Last Watch

by Сергей Лукьяненков

  “Mutton in garlic sauce,” I said.

  “What sauce?” Alisher asked in amazement.

  “I was just remembering the wise Holmes and the naive Watson,” I replied, no longer concerned that my Russian might seem out of place. “The garlic is to cover the smell of the arsenic. You told me yourself-in the East you have to trust your nose, not your eyes. My dear fellow, have a little pilaf with us!”

  The waiter shook his head and slowly backed away. Out of curiosity I took a look at him through the Twilight. The predominant colors in his aura were yellow and green. Fear. He was no professional killer. And he had brought the poisoned pilaf himself, instead of his younger brother, because he was afraid for him. It’s amazing what abominable things people will do out of love for their nearest and dearest.

  Basically, it was all pure improvisation. Some filthy substance with arsenic had been found in the chaikhana, some kind of rat poison. And someone had given the order to feed us poisoned pilaf. It’s not possible to kill a powerful Other that way, but they could easily have weakened and distracted us.

  “I’ll make lagman noodles out of you,” I promised the waiter. “And feed them to your little brother. Is the chaikhana being watched?”

  “I…I don’t know…” The waiter had realized that, despite the way I looked, he ought to speak Russian. “I don’t know. They ordered me to do it!”

  “Get out!” I said, standing up. “There won’t be any tip.”

  The waiter dashed for the door of the kitchen. And the customers started leaving the chaikhana, deciding to take the opportunity not to pay. What had frightened him so badly? What I said, or the way I said it?

  “Anton, don’t burn a hole in your trousers,” said Alisher.

  I looked down-there was a hissing Fireball spinning in my hand. I had gotten so furious that the spell had slipped off the tips of my fingers into the launch stage.

  “I ought to burn down this nest of vipers, just to teach them a lesson,” I hissed through my teeth.

  Alisher didn’t say anything. He smiled awkwardly and frowned by turns. I understood exactly what he wanted to say. That these people were not to blame. They had been ordered to do it, and they couldn’t refuse. That this modest chaikhana was all that they had. That it fed two or three large families with little children and old grandparents. But he didn’t say anything, because in this case I had a right to start a little fire. A man who tries to poison three Light Magicians deserves to be shown what’s what, to teach him and other people a lesson. We’re Light Ones, not saints…

  “The shurpa was good…,” Alisher said quietly.

  “Let’s leave via the Twilight,” I said, transforming the Fireball into a thin plume of flame and directing it at the dish of pilaf. The rice and meat were reduced to glowing ashes, together with the arsenic. “I don’t want to show myself in the doorway. These bastards work too quickly.”

  Alisher nodded gratefully and got up, stamped on the embers in the dish, and emptied two teapots on it just to be sure.

  “The green tea was good too,” I said. “Listen, the tea looks pretty ordinary. Pretty poor stuff, to be honest. But it tastes really good!”

  “The important thing is to brew it right,” Alisher replied, relieved by the change of subject. “When a teapot is fifty years old and it hasn’t ever been washed…” He paused, but when he didn’t see an expression of disgust on my face, he went on. “That’s the ingenious part! This clever crust forms on the inside-tannins, essential oils, flavonoids…”

  “Are there really flavonoids in tea?” I asked in surprise, hanging my bag over my shoulder again. I’d almost forgotten it. The underwear wouldn’t have mattered, but the bag also contained the selection of battle amulets that Gesar had given me, not to mention five thick wads of dollars!

  “Well, maybe I’m confusing things…” Alisher admitted. “But it’s the crust that does it; it’s like brewing tea inside a shell of tea…”

  Taking Afandi under the arms in the way that was already a habit, we entered the Twilight. The cunning old man didn’t argue. On the contrary, he pulled up his legs and dangled between us, giggling repulsively and crying out, “Hup! Hup!” I thought that if, despite what Gesar’s memories told me, Afandi really was Rustam, I wouldn’t let his age prevent me from giving him an earful of good old vernacular.

  Chapter 5

  TO BE QUITE HONEST, I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED A RUSSIAN UAZ OR Niva. Not out of patriotic considerations, but because the Toyota jeep was by no means the most common car in Uzbekistan, and disguising it with magic would have been like unfurling a flag over my head and howling, “Here we are! Come and get us!”

  However, Afandi had told me very definitely that the road ahead was bad. Very bad. And the only Niva we came across near the chaikhana was in such terrible condition that it would have been shameful to subject the old lady to such mockery and humiliation.

  But the Toyota was new, and tricked out with all the gear, the way they do things in Asia -if you can afford to buy an expensive car, then let it have the works! A sports silencer, a bicycle rack (although the potbellied owner hadn’t been on a bike since he was a child), a CD-changer, a tow-bar, and facings on the doorsills-pretty much all the glittering trash that the manufacturers invent to hike up the basic price by an extra fifty percent.

  The owner of the car was apparently also the owner of the local market. He looked like a standard Uzbek bey, the way they’re always shown in the cartoons. In other words, about as credible as the fat capitalist with the eternal cigar clutched in his teeth. The irony of the situation was that this guy had probably derived all his ideas about how a rich man ought to look from children’s cartoons and fashionable European magazines. He was fat. He had an Uzbek skullcap embroidered with gold thread on his head. He was wearing a very expensive suit that was clearly too tight. And an equally expensive tie that had definitely been splattered with fatty food more than once and then run through the washing machine. He had a pair of polished shoes that were quite out of place in the dusty street. And gold rings with huge artificial gemstones or “dopealines” as the jewelry traders spitefully refer to them. The skullcap was supposed to symbolize his closeness to the people, and all the rest symbolized his European gloss. He was clutching a cell phone in one hand-an expensive one, but the kind that ought to belong to a rich young dope, not a respectable businessman.

  “Will this car be OK for us?” I asked Afandi.

  “It’s a good car,” Afandi said.

  I glanced around once again-there were no Others to be seen anywhere nearby. No enemies, no allies, no ordinary Others living among the ordinary human beings. So that was fine.

  I emerged from the Twilight and looked hard at the owner of the 4x4. I touched him gently with Power and then waited until he turned to face me, knitting his thick brows in bewilderment. I smiled and sent him two spells with names that are much too flowery to bother with here. They’re usually referred to as Haven’t Seen You for Ages and Bosom Buddies.

  The modern-day bey’s face dissolved into a broad smile.

  The two young guys accompanying him-either bodyguards or distant relatives-stared at me suspiciously. In the Twilight my hastily applied mask as Timur had fallen away, and this unfamiliar Russian who was walking toward their boss with his arms held out wide naturally made them wary.

  “Ah, how long it’s been!” I shouted. “My father’s old friend!”

  Unfortunately, he was about twenty years older than me. Otherwise I could have gotten away with the “old school friend” line, or “Remember our times in the army, brother!” But then, in recent years, the “times in the army” approach had worked less and less often: The mark was simply unable to figure out how he could possibly have served in the army with you when he had “honestly” bought his way out of military service with a bundle of greenbacks from the good old USA. Some people had even developed a serious neurosis as a result.

  “Son of my old friend!” the man howled, opening his arms
wide to embrace me. “Where have you been all this time?”

  The important thing at this point is to give the other person just a little bit of information. He’ll invent the rest for himself.

  “Me? I’ve been living in Mariupol with my grandmother!” I told him. “Oh, how glad I am to see you! You’re such a big man here now!”

  We hugged each other. The man had a delicious smell of shashlik and eau de cologne. Except that there was rather too much eau de cologne.

  “And what a fine car you have!” I added with a glance of approval at the Toyota jeep. “Is that the one you wanted to sell me?”

  A melancholy expression appeared in the man’s eyes, but Bosom Buddies gave him no choice. Never mind, he ought to have been happy that Gesar had equipped us so generously for our journey. Otherwise I would have asked him to give me the Toyota.

  “But…it’s…” he protested sadly.

  “Here!” I opened my bag, took out four wads of dollars, and thrust them into his hand. “Now, the keys, please, if you don’t mind. I’m really in a hurry!”

  “It…it’s worth more than that…,” the man said in a wretched voice.

  “But I’m taking it secondhand!” I explained. “Right?”

  “That’s right,” he admitted, speaking slowly.

  “Uncle Farhad!” one of the young men exclaimed in bewilderment.

  Farhad gave him a strict glance, and the youth fell silent.

  “Don’t interrupt when your elders are talking, don’t shame me in front of the son of my old friend!” Farhad barked. “What will the son of my old friend think?”

  The young guys were in a panic, but they kept quiet.

  I took the keys out of the man’s hands and got into the driver’s seat. I breathed in the fresh smell of the leather upholstery and glanced at the dashboard. Yes, the car was definitely secondhand. According to the odometer, it had traveled three hundred kilometers.

  I waved to the three men who had been left with forty thousand dollars instead of their means of transport. Then I drove out onto the road and said, “Everybody leave the Twilight!”

  Alisher and Afandi appeared on the empty backseat.

  “I would have given him a little more happiness,” said Alisher. “So he wouldn’t suffer too much afterward. He looks pretty spiteful, not a very good man, but even so…”

  “More spells only make a screwup all the more likely,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s all right. I paid him fair and square. He’ll survive.”

  “Are we going to wait for Edgar?” Alisher asked. “Or look for the Light Ones?”

  I’d already thought about these choices and rejected them.

  “No, there’s no point. Let’s make straight for the hills. The farther we are from people, the quieter it’ll be.”

  Alisher took my place at the wheel when it started getting dark. We had been driving south from Samarkand, toward the Afghan border, for three hours. Just as twilight fell, the asphalt road had given way to an appallingly bad dirt track. I moved to the backseat, where Afandi was snoring peacefully, and decided to follow the old man’s example. But before I dozed off, I took several battle amulets out of my bag.

  Novices are often fond of all sorts of magical wands, crystals, and knives, either made by their own hand or charged by a more powerful magician. Even a weak and inexperienced magician can achieve a quite astounding effect if he prepares an artifact with loving care and pumps it full of Power. The problem is that this effect-powerful, prolonged, and precise-is a one-off. You can’t attach two different spells to the same object. A magic wand intended to belch out flame will cope magnificently with its task, even in the hands of a weak Other. But if his opponent guesses what is happening and raises a defense against fire, the wand and its miraculous flames are useless. It can’t freeze, dry, or stand someone on his head. You can either use the fire that’s available, or hammer away with the wand as if it were a club. It’s no accident that weak magicians who have dealings with people (and it’s precisely the weak magicians who interfere in human affairs or involve people in their own) have always used a magical staff-a hybrid of the usual wand and a long club. Some of them, to be honest, have been far more skillful with the club than at using magic. I remember how all of us in the Watch went to the Pushkin movie theater for the premiere of Lord of the Rings. Everything was fine until the Light Gandalf and the Dark Saruman started fighting each other with their magic staffs. The two rows filled with Others broke into genuinely Homeric laughter. Especially the trainees, who had it drilled into them every day that a magician who relied on artifacts was simply an idle show-off, more interested in appearances than efficiency. A magician’s power lies in his skill in using the Twilight and spells.

  But of course there are exceptions to every rule. If an experienced magician has managed to foretell the future, no matter how-by skillful analysis of the lines of probability, or simply from his own experience-then a charged artifact is quite indispensable. Are you certain that your opponent is a werewolf, who cannot manipulate Power directly and relies on physical strength and speed? One accelerating amulet, one pendant with a Shield that is activated at close quarters, one simple wand (many prefer to charm an ordinary pencil-wood and graphite make an excellent accumulator for Power) with a freezing spell. And there you are! You can quite confidently send a seventh-level magician off to hunt down a Higher Werewolf. The Shield will repulse the attack, the amulet will lend the magician’s movement quite incredible speed, and the temporal Freeze will transform the enemy into a motionless bundle of fur and fury. Call for transport, and he’s ready for shipping to the Inquisition.

  The artifacts in my bag were far more valuable than the money lying beside them. And they had been prepared by Gesar in person…well, perhaps not prepared, but at least selected from the special stores in the armory. I could be sure that they were powerful and that they would be useful. I suddenly remembered an old Australian cartoon film that I had seen when I was a kid, Around the World in Eighty Days. In that cartoon, the coolheaded English gentleman Phileas Fogg, who was attempting to set a new record for traveling around the world, seemed like a cunning fortune-teller who always knew what he would need in the hours ahead. If he took a wrench, a stuffed opossum, and a bunch of bananas with him in the morning, then by the time evening came, the stuffed animal had plugged a leak in the side of a ship, the wrench had braced shut a door that his enemies were trying to break down, and the bananas had been given to a monkey in exchange for a ticket on a steamship. All in all, it was very much like a computer game in the “quest” genre, where you find you have an effective use for every item.

  Artifacts from Gesar could be used for their designated purpose or in some entirely unexpected way. But whatever happened, some use was usually found for them.

  I laid the twelve items out on the seat between me and the snoring Afandi, and I studied them carefully. I should have done this earlier, but I hadn’t taken them out at home because I didn’t want to attract Nadya’s attention. I hadn’t felt like fiddling with magical artifacts on the plane, either, and after that there simply hadn’t been time. Wouldn’t it be annoying if I discovered one of the amulets was a weapon against golems!

  Two portable battle wands, each no longer than ten centimeters. The first was made out of ebony-fire. The second was made out of a walrus tusk-ice. Well, they were both commonplace and useful. I’d managed without them so far, but anything could happen.

  Four silver rings with protective spells. That was a very strange set! The standard magician’s Shield protected against everything, you just had to feed it with energy. An Other didn’t often need protective rings. And here I had specific protection against fire, ice, acid…and vacuum. At first I couldn’t believe what I’d seen through the Twilight. I studied the last ring carefully. No, I was right! If the pressure suddenly dropped, the ring started to work and held the air around the person wearing it.

  That was strange. Of course, there were several battle spells tha
t suffocated the enemy, some by removing the air from around him. The things that had been thought up in thousands of years of warfare! But as far as I knew, nobody actually used these whimsical and slow spells in battle.

  Four bracelets. At least it was quite clear what they were for! Four different spells that forced a man or an Other to tell the truth. If Rustam got really stubborn, all I had to do was say “Tell me the truth,” and the ancient magician would be struck with a blow of absolutely monstrous Power. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  The final two amulets were rather less ordinary, both in appearance and content, and had quite clearly been prepared by Gesar himself for this mission of ours. The first was a SIM card for a cell phone, in a little plastic box. An ordinary card, but pumped full of magic. I studied it for a while, but I couldn’t figure it out. Then I decided to experiment: I took my own card out of my phone and put the one charged with magic in its place.

  It didn’t make any sense! It was a copy of my own SIM card! But what for? So I wouldn’t have to waste money on calls to Moscow? What raving nonsense!

  I thought for a while and then asked Alisher to call my number. Strangely enough, the phone still worked there.

  My phone rang immediately. Everything was OK, it really was a copy of my SIM, but it had been treated with magic for some reason… I shrugged and decided to leave the card in my phone. Maybe it coded the calls in some clever magical way? But I’d never heard of any magic like that before.

  The final amulet was a small stone rolled smooth by the sea, with a hole in it-something I’d once heard was called a “chicken god.” Human superstition believes it brings good luck. A cunningly woven silver chain that looked like a thick, twisted thread ran through the hole.

  In itself, of course, a “chicken god” doesn’t bring any good luck, but that doesn’t stop children from searching enthusiastically for them on the seashore and then wearing them on a string around their necks. This stone, however, had been enchanted with a complex spell that partially resembled the Domination. Was that for the conversation with Rustam too? I thought about it for a while and then hung the chain around my neck. It couldn’t do any harm…