The failure of the vacuum seemed to dent Edgar’s fervor. It was such a rare spell that our readiness for it bewildered the Inquisitor. He began slowly backing away, circling around the charred Toyota that was now smoking from acid and covered in hoarfrost. He got snagged on an icicle that had smashed through the car’s door and almost fell. As he waved his arms about to keep his balance, he almost let my Opium through.
“Edgar, surrender!” I shouted. “Don’t make us kill you!”
Those words stung the Inquisitor, inciting his fury. He paused for a second, then took a strange pendant off his belt—a bundle of small gray feathers tied together with string, like a small twig broom. He tossed it into the air.
The feathers turned into a flock of birds like overgrown sparrows, but with beaks that glittered like bronze. There were twenty or thirty of them, and they came dashing straight for me, maneuvering like supermodern reentry vehicles, the pride and joy of the generals in the space program.
The “chicken god” hanging around my neck broke and fell off its chain. And the flock of birds began fluttering about aimlessly in the air. They didn’t try to approach Edgar, but they couldn’t attack me—and they carried on fluttering about like that until finally Edgar swore and waved his hand to make them disappear.
Afandi also flung his spell and seemed to break through Edgar’s defenses. But there was no visible effect on the Dark Magician. He carried on backing away, occasionally counterattacking. There was a glow on his chest that kept getting brighter and brighter all the time—an amulet hidden under his clothes had been activated and was preparing to respond. For an instant I even thought that Edgar had equipped himself with a suicide spell, Shahid or Gastello, which would take us to the grave along with him.
“More Power to the Shields!” I ordered, and Alisher gave it everything he had, powering up the Shields around us as well as one around Afandi.
But Edgar was clearly not in the mood for a dramatic suicide. He launched one more brief attack and then pressed his hands to his chest, where the amulet was glowing. The blue lines of a portal sprang up around him. The magician took a rapid step forward and disappeared.
“He’s hopped it,” Alisher said. He sat down on the rocks and immediately swore and jumped back to his feet with his trousers smoking. The Kiss of the Viper was still in effect.
I stood there, feeling completely drained. Afandi stood beside me, laughing.
“What did you throw at him?” I asked.
“The next seventy-seven times he lies down with a woman, he will suffer shameful failure!” Afandi explained triumphantly. “And no one will be able to remove the spell.”
“Very witty,” I said. “Very Eastern.”
With a few brief spells I cleared away the traces of magic from the ground under our feet. The drops of acid had raised bubbles in the stone like rising dough.
Saushkin!
So it was Saushkin!
.
.
A COMMON ENEMY
Epilogue
Gesar didn’t answer straightaway. in fact, to be quite honest, it was more than two minutes before he answered.
“Anton, do you think you could—”
“No, I couldn’t,” I said.
The sky above me was gradually growing brighter. The strangely large southern stars were fading. I took another swig of cola out of my bottle and added, “Thanks for the amulets. They were all spot-on. But now pull us out of here. If one more psychopath comes along...”
“Anton.” Gesar’s voice sounded a bit softer now. “What happened?”
“I had a heated conversation with Edgar.”
Gesar paused and asked, “Is he still alive?”
“He is. He left via a portal. But first he spent a long time trying to finish us all off.”
“Has our friend the Inquisitor completely lost his mind?”
“Possibly.”
Gesar hummed something into the phone and I suddenly realized the boss was trying to think of the best way to use this information when he talked to Zabulon. Of how he could humiliate Zabulon the most with this story about his former colleague.
“Gesar, we’re very tired.”
“A helicopter will come to get you,” Gesar said. “Putting up a portal would be very difficult. Wait for a while, I’ll get in touch with Tashkent. Are you... at Rustam’s place?”
“We’re on the plateau where you used the White Mist against the Dark Ones.”
It’s not often that I manage to embarrass Gesar. I couldn’t afford to let the chance slip.
“The helicopter will be there soon,” Gesar said after a pause. “Did you talk to Rustam?”
“Yes.”
“And did he answer?”
“Yes. But not all the questions.”
Gesar gave a sigh of relief. “Well, at least he told you something... . You didn’t have to... er... prevail upon him?”
“No. I discharged all four bracelets into Edgar.”
“You did?” asked Gesar, growing more cheerful with every word I said. “And what did you find out?”
“The name of the vampire who’s working with Edgar.”
“Well?” Gesar prompted. “Who is it?”
“Saushkin.”
“That’s impossible!” Gesar barked. “Absolute nonsense!”
“Then the spells failed.”
“My spells couldn’t have failed. But you could have missed,” Gesar said in a slightly softer voice. “Anton, we’ll have to do without... unnecessary delicacy. When you get here, I’ll show you something I didn’t want to show you.”
“I’m all agog,” I said with a snort.
“I’m talking about the remains of Konstantin Saushkin. We keep them here, at the Watch.”
Now it was my turn to pause. But Gesar said, “I really don’t want to distress you once again. Charred bones are not a very pretty sight. Konstantin Saushkin is dead. There can be no doubt about it. Not even Higher Vampires can live without a skull. That’s all. Now relax and wait for the helicopter.”
I cut off the call and looked at Alisher. He was lying close by, munching on a chocolate bar. I said, “Gesar told me that we have Saushkin’s remains.”
“Yes,” Alisher replied calmly. “I’ve seen them. A skull with the glass from the space suit melted into it. Your Saushkin’s dead.”
“Don’t be upset,” Afandi put in. “Sometimes with an effort it’s possible to lie under any spell.”
“He couldn’t have been lying... ,” I whispered, recalling Edgar’s face. “No, he couldn’t have...”
I lifted the cell phone up in front of my face, went into the MP3 menu, and chose something at random. When I heard a woman’s voice singing along with a quiet guitar, I put the phone down beside me. The tiny speaker strained as hard as it could.
We used to rise with the dawn
And live for a thousand years.
Then someone went and stole
The fire—the flickering light.
And then some of us started praying
And others sharpened their fangs,
But we all drank from the Blue River.
But then time slipped through our fingers,
And by winter the river was shallow.
And those who had always lived here
Blamed those who had come from afar.
Some had daughters growing,
And others had sons,
But we all drank from the same stream...
“Afandi!” I called. “Do you know that my daughter told me about you? Back in Moscow.”
“Yes?” Afandi asked in surprise. “Is your daughter an enchantress, then?”
“Yes, she is,” I said. “But still a little one. Only five years old.
She asked if you would give her your beads. The blue ones.”
“What a fine daughter!” Afandi exclaimed in admiration. “Only five, and already thinking about beads! And turquoise is a fine choice... here!”
I didn’t see which pocket he took the beads out of before he handed them to me. I looked curiously at the string of sky-blue pieces of turquoise and asked, “Afandi, they’re magical, aren’t they?”
“Only a tiny bit. I charmed the string so that it will never break. But apart from that, they’re just beads. Beautiful ones! I chose them for my great-granddaughter, she’s getting on a bit, but she still likes her finery. Never mind, I’ll buy her some more. These are for your daughter, may she wear them in good health.”
“Thank you, Afandi,” I said, putting the present away.
One rose higher and higher,
Another damaged his wing.
In some fields the grain swelled and ripened,
But in others nothing would grow.
One was killed, struck by a bullet,
And the other fired the gun,
But we all drank from the same stream...
After the wine or the poison potion,
Some remember their father, some their mother.
One decides it is time to build,
Another that it’s time to destroy,
But every day at midnight
He who sits by the Mill of Fate
Resolves all their arguments
And says who must go out on watch.
Alisher cleared his throat and said quietly, “Perhaps it’s none of my business—after all, musicians are pretty strange people!—but I think we ought to hold an official inquiry into that song...”
.
.
Story Three
A COMMON DESTINY
Prologue
The tutor, Vadim Dmitrievich, looked around intently at the trainees. He was young himself; not so long ago he had been standing in their place, and now he was desperately lacking in respectability. Or at least, that was what he thought.
“We’re about to make our first field trip,” the tutor said. His hand automatically reached up for the bridge of his nose—he was always trying to adjust his spectacles despite not having any. Why on earth had he cured his own shortsightedness? Spectacles would have added to his respectability! “Andrei, repeat the assignment.”
A skinny teenage boy took a step forward and recited in a breaking voice, “We walk along the street. We examine passersby through the Twilight. If we see any Dark Ones or Light Ones, we inform you. But we pay most attention to finding uninitiated Others.”
“What do we do if we discover an uninitiated Other?”
“Nothing,” the boy said firmly. “We inform you, and then act according to the circumstances. An Other should be initiated at an appropriate moment, when he is most inclined toward the Light.”
“What do we do if we notice a criminal act committed by Dark Ones?”
“Nothing,” the boy replied with obvious annoyance. “We inform you and then contact the Watch... ”
“While maintaining a safe distance,” the tutor added. “And what if we discover a crime being committed by human beings?”
“We also do nothing,” the boy replied, this time in a really somber voice. “All we do is watch!”
The other trainees smiled. In addition to the boy, there were two adult men and a young woman standing in the line. In the tutor’s opinion, those three were all destined for the fourth or fifth level. But the boy might possibly get as far as the second, or even the first. He was an excellent prospect for a Battle Magician.
“Thank you, Andrei. You put everything quite correctly. We watch. We are only learning. Is that clear? Do not enter the Twilight, do not work any spells. Our basic task is to search for uninitiated Others. And don’t go thinking that it’s easy. Sometimes a person has to be studied for several minutes to determine if he or she is a potential Other. By the way, Anton Gorodetsky was discovered during a study assignment like this one. Gesar himself discovered him.”
The tutor paused for a few seconds and then joked, “Well, I’m not Gesar, but I am planning to become a Higher Other.”
In point of fact, he had absolutely no chance of reaching the Higher level. Actually, he had less than half an hour left to live. But the tutor couldn’t sense that. In the bundle of probability lines that he could have examined, there was only one inconspicuous little line that led to death.
At that precise moment, however, dozens of coincidences were coming together and that slim thread was swelling up with blood. Unfortunately, the tutor was too busy to study his own destiny every hour.
“We walk along Chistye Prudy Boulevard,” he said. “We don’t do anything, we just watch.”
One kilometer away, at the very center of the city, on Lubyanskaya Square, a car was stuck solid in a traffic jam. The Caucasian driver shrugged and glanced guiltily at his passenger, who thrust several bills into the driver’s hand and climbed out of the car. The driver put the money in his pocket and frowned as he watched his passenger walk away. He was not very likeable, somehow. He had paid well enough, but... The driver looked at the little icon glued to the dashboard of the old Zhiguli, then at the copper plaque with a sura from the Koran. He mentally thanked both the Christian and Muslim gods that the journey had been short. He really hadn’t liked that passenger!
The driver was an uninitiated Other, but he didn’t know it. Today his destiny could have taken an entirely new direction.
But it hadn’t happened. He turned onto a side street, where he was almost immediately flagged down by a pushy young woman. They agreed on a price and set off to the southwest district.
The tutor halted opposite the Rolan movie theater and lit a cigarette. He looked at Andrei, the trainee he felt the greatest liking for, and asked, “Have you read Denis’s Stories?”
“Uh-huh,” the boy murmured. He was a well-read, bookish boy from a good family.
“What do we learn from the story ‘The Grand Master’s Hat’?”
“That little Denis Korablyov lived in a very prestigious neighborhood,” the boy replied.
The young female trainee laughed. She hadn’t read Denis’s Stories, she had only seen the TV film a long time ago and then forgotten the moral, but she was amused at the facetious answer.
“And what else?” the tutor asked with a smile. He never smoked as he walked along, because he had read in a fashionable magazine that it wasn’t a respectable thing to do. And now every time he inhaled, he brought his death closer—but it wasn’t the nicotine that was to blame.
The boy thought about the question. He liked the young woman magician, and he also liked the semiconscious awareness that he was cleverer than she was.
“We can also say that chess grand masters are very careless people. His hat was carried away by the wind and he didn’t notice.”
“I suppose so,” the tutor agreed. “But for us Others, the main moral of this story is not to get involved in petty human problems. You are likely to be misunderstood or even become an object of aggression.”
“But Denis made up with the grand master. When he offered to play him at chess.”
“Which is another wise thought!” the tutor continued. “You don’t need any magic in order to establish relations with a human being. You don’t even need to try to help him or her. The important thing is to share the other individual’s interests.”
They listened to the tutor attentively. He liked to take some fairy tale or children’s book as an example and draw lots of interesting comparisons. The trainees always found that amusing.
Half a kilometer away from them the former taxi passenger was walking along Myasnitskaya Street. He stopped at a kiosk, found some change in his pocket, and bought the Pra
vda newspaper.
The tutor looked around for the nearest trash bin. It was a long way away. He was about to throw his cigarette butt in the pond to delight the swans, but he caught Andrei’s eye and changed his mind. This was terrible: three whole years as a Light Other, and his nasty little human habits were still as strong as ever! The tutor walked briskly over to the bin, dropped his butt into it, and came back to the trainees.
“Let’s move on now. And watch, watch, watch!”
By now his death was almost inevitable.
A middle-aged man holding a newspaper approached the Chistye Prudy metro station. He hesitated before walking down the steps. On the one hand, he was in a hurry. On the other, the day was much too fine. A clear sky, a warm breeze ... the borderline between summer and autumn, that season of romantics and poets.
The man strolled as far as the pond, sat on a bench, and opened his newspaper. He took a small flask out of the pocket of his jacket and sipped from it.
A hobo carrying a plastic bag full of empty bottles stared at the man and licked his lips at the sight of that sip. Not expecting anything, but unable to overcome his habit of begging, he asked in a hoarse voice, “Will you give me a drop, brother?”
“You wouldn’t like it,” the man replied calmly, without the slightest sign of malice or irritation. It was simply a statement.
The homeless man hobbled on. Three more empty bottles, and he would be able to buy a full one. Number Nine. Strong, sweet, tasty Number Nine... damn all these bourgeois types with their newspapers, there were people here suffering from hangovers...
That was the very day when the hobo’s cirrhosis of the liver would develop into cancer. He had less than three months left to live. But that had nothing to do with what was happening on the boulevard.
“A man with a plastic bag, an ordinary human being,” said the woman trainee. “Andriusha, you have the keenest eyes here. Can you see anyone?”
“I see a hobo... A Light Other by the metro!” the boy cried with a start. “Vadim Dmitrievich, there is a Light Other by the metro! A magician!”
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