY WATCH
SAMARKAND BRANCH
BUSINESS HOURS:
8:00-20:00
I quietly closed the door and walked back into the room. Nodir had evidently sensed my reaction and cleared out.
One of the Dark Ones said good-naturedly, “When you finish your business, come back to see us, respected guest. We don’t often get visitors from Moscow.”
“Yes, do come, do come!” the other one said emphatically.
“Sometime later…thank you for the invitation,” I muttered. I went back into the Night Watch office and closed the door behind me.
It didn’t even have a lock on it!
The Light Ones appeared slightly embarrassed.
“The Night Watch,” I hissed through my teeth, scandalized. “The forces of Light-”
“We’ve cut back on space a bit. Utilities are expensive, and there’s the rent…,” said Valentina Ilinichna, spreading her hands and shrugging. “We’ve been renting these premises for two offices like this for ten years now.”
I made a simple pass with my hand and the wall separating the Light Ones’ office from the Dark Ones’ office lit up with a blue glow for an instant. The Dark Ones of Samarkand were not likely to have a magician capable of removing a spell cast by a Higher One.
“There’s no need for that, Anton,” Valentina Ilinichna said reproachfully. “They won’t listen. That’s not the way we do things here.”
“You are supposed to keep a watch on the Powers of Darkness,” I exclaimed. “To monitor them!”
“We do monitor them,” Timur replied judiciously. “If they’re right next door, it makes them easier to monitor. But we’d need five times as many members to go dashing around all over town.”
“And the signs? What about the signs? ‘Night Watch’? ‘Day Watch’? People read them!”
“Let them read them,” said Nodir. “There are all sorts of offices in the city. If you try to hide and don’t put up a sign, you’re immediately suspect. The militia will come around, or bandits working the protection racket. But this way everybody can see this is a state organization, there’s nothing to be got out of it, let it get on with its work…”
I started to come to my senses. I needed to remember this wasn’t Russia. The Samarkand Watch didn’t come under our jurisdiction. In places like Belgorod or Omsk I could criticize and lay down the law. But the members of the Samarkand Watch didn’t have to listen to me, even though I was a Higher Light One.
“I understand. But in Moscow it could never happen…Dark Ones sitting on the other side of the wall!”
“What’s the harm in it?” Valentina Ilinichna asked in a soothing voice. “Let them sit there. I expect their job’s not too much fun either. But if anything happens, we won’t compromise on our principles. Remember when the zhodugar Aliyaapa put a hex on old Nazgul three years ago, boys?”
The boys nodded. They livened up a bit and were obviously quite ready to reminisce about this glorious adventure.
“Who was it she put the hex on?” I asked, unable to resist.
They all laughed.
“It’s a name-Nazgul. Not those Nazguls in the American movie,” Nodir explained, and his white teeth flashed as he smiled. “He’s a man. That is, he was. He died last year. He took a long time to die, and he had a young wife. So she asked a witch to sap her husband’s strength. We spotted the hex, arrested the witch, reprimanded the wife, did everything the way it’s supposed to be done. Valentina Ilinichna removed the hex, everything worked out very well. Although he was an obnoxious old man, a very bad character. Malicious, greedy, and a womanizer, even though he was old. Everybody was glad when he died. But we removed the hex, just like we’re supposed to do.”
I thought for a moment and sat down on a squeaky Viennese chair. Yes, knowledge of the Uzbek language wouldn’t have been much help to me. It wasn’t a matter of language. It was a matter of a different mind-set.
The rational explanation had calmed me down a bit. But then I spotted Valentina Ilinichna’s glance-kindly, but condescendingly, sympathetic.
“But even so, it’s not right,” I said. “Please understand, I don’t want to criticize, it’s your city, you’re responsible for maintaining order here… But it’s a bit unusual.”
“That’s because you’re closer to Europe,” Nodir explained. He couldn’t mean he believed that Uzbekistan had nothing at all to do with Europe. “But it’s all right here; when there’s peace, we can live beside each other.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Thank you for the explanation.”
“Have a seat at the desk,” Valentina Ilinichna said amicably. “Why are you sitting over in the corner like a stranger?”
I actually wasn’t sitting in the corner at all. Timur was finishing setting the table in the corner. The brightly colored tablecloth that had instantly transformed two office desks into one large dining table was already covered with plates of fruit: bright red and luscious green apples; black, green, yellow, and red grapes; huge pomegranates the size of small melons. And there was very appetizing-looking homemade salami, cold cuts, and hot bread cakes that must have been heated using magic. I remembered how in one rare moment of nostalgia, Gesar had started singing the praises of the bread cakes in Samarkand-how delicious they were, how they didn’t turn stale even after a week, all you had to do was warm them up, and you just kept on eating them, you couldn’t stop… At the time I had taken what he said as the standard old man’s reminiscences. The kind where they say, “The trees were bigger then, and the salami tasted better.” But now my mouth was watering and I suddenly suspected that Gesar hadn’t been exaggerating all that much.
And there were also two bottles of cognac on the table. The local kind-which frightened me a bit.
“Forgive us for laying such a simple table,” Nodir said imperturbably. “Our junior member will be back from the market soon, and we’ll dine properly. Meanwhile we can make a light start.”
I realized there was no way I was going to escape a gala dinner
with abundant alcohol. And I suspected it was not only Alisher’s entirely understandable interest in his old girlfriend from school that had made him dodge an immediate visit to the Watch. It was many years since a visit by someone from Moscow had also been a visit from a superior, but even so, Moscow was still a very important center for the members of the Samarkand Watch.
“I’ve actually come here at Gesar’s request…,” I said.
I saw from their faces that my status had soared from simply important guest to quite unimaginable heights. Somewhere way out in space, where Others could not go.
“Gesar asked me to find a friend of his,” I went on. “He lives somewhere in Uzbekistan…”
There was an awkward pause.
“Anton, are you talking about the devona?” Valentina Ilinichna asked. “He went to Moscow…in ’98. And he was killed there. We thought that Gesar knew about it.”
“No, no, I’m not talking about the devona!” I protested. “Gesar asked me to find Rustam.”
The young Uzbeks exchanged glances and Valentina Ilinichna knitted her brows.
“Rustam…I’ve heard something about him. But that’s a very, very old story. Hundreds of years old, Anton.”
“He doesn’t work in the Watch,” I admitted. “And, of course, he has a different name. I think he has changed his name many times. All I know is that he is a Higher Light Magician.”
Nodir ran a hand through his coarse black hair and said firmly, “That’s very difficult, Anton-aka. We do have one Higher Magician in Uzbekistan. He works in Tashkent. But he’s young. If an old and powerful magician wishes to hide, he can always manage it. Finding him doesn’t just require someone who is powerful, it requires someone who is wise. Gesar himself should search for him. Kechrasyz, apologies, Anton-aka. We will not be able to help you.”
“We could ask Afandi,” Valentina Ilinichna said thoughtfully. “He is a weak magician and not very…not very bright. But he has a good memory, and he has lived in this world for three hundred years…”
“Afandi?” I asked cautiously, caught off guard by the name.
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